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.
Chapter Fifty-Three
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 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 every 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 looked 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!”
They 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.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
“All right. Then it’s decided. I’ll sacrifice myself.”
Billie stared at Edward’s face. He appeared certain and confident about his decision.
“What do you mean? No, you can’t do that!”
“Of course I can. I’m the natural choice.”
“What do you mean? We’re both entitled to the choice of living.”
“Are we really?” The crest of his eyebrow raised up in a sign that she’d learned meant that he was right and he was about to explain why to her. “The way I see it, if we don’t solve this soon, we’re both going to die, and that’s for certain. But already, we know that’s not going to happen. One of us can survive this challenge. The question is who that’s going to be.”
“We should draw straws or something! Christ, you can’t just accept you have to sacrifice your life!”
“But the challenge is called sacrifice. And here it is.” Edward took a step out on to the precipice and then onto the free standing stone which stood like a totem pole in the valley. “I’m old Billie. If I live another five years that would be more than I or any other man my age would have any right to. But you – you could live another sixty or seventy years!”
“But…”
He didn’t let her protest. “The decision’s been made now. You have to save yourself. Don’t look so mortified. I’m not simply doing it for you. We both know there’s a lot more at stake here than our lives. You need to get through this so you can deactivate the code to Atlantis. You’re the only one who’s been there in living history. Only you can save the rest of them!”
“But it will kill you!”
“Yes, but you will live. And that is all that matters.” He spoke the words calmly, and Billie realized that they were the truth – she was the only one who could reach Atlantis in time and change the outcome. But all the same, she found it difficult to accept.
“There must be another way?”
“Maybe there is. But we don’t have time to find it. We have less than an hour before this temple floods once more, and then Mark and everyone else are going to find themselves having a really bad day.”
She thought about it silently and then hugged him. “Thank you, Edward. If I do succeed, the entire world is going to know that it was because of your bravery and act of sacrifice.”
He hugged
her back, and she felt the warm tears on the back of her neck.
“Go,” he told her, and turned to make his way to the SACRIFICE step.
“Good bye, Edward.”
Moments later she watched him, eager to do so before he had time to change his mind, simply step onto the final stone. She turned to see the last six stepping stones raise until they met the height of the levelled ground on the other side of the chasm.
Billie began running across them.
A split second later she heard the axe drop.
By the time she’d heard the third swing Billie was on the other side of the chasm. She immediately turned around, and looked back at Edward, who was standing there with tears of joy over his formidable smile.
“You survived!” she said.
The axe continued, like a pendulum.
“Another illusion.” The white of his teeth smiled back at her. “Wasn’t that lucky!”
“Wait there while I find the reset lever.”
Edward looked at the swinging axe. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Minutes later, after she’d reset the challenge so that the two of them could walk across without repeating it, Edward was across the chasm and holding her tight.
“I can’t believe you just did that. Edward, you literally just gave your life for me!” she said.
A wry smile came across his face. “I might have guessed that it was merely a test… I’m very glad I made the right choice!”
“How did you know?”
“How did I know what, Dr. Swan?”
“That the sacrifice was only in thought, not in practice?”
“What makes you say I did?”
She stared at him. Her brown eyes fixed on him, forcing him to be honest.
“I realized the pygmies must maintain this place. That being so, it would make sense that they needed to be able to complete the challenges themselves. It simply didn’t make sense that they would sacrifice one member of their maintenance crew every time they needed to reach the temple of Poseidon.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Billie walked into the final temple. A broad smile played across her face.
The Sam Reilly Collection Page 65