The War of Immensities (19 page)

“I broke down
in tears in the office. They sent me to the hospital, but I knew I
had to come here instead,” Lorna confessed sulkily.

Chrissie
offered the Almighty a small smile of thanks.

They had to
stay overnight in Melbourne because there was no train to
Shepparton until next day. The hotels in the city were all terribly
expensive but they asked around and finally came upon a pub in
Carlton that offered cheap overnight accommodation. The rooms were
small and the furniture decrepit but the staff was friendly and the
food was good.

Lorna set about
getting herself thoroughly drunk, so drunk that she failed to pick
up one of the locals because she made herself violently ill, and
Chrissie needed to help her to bed.

A seedy but
unrepentant Lorna rode the train to Shepparton next day, and then
the buses to and from Kyabram.

“I still feel
bloody randy,” she murmured.

The fresh
country air did nothing for her and she was a complete wreck by the
time they arrived.

“Maybe our
friend the truckie will be in the mood,” Lorna remarked when their
objective was in sight.

“You suppose
it’s him again?” Chrissie wondered.

“Of course it’s
bloody him again. Blokes like him are the original bad penny.”

“You don’t
really fancy him, do you?”

“Why not?”

“He’s a bit
old.”

“He looks fit
and he ain’t bad looking, in a rugged sort of way. Lousy
conversationalist but who cares? If I don’t get a bit soon, I’ll
turn lesbian and go after you.”

“Maybe he isn’t
so bad after all.”

But as they got
closer, they began to be able to make out a strange object standing
in the paddock some way off from the truck.

“It’s a
helicopter,” Chrissie realised.

“Well, at least
it’s something different,” Lorna sighed.

Finally, they
were wading through the grass toward the camp site. The quiet man
was sitting back against the usual tree reading a book while the
newcomer sat on a log, studying a map. Lorna brightened
immediately. “Wow, what a spunk,” she breathed.

Chrissie
considered the man as he looked up in considerable surprise as they
approached and smiled an encouraging smile. He was almost as old as
the truckie—Brian, she remembered—and somewhat shorter. But yes, he
had a nice smile.

“Hullo there,
you guys,” Lorna bubbled, all trace of the pallid wreck that she
had been all day utterly eradicated.

“You two
again,” Brian remarked flatly, doing nothing other than looking up
from his book.

“Well, hi,” the
newcomer drawled in his American accent. “You didn’t tell me about
this, Brian.”

“Didn’t think
they’d be back,” Brian remarked and returned to his reading.
“Better put the billy on, mate. They drink a lot of tea.”

“Sure, but you
better do the bit where you swing it,” the man said, tipping water
from the jerry can into the billy. “So how about an introduction to
your friends.”

“Can’t. Don’t
remember their names.”

“I’m Lorna and
she’s Chrissie...” and with extra emphasis, she added. “Brian.”

Brian Carrick
gave a little twitch and went on reading.

“I’m Kevin
Wagner. Damned glad to meet you. Grab a seat. What the hell are you
two doing way out here anyway?”

“We were hoping
you might know.”

“Damned if I
do. Hey, where you from anyway?”

“New Zealand,”
Lorna enthused. “Auckland...”

“Waal,
godammit. How about that. I just flew in from Wellington
myself.”

“Really? I
thought you were American.”

“Yeah, well,
some time back. But how about that. Beautiful place, New Zealand.
Love it. You ever been to New Zealand, Brian?”

“Yeah. Once.
Hated it.”

“How could you
hate New Zealand?”

“I had a real
bad time there.”

“I would have
thought you’d have a pretty bad time in most places, Brian,” Lorna
said sweetly.

“I had an
especially bad time in New Zealand.”

Wagner winced
as if he was the victim of the sarcastic exchange, and then
continued to try and keep the conversation light and bright.

“You know, I
get the feeling I’ve met you before,” he said, referring to both of
them but looking at Lorna.

“Maybe we all
met in New Zealand,” Lorna smiled sweetly.

“No way. If I’d
met a girl like you, Lorna, I wouldn’t have forgotten it.”

Chrissie shook
her head in dismay—she heard males say that to Lorna at least twice
a week. But it was Brian Carrick who answered, drawling; “Yeah,
it’s the sharp tongued ones you remember.”

Still, for all
the difficulty, Kevin’s charm battled on. “So, here we are,” he
soothed. “All been to New Zealand and now all here. What a
coincidence.”

“Yeah,” Brian
Carrick muttered. “Bloody big coincidence.”

Perhaps they
were all saved from disaster, if not embarrassment, when they saw a
vehicle coming down the road.

“Waal, will you
get an eyeful of that!” Kevin declared and they all looked.

A white stretch
limousine gracefully slid along the bumpy road.

“Some people
travel in style,” Lorna breathed.

“Must be one of
them down-at-heel cow-cockies you hear so much about,” Brian
declared.

But the limo
drew along the road until it reached the gap in the fence and
stopped. The middle-aged uniformed chauffeur jumped out and opened
the rear door, and a tall black woman flashed elegant thighs as she
climbed out. She offered a gigantic smile to the chauffeur and
thanked him and then looked and waved toward the four astonished
onlookers.

Chrissie
immediately realised that she knew this woman—a black giantess was
hard to forget. She was struggling to place her, as were the two
men, but it was Lorna who got there first.

“Andromeda
Starlight,” Lorna breathed.

“Yeah,” Brian
Carrick grunted. “I think this just stopped bein’ a big
coincidence.”

Along the
shores of Lake Baikal, the rugged Buryat tribesmen lived as they
had for a thousand years, tough Mongolians who prided themselves in
their horsemanship and their absolute control of their animals. In
their small rustic settlements—almost entirely family groups—they
followed the teachings of the Dalai Lama, to whom they were
returning their devotions since the fall of the Soviet Empire. For
this was Soviet Mongolia, where the 300,000 Buryats live in
collectives, migrating with their sheep between summer and winter
pastures, the latter to which they had just returned.

Then in an
instant, everything changed. Their animals went berserk with a
universal suddenness that filled them with terror. Along the edge
of the rapidly receding lake, steam began to rise and then, only
moments after first of these terrors commenced, they knew no more.
Right around the southern end of the lake, the people fell into
sudden unconsciousness—people and horses and sheep and dogs
alike—all dropping in their tracks. The solid wooden houses shook
and collapsed on the unconscious inhabitants. There were few
survivors in the affected zone—most were killed by the searing
steam from the lake, or swallowed as they lay sleeping by the
explosive lava flow.

And there was
no one left awake to see the great cracks open in the muddy floor
along the edge of the lake and fire burst forth, followed by oozing
lava spreading out in all directions. Over a thousand died in the
affected region and, days later, when the neighbouring tribes
overcame their fear of the towering pyroclastic cloud that had
swallowed that end of the lake and came to investigate, they found
those few who had survived locked in an unresponsive coma.

The white
stretch limousine had been provided by Tierney, wanting her to make
a big impression with the paparazzi when she arrived for her
opening night at the Sands in Surfer’s Paradise.

“Keep going,”
Andromeda Starlight had said to the chauffeur as they slid into the
Sands’ driveway. The doorman in green topper and tails was reaching
for the door-handle at that very moment and clean missed as the
limo failed to stop. Andromeda glanced back saw the man standing at
the end of his stumble, catching his topper as it jarred from his
head. She’d also seen Tierney, harried and bewildered, come rushing
down the steps. She turned back, smiling with delight. He chased
them on foot.

“Hoy! Where you
goin’! Where you goin’!”

Gone, Joel,
gone.

“Where to, Miss
Starlight?” the unflappable driver, who wore a neat uniform and was
named John, asked calmly.

“Way we’re
goin’, my man,” she smiled.

A thousand
kilometres later, he remained calm, unruffled by the unexpected
length of the journey, although he had needed to be continually
reassured by the use of the credit card she had stolen from
Tierney. He remained bemused and tolerant, all the way to the bumpy
dirt road, to the place where a truck without its trailer and a
bubble helicopter stood incongruously in a paddock and four people
stood in a line and stared at them.

“My man, we
have arrived,” Andromeda grinned. “You just hop in the back here
and get some shut-eye. I’ll gotta go check out these dudes.”

She got out of
the car in her still spangled but much crumpled dress, slipped off
her high heeled shoes and on her sunglasses, and walked toward
them. Two older men, two younger women, all gazing on her with
appropriate astonishment. The females looked familiar, somehow.

“Hi there,” she
called as she approached them.

“Hullo,
Andromeda,” the red haired girl said with a cheeky tone. Not
another fan... no. The name Laura sprang to mind.

“Well, bless my
soul, Honey. You were in the hospital in Kiwisville,” she said as
if it was an accusation.

That had them
all looking at each other.

“So was...”
Brian began, and stopped.

“I just come
from there,” Kevin Wagner was saying.

“Good God,”
Lorna gasped. “We all were.”

“Of course,”
Chrissie cried. “Talk about mysterious ways. Lorna and I were in
the intensive care ward and you were there too.”

“All comin’
back now, Honeychilds,” Andromeda said. “This here’s the dude in
the coma. Exceptin’ you had black hair in them days.”

Kevin Wagner
nodded, touching his hair as if coming to terms with the change.
But there was more to come to terms with than that.

Lorna pointed
at Brian. “So you must be the chap that woke up before the rest of
us.”

“That’s right,”
Brian said.

“We were all in
that coma. That’s what this is all about,” Chrissie was gasping
with realisation.

They all found
somewhere to sit and gather their wits. One or the other babbled
some realisation or other without adding to the general knowledge.
Then Chrissie went over and sat on the log beside Wagner, and took
his hands in hers.

“There was your
wife and children,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

Kevin Wagner’s
head was already bowed as he strove to fight back the tears.

Suddenly,
Chrissie was looking beyond him to the glowing horizon. The land
was deep purple, the sky bright orange. She stood, backing off,
peering. Then the others were too.

“It’s
happening,” she said. “I can feel it coming.”

Almost
immediately, Andromeda felt the nausea hit her. She staggered a
little but then straightened. A sensation not unlike an orgasm
swept through her body, arising from her bare feet in the soil and
out through the top of her head. After a moment, she recovered, and
immediately saw all of the others were recovering too. She had
experienced it before and so had they, but this time Andromeda
realised something she had not noticed before. The sensation seemed
to come right out of the ground, entering her body through her
feet. It was as if her feet were the points of a power plug,
inserted into the electric earth itself.

The others were
staggering or sitting, doubled up.

“Happens every
time, then it’s over,” Brian said.

“How do you
mean, over?” Lorna asked.

“Don’t you
suddenly have the feeling that you can go home now?”

Each realised
that they did.

Wagner raised
his head and looked at them all.

“We gotta to
talk to someone who knows about this.”

“Sure, but
who?” Lorna wondered.

“There ought to
be a long range cell phone in that limo of yours,” he added.
“There’s Dr Campbell—Felicity Campbell—in Wellington. I promised to
keep her posted. We can start with her.”

They rose as
one and walked over to the limo. John snored peacefully in the
back. Wagner got the phone and dialled the number. The paging
system transferred him to a second number. “Felicity Campbell
please.”

He waited while
she was fetched from wherever she was. Finally, he spoke briefly,
then listened a lot, saying yes and no. Finally, he put his hand
over the receiver and called to Brian Carrick.

“Hey, sport.
Your wife wants to speak to you.”

A few amusing
moments followed while Brian said ‘Yes luv” a great deal into the
receiver and when that was done, he hung up and Wagner
explained.

“Felicity’s
already in Melbourne, at Brian’s home, looking for us. She didn’t
seem surprised that we were all here. She’s got some big-wig
scientist from the States with her. She said we are all to go to
the biggest hotel in Kyabram and make ourselves comfortable.
They’ll be here in two or three hours.”

“A beer would
be nice,” Brian said enthusiastically.

“Might even be
a decent counter lunch,” Andromeda mused.

“Anyone
remember a Mr Joe Solomon?” Wagner asked.

“Oh yes,” Lorna
cried. “He hired the plane for us. A lawyer from Perth.”