Underground (30 page)

‘Quick,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a patrol along this track, sooner or later.’

Aisha and I climbed the fence in turn—not without some difficulty—and joined him. Then we plunged on, uphill, into the blackness under the trees. Walking was harder in there, stumbling over rough ground and dead branches and invisible holes. I was gasping when we crested the rise, and through the canopy I could glimpse the stars, but all around the world remained grey and featureless. We could be anywhere. Then it was down again, and onwards through the forest.

We walked for hours, leaving the plain far behind. Harry was setting a cruel pace for my leg. And the further we walked, the more baffled I became. At one point a sealed road crossed our path. It ran smoothly through the bush, but even though we waited warily for some minutes, there was no traffic. Hurrying across, I felt leaves and twigs crunch under my feet, as if the road had not been used in years.

Miles later the forest had faded away and we were hiking through country that was more open. In fact it was farmland, and yet it seemed overgrown and neglected. There were fields, and sheds, and even some houses, but the fields were deserted, and the houses were silent and dark, their windows smashed. We crossed more roads, all of them as disused as the first. The entire area felt abandoned. Derelict. But then, finally, we cleared a rise and I could see, faraway, a few points of light. They were off to our right and left. Distant houses. Or streetlights, maybe. Straight ahead, however, there rose a ridge of hills that terminated in a single low mountain, heavily draped in forest, and black against the sky.

Harry led us on. We were slowing down now, but eventually we crept to the mountain’s foot. And here was another road. A highway. And as we paused there, headlights appeared, and
a car went rushing by. Not a military vehicle, or a patrol car, just a normal sedan, unmarked. Two women inside.

Harry made no comment. We crossed over. On the peak above us, a tall structure of some sort stood out from the treetops. We began to climb.

My leg was on fire. We’d been walking for something like six or seven hours, and the sky was beginning to lighten, the first hints of dawn. Up and up we went, scrambling on the steeper slopes. Off to either side I could see lights again, many of them, widely spread over the hills like the sprinkle of outer suburbs.

Then the ground levelled out, and we were on the broad peak. There was a road there, and paved places for parking. The tall structure, I could see now, was a communications tower. There was decking built around it, like a viewing platform, with stairs leading up. And a creeping dread took hold of me, because I
knew
this place. I’d been here before at some point in my life, and something about the memory was very wrong. We stumbled across the car park to a stone wall that marked the far edge, where the mountain fell away again to empty air.

But even as we did so, a sound rose behind us. The growing roar of aircraft engines. I turned, and through the trees saw a huge passenger jet drifting out of the sky, off to the west and only a few hundred metres above us, wheels down and landing lights flashing. It soared across the hilltop, losing altitude steeply as it did so, the engines whining, and then sank from view beyond the further rim of the mountain.

Harry was already standing at the wall, facing south and staring down. Aisha and I hurried to join him, the view below us springing up as we approached.

‘Fuck,’ Harry was breathing, over and over. ‘Fuck.’

I could see the jet again, below us in the middle airs, lowering towards an airport that was off to the left, only a couple of
miles away. But everywhere else there were lights, orange and white, the expanse of a whole city, complete with traffic moving sparsely in the pre-dawn streets. From our vantage point, we were directly in line with a wide, sweeping avenue that split the town in two. The avenue began at a hulking domed building on the slopes of the hill below us, and then ran away, ablaze with illumination, lined with statues and memorials, to the shores of a narrow lake. On the far side of the lake was a sprawling grass concourse, at the back of which stood an imposing white building with two outstretched wings. And behind that lifted another hill, one that had seemingly been excavated and consumed by a half-buried building of glass and steel. And over that building rose a gigantic metal edifice, four great beams that vaulted inwards to join into a single spar, which then rose high above the hill, and above the entire city. A flagpole.

I recognised it all in an instant. The War Memorial, Anzac Parade, Lake Burley Griffin, the old Parliament House, Capital Hill and the new Parliament House.

We were standing at the lookout atop Mt Ainslie.

And before us lay the supposedly dead city of Canberra.

Alive and well, after all.

Ah, interrogators. I know that all through these pages of mine, you’ve been marvelling at my stupidity. My sheer gullibility. And the only thing I can say in my defence is that the rest of the nation shares my blindness. Canberra is gone, it was wiped out, we all saw it—what possible reason is there for anyone to doubt it? After all, what sort of madman would conceive of such deception, let alone carry it out? I
still
find it difficult to credit.

Even as I sit here in my prison cell, at Canberra’s very heart.

But all that aside, I’m embarrassed. I should—at the very least—have realised that we were in the Canberra region long before we reached the lookout. As soon as we stepped out of the campervan and saw that unearthly plain before us, surrounded by hills, I should have known. How could I not have recognised Lake George? I’ve driven along its shores dozens of times, riding the Federal Highway on my way to or from the capital. Oh, I know, it was night, and things can look
strange and unsettling in the dark—but then, even in broad daylight the lake has a surreal air, doesn’t it? And true, there was no water. But that’s the mystery of Lake George—the water that comes and goes, so that sometimes the lake is like an inland sea, and at other times there’s only a grassy expanse where sheep graze. People talk of underground rivers that connect to secret reservoirs, channels that alternately fill or drain the basin. Whatever the truth, I should have remembered the place.

And there were plenty of other clues to our location. The fence we climbed. The military patrol we saw. Those deserted outer roads we crossed. The lifeless farmhouses, the paddocks left to run wild. Even the shape of Mt Ainslie itself, rising in front of us. They were all warning signs.

But then again, even if I had worked out where we were, I would only have assumed that Harry was taking us to look upon the ruins of the dead city.

Nothing would have prepared me for a
living
Canberra.

We stared down at it, the lights glittering.

All I could say was, ‘But it’s impossible.’

Harry was gripping the railing on the stone wall, his fists clenched in rage. ‘You see it, don’t you? Believe it.’

I saw it, all right. I turned to him. ‘How did you know?’

‘I didn’t. Not for sure. Not until now.’

‘But you brought us here. You suspected.’

His eyes hadn’t moved from the city. ‘It was the air traffic controller. He told me. Just before he died.’

‘The controller? He was involved in this?’

Harry gave a tight shake of his head. ‘He only found out four days ago. And straightaway he ran, looking for someone to tell. He had friends in the OU. But people were on his tail. They got to his Sydney connections, liquidated them, so he had nowhere to run but Melbourne. And they followed him there
anyway. I think it was him they were after with the attack on the ghetto. They must have tracked him to that hall. They mightn’t even have known that we were there, or that the High Council was meeting. We were probably just collateral damage.’

I pondered the irony of that for a moment. Perhaps it even explained the ease of our escape from Melbourne. But none of it mattered anymore, compared to the sight below us.

‘That man was from Sydney, not from here.’ I waved an arm at Canberra. ‘How did he find out about this?’

‘It was the plane crash.’

I stared. ‘The crash?’

‘I told you. It wasn’t just an accident.’ Harry took a deep breath to calm himself. ‘You remember that night we were lost out in the desert? You remember there were great big thunderstorms way off to the east?’

I nodded, thinking of lightning on a desert horizon.

‘That’s what started it. The controller, he was in charge of the airspace in southern New South Wales that night. He had a plane, a Melbourne to Sydney flight, that was routed right through those storms. The pilots needed a way around, east or west of the bad weather. The problem was, the flight was immediately to the west of Canberra, and the airspace over Canberra has been closed since the bomb. A no-fly zone. So the controller wasn’t allowed to route the flight eastwards. He should have diverted them further west. Only he couldn’t do that either. The airspace to the west was off limits too, that night. Temporarily. For a military emergency.’ Harry glanced at me with a thin smile. ‘That was because of us. The army and the air force had dozens of planes and drones up over western New South Wales that night, looking for you and me and Aisha. They didn’t want commercial aircraft getting in the way.’

A chill ran through me. ‘So what happened?’

‘He sent the plane east. He thought there was just enough room between the storms and the no-fly zone for the plane to
squeeze through. But the storms were moving faster than expected, and the plane was forced further off course, and the controller decided that surely it was no problem for just one flight to break the rules, if it was a safety matter. So he vectored them over the city. But suddenly the pilots were telling him something he couldn’t believe. They could see lights below, lots of them. It was Canberra, and it wasn’t a ruin like it was supposed to be.’

‘Ah,’ I said, beginning to understand.

‘No one else heard this. It was just the controller and the aircrew, talking to each other. But a few minutes later the pilots were yelling something about being buzzed by military jets. And a few minutes after that, the pilots were screaming, and the plane vanished from the radar screen.’

I found myself staring down at the airport. The jet that had flown over us had landed, and was taxiing sedately towards the terminal. I could see now that it was no ordinary passenger plane. It was black, and without marking or livery of any kind. But my eyes were drawn to the far side of the airfield. There, amidst huts and hangars, stood a line of steely grey fighter jets.

‘Holy shit,’ I said quietly.

Harry nodded. ‘The plane came down ten k outside the no-fly zone. And the controller ran. He was no fool. This place here—whatever the fuck it is—has been kept secret for a reason. And he knew that if they were prepared to shoot down a plane because the pilots had seen it, then
he
was on the hit list too.’

The insanity of the whole situation swept over me. ‘But how can Canberra still be here? How could they get away with it? We all saw the mushroom cloud. It was real. So how did they fake it? And
why
?’

‘I don’t know.’ He looked beyond me. ‘Maybe she does.’

I’d forgotten all about Aisha. I turned and saw her there, on her knees against the stone wall, her face starkly white as she stared at the city.

‘Well?’ Harry insisted.

But Aisha didn’t seem to comprehend him. She could only shake her head. ‘It was destroyed.
We
destroyed it.’

‘Who? Your fucking Southern Jihad?’ Harry was behind her suddenly, his hands around her neck, slamming her body against the wall. ‘Look at it, you stupid bitch! Look at it! Does it look destroyed to you?!’

She was choking, coughing, not even resisting.

‘What the fuck is going on here?!’ Harry screamed.

I dragged him away from her.

Aisha sagged against the wall, gasping. ‘I don’t know,’ she got out. ‘They told me it was us. That we set off the bomb. I thought it was true.’

‘We all thought it was true.’ I still had Harry by the shoulders. ‘She was lied to,’ I told him. ‘Just like we all were.’

The fury went out of him, and I let go.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What a mess.’

‘What do we do now?’ I asked him. ‘Why did we come here?’

He looked at me blankly. ‘Why? There’s no why. I just had to see it for myself. The bomb was the whole excuse for what’s going on in this country. The state of emergency. The arrests, the detentions. And it never even
happened
.’

‘So we tell people, right? We get out of here and let everyone know.’

‘Tell who? The Underground? The Underground died back in the ghetto. You saw it. There’s barely anyone left.’

‘Then we tell the media.’

He gave a painful laugh. ‘Three crazies walk into a newspaper office and start raving about Canberra still being in one piece. Oh, that will work.’

‘It might, if one of the crazies is the Prime Minister’s brother. Who’s supposed to have been dead for the last week.’

That made him think, but then he shook his head, rejecting it. ‘Even if we could get to a newspaper, and even if we could
make them believe us, it wouldn’t help. The government has security advisers embedded in every single newsroom. They have to clear every story, every investigation. They’d pass the word back to the authorities, and we’d be dead in hours. Us, and half the newspaper staff too.’

‘So you’re sure the government is in on this?’

His look was withering. ‘Are you kidding? The government had to have
organised
this. There’s no other way it could be done, no other way the secret could’ve been kept. And not just our government. Governments the world over. You can’t hide a whole city just by putting up a fence and a no-fly zone. There’re satellites. American. Russian. Chinese. A whole shitload of people must know that Canberra is still here. And none of them are talking.’

‘But there must be
something
we can do.’