The Extraordinary Colors of Auden Dare

by Zillah Bethell

  “There’s something he needs to see.”

  “What?”

  Paragon tilted his head. “You’ll see yourself soon enough. Now, we’ve got a busy morning ahead of us. Vivi?”

  “Yes?”

  “I told Dr. Treble that you would meet him near the Wandlebury Ring.”

  “Eh?” Vivi looked nervous.

  “It’s okay. I’ll take you there myself.” Paragon bent over and picked up Vivi.

  “Oh no. Not this again,” she muttered to herself.

  “Hold on.” I took a step forward. “What about me?”

  Paragon turned to face me. “I’ll be back for you in a minute. Well, seven minutes and fortyish seconds as an estimate.” He positioned Vivi on his arm and she gripped on tight. “Then you and I are going back home.”

  With that they were off, Vivi’s shriek disappearing into the distance along with them.

  CHAPTER 23

  RETURN TO UNICORN COTTAGE

  Seven minutes and fortyish seconds later, Paragon pulled up like a sports car beside me.

  “What do you mean, ‘We’re going back home’?” I frowned at him.

  He looked a bit puzzled. “I mean, we’re going home.”

  “What? To Unicorn Cottage?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you mad? There’ll be millions of Water Allocation Board soldiers there. They’ll be pulling the house to pieces. They’ll capture us.”

  “Millions is a bit of an overestimate, don’t you think? At the most there will be about forty of them.”

  “Forty?!” I cried. “How are we meant to get into the house if there are about forty soldiers—armed soldiers—waiting for us there? Anyway, why are we going back?”

  “Because there is something there that we need to get.”

  “What?”

  “Something your uncle built. Perhaps you’ve seen it. It’s about this high”—he held the palm of his hand flat about three feet off the ground—“this long”—about four feet—“and this wide”—two feet. “It’s on wheels and has a sort of cover over it.”

  I thought. “Wait. You mean the rainbow machine?”

  “The rainbow machine?” He gave a small laugh. “Yes. I suppose you’re right. Do you know where your uncle kept it?”

  “It was in the shed. Above you. But we took it out from there. Just before we discovered you.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I pushed it against the fence. Under an overhanging tree.” I thought of the previous day, when one of the soldiers started to inspect it but quickly got bored and shoved it back. “I think it’s still there.”

  “Good.”

  “But why are we going back to get the rainbow machine?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, picking me up and preparing to run off again.

  *   *   *

  While Paragon was running, I could see military trucks in the distance, scouring the roads and lanes for any sign of us. At one point, Paragon had to quickly change course when we saw a troop of soldiers spread out across a succulent field, slowly picking their way over it, hoping to stumble over some clue as to what direction we had originally gone.

  Not long after, we came out onto the field behind Unicorn Cottage. The pyramid-shaped irrigation towers were spraying their five-minute daily allocation of water over the crops, and as we rushed past them we got beautifully and hilariously soaked. Diving into the small crop of trees that backed up to the garden, we fell onto the earth and laughed.

  “I hope I don’t start rusting,” Paragon joked.

  After we had recovered ourselves, we peered through a gap in the fence. I couldn’t see anything, and then I realized why. The rainbow machine was in the way.

  It was literally inches away from us. The problem was that it might as well have been a million miles away. I could hear a pair of soldiers talking at the other end of the garden. Getting it out was going to be impossible.

  “How are we going to get to it?” I whispered.

  “Ah-ha!” Paragon held up his hand, and a fingertip flipped back to reveal the tip of a screwdriver.

  “Is there anything you haven’t got hidden away in your fingers?” I asked.

  “Lots of things,” he said as he inserted the head into one of the screws in the fence. “But I won’t start listing them now.”

  The screwdriver tool was almost silent. It turned counterclockwise and twisted the screw out with absolute ease. After it finally came free, Paragon removed another one and another. It reminded me of the time I unscrewed all the floorboards in the shed not ten feet away from where we were now squatting. When the last of the screws in the one piece of fencing was removed, I took hold of the wood and laid it gently on the ground nearby.

  Board after board came away until we had a space big enough through which to pass the rainbow machine. The problem was going to be the beams of wood that ran horizontally along the top and bottom of the fence. We were going to have to somehow lift the rainbow machine through them.

  “Don’t worry.” Paragon leaned forward and grabbed both sides of the machine. “I can get it myself.” He pulled and, with enormous strength, gently brought the thing through the fence and into the field beside us.

  Suddenly, the overhanging branches of the tree parted and a soldier’s face appeared, staring right at us. He opened his mouth to shout something but Paragon hurriedly clasped his hand over the mouth, climbed through what was left of the fence, and disappeared.

  Twenty seconds later he returned.

  “What have you done with him?” I asked.

  “Locked him in my little room under the shed. It’s quite cozy, you know. Someone will find him eventually.” He grabbed hold of the handle at one end of the machine and turned it around. “Come on. We’d better go before any more of them spot us.”

  *   *   *

  It was much slower going. Paragon could push the rainbow machine faster than I ever could, but compared to the racing speeds of earlier, it felt sluggish. The problem was that the wheels on the machine were not designed to go over rough ground.

  “It’s no use,” Paragon finally admitted. “We’re going to have to use the roads.”

  “But they’ll see us,” I protested.

  “If we stick to crossing fields, they’re going to see us anyway. At least on the roads we might have a chance.”

  Paragon wheeled the machine down through a gate and onto a small lane.

  “Now, jump on,” he ordered.

  “What? On you?”

  “Nope. On that.” He nodded toward the rainbow machine.

  I climbed onto the top of the machine and gripped tightly onto the tarpaulin.

  “Here goes.”

  Paragon started racing again—still slower than normal, but at least we felt like we were making progress. He steered the thing around bends and over bumps like a Formula One driver and I held on for all I was worth.

  But then I heard the roar of an engine.

  Behind was a large truck. And it was gaining on us.

  Paragon sped up but the truck still got closer. I looked back and could see the eyes of the driver glaring down on us.

  Suddenly there was a loud bang and a spark flew off the back of Paragon.

  They were shooting!

  Paragon moved even quicker, the wheels of the rainbow machine spinning uncontrollably beneath me.

  Then, without warning, Paragon practically spun on the spot and veered off onto a smaller dirt track to the left. It wound its way up a small hill, and I recognized it as the hill Vivi and I climbed with Paragon the day after we discovered him. The hill where the word achromatopsia opened up a load of information within his memory bank.

  “Hold on tight!” Paragon shouted at me.

  I looked behind and saw that the truck was too big to make its way along the dirt track. Soldiers were jumping out of the back and running toward us, their rifles at the ready.

  “I said hold on!” Paragon half yelled, so I dug my
nails even harder into the tarpaulin. A second later I realized why.

  Paragon twisted off the track and headed toward the stile over which we had all climbed weeks before. Only, this time we weren’t going to climb over it. Oh, no. This time, Paragon was going to smash right through it.

  “Hold on!”

  I shut my eyes.

  The rainbow machine hit the rotting wooden structure with such speed that it splintered apart. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been gripping tightly enough, because as it hit, I bounced off the top of the rainbow machine and bumped onto the grass before rolling a fair distance down the incline.

  “Auden!” I heard Paragon’s voice somewhere above me.

  Bang! Bang!

  Gunshots. Followed by the ping, ping of bullets hitting metal.

  As I sat up, two arms grabbed me and lifted me clear off the ground.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  It was Paragon. He carried me with his back to the firing soldiers and plonked me roughly on top of the rainbow machine.

  “Stay where you are!” a voice screamed. “Do not move.”

  Paragon ignored the voice and began to push the machine along once again.

  “I said stay where you are! Or we’ll shoot the boy!”

  Paragon stopped and lowered the trolley. Then he turned around.

  “Paragon? What are you doing?” I asked.

  Paragon raised both of his arms. The panels on the forearms slid apart and the barrels of the guns came into view. He pointed them toward the soldier who had just spoken.

  “Paragon! No! Don’t! Don’t do it! That’s not who you are! Please. Don’t shoot them.”

  The soldier, realizing that no bullet seemed to harm Paragon, backed away slightly, lowering his gun.

  Paragon took a step toward him.

  “No! Don’t!” I screamed. “Don’t hurt them!”

  He stood still, his guns still trained on the man.

  “Please.”

  Nobody moved or said anything. The only sounds came from the wind and the squeal of traffic miles away.

  “Go back,” Paragon said to the men after a while. “Take your guns and let us be. We have important work to attend to.”

  The gun barrels on his arms retreated back inside and Paragon turned and continued to push the rainbow machine slowly along the path that wound its way around the bottom of the hill.

  There were no more gunshots.

  PART SEVEN

  WHITE

  CHAPTER 24

  THE POWER SOURCE

  “This whole area is swarming with Water Allocation Board soldiers,” Treble said as we approached him and Vivi. “I’ve never seen so many of them in my life. They must really want to get hold of you, Paragon.”

  “Oh, they do, Dr. Treble. They do.”

  Treble stepped forward. “They came for me last night. Luckily I managed to escape out the back door without any of them spotting me. I don’t think they’re the brightest of organizations, you know.”

  Paragon laughed. He was still pushing the rainbow machine as I walked alongside. After racing around so much over the last two days, it was a huge relief to just walk.

  “Have you had an accident?” Vivi asked, staring at the massive rip in one of my trouser legs. It must have happened when I rolled off the top of the machine, only everything was so intense and scary at that point that I didn’t notice it. Now that Vivi had pointed it out to me, I wondered how I could miss such a thing.

  “Yes” was all I said.

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.” Paragon started to push the rainbow machine along the path that led to the top of Wandlebury.

  “Not at all.” Treble sounded surprisingly jolly considering there were men with guns trying to hunt us out at that very moment. “Vivi and I have been having a rather interesting discussion about planetary formation, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, we have.”

  It was weird. They both sounded so similar.

  “It seems we have the same ideas about the Big Bang.”

  We made our way up toward where the trees started, Paragon pushing the rainbow machine, the rest of us close behind.

  “Tell me, Paragon.” Treble looked quite excitable. “Is it true? Do you think it will work?”

  “Yes,” Paragon answered without hesitation. “It will work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Dr. Bloom programmed me to know.”

  “Oh.” Treble stopped for a second, unsure how to take in that information.

  Why were they all so keen on the rainbow machine all of a sudden? What was so impressive? What was so important about it that we were all risking our lives?

  We entered the wood that ran along the brow of the hill.

  “I wish Bloom had told me all about this. I wish he’d told anybody about this,” Treble muttered. “Why didn’t he just tell people what he’d done?”

  Paragon didn’t even turn around to look at Treble. “Because he didn’t get the chance to, I suppose. He left the instruction buried within me because he knew he was at risk. I think he wanted to run it through more tests—to be certain—before going public with it.”

  I suddenly found myself wishing Milo Treble wasn’t there. He was chattering on and taking away from the fact that this whole adventure should only have been about Paragon, Vivi, and me. No one else. Why was he involving himself now? Or, to be more accurate, why was Paragon involving him?

  As if in answer to my question, Paragon spoke. “I think it’s right that you are here to see this, Dr. Treble. We need a recognized member of the scientific community to bear witness to what will happen here today.” Treble seemed to swagger. “Someone with the the respect of the wider scientific world. Someone they can trust.”

  “Well … er … I … I guess…” Treble could hardly disguise his slightly swollen-headed pride.

  Paragon looked back at me.

  That made me feel better.

  “Wait!” It was Vivi’s voice. She was staring back down the hill, her arm outstretched, pointing.

  Water Allocation Board trucks. Dozens of them. On the roads below.

  “They’ve found us!”

  Paragon lowered the rainbow machine and stared down the hill. He then turned and stared up the hill to where we were headed.

  “Too soon. They’re here too soon.” He sounded disappointed. “By my rough calculations, a few minutes later and we would have had enough time to get it done.”

  “Get what done?” I asked, but nobody answered me.

  “You need a distraction,” Vivi said. “Something to buy you more time.”

  “But what?”

  Vivi took a few steps away from us.

  “I’ll run out into the open and go down the opposite side of the hill. I’ll make sure they spot me. I’ll lead them on a goose chase.”

  “Vivi—” Paragon began to protest.

  “No. It’s best.”

  Treble interrupted. “Paragon, it is vital that you do what needs to be done.” He walked toward Vivi and turned back to Paragon. “I’ll go with her. Tell me, you know exactly what to do?”

  “Yes, but I need someone to stay with me.” Paragon turned to me. “Auden, will you help me do it?”

  “I don’t know what it is that—”

  “Will you help me?” he asked again. “I can’t do it on my own.”

  “Yes.” I came alongside him and rested my hand on his arm. “Of course I will. I’ll do anything to help you. You know that.”

  Treble pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders. “Good. Then Vivi and I will distract them. Get yourselves into position and start the thing up.” They twisted away and started to run off.

  “Vivi!” Paragon shouted after her.

  Vivi stopped and looked back.

  “Thank you.” Paragon waved. “You are without the smallest shadow of a doubt the bravest and cleverest girl who ever lived.”

  Vivi smiled before rushing off with Treble out beyond the t
rees.

  Paragon pushed the rainbow machine up along the gravelly path that twisted its way toward the top.

  All of a sudden, my stomach dropped. Something flashed into my mind, something that should have flashed into it earlier.

  “There’s no battery for it!” I cried. “We looked—Vivi and me—but we couldn’t find the battery that fits it. Without it, the machine won’t work.”

  Paragon didn’t even pause. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

  An eruption of shouting came from the bottom of the hill. I peered through the trees. Soldiers who had leaped from the trucks had spotted Vivi and Treble running around the side of the hill. One of them squatted and took aim with his gun.

  “Vivi!” I gasped.

  “No shooting! Your orders are to take the children alive,” barked another distant voice. I shifted my position and could see General Woolf climbing out of a military car. “Give chase. And find that robot.”

  “Come on, Auden. We need to get going.” Paragon was ahead of me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene down below. Because out of Woolf’s car came two more figures. Handcuffed and guarded.

  Mum and Immaculata.

  “Mum!”

  “Auden! We don’t have time!” Paragon called. “Please!”

  I shook the image of my mother in handcuffs from my head and ran up to Paragon.

  “They’ve brought Mum here,” I said. “Why?”

  “To trap you. They’re hoping you’ll rush back into her arms. It wouldn’t surprise me if they gave her a loudspeaker and got her to plead with you to give yourself up.”

  As if on cue, Woolf’s voice boomed through a megaphone.

  “Auden Dare. This is General Woolf of the Second Infantry Division of the Water Allocation Board. You’ll recall we met yesterday. I have somebody here who wants to talk some sense into you.”

  A pause as he handed the megaphone over to Mum.

  “Auden?” Mum’s voice was quaky. “Auden? If you’re out there … please…”

  I stopped where I was. Paragon stopped, too, and watched me.

  “Mum.”

  “Auden.” Paragon looked straight at me. His voice was quiet. “I need you to help me. Without you, I just can’t do it.”

  I stood still and listened to Mum.