around that fish-swallowing-fish-swallowing-fish opera house they have out on Bennelong Point overlooking the harbor. I left town with a limp and a reprimand. Flew to Alice Springs. Picked up the air scooter I had ordered. Took off in the early morning before the full heat of day and light of reason made their respective ways into the world. The countryside struck me as a good place to send trainee saints to get what was coming to them. It took several hours to locate the site and a few more to dig in and set things up. I did not anticipate a long stay.
There are carvings on the cliff walls, quite old, covering around 1,600 square feet. The aborigines in the area disclaim any knowledge of their origin or purpose. I had seen photographs, but I had wanted to view the real thing, try some shots of my own, take rubbings and do a little digging around.
I got into the shade of my shelter, sipped sodas and tried to think cool thoughts as I regarded the work on the rock. While I seldom indulge in graffiti, verbal or pre-, I have always felt something of empathy for those who scale walls and make their marks on them. The farther back you go, the more interesting the act becomes. Now it may be true, as some have claimed, that the impulse was first felt in the troglodytic equivalent of the john and that cave drawings got started this way, as a kind of pictorial sublimation of an even more primitive evolutionary means of marking one's territory. Nevertheless, when somebody started climbing around on walls and mountainsides to do it, it seems pretty obvious that it had grown from a pastime into an art form. I have often thought of that first guy with a mastodon in his head, staring at a cliff face or cave wall, and I have wondered what it was that set him suddenly to climbing and scraping away-what it felt like. Also, what the public's reaction was. Perhaps they made sufficient holes in him to insure the egress of the spirits behind it all. Or perhaps the bold initiative involved was present in greater abundance then, awaiting only the proper stimulus, and a bizarre response was considered as common as the wriggling of one's ears. Impossible to say. Difficult not to care.
Whatever, I took photographs that afternoon, dug holes that evening and the following morning. Spent most of the second day taking rubbings and more photos. Continued my base trench at daysend, coming across what seemed the pieces of a blunted stone chisel. Nothing quite that interesting turned up the next morning, though I kept at the digging long past the hour I had marked for quitting.
I retired to the shade then to nurse blisters and restore my balance of liquids while I wrote up the day's doings to that point along with some fresh thoughts that had occurred to me concerning the entire enterprise. I broke for lunch around one o'clock and doodled in my notebook again for a time afterward.
It was a little after three when a skycar passed overhead, then turned back, descending. This troubled me a bit, as I had absolutely no official authorization for what I was doing. On some piece of paper, card, tape, or all of these, somewhere, I was listed as 'tourist.' I had no idea whether a permit was required for what I was about, though I strongly suspected this. Time means a lot to me, paperwork wastes it, and I have always been a firm believer in my right to do anything I cannot be stopped from doing. Which sometimes entails not getting caught at it This is not quite so bad as it sounds, as I am a decent, civilized, likable guy. So, shading my eyes against the blue and fiery afternoon, I began searching for ways to convince the authorities of this. Lying, I decided, was probably best.
It came to earth and two men alit. Their appearance was not what I would ordinarily consider official, but allowance for custom and circumstance is always in order and I rose to meet them. The first man was around my height-that is, a little under six feet-but heavily built and beginning work on a paunch. His hair and eyes were light, he had a mild sunburn and was slick with sweat. His companion was a couple of inches taller, a couple of shades darker and brushed an unruly strand of dark brown hair back from his forehead as he advanced. He was lean and fit-looking. Both wore city shoes rather than boots, and their lack of head protection in that heat struck me as peculiar.
'You Fred Cassidy?' said the first man, coming to within a few paces of me and turning away to regard the wall and my trench.
'Yes,' I said, 'I am.'
He produced a surprisingly delicate handkerchief and patted his face with it.
'Find what you were looking for?' he asked.
'Wasn't looking for anything special,' I said.
He chuckled. 'Seems as if you did an awful lot of work, looking for nothing.'
'That's just an exploratory trench,' I said.
'Why are you exploring?'
'How about telling me who are and why you want to know?' I said.
He ignored my question and went over to the trench. He paced along its length, stooping a couple of times and peering down into it. While he was doing this, the other man walked over to my shelter. I called out as he reached for my knapsack, but he opened it and dumped it anyway.
He was into my shaving kit by the time I got to him. I took hold of his arm, but he jerked it away. When I tried again, he pushed me back and I stumbled. Before I hit the ground, I had decided that they were not cops.
Rather than getting up for the next performance, I kicked out from where I lay and raked him across the shins with the heel of my boot. It was not quite as spectacular as the time I had kicked Paul Byler in the groin but was more than sufficient for my purposes. I scrambled to my feet then and caught him on the chin with a hard left. He collapsed and did not move. Not bad for one punch. If I could do it without a rock in my hand I'd be a holy terror.
My triumph lasted all of a pair of seconds. Then a sack of cannonballs was dropped on my back, or so it seemed. I was clipped from behind and borne to the ground in a very unsportsmanlike fashion. The heavyset one was much faster than his appearance had led me to believe, and as he twisted my arm up behind my back and caught hold of my hair I began to realize that little, if any, of his bulk was of the non-functional, fatty variety. Even that central-bulge was a curbstone.
'All right, Fred. I guess it's time to have our talk,' he said.
Stardance ...
Lying there, with my abrasions, contusions, aches and confusions, I decided that Professor Merimee had come very near that still, cold center of things where definition lurks. Absurd indeed was the manner in which a dead hand was extended to give me the finger.
Lying there, cursing subvocally as I retraced my route to the moment, I became peripherally aware of a small, dark, furry form moving along my southern boundary, pausing, staring, moving again. Doubtless something carnivorous, I decided. I fought with a shudder, transformed it into a shrug. There was no point in calling out. None whatsoever. But there could be a small measure of triumph to going out this way.
So I tried to cultivate stoicism while straining after a better view of the beast. It touched my right leg and I jerked convulsively, but there was no pain. After a time, it moved over to my left. Had it just eaten my numbed foot? I wondered. Had it enjoyed it?
Moments later it turned again, advancing upward along my left side, and I finally got a better look at it. I saw a stupid-looking little marsupial that I recognized as a wombat, harmless-seeming and apparently curious, hardly lusting after my extremities. I sighed and felt some of the tension go out of me. It was welcome to sniff around all it cared to. When you are going to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
I thought back to the weight and the twisting of my arm, as the heavy man, ignoring his fallen companion, had sat upon me and said, 'All that I really want of you is the stone. Where is it?'
'Stone?' I had said, making the mistake of adding the question mark.
The pressure on my arm increased.
'Byler's stone,' he said. 'You know the one I mean.'
'Yes, I do!' I agreed. 'Let up, will you? It's no secret what happened. I'll tell you all about it.'
'Go ahead,' be said, easing up a fraction.
So I told him about the facsimile and how we had come by it. I told him everything I knew about the damned thing.
As I feared, he did not believe a word I said. Worse yet, his partner recovered while I was talking. He was also of the opinion that I was lying, and he voted to continue the questioning.
This was done, and at one point many red and electric minutes later, as they paused to massage their knuckles and catch their breath, the tall one said to the heavy one, 'Sounds pretty much like what he told Byler.'
'Like what Byler said he told him,' the other corrected.
