WildGame

by Margo Lanagan

  By now the images were flickering like an old Charlie Chaplin movie. Every now and then a chunk of the picture would disappear and leave a blind spot for a few seconds. Something nasty’s going to appear in one of those soon, thought Macka. I’m fighting a losing battle here, I reckon.

  The engine noise died down a little, and a slight hill rose before her. She thought she saw an outcrop of rocks with a deep slash of shadow among them, a few yards up. She could just make it. She paused to look at the sky; for the moment it was empty, and she sprang up the slope.

  Vinnie was fed up. He hooked his fingers through the loops of eight supermarket bags and hauled them out of the back of his mother’s car. Their weight made his knees wobble, but he wasn’t going to make three trips up and down those steps to the flat if he could do it in two.

  He swore as the soft-drinks bag clanked into the metal banisters. First there’d been the shopping itself, and his mother’s usual continuous lecture as they went along the aisles. As if he was responsible for flour being two cents dearer or for her favourite tinned tomatoes not being on special this week!

  And then they’d run into Mrs Casey, Vinnie’s sister’s husband’s mother, and gone back to her place for tea and cakes, while she carried on about what a genius Peter had been at school and how she hoped Vinnie was as studious, as hard working, and how she knew it was difficult for ‘first-generation Australians’, as she’d so delicately put it, twinkling down at Vinnie. He could have strangled her for the way she made his mum go all pink and silent and awkward.

  Far above him he heard the telephone ring as his mother opened the door of the flat. She let it ring a little while, obviously hoping Vinnie would hurry up the stairs and answer it for her. Stubbornly he continued to manoeuvre the bags around the narrow landing, and finally she picked up the phone and he heard her timid voice.

  She came anxiously downstairs to meet him. ‘It’s Louisa’s mother,’ she whispered nervously. ‘She wants to know if Louisa’s here.’

  ‘Well, tell her she isn’t,’ said Vinnie crossly, annoyed at her blocking the stairs. ‘Get out of the way, Mum.’

  ‘No, no! She wants to know if you know where Louisa—she wants to talk to you,’ she finished breathlessly, backing up the stairs.

  Uh-oh, Vinnie thought, depositing his load just inside the door. His fingers felt like claws, so badly had the handles pressed into them. He cracked his knuckles and picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Vinnie, it’s Lou’s mum here. D’you know where she is?’ Trish sounded a bit worked up.

  ‘Not at the moment, no. Last time I saw her was at VideoZone this arvo.’

  ‘Now, Vinnie, I want to know what you two are up to. I had a call from my brother Oliver. It seems he’s had a call from his mate at the university, Dr Harvey or someone—’

  ‘Hart.’

  ‘—and whatever-his-name-is says you pinched this bloody rat-animal Lou had in her room this morning from his laboratory, and ran off with it. Now you tell me where the animal is, and where my daughter is, or I’ll come over there and skin you alive.’

  Vinnie felt cold all over, listening to the fear behind the anger in Trish’s voice.

  Trish continued. ‘Did she have the animal with her when you saw her?’

  ‘Yes, she did,’ said Vinnie, trying to sound firm and responsible.

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  ‘She was going to put the animal back where she found it.’

  ‘Which is where?’

  ‘A … a place out at Seven Hills,’ Vinnie said finally.

  ‘Seven Hills? For heaven’s sake, what’s she been doing out there?’

  Vinnie thought it best not to complicate the story.

  ‘Okay, Vinnie,’ said Trish in the severest voice he’d ever heard her use, ‘now can you ask your mum if we can please borrow her car, and her son? I want you to take us to this place now, and along the way you can tell us exactly what’s been going on.’

  The shadow among the rocks was that of a small overhang. It would give Macka a breather, but she couldn’t stay long; the openness on two sides was too frightening. She huddled against the rock’s comforting bulk, and swept the plain with her weakening gaze.

  ‘What are they up to down there?’ From here she could see the double line of a red dirt road and, where it ended, an elaborate system of tall wooden pegs among the spinifex, with strips of brilliant red cloth tied at their tops. The front-end loader was tearing away at one corner of the site, and a cluster of workmen was conferring outside a white portable cabin at another. The bird was cruising in a wide circle above the scene, its head down, systematically searching.

  ‘Oh go away, you horrible thing!’ whispered Macka.

  The picture began to shake, and Macka could feel the rat-kangaroo’s whole body shaking, too, with shock and exhaustion. A terrible hunger was attacking its stomach; she could almost feel the three babies draining its strength.

  ‘You need a good feed, and a long rest somewhere safe,’ said Macka sensibly. But she knew there was no way the animal could dig itself a new burrow, and a search for one of those nut-bushes would mean a long spell out in the open, and probably another run-in with the bird.

  ‘I could take you out again, but I reckon that’d put you in worse shape than you are already.’ She sat still, the animal’s fear-smell clouding from her pores, its stress squeezing at her heart. She tried to make it breathe more slowly and deeply, but its lungs were out of her control. She could only wait until it calmed down.

  She tried to concentrate on piecing together the view, which was now coming only in flashes, and had a grainy quality that worried her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and tried to distinguish other smells besides the animal’s strong one. She was surprised when she could, and quite clearly. The first she detected was a nasty whiff of exhaust fumes from the loader—to the rat-kangaroo this was obviously a new and unpleasant smell, for concentrating on it made her fur bristle all over.

  Macka tried to reassure her by calling up the rusty smell of the earth. Was this what the Koori girl had meant by ‘holding your mind a certain way’? Could she maybe save this animal’s life by trying to make it think like a human being? She moved its nose out from under the overhang and drew in a steady breath of the breeze; on it there were a number of scents that she didn’t recognise, but she felt the hammering of the rat-kangaroo’s pulse become less intense. And she thought, as she sniffed again, that she caught a sweet whiff of food.

  She opened her eyes and the image was clearer for a moment. The bird was farther away, circling on the far side of the construction site. Maybe she had a chance.

  Not much of one, she thought unhappily as she hopped out from the rocks. She could feel the animal’s head beginning to sway on its neck again, and out in the bright sunlight the glare opened big blind patches on the screen. The knowledge of the sky’s hugeness overhead, full of who knew what predators, really gave her the creeps.

  She had to concentrate hard to find the food scent again and to fit the dimming pieces of the image together into something coherent enough to move through. A couple of times she lapsed and leapt into a blind place, and a hideous silence and whiteness blanked out everything until she jumped again. She began to realise what the animal must fear the most: that the blanking out would continue to a point where no amount of leaping would save it, or its babies.

  ‘You can do it,’ she urged it along, holding the pattern of earth and spinifex together by an effort of will and gently, regularly pushing the run button to force the rat-kangaroo onward. The scent of the food was constant now, though it wasn’t any stronger. Macka wondered if she were moving in the right direction, or whether the animal’s other senses were beginning to give out, as well as its vision.

  Straining her eyes among the swimming grains of colour, Macka thought she saw, above the grasses, something that shone red-brown. A few more hops and she was sure of it; the top of a thin-branched shrub, hung with bright
nuts. Why, it must be only a couple of metres away!

  The question of whether she could make it a couple of metres began to dissipate as the bush’s scent flowed around her. She fought back the film of darkness sinking across the animal’s eyes and concentrated on regular, well-placed leaps. What a heavy body the rat-kangaroo seemed to have now, in spite of its weakness and hunger.

  A last hop and the bush was fully in view, its fruit gleaming, inviting. Macka became aware of sounds she’d been ignoring for a while: a small-scale tearing, an almost-inaudible gnawing, and little tappings that she now realised were the impacts of nutshells on hard earth. Five animals, an entire colony of black-faced rat-kangaroos, sat around the bush, eating their fill.

  Macka sensed that her rat-kangaroo didn’t feel comfortable, was battling its overwhelming hunger with caution. Its gaze switched from the animals to the nuts and back again. Macka pressed the run button, and the animal shifted forward through the dark haze of her own weakness.

  ‘That you, Razza?’

  ‘Ollie? Come up with anything?’

  ‘Well, we found your “delinquent”.’

  ‘And what about the animal?’

  ‘He didn’t have it. Says Lou’s got it.’

  ‘And where’s she?’

  ‘God knows. Or rather, Vinnie knows. Somewhere out west. Trish and Dave are driving out there to find her. They left about ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘You sound pretty wretched, mate.’

  ‘Oh, I am. I tell you, if I could lay my hands on either of the little twerps—’

  ‘I know. Couldn’t you just wring their precious little necks? Anyway, Trish reckons she’s going to get the whole story out of Vinnie if it’s the last thing she does. She’s ropable—not to mention panicking about Lou.’

  ‘Right. I wouldn’t want my daughter wandering alone about town on a Saturday night. Hope she’s okay. Hope that rat-kangaroo’s okay,’ Razz added fervently.

  ‘So do I, mate, so do I. So anyway, I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Okay, Ol, thanks for ringing. I’ll just go back to pacing up and down the lounge room.’

  Ol gave a short laugh. ‘That’s about all any of us can do, old son. Talk to you later.’

  ‘I can’t see!’

  Macka pushed her face close to the screen, then drew back as far as the pod would allow, hoping the colours would coalesce into something recognisable. The machine gave a dreadful, tired groan and the signs over the control buttons died. Macka pressed them all frantically. ‘No, no! You can’t cark it now! You were nearly there! A bit of food and you could’ve—’

  There was a sharp ping! and the darkness cleared from the screen, leaving a pin-sharp, full-colour image of the rat-kangaroo colony—’Yay! That’s better!’—but the button-signs remained black. ‘I guess that means that from here on there’s nothing I can do,’ said Macka, feeling a bit annoyed. She thought she’d been doing so well; it was a shame to lose control just now.

  The largest of the rat-kangaroos raised his head and met her eye. His was neither hostile nor welcoming, but was an unshining dark circle on the screen. Macka felt the fur rise along her animal’s spine.

  The male hopped towards her among the others, some of whom stopped eating to watch. He paused, blocking her passage to the bush, and sat regarding her with his empty dark eye. The air, clotted with the wonderful smell of the nuts, seemed to push at Macka’s animal from all sides, demanding action, but she knew she hadn’t the strength to fight. ‘Not that I could get her to fight anyway,’ muttered Macka crossly, pointlessly clicking on the dead X button.

  The picture swung through a disorienting series of green and red flashes, then Macka found herself gazing at the nut-bush from a new angle. A female sat eating, undisturbed, beneath it, her belly studded with four suckling babies. Macka just had time for a pang of jealousy before the male’s hind foot thumped into the side of her head and knocked the picture into a spin.

  ‘I get the message!’ Macka squeaked, closing her eyes to the sickening roll. When it stopped, her face was stinging with spinifex prickles. She watched as the animal staggered back out of the sharp green maze and turned. The white chest-fur of the male filled the screen as she huddled down, protecting her young.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ yelled Macka, nearly in tears from frustration. ‘I’ll go away! I’ll run off and die, you selfish, greedy bastard!’ She pounded the screen with a fist.

  There was a mind-shattering explosion, and the male fell forward. Macka could feel his hot fur on her face, and the suffocating weight behind it—a limp, dead weight. There was also in her mouth a taste that revolted her at the same time as it gave her strength. Trying to make sense of the picture, she pushed the animal’s head about, until a smear of red told her what she suspected. She forced her way out from underneath the larger animal and lay still, trying to hear something, anything, over the punching of her heart.

  She felt rather than heard the thump of heavy steps. Then a man’s voice called out ‘Good one, Geoff! Got it in one!’ Macka’s animal squinted up at the sky, saw nothing, sniffed deeply and caught a rank, foreign smell. Macka recognised parts of it; human sweat and tobacco-smoke were major components, with a dangerous underlayer of hot metal.

  ‘Christ, there’s heaps of ‘em!’ the voice yelled again and the booted steps thudded closer. ‘Look in ‘ere!’

  Macka felt her animal trembling, tasted the blood on its teeth. She closed its eyes and put her hands over her ears.

  Even so, the shots were terrifying when they came. And the noises she heard between them petrified her: thunderous runnings and skiddings, whoops and yells of ‘Over ‘ere, Geoff! There it is!’ Blam! ‘There’s another one! Get the little bugger!’ Blam! ‘Onya, mate! Good shot!’

  Macka counted ten shots altogether, before a silence fell that was even more frightening than the explosions had been. Slow steps moved closer, irregularly.

  ‘Never know,’ she heard a voice say. ‘Prob’ly be good cookin’!’

  A huge man emerged from the spinifex, three dead rat-kangaroos dangling by their tails from his fingers.

  ‘Smelly buggers, aren’t they?’ said a voice behind him.

  ‘Yeah. Must be ‘cause they eat these things. Pooh!’ Macka saw his blocky fingers, far above, twist a nut off the bush and put it to his nose. His face screwed up and he swore loudly, flinging the nut away.

  He bent to pick up the male, and Macka felt the vacuum it left as a stirring of the fur along her back. Then her tail was tweaked painfully, and she heard a hiss of her own fear and felt herself swing, scrabbling at the air, as he lifted her.

  ‘Shit, it’s still alive!’ the man’s voice boomed as he dropped her. A shout of laughter fell about her like a heavy shower of hail. She was backed up against the nut-bush, huddled over her babies. The other man stepped forward and put his rifle to his shoulder. The fluorescent pink of his safety vest pounded on her eyes, making his tanned leather skin look black.

  ‘Poor thing’s shitting itself. Put it out of its misery, Geoff!’ laughed the big man.

  ‘Right … you … are,’ said the other, and squeezed the trigger.

  The explosion seemed to flood out like a slow tidal wave from the weapon, bowing the grasses and rippling the sand. Macka saw the bullet shunting towards her out of its tunnel with a dreamy leisureliness. It floated across the intervening air, parting it with a sound like tearing tissue-paper. It touched the tip of one of the long white guard hairs on the rat-kangaroo’s chest, bowed it slightly, and stopped as if embedded in solid glass.

  9 THE CHOICE

  Macka stared stupidly at the screen. The image of the animal and the bullet didn’t move or change, however long she looked at it. She pushed a couple of buttons experimentally, which had no effect. She sat back in the comfortable seat and rested her eyes on the black interior of the pod. ‘Well, I don’t know what to do.’

  The silence made her feel deaf after all the shouting and the shoo
ting. The air caught under the metal blanket was stale and immobile; she felt as if she’d recycled it a million times. Shifting her feet, she realised how cramped her body felt.

  ‘I need a walk,’ she said clearly, aiming her voice at the screen.

  In the pause that followed, something changed, but she couldn’t quite tell what. Then the machine emitted a high, serene note, and two circles of flat gold-yellow began to form, side by side in the centre of the picture.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Macka watched suspiciously.

  Above each circle a word appeared, the same flat yellow, in a clear, rounded typeface like the words in a child’s first reader. SAVE, said one; DELETE, said the other.

  Macka buried her face in her hands. She remembered the night she’d brought the rat-kangaroo home, how she’d sat in the park while it glittered and moved about inside her jumper, paralysed by the feeling of obligation towards it. That feeling descended on her again, doubly strong, doubly heavy.

  ‘But I can’t take it home again!’ Her voice was thin with panic. ‘And I can’t hand it over to Razz Hart. That’d be cruel!’

  But she could see no other choice. If she touched the DELETE circle, she would see, and partly experience, the death agonies not only of her own animal but of its babies, too. And every other rat-kangaroo in the colony had been blasted by Geoff’s rifle. Ol had said how incredibly rare the species was. Macka supposed, miserably, that her animal was the last of its kind.

  It was the choice Ol had spoken about, the ability of one person to eliminate an entire species, forever, by her actions, or to give it at least a chance of continuing.

  Macka had the weird impression that the game had reached a new level; or had it always been so real? Had she just refused to acknowledge her part in it? Because she was sure, now, that whatever she did was connected to what Razz Hart and Ol were trying to do, to the fate of the real-life black-faced rat-kangaroos. Somewhere, her animal was living, in a place where it didn’t shimmer and trick the eyes, but was as solid and real as Razz’s specimens had been. Geoff and his big mate were looking at it, waiting for the bullet to find the mark.