Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors Original (pdf) (novels to read in english .TXT) 📖

three of the strongest survivors. They came up with the trader

Dauntless hard by the Six Seven Isles and browbeat its master into

a rescue mission.

‘Where is she now, Captain?’

‘Still sailing in the Red Ocean,’ said Cap Raam. ‘H er trader is

called the Seahawk, after Gline’s ship. She comes to Derry on her

lay-off.’

‘Why would he fear her so long?’

Cap Raam frowned.

‘She’s a hard sort. Rules her crew and drives a hard bargain.’

I had checked the records: Hilo Hill was last seen on the grey

beach, then ‘missing’. Some had died on the beach and their deaths

were recorded, but a few of Hilo’s companions came into this other

category, saved from the wreck of the Seahawk but lost afterwards,

never loaded onto the trader Dauntless. Had they wandered back

into the swamp forest? Slipped back into the sea? They went from

‘missing’ to ‘missing believed dead’, Hilo Hill among them.

The real, the historic Hilo Hill had been a cheerful, well-

rounded fella, more popular than a ship’s cook had a right to be. He

had a sweet wife Janie, a beautiful daughter married to an up and

coming stable-boss, and a baby grandson. Young David Raam was

like a son in his house. When Hal Cline made up his expedition

Hilo Hill the sea cook was forty-six years old, hale and hearty, but

one of the oldest members of the crew.

From this jolly ghost we came to a thin creature, brown,

wizened, uncommonly odd, with a trick of dabbling his hardened

bare feet in a mud puddle especially made for the purpose, with a

repertoire of songs in quarter tones. M orning songs, moon songs,

songs for gathering and for new skin. Fifteen years of songs which

he assured us were ‘the unchanging songs’. ‘There are no new'

songs, only new singers.’ A proverb. The content of an hour-long

whistling chant to be sung in spring when the new moon set. The

Gnai were very long-winded.

I took down or memorised hours of this crazy stuff before they

became real to me. Rayner helped with the drumbeat, I plucked

the strings of the guitar or added flute notes. We pretended it wras a

game; we pretended we might heal the old man of his fantasy by

going along with it.

The ballad o f H ilo H ill

125

Question from Dag Raam What do they look like, Hilo?

AnswerT&W enough, Dag-boy. Upstanding, y’know. And with the

crest (passage untranslated) . . . good hands or handlers. Every

colour, the young, from green through grey, but the elders brown.

(After pause) Looked like bluggy great lizards, didn’t they. I used to

laugh, seeing’em shuffle past, outside the lean-to . . .

Session Twelve. Question from Rayner: Did they live in a village,

Hilo?

Answer: More or less. It is the ‘moving camp’, closest I can come

to it. Ring of earthworks and lean-to huts made of leaves and bark.

Depends where you are and what season.

Question You moved about then?

Answer Always on the move. North for the grasshoppers, then

back to the rivers for the mud-fish. Always on the move. M ust have

done thousands of kilometres. You let the rhythm take you . . .

moon of plenty, moon of new skin, moon of dust . . . (begins to

sing, indicates five/eight rhythm for drumbeat).

I asked about his maimed hand. Hilo Hill laughed and covered

his face for a moment.

Ah’, he said, ‘it’s the custom.’

He held up his skinny left wrist and patted the area below his

thumb.

‘They had a big fold of skin hanging here, more or less. Come the

moon of plenty the Elders do a peeling . . . strip off this skin with

their teeth. Sharp, useful teeth.’

He smiled and squirmed.

‘Well, I had no fold, had I? But I had to be peeled before I could

take a smoother.’

‘Do you mean a mate, Hilo?’ asked Dag Raam, grinning.

‘Not exactly, Dag-boy. The young ones mated. I was old, anyone

could see that, I was even the right colour. The old are-brown, the

young are this grey-green. Their family life is pretty queer. An old

peeled one can take one or even two young things as smoothers.

Part servant, part lover. I had to be peeled and I figured