Butterfly Hunter 01 (13 page)

“
That goes for
any living thing, doesn’t it?”

“
Well, it’s
just that adult butterflies only drink. They don’t eat. But there
aren’t even any flowers out here for them to sip nectar
from.”

Dave had to laugh at that.
“Sipping flower nectar doesn’t sound so gross.”

Nicholas cast him a dark
glance. “We’ll just leave that topic there, then.”

“
All right!
Where to next?” he asked Nicholas, who was navigating from an
armful of maps and the handwritten notes they’d both
made.

Nicholas sighed, and traced
their recent meanderings on the map with one of his long pale
fingers. Dave tore his gaze away only just in time to avoid leaving
the track and scratching the Cruiser against one of the older
gnarled shrubs. It was only that he was interested in their route,
of course. And it was only concern for the Cruiser and for their
safety that caused his eyes to be drawn to Nicholas gently tapping
a fingertip on the satnav, prompting it to reboot.

“
That’s been
playing up again,” Dave observed.

“
It’s as if
something is interfering with the signal. Though I can’t think
what, out here.”

Dave glanced at him. “You
don’t think it’s just faulty?”

Nicholas gasped in mock
horror. “How dare you! That’s one of the Cruiser’s very own
instruments you’re maligning.”

“
Hah! I think
they call that Stockholm Syndrome, don’t they?”

“
You’ll be
loving butterflies next,” Nicholas supplied.

“
They’re
beautiful!” Dave protested like a true convert. “What are you
saying?”

Nicholas smiled a bit smugly,
and left well enough alone. And afterwards Dave thought that maybe
that was just as well, for only God knew what else Nicholas might
convert him to.

“
Do you think
it’s the satellite coverage?” Nicholas asked a few kilometres
later. “I mean, maybe there aren’t many that fly over this
region.”

“
Yeah, though
it hasn’t been a problem before. There’s always been
enough.”

“
How about the
phone? You’re getting through to Denise every evening.”

“
So far. There
were only one or two nights when that was a bit patchy,
too.”

Nicholas made a
non–committal noise of agreement, and turned his attention back to
the maps.

Another few kilometres passed,
with no variation in the landscape. But they were almost at the top
of a long rise now, so when they started heading down again, there
would be something to explore.

“
The thing I’m
still wondering is,” Dave said into the companionable silence, “how
do you find a blue cloud in a blue sky?”

“
It’s
beginning to seem rather impossible.”

“
What? No,
don’t give up yet!” He felt quite alarmed by this sudden turn into
negativity.

“
I only have
so much time …” Nicholas observed, slowly and quietly.

“
No, you
haven’t even been here three full weeks yet. You knew it might take
a while. That was the whole idea of the three months, wasn’t
it?”

A silence stretched. The satnav
flickered and went offline.

Then Nicholas said, “Maybe
we want it too much. Maybe we have to
not
want to find it.”

Dave looked at him
askance. After a moment he admitted, “That’s what Charlie
said.”

“
What?”

“
When I went
up to Charleville the other day.”

“
Why didn’t
you tell me?”

“
Because it
makes no sense!”

“
I don’t care.
Let’s try it.”

Dave rolled his eyes. But he
also waited to hear what their next plan might be.

Nicholas sat there
thinking furiously. “Maybe we have to let go of the
need
.”

“
And you could
do that, could you? Quit needing your butterflies.”

“
If I have
to.”

Dave sighed. At this
point, he’d try almost anything. “All right, sure. Let’s stop
trying. We’re just driving along here for our
amusement.”

Nicholas said with a fair
attempt at world–weariness, “I don’t even care anymore. Who could
possibly give a damn?”

“
It was just
an excuse for a holiday, right?”

“
Right,”
Nicholas agreed. “Just an excuse to have you to myself for three
months.”

“
Huh.” The
driest hint of an old creek bed appeared on either side of where
the track cut through it. Dave’s instincts were to turn right, so
he turned left into it, with an odd feeling of abandon.

“
Wait, that’s
the wrong way!” Nicholas cried out.

“
There’s no
right or wrong,” Dave argued. “It’s not like we’re looking for
anything, is it? It’s not like we’re going any place in
particular.”

Nicholas grinned at him,
and settled back in his seat again. “Of course.” He looked idly
around him, making a great show of not hunting anymore.

They continued on for a
while, and Dave’s concentration was all for the terrain; there were
rocks occasionally, although the ground remained fairly even. But
then they topped another slight rise, and there didn’t seem to be a
mirroring trace of old run–off on the other side. Dave paused for a
moment, looking about him at this new territory, which seemed to be
a wide shallow basin; the horizon was visibly nearer on every side
than they’d been used to.

“
Where –”
Nicholas began, looking from the landscape to the maps and trying
to match one to the other. “I can’t quite –”

From the corner of Dave’s
eye as he scanned around again, he caught a glimpse of something.
It was as if a tiny part of the sky had moved.

“
What was
that?” Nicholas asked in that very moment, in a hushed tone. He’d
tensed up again as if an electric current had gone through
him.

“
What was
what?” Dave asked – but his sudden testiness betrayed the fact that
he’d seen it, too.

“
Like a
shimmer, or something.”

“
Heat haze,”
Dave said, dismissing the whole thing. But he had turned the
Cruiser towards it, and they headed slowly down into the
valley.

They were both staring ahead,
trying to track a piece of sky that for much of the time looked
like any other piece of sky, while Dave was also very conscious of
steering the Cruiser safely through the scrub which was slightly
denser here than it had been on the other side of the ridge.

“
There!”
Nicholas cried. “To the left a bit.”

Dave corrected his course,
having thought he’d glimpsed the flutter, too, even though he’d
been mid–blink.

They continued silently on, not
seeing any more evidence of whatever it was, but eventually
reaching a strange place where a worn old watercourse led out from
a sunken piece of ground. Dave brought the Cruiser to a halt a few
metres away, and they sat there leaning forward in their seats to
stare at this discovery.

It was hard to quite make
it all out, but it seemed quite large, this valley within a valley
– and there were larger shrubs and trees growing within it, though
none of them grew so tall that they stood out from the surrounding
scrub. If you were looking across the terrain, chances were you
wouldn’t even see it.

“
I
scoured
Google Maps,” Nicholas said in a hushed kind of
awe. “The satellite images, you know?”

“
It would have
just looked like a denser part of the scrub,” Dave
affirmed.

“
And there
were a few areas where the images were a bit blurry, a bit odd …”
They both glanced again at the satnav, which seemed to have given
up entirely. “Poor coverage,” Nicholas tried.

“
What you said
before, about something interfering with the signal …”

“
Yes?”

“
There are
huge mineral deposits around here. Australia’s known for them. It’s
such an old place, geologically. So, I was thinking, what if
there’s a lot of … something like iron ore here. And it’s jamming
the signals.”

“
Is that
possible?”

“
I don’t know.
But it would help explain why this wasn’t on any of the modern
maps.”

“
It has to
be,” Nicholas lamely asserted, sitting back to shuffle through the
maps again, though he knew as well as Dave that they were all empty
around these parts. After a moment, he sat back up again. “Can we
drive down into it?” And for once he was actually asking
permission, and letting Dave decide, and knowing that Dave might
refuse.

Dave thought for a while.
And then turned off the ignition. Before Nicholas’s face could
fall, Dave said, “We’ll walk in.”

And Nicholas was suddenly
just
glowing
with anticipation. This man who didn’t think he
was beautiful was just … glowing. And gorgeous.

“
We’ll leave
the Cruiser out here,” Dave said, trying to concentrate on
practical matters. “Don’t know what we’ll find in there, and we
can’t afford to lose it or get it stuck.”

“
I
understand.”

“
Not that she
can’t cope with a lot of different situations –”

“
Of course,”
Nicholas stoutly agreed, laying a gently reassuring hand on the top
of the dashboard.

“
Anyway, if it
comes to anyone sending out an aerial search team, she’s much
easier to spot than either of us – or that … whatever it
is.”

“
It’s the
waterhole,” breathed Nicholas.

“
We don’t know
that yet.”

Nicholas just looked at
him.
Yes, we do.

“
The rule
still holds. You do what I tell you. All right? If it’s a sinkhole
of some kind, if it’s at all unstable, then we’ll –”

“
How can it be
unstable, with those trees growing in it? It must be at least
thirty or forty years old, judging by the size of those gum trees –
and older still if it’s what I think it is.”

Dave just looked at him.

“
Sorry,”
Nicholas said, with honest chagrin. “We’ll take it slow, and I’ll
do what you tell me.”

“
All right,”
Dave agreed, with far more severity than he felt he had any claim
to.

“
Thank you,
David.”

“
Let’s go,
then.”

They paused on the brink of this
strange place, to discover what might serve as a track curving down
into it along the left wall, which was otherwise quite steep.

“
How
wonderful,” marvelled Nicholas.

“
It’s
bizarre,” countered Dave, though he knew he sounded just as
awestruck. He checked again that they had what they might need.
There was a good length of rope in his backpack, along with a
torch, the small first aid kit, and some food. Both he and Nicholas
were carrying full water bottles. Chances were they’d need nothing
but a refreshing drink once they were in there, but it was a
foolish man who relied on chances in the Outback. “All right?” he
asked Nicholas again, just in case.

An eager nod was the only
reply. Nicholas had his satchel with him, trusting that he would
have plenty of discoveries to record. And maybe Dave was just too
caught up in the excitement, but he was feeling almost as certain
as Nicholas was that they had finally found what they’d been
looking for.

“
Come on,
then,” Dave said. And they crossed the edge and walked down into
this place, shoulder to shoulder.

Dave was evaluating the
track as they went, of course. It seemed wide enough and solid
enough for the Cruiser, apparently formed from a harder layer of
sedimentary rock that hadn’t been worn away yet. The strata that
formed the cliff wall above them were reddish with occasional
blackish streaks, which hinted at iron ore.

The track lowered them
down into the small valley, with one twist that would require a
three–point turn, before leaving them on a gently sloping floor.
Then the main impediment for the Cruiser would be picking a way
between shrubs and trees, but they weren’t so closely packed that
it couldn’t be done.

The temperature was a
couple of degrees cooler down here, and there was that crisp feel
in the air of a body of water nearby. Nicholas cast Dave an excited
look, but he kept pace with Dave, and didn’t try to push
ahead.

They followed the slope of
the ground to eventually emerge from sparse undergrowth and find a
pool of still water that was the most astonishing green–blue. The
trees provided a light cover over it all, but sunlight dappled
around them and sang glints of brightness off the water. It was …
magical.

They stood there staring
at the scene for a long while, dumbfounded at finding so much
beauty that was so untouched. It seemed that nothing had been
disturbed here for years, decades even. Dave couldn’t even see any
evidence of animals, though why they wouldn’t use the only
waterhole around for tens of kilometres, he couldn’t begin to
imagine.