The Touchstone Read online

  ‘That's very kind of you,’ said Douglas, ‘but I can't today. There's a… a problem I have to deal with at home.’

  He left soon after that and Ivo, watching him go, wondered what the problem could be. He had always imagined that Douglas was the sort of person who never had any problems at all.

  Douglas got home from school at four o'clock, let himself into the house and went straight upstairs to his bedroom to see what, if anything, had happened to Kai.

  The body was still where he had put it, under the bed, but it did not look quite as he had left it that morning. The skin had turned grey and patches of it, particularly on Kai's face and arms, had begun to peel away. In sections it had opened up, and more of the blue sticky stuff he had seen when Kai's arm fell off was bubbling up in blisters, to sit on the surface in scabby lumps.

  She looked very dead.

  Douglas went over to the cupboard where he kept his clothes and took the Touchstone from its hiding place under a pile of socks. As his fingers curled round the crystal, the picture of Gedrus in the library appeared in front of him, sitting at his desk, making a plastic model of a Lancaster bomber.

  ‘Hi there!’ He looked up. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Is she all right?’ Douglas pointed to the body under the bed. ‘Only she's gone a funny colour. Sort of grey.’

  ‘Perfectly normal.’ Gedrus carefully glued a propeller in place. ‘Nothing to worry about. All going the way it's supposed to.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Anything else you wanted to ask?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was something that had been bothering Douglas most of the day, though he wasn't sure if it was the sort of question Gedrus would be able to answer.

  ‘Why me?’ he asked.

  ‘I'm sorry?’

  ‘Why would an alien who wants help come to me? There's millions of people around, why not ask somebody… older?’

  ‘Ah,’ Gedrus smiled, ‘well, it was my suggestion really.’

  ‘Yours?’

  Gedrus nodded. ‘Not that there was much choice, to be honest. She was hurt, you see. The life-pod was breaking up. By the time she reached the ground we knew she couldn't walk far and you were the only coda she could reach.’

  Douglas remembered that Kai had used the same phrase. ‘What's a coder?’

  ‘A coda,’ Gedrus flicked a switch on his desk and the word appeared on a screen behind him in large letters, ‘is a term from the Tenebrian Personality Profiling System. It describes your chief personality characteristics. The C means that you are the sort of person who can absorb new and disturbing information without too much emotion – in other words you don't panic. The O means you're someone who likes his privacy, so you're the sort of person who can keep a secret. The D means you're completely honest and dependable, and the A means you have a very trusting personality and tend to believe what someone tells you as long as it doesn't contradict common sense or something you already know.’ Gedrus leaned back in his chair. ‘It's an unusual combination of characteristics. In fact, you're the only category 1 coda in the county.’

  There was a long pause as Douglas absorbed this information.

  ‘Anything else you'd like to ask about?’ said Gedrus.

  Douglas looked at his watch. He had about an hour before his mother got home from work.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, firmly. ‘Quite a lot really.’

  Mrs Paterson had recently started working on a check-out desk at the local supermarket. It was not a job she enjoyed and she was always glad to get home.

  Normally she would cook supper in the kitchen while Douglas did his homework. They would talk about what they had done in their day and after they had eaten they would go through to the sitting room and watch television together. But that evening she hardly saw Douglas at all. He stayed in his room until supper was ready and when he had eaten, went straight back up again.

  Mrs Paterson went up at about eight o'clock to ask if he was all right, and heard him talking. He was speaking very quietly and from outside on the landing she could not hear what he was saying. When she pushed open the door, she found him sitting at his desk staring straight at her, but for several seconds he didn't seem to see her or give any sign that he knew she was there. When she asked what the talking had been about, all he would say was that he had been working something out in his head

  The counsellor had warned her that, though Douglas had taken the news of the divorce very calmly, she could expect some odd and even disruptive behaviour as time went on. Perhaps this was what he had meant.

  Mrs Paterson did not like the idea. It was bad enough to have messed up her own life without thinking she had messed up her son's as well.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Douglas's mother noticed the smell as soon as she opened the door to his bedroom the next morning. It was a seriously bad smell. Like drains, or possibly a dead animal somewhere under the floorboards.

  Mrs Paterson was a woman who liked the things around her to be clean and tidy. She found bad smells upsetting and what upset her even more was the knowledge that, in the old days, Archie would have been there to sort it out for her. Archie was the one who knew about checking drains and pulling up floorboards to look for dead mice, but Archie had gone. Mr Paterson was no longer there to sort out this or a hundred other things.

  For an awful moment Douglas thought his mother was going to insist on clearing everything out of his room and finding the source of the smell then and there, but she decided in the end that there wasn't time. The manager of the supermarket where she worked was almost as fussy about people being late as Mr Linneker, and she told Douglas the problem would have to wait until she got back in the evening.

  Douglas had realized where the smell was coming from as soon as he woke up and, after his mother had left, he lifted the duvet and looked under his bed to see what had happened.

  Kai's body had undergone more changes during the night. Her arms and face were now covered in crusty blue scabs the size of biscuits. On her chest and shoulders whole sections of her skin were peeling off. Clumps of her hair had fallen out, and there were holes all over her clothes, as if they had been burnt by a giant cigarette end.

  Douglas took out the Touchstone from the drawer of his bedside table and found Gedrus at his desk in the library, eating a bowl of cornflakes.

  ‘Hi there!’ He gave Douglas a wave. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It's Kai's body,’ said Douglas. ‘It smells really bad and it looks awful.’

  ‘All part of the regeneration process.’ Gedrus smiled reassuringly. ‘As the old organs decompose, you see, and the new ones are manufactured, the body needs to get rid of various wastes, so it pushes some of them out in the form of corrosive acids and noxious gases.’

  ‘Corrosive acids?’

  ‘That's why bits of her clothes and shoes are rotting away.’

  Douglas could not help feeling that it might have been useful to have been warned about this the day before, but there didn't seem any point in saying so.

  ‘The thing is,’'he said, ‘when my mother gets back from work, she's going to come up here to look for what's causing the smell and she's going to find the body, isn't she?’

  ‘Not much chance of her missing it,’ Gedrus agreed.

  ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About the body,’ said Douglas. ‘How do I make sure nobody finds it for the next twenty-four hours?’

  ‘Ah.’ Gedrus did not hesitate. ‘If you want to keep it hidden, I'd suggest moving it to the bathroom in the annexe.’

  Douglas's house was a large one. As well as the five bedrooms, two bathrooms and three reception rooms in the main house, there was a self-contained flat attached to the side. It was called a granny flat but since Douglas's grandparents lived very happily in their own homes, at the moment it was only used for storing spare furniture.

  It would be, Douglas realized, the perfect hiding pl
ace. Nobody went there, so nobody would complain about the smell and, when Kai recovered, he could wash away any corrosive acids and bits of skin and hair she might leave behind, by turning on the taps and flushing them down the drain.

  There was still one problem, however.

  ‘She's very heavy.’ Douglas remembered that simply pushing Kai's body under the bed the day before had been an effort. He doubted if he would be able to carry it down the stairs to the annexe and lift it into the bath. ‘How do I get her there?’

  ‘Well, I don't think you'd manage it on your own.’ Gedrus tapped thoughtfully on the desk with the end of his spoon. ‘You'll need someone to help.’

  ‘But I can't get anyone to help, can I? Kai said I wasn't to tell anyone. She said if I did she'd be caught and put in prison. You said the same thing yourself.’

  ‘I believe,’ Gedrus turned to consult a large desk diary, ‘that we both said being caught would be almost a certainty if you told anyone. But a lot depends on who you tell. There is one person you could ask to help, who could be trusted to keep the secret.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Douglas.

  And the answer was quite a surprise.

  Ivo Radomir was not the sort of boy who made friends easily. This was partly because he was Bulgarian, had ears that stuck out from the side of his head and a seriously bad haircut, but also because he had always found it easier to connect with machines than with other people. They were easier to understand, and they didn't walk away while you were talking to them.

  Ivo usually had lunch on his own, on the bench behind the science lab, and that was where Douglas came to find him. He was making himself a sandwich, cutting a piece of bread from a loaf with his pocket knife and then slicing an onion to put on top. He generously offered to share it with Douglas.

  Douglas shook his head. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I came down here to ask for your help. But before I tell you what it's about, you have to promise to keep it a secret. You mustn't tell anyone else about it. Ever.’

  Ivo was rather flattered. People did not often ask for his help or to share secrets with him but, as Douglas went on to tell him about finding an alien in the garden, the Touchstone, and needing help to move a dead body to a downstairs bathroom, he became increasingly alarmed. He wondered if, like the headmaster's branding iron, this was some English idea of a joke, but Douglas insisted that he was serious. He said he knew what Ivo must be thinking and there was a very simple way to prove he was telling the truth.

  ‘This is the stone she gave me.’ From his pocket Douglas took out a handkerchief and unwrapped it to reveal the Touchstone. ‘It can give you a bit of a shock the first time you hold it, but when you see the man in the library he'll be able to tell you it's all true.’

  Ivo reached out and took the stone. Holding it in his fingers, he peered out over the playing fields but, however hard he looked, there was no picture in the air, no library and no Gedrus.

  Douglas wondered, briefly, if Ivo had somehow broken it but when he took back the stone, the image of Gedrus appeared immediately. The librarian had his feet up on the desk, and was reading a copy of the Beano.

  ‘Hi there!’ He smiled as cheerfully as ever. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Douglas turned to Ivo. ‘Can you see him now?’

  ‘See who?’ Ivo looked blankly in the direction Douglas was pointing. All he could see was grass and the football posts.

  Douglas turned back to Gedrus. ‘Why can't he see you?’

  ‘That would be because I'm not an external physical reality,’ Gedrus explained. ‘I'm an image produced in your brain. It's only the person holding the stone who can see me.’

  ‘But when Ivo had the stone, he couldn't see you then either.’

  ‘No.’ Gedrus nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Touchstones are designed to be used by only one person,’ said Gedrus. ‘The first person to touch it is the only one who can ever use it. It's a security thing. Means there's no point stealing someone else's.’

  Douglas turned to Ivo. ‘He says I'm the only one who can see him because he's only a picture made in my brain.’ He thought rapidly. ‘But we can still prove I'm not making it up. All you have to do is ask him a question.’

  ‘A question?’

  ‘He knows everything, so he can answer anything you ask.’

  Ivo paused, a slice of bread and onion halfway to his mouth, and thought for a moment.

  ‘What's the capital of Sweden?’

  ‘It's Stockholm,’ said Douglas. ‘But I already knew that. You have to ask him something I wouldn't know the answer to, but you do.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ivo thought again. ‘All right. What's the name of the village in Bulgaria where my mother was born?’

  Douglas looked at Gedrus.

  ‘Do you know what village…’

  ‘I'm ahead of you on this one, Douglas.’ Gedrus was looking up the answer in a large leather-bound book he had pulled from one of the shelves. ‘And the answer is Klisura in the Valley of the Roses.’

  ‘He says it was Klisura,’ said Douglas. ‘In the Valley of the Roses.’

  Ivo blinked. ‘And my father?’

  ‘That was in Hisarya,’ said Gedrus.

  ‘That was in Hisarya,’ said Douglas.

  Ivo slowly put down his sandwich. ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘I didn't.’ Douglas placed the stone back on the handkerchief. ‘Gedrus told me. I told you. He knows everything.’

  ‘Everything?’

  Douglas gave a little shrug. ‘He's been able to answer anything I've asked.’ He paused. ‘Well? Will you help?’

  ‘What?’ Ivo was still staring at the Touchstone in Douglas's lap.

  ‘Moving this body. After school.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ivo, slowly. ‘Sure.’ He pointed to the Touchstone and added, thoughtfully, ‘You haven't got a spare one of those, have you?’

  When school ended Douglas took Ivo back to his house, led him upstairs to his bedroom and pulled Kai's body out from under the bed.

  The alien looked, if anything, even worse than she had that morning. The scabs on her face and chest were larger and crustier than ever, her hair had disappeared altogether and whole sections of her clothing and skin were hanging off her body like loose wallpaper.

  Ivo stared at the body in undisguised horror. ‘She's dead!’ he said.

  ‘I know it looks that way but…’

  ‘No! She doesn't just look that way,’ said Ivo, ‘she is! She's dead!’

  ‘Only technically.’ Douglas knelt beside the body and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves he had got from the kitchen. ‘You see this?’ He pointed to Kai's left shoulder. ‘This is the arm that fell off yesterday. I had to put tape on to hold it in place, but look at it now.’ He tapped the blue scab that had formed around the join. ‘The tape's fallen off but the arm's still there, and all this stuff seems to be holding it in place. And look at this.’ He picked up Kai's arm, bent it, and let it fall again. ‘Dead bodies go stiff and she's not doing that at all. She's regenerating.’ He stood up. ‘Gedrus is very definite. All we have to do is put her somewhere safe and by tomorrow morning she'll be fine.’

  Looking at the body on the floor, Ivo fought back the urge to run screaming back out to the street. He wanted to help if he could.

  The truth was that Douglas was one of the few people who ever spoke to Ivo at school. He said hello in the morning, had lent Ivo his pencil on more than one occasion, and rescued his bag once when some other boys had thought it would be fun to throw it round the classroom. It might not sound much, but if you're a Bulgarian with ears that stick out at an English comprehensive, you remember when people are nice to you, if only because it doesn't happen that often.

  Ivo had been brought up with a strong sense of duty. Douglas had been kind to him at times when it would have been very easy not to bother, and now it was time for that kindness to be returned.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What do I have to
do?’

  ‘Put these on.’ Douglas passed him a pair of rubber gloves. ‘They'll stop the acid getting on your hands. Then you can take her legs.’

  With Ivo at one end of the body and Douglas at the other, they wrapped Kai in the rug, dragged her out on to the landing and hauled her down the stairs. At the bottom Ivo waited while Douglas got the key to the annexe from its hook on the back of the pantry door. Then they dragged the rug across the floor of the annexe hall and into the bathroom.

  Even with two of them, lifting up the body and tipping it into the bath wasn't easy, but they finally managed it. Later, Douglas thought, he would have to ask Gedrus what to do about the rug, but for now he left it on the floor under the washbasin and put the metal case with the other Touchstones on top of it. The two boys stood there a moment, catching their breath and staring down at the figure in the bath.

  ‘She's supposed to wake up about nine o'clock tomorrow morning,’ Douglas said eventually. ‘I was hoping you could be around then as well, you know, in case she needed any help.’

  Ivo wondered briefly what sort of help a dead person might need when they woke up, and then he wondered what Mr Linneker would do if he was late for school twice in one week.

  ‘What's going to happen exactly?’ he asked. ‘When she wakes up?’

  ‘I've no idea,’ said Douglas. ‘I suppose we'll find out tomorrow.’

  Mrs Paterson was relieved to find when she got home that the smell in Douglas's bedroom had disappeared. She still put his clothes and bedding through the washing machine to be on the safe side, but fortunately it was one problem that seemed to have resolved itself.

  If she no longer had to worry about the smell, however, she was still worried about Douglas. This was the second day that he had spent the whole evening up in his room. Twice she had gone up to ask if he would like to join her in the sitting room, but both times he had said he was busy – which was obviously untrue. Each time she went up he had been sitting on his bed, not reading, not working, not doing anything – just sitting there, staring into space.