“Get a big fire goin’,” Pat told his mates. “Me and Stone will wait here.”
“Won’t a fire attract attention?” asked Luckman.
“That’s the whole idea. Anyone looking down will think Tommy and Nev are the only people out here. When that fire’s goin’ we gonna sneak away in the dark.”
Luckman was strangely comforted by Pat’s paranoia, although he doubted the diversion would be good enough to fool a well-equipped observer. Several minutes later, they began walking with the light of the fire at their backs. The Moon was almost full and already high in the sky. It cast a bright light over the ranges.
“How far?” Luckman whispered.
“About three clicks,” Pat replied quietly, “watch your step,” he said, putting his finger to his lips to draw an end to the conversation.
A slight breeze flowed toward them along the rising escarpment. The terrain was frozen in time. There was no sign of human existence in any direction. To their right, the ranges began to rise more sharply. Away to their left, the blue-black desert dissolved into infinity. It was so quiet he could hear the wind ruffling the leaves of the scrub. Pat moved silently through the landscape and although Luckman had been trained to move quickly and quietly on rough terrain he still struggled to match Pat’s pace and agility. At one point he almost stepped on a bilby. The poor creature bolted for cover just as Luckman’s boot was about to crush its head.
After about half an hour Pat held up his hand, calling on Luckman to halt, then crouched down and instinctively laid his palms on the ground in an effort to sense movement. The ground was still warm, although the air temperature had dropped sharply. The cool was welcome; Luckman was sweating from the exertion and the concentration their journey had demanded. Pat knew the land intimately, but he also seemed to know precisely what he could ask of Luckman. They had reached the apex of the ranges, beyond which the domes of Pine Gap were visible in the distance. They were closer than when he’d seen them from the viewing chair, but still at least two kilometres away. He was also fairly certain they were approaching from the opposite direction.
“Sit,” Pat told him.
“I can keep moving, I don’t need to rest,” Luckman assured him.
“We’re here,” Pat replied.
Luckman stared at him in bewilderment.
“We safe here, this is tribal land. You look at that base,” said Pat. “Hills front and back, fenced all the way round. Cameras everywhere. You really think you can just walk in there?”
Luckman gazed toward the base perimeter. Pat was right. It would be impossible to breach without being detected. It would be easy enough to launch a couple of stingers from where they stood. That would get the job done, but escape would be impossible. He’d be lucky to make it back to the car before being arrested. Or shot.
“I’m Army Intelligence, I don’t need to break in. I can just drive up to the front gate and flash my ID. They have to let me in, it’s a joint US-Australian facility.”
“They’ll kill you.”
Probably.
“Nah. You’ve spent too long in that bunker. Speaking of which, what’s with all that gold – did it ever occur to Father Paulson to do something useful with it? Fat lot of good it’ll do anyone now.”
Pat Williams didn’t want to talk about gold. He was becoming increasingly agitated. “We should get out of here.”
Luckman was starting to feel the same visceral fear. But they were doing nothing wrong. They weren’t trespassing, they were on Aboriginal land. He wondered if the feeling had something to do with how the Others were keeping Alice Springs frozen in time. Whatever it was, his instincts were quickly becoming laser locked on a blind certainty that simply being here was a deadly risk. Both Favaloro and Pat had warned him to stay away. Yet neither were speaking from personal experience. They were merely responding to the same viral dread infecting everyone.
“You’re going to drive me to the base perimeter,” Luckman decided.
Pat reacted like Luckman had asked him to shoot himself in the leg.
“Fine, I’ll walk,” Luckman decided. But as he turned away, Pat grabbed him by the arm.
“Something else you need to see.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“How about Dog? You wanna meet that fella?”
That caught Luckman’s attention. Pat’s eyes brightened and he took off in leaping strides across the top of the range and down the other side, away from the line of sight from the American base. It occurred to Luckman this could be a diversionary tactic, but as they were heading roughly in the direction of Hatt Road anyway he didn’t argue. He found Pat at the foot of a vertical wall of red quartzite, rubbing his hand across the rock wall in what might be termed reverence, caressing its contours like he was touching the body of a naked woman. Eventually he seemed to find what he was looking for: a crevice, barely wide enough to slide his hand inside. He looked back at Luckman and smiled.
“Follow me.”
Before Luckman had time to question it, Pat stepped into the rock face and vanished. It was so unexpected that Luckman thought he had begun hallucinating again. Then Pat’s arm emerged from inside the rock and pulled him through.
Thirty-Eight
He passed through a moment of pitch black to a cave that was aglow in dancing waves of orange and red light from a fire burning a short distance away. Just beyond the flames, a painted Aboriginal man sat cross-legged, staring wide-eyed like he was in a trance. It was the same spirit man who had beckoned him from Gold Coast rooftops, and Luckman realised he had somehow known all along they had been destined to meet again.
“Dog?”
The kadaitcha man slowly extended his arm and twirled his fingers like he was seeking the attention of a child.
“He wants you to sit down,” said Pat.
Luckman stepped toward the flames, lowering himself to the floor of the cave on the opposite side of the fireplace. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said, realising how lame it sounded saying the words aloud.
Dog waved a hand over the fire and dropped something into the blaze. The flames flared amber green. Luckman felt the heat yet the fire produced neither sound nor smoke. He looked up at Pat then back again at Dog.
“Does he…? Do you understand me?”
“He speaks the old languages – sometimes all of them at once,” said Pat. “But he always knows what I’m thinking.”
“Tjurkurrpa… altjeringa,” said Dog.
“That last one is the Arrente word for Dreaming.”
Dog looked older up close. He was lean and fit. His long beard was grey, the wavy dreadlocks of his hair defied gravity like bolts of lightning. His nose was broad and curved – it reminded Luckman of the hood of an old FJ Holden. The spirit man was at least six feet tall – he must have been a giant among his own people when he was alive. Luckman wondered how long ago that was. Hundreds of years, thousands maybe. He gazed deep into the kadaitcha man’s eyes and was hypnotised. He saw those eyes had witnessed far more than the events of a single lifetime. It was like staring down a tunnel to the ancient past.
“Palineri. Ungud. Wongar.”
“I’ve heard those words before,” said Pat. “Dunno what they mean.”
A voice greeted them from further inside the cave. “They are different tribal words for the same thing. Dreaming, lore, creation, the order of things.”
A man in a phosphorescent white suit stepped out of the darkness and into the firelight. “These are but a small part of their meaning.”