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

forest but my curiosity was greater than my fear. I came up warily

and stared across the gravestones at the hulking figure. She sat on

the ground, face and body drooping; her eyes were not to be

fathomed.

‘The little ferret,’ said Vera Swift. ‘I might have guessed. Who lies

in this grave?’

‘You knew him. Hilo Hill,’

‘That cannot be.’

‘He is dead now,’ I said. ‘There will be no ballads written.’

‘Damn right there won’t,’ she said. ‘Hilo Hill died long ago, d’ye

hear me?’

‘Aye, aye Captain.’

The ghost of a smile crossed her sad, cruel face. She could see

plainly that I was afraid of her although we were alone and she was

The ballad o jH ilo H ill

131

no longer fleet of foot.

‘Tell me . . . she ordered.

So I told the tale of the old man, his return, his strange ways, his

stories of the Green Ocean and of the Gnai. When I had done Cap

Swift sighed harshly:

‘You think he really did it?’

‘I do, Captain. I’m sure of it.’

‘He told you more . . .’

‘He was afraid of you. Afraid for his life . . .’

‘We were all in fear of our lives,’ she burst out, ‘and I was answer-

able for us all. I needed Hilo Hill, his cache of food, the longboat he

stole. He was a fool to take off . . .’

She reached out and laid a hand on the gravestone as if she spoke

to the dead as well as the living.

‘Hal Gline was a worthy Captain,’ she said, ‘but the wreck had

made him mad. There were forty souls on the beach and not one

would have survived if he had had his way. He was crippled and in

pain; his judgem ent was gone; he did not know how badly we were

holding. His plan was to refloat the Seahawk; he would not hear of

rescue or return.’

She stirred and I was ready to fly off but her voice came, sullen

and defeated.

‘Seventeen years . . . what is there left? To sail the Red Ocean as I

do and store up credits? I might have raised an expedition a

hundred times, to push further west, to cross Gline’s new ocean . . .

it is all there, I have seen it, Hilo spelled it out very clear. Yet the

past holds me back.’

Vera Swift passed a hand over her face as if she would wipe away

the traces of age and authority.

‘Gline was mad,’ she said. ‘All sea captains become a little mad, in

time.’

She heaved herself up and walked away down the hill without a

backward glance. Again it was a question of belief; she had made

no real admissions. I laid the string of lilies on Hilo’s grave; I

missed the old man very keenly at that moment. I longed for one

more session by the garden house; I missed Rayner Mack, my

handsome lad. I thought of old age and of youth; I held fast to the

moment and played a chant of the Gnai, a chant for the healing of

wounds. I still had my music and it would last a lifetime. The place

was hot and still; brown lizards came out to sun themselves upon

the sailors’ graves.

The elixir operon

©

DAVID FOSTER

1

I remember clearly the day I first asked myself the question, what’s

it all for? Up till then I’d gone on as most of us do, never questioning my existence or the job I was brought up to do, or the pounding through my flesh of the 0 2 and the C 0 2 — no, I just did as I was

asked, and if I was thirsty I drank, and if I was hungry I helped

myself.

It’s a hard life here on the bronchial wall. Exchange goes on

twenty-four hours a day. It’s a frontier life: invasions that leave the

place swarming with police, and invaders impersonating police;

I’ve known winds destroy entire walls. No sooner are things back to

normal, than war breaks out, or there’s an earthquake: we often die

as fast as we’re reborn.

Even so, one day the environment took a turn for the worse. I’m

not saying we hadn’t known invasions; it’s a hazard of frontier life.

They don’t supply us with so many channels for nothing. No, we’d

seen invaders and we’d known casualties, but nothing the cops, our

channel-cruising macrophage and lymphocyte forces, couldn’t

handle. As we used to say to one another: hang in there on the cliff

face, sister, and strive for the common good.