Dark Matter (21 page)

“I’ll see you again on Friday, Eight
sharp,” she said and smiled. Her teeth were big, and very white, and reminded
him of the carnival clown game, where the object is to knock its teeth in with
a thrown ball. She gave him an efficient little wave in the waiting room before
introducing herself to her next victim. Rasputin contemplated slipping the guy
a warning note.

For the rest of the day he found walking
harder than normal. He felt sapped of strength, and his legs quivered when they
bore his weight for more than a few seconds. He realised he must have been
grimacing with pain when the girl at the checkout counter asked him if he
needed help.

He declined, slung his backpack engorged
with two-minute noodles over his shoulder, and headed for an exit. His route
through the mall took him below the foodhall where he had eaten his last meal
on two good legs. The cocktail party chatter of the hall, and the smell of food
sitting in
bain-maries
, rolled over the lip of the mezzanine and
engulfed him. He suddenly tasted Chinese spices in the back of his throat.

Beneath the food hall lay an exit that led
to the enclosed car park where he had confronted a child jimmying his car door.
He approached the automatic doors, feeling his pocketknife’s weight press
against his backside with each stride.

His mind was a cauldron of thought, had
been all day. As he had scraped along supermarket aisles for press-button food,
the week’s tumult had swirled in a never ending stream of recall: Thorpe, and
his room of wonders; the photos like cannon fodder he had given to Lloyd;
physiotherapy and an exhaustion that was a new kind of pain. It left him
feeling like the meat in a monstrous sandwich. To make matters worse, he wasn’t
sure who was intending to eat it.

So when the automatic doors clapped shut
behind him he stood and fixed his eyes on the stairwell at the far side of the
car park. Below it, he knew, was the bay where he had left his car that sodden
night. Scant feet from that bay was the asphalt across which a Valiant had sent
him careening. Maybe there was a divot in the surface there, and maybe, at the
bottom of that divot, fused with the bitumen, there was even a little piece of
his epidermis.

His mind reimagined the concussing blow,
sending a fierce frisson of pseudo-pain scuttling over his scalp.

He shook it off, and squared his shoulders.

“I’ll be damned if that punk is going to
eat my sandwich,” he hissed, and stumped toward the stairwell.

When he made it to the scene of the
accident, he found the road surface to be entirely normal, entirely unlike his
nightmares. Nothing suggested it had witnessed anything worse than garrulous
shopping trolleys and sugar-hyped children. No divots, no blood stains, not
even a lick of police chalk. But then, he hadn’t died, had he?

He searched a moment longer, feeling the
dull weight of anti-climax, and then mentally erased the carpark from his list
of places-to-see-before-I-die.

 
Beside the stairwell a throughway right-angled
past a strip of fast-food shops. He entered it, heading for the bus stop. As he
rounded the bend, he collided with a man coming the other way.

Rasputin staggered back a step, an apology
forming on his lips. Then he noticed the fedora on the man’s head.

The man’s lips parted in surprise, eyes
hidden behind mirrored lenses.

Immediately Rasputin’s nerve network lit up
with a signal: it screamed
flight
. But he stood, rooted to the spot,
adrenaline backing up against his will, like a flash flood surging behind a dam
wall. His body was taut, primed to open the floodgate, needing only the order
to fly.

But rumour of a countermand paralysed him.
The new message came from the same deep place as the command to run, but was
nurtured by the anger that had simmered in him since morning. It began to boil.
He decided to
fight.

He drove his foot into the path’s concrete
and plunged forward, pinning a finger into the man’s chest.

“I know you,” he said, anger spilling into
his voice. “You want a piece of me too?” He stretched his arms wide. His cane
rapped against the wall, sending reverberations up his arm. “Well here I am.” He
raised his cane in front of him like a sword.

Rasputin wasn’t sure what he expected, but
it wasn’t an apology and an about-face.

The man glanced over his shoulder, tugged
the fedora down over his ears, and strode back along the walkway.

Rasputin watched mutely. When he saw the
man meant to leave, he cried out, “Well?...” There was a plaintive note in the
cry. In response, the man only quickened his pace.

Conscious of the ludicrous reversal,
Rasputin began to chase the retreating figure. They emerged into open carpark,
Rasputin jog-hopping after the man in a fedora and aviator sunglasses, who
faced resolutely forward. Shoppers began crossing their path.

Rasputin raised his voice to shout: “You
like making fun of cripples?”

That drew looks.

The man missed a step, stopped. He turned
around, let Rasputin close the gap, and said in a harsh whisper, “I don’t know
what you’re talking about. Please stop following me.” He said it politely, but
Rasputin saw he was flustered.

He turned to leave again, so Rasputin said
in a voice that carried over the hum of traffic, “You were stalking me at the
university, and on the bus.”

The man kept walking.

Rasputin fired another barb: “And lurking
in the supermarket. You an identity thief or just a pervert?”

Bingo!

The fedora executed a swift pirouette and
bore down on him. He stood his ground. The man had a height advantage, but
Rasputin held the mirrored gaze until it loomed over him.

The man removed the aviators and folded
them in one movement.

He spoke quietly but quickly. “You’ve got
me all wrong. Trust me. Stop making a scene.” As he spoke, his gaze darted
about. Rasputin couldn’t tell if it was nerves or something else.

“Why should I trust you? Maybe I’ll call
the police. What are you going to do?”

The man swept a hand over his chin. He was
thinking fast.

“Come here a minute,” he said, and
manhandled Rasputin backwards.

Rasputin shrugged him off, and stood his
ground.

The man held his palms up, a conciliatory
gesture. “Just get out of sight and I’ll explain.”

Rasputin relented, and moved back into the
enclosed throughway.

“This is far enough,” Rasputin said. “Now
explain.”

The man drew breath, then spoke: “I’m an
insurance investigator. I’ve been employed to audit your claim and ensure it’s
legitimate.”

“Nice try. My claim was rejected.”

The way the man’s face fell was comical.

Rasputin went on. “Your credibility stocks
just took a major dive. What’s your next story?”

The man’s shoulders slumped.

“Alright. That was crap. But I am an
investigator... or would like to be.”

It was a good act, or the man had finally
spilt the truth.

“You’re a vigilante? If so, your underwear
is supposed to go
over
your pants.”

“That’s very funny.” The man slipped the
folded aviators into a pocket. “I work for ASIO. I’m an information officer,”
he said, and then seeming to remember where he was, “Or rather, would like to
be an IO. I’m on probation.”

ASIO, Australia’s very poor cousin to
the CIA?

Rasputin didn’t like where this was
heading, but had to ask. “What do I have to do with your probation?”

“You’re my assignment. I’m meant to be
surveilling you.”

Rasputin was stunned, but his mouth kept
running.

“I’m guessing this little tête-à-tête means
that isn’t going so well for you.”

“No, in intelligence parlance, this is
being up the faecal creek without a paddle.”

“Or canoe.”

“What tipped you off? It was the fedora,
wasn’t it.”

“Yes,” Rasputin lied.

“The officer in charge of my probation
thought it would make an interesting challenge.” He tugged the hat’s brim
self-consciously, and, Rasputin thought, a little protectively. “He’s a bit of
a hard-ass.”

“Smart-ass, more like.”

“My name’s Sam,” he said, and extended a
hand. Rasputin shook it.

“Spade?”

Sam shook his head.

“Smith,” he said, not quite able to say it
with textbook solemnity.

Sam doffed the fedora and spun it on one
finger.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Sam
said, “surveillance ceases in a week.” The hat stopped spinning, and hung
lop-sided. “I don’t suppose you could pretend you hadn’t caught on to me? I’ll
send you a carton of beer when I return to Canberra.”

“I don’t drink.”

Sam smirked. “You did a fair bit of not
drinking in Melbourne.”

“Melbourne?” A shock wave of fear rippled
through his stomach. “I never saw you in Melbourne. That was weeks ago. What do
you know about that?”

Sam seemed lost for words again.

Rasputin went on: “Forget the beer. The
deal is you tell me exactly why I’m being watched.” He held an index finger up
in Sam’s face. “But if any of it doesn’t add up, and I mean to the hundredth
decimal place, I’m on the line to your smart-ass boss.”

“Calm down. I can explain. You’ll probably
laugh—it’s quite ironic.”

“Sarcasm fits my mood better just now, but
go for it. I’m all ears.”

Sam weighed the fedora in his hand, seeming
to weigh his words. “That I’m here in Perth, watching you, is the fruit of
coincidence. We don’t know what you did before the audition in Melbourne, but
as luck would have it, there was an ASIO officer at your audition.”

“ASIO sends agents to Temptation
auditions?” Rasputin screwed up his nose, incredulous. “The government is
either paying you guys too much or not enough.”

“He wasn’t on duty,” said Sam, a touch
offended. “ASIO employees are smart. It makes perfect sense to me.”

Sam might be on probation, thought
Rasputin, but in the brainwashing class he was head of the class.

Sam continued, “He made the last cut, but
it wasn’t until after his interview that he heard a rumour that someone—
you
,
as it turned out—got a near-perfect scorecard. So this agent sniffed around and
got your name. Your profile looked promising, and here I am.”

Sam fell silent.

Rasputin felt he had missed something. “I
don’t get it.”

“ASIO is legislated to double over the next
five years. Cyber-crime, counter-terrorism, you name it. We’re supposed to keep
our ear to the ground for potentials.”

The picture was resolving, but the antenna
needed one last nudge: “Potential whats?”

“Recruits.”

Recruits.

So the shadow that had hunted him, nameless
behind mirrored lenses, had overtaken him and snagged him in its claws...to
offer him a job?

“Okay,” said Rasputin, “that is ironic. If
my English teacher had explained irony that way I might have remembered it.”

Sam switched into salesman mode.
“Information Analyst is a great job—”

“Analyst?” said Rasputin, cutting over the
spiel. “Aren’t you an Officer?”

“Almost, but the Officer role is the ‘man
of action’ type.” Rasputin noted Sam’s athletic figure and poise, with a
grudging admiration. “You, however, were targeted for your intellectual
prowess.”

And my youth, my singleness, and my
motivational indebtedness.

There was a thought: how much did they know
about why he was fortune hunting in Melbourne? As far back as the accident? As
far forward as Thorpe?

Sam was still talking. “Analysts sift
through mountains of data and distil it into intelligence. You get paid to
research. You have to be awake to nuances of culture, companion to zeitgeist,
in possession of prodigious powers of recall. When does a missing bag of shit become
a terrorist bomb?” He paused for effect. “Your intel might find its way under
the Prime Minister’s nose.

“I can put shit under the Prime Minister’s
nose?” said Rasputin idly, still mulling over what ASIO might know about him.

“One more question,” said Rasputin. “What
do you know about why I was in Melbourne?”

Sam sobered immediately, to his credit.

“We know about the accident. We know about
your predicament. We know about your surgeon.”

He
is
my predicament, thought
Rasputin. But Sam hadn’t mentioned anything about sketches or immaculate
memory, what Rasputin had been listening for beneath his words.

“Actually,” said Sam, “we’ve started a file
on him.”

“Are you going to start a file on my cat
too?”

“You don’t have a cat.”