Mum smiled sadly.
‘Hang on,’ said Charlie. ‘What about my rat?’
‘Safe,’ said Dad. ‘I put a twenty-litre can of olive oil on top of the colander. He’s going nowhere. Probably. Good reflexes, by the way.’
Charlie beamed and, satisfied for now, followed them out.
‘How bad will it be?’ said Mary.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Dad. ‘Adrian said we’d lose the hotel, and mentioned jail.’
Mary gasped.
‘On the other hand,’ Dad went on, ‘those rats have clearly been there a lot longer than we have, so they might take that into account.’
‘But what laws did we break?’ said Amelia.
‘Ah …’
Mum and Dad exchanged looks, and the truth of the situation dawned on Amelia. ‘Mr Snavely wasn’t really a Health Inspector, was he?’
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘He’s with Gateway Control, the people in charge of the gateway network. It was Control that Miss Ardman sent her complaint to, and it’s Control who have the power to take the hotel away from us.’
‘And send us to jail?’ said Amelia.
‘An alien jail?’ Charlie asked, as though that would be a great treat.
‘I don’t think anyone will go to jail,’ said Dad. ‘Or not you kids, anyway. But Control is pretty unhappy that you guys found out about the gateway. One of our promises in coming here was that we would contain the true nature of our work to the fewest possible number of humans. In Control’s opinion, that meant adults only. You kids were never meant to know.’
‘That was why I told you it was the Health Department coming,’ said Mum. ‘I didn’t want you to act as though Mr Snavely were anything other than an ordinary, boring government official. I thought it would be easier for you, avoid another pointless argument with James, and show Mr Snavely that you didn’t know everything that goes on here.’
Amelia thought about how she and Charlie crashing into the kitchen was exactly the problem Mr Snavely had come to inspect. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry, cookie,’ said Dad. ‘By the time Mr Snavely saw those rats, there wasn’t anything you could do to make things worse.’
‘Are they really rats?’ said Amelia.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Dad. ‘It was a stroke of genius Charlie caught one, though – gives us a chance to find out what we’re dealing with.’ Charlie glowed with pride. ‘Ah, here’s Tom.’
Tom stamped up the last rise, breathing heavily and looking harried.
‘I’m not sure I’ve got the calculations right,’ he called to Dad. ‘There are two different ways to work out when the wormholes will align, but I’m getting different answers with each method. I can’t be sure when the Brin-Hask –’
‘Tom,’ Dad interrupted. ‘Forget that for a minute. We’ve got something else to deal with.’
Between them, Dad and Tom managed to get Charlie’s rat out from under the colander and into the glass aquarium that had last housed Miss Ardman’s preferred snacks – giant centipedes.
The rest of the rats had retreated back to their nest, abandoning the captive, and – this was the most worrying bit – replacing the wooden floorboards behind them.
In the library, the captured rat was at first frantic, searching for an escape. But when it realised there was none, it sat down in one corner and stared balefully at the watching humans. It twiddled the claws of its front paws, looking down at them now and then as though thinking, and then flicking them again.
‘It’s counting,’ Tom said. ‘Look, it’s trying to figure something out.’
The rat’s eyes glowed steadily, and Amelia saw a flash of silver by its ear.
She pointed, ‘There, on the side of its head. It looks like –’
‘It’s a cyber-rat!’ said Charlie. ‘Can I keep it?’
Mary swatted at him. ‘Get out of here!’
‘I was only joking.’
‘Well, I’m not. In fact, both of you – here, take some money and go buy yourselves a hamburger or something down at the surf club. Leave us alone for a while to discuss things.’
Amelia wanted to stay and listen, particularly if there was any chance her dad was going to jail, but Charlie had already snatched up the money and was out the door.
‘Don’t let my rat go,’ he called back. ‘I’m going to call him Hugo.’
He was practically skipping over the grass, buzzing from the excitement of his rat capture. Amelia was solemn by comparison. Catching a rat wouldn’t make up for anything when Mr Snavely came back tomorrow.
She was walking slowly, thinking hard, when she caught the flash of a dark shape out of the corner of her eye. She turned and saw the hem of a long, black coat flick around the corner of the hedge maze.
Without a second thought, she changed direction and sped toward the maze, not bothering to call out to Charlie and not bothering to answer when he yelled, ‘Hey! Where are you going?’
She didn’t want to give whoever – whatever – was in the maze any tip-off that she was coming. She heard Charlie’s footsteps behind her.
She sprinted into the maze, running the first long, straight pathway, then pausing in frustration at the corner where it branched in two. Charlie puffed up next to her, and Amelia held a warning finger to her lips.
‘The guy in the black coat,’ she whispered. ‘He’s here.’
Obviously, the only chance they had to find him was to each take a different path, which meant they had to split up, but Amelia didn’t care right now. With everything going to pieces up at the hotel, she was determined that at least one problem be solved. No way was another alien getting away with sneaking around behind her parents’ backs.
Amelia went left, Charlie went right.
After three or four turns, Amelia lost her sense of direction. Every now and then, she and Charlie would cross paths, or she would hit a dead end and have to retrace her steps, but it was impossible to tell how much of the maze they had covered, or how close they were to finding the black coat.
She turned the next corner to find herself in the very centre of the maze – a place she and Charlie had only stumbled on once before. There stood an old marble fountain in the middle of a reflection pond (now dry), and next to it, a stone bench on which to sit and think.
Sitting on the bench was a man in a long, black coat, his pockets bulging with gum leaves. As Amelia stared he looked over at her, casually took a leaf from his pocket and nibbled on it.
Charlie crashed in from the other side of the maze. ‘Who are you?’ he asked bluntly.
‘He’s Tom’s other arrival,’ said Amelia. ‘Aren’t you?’
The man smiled, completely unconcerned. ‘There has been a containment breach, hasn’t there?’
‘Yeah, that’s us,’ said Charlie. ‘A pair of breaches. So what are you?’
‘Oh, I’m nobody from nowhere. Really. You should probably forget you ever saw me.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Amelia. ‘All the hotel guests have to sign the register. We have to remember everybody.’
‘But I’m not a hotel guest.’
‘But you came through the gateway!’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Then you have to register!’ Amelia insisted. ‘Those are the rules! You’ll get my dad in trouble if you don’t sign in.’
The man smiled. ‘It’ll be far more trouble if I do. No, no, better we all forget we ever saw each other, I think.’
Amelia was so angry, she shouted. ‘They’re going to close us down! They’re going to put my dad in jail, and you’re making it worse!’
‘Close you down? And what? Put in some of their Control stooges instead? Oh, no, that won’t do. I don’t think Lady Naomi would like it, either. No, I won
’t have it.’
‘What’s it to do with you?’ Charlie said rudely.
‘It’s all to do with me,’ the man said, gazing at Charlie with unblinking black eyes, his white face quite serious now.
‘Yeah, right,’ Charlie snorted.
The man stood up abruptly. He was very tall, much taller than Amelia had guessed when he was sitting. He coat fell straight to his ankles, and was surely much too hot for today.
‘You don’t know who I am,’ he said simply. ‘But you have already formed an opinion of me?’
‘Pretty much,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re hiding in a maze with a coat stuffed full of leaves, and you reckon the stuff at the hotel is all to do with you.’
The man arched an eyebrow and smiled without friendliness. ‘I hope you will not be so quick to judge the Brin-Hask when they arrive, Charlie. Thank you both for the mayonnaise. And don’t look so worried, Amelia, this will all work out. You don’t need to tell anyone about me, because I’m leaving now.’
As lightly as a grasshopper he sprang into the air, over their heads and the nearest hedge wall, and disappeared from sight.
Charlie gaped after him. Then, as though determined not to be impressed, he shook his head and called out, ‘Yeah, whatever. Bye, Leaf Man.’
Going down to the beach for a hamburger didn’t seem that relevant when you’d just seen an alien bounce four metres straight up in the air and vanish back into the maze you were still stuck in – an alien who’d just casually called you by name even though you’d never met before. For a long moment, Amelia and Charlie just stood there, afraid to move in case they were about to walk into an ambush.
In the end, Charlie said, ‘Oh, let’s go. If he wanted to eat our brains with mayonnaise, he could have easily done it right here.’
This disgusting piece of logic made sense to Amelia, and together they made their way out. By the time they emerged onto the lawn, Tom was limping back down the hill to his cottage.
Charlie gazed longingly back up to the hotel – wanting another squiz at Hugo the rat, Amelia guessed – but sighed, and said, ‘Probably easier to get information out of Tom than our parents, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah.’
It wasn’t as though Tom liked them. He barely tolerated them being around, unless there was a job in town he needed doing, but he had one big attribute in his favour: he didn’t go easy on them just because they were kids. He might keep secrets for his own reasons, but he never hid the truth to ‘protect’ them, like their parents did.
So they went downhill to Tom’s.
They caught up with him as he was closing his front door.
‘What now?’ he grunted.
‘We just met your mate, Leaf Man,’ said Charlie.
Tom stared. ‘Who?’
‘The tall guy in the black coat,’ said Amelia. ‘He was lurking around the maze.’
Tom groaned in exasperation and opened the door again. ‘Get inside. And don’t touch anything, Charlie.’
Amelia stepped as carefully as she could among the clutter and said, ‘Is everything OK up there?’
‘No,’ Tom said bluntly. ‘A phone call came. Snavely is going to bring one of the senior managers from Control. Someone with the authority to make a binding decision.’
‘Oh.’ Amelia wished there were somewhere she could sit down and process that thought, but Tom didn’t offer to clear a space on his sofa for them.
‘Well?’ he said, leaning against the doorframe.
‘We just want to know who Leaf Man is,’ said Charlie. ‘And what’s up with those rats?’
‘And what will happen to the hotel if we lose it,’ Amelia added. ‘And why Leaf Man won’t sign the register.’
‘Right,’ Tom grunted. ‘Let’s see. Well, half of it I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself, and the other half I won’t tell you because it’s none of your business. How’s that?’
‘Does my dad know about Leaf Man?’
Tom shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He might.’
‘So would it be OK if I asked him?’
Tom stood upright and glowered at her. ‘Don’t play games with me, missy. In case you haven’t noticed, what you two know and who you blab it to is the whole reason we’re in trouble here.’
Amelia blanched, but Charlie retorted, ‘That’s not true at all. You’re just happy to blame us because it makes everyone forget it was you who started it! You were the one who went psycho and stole the eggs out of Ms Ardman’s room! Plus, we’re not the ones who let a bunch of cyborg rats in through the gateway!’
Tom turned purple, and was undoubtedly about to bellow at Charlie in unforgiveable language, except at that very second, the entire house shuddered on its foundations and the gateway beneath them belched out a cloud of icy air.
Tom growled. ‘Already?’
‘The Brin-Hask!’ said Charlie. ‘Can we stay? Please?’ he begged, all manners and sweetness now. ‘We won’t get in the way, we promise.’
Amelia didn’t think watching an army of alien warriors arrive from another galaxy would be the best way to relax after the day’s adventures, but Charlie had already bunkered down on the arm of the sofa. She edged over to the wall and tried to look inconspicuous.
‘Fine,’ Tom grumbled. ‘But listen up: the Brin-Hask have suffered a terrible defeat in battle. Not only are they exhausted, injured and far from home, they’re also pretty hacked off about being beaten. Which is to say, watch out. They won’t have any patience with you if they feel the slightest bit disrespected or insulted. Understand?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Don’t annoy the angry soldiers. Got it.’
Amelia just shivered.
And then they waited. And waited.
‘How long –’ Charlie started, but Tom hissed, ‘Shh!’
So they waited some more.
It was weird, Amelia thought. Were the Brin-Hask ghosts? Or made of vapour? If they were here, why couldn’t they see them? Or even hear them? Maybe they were liquid, and were flowing silently up the stairs against gravity.
As Charlie started to fidget, something moved at the top of the stone steps. Amelia blinked and tried to focus harder. Yes – there it moved again. Something about the size of a sugar cube, only purple. And as it grew, or rather, as it moved, Amelia could see it was part of something larger – an arm?
Yes, an arm, and it was followed by a head, and the rest of a body, all densely furred like purple velvet. The alien, about as tall as a pigeon but shaped like a miniature bear, got to its feet and immediately turned to help up the next one.
This one was slightly shorter, with a silver shield strapped to its back. Its fur was the colour of bubblegum.
‘Wha–’ said Charlie, but Tom poked him before he could go on.
Amelia put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. There were now half a dozen little bear-men at the top of the steps, and each one was fuzzier and sweeter than the last. Now one popped up that was a pale pink tabby, and she gave a little moan of delight. Tom gave her a hard, beady look, and shook his head.
In all, fifty or sixty Brin-Hask ‘warriors’ heaved themselves up the stone steps into Tom’s house. After everything they’d been through, those stairs must have been like climbing Mount Everest. The last alien to arrive had extremely long fur, almost white, and the others fell back to make a path for him as he crossed the room to Tom.
Tom dropped awkwardly to one knee and bowed his head. ‘Hail, King Hibble. We are honoured to have you stay with us.’
King Hibble nodded graciously. ‘Greetings, Tom. Thank you for your welcome. We, however, have no honour – until we can avenge our disgrace, we are nothing in our own eyes.’
He spoke nobly, with a kind of broodi
ng melancholy, and a sword hung across his back. He also sounded like a cartoon mouse. Amelia wanted to cuddle him up. Charlie elbowed her roughly in the side, and she realised she must have let that thought show.
‘Your grace,’ said Tom, wobbling slightly on that bended knee and sounding very weird as he tried to be polite, ‘we have the, uh, grass of the sea you requested for the warriors’ feast. Let me send these children ahead to begin the preparations.’
‘Fine,’ said Charlie promptly. ‘Come on, Amelia.’
Amelia didn’t think that sounded respectful at all, but followed him to the doorway. Tom hurried them outside and whispered, ‘Tell your dad he’s got about three hours before the Brin-Hask arrive. And they’ll want to pitch camp outside on the lawn.’
‘But –’ Amelia knew they could ferry the entire army up to the hotel in a couple of cardboard boxes in less than ten minutes. Then she saw the look on Tom’s face, and said, ‘Nothing. Sorry.’
‘Do they get holo-emitters?’ said Charlie. ‘Do you have that many?’
Tom shook his head. ‘Not that many, and they wouldn’t be effective at that scale. The emitters only mask a person’s shape, they can’t change their size.’
‘So how do we, you know, keep our cover?’ said Amelia.
Tom didn’t answer, just grumbled to himself and shut the door, dismissing them.
‘Pathetic,’ said Charlie, stamping his way through the dry leaves. ‘Worst warriors ever.’
Amelia didn’t mind. It was a relief to have just one thing today that was a smaller deal than expected.
The three parents were still in the library when Amelia and Charlie got back to the hotel, only now Mary had her shoes off and was lying with her feet up on the arm of the sofa by the fireplace. Mum was putting ice into a drink and Dad was drumming his fingers on the desk while he stared at the cyber-rat in its tank. Amelia noticed the rat was drumming its claws against the glass in time with him.
‘Hugo!’ said Charlie fondly. ‘Has anyone fed you yet?’
The Warriors of Brin-Hask Page 3
