The Second Cure Read online

  Cassie emerged from the kitchen with a focaccia, picked up a flat white from the barista, and delivered them to the woman with the mask. Then she spotted Brigid and grinned. Her hair was tied in a simple blonde plait and her colour was high from working in the kitchen. Brigid thought she looked great.

  ‘Hello, stranger.’ Cassie kissed her on the cheek and sat on the chair opposite.

  ‘Oh, it hasn’t been that long!’

  ‘Too long,’ Cassie told her. ‘So how have you been?’

  The two shared recent potted histories with the ease that comes of a long and dear friendship. They got along much better now they were no longer lovers. Friends could tolerate divergent needs much more readily, especially when the need of one of them was to have a baby, something the other couldn’t see fitting in around the long and unpredictable hours of her job. A few months after the separation six years back, Cassie had met Amelia, they’d married and started Cassandra’s Cafe together, and they now had two children.

  As they talked, Brigid was distracted by the masked woman attempting to eat and drink without exposing herself to the parasite … spores? … that weren’t floating in the air around her. It was a self-conscious performance, and it occurred to Brigid that this wasn’t about avoiding infection. It was about letting everyone know that she wasn’t infected. That she was untainted by the evil.

  ‘Are you seeing a lot of that?’ Brigid asked, nodding discreetly at the customer.

  Cassie glanced around. ‘The mask thing? God, yes. It’s all the rage for my mum and her mates.’

  ‘But they must know Toxo’s not airborne, right?’

  ‘Since when is fashion logical?’ Cassie stood. ‘Better get back to it. Good to see you, Brigid.’

  Brigid drained her second cup of chai latte as a young couple entered. She knew at once they were her subjects because of the very reason she’d wanted to interview them: their tattoos. If the woman with the mask was trying to make a point, she had nothing on these two. Introductions made, she ordered them a pot of tea, and got down to business.

  The girl revealed that the tattoo on her forehead was, in fact, only temporary, but she was planning to follow her boyfriend’s lead and make it permanent soon. ‘It’s just that my dad’ll have a fit,’ she explained.

  ‘It’s not something you’d be easily able to change your mind about,’ Brigid ventured.

  ‘Synaesthesia isn’t something you can change your mind about, either,’ said the boyfriend. ‘Not that you’d want to. This is what we are.’

  The girl nodded vehemently. ‘That’s exactly it. And we’re embracing what we are. We are the first generation of our species to achieve real vision, spiritual vision. We see life as it is. We have a gift. We’re not going to be shamed.’ Brigid suppressed her immediate thought: a couple of wanky teenagers seeing themselves as special snowflakes, enlightened and superior. They took themselves so seriously, but, then, so did she at that age.

  The eye tattoos originated, she knew, from a tabloid columnist pronouncing that those infected by the Cat Plague should be identified with a tattoo of the letter ‘I’ (for ‘infected’) on their foreheads. It was a blatant attempt to goad social media into a frenzy – one of the columnist’s primary reasons for waking up each morning – and it succeeded. There was an online meltdown of predictable outrage and everyone yelled at each other for a few days. Some synaesthetes began drawing ‘I’ onto their foreheads, and that soon morphed into drawings of an eye, which was then etched with tattoo needles into the flesh of the bravest. The tattoos became more ornate and stylised as thete pride in being outcast – or in their membership of an elite – increased. Even some who were infected but whose symptoms were nothing more exciting than increased clumsiness were joining the movement. Brigid wondered, not for the first time, how that small proportion of synaesthetes who had been born that way felt about their condition being co-opted as the latest revolutionary symbol of youth.

  While she felt that such a permanent display mightn’t be wise, and had some empathy with the girl’s father, Brigid couldn’t deny that the boy’s tat was a thing of beauty. The eye looked like the psychedelic art of the sixties: hyper-realism in Martin Sharp colours. When she complimented him on it, he preened, and of course both he and his girlfriend were more than keen to have a photo taken to accompany the article. She brought out her camera, and the two posed themselves against the lime-washed brick wall of the cafe. They looked earnest and committed, and Brigid laughed. ‘Not so frowny and scowly! You’re wrinkling up the tats!’

  As she started shooting, she heard a commotion behind her. She turned to see the woman with the mask remonstrating with Cassie and gesturing at Brigid’s guests. ‘Back in a sec,’ she told them, and walked across to the woman’s table.

  ‘But you’re encouraging them! You know what they are. This is a public health issue!’ The woman’s hot breath was escaping above her mask and steaming up her spectacles.

  ‘Problem, Cassie?’ asked Brigid.

  ‘There certainly is,’ the woman interjected. ‘They’re with you, aren’t they? Are you one of them too?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Cassie. ‘They are as entitled to be here as you are, and no, I’m not throwing them out.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I’m leaving. And I won’t let this rest, believe me …’ She picked up her handbag and magazine. ‘You’ll be hearing more about this. My husband’s in the Department of Health.’

  ‘Fine, go,’ said Cassie. The whole cafe was now listening, agog. The uni-student waitress was watching from the kitchen door, a plate of pasta frozen in her hand.

  ‘Has she actually paid?’ Brigid asked, gesturing at the woman departing through the front door.

  ‘No. But it’s worth it, just to have her leave.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Cassie nodded. ‘I’m fine. Fine.’ She turned to the cafe at large. ‘All over, folks. Eat, drink and be merry.’ She stalked past the waitress into the kitchen.

  Brigid went back to her table. Her interviewees both looked much younger, suddenly. ‘It’s cool,’ the boy said with forced bravado. ‘Happens all the time.’ His girlfriend was looking shaken. Brigid hoped, for her sake, that her father prevailed over the matter of the tattoo.

  It took a little time to get back to the easy intimacy of their earlier conversation, so Brigid steered them towards talking about their experience of synaesthesia, a subject that brought back their enthusiasm and passion. The boy had bog-standard numbers-are-colours symptoms, but the girl could hear tastes.

  ‘Lemon sounds like a high-pitched whistle,’ she said, ‘and oranges taste like – what’s that instrument, like a tiny flute thing?’

  ‘A piccolo? Really?’

  She nodded. ‘And coffee is like a jackhammer. It’s really put me off drinking it, to be honest.’

  Her boyfriend was gazing at her with patent envy. By contrast, he was pretty boring.

  Brigid had begun winding the interview up when the door to the cafe was flung open. Two police officers entered, followed by the woman in the mask.

  ‘There they are,’ she said to the officers, pointing to Brigid’s companions. ‘I think she’s one too.’ Pointing to Brigid.

  ‘Get Cassie,’ Brigid told the waitress, who stood gawping at the arrivals. She hurried out to get her boss.

  The older of the cops, who looked all of eighteen, approached their table. ‘This lady has complained that there’s been a disturbance.’

  ‘The only disturbance has been this woman making a fuss and refusing to pay.’ Cassie had appeared. ‘She owes me twenty-seven ninety.’

  ‘This place is a health hazard,’ the woman shrieked. ‘They’re spreading their filth all over the place, and it’s disgusting. They’re infected.’

  ‘Not really your job, is it, Constable? Unlike someone scarpering without paying for her lunch,’ said Brigid.

  ‘Perhaps it’d be best if you two quietly came with us,’ the second police officer said to the boy and gi
rl.

  Brigid stood. She had a good half a head on both the cops and stretched her spine to make it more. ‘Are you arresting them, sir? On what basis, can I ask?’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Brigid Bayliss, senior political reporter with the Brisbane Chronicle.’ She’d given herself a slight promotion, but she didn’t think they’d check. She picked up her phone. ‘And I happen to have the last hour and a half of everything that’s happened in this cafe recorded. Including the complete absence of any bad behaviour on the part of my friends, and solid audio of your hysterical departure earlier,’ she told the woman with the mask. That wasn’t true, either – her phone didn’t have that much memory on it, but she trusted it’d do the trick. It did.

  From that point, there was a slow backtracking by the police, and a reluctant acceptance on the part of the complainant that there was nothing they could do for her. They finally left, with the woman telling Cassie she was still going to tell her husband about it.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ murmured Cassie as they left.

  The interviewees left soon after – Cassie showed them the back exit so they could avoid any more confrontations – and she and Brigid settled down in the staffroom behind the kitchen with a couple of beers. Determined to salvage something more pleasant from their reunion, they shot the breeze, sharing news of mutual friends, the kids’ lives, Brigid’s work.

  Brigid felt her mobile vibrate in her pocket and apologised to Cassie. ‘Sorry. Might be important,’ she said, scanning the message.

  Messages. Her phone kept beeping as it was inundated with texts from colleagues.

  ‘If I had a buck for every time you’ve said that to me –’ Cassie began. Then, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Brigid.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Effenberg is talking about outlawing same-sex marriage.’

  ‘He can’t.’

  ‘He can’t affect the federal legislation, but he can do a lot to screw up its administration in Queensland. He’s busting for a brawl over it. Look, sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to follow this up.’

  Cassie had started to cry. ‘But Amelia and me. Our kids. We’re a family. He can’t …’

  Brigid embraced her. ‘I can’t tell you what to do, Cassie, but I do think you should get out. Sell up and go. It’s going to get a lot worse. Look, I can’t stay. I wish could …’

  Cassie shook her head. ‘Go, go. Fight this. Fight that bastard. Bring down his fucking government.’

  Brigid hesitated, then left, setting off for her flat and her computer. Effenberg was exhausting them all with his almost daily outrages, and she suspected that was a deliberate tactic, diluting attention, causing chaos. It was her job to keep the focus sharp, as well as she and her words could manage.

  Kangaroo Island Now Free of Feral Cats

  The Kangaroo Island feral cat eradication initiative has officially been cancelled due to the absence of cat sightings over the last two months, reportedly since the spread of T. pestis throughout the ecosystem. Kangaroo Island, southwest of Adelaide, was already free of foxes, wild dogs and rabbits, so the complete eradication of feline species means that its diverse fauna is now safe from feral predation. Previous dietary studies had indicated that cats were consuming eleven species of mammal (among them the endangered southern brown bandicoot, Isoodon obesulus obesulus), thirty-five species of bird including the little penguin, Eudyptula minor, as well as multiple reptile and frog species.

  – Australasian Ecology

  20.

  Sydney

  Charlie carried her felafel roll (with extra eggplant) and ginger beer into the science quadrangle to meet Juliette for lunch. She was tailed by what she’d come to think of as her posse. A group of students from the Christian Society, the Young NatCons and the Army Reserve had joined up to be Charlie’s defenders. They had a schedule to ensure that two of them were with her whenever she set foot outside her lab or a lecture theatre, ensuring that she was untroubled by protesters. While she appreciated their intent, finding herself on the side of conservative, religious militarists was bemusing, and their presence was a little intrusive. When she started getting online death threats, however, she decided some additional protection was sensible, and it was better than escalating the matter to the point of notifying the authorities.

  Today’s contingent was a skinny girl in a cardigan and a boy in khaki. She was wearing one of the increasingly common ‘purity masks’. The dispute between the pro- and anti-thete student factions was being played out in masks and tattoos, and in graffiti. Chalked eye symbols festooned buildings and pathways, often drawn over with verses from scripture. Charlie hoped the conflict stayed on this side of violent.

  Whenever possible, she and Juliette would lunch at noon to avoid the rush in the cafeteria and for the tables beneath the Eucalyptus citriodora, which provided much-needed shade. Today the timing worked well because Gordon Reed had summoned her for a one o’clock meeting in his office. Three times that morning he’d confirmed their appointment with her, once by text message, once by phone and once by email. In response to the last, she’d emailed back with more chutzpah than she felt, ‘Yes, Gordon, I will be there. But could you try being a little less mysterious and tell me why exactly we’re meeting?’ There had been no reply to that, and she was tempted not to show up at all. But, of course, she must. This might be about a decision on her course being rested, or it could even be a response to her latest application for tenure. Further alienating Reed at this point would not be diplomatic.

  Juliette had commandeered their favourite spot, the periodic table. It was an old picnic table with attached benches, cemented into place, which students had long ago redecorated with tiles onto which they’d painted the various elements, colour-coded according to the metal/ metalloid/nonmetal categories. They’d left blank the gaps in chemical knowledge for others to fill in over time, and the two women had been enchanted to discover that it had recently been updated in neat permanent marker with the latest: nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og). Juliette was sitting in front of boron and carbon, and Charlie took the spot opposite, near Einsteinium and Fermium.

  ‘That looks good,’ she told Juliette, nodding at her food.

  ‘Leftovers from last night. Fettuccine alla norma. Don’t be impressed. It’s from the local takeaway.’

  ‘You could have pretended. I used to know a guy who would hold dinner parties entirely composed of stuff he got takeaway, and he’d let everyone think he cooked it. I saw the packaging in his recycling bin.’

  Juliette laughed. ‘Okay, tell me about last night. Not the for-public-consumption-in-the-tea-room expurgated version. I want all the dirty bits!’

  Charlie had been cross-examined over morning tea as word got about that she’d been at the Opera House concert. ‘It was pretty staggering. The woman next to me was writhing about in ecstasy. It’d have been hilarious if it wasn’t so embarrassing.’ She grinned. ‘Okay, it was hilarious.’

  ‘So it was both sexes?’

  ‘Oh yes. Pretty evenly spread, I’d say.’

  ‘And what proportion of people were affected, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe one in fifteen, one in twenty? I didn’t do a head count …’

  ‘Were you … preoccupied? Were you one of the one in twenty, perhaps?’

  Charlie shook her head. ‘No, not me, and not Richard. And not the soprano or the conductor, fortunately.’

  ‘Incredible. God, I wish we could get them all together for a study.’

  ‘I know. I would imagine we should be careful about extrapolating from that to the general population. An orchestral audience is a self-selecting sample, and it’s possible that they’d have a pre-existing increased neurological disposition to musical appreciation, and that combined with this specific form of synaesthesia might make this quite rare beyond that group.’

  Juliette was laughing.

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie.

 
‘You are so … sérieuse! “Appreciation”? There’s a novel term for toe-curling passion. Did the Earth move for you, chérie? Oh yes, I appreciated. Twice.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly giving us a bit of a dilemma. Till last night, I assumed that most people would want to be vaccinated or cured. But now?’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘I was thinking about the shivers – you know, the goose bumps that some people get from listening to certain pieces of music. Well, most people, something like sixty per cent, as I recall. I wonder if there is a crossover here, if this is related.’

  ‘Sounds plausible. We’re talking about a neurological process, after all.’

  She delved into her pasta, and Charlie looked up to see another arrival at the periodic table.

  ‘Shadrack! Hi, take a seat.’ She hadn’t seen him since Richard’s meltdown in his lab, and he looked grim. How was it that even looking grim he looked attractive?

  ‘Thanks. They said upstairs I might find you here. Hi, Juliette.’

  Juliette nodded hello over a forkful of fettuccine and Shadrack sat down at plutonium.

  ‘So, I’ve brought you the pre-print of some research from Tony Dempsey’s lab in Dublin. It’s pretty amazing stuff.’ He unfurled a cylinder of papers and ironed them out with his hand in front of Charlie. She leant forwards to read.

  ‘Short version?’ asked Juliette.

  ‘They’ve been doing work on babies born to women who’ve been infected.’

  ‘Deformities, right?’

  ‘These are not women who’ve become infected while they’re pregnant – that’s where the birth defects happen. These are women who were previously infected. The babies aren’t themselves infected in utero and they’re not infected now. We’re not talking miscarriages or stillbirths or deformities.’