Walking to the Stars (17 page)

They didn't move, just stood still in the dusk, and then Talgerit slowly took his feather boots off his shoulders again and undid the cord that held them, then slid them on his feet.

"It's time,” he said. “Gonna be a Featherman now. You all follow me, and dog."

He walked slowly, with a limp, his feet looking absurd, as though he was wearing giant feather slippers, and he held aloft a ball of light.

Dog led them back to the road, Talgerit walking carefully behind him, and the night stayed still and silent. Samuel followed behind Talgerit, equally carefully walking in his footsteps, and Nick's hand was wound in the back of Samuel's jacket, solid and certain behind him.

A timelessness settled about Talgerit, like there had been back in the farmhouse kitchen, as though the turning of the earth didn't matter. The remembered trees seemed more substantial now, less like ghosts, but they still slipped through them easily and smoothly.

The lines on the old road shone in the light from the sphere, and the moon and stars seemed brighter, wheeling over them in the night sky.

Samuel should have been hungry, they hadn't eaten since the marron at the beginning of the day, but his stomach didn't rumble, even though they must have walked twenty kilometers that day already.

When Samuel looked up from the line on the road, shadowy shapes moved along with them, ghosts of people, ghosts of places, but the most surprising were the two cartoon-like characters they passed, looming garishly beside the road, remnants of the white occupation that the land remembered, too.

In the faint glow of the dawn, the dog sat down, then flopped on the road, nose on its paws, and went to sleep.

Talgerit took a deep breath in, and the stillness slipped away from him, and Samuel became aware of the wind rustling the trees and the cockatoos shouting, welcoming the sun.

"Rest,” Talgerit said, and they all sat down, right where they were on the road.

It was only when Samuel stretched out on the hard road that he realized how exhausted his body was. His legs were trembling with fatigue and he felt weak and light-headed, and it was obvious he wasn't the only one who felt like that. Talgerit was moaning weakly, and Nick slumped against him, taking shuddering breaths in.

They should move off the road, find some shelter and some water, but it all seemed too hard right then, and Samuel closed his eyes.

A fire crackling woke Samuel; the sun was shining fitfully on his face, and he could smell the most wonderful odor of roasting meat.

Talgerit was asleep still, curled up around his dog, while the dog was munching on a rabbit carcass.

That was what Samuel could smell, roast rabbit, and Nick was sitting beside the fire, skinned rabbits propped over the heat, and he looked up and smiled when he noticed Samuel moving.

"Want some water?” he asked, and he held out a metal container to Samuel.

"You caught rabbits?” Samuel asked, and his body shouted at him when he sat upright, his legs feeling wobbly and useless.

He drank water gratefully out of the container, gulping it down, and Nick said, “If Talgerit can, so can I."

Samuel didn't think he could make himself stand up, so he crawled over beside Nick and leaned against him. “How come you're not exhausted?” Samuel asked.

"A long time ago, I had my exhaustion perception centre surgically removed, when I first started working as a doctor,” Nick said, and it took Samuel a moment to work out he was teasing.

"Do you think you could take mine out, too?” Samuel asked weakly.

"I suspect you've burned yours out now,” Nick said. “And look, down there."

Samuel lifted his head and shaded his eyes, peering through the remembered trees. A road, wide and black, well-maintained, cut a swath through the trees, both real and long past.

"What is it?” Samuel asked. “Whose road is it?"

"That's Great Eastern Highway, according to both your map and my memory. I've watched a couple of huge trucks laden with drums go down it, with military escorts. Guess someone is mining something, somewhere north and east of here. Idiots."

"What could they be mining?” Samuel asked. “What is there left?"

"You name it, it's out there,” Nick said. “If it's in drums then it's probably not natural gas or oil, since they'd be moved in tankers. Presumably it's an ore."

Something made a faint rumble in the distance, felt rather than heard, and Samuel made himself get up on his feet and shade his eyes to watch the truck roll past, half a kilometer away at least, the back of the huge tracked stacked with drums, all bearing a triangular warning sign.

What he saw was not good. He sat down again and looked at Nick with horror. “That's yellowcake they're moving,” he said. “They're mining uranium."

Nick looked like he was going to throw up, and Samuel understood it completely. They were about to walk into what had previously been a city, before it had been decimated by nuclear weapons, and the military was escorting uranium ore right past the city.

"Where are they shipping it out of?” Samuel asked, reaching for the map that Nick had beside him.

They looked at the map, and Nick pointed at the coastline. “Fremantle is gone. Rockingham, too. There's a train line from here, in Midland, that runs down the coast to Bunbury, they could have fixed that up. I wonder if someone has rebuilt the port at Bunbury?"

"Would you know if they had?” Samuel asked, looking at where Nick was pointing. “Is the area populated?"

"It's not supposed to be,” Nick said. “It's supposed to be heavily contaminated still. Oh, fuck, it might not be. All anyone would have to do is just say it is, and no civilian will go near the area."

Samuel's stomach churned. “There're no satellites that cover the Southern Hemisphere, there's no way that anyone would know if the port was active. The World Government would have stopped them if it suspected uranium was being mined again. The worldwide moratorium on nuclear power is binding; breaking the moratorium will stop all trade in and out of Australia."

Talgerit lifted his head and said, “What, eh?"

"There's a road,” Nick said. “With trucks on it, just down the hill."

Talgerit stood up, stretching and yawning, and looked where Nick was pointing, then took the can of water Nick offered him.

"Clever, getting water in old cans,” Talgerit said, sitting down again.

"What do we do about the road?” Samuel asked. “Can we walk along it?"

"Dunno,” Talgerit said, and he poked one of the rabbits with a filthy finger. “Not cooked yet.” He flashed a grin at Nick. “You hunted?"

Nick nodded and said, “Threw rocks at rabbits, just like you. If I'd had a shotgun with me, I would have got a roo."

"Can't be a Featherman with a shotgun, Ed said so,” Talgerit said. “Magic doesn't work if you do, have to use Noongar tools."

"You used a knife,” Samuel said. “To get the marron."

Talgerit shrugged, and smiled disarmingly. “And if I hadn't, maybe it wouldn't have bitten me. Maybe it would have."

When Nick unwrapped the T-shirt strips from Talgerit's ankle, the skin was open and torn still, but it looked far better than Samuel thought it had any right to, as though it was healing already.

"I've been fixing it,” Talgerit said. “Soon won't need Dr. Nick at all, except to be a brother. Then I can stay at camp, and Dr. Nick can go hunting for me instead."

"You should get a wife,” Nick said, his sunburned cheeks crinkling with a smile. “Then you can send her hunting, and stay at camp and get fat."

Talgerit chortled at the idea while Nick wrapped his ankle back up again. “Gonna get fat anyway,” he said, grabbing the flat plane of his belly and shaking it. “Gonna have a Featherman belly, get all round and strong."

After they'd eaten the rabbits, they stood, reasonably sure that between the remembered trees and Talgerit's feather shoes they were not easy to see, and looked down the cutting to the road.

"Over there,” Nick said. “If we cut across the road, we should be able to work our way through what used to be small farms, and approach the city that way."

"Road's not good,” Talgerit said. “Even Feathermen get squashed by trucks."

"They're hardly quiet,” Samuel said, sliding his fingers into Nick's hand, and Nick squeezed his grubby hand. “We can hear them coming."

"Guns are quiet,” Talgerit said. “Until they're loud. We can go across at night."

"I hate to tell you this, Talgerit,” Nick said, “but the guns can see in the dark. Night won't be any safer."

"Is there anything magical you can do?” Samuel asked. “To distract them?"

Talgerit was quiet for a while, long enough that another military vehicle rumbled past on the road below them.

"What about a boyee?” Nick asked. “That'd make trouble for them, stop the trucks and APCs."

"That's a fuel store, isn't it?” Samuel asked, pointing further down the slope. “Boyee in there would make a big mess, and they couldn't possibly suspect that there'd be people moving around."

The yard held distinctive cylinders of liquefied petroleum gas, surrounded by a high fence, with machine gun turrets on the fencing. It looked like the intention was to stop people getting in and taking the cylinders out.

"Is it protected magically at all, Talgerit?” Nick asked. “Can you tell?"

"No Noongar magic there,” Talgerit said. “Might be whiteman magic, but boyees don't care."

"What's whiteman magic?” Samuel asked, and he sounded intrigued.

Talgerit thrashed his arms and legs around, stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes, presumably miming the effects of the whiteman magic, and Nick said, “Electric fences, right?"

"Too right,” Talgerit said, rearranging his limbs back to normal. “Never piss on them, ever. Dog knows that too, eh?"

His dog panted and flopped down at Talgerit's feet.

The boyee took time, since Talgerit had to either tame or persuade one of the wild ones to help him, or create one from an ordinary boulder, and Nick could understand Talgerit's reluctance to try and catch something that wanted to catch him, so they waited while Talgerit made a new one.

"Not making one,” he tried to explain. “Just waking one up."

They sat, over the brow of the hill and out of sight of the road, hemmed in by remembered trees, and Talgerit squatted on top of a granite boulder, humming to himself quietly and drumming his hands on the huge rock.

Dusk fell, settling quietly over the valley, and still Talgerit hummed. It wasn't until the night was dark that he stood up, on the boulder, and stretched, then leapt off the rock onto the dirt beside Nick and Samuel.

He led them up the hill again, so they were looking down on the fuel store, and the whole way Nick felt like something was following him, but whenever he glanced over his shoulder, he could see nothing but darkness behind them.

Talgerit squatted down, and when Nick sat beside him and asked, “How long?"

Talgerit's teeth were white in the darkness. “Dunno,” he said. “Not easy to get a rock to hurry."

They sat there, and Nick tracked the stars moving overhead through half the sky, then a siren sounded somewhere below, and a plume of flame shot up into the sky.

A huge bang echoed, and the night lit up briefly as a ball of fire rose up into the sky. Talgerit took off down the side of the cutting, his dog at his heels. Nick hauled Samuel to his feet, and they all dashed across the road as a truck coming the other way squealed to a halt beside the fuel depot.

They kept running, scrambling through the bush, up and over the hill on the other side of the road, down into an area that had previously been hobby farms and market gardens.

Nick had marked a road on Samuel's map, and they had to blunder around in the dark for while, climbing over fibro fences, and under barbed wire strands, before finding it.

In the darkness the desolation didn't seem too bad, but as they walked toward the city, through what had been an affluent area, and the sun lightened the sky behind them, the appalling scale of what had happened became obvious.

The houses were flattened, car hulks strewn around, across the road so they had to climb over or go around them.

The air was silent, with no dawn shrieking from cockatoos and parrots, just the three humans and the dog, making their way slowly toward the edge of a ruined city, beneath an overcast sky.

When the sun was up fully, a brighter patch of cloud amongst the grey, Nick said, “We should take shelter, get out of sight."

"Why?” Talgerit asked. “No one comes here, and whiteman don't have planes to look down on us, not like they used to."

"Samuel?” Nick asked. “Do you want to keep walking, or rest for the day?"

Samuel looked around him, and up at the hills rising on either side of them, at the bush encroaching once again on the gardens and houses, and said, “I'd rather walk through here during the day than at night, but there might be someone in the hills, watching us."

"Guns can see at night,” Talgerit said. “Dr. Nick said so before."

It had begun to rain again, falling steadily and Nick wiped the rain out his eyes. At least they might all smell better now, if it rained heavily, though the worst culprit was undoubtedly Talgerit's feather shoes.

"Then we walk now,” Nick said.

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They made their way through the abandoned streets slowly, not moving any quicker than they had through the remembered forest. There had been no attempt made to clear the streets after whatever had happened to cause the destruction, and power poles were down too, leaving cabling lying haphazardly over the debris. Nick was reassured by the knowledge the city had been without power for twenty-five years, so at least they weren't at risk of electrocution.

Food was there to be found, when they scrounged around the overgrown fields, renegade tomatoes that had been self-seeding for years, grape vines hung with bitter grapes, apple trees, twisted and gnarled from not being pruned, but still fruiting.

It was a relief to eat something other than meat, and even the dog wolfed down the maggoty tomatoes they found.