Terra Nullius

by Claire G. Coleman

  Every member of the gang now carried cream plastic Settler rifles, carried them nervously as if mistrusting that they were really dangerous, would really work for them. Every member that is except for Jacky who was so afraid of the alien equipment they could not convince him to touch them, or even carry a spare for someone else.

  ‘I am taking too many risks,’ thought Johnny, almost letting the words escape into the world through his mouth. The water, the ammo was worth it, but only just. Maybe he should have hidden from the flier, kept running from the Troopers as he had always done.

  It did not presage well. His habitual caution was wearing thin.

  Chapter 17

  Jacky Jerramungup will go down in history with the other outlaws, real or legendary, who have fought a more powerful enemy, one they could not really defeat. Robin Hood, Jandamarra, Yagan, Haasheh Gaarnch, all fought with whatever small resources they had, all became thorns in the sides of the administration they were fighting. All became legends in defeat. It does not matter if we capture Jacky Jerramungup. In allowing him to become famous, in allowing him to become a role model, we have already lost.

  – J. R. Kaashakk, Historian

  Sergeant Rohan finally gave in to his frustration – something he had wanted to avoid, something that would be supremely unhelpful. The thin veneer of stuffy civilisation, that too-tight coat that kept the savage inside, where it belonged, had been scraped and dragged off, torn to shreds by the rough land, by the heat, by too many days in the wild. He lashed out – his grey-green, wide-mouthed face in a contorted, uncontrolled grimace – the ceramic blade in his hand sharper, stronger than steel. The headless body of his informant collapsed, the tumbling head kicking up puffs of dust from the bone-dry ground.

  ‘They took down a flier, that flier we heard about that went down. Somehow that Star, that traitor took down a flier,’ Rohan said to his deputies as he strode past them in a fury. Turning he bared his teeth to his terrified, horrified deputies. ‘Somehow they shot it down and stole their guns, the water, the food, all the ammo, and left the men in the flier to die.’ He did not tell them that the men from the flier had been recovered, alive. He wanted the boys good and angry.

  The Natives were laughing at the Settlers. So many of them and so strong, yet Jacky and Johnny remained impossible to find. That was the thought occupying Rohan’s mind as he leapt onto his mount and turned again to yell at his posse.

  ‘We are going to need a few more men – we cannot take Jacky and Johnny Star, and their whole gang without some serious help. They are armed, they outnumber us and are not as pathetic as you.’ He ignored the gasps of disgust, the looks on their faces.

  His inability to catch Jacky, even to find him, had led him to unconsciously imbue the Native with almost supernatural abilities. The thought of him with Johnny Star, who had escaped the Troopers for years, who killed Settlers and troopers in an almost mocking way, was chilling. They were almost his equals in his grudging esteem. They were almost certainly dangerous. Rohan respected dangerous.

  It was not far to the nearest Settler military base – at least not as the crow flies, as humans said – yet in that wilderness, in that desert, it took days. Too many days, as Rohan knew the fugitives were getting further away, though he hoped not too far away.

  He was merely a trooper, hunting a mere Native, despite the addition of a Settler rebel and a few more Natives in the mix. Therefore, he did not warrant a heavy flier, well armed and thickly armoured; he did not warrant a platoon of troopers or soldiers. Thirty more men and a utility flier, barely armed, not much more than a truck, was all they would spare him.

  Uncontrollably savage now, Rohan snapped and bit at the supply clerks who did not pack his flier fast enough for his liking. His new men were volunteers, from the ranks of the Troopers, not that he had asked for such but before men could be chosen they put up their hands. The traitor Johnny Star was a target many a trooper wanted to pin their name on. Oh how they would boast if they returned from the mission having captured both Jacky, who some now named Jerramungup, and the notorious Johnny Star.

  The eagerness of his small army made Sergeant Rohan slightly nervous, even a little nauseated. He had to wonder, again and again, whether any of the men throwing themselves into the fray had ever been in the desert, ever risked their lives against anything more dangerous than women and children.

  Johnny Star, Jacky and the gang strolled up a ribbon of red sand that looked like it had once been a river. Here and there were boulders, deposited by what must have been a torrent, on the rare occasion that it rained. The sand even looked a little like water, although the wrong colour; the flow of the last rains, who knew how long ago, had made swirls, streaks, ripples that had stayed carved in the sand when the water retreated.

  It was hot as hell out there. Johnny hated the heat, hated the dry but there had seemed little choice but to travel north, north and east deeper into the dry lands, deeper into the desert. Here even the tough native trees, with their dry waxy leaves, the tougher native shrubs, all spikes and scratchiness, seemed confined to the edge of the river. Beyond the riverbanks there was nothing but spinifex, a grass that tore at the ankles.

  What sort of a planet, what kind of a continent, can produce a grass that can tear at your skin until it bleeds?

  Six days after shooting down the flier the gang were desperate, they were hungry, they were almost constantly thirsty. It had taken all of Tucker’s skill, all of Dip and Dap’s luck and tenacity, all Jacky’s will to live to keep the group alive, to keep finding barely enough water to survive. Johnny was tired of the taste of mud and sand, the flavour of the puddles they drank from, of the holes in riverbeds where they dug for water.

  Johnny walked in a silent daze, dreaming of cool water, of lying in a pool, soaking water in through his soft, thin, porous skin. He could not of course do this, when there was little water to be had, and that hard to get, he could not pollute it with his flesh, he could not even spare the water to wash. The nearest he got to lying in water was rolling in the damp sand the more energetic humans dug out when looking for water. They nearly left him there, threatened to leave him when he lay in the damp sand and refused to move. As always Johnny wondered how his people had managed to overwhelm this planet so quickly. The Natives here were stronger and more resilient, better survivors than his own people. He was enough proof of this. Despite his training as a soldier, as a trooper, despite his years surviving in the swamps back home, he was now completely reliant on his human companions. He hoped desperately that they did not resent him.

  With threatening suddenness, Tucker, again leading the way, stopped, his dusty face frozen. The rest of the gang were slower to react: Dip and Dap freezing a moment later; Deadeye lifting his rifle stock to his shoulder with breathtaking, frightening, reflexes; Crow stopping like a ball that had just been caught, too much restless energy to stop softly.

  Even Jacky was faster than Johnny, startled by his companions’ reactions. He scanned the trees with lightning eyes although he knew there was nowhere to hide. Johnny was too tired, too dehydrated to react. He stumbled, almost fell when he blindly staggered into Tucker’s shoulder.

  Here the water must have held on longer – the trees were healthier, taller. The hot breeze had suddenly ceased, the thicker woodland an efficient windbreak. Cooler, without the drying wind, darker in the shade of the trees, they breathed, the air so much cooler than before it felt almost damp.

  ‘There have been people here, many people,’ Tucker said after he had stared at the riverbed for some time. ‘A great mob of people, all human – men, women and children – carrying weight, travelling slowly, some barefoot, some in boots, some in shoes like I have not seen since my family was killed, and some look like they have just tied skins over their feet.’

  ‘People would be nice, people other than you lot. I am getting a bit sick of your company,’ quipped Crow Joe. His voice was its us
ual deadpan – only long association let the others know he was joking. Dip and Dap laughed at once, in disturbing unison; Johnny was too tired to laugh; Jacky was still silent, as he had been for too long.

  ‘We follow them, and stay alert. They might help us, they might at least be company for a time.’ Johnny was glad to have a decision to make finally, something proactive. ‘Unfortunately they might not be as glad to see us as we would be to find them. They have not had the benefit of all the shit we have been going through. Surely nobody can be as tragic, lost and lonely as us.’

  ‘We’d best get moving then,’ Tucker replied, ‘they were here many days ago, maybe a week. They would be far ahead unless they have stopped. There are less of us – we should be faster.’

  Johnny stared where Tucker was looking, marvelling as always at the Native’s tracking ability. Where the Toad saw nothing but scratches and the slightest indentations in the sand Tucker was reading the signs like a book.

  There was a spring in their steps when they moved on – they had a destination of sorts, some sort of target ahead, better than just running away. It was hard to maintain caution – they wanted to skip and run, to get to the humans ahead of them as soon as possible. They walked fast, vibrating with the excess energy.

  Why would such a group be ahead of them? Were they free humans, somehow staying away from the Settlers, keeping free, keeping alive? Were they a group of slaves on a forced march, would they get somewhere ahead and find a work camp, a death camp, a mass grave, a rotting pile of corpses?

  When they broke out of the trees, back into the heat and light, into the scouring wind, they lost the tracks. The tracks of more humans than they had seen in a group in years had been swept away by the weather. No matter, the gang would follow the river, there to find more tracks, to find the people before them, or not. There was nothing to do about it.

  Another clue was not long coming, and again Johnny Star, to his embarrassment, was not the one to see it. In his hot, dry, almost delirious state, he didn’t at first understand the significance of the find. At a bend in the dry river, sheltered by a bloodwood tree, there was a slight depression in the sand.

  There the ground was slightly damp; they could smell it, especially Johnny in his dehydrated state. It was just the sort of place they would have dug for water. Johnny dropped to his knees, grateful they had, at last, found a soak. There would be a little water there.

  Nobody was digging, nobody was searching for the precious water, nobody was breaking branches off the trees to use as digging sticks. They were merely staring at the place where the water would be as if they had all lost their minds.

  ‘Someone has already dug for water here.’ It took some time for Crow Joe’s words to penetrate. Belatedly Johnny realised that all his companions had alert expressions, hands on weapons. He stumbled to his feet, so unsteady, so uncertain he almost fell again.

  ‘Are you sure?’ The Settler was not sure of the significance in his depleted state but knew it was somehow important.

  ‘Yes,’ Crow Joe was sardonic, ‘I’m sure.’

  Johnny examined the slight depression, heat and dehydration chasing his thoughts down a blind alley. Again he felt it was important, yet he could not say how. ‘Why do I feel that matters, why can’t I think why?’

  It was Tucker who answered. The words came out in a rush, more excited than Johnny had ever heard him be. ‘It matters because Settlers would carry water, they don’t dig for it, and a group who are being marched somewhere wouldn’t dig either, they wouldn’t be allowed the time, and if they did dig for water they’d probably not fill in the hole, or make the least effort to hide their hole, to hide their presence here.

  ‘What’s ahead of us, Johnny, is a group of free humans, a group like us but much bigger. They might be refugees, they might be escapees, freed slaves. They might have never even been controlled by your people. I’ve never seen evidence of such a large group in my life.’

  ‘Then what is ahead of us,’ said Johnny Star, his mouth half open in a Settler smile – on a human it would look like they were panting – ‘is hope.’

  The children were so filled with excitement and energy when the flier arrived that it was almost impossible to control them. Sister Bagra stopped trying. There was no way to keep them in class. They were rebelliously heading for the doors, they were standing at the windows – she let them go, it would do no harm. She could hear the banging of doors, the hammering of feet as the other teachers released their charges. Like a flock of gulls they squawked and flapped out the doors and into the open space between the buildings.

  Some had never seen a flier, they landed so seldom there, yet even they responded with joy, aping the other Natives. She would have expected them to fear the sound, the noisy machine coming from the sky. Such enthusiasm, such vivacity was not really acceptable, yet if this was the inspector arriving it could not hurt to have him see the children happy.

  What would hurt was for the inspector to see her disciplining the children for nothing more than being too happy, too noisy. She let them run and scream although the noise hurt her head.

  When the inspector alighted from his still-whining craft the children rushed, consumed with curiosity, and the pointless energy they often had, to examine the new arrival. To someone unaware of the excitement that something, someone, new can bring, someone unaware that excitement does not necessarily equate with happiness, the children would appear to be filled with joy. Bagra hoped the inspector had not learnt enough about Natives to learn to be cynical about their fleeting and unpredictable moods.

  Apparently not. He stepped out of the flier, a soft-coloured almost ivory-white man, going to flab like all their people do as they age, yet somewhat larger. Despite his vow of poverty he was overweight. He reached out to muss the hair of one of the children crowding around. Bagra noticed that, the touching of the hair; likely a gesture learnt from humans, possibly calculated to inform her subtly that Natives are to become citizens, equals.

  She avoided touching the hair of the Natives, except when they were shaved as punishment for almost every minor infraction. Hair, which only mammals have, that someone had told her was actually dead tissue, was disgusting. Even if not inherently disgusting, it was definitely dirty. They shaved the children when it got too dirty; it was almost impossible to clean otherwise.

  There were no shaved heads among the children. Discipline had been lax lately, few punishments had been handed out. She was relying on the short unreliable memory of the children to ensure there was no ‘cruelty’ to report.

  Bagra was certain she was not supposed to see the look of distaste that flickered almost invisibly across the inspector’s face. Behind her mask she laughed. Big words, big gestures, yet he too felt the revulsion that all their people feel when touching a human. Hopefully he felt crowded, infested, dirty and claustrophobic having the Natives pressing against him like that. If so it would certainly not hurt her cause to make sure he had as many opportunities to feel that way, as many chances of being crowded by the children as she could manage.

  ‘Children,’ she flustered towards them, ‘you can all talk to the inspector later. I am sure he would love to spend time with you all.’ Was that a look of alarm that showed briefly on his face?

  ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ Grark boomed over the cacophony, ‘they are just excited.’ He did not sound particularly convinced. Bagra smiled triumphantly behind her mask.

  The flier took off with a scream as she herded the children towards the other nuns who were fluttering like crows. She spoke firmly. ‘They need to return to class, we cannot neglect their education, there will be time for a more formal introduction to the children later.’ With the flier gone she knew now that it was not to be a short visit; he would be staying.

  Grark nodded, relief again? ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘we must continue to improve their lot in life. Nothing, nothing at all, is more important than
education, except faith.’

  Gesturing for the gardener to take Grark’s ostentatiously minimal luggage – so like an inspector to demonstrate their self-declared piety by packing so little – Bagra led the way to the guesthouse. ‘It would be best to not interrupt the children at class – learning order and discipline is an important part of their education. When the children first come here they have no concept of sitting down quietly, they are unused to keeping to a timetable. If we interrupt class now it will teach them the wrong lesson about discipline and self-control.’

  Bagra did not look to Grark to see his reaction to this, so she did not see the expression on his face. ‘Yes, self-discipline is important, discipline is important,’ he said. His voice was curiously flat in the manner of someone keeping strong emotion from their voice. They walked on in silence.

  ‘We will have a meal outside tonight. The children can show you some of their work, show some of their Native dances. We have been teaching them some spiritual songs, they would love to sing you some.’ If not for her own flat tone, sounding like she couldn’t choose an emotion to place in the words, Bagra made sure she sounded enthusiastic, even proud of the children. She dared not look at him but hoped he was convinced.

  There had been a mass grave here once, from one perspective it was a mass grave still. Johnny stood right where the mound had collapsed, where the bones poked through the dry red sand. Nothing grew on the mound but some weeds. The desert plants grew slowly on thin soil, and the disturbance when the bodies had been dumped had interrupted them. Erosion from the last rain, years ago, had been enough to open the grave. There was no sign of life in that place, as if the birds and small animals shunned it, as if life itself was holding its breath.

  Johnny was envious of humans, for they had the capacity to cry. All around him his gang, his friends wept, tears streaming down their faces. Only his face was dry; he lacked the moisture to even ooze with emotion. He knew they were receiving catharsis – that after they had cried they would feel better for a time. He had no such luxury.