AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES
Chapter 13: Sticks 'n Stones
Only one set of footprints
led away...Sid's. "He's carrying her," Jack
commented, narrowing his eyes.
"Going toward Kata Tjuta,"
Himself added, frowning. "Head for the SUVs," he shouted.
"We have our villain back!"
********************
Reluctantly, Maximus permitted Franki to apply a quick bit of salve to his
scrapes. Then they all set off across the plain toward the Olgas. Jack
and Rose sat in the back seat with the General, while Bunny sat in the front
with annsmac as Terry drove.
Maximus leaned his right
temple against the side window, closing his eyes. Rose noticed his hands,
lying in his lap, trembled still from their long desperate clinging to the
ridge. She held his cape in her own lap, her fingers unable to keep from
ruffling through the deep fur of the drape. It was, she had to admit, in
all her years of costume design experience, the single one piece that was the most glorious.
Jack watched her hands for
a while then smiled, saying, "You like his cape?"
She nodded, smiling back.
"I do, but I also like...other...garments." She looked
directly at his ruffles, unable to believe how open she had become with him so
quickly. He chuckled softly and lay his hand atop hers on the fur. They had spent many hours now conversing quietly as they
walked, or beside camp fires, or on the long trips in the SUVs. She couldn't
remember, in fact, when she had spoken at such great length with anyone so
continuously. Slowly she lifted her eyes to his, moved by what she
plainly saw in their depths.
Maximus opened his eyes slightly, looking at them. He was pleased for
them, for them both. He had come to see the qualities Rose bore as a
woman and he could wish nothing better for his friend. Then he let his
lids close again. The sight of Sid's face just before he had fallen to
his knees would haunt him forever. This he knew. Himself had
said, "We have our villain
back," but Maximus had been changed by what he had come to know, to
understand, of Sid. He had hated him for the better part of 3 years,
despising all that he had done to both Joimus and himself. But...then...he
had come to know... purple, and in that knowing Sid would never be merely
'villain' again...no matter what he did. In a way, it made things harder.
Hating him had always been so easy. Now it had all
become... complicated. Again he saw Sid's face in that moment atop Ayres.
He had looked like a small boy about to be swept away in some violent
whirlpool. Maximus let out a long, slow sigh and both Rose and Jack
turned to look at him.
"Sid, this is ridiculous! Put me down!" Joimus said.
Sid was covering ground
many times faster than any normal man would be able. He found himself
appreciating his abilities more than usual now that he knew what being encased
in Maximus' flesh felt like.
"Quit wiggling!"
he snapped harshly, not liking the distraction she offered from his self
admiration.
"At least tell me
where we're going," she then demanded.
"There!" he
said, pointing toward the Olgas, which for her, were the vaguest lumps of rust
on the horizon. She still didn't believe what he had said about Maximus
dangling 200 feet above them back at Ayres, so she wasn't worried about him.
"Maximus will be
upset with you," she admonished.
"There won't be
enough of your General left to admonish anyone," he smirked.
"Why do you keep
saying such things?" she groused, getting really aggravated with him now.
"I say them in spite
of the fact that they are true,"he chuckled, amused at his own cleverness.
"OK...this is
ENOUGH!" she hollered right in his ear. "WHAT have you
done?"
"Oh, just took the
General for a bit of rock and roll," he replied.
"What does THAT
mean?"
He stopped, turning his head
to look straight at her, his face so close to hers that she was able to make
out his features a bit. "I rolled with him...off the rock."
She remembered that he
had, indeed, splatted down at her feet from above. "You rolled... off
the rock?" she repeated.
"Yes, off the rock.
Off the top of the rock."
She twisted so suddenly that
he lost his grip on her, dropping her onto the red sand. Quickly she was
on her feet, stepping really close to him, trying desperately to see his face.
"Why?" she asked,
the tone of her voice changing. "Why would you roll off the
rock?"
"Because I...wanted
to," he answered.
"You knew you would...survive,
didn't you?" she breathed, her voice suddenly going hoarse.
"Yes," he
admitted.
"But...but...you pulled
Maximus with you?"
"I did."
Her breaths started coming
quick and shallow. "You...you...wouldn't do that to him," she
whispered.
"But I did," he
smiled.
"It is true,
then...that he was hanging there...high on the rock?"
"Very true
indeed," he said.
"But...why...would
you DO that?"
"Because I knew he
would not survive," he replied, his voice quite matter-of-fact.
She sank back to her knees
in the sand, trying to think, trying to comprehend what he was saying.
Finally she tipped her head up, saying, "But he is
your...friend."
"He is no friend of
mine," Sid shrugged.
"You are human.
Humans understand very little." He looked down at her.
"All of you are so...limited."
"What of the
waterfall? What of your blue flashing across the skies?"
She reached out, touching
his leg. "And what of...green?"
"Green?" he
spat. "Green was the color of the suit I wore when I was trapped in
the computer. Green was when Parker Barnes blasted me into the ice chest.
I despise... green." He grabbed her arm, yanking her to her feet. "Get your sight back soon," he growled.
"You are too much of a burden this way." Scooping her up
again, he continued rapidly on toward the Olgas.
Her mind whirled.
Why was he doing this? What did he hope to gain by taking her with him?
She thought back over the last 3 years. Always, absolutely always,
the only thing Sid had ever hoped to gain by what he did was the tormenting of
the General. Did he think Maximus would somehow survive after all?
Was THAT why he took her? It was a glimmer of hope that perched in her
heart, beginning to sing the softest, tiny song. It HAD to be his reason!
There was never any other!
Himself had them stop and park the SUVs a couple of hundred feet out from
the Olgas while Terry, Alex, Biebe, Bud, and Cort spread out trying to find
Sid's tracks. The cast stared at the rounded masses of red rocks, now so
very close. Some of them were bunched close together with only narrow,
precipitous crevices between them, others were more spaced apart.
Berti pointed at the tallest
of them. "What's that?" she asked Himself.
"That would be Mount
Olga herself."
"Herself?"
He smiled.
"Named after the Queen of Spain in 1872 when a white man first
explored them."
She turned, looking back
across the plain at the distant Uluru. "It looks taller even than
Ayers."
"It is," he nodded,
"by a good bit." He let his eyes travel slowly over the Mount, then as
if he were Teller Himself, began to speak. "For the Aborigines,
Mount Olga is the home of the snake Wanambi. There is a waterhole on the
summit where he stays curled up during the rainy season. The gorge below
is his home when it's dry. Sometimes, though,
he uses the various caves on the Mount. See the dark lines on its eastern
side? Those are the hairs of his beard. His breath is the wind
which blows through the gorge...the Valley of the Winds. When he gets
angry, it's almost like a hurricane in there.
Ando shuddered. "Let's
hope he's sleeping today!"
Himself grinned, then continued.
"The two large rocks near the end of the Mount are the food prepared
for the mice women."
"Mice women?" Eryn
asked.
"Aboriginal
ancestors...the domed rocks there...on the eastern side."
"What about that more
pointed rock?" Steve asked, looking through his camera lens toward a much
sharper form also on the east.
"That's Malu, a kangaroo
man, who is dying from dingo wounds. The rock it looks like he's leaning
on is Malumura, his sister, a lizard woman, who cradles him in her arms."
Berti nodded appreciatively.
"It does make them seem more than just rocks when you speak of them
like that."
"Rather like the
stars in a way," Jack added. "When I stand on my deck in the night
and know what the ancients saw in them, I feel... connected... somehow."
"As well as being
able to find your way back to England," Lachlan chuckled.
"That, too!"
Jack admitted, grinning. "That, too."
Nash, of course,
found...new and...different...things in the night sky. But, then, not
everybody's mind was as beautifully creative as his.
"HERE!" Bud called. "I've found Sid's tracks."
Everyone went over to
where he stood, taking plenty of water jugs with them. The temperature
had gone up to 97 by this time of day and the
sky was brilliantly blue from horizon to horizon. Steve loved the look of
the deep rusty red of the rocks against the blue and framed shot after shot as
he walked toward them.
"Aren't they just
spectacular, Laura?" he asked.
"They are,
indeed," she smiled. She found his excitement over such things to be
one of the most attractive things about him. He seemed steadily more relaxed,
more comfortable since they had left Nana Glen. He was interested in everything
he saw about him, finding compositions to photograph from the way a fern frond
lay across a log, to the enormity that was Ayres in bright sunlight. Most
of his career he had taken pictures of objects...fruit, vegetables...not
people. More and more he was including her in them, more and more as she
watched his face while he posed her in some shot, she liked what she saw there.
He was gaining some inner confidence, some sense of self that had not been
fully formed before and as she saw it growing in him, he seemed to steadily
become more handsome to her. It was the maturity in his eyes, she
decided, and the way he held his head nowadays.
"I'm so thirsty," Joimus said, licking her dry lips. "Do
you have water?"
"I don't drink, remember,"
he replied.
"But I do!" she
sighed.
"Too bad," he
frowned. "You'll have to make do without."
They were now deep into
the center of the large area covered by the
Olgas. "Do you have any idea where you're going, Sid?" she
asked.
He stopped, turning in a
complete circle where he stood. When he had splatted in front of her, it
had been sheer impulse on his part to snatch Joimus and head for the only thing
on the horizon. Maximus always seemed to weasel his way somehow out of
the things he arranged for him and all Sid could think of at the moment was
taking Joimus away from him so she would not be waiting when... if...he managed
to survive. Now that he had her here in this desolate place, her still not able
to see well, he truly did not know what he was going to do next. His face
was close enough to hers that she could make out a bit of his uncertainty.
"Just let me go,
Sid," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. "Without me
hampering you, you can go wherever you want."
He thought about that for
a moment. She had a point. He was very tired off all this 'country'
part of being in Australia. He yearned to be in a city again where there
were lights, movement, noise...lots and lots of people for him
to...play...with.
"Sydney," he whispered
longingly, not realizing he had said the word aloud. What a great name
for a metropolis. If only it had correctly been spelled 'Sidney', it would be
quite perfect. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Without warning, he suddenly spun around
5 or 6 times very rapidly, set her on her feet, and...disappeared.
She staggered a bit, dizzy
from the fast spins, almost falling into a scrubby bush. "Sid?"
she called. She squinted, trying to locate him, but all she could see
were the foggy outlines of the enormous red rocks in every direction.
Which way had they just come? Ah, that was the reason for the spin!
She had no idea now and with her eyesight so vague, there were no details for
her to have recognized anyway. She licked her lips again, knowing she
needed water badly in this heat. She could barely make out a dark area to one side that might be some form of
shade. The sun was high now and very hot, so she started to make her way
there. The little scrubby bushes were all about, as well as lots of small
rocks and little dry ditches. She'd only gone about 10 steps when she
tripped and fell on her knees. The shadowy area was still a good hundred feet or so away. Perhaps if she had some sort of stick to
help her walk? Peering hard, she looked about the area just around her.
Only a foot and a half away, a long, curving stick lay in the shadow of a
low rock shelf. Ah! That would do!
The cast entered the Olgas through a narrow valley lying between two of the
domes. Up close now, you could see that the smooth surfaces were quite pocked
with small holes. Jack and Rose walked beside Maximus. Every once in a
while Jack noticed the General grip one of his hands with the other as a muscle
spasm took him from the unbelievable strain inflicted on them. Once at
the end of the little valley, Jack paused to look through his telescope.
Maximus watched him
carefully. When Jack lowered the scope, his lips pressed together,
Maximus asked, "Nothing?"
"Not a thing,"
Jack replied, shaking his head.
The General let out a long
breath, closing his eyes, feeling the sun baking on his cheeks. "He
better have water for her," he whispered, setting his jaw.
Jack looked at Rose, a
worried look on his face. She read in it his knowledge that Sid would not
consider that important.
After a few more minutes, Himself divided them into 3 groups to cover more
territory. Maximus and Jack led one group, he Himself another, and Terry a
third. He did not want to make the groups too small as one or two people
encountering Sid by themselves wouldn't stand a chance.
Bunny went with Himself's
party. She was feeling very confused. What exactly had happened to
Sid atop Ayres? How much had he changed? Was everything he'd experienced as the
blue...gone? Was he exactly as he'd been...before? Was he
possibly...worse? She didn't know how to feel until she saw him, could talk to him, could know...who...he was.
An hour passed with no success. Each group had a man with a rifle to
signal the others should they sight Sid. Sid, however, sat crosslegged
atop Mount Olga, watching them with a grin. They were like mice in some
big maze... stupid, clumsy mice at that. He was tired of them. He
needed new sport! Slipping unseen down the back side of the Mount, he sprinted
off toward Yulara, intending to find some transport to Sydney.
Joimus' fingers began to curl as they neared the stick, ready to pick it
up. Suddenly she heard a *whup* *whup* *whup* sound getting closer, then
a slick, sharp thud as something sliced through the stick, burying itself in
the ground mere inches from her hand. Startled, she leaned close to the still-vibrating object, gasping when she saw the
sunlight glinting off a wide blade. Then there was the pounding of
running boots and she felt herself snatched up into strong arms.
"Sid?" she asked
quickly, thinking he had changed his mind about leaving her so alone. It was
not until she felt beard rubbing against her cheek that she knew it was not
Sid.
Jack, chuckling with admiration, put his arm around Rose. "Even with
his hands hurting like they are," he rumbled, "he bisected that snake
from 40 yards!"
"He practices on
Praetorians, I hear," Ando commented.
Maximus had not said a word, but only swooped her into his arms, pressing her
to his chest. He had thought his heart might stop when they rounded that last
dome and he saw her in the distance, kneeling, reaching out her hand toward the
snake resting in the shade of the ledge.
Just the mere unsheathing
of his gladius had caused pain to streak through the length of his hand.
The distance was great but there was simply no time to get closer.
Breathing a prayer to the gods, he threw his sword, sending it spinning in
the bright sunshine. Then he was off, following its flight path before it even found its mark. His knees felt
weak and, holding her, he sat on the ledge, the two parts of the snake near his
boots.
"Maximus?" she
said wonderingly. When it fully hit her that it was, indeed, Maximus in
whose arms she lay, she said his name again, softly, the three syllables of it
containing the essence of her heart. "Maximus." Then she put her arms
about his neck, burying her face close up under his jawline.
He blinked several times,
looking down at the snake, recognizing it now as one of the deadly poisonous
ones Himself had warned them to be on guard for. Then he sqeezed his eyes
tightly shut and just held her, rocking slightly back and forth.
Jack and the rest of their
group walked up. "Sid? Where is he?" he asked.
"He left me,"
she said quietly. She felt Maximus' body stiffen at her words.
"He left you...alone?
Here?" Jack said, his eyes narrowing at the thought.
She shook her head,
keeping it tucked under Maximus' chin. "I...I was trying to find some
shade," she continued, finally turning her head toward the Captain, who,
seeing how cracked her lips were, instantly offered her his canteen. When
she had drunk, she added, "But it was hard to make my way and I fell.
Then I saw a stick and thought it might help."
She looked up at Maximus
then. "You...you broke my stick!"
"Snake," he said
grimly, casting his eyes down at it.
"Snake?"
She followed his gaze, but still couldn't tell if it were a snake or a
stick. "Are you...sure?"
"I'm sure," he
said, using his right hand to tuck her head back where it had been. He
liked the feel of it there, wanted the feel of it there.
"Do you have any idea
where Sid might have gone?" Jack asked.
"Sydney," she
replied. "He said the word 'Sydney'."
East had fired his rifle
and before long the other two groups joined them. Jack briefly explained what had happened.
Himself walked over to
Laura. "May I?" he asked. She smiled and held out her cell
phone. Good thing it was one of those new-fangled ones that never need recharging! Handing it back to her, he turned to the
cast.
"Let's go back to the
SUVs," he said. "I've called for my private jet to meet us at
Connelan Airport. Looks like we're going to Sydney."
