by Lauren Child
When she arrived at Little Mountain Side the following morning, there was something of a commotion just up the hill from the grocer’s store. A whole crowd of people had gathered there and they were all looking up as if searching the sky. Curious, Ruby wandered along to see what the attraction was. What she saw was a man climbing what looked to be a pretty unclimbable tree. He was perhaps seventy or eighty feet off the ground.
‘He’s got it!’ shouted a man.
Got what? thought Ruby.
It was only when the climber got a whole lot closer that Ruby saw he was clutching some kind of animal.
‘Is that a cat?’ said Ruby.
‘Uh huh,’ said the woman next to her, ‘that’s Ginger, all right.’
‘Who’s that with him?’ asked Ruby.
‘Why, that’s Mo from Daily’s,’ said the woman. ‘Isn’t he magnificent?’
‘That’s one word for it, I guess,’ said Ruby.
Applause broke out as Mo reached earth, and people walked over to shake his hand and slap him on the back. Ruby waited until the fuss had died down and then followed him back to the store.
‘Quite the action hero, aren’t we?’ said Ruby.
‘It’s been mewing all night,’ said Mo. ‘Someone had to get that fur-ball down.’
He passed the cat to Ruby. ‘Here, take it, would you? I’m not a cat person. Too much hair, too many claws.’
‘Yet you can climb seventy feet up a two hundred foot Sequoia,’ said Ruby.
‘Trees never bothered me,’ said Mo, plucking the orange cat hairs from his jacket.
‘So what, you used to be a construction worker, a lumberjack, a high-wire walker?’ said Ruby.
Mo shrugged. ‘In a past life maybe.’
‘With skills like that you might want to join the circus or the fire department,’ said Ruby.
‘Nah,’ said Mo, ‘I like an uneventful life.’
‘Uneventful? Are you kidding?’ said Ruby. ‘You think grabbing cats from crazily tall trees is uneventful.’
‘So what are you doing up here, anyway?’ asked Mo. ‘I told you, the maitake won’t be in for a couple of days.’
‘I know, but I wanted to ask you about another kind of mushroom,’ said Ruby, ‘seeing as how you’re such a mushroom expert and everything.’
‘Mycologist,’ said Mo.
‘Exactly,’ said Ruby.
‘So try me,’ he said.
‘Have you heard of a Mars Mushroom?’
‘Sounds like a question for Walt,’ said Mo.
‘I’m serious,’ said Ruby.
‘Are we talking mushrooms from Mars or mushrooms which look like alien things?’
‘Don’t all mushrooms look like alien things?’
Mo shrugged. ‘Does it have a proper name, this Mars Mushroom?’
‘Hypocrea asteroidi,’ said Ruby.
‘That sounds kinda familiar,’ said Mo. ‘I feel like I must have read about that somewhere. I can have a look through some of my journals and specialist books if you’d like me to?’
‘I’d appreciate that,’ said Ruby, although she didn’t hold out much hope that he would find anything. If Pinkerton was trying to keep it secret then it seemed unlikely that there was going to be anything in print.
As soon as Ruby stepped out of the store, it dawned on her just how hungry she was; she hadn’t eaten a bite all morning.
She crossed the road to the diner and ordered herself the Pluto Plate, which was basically pancakes with all the extras.
Walter and Duke were sitting at the counter in the same seats, eating the same food they had been eating when she’d first met them that previous Sunday.
They were talking about UFOs and it made entertaining listening. She looked up when the bell on the door jangled and in came another familiar character. It was the cryptic crossword guy, Sven. She watched him lift Spike from the baby chair thing which he had on his back. He looked around, trying to figure out where to perch the baby, then he saw Ruby.
‘Would you mind grabbing him a second while I get my coat off?’ he asked.
Ruby grudgingly obliged. ‘Boy, this kid weighs a ton,’ she said. ‘He’s like some thirty-pound sausage.’
Sven smiled like he was pleased with that assessment of his kid. ‘Spike’s a big eater,’ he said.
He unwound his scarf and shrugged off his coat and hung it on one of the hooks by the door. It was as he turned back towards her that Ruby saw the image printed on his sweatshirt: a sequence of interlocking triangles.
‘Cool sweatshirt,’ said Ruby. ‘Where’d you get it?’
‘This?’ he said, pointing at it. ‘From my old man. He used to work at the power plant over the mountain.’
‘So it definitely wasn’t a space base?’ said Ruby. ‘I heard those guys say it was.’
‘No,’ said Sven, ‘I can tell you that for nothing – Walter and Duke would like to believe it is, but it ain’t.’
‘No Mars missions, no alien communications,’ said Ruby.
‘Just good old electricity,’ said Sven.
She shrugged. ‘That’s a shame,’ she said.
When she had finished eating, she caught the bus back down the mountain. She was pretty tired and it didn’t take more than a few minutes before she had fallen asleep.
What woke her was a sudden jolt as the driver swerved across the road. He cursed loudly before calling out, ‘Boy, that was close!’
‘What happened?’ asked Ruby.
‘Bambi just got lucky,’ said the driver.
‘Huh?’
‘We nearly hit a deer,’ explained the woman sitting in the seat across from hers.
Ruby’s backpack had catapulted off the seat and some of her things were now rolling around on the floor. She reached to gather them up, but when she checked to make sure everything was now back in the bag, she realised her pencil was missing. It wasn’t under the seat; it wasn’t anywhere.
So where was it?
Where it was, was safely locked away in the most secure vault in Twinford.
Redfort, you’re a duh brain, she cursed, and you’re probably gonna be fired from Spectrum, but not before you’re murdered by your boss, who probably is a bona fide agent-killer and knows that you know it!
WHEN RUBY GOT BACK TO TWINFORD, she felt her watch vibrate as a message came in.
It was from Hal in Gadgets.
IF YOU GO TO THE PARKING LOT UNDER THE ICE RINK YOU’LL FIND A BIG SURPRISE.
The parking lot under the ice rink was also the parking lot above Spectrum. So why does he need to leave whatever he is leaving me in the parking lot? she wondered. Why not just tell me to pick it up from the gadget room? For some reason the whole mystery of it irritated her. There were too many mysteries and she was beginning to crave clarity; clarity on anything would be nice.
She messaged him back.
WHY CAN’T I JUST COME DOWN AND
PICK IT UP?
she asked.
BETTER THIS WAY, he wrote. BAY D 57
‘Have it your way,’ she muttered.
Ruby made her way to Bowery Street and on towards the ice rink. She had never actually been in the underground parking lot before; she had never needed to, the elevator took her to Spectrum direct. She walked down the stairwell into the lot and felt glad that this was not a regular thing. The place was creepy; it also smelt bad. She looked around her, searching for the D zone.
Bay 57 was almost at the end, but she didn’t need to get close to make out what it was.
‘You gotta be kidding me – red?’ she muttered. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead on a red bike.’
She was going to have to do something about this. Red was worse than pink, well almost. It was so ‘jolly’; so ‘my first bike’. Why didn’t Hal just go the whole mile and stick a basket on front and attach one of those little colourful whirling windmills to the handlebars?
She didn’t register the footsteps behind her – maybe because the woman moved almost without sound.
There was a cough and then a gravelly voice spoke. ‘A little ungrateful, aren’t we?’
Ruby spun around to see a woman dressed entirely in white, her face without expression. Ruby had never once seen her boss outside the confines of Spectrum. If LB had a life beyond the agency then Ruby couldn’t imagine it.
‘Is this how you treat state-of-the-art Spectrum technology?’
Ruby began to speak, but found herself stammering; no words were forming.
‘You seem … what’s the word …’ LB paused as she searched for the precise adjective. ‘Edgy.’ She stared hard at Ruby, and Ruby looked away. It wasn’t a comfortable experience to be trapped in this place with an agent-killer.
‘I’m concerned, Redfort, I really am. Your behaviour has been a little –’ again, she seemed to be groping for the word – ‘… off.’
‘I’m just tired,’ said Ruby.
‘Tired? And what exactly is making you tired?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s –’ her mind had gone blank – ‘school …’
‘School?’ repeated LB. ‘School is making you tired?’
Ruby bit her lip. ‘No, I guess it’s more likely to be the training – not that I’m complaining or anything, it’s nothing I can’t handle.’
LB just stared at her, an unblinking stare. ‘Maybe I can drive you somewhere?’
‘Well, I should probably, you know, unlock my bike and, you know, ride it home, I mean, since Spectrum went to all the trouble of getting me this machine and …’
‘Except you can’t possibly do that, Redfort.’
To Ruby’s ears that sounded like a threat. And what LB said next sounded a whole lot worse.
‘I mean who would be seen dead on a red bike? Certainly not you. So on what colour bike would you be prepared to be seen dead?’ She put such emphasis on the word ‘dead’ that a shiver ran right down Ruby’s spine.
LB was beginning to remind her of someone; the someone who wore the Italian shoes and the old-fashioned suit.
‘I don’t mind the colour, not at all actually, I mean, red’s so jolly, so like …’ What was it like? She couldn’t think of a thing other than, well, blood.
‘Santa? Is that the word you’re searching for?’
‘Yes, that’s it exactly, so I might just jump right on and get back, get back home or not home, but somewhere … somewhere else.’
‘You’re acting peculiar, Redfort. Something on your mind?’
The way she said it, the words almost sounded like a challenge.
‘I’m cold,’ said Ruby. ‘Just need to warm up, it’s hard to think straight.’
‘So your survival training has been a waste of Spectrum resources, is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, not at all, I’m just …’
‘Just what?’
The light overhead went out and Ruby jumped.
‘Relax,’ said LB. ‘They do that.’ She waved her hand and they came back on. ‘They’re motion-sensitive.’
Ruby was looking around her now. Which way should she sprint? She must be able to outrun LB. She knew she couldn’t out-fight her, but outrun her, surely.
‘You found something out, didn’t you?’ LB didn’t step closer, didn’t move an inch, but it felt like she had. ‘Why don’t you just spit it out, Redfort? There’s something you know that you don’t want to tell me.’
This was it, this was the moment when the Spectrum 8 boss would pull out some agent-terminator weapon and that would be that.
She might just as well say her piece.
‘You killed Bradley Baker.’ The words echoed around them.
Silence.
LB paused before saying, ‘The Count told you?’
‘So you’re not denying it?’
‘No.’
‘You murdered him.’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘How could you do that? He was your friend, more than that, he was …’
‘It sounds to me like you’re passing judgement here?’ LB stared hard at Ruby, her eyes unblinking. ‘Yet what do you really know? You have a few facts and the word of a psychopath, and yet you feel equipped to condemn me?’
Silence.
‘Imagine this, Ruby Redfort. Imagine you have just seconds to make the biggest decision you will ever make, imagine that whatever you decide will be wrong. There is no right in this, don’t fool yourself into thinking that.’
Silence.
‘There’s a thought experiment in ethics,’ said LB. ‘It’s called the Trolley Problem. You may have heard of it?’
Ruby shook her head.
‘No? Well, lucky you. You see, it’s a question of life and death. When I joined Spectrum, part of the training was to consider what you might do if faced with the gritty question: in whose direction do you point the Grim Reaper’s scythe?’ She smiled a cold smile. ‘No, it’s worse than that. You become the Grim Reaper, you decide: is one life worth more than five? Is the life of someone you value worth more than two that you don’t? Is the life of a child worth more than that of an adult? These are the unpleasant issues you have to consider when you become a person who deals in life and death for a living – you become the man with the scythe.’
Ruby said nothing.
‘So imagine a trolley car is hurtling down a rail track and it’s going to hit five innocent people. You can save them if you pull the points lever, so diverting the trolley car onto the parallel track. On this track there is just one person who will die. One life for five? What do you do?’
Ruby said nothing.
‘In my case, the situation was a little more dramatic. A package was delivered anonymously to me at home and when I opened it I found a detonator and instructions to turn on my TV set. Every channel was tuned to the same broadcast, a live countdown, a ticking bomb counting inevitably towards zero.
‘A scrambled voice told me what I already knew: a whole site would be destroyed and along with it every one of its one thousand and twenty-seven staff. However, I was offered an alternative outcome: I could save them, every one of them. All I had to do was to press the yellow button there on the detonator. There was a catch, though – there always is in situations like this, always a price to pay.
‘“We can trade.” That’s what the voice said. “One thousand and twenty-seven lives for one.” And then the TV flashed up another image: a tiny silver-white craft moving across a blue sky. And it looked so safe somehow, so small in this enormous ocean of sky, and I let my eyes follow it and I knew it was Baker.’
She turned to look at Ruby, eyes unblinking. ‘And that was my choice.’
‘I …’ said Ruby. But she could think of nothing to say. She could see the truth in LB’s eyes.
‘So do I do nothing?’ continued LB. ‘In which case, Baker, the person I regard more highly than any other being on this planet, goes merrily on his way, or do I choose to save one thousand and twenty-seven people that I have never met, probably will never meet and until now have never thought about.’
She paused, staring Ruby hard in the eye. ‘But are they not equally deserving of my protection? Would it not be monstrous to sign the death warrant of so many?’ She pondered the question, and then said in a distant voice, ‘I will never forget the final question he hissed into my ear. “The clock is ticking, dear LB, what price love, what price life; are the heartbeats of many worth more than your heart’s one true desire?”’ Her voice was almost inaudible now. ‘Ninety-nine seconds is all it took to drain all colour from my life.’
Ruby still could find no words.
‘So before you judge me, think about what you would do,’ said LB. ‘One thousand and twenty-seven people who mean nothing to you, or Clancy Crew?’
‘I …’ began Ruby, ‘I mean it’s not possible … to make the right decision, how could one, how could I …’
‘As I said, there is no
right decision,’ said LB. ‘It’s all about your gut instinct. I chose to save one thousand and twenty-seven people, but no matter how one tries to square it, it doesn’t change the fact that I killed someone, my friend, my choice, no one made me pick him. I pushed a button which caused the death of the person I happened to like –’ her voice cracked – ‘to love, more than any other living soul on this sad planet.’
LB turned, strode to her car, climbed in and drove off.
Casey Morgan
heard the shouting …
… people were running to the river’s edge. Casey saw the boy get pulled out of the rapids: he wasn’t moving. There was more shouting, more attempts to resuscitate.
‘I think he’s dead,’ cried a voice. Silence fell.
Samuel Colt didn’t give up, wouldn’t give up. ‘Come on, kid, you need to breathe.’
A cry: ‘He’s alive, the kid’s alive!’
Casey turned and ran, and never looked back.
RUBY HAD ONLY JUST MADE IT HOME from midtown when she heard the sound of a key in the front door.
‘Bonsoir!’ called Sabina. ‘There’s something wrong with my key, could someone let us in?’
Mrs Digby went down to open the door. ‘Well, howdie there travellers,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘I thought perhaps we’d been away so long you had decided to change the locks,’ laughed Sabina.
‘We have,’ said Mrs Digby.
‘You did?’ she said.
‘Only because Hitch mislaid his keys,’ explained the housekeeper, ‘it wasn’t personal.’
‘Well, that’s a relief!’ said Brant. ‘When a man isn’t welcome in his own home, where is he to go!’
‘Hey Mom, hey Dad, you actually made it home,’ called Ruby as she ran down to greet them.
‘Je suis désolée,’ said Ruby’s mother, giving her daughter a dozen kisses. ‘We just got utterly stuck in Paris.’
This was followed by more apologies and a twirling embrace from her father.
‘I’m glad you’re home,’ said Ruby in a strangled voice.
