by Pam Stucky
“I think so?” said Ben uncertainly. “Do you know where the hubs attached to Australia are, Dr. Waldo?”
Dr. Waldo shook his head. “Some but not all. There was the one I visited this summer, Point Quobba, out in the west. As for hubs near Lightning Ridge, well, let’s see ….” He tapped and swiped through several screens on his computer monitor. “Well, there are indications the Fingal Head Lighthouse in New South Wales might house a hub, but it’s not yet confirmed. Farther south, in Victoria, there may be one at Wilson’s Promontory Lighthouse. But again, we have not yet confirmed it. Perhaps if you children have time while you are there you can visit these lighthouses and let us know? That would be just grand!”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Emma, though she was glad to see Dr. Waldo more or less back to his old self. “First, we need to find Eve’s mom!”
Noticing that Eve had been unusually quiet as they gathered their travel necessities, Emma pulled her friend aside. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said Eve. “It’s just ….” She faltered. “I don’t know. Dad was called away on another dig, so he can’t come with us, which scares me a little, not having him along, but it’s probably for the best. My parents’ relationship is awkward at best. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else. But … I don’t know. I’m nervous. I’m hopeful, like I want to hope we’ll find her, but I don’t want to hope too much and then just be let down. You know? If we don’t find her, then what?”
Emma reached for Eve’s hand. “If we don’t find her, we keep looking,” she said. “Now come on. The boys will be lost without us. We need to be strong and lead the way!”
Eve laughed. “You’re right. What would we do without those guys?”
Emma looked over at the Charlies and Ben, who were improvising some strange dance, arms and legs flailing, while waiting for someone to tell them they were ready to go. Crazy as they may be, I can always count on them to make me laugh, she thought with a small smile. Each person in the group of five brought so many strengths and unique wisdom. She was grateful that on traveling into the great unknown, she had this group of friends alongside her.
Everyone rushed quickly to the living quarters to change into WaldoWear and make a final check before traveling. Their last preparations complete and a hearty meal hastily eaten, the teens and Dr. Waldo made their way through the elevator back to its Earth side. The elevator, as with all elevators on Earth, was in a lighthouse; in this particular lighthouse, the entrance was inside what seemed to the unsuspecting eye to be a storage closet.
On stepping into the lighthouse lobby, Emma marveled at its normalcy. “It’s always so weird to think we’re just inches away from … well, everything. Like everything. How many people have come through here and never suspected a thing? If we hadn’t been looking carefully at those pictures—”
“Wait,” said Eve, holding up her hand as she looked around the lobby. “Where did the Charlies go? Did we lose them already?”
Before anyone could start to panic, Charlie and Chuck came bounding around a corner, dressed in Hawaiian-print WaldoWear T-shirts and shorts, sunglasses, and baseball caps, their travel packs on their backs.
“Hawaiian print?” said Emma. “Where did you get that?”
The Charlies just winked at Dr. Waldo, who winked in return.
“Aren’t you cold?” laughed Eve. They were inside, of course, but the lighthouse was old, and the chill of a Pacific Northwest December afternoon seeped through the seams of the walls and permeated the air.
“The WaldoWear adjusts to the weather,” said Chuck, “and where we’re headed it’s ninety-three degrees!”
“You all are quite overdressed, I’d say,” said Charlie. “You wait and see, you’ll regret it.”
Emma looked down at her layers of clothing and had to agree. She wasn’t quite sure about trusting the WaldoWear just yet, and had put on perhaps more clothes than necessary to keep warm. “Well, we’ll deal with it when we get there. We’ve got to get going. Everyone ready?”
“Ready!” said Charlie with great enthusiasm. He was the only one of the group who had not yet traveled via the Dark MATTER sphere.
“Ready! Yeah!” said Chuck, pumping his fists in the air. “Dark MATTER! Dark MATTER!” he started chanting. Charlie quickly joined in, always up for a good chant. “Dark MATTER! Dark MATTER!”
“I guess … ready!” said Eve, ignoring the boys. Emma reached out to hold her hand.
“Okay,” said Ben, double checking coordinates on his iPert. “I think I’m setting us down just outside town. Everybody link arms!”
The others held hands and intertwined arms, ensuring they’d all be whisked away together on this journey. The Charlies changed their chant: “Australia! Australia!” they cheered. “Aussie Aussie Aussie!” cried Chuck, to which Charlie enthusiastically responded, “Oi Oi Oi!”
“Be safe, children, be safe! Come back soon!” said Dr. Waldo, a flash of concern crossing his face for just an instant.
“We will!” said Emma. “Don’t worry!”
“I trust you!” he said to Emma, with a wink. “But I still worry!”
“All right, Lightning Ridge, Australia, here we come!” Ben swiped the face of the Dark MATTER.
They faded in from their edges, becoming nothing but breath and heartbeats. Silence and nothingness melded with awareness, and for the splittest of split seconds, the teens became one with the universes. A whoosh, and the process reversed, bodies reforming from molecules, miraculously reforming into five teenagers half a world away on Earth.
“I think I’m getting the hang of that,” said Emma, waiting for her eyes to refocus before taking a step.
“Whoa!” said Charlie. “Dude, that was gnarly! Like, we were everything! For a second, we were totally … we were infinite and eternal and everywhere. Did you feel that? That was amazing!”
Emma smiled, glad to share with her brother the indescribable feeling of not just being part of existence, but being all of existence itself. She released her grip from Eve on her other side, and punched Charlie affectionately on the shoulder. “Dork,” she said, quietly.
He punched back. “Dork,” he said affectionately. “That was unbelievable.”
Eve was breathing heavy, bent over with her hands on her knees. “Sometimes I feel like my bracelet gets a little wonky when we travel. It doesn’t give me the right amount of oxygen,” she said.
“Wait, I thought Lero and Earth had about the same atmosphere? Isn’t our air breathable to you even without the bracelet?” said Chuck.
“Mostly, I think,” said Eve, “but it’s sort of like being at the top of a mountain. The air is a little thinner. Normally I don’t even notice it, but when we travel, it seems to take the bracelet a little time to catch up.”
“That makes sense,” said Chuck, still blinking. “I think it’s taking my eyes a little longer to pop into place, too.”
“Same,” said Emma. “I feel like my eyes take the longest to readjust, too, every time. Plus, it’s really bright here.” She put up a hand to shade her eyes. The hot sun was already glaring down on them from above, amplified by the vastness of the horizon.
“That is so much better than flying,” said Chuck. “I remember one time we flew from Minsota to London on a school trip. It was awful.”
Charlie looked at Chuck. “Wait. You flew to London on a school trip? I never did that. Our paths, they are not the same.” He frowned with exaggerated sadness.
Chuck’s face fell. “I feel like I hardly know you, man.”
“We’ll get through this somehow, man,” said Charlie, earnestly looking Chuck directly in the eyes. “We will.”
“You are both such dorks,” said Emma. The Charlies beamed.
“So where are we?” asked Charlie. “Are we where we’re supposed to be?”
The group took in the unfamiliar landscape, trying to orient themselves. Based on the temperature, they’d certainly got
ten what they’d expected. The air was hot and dry.
“I feel like the air is sucking the moisture out of me,” said Chuck, wiping from his brow the beads of sweat that were starting to form on his forehead.
The narrow, two-lane road was paved but rustic, lined with a few feet of reddish dirt on either side. Scattered trees with fluffy clouds of dark green leaves mimicked the bright white clouds sprinkled across the deep blue sky. The silence was deep and broad. They were used to silence on the island, but the silence at Balky Point was muffled by forests of evergreens, hills and valleys and caves. The silence here felt like of an ocean of silence, miles and miles from anywhere.
Ben consulted his iPert. “Castlereagh Highway that way,” he said, pointing behind them to the west. “Lightning Ridge this way,” he said, pointing east.
They walked slowly east, the heat of the sun growing with the day. By their calculations they had arrived around 10:00 a.m., and the day was already quite warm.
“Couldn’t you have gotten us a little closer to town?” said Charlie, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Emma reached into his backpack on his back and pulled out a bottle of water for him. He nodded his thanks.
“Sorry,” said Ben.
“No worries, mate,” said Charlie. “You did your best.”
Finally, they came upon some buildings, sparsely scattered on the sides of the road. Shortly after that, they came to a sign that read:
Lightning
Ridge
Population
?
“This is it,” said Ben, relieved to see he hadn’t led them astray.
From the looks of it, though, they were still quite a ways from the downtown area—if there even was one. A few buildings were strewn here and there, but certainly there had to be more to the actual town. They trudged on.
A truck pulled up behind them. “Oi! Mates!” yelled a man from inside the cab. “Need a ride?”
The teens looked at each other, all of them hot and tired. They reached an agreement without speaking.
“Yes!” said Ben. “Thank you! We’re heading to Lightning Ridge,” he added.
The man laughed. “I should hope so! Not much else out here! Hop in!”
They scrambled unceremoniously into the bed of the truck and held tight to the sides. The man tumbled along the road until they reached a more populated area. He pulled into a parking area in front of a café, stopped, and hopped out of the cab.
“This good enough?” he said, helping the teens out of the back.
“Perfect!” said Emma, trying to keep her skin out of contact with the truck’s hot metal sides as she climbed out. “Thanks so much!”
“Yes, thanks,” said Eve, who had jumped out of the truck and was dusting herself off. “I’m Eve, by the way. This is Emma, Charlie, Chuck, Ben.”
“Charlie and Chuck, you must be twins?” said the man. “Odd your parents gave you the same name!”
Emma was taken aback. Charlie was her twin, not Chuck’s. She realized they might have to stretch the truth a bit so as not to arouse suspicion on their travels. Maybe, she thought, we can be fraternal triplets. She wasn’t ready to give up her claim on her brother just yet.
For their part, Charlie and Chuck answered by just laughing it off. “Parents. Crazy! And your name?” said Charlie.
“I’m Mick. Did your car break down? We don’t get too many people walking into town from that far out. Dangerous. And not too smart.” His grin was wide and friendly.
Ben thought fast. “We, back there on the highway, we hitchhiked, and someone, they dropped us off, they didn’t want to turn down the road.”
A squint in Mick’s eyes indicated a hint of skepticism, but he just shook his head. “You’ve walked a long way. Good thing it’s still morning. You know where you’re going?”
“Opals,” Emma blurted out. “We’re, uh, looking for black opals?”
Mick laughed. “You’re in the right place, then, missy. This is black opal country, that’s for certain.” With his arm, he made a gesture that swept across the landscape to include everything around them.
“Are you a miner?” asked Eve. “Black opal miner?”
“I do some fossicking on the odd occasion,” said Mick, “but no, I’m a painter.”
“Fossicking?” whispered Eve to Emma. Emma shrugged.
“You paint houses?” asked Chuck.
“Pictures,” said Mick. “Scenery.” He pointed down the road. “Gallery down there on the right has a show of my paintings right now, if you’d like to take a gander.”
“We’re definitely interested,” said Emma, trying to hide her impatience. “First, though, can you tell us a good place to buy an opal?”
Mick guffawed heartily. “Take your pick!” he said. “Can’t recommend one over another or’s someone would have my hide. Just take a look around ’til you find one you like.”
“That’s great, thanks. And thanks again for the ride,” said Emma, already turning to find a store.
“No worries, mate. Since you’re new to town, if you have time later, you might enjoy a dip in the Artesian Bore Baths tonight, after it cools off a bit again. Closed for cleaning right now, but they open again at noon.”
“Bore baths?” said Eve, confused again.
“Water from the bores,” said Mick, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Hot, though. But you kids might like it. Down the road that way,” he said, pointing.
“Got it, thanks, down the road,” said Emma, pretending she understood everything Mick had said. This man was quite friendly and kind, but she wanted him to leave so she could talk with her travel companions. “Thanks again for everything!”
“No worries. If you all need anything, just ask someone for Mick the landscape artist, they’ll know me.” Mick nodded, gave a slight salute, and headed into the café. The others waited until he was out of hearing distance before speaking.
“Fossicking? Bore baths?” said Charlie.
“Ah, I thought it was just me. I figured you Earthlings would know,” said Eve.
“No, I don’t know, either,” said Emma. “But bore baths, that’s water. Dark galaxy, water, magnet. Maybe that’s the water?”
“What were you asking about an opal store for?” asked Eve.
“Don’t you think we should buy a black opal? It seems like we might need one. I don’t know what for, but it feels like we’ll need one. And probably a magnet, too.”
“Opals can’t be cheap,” said Chuck. “How are we going to afford one? I don’t have that kind of cash.”
Eve cleared her throat and patted her backpack. “I, uh, have a credit card.”
“A credit card?” said Charlie, whose own backpack held only a minimal amount of money. “An Earth credit card?”
“It’s … sort of universal,” said Eve. “Dr. Waldo gave me and Dad each one, a year or so ago. It gets billed to the Hub … somehow.”
“It gets billed to the Hub?” said Charlie in disbelief. “How does that work?”
“I guess … same way Ben gets paid, I think?” Eve said. She shrugged.
The Charlies and Emma looked at Ben. “Ben, how exactly do you get paid?” asked Chuck.
“Uh … it’s direct deposit into my account. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it?” said Ben. He was still living at home with his parents and didn’t have too many bills. The chance to do science in the Hub was his motivating factor, far more than the money. He barely noticed when the paychecks were deposited.
“Man,” said Charlie. “I gotta get me on that payroll.” To illustrate his point, he reached into his pockets and turned them inside out: empty.
“Okay,” said Emma. “We have the credit card, so Eve and I will go buy a black opal. You three, go find a magnet.”
“Where are we going to find a magnet?” asked Chuck.
“I have no idea,” said Emma, exasperated. Do I have to figure out everything? she thought. “Maybe ask the iPert. You can do this. I believe in you.”<
br />
“It’s 10:30 now,” said Eve, looking at her watch. “Meet back here for lunch at … oh, 1:00 if not before?”
“Eve, do you have a picture of your mom with you?” asked Ben.
Eve nodded. “Yes, why?”
“Maybe we should ask if people have seen her, while we’re at it?” he suggested.
“Good idea,” said Eve. “I … well, I already loaded some pictures of Mom and Dad onto my iPert, just … to have them with me. I’ll message one to you all.” She tapped and swiped the iPert screen, and in seconds the other four iPerts received notification alerts.
“Huh,” said Chuck, looking at the picture and squinting. “She looks … sort of less human than you do.”
Eve sighed heavily and slapped her forehead. “It’s a picture, so she looks like herself. Leroian. Like she would look without a bracelet. Stupid me! That’s not what she would have looked like to people around here. We can’t show that picture around. I don’t think I have any of her looking like a human!”
“That’s not stupid,” said Emma. “It’s just complicated. So she’d look more or less like that, though, right? We can describe her to people without showing the picture. Shoulder-length blond hair, mid-thirties, funny accent, not from around here, talking about opals and water, maybe, start with that. They still might recognize her, you never know. It doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“Good point, Emma,” said Ben. “Okay. We’re off to find magnets and do some reconnaissance. You guys go get a nice black opal. Don’t be cheap. Dr. Waldo owes us one.”
Emma laughed. “He does indeed. Be safe, guys! See you at 1:00!”
Emma and Eve meandered slowly through the dry heat of the town. Mick was right: there were opal shops at every turn. They wandered into the first one they came across.
“There are so many,” said Emma, looking at the huge variety of stones. “What if we get the wrong one?”