Part 10 (2/2)

'No,' said Roger shortly. 'Just my wrist.'

'Must run in the family,' Bert said to Rowan, peeling back his sleeve to show a faded scar along his forearm. 'Not a break. Cut it open mucking around down there.'

'I can't climb out by myself,' said Roger. They couldn't even see him now, the way the night had poured into the Narrow. The stars were getting brighter overhead, a great swathe of them that you couldn't see in the city, where they were swamped by artificial light.

'I guess you can't,' said Bert. 'So you might as well sit down and listen while I tell you a few things.'

'I'm listening,' said Roger. Rowan could hear him moving about, settling down on one of the ledges.

'First, no one's selling the Hill,' said Bert. 'Not while I'm alive, and not after it, either. I had a team of fancy lawyers work out how to make sure of that more than ten years ago. The family will be trustees, no more. If you'd bothered to ask, I would have told you.

'Second, I reckon your temper is getting out of hand. I've got a bit of money put by. Not three million, but a tidy sum. I'm going to leave it all to Rowan. If he feels like it, he might give you some. So if it's money you're after, you'd better learn to talk to your son instead of throwing your weight around. You'll live longer too. Bad for the heart, getting angry.'

There was a really long silence after Bert stopped talking.

Rowan looked at the stars, unable to believe what he was hearing. The Hill not to be sold. His father having to talk to him instead of hitting him.

After a few more minutes when Roger still didn't say anything, Bert went back across the log bridge, his old arms outstretched for balance. Rowan walked behind him, quite close, so he could steady him if necessary.

'Where are you going?' asked Roger. There was a hint of panic in his voice.

'Thought we'd leave you to think about things for a while,' said Bert. 'We've got a visitor coming up. It's New Year's Eve, remember?'

'What about me?'

'We'll be back next century,' said Bert. 'Course, you still have to agree to behave yourself.'

He chuckled a bit then, and started up the hill. 'Wait!' called Roger. 'I agree! I agree!'

Bert kept walking. Rowan looked at him, then back at the Narrow. His father was calling him now, desperation in his voice. In the distance, he could hear a car approaching. It had to be Jake in the taxi, back a bit early.

'Come on,' said Bert. 'We'll go meet Jake. We can come back for Roger later.'

'But,' said Rowan, 'what about Dad?'

'We won't leave him too long,' said Bert. 'Just long enough for him to work out what he can do.' 'Like what?' asked Rowan nervously.

'Like nothing,' said Bert. 'That's what I want him to work out.'

'So everything's going to be all right?' asked Rowan.

Bert shrugged. Then he shakily held out his arms, as wide as they would go, taking in Rowan, the Hill, the night, and the stars.

'You can never guess what a new year will bring, even when you've seen more than a hundred of them,' he said. 'Sometimes you see what's coming and can't do a thing about it. Sometimes you can.'

He paused and took a deep breath of the eucalyptus-scented air, closed his arms around his great-great-grandson, and added, 'Out here, right now, I reckon maybe everything will be as close to all right as it can possibly get.'

LIGHTNING BRINGER.

INTRODUCTION TO LIGHTNING BRINGER.

I ALWAYS ENJOY WATCHING ELECTRICAL storms, though I prefer to do so from inside a house, behind a nice gla.s.s window. The undesirability of becoming more closely acquainted with lightning was brought home to me once, when lightning struck a drainpipe a few yards away from me. I'm not exactly sure what happened, because I found myself sitting on the very wet mat outside the back door, with spots dancing before my eyes and my ears ringing. My friend inside told me that the whole house had shaken and the thunderclap had made everything rattle; she thought I must have been killed when she ran through the kitchen and saw me slumped against the door.

Despite this near miss, I remained fascinated by lightning, as anyone who has read even one or two of my books can probably tell. A few weeks before I wrote this story, I was held spellbound by a television doc.u.mentary on lightning. In this doc.u.mentary, they had amazing film that showed the 'streamers' that flow up from anything vertical. These streamers actually make the connection with the lightning leaders coming down from the thunderclouds. I saw ghostly streamers rising up from trees and buildings, from weatherc.o.c.ks, and, most importantly, from people.

The taller and stronger the streamer, the more likely that it will connect with the storm. When it does, there is an electrical discharge down from storm to ground, through the conductor. If the conductor is a metal lightning rod, that's okay. But people are not so well equipped to deal with bolts of energy that at their core are as hot as the surface of the sun.

I vaguely knew how lightning worked, but it wasn't until I saw these strange, luminous streamers rising up out of vertical structures that it really made sense. At the same time, I was struck with the way the streamers varied, even between people of the same height. Some people just had stronger streamers.

I also knew that there were people who tended to get struck by lightning quite a lot, but who still survived. I had a dim memory of a man who was struck by lightning seven times over quite a few years. He was apparently going to the post office to mail the proof of his many lightning strikes to the Guinness Book of World Records Guinness Book of World Records when he was. .h.i.t by an eighth lightning bolt. He survived that as well, though his clothes were burned off and some of his papers singed. when he was. .h.i.t by an eighth lightning bolt. He survived that as well, though his clothes were burned off and some of his papers singed.

Put together, all this gave me an idea about people who could see the streamers and who could manipulate electrical energy in various ways. Small, secret ways, like changing the electrical energies in people's minds, or big, flashy ways, like calling down lightning. That was the central idea. Then I had to find a story to use that idea.

At the time my most pressing need was for something to submit to the anthology Love & s.e.x Love & s.e.x, edited by Michael Cart, so I was also trying to work out a story that would concern s.e.x. Mixing up my ideas about controlling minds and lightning with s.e.x and love seemed like it might produce an interesting story. 'Lightning Bringer' is the result.

LIGHTNING BRINGER.

IT WAS SIX YEARS AGO WHEN I I FIRST FIRST met the Lightning Bringer, on a cloudy day just a few weeks past my tenth birthday. met the Lightning Bringer, on a cloudy day just a few weeks past my tenth birthday.

That's when I invented the name, though I never spoke it, and no one else ever used it. Most of the townsfolk called him 'Mister' Jackson. They didn't know why they called him mister, even though he looked pretty much like any other hard-faced drifter. Not normally the sort they'd talk to at all, except maybe to order off their property-once they were sure the police had arrived.

I knew he was different the first second I saw him. It's like a photograph stuck in my personal alb.u.m, that memory. I walked out the school gate, and there he was, leaning against his motorcycle. His jet-black motorcycle that looked like a Harley-Davidson but wasn't. It didn't have any brand name or anything on it. He was leaning against it, because he was tall, two feet taller than me, easily six foot three or four. Muscles tight under the black T-s.h.i.+rt, the twin blue lightning tattoos down his forearms. Long hair somewhere between blond and red, tied back under a red-and-white-spotted bandanna.

But what I really noticed was his aura. Most people have dim, fuzzy sorts of colours that flicker around them in a pathetic kind of way. His aura was all blue sparks, jumping around like they were just waiting to electrocute anyone who went near.

The guy looked like trouble. Then he smiled, and if you couldn't see the aura, that smile would somehow make you think that he was all right, the biker with the heart of gold, the drifter who went around helping out old folk or whatever.

But I saw part of the energy go out of his aura and into the smile, flickering out like a hundred snakes' tongues to touch and spark against the dull colors of the people around him.

He charmed them, that's what. I saw it happening, saw the tongues coming out and lighting up the older kids' grey days. And then I saw all the electric currents come together to caress one student in particular: Carol, the best-looking girl in the whole school.

Of course I was only ten back then, so I didn't really appreciate everything Carol had going for her. I mean, I knew that she had movie-star looks, with the jet-black hair and the big brown eyes, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s that went out exactly the right amount and a waist that went in exactly as it should and legs that could have been borrowed from a Barbie doll. But it was sort of secondhand appreciation at that stage. I knew everyone thought she looked good, but I didn't really know why myself. Now I can get really excited thinking about the way she looked when she was playing basketball, with that tight top and the pleated skirt . . . at least till I remember what happened to her . . .

She was looking especially good that day. With hindsight, I reckon she'd found out that she was really attractive to men, picking up a certain confidence. That air of the cat that's worked out it's the kind of cat that's always going to get the cream.

When the Lightning Bringer's smile reached out for her, her eyes went all cloudy and she kind of sleepwalked over to him, as if nothing else even existed. They talked for a while; then she walked on. But she looked back-twice-and that electricity kept flowing out of the drifter, crackling around her like fingers just aching to undo the big white b.u.t.tons on the front of her school dress.

Then she was around the corner, and I realised everyone else had gone. There was just me and the man, leaning against his bike. Watching me, not smiling, the blue-white tendrils pulling back into the glowing sh.e.l.l around him. Then he laughed, his head pulled back, the laughter sending a stream of blue-white energy up into the sky.

That laugh scared the h.e.l.l out of me, and I suddenly felt just like a rabbit that realises it's been staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck.

Like a lot of rabbits, I realised this too late. I'd hardly got one foot up, ready to run, when he was suddenly looming over me, fingers digging into my shoulders like old tree roots boring into the ground. Like maybe he'd never let go till his fingers plunged through the flesh, squis.h.i.+ng me like a rotten apple.

I started to scream, but he shook me so hard, I just stopped.

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