The Lost Tribes, page 7
“Nope.”
Ben clicked on the jar. Nothing else happened so he returned his attention to the column of light streaming from the portal and clicked the mouse. A golden beam shot out of the monitor like fireworks. His bedroom sparkled with stars and glitter, then transformed into a realistic, three-dimensional projection of a vast field near an ocean. Large stone heads rose out of the hillside, their wide blank eyes looking out to sea. Ben stood and walked around the virtual statues suddenly realizing he could view them from all sides. But they weren’t real. His hands passed through the ghostly images when he tried to touch them.
Aris hissed and shot out of the bedroom.
“Whoa!” Carlos’s mouth dropped wide open and his eyes bugged out. “Now we know what Rapa Nui means.”
“What?” asked Grace. “Did you find something interesting?”
“Oh yeah! Easter Island!”
Grace seemed unimpressed.
Ben’s heart went into overdrive. His computer monitor showed a digital representation of the landscape now filling his room. “Grace?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you see?”
“I’m in some kind of chamber but it’s kind of dark. I need to find a light switch or a flashlight. Maybe that’s part of the game. There’s a little bag marked ‘PC’ in the corner of the screen. I think we’re supposed to collect tools first. Maybe we’re inside a closet.”
“It’s a new level of interactive fiction,” his uncle had said. “It will run on any computer but there are some special effects if you use it on your own.”
Ben could feel the pulse throbbing in his neck. “How does your bedroom look?”
“Room? Like it always does? A bed, bookcase, couple of lamps, my stuffed bear Theodore, endless boring homework. What’s that got to do with anything?”
Ben cut her off. “Nothing’s changed?”
“No. Why?”
“Can you see what’s in my room?” He panned the web cam from left to right. His hands shook violently.
“Eeew! Disgusting! Don’t you ever clean up? Carlos you’re going to need shots when you leave,” Serise said.
“Grace, what operating system are you on?”
“My mom’s old PC running at 3 gigahertz. I think it’s a Wintel ultra-millennium. Mom borrowed my laptop for her trip. Just got it back and haven’t set it up yet.”
“Get off that thing and get on your Mac,” Carlos yelled.
“Why?”
“Just do it! Do it now!” Ben and Carlos yelled in unison.
“Okay. Wait a minute.” Grace logged off. Less than a minute later she was back online. “Okay, I transferred the files and I’m rebooting the game. Hmmm, that’s odd.”
“What’s happening?” Ben asked.
“Password changed. Darn. I’ve got to start all over again. Unless …”
While Grace tapped on her keyboard, Serise and April danced behind her, lip-synching to a song.
“Hmmm,” Grace said.
“What? What?” Ben yelled.
“This time the password was my name. It was ‘Grace’.”
“Is the corridor still there?”
“Yeah. Everything else looks the same. Hold on a minute. The game started from scratch so there’s no way to zoom forward yet.”
“… beta test it with some of your friends and tell me if it’s any good.”
“Hurry up!” Ben nearly choked from lack of air.
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying! The computer’s got to recompute all those codes using my name as a key. This better be good.”
“Oh, it’s better than good,” Carlos said, his voice cracking. “It’s so awesome I want Ben’s uncle to adopt me. If my dad’s computer games work like this, I’m playing without him.”
“Remember, white is zero, black is one!” Ben shouted.
“I know! Geez! Hey! One of the jars moved. The second one on the left.”
“Ignore it!” Ben yelled, trying to maintain control. “We’ll figure out the jars later! Just put in your coordinates!”
“Okey dokey. I’m punching in the code.”
“Now what do you see?”
Grace gasped. There was a long pause. Ben heard April squeal with delight. Serise mumbled something about a “wicked vision quest.”
“Grace? You there?”
“My room,” she whispered. “It’s … oh my … it’s filled with …”
Grace rose and gazed up at some unseen thing. Serise looked thunderstruck. April clamped her hands over her mouth.
“Grace! With what? Your room is filled with what?”
There was another long pause, followed by a weak reply.
“… the Terra Cotta Army.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rapa Nui
“You can’t cross the sea merely by staring at the water.”
Rabindranath Tagor
Ben stared up into the nostrils of a giant stone head. Hundreds more lay scattered on the ground. It was as if the stone giants were marching out to sea when they became trapped by an unseen force.
The landscape was barren — no trees to offer shelter or shade — but the breeze was warm and pleasant against his skin.
Breeze?
He could make out a faint outline of his bedroom curtains fluttering above the ocean. The breeze was real, not a computer manufactured hallucination. Even so, he could practically smell the ocean’s pungent salty spray. Dry grass crunched beneath his feet as he walked.
Carlos gasped. “Whoa! What’s happening?”
“Beats me. Don’t think this type of technology is part of an archeology toolbox. My uncle must have had help. How can a disk do this?”
“Who cares? This is slick. If he markets this he’s going to make millions!”
“You don’t think …”
“Think what?”
“Never mind,” Ben said. “Stupid thought.”
“What could be more bizarre than this?” Carlos asked.
“Think he works for some new top-secret gaming company? I heard him say something about a family business. Think that’s the hint? That they’ve got technology even the government doesn’t have yet?”
“It’s as good an explanation as any,” Carlos said. “We won’t know for sure until we solve this right? If he can invent things like this can you imagine how huge the surprise is going to be? You are going to be sooooo rich if he can pull this off.”
Ben grinned. Forget his parents. He’d suck-up to Uncle Henry then hit him up for a car when he turned sixteen.
Within minutes the landscape solidified. Ben felt hard, cool stone beneath his hand.
“Whoa! Grace? Can you hear us? What’s happening on your end?”
“They’re real. The Terra Cotta soldiers. I can touch them. There are hundreds of them. If they weren’t so dusty you’d swear they could come to life any minute.”
“So what do we do now?” asked April.
“Look for treasure, I guess,” Ben said, still gawking. “Or at least clues to a treasure map. Last team to collect all the keys has to drink my mother’s breakfast juice for a week.”
“Deal!” April said. “We’ve got more people. You’re both going to be gagging and barfing for days!”
Ha! Not with Serise AND April on the other team. That gave Grace two handicaps. “See ya back at the Guardian.”
“I had a thought,” Carlos said. “You said there were booby traps.”
“Yeah. They were pretty gross,” Ben said.
“So these holograms kind of put a new spin on things. I mean they’re solid. What happens if we mess up?”
“Right? What do we do about the booby traps?” asked Serise.
“We’ll notify your next of kin!” Ben laughed and waved goodbye.
“Okay,” Carlos said,” I think I’ve got my bearings. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.”
“You’ve been here before?”
Carlos nodded.
“Then why didn’t you recognize the name when we dialed it?”
“Because it was a long time ago and my parents didn’t call it Rapa Nui. They called it a terra something. Like terra firma? Firm land? But I do remember some stuff. Like, see that line of statues down there?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re called Moai. I’m guessing we’re at Rano Raraku. It’s a dormant volcano.” He pointed toward the ocean. “Down there is Ahu Tongariki. That seems to be where these heads were headed.” He cracked up over his corny joke.
Ben groaned. He was still thinking about the booby trap issue. These heads were huge. If they opened their mouths they could swallow him whole. If they climbed out of the ground, they could flatten him with one step. There would be no way to outrun or outmaneuver them.
“So where do you want to start?” asked Carlos. “Up that hill? Or down by the shore?”
Ben took another visual sweep of the landscape. “I vote for the water. Let’s go see what’s down there.”
They trudged a half-mile down the slope as if the bedroom had no walls. Although it was just an illusion, the walk seemed hard on his calves. It was a slick trick. He’d figure out how the technology worked later.
At the shore, a line of Moai stood with their backs to the water. Ben counted fifteen in all, each a different size. Each with a different face. They were larger than the ones on the hill — in part because they weren’t buried up to their necks. Their long fingers wrapped around their sides and held up their potbellies. Ben barely came up to their elbows. How big were the others?
The second Moai on the right was the only one wearing a hat. A round, red hat. Ben wondered if that was significant. Like the others, the bare-chested warrior wore only a loincloth and had scrollwork engraved on its backside. Something else struck Ben about the statue. It had a broad nose. The Moai on the hill all had thin, pointed noses. This one had a big wide nose that was … just like his.
“These don’t face the water. Is that a clue? Why walk down here then turn around to face the land?” Ben asked, not expecting an answer.
“I’m not sure they’re supposed to. According to my dad, a lot of them were restored by scientists who were guessing. There weren’t any records except some wooden tablets called Rongorongo. The writing looks like lizard hieroglyphics.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Am not!”
“You’re kind of a walking search engine,” Ben said, mostly envious.
“Just dragged everywhere as a kid,” Carlos said. “I told you, expeditions are overrated. Be careful what you wish for.”
“We’re still kids,” yelled April from the other side of the monitor.
“You’re a kid,” corrected Serise. “I’m thirteen, thank you very much. A few years from now I’ll be driving.” Her voice grew fainter as Ben and Carlos walked.
“Guys,” Ben yelled. “Meet back at the computer in a half hour to compare notes. Look for treasure or some sort of marker. Might be Egyptian if it leads back to the home base.”
No one answered. He hoped they heard.
“Okay, Carlos. Let’s look for something unusual.”
Carlos snorted. “And this isn’t it?”
“Good point. Let’s look for something even more unusual. A clue or a jewel or a mutant monster.”
“Got hundreds to choose from,” Carlos said. “Think they move?”
Ben grimaced. “I hope not. There’s no ‘Try Again’ button out here.”
They examined each of the silent sentinels. There was nothing unusual beyond the obvious. No mysterious symbols. No medallion to dial home. How would they get back?
Ben scrambled onto the chest of a statue laying nearby. “Guess this one got kicked off the team. Hey! Bud! Do you answer questions? Are you lying on the treasure? Could you roll over? Bet you snore with a big honker like that on your face! Yo! Dude!”
Carlos waved for him to stop. “What are you trying to do? Insult it so it will get up and crush us?”
Ben laughed and scrambled down. He spotted another statue off to the right — a lone figure facing out to sea. “That must be the coach!”
The “coach” bore different marks on its loincloth and buttocks. Ben touched a shallow depression in its back. The cold stone grew warm as he pushed his hand further into the space. The sound of stone sliding against stone filled the air. Ben whipped his head around in time to see the remaining statues pivoting to face the sea.
“You’re the man!” Carlos gave Ben a high five as he ran toward them. The one with the red topknot advanced like a chess piece, revealing a set of dark stone steps. Hieroglyphics covered the walls.
“Booby trap?” asked Carlos, taking a step backward.
Ben just stared.
“Your game. You go first,” Carlos said.
“Guests always go first,” Ben said, bowing chivalrously.
Carlos frowned and shook his head vigorously. “My people come from a long line of sacrifice, and I don’t mean that in a positive way. You go.”
Ben considered the suggestion. If you hit a booby trap you didn’t really “die” you just got returned to the altar. He could live with that. It wasn’t as if he was on the real Easter Island. He peered into the darkness then stepped inside.
The dank cramped chamber filled with a low light as he entered. The rough walls were littered with crude paintings and carvings. A single set of tablets lay on the ground. Ben turned to make sure Carlos was right behind him — he was — then picked them up.
“Rongorongo. Told you,” Carlos said.
“Okay, but how do we read them?” Ben said.
“I’m stumped,” Carlos said, dejected.
“We need the Choedon’s,” Ben added, feeling like they’d hit yet another dead end. “They eat up stuff like this!”
“Or my parents,” Carlos said. “They speak a bunch of weird languages. Sometimes they use one if they don’t want me to know what they’re talking about.” He paused as if he had revealed something private. “Okay fine, I’ll admit it. We need Serise’s magic decoder.”
Ben groaned. What was with all this decoding stuff anyway? He wished his uncle would just pick one dead language and stick with it. This was a treasure hunt not a stupid training course for communicating with extinct civilizations.
The tablet glowed when he ran his fingers over the lizard markings. The words changed to something even more obscure. Ben kept pressing the tablet until he saw Spanish — or what looked like Spanish.
Carlos raised his arms in victory. “I can read that!” When he grabbed the tablets the letters reverted to Rongorongo. He groaned then cycled through the options until he found the Spanish translation. “Finally,” he grinned. “Something we can both pilot.”
“Construimos guardianes de piedra para montar guardia sobre nuestra isla y proteger a nuestro pueblo del mal.”
“Gee thanks, Carlos. That clears up everything,” said Ben, rolling his eyes.
Carlos laughed. “Just messin’ with ya,” He translated into English.
“We built guardians of stone to stand watch over our island and protect our people from evil.”
“Clearly it didn’t work,” Ben interjected.
Carlos continued reading.
“Something evil brought the slave traders.
Missionaries came, offering salvation and hope — bringing with them disease, devastation and death. We hid from both. It was futile. The evil found us.”
“Does it say what the evil was? Should we be watching out for something?” asked Ben.
“No,” Carlos said. “I don’t think they recognized it until it was too late.”
“A treasure was lost — carried east — to Peru.
We can no longer summon the Moai.
In time the last of us shall be gone.
And the world shall cease to exist.”
Ben scowled and threw up his hands. “I knew it! It IS a secret way to teach us history.”
“Yeah, but who cares?” Carlos said. “This is way more fun than reading about it in a book.”
“So then how do we get to Peru?” Ben pointed towards the water. “Got an inflatable boat in your backpack?”
“No, but there are dialing codes on the tablet.” Carlos looked at his watch. “Uh oh. I’ve got to get home soon. Maybe the dialer is back by those big stone heads.”
“Either that or we’ll have to swim. It’s a long way though — to Peru that is.” Ben led the way out of the chamber and studied the fifteen Moai.
What secrets are you hiding?
“See anything?” Carlos asked.
“Nope.”
There was nothing about the positions of the Moai on the hill to suggest a medallion.
Ben examined the Moai with the red hat. “I have this one pegged for Center.”
“Center of what?” Carlos said, running his fingers across the Moai’s belly as if searching for a secret button.
“Center on a basketball team,” Ben said.
Carlos groaned. “Seriously? This game is like the greatest invention of all time and you’re still thinking about basketball?”
“Basketball is my ticket out of Sunnyslope,” Ben said, nodding enthusiastically.
Carlos shook his head. He walked in and out of the statues before returning to the Moai Ben called The Center. “We need to find something round. Could be up in the crater or even in this belly button.” He jabbed the statue with his index finger. Moai slid backwards and descended into the ground.
Ben and Carlos gawked. The head stopped halfway down, buried up to its nostrils.
“Okay!” Ben said. “That’s a clue. What kind? I don’t know, but it’s a clue!” He looked into the face of the Moai, half expecting it to speak to him. But it didn’t. Ben studied the hat. It was the only Moai with a hat — a round hat.
A round hat!
“Could that be the dialer?” asked Ben.
“Doubt it,” Carlos said. “No markings.”
“Not on THIS side. What about the top?” Ben stood on his toes but it was no use. The Moai was too tall. He needed something to stand on. The only options were the exiled Moai lying on the ground yards away — too heavy — or Carlos.
“Give me a leg up!”
Carlos cocked his head to the side. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
