The Curiosity Machine (3 page)

Sunlight glinted across a long, metallic object. Gerald's brain tried to process what he was seeing: not twenty metres away, two strangers were closing fast and one of them was wielding a very long, and probably very sharp, samurai sword.

Chapter 2

Gerald and Ruby scrambled to their feet, their boots slipping in the churned-up ice. The strangers were advancing fast. The one carrying the samurai sword wound it through a broad arc above his head. The blade seemed to sing as it sliced the air.

Gerald had no time to wonder who they were or what they wanted, and the sight of the razor-thin blade scything the air left him few options. He grabbed Ruby's arm and they hustled over the rise, only to be slammed in the head with two hard-packed snowballs.

‘Stop it!' Gerald yelled, waving his arms at Sam and Felicity as he and Ruby raced towards them. ‘Get to the chopper!'

Sam was about to unleash another missile when
Ruby took him by the jacket. ‘Run,' she said. ‘There's someone with a sword.'

Felicity led the sprint, but they only made it a short way before she pulled up. ‘What are you doing?' Gerald asked, breathless in the thin alpine air. ‘Don't stop.' But then he saw. The strangers in the white snowsuits had split up—the one without the sword had sped across the ice to be between them and the distant chopper. Gerald glanced over his shoulder; the swordsman was right behind them. Both strangers were clad head to foot in white, complete with white ski masks covering their heads. The only things that were not white were the sunglasses that masked their eyes.

The rotors were turning on the chopper, but there was no sign of Mr Fry. Gerald, Sam, Ruby and Felicity clustered together, as if a larger foe might scare off the attackers. The two figures in white did not seem put off at all.

Sam's eyes narrowed. Then he took a determined pace forward and threw his last snowball hard at the samurai's head. In a blink, the blade cut the air, slicing the snowball neatly down the middle. The two halves shaved either side of the man's head and landed harmlessly on the ground behind him.

‘Crud,' Sam muttered. Then he took off. ‘Run!' he cried, not looking back.

Gerald, Ruby and Felicity set off after him as he scarpered like a startled rabbit across the ice towards the glacier's edge. Gerald pumped his arms, sucking frozen
air into his lungs. He caught up with Sam and chanced a look back over his shoulder. Felicity and Ruby were at their heels; the two figures in white just metres behind.

‘What's the plan?' Gerald asked, running apace alongside Sam.

‘Start heading up this way,' Sam said, nodding to their left. ‘Circle back to the chopper.'

Their pursuers were running either side of them, like a pair of sheepdogs, boxing them in. ‘They'll cut us off before we get there,' Gerald puffed. He stumbled and almost tripped. His boots sank to his ankles as the ice turned to slush near the glacier edge. ‘It's melting,' he panted. ‘The ice is melting.'

Without another word exchanged, the four of them stopped. They knew that there was not going to be any Hollywood escape. Gerald rested his hands on his knees, puffing out plumes of steam. Despite the exertion, he suddenly felt very cold. The two strangers slowed to a walk. Gerald looked in the direction of the helicopter but it had disappeared from sight behind a low rise. Even if Gerald yelled for help, Mr Fry wouldn't hear over the sound of the rotors. They were sunk.

The figure with the sword stopped and pointed the tip of the blade at Sam. He raised his other hand and beckoned for him to come closer.

Sam looked at the swordsman, confused, then at Gerald. ‘You want me?' Sam asked. ‘Are you sure you've got the right person?'

Ruby's eyes rounded with fury. ‘Sam!'

Sam held up his hands. ‘I'm just saying that I'm not usually the one these types of guys come after. Normally, you know, it's…someone else.' Sam's eyes darted back to Gerald.

The figure beckoned a second time and Sam took a reluctant step forward. The samurai sword slashed with two precise swipes at Sam's shoulders, and the backpack toppled to the snow.

Sam stared at the bag where it had fallen. ‘You want this?' he asked. He scooped it up and tossed it to the man with the sword. ‘Here. Take it.'

The man caught the backpack on his chest and held it out, inspecting the St Cuthbert's school crest on the front. He nodded at his colleague, and they both turned to go.

‘Is that it?' Sam said. ‘Is that all they want? A poxy school backpack?'

‘Keep quiet, Sam,' Felicity hissed.

‘Look, you're relatively new at this.' Sam turned to Felicity. ‘In these situations, the bad guys are never just after something as simple as a bag or whatever. You wait and see.'

The bandit with the sword swung back to look at Sam, then advanced on him, swift as a snow leopard. Sam froze in place as the swordsman placed a gloved index finger over Sam's lips, said ‘
Shh!
', then planted his palm over Sam's face and shoved him backside-first into the snow.

A black helicopter soared over the lip of the glacier and wheeled in a tight arc behind the two attackers. It hovered a foot above the ice and the men clambered up onto the skids. The chopper swung skywards. It was gone in seconds.

Felicity dropped to her knees and helped Sam up. ‘Are you all right?' she asked.

Sam watched as the chopper reappeared down in the valley, following the river towards the coast. ‘I'm fine,' he said, dusting himself off, ‘but those guys must have been really hungry to go to all that trouble for some sausage rolls.'

Chapter 3

Ruby pitched the game controller onto the leather couch and shouted at the television screen, ‘This is impossible!'

Sam leaned across his sister to grab the controller and pressed to play again. ‘What's your problem? After you decapitate the fifth zombie you duck and roll to pull the meat cleaver from the dead guy's ribs then throw it between the last zombie's eyes, making sure to shoot his undead wolfhound in the head before it can tear your throat out. Can't get much simpler than that.'

The screen exploded in a gush of high-definition digital gore. The growing intensity of the crimson perfectly offset the drain of colour from Felicity's cheeks. She put her fingertips to her lips. ‘That is terribly
sick-making,' she said.

Sam spun the controller on his finger like a gunslinger holstering his pistol. ‘Perfect score. I should kill zombies for a living.'

Gerald watched his friends from the comfort of his armchair, then turned to gaze out the window, down onto the clouds. They may have been cruising thirty thousand feet above the South Pacific, but the laughter and cries of frustration from around the games console could be coming from any living room in the world. They were still two hours from Bora Bora so there were plenty more zombies to slaughter before they touched down.

Ruby jumped into an armchair next to Gerald. ‘I can't believe you imagined I'd actually enjoy that game,' she said. ‘What were you thinking?'

Gerald shrugged. What he had been thinking was
Zombie Viscera IV
was an outstanding gift that should have won over Ruby's affections and had her begging to be his girlfriend in a heartbeat. But she hadn't even let him finish his proposal (in the form of a badly rhyming limerick, delivered in the snow in Central Park in New York, no less) before shooting him down in flames.

‘It helps pass the time,' Gerald muttered, staring at the clouds. He still hadn't fully forgiven Ruby for rejecting him. But his birthday was only a few days away, so he figured he was likely to get a kiss for that. ‘How about the necklace I gave you? Do you hate that as well?'

Ruby ran a finger along a fine chain around her
neck and flipped out a gold key from under her collar. It was about five centimetres long with two cross arms forming an X at the tip. She smiled at it. ‘No,' she said. ‘It's a lovely reminder of how we escaped from the cellar under the Billionaire's Club. It's a perfect gift. See, you're not totally hopeless.'

Gerald was tempted to launch into another limerick, but Sam spoke up before he could start. ‘So, who were those snow ninjas up on the glacier?' He separated a zombie's head from its shoulders with a swing of his video blade. ‘And would they be as good as me at slaying the undead?' Another four lurching souls lost their noggins.

Felicity's face faded to the colour of chalk. ‘I can't watch this anymore,' she mumbled and joined Ruby and Gerald by the window.

‘Whoever they were they didn't fly to the top of a glacier just for Mrs Rutherford's sausage rolls,' Ruby said, ‘delicious as they are.'

‘Like I told the police in Christchurch, it's got Sir Mason Green's fingerprints all over it,' Gerald said.

‘But Green drowned underneath the Billionaire's Club in New York,' Felicity said. ‘Didn't he?'

‘It looked that way,' Ruby said. ‘Along with poor Professor McElderry. But like that search-and-rescue policeman said at the time, if he was a strong swimmer he could have made it to the East River.'

‘Well, I hope those ninjas were on the glacier because of Mason Green and I hope that he is still alive,' Sam
said. The light went out in a zombie grizzly bear's eyes and its demonic howl filled the room.

‘Why would you say that?' Felicity asked. She was trying not to look at the television screen, but was somehow drawn in by the hypnotic swing of Sam's sword and the rhythmic harvesting of the zombies' brains. ‘Mason Green is a totally foul human being,' she continued. ‘Do I have to remind you he was happy to kill all of us for the perpetual motion machine?'

Sam skewered three more zombies on his sword to create an undead kebab. ‘Yes, Jeremy Davey, coded notes in bottles, perpetual motion machines tossed overboard. Blah, blah, blah. You don't need to lecture me about Mason Green's qualities as a human being,' Sam said. ‘All I mean is, if he managed to survive that fall into the New York sewers then maybe Professor McElderry did as well.'

More zombie heads tumbled from shoulders. ‘Nice swordplay, Sam,' Gerald said. ‘I was thinking the same about the professor. You've got to hold out some hope.'

Ruby leaned forward and patted Gerald's knee. ‘If sending two ninjas to steal our lunch is the worst thing that Mason Green can do then your birthday should be a breeze,' she said. ‘You can forget about Xerxes Blue butterflies, or Voynich manuscripts, or mad billionaires trying to find relics from some collection cobbled together by King Rudolph four hundred years ago. You can have a simple birthday.' She paused to look at the
plush interior of the Airbus A380 Flying Palace. The sound of laughter filtered through from the bar where Vi and Eddie were entertaining the Valentine parents and the other guests. ‘Well, as simple as anything can be when it's associated with you.'

Gerald laughed. ‘It's a shame your mum and dad couldn't come on this trip, Felicity,' he said.

Felicity turned her back on the flickering screen and tried to ignore Sam's delight at finding a flamethrower. ‘The Colonel is stuck in Afghanistan with his regiment,' she said, ‘and mother can't bear to leave the ashram in Nepal until she achieves nirvana, so there's not much point in worrying about them.' She closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. ‘Still, one must carry on. I've packed three swimsuits, and I plan on going back to England with at least some sort of a tan. I intend making the girls at St Hilda's green with envy.'

‘We're spending a month swimming, snorkelling, cruising and exploring from Bora Bora to Martinique on board a luxury mega yacht,' Ruby said. ‘Somehow, I don't think it's a suntan that's going to make them jealous.'

Felicity raised her perfectly formed nose a little higher in the air. ‘Just so long as someone is jealous,' she said.

A cry went up from Sam as a dozen zombies wrestled him to the ground and feasted on his entrails. He screwed up his face. ‘Oh, nasty,' he said. ‘Here Gerald, see how you go.'

Gerald dropped onto the couch next to Sam and thumbed the restart button. The zombie hordes descended. ‘These things are relentless,' he said, jerking the controller left and right. ‘They never stop.'

Sam slid onto the floor by Gerald's feet and stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. ‘Just like a perpetual motion machine,' he said, ‘only hungry for brains.'

‘Sam?' Gerald said, toggling the controller to and fro.

‘Yeah?'

‘That's the last time I want to hear the words “perpetual motion machine” mentioned on this holiday, okay?'

Felicity balled up a paper serviette and bounced it off Gerald's forehead. ‘Don't be such a misery,' she said. ‘Trying to solve those puzzles to find the perpetual motion machine was fun, if you forget the near-death experiences. And deciphering a coded message that someone wrote in the 1830s then stuffed into a bottle and threw into the sea is sort of romantic, when you think about it.'

‘If that's your idea of romantic,' Sam said, ‘remind me never to ask you out to the movies.'

Felicity turned twin eyes of liquid scorn upon Sam. ‘Girls like me,' she said, ‘do not go out with boys like you.' Sam's face deflated like a soccer ball with a hole in it. Felicity returned her attention to Gerald. ‘Solving mysteries can be such fun, don't you agree,' she said. She
sidled over to Gerald and eased onto the couch beside him. ‘We managed to figure out the perpetual motion machine is somewhere near the Galapagos Islands. That's pretty fascinating. And that's not even including those old plans we found in the cage under the Billionaire's Club.' She inched closer to Gerald. ‘Remember?' she said. Gerald could feel the warmth of her breath on his neck. ‘Don't you remember the plans? What were they for again?'

Gerald didn't respond. What was Felicity wittering on about? He had hordes of the undead to deal with.