The Seventh Tide (11 page)

‘He
understood
you!’ exclaimed Eo and Hurple.

Jay gave them a smug grin.

‘I have the software for every known language, written and spoken, in this arm, and I’m not afraid to use it!’

Nobody seemed to think this was funny, but Adom might not even have heard. He’d grabbed Jay’s sleeve – the one on the arm without the computer – and, eyes huge in his face, asked, no,
begged
, ‘Could you do that for me?’

‘Do what?’ said Jay, surprised and uncomfortable with his intensity.

‘Enchant my arm so that I have the gift of tongues,’ said Adom, his voice low with longing.

‘Enchantyour –
?!’ She paused and thought through the kind of vocabulary old Gaelic had on offer. ‘Well… yeah, I guess. Sort of. But why?’

‘It’s a long story’ interrupted Hurple.

She looked down her nose at him. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten
about you
– setting aside you talking at
all –
how is it
you
can speak my language and his language and presumably rat language…’

Hurple shook his head. ‘Long story.’

‘Is that right? And what about
you
?’ Jay turned to Eo.

‘That’s a long story too,’ said Hurple, making it absolutely clear there were going to be no explanations.

Suddenly Jay reached over to the control panel and tapped in another sequence. Almost immediately their pod detached itself from the train, slid over into a side tube and stopped.

‘Are we there?’ asked Eo.

She shook her head.

‘Do we get out now?’ asked Hurple.

‘No.’

‘So… what’s happening now?’

‘Nothing,’ Jay
stated firmly. ‘Nothing whatsoever of any shape or description is going to happen until
you
have told
me
exactly
everything.
’

Hurple tutted and humphed and tried to bully her into starting the pod up again, but Jay was having none of it.

‘I don’t care how long your stories are,’ she said firmly. ‘We’re going nowhere until I’ve heard the lot.’

That was clear enough, so, with extremely bad grace on the Professor’s part, they began to talk…

By the time they’d finished, Jay was leaning forward, elbows on knees, chin in hands, eyes wide. She made several attempts at speaking, but delighted laughter kept getting in the way.

‘That is the most…
outrageous
story I have ever heard!’ she eventually hooted.

‘It’s not just a story, child,’ said Hurple sternly.

‘Quiet!’ Jay hissed abruptly, focusing over his shoulder.

Before the animal could react to her rudeness – she could see his mouth all set to start – she had reactivated the pod and swung it back into the main tube, where it attached itself neatly to the end of a passing train.

‘Guardians,’ she explained. ‘I saw their lights at the other end of the side tube back there.’

Hurple shut his mouth again, but still looked miffed.

‘Look,’ said Jay impatiently, ‘you do
not
want the Guardians getting their hands on you.’

‘We don’t?’ said Eo.

‘Well, put it this way, with a story like yours, it’d take a lot longer than the rest of
this
Tide to convince them to let you go again.’

She couldn’t help letting a bit of a shudder come into her voice. The boys didn’t pick up on it, but Hurple certainly did.

‘Thank you, then, for keeping us clear of “the awful people”, as I believe they have sometimes been called.’

Jay saluted cheerfully. ‘Yes,
sir
, Mr Weasel, sir. Glad to be of service.’

‘That’s
Professor
Weasel – I mean, Hurple – to you,’ huffed the ferret. ‘And as we explained, we haven’t got all day, so could you please
finally
take us to an appropriately powerful but
safe
adult, in the hopes that that adult will be moved to present us with a gift from this Tide?’

He watched the girl’s face lose its manic chirpiness and close up.

‘And now you’re going to say “yes” and mean “no”,’ he said, with a resigned sigh.

She stared at him.

He waved a paw. ‘I
have
met young creatures before, you know. So let’s just skip that part, shall we, and go straight to
why
you don’t want to take us to an adult.’

‘I… um…’ Jay seemed completely flummoxed. ‘Well…’

Hurple just looked at her and waited.

‘All right. OK. You’re right,’ she finally said. ‘I wasn’t planning on taking you to
any
grown-up. And it’s not because I don’t believe you. It’s because I
do
believe you and your crazy story and your mad monk boy there and the shifty boy and
you –
well, if I can believe in
you
, I can believe in
anything
, right?! But the thing is, I really truly can’t think of anyone older than me who would. Not anybody O-class anyway, and I don’t
know
anybody else.’

There was a pause while Eo tried to bring Adom up to speed on the conversation. Jay kept lapsing into English, and besides, many of the words she was using had no Gaelic equivalents.

‘Look, I’m not just making this up. Things like you really do not happen any more, you know. It’s not just the Guardians. There is no grown-up I could take you to who wouldn’t want to study you for the next decade – and besides, even if there were – I have no intention of letting you go!’ She didn’t know exactly when she’d decided she was going with them, but it felt as if had been forever. This was
her
secret,
her
unbelievable adventure, and there was no way she was going to let anybody else get their hands on it, for better or worse.

Hurple groaned. ‘No, no,
no.
Don’t you
see
? This isn’t a game! This is
serious
! Didn’t you understand anything we’ve been telling you? When the boy opened the way between the worlds, he condemned himself to almost certain death. And when he took on the Wager, he included everyone in his universe in the same danger. The same fate.’

Jay looked at Eo. The colour had drained out of his face and he looked as if he were going to be sick.

‘All
right!
she cried.
‘I get it!
Leave him alone. But what
you
don’t seem to get is,
I can help!
Equipment? Technology? General all-round knowledge? I’ve got it all. You said wisdom was one of the things you were looking for, and I’ve got access to
centuries
of information you couldn’t possibly know about!’

‘So give that to us,’ said the ferret gently. ‘Let that be the Gift. Can’t you see how much more use that would be than, well, you?!’

In her mind, Jay knew he was right, but it just made her even more stubborn.

‘You took
him
,’ she said sullenly, pointing at Adom.

‘We didn’t ask for him! We were trying to be offered the help of a great man, a powerful man. Adom just… happened.’

‘Did you force him to come?’

‘No!’

‘Did you trick him into coming?’

‘I told you, no.’

‘So,’ said Jay slowly. Adom is with you not because you tricked him into coming, or forced him into coming, but because he offered himself. Voluntarily. Like… a gift.’

Hurple stared at her for a long moment. ‘Very clever.’

Jay took a deep breath. ‘I’ll teil you what I think,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve just made you an offer you can’t refuse.’

There was a silence, then,

‘I think she’s got a point there, Professor,’ muttered Eo.

Hurple chewed uncertainly on a paw. ‘But surely it’s the technology we need from here?’ he said in a last attempt. ‘And – wait a minute – if you’re the Gift, won’t that mean Adom can’t have his arm enchanted? Because then
that
would count as our Gift?’

Adom looked stricken, but Jay gave him a reassuring pat.

‘You lot really aren’t used to working
around
rules, are you?’ she said. ‘One Gift for the Challenger, yes, and that’s me, because I’m offering and you can’t say no. But where does it say I can’t bring things of my own with me? And where does it say I can’t give things to the Challenger’s
other
Gifts?’

There was a pause. Hurple was not meeting anyone’s eyes.

‘Professor?’ said Adom.

With a sigh, the ferret gave them all an acquiescent wave of a paw.

‘YES!’ hooted Jay, and she planted a big fat kiss on Adom’s cheek, causing him to turn scarlet and forget his own name.

‘Ooops – sorry!’ she said.

‘No kissing me!’ chirped Hurple firmly.

Eo looked hopeful, but Jay just grinned at him and began to recode their route.

‘Right, my friends, first things first – Adom here needs his language capability extended by about four million per cent if he’s going to be properly in the loop. Luckily, when it comes to Assessment, Learning Programmes and the Glorious Greater Glasgow Way of Life – I’m your woman!’ She threw Adom a reassuring look. ‘In other words, one enchanted arm coming up!’

The pod detached itself, nipped along another side tube, paused a moment at the junction and then attached itself to the tail end of a train going in a different direction. It was a moment before the visitors realized what was odd about their new route…

‘Hey! The train – the water – it’s going
up!
said Eo, pressing his nose against the transparent wall.

‘But that’s impossible!’ spluttered Hurple. ‘Everyone
knows
water doesn’t just
run uphill!

Jay snorted. ‘It does if you push it hard enough!’ she said, and, as the ferret drew an eager breath to ask questions, she stopped him with, ‘And if you think I know diddlysquat about hydraulic engineering or infrastructure technology, you can forget it right there. Half that stuff I haven’t covered yet and the other half I slept through!’

Eo laughed, Adom looked confused and Hurple tutted, appalled.

Jay just went on grinning, and their pod sped on past the sights of Greater Glasgow.

Even though it was already late when they reached the Sector where Jay’s mother worked, there were still lights on in the Neural Assessment pod.

Jay swore. ‘Somebody must still be working,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped we’d have the place to ourselves. OK, never mind. Try not to be noticeable, and follow my lead.’ She paused and looked at her companions, Adom in his medieval habit and sandals, Eo with a live animal draped round his neck. ‘Well…’ she said. Just follow my lead.’

She keyed in a code to open the door of the pod and
walked confidently in. A woman in a lab coat spun round, surprised.

Jay! What are you doing here?’

‘Hello, Mrs Chambers. I’m here for some stuff,’ said Jay with a straight face. ‘You know my mum has this conference…’

The woman rolled her eyes. ‘I swear your mother has the makings of a D-class, the way she manages to forget things! Can you find what you need by yourself, though, dear? Only I’m late leaving already.’

Jay reassured her, and promised they’d lock up when they left. The woman was clearly uncertain what to make of Adom and Eo, though. (Hurple was safely out of sight now in the bag.)

‘You’ve met my friends before, have you, Mrs Chambers? Amazing costumes, aren’t they?’ said Jay quickly, and the woman’s expression cleared.

‘Fancy dress party, eh? You’re sure to win a prize!’ she said, giving Adom a friendly shove with her shoulder as she passed.

Fortunately she was in too much of a hurry to notice his lack of reply.

‘Nicely handled,’ said Eo approvingly, once the technician was gone. ‘You didn’t actually lie and you didn’t tell the truth either. Well done.’

Jay gave him a mocking half-bow, and Hurple tutted.

‘The Assessor’s through here. Come on,’ she said, leading the way into the next room.

The Assessor was just a chair, and a kind of silver dome thing on an arm above it, and some discreet panels and keyboards to one side. As far as way-in-the-future technology went, it was pretty unthreatening-looking.

Adom, however, was having none of it. He just stood there, shaking his head, and getting more and more stubborn-looking.

‘You are
not
putting
me
in
that
,’ he stated flatly. ‘Enchant my arm, but leave the rest of me alone.’

Jay gave a sigh of frustration. ‘But I have to assess you
first.
Look – it’s just like, I don’t know – blood types, right? If you needed a transfusion I’d need to know what blood group you were
first
, wouldn’t I, and so I’d test your blood – and this is no different.’ Adom just looked at her. ‘Oh. Yeah. That explanation doesn’t exactly help, does it? Couple of thousand years too soon.’

‘Not quite that long,’ said Hurple, ‘but no, I don’t think that particular analogy is easing his disquietude very much.’

Jay stuck her tongue out at him, and tried again.

Adom, you need to
listen
to me here. All I want you to do is sit in the Assessor and I’ll fit the dome over your head, which will map your brain’s wiring pattern. Once I know what kind of neural class you are, I’ll
also
know what kind of learning package will suit you, we can get you understanding English and any other language you like, and everything’ll suddenly make more sense. Wouldn’t you
like
everything to make more sense?!’

Unfortunately, there just weren’t the words in Gaelic for a good part of what she was trying to get across, and so English (i.e. gibberish) words kept cropping up instead. The overall effect was to just make things worse.