The Castle in the Sea: Quest of the Sunfish 2 Page 11

  ‘We had a report that you’ve been anchored here since yesterday.’

  Pod was surprised. He thought he’d found somewhere ridiculously remote. He hadn’t noticed any towns or even houses nearby. ‘Oh. Yes,’ he said. ‘But I’m not staying long. I didn’t realise I couldn’t stay here.’

  ‘It is not forbidden to stay,’ Tomasson said. ‘But this is not a designated mooring. If you stay longer than six hours, you must register your vessel with the nearest authority.’

  ‘Oh,’ Pod said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Who is the owner of this vessel?’

  ‘The owner?’ Pod stalled, starting to panic.

  ‘Yes. Who is the owner of this vessel?’

  What do I say? Pod wondered, his thoughts whirling. Do I say Spinner? But I don’t know his real name. And he’s a wanted man.

  Tomasson was growing suspicious. ‘I need to see the papers for this boat.’

  He knew where the papers were but he had no idea whether they’d fool a suspicious Norlinden policeman. ‘The papers, sure!’ he said. ‘They’re below—can I go and get them?’

  Tomasson and the other officer conferred, then Tomasson went below with Pod, keeping a wary eye on him as he opened the locker, retrieved the papers and handed them over. Tomasson glanced over them, then indicated they should go back up on deck. Tomasson gave the papers to the other officer, who scrutinised them closely. The two officers conferred again, and then Tomasson asked, ‘What is your name?’

  ‘My name?’

  Tomasson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes. Your name.’

  Pod’s brain had frozen with fear. He could not possibly give them his real name. He had no identity papers and his name didn’t appear on any list. Undocumented people got taken away and put in a camp.

  ‘Will,’ Pod blurted.

  ‘Will what?’

  For a moment he couldn’t remember Will and Annalie’s surname. ‘Will Wallace.’

  ‘A national of which country?’

  ‘Dux.’

  The second officer flicked open a shell and began typing. Pod watched anxiously. Will, at least, was a Duxish citixen. He had identity papers. He was on a list somewhere, a real, identifiable person. Pod was a ghost: nameless, numberless, countryless.

  Something appeared on the shell. Tomasson and the second officer looked at the report, then looked at Pod; looked at the report, looked at Pod again. With a sinking feeling, Pod realised Will’s identity documents probably came with a picture.

  ‘You are not Will Wallace,’ Tomasson said. ‘Who are you?’

  Variables

  Sujana Kieferdottar lived in a tall, narrow wooden house with a steeply sloping roof. It stood all alone, another half an hour’s walk above the very tiny village of Oeferklikken. The young woman with the cart was making a delivery to Oeferklikken; she explained that she couldn’t take them any closer to Sujana’s house because the path was too steep for her horses.

  The path was, indeed, very steep, and might have even been too steep for mountain goats. Will, Essie and Annalie were panting by the time they reached Sujana’s front door.

  The woman who opened the door was very tall and very wide. Graham had once described her as fat, but she wasn’t—she was massive, with broad shoulders, a huge torso and enormous feet.

  ‘Sujana Kieferdottar?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Annalie, this is Will.’ She paused. ‘We’re Spinner’s kids.’

  The glower reversed itself into an expression of surprise. ‘Good gracious. What are you doing here?’

  Sujana lived with her elderly mother, who was as tiny and birdlike as her daughter was enormous. The house they shared was like a junk shop, but it also reminded Annalie a little of home, for it was crammed with old things. As soon as you walked in the front door, there were shelves stacked with dozens of pairs of old shoes, tennis rackets and ski goggles, old cameras, suitcases, bicycles and roller skates. Casting a quick appraising eye over it, Annalie thought Spinner might have found a use for some of it, but most of it was the sort of stuff no one would want any more.

  ‘Do come and sit down,’ Sujana’s mother said, wafting them towards the first door on the left. This was a small formal parlour, decorated in a mix of genteel florals (the wallpaper, the furniture, even the rug were all floral, although none of them matched). It smelled of old books and was piled high with still more stuff.

  ‘We can sit in the kitchen,’ Sujana said.

  ‘But they’re company, they should sit in the good room,’ Sujana’s mother fretted.

  ‘We’ll be more comfortable in the kitchen,’ Sujana said firmly. This, too, was piled to the ceiling with old stuff: electric choppers and bread ovens, bits of old tea sets, ancient cookbooks and very specialised glasses in a myriad of shapes and sizes.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ Annalie asked. ‘Has he been here?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Sujana.

  ‘Spinner!’

  Sujana paused for what seemed like a longer time than the question required. ‘No,’ she said finally.

  ‘Oh,’ Annalie said, disappointed.

  ‘But Dan Gari said Spinner was on his way here,’ Will said. ‘He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Does he?’ Sujana said. She turned crossly to her mother, who was clattering baking dishes. ‘Do you really have to do that?’

  ‘The children look hungry,’ her mother said with dignity, ‘and we’ve nothing in the house.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what he wants to talk to me about,’ Sujana said.

  ‘Come on,’ Will said. ‘You know what he wants to talk about.’

  Sujana eyed Will. ‘Oh,’ she said finally. ‘That.’

  ‘Spinner’s worried you’re all in danger,’ Annalie said.

  ‘What sort of danger?’ Sujana asked.

  ‘Beckett,’ Annalie said. ‘The Admiralty. They’re coming after you.’

  ‘He found Spinner,’ Will said. ‘He got away but now he’s on the run, and you could be next.’

  Sujana fingered a mark on the table, not meeting their eyes. ‘Oh, I don’t think we need to worry about Avery.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Will said. ‘The guy’s chased us halfway round the world, threatened us . . .’

  ‘Threatened you, really? I find that very hard to believe. Avery wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ Sujana said.

  ‘You reckon?’ Will said, looking at Essie and Annalie in surprise.

  ‘I think he’s changed a bit since the last time you saw him,’ Annalie said.

  ‘I doubt that,’ Sujana murmured.

  A baking tray clattered on the bench, giving them all a start. Sujana glared at her mother, who fluttered apologetically.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve got him all wrong,’ Sujana said. ‘To me, he was always one of the good ones. A lot of those Admiralty types don’t really get science. They think everything should work to rules and schedules. They like guaranteed outcomes at set times. Science doesn’t always work like that—it’s unpredictable, it’s slow. Beckett was different. He understood that what we were doing was very complex, and had to follow its own rules. He believed in the work, and he believed in us. It was part of his pitch to us, right from the start, when he was putting the team together: this was good work we were doing, important work, the most important. Our research was going to save the world.’

  ‘He believed that?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sujana said. ‘To a certain extent, we all did.’

  ‘Wait—you thought rebuilding the Collodius Device was a good idea?’ Will said. ‘After what it did the first time?’

  ‘Yes, but it went wrong,’ Sujana said excitedly. ‘If it had worked properly, the way it was supposed to, we’d be living in an entirely different world today.’

  ‘But it did go wrong,’ Will said. ‘We can’t change that now.’

  ‘Yes, but what if we could change it?’ Sujana said.

  ‘How?’ Essie asked.

  ‘Identify the caus
es. Modify the process. Disrupt the changes. Turn back the clock,’ Sujana said, her eyes shining.

  ‘Lower the oceans?’ Will said sceptically.

  ‘Do you really think that’s possible?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be possible? We changed the world once. We can change it again. For the better.’

  Annalie didn’t know what to say. To her, this sounded like lunacy.

  Sujana’s mother slid some delicious warm buns onto the table; biscuits followed. Will and Essie began to eat eagerly but Annalie was too interested in what Sujana had to say to be distracted.

  ‘Avery believed it was possible,’ Sujana said. ‘It wasn’t just another project for him. Like I said, he was a true believer.’ Her voice softened as she began to reminisce. ‘It was so exciting at the start. All of us working together, out in the desert in the middle of nowhere. Site 315, it was called. It was so secret, it didn’t even have a name. Boy, that place was lonely. Blazing hot during the day, freezing cold at night. But it felt like we were doing something really important.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t blame Avery for what happened. He was caught in the middle: he was trying to protect us and our team, but he had to answer to his bosses in the Admiralty. They’re the ones I blame. They were in such a rush. They wanted it all now. But the work wasn’t finished. That’s why it went wrong the first time.’

  ‘You really think that’s the only reason it went wrong?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Well, errors in the science, obviously,’ Sujana said, a little crossly, ‘but that’s because they were rushed into it, too.’

  Annalie looked at her curiously. ‘So, if you believed in the project, why did you leave with the others?’

  ‘It was complicated,’ Sujana said, looking troubled. ‘At the time it seemed the right thing to do. The Admiralty kept pushing us for results, they wanted us to move on to the next phase, and we were all so afraid of what they were going to do with our work . . . Dan thought they wanted to weaponise it, but he was always so paranoid. And Avery assured us they wouldn’t contemplate such a thing. It was unthinkable, he said.’

  ‘And you believed him?’ asked Will.

  ‘Of course,’ Sujana said, rather offended. ‘He wouldn’t lie to us about something that important.’

  ‘What was the next phase?’ Annalie asked.

  ‘Rebuilding the device,’ Sujana said. ‘The thing is, the device was the easy part. You could build it again tomorrow. It’s the modelling that’s tricky. That’s what I was doing, along with Dan. He worked on the weather, and I worked on the modelling—that’s what I do, model complex systems. I try to look at all the variables and then build a computer model so we can understand what the outcomes are likely to be. But when you’re talking about water, the atmosphere, the climate—there are so many variables, and everything is interconnected, and one wrong variable can make a big difference to the outcome. So it’s painstaking, time-consuming work. You can’t rush it.’ She paused. ‘I’m still doing the work, you know. I never stopped.’

  ‘Dan Gari was still working on it too,’ Annalie said.

  ‘Was he?’ Sujana said. Then she caught what Annalie had said. ‘Why do you say “was”?’

  ‘Beckett tracked him down and arrested him,’ Will said.

  Sujana looked stunned. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Essie pulled out her shell. There was no service this high up on the mountain, but she was able to retrieve the news article from her shell’s memory. She showed it to Sujana, who read the story through, her face registering growing dismay.

  ‘This is why we think Beckett’s not such a good guy,’ Will said. ‘See that weather tower on fire in the background? That’s Dan’s tower.’

  ‘But those people were pirates,’ Sujana said, angry and defensive.

  ‘Catching the pirates was just a bonus,’ Annalie said. ‘Beckett was looking for Dan Gari, and he found him. That’s him, getting arrested. You could be next.’

  Sujana stared at the photo for another long minute. Then she looked up at them defiantly. ‘If you take up with pirates, what else can you expect? I’m not in any danger. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  And she got up abruptly and left the room.

  Under arrest

  ‘All right, I’m not Will,’ Pod said desperately. ‘I’m just minding the boat for him. But he’ll vouch for me—I’ve got a shell, you can call him on it. It’s just below, he’ll tell you.’

  ‘I need to locate the registered owner of this vessel. Can you help me locate that person?’ Tomasson said.

  Pod didn’t know whose name was on the papers, and he knew he couldn’t ask the police to tell him. ‘I don’t know where that person is right now,’ he said, knowing this didn’t help his cause.

  Tomasson had clearly had enough. ‘You need to come with us,’ he said.

  ‘But what about the boat?’ Pod cried. ‘You can’t just leave the boat! I’m supposed to be taking care of it!’

  ‘We will take care of the boat,’ Tomasson said. ‘And now you must come with us.’

  Pod could see no other choice; he ran at the police officers and almost succeeded in flipping one of them over the railing and into the water. Almost—but not quite. Even with Graham swooping in to attack with a screech and a rake of claws, in moments the two policemen had Pod flat on his face on the deck and were busily cuffing his hands together.

  ‘You are under arrest,’ Tomasson said.

  Leaving the second policeman behind on the Sunfish, Tomasson and the third officer drove Pod, handcuffed and desperate, to the water police headquarters. Graham had refused to be caught and had therefore been left behind.

  ‘What are you going to do with the boat?’ Pod asked. ‘Where are you taking it?’

  ‘That’s not your concern,’ Tomasson said.

  ‘But what about the parrot? Someone has to look after him.’

  ‘We will deal with the parrot.’

  ‘Deal with him how?’ Pod demanded. ‘He’s a very special bird, very old, very precious to his owner. You’re not going to have him put down are you?’

  ‘We will follow normal procedure regarding the care and control of dangerous animals,’ Tomasson said.

  ‘He’s not dangerous!’ Pod cried.

  ‘He attacked us,’ Tomasson said. ‘The Animal Control Act states that any animal deemed to be a danger to police or the public will be dealt with in an appropriate manner.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Pod asked.

  But Tomasson either wasn’t sure, or wouldn’t say.

  They took Pod, still cuffed, into the water police headquarters. He tried to stay alert to any possibilities of escape, but as he was escorted through one security door after another, no opportunities presented themselves.

  He was taken to an interview room and left locked in there for what seemed like hours. Eventually Tomasson appeared with another colleague. They switched on recording equipment and began to interview him.

  ‘We know you are not Will Wallace. What is your name please?’

  ‘Pod,’ he said.

  ‘Pod what?’

  ‘Just Pod.’

  ‘How old are you, Pod?’

  ‘Not sure exactly. Thirteen.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Tomasson gave him a hard look.

  ‘It’s true! My parents sold me when I was little. Don’t know where I come from.’

  Tomasson and his colleague exchanged a brief glance, then Tomasson changed tack. ‘How did you come to be aboard that boat?’

  The real story was both complicated and unlikely, so Pod simplified it. ‘I escaped from the people who owned me, then I met the crew of this boat and they let me stay.’

  ‘And where are they now, this crew?’

  ‘They went ashore. They’ve gone to meet someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Their dad.’

  ‘And what is his name?’

  Pod had remembe
red Spinner’s real name in the interim, but he still couldn’t say it out loud. Spinner’s name in a police report was certain to raise flags somewhere. But he couldn’t keep saying I don’t know either.

  ‘Arnold,’ he lied. ‘Arnold Wallace.’

  Tomasson took a moment to check his notes, then looked up at him again. ‘So, have you had a chance to remember who the boat’s registered owner is?’

  Pod wished Annalie had told him the answer to this question. It hadn’t occurred to either of them that he might be asked. ‘Look, I don’t know whose name is on the papers,’ he said. ‘I just know who I’ve been sailing with. The boat’s theirs. You’ve got my shell, all you have to do is call them. They’ll tell you I haven’t stolen it.’

  ‘Your friends would say you hadn’t stolen the boat,’ Tomasson said. ‘Especially if they’d helped you steal it. So until we can locate the registered owner, you’re not going anywhere.’

  They took him from the interview room to a cell. It was neat and clean, in an orderly Norlinden kind of way, but plain, windowless, and very, very depressing. Pod sank down on the bed, despairing. How was he going to get out of this?

  When the rain came

  Sujana’s mother took charge of Will, Annalie and Essie, making up beds for them in a spare room on one of the upper floors of the tall, narrow house.

  ‘You must have had a long journey to get here,’ she said. ‘You’re very welcome to stay the night. Perhaps tomorrow Sujana can find a way to contact your father.’

  ‘Do you think she could?’ Annalie asked eagerly.

  ‘I don’t know about these things,’ Sujana’s mother said vaguely. ‘But I will certainly ask.’

  Once they were alone again, Will said, ‘That Sujana was seriously weird.’

  ‘I reckon she used to have a crush on Beckett,’ Essie giggled. ‘Did you hear the way she talked about him?’

  ‘She definitely had a soft spot for him,’ Annalie said.

  ‘She’s mad,’ Will said. ‘Beckett’s a psycho. I bet he was always a psycho. But I’m more worried about what’s happened to Spinner. He had a huge headstart. Why hasn’t he been here?’