by Andrew Lane
It was the day after she had arrived with Rhino Gillis, Gecko and Tara. Rhino had managed to get hold of some crummy second-hand van, and they’d had a bumpy half-hour drive into the centre of Tbilisi, where their hotel was located. It was OK, she supposed. It was more of a managed apartment than a hotel, with four bedrooms leading off a central living room. There was even a small kitchen area, which had filled Natalie with horror. She hoped that they wouldn’t be expected to cook their own food. If it came to that, she was going to phone out for pizza.
Her mother had called the next morning. She’d arrived on an earlier flight, and was intending to head into the American embassy to chat to the ambassador. And Natalie, of course, was expected to go with her. Rhino had agreed – not that it was his place to agree. Gillian Livingstone pretty much did what she wanted.
The car swerved out of the flow of traffic and darted across a road towards a side street. The driver parked the car diagonally. ‘Embassy up there,’ he grunted, gesturing along the side street. It sloped upward, of course. Nothing was ever easy in Natalie’s life, not even short walks.
‘Can’t you get any closer?’ her mother asked.
He shook his head. ‘Security. Best for me to park here and you to walk. Not too far.’
Gillian shrugged. ‘When in Rome . . .’ she murmured. She waited for a moment, expecting the driver to get out and open her door for her. When he didn’t, she opened it herself and stepped out. ‘Come on, Natalie – it looks like we’re slumming it.’
As the two of them walked uphill, her mother confided, ‘I don’t expect to be in there more than an hour – the ambassador is a busy man. We’ll swap pleasantries, he’ll offer us a cup of coffee, I’ll talk a little bit about the business meetings I’ve got planned and he’ll try to give me a steer on how to deal with Georgian businessmen, as if I need it. At the end I’ll just drop in the fact that Rhino Gillis is here with the three of you, and you’re all going to be heading out into the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. I’ll mention these stupid Almast creatures, and he’ll laugh. He won’t take it seriously, of course, but he might have heard a rumour, or know someone that you can talk to. It’s worth asking, and at least we can alert him to your presence, just in case there’s any trouble. Apart from saying “Hello”, “No sugar, thank you”, and “Goodbye”, I don’t expect you to say anything.’
‘As if.’ Natalie had no intention of adding anything to the conversation between her mother and the ambassador.
‘Actually,’ she said, surprising herself, ‘I don’t think it is stupid.’
‘You don’t think what is stupid?’
‘This Almast thing.’
Her mother turned to glance at her, eyes hidden behind dark glasses. ‘Don’t tell me that Calum has persuaded you? Look, if there was really a tribe of Neanderthals running around anywhere in the civilized world, then we would know about it. Given the number of TV documentary teams criss-crossing the world in search of something unique to film, I’d be surprised if there’s anything larger than a beetle that hasn’t had a zoom lens pointed at it.’
‘Then why did you agree to Calum setting up this expedition? And why are you making me go along with it?’
‘Calum is a . . . unique child,’ Gillian said quietly. ‘He’s fantastically intelligent, but he’s not got much perspective. Because he doesn’t get out much, he spends a lot of time propping up his own obsessions by hunting around the internet. The trouble is that he’s got access to a large pot of money, and his Great-Aunt Merrily doesn’t pull as hard on the purse strings as she should. Calum is free to explore those obsessions, and if he’s not carefully controlled then he’ll end up frittering away his inheritance. It’s my job, as I see it, to keep him relatively sane and focused, and make sure there’s still a comfortable amount of money left in his trust fund when he reaches maturity.’ She sighed. ‘That means I have to sometimes pander to his weird obsessions in order to stop him going mad, but it also means that I get to temper his enthusiasm and make sure he thinks about all those little things, like, oh, I don’t know, health and safety, and cost-effectiveness.’ She sighed. ‘Look, I’m not saying that the Almasti don’t exist. I’m just saying that it’s unlikely that they do and, even if they do, I’m sorry, but three teenagers and a former soldier who can’t adjust to life in the civilian world aren’t going to be the ones to accidentally stumble across them.’
‘But if we do,’ Natalie said, equally quietly, ‘you want dibs on the intellectual-property rights.’
‘Hey,’ her mother said casually, ‘I’m an entrepreneur. It’s my ability to take advantage of unlikely business opportunities that keeps you in designer shoes.’
‘The thing is,’ Natalie explained, unsure why she was bothering but somehow knowing that it was important, ‘Calum gave us all some material to read over on the flight. It was kinda interesting. We think the world’s a really small place, and there’s nothing left to be discovered, but apparently naturalists are finding new species, like, every day almost – not just beetles and stuff, but big things, like deer and new types of wild cat. A new type of lizard has only just been discovered on an island off the coast of New Guinea – it’s been called the bumblebee gecko. There was this naturalist who decided to catalogue the bees and wasps in his back garden in England, and he, like, found that there were things flying around there that hadn’t been catalogued – ever – by scientists. There’re literally things right under our noses that we haven’t discovered, and when you think that there’s still sixty per cent of the Earth’s land surface and ninety-nine per cent of the ocean that hasn’t been properly explored, then it makes you think that maybe we don’t know it all. Calum told me that there have been two new species a month discovered around deep-sea volcanic vents for the past twenty-five years. That’s over six hundred new species! There are things out there that we haven’t come across yet, and Calum’s right – there may be things that can help with medicine and stuff. After all, penicillin came from a fungus that was growing on someone’s Petri dish, and aspirin was developed when biologists realized that animals were chewing the bark of willow trees when they were in pain. There’s so much tropical rainforest out there, with so many unknown plants, that there might be cures for cancer, and tuberculosis, and cholera, and typhoid, and all those diseases that kill so many babies every year.’ She paused to take a breath. ‘Do you even know how many babies die of typhoid every year?’
‘As it happens,’ her mother said, staring at Natalie with a strange expression on her face, ‘I do. But do you know how many types of virus or bacteria have been sitting around in the rainforest for hundreds of thousands of years, infecting the local wildlife with nothing worse than a slight sniffle and a headache, just waiting for humans to come along and act as a host? HIV, Ebola, haemorrhagic fever . . . When they’re transferred from animals to humans, they suddenly become fatal, and worse – easily transmissible. There are things out there that should probably be left well alone, Natalie.’ She stopped walking, and Natalie stopped too. ‘You actually care about this, don’t you?’
Natalie shrugged. ‘It makes sense,’ she said. ‘It does make sense. There are all these problems in the world that we know about, but there’re all these potential solutions out there in the world we don’t know about. We need to connect them together somehow.’
Gillian smiled, but there was little humour in the smile. ‘Strange – I’ve been waiting for a while to see what it was that was going to snag your attention, apart from shoes and boys. I thought for a while it was going to be athletics, or swimming, and I had dreams about you competing in the Olympics. But you’ve wrong-footed me. I think you may have found your vocation, and it’s the last thing I would have predicted.’ She reached out and touched Natalie’s cheek. ‘You’ve surprised me, and you’ve made me strangely proud. Good on you.’
Natalie found herself suddenly unable to say anything. She felt her cheeks going red, and she had a horrible feeling that there might be tears bubb
ling up beneath her ice-cold exterior.
‘Don’t worry,’ her mother said. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘This doesn’t mean I’ve gone off shoes,’ Natalie managed to say.
Tara gazed around the bookshop with a smile on her face. ‘Now this,’ she said, ‘is more like it.’
Beside her, Gecko sighed. ‘Do we have to?’ he asked. Bookshops weren’t really his thing. Shops in general weren’t really his thing.
‘We have to,’ she confirmed. ‘We need maps, and guidebooks, and whatever else we can find.’
‘Haven’t you got a computer for that?’
‘Ever heard of low battery power?’
He watched as she walked up to the cash desk. ‘I’m sorry – do you speak English?’ she asked the girl who looked up at her.
‘I do,’ the girl said with an accent. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for maps of Georgia.’
‘City maps?’ the girl asked.
‘No – maps of the area around the Caucasus Mountains.’ She glanced at Gecko. ‘I know Rhino brought some with him,’ she explained, ‘but those were just what he could find in London in the days before we flew out. I think he called in some favours from army friends of his, but even so, there might be something more detailed locally. You never know.’
The girl behind the cash desk had been waiting patiently while Tara spoke. ‘We have some maps,’ she said carefully, ‘but I do not think they are the kind of thing you want to take with you if you are camping. They are more like tourist maps. I can recommend a camping shop just a short walk away, yes? They have maps.’
‘Yes, please,’ Tara said gratefully.
‘I will write the name of the place, and how to get there,’ the girl said. She picked up a pen and scribbled something on a piece of paper she’d pulled from beneath the till.
Gecko got bored, and started looking along the shelves nearest to the till. His gaze skimmed across various covers without stopping until he found a large hardback book with a red cover, highlighted with golden patterns. It caught his eye, at least in part because it was larger and more colourful than the books around it. Picking it up, he flicked through it. Each page contained a mass of text in the flowing Georgian script with which he was gradually becoming familiar – script that was almost like artwork in its own right – but there were also illustrations of men in armour, and animals, and forests. The illustrations were dark, and modern, and quite fantastical.
‘It is called Knight in a Leopard’s Skin,’ the girl at the till said, noticing his interest. ‘It is a classical tale in Georgian literature.’ She smiled shyly. ‘We publish it ourselves. This bookshop is part of Georgia’s largest publishing house.’
‘It is . . . lovely,’ Gecko said, and he meant it.
‘It is quite controversial,’ the girl continued. ‘We chose to make the illustrations modern, rather than . . . how would you say it? . . . antique. A lot of people argued with us, but the book has sold very well.’
‘If I had any money, I would buy it,’ Gecko said.
She smiled. ‘If I could, I would give you a copy for free.’
Gecko smiled back, unsure what to say. He was saved from embarrassment when his mobile rang. He answered it with an apologetic shrug at the girl behind the till.
‘Yeah, Gecko?’
‘Hi, yeah,’ a voice said, ‘this is Natalie. I’m phoning from the US embassy.’
‘Great,’ said Gecko. ‘I am answering from a bookshop.’
‘Oh. OK. Well, my mother’s been talking to the ambassador, and he’s made some calls and stuff, and he’s come up with the name of a guide here in Tbilisi who’s familiar with the Caucasus Mountains. His name is Levan Ketsbaia. He speaks good English, charges reasonable rates and can be trusted. Apparently the embassy staff use him from time to time if they have to leave the city for any reason. I thought you might get in contact with him or something.’
‘Did you try phoning him direct?’ Gecko asked.
‘Eeuw, no!’ Natalie responded. ‘I don’t talk to strangers if I can possibly help it. Besides, it’s more your thing.’
‘OK – text his number through.’
‘I will. Later.’ She rang off, leaving Gecko wondering if she was saying she’d text the number through later or was just indicating that she would see him later. He spoke five languages, but he found Natalie very difficult to understand. She seemed to have a language all her own.
‘That was Natalie,’ he said to Tara as his phone pinged to indicate an incoming text message. ‘She has got a lead on a possible local guide.’
‘Better pass it on to Rhino. He’ll be better at working out whether a tour guide knows his stuff than we will.’
‘Hey,’ Gecko protested, ‘I know about human nature and stuff. I have knocked around. I can tell whether a man is trustworthy or not!’
‘No offence,’ Tara said, ‘but I think we should leave it to the professionals.’ She held up the piece of paper that the girl behind the till had been working on. ‘Meantime, you and I can go and check out this camping shop. With a bit of luck they’ll have maps of the area, and they might also be able to help fill some of the gaps in our kit that Rhino couldn’t get hold of back in England before we left.’
‘Kendal Mint Cake,’ Gecko said suddenly as a thought struck him.
‘What?’
‘That stuff you can only get in camping shops. It is like a slab of pure sugar, flavoured with peppermint oil. It is supposed to be some kind of high-energy food supply for hikers, but there is so much sugar in there that hummingbirds would get hyper on it. I used to love the stuff. I could eat an entire bar in one go.’
Tara looked Gecko up and down. ‘If I did that, it would go straight to my hips and thighs. Where does it go on you?’
‘Charm and charisma,’ he replied with a smile.
Calum sat in darkness, his face lit only by his computer screens.
Six of them were blank – waiting for the streaming video that would be sent back, via satellite, from the cameras on the headbands he’d given the four members of the expedition and from the visual and infrared sensors of the ARLENE robot. The team was still in Tbilisi, according to the schedule, and he wouldn’t expect them to wear the headbands until they set out for the Caucasus foothills. They weren’t doing anything in Georgia’s capital city apart from allowing their body clocks time to adjust, finding a guide and picking up whatever items they needed to complete their supplies. If they wore the camera headbands for that, then they would get some strange looks from the locals. Much as Calum wanted to know what they were doing, what was happening to them, every second of the day, he knew he had to wait.
It was difficult for him though. He so desperately wanted to be a part of the expedition. He so desperately wanted to be there with them.
Maybe, one day, he would be able to. If this expedition, or the next one, or the one after that, was successful.
The seventh screen showed a Google Maps view of Tbilisi with the locations of Rhino, Tara, Gecko and Natalie displayed in different colours. Calum had hacked into their mobile-phone accounts while they were on the flight and set their phones to send him GPS coordinates every fifteen minutes. He hadn’t told them. He had a suspicion that they would have objected, but he had to know where they were, just in case something happened. At least, that’s what he told himself.
Tara and Gecko were off in one location, Rhino was a mile or so away from them, and Natalie was across the other side of the city. Her GPS location coincided with that of her mother. When Gilliam had told him that she was heading to Tbilisi as well, Calum had hacked her phone too. If she was taking an interest in the expedition, then he was going to take an interest in her. He didn’t want her to know more about what was going on than he did. When and if Rhino managed to employ a guide, Calum was going to have to do the same with his mobile phone – assuming he had one.
The eighth and ninth screens were running continual search-engine sweeps of the inter
net, looking for any mentions of the Almasti. If there was any fresh information, then he wanted to know about it straight away so he could pass it on to the team.
He checked his watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon UK time – or eight o’clock in the evening in Tbilisi. The team was probably making arrangements for dinner. Rhino would almost certainly take the opportunity to brief them on the plans for the next few days. He and Rhino had agreed that the best thing was for them to head for the village nearest to the location where the photograph of the possible Almast had been taken. It was as good a starting point as any. The village was called Ruspiri, and it was a small place in the back end of nowhere, occupied by farmers, hunters and the occasional daring backpacker.
The tenth screen showed a mosaic of photographs of Natalie Livingstone. Some were things he’d found on the internet – high-school yearbook stuff, things from the Facebook and Flickr accounts of friends, and a few were candid snaps he’d pulled off his security systems from the two occasions she’d visited the apartment. He felt a bit like a stalker, putting the photographs together and displaying them – no, that wasn’t true, he felt a lot like a stalker – but there was something about her that made his heart feel like it was tearing in two every time he saw her. What was it? She wasn’t exactly the kind of girl he usually went for – she was arrogant, shallow and vain – but he couldn’t get her beautiful tanned skin and her violet eyes out of his mind.
That was another reason why he so desperately wanted to be on the expedition.
He was just reaching forward to type some instructions into his keyboard when the lights went out.
Calum froze. Power cut? Unusual, in the centre of London. Fuse blown in the fuse box? Possible – the warehouse was old, and the wiring wasn’t as up to date as it could be, especially downstairs in the area where his great-grandfather’s samples and exhibits were stored. He sighed. He supposed that he’d have to go and check, difficult though it might be. The alternative would be to phone his great-aunt’s chauffeur and general handyman, Mr Macfarlane, and ask him to come over, and Calum would rather cut his own right hand off than do that.