The Curiosity Machine (22 page)

‘Like Yertle has found a new home,' Gerald said. ‘I can't tell you and your friend next door apart.'

Just then, Sam and Felicity burst into the glade. They were breathing hard and carrying empty tortoise shells on their backs. ‘How did you go?' Gerald asked.

‘It was smoking like a chimneystack when we left,' Felicity said, ‘straight up into the air. There's no way the people on the boat will miss it.'

Sam looked about the glade. ‘Where's Ruby?' he asked.

Gerald rapped his knuckles against the closest tortoise shell. A bald head on a long neck wound up to see what the disturbance was. ‘Whoops, wrong one,' Gerald said. He kicked the shell next door. ‘She's under this one. Just goes to show how good this disguise is. Find a spot and I'll cover you up. We should have some company pretty soon.'

Felicity and Sam nestled into place and Gerald covered them with their shells, working them into the soil. He stood up and surveyed the glade—it looked exactly as it had when they stumbled in earlier that day. He tapped on the back of Sam's shell. ‘Stay quiet from now on,' he said. ‘I'll let you know when it's safe to come
out. Remember, these guys will have guns. They're not mucking about.' A muffled ‘okay' sounded out from three of the tortoises. Gerald flipped up his shell with his foot as if it was a skateboard and looked about for a likely hiding place. He wedged between two snoozing tortoises and positioned the end of his shell so he had a gun-barrel view down the path. He gripped the rim and pulled down as hard as he could, and waited.

The last of the evening's twilight had almost drained from the sky when Gerald heard boots tramping through the undergrowth. He sucked in a breath. If all went to plan, Ursus's gunmen would walk straight through the clearing and up the mountain, towards Felicity's fire and its rising smoke. Once the gunmen were safely past, Gerald could move onto the second phase of the plan, down near the beach. The glade was the perfect hiding place—in fact, the only hiding place—between the beach and the rockpool. With Sam, Felicity and Ruby snug under their tortoise shells, the clearing looked as if it had not seen the presence of humans for a hundred years. Apart from…

Gerald's bright blue backpack sat in the middle of the pathway.

Gerald's eyes stuck out as long as any tortoise's neck.

The backpack.

In the middle of the path.

Not only did the bag give away their hiding spot, tucked safely inside it was the perpetual motion machine:
the only bargaining chip they had if they ever wanted to free their parents.

Gerald's heart closed tight. The footsteps crashing through the scrub came louder and closer. He had no time to think. Gerald launched himself from his hiding place, sending his tortoise shell into the air like a flipped coin. He dived at his backpack and speared a hand through a shoulder strap, then without slowing tucked into a forward roll and sprang headfirst into a nest of ferns on the far side of the path. He rolled to his belly and pressed the underside of his chin to the dirt, trying hard to suppress his breathing and the pounding of his heart.

Bare seconds later, three men strode into the glade. The ferns around Gerald were still twitching, waving about like a flag on a windy day. He squeezed his backpack to his side and clamped a hand across his nose and mouth. Through a tangle of stems and branches, he could make out three pairs of legs. They stopped right by his hiding place.

‘What's that over there?' a gruff voice asked. ‘Just by the path?'

There was a soft scuffling as one of the men ventured forward. Then came the response that sank Gerald's heart.

‘It's a shell, like a turtle shell or something.'

Gruff voice took a pace forward, then a bright beam of torchlight swept the scrub.

From Gerald's spot among the ferns, he could see the
beam track over the cluster of tortoises near the centre of the clearing, pausing now and then on a mossy shell before moving on.

‘Did you hear that?' gruff voice asked. The torchlight shone deeper into the bushes. ‘A scrabbling noise in the undergrowth.'

‘Probably rats,' one of the other men replied.

A dull
clonk
sounded from the cluster of tortoises. Gerald had a clear picture in his mind of the back of Sam's head banging into his tortoise shell at the mention of rats. Gerald screwed up his eyes and let out a silent oath.

Then gruff voice spoke: ‘Check that one.'

Gerald's eyes sprang open to see that the torchlight had fallen on a grey-green mound nestled among half a dozen others. One of the gunmen walked into view. He wore navy-blue overalls, with sleeves rolled to a pair of no-nonsense biceps. One hand held a very serious firearm. The man pointed the gun barrel at the shell, wedged the toe of his boot under the rim and kicked up.

A very annoyed tortoise uncurled its neck and lashed out, clamping strong jaws around the man's ankle. The man cried out. His screams were quickly overwhelmed by the laughter of his two companions as he tried to free himself from the tortoise's grip.

‘Get away from it!' gruff voice laughed. ‘Before he starts chasing you.'

Gerald watched in growing despair as the first man
kicked out, ripping his leg free. The man stumbled backwards across the path, landing on the clearing floor just a metre from where Gerald cowered in the ferns.

‘Shut your blasted laughing,' the man said. ‘All this hassle just to catch some stupid kids.' He rolled to his front, his face pointing directly at Gerald.

Gerald could see the pinprick of whiskers on the man's chin, and the feathered outline of hairs sprouting from his ears. And the man's eyes, black and menacing, were looking right into his own.

Chapter 20

The man's face lit up in a circle of white light. He recoiled, dazzled by the sudden glare of the torch. ‘Get up, you idiot,' gruff voice said. ‘Before these turtles stampede.'

The man pushed himself up and resumed his cursing, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to clear his vision. He looked back towards where Gerald was lying in the ferns, not sure if he had seen something or not. Then he turned to gruff voice. ‘This is ridiculous. How long do we have to stay here?'

‘Until we find the machine,' gruff voice answered. He dug a hand into a pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. Even by torchlight, Gerald recognised it at once: the copy of Jeremy Davey's note that Mason Green had
shown him a few nights before.

‘According to this, we have to find where these tortoises go to drink,' gruff voice said.

‘How did the old man finally solve the puzzle?' one of the others asked.

‘Ursus said something about a dead butterfly someone nicked from Africa. But our orders are clear: don't come back without the machine.'

‘What about the kids?'

Gruff voice shoved the note back in his pocket. ‘You heard Ursus. No witnesses. Once we find the machine, with or without their help, we ditch them. No one is ever going to find them out here.'

The first man adjusted the strap attached to his firearm, shifting it on his shoulder. ‘The quicker it's done the better,' he said.

The third man spoke up. ‘You scared of four kids, then?'

Gerald didn't flinch as a ball of spit landed just in front of his face. ‘Course not,' the gunman said. He cocked his weapon. ‘But who's to say this place is any different from the zoo we work on, with all those'—he paused—‘abominations wandering free.'

Gruff voice gave a hollow laugh. ‘You're jumping at shadows.' But he cocked his weapon as well.

‘Come on. Those kids must be up where the fire is burning,' the third man said. Gerald hugged the ground as the men continued out of the glade. He counted slowly
to one hundred just to make sure they were gone, and then he sprang to his feet, tossed the backpack over his shoulder and set about finding which of the tortoises were his friends.

Gerald led Ruby, Sam and Felicity back down the path to the beach, pausing only to collect one of the empty tortoise shells.

Ruby caught up to Gerald and whispered in his ear, ‘The plan's going great so far.' Gerald grinned at her; he had no intention of owning up about the backpack in the middle of the path.

The jungle canopy began to thin and they could make out the thicket of driftwood that lined the high-water mark at the beach. A plump moon sat in the sky. Gerald scurried over to the barricade and peered through the gaps. ‘There's the boat,' he whispered as the others joined him. It was anchored about fifteen metres from the shore. A dim yellow light shone through one of the windows, blinking in the dark like a dragon's eye.

Gerald squinted, uncertain of what he could see. But then he saw movement, and he was sure. ‘There,' he whispered. ‘By the cabin door. There's at least one on board.'

Ruby moved closer to him. ‘So we have to do part two of the plan?'

Gerald nodded. ‘Sam, Felicity—you know what you need to do. Give Ruby and me five minutes.' Felicity handed the flint to Gerald and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Good luck,' she said. She hugged Ruby, and then disappeared with Sam into the shadows.

Ruby took Gerald's hand and pulled him away from the driftwood barricade to a flat section at the top of the beach. ‘Are you sure about this?' she whispered.

‘Of course,' Gerald replied. ‘It will work just fine.'

Ruby sighed. ‘Tell me when you're ready.' She turned, found a rock to perch on and gazed up at the clear column of white smoke that rose from the mountaintop.

Gerald got to work. He gathered together dry wood and kindling, and built a pile as high as his waist, then balanced the upturned tortoise shell on top. He pulled the water bottle from his backpack and emptied it into the shell, then set to work with the flint at the base of the little bonfire. With a few strikes and some encouraging puffs of breath, a flame licked at the sun-brittled wood.

Gerald sat back and admired his handiwork. There was just one last touch required. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the skull of Jeremy Davey. Then he tapped Ruby on the shoulder. ‘Ready,' he said.

Ruby took in a deep breath, and turned around. The moment she caught sight of the skull in Gerald's hand she let out a scream that would put a cannibal off his dinner.

Gerald winced. Ruby's outburst raised a cacophony of bird shrieks and animal cries that reverberated along the shoreline. As the din died down Gerald tossed the skull into the simmering water inside the tortoise shell. ‘That'll do,' he said to Ruby, whose eyes still quivered in
their sockets. ‘That should bring out anyone left on the boat.' He grabbed Ruby's hand and they scurried further along the narrow ribbon of sand behind the driftwood.

‘This should be far enough,' Gerald whispered, and the two of them nestled into the tangle of logs.

Within seconds they heard someone wading through the water. About twenty metres away a head popped above the wall of wood. ‘Whitefield?' a man called out. ‘Mendel? Brown? Are you there?'

Silhouetted against the pale glow of the moon, the man climbed over the barricade, a gun in his hand. He made his way towards the bonfire, which was now burning with gusto.

Gerald nudged Ruby and they slipped silently over the driftwood and dropped to the rocks, moving as quickly as they could towards the boat. Gerald tried to picture the man's curiosity at seeing the bonfire, his tentative steps towards the flames, the surprise at seeing a tortoise shell bubbling away like a cooking pot, and his face when he sees what's cooking…

When it came, the scream was almost Rubyesque.

Gerald grinned as the high-pitched wail bounced around the beach.

‘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.