The Curiosity Machine (20 page)

Gerald looked at him and arched an eyebrow. ‘And?'

‘We don't know if they're friendly, do we. You read stories about remote islands. You don't know what might be hidden in the jungle.'

Ruby let out a long, weary sigh. ‘He's talking about cannibals,' she explained to Felicity and Gerald. ‘There are only three things that give Sam the willies: rats, actual zombies and cannibals.'

‘Shush!' Sam said to his sister, then lowered his voice. ‘Someone might be listening.'

Ruby groaned. ‘Look, dunderhead, there are no such things as zombies. If no boats have ever been here, then with any luck there won't be any rats. And there aren't any cannibals anymore.'

‘That's only because they ran out of people to eat,' Sam said. ‘Until we showed up. And besides, boats have been here. Jeremy Davey was shipwrecked here, or dumped here or whatever brought him to this place. So there probably are rats. And by the same logic, there are probably zombies and cannibals as well.'

Ruby looked at her brother in disbelief. ‘Well, if there are cannibals then I'll have plenty of willing hands to help me spit roast you for dinner,' she said. ‘Come on, that
trail looks like it hasn't been used in ages. It was probably left by some botanists years ago when they were doing some nature research.' Ruby jumped down and started along the path. ‘Let's see where it goes.'

Gerald gave Sam a what-have-we-got-to-lose shrug and hopped down to join Ruby.

Felicity prodded Sam between the shoulder blades and pointed the way. ‘Let's go, hero,' she said. She followed Sam as he picked his way down the woodpile. ‘Anyway, aren't you meant to be the world's foremost zombie slayer?'

Sam plodded after Gerald and Ruby, deeper into the surrounding trees. ‘I am,' he said, ‘provided there's a video screen between me and the zombie in question.'

The branches soon met overhead, and the path disappeared like a tunnel into the undergrowth. The sounds of the waves and the seabirds surrendered to a whirring chorus of insects and bugs, a song that floated in the thick tropical air like a beehive trapped under a sodden blanket. Gerald smacked a hand against his neck and inspected the results on his fingers. ‘Mosquitoes the size of fighter jets,' he mumbled.

Ruby soldiered on at the head of the expedition. ‘I can't imagine this was a load of fun for Jeremy Davey.'

Gerald stopped walking and rested his hands on his knees. ‘Summer in Sydney isn't as hot as this,' he said. He drank from the water bottle and passed it to Ruby. Between the four of them, they drained it and
continued their march. Red-bellied dragonflies and brightly coloured beetles flitted across their path, wings flashing in the fingers of sunlight that managed to pierce the jungle canopy. Sweat more salty than the ocean stung Gerald's eyes, and the first throb of a headache knocked at his temples.

He was hungry, and thirsty, and over-heated. This trek into the unknown had disaster written all over it.

After almost an hour of hard slog, the four hikers stepped out of the jungle into a broad clearing. A giant tree had fallen, opening a space in the canopy to the sky.

‘Oh, my gosh,' Felicity said, stumbling to a halt. ‘It's like a fairy glade.'

Sunlight streamed into the clearing, picking out a curtain of dust motes and pollen that waved in rivulets of silver and gold. A nest of low rounded boulders dotted the jungle floor, as if set out as seats for a pixies' tea party.

‘Look up there,' Felicity said, pointing to the topmost branches. ‘Butterflies.'

Gerald craned his neck. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of flittering wings reflected blues and oranges, yellows and reds. ‘That's pretty amazing,' he said. He dropped onto a mossy boulder. ‘But I'd give the lot of them for a barrel of cold water.' He shrugged the backpack from his shoulders and flopped onto his side.

‘Ursus is out of his mind,' Felicity said, finding a boulder of her own to collapse on. ‘This island is huge. Jeremy Davey could have dumped the perpetual motion
machine anywhere. We could have walked past it for all we know.'

‘Read the note again, Gerald,' Ruby said. ‘Maybe we missed something.'

‘Shouldn't we just concentrate on looking for water?' Sam said.

Ruby smiled thinly at him. ‘Humour me,' she said.

Gerald pulled the zip lock bag from the backpack and flattened the note on the boulder. ‘Let's see,' he said, and read the deciphered code: ‘
I have taken the infernal machine of Drebbel and consigned it to the depths but my conscience is ill at rest. I am fifty miles NE of Culpepper Island.
' Gerald looked up. ‘I guess that's here.' He continued: ‘
I do not know if I deserve rescue so I rely on the judgment of the one who finds this message. May your soul be raised on butterfly wings
.'

‘That's it?' Sam said. ‘The machine could be anywhere. What's that even mean: consigned to the depths? Did he toss it into the bay where Fry dumped us out of the helicopter, or did he throw it over the side of a boat a mile out to sea? There's an awful lot of deep out there.'

Felicity watched a golden butterfly waft from the treetops. It landed on her nose. She eased it onto a fingertip and held it up to her eyes. ‘I like his sentiments about butterflies, though,' she said. She marvelled at the changing hues as the creature's wings opened and closed. ‘They are so beautiful.'

Gerald glanced at Felicity. ‘If I'm not mistaken, that's a Galapagos Sulphur,' he said.

Sam almost rolled off his boulder with laughter. ‘Look at you, butterfly boy,' he hooted. ‘Maybe Jasper Mantle got it right with his birthday present. Since when did you become an expert?'

‘Lepidopterist,' Felicity said.

Sam turned his head to look at her. ‘You're just making up words now.'

Felicity studied Sam with a look of pity. ‘A lepidopterist is a butterfly expert,' she said.

Gerald's cheeks flushed. ‘I'm not an expert,' he said. ‘I just recognised it from the butterfly collection at the Billionaire's Club. It was framed on the wall, along with about a million others.'

‘Except for the Xerxes Blue,' Felicity said. ‘That's the one Jasper Mantle is always going on about.'

‘That's right,' Gerald said. ‘There was an empty frame there, reserved for that one.'

More butterflies descended from the branches above and soon the glade was a festival of flashing fairy wings.

‘Odd that Jeremy Davey would use the name of the world's rarest butterfly as the keyword for his coded message, don't you think?' Sam said.

‘Unless he found one here,' Ruby said. ‘Then it would make perfect sense.'

Gerald shrugged. ‘Even so, what would make it so special that he would use its name as the code keyword?'
As he spoke, an extraordinary butterfly touched down as light as pixie dust on the coded note. Its wings, closed together like an angel's hands in prayer, were as vibrant as the blue water around a coral island. Gerald watched as the butterfly slowly folded open its wings. Then he gasped. ‘
May your soul be raised on butterfly wings
,' he whispered. ‘Come look at this.'

Felicity, Sam and Ruby carefully clustered around the butterfly. Its wings were panelled with an alternating pattern of a bright blue square, then a completely transparent one.

‘It's like a stained glass checkerboard,' Felicity said. ‘How gorgeous.'

‘Sure, the wings are pretty,' Sam said. ‘But so am I. What's so special about them?'

‘Not the wings,' Gerald said. ‘Look at the pattern they make on the message.'

The butterfly opened its wings once more, flattening them above the paper. Sunlight shining through the coloured squares lit up a series of letters in Davey's original note.

‘What are you saying, Gerald?' Ruby asked.

Gerald fixed her with a manic look. ‘What if this code isn't fully solved yet?' he said. ‘What if Jeremy Davey hid another message inside his original note?'

Chapter 18

The butterfly beat its wings and took off towards the trees. Ruby's eyes did not leave Gerald's. ‘Do you think that was a Xerxes Blue?' she said. ‘The
extinct
Xerxes Blue.'

‘It's only “extinct” because no one has seen one for a couple of hundred years,' Gerald said. He pointed to the treetops. ‘But look, there's a jillion of them up there. What if Jeremy Davey used the pattern in their wings to hide a second message? A message that can only be solved when you are on this island with these butterflies.'

‘Do you remember which letters were highlighted?' Felicity asked.

‘No. We're going to have to catch one.'

Sam looked up to the blizzard of butterflies above
their heads. ‘How are we going to do that?'

Gerald opened his knapsack. ‘By using the second most useless of my birthday presents,' he said, and pulled out Jasper Mantle's collapsible butterfly net. Gerald pressed the brass button on the end and the net deployed. Then followed fifteen minutes of jumping, waving, shouting and falling over, until Gerald finally snared one of the butterflies.

‘Careful,' Felicity said as Gerald laid the net on the boulder. ‘It's so delicate; you don't want to damage it.'

‘You take it out,' Gerald said to Felicity. ‘Butterflies seem to like you.'

‘That's because they have impeccable taste,' Felicity said. She peeled back the net and plucked out the butterfly. It seemed to relax, and its wings draped open.

‘Hold it over the message,' Gerald said. Felicity manoeuvred the Xerxes Blue above the page. It closed its wings for a moment, then settled again, wings spread. The sun shone down on the page and Felicity moved the insect up and down as if focussing a camera. Individual letters from the message were picked out in sharp, vibrant blue.

Gerald grabbed a pencil and circled the highlighted places. ‘Got it,' he said. The butterfly slipped from Felicity's fingers and fluttered into her hair.

‘What's it say?' Sam asked, crowding over Gerald's shoulder. Gerald shrugged him away, trying to see the paper clearly himself. Then he read the message:
x
pjnpjcob ci ibbs jl vxpbn
.

There was a moment's silence. ‘Well, that's just rubbish,' Sam said. ‘A code within a code? Pffft.'

Gerald furrowed his brow. Then it struck him.

‘Of course!' he said. ‘It needs to be decoded as well. Just like the original message, using the keyword Xerxes Blue.' Gerald quickly drew up a fresh grid, the same as the one he had used to decipher Jeremy Davey's original note.

‘Now I swap the letters,' Gerald said, scribbling madly, ‘and the butterfly code says…oh.' Gerald blinked at the page.

‘Well? What's it say?' Ruby asked.

Gerald looked at her. ‘It says:
A tortoise in need of water
.'

There was another moment of silence.

‘That's even more rubbish than the first one,' Sam said. He flopped back onto his boulder. ‘What's that supposed to mean? A thirsty turtle?'

‘Not turtle,' Ruby said. ‘Tortoise.'

‘It's the same thing,' Sam said. ‘A slow, lumbering lump of a thing that is worse than useless, worse than—'

Sam stopped talking. The boulder juddered beneath him. ‘Whoa!' Sam said. ‘Was that an earthquake?'

Ruby looked at her brother. ‘Has the heat got to you?'
she asked. ‘There's no earth—whoa!' Ruby dropped to her belly and gripped onto her boulder. ‘What was that?'

Gerald and Felicity looked at the Valentine twins with alarm. ‘What is the matter with you two?' Gerald said. ‘I haven't felt a thing.' Then Gerald's boulder sprouted a round head on the end of a long neck, rose up on legs and started walking out of the glade. Gerald rolled off into a patch of ferns and looked up with astonishment.

‘Ooh!' Felicity said. ‘Tortoises!' She let out a trill of delight as her boulder ambled to its feet and set off after Gerald's.

Gerald stood back as more giant tortoises rose from their rest and formed a slow but determined caravan out of the glade and further along the path. Ruby stepped off the top of her ride and joined him. ‘Do you get the feeling this path was created by tortoises and not botanists?' she said. ‘It's a tortoise motorway.'

Gerald looked in wonder as the beasts trudged in single file out of the clearing, taking Sam and Felicity with them. He scooped up the backpack and its contents and followed the convoy into the jungle. ‘They're enormous,' he said.

‘Galapagos tortoises can grow pretty big,' Ruby said. ‘And pretty old—like more than a hundred years.'

‘Where do you think they're going?' Gerald asked, ducking under a low vine.

Ruby flashed Gerald a grin. ‘Maybe they're looking for a drink.'

Gerald's brain whirred. ‘Like in Jeremy Davey's note?'

Ruby nodded, her grin growing into a smile. ‘Yes, clever clogs,' she said. ‘Exactly like in Jeremy Davey's note.'