by John Marsden
JAMES SAT IN his room. Mr Woodforde’s machine was on the desk in front of him. He was scared of it, but he played with it as though it held no particular power. He switched it on and off a few times, watching the needle on the battery indicator rise slowly from zero to nine, and even slightly beyond nine. ‘What would happen if the battery went flat while you were away?’ James wondered. He drew the machine closer to him, knowing from the burning feeling on his face that he was about to use it again. With sudden carelessness he keyed in random numbers: 45° 25’ 15” 45° 25’ 15” followed by a date and a time: 11.09. 1948, 1400 hours. Then, before he could have second thoughts, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach, he pressed ‘Enter’.
Again came the terrible glimpse, again the disintegration, with James having time only for one desperate thought: ‘I shouldn’t have done this.’ He was starting to think, ‘Why didn’t I learn from the last time?’ when the insides of his body seemed to fall away and water engulfed him. He was hit by a wave that stung him and drenched him and threw him over. A grim struggle followed, with James’ body fighting a fight to which his mind had not adjusted. There was too much to cope with: the shock, the cold, the wet, the salt, the strength of the water. James had to separate each sensation and identify it before he could respond to it. He opened his eyes and found that he was floundering in grey water under a grey sky. Only the white flecks on the tops of the waves enabled him to separate air from water. He was tossed and rolled and knocked from trough to trough, while the cold took possession of his body as though it were a spirit.
Only one thing could save James, and it was the thing that had brought him here. Through it all some kind of desperate reflex had kept his hand gripped around the machine. His fingers were clamped to it with a power that nothing could release. He did not know it was there but he would have known had it not been. As he came flapping and gasping to the surface, for the third or possibly the fourth time, his fingers groped for the keys on the bottom of the panels. But he was rolled under the water again before he could find what he wanted. When he felt air again, nearly a minute later, he had no strength left to sob, or even to breathe. Somewhere deep inside him some instinct forced one frozen frightened finger, taut like a talon, to scratch at the surface of the machine. It felt a key. It pressed, as he was engulfed by a huge grey wave. He was not feeling the cold of the water now, just its weight.
Then that giddying moment of horror emptied him of everything, even himself, until he was suddenly standing, staggering knock-kneed, at the back of an old wooden shed. He didn’t care where he was until he had stopped being sick, and then for some minutes more after that. The first thing he noticed, to his relief, was that he was dry – the water had not travelled the years and kilometres with him. The second thing he noticed was that no-one was nearby and this was also a relief. And then finally, some minutes later, he started to wonder where he was. But a few steps, to the corner of the building, brought recognition. The old wooden shed was one of the car pool garages, a few hundred metres from Administration. James circled around the back of the Administration building and entered the square through the network of old laboratories. As he passed Lab 17 he gave a quick nervous sideways glance. He was scared of it now. He did not want to go in it or near it, did not want to think about what it looked like, or about any of the moments he had spent in there.
IN THE MACHINE called his memory James went back, back to Mt Speakman. There had been three days of sleet that stung like wasp bites – cold hard unfriendly little bullets – and fogs, and strong winds. By then they were all ready to go home. This is no fun,’ James grumbled to his parents. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll clear up,’ they said each morning.
The first day he had played Monopoly with his sister until nearly lunch time, when they had a gigantic squabble that, in relation to their earlier ones, was like Mayfair compared to Old Kent Road. She had run off in tears and he had gloomily packed the game away, getting no pleasure from his neatly stacked piles of money, nor his glittering array of hotels and houses. In the afternoon he had skied for an hour, but the weather was painful and bitter.
The second day they played cards in the morning and watched videos all afternoon until their heads ached. The third day James met up with friends from school, Peta and Rupert, and went off with them to their flat, leaving Ellie to do. . . what? He tried guiltily not to wonder too much about how she would spend her day. Their parents had gone to the Curlewis’ place to play bridge.
But on the fourth day James awoke to the certainty that all the world was either blue or white. Through his window, from his bed, he could see nothing but blue, and when he sat up he found to his delight that the blue was limited only by the white. He sprang out of bed and got straight into his ski clothes before running into the kitchen for breakfast. There was a new mood in the apartment: a mood of lightness and silliness. People made silly jokes and other people laughed immoderately at them.
Ellie had her pink ski-suit on, which James privately thought looked revolting, but he told her she was looking good and she beamed. By nine o’clock he was tumbling out of the door, getting his boots and skis in a clatter of noise and excitement. Then, suddenly moved by a moment of compassion, which he knew he would later regret, he said to Ellie, ‘Come on, El, you want to ski with me?’
He was rewarded by the life that came into her face.
They skied all morning. Fresh powder snow had fallen overnight and they cut through it in laughing sweeping turns and delicate sharp manoeuvres. James was longing to go over to Snake Gully and do jumps with his friends but he swallowed his impatience. Most of the time he skied at Ellie’s speed, only occasionally bursting into long rhapsodies of genuinely fast movement, then pulling up after a few minutes to wait for her.
Late in the morning he took her down a run that he had found for himself a couple of seasons back, an alternative route down Duke’s Drop. It involved a long zigzag through trees, ducking a few times to get under low branches, then a tricky bit through rocks and bushes, ending with a real slalom course through small trees and a jump right next to the bottom of the chairlift. The first couple of times down it Ellie was nervous but she quickly gained confidence and was soon keeping up quite successfully.
At about noon he noticed that she was getting wheezy. ‘This had better be the last run,’ he said ‘then we can go back and have lunch.’
‘OK, I’m hungry,’ she said, pushing off. ‘I’ll go first this time.’
‘OK,’ James said, watching her lean gracefully into the long turn that took her off the main run and into the trees. ‘She’s getting quite good,’ he thought, before starting after her. He flicked in and out of the trees casually, then began concentrating on planting his pole as he made each turn. Coming through the small scrubby trees before the jump he had almost caught Ellie, but he was hardly aware of her until he heard a loud crack and the crunch of timber breaking. Looking up he saw that she had failed to duck for the last branch. It had caught her across the top of her head, but she was going too fast to stop. She sailed over the jump out of control, with blood scattering from her scalp. James felt his stomach lurch and his body lurched with it as he lost balance for a moment, then he planted his poles and pushed forwards, over the jump.
While he was in the air he took in the scene below, like a snapshot. Ellie lay in a heap of snow and skis and limbs, but she was struggling to get up, despite the blood that was richly marking the snow. People from the chairlift queue were already starting up the slope towards her. James landed and did a tight and fast turn to stop beside her. As he did so he realised with a mixture of fear and relief that his parents were among the half a dozen people coming up the slope. He braced himself for the storm: it came at once.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, bringing her down there?’ James’ father hissed at him. ‘What have you done?’ he asked Ellie, kneeling beside her. But she was crying too much to answer. Blood was soaking through her hair and running down the back
of her head, staining her pink suit.
‘Hit my head on a branch,’ she said at last, between sobs.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said James’ mother, looking angrily at him. A woman standing with them took her gloves off and began parting Ellie’s hair, feeling for the wound. Her hands seemed so experienced that James thought she might be a doctor.
‘Not too bad,’ she said after a minute. ‘Head wounds always bleed a lot. Might need a couple of stitches, that’s all.’ Ellie gave a fresh little splutter of sobs. James noticed, with new guilt, that she was wheezing worse than ever. ‘See if you can get a skivvy or a towel,’ the woman directed, standing up. ‘Fill it with snow and hold it on her head while you get her to the Medical Centre. I think you can get there on your own two legs, can’t you?’ she said, addressing Ellie. ‘I don’t think you need the ski patrol.’
‘Have you got your Ventolin?’ James’ mother asked.
‘Yes,’ Ellie sniffled, groping in her pocket for it.
‘I’ve got a little bag here that might make an icepack,’ a man said, producing a cloth satchel from inside his parka. He clumsily emptied it of its contents, which ranged from sunglasses to a balaclava.
‘That’s just the thing,’ the woman said, as James’ father filled it with snow and settled it onto his daughter’s head.
‘Well, thank you very much everybody,’ James’ mother said. ‘You’ve been most helpful. James should have known better than to take his sister off the groomed runs. Now,’ she said to the man, ‘you must tell us where you are staying, so we can return your bag.’
‘Oh, there’s no real need,’ the man said. ‘I’m at Michell’s chalet, if you happen to be passing, but don’t go out of your way. And my name’s Herbert, Frank Herbert. You could just leave it at Reception.
‘Well, we’ll certainly get it back to you,’ James’ mother said. ‘James can drop it in this afternoon. And now James,’ she said, turning to him, ‘You can go straight over to Running Waters and find the Newcombes and tell them we’ll be late for lunch. Tell them we’ll drop Ellie at the Medical Centre and then come over, but they’re not to wait for us. You can come back to the Medical Centre then and look after Ellie.’
James skied down to the chair lift, relieved to be away. He spent the afternoon hanging around the Medical Centre, and then baby-sitting Ellie back at the flat. Outside, the sun still shone and the snow was a white dazzle.
‘WHEN THE WAR is over,’ the girl with the scarred face thought, as she followed her parents wearily through the city, ‘I’ll eat chocolate again. I’ll smell coffee. I’ll swim in clear clean water.’ The handle of the bigger bag was cutting intolerably into her left hand, so she paused again to change the bags over. ‘I wonder how much weight the human body can carry, and for how long?’ she thought. ‘There must be a limit. I wonder if after a while it stretches your bones, or if the muscles tear away from your bones, or what?’ She looked up and altered direction slightly, to stay in touch with the weary backs of her parents, a metre or two in front of her.
They were angling across the main square, seeming to dodge by instinct the human traffic: pedlars, beggars, refugees, police and soldiers. A group of nuns hurried past, their faces impassive but their eyes narrowed and concerned. On one of the public buildings a banner still hung, torn by time and twisted by weather. It was no longer possible to read it. Its message, that must recently have seemed so urgent, so important, had been superseded by the counterattack from the south. Nevertheless, the girl tried to read it, to reconstruct the words from the fragments that she could see. At least it was something for her to do, something specific.
She paused again in the middle of the square to change hands. The crowd was getting more dense and for a moment her parents disappeared behind a flurry of grey clothing. The girl gave a start forward, then calmed when the crowd parted and her mother’s back came into view, fifty metres away. As she prepared to thread her way through the people again, to shorten the invisible cord to her parents, everything changed. The buildings moved, as though they were not stable and permanent, but instead were made of sand and could be shuffled at will. The ground under her feet shifted and reorganised itself, lifting her as it did so, and causing her to stumble. The sky darkened to grey, and then to complete black. All this happened in the time it took her to drop the heavier bag and open her mouth. Then a moving wall of air and sound hit her and she staggered backwards. The sound that came with it deafened her: an earthquake of a sound, a whole world of sound, a Heaven and Hell of noise.
She opened her mouth a little further, to scream or cry out, but any sound she made, even the thought of a sound, was blown away by the noise. She saw that the old clock tower was coming towards her: the fact that the vertical was soon to be horizontal was final proof that the world was being re-organized. If vertical and horizontal could be as one, then three dimensional could become two, or one, or four, and life could become death. But before the great mass of masonry could reach her she was struck by an absurdly small piece, a lump of brick, a mere harbinger of the building itself. She dropped to the ground, still holding the lighter bag, unconscious before she fell, knowing nothing of the crash as the two planes at last met. She did not feel her body being picked up by the bang of air, nor did she feel the tonnes of rubble cover her, nor was she aware of the awful airless silence that followed.
She was aware of very little for the next three and a half days.
*
TWO TEENAGERS NAMED Max and Sybil had arrived to take James out. They did this occasionally. He was not sure who they were or where they came from or why they did it, but he liked their good-humoured chatter and their breezy confidence. On this particular day they walked a couple of kilometres to Rymill Park. Max and Sybil talked across his head but also tried to include him in the conversation. Sybil was a girl who moved gracefully and spoke with a light and lively voice; Max was clumsier but good-natured. He often surprised, with comments of real originality.
They were talking about one of their teachers. They went to the same school, a senior high about five kilometres away.
‘He’s got no sense of humour,’ Max complained. ‘Were you there the other day? He told us to choose something in the room and paint it. Those were his exact words. So Andrew Reeve chose the back of the door and started painting it blue. Mr Angus was so busy cutting up bits of paper that he didn’t notice for ten minutes. When he did he went sick at Andrew. Absolutely and completely el sicko. He tried to chuck Andrew out of the class but when he opened the door he got blue paint all over his hands. It was so funny. I had to put my face under the tap to stop myself laughing. But he didn’t see the joke at all.’
‘Strange, that,’ said Sybil drily, while James choked back his own laughter. Impassivity, one of his most reliable defences, was threatening to abandon him.
In the park they played cricket, not very successfully with only three players. But after a while some kids at a barbecue with their parents joined them. That made for a better game but intimidated James, who retreated to the outfield and shook his head shyly when invited to bat or bowl.
They’d been playing for half an hour when Max came to the wicket to bat for the third time. He only had twelve runs from his first two innings, which put him well behind the others. The first ball he got sent him falling back over the rubbish-tin they were using as a wicket, causing much laughter among the kids who had joined them. On the principle of ‘not out first ball’ Max was allowed to keep batting. He played the second ball uneventfully without scoring a run. When the third ball hit a bump in the ground and bounced awkwardly Max tried to hook. In doing so he put his left foot in the rubbish-tin. The shock caused him to lose his grip on the bat, which flew into the fire, while the ball popped up in the air to land in a dish of coleslaw that was sitting on a picnic table. Max overbalanced backwards landing with his foot still in the bin and its contents strewn around him.
This was too much for James. He collapsed in helpless laughter, losing
control completely. For several minutes he lay on the ground, giggling convulsively. When he finally recovered he lay on his back, gazing at the sky. A ragged mass of cloud was rapidly filling it, from horizon to horizon. His feeling of elation was giving way to fear and embarrassment at his abandonment. At last, however, he forced himself to sit up and look across doubtfully at the others.
They were ignoring him. To his amazement it appeared that they had not even noticed. They were too busy recovering from their own fits of laughter. Max was ruefully holding the cricket ball between thumb and middle finger while he explained and apologised to the owners of the coleslaw. The bin lay on its side on the ground. The bat had been retrieved from the fire: it was propped against a picnic chair, apparently undamaged. Sybil was on the ground, chewing on a piece of grass and still laughing, watching Max.
Relieved, James squatted on his haunches and found his own piece of grass to chew. For some reason he began thinking of a story he had once heard about sneezing. The story explained why people say ‘Bless you’ when somebody sneezes. It had originated in the old days, when people believed that during the split second of the sneeze, the sneezer was off-guard, and the Devil could enter and take possession of the body. Saying ‘Bless you’ was a defence against Satan; he would be driven out when he heard those words.
Squatting there in the grass under the cloudy sky, chewing on a dry stalk, James whispered, so quietly that he heard himself in his mind rather than through his ears, two words: ‘Bless me’. Then he got up and walked towards the others.
*
THE TOWN WAS called Ravenswood. A few dozen people still lived there. Their houses lurked behind patches of scrub or squatted at the end of confusing tracks. The thousands who had lived there in the days of mining madness were represented now by the cadavers of their buildings. Most of these were fenced off, with signs threatening trespassers. In the distance the dust moved like silk, but the town itself was still. Somehow it had taken on the hot dullness of the surrounding bush: the only movement was the susurration of decay.
