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

but he felt, despite protective coloration, conspicuously old. Most

of the dancers were half his age. He sidled rangily among them,

cold-eyed and lean, to all appearances an ageing shark after little

roe, his bony lantern-jawed face embellished with glittering ice-

blue scales, each the size of a fingernail. U nder his loose jerkin of

silvery glittermesh, he carried no firearm, and he missed the comforting weight — but he would not need it tonight.

Baker kept watch on a couple across the thick-aired room, not

getting close enough to draw their attention. They were even older,

though the woman did not look her age. The serious-looking man,

Alderson, spoke earnestly to his fashionable companion. Both were

in their mid-thirties. The hidden thing they had in common with

Baker was this: all three had shown the talent to reach positions of

great responsibility while still comparatively young.

The room was almost opaque with smoke from the stage and

from the filters that people here insisted on smoking frenetically.

Faces came and went behind the wisps of smoke, navigational

buoys looming from sea-fog, as quickly lost behind its veils.

Lachlan Alderson’s m anner was older than his face, and he was

prematurely grey, white at the temples. His wire-rimmed glasses

added to the enthusiastically serious look. Baker caught himself; he

was staring at the lawyer. Tracking Loerne and Alderson here was

counter-productive if they became aware of him. His assignment

required absolute discretion.

Baker averted his gaze and worked his way towards the bar. His

Unit had done well at keeping covert surveillance on the nine m em bers of the Wallace Inquiry. For all that they represented the extreme ends of the Inquiry’s ideological spectrum, Loerne and

Alderson seemed to prefer each other’s company to that of the older

Parliamentarians, sociologists and professors of science who completed the Board of Inquiry. Each was fascinated by the other’s opposed Weltanschauung. Unfortunately, that was all that the Unit

had uncovered: there was nothing scandalous about their relationship that Baker could exploit —not that he would have expected it from Alderson, concerned parent and elder of a fundamentalist

Glass Reptile Breakout,

79

church.

Though only these two were young enough to look at all

plausible in the Searoom, all nine members had made frequent

visits to the Season Hotel and the other Melbourne venues for the

miracle music: the Rocks and Sand Club in the City; the Fishcave

along the Esplanade in Port Melbourne; the more dignified

miracle bars patronised by a slightly older set in Carlton. Among

the Searoom’s complement of extreme young people in their sea-

tribe gear, Loerne and especially Alderson appeared out of place,

but not ridiculously so. Plenty of people were attired more conservatively than Loerne, including an element of hapless men in their twenties and thirties, fooling themselves that they were going to net

the young roe—who, of course, would have nothing to do with

them.

Baker smiled at this thought, and at another: he could tell the

Wallace Inquirers more about the BioFeed miracles than anybody

else here —perhaps more than they would be comfortable hearing.

Gabby Loerne turned squarely to face Alderson. Only one cheek

was jewelled with scale implants. At heart she was a no-nonsense

woman, a tough-minded human scientist, equally at ease, he

assumed, in an academic conference room, a St Kilda dance

venue, or a jungle village. H er arcane expertise in group rites and

her overt gestures of identification with the youth culture she had

publicly defended did not take away from her down-to-earth

manner. H er touches of youthful fashion were entirely within the

bounds of taste; he had never seen her show passionate emotion.

Gabby’s large green eyes gave no offence and clearly expected

none from Alderson.

‘There’s nothing disturbing about this,’ she said in her comforting plain manner.

W hat could he say? In his fashion, he was also a practical human

being, a moralist, true, but it was precisely because he was a

moralist with his feet on the ground that he insisted that his society

required more than law for its morality: enforcement demanded

law, yes,