Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (8 page)

Kris smiled widely, but the incisiveness in his eyes told me that he expected more. “And?”

“Well, there is something else I’ve been mucking around with. Not really a project, though—more a sort of hobby.”

“This is?”

Davo hesitated, and the Council awaited his reply.

“Uh, there was an old radio amongst all the junk, and I’ve been trying to make it work.”

Instantly the citizens of Adelaide stirred and whispered. There was a shout of protest, to which came answering cries of support.

Kris waved his arms for silence. When he had it, he continued the interrogation. “Why?”

“To see if there are any other survivors, of course.”

“Does the radio work?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Not yet, you mean?”

“I doubt even I’ll be able to fix the damn thing.”

“But you were attempting to do so?”

“Yes. Why not?”

One of the crowd shouted at Davo: “If they’re there, why haven’t they found us already?”

Davo sought to locate his interrogator, but was unable to. “Who would bother to look here?” He addressed the ring of faces around him as a whole. “We were just a small city in a small country. Why look for Adelaide when Sydney, New York, London, Tokyo, and Paris are gone? I know I wouldn’t waste my energy.”

“But if they were looking for survivors, surely they’d look everywhere?”

“And,” interjected another, “they’d be using infra-red—”

“Maybe the shit in the atmosphere interferes with infra-red, or the thermal signals are too weak against the background. I don’t know.”

“What about the OEG? What if we’re still at war!”

“Christ.” Davo ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Anything could have happened. Ten years is a long time.”

There were a few more shouts, and some voices raised in anger— so many that Davo couldn’t respond to all of them.

“Where would they land?” someone called. “All the launch and landing facilities must be destroyed!”

“And they could still drop something on us!” This from a woman towards the back of the gathering, her eyes wide and frightened.

Kris again placated the gathering with his upraised palms, then turned back to Davo.

“I don’t think you’ve considered this matter nearly well enough my boy. Experiments of this nature have potentially disastrous ramifications for the community as a whole. They need to be discussed before you will be allowed to continue.”

Leaning on the podium, Kris assumed the patient, preaching stance we all knew so well. His voice became less accusing, more mellow and charismatic.

“There are those,” he said, “of which I am one, who believe that the past is better left forgotten. We have survived here in peace since war destroyed our old world, and I am loath for this peace to be shattered simply to satisfy one young man’s curiosity regarding the ghosts of a life long dead.

“I have accepted the need for electric power, and might even be convinced that an intercom is necessary, but my sensibilities baulk at the possibility of recontact with any hypothetical outside world. I believe it is foolish to hope that there are others out there who survived the Fall. Even if they are there, they must be in much the same position as we.

“Similarly, lacking evidence to support the continued existence of the OEG, it seems pointless to wonder about the war. The OEG might have crumbled after the Fall, or left the Earth’s vicinity. Certainly, no one has seen them in over a decade, and I would be surprised if they’re still searching or even listening for survivors.

“My mind is unclear, but I see two options open to us. One: allow David to continue with his experiments and attempt to contact any other survivors. Two: ban all further research entirely, on the grounds that it is almost certainly pointless and potentially very dangerous.

“As is customary, we will take a vote.”

The gathering stirred, discussing the options, until Kris called for silence.

“Those for allowing David to continue with his experiment, please raise one hand.” I immediately voted in favour, as did Davo and a few others. I was dismayed by the poor turnout, and that Max did not vote.

When the counting finished, Kris called for the second vote. “Those against—that is, in favour of ceasing the experiment immediately.”

More hands went up this time and my hopes sank. A surprising number of young ones voted against Davo’s project—but at least Max again did not raise his hand.

When the tallies double-checked, Kris announced the results.

“For: twenty-seven. Against: thirty-nine. Abstentions: thirty-five. Not a clear majority either way, so we’ll need to discuss this further. Before we do, however: Max, I couldn’t help but note that you abstained from casting a vote. May I ask why?”

My foster rose to his feet, and heads turned to look at him. His face was shadowed and serious when he tugged away his mask.

“There is a third option we have not considered.”

“And this is?”

Max thought for a second, and I waited breathlessly for his suggestion. I knew that Kris would eventually turn the Council against Davo; Kris was too persuasive and the people too afraid of resurrecting old fears. But if Max—whom the people respected at least as much as they listened to Kris, if only because he was the oldest—spoke against Kris, Davo might be given the opportunity to continue.

Max; no doubt aware of his role, weighed his words carefully. “The third option is to allow David to continue until such time as the radio is working,
then
reconvene the Council to decide the next step. I’m sure he can be trusted not to attempt any communication until the Council advises him that it is our wish to do so.”

Kris looked askance at Davo, who nodded eagerly. “Sure. No problems.”

Kris looked unhappy. The suggestion was so reasonable that he had no choice but to call a second vote. The muttering of the crowd became less strident as human curiosity began to break through the initial shock.

And, sure enough, this time the result was conclusive: sixty-three in favour, less than twenty against, and the rest abstaining.

Kris scowled, but capitulated. “It is decided. I must warn you, David, that any deviation from this agreement will be severely punished.”

Davo grinned. “No shit, bwana—I mean, of course I’ll behave myself.”

“Then this meeting is closed. Thank you all for coming.” Kris turned away from the crowd and bent to whisper with the Senior Councillors.

“Almost too easy,” said Max at my side.

“What?”

He looked at me. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

We helped Davo through the crowd toward the nearest bridge. Despite his handicap, no one offered to help us get him home. Jerrie, however, came with us, and remained behind after we left Davo’s workshop.

Max and I checked our garden together, spraying a few of the sickly plants with clean water.

“You go to bed,” he said when we finished the chore, taking a seat on a rusted air conditioning vent and gazing out to sea. “I think I’ll stay up for a while.”

I studied him closely; his eyes were black pits, sunken in waxy flesh.

“You must be exhausted,” I said.

He nodded, and gripped my shoulder. “I am, yes, but I will not sleep. Not tonight.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t understand, and headed for the stairs. As I left, Max moved to a position facing Davo’s building. A single candle flame burned on my friend’s floor, and my foster’s bulky frame occluded it, like the closing of an eye.

I fell instantly into a deep, dark sleep.

Less than an hour passed, however, before I awoke, scrabbling at my mask as though I were suffocating. I sat upright and listened to the sound of my own breath, wondering whether it had been the mask that had woken me or something else: a nagging sensation that something important, somewhere, was taking place.

I left my bed and padded upstairs to Max’s floor. He wasn’t there, asleep or awake. When I checked the gardens, he wasn’t there either. The plants rustled in the night breeze, and I shivered.

The night had chilled dramatically. Lifting my mask, I tested the air. It smelled of water—clean water from the melting south. The tide had turned.

I removed the mask and breathed deeply, thinking that this was what had woken me. But sleep would be hard to come by without knowing where Max had got to. Suicide never once crossed my mind, but the thought of being alone in our dying building, even for a night, made me nervous.

The Strange Stars hung like sentinels directly overhead as I ran down the stairs and across the bridge connecting our building to its neighbour. If my foster and friend weren’t up talking, then maybe Davo would know where Max had got to.

The workshop was still and silent; no one broke the peace there, either by talking or playing with the radio, but I felt the need to investigate anyway. I tiptoed through the chamber, wary of any loose scraps of old technology that might have tripped me or made a noise, until I caught sight of Davo’s hammock.

Two people lay entwined there, coiled together with an intimacy I had never experienced. Enough light spilled through the window for me to identify Davo’s mop of hair and the silhouette of Jerrie’s face. I crept closer, and my heart pounded when I realised that a part of their juxtaposed anatomy I had not identified was in fact her naked breast, frozen by starlight.

Embarrassed and feeling guilty, I considered throwing a rug over them, if only to protect them from the chill air. Barely had I decided not to when a noise from behind me disturbed the silent tableau.

A callused hand grabbed me across the mouth and, before I could turn, dragged me kicking and wriggling into the stairwell.

“Be quiet!” hissed a voice into my ear. My frightened eyes rolled to catch a glimpse of my assailant, but he was shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

The man wrenched my head so I was forced to look back into Davo’s workshop.

I saw vague man-shapes moving to and fro through the shadows, like ghosts. I stopped struggling instantly.

There were five of them, large and unidentifiable. They seemed to be searching. One of them peered to study Davo and Jerrie, and I thought I heard a soft snigger, barely a worm of sound burrowing through the silence.

“No,” said one of the ghosts. “Don’t touch her.”

The one who had laughed backed away from the couple, and I felt relieved for both of them. Threat was implicit in the stealthy silence of the ghosts, and, even though I didn’t know what exactly had been avoided, I was grateful on Davo’s behalf for Jerrie’s presence. No one in Adelaide would allow harm to befall a woman while the sexes were split so unevenly.

“Here,” whispered another voice, and the ghosts moved to a side of the room I could not see. A moment later there came a tinkling noise as something large was moved, a grunt of effort, then a distant, startling splash.

Jerrie stirred, murmuring in her sleep, and instantly the ghosts retreated, vanishing into the night as though they had never been there at all.

I wanted to scream:
What’s going on?
But my captor held my mouth tightly closed until Jerrie returned to sleep and the night became still again. Only then did he relax his grip and allow me to see his face.

“It’s over,” Max whispered. “It’s over.”

I started to stammer a question, but he shushed me. He led me out of the workshop, across the void between buildings and back to our home. A faint butterfly-wing of aurora danced across the night sky, like an omen, as he explained what had happened.

“I was expecting something like this,” he said, his voice empty of emotion. “The last real challenge Kris Parker had was when we considered lighting the bonfires on Council Tower. I told you that the man who had suggested the plan committed suicide, but that, perhaps, is not the whole of the truth. Cameron wasn’t the sort to give up; he would have tried again, made other plans. Myself and a few others—we will always wonder whether he jumped from his garden, or whether he was thrown.”

I stared at him, shocked beyond words. Could such a thing really have happened?

“Maybe Jerrie’s presence made them think twice tonight,” he went on, “or I’m wrong about their motives. I don’t know. I’m just glad I didn’t have to fight them. There’s already been so much violence ...”

In the glistening starlight, he put an arm around my shoulders and held me to him.

“It’s over,” he said again, and I wondered if he was trying to reassure me—although there was little reassurance to be found in his tone—or if he was describing the future, as he saw it.

I remembered my prophecy that morning:

Someone, or something, will die today ...

I wondered if that thing might have been hope.

“We might as well get some sleep,” Letting me go, he stared out to sea one last time. The aurora briefly flickered in his eyes, then died.

“I’ll stay up for a while,” I said, watching with despair as the impenetrable blackness of the stairwell swallowed him.

Is it really worth it?
I wondered.
Is life so precious that we should scrabble for it every day, breaking our fingernails in the dirt and our hearts with sheer futility? Is it worth fighting death with an inhuman, soul-destroying effort just to survive one more day, and another, and another ...