The Warriors of Brin-Hask (4 page)

But Mr Snavely had his own idea. Without waiting for Amelia and Charlie to move,
he leapt out of the sink, landing badly on the floor and twisting his ankle. He cried
out in pain, and then again in terror as the rats charged at him.

Amelia screamed. Dad yelped and scrambled onto the oven. There was a blur of movement
and a deafening crash as Charlie dove at the floor, bringing half a bench worth of
kitchen utensils down with him. Mr Snavely jumped up and bolted, chased from the
room by four or five beautifully disciplined rows of rats.

Amelia pressed herself up against the wall, but Charlie whooped in triumph, standing
on top of a huge steel colander he’d tipped upside down. ‘I got one! I got one!’

‘Charlie!’ Dad roared. ‘Get out of here! Amelia, go!’

Amelia ran from the kitchen, hooking her arm through Charlie’s as she went and dragging
him away from the upturned colander. They burst into the lobby where Mum, Mary and
James still stood, their faces blank with shock.

‘Are you …’ Mum struggled for something to say. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Never! Never in all my –’ stammered Mr Snavely, before finally gathering himself.
‘You’re
finished!
’ He shrieked. ‘Do you hear me? We’ll be back first thing tomorrow
to – to deal with you people! This is the end, for all of you!’

James was the first to react. Pale with fright, he snapped straight back into Mega-Jerk
mode and said, ‘Well, fantastic. If anyone needs me, I’ll be upstairs finishing off
my packing.’

No-one stopped him going.

The lobby still echoed with the sound of the front door slamming behind Mr Snavely.
Amelia was shivering slightly, but Charlie was doing a curious sort of dance – one
part leaping in celebration that he had trapped a rat under the colander, one part
desperate frustration that he wasn’t back in the kitchen with Amelia’s dad.

Mum reached behind the reception desk and pressed the button that called Tom.

One last bang from the kitchen, and then Dad at last came through the door to the
lobby.

‘Out to the driveway, you lot,’ he said wearily. ‘I don’t want anyone near that kitchen
for a while.’ He clapped his hand on Mum’s shoulder. ‘What do you think, Skye? Good
first impression?’

Mum smiled sadly.

‘Hang on,’ said Charlie. ‘What about my rat?’

‘Safe,’ said Dad. ‘I put a twenty-litre can of olive oil on top of the colander.
He’s going nowhere. Probably. Good reflexes, by the way.’

Charlie beamed and, satisfied for now, followed them out.

‘How bad will it be?’ said Mary.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Dad. ‘Adrian said we’d lose the hotel, and mentioned jail.’

Mary gasped.

‘On the other hand,’ Dad went on, ‘those rats have clearly been there a lot longer
than we have, so they might take that into account.’

‘But what laws did we break?’ said Amelia.

‘Ah …’

Mum and Dad exchanged looks, and the truth of the situation dawned on Amelia. ‘Mr
Snavely wasn’t really a Health Inspector, was he?’

‘No,’ said Mum. ‘He’s with Gateway Control, the people in charge of the gateway network.
It was Control that Miss Ardman sent her complaint to, and it’s Control who have
the power to take the hotel away from us.’

‘And send us to jail?’ said Amelia.

‘An
alien
jail?’ Charlie asked, as though that would be a great treat.

‘I don’t think anyone will go to jail,’ said Dad. ‘Or not you kids, anyway. But Control
is pretty unhappy that you guys found out about the gateway. One of our promises
in coming here was that we would contain the true nature of our work to the fewest
possible number of humans. In Control’s opinion, that meant adults only. You kids
were never meant to know.’

‘That was why I told you it was the Health Department coming,’ said Mum. ‘I didn’t
want you to act as though Mr Snavely were anything other than an ordinary, boring
government official. I thought it would be easier for you, avoid another pointless
argument with James, and show Mr Snavely that you didn’t know
every
thing that goes
on here.’

Amelia thought about how she and Charlie crashing into the kitchen was exactly the
problem Mr Snavely had come to inspect. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry, cookie,’ said Dad. ‘By the time Mr Snavely saw those rats, there wasn’t
anything you could do to make things worse.’

‘Are they really rats?’ said Amelia.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Dad. ‘It was a stroke of genius Charlie caught one, though –
gives us a chance to find out what we’re dealing with.’ Charlie glowed with pride.
‘Ah, here’s Tom.’

Tom stamped up the last rise, breathing heavily and looking harried.

‘I’m not sure I’ve got the calculations right,’ he called to Dad. ‘There are two
different ways to work out when the wormholes will align, but I’m getting different
answers with each method. I can’t be sure when the Brin-Hask –’

‘Tom,’ Dad interrupted. ‘Forget that for a minute. We’ve got something else to deal
with.’

Between them, Dad and Tom managed to get Charlie’s rat out from under the colander
and into the glass aquarium that had last housed Miss Ardman’s preferred snacks –
giant centipedes.

The rest of the rats had retreated back to their nest, abandoning the captive, and
– this was the most worrying bit – replacing the wooden floorboards behind them.

In the library, the captured rat was at first frantic, searching for an escape. But
when it realised there was none, it sat down in one corner and stared balefully at
the watching humans. It twiddled the claws of its front paws, looking down at them
now and then as though thinking, and then flicking them again.

‘It’s counting,’ Tom said. ‘Look, it’s trying to figure something out.’

The rat’s eyes glowed steadily, and Amelia saw a flash of silver by its ear.

She pointed, ‘There, on the side of its head. It looks like –’

‘It’s a cyber-rat!’
said Charlie. ‘Can I keep it?’

Mary swatted at him. ‘Get out of here!’

‘I was only joking.’

‘Well, I’m not. In fact, both of you – here, take some money and go buy yourselves
a hamburger or something down at the surf club. Leave us alone for a while to discuss
things.’

Amelia wanted to stay and listen, particularly if there was any chance her dad was
going to jail, but Charlie had already snatched up the money and was out the door.

‘Don’t let my rat go,’ he called back. ‘I’m going to call him Hugo.’

He was practically skipping over the grass, buzzing from the excitement of his rat
capture. Amelia was solemn by comparison. Catching a rat wouldn’t make up for anything
when Mr Snavely came back tomorrow.

She was walking slowly, thinking hard, when she caught the flash of a dark shape
out of the corner of her eye. She turned and saw the hem of a long, black coat flick
around the corner of the hedge maze.

Without a second thought, she changed direction and sped toward the maze, not bothering
to call out to Charlie and not bothering to answer when he yelled, ‘Hey! Where are
you going?’

She didn’t want to give whoever –
what
ever – was in the maze any tip-off that she
was coming. She heard Charlie’s footsteps behind her.

She sprinted into the maze, running the first long, straight pathway, then pausing
in frustration at the corner where it branched in two. Charlie puffed up next to
her, and Amelia held a warning finger to her lips.

‘The guy in the black coat,’ she whispered. ‘He’s here.’

Obviously, the only chance they had to find him was to each take a different path,
which meant they had to split up, but Amelia didn’t care right now. With everything
going to pieces up at the hotel, she was determined that at least one problem be
solved. No way was another alien getting away with sneaking around behind her parents’
backs.

Amelia went left, Charlie went right.

After three or four turns, Amelia lost her sense of direction. Every now and then,
she and Charlie would cross paths, or she would hit a dead end and have to retrace
her steps, but it was impossible to tell how much of the maze they had covered, or
how close they were to finding the black coat.

She turned the next corner to find herself in the very centre of the maze – a place
she and Charlie had only stumbled on once before. There stood an old marble fountain
in the middle of a reflection pond (now dry), and next to it, a stone bench on which
to sit and think.

Sitting on the bench was a man in a long, black coat, his pockets bulging with gum
leaves. As Amelia stared he looked over at her, casually took a leaf from his pocket
and nibbled on it.

Charlie crashed in from the other side of the maze. ‘Who are you?’ he asked bluntly.

‘He’s Tom’s other arrival,’ said Amelia. ‘Aren’t you?’

The man smiled, completely unconcerned. ‘There
has
been a containment breach, hasn’t
there?’

‘Yeah, that’s us,’ said Charlie. ‘A pair of breaches. So what are you?’

‘Oh, I’m nobody from nowhere. Really. You should probably forget you ever saw me.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Amelia. ‘All the hotel guests have to sign the register.
We have to remember everybody.’

‘But I’m not a hotel guest.’

‘But you came through the gateway!’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Then you have to register!’ Amelia insisted. ‘Those are the rules! You’ll get my
dad in trouble if you don’t sign in.’

The man smiled. ‘It’ll be far more trouble if I do. No, no, better we all forget
we ever saw each other, I think.’

Amelia was so angry, she shouted. ‘They’re going to close us down! They’re going
to put my dad in jail, and you’re making it worse!’

‘Close you down? And what? Put in some of their Control stooges instead? Oh, no,
that won’t do. I don’t think Lady Naomi would like it, either. No, I won’t have it.’

‘What’s it to do with you?’ Charlie said rudely.

‘It’s all to do with me,’ the man said, gazing at Charlie with unblinking black eyes,
his white face quite serious now.

‘Yeah, right,’ Charlie snorted.

The man stood up abruptly. He was very tall, much taller than Amelia had guessed
when he was sitting. He coat fell straight to his ankles, and was surely much too
hot for today.

‘You don’t know who I am,’ he said simply. ‘But you have already formed an opinion
of me?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re hiding in a maze with a coat stuffed full of
leaves, and you reckon the stuff at the hotel is all to do with you.’

The man arched an eyebrow and smiled without friendliness. ‘I hope you will not be
so quick to judge the Brin-Hask when they arrive, Charlie. Thank you both for the
mayonnaise. And don’t look so worried, Amelia, this will all work out. You don’t
need to tell anyone about me, because I’m leaving now.’

As lightly as a grasshopper he sprang into the air, over their heads and the nearest
hedge wall, and disappeared from sight.

Charlie gaped after him. Then, as though determined not to be impressed, he shook
his head and called out, ‘Yeah, whatever. Bye,
Leaf Man.
’