The Lost Tribes, page 9
“That island sounds pretty disgusting. Has to be a booby trap,” Ben said.
“Or it might be where we’re supposed to go. You said we couldn’t rule anything out. The question is, how are we going to get back on your computer without getting caught?”
Ben frowned. “Can we play at your house if I burn a disk?”
“No can do. Our computer is in the kitchen. The one in Dad’s office is strictly off limits.”
“What if you come over for dinner tonight?” Ben asked.
Carlos scowled as if he had eaten something sour. “No offense but I can still taste your mother’s tofu bean curd casserole from the back-to-school picnic two months ago.”
“I hear ya. It’s hopeless.” Ben’s stomach grumbled. Dr. Hightower said the sweat lodge worked better if everyone fasted first. The alternative was his mother’s vitamin drink, so he was grateful that he’d been granted the stay of execution. The flower garden should be thanking him too.
A thought jolted Ben. “Hey, Carlos. You ever been sick?”
“Huh?”
“Sick. Broken leg? Sprained Ankle? Cold? Flu? Anything?”
Carlos creased his brow and shrugged. “Better knock on wood or the sweat lodge before we lose all our good luck, I guess.”
“How about a doctor? Ever have to go?”
“Yeah. Kind of a weirdo but mom likes her. I do too. Dr. Danine doesn’t believe in shots. Think the sweat lodge will make us sick?”
“No,” Ben said, rising from his chair as the fathers gestured toward the sweat lodge. “Just wondered.”
He’d seen Dr. Danine too and so had Grace. Sunnyslope had hundreds of doctors but they’d all seen the same pediatrician.
“Thank you for coming,” David Hightower said as he emerged from the sweat lodge. There were no traces of moisture on his body. “This experience is best shared with close friends.”
He and Dr. Choedon stood on opposite sides of a sand painting at the entrance to the lodge. The detail was intricate with pictures of people, animals, and hieroglyphics — some Ben recognized, some he didn’t. He wondered how they were able to put it together so fast. It wasn’t there two days before. A sand “paint-by-numbers” kit was the only explanation.
“Careful not to disturb the mandala,” Dr. Choedon said, “It is part of the ritual.”
Once inside the lodge, Dr. Hightower smudged ash on everyone’s foreheads and cheeks before directing them clockwise around a pit of steaming boulders. It seemed to Ben that Dr. Hightower slathered extra ash on him and Carlos.
“What’s this stuff?” Ben asked, stifling a sneeze.
“Burnt sage,” said Dr. Hightower. “Today, we will focus on the gifts of our ancestors and pray for wisdom and guidance. I should warn that if you have an illness, this is best left for another time. It is a grueling test of endurance.”
That was Ben’s cue to leave. Carlos blocked his way. “Mental illness doesn’t count. If I have to stay, you have to stay.”
Ben sat, cross-legged, on the ground and pondered his current predicament. “This is great,” he whispered to Carlos. “Today’s entertainment is staring at a bunch of naked men bonding in a broiling backyard sauna. Is it my imagination or have the nutty professors been working out?”
“Shhh!” Dr. Lopez said in a low hiss.
Ben knew better than to respond. Dr. Lopez could be fierce when he was upset. He was fierce when he wasn’t. But the Paradise Circle dads looked like they’d been hanging out in a gym. His own father’s body suddenly seemed chiseled. Flawless. When did his dad get six-pack abs? Couldn’t be from those morning exercises. Ben wondered why he hadn’t noticed before — or the odd tattoo on the inside of his father’s shoulder. Was that new? He squinted but couldn’t make out the detail.
Ben poked his own muscles. Rock hard and bigger than the day before. He pictured himself on the cover of Men’s Health and smiled with satisfaction.
Serise’s father hummed and chanted in his native language as he poured water over the red-hot boulders piled high inside the earthen pit. The temperature inside the lodge was the equivalent of a raging inferno. What was the heat source? Ben had not seen any charcoal. He wondered if there was a hidden extension cord connected to a heating coil. Steam rose from the rocks making the situation worse.
“I assume the rocks are heated outside and brought in afterwards. Is that right David?” Ben’s father asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“Yes, can’t heat them inside,” Dr. Hightower said. “The carbon monoxide would kill us. The rocks retain the heat for quite a while. If it gets too hot you may go outside to refresh yourself. There are bottles of spring water in the cooler.”
Outside? Ben stared at the boulders in disbelief. They had to weigh a ton. “How’d you get them inside if they were heated outside?”
“A little ingenuity,” Dr. Hightower said. “Now, to continue, we must meditate on our connection to all things, and our relationship with the elements; fire, water, earth, air. As your meditation deepens and your quest begins, you may enter an altered state of mind.”
“Aren’t we supposed to smoke a pipe or eat some mushrooms?” Ben asked.
“Hallucinogens are an artificial path,” his father said. “Get in the spirit. Feel the energy flow through you or practice some Spanish and bring your grade up. Whatever you do, show some respect!”
Ben shot his father a dirty look. He was safe. His father wouldn’t see his expression in the darkened tent.
The pebble that grazed his thigh suggested otherwise.
“Hózhóogo naasháa doo,” Serise’s father chanted. “Shitsiji’ hózhóogo naasháa doo.”
Ben lay on his back, closed his eyes and waited for his vision. About now he was hoping a ghost or Uncle Henry’s evil computer skeleton would appear. Something, anything that would break up the monotony.
“Carlos?” Ben whispered.
“What?”
“You’re used to high altitudes and low levels of oxygen. If I don’t suffocate first, I’m going to sweat to death. You can have my computer when I die.”
“Okay,” he whispered. “You’ve got a slick set-up. If I die first, the answers to the math homework and notes for the test are on my desk.”
“Deal.”
“Silence!” Ben’s father said.
Carlos’s father threw a handful of grass at them to make the same point.
“Shikéédéé’ hózhóogo naasháa doo. T’áá altso shinaagó hózhóogo naasháa doo.”
Ben rolled over to Carlos and whispered, “You don’t think she is going to — ”
“No, she wouldn’t dare,” Carlos whispered back.
“Ben!” His father growled.
Ben returned to his prone position and wiggled his feet. They were the only things on his body that weren’t covered in sweat. You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out … He mentally sang “The Hokey Pokey” for a few stanzas until he ran out of things to “put in.” He extended his big toe forward. This little piggy …
“Jemadari! Askar makamu sonara!”
A man’s voice broke his concentration. His spirit guide was leading him to the brink of insanity.
Noises filled his head … mechanical, pulsating, pinging. The sounds were rhythmic, like a heartbeat. And then more nonsense — “Akoosh consat!” — a language he didn’t understand. Or that someone made up.
Someone?
Serise! Ben was going to get even with her when he got out of the lodge.
A woman’s voice whispered in his ear, soft and pleading, “Don’t go! The tribes are doomed. You are not.”
Startled, Ben bolted upright and looked around in the dim light. Everyone else was in deep meditation or asleep. Carlos’s snoring was a dead giveaway.
“Mission aborted …”
A muffled voice answered. “Still time …”
Despite the thick, stifling heat, goose bumps broke out all over Ben’s arms.
“Okay, Serise. Give it a rest!”
No one else seemed to be bothered by Serise’s practical joke. The rest of the sweat lodge was quiet except for occasional prayers and chanting from Dr. Hightower.
“Házhó náhásdlíí. Házhó náhásdlíí”
Ben didn’t know how long he had been listening to strange chants and rhythmic noises but he was completely spooked. Sweat poured down his body. He opened his eyes and found no hovering ghosts, no mischievous poltergeists and no moving items. The voices stopped abruptly.
“Time to go,” his father said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Let’s get some cold water into you. Carlos is outside with Frank.”
Dizzy and disoriented, Ben plotted his revenge against Serise. But his first priority was retreat to the comfort and safety of a cold bath.
He held his arms up and turned counterclockwise to maximize the surface area exposed to the breeze. Pulling water from the cooler he drank greedily before dousing the remainder over his head.
He jerked backward when he realized he was standing on the mandala. It had changed. The sand was fused into the ground as if exposed to an enormous heat source. What remained resembled a stained glass window but the delicate sand people were charcoal, black and outlined in red, as if they were engulfed in flames. Dr. Hightower and Dr. Choedon crouched and examined the damage, then carefully scooped samples into silver vials. When they finished, they stood and watched the remaining grains of the charcoal people scatter into the wind.
“Dad?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Did you hear voices while we were meditating?”
“Other than David? No.” His eyes remained fixed on the sand painting, his hands curled into fists. “Did you?”
“No,” Ben lied. “I guess I didn’t get a spirit guide either.” He watched Carlos walk away, his father’s arm draped affectionately around his shoulder. Frank Lopez wore a thin terrycloth robe and leather flip-flops.
A bathrobe. Duh! Why didn’t he think of that?
Ben’s stomach lurched. Slung over Frank Lopez’s shoulder was a red pouch and a drinking flask — the same red pouch and drinking flask Ben had seen the scientist carrying in the game —
In Llactapata.
Distracted and disoriented, Ben walked toward them to get a closer look.
“Ben?” His father held out a basketball-print bed sheet. “You might want this before you go back inside the house. Or were you planning to give the girls a show?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Facing the East Wind
If one can only find it, there is a reason for everything.
Traditional proverb
Ben sat with his back to the obelisk, breathing the thin air and watching a team of archeology geeks clear another section of ruins.
“Mission aborted. Tribes are doomed.”
Yeah, right! Serise would have to work harder than that to throw Ben Webster off his game.
He felt like a spy on a high-risk mission. His friends were banned from his room. His mom was in the kitchen cooking up a new form of human pesticide and he was sitting on a Peruvian mountain — or at least a cool simulation of it — hoping she wouldn’t pick this moment to check on him.
Grace tried to play on her PC. The locations were the same but with no signs of human or animal life. Just a few hieroglyphics and star patterns. She did find an altar covered in blood. That pretty much ended her desire to explore Llactapata — even without the special effects.
A half-hour of searching the dense jungle — most of which involved being lost — turned up nothing but more ruins and a lot of annoying insects the size of his father’s SUV. Ben found no clues, no gems, no secret passageways and, thankfully, no skeletons hovering to say he had not “chosen wisely.”
What if he hit a booby trap? The hologram technology put a new spin on things. He picked up a sharp rock and squeezed it in his hand. It nicked his palm causing it to bleed. So he wasn’t about to test the holographic booby trap with his life.
Ben returned to the obelisk to find the site abandoned. Was it a glitch in the software? Did it crash leaving him stuck in an alternate reality? The jungle fell silent, freaking him out even more. That was enough for Ben. As much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t do this alone — he needed his team.
Seconds later, Ben was back in his bedroom watching the green Tibetan emerald rotate above the altar in his computer monitor. The message was clear. He and Carlos were behind and the trail was not getting any warmer.
Bounce. Bounce. Crash!
Outside, the entire crew, including April, had assembled in Carlos’ backyard. He raced out of his room and through the kitchen.
“Homework?” asked his mother, blocking his path to the door.
Busted!
“I’m almost done, Mom. Honest.”
His mother sighed. “I don’t suppose you’d let me help you?”
Ben pulled the math homework from his jeans pocket. “I thought I’d get some help from Carlos. I won’t ask for the answers, just tips.”
His mother gave a weak smile and waved him off. He reached for the door then paused. Her mood seemed odd — even for her.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “I’ve got to spend a few hours at the lab analyzing your uncle’s plant samples. Try to do a few problems on your own before you lose track of time shooting hoops. Have fun.” She rubbed his head affectionately then disappeared into the dining room.
Have fun?
Something was definitely wrong. And every trail lead back to Uncle Henry.
Bounce. Bounce. Crash!
Carlos seemed embarrassed when he saw Ben, and tossed the ball to him.
“What’s up?” Ben rebounded and nailed a shot.
“We were hot on the trail of another gem, and found some more star charts,” Serise said. “I snuck out of the house to see if Carlos knew what they meant.”
Carlos shrugged. “Trust me. I know ‘em all and these aren’t it.”
“Well, so far they haven’t been important,” Grace said. “There’s two different star charts each with a triangle pointing to a letter.”
“S and O? As in ‘So what’?” Ben frowned. “Maybe it’s a joke. You know, to throw us off the scent. Uncle Henry said the solutions weren’t obvious. We’re supposed to find eight Earth tribes. They wouldn’t be in outer space or we’d be searching for the aliens.” He shot another basket, then paused. “Wait a minute. You’re still playing?”
April grinned. “Grace figured out a way to get into the holograms.”
Ben caught the ball as it bounced to the ground and froze. “How? Did your mother give you your computer back?”
“No. She took my computer to work and left it there. So I transferred a copy from my PC to Serise’s laptop.”
“This whole thing is weird,” April said. “Like we’re all in the middle of a giant game even when we’re not playing.”
Ben sat and tossed the ball to Carlos who continued his tireless quest to nail a basket.
Bounce. Crash!
For once his sister was making sense. Getting back into the game without being caught was becoming a full-time job.
“Maybe we’re all in the sweat lodge and this is a group hallucination. All we need now is for Serise to make weird noises.”
Serise slapped her hands on her hips. “What are you talking about?”
“The sweat lodge yesterday. All those noises you were making on the walkie-talkie.”
“Serise was with us the whole time,” Grace said, “She won Mahjong.”
Serise blushed. “Highest score ever!”
“Boy, was my mother upset,” Grace said. “She’s never been beaten. Ever. She’s superstitious and said it was because Serise was facing the east wind. Serise kept drawing flowers and dragons from the wall. You should have seen her! Mom made sarcastic comments about the Hightowers and how it didn’t matter what wind they were facing because they had an unfair advantage.” Grace paused. “I’ve been meaning to ask you what that meant.”
Serise shrugged. “I asked my mom. She laughed and did a victory dance but she didn’t explain. Must be an inside joke.”
“Getting back to the point,” Ben sighed, “I saw you hide that walkie-talkie. Someone had to be making those voices.”
“Like what?” asked Serise.
“Mission aborted. Ah coosh khan sat. Weird stuff like that. Is that Navajo?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Carlos said.
“Because you were too busy snoring,” Ben said.
Serise groaned. “No, it’s not Navajo! You were just having a vision. Isn’t that what was supposed to happen? Dad came out pretty loopy until he drank a quart of water and took a bath. Besides, my mother found my stuff the night before. She didn’t tell my dad about it, but I’m grounded.”
Now Ben was totally confused. “So it wasn’t you?”
“No! I told you, it’s just your imagination.”
“Serise Antonia Hightower!”
“Oops! The warden calls.” Serise tugged on Grace’s arm. “Can you and April come over? I’m allowed visitors, just can’t leave the house. She doesn’t know about the game. We could play in secret.”
Ben was furious. He was counting on the girls being stuck until he could even the score. He pleaded to Grace with his eyes. She just shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter who wins, right? As long as we solve it, you still get your expedition! There’s some cool places on the list. I looked them up. No blood. No sacrifices!” She waved then ran off to catch up with Serise and April.
“How about you, Carlos? Mom’s softening,” Ben said after the girls disappeared. “She said you could help with homework as long as you didn’t do it for me. Want to come over?”
Carlos seemed to be debating the offer in his head, then scowled. “No can do. My parents told me to stick close to home while they were gone.”
“Isn’t my house close enough?”
“Apparently not. Their exact words were to stay out of your yard.” Carlos frowned. “Want to shoot some hoops instead? Not that you need the practice.”
