The Curiosity Machine (33 page)

Gerald's eyes scanned the space between him and Green, desperate to find a weapon or somewhere to shelter if bullets started flying. But there was nothing. He had to keep Green talking. Divert and distract.

‘What type of options?' Gerald asked.

‘Let me put it this way: the share market is a gambler's dream come true, a place that caters to every level of greed. From the granny with a few dollars to invest, to people like you and me who can roll the dice on fortunes that would have made King Midas weep. Can you imagine what would happen to the world stock market if the black plague were to rear its head in the middle of Beijing or New York? Even the mere threat of it would cause panic on a global scale. Insurance companies would collapse, the gold price would soar. The money to be made in gasmasks alone doesn't bear thinking about. Now, someone with sufficient savvy, who
had borrowed eye-watering amounts of money and made the right investment choices ahead of that time would stand to make a profit of truly astronomical proportions. A trillion dollars might actually be understating it.'

Gerald's brow wrinkled. ‘But you don't have any money. The police have frozen all your accounts, and it's not like you can wander into a bank and just borrow some.'

A smug smile flittered across Mason Green's lips. ‘You are quite right, Gerald. I am, as they say, financially embarrassed at the moment. Which is why I need to remake my fortune. Through money lies power. Now while I may be persona non grata with the banks, there are those whom they would happily lavish ludicrous sums of money upon. A certain Archer Corporation springs to mind.'

‘Why would Archer Corporation go into massive debt to gamble on the stock market?' Gerald said. ‘As if that would happen.'

Green's gaze shot across to the glass-walled enclosure and landed on the figure of Mr Bourse, who was still wandering befuddled inside. ‘But Gerald, it has happened. You see, a rather clever investment banker operating on my instructions has ingratiated himself with the senior officers of Archer Corporation, and convinced them to borrow a sphincter-tightening sum of money. That money has been invested on their behalf to take maximum advantage of a plague-induced share
market crash. His share of the profits—
my
share of the profits—will return me to multi-billionaire status. And, happily for you, you will be the world's first trillionaire. To use a casino metaphor, Mr Bourse has placed everything on Black. Black death, that is.'

Gerald's brain spun like a roulette wheel. So that was what Mr Bourse had been doing on the
Archer
. All those meetings with Mr Prisk and his parents. It had all been about Green trying to remake his massive fortune.

Ruby moved to Gerald's side. ‘Is that true?' she asked him. ‘You stand to become the richest person in history on the back of millions of innocent people dying?'

Gerald spun around to face her. ‘It's not like I had anything to do with it,' he protested.

‘But it's your fortune that's bankrolling the deal,' Ruby said, her voice rising. ‘All that rotten money of yours.'

Mason Green emitted a condescending laugh. ‘Miss Valentine, you really ought to read some history,' he said. ‘Most of the great fortunes of Europe were built on great piles of bodies.'

Ruby shot the man a deathly look. ‘But the black plague isn't coming back,' she said. ‘We've stopped it, so you lose. Your gamble with Gerald's money hasn't paid off.'

Green smirked again. ‘And yet I am the one holding a gun, and the one with unlimited access to the world's only plague machine. And frankly, threats aren't enough.
I think I will spread the plague in a few major cities just to show the world I'm back in business.'

Gerald knew what he was about to do was insane, but he did it anyway.

He dashed to McElderry and thrust his hand into the pocket of the professor's lab coat. ‘Put the gun down,' Gerald said to Green, pulling his hand out and holding it high above his head. ‘Or I break this.' Gerald opened his grip to reveal a glass ampoule between his forefinger and thumb. ‘This is the black plague, made to Rudolph's personal recipe. Unless you put your gun down and kick it over here, you will be bleeding from the eyes within seconds.'

Chapter 32

Sir Mason Green did not move. His gun hand did not waver. ‘You're willing to take a hit for humanity, are you Gerald?' Green said with a wry smile. ‘Condemn yourself to a horrible death, just to stop me?'

‘To stop you from killing millions of people,' Gerald said.

Green's smirk spread wider. ‘You know, I believe you probably would sacrifice yourself for the greater good.' His eyes flickered towards Ruby. ‘But I bet you wouldn't sacrifice her. I bet you wouldn't sacrifice them.' Green aimed the gun at the end section of the glass-fronted enclosure and fired three quick shots. The sound of shattering glass filled the hangar as the wall disintegrated in a cascade of broken shards that flowed across the floor
like a river of diamonds. The people on the other side stared out in shock at the scene before them. Green's voice rose above their gasps and cries. ‘You break that vial and the plague bacteria will find every human on this island within hours. There is no place to hide. You will kill everyone here.
Everyone
.'

Gerald took in a sharp breath and stared hard at the man who had dogged his every moment for the past year. Then he looked over to the people in the sixth pen: his parents, Mrs Rutherford, Mr Fry and all the others. He turned to see Felicity and Professor McElderry staring at him, fear in their eyes. And he saw Ruby.

‘Gerald?' she said.

Gerald looked into those blue eyes, and lowered his hand to his side. He couldn't do it.

A smile spread on Green's face faster than any plague. ‘It looks like we're going to make a lot of money together, Gerald.'

Green's laughter changed to an ear-splitting yell. The handgun clattered to the floor and Green collapsed to the concrete, clutching his right knee. Gerald gaped at the sight of Sam, standing over Green as he writhed on the floor in agony. ‘So much talk,' Sam said, tapping an iron bar into the palm of his open left hand. He looked up at Ruby, Gerald and Felicity and grinned. ‘It's not as satisfying as killing zombies,' he said. ‘But Mrs Rutherford is right. Knee-capping is really effective.'

The reunion between Felicity and her parents brought a lump to Gerald's throat. He even allowed his mother all the time she needed to smother him in hugs and kisses. And he hugged her back. ‘Oh, Gerald,' Vi said, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘That's the first time since I can't remember when that I finished hugging you first.' Then she wrapped him up in her arms all over again.

Mrs Rutherford accepted Gerald's hugs and tears with grace. Gerald went to shake his butler by the hand but Mr Fry batted it away, and gave Gerald the biggest bear hug he had ever received.

It would take a day for Inspector Parrott from the Metropolitan Police to arrive on the island, and Gerald spent most of that time with Professor McElderry, Ruby, Sam and Felicity dismantling the curiosity machine. Piles of gears, flywheels and other assorted bits surrounded the five of them as they went about tearing down the plague contraption.

Professor McElderry cradled the perpetual motion machine in his hands, running his eyes over its shiny surface. ‘I can't wait to get this little beauty back to London so I can see what makes it tick,' he said. ‘Bound to be something useful to come out of this.'

‘So that's it?' Ruby said. ‘The Voynich manuscript cipher is solved, Rudolph's death machine is no more, and Jasper Mantle, Mason Green, Ursus, Ella, Irene, Mr Bourse and all the gunmen are trussed up like Christmas turkeys, waiting for the police.' She shook her head. ‘Gerald, when you send out the invitations to your next birthday party, maybe you could lose mine.'

‘That Jasper Mantle wasn't so bad,' Sam said, unwinding a bolt from the side of the curiosity machine with a wrench. ‘You know, as far as lunatics go.'

‘Are you nuts?' Ruby said. ‘He wanted to kill a third of the people on Earth.'

‘Well, there is that,' Sam said. ‘But it was for a good cause. You remember that garbage patch we found in the ocean? Stuff like that isn't very good for the planet. And it's not going to fix itself.'

‘But you can't just kill a couple of billion people,' Felicity said. ‘That's a bit, you know, extreme.'

Sam shrugged one shoulder. ‘We could all stop using so much plastic junk,' he said. ‘If seven billion people did that it would at least help a bit. You know: no more plastic water bottles, take your canvas bags to the supermarket and all that.'

Professor McElderry looked at Sam from under his shaggy awning of ginger eyebrows, and grunted. ‘Maybe you're not that stupid after all,' he said.

For the fourth time in an hour, Ruby pressed her nose up against the window to see what was going on inside the
Archer's
main cabin. ‘They're still talking,' she reported to Sam and Felicity, who were lounging in the sun on the lower pool deck. ‘Well, everyone is talking except for Gerald. He's just sitting there looking bored.'

‘What do you think is going on?' Felicity asked, flicking through the pages of her magazine. ‘We're due in Quito to catch our flights home soon and Gerald's been stuck in there for ages.'

‘I don't know, but Mr Prisk is doing most of the talking,' Ruby said. ‘Gerald's mum and dad don't look very happy.'

Sam stretched out his arms and rolled over on his sun bed. ‘It's probably some big business deal,' he said, scratching at an itch on his back. ‘You know how these billionaires are: always looking for the next big thing.'

They looked up as the door banged open and Gerald stumbled out into the sunlight, looking like a mole that had lost its way.

‘You've been ages,' Ruby said to him. ‘Is everything all right?'

Gerald dropped onto the end of Sam's sun bed, his expression a mixture of bewilderment and wonder.

‘Gerald?' Felicity said. ‘Are you okay?'

Gerald looked out at the expanse of Pacific Ocean behind them, and then back to his friends. ‘It's all gone,' he said.

‘What's all gone?' Sam asked, sitting up. ‘Not lunch? I haven't had thirds yet.'

‘No, not the lunch,' Gerald said. ‘The money. The fortune. Great Aunt Geraldine's enormous estate. It's all gone.'

Felicity pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead. ‘What do you mean, gone?'

‘You remember what Mason Green said about Mr Bourse convincing Archer Corporation to make a big investment on the stock market?'

‘Yeah,' Sam said. ‘Just before I kneecapped him. Something about taking a massive loan and going to the casino.'

‘Well, it looks like we lost the bet. Mr Bourse put everything on the stock market collapsing because of the black death, but we stopped it from happening. Now, everything has to be sold to pay back the debt. The plane. This yacht. The Caribbean island. All the houses. Everything.' Gerald blinked at his friends. ‘We're broke.'