The Curiosity Machine

by Richard Newsome

  Felicity leaned forward and patted Gerald on the arm. ‘Don’t mind them, Gerald,’ she said. ‘I’m sure none of that compares with being caught in an avalanche in California while escaping armed bandits on snowmobiles.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Ruby said with a thoughtful nod. ‘But I’d say having a lunatic with a fake nose try to slice out your still-beating heart for a science experiment might just top the list.’

  Sam, Ruby and Felicity burst out laughing. Gerald looked at each of them in turn. ‘Are you all quite finished?’

  Ruby wiped a tear from her eye and flopped back in her chair. ‘I was going to mention our glamour weekend in New York where you were almost gassed to death and the rest of us were nearly swept into the Manhattan sewage system under the Billionaire’s Club, but yes—I think we’re done.’

  Gerald knew they were only poking fun, but it was a fair point: ever since inheriting the twenty-billion-pound estate of his Great Aunt Geraldine Archer less than a year ago, life had taken on an unusual level of complexity. After the fiasco at the Billionaire’s Club in the mid-term break, Gerald had been pleased to get back to the school camp in the Scottish Highlands. But it had only taken a few days of bone-shattering cold and meals of lukewarm baked beans to have him dreaming about his birthday. April could not have rolled around fast enough.

  ‘Look, I know some of the other trips might have been odd,’ Gerald began.

  ‘Only odd?’ Ruby said.

  ‘Well, if not odd, then a little bit weird,’ Gerald said. ‘But my birthday should be drama free. The only thing between us and the Archer island is a week on a luxury super yacht with every comfort thrown in, and a trip through the Panama Canal. It’s as simple and straightforward as that.’ Gerald knew that very little in his life was simple or straightforward but he felt confident that he had clocked up sufficient bizarreness in the previous year to last him several lifetimes.

  They were interrupted by Gerald’s mother, who leaned over Sam’s shoulder to deliver the news that there was a problem with refuelling the jet. ‘I’m afraid we’ll be delayed here for another four hours,’ Vi Wilkins said. ‘But I think I can come up with a way for you to pass the time. How about a helicopter ride to the top of a glacier?’

  There was a moment’s stunned silence around the table, then a burst of fervour.

  ‘A glacier!’

  ‘What? Land on top of a glacier in a helicopter?’

  ‘Yes please!’

  ‘Will there be any food?’

  This last response came from Sam and provoked a barrage of balled-up paper serviettes from the others. Vi Wilkins fixed him with a wary eye. ‘I was warned about you,’ she said. She dropped a St Cuthbert’s school backpack onto the table. ‘Mrs Rutherford has fixed you a selection of your favourite snacks for the flight. You won’t go hungry.’

  Sam’s face creased into a smile. ‘Thanks, Mrs Wilkins.’

  Vi clapped her hands together as if shooing pigeons in the park. ‘Off you go, then,’ she said. ‘Mr Fry will pilot the helicopter—make sure you do as he says.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Gerald asked.

  Vi shook her head. ‘I’ve seen enough snow for one year, dear, what with that horrendous Christmas Eve in the Archer chalet in California. That little affair almost killed me socially. No, you lot run along and I’ll see you back here in a couple of hours.’

  Mr Fry was completing his pre-flight checks as Gerald, Felicity, Sam and Ruby climbed aboard the helicopter. They settled into the cabin, tugging on seatbelts and placing headsets over their ears. Sam unzipped the backpack, and the aroma of home-baked sausage rolls and party pies filled the chopper with a steaming infusion of lamb and rosemary. He picked out a pie and bit into it.

  Mr Fry looked at him with undisguised scorn. ‘Oh look, crumbs everywhere. How marvellous. I must thank Mrs Rutherford for being so thoughtful.’

  Sam paused mid-mouthful and met the butler’s glare. ‘They’re really good,’ he said. Flecks of golden pastry flew from his lips. ‘Want one?’

  Mr Fry’s eyes fell to the confetti shower of crumbs on the sleeve of his jacket. He brushed the bits away with a flick of his fingers. ‘I think I can resist,’ he said.

  Sam took another bite. ‘You’re funny,’ he said, coating the butler in another fine spray.

  Gerald marvelled at the way the veins in Mr Fry’s neck stood out like high-tension cables.

  The helicopter was soon skimming across the patchwork of the Canterbury plains and powering towards the rippled spine of mountains that formed New Zealand’s spectacular Southern Alps. The sky was painted an autumn cornflower blue as they climbed high over craggy mountaintops dusted with early season snow before plunging into snaking ravines and shooting just above the rapids. Not even Mrs Rutherford’s snack box could drag Sam away from the window as Mr Fry jockeyed the chopper above the natural wonders beneath them.

  ‘This is beyond beautiful!’ Felicity’s voice squeaked through the headsets of the intercom.

  The chopper broached a ridge and the blue-white expanse of a glacier materialised before them. Mr Fry’s clipped tones sounded through the headphones: ‘Behold, the Porangi Glacier!’

  The chopper passed over deep cracks in the frozen icepack: sheer drops into jagged chasms of what looked like broken glass. Mr Fry pointed towards the front face of the glacier, which fell to a bubbling river of ice melt that carved a path towards the coast. ‘This glacier has been retreating in recent years because of the warmer climate,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky to see it like this.’ Another helicopter was just taking off from the top of the ice. It disappeared beyond the ridgeline as Mr Fry made his approach. The downdraft from the chopper blades lifted a curtain of snowflakes as they touched down. Mr Fry turned in his seat and handed out Archer Corporation-branded beanies and gloves. ‘I will stay here to keep the rotors turning,’ he said, ‘otherwise we’ll be in for a long and cold night. Don’t wander too far. The ice can be unstable at the edge.’

  He gave a quick thumbs up, and Gerald, Felicity, Ruby and Sam rolled out of the chopper and onto the ice. Sam tugged the backpack onto his shoulders—‘Provisions,’ he said to Gerald—then dropped to his knees to scoop up a handful of snow. Ruby emitted a satisfying yelp as the resulting snowball splattered across the side of her head. She wiped a hand across her face to clear away the icy sludge. ‘Right,’ she muttered.

  The resulting snowball war spread across the glacier top. Sam teamed with Felicity and together they rained a barrage of white missiles onto Gerald and Ruby. Gerald took three quick hits to the back of his head. He didn’t need any more convincing—he and Ruby dived over a shallow rise for shelter. ‘He’s quick,’ Gerald said, pressing his back into the ice shelf. Ruby packed in beside him. Four more snowballs whipped overhead, centimetres from their beanies.

  ‘That’s what you get when you spend more time playing cricket than doing your homework,’ Ruby said. She waited for another ball to whizz past, and then jumped up and unleashed an icy missile of her own, dropping back beside Gerald in a single smooth action.

  ‘Did you get him?’ Gerald asked.

  An evil grin spread across Ruby’s face. ‘In the teeth,’ she said.

  Gerald scraped together another shot and was about to spring up when he caught a sudden movement from the corner of his eye. The sun was reflecting off the ice, making it difficult to see clearly, but he swore two people in white snowsuits had stepped from the cover of an icy embankment. He shielded his eyes from the glare and looked again. Then he saw them properly: two figures were striding their way. Gerald shook Ruby’s arm and she looked up just as one of the figures pulled something from a backpack.

  Sunlight glinted across a long, metallic object. Gerald’s brain tried to process what he was seeing: not twenty metres away, two strangers were closing fast and one of them was wielding a very long, and probably very sharp, samurai sword.

  Chapter 2

  Gerald and Ruby scrambled to their feet, their boots slipping in th
e churned-up ice. The strangers were advancing fast. The one carrying the samurai sword wound it through a broad arc above his head. The blade seemed to sing as it sliced the air.

  Gerald had no time to wonder who they were or what they wanted, and the sight of the razor-thin blade scything the air left him few options. He grabbed Ruby’s arm and they hustled over the rise, only to be slammed in the head with two hard-packed snowballs.

  ‘Stop it!’ Gerald yelled, waving his arms at Sam and Felicity as he and Ruby raced towards them. ‘Get to the chopper!’

  Sam was about to unleash another missile when Ruby took him by the jacket. ‘Run,’ she said. ‘There’s someone with a sword.’

  Felicity led the sprint, but they only made it a short way before she pulled up. ‘What are you doing?’ Gerald asked, breathless in the thin alpine air. ‘Don’t stop.’ But then he saw. The strangers in the white snowsuits had split up—the one without the sword had sped across the ice to be between them and the distant chopper. Gerald glanced over his shoulder; the swordsman was right behind them. Both strangers were clad head to foot in white, complete with white ski masks covering their heads. The only things that were not white were the sunglasses that masked their eyes.

  The rotors were turning on the chopper, but there was no sign of Mr Fry. Gerald, Sam, Ruby and Felicity clustered together, as if a larger foe might scare off the attackers. The two figures in white did not seem put off at all.

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. Then he took a determined pace forward and threw his last snowball hard at the samurai’s head. In a blink, the blade cut the air, slicing the snowball neatly down the middle. The two halves shaved either side of the man’s head and landed harmlessly on the ground behind him.

  ‘Crud,’ Sam muttered. Then he took off. ‘Run!’ he cried, not looking back.

  Gerald, Ruby and Felicity set off after him as he scarpered like a startled rabbit across the ice towards the glacier’s edge. Gerald pumped his arms, sucking frozen air into his lungs. He caught up with Sam and chanced a look back over his shoulder. Felicity and Ruby were at their heels; the two figures in white just metres behind.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Gerald asked, running apace alongside Sam.

  ‘Start heading up this way,’ Sam said, nodding to their left. ‘Circle back to the chopper.’

  Their pursuers were running either side of them, like a pair of sheepdogs, boxing them in. ‘They’ll cut us off before we get there,’ Gerald puffed. He stumbled and almost tripped. His boots sank to his ankles as the ice turned to slush near the glacier edge. ‘It’s melting,’ he panted. ‘The ice is melting.’

  Without another word exchanged, the four of them stopped. They knew that there was not going to be any Hollywood escape. Gerald rested his hands on his knees, puffing out plumes of steam. Despite the exertion, he suddenly felt very cold. The two strangers slowed to a walk. Gerald looked in the direction of the helicopter but it had disappeared from sight behind a low rise. Even if Gerald yelled for help, Mr Fry wouldn’t hear over the sound of the rotors. They were sunk.

  The figure with the sword stopped and pointed the tip of the blade at Sam. He raised his other hand and beckoned for him to come closer.

  Sam looked at the swordsman, confused, then at Gerald. ‘You want me?’ Sam asked. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right person?’

  Ruby’s eyes rounded with fury. ‘Sam!’

  Sam held up his hands. ‘I’m just saying that I’m not usually the one these types of guys come after. Normally, you know, it’s…someone else.’ Sam’s eyes darted back to Gerald.

  The figure beckoned a second time and Sam took a reluctant step forward. The samurai sword slashed with two precise swipes at Sam’s shoulders, and the backpack toppled to the snow.

  Sam stared at the bag where it had fallen. ‘You want this?’ he asked. He scooped it up and tossed it to the man with the sword. ‘Here. Take it.’

  The man caught the backpack on his chest and held it out, inspecting the St Cuthbert’s school crest on the front. He nodded at his colleague, and they both turned to go.

  ‘Is that it?’ Sam said. ‘Is that all they want? A poxy school backpack?’

  ‘Keep quiet, Sam,’ Felicity hissed.

  ‘Look, you’re relatively new at this.’ Sam turned to Felicity. ‘In these situations, the bad guys are never just after something as simple as a bag or whatever. You wait and see.’

  The bandit with the sword swung back to look at Sam, then advanced on him, swift as a snow leopard. Sam froze in place as the swordsman placed a gloved index finger over Sam’s lips, said ‘Shh!’, then planted his palm over Sam’s face and shoved him backside-first into the snow.

  A black helicopter soared over the lip of the glacier and wheeled in a tight arc behind the two attackers. It hovered a foot above the ice and the men clambered up onto the skids. The chopper swung skywards. It was gone in seconds.

  Felicity dropped to her knees and helped Sam up. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  Sam watched as the chopper reappeared down in the valley, following the river towards the coast. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, dusting himself off, ‘but those guys must have been really hungry to go to all that trouble for some sausage rolls.’

  Chapter 3

  Ruby pitched the game controller onto the leather couch and shouted at the television screen, ‘This is impossible!’

  Sam leaned across his sister to grab the controller and pressed to play again. ‘What’s your problem? After you decapitate the fifth zombie you duck and roll to pull the meat cleaver from the dead guy’s ribs then throw it between the last zombie’s eyes, making sure to shoot his undead wolfhound in the head before it can tear your throat out. Can’t get much simpler than that.’

  The screen exploded in a gush of high-definition digital gore. The growing intensity of the crimson perfectly offset the drain of colour from Felicity’s cheeks. She put her fingertips to her lips. ‘That is terribly sick-making,’ she said.

  Sam spun the controller on his finger like a gunslinger holstering his pistol. ‘Perfect score. I should kill zombies for a living.’

  Gerald watched his friends from the comfort of his armchair, then turned to gaze out the window, down onto the clouds. They may have been cruising thirty thousand feet above the South Pacific, but the laughter and cries of frustration from around the games console could be coming from any living room in the world. They were still two hours from Bora Bora so there were plenty more zombies to slaughter before they touched down.

  Ruby jumped into an armchair next to Gerald. ‘I can’t believe you imagined I’d actually enjoy that game,’ she said. ‘What were you thinking?’

  Gerald shrugged. What he had been thinking was Zombie Viscera IV was an outstanding gift that should have won over Ruby’s affections and had her begging to be his girlfriend in a heartbeat. But she hadn’t even let him finish his proposal (in the form of a badly rhyming limerick, delivered in the snow in Central Park in New York, no less) before shooting him down in flames.

  ‘It helps pass the time,’ Gerald muttered, staring at the clouds. He still hadn’t fully forgiven Ruby for rejecting him. But his birthday was only a few days away, so he figured he was likely to get a kiss for that. ‘How about the necklace I gave you? Do you hate that as well?’

  Ruby ran a finger along a fine chain around her neck and flipped out a gold key from under her collar. It was about five centimetres long with two cross arms forming an X at the tip. She smiled at it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely reminder of how we escaped from the cellar under the Billionaire’s Club. It’s a perfect gift. See, you’re not totally hopeless.’

  Gerald was tempted to launch into another limerick, but Sam spoke up before he could start. ‘So, who were those snow ninjas up on the glacier?’ He separated a zombie’s head from its shoulders with a swing of his video blade. ‘And would they be as good as me at slaying the undead?’ Another four lurching souls lost their noggins.

  Felicity’s face faded to
the colour of chalk. ‘I can’t watch this anymore,’ she mumbled and joined Ruby and Gerald by the window.

  ‘Whoever they were they didn’t fly to the top of a glacier just for Mrs Rutherford’s sausage rolls,’ Ruby said, ‘delicious as they are.’

  ‘Like I told the police in Christchurch, it’s got Sir Mason Green’s fingerprints all over it,’ Gerald said.

  ‘But Green drowned underneath the Billionaire’s Club in New York,’ Felicity said. ‘Didn’t he?’

  ‘It looked that way,’ Ruby said. ‘Along with poor Professor McElderry. But like that search-and-rescue policeman said at the time, if he was a strong swimmer he could have made it to the East River.’

  ‘Well, I hope those ninjas were on the glacier because of Mason Green and I hope that he is still alive,’ Sam said. The light went out in a zombie grizzly bear’s eyes and its demonic howl filled the room.

  ‘Why would you say that?’ Felicity asked. She was trying not to look at the television screen, but was somehow drawn in by the hypnotic swing of Sam’s sword and the rhythmic harvesting of the zombies’ brains. ‘Mason Green is a totally foul human being,’ she continued. ‘Do I have to remind you he was happy to kill all of us for the perpetual motion machine?’

  Sam skewered three more zombies on his sword to create an undead kebab. ‘Yes, Jeremy Davey, coded notes in bottles, perpetual motion machines tossed overboard. Blah, blah, blah. You don’t need to lecture me about Mason Green’s qualities as a human being,’ Sam said. ‘All I mean is, if he managed to survive that fall into the New York sewers then maybe Professor McElderry did as well.’

  More zombie heads tumbled from shoulders. ‘Nice swordplay, Sam,’ Gerald said. ‘I was thinking the same about the professor. You’ve got to hold out some hope.’

  Ruby leaned forward and patted Gerald’s knee. ‘If sending two ninjas to steal our lunch is the worst thing that Mason Green can do then your birthday should be a breeze,’ she said. ‘You can forget about Xerxes Blue butterflies, or Voynich manuscripts, or mad billionaires trying to find relics from some collection cobbled together by King Rudolph four hundred years ago. You can have a simple birthday.’ She paused to look at the plush interior of the Airbus A380 Flying Palace. The sound of laughter filtered through from the bar where Vi and Eddie were entertaining the Valentine parents and the other guests. ‘Well, as simple as anything can be when it’s associated with you.’