The Curiosity Machine by Richard Newsome Page A

looked oddly familiar. A man, aged in his sixties with a head of well-tended silver hair. A glowing tan. A steely glint in his eyes. Gerald stared at the screen with drop-jawed disbelief.
    Sir Mason Green?
    Hosting a travel show?
    If Gerald was going through some form of psychological crisis seeing his arch nemesis fronting a television program, it was nothing compared with his brain explosion when Sir Mason Green stared hard into the cameraand spoke to him.
    â€˜Good evening, Gerald. I trust you’re having a fine start to your birthday extravaganza?’
    Gerald jolted upright in the bed, sending the basket of potato wedges across the floor. He didn’t spare them a second’s thought as his eyes remained welded to the screen. Had the man actually just spoken directly to—
    â€˜Gerald, there’s no need to look so surprised. You must have expected I was going to interrupt your dream holiday sooner or later.’ He raised his glass. ‘Many happy returns, by the way.’
    â€˜How are you doing this?’ Gerald finally managed to blurt out. ‘How can you be on my TV?’ Then, in a moment of stark realisation, ‘Can you see me?’
    On the screen Green’s thin lips twisted into an approximation of a smile. ‘I’m a bit late to the party with the technology, Gerald. I have people who do that’—he wafted his hands in the air—‘stuff for me. I just sit and talk and the digital dust scatters about the stratosphere. But, in short, yes, I can see you. That is the point of video conferencing, I believe.’
    Gerald glanced left and right. A crazed killer had hacked into his television. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, pulling the bedclothes around his waist.
    â€˜To wish you a happy birthday, of course,’ Green said, his face a picture of feigned sincerity. ‘Fourteen, is it? I remember my fourteenth birthday as if it was yesterday.’
    â€˜You must have a very good memory,’ Gerald said,tightening his grip on the television remote. ‘Tear the wings off some butterflies to celebrate, did you?’
    Green’s eyes dimmed to a humourless grey. ‘Do not be tiresome, young fellow. I thought you would have learned by now that my patience stretches only so far.’
    Gerald pressed his lips together as he struggled to hold back what he really wanted to say. Then another realisation struck him. ‘You’re alive!’
    Sir Mason picked up his cocktail glass, slid a slice of orange along the rim, and sipped. ‘Your skills of observation astound me,’ he said.
    â€˜But if you’re alive that means you survived the drains under the Billionaire’s Club. Does that mean that—’
    Green finished Gerald’s question for him. ‘That Professor McElderry is also alive?’ He placed his glass on the table by his elbow and steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘I’m afraid I have some difficult news,’ he said.
    Gerald’s stomach tightened. He sat straighter in his bed. ‘Is he—’
    â€˜Dead?’ Green said. ‘Sadly, no. The prickly old curmudgeon is still with us. It seems he is fashioned from stern stuff. And quite buoyant stuff as well. He floated out of that stormwater drain like a cork on the tide. But don’t worry. He’s dried out and back to work with me. He is quite safe, for now.’
    Gerald did not miss the threatening tone in Green’s voice. He repeated his first question: ‘What do you want?’
    Sir Mason Green eased back in his chair and smiled.‘You’ve been spending too much time with that lawyer of yours, Prisk. You’re straight down to business. Very well—you have something that I want and I need to find a way to get it from you as painlessly as possible.’
    A cold loathing flowed through Gerald’s veins. Would this man torment him for the rest of his life?
    â€˜You have some plans,’ Green