The Lost Tribes, page 16
The man laughed again. “That is an obvious answer, but not the one I was looking for. Where you are on the planet is not relevant. It is where you are in the universe that is significant.”
“Okay,” said Ben. “How about third planet in the solar system?”
The old man rubbed his temple and shook his head from side to side.
“Who are you?” asked Ben.
“I am the Hogon,” the man said. “The Dogon village elder. I guess you could say I’m the boss.”
Dogon? Hogon? Another riddle? Then something dawned on him.
“The Dogon have known about …”
Isn’t that what his uncle had started to say before his father shut him up?
Excited, Ben said, “I’m searching for a jewel. It will help me find some lost tribes. Do you have anything like that lying around?”
“The tribes are not lost. They just haven’t been discovered. There is a difference.” The man reached into his robes and produced a cloth bag. “You’ve always had everything you needed. You just refuse to see it. Perhaps some parts were hidden on purpose. But isn’t that what makes a journey more satisfying?” He placed the bag in Ben’s hand.
Ben loosened the drawstring, giddy to have solved the puzzle so fast. Then he slumped. The bag was filled with only sand and dirt. He looked to the Hogon for answers, but the man was staring at the sky. Ben looked up too.
“Ever look at the stars at night?” the Hogon said. “At the brightest of them all? It is a seed. We call it Po Tolo. Others call it Sirius A.”
Ben nodded. More stick pin art. Where was Dr. Lopez when he needed him? Or Carlos?
“Around that star,” the man continued, “is another. We’ve known about it for years. Part of our Dogon culture and our lore, with a few parts made up for nosy tourists. But you’re not a tourist are you?”
“No, sir, I’m not,” Ben said.
“Then learn before the sun comes up,” the old priest said. “Thousands of years ago, life sprang upon this earth.”
Ben was already lost. He’d just play along until he got his gem and star chart.
“But there are many Earths,” the man continued. “Many seeds. Only one base. One beginning. Just as all myths and religions on Earth have similar origins even though they appear to have developed independently.”
Ben just smiled.
“You don’t understand, do you?” the Hogon asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “We’re in Africa. It’s the Cradle of Life. Got it!”
The man laughed. “I have sons of my own. They are just as pig-headed. Can’t ever admit they don’t know everything. Africa is A cradle. But not the only one. Why are you so resistant to learning about your history?”
“Because — ” Ben stopped. He was embarrassed. “Because it’s all I ever hear about. I just want to be like everyone else.”
The Hogon seemed confused. “Explain.”
“You know — normal.” Ben said, trying to avoid eye contact.
The old man’s gaze grew intense. “Normal? I am still unclear. Normal is relative.”
Ben shrugged. “You know, without all the ancient history baggage that makes me feel like I’m doomed to fail before I even start.”
“You are what you choose to be,” the Hogon said. “And yet you push away the very people trying to help you.”
Ben bit his lip. “So my uncle is trying to tell me something.”
“Of course,” the Hogon said. “It is both his job, and his nature to do so.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “Then where’s the path?”
“Closer than you think.” The man pulled a second pouch from his cloak, then reached inside again and pulled out a star map with the letter ‘C.’ “Does this help?”
Ben was tempted to lie, but his watch read 10:00 pm. The “clock” was ticking louder than ever and it was a school night. “No. It doesn’t. I don’t get it.”
“You have collected maps. You’ve never seen a word with those letters before?”
Ben wracked his brain, then shrugged.
“Think harder.”
He tried, but other than the options he’d already ruled out — like the fact that Darth Vader was not his father, and the fact that the letter C ruled out the possibility of rearranging the other letters into “NOSE” — he was stumped.
“Sleep on it,” the priest said. “It will come to you.”
“That’s it? Sleep on it? No enlightenment?” Ben couldn’t believe it. He searched the village with his eyes hoping to spot something he could use.
The man shrugged. “I could give you the answers, but where’s the challenge in that? Didn’t you say it was time to start figuring things out yourself?”
Ben’s jaw dropped. He had never said that out loud, not even inside the game.
The man winked. “Ben, a butterfly struggles to break out of its cocoon to strengthen its wings. It’s nature’s way of helping it become strong enough to fly. If you cut the cocoon to help it, it will die without ever taking flight. So the game is a way to help you strengthen your wings. Do you understand?”
“No. I really don’t,” Ben said. “Just sounds like another riddle.”
The man sighed and placed his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You will. In the meantime, you are supposed to go to the old Nubian capitol in Sudan. But it’s late, the clock is ticking, and I need my rest. So do you. I’m told it’s a school night so I’ll save you the trip. Give my regards, and that pouch, to your uncle. And tell him we hope his next visit occurs before Sirius B completes another full orbit.”
“Is that it?” asked Ben.
“Afraid so,” the Hogon said. “Not allowed to give you all the answers.”
Ben squeezed the worthless pouch. “All the answers? You didn’t give me any answers!”
The man chuckled quietly. “Like I said. I have sons. They think they know everything. You have all you need and know more than you think.”
The man threw the chart into the air. Parts of it overlapped actual stars. So that was it. Each chart showed only random stars. He’d need them all to fill in the blanks.
“Thanks.” Ben hesitated. He had one more question. “Do you know my dad?”
The man’s eyes sparkled. “Yes. He is an honorary member of our tribe.”
Ben was stunned. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to the next question. “Is he a jewel thief? A spy?”
“Your father does what he must to guarantee that you have what you need,” the Hogon said.
Ben gave up. The Hogon might as well have been speaking in hieroglyphics. “Then I guess I’d better get home. Don’t have a dialer handy, do you?”
The man smiled. “I have something better. I have faith in you.” He pointed to the top of the cliff. It was at least 1,000 feet high.
Confused, Ben looked around for a path to the top. “How am I supposed to get all the way up there?”
“Take a leap of faith.” The Hogon jumped, his bare feet rising a foot off the ground.
The man had clearly lost his mind. But Ben jumped anyway and found himself soaring toward the stars and into … broad daylight? He looked down and realized he had not been outside until now. He’d been in a holographic projection running inside of a holographic projection. The elderly man waved beneath a hole in the roof of the hut.
Once Ben reached the top of the cliff he was zapped back into his room. The pouch was still in his hand, a white diamond he’d never seen rotated on the screen above the altar, and the new star chart was in the ancient book with all the others.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Getting Warmer
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
Ben was hit with a wave of adrenaline. He laid the star charts out in order of their discovery:
SONEC
An internet search for “sonec” turned up nothing useful. Out of curiosity, he looked up Sirius A and B and discovered that the smaller of the two stars completed its orbit every fifty years. The Dogon planned activities around it. So what was the priest saying? He hoped Uncle Henry would visit again before another fifty years had passed? Sounded like sarcasm. But the legend was still fascinating. The Dogon knew about those stars before telescopes were strong enough to see them. It fit the pattern but didn’t answer any questions.
The man said Ben had everything he needed already. But what he needed was another clue. He hit the “Escape” key and turned off the 3-D holographic projections. The speed of the game accelerated. Armed with the digital reference set for National Geographic, an atlas, a DVD ROM encyclopedia and a browser window opened to the CIA World Factbook, Ben traveled the globe collecting clues and retracing his steps when he hit dead-ends.
He missed the slick interactive feature but it was easier to play without walking every place. But he didn’t find what he was looking for. By eleven thirty and he was tempted to quit. Still curious about his father’s notes, went to the Vatican Museum instead.
After walking endless corridors he found the first Dynasty pendant. It contained no jewels, just Egyptian scarabs and he didn’t zap back to the bedroom. Discouraged, he put it away and began dialing Sunnyslope when a different pendant dropped from an open case. The sign read: Norwegian Risku. Saami symbol of the sun. He tried to put it back but zapped to his bedroom instead.
He checked in with Serise and Grace who looked dead on their feet. They’d discovered a black pearl in an oyster carried by a whale off the shores of Bora Bora. Seven clues were in place. One more to go.
“You found two more?” asked Grace. “Way to go, Webster!”
Ben nodded. “Thanks. The second one was a happy accident. But it worked and there’s another star chart in the book.”
“What’s that gold necklace?” she asked. “How does it fit the pattern?”
“Beats me. It’s Norwegian, though,” Ben said. “You know, we’ve been playing without trying to figure out the identities of the missing tribes.”
“I figured that it had to do with the countries we visited,” Grace said.
Ben yawned. “But which tribes? There’s a lot of people living on those continents. Every location says that the world will come to an end if we don’t solve the mystery.”
Grace groaned. “Are you sure there isn’t a scary ending?”
“Can’t be sure of anything.” Ben opened a text file on his computer and made a list based on where he and the girls found jewels:
1. Sudan, Africa which was once the Nubian empire.
2. New Mexico along the Navajo Long walk.
3. Guatemala at a Royal Ball Court
4. Nepal at a Tibetan monastery.
Ben realized how obvious the first four were. Of course his uncle would pick the ethnic origins of the kids. Wasn’t that his point about connecting with their past?
The others were less clear: Easter Island, Norway, South Pacific. The final trail lead to the Antarctic and as far as he knew there had never been any tribes living there.
With seven jewels in place, the canopic rods clicked into position and glowed with more hieroglyphic patterns. There was too much to decipher and asking Carlos to analyze the celestial patterns was out of the question. The seven letters in order now spelled:
SONECIA
Even weirder, the star charts became transparent when layered on top of the other and showed a huge blank space in the center. Triangles beneath the letters formed seven points of an eight-pointed star. The pattern had been popping up everywhere. Grace insisted it was a coincidence. She’d found the same star in a Wingdings font set on her computer. Maybe the names of the tribes would be revealed when the eighth jewel and map were found. He printed screen shots just in case.
“Serise? Any clues about those hieroglyphics. Got any new tricks up your sleeve.”
She threw up her hands in defeat. “I’m exhausted. There’s an English test tomorrow. I don’t have time to write a program for all of them. Right now I’m so tired I’m not even sure I could write the alphabet.”
Grace nodded and yawned.
Ben couldn’t shake the idea that finding jewels wasn’t his uncle’s real message — that the treasure hunt was just a distraction. He had to follow this through to the end … tonight.
Alone.
“Okay. Get some sleep,” he said. “We can finish over the weekend.”
“By the way,” Grace said. “You know that weird plant in the greenhouse, the one that says Amorphophallus Titanum? It’s not an avocado plant.”
“You sure?” Ben asked.
“Yes. I looked it up,” said Grace. “It’s a corpse plant. They bloom every forty years. It will smell like a dead person when it opens.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Bay of Whales
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Albert Einstein
Familiar footsteps padded along the carpet outside Ben’s bedroom door. A gentle knock followed and the door opened a crack.
“Are you decent?”
Ben put the computer to sleep, pulled his father’s list from the stand and slipped under the comforter. “Yeah. You can come in.”
His mother took a visual sweep of the room. She seemed distracted and tired. Then it hit Ben, he had been so busy solving the game he had forgotten about the time. His mother was hours overdue.
“Finish your math?”
“It’s on the desk.” He panicked when he realized the leather collar was next to the computer. They weren’t allowed on the cat but his mother never explained why.
“Thanks for putting April to bed.” She brushed the collar aside as if it were nothing and surveyed the math notes. She waved the homework paper at him. “Do this yourself?”
Ben nodded
“Good job, Honey. There’s a mistake on problem number six. Simple. I’ll help you fix it in the morning. Okay?” She touched the dead rose on Ben’s desk, frowned and moved the vase to the windowsill. Within seconds the flower began to revive.
“Not going on a trip?” Ben faked a wide yawn and did a double take at the now erect flower.
His mother’s eyes flashed briefly. She sighed and looked out the window to some faraway place.
“Seems like everyone else is,” he continued.
His mother nodded again but didn’t answer the question. Instead, she kissed him on the forehead. “Get some sleep.” Then she left and closed the door. No song, no candles, no ritual.
Ben jumped out of bed and ran to the window when he heard the kitchen door slam shut. His mother hurried toward the garage where a light glowed in the workshop. She was probably going to tell Ben’s father to wrap up his experiments for the night, or to stop trying to increase his car’s energy output. She once asked him to explain the point of changing the engine specifications when there was no place on Earth to drive a car 300 miles per hour. His father had kissed her and said, “Not yet, you mean.”
Corny? Definitely. But not spies. Not them.
Ben studied the star charts again. The Dogon man insisted he’d seen the letters before. But where? He let his head drop to his desk as he replayed the events of the past days. The passwords, the holograms, the sweat lodge, the satellite dish, the …
“Think harder.”
The satellites. The star was on the program that shut them down. Carlos said his father was blocking the government data.
“It will come to you,” The Hogon had said.
Think, Ben, think!
“Sonecian Control — online.”
Ben’s head jerked up. The name of a system they accessed on the Lopez computer. But what did that mean? In the morning he would show the combined star chart to Carlos — whether Carlos wanted to help or not.
Antarctica was the only destination remaining in the game options. What tribe would be living there? The lost penguins?
Curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to play with the hologram running one last time.
Thinking about the extreme cold made him shiver. The southern California climate didn’t exactly require keeping a parka or earmuffs on hand. He would have to make do with a warm-up jacket and two extra blankets from the closet. As a precaution, he turned off the bedroom lights and lowered his window shade. Now the glow of the computer monitor was the sole source of illumination.
Ben wrapped the blankets around his body, the outermost bearing the logo of the Cleveland Cavaliers, then pressed the escape button and saw the chamber of the Guardian materialize on the monitor. This time there were four choices:
South Pole
90 00S 00 00W
Deception Island
62 58 S 60 33W
Paradise Bay
64 54 S 62 52 W
Bay of Whales
78 30 S 164 20W
Rolling a die from his Monopoly game, Ben narrowed the choice to the Bay of Whales which sent him to a remote ice floe in the Ross Sea.
He was greeted with bone numbing cold and razor sharp wind. Stumbling forward, he tripped over a footlocker. Out here? A thick parka, gloves, scarf and boots were tucked inside along with a survival kit containing a compass, goggles, emergency flare, and matches. Uncle Henry thought of everything.
Ben’s hands felt many degrees colder than the miles of ice surrounding him as he struggled to put on the extra clothing. The boots were too large for his feet, but once on, they shrank to a perfect fit. His body thawed to normal temperature, as if the clothing contained a built-in heat source.
His eyes hurt from the intensity of the sun’s rays reflecting off the thick ice. Sliding on the goggles, he tried to get his bearings. There were no shadows to guide him in the desolate wasteland. No way to distinguish the sky from the land. His mouth felt parched. All this water frozen around him and yet none to drink.
Typical, Webster. Save the hardest part of the game for last.
Ben pulled the hood of the parka tighter around his head and wrapped a scarf around his face. Compass in hand, he headed north in the hopes of finding a shore - or anything in liquid form.
