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  Virginia frowns. She watches the surf and the powerful launch, bow rearing through the force of knots, slashing the goddess of the sea. Mothers who give their boys feminine disguises, inviolable armour, ultimately please the cheating general, Apollo. Daddy's girls. The art of the poets brought to the service of the death culture, glorifying war, manipulate sentiment.

  The sun has risen higher in the sky, but it is behind pillows of cloud.

  The Amazons' dawn is stolen and the sun's rays recruited in the fight against them. The Myrmidons are written into history from the ancient world to Gallipoli diggers' hats. Hellespont. The Dardenelles. Same place, for godsake. Virginia White reconciles her distrust of men with her love of her brother and his sons by admitting to herself she is but an individual being, a grain of sand. The wind whips up. It is about to rain. She is back at Cybil's flat by seven-thirty when she should be waking.

  Off shore, the ship hesitates in its journey. The engines quieten, the gauge registers no knots, working merchant marines sit down for a smoke in the galley, turning a blind eye. All that is expected of them is ignorance. On deck, the activity is slick, quick. There are no coastal-watch Cessnas, no police helicopters, nor incidental vigilantes. The weather threatens. The few fishermen out on this ocean are one-eyed johnnies attending their hooks. The masters rely on their brutalised crew's obedience. The pay is good, the promise better than the normal expectations of their brothers at home. The crew have no responsibility. No power. Never would a woman be employed. Except as a prostitute. Then, only at port. The sailors on deck see a speedboat heading to shore.

  Business done, the tanker makes way.

  Alison did not come home to Tilly, who slept with the animals in the barn and woke with them, as soon as the swallows started nattering in the rafters. She dawdles across the acre through the dank dawn in her thin flannel nightie and bare feet to Chandra's house. She is decidedly damp when she cuddles into her mum-substitute and starts chattering. Rain makes life outside for Chandra three times more difficult than it does for anyone else.

  'Hello, spring chicken,' Chandra greets her with barely forced gaiety.

  They are into their day by seven a.m.: Tilly releasing the chooks, feeding them, giving Spotty his biscuit of hay, Chandra checking her email and going on-line to the real-time chat.

  Monkish living is not necessarily a sign of goodness & materialism is not the only evil.

  Become a member of the fuck-up force?

  To unwork is my aim. I hear you mujere.

  Where do you mad sisters live?

  Males, like rats following the pied piper, will be lured by pussy to their doom.

  Identify yourselves. Where am I?

  Drug pushers and advocates are hastening the dropping out of men.

  Chandra slides backwards: 'become a member of the fuck-up force'? She thought she booted out that nutter. Chandra doubts whether the revolution is as easy as that. It is possible to destabilise defence systems, but dangerous. Ditto, the money market. She knows she can set in place the infrastructure for war, create tools, but she needs unified commitment to strategies. The cells can't just go off, like free radicals, destroying what they please.

  consider the implications, she types. Because it is raining outside she will be at her desk all day. Especially if the avatar in Cellar2chat is failing. She needs to run a check throughout the whole site.

  Cybil Crabbe sees the fierce pride in Virginia White's eyes and the deep, troubled groove above her nose as she bends down to kiss her as she wakes. She writhes with the self-indulgence of a cat and decides it is not wise to project onto Virginia the grumpiness she feels and identifies as her own guilt. Instead Cybil traces the long vein on her forearm with her soft fingers, then slips her hand between T-shirt and skin. She says nothing. She goes about exciting Virginia's sexuality with her tongue and her hands, aware of the effect she is creating. She reduces Virginia; she melts her. She is greedy for pleasure, as needy for Virginia's climax as her own orgasm. Cybil is a sensualist. When they are replete, they overflow and dissolve into the messy bedclothes. Cybil smiles cheekily. Virginia would like to tell her what she has been thinking as she would with most lovers in bed after sex, but with Cybil it takes an effort.

  She tries. 'Transsexuals, according to themselves, are women trapped in male bodies. Was my Amazon soul trapped in a male body in a past life?'

  'I don't believe in reincarnation,' Cybil says. 'It just excuses bullshit artists.'

  Virginia adjusts her position in the big brass bed, and talks. 'Trannies who want to be lesbians appear less misogynistic than transvestites.'

  'And, assumably, have less tacky taste in clothes,' Cybil plays with Puddles' ears.

  'They are another version of Achilles at Scyros. Their task is to infiltrate the fearsome women's-only world for their own purposes.' Virginia's heavy eyebrows meet each other and she clenches her teeth. 'Sex and war. Rape. The pursuit of androgyny, for us, is pathetic.'

  'VeeDub, you took the prize as the woman best dressed as a man,' Cybil likes an argument. 'How ironic!' They agree on nothing.

  'As Orlando. You don't understand what Virginia Woolf was trying to say,' Virginia reaches for her book. But Cybil does not want to be read to.

  Virginia herself cannot concentrate on the written words. Her mood changes. She remembers the lost raft. Forty years at sea. Flotsam. Driftwood. In Cybil's bed, gazing into the middle distance, unfocused. 'Disguised as a woman, Achilles fathered Neoptolemus. As a victor, he desecrated the bodies he defeated which was not a Greek custom, rather one of a more savage past.'

  'What are you talking about?' Cybil interrupts. 'What's that got to do with the price of fish in China?'

  'Achilles, the hero, is an immature person, a spoilt brat, a horror and a worry. The murder and dishonourable treatment of Penthesilea was unmitigated hatred. When he felt like it Achilles could heal injuries. What a weird irrational myth! He loved his boyfriend, Patroclus, so much he had to avenge his death by killing and abusing the remains and the family of Hector. He ravaged the Queen of the Amazons, arsehole! His final and fatal courage was inspired by his grief over the death of Patroclus. And they are such cheats, these fellows. Apollo disguised as Paris, or Paris himself helped by Apollo, fired a poisoned arrow from behind into his vulnerable heel. Achilles was vanquished by an act of cowardice on the part of a god. Makes you wonder; is cowardice central to the male myth?'

  'Men are sooks,' Cybil, who suffers dysmenorrhoea, states, getting up.

  Virginia queries rhetorically, 'How many living Amazons hate Achilles as I do?'

  'Mummy's boys all over the globe have their battles fought for them.' Cybil wraps herself into her expensive dressing gown. She flicks underclothes off her computer keyboard.

  'Maintaining sexual access to women, when their true love is men. Daddy's girls are inconsistent and vindictive, according to Valerie Solanas.' Virginia puts her arms behind her head on the pillow.

  'What would you know about daddy's girls?' says Cybil quite viciously, as she checks her electronic mail. She sees herself as a superwoman, making it in the world. Virginia frowns at her lover's desire to hurt her. Suddenly, Cybil is late for work. 'While I have a shower, would you iron my shirt, my eagle? Please?' She raises her eyebrows.

  Virginia shakes her head, 'No.'

  Cybil shrugs then says, 'There is something I want to ask you. Won't be a minute.'

  Virginia rolls out of bed, and touches her toes. 'You iron your own shirt. I'll make a coffee,' she calls passing the bathroom. As she sniffs the fresh grounds and waits for the kettle to boil, she realises she hates these demands of Cybil. The power game is pathetic. No contest. She pours hot water into the coffee pot and places the plunger carefully on its surface.

  'I'm not going to socialise again, if that is what you want,' she tells Cybil as she emerges from the shower in a towel. Holding her mug to her, Virginia asks, 'What is it, then?'

>   Cybil irons with great care, like a dry cleaner, a perfectionist about pressing, and does not take the mug until she is finished. Then she laughs. She is warm and beautiful and Virginia grins. She feels sorry for Cybil.

  Cybil clears a spot on her couch and says, 'Come here.' She reaches for Virginia's foot and massages it, glancing up through her lashes. 'Huge feet and your toes have little webs.'

  'Yes?' Virginia is both amused and apprehensive.

  'Concerns you. Mm. I'll come out with it. I have had a bet, well, I'm running a book. Will you compete in Sunday's triathlon?' she says quickly. She doesn't like divulging much.

  'What triathlon? Where?' Virginia is taken by surprise.

  'The only thing you have to do is compete. Please, it's only half-length. Swim seven hundred and fifty metres, bike, I don't know, fifteen kilometres and, run, about one or one and half. Like, you did all those things as a kid. Will you do it for me? I want to see if you can do it now. Prove all that stuff about beating Jeff at bike races.'

  Virginia laughs, and explains, 'The only bike race we had was at school. I did win it, but you had to come last. Anyway, why not? Sure.' The question of her age doesn't bother Virginia. Cybil will make herself unavailable if Virginia does not allow herself to be her toy. At the moment, she aches for her.

  Virginia feels both abandoned and relieved when Cybil slams the door, descends the stairs and drives away. She plays on the computer, but is oppressed by the flat and goes soon afterwards, leaving the mess as she would never do at her own home. She doesn't care whether she competes or not. She likes a race and in that case doesn't mind playing this part in Cybil's scenario. Constantly on the make, constantly at some scheme or scam, always busy, Cybil controls Virginia's thoughts because she can make no sense of her. The triathlon is not all in Cybil's agenda, does she want to laugh at her? To show her off? To show her up? Her pride will not let her entertain the possibility of betrayal.

  Shopping first, she heads bush as soon as she can.

  Rory has a flattish, freckly Irish face. A favourite hat with the badges of the revolution pinned in all available space on the brown felt usually hides her thin ginger hair. Strong neck, low-hanging breasts and a penchant for the khaki and camouflage clothes from army disposal stores, Rory always has pockets, for torch, a knife, a pen, a pad and, often, a bit of reading. So dressed, and out walking, she is met by one of the gurls, Ella, who tells her the bridge is completely down and her car is stuck. Rory, the practical one, must be told of the broken bridge. Ella is on the edge of panic. Getting into Rory's truck, they drive towards the gates of Lesbianlands. Rory won't be blackmailed, bullied, bribed or bought, but she would do anything for anybody.

  Because of the steep hills and gullies, Lesbianlands is far more than the three hundred hectares on title across the ground. Women have come and gone for twenty years and they keep coming. Many shelters constructed with love and excitement, now abandoned, can be occupied by lesbians who bring no inclination to become carpenters. Ella is a relatively recent arrival. Rory finds her timid, although her manner of dress suggests city-lesbian chic. Madly liberated by land-living, she wears a slip and lace bra with a leather jacket, high lace-up boots and stud in her nose. They don't talk much as Rory skilfully negotiates the bush track.

  A number of gurls are waiting for them. A fire in a circle of rocks keeps the billy boiling. Rory pulls up and gets out and says yes to a coffee and hunkers down to listen. The story is unsatisfactory. A large heavy vehicle must have gone across the bridge, weakened it, and when Ella came screaming in too fast, still drunk and high from partying after the dance, it collapsed. The tin mugs empty, a few walk down the hill to examine the situation and inspect the damage. The huge logs thrown across the fast-flowing creek by loggers of yesteryear had given way. The planks of hardwood are severed in jagged, fresh breaks. The old Holden sits on the edge of these on its under-carriage, front wheels hanging over the creek.

  Everyone's movements are discussed and reiterated but the upshot is no gurl hired a bulldozer or six-tonne truck in the last fortnight. The gurls laugh; disaster brings out their humour.

  'No one has had a dam made,' Ci is frivolous, making a joke about an incident years ago when an individualist had brought men in to make her a personal dam so that she would have water for her garden. Like many who come too full of action, she had left. Her legacy, now, a pleasant billabong. There is always tension between the desires of the one and the consensus of the many.

  'No,' Rory mumbles. 'But a bulldozer has been through here.'

  'We expected it to last forever. Damn and bother!' Querrin jokes.

  'Ella's car might have broken it. But who did the original harm?

  'It's a mystery. Looks like the planks were put back to hide the damaged logs underneath.' Dee points at evidence for her theory. 'That is malicious.'

  'Not to say very dangerous.'

  Gig says, 'Hope saw the Campbell women.'

  'Well, it couldn't be one of us, could it?' Rory asserts.

  'What we need is a detective,' Dee grins, winks, 'nudge nudge'.

  Rory goes red, 'That may be so.' She kneels down and remarks, 'These are definitely bulldozer tracks.'

  'A lot of them.' Fi asks Ella, 'Did you hear anything, I mean, like the big bits breaking?' Ella shakes her head.

  'He backed away after he broke the bridge and went through the creek,' Dee says, again pointing. 'Over there.'

  'He?' repeats Ci, with irony.

  'Do you know any woman with a dozer?'

  'Or an army tank, perhaps?' Gig joins the ironic tone.

  Rory looks at Dee. 'You're right about a detective, let's hire one.'

  'Yeah, Rory, you fancy the ex-cop, we know that.' Dee smiles.

  'So, let's get her,' Rory argues. 'Let's ask Margot if she can figure it out.'

  'Why?' Ti Dyer is aggressive. 'We do everything ourselves, we don't need her.'

  'Maybe not, but, as Dee said, I'd like to give her an excuse to visit me,' Rory says peaceably. 'Does anyone know anything?'

  'Judith was casual, when I spoke to her, as if it didn't matter,' Gig tells them.

  'It might not matter to her, but it does to us, we don't have a four-wheel-drive and we need this bridge.' Ti Dyer maintains her aggro. 'You've got the vehicle to get around. Can we make a decision now to get the bridge fixed?'

  'No, we'll have to have a meeting,' Rory responds.

  'That will mean women coming from Sydney, Canberra, wherever.'

  'Have we got any money in the bank?' enquires Ci.

  Rory shrugs, 'Ask Judith. But I don't think so. We won't get the bridge fixed straight away, unless you want to pay for it out of your own pocket.'

  'So, will we get Margot to come, get a full report from someone objective?' Dee finalises.

  'Okay.' It always surprises Rory how the lesbians on the plain, the easiest part of the lands to live on, enjoy the prospect of a new romantic liaison.

  She gets back in her truck, waving to the group of gurls. Perhaps they care that she hasn't had a lover for so long. She likes to think so.

  8

  …the World Wide Web…

  The police station was a fancy new building beside a sweet little sandstone jail which could almost achieve a heritage listing but as it is islanded in the middle of a tarred car park, that would be unlikely. Patrol cars only—except for a tow-truck with oily dark duco, a mean-looking machine, American made V-8 engine and a vicious hook hanging free off a crane mounted in the tray—were there.