Part 34 (2/2)
There was a momentary silence as they all looked out into the Rwandan countryside.
Alby's discovery had briefly made them forget where they were.
When all was silent again, Wizard said, ”I'll be very interested to know what the last side of the Pillar says. Good work, Alby, you've donevery well. Jack always said you were a special one. Lily's lucky to have a friend like you.”
Alby beamed.
Zoe had observed the entire exchange with interest-focusing on these problems and puzzles was a good way to keep their minds off the loss of Jack. She leaned forward, ”So if this isknowledge, what is the next reward,heat ?”
All eyes turned to Wizard.
”Something similarly advanced, I a.s.sume. But somehow different from pure knowledge like this. I once knew an American academic who was interested in the Ramesean Stones, a fellow at MIT named Felix Bonaventura.
”Bonaventura was mostly interested in the second reward. He interpretedheat to mean energy, an energy source of some kind, since all our known sources of energy require the production of heat: coal, steam, internal combustion, even nuclear power. But if one could produce heat or motion without the need forfuel, one would have an unlimited supply of energy.”
”Are you talking about perpetual motion?” Alby said in disbelief.
”That's exactly what Bonaventura thought the second reward was,” Wizard said. ”The secret of perpetual motion.”
Zoe said, ”It'd be something China would kill for. It's choking on its own coalbased pollution.”
”Same for America,” Alby said. ”It wouldn't need Middle Eastern oil anymore.”
”The whole world would change,” Wizard said. ”The Saudis and their vast oil reserves would no longer be needed. Coal would be useless. Why, warfare as we know it would be transformed. Did you know that by the end of World War II, the n.a.z.is were using horses and carts because they'd run out of petrol. As a reward, pureheat would certainly be a worldchanging one.”
Throughout the afternoon, Solomon and Zoe set about repairing one of the Hueys in the UN compound. Unlike the trucks, the choppers' engines were more or less intact, and where one of them was missing parts, they could mostly scavenge matching parts from the other.
Late in the afternoon, Solomon came over from the chopper, wiping his hands on a rag.
”Ladies and gentlemen. Your helicopter is ready.”
Wizard stood. ”Then let's go find the Neetha.”
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO.
DECEMBER 1113, 2007 THE RUSTY OLD UN Huey helicopter soared low over the junglecovered mountains of the eastern Congo, still without any landing skids.
Zoe flew, with Wizard beside her, flipping between a tangle of maps, notes, and his laptop computer.
”A few years ago I got Jack to do some research on the Neetha,” he said, finding a certain page in his notes: NEETHA TRIBE.
Remote tribe from Democratic Republic of the Congo/Zaire region warlike much feared by other tribes cannibals Congenital deformities in all members, variety of Proteus Syndrome (bony growth on skull, similar to Elephant Man) Found by accident byHENRY MORTON STANLEY in 1876 Neetha warriors killed seventeen of his party Stanley barely escaped alive years later, he tried to find them again, but strangely he could not locate them.
Possibly the same tribe encountered by the Greek explorerHIERONYMUS during his expedition into central Africa in 205 B.C. (Hieronymus mentioned a tribe with terrible facial deformities in the jungles south of Nubia. It was from the Neetha that he stole the clear sphericalorb that was later used by the Oracle at Delphi.) BEST KNOWN EXPERT: DR. DIANE Ca.s.sIDY,Anthropologist from USC. But her whole 20man expedition went missing in 2002 while searching for the Neetha in the Congo.
Ca.s.sidy found this cave painting in northern Zambia and attributed it to ancestors of the Neetha: Seems to depict a hollowedout volcano with the Delphic Orb at the summit but its meaning is unknown.
”Hey, I've seen that painting!” Zoe said. ”It was at...”
”It was at the First Vertex,” Wizard said. ”Which suggests a clear connection between our quest and the Neetha. The key, however, is Hieronymus.” He clicked through the database on his laptop. ”Hieronymus...Hieronymus...Ah, here it is!”
He'd found the entry he was after: a scan of an ancient scroll, written in Greek.
”What's that?” Lily asked.
”It's a scroll that was kept at the Library of Alexandria, a scroll written by the great Greek teacher and explorer, Hieronymus.”
Years before, Wizard and Jack had uncovered a vast collection of scrolls in the Atlas Mountains-a collection which, it turned out, was that of the fabled Alexandria Library, long believed to have been destroyed when the Romans burned down the famous Library.
After months of careful scanning, Wizard had managed to load all the scrolls onto his various computers.
”Hieronymus was a truly exceptional man. Not only was he a great teacher, he was also an explorer beyond comparison, the Indiana Jones of the ancient world. He taught alongside Plato at the Academy, teaching no less a student than Aristotle himself. He was also the man who stole the Delphic Orb from the Neetha and took it back to Greece, where the Oracle at Delphi later used it to foretell the future.”
”The Delphic Orb?” Zoe said as she flew. ”You mean the Seeing Stone of Delphi? One of the Six Sacred Stones?”
”Yes,” Wizard said. ”Hieronymus stole it from the Neetha, but from what I've studied of him, he always intended to return it. That was why he wrote this scroll-it's a set of instructions detailing the location of the Neetha, so that the Orb could one day be returned.”
”Was it ever returned?” Alby asked.
”After they saw its power, the Greeks didn't want to give it back,” Wizard said, ”but late in his life Hieronymus crept into the Oracle's templecave, grabbed the Seeing Stone, and fled from Greece by boat. He stopped in Alexandria-where he deposited these scrolls, written in Greek and Latin, at the Library-before he headed south into Africa. He was never seen again.” Wizard turned to Lily. ”Think you can translate this scroll?”
She shrugged. It was in Latin, and Latin was easy for her. ”Sure. It says: ”AT THE VALLEY OF THE ARBOREAL GUARDIANS AT THE JUNCTION OF THE THREE MOUNTAIN STREAMS.
TAKE THE SINISTER ONE.
THERE YOU WILL ENTER THE DARK REALM OF THE TRIBE THAT EVEN.
GREAT HADES FEARS.'”
”'The tribe that even great Hades fears'?” Zoe said. ”Charming.”
Solomon said, ”The Neetha have a reputation so fearsome it has become myth many Africans use tales of Neetha bogeymen to frighten young children: cannibalism, human sacrifice, killing their young.”
”Takes more than a scary story to frighten me off,” Lily said in her best adult voice. ”So what's the 'Valley of the Arboreal Guardians'? That seems to be the starting point.”
”Arboreal means trees,” Alby said. ”The tree guardians?”
Wizard was clicking through more entries on his computer. ”Yes, yes. I've seen a reference to just such a valley before. Here it is. Ahha....”
Lily leaned over, and saw on his screen the t.i.tle page of a book, an old 19th century pulp fictioner calledThrough the Dark Continent by Henry Morton Stanley.
”Stanley wrote many books about his expeditions in Africa, most of them pure romantic rubbish,” Wizard explained. ”This one, however, detailed his genuinely remarkable tripacross the African continent, from Zanzibar in the east to Boma in the west. Stanley departed from Zanzibar with a caravan of 356 people and, over a year later, emerged at the Congo River estuary near the Atlantic with only 115, all of them on the verge of starvation.
”Over the course of his journey, Stanley recounted numerous gun battles with native tribes, including one particularly gruesome skirmish with a tribe that resemble the Neetha.
Immediatelybefore that battle Stanley recounted traveling through an isolated jungle valley in which the trees had been carved into marvelous statues, towering statues of men, some of them over seventy feet high.
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