The Worm King (19 page)

‘Should burn for two, maybe two and a half
hours.’ A delicate eddy of smoke wafted across in front of the lantern. Her
feet and hands twitched uncontrollably. ‘Fortunately, the hotels humidor has been
deemed an essential service.

‘Bob! For goodness sake! Can you at least
wait ’til I’ve left the room?’

.
THE

WORM

KING

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Devil

J
erry parked the bus in an empty shed adjoining a fruit and vege
wholesaler on the outskirts of Tamworth. Before leaving Dubbo he’d removed a
seat opposite the back door and in the space stored an ancient Kawasaki bike he
owned, which his mate Ken rode into town two hours ago. Ken volunteered because
he was the only one apart from Jerry who knew how to ride a motorbike. No point
risking the bus if Tamworth border security turned out to be anything like
Dubbo. David was wounded and depressed: a pellet or sliver of glass must’ve
nicked his scalp and it’d bled all over the place but appeared to have done no
real damage. Āmiria had seen worse injuries on the netball court. Shortly
after Ken left, rain began pattering down then within a minute it’d turned into
a downpour, deafening on the flat tin roof. Zelda gazed up and said it’s lucky Ken
was wearing leathers.

‘Whose turn is it?’ called the Hat.

Lord Brown sat two rows behind Jerry, near
the front of the bus. He stood, and stepped into the aisle facing towards the
rear, a little bent over and eyes all narrowed. ‘The Devil was born in a blacksmith’s
shop in a sleazy backstreet of Babylon, in Iraq, in the year 539BC.’ His gravelly
resonance cut straight through the rain. ‘Invading Iranian priests came up with
the initial form, then a sect of angry breakaway Jews modified Satan, carrying the
demon back to Israel, and a few centuries later Christians refined him once
more, this time into a brutal tool of political terror.’

The Hat put up a hand. ‘Can you explain—?’

‘Yes, John?’

‘Can you please explain how on earth that
falls into the “happy story” category?’

They were playing
Happy Stories
,
going around the group to see who could tell the “cheeriest yarn”. The Hat had
already been cutoff midway through his, about a traffic accident, which seemed
to go from bad to worse as it unfolded, with more and more being swept into the
carnage. David had been horrified. Even now, you could see he was on the verge
of crying again. A lantern hooked on the edge of the seat cast a sickly glow
across his pasty face; the rain eased a touch as the worst of the shower passed
over.

Zelda patted his knee. ‘You alright Davey?’ She
turned to the Hat sitting across the aisle. ‘That would’ve been your one, about
the school bus, which I must say given we’re actually sitting
on
a school
bus, was in very poor taste.’

‘I don’t know why? It was all geared up for
a happy ending, if you had’ve let me finish.’

‘How?’ exclaimed David, aghast. ‘How could
it possibly?’

‘Right at the end, a butterfly comes along
and lands on the big heap of smoking bus wreckage. One of those monarch-type
things. Then, another butterfly comes along, and they have a root. How happy’s
that?!’

Āmiria laughed but no one else did and
when she stopped her stomach gurgled because she hadn’t eaten for ages. Luckily,
only the dog sat near enough to hear it. She put her arm around Peanuts and
pulled him close. He’d stopped shaking now but still seemed to’ve lost a lot of
fur recently. Her Uncle Monty would know how to fix that, if he were here. Or
her dad: their pig dogs were legends around Ngaruawahia.

A dull thud came from the roof followed by a
distinct sploshing. Peanuts tensed and growled. It’d happened several times since
they’d been here, something like a bucket filling with water and tipping then
snapping back into place with a metallic
ting
as it emptied. Why a
bucket would be up there like that, she had no idea.

‘Is that him?’ said Jerry, looking around.

Zelda straightened and frowned. ‘No. It’s
still raining. He’ll probably wait till it stops.’

Another squall rolled over and the hammering
on the roof intensified for a minute, then died back.

‘So how does the Devil one have a happy
ending?’ Āmiria asked.

Lord Brown took a pace forward, standing
directly over David who squirmed uncomfortably and stared out the window past
Zelda, although there was nothing to see except the black walls of the shed. ‘To
answer that, you have to know where the man Satan came from, for he was part-man
once, when this demon was born smack in the middle of the Axial Age.’ He raised
his hands, touching the roof lightly and staring up. The rain petered for a
second or two, although she might’ve imagined it or he just got lucky with a break
in the weather, then he bent forward and gripped the edge of her seat and the
one in front of David. ‘In 500BC the Axial Age was in full-stride. It’s a
period not greatly spoken of these days, but verily, it was a tremendously
important burst of creativity and invention; as brief as a snowflake really, but
during that short span of only four hundred years, all the worlds chiefly
religions came into being. You’d think that suddenly, for some reason, everyone
became scared of . . . ghosts.’ He held David’s gaze.

‘Tell us, Lord,’ sang the Hat.

‘When was it again?’ asked Āmiria,
curious.

‘The Axial Age went from 750BC to 350BC. In
this short four hundred year stretch, Confucius was born in China, and Buddha
in India. Both big names in their day. In Palestine they had the prophets
Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah. And in Greece you had Homer, Plato and Archimedes.
Pythagoras and Socrates too.’

David was bewildered, his brow puckered. ‘And
you think one of them . . . was Satan or something?’

‘In a way, and that’s the happy part. The
Iranians invented him. Or the Persians, as they were called back then. Their
prophet, a bloke by the name of Zarathustra, he’s the one that come up with the
original Satan plan. He developed Zoroastrianism, which itself was a rehash of
the Vedic mysticism the Aryans of the Russian steppes put together a hundred
years earlier. Zarathustra, who grew up in northern Iran on a horse ranch not far
from the Russian steppes, he rebuilt this mishmash of Aryan magic into his own religion,
which they ended up calling Zoroastrianism.’

‘Is that where Zorro came from?’ she asked. ‘You
know, with the mask and that?’

‘Yes . . . that’s one
theory, certainly. But the Zoroastrianism I’m talking about is a separate
offshoot from Zorro the Mexican. Zoroastrianism was the main religion in the
Middle East for more than a thousand years, before it morphed into Islam when
Mohammad turned up in 650AD, which was relatively late in the piece for a new
religion, to be honest. Although Islam wasn’t really new anyway, it was just a
slight reworking of the old Zoroastrianism rulebooks.

‘What happened was, in 600BC, the
Zoroastrians invented the idea of “dualism.” It roughly meant the world is all
about a giant struggle between an ultimate good, and an ultimate evil. Dualism means
everything comes down to one good entity, versus one bad entity. Up until then all
the tribes and civilizations scattered about the place had a much bigger mix-up
of gods and demons. The Egyptians, of course, had stacks of them.

‘But this duality theory had a nasty side effect
they hadn’t accounted for. If you belong to any religion that has some human
“prophet” spreading the word—and that’s just about every religion you can name—then
duality theory requires there’s also got to be some human “baddie” working in
the other direction too. Duality was like a virus: if your particular religion
picked it up, not many steps down the road you’ll end up creating your own
personal, living breathing Satan.

‘Don’t get me wrong, for the Iranians
dualism was obviously terrific, and as a civilization they made enormous
advances. In 530BC, Cyrus II of Iran virtually single-handedly invented
Government bureaucracy. As well as the entire postal system as we know it today,
so full credit and all that.

‘But the big crunch point was in 539BC, when
a bunch of Judean tribes were freed from Babylon, which is in Iraq, by invading
Iranians. The Jews had been held captive in Babylon for fifty-odd years after
the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzer destroyed Jerusalem in 586BC and carried the
Jews into slavery, largely because they kept reneging on tax obligations, so he
certainly had some justification, of sorts. When the Persian King Cyrus overran
Babylon in 539BC, he told the errant Jews they could all go home if they wanted,
and many naturally did, and more than a few took some free Iranian dualism with
them. When this dualism got mixed up with your bog-standard Jewish monotheism,
which is a belief there’s only one true religion, and one God,
you’ve
got it: you’ve cranked up your own fully-blown, live devil-type being.’

Zelda frowned. ‘My mother’s Jewish. I can’t
remember her saying any of that. Even when I was
in
Israel, nobody
mentioned anything like that. My folks took us over when we were little.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’ Lord Brown inquired pleasantly.

‘Well, not really. It was the first time my
sister and I’d been outside Australia, and we’d never seen so many people
walking around with guns; it was stinking hot, and there were just old stone
buildings to look at. The food wasn’t flash either. For a pair of nine-year-olds
from Toowoomba, a bit of that goes a long way, I’ll tell you.’

‘Indeed. Of course the good news from all
this, is that the devil is an invention. A myth. A pure fabrication of politicians.
So if the worst thing you can possibly imagine is discovered to be completely make-believe,
isn’t that a fantastically happy ending?’

‘I don’t know,’ wailed David, clutching his
hands in his lap and shrinking into the seat. ‘Sorry, but I just don’t!  . . . Did
the Iranians have anything to do with that bomb on the school bus?’

The rain came and went over the next couple
of hours, most of the time sounding stronger than it actually was on the tin
roof. Zelda had turned off the lantern. There wasn’t any point getting off the
bus: the bare concrete floor of the shed was drenched because the front doors
didn’t close properly, and the attached coffee room had two broken windows so was
even wetter.

The deluge finally ground to a halt, the
silence surprisingly soothing and no one spoke for ages. The spell broke at the
sound of the Kawasaki’s soft
put-put-put
in the distance, gradually growing
until Āmiria realized it was definitely Ken. The others sighed in
recognition too, and the atmosphere on the bus improved palpably. Zelda relit
the lantern, unhooked it from the seat in front and got to her feet. ‘Now
that’s
a happy sound.’

The Hat disembarked first, then Zelda with
the lantern, followed by Āmiria and Jerry while Lord Brown and David waited
onboard. As soon as they opened the shed door and saw Ken standing by the bike,
removing his helmet, Āmiria could tell from his smile it must be good
news.

‘Yep, they think he’s there.’ He pushed the
bike down the right-hand side of the bus, which had slightly more room, then kicked
the stand down and removed the key, giving the seat a small wiggle to check all
stood secure. ‘Let’s get back on board.’ He rubbed his hands together with an
air of smug confidence, like he’d just completed a secret mission. ‘I had a
look down the list they had, but was kicking myself for not asking your surname
before I left.’

‘Ruarangi. It would’ve said Wiremu Ruarangi?
And the four men he works with are Tamati, Hemi, Rangi and . . . ’
She struggled to recall the name of the newest member of her Dad’s gang. An apprentice.
‘Geoff! That’s right! Tamati, Hemi, Rangi and Geoff.’

‘Doesn’t ring a bell. But they knew there
was a team of four or five Māori builders staying there who’d come from
Sydney, so I’d say it’s him alright. They wanted to come and fetch everyone,
but I said you were all hiding in a house down the road and were a bit scared,
so I’d get you. I thought it best not to tell them about the bus yet, just to
be on the safe side.’

‘Is it dangerous?’ She suddenly felt worried
that he might be in trouble.

‘No, no. Quite the opposite, it all seemed
very civilized. I’m sure he’s fine. I only went about three kilometers up the
highway—not even that—and just before you get to the town limits there’s a pile
of bricks across the road, and a minivan with a couple of fellers in it. A man
and his son. He’s a sergeant, and I was drinking tea out of a thermos with them
while we waited for the rain to stop. He said we could come and go as we please,
and the son did remember taking food to a bunch of Māoris staying in the
gym yesterday. And you were right about the other day girl: they thought the
sun come out for a minute then as well.’

The walk to the minivan took three-quarters
of an hour. Jerry and the Hat carried a rolled-up tarpaulin between them which
Jerry said they could all hold over themselves if it rained, but it never did. The
man and the boy at the roadblock appeared genuinely pleased to see new arrivals.
‘Welcome! Welcome!’

‘Are you a sergeant in the police?’ asked
the Hat, after being introduced. Sgt Kevin wore jeans and Āmiria hadn’t
thought him very official looking either.

‘No. Rotary. I’m a sergeant-at-arms for
Rotary. Me and Tim are helping direct any outsiders coming into town. I report
to the District Governor. Of Rotary, that is.’ He faced Ken. ‘That Kiwi builder
you asked about, well Tim and I were talking about it again, after you left,
and we’re ninety-nine percent certain he’s at the Banjo Patterson College
gymnasium, like we thought.’