“NO!” he yelled, hiding his eyes with his hands. “I have done enough! I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing its purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. No more!”

Listen. You are a conduit for a message that is not for you to understand.

Ezio had no idea where the voice was coming from, or whose it was. He took his hands from his eyes and placed them over his ears, turning to the wall, his body wrenched to and fro as if he were being beaten.

And he was pulled round to face the room. Swimming in the air, filling the gaudy brightness, were trillions of numbers and icons, calculations and formulae, and words and letters, some jumbled, some thrown together to make occasional sense, but splitting again to give way to chaos. And from their midst the voice of an old man; old because from time to time it trembled. It was not without authority. It was the most powerful voice Ezio had ever heard.

Do you hear me, cipher? Can you hear me?

And then—something like a man, walking toward him as if from a great distance, walking through the swirling sea of all the symbols Man had ever used to try to make sense of it all; walking on air, on water, but not on land. But Ezio knew that the figure would never break free to reach him. They were on two sides of an unbridgeable abyss.

Ah. There you are.

The numbers around the figure shifted and pulsed. And started to flee from one another without being able to get free—in a kind of nightmarish entropy. But the figure became clearer. A man. Taller and broader than most men. Ezio was reminded of one of the statues of Greek gods Michelangelo had shown him when the Borgias’ collection had been seized by Pope Julius. An old god, though. Zeus or Poseidon. A full beard. Eyes that shone with an unearthly wisdom. Around him, the trailing digits and equations ceased to battle with one another and finally began to drift away, faster and faster, until they were gone, and the world was gone, and all that was left was this—man. What else was Ezio to call him?

Jupiter. Jupiter is my name. I think you’ve met my sisters.

Ezio looked at the creature but it was watching the very last trailing formulae as they scurried away through the ether.

The voice when it next spoke seemed oddly human, a little unsure of itself.

A strange place, this nexus of Time. I am not used to the . . . calculations. That has always been Minerva’s domain.

He looked at Ezio quizzically. But there was something else—profound sadness, and a kind of paternal pride.

I see you still have many questions. Who were we? What became of us? What do we desire of you?

Jupiter smiled.

You will have your answers. Only listen and I will tell you.

Light slowly drained from the entire room, and once again a ghostly, blue, revolving globe came into view directly behind Jupiter, and slowly grew in size until it occupied almost the entire chamber.

Both before the end, and after, we sought to save the world.

Small dots began appearing on the huge, revolving globe, one after another.

These mark where we built vaults in which to work, each dedicated to a different manner of salvation.

Ezio saw one of the dots among the many flash brightly. It was near the eastern seaboard of a vast continent he couldn’t imagine really existed, except that he knew that his friend Amerigo Vespucci had discovered a coastline there a decade earlier, and he had seen the Waldseemüller map depicting all the discovered world. But all that the map showed was farther south. Could there be more? A great land there? It seemed so unlikely.

They were placed underground to avoid the war that raged above, and also as a precaution, should we fail in our efforts.

And Ezio saw now that beams of light were beginning to stretch like lines across the slowing, spinning globe from all the other points marked on it to the one on the strange new continent, and went on until the entire world was crisscrossed with a filigree of lines of light.

Each vault’s knowledge was transmitted to a single place . . .

And then Ezio’s point of view seemed to change as he watched the great image of the world; and he seemed to plummet toward it, down through space, until it seemed as if he were about to crash into the ground, which rose to meet him, coming alarmingly close. But then—then it was as if he were lifted up, at the last moment, and was skimming along close to the ground, then down again, down through a shaft like a mineshaft until he emerged in an immense underground building, like a temple or a palace hall.

It was our duty . . . mine, and my sisters, Minerva and Juno—to sort and sample all that was collected. We chose those solutions which held the most promise, and devoted ourselves to testing their merits.

And, indeed, now Ezio was in the great hall, in the mysterious vault in the mysterious land—or seemed to be there—and there, near Jupiter, stood Minerva and Juno, whom Ezio had indeed encountered before . . .

Six we tried in succession, each one more encouraging than the last. But none worked.

And then—the world ended.

The last statement was made in so simple and matter-of-fact a tone that Ezio was taken aback by it. He saw Minerva, heavy-hearted, and Juno, angry, look on as Jupiter put into action a complex mechanism that triggered the great doors of the place to close and seal themselves shut. And then—

Then a great wave of indescribable power hit the upper vault of heaven and lit up the sky like ten thousand northern lights. Ezio seemed to be standing amid hundreds of thousands of people, in an elegant city and all looking up at the supernatural display above them. But the light breeze that played on them changed, from zephyr to storm, then to hurricane, within less than a minute. The people looked at one another in disbelief, then panic, and they scurried away to safety.

The sky, still ablaze with waves of green fire, began to crackle and spark with lightning. Thunder rolled and crashed, though there was not a cloud to be seen, and bolts smashed from the heavens onto trees, buildings, and people alike. Debris flew through the air, destroying everything in its path.

Next, a colossal tremor caused the ground to shudder. Those left in the open lost their footing and before they could rise were struck down by rocks and stones carried like balls of paper by the wind. The earth shook again, more violently this time, and the screams and cries of the afflicted were drowned by the crack of lightning and the deafening scream of the gale. Survivors in the open strove to find shelter, some fighting to keep their balance by clinging to the sides of whatever buildings still stood, as they clawed their way along.

But, amid the general devastation, great temples stood firm, untouched by the catastrophe around them, bearing tribute to the technical ingenuity of those who had built them. But another great tremor rippled the ground, then another. A broad highway split in two along its length, and people fled from the growing abyss that cleaved it. The sky by then was on fire, arcs of lightning rushing from one horizon to the other, and the upper reaches of the firmament seemed about to implode.