The Bone People (25 page)

Who else to tell anyway? The fuzz? The welfare? That means the experts get to wade in, but how does the

section in the Crimes Act go? Something about assault on a child, carries a sentence maximum five years,

child removed from environment detrimental to physical or mental health and wellbeing... sheeit and

apricocks, that's no answer.

But just telling Joe wouldn't do any good... I'd have to look out for the child, and that means getting heavy.

Getting involved.

She shivered.

It always happened.

You find a home and you lose it. Find a friend, grow a friendship, and something intervenes to twist it, kill it.

So what the hell can I do?

She takes down a long narrow black-silk wrapped bundle from the niche by the guitars. Lights incense,

arranges the table, and manipulates the yarrowsticks. Forty-nine stalks worn to the smoothness and oily shine

of muchfingered bone, and somehow they assist a contact with an ancient, compassionate wisdom.

The hexagram given is Kuai, Advancing Again. 'One who is determined to proceed must first demonstrate

the offender's guilt in the high court,' it says. 'At the same time, one must be aware of the peril such action

will place a person in. As well, one's followers must be made to understand how reluctantly one takes up

arms. If this is so proceed, and good fortune comes--'

Peril and guilt and reluctance--

And the mysterious lines of the Duke of Chou, hideously apt, but dismaying:

One walks slowly and with hardship because of flaying. If only one could act as though one were a sheep,

and let the decisions be made by a companion, one could still accomplish something of the plan. But advice

is not listened to, and alone one can do nothing--

The pine scent of the incense is cool, acrid, remote.

Alone, one can do nothing--

She rocks to and fro.

The amplifying hexagram, made from the moving lines, is Hsu, Biding Time.

Simon stamping along the beach and grizzling audibly. He's

tired and it's cold, and his arms ache from carrying two pieces

of driftwood. (She is carrying what feels like half a ton

deadweight of rata, and Joe is bowed under a mighty pile.)

"We'll soon be home, tama."

"Not long to go now, Haimona."

"Just a little way now, eh."

The snivelling goes on.

Suddenly Joe swings round and down. He crouches in front

of the boy, reaches out and touches him briefly on the lips.

Hush up... in Simon's language. The boy gives him a brilliant

smile. Attention, attention, he loves it.

"Okay, come on up, sweetheart," Joe lifts the child, one-armed,

sets him on his hip, and staggers on down the beach.

She gets down the golden guitar for the second time this nightmare day, but this time picks out the ragged

beginnings of a tune. Then it swoops, it flies, it glides... it sounds thin, only the guitar's voice singing the

overture to La Gaza Ladra. It needs an orchestra, a synthesiser to do it justice. Or even that music box.

She opens the lid to the gaudy little box, and the melody jangles

out.

"Well well, me favourite piece among others... overture to The

Thieving Magpie and where'd you get it?"

Joe grins. "It's not mine. Himi picked it for himself." He touches

the fluorescent pink lid. "Okay taste in music but eecch colour

sense eh... I was buying smokes last month and he was with

me. Started playing with Emmersen's display of these boxes while

I was talking tips. And Emmersen said suddenly, Hey look at

your kid, he's dancing, and there's Himi showing --"

"Sim dancing? That I've got to see."

"He does it a lot... play the tune, and you'll see soon enough. Anyway, he fell in love with this thing, and I

like to see him happy. I said leave it alone, but gave Emmy the wink and he picked it up without Himi seeing

and stuck it in with the rest of the gear."

He beams at her. "You should've seen tama's face when I unloaded it. He still plays it about twenty times a

day. When he's home."

She thinks, I'll wait. I'll do nothing except watch out for the brat. Say nothing to Joe but wait for a good time

to tell him my mind on the whole bloody thing. Preferably with my fists.

And I feel eyes on me.

She turns to the door.

"Hullo."

What else to say? Somehow, knowing about the Crosshatch of open weals and scars that disfigure the child

has made him back into a stranger.

He's wan and unsteady and there's a look on his face as though he's just chewed bile. Very sour, very surly

brat. He stands there scowling, wrapped in one of her silk shirts.

"Quick sleep?"

He hasn't reacted to her words, standing there, shaking steadily, but his eyebrows still superiorly high.

It is a surprisingly arrogant look, nose in the air, highchinned, proud-headed. The aloofness of his bearing,

wobble and quiver and all -- the fact that he still manages to look aloof despite the shakes

is offensive.

And what the hell have I done to deserve this coldshoulder

carryon?

You do this too often, and I can understand why Joe would

have a go at you... ah come on, Holmes! Bash him like he has been because he's indulging in some kind of

kiddy snubbing? And how often does he do it? Never before to you.

But she is staring as coldly, as arrogantly back.

And then the child slumps, slithers down to a heap on the floor, a very surprised look coming over his face as

though he didn't intend doing this at all.

And all Kerewin can think of, in her guilty astonishment, is to say,

"Are you okay?"

"That flu you mentioned?" says Kerewin.

"Uh huh."

"I think it's caught up with him."

"Uh huh. He okay?"

"He's better in bed than out of it, I think. I gave him a drink and some dope, and a hottie and one of my shirts for pyjamas, and sent him off to bed."

"Great."

The man's practically asleep, sprawled lithe and careless as his son can be on the sheepskin mat in front of the

fire.

He greeted Kerewin fondly and drunkenly an hour ago, gave her the parcel of chicken pieces he'd won in a

pub raffle, raved on about a game he'd seen played in the afternoon, sipped a coffee, and then curled up by

the fire.

He hasn't noticed anything untoward. Her manner may be reserved, her voice tight and controlled, but he's

got warmth and companionship enough for a dozen, and he's determined to give some away. And after the

talk, he's determined to go to sleep.

Why bring Himi up now, thinks Joe dreamily. It's good he's gone to bed because it's late, and if he's caught a

flu -- did I say he caught the flu? -- well, he'll get over it all right. He's rarely that kind of ill.

"But as soon as he's better, it might be an idea we head south for that holiday, eh."

That penetrates.

Joe raises his head.

"We?" he asks joyfully. "All of us? You coming too?"

"Yes," she says. "I think it might be a damn good idea if I come along in case you," she stutters over the next few words,

Bite or slight or might happen? thinks Joe sleepily, I dunno--

as she finishes, "and anyhow, I can use a change of scenery too."

Joe grins slowly and secretly, hiding the smile in the crook of his arm.

Ahh tama, she likes us eh. She wants to be where we are, after all. It'll all work out fine, Himi, all work fine,

and he gives up the struggle to keep listening to whatever Kerewin might say, and falls very peacefully

asleep.

II

The Sea Round

A Place To Sleep By Day

"Tea time," says Kerewin, and turns the car off the main road.

"Bloody pines," snarling to herself.

"Huh?"

"Look at it."

Cutover bush going past in a blur. Where it isn't cutover, it's pines. They start a chain back from the verge

and march on and on in gloomy parade.

"This place used to have one of the finest stands of kahikatea in the country."

"And they cut it down to make room for those?"

"They did," she says sourly. "Pines grow faster. When they grow. The poor old kahikatea takes two or three hundred years to get to its best, and that's not fast enough for the moneyminded."

She pulls up hard. "I hate pines," she says unnecessarily.

Joe grins. "I gathered. They've got their uses though."

"O there's room in the land for them, I grant you, but why do they have to cut down good bush just to plant

sickening pinus? Look at that lot, dripping with needle blight dammit... this land isn't suitable for immigrants

from Monterey or bloody wherever. Bring the kete, eh."

She slams the door when she's out.

He looks at his son.

"What's she in a bad mood over?"

Simon winces. Joe lowers his voice. "You hurting?"

The boy says No. He's spent the last three days in bed, all taken care of by his father who's suitably

sympathetic to, and thankful for, flu, this time.

Might've been a lie when I said it, but thank you for making it come true. He strokes the child's hair. "Sure?"

he whispers.

Sure, he nods.

"Well, it must be the pines that have upset her." He leans over the seat and picks up the kete, full of

sandwiches and teamaking gear. "You feeling hungry, e tama?"

He winces again.

"Ah hah, that's the problem is it?" Joe grins cheerfully, "Don't worry. We'll eat your share, and you can have a double helping at tea or whenever we get to this place."

He picks his son up, and joins Kerewin.

It's a good place where she's standing, despite the alien trees.

There is a stone-bottomed creek twenty yards away, and the ground slopes towards it. The sun is high, and

the air is warm and windless.

Kerewin has taken her jacket off, and is booting pinecones.

"Now that's a good way to show your opinion of them." He plonks the kete on the ground, and sets Simon

beside it.

She lays her boot into another cone, and it cracks against a tree trunk fifty feet away.

Joe whistles. "Mighty! I'll bet you didn't intend to hit it though--"

For answer, she kicks again, and a second cone shatters on the same tree. She rubs her nails on her shirt

collar, and breathes on them carefully.

"Right," says Joe, challenged, and zooms in on a grand-daddy cone, thick and hard and bristling with club-

ended spines. It explodes on impact.

He shakes his head in mock surprise.

"Gee, poor tree..."

"Poor bloody cone, more like. Anyway that was a fluke," Kerewin dismisses it. "We'll try for best out of three. You've got to hit under that bole, and pinecones that break up before arrival don't count."

"Done. Haimona, be scorekeeper."

The boy, looking less unhappy now he's out of the car, kneels up to watch.

"Turn and turn about," says Kerewin, "And you can go first."

His cone gets there, off centre and under the bole. It skids off at an angle on impact, still intact.

Simon coughs, and hides his eyes.

"Any rude remarks from you Himi, and you can pick up all the pieces after."

"Fine performance," she says, and Joe smirks, "Yeah, it wasn't = too... ."

"I meant the finger wagging," she says, and launches herself at a hapless cone.

It speeds in, dead on target, and splits neatly in two, halves lying defeated at the base of the tree.

"Haiieee," sighs Kerewin, "who is like me?"

The boy whistles, and holds up two fingers.

"An extra point for prowess? Accepted with thanks, but really unnecessary."

"Cheating. We didn't agree on that."

"So? He's the official scorer. You appointed him yourself."

Joe mutters to himself, sights, and sends the pinecone flying with a short vicious swipe.

"Equalled mine, shall we say?" she says thoughtfully.

The cone bursts right on the bole in a shower of chips.

She boots another one away. It doesn't break, but is accounted better than Joe's first effort by the official

scorekeeper.

"Help yourself to the liquorice allsorts, fella me lad," she turns

to Joe, smiling smugly. "Loser stands me a drink, eh?"

"Bribery and corruption," he growls, and kicks hard.

It is spectacular, soaring away in a magnificent parabola and whistling down to hit directly under the bole. He

rubs his hands, and smiles nastily. "A jug for me, nice and cold."

Kerewin frowns at a pinecone. It is a fat little brown one, its knobs still closed, not too heavy but weighty

enough. She swings her leg and hits the cone with calculated force.

"Beuteefull, beuteefull," she intones solemnly, listening to pine chips raining down. Perfectly on target, and this spectacular disintegration at the end of it.

She turns to Joe, who has flung himself down on the ground.

"Two perfect and an excellent against two perfects and a fair, right Simon sunshine?"

Joe whimpers.

"You can't tell me he's an unbiased judge."

Facedown, he can't see the coldness that comes into Kerewin's eyes.

"O, he does all right. That's a glass of pure iced orange juice you owe me, and endeavour to see there's three

shots of tequila in it."

He lifts his head and brushes some of the pineneedles out of his hair. "Done," he says in a normal voice, and then drops his head again and says sobbingly, "Beaten, beaten by a mere female. I can't stand it," pounding the ground with his fist.

"I think you better bring your da a drink of something quick. The sunshine's addled him. Or maybe it's the

pinescent. It does peculiar things to people--"

The boy comes over, radiating concern, mouth full of liquorice, hand full of a cup of soft drink. He dribbles