The Curiosity Machine (7 page)

Gerald's stomach tightened. He sat straighter in his bed. ‘Is he—'

‘Dead?' Green said. ‘Sadly, no. The prickly old curmudgeon is still with us. It seems he is fashioned from stern stuff. And quite buoyant stuff as well. He floated out of that stormwater drain like a cork on the tide. But don't worry. He's dried out and back to work with me. He is quite safe, for now.'

Gerald did not miss the threatening tone in Green's voice. He repeated his first question: ‘What do you want?'

Sir Mason Green eased back in his chair and smiled.
‘You've been spending too much time with that lawyer of yours, Prisk. You're straight down to business. Very well—you have something that I want and I need to find a way to get it from you as painlessly as possible.'

A cold loathing flowed through Gerald's veins. Would this man torment him for the rest of his life?

‘You have some plans,' Green continued, ‘plans that you found in the cellars under the Billionaire's Club.'

‘For the curiosity machine?' Gerald said. He was tired of Sir Mason Green's mannered riddling. It was time to talk turkey.

Green flinched—only a twitch at the corner of the mouth but enough to let Gerald know that he had scored a point.

‘How stupid do you think I am?' Gerald said. ‘I know you want those plans, and what's more'—he straightened his back to sit as tall as he could—‘I know why you want them.' Gerald did not have the first clue why Mason Green wanted the plans. But the impact that his words had on the man on the other side of the television screen showed the depth of Green's desire.

‘How could you possibly know?' Green blustered. ‘That machine has been shrouded in mystery for centuries. We only completed the final translation describing its full purpose from the Voynich manuscript a few months ago.'

Gerald knew he was in treacherous waters. He decided to swim on. ‘It was King Rudolph's greatest
treasure,' he bluffed, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. ‘And we all know what he valued the most.' Gerald paused, hoping for Green to fill in the gaps.

Sir Mason lifted his chin and took in a slow breath. ‘For one still so young, you continue to impress. As you have somehow stumbled on the secret that lies behind the curiosity machine I hardly need tell you of its worth.'

Gerald blinked. How long could he keep this up?

‘Nor of the danger it poses if it falls into the wrong hands,' Green continued.

‘And you're the right hands, are you?' Gerald said.

Green narrowed his eyes. ‘I'm the most reliable hands, if you get my meaning.'

Gerald nodded. He had no idea what Sir Mason Green was talking about.

‘If it's in my hands, I can promise that lives will be saved. Many, many lives.' Green lifted his eyes and glanced at a point somewhere off-screen. He dropped his voice low. ‘Not everyone can make the same claim. You do understand the potential the machine holds?'

A light sweat bloomed on Gerald's forehead. ‘Massive potential,' he said, trying to sound confident. ‘Just so much…potential.'

‘Precisely,' Green said. ‘I'm glad that we agree on that score, and that I am the logical choice of person to take possession of the plans.'

Gerald tilted his head. ‘What gives you that idea?' he said. ‘You're the last person I would trust.'

The shadows under Green's eyes lengthened, casting his face in a cadaverous scowl. ‘You will deliver the plans to me,' he said, ‘or I will kill Professor McElderry.'

Gerald shrugged. ‘Do what you want,' he said. ‘I tried to save him and he didn't want to be rescued, so the professor has made his choice as far as I'm concerned.' Gerald hoped Mason Green couldn't see his knees shaking under the sheets.

There was a moment of tense silence, broken by Green. ‘Well done, Gerald,' he said. ‘You have seen though my hollow bluff. McElderry still has important work to complete here so he will be the last person I kill. Frankly, I'm surprised the whole threaten-to-kill routine has got me this far. You leave me no other option than to take our negotiations to the next level.'

Gerald swallowed. There was a level above killing someone? ‘What do you mean?' he asked.

Sir Mason smiled a greedy smile. ‘Money,' he said. ‘I'm going to offer you an unimaginable sum of money.'

‘I've already got an unimaginable sum of money,' Gerald said. ‘Like, heaps of the stuff. More than I know what to do with.'

The smirk returned to Green's lips. ‘Your billions will pale to insignificance when you hear my proposal. Tell me, Gerald, how would you like to go down in history as the world's first
trillionaire
?'

That got Gerald's attention. One. Trillion. Dollars.

Sir Mason Green leaned forward, fairy lights
reflecting in his glossy eyes. ‘That's right, Gerald. You could spend a million dollars a day for the next thousand years and you still wouldn't be halfway through it all. Do you have any concept of the power you could wield with that kind of money? Entire countries would rise and fall before you. Your power would be absolute.'

‘But you don't have any money,' Gerald said, his mind still trying to grasp the concept of a trillion anything. ‘All your bank accounts have been frozen. You're basically bankrupt.'

Green flinched again. He clutched his hands before him. ‘You deliver the plans to me and we get the curiosity machine finished. Once it's up and running and making its quite unique product, you can imagine what governments would pay.' Green nodded in a knowing way.

Gerald, of course, knew nothing. Rather than worry what type of ‘product' would convince a government to hand over a trillion dollars, he tried to change the subject. ‘What about the perpetual motion machine? Have you given up on that?'

Gerald regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth. The location of the perpetual motion machine, as far as it could be narrowed down to somewhere near the Galapagos Islands, was known only to Gerald, Ruby, Felicity, Sam and Inspector Parrott of the London Metropolitan Police. If Sir Mason Green was to find out that Gerald had that information, then—

‘Oh, do you mean the perpetual motion machine
mentioned in this note?' Green asked. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table at his elbow and held it up to the screen.

Gerald's mouth fell open. It was the coded message from Jeremy Davey that revealed the location of Cornelius Drebbel's mysterious invention, which once set running would never stop. ‘How did…' Gerald began. ‘Who…' Then his eyes shot wide. ‘That's my handwriting at the bottom! That's the same message we solved in New York.'

Green glanced at the page in his fingers. ‘Or at least a copy of it,' he said. ‘It pays to have friends in high places. I still need perpetual motion. That's what powers the curiosity machine, after all. It's the ongoing source of energy that's going to mint you a trillion dollars, Gerald.'

The sight of the message in Green's hands sent a chill through Gerald's bones. That man had too much access to Gerald's life. ‘I'm not giving you the plans,' he said. ‘I don't trust you.'

The grin on Sir Mason's face faltered for a moment. ‘Trust has nothing to do with it, Gerald. You have a simple choice: will you be better or worse off if you accept my offer? Take my word for it—you will be immeasurably better off, because if you don't hand over those plans there are strategies in place that—' Green's voice rose to a villain's pitch. He composed himself then resumed: ‘Great fortunes are at stake here—they can be lost just as easily as they can be made.'

Gerald had heard enough. It was his birthday in the morning and he had seen quite enough of Sir Mason Green for one night. ‘How can you possibly hurt me?' he said. ‘You're on the run from the police on two continents. All I know is, if you're so desperate to get the plans then the plans are dangerous. And since there's nothing you have that I want to trade for them, I'll probably just rip them up and flush the pieces down the toilet.'

Gerald raised the television remote and pressed the off button just as Sir Mason Green launched from his chair and started shouting. The screen went blank. Gerald leaned across to switch off the cabin lights. He snuggled into the comfort of his pillows, trying to be content in the knowledge that at least he would have a better night's sleep than Sir Mason Green.

Chapter 6

Gerald woke to the sound of someone battering on his cabin door. He propped onto his elbows in the middle of the bed and blinked the sleep from his eyes.

‘What? Who is it?' His brain still sat somewhere in that hazy gap between sleep and awake, and he wasn't entirely sure if the racket wasn't a continuation of his dream. He and Sam were waging a war for survival against an army of warrior pigs, which Sam had infuriated with his repeated taunts of ‘bacon sandwiches!' Swords and tusks clashed in a battle that had only ended when Mrs Rutherford turned up with a hand-cranked meat grinder and a thousand empty sausage casings. It was a most disturbing encounter.

Gerald was relieved to find that it was only Ruby,
Sam and Felicity pounding on the door and not a delegation of armoured hogs. The door juddered on its hinges and the three of them barged into Gerald's palatial suite, launching onto his bed and almost bouncing him out the other side.

‘Wakey, wakey, birthday boy!' Ruby was on her knees, springing up and down on the mattress. She stopped. ‘Why are there potato wedges all over the floor?' she asked, screwing up her nose.

‘It's a long story,' Gerald said. He had every intention of telling his friends about his conversation with Sir Mason Green, but there was the little matter of his birthday to celebrate first. Bad news could wait.

Felicity dropped onto the foot of the bed. ‘We've got you the most amazing present, Gerald,' she said. ‘I can't wait until you try it out. It's epic. You are simply going to love it. Love. It.'

Ruby's sly grin told Gerald that the gift was either going to delight him, or annoy him intensely. ‘Where is it, then?' Gerald said. ‘If you're going to wake me at dawn it had better be good.' Ruby sprang off the mattress as if it was a trampoline and flicked a switch on the nightstand. Floor-to-ceiling curtains drew back with a soft
burr
to reveal the sun beating down on an enormous expanse of deep blue water.

‘It's almost lunchtime, dozy,' Ruby said. ‘We've been clay pigeon shooting off the back of the boat waiting for you to get up. It's loads of fun. Come and try it.'

Gerald wiped his hands down his face. ‘Sorry, I didn't get to sleep till late. Why didn't anyone come and wake me up?'

Sam slid open a glass door onto a private deck; a breath of salt air wafted through the cabin. ‘What do you think we're doing now? Rolling you over and tucking you back in? Come on, the day's half over and all you've managed to do is drool on your pillow.'

Gerald kicked back the covers and crawled out of the bed. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Let me get dressed and we'll go blow some targets out of the sky.' He stumbled across to the wardrobe, the ends of his pyjama pants brushing across the plush carpet. He slid open the door and stared inside for a long moment.

‘What's the matter, Cinderella?' Ruby asked. ‘Can't find anything for the ball?'

Gerald blinked down at the bottom of the wardrobe. ‘Have any of you seen my backpack?' he asked.

There was a general shaking of heads. ‘Surely you don't still have that same ratty one you've been carting around since we first met you?' Ruby said.

‘No, that one got pretty much destroyed in the waterfall under the Billionaire's Club,' Gerald said. ‘I've just got a plain St Cuthbert's one now.' He dropped to his knees and tossed out random shoes, balled-up socks, underwear. ‘I'm sure it was in here.'

Ruby plucked up a pair of undies between her forefinger and thumb as if it was biological waste. ‘Does
it really matter?' she said, her face wrinkled with distaste. ‘I'm sure St Custard's has a few in reserve.'

‘I'm not worried about the bag,' Gerald said, his head and shoulders still buried inside the wardrobe. ‘It's what's inside it.'

Felicity's eyes lit up. She jumped from the bed. ‘It's the note from Jeremy Davey, isn't it?' she said. ‘Or the plans for the curiosity machine! You
are
going to hunt it down after all. I just knew it. That's so tremendously, fantastically exciting. When do we start? Is Captain Cooper charting a course?'

Gerald ducked his head out of the wardrobe and looked at Felicity the same way he might look at a grenade with the pin pulled out. ‘No, I'm not talking about that at all,' he said. ‘I'm just looking for my sunglasses—I think I left them in the bag.'

Felicity's face fell. ‘Oh…' she said.

‘Honestly, Felicity,' Sam said. ‘What is it with you? You've been banging on about this for days.'

Felicity spun around and turned on Sam, her voice a flint on stone. ‘Of course I've been banging on about it! How can you have a mystery like that, so close to being solved, and then do nothing to solve it? Doesn't that just tear you up? When you're so close to something that you desperately want, but you can't put your hands on it. Something that's really important. Aren't you even a little worried about that?'

There was an awkward silence. Ruby took Felicity
by the hand. ‘Come on, Flicka. Let's leave Gerald to get dressed.' She guided Felicity across to the door. ‘We'll see you two at the back of the boat,' Ruby said. ‘We'll be the ones with the shotguns.'

The cabin door closed and Sam turned to Gerald. ‘That was all a bit weird.'

Gerald pulled on a T-shirt and some shorts, kicking his pyjamas into a pile on the floor. ‘What is it with Felicity at the moment?' he asked. ‘She's obsessed with finding the perpetual motion machine.' Almost as obsessed as Sir Mason Green, he thought.