Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3) (19 page)

Billie laughed at
its simplicity.

“It’s nothing
more than deception and sleight of hand!”

Edward stared at
her. As though certain she was insane. “I’m afraid those spikes are very sharp,
and the roof remains too heavy for me to hold for any length of time.”

“That’s okay,
because we don’t have to hold it very long at all.” She sat down on the stone,
and casually reached up to take hold of the pulley. Gently taking it off its
first hinge, she said, “Look what happens to the roof behind us.”

And there it was.
While the lever was being pulled, the ceiling behind them lowered, leaving a
section to climb out of. The most obvious of solutions, except painfully hidden
to those who were focusing so much on the area in front because their lives
depended on it.

Edward smiled.
“You’re a genius Dr. Swan!”

“I was wrong,
this was a test of strength of mind, not body.”

Edward then held
the bar while Billie climbed through the exit and into the second room. There
she quickly found the reset lever and the entire ceiling from the first
challenge rose.

A moment later, Edward
quickly emerged.

“Okay, so this
must be the second challenge – the test of intellect.”

Billie stared at
the room. It was a similar size with a large canyon in the middle. A gap of
nearly ten feet blocked their progression. Below it, the stone floor appeared
lethal at nearly thirty feet below. There was no way to climb down. A brass
pedestal stood at the precipice to the chasm. At its base, a large pile of gold
ingots were stacked half a foot high, their luster unaffected by the thousands
of years they’d spent inside the ancient cavern.

Both of them
resisted the inkling to take any – some riches are only valuable if you live
long enough to spend them.

In the middle of
the room, a single plaque made of orichalcum glowed red. Billie approached it
quickly. The inscription was written in an Atlantean script, which was almost indistinguishable
from that which the Master Builders used. It explained that to pass this
challenge the contestant needed to calculate the weight of the tiny gold ingots
to balance the exact weight of the bridge. Too much and the bridge would fall
to the ground below. Not enough, and the bridge would be pulled higher.

“This is almost
identical to the one that I overcame in the other Atlantis. Only this one
involves counting piles of gold instead of orichalcum.”

“Did you work out
how much orichalcum was needed to open the drawbridge?”

“Yes, but it will
be completely different using gold ingots!”

“Pity.” Edward
walked to the edge of the chasm, and looked at its unforgiving and vacant expanse.
“Where’s the bridge?”

“In Atlantis, the
bridge was hidden, and swung toward the middle when I worked out the riddle.”

“Riddle? I
haven’t seen anything to at least guide us with our task.”

Billie looked
worried. “I’m not sure. Last time, it was left nearby the chasm.”

“Like that?”
Edward suggested.

In the corner of
the room a single set of brass scales stood lonely. At its base, another plaque
was inscribed with the Atlantean ancient text.

Billie walked to
it and began reading out loud…

“Place
precisely 10 stadia on the pedestal. If you place more or less weight on the
pedestal, the bridge will automatically collapse.”

“What the hell is
a stadia?”

“Plato’s Critias
Dialogue describes the length of Poseidon’s temple by the unit of measure of
stadia. Of course, no one has ever been able to work out exactly how much
length that was. Some have suggested it was equivalent to a Greek stadium, but
I think that’s merely Plato playing on the superiority of Athens. Now, here it
appears to be a measure of weight. Perhaps a length of it correlates to a
certain weight. Either way, there’s no other explanation than it being a
measurement of weight used by the people of Atlantis.”

Edward sighed.
“I’ve studied in many fields through the course of my life, but math was never
my strong point!”

“Come on Edward,
we can beat this.” Billie continued to read the puzzle left by the Atlanteans.
In front of her, a single balancing scale stood threateningly at the edge of
the room. Four heavy iron weights stood at its base.

“
Using only
these four weights – 2, 6, 18, and 27 stadia respectively, the challenger must
determine how many gold ingots to place on the opposite side of the scales to
achieve precisely 10 stadia.”

“Damn it! I said
I didn’t like math!” Edward then studied it carefully.

Billie began
scribbling the numbers and potential solutions on her tablet.

Edward was the
first to see the answer. “I’ve got it!”

“What’s the
answer?” Billie asked in surprise.

“It’s easy,”
Edward said. “We need to place the 6-stadia weight and the 2-stadia weight on
the opposite side to the 18-stadia weight and then add the gold ingots until
the two sides balance. When the two groups weigh the same, then the weight of
the gold ingots is equal to 10 stadia!”

Billie nodded her
head.

The math appeared
quite simple – too simple! She grabbed her tablet and quickly began searching
for something. The slightest of crests formed on her forehead, the only sign of
her stress. Quickly, she scrolled through and read the information she was
after. Something was wrong, but she needed proof.

Edward started to
optimistically load the scales until he balanced the same amount of gold ingots
on the same side as the one with 8 stadia worth of weight. Once the scales were
balanced, he took the gold ingots and said to Billie, “I guess that’s how much
10 stadia is. About twenty-five pounds!”

He was ready to
place it inside the brass cup that formed the pedestal, when Billie stopped
him.

“Wait!” she said.

“What is it?”

“I think we just
got the entire equation wrong! I think we just overcomplicated a very simple
math problem.”

“What do you
mean? The math was simple. I’m sure we covered it in grade school or something.
We placed the 18- stadia object on one side of the scales, followed by a
6-stadia and 2-stadia weight on the other side and then increased the weight
with gold ingots until the scales balanced – leaving precisely 10 stadia worth
of gold ingots! Now I’m going to take those 10 stadia worth of gold ingots and
release our bridge.”

“That would be
correct,” Billie said, with a tone of reassurance that clearly said that it
wasn’t. “That is to say, if we were using the correct type of math, as we use
today. But what if the Atlanteans used something different?”

“What do you
mean? Math is the one universal constant, the language that defies borders!”

“The answers may
be the same, but the method of reaching those answers vary greatly throughout
history and society.”

“You’re losing
me, Dr. Swan. In plain English, what have I missed?”

“We work on base
ten! What’s to say that the people of Atlantis worked on the same system as we
do?”

Edward looked
hurt. “What’s to say that they didn’t?”

She shoved her
tablet into his hands and said, “This!”

His eyes scrolled
over the page, while his eyes stared in blank confusion. Math, she realized,
really wasn’t his forte.

“According to
this, the early inhabitants of the Congo Basin used duodecimal systems, as well
as the most ancient tribal communities in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal.”
Billie held her notepad in her hand and then looked up and said, “Who else do
we know lived in both those places?”

“The survivors of
Atlantis!”

“Exactly. Why
else would they evolve to use such a unique base system?”

“Christ! The
people of Atlantis worked in base twelve!”

Billie nodded her
head. “Therefore, we need to calculate this using base twelve.”

“Base twelve?”
Edward looked confused having just agreed with her argument. “Just because my
grandfather stole most of the orichalcum left in Atlantis doesn’t mean I
actually know much about the place. What do you mean by base twelve?”

Billie began
explaining it to him in simple terms. “Mathematics is standard. The universal
language. It doesn’t matter where you come from – math is math.”

“Right,” he
agreed.

“Only that
assumption’s wrong. We work on base ten. Most likely because that’s how many
fingers we have. Meaning we count to ten, then hundreds, which are just tens of
tens, followed by thousands which is tens of hundreds, and so on.”

“All right. Now
I’m following you. I’m sure we learned about this stuff somewhere. The ancient
Atlanteans didn’t use this method?”

“No. They worked
out of base twelve. That means they counted to twelve and then moved to sets of
twelve, followed by sets of sets of twelve.”

“Okay, so now what have we got?”
Edward said, frustrated.

“Using this unique system…” Billie
thought about it and then scribbled on her tablet several times until she
reached an answer. “The numbers 2
, 6, 18, and 26
in the
game now become –
2, 6, 20, and 30 in base 10. The number 18 actually
means 12 plus 8, which we all know equals 20 in base 10. And the number, 26
actually means, 2 x 12 plus 6, which equals 30.”

“Okay, that makes
sense,” Edward said, although it didn’t. “So that being the case, we can work
out how many gold ingots equal 20 stadia and then halve it to reach the goal of
10 stadia worth of gold?” Edward suggested.

“No, because
we’re no longer looking for 10 stadia in weight.”

“But the puzzle
said…”

“10 in base 12 is
12!”

Realization
struck Edward!

“Which means the
problem becomes very simple – we take 18 on one side and place the 2 and the 6
weight on the other to make 10, which is really 12 stadia!”

“Exactly!”

Billie and Edward
carefully balanced the scale until they were confident they had reached 12 stadia
of gold.

Edward looked at
her and said, “You’re certain this will work, Dr. Swan?”

Beneath a smile
filled with sweat, Billie replied, “Certain enough that I’m willing to bet my
life on it!”

“That’s good
enough for me.”

Edward, keen to
discover the truth, then carefully placed the gold ingots on the pedestal.

Nothing happened.

Then the ground
began to shake with the force of an earthquake. Above them, stone rubble fell
from a ceiling that had lost its strength. The two quickly retreated toward the
entrance of the room, which was covered by stone arches.

By the time the
rubble had subsided, the chasm was replaced by a single bridge of fallen stone no
more than a few feet wide, but easily able to be traversed. Billie looked at
the almost perfectly formed passage.

“It looks stable
enough. What do you think?” she asked.

“I still think
you’re a genius, Dr. Swan!” He grabbed one of her hands and squeezed it with
the warm affection of an old man. “Thank you.”

Carefully, they
crossed the chasm and after crawling through a narrow tunnel, reached the third
challenge. Again, it appeared to be a relatively large cavern, but this time
the entire room was separated by 20 tall stones, which reached up toward them, like
totem poles. From their height, Billie and Edward could step along most of them
and reach the other side, but any misjudgment of their footing and they would
fall to their deaths.

The steps ranged
from one to three feet apart and at points were narrow enough that whoever was
attempting to cross would have only enough room to place one foot on it. Even
so, with only mild circumspection, even an 80-year-old man could make his way
across to the level ground on the other side.

“Looks easy
enough, doesn’t it?” Edward said. “This is the challenge of bravery. What’s to
be afraid of? I’ve seen you hop from branch to branch above crocodile infested
waters, my dear Dr. Swan, this must be simple by comparison?”

“Yes. Dangerously
so.”

“What are you
worried about? None of the other challenges have been that hard, once you take
a step back and look at them.”

Billie looked
carefully at the simple maze of totem poles they would have to navigate to
across. “I don’t like it. Every other challenge has first appeared difficult,
only to become simple. Now this one appears simple. There must be something wrong.”

“Well, there’s
only one way to find out,” Edward said. “This time I’ll go first.” 

She watched as
Edward carefully took the lead and stepped from one precipice to the next with
a certain level of agility that surprised her. His confidence rose the further
into the maze he stretched. By the time he was halfway through, he was merely
skipping from one stone to the next until he reached the fourteenth stone.

Then, as he
landed on it, the stone sunk. Not by much, perhaps four or five inches at most.
But then, so did the next one and the one after that until, the final few stone
steps had lowered so much that it would be impossible to jump from the last one
onto the level ground on the other side of the chasm.

He smiled,
patiently. “Okay, I guess I see the problem.”

“Yeah. All right,
Edward. See if you can come back here and we’ll see if there’s another way
through. Maybe there’s a secret path or something that could let us through?”

“What did you
find for this challenge in the original Atlantis?”

“An almost
identical room. Filled with similar totem pole-like structures.”

Edward jumped
over the remaining stones and landed back on the same side of the chasm as
Billie. Reassured to be back on the ground, he said, “And how did you beat
it?” 

“Funny you should
mention that.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because when I
beat this challenge last time I took a fairly lateral approach to the problem,
which we might have trouble reproducing.”

Edward curled his
eyebrow. “Are you going to tell me what that is, or shall I keep trying
alternative routes through the secret labyrinth?”

“I had dynamite
with me. And I knocked over the final three totem poles, so that they lay
diagonally along the final wall. Then I jumped from one to the other.”

“You cheated?”

“No one said how
we were supposed to get through the challenge. Only that failure would result
in death.”

“Christ! And you
didn’t think to mention this before you came in here – without any dynamite?”

“No. That’s why I
brought you along. I figured that maybe you and I would be better equipped,
mentally, to solve the puzzle.”

Edward laughed as
he thought about it. All that rested on their ability to pass this simple
puzzle. 20 stepping stones. Six that dropped lower and lower the closer you got
to them. If they’d brought some sort of makeshift ladder it would have been
easy. “Okay, so let’s work the problem.”

Billie drew a
series of vertical and horizontal rows with her finger in the sand to make a
grid similar to what they were looking at. Then slowly filled in the squares with
crosses for where the stone steps appeared.

From above, there
was no obvious pattern.

Billie stared at
it for a few minutes and then said, “Okay, there’s only so many options. Let’s
try skipping ever second step. Then every third step. We’ll keep breaking it up
until we come up with a solution.”

“It seems like as
good an idea as any.”

“I’ll go first.”

Billie skipped
every second stone until she reached the final 6 steps. The second she reached
the sixth step, the remaining five dropped to where they had been when Edward
had attempted to cross them. Like last time, they had become impossible to
cross.

She quickly
returned and repeated the process by choosing a new pathway. This time starting
from the right hand side of the secret maze. Somehow, she was certain the
perfect path was hidden in plain sight.

Billie tried
another twenty-two pathways before she noticed it. To the right were another
two stepping stones, which she’d dismissed out of hand originally because they
took her further into the chasm, instead of across it.

“What about
this?”

Edward look to
where she was pointing.

“It’s something
we haven’t tried yet. May as well give it a go.”

She carefully
made the larger jumps toward the two stones. Instantly, when she landed on the
final stone, each of the six stones at the end raised in height until they were
level with the opposite end of the chasm.

“That’s it Dr.
Swan! You’ve done it.”

She turned to see
the final six stones had somehow returned to their original height again.
Billie focused on the next closest stone, preparing to jump.

Whoosh!

Billie heard the
sound before she saw the giant axe swing toward her. A split second before it
collided with her, she landed on the first stone.

Behind her the
stone axe, nearly twice her size, continued to swing like a pendulum behind her
and directly above the stone’s she’d just jumped off.

“That was close.”
She smiled, her infectious confidence returning. “All right. I’d say it’s time
to complete this challenge and find that code to Atlantis.”

Edward started
stepping over the stones. “Sounds good to me.”

She reached the
sixth stone, and carefully stood on it. This time, nothing moved. Then she
stepped onto the fifth stone. And again, the remaining stones dropped – several
feet this time.

Edward swore. “We
were so close!”

The both looked
back at the swinging pendulum. After she’d stepped on the fifth stone, the axe
returned to its waiting position high above the furthest stone into the chasm.

“It appears,
someone has to remain standing on the stone,” Billie said. “If someone could
stay there for more than a couple seconds, it might just be long enough for the
other person to cross the stepping stones and make it to the other side. Once
there, the reset lever could be pulled, and whoever remains could make it
through the chasm.”

“That’s fine, but
you jumped with less than a second to spare. Whoever stands on that stepping
stone long enough for the other person to make it across, would need to be more
than just brave – they would need to be suicidal.”

Billie’s large
brown eyes widened with understanding, but she said nothing. 

“What now?”

“I was worried
about this when I read the three challenges.”

Edward spoke them
out loud. “Strength, Intellect and Bravery?”

“Yes, it was the
word bravery that I was worried about.”

“Why?”

“Because in the
ancient Atlantean text, the word ‘Bravery’ reads very similarly to another word
– SACRIFICE.”