Tag - A Technothriller (49 page)

She wiped away another tear and laid the brush back onto the table in front of the mirror. A knock at the door to her room caused her to twist in the seat.

“It’s open,” she said, in a clear light voice.

The doorknob turned and a hand appeared, pushing the door open. Marty stuck her head in the crack around the door.

“You ready?” Then she smiled. “Oh you look gorgeous!” and walked into the room to stand in front of Sharon. “Up you get. Let me see.”

Sharon smiled and stood, smoothing the pale blue dress with her fingers. This was the first time she could ever remember having worn a dress. It was a simple dress, pale blue with two thin straps over her bare shoulders.

“Turn around,” Marty said, still smiling. The dress had no back, just the two straps that descended to the cloth that covered her hips and ended in a short skirt well above her knees. Her back was completely exposed except for the two straps. There wasn’t a blemish on it. Sharon turned to face Marty.

The material of the front of the dress was thin enough to see her skin, except at her breasts and hips where the cloth wasn’t transparent. A deep V was cut into the middle of the top ending below her navel, the two pieces held together by a gold chain at her neck.

“It’s time to get moving. We can’t be late,” said Marty, taking Sharon’s hand. Lifting it, she pulled her lightly towards the door. Sharon picked up her dark blue thick canvas shoulder bag from the table and slung it over her shoulder, following Marty out of the room.

They descended the spiral staircase from the second floor and, passing through the corridor, walked into the living room where Gabriel was sitting on the sofa. Though talking on his Devstick, he looked up at them as they came into the room. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and light white canvas trousers. He studied the two women for a moment, and smiled.

“Annika, I’ve got to go. Your news is great. I’m very happy for you, although I wonder about that old phrase – be careful what you wish for.” He paused, nodding. “Yes, I’ll talk to him, I’m sure he’ll accept. Take care and we’ll talk soon. OK? Yes, bye for now.”

He closed the Devstick and turned to them, still smiling.

“Why are you two armed?” He could tell from the way their bags were hanging off their shoulders that they were carrying more than cosmetics.

Sharon looked at Marty. Marty looked at Sharon.

Marty spoke.

“Gabriel, there are a lot of people out there who are pretty upset over losing everything they had, including their names. Family ceremony or not, neither of us is ever going to let harm come to anyone in this family if we can prevent it. Right Sharon?” Sharon nodded and turned to Gabriel.

“This is not an option and nor is it for debate.” She smiled sweetly at him.

Gabriel returned her smile and rose from the sofa.

“You both look gorgeous. Come on, let’s go.”

“Where’s Maloo?” Sharon asked.

“Oh he went on ahead. He’ll be there by now. He had quite a few things to do to get ready for the ceremony. He looked great though, dressed and painted in the tribal way. But come on, let’s get moving.”

Marty stopped him, moving with a hand on his arm and a slightly troubled expression on her face.

“What did Annika want?”

“Annika’s just been elected Secretary General of the United Nation. Mainly for her work in getting the identity crisis sorted out but also because she’s a dammed good politician. She’s asked me to help her by becoming her Chief Intelligence Officer.”

“And?”

Gabriel smiled at her and stroked her hair. “And I accepted, on the condition that I didn’t have to wear a uniform or nametag.”

***

Maloo sat in front of the shallow pit he had dug in the beach and carefully laid the dry conkerberry wood over the bottom of the pit, stacking it so it would light easily. Then it was time to light the fire. The eldest elder of the Waalpiri tribe, the tribe that had sheltered Gabriel on his run from Darwin as a boy, carried the dry grass that they had brought with them that morning. The grass had been twisted into hard chords resembling thick rope. Maloo took the chords and, lighting them pushed, them into the bottom of the pit. The dried wood caught quickly. Good, Maloo thought. It needed at least another forty-five minutes to burn to that state where it could smoke properly.

Kneeling in front of the fire, he sat back on his haunches and took in the sight on the beach in front of him. Starting from the steps of the deck of Mark and Mariko’s house, a path of large white stones had been laid to curve down to the edge of the sea. Maloo was about five meters from the shore and beyond the fire. Opposite him, were nine Tibetan monks, sitting cross-legged. A large white sail stretched above them, keeping them out of the direct sun.

One of the monks giggled, whispering something in the ear of the monk sitting next to him. Talking about us no doubt, Maloo thought. He glanced over his shoulders at the rest of the mob he’d brought up with him from the Tanami desert. Twenty of them had come: ten males and ten females. The elders and the young ‘uns. The young were off playing on the beach, in front of the cool breeze provided by the huge Sea Breeze air-conditioning unit placed there that morning by Abdul.

To his right another sail stretched out across the white sand reaching to the deck of the house. Forty white chairs were laid out, evenly spaced, with a gap in between them for the white stones that ran down to the beach. The fire burned in earnest now.

The path through the jungle flittered with shafts of light from the sun, highlighting the lush green foliage with tints of lime. They walked single file. The noise of the party filtering back as snatches of laughter and the murmuring of voices. Gabriel in front, Marty behind and Sharon bringing up the rear. Gabriel emerged from the jungle onto the lawn in front of the house.

A table covered in white cloth was next to a hoop wreathed in white flowers. On it was a book open to a blank page. Siti stood up from her seat behind the table, recognizing Gabriel from the image she’d seen on the shelf in Mark’s house. Gabriel smiled at her and stopped at the table.

“Hi. My name is Siti.”

Gabriel recognized the name as the realtor who had helped Mark and Mariko find the house. “Yes, Mark talks of you often. I think it’s great that they have friends such as you.”

Siti smiled a huge smile.

“Would you please sign the guestbook?” she said, before turning the guest book around and lifting it gently. Her thumbs were a golden brown on the startling white of the paper.

Gabriel wrote, ‘The happiest day of my life – GAZ’, and turned and gave the pen to Marty.

Marty wrote underneath Gabriel’s words, ‘Me 2 – MSZ’. She turned and gave the pen to Sharon, as she stepped up to the table. She thought for a long while, the pen hovering above the paper. Its gold nib was perfectly still as she thought. Gabriel, Marty and Siti waited, all eyes on the pen in Sharon’s hand. Finally she smiled and wrote underneath Marty’s words.

‘Me 3 – Sharon’.

They passed under the hoop, each accepting and slipping over their wrist a bracelet made with jasmine and tied with a red rose. The lawn was crowded with people standing and chatting in the soft early evening light. The sun hung low now. A glance at his Devstick confirmed that it was nearly five. Avoiding the table laid out with alkys and non-alky drinks, in deference to the Tibetan monks who he had asked to be here today, Gabriel slid through the people, with Marty and Sharon in tow.

He walked around the house until they reached the edge of the beach and the jungle. The site on the beach brought a smile to his eyes. He kicked off his canvas shoes and turned to Marty and Sharon.

“You should go and see Mariko. She’s upstairs in the house. I have to take care of things down there.” And he nodded down at the beach. They nodded in unison and turned to the steps leading up to the deck of the house.

Walking around the back of the people in the chairs to the water’s edge, Gabriel angled back until he stopped short of the large carpet that the monks were sitting on, and knelt down. The hubbub of noise from the crowd hushed within a few murmurs to a silence. Gabriel bowed his head to the carpet in front of the monks.

A gong sounded. Its clear metal tone spread over the silence on the beach. Gabriel, his hands on his thighs, sitting with a straight back, looked over to where the white stones met the deck of the house. The gong sounded again, each minute representing a year.

Mark appeared on the deck by the top of the stairs. Gabriel knew it was him only by the black trousers and the stick that he still used to walk with. One step at a time, his brother came into view. Limping and using his stick but smiling. In his other hand he held a gold framed image on a stand clutched tightly to his breast.

The gong sounded twice more before Mark knelt down slightly behind Gabriel.

***

I knelt before the monks and placed my forehead on the ground. Bringing my hands together under the tip of my nose, I pushed my hands back through either side of my head then placed them on my thighs.

Gabriel shuffled forward on his knees. My damaged knee was beginning to really hurt so I slipped sideways, taking the weight off it, and slid my folded legs behind me. Gabriel placed the image of our parents in front of us. He had discovered it in an old archive in an aboriginal community center. An image of Philip and Mariah, his arm around her, smiling at the camera, a gum tree in the background. In the image, Mariah was clearly pregnant. With me. They looked young, happy and at peace.

The head monk handed Gabriel a lotus bud, a large yellow candle and a single stick of incense. A wooden bowl filled with water was placed in front of the image. Gabriel laid the lotus bud on the edge of the bowl. Using the taper of flame provided by the monk, he heated the wax on the bottom of the candle until it was soft. With the same taper, he lit the candle and stuck it so that it angled out over the water in the bowl. The hot wax dripped into the cool water.

Reaching over, one hand on the carpet, he lit the stick of incense. Gabriel sat up straight then lifted the incense between the palms of his hands until his hands were resting on his forehead, his eyes open, declining his head slightly in prayer. I did the same. The gong sounded again and the monks began to chant. My knee hurt again. I forced myself to ignore the pain and focus on the chanting. It had meant a lot to Gabriel to organize this and it meant a lot to me too.

Suddenly my thoughts were awash with the minds of the monks. I almost keeled over, but then Gabriel thoughts came strongly into my mind.

“We’ve come a long way my brother and we had to do it alone. Now we can cast our demons aside and look to the future. We remember her, we remember him, just feel now. Open your mind and feel them.”

Feelings, fleeting images, emotions felt and seen by Gabriel with Philip and Mariah began to enter my brain. I was overwhelmed. The chanting of the monks and gong occasionally reverberating across the beach, blended and focused my thoughts until I was in the well of Gabriel’s mind. My eyes were open but all I saw was the years that Gabriel had spent with Philip and the months with Mariah.

A clear piercing thought from Gabriel,
“My gift to you, my brother.”
An image of my mother smiling down at me came to my mind. The image was sharp and came with the emotion of the love she felt.

I thought,
“Thank you my brother, this is a wonderful gift.”

I realized that the gong hadn’t sounded for a while and the monks had stopped chanting. Thirty-five minutes had passed. A gong for each year since my parents had been taken from us. The head monk stood and another monk picked up the wooden bowl with the water and the wax from candle in it. We waied as he dipped a brush made from small twigs into the bowl and, saying a prayer, flicked the water over us three times. He moved away and walked over to the aborigines, blessing them in a similar fashion. Once he had covered the entire crowd of people, he returned to the carpet and sat down again.

Smoke wafted around me. Gabriel shuffled off the carpet, and waiing at the monks once more stood up. I did the same. We stood together and faced the path of white stones.

***

Mariko, Marty and Sharon stood just inside the clearfilm doors which were open to the deck. They looked out to the sea across the white sails partially covering the beach in front of them. Mariko walked forward across the deck with Marty on her left and Sharon on her right. The baby in her arms was dressed in a long, flowing white gown.

As Mariko went down the steps to the beach, Sharon held her arm just above her elbow. She turned and smiled at Sharon. “You’re probably wondering why I asked you to get the gown for the naming ceremony,” and she cocked an eyebrow.

Sharon flicked her eyebrows up in the affirmative, but didn’t say anything. Her eyes scanned the seated crowd, head calmly turning left and right. She hadn’t been in any crowds since she’d been blinded and it made her a little nervous.

“Well, the reason is that it’s tradition that the child’s godmother buys the gown.” Mariko turned to face straight again, walking on the white flat stones to where Mark was standing. Sharon was shocked.

“Why me?” she asked as they walked.

“Because there’s only one other woman who’s maybe tougher, and perhaps smarter, in the entire world,” and nodding her head sideways at Marty. “And she’s pregnant with your other godchild. So you’re my best choice.”

Sharon looked at Marty around Mariko’s shoulder. Marty smiled at her and nodded and held out her hand which Sharon took in hers. Tears in her eyes, she understood that Mark and Mariko had given her what Sir Thomas had taken away. A family.

***

I walked around the fire until my back was to the ocean. Taking off my black jacket, I laid it on the sand next to me. Maloo and the elders began chanting in Waalpiri, their tribal language. Mariko walked up to Gabriel and held out our son. Gabriel took the boy and carefully unwrapped the gown until the baby was naked. He turned to Sharon and held out the child.