Arms Race (23 page)

Neil runs a hand along his jaw. It must be lonely out here, though. I think I'd miss
people.

The culler laughs at that, a short bark. I miss people, he says. In a good way. This
far from the world, you can forget what bastards they are.

People are bastards?

Trust me.

Neil shifts in his sleeping bag. What do you think of this, then? he says, riffling
through his notebook with a chuckle.
For one priceless moment in the whole history
of mankind, all people on this earth are truly one.

Truly one? the culler says. Yeah. Truly mean.

C'mon. Neil sits up, grinning. You don't think that.

You think people are kind? You who's sleeping on the floor? Can't have any bacon?

Sure I do, Neil says. You who's telling me how to make a bed. Giving me venison.

Horseshit, the culler growls. That's not kindness. Any fool can do that. But he can't
help himself: he likes the kid. His cheeks have mutinied into a grin.

There, Neil says. You see?

After a moment the culler settles back against the hearth. He jabs at the fading
coals with a stick. The moon's visible through the window now, sitting above the
black swell of the ridge beyond.

All those questions, the culler says. You're going away, aren't you?

Yeah.

More than a fortnight's field testing.

Same as you. Rest of my life.

Helluva trip. Where?

Ah shit, Neil says softly. I guess I can tell you.

The culler wakes before sunrise.
He swings his legs over the edge of the bunk. The men are gone. There's ice on the
window from their frozen breath. On the bench they've left him a pile of silver food
tubes and a block of chocolate.

He pulls on his clothes, socks last. Where the wet wool hits his skin, tiny curls
of steam rise and drift into the gloom. He carries his pack to the door.

He thinks of the men taking the white suit and the flag up the valley. Neil is wearing
the suit as he walks, sealed from the world, with only the sound of his own breathing
for company. He'll climb, slow and dreamlike, through cloud and ferns and the splintered
beech brought low by last week's snow, till he's just a dot among the bluffs and
peaks. He'll vanish into the moonscape, as far from civilisation as can be.

The culler slings his pack onto his back, shoulders his rifle and opens the door.
The dawn valley gives him an icy lungful of pleasure. Mist fills the riverbed, while
up above sunlight carves the shadowed lip of one ridge from the next.

He sees Neil planting the flag as the camera rolls, his face lost behind the mirrored
visor. Neil will spend the rest of his life pretending. People will think he's changed
forever. But he'll still be capable of kindness.

The culler launches himself from the top step of the hut into the world. He hears
Neil's voice in his head.
That's one's mall sleep foreman. One gaunt sleep firm and
kind.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my family Geoff and Hikatea, Ben and Tim, thank you for the years of encouragement,
stimulus and challenge, and the sense that stories are worth telling.

To Beth Ladwig, a thousand thanks for your critical insight, support and generosity,
each of which made this book possible.

Thanks to my Stewart Street family—Stephen Mushin, Piers Gooding, Meg Hale, Robin
Tregenza, Dom Kirchner and Imogen Hamel-Green—for enduring my long bush absences,
and for all the coffees, dinners and discussions about characters like they were
real people.

To everyone at Text, and particularly David Winter, thanks for your consummate skill
in shaping raw material into polished work. The jokes in the margins were frequently
better than the ones in the text.

A number of people provided invaluable critiques of early drafts. Thanks to Tim Low,
Beth Ladwig, Hikatea Bull, Geoff Low, Stephen Mushin, Annie Zaidi, Jennifer Mills,
Melissa Cranenburgh, Sam Gates-Scovell, and all the Monday night regulars. I owe
a particular debt to Tom Doig for structural feedback that was on the money every
time, and for
Moron to Moron
, the Mongolian inspiration behind the title story. That
one's for you!

Thanks also to Lesley Alway and Asialink for the encouragement and trust in allowing
me to juggle working and writing; the National Young Writers' Festival and This Is
Not Art for the idea that it's okay to simply make shit up;
Griffith Review
,
Overland
and the
Big Issue
for getting behind early versions of three stories; Kerry Reid
and Craig Gaston for being superb bush-neighbours and keeping me sane up there in
the hills; and Marion M. Campbell for years of guidance at the University of Melbourne.
I'm grateful to you all.