“How many of them are there?”
Eight, the Endeavour said. All adult men.
“Armed?”
Some police-issue Glocks and automatic shotguns, which have been confiscated.
It was dusk by the time their medical was completed, and they were permitted out of the tent and the Endeavour was explained to them. They were all from Canberra, though not with jobs important enough to be included in the mass evacuation, and they’d ended up on the move in the countryside for the past six months. They’d been driven up into the mountains recently when their hideout down near Cooma had been attacked by another group. Tobias ordered a tripling of the eastern patrol.
“You’re going to let these guys stay here?” I asked him quietly, as he was moving between campfires, crunching through the snowy dark.
“Why not?” he said. “We need the manpower. We already have civilians here, anyway, in case you haven’t noticed.”
He meant Trish and her kids. “That’s a bit different. We don’t know we can trust these guys.”
“Of course we don’t,” Tobias said. “Don’t worry, they’ve handed over their weapons and we’ll keep an eye on them. There’ll be more coming, Aaron, now that the shield’s down. Better for us to absorb who we can. There’ll be more in spring and summer. We need to get ourselves established so we can defend against that.”
“Just in time for the machines to get bored of their experiment and wipe us out,” I muttered. “How’s the nuke progress coming along, anyway?”
“Not particularly well,” Tobias said irritably. “Aaron, I’ve got other people I need to talk to. Was there anything else?”
I let him melt off to one of the other campfires, and went back through the darkness to the flickering warmth of our own. Jonas and Simon and Andy were trying to remember all the campfire stories they could to tell Trish’s kids – generally ones that had funny endings, since we’ve all had enough of real horror stories to last us a lifetime.
“You’re fretting about those new arrivals, aren’t you?” Matt said, poking at the coals with a stick.
“I’m not fretting.”
“There’s eight of them. So chill.”
It annoyed me, how easily he could read me. First the soldiers, now the civilians. I hadn’t thought the valley would get so busy so quickly. I’d spent all year thinking about coming here, and in the dreams it had just been me and Matt.
Petulant, I guess. I wouldn’t really want us to be up here by ourselves. But Tobias and the SAS are one thing. I don’t know these people. I don’t feel the way I felt in Eucla.
“Give it a bit of time,” Matt said. “We all just got here. But we’re all on the same side. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are,” Matt grinned. “I can tell.”
“Oh, get out of my head.”
July 19
I drew the short straw this morning and had to trudge up the western flank of the valley, sit in the snow gum forest with my back to a tree, and try to sink into the mental trance state in an ambient temperature of two degrees. I was wearing military-grade thermals, multiple layers, waterproof boots, a snow jacket, a beanie and a neck warmer - but there’s a difference between not freezing to death and actually being warm. I don’t think I remember what it’s like to be genuinely warm. Sometimes I try to remember what it was like to sit on a beach in Perth on a 40-degree day in summer – which I was doing just over six months ago – and I can’t, I can’t actually remember what it felt like. What I miss most is a hot, windy day. The feeling of the wind hitting you and actually being warm, not burrowing through the gaps in your clothes and sucking more warmth away.
Anyway. The reason I was out there was to test the Endeavour’s theory, which was that Matt and I should be able to communicate with each other regardless of physical distance. So while he was tucked away inside the warmth of the Endeavour, I was out here in the snow.
It still takes time to achieve the meditative state necessary to open the link. Ten minutes at least, sometimes as long as half an hour. I can feel Matt’s mind out there, I can feel us approaching each other, like two ships on a foggy night. And eventually we’re close enough to loom out of the mist, draw alongside each other and speak.
well I guess endeavour was right, Matt said.
This doesn’t feel different, I said.
no. Same as down here.
Still a bit frazzled. Like talking on a bad telephone line.
You’re both doing well, the Endeavour said.
how we know this isn’t you? I asked.
Yeah, Matt said. like a channel. maybe if you not here, we can’t.
That will be the next test, the Endeavour said.
And all of a sudden I was jerked blinking out of the meditative state, somebody’s hand on my shoulder, a stranger kneeling down in front of me and peering at my face with bright blue eyes.
I yelped in shock, but all of Sergeant Blake’s training over the past few weeks kicked in. I was sitting cross-legged but I reached my arm out and seized his forearm, dragging him forward and to the side, off balance, into the snow, even as I sprang to my feet and pulled the Glock from my thigh holster. A second later he was in the snow, blinking in surprise and holding up his hands, staring down the barrel of my gun.
“Whoa!” he said. “What the fuck, kid!”
“Who the fuck are you?” I snapped.
Aaron! the Endeavour said. Aaron, put the gun down.
“Ira!” the guy said. “From Canberra, I came in with the group yesterday!”
I lowered the gun, still eyeing him suspiciously. “Why’d you touch me?”
“I thought you’d fallen asleep up here, I didn’t want you to freeze to death! You looked unconscious! Jesus!”
I looked around, glanced down at the valley, up along the ridge. It was an overcast day and thicker clouds were coming in from the south. “What are you doing up here?”
“I was going for a walk.”
“There’s plenty of work to be done if you’re bored.”
“I’ve got a busted wrist,” he said – which was true, I could see now, the edge of a medical splint poking out from beneath his parka. “What were you doing?”
“Thinking,” I said.
He was climbing to his feet, brushing snow off himself with his good hand. “Were you talking to your brother?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Everyone knows that,” he said. “You two are, like… aliens, right? From the ship?”
“For fuck’s sake,” I said. “We’re not aliens. We’re from Perth.”
“But you’re the reason we’re all here.”
He was looking at me oddly, a tall man who might have been well-built if not for the past half-year of starvation rations and bare survival. Sharp blue eyes, stringy black hair. I found it hard to judge his age – he could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty.
“I guess,” I said.
“Well,” he said. “I got to say, we’re pretty glad to be here. Sorry if I just messed up something you were doing.”
I started making my way down the slope. He followed after me. “What were you doing?”
“Telepathy practice.” If everybody knows, I guess everybody knows.
“Like when the ship talks to you?”
“Yes.”
“Will we all be able to learn that?”
“No,” I said. “Just me and Matt.”
“Because you’re part alien?”
“Look,” I said, stopping in the snow. “You want to know about it, talk to Captain Tobias or Professor Llewellyn. Or the Endeavour. But I’m not in the mood to chat, okay?”
“All right,” he said, as I started walking. “Sorry!”
I went back down the valley, past the soldiers chopping firewood, boiling snow, stacking food pallets, looking over patrol maps. In his cabin on the Endeavour Matt was still sitting in his sleeping bag, doodling in the margins of a crossword book.
“You cut off pretty quick,” he remarked.
“Some dickhead shook me out of it,” I said. “Thought I was freezing to death out there. Endeavour, who is that guy?”
Ira Cole, the ship said. He used to work for the Australian Research Council.
“A scientist?”
An administrator, I believe.
“You believe? I thought you could read minds.”
For the umpteenth time, Aaron, I am not reading anybody’s minds. This is what he said at the debriefing yesterday. Most of them had office jobs in Canberra. One was a firefighter, one was a rugby coach… You can go and read Tobias’ report if you care to know.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Never mind. He was asking a lot of questions.”
Wouldn’t you?
Matt laughed. “You’d be driving people up the wall with questions. You dragged us across half the country for this. Imagine if you were just wandering around the mountains with a group of survivors, half dead, and you come across this. Of course you’d be asking questions.”
Aaron, the Endeavour said, more patiently than Matt, I think it would help if you talked more about the feelings of suspicion and mistrust you have. One of the men who arrived from Canberra was a psychologist with the Department of Child Services…
“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m not a child and I do not need a fucking shrink, especially not one of the guys who just rocked up. I just don’t know why Tobias is running an open-door policy here.”
Personally I thought he explained it quite well to you last night.
“Do you eavesdrop on every conversation?”
I’ve already told you. You cannot call it eavesdropping when it is not a voluntary action.
“Forget it,” I said. “I just don’t like all these people showing up.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, without looking up from his doodling. He was drawing a robot holding a sausage over a trash can fire. “You’ve mentioned.”
I guess it doesn’t matter. Who cares what I think?
July 20
As Matt and I had pointed out, me sitting a few hundred metres away at the top of the ridge doesn’t quite prove much. The Endeavour is still sitting there in the middle of the valley, its own mental waves emanating over everything, the psychic equivalent of a gigantic wifi router. Like two telegraph operators getting a signal boost during a solar flare. So to really test the long distance connection, one of us was going to have to go further.
There are still some supplies to be cleared out from Trish’s lodge. We flipped a coin and Matt lost, so this time it was my turn to stay nice and cosy in the Endeavour while he helped Jonas and Andy and half a dozen soldiers load up the sleds and trek south.
I watched them go from the top of the southern ridge. It’s a bit of an odd feeling, not having Matt around. Apart from a handful of times when one of us was in Eucla and the other aboard the Regina Maersk, we haven’t been this far from each other all year.
Eucla. I wish they could get a proper radio up and running. Through the long Chinese whispers of various military bases we’ve managed to get word that they’re all right, and that they know we survived as well. But it would be nice to talk to them. I know Matt misses Ellie, but I was surprised – once we’d made it to the Endeavour, once that fierce urgent mission had been accomplished and I could think about other stuff again – how much I missed them all too. Ellie, Geoff, Colin, Liana.
Well. They’re safe. We’re safe. We’ll see them again.
I spent the afternoon doing more sparring training with Sergeant Blake and some of the soldiers. A few of the Canberra refugees joined in too, although Ira Cole wasn’t among them. I actually managed to get one over on Private Rickenbacker for the first time, disarming him in a wrestling match as Blake taught us best how to take on an armed opponent in close quarters combat. I feel a lot fitter and stronger than I used to – amazing what three square meals a day can do for you. And the MRE diet is getting peppered with a bit of fresh meat these days as well – Andy and Simon have taken to hunting while on patrol, shooting birds and possums and bringing them back to camp to be skinned and cooked.
Matt and the team expected to arrive at the lodge before sundown, so we’d agreed to try to contact each other at six o’clock, and if that failed – if they’d been delayed or something – to try every hour on the hour after that. It was with a bit of nervous trepidation that I sat in my cabin and tried to sink into the calm state. What if it didn’t work? What if there wasn’t really anything special about us at all, once we ventured away from the Endeavour?
After twenty minutes or so, I felt Matt’s mind out there – just the same as if I’d been sitting on the ridge, or if he was right next to me. We swam through the void for a bit, seeking each other out, and after another ten or fifteen minutes we made contact.
so it does work, Matt said, sounding pleased.
Loud and clear, I said. you get to the lodge ok?
No problems. fucking tired though.
I didn’t envy him having to pull a sled through the snow all day. Well hey you get to sleep in a real bed tonight at least.
We talked a while longer. The Endeavour, interestingly, was able to piggyback on my own connection and speak to Matt just as clearly as I was doing. Aaron, tomorrow I’d like for you to leave the valley and go beyond my own range, it said. To ensure that you can still communicate when I am not part of the equation at all.
andy wants leave first light, Matt said.
Tell him to wait, the ship said. The weather tomorrow should be fine, you’ll face no problems.
I wasn’t particularly keen on getting out of bed before dawn, but I could see the Endeavour’s point. We agreed on a time, said goodnight and closed the connection. I went outside for an evening meal of warmed-up beans and roasted meat feeling pretty good.
“This shit isn’t going to be full of parasites, is it?” I asked Simon.
“That’s the point of cooking it,” he said dryly.
“Christ,” Trish said, arriving at the campfire and squinting at the carcass Simon had propped over the flames on a stick. “What is that?”
“Cat,” Simon said.
I gagged.
“What?” he said.
“I thought it was possum!”
“What’s the difference? Cats are an invasive species, anyway. The possums are all probably fucking endangered, I feel guilty when I shoot ‘em.”
I’d spat the meat I was eating back into my bowl, but after looking at it for a moment I figured Simon was right, and started eating again. Protein is protein.
July 21
The Endeavour woke me before dawn today, and I groggily got dressed, pulled on my boots and took a flashlight outside into the night. The eastern sky was beginning to turn grey, but the camp was mostly still asleep. There were a few tired sentries still up on the ridges, a couple of people around the campfires, and in the gloom around the nearest campfire I could see a few pinpricks of cigarette light.
The Endeavour had arranged for two soldiers to escort me; Private Dresner and Private Lomax, whom I vaguely remember from some of Sergeant Blake’s training sessions. They were already waiting for me by the campfire. “You good to go?” I asked. They nodded, slung their Steyrs over their shoulders and we set out into the bluish pre-dawn twilight.
We only had to go about two kilometres from the Endeavour, so we took the path of least resistance: two valleys to the east, then we could follow the creek north down a pretty gentle slope. This is the same creek where I was attacked by Trish’s husband’s corpse when we first got here, do I still feel a bit nervous about it, but I know that’s unfounded – we have patrols all over the joint now, and we know there isn’t anything of danger within five kilometres.
I kept in touch with the Endeavour as we marched. Eventually its voice became faint, and then drifted away entirely. We were beyond its range. I kept us going for another few hundred metres to be sure, then we stopped at a twist in the creek, the water chattering and
burbling away across smooth river stones. The sun had come up now, and though we were still in mountain shadow, the sky above was bright blue. I did my cursory check for a platypus – nothing doing – and then sat down with my back against a snow gum.
“Alright,” I said. “You know the drill. If something happens, just shoot at it or whatever, that’ll snap me right out of it.”
“Nah,” Dresner grinned. “We’ll just bolt.”
I rolled my eyes, then closed them and started concentrating. It’s funny how all it took for me to trust the soldiers more was for a new group to show up. Maybe if we get another batch of refugees I’ll feel better about Ira Cole and his gang.
I sank into the trance, listening to the gurgle of the creek and the wind whispering in the snow gum leaves, trying to tune out Lomax humming to himself a little further downstream. I could feel Matt out there, not so far to the south as the crow flies, still sitting in bed at the lodge. Eventually we managed to ease our minds together.
bingo, Matt said. don’t need the Endeavour after all.
Not for this, anyway, I said.
nah, he said. it’s useless. We can dynamite it.
He was joking but I didn’t like it. There were probably plenty of people in the world who’d do just that, out of kneejerk terror, if they’d found it before we did.
So, Matt went on. had a dream last night.
A dream dream?
Yeah. A dream dream.
He seemed uneasy – more uneasy then he was trying to put across. What happened in it? I asked.
tell you when I get back, he said. it wasn’t good.
None of them are, I said.
Guess not. Anyway I got to go, Andy chomping at the bit. See you this arvo.
See you soon.
We cut the connection, and I opened my eyes, blinking, the world swimming back into focus around me. I stood up, brushing snow off my pants. “That was quick,” Lomax said.
I squinted. The sun was just creeping up above the north-eastern ridge. “How long was it?”
“Maybe twenty minutes,” Lomax said. “I thought it took you, like, half an hour.”
“It changes,” I said. “Come on, let’s get back to camp and get breakfast, I’m hungry.”
End Times (Book 4): Destroyer of Worlds Page 10