“Don’t scare him, Jack,” said Olivia, opening the front door. She didn’t step over the threshold. “The blood test plate is to your right, boss. Once you’ve checked in, you can come and go as you like, unless you’re trying to enter with someone who hasn’t been tested clean within the last six hours. If you leave the property or go over six hours, of course, you have to check clean again.”
“Sensible,” I said, and slapped my hand down against the testing plate. Needles bit into the base of my palm, and a moment later, a small green light clicked on inside the doorframe.
“Come on in,” said Olivia. “Zane and Hotaru are very excited to meet you.”
“I’m terribly sorry for them, then,” I said, smothering another yawn. “I’m not exactly at my best right now.”
“We understand jet lag,” said a tall, barrel-chested man whose bushy red mustache had been the subject of more than a few cheerful meme explosions started by Olivia. He offered me his hand, and I noted dispassionately that he was almost a foot taller than I was. “Zane Mebberson-Yamaguchi. It’s a real pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Mahir Gowda,” I said, slipping my hand into his, where it was engulfed by his fingers. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“That’s on Olivia,” he said, shaking once before letting me go. “She said her boss was coming to the country, and she couldn’t exactly ask him to stay at a hotel, so would we mind? As if we could tell her no.”
“You could, but you’d wake up with spiders in your bed,” said Olivia, walking by and leaning up onto her absolute tiptoes. Zane ducked his head, allowing her to kiss his cheek.
“I already wake up with spiders in my bed,” he said. “Find a better threat.”
Rather than pay attention to their banter—which had the long-practiced feel of a call and response, the sort of private patter that partners tended to develop over long periods of time—I turned and studied the living room. It was surprisingly normal; except for the windows, it could have been placed in any American or British home and fit right in. There was a large entertainment center in one corner, with a stationary bike discreetly folded and tucked off to one side. About a third of the room had been sectioned off with a metal bookshelf, forming a private workspace.
“That’s mine,” said an unfamiliar female voice. I turned from my consideration of the workspace. A slim young Japanese-Australian woman had entered the living room, a pillow under one arm. She had red and blue streaks dyed in her shoulder-length black hair; the blue matched Olivia’s closely enough that it was doubtless from the same bottle. “You must be Mr. Gowda. Olivia’s told us so much about you.”
“And you must be Hotaru.”
“Exactly.” Her smile was wide and warm. “Your room’s ready for you, except for the pillow, which is here.” She held it out to me. “Welcome to Australia.”
“I’m thrilled to be here,” I said, taking the pillow. “Now, if someone would show me where I’m meant to be sleeping, I’d like to go pass out until I feel secure in my ability to remember any of this.”
Olivia laughed. “Come on,” she said. “It’s this way.”
“Oh, thank God,” I muttered, and followed her down the hall, away from the already-chattering cluster of people, until we reached a small, blessedly dark room. There was a single twin bed pressed up against the wall, and in that moment, it seemed larger and more welcoming than any bed that I had ever seen. My suitcase was already there, next to the nightstand. Jack must have moved it while I wasn’t looking.
“Do you need anything?” Olivia asked.
“Just sleep,” I said.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said, and shut the door behind herself as she left the room.
Improbable as it seems, I truly believe that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, and I celebrated my arrival in Australia by falling into a deep, dreamless unconsciousness.
Part II:
A Fantastic Voyage into the Land of Venomous Snakes, Improbably Large Spiders, and Marsupials
People make Australia out to be some dangerous, horrifying wilderness, but it’s not. It’s a country like any other, and for the people who live here, it’s home. You can get a little tired of people acting like your home is some sort of Murderland.
—Olivia Mebberson
Whoever authorized the evolution of the spiders of Australia should be summarily dragged out into the street and shot.
—Mahir Gowda
1.
When I awoke, the inside of my mouth tasted like a public toilet, every inch of my body ached, and the light oozing into the room around the edges of the single closed blind was somehow indefinably wrong, like it had been designed by someone who had never seen proper sunlight. I heaved myself into a sitting position, wondering if I could somehow convince myself to go back to sleep, when my nose caught another whiff of the aroma that had awakened me. Somewhere in this house, someone was frying sausages.
My stomach, which had otherwise offered very few opinions since leaving home, stirred and announced that going back to sleep was not an option—not when there might be sausages to be had. I groaned and climbed out of the bed.
There was no shower in the guest room, but I had tidy wipes in my travel kit. I cleaned myself up as best I could, changed into clean clothes, and made my way out of the room. Voices drifted down the empty hall. I walked toward them, following the smell of sausage until I found the kitchen, where Jack, Olivia, and Hotaru were clustered around a table. Zane was at the stove, a spatula in his hand and a frying pan in front of him.
“He lives!” Zane roared, and broke out in a deep, belly-shaking laugh.
“Good morning!” said Jack, turning from his plate and beckoning me toward the table. “We were just arguing about who was going to get the duty of coming and waking you up for breakfast. Have a seat, there’s more than plenty.”
“But is there tea?” I asked, with more of an air of desperation than I had actually intended. I half walked, half stumbled to an open place at the table, collapsing into the chair. “Please tell me that there’s tea.”
“There’s tea,” said Hotaru, and stood. “I’ll start the kettle. Is English breakfast all right?”
“English breakfast will qualify you for sainthood,” I said. A plate appeared in front of me: scrambled eggs, toast, fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes, and two links of the sausage that had coaxed me out the bed. I took the fork Olivia offered me and fell to, barely remembering the manners my mother had taken such unending pains to teach me.
When I was somewhere in the middle of the eggs, tea appeared. I nodded thanks to Hotaru and kept on eating.
Jack waited until I was done with my second cup before he said, “It’s about nine now—you slept clean through the night—and we’re set to strike off at noon. We’ll be driving to Adelaide, via the Western Highway. That’s about eight hours and should give us plenty of time to review the material that we’ve gathered for you about the fence. When we get there, we’ve got friends with a private plane who’ll be transporting us to Nullarbor. From there—”
“I’m sorry; this is probably a stupid foreigner question, but why can’t we fly out from here?” I put down my mug. “Wouldn’t that make more sense?”
“It would, but the travel restrictions between here and Adelaide made it a bear. We’re in Victoria right now. This is one of the more restrictive states. Adelaide is in South Australia. It’s easier to fly out of there. Nullarbor is a good refueling spot.” Jack shrugged. “It may seem a little odd, but it really is the best way.”
“We’re about three thousand miles from the fence,” said Olivia. She smiled a little at the look on my face. “Australia’s really big, remember? We’re a country and a continent at the same time, and that means getting places can be a bit tricky.”
“As for why we’re starting from Melbourne instead of meeting up in Perth or thereabouts, it’s easier for us to take a trip of this magnitude when we’re doing it with a visiting journalist.” Jack made a face. “Travel permits can be hard to get unless you can demonstrate that your report would be good for tourism.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Australia has tourism?”
“Mostly in the form of attractive singles from around the world coming here hoping to marry a native and get permission to stay,” said Hotaru. She sounded amused. “That’s what they assume I am, until they hear my voice, and then they want to know if I’m in the market for a spouse.”
“But…” I looked around the open, airy kitchen, with its windows looking out on the backyard. “Most of the people I know would be intensely uncomfortable living like this.”
“Sure, they would, but they’re thinking of their kids,” said Olivia, with a shrug. “Marry an Australian and know that your children will have the best life they could possibly have, or spend your life locked in your room and waiting for the sky to fall. It makes us tempting. Trouble is, we don’t want to be the world’s solution to cowardice. We want people to come here, pump their dollars into our economy, and go the hell home.”
“I can’t promise that our report will have that sort of effect,” I said carefully. “To be quite honest, my work tends to discourage casual tourism more than it encourages it.”
“That’s all right, that’s what we’re expecting,” said Jack. “I’d rather people never came here in the first place. We’ve got a quite sufficient human population, and expanding the cities would mean going up against the wildlife. Not a plan for the faint of heart. I’m more interested in telling the licensing board what they want to hear in order to get us to the fence and get our numbers up.”
“Maybe you don’t need the money, mate, but we do,” said Zane, appearing behind Olivia and putting a hand on the smaller woman’s shoulder. She leaned back against him, apparently quite comfortable with her position. “If our Liv can just go up a few notches in the ratings, it’ll make a big difference for us as a household.”