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

before and their reactions were

extreme.

So we thought. Afterwards, we saw how they had managed to

hinder us until a couple of small outrushes became walls of flame racing over the grass. It reached the eastern perimeter hedge, moving so fast that one of my gardeners, who was coming on duty and taking a

short cut from the guardhouse, was caught by it as he ran.

It hit the eucalypts round the guardhouse and they exploded the

way they do when the sap catches. The guardhouse went up and the

whole of the perimeter hedge on that side. The power to the concealed

fence was cut as the terminals melted free and the whole security system was exposed. It was easy to penetrate when you could see it.

There was an offiduty soldier in the guardhouse, sleeping; he burned

alive. The fire leapt the road and raged into the tinderbox pasture

round the Tebbutt homestead and burned his small herd of tortured

cattle before the Country Fire Authority could do more than reach the

scene.

In the middle of it all Young Feller strolled to freedom through the

west perimeter, walking at his leisure.

The other three went into crocodile lamentations, but by this time

we were putting ideas together and they knew it. And mocked us. Not

openly, but the cool contempt was there. They had what they wanted:

one of their num ber out in the world. A vanguard observer of the

savages in habitat. They knew their value; they knew nothing puni­

On the nursery floor

175

tive could be done to them. But they were wrong about that.

The staff had long ago stopped loving their charges and now they

hated the young bastards who pretended remorse for the dead men

and the holocaust of cattle. The psychologists said objectiveness was

essential, that the kids were the product of a pragmatism designed into

them, however unwittingly. But they were willing enough when finally

given permission to make an all out assault on the superhuman

minds. They went at them with drugs and sensory probes, trying to

discover what they had made, at the risk of destroying it.

I never found out much about that because I was recalled to barrack

duty.

So why mention it? Why, indeed, when this little carnival of cruelty is n o t a

matter of public record? The thin end of a secret? A sop to lure me on? Hist, I

am observed! Eleven interviews and at last a stirring of the enemy.

Dangerous? Undoubtedly, but I am like Childe Roland, whose road

vanished behind him. Nowhere to go but forward.

C onrad’s feeling for me? There is evidence, but it isn’t really my

story; I didn’t know much about it when Conrad showed how he

thought. You’d do better to ask Jilly, if you can find her. She has a

husband and kids somewhere in the city.

And thus, smoothly, am I directed to the next in line!

4

The farmer’s daughter

Hum an interest, Mister Newshound? Should I tell you to keep your

nose out of my private life? O r should I ask, how much it it worth?

And what makes you think it will be worth anything at all?

Because you are primed to make it worth. Educated, poised, disillusioned

and poor; grateful for a couple of hundred. A lady' who has, as they say, ‘seen

better days’. Heroine moves to window - thirtieth floor - holds drape aside to

gaze pensively over great, heartless city; pauses for me to name a sum. Her

husband looks uncomfortable at the blatant demand but doesn’t protest. Has

his orders from script director. All right, then, a small offer, just to play along.

I suppose you’ve seen Derek, because I never told anyone about

meeting Young Feller. It wouldn’t have helped the hunt. Also, Derek’s

wife had to be considered. I don’t know what my husband will think;

I’ve never told him about it.

176

George Turner

He has been told what to think, Jilly. Out with it, girl!

Did Derek tell you that our homestead was burned out by that filthy

kid? We were lucky not to lose our lives. We lost the herd, which was

all Dad had, and it broke him. T hat’s why —

Nearly let out an unscripted bit then. Something like this: 'That's why I had

to marry, for survival, and why I’ve come to this musty husband in this musty

hole.'

I made a fool of myself over Derek. Masculinity, muscle and Special

Service glamour — and little snippets of information to make me

think myself privy to secrets. And dreams of romantic marriage.

Derek told me no lies; he just failed to mention a wife and a teenage

family.

We used to meet at The Willows. That was a picnic spot at a bend

in the creek at the bottom of our Long Paddock. There were half a

dozen big old trees, weeping almost to the ground; in the heart of them

you could not be seen from the further bank. It was one of the Long-

Drought years and the creek was almost dry, just a trickle, but the trees

were still sturdy and Derek would meet me there of an evening.

When the house was burned out and friends were putting us up, I

made excuses to get away because I needed desperately to see him. I

thought he’d surely propose now that I was literally homeless. So I

went there in the late afternoon, knowing he would come as soon as

he had handed over to the evening watch; there were still a couple of

hours of daylight.

I pushed the long, drooping fronds aside, and