Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

On my return I found the great room completely empty, even the

cedar chest banished from its corner.

‘They said I should have it, sort of a cumulative rent payment.’

Vini had installed it in the living room of his flat where, amid the

books and clutter, it still succeeded in looking lonely.

‘How did they go?’

‘I didn’t see. One day they just weren’t around anymore.’

‘Didn’t they say goodbye?’

‘Yes, well in advance. But I never took them seriously, didn’t believe

they could . . .’

‘Maybe they’re hiding somewhere.’

‘Why?’ he asked, but I didn’t answer the question.

‘I can’t accept this. I have to make further enquiries.’

After some hours, and much nagging, Vini produced a complete

list of the real names behind the monickers of the Lipton Village Society. He could not tell me where they had been living, but I, with access to Education Department records, was able to find about thirty addresses of the nearest and dearest of these dead-end kids, years out

of date.

The following day I made a preliminary venture to the other side

of the city, to interview M r and Mrs Mahaffy, the parents of T hursday October. They refused to speak to me, for I wore working dress, and they rightly suspected a connection with officialdom. I returned

to Hirst folly, changed into casual cheaperie, and went slumming

again.

This time I received cautious help and an occasional insight into

various members of the Society. Strongarm had a brother in jail, and

the family of Linear seemed a prize pack of villains. One of the nightworking girls came from a household of Plymouth Brethren, who pretended she was dead. I called their bluff and forced an admission

that they prayed for her daily.

After five such visits, I could perceive a pattern, which recurred

with depressing inevitability. No, they hadn’t seen the kid for a while,

and they weren’t particularly worried. “You grow up in this district and

you grow up a survivor,’ said Linear’s thuggish father.

Jeri alone had no accessible kin, and I finally phoned the University library. The Personnel Officer was perfectly willing to chat.

‘He left a month ago. Bright lad, we miss him.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

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Lucy Sussex

‘To a good job with a tea company. Tetley’s, I believe.’

Having followed my line of enquiry to its dead end, I returned to

Vini. We talked about the Lipton Village Society, and then we talked

about ourselves. Several days later, I moved upstairs, into his flat.

‘I have to be honest with you. I really am only interested in old

books of geography.’

‘I’ll be honest too. I need something to lean on, if you pardon the

cliche.’

So we wait, in a quare house, with plural old books and singular old

cat. For what? A visitor from Lipton Village, home of the truants from

reality.

Tim e andflowers

©

ANTHONY PEACEY

The seascape was vast, the shoreline interminable, the sky an endless ceiling of stratocumulus. His chair stood upon a high sandbar.

Behind him the beach curved around the bay, away and away

northwards, to be lost between grey sea and grey sky. Northeastwards across brown flat country utterly devoid of the relief of vegetation brown mountains reared, blued with distance. At his

feet a small river tried to decide if it were now part of the sea, while

its further bank broke into a maze of lagoons extending southwards

to the limit of sight, leaden or quicksilver as the wind touched their

surface.

No bird sang; no insect chirped; only the clean breeze sighed

through the shells and caverns of his ears. But from the mud a few

paces away, at the bottom of the dike, by the river, a thicket of leafless green twigs grew, the tallest perhaps knee-high. This plant was called Rhynia. Its rhizomes extended slowly beneath the mud, striving to confirm their escape from the water. The man was waiting for the sporangia to ripen on the stem tips. It would be 200 million

years before Rhynia s descendants towered above the Carboniferous

swamps to spray their fronded tops at the sun, and a further 100

million before birds appeared to flit and cry down the aisles of

unborn forests.

The man sat, deep between the arms of his chair, absorbed in

spaces of distance, time and horizon. Not far away the water

clopped, drawing his glance. Rings were expanding on the surface;

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30

Anthony Peacey

beyond the spit of mud that sheltered this place the water was now

rougher. Gradually, from the space between sea and sky where

wind sighed on its way from world’s end to world’s end, the grey

light drained. Yet when the land was lost in gloom some of the

lagoons still reflected the sky like polished metal.

He stirred. It was a movement of the body, a shifting of lungs and

stomach as much as anything; he had lost all feeling in his