Kelly?

Yes, Myra, it was... I'm sorry, but it didn't seem to matter any more. Or I didn't care.

She was shaken, crying inside.

Kelly, I couldn't... I couldn't face it again...

After a while Greg stirred and reached for me again, but I held him off.

"Greg, not again, surely!"

He grinned in the dark.

"Well, not right now, anyway. I've got a question for you."

"Let me guess. You're going to ask who Myra is, right?" I searched his face as he nodded, wondering if I really could make him understand.

"Greg, Myra is my sister, my twin sister."

He looked at me, silent.

"Then where is she?" he finally asked, a little puzzled.

"I'm here, Greg." she said very quietly, in her own voice.

"If you could see me in the light my face and eyes would look different, and you would know for sure that Kelly told the truth. We don't tell anybody about it as a rule. Tanu found out for herself, and we had to tell the Inspector to stop him locking us up."

For a long time he just looked at her, his face expressionless. Myra reached out and touched his face.

"If you think about tonight you'll remember each of us singing separately."

"I find that very hard to believe, Kelly."

"Myra. I'm Myra. Tanu can tell instantly now."

"Well, Myra... or Kelly, whoever you are, I kind of like the way you're put together..." He said with unconscious irony, and he reached out to run his finger down her face.

Kelly, swap!

Nope, sister. If I can take it, so can you. Besides, you were doing pretty well back there...

Very soon she was too busy to argue, and the inevitable happened. Myra fought herself all the way but Greg had no such limitations. It was peculiar being present at someone else's lovemaking, but I was determined that Myra should have to meet her psychosis face to face, to overcome it and be a whole person again. I mean, how could I ever enjoy sex if I had a lips-pursing Ma Grundy inside my head all the time protesting shrilly...

It was afterwards when Myra was half asleep, her body still warmly entwined that I had a twinge of jealousy and I demanded and got a swap. There's never too much of a good thing, no matter what you hear!

I must have been asleep when they entered. Usually Myra would prod me awake if anything unusual occurred, but this time she too was out to it.

It was the scratching noise that woke me, and I stirred sleepily and raised my head to look around the darkened room. I was just in time to see a dark form appear in the doorway and to recognise it as a man and the thing in his hand is a gun oh hell Dowd was right after all Greg! A great rolling leap out of the bed as the orange flashes began to light up the room and in slow motion I saw Greg jerk and then Myra was tearing through and we reached out with a terrible anger...

Then the man was screaming a thin sound as he was enveloped in blue flames eating searing his clothes bursting into contrasting yellow fire and he was dropping the gun to claw at them but it was too late he was dead and I began to cross the room but the second gunman loomed in the doorway and something picked me up and hurled me against the wall before the blue fire reached him too.

Foolishly I looked down at my side where there was a great weight pinning me to the ground and my fingers leaked dark blood. There was no pain yet. I crawled over to the door holding one hand to the wound but the room was moving and I steadied it against the door then the pain did hit talons clawing deep into my vitals Myra take over and the room dissolved as I glimpsed another figure burst in through the door...

So now we come to the end of my story. The nurses and the doctors here have been very good to me and very discreet, leaving me alone to talk into a recorder for hours at a time, disturbing me only when absolutely necessary.

Why am I bothering? I don't really know, but it helps ease the desperation gnawing at me and gives me something to do while I wait. I've already told the nurse to give the tapes to Dowd, at least he'll understand what it's all about...

Of course I'm a mass of plumbing now, with plastic tubes in my arms leading to big bottles slung from shiny metal racks that look for all the world like hat racks.

I get lots of visitors when the hospital thinks I'm able to take them, which isn't often now, for it's nearly two weeks since that last night in the motel when my world was destroyed, and they tell me that the operation will be in the morning.

Once I had a whole courtroom here.

With one witness dead and the second nearly so they had to have those hearings about 'Twister' and the drugs as soon as possible, never mind their holiday schedule. The judge was a portly man with a shiny face and a habit of going 'hrrmp' before he spoke. With him were several court officers and a woman stenographer who wrote furiously as well as operating a small cassette recorder.

I recognised two Queensland Police uniforms and of course there were several local officers. Everybody looked so serious, as if what they were doing was the most important thing in the world. They all arranged themselves awkwardly around me and in very official tones the judge declared that for the purposes of the inquiry this was now a courtroom with all the usual requirements for respect and order.

All because of a wee girl in a hospital bed.

I played their game and answered their questions, describing once again the kidnap, rape and subsequent deaths, this time censoring the story and telling them it was I who overheard the names of the Australian operators. I didn't think it was wise to mention Myra or the killing of Manuel.

In my new, squeaky-clean version the baddies all killed each other and Tanu freed me.

Dowd said nothing, just looked at me through half-open eyes as I made my statements in a clear if weak voice.

Afterwards they thanked me and all filed out, leaving me with the Inspector. He said nothing, then suddenly bent and kissed me on the cheek. I could see tears in his eyes before he stood up again and walked stiffly out of the room.

There were lots of other visitors. My whole family flew down from Bougainville to see me. I think Father must have insisted and told them exactly how serious it all was, for Marjorie was red-eyed and even Michael was very subdued. That particular visit was very short, for there's not much you can say in a situation like that.

Harry came to see me before he flew back to Melbourne, his roly-poly figure nearly blocking the door.

"Kelly, what have you done to yourself? When are you getting out of this place?" He looked around in disgust.

"When you're out of here you must come over and see us to recover. Jean insists on it!"

"Thanks, Harry. I'll certainly think about it." All pretence. He knows perfectly well I won't get out of this building again, but it gives me a good feeling to know he cares too.

Lots of people care. There's always great masses of flowers around the bed, some of them produced by hulking great embarrassed policemen.

"Uhh... thought you'd need some fresh ones, Kelly."

"Great singing the other night, Kelly."

Or the deputation from the Airforce. I swear they were hardly much older than I was, young fresh-faced men with a professional slouch. They introduced themselves rather diffidently.

"We wanted to meet the girl who sailed the catamaran, so we badgered our commanding officer until he let us come." Their spokesman grinned. "Really we wanted to book you for our next Christmas party. We can't let these police yokels grab you twice in a row!"

"It was Tanu who did most of the sailing." I told them, tears in my eyes. "She's dead now..."

Yet another visitor was Angus Urquart and his wife. They said very little, but of all these people it was they who made me feel I would be remembered.

It was Dowd who told me what the doctors planned to do.

"Kelly, they think they can operate and remove the bullet, and it's to be tomorrow."

I smiled at him and read the truth in the anguish on his face. He's not a bad old stick when you get to know him, and he's been moving the universe to try and save my life. This was a last ditch stand, they have to operate before the paralysis reaches too high.

What a decision to have to make, leave the bullet and let it slowly throttle the life from me, or try to operate beforehand with the almost certain prospect of failure and immediate loss of the patient.

It's not easy to remove a bullet from the spine.

I'm ready for death now. I've faced it and done my crying and it's strange but I'm almost looking forward to it, as a new experience, I mean.

Tanu's dead. What a terrible irony, that just when she found a way out of her own background to a new, bright future, that her own life should be extinguished. She was the first to die, before the bullets were pumped at Greg and me and ignited that terrible final anger.

Greg too. He died within the hour, no more to play that glorious music or to make love to pub girls who whimper and cry all the time. Dowd said he was trying to talk just before he died, and it was my name on his lips. Of course they couldn't do anything about it, I was still unconscious on the operating table in the next theatre.

Dowd described too the scene in the motel room when he and his men burst in.

"Kelly, it was a shambles. I stumbled over the body of one man in the doorway, and all around him it was charred, scorched, still smouldering in places."

"You were slumped in the doorway to the bedroom, naked and holding your hands over that terrible wound. You nearly killed me, even then. There was a great flash... of something... and plaster flew from the ceiling just above my head. I had to yell my name at you several times, and then you passed out."

"That was Myra, Inspector. She got real mad and maybe a little crazy with the pain. I was too busy just staying alive."

He at last explained why he had known we were in danger right from the beginning.

"It was the man on the yacht you knew as Gerry. When we got an identification back on him from Brisbane we learned that he was the son of a man known to be deeply involved in drugs, a man who holds political office over there.

"That's why I never seriously doubted your story, unlikely as it was, and why I thought you should be protected, for this man would almost certainly try to avenge his son. When Constable Brennan was so foolish as to return to the same motel twice we quietly covered the area. Frankly, we were running out of time and we used you for bait. That's why we came so quickly when it all began..." His voice was shaking and he looked at me with an appeal in his eyes.

Inspector Dowd was regretting his actions.

There's still a worm of doubt in my mind about it all, though. It was Myra who asked why these killers had waited so long. After all, we'd already been in and around Auckland for some time, plus a whole week away out on a virtually deserted island, a perfect setup for assassination, in spite of Greg's pretence that it was secure. However, the one alternative explanation seems even more unlikely...

Myra's gone now. We discussed it for a long time, and she finally had her way, saying it might work, and that if it didn't she was no worse off than she was now.

I don't know about that. She went into... the moon-pool, as we came to call the porpoise artefact. It's a vast reservoir of knowledge, an encyclopaedia that crosses cultures, maybe bridges the stars themselves. It provides answers if you have the strength to resist its siren call, for to approach it is to stand on the edge of eternity and feel the winds of a million strange worlds grabbing at your legs, exposing yourself to the almost irresistible temptation to throw away everything and merge your very being.

That's how it works. That's how the knowledge is acquired, and why it's so dangerous.

And my twin sister Myra thought she could withstand something like that...? Anyway, she's gone, and I no longer have the strength left to search for her. It drained me enough to work with her and set things up so that she had the greatest chance of doing something, perhaps even succeeding before it was too late.

We learned how to invert the time stretching effect so that instead of things racing along here they'll expand there. How? Simple, enter the artefact from the other side. It's a connection to space along a thread of time, and reversing your direction changes the time element. That's what Myra did.

I don't think she'll be back.

Vicki has been in to see me. She cries a lot, that girl, but she's made of the right stuff.

"Kelly, I don't want you to die!" she sobbed one day when we were alone.

"Ahh... it happens to all of us sooner or later, Vicki. If it happens, it happens."

She looked down at me through the tears.

"Do you believe in God? Do you believe you just... stop, or is there something more...?"

"Ask me that afterwards. No Vicki, I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that. I guess people like to be comforted by the idea of some great benevolent being who can solve all their problems for them, and maybe they're right, but for me reality is much harsher than that. We used to have a saying. Tanstaafl."

"'Tanstaafl'? What does that mean?"

"It's very simple,' 'There-aint-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch'. And there never is, Vicki, you pay for everything in life, one way or another."

She looked at me steadily.

"Kelly, there's something I wanted to ask you... the Inspector said you killed those men at the motel, but I heard that they were burnt, that the motel room was nearly destroyed by fire. How did you do that?"

She looked at me with such childlike faith that I couldn't avoid an answer, not this time.

"Vicki, there's a lot of things you don't know about me, and a lot you should never ask about. That was my twin who did that, or most of it. I was too busy trying to stay alive."

"Your twin...?"

"Yes. Ask Dowd, he's met her. Vicki, will you do something for me, something very important to me?"

She smiled and nodded, reaching out to touch my hand.

"Of course."

"Then come closer. Remember how I taught you French?"

She nodded.

"Well, I'm going to do something like that again now. Watch my finger..." In a very short time she was under and I planted a piece of the 'moon pool' in her mind.

How did I do that? What does the colour red taste like, have you heard the smell of African Violets...?

I did it for Myra. In case she came back and I was gone, I mean. At least then she would have a human host to come back to, for all the contributing species are accessible where she went, and I didn't want her spending the rest of her days with the orcas, or lost on some alien planet somewhere.

"Vicki, wake up." I snapped my fingers and she started, and it was then I saw Dowd watching quietly from the end of the bed.

"Inspector!" I must have looked a bit guilty, for he just signed with his hand and said to carry on.

"Vicki, wait for Myra, whatever else you do, please wait for Myra. Promise?"

She looked totally confused, but nodded hesitantly, then left us.

"What did you do, Kelly?" he asked quietly when she had gone and he stood by my bed. I explained.

"Myra's gone, Inspector. She's trying to save us in her own way, but I don't think there's time. I took... I put a place in Vicki for Myra. Was that wrong?"

He looked at me for a long time before speaking.

"Kelly, you continue to amaze me. No, I can't tell you if it was right or wrong, but I think I'd better keep a close eye on that young lady from now on.

"I came to tell you it's time for the operation."

"But... but I thought it was to be tomorrow!"

"They decided to do it today instead. In a few minutes they'll come in and prepare you, and I'm going to be in there beside you, all the time."

We looked steadily at each other.

"It's better this way, Kelly. I can call your family if you wish, but I thought..."

I reached out and touched his hand.

"No, Inspector, you're right. I'm pleased you'll be there."

Then the hospital staff came in and there was a confusion of activity. While I let them do their work I thought about how beautiful it had been on Bougainville, and how lucky I was to have seen Tanu's shining sea, remembering the irresistible charm of my two porpoise friends who had given me so much and the unwavering friendship of a smiling brown-faced girl who stood tall and proud at the wheel of her ship.

I thought of all the new friends we'd made together, Tanu, Myra and I. It was indeed a great adventure.

Again I remembered Greg, and how he had held me so gently that last night, stroking the fear out of me and teaching that love can be beautiful too if you have trust...

They're here for me now, I have to turn the recorder off now and face the music, I guess. I just wish Myra was here...

Appended note by R.E. Dowd, Detective-Inspector of the Auckland Metropolitan Police.

Kelly Weber died on the operating table two hours later. I wasn't there after all, I couldn't stand seeing them operate on her as if she was... a piece of meat, nothing more. When the registrar came I knew immediately from the grim and angry look on his face that they'd failed.

Who and what was she? I wish I could answer that. All I can be certain of is the sense of guilt I will take with me to my own grave. Dalkeith must have seen it in my face when he caught me leaving the hospital and later, when we stood beside the grave he himself had arranged he asked me again if I still felt that way.

He said that life was irresistible, unstoppable, that it went on whether people cared or not. It must be the psychiatrist in him, I suppose, always trying to pry into the dark corners of peoples' minds.

I told him to go to hell.