The train ride back was more relaxed. They all talked amongst themselves about everything and nothing, all but Joel who could not tear himself away from the short cut clue he gripped tightly in both hands.
Framed on the partition behind them was huge map of the city with its simple grid shaped design with five small parks placed strategically around the centre.
Dave greeted them as they hopped off the train. The bonus clue and the normal clue safely tucked away in Alicia’s backpack. The short cut clue still in Joel’s hands.
“Where to now?” Dave asked as they made their way back to the car.
“To the museum,” Joel said with a smile and waving the clue out in front of him.
Mouths dropped open in shock.
“I suppose I have to explain the clue to all you little feeble minds. Nine to inspire are the muses from Greek Mythology. Now picture the word umpire. Drop the pire at the end and combine it to the word muse, Museum. But first we’re gonna make a quick stop to pick up something I really, really deserve.”
Joel exited the trophy shop with a big grin on his face and Dave in tow.
“What did you have to do in there that was so important,” Alicia asked Joel as he got into the car.
“Doing what you told me to do.”
“What was that?”
“Courtesy of Mr. Cushly’s account I got myself this,” Joel pulled out a round gold coloured medal with a red and white ribbon attached to it. Engraved on the medal was an image of Earth and the words World's Greatest Idiot written in a circle around it.
There were moans, groans and headshakes from the others.
“Ok,” Joel slipped the medal over his head. “Away with you driver, to the museum,” he said with a smile and a clap.
Chapter 14
The security guard forced them to check their bags in as they entered through the glass doors to the museum. The white cast of dinosaur bones in the shape of a whale looking thing and one of a Raptor hung from the ceiling on either side of the security desk. A class of primary school kids snaked past them; the teacher made desperate, tired attempts with finger pointing and raised voice to keep the convoy of kids moving in a two-by-two formation. Beads of sweat sparkled off his balding head under the overhead spot lights as he and the rowdy students passed and then disappeared around a corner.
“The Museums a big place,” Alicia said. “Any where particular we should be looking.”
Joel took out the clue again, unfolded it and leaned on a giant brown metal boulder encrusted with holes and dents. He read it taking in the finer details of the last sentence. “I think we should go to the…” Joel thought for a moment then smacked his hand down. “Ouch!” he cried, inspecting his hand. “The geological section! And what the hell is this boulder made of?”
Joel stepped back to inspect the plaque below the giant object.
“It’s an iron Meteorite,” Roy said.
“Those aliens have got filthy habits,” Joel said pointing at a pair of cigarette butts stuffed into a crevice.
Joel laughed at his own joke.
The others left him laughing at his attempted humor and walked off around the corner as the rowdy class had done. They passed under a black sign that illuminated the word Mammals in green. A ceiling high, concaved glass partition separated the left hand side of the room; curving from one corner to the other. Inside our so called ancestors trapped in a sculpted pose; all staring with dead glass eyes.
A chill trickled down Alicia’s back and she hurried along to catch up with the others. She found them huddled around a directory board on the wall beside the entrance into the next room.
Roy ran a finger down the board. “There it is,” he tapped at the word Geology, the arrow next to it pointing up to the sky. “Straight ahead.”
They passed the aboriginal exhibit then the bug display. They then had to tear Joel away from Andy Thomas’s space suit housed in a glass cabinet. Joel pointing and laughing at how small the suit was and if the museum had washed it before putting it on display; reminding any passer bys on how astronauts go to the toilet up in space.
Guided along by another directory board; this time the arrow had shifted and pointed to the left. They entered the geological room.
The room was small and each wall was lined with brightly lit enclosed glass shelves. On the shelves sat all-sorts of ancient rocks, some with spectacular bright coloured crystals protruding from a plain rock base, others no more different from those found in backyards. The descriptive tags dating them back Millions of years.
Roy called the group over to a small section in the corner, his excitement for the display before him shaded his cheeks red. He pointed out a handful of meteorites. He was amazed at how they originated from an unknown origin then tore through Millions or even Billions of kilometers of space, burn through our atmosphere, smash into the earth and now sit just a few centimeters away from his outstretched hand. “Wow! Most of these came down less than five hundred kilometers from our city.”
The others didn’t share his level of enthusiasm.
“Ok, red,” Tony said. “Calm down a bit or people will start to get the wrong idea about you and rocks.”
“I bet you cried tears of joy when you got your first rock tumbler?” Joel joked.
Alicia quickly pulled up a female attendant who had come scurrying through the room. “Excuse me,” she said and then explained who they were and why they were here. “You wouldn’t happen to know where our clue is?”
The attendant’s head said no but her smirk said yes. She finally couldn’t contain the secret any longer, she lent in towards Alicia. “All the shelves are represented by letters,” she whispered. “Example, section A shelf B exhibit E. Read the clue again.”
Alicia thanked her and the attendant hurried off again. Alicia grabbed the clue back off of Joel. “The last word is age not ages. That’s it!” she searched the shelves, a small letter was stuck on the far corner of each shelf. Alicia found section A then scanned down to shelf G then named each exhibit from left to right as she walked across, “A, B, C, D and E. AGE. Over here guys!” she called with excitement. “That’s the one,” Alicia tapped at a quartz like rock.
Roy ran in a little too fast and to eager. BANG! He’s forehead hit the glass. The noise reverberated around the little room and the glass shelf rocked slightly. The others laughed as Roy rubbed at his forehead.
“Love at first sight, hey red.” Chuckled Tony.
“Not funny guys,” moped Roy and pulled his hand down revealing a raised red lump in the center of his forehead; matching the colour of his red cheeks.
The sight sent the others deeper into laughter. The group slowly composed themselves and Roy jotted down what was on the plaque at the foot if the milky white rock and also drew a rough sketch of it just in case for future reference.
Joel noticed the foot note on the little plaque in front of the quartz like rock, kindly donated by Professor Harris. “Kindly donated? What did he do scrap it off the bottom of his shoe when he was walking past.”
Tony laughed, “Ha, I donated some rocks through my neighbor’s window once, I didn’t get my name on a plaque.” Both the boys laughed while Alicia rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Alright then, let’s go spend some of Mauritius Cushly’s money. We’ll all meet up in the canteen in five minutes,” suggested Tony.
“Sounds perfect,” said Joel. “I’ll go look for Dave.”
All five sat back from their table, stomachs full but their minds still hungry for answers. Their lunch time discussion couldn’t find the location of the finish line.
Dave’s phone rang to the tune of the mission impossible theme. He excused himself and stepped out of the canteen. He returned a short time later and jabbed his phone towards the group. “It's Richard, he wishes to speak to one of you.”
Each one ran through things they might have done wrong, but found nothing.
Alicia slowly took the phone and tucked it under her bl
ond hair and pressed it against her ear. “Hello this is Alicia speaking,” she said, clear and precise. Her eyebrows narrowed then lifted then clenched down tight. “Umm, no he didn’t,” she said this time with a slight pause and a stutter. “Ok bye.” Alicia handed the phone back to Dave and he stepped back out to continue his conversation.
“What happened,” Joel leant in closer.
“He wanted to know if Mauritius had talked to us or gave us anything.”
“Richard knew Mauritius followed us to the station,” Tony said and sat up in his chair. “He tracked his car there and now he also knows we are lying.”
“Well I didn’t know what to say, why didn’t you pick up the phone,”
“What the hell is going on and I have a sixth sense it aint part of the game,” Joel said.
“What, that barnacle on your lip is psychic too,” joked Tony.
“HA! HA! in fact it’s telling me right now that in two minutes time you’ll be rolling in pain on the floor crying for your mummy,” Joel stood up.
Tony called Joel’s hand and threw in a raise. He shot out of his seat and looked down at Joel, “And you’ll be counting coins at the bottom of the fountain out the front!”
Roy casually stepped between the two. “Excuse me,” he said with a smirk on his face. “There’s only one way to find out what this is all about.” Roy waved a white envelope held loosely in his hand. On the envelope were the words Bonus clue.
Chapter 15
The table was cleared of remains from their lunch and the salt and pepper shakers pushed to the edge of the table. In the center the unfolded white a4 paper stared up at the ceiling waiting like a patient on an operating table. The five students studied the clue on the paper. At the top of the page were symbols arranged in a loop, very similar to the clue that had been on the blue disk Nadia retrieved from the box in the warehouse. But in this one they were all foreign, no recognizable hieroglyphics at all. At the bottom was what looked like an attempted English translation. It read Sun guard pointed finger search city rises event furthest here behind tip (or point) under.
“What language is that?” asked Joel. “It looks like windings.”
“I sort of might know,” Roy said quietly. “I did a bit of research on the net after we first came across the bizarre symbols.”
“Where’s it from?” asked Alicia.
Roy hesitantly replied, “I’ll rather not say. The source wasn’t very reliable.”
“Good for you Roy,” smiled Alicia. “Way to make a stand. Anyway the symbols aren’t important we’re got a translated verse underneath it to go by.”
“The verse doesn’t make sense and there are a few unsure words,” added Tony.
They all sat in silence for a long time spinning their brains over the verse but nothing came of it but a mild headache on Joel’s behalf.
Joel rubbed his eyes. “Can’t force it, it will eventually come. I’m gonna take a break.”
“Good idea,” Nadia added. “Since we’re here I might take a look around.” Nadia’s face then saddened, “been a long time since I’ve been here.”
“You want to come with me?” Alicia asked Tony impersonating Nadia’s voice.
Tony shot her a dirty look and left with Nadia. The others chuckled.
Roy took out his notebook. “I’ll copy out four copies of the clue so we can each take one home.”
“Didn’t Mr. Cushly say to keep the clue a secret? Making four copies isn't keeping it a secret,” Alicia reminded the group.
Roy simply shrugged and then hunched his head over the notebook and copied away.
**
Tony and Nadia made their way upstairs to the Egyptian exhibit. Nadia had a mild fascination with all things Egyptian and couldn’t wait to get in there. On the way Tony made a toilet stop and urged the impatient Nadia to go on ahead and he would meet her in the exhibit. Nadia not needing much of a push quickly hurried off.
With the bathroom chores done Tony walked into the Egyptian exhibit. He hadn’t visited the museum for at least six years but not much had changed. A replica of the Rosetta stone hung on the wall at head height by the entrance. Old Egyptian jewelry and nic nacks filled the glass shelves. In the center of the room were two glass sarcophaguses, each one housed a mummy and objects that were found buried with it, such as mummified cats, jewelry and small wooden containers with jackal heads as lids.
The only thing that Tony recognized that was different from his last visit was the smell, it certainly had got worse. Despite all the glorious artifacts surrounding the room, what drew the attention of the small pedestrian crowd was a tear away group of four students; no doubt from the class they saw earlier, running rampart. They floated from mummy to mummy expressing their disgusted fascination to the corpse as loud as they could. One student gave the female mummy a mock pash against the top of the glass, another tried to pry open a lock to get to sheets of papyrus paper inscribed with hieroglyphics telling his friend that he wanted to hand it up as his English assignment.
Tony couldn’t help but smile remembering that’s exactly how he was acting all that time ago. Time sure loops but with different faces each time it passes.
A big angry security guard came marching in, “RIGHT!” he yelled. “YOU FOUR, OUT NOW!”
The four kids froze in shock before the security guard escorted the boys out, their shoulders slumped and heads down.
Tony looked around for Nadia and saw the top of her head in the far corner examining the display. Tony slowly walked over towards her taking in a few objects as he did so. He then turned away from a display of arrow heads and saw Nadia side on leaning over a table display cabinet. Her left hand held her thick chestnut curly hair away from her face. The room faded away and Tony could not think, move or speak but just watch. It all came crashing back into place when a child no more than seven years old shot into the room. The little girl bumped into his hip as she sprinted pass him heading towards the back of the room with her coulourful dress flapping about. The little girl met up with an older lady no doubt by the identical facial features they shared it was her mother. The mother waited one hand on her hip and the other pushing a pram forward and back attempting to sooth the baby inside who now sounded distressed.
The little girl handed something over to her mum. Mum snatched the object, it was a dummy. The mum examined it closely then frowned, “NOT THIS ONE!” she yelled, her piercing voice bounced off the walls and quickly filled the room. “This is the broken one! I said the yellow one not the white one.”
Everyone looked
The little girl cowered and her eyes started to swell.
“I can never rely on you to do anything!” the mother continued to yell.
The people in the room became uneasy.
“You're absolutely useless and your always will be with that thick brain of yours.”
It was at this point Tony saw something completely unexpected and out of character come from Nadia. Nadia erupted into ball of rage, “WHAT DID YOU SAY!” she yelled back at the mother, her face burning and her hair looked like tongues of flames lashing out at her victim. “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE PUTTING AN INNOCENT LITTLE GIRL DOWN LIKE THAT? YOU’RE PATHETIC. I’V HAD ENOUGH OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU. SHE LOOKS UP TO YOU TO GIVE HER GIFTS OF NOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE THAT SHE WILL CARRY FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE AND IS THAT WHAT YOU GIVE HER INSTEAD. IT’S NOT FAIR”
Nadia’s eyes began to tear.
Tony walked up to her to try to calm her down. The mother raised her nose, snatched her daughter’s hand and dragged her out the door.
There was an encouraging applause from the onlookers.
Nadia turned to Tony and fell into his arms crying. “It’s not fair,” she cried into Tony’s chest. “Why did they do that to her?”
Tony knew now that Nadia was that little girl and the anger ran through his muscles. He could not fix the pain, it was pain trapped in the past protected and untouchable. Tony slowly pulled her away then crouched slightly to mee
t her height. Nadia looked up, her eyes pleading for Tony to make it all better, to make the past disappear. A tear slipped off of Nadia’s cheek, Tony caught it in his palm as he raised his hand to wipe her eyes. ”Sometimes we look up to adults as heroes, as teachers, as protectors but they are and always will be the most flawed creatures on Earth.”
Nadia blinked then returned to the comfort of Tony’s shoulder.
“Always remember,” Tony whispered into her ear. “You’re the most amazing girl I have ever met.” He held her tight and there he sheltered her even if it was for a short while.
Tony let Nadia get her strength back before they walked in silence back to the canteen.
**
“Nadia your eyes are red,” Alicia said shifting over on the bench seat to let Nadia and Tony sit down. “Is everything ok?”
Nadia nodded then sat with her head down. Tony quickly changed the subject, “Roy, any luck on those clues?”
“No not at the moment. But I made a copy of them for each one of us to take”
“Didn’t big Mr Cushly say to keep the…”
Roy cut Tony off with a wave and then handed the copies out to his team mates. They all stared down at their sheets trying to piece together the puzzle.
Roy started them off, “there are twelve symbols and twelve words. So it’s a no brainer that each symbol represents a word. First word represents the symbol at the twelve o’clock position. Reading left to right we go clockwise. The verse doesn’t make any sense because I feel that the clue is not read in a clockwise manner. So all we have to do is figure out the correct order.”
Roy rummaged through his bag at his feet and then popped back up holding an assortment of pencils and pens. He handed them out accompanied with a ripped out sheet of paper from his notepad. Between the five of them they quickly filled up their scrap paper with different combinations; anticlockwise, up, down, zigzagged and also an added doodle of a doodle alongside the other symbols courtesy of Joel.
The group suddenly became distracted by a girl around the age of eighteen, bolt out of the canteen calling out a very familiar name, “Professor Harris! Professor Harris!”