The Curiosity Machine (21 page)

‘Come on, then,' Gerald said, and pulled Ruby around to squeeze past the last of the tortoises. ‘Let's beat them to it.'

They caught up with Felicity and Sam, who agreed reluctantly to dismount from their steeds. ‘See you later, Turbo,' Sam said and gave his tortoise a pat on the shell. ‘Don't overtake on blind corners, all right?'

The path soon emerged from the tangle of the jungle and wound up a slope of rocky scree towards the mountain at the centre of the island.

‘You really think the tortoises would come all the way up here for water?' Sam said, scuffling his shoes along the flinty path. ‘It's a bit of a trek.'

‘Why not?' Gerald said. ‘It's not like they'd be in a hurry to do anything else.'

‘I don't think they're in a hurry to do much at all,' Felicity said.

Ruby nudged Gerald with her shoulder. ‘The more you think about it, the more ingenious Jeremy Davey's code is. The only way you can decipher it fully is to be on what's probably the only island in the world where you can find a Xerxes Blue. It's brilliant. The perpetual motion machine must be here somewhere.'

‘At least, some place where a tortoise in need of water wants to go,' Felicity said.

‘How do we know that's not at the bottom of this path rather than the top?' Sam said. ‘That's where the ocean is.'

Gerald adjusted his backpack on his bare shoulders. ‘I guess we get to the top and find out.'

The path continued up to a saddle on the ridgeline, about a hundred metres on.

‘What do you think?' Ruby said.

‘Looks like a good place for a rest,' Gerald said. They scrabbled the last of the way, sending a stream of loose pebbles down the slope behind them.

‘If the tortoises weren't thirsty before they came up here, they would be by the time they arrived,' Sam said. ‘I'm parched. What are the odds of a Coke machine behind those bushes?'

The path disappeared between two scrubby shrubs. Gerald crawled through the tangle of twigs and leaves, then stopped short and stared at what lay before him. Ruby, Sam and Felicity joined him on hands and knees.

Six giant tortoises rested at the edge of a large rockpool of crystal clear water, gulping their fill.

‘Tortoises in need of water,' Felicity said, shaking her head. ‘How would they even know to come all the way up here in the first place?'

‘If you live for more than a hundred years on an island, you're bound to come across all sorts of interesting
things,' Sam said, ‘even if it does take you a while to get from A to B.'

Gerald kneeled beside one of the tortoises and cupped his hands into the pool. ‘If it's safe for them to drink, it should be okay for us,' he said, and tipped the handful of water down his throat. It tasted of honey and lavender. ‘That is so good,' Gerald said.

The six tortoises were soon joined by four young adventurers, all with their heads down and bottoms in the air. Gerald splashed water over his head and chest and fell back onto a rock to let the cooling breeze dry him off.

‘That may be even better than one of Mrs Rutherford's meals,' Ruby said, closing her eyes and letting out a long, low breath.

‘No wonder the tortoises come all the way up here. Have you ever tasted anything so fresh and sweet?' Felicity said. She rose to her feet and wandered further around the pond, settling on a grass tussock. ‘This is a lifesaver.' Then she noticed something tangled in the longer grass behind her. She tilted her head to the side.

‘That's strange,' she said.

Ruby looked up. ‘What is, Flicka?'

‘There's something wedged into the undergrowth here,' she said.

Felicity got down on her knees and rummaged in the snare of grass and twigs, and pulled it out.

She held up a human skull.

Ruby's screams startled birds from their nests all the way back to the beach.

Chapter 19

It took Ruby a minute to respond to Felicity's calming hug, and even after she stopped screaming, the jabbering and the rapid breathing and the quivering continued for a few minutes more.

Sam observed the meltdown from the far side of the rockpool. ‘Ruby isn't much of one for skeletons,' he explained to Felicity. ‘She had a bad Halloween experience when she was six.'

Gerald emerged from the bushes where Felicity had found the skull, his hair studded with leaves and sticks. ‘There's a whole set of bones in there,' he said, dusting off his hands. ‘And a stack of empty tortoise shells. It looks like that's the place you crawl into when you're ready to die on this island. It's probably best if Ruby doesn't have a look.'

‘Do you think it's Jeremy Davey?' Felicity asked.

‘There's no way to tell for sure. Whatever clothing he had has rotted away,' Gerald said. ‘But this was in his hand.' He held up an old bottle, the dark glass weathered and pocked. ‘Look familiar?'

Felicity reached out to take it. ‘It's the same as the one we found in Mason Green's apartment in San Francisco,' she said, holding it up to the sun. ‘The one that had Jeremy Davey's message in it.' She peered down the neck. ‘This one is empty though.'

Gerald knelt beside Ruby and put a comforting arm across her shoulders. ‘I suppose that one was for drinking. A last slug of rum before he died.'

Ruby wiped a shaky hand across her face and shot a glance towards the skull by the water's edge. ‘Felicity, could you please put that thing back where you found it?' she said.

Felicity shrugged and burrowed back into the shrubs before re-emerging. ‘Everything's back where it belongs,' she said.

Ruby shivered. ‘At least that answers the question about what happened to Jeremy Davey,' she said, hugging her arms tight across her chest.

‘But not about the perpetual motion machine,' Felicity said. ‘Did you see anything else of interest in there, Gerald? No notes? No diary?'

Gerald shook his head. ‘Just a big nest of dead man's bones,' he said, prompting another squeak from Ruby.

‘Sorry,' he said.

‘Hey, Gerald?' Sam had not moved from the edge of the rockpool. ‘Can you feel a breeze up here?'

Gerald looked up and thought for a moment. ‘Not anymore. It has gone really still.'

‘That's what I thought,' Sam said. ‘So why do you suppose there are ripples on the top of the water over here?'

Gerald, Felicity, Ruby and six tortoises looked at Sam, and then at the rockpool. The surface was corrugated with tiny waves. ‘Curious,' Sam said, and he ducked his head under the water. After a moment, he resurfaced. ‘I think there's something down there. And Ruby—'

‘What?'

‘Don't worry—I'm pretty sure it's not a skull.' Sam did not wait to hear the stream of abuse that Ruby sent his way. He plunged headfirst into the pool.

He emerged a few moments later, cradling a silver sphere the size of a large grapefruit. It vibrated in the cup of his hands, sending a steady judder along his arms and up to his jaw.

‘Is that what I think it is?' Gerald asked, his eyes growing round.

Sam nodded. Ruby stared at the shuddering orb. ‘The perpetual motion machine. These must be the depths Jeremy Davey was talking about. Where tortoises go when they're in need of water.'

Felicity, Gerald and Ruby, and even the tortoises,
craned their necks to get a better view of the curious object that vibrated in Sam's hands.

‘Has it been doing that for the past—what?—almost two hundred years?' Ruby said. ‘Sitting at the bottom of a rocky pool buzzing away.'

‘How do you shut it off?' Sam asked.

‘I don't think you do,' Gerald said. ‘It's perpetual. That's the point.'

‘Then what's the switch on top for?'

Gerald arched an eyebrow, then reached out and slid a small switch to one side. The machine fell to stillness, almost sighing with relief.

Ruby took the machine and held it up to her eyes, studying its polished silver exterior. It was unmarked apart from a band of tiny rivets around its circumference.

‘It's just like the symbol we were hunting for in the Triple Crown challenge in Scotland,' she said. She flicked the switch and immediately the sphere fired into action again, jostling in her grip and almost bouncing out of her hands.

‘Careful!' Gerald said, darting a hand in to switch it off. ‘There's no point in making the discovery of the century if you drop it on a rock and bust it.'

Ruby nestled the sphere onto a bed of grass.

‘So this is it?' Felicity said. ‘What all the fuss has been about. Mason Green wants it. Ursus wants it. Alex Baranov's dad wanted it. My parents have been kidnapped and put through who knows what horrors
for it. Everyone wants a silver rockmelon that goes buzz.'

Ruby ran a finger across the metal surface that gleamed in the afternoon sun. ‘It's been operating underwater for two hundred years,' she said. ‘I think it might be a bit more than just a piece of clockwork fruit.'

Despite the tropical heat, a shiver ran the length of Gerald's spine. That polished ball was the final jigsaw piece in Sir Mason Green's diabolical plot. ‘Whatever it is, for us it's a bargaining chip,' Gerald said. ‘If Mason Green wants it, he's going to have to free our parents to get it.'

The closest tortoise extended its neck over Sam's shoulder to get a better view. ‘Tame, aren't they?' Sam said, tickling the reptile under the chin. It closed its eyes and emitted a throaty gurgle.

‘It's easy to be happy when no one is out to get you,' Ruby said. ‘The real challenge is when you're not at the top of the food chain.'

The tortoise opened its mouth and yawned.

‘Humans almost hunted these things to extinction,' Ruby said. ‘They have the two worst characteristics for survival.'

‘What's that?' Felicity asked.

‘They're easy to catch,' Ruby said, ‘and apparently they're really, really yummy.'

Sam opened his mouth but Ruby spoke up first: ‘No, we are not going to barbecue one, no matter how hungry you are.'

Sam screwed up his face at her. ‘Save your abuse
for later,' he said. ‘We might have our own predators to worry about.' He pointed through a gap in the bushes with a view to the ocean to their north and a sleek jet boat powering towards the island.

Gerald scrambled to his backpack and pulled out the telescope. ‘It looks like the speedboat that Ursus used to get onto the
Archer
,' he said, adjusting the focus on the eyepiece. ‘There's one guy at the wheel and another next to him.'

‘What do you think?' Ruby asked. ‘Rescue party or firing squad?'

‘Seeing as Mr Fry tried to kick Ursus out of a helicopter, it's a pretty safe bet they're not here to tuck us in for the night,' Gerald said.

‘They're bound to have guns,' Felicity said.

‘Can you see if they have any food,' Sam said, ‘because it's either tortoise soup or I give cannibalism a try.'

Ruby shook her head. ‘Spit roasted, I swear. I'll jam the apple in his stupid mouth myself.'

Gerald passed the telescope to Felicity and let a random thought bounce about in his head for a bit. ‘Maybe Sam is onto something,' he said.

Gerald and Ruby burst into the tortoise glade, stumbling through the trees and scrub and sending a plume of
butterflies into the darkening sky. Ruby dropped the two tortoise shells that she had carried on her back from the rockpool onto the flattened space where they had first seen the giant reptiles earlier that day. There were still four or five of them resting in the shadows.

‘Where are Sam and Felicity?' Ruby asked, catching her breath. ‘They shouldn't be this far behind.'

‘Some of those scrubby bushes might take a bit to get burning,' Gerald said. ‘They'll be here. There's no way the people on the boat are going to miss the smoke coming from up there. It'll stand out like a lighthouse on fire.'

Ruby eyed Gerald's backpack where it sat at his feet. ‘Do we have to go ahead with every part of your plan?' she asked. ‘Is it really necessary?'

Gerald peered into the gathering gloom where the path led on towards the rocky beach. ‘It is totally necessary,' he said.

‘Will it work as well as your last grand plan to rescue us?' Ruby asked. ‘You know, the one that ended with an atomic explosion?'

‘I seem to recall it was you who threw the flare gun. Until then the plan had been going perfectly'—Gerald had a sudden vision of being dragged backwards underwater by an out-of-control speedboat—‘give or take. Anyway, this plan is rolled-gold guaranteed.' He picked up one of the empty shells and pointed to a flat spot beside a dozing tortoise. ‘That looks as good a place as
any. See how it fits.'

Ruby tucked herself into a ball on the ground and Gerald placed the tortoise shell over the top of her. He sat on it to settle it into place in the soft earth. Ruby's voice echoed from inside. ‘How's it look?'