by Liz Grzyb
“I’d like my keys back now, please,” Fiona said. Her voice was so soft and yet it cut through all the talk, which died off almost immediately. Derek made a weird sort of incoherent screaming noise and handed them over. Fiona curled her fingers around them tightly and spoke a little louder. “We’ll be outside at our vehicle for the next hour for anyone who wants our help, or just wants to ask questions. We require consent forms before we give any vaccinations.” She glared lasers at Derek, then walked out the door without a backwards glance.
We moved the Land Rover a little further away from the settlement, just far enough to get a signal again. No one had followed us out after the gates swung open; they might have all had a change of heart, but I was pretty confident that they were just giving us some space. Nice of them. Fiona opened the pop-up tent and I put out some folding chairs underneath it. As Fiona set down a citronella coil, Winnie collapsed onto the ground, crying with great hiccupy sobs. Of course, she’d waited until the tent’s tarp was conveniently beneath her. Fiona dropped the matches and ran over to wrap an arm around Winnie, stroking her hair with the other hand.
I lit the mozzie coil and walked around to the other side of the Land Rover, resting my elbows on the bonnet and my head in my hands. Winnie would definitely want space from me, and so would Fiona. As much as that stung, I needed it, too. Not to cry, just to breathe the fresh, unimpeded air. So it was a bit of a shock to feel a hand on my shoulder.
“You did good,” Fiona said.
“I did shit, but thanks.” My voice came out muffled by my hands, but I wasn’t ready to look into her gorgeous eyes just yet. “Winnie okay?”
“She’s fine. Just shock.” Her hand was still on my shoulder, the pressure warm and gentle.
I stiffened, unsure of whether I could handle the contact even if she meant nothing by it. Other than not completely hating my guts, anyway. “It wasn’t fun. I’m sorry.”
She moved her hand away and leaned in to peek through my curtain of hair. “I mean, your methods might not be ideal. But I think you got us more participants than we would have otherwise.”
And by the crowd of people pouring out of the gate, it looked like she was right.
Winnie had stopped crying and gave us—me!—a very tiny smile. Fiona nodded at each of us in turn. Taking a breath, I let myself smile too.
* * ** * ** * *
Milk and Honey
Jason Fischer
They came out of Tel Golah to see the Diprotodons. The convoy left that gleaming city behind, left behind progress and glass spires and slipped into an ancient landscape, the effect instantly jarring. The road curved through the steep mountain ranges and gorges like a secret snake, its makers unwilling to blast through the landscape in one rude straight line. If a bridge was needed, it was done discreetly.
As to the road itself, there were no reflectors, no painted lines, and the smart-mac was the same hue as the ground it followed. A dozen cars rolled along in wake-sync, their bumpers inches apart even as they nudged 200km/h. Above, a helicopter watched the surrounding landscape carefully, and the satellite above that dared anything to move where it shouldn’t.
The second to last car was jammed full of talking heads from the Knesset, representatives from the Chief Rabbinate, and Chris Lynch, a reporter from the BBC. He’d slipped a Mossad agent a pack of marijuana cigarettes for a seat next to Eloise Hitler.
She did not look at the scenery as they barrelled through the rugged Kimberley. Whenever one of her superiors spoke to her, she would nod in agreement, lips drawn up in an approximation of a smile, and then she would return to her own thoughts. As the convoy approached the domes of Purnululu, the lead car slowed, Australia’s Prime Minister no doubt wanting to admire the scenery. Everybody slowed to a crawl, and a radio up front squelched: the Mossad agents confirming that all was well.
The talking heads mocked the politician from Canberra, themselves long familiar with the beauty of the domed mountain range. Lynch leaned in close and smiled at Eloise.
“I’ve heard of you,” Lynch said quietly. “Of your family.”
“Of course you have,” she said, face drawing into a wry grin. “Let me save you some time. Yes, I am a descendant of Adolf Hitler. No, I don’t own any of his paintings. I’m not on the board of the Gallery, and I don’t have any influence at the Foundation. I’m from the branch of the family that actually has to work for a living.”
“You must get a lot of jerks asking you questions,” Lynch said, and she feigned a wince until the reporter laughed out loud.
“Hey, I can’t even draw,” Eloise said. “I’ve been tempted to change back to Schicklgruber, and more than once.”
“Still, the name must be useful. Look at you, big wig at the Ministry for Agriculture. You can’t tell me you didn’t drop the Hitler name in your job interview.”
“Guilty,” Eloise chuckled.
“So what are they like? The Diprotodons?”
“Magnificent.”
* * *
It was a great photo opportunity, the Australian Prime Minister riding on a Diprotodon. He’d brought a cowboy hat for effect, and posed on the creature’s back, whooping and waving for the cameras.
It was huge, like a wombat enlarged to hippopotamus size and then some. One of the handlers fed it fruit to keep it still, and when the creature grew greedy and lurched over to the food barrow, everybody laughed. It smashed through a watermelon as if it was a grape, huge incisors crunching away, and the cameras flashed away.
Hundreds of other Diprotodons roamed around on the plain, tearing up at the scrubby undergrowth. They lazed in the sun, fought playfully, and rolled around in the dust when the flies got too bothersome.
The politician spoke for a while, and then his hosts shared the same platitudes, words about friendship between the Australians and the Israelis, about free trade. The Kimberley was finally opening up for business. The cameras rolled, and no-one mentioned the war.
Eloise Hitler had her own turn at the makeshift podium, long after the politicians and clerics had worn themselves out with words and beer.
“We’ve brought back the ultimate livestock from extinction,” she told the handful of reporters still paying attention. “Six times the meat of a cow, and it will eat just about anything. It releases less methane than other animals, and its paws don’t damage our fragile landscape. We even let the local Pilbara people hunt them.”
“Are you going to sell any breeding pairs?” one of the reporters asked.
“No. Any animals given over to live export will be sterile. The Diprotodon is our intellectual property. Next question?”
“What do they taste like?” Lynch called out, and Eloise laughed.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Our Chief Rabbinate decided that these animals are not kosher. We’ve had gentiles describe Diprotodon as a gamey pork taste, but I’ll have to take their word on that.”
Laughter from the press. A lingering gaze from Lynch, and Eloise felt a blush wash over her cheeks.
“You mentioned Aboriginal hunters. Will these preserves be open for other game shooters?” another reporter asked. She recognised him as a head writer for a gun magazine.
“No, because we don’t see the point,” Eloise said. “They’re docile. They don’t move fast, in fact they don’t have much in the way of natural defences. It wouldn’t be very sporting.”
The reporter grumbled.
“How about racing them?” Lynch called out. “You know, once a year, the Kimberley Israeli Territory gives the old Melbourne Cup a run for its money?”
Flemington Racecourse was long since underwater, along with most of the eastern seaboard. There was a rumble of polite laughter, but it was bittersweet, and most there were probably thinking of the great cities before the ocean came calling.
“You can domesticate and ride them, but it’s a little like racing a Clydesdale,” Eloise said. “Having said that, we are examining a humanitarian program. For the third world, the Diprotodon
will be a tractor that you can eventually eat.”
Lynch raised his hand once more, and Eloise smiled in his direction. The BBC seemed to be running a soft story, and she awaited his next humorous question.
“Can you address the rumours that there are significant numbers of mutant calves? I note that the press won’t be allowed to see into the laboratories or the abattoir.”
Her smile dropped like a steel gate. The bastard had been working up to this.
“Th—the reason that we aren’t permitting access to these sites is to protect our intellectual property,” Eloise Hitler said, voice rising, eyes aflame. She clenched a fist at the podium, and then slammed it down. “There are no mutations in this generation of Diprotodon, and none in the three before. Your claims are rumour-mongering, sir, and I suggest they border on anti-semitism.”
Fuming, she wound up her Ministry of Agriculture presentation, and the reporters made a beeline for the food and drink pavilion. The KIT had set up a small tent city under the stars, milking the publicity for all it was worth. Australia had come calling with its energy dollars and political favours, and it was time to woo her.
Eloise didn’t feel much like talking, but she was required to mingle with the politicians and reporters, to answer all their inane questions. Midway through a spiel about the industrial uses for Diprotodon fur, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Prime Minister Ephraim Cohen, flanked by a pair of Mossad agents.
“Excuse me,” she told the guests, a wealthy industrialist and the leader of the Australian Opposition. Cohen led her well away from the tents and into the dark landscape, over a hill. Looking back, there was only the glow from the tents, and the silhouettes of the intelligence agents as they kept a respectful distance.
“Do not let the BBC get under your skin,” he said. “Of course they will dig, that is what they do. I will not have you turn into some sort of orator, thumping the lectern and screaming for justice. Deflect him, and gently.”
“Yes sir,” Eloise said.
“He has no hard data, only the rumours. Let them die. We will get the man drunk and give him a woman, and that will be the end of it.”
She nodded, and then he left, drifting back towards the raucous gathering. Eloise Hitler stared up at the brilliant stars, and fought down the anger in her heart, the urge to take the reporter by the throat and choke the life from him. Lynch had risen like a snake from the grass, but she’d lived out in the KIT long enough to know just how to kill snakes.
* * *
The next morning, the entourage left the Diprotodon ranches behind, and they made for Halls Creek. With the thawing of relations between the KIT and Australia, Canberra had approved the extension of their high-speed maglev into the Israeli lands, and the first station had already been constructed here. Work was going slowly through the fragile parts of the Kimberley, but soon the line would terminate in Tel Golah itself.
Here the Israelis processed the Diprotodon meat, and the old gold town was booming with new industrial construction and new housing. The meat plants dominated the landscape, and thousands of workers filed through the doors, gleaming in white coveralls and boots. The reporters went nuts.
By the front doors, the two Prime Ministers shook hands and beamed for the cameras, and they cut a ribbon with a giant pair of scissors. With that, the meat was finally moving, cheap protein for the Australians. Soon the trucks would roll the other way, bringing energy tech, smartwoods, the new textiles, and what few minerals the Israelis wanted.
Trucks constantly rolled out of the knackery doors, headed for New Perth and east to Toowoomba and the Townsville Islands. The first maglev full of butchered Diprotodon meat left for Alice Springs, hundreds of refrigerated cars gliding along the track.
“When finished, this building will be our new Halāl abbatoir,” Eloise told the tour-group she later led. “We want to branch out to the Dutch East Indies market. They want live exports, of course, but we can process the meat here a lot cheaper.”
“What is going on in that building there?” a reporter from the Western Argus asked. On the edge of the settlement stood another factory, this one topped with a tall brick smoke-stack. It pumped out plumes of black smoke, which drifted downhill and away from the town.
“That is the rendering plant,” Eloise said. “Nothing is wasted here.”
Chris Lynch followed the press pack, but he was nervous, a Mossad agent dogging his every step. Eloise ignored all of his questions, favouring the other journalists, and soon the man was fuming. She delighted in his sputtering anger, and made a point of answering the same questions as phrased by his neighbours. He waved like a schoolchild in need of a toilet, and she never even looked his way.
“If there are no other questions,” Eloise said with a smile and an arched eyebrow, “I suggest we all head for the train.”
The Halls Creek maglev station was decked out in bunting and flags, both the starry Australian standard and the KIT flag with its own six-pointed star. A Sephardic group were performing traditional tunes on the platform, and there were laughs and polite applause when they made a passable attempt at the Australian national anthem.
The Australians had brought their official state maglev for the occasion, itself coated in pennants and bunting, and polished until it shone. Eloise joined her superiors from the Knesset and filed into the train behind Prime Minister Cohen. The Federal Police gently guided them into the guest carriages, well-appointed and luxurious. Soon Eloise found herself in a private booth that had been fitted out like a small apartment.
In mere minutes, the speedy maglev had crossed the border into Kingsland, and almost immediately the landscape changed. The Australians had tamed their Red Centre, and here were solar plants, geothermal works, and dozens of market towns, fat and prosperous. Waterpipes ran east, steel veins bringing life from the desal plants ringing the Inland Sea, and Eloise found the sight a little sad. Ancient rock formations were surrounded by that incongruous greenery, as if someone had draped the English countryside over everything else.
Her department had done things the Israeli way—unobtrusive use of the existing landscape, development of native grasses and plants, and now the resurrection of the megafauna. She wondered if these steel fingers would cross the border, wondered if the convenience of water would change the Kimberley and the Pilbara that she knew.
There was a knock on the door, and she mumbled “Enter,” before returning to the window. Expecting an attendant or one of her colleagues, Eloise was surprised and a little angry to see Chris Lynch standing in the open door.
“You’ve got a nerve,” Eloise said. “What makes you think I’ll give you the time of day?”
“You’ll want to hear this,” Lynch said, face drawn. “Five minutes, that’s all.”
“I could call the Mossad in here,” Eloise said, and she felt a thrill at the thought of them strong-arming this grub out of her sight. Even still, the man stood his ground, waiting just inside the threshold. With a sigh, she invited him in, and pointed at the seat opposite the table from her.
“There are two stories I want to run,” Lynch began. “Headline stories. Both of these stories affect you, so I want to allow you a choice.”
“A choice, Mr Lynch?” Eloise Hitler said, jaw muscles tensing. She stared down the man, and after a moment he looked away. Over the years she’d fought her way to the top of her department, and knew she had a formidable reputation. This was far from her first uncomfortable meeting.
“I have hard evidence of mutations in the Diprotodon Program,” he finally said. “Not the sanitised data you’ve released; the real information. Our source has leaked the numbers, the lab reports, even a floorplan for the furnace in Halls Creek. You know, the one where your people burn the two-headed calves.”
Eloise felt the blood rush out of her face, and thought she might be sick. Across the table, Lynch looked almost apologetic, but still he pressed on.
“There are rumours that this agreement between KIT and Australia is the be
ginning of something much bigger. Your rogue state wants to come back into the fold, and contribute taxes, your megafauna cloning technologies, everything. You have everything to lose from this deal, so why would you sell out to the Australians?”
“You tell me, Mr Lynch. You’re the one with the fanciful tale.”
“The answer is Palestine. Your new masters have the chair of the League of Nations. They can put pressure on the Ottomans to finally permit a Jewish settlement, a real one.”
Lynch looked out the window as the maglev roared over another new town. It was a temporary city, smartwood huts for the workers growing around the frames of a new arcology, the steel ribs jutting skyward. A few minutes later, another site, a new town next to an old one. They’d seeded the earth with dozens of glass domes, now surrounded by irrigated fields. A sign flickered as they passed the town’s maglev platform, and it read “Yuendemu”. Eloise remembered hearing about the Australians and their undergound cities—one more way to preserve energy against that relentless heat.
Less than an hour left to their journey.
“I’m guessing that if the Australians learn of your deception, this deal will be off?” Lynch finally said.
“You should turn from journalism to creative writing, Mr Lynch.”
“If I quote you as ‘no comment’ or some glib statement that discounts these facts, you’ve as good as admitted this in the eyes of the world. You and I both know that, Miss Hitler.”
“Why are we having this conversation then?” Eloise said warily.
“Head office sent me out for your dog-and-pony show, but this isn’t the story I want to run. I have something better, something I’ve been working on for years.”
Lynch stretched out an e-papyrus on the table, rotating the image so Eloise could see. It was the photo of Adolf Hitler, at work on his famous painting of Uluru. Next Lynch brought up a picture of the artist at Purnululu, smiling as he posed with a group of Gija people. Shots of the man at the opening of his gallery, cutting the ribbon. Hitler at the dedication of the yeshiva at Tel Golah, mingling with the important people of the time. Hitler at the Knesset, delivering a fiery speech.
