Dinner tasted like shit. For one thing, Peter’s appetite had completely left him, and for another, the horses were dragging heavy tools and equipment past the mess, sending in splatters of mud and the distinctive scent of manure.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked one of the cooks.
‘Building a bridge over the river,’ came the reply, and then, ‘Did you just feel an earthquake?’
Peter shook his head and took a seat in a corner. He turned his rice over with his fork, finally allowing himself to consider what the kid had told him. The whole thing was bullshit, of course. The kid had probably been whacked on the head or something. But then he remembered the pressure of dry, slick skin, grey as a ghost, slithering against his legs, and he shuddered. That snake had been real all right – in his head.
He glanced around the mess. The other personnel were talking in low voices. Were they discussing mining? Or UFOs? He was beginning to feel left out, big time. He’d felt the same way when his uncle had asked him to that party – to play valet. It sucked.
He was a Seddon too. He had rights. He should have been told the truth. So screw it,he thought. I ain’t calling in that kid until I know for sure. And maybe not even then.
He pushed away from the table, scraped his near-full plate into the scrap bucket and headed outside. A group of guards were straining under the weight of the wooden crates they were carrying.
‘Give us a hand?’ A guard was standing by a wagon piled high with the crates. Peter reached for one of the rope handles and tugged.
‘Careful!’ hissed the guy, just as Peter recognised the symbol on the side of each box.
‘Explosives?’ he said in a hushed voice.
‘Yeah. Pretty safe but … don’t drop it, okay?’
‘Can’t the horses pull the whole wagon in?’ Peter grunted as he hefted the crate and followed the guard towards the Restricted Area.
‘Nah. The electro fields make ’em too jumpy. It won’t be too pretty if they bolt with this lot.’
The muddy entrance had been churned up by the horses, and Peter had to watch where he stepped. The guard handed his crate to a guard on the other side of the gate. The woman with mahogany hair watched, her little black wand at the ready.
‘It’s okay,’ Peter said. ‘I’ll take mine through. I’ve got a pass.’
Surprised, the second guard stepped back. Peter gave the woman a wink, trying to give the impression the crate weighed nothing at all.
‘It’s in my back pocket. You want to get it? I won’t mind.’
She laughed. ‘No thanks. I remember you.’
She waved him through, and Peter moved past, staggering as the slippery mud shifted under his feet.
The crates had been stacked on the inside of the gate, and two people were laboriously carrying them through the Restricted Area, past the skull and crossbones sign, and along the track through the trees.
Peter followed them, trying to look inconspicuous. The sign flapped in the breeze, a grey snake coiling around the shiny white skull … Peter blinked and the snake disappeared. He gritted his teeth and hurried forward through the trees. His head was throbbing – just a little.
The track opened out to the riverbank and a cacophony of noise. The crack of axes on wood, the crash of trees falling, the grinding of mysterious mechanical equipment, and shouted instructions almost blotted out the sound of the rushing water.
Piles of earth and rocks had been dumped at intervals across the river, and logs placed between them to form a bridge. The steep cliff face on the other side was a slick plane of clay reaching up and up. There was no way anything could get down the cliff unless it was abseiling – or falling.
Peter’s eyes traced the sharp silhouette of the ridge line against the sky and followed it down to a broad gouge in the earth. His heart began thudding painfully, trying to adapt to a rhythm oozing up from the earth and through the soles of his feet. His eyes widened, his breath caught.
It looked like … but it couldn’t be. A goddamn …
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and dug into his flesh, making him cry out.
‘Mind telling me what the hell you’re doing here?’ Griff
McKenzie growled.
Peter squirmed away from his uncle’s grip and lowered the crate to the soft mud of the riverbank.
Griff slammed a hand on the back of Peter’s neck and marched him back up the track, away from the river. He didn’t say a thing until he’d shoved Peter through the flaps of the big tent and spun him around to face him.
‘This better be good.’
‘I have a pass!’ Peter blurted, bringing out the pass from his back pocket and thrusting it at his uncle.
Griff slapped the pass out of his hand. ‘You’re not supposed to be here. It’s dangerous!’
‘Dangerous for you, you mean. You’re hiding those dead kids. And you’re hiding a freaking UFO!’
Griff backhanded Peter across the face and he fell to the floor, clutching his cheek. He was actually seeing stars, just like in the cartoons. He glared up at his uncle through a rapidly swelling eye.
‘I’m not going to tell, if that’s what you’re afraid of!’ he said, readying himself to roll out of the range of Griff’s boot.
‘Too bloody right you’re not!’
Griff took two or three deep breaths, his hands clenching and unclenching. He leaned down and pushed his stubbled face into Peter’s. ‘And what’s my guarantee?’
An image of Jahmin swam into Peter’s head, and he closed his eyes, half afraid Griff would see it. Jahmin was his trump card, and he had no intention of playing it so early.
‘I’m family,’ he said, and forced himself to his feet. No need to grovel on the floor like a whipped dog. He was a Seddon, and there was no getting around it. He stared unblinking at his uncle, despite his face throbbing like hell. His uncle regarded him for a long moment.
‘Fine,’ Griff said abruptly. ‘But I warn you …’
‘You don’t have to,’ Peter said. ‘I get it.’
They moved to a table laden with coffee and tea and biscuits. Peter added three spoonfuls of sugar to his coffee. He figured he needed it for the shock of seeing that thing. He stirred his cup, and for the first time noticed there were others in the tent, a handful of people clustered around a table looking at an old journal and a stack of documents that looked like maps. They would have seen him being slapped to the ground, and they hadn’t done a thing. Either the maps were so engrossing they couldn’t tear themselves away or their fear of Griff held them motionless. It was probably a bit of both.
‘What is it, exactly?’ he said, too curious to be wary of his
uncle’s response.
Griff helped himself to coffee. ‘We call it Destiny.’
Peter grinned, until he realised his uncle was deadly serious.
‘Destiny was discovered back in the ’50s by my grandfather, but it’s been here a hell of a lot longer than that. He had the foresight to keep his mouth shut and wait for technology to advance to a point where we can take advantage of it. We don’t know much about it, but we do know it screws with your head.’
‘I saw a snake.’
Griff ignored this.
‘It leaches some kind of energy. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it either supercharges or supercircuits things that enter its sphere of influence. Proximity matters – sometimes. The effects can fade with distance, but sometimes they’re permanent.’
‘How do you mean, supercharges or supercircuits?’
‘Most things go doolally when they get up close. Humans, some species of animal – especially rabbits – machinery, pretty much anything electrical. But there are exceptions. We haven’t worked out why. Something in the DNA.’
Griff seemed to catch himself. He sucked at his coffee.
‘I didn’t see any rabbits when I was on patrol,’ Peter offered, anxious to find out more.
‘Cos it doesn’t like them.’
‘I saw a deer once.’
‘I read your report. Riveting stuff. Seven blisters, was it?
Or eight?’
Peter’s coffee was cold and bitter, which pretty much summed up his mood. First a slam in the face and now unc was taking the piss. And for what? He hadn’t asked to be here. He’d only gone along with it because of the promise of mining money.
He groaned. ‘So … what you told me about the mining. That’s not true, is it?’
‘No.’
The billion-dollar dream vanished.
‘Well …’ said his uncle, and Peter’s hopes rose again. ‘That’s not strictly true. The potential is there. But it’s nothing, nothing, compared to what Destiny can do for us. Our research was about a year away from figuring it out. Only a year!’
‘Only?’ Peter muttered. A year was, like, forever.
‘Considering we’ve been studying it for over half a century,’ his uncle said drily, ‘a year is nothing. But right now we have to contain the situation. The longer we leave it, the more likely it is that stories will get out and rumours will start to spread.’
His eyes snapped to Peter, who dipped his face back into his cup.
‘We’re about to let everyone know we’ve found the students.’
‘But won’t they find out about–’
‘We’ve located the rest of the bus, a few kilometres downriver. We’ll take all the bodies and the remaining wreckage from here, and stage things. We need to make it look good for the photos.’
‘So you’ll arrange all the kids, like props?’ The idea made Peter’s stomach turn. And just like that, he saw a flicker of a grey tail on the floor, oozing beneath the tent flap. He blinked. Just a dead leaf. He raised his cup again, not entirely surprised to find his hands were shaking.
‘No. You’ll be the one arranging the kids out like props.’ Griff’s voice was hard. He held up a hand to forestall Peter’s protest. ‘There’s a team going out. We have to do it on the … what do you call it? The downlow.’
Peter ignored his uncle’s attempt to be relevant.
‘They’ll work it out. They’ll find out.’
His uncle laughed, a laugh so utterly cheerless it hardly deserved to be called one.
‘When Seddon brings the bodies home, the public won’t care about the details, trust me. We’ll be heroes.’
‘And what about the other ones?’
‘What other ones?’
‘Well …’ Peter thought fast. ‘There weren’t that many in the tent.
I thought there were more.’
‘The rest ended up downriver, trapped in the bus,’ Griff said, without a sign he’d picked up anything untoward. ‘Lucky for us.’
Peter’s skin crawled at his uncle’s words. Lucky? Suddenly he was glad he hadn’t reported Jahmin, glad that the kid was still out there. He was the only one who would be able to tell the truth. Because, Peter thought, as he put his cup down and followed Griff out of the tent, he never would. He’d need paying for his silence, though. A cool mill might do it.
‘Jesse and Moses will come and get you. Just do what they say, and everything will be fine.’
At least Moses was going to be there. Peter didn’t like Jesse. Hell, nobody liked Jesse. Even Moses seemed a little afraid of him. ‘Sure.’
‘And tomorrow, we’ll bury this thing once and for all.’
The reason for the explosives became clear. ‘You’re going to blow it up?’
Griff sighed. ‘The most valuable, significant contribution to science in the entire history of the world and you think we’re going to blow it up? We’re holding on to it until we have the technology capable of controlling it. I told you, we’re a year away at least. I said, we’re going to bury it. Earth helps to contain its … forces. When the shell is exposed like that, it can really do a number on you.’ He gave an almost imperceptible shudder.
‘What does it make you see, Uncle?’ Peter asked curiously.
‘An annoying idiot who asks too many questions.’
Peter shrugged. Whatever Griff was hallucinating, it scared the shit out of him, and Peter was fine with that.
‘Stay here. And keep your mouth shut.’
Griff stepped back inside the tent, leaving Peter to wait outside like a naughty schoolboy.
One million dollars. Maybe even two.
A slow smile crept across his face. Thinking about money was a lot more pleasant than thinking about lugging dead bodies into position for a photo shoot.
Maybe he should ask for three.
