10. Heatwave

As Sylvia stepped up onto the air-conditioned coach, she reminded herself that she was fate’s plaything now and that events would take their course. It was Thursday January 12th, not yet nine in the morning but already stifling at the bus port where the protesters had been gathering. She had spent so long at the mercy of others – first David, then the guards at Symonston, her difficult mother, latterly Eli and most recently Lyncoln Rose – that she’d forgotten to want anything for herself. She took a window seat near the back of the coach, desperate to tune out the excited voices. The protesters were very young for the most part, mostly students from Quindalup University. She turned toward the window, impatient for the coach to start moving.

“Sylvia, there you are,” Tamara said, sitting down next to her. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Tamara’s wavy hair was tied back and her skin was beaded with perspiration. “Hot, isn’t it?” Sylvia said. The aisle filled up with people in search of a seat.

“At least it’s cooler on here,” Tamara said, wafting cold air from the vents down with her hands. Then their eyes met. Tamara leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Did you stay with Eli last night?”

So that’s what this was about. “Does it matter?” Sylvia whispered in reply. Images of Eli’s soft, hairless chest rose unbidden. His sallow, flabby skin. The pig-like grunts he made when he was inside her.

“It matters to me,” Tamara said, her eyes rueful. “Was he all right?”

“How do you mean?” Sylvia asked. The coach shuddered and began to inch forward. “You’re asking me whether I liked it?”

Tamara looked away. “No, it’s just that sometimes he can’t –”

“– Well this time he could. But between us, I think his best talent is oration.”

Tamara’s frown morphed into a sly grin. “I’m not really jealous, I’m just protective of him. He’s been under a lot of pressure.” She sighed.

“He seemed to enjoy himself just fine,” Sylvia said. What she didn’t say was that Eli might have enjoyed himself, but she certainly hadn’t. She hadn’t had sex in a long time, so long that she’d almost forgotten what it was like, and Eli hadn’t exactly stoked the dormant fires within. He hadn’t been selfish, just... inept. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could say about your cell organiser and the heir apparent to David’s throne. She suspected that for Eli it was more the idea of sleeping with Sylvia Baron, the founding father’s widow that motivated him. She didn’t regret it. It was just another duty, just another thing she did for the cause. The only problem was that she no longer knew what the cause was.

“He’s lost interest in me,” Tamara said, interrupting Sylvia’s reverie. The coach had stopped at the traffic lights leading onto the Northern Freeway.

“Don’t stress. I’m just a novelty to him at the moment,” Sylvia said, touching Tamara’s shoulder. “I’d be happy for you to take him off my hands, to be honest. I’m not all that keen.”

“Really?” Tamara brightened. “I love him, Sylvia. I can take good care of him. But you’re so pretty and thin and I’m just... me.”

“I’ll say something to him.”

“Don’t make him angry. I don’t want him to think it’s because of something I said.”

Sylvia shook her head. “It isn’t because of you, don’t worry.”

They lapsed into silence. The oddest thing had started happening to Sylvia just recently. After years of hating David for his reckless stupidity, she was surprised to find that she’d finally forgiven him. Now that he was dead, images of his chiselled features, his rough chin and hard limbs, had started manifesting themselves in her mind. She wanted him in a way she’d rarely wanted him when they’d been together. And pudgy Eli was practically his polar opposite and not at all her type. Even Rion was far superior in that sense. In fact, now that she thought about it, the very last time had been with Rion, hadn’t it? But they’d parted on bad terms on June First. She’d asked him to help her get away and he wouldn’t, not that she really blamed him for that now. She’d more or less turned him over to the authorities in the first place. She should ask Eli if he knew anything about what had happened to him.

The coach was on the freeway and at last it was moving at a reasonable speed. This whole protest was a waste of time, in her opinion. She hadn’t approved of David’s measures, but this was going too far the other way. What did CIQ Sinocorp care about peaceful protesters? The AFP needn’t worry. She had tried to explain this to Lyncoln Rose the other day, but the Superintendent hadn’t seemed convinced. Sylvia sometimes went hours without thinking about the SCA now, generally only remembering it at embarrassing moments such as when she was on the toilet or when Eli took off his pants in front of her. That was probably too much information even for the AFP.

As the freeway gave way to the coastal highway, she looked through the darkened glass at the burning world beyond. She saw a wall of smoke enveloping the eastern sky, a massive bushfire on the periphery of those blighted outer suburbs in the distance. New heatwave records were being set all the time, so often now that people had become altogether blasé about them. Nothing much moved on foot out there. Though it was not yet ten, the residents of those grim developments who were not working would be huddled inside beneath their air-conditioners, while those who could not afford them sweltered. Today was supposed to be 44 degrees and the maximum hadn’t been below 40 all week. To be wealthy these days meant to be sufficiently cool, while to be poor was to fry. Autumn was months away and for many people in these mad, thirsty days they would die before it came.

Here, just south of Florinton, the roadsides were clogged with car dealerships, shopping centres and fast food outlets, but all of these had been afflicted with a malaise, or so it seemed to her. No cars were being sold, no shoppers were bustling along the concourses, and no greasy food was being served at drive-thru windows. Commerce could not be transacted in this heat. The only meaningful activity consisted of the fire-crews working to keep the hungry flames at bay. The suburbs would burn, routing residents and forcing them from their homes, but not today.

The highway bypassed Florinton and soon after that the coach reached the periphery of suburbia, a realm of new housing developments, signage and yellow sand. Every stretch of sand was an ‘Exciting Opportunity’ and ‘Too Good to Miss’. The suburbs finally gave out some ninety kilometres north of Perth. Here at last the landscape could be seen for what it truly was, a windswept coastal plain populated by scrubby bushes and little else. This unpromising landscape too would one day be transformed into a desert of traffic lights and terracotta roofs. Ridge Point was less than thirty kilometres away and beyond that was the CIQ Sinocorp Protectorate and Yellowcake Springs. It was a landscape she had never wanted to set eyes on again and yet here she was. The place was a vortex, exerting a subtle pull.

“Nearly there,” Tamara said, obliterating their long silence. She pointed to a sign which flashed past before Sylvia could read what it said. “Aren’t you excited?”

“I lived up here, remember?”

“Come on, you’re excited,” Tamara asserted, and Sylvia thought better than of trying to disabuse her of the notion. “We’re going to be at the centre of history,” she continued. “All eyes will be on us. On you.”

They already are, Sylvia thought.

The coach turned off the highway just south of the border, at the road to Ridge Point. She thought of the route she’d once taken across this arid landscape. How far it’d seemed. At least she’d undertaken that trek in the cooler months. She wouldn’t have made it far in this weather. Ridge Point was much as it had been, an outcropping of coastal suburbia in an otherwise barren landscape. Should CIQ Sinocorp get its way and be allowed to expand its Protectorate, then Ridge Point would be subsumed. Perhaps for this reason, the property market in town was in decline, judging by the profusion of FOR SALE signs.

But there were police, lots of them, the lights on their cars flashing. The convoy of coaches was being channelled onto a side street, where a tent city had been erected on the oval of the local park. “No, we’re not camping in this heat,” Sylvia said. “I can’t believe it.”

“Where’d you think we were staying, in a hotel?” Tamara replied. “There’s more than two hundred of us, Sylvia.” Nearly half of the financial members had not fronted up on the day, which was just as well.

The university students didn’t seem to mind, however, and Sylvia did her best to close her mouth and keep it shut thereafter. They all clambered off the coaches into the merciful shade provided by a massive bus shelter, and there they stood waiting for their bags to be unloaded while many queued at the already formidable lines at the portable toilets. The local sporting club had been commandeered for the occasion and lunch would soon be served. Banners were unfurled, chants were practised, and Sylvia felt utterly alone in the universe.