The War of Immensities (18 page)

“They’re on the
move?”

“All of them.
The good doctor checked. All six of them on the move in the past
couple of hours. Which means the event occurs in roughly thirty
hours. Six in the morning, Monday, our time.”

Jami laughed.
“Is that all?”

“Not enough for
you?”

“We really
don’t have much, Harley. Just a few vague guesses.”

“True, but
since that’s all we have, let’s go with it.”

She shrugged a
throwaway gesture. “Okay. Consider me persuaded. So what do we
do?”

“Our subjects
are on the move and so should we be. Pack your bag and grab your
passport and be ready to go wherever the hit occurs. Get there,
commandeer whatever and whoever you need—use my name for authority,
whatever that may be worth—and do whatever is necessary to fill all
the gaps in your data.”

“And where will
you be?”

“I’ll be
linking up with Felicity Campbell in New Zealand. I want to find
out how these people are connected, where they are going, and
why.”

The dun yellow
and drab green of the Australian landscape stretched out beneath
him, reaching toward a purple-grey haze that obscured the horizon.
He shifted the controls lightly, adjusting to the vibration caused
as the rotor blades flapped against the thermals.

It was great to
be flying again, to be testing himself, showing what the human
spirit and body could do if it had to. Initially there had been
disappointment when he had been unable to hire a plane in
Wellington with the range to fly the Tasman Sea. He had plenty of
money, but suitable aircraft simply weren’t available at such short
notice. He had wasted a great deal of frustrating time arguing with
operators and airport officials before finally resorting to the
commercial airlines.

Qantas landed
him in Sydney—far wide of his destination but there he was able to
hire this nifty two-seater helicopter with enough range to get him
to Albury where he refuelled. And now he was closing in on his
destination—he could feel it in every part of his body.

He felt good.
Felicity’s fears about his strength were completely unfounded. It
was a fabulous sensation. They had smashed him to smithereens but
the body fought back with everything it had and restored every
part, as good or better than before. Well, almost. There were
scars, everywhere. Great chunks gouged from his buttocks and
grafted to his chest, right shoulder, back and both thighs. There
was a problem with his liver that they had not quite resolved,
which caused him to fart rather more often than was socially
acceptable and one lung pierced by his shattered ribs would never
again attain full function. But all that was minor. Sure, he’d
never play football again and might have trouble scaling the higher
alps or diving to the greater depths. But really, he was fine.

It was great to
be reborn, reinvented, reconstructed, whatever. It made his past
life seem as if it had never happened, or was a movie he saw once.
He closed his mind with an effort that was almost physical every
time the past tried to intrude. “You’re in denial,” the
psychologist said. You bet he was. And he was going to keep it that
way.

Occasionally,
less frequently now, images of Sally, or the kids, would try to
creep in from the periphery. He struck them away with actual
physical movements, thrusting his mind into the present, the
immediate. At night he dreamed about them but his dreams were all
so painful that he awoke, sweating and terrified. Grimly, he would
force them from his conscious. Only then would sleep return.

Well, he
couldn’t do anything about that. But he could deal with his
conscious thoughts and it was all a matter of discipline. He prided
himself on his willpower in that he couldn’t remember the last time
he had thought about them. It was almost like they had never
existed…

But that wasn’t
the only reason they kept him in Rehab for so long. It also had to
do with the mysterious coma and its periodic effects. Felicity had
discussed it with him intimately, explored every aspect of his
psychic condition and did so to a depth that the professional
psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors did not even approach.
He co-operated because he was as curious as she was. Something
quite strange but seemingly quite wonderful was happening to him.
It was especially wonderful now as he neared his destination.

The periods of
agitation—the aberrations as she called them—carried with them an
exquisite sense of strength. It was impossible to define. At three
monthly intervals, for a period of three days, he would become
grindingly tense and desperate to be on the move. It was really a
chronic wanderlust but within it too was a sensation of purpose, of
precise need, that was in itself exhilarating.

It was as if
some new part of his brain had been opened, admitting senses
hitherto blocked to all other humans. There was definitely a sense
of superiority attached to it that was hard to explain. It was as
if the aberrations were the real moments of his life, and the
periods between merely flowed to and from them. Daily he searched
his being for the new powers that the aberrations unleashed and if
he found none, he was not disappointed. He knew—he didn’t know how
he knew but he knew it with certainty—that such super-strengths
would eventually appear. It was just a matter of looking for them
in the right places. He knew that it was just a matter of time.

He had passed
the spot. It was knowing something like that, with such utter
certainty even though there was no physical evidence to support it
whatsoever, that convinced him all the more of his hidden strength.
He swung the helicopter in a wide circle and soon determined the
region he was seeking so blindly yet surely.

This was flat
country, cattle and some sheep, although in some regions the
irrigation channels from the Murray River reached down to touch
green rows of orchards and other diverse crops. He passed over a
town of medium size that his map identified as Kyabram and going in
low swept over the paddocks until he circled again and was over the
exact spot.

Someone was
already there. A camp fire smouldered, a prime mover sans trailer
was parked nearby. The man sat in the shade with his back against a
solitary tree trunk, his hand shielding his eyes as he regarded the
chopper hovering above. Wagner moved wide of the spot, away from
the camp and the tree, to nearby open ground for he knew such dry
country would throw up a vast amount of dust when he landed and he
did not wish it to blow into the man’s camp. It was the decent
thing to do.

Carefully, he
set down in the middle of the paddock. He turned off, unstrapped
and looked around. There was nothing else to be seen in any
direction. He got out—his right leg was cramped and he needed to
walk in a few small circles to get the circulation flowing
properly. By then, the tall man in the big bush hat had walked over
to him.

“G’day,” he
called.

“Hi there.”

“This your
property?” the man asked, before Wagner could ask exactly the same
question.

“Nope. Not
yours either then.”

“No.”

They stood
facing each other—Wagner could see that this man was as uncertain
of his right to be here as he was. He extended his hand. “Kevin
Wagner.”

“Brian
Carrick,” the man said and shook firmly.

The name stuck
a chord. Wagner was certain he had heard it before, somewhere… “You
from around here?” he asked.

Brian Carrick
eyed him suspiciously. All questions seemed a great trouble to
him.

“Nar, I come up
from Melb’n.”

Since he knew
Melbourne was a major Australian city but wasn’t too sure where it
was from here, Wagner nodded and could think of nothing to say.

“I’m just
making tea,” Brian said.

They had tea,
and then Brian provided sausages and eggs for dinner. Finally
-about an hour later as night came down and they squatted by the
fire—Brian said: “You’re a Yank.”

“That’s
right.”

“What
part?”

“San
Diego.”

“Long way from
home.”

“I sure
am.”

And, exhausted
by all that conversation, they soon retired to their respective
vehicles and slept.

Twenty-three
hours after he left the bemused Jami Shastri in his office, Harley
Thyssen landed in Wellington. He had flown New York to Los Angeles,
and almost immediately by United to Hawaii and then a wait of
several hours before the Air New Zealand flight carried him
directly into Wellington. He walked off the plane refusing to face
his body’s demands for rest and re-orientation.

It was 9am,
local time and there were only seven hours left if his calculations
were right. Customs officials fussed over a passenger with only a
small overnight bag and then finally he emerged and approached the
information desk. The girl did not have to bother to page Doctor
Felicity Campbell—she was standing right beside him.

“Professor
Thyssen I presume.”

“Doctor
Campbell, good of you to respond on such short notice.”

They shook
hands. Hers was cool and fresh, his was sweating and clammy. He
could tell by her bemused expression that he was far from what she
expected.

“A long
journey, Professor.”

“Let’s be
informal, shall we Felicity? Even my students call me Harley.”

“Well, Harley.
As a doctor, allow me to recommend immediate rest.”

“No time for
that. Next time, assuming there is a next time, I’ll be better
organised, but right now time is running out. What can you tell
me?”

“Let’s at least
sit down and have a cup of coffee, Harley. The next flight to
Melbourne doesn’t leave for two hours and we are booked on it.”

She took his
arm and led him off toward the coffee shop. Thyssen was thinking
rather more in terms of a couple of quick Bourbons but at such an
ungodly hour and in the presence of an MD, he supposed that would
be out of the question.

Felicity
Campbell, he was beginning to notice, was a cool attractive woman,
straw-haired, freckled, beaming smile, fit trim body, efficiently
dressed in a purple suit with a skirt was rather shorter than most
forty year-old women would have dared wear. Although friendly, she
remained cool and businesslike. Thyssen made an effort to subdue
his essential loneliness.

They sat and
she ordered black coffee without asking his preference. He fumbled
in his pocket for saccharine.

“So,” he asked,
when her fussing over him finally subsided. “What do we know?”

“Not a lot.
Judy Carrick reports that Brian said he had been ‘up Shep way’
after one such trip and ‘same bloody place’ after another. ‘Up Shep
way’ seems to translate into a region in Central Victoria where
Shepparton is the major rural city. Lorna Simmons’ employer said
she ‘kept disappearing off to Australia all the time’ and I spoke
to John Burton, who was but is no longer Chrissie Rice’s fiancee
and he thought they went to Bendigo, a big provincial city a
hundred kilometres from Shepparton but also in Central Victoria.
That’s all I was able to find out.”

“You haven’t
heard from Kevin Wagner?”

“No. He
promised to call but hasn’t. I’ve arranged for all of my calls to
come through on the mobile,” she said, waving the instrument at
him. “But no luck so far.”

“Still, he
remains our best chance.”

“We could seek
the co-operation of the Australian Police. I understand Brian
Carrick is, once again, driving a stolen vehicle. Although, since
they can reasonably suppose from experience that he’ll probably
bring it back after three days, this time the owner has decided not
to complain.”

Thyssen was
shaking his head wearily. “I’m reluctant to involve the civil
authorities at this stage. The risk that it might start unfounded
rumours which in turn could lead to unnecessary panic, not to
mention possible future embarrassment, is just too great.”

“You didn’t
seem to have any trouble bringing diplomatic pressure to bear on
the hospital,” Felicity said provocatively.

“No. I am sorry
to drag you away from your patients like this. I know that you have
a very busy schedule.”

“I needed a
holiday anyway,” Felicity chuckled. “But I would be interested to
know how you did it.”

“Friends in
high places able to persuade the New Zealand government to turn you
over to us on a matter of national security.”

“Good Lord,
they’ll think I’m working for the CIA or something.”

“And your
family? How will they cope?”

“Oh, fine. They
think I’m off to a conference on renal procedures. Nobody asks too
many questions about things like that.”

“Still, I
apologise. I hope it’s worthwhile.”

“I hope it
isn’t,” Felicity said quietly. “On the whole, I suspect it would be
best for everyone if this proved to be a wild goose chase.”

So here they
were again. Same old paddock down the same dirt road. Same bloody
truck driver in the same sort of truck but red this time not blue,
same journey to nowhere. It was past summer now and although the
grass was still yellow, it wasn’t as hot, it wasn’t as dusty and
there were no longer the swarms of flies that drove them mad last
time. But this time they were dressed for the occasion in jeans and
sneakers, hats and sunglasses and instead of hauling suitcases each
had a small pack on her back.

Lorna refused
to go at first and Chrissie had to be patient with her.

“It’s
ridiculous. I can’t afford to go running off to Australia every
three months for no good reason. I’ve gone through all my savings.
I can’t afford it.”

It was actually
the shopping in Melbourne that she couldn’t afford, but Chrissie
had plenty of money to pay for them both so it hardly mattered.
Lorna had gone to work that morning, and Chrissie, to try and
subdue her agitation, went to the local church and prayed and
prayed. If it didn’t provide any comfort or relief, at least it
offered a point for all that suffering. Lorna turned up late in the
afternoon, and knew exactly where to go to find her.