Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [36]
It looked like this:
It was positioned so that Lily saw it every day when she went to get her morning juice. When she asked what it said, Doris Epper answered: ‘We don’t know. We’re hoping that one day you’ll be able to tell us.’
When she hit five years of age, Max Epper took charge of her schooling, teaching her maths, science, ancient history and languages—with an emphasis on Latin, Greek and cuneiform.
It turned out she had a singular aptitude for languages, learning them quickly and fluidly—with almost unnatural ease.
By age 7, she had mastered Latin and Greek.
By 8, she was deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.
By 9, she had outstripped Epper in his knowledge of cuneiform— translating all three of the ancient languages from the Bisitun Monument.
Not to mention the modern languages she was learning just by speaking with her multinational guardians. She particularly loved the difficult Gaelic tongue spoken by her Irish protectors, Zoe and Liam Kissane.
Epper was a wonderful teacher.
Lily just adored him—loved his wise old face, his kind blue eyes, and the gentle yet clever way he taught.
And so she renamed him Wizard.
Every day, she would race to his schoolroom in the east wing of the farmhouse to learn new and interesting things.
Poems like ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ were acted out with verve and energy.
Simple arithmetic was illustrated with farming examples.
And science was a blast—literally. For Wizard had all manner of crazy home-made inventions in his workshop at the farm. Gadgets and tools that emerged from his dabblings in electromagnetism and foam epoxies.
He once told Lily that a long time ago he had worked at a laboratory called Sandia in the United States, and that it was a secret place where they made secret things.
She liked that. Secret things.
She got along with the team members in different ways.
Although she wasn’t a very girly girl, Zoe taught Lily some necessary girly things—like brushing her hair, filing her nails and how to make boys do her bidding.
Matador, the Spanish trooper, spent a lot of time in the gym they’d set up in the smaller barn. At first he let Lily watch him work out. Then, as she grew bigger, he let her sit on one end of a plank of wood while he bench-pressed it, balancing her mass with lead weights at the other end, lifting her high into the air. She loved that.
Witch Doctor, the Jamaican commando, taught her how to tread in silence—they would terrorise Doris Epper, sneaking up on her when she dozed on the veranda in the afternoon sun.
But the soldier she bonded with most was Zoe’s brother, Liam, call-sign Gunman.
Gunman was a big guy, broad and tall, easily six-foot-three— with a wide honest face, a fully-shaven head, and large jug ears.
He wasn’t all that smart, but he was a great commando.
With Lily, though, he just clicked—perhaps because they were of an equal intelligence level, even though he was 24 and she was just a kid.
They watched movies and read books together.
They played the video game Splinter Cell endlessly in dual-player mode—killing baddies left, right and centre, co-ordinating their moves with loud shouts and commands. They actually made a good team, winning the inaugural ‘Victoria Station Dual-Player Splinter Cell Competition’, defeating Wizard and Zoe in a hard-fought final.
They went on adventures around the station—including one visit to a giant hangar concealed in the western hills of the property, inside which they found the towering Halicarnassus.
Lily gazed in awe at the great 747, and felt a thrill of excitement when she walked up to it, touched it and read a peculiar inscription on its underbelly: ‘PRESIDENT ONE—AIR FORCE OF IRAQ’.
But most of all, no-one would ever forget the famous tea party held on the front lawn one summer, with Mister Bear, Little Dog, Big Dog, Barbie, Lily and Gunman—huge Gunman, all six feet of him, hunched