Cloud of Universal Light - chapter 3 ARRIVAL AT THORZINBURG
Bram felt terrible. He had a throbbing headache, he was nauseous, and he felt as if he were lurching around in space. Too much beer, yet again. Drink less beer! he ordered himself.
He blinked, and a brilliant light seared into his eyes. He groaned, and shut them again.
"Did you see that, Cinnabar?" said a woman. "I think he opened his eyes."
Though she seemed to be shouting, Bram could only just hear her, over a constant roaring in his ears. Am I in hospital? he wondered, becoming aware of his half-reclining position.
Above him he sensed a shadow. A cool hand grasped his wrist, and felt his pulse.
About time he woke up," replied an older woman, with a husky voice. "You said eight o'clock, Viddy, and it's nearly ten now. I hope he's going to be OK."
"It might have been a tiny bit of an OD," said a young man's voice. "We're lucky we didn't kill him. Two percent of adults are allergic to this stuff. I shouldn't have let you talk me into this. We could have just persuaded him."
The roaring in Bram's ears altered its tone, and he had a sickening feeling that he was falling down to the right. He put out a hand to steady himself; it touched cold, smooth cloth beside him.
"But I don't think that would have worked, Viddy," said the earnest young woman. "He seemed too preoccupied last night."
"He was bloody pissed, Indigo," said the man. "Admit it."
Indigo: where had he heard that name?
The light seemed less dazzling now, so Bram tried opening his eyes again. In front of him, on a seat facing him, was the Chinese girl, studying him with great concern.
"He's awake!" she said, delighted. "Bram Thorzin, welcome."
He looked out the big window to his right. The underside of an aircraft wing now sheltered him from the sun, and the roaring came from an engine that seemed close enough to touch.
Filling the narrow centre corridor to the left of Indigo were the heads of Viddy and Cinnabar, twisting around to study him.
"Bram Thorzin," muttered Viddy, a thin young man with some pimples on his face, and long dark hair in a pony tail.
"Bram Thorzin," said Cinnabar, her head appearing above Viddy's. She was about forty, pink and plump, with ginger hair and a competent smile. All three of them were wearing loose white tunics.
He glanced down and noticed he was wearing a kind of white dressing gown, of the same flimsy material, muslin or cheesecloth perhaps. What had happened to his clothes? What was going on? He was really worried now.
"Welcome to what?" said Bram, heaving himself up straight, looking into each of their eyes in turn. The three of them smiled at him, but said nothing.
"Have you kidnapped me?" he shouted, above the engine noise. The pilot, an elderly man, glanced around quickly.
It had been known for company negotiators to be kidnapped. But more often, they were distracted, plied with alcohol or drugs, or seduced by sexy women in motel rooms. Unfortunately, Bram reflected, that had never happened to him. But such kidnapping would take place before the negotiations, not after they'd been completed. This made no sense.
"Of course we're not kidnapping you," said Cinnabar. "You'll be free to go at any time. In fact, we're rescuing you."
"It would be truer that you've kidnapped us," said Indigo, beaming at him.
"I bet you've been waiting for this opportunity for years," said Viddy. "To get out of the corporate rat-race, and come home."
They were obviously some kind of cranks, Bram decided. That would explain the white pyjamas they were all wearing - more Arabic than Australian in style.
"What would you call yourselves?" he said. "I mean as a group. Do you have a name?" He now suspected they were environmentalists, holding him for ransom as an anti-mining protest. Could they have heard about the Muttaburra project? Surely not: that was still a deep company secret.
Cinnabar laughed; a deep, throaty laugh, the laugh of a smoker or a whisky-drinker. "We're Thorzinists, of course."
"Extortionists?" said Bram, not hearing her properly over the noise of the engines.
"Thorzinists!" said Indigo.
"Followers of Thorzinism!" Viddy chimed in.
"Of you!" said Cinnabar. "Of Bram Thorzin."
"We checked you out thoroughly," said Viddy. "It's lucky you're not called John Smith. We're pretty sure there's only one real Bram Thorzin in Australia."
"After weeding out the impostors," Cinnabar put in.
"We went to the Townsville library and looked in all the phone books," said Indigo. "There weren't any Bram Thorzins, but we already knew you had a silent number. Then we searched every single electoral roll. The librarian thought we were crazy. But we only found one Bram Thorzin."
"Bramwell Leopold Thorzin," said Cinnabar. "29 Horizon Road, Fig Tree Pocket, Brisbane."
Bram nodded, dazed.
"I don't remember the phone number," Cinnabar continued.
"I do," said Indigo. "3294-5393," she chanted. "I actually rang you once. I was in a terrible mental state. But I was so nervous, I put the phone down when you answered."
"I didn't think it was him," said Viddy. "The voice was wrong. It would have been the boy."
"We didn't want to bother you," Indigo explained. "We sort of hung around your place for weeks. Very discreetly. We just wanted to check you out."
"It's a lovely old house," said Cinnabar enviously. "I've always wanted to live in a Queenslander like that."
It's a bottomless pit that sucks up money, Bram felt like telling her.
"One morning we hired a van," Viddy said. "We pretended to be the garbos. We stopped outside your place and emptied your wheely bin into our van."
"We were so worried that nosy woman next door to you would see us, and tell you that somebody had stolen your rubbish."
"That's why we sent Vandyke and Olive to distract her," Indigo put in. "But it worked. We collected all your rubbish. Please tell me, Bram Thorzin, just to clear up a small point, if you are the one who eats blueberry yogurt in your household."
"Now and again," Bram said, deciding to play along with the veneer of rationality. "I think Kristin gets through a lot, though. Why?"
"You do like it, though?" said Indigo, anxious.
"Sure."
Indigo gave a little giggle of relief. "I kept the container," she said. "Every morning I drink my juice out of it. I was sure it would be you, because of the blueberry. We had a little squabble over it, Olive and I. Isn't that funny? She can have it now."
"Indigo!" said Cinnabar. "That's not very nice."
"But it is!" Indigo exclaimed. "I've invested that little plastic container with so much razah that it's honoured now."
Cinnabar shrugged.
"Razah?" said Bram.
They all laughed at him.
"You haven't forgotten, have you?" Cinnabar teased. "Just as well we're rescuing you."
"I don't want to be rescued," Bram protested. "You say you're not kidnapping me, but that's exactly what you've done. And where is this plane headed?"
"Home," said Indigo.
"You'll love it," said Cinnabar. "We call it Thorzinburg these days. You'll never want to leave."
"A lot better than the backblocks of Toowoomba," Viddy put in.
"Now that really would have been kidnapping," said Indigo. "If those scoundrels had found you. See, we're rescuing you from that lot, as well as from the corporate rat-race."
"What lot?" Bram asked, wondering if this was a dream.
"The con-men," said Cinnabar, curling her lip. "The so-called Institutional Thorzinists."
"Con-persons!" said Indigo, correcting her.
Bram sat back, and shut his eyes. He couldn't take any more. The plane droned on, then turned so suddenly he felt he was falling out sideways. Bracing himself, he leaned over and looked out of the side window. Below was a river and a lot of scrubby trees, and beyond them a range of jagged grey hills.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Way out west of Mackay," said Viddy. "Longreach is somewhere over there on the right. We'll be landing soon."
"It had better be at Townsville," said Bram, glancing at his watch and finding it wasn't on his wrist. "I'm booked on the 11.30 flight to Brisbane. I've got an important meeting at four this afternoon. It is Monday, isn't it?"
"Don't worry about QMine," said Cinnabar. "We faxed them a message from you, saying you were being held up for a little while."
"You what?" yelled Bram.
"I'm really good at your signature," said Indigo. "I can do it better than you can. That autograph last night wasn't up to your usual standards."
"Where did you find my signature?"
"For example, in the rubbish that we intercepted. You wrote out a cheque to Sunsurance, then tore it in half and threw it out."
"You'd already paid your insurance by credit card," said Cinnabar. "We checked up, in case you'd made a mistake. We wouldn't want that beautiful house to be uninsured."
"I sticky-taped the cheque back together and framed it," said Indigo. "But I've got a photocopy with me now." She smiled at him.
I'll have to ring Royce and tell him that fax was a hoax, Bram thought. He'd be furious if it was real. And I'd better ring Kristin, in case she's worried.
"I sent a fax to your wife, too," said Indigo.
"Actually, I wrote it," said Cinnabar. "Indigo just did the signature. I'm more experienced at this type of letter."
"What the hell did you write?" Bram asked, angry.
"Basically 'Dear Kristin, it's my turn now.' "
"Meaning what?"
Cinnabar smiled into his eyes. "We know what's been going on. You forget, Bram Thorzin, we've been studying you in depth, ever since we rediscovered you on March the twenty-fifth."
"We have proof that she's been unfaithful to you at least five times," Indigo declared. "She's a terrible woman."
"You wouldn't even begin to understand," said Bram scornfully. Despite everything, he still loved Kristin. She'd left him many times, for a selection of no-hopers. When they lost interest in her, she came home and confided in him, alternating between tears and laughter. There was nobody in the world like Kristin.
"She'll assume you've run off with Clarissa Bowers," said Indigo.
How the hell did they know about Clarissa?
The pilot turned in his seat, and shouted something at them. Indigo leaned over, and adjusted Bram's seat so that it was upright. The plane flew in a tight loop around the airstrip, while the pilot checked that it was free of grazing kangaroos. Apart from the airstrip and a field of crops on the riverbank, the land was hilly, and mostly covered with trees, among which Bram noticed a few shiny iron roofs.
Indigo was singing to herself. It sounded like "we find ourselves in the place just right."
"What's that you're singing?" Bram asked. The pilot had put the plane into a steep dive to clear a rocky bluff above the airstrip, and Bram, guessing she was a nervous flier, was trying to distract her.
"Our song," said Indigo, white knuckles gripping the sides of her seat. "Haven't you heard it?"
She sang:
"...turning, turning, we come down right,
We'll be in the valley of love and delight.""Simple Gifts," said Bram. When he'd learned this song in primary school, the words had mystified him, but now they became crystal clear: they referred to an aircraft landing. "So would this be the valley of love and delight, by any chance, Indigo?"
She nodded, so choked with emotion she was unable to speak. Tears were rolling down her face, as the plane coasted low over the rocky river and landed in a shower of gravel on the rough airstrip.
The pilot taxied to a little hut, and switched off the engines. Everybody sat still, while the pilot did his final checks, and they waited for the propellers to stop spinning. Bram glanced outside, and noticed a crowd of people approaching from behind a group of trees. About twenty of them, all dressed in the white pyjamas, with various coloured belts.
Is this a judo group? he wondered; but something about the costumes didn't look right. Two of the crowd were carrying poles, between which a banner drooped down. Several others had signs too. Were they demonstrating about the Muttaburra plan?
At last the pilot took off his seat-belt, and stood up. He was a tall man, so he had to crouch a little, but before he opened the door he grasped Bram's hand and shook it warmly.
"I'm honoured to meet you, Bram Thorzin," said the pilot.
"This is Eddy Fanstein," said Cinnabar. "He's the previous owner of the property."
"Who's the new owner?" Bram asked.
They all laughed at that. "Guess!" said Cinnabar. "Bramthorzin Downs?"
Bram shrugged.
"YOU are!" said Eddy Fanstein. "Congratulations."
"Though the papers are in the Cloud's name," said Cinnabar.
"Cloud?" said Bram.
The others all laughed. "Our cloud," said Eddy. "Your cloud," said Indigo.
Bram rubbed his brow. Trying to understand these nuts only made his headache worse. He followed the four others off the plane. Viddy helped Bram down the steps, as if he were an invalid. In fact, he felt very wobbly on his feet: the drug hadn't quite worn off.
While Eddy tied down the plane's wings and tail to hooks set in concrete, the welcoming party arrived. A multi-coloured banner, held up at the ends by two white-clad men, billowed in the wind:
WELCOME HOME BRAM THORZIN
The party stopped a few paces from the travellers. A young woman, her lightly tanned skin and long dark hair making a beautiful contrast with her white pyjamas, held up a smaller sign:
BRAM, WE LOVE YOU!
A man who looked like a retired bikie, ludicrous in his white suit, had a sign too:
GREETINGS TO OUR PROPHET!
"We got him," shouted Cinnabar to the crowd. "It's REALLY HIM."
They surged forward, some laughing, some cheering, some weeping. Bram was surrounded by the people in white. They were touching him, embracing him, and crouching to kiss his bare feet. Finally they picked him up, their signs abandoned, and carried him on their shoulders. For ten minutes they walked in triumph, exclaiming to each other in noisy delight.
They must be going to ask a really big favour of me, thought Bram, if they're putting on a welcome like this. In all his years as a negotiator, nobody had ever made such a fuss of him. He still suspected they were environmentalists, who'd somehow got wind of QMine's secret plans for a new bauxite mine at Muttaburra, very close to a rich source of dinosaur fossils. Environmentalists were often failed actors, he'd learned, at a course on how to deal with extremists. So the white pyjamas, the scraps of knowledge about his private life, and the welcoming banners were all probably part of a campaign to soften him up for the demands that they would soon put forward.
They made their way through a grove of trees, the lower branches occasionally swishing across Bram's head; he had to raise his arms to push them out of the way.
They came to the river, low in its channel at this time of year. Beside the ruins of a wooden bridge were great flat rocks, forming stepping stones. Still bearing Bram aloft, the people carried him to the other side, where the path swept up a small hill and into a clearing. He noticed the ruins of several stone buildings.
"Was this once a town?" he asked his bearers.
"It was, and now it is again," said one. "Welcome to Thorzinburg."
"Did you bring the newspapers, Cinnabar?" a woman asked.
"Of course," said Cinnabar. "They're still in the plane. I bought thirty copies, one for everybody."
"But there aren't thirty of us here," said the woman.
"I'm including the children," said Cinnabar. "This is a historic occasion for them. They'll treasure those cuttings all their lives."
The clearing, Bram saw, was set up for a picnic. Rustic tables were covered with food, and several people were now rushing around, throwing back the cloths that had protected the food from the sun. Nailed along the side of a wooden ruin was another banner:
THE CLOUD OF UNIVERSAL LIGHT WELCOMES BRAM THORZIN
"Cloud of Universal Light" he said to himself. "Where have I heard that before?"
Bram was reclining on a wooden chaise-longue, in a brand new pavilion, and his supporters were milling around him. In honour of his arrival, they were putting on a feast. This struck him as something halfway between an Indian restaurant and a Country Women's Institute luncheon. The most embarrassing part was when they lined up to kiss his feet. He'd tried to keep a straight face when a queue had formed in front of each foot. Some of them, like Viddy, had given the foot a light, fastidious kiss, while others, like Indigo, had gone for great sucking slurps halfway up to his knee.
He'd suffered that, humouring them despite his inclinations. They were obviously trying, in an amateurish way, to make him angry. Instead, he felt a disdainful tolerance.
They hardly let him move, protesting that he must be tired after his long trip. They kept offering him drinks of non-alcoholic champagne. Apparently, in some religious manifesto they attributed to him, there was a prohibition on alcohol. When he told them he'd never have written that, they laughed.
After an hour or two, he thought he'd solved the mystery: there must be another Bram Thorzin, who didn't appear on any electoral roll. Bram remembered a plague of nuisance phone calls he'd had a few years ago. People had telephoned, often in the middle of the night, asking silly questions like "Are you really Bram Thorzin?" and giggling a lot. He'd put it down to troublemakers from work: QMine had been shedding a lot of staff at the time, and he as Human Relations Manager had copped a lot of misplaced blame. He'd solved the problem by getting a silent phone number.
His pavilion consisted of five pseudo-Greek aluminium columns on a round concrete base. Surmounting the columns was a kitset geodesic dome, its triangular panels painted in a wide range of colours. Under its centre, surrounded by trestle tables of titbits, was Bram's throne of honour. He badly wanted to have a piss, but didn't dare, in case they all followed him. Now I know how the queen feels, he thought.
Around the perimeter of the pavilion, the Thorzinists sat, in folding aluminium chairs, chatting among themselves with occasional glances at him.
Next to him, Sandstone, a strange-looking young man with purple skin and a high-pitched voice, was explaining the layout of Thorzinburg.
"The old farmhouse is across the river, in the trees above the airstrip. Eddy and Heather still live in it. On this side it's our public area, just downhill from the water tanks. The main temple's over there."
"Over where?" said Bram. He couldn't see anything but a few dead trees rising above the bushes.
"Those seven dead trees form an almost perfect irregular heptagon. The temple's the hollow between them, but we haven't finished clearing it yet. Eddy offered to do it with his big tractor, but we voted for the joy of manual labour in building our temple. We prefer to do things outdoors, you see."
"Do you sleep outdoors too?" Bram asked.
"No," said Sandstone. "The manifesto doesn't say we should. The cottages are down there on the bluff overlooking the river. Most of them are one-room shacks, but we've built a beaut one for you. We call it the Prophetorium. It's three storeys, with a reception room downstairs, a study in the middle, and a bedroom on top, with real - "
"Already? When did you start building it?" Bram asked. He knew by now that his kidnapping had been decided on the spur of the moment. Eddy Fanstein had flown to Townsville last Thursday for supplies, and noticed an article in the local newspaper about the strike at the nickel mine. The article had stated that he'd be going to Charters Towers to mediate between the two unions.
Why did the stupid reporters have to write my name? he wondered. If they'd just put "a negotiator" this wouldn't have happened.
Though at the moment he was savouring the novelty of being a prophet, he had the feeling it could rapidly become boring and restrictive.
"February last year," Sandstone answered. "As soon as we moved here. It was the first house we built. Then we..."
Bram tuned out of what Sandstone was telling him, and listened to a conversation that two young women were having. One sounded American, and had a very penetrating voice.
"He's much younger than I thought," she confided to her companion.
"Younger?" exclaimed the other one, the olive-skinned beauty who'd held up the sign. "He's OLD."
"I expected him to be at least seventy," the American boomed.
"He looks like a bit of a creep to me," said the sexy one. Then she noticed Bram looking at her; she put a hand over her mouth to grin, looking him straight in the eye.
That one needs a humility lesson, he decided, wondering what authority a Prophet was expected to exercise over his flock.
"I'm sorry if I'm boring you, sir," said Sandstone.
"It's okay, Sandstone, I'm just finding it hard to absorb all this at once. How come you're called Sandstone - is that your real name?"
"It is now, sir. We're all named after colours, as the manifesto commands."
"Is Sandstone a colour?" asked Bram. "I thought it was a rock. Sandstone can be anything from yellow to grey."
"I'm sorry, sir. My colour is more brownish. I found it on a Taubmans paint chart, so it's genuine. I can show you if you like."
"Tell me more about this manifesto," said Bram.
Sandstone laughed. "You should know, sir. You wrote it. I'll find one later. We only have a few spare copies here: the breakaways kept all the stocks. But we don't need to refer to it very often: most of us know it off by heart."
"Excuse me, sir," said Cinnabar. "Are you ready for your birthday ceremony yet?"
"Birthday ceremony?" said Bram. "It's not my birthday. And for Christ's sake, stop calling me Sir."
She lowered her head meekly. "Very well. Your birthday, Prophet. We know your real birthday is is the ninth of May..."
How did they know that?
"...but the celebration of your coming together with your City. We want to commemmorate you."
"How?"
She giggled, putting a hand over her mouth in a girlish gesture. "A touch-feast, as described by your manifesto."
I'll have to see this manifesto that the other Bram Thorzin wrote, Bram thought.
In Australia, Thorzin was an unusual name. But in eastern Denmark, where his father had been born, it was a not uncommon variant of Thorsen. And now he thought of it, over the years he remembered various incidents of people having heard of him. The other Bram Thorzin must be an American, he decided, to have founded a fruitcake religion like this.
Cinnabar waved at a few other people; they came into the rotunda and took away the food from the tables. Others followed them and took the most of the tables away. They left just one small but sturdy table, which they carefully placed on a piece of bare earth near the rotunda. They checked it carefully for wobbles, eventually deciding that the earth under one leg needed to be dug out a little. Then they spent some more time, moving it around to exactly the right angle to the sunlight.
Finally a man clapped, and Cinnabar went over to see him. Sandstone was talking to Bram again, but Bram was more interested in what was happening with the table.
Cinnabar came back to him. "That's perfect," she said, interrupting Sandstone, who glared malevolently at her for breaking up his conversation with the Prophet.
"Come, Prophet," said Cinnabar, taking his sleeve and leading him to the table.
They stood together and looked at the table.
"What now?" he asked. Were they going to bring out a cake?
"Now you lie down," Cinnabar prompted.
"On that? But it's too short."
Cinnabar shook her head. "Just your body. Don't worry about the head and the legs. Stand at this end."
If he'd been feeling well, he'd have refused to co-operate. But his legs still felt wobbly from the anaesthetic, and he had a strong urge to lie down.
In front of him the faithful were gathered in a semicircle, at a respectful distance. Not so respectful were the two women who now came up behind him. Each taking one end of his white belt, they pulled. The belt came undone, and his gown gaped open. As he instinctively pushed the two edges together to cover his nakedness, the two beside him grasped his lapels and slid the loose gown from his arms before he could react.
He stood naked before his disciples, and an approving murmur came up, rising into the air like a warm balloon.
"What's going on?" said Bram, puzzled and embarrassed.
"Your birthday suit," said Cinnabar.
The crowd laughed.
"Lie down," said a woman at his ear. Gently, they laid him on the small table. The followers crowded in and held his legs, which the table was too short to support. His head hung over the other end of the table, or would have done so if the two women behind him hadn't cradled it in their hands.
"It's him, all right," said a woman, bending so low over him that her hair tickled his chest. "A triangle of three moles on the groin."
Others murmured their assent. "Beautiful," one whispered.
"Equilateral," responded another.
"Relax, Prophet," squeaked Sandstone. "Relax. Close your eyes."
He had to close his eyes anyway, because of the dazzling sun above. So he didn't see Indigo arriving with the yogurt. She had the honour of the first pour: tipping the container, she trickled a line of yogurt onto his left big toe.
"Hey!" he said, jerking his head up. "What's that? It's bloody cold."
"Your favourite!" said Indigo. "Blueberry."
Everybody laughed again. He was too tired to tell her that he preferred raspberry.
The container was passed from hand to hand, as all the Thorzinists around him took turns. From his big toe, the yogurt line ran over his ankle, along the top of his shinbone, and to his knee, where the blob was larger. The line continued up his thigh, over his hipbone (a much thicker trail now that it had a larger area to spread over), and across his left nipple to his shoulder. Then it ran, in a thinner trail, up his left arm, ending at the tip of his middle finger.
It was a strange sensation, tickling him at first, but pleasant in the end with its slow inevitability. When they'd finished the pour on his left side, they passed the container over him, and the people on his right side made a another line, starting from his right hand and finishing at his right big toe.
They paused. Now what? he wondered.
Then it hit him. "Ugh!" he said, as a massive blob of cold yogurt covered his genitals. They trickled a thick line over his navel, up his breastbone and neck, and finished at his mouth.
"You forgot my nose," he pointed out, licking his lips.
"It's all gone," said Cinnabar. "Somebody was a bit heavy-handed on your right leg."
They all laughed again. Somebody scooped up one of the drips from his right leg, and dabbed it on the tip of Bram's nose. Somebody else bent down, and kissed it off.
Then the licking began. People were licking him all over. The couple behind him were massaging his neck, and others were gently rubbing his legs with their noses, smearing the yogurt more widely before others licked it off. He felt like a giant ice cream. Many mouths - mostly female - were kissing his torso. He was trying hard not to get an erection, but he wasn't succeeding. It felt as if somebody were kissing the tip of his penis, while another mouth nuzzled its base.
Feeling helpless, he opened his eyes a little. A dozen heads, almost touching, gazed lovingly at him. As mouths gently sucked him, and fingers stroked him, he developed an enormous erection. His penis felt as if it would burst, and the licking was driving him insane. The more he wriggled and squirmed, the more they laughed. When somebody licked his testicles, he could bear it no longer. With a great involuntary groan he came to orgasm.
"Ahhhhh!" said the crowd. "Blueberry and cream."
"Magenta, there's some in your hair," said a woman, excited.
"Gee, is there really?" said the American woman, sounding delighted. She put her hand to her hair, then to her mouth. "Hmmm," she said. "Incredibly salty. Absolutely amazing."
Tongues descended on him, and the touch-feast began to feel quite pleasant. If he were a cat he'd have been purring. Soon he felt drowsy.
"His head's all heavy," one woman behind him whispered. "I think he's asleep."
The woman called Sky, holding the other side of his head nodded. "A natural," she said.
"Naturally, you idiot," the first woman said.
When Bram awoke he was back in the rotunda, licked clean, still on the little table, with his gown spread over him. Many of the followers had left to go about their business, but four of the faithful were still there, holding up his neck and his legs. It would have been much easier for them to bring up another two tables, but they preferred to hold him.
"Happy birthday, Prophet," said Cinnabar.
Bram started to say it wasn't his birthday, but gave up. The people holding his head - a different pair now - slowly raised it, almost imperceptibly, until he was sitting up.
"How did you like that?" asked Indigo.
"After I got over the initial shock..." said Bram - they all laughed. "Well, I guess worse things have happened to me. I didn't get to eat much yogurt, though."
"You sound as if you haven't had a touch-feast for a long time," said Sandstone.
"That's right," said Bram sarcastically. "I've obviously strayed from the proper path. If only I'd remembered its delights...."
The others laughed.
"It's my birthday next month," said Indigo. "Will you be taking part in my touch-feast, sir? I hope you like strawberry jam."
Next month? he was thinking. I'll be out of here tomorrow. He'd decided to stay overnight: he'd missed his meeting by now - and it wasn't vitally important. It shouldn't be hard to square up things with Royce: after all, he had sixteen weeks of leave accrued.
"You mustn't ask him such things!" Cinnabar chided Indigo. "That's impertinent." A conference of whispers took place, just out of his hearing.
"What are you saying?" he called to them.
Four or five disciples looked around guiltily.
"Actually, Sir, -" said Sandstone.
"Don't call me Sir."
"Prophet," said Sandstone with an injured look. "We were trying to recall what the manifesto says about the Prophet's role in touch-feasts."
"Probably nothing," said Bram. "But Indigo, I'll consider your request carefully."
This was industrial-relations jargon for "no," but Indigo, unversed in the subtleties of union/ management dealings, read it the other way. She squealed with delight. She was really rather juvenile, Bram decided. In fact, they all were. What a bunch of misfits, he thought, gazing around at the dozen or so who attended him. Eddy seemed to be the odd one out. Why would a sensible, conservative Queensland farmer not only tolerate this sect, but give them his land?
Bram stood up, and put his gown back on. retying the white belt. "I want to interview some people separately," he said - as if they were applying for jobs. "Is there a suitable place?"
"Of course," said Cinnabar. "Your Prophetorium." She pointed above a group of scrubby trees, and he saw a blue hump, a shade or two lighter than the sky.
Cinnabar led the way through some trees, and they came into a small clearing, out of which the building grew. It wasn't quite round; were it not for the blueness, it could have been a rock. The effect was spoiled a little at ground level by an aluminium and glass door. Cinnabar slid the door open with a flourish, as ten others looked on.
"Your reception room, Prophet," she said.
He came to the door and looked inside. The brick floor sloped down towards the centre of the room, In the depression at the middle was a heap of oversized multi-coloured cushions. A second sliding door was on the far side of the room, and between the two doors, steep stairs rose.
On the inside, the plaster shell of the building was supported by woven wickerwork, in turn held up by tree trunks bent inwards,
"What do you think, Prophet?" Cinnabar demanded.
"Different," he ventured. It was certainly nothing like any office he'd ever seen. Where was the desk for him to sit behind while interviewing his constituents? Where, in fact, was the throne? He guessed he was expected to squat on the ground beside the supplicant.
"Your study's up here," said Cinnabar enthusiastically, leading the way up the flight of rustic wooden stairs. This room, illuminated by two car windscreens set in the plaster like a pair of wide eyes, had a thin pseudo-Persian rug on the plank floor, and a home-made looking wooden cabinet. That was all.
Bram nodded approvingly. "And your bedroom's at the top," Cinnabar continued. I bet she was once a land agent, Bram thought cynically, following her up the next flight of stairs, which was even steeper than the first.
This room, furnished with only a king-size mattress, was dominated by a huge skylight: a clear plastic dome. Scattered around its irregular base were numerous tiny windows of red and yellow plastic.
"Isn't it beautiful?" said Cinnabar, looking up. "We damaged that old Air Force dome, getting it here, but some of the people made that wreath pattern around the edge, with coloured plexiglass."
Bram now saw that a kind of stained-glass effect had been intended. Looking carefully at the amateurish design, he could now detect that it was a wreath, and that the multi-coloured shapes were supposed to be autumn leaves.
"It is indeed a work of art," he said sarcastically.
"I knew you'd love it," said Cinnabar. Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "We're really in accord, aren't we? It's fantastic, having you here. You're much nicer than I'd expected."
"Where's Eddy?" asked Bram, as they left his house. He wanted to talk to Eddy.
"Probably on the computer," said Cinnabar.
"You have a computer here?"
"Of course. We Thorzinists are very progressive." She looked at him, suddenly worried. "You don't see anything wrong with computers, do you, Prophet?"
"Not as such," said Bram enigmatically. "But bear in mind, they are capitalist tools, designed to help subjugate the masses."
Irony went straight over Cinnabar's head.
"We want to free the masses," she declared. Then, with another worried glance at him: "Don't we?"
"Of course we do, Cinnabar. But we mustn't be tempted."
He could see her mentally chewing over this throwaway comment, wondering how to interpret it.
"Eddy mainly uses the computer for e-mail," she said. "Communicating with other Thorzinist groups around the world. He'll be spreading the good news right now."
"Good news?"
"That you're alive, and have come home to us."
"Speaking of good news," said Bram. "If there's e-mail, there's a phone line, right?" He felt a desperate need to get in touch with Kristin and his boss Royce.
Cinnabar shook her head. "No, it's miles and miles to the nearest phone line. Sometimes it's a nuisance, but we manage with e-mails. We have a satellite dish, and when the satellite comes overhead twice a day, there's about half an hour for the e-mail. We have to be very sparing with our messages, though: that dish uses up batteries really fast."
"As I'm the Prophet," said Bram, not believing all she said, "surely I can send a few private prophecies."
Her arms were assuming the No position, but her mouth was trickier. "Eddy's the only one who knows how to reposition the dish," she said. "And the satellite's always drifting away from the right position. We can't just send messages when we feel like it. We write them out, and Eddy sends them all in a batch. Besides, we've already contacted your company and your wife."
"I want to see the messages you wrote out for them." He was curious and suspicious about what Kristin and Royce had been told.
"They weren't those sorts of messages: we sent them from Charters Towers this morning. I don't think Indigo brought any copies back with her."
I'm not getting anywhere, Bram thought. I'll try Indigo later. If I can get her alone. She's too naive to lie.
"Tell me, Eddy. Why would a prosperous farmer sign over his property to a bunch of religious nuts? Is it true?"
Eddy stared into Bram's eyes, aghast - till he realized his faith was being tested.
"Nuts," Eddy reflected. "How would you define nuts? People you don't agree with? I guess malicious people could see us like that, but we're not one of those weird proselytizing bunches. We don't try and convert people, we don't have strange taboos, we don't reject technology, we are peaceful...." He raved on.
Bram tried again. "Tell me how you got involved."
"A couple of years ago, the drought was getting the better of us. What you see here is only a tiny part of Bramthorzin Downs - this is the part with the highest rainfall. Over those hills to the west, it's pretty barren. My cattle were dying, beef prices were rock-bottom, and the council rates were going sky-high. So I investigated other types of farming, and came up with the idea of growing vegetables on the river flats. Of course it would take a lot of labour, but I couldn't afford staff any more, and it got a bit lonely at times, with only Heather around. And our son - "
He looked down, and continued in a choked voice.
"Our boy Steven was drowned seven years ago, and we've never got over that. He was going to take over the farm when I retired, but when he was fifteen he was larking around with some friends and fell down the big waterfall. They dredged the river, but his body was never found. Then the next year, after the rains, one of his sneakers was washed up, a few miles downstream. That really knocked the stuffing out of Heather. He was our only kid.
"So a couple of years ago we decided to sell most of the station, and just keep a few hundred acres of river flats. I knew I couldn't get much for the land, because of the drought, but that would be enough to get us started with the vege growing. We called in a few stock and station agents, but they were all a bunch of rogues, and every other station in NQ was on the market too. So I advertised the property myself, in a magazine that circulates down south.
"There were no bites at all, and Heather and I were thinking about abandoning the farm, and going to live in our Townsville house, even though we hate cities. But one day I had a call from this American guy, who'd found my old ad in the magazine. He was from an outfit I'd never heard of - your one - and they were looking for an isolated property where they could build a better world.
"The amazing thing was that this obscure church turned out to be a genuine one. It's apparently very hard to get a church recognized in Queensland these days, there are so many shonky ones around. But the established ones pay no rates or taxes. That interested me a lot, I admit.
"The church people - Cinnabar, and this guy called Skewbald, and a couple of others - came up and had a look around. They liked the property, and I liked them - straightforward, no-bullshit types like yourself - none of this religious claptrap. Well, they left a copy of your manifesto behind, and Heather and I picked it up and started reading it. We were impressed."
Eddy took off his reading glasses and grinned at Bram. "Very impressed indeed," he repeated. "So we sold the property to them, then signed up with them. And suddenly we had stacks of money, so I bought a new aircraft, and plenty of timber and building materials, and we put up all these new buildings. This place was a town once, do you realize? They found gold here in the 1880s, two thousand people came to live here, and when the gold ran out in the 1890s, they all pissed off again. It was called Thomasburg, after the bloke who first discovered the gold, but we've renamed it Thorzinburg. With your help, maybe it'll be a town again some day."
He gave Bram a shrewd, searching look.
"And while I was getting rid of the land," Eddy added, "I gave away the big hill in the southwestern corner to the blackfellas, who've always been after it because it's one of their sacred sites. At least, I tried to give it away. You've got no idea about the bureaucracy involved in that, and the number of government departments. Three years later, the paperwork's still raging. ATSIC won't let me give the hill away: they insist on buying it off me, with money from the Land Rights Fund. Except that the Land Rights Fund has no dough, right now. Maybe next year - or maybe later. In the meantime the blackfellas live there, just like they always have."
"Can you get here by road?" Bram asked.
"You could once, but it was a terrible road. Two hundred miles of axle-busting gravel: it took all day on a four-wheel-drive from Charters Towers. The plane can do it in under an hour."
"Once? But not now?"
"A big chunk of road got washed away in the summer floods, early last year. It's on our driveway, so the shire council won't pay for it. Cost a fortune to get it fixed. Not worth it. Besides, I quite like the isolation: you don't get the neighbours dropping in for a chat and interrupting your work."
"Neighbours?" said Bram.
"There's Hidden Valley station, for example, fifty miles down the track." Eddy laughed. "And Micumba Downs, seventy miles west. We're hemmed in by bloody neighbours, all around us."
For the evening meal, everybody came to the refectory: a new mud-brick building overlooking the river: it was the only building this side of the river with electric lights (expensively powered by an array of solar cells on the roof, and an adjoining shed packed with truck batteries). Tired of being questioned by the Thorzinists, Bram decided to retire early. They even offered to escort him back to his Prophetorium, a few minutes' walk through the trees, but he insisted he wanted some time alone.
Instead of taking the clifftop path to the Prophetorium, he followed a path he'd noticed earlier, which led up the hill. In the cloudless sky, there were more stars than he'd ever seen before. At the top of the low hill, the path stopped under a large tree. Bram looked across the moonlit valley. From here, no artificial light was visible. And apart from a faint rustling in the leaves of the tree above him, not a sound could be heard. Bram hadn't known quietness for ages. His life recently had been a riot of noise, he realized: the roaring of traffic, the babble of meetings, and the thunder of jet planes taking him to QMine's noisy sites for more meetings. And at home the whine of electric tools as an endless parade of workmen renovated the old house, Kristin's pride and joy. Then there was the loud rock music that Kristin played every morning to wake herself up.
And now all the noise had stopped.
I could get to like this, he thought. For a while, at least.
Some people came out of the refectory, talking excitedly among themselves.
When their sounds had died down, he went back down the path to his hump-backed house. It looked as if it came out of a fairy story, like a giant blue mushroom.
It was hard to believe they'd gone to all the trouble of building a house for him, just in case he turned up. He suspected it would leak like a sieve, in heavy rain.
The sliding door was open. He closed it as he went through; there were mosquitoes around. It was very dark inside, and he couldn't be bothered fumbling around for the oil lamp. He was tired, even though he'd done nothing all day. He yawned as he climbed the steep stairs, and felt his way through the study for the even steeper stairs to the bedroom. The bedroom was a lot lighter, with the big dome of a skylight. He could even make out the pale shape of the bed in the centre of the room.
Dropping his white gown to the floor, he stepped to the bed and felt around for the top of the sheet. Instead of the smooth cloth he expected, his hand touched something hairy. It made a faint sound, too.
"Shit," he muttered to himself. What was this, a cat, or a larger animal?
He touched something smooth at one side of it, and a giggle emerged.
"You're tickling me," she protested.
Bram pulled his hand back as if he'd been stung. "Who's that? What the hell are you doing in here?"
"It's me, Indigo. Don't be angry," implored a shaky voice, muffled by the pillow. "I won the right."
"The right to what?" he snapped.
"The first night," Indigo said, her voice wobbly with fear.
"What the hell do you think you're up to? Auctioning me off or something?"
"Don't shout like that," Indigo wailed softly. Bram could see more clearly now that his eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness. She was sitting up in the bed, hunched over so that only the blackness of her hair was visible, and the whiteness of her back.
Bram sat on the other side of the bed, sighing heavily.
"I've saved myself for you," she continued. "Only to have you reject me."
"I'm not rejecting you," he said sharply. But, of course, he was. "Do you expect me to have sex with you, or what?"
He didn't find Indigo at all sexy; she was far too earnest, and almost childlike.
"I hoped you'd love me," she sobbed.
"But Indigo, I don't know you," said Bram gently. "Yet. How can I love somebody I don't know?"
"It's in your manifesto," she said, looking up. "Section 9: 'The force of love is everywhere, in every blade of grass, in every drop of water, in every ant.' I think that would include me too. Besides, everybody knows that men only want one thing."
"And what thing is that?" Bram asked sarcastically. "Salvation?"
She didn't answer.
"I appreciate your consideration in looking after my needs, but this is going too far. I'm tired, Indigo, I just want to sleep. Please go home."
She started crying again. "Everybody will laugh at me, because you rejected me. After I won the draw."
"What draw?" He didn't like the sound of this at all.
"Some us drew lots to spend the first night with you."
"But why?"
"You're Bram Thorzin. You're our Prophet."
"I don't like it," said Bram, thinking fast. "This is vanity. It's selfishness."
"It's harmless fun," said Indigo, a little aggressively.
"You've got it arse-about," said Bram. "You should have drawn lots to spend the last night with me, not the first. You should be humble."
"I am humble," she wailed. "I'm very, very, humble. Please don't make me go back. Everybody will know I've been a failure."
"More vanity," said Bram. "On your part. And sheer bloody nastiness on everybody else's if they do laugh at you. This cult needs a bomb under it - you should love each other a lot more."
"The prophet leads by his example," she quoted. "Section eleven."
Bram couldn't be bothered arguing any more, specially with somebody who knew the manifesto off by heart. "OK then," he said. "You can lie over there." The bed was a good size. "But no sex, and don't talk any more."
Horrified at his tone of voice, he lay down. That's no way for a prophet to talk, he told himself. It's not even a way for a progressive H.R. manager to talk.
"Thank you," she whispered, snuggling against him.
A few hours later, something woke him. An animal was calling in the night, perhaps from a nearby tree. There was a rustling sound on the side of the hump-house, as if another animal had just run over its surface.
While he tried to work out where he was, which motel he was in, he felt something fluttering against his stomach: he put a hand down there, and found another hand, its fingers restless in a dream.
Kristin's fingers seem shorter and smoother, he thought. Then he remembered where he was, and who was with him. He woke fully, and opened his eyes. In the moonlight, he could see Indigo lying next to him on her back, making a funny little sound every time she breathed in. He stretched out a hand, and stroked her firm young waist. She sighed, and turned towards him a little, flinging an arm over his chest. He gently returned it to its owner, and sat up slowly, trying not to disturb her.
Above him, at the edge of the skylight, two lights seemed to be shining: a red one and a yellow one. He soon worked out what these lights were: the crescent moon, with one of its horns illuminating a red plastic leaf of the wreath, and the other shining through a yellow leaf.
"Red and yellow light," he mused. Why did that seem familiar?
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