Chapter Eleven: In Which There is Mystery
'Mysterious things moved mysteriously, in such a mysterious way that all the mysterious forces of Earth's mysterious corners could not have penetrated their mystery. And so mysterious things happened, very mysteriously, and the consequences were, in point of fact, mysterious.'
— Sunday Rockefeller, The Mystery Book
In the south of Eterna, four stone towers rise around an old cobbled courtyard; they have been there for five hundred years, and time has ground its mark deep into their stones: they are soft-edged, worn smooth by the quiet passage of the centuries and the silent ivy that winds its way, year by year, around the courtyard walls. Between these towers stand four crenellated walls, the last clue that the Eterna City Pokémon Gym was ever part of a castle.
It stands alone on a hill; if it were not for the skyscrapers, it would be the most commanding building in the city. As it is, it seems slightly cowed and not a little tired, worn out from the effort of keeping modernity from taking over its hill.
If you think this, you're probably a tourist, and have read the ridiculously sappy guide that they give out free in the information centre. In real life, the Gym's been fully modernised on the inside, and though it does look slightly out of place, it doesn't look tired. How does a building look tired, anyway?
We pulled up outside it at about quarter past five; we'd have got there earlier, but where the black biker passed, the traffic got a bit confused, and so the cabbie had to extricate us from about fourteen almost-traffic-accidents on the way. There was some unpleasantness with the payment, which Iago and the cabbie almost came to blows over, but I put together a timely intervention with a credit card, and sorted it all out. Two minutes later, we were passing under the archway and into Eterna's ancient Gym.
"You'd think they'd put in a door," Iago observed.
"Yeah," I agreed, but since there wasn't really anything else to say, we said no more about it. Instead, Iago went over to the receptionist, whose desk looked slightly anachronistic when set on flagstones, and said:
"I'm here with Ashley."
The receptionist looked startled.
"You—?"
The Kadabra produced some sort of card from within the many folds of his tail and showed it to her; this seemed to clear everything up, as she suddenly straightened up and pointed him over to a door marked 'Staff Only'.
"Right through there, sir."
Sir? That's... unexpected, I thought, and followed Iago.
We made our way down a stone corridor, through a heavy door and down another stone corridor; the Gym was nice, I thought, but it was getting a bit monotonous. It could have done with some windows, too. Eventually, Iago stopped in front of a door that was emitting noises that indicated some sort of argument was going on in there, and turned to face me.
"Pearl," he said, "stay out here."
"What? Why did you bring me here if you didn't want me to come in?"
"Because... because... I don't know," he admitted. "Look, just stay out here, all right? This is not something you want to get involved with."
"Yeah, because I'm totally not involved already, am I?"
"Oh, the little human can do
sarcasm," said Iago, with at least four times as much sarcasm as I'd managed to get into my sentence. "Isn't she clever?"
"Don't patronise me—"
"I'm not patronising you," Iago interrupted. "For a human, you are in fact quite clever. Unfortunately, that counts for nothing when you're dealing with a Kadabra." He sighed and put one hand to his forehead for a moment. "Pearl, I can't say this any clearer. This doesn't concern you. It might well kill you. It's also highly classified. If you go in, there are people who would try and silence you, and I think that one set of people after your life is enough, don't you?"
"Fine," I answered sulkily. "Go on, then."
"I'm glad you have at least some small capacity to see sense," said Iago, and went through the door. I got a glimpse of Ashley's back – but that was all I saw before it closed.
Immediately, a sly grin crossed my face. Iago thought I was stupid; that meant he was underestimating me. He probably expected me to stand right outside and wait like a good little human – and as anyone who knows me can tell you, Pearl Gideon definitely does
not fit that category.
I pressed my ear to the door, but couldn't hear anything beyond low angry noises; the wood was far too thick. I'd thought that might happen, so I went over to the next door and listened at that; I heard nothing, so opened it cautiously and went inside. Thankfully, it was deserted – I had no idea what I'd have said if it wasn't – and seemed to be some sort of office. Shutting the door behind me, I looked at the wall that separated me from Ashley, Iago and the mysterious woman, and smiled: just as I'd hoped, it wasn't stone. The same thing had been done at my family home – the bigger rooms had been divided up into smaller ones with flimsy plaster walls. The first thing my dad had done to it had been to tear them all out, and I knew from experience that sound went straight through them.
"Oh yeah," I said quietly to myself, smiling. "
This is how a real detective does things."
I pressed my ear to the wall and began to listen.
"—greement," someone was saying – the leather-clad biker. "You stay under the radar, we don't interfere."
"I—" began Ashley, but the woman kept talking, as bossy people often do.
"I mean, what possessed you?" She sounded almost incredulous. "Why would you do something like that?"
"These people are doing something—"
"We know, Ashley," said the woman. "Researching the energy given off by evolving Pokémon. We've had an eye on them for ages."
"And you haven't done anything?" asked Ashley. "But surely this is your remit!"
"The only illegal thing they've done is what they did in Jubilife with Rowan," replied the woman, "and we don't have the authority to do anything about that. It's the police's job.
Your job. Wait, let's not get off the point."
"The point? I was rather hoping you might forget about it."
"Oh yeah," said the woman. "Forget that you released in the middle of a city. That's likely, isn't it? You know, in the same way that a tiger coming through the door and eating me is likely."
"You're not very reasonable when you're angry," observed Ashley. "I find it much easier to speak to you when you're calm—"
"
No! I have a
right to be angry, Ashley, you've broken our agreement and you won't tell me why!"
"There was no other way to get what I wanted!" he cried back. "I wouldn't have done it if this was anything else – but there's something about this, Cynthia, there's something that doesn't feel right...!"
I didn't hear any more. I drew my head away from the wall, and blinked slowly in wonder. Cynthia. That was why the voice sounded so familiar. I'd heard it a thousand times before, on the news, during League Tournaments on TV, on the radio...
The black biker was Cynthia Buckley, the Pokémon Champion of Sinnoh.
---
"Liza!"
Tristan leaped up from where he'd been sitting on the steps and rushed to meet her as she left the Galactic building; as he approached the guards and noted the look in their eyes, he slowed, and in the end resolved to wait for her a safe distance away.
"Ah, the perfect welcome committee," Liza said. "It's the one-man Laurel and Hardy show."
"That's a compliment, right?" asked Tristan hopefully.
Liza paused to think.
"Sure," she said, with a small smile. "Yeah, it's a compliment."
"Oh. Thanks." Tristan felt that she might be withholding part of the truth from him here, but said nothing about it. "So? What happened?"
"Lacrimére and his friends," replied Liza succinctly. "They broke in and – well, it was probably the Kadabra, Iago. They caused a mass hallucination and stole quite a bit of information in the confusion."
"Damn," whistled Tristan. "That's bad."
"I will forever be in awe of your mastery of stating the obvious," said Liza absently, walking over to the road and looking up and down it for something unknown.
"You're in a good mood," noted Tristan. "What's that about?"
"I had a productive conversation with your Mister Maragos," Liza replied. A black sedan of the sort positively adored by villains the world over drew up beside her, and she got in. "Tristan. In."
Tristan obeyed, somewhat confused, and as the car began to move away he asked:
"What's happening? What are we doing?"
"We're driving in a car," replied Liza.
"I
had noticed that," snapped Tristan, somewhat crossly. "Look, what's going on? Where are we going?"
"Mister Maragos laid on a car for us, which was nice of him," Liza replied, "and we're going to the Gym."
By this point, Tristan was about five seconds away from biting off his own foot and using it to beat his brains out.
"
Why doesn't any of this make any sense?" he wailed, at which the driver turned around and told him to shut up, or he'd end up embedded in the ground, a position from which he doubted he would ever recover.
"We're going to the Gym because the Diamond was just seen heading there on a giant black motorbike," said Liza mildly. It seemed to Tristan that she was taking a perverse sort of pleasure in his discomfort – but then he realised what she had just said, and blanched.
"A giant black motorbike? So... she's...?"
"Yes," confirmed Liza. "The League's involved now." She grinned a lazy grin. "This is becoming more and more exciting."
"It's getting more and more
dangerous—"
"It's much the same thing."
Tristan was of the opinion that it wasn't the same thing at all, but thought it wiser not to say so. He was also of the opinion that Liza was dangerously unsound of mind, but saying that would probably have been even more ill-advised than saying that excitement and danger weren't the same thing.
"Oh dear," he said, mostly to himself. "This isn't looking good at all."
And as the sinister black car rounded a corner and began to head south, a
second sinister black car, longer and slimmer, slid out of a nearby street, and started to follow it – only for the driver to stall the engine, curse inaudibly, and cause a minor traffic jam before managing to get the car moving again.
---
I heard footsteps moving over to the door, and quickly left the office to lean against the opposite wall in the corridor; Iago came out first, looking suspiciously at me, and then Ashley, looking somewhat abashed. Then came Cynthia, and her face was so familiar that it seemed like it wasn't real, but there it was: the sharp grey eyes, one of which was hidden beneath the sweeping curve of her knee-length blonde hair; the perfect nose, the small mouth... All that was missing was her trademark faint smile, for she was currently wearing a tight, disapproving line in lieu of that.
It wasn't hard to act surprised; even though I'd already known who she was, it was still a shock to actually see her in the flesh. My eyes widened and I gaped slightly; Iago looked at my face, and seemed satisfied.
"You're Pearl Gideon, right?" asked Cynthia, looking at me. It wasn't an approving sort of look.
"Uh... yeah," I replied, startled.
Oh my God, I'm speaking to the most famous woman in Sinnoh!
"Iago will escort you home," she said. "I suggest you stay there from now on." She looked at Ashley. "I need to thank Gardenia for letting me use this place," she announced. "You can find your own way out, can't you?"
"Is that a joke?" asked Ashley sourly.
"Yes," admitted Cynthia freely. "Now be good, boys."
"Don't worry," Iago said. "I've got it covered.
"Considering what you let Ashley do today, you'll forgive me if I don't believe that."
With that, Cynthia turned on her heel and strode off down the corridor, helmet under one arm. I stared at her until she turned the corner, and then looked at Ashley and Iago.
"Was that...?"
"Yes," confirmed Ashley listlessly. "Cynthia Buckley." He sighed. "I apologise for her. She's not usually like this."
"It's just that Ashley made her
very angry," Iago added.
Ashley frowned.
"No,
we made her very angry," he said. "You're supposed to—" He looked at me and broke off. "Well, anyway. We ought to leave. The next train to Jubilife leaves in twenty minutes."
On the way out, we were all subdued: Ashley and Iago because of their telling-off from Cynthia, and me because I was thinking hard about everything I knew so far. What did it all mean? Cynthia was somehow in charge of Ashley, who had done something that Cynthia called 'releasing' in the Galactic building. Iago seemed to be... what, exactly? Was he a friend of Ashley's after all, or was he some sort of employee of Cynthia's, meant to keep an eye on him for her? That didn't fit so well with what I knew about him as a con artist; since the League was part of the government, I'd have thought it was out of the question for them to employ internationally-wanted criminals.
And on top of that I had to consider Team Galactic, who wanted Ashley, Iago and I dead, and were looking into some sort of scheme to obtain vast quantities of energy...
"This is worse than philosophy," I muttered to myself. "This actually requires a straight answer."
I paid for a taxi to get us back to the train station – Ashley and Iago were running low on funds again; they seemed to get through money at the same rate normal people got through oxygen – and sat in silence the whole way through, thinking furiously and getting nowhere. The train journey itself was also silent; Ashley fell asleep, though woke precisely thirty seconds before we pulled into the station, and Iago stared vacantly out of the window for the entire trip.
All in all, it was close to nine in the evening when I arrived back at my apartment – not late, especially not for me, but it had been quite an exhausting day. Ashley and Iago had insisted on escorting me there, presumably acting on Cynthia's orders, and bade me a tired goodnight at the door.
"I'll come here tomorrow," Iago said. "There's some paperwork you need to do."
"Paperwork?"
"Yeah, paperwork." He scratched his head. "Basically it says you won't tell anyone about anything you saw, and that you're going to stay out of our affairs from now on."
"Huh." Right. Like I was going to sign
anything like that. I'd get to the bottom of this mystery, whatever it was – and I'd get there on my own if need be. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Pearl," said Ashley, which startled me because he hadn't said anything for several hours now. "I'll be in touch when I find something out."
I did my best to smile.
"Thanks," I said. "I'll see you."
"See you later, Pearl," said Iago. "Well, hopefully
not, but... you know."
With that, they walked down the hall and out of my life – for the present at least. I unlocked the door and went inside, then immediately headed for bed. I was going to sleep now, so that I could get up early in the morning and call Stephanie. There were two mysteries to be solved now, and there was no way I was going to let either of them pass me by.
Morning came, and since I hadn't set the alarm I didn't wake up until ten thirty, which kind of ruined my plan. I'd half-expected this, so shrugged and put the kettle on while I called Stephanie.
"Steph? It's Pearl."
"Pearl? Where are you?"
This was, I reflected, a slightly weird way to start a conversation, but I supposed it didn't matter.
"At home. In my flat."
"You're back?"
"Yeah—"
"For good?"
"Um... yeah. Why not. Listen," I went on, eager to change the subject, "have you found anything out yet?"
"It's ten thirty-nine," Stephanie said, "so you've probably just got up. You're making breakfast right now, and then you'll take a while to get dressed... come over here in forty minutes and we'll talk."
"You know me
far too well," I told her. "You found something out, then?"
"Sort of," Stephanie replied enigmatically. "Like I said, come over and we'll talk."
"About Ashley?"
"Amongst other things."
Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get her to reveal anything, so I hurled my phone onto the sofa in frustration and set about finishing my breakfast preparations.
Fifty-three minutes later, I was walking up to the door of Stephanie's apartment; I reached up to press the doorbell, but it swung open before I'd touched it.
"Am I really that predictable?" I asked.
"I knew you'd be late," said Stephanie. "Exactly thirteen minutes late, in fact." She smiled. "Come in, Pearl."
I came in, dropped my bag on the floor and threw myself onto her sofa.
"So," I said, "tell me what you found?"
Stephanie said nothing, and I looked at her uneasily.
"Oh no. I know that look. What are you up to?"
No response, but Stephanie's smile broadened.
"What have you..." I trailed off, realising what she was up to. "
Cal!"
I jumped up and lunged for the door – but Stephanie held up the keys, and I rattled the handle to no avail.
"I locked it," she said. "Shall we make a deal?"
"This is about the essay, isn't it." I didn't say it like a question.
"Yeah, that's pretty much it." Stephanie pocketed the keys. "That essay's due on Tuesday. Today is Saturday. That's three days to do what usually takes you over a week."
"I think the Ashley stuff is more important than the essay—"
"Ah,
there's the thing," Stephanie said. "See, I
don't think so. And neither will Professor Legumulous. So I'll make you a deal: you get your information after I get some proof that you've done the essay."
I glared at her.
"What's to stop me from going and looking up this stuff myself?"
"Pearl, you said yourself that you'll get knifed if you do," she pointed out. "And by the way, I want an explanation for that – after the essay, of course."
"You," I said, with the voice of one who knows, "are evil."
"And you are indolent and hedonistic," replied Stephanie.
"I'm a – a Stoic—"
"I think you mean an Epicurean," she corrected. "This is all further proof that you should be studying. You should have learned that years ago."
"Look," I said, trying a different tack. "Something weird is happening, and everyone who's caught up in it knows about it. I am also caught up in the something weird. Therefore I need to know about it. That's – that's perfectly valid inductive reasoning!"
"Pearl, are you seriously trying to beat me in a philosophical argument?" asked Stephanie. "Think about that for a moment, and tell me whether you still think it's a good idea."
I intensified my glare, but it made my face ache and so I had to stop.
"You're sulking," said Stephanie, trying hard not to laugh.
"No I'm not."
"Yes, you are." She shook her head, smiling. "You can be so childish sometimes."
"What!"
"You're right," conceded Stephanie. "That statement wasn't wholly accurate."
"Thank you," I said with dignity.
"You're childish
all the time."
"Stephanie—!"
She looked at me innocently.
"It's for your own good." She pressed her notebook into my hand. "You'll need this. Thanks for bringing it back, by the way."
"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." I remembered I'd left it on my desk before I'd left, and took it from her with no small sense of guilt.
"That's fine," Stephanie said sweetly. "You need it more than me."
"Why does everyone think I'm an idiot recently?" I complained.
"Because you've started to act like one," she replied sharply. "Now go and work, or you'll never get the answers you're after."
And so I left, with great haste and no little alarm, for I had what is technically known as a freaking
enormous pile of work to do, and very little time in which to do it.
---
"We missed them," said Liza. "That's annoying."
"Why did we come here anyway?" asked Tristan.
They were sitting in the car, just outside the Gym; as they'd pulled up, a big black motorbike had roared away, which had seemed to cause Liza's spirits to sink somewhat.
"They came here," Liza told him. "Buckley just left – we passed her, remember? She brought the Diamond, the Kadabra and Gideon here."
Tristan stared at her.
"But... how did you know that?"
"Mister Maragos told me," she replied. "He was in the park when he got a call from the Eterna base, and passed them on the way there – so he detailed an agent to tail them."
"Why didn't that agent kill them?"
"Because," the driver said, turning around in his seat, "if he'd tried to do so, he'd have been struck down with a vicious blow."
Tristan blinked.
"What?"
"He couldn't have beaten Buckley, could he?" the driver continued. He had, Tristan noticed, a distinct Johtonian accent. "Beating her would be something that only happens once every hundred thousand years or so. You know, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth blow."
"What?"
"Ignore him," said Liza languidly. "He's just a running gag."
The driver grinned and asked:
"Where to now? Mister Maragos told me to take you wherever you need to go."
"I can't help but feel that I'm very out of the loop here," Tristan said crossly. "Is Mars still angry with me?"
"I think it's safe to say she has bigger problems right now," replied Liza.
"Cheer up," said the driver. "You know what they say: when your chips are down and your highs are low – joy ride."
"You are a singularly weird sort of man," Tristan informed him.
"He's one of many." Liza coughed. "That's enough. Uh... let's see..." She thought for a moment. "They know everything that Jupiter knows, which I should think isn't much more than Veilstone and Maragos..." Her eyes widened. "
Veilstone."
"Veilstone? They're heading for the main base?"
Liza smote her forehead in frustration, then decided that it would be better to smite Tristan, and consequently did so.
"Where else? Are you really as stupid as you seem, or are you just Sinnoh's best actor? I have to say that it seems very unlikely that one man can contain such a large quantity of idiocy."
"I've had more than enough of this!" cried Tristan, and would have smote Liza back had not the driver intervened, and smote both of them. The general smiting levels inside the car were now approaching Old Testament standards.
"Look, tell me where you wanna go," he snapped crossly, in yet another strange musical reference. "I'm a driver because I like driving in my car, and so I'd quite like you to tell me where we're going."
"Cease this smiting!" cried Tristan, feeling that his path, like that of the righteous man, was truly beset on all sides by the iniquity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
"He's right," said Liza, whom life had taught the hard way to recognise and rectify her faults as quickly as possible. "Let's see... take us to the airport. We'll fly to Veilstone directly."
There was a silence, and the car went nowhere.
"To the airport," repeated Liza.
"Oh, I heard you," the driver said. "But... think about it. I'm a driver. And you want me to take you somewhere where you can
fly to your destination? When your life's in a mess, you take the National Express – but this isn't even a coach, it's a
plane! It's ridiculous!"
At this, Liza's brow darkened, and Tristan instinctively recoiled from her – but it was towards the driver that her ire was directed, and to his ear that she put her mouth, and into his head that she whispered certain exotic words. And it was therefore his diminutive frame that stiffened, and his voice that issued from between his dry lips in a quiet 'Yes', and his hands that keyed the ignition and made the car drive away.
Tristan sat in silence for a while, and then asked:
"What did you say to him?"
Neither Liza nor the driver replied, and Tristan came to the conclusion that the exotic words so often employed by Liza were not ones to be spoken lightly, and therefore resolved never to speak of them again.
However, as has already been related, there were no East-side flights to be had at present, and they left dispirited – except for the driver, who of course was overjoyed.
"If he can't get East-side," Liza reasoned, "the Diamond would head home, wouldn't he?"
"What are you basing that on?" asked Tristan.
"He's broke," she replied briefly. "It's not as if he can afford hotels. He'll go home and wait until things have cleared up."
"So, we're...?"
"Yeah," said Liza. "Driver—"
"My name's Stravinsky—"
"Driver, take us to Jubilife," she said.
Stravinsky grumbled for a moment, remembered the certain exotic words, and decided to immediately stop complaining and drive instead.
Tristan sat very quietly, and hoped that Liza never had cause to speak those words to him.
---
"Bond," said Ellen.
"Yes, madam?"
Bond's voice was rather strained, though he was doing his level best not to show it.
"It's nothing personal, but..."
There was a short silence, which Bond eventually broke by saying tersely:
"I'm all ears, madam."
"Well," Ellen said. She sounded rather apologetic. "Well, it's just... you're not very good at this, are you?"
The car ground to another halt, half on and half off the pavement, and Bond turned to look at Ellen. It was the sort of look that only the very dignified can pull off, and it was intensified a thousandfold by the fact that Bond had been dead for over sixty years.
"Miss Ellen," he said, "it has been a great many years since I last drove a motor-car. The last one I drove was of approximately the same complexity as a flea's mind. This one has so many buttons, levers and pedals that I might as well be attempting to pilot an aeroplane. Under the circumstances, I think I am doing
exceptionally well!"
"Oh. Yes. Of course." Ellen fiddled with the hem of her dress, somewhat subdued. "Well... carry on, then."
Bond turned to face the road again, but before he could get the car started again, a policeman tapped at the window.
"Evening," he said. "Do you know exactly how many road laws you're breaking he..." He trailed off, blinked, rubbed his eyes and blinked again.
The car, as far as it appeared to him, was empty.
"They're very annoying," Ellen said. "This must be the seventh one now. Bond, tell him—"
"Madam, they cannot hear us." Bond waved a hand before the policeman's face, but got no response. "And it appears as though this one cannot even see us."
"That's not happened before. Why do you think that is?"
"I suspect there are some people who can, and some who cannot." Bond shrugged. "It is often that way in books."
"Oh yes." Ellen smiled at that. "When can we stop and get some ink?"
"When we have warned that young man about his companion."
Bond managed to start the car, much to the consternation of the policeman; as it pulled away, the good man of the law jumped and fell over backwards.
"How are we going to do that?"
This was a question that had been occupying Bond for some time. If so few people could even
see them, then how on earth were they going to communicate a message to their target?
"Yes," he murmured to himself, "it seems as if she might have her wicked way after all..."