The Curiosity Machine

by Richard Newsome

  Ursus smiled thinly. ‘Let’s just say that Mr Fry had no problem finding somewhere to land the helicopter.’

  Gerald looked at the back of his butler’s head—a view he had become used to over the course of the previous year. ‘How are you, Mr Fry?’ Gerald asked. ‘Are my parents freaking out about us?’

  The butler stared straight ahead and emitted a low grunt.

  The sea air hasn’t improved his humour then, Gerald thought.

  ‘Your parents are fine,’ Ursus said. ‘We’ll join them on the Archer soon and all will become clear.’

  Gerald looked through the window. Ursus was promising a lot of clarity but none seemed to be forthcoming. ‘Why does your boss care so much about me that he would send you to protect us?’ Gerald said to Ursus, picking the most obvious question to ask first.

  Ursus thought for a long while before answering. ‘My employer wants to protect you because he needs your assistance, Gerald.’

  ‘Assistance with what?” Gerald asked.

  ‘The gentleman I represent is very keen to protect the planet,’ Ursus said. ‘Your friends told me you came across a nasty patch of rubbish in your submarine. Well, my employer is establishing a global environmental protection foundation. He would like you to contribute to it. He wants to preserve vast areas of natural habitats so native species can regain a foothold. He has already started on a small scale with an island here in the South Pacific that he is repopulating with endangered flora and fauna.’

  Gerald shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me. But he didn’t have to go to all this hassle. I would have sent a donation anyway.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Ursus said. ‘You’ll like the island when we get there—it is very much as Rudolph II envisioned.’

  Gerald tilted his head to the side. ‘What has Rudolph II got to do with anything?’ he asked. ‘And why would we go to some island when we’re supposed to be going back to the Archer?’

  Ursus turned and flashed an estate agent’s smile. ‘Because the island is where the curiosity machine is being assembled,’ he said. ‘And now, thanks to you, we have the final plans so the last details can be completed.’

  Gerald nearly wrenched a muscle in his neck at the mention of the curiosity machine. ‘What is it with that contraption?’ he asked. ‘What does it even do?’

  Ursus leaned an elbow on the back of his seat. ‘It’s complex, Gerald. Think of it as a global vacuum cleaner. Once it’s up and running the world will be in the best shape it has been for hundreds of years.’

  ‘That’s great, but it doesn’t explain why Mason Green would kill to get his hands on it,’ Gerald said. ‘He’s not exactly the eco-warrior type.’ And it certainly didn’t explain where Gerald’s trillion dollars would be coming from.

  Ursus did not hesitate. ‘Because Sir Mason Green is not a nice man.’

  Gerald could hardly argue with that, and while it was not much of an answer it appeared to be all that Ursus was willing to give.

  ‘We’ve been working on versions of the machine from draft designs, but the plans you discovered are the real deal,’ Ursus said. ‘It won’t take long to make the final adjustments and then testing can begin. Of course there is a slight detour we have to make on our way. We still need to collect Cornelius Drebbel’s perpetual motion device. You can’t run the curiosity machine without its power source, can you?’

  Gerald tugged on Sam’s arm, trying to rouse him. He shoved Felicity’s shoulder. Finally, his friends started to stir. ‘What’s going on?’ Ruby asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

  Gerald had a bad feeling about where the conversation with Ursus was heading. ‘But nobody knows where Drebbel’s invention is,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, but Miss Valentine found it for us,’ Ursus replied. He handed a large book over his shoulder to Gerald. It was the edition of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of HMS Beagle that Ruby had been reading on the Archer. ‘Turn to the marked page,’ Ursus said.

  Gerald had the uncomfortable (but by now familiar) feeling of his life whirling out of control. As instructed, he turned to Chapter XVII—‘Galapagos Archipelago’. There was a rough map of about a dozen islands, and Gerald saw it. ‘Culpepper Island,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that was a bit confusing,’ Ursus said. ‘All the modern maps refer to it as Darwin Island. But back in Darwin’s day, in the 1830s, when Jeremy Davey was writing his coded rescue note, it was known as Culpepper. So now we have a very good idea of where Davey was with the perpetual motion machine. And you are going to find it.’

  Gerald leaned forward. ‘Mr Fry, is this true? Is that where you’re taking us?’ It was then that he saw the broad strip of cloth tape stuck across Fry’s mouth. Gerald’s eyes fell to his butler’s hands—they were both bound with tape to the helicopter’s joysticks. Mr Fry emitted a stifled grunt.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gerald demanded. He pushed himself up and tried to claw his way into the front when he suddenly fell flat back into his seat. He looked down and found he was roped around the waist. The four of them were trussed together like tomatoes on a vine.

  The helicopter cabin erupted as Gerald, Sam, Felicity and Ruby strained to free themselves. Mr Fry turned to look into the back seat, struggling against his gag. His face was red and stained with sweat.

  Ursus’s hand darted into his jacket and pulled out a pistol. ‘I had hoped it would not come to this,’ he said. ‘Remain calm and nobody need get hurt.’

  The cabin fell into a sullen silence and Ursus turned back to keep an eye on Mr Fry. Ahead, a speck of land appeared on the horizon.

  Gerald whipped off his headphones and gestured to Ruby to do the same. ‘So much for all this being a huge misunderstanding,’ he said into Ruby’s ear, trying hard not to sound accusing but failing spectacularly. ‘Mason Green is running this show for sure, and we’re in the thick of it.’

  Ruby frowned at him. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘The whole environmental thing. Protecting you from Sir Mason Green. It all seemed to make sense.’

  ‘And yet here we are with a gun pointed at us,’ Gerald said.

  ‘The drink!’ said Felicity. She gave up trying to untie the rope at her waist. ‘There must have been something in that juice that Ursus gave us,’ she said. ‘Something that made us believe whatever he said.’

  Sam leaned in to hear the conversation over the noise of the chopper’s rotors. ‘Like the way Mason Green doped up Professor McElderry in Scotland,’ he said, ‘using one of those recipes from the Voynich manuscript.’

  Gerald looked out the window. The island had grown from a speck to a mountain, rising out of the ocean. The helicopter descended, passing over a squat summit studded with stunted trees. Ursus rested an elbow on the back of his seat and looked into the rear of the cabin. ‘This is the only land near Culpepper Island that fits with Jeremy Davey’s note,’ he said. ‘The perpetual motion machine must be here.’

  The chopper hovered low as Mr Fry searched for somewhere to land. But the rocky shore offered nothing and the island’s interior was thick with scrub.

  Gerald glared at Ursus and was suddenly emboldened with a dose of sheer fourteen-year-old pigheadedness. ‘We’re not going to look for the perpetual motion machine,’ he said. ‘Why would we help you when our parents are being held hostage?’

  Ursus’s expression did not change. ‘You will do it for that very reason. I have your parents and if you refuse, I will have one of them shot.’ He scanned the four faces that looked aghast at him. ‘Miss Upham’s father, I think. He will be the first.’

  Felicity threw herself forward in a flight of rage. She lashed out, fingernails flashing, and scoured a gash across Ursus’s cheek. The man fell back with a howl. Then Mr Fry launched into action, tipping the helicopter to its side. Ursus landed heavily against the door. In the back seat, Gerald and Sam tumbled over the top of Ruby and Felicity in a tangle of bodies and limbs. Ursus tried to right himself, but before he could move, Mr Fry kicked out. His heel was aimed squarely at the door handle b
y Ursus’s side.

  The door flew open, and a blast of sea air roared into the cabin. Ursus dropped the handgun and it clattered into the foot well as he struggled for a handhold, desperate to stop himself falling through the gaping doorway. The chopper corkscrewed towards the water, rotors straining. Ursus’s legs dropped into open space and dangled out the side of the chopper. Gerald’s left ear took the full brunt of a high-pitched screech. He twisted his head to find the noise was Sam. He rolled to get away from the shrieking just as Mr Fry jerked the chopper steeper onto its side. Gerald could feel himself falling. There was a flurry of movement above his head and he took the full brunt of his backpack as it bounced off his face and out of the helicopter. Gerald slipped, tumbled past Ursus and straight out the open door.

  Chapter 17

  The rope around Gerald’s waist pulled as taut as piano wire. He stared up at the open chopper door. Ursus had managed to clamber inside, but Gerald was dangling like a teabag. On the other end of the rope Sam clung to the doorframe, fingers and feet wedged hard against the metal trim. The line between them was threatening to drag him out as well.

  ‘Hold on!’ Gerald cried, but the wind and the roar of the rotors whipped the words from his mouth. He could see the fear in Sam’s eyes, and the grim determination to hang on. But his grip slipped, and Sam popped out the door, dragging Felicity and Ruby with him like beads on a human necklace.

  The four of them plummeted into the ocean. Gerald hit the surface on his back and was swallowed in a rush of folding water, whipped up by the downwash of the chopper’s blades. He twisted like a kite that had lost its tail. As soon as he rolled one way he was violently pulled in the opposite direction. He was tethered to three other people, and they were all fighting to get back to the surface.

  Gerald kicked hard, driving up, but he was hauled back at the waist. His lungs screamed for air; all he could see was a flurry of bubbles and the flash of a foot past his eyes. He kicked again. Pinpricks of colour kaleidoscoped his vision. He had to breathe.

  A sharp tug at his waist dragged him deeper. Then a flash of realisation: he was swimming the wrong way. In all the disorientation of falling from a helicopter, Gerald had lost track of which way was up. A single air bubble escaped his lips and it bobbed under his chin. The rope at his belly tugged again, as if there was an impatient fisherman on the other end. This time, Gerald followed it.

  His head broke the surface and salt air filled his lungs. He found himself bobbing beside Ruby, Sam and Felicity. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he asked between coughs and wheezes.

  ‘I’d be a lot better if you hadn’t kept trying to pull me under,’ Sam said.

  Gerald mumbled an apology and they started to swim to shore.

  ‘Where’s Fry and the chopper?’ Sam asked.

  ‘He took off the moment we all fell out,’ Ruby said.

  ‘What? Abandoned us?’

  ‘He must have decided getting Ursus away from us was the best thing he could do,’ Ruby said.

  Gerald swam with slow, determined strokes. He had the feeling that Mr Fry’s day was not about to get any better. His feet touched a loose scattering of stones, and the four of them waded out of the water and collapsed onto a large flat-topped boulder the size of a grand piano.

  ‘Where would Mr Fry have gone?’ Felicity asked, gazing out to the blue horizon. ‘This was the only land for ages. He wouldn’t have just flown out until…’

  She left the thought unfinished, but it had already occurred to Gerald: Mr Fry may have sacrificed himself by ditching the helicopter into the sea, taking Ursus with him.

  ‘You saw the map—there are other islands,’ Ruby said. ‘The distance to the horizon is only five kilometres. There must be loads of places out there where Mr Fry could land safely.’

  ‘Ursus said his boss had an island where he was building some animal sanctuary,’ Sam said. ‘They might have gone there.’

  Gerald tugged at the rope around his waist. The knot was wet and pulled tight. He picked up a smooth stone the size of a cricket ball.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Trying to loosen this knot,’ he said. ‘Much as I like hanging around with Sam, I’d rather it wasn’t on the end of a rope.’ The others scoured around for similar stones to work at their bindings.

  ‘So this is where Jeremy Davey was marooned?’ Felicity said. She twisted her hips against the boulder and bashed at the knotted rope around her middle. ‘You can see why he had a change of heart and wanted to be rescued. It’s a bit grim.’

  Behind them, the rocky beach ran up at a sharp angle to a scrubby tree line, and beyond that poked a bare mountain peak. A barrier of driftwood, washed up over the centuries, stood like a castle rampart at the high-tide mark.

  ‘Did Ursus think there was going to be a display case with a flashing sign on top, saying, “Line up here for all your perpetual motion needs”?’ Sam said. ‘He must be bonkers. Where would we even start to look for it?’

  Gerald wiped a forearm across his sweaty brow. ‘And as for the curiosity machine, does anyone believe what Ursus said about it saving the world?’

  ‘The fact he had Mr Fry tied up like that tells you that nothing Ursus says can be believed,’ Felicity said. ‘What an atrocious excuse for a human being.’

  ‘I think we can safely assume,’ Ruby said, ‘that whatever the curiosity machine does, it would be better for everyone if neither Mason Green nor Ursus ever gets it going.’

  ‘But Ursus said that now they’ve got the plans, all they need is the power source,’ Gerald said, ‘and that it’s hidden somewhere on this island.’

  ‘And you believe him?’ Sam asked.

  Gerald bashed away at the knot around his waist. ‘On that subject, yes I do. There,’ he said, tossing the rock aside. ‘Free at last.’ He stood and stretched his arms high then wide, taking in the expanse of the choppy bay in front of them. His gaze fell on something wedged between two rocks at the water’s edge a little further down the beach. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I think that’s my backpack.’ He set off to get it.

  ‘It’s a shame something useful didn’t fall out of the chopper,’ Sam said. ‘Like a fully stocked refrigerator.’

  Ruby managed to loosen her rope, and she crawled onto her knees to help her brother. ‘If you, even once, mention that you are hungry,’ she said to Sam, ‘I swear I will start a fire and spit roast you for dinner.’

  Gerald dropped down next to Sam and pulled open the top of his battered backpack. He tipped out the contents. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got to help us survive,’ he said. ‘There’s the compass telescope flint thingie, so that’s actually useful.’

  Felicity turned her head to face Ruby. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

  Ruby ignored her. ‘What else have you got?’ she asked.

  ‘A pencil case with three broken pencils but there is a sharpener,’ he said, ‘a permission note about flying lessons for next term, a tennis ball, an empty water bottle, the butterfly net and the note from Jeremy Davey in a zip lock bag.’

  ‘That’s everything?’ Ruby said.

  Gerald ran a hand inside the bag and through its pockets. ‘That’s the lot,’ he said. ‘Oh,’ he fished a hand into his shorts, ‘and three packets of soggy chewing gum.’

  They each took a piece of gum and studied the meagre collection.

  ‘Do we light a rescue fire?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘Mason Green,’ Ruby replied.

  ‘Ursus,’ Gerald added.

  ‘So we’re no better off than we were on the last island we were stuck on,’ Sam said. ‘Terrific.’

  Gerald scooped the contents back into his bag and lifted it to his shoulder. ‘If Ursus, his mysterious boss and Sir Mason Green all need perpetual motion to power up the curiosity machine then you can bet someone will be sending a search party soon enough. If we want to get some advantage in this game, we need to find the machine first.’ He squelched in soggy sandshoes towards the driftwood barricade at the t
op of the beach. Gerald climbed it and stood at the top, a hand shading his eyes as he gazed inland. ‘Hey, it looks like there’s a trail here,’ he said as the others scrambled up to join him.

  ‘A trail?’ Ruby said. ‘Like a human trail?’

  Gerald pointed to a sandy path about a metre wide that snaked off into the thickening bush. ‘Well, I don’t think it was made by an army of penguins,’ he said. ‘Though, that would be pretty cool.’

  He went to climb down the other side of the driftwood pile when Sam grabbed him by the elbow. ‘Is this such a good idea?’ he asked. ‘If there’s a path then there will be people.’

  Gerald looked at him and arched an eyebrow. ‘And?’

  ‘We don’t know if they’re friendly, do we. You read stories about remote islands. You don’t know what might be hidden in the jungle.’

  Ruby let out a long, weary sigh. ‘He’s talking about cannibals,’ she explained to Felicity and Gerald. ‘There are only three things that give Sam the willies: rats, actual zombies and cannibals.’

  ‘Shush!’ Sam said to his sister, then lowered his voice. ‘Someone might be listening.’

  Ruby groaned. ‘Look, dunderhead, there are no such things as zombies. If no boats have ever been here, then with any luck there won’t be any rats. And there aren’t any cannibals anymore.’

  ‘That’s only because they ran out of people to eat,’ Sam said. ‘Until we showed up. And besides, boats have been here. Jeremy Davey was shipwrecked here, or dumped here or whatever brought him to this place. So there probably are rats. And by the same logic, there are probably zombies and cannibals as well.’

  Ruby looked at her brother in disbelief. ‘Well, if there are cannibals then I’ll have plenty of willing hands to help me spit roast you for dinner,’ she said. ‘Come on, that trail looks like it hasn’t been used in ages. It was probably left by some botanists years ago when they were doing some nature research.’ Ruby jumped down and started along the path. ‘Let’s see where it goes.’

  Gerald gave Sam a what-have-we-got-to-lose shrug and hopped down to join Ruby.