Free The 39 Clues Book 7: The Viper's Nest by Peter Lerangis Page A

Madrigals."
    Amy thought for a moment. He was right. Being like a Madrigal was the worst possible fate she could imagine.
    Sometimes -- just sometimes --Amy wanted to put her arm around her brother. But the last time she'd done that, he'd washed his shoulders off and written CP on his shirt for Cootie Protection. So she just smiled and asked, "How do you know, Dan? You were so young when they died. Do you really remember them?"
    "Not in my mind," Dan replied, gazing at the passing scenery. "But everyplace else ..."
    * * *
    "Turn left, now..." said a soothing voice from the Yugo dashboard.
    "Thank you, Carlos," Nellie replied with a grin. "I'm going to marry Carlos. I tell him what to do, and he just does it. No complaints."
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    Nellie's new GPS device, which they had named Carlos, was leading them into the city of Johannesburg. In the near distance, a cluster of glass-and-steel skyscrapers sloped up gently toward a slim, graceful structure like a giant scepter.
    Amy's face was buried in a book. She had been reading aloud from it, a fact that made the trip seem about fifteen hours long. "'The N1 Western Bypass is part of a road system that rings the city, the busiest section of road in South Africa,'" Amy recited. '"As you approach Constitution Hill, notice the Hillbrow Tower, one of South Africa's tallest structures, resembling a more modest version of the Space Needle in Seattle.'"
    "Uh--Amy?" Dan said. "We're here. We are in the traffic. We can see the tower."
    Amy ignored him. "Let's find the Jan Smuts exit."
    "Sounds like one of Nellie's boyfriends," Dan said.
    Nellie leaned over and smacked him. "I'm loyal to Carlos. And he will find the exit for us."
    "Smuts --pronounced Smoots -- was an Afrikaner military leader and prime minister of South Africa," Amy said. "He supported apartheid, the separation of races. But in 1948 he came out against it--and lost the election. Can you believe it? I mean, the Africans --the ones who were here first --were treated like that? And you could only be president if you agreed to it?"
    "They could have voted the bad guys out," Dan said, "like we do in America. Well, sometimes."
    "We're not so squeaky clean," Nellie said. "My dad--
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    Pedro Gomez--was chased out of this town in the 'burbs? They hated Mexicans gathering on the street --but they were just waiting for farmers to hire them for daily work! My grandmother? She was going to settle in the South, until she saw this sign on a water fountain that said 'Coloreds Only.' She wasn't sure if she was or wasn't. But just the idea that she had to think of it was disgusting. Dude, why do you think there were marches and protests in the fifties and sixties?"
    Dan recalled all pictures in textbooks and on a million PBS specials Aunt Beatrice used to sleep through. "People were crazy back then," he said.
    "Crazy is something you can't help," Amy said. "This was planned. South Africa had always separated races, even in colonial days. Tribal people couldn't go into white cities after dark. They had to carry passes, or they were jailed. But apartheid didn't even start, officially, till, like, the forties. You had to be labeled black, colored, white, Indian. 'Colored' meant you looked part white, part black. If you weren't white you couldn't vote. You had to live in segregated areas -- like our Indian reservations but called Bantustans. You had your own schools, doctors, and stuff--totally inferior. The government made Bantustans separate countries, so they could control people with immigration laws. You had white bus stops and colored bus stops. You couldn't marry out of your race."
    Dan's head was spinning. This somehow didn't seem real. It didn't match what he was seeing outside
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    the car window. But when Amy was on a roll like this, she had the facts locked. Colored?
    "How could you tell if someone was, like, colored?" Dan asked. "What did that mean?"
    "They had tests," Nellie said with a shrug. "Like, looking at your skin color with paint