Fergus reckoned his load was a round dozen youngsters, as well as Rifkah, the former to be placed as pairs in each of the six passenger seats, she to ride beside himself. If there were too many kids for one flight, he said he would make another. That’s the glib way he had put it. As Anthropologist as well as Aviator, he should know better. When he and Prindy reached the Aboriginal quarters and found Rifkah waiting for them alone, saying that no one wanted to come, he showed complete surprise. Rifkah looked at Prindy, who was giggling inordinately, and made him worse by asking him what was the matter? Fergus, thinking he knew the answer, replied for him, ‘We just saw something very funny . . . the Coot’s bum . . . ahaaaaeeeah!’ But while there was all this mirth coming out of Prindy’s mouth, his staring wide eyes belied it.
Fergus tried to get a crew himself, but failed utterly, even when he called those who only hung their heads and giggled, myalls and brumbies. A couple had already flown, he learnt, with Dr Fox. Why couldn’t they fly with him then? They could hardly tell him the truth, which was that they regarded the Flying Fox as a kind of dookyangana. Getting back into the car with Prindy and Rifkah, he remarked, ‘You can never understand ’em.’ Then he asked Prindy, ‘You’re not frightened, too, are you?’
The grey eyes, already fixed on the silver thing away over on the race track, did not turn to meet the questioner. The answer was given on indrawn breath, ‘Can’t be fright’.’ Fergus left it at that, not knowing enough about the manipulation of his own language by others who made use of it to know that the words could mean anything but what he would have taken literally. Rifkah, however, put an arm about the small shoulders, and surely responded to the tension in them, since she placed her cheek against the fair head.
Rifkah held Prindy while Fergus made an inspection of the outside of his aircraft, and while he himself looked blankly up into the blazing blue, void but for one small bright mass of cloud hanging over the Plateau. Then she shoved him along ahead of her when Fergus opened the door and dropped the steps. Fergus took him and led him up the sloping aisle, to set him in the front seat on the left, by a wide window looking out under the high wing. As he strapped him in, Prindy eyed him as he might a policeman putting on the neck-chain. Fergus then placed Rifkah in the right-hand seat of the cockpit, and settled into his own on the left, to begin at once to check his instruments.
Prindy stared ahead and upward, at the empty blue beyond the windshield. Had he looked out through his own window the would have seen the black and brindle mob, who had preferred to be called myalls and brumbies to voluntary venturing into what to them was a medium of the greatest menace, since the realm of spirits, coming running to see do it the one who had been bedevilled by a koornung. He did look out when the port engine began its animal-like squealing and growling in being started, but evidently only to see the propeller spin into a blur. He turned away at the starting of the starboard donk.
In moving off, Fergus ran along the fence now draped with figures. Prindy didn’t see them, now concentrated on that distant cloud as it swung into view ahead.
They went rolling away across the expanse of paddock, lurching over the little piles of horse-dung, the tiny attempts of termites to rebuild their constantly levelled cities. Horses, tails high, necks arched for the half-fun of it, were prancing away into a corner to which Fergus with his skilfulness of manoeuvring had headed them. Then as the further fence came close, the sky spun to Fergus’s swinging into wind. Prindy looked out the side now, to find the propeller vanished, the grass flattened, the dung and dust flying as before the breath of Tchamala. A jerk. One’s insides were left behind in the rush, as should be when one was becoming virtually disembodied. Grey eyes wide in concentration on the blue ahead, as if it were a hole in the sky into which the Old One was sucking them. Then suddenly the violence was smoothed out, the ear-shattering din becoming an harmonious drumming. There was the homestead, familiar scene: Big House, annexe, mangoes, garden, sheds, yards, cottages. Yet so unfamiliar; its denizens dwarfed to insect size, some waving, others bolting. The way the Old One must see it from on top, or the Pookarakka when he was moved to levitate. A turn of the homestead underneath, like a slowly spinning wheel. Then there ahead was the red wall of the Plateau and that cloud, seen from this height to have a purple belly.
In no time they were over the Turtle Hole, the little stockyard, the tumbled rocks, all so plain to see in miniature; and plain to see how Tchamala had made the Plateau by getting under it and heaving it up, then chucking those rocks over the side to clear a Ring Place, as the Pookarakka said he had, for initiating the first men into the secret rites he had stolen for them from the women whom only had Koonapippi instructed. Was that now a Shade of the Old One’s travelling with them, just ahead of them and below as they flew eastward round the bays of the escarpment: a dark flickering bat-winged thing, leaping through and over rocks and scrub, sometimes leaping up a red wall as if with translucent wings to blot out some piece of those glimpsed bright substantiations of occult beginnings that were not to be seen by the uninitiated. It must have been Tchamala, because the thing beat them to that eastern horn round which were the Snake Galleries, found now to be blacked out by shadow the Old One had flung over it — just as the Kudijingera Men fling bark over the sacred objects if there is intrusion.
Again, when they lifted up over the rim of the Plateau, the Shade followed, dodging round the scrubby broken edges of the great silver-grey expanses of smooth rock that looked like the backs of turtles burrowing in mud. Brush-tails darted out before the thing, to dash about madly on the rocks for fear then of the booming thing above. The ghostly follower was particularly in evidence when they came to a waste of yellow gravel that interested Fergus so much he dropped down as if to land on it, as he might have done without much damage in emergency, so sparcely grown was it with mere gorse and porcupine grass. But the black bat got right underneath them and with some angry heaving shouldered them off. Prindy covered his face. This would be the very Woolahloo where those first Koonapippi ceremonies took place, to which the Pookarakka had promised sometime to take his mekullikulli.
They rose to that hanging cloud, to find it nothing like the solid fat thing it looked at the distance, the coy cocoon of sleepy Waianga waiting for Wet Season, but the tenuous half-substance a gathering of spirits might be expected to be, which with old Tchamala’s Shade flitting about, was spun into twin rainbows by those invisible forces in the wings. That they were no more wanted in the cloud than the Old One was on those stormy occasions of the Wet, was evident in the way they were tossed about, dragged at by whispy wet grey hands, at last flung back out into the blazing blue.
Now there was all Terra Australis to see as they circled high; a red-grey land that vanished on all sides into smoky infinity. But at hand were familiar things, if ever so tiny. Knowles Creek like a green whip-snake crawling. The Beatrice like a black adder. Lily Lagoons homestead quite plain. A glimpse of something away to southward that might be Beatrice township. The billabongs little emerald green pats in the red-grey. The white of the limestone country, with a glint of water here and there like sparkling eyes looking up out of the cavernous earth.
Then sudden silence, so that the ears rang with the memory of that humming engine music. Fergus was gliding down. Soon they were whistling like a swooping eagle. Down over the escarpment, to send a crowd of white cockatoos flying like blown petals, to see a black cloud of waterfowl pour like smoke from the billabongs, to circle the Corella Bore and see the corellas scattering and the insect cattle bolting. Then away southward, with engines singing again, syncopating as now and then they came out of synchrony — Ah-oom, ah-oom, ah-oom, ah-oom — low over the yellow dust that could so quickly become a raging yellow serpent of water when it pleased the Great Snake to make it so. Coming to the Knowles, Fergus dropped down again amongst the trees by that big waterhole, only scaring a couple of white egrets this time, remarking to red-faced Rifkah as he climbed again, his split-lip showing in a grin, that the view
was not nearly so good as yesterday.
A turn over the Rainbow Pool, with the grey eyes intense in their staring search for what might be revealed of its secrets. Then along the yellow road for home. The white roofs and mangoes sliding to meet them, slipping under them, while the human ants and the equine insects ran hither and thither, and a wedge-tail eagle, glinting bronze in the Sun, hung in the blue ahead as if to challenge their progress. But they were going down, down, were down, with a tiny bump, and then a bumpity-bumping over the horse-dung again.
The rails of the race track were hung again with dark humanity as they drew up to it and stopped. Silence again. But no. Up in front there was a whining whisper, sounding like muted grief, as if this machine-thing were in fact a live thing and was whimpering in the disillusion of being bound to earth again. Fergus, coming to unbuckle Prindy, seeing the grey eyes staring, said, ‘Those are the gyros . . . running down.’ He added with a chuckle, as he had to pull Prindy up out of the seat: ‘Looks like yours are running down, too.’ Rifkah, shoving along, looking anxious over Prindy’s evident state of daze, asked what was the matter with him. ‘He’s all right,’ said Fergus, opening the door. ‘Still up top in the spirit, that’s all. Did you see how he took it all in? I was watching him in the rear-view mirror. Never saw anyone lap it up like him. Might make an airman of him.’
All eyes on the fence were fixed on the grey eyes that didn’t seem to see them, that didn’t seem to see anything, not even the utility towards which Rifkah was guiding him. Fergus, going round to the driving side door, jollied the crowd again for their cowardice, but now contrasting it with the courage of him he called their Little Mate. Again they only giggled. Fergus got in to find Prindy beside him, as when they had driven out, but now with head on Rifkah’s breast and enfolded in her arms — asleep. He stared, would have spoken; but she raised a finger for silence.
The mob leapt into the back, making it sag and sway when the car got going. Those near enough, peeped through the little window at the back of the fabric hood or round the sides. All dropped off at their quarters. Fergus pulled up at the car shed by the annexe. He was going to speak again, but this time was stopped by a murmur from the boy, who stirred, sat up, still with eyes shut, lips writhing now and throat convulsing. Forth came the sweet strangled sound, unintelligible at first, but soon plainly to be recognised as imitation of the sound of aero engines in concert, rising and falling to make melody: Ah-oom, ah-oom, ah-oom, ah-oom.
Fergus breathed, ‘Well, what d’you know!’
Prindy woke, blinked, looked from one to the other, then smiled, stretched, saying, ‘I been sleep little bits, eh?’ He moved to get out. Rifkah opened the door for him, and as he scrambled past her knees, kissed his cheek. He went running into the annexe.
Fergus leaned over as if for a kiss as well. But Rifkah got out. As Fergus joined her, there came the lilt of the flute from the annexe. She said, ‘He is meking song of ze flight.’
‘Strange kid.’
‘He is very vonderful child.’
‘What’s going to become of him?’
‘He vill decide zat. Come. It is time for smoke-o.’
Going with her, he asked, ‘What about a walk with you this evening?’
‘I alvays go wit’ Jeremy.’
‘Well, make it me tonight for a change.’
‘You can come along, too.’
‘No . . . I want you to myself.’
‘Vell . . . you cannot haf.’
He tried to grab her; but she leapt away, went sprinting to the Big House, in by the kitchen door. Biting his split lip he followed, to enter by the lounge.
It was Jeremy who asked Fergus to go along on the ritual walk that evening. Fergus went eagerly enough, despite those last words to Rifkah, and behaved so circumspectly that the conversation might have been quite serious, but for Jeremy’s constantly urging him back to the usual drollery. They began with talk of the Free Australia Movement, with which, evidently, Fergus was more than slightly involved. Whether or not he would have talked more of the involvement, he didn’t get the chance, because Jeremy interrupted to say that from much of what he had read in the Movement’s journal it seemed to him to be as lunatic as Hitler’s brain-storms. Fergus agreed. He told about the pair who really ran the show, the Chief as he called the virtual boss, a monied man with a deep sardonic streak, who he himself believed was backing the Movement only with the idea of playing some mad joke on the Nation — that is by presenting it with a sawdust führer — and the Sawdust one himself, the nominal Leader, discredited Scholar, Writer, ex-Commo, ex all sorts of things, including barefoot bush-boy — the Bloke, as Fergus called him.
Still, Fergus went on to argue that despite that lunatic quality, there was value in Free Australia, properly handled. In fact he declared that Australia’s future would depend upon its prospering. Establishment of Australia as truly a nation was now or never; and here was the means. He confessed then that he wrote for the magazine himself, and evidently would have talked about his writing, only that Jeremy steered him onto the subject of the Coot, about which he was sure to be droll. He certainly was droll, telling some very funny stories of the great man’s academic life, of his being kidded, by Fergus and others, into believing himself a ladies’ man. But again he got serious, saying, ‘Don’t underestimate the Coot, though. For all his lack of being able to see himself as others see him, deep down he’s shrewd . . . and very ambitious. He knows exactly the right people to cultivate at the right time. Everybody thinks he’s a bit of a joke, but knows at the same time he’s a jump ahead of ’em in things that matter. If the top job of administering Aboriginal affairs eventually becomes worth having, eventually he’ll have it. He’s running St Clair. But his interest at the moment’s really military. See how he is with the military boys? He believes war’s inevitable soon. If there is a war, he’ll leap into it as top brass, bet your boots. He won’t even be a common junior officer. Field rank the day of enlistment.’
‘Do you believe there’s going to be a war?’
‘If there is, Sir, it ain’t going to be mine.’
‘What about the Japs?’
‘They don’t want war with us. I know a lot of Japs well . . . top ones, too. Met a few down South . . . university, Free Australia which naturally has their official blessing . . . and up here, too. I belong to the Japanese Society of Port Palmeston . . . only non-Jap in it. I get on with ’em well. I like their manners. But they may be very useful, too. There’s a hint of working for them flying . . . for the pearlers now working this coast from the Jap Mandated Territory Islands . . . Carolines. Good money in it . . . and the East Indies to knock about in to spend it. I’m learning the lingo.’
‘Does General Esk know this?’
‘Sure. Doesn’t he know everything . . . through that super-sticky-beak of his, Maltravers?
‘How’s he take it . . . with his feelings about the Japs?’
‘Rather keen on it, in fact. Naturally thinks I’m on the gentlemen’s side, what, what!’
‘Are you on the side of the Japs?’
‘I’m only on my side, Sir. Anyway, I don’t mind obliging. He’s paying me extra for it. We’ll be contacting the outside Japs at the watering places during the survey . . . and he’s relying on me for the protocol . . . and any handy information on the side. Got to keep right with the Eskimo, as his boys call him. For the moment, anyway, he carries a lot of weight.’
‘How do you mean . . . for the moment?’
‘Well, the Coot, who as I’ve said’s always a jump ahead of everybody, reckons this Government can’t weather any sort of crisis, and things are certainly critical just now. A Labor Government will replace them. Then out goes Esk. Cootsey’s already sucking up to Labor leaders, while being a white-haired boy of the others. But I think he’s a bit out this time. My smoke signals tell me a new party’ll grow out of this Free Australia thing. People are sick of the common or garden party-line politicians. Hence my association with what, I adm
it, looks rather like a loony-bin at the moment.’
Jeremy said dryly, ‘Strikes me you’re all a jump ahead of yourselves even.’
Fergus laughed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
The dauntless Fabers was up at dawn next day and out with Malters to the race track, where Jeremy was already running. But Fabers was there not to run but to ride. He found Bay Rum Betsy already with saddle on and saddle fitted with a felt pad. As if used to gnomes or fairies anticipating his needs, he said nothing to anyone about the courtesy. Another gnome, Prindy, came to dance discreet attendance on him after breakfast. He let morning smoke-o pass in his zeal for practice, and thus came with something of a stiff-legged strut to lunch on the down cushion. Hearing over lunch that the others had decided to go riding to the billabongs that afternoon, he declared that he would go along with them. When gently Jeremy remarked that such a trip would be rather much for old Betsy after all her recent work, Fabers flushed, said haughtily, ‘Of course. I’ll ride Black Andy.’
Fabers did just that, being the man of iron will he was, and Black Andy being a very amiable animal. Andy must have suffered from such grossly bad handling, but showed it no more than to droop and sigh whenever the flopping lump on his back permitted pause for it. While the others probably would have been content with trotting or ambling to make things easy for Fabers, he would persist in kicking Andy into bursts of cantering. Fergus, riding behind with Rifkah, softly sang to her a song out of his childhood: Bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, bump, here comes the Galloping Major.
The excursion also turned out to be a riding lesson for Rifkah, who with persistent cajolery from Fergus and his expert handling of the situation and the fact that all horses seemed to like her, was induced to get off old Snowball onto Fergus’s mount Red Rory. Rory behaved like a perfect gentleman all the way, finished the trip with an easy gallop that left his lovely rider looking even lovelier with the joy of the accomplishment and earned the sly riding master a kiss that he would have made a meal of had the dainty dish not fought free.
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