Lost in Babylon

  “I don’t remember seeing this from the air,” I said, turning to Cass. “How about you, Mr. GPS—any ideas?”

  Cass shook his head, baffled. “Sorry. Clueless.”

  “It’s not a theme park,” Marco said, ducking back into the trees. “And it’s not the other side of the river. Follow me, and keep yourselves hidden by the trees as long as possible.”

  “Marco,” Aly said, “what do you know that you’re not telling us?”

  “Trust me,” Marco said. “To quote Alfred Einstein: ‘a follower tells, but a leader shows.’”

  He slipped back into the trees, heading in the direction of the city. Aly, Cass, and I fell in behind him. “It’s Albert Einstein,” Aly corrected him. “And I don’t believe he ever said that.”

  “Maybe it was George Washington,” Marco said.

  We trudged through the brush. The river roared to our right. Roared? Okay, it was swollen by the rain—but how long could it have rained, five minutes?

  The tree cover seemed a lot denser than I’d remembered seeing it from the other side. It partially obscured our view of the city, save for a few glimpses of distant yellowish walls.

  As the rain clouds burned away, the temperature climbed. We may have walked for ten minutes or an hour, but it felt like ten days. My body still felt creaky from our little swim adventure. All I wanted to do was lie down. I could tell Cass and Aly were hurting, too. Only Marco still seemed fresh and dewy. “How far are we going?” I called ahead.

  “Ask George Washington,” Aly mumbled.

  Marco took a sharp turn and stopped short at the edge of the trees. He peered around a trunk, signaling us to come close. With a flourish, he gestured to his left. “Abracadabra, dudes.”

  I looked toward the city and felt my jaw drop. The tree cover completely ended here. Up close, I could see that the city spilled directly to the banks of the Euphrates.

  Marco was climbing a pine tree and urged us to do the same. The branches hadn’t been trimmed, so it was easy to get maybe fifteen feet or so above the ground.

  From this vantage point we could see over the outer wall and into the city. It was no theme park. Way too vast for that. It wasn’t a city, either. Not like the ones I knew—no power wires, no cell towers, no cars. The roads leading into the city were hard-packed dirt. On one of them trudged a group of bearded men in white robes and sandals, leading swaybacked mules laden with canvas bags. They were heading toward a bridge that led over the moat and into the city gate. From the lookout towers, guards watched them approach. I craned my neck to see what the place was like inside, but the walls were too high.

  “These people are about as low-tech as it gets,” Cass said. “Like, from another century.”

  I felt a chill in spite of the hot sun. “From another millennium,” I added.

  “M-M-Marco . . . ?” Aly said. “You have some ’splainin’ to do.”

  Marco shook his head in wonder. “Okay. I’m as baffled as you are. Lost in the Land of the Big Duh. No idea where we are or how we got here. I wanted to show you, partly because I couldn’t believe it was real. But you see it, right? I’m not crazy, am I? Because I was having my doubts.”

  A rhythmic whacking noise nearly made me slip off my branch. We all scrambled down the trees. A little kid’s voice was coming nearer, singing in some strange language. Instinctively we drew closer together.

  Strolling up the path toward us was a dark-haired boy of about six, wearing a plain brown toga and holding a gnarled stick. As he sang, he whacked a hollow, dead tree in rhythm, his eyes wandering idly.

  He stopped cold when he saw us.

  “Keep singing, little dude,” Marco said. “I like that. Kind of a reggae thing.”

  The boy glanced from our faces to our clothes. He dropped his stick and darted back toward the main road. We must have seemed pretty strange to him, because he began shouting anxiously in a language none of us knew.

  At the road, a caravan of camels turned lazily toward him. A man with graying hair was at the head of the caravan, leaning on a stick and talking to a city guard dressed in leather armor, who had strolled out to meet him. Both of them turned toward us.

  The guard had a thick black beard and shoulders the size of a bull. Narrowing his eyes, he began walking our way, a spear balanced in his hand. He shouted to us with odd, guttural words.

  “What’s he saying?” Aly asked.

  “‘Does this toga make me look fat?’ How should I know?” Cass said.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Fido,” Marco said. “I say we book it.”

  He pushed us toward the river. We began running into the woods, down the slope, tripping over bushes and roots. I felt like I was re-banging every bruise I had. Marco was the first to reach the river banks. Cass was close behind, looking fearfully over his shoulder.

  “He’ll give up,” Marco whispered. “He has no reason to be mad at us, just probably thinks we’re dressed weird. We hide for a few minutes and wait for Spartacus and Camel Guy to go away. Then when things are quieter, we go find the Hanging Gardens.”

  “Um, by the way, it’s Toto,” Aly whispered.

  “What?” Marco snapped.

  “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Aly said. “Not Fido. It’s a line from The Wizard of Oz.”

  As we crouched behind some bushes, Marco’s eyes grew wide. I looked in the direction of his glance. Over the tops of the trees, a solid black band shimmered across the sky. It wasn’t a cloud cover exactly, but more like a distant gigantic cape.

  “And, um . . . that thing?” Marco said. “That’s maybe the wizard’s curtain?”

  I stood and ran to higher ground, to a place where I could see the city. I spotted the guard again and ducked behind a tree. But he wasn’t concerned about us anymore. The guard, the camel driver, the boy, and a couple of other men were hurriedly herding the camels toward the bridge.

  “I don’t like this,” Cass said as he caught up to where I was standing. “Let’s get out of here before a tornado strikes. We need to get Professor Bhegad. He’ll know what to do.”

  “No way, bro,” Marco protested. “It’s just weather. We need to move forward. And I have about a million things I have to tell you.”

  In the distance an animal roared. Birds flew frantically overhead, and a series of crazy, high-pitched screeches pierced the air. This place was giving me the creeps. “Tell us on the other side,” I said, heading back down.

  Aly, Cass, and I bolted for the river. It was three against one.

  “Wusses. All of you,” Marco said. And with a disgusted sigh, he followed us back in to the river.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT’S ALIII-IVE!

  “LOOK! IT’S MOVING! It’s aliii-ive! It’s alive, it’s alive, it’s aliiiive!”

  It was Aly’s voice. That much I knew. And I had a vague idea why she was sounding so dorky.

  I tried to open my eyes but the sun was searing hot. My muscles ached and my clothes were still wet. I blinked and forced myself to squint upward. Marco, Aly, and Cass were leaning over me, panting and wet. Behind them, the cliff rose into the harsh, unforgiving sun.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “It’s a line from a movie.”

  Aly beamed. “Sorry. I can’t help it. I’m so relieved. The original Frankenstein. Colin Clive.”

  “Welcome to the living,” Marco said, helping me up off the sand. “The original Seven Wonders Story. Marco Ramsay.”

  The landscape whirled as I struggled upward. I looked warily up the slope. “What happened to Ali Baba and the camels?”

  “Gone,” Marco replied, his eyes dancing with excitement. “We are back to the same spot where we left in the first place. And are you noticing something else? Look around. Look closely.”

  I saw the worn path to the top of the ridge. I saw the gray river, placid under the rising sun. “Wait,” I said. “When we left, the sun was almost over our heads. Now it’s lower.”

  “Bingo!” Marco said.


  “From Bingo,” Cass murmured. “Starring Bingo.”

  “Meaning what, Marco?” Aly said. “I’m supposed to be the smart one. What do you understand that I don’t?”

  “Hey!” A distant, high-pitched voice made us all turn sharply. Nirvana was sprinting up the beach in loud Hawaiian shorts, a KISS T-shirt, and aviator sunglasses. “Oh . . . my . . . Gandalf!” she screamed. “Where have you guys been?”

  Marco spun around. “Underwater. ’Sup, Dawg? Where’s Bhegad?”

  Nirvana slapped him in the face, hard.

  “Ow,” Marco said. “Happy to see you, too.”

  “We thought you were dead!” Nirvana replied. “After you jumped? I nearly had a heart attack! Bhegad and Fiddle and the Hulk—they’re all in each other’s faces. ‘How could you let this happen?’ ‘How could you?’ ‘How could you?’ Blah blah blah. Fiddle’s insisting we call nine-one-one, Bhegad says we can’t, Torquin’s just going postal, and I’m Will you guys just take a pill? So we all jump in the river to look for you, except for Bhegad, who’s so mad he’s practically doing wheelies. Finally we give up. All we can do is wait. Soon we assume you all drowned. Torquin is crying. Yes, tears from a stone. It does happen. Fiddle is like, ‘Time to break up the KI and look for a new job!’ Bhegad insists we set up camp. Maybe you’ll come back. Or we’ll find the bodies. So we’ve been sitting here for two days eating beef jerky and—”

  “Wait,” I said, sitting up. “Two days?”

  “Torquin was crying?” Cass said.

  Over Nirvana’s shoulder, I could see Fiddle pushing Professor Bhegad toward us. Torquin was waddling along beside them, his beefy face twisted into a pained expression that looked like indigestion but probably was concern. About twenty feet behind them was a camp-type setup—three big tents, a grill, and a few boxes of supplies.

  When had they set that up?

  “By the Great Qalani!” the old man cried, holding his arms wide. “You’re—okay!”

  No one of us knew quite what to do. Professor Bhegad wasn’t exactly a huggy kind of guy. So I stuck out my hand. He shook it so hard I thought my fingers would fall off. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes darting toward Marco. “If I weren’t so relieved, I’d be furious!”

  Marco’s face was flushed. He blinked his eyes. “My bad, P. Beg . . . shouldn’t have run off like that . . . whoa . . . spins . . . mind if I sit? I think I swallowed too much river water.”

  “Torquin, bring him to the tent. Now!” Bhegad snapped. “Summon every doctor we have.”

  Marco frowned, drawing himself up to full height with a cocky smile. “Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist, P. Beg. I’m good.”

  But he didn’t look good. His color was way off. I glanced at Aly, but she was intent on her watch. “Um, guys? What time is it? And what day?”

  Fiddle gave her a curious look, then checked his watch. “Ten-forty-two A.M. Saturday.”

  “My watch says six thirty-nine, Thursday,” Aly said.

  “We fix,” Torquin said. “Busted watches a KI specialty.”

  “It’s still working, and it’s waterproof,” Aly said. “Look, the second hand is moving. We left at 6:02, our time here in Iraq, and we were back by 6:29. Exactly twenty-seven minutes by my watch. But here—actually in this place—almost two days passed for you!”

  “One day and sixteen hours, and forty minutes,” Cass said. “Well, maybe sixteen and a half, if you count discussion time before we actually dove.”

  “Aly, this does not make sense,” I said.

  “And anything else about this adventure does?” Aly’s face was pale, her eyes focused on Professor Bhegad.

  But the professor was rolling forward, intent on Marco. “Did no one hear me?” he said. “Bring that child to the tent, Torquin—now!”

  Marco waved Torquin away. But he was staggering backward. His smile abruptly dropped.

  And then, so did his body.

  As we watched in horror, Marco thumped to the sand, writhing in agony.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A QUESTION OF TIME

  “IF YOU SAY, ‘It’s alive,’ I will pound you,” Marco said.

  His eyes flickered. Professor Bhegad exhaled with relief. Behind him, Fiddle let out a whoop of joy. “You are a strong boy,” Bhegad said. “I wasn’t sure the treatment would take.”

  “I didn’t think I needed treatments,” Marco replied. A rueful smile creased his face as he looked up at Aly, Cass, and me. “So much for Marco the Immortal.”

  Cass leaned down and gave him a hug. “Brother M, we like you just the way you are.”

  “Sounds like a song,” said Nirvana, who was clutching Fiddle’s and Torquin’s arms.

  I glanced at Aly and noticed she was tearing up. I sidled close to her. I kind of wanted to put my arm around her, but I wasn’t sure if that would be too weird. She gave me a look, frowned, and angled away. “My eyes . . .” she said. “Must have gotten some sand in them. . . .”

  “Aly was telling me about your adventure,” Bhegad said to Marco. “The Loculus seeming to call from the river . . . the weather change . . . the city on the other side. It sounds like one of your dreams.”

  “Dreams don’t change the passage of time, Professor Bhegad,” Aly said.

  “It was real, dude,” Marco said. “Like some overgrown Disney set. This big old city with dirt roads and no cars and people dressed in togas, and some big old pointy buildings.”

  Fiddle nodded. “Hm. Ziggurats . . .”

  “Nope,” Marco said. “No smoking.”

  “Not cigarettes, ziggurats—tiered structures, places of worship.” Bhegad scratched his head, suddenly deep in thought. “And the rest of you—you all confirm Marco’s observation?”

  Nirvana threw up her arms. “When Aly talks about it, you assume it’s a dream. But when Marco says it, you take it seriously. A little gender bias, maybe?”

  “My apologies, old habits learned at Yale,” Bhegad said. “I take all of you seriously. Even though you do seem to be talking about a trip into the past—which couldn’t be, pardon the expression, anything more than a fairy tale.”

  “So let’s apply some science.” Aly sank to the ground and began making calculations in the sand with her finger. “Okay. Twenty-seven minutes there, about a day and sixteen-and-a-half hours here. That’s this many hours . . .”

  “Twenty-seven minutes there equals forty-and-a-half hours here?” I asked.

  “How many minutes would that be?” she said. “Sixty minutes in an hour, so multiply by sixty . . .”

  Aly’s fingers were flying. “So twenty-seven minutes passed while we were there. But twenty-four-hundred thirty minutes passed here. What’s the ratio?”

  “Ninety!” Aly’s eyes were blazing. “It means we went to a place where time travels ninety times slower than it does here.”

  Fiddle looked impressed. “You go, girl.”

  “Whaaat? That’s impossible!” Cass shook his head in disbelief, then glanced at Professor Bhegad uncertainly. “Isn’t it?”

  I desperately tried to remember something weird I once learned. “In science class . . . when I wasn’t sleeping . . . my teacher was talking about this famous theory. She said to imagine you were in a speeding train made of glass, and you threw a ball up three feet and then caught it. To you, the ball’s going up and down three feet. But to someone outside the train, looking through those glass walls . . .”

  “The ball moves in the direction of the train, so it travels many more than three feet—not just up and down, but forward,” Professor Bhegad said. “Yes, yes, this is the theory of special relativity . . .”

  “She said time could be like that,” I went on. “So, like, if you were in a spaceship, and you went really fast, close to the speed of light, you’d come back and everyone on earth would be a lot older. Because, to them, time is like that ball. It goes faster when it’s just up and down instead of all stretched out.”

  “So you’re thinking you guys were like the spaceshi
p?” Nirvana said. “And that place we found—it’s like some parallel world going slower, alongside our world?”

  “But if we both exist at the same time, why aren’t we seeing them?” Marco said. “They should be on the other side of the river, only moving really slow a-a-a-a-a-n-n-n-d speeeeeeeeaki-i-i-i-i-ing l-i-i-i-ke thi-i-i-i-s . . .”

  “We have five senses and that’s all,” Aly said. “We can see, hear, touch, smell, taste. Maybe when you bend time like that, the rules are different. You can’t experience the other world, at least with regular old physical senses.”

  “But you—you all managed to traverse the two worlds,” Bhegad said, “by means of some—”

  “Portal,” Fiddle piped up.

  “It looked like a tire,” Marco said. “Only nicer. With cool caps.”

  Bhegad let out a shriek. “Oh! This is extraordinary. Revolutionary. I must think about this. I’ve been postulating the existence of wormholes all my life.”

  Torquin raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Pustulate not necessary. See wormholes every day!”

  “A wormhole in time,” Bhegad said. “It’s where time and space fold in on themselves. So the normal rules don’t apply. The question is, what rules do apply? These children may very well have traveled cross-dimensionally. They saw a world that occupies this space, this same part of the earth where we now stand. How does one do this? The only way is by traveling through some dimensional flux point. In other words, one needs to find a disruption in the forces of gravity, magnetism, light, atomic attraction.”

  “Like the portal in Mount Onyx,” I said, “where the griffin came through.”

  “Exactly,” Professor Bhegad said. “Do you realize what you were playing with? What dangers you risked? According to the laws of physics, your bodies could have been turned inside out . . . vaporized!”

  I shrugged. “Well, I’m feeling pretty good.”

  “You told me you could feel the Loculus, Jack,” Bhegad said. “The way you felt the Heptakiklos in the volcano.”