Free Dark Matter by Brett Adams

Australian . Rasputin leaned over him, but
before he could ask for a paper, Jordy waved her on.
    “You’re on a reading plan,” he said, and
from his bag produced an encyclopaedia.
    “What are you, my agent?”
    He smiled evilly. “Agent, coach, scrutator,
whatever. Just read.”
    Rasputin grimaced. Jordy leaned over, and
said, “You do realise this could be your ticket to the big city. Why stop with
the bills. Temptation is just a beginning.” He winked. “The road goes ever on.”
    At his words, an image flashed through
Rasputin’s mind of Bilbo Baggins setting forth under a star-scintillated sky.
    “But why an encyclopaedia? Why can’t I read
that?” He indicated the paper covering Jordy’s lap. “It’s current. They ask
current.”
    “It’s rubbish.”
    “So why are you reading it?”
    “Good IT section. Plus, if I get cold,
broadsheets make passable rugs.”
    The plane took to the sky with a roar of
defiance. Rasputin felt pressed into his seat, and couldn't help smiling. Disneyland
had been right after all.
    Jordy clasped headphones over his ears.
    Over the thrum of the plane’s labouring
engines, Rasputin said, “You look like Stevie Wonder.”
    Jordy lifted an ear-cup and said, “What?
These are noise cancelling.”
    “I said, you look like Stevie Wonder, when
he was hip.”
    Jordy put the paper down, leaned back into
the chair, closed his eyes and said, “And I’m going to sleep like I got hit by
a Valiant.”
    “Except you’re not black,” Rasputin went
on.
    Jordy’s breathing slowed.
    “And you can’t sing.”
    Jordy’s mouth fell open. Rasputin couldn’t
believe it. Asleep in under two minutes. A new record.
    He turned his attention to the
encyclopaedia lying in his lap. It was a Funk and Wagnall’s circa the 70s. They
were a dollar a pop in charity shops. He turned back the cover and began to
read.
    “Did you know the Aardvark—” he shouted,
and then remembered Jordy was asleep.
     
    The plane dropped toward Tullamarine
airport in the pre-dawn gloom. Rasputin’s face was plastered to the window. His
hands gripped his chair. He had watched since the hum of the engines had
changed pitch, and his ears had popped. The runway appeared below, stretched
out to receive the plane, and then raced like a river in tumult, daring it to
find safe purchase.
    At the baggage carousel Rasputin and Jordy
joined the throng waiting for it to come to life. Most waited silently, pensive
or half-awake. The smell of percolating coffee drifted from a niche café squatting
at the end of a row of hire car counters. It lured a few stragglers. The snap
of its cash register was jarring in the quiet.
    The carousel lurched to life. Miraculously
their bags emerged first. Jordy hauled them into the brisk air outside, and
they caught the first taxi in the rank.
    As they crossed the Bolte Bridge at ten
clicks above the limit, Rasputin got his first view of Melbourne city. The CBD
was a mass of spires anchored in darkness and twinkling with multi-hued light.
The first rays of sunlight were glancing off the eastward facets making the
city a cluster of crystal. Rasputin cupped the city in his hand and, for a
moment, possessed it.
    Their hotel was a grey block tucked away in
a sun-starved lane in the CBD. Jordy slumped onto one of the single beds.
Rasputin used the toilet.
    “Barely enough room to swing a cat in
here,” he said, pivoting on the spot to avoid sitting in the sink. His cane
rapped the porcelain, evoking a dull clang.
    “Always room to swing a cat,” Jordy replied
sourly, and was soon asleep again.
    Rasputin moved about the room, picking over
its contents. It gave an initial sense of warmth, but he soon penetrated the
illusion. The room was dead like the needle-strewn carpet of a pine forest. In a
drawer by the bed he found a Gideon’s bible, and leafed through a few pages
before returning it. On a mantel above a row of coat hooks sat a small, die-cast
sailing ship, proxy for ornaments on warm