Earth Bound
A Novel by Clif Sanderson

'Earth Bound has the spiritual qualities of the best seller Celestine Prophecy ...but with Australian wit, irony and landscape...' 'This is not a novel but a guide book to the mind..' You can order on-line here

Introduction      Chapter -1-      Chapter -2-

'Digger! For God's sake man you're calling at five in the morning. I thought I'd made myself clear after last time. If you want to risk your life again count me out. I enjoy living! Besides I'm due in the theatre at eight. This time I'm definitely a sleeper.'
Daisy moved a little in the bed, showing no signs of waking. Placid, settled into mid-life. Twenty years of marriage to a doctor giving her immunity to urgent demands at odd hours of the night.

I put the phone down and sat on the edge of the bed looking at it. But seeing Digger.

The house was quiet; the elderly watchdog snoring blissfully in the lounge.

'Well,' I thought, 'What's the harm? I'm awake anyway. It would be easy enough to slip out quietly; have a chat to Digger; be at the hospital by seven-thirty.'

Feeling the guilt of a priest indulging a dangerous passion for pornography I gave in to the craving for excitement.

Shortly after six I was sitting in Digger's office.

'Nothing happens at random. That means it never did, it never does and it never will.'

My eyes were on a level with the soft brown leather of Digger's high heeled R.M.Williams cowboy boots.

I leaned back in his padded armchair and allowed my glance to travel up the creamy white crumpled moleskin trousers, past the country and western plaid of his unpressed shirt to the sharp triangle his arms described in support of the point he was making about pyramids.

He had jumped onto the top of his desk in an exuberant mood to demonstrate his point, looking down at me to make sure I caught his drift. I watched his animated face light up with the drama of the idea he needed me to understand in that moment. You would never guess he'd been awake all night.

'Don't you get it? There's some reason why so many different cultures built pyramids to house the dead. You think that's coincidence?'

'Which means... what?' I asked behind a deep and satisfying yawn.

It was now, according to the old railway clock on the wall of his office, approaching 7am. I had hoped my expedition would produce more than pyramids and un-random theories.

Sometimes life holds disappointment for excitement seekers.

I began to stand. Leaving on my mind.

'Thanks Digger, call me if you need a tablet or two for your insomnia, OK?'

Ahead of me I had a long patient list to attend to and they demanded an alert surgeon not a dopey doctor.

Even so, I hesitated.

I hadn't seen Digger for months and had no idea what he was working on. But I knew him well enough to know he never just milled the air.

As usual he picked up on me, 'Sorry I got you up early, mate, but give me a minute and you'll see this is urgent and dangerous too.'

'It's OK, I guess,' hedging, manoeuvring my reluctance, 'But I'd have to be brain dead to get involved with any more of your schemes after the 'Plateau Affair.' It was my fiftieth yesterday, you could at least have called to wish me something positive instead of gloomy and depressing.'

'Happy birthday! Dangerous, is what I said.'

'What's new? Have you finished waving your arms around up there?'

'Yeah. None of them were built with capstones either, so none of them are true pyramids! Isn't that interesting?'

He leapt from the desk in one bound to land lightly on the creaky board floor. It shook like an L.A. tremor, dislodging his didgeridoo from the top of his desk. The heavy wooden thing slammed to the dusty carpet amidst a butterfly scattering of papers and electronic bits and pieces.

Digger stared at it as though seeing the Maharajah's jewels for the first time, inspecting each section of the myriad animal drawings — some so worn by the caress of playing as to be indistinguishable from the deep red ochre background — searching for any possible damage. Little chance of damaging five foot of heavy wood, I thought.

'Oh.' He didn't take his eyes from it but moved in slow motion; crouching down with straight back as though about to lift the Olympic welterweight snatch and with practiced reverence took it in both hands to place it slowly against the wall.

The thought crossed my mind that it was only a branch of an iron bark tree hollowed out by some long dead white ants and painted by some unknown Koori. His eyes caught mine to warn me of the lecture that would follow if I so much as shook my head. For him this was no mere musical instrument. This was nothing less than a primal harmonic generator.

'Doesn't appear to be damaged?' I chided him a little.

He sat back in his chair with his elbows resting on the wooden arms and there was that pyramid again as the tips of his fingers slowly came together supporting the end of his long nose. No words ventured through the tunnel formed and he appeared to be either stalling for time or deciding how to break it to me. Sitting there looking for all the world like some Bank Managers we've known who relish delivering the coupe de grace on your overdraft.

'And.....?' I encouraged.

We both had thoughts to work on now — his inscrutable; mine, mundane — I think he's going to suggest a doughnut breakfast shortly.

'How about breakfast,' he smiled.

I walked out the door ahead of him and strolled off down the long corridor expecting him to follow but the rattle of his keys brought my attention back. This sound did not fit Digger's usual casualness about possessions, nor had I, in all the years I had known him, ever witnessed him locking any door. Seeing him with keys was shock enough but now to watch him struggle with the rusty lock was serious psychology.

He didn't win. The years of neglect proved too much for his flimsy key and he was forced to give up the struggle.

'We've never had trouble before,' he said, but I noticed his glance around wasn't entirely casual even though no student pressed for his time and only a few dedicated sleepwalkers wandered outside on the wakening quadrangle.

Now, as we walked in the silence of the morning, our footsteps echoed against the long classroom walls not quite muffling a quiet murmuring like monks at hushed prayer and I noticed Digger's mouth moving almost silently — with what? A mantra? Surely not a benediction! I caught his eye and he looked back with the look which warns that he is in the middle of an experiment not to be disturbed by questions. He slightly raised his voice so I heard him repeating endlessly —

'I am going to the canteen to buy doughnuts... I am going to the canteen to buy doughnuts..'

I decided to just hope there was no early arrival who might witness the final degradation of a great mind. My God! He's too young for Alzheimer's.

The sun was well up now casting shining, slanting rays across the worn wooden floor of the corridor. As we moved, the warm light sent sparkling flashes off the bright serried rows of nail heads polished by years of hurrying students and caught highlights of deep blue in the sleek coiffured fur of the school cat.

Digger maintained his muttering but slowed to meet this interloper.

Green narrow eyes met blue and she unfurled her teeth as if to let the tom know he had not danced enough to win her favors. He looked back innocently as though the thought had never crossed his mind while he entertained her challenge by lifting on to the tips of his toes and approaching her with outspread palms.

'I am going to the canteen to buy doughnuts...I am going to the canteen to buy doughnuts..'

She retreated a few steps, confused, then crouched, head between paws before moseying slowly off, flicking her white-tipped tail to make it known that she was not defeated but casually alert with all claws ready to go for the gun if her territory was further threatened.

Uncomfortable with the display I found sudden interest in the fading black and white photographs lining the corridor, observing with some amusement the synchronicity of the cat's pistol-packing walk at the same moment I was looking at the shining faces of the class of '45 shooting team.

We crossed the asphalt quadrangle and pushed open the door to the canteen to be met with the bustle of early morning preparation and the sleepy blank stares of cooks not expecting to be interrupted in their gossiping.

Fat hands clapped on flour-dusted aprons but the agitated signs of annoyance disappeared when they recognized it was Digger on one of his frequent forays for food at unreasonable hours. Taking his usual chair at the farthest corner of the café he signaled agreement to the usual doughnut and herb tea which they knew he insisted was the basis for a happy life and expectation of active old age.

In friendly resignation they simply put down their round patties of sluggish dough, flapped a small hurricane of white flour off their hands and went about preparing coffee for me and tea for him.

'There you go Digger, mate.'

To an Australian everyone is 'mate' whether male or female it just slips off the tongue as easily and comfortably as a good Foster's beer slips over it. Using the term doesn't imply intimacy or even special friendship. On the other hand, the rare use of a person's full name is a sure sign of amused respect because usually the Aussie will shorten any name to the shortest possible syllable — Michael becomes Mick, Barbara becomes Barb, Australia becomes Oz and so on — some say it's because it's such a hot country you can't waste extra breath on names, others say that using full names takes up valuable drinking time. I never heard anyone use Digger's proper name but they never shortened his nickname either. Respecting him with an understanding that he'd won the name honorably during his archaeological days, not using it as it has applied generically to all Aussies since their display of superior trench digging (some say latrine digging) skills in the First World War.

The tea slopped a little in the saucer as Joan placed it on the table and then, with undismayed familiarity pulled up a chair for herself, turning it backwards a little out from the table to lean forward so that the folds of the massive white apron pushed through the bars. What had looked like a huge skirt now became gray patterned cook's trousers, each leg coming half way down her calf like culottes in mourning.

She casually brushed her hand through her severely cut blonde hair, and turned her piercing blue eyes on me in a motion that would have guaranteed her the part of a domineering female German prison guard in any culturally insensitive movie.

It was a ritual I remembered even though I hadn't had breakfast here for a long time. Now there would be a pause for a moment. Collecting the thoughts of wayside gossip.

No-one did it better than Digger who adopted an unemotional look for all the world like the cat. Sitting there relaxed and easy.

Moseying.

It was one of the things he was noted for. Moseying. In fact sitting here now watching him do this I remembered he had once tried to have the College include Moseying As A Social Skill officially on the curriculum. He figured it was a valuable talent to be able to enjoy the art and technique of being totally alert for whatever might happen while giving the impression of being relaxed and uninterested in the surroundings.

They swapped the chatter of the day. Digger with some little piece, Joan parrying with morsels of minor interest. Each recognizing in the neutral ground of the canteen the essential pipeline between faculty and students, the safety valve this forum provided for 'leaks' of sensitive proposals by the Board and the reciprocal information on student opinion.

It was easy, casual, punctuated only by a few rowdy students arriving as the canteen began filling with red-eyed kids. A few staff.

Perhaps twenty minutes went by and once again I began questioning the value of my early excursion as Digger ignored me in favor of Joan.

Finally she left and Digger turned to me.

'Sorry about that, important business often seems trivial, don't you agree?'

'Well, sure, but I'm a little edgy with time.'

'Sure mate, not to take too long, eh? OK, look, remember we talked a long while ago about certain groups wanting to maintain their positions in the drug trade and their secret deals with the politicians?'

'I guess every 'profitable industry' wants to maintain the status quo!'

'It's got a bit bigger than that. I've already had a couple of threats on my life and I thought I ought to offer you a share, being my good friend and all.'

'Digger, this one I'm not buying. To me drugs is what I dispense not what someone shoves up their...'

'We're not talking pharmaceuticals here, we're not even talking druggies, I'm afraid it's got bigger than that.'

'There's not much that's bigger than that!'

'You're right. You're right.' Serious now he leaned forward to emphasize his point, 'Bigger than organized crime is only organized business, world religions, war games and the Internet!'

'And you hold the secret to them all?'

This man sitting across the table in a nondescript College Canteen in Sydney, Australia had been there and done that to everyone, everywhere. Yet his calm was deceptive and I watched him hesitate as he pulled out a crumpled paper from the tight pocket of his moleskin* trousers.

'Jesus!'

We both jumped as police sirens spat urgency into our tense moment. But instead of rushing by they approached closer until we could hear the screaming engines pushing decibels into hell with enough noise to perform instantaneous frontal lobotomies.

Tires squealed, doors slammed and police radio trauma filled the morning's bright calmness.

In slow zombie dance we stood to go take a look. I thought I heard Digger say, 'That was quick,' so it was no surprise to either of us that crowds were gathering around the entrance nearest his office.

'Bloody hell, what a mess.'

The wooden floor of the corridor was stained with seeping blood, the soaked gray carpet catching flashes of red from the police lights. A police sergeant on his haunches pulling a notebook from his blue uniform pocket turned to look up at Digger as we pushed through the crowd.

'Your office?'

Blood was splashed all over the desk, the walls, the collection of boomerangs, even on the ceiling.

'Yeah.'

In my time in the Emergency Room I've seen enough blood dealing with the incoming wounded. You get used to it in a sickly way. But this gory scene had none of the safety net of white coats and medical promises.

What I was looking at over Digger's shoulder was senseless murder and, if I spend the days of my life trying to save lives, at this moment if I could have got my hands on the culprit I swear I would have done cheerful murder myself.

There, spread-eagled like a laboratory specimen in the middle of his desk was the body of the school cat, pinned by the paws to the day pad. The poor thing was slit from genitals to throat. This was grotesque enough but what made it macabre was the crude bamboo cross stuffed inside the empty stomach cavity.

'Some bloody student prank. I guess you're not liked much, Huh, Professor?' Jumping to conclusions that wouldn't require too much paper work was part of the Sergeant's philosophy.

'I guess.'

'Try to keep it down to protests and minor riots. OK? This is getting a little sticky here.' He clumped out.

Digger, now coldly calm, picked up the tiny cross and with a resigned, almost casual gesture reached over to the phone.

'Mark?' I muttered.

'Mark?' he spoke into the mouth piece then waited.

This was an old friend of ours who was used to cleaning up after events Digger had spawned.

He turned to me, 'At least we know it wasn't the Klan or they would have burned the bloody place down!'

Over the phone he briefly instructed Mark what to expect, then, while I waited for some explanation of this latest outrage he turned and curiously bent into the corner of the room to retrieve the upturned waste basket, furiously scratching through the crumpled papers, intent on finding something.

Seeing my query and my anger in the middle of all this he allowed a half smile, 'Thieves and snoopers don't have time to unravel all the pieces of paper in the bin, they only go through neat piles of papers, they might go through drawers but they never think you would store your precious documents screwed up in the rubbish bin.'

He indicated a small asterisk he had placed on each of the pages he now spread out, smiling as he saw none were missing. 'The cleaning lady is threatened with dismissal if she disturbs anything in my office, as you see!'

'After this, don't count on having a cleaning lady, mate!'

'Oh, Mark will clean it sweet as a whistle, no worries.'

Thinking about it now you might feel we lost our compassion sitting there amongst the remains of our early morning friend but the need to get a hold on the purpose behind the deed took over. Few people are squeamish at the scene, it is only afterwards that nausea and logic sets in.

So it was that he waved me into the easy chair and stood on the other side of the desk smoothing one of the pieces of paper in his hand. For all the world as though he were about to read a eulogy over the body of the cat. As it was, in a strange way it was the start of a tribute to the many lives lost by all sorts of people who have valiantly confronted the reigning authority of the day in attempts to clarify certain mysteries.

'As long as we are stuck in the tragedy of tiny traumas we can never see the greater picture. This is what television news sucks on. Our small minds. Avoiding the real puzzlers. Turning minor incident into major disaster.'

He wouldn't get argument from me on that one, 'The 'it-could-happen-to-me' syndrome.'

'I know you know that but what most of us can't do is practice what we preach every day.'

'Such as...?'

'By accepting that nothing happens at random then even this,' he swept his hand round the charnel house décor, 'is intimately connected to some greater plan.... or other.

'I am absolutely convinced. That's how it really is. There is somewhere a pattern we might be able to decipher if we could only get our minds above all the mundane things we have been taught.'

'That's hardly an academic proposition Digger, what are you talking about Professor?'

'Einstein thought it was! We're missing the obvious point that each event that has ever happened relates to every other event. Something that happened centuries ago has meaning for us today. It's in the program. Wedged between the obvious is the truth. The physical planet has preserved the clues to all that has happened and she's just waiting for us to decode it. In order to do that we have to give Aristotle the boot and go for the Buddha!'

I wasn't going to let him get away with that, 'You know, just when you start to talk simple you screw up. As far as I get it, modern science adores Aristotle who said, 'there is only black and white; on or off; yes or no — while the Buddha said, 'hey guys, knock it off, black and white are only extreme cases of gray! Between the two you've got the real playroom!'

'Give you that, buddy! But the middle way isn't based on logic. You gotta experience it! Without experience you miss out 'cause you only got faith based on someone else's velvet tongue. The masters, from Hippocrates to Buddha to Jesus to Sai Baba demanded their disciples get first hand experience.'

It was a bit incongruous talking of logic in the midst of such meaningless slaughter but clearly Digger was intent on unraveling an important concept.

'The 'X' on the treasure map of life has been etched by the practical experiences of the cultures and nations who have lived throughout the history of this planet.'

I let it be, focusing on the three pieces of paper he now pushed towards me.

'Nothing happens at random,' he repeated with a touch of mock solemnity holding my eyes in his blue stare.

Digger's students were not known for their great intelligence. In fact most of them only took his subject when they had run out of other options and they all knew that a pass or fail in Digger's peripatetic class would have little or no effect on their graduation potential, even less on their future money earning careers. Yet I knew of no-one who wasn't fascinated with his mobile brain and it's flashy intuitive absorbency. Like bungee jumping in mind space.

As for me, well I've never been a student of his, in fact we are almost exact contemporaries and that makes it possible for both of us to enjoy my role of Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes when the occasion arises.

Or you might call it my hometown New Zealand curiosity to his Australian bluntness.

My quiet plodding to the explosive flare of his schizophrenic Clark Kent/Superman double personality. In the classroom or, as now, in the midst of chaos revealing a new and vulnerable idea, he could adopt an almost gentle, timid, boyish demeanor.

However, the chameleon change when you saw him in the midst of danger — to continue the theatrical comparison — struck you as a character somewhere between Crocodile Dundee and battle-jacketed Indiana Jones right down to the felt Akubra which never left his head (some said) even in the shower.

As I read the clippings he relaxed into his swivel chair like a cowboy watching his herd for mountain lion.

It wont be long, I thought, before he puts his feet up on his desk.

He pushed aside some bloodied papers and hooked his feet on the corner of the desk. The scrubbed-white leather soles with their pointed toes presented me with a view that looked like two scruffy pyramids. You've got to admit, nothing happens at random!

The first piece of paper was a cutting from a Sydney newspaper datelined August 1994. It looked as though it had recently been used to wrap greasy food the way the English wrap their parcels of fish and chips. Watching me turn to it Digger doubled forward to wave his hand over the semitransparent oily spot. I half expected it to disappear as I watched. It didn't but he caught my thought and we grinned.

The article was written in unusually excited language for a scientific report. 'NULLARBOR LINES MYSTIFY SCIENTISTS' ran the headline.

Satellite photos have revealed seven parallel lines crossing the Nullarbor Plains, a desert long considered a treeless wasteland.

The mystery is that these lines seem to disappear at night and maybe this is why they have been missed until now as most satellites use thermal imaging and infrared technology during the hours of darkness.

Daytime satellite images taken of this area in 1992 show the lines are 400 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide

Scientists have only just reported them as an item at a conference in Sydney.

'These things are usually seen clearly at night,' one scientists confirmed, 'that's what makes this such a mystery because we can only see these [Nullarbor images] during the day.

'Australia has many unique geological faults, some form parallel lines of great length but they are thinner and can all be seen at night with our advanced technology. These Nullarbor ones can't.'

People are now searching for any evidence in the historical archives. But there is presently no logical answer how these came to be there especially as the original inhabitants of this area are not known to have ever worked with stone. Certainly not on such a massive scale. How could they have? Even today we would have extreme difficulty reproducing such monuments with all our largest earth-moving equipment.

I had already read that article when it was first printed and found it no more than curious. Now my heart was sinking in the dread of another one of our adrenaline adventures as I sensed Digger's face alight with anticipation of my immediate comprehension of this mundane story. Nothing came to me. I reread it but it still didn't get the sluggish hormones out of bed.

Feeling by the minute more and more like Castenada being mouse-played by Don Juan I sighed into the next scrap of newsprint. The obvious thing about this was that it did not fit with Digger's usual skepticism of common myths. 'SPACE TRAVELERS SLAM INTO JUPITER,' it read. The slightest twitch at the corners of his thin lips did nothing to remove the rising nausea my stomach was telegraphing to my brain.

For a mesmerizing moment, 'here-we-go-again' seemed to neon out of the gory mess of paper, boots, trouser cuffs and student's homework framing this dreadful harbinger of future torture. But the resigned shrug that it brought on was long familiar to me and preempted the need for a soulful sigh.

I shifted in the chair a little to change the pressure from a protruding steel spring and began reading what was obviously not another New Age prophecy of doom and destruction, nor even another lurid tale of sex and depravity inflicted on another abductee by little green aliens. This was a perfectly innocuous Lois Lane article on the impact of the Shoemaker-Levy comet on the sleeping giant planet, Jupiter from July 16-22, 1994.

I could hardly call it CNN stuff.

To my puzzled glance Digger replied, 'Dry stuff indeed, my friend, but when you put things together, the Shoemaker-Levy in July, the public disclosure of the Nullarbor lines in August — even though they'd been photographed two years before — now this....' He knew he wasn't good at doing the affected accent of an English professor and we smiled at his Aussie slang creeping in around the edges as he indicated the last paper.

This item was printed on quality glossy magazine paper that looked as though it had been rolled and crumpled for delivery in the cramped tube on a carrier pigeon's leg.

Most magazine printers nowadays use that insecure biodegradable ink made from apple skins or something, which is fine for the ecology but not so good for clothes when it bleeds off onto hands and business shirts. From the look of this paper it would have been easier to find that shirt and read the smudges on it than to decipher the few scraps of black ink left between folds and blurs. There was no identifying logo.

'National Astronomer,' Digger offered.

'Uh, Huh.'

This article was definitely not going to be picked up by the tabloids either. 'Jenkins sights new comet,' slept the headline, followed predictable by the ego-massaging claim for the right to name this less than mediocre discovery after it's sleep deprived discoverer.

To be honest I did not expect my dark foggy morning drive to the Sydney suburb of Coogee Bay would have brought instant enlightenment, but for goodness sake at least Digger usually had some skerrick of information which would make the diversion worth it. This was not up to his usual standard of originality and it surprised me because I couldn't see what was the purpose of collecting these scraps of paper.

There was nothing here which warranted panic, fear or excitement. Nothing to justify paranoia. Comets passing by don't tend to increase the homicide rate and lines in deserts aren't known to invoke random acts of ferocity.

Perhaps killing the cat was no more than a sick student prank after all but I found myself reaching for the phone to cancel my day's appointments.

Go On To Chapter 2

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