The Curiosity Machine

by Richard Newsome

  ‘Whitefield! Mendel! Brown!’ the man yelled, his voice skipping up half an octave with each cry. Then came the sound of boots crashing deeper into the undergrowth.

  ‘That should buy us enough time,’ Gerald said to Ruby, while they ran. They waded out to the boat and found Sam and Felicity already working on the controls.

  ‘What do you think?’ Sam said, looking at an array of buttons and dials next to a steering wheel that would not have been out of place in an Italian sports car. ‘Give the big green button a go?’

  ‘It hasn’t let us down yet,’ Gerald said.

  Sam gave Felicity a quick thumbs up and pressed the button.

  Twin jets of power roared to life, and Sam’s eyes bulged at the sound. ‘That’s what we like to hear,’ he said. He called out to Ruby to untie the anchor rope, then he eased the throttle forward. The boat surged, engine gurgling. ‘We’re off,’ he said, straightening the wheel towards the vast dark horizon.

  ‘Fantastic!’

  ‘Terrific!’

  ‘Great plan, Gerald!’

  Then, ‘Uh, where am I going, exactly?’ Sam asked.

  Gerald let his backpack slip from his shoulder to rest on the deck. He had not given their destination a second’s thought.

  The first bullet shattered a navigation light a metre from Sam’s right elbow, exploding in a shower of green plastic. The next one took out a windscreen panel, and a million pieces of perspex were thrown into the air. Sam jammed the throttle all the way to the front, throwing Felicity, Ruby and Gerald flat to the deck as the boat leapt forward like a racehorse out of the starting gate. Two more bullets sizzled overhead as the black craft skimmed across the ocean surface in a blur of spray and adrenalin. The sound of gunfire chased after them, but the bullets fell wide of their mark. Gerald looked back at Jeremy Davey’s island. He could see the glow of the fire on the beach, and the pillar of smoke rising from the mountainside. He allowed himself a satisfied grin. His plan had worked. Even if they had no idea where they were going.

  Sam waited until the fire on the beach was a distant red speck, then eased the throttle to idle. The boat slid to a gentle roll in the swell of a calm tropical night. The moon painted the ocean with the silver glow of an antique mirror. Gerald climbed up from the cabin below, his arms cradling a cornucopia of chocolate bars, apples and packets of chips. ‘That’s about it for supplies,’ he said, dumping the food on a table. ‘They can’t have been planning a long voyage.’

  Sam descended on the snacks like a vampire at sundown, tearing the wrapper from a bar of dark chocolate and sinking his fangs in. He closed his eyes and let the flavours roll around in his mouth. ‘It’s not turtle soup,’ he said, ‘but it’ll do.’

  ‘Throw me an apple, will you Felicity?’ Ruby said, then she turned to Gerald. ‘Well done. We’re off the island. But now what do we do?’

  Gerald ripped open a pack of barbecue-flavoured chips and stuffed a handful into his mouth. ‘No idea,’ he said.

  ‘Could we radio someone?’ Felicity said, unwrapping a muesli bar.

  ‘Two guesses who would be the first to respond,’ Sam said, ‘and the coastguard is not the right answer.’

  ‘Isn’t there some satellite mapping gizmo like on the Archer?’ Ruby said. ‘That would at least show us if there was anything close by. In theory, Culpepper Island is fifty miles away.’

  Sam scanned the set of controls in front of him. ‘This looks like a depth sounder, and this shows how fast we’re going. According to this one we’ve got three-quarters of a tank of fuel and this one says tomorrow will be cloudy with a chance of afternoon showers.’

  Gerald pointed towards a small rectangular screen. ‘That looks like the GPS. Does it show anything?’

  Sam pressed the front panel and a menu appeared. He touched a map symbol and the screen filled with pale blue. ‘According to this we’re in the ocean,’ Sam said. He zoomed out. The screen remained a resolute blue. ‘A very large ocean.’

  Felicity tilted her head to the side. ‘What happens when you press the Home button?’ she asked. ‘In our GPS when you push the Home button it shows you how to go, you know, home.’

  Sam touched a symbol of a house and the map scrolled to the side, a red line shooting out to a small green speck. ‘Holy cow, Felicity,’ Sam said. ‘I think you’ve done it.’

  Ruby squinted at the screen. ‘Wherever it is, it’s two hours away. What do you think?’

  Gerald upended the last of the chips into his mouth. ‘I don’t think we’ve got much choice,’ he said. ‘We probably don’t have enough fuel to try anywhere else.’

  ‘If this little island on the map is home, then wouldn’t that be the bad guys’ home,’ Sam said. ‘And doesn’t that mean Ursus?’

  ‘And Sir Mason Green,’ Gerald said.

  ‘But Ursus said he wasn’t working for Green,’ Ruby said.

  Gerald scoffed. ‘And since when do we start believing him? Ursus is just another of Green’s hired hands. It’s obvious. Even the head gunman back on the island spoke about an old man solving the puzzle of Jeremy Davey’s note. That has got to be Green.’

  Ruby nodded, though she wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘I suppose that makes sense. At least our parents are probably there. And now we have the perpetual motion machine to trade for them. That is, unless Gerald left it in the middle of the path for the bad guys to find.’

  Gerald felt his cheeks glowing. ‘You saw that, did you?’

  ‘Yes we did,’ Ruby said. ‘You great goose.’

  Gerald weathered the shower of screwed-up chocolate wrappers and an apple core that bounced off his forehead. He didn’t mind. Because he knew it was nothing compared with what was likely to be facing him soon. ‘Follow the red line, Sam,’ Gerald said. ‘Let’s see what the next tropical paradise has in store for us.’

  Chapter 21

  It was nearing ten o’clock when they saw the hint of lights on the horizon. At first, it was difficult to tell whether it was the reflection of stars in the water, or phosphorescence or glow-in-the-dark jellyfish. But as the boat surged on the glimmer gradually became an island. Sam eased back on the throttle and Felicity switched off the lights so the boat wouldn’t be noticed from the shore.

  Gerald squinted through the telescope, but he could only make out vague shapes in the darkness.

  ‘Do you think our parents are there?’ Ruby asked. She sipped on a mug of tea that she had brewed in the boat’s galley. ‘I mean, if this is Mason Green’s secret hideout, would it make sense to bring them here?’

  ‘As well as Professor McElderry and all the scientists from the British Museum,’ Sam said. ‘It’s not like Green is going to have a choice of places to hide that many people.’

  ‘It would explain Green’s suntan,’ Ruby said. ‘When we saw him in Scotland he looked like he’d just spent a month in the South Pacific. I guess he had.’

  ‘It also explains the tropical resort he was sitting in during our video call,’ Gerald said. ‘But I still don’t get why Ursus was so keen for us to think he doesn’t work for Green.’

  ‘He wanted you to trust him,’ Sam said, ‘so he pretended to hate Green as much as you do. All this talk of a mystery tree-hugging boss is just a smokescreen.’

  Gerald studied the outline of the speck of land ahead of them and pondered something that had been bugging him since their escape from the tortoise island. ‘What do you think that guy meant, back in the clearing with the tortoises, when he said this island was a zoo?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘My old maths teacher used to refer to us as animals in an open plan zoo,’ he said. ‘Maybe Mason Green is a tough bloke to work for. I imagine he’d be a nightmare as a boss.’

  ‘I have no doubt that’s the case,’ Gerald said. ‘But it was just the way he said it: zoo. And what else did he say? Something about abdominals?’

  Ruby popped open a tin of peppermints and flicked one into her mouth. ‘A zoo where you can work on your six-pack?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t worry
what those morons were talking about. Big guns, tiny brains.’

  A crackling voice broke into their conversation. ‘Whitefield, this is base. Over.’

  Sam, Gerald and Ruby started at the noise; Felicity froze as she climbed up the steps from the cabin below. All their eyes fell on a radio in the control console.

  The voice sounded out again. ‘Whitefield? Do you copy?’

  Ruby looked at Gerald. ‘They’ll get suspicious if no one answers,’ she said.

  ‘How can we answer?’ Gerald said. ‘They’ll know straightaway that something is wrong.’

  Felicity and Ruby spoke over each other, disagreeing about what they should do. Gerald joined in and the argument rose higher and higher, when Sam let out a heavy sigh. ‘So much talking,’ he said. He picked up the microphone and thumbed the talk button. ‘Yeah, what?’ he said in a gruff voice into the handpiece.

  Ruby glared fury at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  The voice on the radio crackled again. ‘Good to hear from you too, Mr Cheery. Ursus wants to know if you’ve found anything yet.’

  Sam gave his sister a smug smile, then spoke into the microphone. ‘Nah. Nuffin’.’

  There was a short pause then the radio sparked again, and this time it was the unmistakable voice of Ursus. ‘Just to be clear, the perpetual motion machine is the priority. Use extreme force if necessary.’

  Gerald, Felicity, Ruby and Sam exchanged glances. ‘How extreme do you think extreme is?’ Felicity asked. As if Ursus had heard the question, his voice came through strong and clear, ‘Fatal force if you need to.’

  Sam’s eyes popped. He raised the mic to his mouth. ‘Orright,’ he said, his voice cracking.

  The four of them stood silent while the words soaked in. Gerald took the mic from Sam’s hand and put it in the cradle. There was no way to misinterpret what they had just heard. Ursus was happy to have them killed.

  Felicity climbed out of the cabin, tucking a clean polo shirt into the top of her shorts. ‘I guess it’s safe to assume that Ursus made it back to land with Mr Fry,’ she said. She tossed a matching shirt to Ruby. It was still wrapped in a clear plastic bag. ‘This might fit you better,’ Felicity said. ‘It seems our criminal mastermind likes his hired hands dressed in uniform.’

  Ruby tore open the bag and held up a striped polo shirt with a circular crest embroidered in white on the left breast. It featured the outline of a butterfly and the words Tabula Rasa.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ Sam asked.

  ‘We did that in Latin last year,’ Felicity said. ‘It’s something to do with a clean slate. You know: starting afresh.’

  ‘So Mason Green has a marketing plan for his evil shenanigans?’ Ruby said.

  ‘He can have funny-hat Fridays for all I care,’ Gerald said. ‘Just as long as we get our parents out of there in one piece.’ He peered back through the telescope. ‘I don’t fancy going through the front door where all those lights are, Sam. Not after what we just heard. How about we try further around the island? I’d prefer to be sneaking in than ringing the doorbell.’ He looked at Ruby and Felicity in their smart new outfits and said, ‘Are there any more of those shirts, Felicity? I’m getting a bit sick of the Tarzan look.’

  Felicity climbed back into the cabin. ‘I found something else down here apart from uniforms. You’d better see,’ she said.

  Sam switched off the engines and Felicity led them to a forward hold, where she pulled a shade over a porthole and flicked on a light.

  ‘Oh my word,’ Ruby said, her eyebrows winding to the top of her forehead.

  ‘Cool,’ Sam said. ‘Very, very cool.’

  Gerald blinked half a dozen times. ‘That is some serious firepower,’ he said.

  Arranged before them, padlocked behind a security grille, were enough firearms to start a modest-sized war: pump-action shotguns, Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistols, Uzi machine guns, and boxes and boxes of ammunition.

  ‘You’re not suggesting we actually take these, are you?’ Ruby asked.

  Felicity rattled the padlock. ‘If we can get this unlocked, sure. Why not? You heard Ursus. Fatal force, he said. That means killing us. We’d be crazy to pass up this opportunity. It’s like a gift from Santa.’

  Ruby arched an eyebrow. ‘Sure, if Santa was a psychopath,’ she said. ‘Do you even know how to use any of these?’

  Felicity frowned. ‘You were happy enough to fire a shotgun off the back of the Archer. These can’t be any more complicated than that. Just aim and pull the trigger.’

  ‘That was at clay targets,’ Ruby said.

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Felicity demanded.

  ‘For one thing, clay targets tend not to shoot back,’ Ruby said. ‘I thought we settled this argument back on the yacht.’

  Felicity pressed her lips together and turned her back on the others, staring at the arsenal.

  ‘What’s got you all gung-ho, Felicity?’ Sam asked. ‘I like the idea of shooting them up as much as the next kid, but this isn’t a video game. Those things kill for real.’

  When Felicity turned back to them, tears pooled in her eyes. ‘I want my mum and dad,’ she said, her voice catching. ‘I want them safe and I want them now.’ She let Ruby wrap her in a hug.

  ‘We all want that,’ Ruby said. ‘That’s all we want.’

  ‘Besides,’ Gerald said. ‘We’ve got the perpetual motion machine so we can trade that for everybody’s freedom. It’s all Mason Green is after.’

  Felicity sniffed back tears and her eyes focused on the padlock on the grille. ‘I’d still be more comfortable if we had a weapon. Even just a hand gun.’

  Gerald nodded. ‘I know, but we don’t have any way of opening the lock so this conversation is pointless,’ he said. He ushered Felicity, Ruby and Sam back towards the cockpit. ‘Let’s get moving before we drift too close to shore.’

  Felicity gave a final look at the armoury, and moved on. ‘The shirts are over there,’ she said to Gerald, gesturing towards a locker on the far wall.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Gerald said, and he held back while the others went topside. He switched off the light and uncurled his hand to inspect the key that he had snatched from a hook by the door when they entered the hold. He tried it in the padlock. It opened with a light click. Gerald took a slow breath and surveyed the rack of guns. The growl of the boat’s engines firing back to life startled him. He snapped the lock shut and slipped the key into his pocket. Then he took a shirt from the locker and climbed back on deck.

  Sam guided the jet boat further around the island. Gerald clambered back to the wheelhouse from the front deck, where he had been spying on a cluster of buildings through some powerful binoculars that he had found below. ‘It’s quite a set-up,’ he said. ‘There’s a jetty where I expect this boat usually ties up and a whole bunch of different buildings set back from the beach. There’s a giant satellite dish and what look like banks of solar panels. It’s a bit more than just a billionaire’s weekend getaway.’

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ Sam said. ‘I thought Mason Green would have his lair inside a dormant volcano at the very least.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’ Ruby asked. ‘Any sign of people walking around?’

  ‘How about our parents?’ Felicity said.

  ‘If they are here, I don’t think they’re going to be walking around like it’s a holiday resort,’ Gerald said. ‘They’ll be locked up somewhere.’

  Ruby’s head jerked up as if someone had landed an uppercut on her jaw. ‘Gerald, do you remember when we all had dinner at your place in Chelsea after we got back from Sweden, after the’—she paused—‘incident with Tycho Brahe? Didn’t your mother say that she and her friends had been held captive somewhere near the ocean?’

  Gerald thought back to the dinner. His overwhelming memory was of Ruby holding out the faint prospect of actually agreeing to become his girlfriend. His brain moved reluctantly on from that image. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They were kept in some windowless dormitory b
ut they could hear waves breaking on the shore. This could be the place.’

  ‘And she said she saw Professor McElderry and the others from the museum as well,’ Felicity said, her voice rising. ‘This must be the place. And it must be where my mum and dad are too. Surely it must.’

  The lights of the compound disappeared as the boat rounded the western tip of the island where the trees grew thick to the waterline. After another twenty minutes of motoring, Sam brought the boat around a headland to a beach that ran long and straight for several kilometres. He drew in a sharp breath.

  ‘What is it?’ Ruby asked, turning to look ahead. And she saw it too.

  The Archer.

  Gerald’s palatial super-yacht was anchored half a kilometre ahead. It almost glowed in the moonlight. But there were no party lights, no Chinese lanterns. The vessel floated as lifeless as a bloated corpse.

  ‘We don’t want to get too close,’ Sam said. ‘Green probably has some men on board.’

  ‘At least we know we’re at the right place,’ Gerald said. He chewed on his bottom lip. ‘What do you say we beach this boat and go the rest of the way on foot?’

  There was a murmur of agreement, and Sam steered towards the sand.

  ‘Over there,’ Ruby said, pointing to a spot where the trees grew thick down to the shore. ‘If we can get in there we can hide the boat and keep our presence secret for a little longer.’

  The trees lined either side of a stream that flowed into the ocean. Sam was able to take the boat well into the foliage; even from just a little way along the beach it would be impossible to see. The hull scraped the sandy bottom and juddered to a stop. ‘That’s as far as we can go,’ Sam said, and he switched off the engines.

  The low rumble of the jet boat was replaced with the chirrups and buzzing of insects that filled the dense jungle ahead of them. Gerald shovelled all the remaining snacks into his backpack, together with a torch and a fresh water bottle. He picked out a spare shirt from the pile in the cabin and wrapped it carefully around the perpetual motion machine to protect it. Sam looked at Gerald, Felicity and Ruby in their Tabula Rasa polos and grunted. ‘You better throw me one of those too, Gerald,’ he said. ‘I’m a team player.’