by Debi Gliori
“Oh, sigh. I forgot you don't do words of more than one syllable. Let me rephrase this. She has gone to the big factory down the loch. To earn money. As a sort of lab rat and guinea pig type of deal. Not a very good plan, I would say, but when did she ever listen to me…?”
The loch was silent, its surface glassy-calm save for a whirlpool marking where the Sleeper had gone. A vast underwater shadow arrowed down the loch, heading for SapienTech. Tarantella watched for a moment, until the Sleeper's shadow had vanished from sight and then, hearing the distant scream of a shore-bound seagull, she made herself scarce.
In a cage in the containment facility of Room 101, the beasts huddled together, shivering. During the scuffle in the SapienTech parking lot, Ffup had accidentally torched a row of trash cans in an attempt to escape and Sab had turned himself into an immovable lump of stone and had needed to be forklifted into the building. Meanwhile, Knot had been copiously sick all the way through reception, inside the elevator, and along the corridors, and on arrival in Room 101, had suffered the further indignity of being forcibly washed with high-pressure hoses before being cattle-prodded into the cage with Tock. Throughout this sorry episode, Nestor had clung to Ffup and wailed inconsolably before falling asleep in her arms.
In the subsequent silence, the beasts held a whispered conference out of earshot of the security guards flanking the only exit.
“Any ideas?” Tock muttered, rubbing his stinging tail where a particularly vicious blast from a Taser had thrown him across the cage in response to his request for a bathroom.
“Just do it on the floor,” Ffup suggested. “That'll teach them.”
“That's not what I meant,” Tock sighed. “I meant: any ideas about how we get out of here?”
“They do seem awfully keen to keep us here,” Ffup said. “I know the welcoming committee left a lot to be desired, but hey—I think we've got the job, guys. Um…Tock, what d'you think they use that circular saw for? That one with the bucket under it… and what's with all the rubber beds? And all those piles of scalpels and big black paddles with sparks coming off them? And why so many mice in cages?”
“Feel sick …,” Knot whimpered. “Listen,” Tock hissed urgently. “We have to escape. This isn't what I thought it was going to be. We're prisoners, not employees. Check out the saw if you don't believe me. It's got red stuff dripping off its blade…. ”
Ffup swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “I'm going to die ! We're all going to die ! Aaaaaaaargh, HELP, HELP, HELP. SAVE ME! I don't want to die ! YEEEEEEARGH, somebody DO something!”
The beasts cowered in a corner, out of range of Ffup's fiery hysterics. The bars of their cage clanged and clashed as the demented dragon hurled her vast body against the reinforced steel, trying unsuccessfully to force her way through.
Across the room, one of the security guards levered himself to his feet and, grunting with exertion, lurched toward the cage, an aerosol can dangling from one apelike arm. Ffup's efforts redoubled, her deafening screams causing Nestor to run for the safety of Knot's woolly embrace before adding his own contribution to the general cacophony.
“Waaaaaaah, Mumma, waaaaaa ! NO WANT IT,waaaaah !”
“I'm going to die ! Let me OUT. Let me OUT!”
“Listen, pal”—the security guard's voice was flat and monotonous—“cut that out, or we'll go get Dr. Umbra. And we wouldn't want that, would we?”
Across the room, Tock noticed the caged mice executing a synchronized wave at the mention of the good doctor.
“I WANT TO GO NOW!” Ffup shrieked, beyond reason or sense.
“Have it your own way, pal. I'm going to have to give you a wee squirt from ma wee can of tear gas and then you might have a wee think about whether we need to bother the doctor, eh?”
This time the mice did a synchronized throat-cutting mime.
“LET ME OUT OR I'LL—”
A pssscht sound came from the security guard's aerosol can. For such a small noise, its effect was spectacular. Ffup yelped and contorted herself into a ball of dragon agony, clawing at her eyes as tears sprayed from between her talons, while the tear gas lived up to its manufacturer's promises as a powerful weapon for riot control.
“My eyes,” Ffup whimpered. “I can't see ! I'M GOING BLIND! Get me a doctor—I NEED MEDICAL HELP!”
The door to the corridor opened and a woman entered the room. From the respectful salutes and flurry of activity around her, Tock knew that this must be the dreaded Dr. Umbra. His heart sank as he realized she was wearing surgical gloves and a rubber apron and was thoughtfully testing the edge of a scalpel against her thumb.
“Let's just have a little peek at your poor eyes, shall we?” she murmured, stepping forward.
Tock's horrified gaze skittered away from her across the room, skirted the rubber examination tables, avoided the dripping saw, and at last alighted on the cages of mice. The mice were now huddled in the shadows at the rear of their prison, their paws in their ears and their pink eyes firmly shut.
They didn't want to know.
Fire and Ice
nce an essential part of life at StregaSchloss, the old icehouse had overlooked the kitchen garden for hundreds of years. Previous generations of Strega-Borgias had cause to be grateful for its existence: the icehouse's thick stone walls, perpetually damp interior, and shadowy position had proved to be ideal for storing vast slabs of ice carried down from the frozen hilllochs of Bengormless. Before mankind had invented freezers, deep-frozen grandmothers like Strega-Nonna had taken up residence in their icehouses, lying in state like marble effigies, oblivious to the traffic of maids and housekeepers who had been trained not to disturb the slumbering wrinklies while they stealthily chipped off fragments of ice for household use.
Now the icehouse lay semi-derelict and was home to field mice and pigeons rather than preserved persons. In her defrosted state, Strega-Nonna found the icehouse's damp silence oddly soothing, and took to spending hours within its walls, idly cataloging the Strega-Borgias' vast collection of rusty garden tools and thus avoiding some of the noisy chaos of life in twenty-first-century StregaSchloss. The icehouse also offered sanctuary from murderous trainee butlers, or so Pandora had thought. Now she wasn't so sure. Although no ice had been stored within its walls for nearly a century, Pandora couldn't stop shivering. She was crouched in the icehouse loft, surrounded by the sleepy cooing of several dozen pigeons and watching in terror as a shadow fell across the straw-littered floor six meters below.
Please, Pandora begged silently, let it be Strega-Nonna, nostalgically revisiting her old icehouse like a geriatric homing pigeon… please?
Dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight, which highlighted precariously balanced piles of redundant lobster creels, broken wicker crates, and shredded nets from some long-dead angler ancestor. In the deep silence, Pandora heard footsteps cross the floor below and then pause beside the wooden ladder to the loft.
It wasn't Strega-Nonna, she realized. She was in trouble now—deep, deep trouble—and Titus had dropped her right in it. Not his fault, of course; he didn't know what he'd done…but she'd seen the look on Zander's face when he worked out who had really been in the cave in Coire Crone….
Next to where she was hiding, a pigeon popped its head out from between its wings, gave an inquiring “Tuu-tuu?” and waddled off across the loft to investigate.
“Who's there?” Zander hissed, the sound of his voice causing the pigeon to flap its wings in alarm.
Pandora held her breath, willing her nose to stop sending itchy signals to her brain.
“Dumb birds,” Zander muttered, squatting on the floor and digging his hands in a mound of straw. He pulled out a plastic-wrapped bundle and stood up, giving a quick glance over his shoulder to confirm that he was alone. Ripping open the package, he produced several sticks of demolition-grade dynamite and carefully tucked each of these into a series of pockets sewn into the lining of his motorcycle jacket. With an efficiency born of years of practice, he wired the e
xplosives to a radio-controlled detonator and then turned his attention to a slim device that would allow him to activate the detonator from a safe distance.
Crouched six meters above him, Pandora paid little attention to the sounds filtering up from below. Her concerns were more immediate: her nose was on the point of exploding, her eyes streamed, and her left leg had passed through the pinsand-needles stage into full-on cramp.
A series of clicks and beeps from below was followed by a shrill mechanical voice intoning, “T minus one hour and counting…”
This proved to be the final straw for the pigeon. Wings beating frantically, it flailed blindly across the loft, causing the other pigeons to cease cooing and wonder if they, too, were obliged to join in the hysterics. Dust and feathers rose into the still air, and Pandora's nose gave a warning squeak. The original pigeon fluttered down on top of a mountain of lobster creels, then overbalanced, overcorrected, and brought the entire edifice crashing down onto the floor. Immediately the loft filled with terrified birds flapping into the air and battering their wings against the roof, the walls, and each other. Amidst the utter pandemonium, Pandora heard the creaking approach of Zander scaling the ladder to the loft. With nowhere to hide, she looked around for something to use in her defense, but she could barely see past all the pigeons. She stumbled across the floor, fumbling blindly for the top of the ladder, hoping she might get there in time to push it off balance and send Zander crashing back to earth. She had nearly reached her goal when, to her horror, a hand reached through the rungs and fastened itself around her ankle.
Titus stood squinting into the sunlight, avoiding his reflection in the gleaming chrome of Zander's motorcycle and feeling decidedly nervous. There was nothing to hold on to, he realized, his stomach giving a slow lurch: no seat belts, no air bags, no crumple zone…. And, he thought, peering down at his T-shirt and shorts, these things offer zero protection. Overhead, a huge flock of pigeons clattered into the sky, their wings sounding like impromptu applause.
Have I got time to change? he wondered, this thought immediately followed by, Into what ? A suit of armor? Aaargh—what do I do ? Zander'll think I'm a complete numpty….
Titus was halfway back up the front steps when a voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Forgotten something?” Strolling around a corner of the house was Zander, helmet under one arm, the other arm carrying a black leather motorcycle jacket and matching pants. Titus thought he'd pass out with relief as these were slung in his direction. Zipping up the dauntingly heavy jacket, he felt immediately invincible. Awash with gratitude, he turned to where Zander was removing a spare helmet from a locked box behind the passenger seat and muttering something about scaring the living daylights out of Strega-Nonna.
“She's probably never seen a motorcyclist before,” Titus explained, well accustomed to Strega-Nonna's hissy fits and bizarre behavior. “What did she do?”
“Screamed like a banshee and swore at me in Latin,” Zander replied, omitting to mention that she'd also tried to brain him with a lobster creel after he'd set the icehouse on fire, and had cursed him in five languages upon discovering that he'd barricaded the exit, thus condemning her and Pandora to death.
“She's quite harmless, really,” Titus said, his words muffled inside the helmet as he climbed onto the passenger seat behind Zander. He was unable to hear Zander's reply over the roar of the motorcycle, and was too busy hanging on for dear life to notice the telltale cloud of smoke rising into the sky above the old icehouse.
Crash and Burn
itus, dear?” Mrs. McLachlan stood outside Titus's bedroom, her voice echoing down the corridor. “I'm about to do a mixed-color wash, dear. Any contributions? Socks? T-shirts? Festering piles of damp towels?” Surely he wasn't still asleep? She knocked on the bedroom door and waited a moment before walking into the empty bedroom.
“Oh, for heaven's sake,” she muttered, rolling her eyes and breathing through her mouth as she bent to gather several socks which had been widely distributed across the bedroom floor. “High time that young man learned that dirty laundry does not walk to the washing machine by itself…. ”
Repeating this procedure in Pandora's room, which was similarly unoccupied and decorated with discarded clothing, Mrs. McLachlan tssk ed and looked at her watch. Wherever Titus and Pandora had gone, they'd be back soon, hovering vulture-like in the kitchen and demanding lunch. Sighing, the nanny headed downstairs, bearing her malodorous bundle in her arms.
Sorting through socks in the kitchen, Mrs. McLachlan sniffed, frowned, and sniffed again. What was that burning smell? She jammed a molding pile of bath towels into the washing machine, switched it on, and headed off to check that she hadn't mistakenly left her iron on in the linen room. Puzzled, she returned to the kitchen and opened each oven of the range in turn, making sure that no carbonized horrors lurked within, then she sniffed once more… and froze. Through the window, the kitchen garden had all but vanished, obscured by smoke drifting across it, escapee tendrils curling round the door into the kitchen like beckoning fingers.
“TITUS? PANDORA?” she yelled, praying for an answer that did not come.
Opening the washing machine in midcycle and flooding the kitchen floor with hot suds, she grabbed a wet towel and ran coughing into the garden, blindly following the chamomile path until suddenly she was confronted with the heat of the blazing icehouse.
“Merciful heavens,” she heard herself say. “What madness is this?”
Wrapping the wet towel around her head, she tried to reach the charred wooden door, but was overcome by the intense heat and had to retreat, choking and spluttering, into the relative cool of the smoke-filled garden. Ahead, the icehouse glowed like a beehive made in Hell; flames shot through gaps in the roof and glowing lines of angry red flared between spaces in the masonry. Already half-derelict, built to withstand extremes of cold, not heat, the icehouse looked as if it was on the verge of total collapse. From outside Mrs. McLachlan could hear ominous crashes and small explosions as the overheated stones cracked apart. Even the surrounding trees were affected; they shrank away from the blaze, their leaves shriveling and falling to the ground as gray ash.
Mrs. McLachlan ran for the house to summon help, aware that with the best luck in the world, a fire engine would take at least twenty minutes to negotiate the narrow track between Auchenlochtermuchty and StregaSchloss. One last glance behind her confirmed what she already knew: nothing living could survive such an inferno.
Clinging to Zander's back in a rigor of terror, compounded by a pressing need to use the bathroom, Titus was so convinced he was going to die that he didn't notice the bike was slowing down until it had stopped completely. Turning around with some difficulty due to Titus's limpet grip, Zander removed his helmet and tapped on Titus's visor.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
Titus opened his eyes and realized that he still had his arms wrapped round Zander's waist. Pink with embarrassment, he sprang off the passenger seat and somehow managed to miss his footing, falling facedown on the road and banging against the mesh of a chain-link fence that he hadn't realized was there. Somewhere nearby, several dogs barked in stern disapproval. Titus climbed to his feet, removed his helmet, and gazed around, somewhat at a loss to understand where he was.
“Er…I don't…um…,” he managed at last, catching sight of Lochnagargoyle through a cluster of strangely melted trash cans and assorted cars parked in front of an anonymous gray building. He couldn't see a single sign telling passersby what this particular blot on the landscape might be. Turning to Zander, he saw that the off-duty butler had parked his motorcycle next to a gate in the chain-link fence and had dismounted, presumably without falling on his face.
“Where is this?” Titus asked, hoping that wherever it was, the owners might allow him to use their toilet.
“I must have taken the wrong turn,” Zander muttered, his face hidden behind the mirrored Perspex of his visor. “Look, er, do me a favor? Go ask if we've missed
the turnoff for Auchenlochtermuchty somewhere back there? I'd go but…I, ah, want to check out the bike. It's… running a bit rough for my liking.” And having got this lie out of the way, Zander bent down to examine a part of the engine that he was barely able to identify, let alone repair.
“Maybe you've picked up dirt in the spark plugs,” Titus suggested helpfully, coming over to peer manfully at the bike alongside the butler.
“Look, kid,” Zander snarled. “Just go ask, would you? Let me sort my bike out in peace, all right?”
Tempted to tell Zander exactly where to stuff his precious bike, Titus stormed off across the parking lot and pressed the doorbell outside what looked like a reception area, before his brain finally processed the letters embossed in the aluminum plate below the bell. SAPIENTECH UK, he read, just as the barking dogs skidded into the parking lot behind him.
“Ah… Zander?” Titus called, spinning around and forgetting his earlier desire for the butler's death by insertion of motorcycle.
“Zander?” he yelled as the dogs fanned out in a slavering line in front of him.
“ZANDER—I'M IN TROUBLE HERE!” Titus's voice had risen an octave in his haste to summon help before the snarling guard dogs came any closer. They advanced one yelp at a time, affording Titus glimpses of their hideous yellow incisors as they assessed his calorific value.
Titus couldn't believe his eyes. Zander was turning away, one foot balancing the weight of the bike as he slowly wheeled it around to face the way they'd come. With a loud roar from the perfectly tuned engine, he opened the throttle and was gone.
“You complete and utter toad ! You piece of scum !” Titus shrieked. “I hope you crash and burn, you bastard !”
The dogs snarled as if in agreement. Then they licked their lips and inched closer, anticipating the unexpected pleasure of having Titus for lunch.