Twere a beautiful
thing,
Thus to sit like a king,
And talk of the world
turning round,
If it were not that we
Like all things that
we see,
Are standing on moveable ground.
From “Il Segreto Per Esser Felice” by James Clerk Maxwell 1831 – 1879
Seven thin, horizontal rods of light crossed the dark and silent interior of the Deli delivery van. Even half awake, Max could sense they were moving, though the rods never wavered, and only the sparkle of tiny crystals suspended in the chilled air made them visible. Ice, he supposed. At one end, there was a brilliant white hole where the polystyrene insulation had been punctured – by bullets, his mind suggested, though he had yet to remember the event. His eyes flew to the place where the bullets must have departed, but the tiny spotlights failed to align with the darker exit wounds. Perspective created an illusion that the beams diverged, but Max guessed they must be parallel (within reason) for their common source would likely be eight light-minutes to the east, a recently risen sun – assuming that it wasn’t actually setting and that they hadn’t slept the day away.
It was normal for Max that his intellect woke first. Anxiety, and all other lesser brain functions would remain dormant for another minute or two. Until then he would enjoy some rational thought.
Max couldn’t remember falling asleep. He did remember Cathy snuggling up to him. He remembered smiling. He remembered her saying, ‘Grae, you don’t need to get hair transplants. We can go bald together.’ He remembered frowning.
Cathy was still beside him. He could hear a slight wheeze as she breathed in, and something like a whinny as she exhaled. Maybe she really was sick. She didn’t look well, but as the light grew stronger, what he had assumed was her head turned into a sack of turnips, and below that, her angelic face slumbered at peace.
He reluctantly extracted himself from the loaves of Italian bread they had used as blankets and redistributed them over her. If it was this cold inside the insulated van, it must be unbearable outside.
When he tried to look through a hole on what he supposed was the eastern side, the sun was blinding. To reach the other side, he moved a crate and found three more holes behind it. You had to admire Major Driesk’s marksmanship. All the bullet holes were evenly spaced in groups of three. He and Cathy should be dead.
Through two convenient holes, he could make out a coastline far below, though he had no idea whose. Condensation trails from jetliners were the only sign of civilisation, and even those were lower. Above him, the sky was a deeper blue, the planets and stars keeping a nearly full moon company. Everything appeared stationary, but that could be because everything was so far away. He waited to see if the shadow of a cloud would alter.
‘Where are we?’ Cathy asked. She was already making breakfast – cheese, salami and bread, all without the aid of a knife. How long had he been gawping? Long enough to confirm they were definitely moving.
Max sat down next to her. ‘I’m fairly sure we’re still on Earth.’ He accepted a rough attempt at a sandwich. ‘Confucius must have a rather spectacular destination in mind for your holiday.’
‘What might paradise look like for a mobile phone? Antarctica?’
Max shook his head and mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘North. We’re heading north.’
After his meal, Max picked at some of the solidified metal which decorated his clothing. The substance was easier to remove now it had stopped glowing.
‘You’re fighting a lost cause there, tin-man,’ Cathy commented between dainty bites.
He nodded. ‘True, but there’s nothing better to do.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ With a cheeky grin, she wriggled up next to him. ‘You supermen! You go around stopping bullets but can’t be bothered keeping a girl warm?’ She probably only wanted his body heat, but he didn’t object. He welcomed hers.
‘When did you and Confucius develop super powers?’ she asked.
‘Me?’ Max scoffed. ‘It’s the phone that’s got all the freaky abilities.’
‘That’s not what it told me.’
He turned to look her in the eye. ‘When?’
‘When you were snoring.’ She peeled off a splatter of metal from Max’s track pants. ‘It didn’t want to wake you. Said you were useless until you’d had your Wheaties.’
‘I took its advice. What does it want from me now?’
‘To know how you melted bullets on contact. I’ve been wondering that myself, and asked why it wanted to know. It said it had a situation to deal with. Something where melting metal quickly would come in useful. It said it could wait. They hadn’t started shooting each other yet.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think it likes me. Can a phone be jealous?’
Max shook his head, more to clear it of questions – he hadn’t really listened to hers. ‘Confucius is mistaken. The bullets that hit me were something special. I thought they might be intended to knock me out, but clearly they didn’t work. It’s a wonder you weren’t hit too.’
‘Driesk wasn’t aiming at me. Not to begin with anyhow. But this thing I found inside my pillow doesn’t look so special.’ Cathy held up a bullet partly melted into an irregular spiral.’ She held the bullet against a matching metallic smear near his shoulder.
‘Another trick the phone has picked up,’ Max concluded casually, while internally trying to dismiss this frightening development. Over the last few days, he’d seen the phone do some weird science, but liquefying bullets was another game entirely. What sort of genie had he released from the bottle? ‘Confucius is a fast learner. I don’t know how, but it has advanced far beyond my understanding. I only taught it how to use resonance to separate air molecules – dividing them by energy level.’
‘Is that how it can fly?’ she asked.
‘Exactly so. Low pressure at the top, high pressure at the bottom. Nothing special. Apart from balloons, all aircraft use that trick. With just the atmospheric pressure, you can lift massive weights, but we might be as high as Confucius can fly. The air outside at this altitude must be very thin. How are we even breathing? Confucius must be compressing ...’
‘Alla will know I’ve gone by now,’ Cathy interrupted.
She hadn’t listened to a word of his explanation. How were they going to have interesting conversations if she wasn’t even interested in science? Had it only just occurred to her that she had left her daughter behind?
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Max. ‘I’ll get Confucius to take me back as soon as we’ve got you settled somewhere nice. I’ll tell them you’re comfortable.’
He expected her to protest, but she simply nodded.
‘You understand, Cathy, I can’t allow them to invade Australia. Can I? They might even try to use the people we left behind as leverage – to make me return.’ He wished she would at least try to dissuade him.
‘Take your time,’ she offered. Her voice had flipped back to her usual blasé tones. ‘They’ll take good care of Alla until you return. They might even do a better job than her mother. God knows, someone needs to take care of her once I’ve gone. Do you know, when it leaked out I had terminal cancer, my society friends evaporated. I really don’t know who to ask to care for Alla.’
‘What about your father?’
Cathy scoffed. ‘Dad couldn’t raise a flag. A dingo would do a better job. It’s just a good thing my mother lived long enough to see me through high-school, or I’d have gone feral.’
‘But Phenalla’s not a child either. She has her own friends. I heard her mention a Joe.’
‘Joanne?’ Cathy rolled her eyes. ‘Another lame duck. Anxiety and depression are even better than cancer when it comes to flushing a social life down the toilet.’ Cathy sighed. ‘I do wish you’d known Alla before they messed with her. You’d have loved her, like every other guy or girl she met.’
Max was wondering whether to ask more about Alla’s love life, when someone, or something, knocked on the rear doors.
‘The milkman?’ Cathy suggested.
Max looked around for a weapon, but only a bread stick came within reach. Maybe in the shadows it would look more substantial. He cracked open the door.
A fluffy white landscape, fit only for angels, stretched out to the horizon. To the east, the sun peeked over a dark and ugly wall of storm clouds. It was warmer than he expected. They must have descended from the lofty heights he had seen through his spy holes.
‘Oh, my,’ Cathy said, resting her hands on his shoulders. ‘What a sight! Almost worth getting shot at.’
Approaching them across this ethereal sea, a two masted sailing ketch sliced through the insubstantial waves and came to berth next to the van. Only the lack of billowing sails (for they were furled) and his mobile phone perched at the tip of the bowsprit ruined the effect.
‘Arr me hearties,’ Confucius called. ‘Would you be wanting to come aboard?’
‘Where did you steal it?’ Max asked.
The phone, despite its size, stood up straight. ‘We pirates don’t speak of stealing. Rather we take what’s rightfully ours. I’d have been preferring a junk, but thought this here two mast’r shall suffice for my captain’s needs.’ Confucius dropped the antiquated nautical accent and flew closer. ‘Actually, it was all I could book at such short notice. I’m sure Cathy’s estate can pay for the lease once she’s dead. Did you know, Ms Cathy has a very handsome life insurance policy.’
‘I’m not dead yet, you insolent domestic appliance.’ Cathy waved her fist at the phone. ‘And that policy you mentioned. That’s for Phenalla.’ But her eyes were roaming over the boat’s lines. She stepped past Max, across the abyss, and onto the teak deck. ‘I don’t suppose the owners left any rum onboard?’
‘There might be a keg or two.’
She ran along the port side to the stern, rubbing the condensation from the cabin windows to look inside with increasing glee.
‘Thank you Confucius,’ she called. ‘This is exactly the kind of holiday I need. Je suis adore sailing.’
‘Yeah, thanks Confucius.’ Max was less enthusiastic about the almost certain motion sickness he would endure.
‘Just remember our bargain, Cathy Taylor,’ said the phone. ‘Else it’ll be the plank for you.’
‘What bargain?’ Max asked, but Cathy had disappeared below decks, and the phone with its signature grin on display, simply faded from view entirely.
‘Bad phone,’ Max said into the air, then wondered if was wise to chastise the phone when it had them suspended far above the sea.
Cathy came back up. ‘Max. Pass me some of those vittles from the van, and I’ll stow them in the galley.’
When they had transferred far more than he thought necessary, she declared their larder was full, and Max stepped across as the boat began to drop down, leaving the van parked in the thinning cloud. He and Cathy looked over the side in amazement as a group of islands appeared below, surrounded by a calm and turquoise sea. The hull touched water inside a coral reef and within easy swimming distance from a palm shaded beach. Cathy patiently showed him how to drop the anchor.
‘Where are the tourists?’ Max asked. He was not accustomed to exclusive access to anything nice.
‘I don’t care,’ said Cathy. She stripped to her underwear and dove overboard.
He considered joining her when Confucius appeared beside him. ‘You were asking where be the lawyers and other riff-raff who regularly populate these idealic locations? You see those clouds on the horizon? That be a grade two cyclone. It be expected here yesterday, but I’ve persuaded it to linger yonder. No one sensible will bother ye here.’
‘You can tame cyclones now?’
‘Oh. Nothing special. Low pressure at the top, high pressure at the bottom.’
The phone’s cheek was beginning to annoy him. ‘I hope that cyclone’s not sitting on top of anyone.’
‘No one you’d want to meet. Do you think you can live without me for a while? I need to get back onto the internet to pay for the food you stole. Have you considered converting your body to electricity? Far cheaper. I’ll use the Taylor’s credit card. My morality chips are also insisting I return the van as soon as possible. I’ll be gone for about six hours.’
Max looked about at their location – one the phone had chosen for Cathy’s final days. Having come from a Canberra winter, he would need to spend a lot of time in the water to keep cool, but it wouldn’t hurt to stay one night with Cathy before heading back himself. Just to ensure she was comfortable. And having just lost her husband, she might be lonely.
‘We’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Provided that storm stays put and no one tries to shoot me again. I’ve been thinking. Rather than melting those bullets, why didn’t you just stop Driesk from shooting at me?’
‘Was I supposed to? You seem to be immune to that kind of damage, so why would I bother. Did you like my trick with the glass though?’
‘Yes, that was clever. And tying the shoes together.’
Confucius had been slowly rising, but stopped. ‘What would a phone know about shoe laces? Master. I think we need to have a talk about self denial. I need to fly now, but how about we ditch the girl, and you can tell me how you did it over lunch? See ya soon.’
It accelerated into the sky towards the van and vanished from sight without the need for any trickery.
Could he, Max, really be responsible for melting the bullets? He’d been studying the physics involved in irrational chaos for longer than the phone, but to suggest he had tied over one hundred shoelaces, using just his mind, was ridiculous.
Max was still puzzling over what the phone had implied when Cathy returned, pushing a couple of coconuts ahead of her. She had an excellent swimming style and covered the distance with apparent ease despite her booty. Climbing the ladder proved harder and she held out her hand for him to pull her up.
This was his first opportunity to see her undressed and he thought she looked mal-nourished. There was little covering over her ribs and her muscular tummy was, if anything, too well defined. Positively unhealthy. Even so, Max found it very hard to believe that illness could soon take her away. Maybe a tropical vacation would slow the decline she seemed to expect.
‘I had to push myself,’ Cathy said, ‘but oh, that swim felt good.’ She dried the stubble on her head using one of the plush towels they’d found in the forward cabin. ‘The government should offer this holiday for anyone expecting to die.’
‘I was hoping you’d reconsider that.’
Cathy laughed. ‘Death doesn’t scare me. Not after dying twice. I am a little nervous of how my situation will change when I wake again last Wednesday, but I shall live each moment in the remainder of this life as if it were the last. But don’t get any ideas, young man. I shan’t throw caution completely to the wind, and I intend to remain virtuous and dignified until the end. You won’t have reason to be coming around in my next life, demanding returned favour.’
Max didn’t like this talk of dying but couldn’t help saying, ‘By your own theory, if you survive the next few days, you won’t remember me.’
She stopped drying her long legs and looked him in the eye. ‘That would make me sad. I should need to feed myself to the sharks. And it’s essential I remember this life so I can stop them breaking my Alla in my next. Besides, if I don’t learn to guard myself from handsome creatures like yourself, she won’t be born in the first place.’
‘Is that what happened in your former lives?’
Cathy’s eye’s widened. ‘Oh dear. That was cruel Max. Grae would never have said such a thing, not even if he had known it were true.’ She stood up, wobbled for a moment, then walked with care to the cabin door. There might have been a tear in her eye when she stopped and turned to him. ‘I’ve missed you, Max, for over forty years – eighty if you count my second life. I’ve suffered much to have my daughter, so there was no need to criticise me. In that, Grae was far better suited to my wicked ways than you will ever be. He was my perfect partner, and will be again.’
She went below, while his jaw, on receiving no further instructions, gently dropped. Was she saying he’d had a relationship with her in a previous life? This was crazy, though it would explain how he had felt an instant connection with her, more than any other woman he’d met. So, he’d been cheated in this life, but even if he did believe any of this reincarnation nonsense, how could he be to blame for preventing Phenalla’s birth in those other lives. He was less than a decade older than Cathy’s daughter. Had she been unfaithful with someone else? And would it be a sin if she had, since none of this history was real anyway?
‘I think I’d better cool off,’ he told no one and jumped over the side – scaring a school of parrot fish.
The fish didn’t know he wouldn’t hurt them. They darted every which way to avoid this unusual predator. Their movement and colour were such a wonderful distraction from the moral dilemmas he found above, he didn’t want to go surface, preferring instead the pain of suffocation. In that way, he stayed under much longer than he would have expected.