Cody thought they would head east, back to Europe. Back to Germany. So he was more than a little surprised when they boarded a Qantas flight.
“Sydney, Australia?” He posed the metropolitan query absently as he and his elderly companion waited for Kelli to emerge from the women’s lounge at the airport. “What’s in Sydney?”
“Excellent restaurants. Fascinating history. Interesting shopping.” Oelefse was scanning the concourse, his eyes ever busy, his mind always alert to the possibility that even in a security-screened public place the wretched minions of the Interlopers might try to intercept them or otherwise interfere with their movements. “None of that, however, need concern us. Nichts, nada—nothing.”
Cody was watching a tall, cadaverous Scandinavian approach the metal detector. The device would warn of incoming guns and bombs, but not of Those Who Abide. “Then why are we going there?”
“Because it provides the most connections from the western U.S. to Perth which, in case you were unaware of the fact, is the most isolated large city on Earth.”
“So we’re going to Perth?” The archaeologist shifted his stance, wishing that Kelli would hurry. Although he knew that women in restrooms typically did not hurry, because of her impaired vision he became nervous whenever she was out of his sight for more than a few minutes.
“Only to get to Kununurra.”
Oelefse had finally lost him, had geographically dumped him somewhere in the empty northwest of Down Under. He said as much. His knowledgable friend elucidated.
“Kununurra is a small agricultural town in the East Kimberley, almost on the border with the Northern Territories. South of the town lies the Argyle mine, which is famed for its pink diamonds. There is also an impressively big reservoir, Lake Argyle. About two hundred and fifty kilometers drive south from the town is the Bungle Bungle range.”
Though he knew Oelefse was being dead serious, Cody could not keep from smiling. “There are mountains in the world that are actually called the Bungle Bungles?”
His friend nodded. “The aboriginal name is more mellifluous. To help your wife we must enter Purnululu. For the local people it is a place of great magic and spiritual significance. Despite its beauty, few tourists go there. The place is simply too isolated. Parts of the range have never been observed close-up and have yet to be visited—by outsiders.” Turning his gaze away from the colliding streams of humanity that filled the concourse, he met the archaeologist’s eyes unflinchingly. “It is one of those places where the unreality of Interloper existence spikes the truth of ours.”
Cody’s smile vanished. “I see. If this place is so remote and difficult to visit, how will we know where to go once we get there?”
It was Oelefse’s turn to smile as Kelli, feeling her way along the walls, emerged from the restroom. “A member of the Society will be our guide. It is necessary. Otherwise we could well become lost and perish of thirst. The East Kimberley on the border of the Great Sandy Desert is unforgiving country, my friend. It can kill as surely as a hungry Interloper.”
The flight from Los Angeles to Sydney was not long—it was interminable. Arriving in Sydney, they slipped past a violent verbal confrontation between a tight-lipped customs inspector and a first-class passenger whose luggage was being dismantled right down to the aspirin bottle in a small medical kit. It was Kelli who spotted the irate traveler’s inhabiting Interloper first. It was fluttering in ecstasy, delighting in the mental and emotional discomfort of its distraught host. Feeding in broad daylight.
Throughout the world, international customs are one of the favorite feasting grounds of Those Who Abide,” Oelefse informed Kelli and Cody. With his guidance, they had passed without comment through the line of inspectors. As they left the terminal, the enraged protestations of the infected wayfarer could still be heard behind them.
Following a necessary night’s layover at an airport hotel, they were up early the next morning to catch the first flight to Perth—another five and half hours in the air. Perth to Kununurra with the requisite stops in between found them in that remote but pleasant town by nightfall. Cody had thought himself used to the travails of long-distance travel, but neither he nor Kelli, leaning on his arm for guidance, had ever experienced anything like this. While they collapsed in an air-conditioned motel room, the indefatigable Oelefse went in search of the local car rental.
“No time to waste,” the practical German had responded when Cody had urged him to rest and wait until morning. “We must have a four-wheel drive to reach, much less negotiate, the terrain around Purnululu.” Glancing at the night sky he added, “It is late in the dry season. If the Wet hits while we are here, we will not be able to get into the range. I will feel better when we have arranged the necessary vehicle.”
“And contacted your colleague.” Kelli was seated on the big bed, tracing its outline with her hands. Pain coursed through Cody that she was forced to see with her hands instead of the almost functional eyes she still possessed. She was handling her affliction better than he.
“I doubt we will see him here.” Oelefse opened the door, letting in a puff of almost cool night air that slipped down around Cody’s head and shoulders like a cloak of gossamer dampness. “We are not likely to be that lucky.” He closed the door behind him. “But I know where to find him—I hope.”
The journey south from Kununurra along the paved two-lane, shoulderless road euphemistically called the Great Northern Highway wasn’t bad. Except for having to hold his breath while the occasional road train came barreling toward them, Cody found it almost enjoyable. He did his best to describe the rust-red, sparsely vegetated ground with its warped hillocks and torturously folded ridges to an attentive Kelli. From time to time a kangaroo or wallaby would bound across the road, while unknown birds mocked them from the shelter of scraggly bushes.
Warmun Community was little more than a collection of dilapidated trailers and a couple of food stores, though a few newer, more permanent houses could be seen hugging the shade of a small canyon.
“This place used to be called Turkey Creek.” Oelefse remarked as they pushed through the desert heat toward the largest of the stores. “Like a good deal of this country, the names as well as the land are reverting back to the original owners.”
As they walked, Cody marveled at their guide’s ability to handle the difficult climate. Living in Phoenix, he and Kelli were used to the heat and absence of humidity. At least, he reflected, Oelefse had finally put aside his elegantly tailored suit in favor of bush shorts, poplin shirt, and wide-brimmed hat. Enveloped by this wilderness apparel, the omnipresent briefcase that went everywhere with him looked distinctly out of place.
Although everyone was soon perspiring profusely, the temperature was not the real problem. Far more aggravating were the flies that assailed them at every opportunity. Refusing to be waved away, they persisted wherever they happened to land—on exposed skin, on lips, or in the inviting cavities of ears or nostrils. Cody and Kelli quickly learned how to perform the Australian salute—the waving of a hand ceaselessly back and forth in front of their faces.
The store was air-conditioned and blissfully free of annoying insects. Behind the counter, a heavyset woman with skin blacker than that of any person Cody had ever seen was unpacking bottled sodas from a cardboard crate and placing them one by one in an open upright cooler. Her features were bold and flattened. When she smiled, the contrast between ebony skin and teeth white as milk was startling.
“What you blokes want? Something cold to drink?”
Kelli wiped sweat from her brow, clinging deftly to her husband’s left arm for guidance. The clerk noticed but did not comment. “I’d love a cold cola. The brand doesn’t matter.”
Oelefse paid. Halfway through their chosen refreshment, he put one hand on the counter and smiled engagingly. “I am seeking Tjapu Kuwarra.”
The woman looked uncertain. “You not a government bloke—you got a funny accent, mate. You a friend of old Tjapu?” When Oelefse nodded, she waddled out from behind the counter and retraced their steps to the store’s double-doored entrance, parting a sudden influx of laughing coal-black children like an icebreaker cleaving an Arctic sea.
“You see back in the canyon there? Last house—you’ll have to walk.”
“Is he home?” Cody inquired politely.
The woman chuckled. “Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. If he wants to see you, he’ll be there, and if he don’t, he won’t.” Without a goodbye, she turned to deal with the sudden flash-flood of thirsty children who had inundated the counter with their shouts and laughter.
After downing the last of their drinks, the three travelers left the store and started up the rough dirt track. Overhead, a single scavenging hawk soared silently on rising currents of desiccated air.
“How do you know this Kuwarra person?” Despite her handicap, Kelli negotiated the uneven path gracefully, relying on her husband to notify her of any obstacles in their path larger than a baseball.
Oelefse glanced back. “Why, he is a member of the Society, of course.” He smiled. “The Society has chapters in odd places. Wherever Interlopers are to be found, the Society is there: watching, combating, striving to protect those who can not perceive.”
Cody had been uneasy ever since they had left their Jackaroo four-wheel drive parked in front of the store. His eyes swept the surrounding terrain: all stone and bush and tree. All natural, and therefore potential home to Those Who Abide. Detecting not a single Interloper, an observation that the skew-sighted Kelli was able to confirm, he queried Oelefse about their apparent absence.
“Tjapu is here, and works to protect his people. By reputation he is a good man, a strong defender. He keeps his territory cleansed. Do not worry about these rock faces and precipices we walk between. He will already have dealt with them. In the local Kija language, Kuwarra means ‘cliffs you can’t climb.’”
Cody was heartened, until several tries at the door of the last house produced no response. Though it was unlocked, Oelefse chose not to enter. Instead, they walked around to the back, where they were surprised to find a modest, neatly laid-out garden composed of carefully nurtured desert plants. Several were in bloom and boasted unexpectedly brilliant flowers.
At the far end of the garden path they came upon a small, narrow pool; a place where still water had gathered as if for protection beneath a slightly undercut, overhanging cliff. A single large log rested at the edge of the water. It had been trimmed and groomed to form a kind of bench. Seated on the log and facing the water were three locals; all male, all aged, almost identically clad in shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and battered sandals.
The first had a neatly trimmed white beard and wisps of a darker gray peeking out from beneath his hat. Cody guessed him to be about seventy. His neighbor’s whiskers were as long and full as those of a department store Santa, above which eyes were set deep in ebon skin. His face was as convoluted and tormented as the surrounding geology. He might have been eighty, or ninety, or over a hundred; the archaeologist could not tell. Seated to his right was a similarly bearded elder who was the perfect image of an aboriginal Methuselah.
None of them looked up at the newcomers’ approach. None turned from contemplating rock and water to offer query or greeting. Silently, Oelefse took up a seat at the near end of the log, put his briefcase down on a flat red stone, and proceeded to stare fixedly into the placid desert pool. After whispering a description of the scene to his wife, Cody led her forward and together they assumed similar positions.
They all remained just so for at least an hour, all six of them staring quietly at water that did not respond. In that hushed canyon, nothing moved. The other houses were likewise silent, their younger men away tending to sheep and cattle on nearby stations or working at the distant diamond mine.
Terminating the brief eternity, the youngest of the three elders finally turned to Oelefse and asked, as if no time at all had passed, “Where you from?”
“Germany. My friends are from America.” Leaning forward slightly, the old man gestured. “I am a friend of Tjapu Kuwarra.”
The speaker nodded once. Without another word, he and his neighbor rose, turned, and departed. Again, no goodbyes were offered. They were leaving, and that was farewell enough. The action being self-explanatory, there was no need for superfluous declarations. In the country of the Kimberley, even language was scrupulously conserved.
Rising from his seat at the far end of the log, the oldest of the contemplative trio came approached the visitors. His astonishingly advanced age did not appear to have much of an impact on his movements, which were fluid if slightly shaky. Smiling through his white monument of a beard, he reached out to embrace Oelefse.
“Long time since I had a visit from the Society. Welcome!”
In the presence of so much hoary sagacity, Cody felt like a stammering child. Having nothing wise to say, he demonstrated wisdom by saying nothing. After introducing his companions, Oelefse proceeded to explain the reason for their visit.
Tjapu listened solemnly, every now and again nodding as much to himself as to his visitors. When Oelefse finished, their venerable host turned and headed back toward the house, moving with easy, rapid strides.
About to burst from anxiety, Cody did not wait for Oelefse to explain. “My wife—can you help her? Can you do anything to alleviate her condition?”
“Oh sure, mate.” Looking back, the ancient one smiled. “We fix her right up. The doing of it might be a little dangerous, but we for sure got to give a try, you know? If everything works, she’ll be right. No worries.”
“And if everything doesn’t?”
Kuwarra shrugged. “Then maybe we be dead. But in the long run, we all dead, fair dinkum.” Opening the back door, he led them inside.
Though it did not boast the wonderful forced air-conditioning of the store, the interior of the concrete-block house was far cooler than the sweltering conditions outside. Amid a wealth of astonishingly detailed paintings done in traditional style, they sat and stared while their host served them lukewarm tea, chocolate biscuits, and chicken sandwiches. All the while, Kuwarra was studying Kelli, searching every inch of her face, gazing into eyes that could not look back.
“S’truth, she got the Sight, but not sight. We fix that.”
“How?” Cody sipped at his cup, marveling at the absence of ice in such a climate. “Oelefse has tried rattles, and chants, and tea brewed from the blue leaves of the ilecc.”
“Ilecc leaves!” their host exclaimed. He turned to Oelefse. “You blokes been doing some serious traveling.”
Holding his cup as delicately as if he were at court, the German replied genially. “We had a few awkward moments, yes.” He indicated Kelli. “She was very ill. The ilecc restored her health, but left her vision turned inside out. Thanks to his research, our friend Cody is Sighted. It is because of that research, which is important and inimical to Those Who Abide, that he and his wife were singled out by them for special attention.”
“If not for him,” Cody added as he nodded in Oelefse’s direction, “I don’t think Kelli and I would be here now. Or anywhere else.”
Kuwarra nodded sagely. “The Society is glad to help. I am honored in my turn.” Rising, he turned and started for a back room. “Got to get some things together. You finish eating. Spend the night here.”
“Is there a motel?” Kelli asked hopefully.
That brought forth a burst of laughter so bright and refreshing it seemed to cool the room ten degrees. “A motel! In Warmun! That’s a good one, sheila. A motel.” Still chuckling to himself, he vanished into the back.
“We will sleep here tonight.” Finishing the last of his tea, Oelefse discreetly set his cup aside. They had not been provided with saucers. “Tomorrow we will go into Purnululu.”
“What’s in there?” Cody was wary of the answer.
His friend would only smile. “This is Tjapu’s country, not mine. You will have to ask him. Not ilecc bushes, I promise you.”
“Something else,” the archaeologist murmured.
“Something different. As different as this land is from Austria, I suspect.” Reaching out, he patted Kelli’s hand. “Whatever it is, we can rely on Tjapu to make good use of it.”
“If it doesn’t kill us first,” Cody felt compelled to point out.
• • •
After the comparative cruising comfort of the paved highway, the fifty off-road miles into Purnululu came as more than a slight shock. In places they were reduced to bouncing and banging along dry creek beds, following signs that had been battered and weathered almost beyond recognition. With the Jackaroo grinding over rocks and stumbling across mini-gorges, by the time the fabled, isolated range itself finally came into view, the two Americans were sore and tired. In contrast, neither of their elderly companions seemed to have been affected by the difficult ride.
Ahead loomed the most remarkable collection of hills Cody had ever seen. He did his best to describe them to Kelli.
More than anything else, the Bungle Bungles resembled a collection of giant beehives. Horizontally striped in red, yellow, ochre, and every shade in between, the domes rose up out of the surrounding rubble like a vision from Bosch. Trees clung to the shady places between the sandstone cupolas while Livistonia palms hid in cracks and chasms in the highly eroded rock. As the abused Jackaroo trundled forward along the dirt and gravel track, a nail-tailed wallaby burst from a bush to rocket past in front of them. The spectacular array of mineral-inspired colors was enhanced by a backdrop of cloudless blue sky.
Turning right, they followed the track until they eventually left it entirely. Behind the wheel, Oelefse paid careful attention to Kuwarra’s directions. Cody was acutely aware that they were leaving behind any semblance of civilization or development. On the eastern half of the escarpment were no tourist facilities, no roads, nothing but beehived sandstone, heat, and the maddening, Danteesque flies. To the south lay the empty vastness of the Great Sandy Desert, thousands of square miles of wasteland uninhabited save for a few marginal sheep stations and isolated aboriginal communities.
On the rim of the range the terrain was relatively flat and negotiable in the Jackaroo. Peering at the jumble of resplendently striped domes and spires, Cody wondered aloud how they were going to coax the four-wheel drive more than a short distance inward.
“We’re not,” was Kuwarra’s answer. “Got to walk. There’s a creek we’ll follow. Can’t drive on these hills anyway. That pretty banding you see is a crust over the underlying sandstone. Just walk on it wrong and it flakes away.”
The archaeologist eyed the hills with new respect. They didn’t look half so fragile. “Okay. So we go up a creek. To find what?”
“These hills,” Kuwarra asked him, “what they look like to you?”
“Beehives.” Cody responded without hesitation. “Big beehives.”
“How about eggs?” The Warmun elder was grinning. “They look a little like eggs to you?”
“Maybe a little. Awfully garish for eggs. Easter eggs, maybe.”
“S’truth, mate.” Kuwarra pointed and Oelefse responded with a sharp turn of the wheel, heading the vehicle into the looming, multicolored hillocks. “Sandstone here, sandstone there, but every now and then you find an egg. That’s what we looking for. That’s what we got to find to help your woman. Bonzers from the city, they just see rock, rock, everywhere. Walk right past an egg without seeing what it is. Don’t matter to the egg ’cause they don’t try to break it open. We do different.”
Watching the rounded hills, some of them hundreds of feet high, draw near, Cody frowned. “You’re saying that some of these domes aren’t stone, but eggs?”
“Too right, mate. Bunyip eggs. That’s what we gonna do: crack open ourselves a bunyip egg.”
Bouncing on the padded bench seat next to her husband, Kelli spoke up. “What do we do then? Make an omelet?”
Roaring with laughter, the aged aborigine slapped his leg. “Bunyip omelet! That’s a good one, woman! No, no omelet. We do something else.” He nudged Oelefse, who was concentrating on the gorge they were approaching. “You hear that, mate? Feed a lot of folk, that omelet would!”
“All of your community?” Cody asked curiously.
“Maybe. Depend on the bunyip. Maybe feed Warmun, sure.” Turning, the white-haired elder met the archaeologist’s gaze. “Maybe feed Perth.”
Cody was left with that image to ponder as they entered the shallow creek that had eaten a cleft in the rock, allowing them to penetrate the range. Curving, sheer-sided walls closed in on both sides. Even in the shade, it was hot, but nothing like the searing semidesert they had left behind. When the chasm grew too narrow for the Jackaroo, they parked it in a little side canyon. Kuwarra passed out small day packs. Cody and Kelli’s contained only food and water. In addition to his pack, the elder carried in one hand a three-foot long wooden tube, a piece of tree that had been decorated with many symbols and dots in white and dark red. Kuwarra defined them as best he could, tracing paths and stopping-places in the Dreamtime, highly stylized animals, and creatures few people would recognize. Cody was one of the few, having seen Interlopers before.
They advanced in silence, following the overachieving trickle of a creek until the water vanished into the sand. Kelli held tight to her husband’s guiding arm. Above them the sky was reduced to a narrow, winding blue streak that followed the line of the gorge. Everyone kept a careful eye out for Interlopers, but despite the profusion of native stone, they saw none. Their absence in such a potentially hospitable place struck Cody as peculiar. He said as much to the two old men who were leading them onward.
“The reason is simple enough.” Kuwarra explained as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “They keep away from this place ’cause they scared.”
“Scared?” In all his many conversations with Oelefse, Cody could not recall the German mentioning anything that could frighten an Interloper. Enrage them, yes. Through his research the archaeologist had succeeded in doing that himself. But scare?
“What could frighten an Interloper?”
Kuwarra’s laughing smile vanished and for once he was wholly serious. “You never seen a bunyip, mate. When you see one, you have your answer.”
He did not elaborate. Nor, Cody decided abruptly, did he want him to.