Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [39]
Purple print caused the young bartender to waver in his better judgment.
“Maybe one larrikin. But he’s mad.” The traveler’s check vanished. “If you’re so flamin’ sure it’s a joke, why’re you suddenly so keen on checkin’ it out?”
Covey stared across at him out of eyes that could not see quite far enough. “Since my writing and I are something of a joke, I don’t see the contradiction in following up on another.”
Boris Schneemann didn’t act crazy, but he sure as hell looked the part. Covey found himself mentally recording the man’s vitals for future literary abstraction. Six-two, 210, crowned by a mat of scraggly black hair that glistened with some kind of internal ooze, Schneemann regarded the world unblinkingly while perspiring like an asphalt-layer working Phoenix streets in mid-July. Originally from a corner of Germany he declined to identify more than vaguely, he had migrated to northeast Australia fourteen years ago. Now he grew bananas and dogs when not running tourists into the Daintree.
A succession of short scars ran across his Roman bridge of a nose, fossilized evidence of some ancient battle in which an opponent had tried to remove the protuberance via amateur rhinoplasty. This and other aspects of personality and self suggested that in dear old Deutschland, Schneemann had been something other than a farmer of edible fruits and lover of dogs. Covey chose not to probe too deeply too soon into his guide’s hazy history.
The battered gray Toyota Land Cruiser was to cars what a professional wrestler was to a surgeon. It did not so much drive over the road as intimidate it.
“Ninety thousand new she cost me.” Schneemann railed against faceless bureaucrats as the Land Cruiser slammed contemptuously through a bottomless pothole, sending Covey’s brains ricocheting off the top of his skull. “Auschloch import duties! Can buy nothing reasonable in this country unless it’s made here.” He pointed to his right.
“See that tree? Tulga. Forty thousand dollars it’s worth, just standing there. Most places people poach animals. Here they try to steal trees.”
“Tell me about the women.” Covey’s fingers were white and numb from clinging to the handgrip bolted to the Land Cruiser’s frame above the passenger-side window. The so-called road they were careening down like a runaway Baja racer, the Inner Bloomfield Track, continued snaking its way through towering green walls. The roadbed was yellow-brown, the narrow strip of sky overhead shockingly blue, and the rest of the universe alternating shades of green hothouse gloom.
“Not much to tell, Mike Covey. They been back in here long time.”
“So you believe in them, too?”
Schneemann was silent for a while, concentrating on the road. “Ya.” He spoke softly for a change, scratching the back of his head. “Ya, I believe in them.”
“Any idea how old they are?” Covey was making mental notes.
“Mother and daughter. The girl, she would be about seventeen, I’d say.”
“And the local school authorities don’t mind that she’s not in school?”
The front end of the Land Cruiser went temporarily airborne, and the impact when it touched down stunned Covey’s sacrum.
“Oh sure, they mind. Every once in a while somebody go looking for them to bring in the daughter. School nannies, state social services. They never find them.”
“I was told that you could.”
The burly German laughed like a demented Santa Claus. “What fool bloke guy told you that? I can track them…sometimes. Naked footprints in the mud, two sets. You follow them.” There was a curious edge in his voice. “Over ridges, through trees, across streams. Until they disappear. Always,” he muttered more to himself than to his passenger, “they disappear.”
Covey began to worry that the bartender’s appraisal of the guide’s sanity was nearer the mark than he’d been willing to countenance when he had hired the man. He gazed out the window. One thing was already apparent. Any inspiration to be found out here would be heavily tinged with green.
“Yeah, sure. They ‘disappear.’”
Schneemann shrugged massively. “Maybe they go up in the trees, ya? Maybe