Needles In The Haystack


Copyright (C) Will Kemp 1993


For reproduction rights see file sp001039.txt


CHAPTER SEVEN

    "It's up that tree there." Zara pointed to one of the dozens of 
trees surrounding them.
    "Where?" Sally asked, puzzled. She couldn't see anything.
    "That's good!" Phil grinned. "If you can't see it when it's 
pointed out to you, no-one else is going to find it by looking for 
it!"
    Zara threw the rope she was carrying over the lowest branch of 
the tree and used it to climb up into it. Then Sally and Anton could 
see the transmitter. It was a small green and brown box perched on a 
higher-up branch and nestling against the trunk. Zara took a 
cassette out of it and put the new one in place before she climbed 
back down again.
    "We managed to nick a solar panel and that's perched right up in 
the top of the tree there, see it?" Phil pointed.
    They both looked up again and they could just see the straight 
edges of the panel among the leaves.
    "That and a moter bike battery power the thing. Simple, isn't 
it? All we ever have to do is put a new cassette in every hour and 
clean the heads on the cassette deck." He pulled out a small 
transistor radio out of his pocket and turned it on. A song by the 
Crass was just ending, followed by Alien's voice saying "This is 
Radio Freedom, your local community pirate radio station..."
    "What happens if the cops come?" Sally asked.
    "We'd know they were coming long before they got anywhere this 
tree!" Zara laughed. "So all we have to do is run up here and turn 
the transmitter of and they've lost us. They could spend a year 
searching the bush around this spot and never find it. Finding a 
transmitter up a tree in the rainforest is a bit like finding a 
needle in a haystack!"
    "We've got a friend working on a remote control at the moment." 
Phil joined in. "So we can have a little box at home that will 
switch the transmitter on and off with radio signals. We were 
thinking about having a link transmitter at home to save us coming 
up here to change the tape all the time, but it's a bit of a 
giveaway if they search the house and it doesn't really take much 
effort to do it anyway."
    "We'll go back a different way eh?" Zara said, as they began to 
move off. "We don't like using the same route all the time, you end 
up with obvious tracks real quick."

                                  *

    Sally and Anton had been living in Mainline for nearly a week 
now. They were almost beginning to get used to the steep hill that 
led up to their new home.
    Life had certainly changed for the two of them in those few 
days. It was surprising what a difference getting out of the town 
and into the bush could make. They hadn't fought once in that time, 
although Anton had had a couple of tastes of smack - no more. And 
they both felt much happer and were starting to feel like they 
really were in australia out there, among the trees. Sally still 
hadn't told Anton about her dead boyfriend and he still hadn't told 
her about his drug use history, but they both still meant to - soon.
Everything was going too well to risk spoiling it will possible 
controversy. It was silly really, as the best time to talk about 
these things is when you're getting on well, but when has sense ever 
come between a couple and their excuse for a fight?
    They'd stayed in the house for the first couple of nights they 
spent in Mianline. But then they bought a $45 polytarp and put that 
over the platform which was up the hill as Phil had said. The tarp 
had been a bit of a struggle at first, as none of them had ever 
slung one up before. But eventually they sorted out the mess of 
ropes and tarpaulin and managed to create quite a habitable little
structure, shaped like a house and about the size of a small 
bedroom. They only used it for sleeping in, living in the house in 
the daytime.
    At first it felt really strange walking up the muddy hillside
in the pouring rain to go to bed at night. And then lying under the 
tarpaulin, with the loud splashing of the rain on top of it lulling 
them to sleep. But they were beginning to get used to it already. 
That and the feeling of being out on their own in the strange forest 
at night - although they were hardly any distance from the others 
sleeping in the house.
    There were other weird an unexplainable sensations that came and 
went in those first few days - and corried on for several weeks 
after. One of them was the sickness that Anton had felt on his first
drive into the Mainline valley. They both felt it this time, 
although they didn't talk about it until someone else brought up the 
subject several weeks later. Then they discovered that it affected
just about everyone who was new to the place. It only lasted a few 
hours really, although in a milder form it was with them for a few 
days.
    Another strange thing they both noticed was how much more 
strongly drugs seemed to affect them there than anywhere else. It
hardly took more than a few drops of alcohol to get quite pissed.
And a couple of drags on a joint and they were out of their heads.
Again, neither of them related it to where they were until someone
else talked about similar things later on.
    Theri dreams were suddenly stronger too. They were more vivd and 
intense, and both Sally and Anton often woke in the morning feeling 
they'd discovered something really significant in their dreams last
night - although they could never quite remember what it was.
    All in all, it was a strange place, Mainline. A place like 
they'd never been to before. There was something about it that seemed
totally impossible to define in terms of their previous experiences 
of life. And therefore totally impossible to define in ay way at 
all. Their minds didn't yet hold the concepts that would allow them 
to explain it. Their language didn't have the words to express these 
concepts so they could talk about them an gain some understanding 
that way. And they were so swamped by the newness of the whole 
situation that they couldn't have separated one aspect of it from 
another - even if they'd known they had somehow arrived in two 
different realities at the same time and not just one.
    Later on when these elusive concepts had filtered through from 
their unconscious minds to their conscious, and they'd learnt to use 
some of the  words in the english language in  completely new ways, 
so they had a means of talking about it, they looked back on this 
period with a mixture of amusement and confusion. It all eventually 
made sense, although they wouldn't both arrive together at the 
mental milestones on the road to understanding.
    They would both look back on this time in the future, realizing 
it was here they learnt to understand the real australia - not the 
ridiculous hallucination that the europeans have obscured it with, 
but the australia that's hardly ever seen by anyone else except its 
original inhabitants, but that's all around us all the time. It even 
lies there still, buried under the hideous concrete nightmares of 
the cities and its power is as strong as it ever was. Which is why 
people who live in australian cities are so confused.
    The land was talking to them. Telling them about itself and its 
laws, about its people and its spirits. That was the cause of the 
strange feelings and experiences that seemed to come from all sides 
in Mainline. It would take them a long time to understand it fully, 
but when they did they would realize the incredible power of those 
hills. The power they held could cut through their european 
conditioning, their european view of reality - or maybe i should say 
their view of reality as it is in europe, which is something 
different. It could teach them not only about itself , but about 
australia as a whole. Maybe if the first fleet had landed near 
there, the colonization of australia would have happened in a 
different way. Would not have happened at all perhaps. It might have 
become migration and integration, rather than colonization and 
destruction. But then who knows? It didn't stop what destruction has
happened in the area in the last two hundred years.

                                  *

    The dry season was slowly edging towards its hottest peak and 
the afternoon sun turned the sandy ground to a blistering furnace. 
    Gdzakl sat outside her humpy, in the sparse shade of the old gum 
tree. She looked out over the dry patch of ground in the clearing 
immediately in front of her and nodded slowly to herself. It wasn't 
always easy being alive, but she was happy.
    The little vegetable patch over there that survived the harsh 
climate only with her help didn't take much work to grow. But it was 
all they needed, her and the kid, to survive quite comfortably. Some 
years there was less food than others, but they managed.
    The river never ran completely dry, and if it was used 
carefully, the water would last the two of them and the vegetables 
until the rains came. It was a drag, sometimes, carrying all that 
water from the river to the garden in the old wooden bucket. But 
when it was done she felt satisfied.
    Then Gdzakl looked towards the other part of the garden, where 
the white petals of the poppies shone fiercely in the powerful 
sunlight. Those plants were important too, she thought. Without 
them, life would be pretty meaningless. It would just revolve around
growing and eating food and fixing up the thatch of her humpy.
    Of course there were friends and neighbours in the village to 
talk to, but eventually they got boring. Only for a while mind, now
and then. She always found a new interest in them after a bit of a 
break from their company. But she needed more. Something outside the 
village, outside this material existence that she surveyed now. And 
the poppies provided that.
    They put her in touch with other worlds. Other existences. Other 
possibilities for reality. None of which she really wanted to stay 
in for ever, but all of them were fascinating and beautiful. Like her
own world really, only familiarity always tends to breed some form
of contempt.
    They also relieved the pain of hunger in the lean periods - when 
they seemed to grow biggest and strongest. And they soothed her 
weary body after a day's work that had been harder than usual.
    She had no reason to imagine life wihout them, so she didn't. 
Until one day.
    "You can't grow those you know!" A harsh voice cut through the 
afternoon sun.
    Gdzakl looked up at the red faced person in a strange looking 
suit who stood in front of her pointing at the poppies.
    She couldn't work out what this person meant. She could grow 
them quite well in fact - her poppies were the biggest and strongest
in the village. Or maybe this red faced person meant that you 
couldn't grow them because they grew themselves, which was quite 
true. But what did he want anyway? And why was he out and about at 
this time of day, when everyone always rested and kept out of the 
sun?
    "I've told all the other villagers that if they pull them up 
now, we'll take no further action." the harsh voice continued. "But
if you don't, we'll have no option but to put you in prison!"
    Gdzakl had never heard of prison, but the official person was 
very keen to put that right. He explained that it was a big building 
made of stone where you had to live in a small cell and never saw 
the sun. And it didn't sound very much fun at all.
    Eventually Gdzakl, along with everyone else in the village was 
persuaded to stop growing their poppies, which they'd been growing
for dozens of generations and never found any reason to stop growing 
before. They just didn't seem important enough to be put in prison
for.
    But that was then. And it didn't take very long before they 
realised how important they'd been to them. Life wasn't the same.
It turned into one long drudge. A real proverbial daily grind. There
really was bugger all to make it better than what they'd always 
imagined death to be like. Then one day when they were just about at 
the end of their collective tether and seriously contemplating mass 
ritual suicide, another stranger came to the village.
    "Psst..." said the new red faced person, who was also out in the 
heat of the afternoon sun while everyone else was sitting in the 
shade thinking about the good old days. "Remember those white 
poppies you used to grow?"
    Gdzakl nodded. That was exactly what she had been remembering. 
She looked up at the stranger, who looked curiously like the last 
one, only without the suit, and wondered what this was all about.
    "Well, i've got some white powder here that does exactly the same
thing." He held out a little silver foil packet, which Gdzakl went 
to take.
    "Uh-uh! Wait a minute." the stranger said, withdrawing his hand 
a little. "It costs me money to bring this here to you. I can't just 
let you have it for nothing you know! Tell you what i'll do though," 
he smiled and Gdzakl noticed just how much like the other stranger 
this one looked. In fact she could have sworn it was the same person
if it hadn't been for the different clothes.
    "If you just double the ammount of food you grow and give me 
what you don't need, i'll supply you with this stuff when you need 
it."
    Gdzakl frowned. It seemed like a strange idea, but she supposed 
it wasn't very much more effort than growing the poppies in the 
first place. So she accepted the stranger's offer and once again she 
was happy. The afternoons, when work was finished, regained that 
charmed and pleasantly relaxed quality. Of course they weren't quite 
so long, as it did take an extra hour to water all those other 
vegies the stranger demanded, but after the months without poppies 
it still seemed worth it.
    Of course it didn't stop there.
    "Due to fluctuations in the market and a poor harvest this year,"
the stranger said, "the cost of this white powder has risen 
prohibitively. Of course, i wouldn't want to deprive you of your 
pleasure and relaxation, so i'll tell you what i'll do..."
    Gdzakly ended up growing four times the ammount of vegies she 
needed to live on and then she really did need the white powder that 
the other three quarters went to pay for. But somehow by then, it 
was too late. She didn't have the time to sit down and think about 
her life. The shadow cast by the old gum tree never had anyone to 
shelter any more. So she could barely muster up the energy to hit up 
the white powder in order to get a good night's sleep before the 
daily grind began again, let alone wonder why she was working four 
times as hard as she had been before.
    The stranger who sold the white powder laughed as he sat in the 
shade of an air conditioned bar and drank a beer with his cousin who 
wore the suit.

                                ***