Amalfi Echo (3 page)

Marion had no
idea what to say, the crazy tumble of events finally catching up
with her and possibly the lozenge had now worn off. Shrugging,
Joanne Fleischer walked down the ramp. By now, the rest of the
passengers had moved off towards a doorway at ground level between
two of the embarkation tunnels poking out from the terminal.
Airport officials and police hurried out through the door towards
them. Several jet fighters roared through overhead. In the distance
the heavy beat of military helicopters began to grow.

Back in the
shuttle Marion said, “Maybe we should have this chat somewhere
else.”

“My thoughts
exactly,” Digby said. The ramp and doorway flickered like a shutter
closing and opening again. Harsh sunlight flooded in. The air was
dry and crackling. An endless sea of spindly gum trees spread out
towards a low range of red hills. The light was painfully intense.
Digby did his usual trick of producing things from nowhere and
offered a set of sunglasses and a hat for each of them.

Unfazed, Tessa
put them on and demanded a mirror. “I have to look right for my
fans.”

Marion looked
out at the trees. “Don’t bother. It doesn’t look like there’s
anyone for miles.”

“Which will
suit our purposes nicely, I think,” Digby said. “We are in outback
Australia, a few kilometres north of Cloncurry in Queensland. It’s
the middle of the afternoon and on the warmish side.”

“Yeah,” Marion
said slowly. “You’ve got that right.” She sagged down at the top of
the ramp gazing at nothing.

Tessa dragged
her up. “C’mon, let’s explore.”

Digby followed
them out and waited until Tessa very quickly got bored with the
dust and the heat and the sheer lack of anything to do. He led them
through the trees to a muddy pond, fringed with weed and somewhat
shaded by a thicket of trees and scrub.

“Dam for the
cattle,” Digby explained. They made themselves comfortable in the
shade. At least until the flies and mosquitoes arrived. Luckily
Digby had a remedy for this and they relaxed again.

“Are you going
to give with this vital information I’m probably going to spend the
rest of my life in prison for?” Marion said.

“Yes,” Digby
replied. “But I’d like to show you something first.”

A burst of
light, like a shooting star, came down from the sky and skidded to
a halt beside them, to rest itself gently on the ground in front.
The light transformed to a silver grey metallic case which split
into two lengthwise, the top half raising as a lid. As soon as
Marion and Tessa saw what was inside they both tried to speak,
Marion with concern and Tessa with excitement but Digby silenced
both of them. “First, let me tell you what I see.” He described
four stone-like objects with smoothly rounded edges and whose
colours oscillated through the spectrum. Two of them were half the
size of the other two.

“No way,” said
Tessa.

“Is this a
twisted attempt at humour, Digby?”

“If you like,
we could take these objects into Cloncurry and get people there to
describe what they see. It will be no different to what I’ve just
described to you. We
will
do this, if necessary.”

“What will that
prove?” Marion said. “You can make anything vanish or appear
whenever you want.”

“To hell with
that,” Tessa said. “Gimme. I want to play.”

“Yes, there is
a certain amount of truth in that,” Digby conceded, in answer to
Marion. “And you would have no way of telling. I’m going to suggest
to you that at some point you will have to take things on faith
otherwise you’ll never get a handle on this whole business.”

“Okay. Might as
well keep on going,” Marion said. “I sure wonder where this is all
going to end though.”

“Tessa, what
are these objects?” Digby said.

“Can I pick one
up?” Tessa said. At Digby’s negative reply she groaned but said,
“Okay, okay. The smaller ones are like pistols only the handles are
really strange. I don’t know how you would hold it and there
doesn’t seem to be any trigger. The bigger ones are like a military
assault rifle but same again about the stock and the trigger.”

“Do you really
not see that?” Marion said to Digby. Then the light began to dawn.
“Is this something to do with the Amalfi Echo?”

“Very good,”
Digby said approvingly. “All I see are four pretty coloured stones
or jewels but then I am entirely human. There is no one on this
planet, other than you two, who can see what they really are.
Before we go any further, is there a little brown oval button about
where you’d expect to find the trigger on each weapon?”

“Yes,” Marion
and Tessa said together.

“That’s good,”
Digby said, relieved. “From what I understand of Amalfi weapons
that means that none of them are armed otherwise the buttons would
be coloured purple or a colour like purple.”

“Oh I’m so glad
the weapons are not armed,” Marion said. “That makes everything
just peachy keen.” She moved away to the edge of the pond and
trailed her hand in the water. “I want absolutely nothing to do
with them. And Tessa is not having anything to do with them
either.”

“Tell her,”
Digby said to Tessa who responded by spreading her hands in a
question mark. “Tell her about the gun clubs and the career you
were headed for.”

Tessa’s face
closed up. “Do I have to talk about it?”

“You have to
deal with it some time,” Digby said.

“You don’t have
to say anything if you don’t want to, Tessa,” Marion said. To Digby
she said, “Don’t try to be a counsellor. It’s not a good fit.”

“I want to,”
Tessa said but then hesitated. “No, I don’t really want to but I’m
going to. I need you to understand why I want the weapons.” She
fiddled with the hem on her T-shirt before continuing. “My Mom was
a shooter. I had been going with Mom to gun clubs ever since I
could walk, first in Oregon where we are from and then, when we
moved to D.C., we were members of a private gun club. I fired my
first gun, a 22, when I was eight years old. I can handle many
different rifles and pistols, including military-style weapons. I
am a very good shot but not as good as my Mom. She was a marksman
and she won many medals and trophies although I have won a few
myself.” Her voice became tinged with bitterness. “I was headed for
the Academy. Fly jet fighters. Yeah, that ain’t ever going to
happen now.” Tessa looked at Marion and there were tears now in her
eyes. She indicated the Amalfi weapons. “I need this.”

“You’re 16
years old, Tessa,” Marion said. “This is all wrong.”

“My Mom would
have understood.”

“I’m not your
Mom.”

“Yeah, tell me
about it,” Tessa said.

Marion looked
away as though she had been slapped. Tessa went over to Marion and
hugged her. “I’m sorry.”

“I never will
be your Mom,” Marion said.

“No,” Tessa
said. “But I still need you. I don’t feel so alone now.” She went
back to the Amalfi case and looked interrogatively at Digby.

“Maybe the
pistol first,” Digby said. “That seems a good place to start.”

“So do I have
to, like, pass a course on the pistol first or what?”

“I don’t know,”
Digby said. “These are Amalfi weapons. I can’t even see them. What
happens from here is strictly between you and the weapons.”

Tessa smiled
for the first time, in a very long while. “So they come with
instructions too.”

“Oh, that’s
great,” Marion interjected. “You don’t even know anything about the
weapons and you’re giving them to a child.”

“What I know,”
Digby said, “is that things Amalfi belong together. That’s all I
need to know. They’ll work it out between them.”

Tessa picked up
one of the pistols. Instantly her fingers and her hand bent into
impossible, horrible looking angles, twisting back on themselves in
excruciating ways. Tessa was unruffled. “Did you know that would
happen?”

“I did guess,”
Digby said. “I scanned your hands. Did you amaze and amuse everyone
when you were younger?”

“Jesus,” Marion
said. She looked at her own hands.

“Yours are the
same,” Digby said, “but then I think you already knew that you had
rather strange hands.”

“I stopped
giving demos. It freaked people out,” Marion said.

“Same,” Tessa
said. She raised her pistol hand, pointing directly upwards into
the sky. “The weapon is speaking to me.” Her hand began to inscribe
arcs across the sky. “It’s finding out about me. How my body
moves.” A few exercises later she said, “This little pistol could
probably take out a tank or a small building. I’d love to know what
the rifle can do.”

Digby shrugged.
“Not up to me.”

Tessa reached
out her other hand and touched the rifle, snatching her hand away
as though stung. “It won’t let me near it until I’m qualified on
the pistol.” She went back to doing exercises with the pistol.
“This little pistol will do me fine just now.” Eventually she said,
“Enough already. I’m starving.” She slapped the pistol to her hip
where it stuck all by itself, although to Digby, and certainly
every other person on the planet except Marion, the bit that they
could see looked like nothing more than a small ornament.

“Have you
checked the safety…lever or whatever it’s called?” Marion said.

Tessa rubbed
the pistol lovingly, a snaky look in her eyes. “Relax, kiddo. It
won’t arm itself until it’s satisfied I can do all the drills and
I’m proficient at targeting. And by the way, Digby, the little
brown button is not a button and the colour it changes to is
nothing like purple although I have to say that I couldn’t tell you
what colour it really is.”

Now Marion
realised that she too was ravenous. “Maybe you can magic up some
food for us,” she said to Digby. “Do we get a menu or how does it
work?”

“What am I, the
hired help?” Digby said. “Go find a burger bar.”

Tessa went up
to Digby and fluttered her eyes at him. “Please Digby. I’m ever so
hungry.”

“Tessa!” Marion
said.

“It’s okay.
He’s not my type. He’s not yours either.”

“Yes, you’ve
nailed that one.” Marion sent a warning glance to Digby. “Get the
message? If you have any ideas about playing happy little families,
forget it.”

“I don’t mate
with aliens. We humans do have our standards.”

“Get out of
here,” Marion said, heaving a small branch at him. This got a
second smile from Tessa so things were definitely looking up.

Digby solved
the problem of food and a lot of other issues straightaway. He
opened his hand, offering it out to them, and they saw that two
objects had appeared in his palm. These also looked like ornaments
or jewellery, but were not Amalfi. “These will give you access to a
limited range of the ship’s resources. I’d suggest the best
location to place them is behind one ear but anywhere on your head
will do.”

They took one
each. “How do they work?” Marion said dubiously. Then she looked at
Tessa and they both said together, “They come with
instructions!”

“Now you’re
getting the idea,” Digby said.

Nevertheless,
Marion stalled, cupping the little silver filigreed device in the
palm of her hand. “It isn’t doing anything.”

Tessa also was
unsure whether she wanted this or not.

“It won’t
activate until you place it somewhere with definite intent,” Digby
said.

“What happened
to the terribly vital information you were going to give us?”
Marion said.

“We’ve had a
big day and it can wait until tomorrow. No decision is required of
you straightaway and even if you make no decision, that in itself
will still be the most important decision you will ever make.
Perhaps we could go to the ship, unwind, watch the news which
probably will be most interesting today, and you can eat.”

“Yeah,” Tessa
said, becoming excited again. “An alien spaceship. It’ll be all
over the news.”

“No, not the
ship. That’s in orbit on the dark side of the Moon. But they are
having a field day with the pictures of the shuttle.”

“What does the
ship look like?” Tessa asked.

Digby pointed
to the top of the shuttle visible above the trees. “Exactly like
that only a lot bigger…you know, we could continue to hide away in
this less than interesting place or we could be lazing about on the
ship, munching liver pâté and sipping good wine, safely out of
their reach. Given that they are likely to arrest you two on sight,
you might want to give that some thought.”

“Not giving up
on getting us up to the ship are you Digby?” Marion said, beginning
to cave-in. She was suddenly very tired of the little pond and the
dust and the heat and the day was beginning to crash in on her.

“It so comfy
and an all-round nice place to be,” Digby said winningly.

Marion and
Tessa bowed to the inevitable and followed Digby to the
shuttle.

-oOo-

And the ship
was
beautifully furnished. Marion relaxed in a deep and
undeniably comfortable sofa, looking out through enormous curved
windows at the dark side of the Moon which was, well, dark. She had
eaten herself silly on chicken and salads, rich, aromatic bread,
and freshly squeezed juice. Now she felt full and was even in
danger of dozing off. Tessa was off exploring the ship and giving
her a running commentary which mostly consisted of utterances like,
“That is so freaking huge,” or “How can that be so crazy big,
Marion?” or “That is so incredibly cool,” and endless variants of
these, interspersed with ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs.’ The ship faithfully
relayed every little excited squeal through the silver filigreed
interface device which had melted into her skin behind her ear,
although the silver outline could still be seen. Her personal
living quarters had proved to be spartan but could be modified in
any way that she wanted. The ship had not yet talked to her
although this was apparently normal. If she wanted something she
only had to think of it and the ship supplied it, hardly before the
thought had formed. Digby had gone off somewhere to do something
arcane and, for the moment, Marion was happy to be alone, enjoying
the almost peace and quiet. Even this was rudely shattered with the
return of Tessa who had finally worn herself out. She flopped onto
the sofa beside Marion, threw her feet up onto the arm of the sofa
and put her head in Marion’s lap.