by Martin Booth
“Scientists,” he began, “know that radioactive elements have what is called a half-life. This is the length of time it takes for their radioactivity to decay by half. It is like saying you have a kilo of sugar but every hour it grows less by fifty percent. After an hour, you have only 500 grams left, another hour 250, another hour 125 and so on.”
“What happens when there’s nothing left, sir?” Pip asked.
“A good question,” Yoland replied. “In the process of decay, the element changes into another form of itself or, possibly, into another element. For example, when uranium-238 decays, it forms thorium-234. It follows, therefore, that there is never nothing left.”
“How long does it take?” asked another pupil.
“It varies,” Yoland answered. “The isotope of carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years, but uranium-238 has a half-life of four and a half billion years.”
“What’s an isotope?” questioned someone.
“An isotope is another form of an element,” Yoland replied.
“Are there any that have short half-lives?” Tim inquired.
“Indeed, there are,” Yoland responded. “Some elements have exceptionally short half-lives. Rubidium-94 has a half-life of just under three seconds. Now,” he glanced up at the laboratory clock, “the bell will ring soon so let us move on to a practical demonstration before we cease for today.”
At this point, Yoland reached along the demonstration bench and pulled over a piece of equipment that reminded Tim of a car-battery charger. It had several switches on the front, a dial and a wire leading to a sensor that looked like an aluminium cigar tube.
“This,” Yoland announced, “is a Geiger counter. It measures the presence of radioactivity.” He flicked a switch. A small red light came on. “As you can see,” he announced, waving the sensor about in the air, “we are in this classroom virtually devoid of radioactivity. There is in existence what is called background radiation, given off by the ground or substances in it. Granite, for example, emits such radiation in measurable quantities but otherwise we are comparatively free of it. However…” He cast a look at Scrotton. “Will you do the honors, Scrotton?”
Without a word, Scrotton entered the preparation room and reappeared carrying a large polished steel canister. On the side was painted the bright yellow and black propeller-like warning sign for radioactive material. From the way he moved, it was obviously very heavy, but he had no difficulty lifting it on to the bench.
“This container,” Yoland explained, “is lined with lead. Radioactivity cannot usually penetrate this metal and so it acts as a protective shield.” He moved it to the middle of the bench. “In this is a radioactive element,” he went on. “All radioactivity is dangerous and so must be treated with respect. As the saying goes concerning fire, radioactivity is also a good servant but a bad master.”
“Bit like Scrotton,” Tim muttered under his breath.
“The element in this container is polonium-212. It is commonly to be found in hospitals where it is used in treating cancer. Radioactivity destroys living cells.”
“Can we see it?” asked a boy at the end of the bench.
“No, you may not!” Yoland replied brusquely. “That would be dangerous.”
“How big is it?” asked a girl next to him.
“The piece is the size of about six grains of salt,” Yoland answered, “and is contained in a block of clear plastic.”
“Why?” inquired a second boy.
“Because,” Yoland explained, “that way it cannot be lost. Consider how easy it would be to lose a grain of salt.”
“What would happen…?” the boy persevered, but Yoland interrupted him.
“The school — at least, this building — would have to be closed down and the NRPB — that’s the National Radiological Protection Board — would have to be called in to sweep the building to find it. So,” he added, smiling benevolently, “don’t get any ideas, any of you. It’s stowed away in the chemistry department safe. And there it will remain.”
And I bet I know the combination, Tim thought, making sure he was not looking in Yoland’s direction as he did so.
“Now,” Yoland continued, “all of you step back from the bench. Remove the lid, Scrotton.”
Scrotton grasped the canister and slowly unscrewed the lid. Yoland held the cigar-tube sensor over the mouth. Scrotton quickly removed the lid. Immediately, the Geiger counter started clicking furiously, the needle on the dial dancing to and fro. Yoland moved the sensor nearer to the canister until the clicking was an almost continuous high-pitched buzz.
“Replace the lid, Scrotton.”
Scrotton did so. Immediately, the Geiger counter fell silent.
“Thus,” said Yoland, “are you introduced to the wonders of nuclear energy. For radioactivity is energy. It is what powers the sun, drives the universe, is at the very center of creation.”
The bell sounded for the end of the lunch break and the first meeting of the Atom Club broke up.
Sebastian did not speak as they made their way to the first class of the afternoon.
“Something troubling you?” Tim asked as they lined up for the next lesson.
Still, Sebastian kept his peace.
The weak autumn evening sunlight had moved on from the fields of Rawne Barton. The sunset had been a glorious display of orange and scarlet against which the trees by the river had been starkly outlined, as if etched upon the sky in Indian ink. Now, the light was fading fast, the shadows waning into twilight.
Tim sat at his computer, maneuvering a Y-shaped space fighter across the galaxy, avoiding enemy craft, asteroids and deep-space mines that looked like magnified pollen. His craft had already suffered some battle damage and he had to get to the mother ship off Star-ion 4 before his fuel pile was depleted. His mission was not helped by the fact that one of the rubber suckers on the base of his joystick no longer sucked.
The mother ship had just come into sight as a small dot of light far ahead in cyberspace when Tim’s bedroom door abruptly opened and Pip rushed in.
“You’ll never learn to knock, will you, sis?” Tim remarked caustically, glancing over his shoulder.
“Never mind knocking!” Pip retorted, stepping towards the window. “Switch off the monitor. Quick!”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t want to be silhouetted by it and…” She became exasperated. “Just do it!”
Tim pressed the switch. The screen went dead, the room falling into semi-darkness.
“Now look at this!”
Tim joined his sister at the window.
“What?” he said, his eyes not yet adjusted from intergalactic night to earth light.
“Down by the river bank. Can you see anything?”
Tim squinted. The river reflected the last of the sunset.
“Trees, grass, a crow flying…” Something on the river bank moved. “A sheep.”
“That’s no sheep,” Pip replied succinctly. “Sheep wander about.”
“Well, that one’s not exactly doing the marathon.”
Yet no sooner had the words left his mouth than the shape darted for cover behind one of the oak trees.
“What the hell was that?” Tim exclaimed.
“That was the fifth one. There’s two more behind that oak and another two behind the chestnut tree to the left.”
“Get Sebastian!” Tim ordered.
They ran into Pip’s room. Tim kept watch at the window as she tapped on the panel. There was no response. She knocked again, harder. Still, there was no sound of Sebastian coming up the tunnel. She tapped harder. Nothing.
“He’s not there,” she said with alarm.
“Good time to take a hike,” Tim retorted. “What do we do?”
He glanced out of the window. In the twilight, six dark, formless shapes began making their way in a line towards the house. They kept low, almost creeping through the grass.
“Do we tell Dad…?” Pip began.
“Tell h
im what? Dad, there’s an army of ghoulies about to attack the house. We’ll never hear the end of it. The laughter’ll echo for weeks.”
“We might not live to tell the tale,” Pip replied.
“Besides,” Tim added, ignoring his sister’s melodramatic remark, “what could he do that we can’t? Invite them in for a cup of coffee or a beer?”
Outside, the line was already only fifty meters from the ha-ha. Tim screwed his eyes up and concentrated on what appeared to be the leader, a form slightly ahead of the others.
“It’s Scrotton!” he exclaimed then, after a pause, added, “No, it’s not — it’s six Scrottons! He’s been replicated!”
Pip felt weak at the knees, her palms began to sweat and her flesh crept.
“If Sebastian’s not here…” she started, but she was interrupted.
“Look!” Tim blurted out.
As he spoke, a lone figure rose out of the ha-ha and gradually advanced towards the line. It moved slowly, an obvious deliberation in its every action.
“It must be Seb…” Tim muttered.
At the figure’s appearance, the line of Scrottons became agitated. They started to hop from side to side, jumping up and down with a frenetic flailing of their arms. It was now Tim noticed that they each carried a stout wooden staff.
“He doesn’t stand a chance,” Pip murmured. “Six to one and they’ve got weapons.”
“No choice then,” Tim decided. “Get your shoes on.”
“Just going for a walk,” he said to their mother as they went through the kitchen.
“Don’t be long,” she replied, looking up from her ironing, “and be careful. It’s getting dark. Don’t go down to the river. You might fall in.”
Pausing in the garage to let their eyes adjust to the darkness, Tim armed himself with a hedging hook, the curving blade bright where his father had recently sharpened it. Pip found herself an old rusty pitchfork.
They hurriedly tiptoed to the field gate, crouched down, opened it and edged into the field. Off to the left, the line of Scrottons had halted in a semicircle, Sebastian in the center. Every Scrotton was swinging its club, uttering an obscene noise, like mating frogs in a springtime pond.
“What now?” Tim wondered. “Do we charge them?”
At that moment, Sebastian started to gradually advance. The Scrottons began snarling under their breath and grew more agitated.
“Let’s go for it,” Tim whispered. “We’ve at least got the element of surprise.”
He stood up, weighed the hedging hook in his hand and set off running at the Scrottons as hard as he could go. Pip was only a few steps behind him.
The line of Scrottons swung around with military precision to face them, halted as if gathering their strength, then came at them. For a moment, Tim faltered, but both he and Pip knew they had gone past the point of no return. They were committed to battle.
In seconds, the first Scrotton was almost upon them. Tim lashed at it with the hedging hook but missed. It ran on by, heading for Pip. She rammed the handle of the pitchfork into the ground before her, angling it at her adversary. Under its own momentum, the Scrotton ran on to the pitchfork, the prongs going deep into its chest. Blood spurted on to Pip’s clothing. She screamed. The wodwo hissed like an angry lizard, thrashing to and fro on the pitchfork, wrenching it out of the ground and trying to extract it from its torso.
In the meantime, Tim had a second Scrotton lunge at him. He swung the hedging hook at it, feeling it shudder as the metal blade sunk into its shoulder, striking bone. The Scrotton grunted, jerked the tool out of Tim’s hands, twirled it in mid-air with as much ease as a majorette might her baton and lifted it high over his head.
Tim watched as the hook rose as if in slow motion, the sharp sickle-edged blade turning towards him. He tried to dodge, but his feet seemed cemented to the spot. He raised his hands to defend himself or deflect the blow, remembering as he did so seeing his father cut through saplings thicker than dining-table legs with one swipe. His mouth opened to yell, yet no sound came.
The Scrotton in front of Pip finally levered the pitchfork from its chest. Holding it like a javelin, the creature faced Pip and drew its arm back.
The hedging hook fell into the grass at Tim’s side. The Scrotton stood not a meter from him. It grunted incomprehensibly and then sank to its knees. Gradually, it seemed to deflate. The Scrotton before Pip was also collapsing as if punctured. Elsewhere, three of the other Scrottons were similarly shrinking, yet one was not. It stood its ground before Sebastian, glaring at him, its eyes like small glowing coals, bright one moment, dull the next.
Pip and Tim picked up their weapons and rushed to Sebastian’s side.
“Behold,” Sebastian announced, standing with his legs astride and his arms akimbo, “the wodwo in all its evil panoply.”
Before them stood Scrotton, besmirched with mud, his face shining with sweat, his hair matted with twigs and dead leaves.
“You gonna wish you ‘adn’t messed with me,” he threatened, his eyes fixed on Tim, his lip curling like that of an irate dog.
Sebastian made no response. Instead, he raised his left hand. Beneath it, there appeared a cone of blackness darker than the darkest, starless night.
At the sight of it, Scrotton gave a sickening, penetrating squeak, like a rat held in a trap by one leg or its tail. Sebastian stepped across to him so that Scrotton was completely covered by the dark cone. He spun around to escape, but it enveloped him.
“Pip,” Sebastian ordered. “Take my right hand and, while holding it, touch Scrotton’s head. Yet do not entirely enter the blackness yourself.”
Pip did as she was asked but, as her fingers touched Scrotton’s hair, she was disgusted and withdrew it.
“Do not flinch,” Sebastian said. “He can harm you not.”
Steeling herself, Pip closed her eyes and pushed her fingers into Scrotton’s filthy hair. She could feel the grease and sweat between her fingers, slick like sun-warmed olive oil.
“Hold still,” Sebastian ordered.
A sudden surge of power flooded from Sebastian’s hand through Pip’s arms. It was as if an electric current were pulling her muscles tight, flexing her tendons. Scrotton started to convulse beneath her touch.
“Together, our strengths combined shall overcome,” Sebastian whispered.
In a matter of seconds, he let Pip’s hand go. Instantly, the flow of power ceased, and Scrotton collapsed as if his skeleton had suddenly been removed from his body.
“What do we do with him?” Tim asked. “We can’t leave him here.”
“He will, like any creature,” Sebastian replied as Pip wiped her hand clean on the grass that was already damp with dew, “find his way to his burrow.”
With Tim carrying the hedging hook and pitchfork, the three of them returned to the house. By chance, Mrs. Ledger had joined her husband in the living room.
Slipping past the door undetected, they went upstairs where, once in her room, Pip changed and put her bloodstained clothing in cold water to soak. The bloodstains, she noticed, were very weak, as if the blood had been diluted. When she was done, hiding the basin under her bed, Sebastian and Tim joined her.
“Well, we’ve blown it!” Tim exclaimed ruefully to Sebastian. “Now Yoland’ll know you’re in cahoots with us and that we’ve rumbled his familiar.”
“On the contrary,” Sebastian replied. “Scrotton will remember nothing of tonight.”
“Like, yes!” Tim replied. “We’ve just trounced his army of darkness.”
“Like yes, indeed,” Sebastian answered, smiling. “I have erased his short-term memory. His brain is not a complex organ. It was a simple process.”
“The other five Scrottons…” Pip ventured timorously. “They weren’t homunculi…?”
At this, Sebastian’s smiled faded.
“Only in a manner of speaking. They were in fact merely automatons, replicas with no independent will of their own. They were created for the sole function of fight
ing on this one occasion.”
“Who made them?” Pip asked fearfully.
“I know of only one who has perfected the art thus far…” Sebastian replied.
“Malodor,” Tim cut in.
Ten
Gathering Clouds
For an hour, Tim sat at his desk with his bedroom door locked and surfed the Internet, logging on to , genealogical and census databases, searching parish records, scouring cathedral and university records, and combing library and museum sites. Finally, at ten o’clock, he emerged and, holding a sheet of neatly printed A4, knocked on Pip’s door, waited a few moments and went in. She was sitting at her dressing table in her dressing gown, trying out different hairstyles with a set of soft curlers.
“Now that’s progress,” she congratulated him. “You knocked.”
Tim held up the sheet of paper.
“Call up the man!” he commanded.
When Sebastian surfaced from the panel, Tim said, “I’ve done a bit of digging into Yoland’s past.” He sat on Pip’s bedroom chair just after she whisked her clothes off it.
“It seems,” he began, reading from the paper, “that Yoland — or someone with his name — has lived in this area for generations. But,” he continued, “there’s something strange going on. For long stretches of time, there’s no mention of him in the records — then he pops up again. For example, there is no sign of any Yoland between 1450 and 1661; then a Yoland reappears employed as an apothecary. And then, with the exception of 1665, he disappears until a period from 1682 to 1700.”
“You have acquired this knowledge through your computer?” Sebastian asked.
“That and the aid of Google,” Tim answered. “Google?” Sebastian repeated.
“A search engine. It helps you to find knowledge anywhere on the Internet. But it still took a bit of serious surfing.”
“Surfing?” Sebastian asked.
“Surfing the net, riding the cyber-waves. You’ll get it in time.”