The Curiosity Machine

by Richard Newsome

  Gerald stared at Ruby in silent panic. All he had done was ask what book she was reading. How was he supposed to respond to all that? As it turned out, he didn’t have to. Ruby was quite capable of responding for him.

  ‘Then I look at it from your perspective,’ she continued, barely breaking stride, ‘and how difficult it must be for you. Who can you trust? Who are your real friends, and who is just pursuing you with dollar signs in their eyes? I haven’t forgotten those sacks of love letters and the screaming crowds outside the Old Bailey. All those beautiful girls wanting to get their hands on you, wanting to get their claws into your cash. But you’ve never been the one to flaunt your fortune. That’s what I love about you, Gerald: your genuine common decency. You’re an honest and good human being. A generous, brave, innocent soul. Any girl would be delighted to call herself your girlfriend. And I know I am so lucky to be able to count myself as a very special friend.’ Ruby leaned forward and kissed Gerald on the cheek.

  Gerald didn’t move. He blinked. Twice. ‘Um,’ he said, ‘so, do you still want to see a movie tonight?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ruby said. She opened her book and looked down at the page. ‘Sounds fun.’

  ‘Okay then.’ He stared at the carpet under his feet. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  Ruby flashed him a smile. ‘Sure. See you.’

  Gerald scooped up his towel and turned to leave. Ruby lowered her book. ‘See, Gerald?’ she said. ‘It’s good to talk these things through.’

  Gerald nodded and wandered back towards the pool deck, his brain whirring. Had Ruby just agreed to be his girlfriend? Or the exact opposite? He had no clue. But Gerald would happily do battle with every sword-wielding ninja on Sir Mason Green’s payroll rather than go through that experience again.

  Chapter 5

  Gerald fluffed the goose feather pillows, moulding a cloud of comfort behind his head. He rolled onto his back and fished the television remote from the bedclothes, taking care not to upend the steaming basket of potato wedges at his side. There were countless benefits to being a boy billionaire, but Gerald could think of few better than fresh-cooked midnight snacks delivered to your bedside.

  It had been a hectic day. The Archer was powering into the night through calm seas that caressed the ship into a gentle roll, as if being rocked in a cradle. After a soak in a fragrant bath and a dinner of fresh-caught mahi mahi and chips, topped off by a mountain of mango sorbet and a scoop of avocado ice cream on a dare from Sam (which was a mistake), Gerald should have been battling to keep his eyes open. But he was wide awake.

  Usually on the night before his birthday, Gerald would wish himself to sleep. The sooner he was snoring, the sooner he would wake to find the foot of his bed piled with presents. But this was his first birthday since inheriting his great aunt’s colossal fortune. Somehow the buzz had gone out of his pre-present anticipation. Where was the thrill in guessing what you would get when you already had everything?

  Gerald stuffed a potato wedge into his mouth and flicked on the television. The screen shimmered to life. He shifted back into his nest of pillows and sighed. He was sure the party his mother had arranged for him would be fun, and any time spent with Sam, Ruby and Felicity was always an adventure, but somehow something was missing.

  Gerald pressed the channel button. The news in Spanish. Apparently something of incredible interest had happened in the parliament in Madrid. Apparently.

  Click. A Japanese game show. A contestant was having a bucket of writhing snakes poured over his head. Ho-hum.

  Click. Three men riding unicycles on a stage while throwing chainsaws and kittens at each other. Gerald could only assume it was Uzbekistan’s Got Talent. Yawn.

  Gerald knew he had nothing to complain about—he reached across and poured himself a glass of cola from the ice bucket that Ella had put by his bed, and scoffed down another potato wedge coated with sweet chilli sauce and sour cream. With untold wealth, had the fun actually gone out of his life? He shoved in another potato wedge and belched. How could that be?

  Click. A documentary about drilling for oil in Kazakhstan. Boring.

  Click. An infomercial about tinted contact lenses. Eye-glazing.

  Click. Horse racing in Hong Kong. Lame.

  Click. A German celebrity had posted a photograph of his bottom on the internet. Gross.

  Click. A travel show at a tropical resort, with a beachside swimming pool at night surrounded by palm trees sprinkled with fairy lights. A gentle breeze disturbed the fronds as the show’s presenter settled into a wicker chair and stared into the camera. Gerald had his thumb on the channel button, but paused. The presenter looked oddly familiar. A man, aged in his sixties with a head of well-tended silver hair. A glowing tan. A steely glint in his eyes. Gerald stared at the screen with drop-jawed disbelief.

  Sir Mason Green?

  Hosting a travel show?

  If Gerald was going through some form of psychological crisis seeing his arch nemesis fronting a television program, it was nothing compared with his brain explosion when Sir Mason Green stared hard into the camera and spoke to him.

  ‘Good evening, Gerald. I trust you’re having a fine start to your birthday extravaganza?’

  Gerald jolted upright in the bed, sending the basket of potato wedges across the floor. He didn’t spare them a second’s thought as his eyes remained welded to the screen. Had the man actually just spoken directly to—

  ‘Gerald, there’s no need to look so surprised. You must have expected I was going to interrupt your dream holiday sooner or later.’ He raised his glass. ‘Many happy returns, by the way.’

  ‘How are you doing this?’ Gerald finally managed to blurt out. ‘How can you be on my TV?’ Then, in a moment of stark realisation, ‘Can you see me?’

  On the screen Green’s thin lips twisted into an approximation of a smile. ‘I’m a bit late to the party with the technology, Gerald. I have people who do that’—he wafted his hands in the air—‘stuff for me. I just sit and talk and the digital dust scatters about the stratosphere. But, in short, yes, I can see you. That is the point of video conferencing, I believe.’

  Gerald glanced left and right. A crazed killer had hacked into his television. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, pulling the bedclothes around his waist.

  ‘To wish you a happy birthday, of course,’ Green said, his face a picture of feigned sincerity. ‘Fourteen, is it? I remember my fourteenth birthday as if it was yesterday.’

  ‘You must have a very good memory,’ Gerald said, tightening his grip on the television remote. ‘Tear the wings off some butterflies to celebrate, did you?’

  Green’s eyes dimmed to a humourless grey. ‘Do not be tiresome, young fellow. I thought you would have learned by now that my patience stretches only so far.’

  Gerald pressed his lips together as he struggled to hold back what he really wanted to say. Then another realisation struck him. ‘You’re alive!’

  Sir Mason picked up his cocktail glass, slid a slice of orange along the rim, and sipped. ‘Your skills of observation astound me,’ he said.

  ‘But if you’re alive that means you survived the drains under the Billionaire’s Club. Does that mean that—’

  Green finished Gerald’s question for him. ‘That Professor McElderry is also alive?’ He placed his glass on the table by his elbow and steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘I’m afraid I have some difficult news,’ he said.

  Gerald’s stomach tightened. He sat straighter in his bed. ‘Is he—’

  ‘Dead?’ Green said. ‘Sadly, no. The prickly old curmudgeon is still with us. It seems he is fashioned from stern stuff. And quite buoyant stuff as well. He floated out of that stormwater drain like a cork on the tide. But don’t worry. He’s dried out and back to work with me. He is quite safe, for now.’

  Gerald did not miss the threatening tone in Green’s voice. He repeated his first question: ‘What do you want?’

  Sir Mason Green eased back in his chair and smiled. ‘You’ve b
een spending too much time with that lawyer of yours, Prisk. You’re straight down to business. Very well—you have something that I want and I need to find a way to get it from you as painlessly as possible.’

  A cold loathing flowed through Gerald’s veins. Would this man torment him for the rest of his life?

  ‘You have some plans,’ Green continued, ‘plans that you found in the cellars under the Billionaire’s Club.’

  ‘For the curiosity machine?’ Gerald said. He was tired of Sir Mason Green’s mannered riddling. It was time to talk turkey.

  Green flinched—only a twitch at the corner of the mouth but enough to let Gerald know that he had scored a point.

  ‘How stupid do you think I am?’ Gerald said. ‘I know you want those plans, and what’s more’—he straightened his back to sit as tall as he could—‘I know why you want them.’ Gerald did not have the first clue why Mason Green wanted the plans. But the impact that his words had on the man on the other side of the television screen showed the depth of Green’s desire.

  ‘How could you possibly know?’ Green blustered. ‘That machine has been shrouded in mystery for centuries. We only completed the final translation describing its full purpose from the Voynich manuscript a few months ago.’

  Gerald knew he was in treacherous waters. He decided to swim on. ‘It was King Rudolph’s greatest treasure,’ he bluffed, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. ‘And we all know what he valued the most.’ Gerald paused, hoping for Green to fill in the gaps.

  Sir Mason lifted his chin and took in a slow breath. ‘For one still so young, you continue to impress. As you have somehow stumbled on the secret that lies behind the curiosity machine I hardly need tell you of its worth.’

  Gerald blinked. How long could he keep this up?

  ‘Nor of the danger it poses if it falls into the wrong hands,’ Green continued.

  ‘And you’re the right hands, are you?’ Gerald said.

  Green narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m the most reliable hands, if you get my meaning.’

  Gerald nodded. He had no idea what Sir Mason Green was talking about.

  ‘If it’s in my hands, I can promise that lives will be saved. Many, many lives.’ Green lifted his eyes and glanced at a point somewhere off-screen. He dropped his voice low. ‘Not everyone can make the same claim. You do understand the potential the machine holds?’

  A light sweat bloomed on Gerald’s forehead. ‘Massive potential,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘Just so much…potential.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Green said. ‘I’m glad that we agree on that score, and that I am the logical choice of person to take possession of the plans.’

  Gerald tilted his head. ‘What gives you that idea?’ he said. ‘You’re the last person I would trust.’

  The shadows under Green’s eyes lengthened, casting his face in a cadaverous scowl. ‘You will deliver the plans to me,’ he said, ‘or I will kill Professor McElderry.’

  Gerald shrugged. ‘Do what you want,’ he said. ‘I tried to save him and he didn’t want to be rescued, so the professor has made his choice as far as I’m concerned.’ Gerald hoped Mason Green couldn’t see his knees shaking under the sheets.

  There was a moment of tense silence, broken by Green. ‘Well done, Gerald,’ he said. ‘You have seen though my hollow bluff. McElderry still has important work to complete here so he will be the last person I kill. Frankly, I’m surprised the whole threaten-to-kill routine has got me this far. You leave me no other option than to take our negotiations to the next level.’

  Gerald swallowed. There was a level above killing someone? ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  Sir Mason smiled a greedy smile. ‘Money,’ he said. ‘I’m going to offer you an unimaginable sum of money.’

  ‘I’ve already got an unimaginable sum of money,’ Gerald said. ‘Like, heaps of the stuff. More than I know what to do with.’

  The smirk returned to Green’s lips. ‘Your billions will pale to insignificance when you hear my proposal. Tell me, Gerald, how would you like to go down in history as the world’s first trillionaire?’

  That got Gerald’s attention. One. Trillion. Dollars.

  Sir Mason Green leaned forward, fairy lights reflecting in his glossy eyes. ‘That’s right, Gerald. You could spend a million dollars a day for the next thousand years and you still wouldn’t be halfway through it all. Do you have any concept of the power you could wield with that kind of money? Entire countries would rise and fall before you. Your power would be absolute.’

  ‘But you don’t have any money,’ Gerald said, his mind still trying to grasp the concept of a trillion anything. ‘All your bank accounts have been frozen. You’re basically bankrupt.’

  Green flinched again. He clutched his hands before him. ‘You deliver the plans to me and we get the curiosity machine finished. Once it’s up and running and making its quite unique product, you can imagine what governments would pay.’ Green nodded in a knowing way.

  Gerald, of course, knew nothing. Rather than worry what type of ‘product’ would convince a government to hand over a trillion dollars, he tried to change the subject. ‘What about the perpetual motion machine? Have you given up on that?’

  Gerald regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth. The location of the perpetual motion machine, as far as it could be narrowed down to somewhere near the Galapagos Islands, was known only to Gerald, Ruby, Felicity, Sam and Inspector Parrott of the London Metropolitan Police. If Sir Mason Green was to find out that Gerald had that information, then—

  ‘Oh, do you mean the perpetual motion machine mentioned in this note?’ Green asked. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table at his elbow and held it up to the screen.

  Gerald’s mouth fell open. It was the coded message from Jeremy Davey that revealed the location of Cornelius Drebbel’s mysterious invention, which once set running would never stop. ‘How did…’ Gerald began. ‘Who…’ Then his eyes shot wide. ‘That’s my handwriting at the bottom! That’s the same message we solved in New York.’

  Green glanced at the page in his fingers. ‘Or at least a copy of it,’ he said. ‘It pays to have friends in high places. I still need perpetual motion. That’s what powers the curiosity machine, after all. It’s the ongoing source of energy that’s going to mint you a trillion dollars, Gerald.’

  The sight of the message in Green’s hands sent a chill through Gerald’s bones. That man had too much access to Gerald’s life. ‘I’m not giving you the plans,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust you.’

  The grin on Sir Mason’s face faltered for a moment. ‘Trust has nothing to do with it, Gerald. You have a simple choice: will you be better or worse off if you accept my offer? Take my word for it—you will be immeasurably better off, because if you don’t hand over those plans there are strategies in place that—’ Green’s voice rose to a villain’s pitch. He composed himself then resumed: ‘Great fortunes are at stake here—they can be lost just as easily as they can be made.’

  Gerald had heard enough. It was his birthday in the morning and he had seen quite enough of Sir Mason Green for one night. ‘How can you possibly hurt me?’ he said. ‘You’re on the run from the police on two continents. All I know is, if you’re so desperate to get the plans then the plans are dangerous. And since there’s nothing you have that I want to trade for them, I’ll probably just rip them up and flush the pieces down the toilet.’

  Gerald raised the television remote and pressed the off button just as Sir Mason Green launched from his chair and started shouting. The screen went blank. Gerald leaned across to switch off the cabin lights. He snuggled into the comfort of his pillows, trying to be content in the knowledge that at least he would have a better night’s sleep than Sir Mason Green.

  Chapter 6

  Gerald woke to the sound of someone battering on his cabin door. He propped onto his elbows in the middle of the bed and blinked the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘What? Who is it?’ His brai
n still sat somewhere in that hazy gap between sleep and awake, and he wasn’t entirely sure if the racket wasn’t a continuation of his dream. He and Sam were waging a war for survival against an army of warrior pigs, which Sam had infuriated with his repeated taunts of ‘bacon sandwiches!’ Swords and tusks clashed in a battle that had only ended when Mrs Rutherford turned up with a hand-cranked meat grinder and a thousand empty sausage casings. It was a most disturbing encounter.

  Gerald was relieved to find that it was only Ruby, Sam and Felicity pounding on the door and not a delegation of armoured hogs. The door juddered on its hinges and the three of them barged into Gerald’s palatial suite, launching onto his bed and almost bouncing him out the other side.

  ‘Wakey, wakey, birthday boy!’ Ruby was on her knees, springing up and down on the mattress. She stopped. ‘Why are there potato wedges all over the floor?’ she asked, screwing up her nose.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Gerald said. He had every intention of telling his friends about his conversation with Sir Mason Green, but there was the little matter of his birthday to celebrate first. Bad news could wait.

  Felicity dropped onto the foot of the bed. ‘We’ve got you the most amazing present, Gerald,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait until you try it out. It’s epic. You are simply going to love it. Love. It.’

  Ruby’s sly grin told Gerald that the gift was either going to delight him, or annoy him intensely. ‘Where is it, then?’ Gerald said. ‘If you’re going to wake me at dawn it had better be good.’ Ruby sprang off the mattress as if it was a trampoline and flicked a switch on the nightstand. Floor-to-ceiling curtains drew back with a soft burr to reveal the sun beating down on an enormous expanse of deep blue water.

  ‘It’s almost lunchtime, dozy,’ Ruby said. ‘We’ve been clay pigeon shooting off the back of the boat waiting for you to get up. It’s loads of fun. Come and try it.’