Vulture's Gate Read online

  Callum laughed. ‘What planet have you been living on, kid?’

  Bo wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh along or pinch him. In awkward silence, they trudged across the plain towards a stretch of nubbly golden scrub. Mr Pinkwhistle had disappeared but they could hear the sound of his whirring growl close by.

  Finally, they found the Daisy-May lying at the bottom of a small gully. Callum let out a whoop of pleasure and scrambled down to crouch beside it. Bo walked along the stony rise, cautiously checking the horizon before she joined him. Mr Pinkwhistle sat on the Daisy-May’s tank, his snout bobbing as a garbled victory cry rattled in his throat.

  Bo squatted beside the bike and ran one hand over its pearly tank. ‘Gosh. Lovely.’

  Tipping her head to one side, she peered at the control panels. She traced her finger over the odometer and positioning devices, trying to get a sense of the machine’s capabilities.

  ‘We’ll never get her started,’ said Callum. ‘I tried and tried, but nothing I did worked. She’s too heavy for us to even lift.’

  Bo concentrated on the bike. Suddenly, her hand found the control she’d been searching for and the Daisy-May sent out a spike into the rocky ground and pushed itself upright.

  ‘There,’ said Bo. ‘Fixed.’

  ‘No way. She’s probably out of juice too,’ said Callum. ‘Getting her upright isn’t going to help if we can’t get her going.’

  ‘Reserve,’ said Bo. She shut her eyes as she tried to remember how to explain herself. ‘One activates the reserve tank in emergencies. It allows one to travel short distances.’

  ‘It can’t be that simple,’ Callum said. He jumped onto the bike, grabbed the handles and gunned the accelerator. Nothing happened. Bo stood watching and tried not to look amused. She sensed it would only irritate him. He glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘What are you looking so smug for?’

  ‘May I?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I need to think about it for a while.’

  Little beads of sweat ran down the side of Callum’s neck as he fiddled with the switches and peered down the side of the bike to see if there was a way to kick-start it. After ten hot, long minutes he slumped in the seat and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘She’s stuffed.’

  Silently, Bo swung one leg in front of the boy, nudging him onto the back seat. Mr Pinkwhistle jumped onto the tank in front. Callum moved as far as he could along the seat, away from both of them.

  ‘Hold tight,’ instructed Bo.

  The Daisy-May roared to life and with a bone-shuddering jolt raced up the side of the gully and onto the gibber plain. The hot desert wind stung their skin and the bike picked up speed so quickly that it was hard to breathe, but Bo loved it. She felt the boy draw closer and slide one arm around her shyly. Bo smiled into the wind.

  8

  THE FIRST CUT

  That evening, Callum sat watching as Bo took a bowl of crushed seed, mixed it into dough, and then buried it among hot coals at the back of the wood-fired oven.

  ‘Aren’t you worried someone will see the smoke?’ he asked.

  Bo smiled. It was a strange pleasure to have someone to talk to who could answer back. ‘One cannot see smoke clearly on moonless nights,’ she replied.

  Callum crossed over to the burrow entrance, checking that the stone door was wedged tightly in place.

  ‘No one is out there,’ said Bo.

  ‘You can’t know that,’ he said.

  ‘We would hear them. Only I know how to cross the minefields.’

  ‘Then how did they kill your Poppy? Was he your dad or your granddad? Or did he buy you? Those green eyes of yours, I’ve only seen them on chimeras. You talk funny too.’

  Bo turned away from the boy. He made her brain feel scrambled. She wondered why, only a moment ago, she had been excited at the idea of conversation. Now she felt anger welling inside her but she didn’t know how to make it take shape.

  ‘It is six months since I spoke to another human,’ she said. ‘The words come, but slowly. Six months since my Poppy died, my grandfather, my blood kin. We were hunting on the edge of the minefield. They came from nowhere. Outriders. One of them died crossing over. One of them murdered Poppy. The murderer did not find me. The walls of Tjukurpa Piti are too thick for Outriders to sense my presence.’

  ‘But they scout this territory, don’t they? Could they force their way through your minefield? Do you have any allies? How can you protect yourself? How can you stop them from attacking?’

  Bo put her hands over her ears. The boy’s questions were like needles.

  ‘If I read you another story, will you stop?’

  Callum looked surprised but he nodded. ‘You have more stories?’

  ‘Only if you have no more questions!’

  ‘I liked that story about the boys who turned into ravens. Do you have another like that?’

  Bo pulled a book from the shelf and settled herself on the sofa with Mr Pinkwhistle on her lap. ‘This is the story of “The Wild Swans”, of Elisa and her eleven brothers.’

  As Bo began to read, Callum drew closer until finally he snuggled down beside her, peering over her shoulder to see the pictures of Elisa crushing nettles to make yarn for her brothers’ fine shirts. When she finished “The Wild Swans”, Bo read on. She read stories of brothers and sisters lost in dark forests, of snow queens and robber brides, until Callum’s head rested sleepily on her shoulder.

  When she was sure he was fast asleep and would ask no more infuriating questions, she slipped off the couch and picked up a catskin rug to cover him. The boy’s ragged shirt had ridden up and Bo stared at the mass of welts and scars that covered his back. She looked at her own scars, the white crisscross markings on her legs made by playful roboraptors, the old scars on her hands from small accidents with knives. They were nothing like the welts on this boy’s body. Her scars mapped a good life at Tjukurpa Piti, each a sign of a skill she had gained, a lesson she had learnt. Callum’s scars were fresh, still glowing with a flush of pink where the skin was newly healed. He had learnt his lessons from a harsh teacher. Tenderly, she laid the rug across the sleeping boy.

  For the next two days, Callum wouldn’t leave the burrow. Mostly, he lay on the sofa and slept or watched Bo as she went through her daily routines: drawing water from the artesian well in the cave, salting and preserving cat meat or threshing seeds from woollybutt grass that she gathered on her morning and evening hunts. Every few hours he rose from the sofa to check on the Daisy-May. Bo had set the Wombator to work carving a new cave next to her workroom to house the motorbike. She knew she would find Callum there whenever he wasn’t asleep.

  On the third night, when she returned to the burrow after her sunset hunt, she found the boy rummaging through the drawers in the kitchen.

  ‘What do you search for?’ she asked.

  ‘This collar is driving me crazy. I’m going to cut it off.’ He pulled out one of her sharpest knives and held it against the ring of steel that encircled his neck.

  ‘You will slice a vein if you try like that.’ Bo took the knife from him and pushed Callum onto the sofa. She ran her finger around the torque, searching for a hinge or rivet. When her hair brushed against his cheek, he squirmed.

  ‘Be still,’ she said.

  Using a small screwdriver and a length of wire, she picked the lock and snapped the hinge of the collar. As she pulled the torque away from Callum’s neck, it let out a long, singing wail of alarm. Bo dropped it in surprise. Mr Pinkwhistle scurried out from beneath the kitchen table and took the ring in his teeth, chomping down hard, crushing the thick metal. A profusion of wires spilled from the torque. The wail stopped and Mr Pinkwhistle trotted across to Bo and dropped the remnants at her feet.

  ‘This has been sending out a signal ever since you arrived,’ she said, nudging the mess of metal and wire with her foot. A heavy, sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. She looked up to see Callum’s face grey and drawn.

  ‘Do not be afraid. In
side, we are safe,’ she said, desperate to believe it was true.

  Callum picked up the broken remnants of his torque. ‘Not for long.’

  For the rest of the evening, Callum sat silently on the sofa, turning the torque over in his hands and brooding. Bo tried to ignore him as she secured the burrow for the night but his silence was like a cloud that filled every crevice of the cave.

  It was nearly midnight when they heard the first explosion. It made the burrow shudder and Callum jump up in fright.

  The roboraptors scurried under the table.

  ‘The minefield,’ said Bo. ‘Something’s in the minefield.’

  They both held their breath, waiting for another explosion. When none came, Bo pulled Mr Pinkwhistle onto her lap and opened up his chest. She checked the settings of his motion sensor. There were three men moving stealthily on the edge of her territory.

  ‘They will not try again.’

  ‘Yes they will,’ said Callum. ‘They’ll hunt me down, no matter what.’

  ‘Hunt you? Hunt for a boy?’

  ‘Not only me. It’s the Daisy-May they’re after. And this.’

  Callum pulled a battered leather wallet from his waistband and threw it onto the kitchen table. Bo picked it up, weighing it in her hands.

  ‘Is this important?’

  ‘Drugs. Gold. Gambling booty. That pee-wit, Dental, thought he could do a runner on a brotherhood of gamblers. This was a whole night’s takings.’

  Bo raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. As if you don’t believe me. I’m not some made-up boy like those kids in your books. This is the real world I’m talking about. I know how it works. They’ll hunt us down the way you hunt those feral cats. They’ll wait for us in the dark and then pichewww – we’re dead meat, or worse.’

  ‘I am not afraid,’ said Bo.

  ‘You should be. There are no kings or queens or fairies out there that are going to save you. I know what these people are like. There’s only one thing we can do. Take the Daisy-May and try to outrun them.’

  ‘They will die in my minefield.’

  ‘Bo, those men are only Outriders. Even if they don’t come back, more will follow. Every man in every outstation in the desert will come looking for me. Word travels. They’ll know I have booty. They’ll find this place one way or another. Your minefield won’t protect us. And they won’t care if you’re innocent. They’ll kill you or sell you.’

  Bo looked at the scrawny, scarred boy standing in her kitchen. Why hadn’t she left him in the desert? Everything Poppy had worked for was jeopardised by his presence.

  ‘You leave. I will stay. I will hide deep,’ said Bo.

  ‘Don’t you get it? You will be buried alive,’ said Callum. ‘They do scorched earth.’

  Bo looked at him questioningly.

  ‘They destroy everything. Make it so there’s no point in coming back. Smash everything, poison the water, throw flame around so that everything’s black and then they piss on it so it stinks.’

  ‘This is an opal burrow,’ said Bo. ‘It will not burn.’

  ‘Then they’ll blow it up,’ said Callum.

  Bo checked Mr Pinkwhistle’s motion sensor again. ‘The Outriders have retreated. They have turned west. They are not coming this way.’

  Callum shook his head. ‘They’ll be back.’

  9

  A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

  Bo slept badly that night. She kept Mr Pinkwhistle close to her and woke every hour to check his monitors. Even without looking, she could sense something evil drawing closer. She stood by Callum’s sleeping body. He lay sprawled across her sofa, his mouth open, his tousled dark hair sticking out in all directions. He twitched in his sleep, one hand tucked under his cheek. He was like a wild bird, a carrier of disease, poisoning her nest. She was going to lose everything because of him and yet she didn’t want to see him hurt or betray his trust. She rested her hand against his chest and felt the pulse of their two hearts beating.

  Before dawn, Bo crept out to scan her territory. A pale silvery-grey light rose over the eastern horizon and in the distance she could see the faint glimmer of men and machines searching for a path through the minefield.

  Bo walked around the burrow, gently touching everything in the rooms. She stroked the shimmery stone walls. Then she herded the roboraptors out from beneath the kitchen table and

  down into the deepest burrow. They mewled and butted her ankles as they followed her into unfamiliar territory. When they could go no deeper, she set the herd in a row and stroked their smooth shells, chucked them each under the chin and one by one set them to rest. But when she reached Mr Pinkwhistle and saw his eyes glittering in the darkness, she couldn’t bring herself to shut him down. She thought of all the times he had hunted for her, of his preternatural ability to understand what she needed. She tipped his jaw upwards, opening the small cavity where his head joined his neck, then paused. She couldn’t do it. Before she could change her mind, she opened the casing in his chest, punched in a new program and led him back to the main living area.

  Once she was at the top of the winding burrow, she set the Wombator to work, covering up the entrance to the herd’s hiding place. If she couldn’t protect them, she was determined they would be safely entombed. They must never belong to Outstationers.

  When the Wombator had completed the task, she took him into the south-east reaches of the burrow and programmed him to dig at his fastest setting. As the tunnels hummed with the vibrations of his burrowing, Bo began to pack. She pulled down two old cat-leather bags that Poppy had made and began weaving their handles together to make a pair of panniers to sling across the Daisy-May. She packed salted meat and damper, a bladder of water, and an assortment of items she thought might be useful for travelling. When everything was ready, she went to wake Callum.

  She leant over him and shook his shoulder. ‘You must go now.’

  ‘Huh?’ said Callum, blinking. Bo shoved a slice of damper into his hands and put a catskin shawl around his shoulders.

  ‘Travelling gear,’ she said in answer to his questioning expression. ‘You have to leave.’

  Callum sat up and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Now?’

  As he spoke, another landmine exploded, this time close enough to cause a shower of dirt to fall upon them. Callum shook the dust from his hair and followed Bo to where the Daisy-May stood waiting in the work cave. She could hear the faint whirr of the Wombator, and now, barely audible, the shouts of the approaching Outstationers. The Wombator came trundling back from the lower depths of the caves seeking new instructions.

  Bo pointed a remote control at the dusty brown lump of synthetic fur and metal. Its tiny black eyes swivelled as she punched in the new set of directions. The Wombator turned its nose towards a corner of the cave and waddled away again, disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘Since you came, he’s been digging,’ said Bo. ‘To the southeast there are tunnels in an old mine, for many kilometres. He is digging a link. You will not be above ground until you are far, far away, so you will be safe. Safe from their eyes.’

  ‘But if it’s a tunnel underground, how will we know where we’re going?’

  ‘The Daisy-May has many spiffing devices.’

  Bo blushed as Callum laughed at her words. ‘She has sensors,’ Bo continued. ‘One works on black body – like infrared – but she also has ultrasound and . . .’ She started pushing buttons and the control panel of the motorbike lit up like a Christmas tree. ‘. . . some sort of radar. Made to pick up something . . . what’s that word? Specific. She has a GPS too.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A global positioning system.’

  ‘They don’t work any more. Even I know that. The satellites blew when my dads were boys.’

  ‘This one works on magnetic fields.’

  She glanced up at Callum and saw that his expression had changed from amusement to quiet admiration.

  ‘Where did you learn all thi
s stuff?’

  ‘My Poppy was an engineer,’ said Bo. She shut her eyes, remembering the last time she’d seen him, when he’d turned to face the Outstationers, defending her, as she would defend Callum.

  ‘Scuttle,’ she said, repeating her grandfather’s instructions. ‘You must scuttle.’

  As the words left her lips, another blast rocked the burrow. ‘That was close,’ said Callum. ‘Closer than the last one.’

  Bo checked the supplies. She had strapped her homemade panniers to either side of the machine. In one of them sat Mr Pinkwhistle, his shiny snout protruding from beneath the flap.

  ‘Why bring him?’ asked Callum.

  ‘I may die fighting. You take Mr Pinkwhistle with you. He must survive.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘First, I help you to escape. Then I return to defend my home.’

  ‘Come with me, Bo,’ said Callum. ‘You can’t stay here.’ He gripped her by both shoulders. She couldn’t meet his eye. Beneath her calmness, the breath was being squeezed from her lungs and her heart was pounding. Another blast shook the burrow. Behind them, the living area ceiling collapsed in a crushing roar of fallen rock.

  ‘Bo! There is nothing to defend. You have to come with me – all the way.’

  Bo looked back at what was left of her kitchen. The oven had imploded, sending a plume of ash and rock into the air. The bookshelves and worn brown sofa were buried beneath a pile of rubble. The Outstationers were pounding against the roof, scrabbling at the rock, trying to force their way through. Her stomach ached and her feet felt as if they were made of lead but she snatched her string bag of hunting tools from a hook on the wall of the work cave and flung them into the panniers.

  ‘Quickly. Help me push the Daisy-May until the Wombator breaks through, or the fumes will poison us.’

  Callum took up a position on one side of the motorbike and they began to push the machine along the narrow passageway, into the darkness. Behind them, another explosion destroyed her work cave and they heard the sound of the Outstationers smashing their way through rock. Sweat dripped down Bo’s forehead and into her eyes. She glanced across at Callum. He was struggling too, his face tight with strain. She dug her toes deeper into the dirt and tried to take more of the weight of the bike. They heard another muffled thud and the air filled with dust. The caves behind them were collapsing, crushing her hopes.