Vulture's Gate (23 page)

33

UNDER THE WALL

The Sons of Gaia were too nervous to cross the harbour for
fear of mines
so they trekked laboriously around its perimeter. Callum's feet grew sore after three days of scrambling through dense bushland. Finally, they reached a small, shaky bridge that spanned the narrowest neck of the harbour.

On the night they crossed the water, Quokka, Quoll and Koala pitched camp under the shadow of the narrow bridge. Callum was sent to collect firewood. As he scouted in the bush, gathering up dry sticks, a wild-eyed stranger stepped out from behind a tree. His face was swollen and his eyes bloodshot. He stretched one hand out to Callum, almost as if he was begging. Before Callum had time to react, the man let out a strangled cry and fell forward, a fishing-spear in his back. A dark stain of blood spread across the ground.

Rusty came running through the bush, jumping over the man's body and putting his hands on Callum's shoulders. ‘Are you all right?' he asked.

‘I'm fine. But you killed him. He may have only wanted help. He hadn't done anything and you killed him!'

‘It doesn't matter what his intentions were, Callum. It is our responsibility to cull all strays.'

Callum shut his eyes, remembering the kind, gentle man Rusty had been before he became a Son of Gaia.

Back at the campsite, Callum sat as far away from the men as he could while they ate a sloppy stew of ancient canned beans flavoured with bitter bush herbs.

‘You are very silent tonight, Fester,' said Quoll, putting down his tin plate and staring at Callum.

‘I'm tired,' said Callum.

‘If you had more faith in Gaia, she would sustain you,' said Quoll. He turned to Rusty, frowning. ‘Koala, you said you educated the boy in the ways of Gaia. But still you call him by his name from your other life. If he is to serve us as we discussed, he must be reborn as a true Son of Gaia. You do not harbour feelings for him as a child of your flesh any longer, do you?'

Rusty blushed and put his head down. ‘No, brother, I harbour no feelings for him, other than brotherly love.'

Callum glared at the top of his father's shiny bowed head.

‘Then what will you name him?'

‘We could call him Dibbler,' said Rusty. ‘They were little desert animals, once native to the region where he grew up.'

‘Dibbler. A fine name for one destined to be a detonator.'

‘Dibbler the Detonator?' said Callum, trying to mask the ridicule in his voice.

A full moon rose over Vulture's Gate and Callum lay awake for a long time, staring at the dappled light that shone through the gum trees. He flinched when Rusty came and lay beside him, and shut his eyes, pretending to be asleep. But when he opened them again, he realised Rusty was watching him, the way he had watched over him when he was small, his face full of tenderness.

‘I wish we were all back in Nekhbet Tower,' whispered Callum. ‘You, me and Ruff. I wish you were tucking me into bed like when I was little.'

‘That time is over, Dibbler.'

Callum winced. ‘I know that. I'm not a baby any more. But it was a good time, wasn't it? We were happy then?'

Rusty's face grew still. He didn't answer.

‘Do you know who Nekhbet was?' asked Rusty.

‘It was just a name for the Tower, wasn't it?'

‘No, it's not just a name. Nekhbet was a goddess of childbirth and motherhood. The Colony called the tower Nekhbet because they thought it was a good name for a nest of breeding humans. But “Necropolis” – city of the dead – comes from the name of the sacred city in Egypt, Nekheb. The Colony coveted the name of a goddess of babies and death when they should have been looking to Gaia. If we had embraced Gaia, then we would have understood our folly. '

Callum wanted to cover his ears and scream. He turned his back on Rusty and willed himself into a dark and troubled sleep.

The next day they trekked along the edge of the harbour, into the heart of the ruined city. Rusty kept Callum close to him. Was it to keep him safe or to stop him escaping? Callum couldn't decide. He felt so numb with grief that all he could do was put one foot in front of the other.

When they came to the entrance to a flooded underground station, Callum wanted to laugh. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he and Bo had found their way into the Festers' cavern but the thought of her made him feel more alive. Quokka led the way down to the deepest part of the subway where he uncovered a canoe. They dragged it to the entrance of a watery tunnel that wound into blackness, deep under the city.

‘Dibbler, Koala, you take the middle seat.'

Callum could tell by the tone of Quokka's voice that he didn't trust either of them. He only wished that it were true – that Koala wasn't totally committed to the Sons of Gaia. As they glided through the dark caverns, the air grew chill and Callum began to shiver in the darkness. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they moored the canoe and climbed out onto a pile of broken rocks.

‘Up through here,' said Quokka, pointing to an opening through the rockface, ‘this is where the Sons have been working for the past year. We are so close to the surface, so close to infiltrating their stronghold, that explosives can't be used for fear of alerting Colony men. We believe there are fissures and small cracks that your beast may be able to detect that will provide us with the perfect location to lay our explosives. We will come with you until the space becomes too small. Then you must go forward alone to find the soft underbelly of the Wall.' They began to unload fuses and explosives from the canoe. Quoll strapped a huge coil of cable to Rusty's back, handed him two containers of explosive, and then pushed him towards the tunnel entrance.

As the passage narrowed, and began to wind upwards, they were all reduced to crawling on their hands and knees, awkwardly manoeuvring their equipment as they went. Finally they reached a small cave where another half-dozen containers of explosives were stored.

‘This is as far as we have managed to dig effectively,' said Quokka. ‘We need to find an open space directly beneath the Wall that we can fill with explosives. We believe it is only one hundred metres further, but the route there may be circuitous.'

Callum scrunched up his nose. The stale, close smell of the cave began to oppress him. He felt light-headed as he flicked open Mr Pinkwhistle's chest and scrolled through to the screen that displayed the muon detector.

‘Mr Pinkwhistle's sensors show one twisty tunnel that stretches for three hundred metres but it's very small. Do you want him to go ahead?'

‘No,' said Quokka. ‘We want you to go. Follow the beast machine as far as is possible and establish fixed co-ordinates for your position. Then report back to us. The path to the location must be wide enough for you to drag the explosives with you and the chosen position for the explosion must be large enough to store seven tins. Make note of the dimensions of the tunnels. When we are sure you have found a position directly beneath the Wall, we can begin in earnest.'

While Quoll and Quokka sorted through the stockpile of tinned explosives, Rusty tied a loop of rope around Callum's waist.

‘If anything goes wrong, if you run out of breath, or smell something that makes you giddy, tug three times and I'll haul you back to us,' he said.

‘Are you worried I'll run away?' asked Callum.

Rusty cupped Callum's face in his hands. ‘I trust you, Dibbler.'

Callum wanted to shout, ‘Don't call me that! Don't trust me! I hate you. I wish it was you that died, not Ruff.' But the heavy numbness that had descended on him since his reunion with Rusty squashed his rage deep inside.

He turned away and followed Mr Pinkwhistle. The robo–raptor sent out a soft blue light that filled the tunnel and made Callum less afraid. He was glad to be away from the men. When he was with Rusty he couldn't think straight, but alone with Mr Pinkwhistle in the winding tunnels he remembered who he really was. And he remembered Bo, his dream of introducing her to his fathers and his hopes for their future. Now the future looked as dark as the narrow tunnel ahead of him.

It took Callum nearly twenty arduous minutes to reach the cave that had shown up on Mr Pinkwhistle's muon detector.

‘We must be closer to the surface, Mr P. The air smells better, doesn't it,' he said, even though he knew there was no point in talking to the machine. Mr Pinkwhistle bobbed his head and his eyes glowed pink as Callum checked his sensors and tried to figure out if they had come too far. Suddenly, Mr Pinkwhistle jumped off Callum's lap and scurried ahead through the cavern.

‘Mr P, come back, come back,' called Callum. He crawled on his belly to where the roboraptor had stopped at the bottom of a wide crevice. A thin shard of light pierced the darkness from above. Callum looked up to see a tunnel, almost like a chimney, that rose straight up through the rock. Halfway up, Callum could make out the beginnings of a ladder. Above the ladder, soft light filtered through a metal grid.

“I think we've come too far, Mr P. I think we've passed under the Wall,' said Callum.

The rope around Callum's waist grew tight, as someone yanked the other end. He tugged back, trying to loosen the knot but it was too hard to undo in the confined space. Wearily, he crawled back to the explosives stockpile. As he drew closer to the Sons of Gaia and the tunnel widened, he grabbed Mr Pinkwhistle's tail and lay very still.

‘Dibbler?' came Rusty's voice. ‘Are you there, Dibbler?'

Callum didn't answer. Tears filled his eyes. Why was he helping the Gaias? This man that called him Dibbler was nothing like Rusty. The old Rusty was lost to him. Next time the rope pulled tighter around his waist, he managed to undo the knot. It whisked its way down the tunnel and disappeared into the darkness.

‘Callum! Callum!' shouted Rusty. ‘Callum, son, where are you?'

Callum started crawling again, drawn by the fear in his father's voice.

‘It's all right, Dad,' he said. ‘I'm coming.'

As soon as Callum was near enough, Rusty dragged him into the open cave, into his arms. Rusty held him so tightly Callum could hardly breathe. He ran his hands through Callum's hair and gazed into his face. For the first time since they'd discovered each other at the Gaias' aerie, Callum felt as if he could see his father again, the Rusty he had known and loved. He was glad that Quoll and Quokka were too far behind to see them or hear Rusty call him by his true name.

‘I thought you'd drowned or were trapped. I thought I'd lost you again,' whispered Rusty.

‘I found the cave,' said Callum. ‘There's plenty of room for the explosives, except I'll only be able to take one tin at a time through the passage. According to Mr Pinkwhistle's muon detector, it should be directly under the Wall. We even went further. I saw daylight! Daylight on the other side of the Wall!'

Rusty ran his hand over Callum's face, like a blind man. ‘I don't want you to do this, Callum,' he said, his voice breaking. ‘I don't want you to be the detonator.'

‘It's okay,' said Callum. ‘Maybe if the Wall comes down, I'll be able to get out to the island and see Bo again. If I could only see her one more time . . .'

‘Callum, you haven't understood,' interrupted Rusty. ‘When Quoll and Quokka said we're to be the detonators, they mean we will detonate the bombs. You'll die in the blast. I was going to use you to help me trigger the explosives.'

Callum looked into Rusty's eyes and saw the truth.

‘Detonators for Gaia,' he said. ‘You were going to kill me?' ‘We were going to die together. But I don't want you to do it, Callum. I want you to live.'

Callum pressed his face against Rusty's chest. It was the old Rusty again but it was too late. There was too little time left.

‘What can we do? They'll kill us both anyway.'

Rusty's hands were trembling as he tied the rope around Callum's waist again.

‘No,' said Rusty. ‘You are going to live.'

34

THE BOUBOULINA

Callum pushed Mr Pinkwhistle through the opening in
the gutter
and wrapped his fingers around the bars of the stormwater grille. As another explosion reverberated through the tunnel, a backwash of water flooded along the drain and dragged him off his feet. He clung to the metal bars with all his strength while Mr Pinkwhistle crouched above him, mewling in distress.

‘Shut up, Mr P,' he said. When the worst of the shockwaves had subsided he pushed the grille away and dragged himself into the gutter. The streetlights were out and the fires along the Wall cast a smoky orange glow across the roadway. Squadrones and Colony men raced down the streets, heading for the Wall, frantic to battle the invisible enemy. Callum clutched Mr Pinkwhistle against his chest and ran in the opposite direction. Tumbling over a low fence, he lay flat on his belly, listening to the sound of the Colony alarms screaming.

The night air felt cool against his burning face but his ears were still ringing from the roar of the explosion. He couldn't believe he was alive. He shut his eyes and tried to recall those last moments beneath the Wall with his father. ‘Yesterday was mine,' Rusty had said. ‘I messed it up. But all the tomorrows are for you, Callum. However few of them are left. You are the future. Take it and run with it.' Then he'd hugged Callum tightly and kissed him one last time before pushing him into the narrow tunnels that led to freedom.

But freedom was like drowning. Callum had no idea what to do next. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Except Bo. Moving quickly and quietly and keeping low to the ground, Callum made his way to the waterside. If he could find any small vessel that would take him across the harbour to the Island, he would risk the mines. He would risk anything to be with Bo again.

He forced his way through a maze of barbed wire and scrambled along the rocky harbour-side in the dark. Jagged stones cut his feet and he stumbled on mounds of slippery seaweed as he made his way along the shore. He had almost given up hope of finding a vessel when he heard strange voices drifting down to the water from somewhere above.