Chapter 1

I met her last week while on the train returning from work. I'm a reader. Some people do crosswords every chance they get, others are news junkies with newspapers, or I-whatever's. I read books. Mostly science fiction/fantasy, but I'm fairly catholic in my tastes. I'm an eighteen year old drifter. I'm probably a bum on most occasions, and other occasions; I'm really, truly, a genuine swaggy since I turned eleven ... or so, as my birth date is a little iffy. My given, since I adopted my 'road name' is Professor or Prof, though my real name is Damian Saint Joseph. That also has a story attached, which I will keep for a more appropriate time and place.

I have been in this city for a month and a bit more, now. That's a long time for me to be in one place; but this city, whilst being just another place, is also long way from anywhere else. From here you can't just hitch a ride to the next place, easily. You have to amass funds so you have something you can survive on until the next meal ticket in the next town you fall into, and maybe stay. Just getting here, mainly out of curiosity because I had never been here before, had left me totally broke, making it necessary to do day labour to buy food to eat. A man can become very sick, eating nothing but damper and found.

Day labouring led me to Karrakatta Cemetery on the maintenance crew, being paid daily by a day labour company. From there I got onto the casual maintenance crew, being paid weekly by the cemetery. The peace and quiet suited my mood, and the work isn't hard. They couldn't find workers, due to the iron ore mining boom up north. There they pay you doctor's wages for sweeping a footpath; but you have to sign a contract and remain for a minimum time in the mines. There was no way I could be restricted like that. If I have a panic attack, I can't guarantee where I will be this afternoon.

People on the road generally use haversacks and sleeping bags but I find it convenient to roll everything I have in the world inside a blanket. Then I put that in a waterproof thin mattress and wrap everything outside in plastic. The commercial swags are a bit oversized and weighty, by comparison. The reality is, everything comes down to weight, as it has got to be on your back. The logic being, heavier the weight, the longer you must carry the load.

My books weigh a lot, you may say; but again, that is all in the priorities one has. So do water and food. They are the three things that I deem I can't live without. I'm currently reading Dune, again; one of my favourites. Seeing as it must be forty years old as a novel, it has stood the ravages of time well. Except for one, and occasionally two basic books, the rest I don't keep for the simple purpose of reading. Before I leave here, I'll find a Salvo's, or a Saint Vinnie's, and donate them to be sold again. That is the same manner in which I received most of the ones I currently have. I give them back for baksheesh, and the few cents they receive on their sale, to be given to the poor. Unlike myself, who is rich in freedom, and that makes my world go around.

I'm living in a deserted house near the north eastern end of one of the city commuter railway lines. Five days a week I'm travelling to and from the nearby station to Perth, and then to the cemetery railway station which is west of the city itself. Coming home I take a train to Perth, then transfer to the line which takes me home.

It's an odd place, Karrakatta, for a suburb, that is. There are no living permanent residents, just a cemetery and an army base. Nothing else. There are only six trains a weekday, which actually stop there only for the workers, as mourners aren't catered for at all. I'm on the train homewards after having left Perth Station behind where the bulk of people get on, and then the crowd slowly recedes until I arrive at the station where I am slumming, in that long deserted house.

The train rocks heavily and each passenger ignores the one who bumped into them, but the one who was standing in front of me had been reading 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and had also been bumped on two sides at the same time. Her book landed in my lap, directly below her.

Okay, so in the standard commuter crowd mentality, you ignore everything around you in your own little world. I have hit this denial of your fellow citizen's existence, before. It's at its worst in the big cities of Melbourne and Sydney, and I fear it in a way. Two years ago I had been coming down from North Queensland and I was staying a few weeks in the west of Sydney. I was on one of their commuter trains mid peak hour, it was packed and a lady who was jammed against me (we couldn't fall over) and a street kid with a knife held it to her throat as he rifled her purse.

Everyone around her saw it and ignored it, while she was terrified and did not say a word, neither did he. If it had been a priest I would have killed him, but he was only a kid so I only broke both his arms as he went to do similar to the next person nearest them. Me. He made a noise at that point, a loud noise, and I got off at the next station to change to the next one along. It was reported that I was being searched for by the cops for my assault on him, making my stay in Sydney rather short.

This may give you an idea why being on a badly graded dirt road, eighty klicks from the next nearest township of forty-five people (one general store, one petrol station/road house with two pumps, and a pub); looking for a dry spot in a sudden shower, looks so attractive right now. If someone is this close to you out there, you are going to fight them, fuck them, or have a meaningful discussion about the work prospects in the location we each last left.

That outlook still wouldn't be as attractive as the pair of bare, sun tanned, never shaved teenage legs, under the Catholic School uniform's dark green tartan skirt, above long white socks, ten centimetres in front of my nose, looks. She is currently holding on tight to a chromed upright as the train rocked and rolled over some cross rails and entered a station.

I could get out onto this specific station and have my toes paddling in the Pacific Ocean in five days from where I am now on the Indian Ocean. Right or left at Main Street. She was desperately looking around for her book and I lifted it up to show her I was keeping her place with my finger, she looked relieved. She, she is beyond pretty; even simply beautiful does not do her justice. And that wide-eyed look of innocence and naiveté...

The train violently shuddered to a stop and the porcine, perspiration smelling female individual next to me stood, and moved away towards the automatic doors. A little uniformed school aged kid of eight or so tried to barge in there with his Globite school case and cream coloured boater hat. I just looked at the kid and he went the other way, quickly. You may get the impression that human beings are not some of my favourite things in the world, and you would be right, just listen to a soundtrack of Mary Poppins; they're not hers either, so I'm in good company.

The girl sat beside me and I gave her the book back. She thanked me; her voice seemed out of place for her youthful appearance, deeper more mature. I won't say like a thirteen and a half year old, as in the old joke, as that wouldn't be fair, and demonstrably wrong. She noticed I was holding my book in my hand.

She reached out and turned it around to look at the cover as only another reader could do and not appear to be rude and she said, "I didn't like the movie."

I nodded in agreement and replied, "The movie was simply a screenwriters rewrite of something which was way above and beyond their skill level. Herbert wrote this and his next books, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune to be an experience and the screenwriter was an author who particularly didn't like science fiction but liked money. They call them hacks. Any idiot can put words together to make a story; Herbert wrote to create an intricate set of worlds and societies. The screenwriter wrote a 'soapy', with one big named singer as an actor, using a basic TV soapy script. I believe the make-up was true to the book, but that's about all."

"Have you read the series?"

I nodded, "I even tried to read his son's efforts who believed his father's writing skills and imagination were genetic; he erred. After his father's death the publishers even teamed him up with a real professional writer, er, um, the name has left me, but he hadn't the spark that Frank had."

"I tried reading House Atreides and found it lacked something and only made it half way and it's still on my bed side table. Gee, that was months ago, so I may have even put it away by now."

We were approaching my stop, near the end of the suburban line.

Through the window I can see my street's corner, and I said, "This is where I get off."

"Oh," she looked around suddenly realising where she was, "so do I."

We disembarked together. As there were only two more suburban stations to go, there weren't many people remaining on the train, by now. It is a long way before you arrive anywhere significant up in the northern wheat belt. That's where I have every intention of eventually going, in my eternal quest for solitude. I handed my ticket to the uniformed station assistant and she showed a school pass and we both immediately turned in the same direction and she giggled. She's about thirteen or so, so of course she giggled, but it was more a chuckle with her resonant voice. We walk slowly, neither of us want to break the contact, "I've lived here all my life and I don't think I've seen you around before."

"Nope, I've only been here for a month going on two now, and will be leaving in a couple more unless there is something here to hold me. What do you think of Heinlein's, Stranger in a Strange Land? Have you read it before?"

"I've read quite a few of his books and they wouldn't let me read this before. To be honest they don't know I'm reading this, now. They think it's too advanced for my age."

She put an odd accent on the word they so she may not be the quite the obedient daughter and student they all think they know, there's a bit of rebellion there.

"They would worry more if they saw you reading his last novel before he died, To Sail Beyond the Sunset. For him, it is nigh on pornographic. He knew he was dying so he tied up all the loose ends of his generic Lazarus Long novels, making it almost incomprehensible. Who are 'they'?"

"They are my parents and the school. I've Greek heritage and my parents a very strict and they think that the influence of a Catholic school will instil discipline in me, where they think the public school system doesn't give an 'adequate' education and too much freedom. At least I would then have some friends. Anyway, with all that said, I've never heard of To Sail Beyond the Sunset, but the school has Stranger in a Strange Land on its banned reading list and I have to hide it."

"Ah, I do understand. Greek Orthodox parents, and Roman Catholic private school's are a bad mix. The Catholic Church is still trying to make excuses for the Inquisition but they won't even remove the division that ran it. The current Pope used to be the leader of that division. All they ever did is change its name to 'Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith', or something equally benign sounding, back in the 60's. As a discipline, they would as soon get out the red hot pincers. You're lucky if they let you read Rowling's, Harry Potter."

She gave me one of those looks.

"Oh!" I replied.

We had to walk back along the footpath running parallel with the railway line beside the suburb's main road, and I was going to stop and talk for a bit as I had to turn the next corner and she did the same thing, coincidentally.

"In reality, Heinlein is the perfect author for someone your age though I find him a little condescending for the sophisticated jaded adult mind. Especially Stranger as it expands the imagination and gives someone with a young and open mind a different outlook on current moralities, and especially the American moral attitudes of the 1960s. Compared to us, even today, they are like being back in the 40s to 60s in some US states, and almost civilised in others like California and New York. It was the point of the book as a whole.

"I think the book's major problem these days is that after his death his widow republished his original version, which his original publishers had him originally, dramatically, shorten to become the hit novel of that era. The publishers were originally right too, considering the age demographics of Heinlein's readers and their attention span, the extra makes it too long; I'm going down here." I motioned to the cross street opposite.

There is that throaty giggle again, "So do I. Which house? Now I'm shocked I haven't seen you."

"The empty one, I'm squatting until I head north for the winter. At the moment I'm working to build up my money reserves and then I'm back on the road again."

"Oh! That house is in the middle of an inheritance dispute and has been since before I was born. What do you do?"

"The cops call me a vagrant. I'm a bit of a swaggy. Most people my age, who are on the road, are what they call backpackers. We travel to gain world experience; and again, to broaden the mind, because most of us are usually growing up somewhere a bit provincial, with parochial values. Aussies head for Pommyland and Europe, while the Pommy's and the Europeans come here. Me, I simply have nowhere else to live and nowhere to go home to, so I just go. Come on!"

We crossed the road carefully, even though there hasn't been a car since the train commuters have all shot through, like rats deserting a sinking ship.

We only just made the corner safely, and then walked even slower, "Robert Heinlein wrote in a style congenial to the teenage mind. He's not too sophisticated in his writing style while discussing some very adult subjects. His Lazarus Long books are a case in point and they're not even a series, he just justifies them by calling them a series using the time travelling interface to tie them together. All his main characters seem to be the same person, probably Heinlein's own persona, in different guises, and sometimes they are even the same person in a different body in the book in which they feature. Did your parents come from Greece?"

We stopped in front of the badly maintained late Depression, early WW II vintage house with a low slung brick fence made of the same dark, dated style brick. Farther along the fence, some bricks have lost their mortar in a gradual state of slow decay. Seeing the fence was less than a meter tall, I hopped up and sat on it.

"Yeah, about forty years ago. I was their accident. I have three brothers who are all over thirty, married, with kids ... the lot. One of my nephews is ten years older than me; the youngest is two years older. I think it funny because my folks are so old world Greek and Mum started menopause and became pregnant. Mum said Poppa blamed her for having a lover, and she just laughed at him and asked if he thought he was shooting blanks?"

"Answers everything, the only daughter to the old man will be five year old virgin until she's grey and is a grandmother herself; if his diet doesn't kill him, before then. I'm surprised he didn't want you to become a nun. Does the Greek Orthodox Church have nun's?"

"No, the religious hierarchy get married and stuff. He wants more grandchildren as he never sees the one's he's got. How do you know so much about the Greeks?"

"I worked for quite some time up in the cane fields. The old blokes I worked with were Italians or Greeks, who got here on the cheap immediately after the war. Good blokes, didn't talk down to a kid who was busting a gut same as them, and holding his own. You do, of course, realise that Heinlein and Herbert were translated into Greek. The reason they don't like you reading Stranger, and there can only be one reason; is because your mum or dad, or both, have read it and aren't prepared to answer some of the questions that are bound to enter your mind. Multiple wives, free love and women enjoying sex ... that was shocking to the Yanks of the day, and there ain't nothin' more provincial or insular than Yanks; then, or now.

"A Greek man will be real proud that he can make his wife have an orgasm but no one else can do it like him as it's secret women's business. Some Yank wrote a book about it and they act like he invented the thing. Heinlein wrote Stranger in 1960 and it was published soon after and most Yanks had no idea what the world was about as then they were the world. They'd only just finished single-handedly winning The Second World War, agin' al' 'em furiners, fifteen years before. Heinlein made fun of their stupid down home religions, and especially the televangelists, which many of them could never forgive. They haven't changed much since then, not really. I've met quite a few, nice people on the main, but they have a mindset which is warped, condescending and they don't realise it. The French are nearly worse, only they think they had the world stolen off them by Le Américain."