Back To The Divide (37 page)

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"What is this place?" hissed Betony as Felix tried to open the sliding door with a gloved hand.

"It's a company of some sort," said Felix. "I think this is their head office. I don't know what they make; it wasn't very clear from the logo. A couple of squiggly lines and a pentangle. The name doesn't mean anything to me, either."

"Guess what," said Rutherford, sticking his head around Emily's door.

"You've been voted best-dressed man in the company?" returned Emily, with a sarcastic glance at his mismatched socks.

Rutherford looked down at his feet and made a face. "They both looked the same color without the light on," he said. "I'm busy, Rutherford, what is it?"

"The magic's gone out of your theory, I'm afraid."

"How so?"

"I've been monitoring a UFO site on the Internet, and there were three reports yesterday.
Three."

"You've got aliens on the brain, Rutherford. I'm pursuing a different line of inquiry, as you know."

"All three sightings were within a five-mile radius of a certain house."

"Now you do interest me," said Emily, looking up from her keyboard. "Were there any descriptions?"

"Yes. All exactly the same. A rectangular shape that undulated slightly."

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"Rectangular?
Are you sure? UFOs are usually cigar-shaped or round."

"I know."

"Weird."

"Very weird."

"However," said Rutherford, his heart beating a lot faster all of a sudden, "it's not as weird as the real explanation -- a flying carpet that's just landed on the balcony outside, behind you, with two kids on board."

"That's not even slightly funny," said Emily, refusing to look.

"I agree," said Rutherford. "I think you'd better open the door and let them in."

"Stop being so childish," said Emily. And then she heard the sound of someone trying to open the sliding door. She spun around, and Rutherford felt himself fill with pure joy as her mouth dropped open in amazement.

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***

20

***

"Someone's coming," whispered Betony.

A woman materialized on the other side of the glass. She was slightly built with brown hair and olive skin. Her eyes were dark and intense and set a little too closely together. There were a couple of clicks as she undid the catches fastening the door, and then she slid it back. She glanced briefly at Betony, clearly noting the fact that she was wearing gloves -- but, more surprisingly, she looked very hard at Felix. A man appeared behind her. He had thin sandy hair and a high forehead, and he was wearing a lab coat, mismatched socks, and glasses.

"I think you're looking for your parents, aren't you?" said the woman.

The man looked momentarily stunned. "How did you work that one out, Emily?" he asked.

"Family likeness," said Emily. She smiled at Felix, although the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "You'd better come in. It's a bit windy this high up. And bring your magic carpet."

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Felix picked up Nimby, and he and Betony stepped into the room. It was an office, with desks and computers and filing cabinets and stylish leather chairs.

"The statues are through there, aren't they?" said Felix, pointing at the door. He had the compass in the palm of his hand, and he knew which way the needle was pointing. He wasn't going to reveal the source of his information, however; he had a feeling things might get tricky.

"Just ... sit down for a moment," said Emily. "I'd like to talk to you."

"I'm sure you would," said Felix. "But all I really want is the statues of my mom and dad, you see."

"But they're not statues, are they? If you touched them with your bare skin you'd turn to marble as well. Just like the wasps, and the frogs, and the cat, and the young men who tried to burgle your house. You know how the petrification was done, I imagine?"

"Not exactly," said Felix, filing the remark about burglars but not wishing to pursue it right at that moment. "I do know how to reverse it, though."

"That'll do," said the man with the sandy hair. "Explain the antidote, and we'll be able to --"

"Shut up, Rutherford," said Emily.

"We haven't got time to stand around here talking," said Betony, annoyed that none of the conversation had been directed her way. "Come on, Felix." She made a move toward the door.

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"Oh, you can't go in there," said Emily, quickly stepping between Betony and the door. "Top secret, you see. Dangerous, even."

"Perhaps I'll phone the police," said Felix, reaching into his pocket for his mother's cell phone. "Breaking and entering, followed by theft ... or would it count as kidnapping?"

"I think it would count as acting in the public interest," said Emily. "The precautions we had to take when we burgled your house were considerable. We did it at night, so that we could use ultraviolet light to track down every single piece of marble. NBC suits to avoid all skin contact, a suction sampler to pick up all the invertebrates. We stopped the chain reaction; you and the rest of the world should be grateful."

Felix clenched his fists with fury. "Grateful? Can you imagine what I felt when I came back and found my parents were missing?"

"Came back?" said Emily sharply. "Came back from where?"

"An adventure vacation," said Felix quickly. It wasn't too far from the truth, either.

"Look," said Rutherford, "this is all getting us nowhere fast. We've got something you want, you've got something we want. Let's do a deal. The ingredients of the antidote in exchange for your parents."

"And the carpet," said Emily.

"No way," said Felix, feeling for the matchbox in his other pocket. "You'd use your knowledge for all sorts of dreadful things."

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"Let them have the statues," said Rutherford suddenly. Emily turned to him. "Have you gone mad?" she snapped. Rutherford shook his head.

"Oh, I know what you're thinking," said Felix. "First, you could watch us turn them back into people and try and work out how we did it. Second, you must have all the insects that turned to marble somewhere here as well. Third, you know where I live and you could always pay me a visit and try and force me to tell you what I know."

Emily didn't look quite as annoyed with Rutherford as she had.

"Well," said Felix, "I hate to disappoint you -- but I only have a limited amount of the chemical required." He took the vial of water from the prediction pool out of his pocket and showed it to them. "Once it's gone it's gone, and I can't get anymore."

"Where
did
you get it?" asked Emily.

"From an old man," lied Felix, knowing that any mention of the other world would be bad news. Rutherford and Emily glanced at each other skeptically, and Felix took the opportunity to mouth, "Time for your party trick," to Betony.

Betony started to tap her fingers and mutter some words under her breath.

"An old man," repeated Emily slowly, but there wasn't as much doubt in her voice as might have been expected.

"He was an inventor," Felix elaborated. "He died in a fire, and all his records were lost."

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"What a pity," said Emily dreamily, although it was clear she was referring to the records, not the old man.

"So once we've turned everything back to the way it was, that's that." He suddenly realized he had to demystify Nimby, as well. "Even the carpet will return to being just another rug," he lied.

"All that work we did just wasted," said Rutherford sadly.

"I was so close to understanding the principles behind it all, as well," agreed Emily. "It would have been such a fantastic weapon of mass destruction."

"I'd seen it more as an easily sustainable method of suspended animation," said Rutherford. "It could have made interplanetary space travel a reality."

"There's not as much money in space travel as there is in weapons of mass destruction," said Emily.

Betony stopped tapping her fingers, and she and Felix edged toward the door.

Emily suddenly seemed to snap out of her hypnotic state. "If you've got the only antidote there is," she said, her eyes narrowing as she barred the way, "we really can't let you use it all up on something as trivial as your parents." She leaned sideways and took something out of a drawer, concealing it in her hand.

Felix took the matchbox out of his pocket, keeping it behind his back. Would she be prepared to kill them, to keep them quiet? What did she have in her hand? He pulled out the marble snail with his gloved fingers, and then he stepped quickly forward and pressed the snail against Emily's cheek.

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She knew what he'd done right away, and an expression of dismay crossed her face. She tried to grab the vial of water, but her arm seized up. The hypodermic syringe she'd taken from the drawer dropped from her other hand to the floor. The color drained from her face; her hair turned white, then her clothes and her shoes.

Rutherford was backing away across the room, shaking his head, his eyes wide with fear. Felix threw the snail at him, and he became rooted to the spot, the color leaching away as though he were being bleached. His eyes were the last things to be affected, and they carried on moving from Felix to Betony and back again until they set in one position, and the transformation was complete.

"We'll have to change them back last thing," said Felix, retrieving the snail.

Betony nodded.

They opened the door just a crack to begin with, and Felix saw a big laboratory. On the far side were five human-sized shapes, wrapped in some sort of plastic.
Five?
Then he remembered what Emily had said about burglars. There was a big DO NOT TOUCH sign stuck on them. Next to them were some crates, also wrapped in the plastic, also with warning signs. Felix looked at the compass. It was pointing directly at them. The bad news was that there were several people in the room.

"What do we do now?" whispered Betony. "If we turn them all to marble, we'll never be able to change them all

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back fast enough. By the time we get to the last one, the first one will be raising the alarm."

"Alarm," said Felix, giving Betony a broad grin. "Brilliant." He glanced around the office ceiling. Then he dragged a chair to the center of the room, picked up a piece of paper, twisted it into a cylinder, and turned to Betony. "Can you light that?" he asked her, suspecting it was too substantial for him to risk doing it himself and needing several tries to get it right.

Betony nodded, although it was clear she had no idea what he had in mind. She waved her hand over the taper, and it burst into flames. Felix took it from her, climbed on to the chair, and held it beneath the smoke alarm. Within a couple of seconds the most unearthly shriek started up.

Through the crack in the door they could hear a voice saying, "No one told me there was a fire drill this morning."

Someone else said, "There isn't."

There was a brief pause; then there were hurried footsteps as half a dozen people made a rush for the stairs. When the room was empty, Felix and Betony went in. Felix started to cut the plastic off the statues with a pair of scissors he found on a bench. He began with the heads, for identification purposes. The first one was a man in a balaclava helmet, which was a disappointment. The second was a teenage boy, wearing a baseball cap with save the whales printed on it. The one after that was Felix's mother, and he heaved a sigh of relief. Then another teenager, and last of all his father.

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Meanwhile Betony had found a screwdriver, and she was tackling the packing cases. They were easier; she only had to pry up the lids. As she opened each one, she made little noises of amazement at the variety of creatures she found.

The horrible shriek of the fire alarm continued in the background as Felix worked, but eventually the statues were freed of their wrappings. He felt a lump rise in his throat as he saw his parents again, so white and unresponsive. Supposing, after all this, Leona's countercharm didn't work? He took the stopper off the vial of water, and he was in such a hurry that he nearly spilled it. This made him realize that he was going to have to be very careful with it and measure it out drop by drop, or there wouldn't be enough for everything they had to do. He glanced around. There was an eye-dropper on one of the benches: perfect.

The incantation was in his notebook. He took it out and opened it. And just like the last time, the pages were blank. He wanted to scream; how could he have been so
stupid?

"What's the matter?"

"I've been an idiot," said Felix. "A complete and utter
idiot.
Crossing the Divide always wipes out any writing in my notebook. It wasn't until Snakeweed ran my brazzle feather over the pages that I realized there was a way of reversing it. But we don't have one with us."

Betony grinned. "Good thing that Emily person stole your feather as well as the statues then, isn't it?" She pointed to one of the packing cases.