The Other Tree (19 page)

Luke sifted through the various texts, comparing the markings to those on the Sumerian map. The photograph of the chapel floor was getting quite wrinkled by now, and there may have been a spider-related stain on the back; Luke had managed to convince himself it was tomato juice.

They were all landmarks
, thought Luke, scrutinising the pictograms on the Sumerian map. Mountains, valleys, rock formations, and one which may have roughly translated to “make-out spot,” but none of the pictograms meant “garden.” Or “Eden.” Or anything even remotely Biblical.

“Our university has an excellent system of student loans,” said Sorakova, pulling a navy, calico-covered book from a shelf. “And we have sausage sizzles once a month. All you can eat for a dollar.”

Sorakova put the navy book on the table next to Luke—it was titled
Cuneiform for Fun
.

“Really, sausage sizzles…” said Luke, opening the navy book only to be assaulted by pages of uncomfortably large-print cuneiform.

“Have you seen our natural history collection in the East Wing? Ask them to show you the thing with teeth.”

Luke wasn’t sure he wanted to see the thing with teeth.

He quickly busied himself with the large-print cuneiform, picking up useful phrases like “I’ve come to clean the atrium” and “Your dog is eating my offspring.” Luke stopped suddenly, his eyes locked onto a series of familiar lines and hatchets. He placed the Sumerian photograph alongside the symbol and compared the markings. He looked at the translation beneath the symbol.

Sign
.

A chill shivered through Luke’s chest, and something tingled at the periphery of his mind. It couldn’t possibly…

Luke flicked rapidly through the pages of the navy book—this line here, that series of strokes there, those wedges lined up like that. Pages ruffled in the hushed room as Luke cross-checked and compared, scribbling notes and syllables onto a piece of paper, words crossed out then corrected. It was like a crossword, or a puzzle, slowly taking shape as pieces were filled and gaps were bridged.

Gradually, the ruffling stopped, and Luke stared at the scrawled sheet in front of him.

Oh my…gosh
.

It had to be some kind of elaborate hoax or ancient prank. A thousand years ago, there must have been a garret full of delinquent monks, cackling themselves into insanity as they imagined the look on the face of some fervent Bible decoder putting the pieces together.

The inky letters stared back at him.

The word of our fathers shall be the salvation of our sons. To return to Eden, man must know the Lord, in head, heart and spirit. Unto him shall a sign be given to light the way
.

It was Book of June.

But the Book of June, the calfskin text, couldn’t have been more than a thousand years old, two at the absolute maximum. The Dead Sea scrolls were less than two thousand years old, and they were the oldest credible record of the Old Testament. The Sumerian tablet, on the other hand, would predate the Book of June by two to three thousand years. So, was the tablet quoting from the Book of June, or was the Book of June quoting from the tablet, or were they both quoting from an even older, shared source? Luke’s mind raced in circles, trying to stuff the chicken back into the egg.

He looked up suddenly, the pale gold daylight sparkling on burbling fountains. Through the window, the opposite building shimmered in the heat.

Luke rose to his feet.

“Don’t forget we have teppanyaki at the RSL every Wednesday night,” said Sorakova. “And karaoke at Han’s takeaway on Friday. His “Moon River” just breaks your heart.”

“Thanks for your help,” said Luke.

Faces, voices, silhouettes hummed through his mind. There was something that needed to be taken care of.

* * *

Scuff marks blackened the floor of the hallway, and Luke could hear the faint squealing of shoes on the basketball court. The Corrawong Community Facilities building ran alongside the university, and appeared to have been designed by the same function-over-form architect, who had only included windows under duress. A spartan concrete gymnasium had been partially converted into a nursing home for farm equipment, and the dried-up swimming pool was scattered with toys, currently used as a child care holding pen.

Luke walked past a woodworking room full of stunted balsa garden gnomes and began to climb the dim stairwell to the second floor. Luke had never seen the appeal of garden gnomes, or decorative flamingos. He had his doubts about the usefulness of actual flamingos, but he had been told that all of God’s creatures had a purpose. Luke wasn’t sure whether being a flamingo counted as a purpose, but he had tried not to question it.

Not asking questions had, however, made it exceedingly difficult to answer them. Especially when people asked about wasps, which happened more often than you might expect.

What about the parasitic wasps?
, they would ask.
Did God create them?

What about the wasps that eat baby caterpillars from the inside out?

What about the grotesque brain-eating wasps that ride on helpless spiders and slowly suck out their brains with straws until the spiders become demented and die?

Did God make them, too?

Well
, Luke would say.

That’s why he had made the business cards.

When the parish priest had gently taken Luke aside one day and told him they had an exciting new assignment for him, he had thought perhaps they were sending him to join a mission in North Korea. He was under no illusions about his popularity at St Wulfstan’s Church.

When they told him about the Religious Guidance position at Varria University, he had thought—well, firstly he had thought, “Thank goodness they’re not sending me to North Korea.” Then he had thought the university post sounded quite good—surely college students were too busy getting drunk and studying themselves senile to have existential crises.

Instead, he had discovered there were actually several distinct groups of people who sought out Religious Guidance counsellors. There were the believers, seeking reassurance, advice, and relevant-sounding quotes from the Bible. Luke had decided that preaching to the converted was one of the cruisier jobs around. Then there were the militant agnostics and atheists, who occasionally plastered his door with posters screaming “Remember the Crusades!” and “Religion is a mental disorder!” Luke had found the best way to deal with this group was a chair lodged firmly against the door.

However, the toughest ones to deal with were the Undecided. These were people who wavered on the cusp of faith, standing at the edge of the chasm of disbelief, reaching out to him and asking to be saved. They had questions, sensible questions, simple questions—and Luke’s assurances about faith and mysterious ways only went so far. He could see them falling away, into sorrow, into faithlessness, into abandonment, into anger, still reaching out as they sank beneath the waves, while he stood by, throwing handfuls of air.

Luke stepped into the second-storey hallway, the afternoon light filtering through unwashed windows. He walked past empty classrooms, past sewing machines and unfinished quilts, past macaroni sculptures and waiting easels. His steps slowed, and he crept silently towards a door that stood slightly ajar. He was sure this was the one.

His fingertips pressed against the daisy-patterned door, and as it creaked open, it occurred to Luke that perhaps he should have brought a weapon. The small classroom was empty except for a lithe shadow standing by the far window. The woman spun around, her hand already reaching inside her Louis Vuitton handbag. She stared at Luke.

“Crap,” she said.

“Hi,” said Luke.

There was a long pause, as each tried to gauge which one of them was entitled to say, “Gotcha!” The woman at the window was slim and lean, of Southeast Asian descent. She had fine black hair, tied in a long flick of a ponytail, and either flawless skin or extremely expensive foundation. Judging from her black Chanel tank top and skinny designer jeans, Luke would bet on the latter.

“Let me guess,” said Luke. “SinaCorp.”

“Walk away, Bible boy,” said the woman. “Pretend you never saw me.”

Luke took a casual step forward, and caught the faintest scent of Anna Sui.

“Maybe the first time, maybe the second, maybe even the third,” said Luke. “But not this time. Who are you?”

She watched Luke carefully, like a cat watching a kamikaze mouse delivering a manifesto.

“Lien. Gonna put me on a divine blacklist?”

“You were at the cemetery that day,” said Luke. “And on the plane to Italy. You were the one who put the bug on Chris in Romania.”

“She would have found it earlier if she bothered washing her hair properly,” said Lien defensively, flicking her own gossamer ponytail.

“I’m not sure I would have recognised you,” said Luke. “But every face with every voice, every voice with its confession. The telltale signs of hidden sins that follow you outside the confessional… All those things you shouldn’t know, shouldn’t notice, can drive a person insane.”

Lien cocked her head, eyeing Luke. She wasn’t sure if what he just said was either relevant or coherent, but he seemed to be venting about something. His eyes had taken on a strange, haunted look.

“I’m just doing my job,” said Lien.

That usually worked.

“Thou shalt not steal.” Luke took a step forward. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods.”

Luke took another step forward, and Lien shifted uncomfortably.

“Thou shalt not kill,” said Luke, his voice low and dangerous.

“It doesn’t mention assault and battery. Look, we don’t have to get in each other’s way.”

“I think we already are. There’s a flight leaving Corrawong tonight. Be on it.”

Lien looked at Luke coldly.

“You’re on the wrong side,” said Lien.

“At the risk of sounding facetious, I think I’m more of an authority on right and wrong than SinaCorp.”

“I guess we’ll see,” said Lien, heading towards the door.

“It’s not too late to walk away,” said Luke, his tone a little softer. “You seem like you have a lot to live for.”

Lien stopped at the doorway and turned to look at Luke, with his oversized cardigan and his perilous psychological issues. There was something so desperate and fragile about him. Like a hermit crab with a broken shell.

“The other guy,” said Lien. “He’s not with me.”

“Other guy?” asked Luke.

“The other guy who’s been following you since Romania.”

Lien smiled and left the room.

* * *

Chris tramped through the blazing quadrangle, punching numbers into her phone. The screen was smudged with sweat and red dust. She lifted the mobile to her ear.

“Hello?”

Beep. Crackle
.

“Hello?” came Mr. Arlin’s voice, interference rattling like a poker machine hall.

“Dad! It’s Chris, how are you?”

“Good.” Cough. “Are you still in Romania with that priest?”

“I’m in Corrawong.”

“Are you sure he’s a priest? I heard it’s a popular cover for scam artists, drug smugglers, and strippers.”

“I don’t really think he’s got the imagination for any of those,” said Chris. “Have you been seeing the specialist?”

“It’s fine.” Cough. “Just take care—” Cough. “You’re breaking up—” Cough.

Beep
.

Chris stared at the phone, gripping the case so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Soon, she’d be forced to make a choice, and she wasn’t ready to do that. She was so close, she was sure of it—she could finish what her mother started. But time was running—

Chris looked up at the sound of crunching grit and saw Luke jogging towards her, clouds of red dust kicking up around his feet.

“How’d it go?” asked Luke.

Chris looked around at the near-deserted quadrangle—only the suicidal, or the sun-deprived European exchange students, loitered in the searing afternoon heat. One lone young woman lay on a beach towel, wearing only a bikini and a layer of coconut oil, giving a very graphic demonstration of organic matter turning into human charcoal.

“Let’s go somewhere private,” said Chris.

This, however, proved rather difficult in a town the size of a celebrity Hummer. Chris and Luke wandered through the silent, baking streets, the wide roads lined with wilting banksia trees. They walked past one-person diners and hamburger shacks, past clay-dirt yards with brittle yellow grass, past plastic play equipment stripped white by the sun.

“Let’s just get a room,” said Luke, his hair plastered limply to his head.

“Jesus spent forty days in the desert, and you can’t handle forty minutes,” panted Chris.

“This is not an epic journey of spiritual enlightenment and physical denial. This is finding a place to sit.”

“Fine.” Chris trudged back towards the rental car. “The guidebook recommended a place two Ks that way.”

“When you say ‘recommended,’ you mean cheap, right?”

“It rated very highly on the eco-friendly scale,” said Chris, sounding faintly insulted.

“By ‘eco-friendly,’ you mean there’s no air-con, right?”

“You have to twist everything around. You should have gone into marketing or corporate accounts.”

As it turned out, not only was there no air-conditioning at the Black-Footed Ferret Lodge, but there was no television, no refrigerator, no telephone, and no ensuite. In fact, it didn’t have rooms, so much as cabins.

“We like to think we offer an authentic, rustic experience of Australia,” smiled Yvonne, the dark-haired woman at the reception desk.

The reception desk appeared to have been made from wood reclaimed from old Ikea furniture.

“Complimentary blowflies on the pillow,” muttered Luke. “Ow!”

“We’d like two rooms, please,” said Chris, peeling her foot from his toes.

Yvonne beamed benignly and unhooked two keys from a handcrafted board, which still appeared to be shedding pieces of bark and beetle legs. It was amazing how there were more beetle legs in the world than there were beetles with missing legs.

“Did you know that the black-footed ferret is actually related to the badger, and feeds largely on prairie dogs?” said Yvonne. “It’s currently on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss and declining populations of uneaten prairie dogs.”