Giant Killer. John McNally

you were in the woods too.”

      “Pine cones. For the fire …”

      “You were gathering aromatic fuel? In a snowstorm?”

      Santiago wriggled an approximate nod, ashamed to be lying.

      At the stove, Olga used some tongs to drop off their hot stones, taking her time as Carla watched Santiago on the rack. Finn could almost feel the morality rising through Carla’s scalp, but counselled – “Don’t do anything. We have to figure something out.”

      “Who was it, do you think, that the lookout and the searchers saw then?” the Abbot asked Santiago, letting the question hang. Santiago could not help but fill the silence.

      “An … angel, Padre?”

      “An angel?” said the Abbot. “With a dog?”

      Santiago shook in disagreement. “NO DOG, Padre – dog run away! Crazy dog!”

      “Could it be a stray?” the Abbot asked the Siguri chief.

      “No, sir. A stray would have starved by the time it got up here. This dog has been regularly beaten; its master must be the stanger.”

      Olga started to lead Carla back out.

      The Abbot waved, the rack wheel turned, and Santiago cried out again in excruciating pain.

      “Arrrrrrrrrrgggghhh!”

      The cry stopped Carla in her tracks – at the very moment Finn’s scent finally rang a big bell in Yo-yo’s tiny brain – YAP!

      Yo-yo whipped round. There! There was the good girl! There was the Finn smell!

       YAP YAP YAP! YAP!

      The Siguri chief, the Abbot, even Santiago, turned to look.

      “It has the scent of its master!” said the chief.

      Yo-yo was straining at the rope that held him, pointing only one way: at Carla, halted before the great door, ready to turn and declare herself.

      “Let the dog go!” ordered the Abbot.

      “No, Yo-yo! PLAY DEAD!” Finn yelled uselessly from Carla’s hair.

      The Siguri holding Yo-yo released him and he sprang towards Carla like an accusing finger, all skew-whiff as the stew sloshed about the wire rack of his body, until … BANG!

      The doors behind Carla burst open and in came the severed head of Baptiste, ravaged by bears and dangling from a Siguri gauntlet.

      HOWWWLLL! – Yo-yo cowered back in fear.

      CLANG! – Carla dropped her empty bucket in shock.

      “Stupido!” cried the secretary, and slapped her so hard Finn had to cling on as she fell.

      The Abbot was shaken. “Bring it closer!”

      Baptiste’s head was marched up and dangled before him.

      There was one lidless eye, the other was missing, as was the top quarter of his skull. A wafer edge of white bone stood proud of the blood and brain on what was left of his brow. His skin was ghostly, ghastly pale, and his black mouth gaped open. A section of collarbone dangled from ligaments at his neck. Here was the master. Here was the stranger.

      The Abbot recognised him at once. “Oh, my dear boy …”

       FIVE

      Santiago was released and led back through the labyrinth, held between Carla and Olga like a broken bird, eyes tight shut, muttering some mad, grateful, polyglot incantation (“Fo me ca Maria – fo me ca Primo – fo me ca Jesu – fo me ca Master – fo me ca Dei”) while Yo-yo strained at the end of a rope just ahead, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and the severed head.

      They arrived back in the library to exclamations in a dozen tongues. Carriers crowded round. Excited, Yo-yo began to yap, then – just like it would in the playground – a handbell broke up the scene – Ding-a-ling!

      “Quiet! Do you want the Siguri back?” demanded the Primo.

      Santiago limped over to him.

      “What did you tell them?” the Primo asked.

      Santiago recounted what had happened in a breathless, dramatic babble.

      At the end of it, the Primo asked, astonished, “Baptiste?”

      “His head – just his head,” Carla confirmed. “He dragged me here from Shanghai. When I got away from him, the bears got him.”

      Santiago grunted confirmation. There was murmuring among the Carriers.

      “They know him … They’re impressed,” Finn said at her ear. “Make the most of it!”

      “I did what you asked,” Carla told the Primo. “I brought Santiago back. Now I must make contact with the outside. I must call for help.”

      “There is no means. We are not meant to exist,” the Primo said. “There are no phones, no electric. Even fires do not burn by day. We are made to live as of old.”

      Finn looked at the bells and the speaking tubes hanging around the dais and started to understand. This place was undetectable.

      “There are NRP machines in the infirmary, but nothing else,” said the Primo.

      “What are NRP machines?” asked Carla.

      “Neuroretinal programming,” explained the Primo. “A probe is put through the eye into the brain, to program Tyros with expertise, strength, character.”

      “That’s what made you blind …” Carla realised, appalled.

      “The Master searches care institutions across the world for children of exceptional intelligence. I am from a local orphanage, but others are from the farthest corners of the earth. If we are suitable for NRP, we become Tyros and begin our training. If NRP fails, but we are still of use, we are put to work with the Carriers – local unwanted children,” the Primo said. “If we are not of use, we die.”

      Finn felt Carla give a shiver.

      “Your Master is a monster,” she said.

      “We are here. Nowhere else,” said the Primo, dead simple.

      At Carla’s ear Finn said, “These NRP machines must use computers of some kind, they must be connected to something?”

      “Primo, these machines, are they computers? Do they have electricity?”

      “They are connected by wire to the Caverns, but no Carrier can go there.”

      Finn’s ears pricked up.

      “What caverns?” asked Carla.

      “Beneath us. Great halls within the mountain.”

      “What is in them?”

      “We cannot know. But flying machines go there at night sometimes.”

      “Flying machines?” said Carla.

      “We have to get out and tell someone about this,” insisted Finn. “We have to get off this rock!”

      “In the morning, I have to leave, I have to get help,” Carla told the Primo.

      “You will never make it. First you have to escape the Siguri, then the peasants – who all depend on the Protectorate – then the elements themselves.”

      “Santiago gets out,” said Carla. “How else did he