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."This is just like the Murray Valley at home," said Darleen."Too right," agreed Shiri."But we can't stay here," said Grimes."Why not?" asked the two girls simultaneously."We have to get back to Port Aphrodite," he said."Why?" they countered.Fenella Pruin's voice came from inside the camperfly."Where is everybody?Grimes, where are you?""Here!" he called.With some reluctance the two New Alicians helped her up to the side of the camperfly.Steadying herself with one hand on the up-pointing wing shelooked around."All very pretty," she said at last, "but where are we?""Home," said Darleen."Home," said Shiri."We will settle here-Darleen, John Grimes and myself.We will start a tribe.""You can stay if you like," said Darleen generously.Fenella laughed."I'm a big city girl," she said."And, in any case, you'llhave to ask the owners' permission before you set up house.""The owners?" asked Grimes."Yes." She pointed."The owners."They were coming down from between the trees and bushes, making theirway to the beach.They were.human? Or humanoid.Their arms were too short, their haunches too heavy.The women werealmost breastless.Their skins were a dark, rich brown.Some of themcarried long spears, some cruciform boomerangs, some heavy clubs.They stared at the stranded camperfly, at Grimes and the three women."Good morning!" Grimes shouted."Gidday!" came an answering shout."Where are we?" he called."Kangaroo Valley!" came the reply.Twenty-fourIt had been a long day.Grimes had supervised the stripping and dismantling of the camperfly, itsbreaking up into pieces that could be carried into the bush and hidden.Matilda's Children-as this tribe called itself-possessed some metal tools,saws, hammers and axes, and the construction of the aircraft was mainly ofplastic.Nonetheless it had not been easy work.And now it was late evening.A fire was burning in the centre of the clearing, now little more thanglowing coals.Over it, on a crude spit, the carcass of some animal, possiblya small deer, was roasting.The hot coals flared fitfully as melted fat andother juices fell on them.(Grimes remembered, all too vividly, some of thethings that he had witnessed during his incarceration in the Snuff Palace.He did not think that he would want any meat when the meal was ready.)There were crude earthenware mugs of some brew that could almost havepassed for beer.Grimes had no qualms regarding this. "You're as safe here, cobber," said the grizzled Mal, who appeared to be thetribe's leader, "as anywhere else on this world.They don't bother us.Theyleave us be.An' we could use a bastard like you, with a bit o' mechanicalknowhow.An' Shirl an' Darleen'll be good breedin' stock.They're young."He looked over the rim of his mug at Fenella."About you, lady, I ain't socertain."She laughed shortly."And I ain't so certain about you, Mal.But could I haveyour story again? Everybody was so busy during the day that they couldn'tfind time to talk to me.""We're Matilda's Children," Mal told her."We come from New Alice.We werebrought here by a man called Drongo Kane who said that he was one of us,although he came from another planet.He promised us loads of lolly if we'dwork on this world.An' there was loads of lolly, at first.An' then we, thefirst ones of us, started gettin' old.The fat, rich bitches from all over, an'their husbands, wanted younger meat.Nobody wanted us anymore.Not foranything.An' we had no skills apart from rogering.An' there was no way,no way at all, of gettin' back to where we belong."We were just turned loose."We found this valley.Over the years others of our people have joined us,some of them too old to work among the red lights any more, some of themescaped from places like the Colosseum.We get by.""And why do you call this place Kangaroo Valley?" asked Fenella,"It's a tradition, sort of.Whenever our people have lived together in astrange city, on a strange world, it's called Kangaroo Valley.And there was a Kangaroo Valley in London, on Old Earth, thought Grimes.In a place called Earls Court.His father had told him about it when he wasdoing research on a historical novel the period of which was the TwentiethCentury, Old Style.But the people living there had not been descendedfrom kangaroos."But why Kangaroo Valley?" persisted Fenella."What is a kangaroo?""An animal from our Dream Time," said Mal."An animal that lived inAustralia, on Earth, where our forefathers came from.On New Alice thekangaroo hunt is one of our traditional dances.It is performed here, formoney, on New Venusberg.""I've seen it," said Fenella."I've been it," said Shirl.A humpy, a rough shelter of leaves and branches, had been allocated toGrimes and Fenella as their sleeping quarters.They retired to this after thefeast.Grimes, unable to face the barbecued meat, had dined on ratherflavourless but filling roots that had been roasted in the ashes.Fenella, inmany ways tougher than he, had enjoyed the venison.Settee cushions, salvaged from the camperfly, were their beds.Theystretched out on these, each with a cigar from the aircraft's now much-depleted stock."Poor bastards," whispered Fenella."Poor bastards, thinking themselveshuman when they're so obviously not.That reversion to their ancestralcharacteristics with age.In only a few years' time your precious Shirland Darleen will look just like the older women.All that they lack is tails.""They're still victims of a white slave trade," said Grimes."Yes.But legally only animals.How do you think they started?""It must have been very similar to what happened on Morrowvia.One of theold guassjammers, driven off course by a magnetic storm, lost in Space andmaking a landing on the first world capable of supporting our kind of life.Probably a crash landing, with very few survivors, among them a geneticengineer.Fertilised kangaroo ova-but the Odd Gods of the Galaxy aloneknow why!-in the ship's plasma bank.""Mankind," she said, "has made a habit of spreading its own favouriteanimals throughout the galaxy.""True
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Tematy
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