by Piers Torday
Looking really offended, Dad huffs and puffs. ‘I’ve never been … Not in all my …’ He looks at our waiting faces. ‘Yes … Yes, I believe we could – in time, with the right equipment – bring the Iris to life. But it’s not that simple …’
Aida zips her mouth again. ‘All I need to know. Now the second thing.’ She points at Polly. ‘You had the Iris. You all knew where it was. Kester found it. Now it gone again. And all because a man on sticks was waiting for us when we came to rescue you.’
She lets the meaning of her words sink in as we all watch her.
‘No one else knew we even had the Iris. Or that we were breaking into here. So how come Captain Skuldiss knew? It was a trap. Someone set us up. And it sure wasn’t me.’
Everyone looks at everyone else. Polly’s parents draw her towards them protectively. Dad straightens his dirty tie, trying to look innocent. The toad croaks, as if to say, *Not guilty.*
And we hear, as if in reply, from beyond the iron door – the sound both Aida and I have heard many times before.
The sound of an old-fashioned bike horn.
The door to our Facto cell slides open again.
‘I’m so sorry you had to find out this way, my dear, I truly am.’ There is Littleman, still in his sun hat and baggy shorts, standing next to Captain Skuldiss.
‘No! You can’t!’ says Aida.
‘But I can,’ says Littleman. ‘I’m afraid it was too irresistible. As soon as I learned what the Iris really was, I knew it was no use to me. I’m a commercial operator, my dear, not a scientist. We couldn’t realize its value on our own … so I made a phone call to the only company I knew who could. You would never agree, hence your surprise encounter with the Captain here.’
I knew he looked too pleased with himself when he came out of his shack and sent us off on our own.
‘You double-crossing little toad!’ Aida roars.
(And that’s not being nice to toads.)
She runs at him, but he grabs her wrists easily in his spotted hands. ‘Everything for the right price, my sweet. Mr Stone’s terms were more than generous.’ He looks towards me. ‘But I hadn’t counted on your young friend. The deal is not complete. Which is why we’ve come for a little chat.’
Skuldiss bounds into our cell in a couple of crutch leaps. ‘You might not want to tell me or my new friend Littleman where the Iris is, boy-childrens. But perhaps you will sing a different tune when we take you to meet the big boss of this whole here caboodle.’
I look around. You can see the same thing in absolutely everybody’s eyes. Fear.
‘Yes indeedy, old chap. It’s time to have a little talk with Mr Selwyn Stone.’
*
After being marched through more portholed double doors in more submarine-like corridors, I don’t know what I was expecting Selwyn Stone’s office to be like – but it wasn’t this.
A softly lit room, with panelled walls and paintings in soft colours. My footsteps echo across a tiled floor, as the door slides shut behind me. Ahead, a circle of tall wooden stacks.
Shelves.
It must be some kind of library. I remember the one belonging to Polly’s parents at Wind’s Edge, full of their leaf and shell collections. Except this one has a strange smell that room didn’t. A sharp chemical one.
I go up to inspect the first stack and come face to face with an owl, mid-flight, claws raised, beak open –
I stumble back, nearly falling into the stack behind –
And a fox, like the Guardians of the dark wild, cowering and snarling as if I’m attacking him.
But he makes no noise. These animals are silent, and will be forever.
They look real but they’re not. Dad once showed me creatures like these in a museum. When the virus was starting, he showed me animals he thought I might never get to see alive. He showed me round room after room full of lions, tigers and bears that were just like the ones in here – stuffed.
‘Just in case,’ he said. He was right.
Like then, my gaze bounces off glass: a domed jar over the stuffed owl, a cabinet for the mounted fox.
I catch my breath, my heart thudding.
Going along the shelves, I can’t help glancing from side to side at the exhibits around me. Two weasels, frozen in combat for eternity. A giant varnished fish in a frame. An old-fashioned birdcage with silent parrots perched on the bars.
I duck at the sudden sight of a golden eagle above my head, wings outspread, but it’s held still in the air by a dusty chain.
In between the shelves are stag horns and heads mounted on the walls. I look away. I pull open long drawers at the base of each stack and see that they are full of butterflies and beetles pinned under glass lids. And a cockroach, shiny and dead in its drawer. Further down the corridor, a big white bear on his haunches looms up, jaws wide open with rage, paws outstretched –
‘It’s all right. He won’t bite.’
I start, but there’s no one there.
‘Over here!’ calls the voice. It’s coming from behind the bear. I would recognize that voice anywhere.
Slowly I walk past the giant animal, touching his fur as I do – it feels stiff and dry. There’s bright light seeping round the corner of the final stack of shelves, making the eyes of a stuffed wolf’s head glow as if they were on fire.
The chemical smell grows stronger.
I stop in between the shelves, unsure.
‘Come, come!’ says the voice. ‘I don’t bite either.’
I take a deep breath and step around the corner.
The man I last saw in our garden is sat at a small table on a stool, wearing a green apron this time, his sleeves rolled up. There are little beads of sweat on his shiny head.
I can’t see what he’s doing at first.
In a pool of light from a desk lamp, he’s looking at something stretched out on a paper towel. It reminds me of the operating table in Dad’s lab, only that doesn’t have pots of glue, brushes and rolls of wire.
Then I see what the something is.
Our red squirrel.
That poor frightened squirrel, who ran out from his hiding place at the wrong moment and who will never run away from anything again. He is now lying stretched out right in front of me, eyes glazed over. Without meaning to, I reach out –
‘Tut-tut!’ says Mr Stone, slapping my hand away. ‘No touching, please, not until I ask you.’
He admires the creature for a moment. ‘A perfect specimen, don’t you think?’ Seeing the look on my face, he adds, ‘Don’t be sad. Think of it as your gift to my collection. For all the trouble you’ve caused me.’
I want to grab the poor creature, kick the table over and run as far away from this man as I can. But there’s nowhere to run to. Skuldiss and Littleman are waiting outside.
Not waiting for any response, Stone picks up a scalpel from the table and peels the squirrel’s fur off, like it was only a costume.
I turn away, bile rising in my throat.
‘This is a little hobby of mine,’ he says as he works. ‘Keeps me sane from all the madness out there …’ He points at the animal heads on the walls, and in my mind’s eye I see the prisoners down below, the moonless stormy skies above, the overcrowded and hungry city all around. The dark wild deep beneath us, waiting to rise at any moment …
I’d rather think of them than of what lies in front of me.
Perhaps Dagger was right. Perhaps we are worse than him and his wild.
Stone prods at the body with his gloved finger. ‘No marks, you see. It was a very humane death, like the other animals on display here. You saw for yourself. One single dart, as it was for all the beasts.’
I must make some kind of sound, like a gasp, because he raises an eyebrow at me. ‘Go on, admit it. You and your father, your friends downstairs, you all still think I’m a murderer – some kind of monster.’
It’s like he can read my mind.
Stone picks up a pair of scissors from the table and, peering over his
glasses, does something I can’t watch. When I turn back he has laid the mutilated animal back down on the table and is studying me. ‘You can all think of me what you like. Because I’m just the man in charge, Kester, that’s all I am. The head of the company, the head of the country. Sometimes the people in charge have to make difficult decisions for the greater good.’
He wipes his gloved hands with a rag.
‘Contrary to what you may think, I don’t dislike animals. Quite the opposite. Look at this collection!’ He points to the shelves and walls behind me, the museum of dead creatures. ‘Of all the beasts we culled to contain the virus, I instructed my men to always save me one, the finest, if they could – for my little museum. I call it my ark. It’s not just for show either.’ I make a mental note to ask Dad and the Goodacres whether Stone’s museum could help them activate the Iris. Its owner studies me. ‘We’re more alike than you think, Kester – we both save animals, don’t you see?’
For a moment we both look at the rows of shadowy lifeless shelves.
No, I don’t see. I don’t see at all.
Stone reaches into a box of straw beside him and pulls out a clump, which he begins to press tightly into a bundle.
‘But everything I have ever done, I have done for the species I love the most. The human. I’ve had glass towers built so we all had somewhere to live. With the greatest reluctance I’ve had thousands of animals humanely culled so we didn’t get their virus. The money Facto have made from formula, I’ve spent on building the Amsguard to keep us safe from the rising seas. And, if you’d let me have that little Iris of yours, I have one final great project in mind. The most ambitious plan of them all.’ I wonder if that’s what Aida’s mum found out about. ‘We’re the good guys, Kester! Can’t you see that?’
‘No,’ I say. I’m surprised at how loud I sound, my one word echoing off a thousand glass cabinets. But he’s wrong.
‘A pity,’ says Stone sharply, looking up for a moment. ‘You may believe something else, but that’s what I believe.’ He holds up a rough cylinder of straw that he has bound together with wire. ‘We’re really getting there, aren’t we?’
Now he starts moulding a lump of blue clay into a small head. ‘But unfortunately the world has moved on since I made that decision. I’m afraid the planet is rather against us, it seems. Which is why I need the Iris more than ever.’
If only he knew just how much the planet was against him. I clench my fists tight behind my back, my nails digging into my palms to try and stop myself going crazy. Every second I waste in here listening to this lecture, the dark wild could be streaming out of the Underearth, ready to destroy everything in their path.
‘The weather, then the virus – and now, would you believe it, we’re even running out of the raw ingredients for formula.’ I think the people of Waste Town would believe it all right. ‘The minerals, vitamins and dried protein. There’s just too many of us for this planet to cope with.… Now will you look at that – perfect!’
A model of a squirrel, made out of straw and clay and wire. He begins to tug the fur over it, like a hood. ‘Perhaps it might have been hasty to have all the animals slaughtered. But that was the decision I made, and I stand by it.’
‘No,’ I say, and fold my arms. I start to look around the room to see if there is any way out, any weapon that I could use –
‘However, it has come to my attention that certain people have in their possession the scientific data that would make it possible to reverse some effects of that decision. Not only reverse that decision, but create a whole new world.’
Make a new world or bring an old world back? I hadn’t thought before that Stone might want the Iris for any other reason than to destroy it. Perhaps the Iris includes information which this ark doesn’t give him.
He picks up a pair of glittering black glass eyes from a tray with his tweezers and presses them into the head of the stuffed squirrel. They seem to catch mine, dead though they are, and fill me with shame.
‘Such data,’ says Stone, ‘could be extremely dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. You must understand that?’
You bet. Which is why it is in the possession of a mouse very far away.
In trying to stare him out, I accidentally find myself looking at the squirrel. Something I have been trying to avoid since I walked in here. I no longer recognize him as a creature I knew. It looks like he once did, but it feels fake. Like an impostor.
‘That is a great pity,’ he says, producing a brush from his pocket and grooming the fur of the fake squirrel until it almost looks lifelike. He screws the poor thing on to a wooden base which he swivels and turns to face me. I don’t want to look at the black eyes, I can’t –
‘That is a great pity,’ he repeats, examining the squirrel, ‘because if I do not have that information by the end of today, I shall personally take every single one of your precious animals that we have in captivity here and … add them to my collection.’
A tongue flickers out as he licks the sweat off his top lip. ‘And nothing will give me greater pleasure than to watch your face as I do.’
For a moment we stay in silence.
And deep down, inside, that is the moment.
Buried deep in my brain, an electrical connection is made. I feel it. Thoughts racing around my head at the speed of light, turning half-thoughts into clear instructions. At least on this, I no longer feel any confusion. Like a massive weight has been lifted off my chest, I realize that no matter what else happens to me, my friends, my family, my wild or the planet – one thing is for sure.
I will destroy this man.
Not now. But one day. Whatever the price, I will destroy this man in his shiny glasses, and everything he stands for – his empire, his big new mystery project … I will not rest till not one cell remains of them or of him on this earth.
For now, I simply swallow hard while Stone, his hands laid flat on the table, watches me. The lifeless squirrel watches me with dead eyes. And I begin to scope the table, trying to work out whether I can get to the scalpel or the scissors first.
He closes his eyes and sighs. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he says. ‘I would expect more from you.’
Which is when something starts vibrating in his pocket. Stone tuts, and pulls out a slim silver handset.
He places it to his ear. ‘What? … What on earth do you mean?’
I can’t take my eyes off the squirrel.
‘When? … How many?’ His hands are clenching and unclenching on the table, like he’s trying to control himself. ‘Don’t do anything. I’ll be there straight away.’
He snaps the phone back in his pocket and glances up at me.
‘There’s something happening that I think you should see.’
Before I can do anything, he’s standing up and removing his apron, striding out across the smooth floor towards the doors.
I’m about to hurry after him, but just before I do – something makes me pick the squirrel up off the table. Impostor or not, I can’t leave him here. Hugging him close to me, I follow Selwyn Stone out of his ark and back into the maze of the Four Towers.
Selwyn Stone clips ahead in his polished black shoes through Facto’s headquarters. Skuldiss is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he got the same phone call. There doesn’t seem to be anything to stop me making a run for it, or diving into any of the several offices and labs we hurry past, but I keep following him for one simple reason.
The voices.
The voices that slide under every door like a draught, that curl through the ventilation grilles in the walls like poisonous gas and even seep from the lights above our heads like leaking water.
The whispering voices only I can hear – that I hoped I had left behind far underground. The voices that can only mean one thing.
My head is so full of hissing animal cries I can hardly think, but Stone just calmly stabs at a button in the wall, and a set of doors parts for us without a sound. We step into the lift, they close again, a
nd at a speed so fast I have to grip the handrails to stop myself falling over, we rocket straight to the top of one of the towers. My stomach feels like it has been left behind on the ground floor.
For a moment we seem to have left the whispering far behind.
Stone stands in the middle, facing the doors, hands clasped, not even swaying as I cling to the sides.
‘Our nuclear elevator, we call it,’ he says with a smirk. ‘Too fast for you?’
The lift glides to a stop, my stomach heaves again, and the doors open out on to the top of the tower.
I don’t know what to look at first. The huge windows on every wall give a view of all Premium – the glass towers, Waste Town, the railway, the river, the park we hid in, Maydoor Estate, even our Culdee Sack – everything. And above them all, the stormiest morning sky I have ever seen.
A sky with only a slim curve of early-morning moon left in it. We are running out of time. By tonight that will have vanished.
Beneath the windows are black desks, smooth and shiny like giant dashboards. Facto officials in purple jackets are poring over them, talking into microphones, twisting joysticks and snapping orders at one another.
A big digital clock on the wall counts down to the daily curfew. And in one corner, Coby Cott himself, sat under bright lights behind a desk facing a bank of cameras, while someone brushes make-up on to his face.
In the middle of it all stands Captain Skuldiss, hunched over his crutches, gazing out through the large windows. Stone strides over to join him, but I lurk a few paces behind, holding the squirrel close to my chest.
They don’t say anything. They just look.
They look through the big window, at the Facto helicopter flying above the tops of the towers, just like the helicopter which landed in our garden.
A giant purple metal bird, blazing a path of light through the cloud-filled sky. It flies out from between the glass towers and across the river, back towards us.
And it’s being chased.
By a tiny dot. And a very fast one at that, swooping and diving alongside the helicopter, glinting green and purple in the dawn light.