Brace yourselves - Thatcher does not appear in this story. That's right, I have written a story that doesn't have Meg in it! ...have you all recovered from the shock yet? I went bushwalking with friends yesterday and started thinking about how Ben and Ray would cope here. This is the result.
A few comments... This story is set in Brisbane Forest Park and the details are, to the best of my knowledge, accurate. There really is an old gold mine there. However, in this story, Kira can't light a fire. In real life, she was actually a Ranger in the Girl Guides, and claims to be able to light a fire with two sticks. Also, no Australian would light a fire in a protected park, particularly not in summer. (we hope!)
All standard disclaimers etc stand. Kira, Serina and I are all our own people; however, if Alliance ever wants to write me into a DS ep, I'm not going to be quibbling about copyright!
Nik
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"So... just where are we?"
"Have you got the map?"
"Yeah."
"We're on there."
Kira stared at Nik, debating whether or not to just hit her. "I was hoping for something a little more specific than that."
Serina came up from the rear, careful not to take the lead in case they ran into any spider webs. "Oh, relax. After the time it took just to get out of the car park of that visitors' centre, getting lost in the bush is nothing.
"Yeah. 28 500 hectares of bush and it took us 10 minutes to find any of it... Ewww!" Nik swatted at another web. "But at least Kira was right about the low fire hazard today."
Serina looked at the other two through hair plastered to her forehead with rain. "Yeah. There is that."
They walked on in single file through the trees until Nik stopped, puzzled, and turned back to Kira and Serina.
"I could have sworn I just saw a Stetson."
Kira was instantly alert. "Where?"
"Jeez, you're such dags." Serina rolled her eyes. "Look, Nik, I'm sorry you've been dragged away from your Due South videos, but..."
"There!"
"Hey, I see it, too!"
"Guys, that's an Akubra..."
But they ignored her, and she was forced to run to keep up with them as they raced towards the object of their interest.
"Oh, my god, it is them! Say 'thank you kindly'! Say 'that's just silly, Ray'!"
"Say 'Frasier'! Say 'oh, no, not the window'!"
"Can we see your back-up gun? Where's the Riv?"
"Where's Dief?"
"Tell us an Inuit story!"
Ray Vecchio and Benton Fraser stood, shell-shocked, as two of the three Australians danced excitedly around them, showering them with questions. Eventually, they calmed down enough for Fraser, with single-minded determination, to get in a question of his own. "I'm sorry, we seem to be lost. Would you be able to help us find our way out of here?"
Serina, who had until then remained silent, stared at them in disbelief. "You're lost? Here?"
Defensively, Ray shot back, "Yeah. Is that a problem?"
"Well, for you, maybe."
"Ray..." Fraser gave his friend a reproachful look and turned back to the Australians. "It's just that we don't seem to have any idea where we are, or how far we are from possible help."
Now Nik was disbelieving. "You're kidding. We're only a couple of hundred..."
"...kilometres," Kira leapt in smoothly, "from the ranger's hut."
"Oh, dear." The Mountie looked stricken. "As far away as that? In which direction?"
"Oh..." Kira waved her hand around vaguely. "It varies."
Fraser blinked at her quizzically. "Really."
Nik, who was struggling with something, burst out, "Hang on, how did you get here? You must have seen roads, houses..."
Through clenched teeth, Kira hissed warningly, "Shut up, Nik!"
Looking around in confusion, Fraser didn't hear that last comment. "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure. We were just on our way to Australia for a law enforcement exchange, we had plane trouble and we were forced to bail out."
"So..." Nik was still having trouble with it. "You just happened to get stranded here."
"Yes," Fraser nodded, a little worried about her obtuseness.
"You have no idea where you are, or..."
"Will you gentlemen excuse us for a minute?" Kira gave them a brilliant smile, and dragged Nik off to one side. "What are you doing?" she hissed at her friend, furious.
"Kira, we're 20 minutes away from the central business district. How could they possibly have been dumped here and not know that, or that there are paved roads several hundred metres away, or that..."
Kira smiled, showing lots of teeth. "Nik. Try to grasp this, will you? Through some amazingly fortunate plot development, Fraser and Ray have been transported to the same bushland we're in, and they're completely at our mercy. Will you, as a special favour to me, not ruin this with your stupid logic kick?!"
"Oh. Good point."
"See?"
Serina had joined them, and at Nik's capitulation, rolled her eyes in disgust. "You guys are going to get struck down by lightning for the lies you're telling these poor men."
"We're not lying," Nik said craftily. "If you plan your route carefully, you could go for ages without hitting a road."
"Serene, please," Kira begged. "Think of this as an early Christmas present. Play along."
There was a long pause, while a pair of brown eyes and a pair of blue looked beseechingly at Serina. Finally she sighed, griping. "Jeez, the things I get into because of you two."
A short distance away, the two cops were watching the Australians with something approaching alarm.
"Hey, Benny."
"Yes, Ray?"
"You remember how we went to your father's cabin to rebuild it, but an escaped criminal killed the pilot and hijacked the plane and then bailed, and we crash-landed?"
"Yes, Ray."
"Remember how you hit your head and went kinda weird, that thing, what was it..."
"A subdural haematoma," Fraser supplied.
"What are the odds that these three all have subdural haematomas?"
Fraser looked pained. "They're not what I would precisely describe as 'weird'... well... perhaps it's just a regional idiosyncrasy?"
There was no time for Ray to answer. The Australians rejoined them, two of the three beaming brightly. Kira introduced them all, and smiled even wider. "There's only one thing for it. You'll have to join up with us. We should have you back to safety in a few days..."
"...maybe a week..." Nik amended.
"No more than a couple of weeks, that's for sure," Kira assured them.
Ben and Ray exchanged worried looks, and Ben ventured, "You know, that won't be necessary, thank you. If you could just point us in the right direction, we won't trouble you any further."
"Oh, it's no trouble!" Nik said with a brilliant smile. "You really had better stick with us, we know the land."
Ray shook his head at her patronising tone, telling them hotly, "I'll have you know he's a Canadian Mountie, trained in wilderness survival."
"Yeah," Serina returned dryly, "and I'm sure the Yukon bears remarkable similarities to the Queensland bush." She did a 'see?' look at her friends, who smiled back gratefully.
Reluctantly, Ben confessed to Ray, "They do have a point."
"What point? Wilderness is wilderness. I got us out when we crashed up north, didn't I, and I had no training in Canadian stuff."
Nik apparently conceded, nodding slowly. "Well, okay, if you think you can hack it, go for it. Just a word of advice - be careful near water. It's platypus territory, and the male platypus has a poisonous spine on his flipper."
"Oh, like they're going to be drinking the water?" scoffed Serina, who was never averse to terrorising tourists. "Blue-green algae poisoning, here they come."
"Anyway, there's too many mosquitoes around water," Kira pointed out, turning to the two men to explain, "Some mosquitoes carry dengue fever and Ross River fever; you can get seriously ill."
With faultless logic, Fraser asked, "Shouldn't you be near Ross River to get Ross River fever? I believe Ross River is several thousand kilometres north of here."
"Oh, like all of a sudden you know where you are now?" Nik challenged.
"You're all being worry-warts," Serina interjected, with the ostensible intention of calming things down. "No one's died of Ross River or dengue fever in ages."
"Yeah, she's right," Nik acknowledged, giving them all an appeasing smile. "Well, good luck! Just watch out for leeches, okay? In this weather, they'll be out in force."
"Leeches?" Ray, who had turned to leave, froze in horror.
"Yeah. Oh, don't worry about it, they're fine. You have salt with you, right?" Kira said as though the question were a mere formality.
"Oh, yeah, I carry it with me always," Ray sneered at them.
She shrugged, unconcerned. "Well, just pull them out, and stick a Band-Aid on afterwards. You'll bleed profusely for a little while, otherwise."
"And watch out for paralysis ticks," Nik advised. "Metho's good for them, but... Hmm. Just be careful pulling them out. If you break the head off in your skin, the poison stays."
"Oh, they're not the problem," Serina scoffed. "It's all those spiders."
"Ooh, yeah." Kira did a credible shudder. "Redbacks are okay, you generally won't die from them unless you're a little kid, but watch out for funnelwebs."
"Trap doors."
"Brown spiders can be pretty nasty."
"White-tails won't kill you, but they're really unpleasant. Some people's flesh never recovers from white-tail bites."
"Oh, and snakes!" Nik reminded them all. "Red-bellied black snakes..."
"Black snakes..."
"Brown snakes..."
"Yeah, a veritable rainbow," Ray muttered, turning to Fraser. "They're yanking our chain, right?"
"Well, actually, no, Ray, Australia is well-known for having a large number of venomous creatures..."
"...death adders..."
"..taipans..."
"Oh, good." Ray threw up his hands in disgust. "We're gonna die out here.
Great. Why don't we just wait for a dingo to come and maul us, it'll be a much less painful death."
"Oh, come on," Kira scoffed. "You won't get dingoes around here."
"No," Nik agreed, equally scathing. "It's the drop bears you have to worry about."
Serina turned away in disgust, muttering under her voice, "Oh, please..."
Kira took up the story with enthusiasm. "Yeah, drop bears. Nasty little creatures. They're vicious versions of koalas, they just drop out of the trees on to you, very savage."
Fraser raised his eyebrow and protested mildly, "I don't believe I've ever heard of those."
"Tourism board hushes it up." Nik nodded sagely. "After all, what is Australia known for? Cute koalas you can cuddle for photos. Do you have any idea what it would do to tourism if word got out that you could get killed by something you thought was a koala?"
Something crashed through the trees, and Kira gave a scream, throwing herself into Fraser's arms. Nik glowered at her, wishing she'd thought of it first, and Ben looked uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. "Well... it would seem that we require your assistance, after all."
"Good." Nik looked decisive. "We'll set up camp here."
"But it's still daylight..." There was no arguing with her. With some difficulty, Fraser extracted himself from Kira's iron embrace, and he and Ray sat on the ground in defeat. Kira grinned wickedly at them; she was enjoying herself. "Next time, check the ground for scorpions, centipedes and millipedes before you do that."
Ray glared at her and located a fallen tree to sit on instead.
"Check that for ants," Nik advised him as she looked around.
He scoffed. "Ants? I think I'll cope."
"Meat ants, bull ants, green ants, army ants, red ants, jumping ants..."
Ray looked over at Fraser as Nik continued through her list. "You know what, Benny? I hate this country already."
But Fraser had been studying them and was concerned about something else. "I don't mean to suggest that you're deceiving us in any way," he ventured, "perhaps it's more in the nature of being unintentionally misleading, but you don't seem to be equipped for a several-day-long hiking expedition."
"Hey, this is Australia, remember?" Kira responded glibly. "We know what we're doing."
"Nonetheless," he persisted, "the nature of Serina's attire - a long dress and deck shoes - suggests an easy stroll."
"Hey, for us, this is an easy stroll."
You're not carrying tents..."
"We like to rough it." Nik tried to look like a hardened outdoors type. "We're tough."
"...sleeping bags..."
"What are sleeping bags when you can make piles of gum leaves?" Kira asked brightly, and added, maliciously for Ray's benefit, "checking of course for various arachnids, ants and stink bugs."
"Stink bugs?!" the Chicago policeman repeated in alarm.
"Oh, don't worry, they're not poisonous," she reassured him. "But if you annoy them, they spray you with an awful-smelling chemical that won't wash off. Think skunks, only harder to see - and avoid."
"...and you seem to have made less than adequate provision for food." Fraser concluded his preliminary analysis of their situation.
"What, you never watched Bush Tucker Man?" Nik demanded, and threw out her arms in a grandiose gesture. "We can live like kings out here."
Ray groaned; his day was getting worse by the second. "Oh, no. No worms. I'm not eating any worms."
"Not worms," Kira told him sweetly. "Witchetty grubs. Among the Aboriginal tribes, they're a delicacy. You never saw Crocodile Dundee?"
"I saw an episode of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo once," he offered.
"Oh, that's good, too," she said, nodding. "Kangaroo meat is good for the heart, very low in fat."
Appalled, he stared at her. "You're going to eat Skippy?!"
Fraser interjected, sceptical, "Just how do you propose to go about catching a kangaroo?"
"With a boomerang, of course," Nik responded promptly.
"Oh, of course," Ray muttered.
"And you have one on you?"
"Oh, they're everywhere," Nik told the two men. "Look around you."
"All I see are sticks."
"Don't be so sarky," Serina chided Ray. Nik smiled beatifically.
"Well, you know what they say. The Aboriginal name for a boomerang that doesn't come back is 'stick'." She cracked up laughing at her own joke, wiping away tears.
The other four just stared at her in disbelief, and eventually Kira pointed out, as tactfully as possible, "Nik, you know, that joke doesn't improve the more you tell it."
She glared at her, sulking. "Go get some firewood."
"And what are you going to do?"
"I want to find this gold mine."
"There's a gold mine?" Ray asked in interest. Kira and Serina pulled him away to collect wood.
"No, it's an abandoned one. Every time we come here, she wants to see it. Never go anywhere with a minerals process engineer."
"With a what?"
Kira opened her mouth to explain, but changed her mind. "A metallurgist."
"Oh." Ray thought about it. "So she can tell us what the weather is going to be like?"
Suddenly, they heard a muted roaring. Fraser pricked up his ears, listening intently, and turned to the Australians. "That sounded like a car."
"Nope." Nik looked up from where she was studying rocks, and said emphatically, "Drop bear."
"It sounded very much like a car to me," Ben insisted, and Ray agreed, thoughtfully.
"Nik's right. Drop bear," Kira insisted. "Or maybe a bunyip. There's a billabong near here, after all."
"It's called a dam, you guys," Serina muttered, sotto voce. "As in, man-made?"
Kira shushed her, piling up sticks in the centre of their chosen clearing. Fraser moved to help, but she waved him away loftily. "There are things you just don't understand about building fires in the Australian bush."
"Really?" he asked in genuine interest. "Such as?"
"It would take far too long to explain." She left the two men with Serina and approached Nik, who was squatted on the ground scratching at rocks with her pocket knife.
"Hey, Nik?"
"Hmm? - you know, I don't understand it. This is entirely the wrong kind of rock for gold deposits."
"Do I care? Nik, I need help with the fire."
"Use matches."
"That much," Kira said dryly, "I had figured out for myself."
"Maybe it was hydrological deposition... do you think it's a placer deposit?"
Kira considered her options for reply, and went with the one that worked last time. "Yes."
Nik looked up at her for a moment, eyes narrowing in thought. "Interesting."
"Nik - the fire?"
"Good aeration," she told her. "You want a porous structure."
"Oh, thank you," Kira said with sweet sarcasm and returned to the others, not any more enlightened than before.
"I'm intrigued," Ben began. "Is it the difference in wood type that changes the nature of the burning process?"
Kira glanced back at Nik, then Fraser, noting certain parallels, and smiled broadly. "Yes."
"Ah. I see."
"I don't," Serina hissed at her friend, echoed loudly by Ray. And a few minutes later, "It's not lighting, Kira."
"Thanks for pointing that out." She went over to Nik again, who now had a pile of special rocks that were, to Kira, completely indistinguishable from the rest of the ground.
"Nik..."
"Hmm?"
"Supposing I wanted to make a really great, blazing fire? How would I do that?"
Nik sniffed at one of the rocks, replying absently, "Petrol's good."
"Oh. Okay." She left.
Ben and Ray were staring at the engineer, Ben in professional interest and Ray in vague horror. "Just what is she doing?"
"Sniffing rocks, obviously." Serina rolled her eyes. "She does it a fair bit."
"Oh, god..." Ray blanched. "She doesn't... she doesn't taste them, does she?"
"Only once that I know of," Serina reassured him.
"That was halite," Nik called out defensively, "and for halite, that's a legitimate identification technique..."
Suddenly, there was a loud WOOF! that caught their attention. They leapt back, startled, as the fire roared into life. Kira stood beside it with an empty container in her hand and a broad, satisfied grin on her face.
"Just what did you do?" Nik demanded hoarsely.
"I chucked petrol on it, like you said."
"Like I said? I never told you to put petrol on a fire!"
"No," Kira corrected her meticulously. "You distinctly told me that if I wanted to make a really great, blazing fire, I should use petrol."
"I thought it was a hypothetical question!"
Under cover of the ensuing rant, Ray asked Fraser, "What's petrol?"
"An Australian term for gasoline, I believe..." He broke off thoughtfully. "That's a good point, Ray. Uh... Kira? Where did you get the petrol from?"
Distracted, trying to concentrate on the argument with Nik, Kira waved him quiet. "I got it from the car."
"The car," Ray repeated levelly.
"Oh." Nik and Kira froze as they realised what had been said.
"So. All this time, you had a car. Near by."
"Um..." They exchanged guilty looks. "Yeah."
"So why didn't we just drive out?"
"Because Kira used the petrol to light the fire," Nik tried lamely, and Kira shook her head.
"No, the tank was full, remember? We topped it up at the petrol station down the road..." she trailed off under the force of Ray's glare.
The two policemen stood watching the Australians thoughtfully. Eventually, Fraser said, "You know, Ray, my father had a lot to say on the subject of running away."
"I knew it. Your father."
"He said that you can run away, and always feel ashamed, or you can face your problems, and everyone will know you're a man without you telling them."
"Thank your father for me one day, will you? His words always inspire me."
"However..." Fraser paused to look around the bush, and then at the Australians again. "I don't believe he ever came across anyone quite like these three."
"So you're saying..."
"Run, Ray."
They bolted.
Kira stared after them, disappointed. "They're leaving."
"Maybe we should go after them," Nik suggested half-heartedly.
"What, in these shoes?" Serina protested. "Time for a reality check, Nik."
"Oh." Nik deflated slightly. The two men were still visible in the distance. "Where's your camera, Kira?"
"You used up the last of the film on that thing that bit you."
"Oh. Oh, well."
They watched in glum silence as Ben and Ray finally disappeared into the bush. Kira heaved a long, heartbroken sigh, and turned to her friends. "Want to catch a movie?"
Nicola Heiser
Nicola Heiser died on 24th October 1997, and is greatly missed by her friends and fans of her writing.