A RATHER CASUAL, TERRITORY-STYLE roadblock, I had to admit—one cop stirring from a bedroll by the fire and the unmistakable figure of Jerker Jenkins shaking himself down and buttoning up in the bushes. A whisky bottle glimmered among the cups and lanterns. I’d caught them unawares. They’d been told we might be on our way, they didn’t know for sure.
I sat there for a moment, wondering what the hell to do.
Whoever was on our tail wasn’t worried about soft options like wondering—or indeed, taking his foot off the throttle. He came racing up, roared past in a storm of lights and rattling steel.
Jerker stood there stunned as the car, a leprous HT Holden, went into a slathering spin and slammed into his own vehicle, careening it onto its side.
Two figures had rolled out of the Holden just before impact: one leapt to his feet, began flapping about like an emu on an electric fence: ‘Eh! What for you parkin middle of the fuckin road!’ The familiar, stringy figure of Bernie Crankshaft. ‘Somebody gonna get hurt, you bloody idiot! I might call the cops!’
Did my eyes deceive me, or did he cast a subtle glance in my direction?
Jerker was glowing in the dark. ‘I don’t believe you jungle bunnies!’ I heard him bellow. ‘We are the fuckin cops! This is an authorised roadblock. Are you blind as well as stupid?’
Benny, the younger brother, rolled over and clutched his face. ‘I can’t see! I gone blind!’
The second officer—Jake Trail, from the look of him-picked himself out of the bushes into which he’d dived to avoid the oncoming vehicle, regarded Benny with alarm.
‘Blind?’
‘I can’t look.’
He put an arm on Benny’s shoulders. ‘Take it easy, mate.’
‘Emily.’ I startled at the voice whispering in my ear: Jet, standing at my window.
‘Come. We have seconds.’
‘What’s going on?’
She squeezed herself into the cabin. ‘My car is back along the road.’
I swung round, high-tailed it out of there.
She glanced at Danny, saw the state he was in. ‘Boy, you are in good hands. If anybody can set you free…’
His response was a barely audible whimper.
I dropped her at her van, then we drove a mile down the road, pulled over for a hasty, torch-lit conference.
‘How the hell did you know we were coming, Jet?’
‘The police come looking for you. They make the song and dance! My friend, Constable Blad…’
‘Who?’
An impatient gesture. ‘The policeman.’
‘Jerker? He’s your friend?’
‘When I have a use for him,’ she shrugged. ‘And I use him now. He tells me you take Danny back to the Stonehouse; that you escape him from the jail.’
‘Did he say why he was in there?’
‘He did not say, nor do I care. I begin to know your people—the world is their jail. The only puzzle is you.’
‘Me?’
‘Never mind; now is not the time. Whatever he did—whatever you have done—I know that it is not…bad.’
Not bad? About the closest thing to a compliment you were ever likely to get from Jet.
‘We try to warn,’ she continued, ‘but you go racing past. That is the Emily Tempest, I say to my Crankshafts—always in hurry. And the police, they are in…wait! The brothers were forced to—how do you say, think upon their toes? Improvise?’
‘Hell of an improvisation.’
She shrugged. ‘Their lives are improvisation.’
‘Are there any more road blocks?’
‘I do not know, but one, maybe two police drive by in the night. To the west.’
‘Shit.’ That meant they were probably blocking off the Gunshot Road as well. We might have bypassed a roadblock or two by taking to the back roads, but Cockburn had sussed me out. He’d guessed we were making a run for Danny’s country.
He’d covered the track to Stonehouse; what were the odds that he’d done the same for the north track, the route we’d taken in from Dingo Springs? This was a game of chess, with each of us trying to anticipate the other’s moves. Was the radio in the overturned vehicle still working? Would Jerker have rumbled the Crankshafts and called for back-up?
What in Christ’s name were we going to do now?
I ran a torch over the map, considered our options.
The solution leapt out at me: Galena Creek. Jojo’s camp. We could lie low for a day or two, make a run for Stonehouse when the heat was off and the hunt died down. There’d be food there, and water. Maybe a bilby pining for Jojo.
But even getting to Galena Creek would be difficult; there could be roadblocks anywhere along the way. It wouldn’t take Cockburn long to figure out what had happened back at the turnoff.
Jet indicated a winged marker north-west of the roadhouse. ‘What is this?’
‘Airstrip. Must be for the Green Saturn mine.’
I glanced at it casually, then took a closer look: the Green Saturn might not be contributing much to the local economy, but maybe it could make a contribution to our escape.
Out back of the mine was a track that wound down to the south-west, rejoining the road near the old Gunshot Goldfields. It was a roundabout way of getting anywhere, but at the moment it looked like a pretty good way to avoid discovery.
There were risks. The Green Saturn itself, for one. We’d have to circle it in the dark, pick up the track on the far side. What security the mine had in place—and what they’d think of strangers blundering about their perimeter—I’d no idea.
Then there was the Gunshot Field. We’d have to drive right through it, and there’d be people about who knew me: the Rabble.
And then there was my passenger. Since Andulka’s death, the Kantulyu had been rigorous in avoiding the area around Green Saturn. Danny was rattled enough as it was; how would he react to the breaking of a taboo?
Badly, I suspected. But we didn’t seem to have much choice. The mine was just up the road, and Danny was barely conscious. With a bit of luck, we’d be in and out before he even knew it.
We made our farewells. Or I made my farewells—Jet just stood on the side of the road in her skinny singlet and big boots, shaking her head and muttering, ‘Aiee…This Emily Tempest.’
You can talk, I thought. Jet was taking to the relentless chaos of the borderlands—and there were all manner of borders out here: between black and white, the organic and the mechanical, the random and the damned—like a cockroach to a grease trap.
We left her in a cloud of dust.