Hindsight (21 page)

‘Where do you suppose they were taking us?’ she asked as the creek swept to the left of a tree and a sharp rocky rise.

‘Nowhere pleasant, I’m sure. They made that quite clear to me with the taser.’

‘Oh, but they said something I can’t get out of my head. They said I’d never be safer than with them. Why would they say that, if they weren’t MPs for General Garland or Colonel Kitching?’

‘I was wondering the same thing. Here’s hoping we never find out,’ he added as the creek narrowed to a trickle. ‘Are we there yet?’

She nodded just as the front wheel bumped over a stump and the forest opened into a wide field of destruction — pummelled earth and ash from burned and bulldozed trees — that sloped gently down to the bay. Wild flowers framed the nearest edge of the forest like trembling spectators to the massacre. Churned earth and sand was all that remained where blooms of all colours and shades had speckled the natural clearing from spring to autumn and back again. Gone was the orchard bearing fruit of every kind. Gone were the vineyard and feral vegetable vines, and gone was the central crowning glory — the grove of ‘Poet Trees’ with their gold-studded branches of Braille and their nest of treehouses that were linked by bridges to form a single home in the shape of a crown.

Seeing it through the light of yesterday, though, was barely the half of it. Through the open car window, she could smell the mashed leaves, taste the soiled breeze and hear the distraught cries of evicted birdlife, still circling overhead in the clouded purple skies.

As the truck levitated her deeper onto the battlefield, her focus was drawn to the few remaining trees, just skinned carcasses really that were shuffled aside for the last batch of funeral pyres. Most were already charred ruins, but two untidy piles remained, lending hope that she might be able to find an additional keepsake.

As Ben braked to a halt beside them, she expected to feel furious at their fate, and for a moment she was, but grief overwhelmed her. Here were the trees where nine generations of her family had lived and died, where her mother had stepped off a high branch to fly forever with the angels, where her father had hung himself upside down in a barrel of liquid fertiliser. Yet for every tragic memory, there were countless happier moments. Her father teaching her to cook, sew, fish, and hand-raise native wildlife, or her mother teaching her to plant vegetables, play music on a flute, guitar and mini organ up there against the sky in the rooms — and how to read thumbtack-Braille from the trees with her palms before scaling down to her fingertips on a proper page of rare Braille paper. So expensive.

‘Try the glasses,’ Ben said, as he opened her door. ‘Much better if you remember it the way it was than how it is.’

‘I already do.’ She climbed out, aware that even her small footprints were adding to the damage now that the protective vegetation had been shaved away — or pummelled into the soil by mechanical blades and treads. She only needed to close her eyes to see it all again in its haunting majesty.

She couldn’t help herself. She toggled the controls, her fingers remembering roughly how far to scroll to see back into the shades of yester-month. In seconds, she found the approximate shade — the same muddy purple haze that allowed her to watch Ben surfing with his dog — and there they stood again. Her field of wild flowers, her orchard, and her circle of seven Poet Trees, gently swaying in the stronger breeze.

Five of the seven were Moreton Bay figs with huge umbrella-shaped canopies, but the nearest of the seven was a ghost gum, the spectre of which still stood within reach.

Caressing its trunk, she could almost feel the wrinkled silver bark, stained purple by its own slow light, and as she explored the Braille embossed into the lowest branch, she remembered teaching Ben how to read it during their first visit, just as her mother had done long ago for her as a child.

Moving around to the far side of the trunk, she found another favourite — an extract from
The Ladder of Saint Augustine
by Sir Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which read:

At night, alone in her room at Serenity, she’d recited that particular quatrain over and over in her mind to remind her that she could escape and find independence again eventually, if she kept trying. Yet they weren’t all quatrains, nor all of them rhyming, nor even serious. On a neighbouring tree was a long, funny bush ballad by Thomas E. Spencer called
The Day McDougall Topped the Score —
and beyond that, a tree devoted nearly entirely to Dr Seuss. Others quoted lyrical proverbs or songs, but they’d all lived and breathed with their own rhythm, and in the slightest breeze, she could still imagine them singing to her.

Looking up, she could also admire the slim shards of sunlight piercing through the ghostly canopy, and in times past, she would gaze up into the sky and wait for the whispering leaves to harmonise. Not today.

An evil breeze brought the smell of death to her instead — a sickly sweet stench that rose from the dirt only a short distance away.

Adjusting her sunshades again to the nearest hour of yesterday that she could manage before the pain grew too great, she saw that it was an old friend, a wallaby that she’d raised from a joey. Twelve years old by now. With love and the nutrients from daily treats, Josie could have lived another three to ten years. Now her neck looked broken and her hide was punctured by fangs. Yet she’d been so shy of strangers and dogs it seemed unlikely for her to be in such a place, unless she’d been hunted. The last that Mira had seen of the wallaby was that traumatic morning a decade ago, when government officials had come to relocate Mira to her first orphanage. Now fresh dog prints led away from her body, along with the drag marks of a lengthy chain and the parallel tyre marks of a small truck — as if the dog had been tethered to it as punishment while the owner had been parked and working somewhere else.

Movement caught Mira’s eye, and she realised the dead marsupial seemed to have life in her pouch — yesterday at least. Her ghostly fur bristled.

Mira hurried across and fell to her knees, ignoring Ben’s pleas to stay away. She held her breath from the stench, swatted flies away from her face and shaped her hands around the pouch, praying that yesterday’s life had not been extinguished between then and now.

Inside, she felt the weak shuffle of a small hairless leg, and reaching in before Ben could stop her, she found the shape of a small joey — a hairless female, who smelled as rank as her mother, but clawed and struggled weakly to stay in her pouch, as if determined to wait for the milk to resume flowing.

‘Mama’s got no more for you, baby. No milk and no oil for your skin.’ She stroked the joey’s long papery ears. ‘You’re so dry! Come with me, baby Josie …’

‘Is it still alive?’ Ben asked.

‘Barely. She’s dehydrated and cold.’ Mira folded the joey gently down the front of her shirt as a makeshift pouch, being careful to let it hang down with its body down her stomach and its paws folded up to its ears. Warmer now, it began sucking its rear dew claw, like a human baby sucking its thumb.

‘We need a fire,’ Mira said. ‘Some powdered milk and a squirt or two of Lockman’s honey — and some vegetable oil or something similar for her skin.’

By dusk, their camp was well established with a tent full of provisions and canvas furniture.

‘I can’t wait for you to see this tomorrow!’ Ben hurried up from the beach with a fishing rod that he’d taken from Lockman’s kit. ‘This whiting is big enough to feed us for a week. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say our friend really did plan to compete in the fishing tournament. He had the right bait on ice and all the right lures and tackles to catch this baby!’

‘His toothpaste is thoughtful too — in a pump-dispenser that can’t squash. Only one bunk and sleeping bag, though. Do you mind if I sleep in the truck?’

‘That wouldn’t make me much of a gentleman. The bunk has mosquito netting.’

‘It creaks like my old bed at Serenity. Seriously, I won’t catch a wink if I have to sleep in it.’

‘If you insist.’ The fibreglass rod clattered as he set it beside the campfire. ‘How did you go with baby Josie?’

‘Much better. She’s sucking her claw in the truck. I used the outer case to Lockman’s sleeping bag as a pouch. Do you think he’ll hate that?’ She grinned, and he chuckled.

‘Warm enough?’

‘Thirty degrees exactly. I put her in with a towel, hot water bottle and the talking thermometer from Lockman’s med kit. He really is a good boy scout, isn’t he? He had eyedroppers and gloves and everything else I needed in his kit.’

‘Powdered milk?’

‘Evaporated, but it works just as well for roos and wallabies. There’s enough tinned food and provisions here to last a fortnight.’

‘Don’t praise him to his face, Mira. He might get the wrong idea that you like him.’

‘Ha! No chance of that. He’s all army.’ She leaned into a box of supplies to fetch out a roll of silver roasting foil, and as she did she smelled the familiar scents of garlic, ginger and other favourite herbs, and couldn’t help but admit to herself that she did admire him — just a little.

‘I dug up some yams,’ she said, handing the roasting foil to Ben. ‘In case you didn’t catch anything.’

‘I can guess how you found them, even with the plants and leaves scraped away.’

She nodded and smiled. ‘I dug up some sweet potatoes too, despite the missing vines, and there was a little spring just over there. No trace of the pond or water chestnuts any more, though. Makes me wonder how anyone could destroy such a pretty place without being struck still by the sight of it. With eyes so closed, they must be closer to dead inside than I am.’

‘Don’t say that! You’ve got a long life ahead of you.’

Mira shrugged. ‘Time will tell, I guess.’

A long silence followed, and she sensed him watching her.

Just then, she heard a sound that made her feel sick to her stomach: the wings of a mechanical hummingbird, then two more that beat the air so hard and approached so fast, they could only be helicopters.

‘Run!’ she shouted, but there was nowhere for either of them to hide. Their attackers had swept in so low and so fast, they were already upon them.

R
otors made the air shudder with a vibration that grew more intense as the first helicopter swung in overhead. The air swirled with ash, sand and a whirlwind of dead twigs and leaves as Mira heard the next three approaching, the last of which sounded deeper pitched than the others — heavier, as if it was lugging an elephant.

‘Mira!’ Ben shouted over the racket. ‘Shield your eyes!’

The noise grew too intense for her ears. ‘The joey!’ She scrambled to the driver’s door of the truck, where she found the small bundle trembling in terror inside the sleeping bag’s cover.

‘Leave it!’ Ben shouted, but Mira ignored him, needing both hands to wind up the driver’s window to help reduce the noise for the little animal.

As the first two choppers swung over to land, Ben came to her side.

‘The boy scout sold us out! He’s led General Garland and those damned MPs straight to us!’

Mira heard Lockman’s name called by a woman nearby, but she didn’t hear him reply as many boots thudded onto the ground and approached, while others spread out around their campsite.

‘Nice shades, Miss Chambers.’ Garland came to a halt with her own small squad of boots. ‘Interesting design. I wouldn’t mind a pair myself.’

Mira scowled, feeling disinclined to tell her anything about anything.

‘They were a gift,’ Lockman said, revealing his presence beside Garland, ‘sent from …’

‘A friend!’ Ben shouted as the whine of a high-speed boat also beached on the shoreline. ‘What the hell is this? An invasion?’

‘Nothing to fear,’ Garland replied. ‘I’m just securing your location and ensuring we don’t have any interruptions for a little talk this evening.’

‘How did you find us?’ Mira demanded. ‘We didn’t tell anyone where we were going.’

‘Eyes in the sky,’ Lockman replied. ‘You’ve had your own private satellite.’

‘And
you knew about it
?’ Mira shook her fist in his direction. ‘For how long?’

‘I only found out about it when I checked in …’

‘Thank you, Corporal,’ Garland said. ‘I’ll take it from here. Pack your gear.’

Mira slumped against the truck, feeling betrayed; the world and last shreds of her freedom ripped out from underneath her.

‘For how long?’ she demanded.

‘Since you first sparked my interest,’ Garland said, ‘a month ago.’

‘A
month
?’ Mira shook her head in astonishment. ‘Have you people never heard of the word privacy?’

‘You should be grateful. If I hadn’t kept eyes on you, then your friend, Bennet here, would have died on his own patio. It wasn’t dumb luck I had a med-evac squad in the air that day he was shot.’

‘
Grateful
? I’m sick to death of living my life in replay! Feels like I’m stuck in perpetual loops! If you’d caught Kitching in time he never would have shot Ben in the first place!’

‘Unfortunately, the colonel was the one we needed to lead us to other kingpins. If my people had blown cover …’

‘You’d have lost a few bad guys,’ Mira argued, ‘but only for as long as it took me to track them. If you’d saved Ben
before
he’d been shot, you’d have earned my trust
and
my help in routing them out of their damn shadows!’

‘I couldn’t risk it. Not at that early stage. As far as I knew, you were psychologically unstable, not to mention physically less capable than …’

‘Blind. You can say it. Blind and crazy.’

‘Blind maybe. But never crazy — only I wish I’d realised
that
part much sooner.’

‘Done is done,’ Mira cried. ‘You blew it!’

‘Done is done,’ Garland repeated. ‘Indeed, it’s not like I can change anything. Looking back through time isn’t nearly as useful as going back in it. Isn’t that what you said?’

‘You heard that with a satellite? From
space
?’ Mira huffed, feeling totally defeated — as trapped as she’d ever been, then she remembered the muttering tram bridge. ‘No, you had three fishermen … I should have realised. I didn’t hear any reels or bait hitting the water.’

‘That was the ground team, and I can assure you, Miss Chambers, they did
look
the part.’

‘Bitch!’ Ben swore. ‘You’re not scoring any points here.’

‘That’s hardly fair. If it wasn’t for me, Colonel Kitching never would have sent any medical scientists to Serenity in the first place. They would have only asked for volunteers from military personnel and other related sources.’

‘Field medicine?’ Ben argued. ‘Is that what you call creative interrogation these days? That thing grilled her
subconscious
, damn it! Didn’t matter what came out of her mouth. You people needed wires and flashing lights before you’d believe that every word that comes out of her is always the truth!’

‘That’s beside the point now. If I hadn’t …’

‘… sent scientists to Serenity,’ Mira interrupted. ‘That’s hardly beside the point. Why exactly would you do that, and risk being accused of conducting medical experiments on disabled and other patients?’

‘Participation was entirely voluntary. Your Matron Sanchez wouldn’t have it any other way, but since her reason for granting permission was similar to mine for seeking it, you might as well ask the same question of
her
.’

‘Which was?’ Mira said, leaning forward with determination for an answer.

‘To indulge a curiosity. Kitching had avoided contact with his estranged brother since joining the army, almost forty years ago, and yet he was caught on base security footage making obscure references to the word
family
in coded communiqué. I was curious how he’d react when forced into closer proximity, but perhaps he was referring to Greppia’s family, since he’s been strengthening ties with them and taking a greater interest in you, while making no attempt whatsoever to contact Freddie … before you helped put him away.’

‘And we have only good luck to thank for that,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not sure which of them is craziest. If you force both brothers into the same space, there’s no telling what could happen.’

‘That aside, if it hadn’t been for my interest in Kitching, you never would have met the two doctors, never been included in their research and … well, we all know how you feel about Serenity, Miss Chambers. Without me, you’d still be there.’

‘That’s not true!’ Mira shouted. ‘Ben and I would have figured it out by ourselves eventually. Their machine only confirmed something my subconscious was already trying to tell me.’

‘Something that was too incredible to believe otherwise.’

‘Greppia seemed to believe it,’ Lockman said, revealing his presence still behind Garland and that he hadn’t moved very far around the campsite.

‘Greppia purchased Kitching’s copies of the doctors’ reports.’ Excuse me,’ Garland added. ‘Did you not hear me, Corporal? Pack your gear and go. I appreciate your initiative and assistance in keeping Miss Chambers safe, but you’re back on leave now. In fact, take two extra days for your trouble.’ She clapped her hands twice, commanding additional attention. ‘You three, assist him.’

‘No, wait!’ Mira wrenched open the driver’s door and grabbed the sleeping bag with the wriggling joey. ‘Leave this with me, please, and the milk … and your toothpaste, too, if it’s not too much to ask?’

‘I think you’re owed somewhat more than that,’ Garland said. ‘Clearly, we stumbled off on the wrong foot, you and I, but I wish to rectify the matter. The assistance you can provide investigating war crimes, spies and enemy troop movements … allied forces will never lose track of a terrorist or weapon of mass destruction ever again. So anything she wants, Corporal, please leave it with her, and I’ll reimburse you for it.’ Garland clapped her hands again, and from the direction of the furthest chopper, Mira heard the rev of a familiar engine, wheels rolling onto something that clunked under the weight, and then metal on metal, like a tailpipe scraping at the bottom of a ramp.

‘My car!’ Ben cried as the engine revved clear of the idling chopper. ‘Oh, hell! What have you done to my Camaro?’

‘Peace offering,’ Garland replied. ‘Fully fuelled, washed and polished.’

‘You don’t mess with a man’s wheels!’ he complained. ‘She was my project!’

The car stopped nearby and the engine shut down without backfiring. The door opened without clanking or sticking, and closed again without squeaking.

‘Catch,’ said the male driver, chinking the keys.

‘Fantastic,’ Ben replied flatly. ‘You’ve fixed bloody everything.’

Garland chuckled. ‘Consider it a favour, Mr Chiron. It took three mechanics four hours each. Now you’ll have more time for surfing when this is over. In the meantime, the trunk is fully stocked with fresh provisions — and it’s bug-free, since I’m now aware of how sensitive Miss Chambers can be about such things.’

‘You expect us to believe
that
?’ Mira argued. Behind Garland, she could hear the first sounds of construction — hammering of metal and flapping of canvas, as if the general had signalled the erection of a tent city. ‘You’re not about to let us go, just like that. Sounds more like you’re moving in with us!’

‘That’s just a marquee to provide a big enough shelter for our meeting. I’m trying to make this as comfortable for you as possible.’

‘A little harder to keep eyes on her from space that way?’ Ben asked sarcastically. ‘Unless you’re recording us now with a personal wire, or thermal imaging and some long-range eavesdroppers? We’re civilians, General. You can’t just move in on us like this and take over our lives.’

‘On the contrary, if it has anything to do with national security I can do almost anything. But I’m not going to argue and I’m not going to move in on you. I’d much rather establish a reliable degree of trust between us.’

‘Trust?’ Mira laughed again. She turned an ear to the last direction she’d heard Lockman, and took a best guess as she pointed. ‘You ordered
him
to betray us!’

‘Actually, Corporal Lockman acted entirely without prejudice. He strayed into my field of operations while on holidays and stayed for surveillance of his own when he suspected trouble. That means he followed you on his own time, then tracked and neutralised the perceived threat with his own resources. He didn’t know they were my people until after he reacquired them in the field and called my office to verify their story. Naturally, he’s been reprimanded for not reporting the potential threat until after he’d verified it himself, but rest assured he conducted himself admirably in every other way — far above his current training and rank. If my MPs had been a real threat, they’d be in custody by now, if not with me, with civilian police.’

‘Tell us one thing,’ Ben said. ‘Has he been under your command all this time, holidays or not?’

‘Ultimately, they all are — police, defence personnel and anyone else who works for a government service.’

‘How does that work?’ Ben argued. ‘Unless you’re also the prime minister?’

‘Or head of a special task force appointed by parliament. Listen, I’m happy to explain the whole deal, provided you can both agree to keep your minds open and lips sealed.’

‘Yeah, well, perhaps you’d better assume we’re already trustworthy in those respects,’ Ben suggested. ‘Trust begets trust
after
it’s earned in
our
world.’

Garland shifted her feet. Not nervously so far as Mira could tell — sounded more like bracing herself.

‘Picture the command structure of the army as a pyramid,’ Garland replied, ‘with the pyramids for the navy and air force as neighbours. Then picture a head of defence as the commander at the top of all three — and me as his shadow, stretching out to all the other state and federal government departments. That’s grossly oversimplified, obviously, but as far as you’re concerned, above me, there’s only parliament, the Queen and God — not necessarily in that order — unless you’re talking internationally, in which case things get a little more complicated since I also get to play outside with the United Nations and a number of allied intelligence agencies.’

‘Sounds sweet,’ Ben said. ‘Was that a vacancy they advertised on the back of breakfast cereals?’

‘Milk cartons, actually. Part of the barcode. No, my personal area of expertise is logistics, not just with defence but also civilian forces such as emergency workers and police playing their parts in supporting me with national security. Then there’s you, Miss Chambers, and I think I’ve made it clear why I want you on-side with me. If we could also continue studying you, we may be able to reverse engineer what you do so others can do it too, and still have their normal sight.’

‘Oh, sure,’ Mira replied. ‘My dream job as a lab rat, no thanks. I have too many questions and suspicions.’

‘I’m sure you do. That’s what the marquee’s for. It’s ready now, if Mr Chiron feels reassured enough yet to show you the way?’

‘So long as it’s not an order …’ Ben took Mira’s hand and led her uphill, to a patch of earth where some of the trees from her parents’ orchard had been bulldozed into a pile and burned. ‘You brought a carpet and lounge suite?’ Ben asked as soon as the air turned cooler under the shade of the marquee. ‘And we thought
he
was the boy scout.’

‘Make yourselves comfortable.’ Garland followed them in, ordering her personal assistants and everyone else outside to a distance of at least two hundred metres. ‘This is nothing compared to the demountable field office that’s on its way — air conditioned with an annex for bedrooms and all the amenities she needs. Separate barracks for security and support staff, naturally.’

‘Support staff?’ Mira shuddered. ‘It frightens me how far you’d go to get your own way!’

‘Anything you say,’ Garland said with a clap of her hands. ‘If you think your new chef and maid are a bit much just say the word.’

‘Then
word
!’ Mira shouted, giving her fist another workout. ‘I don’t need you, or anything else you can give me!’