"Maybe us 'gator types have natural immunity," Cordelia said, smiling wanly. Warreen looked politely puzzled. "Never mind. I guess I'm just lucky."
He nodded. "Indeed so, little missy."
"What's this `little missy' crap?" Cordelia said. " I didn't want to take time to ask back in the alley."
Warreen looked startled, then grinned widely. "The European ladies seem to like it. It feeds those delicious colonial impulses, you know? Sometimes I still talk like I'm a guide."
"I'm not European," said Cordelia. "I'm a Cajun, an American."
"Same thing to us." Warreen continued to grin. "Yank's same as a European. No difference. You're all tourists here. So what should I call you?"
"Cordelia."
His expression became serious as he leaned forward and took the gun from her hand. He examined it closely, gingerly working the action, then clicking the safety back on. "Scaled down H and K full auto. Pretty expensive hardware, Cordelia. Going shooting dingos?" He gave her back the weapon.
She let it dangle from her hand. "It belonged to the guy I came to Alice Springs with. He's dead."
"At the hotel?" said Warreen. "The minions of the Murgamuggai? Word was out, she was going to ice the agent of the evangelist."
"Who?"
"The trap-door spider woman. Not a nice lady. She's tried to kill me for years. Since I was a kid." He said it matter-of-factly. Cordelia thought he still looked like a kid.
"Why?" she said, involuntarily shivering. If she had any phobia, it was spiders. She coughed as the wind kicked red dust up into her face.
"Started as clan vengeance. Now it's something else." Warreen seemed to reflect, then added, "She and I both have some powers. I think she feels there is space in the outback for only one such. Very shortsighted."
"What kind of powers?" said Cordelia.
"You are full of questions. So am I. Perhaps we can trade knowledge on our walk."
"Walk?" said Cordelia a bit stupidly. Once again events threatened to outstrip her ability to comprehend them. "Where?"
"Uluru."
"Where's that?"
"There." Warreen pointed toward the horizon.
The sun was directly overhead. Cordelia had no idea which compass direction was indicated. "There's nothing there. Just a lot of countryside that looks like where they shot Road Warrior."
"There will be." Warreen had started walking. He was already a dozen paces away. His voice drifted back on the wind. "Shake a pretty leg, little missy."
Deciding she had little choice, Cordelia followed. "Agent of the evangelist?" she muttered. That wasn't Marty. Somebody had made a bad mistake.
"Where are we?" said Cordelia. The sky was dotted with small cumulus, but none of the cloud-shadows ever seemed to shade her. She wished mightily that they did.
"The world," said Warreen. "It's not my world."
"The desert, then."
" I know it's the desert," said Cordelia. "I can see it's the desert. I can feel it. The heat's a dead giveaway. But what desert is it?"
"It is the land of Baiame," said Warreen. "This is the great Nullarbor Plain."
"Are you sure?" Cordelia scrubbed sweat from her forehead with the strip of fabric she had carefully torn away from the hem of her Banana Republic skirt. " I looked at the map on the plane all the way up from Melbourne. The distances don't make sense. Shouldn't this be the Simpson Desert?"
"Distances are different in the Dreamtime," Warreen said simply.
"The Dreamtime?" What am I in, a Peter Weir movie? she thought. "As in the myth?"
"No myth," said her companion. "We are now where reality was, is, and will be. We are in the origin of all things."
"Right." I am dreaming, Cordelia thought. I'm dreamingor I'm dead and this is the last thing my brain cells are creating before everything flares and goes black.
": All things in the shadow world were created here first," said Warreen. "Birds, creatures, grass, the ways of doing things, the taboos that must be observed."
Cordelia looked around her. There was little to see. "These are the originals?" she said. "I've only seen the copies before?"
He nodded vigorously.
" I don't see any dune buggies," she said a bit petulantly, feeling the heat. " I don't see any airliners or vending machines full of ice-cold Diet Pepsi."
He answered her seriously. "Those are only variations. Here is where everything begins."
I'm dead, she thought glumly. "I'm hot," she said. "I'm tired. How far do we have to walk?"
"A distance." Warreen kept striding along effortlessly. Cordelia stopped and set hands to hips. "Why should I go along?"
"If you don't," Warreen said back over his shoulder, "then you shall die."
"Oh." Cordelia started walking again, having to run a few steps in order to catch up with the man. The image she couldn't get out of her head was that of cold cans of soda, the moisture beading on the aluminum outsides. She ached to hear the click and hiss as the tabs peeled back. And the bubbles, the taste…
"Keep walking," said Warreen.
"How long have we been walking?" said Cordelia. She glanced up and shaded her eyes. The sun was measurably closer to the horizon. Shadows stretched in back of Warreen and her.
"Are you tired?" said her companion. "I'm exhausted."
"Do you need to test?"
She thought about that. Her own conclusion surprised her. "No. No, I don't think I do. Not yet, anyway." Where was the energy coming from? She was exhausted-and yet strength seemed to rise up into her, as though she were a plant taking nourishment from the earth. "This place is magical."
Warreen nodded matter-of-factly. "Yes, it is."
"However," she said, " I am hungry"
"You don't need food, but I'll see to it."
Cordelia heard a sound apart from the wind and the padding of her own feet on the dusty soil. She turned and saw a brownish-gray kangaroo hopping along, easily pacing them. "I'm hungry enough to eat one of those," she said.
The kangaroo stared at her from huge chocolate eyes. "I should hope not," it said.
Cordelia closed her mouth with a click. She stared back. Warreen smiled at the kangaroo and said courteously,
"Good afternoon, Mirram. Will we shortly find shade and water?"
"Yes," said the kangaroo. "Sadly, the hospitality is being hoarded by a cousin of the Gurangatch."
"At least," said Warreen, "it is not a bunyip."
"That is true," agreed the kangaroo.
"Will I find weapons?"
"Beneath the tree," said the kangaroo.
"Good," Warreen said with relief. " I wouldn't relish wrestling a monster with only my hands and teeth."
" I wish you well," said the kangaroo. "And you," it said to Cordelia, "be at peace." The creature turned at right angles to their path and bounded into the desert where it soon was lost to sight.
"Talking kangaroos?" said Cordelia. "Bunyips? Gurnagatches?"
"Gurangatch," Warreen corrected her. "Something of both lizard and fish. It is, of course, a monster."
She was mentally fitting pieces together. "And it's hogging an oasis."
"Spot on."
"Couldn't we avoid it?"
"No matter what trail we follow," Warreen said, " I think it will encounter us." He shrugged. "It's just a monster."
"Right." Cordelia was glad she still had tight hold of the H and K mini. The steel was hot and slippery in her hand. "Just a monster," she mumbled through dry lips.