If conventional anti-epileptic drugs could leave someone a little drowsy, possibly a herbal concoction meant for the same purpose might do so too, even if it couldn’t stop the seizures.
She knew more about herbal medicine than she had when she met Mark, from books she’d borrowed from the town library, and other works she’d hunted for in bibliographies and ordered through the bookshop. One fact she did know: it was illegal for any herbalist to offer to cure or to control epilepsy.
‘Ra admits that he can’t cure us all! Not forever! But we only have to wait. It’s only just over a year now.’
‘What will happen then?’ asked Scarlett gently. She felt Leafsong arrive still and intent beside her.
Mark looked at her, then glanced at Leafsong. ‘I . . . I’m not supposed to say. I shouldn’t have told you that! Ra Zacharia says he tried to tell the world about the Message,’ the capital letter was distinct in his voice, ‘but no one would listen. He can’t risk ridicule now, not when the Visitors might hear it on earth broadcasts.’
‘We won’t tell anyone,’ said Scarlett.
‘Not even Jed?’
‘Not even Jed,’ she agreed.
‘The aliens are going to land next year. We need to meet them. Pure spirits who have learned to be one with the universe. And then the aliens will cure us,’ said Mark quietly. ‘They’ll make us perfect, so we will live forever too.’
Chapter 54
Draft of a letter from Jed Kelly, Dribble via Drinkwater, to Sam McAlpine, Nimbin (never sent)
Dear Sam,
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I miss being ‘us’ too. I don’t know if I hope everything is wonderful for you up there, or such a mess that you want to come home now, today, this minute.
RA ZACHARIA
It was not all going wrong. A lesser man would have thought so.
A lesser man, one not in complete and utter harmony with the universe, would not have realised that a small perfect offering was a better Sacrifice than a large imperfect one.
Ra Zacharia had hoped to offer fifty healed and perfect bodies. But those who had left the Chosen had demonstrably not been perfect. Nor was remission from conditions like arthritis a true testament of harmony.
They were too old. Too conditioned by conventional belief. He had been young when he had first realised the message from space, young enough for his mind to be pliable enough to accept a new reality. Mark 23 and Mark 40 were young too. Scarlett and the baby Gavin were even younger. It had only taken weeks to teach Mark 23 the universe’s harmony. The girl would need even less. A day! And the baby’s healing, unpolluted by doctors’ propaganda, would be instantaneous. That would be a Sacrifice indeed to give the Elders: two cured and Sacrificed just as they appeared.
Mark 23 and Mark 40 would bring them, exactly when and as he ordered. And then the true Sacrifice to the Elders could begin.
Chapter 55
Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 May 1974
Labor Wins by Five Seats
Victory for the Labor Party may mean little now that its majority has been reduced from thirteen to five seats, nor has Labor won enough seats in the Senate to allow it to pass its stalled legislation . . .
JED
Jed and Scarlett drove home in silence. Usually Scarlett chattered. Tonight she watched the dark tunnel of the road. Tired, thought Jed. It had been a busy weekend, and now another late night. She had to remember that things she took for granted took far more energy for Scarlett, not just wheeling but always having to be conscious of how she would get somewhere or manage toilets or even reaching up to get a cup of tea.
Nor did she say anything about the Chosen of the Universe as they said good night. Her own going-to-bed ritual took just minutes, most of which were spent brushing her teeth. Scarlett’s took half an hour, laboriously undressing, lifting her legs, getting into her nightdress, wheeling the chair into exactly the right position to heave herself into bed.
Next Saturday, she thought. She and Scarlett would have time to discuss things properly then. There was someone she wanted to talk to first.
She waited till Wednesday night — they usually had dinner at Matilda’s on Wednesday nights, with Nancy and Michael and the twins. Then she slipped out to Matilda’s study. She dialled the Canberra number — wonderful at last to be able to make calls without the switchboard listening in. ‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice.
‘Hello. My name’s Jed Kelly. I used to work at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station. I wondered if I could speak to Mr Bryan Sullivan, please?’
‘Of course.’ She heard the receiver clank down, the call of, ‘Bryan! It’s for you . . .’ then the familiar voice on the line: ‘Hello?’
‘Mr Sullivan, it’s Jed Kelly. I don’t know if you remember me.’
‘Of course I remember you.’ As kind as always.
‘I wondered if you’d mind giving me some advice. There’s a bloke, a kind of guru, who claims that what looks like a star near Alpha Centauri is really a spacecraft heading to earth. Its twinkle is really Morse code.’
She heard the laugh at the other end. ‘What rubbish.’
‘So it couldn’t be true?’
‘Well, a spaceship might head towards earth. It might even look like a star if it were far enough away. But any deviation from an expected orbit or appearance would be picked up by a hundred observatories and amateur astronomers pretty quickly.’
‘What about the Morse code?’
‘The same. Morse code needs to be distinct short and long passages if anyone is to interpret it accurately. If anything up in the night sky has been doing that, someone would have picked it up.’
‘I see,’ said Jed slowly.
‘On the other hand, anyone a bit . . . deluded . . . could probably make a star’s twinkle say anything they wanted it to.’
‘I think that’s what’s happened here,’ said Jed. ‘How are things out at Honeysuckle Creek?’
‘A bit sad, really, with the space program winding down. I’ll be moving on soon, I think.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jed sincerely. ‘Working there — there’ll never be anything else like it.’
‘No,’ said Mr Sullivan wistfully. ‘I don’t suppose there will be now, not in our lifetimes. How’s everything with you? All good?’
‘All good,’ said Jed. ‘Please say hello to everyone there from me —’
‘Jed? Tom and Clancy want you to read them a story before we go.’ It was Nancy’s voice.
Jed said goodbye quickly, then headed back to the living room. ‘What story do you want me to read you?’
‘Tell us,’ said Clancy firmly. ‘And then read us a story,’ he added, holding his dog-eared copy of Where the Wild Things Are close to his chest.
‘What do you want me to tell you a story about?’
‘A dinosaur.’
‘A rabbit,’ said Tom.
‘Okay, how about a rabbit and a dinosaur.’ Real life, she thought, making up stories for small boys, eating with friends who were family too, going home to a house that had sheltered a shearer’s family before her and Scarlett. Space aliens were just a dream.
And yet, going to the moon had been a dream too, till men like Mr Sullivan had helped to make it happen. Part of her almost wished that Ra Zacharia’s prophecy might actually be true. That in her lifetime she might hear what life was like on another planet, see how evolution might diverge . . .
‘Why?’ demanded Clancy as the dinosaur decided a toy rabbit was his best friend.
Time to concentrate, thought Jed. Ra Zacharia and alien spaceships could wait.
She waited till she and Scarlett had had breakfast the next Saturday, scrambled eggs because that was what she used to make for Sam, and making them meant she didn’t miss him quite so much, and anyway, they needed to use up the eggs from the hens. She really needed Sam this morning. Sam had experience with sisters . . .
‘Scarlett, I need to talk to you about Ra Zacharia.’
Scarlett looked u
p warily. She was a shadowed elf today. She’d been looking preoccupied all week, Jed realised. The election and late nights must really have been too much for her. ‘What about him?’
Where to begin? ‘I . . . I was speaking to Mr Sullivan this week. I used to work with him at Honeysuckle Creek.’
‘I remember. What were you talking about?’
‘I wanted to know if a spaceship could be heading to earth and sending Morse code signals without anyone noticing.’
‘And he said it couldn’t,’ said Scarlett flatly.
‘Yes,’ said Jed, relieved. ‘Scarlett, I don’t want you to go out there again.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Ra Zacharia is deeply deluded.’
‘But you already knew that.’
‘I didn’t know that he expects the aliens to land at the end of next year.’ Jed stared when Scarlett showed no surprise. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
Scarlett nodded.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I promised not to.’
‘What? What else have you promised not to tell me?’
‘Nothing,’ said Scarlett wearily.
‘Look, you’re not going out there again and that’s final.’
‘Just because Ra Zacharia is deluded? Jed, the world is full of deluded people. People who think that the world’s population can keep growing forever, that earth’s oil won’t run out if we keep using more and more of it, that DDT is safe. The pest inspector says DDT is safe, even though he lost his ARM to bone cancer, but you still offer him a cup of tea every time he comes to check the orchard.’
‘He’s a nice man.’
‘Exactly. But he’s deluded. Mrs Weaver is deluded. I am probably deluded thinking that one day I might marry and have children. Ra Zacharia and his followers just have their own particular delusions.’
‘You make it sound like a delusion is a kind of hobby. Those people base their whole lives on this.’
‘And I base mine on the hope I’ll be able to finish a medical degree. Do a residency in a hospital. For twelve years I pretended that one day I’d be able to brush my own teeth and feed myself and even go to the toilet by myself. And you know what? I did!’
‘It’s not the same. You worked hard. And had qualified help.’
‘I’m not a fool,’ said Scarlett. ‘But one day soon Mark is going to discover that the aliens aren’t coming. That nothing of any interest at all is going to happen on 11 November 1975. And he’s going to need a friend.’
‘Are you sure he really is a friend? Not just trying to get to the Thompson money?’
Scarlett stared at her. ‘Do you really think I am so hideous that no man would want to be my friend?’
‘What? No! I didn’t mean that. I’m sure Mark genuinely likes you.’ Jed knew she sounded both false and banal.
‘That’s what it sounded like!’ Scarlett was not just upset but furious.
‘Scarlett, I love you, that’s all. I want you to be safe. Deluded people can be dangerous —’
‘So I’m not supposed to see Mark either? How dare you say who I can have as a friend? I’m not a little girl any more. You’re not even my legal guardian.’
‘Nancy wouldn’t want you going out there either —’
‘So you and Nancy are going to forbid me?’
‘Yes!’
‘Really? What are you going to do if I keep going out there? If I keep meeting Mark? Tell me I have to go back and live at River View? Stop my allowance? Well, go ahead and do it! I managed before you came into my life and I’ve managed this far. I can keep managing! And you can take your allowance. I’m not for sale!’
Scarlett turned and wheeled herself furiously out the door and down the ramp.
Jed sat, trying to control her anger. Didn’t the stupid girl realise Jed just wanted her safe? Scarlett was only sixteen. Even though she had conquered more than most in a lifetime, that very battle had meant she’d seen less of the world than any other sixteen-year-old in Gibber’s Creek.
She’d wait five minutes before she followed her. Ten, to give her time to cool down. There were only two paths her everyday wheelchair could manage anyway: the one down to the river and the one out to the orchard. If she tried to go further, she’d get stuck. Or the chair would tip.
What if it did tip? What if Scarlett broke her arm? She’d have to go back to using the motorised wheelchair till it healed. She might not even be able to manage that if she broke her right arm . . .
She’d go after her now. Apologise, even though she was totally in the right. She opened the back door, gazed down to the river, then back to the orchard. No sign of a girl in a wheelchair. Had the silly child tried to head off across country to the billabong? Or . . .
No!
Jed ran, down the drive, out to the gate, just in time to see Scarlett about two hundred metres down the road with her arm out and her thumb up. Even as she watched, a car pulled up.
‘Scarlett!’ she yelled.
Scarlett ignored her. She spoke urgently to the person in the car, then swiftly and competently pulled herself up from her chair to the car seat.
‘Stop!’ yelled Jed as the middle-aged man in the driver’s seat emerged, evidently following Scarlett’s instructions, folded the chair and shoved it in the back of the car.
What had Scarlett told him? That Jed was kidnapping her? Why would any driver pick up a hitchhiker who was being chased by her sister?
‘Stop!’ she screamed again. Memory came in a black tide. The psychopath, five years ago, who had murdered those hitchhiking girls in Victoria, who had tried to kill Jed too. What if this was a murderer? It wasn’t safe to hitchhike. She had only just managed to escape, and her body had been whole, and strong . . .
The car zoomed off smoothly down the road.
And suddenly terror vanished, though deep concern remained. Because she had hitchhiked for years with only that one horror incident. And Scarlett had just shown she could manage.
But where was she going? To River View? Or back to Overflow from there? Or to the Chosen of the Universe, to ask if she could live with them? And they’d agree. Of course they would agree. And just like Scarlett’s birth mother, she and Nancy might find it difficult, even impossible, to legally get Scarlett back.
And if she and Nancy did use the force of the law? Argue that because Scarlett was in a wheelchair she couldn’t make decisions about her life?
It wasn’t true. And yet it was!
She ran back to the house, shoved her feet into shoes, grabbed her shoulder bag, then realised that the car would reach town, with all its possible streets and turns, long before Boadicea could catch up with it. If Scarlett were headed for Drinkwater or River View, someone would call her from there. She needed to stay here, at least for an hour, in case Scarlett phoned her, needing help.
She sat, helpless, staring at the phone in the living room. She checked her watch. How long since Scarlett had left? Fifteen minutes? Twenty?
Terror began to build. In another ten minutes . . . fifteen . . . she would ring River View. Or call the police . . . And yet the driver had done nothing wrong.
She should phone Nancy, confess what had happened. That the trust Nancy had placed in her had been misplaced. That she’d let Scarlett head into danger. No, that they had argued so fiercely that Scarlett had fled into danger . . .
What if the driver of that car just kept going? Not a murderer, but someone who had good intentions, who took Scarlett home with them. A home that might be a hundred kilometres away, because Jed hadn’t recognised the car. Was Scarlett pleading to be allowed out . . . ?
The phone rang. Jed grabbed it.
‘Hello?’
No answer.
‘Hello?’ she cried again. ‘Scarlett, is that you?’
A click, sharp, like something flicked against the phone. And then three more sharp clicks.
‘Leafsong?’
Two clicks.
‘Leafsong, if that’s you, ca
n you click twice again? Is Scarlett with you?’
Two clicks, a pause, and then two clicks again.
Relief surged through her and a bubble of hysteria.
‘Should I come to the café?’
Silence, as if Leafsong was considering, then two clicks. A pause. She could hear Leafsong breathing. Two more clicks. Then the phone went dead.
What did the pause mean? Jed bit her lip. A pause meant . . . a pause. Wait. Don’t rush in here. Give Scarlett time to . . .
To what? Work out what she was going to do? Or, possibly, for Jed to reconsider too.
Because Scarlett had just shown how well she could manage by herself, not just in hitching a ride — please, please, let her never do that again — but, sensibly, going to the Blue Belle to talk to a friend. Not a hysterical rush to the Chosen of the Universe. Not back to the place that had sheltered her as a baby and child. Scarlett had overreacted. But maybe so had she.
Jed looked out the window, as if the hens or the fruit trees could give her an answer. Sam’s chook palace. Sam’s fruit trees.
If Sam had been there, the quarrel wouldn’t have happened. Sam would have said something to make them laugh. She had overreacted. Stupidly, wildly, because she had been scared. And Scarlett had too — but Scarlett was sixteen, and sixteen-year-olds were supposed to push back against their families. But Jed knew how much horror could dwell behind lace curtains or compassionate masks. Scarlett had known only love and kindness since she had been dumped at River View.
Experiencing fear did not make you stronger. It just meant you were more easily afraid.
She had called herself Scarlett’s sister, a gesture made on impulse, years before, when the elf-like girl was helpless and had asked wistfully if Jed could be her mother.
Jed had offered sisterhood instead. And yet she had been acting like a mother, not a sister, and an overanxious one at that. What experience had she had of either being a mother or a sister? Worse, she had not acted like a friend.
She had to face it. She was not good at loving. Or rather, she knew how to love, but not what to do with it. She had driven Sam away, or at least she had let him go, without telling him how much he meant to her. Come to think of it, she had never said, ‘I love you,’ to Nancy or Matilda.
If Blood Should Stain the Wattle Page 33
