Authors: Kate Thompson
‘Brilliant!’ I said
There was no Chub key on the bunch in my hand, but it didn’t worry me. After all, I knew someone who was a whiz at picking locks.
7
I SLEPT LATE
after my wakeful night. By the time I came down, Tina and Sandy had already gone off about their business, and only Danny and Maggie were in the kitchen.
‘Hi, Danny,’ I said. He waved a big, flappy hand but said nothing.
Maggie pointed to a snazzy steel clock on the table that looked as though it might have come out of a lunar module.
‘Five minutes and counting,’ she said.
I helped myself to gloopy porridge and honey, and sat down to eat it at the table. Maggie never once took her eyes off Danny.
‘When you can’t hold it any longer,’ she said, ‘take one big breath and hold it again, will you?’
Danny nodded, happy to please. I gobbled the porridge and went back for more. When Danny finally let his breath out the clock registered seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds. As he drew in another, Maggie reset the clock and settled in to watch him again.
‘I think it might be why he’s so scatty,’ she said. ‘He gets too much oxygen to his brain under normal circumstances.’
It made sense. ‘He always seems to be
clear
-headed after he holds his breath,’ I said. ‘And in the mornings.’
‘Does he?’ said Maggie. ‘That fits.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What would make him like that?’
Maggie shook her head, as though she didn’t know. When I finished my breakfast and set out to find Tina, the clock was reading six minutes and forty-three seconds.
Tina was educating some kittens that I hadn’t met before, and Itchy was looking on with a benign but shuttered gaze, as though she might change her mind given half an excuse and swallow them all whole. Their mother, perched on the windowsill, watched her like a hawk.
‘Paws,’ said one kitten.
‘Claws,’ said another.
‘Hello, Christie,’ said Tina.
‘Hello, Christie,’ echoed the kittens.
‘Come to help?’ said Tina.
I couldn’t speak freely in front of Itchy. ‘Yeah,’ I said, sitting down beside Tina on a straw bale.
The kittens were at their most enchanting age, more interested in playing tiger games than in concentrating on their lessons. But their vocabulary was already impressive and they seemed to pick up new words and phrases without effort, far more quickly, I thought, than human children did.
‘They develop much quicker,’ said Tina. ‘In every way.’
‘Develop much quicker,’ said one of the kittens.
‘In every way,’ said another.
Tina gave them a bowl of fresh cream as a reward for their endeavours, and then we left them. In the yard we met Sandy, coming to fetch the kids’ mother and take her out to the mountain-side with the other goats.
‘How can they graze when there’s so much snow?’ I asked.
‘They browse,’ said Sandy. ‘Bushes and heather and stuff.’
To my relief, Itchy went with her to help keep the little flock in order, and I was alone with Tina at last. We went into the shed where Sparky lived, and I called to the sleeping muddle of pups.
‘Loki?’
One tiny head shot up, and then she was squirming out of the puppy mass and searching the floor for me, her tiny tail going nineteen to the dozen. I picked her up. There was no doubt about it. This one was my dog.
She chewed on my little finger as I spoke to Tina.
‘I found out where the lab is.’
‘Oh?’
I kept my voice low. ‘It’s under the garage. There’s a trap door.’
‘Very clever. Did Mother show you after all?’
‘No. A little mouse did.’
‘How sweet,’ said Tina, with something of her old, familiar cynicism. I ignored it.
‘It’s locked, though,’ I said.
‘It would be, I suppose.’
‘So I was wondering . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘I was wondering if you’d come with me. Tonight, after everyone’s in bed. You can open it and we’ll sneak in and have a look.’
I really thought she’d be on for it; as curious and enthusiastic as I was. But she thought for a long moment, and then said, ‘No.’
‘No?’ I yelped.
‘No. If Mother doesn’t want us in there I’m sure she has her reasons.’
I couldn’t believe this was Tina sitting beside me, talking like that.
‘Oh,’ I said, lamely. And then, as my resentment surfaced, ‘Now who’s Goody-Two-Shoes, then? Eh?’
It just rolled off her.
‘This place is different, Christie. This world makes sense to me.’
‘Sense?’ I said. ‘It makes no sense at all, Tina. Not a bit. That’s why I want to go into the lab, see? To try and understand what’s happening here!’
But Tina had already shut me out. She picked up one of the other pups and looked it in the eye.
‘Tina,’ she said. ‘Say “Tina”.’
‘Tee,’ squeaked the pup.
‘Hear that?’ said Tina.
I put Loki back with her mum and moved to the door. ‘I don’t know
what
I’m hearing in here,’ I said. ‘I can’t really believe any of it.’
8
I MOOCHED AROUND
for the rest of the morning, not knowing what to do with myself. I felt like a misfit; completely out of place. Everyone else had a purpose here; something which kept them occupied and motivated. But I was adrift, at odds with everyone and everything, and my only ally in the whole place was a small, pink mouse.
I couldn’t bear to be around Tina any more, so I wandered over and helped Danny, who was digging in the outside garden despite the layer of old snow which still covered the ground. Not for the first time, I envied him his simple existence.
‘I’m a gardener, Crusty,’ he told me, proudly. It was all he wanted. But it wasn’t for me. Digging made my back hurt, and it was boring. After a while I left him to it and made my way back to the house. I was in a foul mood, but just as I was nearing the back door I saw something which set my heart racing and filled me with new optimism.
Maggie was emerging from the garage on her way to make lunch. As she closed the door
behind
her, I saw her drop a single brass Chub key into the pocket of her jacket.
Now I knew where she kept it. Tonight, I would get into the lab.
PART TEN
1
I DIDN’T FORGET
my promise to Claus. Before I went to bed I took it upon myself to get the porridge ready for the morning, and made sure to scatter a few oats and a tiny piece of cheese into the dark corner.
Up in my room, I discovered that I was desperate for some sleep, but I stayed awake, listening to every sound in the house. At around midnight, Claus arrived on my pillow, but the lights were still on at the back of the house and I knew that Maggie hadn’t gone to bed yet.
I filled Claus in on what I had seen and what I intended to do. If he didn’t exactly approve, he didn’t object either, and I knew I had an accomplice in my mission. Together we waited, listening to the drips and trickles from the thawing snow, watching the moon appearing and disappearing among the gathering clouds. At last the lights went out, and soon afterwards I heard Maggie’s soft tread passing my bedroom door. Then the worst of the waiting began. We had to give her time to get ready for bed; maybe read for a while, then get into a sound sleep.
I didn’t want to be rumbled in what I was about to do. I think I must have dozed, because
I
got an awful jolt when Claus’s shrill voice started up right next to my ear.
‘I’m sure she’s asleep now. She must be. Shall I go and see?’
I crept to the door and eased it open. The landing always had a light on in case Danny woke in the night and couldn’t find his way around. Claus scuttled across the floor. The door to Maggie’s room was closed but not latched, and Claus narrowed himself and squeezed through like ectoplasm. A blink or two later and he came oozing back, then raced over to me. I picked him up.
‘Out for the count,’ he said. ‘Snoring like a drunk.’
She was, too. I could hear it myself as soon as I troubled to listen.
‘Right, then,’ I said. ‘To work.’
Back in my room, I wrapped up warm and then re-emerged like a thief in the shadows. Claus rode on my shoulder again, and we crept down to the front hall where the coats were hung. The light from the upstairs landing reached just far enough, and I could see Maggie’s jacket – the top layer on an overloaded hook. I felt in the pocket and pulled out the contents. In my hand were two nails, a small stapler, a box of matches and a pipette. I returned them and tried the other pocket. A sticking-plaster, a glass marble, a tiny torch, a tissue and the smallest screwdriver I had ever seen. But no key.
‘Blast!’
I put everything back and tried the top pocket. A ten pound note. Nothing else.
‘She’s not taking any chances,’ I whispered to Claus. ‘She must have hidden it somewhere.’
‘Maybe she took it to bed with her?’
Before I could reply, Claus took a flying leap and landed on the bannister rail. He shot off like a tiny guided missile and soon disappeared around the bend in the stairs.
While he was gone I borrowed the little torch from Maggie’s pocket and made a search of the kitchen. I opened every drawer and cupboard, every jar and bin and pot, and I looked into every jug and bowl and cup. Nothing.
But Claus was having better luck. If he hadn’t squeaked I would have trodden on him as he came hurtling across the kitchen floor. The brass key was in his mouth.
‘You’re a star!’ I hissed, picking him up and taking the key. He rubbed at his jaws with his pink paws.
‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘Heavy.’
I sympathised. The equivalent for me would have been carrying a pick-axe in my teeth from here to the farmyard and back.
‘Where was it?’ I asked.
‘Tied around her wrist with a rubber band.’
‘You’re not serious?’
He made a chopping motion with his long incisors. ‘Neat and clean,’ he said. ‘She didn’t feel a thing.’
It wasn’t going to be so easy to put it back.
But
for the moment I couldn’t let that bother me.
Claus ran up my clothes like a sailor in the rigging and took up his position beside my ear.
‘What are we waiting for?’ he said.
A wave of anxiety threatened to swamp me, but I resisted it and it subsided.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’
2
THE CASUAL SLOPPINESS
of the garage seemed sinister to me, now that I knew how carefully it had been contrived. But Claus’s cavalier attitude gave me courage, and I closed the door behind me and turned on the light. Immediately we entered a timeless zone. In a windowless building, day and night lose their meaning.
The key turned silently in the lock, as though all the parts were oiled. I pulled back the trap door; trunk, rags and all, and peered into the hole below.
A set of wooden steps ran down from the garage floor. There was a switch on the wall just below ground level, and I flicked it as we began to descend. Below me the lights came on, revealing a long corridor at the foot of the stairs with six doors leading off it, three on each side. It was more than a lab. It was a whole underground complex.
The first room I entered was lined with steel oxes. Wires ran from terminals on each one to a panel of dials and switches on the far wall. I read some of the labels beneath them.
POWER ON/OFF. SECONDARY SUPPLY. BACK-UP. EMERGENCY POWER.
I took another look at the boxes and saw now that they were batteries; sturdy and sophisticated, built to last. Presumably the lab needed a steady supply of power and, since the sources Fourth World relied upon were unpredictable, a large storage capacity was needed.
I was pleased with my deduction and tried to explain it to Claus, but he wasn’t interested. He cut across me.
‘Come on, come on. What’s next?’
I closed the door carefully behind us and listened for a while in the corridor before opening the next. That one wasn’t a lab, either. It was a study, or office, or library, or all three combined. There were books everywhere, scattered across both of the desks, stacked on the floor, and stuffed every which way into the bookcases which covered two of the walls. There were papers and journals; drifted up at the backs of the desks, jammed into filing racks, heaped beside the computers which hummed in their sleep.
Claus wanted to get out of here, too, but I was determined to have a look around. I ran my eyes over some of the titles on the shelves:
Dictionary Of DNA. Early Man And His Forerunners. Techniques Of Avian Genetics
. On a lower shelf I spotted a book that I had once seen Mom reading, called
Chariots Of The Gods
. Beside it were others that looked like popular reading;
Crop Circles: Fact Or Fabrication?
and
Lost Civilisations
. There were a few science fiction books as well. Even one that I had read myself:
2001
, by
A
.C. Clarke. I took it out and flipped through it. Inside the front cover someone had written his name. BERNARD RUSSELL. Other than that there was nothing remarkable about the book. It was just a cheap, well-thumbed paperback.
‘Let’s go, Christie. Let’s go,’ Claus nattered. I would have stayed longer; taken a look at some of the papers, but I couldn’t think straight with his nagging.
We moved on. The third room was a bathroom. I was nervous enough to want to use it, but I was afraid the flush would make too much noise, and decided I could wait. The fourth room was full of caged animals. I got a glimpse of a terrier dog, a duck, a glass box that contained eggs of all different shapes and sizes, and something that might have been a fox. But the creatures made such a din when they saw us that I closed the door quickly, my nerves a-jangle.
We moved on. The next door, at last, opened on to the lab.
It wasn’t exactly what I had expected. The only lab I had ever seen was the one at school, with its rows of benches and stools, its Bunsen burners and brown bottles and bell jars. This one was much more high-tech. There was a bank of electrical equipment against one wall; what looked like fridges and ovens. On a central platform were powerful microscopes and a whole array of glass and plastic syringes and containers of different shapes and sizes.