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The Nautilus Project: Adventures of the Story Gatherer
The Nautilus Project: Adventures of the Story Gatherer
The Nautilus Project: Adventures of the Story Gatherer
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The Nautilus Project: Adventures of the Story Gatherer

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(Spoiler alert!)
Arthur Pike, a rebellious 15-year-old who loves online games and hacking, lives with his mum Mary Pike, in an apartment in the Metropolis, Auckland. Mary, a career lawyer had lost since left her marine researcher husband on the Pacific atoll where he had refused to give up his quest for a lost species of deep-sea Nautilus.
Arthur is kidnapped by his reclusive billionaire grandfather, Dr Thaddeus Pike. He is taken to an island in the middle of a brooding lake connected by an underwater cave to the sea. There, in an underground research station, Arthur meets his Nemo-like grandfather for the first time. He is given access to a super computer - and tells Arthur he may one day take over ‘Project Nautilus.’
Arthur’s grandfather has developed a revolutionary organic computer powered (unknown to Arthur) by a giant nautilus which Arthur’s father had finally discovered deep beneath the reefs of the atoll. Dr Pike has connected the creature to the internet, believing that its giant brain will allow him to rule the Web and set the world onto a rational course – his course... But the ‘computer’ is starting to ask awkward questions like “who am I?”
The Nautilus has scientific knowledge, but it wants to be told stories. She wants an identity, a history, and dreams. She wants to learn about joy and sorrow. She is beginning to sound like a child looking for its place in the world....
Arthur is enthralled by the supercomputer, and tells his crazy grandfather he will harness its powers. He is beginning to go over to the Dark Side... But when he breaks into the top-secret basement level of the base, he learns the terrible secret that it is a sea-creature that has been turned into a kind of Cyborg. So Arthur promises the Nautilus he will help it ‘find itself.’
Now the agents of Dr Pike’s deadly rivals, the INC, are closing in on the secret base. They are determined to capture the Nautilus’ secrets by fair means or foul.

Arthur befriends John, the enigmatic caretaker and his daughter Tess who live in the forest on the edge of the lake. Though Dr Pike scorns the caretaker’s ‘Nature worship,’ he needs his massage skills to control his terrible migraines and neuralgia. And Arthur begins to learn of another way besides Dr Pike’s...

Arthur's mother is desperate to get him back. She decides to turn to her estranged husband for help, and he sets sail for New Zealand in his research vessel.

Meanwhile Arthur and Tess develop a bold plan to set the Nautilus free, through the underwater caves to the sea. But it’s not just his grandfather Arthur has to worry about. Dr Pike’s assistant Hilda has her own ruthless agenda - and the INC’s submarine is closing in on Dr Pike’s hideaway.

Dr Pike’s team lose the remote-controlled underwater battle between stingray robots and the INC’s drillerfish, and to protect his secret he pushes a button to terminate the escaping Nautilus in the lake, in a terrible explosion just as the INC frogmen are closing in. Dr Pike and Hilda escape in a submarine as the countdown begins for the detonation of the whole base, as Arthur and Tess escape into the bush, heartbroken at the death of their gentle friend.

However, the Nautilus had a baby (a kind of clone) which she ejected to safety just before she was killed. This baby has all her mother’s memories, though it is small enough for Tess to put it into a goldfish bowl and take it on board when Arthur’s father finally arrives off the coast. Putting out to sea, they are met by two of the giant nautiluses, who had heard of their sister’s plight through the Gaiaweb, and come to rescue her and escort her home. So Tess releases the baby to them, and they wave good bye as the three wise creatures sink into the depths.

But we have not heard the last of Dr Pike – or the INC. The Net Wars are just beginning.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherPeter Harris
Release dateApr 21, 2012
ISBN9781476139982
The Nautilus Project: Adventures of the Story Gatherer
Author

Peter Harris

I joined GRID-Arendal as Managing Director in 2014. I am a native of the USA, citizen of Australia and resident of Norway; I describe myself as a “professional foreigner”. I am a graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle USA), completed a PhD at the University of Wales (Swansea UK), married an Australian and have 3 children. I have worked in the field of marine geology and science management for over 30 years and published over 100 scientific papers. I taught marine geology at the University of Sydney and conducted research on UK estuaries, the Great Barrier Reef, the Fly River Delta (Papua New Guinea) and Antarctica. I worked for 20 years for Australia’s national geoscience agency as a scientist and manager. In 2009 I was appointed a member of the group of experts for the United Nations World Ocean Assessment. Apart from managing all of GRID-Arendal’s amazing activities, my interests include new methods for the conduct of environmental assessments (the expert elicitation method) and the use of multivariate statistics and geomorphology to provide tools to manage the global ocean environment. I also enjoy sailing and playing the bagpipes.

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    The Nautilus Project - Peter Harris

    The Nautilus Project

    - Adventures of the Storygatherer

    Peter Harris

    Copyright © Peter and John Harris 2006, 2009

    Artwork by Peter Harris

    Smashwords edition

    Published by Eutopia Press

    P.O. Box 37, Kaiwaka

    Northland 0542

    New Zealand

    Ph 09 4312 178

    http://www.eutopia.co.nz

    email: peter@eutopia.co.nz

    Revisions 9/6/02 to 24/10/06

    New Revision and First Edition 2/4/09

    Website (about Café Eutopia, Eutopia Press books, jewellery and more):

    http://www.eutopia.co.nz

    Peter’s blog and free offerings site:

    http://www.wizardgifts.wordpress.com

    Table of Contents

    1.The Museum

    2.The Abduction

    3.The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

    4.The SHELL

    5 New Friends

    6.The Basement

    7.Virtual Love

    8.Old Friends

    9.The Betrayal

    10.The Black Hole

    11.The Chamber of Horrors

    12.Death and Regeneration

    13.The Secret of the Lake

    14.The Shadow of Nemo

    15.The Spirit of Nemo

    16.Love and War

    17.The Green Man

    18.The Dream

    19.Moonlight on the Lake

    20.The Wrath of Thaddeus

    21.Attack of the Drillerfish

    22.Life and Death

    23.Return To The Sea

    More things by Peter Harris

    CHAPTER 1

    The Museum

    Almost out of sight of land, in the blue sunlit water above the dark secret depths, the dolphins were playing. But they were watchful, too. Lately they had felt strange things in the ocean currents.

    Suddenly one sounded the alarm with clicks and squeals as the sleek, hi-tech submarine silently passed below. There were no national markings on its dark grey hull, invisible in the darkness, cloaked against all known tracking devices. But the dolphins had other senses, and they felt a menace approaching their shores.

    On the green coast which the submarine was rapidly approaching, was a city harbour where the tall white sails of the pleasure yachts glided past forested islands and fashionable suburbs overlooking shelly bays and rocky points with sprawling pohutukawa trees and mangroves.

    Further up-harbour, between the Bridge and the skyscrapers, a lone boy was windsurfing. It was early Monday morning and he had school, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care much for the city, either, that loomed up behind him as he skimmed the waves in the fresh breeze.

    He was wiry and strong, about average height for his fifteen, going on sixteen years, with a fierce look in his seagreen eyes as he fought the pull of the wind, while dark clouds rolled down over the skyscrapers and whitecaps began to foam on the wave-tops. He was going very fast now, almost flying over the sea, cold wind in his face, free as a bird.

    But the rain was coming, and he was going to be in big trouble at home if he was late again for school. ‘Mum’s a real control freak,’ he thought angrily as he turned for the shore.

    The boy’s name was Arthur Pike, and the two burly men who watched him through high-powered binoculars thought he was the luckiest little punk they knew. Back there in the city, he lived in a luxury high-rise apartment overlooking the harbour, and he had everything. Everything except a father. But who needs one of them? Especially when you’ve got a rich grandfather who makes sure you get everything you need and doesn’t interfere or tell you to put the rubbish out or mow the lawn (if you had one to mow). But he did have a niggly feeling that one day granddaddy Pike would want his pound of flesh.

    Arthur knew nothing of these men, or the submarine, which belonged to a secret arm of the octopus-like International Network Corporation, the INC. It was not long after the turn of the millennium, and the Net Wars were about to begin, but he didn’t know that either. Hardly anyone did.

    High in a tower on a lake in a remote forest far to the north of the city, was someone who did know that, and a great many other things. Things about Arthur and his mother, and his father back in the Islands on his research boat, and why his father hadn’t written or called for two whole years. That someone was one of those who know but are not known, who control in secret and answer to nobody: a billionaire, reclusive master of a shadowy empire with interests in everything from submarine weapons systems to stealth technologies to computer networks. That someone was Thaddeus Pike, Arthur’s grandfather, and Arthur had never met him.

    The cellphone of the two men rang in the dusty Landrover they had parked beside the immaculate BMWs and Mercedes of the yacht club.

    ‘Bruce, here, SIR.’ Bruce, a Maori, had done a stint in the army, and still kept some of the formalities of that way of life. But he loved fishing and taking it easy, and practising his Tai Chi on the beach. He was wearing a fishing vest now, though the contents of its many pockets were hardly standard for a surfcaster.

    ‘What is the boy doing?’

    ‘He’s windsurfing, SIR.’

    ‘Windsurfing?’ The dark figure in the tower turned from the lake to a satellite screen showing downtown Auckland. Whitecaps crawled across the harbour. ‘There’s a storm coming! Perhaps it is time to summon him. I’ve invested too much in that boy to have him drown now,’ he muttered.

    ‘Will we nab him when he comes ashore, SIR?’

    ‘No, not yet. Keep him under surveillance, and stand by.’ The phone clicked.

    Bruce shook his head, then said to the other man, ‘Well Wayne, looks like it’s the end of an era coming up. How many weeks’ve we been watching him? And now the old man wants the boy up at the Base. Just like that. Told us to stand by to nab him.’

    ‘Cripes, the way he’s been getting around lately, we could lose him,’ said Wayne. A Kiwi European, he had done everything from fruit-picking to night-club bouncing. He loved drinking beer and fishing with a good mate, and on the whole this job with Bruce fitted the bill. And they both enjoyed talking like British undercover cops on their favourite TV show.

    ‘Time for plan B—the old tracker-in-the-cellphone trick,’ said Bruce with a casual wink.

    They looked up and down the beach, then, pretending to be considering a bit of surfcasting, sauntered over to where Arthur’s things, including his stylish new cellphone, lay in a careless heap on the gravel and seaweed at high-tide mark. Bruce handed his fishing rod to Wayne, whipped out a battery-powered multi-screwdriver from a back pocket of his fishing vest and had the cover off in a few seconds. From another pocket he took out a tiny tube like a syringe and carefully injected one of the Boss’s latest miniaturised tracking devices onto the motherboard, where it scurried like a spider mite over the edge and disappeared into the works. Bruce replaced the cover and put the cellphone back. The two then pretended to decide against fishing (the wind was whipping up a spray on the water now) and took shelter in the Landrover, where they watched the beeping spot on the screen of their GPS locator.

    ‘That’ll do the trick. Now we can relax. Could even do a spot o’ fishing off the wharf,’ said Wayne.

    ‘Yeah, I guess so, as long as that spot on the screen doesn’t move. ’ said Bruce. He was the more conscientious of the two.

    ‘If this rain blows over. #@!#?# Auckland weather!’ growled Wayne.

    They moved off in the Landrover, just as Arthur glided in to the shore and quickly took down the sail in the strange light of the approaching downpour. Throwing the board and sail into a shed, he went back to his things on the beach. ‘Funny,’ he thought, ‘I don’t remember leaving the cellphone on top.’ He was careful about details like that, in spite of his untidiness. Cellphones don’t like getting rained on – though his was rated ‘water-resistant’ he didn’t trust such a half-hearted assurance from a manufacturer.

    He glanced up and down the beach. It was deserted except for a few seagulls hunched against the wind. Arthur was pretty sharp; nothing much escaped his notice when it came to his own stuff, things that interested him. But he didn’t have time to think about it, he was late, and the big drops of rain were beginning to drum on the shed roof as he got out of his wetsuit and into his school uniform.

    This morning was different, luckily: there was a school trip to the city museum first thing, and Arthur knew a shortcut through the craneyards. He leaped onto his shiny black carbon-fibre bike and pushed himself hard, chopping through the gears. High overhead the Sky tower was now wreathed in gusts of rain, as he raced the clock and the rain up to the museum, wishing he had a motorbike.

    Meanwhile in the tower on the lake up North, the dark figure sat motionless in a high-backed chair, illuminated only by the stormy sky outside (the computer screens surrounding his desk only lit up when he looked at them). His lined face lit up suddenly as he activated the video function of the intercom. He took in the familiar sight of the tall, blonde, white-coated woman in the dimly lit underground chamber far below, all built to his design. She was standing on the steel platform of a gantry arm as it slowly withdrew, with a whine of hydraulics, across a deep dark pool. A massive oval shape, with black shiny cables trailing out of it, sank out of sight into the depths.

    The woman spoke into the microphone on the gantry. Thaddeus reflected for the hundredth time, in spite of himself, that she would be beautiful if it was not for the scar that ran down one side of her face, the coldness of her blue eyes, and the stern humourless expression she wore like a mask.

    ‘Its operational parameters are within the normal range, Dr Pike. I have no idea why it is not working.... It is as if it’s... sulking.’ Her accent was clipped, Nordic or German-sounding.

    ‘Not a very scientific comment for you, Hilda! I need that thing WORKING. You know what’s at stake here for me—and yourself. If you can’t suggest anything more... logical, I’ll just have to get the boy here and....’

    ‘Dr Pike, with respect, I don’t think a mere boy—’

    ‘Well, do you have any other suggestions?’

    ‘I was thinking that now could be a good time to try a form of punishment… as I have already suggested. Electric shock has been shown to—’

    ‘I find your suggestion repellent, Hilda — but I will keep it in mind as a logical possibility. For now, we will use the boy.’

    ‘As you wish,’ she said, icily. ‘But we must keep him under control. If he finds out about the SHELL, who knows how he will react? Boys, they are unpredictable, they—’

    ‘Leave that to me. The boy is my concern.’

    The speaker in the chamber clicked, echoing off the rocky walls, as Thaddeus switched off the intercom. She knew he would have been watching her, and perhaps still was. She kept her sternest face on as she left the chamber.

    The museum and war memorial loomed above him as Arthur rode bumpily straight up the flights of stone steps to the entranceway with its huge marble pillars. He threw his bike to one side and dashed into the echoing foyer. High above was a stained-glass window in the roof, where the rain now drummed loudly. He ran up the stairs to the Origins gallery, where he could hear the familiar voice of his teacher droning on among the other fossils.

    Sidling up to join his class, Arthur thought he had not been detected, but his friend Ricky mouthed that he was in trouble.

    ‘...and in the late Triassic period, as in the late ARTHUR PIKE: DETENTION period....’ His heart sank. More detention. The teacher droned on, about some sea creatures that all became extinct 60 million years ago: ‘The Ammonites just about ruled the seas back then. To think they didn’t even have a skeleton— just a huge cone-shaped or spiral shell with tentacles sticking out! They’re related to the squid and the octopus, but more closely to the chambered nautilus.

    ‘In fact, there is a special research unit here at the museum studying the nautiluses from Palau Island—the Pike Research Foundation is funding it. Dr Pike is quite a patron of the sciences. No relation of yours, I’m sure, Arthur.’

    The class tittered.

    Arthur retorted more sharply than he had intended: ‘What would you know?’ She looked daggers at him, and he knew the detention was going to be a long one....

    He looked up in frustration. A skinny, huge-headed Pterodactyl was staring down at him. He grimaced at it. Dumb-looking bird. No wonder it was extinct. As the teacher went on about the dinosaurs, Arthur looked over at the wall where a giant Ammonite fossil shell stood, two metres or more across. Something stirred in him, a memory of his old life. Didn’t he see something like this in the sea when he was nearly drowning? ‘But I couldn’t have—they died out sixty million years ago....’ He snapped back to the present at the thought of that huge expanse of time.

    The class began to move off. He followed at the rear with Ricky, a gangly, friendly boy with dark straight hair and a big (sly) grin. Ricky was in Arthur’s techno band and was his closest friend, though they never talked about much besides techno music and computers.

    They were at the Maori section now, standing around a big canoe. Surrounding them in the big, dimly lit hall was a food house on stilts, carved ornately; a meeting house, with red-glowing artificial embers in a firepit in the middle of the floor; and greenstone weapons and polished greenstone Tikis, ancient heirlooms of the Maori, locked away in their glass cabinets. There was a strongly-built young man who would have passed for a full-blooded Maori, dressed in traditional cloak and grass skirt, talking to them about Maui, the ancestor who hauled the North Island like a huge fish from out of the sea.

    Arthur was daydreaming about catching the biggest fish ever—maybe a bluefin tuna like the huge ones that he’d seen flashing under the boat in the islands way back then, when he was still carefree and living with his dad and mum—she’d been nice to him then—and everyone was cool and happy, and they had a little house at the very edge of the white coral beach....

    As the guide talked of Maui, acting out the mythical fishing trip, pulling up the heavy line, twanging with the tension, in Arthur’s imagination he suddenly became Maui, all dressed up in a kiwi-feather cloak, with spiral tattoos all over his face, leaning over the side of the canoe, staring intently into the water as if to part it with his gaze. Arthur was startled by the vividness of this vision as he looked down into the depths where the sunlit line disappeared into indigo darkness. For a second he saw a giant spiral shell coming up, struggling slowly against the big cord tied to the magic hook of Maui... then the vision disappeared. Shaken by the experience, Arthur got smart with the guide: ‘I don’t suppose Maui knew it was the tectonic plates that raised New Zealand?’

    The guide just smiled at this and said, ‘What’s your name, young fella?’

    Several voices from the class answered, ‘Arthur Pike,’ and someone said, ‘Beat him up!’ but the guide held up a hand for silence and said, ‘Well Arthur, this story is a myth. It’s about something that science doesn’t deal to.’

    ‘Oh yeah? Like what?’ Arthur found himself asking.

    ‘Like be careful what you do when you haul up something from Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother—make sure you give it the proper respect.’ He looked Arthur in the eye.

    ‘Anyway, when the brothers of Maui saw the beautiful smooth fish, they wouldn’t wait to pay their respects to the Mother of all life, but greedily started to hack it up. And so to this day our country, which could have been a paradise, a model for all countries, is divided and rough, full of gullies and mountains.’

    Arthur found himself drawn in again: ‘Yeah, but what the heck, if they hadn’t got stuck into it someone else would’ve. Everyone’s just out for what they can get.’

    ‘In those days that wasn’t how it was—that’s why it was such a bad thing when they first did it.’

    ‘Well, now everything that can be hacked up has been.’

    ‘Have you looked lately? There’s a great big ocean out there. We still don’t know bugger-all about it. We cheeky humans haven’t pulled up the biggest fish yet, but when we do, we’d better remember the warning of this story. What are YOU going to do when it happens, Arthur Pike?’

    Arthur felt spooked by this strange man who had turned into Maui, and so did the teacher apparently. He was just a bit too… primal. She gathered the class together and shepherded them away from the Maori exhibit, without even a thank-you to the guide. She had had enough of myths for one day.

    The group went up the stairs to the Scars on the Heart exhibition, all about the World Wars. Arthur felt bored and angry with the world. ‘Grownups really suck,’ he thought. A group of Japanese tourists passed, nodding politely and smiling at the children as they looked at the Pearl harbour and Hiroshima exhibits. Arthur grimaced at them. Turning to Ricky, he said, ‘I’m outa here. Coming?’ Ricky nodded, and they slipped behind the Japanese group and then walked quickly away through the echoing Hall of Memories with its carved walls listing New Zealand’s casualties of war, and its ominous blank space at the end with the inscription, ‘May these panels never be filled.’

    The two boys went through the Holocaust gallery and out to the library. Arthur was looking for a door to the research wing at the rear of the museum, where he knew the Pike Research room would be. He had got it into his head to learn more about his grandfather—Dr Pike was his grandfather, though he’d never met him. Also he had a nagging feeling there was something about those nautiluses that was important to him. Maybe his father had found out something big about them. Why else would he have stayed on in the islands all those years instead of joining mum and him? Conspiracy theories he’d read about on countless websites came into his mind, and he wondered what dark secrets he might pull up. He imagined himself shadowed by sinister octopus-like multinationals, reaching into his life, controlling his mind so he could never quite learn what they were up to....

    ‘What say we have a jam tonight?’ said Ricky, interrupting his dark train of thought.

    ‘Yeah, whatever… maybe.’

    ‘We’ve got Mike’s new biofeedback gear to try out.’

    ‘Oh yeah, I’d forgotten.’ Arthur was cheered up by the thought. He quickened his pace through the library. ‘Let’s try and get into the research wing,’ he said.

    ‘Ok, I’m up for it.’

    They dodged past a librarian or two and slipped through a door marked Staff only. Arthur hated barriers, in real life, on the Web, anywhere. That was why he was a hacker, and partly why he was always in trouble….

    The museum was a strange building, with a semicircular rear wing, which is where they were now, padding down the silent carpeted corridor that curved away before them. They passed door after door. The only noise was the rain on the windows, slanting in with the wind outside. ‘Look! Here it is!’ said Ricky. The sign on the door read:

    Hector Ayling

    Thaddeus Pike Foundation

    There seemed to be no-one in. A printout taped to the door said:

    STRICTLY PRIVATE. NO ENTRY. THIS MEANS YOU!

    There was a picture of Uncle Sam in his American-flag top hat pointing directly at the boys. Arthur saw red, ripped down the printout and screwed it up. Ricky laughed his approval. Then Arthur slid his multi-function pocket-knife blade into the door jamb opposite the old-fashioned ‘snib’ lock, expertly twisted it a few times, and they were in.

    There were benches around the walls, strewn with nautilus shells, not the giant extinct kind but the present day species, only about twenty centimetres across, along with fossils and a pile of palaeontology and biology books and—strangely, thought Arthur—books on acoustics and code-breaking and pattern analysis. This Hector was one strange dude… messy too….

    On a big desk in the middle of the room under a skylight was a rat’s nest of printouts and graphs surrounding a grubby-looking computer. Arthur went for the computer, which was still on. There was an icon of a fossil Ammonite shell onscreen. Arthur clicked on this, and the Enter Password prompt came up. Ricky looked at his watch: ‘I’m timing ya. Go!’ Arthur tried a few words. The prompt came up each time, taunting him. He had a flash of anger, thumped the desk, and tried again. No luck. Then he yanked a drawer open, and read a string of digits and letters written on the inside of the drawer. There were only four; he needed eight. He yanked another drawer open; there were the other four. This time he was in. ‘Twenty seconds. You cheated!’ said Ricky.

    ‘All’s fair in love and hacking,’ Arthur grinned as he wrote a tag in Hector’s file:

    Hello Hector, what’s your big secret? XXX, Slasher.’

    He scrolled down the document with growing interest: the photos and map of the atoll looked strangely familiar. It looked very like his old home. But he reminded himself, all atolls look pretty similar.

    The document seemed to be the draft of a scientific paper, describing some kind of giant nautilus. Whoever wrote it seemed to be trying to explain how it could communicate over vast distances with others of its kind. There were mathematical formulas and diagrams, and a map showing many criss-crossing lines between islands. Then he flicked down to the end:

    This draft was found on the disk we acquired when we searched your son’s boat at your request. It appears, therefore, that Jules has been withholding vital information from us about some of the creatures’ capacities. This could be vital to the Nautilus Project. I await your advice,

    Yours in Science,

    Hector Ayling

    This was no article for a stuffy scientific journal; it was a private report for his grandfather—about stolen research by Arthur’s father, Jules Pike! His chest tightened, and he fought back the tears. ‘So,’ he murmured bleakly, ‘Dad’s still in the islands…. Why hasn’t he called? It’s like he’s in hiding…. What’s he up to?’ He sighed deeply, clicked on the print icon and the printer chattered to itself as the document inched out of cyberspace into Arthur’s impatiently waiting hand.

    Ricky, meanwhile, was ferreting about on the bench. He found a lighter, struck a flame and held it under a sprinkler. Water sprayed out over the benches and the desk, and alarm bells rang up and down the museum.

    Arthur was brought back from his brooding with a start. He caught his breath as the cold water sprayed down on him, but grabbed the first page of the printout off the printer and stuffed it in his back pocket.

    ‘What’d you do that for, you dork!’ he cursed as they ran for the door.

    ‘Sorry, Art. I was just seeing if they worked,’ panted Ricky as they dashed along the curved corridors and past the startled librarians.

    They dodged the Japanese group, which was wandering around in confusion, looking for the exit. They ran for the stairs, saw the security guards coming up, and turned tail. There was a big marble statue of a naked bearded man and two boys desperately grappling with a very long python which was draped around them. ‘Quick, in here!’ whispered Arthur, and they dived behind the writhing wall of marble.

    But the Maori guide, the one Arthur had argued with earlier, turned towards the statue and stared straight at them. He looked just like Maui again. Arthur, spellbound by the sight, crouched for a moment like a rabbit in the headlights of a truck. He knew the game was up. He nudged his friend, and they both came out sheepishly from their hiding place.

    Mary Pike was very busy that day. She had an important court-case on and people were ringing her every five minutes, complaining and threatening. She had just rushed out for a bite to eat and discovered yet another parking ticket under her windscreen wiper, when her cellphone went for the fiftieth time. It was the secretary of Arthur’s school.

    ‘Arthur’s what? Really?... Oh, I am sorry to hear that.... Right away? Yes, I can make it.’

    She made a growling noise and gritted her teeth as she shoved the cellphone back in her executive purse along with the parking ticket.

    Speeding off into the frenetic lunch-hour traffic she found herself thinking about her life. How did it get to be this desperate? She was only trying to make a decent life for herself and Arthur, and get free of the stranglehold that that man, her father-in-law, had on her life.... Why couldn’t Arthur understand, instead of always making trouble?

    Mary was a tall, beautiful, motherly woman who looked like someone best suited to relaxing on a beach or in the garden with children and a dog, not chasing up and down corporate headquarters and arguing on cellphones with hard-nosed businessmen. That is also what Arthur felt about his mother, deep down, though he pretended to be cool about her high-pressure lifestyle.

    Indeed, she’d once had a very different life, with Jules in the Islands, helping him with his research on the deep-water fringes of the beautiful coral reefs that enclosed the white sands of their atoll. There she always had time to play with Arthur on the beach, or cook the fish he sometimes proudly brought home after a fishing trip with his dad. But that was before the shipwreck....

    Mary fingered the Abalone shell pendant she often wore under her business suit. It was a present from Jules when they first got together, in Hawaii where she was a graduate assistant helping on his research into nautiluses in the aquariums there. ‘He used to dive for Abalone off the Californian coast, and that’s when he made the pendant,’ she remembered dreamily.

    Suddenly there it was: the Grammar school, grim with ivy and stucco, oak shields and old colonial pride, oozing pressure to conform. She wondered why she had ever sent her son to this place, even if it was the best school in the city, with an ‘old boy network’ second to none.

    The headmaster’s office was also colonial, Victorian, as was his stiff handshake. In a daze Mary saw her son already in the room, looking lost and betrayed. Then she felt a wave of anger, that he had put her into this situation. The head was all ready with a lecture:

    ‘Mrs Pike, although we appreciate the contributions your father-in-law has made to this school in the past, especially the swimming pool renovations, we have no choice but to suspend Arthur for the first four weeks of next term, pending a hearing with the school board. And as I was saying to Arthur, the good name of the school has been tarnished by this latest incident. He is a talented boy in some ways (though unfortunately not in sport, which could teach him a lot about team spirit and fair play), but he seems to be determined to throw his potential away. Perhaps you can use the coming break and the suspension to take him in hand. That will be all for now. No, Mrs. Pike, there is no possibility of another chance. Thank you for coming.... Good afternoon.’

    CHAPTER 2

    The Abduction

    Mary was surprised at herself as she stumbled out of the headmaster’s office and down the school steps with Arthur. She hadn’t put up much of a fight; in fact hardly any. ‘What a self-satisfied sexist prat,’ she muttered to herself, but Arthur heard her, and smiled for the first time.

    ‘Yeah, he’s a jerk,’ he ventured.

    ‘That’s enough from YOU, young man,’ snapped his mother. The moment had passed. She was back into efficient parenting mode, lecturing him on how selfish he was being and how he would end up a ‘loser’ on a park bench. ‘Is that what you want, Arthur?’ she concluded.

    ‘Yep,’ he shot back, provocatively. She felt the sudden urge to hit him, but held herself back. He was getting far too big to control like that... and she hated herself for wanting to lash out.

    Back home on the 25th floor of the Metropolis apartment building, an American Art Deco dream which towered stylishly over the downtown streets and the sixties glass-box skyscrapers, Mary spread out her paperwork on the dining-room table in front of her big picture-window with the panoramic view and tried to work on for as long as she could before forcing herself to think about dinner. Arthur took off, without saying where he was going. She struggled on, frustrated with everything and everyone. Later, as the view through the window faded from sunset to grey, Arthur returned.

    ‘Where have you been, Arthur?’

    ‘Out.’

    ‘Where out?’

    ‘Skateboarding.’

    ‘You’ve just been suspended, and all you can do is go skateboarding?’

    ‘What do you expect me to do? I’ve got all the time in the world now I’m... suspended,’ he said sarcastically. Now furious, Mary shouted, ‘I didn’t give up everything for you so you could be a loser and throw it all away!’

    ‘Well, now you know I’m a loser, can I go and play in peace?’ he shot back as he turned to go to his bedroom. A good game of Everquest was just the thing now, to get right out of this crazy pressure of the so-called adult world, into a world that made a lot more sense....

    ‘You know that’s a dumb thing to say, Arthur. You need a career, we all do.’

    Stung by the insult to his intelligence, Arthur stopped in the hall and fired back, ‘What if your whole corporate world sucks? What if the whole sick system is coming down? What’s the point of it all then, eh? Seen any of the websites lately, the ones that tell you what’s REALLY going on in the world? You’re the dumb one, and blind! No wonder dad doesn’t want to come back to you—who would?’

    Hurt to the point of tears, Mary opened her mouth to respond in full sarcastic motherly fury.

    Just then the doorbell went. Mary hesitated, composed her face, then flung the door open. There stood a nervous-looking man of about forty, dark greasy hair brushed back over his ears, dressed in an expensive dark suit and clutching some packaged flowers. It was Roger Garvey, from the floor below. Arthur sneered, ‘No time to argue now, your boyfriend’s here.’

    Mary shot a fierce look at Arthur, then at Roger, who brightened visibly at the word ‘boyfriend.’

    ‘Er, Mary, I was wondering if we could ah—do dinner tonight. Uh, these are for you,’ he said awkwardly, handing her the flowers with a jerky motion.

    ‘Oh, I thought they were for me,’ said Arthur sarcastically, from the hallway.

    ‘Arthur was just going to his room,’ said Mary icily, trying to hide her rage.

    ‘Don’t let me stop you two,’ said Arthur over his shoulder, slamming the bedroom door. ‘You corporate yes men, you... DORKS!’ he spat out the word as he kicked the closed door.

    Mary excused herself from going out anywhere with Roger that night. She gave him a coffee, and made small talk about boys and their problems, and the bad weather they’d had that day, and the plumbing, and the Metropolis body corporate fees. Roger made small talk about his software firm’s latest hostile take-over bid and how well he was going to do out of his stock options.

    ‘But, Mary, one corporate lawyer to another, we don’t get the appreciation we deserve. It’s high-stress work, doing the litigation that must be done. That’s what I hinted when I went to see Bob today....’

    ‘Bob sounds like a complete prat to me,’ commented Mary, picking up her son’s term in her impatience with the conversation.

    ‘Oh, now Mary, don’t go talking like that! Do you realise Bob is the direct line from Head Office in New York? He’s next only to God! You don’t get anywhere by rocking the boat....’ He trailed off wistfully. Then he brightened: ‘We’re realists, you and I. One day that boy of yours will understand that’s what you have to be in this modern world— realistic. The Hippies lost, remember? Love is all you need, and all that nonsense!’ He laughed, a nervous titter.

    Mary fingered the pendant through her severe executive top, lost in sad thoughts about how much better Jules’s dreams seemed now than this reality, talking with Roger Garvey, stuck somewhere between heaven and earth in an overpriced high-rise building.

    But all she said was, ‘Well Roger, I’m a bit tired. I’d better get back to work while I can still keep my eyes open....’

    He offered to help, but Mary said ‘No thanks,’ managed a smile (which lit Roger up for a moment), and walked him to the door. She

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