We Dine With Cannibals (8 page)

CELIA COULDN'T BELIEVE
her ears.

“A death trap?” Dr. Navel asked. “Why?”

He almost accidentally killed his children all the time in the far-off places of the world, but he was their father. He wasn't so sure he liked it when other people almost accidentally killed his children.

“I thought I could free them from Sir Edmund,” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg said. “And in the process, protect the Inca's Itinerary.”

“What's that?” asked Oliver. Celia glared at him. “I mean … whatever,” he added and turned toward the TV.

Celia turned up the volume. She didn't want to get caught up in another quest for another artifact and she didn't want Oliver getting caught up either. They had sixth grade to worry about, and no
cable television, and no mother, and that was enough for two kids to handle. No more mysteries. No more adventures.

The Celebrity Adventurist
had come on. Corey Brandt was standing in front of a giant redwood tree.

“Last week we learned that quicksand isn't all that dangerous as long as you don't panic. We also learned the hard way not to eat wild mushrooms off the ground. Today we're leaving the ground altogether to learn what it takes to survive for a whole week in the treetops of a giant redwood forest.” He smiled and patted the thick trunk behind him.

“How would anyone get stuck in the treetops of a giant redwood forest for a week?” Professor Rasmali-Greenberg wondered aloud, interrupting his own train of thought.

“Shh,” Celia snapped. She was happy just looking at Corey Brandt's smile. He didn't need to make any sense. Oliver thought Corey Brandt might just be the coolest guy in the world. His new show was reality TV. He wasn't acting. He wasn't using a stuntman. It was just Corey Brandt on his own, in the wilderness with a camera and
his wits, and he was about to climb a really big tree.

“Professor … the Inca's Itinerary?” Dr. Navel said.

“Ah yes, well, some time ago I found myself in Machu Picchu, investigating the myth of El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold.”

Celia turned up the volume on the TV. She didn't want to hear this nonsense. She knew that an itinerary was a plan for a journey, and she didn't like the sound of that. Journeys and investigations were bad news for Oliver and Celia Navel. And lost cities were even worse.

“It was there that I discovered a room of hidden khipu …” The professor had to raise his voice to talk over the television.

Celia turned it up again.

“
These trees are the killer whales of the arboreal world. I've never felt more unsafe!
” Corey Brandt was hugging the high branch of a tree, straining to tie a rope around his waist. His hands were shaking. The camera cut to a close-up. “
Remember, the first rule of thumb for any survival scenario: Try not to hurt your thumb.
”

“
I believe one of the khipu,
” the professor
had to shout over the television, “
was the Inca Itinerary, hidden from the Spanish Inquisition in Machu Picchu.
”

“
Were you able to break the code of the khipu?
” Dr. Navel shouted over the television.

“I was not. I took it with me and left this trap in its place. B
ut the golden cord implies the path to El Dorado might be contained in its—”

Celia turned the TV up again. “
Being tangled in vines is like being stuck in quicksand,
” Corey Brandt told his audience, while he was tangled in an impossible mess of vines. “
If you panic and squirm, you make it worse.
”

“
CELIA!
” Dr. Navel turned to his daughter.

“What?” Celia asked, smiling innocently. Oliver mirrored her smile. They knew exactly how to drive their father insane.

“Could you
please
turn down the television?”

“Of course,” Celia said as she turned down the television. “Could you please not involve us in any more deadly adventures? We have sixth grade starting tomorrow.”

“Don't you want to know anything about this place?” their father pleaded as the TV volume
went down. His shoulders slumped and his glasses slid down his nose. “It nearly killed you. Aren't you at all interested in knowing why? Aren't you interested in anything other than TV? Don't you want to find your mother?”

“Maybe Mom doesn't want to be found!” Celia snapped at her father, startling everyone in the room. “Maybe she cares more about old libraries and lost cities and weird mysteries than she does about us!”

Celia turned her back to the TV again and crossed her arms. Oliver started to speak but stopped himself. Celia glowered at him, boiling with anger. Oliver's lower lip quivered.

“We have school tomorrow,” Celia added, and looked at the floor.

“School, right …” Their father let his voice trail off. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and kept his gaze fixed on the back of Celia and Oliver's heads.

“Perhaps we should adjourn to the Great Hall,” the professor suggested after a very long silence.

“Yes … adjourn …,” Dr. Navel said, still looking at his children. He followed Professor Rasmali-Greenberg out of the apartment. Just as he reached
the door, he turned back and spoke to Oliver and Celia. “Make sure you brush your teeth and go to bed when your show is over. And”—he cleared his throat—“I … you know … I think that …” He rubbed his hand along the door frame, searching for the right words to say. “I'm sorry for everything that's happened. I love you.”

“Love you too,” the children said absently as they stared at the screen. Corey Brandt was trying to catch a squirrel in a trap made of dental floss, but neither of the twins was really watching.

When they were alone, Oliver spoke.

“The professor just thought he was trying to help. He thought he would get Sir Edmund with that trap.”

“Well, we don't need his help,” Celia said. “His kind of help is bad for our life expectancy. I'd like to reach twelve.”

“Do you think the professor will tell Dad about the Mnemones, and, you know, our destiny?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you think he has that khipu Sir Edmund was looking for?”

“I don't know,” Celia said again.

“Do you think Mom is in El Dorado?”

Celia just shrugged. She was still staring at the screen, but there were tears on her cheeks.

“Do you really think Mom won't ever come back?”

“I don't know!” Celia snapped. “Okay? I. Don't. Know!”

She was fed up. Oliver's curiosity was just the kind of thing that would send them off on another adventure, and adventures always ended up with missed television, lizard bites, and a lot of disappointment. Some things stayed lost for a reason, Celia thought. There wasn't any point in looking for things that didn't want to be found.

“Listen,” she said. “The more we know, the worse things
always
get for us.”

“But what were they talking about? What's an itinerary?”

“It's a plan for a trip, Oliver! A trip! An adventure! Do you really want to know more than that? The last time you wanted to know something, we got thrown out of an airplane into Tibet … by our own mother. You want to do that again?”

“She was trying to protect us.”

“So was the professor, and look how that went.”

“I mean,
The
Celebrity Adventurist
is almost
over. There's nothing on TV now anyway. We might as well …”

Corey Brandt was rappelling down a giant redwood on a rope he'd cut from tree bark in a harness padded with leaves. It made Celia think about when she rappelled down that chimney in Machu Picchu. She wondered if Corey Brandt would be impressed that she knew how to rappel.

“I'm going to look,” Oliver said, and he picked up the remote control. He started to press the buttons in different combinations. The channel changed to a commercial for snack cakes. Then to another.

“Do you even remember how to do it?” Celia asked.

“Just gimme a second.”

“You're doing it wrong!” she said, and reached out to grab the remote. “If you're going to make us do this, at least do it right!”

“Hold on, I almost got it!” He kept pressing buttons and the channels kept flipping between commercials.

The TV blared: “Velma Sue's snack cakes, now in lemon-ginger cream!”

And then: “Our cakes are wholesome because the towns that make them are wholesome. Try a Velma Sue's snack cake today.”

And: “This is not your grandmother's snack cake!”

“I heard that Velma Sue's snack cakes blow up if you put them in water,” said Oliver.

“That's just a myth,” said Celia. “You can't believe everything you hear.”

“I saw it on the local news,” Oliver said.

“Then it's definitely not true,” said Celia as Oliver kept flipping from commercial to commercial. Beverly blinked at the TV. She liked Velma Sue's snack cakes as much as Oliver did.

“Just give me the remote!” Celia lunged for it, and just as she did, Oliver pulled the remote away so that Celia ended up smacking him in the face.

“Ouch,” he said.

“Your own fault.”

Oliver rubbed his cheek where she'd hit him. “It worked, didn't it?” He pointed at the TV screen.

W
ELCOME TO
T
ABLET 2.0
, the TV screen read. T
HE COMPLETE CATALOG OF THE
G
REAT
L
IBRARY OF
A
LEXANDRIA.

This was the souvenir their mother had given them the last time she left them, back in Tibet. It wasn't a T-shirt and it wasn't a knickknack or bric-a-brac or a tchotchke. It wasn't a fanged spirit mask of the Liberian chimpanzee devil.

It was a universal remote control that could access the complete catalog of the Lost Library of Alexandria—every book and scroll and mysterious treasure that had been hidden there since the library was founded over two thousand years ago. Right on the TV screen.

They had only opened it once before they had gone off to South America with Sir Edmund, but their mother had told them that the catalog would help them. They'd need it to find the Lost Library and she gave it to them to keep it safe. It also worked on any TV, which was a plus.

“So what do we look for?” Celia asked.

Oliver typed in the letters for “El Dorado” and pressed enter. A little cartoon man in a toga appeared and tapped its foot while the request was processed.

Suddenly, the toga man frowned and a message appeared on the screen.

A
CCESS
D
ENIED.

Oliver frowned and pressed some other buttons. The message repeated itself.

A
CCESS
D
ENIED.
A
CCESS
D
ENIED.
A
CCESS
D
ENIED.

“What?” Oliver wondered aloud. “It's broken.”

He pressed more buttons. Suddenly the screen went dark. After a second, Corey Brandt appeared again, standing at the base of a giant tree.

“So remember,” he said. “If you want to battle the giant redwoods, you'll need nerves of steel, eyes like lasers, and a copy of
The Celebrity Adventurist
companion photo book, on sale this spring.”

He winked at the camera and it cut to the credits.

Oliver and Celia stared at their TV.

“Well,” Celia said at last. “So much for the catalog.”

“I guess.” Oliver couldn't hide his disappointment.

“Whatever,” said Celia. She couldn't hide her happiness. No more catalog in their remote meant that maybe there was no more destiny, nothing they could do to find the Lost Library. Maybe they could just be normal for a little while.
“There's a bright side,” she told Oliver to try to cheer him up.

“What's that?”

“We'll get cable TV tomorrow.”

Oliver smiled. He could argue with his sister about a lot of things, but never about cable television.

IT WAS THE MOST STRANGE
and terrifying thing Oliver and Celia had ever seen.

Although they had endured many terrors in their eleven years and they had seen many strange things, from giant yetis to psychic yaks, nothing compared to what they saw before them at this moment.

Children screamed.

Furniture tumbled.

Paper flew through the air.

A
miasma
—which is what Wally the Word Worm might call a really stinky smell—of sweat and perfume filled the air. A
cacophony
—which is what Wally the Word Worm might call a lot of noise—shook the walls. Children of all different shapes and sizes darted from place to place like nervous lizards.