The Dreaming 1.11
By Asynca
Thanks to Omnipatient and Cbulldog09.
The girl looked absolutely shocked to see me for just a fraction of a second, and then her face settled into a scowl. "What the fuck are you doing here?" she asked, frozen midway down the stairs and glaring down at me. "Did you follow me?"
"I was about to ask you the same thing," I said, although I wouldn't have said it quite like she had. I doubted she'd followed me, because she was clearly shocked to see me. And if she hadn't followed me and I hadn't followed her, there was more at play here than just us bumping into each other twice in really obscure locations. "What are the odds of this happening?"
She didn't answer me. Instead, she looked at Macca. "Seriously, what the hell?"
He looked uncomfortable, glancing sideways at me to check to see if I was upset by how she'd spoken to me. "Sorry, Amanda, I didn't know you guys knew each other."
"I didn't, either," I muttered. I took a deep breath, thinking that we should just settle whatever perceived differences she had with me for the sake of everyone else. "Listen, I don't—"
"No, you listen," she said, interrupting me and walking slowly down the rest of the stairs. "Next time you want my number, how about having the guts to actually ask me yourself? At least then I'd have the satisfaction of saying no to your face." As she reached the bottom of the stairs she spent a few seconds glaring at me. There was an ominous weight about Amanda's stare that made my skin crawl, but I couldn't put my finger on why it affected me so much. I wondered if the cave-thing was involved with her, too.
Eventually, she made an exasperated noise and spun on the heel of her boots, walking out the door. Boots, I thought, that's what I like to wear. It was only at that point that I took stock of the rest of what she had on: a long sleeve top with a polo neck despite how warm it was getting outside. There was no end to the mysteries surrounding this girl.
Macca and I just stared after her.
After just a few seconds, he laughed nervously. "What the fuck?" he said, and then looked at me. "Did you run over her cat or something? Geez!"
"I'm not exaggerating when I say I have no idea at all what her problem is," I said. "Literally, we just bumped into her while we were hiking. It was the first time we met her. I never asked anyone for her phone number." I did seriously wonder if she might be one of the people Sam had been talking to on Bree's Facebook, but even that didn't make sense because Sam hadn't been posting as herself. It was just a total mystery.
Macca and I followed her out to the people mover. Amanda had taken the front passenger seat and had her eyes forward as he opened the sliding door for me. Sam accepted her backpack and then helped me up the stair with mine and we dumped them on the seat behind us. She was trying to get my attention the whole time. "It's her!" she hissed into my ear as I sat beside her. "That blond girl from near the cave!"
As I sat, Amanda and I made eye-contact in the rear view mirror and I looked away quickly. Then I felt stupid for being so timid about it and had a debate with myself about whether or not it would be appropriate of me to just insist she be nice to us. While I was staring out the window, Sam took my hand and leaned over to my ear again, holding the camera close to her face so the mic would pick up her voice. "What is she wearing, anyway? Did I make a mistake and fly us to Alaska?"
"Shh!" I said quietly to Sam, but I was smiling.
"What are you two whispering about?" Jammas asked, leaning his arms on the back of the seat we'd put our bags on.
"Clothes," Sam said, putting on a ditzy voice, and swinging the camera around to face him. "I'm totally serious."
He laughed. "No way," he said, joking. "You were arguing about who gets me, weren't you?"
"Aren't you with…" I said quietly, tilting my head back towards Amanda. I hadn't really thought about it, but I'd assumed since it seemed they were in the same room that they were together.
He laughed once. "Working on it!" he said loudly, and shot Amanda a grin. She must have been watching us in the mirror, because she made a disgusted noise.
Sam winced. "Really? You don't maybe want someone who, like, doesn't want to kill you in your sleep?"
"You offering?" he said, clearly kidding with us. His smile faded a little as he continued, shrugging. "I don't know what's up with her today, but she's usually just quiet. And, you know…" he made a beckoning motion with his hands, leaning in toward us as he glanced up to check if Amanda was listening. "All those clothes. Makes you wonder what's underneath, yeah?"
We leaned back. Sam looked very entertained. "Oh, my God," she said, turning around to face the front. "I can't believe you just said that!"
While Sam and I were sorting out our seatbelts, Macca started the engine and tried to do a three point turn out of the tiny car park at the backpackers'. He managed it quite admirably, but when we finally made it out he nearly hit over a group of miners who were walking past from their hotel, bags in tow.
"Jesus, fucking," he said, reminding me of Australians and their love of expletives. "If I'd just accelerated a little bit faster, I'd have killed the whole lot of them." He twisted back to us at the traffic lights. "I'm a cold, hard, killer, too, you see," he said, sounding anything but. "I hope you're not disappointed. I think that bald guy was in that group. "
Sam was looking at me, too, as if she was waiting for me to reply.
"No, I'm still completely impressed," I said, playing along. The more these two boys spoke, the more I thought that perhaps Macca hadn't been that interested in Sam, after all. Being forward just seemed to be how he interacted with people.
Macca looked at Amanda, who was trying to appear as if she wasn't involved in the conversation. He flexed his arm so his biceps bulged. "It's my muscles," he told her. "It's definitely my muscles. They always get the girls."
"Can we just go already?" she asked.
I glanced sideways at Sam. Unlike Amanda, she was watching his muscles. I sighed.
We hadn't driven for five minutes before Broome abruptly ended and we were on a sealed road in the middle of nowhere. The shoulder was the same deep orange as the soil we'd camped on and lush green shrubs and trees were growing out of it. In contrast to Sydney there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and the morning sun shining through the window already had a bite to it.
Thinking of Sydney reminded me what had brought us here. "Macca," I said, saying his name to get his attention. "I know the location of this mine is important, but I don't actually know why it's important." Beside me, Sam had her camera pointed at him as he drove.
I could see Amanda roll her eyes in the mirror. She was looking out the window, though, and not at me.
Jammas groaned behind us. "Don't get him started," he warned me.
"Too late!" Macca said, and then answered me. "Do you know about the Bunuba War?" He glanced at me and saw as I shook my head. "The name 'Jandamarra' mean anything?"
It sounded familiar, I thought. I think I'd read something about him in the research papers I'd downloaded the day beforehand. "Wasn't he a local who killed some European Settlers back in the late nineteen hundreds?"
Macca looked delighted I knew. "Yeah, an Aboriginal guy. He joined the settler police. I'll spare you the details but basically the settlers did a lot of racist shit and he ended up turning on them, killing his police partner and stealing some guns. The stand-off between his tribe and the settlers lasted for three years and there are all sorts of stories about his supernatural ability to appear suddenly, kill someone and then vanish completely. Anyway he was killed in his hideout in Tunnel Creek which is near Windjana Gorge by another Aboriginal guy who was supposed to also have magical powers. Basically everyone in Aboriginal stories has weird magical powers." He laughed. "Tunnel Creek and Windjana Gorge are dead smack bang on either side of where the mine's actually going to be, and there's a very real threat to both sites. It's a fucking tragedy that corporations can ever get permits for this stuff."
He seemed to know a lot about the area. "You're a student, aren't you?"
"Was," he said.
"Did you study Australian History? Is that how you know all this?"
He shook his head. "Bachaelor of Arts," he said. "Not worth the paper it's printed on. Amanda here's the decorated historian," he jerked his thumb at her.
"Archaeologist," she corrected him. "And there's a lot more to the area than what he's told you."
That made me sit up straight. "You're an archaeologist, too?"
Sam looked up over the LCD at me, eyebrows in her hairline.
Amanda didn't look like she wanted to discuss it, so Macca answered for her. "All the way from your neck of the woods," he said. "Cambridge."
Which would mean only one thing. "You'd have Professor Chamberlain as your supervisor," I realised aloud. There wouldn't be more than one student from Cambridge doing projects in the Kimberley, surely. He must have been talking about her in his long letter. At least it went some of the way to explaining what her problem with me was; I wondered if perhaps Prof Chamberlain had said something to her about Peru that had got her back up. I couldn't think of any other reason she'd dislike us so much. "You're the student he sent the drawings to whose contact details I asked for!"
"You shouldn't have copied the designs," she said, still looking out the window. "You don't even know what you're doing."
Macca looked uncomfortable again. Behind us, Jammas said pointedly. "So how long 'til we get to the blockade?"
The drive ended up being about five or six hours. When Sam and I had driven up the coast with Bree and Min, there had been plenty of little towns and other distractions along the road, but not out here. Here, it was just a flat, long road. Bree and Min had also been great company. It wasn't that Macca and Jammas weren't, really, it's just that everyone was a little on edge with Amanda brooding in the front seat. She didn't seem to want to talk much but just her presence was a constant weight on the four of us.
In the afternoon, Sam fell asleep on my shoulder. I put her camera safely on my lap and my arm around her so she didn't flop against the window and bump her head.
Jammas watched us. "Aww, you guys must be pretty close," he whispered. "Childhood friends, right?"
I wondered if that should be the moment I said something about us. In the end, I didn't. It wasn't as if he was actually asking for that information and I didn't really want to make him feel uncomfortable if he wasn't. You just never knew how people were going to react, and this trip was already awkward enough. "Boarding school."
He nodded as if that explained why I was cuddling her. As soon as the moment was over, I decided that I should have said something. It was too late by that point, though.
The last hundred kilometres of the trip was on an unsealed road. It was well-tended enough to tear along, but from time to time Macca would swear and break suddenly. Towards the end of the trip he slowed and called back to us, "Hey, look!"
In front of the car was a flock of emus travelling at their own pace across the orange road. I shook Sam; she shouldn't miss them. "Sam?" While she was stirring, I held her camera up and recorded them. I had expected them to be fearful of the car as we slowly rolled past them, but they had quite the opposite reaction. One of them wound up and ran at us, mouth open and head low. It was making the most awful sound.
"Whoa!" Macca said, and stopped completely.
It arrived at our windshield with the feathers on its neck completely fluffed so it looked more like some sort of yeti than a bird. Then, it opened its deep mouth so wide we could see down its throat and made a sound in the swell of its neck that sounded like someone thumping on a box.
That woke Sam up. "What on…" she said, rubbing her eyes. "Oh, my God!" She sat back against the seat, and then repeated, "Oh, my God, that's awesome!" She took the camera from me and zoomed in on it.
At the window beside us, another pair of eyes appeared and considered us. The window was only open an inch, but Sam took one look into the beady eyes and shut it completely.
"Just F.Y.I.," Macca said, turning to us. "Everything in Australia wants to kill you. Everything."
"Thanks for the warning," I said, watching the Emu bounce around aggressively and flourish its neck feathers at us.
Just then, Sam shrieked. "Amanda!"
Amanda looked alarmed. "What?"
"I swear to God I just saw a spider on your neck, under your hair!" She had her camera pointing at Amanda, despite Amanda's earlier threat that she'd sue us for any footage that ended up on telly. "I think it ran into your collar!"
Amanda didn't even check, relaxing back into her seat. "I'm sure I'll be fine." Leaning boredly against the backrest, she watched the emu dancing around the front bumper as if she'd seen it a million times before.
Sam looked completely confused. "Aren't all the spiders poisonous here, though?" she asked me. "Why would she not care?"
I didn't really have an explanation. "Maybe she thought you were messing with her?"
Sam didn't look convinced. "We're pretty far from a hospital," she muttered. "I'd at least want to double-check to make sure I wasn't being messed with…" She shivered, and then began to search around in her own clothing for spiders. When she was done she got started on me.
Meanwhile, Macca was leaning on the horn to try and get rid of the aggressive emu. Eventually we were able to drive on.
I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting the blockade to look like, but I hadn't seen that many people on telly. What we arrived at looking something between a college fair day and a commune. There must have been hundreds of people there.
There was so many people, in fact, we had to park quite a bit up the road from where everyone had pitched their tents and walk the rest of the way to it. We even passed a truck with ten Porta Loos on the back of it and a queue for them spreading out onto the road.
I was looking at them, and Macca explained, "Never host a blockade without food, booze and loos."
Sam tugged on my arm as we walked past a media van with a big red seven painted on the side of it and a dish mounted on top. There was another one, as well, but the logo was more obscure. "You'll be right at home," I said to her, and pointed further up to where I could see a man with a camera on his shoulder talking to some other media professionals. "Look, a great big EFP. I wonder if he'll let you touch it."
She laughed, grabbing my arm as she exaggerated her reaction. "Stop, you're turning me on."
Jammas was walking near us and hadn't actually heard what I'd said, only what Sam had. Boy, did he give us an odd look. I wondered if I'd even need to spell out the relationship between Sam and I to him.
We'd arrived at the tent city before I realised that Amanda had disappeared. I wasn't that disappointed, actually. She probably had a great deal of knowledge of the area that I'd really like to pick her brains over, but she was just insufferable. I couldn't possibly have done anything to her that would justify her behaviour toward us. It really was a pity, though. I very rarely came across other female archaeologists that had similar interests to me, especially younger ones.
Macca gestured out over the sea of tents. "Pitch anywhere," he said, "preferably on flat ground or the road because that makes it harder for Frost to pass us." He pointed over at a plume of smoke that was further down the hill. "That's the kitchen, you saw the loos. I've got some stuff to do, but can you find me later? I want to talk about what you're going to say to the news. Thanks for doing this, again. You rock."
He gave me a collegial pat on the back and then he and Jammas walked off somewhere. Various people greeted him as he went. I was pleased to see that some of them were clearly Aboriginal. My heart leapt. I wanted to rush over and talk to them about the area, but in a way that didn't look horribly tokenistic and patronising. Perhaps I'd have more opportunity to meet them later. I watched him go.
Sam was filming out over the tents. "This is amazing," she said. "There's signs everywhere. Don't do this, don't do that, camp here please, don't leave your valuables unattended… There's even trash cans."
"I think Macca's the one who organised it," I said, with new respect for him.
"Well, it's pretty well organised," Sam said. She was looking at something, so I followed her line of sight and saw a St Johns Ambulance crew relaxing on deck chairs near their van.
Ahead of the camp, the road bent to skirt around what looked like an enormous rocky hill. The ridge of the hill stretched along the horizon, but the apex of it was casting a long shadow on the camp. It loomed over the tent city, dwarfing it. It was so vast that even just looking up at it made me dizzy.
"That must be Windjana Gorge," I said. "It's supposed to have some beautiful caves."
Sam was still looking at the screen, but she sounded amused. "Gee, I wonder what we're doing later," she said. "Although, you have an awful dilemma, now." She paused for effect. "Whether we go snoop around the empty mine site or go spelunking in some more 'beautiful' caves. Maybe we can find cave-thing a girlfriend."
I laughed shortly, shifting the weight of the pack. "Well, I think I'm going to have to hang around for the cameras for now," I said. "Shall we put the tent up?"
Sam looked longingly towards the cameraman I'd pointed out before, but he still appeared to be deep in conversation. I supposed she decided it could wait until later. "Okay."
We found a spot on the outskirts of the main city and a little into the scrubland. After Sam had beat around the sand for several minutes and was absolutely certain it was safe – "They have these snakes that cover themselves in sand and just lie there waiting to attack you!" – she helped me pitch the tent.
I always loved crawling inside after it was up. There was something really comforting about lying there in your own little room that created the illusion we were perfectly safe. I took my sleeping back out of my pack and unrolled it, lying on top of it as Sam took a peek at what clothes I'd packed for her.
"I love this top," she said, holding up a white t-shirt. "I have a feeling it's not going to stay white for too long, though." She looked down at her hiking boots, which were already covered in a fine sheen of orange dust.
"At least you can bleach white," I pointed out.
"I haven't worn this one for ages," she said, shaking out a grey tank top. "I wonder if it still looks good." Without any warning, she pulled off the t-shirt she was wearing, revealing a very inappropriate bra. It really suited her, but wasn't going to offer her anything in the way of support. I had a brief vivid memory of Sam walking around the hotel room in that tiny bikini with her breasts bouncing everywhere. My cheeks felt hot.
She caught me looking. "Like it?" she asked me, looking mischievous.
"I didn't see you put that on," I said. "And yes, I do." What was in it, at least.
She abandoned the grey singlet and stepped one leg over me, sitting across my hips. "Want a closer look?"
I curled my hands around her hips. Then, because I knew she loved it, I flipped her onto her back and lay between her bent knees. "That's much better," I said and kissed the crease between her breasts. "I can see all detail from here." I slipped a hand underneath the offending item and Sam exhaled at length, relaxing back.
"Can I come in?" a tiny voice with a strong accent said from the doorway.
"Shit!" Sam hissed, and then hurriedly put her hand over her mouth. It was obviously a child's voice. She made a grab for her t-shirt as I quickly scrambled off her.
The little girl had already crawled into the tent without waiting for us to answer her. She had dark brown skin and black hair which was ratty and obviously overdue for a wash. I would have thought she was no more than four if I hadn't heard her speak. A four year old didn't speak that clearly – at least, I didn't think they did. I hadn't really had extensive experience with young children.
Sam held her t-shirt across her chest. "Hello, Sweetie," she said, sounding a lot less flustered than she looked. "Won't your parents be wondering where you are?"
"My parents don't live here," she said, sitting herself neatly on the edge of my sleeping bag and picking up Sam's abandoned tank top.
"Do they live nearby?" Sam asked.
"They live in the Spirit World," she said as confidently as if she were telling us which suburb they lived in. She lay the tank top out in front of her and smoothed it carefully out. "This is pretty," she said. "I like the pictures."
Sam and I looked at each other. A rock settled in the pit of my stomach. "My parents live there, too," I told her.
She thought about that for a few moments, and then turned her attention back to the top. "What are the pictures of?" she asked, crawling over and inviting herself into my lap.
Sam looked from me to the girl, and then reached over and picked up her camera.
I raised an eyebrow at Sam. To the little girl, I stretched the fabric and had to actually look closely to figure it out myself. "This one looks like a feather," I said.
"From which bird?"
I looked at Sam. Ornithology wasn't really my area. Sam just grinned at me and kept the camera steady. In the end, I just made it up. "I think it comes from a pigeon," I said. "Do you know what a pigeon is?"
She looked up at me. "Everyone knows who Pigeon is," she said. I didn't really understand what she meant. "Can I put it on?"
I helped her put it on over her dusty t-shirt. She looked down reverently at the tank top which was so long on her it reached her knees.
Sam quickly put her own top back on. "What's your name, Sweetie?"
She looked up. "Blanket," she said.
We both squinted at her. Her accent made it difficult to tell if she was saying an English word or an Aboriginal word that I'd misunderstood. "Blanket?" I repeated for clarification. "Like, this?" I touched the sleeping bag.
She nodded. "Like Michael Jackson," she said. "I can do the dance. Want to see?"
"Okay," I said automatically, because what other answer was there?
She immediately began to do her best rendition of Thriller, complete with the whole zombie shuffling. Watching the total concentration on her little face was absolutely hilarious. About halfway through it, Sam started to giggle and couldn't stop. She put a hand over her mouth again and I could see her trying to compose herself so as not to offend Blanket.
At the end, when she imitated the evil laughter, Sam made a terrifying noise that was a result of a full minute of smothering hysterical laughter.
Blanket stopped. "It's not funny," she told Sam indignantly. "It's scary."
"I'm sorry," Sam said, trying to look as much. "I was thinking about something else, I promise."
"That was a nice dance," I said to the girl. "Very scary."
"I'm going to be a dancer," she said. "I'm going to wear this today, too." Without even waiting for us to answer her again, she crawled out of the tent and ran off.
We sat there in silence for a moment. Sam put the camera down. "I guess I'm not going to try that top on today," she said. "What a cutie, though. It's sad about her parents. I wonder who looks after her?"
"I suppose we can ask her when we get your top back later."
Sam didn't look very concerned, holding the camera up and reviewing the footage. "I don't even really care about the top. It kind of looked like she could use a new one, anyway, even if it's big enough on her to be a dress." She stopped playback, tilting her head as she considered the screen. "You know, it would look totally cute with a little belt."
I had to laugh at that. "I swear, Sam, you'd have a baby just so you could dress it up."
She grinned, still looking at the LCD. "Well, technically I'd have a baby just to shut Dad up. Getting to dress something in adorable clothes is just an added benefit."
I knew she was only half-joking. Kids, I thought. I couldn't imagine how I'd ever have them if I was going to do this sort of thing for a living. I wasn't sure how Sam was going to reconcile it to herself, either. She'd had more nannies and carers than anyone I'd ever met and been constantly shunted around by parents who had other priorities. She couldn't do that to her own child, could she? I couldn't imagine she would be able to, but then again I couldn't imagine her being able to sideline her passions and obsessions for long enough to take care of a child.
"Do you really want children?"
She put the camera down beside her. "Want?" She shrugged. "I don't know, I guess. I can't really ask myself that question, though, because Dad will kill me if I'm where 'Nishimura' stops." She watched me closely, though, reflecting on my question. "You don't," she said carefully. "You used to."
I lay back on the sleeping bag. "I don't know," I said, folding my arms behind my head. "I just assumed I would, because that's what happens, isn't it? You meet a nice man, you get married and then you have children."
Sam leant over me. "You still can, you know," she said. "Thanks to the marvels of modern reproductive technology. You could carry my child or something. That way we'd both be mothers."
I must have looked horrified at the thought of being pregnant. "Can we worry about this in about fifteen years?" I pleaded. "Or maybe twenty?"
"Your expression," she said, laughing. She lay down next to me. "I always worry what it would turn out like, you know?" she said. "Like, what if I give up everything to take care of my child and it hates me? What if it turns out like Amanda or something?"
I snorted, slipping my arm underneath her neck.
"Oh, God," she said, scrunching up her face as she ran with that thought. "Sick-looking, anti-social and a total bitch. What a nightmare. Maybe we should have two so we have a back-up plan."
"Could be worse," I said. "At least she's clearly intelligent, and she's an archaeologist so she can't be that bad." I was smiling.
Sam turned her head toward me. "You like her," she accused me.
I made a noise. "Not at all," I said. "Just pointing out it could be worse. She could be, I don't know, one of those crazy reality show directors." I wagged my eyebrows at Sam and she pretended to throttle me, and then kissed my cheek.
"We don't do this as much as we used to," Sam said at last, much more soberly than I was used to hearing her speak. "I love just talking about crap with you." She turned her head to me. "Happy three months."
Something about what she said broke my heart, and I couldn't figure out what it was. She didn't say anything else. We just regarded each other at length while I tried to figure out what I'd done wrong.
It was almost a relief when a second voice said out the front of our tent, "Knock, knock?" and then hesitated. "Kind of ironic I'm saying that to a tent flap. It's me." 'Me' sounded like Macca. "I have some great news."
We sat up, looking towards the doorway. "You can come in," I said.
He didn't actually come in, but he did peel the flap back. "Hi," he said. "I hope you guys weren't trying to nap."
I shook my head. "How did you find us?"
He scoffed. "Dude, you're Lara Croft. I just asked people where you'd pitched," he said. "Anyway, I was talking to the ABC about getting a full interview with you, me and maybe one of the Bunuba elders and they said they'd had a call from Frost's PR rep." He was recounting the story like juicy gossip, and it was actually rather endearing. "Anyway, I'm reasonably good mates with one of ABC's scheduler and so I accidentally acquired Frost's PR rep's number and called it."
"Accidentally," Sam said, just to be clear.
He flashed her a grin. "Of course," he said. "Slip of the fingers. So the PR rep answered and I pretended to be a scheduler and invited the Frost twins to appear alongside us for an in-depth discussion of mining in the locale. He said no, of course, but wanted the number of the protest organiser to double-check something." Macca was getting more and more excited. "Ten minutes later I received a call and it was Diane fucking Frost, and she wants to meet with you before you appear on the news and mobilise your millions of fans against her."
Chills washed over me even at the mention of her name. Frost, I thought, how apt. "So I just need to meet with her?"
He nodded. "I'm coming. I'll do most of the talking. You just have to show up and be famous."
"I'm coming, too," Sam said. "But I suppose she won't let me film it, right?"
"I won't let you film it," Macca said, still with the wide grin. "Just in case I 'accidentally' kill her for destroying so many beautiful natural environments to add a few extra zeros to her bank account."
Sam and I both just stared at him. He was getting those same feelings I was about Diane Frost?
The grin faded. "I was kidding," he said, but I couldn't tell if he was telling the truth or not. "I don't know what happened to my Y chromosome. These muscles are a lie, I can't even step on a spider. Anyway, there's no way the twins would let you film any sort of confidential discussion." He paused, looking smug. "If they know you're doing it, that is."
Sam exhaled, looking charmed. "You must do this stuff all the time," she said. "You're good."
I looked across at her and raised my eyebrows, but she deliberately didn't make eye-contact with me.
"Aren't you the media guru?" he asked. "I'm sure there's plenty you could teach me about how to work people."
This was too much. I didn't even understand why she was doing it, although obviously there was some purpose other than to upset me. "When is this meeting?" I asked Macca, interrupting them.
He looked surprised by my tone. "Tomorrow," he said. "Ten a.m., they'll chopper us out of here onto the mine site. Meet you down the back at nine-thirty?"
Well, I'd come this far. I nodded.
