Butterfly Hunter 01 (12 page)

“
No, Nicholas.
I’m not happy about this anyway. You’ve drawn your line, and you’re
just gonna have to let me draw mine.”

Nicholas was staring at
him with those deep dark eyes, and there was a storm happening in
there, even if the surface was calm. They sat there at the foldout
table, neither of them eating. “David, I didn’t mean to make you
–”

“
If I could
live my life without rules,” Dave blurted, “that’d be great. Well,
you know, not without decency, and Do Unto Others, and all that.
But out here – you won’t live long if you’re not careful. There’s a
reason for every single one of my rules. There really
is.”

“
I know,
David. I understand that they’re not arbitrary.”

“
So don’t go
thinking that cos I gave in on this one, I’ll start giving in on
others. It can’t work like that.”

“
I won’t ask
for anything else,” Nicholas promised. He sounded almost as if he
wished he hadn’t even asked for this. “I’ll come in with you, if
you insist. If we both go for the day –”

“
No,” said
Dave, bitterly. Stupidly. “No, you stay, if that’s what you really
want.”

The turmoil was visible on
Nicholas’s face now. “David –” He reached to rest a cool palm and
long fingers against Dave’s hand where it lay on the
table.

Dave withdrew his hand,
and went to fetch the satphone. “I’ve shown you how to use this. Do
you remember?”

“
Yes,
David.”

“
The first
number programmed in is Denise, and the second is Charlie. I’ve put
my mobile number in, too, now; it’s the seventh one. But if you
need me, I don’t care what for, and you can’t get through to me,
then call Charlie. If you can’t get hold of him, then call Denise.
She’ll know what to do. All right?”

“
Yes, David,”
Nicholas humbly agreed.

“
And you do
what they tell you to, even if it makes no sense to you. Even if
you don’t want to.”

“
Yes,
David.”

“
You promise?
And I mean it. Call about anything. Even if it’s just that you
can’t decide whether to have baked beans or spaghetti with
meatballs for lunch.”

That won a smile from the
man. “I promise. And I appreciate what you’re doing. Very
much.”

“
I’m an
idiot,” Dave said, angry with himself, but unaccountably fond of
the man who was making him so idiotic.

“
You’re the
most amazing man in all the world.”

“
Huh,” said
Dave. And he went to fetch his shopping list. When he emerged from
his tent, he found Nicholas waiting with a thermos of coffee for
him. “Well,” he had to admit in a mutter, “you’re not too shabby
yourself.”

Dave was out of sorts all
day, and he knew well enough why. He’d not only done the wrong
thing but he’d done it for the wrong reason. Underneath which was a
low–level, fairly realistic buzz of anxiety that he knew wouldn’t
quieten until he saw Nicholas again, whole and safe.

His thoughts were in a
constant fret, going over and over all the advice he’d passed
on.
Don’t wander so far that
the camp’s out of sight. You’ll get turned around, and head off in
the wrong direction, and you’ll be lost. Don’t leave uncovered food
or water out. You’ll attract the wrong kind of attention. Don’t
–
And so on, and so on. How much of it
Nicholas had actually taken in was another matter entirely. Dave
hoped he wouldn’t find that out the hard way.

Charlie came to find him
at the grocery store. “I heard you were in town again.”

“
Just for the
day, mate.”

After a brief glance
around, Charlie asked, “Where’s your man, Davey?”

“
Nicholas is
hardly
my man.”

“
Bring him
down the pub for lunch. It’ll be good to see him again.”

“
I can’t,”
Dave said. And then he explained why.

“
Come anyway,
mate. You need to talk.”

“
I’ve never
done anything stupider,” Dave announced once their meals were
served. He didn’t really feel like eating, though he always looked
forward to having a proper meal in town.

“
He’ll be all
right,” said Charlie.

“
How do you
know?” Dave asked, searching Charlie’s cheerfully worn face, hoping
for even a mystical Dreamtime kind of reassurance – the sort of
thing that he wouldn’t really believe, but which would feel
comforting.

“
I have faith
… that this isn’t Nicholas’s fate.”

“
Faith?”
Dave sighed. Faith seemed like little more than blind belief to
him. “Do you
know
what a clumsy bugger he is? If anyone could –”
He forced himself not to imagine any more disastrous scenarios. “I
should never have let him talk me into it.”

“
Don’t be so
hard on yourself.”

“
Someone has
to be,” Dave said darkly.

Charlie considered him
silently for a time, in between mouthfuls of steak, spud and veg.
Eventually the man observed, “You care about him,
Davey.”

“
Course I do,”
he replied a bit scornfully. “I know he’s a bit – odd. Nothing like
what I expected. But he’s become a mate.”

“
Of course he
has,” Charlie quietly agreed. “He’ll be fine today. And I know
you’ll take good care of him. But you need to take better care of
yourself as well, Davey.”

“
Uh huh,” Dave
neutrally agreed around a mouthful of steak.

“
How goes the
quest for Nicholas’s butterflies?”

Dave rolled his eyes.
“Nothing. Well, just the sort of grubs and butterflies you’d expect
to find, apparently. Which he’s happy enough about, and he’s busy
gathering all the data he can. But no blue clouds, no mysterious
waterholes – nothing that’s never been seen before.”

Charlie nodded for a
moment, sagely. “The time has to be right.”

“
Right time in
the right place. I get that. The distances we’re covering each day,
we’re giving ourselves every chance to stumble into it.”

“
Mmm.” Charlie
sat back, and mused over his beer. “There’s … a strangeness down
around there. There’s a mystery.”

“
Right …” Dave
warily agreed, wondering if he dared prompt Charlie for more
information – or if Dave might even be better off not muddling his
head with half–hints of Dreamtime secrets.

“
It’s
reasonable to assume you’re not gonna find it the regular
way.”

“
Mmm
…”

“
Maybe –
you have to
not
want to find it.”

“
What?”

Charlie shrugged. “Maybe
you have to
not
be looking.”

“
How does that
work, then?”

Another shrug, and
Charlie’s gaze slid away.

Dave sighed. Sometimes he
reckoned he was just a bit too white and ordinary for the
Outback.

As Dave drove back to the
camp, the Cruiser’s satnav began doing that odd flickering and
resetting thing again. Which didn’t help his peace of mind, though
he had a good sense of direction, and reckoned he could almost
certainly find the camp again just on his own instincts. It was a
bit of a worry, though, and no doubt he should try to have someone
look at it before he and Nicholas really went off–road.

His thoughts were nothing
but fretful as the sun started westering. But soon enough he saw
the camp in the distance across the flat landscape, and at last he
could make out Nicholas standing there waiting for him, and
Nicholas appeared to be upright and in one piece, so maybe
everything had quite unexpectedly turned out fine. After long
moments Dave tore his gaze off that long tall figure in his Akubra
and sage green shirt and blue jeans – tore his gaze away to glance
across what he could see of the camp, which all seemed to be in
much the same state he’d left it that morning. So maybe everything
really was fine.

In those last moments
before he parked the Cruiser, Dave was abruptly swamped with fury –
the sort unleashed in a parent the moment after their child is safe
and the danger is past.
What
did you think you were DOING?! How could you have been so
STUPID?!
But then that ebbed away, too,
and Dave was left with a giddy sense of relief, and he knew he was
grinning like a loon as he finally turned off the ignition and
climbed out of the Cruiser. He approached Nicholas, his grin only
broadening even while he felt more and more idiotic – and Nicholas
stood there with his hands jammed into his jeans pockets, his grin
just as wide as Dave’s, and he was kind of shifting about on his
feet as if he couldn’t quite keep still but he was forcing himself
not to – well, not to just grab Dave and hug him, Dave
imagined.

“
So,” said
Dave. “You managed not to lose a limb or set fire to your tent or
anything?”

“
Seems like
it,” Nicholas agreed. “But I –”

“
But you
what?” Dave prompted after a pause, though somehow he knew it
wasn’t anything serious.

Nicholas had his mouth
pressed tightly closed, and just shook his head to indicate he
wasn’t saying anything further for fear of incriminating
himself.

Dave had a stab at it.
“But you missed me.”

Those lips remained
pressed together, but widened and quirked into a flat version of
the man’s wicked grin, while his deep blue eyes danced and his
shoulders quivered with laughter.

“
You’re never
going to stay behind again.”

Nicholas shook his head
emphatically.
Never.

“
Good,”
said Dave. He let his smile turn affectionate for a moment, risking
the man reading that as
I
missed you, too
.

And indeed Nicholas’s lips
parted on a silent huff, and then turned sweetly poignant
…

Oh God,
thought Dave,
and there’s another of The Thousand Smiles of Nicholas
Goring. Why on earth hasn’t he found a man yet who can see the
wisdom of devoting a life to cataloguing them all?

Nicholas was standing there with
his hands hanging free now, standing there so very still, watching
Dave. Hardly even breathing, apparently.

It was the first time that
Dave had been conscious he might actually be in some danger
here.
When did that
happen?
he asked himself.
And how?

There was no answer, of
course. The moment lengthened as they considered each other;
Nicholas waiting, and Dave’s brow beginning to wrinkle with
puzzlement.

But Dave soon cleared his
throat and turned away. “Right. Groceries. Let’s get these unpacked
and stowed,” he said, heading around the back of the Cruiser. “And
then I got one of Billy’s homemade meat pies for our dinner. To
celebrate, you know?”

“
Celebrate?”
Nicholas asked in a neutral tone. He was standing there beside him
now, uncomplainingly letting Dave load him down with grocery
bags.

“
Celebrate,
yeah. My safe return. You being whole and well. The camp not being
destroyed.”

Nicholas nodded, as if still not
quite trusting himself to speak.

Dave was the opposite,
though, babbling on and unable to stop himself even though he knew
it was just an avoidance tactic. “So we can continue enjoying our
inalienable rights,” he said.

Warily, Nicholas asked,
“Which would be … ?”

“
Life,
liberty, and the pursuit of butterflies, of course. What
else?”

Nicholas guffawed quite happily,
and they were all right again. They were fine. Everything felt easy
between them. Nothing need change.

Even though Dave was
visually charting Nicholas’s post–guffaw contentment, and
thinking,
One thousand and
one
.

During their third week,
they decided, they
’d concentrate on
trying to find the waterhole where the Barcoo grunter ancestor was
dreaming through his long sleep. They had historical maps as well
as current ones, and Dave had worked out an itinerary that took in
any water feature whatsoever, whether it still existed or not. If
that didn’t work, they would start exploring any ground at lower
levels. The landscape appeared quite flat, but it wasn’t really;
there were gradual rises and falls, there were folds and creases
between them where any rare rainfall would collect and run off. The
waterhole might be more myth than reality, but they had to
try.

The search was
disheartening, though. “I hadn’t realised everything was so dry out
here,” Nicholas commented on the third afternoon, as Dave steered
the Cruiser up out of a dent in the landscape and back onto an
unsurfaced track. “Butterflies need liquid of some kind,
almost
any
kind. It can be quite ghastly what they’ll drink, but they
need
something
.”