Escape to the Moon Islands: Quest of the Sunfish 1 Read online

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2016

  Copyright © Text, Mardi McConnochie 2016

  Copyright © Illustrations, Jason Solo 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760290917

  eISBN 9781952534737

  Cover design: Design by Committee

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Cover illustration: Jason Solo

  For Annabelle and Lila

  Contents

  Spinner’s flight

  Spinner’s secrets

  Trashed

  A visitor

  Triumph

  Swamphead

  Spinner the thief

  Will

  The Sunfish

  Don’t do anything stupid

  Lolly

  Escape

  Lowtown

  Bike boy

  The noisy house

  At the Crown and Anchor

  Pursued

  The Admiralty Oath

  Liberated

  The boat thief

  The southern route

  A cure for seasickness

  Southaven

  Run

  The Code

  Pirates

  The boy

  What to do about Pod

  Pod’s true colours

  Pod joins the crew

  Mangoes

  Breaking the code

  The Blue Room

  Blue Water Princess

  Pirate submarine

  Into the churn

  Links

  A sighting

  Beckett again

  Shipwreck Alley

  Holed

  Fever

  The Welcoming Friends

  Little Lang Lang

  Where’s Spinner?

  The Collodius Process

  Destinations

  Spinner’s flight

  The last night Will and his father spent together was a very ordinary night—so ordinary you’d almost call it boring. Both of them were working—Spinner on a broken wind turbine, Will on the trucks of a skateboard—but the pace of the work was slow and relaxed. Songs from Spinner’s distant youth played on the old reconditioned soundbox.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Will, ‘we’ve listened to enough of your old-guy tracks. I want to put some good music on.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know good music if it sat up and bit you,’ Spinner said amiably.

  And it was then, just as Will was deciding whether to argue his case or just lunge for the controls, that there was an urgent beating on their front door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Spinner called. It was wiser not to open your door at night.

  ‘Truman,’ came a voice. Truman was a pedicab rider who lived in the neighbourhood.

  Spinner unbolted the door and Truman fell into the room, gasping as if he’d just run the race of his life. ‘They’re coming,’ he blurted.

  ‘You’ve heard this?’ Spinner asked sharply. ‘Or have you actually seen them?’

  ‘With my own eyes,’ Truman said.

  ‘How far behind are they?’

  ‘Not far,’ Truman said. ‘You’d better get gone.’

  Spinner clapped Truman on the shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘and so should you. You don’t want to be here when they arrive.’

  ‘Watch yourself,’ said Truman.

  Spinner was usually slow-handed and easygoing, but now he was electric with energy. ‘Come on,’ he said to Will, hurrying into the living quarters at the back of the shop. ‘We don’t have much time. Thank goodness your sister’s away.’

  Will followed him, bewildered. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Trouble,’ Spinner said. ‘And the less you know the better. Collect up your things and go over to Janky’s place.’

  Janky was Will’s best friend. ‘Okay,’ Will said, ‘but where are you going?’

  Spinner was busy pulling useful things from cubbyholes and stuffing them into a backpack. He didn’t answer Will’s question.

  ‘Spinner?’

  Spinner looked up at him, his face uncharacteristically tense. ‘Get your stuff. We don’t have much time.’

  Will clattered upstairs to his little bedroom and grabbed some clothes at random, still not really understanding what was happening.

  When he came down again, Spinner was counting the money in his cash box, a worried look on his face. ‘Here,’ Spinner said, holding out some notes, ‘you’d better take this. I’m sorry it’s not more.’

  Will took it, disturbed. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Spinner said. ‘I’m sorry Will. I knew this day was coming, but I hoped . . .’ He trailed off. ‘Whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, stay with Janky and his mum. They’ll keep you safe.’

  ‘But I want to come with you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, son. You can’t. Not this time.’ Spinner looked at Will, his face filled with love and tenderness and anxiety and all the words there was no time to say. Then they both caught the sound of heavy vehicles in the distance, their engines roaring.

  ‘I’ll send word when I can,’ Spinner said. He hugged Will tightly. ‘Be careful. Be safe. Now go.’ His hard hand pushed Will in the back, propelling him towards the door.

  Will looked back one last time and saw Spinner, the wiry old man, with his quiff of silvery hair standing up like a parrot’s crest, packing a few last essentials into a backpack. Spinner looked up at him and his dark eyes blazed. ‘Go!’ he roared.

  And Will pushed out the back door and into the night.

  Spinner’s secrets

  Will arrived, breathless, on Janky’s doorstep, and they let him in without question. Janky’s house, like most of the houses in the area, had been flood damaged, but it was in better condition than most, and didn’t have that mouldy smell so many of them had.

  ‘You can stay as long as you like,’ Janky’s mum said, pulling spare sheets and blankets from a cupboard. ‘You can count on us.’

  She asked very few questions about what had happened, something Janky, for one, found weird.

  ‘But what do you think’s going on?’ he asked as he made up a bed for Will on his bedroom floor.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Will said, still a little dazed by the suddenness of it all.

  ‘Truman must have said who it was that was after your dad.’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘So who do you think they were?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Will said irritably.

  ‘Janky!’ shouted Janky’s mum from two rooms away. ‘Stop hassling him!’

  Janky lowered his voice and continued. ‘Did you see what they were driving?’

  ‘Nah,’ Will s
aid. ‘But I heard them. Something powerful. I’d guess all-terrain vehicles.’

  Janky nodded eagerly. ‘So who drives those?’

  ‘Admiralty.’

  ‘Brotherhoods.’

  ‘Why would the brotherhoods be after my dad?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Janky said. ‘Maybe he had secrets.’

  ‘Spinner didn’t have any secrets,’ Will snorted. ‘Not in our house. Those walls are like paper.’

  ‘He obviously had at least one secret,’ Janky said.

  Will humphed. He couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘Hey, you can borrow my shell if you want,’ Janky said.

  A shell was a small handheld communication device. You could use it to make calls (voice or vid) and send messages; you could join the links with it. Most shells had virtual keyboards which turned them into computers for study or work. Some of the newer models came with accessories like headpieces or sunglasses that connected wirelessly to the shell and displayed information directly in front of your eyes. This function was definitely kind of useful, but the real reason people liked them was because the sunglasses looked cool, and the headpieces were like jewellery—decorative, customisable, and ever-changing. Janky’s shell was a very basic model—his mum wouldn’t fork out for retinal-display sunglasses.

  ‘What do I need your shell for?’ Will asked.

  ‘To let Annalie know what’s happened.’

  Annalie was Will’s twin sister, and she had been away at boarding school in Pallas for almost a term now. Will and Annalie were very different people—Annalie was bookish, Will the restless opposite of bookish—but in spite of this they had always made a good team, until high school separated them.

  ‘No need to call her,’ Will said. ‘Not until I know more.’

  ‘The whole thing may have blown over by tomorrow anyway,’ Janky agreed.

  ‘Maybe,’ Will said.

  That night, while Janky snored beside him, he picked over his memories looking for clues about what might be going on, but came up empty.

  The next morning Will was up early, hanging around while Janky’s mum made breakfast, trying to find out what she knew about the situation.

  ‘So my dad must have told you something,’ he said.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But he must’ve made some kind of arrangement with you, right? Like, “If anything should ever happen to me . . . for example if the Kang Brotherhood comes after me—”’

  ‘The Kang Brotherhood?’ Janky’s mum looked at him incredulously.

  ‘So, it wasn’t the Kangs?’ Will said, feeling like he was getting somewhere. ‘Was it the Three Knives?’

  ‘Will,’ Janky’s mum said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with your dad. He’s been good to me over the years, and if there’s anything I can do to help you out, you know I will. But I don’t have any secret information.’

  ‘Has he been in contact with you?’

  Janky’s mum looked concerned. ‘He hasn’t contacted you?’

  Will shook his head. ‘I don’t have a shell.’

  Janky’s mum put her hand on his shoulder reassuringly. ‘Whatever this is, I’m sure it’ll blow over soon. Don’t worry, Will. He’ll be back.’

  Will nodded, not quite trusting himself to say anything. He grabbed a piece of toast and stuffed it into his mouth instead.

  Janky’s mum told them absolutely positively to stay away from the workshop that morning. ‘You two are going to school, and if I hear any different, you’ll be in big trouble,’ she said sternly.

  But of course that was never going to happen.

  Will put on a borrowed Janky-smelling school shirt, but as soon as they were around the corner from Janky’s house he announced he was going back to the workshop to look for clues.

  ‘You coming?’ he asked.

  Janky squirmed. ‘You know I would,’ he said, ‘but I bet Mum calls the school to check up on us.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘When she’s mad,’ Janky said feelingly, ‘she’s mean.’ He paused. ‘I can tell school you’re sick?’

  ‘Thanks, man,’ Will said.

  He turned around and doubled back, hoping to avoid a chance encounter with Janky’s mum, picking his way along the lumpy, bumpy streets of Lowtown.

  Lowtown was one of the nicer parts of the huge slum where Will lived. It was called Lowtown because it was low-lying and water damaged, but it was not the worst area of the slum—that was Saltytown, where the water lapped at the houses and only the most desperate people lived. There were other parts too: the Eddy, the area surrounding the small unofficial port mostly used by smugglers and pirates; Firetown, which was where you went to get drunk; and Kang, Three Knives, and Korrupter—neighbourhoods that took their names from the brotherhoods that controlled them. Lowtown was one of the safer parts of the slums, but it wasn’t a comfortable place to live, work or walk.

  Forty years ago, the slums had been ordinary suburbs of Port Fine, a large and busy seaport. Then the cataclysmic rise in sea level known as the Flood permanently reshaped coastlines all around the world. Huge swathes of low-lying real estate were inundated, and much of Port Fine was damaged or destroyed. Once the ocean had settled into its new level, the emergency government decided which parts of the city of Port Fine should be saved, what should be rebuilt, and what could be ignored. The main port was rebuilt, its shipping lanes cleared, and the port re-opened for business; the parts of the city on high ground were kept. They drew a line around the rest of the city, the parts on lower ground. Beyond this line, they did not rebuild. Whole sections of the city were written off, like a wrecked car that wasn’t worth fixing. In these parts, no one made any attempt to repave the streets that had been potholed or washed away, run new electricity cables, fix the damaged water mains or restore the flooded metro lines.

  There was no compensation offered to the people whose homes had been beyond that arbitrary line. The Flood had made their homes worthless, but there was nothing they could do about it. The scale of the disaster was too vast. Some people got out and tried their luck elsewhere; many more stayed, ruined by the Flood, living among the wreckage as best they could, an underclass trapped by poverty. There were refugees, or ‘illegals’, living in the slums too: people who’d escaped from other flood-ravaged countries and entered Dux illegally, hoping for a better life.

  The Flood’s effects were different in every country. Dux was geographically very large, and many of its major cities, including Pallas, the capital, along with much of its agriculture and industries, were inland, where the Flood didn’t reach. Countries that were low-lying, or had lots of major coastal cities, or relied on crops that grew near the sea, were devastated by the Flood; afterwards, many economies simply collapsed. Forty years on, Dux was thriving again, and there were other countries where things still went on more or less as they always had; but many other countries could not get out of the cycle of poverty, famine, illness and violence. A steady stream of unhappy people left these places, looking for a better chance somewhere else—anywhere else.

  Spinner, Will and Annalie were Duxan citizens, not illegals, but their reason for living in Lowtown had never been entirely clear to Will. Whenever he or Annalie asked why they couldn’t move somewhere nicer, Spinner always said, ‘What do you want to move for? We live a good life here!’ And it was true—they had led a good life. At least until now.

  Will hopped over the potholes as he hurried to the workshop, hoping that when he got there he’d find Spinner brewing his first coffee of the day, ready to explain that the whole thing had been a silly mistake.

  Because it had to be a mistake, Will thought furiously. Spinner wasn’t the kind of guy to get in trouble with anyone. He ran his little workshop. He fixed things. He built new things, useful things. He found old stuff from the wreckage of the old prosperous world and made it work again. How could anyone have a problem with him?

  He came round the corner into his street. The front door of the workshop was ajar; his
heart leapt hopefully. Spinner always left it that way when he was open for business. He walked to the door, hoping to see Spinner there waiting for him.

  But as soon as he stepped inside he knew Spinner was not there, could not be there. Because something terrible had happened.

  Trashed

  The workshop was a large open space, lit from above by skylights that Spinner had found and installed himself. It had rows of shelves reaching all the way up to the roof, filled with a collection of components and parts, hardware and gadgets, mechanical objects of every vintage, neatly sorted and arranged. Behind these shelves was the counter, and behind that was the workshop proper, where Spinner worked on the things he invented or found and reconditioned or fixed for other people.

  Now the workshop was in chaos. One of the shelving units had been tipped over. Broken bits of gears and housings were scattered on the ground. Gadgets lay smashed and ruined. The millions of drill bits and nails and nuts and screws Spinner had painstakingly collected and sorted over the years spread, glistening, across the floor.

  Will walked cautiously through the mess, screws rolling under his feet, a feeling of helpless fury rising in his chest. Spinner’s workspace had always been a miracle of order and calm: every tool had its designated hook or drawer. But now the pegboard where the tools hung was ripped off the wall; the workbench, built from heavy slabs of old wood, was knocked over; and the cupboards which had held larger tools—tools Spinner had painstakingly gathered over many years—were stripped bare.

  The furniture was smashed. All the stock Spinner had kept to sell or barter was damaged or gone. For a few long moments, all Will could do was stare at the mess, struggling to take in the scale of this loss.

  What happened here? he wondered. Why would someone hate Spinner so much they’d want to tear the place apart?

  He walked to the door that separated the shop from the flat at the back and discovered it had been kicked in.

  Of course, they had been here, too. The flat consisted of one comfortable room with a sofa and chairs at one end, a table and a little kitchen at the other, with three little bedrooms up a steep flight of stairs. The laundry and bathroom were out the back. The tall bookshelf that usually held Spinner’s collection of books was also on the floor. Most of the books were gone, apart from a couple of childhood favourites that lay splayed about, their covers torn. Holes had been punched in the plasterboard walls, as if whoever had been here was looking for secret hiding places. Cupboards had been broken open and kitchen canisters emptied out. The floor was a mess of rice, flour and sugar, crisscrossed with footprints.