Vulture's Gate (7 page)

Callum nodded. She stepped behind him and, very gently, pulled him towards her. ‘Then I think you are brave. Because these are two things you are afraid of, water and girls, and yet both of them are touching you. So now you are going to show you are truly courageous and let me hold you.'

When she slipped her arm around his waist and tried to make him bend, his body was stiff and unyielding. ‘Relax. I promise you are safe.'

She lifted Callum off his feet so that his legs floated free and then walked slowly backwards into deeper water until his whole body was afloat. She kept his head resting on her shoulder, their cheeks touching, as she moved deeper into the gorge. Callum's golden limbs floated just beneath the surface of the swirling green water.

For a moment Bo wanted to cry out in wonder, it looked so strange and beautiful to see another human moving like a free-falling angel through the watery space. Instead she spoke to him in a low, soft voice, explaining that he was safe, she wouldn't let him go, he could relax and let the water and her arms support him. Then she drew him back to shore.

Callum opened his eyes when his feet touched the sandy bottom. They sat together in the shallows, their eyes mirroring the sunlight sparkling on the waterhole.

Callum wiped his arms and smiled as another layer of dirt sloughed from his skin. ‘I feel so clean,' he said. ‘I feel all new.'

‘When you're in this gorge, the rest of the world falls away. There is nothing but this moment. We could stay here for as long as we want.'

‘We definitely can't stay here,' said Callum. ‘They'll track us, Bo. It's not just me that I'm worried about. It's you. We can't let them catch you. I bet Outstationers have never seen a girl before either. Not a real one. They'll put you in a freak show.'

‘I'm not a freak. I'm a girl.'

‘Don't you understand? That's freaky. Being a girl is . . . weird.'

Bo wriggled uncomfortably, as if her skin no longer fitted her lanky bones.

Callum knelt close to her, talking with a new urgency.

‘We have to go and find my dads. I promise, if we find them, you'll be safe. They'll take care of both of us. You could be my sister, like in those stories you read to me. Brother and sister. As long as it's legal to have a sister.'

Bo shut her eyes. ‘I don't need anyone to take care of me. I take care of myself.'

‘How? You can't go home.'

‘Neither can you.'

Callum slapped the water, sending droplets into the air. ‘That's not true! Even if the Outstationers did destroy the Refuge, my dads would build it again. It's not like your place. There's no one to rebuild Tjukurpa Piti. But my dads work for the Colony. The Refuge was an important outpost. Ruff and Rusty will be back there, rebuilding and waiting for me.'

‘There are yams and berries here. There is water. I have my hunting tools and Mr Pinkwhistle.'

‘Are all girls born stupid?' Callum shouted. ‘Is that why they were wiped out? Or is it just you?'

Bo got silently to her feet and dived into the waterhole, swimming to the far side of the gorge. She rinsed her hair under the waterfall and let the sound of the cascade drown out Callum's voice. When she finally swam out into the open gorge, she could hear Callum shouting, ‘Get out, get out of the water!'

‘Leave me alone,' she shouted back.

‘No, listen to me! Something's coming. Something bad.'

Bo turned to see what he was pointing atand saw a long, rippling darkness coming towards her. She made it to the shore as quickly as she could and pushed Callum away from the water's edge. Snatching up her discarded clothes, she ran to the Daisy-May. Callum climbed onto the bike expectantly but Bo snapped her fingers to activate Mr Pinkwhistle and he leapt from the pannier. The roboraptor turned his head towards Bo, his eyes glowing with a soft green light as he scanned the gorge. Bo drew a long knife and a pistol from inside her string bag.

‘Wait. Don't move. Don't make a sound. You are bait.'

Callum stared at her, his mouth open, but he stayed put. Bo stroked the underside of Mr Pinkwhistle and then, quick as a lizard, she scrambled up the side of the gorge until she was on a rock overhanging the water's edge. When the crocodile finally emerged from the waterhole, she took aim.

Mr Pinkwhistle stood between Callum and the crocodile, emitting a low, whirring growl. Distracted, the crocodile turned its huge snout towards the roboraptor and opened its mouth. Bo fired one direct shot to the back of its skull and the reptile slumped on the shore, twitching. She scrambled down from the rock and pulled a long metal spike out of the bike panniers. Sitting astride the crocodile's body, she shoved the spike through its skull at the point where the bullet had entered. Then she dragged the carcass away from the water's edge and squatted down beside it.

‘Are you sure it's dead?' Callum stayed on the far side of the Daisy-May.

Bo didn't bother to answer. She flipped the reptile over and cut a long incision into its belly, working her knife all the way down to its tail.

‘This will make a delicious dinner. White meat is sweeter than pudding.'

Callum screwed up his face. ‘Meat doesn't taste sweet. Pudding, donuts, chocolate – now that's sweet. Not crocodile meat.'

‘Have you ever eaten it before?'

This time it was Callum's turn to stay silent.

Bo concentrated on the task at hand. When she'd cut away the flesh from the tail and belly and wrapped it in a damp cloth, she shoved the parcel into Callum's arms. Next she dragged the butchered carcass away from the waterhole and out of the gorge, leaving it on a stretch of flat desert ground.

‘What are you doing?' he called after her.

‘It must not foul the waterhole,' she called to Callum over her shoulder.

Callum stood holding the parcel of meat awkwardly away from his body as he perched on the back of the Daisy-May.

‘It doesn't matter if it fouls the waterhole,' he said. ‘We're not staying. It's too dangerous.'

Bo took the parcel from him.

‘It can't bite you now. We are safe.'

‘Safe? We will never be safe until we find my fathers.'

‘I can protect you.'

Callum flushed darkly and scowled. ‘Protect me? You made me bait. And now Mr Pinkwhistle has turned on me too.'

Bo looked down and realised Mr Pinkwhistle was crouching as if to attack, watching Callum with sharp intent. She bent down and lifted the roboraptor into her free arm. Immediately, he stopped growling and began to nuzzle her chin with his snout.

‘Why was he doing that?' asked Callum.

‘He's programmed to sense emotion as well as movement. He understands you are frightened, so he thinks you are dangerous, or maybe good to hunt. But he will never harm you. I would not allow anyone to hurt you. You have nothing to worry about.'

‘Frankly, I think we both have a lot to worry about,' said Callum. He walked away from her to dress in private. Then he sat down on the sandy bank and put his head in his hands.

Bo stood up, shook the dust from her cat-hide clothes and put them on. They clung to her wet skin but she was glad to be dressed. She gathered her weapons and packed them into the panniers. Then she swung a leg over the Daisy-May and carefully positioned Mr Pinkwhistle on the tank in front of her. ‘Where is this place you seek? Your fathers' Refuge.'

Callum glanced over his shoulder and grunted. ‘I don't know how to get there.'

‘We will find it. Mr Pinkwhistle and the Daisy-May will show us the way.'

Callum blinked in surprise. ‘We're going? Is it that easy to make a girl change her mind?'

‘No,' said Bo, laughing. ‘Sometimes, what you say makes sense. If you have a home to go to, that's where you should be.'

Callum jumped onto the back of the Daisy-May. He wrapped his arms around Bo and rested his cheek against her back. She drove the Daisy-May slowly out of the gorge and kept the shield down so the desert wind dried her hair. Then she pushed the release button and the two of them were cocooned again inside the blue darkness of the shield. The Daisy-May skimmed over the desert, until the landscape was a blur on either side of them and the journey ahead was all that Bo could focus on. She had lost her Poppy, she had lost her home and all her herd but for Mr Pinkwhistle. But she had found this boy, and when he put his arms around her, she knew she had found a reason to go on.

11

THE WRECK OF THE REFUGE

It took them two days to reach the Refuge.
Or what was left of it. From a distance, Bo spotted a tall white pole with an oval sign on top and faint writing in dull solar neon. As they drew closer it was clear that the sign said
Ruff & Rusty's Roadside . . .
but the last word had been seared by flame and was unreadable. Callum's home was nothing but a heap of dust and ash. Low scrub and sandy, red-gold desert stretched as far as the eye could see to the pale purple haze on the far horizon, uninterrupted by any type of man-made shelter.

Callum gripped Bo as they drew nearer.

‘Squeeze me any tighter and I will stop breathing,' she said. Callum loosened his grasp but Bo could still feel his fear growing. As soon as the hood of the Daisy-May slid open, he jumped off the bike and ran into the midst of the wreckage.

Bo lifted Mr Pinkwhistle from his pannier and they followed Callum across the ruined site. He squatted in the centre of what had once been a kitchen, cradling a mangled figurine in one hand and a soup ladle in the other. The sun beat down on them, scorching their faces.

‘They didn't come back,' he said, disbelievingly. ‘I thought they'd camp out, wait to see if I came home. I thought they'd do anything to find me.'

‘You've been gone for months,' said Bo.

‘They still should have waited.'

‘Maybe they followed the circus, hoping to buy you back?'

Callum turned on her. ‘You don't understand anything, do you? My dads had no way of knowing where I would wind up. But they could have waited. They were my fathers. They shouldn't have given up!' he shouted, his face contorted with rage and grief.

Bo walked back to the Daisy-May. She sat in the shade and watched Callum picking through the wreckage in a desultory way. She settled Mr Pinkwhistle on her lap and flipped open his chest to program new instructions. ‘We have to help him, Mr P.'

Mr Pinkwhistle set off at a trot, his head gyrating and his beady eyes flashing red to green as he surveyed the site. At the base of the solar sign, he stopped and pawed the ground. Bo knelt down beside him.

‘We've found something,' she called.

Wearily, Callum trudged towards her, kicking aside piles of ash and debris.

‘Look at this,' she said, pointing to where Mr Pinkwhistle was bobbing up and down beside a dusty patch of earth.

‘What?' he said flatly.

‘Someone has been here. Mr Pinkwhistle has a tracker facility. He's magnified and interpreted these markings. It shows humans camped on this spot.' She knelt down beside Mr Pinkwhistle and flicked open a panel on his back to reveal a small monitor. ‘At least two, maybe three men. They were here for a while but they left more than a month ago. Maybe your fathers waited, just as you said they would.'

Callum looked at her with glazed eyes and shook his head.

‘They still gave up on me,' he said, sitting down beside her on the hot ground.

‘What's that?' she asked, gently taking the twisted figurine from his hand.

‘He was our Elvis cuckoo-clock man,' said Callum. ‘He used to jump out and sing “Heartbreak Hotel” every hour.' He wiped his hands across his eyes. ‘I guess my dads thought he wasn't worth keeping.'

‘Maybe they left you a message,' suggested Bo. ‘Maybe they wrote you a note and left it somewhere.'

Callum shrugged and bit his lip. ‘They don't do that in my family. Leave messages.'

‘Why not?'

Callum said nothing and they sat together in mournful silence. Mr Pinkwhistle continued to circle the solar signpost, stopping to scratch at the dirt every metre. Suddenly, he let out a guttural chuckle.

‘He's found something else!' said Bo. Mr Pinkwhistle tipped his head back and chortled as he danced a victory dance at the base of the Refuge's signpost.

Bo and Callum stared at the patch of red earth and then at the post.

‘Was all this writing on the pole before you left?'

Callum stood beside her and stared at the fading, scratchy marks. ‘I don't remember. What do they mean?'

Bo knelt beside the pole and ran her hands over the words. ‘If anyone passing knows the whereabouts of Callum Caravaggio, eleven-year-old métis Eurasian, brown eyes, black hair, wide smile, please contact R & R Caravaggio at Nekhbet Tower, Apartment 217, Vulture's Gate. Reward.'

‘Vulture's Gate?' said Callum. ‘They've gone back to Vulture's Gate?'

‘Where is that?'

‘It's where the Colony was founded. When I was little, we lived in an apartment in a tower block there. I liked it. Other men and boys lived there too. Then Ruff and Rusty took the contract for this place and we moved. They said it would be better to bring up a kid away from there.'

‘Why?'

‘A long time ago, it was a good place to live, but the plague changed it. That's when it became Vulture's Gate, once the women died out.'

‘Do women still die there? Are there still birds?' asked Bo.

‘Of course there are birds. But I told you, women are extinct. And Vulture's Gate is so far away, right over on the east coast. Why did they have to go so far!'

Bo looked out over the wreckage of the Refuge. ‘There wasn't anything to keep them here.'

‘There was me!' shouted Callum, slamming the white post with his hand.

Bo didn't look at him but pointed at the sign. ‘That last symbol. What does it mean?'