Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 11 November 1975
According to an unnamed source, not far from the Gazette office, Prime Minister Whitlam intends to meet the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, today to formally request a double dissolution of parliament . . .
RA ZACHARIA
A lesser man would not have slept.
Ra Zacharia was not a lesser man.
But even so, he fasted instead of breakfasting with the small remnants of the Chosen, watching the dawn light, fragile as glass, the bright sun stroking each object in the Star Room.
The world was . . . different. He was different. For the first time since his diagnosis even the shadow of the brain tumour that had once inhabited him had vanished. His body was no longer entirely his. His feet felt the earth, but were not part of it. Was it because the Elders were so close? Or because he had perfected himself so entirely that he was no longer planet-bound?
He stroked the top of a chair. There was sensation, yet his body felt as if it had lifted across the universe, as if every wind of space blew through his body, and he controlled them all.
He smiled, glorying in the light, the darkness, the light again as the universe spread throughout his mind. If he were already this, what would he be tonight?
Who were the Elders? Where had they come from? How long had they been travelling? He’d had no way to ask them questions. Yet from that moment he had first been drawn to that starlit pulse he had known them, not just in the fibres of his flesh but in the reaching mind that soared across the universe. Whatever bodily shapes they had, they were like him, but more than him.
By tonight place and time and body would have no meaning.
At last he called Mark 23.
The young man looked pale, and was blinking badly. Ra Zacharia had no need to hunt a smile for him this morning. By evening the young man would be healed.
‘Excited?’ he asked softly.
‘Of course.’ And yet the young man did not look excited. He seemed scared. Determined.
Ra Zacharia felt his smile envelop all of Gibber’s Creek. ‘We each have our role today. Call the girl now.’
‘Her name is Scarlett.’
‘Call Scarlett now, before she has a chance to go out. Tell her you need her, urgently. That I will drive her here, to you.’
‘No,’ said Mark 23.
The universe quivered. Ra Zacharia steadied himself, a hand on a chair. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m not going to call her. You told her she has a choice.’
‘That was years ago! The foolish girl did not choose!’
‘She has chosen,’ said Mark stubbornly. ‘I promised I wouldn’t force her. And I won’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I love her.’
‘For pity’s sake.’ Ra Zacharia hauled in every thread of steadiness across the stars. ‘If you love the girl, you want her to walk.’ Ra Zacharia was glad he had never given anyone a hint of what would happen then.
‘When the Elders come, she may decide she does want to walk. The whole world will see and change. But it has to be her choice.’
‘You have no conception —’ Ra Zacharia stopped. If he gave too much away, the boy would never do it. He had to think. Plan. Somehow, someway, he must force Mark 23 to bring the wheelchair girl. Or should he try to grab her himself?
Not today! Today was for calmness, meditation, joy! Not scrabbling with a blinking boy who prattled about love. What did Mark 23 know of the true love between the stars?
He felt the unity of stars and darkness slide away. He grabbed them, trying not to show the effort on his face. He must stay calm.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Reflect. Think how you will face the Elders and say, “I did not believe enough. I failed.”’ He turned his back as the young man left.
Think! If Ra Zacharia had to grab the wheelchair girl — easily done, with such a small weak body, provided no one saw him, and why should they, way out there — why not take the boy as well?
It might take an hour for anyone to realise he’d been taken during his afternoon sleep. Most of the staff took their lunch breaks then. Ra Zacharia had observed them well.
Easy to overpower a wizened girl in a wheelchair. Possible, surely, to take the boy. Pursuit would not matter, for it could not find them in time. All he needed was an hour, for the Sacrifice.
Ra Zacharia took a deep breath of stardust, sun power, light. And after the Sacrifice, the Elders would arrive.
The universe was light and darkness; suns spinning into life and burning to a small crisp crust of death, or black holes swirling with energy that both gave and took.
This was what the Elders would bring: death and life and energy, the breath that was the universe, that mortals could not understand.
All would change. And at last, he would not be mortal. For the first time since the brain tumour showed him the face of death, he would be free.