The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 22

His mother watched from the front door as the Mongolian herdsmen went past with wheelbarrows full of manticore parts. The dead creature was too massive to move easily in one piece, but Mr. Walkwell had some kind of superstitious objection to burning it, so they were trundling the body off to bury it somewhere in the hills.

“One of Gideon’s most foolish, dangerous ideas, those animals,” she told Colin. “I told him but he wouldn’t listen. ‘They’ll kill someone,’ I said, and I was quite nearly right. It still may happen.” She shook her head. “Such a pig-headed man.”

Colin Needle had stopped watching the clean-up-the blood made him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach, and of course more than a bit guilty because of his own involvement. This should have been his moment of triumph, now that the Jenkins children and the Viking bully had been thrown off the farm, but for some reason Colin didn’t feel as happy as he thought he should. “How is Gideon doing?” he asked, peering into the parlor. The old man was sleeping, or appeared to be, his mouth wide open and his eyes shut. “Any better?”

Patience Needle’s mouth tightened a little, but she did her best to smile, an effort Colin appreciated because he saw it so seldom. “I think so. I’ll have him up and around soon.”

Colin felt his chest loosen. When she talked about Gideon, it was with real puzzlement and concern in her voice-that proved his illness couldn’t be anything to do with her! He wanted to celebrate this happy state of affairs, somehow, but both he and his mother were going to be very busy today. Already she had made several calls to Gideon’s lawyer, Mr. Dankle. “I am not pleased, Mr. Dankle-not pleased at all,” he heard her tell the lawyer at one point. Dankle was out of town, apparently, and whatever she wanted from him would have to wait. Some legal question that needed answering because of Gideon’s illness. Colin guessed, or some insurance thing. He didn’t really care too much.

And why should he? His enemies had been driven from the field and Colin Needle himself was now the boy with the best toy in the whole wide world.

In fact, Colin knew he had been very lucky. When he heard Tyler Jenkins shouting about the dragon’s nest and Gideon’s precious Continuascope he had been certain that things were going to get bad quickly. He had only used his computer to open the manticore cage to cause a distraction-how was he supposed to have known that Carrillo fellow from next door was waiting outside the inner gate, right in the monsters’ way? It had been sheer dumb luck that only one manticore had got out, and even greater luck that Alamu had been close enough to notice the ruckus and nasty enough to feel challenged. Colin knew that the manticore’s death was a terrible loss-one of only six in the world!-but he also knew that Walkwell and the rest could get rid of a dead manticore. A dead Hector Carrillo would have been a lot more difficult to hide. In fact, it chilled him how close he had come to getting somebody killed.

But I’m fighting a war to save this farm, he reminded himself. In wars, there are casualties. And the prize-the prize is worth it!

Including, of course, the best prize of all, the ability to use the Fault Line, and everything that would come with it-and that ability was now Colin Needle’s.

The Continuascope was still where he had left it in the library the evening before on his way back from the dragon’s nest, stashed unceremoniously beneath one of the dusty chairs. Colin lifted the device up to the morning light that streamed through the high windows. It was a beautiful thing even if you didn’t know what it could do, a complicated but graceful arrangement of golden celestial rings, starry pale crystals, and shiny gears in many sizes, some big as salad plates, others smaller than the tip of Colin’s finger. Everything in him longed to try it out but he knew he wasn’t ready.

In the past year he had managed to hunt down more of Octavio’s journals, scattered in the oddest places in the house: it had taken much persistence, but as he had tracked down piece after piece the search had also given him new insights into Ordinary Farm’s creator. Something had clearly made the old man more than a little paranoid about his discoveries, enough that he seemed to have intentionally hidden his writings in all kinds of places. Either that or he had been senile at the end and had just forgotten where he had left them. But even after close study of all the material he had so proudly managed to assemble, Colin barely began to understand the ideas in Octavio’s work, let alone anything relating to how to use the complex instrument that was the Continuascope.

Patience. It wasn’t just his mother’s name, it was Colin’s word to live by. No point in getting himself lost in the Fault Line by being in a hurry. The Jenkins kids were gone now, after all. He could take his time.

He began by cleaning every inch of the Continuascope gently and thoroughly with a soft cloth, q-tips, and alcohol and, for some of the very hard-to-reach places, a little canister of compressed air that he kept for cleaning keyboards and computer parts. Considering all the time it had been in the dragon’s nest, Octavio’s device seemed to be in amazingly good condition; under the dirt it appeared largely undamaged.

When he got hungry Colin trotted back across the grounds to the kitchen and helped himself to some leftover dinner rolls, as well as some pickles and slices of ham from the refrigerator. He also grabbed a pitcher of cold milk, then carried it all back to the library so he could keep working.

It was early afternoon by the time he finished cleaning. Colin touched the crystals in their tight baskets of coiled golden wire. They might have been a little warm to his touch, but that might also have been his imagination because he was very excited. After so long, after so many nights hunting journals and information, and after the mind-numbing fight to understand the things Octavio Tinker had written-and after he had twice risked his life too, searching the dragon’s nest-all that work, and now here he was, holding the actual article in his own trembling hands.

The most powerful thing in the world-and it’s all mine.

Colin surprised himself-it was as if someone else had thought it, not him. But it was true, wasn’t it? Governments around the world would pay millions-no, billions!-for this thing, and even more for Ordinary Farm itself. Look at that crook Ed Stillman-he had brought half a million just to buy what he thought was a live dinosaur egg. How much would he have been ready to pay if he had known it was from a real, live dragon…? And what would he give for the ability to travel to any time in history…?

No. Colin did his best to clamp the lid on such thoughts. Maybe later, when he had assumed real control of the farm, he could think about all the different possibilities; now he had more important things to do. He would study and study and study, and when he was ready he would take the Continuascope and then he, Colin Caiaphas Needle, would make the Fault Line his own.