Solace & Grief (9 page)

‘He? Who's gone?’

But sleep had already claimed her.

L
eaving the warehouse the following morning, any qualms Solace might have felt about returning the surveys were swiftly erased by the physical pressure of daylight. Although the temperature was cool, the sun beamed down unhindered through a sharp blue sky, piercing her like a javelin. Within fifteen minutes, she had begun to feel a little as though she were dreaming and a lot like she was drunk, with the added hindrance of not being able to see straight. Swaying, she tripped and fell between Jess and Electra, who caught her by the arms.

‘Have a nice trip?’ Jess asked, grinning slyly.

Solace made a face.

By the time they reached the Town Hall steps, the sun was high in the sky, Evan was complaining about a blister on his heel and Solace was more than ready to drop. It was a small mercy that, as advertised, the students were where they'd said they'd be, collecting and handing out their strange surveys. Spotting Manx, one of the duo, who sported improbably blue hair and a pierced eyebrow, grinned and waved.

‘Hey, man. You're back. Hey, Fin! Those guys are, like, back!’

‘Hey!’ said Fin, sauntering over. He was lanky, lean as well as tall, and awkward-seeming, like a foal that hadn't yet grown into its legs. His face was square and handsome, with a flop of sandy-coloured hair perpetually falling into hazel, green-flecked eyes. For a moment, he stared at Solace. She stared back. A kind of weird tension hovered in the air, something nobody else noticed but which, she felt sure, was far from imagined: something tangible and distinctly Tricksy, like her reaction to sunlight. And then, just as suddenly, whatever-it-was had passed, blinked away like a grain of sand as Fin shook hands with Manx, chatting amiably as Evan passed him their forms. They were slightly scrunched, owing to having spent the journey in his pocket, but otherwise intact, which, as Electra kindly pointed out, was a double miracle when combined with the fact that he'd remembered them at all. Evan grumbled at that and rolled his eyes when her back was turned.

Accepting the papers with a grateful smile, Fin slipped their surveys into a plump manila folder – clearly, they weren't the only respondents – and then, to Electra's evident surprise, reached for a nearby cashbox, opened it, and withdrew five twenty dollar notes, handing one to each of them. Blinking, Electra stared at this unexpected bounty, looking from it to the others.

‘Told you so,’ said Evan, smugly.

Electra shrugged.

‘Weirdest thing,’ said Blue-Hair, noting this exchange. ‘I've done a few of these survey gigs before, right, and usually no one cares. You flag someone down, they keep walking – pretty much, if they don't fill one out while you're watching, they don't fill one out at all, money or not. But these ones, people can't get enough of them. I ran out yesterday, and almost every one came back. It's odd.’

Evan raised an eyebrow. ‘No offence, but have you actually
read
them?’

‘Dude,’ said Blue-Hair. ‘No offence, but it's a
survey
. A
sociology
survey. Like I care!’

‘Why?’ asked Fin, curious. ‘What's special about them?’

‘Look for yourself,’ said Evan.

Frowning, Fin reached across to a different folder and plucked out an unmarked form. He looked bored right up until the end of question eight, at which point he started blinking, moving his lips as he read and making small but nonetheless audible noises.

‘Um,’ he said, eventually. ‘Um. Right. Yes. I think – and you
answered
this?’

‘Yes,’ said Jess, grinning broadly. ‘
All
of us.’

It wouldn't have been unreasonable for Fin to laugh at them, scoff or make a sarcastic aside, particularly if – as seemed to be the case – he was normal himself. Instead, he gulped and ran a hand down his face; Jess's emphasis had apparently not gone unheeded. Again, his gaze flashed to Solace, but his expression was unreadable.

‘Look,’ Fin said. He reached down and picked up the folder of completed surveys, handling them gingerly. There was a quaver in his voice. He coughed. ‘Um. I think – I think you should come with me. All of you. Now.’

Solace raised her brows at Manx, who nodded. As though this exchange constituted group agreement, Fin motioned towards the Town Hall steps, already ushering the others forward. Blue-Hair, who'd watched his friend read the survey with the kind of special, aloof disinterest cats normally reserve for garden slugs, blinked at the sudden eddy of people and remembered where he was.

‘Hey! What're you doing?’

‘Just wait!’ Fin called, distracted. Blue-Hair sighed dramatically and picked up the discarded surveys, watching with boredom and a little resentment as the others filed away and up the steps.

Once inside, Fin rushed them through a passageway to the left, all but tripping over his own feet in the process. Solace had never seen the hall's interior before, and despite the strangeness of the situation, she found herself craning her head to stare at the vaulted ceiling and wide windows of the central reception room, a tourist in her own city. Fin ushered them past it all too quickly, hurrying jerkily down the side hall as though, despite his own urgency, he wasn't actually sure where he was leading them. Then his eyes lit on an unobtrusive door. Given its location on the right-hand wall and the fact that they were now a few metres above street level, it should have led to a narrow room between the wall and the main auditorium, and yet, when Fin opened it and stepped through, an impossible depth seemed to swallow them for the second it took to cross the threshold, disorienting as an eclipse. Then the world swam back, revealing a room which, far from being part of the Town Hall, couldn't possibly have existed.

For one thing, the windows were showing a different view.

‘Um,’ said Evan, looking around them.

They seemed to be in a classroom; which is to say, the place
looked
like a classroom up until the point at which it became apparent that, owing to the myriad different objects filling every corner, there would be little or no room for actual students. As Fin shuffled forward, Solace noted a stuffed panther cub, a strange, aesthetically elongated human skull, a jar full of what appeared to be bright white light, a sack of potatoes overflowing onto the floor, a female shop dummy wearing a coat of chain mail, and a glass-fronted terrarium containing no less than three medium-sized, glossy brown snakes, all of them asleep. Old-fashioned wooden desks, secured in rows to the floor, dissected the room into a series of crowded aisles, while large, tropical-seeming ferns in earthenware pots clustered along the walls, waving and glowing gently like a miniature rainforest. Behind all this kerfuffle lurked a low, dark desk covered with paper, knick-knacks and books. It took Solace a moment to realise that someone was bending down behind it, and another moment still before she saw that Fin was wide-eyed and nervy, as if he too had never seen this room before and was just as surprised by its impossibility as everyone else. Either that, or he was a very good actor.

‘I don't – I didn't – this was
different,
’ he said plaintively. Evan patted his arm.

‘Don't worry,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I'm sure you'll cope.’

‘But I need to ask –’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed a voice from behind the desk, cutting Fin off. A head appeared. After a few muffled curses and some shuffling, a man emerged from the clutter. Solace fought the urge to laugh. At first glance, he seemed to be in his mid-sixties: thin, bony and energetic, with a shock of ginger hair frizzing out from around a shiny bald pate. A pair of silver spectacles – it was impossible to think of them as glasses – perched on his nose, providing a sparkling contrast to his less-than-pristine lab coat, which, unbuttoned and knee-length, showed glimpses of the blue velvet vest, cream-coloured shirt and flecked tweed trousers worn beneath. The man blinked, pausing to survey the group before flapping a busy hand at Fin.

‘Out,’ he said.

‘Uh, I, Professor, what –’

‘Out!’ he repeated, with strong, somewhat manic cheerfulness, simultaneously beckoning the others. Manx and Evan exchanged bemused smiles; Jess suppressed a giggle. Solace and Electra were still busy taking in both the stranger's appearance and the room itself: new oddments and bits of bric-a-brac kept leaping into individual focus, such as the collection of wicker pig statuettes arranged lovingly atop a rusty oil drum. Fin bobbed nervously in place for a few seconds before deciding that discretion was clearly the better part of valour, dropping the surveys carefully on a desk and then bolting, looking for all the world as though he were about to throw up. There was a soft
snick
as the door swung shut behind him. The stranger watched him exit, blinked again, and then turned back to everyone else.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now. Let me see your answers. Sit!’

Without waiting for a response, he picked up the papers that Fin had left behind and began to read through them. After a moment's hesitation, Solace shrugged, pulled out one of the wooden chairs and sat; the others copied her gesture. Beyond the initial scraping and shuffling this created, there was a prolonged pause as their eccentric host delved into their surveys. He was not, however, silent, punctuating this task with little clicks and trills of his tongue, uttering the occasional gruff, breathy chuckle or otherwise shaking his head. At long last, however, he finished the final page, put the whole pile down on top of the snake terrarium and then leaned against a desk.

‘Well. You're certainly a colourful lot, aren't you? So! Who's going to be the first to ask me who I am and what I'm playing at, eh?’

He smiled. The professor, as Fin had called him, possessed a thin, friendly, crinkled face and a very broad mouth, although his eyes were slightly bulbous. He was looking at them all with such earnest concern that Solace, at least, felt moved to break the confused silence.

‘You wrote the surveys?’ she hazarded. ‘And you're a… sociologist.’ She uttered this last with some scepticism, eyes lighting on a half-collapsed pile of ageing
Playboy
magazines. If the professor followed her gaze, he didn't show it, preferring instead to doff a nonexistent hat in her direction.

‘Well done! My name is Lukin – Professor Lukin – and I am, indeed, responsible for these.’ He tapped the surveys and frowned. ‘Although why young Finlay brought you to me is something of a mystery. Would anyone care to shed some light?’

‘Not sure,’ said Manx, glancing at the others. ‘He just said he wanted to talk to us.’ He took a breath. ‘Actually, I'm not sure he knew you were in here. What with the, uh… I mean, the windows…’

‘We're not in Kansas anymore,’ Electra finished, bluntly.

Lukin laughed. ‘No, indeed you're not, assuming your “Kansas” refers strictly to the Town Hall. We are, in fact, still in Sydney; more precisely, at the illustrious University of the same name, in my office – or rather, what passes for my office. Things do have a tendency to accumulate. Er –’

‘Not to interrupt, but how the hell did we get here?’ Evan demanded, crossing his arms. ‘And why the surveys? Because honestly, I'm
quite
interested.’

‘Really?’ Lukin brightened considerably. Given that he hadn't been demonstrably un-bright to begin with, the resulting enthusiasm was like turning up the wattage on a halogen bulb to somewhere near the intensity of a small sun. Any objections, questions or comparable vocal utterances on the part of his audience melted away like so much cheap ice-cream, leaving the professor master of his strange and cluttered class.

And so, with barely a breath of hesitation, he told them about the Rare: sentient beings who started out human and ended up something else. He spoke about the myriad folklores, myths and fantasies which attempted, often unsuccessfully, to document their kind and of how, despite the advances in modern science, their origin was still unknown, let alone the logic of who inherited what, or why. It was small wonder, really, when most people refused encountered bar one. And as for her friends –

‘Stop!’

It was Evan. The interjection was so abrupt that Solace actually jumped. Lukin did a double take and snapped back, somewhat guiltily, into an awareness of his surroundings.

‘Apologies,’ he mumbled. ‘Chance to lecture, force of habit, and so on. Too many years in the faculty lounge can do that, I'm afraid.’ He coughed.

‘That was… whoa.’ Jess shook her head. ‘Is brain-spasm a word? Because it really should be.’

‘Thanks, Professor,’ said Manx, standing quickly. The others followed suit. ‘That's certainly something to think about. But we should probably be going.’

‘Of course,’ said Lukin. He seemed to have shrunk, his enthusiasm turned to a negative polarity. Suddenly, he was little more than a harmless, lonely old man; and Solace, who knew about loneliness, pitied him. ‘It's just… no.’

‘What?’ asked Solace, hesitating under the guiding pull of Manx's hand. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘Well.’ Lukin exhaled, sharply and disappointedly, through his teeth. ‘Some colleagues and I – all from different fields – we've worked up a series of simple tests for Rarity. Data-gathering, that sort of thing. Completely non-invasive. I've petitioned the university to let me ask for contact details on the surveys, so I can reach suitable candidates, but they haven't okayed it yet – stubborn bureaucrats, always tentative – it's paying work, mind you, fifty dollars each for an afternoon's work, and not much work at that – it's just so difficult to find people…’