Bouncing on the padded bench seat next to her husband, Kelli spoke up. “What do we do then? Make an omelet?”

  Roaring with laughter, the aged aborigine slapped his leg. “Bunyip omelet! That’s a good one, woman! No, no omelet. We do something else.” He nudged Oelefse, who was concentrating on the gorge they were approaching. “You hear that, mate? Feed a lot of folk, that omelet would!”

  “All of your community?” Cody asked curiously.

  “Maybe. Depend on the bunyip. Maybe feed Warmun, sure.” Turning, the white-haired elder met the archaeologist’s gaze. “Maybe feed Perth.”

  Cody was left with that image to ponder as they entered the shallow creek that had eaten a cleft in the rock, allowing them to penetrate the range. Curving, sheer-sided walls closed in on both sides. Even in the shade, it was hot, but nothing like the searing semidesert they had left behind. When the chasm grew too narrow for the Jackaroo, they parked it in a little side canyon. Kuwarra passed out small day packs. Cody and Kelli’s contained only food and water. In addition to his pack, the elder carried in one hand a three-foot long wooden tube, a piece of tree that had been decorated with many symbols and dots in white and dark red. Kuwarra defined them as best he could, tracing paths and stopping-places in the Dreamtime, highly stylized animals, and creatures few people would recognize. Cody was one of the few, having seen Interlopers before.

  They advanced in silence, following the overachieving trickle of a creek until the water vanished into the sand. Kelli held tight to her husband’s guiding arm. Above them the sky was reduced to a narrow, winding blue streak that followed the line of the gorge. Everyone kept a careful eye out for Interlopers, but despite the profusion of native stone, they saw none. Their absence in such a potentially hospitable place struck Cody as peculiar. He said as much to the two old men who were leading them onward.

  “The reason is simple enough.” Kuwarra explained as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “They keep away from this place ’cause they scared.”

  “Scared?” In all his many conversations with Oelefse, Cody could not recall the German mentioning anything that could frighten an Interloper. Enrage them, yes. Through his research the archaeologist had succeeded in doing that himself. But scare?

  “What could frighten an Interloper?”

  Kuwarra’s laughing smile vanished and for once he was wholly serious. “You never seen a bunyip, mate. When you see one, you have your answer.”

  He did not elaborate. Nor, Cody decided abruptly, did he want him to.

  Seventeen

  Eggs.

  Observing the domes and spires through which they were hiking, Cody could not banish the image from his mind: something a hundred feet high, or maybe two, having the appearance of solid, banded sandstone, suddenly rumbling and cracking and splitting wide open to release—what? Every image his brain unwillingly conjured to fill the void was more disturbing than the next.

  Kelli helped to calm him. If the danger was that great, she argued, then surely Kuwarra would not have brought them here. There had to be a reason why their actual presence was required. If it was simply a matter of finding and gathering something, some special ingredient for a potion or pill, the elder could have come by himself, or in company with Oelefse, or Oelefse and Cody, just as her husband and his European friend had gone to fetch the blue leaves of the ilecc to bring her out of her coma.

  Her rationale, Cody realized, was sound. But while he approved of the logic that led to an inarguable conclusion, he didn’t like it.

  Kookaburras and galahs guffawed in the Livistonia palms that filled the chasm. Where fast-flowing runoff from the Wet had scooped depressions in the sand of the creek bed, dark pools had collected, their depths as still and shadowed as the dust-free surface of black pearls. Even in the near perpetual shade, it was incredibly hot. Sweat poured down everyone’s face except Kuwarra’s, staining collars and sleeves. Tjapu Kuwarra did not sweat. In any event he had nothing to stain, having left everything in the way of clothing back in the Jackaroo but for a skimpy pair of briefs.

  The chasm widened out into a bowl-shaped pit. The far side was dominated by a vast undercut ledge, a smooth-ceilinged cavern large enough to hold a thousand people. Splashing through ankle-deep water, they halted beneath the ceiling of the impressive natural amphitheater. Even a whisper was clearly audible, reflected and magnified by the superb natural acoustics of their red earth surroundings.

  Slipping his pack off his back, Kuwarra brought out an incongruously powder-blue, cheap plastic lady’s makeup kit. From its contents he extracted glutinous paints and natural resins with which he proceeded to paint his body from face to feet, not neglecting to dab some bright reds and yellows in his remarkable beard. Cody looked on in quiet fascination, doing his best to describe the simple but bold patterns to Kelli. Working in silence, Oelefse stripped off his own clothes and proceeded to emulate his friend and colleague. The designs with which he streaked his pale skin were utterly different from those that decorated the nearly nude form of the aged aborigine.

  When both elders turned to face Cody, he wondered if he would also be expected to offer up his torso for duty as a canvas. Or worse, Kelli’s. Noting the look of concern on the archaeologist’s face, Oelefse hastened to reassure him.

  “You are perceptive, Coschocton Westcott, but you are not a member of the Society. There is work to be done here, and it is for my friend Tjapu and me to do.”

  Cody nodded understandingly. “What about Kelli and me? What do you want us to do?”

  “Stay out of the way.” Kuwarra’s eyes were roaming the sheer stone walls that enclosed them. “Stand. Watch. And be ready.”

  “We can do that,” Kelli told him. “Where do you have to go next?”

  “Where?” Kuwarra gestured expansively. “We are there, miss.”

  Turning in a slow circle, Cody examined the handsomely banded, wind- and water-washed sandstone. It contained every earth tone imaginable, from deep magenta to bright yellow. He saw nothing but gravel, boulders, weathered stone domes, and sand. Since entering the range they had not seen a single Interloper. They were afraid of this place, their guide had explained. Of the bunyip. What in hell was a bunyip?

  Did he want to find out?

  Settling himself down on a cool patch of sand by the water’s edge, Kuwarra passed something to Oelefse. It was a half-foot long piece of wood, smooth on both sides, shaped something like a squashed banana. Intricate painted patterns decorated both flattened sides. At one of the two pointed ends, a stout knotted string passed through a hand-drilled hole. Oelefse held the string loosely, letting the piece of wood dangle near his ankle.

  Taking up the hollow tube he had been carrying, Kuwarra put one open end to his mouth. Beeswax formed a smooth seal between lips and wood. When he blew into it the resultant drone, enhanced by the acoustics of the sandstone amphitheater, spooked every bird from its midday roost for half a mile around. Wings briefly filled the sky overhead before disappearing in all directions.

  What the aborigine patriarch played could not be called a tune, but it was surely music, Cody knew. As an archaeologist, he had heard didgeridoo before, though it had been nothing like this. Instead of a hypnotic, barely modulated drone, Kuwarra punctuated his playing with as weird an assortment of whoops, squawks, squeals, and moans as could be found in a haunted house on Allhallows Eve. In his hands the didgeridoo became a living thing, an imprisoned orchestra, an insistent long-distance call to an atavistic past that went beyond music to penetrate to the heart of whatever it was that made its listeners human. It was mesmerizing, enthralling, all-embracing, and the Kija elder played without pausing to breathe, utilizing the traditional cycle breathing that had been developed for use simultaneously with the instrument itself.

  Within a banded beehive dome of a hill across the shallow water, something stirred.

  As soon as Cody saw the sheer rock face begin to quiver, he put an arm around Kelli and drew her back, instinctively putting room between them and the two elders. Bits and pieces of the highly colored sandstone crust began to flake away from underlying stone, tumbling to the sandy creek bed below. Kuwarra never broke off playing. If anything, his playing grew more insistent, more convoluted, evolving into the didgeridoo equivalent of a fugue. Cody paid less attention to the panoply of sounds than he did to the shuddering stone.

  Kelli took an unexpected step forward and pointed. “I can see it!”

  The archaeologist squinted, scanning the exfoliating rock. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the wail of the ancient musical instrument and the now rapidly peeling cliff face.

  “Where? I don’t see anything.”

  “There—it’s right there!” She was gesturing emphatically. “Can’t you see it?”

  Between a band of yellow and a band of mauve, the rock was parting, cracking open, widening to reveal a dark hollow place in the solid stone. To Cody it looked like a mouth opening wide as a pair of colossal lips parted. But that was all he could see.

  “Oh—it’s coming out!” Kelli took several steps backward, compelling her husband to retreat with her.

  “What? What’s coming out?” Anxious and frustrated, Cody stared so intently at the widening maw in the cliff that the backs of his eyes began to throb. “I don’t see any . . .”

  There was a crack of thunder. A crack of thunder in a cloudless, clear blue sky. The two-hundred-foot-high dome split vertically, like a mound of rainbow sherbet cleaved down the middle by a hot butcher knife. From depths within emerged a bluish silhouette, grotesque and malformed beyond imagining. Shimmering and glittering with malevolent fire, it turned a thousand luminescent fangs the length of a man in the direction of the four tiny figures on the sand below. Without warning, preamble, or hesitation, it struck, a descending synthesis of all that was sharp and lethal.

  Just before it attacked, Oelefse had begun to whirl the banana-shaped piece of wood over his head, like a loop on the end of a lariat. With each revolution the brightly painted wood thrummed through the air, generating a deep-throated humming like the whir of a colossal, contemplative bumblebee. As the mad aggregate of blue-tinged razors lunged at Kuwarra, the wooden bullroarer struck. Fangs exploded, bursting on contact with the ancient device in a shower of azure sparks that flamed briefly blue before sinking into the sand. Outraged and thwarted, the horrific visage withdrew preparatory to striking again.

  “It’s an outline!” Clinging tightly to his beloved, Cody tried to shield her as best he could. “Just an electric blue outline. There’s nothing else there.”

  Within the tenuous safety of his arms, Kelli struggled to swallow, and failed. “No, Cody. It’s more than that. I—I can see all of it.”

  “But how . . .” As he turned slightly to meet her blank gaze, the rest of the archaeologist’s question died in his throat. All he could see was a silhouette, a suggestion, a roiling hint of what the flickering blue enclosed. Damaged, altered, her perception transfigured, Kelli could not see him. But her clouded eyes could see—other things. The truth was right there, blatant as the stone that surrounded them. In spite of himself, despite his fear for his wife’s safety and his overriding desire to shield her, he pulled away from what he saw. He could not be blamed for doing so. No one could have withstood the horror he saw then—not even Oelefse.

  The bunyip was reflected in her eyes.

  As it drew back, gathering itself to strike again, Oelefse whirled to face the two archaeologists. His painted countenance was no longer that of the urbane European gentleman. Like the rest of him, his expression seemed to have slipped back ten thousand years in time. Even as he shouted, he continued to whip the bullroarer over his head while Tjapu Kuwarra sustained the steady drone of the didgeridoo.

  “Kelli Westcott! Inhale! Take a deep breath. Now, as deep as you can! Do it!”

  Questions flared like matchheads in Cody’s mind, but there was no time for thinking. Reacting to Oelefse’s command, a startled Kelli sucked in as much of the ozone-tinged air as she thought she could. Beneath her shirt her chest expanded with the effort. It coincided with the bunyip’s second attack.

  Once again the strike was deflected by the disk of power generated by Oelefse’s bullroarer. But this time the frightful apparition was not hammered backwards. Instead, reflecting the angle at which it had impacted the bullroarer’s circle of influence, it was shunted sideways, knocked askew. Something caught hold of it, drawing it forward instead of casting it away. Though it struggled mightily, twisting and writhing like a runaway dynamo with awful insensate life, it could not resist.

  Cody felt as if he had been struck by a pillow filled with pudding. The force of it knocked him down, breaking his grip on Kelli’s shoulders, then picked him up and threw him six feet away so that he landed flat on his back on the soft sand. Looking on in helpless horror and fascination, he watched as a single flash of condensed blue lightning vanished down his wife’s smooth-skinned, tanned throat.

  Kelli sat down hard, her hands at her sides bracing herself in a sitting position. Startled, dazed, she blinked several times, as if she had swallowed nothing more than an errant bug. Putting aside didgeridoo and bullroarer, the two elders instantly rushed to her aid. As they started to help her up, a furious Cody brushed them aside.

  “What happened?” Trembling with rage, he stared down at his stunned wife. “What did you do to her?”

  Oelefse replied gently—more gently than Cody had ever heard him speak. “Ask her if she can see you, my friend.” The old man nodded encouragingly. “Ask.”

  The archaeologist did not have to. Her eyes welling up with tears, Kelli had reached up and was running her fingers over her husband’s features; touching, caressing, loving. The answer to Oelefse’s query was evident in the way her face moved, the way her smile widened.

  “I can see you, Cody. I can see again. Everything.”

  The fury went right out of him. Whatever hideous marvel he had just witnessed, it had restored her sight. Except for some initial, momentary shock, she seemed none the worse for the experience.

  “Most people,” he muttered falteringly, “can get by with swallowing a lousy pill to cure what ails them.” Then he was bending toward her, his face inclining toward her own, his mouth and lips reaching for the warmth that was so familiar, staring into . . .

  With a cry he fell back, stumbling away from her startled face, his trauma greater than hers. It was still there. The bunyip was still there—in her newly restored eyes. He had seen it—and it had seen him, staring murderously but impotently back from within the depths of his lover’s self and soul.

  It wanted out.

  Yet, as he gathered himself and struggled to deal with the shock of what he had just seen, it struck him that she seemed to be suffering no ill effects. What had happened, was happening? Did the bunyip now possess her—or she it?

  Her expression was one of frightened bewilderment. “Cody, honey—what is it? What’s wrong?” She was oblivious to that which was now dwelling within her.

  Slowly he walked back to her, putting a hand on each shoulder. “How do you feel? Anything unusual or irregular? What about your eyes?”

  “They feel fine. I can see again. They ache a little, and I’m kind of nauseous, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” In her voice, confusion was paramount. “What’s the matter? You look so strange, Cody. Almost as if you’re frightened of me.”

  Still holding her, his expression grim, he turned to confront the other members of the little party. They were observing in silence. “Well? What just happened here? Should I be frightened of her? Should we all?”

  The two elders exchanged a glance. Oelefse left it to their guide to explain. “It was the only way, mate. The part of her mind that sees right was all cocked sideways, you see. Had to be knocked back into place. Need a big shock to do that, too right!” He gestured at his colleague. “Without me and Ole here, the bunyip maybe come out of its egg and eat you for sure.” He ventured an encouraging smile. “Instead, we make a little music, a little magic, and she eat it. Suck it straight down, your sheila did! Knock her eyeball stuff right back into line.”

  Cody and Kelli struggled to make sense of the unfathomable. Kuwarra’s words were clear enough, but the antediluvian meaning behind them was not.

  “Then it hasn’t gone away, this bunyip thing? It’s still inside her?” Summoning a great effort of will, the archaeologist made himself gaze once more into his wife’s eyes. What he saw there would have made a strong man blanch or a weaker love turn away. “I can see it.”

  Oelefse nodded. “All surgeries have side effects, my young friend.”

  “Side effects! What are we supposed to do now? Go home and go back to work? Resume a normal life while Kelli walks around with some irate eldritch horror fuming inside her? The idea behind all of this was to keep Those Who Abide away from us. Not make them part of the family.”

  “The bunyip is not an Interloper.” Oelefse explained patiently. “It is something else.”

  “I’ll say it is!” Cody’s angry voice reverberated off the burnished, buckled sandstone walls of the amphitheater. “It makes the worst Interloper I’ve seen look like a stuffed toy handout from a fast-food chain.”

  “Of course we will exorcise it from her.” The elderly German’s tone was soothing. “But if you are willing, not here. There is a better place.”

  “Better place?” Frowning, Cody looked from one composed, impassive elder to the other. Kelli’s expression reflected similar uncertainty. “What do you mean, a better place?”

  Kuwarra took up the explanation. “Something is on the verge of happening, mate. Something real very bad for the very real world. It got to be stopped, don’t you know.” He spread his hands wide. “To prevent something real bad you got to use something real bad. Nothing around that’s badder than a bunyip.” Straining to see, he tried to peer speculatively into Kelli Westcott’s eyes. “Especially an angry one.”