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  'Chat occurs in real time,' she explains. She allows it to scroll on the larger computer screen as they speak.

  'What does stand for?' asks Rory, bemused by the nyms.

  'Bullets and chevrons,' replies Chandra. 'This individual calls it the language of aliens, female ones.'

  'Aliens? Are you kidding?' Rory is jolly as she is sceptical.

  'Takes all sorts,' Chandra says. 'But they are like computer short-hand, smileys and so on.' She points to what she means. Then she clicks out of the chat, wanting to discuss the Memos of Annihilation. 'I've been fascinated by this woman who keeps posting essays on the bulletin board. She signs herself Tragic. A pretty serious Solanasite. Hopefully.'

  When they are having a break and sitting at the kitchen table, they leapfrog over the initial hurdles of getting to know one another, small talk, and settle into a friendship which could be life-long.

  'Andy Warhol was about emptiness,' Rory seriously states. 'Is that why Valerie chose him?'

  'All men are empty,' spits Chandra showing her contempt. 'He was certainly symbolic of his time, but I don't know if she knew that. Probably.'

  'You bet. Celebrity. But, you know,' Rory, thinking of the implications of a genuine revolution, decides to be honest. 'I don't think I could shoot anyone. But what you're doing is so far out. A Solanasite Conspiracy was a dream of mine.'

  'Well,' says Chandra, 'you can share it with others on the net. If you can afford this.' She indicates one of the lap-tops. Rory pulls a cheque book from one of her commodious pockets, and they decide which one she will have and talk about how she will set it up and so on.

  So many questions stream into Rory's consciousness, she doesn't have room to hear answers. She asks, 'Do you mind if I call in, like often, say Sunday? Or tomorrow?' Chandra doesn't mind. She is actually keen. Gratified, Rory keeps questing.

  'Isn't it vulnerable? Couldn't a spy infiltrate?'

  'Yes, of course,' Chandra explains methods of encryption and schemes for booting out suspicious types.

  Rory literally rolls up her sleeves. 'I understand your structure and control. But when it's under way what do we actually do?'

  'Who knows? Carpet-bombing?' Chandra explains the method of flooding the target address with thousands of emails. 'The server is overloaded and the entire system collapses and shuts down.' They go back into Chandra's home office. 'Think up a name, introduce yourself, chat.' Chandra spins out of the way, and offers Rory her place. Rory pulls up a chair and types, ANNIEOAK.

  Eh? Has anyone barged into mixed (male-female) couples to bust 'em up? By making love to the woman making her a lesbian.

  Need you ask?

  There are girl porn channels for the likes of you, sister. Wheels ICQ

  'That's me,' Chandra murmurs.

  Chandra leans in front of Rory and types in EMML, BAC.

  Rory asks, 'Who is ? Another acronym?'

  'Moments of pleasure, can you believe?' Chandra remembers, 'She came through CellarOne. Here, let me show you.' She brings up the pattern of her virtual house and explains the make-up of the basement. 'I didn't want to exclude lust, just as I didn't want to judge those with a passion for cooking, so you can get to Cellar2, which is based on the Anarcho-Syndicalists' model of cells, from there as well. Anyway, let's have a look at what's going on in CellarOne'.

  Rory reads.

  >>i can write a love letter with juiciest sex-pets lines a canal dripping with slippery slime glides slides into darkness tunnel & hark! marvel at u at me sound & bound by white knuckles fierce & fire spits me up it spins me out about billets-doux to so many unworthy individuals of both sexes who diddled my und(erl)ying lust as long as my flu(id)ency controls imagination waxing lyrical with waxen rubies & stacks of lace & what i am capable of in private! & in private parts my knots tight tighter as lazy muscles spaz erectile tissue strutting its stuff my whip can crack smack & whack cries enough surfeit suffice & surfacing no one believes her singing for help minuscule pearls of adoration form at the tips of eyelashes flaxen flames of innocence as sadly i shake my golden head & say let's go to bed let's fuck & suck but the silence the violence clinging without apologies with no thanx

  'What?' she shakes her head.

  'Yeah, I know,' grins Chandra. 'Let's have a cup of tea.'

  Chandra enjoys Rory's interest and gives her the secret code language of white food to access the revolutionary group from the kitchen. First she has to learn how to use the technology. 'Yes,' Rory says. 'I do. Be back tomorrow or after the triathlon, on my way home.'

  'That's okay,' Chandra says.

  Catherine Tobin checks her email at a booth in the post office. She angles herself so she can see who comes to wait in the snail mail queue, which moves at snails' pace. Her contact's instructions are clear. She notices an interesting customer dispatch a large manila envelope. This could be one of the women she is in the area to get to know. She follows her out into the street and watches her unlock from a distance, with a gadget in her hand, a late-model car.

  Jill David cruises around Port Water in the borrowed Saab, playing a part. Wheeler-dealer, power-woman, undercover agent, drug-courier. She grins and waves to Tiger Cat. Anything but an unemployed actress with nothing to do, an artiste, performing roles in the drifting world indifferent to her gifts, Jill keeps herself fit. In case, some day, she needs to perform on stage. But all the money she has is a few coins in her pocket. Change. She drives round the block.

  She pulls into the curb outside Il Paradiso. Margaret sees her sitting down at a table, taking a newspaper out of her brief-case. She waves. Jill calls her over.

  'Want a cappuccino? Macchiato? Long white?'

  'Mugachino. Lots of froth, please,' Margaret says to the waiter.

  'Just the woman I want to see.' Jill is charming.

  Margaret picks up the key-ring from the table near Jill's purse. 'Nice wheels.'

  Jill shrugs. 'I'm doing a favour for a friend. Got her car.'

  After their coffee, Jill and Margaret go into the room with the computers.

  'Sofia's right into it.' Margaret points at one intense user.

  'Don't mock.' Jill fires her defence of another frustrated talent with the passion of her own disappointed ambition.

  They stand behind Sofia for a moment.

  'Bit gross, Sof,' comments Jill.

  'Got work to do, see you later,' says Margaret.

  Jill sits down at another computer and starts surfing the net, wondering if Sofia has found the hidden cave or is she just an intelligent woman spinning out? Another net-nutter.

  Jill drives Sofia home.

  'Has it ever occurred to you, when doom is foretold, those with most to lose are the most into denial?' Sofia expounds, freakishly picking up thoughts in the air around her but not hearing direct questions.

  'No imagination,' Jill says, humouring Sofia, whose political stance is total distrust of the male of the species.

  Sofia nods. 'Everyone is crazy. Merde. It's too big. It's too boring. Maybe nothing. Eh bonne.'

  'She'll be right, mate.' Jill takes off the Aussie bloke perfectly.

  'Say, for example,' Sofia is intense. 'The Thredbo disaster. Whose car is this?'

  'My brother's,' Jill lies. 'Thredbo?'

  'A ski lodge collapses,' continues Sofia. 'You want to build on a piece of land which those who don't want to build on it but have knowledge, say, is unstable, dangerous, and you still build on it? You are into denial but nothing happens to you. So denial was okay.'

  'Then something does happen,' Jill prompts as she overtakes a truck with effortless acceleration.

  'The sooth-sayers were right. You lose your building, your assets, the rent and whatever was inside and people are killed, money is lost and personal tragedy. The earth has caved in,' Sofia clings on to her point. 'Who takes responsibility?'

  'That's the question.' Jill asks.

  'Precisely. The earth has quaked. You were wrong. All you have to say is, it seemed lik
e a good idea at the time. But, you see, no one is responsible because denial is not a crime and warnings are not currency.'

  'Sofia, you sound coked to your eyeballs, but you're not wrong, you know. Are you okay?' Jill has never heard Sofia so lucid.

  'Images, visions. There's my locomotive.'

  Jill stops at the level crossing for the goods train to rattle past with various shapes of freight on the carriage trays.

  Sofia talks, 'Leviathan of the new age, sleek, cylindrical and phallic, or a sleeping secret rocket launcher. Aliens turn up like the Blessed Virgin Mary in a balloon, their interstellar caravan. Maybe it is a prone silo disguised as a tanker.'

  'Have you taken any drugs today?' Jill asks in the voice of a nurse. 'You're different.'

  'It doesn't matter how much I use, I still think. My head's about to blow off.' Sofia continues, 'Did you know we are on the bottom of the pond of the future?'

  'What do you think of the white virgin?' asks Jill, responding to a bumper sticker for the gun lobby. 'A woman fronts the most masculine organisation. Like, most guns are used in domestic disputes.'

  'She is an expression of the mediocre. She is a product of the multiple, the mean number, not the average, the mean.' Sofia is speaking quickly.

  'The media love her,' Jill comments.

  'There are thousands like her out there, Mary Smiths, Joan Cains, Molly Abels, so many in fact that one had to be made into a star. She is created out of brains, thought is an energy out there. It creates things. It is as solid as shit. She is quintessentially ordinary Australian. She is just the catalyst, not the one to fear. She will probably be assassinated. The mediocre somehow find a place in history and wise witches are burnt. Unsung.'

  'She's a puppet,' Jill states. And starts the car as the long train leaves and the red light stops its dinging.

  Sofia shakes her head, 'Like god, people only adore images of themselves.'

  'You're as mad as Cassandra,' Jill laughs.

  'Don't ever call me mad.' The tone of Sofia's voice is threatening.

  'Okay, cool.'

  'The idiocy is that only partisan interest is taken for real.'

  'You could have a point there.' Jill parks in front of Sofia and Maria's house.

  'When god is in your image, or your image is in your face all the time, it doesn't matter how shallow or what the image stands for is, because it stands for you. You then go out into your own life and be as fascist as fascist can be. There are no controls, none whatsoever, because you are right, even though, everything you say contradicts yourself. Even in little ways. And, ohmygod, you won't shut up. You understand what I am saying, Jill? There are these people in our own community. Now it has to be about women, because the fundamental, the basic, the firmamental contradiction, is that the leader of the ratbag right is a woman and fascism can only benefit the patriarchy.' Sofia's monologue goes on, even as Maria prepares dinner, serves it, eats it, feeds her, listening. With Jill who stays for tea.

  Having done a lot of running round today, I felt I'd worked, but had got relatively nowhere. Two investigations and the meet on Sunday, my life was full, fulfilling in fact. I told the boxing bag, left hook, right jab, left hook, right jab. Goodnight.

  Book Three

  madness

  Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday

  Saturday's child works hard for a living

  16

  …greenish glass…

  Ian Truckman is never late. It is pre-dawn. The six-cylinder Commodore, with only 30,000 on the clock, is uncomfortably low and fragile, frighteningly fast on the uptake: a feather-touch on the accelerator and she's off. As vulnerable as the Man from Ironbark or a bullocky on a race-horse, Ian speeds along the airport road, takes the corner, hits the cattle-grid, and, with an expletive yelp, is flying. Eventually he pulls in beside the truckie who is picking up the morning papers. He identifies himself as a fellow of the road fraternity by mentioning the size of his rig in the small talk as the first plane of the day lands. Back in the sedan, he drives to the commercial strip of oversized aluminium sheds, where transport companies have their warehouses, and several hangars are up for rent.

  Truckman consumes the fast-food items of Saturday's paper like crispy chicken wings, until headlights pierce the mauve early morning. A tow-truck brakes next to him. The engine, a V8 Chevvie, is tuned for super-acceleration. A bulky, black-haired bloke jumps out. The guy is jittery.

  Ian nods good morning.

  'Hey, man.' The tow-truck driver opens the Holden's door before Ian does it himself. 'Ian, right? My name's Paul. Boy, are you going to be pleased! All your Christmases at once. Wait and see.'

  Ian is unsettled by the looming closeness of the big chap. 'Where's my rig? Don't see it here anywhere.'

  Of South Sea Islander appearance, Paul could be a lock for the All Blacks so impressive is his physical size. 'Keep your jocks in place, man. She's right here.'

  'But my gear? I spent a lot of dough setting myself up in that cabin,' Ian says feeling small. 'He promised.'

  'Hey, man, you gotta remember you don't own her. But,' Paul concedes confidentially, 'Don't worry, china. Settle down. Where's your bag? Pop the boot. This it? What's this? What are ya? An executive? They said you were pernickety.'

  Truckman, already grinding his teeth, picks up his mobile, his paper and his overnight bag from the back seat and follows Paul. The chrome-glistening semi-trailer is radiant even in the low sheen of coming dawn. They approach it from behind, twenty-four wheels in the back, some bald, and ten brand-new on the semi, seven and half thousand tare. His name in elaborate brush script on the right hand door near the bottom, near the step, gives him a shock. Spooky. This FreightLiner has more horse power than the Scania he had so recently called home.

  'Usually do that myself,' he complains grumpily. Something's going on and he doesn't know what it is. Why are tanker-trailers at the freight terminal of an airport?

  'What are we packing?' Ian asks Paul who has bounced ahead, pointing out all the aerials, including a tiny satellite dish and miniature solar panel which protrude from the cabin-casing. Mounted above the front of the engine, which juts forward in the rounded lines of the brand-new, is his own sign: White Virgin.

  'Go on, get up inside, take a deco,' Paul pushes the keys into his hand. Ian Truckman puts down his port, turns and, swinging the smooth door wide, mounts with care.

  Paul jiggles about, wanting to get up, but truckers take their time.

  The interior is immaculate. Radio, stereo, tape deck, computer screen the size of a piece of bread, dash modem, aerials everywhere, VCR, CD player, phone, fax, CB, TV, bed, bar, leopard skin, pine forest aerosol spray and new box of cleaning materials. Ian inspects every nook and cranny, and finds a butterfly knife and his own rifle as well as a 0.32 calibre self-loading pistol. Whoever installed the gadgetry knew what he was doing. Truckman cannot find fault. He dismounts backwards and circumnavigates the vehicle. Everything on the FL112 is new.

  'Can I?' Paul, surprisingly, has the manners to ask if he can look inside. Men respect each other's boundaries, and White Virgin, with 'Ian Truckman' hand-painted on the door, is out of his bounds to the uninvited. Ian nods distractedly. Hearing noises of wonder and praise, his own bliss rises quietly up his body.