The Price of AdventureIndia was bored – and more than a little depressed. She wished she could go adventuring again. She wished she’d never agreed to all this. She hadn’t asked to be a dynasty heir, after all.
When her parents had given her a password for the family website, they had expected her to be inspired by the biographies of earlier heirs (although her mother later admitted to being relieved that her athletic daughter hadn’t chosen to channel her energies into crime like her Bernal ancestors). Instead, it was two siblings of heirs whose stories she read again and again: Freya Arevalo and Paul Silverman. If Sophia were to be believed, Paul might well still be alive somewhere. India wished she could contact him; find out first-hand what tombs were really like. True, as an heir, she had more restrictions and she couldn’t be a full-time explorer as he and Freya had been but maybe…
She’d pestered and begged her parents to give Laura access to the site as well. Perhaps her clever twin could come up with a plan. That silly episode with the Forbidden Fruit hadn’t helped, of course. Growing up with a dynasty heir and a PlantSim who was the most exotic and popular girl in the school couldn’t have been easy. No wonder Laura had been so desperate for attention – but her parents had said it just went to show that brains weren’t everything. Laura would have to prove she’d settled down and seen sense before they’d let her near anything as sensitive as their family history.
Then India was sent to Shang Simla to learn martial arts. Laura, who’d finally impressed her parents with her dedication to her career in the police, was too busy with a complex case to leave Monte Vista just then but Rob and Sue gave her access to the website before they left.
“Plenty there to keep you busy while we're away,” said Rob, who knew all about being on-call and bored.
As soon as they returned, the twins had started putting together a strategy for tomb-raiding as a team, combining Laura’s brains (and lack of restrictions) and India’s brawn. China might have been short on adventures but the next time the family had a chance to travel, they’d try it out.
It had worked brilliantly. That holiday in Egypt was the most fun she’d ever had, despite the occasional mishap with traps.
But then she’d had to leave Monte Vista – and her twin – behind forever. She wondered what Laura had done with the rest of her life. Had she become a spy as she’d wanted? India giggled, despite herself. What would her parents have said to that? Not the most sensible and grown-up of ambitions. Had her twin married? Had kids? She must be long dead by now, as India herself should have been, if not for the plan.
The plan. Take that potion and become young again before the move; find another adventuring partner in her new home and keep herself young; give herself time to explore more tombs, collect more relics. The website had plenty of suggestions: potions, salon treatments, tattoos or, best of all, Ambrosia.
Meeting Odessa had seemed like fate. A brave logician who was also an expert cook?
Thank you, Simgods, if you exist. Odessa was childlike enough to love the idea of tomb-raiding, too.
India had heard that there were hidden underground chambers in Barnacle Bay itself. It seemed reasonable that somewhere founded by pirates would have some dark secrets and, to be honest, it had been a significant factor when she was choosing her new home. She asked Odessa but she’d only heard the same rumours that India had.
Then India married Dude and had Simon and there wasn’t much room in her life for dreaming of adventure. Marriage and motherhood had been fulfilling in their own way and she was still very busy with her career. As for Dude, he neither knew nor cared about secret caverns: nasty, dark, cold, damp places. Why bother with them when you could spend your free time at the beach?
Dear, innocent Dude. Life had been so simple for him: just have fun! Now the worst of her grief was over, she found herself smiling every time she thought of him.
I’ll do my best, Dude.But it wasn’t easy. Losing Moe and Dude had brought home the harsh reality of long life. She was going to have to deal with a lot of death. Even with Odessa along for company, it wouldn’t be the easy ride she’d imagined in her youth.
You know, Laura, you might have had the better deal in the end.Then she’d been called in to see the chairman of the club after a game one day.
“I’m sorry, India. We’re going to have to let you go. We need a younger star player.”
“But I’m the best you’ve got. Highest scorer in the league for the past ten seasons. Where will you do better?”
“Ten seasons. That’s the point.” He’d sighed. “It’s not all about the game; not at my level. I have to think about the bottom line – and our crowds are getting smaller all the time. Did you notice how many empty seats there were out there today? Our fanbase is getting older, too. We need to get the kids back into the stadium – and for that we need a young team. Young fans want someone they can dream about; someone their own age. Not a widowed grandmother, however well-preserved she might be.”
He was right, she realised. She thought back to her last autograph session. Hardly anyone had turned up and they’d all been old. In fact, her phone had rung with news of Fern Annan’s death while she was still having her autograph album signed! Grim’s underlings had obviously messed up the paperwork and reported poor Fern’s demise a few hours ahead of the fact. India had hoped it was a total mix-up but she’d checked with the hospital later that evening and yes, Fern was dead.
So now she was stuck at home all day, brooding. Odessa still nagged her into visiting the Academy at intervals to brush up on her skills but what was it all for? And now her son was an old man. It was all his own fault but she really should have kept track of the date and reminded him. He’d been too busy messing about in that workshop of his to notice that he ought to eat some Ambrosia. He didn’t seem to mind all that much: there was a lot of his father in hm. He just said it gave him a chance to retire from business and spend more time inventing and trying to get past the next level of that darned video game. (Well, actually, he hadn’t said ‘darned’.) And at least he and Coral had grown old together.
Coral… She was gone now and India missed her far more than she’d expected. She hadn’t liked her much to start with: all that talk of hating children and art, not to mention being the mayor’s daughter and nearly as rich as India had once been. But what Coral said and what she did turned out to be two different things. She’d been wonderful with Odessa’s kids and had even encouraged them in their love of painting, using her family connections to get them access to areas of the art gallery that were normally closed to the public. And she’d given India her one little taste of adventure in Barnacle Bay.
It was shortly after Ken’s birth.
“India, I’m getting stir-crazy. I need to get out and do something now I’m not waddling everywhere. I want to show you the place where Simon and I got married.”
And so they’d called the limo and driven off.
It was a lovely place. India could see why it was special to her son and daughter-in-law – but that wasn’t all, apparently. Coral leaned in and whispered.
“Simon told me you’d heard rumours of the Pirate’s Hideaway. Well this is it. Come on, I’ll show you around – but don’t tell anyone else or I’ll have to kill you.”
India wasn’t entirely sure she was joking. The Goldbeards had once been pirates, after all. So she promised to keep her mouth shut and waited while Coral poked about in the bushes.
“Here it is! Come on!”
And she followed her daughter-in-law down the steps and into darkness.
She’d never admitted it to Coral, of course, but it had been a little anticlimactic. No traps; no puzzles – and any treasures had long been spirited away. It was interesting, though.
Why were there the remains of a rowing boat here? Had the cave once been connected to the sea? Maybe the passage had been blocked by a rockfall – or deliberately walled in to keep the Hideaway’s secrets secret.
They worked their way around to the centre of the maze. This must have been the treasure chamber once.
All that remained was a solitary chest, its once-colourful paint sadly faded. She looked inside but wasn’t surprised to find it empty.
No, only the ghosts remained. Judging by the number of urns, there must be plenty of them. She hid her disappointment and thanked Coral, promising again to keep the secret.
And that was it. Her only adventure since she’d moved here. Maybe she wouldn’t bother with her next dose of Ambrosia; just grow old gracefully, let go and rejoin Dude.
Then Ken came in from work, bubbling with excitement. The military had asked him to go to Egypt to research a game called Senet, which they thought might be strategically useful. India couldn’t quite see why they’d chosen a policeman for the job rather than one of their own, even if Ken was an acknowledged genius. Still, Egypt! And he was asking her to go with him, ‘since you know the place’.
* * * * *
Ken’s mission turned out to be something of a wild goose chase. None of the locals claimed even to have heard of a game called Senet. Instead, he practised chess at the general merchant’s…
…and tried his hand at snake-charming.
India was pleased to find that the house above the basement she’d been asked to explore had now changed hands and she was free to visit and investigate. The clues she found there led her to the marketplace, several floors below her grandson’s chessboard. Odessa stopped to chat and to tutor Kenneth, while India started unlocking the tomb’s secrets.
Then India phoned to say she needed Odessa’s help and Ken went back to his chess problems.
This tomb was tricky. It almost seemed to be taunting them. They could see their goal but how could they reach it?
Finally, Odessa figured it out. She was proving to be as good at puzzles as Laura had been. India collected the relic she had been asked to find and set out on her next adventure.
While she was finishing her quest, Ken mastered logic and expressed a wish to learn potion-making, so India used her status as the holder of a level three visa to buy a holiday home.
It wasn’t much: just a patch of sand with the essentials for survival, plus a chemistry bench, but Ken seemed happy.
India had now completed every Egyptian tomb except one: Abu Simbel was still unexplored. Odessa helped her to collect the offerings needed to gain entrance, then went off to visit friends while India started exploring.
The puzzles were easy at first. She read the plaques carefully and made her choices: blue or red? Only one stumped her for a while. Which way up was a rainbow? She knew the mnemonic for the colours, of course, but which was at the top? Then she shrugged. Play a hunch – there wasn’t a violet path, after all. At worst, she’d get singed and she’d survived that before. Red. Phew! No traps.
She gradually realised that there was an odd duality to this place: almost everything was twinned in red and blue. In fact, it was like a mirror. She took a break and called Odessa.
Working in parallel, they breezed through the remainder of the tomb. Odessa went to see how Ken was getting on and maybe try making a potion or two of her own while India cleaned up the two areas they’d bypassed on the way in.
It had been quite a while since she’d fought a mummy but she hadn’t lost her skills.
With the Red and Blue Priests disposed of, Egypt was officially finished. Where next? Now the Eyes of Horus were in their possession, Odessa would be able to follow India everywhere. Maybe they could get past some of those giant boulders and see more of China – and she still hadn’t visited France.
Perhaps adventuring was worth the price, after all.
As you’ve probably gathered from the story, the Senet Strategy opportunity cancelled when they arrived in Egypt. At this stage, I don’t know whether it was a one-off glitch or the same bug that affected my Life States game. Ken had another travel opportunity – that police career one to visit China and talk to the locals – but it fired only a few hours after their return from Egypt. Since it would have been a couple of days before they could have travelled again, I cancelled it, hoping that a non-travelling one would pop up instead (which it did).
Ken, incidentally, is named after a Legacy spouse, who was called Kendell rather than Kenneth. Since the few Kendals I’ve met have been female (when they weren’t a Lake District town or mint cake
), I think of it as a girl’s name. So I changed it to Kenneth, which is a family name.
Kendell was also in the police. He was my first Superspy. I’d had several Sims in that family with suitable traits, and someone had already gone through the Forensic branch, but no-one would roll the International Superspy wish. Even his mother-in-law, who was a brave genius, somehow ended up wanting to be a journalist instead. Then Kendell joined the family, with the wish already in place. Of course I remember him fondly
.
