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She looked at Adam and smiled.

Adam tried to think of something insightful to say about birds. His mind veered from Chris, reasoning that Chris led to too many of the traumatic events of his life. This made him think of the magpie. Adam found himself needing to confess. ‘When I was little, on the farm, I saw this magpie flying toward me, low, with what I thought was a golf ball in its beak. I grabbed a rock. There were lots of them in our paddocks. I threw it at the magpie and it dropped the ball. Only it wasn't a ball. It was an egg. When I went to look, there was this little body with big
black eyes dead in the broken shell. And the mother magpie was on the branch of a tree making this awful cawing.'

‘You killed its baby,' she said.

‘I was only little.'

‘That's terrible,' she said, standing and backing from him.

‘I didn't know. I felt awful. I feel awful. I'm an orphan.'

Adam saw Howard coming into the park with Sharon from sorting. He grabbed Evelyn's hand and said, ‘Let's go down here.'

He led her along the path towards the street at the other end of the park where a green Commodore was illegally parked up on the grass.

Howard caught them near the other side of the park. ‘I see it but I don't believe it.' Howard dragged Sharon towards them. ‘You've snuck off with the pet shop girl.'

Adam turned to them. ‘Hi, Howard. Hi, Sharon. This is Evelyn. We're going to the movies. Running a bit late.'

Adam turned as the side door of the green Commodore swung open to reveal a girl in a balaclava holding a weird contraption towards Adam. ‘You. You will get in zee car.' It was a bad Russian accent.

Sharon gasped. Evelyn stood frozen. Adam looked at the driver who was still scrambling to get his balaclava on as he sat behind the wheel. Paul from flat one.

‘It's all right folks, I'll handle this,' said Howard as he flashed a confident smile towards Evelyn and stepped towards the girl with the zip gun. ‘That isn't even a real gun, is it darling?'

She looked at the object in her hand and then lifted it slightly and shot Howard.

He staggered back, grabbing at Adam for support. ‘Owww.'

Sharon looked at blood spreading on Howard's crotch and screamed.

The un-Russian grabbed Adam by the arm, pointing the zip gun at his chest. ‘Come on.'

But Adam couldn't come on because Howard had his other arm and was dragging him down.

‘Let go,' she ordered Howard.

Evelyn stepped towards the street. She called, ‘Help!'

‘She shot me. She bloody shot me,' yelled Howard.

Sharon kept screaming.

‘We gotta go,' called Paul from the car. ‘Jane, we gotta go.'

Jane straightened, looked at her gun, then grabbed Evelyn and pushed her into the back of the Commodore.

‘Evelyn!' yelled Adam, managing to break Howard's grasp.

The green Commodore VN spun its rear wheels on the grass before they gripped on the bitumen and howled away amidst the peak hour traffic.

Inside Adam's flat, Chris stood on his perch near the abutted open cage doors. Antigone was pecking at her feeder box. Chris tried to concentrate on the evening developing outside the window.

The sky filled with colour as the few clouds refracted the rays of the setting sun. The lower clouds were white and grey with golden underbellies, while the upper ones remained dark but orange. The sky went from blue to red and then purple. It was as though an enormous bird were breaking from its egg and fluffing out its soft plumage for the first time.

Chris turned to watch Antigone again. ‘You like the little black ones don't you?'

Antigone looked up from the plastic tray that held the assortment of seeds. ‘They're my favourite.'

‘I noticed. You always eat the little black ones first and leave the sesame. Whereas I eat the sesame and leave the poppy.' Chris touched the little talons of his left foot on the metal where the two doors touched.

‘Hey, I said don't cross that line.'

‘I was stretching.' Chris raised both wings, stretching them to full width before retracting them. ‘You look beautiful when you're alarmed.'

Antigone stretched her own wings and gave some gentle flaps. ‘Only when I'm alarmed?'

The throaty roar of a Commodore approaching startled both birds. Antigone fluttered up to grasp the high back of her cage and Chris stepped back along his own perch.

The sky was beginning to darken, causing deep shadows everywhere in the garden. It was hunting time and they were not in a high place.

Jane pushed a blindfolded Evelyn towards the flats, Paul running ahead to get the doors.

‘I'm really sorry about this,' said Paul. ‘It's pretty ideologically unsound, I know. Taking a woman by force. But, seeing as it was another woman who did the taking, I suppose it's ... equitable. I'll get the door. I mean, only because you both can't. I mean, are busy.' He held the door to the vestibule open, making sure there was no one inside.

Then he went for the door of flat one, fishing for the key. ‘You know, like that woman investment adviser who ripped off all those women. The chauvinists got down on her, but as Jane explained – that's genuine equality.'

Jane pushed Evelyn into the flat.

‘Wimmin have as much right to be a good criminal as any man,' Paul said. ‘Better.'

‘Will you shut the fuck up?' said Jane. She hustled Evelyn to the chair at the computer desk, and removed her own balaclava. ‘Don't move or I'll kill you.' As if prompted by her own statement, Jane fumbled in her jacket for the zip gun and the two remaining bullets.

‘We're really sorry about all this,' said Paul.

‘You used my name, you moron.'

Paul whispered, ‘I was in shock. You shot that guy.'

‘Yeah. Bang. God that was a buzz.'

Paul looked at her, aghast. ‘What are we going to do now?'

Jane thought. ‘We drop him a ransom note. Get the package. Give it to us. Or your girlfriend dies.'

‘He's just a friend,' said Evelyn.

‘You better hope he's a bloody good friend,' said Jane.

Sharon was giving a statement to the police. ‘They seemed to want Adam. But Howard tried to save everyone.'

A sergeant with a notebook asked, ‘But they took the girl?'

‘From a pet shop.'

Howard sat up in the ambulance and grabbed a paramedic by the arm. ‘Have you found it? Have you found it yet? You can sew it back on, can't you?'

The sergeant asked, ‘So this Adam guy, where's he?'

‘He ran off, chasing the Commodore.'

‘Stolen most likely. Most stolen vehicle of 1988. It's the ignition system,' said the sergeant.

‘Found it!' yelled a paramedic with a torch, shooing away some pigeons and an insistent seagull.

Everyone went quiet, including the sergeant. The onlookers edged forward as the piece of flesh was carefully put into a small medical eski. The barking owl sat atop her favourite tree and watched Adam creep past the green Commodore, the white Rover and the neatly stacked rubbish bins and into the garden in front of the flats. The sunset had been glorious and the air began to flicker with the promise of excellent hunting.

Adam crept to his door and silently inserted the key. There was a piece of paper inside. A ransom note.

‘Adam! Great. Listen, mate – you wanna shut these cage doors. Antigone is starting to, you know, lose it.'

‘If you need bars to give you self-control, you have none.'

‘I think it's her legs. Have you seen her legs? Adam, you gotta help me.'

Adam stopped reading the note. Under the bird's table he saw the large cardboard box with forty-five dollars worth of postage and Adam's writing and Adam's address. He tore off the outer box and then the crushed box underneath until he found what appeared to be a gold bowling ball.

Adam looked at his front door then went to the window in front of the birds' cages and opened it.

‘Good idea Adam. Set her free. Can't live with them; can't shoot 'em. Well, if they were twenty-eights or crows, sure. Starlings, of course.'

Adam turned from the window and left his flat, slamming the front door loudly enough for flat one to hear.

Paul turned from the window of flat one. ‘Should take him a couple of hours.'

‘I think your mother has been.' Jane was looking at the clean kitchen table.

Paul asked Evelyn, ‘So, what do you think about dolphins?'

Evelyn didn't know he was talking to her because of the blindfold.

Jane came over to the computer table and looked into the empty litter bin. ‘What night is it?'

‘Thursday.'

‘It's one of the bin nights.'

‘So.'

‘You asked him to put the package in the rubbish bin down the street,' said Evelyn.

When Adam got to the cars he ducked down and then crept back into the garden where he stopped behind a tree. He went down on all fours to crawl to the window of his flat.

Baby the cat sat in the garden. She ignored Adam going in. Her eyes were fixed on the window he'd left open.

In flat two a gentle breeze flicked and lifted the lighter feathers of both canaries as they sat very still and very quiet in their respective cages.

Nearby, Adam's computer was on and on the desk in front of the computer was the leg of a chair, a thimble, cleaning chemicals, the bolt from a cupboard door and the lead of a pencil.

The computer was still parked at the site Adam had found:
How to Make a High Velocity Weapon out of Kitchen Utensils and a Beach Umbrella.

Adam had discovered some of the neophyte features that were way beyond e-mail and CD-ROMs. He'd found ISP and UUNET/AlterNet and also CIX. He'd found a thing called the internet and it led to all kinds of knowledge around the world and not only from universities. It was for everybody, although a lot of people appeared to be offering free kittens.

Adam scrambled back in through his window, this time dragging in a red and white beach umbrella he'd found next to Mrs McGready's swimming pool. He rested it on the computer chair, and looked at the diagram again. His shoulders sagged.

On cue, a sawing noise started above.

Adam headed out of the window once more. He climbed up the drainpipe that went past Harry's balcony. He knocked on the glass.

Harry came to the dusty French doors as though this were a perfectly natural point of entry.

‘Adam! Not still mad with me then?'

‘I need to borrow a hacksaw.'

‘No problem,' said Harry, moving plans and wood while he looked for one. ‘How'd your date go?'

‘They shot Howard and took Evelyn hostage. If I don't get the stolen golden ball from the post office where it isn't, they'll kill her.'

Harry looked up from his search for only a blink before he said, ‘Sounds like she won't forget this date in a hurry. Where does the hacksaw, which I can't seem to find, come into it?'

‘They're holding her in flat one, I think.'

‘Hmm,' said Harry, ‘that Jane's got father issues, I suspect.'

‘I'm going to build a rifle, drop the package off in the rubbish bin down the road, and go up onto the roof. When they pick up the package I'll shoot them and rescue Evelyn.'

Harry stood and looked into Adam's steady gaze. ‘When you discover the warrior in yourself, you don't just sit around a campfire hugging blokes, do you?'

‘She's innocent. I ... I can't run away and leave her.'

‘Good for you,' said Harry, wandering off into the bedroom.

Adam looked at the mast, now fixed to the yacht, going up through a new hole in the roof. There were stars in the sky.

‘This might be better for accuracy.' Harry came back with a .303 rifle. ‘Got it to keep the pirates away.'

Adam grabbed the rifle and turned towards the French doors.

‘You might want to make sure she's there.'

Adam turned to see Harry grabbing a toolbox and motioning him to follow.

They went out the door of number four and crept over to the door to flat three. Harry produced a door key and unlocked Mary's door.

In Mary's lounge room a man was in his underwear and tied to a rack of leather. His eyes opened with fear but he could only gurgle his alarm because of a black rubber ball tied into his mouth.

‘I thought I had one,' Mary was saying triumphantly as she came from the bedroom with a ping-pong paddle. She was dressed in a leather corset, suspender belt and straining fishnet stockings.

Then she saw them. ‘Oh? Jake. Adam.'

‘Don't mind us, love. How ya doing, Mr McGready?'

The tied up man grunted wetly.

Harry bent to the floor and took out a drill.

‘How was your fruit salad, Adam?'

‘Very tasty,' said Adam as he watched Harry drill a hole in Mary's floor.

In the flat below, Jane stood looking out the lounge window with binoculars.

Paul was sitting on the very low coffee table, talking urgently to Evelyn. ‘The Princess's Ball symbolises the moon and wholeness and a kind of uterine symmetry that encompasses, like Gaia, the earth itself.'

A tiny drizzle of white plaster dust spread from the ceiling and drifted down into flat one.

Jane turned from the window. ‘What was that noise?'

‘Was it a whipping kind of noise or a hammering kind of noise?'

Jane listened, then shrugged.

Paul said, ‘On the other hand, it was also fashioned by the czars, who were evil patriarchs and it was kept in St Petersburg. Which reminds me, did you know, it was renamed Petrograd in 1914 and then renamed
Leningrad in 1924 and only this year renamed back to its original St Petersburg. Weird, huh?'