Will idled, enjoying the start of the race, almost forgetting why they were there, watching as the great sails filled and the yachts manoeuvred to cut each other off. Their hulls, lifted by all that magnificent canvas, barely seemed to touch the water. Soon enough the contestants had passed, along with a good proportion of the crowd who fancied testing their vessels against the kings of the sea. Will joined the followers as they danced into the wake of the race, just one among twenty or thirty little boats with nothing to do and nowhere to be on this crisp windy day in early spring, joining the loose convoy of happy, larking vessels—some fast, some not, but all out for a good time—as they sailed down the coast. They quickly lost sight of the racing yachts, and after a few hours most of the other vessels had dropped away and turned back to their home port, although there were a few, like the Sunfish, still sailing south.
Pod scanned the horizon through the binoculars, looking in every direction.
‘See anything?’ Will asked.
‘Nope,’ Pod said. ‘I think we lost them.’
The next destination
There were now just two scientists left on the list: Ganaman Kiveshalan (or Vesh) and Sola Prentice. According to Spinner’s list, Vesh lived in a town on the border of Brundisi, while Sola had somehow managed to get all the way to Sundia. Both places were infamous, although for different reasons.
Brundisi’s government had developed and used the Collodius Device. Even forty years later they were still a pariah nation, sunk in poverty, with dire water problems that the Device, ironically, had done nothing to solve.
Sundia was a huge island nation, remote and isolated in the southern ocean, south and west of the Moon Islands. It had once been a popular holiday destination for people with the time to make the long journey south; but in the troubled years leading up to the Flood it had taken an increasingly isolationist stance. After the Flood, the Sundians had closed their borders, and they hadn’t just closed their borders to refugees; they’d closed their borders to everyone—all ships, all nations, even the Admiralty. Ships that approached Sundia were warned, chased away and sometimes sunk. No one could get in; no one could get out. It was a mystery how Sola Prentice had got there.
‘So it seems pretty obvious we go to Brundisi next,’ Will said. They had sat down together around the saloon table to discuss the next leg of their journey. ‘I mean, I’ve got no idea how you’d even land in Sundia, so really there isn’t much of a choice.’
‘Isn’t Brundisi kind of dangerous?’ Essie said.
‘No more than the Moon Islands,’ Will said.
They continued on towards the south, planning the next stage of their journey. They would need to reprovision; they debated whether they should do that in one of the northern countries and risk being spotted by the authorities, or in Brundisi, where there were few authorities but lots of pirates. They decided to take a chance on the northern countries. Annalie chose a quiet town she’d visited with Spinner.
As they sailed towards the port, busy allocating tasks (Pod would fill the water tanks, Essie would get provisions) they heard a shell chime.
‘We must be in range,’ Essie said, and jumped up and went into the cabin to fetch her shell. When she came back, she was carrying both shells.
‘Annalie,’ she said, a strange look on her face. ‘You’ve got a message.’
Annalie’s heart began to beat faster as she reached for the shell. The message said: Annalie and Will, I know you’ve been looking for me. I’m desperate to see you both. I’m in Gloradol and I’m safe for now but I can only stay for a week and then I’ll have to move on. Please hurry. All my love, Spinner.
Tests
All four of them gathered around the shell to read and re-read the message, which also contained an address and a map reference.
‘This is it!’ Will said. ‘It’s what we’ve been waiting for!’ He turned to Annalie. ‘We’re obviously going, right?’
‘Yes. I suppose so,’ Annalie said, still rather dazed by the shock of it. ‘After all this time, he sends a message now. So weird.’
‘Wait, when did he send this?’ asked Will.
Essie checked the date on the message. ‘Two days ago.’
‘That means we’ve only got five days until he leaves again,’ Will said. ‘We’ve got to get to Gloradol!’
Gloradol was the old capital of Hesh, built more than five hundred years ago from land reclaimed from the sea and protected by dykes. It had been inundated and almost completely destroyed by the Flood, but the Heshans had built an enormous—an enormous—sea wall, pumped out the ocean, and had begun to rebuild their old city again, even more splendidly than before. Hesh was Norlind’s southern neighbour; it wasn’t a big country and they had already sailed past it. The yacht race had taken a southerly route, and Will had kept them on their southerly course while they were considering where to go next. They had come a reasonable distance south; going to Gloradol would mean retracing their steps.
‘Can we get there in time?’ asked Essie.
‘We have to,’ Will said.
‘Now that we know he’s there and contactable, we can just call him and tell him to wait,’ Annalie said.
Will looked at her eagerly. ‘All right, let’s do it, let’s call him now!’
They put the shell on speaker and Annalie pressed the call button, her hand trembling so much with excitement she could hardly keep the shell still. They listened to it ring, then an electronic voice said, ‘This shell is enabled for text only.’
Will and Annalie looked at each other in confusion. ‘What does that mean?’ Annalie asked.
‘You can’t call him. You can only send him a message,’ Essie said.
‘But why?’ asked Will.
Essie shrugged. ‘I dunno. I think it’s cheaper. Or the audio might not be working.’
‘Maybe he can’t talk,’ Will suggested. ‘Maybe he has to stay really quiet, because he’s in hiding.’
‘Could be,’ Annalie said, thinking of old wartime stories about people concealed inside hidden rooms.
‘Or,’ Pod said, ‘he doesn’t want to talk to you because then you’d know it isn’t really him.’
Will looked at Pod. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious to you?’ Pod said. ‘After all this time, he sends you a message saying “hurry, come and meet me here,” and he’s chosen somewhere really close to the last place Beckett knows we were, and you can’t even speak to him.’
Essie swallowed, looking uneasily at Annalie and Will. ‘He does have a point.’
‘Well, let’s just ask him then,’ Will said. He grabbed the shell and typed: Why Gloradol? And how come it’s taken you so long to reply to all our messages? W
They waited for a reply. It came quickly enough: My shell was taken from me and I’ve been out of range for a long time. I thought you were both safe back in Dux. I had no idea you’d come after me. Why did you do that??? Gloradol was not my choice but it’s where I ended up. Does this mean you’re coming? Where are you now? Are you far away?
Will began typing again, but Pod warned, ‘Don’t tell him.’
‘But what if it’s him?’ Will said.
‘He hasn’t said anything that would prove that it really is him yet,’ Annalie said, torn between her desire to believe and her fear that Pod might be right.
‘Okay,’ Will said. ‘Let’s test him.’ He typed: What’s my middle name?
The answer came back: You don’t have one.
‘True,’ Will said.
‘Who was I named after?’ Annalie suggested.
The main character in your mother’s favourite book.
‘How did you get Graham?’ Pod asked.
There was a longer pause this time before the answer came through. Will read it aloud. ‘I was investigating a university science lab not long after the Flood. There were rooms full of empty cages. I found Graham in an office, sitting on top of a cabinet. The scientists had set him free when the Floo
d came but he had nowhere to go so he went back to his lab. He was very thin and very hungry. I fed him, and he stayed with me.’
Pod turned to Graham. ‘Is that how you met Spinner?’
‘Spinner had biscuit,’ Graham said, bobbing up and down.
‘What kind of biscuit?’ Pod asked. ‘Do you remember?’
‘Anchor,’ Graham said promptly. ‘Very hard.’
Anchor biscuits were Admiralty emergency rations. They were not very tasty and hard as concrete (the joke was they were made from actual anchors), but they were nutritious.
Will typed. What did you feed Graham?
There was another pause. Then the answer appeared. Not sure. Probably an Anchor biscuit.
‘You see?’ Will said, relieved. ‘It has to be him!’
‘Or a lucky guess,’ Pod mumbled.
‘He knew all the answers,’ Will said. ‘It’s him! Can’t you be happy about it?’
Pod’s face closed. ‘Just want to be sure,’ he growled.
‘So?’ Will turned to Annalie, to Essie. ‘We’re going, right?’
‘He did know all the answers,’ Annalie said, wanting to be convinced.
Essie looked from Annalie to Will. ‘You’re never going to be able to live with it if we don’t go, are you?’
‘Nope,’ Will said. He grabbed the shell and typed triumphantly: We’re on our way. Don’t leave without us!
The answer came promptly: I’ll be right here waiting for you.
Gloradol
They provisioned as quickly as they could, then turned around and began to sail north with all speed. They would not sail directly into Gloradol—the great port had a naval base attached; it would be like walking into a lion’s den. They agreed that the Sunfish would stay at sea while Will and Annalie went ashore, then made their way overland to the address Spinner had given them. Essie and Pod would stay on the boat, far enough from shore to stay out of trouble, but close enough to be within communication range.
‘This could be it,’ Essie said as they sat around the table eating their dinner. ‘The end of our journey.’
‘It won’t be the end, even if we do find him,’ Will said expansively, helping himself to seconds. ‘We’ll still have Beckett on our tail and he’ll still have to work out what to do with the research. But at least we won’t be chasing round the world not knowing where we’re going.’
‘Spinner might try and send you back to school,’ Essie said, teasing Annalie.
‘He can try,’ Annalie said, laughing.
‘He might have some ideas about how we can get your sister back, too,’ Will said, trying to include Pod. Pod had been in a glum mood since they’d taken the decision to go to Gloradol and nothing could shake him out of it.
‘Maybe,’ Pod said.
The winds were against them; it took many days to beat back to the north. There was a storm in the offing and the seas were rough and miserable. Will was almost beside himself with impatience as the original time frame came and went; Annalie had to remind him that Spinner knew they were coming, and there was no way he would leave without them.
At last they reached the place where they’d decided to go ashore. Essie hugged Annalie and then Will as they prepared to depart. ‘Stay in touch,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave us in suspense.’
‘You sure about this?’ Pod asked, scowling.
‘We have to go,’ Will said. ‘We’ve got to know.’
‘Be careful,’ Pod warned.
‘Always am.’
‘Be carefuller.’
Will grinned. ‘Come on Graham. Ready to go see Spinner?’
Graham let out an ear-splitting shriek. Then the three of them clambered into the dinghy and puttered away towards the distant shore, through sheeting rain that quickly hid them from view.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ Essie said, seeing Pod’s bleak expression.
‘Hope so,’ Pod said.
Hesh was a very flat country, and Will and Annalie could see the Great Sea Wall of Gloradol from a long, long way away. It was a vast construction of reinforced concrete that reared up into the sky, with a walkway cantilevered off the top, dizzyingly high, so you could walk the perimeter of the city and its wall if you chose to. Today was not a day for sightseeing: rain clouds seemed to sit just above the wall, swirling menacingly.
The closer they got to the city, the larger the wall seemed to grow. ‘Imagine if you lived in the shadow of that thing,’ Will said. ‘You’d never see the sunlight.’
‘They thought of that,’ Annalie said. ‘They’ve got mirrors.’
She pointed out angled, mirrored panels high up above the streets that reflected sunlight into the dark spaces under the wall.
Gloradol was new to them; in all their travels with Spinner they had never been here before. It was a slightly confounding city, for although it looked very old, it had been almost completely rebuilt. Gloradol had survived many floodings—the Flood was not its first, although it was probably the worst—and so the Heshans were old hands at picking up the pieces and putting them back just as they were. The narrow streets of Gloradol were still laid out in exactly the same way as they had been two hundred years ago, before the invention of motor vehicles, and the houses had been rebuilt in the old Gloradol style, tall and narrow, with layer on layer of distinctive curved windows, and flat roofs, some topped with gardens. The grand old manor houses, government buildings and museums had been restored to their former glory, and the toppled cathedral had been so carefully rebuilt you would never know it was not the sixteenth-century original.
It was funny, Annalie thought, as the smooth, comfortable and silent electric tram moved them efficiently through the streets, how different things could be from one country to the next. Everyone was hit by the same Flood, but some places were still in ruins, even now, and other places, like Gloradol, were so beautiful it was almost like the Flood had never happened. She’d seen pictures of the ruins of Gloradol—it made for a memorable history lesson—but to look at the city now, so comfortable and prosperous and elegant, it was hard to believe it was the same place. The only reminder of what had happened was the wall, which was hard to miss, since it was taller than almost every other building in this low-rise metropolis, and if you were facing in the right direction you couldn’t help but see it, looming over everything.
They watched the streets go by, grey and glistening, as rain began to patter tentatively at the windows.
‘Where do you suppose the rainwater goes when your city’s built below sea level?’ she said.
Will blinked, suddenly recognising the problem. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But it has to go somewhere, or that wall’s going to turn this city into a dam.’
‘I’m going to find out,’ Annalie said.
She searched the links, looking for answers. ‘They have a state of the art system that kicks in whenever the water levels get too high,’ she reported. ‘The stormwater gets channelled into canals and then they pump it through the wall and into the sea.’
‘Huh,’ Will said, only momentarily interested by the engineering problem. His mind was on other things. ‘Do you think he’s going to be mad at us for coming after him?’
Annalie knew he was talking about Spinner. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Probably.’
‘We had good reasons for coming,’ Will said.
‘I know.’
‘And at least we made it here in one piece. That’s something, right?’
‘Definitely.’
They thought about this for a bit. ‘I think he’ll still be mad,’ Annalie said finally. ‘Happy, but mad. This is our stop.’
Before Will and Annalie left the Sunfish, they’d spent a lot of time planning the best way to approach the place where Spinner was holed up. Essie had gone to work on her shell, pulling up pictures of the district, the streets, the building itself. They’d studied these carefully, working out the best ways in and out, possible escape routes, danger points and hazards. They wanted to be sure th
at once they were reunited with Spinner they knew the quickest way to get out of there and back to the boat. ‘Because every time we go on land,’ Will said, ‘something seems to go wrong.’
They alighted from the tram, Graham riding on Will’s shoulder. It made them a little conspicuous, but Graham had refused to be carried. He was still, perhaps, traumatised by the Norlind police and their cardboard box. They were on a pleasant avenue lined with trees that were just coming into spring bud. Spinner was staying in an apartment building not far from the tram stop.
‘See if you can get him to come to you,’ Pod had suggested.
‘Why?’ asked Will.
‘Because then you can make sure it’s really him before you let him see you,’ Pod said.
There was a large park not far from the apartment building, and they’d chosen this as a possible meeting place. The rain started whispering down again as Will and Annalie walked to the park.
‘Let’s find somewhere to wait out of the rain,’ Will said.
They found a tree; it didn’t offer much shelter, but it was better than nothing. Will scanned the park, which was deserted apart from one or two hurrying pedestrians, while Annalie sent a message: We’re here. Come to the park at the end of the street. We’ll meet you at the fountain.
There was a pause. Then the answer came back: I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’ll need to come here.
Why? Annalie typed.
I was injured and I’m not very mobile. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to worry you—it’s not very serious. But you’ll have to come to me. I’m really looking forward to seeing you both.
Annalie looked at Will, worried. ‘I wonder how bad it is,’ she said. ‘What if we can’t get him back to the Sunfish?’
‘We’ll work it out when we see him,’ Will said. ‘Let’s just find him.’
The Castle in the Sea: Quest of the Sunfish 2 Page 15