The Lost Tribes, page 26
“So much for being able to solve a game in a week,” Uncle Henry said.
Ben felt as though he had been punched. There was only one more jewel to go. One more! A burning rage rose within him.
“Stop picking on Ben! It’s not his fault!” April pounded Uncle Henry with her fists. “Mom took the game away. Mine too. And Grace’s mom took her whole computer. Ben was the one who figured out how to get it started again. We only had one more piece to find and we would have been finished today if the neighborhood hadn’t blown up. You need to stop being so mean.”
Ben didn’t know which made him feel worse — his uncle’s insult or the fact that his little sister was defending him. He searched for a proper response then decided against it. Reluctantly, he looked up and saw his uncle’s expression soften.
“I was out of line,” his uncle said. “You have my apologies.”
“What would have happened if we had found the final jewel?” Carlos asked.
“The game was programmed to bring all five of you automatically. Regardless of who was playing the game. It would have forced your parents to return to the Harbor to prepare you for the trip home.”
“So our parents are like, what? Secret agents?” asked Serise.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“But they aren’t originally from the United States,” Grace said.
“That would be an accurate analysis,” Uncle Henry said.
“Are they working for British Intelligence?”
Uncle Henry cocked his head and gave Ben a stern look of disapproval. “I’d like to think we’re a little more sophisticated then that.”
“Well, where are they from? It’s got to be somewhere on the planet!” Ben snapped. “Russia? Europe? Africa? “
Uncle Henry sighed, closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
“What are you saying? We’re not from Earth?” asked Grace.
“You were born here,” he said.
“But our parents!” shouted Grace, mirroring Ben’s own frustration with his uncle’s short, cryptic answers. “ARE … OUR … PARENTS … FROM … EARTH?”
“No,” Ben’s uncle said. “They are not.”
Ben felt all the oxygen leave the room. He gasped then sank into the nearest chair. It was confirmed. He had been zapped into a computer game.
After a few minutes of silence, April asked, “Are you really my uncle?”
Uncle Henry stroked her cheek. The gesture caused Ben to feel further isolated. His uncle flinched and quickly withdrew his arms. His narrowed eyes registered alarm for less than a second before he answered, his tone cold again. “Yes, April. Your father and I are brothers.”
“And your name?” Ben asked angrily. “It’s not really Henry, is it?”
“I suspect you already know the answer to that question. Why ask it now?”
“Because you’re the mysterious Kurosh! The man everyone’s been talking about!”
Uncle Henry bowed his head.
“Whoa! You’re the mission commander? You’re like the boss of this whole complex?” asked Carlos.
“That’s an accurate, if not concise summary of the facts,” Uncle Henry said.
“Then what’s going on?” shouted Carlos, his face red with anger. “My dad is mad at you. All the parents are mad at you!” His voice dropped, the anger replaced by curiosity. “By the way, what’s a son of Casmir?”
“You are a son of Casmir, Carlos.” Uncle Henry’s expression remained stoic while Carlos digested the comment. “There will be plenty of time for explanation. I have business to attend to, not the least of which is locating your parents. For now, get some rest. I’ll arrange for food. I’m afraid that the accommodations aren’t ideal, but you should be comfortable until it is time to board the transport. We can talk in the morning.”
“No!” insisted Ben. “We have a right to know what’s going on!”
“Now is not the time,” Uncle Henry barked impatiently.
“If not now, then when?” asked Ben. “You gave me that game to send a message about the family business. If this is it, you kind of owe us all an explanation.”
“I suppose I do,” Uncle Henry replied, sounding almost defeated. “Your parents were sent here to determine the fate of their predecessors.”
“What happened to them? The others,” asked Ben.
“Unknown. The transport returned with only a few bodies on board. All dead.”
“Returned? Returned where?” asked Grace
“To our home in the Sonecian Galaxy,” Uncle Henry answered.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Revelations
“There are more things on Heaven and Earth Than are dreamt of Horatio.”
Shakespeare
Uncle Henry walked to a digital panel near the door and tapped on a flat keypad. The room darkened. An image of three pyramids and the Sphinx floated above them.
“Do you know where we are now?”
“Egypt?” asked April.
“Precisely. Beneath the great pyramid of Giza. In your history books the structure is referred to as Khufu’s Pyramid. Think of the Harbor as part observation post, part space port.”
“How long has this place been here?” asked Carlos, sinking into one of the couches.
“Thousands of years,” Uncle Henry said. “Didn’t take much convincing to get Khufu to build it. With our technology and his ego, our ancestors achieved a masterpiece. His sons, not to be outdone, requested help in building two more. This complex is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still standing. Historians have never figured out why Khufu isn’t buried here. We’ll let them puzzle that one a little longer. After our initial visits, the station sat dormant for several millennia.”
Uncle Henry waved his hand. Like the game, the three-dimensional projection expanded to fill the room. Ben felt as though he were floating in space. It was disorienting, but he could still see faint outlines of the furniture and felt the floor beneath his feet.
Images formed of a distant galaxy. To Ben, it looked like more pin cushion magic from their backyard adventures with Senóre Lopez.
“You’re looking at Orion’s Belt. It’s a gateway.”
“To where? Alpha Centauri?” asked Carlos.
“Hardly,” Uncle Henry said, sniffing snobbishly at the suggestion. “The Centaurians are advanced but not exactly friendly. We stopped them from raiding Earth for zoo and laboratory specimens.”
“Lab specimens?” Carlos looked stricken. “Us?”
Serise shrugged. “Why not? We do it to poor defenseless creatures. I guess some other race thinks that way about us. Scary.”
Carlos’s eyes grew wide. “So all those stories …”
Uncle Henry cut him off. “About alien abductions? Yes, for the most part they’re true.”
Ben grew impatient with the discussion getting off track. “Okay. Back to the main point. You were going to explain about this so-called galaxy we’re from?”
Uncle Henry glared. “The ‘so-called’ galaxy is approximately 230 million light years away. Well outside of the Milky Way. We’re located in what Earth scientists call the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster. We appear as a void within it. As Earth technology became more sophisticated, we used the Casmir Array to keep the area hidden.”
Uncle Henry barked a command at the panel. New video streamed overhead.
Grace sat on a floor cushion, brushed sand off the last of her sushi rolls and munched as if she were eating popcorn at the movies. She offered one to April who stared at the dried fish and rice ball and declined. Ben wondered how Grace could eat at a time like this.
“We call this place Safe Harbor because that is what it represented to our ancestors — a sanctuary from the impending collapse of a star near our galaxy. “Our ancestors wanted to preserve something of their cultures. Earth was the nearest planet capable of sustaining the many species found in our solar system, making it perfect for colonization. They placed eight tribes on a land mass similar to the environment on their home planet. In time, the tribes blended with the indigenous populations and became part of their genetic pool.”
Scenes of the arrival streamed around Ben. The warrior tribes were greeted as if they were gods. Temples and pyramids sprang up all over the world. Some were disguised to look like mounds or mountains. Others were hidden in jungles. People lay on slabs attended by priests and priestesses. But they weren’t being sacrificed — they were being revived. Ben’s hand passed through the holographic images when he reached out to touch them.
Uncle Henry continued his narration. “The individuals were chosen by lottery and placed in cryogenic suspension. The ancients had hoped their descendants would eventually discover that each held only a single piece to the puzzle of their origins. And then, only then, would the tribes come together and discover the location of the Guardian. A signal beacon would show the way home.”
“But something went wrong. A catalyst or factor we hadn’t anticipated. An evil we couldn’t conceive of even in our worst nightmares. We sent observers to check on the progress of the tribes and to relieve their colleagues. But when the ship arrived, the teams found most outposts deserted. From the limited data we retrieved from the ship’s log, the team and survivors decided to return home. They died on the journey. There is no record as to the cause.”
Uncle Henry paused for effect. No one said a word. Even Serise and April were speechless.
“Then why did you come back?” asked Ben.
“To retrieve the Guardian. She was deactivated after the final terraforming transports returned home in 10,000 BC.”
“And our parents?”
“After finding several artifacts they became over confident and started families. The habitat adjustment mixture Medie created allows you to function like human children. I believe Ben refers to it as green glob. If you stop taking it for more than a few months, you’ll revert to traits based on your inherited genetic coding.”
Ben stared at his hands, half expecting to see himself turn green … or grow the hairy arms of a werewolf.
“But the rest of us don’t drink that horrible stuff,” Grace said. “We haven’t been given anything special,”
Uncle Henry smirked. “Haven’t you? One of your favorite foods is black moss seaweed. You even insist that your mother add it to soups and other foods.”
Grace gasped.
“And imagine our good fortune!” he continued. “A Tibetan child with an insatiable appetite for Japanese sushi. Your mother makes her own seaweed wraps and whips up a special batch of wasabi. There is also her special red bean paste for the Zongzi, and … should I continue?”
Grace stared at her sushi rolls as if they were crawling with worms.
“Serise,” Uncle Henry continued. “Cranberry smoothies with an algae based protein powder are your favorite drink, correct? Seaweed and algae mud masks are part of your bedtime routine. Absorbs through the skin and leaves a tingling sensation?” He pointed to her left ear. “You missed a spot.”
Serise clawed at her face as if trying to wipe off the remaining residue and the skin with it.
“Carlos? Your mother’s green tamales are the best in town. Practically habit forming. I understand that you are partial to malted Ovaltine and Chocolate Yoo-Hoos. She mixes in a little protein powder to give it an extra boost. Drink it by the gallon if you got a chance. Hmmm?”
Carlos froze in place.
“Medie is an extraordinary chemist. Your parents were very creative with her formula.”
“Not creative enough,” snorted Ben. “Wish Mom had turned ours into barbecue sauce.”
Uncle Henry closed his eyes as if conjuring a memory. “Ben, your mother is one of the most gifted botanists I’ve ever known. She is accomplished in many things. Cooking, however, is not one of her strengths.”
Memories of his mother flooded into Ben’s mind. He missed her awful cooking already. “Okay, back to the main point. Why can’t you just open this Guardian up and get what you need?”
“She can only be activated when all eight keys are present. The master codes were destroyed thousands of years ago.”
“So what happens when you find the keys? What does this Guardian do?” asked April.
“We don’t know. Right now we are operating on the faith that she holds the solution to Earth’s current situation.”
Exhausted, Ben collapsed on the couch next to Carlos. “So why the game disk? Why not tell us and get it over with.”
Uncle Henry sighed. “I am bound by a higher authority. I needed a way to get you here with or without your parent’s permission. The game was a loophole. It allowed me to get information to you without breaking a vow. As I hoped, Ben shared it and it allowed us to observe you working as a team. The results were encouraging.”
“What if someone else found the disk?” asked Grace.
“They would just think it was an interesting game,” Uncle Henry said. “One of thousands on the market.”
“But someone could have figured out the codes and found these tunnels or even the Guardian,” Ben said.
“No, the gateways and passages are secured. You need a specific eight-gene code in your DNA to activate them. But the Guardian works differently. We need a key from each of the original tribes to form the final sequence - a sixty-four gene code.”
“So that’s why the medallions turned on as soon as we touched them,” Ben said.
“We were surprised to find them still operational. They haven’t been used in thousands of years. They came in handy when Kavera and I programmed the game. I got quite an earful from Shan and Frank after they saw you boys sitting in Llactapata.”
He paused and seemed disappointed. “When you realized you were lost, didn’t it occur to you to use your computer — for instance, the one Serise is carrying — to dial here? Did you ever consider booting up the game and dialing the location marked ‘home’?”
Everyone groaned at the obvious nature of his comment.
“I don’t get it,” Serise said. “If everyone from our home planets has the gene sequence, why look for the tribes? Why not just find the keys and use your own team members.”
“We thought of that. We have two keys in place, but the Guardian doesn’t recognize the team members that bear them. We suspect a genetic alteration was made to the tribes that settled here. One that only the Guardian will recognize. To prevent us from doing what we are attempting — remove the technology without reuniting them.
“How long have you been trying?” Serise asked. Her voice was quiet and respectful.
“Hundreds of years.”
“And how many expeditions have you been on?”
“Five. Although not consecutively.”
“That makes you how old?” asked Grace
He frowned, “Let’s just say I’ve been around the galaxy a time or two.”
Ben studied his uncle. He looked like he was in his forties — ancient by kid standards but not by universe standards. He couldn’t figure out the whole time/space continuum stuff and wondered what all those trips translated into — hundreds of years? Thousands?
“After you sent a team to Earth and ALL of them ended up missing or dead, wouldn’t that be a clue to stop trying?” Ben said.
“It’s not that simple,” Uncle Henry said. “Our research has shown that Earth’s core is unstable.”
“Even more reason not to come back,” Ben said.
Uncle Henry rolled his prayer beads in his hand, focusing intently on the violet one. “Do you remember the basic principles of science? Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Nor energy. Just stored, redirected, transformed. That single principle keeps balance in the universe.”
“Yes,” Ben said. “But I still don’t understand why you didn’t just stay away.”
Uncle Henry drew in a long breath, the beads clicking as they fell from his grasp. “We uncovered a force that feeds on the negative energy of others. Stores that energy deep in Earth’s core. Some refer to it as Hell. As conflict escalates, so does its power. The energy is tearing the planet apart. Earthquakes, Tsunamis, volcano eruptions, mud slides. It won’t stop until everything is consumed.”
“Everything?” April winced and sank into a chair.
“All life,” Uncle Henry answered. “Everywhere. The Earth is just a tiny blip in the universe and yet an important one. What goes on here will affect every race, every planet. Our readings have shown the energy build-up to be enormous. If we don’t stop it, everyone and everything in the known universe will be gone in an instant. Think of it as the ‘Big Bang’ in reverse.”
Ben gasped as the meaning took hold. “Gone?”
His uncle nodded. “Completely … utterly … obliterated.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Keys to the Future
“Everything you can imagine is real.”
Pablo Picasso
Ben’s mouth dropped open. He clamped it tight before he could say, “You’re kidding.”
Having apparently read his expression, Uncle Henry said, “No, I’m not kidding. In any event, I have duties to perform before the Sonara docks. I suggest you get some sleep.”
He programmed something into the door panel, stopped to scan the room, then returned to his task. Five shimmering platforms appeared, suspended in midair at the far end of the room.
“What are those?”
“Hammocks constructed from modified force-fields.”
Ben rose from the couch and slid into the closest one. He felt as if he were floating on a bed made of stars. The lights dimmed. Smooth jazz played through hidden speakers. All that was missing was one of his mother’s candles. On cue, a scented mist fell from the ceiling.
“Some logistics,” Uncle Henry said, looking satisfied with his work. “Bathroom through the first door on the right. Everything in the complex is recycled. A communications panel will provide instructions if you need assistance. It may take a little getting used to. Don’t bother trying to wander from the apartment. The door will be locked for your safety. I’ll have nutritional supplements available when you wake.”
Ben groaned at the sound of “nutritional supplements.”
