Wonderscape Read online

  Watching the other vehicles move into position, Arthur shuffled in his seat, his nerves building like static electricity. “Which side actually won the Genpei War?” he asked Cecily, searching for a distraction. “Red or white?”

  “White,” she said, her voice trembling. “The side Tomoe Gozen was fighting for.”

  Once all the teams were in place, everyone revved their engines. Dust and debris blew out from under the hover-powered vehicles; multicoloured gases burst from various outlets on the other buggies, trucks and cars. Arthur’s feet vibrated as the engine in their car purred into life. His pulse was thudding. He hoped above everything that he’d made the right decision and hadn’t just doomed them to end their lives as another pile of rubble at the edge of the course…

  One by one, the red overhead lights switched on.

  Arthur’s heart skipped a beat.

  The lights went out.

  And the race began.

  10

  They surged forwards, the G-force driving Arthur’s shoulders back into his chair. The choking stench of chemicals cloyed at his throat as air from outside filled the car.

  Ren clenched her jaw, clinging to the underside of her seat. “Everyone, hold on!”

  Ahead, amethyst-purple exhaust fumes clouded the track as a saloon car with glowing wheels blasted through the grid. A red-camo motorbike swerved into the mist, its sub-zero engine leaving behind a trail of ice as it overtook a pair of monster trucks. The flaming feathers of the Falcon’s Fury car blazed in the distance, approaching the first corner just behind the White Tiger.

  Within seconds, the rest of the field had disappeared around the first bend and the Pipsqueaks were speeding along on their own.

  “Get ready!” Arthur cried as they made a sharp turn off the road, heading into the trees. A dozen race marshals gave chase, their chest beams piercing the dark undergrowth like helicopter searchlights. The Pipsqueaks’ car bumped and jerked over the rough terrain, making for a bruising ride. As the perimeter of the canyon appeared, so did the void beyond. Arthur spread his hands against the panel in front of him. “This is it!”

  Everyone screamed as they sped up. The nose of the car lurched over the cliff edge and with a jolt they launched into the air.

  Even though Arthur had been anticipating the fall, nothing could have prepared him for how it actually felt. His stomach jerked into his mouth; his helmet thumped against the roof of the car and as his bottom left his seat, his seat belt dug into his collarbone to pull him back into it.

  Cecily shrieked.

  Cloud barked.

  The driver helpfully informed them that they were plummeting at a speed of one hundred and forty metres per second, and that the time until impact was seven seconds.

  Blood rushed through Arthur’s veins as the outside world spun past in a blur – the stars, the canyon, the tree-tops, the snaking racetrack…

  …

  …

  There was a dull thud from somewhere inside the bonnet and their driver announced, “Parachute deployed!”

  Arthur shook as the car tipped backwards. Heavy wires sprung from a spot behind each of the car’s headlights and in two places at the car’s tail. In the rear-view mirrors he saw they were connected to a huge red parachute branded with a black comma.

  “Time until impact now twenty-six seconds,” their lizard driver corrected.

  As the earth stopped spinning, Arthur’s focus recovered. Saliva bubbled in his throat and he fought back the urge to wretch. Cecily was hyperventilating behind him.

  “Did you know our car had a parachute?” Ren yelled.

  “I saw it on the spec!” Arthur replied, grateful he hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

  Below them, the racetrack grew bigger. Most of their competitors were rounding the tenth hairpin bend, with the Falcon’s Fury girls second behind the White Tiger. Arthur doubted whether any of them had noticed the Pipsqueaks’ car parachuting into the valley; they were probably concentrating too much on their own race.

  “I think we’re currently beating the White Tiger, but not by much.” Ren pointed to a strip of straight road that went all the way to the finish line. “We’re going to land over there. Prepare yourselves!”

  As they drifted the last few metres to the ground, Arthur pushed down with his feet and rammed his hands against the dashboard, readying for impact. The parachute disconnected with a loud click and the car lurched, throwing his head back at the same angle as a Pez dispenser. Pain erupted in his neck and collarbone as the tyres hit the ground and the car crashed down. With a loud whir, the engine stirred into life and they bolted forwards.

  “There are five hundred metres to the finish line,” the driver informed them.

  Arthur rubbed his jaw, wincing. He felt Cecily’s hand on his shoulder and instantly felt a pang of guilt. Free-falling off the side of a mountain had probably been way worse for her. “Something’s happened,” she said shakily.

  Hearing the tone of alarm in her voice, he twisted around and saw a scene of chaos through the rear window. The White Tiger was accelerating close behind them, but further back there had been an accident. The smoking remains of the car belonging to Falcon’s Fury was lying trackside at the eleventh turn, surrounded by race marshals. The blonde-haired girls were nowhere to be seen. Arthur hoped they were OK. That rubble could have been them and he felt lucky his risk had paid off.

  Gaining on them, the White Tiger hurtled around the final corner and eased onto the straight.

  “It’s getting closer!” Ren shouted.

  As they streaked over the tarmac, still gathering speed, Arthur studied the rear-view mirrors. The snarling headlights of the White Tiger were growing bigger and bigger. The finish line was seconds away. An excited mob of supporters had amassed on either side of the track, cheering the cars home.

  There was only one thing Arthur could think of to do. It wouldn’t make them go any faster, but it might make him feel better. He filled his lungs with air and bellowed the loudest battle cry he could, willing the car on. Cecily and Ren joined in, screaming together. “Ahhhhhhhh!”

  And then in a flash, they crossed the finish line.

  The action-movie soundtrack stopped abruptly and was replaced with a trumpet fanfare and recorded applause. “What happened?” Arthur asked, panting, as their car slowed. The White Tiger was braking beside them. He didn’t know who had got there first. “Did we win? Driver?”

  The lizard-man bared his pointed teeth as he spoke. “Congratulations, Pipsqueaks! You have completed the challenge: Race of the Warrior.”

  Arthur’s head fell back against the headrest as he gave a weary sigh. We did it! said a voice in his mind. We won! But he was too overwhelmed to pay it much attention. A glance in one of the mirrors told him that Cecily’s cheeks were flushed and she had Cloud pressed close to her side. He reached round and gently touched her knee. “It’s all right. We’re OK.”

  Ren dragged the heels of her hands down the sides of her face. “That was the scariest thing I’ve done. Ever.”

  Arthur had never felt so relieved and yet somehow so tense in all his life. His muscles felt like they’d morphed from iron to jelly and back again several times in the past few minutes.

  Without warning, a gaseous red sphere appeared in the middle of the car, hovering between the front seats. Ren reached across to touch it. As soon as her fingers made contact, the sphere evaporated and a white prism appeared in her palm. “Another realm-key,” she said, tucking it into her pocket.

  As they came to a stop in the middle of the tarmac, the White Tiger halted in front of them. The driver-side door lifted open vertically and a slim figure wearing a white leather racing suit and darkened helmet stood up and walked towards them.

  “This isn’t over yet,” Cecily warned. “We’ve got to stay in character. No one can know where we’re really from.”

  As the driver, or passenger – Arthur wasn’t sure if they’d had a lizard-man too – of the White Tiger approached, h
undreds of spectators ran onto the track behind them, throwing their flags into the air and high-fiving each other.

  Without invitation, the figure in the white racing outfit opened a rear door on their car and climbed inside. Cecily unstrapped Cloud from his harness and lifted him into her lap as she shuffled over.

  A voice mumbled something inaudible from inside the helmet, then, when no one responded, the figure pulled its helmet off.

  “I said: Congratulations.” The speaker was a beautiful woman with porcelain skin, a high-bridged nose and long black hair tied at the nape of her neck with a white ribbon. She bowed her head. “You’re the first team to ever beat me.”

  “Tomoe Gozen!” Cecily exclaimed.

  The driver’s dark eyes glittered. “You know my name?”

  “I read about you in The Tale of the Heike,” Cecily ventured.

  Arthur was glad she hadn’t gone with, I learned about you from a manga character on the back of my phone case.

  “I’m Cecily. This is Arthur and Ren.”

  “And who is this?” Tomoe asked, nodding at Cloud, who had wriggled out of Cecily’s lap and padded across the seat to sniff Tomoe’s hip.

  “He’s called Cloud,” Cecily said, a little embarrassed, sliding him back over.

  “I see.” Tomoe tilted her head and absorbed the details of their faces, from the set of their jaws to the sweat on their skin. Arthur squirmed, feeling as though he was being read like a book. “Great warriors come in all shapes and sizes,” she observed. As she pulled off her driving gloves, Arthur noticed several milk-white scars on her hands that he assumed she’d acquired during combat in twelfth-century Japan. He still didn’t know how she and Newton were alive in the twenty-fifth century, other than it probably involved time travel…

  Just then a hand pounded against his window and another banged loudly on Ren’s door. Everyone except Tomoe flinched. Arthur made sure his door was locked before peering outside. While they’d been talking, the race supporters had caught up with them. The car was surrounded.

  “Would you rather adjourn this meeting so you can greet your new fans?” Tomoe asked, reaching for the door handle. “I’m sure the Wondernews press will be keen to interview you too.”

  “No!” Arthur, Ren and Cecily said in unison.

  Tomoe settled back into her seat with a hint of amusement on her lips, as if she’d expected that answer.

  “We’d prefer to keep a low profile, if you don’t mind,” Arthur explained. “We just want to visit the Wonderdome. Do you know how to get there?”

  “The Wonderdome?” Tomoe raised her eyebrows. “I can show you the way, but as Hxperion weren’t expecting anyone to win the race, the building won’t be ready for visitors. It’ll probably be next week before they grant you access.”

  Arthur’s stomach dropped. “Next week!”

  On the back seat, Cecily squeaked. “Then … everything we’ve just been through was for nothing. How are we going to find Milo Hertz?” As soon as she’d said it, her hand jumped to her mouth and her cheeks flushed pink. Ren glared at her, but Arthur couldn’t blame her for over-sharing. After car-parachuting off the side of a mountain, she was doing well to speak at all.

  “So that’s it,” Tomoe said with a smirk. “You want to solve the mystery of Milo Hertz’s disappearance.” She considered them thoughtfully. “You know, when I first arrived here, Milo had only been missing for a couple of days. Every wanderer in the realm was talking about it. Rumour was, he’d been seen arguing with Tiburon and Valeria backstage at the Expo before he ran away. Here, let me show you something.”

  Tomoe swiped her hand over the back of Ren’s chair and Arthur blinked as the woven surface transformed into a tea-stained sheet of paper with a thick black border. Glimpsing a pattern of metal circles under the headrest, he figured it was something to do with nanotech again.

  “Where I can, I learn about the Wonderscape by listening to the conversations and comments of wanderers who visit this realm,” the warrior revealed, “but mostly I source information from this.”

  The page was divided in two horizontally. The top half was filled with black Japanese writing; the bottom, with black-and-white photos. Arthur thought it looked a bit like an ancient Japanese newspaper and realized it must be another version of Wondernews.

  The warrior translated a section of writing at the top. “Mysterious Flying Pipsqueaks become first wanderers to complete Race of the Warrior in Realm Eighty-Nine.” She flashed them a smile. “You’ve made the headlines already.”

  Beneath the writing was a photo of Arthur, Ren and Cecily in their paddock before the race. Cecily was signalling to their freshly painted car; Ren was scowling and Arthur … hadn’t realized his cheeks looked so dark when he blushed.

  “Who took that picture?” Cecily asked. “I didn’t see anyone with a camera.”

  “All mimics transmit images back to Hxperion,” Tomoe explained. “The V-class models communicate directly with Valeria Mal’fey. The T-classes, with Tiburon Nox.”

  Arthur wondered anxiously if Newton’s first officer had transmitted an image of the co-ordinates of the Wonderway they’d arrived through back to Tiburon. If so, Tiburon might know that they were from a different time. “And Tiburon and Valeria, they look at all these images?”

  “I think so,” Tomoe answered, “although some things must go unnoticed for a while – a wanderer was recently expelled from the Wonderscape after Hxperion discovered they’d tried cheating, weeks ago.”

  Arthur crossed his fingers. With any luck their co-ordinates would stay undetected long enough for them to return home.

  “This is what I wanted to show you,” Tomoe continued. She tapped the top-right corner of the page and it changed to show a different article. “Milo Hertz branded a ‘lazy oaf’ by his sister, Valeria,” the warrior read, tracing her finger over the Japanese writing.

  The photo below was of the three Hxperion founders at the Wonderscape opening ceremony. Arthur stretched across the middle of the car to see it better. Valeria was posing for photographers while she cut a holographic ribbon; Milo was spraying champagne above everyone’s heads and Tiburon was standing like a heron behind them both, studying proceedings over the end of his long, droopy nose.

  “The article features an interview with Valeria Mal’fey, taken right after Milo disappeared,” Tomoe went on. “In it, she claims that Milo never took his role at Hxperion seriously; he was always missing meetings and shirking duties. She says she wasn’t surprised in the least when he finally abandoned his responsibilities and ran off.” Tomoe indicated to the last section of writing. “This final part is even more interesting. The interviewer asks Valeria if she knows where Milo is, and Valeria says no, but that she expects he still visits the Wonderscape from time to time, out of curiosity.”

  Arthur gave Ren and Cecily a sideways glance. If Milo Hertz did return to the Wonderscape occasionally, they probably had a higher chance of finding him. But all that stuff about him being lazy didn’t sound right – how could a lazy person invent time travel? Something else Tomoe had mentioned was playing on Arthur’s mind. “You said Milo disappeared a few days before you arrived here, but where did you come from? And how did you get here?”

  “I came from home,” Tomoe replied, glancing wistfully out of the window. “From Japan. The rest…” She shook her head and muttered tiredly, “Well, the secrets of the Wonderscape must stay secret.”

  Arthur’s chest sagged. Newton had used the very same line to dismiss that question before.

  “As it is getting late, I have an idea,” Tomoe said. “Why don’t you stay overnight at my house? In the morning, we will have a chance to get to know one another.” She addressed the holographic lizard-man. “Driver?”

  Before anyone could protest, the doors locked with a low buzz and Arthur felt the rumble of the tyres as they steered forwards into the crowd. Supporters slammed their fists onto the bonnet of the car, beating a rhythm as they chanted. Arthur thought they migh
t be shouting, “Pipsqueaks!” but his lip-reading wasn’t that good. It could also have been, “Big butts!”

  In the rear-view mirror, he caught Tomoe Gozen scrutinizing their Wondercloaks. Perhaps she was intrigued because they were the first wanderers she’d actually spoken to, but it left Arthur feeling on edge. Without knowing her motives, he still wasn’t sure they could trust her. If she learned they had time travelled, she might take advantage of them. With everything at stake, they couldn’t take that risk.

  As they drove clear of the spectators, they passed the blonde-haired girls from Falcon’s Fury answering questions at the side of the track. They looked red-faced and sweaty, but uninjured.

  “I don’t know how they survived,” Cecily commented from the back seat. “Their car was in pieces.”

  “Maybe it ejected them before they crashed?” Ren guessed.

  “I expect they were rescued by V-class units,” Tomoe said. “After all, they’re trained in life-saving first aid and programmed to prevent casualties where they can.”

  Arthur thought of the grumpy crew of the Principia saving him and Cecily from being squashed by a falling foremast and understood now why they’d done it.

  “Ms Gozen,” Ren said, shifting nervously in her seat. “Can I ask: why aren’t you speaking Japanese?”

  Tomoe instinctively touched her throat. “I am. And the wanderers we just saw were no doubt using hundreds of different languages from across the Known Universe. Your Wondercloaks translate everything you hear into your mother tongue – you must know that.”

  Moving the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, Arthur wondered what else the garment could do. He covertly caught Ren’s gaze and drew a line across his throat, signalling for her to be quiet. They’d already revealed too much.

  Ren smiled thinly at Tomoe before turning back round.

  An uneasy quiet settled over the car as they wound along a narrow road, heading deeper into the valley.

  Arthur couldn’t relax. He examined his watch. Eleven hours had passed since they’d arrived in the Wonderscape, which meant they had a little under forty-six hours left in which to get home. Newton’s warning echoed in his mind: If anyone discovers where you’re from, they could see you as a threat … or an opportunity. He hoped news of the Pipsqueaks’ win would blow over. They couldn’t afford to make a name for themselves.