extreme.
So we thought. Afterwards, we saw how they had managed to
hinder us until a couple of small outrushes became walls of flame racing over the grass. It reached the eastern perimeter hedge, moving so fast that one of my gardeners, who was coming on duty and taking a
short cut from the guardhouse, was caught by it as he ran.
It hit the eucalypts round the guardhouse and they exploded the
way they do when the sap catches. The guardhouse went up and the
whole of the perimeter hedge on that side. The power to the concealed
fence was cut as the terminals melted free and the whole security system was exposed. It was easy to penetrate when you could see it.
There was an offiduty soldier in the guardhouse, sleeping; he burned
alive. The fire leapt the road and raged into the tinderbox pasture
round the Tebbutt homestead and burned his small herd of tortured
cattle before the Country Fire Authority could do more than reach the
scene.
In the middle of it all Young Feller strolled to freedom through the
west perimeter, walking at his leisure.
The other three went into crocodile lamentations, but by this time
we were putting ideas together and they knew it. And mocked us. Not
openly, but the cool contempt was there. They had what they wanted:
one of their num ber out in the world. A vanguard observer of the
savages in habitat. They knew their value; they knew nothing puni
On the nursery floor
175
tive could be done to them. But they were wrong about that.
The staff had long ago stopped loving their charges and now they
hated the young bastards who pretended remorse for the dead men
and the holocaust of cattle. The psychologists said objectiveness was
essential, that the kids were the product of a pragmatism designed into
them, however unwittingly. But they were willing enough when finally
given permission to make an all out assault on the superhuman
minds. They went at them with drugs and sensory probes, trying to
discover what they had made, at the risk of destroying it.
I never found out much about that because I was recalled to barrack
duty.
So why mention it? Why, indeed, when this little carnival of cruelty is n o t a
matter of public record? The thin end of a secret? A sop to lure me on? Hist, I
am observed! Eleven interviews and at last a stirring of the enemy.
Dangerous? Undoubtedly, but I am like Childe Roland, whose road
vanished behind him. Nowhere to go but forward.
C onrad’s feeling for me? There is evidence, but it isn’t really my
story; I didn’t know much about it when Conrad showed how he
thought. You’d do better to ask Jilly, if you can find her. She has a
husband and kids somewhere in the city.
And thus, smoothly, am I directed to the next in line!
4
The farmer’s daughter
Hum an interest, Mister Newshound? Should I tell you to keep your
nose out of my private life? O r should I ask, how much it it worth?
And what makes you think it will be worth anything at all?
Because you are primed to make it worth. Educated, poised, disillusioned
and poor; grateful for a couple of hundred. A lady' who has, as they say, ‘seen
better days’. Heroine moves to window - thirtieth floor - holds drape aside to
gaze pensively over great, heartless city; pauses for me to name a sum. Her
husband looks uncomfortable at the blatant demand but doesn’t protest. Has
his orders from script director. All right, then, a small offer, just to play along.
I suppose you’ve seen Derek, because I never told anyone about
meeting Young Feller. It wouldn’t have helped the hunt. Also, Derek’s
wife had to be considered. I don’t know what my husband will think;
I’ve never told him about it.
176
George Turner
He has been told what to think, Jilly. Out with it, girl!
Did Derek tell you that our homestead was burned out by that filthy
kid? We were lucky not to lose our lives. We lost the herd, which was
all Dad had, and it broke him. T hat’s why —
Nearly let out an unscripted bit then. Something like this: 'That's why I had
to marry, for survival, and why I’ve come to this musty husband in this musty
hole.'
I made a fool of myself over Derek. Masculinity, muscle and Special
Service glamour — and little snippets of information to make me
think myself privy to secrets. And dreams of romantic marriage.
Derek told me no lies; he just failed to mention a wife and a teenage
family.
We used to meet at The Willows. That was a picnic spot at a bend
in the creek at the bottom of our Long Paddock. There were half a
dozen big old trees, weeping almost to the ground; in the heart of them
you could not be seen from the further bank. It was one of the Long-
Drought years and the creek was almost dry, just a trickle, but the trees
were still sturdy and Derek would meet me there of an evening.
When the house was burned out and friends were putting us up, I
made excuses to get away because I needed desperately to see him. I
thought he’d surely propose now that I was literally homeless. So I
went there in the late afternoon, knowing he would come as soon as
he had handed over to the evening watch; there were still a couple of
hours of daylight.
I pushed the long, drooping fronds aside, and
