Hindsight (24 page)

G
arland left with a promise of returning at dawn with her dozen best security specialists, from which Mira would choose her final team — none of whom, Lockman warned, were likely to relish the thought of taking orders from him.

‘Most will be corporals or sergeants,’ he explained, ‘and I didn’t earn this promotion the right way.’

‘Ability should command its own respect,’ Mira said, ‘just as Ben earned my respect in the beginning.’

‘You’ve earned it from her, too,’ Ben said, ‘and that’s no easy feat.’

Lockman stayed quiet for a long moment, tapping a stick to the tune of the crackling campfire. ‘For her sake, I should have declined.’

Ben stirred his coffee, keeping close to their campfire.

‘Why didn’t you?’ Mira asked.

‘It’s not every day a general asks someone like me for a personal favour.’

Mira hugged the joey and settled in her own camp chair, having already impressed upon Garland that she wouldn’t have Lockman or anyone else ordered to work with her against their will or even against their personal irks, if they had any, about working with blind people.

‘You can go any time,’ she assured him.

He answered her with silence again briefly. ‘Sorry, ma’am. I keep forgetting you can’t see. I was nodding just now, and if I can’t keep track of a glaring little detail like that, what use can I really be?’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Lieutenant.’

‘You shouldn’t. Garland might have bumped me up two ranks with another field commission, but then in the next breath she left a whole company of spec ops boys to secure the perimeter. It’s so thick out there, they could hold hands — which is either a measure of her lack of confidence in me, or the scale of trouble she’s expecting.’

‘Both, probably.’ Ben slurped the froth off his coffee. ‘Overkill either way, if you ask me.’

‘Let’s hope that’s all it is. Last time I saw so many muzzles on a perimeter, the American president was in town. How big is this place anyway? A hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty acres?’

‘Hundred and twelve,’ Mira said, ‘but that’s just this clearing. The property runs for another two hundred acres over that hill to a ghost town, and three hundred up that ridge behind me.’

‘View would be spectacular for a house,’ Lockman said. ‘Thirty or forty of them probably.’

‘Per street is the plan, I think. Developers bought it from my estate.’

‘You’re here anyway?’

‘Greenies. Injunction, and I needed to see it.’

‘Why’s that? You’ve been paid big bucks, I expect, whether the buyer makes money or not?’

Mira shrugged. ‘You can’t understand. For soldiers, land like this is only good for war games and blistering your feet.’

He chuckled and tapped a brief beat on the ground again with his stick. ‘Oh, I can think of a few other things. I own twelve hundred acres myself — inland. Not worth more than a roo’s tail, but it’s home when I need one.’

‘Okay, so maybe you might understand. My poet trees were just over there.’

‘Sorry, did you say poetry?’

‘Poetry. On. Trees. Embossed in gold Braille, actually. My house was perched in their branches, one room per tree — only saying it like that is so empty of atmosphere. You had to be here — feel the words yourself and hear the leaves sing in the breeze.’

‘Sounds nice.’

‘Nice?’ She laughed. ‘I spent a decade trying to get back here, and by the time I did, it was sold out from under me, and the buyers were dancing a jig in their bulldozers.’ She leaned forward to poke the fire blindly with a sturdy branch, not so much for the sake of the fire, but because it gave her an excuse to turn her oh-so-readable face away from him. ‘Bad luck like that haunts me, Lieutenant.’

‘I had noticed that, actually.’ Something in his voice warned her that wasn’t the only thing he’d noticed about her.

Mira chewed on her tongue, wishing she could also explain how her luck always U-turned for the better every time he appeared, even if he wasn’t always directly responsible. However, she couldn’t do that without mentioning how valuable the sunshades had turned out to be, and how he’d been there as the guard in the hall on the first day she’d met the medical scientists
and
the day they’d figured out what she could really see.
And
the day she’d escaped Kitching.
And
now also with the two MPs.

‘So why
did
you accept the job?’ Ben asked, still pacing with his coffee. ‘Were you really on holidays?’

‘Ha! Not anymore.’

‘So why did you let us think it might be a cover story?’

‘It’s what she wanted to hear. Sorry, ma’am, but you seemed convinced I was part of a conspiracy, so I thought if I let you nail it on me, you might relax a little — and you did. Only I didn’t realise at the time that you had every reason to worry.’

‘You didn’t tell Garland about the gift you brought me?’

‘Irrelevant. A private gift on a private errand. Sounds like she guessed where it came from anyway.’

‘I notice you’re still avoiding the prime question,’ Ben said, his voice still heavy with suspicion. ‘Why did you take this job with Mira? Even if you were keen to play soldier instead of fisherman? Your mates are all out there in the forest next door, playing shadow games. More fun to be with them than us surely?’

‘Ah, but you have the campfire, and I have two bags of marshmallows.’

Mira laughed. ‘Of course you do — and spiked sticks, no doubt, all cut and trimmed to a safe length.’

‘I just finished shaping the tips.’ Lockman sounded astonished, and Ben laughed.

‘You know what this campfire is still missing?’ Mira said, longing for a little more normality. ‘Music.’

‘I can fix that,’ Lockman said.

Mira expected him to break into song, but instead he walked to his truck and shuffled through his gear.

‘Guitar?’ Ben said. ‘But that looks electric?’

‘Yep. Rigged through an inverter to the spare car battery. The amps aren’t great, but volume isn’t the aim when I’m camping anyway.’ Returning to his stump by the fire, he plucked a few squawky notes, then proceeded into the most passionate and lively improvisation of Beethoven’s fifth symphony — second only to the version Mira had heard earlier that day in his truck, with backing from other instruments.

‘You play in a band?’ she asked.

‘Occasionally with mates, but mostly I play with myself.’ He chuckled. ‘That didn’t come out right. I use recording software so I can play each instrument separately, and then overlay.’ He finished with the ee-i-o notes from
Old Macdonald’s Farm
. ‘Not what you’d expect in a campfire song, I guess, but you can’t beat Beethoven for a good beat. He was rocking before rock was rock.’

‘Oh, I love Beethoven!’ Mira said, unable to contain her smile, ‘and Mozart, and Pachelbel and Bach. May I have a go, please?’

‘You play?’

‘She plays anything,’ Ben said. ‘Piano, drums, flute, violin. At Serenity, she played them all from memory. Totally amazing, and all by ear. No lessons.’

‘That’s not exactly true, Ben. My mother taught me a few things. Since then, I was rarely allowed.’

‘Okay, watch the power cord,’ Lockman warned as he settled the instrument in her lap. ‘Sorry if it’s a little uncomfortable. It’s a leftie and I notice you’re right-handed. The strings will be upside down to what you’re used to.’

‘Then I’ll play left,’ she said, turning it again. ‘I can play either way so long as I feel the music inside me. It’s been a while, though, so my finger-strength might let me down.’ She familiarised herself with the shape of the instrument first — unusual in itself, since it felt like it had been manufactured deliberately into the shape of a machine gun — then she plucked the first few notes of her mother’s favourite:
Ode to Joy.

Electric! The notes came to life in her hands and she swiftly became one with the music, tickling the most beautiful sounds into the crisp night air, and going wild at the end.

‘Wow,’ she said when she was done. ‘This thing speaks to me. Hard to keep it slow — like keeping a wild dog on a leash. A whole wilderness!’

Lockman chuckled. ‘Don’t hold back. Try an improv. Rule the neck and make it tell your own story.’

Mira laughed. ‘Oh, no. My story is too boring! I want to play something lively.’ Inspired by Lockman’s improvisation of Beethoven’s fifth, which reminded her of their fast getaway, she considered the ninth symphony, second movement, which always sounded to her like a love story set on a battlefield — ending in friendship, like her and Ben.

Starting with the simplest notes, her fingers tickled softly over the strings until she became one with the music again and the symphony rose vibrantly from her mind to skip and dance among the stars. Closing her eyes, she could imagine a whole orchestra around her. Not that she needed one. The electric guitar sang like its own small band — exhilarating, and yet she felt contentment for the first time in as long as she could remember.

‘Careful,’ Ben said as he swiped the guitar from her lap. ‘You could wake up half the nation.’

‘If she’s not safe here,’ Lockman said, ‘she’s not safe anywhere. Aside from the SAS, there are also thermal sensors on the perimeter and a patrol offshore.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Mira said, frowning again. ‘Play something happy, but quieter, please, for Ben’s sake.’

Lockman obliged by caressing the long soothing notes from the start of Pachelbel’s
Canon
.

‘Yeah, that’s better,’ Ben said, but the melody burst immediately into the musical equivalent of laughter, and of children chasing each other about the dance floor of a wedding.

‘I give up,’ Ben said. He slumped onto the ground beside Mira and tapped a simple backing beat with two sticks, which made them all laugh, then Lockman turned the volume down as low as it would go and plucked random tunes that were far more suited to camping.

They spent the next two hours passing the guitar back and forth and roasting marshmallows and talking about fishing, and cars, and Mira’s method of taming local wildlife, little by little, by making them feel unthreatened whenever they entered her environment.

‘Do you have many animals on your land?’ she asked Lockman.

‘Sure, it’s a farm,’ Lockman said as he caressed another soft tune from his instrument. ‘I used to ride up on the range before dawn and infiltrate the herds of wild brumbies. If you can get past their sentries you can get anywhere. Rewarding in other ways, too, when you have foals wake up around you as if you’re already part of their world. Same principle as you, I guess. They tame so quickly through their own curiosity, so long as you’re not threatening them. Some are even keen for a human hand.’

‘Do you keep many horses?’ Mira asked. ‘I’ve never touched an animal so big in my life.’

‘A few. I used to breed stock horses. Good ones. My stallion and five of the mares were world champs, but I had to turn them out when I enlisted. Ironically, they’re now running with the brumbies.’

‘You didn’t sell them?’ Ben asked. ‘World champs must be worth a fortune.’

‘Too precious?’ Mira asked.

‘Best friends, more like it — and I don’t sell my friends. Not for any price.’

Mira nodded, knowing that she’d sensed that inner core of goodness about him, even when she’d trusted him less than Freddie Leopard. Yet there it was, and if she could attract his friendship, despite that wretched barrier of his uniform, she hoped she might also be able to achieve the grand prize of his trust. She didn’t need much. Just enough to help her disappear from Garland’s grasp when the time came. How, was the big question, when she didn’t know the first thing about making friends or earning trust herself, and was still struggling to put her own trust in anyone other than Ben. Even lending trust to Matron Sanchez from one day to the next was a stretch. Meanwhile, Lockman had already sworn an oath to the army and Garland.

‘I’m off to sleep,’ she said, feeling worn out just thinking about it.

She headed for Lockman’s truck, having already turned down the use of the marquee and portable barracks that Garland had left behind for them.

‘If you must sleep in here,’ Lockman said, beating her to the driver’s door, ‘at least let me open the vents and drop the windows to keep a fresh air flow.’

Mira hugged the joey against her chest. ‘I’m sure Josie would appreciate that.’

‘Night, ma’am,’ he replied, but Mira suspected from his tone that he was also smiling. He shifted the gear stick into a forward gear to hold it out of her way for the night, applied the park brake, and closed the door as she made herself comfortable across the seats.

Listening to the crackle of the campfire, she heard the soft pad of his stride as he returned to the fire. Normally, she could have learned a lot from the sound of almost anybody’s stride, but he sounded confident in himself when he’d confessed the opposite. That was something else she appreciated about him: that he wasn’t afraid to voice concerns, or relax with music, which still sang in her heart.

She listened to him talking to Ben for a long while about camping and more fishing on Straddie, and then as the sounds of the fire began to fade and a chill crept into the air to replace the smell of coffee, she heard Ben’s voice drop almost to a whisper.

‘How did you know her name was Mirage? I know her file off by heart and it’s not mentioned once, not even on her guardianship papers.’

‘Beats me,’ Lockman replied. ‘I guess Garland’s file must be bigger than yours.’

‘I guess it must be.’

Silence followed for another long moment, then she heard shuffling to kick dust over flames and smelled the smoke thickening.

‘Are you up to this?’ Ben asked.

‘Are you?’ Lockman replied. ‘Seems obvious that you got the sharper end of the colonel’s wrath last month.’

‘Seriously,’ Ben said, resuming his pacing. ‘Why did you take this job?’

‘Seriously? She intrigues me. I can’t nail it exactly. You called her eye candy, but it’s much more than that.’