Callum kept a close eye on the Daisy-May’s sensors, and while Bo focused on the road he watched to make sure they were safe. When the monitors indicated another vehicle approaching, he tapped Bo on her thigh. She steered the bike off-road so they could wait in sheltering scrub for the strangers to pass. It slowed their progress and the days slipped into weeks but they didn’t want to risk making contact with anyone. Red sand was replaced by sandy yellow soil. Occasional gum trees began to pepper the roadside. Finally the country turned from desert scrub to forest.
One warm afternoon after a long day of travel, they found a sheltered dry riverbed in which to camp. Bo lifted Mr Pinkwhistle out of the pannier and set him on a rock to soak up the last of the day’s sunlight before sending him out to hunt. Callum was anxious that they start scouring the surrounding country for succulents to feed the Daisy-May’s still and was glad to see the roboraptor disappear into the scrub.
They returned to camp as darkness fell with only a small string bag of plants, to find Mr Pinkwhistle waiting for them, pawing the ground miserably and loudly gnashing his metal teeth. He’d been unable to catch anything for their dinner and he let out a whirr of embarrassment when Bo stroked his spine.
When Mr Pinkwhistle was calm again, Bo pulled the top from her water flask and licked the last drops from its rim. Then she flopped down in the sand and stretched out on her back. ‘I don’t think we’ll make it at this rate. We’ll starve before we reach the city.’
‘When we get to Vulture’s Gate, there’ll be plenty of food,’ said Callum. ‘My dads will make sure of that. The Colony has storehouses full of stockpiled food.’
‘But we’ve still got hundreds of kilometres to go and we’ve almost no food and no water. We spend so much time travelling or looking for plants for the still that we don’t have any time to find food. Mr Pinkwhistle can’t do all the hunting by himself. We need to stop and make a camp for a while.’
‘No way! We have to keep moving!’
Bo sighed and pulled Mr Pinkwhistle onto her lap. She opened up his chest and checked his sensors as she spoke. ‘Didn’t you say your fathers used to buy supplies? Isn’t that what people who can’t hunt do? You’ve got gold. We should use it to purchase something.’
‘Who from? Outstationers? You think we can simply roll up at an outstation and trade? They would eat us for breakfast. We’re probably a gazillion kilometres from any Colony outposts. There was one my dads used to go to on business. It was an old port, so stuff came to it from the sea. But it was bad news. Heaps of pirates and cutthroats. I was never allowed out of the Colony compound when we went there. You wouldn’t want to walk around somewhere like that with a fistful of gold. Like I said, we have to do this alone. We can’t trust anyone.’
When he looked across at Bo, he realised she had stopped listening and was busy studying Mr Pinkwhistle’s sensors.
‘Look at this,’ she said, pointing at a luminous glowing circle on the monitor.
‘What’s it mean?’
‘It’s a big body of water, maybe a dam or lake, but there are tanks as well. And some sort of power source. That means there must be people there. Not ordinary Outstationers or anyone like that Dental and Floss. Whoever is up there, they’re jolly well organised. But there’s something queer about it. I can’t see any movement.’
Suddenly, the screen went dark and the green light disappeared. Mr Pinkwhistle let out a low growl and shifted from one foot to the other, leaving a trail of little red scratches on Bo’s thigh.
‘Something’s blocked the signal, but I did get a fix on where it is. It’s a valley, inside a circle of hills somewhere over that way,’ she said, gesturing into the darkness. ‘I can put the coordinates into the Daisy-May and we could be there and back again in no time. If there’s water, there should be good hunting. At least we could fill our flasks.’
Callum frowned and rested his hands on his grumbling stomach. ‘What if there’s someone there? It could be dangerous.’
‘We won’t know unless we spy them out.’
The next morning they followed a winding trail up the side of a mountain. As they rode closer to the top, the path became heavily overgrown.
‘This is taking us nowhere,’ said Callum. ‘We’ll never get the Daisy-May through this scrub.’
‘Maybe we could climb to the top of the hill and just see if there really is anything down there. I don’t understand why neither Mr Pinkwhistle nor the Daisy-May has readings on it any more. It’s as if there’s a blanket across the whole valley. Something about this place gives me the willies. It’s claustrophobic. All this green. It’s suffocating.’
‘It might be a Colony outpost. They can do things like that, blanket signals and all.’
They parked the Daisy-May in the shelter of trees and covered her with bracken. Bo slung her string bag over her shoulder and set Mr Pinkwhistle down on the ground so he could scoot ahead of them, forging his way through thick ferns. As the bush grew denser, Callum’s hope that the valley might be a Colony outpost flickered and died. There were no border guards, no fences, nothing but wilderness as far as the eye could see.
When they reached the crest of the hill, Bo climbed onto a high rock to survey the valley. For a moment she was silhouetted against the blue and then she crumpled, screaming. A flock of white cockatoos swept down from the sky and attacked her, tearing her hair, and pecking until they drew blood. She huddled in a ball, paralysed with terror.
Callum jumped up beside her and tried to bat the birds out of the way. ‘Hit them, Bo. Hit back!’ he shouted.
Why didn’t she fight? How could she be so courageous about everything else but let birds defeat her? Clumsily, he caught a cockatoo by its feet and used it to beat the others away. They shrieked and dived harder in a rush of feathers and wings, pecking his face and arms until they bled. Flecks of blood splattered their white wings. Suddenly, a thunderous noise dispersed the flock. Callum turned, still clutching a squawking cockatoo by its feet.
‘Let go of the bird, sonny,’ said their rescuer, squinting through the viewfinder of his gun. ‘Let her go or I’ll shoot you right through your nasty little heart.’