Peter Temple - Shooting Star

‘Okay, that’s the voice we heard,’ said Orlovsky. ‘Now listen to this.’

The voice was deep and sonorous now and the speech slower.

‘And this.’

Now the voice was feminine, light, a woman speaking quickly.

‘And so it goes on.’ He was shutting down the machine.

‘Modulate the basic voice, you can get any number of voices, male, female, young, old. Once you’d done the work, it would be the cheapest way to put a multi-voice track on anything. All it needs is one person to speak with the intonation you want.’

‘And you can’t buy it?’

‘No one’s ever heard of a commercial product like this. Or anyone working on one. This woman at RMIT, Kim Reid, Dr Reid, she says a bloke came wandering into the place a few years ago and asked a lot of intelligent questions about linguistic and acoustic patterns, about Tone and Break. Said he was working on games. But she doesn’t know his name, not sure he gave it, can’t really remember what he looked like.’

‘Anyone can just wander in? You just wandered in?’

‘No. I rang her, she invited me over, came to the office to meet me. But it’s a uni, people wandering everywhere.’

‘Why did this person pick on her?’

‘He’d read something she published about the voice bank.’

Orlovsky opened the drinks fridge, a full-size refrigerator, took out another Dortmunder, offered it to me.

‘No thanks. Was that a Miller’s I saw in there? Published where?’

‘Christ, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. What does it matter? We’ve got Miller’s in the longneck bottle, yes, imported from a country that doesn’t know good beer from fermented horse piss.’

‘Can you ring her? Got a home number?’

He closed the fridge, put the beers on the counter, studied me with his head tilted, his eyes expressing a complete lack of confidence in my state of mind. ‘To ask her what?’

‘Where the stuff was published.’

‘Jesus, Frank.’ He took a bloated wallet out of an inside pocket of his jacket, rejected half a dozen bits of paper before he found what he wanted, a business card. ‘There’s no home, there’s a mobile.’

‘Try it.’

He shook his head, left the room. I went over and uncapped the beers, rinsed my mouth with Miller’s, thinking about old Pat Carson and the crippled QC, the Carson brothers arguing in the library. Then the mind sideslipped without warning to Corin McCall, to the little garden I’d had when I was a child, to the day my mother told me I was forbidden to go next door, could not go next door ever again, could not water my garden. But everything I’d planted came up. I knew because I climbed onto the garage roof and from up there I could see my little garden, saw the peas and the pumpkins like bombs, the tops of carrots. And I saw the flowers.

Orlovsky came in, pleased, took his beer in his long-fingered hand, drank. ‘She was in a pub, very friendly. Enjoyed our encounter, she said. Mostly these balloon heads go home and eat cereal in front of the computer. I might ring her again some time.’

‘Published where?’

‘Something called JIVS. Stands for Journal of Intelligent Voice Systems, it’s published at some university in the States. To help nerds get tenure, I would think. A minimum of so many thousand words published in a refereed journal, that’s a condition of getting a permanent job. So there’s thousands of refereed journals. Six nerds get together and put out a journal and they referee each other’s stuff.’

‘Sounds like the police force. How would you get the list of subscribers?’

He looked at me, understood. ‘They put the thing on the web after the subscribers get it, the whole world can read it. Shot in a million, digger.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I don’t imagine these people are going to great lengths to hide their subscribers. There’s probably a way to get the list. An unethical way.’

‘Can you do it now?’

Orlovsky wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘You’re encouraging me to engage in unethical behaviour?’

I said, ‘No. Just to get the list.’

It took him about twenty-five minutes, then he called me over. ‘They’re sorted by postcode for the US, otherwise by country,’ he said. ‘This is Australia, about thirty subscribers, I count nine in Victoria, exactly the people you’d expect: two at RMIT, two at Defence Intelligence, three at Monash, one at Deakin, one at the eye and ear hospital. Not people working on games, I’d say. Not officially.’

‘Depending on what’s in the post, check them out tomorrow,’ I said.

Later, I showered in the slate-floored chamber where water could be commanded to come from above and below, from every side at any temperature and velocity. Then, in the big, pale room, I climbed between linen sheets that smelled of sunlight and went to sleep, instantly. And in the dog watch of the night, the dream came, the dream that was a version of reality but in which I floated freely between points of view, now myself, now a spectator.

It always began in the room in the sad little house, the odour of lifetimes held in the layers of carpet and underfelt, in the old newspapers down there on the floorboards. Seventy or eighty years or more of dust and spilt food, spilt liquids, ground-in coal ash, the urine of dozens of long-dead cats. ‘We’re going out now, Dave,’ I say. ‘Get up.’

He looks at me, wild face gone, years gone, a sad and chastened boy now. ‘They’ll kill me,’ he says.

‘No they won’t. I’ll be with you.’

‘Kill me,’ he says. ‘Won’t let me live.’

‘Not while I’m with you.’

‘Look after me?’ he says in a tiny voice.

‘Yes. I’ll look after you.’

We go down the passage. I feel the old sprung floorboards bounce, feel the rotten stumps move. Dave is ahead of me. At the front door, I say, ‘Open it.’

He opens it, stands, looks back at me. And I am seeing myself from outside, looking into the dim doorway, seeing myself, shirtless, sweat in the hollow of my throat.

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s okay, I’m with you.’

He puts out a hand to me. I sigh and take it and we go out onto the verandah together, grown men holding hands.

It is dark, no moon, no lights on in the street. I am straining to see beyond the low hedge and front gate.

At the steps, the spotlight comes on, night sun, impossibly bright light. Dave jumps, startled, lets go of my hand, turns, tries to hug me, bury his head in my shoulder.

I hear the sound and I feel the shot hit him, feel it through his bones, feel it through his arms clinging to me.

‘Oh Jesus, no,’ I say, holding him, feeling the strength leave his body, having to hold him up, feel his warm blood on my face, taste it on my lips, go to my knees with him.

And I hear myself saying, ‘No, Dave, not me, not me.’

Then I am myself, looking into his eyes, seeing the reproach in them, no anger, just hurt and betrayal. ‘You knew,’ he says and he begins to cough, to cough up blood.

I see myself lay him down, stand up, see the blood on my bare upper body, my hands. Police are coming from everywhere. In the gate, Hepburn appears, black overalls, Kevlar vest, Fritz helmet.

I walk towards him.

He backs away. ‘

Frank, the bloke was…’ I take two big strides, get to him, grab him by the throat with both hands. I feel the squeeze, my thumbs digging into his windpipe, my will to kill him. He tries to spear my arms apart with his palms pressed together but I butt him in the face, hear the sound the cartilage in his nose makes as it is crushed.

Then I woke up, the dream always ended there, woke me. I got up, went downstairs, found Orlovsky’s no-name cigarettes, sat in the dark and smoked and brooded. Waiting for the light.