by Mark Lingane
“Exactly that.”
“Anyway, let us turn to cheerier subjects.” Oliver reached over to his old leather case and flicked it open. Sebastian spotted a box with a protruding stick concealed under some cloth before Oliver snapped the lid shut. “My latest creation.”
Isabelle dished the food onto the plates. Oliver flourished a small box, a few inches tall, then removed the base and revealed a tiny figurine of a ballerina made from bent wire, bolts, and washers. It took pride of place in the center of the table as he extracted an equally minute key from his pocket. Theatrically, he waggled his eyebrows as he inserted the key into a small hole on the side of the base and twisted. The clicks punctuated the silence of expectation that filled the room.
They held their breath as he flicked a small switch underneath the clockwork dancer. The tiny dancer pirouetted as delicate music played a sad tune that brought a tear to Isabelle’s eye.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered as she held it in front of her face.
“You have it, please.”
“Oh, no. It’s too pretty for me.” She placed it on the tabletop and slid it back.
He noticed how Sebastian’s face fell in disappointment. “If not for yourself, how about as inspiration for young Sebby? We need some fresh minds at the Academy.” Her face switched instantly into a scowl.
Sebastian’s face broke into a huge grin. He gave his mother his best pleading face, which eventually had her sighing in resignation.
“Very well,” she said. “But don’t disassemble it and leave the parts scattered over the floor where bare feet can tread on small, sharp corners. And you’re not going to the Academy. Ever.”
The ritualistic screeching of the fruit bats flooded into the dwindling remains of the day. Isabelle ignited the wick in the large gas lantern, which bathed them in a soothing golden glow. Soon she made Sebastian prepare for bed.
“Are you considered one of those professions who can legally witness,” she glanced over at Sebastian, who was ignoring his bed-time instructions, “paperwork?”
“I’m not a scrivener, like the doctor, but my signature is considered binding by the local authorities.”
“Good. I don’t trust that doctor. I’ve heard too many bad rumors about him. Sebby. Bed. Now!”
Grudgingly Sebastian retired to his bedroom, accompanied by the low murmuring of voices and the scratching of a pen. Their voices receded until they were just echoes. The last thing he heard before he floated off to sleep was the front door clicking closed.
School finished for the year. Several days later, Sebastian was woken by heavy scrapes and thumps. Blearily he descended the stairs and was confronted by his mother’s traveling cases scattered around the room. She barely noticed him as she packed away the household items.
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Hmm? No. I’m … spring cleaning.”
“By putting away all the clothes and cutlery?”
“Yes. We have too much stuff. Too many things.” She stood and wiped her arm across her forehead. She was perspiring heavily, although the room was still cool.
“We need to travel light.”
“Travel?”
“Live. I mean live light. We don’t want to get too wound up with possessions.”
“Are you sure we’re not going somewhere?”
“Certainly.” She ran her hands over her head and hair. “Now, please, I need some space to think. Get breakfast.”
“Has Mr. Stephenson left town?”
“Uh, yes.”
“He didn’t say goodbye,” Sebastian felt disappointed, but it was nothing a big bowl of sugar with the occasional bran flake couldn’t fix.
Spreading sheets of paper over the kitchen table, and between mouthfuls, he unleashed his imagination and started to populate the paper with mythical beasts. Idly, he drew a great machine that floated in the air, firing large blunderbusses at the creatures below and defending his village.
“You should put your favorite things in a box, so I don’t accidentally pack them away,” his mother called out. Sweat rolled off her face, spotting the floorboards.
Distracted, he watched his mother with one eye. “Is anything wrong, Mom?”
“I-I,” she stuttered. “I don’t feel …” She rested her head on her forearms on the largest case. “What was I saying?”
Isabelle swayed, took a couple of deep breaths and steadied herself. She raised a hand and stared at it. It was shaking. Her body failed and she collapsed to the floor. She reached out for her son, trembling from the weakness draining her body.
“Help me,” she croaked before losing consciousness.
-3
IT HAD BEEN a fraught few days trying to get a message to the doctor, and when contact was finally established, he had been reluctant to leave his current patient. But as soon as Sebastian promised fifty dollars, he had hitched his medical cart and pushed his old mare to breaking point to get back to Talinga.
The doctor demanded him to fetch the closest relative. Sebastian only knew one, and now Ratty and the doctor discussed the “situation” upstairs in his mother’s bedroom. Sebastian sat on the steps by the street, unable to tolerate watching the doctor prod his mother. He could hear the muffled voices of the adults, but was so wound up with concern their words drifted over his head.
“I was pulled away from a very profitable client for this melodrama,” he moaned.
“More profitable than this lot?” Ratty indicated the unconscious Isabelle. The doctor hesitated. “Obviously not,” she sneered.
“Just some sick child. I say child, she was more like a jail sentence waiting to happen. Honestly, I was happy to see the back of the spoilt trollop. Violent and offensive.” He took a swig from a hip flask.
“I doubt she’ll survive the night,” the doctor slurred.
“The girl?”
“What? Oh, no. I meant her,” he said, indicating Isabelle. “The girl only has a few months to live, I think. I couldn’t be sure because of running back here. I can milk out that situation for a bit longer.”
His bulbous pink nose caught the dull glow of the gaslight before it radiated out of the window, spilling into the dark night. His breath reeked of gin.
“What about the boy?” Ratty said. She folded her thin arms and glared at the man.
“You’ll have to look after him.”
“Me?”
“You’re the nearest kin.”
“I ain’t got the space to look after his filthy bones.”
“I’m sure no one would mind if you moved in here. There’s the matter of the estate to manage until he comes of age.”
“But there are legal things. My dim brother made sure he had everything stitched up good and tight.”
“I am the scrivener for the region. I can arrange matters … with the right incentive.”
She cleared her throat. “It would be particularly unkind of me if I wasn’t to offer a guiding hand at this time of trouble. It’s the least I can do for my dearest nephew.”
Ratty toyed with the top button of her frock, lost in thought. Her eyes wandered from her ailing sister-in-law over to the doctor, his stomach bulging out of proportion to the rest of his body, his old-fashioned clothes old and fading, his brow slightly sweating in the relentless heat, and large nose and blotched skin.
“Would you like your incentive now, or will you call around?” She considered him closer to a clown than a man.
The doctor adjusted his stiff collar, running his finger along the inside. “I prefer the spending kind of appreciation.”
“Have it your way. I’ll arrange for my stuff to be delivered straight away.”
—Sebastian watched his mother being lowered into the ground, with a solitary tear rolling down his face. He had watched her fade from an angel to a fragile shell—
He woke from his nightmare, crying heavily. The room was silent except for the wheezing from his mother. The rasping set his nerves on edge. Sebastian got out of bed and
padded to her room. Sitting by the bed, he watched her struggle with each breath, her chest barely moving. He placed a small pillow under her head, and the rasping eased.
Sebastian thought back to his father, the silent giant who sat in the corner of the room. A distant man, never overly affectionate, never the one who waited by his bed when he was sick, never the one to say, “well done,” if he managed to achieve something new. That had always been his mother, his rock. In the hurricane winds of life, she had always been unyielding against all that was thrown against her, fiercely defiant and relentless in her defense of family and home. And now she diminished, like his father; and to what end?
“Come on, Mom, you’re a fighter,” he whispered. The despair tore at his stomach as grief hammered into him. His fears fought for dominance until, emotionally exhausted, the night eventually reclaimed him.
Sebastian woke in the morning soaking wet. His mother had been sweating and had saturated the sheets. Her lips were chapped and her skin was flaky.
He ran to find the doctor, who grumbled and complained all the way back about the earliness of the hour.
The doctor looked at Sebastian’s mother and sighed. “There’s nothing I can do for her. Her time is up.”
“There must be something you can do.”
“I could take her to the hospital at Toowoomba. It’s the most advanced in the region. But I don’t know if she’ll survive the journey.”
“Please take her. I can’t watch her die.”
“It’s hardly worth the effort. Really, you have to grow up and face the facts.”
“I’ll pay you.”
The doctor paused in his tracks. Greed flashed in his eyes. “How much?”
“One hundred dollars.”
“One hundr …? That is a most generous offer. I shall collect my things and take her forthwith.”
Within half an hour, the doctor had returned, smelling strongly of gin, with his medical cart. Sebastian helped his mother down the stairs, as she had lost all bearing on the world. Her head lolled and her eyes stared vacantly ahead. They lifted her into the cart. She was so light, Sebastian thought he could have lifted her on his own.
He wrapped Isabelle in blankets and placed her favorite pillow under her head. He wiped his hand across her forehead, mopping away the sweat. The doctor snapped the reins and the old mare trudged forward. Sebastian attempted to leap up next to the doctor, but the way was blocked.
“You cannot come. There’s insufficient space. I’ve arranged for your aunt to come and be your guardian.” The doctor pushed Sebastian, who fell off the cart and landed heavily in the dirt.
His mother stirred in the back.
“Look what you’ve done, foolish child. You’ve upset her.” The doctor cracked his whip and the horse started to trudge away.
Sebastian lunged after his mother and grasped her hand. He felt it wrap around his, briefly, before she succumbed to darkness and let him go. He fell back again into the soil. On his hands and knees, he watched his mother’s frail form being dragged from him. He folded his head into his arms and sobbed.
The train rocked rhythmically along the tracks. The smartly dressed young man stared out the window at the endless flat plain of dry earth and dying scrubs. The moisture had been sucked from the red sand, leaving it nothing more than dust. The rivers were empty. Everything was dead or dying. The heat from the steam-engine rolled over the passenger compartments, making those at the rear, who couldn’t afford the good seats, perspire. He felt he was surrounded by those not strong enough to survive the extreme desert living any longer, which meant old ladies. The one knitting next to him appeared to be the oldest. He vaguely recognized her. She wore sturdy brown shoes, thick stockings, and a floral “Sunday best” frock. Her face was half covered with widow netting. He noted the other women were the same, widows leaving somewhere with nothing to stay for.
“Looks like another long, hot winter,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“To the Steam Academy,” he mumbled.
“Glad to see you’ve dressed for it. It’ll be a change from Birdsville, a big city like that.” Her yellowed needles clicked together.
“I hope so,” he replied. He wiped his long fringe out of his eyes.
A faint but angry buzzing tickled at the edge of his hearing. He gazed out at the expansive, flat plain which met the eternal blue sky in a blurred horizon.
“I hear they have plenty of water there. And it’s a big shiny place full of modern wonders—a place with a future for people with a future. Are you Jennifer Healy’s boy?”
“Huh?” He thought he could distinguish a distant, stretched-out dust cloud peeling out of the haze, matching the speed of the steam express. The streak of cloud split into two.
“Jenny? Cupcake Jenny? Young Jenny?”
He absentmindedly nodded.
“My, how you’ve grown. I have the clearest recollections of young Jenny pushing you in her little pram down to the river, when we had one of course. I used to teach her English at the school before she had to leave. Is it your first time away from home?”
Three dust cloud trails could be seen now, and they were getting closer. He could see a reflective shape at the head of each cloud. As the old lady continued her conversation, he nodded without listening, and watched them approach. His head snapped around as the old lady stabbed him with a needle.
“Sorry, love.”
He turned back to the outside. The clouds were dissipating, the reflective objects gone. He sighed in disappointment.
The train’s horn sounded twice. A loud scraping reverberated through the carriage, and the passengers went quiet. The train hadn’t slowed. The far door burst open, and three cyborgs entered the carriage, all wearing shiny black armor. A fourth figure crept in behind them. The leading cyborg had strange skin, almost scaly, and towered above the others. The large teeth in its mouth made talking difficult, as well as controlling the greenish drool that dribbled out between the teeth. He reached to nearly the ceiling. The young man slumped down into his chair out of the creature’s view. He found the size and appearance of the cyborg shocking.
The old lady gasped, “A skynet.”
“A what?” the young man whispered.
“Skynet is the collective noun for cyborgs.” She cut her language lesson short as a new figure appeared.
At the back of the small party was an ordinary man, diminutive in comparison to the cyborg warriors surrounding him. He eased open his long Drizabone riding coat and sand cascaded to the floor. The mottled brown coat revealed mismatching black clothes. He stepped between the cyborgs and presented himself. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am your host for this brief interlude.”
He bowed slightly, tipping his dusty hat, and smiled his cracked and blackened teeth at the passengers. Several of the old ladies whispered at a volume their fading hearing could detect, and as such could be heard by the whole carriage. Mola.
The man tutted. He wandered along the aisle with his hands behind his back, theatrically bending toward his audience as he spoke. “Mola is a word what comes with all kinds of horrible connotations, it does. We Negotiators put nice food on your table, water in your trough, and a roof over your head, and appreciate a modicum of respect for the dangerous work performed in keeping balance in a turbulent world.”
“Mola?” the young man whispered.
“General Mola.” The old lady replied. The young man gave her a look that said, “What are you talking about?”
“Fifth column. I really can’t spell it out any more than that.”
The Mola clapped his hands together. “I could understand the tempestuous nature of some of the younger men on board to feel inclined to prove their burgeoning manhood and challenge the authority in front of them without truly comprehending the political landscape, but I had expected better from our distinguished ladies of this vaporous perambulator. I shall need an inconsequential recompense for the affront. And an aspersion to me is reflected to your guests here
.” He indicated the cyborgs slowly making their way along the cramped aisle. “So, please, dig deeply.”
He raised both hands above his head and then extended them down the aisle. “Search and collect any water you find.”
The lead cyborg grabbed the Mola by his coat lapels and dragged him close. “Boys,” he spluttered.
The Mola pushed the towering cyborg away, unthreatened by the aggressive reminder. “Oh, yeah. And inform @redFive, here, with the utmost urgency if you find any boys.”
“I find one,” shouted a cyborg from the front of the carriage. @redFive released the Mola and stormed to the front. He clutched the young lad’s throat and lifted him out of his seat. He was in farming clothes, basic and of little substance or style.
“Name?” the cyborg leader spluttered.
“I’m not telling you,” the unnamed spat back.
The second cyborg held up a small black device with a long prong extending out the end that clicked slowly as he held it near the captive. @redFive glanced over to the cyborg, who shook his head.
“Weak readings. It is hard.hard to tell. Mostly not.”
“Why did he repeat ‘hard’?” the young man whispered to the old lady.
She glanced at him and shrugged. “Maybe they don’t have comparatives or superlatives. Hard.hard could possibly mean very hard.”
His fear that the old lady’s response was going to be way too loud was realized. The third cyborg turned and stared at the smartly dressed young man. He swallowed nervously under the intense glare.
“Name,” hissed the cyborg.
“I-I-I’m Gavin,” he nervously replied. Commotion broke out between @redFive and the unnamed boy in his grip. The cyborg returned to assist @redFive. Gavin put his head in his hands. The old lady patted him on the back.
“Are you okay? Best to give them what they want and don’t cause a fuss,” she whispered.
“Tell name or be kill.kill,” shouted @redFive.
“I’d rather die than tell you anything.”
“Yes,” replied @redFive. He aimed his gun and pulled the trigger. White light erupted from the barrel and cut through the unnamed body, and out through the side of the carriage. Blood splattered over the surrounding walls and passengers, accompanied by screams from the old ladies. The dry air whistled past the opening, blowing in dirt and debris.