Book 1: Chapter 5

The thief tried to use the hand that wasn’t being grappled to claw at Linua’s face, but couldn’t quite reach. She tightened the hold her ankles had around his neck and put more pressure on the arm she was trapping against her torso. The thief yelped in pain and his face turned red as he struggled for air. She relaxed her ankles very slightly. She didn’t want him to suffocate.

If the man really was a replacement janitor from the agency she would be in a lot of trouble. The Astronomy Club blinked at her like baby owls while Linua and the thief wrestled on the ground. Eret’s sister went so far as to clap a hand to her mouth.

“Oh gods, oh gods, don’t hurt yourself!”

Currently the person at risk of being hurt was the thief, not Linua. But she didn’t want to hurt him, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to hold him for any length of time without doing so.

“We need to tie him up,” Eret said hastily. “Does anyone have any rope?”

Naturally, no-one had any rope. The small plump kid backed out of one of the classrooms pulling a length of electrical cable—which Linua recognised as the extension cable for the overhead projector—saying “This will be better anyway.”

“Pickle, how do you know these kinds of things?” Eret’s sister protested.

The next few minutes involved complicated negotiations as the young man’s feet were tied together, then his hands. The man protested vociferously, employing language which made Linua blink. She looked around at the others, who as edcuated, middle-class children might expected to be shocked, but they displayed no reaction to this at all.

Eret and his sister, as the tallest of the group, elected to drag their prisoner into the nearest lecture room.

“We need to tell the grown-ups,” Linua said, following them.

“We already tried that and it didn’t go well,” the red-headed boy told her self-importantly.

Eret crouched down by the thief’s head.

“What were you looking for in the vault?” he asked.

“No, no,” Pickle interrupted. “You need to ask him lots of basic questions first, like what is his name and stuff, to get him into the habit of answering, then you swing the important questions at him, so he answers without thinking.”

Eret rolled his eyes.

“There’s no point in doing that now that you’ve explained the strategy.”

The prisoner’s head was swivelling between Pickle and Eret as if he could hardly believe his ears.

“Kids, kids, kids,” he said. “Youse have really got no idea what youse are letting yourselves in for. This ain’t no game.”

Eret’s sister crouched down on the other side of the prisoner.

“You were at our house to speak to my dad three weeks ago. You said you were a researcher. But the Observatory trustees didn’t like your patron. They refused to give you access to the museum.”

“Then last week you came to the house again,” Eret added from his side, “but this time disguised as a repairman.” The prisoner’s eyes widened.

“Youse clocked me that early? Nimsy’s Balls, it’s like me own personal episode a’ Keng Boh Kids.”

Linua didn’t know what Keng Boh Kids was. It was one of those many popular culture references she was destined never to know about because of her weird upbringing. Keng Boh was a Zuyu term that meant to be practiced and skilled at something, so she presumed it was some kind of TV series about clever children.

“You’re looking for something in the vaults,” Eret continued. “We knew you wanted something from there, so we put cameras up. There’s no point in denying it.”

“If youse put cameras up youse’ll know what I was looking at, right?” the prisoner said, and grinned.

Pickle huffed a sigh.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get a proper shot of aisle three,” he told everyone. “It was a dead spot. We didn’t think there was anything valuable in that bit cos it was all Post-Deluge stuff.”

“I ain’t stolen nothing!”

“Search him.” Eret nodded to Pickle, who looked taken aback and pointed at himself as if questioning Eret’s command.

“You want me to…?”

Eret rolled his eyes.

“Just check his pockets.”

At these words the thief writhed around desperately on the floor while Pickle and Eret chased him and tried to get him to lie still. The resulting scuffle nearly knocked the lectern over. Linua winced—it was a big heavy box of wood on legs, and if would hurt someone if it fell on them.

“Careful!” Eret’s sister exclaimed.

Eventually, Eret sat on the thief while Pickle got down on his knees and cautiously explored the man’s pockets. Not content with that, he proceeded to check the thief’s belt, his sleeve cuffs and the hems of his trousers.

The thief’s eyebrows grew higher and higher during this process.

“Regular little polis, ain’t you?” he commented.

He fell silent, however, when Pickle pulled off his shoes and prised open the heels with a pocket knife borrowed from Eret.

“I know he’s a thief, but are you sure you should be cutting his shoes to bits…?” Eret’s sister began, but stopped when Pickle revealed a small cavity inside.

“When I was ten I used to hide my lunch money like this,” Pickle announced.

“Was someone trying to steal it?”

Pickle did seem like the sort of kid that bigger kids would gang up on in order to steal his lunch money.

“No.” Pickle sounded regretful. “No-one ever did. But it was a totally mez place to hide it.”

Inside the cavity was a small object made out of metal and plastic. Pickled turned it over several times, then held it out for everyone to see.

“It’s a miniature camera. But look, the storage media is gone. He must have hidden it.” All the others looked at him blankly, and he pointed at a part of the camera. “This empty slot is supposed to have something that saves the images.”

“Like a roll of film?” Eret’s sister asked.

“Yes, but it uses a transistor semiconductor instead of…” Pickle’s voice trailed off as they all looked at him in confusion. “It’s a military technology. It’s, like, the latest thing.”

Like most military technologies, it was probably based off something that had been looted from a ruined Ancient Kāruan city, built when Inanna had first been settled three thousand years ago.

After this revelation, everyone except for Pickle turned to look at the prisoner.

“He’s a soldier?” Eret’s sister asked doubtfully.

“He’s a spy!” the red-headed kid announced.

“Oh, probably not.” Pickle said airily. “Well, I mean, at least, he is a spy for someone, but if he’s sneaking around your house he’s not the government or the army. They would just march in and requisition whatever they wanted. I’m sure he just bought this camera on the black market.”

“Oh really?” the prisoner asked. “What would a kid like you know about stuff like that?”

“Nothing!” Pickle sounded defensive.

“So, let me just get this straight,” Linua said. “This man went to your house twice, both times in a different disguise, and then turned up in the Observatory vault with a small black-market camera to take pictures of something in aisle three, although you don’t know what?”

The others nodded.

“I think we’ve got enough evidence to prove to Dad that something is going on,” Eret’s sister declared. “We should go to him now.”

There was a pause.

“Don’t be such a bunch of draffs!” the red-headed kid said, obviously unwilling to let go of their adventure and hand it over to someone else. “We need to get the thief to tell us what he was looking at in aisle three!”

Eret rolled his eyes again.

“Any clue how we’re going to make him do that?”

“Torture him!”

Everyone stared at the red-headed kid, including the prisoner, who, Linua saw, was sniggering silently.

“You clod…” Eret began, but his sister interrupted him.

“Seriously, are you volunteering?” she asked, whereupon the red-headed kid’s ears went as bright red as his hair. “No, I thought not.” She added to Eret: “Unless you have any clever ideas, we need to tell Dad.”