"Monolith!" Jeff exclaimed.  "That's the album with that song you played for us earlier, 'People of the South Wind," which is also the name of this secret society!"

"And it's the album with the song 'How My Soul Cries Out for You,' which Kansas was playing at the show the other night when the John Brown dummy fell to the stage," younger Michael added.

"And it's the album that came out just before Kerry Livgren's conversion to Christianity!" Graham interjected.

"Yes," their father said.  "Everything's coming back to the album Monolith."

They all stared around at one another for a few seconds.  Bev rolled her eyes, not knowing how to interpret all that she'd been hearing.

"So it's 'divine-atonement-Kerry-Livgren-Monolith,'" Jeff said.  "That's what this 'Holy Fivefold String' means to the People of the Southwind?"

"Yes," his father affirmed.  "The secret to the Holy Grail."

"Well, now that we know what it means," younger Michael said, "what does it mean?"

"Yeah," Katherine said, "it doesn't make any sense."

"Hey," Graham spoke up, laughing, "maybe it means that Monolith wasn't all that great of an album, and now Kerry Livgren has to atone for it!"  He and his brother Michael started laughing.

"Oh," Jeff said, annoyed, "you're just being stupid.  I've got it on my iPod.  It's a pretty good album!"

"Well, some members of the People of the Southwind just might agree with Graham," Michael said.  "After all, Monolith did represent something of a departure from the style the band had developed in their first five albums, and it ended up not doing as well commercially as had their previous two studio albums, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return, which were progressive rock landmarks.  In fact, for a long time Kansas didn't even play any songs from Monolith in their shows because they felt that people just didn't like the album.  But in spite of all that," Michael said, looking back toward Graham, "the Holy Fivefold String doesn't mean that Kerry Livgren has to atone for the album."

"Well, then," Graham asked, "what does it mean?"

His father fixed his gaze upon him and said quietly, "I don't know."

"You don't know?" his family said out loud in unison.

"All this arcane stuff you've been explaining to us today about secret societies and codes and Wheatheads and cat suits and, and..." Bev said, stammering, "and symbols and strings of letters in Greek and English, and now you say you don't know?"

"Nope," Michael said, "at least not yet.  But I'll bet the answer is inside this cryptex.  As I said earlier, I'm now convinced that Ryan Waldron, the Grand Master of the People of the Southwind, is behind all of this.  For some reason he set in motion everything we've experienced over the last couple of days.  Something must have happened, something dire, and for whatever reason he set out all these clues for us to find and decipher."

"Well," Bev said fiercely, "if that's so, I want to give him a piece of my mind.  We've been on an emotional roller-coaster since the other night, driving from Culpeper to Richmond, finding all these things, going through all this worry and stress only to end up with this cryptex we can't open, and I want to know why!"

"So do I, Honey, because without the combination, 'thus far we shall go, and no farther,'" Michael replied, citing Job 38:11.  "But getting angry about it won't help.  I'll send Ryan an e-mail when we get home, telling him what we've found so far.  He should be able to shed some light on all this."

Michael put the cryptex back into its leather case, wrapped the velvet cloth around it and closed the lid of the box.  Strewn about the bed around the box were all the papers containing his symbolic drawings and anagrammatic decodings, along with the Masque album they had picked up earlier that day from the record store.  Graham looked over the collection of clues that his family had found and that his father had explained, his eyes growing wider and wider until finally he leaped up off the bed.

"Wow!" he exclaimed.  "This is all so cool I have to go to the bathroom!"

All the kids started laughing hysterically as Graham dashed into the bathroom and slammed the door.  "Actually, guys," their father said, laughing himself, "all of you should hit the bathroom.  We have to leave soon, and it's going to take an-hour-and-a-half to get back home."
 
 

26
 

The late afternoon traffic was moderately heavy on I-95 North as the Brooks van eased off the acceleration ramp and into the right-most travel lane heading back toward Fredericksburg.  The leather box containing its cryptex, the Masque album and the papers bearing Michael's scribblings were packed safely into his and Bev's suitcase in the back of the van, along with the kids' travel bags.  In the driver's seat sat their oldest son Jeff, proud bearer of his Commonwealth of Virginia learner's permit.  Bev sat in the front passenger seat, listening to Barbara Streisand on her iPod, while her husband sat reading in the bench seat behind her.  Behind him, the other kids' eyes were glued on the ceiling-mounted DVD player, headphones on their heads, watching the old Monty Python flick Life of Brian.  Traffic whizzed by in the two lanes to their left.

"Dad," Jeff said after a while, keeping his eyes on the road, "what's the speed limit here?"

"Sixty-five," Michael answered, noting that Jeff had already set the cruise control to that speed.

"But everyone's passing me," Jeff said.  "Shouldn't I speed up to their speed?"

"Nope," his father replied.  "The speed limit's the speed limit.  Traveling faster only reduces your ability to stop quickly if you have to, and it increases the potential level of damage and injury if there is an accident.  In addition, you don't have to worry about suddenly slowing down if you spot a trooper waiting with his radar on, since you're already doing the speed limit anyway.  And finally, driving the speed limit saves gas, which saves money, and with the price of gas the way it is, that's even more of a reason to keep it at the speed limit.  Don't worry about how fast everyone else is going.  That's their problem, not yours."

"Oh, okay," Jeff replied.  He drove on in silence for a few seconds.  "Hey, Dad, talking about the price of gas, I got an e-mail from someone saying that if people just didn't buy gas on a certain day it would force the oil companies to lower the price of gas."

"Oh, yes," Michael replied, "the annual 'gas out' chain letter.  'Don't buy gas on a given day to force the price to go down.'  That's an e-mail to ignore if ever there was one."

"How come?' Jeff asked, checking his mirror and turning on his blinker to move to the center lane to make room for merging traffic.  "It sounded like a good idea."

"Its whole premise is faulty," his father said.  "It calls for people not to buy gas on a certain day without calling for them to actually use less gasoline, which would lower demand."

"What's 'demand' got to to with it?" Jeff asked, merging safely back into the right lane.

"The retail price of anything in a free-market economy is driven by the law of supply and demand," Michael explained.  "If consumer demand for a product goes up and the supply can't keep up, the resulting shortage causes the price to increase.  Likewise, if demand drops or the supply exceeds the demand, then the price comes down.  Now, regarding the price of gas, merely not buying gas on a given day won't affect supply or demand unless people also don't drive on that day.  If you just drive the way you always do and fill up either on the day before or the day after the 'gas out,' you haven't reduced the amount of gas you've used or the amount you have to buy to replace it."

"So it doesn't matter whether you buy gas on a certain day if you're still driving the way you normally do," Jeff said.

"Right," his father replied.  "In past years, some versions of this e-mail called for people not to buy gas for three straight days instead of just one, but it still didn't call for them to use less gasoline."

"Well, wouldn't it make a difference if everyone in America went three days or more without buying gas?" Jeff asked.

"Not unless they also stopped driving for three days or more," Michael answered.  "Otherwise they're still using the same amount of gas and sooner or later will have to replace that same amount.  They haven't lowered their demand, they've just changed the days they buy it.  The oil companies wouldn't feel a thing, but the innocent neighborhood retail gas station owners sure would."

"Why?"

"The average gas station makes maybe a dime of profit for each gallon of gas sold, if that much" Michael continued.  "They have to sell about 300 gallons of gas, around $900 worth at current prices, just to make thirty dollars profit.  Where gas stations really make their money is on people coming in and buying drinks, snacks and other items along with their gas.  Some even sell gas at a loss just to attract customers into the store.  If no one comes in for three days, the station owners take the hit, and they're the ones with the least control over the price of gas.  Now on the supply side, the cost of drilling for crude, transporting it to the refinery, refining it, transporting it to gas stations (all of which also use gas) and federal and state taxes all contribute the the cost of gasoline.  Not even the big oil companies can simply 'set' prices.  It's all driven by supply and demand."

"And it wouldn't make a difference even if people went several days without buying gas?" Jeff asked, slowing down as traffic tightened ahead of him.

"Look, Jeff," Michael said, "even with this big old van, we normally just drive it around town.  It's tank is so big we can usually go two weeks without buying gas, except for when we make trips like this.  And my own van, which I drive for work, only requires me to fill up once a week or so.  So what if I go one day or three without buying gas?  I regularly go seven days without buying it for my van, and often fourteen for this one!  What matters isn't when you do or don't buy gas but rather how much you're using.  You can read more information about it at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18492185/.  In fact, as a matter of principle, on the day of the so-called 'gas out' I deliberately filled up my van's tank to protest both the faulty reasoning in the e-mail and the idea that e-mail chain letters are an effective means of organizing anything."

"But what if people didn't buy gas from the big oil companies but just from the little ones instead?" Jeff asked.  "I saw another e-mail the suggested that."

"Think about what would happen," Michael replied.  "If everyone went with little oil companies, the little companies, because they're little, wouldn't be able to meet the new demand.  Their supply would drop.  Then their prices would go up.  And then where would the little companies buy gas to meet this new demand?"

"Um," Jeff said, "I don't know."

"They'd have to buy it from the big companies, who--surprise--have a surplus because no one's buying their gas.  So the little companies would buy gas from the big ones to meet the new demand and then the price of gas would eventually drop back down to where to was to begin with.  The only thing that would've happened is that you would have temporarily driven the price of gas up as you created an artificial shortage by buying from companies that couldn't meet the demand themselves."

"So it doesn't make a difference who you buy gas from?"  Jeff asked.

"Once it gets into the supply chain, gas is gas, no matter what the brand name is on the gas station," Michael said.  "It's not big company gas, it's not little company gas, it's just gas, and all the companies, big and little, regularly buy and sell it among themselves to meet consumer demand.  It's what's called a fungible commodity."

"So how can ordinary people like us really affect the price of gas?"

"Not by forwarding an e-mail chain letter, that's for sure," Michael answered.  "These 'gas out' e-mails would have us believe that power is in the hands of those who merely click the 'forward' button.  We can really affect the price of gas by consistently using less of it.  People can drive smaller cars, they can drive more fuel-efficient models, they can keep their cars tuned up, they can car-pool, they can drive hybrids..."

"But we have to drive these big vehicles," Jeff interjected.

"Right," Michael said.  "With seven people in our family, we need at least two vehicles big enough to carry everyone."

"Why two?"

"In case one goes into the shop.  And since both these cars are fairly new, there's little chance they'd both break down at the same time.  Of course, when you get your own car or truck, Jeff, you can get something smaller for yourself."

Behind them, Graham and younger Michael removed their headphones to hear what their dad and Jeff were talking about.

"So, Dad," Jeff said, accelerating back to sixty-five as traffic cleared ahead of him, "what can we do right now with our two big cars to reduce how much gas we use?"

"The same thing everyone on the road can do, and it won't cost anyone a cent."

"What?"

"Drive the speed limit," Michael said.

"I am; I'm at sixty-five," Jeff said.

"No, I wasn't telling you to slow down," his father replied.  "I mean that if everyone drove the speed limit as opposed to going five, ten or fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit, we'd all instantaneously reduce our demand for gas because our cars and trucks would be using less of it.  And if everyone consistently drove the speed limit, not just for one day or three days but every day, that's what would make a difference to the oil companies.  You see," Michael continued, "to go a certain speed a car has to overcome air resistance, friction between the tires and the road, friction inside the engine and the car's own inertia.  It takes x amount of gas to drive a car at sixty-five miles an hour for an hour.  But if you go seventy-five miles per hour to travel those same sixty-five miles, you'll use anywhere from ten percent more gas for a small car to as much as thirty percent more for a van like this to go the same distance.  You'll get where you're going faster, but you'll spend more money to do it.  And after taxes and production and transportation costs are figured in, that 'more money' you're spending just to drive faster ends up as profits for the oil companies.  The irony is that I bet most of the people complaining about the oil companies and the price of gas going up are also the same ones blasting down the road at seventy-five or faster with no idea that they're doing it to themselves."

"Really?" Graham asked.

"Yes," Michael said.  "You can read more about it at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18615572/.  In fact, the Department of Energy estimates that average drivers can save between 15 and 98 cents per gallon of gas if they just drive sensibly and obey the speed limit instead of racing around like speed demons" (http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/09/pf/gas_myths/index.htm).

"So," younger Michael spoke up from the seat behind his father, "you're saying that the best way that ordinary people can make a difference in the price of gas is just to drive the speed limit?"

"Right," his father replied.  "Or, to put it another way, the best way to 'stick it' to big oil is to... obey the law."

"Nooooo!" younger Michael cried out facetiously, laughing.

"Neverrrrr!" Graham chimed in.

"Oh, yes," their father replied, chuckling.  "You'll drive the speed limit... especially since I'm the one buying the gas... and paying the insurance, for that matter."

"Hey, Dad," younger Michael spoke up, "I just thought of something.  What does any of our conversation about gas prices and driving habits in this chapter have to do with the People of the Southwind or the cryptex or the Holy Fivefold String?"

"Nothing, really," his father replied, "but we had to talk about something on the way home."

"Oh."

"And our talking about something other than the story line for a little while gives substance and depth to our characterizations, suggesting that we really are real people with a real life beyond merely advancing the plot."  Michael looked up the road ahead of them.  "Oh, here," he said, pointing at a road sign ahead of them, "here's our exit, Jeff.  We'll be home in about thirty minutes."

"Okay," Jeff said, steering onto the exit ramp.

"And remember," Michael said kiddingly, "once we're out of Fredericksburg the speed limit's only fifty-five."

"All right," Jeff said, sighing in mock resignation.  He pulled down the sun visor as he headed westward into the setting sun toward home.
 
 

Four or five cars back, a black sedan carrying two occupants merged into the same lane heading west, also traveling at the speed limit.