Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 May 1974
Lamb Producers Caught in the Squeeze
High interest rates are making it impossible for farmers to keep up with their mortgage repayments, according to Gibber’s Creek Chamber of Commerce president, Mr Graham Flint, made worse by spiralling farm fuel costs due to the oil crisis. ‘With inflation eating away people’s wages, most wage earners can’t even afford the humble weekend roast. It’s sausages instead, and hard times for farmers.
‘This year should have been one of our best. Instead it’s the worst I’ve ever known.’
JED
The phone rang in the living room after their early dinner that Monday. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Jed as Scarlett looked up from her homework.
It was Carol. ‘Sorry it’s so late — I’ve been out all day helping get in the last of the pumpkin crop. The report’s here from the private investigator, if you want to look at it.’
The sensible thing would be to wait till tomorrow. But suddenly she wanted to know what kind of people her sister had become involved with. ‘When? Now? At your office?’
‘Can do,’ said Carol.
Jed put the receiver down slowly. ‘I’m just going into town for an hour or so,’ she said to Scarlett. ‘Want to come too?’
‘Sure. This isn’t due till Friday. Where are you going?’
‘The café. Carol’s been doing some work for me.’
‘Planning a takeover of Thompson’s Industries with Matilda? I’ll see if Leafsong wants a hand.’ The café closed each afternoon at four-thirty, as soon as the ‘must have a cup of tea after picking up the kids’ rush was over.
They parted at the narrow metal staircase that led up to the top storey of the café, replacing a similar but rotting wooden one. A staircase that Scarlett would never be able to get up, thought Jed, unless someone piggybacked her; nor was there room on the block of land for a ramp to go as high as that. But Leafsong used the café as her living room, once the front door had its Closed sign on it. Luckily Scarlett would probably never need to come up here.
Jed knocked at the paint-peeling door. As the landlord, she really should get this all repainted too. ‘It’s me.’
Carol sat behind an elderly but business-like desk, a clean and even-ironed men’s Pelaco business shirt under her overalls. Behind her was a wall of brick-and-plank bookcases filled with law books and equally elderly filing cabinets. Jed suspected that anyone in a big city would take one look at the office — or even the staircase leading to it — and find another solicitor. But Old McDonald’s office was reputedly as bad, with half an inch of dust and a carpet so worn that a small table had been put over the worst of the holes so clients wouldn’t trip.
‘How’s business?’
‘Fourteen clients so far.’
Jed looked at her shrewdly. ‘How many of them pay?’
Carol grinned. ‘That’s confidential. But your bill is going to pay the rent to our landlord nicely.’ She nodded to a fat folder on the desk. ‘Do you want to read the report first, or will I give you the main bits?’
‘Main bits, please.’
‘Okay. Ra Zacharia is really Dennis O’Lachlan. He has a doctorate in herbalism from a private college in California.’
‘But he said he was a —’ Jed stopped. Ra Zacharia had said he was a doctor of medicine. Herbalism, at a pinch, might be described as that.
‘No police record in the USA or Australia. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got one somewhere else.’
‘The money? There has to be money in this somewhere.’
‘There is. But I had to hire a Californian investigator to find it. They sent the copies of the press cuttings in your folder. The money — or part of it at least, anyway — seems to come from a bequest by an elderly widow in California, Mrs Ellen Tetlock. Mrs Tetlock believed Ra Zacharia had healed her ovarian cancer. When she died, he inherited her considerable estate. Which really was a lot. Her son appealed and settled out of court, presumably also for a lot, but there was a lot to share. The son also claimed that Mrs Tetlock had given Ra Zacharia a large part of her estate before she died.’
‘And yet the poor woman died,’ said Jed. ‘Surely Ra Zacharia should have been prosecuted for fraud?’
‘Except Mrs Tetlock didn’t die from the cancer,’ said Carol dryly. ‘She was killed when the car she was in ran off the road and over a cliff. The driver, her other son, was killed as well.’
‘Could Ra Zacharia have . . . arranged the accident?’
‘Severed the brake lines, or something like that? You’ve been reading too many Agatha Christies. There was no way of telling if any mechanical fault caused the crash — the car burst into flames on impact. But they’d been at a big family party and witnesses at the inquest said Mrs Tetlock’s son had been drunk, so drunk that he’d become abusive and was asked to leave. It seems he was drunk quite often.’
‘An alcoholic?’
Carol shrugged. ‘I’ve only got what was said at the inquest.’
‘So no autopsy to see if the ovarian cancer was still there or not. Did your investigator say what her son had been abusive about?’
‘Not his mother’s involvement with Ra Zacharia. He’d been accusing his brother of sponging off their mother. Which it seemed he had been.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Jed again. ‘One son an alcoholic, one sponging off her. Or both. I don’t suppose either was much support to her. No wonder she became so close to Ra Zacharia. He’d have given her sympathy, at least. Any other grateful patients who have left him money in their wills? Or been especially generous?’
‘Possibly. There’s been one death at the community here. A heart attack. Nothing got into the Gibberer, because there were no suspicious circumstances. The deceased was a Mr Alan Rigonati, who left everything he owned, valued at two hundred and fifty-two dollars, less probate duty, to his son, who hadn’t seen him in a year. If there have been any bequests to Ra Zacharia, none have landed him in court or the main newspapers. We’d need to hunt through every will in every state registry in Australia and the USA to see if he was listed when the wills were probated. It’d be easier if we knew the names of everyone who’s lived there.’
‘The Chosen are called by numbers,’ said Jed slowly. ‘They give up their old names when they join the group.’
‘Convenient.’
‘Not for us,’ said Jed. ‘Or anyone else trying to make enquiries. What about the college he went to?’
‘Seems genuine enough, though it’s not exactly Yale. But it’s not a mail-order degree place either, if that’s what you’re asking. “Dennis O’Lachlan” spent four years there and graduated, then did his PhD. The Californian investigator talked to a few people who had known him. Several of them said that he’d enrolled in the herbalism course because conventional medicine had failed him. One of them mentioned a brain tumour. They all knew about the Chosen of the Universe — he’d begun it before he enrolled or attempted to anyway.’
Carol shrugged. ‘None of the people they spoke to had joined the Chosen. They seemed to think it was all a bit of a joke, especially the alien stuff. Dennis O’Lachlan must have realised his fellow students and the staff there weren’t buying the “messages from an alien spacecraft stuff” because he stopped talking about aliens after that first year. They seemed to like him well enough. But no one described him as charismatic or a natural leader.’
‘Wait a sec,’ said Jed. ‘How did he afford to go to a college in the USA? He couldn’t have worked there without a work visa, and they’re not easy to get.’
‘One of his former friends said an elderly woman paid the fees, and that he lived in her house. Presumably Mrs Tetlock. He came back to Australia straight after the estate was settled.’ Carol shrugged again. ‘Maybe because of the bad publicity. He might even have been homesick. I don’t know. He didn’t start calling himself Ra Zacharia till he left the USA.’
‘When did he start the community of the Chosen here?’
‘1968. Their headquarters was a terrace house in Sydney, then he bought the land here. But the investigator couldn’t find out how many members they have now.’
‘At least forty-eight,’ said Jed, remembering Mark 48 drooling at the loom. ‘Not many more than that, I think, unless there are adherents elsewhere. Are there?’
‘Not that the investigator could find. But there’s something else from an old friend of mine. He works at Parkes Observatory now and edits a small astronomy journal. I mentioned the messages from aliens to him, just in case there might be something in it.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘Look, strange things do happen. Anyway, my friend said it was rubbish too. But he did remember the name. It’s hard to forget. Ra Zacharia submitted an article about two years ago. The journal didn’t accept it, of course, but there was no stamped return address envelope, so my friend couldn’t send it back. He sent me a photocopy of it.’
‘What does it say?’
‘The same stuff as in his book, mostly. But apparently there’s been a new message from the aliens. One that hadn’t been received when Ra Zacharia wrote his book four years ago.’ Carol paused dramatically.
‘Please, no dramatic pauses!’ said Jed.
‘Okay. The aliens have given Ra Zacharia an exact date and location. They are going to land on the afternoon of 11 November 1975. And the location . . .’
‘Is outside Gibber’s Creek. Of course. Why else buy up barren paddocks?’
‘Exactly. In a year and a half Gibber’s Creek is going to have an alien invasion. Presumably peace on earth for all mankind. And even perhaps women.’
‘We’ll probably just get a mob of angry followers demanding the aliens they were promised,’ said Jed.
‘Don’t underestimate human gullibility. He’ll probably just say it was a mistranslation and the aliens will arrive in another ten or twenty years. That’s what gurus usually do when their predictions don’t come on schedule. And their followers mostly swallow it.’
Jed nodded, remembering the slightly frightening uniform smiles out at the community of the Chosen.
‘There’s not much else that the investigator can find,’ added Carol. ‘Ra Zacharia’s mum is still alive, up in Townsville. He paid off her mortgage as soon as he came into the money. He goes up there for Christmas and her birthday each year. He uses his real name up there, and wears normal clothes. The neighbours say he’s very nice and good to his mum. None of them mentioned his brain tumour. It’s possible his mother never knew about it either.’
‘If it ever existed,’ muttered Jed.
‘If it ever existed,’ agreed Carol. ‘But I’m pretty sure that Ra Zacharia at least believed in it, and that changed his life. Don’t worry — the investigator was very discreet up in Townsville.’
‘Good.’ The last thing Jed wanted was to scare an elderly widow with the news that her son might have a brain tumour. ‘I suppose he goes around Australia giving talks to get more members? Elderly wealthy members to leave him more dough?’
‘If he does, there’s no record of it. The last public talk seems to have been at Sydney University, just before they came out here. That must have been the one where Scarlett’s Mark was recruited. The Chosen don’t seem to be trying to recruit anyone these days. On the contrary.’
‘But Ra Zacharia tried to recruit Scarlett.’ Or had he? Had he only promised she would walk again?
Carol shook her head. ‘It’s . . . odd. On the surface the Chosen of the Universe seem like the classic con, a charismatic bloke fleecing followers. But cults mostly don’t allow their members to visit their families, much less attend events on their own.’
‘But the Chosen do mostly keep to themselves. And Ra Zacharia changed his name.’
‘So did Leafsong. And you, for that matter. So far this guy seems to be sincere. Jed, I think you need to accept that Ra Zacharia may be a harmless crackpot, a bloke who was lucky enough to befriend a wealthy woman and who’s using the money she left him to help others. Maybe some or even all of them are deluded about their cures and the alien spaceship. But from all the investigators have found out, and from all you’ve told me, there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Unless Scarlett decides to join the community.’
‘Keep your hackles down, mother bear. If Scarlett really thought Ra Zacharia could make her walk, don’t you think she’d have said, “Prove it”?’
‘Then why hasn’t she?’
‘I suspect she doesn’t want to hurt or embarrass Mark when his leader can’t keep his promises. I bet Scarlett forgets all about the Chosen of the Universe as soon as she gets to uni.’ Carol grinned. ‘And Scarlett’s Mark checks out. The Sydney investigator went to see his mum. She’s not happy that he’s with the Chosen, but he visits her and writes to her on and off.’
‘Maybe Ra Zacharia thinks Mark is tied to him so securely he can risk him going to visit his mum.’
‘Maybe. Or as I said, maybe there is no fraud at all.’
‘You mean Ra Zacharia isn’t after my money?’
‘Of course he’s after your money,’ said Carol, exasperated. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’s a con man.’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘Con men don’t believe their own lies. It’s possible he is genuinely deluded.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jed. She had been a con woman once too. She knew how you could make yourself believe that the impossible might just be true, then spin the lie to another, pretending to yourself you only told the truth.
And yet her not-quite lie had turned out to be true. She was Tommy’s great-granddaughter. But that had always been a possibility, however remote. Curing a girl with a deformed spine and aliens sending coded messages to earth were not.
And there was something she couldn’t put her finger on. His intensity? Was that it? And suddenly she had it. ‘We’ve missed something. Ra Zacharia says he’s uncoded the messages from a spaceship heading to earth.’
Carol nodded.
‘Did the article say why the aliens are coming here?’ asked Jed slowly.
Carol shrugged. ‘To give us peace, harmony and love everlasting, I presume.’
‘A planet-wide commune like Halfway to Eternity?’ said Jed facetiously, then felt guilty. Carol had been discreet, sympathetic and helpful. She had no reason to mock her.
Carol sat back in her ancient office chair. ‘We didn’t fail, you know. We just didn’t get it right the first time. The geodesic dome may be falling down, but the cottages are good and so is Broccoli Bill and Susan’s place. People around here are putting in drip irrigation instead of overhead spraying, and solar hot-water panels. Sam’s doing good work, even if it’s up at Nimbin, not here. And so am I, and so is Leafsong. We may be more like a cooperative than a commune these days, but we still cooperate. Which is why my back aches from hauling pumpkins all day.’
‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say.’ Which was more frightening? A con man, simply out to get her money, or a true believer, who actually thought he could heal a crippled girl and was going to greet the aliens who would usher in a new dawn for all humankind?
‘It’s okay. Here’s my bill.’ Carol passed it over the desk. ‘If you’re worried, just ask Scarlett not to go out there.’
‘I . . . I think I might. I know how to deal with con men. If you ignore them, they find easier prey. But then if Ra Zacharia really believes all this, he could be truly dangerous.’
Jed suddenly realised she had never actually asked Scarlett not to do anything. Her behaviour had been more Fairy Godmother than sister . . .
‘How do you tell a sister what to do?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘You’ve more experience than me.’
‘Interesting question. Tell me when you find the answer,’ said Carol wryly.
‘Scarlett is so determined. And stubborn . . .’
‘Yeah. So is Leafsong.’ They shared the look of older sisters down the millennia.