ABC Local Radio, Gibber’s Creek, 11 November 1975
‘Kerr’s cur’ — that is how Gough Whitlam, former prime minister of Australia, referred to Australia’s new caretaker, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.
RA ZACHARIA
His world had ended.
Ra Zacharia steadied himself at his desk as a bolt of lightning flashed across the shadows gathering at the edges of his sight.
No! Not today! Of all days, why must his body fail him now? He forced his vision to clear again. There. He could still do it. Still force his body into harmony with the universe, control the rogue cells that tried to multiply within his brain.
But today he needed more.
He had forced his body to do too much. Had lost the unity of the universe. For when he had reached the wheelchair girl’s house that morning she had been gone.
He had left the car, had walked around the house, quiet as the space between the suns, peering through the window at the Kelly girl asleep in tossed sheets, the wheelchair girl’s empty bedroom.
He had tried the café where she met Mark 23. The door was locked.
He had given up, waited till the time the baby slept.
Paths with too-bright flowers. The colours hurt his eyes. He needed darkness, the peace between the planets. Chatter from the refectory. And then the door to the matron’s quarters, open, for who locked their doors in Gibber’s Creek, except the crooked girl with her crooked brain, at her café?
A living room. Sofa, chairs, a television set, shelves with too many photos — a young man, a baby dressed in lace. Two doors. Displaced as he was from his true power, Ra Zacharia still knew the right one.
He opened it.
The boy was there.
He reached for him, and the woman screamed. Lashed at him with her hands, and then a metal bucket that held soiled nappies. The matron screamed again.
He ran.
She must have been sitting, dozing perhaps, in the dim corner. The world had too many dim corners now. Too much light in parts, and then too little.
It was the power of the Elders, he thought, sliding into his car, driving away from the growing tumult behind him. Already his body must be shifting to a new plane.
He had to find the girl. He had to! He could not bear this transition long!
He tried the door of the café again. Locked. Nor, he knew, with sudden clarity, would the café open today. He could hear a woman’s voice. Emotion.
Nothing was right. But of course, today, nothing would be ‘right’, for all was changing as the Elders brought their vessel in. He should have expected routine and expectation to dwindle more and more the closer the Elders came.
Should have known his expectation would crumble too. This day. This One Day. This day from which all other days would flow.
But would he flow with them?
His body felt . . . lost. No longer soaring. Simply gone. Yet his fingers had still opened the car door; found the keys.
He found his way home and stood, eyes closed, trying to feel the Elders come. And knew that he was not perfect.
The tumour was still there. Which meant not only did he not have two complete miracles to Sacrifice today. He could not even, as a last resort, give them himself. The aura he had thought was a blessing of the Elders was the tumour stealing away his sight, his consciousness.
He would not let it happen! He was still strong, even if not perfect! But with no Sacrifice to draw them, the Elders would not make him whole.
For the first time since the star had drawn him into its red gaze, Ra Zacharia felt his hands shake.
Wait. The sound of an engine. For a second he thought it was the Elders’ ship, come early, but they would come as silently as the dark spaces between the stars, powered by strange equations, not earthly engines.
A car? Mark 23, finally accepting he must go and get the wheelchair girl? No, this car was not leaving, but coming closer.
Ra Zacharia stepped to the window, telling himself his steps were steady, his sight clear, that the halo of brightness was just the afternoon sunlight, another gift from the universe pouring gold across the world.
And there it was. A green Volkswagen was parked neatly by the stairs. The mute girl from the café hauled out a wheelchair.
Dizziness clawed at him. He resisted, forced the tumour’s tiger back in triumph. Because here at last was the offering he had always wished to give. How could he have doubted that the universe would not bring the perfect Sacrifice to him?