Gladiatrix (3 page)

‘I'm fine, stop fussing.' He gave me a measuring look. ‘But what's wrong with you, Kannon? You look pretty stressed. Everything okay with the company?'

He sat there, thin and exhausted, waiting to hear about my day. I loved him so much my heart hurt. And the last thing I was going to do was tell him about Ledbetter.

Even though Des was retired, he'd been a detective sergeant for so long he felt he owned the police force. If I told him, he'd be on the phone to everyone in sight, yelling about the poor quality of the new police cadets, and asking what the College thought it was doing letting trash like Ledbetter Junior in the front door? I'd just got Des back from hospital; I wasn't risking him making a return visit on my account.

I was too tired to think of an excuse, so I went for a half-truth. ‘Nothing, I'm just tired.'

He gave me a sharp glance and waited.

I gave up. I'd spent half my teenage years lying to him and he'd caught me out every time. Des was impossible to lie to, and he smelt a con like a seasoned sniffer dog at the airport spotting drug mules.

I had to give him something, but not Ledbetter.

I kept my expression neutral. ‘I just got off the phone with one of the people who run my degree program.'

‘Yeah. And?'

‘And they just wanted to discuss this year's enrolment.' I flicked my hand to dismiss it. ‘Just some red tape about my subjects. I've sorted it.'

He kept his gaze steady on my face. ‘Why did you lie about it, then?'

I felt like screaming. Des could teach interrogation techniques. In fact he had. He'd been a country cop but a damned good one. What to notice. Inconsistencies. Facial tells. And he was relentless.

He knew people, and he knew how they twisted the truth.

‘Des, back off, will you? I'm more worried about you than anything else, so stop trying to fix my problems.' I eyed him warily. ‘Anyway, didn't you say you'd rushed over to see me about something?'

His face hardened when I said that. ‘Stop changing the subject, Kannon.'

‘Sick?' I spluttered. ‘Where did that come from? I'm healthy as an ox and you know it.'

He didn't respond. He was still waiting for me to come clean.

‘Oh all right. All right.' I couldn't take his best police detective stare. Well not when he was so frail anyway. ‘The Archaeology Department has told me they won't enrol me in any more subjects.' I checked his expression.

He grimaced. ‘Because you didn't do the dives and the trips overseas?'

I nodded. ‘Yep. The fieldwork. That's right.'

He rubbed his face. ‘What are you going to do? What can you do?'

I wanted to get off the subject as quickly as possible and get him home to bed. He still hadn't told me why he was here, so I just said, ‘Sleep on it. I'm too tired to make any decisions tonight. I need to think this through.'

‘You're not going to give up on this.' He glared at me. ‘Are you? They can't …'

I cut in. He was going into full strategy mode, which would probably involve me threatening legal action and God knows what else. ‘Des, I will deal with it. Just not now, not tonight. I need to think this out.'

He read the finality in my face with narrowed eyes. Then, instead of continuing with his rant, he leant back in his chair, sighed, and said, ‘You know, Kannon, I remember when you first became interested in archaeology.'

I sighed as well. I knew this tactic. It was softer, but it took longer.

Des was like a terrier: when he wanted something he just kept at it until he got it.

‘Yeah, me too,' I said, hoping if I went along with it, he'd be irritated and give up. ‘That first summer I spent at Rollie's place was special.'

Which was true. I'd never forgotten that time. Rollie was Des's younger brother. He ran Nunga, the Carmichael family homestead in Western Australia.

‘Yes. Yuki'd asked me to find a place she could take you for the school holidays. A quiet place in the country,' he said, with a suitable hint of nostalgia.

I eyed him in disbelief. That wasn't the rosy way I remembered it.

What Des hadn't mentioned was that Yuki'd wanted me as far from the big city as possible, because I'd spent my fourteenth birthday living on the streets in Kings Cross. They'd just brought me back home again, and she didn't know what to do with me.

So I said, with heavy sarcasm, ‘Well, Des, you don't get much more country than Nunga.' It was north of Geraldton and about eighty miles from the coast. The nearest neighbour was half a day away by four-wheel drive. ‘Not a big city in sight.'

Des ignored the jab. ‘Yep, that's right. Nature. In all its glory,' he said, with a hint of longing, ‘Rollie took you both around the old place, didn't he? You camped out under the stars, saw the rock paintings, met the local tribal elders.'

That was a bit too much.

‘Cut it out, Des. You hate the place. Haven't been back to Nunga since you were my age.'

He gave me a deeply offended face. ‘Well, Kannon, that trip got you thinking about the big picture, didn't it? Nothing like thinking in terms of millennia to stop you focusing on yourself, and your own problems.'

‘Yes,' I said, reluctantly. ‘It did change things for me. Make things look different.'

He was right, however manipulative he was being. The incident in the park with Ledbetter had shown me what I didn't want. But that summer had got me thinking about what I did want. What the future could be.

Des said idly, ‘It was when he took you out to the Abrolhos Islands that did it, wasn't it? That was when he taught you to snorkel.'

The Abrolhos Islands were a string of 120 islands, sixty miles off the coast of Geraldton. The reef there teemed with sea life of every description, and had a haunted history, which had both chilled my bones and focused my teenage ambitions.

‘It was the story of the
Batavia
that got you in. The story of the shipwreck on that reef in 1629 …'

‘You can stop there, Des,' I said. It was getting late and he had to go to bed and recover. ‘I know very well why I became interested in archaeology. You don't have to give me a pep talk.'

‘Kannon.' He became more serious. ‘Rollie got you interested in someone else's life story. And it gave you perspective. Even a sense of power over the past.'

‘Yeah. Even if it was someone else's.' I laughed. ‘How healthy is that?'

‘Well … you haven't been able to find the truth about yours. You haven't been able to dig into your own past …'

My face froze over. This was a topic we never touched. At least not for a very long time. We both sat there for a moment. Silent.

I asked again, quietly, ‘Why did you come over, Des?'

A shutter slid over his face. Unfortunately for Des, growing up with him had taught me to read faces as well. He was trying to cover his response, which usually meant he was trying to think of a way to manage me.
That thought filled me with dread. It could be news about his health. Bad news.

‘What is it, Des? What's going on?'

He knew exactly what I was thinking. He'd heard the fear in my voice. ‘It's not me, Kannon. Not my health,' he emphasised. ‘It's something else.' He took a deep breath, ‘But I want you to promise to hear me out.'

‘What's going on, Des?' He was making me anxious. ‘Spit it out.'

‘I want you to watch something I recorded today.'

‘Something you recorded?' I felt my eyebrows hit my fringe. ‘What are you talking about? Why?'

‘I think it may finally give us some answers,' he said carefully.

‘Answers.' I was confused. He seemed to be starting in the middle of a conversation I hadn't had yet. ‘Answers about what?'

‘I think it'll tell us who you really are.'

Dead silence.

‘No.' I shook my head. ‘No. I am not doing this.'

Des stared hard at the view, anywhere but into my face.

So I stared at him, torn between anger and grief. ‘I told you last time, I would never do this again.'

He swung back to me, pleading. ‘Kannon …'

‘Des. It's finished. Over. As far as I'm concerned my life started the day Yuki found me.'

I looked down at his battered leather briefcase sitting at our feet. I thought he'd given up years ago, but I should've known from the bag. When I was young, every time he'd arrived with that briefcase it'd meant he had another lead. He'd kept the police investigation going long after everyone else had given up.

I'd never wanted to know the details. Why would I?

My biological parents had already taken their best shot at getting rid of me. Dumped me in a cave to die, to strangle to death.

Apart from anything else, I don't know what I'd do
if I found them. Probably something that'd involve gaol time.

Des knew how I felt. He said softly, ‘Kannon, if I'm right then your parents didn't abandon you.'

‘You mean, try to murder me.' It was a statement, not a question.

‘No.' He tapped his bag. ‘I think we've been completely wrong about that all along. This new lead explains why, after all that publicity and searching, no-one ever came forward. Why there were no clues to be found. It wasn't your parents who left you in that cave at all. If I'm right then the answer is much more complex than we ever could have guessed.'

‘Complex, you say?' Tonight had already been complex enough. Ledbetter's crap. Cockburn's ultimatum.

I stared down at the ocean shimmering coldly below; I really didn't want to have this particular conversation. Not tonight. Not ever.

‘Kannon. You have to watch this recording.' Des had that stubborn look. ‘This time I think I really have something here. That I'm onto something real and new.'

He touched my arm. ‘Kannon. You have to give it a shot.'

I shook my head. ‘I can't, Des. Don't ask me to. Not tonight.'

‘If I'm right then we have to act now. Right away. This can't wait till you're ready.' His voice was hoarse with feeling. The sound hurt my ears.

He'd aged a lot in the past year. Didn't walk that well any more, and there was a hint of desperation around the eyes. But I'd been through this before. The last time Des had come here with the same hope, that I hadn't just been thrown away, I'd been eleven.
And that one time had nearly crushed me. It had nearly crushed us all.

I searched his face. His sad, kind face. But this was Des. Des wouldn't do this lightly. He knew exactly how much this would cost me.

‘Please, Kannon. Watch this with me. Now. Tonight. You know I wouldn't ask this unless I was sure.'

I let out a long breath and said softly, ‘Okay. Go on. Show me.' He wouldn't go home until I'd done what he asked. And I was older, tougher now. ‘I'll watch but don't expect me to get involved in anything.'

I immediately began bracing myself for the worst. What was this recording of? It could be anything …

‘Sure,' he said with confidence.

Des still believed he could bend the world to fit his vision. It'd made him a formidable cop but less relaxing as a close relative. Growing up with Yuki and Des: between a rock and a hard place.

We moved into the lounge room with the pup padding behind. Des set it all up and turned the screen slightly in my direction. He grabbed the remote and sat next to me on the worn four-seater couch. Then he hit ‘play' on the remote.

The screen bloomed into a brightly coloured image. Mainly green. Grass green … What …?

It was today's cricket match between Australia and the West Indies. Cricketers in uniforms … playing on a field in the sunny Caribbean … Australia was batting, the West Indies player was running up to bowl and …

‘I'll just cue it up,' said Des, as he fast-forwarded through another five minutes of play.

I wrinkled my forehead in confusion. ‘What's going on, Des? You got a lead while recording a televised cricket match? This afternoon?'

He shook his head. ‘Wait till you see. Then we can discuss it.' The game finished and he pressed ‘play'.

The next program was
The Linken Fox News Hour
, a US news segment shown every weekday afternoon on the Australian public broadcasting channel. It gave summaries of US news stories, and the occasional overview of current events.

Since he'd retired, Des watched every news program he could find. Said it made him feel less isolated, still a part of the world.

The Linken Fox News Hour
? I'd been expecting to see terrible footage, to have to brace myself as I watched. But a US news show?

The melodramatic opening music featured the sound of frenzied typewriters and staccato trumpets, then the camera focused in on the presenter, a heavily made-up blonde woman, sitting behind a news desk with a logo on the wall behind her.

‘This is Susan Mornington,' she said, with an American accent, ‘and this is
The Linken Fox News Hour
.' She gave an expert smile, then launched into her presentation with vigour, ‘Today we're going to focus on the constitutional crisis.'

She paused to change camera angles. ‘It all started when the Moral Legion began holding public rallies across the nation, demanding a change to the constitutional right to religious freedom. The Moral Legion is an alliance of radical, right-wing Christian groups, and in the past they've been linked to the white supremacy movement.'

The screen changed to a night scene. A tall, thin man in a white suit was addressing a brightly-lit stadium full of cheering fans.

‘White Gregson, head of the Moral Legion,' Mornington continued in voice-over, ‘aims to outlaw
paganism and make Christianity the state religion. He claims paganism is leading to the destruction of Western civilisation, and destroying the moral fibre of the American people. In particular he's targeted the Isiacs, worshippers of the Egyptian goddess Isis, for his most serious attacks.'

I grabbed the remote and pressed ‘pause'. White Gregson froze in an unflattering close-up as he gloated over his audience.

‘Des,' I said, trying to be patient. ‘Why are we watching this? This is an American news segment on their problem with religious terrorism and the push for constitutional amendment.'

There'd been a lot of coverage on it here over the past few years and things seemed to be getting worse, an escalation in the bombing of Iseums and hate crimes. And, apart from anything else, it was making our own politicians very nervous. If the mid-west Bible belt started in against the rest, then a new Civil War could be triggered.

‘Des? Apart from wanting me to be an informed and concerned citizen, what's this got to do with me?'

He stayed focused on the screen. ‘Just be patient, Kannon. You'll understand in a minute.'

‘It's
The Linken Fox News Hour
. Just how long a minute are we talking about here?'

I checked his face. It was a little whiter than when he had arrived. What had happened today to make him fixate on this stuff? And on American politics of all things? Then I remembered. His doctor had told us both that recovering heart surgery patients often had mood swings, sometimes even depression. Could it be that? Was he trying to solve the unsolvable, any way he could?

Des stared at me, hard. And then down at the remote. ‘Turn it back on, Kannon, This is just the introduction,' he said, exasperated. ‘What's coming is worth seeing.'

I frowned, but turned back to the screen. I'd agreed to watch so I would. But then I was driving him home myself. I pressed ‘play'.

The image of a smirking White Gregson unfroze and Mornington's voice-over restarted. ‘Of course this conflict isn't new, Isis worship has existed in the US for as long as Christianity. It came with the Old World settlers: up through Mexico with the Spanish, and down from Canada with the French.'

Footage of an old, weathered Greek-style temple, with columns and a slanted roof, appeared. It was topped by a statue of Isis as a winged woman. She was not unlike the Statue of Liberty. Strong features, on top of a strong, commanding body.

‘Looks a bit like the statue above the temple in Sydney, but much older,' I said.

The first Australian Iseum had been built in Quebec Bay on Sydney Harbour. Unlike North America, there'd only been Isiacs in Australia since the nineteenth century. They'd been mainly French dissidents, part of the Quebec Rebellion, who'd been sent here by Britain as exiles from Canada.

The camera pulled back to give a wider view, to give context to the temple. The screen now showed the old temple sitting on a corner opposite New York's Central Park. The entrance was full of sleek devotees wearing designer dresses and power suits.

‘And it looks richer than the Sydney one, too,' said Des. Which was cynical but accurate.

Organised religion had never been a big thing in this household. If Des had any preferences I didn't
know about them. Probably his police work had eliminated the desire to travel in packs of any kind. Yuki was a Buddhist but had kept it a private practice. She'd led by example, probably the only method that would've worked with me when I was young.

Mornington reappeared to say, ‘Isis worship has now become the second most popular religious affiliation in the US, and some predict that it will overtake Christianity in this new millennium.' She paused for effect. ‘Two years ago White Gregson and the Moral Legion announced they had proof that the rise of the Isiacs had a sinister side to it, that their rise in popularity is not a natural one.'

‘Sinister?' I snorted. ‘I don't know much about Isis worship in the States, but the Isiac temple here seems more interested in holding bake sales to raise money for the local hospital than anything else. Just like St Barney's.' St Barnabas was the Catholic church just down the road from them.

Des was not impressed with the accusation either. ‘Yeah. Bombing someone seems much more sinister to me.' The link had never been legally proven, and the Moral Legion had refused to admit it, but everyone knew they were directing the attacks.

The screen changed back to a close-up of White Gregson haranguing the crowd in a twangy Southern accent. ‘The Isiacs are a part of Satan's bid to gain power on Earth.' Sweat poured down his face as he shook his clenched fist. ‘I have always told you that their religion is founded on satanic ritual.'

He pulled a rolled-up document out of his white suit pocket. ‘Now I can prove it. Their teachings are founded on Egyptian texts, first translated and interpreted in ancient Rome by their revered founding father, the Hierophant.'

He waved the roll of paper. ‘Here is a copy of a pact the Hierophant made with Satan. In his own handwriting. The pact was to enable Satan, and the lesser demon Isis, to rule the new millennium. This millennium!'

The stadium surrounding him roared out their anger and hate.

‘Satan and the lesser demon …? This is just divisive fear-mongering.' I picked up a section of the newspaper and fanned myself. ‘Why are we watching this crap?'

‘Yeah and patience is your strong suit, Kannon. Hang on.'

Mornington again, her face serious. ‘Though Gregson and his organisation disclaim all knowledge of, or links with, the terrorists, his accusations have led to more open violence. California — an Isiac stronghold, along with New York and Louisiana — has been the worst hit. In the past two years hundreds of people across California have been injured in attacks on Isiac temples. And eighty-seven have died.'

A shot of a frail old woman staggering out of a burning temple and into the arms of a hefty fireman filled the screen.

‘This isn't Christianity. Jesus didn't tell people to bomb the Romans.' I stopped fanning myself and threw the newspaper across the room. It hit the wall with a solid thwack. ‘I just don't get it. Why does religion raise so much hate?'

‘Fear,' Des said tiredly. ‘It always comes down to that. People hate what they fear.'

By now I'd given up any expectation that this coverage had anything to do with me at all, other than indicating that I had to take Des in to see his doctor again tomorrow. But the story itself was pulling me in.
The violence was so pointless, but so hard to solve. We'd been lucky here so far.

Mornington said, ‘Early last year, in response to the death of sixty-five people in the San Diego Iseum bombing, the Governor of California, James Haverstock, asked the President for special assistance. The following is footage taken at the press conference Haverstock called at that time to announce their solution.'

The screen changed again to show a jowly older man in an expensive suit standing on a podium. He looked polished, slick, artful. The caption underneath read: Governor James Haverstock.

Haverstock addressed the camera directly. ‘As well as presenting a public danger to the people of this state, this civil discord has far-reaching consequences for us as a nation. It has to be resolved, and as peacefully and completely as possible. To this end I have spoken at length with the leaders of the United Isiac Coalition.'

He turned to introduce a well-dressed, middle-aged couple standing behind him. ‘Dr Cynthia Jones and Mr Xavier Fuentes.' The camera zoomed in on them. Jones was tall and blonde, Fuentes was dark and shorter. ‘And with the representative of the Moral Legion, Mr White Gregson.'

Gregson was also standing behind the Governor, but as far away from Jones and Fuentes as he could and still stay within camera range.

The Governor turned back to the camera. ‘I believe together we have worked out a solution that will stop the violence. Both sides are willing to abide by the findings of a special inquiry into the activities of the Hierophant in ancient Rome. The representatives of the Isiacs are determined to have his name, and their
religion, cleared of any criticism. And Mr Gregson's organisation is keen for their own claims to be put to the test.'