Soul Stealer (18 page)

To bolster her brother’s suspicion, Pip found a volume among their aunt’s cookbooks entitled
Courtly Meals from Courtly Days,
which included instructions for the making of such dishes
as jellie of pyke, conyngys in graueye or with siryppe of honeye, sparwes in aspic
and
trype de motoun.
To kill time until they left, Tim tentatively translated the titles into pike jelly, rabbits in gravy or honey syrup, sparrows
in solidified beef stock and the stomach lining of a sheep. Only one,
whyte wortys,
defeated even his wildest guess.

“Bet this little lot would have Sebastian’s mouth watering,” he declared.

They did not return to Rawne Barton until Sunday
evening. When, on entering the kitchen, Mr. Ledger went to the alarm panel to deactivate the system, he was met by a blinking
diode beeping on the control box.

“Something’s triggered the alarm while we’ve been away,” he said. “Probably a mouse or a spider on a sensor or something.
I’ll give the security firm a ring although, if there had been a problem, they’d have called me on my mobile phone.” He studied
the electronic display. “It was in the sitting room.”

“I’ll check it,” Tim offered, yet no sooner had he done so than he regretted it. His parents always shut or locked all the
internal doors before going away. The intruder — or whatever it was — could still be in there, hunched in a corner, undetected
by the sensors, motionless, waiting…

With trepidation, Tim put his hand on the door handle and gingerly opened it a few centimeters. Through the crack, all seemed
in order. He opened it wider.

The sitting room was undisturbed. Even a car magazine he had dropped on the floor by the armchair just before they had left
on Saturday remained open at the page he had been reading. He inspected the windows. They had been neither forced nor opened
but, on the outside sill of one of them, was a small clod of dried mud with a beech leaf embedded in it.

“Mouse or spider,” he confirmed, returning to the kitchen where his mother was beginning to prepare supper.

“Any homework to do?” Mrs. Ledger inquired.

“Did it on Friday,” Pip and Tim chorused.

“In that case,” she responded as Mr. Ledger went into the sitting room to switch on the television, “supper in fifteen minutes.”

Pip and Tim went upstairs. Sebastian was sitting on Pip’s bed. He looked drained. His face was pale and his body hunched.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

Sebastian did not reply. Tim appeared at the door.

“Sis…” he began, then he saw Sebastian. “What’s happened?”

“I have spent most of your absence defending this house,” Sebastian said in a weak voice.

“From what?” Pip asked uneasily

“From the wodwo,” Sebastian answered.

“The wodwo!” Tim exclaimed. “You mean Scrotton’s been here?”

“Yes,” Sebastian replied. “He spent some hours attempting an entry last night. He was unsuccessful but, while endeavoring
to open a window, he caused the alarm to operate.”

“Do you think Yoland sent him?” Pip asked.

“It is possible,” Sebastian said. “To Yoland, this house has a certain reputation. However, I think his intention was for
Scrotton to ascertain if anything out of the ordinary was occurring here. All he saw was a normal family domicile.”

“If he had got in,” Tim mused aloud, “he would have found my printout of his master’s Internet Favorites list…”

“How did you keep him out?” Pip asked.

Sebastian smiled knowingly and replied, “There is
more to Frère d’Aurillac’s book than Scrotton has discovered. Eventually, some men in uniforms with powerful lights and two
large dogs arrived and Scrotton fled.”

The sound of footsteps approached Pip’s door along the corridor.

“That’s our mother,” Tim warned. “You’d best hide or she’ll want to know how you come to be here only a few minutes after
we’ve got back.”

No sooner had he spoken than Mrs. Ledger knocked on the door and inquired, “Can I come in, Pip?”

Pip was about to stall her, but Sebastian had vanished into thin air.

As their mother came in, Tim squeezed by her in the doorway and went to his room to boot up his computer. It was as he waited
for it to get up and running that he noticed the window and his spine crept. On the outside, the glass was smeared with dried
streaks of mud. It was plain they had been made by hands scrambling to get in.

It was Sebastian who first saw the announcement. Written in Yoland’s immaculate handwriting, it was pinned to the science
department noticeboard and read:

Starting on Monday, the Atom Club will meet every week

at lunchtime in Chemistry Lab One.

Membership restricted to Years Seven and Eight.

Keen on Science?

Come and join!

More wonders of Science than you’ll ever see in lessons.

“What do you make of that?” Tim pondered.

Sebastian considered the notice before replying, “I cannot say, yet I sense it is ill-omened.”

“Whatever the case,” Pip said, “we’ve no option but to join.”

And so it was that, the following Monday, the twelve founding members of the Atom Club, including Pip, Tim and Sebastian —
and Scrotton — sat on stools in a semicircle in front of the demonstration bench. Behind it stood Yoland, a complex molecular
model made of large colored beads and rods at his side.

“Scientists,” he began, “know that radioactive elements have what is called a half-life. This is the length of time it takes
for their radioactivity to decay by half. It is like saying you have a kilo of sugar but every hour it grows less by fifty
percent. After an hour, you have only 500 grams left, another hour 250, another hour 125 and so on.”

“What happens when there’s nothing left, sir?” Pip asked.

“A good question,” Yoland replied. “In the process of decay, the element changes into another form of itself or, possibly,
into another element. For example, when uranium-238 decays, it forms thorium-234. It follows, therefore, that there is never
nothing left.”

“How long does it take?” asked another pupil.

“It varies,” Yoland answered. “The isotope of carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years, but uranium-238 has a half-life of
four and a half billion years.”

“What’s an isotope?” questioned someone.

“An isotope is another form of an element,” Yoland replied.

“Are there any that have short half-lives?” Tim inquired.

“Indeed, there are,” Yoland responded. “Some elements have exceptionally short half-lives. Rubidium-94 has a half-life of
just under three seconds. Now,” he glanced up at the laboratory clock, “the bell will ring soon so let us move on to a practical
demonstration before we cease for today.”

At this point, Yoland reached along the demonstration bench and pulled over a piece of equipment that reminded Tim of a car-battery
charger. It had several switches on the front, a dial and a wire leading to a sensor that looked like an aluminium cigar tube.

“This,” Yoland announced, “is a Geiger counter. It measures the presence of radioactivity.” He flicked a switch. A small red
light came on. “As you can see,” he announced, waving the sensor about in the air, “we are in this classroom virtually devoid
of radioactivity. There
is in existence what is called background radiation, given off by the ground or substances in it. Granite, for example, emits
such radiation in measurable quantities but otherwise we are comparatively free of it. However…” He cast a look at Scrotton.
“Will you do the honors, Scrotton?”

Without a word, Scrotton entered the preparation room and reappeared carrying a large polished steel canister. On the side
was painted the bright yellow and black propeller-like warning sign for radioactive material. From the way he moved, it was
obviously very heavy, but he had no difficulty lifting it on to the bench.

“This container,” Yoland explained, “is lined with lead. Radioactivity cannot usually penetrate this metal and so it acts
as a protective shield.” He moved it to the middle of the bench. “In this is a radioactive element,” he went on. “All radioactivity
is dangerous and so must be treated with respect. As the saying goes concerning fire, radioactivity is also a good servant
but a bad master.”

“Bit like Scrotton,” Tim muttered under his breath.

“The element in this container is polonium-212. It is commonly to be found in hospitals where it is used in treating cancer.
Radioactivity destroys living cells.”

“Can we see it?” asked a boy at the end of the bench.

“No, you may not!” Yoland replied brusquely. “That would be dangerous.”

“How big is it?” asked a girl next to him.

“The piece is the size of about six grains of salt,” Yoland answered, “and is contained in a block of clear plastic.”

“Why?” inquired a second boy.

“Because,” Yoland explained, “that way it cannot be lost. Consider how easy it would be to lose a grain of salt.”

“What would happen…?” the boy persevered, but Yoland interrupted him.

“The school — at least, this building — would have to be closed down and the NRPB — that’s the National Radiological Protection
Board — would have to be called in to sweep the building to find it. So,” he added, smiling benevolently, “don’t get any ideas,
any of you. It’s stowed away in the chemistry department safe. And there it will remain.”

And I bet I know the combination, Tim thought, making sure he was not looking in Yoland’s direction as he did so.

“Now,” Yoland continued, “all of you step back from the bench. Remove the lid, Scrotton.”

Scrotton grasped the canister and slowly unscrewed the lid. Yoland held the cigar-tube sensor over the mouth. Scrotton quickly
removed the lid. Immediately, the Geiger counter started clicking furiously, the needle on the dial dancing to and fro. Yoland
moved the sensor nearer to the canister until the clicking was an almost continuous high-pitched buzz.

“Replace the lid, Scrotton.”

Scrotton did so. Immediately, the Geiger counter fell silent.

“Thus,” said Yoland, “are you introduced to the wonders of nuclear energy. For radioactivity is energy. It is what powers
the sun, drives the universe, is at the very center of creation.”

The bell sounded for the end of the lunch break and the first meeting of the Atom Club broke up.

Sebastian did not speak as they made their way to the first class of the afternoon.

“Something troubling you?” Tim asked as they lined up for the next lesson.

Still, Sebastian kept his peace.