‘Beetle man.’
The answer, totally unexpected, stunned her. ‘What did you say?’
‘Beetle man. He gave it. Nikos said it wasn’t wrong.’
‘Beetle man. What’s the beetle man like?’
Ben grinned. ‘Funny.’
She studied him, thinking hard. ‘OK, Ben. Look, it’s getting late. You run on in and wash your face now.’ When he’d gone, she said to Shi-mi, ‘When Lobsang comes in, he and I will be having a long chat. And tomorrow I’m going to the Poulson place myself. Without Ben, with Nikos. And with Lobsang, if I have to drag him by his prosthetic nose.’ She tucked the bracelet into a pocket. Then she looked down, forcing a smile, and stroked Shi-mi’s back. ‘Now, shall we see how far we can get with this pendulum business? How long a string did you say – thirty-nine inches?’
22
IN THE MORNING Agnes left Ben playing with little Lydia in the care of Marina Irwin.
Then Agnes, Lobsang and a shamefaced Nikos Irwin hiked across Manning Hill to the old Poulson place. Nikos’s dog Rio, elderly now yet still puppyish, trotted alongside them, eager to explore, eager to be involved. It was well after dawn on a relatively calm day; the furball mammals had already finished their morning hunt, and the forest was quiet in the lowland that sprawled below the hill.
‘I can’t believe you’re involving me in this stuff,’ Lobsang grouched. ‘I’ve got potatoes to top, beets to water—’
‘What “stuff”?’
‘Ben’s a little boy, Agnes. Little boys go exploring. Worming their way into things. Boys will be boys.’
‘Oh, George—’
‘Of course if they find some junk yard like this Poulson place they’re going to rummage through it.’
‘George, Ben had a solid silver bracelet. If it was a bracelet at all. If you ask around,’ and since yesterday Agnes had been asking around, ‘half the kids in New Springfield are walking about with such things. Every parent thinks it’s just them. Everyone is a bit embarrassed, I think, that their kid found such valuable stuff in the Poulson place – stuff that’s rightfully not theirs. Generally they kept it quiet. Like you did until now, didn’t you, Nikos?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Lobsang said, ‘You know, Agnes, people here are different from the urban types you and I are used to. They don’t get to deal with strangers every day of their lives. They don’t have cameras in their faces the whole time, a government taxing them, corporations endlessly modelling their behaviour so they can sell them stuff. Out here, you keep yourself to yourself.’
‘Well, maybe. But, whatever the reason, nobody put together the pattern, did they? That these precious items are just flowing out of that ruined house like it’s a closing-down sale in a jewellers’ store. But you know the truth, don’t you, Nikos?’
‘Ma’am, the silver beetles are harmless—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Agnes said. ‘We’ll see for ourselves soon enough. But they’re odd – yes? Something out of the ordinary. Out of place, even considering we’re on a jungle world a million steps from the Datum.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And you took little kids down there, kids as young as Ben and your own sister.’
Nikos shrugged, uncomfortable, but with a trace of defiance. ‘Yes, ma’am. But I’ve been going down there for years myself. They were safe with me. I was always safe.’
‘He has a point, Agnes,’ Lobsang said, annoyingly.
Agnes snapped, ‘Tell me later when I figure out how much harm has been done.’
They came to the Poulson house, with its half-finished, broken-down stockade, the abandoned fields where saplings sprouted enthusiastically, and the house itself, whitewash peeling, an old swing on the porch choked by a vigorous vine. Only the door looked as if it had been recently used, some of the litter on the porch kicked aside to allow access.
Agnes asked, ‘So, Nikos, do we go in the door?’
‘You need to come round back.’
At the rear of the house was a pit, roughly dug into the thin strip of ground between the house itself and the stockade. It looked maybe eight feet deep. The ground around it was clear of the immature ferns that choked the rest of the area.
Lobsang looked into the pit. ‘A cellar? But it’s obviously unfinished. And there’s a hole in the side wall.’ He glanced at Nikos. ‘Leading to what?’
‘I thought you wanted me to show you, not tell you,’ Nikos said with a trace of cheek. He turned to his dog. ‘Rio, down. Rio – stay.’ The dog, panting, curled up in a bit of shade, tongue out, watching the action. Nikos ruffled her head. ‘She’ll be asleep in a minute.’ He slipped his pack off his back, opened it, and pulled out a smaller sack. It was lumpy, as if filled with rocks, and he tied this to his belt. Then he faced the adults. ‘Ready?’ He looked at Agnes. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’
‘Don’t get cocky,’ Agnes said. ‘Nikos, why don’t you lead? I’ll go second. George, you can be rear gunner.’
‘Who put you in charge?’
‘You did twenty years ago, when you brought me back,’ she said softly, with an eye on Nikos. ‘So, did you bring the flashlights?’
The passage down the sloping shaft that led from the ‘cellar’ was easy enough. In the years they’d been coming down here Nikos and his little buddies had dug in hand- and footholds.
But both Lobsang and Agnes were astonished when they climbed stiffly out of the shaft, and found themselves standing in a long, low chamber, lit only by their flashlights: a floor of trampled dirt, a smooth roof supported by pillars of rock or dirt. All this was evidently deep underground.
Agnes asked, ‘What is this place?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nikos said. ‘Something to do with the silver beetles. I call it the Gallery. Because it’s like a gallery in a big museum in a picture book my Mom used to read with me when I was little.’
He sounded different now, Agnes thought, in this echoing space, his face half-shadowed in the light of the flashes. Not so ashamed of the stunts he’d pulled. More like he was proud of what he’d found. Well, maybe he should be, she thought. She supposed he should have told people about this, but to have kept his nerve and go exploring in the first place was something.
‘It’s no gallery,’ Lobsang said. ‘Some kind of mine – and worked out, it looks like.’ He splashed his light on the roof, the floor. ‘An iron ore seam? This area’s rich in ore, it’s one reason New Springfield was planted here. But I’m not aware of any large-scale works here, apart from a few minor scrapes for the forges.’
‘This is more than a minor scrape, George.’
‘I can see that. So, Nikos, what about these silver beetles of yours?’
‘Turn around,’ said Nikos softly.
‘What’s that?’
‘Turn around.’
Agnes and Lobsang turned, swinging their flashlights.
The beetle was here.
As their lights splashed on it, it unpeeled from the ground, standing on a cluster of hind limbs, its black carapace gleaming with silver insets, and semi-transparent sacs of some kind of gas clustered on its exposed, greenish underside. It was the size of a human.
And a kind of face, half-hidden behind a silver mask, swivelled to consider them.
Agnes was astounded, overwhelmed. Whatever she had been expecting it hadn’t been something so utterly alien. She shrank back, would have fled if Lobsang had not held her.