Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams (7 page)

The sudden silence was eerie, until Davo filled it: “It’s a beacon,” he said, his voice trembling.

“A what?”

He did his best to explain. “Imagine you’re on the top of your building and I’m on the top of mine. You want to talk to me, but it’s too far to shout. All you have is a mirror. How do you attract my attention?”

“I guess I’d use the mirror.”

“Of course—reflecting the sun until I see you. That’s what a beacon is: a repeated flash, but of sound not light, carried through the air by radio waves.”

“So ... ?” I was breathless at the thought gradually dawning.

“So somebody’s out there.”

“And they’re trying to get our attention?”

Davo’s face was very serious when he replied: “Maybe. I hope so. You see, the great advantage of having this old CB-V is that we can do more than receive. We could transmit, talk to them, find out who they are—if we wanted to.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to?”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“Have you tried?”

He looked guilty, but was saved by the baying of a horn. I was about to press him, but Davo cocked his head to listen, and put a finger over his mouth.

I listened too. The horn-player, having attracted the attention of everyone in the city, rattled out a short, staccato code almost too quick for me to follow, then wound down with one final blast. A few horns replied, echoing raucously among the towers.

Davo winced as he shifted his leg to a more comfortable position. “So this is it, the excuse they’ve been waiting for. They’ve finally called a Council.”

“They always do after a quake.”

He smiled wryly. “But not always just to find out if some poor bastard’s been killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

He pulled another face, and I suggested he should go back to bed. He could see the sense in that, despite himself, and, after switching off the radio, allowed me to manhandle him back to his hammock.

“Can I ask you for another favour?”

I nodded.

“I need to go to the Council meeting tonight,” he said. “Would you and Max could help me get there?”

“Sure. I’ll ask Max, anyway.”

“Thanks.” He leaned back into the hammock and regarded me through half closed eyelids. “You’d better go do some work, seeing you’ll miss the night because of this damned bureaucratic bullshit.”

I nodded, although reluctant to leave the wizard’s den of his workshop. Even mysteries adults refused to explain were preferable to tilling soil and killing insects.

“You’re a good kid,” he said, before I left. “Don’t tell anyone what I showed you.”

The afternoon passed slowly. I helped Max prune our crop of tomatoes and carry some ripe vegetables into the depths of our building, where the relative coolness would keep them fresh. As I performed my chores, my attention kept straying beyond the confines of the rooftop garden. I wondered who might be out there, across the seemingly endless ocean, and if they really were talking to us.

The sea was deep to the west, almost navy blue at the horizon; eastwards it grew shallower and lighter in colour as it approached the islands. Waves played on the distant beaches, white fingernails appearing and disappearing as though vast, submerged hands were reaching for the surface. Birds were few and far between when a warm tide happened upon us, and only the odd dark speck disturbed the hazy tranquillity of the eastern horizon that day.

As recently as four years earlier, I had gone with Max and a few others on an expedition to Barker, the nearest of the islands. We were collecting wood to light a bonfire on Council Tower—a scheme devised by a man named Cameron Dennis, who wanted to see if there were any other survivors nearby. The Council had forbidden the use of the city’s store of wood, so we had to go to the islands to collect fuel.

We took even more stringent precautions than normal, wrapping ourselves from head to foot in old plastic and leather to keep out the poison, and ensuring our masks were equipped with triple the normal thickness of filters. Even so, the terrible malignance of the soil seemed to eat at us as we hacked at the mutated trees. One of our number scratched himself on an axe, and died two weeks later of fever.

What I remember most clearly is the return to Adelaide. The three heavily laden boats were rowed by our strongest men—one of whom was Max—and they hurried through the thickening gloom, oars splashing and creaking with effort. I crouched at the foremost point of our boat, staring ahead at the vision of our home silhouetted against the setting sun.

So flat and still was the sea that the buildings appeared to rise out of the surface of a shining mirror. Their reflections stabbed deep into the water, as though Adelaide were a city of crystal anchored to the very heart of the earth. Occasionally, a beam of light flashed through one of the abandoned floors, and my spirits soared, uplifted by the sight.

Then the light changed. The skyscrapers darkened, became slender pillars of blackness like the petrified legs of an enormous creature sinking into the sea. I’d never seen a gravestone—our bodies were burned or dumped into the sea—but I knew what they were, and what they meant to me. The place I called home was made of tombs, archetypal symbols of the empty, final flesh. Within ten, maybe twenty years, we would be gone, except perhaps for me and a few of the younger ones. Not long after, the buildings themselves would succumb to the acids that ate at their foundations and topple into the ocean. Adelaide would disappear without trace.

The sun set, like the slamming of a door, and everything went dark.

When the expedition returned, we unloaded the wood, hauled it up Council Tower and heaped it on a concrete block. Disaster struck when we tried to light it. Chemicals had so permeated the wood that it refused to burn, no matter how hard we tried. Eventually it was thrown into the sea and the attempt to signal fellow survivors abandoned.

As the sun slowly crept toward the horizon on the day Great Fred chimed four times, I was reminded of that venture.

“Do you think anybody’s out there?” I asked Max as we finished our jobs for the day.

My foster looked at me carefully, his grey eyes both amused and saddened. “I don’t think so, son. Why?”

“Just curious, I guess.” The day faded in a wash of deep browns and reds, tending to black. “Whatever happened to Cameron Dennis?” I asked, realising that I hadn’t seen him for a long time.

“He killed himself when the bonfire project failed.”

“Oh.” I was tempted to ask how, but could guess the answer. The preferred method of suicide was to leap from a building and be killed upon impact with the forbidding waters below.

We were silent as stars appeared one by one in the grey sky. The first to emerge were the Strange Stars: three brilliant points of light hanging over the northern horizon, always brightest at the end of the day. The Strange Stars had paths of their own, entirely separate from the circle of the heavens, and they’d always fascinated me. They represented change and mystery in my otherwise immutable world.

I watched them with renewed interest until Max handed me a sack of compost.

“Take this down to the storeroom,” he said, “then we’ll head off to the Council.”

I obediently put aside my thoughts and hurried down the stairwell. When I returned, Max had a bag full of spare produce ready to take with us.

We crossed the bridge to Davo’s building. My friend waited for us there, hopping nervously back and forth on a pair of makeshift crutches. Jerrie was not present, having already gone to Council Tower.

“She means well,” said Max. “Perhaps a little
too
well for the likes of you.”

“She’s brainwashed, you mean,” Davo laughed bitterly. “Tell it like it is, you old bastard.”

The three of us inched our way up the four flights of stairs to the bridge connecting Davo’s home to the next building. I took the crutches and the bag while Max hoisted Davo onto his back, where the technician clung like a giant child. Slowly, we inched our way across the bridge, I prayed all the while that there would be no repeat of that day’s quake.

There wasn’t. A light breeze had sprung up, dispelling the fog rising from the water. The night was clear and silent. Gap-toothed buildings surrounded us like silhouettes of all the world’s dead cities, immense and hollow. Five bridges ahead, we could hear a whisper of voices from where the Council gathered.

Councils were normally exciting for me. Being accustomed only to the company of Max, and occasionally our neighbours, I was unused to crowds, and the hundred citizens of Adelaide certainly felt like one when gathered together. Although most were old and tired, and some openly grieved at the sight of the Council, shrunken as it was from the old days, my eyes saw only a multitude of dazzling variety.

On this occasion however, I felt a twinge of nervous discomfort. Perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that, with everyone still masked against the fumes of the poisoned sea, the Council resembled less the gathering of our community than a coven of mouthless wraiths.

Davo, Jerrie and I were among the dozen or so below twenty-five years of age scattered through the assembly. The rest were uniformly over forty, with Max, at fifty-nine, being the eldest. Kris Parker, chair of the infrequent meetings, was forty-seven and almost completely bald. His eyes were a startling blue. I’d always been a little afraid of him.

“Order!” he called, and the crowd slowly settled. His eyes smiled through his mask at the rings of citizens sitting on the floor around him. The meeting was held on the very top of Council Tower, lit by yellow lamplight, and there seemed to be more shadows than people clustered about the makeshift podium.

Kris removed his mask to speak to the group as a whole.

“First, welcome to you all, and thanks to everyone who brought gifts. The surplus will be distributed to those who need it after the meeting. Second, the roll indicates that three people are missing.”

Kris listed the names, and members of the crowd explained the absentees. One had not been able to come because of fever; another had died the previous week of a heart attack; the last had fallen from a garden during the quake.

There was a long silence as the crowd remembered the dead woman. I couldn’t remember a meeting that hadn’t started with a roll call of the deceased. We were all used to the fact of our dwindling numbers. If tears were shed, they were hidden by the masks we all wore.

Kris shuffled his notes. “The reason we’re here is to discuss the effects of the quake. Does anyone have any major damage to report?”

A woman with red hair put up her hand, and Kris invited her to speak. Her fresh-water tank had developed a leak, allowing the precious reservoir to trickle away. In times of a bad tide, this was a serious matter. The woman accepted that the best course of action was to relocate the people living in her building and to transfer her crops before they wilted. The Council voted, and agreed. The move would take place the next day, or sooner if convenient.

I tried to put myself in her position. She was leaving her home and the crops she had tended with back-breaking care since the Fall. I felt sorry for her, and was selfishly glad that it hadn’t happened to Max and me.

Somebody else reported that one of the older buildings had collapsed. Although uninhabited and therefore a relatively minor loss, it was disturbing nonetheless. All the skyscrapers had a slight lean, and it was only a matter of time before the stronger structures capitulated to the force of gravity.

Kris waited a few moments for further queries, but none were forthcoming. No one mentioned the ever-present threat of crop failure, which was unusual; I supposed that the earthquake had erased the more conventional concerns of Adelaide, for a while.

“Very well. Let’s move on to the next and final matter. I’ve had a request from someone who wishes to remain nameless for information on a matter I know nothing about. The last, in itself, is not unusual—” a smattering of laughter greeted the small joke “— but the subject is one of some significance for our entire community. I therefore called this Council in order to discuss it.

“I’d like to call David Rothbaum to the podium to answer a few questions.”

I stared in surprise at Davo, who struggled to his feet and removed his mask.

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather stay here.” My friend indicated the splint and bandages on his leg and exaggerated slightly. “Dislocated, you see.”

Kris nodded. “My sympathies. By all means, remain where you are.”

“What would you like to know?”

Kris paused slightly before voicing the question. “The person I speak for would like to ask what you’ve been doing in that laboratory of yours. Is there anything you should tell us all about?”

“Let’s see.” Davo shuffled on his crutches. “I looked at the easy stuff first, so it’s only getting harder as time goes on. But there are two more panels working, if anybody needs power.” There was an immediate buzz: everybody wanted more light, more heat. “And I’ve developed a primitive intercom system—a bit like telephone, but not as sophisticated. If we can find some unbroken wire I can link all the buildings together. That way we won’t have to shout across the gaps any more, or blow trumpets every time we have a Council meeting.”