The Complete Kane Chronicles Read Free Page B

Sadie.”
    “Ah! Your son, obviously, and—” The curator looked hesitantly at Sadie. “And this young lady?”
    “My daughter,” Dad said.
    Dr. Martin’s stare went temporarily blank. Doesn’t matter how open-minded or polite people think they are, there’s always that moment of confusion that flashes across their faces when they realize Sadie is part of our family. I hate it, but over the years I’ve come to expect it.
    The curator regained his smile. “Yes, yes, of course. Right this way, Dr. Kane. We’re very honored!”
    The security guards locked the doors behind us. They took our luggage, then one of them reached for Dad’s workbag.
    “Ah, no,” Dad said with a tight smile. “I’ll keep this one.”
    The guards stayed in the foyer as we followed the curator into the Great Court. It was ominous at night. Dim light from the glass-domed ceiling cast crosshatched shadows across the walls like a giant spiderweb. Our footsteps clicked on the white marble floor.
    “So,” Dad said, “the stone.”
    “Yes!” the curator said. “Though I can’t imagine what new information you could glean from it. It’s been studied to death—our most famous artifact, of course.”
    “Of course,” Dad said. “But you may be surprised.”
    “What’s he on about now?” Sadie whispered to me.
    I didn’t answer. I had a sneaking suspicion what stone they were talking about, but I couldn’t figure out why Dad would drag us out on Christmas Eve to see it.
    I wondered what he’d been about to tell us at Cleopatra’s Needle—something about our mother and the night she died. And why did he keep glancing around as if he expected those strange people we’d seen at the Needle to pop up again? We were locked in a museum surrounded by guards and high-tech security. Nobody could bother us in here—I hoped.
    We turned left into the Egyptian wing. The walls were lined with massive statues of the pharaohs and gods, but my dad bypassed them all and went straight for the main attraction in the middle of the room.
    “Beautiful,” my father murmured. “And it’s not a replica?”
    “No, no,” the curator promised. “We don’t always keep the actual stone on display, but for you—this is quite real.”
    We were staring at a slab of dark gray rock about three feet tall and two feet wide. It sat on a pedestal, encased in a glass box. The flat surface of the stone was chiseled with three distinct bands of writing. The top part was Ancient Egyptian picture writing: hieroglyphics. The middle section…I had to rack my brain to remember what my dad called it: Demotic, a kind of writing from the period when the Greeks controlled Egypt and a lot of Greek words got mixed into Egyptian. The last lines were in Greek.
    “The Rosetta Stone,” I said.
    “Isn’t that a computer program?” Sadie asked.
    I wanted to tell her how stupid she was, but the curator cut me off with a nervous laugh. “Young lady, the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering hieroglyphics! It was discovered by Napoleon’s army in 1799 and—”
    “Oh, right,” Sadie said. “I remember now.”
    I knew she was just saying that to shut him up, but my dad wouldn’t let it go.
    “Sadie,” he said, “until this stone was discovered, regular mortals…er, I mean, no one had been able to read hieroglyphics for centuries. The written language of Egypt had been completely forgotten. Then an Englishman named Thomas Young proved that the Rosetta Stone’s three languages all conveyed the same message. A Frenchman named Champollion took up the work and cracked the code of hieroglyphics.”
    Sadie chewed her gum, unimpressed. “What’s it say, then?”
    Dad shrugged. “Nothing important. It’s basically a thank-you letter from some priests to King Ptolemy V. When it was first carved, the stone was no big deal. But over the centuries…over the centuries it has become a powerful symbol. Perhaps the most important connection between Ancient Egypt and the