by John Moralee
I went into the kitchen and made myself some ersatz coffee with ersatz milk. It tasted awful, but it energised me. I read yesterday’s newspaper. There wasn’t much news, but I paused over one story. Hitler was returning to New Berlin tomorrow – today now – and he was holding a meeting with the war council about the deepening crisis in North Africa. It was expected he would authorise tactical nukes. The tone of the article suggested this was a sensible option. Tactical nukes! We’d tried that and millions had died on both sides! Frankenstein as Science Minister was a member of the war council. Knowing Frankenstein, he would no doubt back the proposals: his radiation experiments had developed a new anti-cancer drug that he wanted to test in a war zone.
I dressed and went down to the basement garage. I drove my BMW out onto the street regardless of the danger of being stopped without a pass. I headed for the autobahn. There was one checkpoint between my home and the institute. I slowed approaching it. There was a young army officer checking IDs. I showed him my doctor’s licence.
“You need a pass, sir.”
“I’m on my way to an emergency transplant – no time for a stupid pass.”
“You need a pass, sir.”
“I’ll tell General Rommel that should I? I have his new heart in here.” I patted my briefcase – which contained some papers and a two-day old sandwich I’d forgotten to eat. If he asked to see the heart, I was really in trouble. “Should I tell him I was delayed because of some corporal?”
“Th-that’s all right, sir.”
He waved me on.
*
SECTION D: AUTHORISED PERSONAL LEVEL 001 ONLY
“It’s late, sir. This isn’t your shift.”
I looked at the guard and nodded. “Forget to analyse my data. Professor Frankenstein will be angry if I don’t finish it.”
He nodded in sympathy. He knew what I tyrant Frankenstein could be. “He’s in there, so good luck.”
I slid my car over the scanner and hurried into the room. I walked to the programming room. There was nobody about. I opened the large cryogenic refrigerator and removed the vials of 1.13 containing 2.91. I thawed it out and loaded it into a syringe. It was then I heard someone cough. I spun around. It was Bauer.
“What’re you doing, Christian?”
“I think some of the 1.13 has contaminated the 2.92. I was just getting a sample.”
“That’s interesting,” he said, “because I just re-tested you 2.91. I was going to tell Victor, but first I wanted to ask you about it. It was successful, Christian. But you reported it as a failure.”
“I can explain,” I said, stepping towards him. Suddenly, he reached into his lab coat for a gun. I was faster, though. I had the syringe in his arm in an instant. He struggled, but already the virus was reaching his brain. As a last effort to stop me, he fired his gun through his coat. The bullets slammed into me – one, two, three – all hits to the chest – the pain incredible – and then he stopped firing and stiffened and his face became slack. I found myself on the floor bleeding to death, but I didn’t care about that. I just hoped no one had heard the shots. The walls were supposedly soundproof. Quickly, quickly, I told him what to do ...
Now was the true test.
*
Into the light again … After months of existing in the darkness, I climb up the ladder and push open the hatch. I fully expect to see the Coast Guard – or someone, anyone – but the deck of the cabin cruiser is deserted. I am alone in the middle of a blue-green ocean, a light breeze rocking the boat. I crawl until I gain the strength to stand, then I walk to the wheelhouse. I find signs of recent habitation – cigarette butts, beer cans, discarded playing cards – but no crew. There is some blood, though. It is smeared like grease on the walls and windows. I was right about the danger of pirates. They must have killed the crew and taken away their bodies, which they could either use themselves or sell the parts of the organ market. I look for boats on the horizon, fearing their return. I see nothing. By hiding, I’d escaped their wrath, but how was I going to steer this thing myself?
I look at the endless ocean, wondering which way is west. I read somewhere you could tell the direction by looking at the sun. I can’t see the sun in the sky because it is so bright, a solid white sheet of light. No clues there. I study the controls with growing alarm: they have been smashed. There is no way to drive this thing without them.
Cursing, I search the cabin cruiser from top to bottom, pausing only to fill my stomach with dregs from the galley and drink clean – clean? – water from the toilet. Eating makes me feel better, but then I make the mistake of opening the refrigerator. A human head rolls out and thuds onto the floor. The shock nearly empties my stomach, but I hurry onto the deck for fresh air. I don’t know why it shocked me - not after the things I’ve seen - perhaps it was just the surprise of it. People jump when a balloon pops - but it doesn’t mean they are scared of balloons.
I compose myself. The head … I go back and look at the features. It was the captain. He looks … preserved. I take his head up the stairs and give him a burial at sea. His head sinks without a trace. The head … It reminds me I haven’t seen how I look after weeks hidden in the engine room.
I check out my condition in a broken mirror in the captain’s quarters. I look pale and skeletal. The death camp really took its toll. The flesh hangs from my bones. I can see every rib. The serial number on my wrist looks like a purple wound. I hold it up and read it to myself over and over, remembering.
1995-25-02-70-1110110101-172A.
The serial number is a special code the Nazis use. It can be split up into components. The first four digits stand for the year of capture, the next six are the date of birth – in this case 25 February 1970 (the Nazis hadn’t thought the system would be required into the 21st century, so they’d used only two digits for the year). The numbers in binary described physical features for identification purposes such as colour of eyes, colour of hair, colour of skin, height …
The man this body belonged to died in Frankenstein’s lab in a failed test. Bauer had transplanted my brain into it. He smuggled the “dead” body out of the building, then returned to give Frankenstein an injection and his instructions. I was on my way to the coast by then.
If everything had gone as I intended, Frankenstein would have infected Hitler and the whole war council and instructed them to sue for peace at any price. Meanwhile Bauer should have destroyed the lab and all records so the experiments could never be repeated. Then he had been instructed to infect as many people as he could with his special programming - I called it a conscience, something we’d all lost over the years.
Hopefully, the war is over.
I walk onto the deck and hope.
There’s something on the horizon.
A green smudge.
It looks like land.
I stare at it until my vision blurs.
Sickness Country
He stepped into the smoky room crowded with eighty white men between eighteen and sixty. The uranium miners had ended their shift an hour earlier and had been drinking much of their day’s wages. They stopped drinking and talking to look at him. They were surprised to see a black man in their bar.
There was something wrong about his face – it looked leathery but with smoother, lighter patches. It was mostly hidden under a black hat with a crow’s feather in its brim. He had long black curly hair over his shoulders and face. He looked as though he had stepped out of the Outback, formed from charcoal and oil, his hard eyes cut from obsidian stones. His dark, tattered clothes and the feather in his hat made him look like a human crow.
In silence, he walked to the counter and put down dollars, pointing at the Fosters bottles cooling in their cabinet. The bartender clearly did not want to serve him, but did so against his will. The stranger sat down on a stool and turned to face the miners, drinking the beer without saying a word. He took a long time drinking the beer for a man who must have been out in the sun all morning. For a few minutes, the
only sounds in the bar were the ceiling fans and the murmurs of disapproval. He sipped his cold beer, moisture shining on his lips. When he was finished, he stood up again, the stool creaking like the bones of an old man. His dark eyes looked at everyone in the bar. Nobody returned his stare. Smiling, he strode out into the white, white sunlight, leaving eighty men staring at the closing door.
Jake Harrison was one of them.
*
Freedom was a strange place to live. The town had a way of twisting the past and present into a blur, as if the desert heat melted reality into something trapped in a bubble. There was always a feeling of déjà vu because every day felt like yesterday. The appearance of the stranger was something different. And yet Jake Harrison knew he would see the man again. It was a feeling he had as he returned to his store after lunch. With Christmas coming, the store was decorated with sparkling tinsel and plastic trees. A cheerful cardboard Santa Claus wearing sunglasses stood by the entrance next to the barbecue equipment. Jake was looking into the till when he heard the door open. Looking up, he saw the man was suddenly there, his black clothes flapping and swishing around him as if caught in a wind. But there was no wind – just the door closing. Jake shivered – he was cold all of a sudden.
“G’day,” Jake said. He wanted to be the first person to hear the black man speak. But the man did not reply. Jake watched him going up and down the aisles, picking up camping equipment – the best stuff. He selected a tent and sleeping bag made of space-age materials. “You’re camping nearby, mate?”
The stranger grinned but said nothing. He carried the equipment to the counter. The man gave off a smell like charred steak.
“Are you staying in town?”
The man nodded.
“What’s your name?”
He did not answer. Something else had taken his interest: the book rack. He studied it, turning it slowly, choosing half a dozen sun-faded paperbacks. The paperbacks had been in the store for years, perhaps decades. Jake was not an avid reader of fiction, preferring to read the newspapers and magazines. Not many keen readers lived in Freedom. Jake just had to look at the street to see why: satellite dishes were perched on the houses like the ears of bats. The man added the paperbacks to his purchase. Jake totalled everything at over 400 dollars. To Jake he did not look like he could pay for cigarettes, but he paid with cash from a thick roll kept in his black overcoat. Was he expecting rain? Jake wondered. Wearing those black clothes, Jake would die of heat exhaustion in five minutes.
The man left, leaving behind a cool breeze.
*
Later, Jake saw the man camped out by the roadside within sight of anyone travelling in or out of Freedom.
There was a large mining area ten kilometres from the town. It employed five hundred people – mostly white. Three shifts of workers were bussed to the site and back to Freedom every day. The Aborigines would not work there even if they were given the choice. They called it “sickness country” and avoided the quarry, which from the sky looked like a multiple meteor strike, with its concentric rings of excavation. Thousands of years ago the Aborigines had known there was something dangerous in the land, but it had taken until the 1950s for Australian and British scientists to identify the vast quantities of uranium-rich rock. It had made Freedom a wealthy town – for some. The land was taken off the Aborigines many, many years ago, when it was perfectly legal. They earned nothing from the uranium mine. Their descendants were fighting back the 21st century way: suing the company for fifty years of mining royalties. The company had hired the best lawyers, arguing it was unreasonable for them to pay. The ownership issue was a sore subject with the workers living in Freedom, who saw the Aboriginal lawsuit as a threat to their jobs. Many saw it as a racial battle: white workers versus black activists. For a black man to camp outside their town was bound to cause trouble.
He sat in the shade of a rock the colour of blood, reading a book. He was in full sight of everyone, as if he wanted to remind them of his presence. He sat cross-legged, relaxed, immune to the heat and flies. He was as immovable as the gum trees and spinifex growing from the red soil. His tent was erected. It was like seeing a one-man protest against the uranium mining, though he did not have any placards or slogans. He was simply there. When the trucks drove by dust swirled over the man, but he did not react … except to turn the pages of his book.
It was as though he was waiting for something to happen.
*
“That nigger. You sold him camping gear?”
Jake looked up from his newspaper, feeling his chest tense up as he recognised the McGregor brothers. The brothers had short red hair and small blues eyes, shaded by blue baseball caps. Their heavily muscled arms were deeply tanned red and glistened with sweat.
“Who?”
Gary McGregor stared. “There’s only one - the Crow.”
So, he had a nickname now. The Crow.
It was better than calling him nigger, Jake supposed. Just.
“I sell my goods to anyone who can afford them.”
“Not to niggers, you don’t.”
“If you’ve got a problem with him, see him.”
“Oh, we will.” Ian nodded in agreement. “But right now we’re talking to you.”
“Talking to you,” Ian echoed.
Jake glanced at the security camera watching the store. Gary and Ian McGregor noticed it as if for the first time. Gary tapped his brother on the shoulder, whispering something in his ear. Ian smiled. They would not try anything with the security tape rolling, Jake hoped. But he could expect some kind of recrimination. “Are you buying anything?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t mind leaving.”
Gary aimed a finger at him like a rifle, making a click-click in his throat. “See you, Jake.”
Jake did not move until they had gone, but then he looked down at his hands and noticed he had crumpled his newspaper into a rag.
*
That afternoon Jake Harrison picked up his son Donald from school and drove homeward in his Toyota Land Cruiser. The sky was a white glare. They entered the suburbs of white houses with tall fences. Heat-drunk dogs barked as usual as Jake went by. Donald was eleven. The boy was sipping a Coca-Cola, listening to the radio. But Jake wanted to talk, so he switched it off. They had five minutes before they got home.
“Watch for the McGregor brothers,” he told him. “They’re mad at me, so be careful.”
“What did you do to them?”
“Nothing,” he said. “But they think I did. There’s this man in town they don’t like.”
“You mean the big Abo?”
“Yes, him, but I don’t want you talking like that. I don’t want you using racist words like Abo. The word’s Aboriginal. Better yet, use the specific name of the clan.”
“I’m only saying what Bruce Newman said. He used those words, Dad. He used the word wog, too, but I didn’t.”
“Maybe so, but there’s no excuse.” Jake sometimes caught himself saying racist words, almost like a reflex to a situation. He only recognised its harm if Donald said those words, innocently brought back from school. Then he felt shame because the last thing he wanted was for prejudice to grow inside his son like a malignant tumour. He told Donald about the man visiting the store and then the McGregors’ threat.
“I don’t understand why they hate him. He’s black – so what? What did he say to them?”
“He didn’t talk to nobody - but sure made himself heard by the silence he made. In the bar I never seen so many fellas go quiet.” Thinking about the reaction of the miners when the stranger ordered a beer made him smile. He could see their house ahead. The windows were shuttered against the sunlight. Kathy’s car was in the open garage. Jake pulled into their driveway and coasted into the garage. He switched off the engine, but stayed inside the car, looking at his son. “The poor fella didn’t actually do anything. But he turned that bar into a graveyard with a single look. Then he just walked out. Nobody can figure why
he was sitting out there by the road. I’m curious myself. I got the strangest feeling I know him. Like déjà vu.”
“What’s that, Dad?”
*
Déjà vu is 1960, the same place, a younger Jake Harrison.
Jake fell in love for the first time during the summer of 1960 when he was only ten years old, but his feelings were very real and very strong. It hurt him deeply that he could not tell anyone in his family about it. He hated lying to his father, but he could see no other way of living. That morning his father was waiting downstairs with a question.
“Where’re you going?”
“Out,” he said, lifting his cricket bat.
His father approved of cricket and wanted him to play for Australia. “Hmm. Get back at six for dinner.”
Summer was cooler than winter in Freedom, but it was still hot – eighty degrees in the shade. Jake ran through the boiling streets and met up with George behind the railway station. George had a new ball. Kicking and throwing the ball, they crossed the tracks. Several Aboriginal families living in tin huts along the dry creek. Desperately poor, the adults did domestic work and odd jobs for the whites, but they were not allowed to live near them. The black children were not allowed to attend the white schools, so they had little education. It was a common sight seeing small black children dancing naked in the red dirt. Fat black men sat in the shade of corrugated tin shelters, looking straight through the two white children. The men were drinking from whisky bottles. The Aboriginal men were frightening, but Jake and George continued past them to the flat ground where they played cricket. Jake would be beaten if his father knew he regularly came here to see Sam and Mary Tjakamara. Sam and Mary were under a gum tree, waving. Mary looked so beautiful with her hair tied up in braids. He loved her so much. He and George sat down under the tree.