1
The house was eleven years old when Adam bought it. It was a project home the design of which was perfectly suited for the slope it was built on. It reminded Adam of some of the ski lodges he had stayed in, years before, when he was down in Perisher with his student mates. It sat on the side of one of the most beautiful coastal valleys on Earth and faced south, looking down a long line of headlands and beaches, elegantly elevated two hundred and fifty feet above sea level. It was split-level with four bedrooms and a bathroom on the top level, and the living area, the dining area and the kitchen on the lower level. The whole front of the house was basically glass. Two sliding doors opened onto the hand-railed, timber deck out in front, one from the dining area and the other from the living. At the back of the house the bedrooms all opened up, through sliding doors, onto a spacious, wooden back veranda. The veranda had a translucent, Alsynite roof, which made it a great place on rainy days. The back was really the warm, sunny side.
It tended to be warmer, as well, because it was sheltered from the cold, blustery southerlies that buffeted the more exposed front of the house. The backyard was a small lawn on a moderate slope. The garage, sitting in the right-rear corner of the backyard, and set into the hill, was one of those build-it-yourself, tin shed types, with a Rolla Door.
It was painted a near-invisible, matt-green colour and fitted the Charger like a glove.
Liberty’s van lived under the carport, next to the house, exposed to the corrosive salty air.
The property was only fenced on its eastern side. The neighbouring block of land, on the western side, was vacant, creating the feeling that they were living on a much larger property. The whole space around them was filled with tall eucalypts. From the front of the house there was the amphitheatre view, but from the rear, the hill rose steeply to six hundred feet. In the middle of winter, the sun wouldn’t appear from behind the hill until ten o’clock. Adam used to joke about the freezing mornings in the kitchen. His favourite quip was,
‘It was so bloody cold in the kitchen this morning that I had to open up the fridge just to warm the place up a bit.’
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2
She surfed the beach every day and managed to drag him out on a regular basis.
There was no doubt that she was the shining light of surfing in his life. She kept it alive for him. She watched the surf from the house and constantly picked off the quality conditions. She knew the tide, the wind and the swell at all times.
During their evenings, after they had finished their dinner, they enjoyed long conversations on the front veranda. They both agreed that young Ben, gestating in her womb, had made a lot of decisions for them already. They talked about her business in California. She told him that she was happy to give her half to Jamie, which she could sell to someone else if she wanted to.
‘But won’t you miss California?’ he asked.
‘How could I?’ she replied. ‘Just look around, this is the new California. It’s like California was fifty years ago, before they all went mad.’
They resolved that the easiest way to get around an Australian residency visa for her, and make Ben legitimate, was to just get married.
He sat next to her, held her hand in his, looked deeply into her misty eyes and said softly,
‘Darling, I know that I’m not the best looking ….’
‘Stop it, you are.’
‘And darling, it’s my fault that I got you into this unexpected …’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘But baby, you know that I can’t imagine living …’
‘Me either.’
‘And I know that marriage wrecks a lot of …’
‘Not ours.’
‘But despite all that, darling, will you marry me?’
She kissed his lips and hugged him and told him how it all felt like a childhood dream coming true.
Later, after a prolonged interval of passion, and a brief cool down, she revealed to him that she was actually, amazingly, quite ‘independently financial’. It turned out that her uncle, the one who disappeared with her dad, was a wealthy property owner. She said that she was the beneficiary of a testamentary trust he had outlined in his will. She said that they had to wait seven years before they declared her uncle officially deceased. That
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was about two years before. She said that the money helped her and Jamie start up the dog-management business. She said that she could draw money out as she needed it.
‘But I don’t like to abuse it, Adam.’
‘Boy, beautiful and rich.’
‘ You make me rich, sweetheart.’
He spoke to her about his profession, never mentioning his Nitrous Oxide addiction.
He talked about his university days and his five-and-a-half years in the city.
‘I still can’t imagine you working and living in the city,’ she said, shaking her head.
Suddenly, right in the middle of her sentence, he got the idea that instead of looking for a job, maybe he should look for a place to set up another practice and go into business for himself again. After all, he already knew how to run a business.
A few days later, they set out on a reconnaissance, driving south along the winding, coast road. They stopped in a small beach town, about fifteen kilometres south of Stanwell Park, and walked into an old-fashioned real estate agency where they heard about a newsagent that was planning to relocate.
‘Yes, sir, I know the landlady and she’s looking for a dentist or a doctor to take the newsagent’s place.’
‘Can we look at it?’
‘Yes, sir, just walk down the main street and take the first left. The newsagent is right there, but would you mind not saying anything to him please.’
‘Oh no, we’ll just look.’
‘Or maybe we’ll buy a paper,’ Liberty added.
At the back of the newsagency, pretending to browse through magazines, Adam whispered,
‘This is unbelievable, Libby, it’s absolutely perfect.’
That afternoon, Adam called his old bank.
‘I found a good location, George. I think it should go well because there is only one other old dentist in town and I heard that he can’t wait for someone to show up to take some of the load off his shoulders. I’m going to need a bit of a loan to set up, though.’
By the beginning of March, 1980, Adam had measured everything, drawn up the scale plans, organised the team of tradesmen and equipment specialists and got them all together at the new premises so they could synchronise their activities.
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Liberty got involved with making up lists of things to do, ticking them off after they had been done. She designed the letterheads and cards and organised the printing. He hassled with the registration, the council and the details of the surgery fit-out. A Nitrous Oxide machine crossed his mind, but he thought,
‘I can’t go around that merry-go-round again. I wouldn’t mind things being a bit less intense for a while.’
That was the end of it. He never thought about it again.
3
During the construction of the new surgery, Adam and Liberty took a drive up to Sydney’s north shore to introduce her to his parents who were visibly dumbstruck when they first saw her. She was a vision wearing a light, summer dress and sandals. His dad couldn’t stop staring at her until his mum gave him an elbow in the ribs and told him to go help her with the coffees in the kitchen.
‘What’s the matter with you? Did you have a stroke? I thought you were going to start drooling.’
‘Why don’t you look at something else, eh?’
‘She is so beautiful.’
‘He could get arrested. She must still be in school.’
‘Adam told me she was nineteen.’
‘There must be a streak of insanity in her family. What could she possibly see in him?’
‘Plenty, plenty, he’s my beautiful boy.’
‘It won’t last. She’ll open her eyes one day.’
After they brought out the coffee and cake, and sat down again, Adam’s dad continued the conversation.
‘So, now you’re going to work in the country, with the peasants and farmers.’
‘You had such a nice business in the city, Adam,’ said his mum. ‘We were shocked when you sold it.’
‘Just when it looked like they were going to let you stay a dentist,’ said his dad sarcastically.
‘When are you going to cut your hair, Adam? You look like a hippy,’ said his mum.
Then she looked at Liberty pleadingly. ‘Please, Liberty, can you make him cut his hair and buy some new clothes? He’s a professional dentist.’
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‘Professional, hah!’ retorted the father. ‘Farmer boy! He’s become a farmer boy. I think you have to go back four generations in our family before you’ll find the last farmer boy.’
His parents switched to politics while he and Libby politely listened.
‘You don’t vote Labor, do you, Adam?’
‘Of course he votes Labor, he’s a communist.’
‘You’re not a communist, are you Adam?’
‘I remember those bastards well. You know, Liberty, communism is what happens when the criminals get into government. Everything you owned was taken from you by the government. Then they rented you your house back and told you that you were lucky to get it at all. If you were rich, they took all your money and moved into your house themselves. If you complained, they threw you in jail.’
‘Or shot you!’ added Adam’s mum.
‘There were no elections, there was no private business and there was no contact with the outside world. Everyone worked for the government for cheap wages, became lazy, afraid, poor and depressed, while the criminals lived like princes, drunk with power, but their hands were dripping with the blood of their own people.’
Liberty joined the discussion.
‘It sounds like a whole other world.’
‘I know, Liberty, but Adam’s father and I lived through it, even Adam, but he was too young to understand.’
Adam steered the conversation into another direction.
‘You know, father and mother, Liberty and I have some big news.’
They both smiled at his parents. There was a pause.
‘I know that Libby and I haven’t known each other for long. How long has it been, darling?’
‘We met on Christmas Day.’
‘What’s that, three months? I just know that it has been the happiest three months of my life and mum, dad, me and Libby, we’re hoping … to … to … to get married … with your blessing.’
For a few moments they were all struck speechless. Eventually, Adam’s mum broke the stunned silence. She suddenly raised her hands above her head and exclaimed,
‘My dreams, my hopes, my prayers have all been answered.’
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She looked up at the ceiling like a heavenly light had just burst through it, held her hands up in prayer and cried,
‘Thank you, God!’
After initially being lost for words, his father quickly returned to form.
‘It looks like your mother might be right; you might not be a homosexual after all.
Me? I just say that we will see where that dog is really sticking his paw.’
Adam’s mum couldn’t help throwing in,
‘I was going to kill myself if you turned out to be a homosexual, Adam. I couldn’t face the world … and your father … aghhhhh!’
Adam and Liberty looked at each other as his mum suddenly stopped talking, mid-sentence, and looked at everybody as though she’d just woken up. There was another short pause in the conversation. She then asked them both,
‘Are you both sure?’
They replied in unison,
‘We’re positive.’
They all rose from their seats and started hugging and shaking hands. Adam’s mum looked at Liberty, held both her hands in hers and asked,
‘Do you love my son?’
‘I love him with all my heart. I want to be with him and I want to take care of him.’
Adam’s dad butted in,
‘You’ll get over it.’
‘She’s not marrying you,’ retorted his mum. ‘She’d get over that!’
‘Do you realise, son, that once there is a woman in your life you are no longer a free man. You have to do what you are told.’
‘Oh, shut up, you. He thinks that everybody likes the sound of his voice as much as he does.’
Suddenly everyone was overcome with joy. Adam and his dad talked about his dad’s favourite subject, UFOs, while Libby and Adam’s mum talked about Adam. Liberty said that she hoped for a small, intimate wedding with just some close friends. Adam’s parents offered their house for the reception and his dad insisted that he ‘take care’ of all the bills.
All in all, things were looking pretty good. Later in the evening, his mum pulled Adam aside and whispered to him,
‘Your father always said you were a lucky boy.’
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4
Four weeks later, they opened the new surgery. Due to the fact that Liberty never left Adam’s side, she ended up becoming his receptionist. He taught her himself.
‘Darling, it’s easy. There’s the phone, the appointment book, the patients’ cards and the bills. We just keep the receipts and cheque butts and that’s all there is to running this business.’
Unbeknownst to Adam, Liberty had already done some preparation of her own.
About a week before the surgery was finished, she went for a walk up the main street to visit the old dentist’s practice and introduce herself. When she got there, she noticed how neat and clean everything was. She glanced across the empty, receptionist’s desk and admired the organised paperwork, the electric typewriter and the way the pens and staplers and things were all neatly placed into their own groups. Finally, a middle-aged lady, looking very prim, walked out of one of the surgeries. She was the receptionist.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh hi, my name is Liberty. I’m with Adam and we’re the ones opening the new dental surgery in town.’
The receptionist smiled and introduced herself as Rose.
‘We’re so glad to see you. The doctor’s just about to blow a gasket. You’ve missed him though, he’s out to lunch.’
‘Oh, that’s a shame. When do you expect him back?’
‘Ahh, he likes his counter lunches at the pub. Sometimes he doesn’t even come back.
He calls it his balancer. He reckons that he really neeeeedsssss ………….. hiiiiiiiiiiiis
………………. baaaaaaaaalaaaaaaa …….’
Rose appeared to just go to sleep mid-sentence. Liberty quickly locked the front door and positioned herself directly behind the sleeping receptionist. She gently placed her hands on top of Rose’s head, closed her eyes and made a barely-audible, low sound, like humming.
‘Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …’
After less than fifteen seconds, she lifted her hands off Rose’s head, walked to the door and unlocked it. She then returned to the spot she stood in originally. Rose suddenly woke up speaking, beginning mid-sentence.
‘… needs his balancer. Poor old guy, he’ll be so happy to see you.’
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‘I’m sorry I missed him, Rose, but I’ll come around again real soon. I might have to pick your brain about a few things.’
‘Sure, anytime, Liberty, any way I can help. I’ll tell him you called in if he comes back from lunch. You can always catch him in the mornings.’
‘Bye, Rose.’
Liberty walked out of that office with twenty years of office-management and chairside-assisting experience. Adam was amazed at how quickly she picked up the dental language and how she went out and bought a new electric typewriter, copier, calculator and fax machine. Their correspondence was something to behold, meticulously typed on the intricately-artworked, letterhead paper. In the surgery, he commented on her assisting,
‘Darling, you do this like you’ve been doing it for years. Are you sure you’ve never done any dental nursing before?’
‘No, hunkster, you just inspire me to do great things.’
They both wore their surgical masks while they worked. One day, when there was no one in the surgery, she made a comment about his mask.
‘That mask makes me want to just rip all your clothes off and attack you right here and now.’
‘But baby, we could damage some equipment …’
‘The way it hides your face, except for your eyes, ooooh, I can’t stop thinking about sex.’
‘But darling, we have to be professional in here. What would people think? Baby, what are you doing? What if someone walks in? We should lock the door.’
‘Yeah, and put the back in an hour sign up.’
‘But sweetheart, this is no way to run a business … do I ever tell you how I never tire of seeing that incredible body of yours?’
‘I can’t remember. Come here you.’
5
Glenn and Aureole occasionally came down for a visit after a day of flying.
Sometimes they stayed overnight if the flying was going to be good the next day. They all enjoyed long evenings on the veranda, dining alfresco and lost in conversation. As a consequence of the visits, Aureole and Liberty became very good friends. One time, in the
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park, while packing up their gliders and watching the girls kick a soccer ball around the oval, Glenn commented to Adam,
‘Look at them, Adam, they look like two angels, like they’re from another world.
They are just so gorgeous.’
At nights, when Adam was asleep next to her, Liberty closed her eyes and began to breathe smoothly. She slid into her trance and entered the mind plane. There she merged with her mother and father and her darling older brother. They became aware of her successful pregnancy and the coming wedding. She shared realities of all the people she had met, especially plenty of Adam. Her family were delighted. They shared her emotions, her true love for Adam and her commitment to her mission.
It was rare for a telepathic traveller to fall in love with a non-telepathic human being from another planet, but it happened occasionally. There was one chance in four for an offspring from such a union to be fully telepathic and two chances in four for it to be partially telepathic. The part-telepathics were the problem as they were considered retarded in the telepathic community and schizophrenic in the non-telepathic community. The telepathic mother usually knew, within a few days of conception, if the embryo was healthy and fully telepathic. If the embryo was not fully telepathic, she aborted it immediately with just a loving thought. It was because of this ability that telepathic women were the only ones that chose to conceive children on other, non-telepathic planets, and it was precisely for the lack of this ability that telepathic men chose not to take the risk. This is also the reason that there were no babies born on Rama with any kind of congenital diseases or defects.
When the hybrid, telepathic child was born on a foreign planet, there were necessary protocols to be followed in regards to their education. Also, at all times, there existed the requirement to keep the child’s telepathic ability a total secret, even from the father.
6
A month later, Adam and Liberty got married. His mum and dad organised the most beautiful wedding for them. His mum baked the wedding cake and prepared some of the food. They organised catering for the rest. They only ended up having a small group of guests, just their closest friends, but it was the happiest of weddings for everyone that was there.
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The dental practice thrived as Liberty’s tummy grew. Adam became very caring and protective of her. By the time she was six months pregnant, the old dentist in town decided to close up shop and retire. It turned out that Adam acquired the old guy’s patients by default, as well as Rose, who joined the practice to replace Liberty due to the imminent arrival of Ben. The first thing Rose said when she began work was,
‘Libby, I just can’t believe how you have set this place up. It’s like I did it myself.
Everything is exactly, I mean exactly, how I would have done it, even down to my favourite pen.’
‘So, you think I did OK, Rose, considering that I am just a novice.’
Rose ran her hand over the reception desk and replied,
‘It’s perfect, Libby, just perfect.’
7
Around about that time, one Saturday morning while Liberty was in Sydney shopping and lunching with Aureole, Adam had a rummage around his garage, looking for something, when he came across his journal. He remembered that he had hidden it there when he moved in. He sat down on a small box and started flicking through the pages. He opened his last entry, on Friday, September 28, 1979, and read it. He thought to himself,
‘Wow, it’s hard to believe that it was only nine months ago. It’s like I’m in a completely different life now.’
He flipped through some more pages and read some of the entries and thought again,
‘Man, what a time that was, but I wouldn’t want to go through it again. Jees, when you read it back it really sounds suspect. If you weren’t there, you’d have to think that the person that wrote this stuff was totally nuts.’
He kept turning the pages, becoming more and more concerned about someone finding and reading his notes.
‘There is no way that anybody can see this, and what good would it do anyway? It wouldn’t be very good for me. Look at this stuff. On one hand it’s precious, on another it’s dangerous, and on another still, it’s probably meant to be secret, so nobody should ever read it. It’s just meant for me, to remind me of what happened. But I can remember what happened. I can’t imagine Libby finding this. She thinks she married a completely different
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person to the one that wrote this stuff. I don’t want to open that part of myself to her. I don’t want her to have to deal with any of this.’
He closed the journal and looked out through the open garage door. After thinking about it for a while, he went into the kitchen and picked up a lighter. He then walked down to the front section of his yard. There was a clearing there where he had a small circle of stones set up as a fireplace. He needed to burn off dead twigs and branches on a regular basis and that was where he used to do it. He sat next to the fireplace, flipped the pages of the journal with his thumb and thought,
‘I’m sending you back to where you came from. These trips, in these pages, can be made more perfect. Does not a perfect journey leave no tracks? I know what needs to be done. I have to let go of the past and make space for the future.’
He began tearing out the pages, one by one, from the back to the front. As he glanced at each page, before he scrunched it up and threw it into the fire, he flashed on the experience described on it. He fell into a nostalgic melancholy as he watched his past life go up in flames, page by page. As he neared the front of the journal, he began to feel a new lightness, as if a burden was being lifted off his shoulders. Finally, he came to the first page. It began,
Sunday, December 26, 1976. 10.00am. I’m doing this all alone now. There’s no Nancy to talk to …
He remembered Nancy. He thought it fitting that the page with her name on it should be the last to go in the fire. Their time together seemed like another life away, and his heart, well, it felt different now, now that there was Libby. As he threw the empty hard covers into the fire, he lay down on the lawn beside it and savoured the feeling of release.
He thought,
‘That’s it. The whole thing is gone from the Earth. It’s all gone. What a relief. All that is left are my memories. It’s finally finished.’
As he watched the wisps of smoke rise into the sky, he noticed the local sea eagle come gliding over from the centre of the valley and begin circling above him. In amazement he watched the eagle soar the warm air rising from the fire, and for a while there, he thought that the bird was watching him. He thought to himself as he lay there,
‘I just want to have a normal life, that’s all. Nothing big needs to happen … happy with the little things.’
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8
A few months earlier, as she sat on the hill watching Adam flying, Liberty spotted the local sea eagle soaring the east face of the escarpment. She focussed on the bird and employed a special skill, which was known by some telepaths. It was the ability to control the mind of a bird in a most intimate way. She had the ability to establish a mind thread with a chosen bird and merge with its consciousness. Back on Rama, she and her friends used to go eagle flying. They all met on the summit of a high mountain and sat down together in a circle. They then each chose one, huge, mountain eagle that soared the peaks there and telepathically merged with it and began to experience its consciousness. They then began to control the eagle’s movements as though they were their own. The experience was totally real. Sitting huddled together, all in a trance, they transformed themselves, in their own minds, into mountain eagles. The eagles on the other hand, although very intelligent, nonetheless remained completely oblivious to the fact that someone else was controlling their flight. They all occasionally executed flyovers of themselves, and saw themselves, sitting on the mountaintop, through the eagles’ eyes.
Interestingly, the Rama, as well as other telepathic beings, not all completely human, liked to do the same thing with other animals as well. Liberty actually knew some telepaths who loved to hunt wild game as lions or tigers, or any one of a number of other wild predators.
It is important to note here that learning a skill such as telepathically flying an eagle was at least seven times more difficult as, say, learning to fly an aeroplane on Earth. Also, not all telepaths had an interest in it.
9
Liberty stopped on top of Bald Hill on her way home from her day out with Aureole.
She stepped out of the car and walked to the edge of the hill and thought to herself,
‘I can never tire of this view … oh? What is that smoke? It looks like it’s coming from the front of our house.’
She looked to the north trying to locate the local sea eagle. She spotted it soaring a warm-air bubble a couple of hundred yards along the east face of the escarpment. She sat on the grass, on the point of the hill, and closed her eyes. Almost immediately, the eagle left the thermal and turned towards the valley. It glided around in a big semi-circle and headed towards the plume of white smoke. It found the marginal lift above the fire and
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proceeded to fly small circles around it, just managing to maintain its altitude without having to flap its wings.
Her heart sang as she saw Adam lying next to the fire. She could see that he was watching her circling above him. She gave him a couple of loving screeches and flew back out into the valley. The afternoon was almost completely calm.
He watched the eagle climb to about a thousand feet, right in the middle of the valley. He then saw it pull in its wings and plummet like a stone in a five-hundred-foot freefall. It then spread its wings and pitched up into a massive full loop. Coming out of the loop, it retracted its wings again for another hundred feet and then again pulled up into a completely vertical climb. Right at the point of zero velocity, at the top of the climb, the eagle suddenly collapsed into what to Adam looked like an epileptic fit. It fell out of the sky like it had been wounded, tumbling and spinning. Then, about two hundred feet above the ground, it regained control and flew back over to him. It screeched a couple of times as it swooshed over his head and then flew off.
Liberty arrived home a few minutes later. She greeted Adam and asked him about the fire.
‘Oh, I just burned off some old deadwood lying around the place, darling,’ he fibbed,
‘but you should have seen this eagle …’
She put her hand on her tummy.
‘He’s been kicking again today. Here, you want to feel?’
Adam placed his hand over hers.
‘Oh yeah, darling, ooh, it feels so strange. I wonder if he knows what a beautiful mum he has?’
‘And dad.’
10
Ben was born in Southerland hospital at ten in the morning on a sunny spring day in late October, 1980. No one at the hospital could believe the way Liberty handled the labour and the birth. She had a completely natural birth with no medications whatsoever.
The doctor said that he had never delivered a baby from such a relaxed mother. The same could not, however, be said about the father, and you could multiply that by ten for the grandparents. Everyone at the maternity ward was amazed at how calmly and peacefully Ben was born. He did not cry at all. In fact, he came into the world with his eyes open, smiling at his mum when they first made eye contact.
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Adam took a couple of weeks off from work while Ben settled into the house. Rose kept the surgery open and read a good book.
The next two weeks were like the best two weeks of their lives. For the first time, since he was a kid with his parents, Adam felt like a family again. The days were sunny and warm, heralding the approach of summer. Liberty loved to lie naked on a blanket, that was spread out in the sun on the front lawn, and breast-feed with the little tyke sprawled out over her belly. One such afternoon, Adam lay down next to her and made a curious observation.
‘You know, darling, I can’t remember ever hearing him cry.’
‘I know, he’s such a contented little critter. I think it’s because of his dad.’
‘Oh, Lib, look at you both lying there in the sun. My family. I love you both so much.’
He leaned over and kissed her lips, then the top of Ben’s little, round head.
‘So far so good, Lib, so far so good.’
She replied softly,
‘So far so good, Adam.’
Adam cooked, shopped, cleaned, mowed, played with Ben and generally wallowed in domestic bliss. In the evenings, after Ben was put to bed, an occasional friend came over for an evening visit.
Now that Zeke was getting around a bit better, he started to drop in from time to time. The first time Libby met him was just before the wedding. It was on a balmy, autumn night when Glenn and Aureole were visiting. There was a knock on the door. Adam opened it and there he was, the big guy. Aureole reacted with the most enthusiasm.
‘Ziki, Ziki, you are so much better.’
Adam introduced Zeke to Liberty. She looked up at him, he looked down at her, they shook hands and their eyes met. She knew immediately. It took every ounce of self-control she possessed to conceal her surprise at realising that Zeke was a part-telepathic hybrid. She looked deeply into his bright-blue, almost iridescent eye. It was just a shade of those of a full telepath, like her, but nonetheless unmistakable. The full brilliance of her own emerald pools was intentionally subdued by the tinted, contact lenses permanently shading her irises.
‘Zeke, I’ve heard so much about you from so many people. I feel like I know you already.’
‘Libby, you’re even more good lookin than everybody says.’
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Glenn joked,
‘Watch out, Adam, I think he’s got his eye on her.’
Adam replied laughingly,
‘I better, she’s got a thing for eye patches.’
‘Don’t believe anything he says, Glenn.’
Zeke brought out some home-grown, Adam made some tea and snacks and they all spent a happy evening together, listening to music and lost in conversation.
Liberty looked through Zeke as though he was made of glass. She saw a kind and honourable heart. She also saw a man waging a heroic, private, inner battle with schizophrenia. If the mind plane could be imagined as a boxing gym, then Zeke was the punching bag in that gym. But then she saw his inner strength and courage. She realized that this was no ordinary, part-telepathic schizo. She could see that he cleverly philosophised his way around all his bizarre experiences. For her, though, the one outstanding thing about him was that she couldn’t see an ounce of fear in him. She couldn’t even imagine herself existing with retarded telepathic ability. ‘It would have to be so frightening,’ she thought to herself. She felt her heart reach out to him as she thought,
‘The poor guy, and to top it all off, his body’s been all broken as well.’
About six months had passed since that first encounter with Zeke. After a few visits, Liberty realised that anything that Zeke picked up from the mind plane was so scrambled that it was impossible for him to make any sense of it. She thought it unlikely that he would ever come to suspect her true identity. She thought about ways that she could help him and she wondered if there was any chance that his dad may have been a telepathic traveller or whether maybe Zeke was just an ultra-rare, natural mutation. One night, when he was over for dinner, she asked him,
‘Zeke, do you see much of your mom and dad?’
‘Oh, a bit.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘Cronulla, not far from the point. Have you ever surfed Cronulla Point?’
‘No, but I love point waves. So, you grew up in Cronulla?’
‘Yeah, with mum an dad. Actually, not me real dad. Mum told me that me real dad just disappeared before I was born. But I’ve got a great stepdad. He was the one who taught me how to surf.’
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Liberty thought that if his dad was from another planet, he could have come from an uncountable number of them. She knew that all telepaths practiced stealth on non-telepathic planets. She could see now how necessary that was. Also, it was becoming obvious to her that some of the visiting males were not as careful with pregnancies as they should have been.
‘But that is the way of the universe,’ she philosophised to herself, ‘and boys will always be boys. They just can’t keep their pants on.’ Then she looked at Adam and smiled to herself, ‘and thank God for that.’
After dinner, Zeke asked if he could choose a record. After a period of rummaging through Adam’s extensive collection, largely courtesy of Nancy, he finally chose one. The mellow rhythms of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks again gently oozed out of the giant, Altec Stonehenge Threes. Adam and Zeke sat outside while Liberty quickly slipped upstairs to check on Ben. Adam began the conversation.
‘This music takes me back, Zeke, to a small veranda overlooking Rose Bay … but that was in another life.’
There was a short silence between them, then Adam continued,
‘Look at all the stars. Don’t you ever wish that you could travel to all the stars?’
‘You wanna be careful what you wish for, mate, it might come true. I knew this bloke once who told me a story about a bloke who wished for a million bucks. One day he went out an got run over by a government bus an ended up becomin a paraplegic. The government paid him a million bucks in compo an put him on a pension.’
‘Jees, Zeke.’
Not long after that, Libby came out with her gold container and little white pipe and sat down with the boys.
‘We were just saying, Lib, how amazing it would be to be able to fly to the stars.’
She looked up at the starry, night sky and commented,
‘You can barely see the Andromeda constellation from this hemisphere. I could see it easily from California.’
‘That’s where our neighbouring galaxy is, isn’t it?’ Adam enquired.
‘Yeah, two-million light years away,’ answered Zeke. ‘Can you even imagine how far away that is?’
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‘Distance has always got to be considered with how fast you can get there,’ Liberty postulated. ‘If you measure it against the speed of a photon and the lifespan of an Earth human, then it’s really far away.’
Both of the boys just looked at her, slightly stunned, then Zeke asked her,
‘Are you into this sort of stuff?’
She handed him her loaded, white ceramic pipe and casually replied,
‘Oh, you know, no more than your average space cadet.’
‘We talked about this, Zeke. He’s into … do you mind me telling her?’
‘Naah, go ahead.’
‘Zeke’s got this theory about gravity and what causes it and he reckons that when you’ve figured that out, you can make an anti …’
‘A gravity sail,’ interjected Zeke.
Liberty couldn’t believe her ears. She asked,
‘And what would you do with this gravity sail?’
‘Not what you think. You probably think, fly off to the stars, but you’d have to know what you were doin before you could do stuff like that. Me, I’d just keep it simple.’
‘Ooooooh,’ she responded, ‘now you’ve really stirred my curiosity.’
‘Once I figured out how to make a G-sail, I’d make a real small one, maybe no bigger than a matchbox, I reckon, then I’d strap it on me back. I’d have a control in me hand.’ He held out his hand. ‘It would control how much gravity the sail engaged, like pullin the mainsheet of a boat sail. Then I’d go down the snow, somewhere real flat, an clip on a pair of skis an get pushed around by me G-sail.’
‘Hello, Zeke’s back,’ commented Adam in jest. Zeke continued,
‘I’d also start workin on a shaft turner, to run a generator, to get free electricity, eventually as much as I wanted. I could disconnect from the power grid. I could pump me own water from the creek. Hell, I could build a machine that made water out of the humidity in the air, an it could run twenty-four-seven. I could build greenhouses an grow me own food in a perfect, artificial environment under lights. I could go completely hydroponic with everythin bein powered by me G-engine, which would be nothin more than a gravity windmill. I’d install a G-sail in the boot of me car an drive around in neutral all day with the motor switched off. I’d have to get new brakes, though.’
‘What about using it for flight?’ Liberty contributed. ‘You might be able to fly with the matchbox gizmo thing on your back?’
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‘Whoah, girlie, you’re gettin ahead of me now.’ Zeke looked at Adam and exclaimed,
‘Where did she come from? I’ve first gotta figure out the sail, an now that I’m finished with hang gliders this is all I wanna do.’
‘What, invent the antigravity machine?’
‘It ain’t anti nothin, Adam. It’s gonna be the G-sail.’
‘I guess that’s what I meant.’
‘It’s the Holy Grail of all inventions. It’s the invention that takes the human race out of the age of darkness, an seein as I’ve got nothin better to do, I might as well do that.’
‘Well, all I can say is, lots of luck, buddy.’
‘Thanks. I might need some help.’
‘Like a test dummy?’
‘Naah, that’s my job.’
Liberty asked Zeke when he intended beginning his project, but before he could answer her, they were all distracted by a very unusual sound. During the short pause in the music, when the turntable stylus was between tracks, all three of them thought that they heard a high-pitched voice calling out the word, ‘daddy’. Adam was the first to respond.
‘Did anybody hear that?’
Zeke also made a comment.
‘Was that on the record?’
‘No way,’ Adam replied. ‘Did you hear that, Lib? Do you think it’s Ben? I’ll just turn the music down for a sec.’
Adam got up, went inside and turned the volume control all the way down. Then they all heard it again, and this time it was definitely coming out of Ben’s bedroom. They heard a tiny little voice calling out,
‘Daddy … daddy.’
Liberty rose from the veranda table.
‘Excuse me, Zeke, I’ll just check on Ben.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Adam.
They went up to Ben’s bedroom door and looked inside. When the tiny, little boy saw his parents, he smiled, his little face lighting up like the sun. Then he spoke again,
‘Daddy, mummy.’
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Adam’s eyebrows hit the ceiling and his jaw hit the floor. Liberty, on the other hand, had to fake her surprise. He asked her,
‘Are kids supposed to talk at four weeks, darling?’
‘Daddy, daddy.’
‘I don’t know, but you better give him a hug, daddy. Look, he’s got his little arms up.
He wants a cuddle from his daddy.’
…….
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