Strange Attractors (1985)

by Damien Broderick

  on the harbour shebeens and sure enough 1 found what I had been

  seeking in the ‘Pot o’ Gold’.

  It was a tough, snug, secret place; the wine and food were of the

  best; there were brass lamps giving off a haze of golden smoke. The

  Pot was never noisy; fights were brought under control and drunks

  were rolled away into the alley. The customers were mainly hardbitten sailor women plus the younger gals and pretty-boys who frequent such places. I sang for my supper, avoiding the embrace of

  some brawny arms, and came at last to my goal. For the crowd

  thinned out after midnight and there, queening it in a deep alcove,

  was a trader captain on shore leave.

  ‘Tall and fine with hair of flame,’ the old song had it, but the

  words stuck in my throat. Even for the ‘Pot o’ Gold’ Vera Swift was

  an ugly customer, bulky and grey-haired. When she smiled her

  hard grey eyes sunk into cushions of fat. She had frightened Hilo

  Hill when she was in her prime, now she frightened me. She had

  the power of command and a bunch of shipmates and shore toadies

  to do her bidding.

  I sang the most sentimental and flattering of all the ballads that

  mentioned her by name. It is called ‘Brave Hearts’ and goes to the

  ancient tune o f ‘Derry’, a popular air in these parts. Jup Star him self wrote the words but he will not own to it.

  ‘The years are long since last we kissed and parted,

  Good shipmates all who sailed into the west,

  The day will dawn when all our seas are charted,

  O then, brave hearts, the Seahawk’s crew may rest.’

  A few sailors wept and a few pretended to weep for Cap Swift’s

  benefit. She herself gave a sigh and threw me a piece of silver; I

  caught it and, for once, did exactly the right thing. I gave the

  money back and saw her fingers close greedily over the coin.

  ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘a few words!’

  H er voice was mellow at this hour of night.

  ‘W hat d’ye want, sweetheart? This is ancient history.’

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  I had my answer ready.

  ‘The anniversary of’your sailing, Captain. It comes up in twenty

  days. We’re planning new ballads for Gline and your good self.’

  She moved a hand and suddenly a bench emptied so that I could

  sit at her side. I would sooner have cosied up to those mighty

  wonders the Vail than to this old sea-monster but I gritted my

  teeth. I ran a short, standard interview and Cap Swift answered

  promptly. Her eyes were cold and watchful. I did not dare bring the

  conversation around to a lost seaman named Hilo Hill. I could picture her swooping like a seahawk on the least hint of his survival. I consulted my tattered jocca scroll and said:

  ‘Nan Born was cook then, and came with you on the cutter?’

  ‘Second cook,’ said the Captain, ‘the cook was a man named Hill.’

  ‘H a . . . yes,’ I ran a finger shakily down the scroll. ‘He was

  missed from the beach, Captain, along with Kettle, Kelly and

  Adma. What became of these poor souls, Captain, missing

  between wreck and rescue?’

  The Captain’s wine beaker rocked just a little as she set it down.

  ‘I’ve thought about it,’ she said. ‘Too much was wrong on the

  beach. Gline was in command still but he was a sick man. I tended

  to him as best I could and rounded up food and shelter. I fancy that

  some of these shipmates never reached the beach at all, they did in

  fact drown in the wreck and were falsely reported alive. Who could

  be sure in that place, full of mist and the phantoms of disease?

  Then again, perhaps they struck inland . . . ’

  ‘Were there boats?’ I asked. ‘Could any have taken a boat?’

  The hawk swooped. Captain Swift’s big hand clasped down with

  a savage grip . . . not on my wrist, she was more crafty than that.

  She gripped the slender neck of my guitar as if she would snap it

  like a twig.

  ‘W’ho might have done that?’ she asked softly, ‘which one of these

  missing persons might have stolen a boat?’

  ‘None that I know of, Captain,’ I brought out, ‘but there was an

  interview . . . ’

  ‘Where? W hat did it say?’

  ‘At City Hall. Two of the missing, Kettle and Adma, were last

  seen beside a boat.’

  ‘Ah, those two,’ she said. ‘The smaller boats were not seaworthy.

  Perhaps they made off, poor gals, and came down to delfmhome, as

  the saying goes. They drowned. Don’t quote me, child. I’ve no true

  notion of how they died.’

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  Cherry Wilder

  Another thing,’ I went on quickly. ‘The plan to refloat the

  Seahawk . . . ?’

  ‘You’re well up in this history, little one,’ she said, smiling at last.

  ‘A real newsferret Ju p Star has made of you. Yes, there was some

  talk of refloating the Seahawk. She hung on the rocky tip of the

  point, only two, three hundred metres from our wretched beach.

  Might have been a world away, in those waters and in our weakened

  state. / knew at any rate, that it was death to approach her. So my

  plan was to patch up the cutter.’

  H er plan had worked; she had the air of one whose plans worked.

  But it had been too late to save their Captain, Hal Gline. I was as

  certain as I could be that Hilo Hill had taken a boat after some falling out with Vera Swift on that dreadful beach, long ago. I made my escape from the ‘Pot o’ Gold’ without probing any further. I

  understood a part of his lifelong fear.

  A spell of cold and rainy weather kept us indoors at the Songfabrik

  with the hatches battened down. I was sent for one night to go to

  Moon Lane. Hilo Hill was dying. A pneumonia had taken hold

  and the doctor Ruby had called could do no more for the old man.

  He lay at last in a big bed in an upstairs room, his face sharp and

  brown against the pillows. Dag Raam was there, sitting patiently at

  a corner of the bed when I stole in with my guitar and someone I

  took for a nurse but who was a female intern . . . Ruby had spared

  no expense.

  Now she was tired, poor lady, from watching, and Rayner led her

  off to get some sleep. Hilo drew breath painfully but his head

  seemed as clear as it had ever been. He m urm ured in two languages. I played a soft refrain and his eyes found me and knew me.

  When the intern came to stop my music, Hilo turned to Dag

  Raam.

  ‘This time?’he wheezed softly. ‘This time at last, Dag-boy?’

  The Captain would not lie to him or pretend to misunderstand

  the question.

  ‘It seems so, Hilo,’ he replied.

  Hilo fixed his gaze on the hovering intern.

  ‘Step out a moment, gal,’ he said. ‘I have something to say to these

  folk.’

  She went off when we promised not to tire him. He fell back into

  silence when the intern had gone and we waited. Then, fighting for

  I hr ballad o f H ilo H ilt

  129

  his breath, he began to speak.

  'On the beach,’ he said, 'the fifteenth day after the wreck. 1 saw

  Vera Swift, second mate, kill our Captain, Hal Gline. He lay apart

  in a rough shelter of canvas; 1 had
extra food hidden . . . 1

  brought him a little. He was injured but strong in heart, trying to

  keep command. As I came up through the bushes I heard him

  groan. Vera Swift lay across his body, her hands over his mouth,

  her elbow pressed into his throat. What I had heard was his death

  sound. She saw me and gave chase. She carried a knife, she was

  every way faster and stronger than I was. I was stricken with a

  mortal fear. I knew she would never let me live or come to the camp

  again. I took to the swamp forest. She hunted me again at night; 1

  thought I heard her calling my name. I saw a chance, stole the longboat early in the morning and took off west, beyond Gline’s cape.’

  So it came out, with many pauses for breath but absolutely clear.

  Dag Raam and I said nothing; we did not even exchange glances.

  Hilo lay still, then cocked an eye at the guitar again and I played the

  songs of the Rhomary land and the chants of the Gnai, far into the

  night. The intern came back and Rayner came to sit beside his

  grandfather.

  Dag Raam spoke to the old man once and said:

  'Hilo, you have come a long way. You have come all around this

  world.’

  ‘Seems so, Dag-boy,’ said Hilo, very faint. ‘I took the long way

  home.’

  Then he Spoke no more except in his other language and toward

  morning, with a grey dawn breaking over the Long Portage, he was

  gone. We went out of his room and down through the quiet, creaking house. Rayner let his mother sleep. Dag Raam said to me:

  ‘This will make no ballad, Cat Kells.’

  ‘1 know it.’

  I went out with Rayner Mack into the rainwashed garden and

  looked up to the sky, the sale camp of Ha-hwoo-dgai, and hoped

  indeed that Hilo Hill had come there. I might have chanted again

  but I could not. All my songs were sung.

  Everything changes and sometimes more quickly than we have

  time to reckon on. Soon after the old man’s death Ruby Mack sold

  up her great house and sent her son to Rhomary to complete his

  schooling. She planned to live modestly in the town but a doctor,

  newly arrived in Derry, was smitten with the handsome widow and

  they married. Now she lives on Medicine Hill, still in the best part

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  Cherry Wilder

  of town.

  Rayner took to spending his holidays in Rhomary; he did not

  care for his stepfather. We exchanged letters for about a year. If

  there is anything more popular than a newsballad it is a love song

  but, you see, I do not even have this to offer. The balladmaker did

  not fly off with the handsome silverwing; I felt regret, for there

  might have been more in it than a summer’s dreaming.

  What was the truth of the story? Nothing can be proved now.

  Hilo is dead and, in any case, he was not much of a witness. It is all

  a m atter of belief. I believe he told the tale as plainly as he could. I

  believe it fell out on the beach in the Red Ocean as he told it. More

  than that I believe in the ocean he crossed, in the floating islands

  and in Palmland. I believe there is a race of lizard-folk living far to

  the west of the Rhom ary land, and they call themselves the Gnai-

  na-gada, the Children of the Broken Snake.

  There is one scene left, one last verse in my ballad. Hilo Hill was

  buried beside his wife Janie in the cemetery of Derry town, on a

  headland overlooking the sea. A plain stone marks his grave; there

  are no dates, only the name Willem Hill and the words ‘Home from

  sea, a common inscription in this place. I go there sometimes in

  summer and sing a chant for him; no other balladmaker has ever

  got wind of the story. One summer’s day as I climbed up between

  the stones carrying my guitar and my string of climbing lilies, I saw

  that someone was there ahead of me.

  I wanted to run as Hilo had gone running through the swamp

  forest but my curiosity was greater than my fear. I came up warily

  and stared across the gravestones at the hulking figure. She sat on

  the ground, face and body drooping; her eyes were not to be

  fathomed.

  ‘The little ferret,’ said Vera Swift. ‘I might have guessed. Who lies

  in this grave?’

  ‘You knew him. Hilo Hill,’

  ‘That cannot be.’

  ‘He is dead now,’ I said. ‘There will be no ballads written.’

  ‘Damn right there won’t,’ she said. ‘Hilo Hill died long ago, d’ye

  hear me?’

  ‘Aye, aye Captain.’

  The ghost of a smile crossed her sad, cruel face. She could see

  plainly that I was afraid of her although we were alone and she was

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  131

  no longer fleet of foot.

  ‘Tell me . . . she ordered.

  So I told the tale of the old man, his return, his strange ways, his

  stories of the Green Ocean and of the Gnai. When I had done Cap

  Swift sighed harshly:

  ‘You think he really did it?’

  ‘I do, Captain. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘He told you more . . .’

  ‘He was afraid of you. Afraid for his life . . .’

  ‘We were all in fear of our lives,’ she burst out, ‘and I was answer-

  able for us all. I needed Hilo Hill, his cache of food, the longboat he

  stole. He was a fool to take off . . .’

  She reached out and laid a hand on the gravestone as if she spoke

  to the dead as well as the living.

  ‘Hal Gline was a worthy Captain,’ she said, ‘but the wreck had

  made him mad. There were forty souls on the beach and not one

  would have survived if he had had his way. He was crippled and in

  pain; his judgem ent was gone; he did not know how badly we were

  holding. His plan was to refloat the Seahawk; he would not hear of

  rescue or return.’

  She stirred and I was ready to fly off but her voice came, sullen

  and defeated.

  ‘Seventeen years . . . what is there left? To sail the Red Ocean as I

  do and store up credits? I might have raised an expedition a

  hundred times, to push further west, to cross Gline’s new ocean . . .

  it is all there, I have seen it, Hilo spelled it out very clear. Yet the

  past holds me back.’

  Vera Swift passed a hand over her face as if she would wipe away

  the traces of age and authority.

  ‘Gline was mad,’ she said. ‘All sea captains become a little mad, in

  time.’

  She heaved herself up and walked away down the hill without a

  backward glance. Again it was a question of belief; she had made

  no real admissions. I laid the string of lilies on Hilo’s grave; I

  missed the old man very keenly at that moment. I longed for one

  more session by the garden house; I missed Rayner Mack, my

  handsome lad. I thought of old age and of youth; I held fast to the

  moment and played a chant of the Gnai, a chant for the healing of

  wounds. I still had my music and it would last a lifetime. The place

  was hot and still; brown lizards came out to sun themselves upon

  the sailors’ graves.

  The elixir operon

  ©

  DAVID FOSTER

  1

  I remember clearl
y the day I first asked myself the question, what’s

  it all for? Up till then I’d gone on as most of us do, never questioning my existence or the job I was brought up to do, or the pounding through my flesh of the 0 2 and the C 0 2 — no, I just did as I was

  asked, and if I was thirsty I drank, and if I was hungry I helped

  myself.

  It’s a hard life here on the bronchial wall. Exchange goes on

  twenty-four hours a day. It’s a frontier life: invasions that leave the

  place swarming with police, and invaders impersonating police;

  I’ve known winds destroy entire walls. No sooner are things back to

  normal, than war breaks out, or there’s an earthquake: we often die

  as fast as we’re reborn.

  Even so, one day the environment took a turn for the worse. I’m

  not saying we hadn’t known invasions; it’s a hazard of frontier life.

  They don’t supply us with so many channels for nothing. No, we’d

  seen invaders and we’d known casualties, but nothing the cops, our

  channel-cruising macrophage and lymphocyte forces, couldn’t

  handle. As we used to say to one another: hang in there on the cliff

  face, sister, and strive for the common good. W hat the common

  good was, we never knew and never asked.

  This particular day, late in the month it was, the void turned

  suddenly filthy, and all sorts of foreign material started settling

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  7 'he elixir operon

  133

  down. ‘Hey!’ I shouted to leeward. A passing lympho put out a call,

  and that’s when the trouble really began.

  (A word on police procedure. Lymphocytes turn killer, or churn

  out ‘twigs’, in response to a threat. Twigs are scripts with the

  enemy’s name written on them. So invaders are either eaten whole

  by killer lymphos, mackas and grannies, or immobilised by twigs

  then blasted apart.)

  In the first place, along with the usual heterocyclic tar babes and

  lolly wraps (you never saw trash so thick), I saw some classy stuff in

  transit. W hat grabbed my attention and commanded my respect

  were the positive terminals. I thought they might have been neurotransmitters. True, I’d never before seen a script come in on the wind like an illegal immigrant.

  Whatever it was, it said never a word, just eased on by, cool and