The Curiosity Machine

by Richard Newsome

  The four of them slipped over the side of the boat and waded through a tangle of mangroves. ‘So we go in there?’ Sam said, nodding towards the dark wall of vegetation.

  ‘That’s right,’ Gerald said. ‘Across the middle of the island and sneak up from behind.’

  ‘Right,’ Sam said.

  ‘Right,’ Gerald replied.

  No one moved.

  Felicity opened the top of Gerald’s backpack, and pulled out the torch. ‘You pair are going to attract barnacles if you go any slower,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve faced enough danger in the past few months to prepare us for a hike in the forest.’ She hooked an arm through Ruby’s and they made their way through the veil of vines and branches.

  Gerald was astonished that the foliage could so quickly and thoroughly digest a human being, leaving no sign of the girls apart from the swish of a leafy curtain that fell back into place. ‘Wait up,’ he called. Then he shoved Sam hard between the shoulders. ‘After you, champ.’

  And the jungle happily swallowed two more.

  Chapter 22

  Gerald and Sam caught up with Ruby and Felicity and made sure not to lose sight of them again. They pressed on, squeezing between trees that stretched high and straight to the star-filled sky. Soon, Gerald felt a great tiredness come over him. He glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. He had not slept properly for more than twenty-four hours. He stumbled forward, almost falling on top of Ruby.

  ‘I’ve got to sleep,’ he said, his voice a slur, ‘or I’m going to collapse. I vote we go back to the boat. There are comfy bunks at least. We can start again in the morning.’

  Ruby gave a tired nod. ‘You’re right. I’m done in.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘Which way is back to the beach?’

  Gerald, Sam and Felicity pointed in three different directions. Ruby looked at each of them in turn. ‘A fat lot of good that is,’ she said. ‘Now what do we do? Sleep in a tree?’

  ‘That sounds a great way to roll over in the night and break your neck,’ Gerald said.

  ‘If you’ve got a better idea, don’t hold back,’ Ruby said. ‘We’re all ears.’

  Gerald was tempted to argue with Ruby just for the sport, but he was too exhausted to bother trying. ‘What do you think, Sam?’ he asked.

  Sam was peering into the jungle, lost in thought.

  ‘Sam?’

  Sam looked back at Gerald, almost surprised to be hearing his name. ‘Huh? I think we should sleep in that shed over there and start again when the sun comes up.’

  ‘What shed?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘The one just on the other side of that wire fence,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see it?’

  Ruby took hold of her brother’s shoulders and spun him around. ‘Just take us. We can shower you in praise when we get there.’

  Sam led the group to a waist-high wire-mesh fence. Gerald was too exhausted to voice the obvious question about why there would be a fence in the middle of a jungle. The prospect of sleep took him over the wire and stumbling onwards.

  The shed was a simple wooden structure. The door was unlocked and Felicity shone the torch inside to reveal a floor piled with bales of hay and rough hessian sacks, stuffed and stacked halfway up the wall.

  ‘What’s in these, do you think?’ Ruby asked as she climbed onto one pile.

  ‘Don’t care,’ Gerald mumbled. ‘Just as long as it’s soft enough to sleep on.’

  Felicity flicked off the torch. Gerald could not remember ever feeling so tired. Within a minute all four of them were stretched out and lost to their dreams.

  Gerald woke to a gentle knocking on his skull, as if somebody was checking whether anyone was home. He opened his eyes to be greeted by the sight of a large blunt-beaked bird, butting its forehead against his.

  ‘Gack!’ Gerald cried.

  ‘Gack!’ the bird echoed back at him.

  Gerald bolted upright and scooted in reverse, shuffling as fast as he could across his mattress of sacks. The bird quickly overcame its shock at Gerald’s sudden movement, and resumed its previous activity: eating from a pile of pellets that spilled from a tear in the sack Gerald had been sleeping on.

  Gerald leaned back on his elbows and stared at the creature. It stood almost a metre tall, with two stubby wings tucked into its sides. A light covering of grey and white down gave it the appearance of a stunted chimpanzee dressed in a feathered onesie. The bird’s head had both the brilliance of a toucan and the addle-brained docility of a giant pigeon. It was quite the most extraordinary thing Gerald had ever seen.

  The bird looked up from its breakfast and fixed a goggle eye on Gerald’s open-mouthed stare. ‘Gack!’ it said. Then it buried its head into the sack, disappearing in a spray of light brown pellets.

  It was only then that Gerald realised the shed was over-run with the bizarre creatures. A dozen stumpy-legged, round-beaked birds were pecking, head-butting and tearing at the piles of hessian sacks.

  Gerald leaned over and grabbed Ruby’s ankle. She woke with a snort. ‘Whazzit?’ she said. ‘Who’s talking about what now?’ Her hair was stabbed through with straw that stood out on both sides of her head like a startled scarecrow. Her outburst caught the attention of the birds, which raised their heads to stare her way.

  ‘Gack!’ they chorused.

  Ruby blinked. Then she screwed her eyes shut and opened them again. ‘Nope, no good,’ she said. ‘They’re still there. Gerald?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why is there a bunch of dodos in here?’

  Gerald almost fell off his perch. ‘Dodos!’ he said. He thought they looked familiar. ‘Of course they’re dodos.’ One of the birds launched itself on strong legs from the floor to land on the sack next to Gerald. It nudged the side of its head against his thigh.

  ‘Uh, Ruby?’ Gerald said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Aren’t dodos meant to be extinct?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They are meant to be extinct.’

  Felicity and Sam woke and joined the confusion. They stepped from hay bale to hay bale to join Ruby on her stack. Gerald pulled the last of the food from his backpack and handed it around.

  ‘Doesn’t anyone find this the slightest bit strange?’ Felicity asked. ‘Breakfast with dodos?’

  ‘Of course it’s strange,’ Ruby said. ‘These things died out hundreds of years ago.’

  ‘But not here, apparently,’ Gerald said.

  ‘No,’ Ruby said, as one of the birds tugged at her shoelaces. ‘Apparently not.’

  Sam jumped to the floor and scooped up a handful of pellets. He soon had a dodo eating out of his hand. ‘They’re sort of cute, I suppose,’ he said. He tickled it on the back of its head as it bobbed up and down for food. ‘Why did they go extinct?’

  ‘The usual story: too slow and too yummy,’ Ruby said. ‘And, to answer your next question, no, we cannot barbecue one of them.’

  Gerald shooed two of the birds away from his backpack. They flapped their stunted wings and scattered in a flurry of feathers and gacks. ‘Ursus said this island was some sort of eco-experiment,’ he said. ‘Maybe bringing back the dodo is one of them.’

  Ruby stretched her arms wide to ease the cricks from her back. ‘We better get going,’ she said, ‘and see what other surprises this place has in store.’

  They filed out of the shed to an overcast morning that hung on the landscape humid and lank, like washing left overnight on the line. The shed stood on the edge of a cleared section of land that the surrounding jungle was doing its best to take back.

  Gerald pulled the compass from his pocket and pointed it at a rise in the distance. ‘We came in from the north-east last night,’ he said, ‘so if we go back in that direction we should get close to Mason Green’s compound.’

  Felicity nodded. ‘And then what do we do?’

  Gerald started across the clearing. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘I’m making this up as we go along.’

  Ruby glanced back to look for Sam and found him kneelin
g in the shed doorway. ‘Come on. We’re going,’ she called. He turned around with a sheepish grin on his face. He was holding a dodo in his hands. ‘Can I keep him?’ he asked.

  Ruby sucked in a slow breath. ‘Put it back,’ she said. ‘One dodo in the family is enough.’

  Sam grumbled to himself and placed the bird on the ground. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the dodo. The bird head-butted him in the nose.

  ‘Gack!’ it said.

  They passed more of the birds scratching and pecking in the dirt like over-grown chickens. Eventually they reached a tall chain-link fence, at least three metres high, that stretched out of sight in both directions. Jungle grew thick right up to the other side of the fence.

  ‘Should we climb it or look for a gate?’ Felicity asked.

  Gerald laced his fingers through the wire mesh. ‘It could be kilometres till we find a gate,’ he said. He wedged the toe of his sandshoe into the fence and lifted himself off the ground. ‘This won’t be hard to climb.’

  ‘Why would you need such a high fence?’ Sam said. ‘It’s not like the dodos are going to get over it.’

  Gerald clambered higher. The wire bit into his fingers. ‘Maybe they can fly a little bit.’

  A beast appeared from the closest tree with incredible speed, leaping across the gap to the fence in a flash of fur and fangs. All Gerald registered was gaping red jaws and the stench of foul breath. There was a roar, and a high-pitched scream, and the clash of teeth on metal. A powerful paw lashed out and Gerald threw himself backwards off the fence. He landed hard on his side, his lungs deflating on impact. He looked up at the frantic animal hacking at the wire with its claws.

  Gerald’s breathing was ragged. ‘Why is there a tiger on this island?’ he asked, not expecting anyone to have a sensible answer. ‘And Sam, can you please stop screaming?’

  The tiger dropped to the ground and threw another powerful swipe at the fence, straining the tall posts on either side. It opened its mouth and snarled a long low growl, baring its teeth.

  ‘That is like a full grown Bengal tiger,’ Felicity said, unable to take her eyes from the animal as it paced the fence line. ‘On a South Pacific island. It makes no sense.’

  ‘Compared with a flock of extinct dodos, a tiger actually isn’t that much of a surprise,’ Ruby said.

  Gerald watched as the big cat spat out a final snarl and turned back into the jungle. ‘It looks like we’ll be walking around this fence after all,’ he said.

  Ruby picked up Gerald’s backpack from where it had been thrown into a bush and handed it to him. ‘I get the feeling this might not be your standard South Pacific island.’

  Gerald pointed to their right and they trudged on. From deep in the tangle of trees and vines off to their left came a shrill whooping.

  ‘What do you think?’ Felicity asked. ‘Monkeys?’

  ‘Either that or Sam made it over the fence and no one noticed,’ Ruby said.

  Sam sent a stone skittering through long grass with a deft kick. ‘I didn’t make fun of how you react to skeletons,’ he said. ‘I just have a highly developed attack response, that’s all.’

  ‘If your attack response was any more highly developed it would shatter glass,’ Ruby said.

  In the distance, a long mournful howl filtered out through the trees.

  ‘Was that a wolf?’ Felicity asked, jogging to keep up with Gerald.

  Gerald shook his head. ‘I can accept a tiger on a tropical island, and I can understand monkeys living here. Hey, I can even believe dodos, in some weird land-before-time lost-world situation,’ Gerald said. ‘But wolves are at home in the snow.’

  ‘What those gunmen said is true, then,’ Felicity said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘This place is a zoo. Like, a literal zoo. With enclosures and exotic beasts.’

  ‘A zoo that would make King Rudolph proud,’ Gerald said, recalling what Ursus had told him on the helicopter.

  ‘What about the abdominals?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Somehow, I don’t think that’s the word he used,’ Ruby said.

  A lion dashed at them from the undergrowth and hit the wire mesh with its full weight, baring its teeth and unleashing a deep roar. Sam was a metre from the animal when it struck. He jumped straight up and shrieked with an intensity that silenced the lion. The big cat recoiled, its fur raised and its ears bent backwards by the pitch of the cry. It took a startled look at Sam and retreated to the trees.

  For a moment they all just looked at the curtain of foliage where the lion had disappeared.

  ‘Lions,’ Felicity said. ‘Tigers. What’s next?’

  ‘Bears,’ Ruby said. ‘Oh my.’ She prodded Sam between the shoulders and propelled him on. ‘Let’s move, Dorothy. There’s still a long way to go.’

  They walked for almost an hour, passing the occasional dodo scratching in the dirt. The humidity was like a sauna, and the clouds began to turn thunderstorm grey.

  Sam lifted his chin and said, ‘There’s something up ahead. A change in the fence line.’

  They stopped at a point where the tall fence branched off to their left, and a lower chain-link fence kept going in the direction they were walking, sectioning off a large area of cleared land.

  ‘It’s like a paddock on a farm,’ Gerald said. ‘Big scary creatures in the jungle behind the tall fence, extinct flightless birds behind the small fence.’ He threw a leg over the low wire and leapt into the adjoining field.

  ‘Is that a good idea?’ Felicity asked. ‘We don’t know what’s in there.’

  Ruby and Sam followed Gerald over the wire. ‘If the fence is only up to your hips, there can’t be anything too bitey in here,’ Ruby said. ‘And if there is I’ll just turn Sam up to maximum volume and point him in its general direction.’

  Felicity grumbled something about taking risks, but went after them anyway.

  ‘Every step is getting us closer to the compound,’ Gerald said, ‘and closer to taking some action against Mason Green.’ Gerald wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the humidity or the heat but his resolve to exact revenge on Green was getting stronger by the minute.

  They crossed the cleared section quickly and stepped into a thickening jungle. The air became heavier. Soon it was an effort to breathe. After a few minutes, Sam pulled up and leaned against a moss-covered tree trunk. ‘My lungs feel like soggy football socks,’ he said. ‘How about we take a break?’ Sam didn’t wait for a response before he wandered into a small clearing where the jungle floor was littered with broad-leafed palm fronds. He stretched out on a lime green carpet and took a long drink from the water bottle. ‘Wake me when you’re ready to go,’ he called to the others. ‘I’m stuffed.’

  Ruby didn’t bother to look at him. ‘Yes, you have a rest. I imagine all that screaming would take it out of you.’ She sat on a fallen tree trunk and kicked off a shoe to massage her toes.

  Gerald squatted at her feet and looked at his watch. ‘This is taking forever,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should have just knocked on the front door last night and taken the chance that Green would be so happy to get the perpetual motion machine that he’d just let everybody go.’

  Felicity dropped next to Ruby and rolled her shoulders. ‘I think we all know it’s not going to be that easy,’ she said. ‘Dodos, tigers, lions…Mason Green has something brewing on this island. I want to free my mum and dad more than anything, but I don’t think we can rely on doing a straight swap with Cornelius Drebbel’s contraption.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ Ruby asked.

  Felicity reached out to touch her toes. ‘The only reason we didn’t radio for help before was because Green and Ursus would get to us first and bring us here. Well, we’re here now. Gerald, you saw a satellite dish and antennas in the compound? There must be some powerful communications equipment here. I say we get a distress signal out to the world. Then we can set to freeing our parents and the others. Whether that involves dealing directly with Green can depend on what we fin
d when we get there.’

  Ruby and Gerald looked at each other and nodded. ‘That sounds like a plan,’ Gerald said. ‘The sooner we can get to a radio or satellite phone, the sooner a rescue party can get here.’

  Ruby laced up her shoe and stood up. ‘We’ll get our parents out of this, Flicka,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’ She turned to look for Sam between the trees. ‘Hey, dopey!’ she called. ‘Let’s move. Felicity has worked out how to save us all.’ She waited for a response. ‘Sam?’

  Ruby frowned. The clearing where Sam had stretched out to rest was empty. Sunshine tumbled through the gap in the canopy like a spectral waterfall, lighting up the green leaf litter on the jungle floor. A water bottle lay discarded on the ground. But Sam Valentine was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 23

  Ruby called her brother’s name as loud as she dared. She circled the jungle that fringed the clearing, searched the undergrowth, scanned the treetops.

  But there was no response. No sign.

  ‘Maybe he wandered into the bush to, you know, have a pee,’ Felicity said.

  Ruby shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t have gone that far,’ she said. ‘Trust me, being bashful is not one of Sam’s endearing traits.’

  ‘We’ve got to find him,’ Gerald said. ‘Who knows what other bizarre things Mason Green has in this zoo of his.’

  ‘Obviously we have to find him,’ Ruby said, spinning around to face Gerald. ‘What a stupid thing to say.’ Then she pressed her lips together. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. And I’m worried.’

  Gerald put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We’ll find him. He can’t have—’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Ruby cut him off. Her head swivelled left and right like a radar dish trying to pick up a signal. ‘I thought I heard a cry.’

  She took a step into the jungle. ‘There,’ she said. ‘There it is again.’

  Gerald strained to detect anything above the background chatter of insects and bugs. Then he heard it: a muffled sound, as if someone was shouting through a hand held across their mouth.