Chapter 2

The next day I spent the morning at Scitech, following a class of 10-year-olds. The various staff were very, very good. They responded to every question, had sheets with information to hand out and even had bibliographies of works at the appropriate level — no sense sending a 10-year-old to look at Wheeler or Wilson or Holldobler when she asks about ants.

After lunch (don't ask), I spent time with the librarian. It was quite illuminating.

After dinner, I asked Weena again about getting away to Queensland.

"When?"

"When can you get away?"

"I think I've leave. It's about eight months. I must have two weeks."

"Well, let's take some of it." I looked at the calendar. Why don't we leave on Friday and come back on the fourth? That would be six days."

"How will we get there?"

"The Great Emu will take us."

"Emus can't fly."

"They used to.

In the Dreamtime the Emu was a boaster. He said, 'I can fly the fastest in the world and I can run the fastest in the world too.' But everybody knew he could not run at all.

'I will challenge you to a race in two moons.' said Dingo. 'Yes!' cried the animals. And Dingo ran off as fast as he could. 'Are you scared?' asked Emu, knowing he was scared too. 'I'm not scared, I'm going to train like you should, ' yelled Dingo. One moon later, 'Hey Croc I need your help to pull some tricks on Dingo, ' said Emu. 'OK, ' said Croc. 'But you have to find me a new water hole.' The next day Emu and Dingo were at the starting line. 'GO, ' said Turtle. Off they went! Dingo was so fast that he knocked poor Turtle over! Then Dingo tripped over Turtle and Emu ran past him. But all of a sudden Dingo ran past Emu. Soon later a storm whipped up thunder and lightning. Emu got struck by lightning. He won the race, but he never flew again."

"That sounds like a real one, not one that you made up."

"Emu once had great wings, when she was Turkey's sister."

"Tell me that one!"

"Not now. Another day. But tomorrow you must ask about leave and I will ask Captain Evans about the great emu."

"Captain?"

"Oh, I forgot. He's been promoted."

"What else did you forget to tell me?"

"Lots. I'm going to treat you like a mushroom and keep you in the dark."

In the morning I reminded Weena to ask about taking holiday. When I got to the office Mona had the usual litter of phone messages, but none of them looked even remotely important. I called Evans.

"This is Hollister, is the Captain in?"

"Yes, Mr. Hollister — uh — Dr. Hollister, he said you were to be put through if you called."

"Thank you."

"Morning, Gordy. What's up?"

"I was wondering whether I could extract a favour from the Royal Navy."

"Well, as we've paid nothing for your two services, I think it might be arranged. What is it?"

"I want to fly to Roma next Thursday or Friday and back to Perth on the 4^th. My parents haven't seen us since the wedding last November."

"Give me an hour. Are you in your office?"

"Of course."

"That's PER to RMA?"

"Right."

"OK. About an hour."

I went next door for coffee — unfortunately, Mona drank tea so it wasn't what Shirl would brew — and asked what the next week looked like. "Nothing much," was the response.

"Weena's got next week off. I thought we might visit my folks in Queensland. We haven't seen them since our wedding."

Oh, what a pity. And it's quite far, isn't it?"

"About 4000 kilometres — 2500 miles."