“If that happens I’ll move to Thailand,” he said brusquely.
“And what’ll I do?” she gasped.
“Come too, of course.”
“But what will I do?” Her package at the Research was worth ninety thousand dollars a year, plus a fabulous pension if she stayed in the public service until she was fifty-five. She would not get that in Thailand.
“You can discover your inner shopper,” he said, and laughed at his wit.
He was due at Sydney University to give a lecture on immuno-sterilization to vet-science students and was not interested in her news. He leaves everything to me, Sonja thought. John’s reliance on her used to be a thrill, but this morning she had felt strangely let down—especially when he was evasive about what he had bought for her in Bangkok. Animal, vegetable, or mineral? she’d asked, hoping the answer was “vegetable,” which would mean Thai silk. “Animal and mineral,” he said in a bored voice. “Women always want more from men than they can get,” he’d once remarked. Sonja felt he was accusing her of being demanding. It’s because I love him that I’m so concerned for his welfare, she told herself. While this turmoil was disturbing the surface of her mind, on another level she was steadily calculating her next move at the meeting. She lifted the dripping tea bag from her cup with care, dropped it onto a saucer beside other sopping bags—their strings made them look like drowned mice, she thought—and returned to the table.
“I explained myself very poorly, Mr. Chairman, and I now realize I must go back a step and say why, from the point of view of personnel, we must not agree to Pembridge,” she said.
She had their attention. “I’ve had two resignations already this week over the appalling Williams business. Morale among the women is, I can tell you, at a critical point. There has been a stream of females through my office in the past two days, all of them wanting to know their entitlements if they resign. I think I’ve persuaded most of them that our new security arrangements will safeguard them and that they should stay on, but I expect another half-dozen clerical and typing-pool resignations in the next few weeks. That will have a carryover effect on the morale of the scientific staff.”
A tight silence enclosed the table. If the scientific people began to leave, the Research was in real trouble.
“That’s half the background,” Sonja continued. “The other half is this: Diana Pembridge is obviously a political appointment by a minister who has never been supportive of this place. We all know, I think, my sister’s view of the Research. Well, if Hilary places her agente provocateuse on the Ethics Committee, what sort of signal will that send to an already demoralized staff?” She looked from face to face, her eyebrows raised in query.
“Not a bad point,” the chairman murmured. He eyed Finance, hoping for a bright suggestion, but Finance was stumped.
Sonja said, “May I propose, Mr. Chairman, that this board inform the department that in view of the state of uncertainty here, it declines for the moment to endorse an appointment that is likely to be controversial? We should point out that we don’t want compensation claims for mental anguish and the like, which could result from a further decline in morale.”
“We certainly don’t!” Finance exploded. “Did you see that postman in Melbourne who got half a million dollars compensation because he was worried he’d get the sack?” He snatched handfuls of his hair with stubby fingers. “Mad! Everything’s gone mad!” he cried. “We’ve turned into a nation of infants! Who’ll change my nappy? Waaaah!”
“Yes. Well,” the chairman said. “Other thoughts? Anyone?”
There were somber looks along the table. “Right,” he said. “I think that settles it. Thank you, Sonja, for your contribution. I must say that none of us—well, that is, I, anyway, have not yet come to terms with all the difficulties we face since the dreadful event on the weekend. I suppose it will be weeks or months before we know its full effect, and in the meantime …”
Sonja had on her small, serious face and nodded rhythmically as the chairman spoke. She was mentally constructing a triumphant report to John about how she had turned the meeting around.
The words “… so I’ll hand over to Joe to tell us what happened” startled her.
“Yes,” Miller said. “It happened around 3:00 A.M., we estimate, and I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again. This place is easily penetrated. The reason we’ve had no trouble until now is that we’ve had no trouble until now. It’s one of those flukey things: a house can go for decades without being burgled, but once it’s been knocked off, it’ll be knocked off again. That’s now the situation here, I’m afraid.”
“What situation?” Sonja whispered.
“The labs were burgled last night,” Housing whispered back.
“What!”
“Someone got in through the northwest gate, went past the airfield and your place, and burgled the labs. Nothing much taken, but …”
“I’m replacing the lock on the gate,” Joe continued. “But a pair of bolt cutters can bugger it again.”
“My God,” Sonja said. “You mean our millions of dollars’ worth of equipment is up for grabs for anyone with bolt cutters?”
Joe nodded. “This place is like the whole country: we rely on distance for security. Since Sunday night, I’ve had my staff concentrated around the residential area. I don’t have the manpower to patrol the labs as well.” He looked at Sonja. “I’ve had extra people at your place for the past three nights—don’t know if you noticed them.”
“I didn’t. Thank you, Joe.” She sounded contrite.
When the meeting broke for afternoon tea, Sonja went to the women’s room and leaned against the door while she rummaged in her handbag for her private telephone book. It had burrowed down to the bottom, beneath some hard candies, sunscreen, a Teach Yourself Spanish tape, and the waterproof bag containing the little Mediterranean sponges that she used as tampons. She found Kerry Larnach’s office number and dialed him from a phone in the corridor outside the loo. “Can you come by?” she asked. They had a code. “After dark is okay.” “Dark” meant: It’s about the chimpanzees.
Larnach was in his office in High Street, Kalunga, staring at Kalair’s balance sheet on his computer screen. He could pay wages for five more weeks. After that he would default on the next round of interest on the three million he owed for aircraft. Maybe the bailiffs would move in even before then. There was nothing from the air fleet he would be able to hang on to, not even the crop dusters. They would repossess his flat up at the Gold Coast. Probably even his house. It was almost funny that the one surefire area of profit these past few years had been his flights for Parker. This chimp delivery, however, would have to be his last, because soon every move Kalair made would be scrutinized by accountants.
“I’ll be there before seven,” he said. He needed to do a bit of work in his toolshed before going to the Research.
At the breeding farm in Saraburi, Michael Romanus needed to do a bit of work in his own toolshed, the darkroom he had set up inside the suite Otto provided for him at the Siam Enterprises guesthouse. He had fastened black cloth over the second lavatory’s window and door and turned the vanity table into a bench to hold chemicals; in there he was able to process the black-and-white photographs he took of the farm’s primates. These pictures—portraits, really—were kept on file to help the company identify animals in case of insurance claims from customers. Romanus was required to leave his negatives with Grossmann’s personal assistant and to make three prints of each photograph: one for the customer and two for the company. Each evening, in the darkroom, he made a fourth print, for himself.
Chapter Eight
Diana had filled her van with petrol on Tuesday, and the next morning she had not given fuel for her trip to Canberra another thought. On the outskirts of the city, starting for home, she glanced at the gauge and saw the needle already pointing to empty. The closest garage was five kilometers away, but the engine stopped before she reached it, and she had to walk.
On the road that afternoon she had been bird-watching. She had already seen flocks of crimson rosellas, ganggangs, galahs, and sulphur-crested cockatoos, both on the wing and feeding in paddocks beside the road. In a farmhouse garden, about twenty king parrots swung, beak over feet, from branch to branch in a berry tree, agile as pirates climbing rigging. Farther west she saw apostlebirds, a pair of yellow-tailed black cockatoos, and, on the edge of a pine plantation, white-wing choughs, whistling to each other with mellow, mournful voices. Diamond firetails bounced along the roadside border before swooping away in undulating flight, their scarlet rumps flashing. The best bird of the day, however, had been a brilliant blue forest kingfisher that should have left already on the migration north. He gave a dry, hard, high-pitched rattle, then flew fast and straight, a sapphire arrow.
With her hand loose on the wheel and her eye roaming the landscape, she tried to keep her mind off the letter she had received that morning, and the disappearance of her petrol, focusing instead on getting inside the animal houses, but her attention kept returning to the letter. She remembered that the postal clerk had said, “By the way, there’s a newsletter for you, and a parcel from London.” Yet there had been no newsletter in her mailbox that morning. She decided to check once more when she reached Kalunga.
After a while she began thinking of the eagle, and the battle ahead. To hold her on my forearm, when she weighs seven kilos, not to flinch, to keep as still as rock … I’ll have to start lifting weights, Diana realized. And I’ll need the cantilever. Raoul had made it for her. He had welded the rods, cut the belt for her waist, shaped the support for her arm. The contraption was to help her while she trained a young wedgetail with gold still in its plumage, captive-reared and needing months of daily exercise before he could hunt well enough to live in the wild. The morning she had released him, Raoul took photographs, for which a German magazine had paid twenty-five thousand dollars. I should have demanded a percentage, she thought bitterly.
The afternoon was warm and still, with a special clarity, a glassiness, that filled the air with a vibrating, invisible presence. There was so little breeze, the landscape seemed immobile; trees and paddocks appeared to be bright paintings of themselves. Only when she looked steadily could she see that every leaf of the thousands on each tree made tiny glittering movements; the whole countryside was dancing in minute steps. That wasn’t dog hair on Carolyn’s T-shirt, she told herself again. Her mind drifted back to the landscape. At this time of year, her parents had always looked anxiously for the first rains to bring up the barley grass, because it was good sheep feed and broke the summer dry. But March was also the month for saffron thistles, Paterson’s curse, and wild oats. This was a drought year. Scrawny stock wandered across dun-colored paddocks, searching for green pick, and the kurrajong trees were flat underneath, where they had been eaten by sheep.
Toward dusk, she saw the silver flash of eyes not far from the highway and slowed down. When she’d found a place to stop, she took her small rifle, the .22, ran to the fence, and climbed through the wire. In three shots she got two rabbits. The eagle would need plenty of meat when she brought it home from Jason’s in a day or so. Meanwhile, the owl, the frogmouth, and the peregrine would not refuse fresh coney.
Back at the van, she skinned and gutted the soft, hot corpses, then rinsed her hands with water from the thermos and tossed the guts into the grass. Ravens were ramming their beaks into them before she drove away.
It was growing dark by the time she entered the broad wheat country, and night had fallen long before she reached the outskirts of town. She drove slowly along High Street, hoping to see a light inside the police station, but it was in darkness. At the post office, she stopped and went to her box. There was something else in there, after all: the Primate Rescue Organization newsletter. How did I miss that this morning? she wondered. As she drove down Fig Tree Gully Road toward her house, she peered forward, wanting lights to be on inside, meaning Grace was still there. They could sit in the kitchen over a pot of tea and exchange the news of the day. But the house was empty.
Sonja had left the directors’ meeting at four forty-five, changed into Reeboks, and mounted her bicycle. It had a basket on the back for her files, her handbag, and whatever else she needed to carry home. She pedaled at a leisurely rate, taking a few minutes to ride around the lanes of the laboratory complex to see what damage had been done in last night’s burglary. One door showed the ghost of a stolen biohazard sign, and nearby there was a broken window. A box of autoclave bags had been reported missing, and a couple of vending machines inside had been robbed.
When she reached her house, Sonja leaned the bicycle against a pylon and went to the clothesline. All her washing, including a terry-cloth robe, was stiff dry, and it was with a sense of virtue that she lugged the laundry basket upstairs. She enjoyed the many small environmentally aware practices she observed each day—such as hanging out the clothes instead of flinging them into a dryer, as they did up at the condos. That morning, before leaving home, she had turned down the thermostat on the hot-water system and sorted the organic from the inorganic garbage. “You don’t drink. You don’t smoke. The trouble with you, Sonja, is you have no redeeming vices,” Hilary once said. Sonja was still thinking about that remark when she took the kitchen scraps to the compost and saw scattered across the wilted lettuce leaves and cucumber peelings traces of the sorrel soup she had given Lek, the Thai animal keeper, a week earlier. “That’s the last time,” Sonja said to herself. “You cook your own food in future, you ungrateful slut.”
It was too chilly to sit on the veranda now, but from the western window of her house Sonja could keep her eye on the airfield and be ready to jump into the Land Cruiser and drive across to meet Kerry. As she sat down, her backbone seemed to collapse, and she closed her eyes for a moment. The meeting had taken its toll. She often told John, “Don’t think it’s easy for me to get the things through meetings which I do—for you!” She felt as if she would never be able to get out of the chair again, although she now remembered she wanted to check on U-1 before the staff left at six. But she was too tired.
A Walkman lay on the wicker table beside her chair. She fiddled with the black sponges on the headset until they felt comfortable against her ears, then leaned back to be soothed by the Largo from Xerxes. After a few bars, the warm voice of the teacher announced: “Lesson Six. Vocabulary. A Spanish grocery store.” She ate a pear as she listened, her jaws stopping now and then as she practiced the tongue gymnastics of a Spanish noun. Come Christmas, she and John would be in Chile on their long-delayed honeymoon. The thought of traveling with him, having him all to herself, away from the lab and other people, acted on her nervous system like a balm. She imagined the miracles she would achieve with his grooming and personal hygiene when he could forget the tension and worry of work for six weeks. After ten minutes she stopped the tape.
A pair of daytime binoculars lay on a ledge inside the front door, handy in case something interesting happened on the lake. (John had identified a royal spoonbill with them recently.) She took them to the western window and, working from a spot on the side of Mount Kalunga, moved across the sky in what she knew to be the flight path of the air taxi. Sure enough, there it was, its wheels already down. Noise from incoming aircraft reached her house only a few seconds before they were to land, and even then some quirk of topography and prevailing winds muffled the sound.
She crossed the living room to the kitchen, where an internal television monitor was fitted between the work counter and the serving shelf above it. She flicked on the screen and saw that everything in the main lab looked normal. Although it was now nearly 6:00 P.M., the technicians were still working. One was writing in his lab book, another was seated at a microscope, and the third young man was manipulating an image on one of the computer screens. Sonja pressed the Animal Room switch, thinking, Lek will have left already—but when she looked into the Animal Room, there was Lek, lying on a pile of cushions beside
Lucy, watching CNN. The chimpanzee was meant to be in her sleeping cage by now. Instead, Lek was feeding her Cheezels out of a box, and a rabbit was on the loose. John had told Lek a hundred times that the rabbits were to stay in their cages, especially after they had been bled. This rabbit had been bled recently: Sonja could see the sutures in its ear. The rabbit was cantilevering itself slowly across the floor, following a trail of carrot rings laid out like sweets at a children’s treasure hunt. Lek had kicked off her shoes, and both she and the chimpanzee were playing with some mice with their feet while their hands and mouths were busy with the Cheezels. As Sonja watched, the girl stretched toward a mouse and, giving a quick nip of prehensile toes, picked it up, bent her knee with that extraordinary double-jointed suppleness they all seemed to have, and dropped the mouse in her lap. The chimp watched, then did it too. “A bloody circus!” Sonja said aloud.
When she pulled up in the Land Cruiser, Kerry was waiting, his hands on his hips. From thickset boy he had grown into a heavy-featured man, whose face broke easily into smiles but just as quickly became saturnine again. This shift from sunshine to storm gave a certain power to his personality, an undertow of aggression that unsettled people. “Been asleep?” he said with a grin.
“I was practicing my Spanish vocab.”
He grunted. “Well? What’s up?” Kerry hated to waste time. He had surrendered himself body and soul to drudgery to get the airline flying again after it went bust in ‘82 and killed his father with worry. Now, at the age of thirty-three, he was so hardened to work that he was unable to appreciate anything unrelated to it.
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