Fuck me!!! thought the other.
And Liz said, 'No, thanks. I'm spoken for.'
'J-Jesus, I'm s-s-sorry!' the other gasped.
'It's okay/ Liz told him. 'But maybe we should change the subject now? And yes, you're safe: I promise not to peek.'
'What's going on?' asked the other soldier, genuinely puzzled.
'Nothing much/ Liz told him. 'I was reading your friend's thoughts, that's all. Yours, too, if you like.'
'Oh, really?' The second W.O. was older and less inquisitive. But he did have something on his mind.
'In the chopper/ Liz said, 'just as we were landing. You were wondering what was wrong with David. Like me, you noticed the way he was looking out over the sea, his expression.'
'You saw that?' the W.O. said.
'No/ said Liz, 'I overheard it, "Joe" — in your head/
And Joe accepted that she had, because they had only ever been introduced as Warrant Officers Bygraves and Davis!
'Let me have one of your maps/ Chung said, deciding that Liz had gone far enough. 'This area, and small-scale. Covering as much ground as possible/
'Red' Bygraves spread a map on the table, and Chung began poring over it. While he searched he explained:
'I'm a kind of bloodhound. It's nothing weird/ (though in
fact it was) 'just a knack, sort of instinctive. But sometimes I can sense where these things are hanging out. In the helicopter, I got a feeling that there just might be something… out there!'
He stabbed his index finger at the map, their current location, then drew it in a straight line east and a little north. 'In that direction, anyway. And you know, it's still there, but so very faint…' Chung shook his head, narrowed his eyes in a frown. 'What we could use, really, is a little triangulation/
'Now that I understand/ said Red. 'Let me see the map/
They let him jostle into position, watched him point out a location: Sandy Cape on the northern tip of Fraser Island. And: 'We can't ask the pilot to fly us east and out to sea/ he went on, 'because that will add air miles and run him low on fuel to get us back to Brisbane. But there's no reason why he can't fly us over Fraser Island, which lies south of here. He did suggest a coastal route, right?'
'Good!' said Chung. 'And as soon as we get over the northern tip of the island, I can — well, do my thing, take a bearing north — and see if we come up with something/.
Red looked at Liz. 'And you'll do what? Or does this part include you out?'
Now Liz saw the error of saying anything at all. But since it was too late now:
'If David senses anything, I'll try to, well, hitch a ride on his probe/ she said. 'But since this looks like a long-distance thing, I really can't be sure 111 get a reading/
And Joe asked Chung: 'Did this talent of yours really lead your people to that Gibson Desert nest? I mean, we haven't seen you around until today — and you weren't out there — so…?'
'Bruce Trennier had a very powerful aura/ Chung answered. 'But as a comparative newcomer among these creatures — even as a lieutenant — he wasn't too good at hiding himself away. When he slipped up, myself and some other E-Branch people, we picked him up from London. Since when the rest of them seem to be masking their presence — a kind of mental camouflage, you know?
So I came out here to get a little closer to the action. Well, and now we might have found some.'
'You picked Trennier up from London?' Joe said.
The locator nodded, and thought, Yes, like a dense bank of jog on a sunny day. Fog that's there one minute, gone the next. Minasmog! But out loud he only said, 'Yes, we did.'
To which there was no answer, and the two W.O.s could only look at each other and shake their heads in wonder…
In the other helicopter an hour later, Jake Cutter was lost in his own thoughts, somewhat moodily enjoying the mountain scenery, when Lardis Lidesci reached across the narrow aisle, jogged his elbow and said something.
'Um?' Jake murmured a response: He had long since removed his headset, and so had Lardis.
'I said, what's that?' the Old Lidesci said again, pointing out of the window on his own side of the aircraft.
'Why not ask the pilot?' Jake grumbled. 'How am I to know what something is?' But, loosening his belt, he stood up, leaned across and looked anyway.
lan Goodly was seated in front of Lardis. Feeling the movements, he looked back, saw where the others were looking.
They were on the return trip, covering different mountains than on the outward-bound leg. A thousand feet below, a massive geological 'wrinkle' in the Macpherson Range had left a tightly angled dog-leg fold. In the west-facing lee of the fold, a saddle or roughly oblong-shaped false plateau maybe two and a half by four acres in extent stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding heights. For it wasn't naked rock. Anything but.
At an elevation of almost three thousand feet, someone had built… a small town? No, not a town but a complex of sorts: with gardens, pools, fountains, a monorail, tennis courts, bowling greens, even a small ski-slope up against the mountainside, and terraced chalets to house the guests. The walkways between concentric rows of red-tiled chalet accommodations radiated out
from a roughly central location: a circular garden surrounding a great, silver-shining bubble of a structure, with windows on three levels and a smaller dome on top.
Lardis was lost for words; he found it too fantastic. But Jake only grunted and said, 'You should see Las Vegasf While in his own mind he wondered: A holiday campp A fantastic hotel complex for the jet-setters and beautiful people? Or maybe—
'An aerie!' sighed Lardis. 'Now wouldn't that make a wonderful aerie? Er, without all this sunlight, of course.'
The precog was still wearing his headset, and he had been conversing with the pilot. Now he put a hand over the mike and said, 'Xanadu, and the centrepiece there… why, that can only be Kubla Kahn's pleasure dome! Put on your headsets. The pilot knows some stuff
Jake and Lardis complied, heard the pilot tail off:
'… There were some private homes here, hence the road up the mountain. But after the fire some kind of tycoon bought up the land and built this place. He's a philanthropist, uses the money from this for other "good works", allegedly. Huh! A typical tax gimmick, if you ask me. All of these fat-cat rich bastards are the same. Xanadu, yeah, that's what it's called. The dome's a casino, all three floors of it.'
'The fire?' said Goodly. 'You mean the Brisbane Fire?'
'Nah, not the Great Fire,' said the other. 'This was back in '97, an earlier El Nino. The place was a tinderbox, and the fire must have started in one of the weekend homes. They were simple timber cabins, holiday homes, you know? Went up like so much kindling.'
'Take her lower, can you?' The precog was plainly interested.
'So what's on your mind, boss?' With a chuckle, the pilot leaned his machine into a descending spiral. 'You want to wave at the girlies around those pools?'
'Er, something like that,' said Goodly.
And certainly the girlies were there, and sun-bronzed fellows, too. There were three pools situated equidistant from the central dome; they glittered like dazzling blue jewels in Mediterranean settings, and were surrounded by low windbreak walls and mosaic-paved sundecks. The sundecks were dotted with chairs and sunbeds. And sure enough, as the chopper circled lower, the girls were sitting up, tilting their mirror-shades at the furnace sky, waving lazy arms at their imagined aerial 'admirers'.
'That's low enough/ Lardis muttered, nervously. 'The next thing you know, I'll be swimming!'
And the Major said, 'Mightn't we attract a little too much attention?' He was on the headset and the pilot heard him.
'So what's the problem?' he inquired. 'Are you worried the people who run the place will complain? Nah! It's good free advertising, and we do this all the time. Tourists who can afford it sometimes take time out after they've seen it to come up for a few days' relaxation — though how anyone with red blood in his veins could relax up here is beyond me!'