THOTH & MORVEREN
When Megan narrowed her eyes at Thoth, the package under his left arm and Morveren under his right both seemed to double in weight. He had no idea what Tris saw in her – but, then, he had no idea what Tris saw in most of his friends. Thoth must have read a hundred psychology books, and he still couldn’t figure people out enough to get along with any more than a tiny minority of them. People didn’t make sense like mechanics, chemistry or physics did. With people, you couldn’t just put add another compound to mix the correct solution, or take them all apart and reconstruct them with the correct parts. People were complex and nonsensical… and, for the most part, not very nice.
If Eselda noticed that Megan was looking less-than-pleasant, she clearly didn’t consider it a personal affront. Her attention was largely consumed by the prince, at any rate. She bobbed up and down with excitement while he held the parcel, obviously doing all she could not to ‘help’ him open it, and beamed from ear to ear. The prince’s quip about his father laying eggs tainted her face with a puzzled frown, although Thoth smiled in appreciation. The vaguely mystified expression remained in place even when Tristan opened the present and pulled out the rainbow glitter toy horse and in spite of the rest of her face lighting up as though Christmas had come early.
“His name is Freddie, and he likes parties,” she told Tristan chirpily, rolling back and forward on her heels. Her baffled expression cleared once and for all when he told her that she looked pretty, and she mumbled a pleased “thank you.”
Thoth expected her to start chatting about ponies or tea parties or something, but at that precise moment a couple of girls and a guy about her age started squealing her name from the other side of the room. He was taken aback for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to Thoth that Eselda had other friends who she might want to talk to at the party, and he felt an annoying twinge of jealousy when she dashed over to see them without even saying goodbye. A minute later she ran back, made a fairly bad attempt at a curtsey to Tristan (it was pretty much just a bow with her skirt slightly lifted), hugged Thoth around the midsection and raced away again.
Trying not to feel too pleased, Thoth set Morveren down on the floor and started feeling in his pocket for the card he knew he’d written earlier that day. He pulled out a pair of white mice by their tails, who squeaked indignantly at him; he squeaked apologetically back and returned them to his pocket. Transferring the box to his other hand, he searched the other pocket and pulled out a close-lidded petri dish containing some blue mould. A small gecko, which had obviously been at the bottom of his pocket under the petri dish, crawled out and start shimmying up his shirt. Thoth shoved the petri dish back and plucked the gecko off his shirt, giving it a mystified look. Mice and science projects were frequent inhabitants of his pockets, but the gecko was new. The gecko licked its eyeballs and leapt from his hand to his shoulder, where it sat and stared at the party guests, unnerving a few middle-aged ladies. Thoth left it to it.
No card, then. Maybe he left it at his sister’s house. Bugger. With a slightly sheepish look, he handed the box – white, unwrapped and undecorated – over to the prince, while Morveren tied her tail in a knot around Tristan’s legs. As his friend opened the box, a bizarre contraption – approximately the size of the prince’s head – was revealed.
“It’s a flying machine,” Thoth explained without a trace of condescension for once as Tristan lifted it out. “Those are rotary blades. And this – ” he reached into the box and emptied it by pulling out another weird bit of kit. “This is the controller. Press this switch on the machine – here – and then you can operate it using the joystick. Forward is up, backwards is down, and right and left are… well, right and left,” he moved the joystick in each of the indicated directions as he spoke, then pointed to the flat, blank screen above it. “This is a video feed. I’ve attached a camera to the bottom of the machine – like a pair of eyes. Whatever the machine ‘sees’ will show up here when you press this button.” He pressed it and the screen flickered to life, showing a live image of their feet.
“Range is only one mile across and up right now, since this is just a prototype,” he glared at the machine as if it was its fault and handed the remote control over to Tristan. “I haven’t quite perfected the design yet, so let me know how you get on with it.”
|
|
