Читаем Angels & Demons полностью

"Exactly. Word of Galileo’s brotherhood started to spread in the 1630s, and scientists from around the world made secret pilgrimages to Rome hoping to join the Illuminati… eager for a chance to look through Galileo’s telescope and hear the master’s ideas. Unfortunately, though, because of the Illuminati’s secrecy, scientists arriving in Rome never knew where to go for the meetings or to whom they could safely speak. The Illuminati wanted new blood, but they could not afford to risk their secrecy by making their whereabouts known."

Vittoria frowned. "Sounds like a situazione senza soluzione."

"Exactly. A catch-22, as we would say."

"So what did they do?"

"They were scientists. They examined the problem and found a solution. A brilliant one, actually. The Illuminati created a kind of ingenious map directing scientists to their sanctuary."

Vittoria looked suddenly skeptical and slowed. "A map? Sounds careless. If a copy fell into the wrong hands…"

"It couldn’t," Langdon said. "No copies existed anywhere. It was not the kind of map that fit on paper. It was enormous. A blazed trail of sorts across the city."

Vittoria slowed even further. "Arrows painted on sidewalks?"

"In a sense, yes, but much more subtle. The map consisted of a series of carefully concealed symbolic markers placed in public locations around the city. One marker led to the next… and the next… a trail… eventually leading to the Illuminati lair."

Vittoria eyed him askance. "Sounds like a treasure hunt."

Langdon chuckled. "In a manner of speaking, it is. The Illuminati called their string of markers ‘The Path of Illumination,’ and anyone who wanted to join the brotherhood had to follow it all the way to the end. A kind of test."

"But if the Vatican wanted to find the Illuminati," Vittoria argued, "couldn’t they simply follow the markers?"

"No. The path was hidden. A puzzle, constructed in such a way that only certain people would have the ability to track the markers and figure out where the Illuminati church was hidden. The Illuminati intended it as a kind of initiation, functioning not only as a security measure but also as a screening process to ensure that only the brightest scientists arrived at their door."

"I don’t buy it. In the 1600s the clergy were some of the most educated men in the world. If these markers were in public locations, certainly there existed members of the Vatican who could have figured it out."

"Sure," Langdon said, "if they had known about the markers. But they didn’t. And they never noticed them because the Illuminati designed them in such a way that clerics would never suspect what they were. They used a method known in symbology as dissimulation."

"Camouflage."

Langdon was impressed. "You know the term."

"Dissimulacione," she said. "Nature’s best defense. Try spotting a trumpet fish floating vertically in seagrass."

"Okay," Langdon said. "The Illuminati used the same concept. They created markers that faded into the backdrop of ancient Rome. They couldn’t use ambigrams or scientific symbology because it would be far too conspicuous, so they called on an Illuminati artist—the same anonymous prodigy who had created their ambigrammatic symbol ‘Illuminati’—and they commissioned him to carve four sculptures."

"Illuminati sculptures?"

"Yes, sculptures with two strict guidelines. First, the sculptures had to look like the rest of the artwork in Rome… artwork that the Vatican would never suspect belonged to the Illuminati."

"Religious art."

Langdon nodded, feeling a tinge of excitement, talking faster now. "And the second guideline was that the four sculptures had to have very specific themes. Each piece needed to be a subtle tribute to one of the four elements of science."

"Four elements?" Vittoria said. "There are over a hundred."

"Not in the 1600s," Langdon reminded her. "Early alchemists believed the entire universe was made up of only four substances: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water."

The early cross, Langdon knew, was the most common symbol of the four elements—four arms representing Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Beyond that, though, there existed literally dozens of symbolic occurrences of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water throughout history—the Pythagorean cycles of life, the Chinese Hong-Fan, the Jungian male and female rudiments, the quadrants of the Zodiac, even the Muslims revered the four ancient elements… although in Islam they were known as "squares, clouds, lightning, and waves." For Langdon, though, it was a more modern usage that always gave him chills—the Mason’s four mystic grades of Absolute Initiation: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Vittoria seemed mystified. "So this Illuminati artist created four pieces of art that looked religious, but were actually tributes to Earth, Air, Fire, and Water?"