The Warriors of Brin-Hask (8 page)

‘Will we really go to jail, Dad?’

‘Oh, no!’ He managed a smile at that. ‘I’m sure not. Mr Snavely is always threatening
stuff like that. He wishes he had that sort of power but no, it’s not up to him to
send anyone to jail.’

‘But,’ Amelia pressed on, ‘we’re fired, aren’t we?’

He sighed. ‘I hope not, but … it doesn’t look good. Sorry, kiddo. Still –’ he hesitated,
trying to look on the bright side. ‘Moving back home to the city wouldn’t be the
worst
thing in the world, would it?’

‘I should be so lucky.’ James stumped along the hallway, his hair all bed-tangled,
and pale, skinny legs sticking out of his striped boxer shorts.

Mum looked at him in amusement. ‘Good morning, sunshine. Mr Snavely will be here
any minute now. Do you want to put some pants on before he comes?’

Amelia looked down at her own daggy pyjamas and decided proper clothes would be better
for her, too. She padded back to the lobby, her bare feet silent on the marble stairs
up to her room – and realised with a start how much it really did feel like
her
room.
Already, going back to the city would be like going back to someone else’s life.

She was halfway along the gallery when she heard a floorboard squeak – but not under
her
foot.

She skipped the last couple of metres to the head of the hallway and saw Charlie
creeping out of James’s room, easing the door closed behind him.

‘Charlie!’

He spasmed in shock. ‘Amelia! Don’t do that! Kids can have heart attacks too, you
know.’

‘What were you doing in my brother’s room?’

Charlie grinned and held up the holo-emitter. ‘Got it!’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘I just did.’

‘But you shouldn’t have.’

‘But I did.’

It could have developed into quite an argument, but Charlie seized on the sound of
a car in the driveway and said, ‘They’re here!’

Amelia fled to her room, slamming the door on Charlie and scrambling to get changed
before she missed anything downstairs. She needn’t have worried. It turned out to
be Mary, coming back from Forgotten Bay with coffee for the adults and croissants
and bagels all round. Charlie stayed close to his mum, pretending to be ravenous
so that Amelia couldn’t get close enough to continue the conversation.

But soon another car crunched up the driveway and into the turning circle, and they
heard the heavy clunk of Mr Snavely’s car doors being opened and closed.

Dad peered out the library window and groaned.

‘Who is it?’ said Mum.

‘Rosby.’

‘Oh. What does she look like?’

‘Not what I expected, to be honest.’

Amelia looked. There was Mr Snavely, as thin and sneering as the day before, and
on the other side of the car, an ancient-looking woman, her grey hair curled into
a bun, leaning on a walking stick. She tottered slowly around the car’s long bonnet,
but looked up brightly enough at the hotel.

‘Showtime,’ whispered Dad.

He went to the lobby and opened the door, his usual smile faltering. ‘Good morning,
Mr Snavely. Good morning, Ms Rosby.’

Ms Rosby made her way inside and nodded to all of them.

Mr Snavely handed Dad a fat white envelope with a red seal. ‘My report on yesterday’s
inspection. Just a copy for your records, you understand,’ he said greasily. ‘The
original has already been lodged with Control headquarters.’

Dad gulped.

‘Adrian says you’ve got a hive of robotically enhanced animals under the hotel?’
said Ms Rosby.

‘Not any more,’ said Dad.

‘Don’t suppose you managed to trap one, did you? Be jolly useful to have a specimen
to send back to the lab.’

‘I did!’ Charlie beamed. When Ms Rosby turned to him, though, he was forced to add,
‘But it got away …’

‘Ah, I see. Pity.’

Dad coughed. ‘The … ah … situation has …
evolved
somewhat since yesterday.’

‘Oh?’ Ms Rosby cocked her head to one side, her eyes bright.

‘Yes. You know the Brin-Hask arrived last night?’

‘I thought I smelled seaweed!’
Ms Rosby looked delighted. ‘Marvellous. I’ll have to pay my respects before we go,
Snavely.’

‘Yes, well,’ Dad went on. ‘They heard about the rats.’

‘How?’ said Mr Snavely. He had his clipboard out and was taking notes already.

‘The …’ Dad sighed. ‘The kids told them.’

Mr Snavely flashed a triumphant look at Ms Rosby, but Ms Rosby merely waited for
Dad to go on.

Dad, however, was lost for words.

‘Perhaps it’s simplest if we just show you,’ Mum suggested.

She led them down the hallway and threw open the door to the kitchen. Mr Snavely’s
mouth dropped open. The dust and smoke in the air had died away completely overnight,
but the smell of burnt rats that replaced it was not an improvement. Mr Snavely’s
eyes bulged, he gagged slightly, and put a white-gloved hand to his mouth in horror
as he backed away from the room.

Ms Rosby thumped the floor with her walking stick and cried, ‘Oh, bravo!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Dad.

‘Really, brilliantly well done,’ Ms Rosby said warmly. ‘Look, Snavely, get down there
and fetch me one of those poor things, will you?’

‘One of – what?’ Mr Snavely blinked at her. ‘Poor what?’

‘A rat, Snavely. Get me a rat. Poor little wretches, I’m sure I’ve seen this sort
of thing before. Go on, Snavely – what are you waiting for? You’ve got gloves on,
haven’t you?’

Almost whimpering in disgust, Mr Snavely lowered himself into the ruined floor and
picked up the matted, dusted body of a rat. It was slashed open along its belly.

Ms Rosby took a thin metal gadget out of her jacket pocket and prodded the rat as
it lay in Mr Snavely’s hand. The red eyes sparked with light, and the body twitched
as machinery inside responded, but it was only the slightest of movements. When Ms
Rosby pressed a button on her gadget and prodded the rat a second time, there was
a grinding noise and the red eyes died again.

‘Humph.’ She put the gadget back in her pocket, disappointed. ‘I suppose they destroyed
the hive centre?’

Dad looked blank.

‘Yes,’ said Amelia. ‘At least, I think so. They kept letting off little bombs, but
the last one electrocuted them all.’

Ms Rosby sighed. ‘Yes, they self-destruct every time. Ah well, can’t be helped. The
fact is, you got rid of them all, and that’s as much as any of us in Control have
been able to do so far.’

‘What?’ Dad was trying to catch up. ‘Are you saying –’

‘You handled the problem,’ said Ms Rosby. ‘That’s what you are here to do, isn’t
it? Handle problems? Well, then, what do you want me to say? Get on with it!’

‘You mean …’ Dad was faint. ‘We can stay?’

‘No!’ said Mr Snavely.

Ms Rosby regarded him coolly. ‘Are you contradicting me?’

‘But, but –’ Mr Snavely spluttered. ‘The children! The children are the problem!
The rats were only discovered yesterday! It was the children Miss Ardman complained
about.’

‘Yes, I read the reports, Snavely. I know the story as well as you do. As I understand
it, the core issue was the caretaker falling under the spell of those eggs.’

Mr Snavely nodded.

‘The man’s first lapse in judgment in the thirty years he’s been here,’ Ms Rosby
went on. ‘Am I right?’

Mr Snavely nodded again.

‘And something that could easily happen to any of us. In fact, Miss Ardman should
consider herself lucky if Tom doesn’t lodge a counter-complaint that she failed to
protect him by not properly securing the eggs.’

Mr Snavely opened his mouth. He thought better of it, and closed it again.

‘Furthermore,’ Ms Rosby said crisply, ‘the issue with the
children
, as you call them,
seems to be rather that they
weren’t
informed about the gateway. Now they know what’s
going on here, I see they are managing themselves and the situation as well as their
parents. Perhaps even better.’ She smiled at Amelia and Charlie.

Mr Snavely had had enough. ‘I must object! How can we trust Gateway Control’s mission,
its security, its
dignity
, I say, to those who are not yet …’ He faltered.

‘Not yet what?’ Ms Rosby snapped.

Mr Snavely was silent, his face pale and fearful. He looked as though he’d just realised
a terrible mistake, but Amelia couldn’t tell what it was.

Ms Rosby turned to her, and smiled again. ‘Tell me, my dear, how old would you guess
I am?’

Amelia shook her head. There was no way to answer an age question politely. Whatever
she said, it was bound to come out badly. But Charlie wasn’t so restrained.

‘Eighty-nine!’ he said.

Ms Rosby grinned. Mr Snavely writhed.

‘Not even close! Guess again.’

‘A hundred and four!’ Charlie grinned back.

Ms Rosby leaned over her walking stick, her wrinkles deepening as she smiled more
broadly than ever and said, ‘Nope. I’m six years old. In Earth years, that is.’ She
straightened up and gave Mr Snavely a hard look. ‘And I’m quite capable of protecting
Control’s mission, secrecy
and
dignity, thank you.’

She shook hands with Dad, who was so stunned he just stared at her, and Mum, who
smiled calmly. Ms Rosby said to Amelia and Charlie, ‘Lovely to meet you all. Scott,
I’ll send a crew in to clean up this mess. You should have a new kitchen installed
within the week on my recommendation.’

Dad stammered a bit, but nothing much came out.

‘Come, Snavely,’ said Ms Rosby. ‘And bring the rat. I want to thank the Brin-Hask
for their superb work last night.’

She tottered back out to the lobby, Mr Snavely following her wretchedly, while Amelia
and the others stood in silent amazement.

They were staying!

As soon as Mr Snavely’s car had disappeared from view, Mum and Dad broke into loud
cheers. Dad swept Mum up in his arms and they danced around the lobby, laughing goofily.
Mary sat down hard on the arm of a chair, limp with relief, while Charlie whooped
and high-fived Amelia so many times, her palms were red.

James had stayed in his room for the whole event, and if he heard them at all, he
was ignoring them.

Mum went to the cellar and came back with a bottle of champagne. Then, looking at
the kids, realised the box of extra-fancy chocolates she kept in her bottom drawer
would be a better way for them to celebrate. Amelia was on her fourth soft-centre
when Dad blurted out, ‘Tom! We haven’t told Tom yet!’

Mum looked guilty, then said, ‘Quick, kids – go and get him for us, would you? He’s
part of this too.’

Outside, Amelia looked around for the Brin-Hask. Their camp site seemed deserted.

‘Have they gone already? I thought their wormhole didn’t arrive until tonight.’

‘Don’t you remember how long it took them to get up here?’ said Charlie. ‘And it’s
probably like the airport – maybe Tom likes them there two hours early or something.’

That made the trip down to Tom’s a bit slower than usual. Normally they would have
raced each other down the steep slopes, hardly looking where they were going, but
now they knew there was an army of tiny aliens ploughing their way through the long
grass, they moved much more cautiously.

‘We should have mowed a pathway for them,’ said Charlie. ‘We kind of owe them that
much.’

They caught up to the warriors in the clearing outside Tom’s cottage. Poor Enrick
was being pestered by a dozen different suggestions for the new song he was trying
to compose, ‘The Ballad of King Hibble and the Earth Rats’. King Hibble himself was
at the head of the procession, laughing with his companions. When they heard the
kids coming through the leaf litter, the whole army turned.

This time, Amelia knew exactly what to do, and it didn’t feel awkward at all. She
dropped to one knee, bowed her head and said, ‘Your highness, you saved both our
families. Thank you!’

The king laughed again. ‘Yes, Metti Rosby came to tell us as she left. We are pleased
for you, cubs.’

‘But now you’re going, and we haven’t done anything for you,’ said Amelia.