With much rattling of locks and clatter of mechanical parts the door was unlocked, and three guards came in. All were women, one in officers' uniform, the other two in soldiers' gear. The officer had a handgun at her waist in a highly polished leather holster, and her offsides carried handguns which they held pointed at me. I still couldn't believe how respectfully—well, fearfully—they were treating us.
Although none of them seemed to speak English they made it clear what they wanted. I had to get undressed and they searched my clothes, emptying the pockets, then carefully checking the hems and linings. They were so thorough. When they'd finished they started on me. That was embarrassing and painful, but I put up with it. Not that I had a choice. Then they let me get dressed again. I thought I'd start to try my luck, so I mimed eating, to show that I wanted food, but they didn't react at all. When I was dressed they left, taking the contents of my pockets with them. I realised numbly that I'd now lost everything, even my little bear, Alvin, that Lee had retrieved for me from the wreckage of the Harvey's Heroes campsite. Alvin had survived that, but it looked like he wouldn't survive this.
I lay on the hard bed. It did feel funny to have a bed under me again. I wondered if anyone had ever made a cell aerobics video, and if so, where I could get a copy. Maybe I could make one and become a millionaire, selling it to mass murderers all around the world.
The next thing I knew I was waking up. I'd been asleep? How was that possible? What if I were about to be executed and I'd wasted the last few hours of my life by sleeping? How stupid and tragic was that?
But I'd been woken by sounds from the cell door again. The lights were still on and they were hurting my eyes. But a smell was coming in that had me sitting up in excitement. I realised I was about to be fed. I couldn't believe my luck. One of the female soldiers came in carrying a tray, while the other two stood at the door covering her with their guns. She put the tray on the desk and went out again without looking at me, I hardly noticed her. I was still barely awake but I hobbled across to the desk and sat on the white chair. The cold metal woke me in a hurry. I peered at the plates and cup. There was a bowl of' boiled rice and a plate with three small pieces of steamed fish. Another plate held two slices of dry white bread. The only colour contrast came from the' cup, which held weak black coffee. It was not an attractive-looking meal, nor a big one, but it was something, and I was grateful enough for it. I took my time, chewing each mouthful dozens of times before swallowing, to make it last, and having sips of coffee in between. But the coffee was only lukewarm, as was the rice and fish, so it wasn't too good. We'd eaten better meals out in the bush, rough and ready though those meals were.
Still, the fact that they were prepared to feed me was encouraging, suggesting they weren't about to kill me straight away. I ate everything, then—I swear this is true—with a guilty look at the camera, I licked the plate. Yes, Ellie the Fearless was embarrassed to be seen with bad table manners. I think that's when I knew for sure I wasn't a natural born terrorist.
After that there was just nothing to do. I tapped on the walls a few times but got no answer. Every half hour or so a face appeared at the inspection panel in the door and stared at me. I didn't know what to do with myself. The camera made it worse, not knowing whether someone was watching every move. At one stage probably about midmorning, there was no way of telling—J caught myself actually wishing something would happen. Then I realised that any something that happened was bound to be bad, so I started wishing nothing would happen. I lay on the bed again and stared up at the ceiling.
One of the awful things was the silence in the cell. It must have been well soundproofed. From time to time I'd hear a door slam but that was the only sound that penetrated. I hummed to myself, then started singing under my breath, just to make a little noise. I wondered how long I'd spend in the cell and how long it'd take before I went mad. I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.
At lunchtime the breakfast tray was taken away and a lunch tray put in its place. The food was much the same: rice and dry bread, but they'd added about half a cupful of curried meat and a small apple with ugly black spots on it.
"Dear God," I thought, "how long can I last?" I could feel a terrible dark depression slowly moving into me, not like any depression I'd had before, more like a physical thing, as if some dreadful black fog was drifting into my landscape and wasn't going to go away. It was a disturbing, uncomfortable feeling. I ate my lunch as slowly as I'd eaten my breakfast, thinking about my situation. I decided I had to get myself organised. If I was starting to sink into depression after a few hours, what would I be like after a week or a month or a year? People had told me how strong I was, and now I had to prove it. I knew that more than any other time in my life I was on my own. My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things. I remembered the poem Robyn had in her bedroom at Wirrawee, the one about the person saying how when she looked back along the beach she saw two sets of footprints, hers and God's, except at the tough times, when there was only one set of footprints. And she says to God, "I low come at the times when I most needed you, you weren't there?" And God answers, "My child, I was there. Those footprints were mine; I made them when I carried you."
When I'd first read the poem I'd thought it was nice, but that was all. It was only now, when I needed it, that the poem became important to me. During the time I spent in the cell, that poem became about the most important possession I had.
I decided to divide the time between meals into shifts. I had no way of telling the time, because they'd taken my watch. And in the cell I couldn't tell day from night. So meals were the only measure I had. I decided I'd spend time on physical activities, and time on mental, and time on creative. I started with the physical, because I guess I'm a physical kind of person. My first session of cell aerobics consisted of stretching exercises, followed by a dance of my own invention, which had a lot of stepping backwards and forwards. I had to avoid anything that would aggravate my knee, because it was still tender and swollen. But apart from that I went OK. The worst thing was that the air was not fresh enough. There was so little new air coming in. Normally it didn't matter much, but as soon as I started working out I used it all up. Within sixty seconds I was sweating heavily.
After that I made my brain sweat a bit. I went through some Maths, multiplying fractions in my head—three-eighths by two-thirds equals a quarter, that sort of thing—then went on to Social Ed, mentally listing things like the three main types of erosion, the major causes of erosion, the definitions of terminal moraines, stuff like that. That part was all memory work.
I also set out to remember the words of four different songs. That was quite fun. I chose "Public Friends," "Bananas in Pyjamas," "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay," and "Reason for It All." I deliberately chose ones that were a real variety, some from my parents' tapes, some from my CDs. It was amazing how when I worked at it, when I made myself go over the songs four or five times, more and more "bits came back into my memory. By the time I'd finished I'd remembered nearly all of them, "Reason for It All" giving me the most trouble. "Bananas in Pyjamas" wasn't too hard.
Quite a lot of time had passed, or so it seemed to me. I'd almost stopped being obsessed with thoughts of imprisonment and death, which was good. So I was taken by surprise when I heard the locks on my door being worked open again. I didn't think it could be tea time already, and I was right. When the door opened, two men in uniform were standing there, with two women behind them. They motioned for me to get up from the bed, which I did. They then stood back, inviting me to step out from the cell. I walked into the corridor, beginning to tremble uncontrollably. Was this my death? Had I spent my last afternoon of life trying to think of the words to "Bananas in Pyjamas?" Was I
going to die without the chance to say goodbye to my family, my friends?
My escort fell in around me and we started along the corridor. For the first few steps I was so frightened I could hardly walk, but by the time we reached the first security gate I was in more of a rhythm and moving a bit more easily.
We marched back past the cage, through the gate on my right that we'd come in before. We walked almost the full length of the prison, stopping at a light green building on the left. All the colours in this place seemed to be mild, pastels. This building looked a bit like the new library at Wirrawee. It seemed to have more glass than the other buildings in the compound. There was a guard on the door who ticked a list on a clipboard before letting us in. The four guards and I marched inside. It was more like a doctor's waiting room than a library: a row of chairs and a coffee table. All it needed was a stack of magazines. But none of us sat down. We stood there uncomfortably. I said to the guards, "What are we waiting for?" I didn't expect them to answer; I was just trying to kid them that I wasn't scared. And they didn't answer. I don't even know if they understood English.
We waited at least half an hour. It was incredibly boring. My greatest hope was that it really was a doctor's waiting room. It was possible that they would give us a medical examination. That would have been normal prison procedure in peacetime, surely. Maybe they would still do it.
But no, I couldn't be that lucky. A door opened along the corridor to my left and the guards prodded me down towards it. All my terror returned in an instant and I wallowed along as though I were a waterlogged boat in a heavy sea. Sick deep in my stomach, I turned at the doorway and stepped across the threshold.
And there he was. Someone I'd never expected to see again. Someone I'd almost forgotten about. Someone I despised so much I felt giddy and faint at the sight of him.
"Ellie, my dear girl," Major Harvey said. "Do come in. How nice to see you."
There was a horrible silence. Although I hated to seem weak, I had to put one hand on the frame of the door to hold myself up, to keep from falling over. I started to realise now just how deep was the trouble we were in, just how dangerous was our situation. I felt defeated and hopeless.
Major Harvey was sitting at a big shiny black desk. There was nothing on it but a clock, a ruler, a fountain pen and three piles of paper, arranged with perfect precision. Behind him were two officers. One was the man with the gold braid, whom we'd seen when we arrived; the other was a woman with almost as much gold. They were standing and gazing at me with expressionless faces.
I forced myself to look at Major Harvey's eyes. They were dead and empty. I wondered if there was a person inside, or if he was just a dark devil from Hell itself. At least the soldiers were fighting honestly, under their own flag. This man was a foul shadow of a human being. I knew he would crush me as easily as I would kill a blowie, and I also had an inkling that he would get some kind of perverted pleasure from doing it.
I made myself stand a little taller. He hadn't taken his eyes off me; those black beady eyes that seemed not like eyes at all. It was like his skin had been pierced at those two points in his face and I was getting a glimpse of what lay inside: an empty ugly darkness.
When I did straighten up, I noticed a quick movement around his lips. It was almost a smile, as though he'd expected me to do something very like that. I did not respond. How could I? I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, vomit would come from it; the vomit of fear, the vomit of hatred.
Major Harvey mewed his right arm and slid open a drawer in the desk. He brought out a small silver tape recorder and placed it in the middle of the big desk.
"Sit down, Ellie," he said.
I obeyed, slipping silently into the nearest chair, a trendy grey one made from cane and steel. I gripped its armrests tightly, knowing I was leaving clammy wet sweat on it, but appreciating its coolness and strength. Major Harvey turned the tape recorder on.
"Now, Ellie," he said, "I don't think you'll have many-surprises for us. We know just about everything. But for the record we do require a full statement, detailing your activities. You can start with your name, address and age, then work backwards from the Cobbler's Bay attack. And, please, don't forget to mention the officer and two other ranks you killed in cold blood when you stole the Holden Jackaroo."
I sat there staring at him. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think. I had no idea what was best for me, whether to say nothing, whether to tell him everything, whether to put together a mixture of lies and truth. It was quite likely that he did know most things, especially if he'd already questioned the others. If I got caught telling lies I suspected he'd treat me very badly. I didn't want to make him angry.
So I said nothing, not because I wanted to be a hero, but because I couldn't think of what to say. Then I decided that silence was probably quite a good strategy.
He waited for a minute or so. Then he said: "You know, Ellie, the first time I met you, you struck me as a particularly rude and pig-headed young lady. It is unfortunate for you that you were raised in a society where standards have been so corrupted that behaviour like yours has been tolerated. But you are a child no longer. You will be treated here as an adult."
He paused. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I couldn't think of anything. So he continued.
"When a child commits an offence he is punished. But the punishment an adult would receive is modified for the child, who is judged not yet responsible for his actions, not able to grasp the full extent of what he has done."
He seemed to be quoting from a textbook or a speech or something. I still didn't know where this was heading but I was frightened in a cold sickening way, like no fear I'd felt before. It was like the chill of death was already moving through me, turning my skin white and liquefying my insides.
"We believe in adult punishments for adult acts. You have, for a long time now, acted in a thoroughly irresponsible, destructive way. You have committed appalling crimes. You can, of course, no longer expect to be treated as a child. I'm sure you wouldn't wish to be. We have reintroduced capital punishment to deal with crimes such as murder, terrorism and treason. I've talked to your friends at length today and formed an accurate picture of what you've been up to. I wasn't surprised to learn that you and the Greek boy are the ringleaders of your little group. The only thing I really require from you is a list of these crimes, for our records, and the details of how you committed them, so that we can improve our security. In particular, we are concerned about the acts of terrorism at Cobbler's Bay. In supplying this information it may be that you will make us aware of circumstances that might incline us to consider clemency in your case. We are considering that for one of your companions who has been especially helpful, instead of the extreme punishment that, frankly, is well deserved; in fact has been earned many times over.
"So, Ellie..." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. Up till then I'd thought he was perfectly relaxed, completely in command, but, when he lifted his arms, I saw huge sweat patches in the armpits of his shirt, stretching almost to his waist. It made me feel a fraction better.
"...I understand you are something of a writer—the record keeper for your little bunch of hooligans." I Ic peeled a sheet of paper from the pile on the desk and placed it in front of me. From his pocket he drew a cheap grey biro, with the words STATE GOVERNMENT written in red down its side.
"Stealing pens," I said. "That's a criminal offence."
It was the first thing I'd said since coming into the room, and it was a pretty dumbass comment. Major Harvey just smiled, and shook his head.
"People don't change, Ellie, do they?" he said. "I don't think you'll ever change. And I feel sorry for you, I really do, because things might have gone easier for you if you had. Well, there's your paper, and here's a pen. As I said, you can start with the mess you caused at Cobbler's Bay. We're particularly anxious to know how you got in there, what explosive you used, and how you got that explosive. We'll leave
you alone for an hour. I suggest you write fast. The only chance you have is to write down everything. Everything, you understand?"
lie said the last three words with sudden ferocity, taking me by surprise, but I tried not to show it. Instead, I gazed sulkily at the floor as he and the two officers left the room. They shut the door behind them and I heard the key turn.
I sat gazing at the paper. Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't imagine how to put clown so much on paper in just one hour. I'd need months, and hundreds of thousands of words. It seemed pointless anyway. I didn't have the energy to write anything.
Twenty-four
Major Harvey picked up the piece of paper. "I see writing on this paper," he announced.
I didn't say anything; I assumed he was going to make some dumb comment about the blank sheet.
"Yes," he said, putting it clown again. "I certainly see writing on it. I see your death warrant. That's what it says to me."
He looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I wasn't going to give him the pleasure of one. I was very confused, uncertain, of what I should do; the only thing I was reasonably sure of was that whatever Major Harvey wanted me to do, I wouldn't.
"A very well-written death warrant," Major Harvey concluded, milking his little joke for all it was worth.
He sat at the desk again. The woman officer was there too, and she sat down this time, in a chair in a corner of the room. Major Harvey continued to talk to me.
"I'm a very busy man, Ellie," he said. "I'm trying to help you but I'm not going to spend day alter day persuading you to save your own life. If you're not interested in doing it, I don't see why I should be. You're a very silly, very stubborn girl, and I can tell you now that you'll be shot before the week's out if you don't make the effort to tell us what we need to know."