Time Past (13 page)

Nine

I
n the dream I chase an elusive figure along a street in a place like the out-town. Overhead in the apricot sky hovers an Invidi ship. But the underside of the ship is the same color as the sky and nobody else notices. If I stop to tell someone about the Invidi, I’ll never catch my target. And Henoit, blast him, keeps whispering in my ear,
Nor death shall us part, Nor death shall
…

I didn’t know why I woke. The only sounds in the tent were Will’s soft wheeze, Murdoch’s rumbling snore from his mattress, and an intermittent
tap-thud
from the roof as the wind lifted a loose corner and set it down again.

Will’s leg weighed on my stomach like a girder. I pushed at it and squirmed away. He twitched once, then flung his arms wide and took up more space. I slid out of bed. Murdoch’s wrist timer, placed on the crate, showed two A.M. Too early for the Invidi, surely. May first had only just begun to crawl across the Pacific.

When I opened the door, the growl of the city sounded louder in the darkness, punctuated by sounds muted during the day—overhead roar of high-flying planes, the whine of vehicles from the motorway to the south.

The sky was its usual dull brown-gray, orange on the horizon. Not a star to be seen, not even straight overhead. Around me, the irregular shapes of shacks and tents. The smell of open drains, strong enough to have shape itself. And another smell I couldn’t quite identify.

A dog barked a couple of lanes away. The skinny yellow creature that guarded the iron scrap gatherer’s cart. Another dog, farther away. Then another, closer. In the next lane maybe. Too many dogs barking.

I looked up. Could the animals sense an alien presence?

A sleepy voice yelled shut up at the dogs. Then more voices yelled, several blocks away. I realized that the other smell was smoke. Coming on the wind, which gusted dust and heavier particles into my face. A hot, dry wind, blowing from the west.

I turned back to shake Murdoch awake, and far off somebody yelled the word.

Fire.

“Get up, Bill.”

He sat up and automatically groped for his trousers. “Whatsup?”

“Fire. Don’t know how bad.”

“Shit.” He rolled over and grabbed the two water bottles. “You got anything important here?”

“No.” I grabbed my inhaler from beside the bed and shook Will. “It’s all at the Assembly office... Will, come on. You have to get up.”

More voices outside, slap of sandals on the earth.
Tap-thud
from the roof. “Move it.” Murdoch shoved the bottles at me and picked up the still-groggy Will.

I stepped outside and was nearly bowled over by a woman and two men running. The woman held a scrunched-up blanket and was sobbing.

“Which way’s it coming from?” Murdoch said behind me. I could hear more noise from the riverside. “We go this way.” I pointed south and went ahead.

People milled about in the light from open doorways. Only a few moved purposefully like us. The comments we overheard were merely curious, and I wondered if we had been premature in fleeing.

What’s going on?

Fire down the road.

Not that bloody bonfire again. I told ’em I’d report that...

What is burning?

I turned to Murdoch. He put Will down and held his hand.

“Where are we going?” said Will. “Is it a real fire?”

“I don’t know how big it is,” I said. “Maybe it’s only a small one, but you can’t be too careful.” Twenty-five years of living in enclosed artificial environments had given me a healthy respect for fire and the way it sucks away oxygen.

“You’d better go to Levin’s,” I said to Murdoch. “Grace will be worried.”

“What about you?” His voice was sharp.

“I’m going along to the Assembly. See if I can get the telescope out.” I held out one of the water bottles and started to go back past them, but Murdoch got in my way.

“Hang on. We don’t split up. Too much chance we never find each other again.”

“Bill, the scope’s our best hope of contacting...”

Will was staring confusedly from my face to Murdoch’s. Down the way we’d come there was a loud crash. More people began to run. In the distance a siren sounded.

“It’s today,” I pressed. “I won’t have time to make...”

“That’s why we got to stay safe.” Murdoch had to yell for me to hear him over the crashing, crackling sound and the babble of voices. When I looked back, smoke billowed upward, lighter gray against the dark brown-gray sky.

He picked up Will again and shoved me. “Go on.”

I hesitated.

“I didn’t come all this way to lose you now,” growled Murdoch, and shoved me harder.

“Maria, let’s go,” whined Will.

We fled with the rest of the out-town. We started off in the direction of Silverwater Road, thinking we’d walk south along it to Levin’s house where Grace would be waiting, but with thick smoke in our eyes we became confused in the maze of small lanes. People pushed us the other way, toward the river.

Will kept his eyes squeezed almost shut, whimpering. My feet were sore and battered from tripping on stones and rubbish. The water bottles dragged at my shoulders until we had to pass along a lane, where the heat and crackling loomed from both sides.

“On his hair.” Murdoch directed me to soak Will and then we dribbled the rest on each other and ran through the lane.

We ran for what seemed like hours, but it was only a few minutes. The noise of the sirens grew behind us but the smoke had thinned. Those who’d run, like us, now mingled in the street with the residents of shacks and houses who came out to see what was happening.

“Where are we?” I croaked.

Murdoch shook his head. When he tried to speak, he doubled over coughing.

“I want to go home,” said Will.

“Which way is it?” I said.

“I don’t know.” He began to cry.

“It’s okay.” Murdoch rubbed his back and held him close, in between coughs.

The smoke-filled dark whirled around us. I asked a man in yellow pajamas which way was south, and he pointed back the way we’d come. Surely that can’t be right. I felt sick and put my head down, one hand on Murdoch’s shoulder.

“Vince!” squealed Will.

Murdoch and I whirled around and there was Vince, puffing and coughing like us. He didn’t look singed or hurt, but his face was shiny with sweat and at the sound of Will’s voice his teeth flashed in a grin.

“Hey, you got out too.”

He led us easily away from the edges of the out-town through streets gradually clearer of smoke, then under the motorway crossing to Levin’s place, chattering with what must have been relief at finding someone he knew.

“I got stuck back there, was visiting Mikey over near the racecourse. You remember Mikey, Will? Used to dunk you in the water tank. Come and hold hands, mate. Yeah, and then all shit breaks out, they reckon it was somebody smoking and all that dry rubbish went up. Fire engines took their time. I reckon they couldn’t care less. They prob’ly think, good way to get rid of the rubbish and all that crap.”

I followed, too exhausted to query Vince, Murdoch holding my hand instead of Will’s. Behind us a cacophony of sirens, voices, wind, and the breaking-up of flimsy dwellings. How could the Assembly office have survived this? Today the Invidi would arrive and I was back to square one.

Be grateful we’re alive, said the voice of common sense. We seemed to walk for much longer than we’d run from the flames. Houses around us.

Grace’s voice in the darkness.

“Will? Thank God.” She grabbed him in a fierce hug. I looked back in the direction of the river flats and the sirens, but couldn’t see anything except a faint glow in the sky above the ridge of the motorway. A shift in the wind brought a whiff of burning rubber, stronger than the smell that permeated our hair and clothes.

“You two okay?” she said. “Come inside.”

“I’m okay too,” said Vince pointedly.

“Thanks, darl.” Grace bestowed a wet kiss on his cheek and Vince recoiled.

“Yech. I’m off.” He started to slouch away, then turned back. “Levin around?”

“He went off about nine,” said Grace distractedly, and shooed Will inside.

I grabbed Murdoch’s arm as he went to follow her. “Bill, we need to go back and check the Assembly. Maybe the fire didn’t go that way.”

In the glow from the open doorway I could see the sympathy on his face. “Wait a little while. When the fire’s out we’ll go and see if it’s safe.”

“But the telescope...”

“Yeah. I know.”

I didn’t want sympathy. I wanted to smash something in rage at the unexpected contrariness of things.

Ten

G
race shut the door of the bedroom and sat with Will until he went to sleep. Murdoch and I washed off the worst of the grime and soot in Levin’s bathroom.

I watched the brownish gray water swirl around the old porcelain of the hand basin and couldn’t help thinking of hopes being washed away. Today the Invidi would come, and I had no way of contacting them. I would grow old— the pale, haggard face in the mirror seemed to confirm it— in this cursed century, while in my own world the neutrality vote finishes one way or another and Jocasta moves on, with the Four Worlds continuing to dominate the Confederacy, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I couldn’t get the smell of smoke out of my hair without having a shower, and using Levin’s shower was not something I wanted to do. Not rational, but I preferred to leave the stink in there, a symbol of my defeat.

In Levin’s living room reporters on televid told us what was going on two kilometers to the north. Sirens blared and we couldn’t tell if they were outside or on the screen. Behind the reporter’s circle of light, fire trucks siphoned water from the river onto what looked like a huge bonfire, and dark figures moved in front of the flickering light. It looked like the shanties of the main out-town over on the old oil company site. Made of old construction material, wood, and canvas, they must have fed the flames like tinder.

.. for years, surrounding communities and charity groups have been telling local government about this fire hazard. Miraculously, there have been no reports of fatalities. Dozens of people have been taken to hospital with minor injuries and smoke inhalation...

Only those too injured to run away first. Nobody from the out-town wanted the prying care of a big hospital, where they had to fill out forms with nonexistent ID and health-care numbers.

It’s not known how the fire started, but the police have not ruled out the possibility of arson...

Murdoch, who had showered with every evidence of enjoyment and who sat toweling his hair on Levin’s sofa, laughed derisively. “They think people torched their own homes?”

“They don’t think our tents are homes,” I said.

He twisted around to look at me properly. “You okay?”

“I’m going to check on the Assembly. The main fire was over on the Rosehill side. And the fire trucks were coming as we walked this way, I heard them. Creek Road’s probably all right.”

He sighed, then stood up. “You’re right, we should go and look. Even if the house wasn’t damaged in the fire, there could be looting.”

One more thing for me to worry about.

We went out the back door. It was still dark, but in the east the orange glow of the city was lightening further. I shivered. There was a chill in the air that I’d never felt before in Sydney. A cooler season on the way.

We could still hear sirens. People were clumped in groups along the road, talking. It seemed two theories were the favorites: that anti-immigrant groups had torched the shanties, or that it was part of a gang fight over territory. Some part of the out-town had paid protection money to a different gang or something, I couldn’t work it out from the snippets of conversation we heard, but Murdoch listened carefully.

We crossed Parramatta Road, deserted under broken streetlights, detoured around Will’s primary school and over the footbridge that spanned the motorway.

The roads here, though closer to the fire, were nearly empty. We passed an elderly man walking two small dogs. Three boys on bicycles laden with newspapers passed us. Lighted windows glowed in a couple of houses, but most were still sleeping. Despite the haze and smell of smoke, it might have been the dawn of any day. But it’s not any day. Today the world changes. Fatigue and thirst hit me suddenly and I wished I’d drunk more than a glass of water in Levin’s bathroom. Never mind, it will be worth it when we contact the Invidi.

“Hang on.” Murdoch grabbed my elbow and I staggered to a stop, dragging my attention back to the present. There seemed to be a commotion ahead of us. At the intersection of the next road, the telltale blue flashing light of a police car.

“Just stroll along and see.” Murdoch linked his arm in mine and we sidled along the road, finally camouflaging ourselves behind a couple in matching dressing gowns who’d come out of their caravan to see what was happening.

A heavy feeling of apprehension dragged at my stomach. Just short of the corner we stopped to watch three policemen as they spoke to a dog walker coming from the direction of the fire. They allowed the dog walker to pass, but they might not let us.

“Do you think they’ll bother with people going in?” I said quietly to Murdoch.

He shrugged. “They can take you in on the spot for being without an ID, can’t they?”

We strolled casually away from the police, back down the street we’d come. If we turned up the next one, we could cut across to Silverwater Road.

I cursed under my breath. Nothing was easy in this damn century.

Murdoch squeezed my arm. “We’ll get there.”

But police lined the whole length of Silverwater Road and watched the bridge. We’d have to go back south, walk beside the motorway, then follow the river back up north.

“What’s their problem?” I moaned. “Surely they can’t suspect the whole suburb of arson?”

“I reckon it’s the march,” said Murdoch. He watched a bus trundle along, decked in bunting. “They’re keeping an eye on possible trouble spots.”

“Which won’t be here. How can people whose homes have burnt down cause trouble?”