The Corpse of The Past
THEYWEREfour miles on to the east when the sun blotted from that quarter the endless rusty mud and began hastily to lay the mirage over the putrescence of its own creation. It had been comparatively straight going, proving the dogs followed submerged ridges, when sharply the pad turned left towards the north and away from the glaring sun. Minutes later they saw movement at about half a mile, and stopped.
“What is it?” cried Meena, who was close behind Bony. “I don’t like it.”
A something rose and subsided erratically, never in the same place, and, without replying, Bony proceeded with his rifle more easily accessible to hand. They could see the lake floor was moving, and ultimately the pad skirted this area of disturbance. Great mud blisters rose and sank without bursting, the light glinting on them as though the skin was stretched taut with pus. There was no evidence indicative of thermal forces agitating this area of several square miles of turbulence.
“Go on, Bony. Don’t wait here. I don’t like this place,” Meena urged.
Far away something rose above the general level which was no blister. It was like a wave running end-forward, then abruptly it turned towards them and drew close in zigzag fashion. It suggested the movement of a great reptile swiftly passing under the mud which rose to curve away from its back. There was certainly no solidity anywhere except that under their feet. The wave thing skirted their end of the area and slowly sank among the recurring blisters.
“What’s doing it, Bony?” Meena whispered, but Bony merely shrugged and pressed on. What could he, the big-feller policeman, say in answer to so simple a question? How to explain something apparently behaving in opposition to natural laws? How to explain those green fingers? Or to bring logic to bear on the rotting corpse of This-Sea-That-Was?
The pad skirted the area for more than a mile, and twice the whale-like bank of mud rose and moved with astonishing speed as though the mass were a living thing. Merely a quarter mile from them, a hill of mud rose many feet, to disintegrate as though from internal combustion.
The sky was white, the sun itself tawny, and the wind came to hurry them onward to safety from this blistered menace. A possible explanation, in Bony’s opinion, was that this area of deep mud was agitated by water pouring into the northeast section of the lake, thus creating pressure and stress, and were this so, then danger to themselves was to be reckoned with.
He gained another opinion later when skirting a small area of liquid mud bearing distinct traces of oil. The wind then was so strong that the surface was ridged with sluggish ripples.
When the sun wassearingly hot on their backs, they came to the next dingo rest. Both were physically exhausted and disturbed by the implications of the mud’s behaviour, for should the water rise to cover the surface, the dog pad would disappear, and they would be engulfed.
“Two hours ago I urged you to go back. I do so now,” Bony said, and all the reaction he produced in the girl was a slow smile and a negative shake of the head.
“Yorky and Linda are somewhere out here,” she reminded him. “And I wouldn’t go back past those things for anything. You don’t seem to mind, though.”
“I mind all right, Meena. I’m not liking this at all.”
“I know. If there was a wall of fire half a mile on, you’d go straight through it instead of going back. The Missioner told us that pridegoeth before a fall. I hope you don’t fall.”
“We haven’t that kind of pride, you no more than I. You and I are merely animated shells crammed with fears and inhibitions, humility and pride. What white people might name courage is in us instinctive revolt against the abyss for ever opening at our feet. We must not fail. We dare not think of failure. So we must go on, even if we have to travel right across this abominable lake.”
They ate slowly. Sips of water immediately issued from them in the form of perspiration, the natural bodily function having ceased since leaving Mount Eden. For a little while they lay with their faces pressed into folded arms to give relief from the glare to eyes sore and heavy.
“You don’t really think Yorky shot Mrs Bell?” Meena asked without raising her head.
“No. But don’t ask me why he bolted with Linda. I couldn’t answer that.”
“D’youknow who did shoot her?”
“One of two men, possibly. It could be one of five men, but I think it’s one of two.”
“Which two, Bony?”
“It is now three hours to sundown, Siren. We should press on and hope to reach another dog rest before darkness stops us.”
“All set. I’m ready.”
She was lacing her mud shoes when he raised himself and blinked against the fierce light. He offered to carry her store of food, but she refused. She stood straight and strong, and the beauty of her body defeated the grime and dust and mud flakes adhering to it. Over her deep-gold face was the smile again, a smile of daring, with a dash of inscrutable woman.
Now and then she watched him pushing on ahead, seemingly making light of the gear he carried and finding no difficulty with the boards, and, as with their maternal forebears, both possessed that rare ability of closing their minds to physical discomfort and concentrating only on the important matter of arriving.
They came to a break in the pad of several yards, and after tentatively testing the surface, managed to cross by hurrying. Another area was pocked by mounds two feet high, and from the mounds came sucking and gurgling sounds. Bony, having heard and seen the giant earthworms of Gippsland, wondered how enormous must these worms be, if worms did produce the sounds and the surface casts.
Often he expected the water to flow around them, and as often was fooled by the mirage, so complete was this trickery played by Lake Eyre. Four crows came from the east, mocking them as they passed. That morning he had noticed three flying to the east, and as he laboured onward, he speculated about the additional bird.
When the sun went down, the wind was furnace-hot, the sky a flaming fire, and the surface of the lake was a red-gold sea. Far ahead tall masts towered to the sky, and from tip to tip of these masts sped something resembling nothing. Abruptly there appeared an object looking like a crab walking on the edge of its shell.
“That’s them,” shouted Meena, and Bony turned to say:
“Could be. But how far away?”
The question baffled her. The shadows of the voyagers magically lengthened and were barely the width of a hair. The flame of the sky darkened to crimson, and the mirage turned to green and swiftly from green to steel. Overhead the crimson pall quivered, became ribs of blood veined by black valleys and moving ever to the east before the wind; the mirrored surface of real water to the north enflamed by the setting sun.
They could see the gradual darkening as the sun passed over the rim, and swiftly all the colours under the sky faded into drab brown oblivion. Quite suddenly they saw, barely two hundred yards distant, a low wall of reddish sand, topped with tussock grass. And a man and a child!
“Down,” shouted Bony, as he sprawled forward on his chest, wriggled slightly to pull the rifle off his back and bring it to the ready.
Facing the glare of the western sky, the man and child sighted the voyagers moments after they themselves were seen. Yorky, for it must be he, flung himself down behind the robust tussock grass, but the child continued to stand on a miniature hummock of sand.
The moments were those between the magic hours of day and the shrouding hours of night, when this country is revealed in true perspective, and this evening, stereoscopic clarity. Over the barrel of his rifle, Bony watched the movements behind the grass, and actually witnessed the muzzle of Yorky’s Winchester being pushed through the fringe.
A swift glance backward showed him Meena still standing, and he called to her to go down. She shook her head and shrilly shouted to Linda:
“It’s me! Meena! Tell Yorky, Linda. Tell Yorky!”
Meena provided a perfect target. Bony, who was better than average, could see the tip of Yorky’s rifle and knew precisely where the man’s head was in relation to it. The range was only about two hundred yards. The light held. Perspiration ran like rain down his face to wet the stock of his rifle against which his cheek was pressed. If Yorky fired first, Meena or himself would die. If he fired first, curtains for Yorky. Instinct drove him to pull the trigger; training commanded him to wait.