“And now for local events,” the vox from the news com droned.
“Students from the Kennedy High School marching band are having a car wash to raise money for new uniforms.
This will be at the Lincoln Mall Vidplex from noon to four, Saturday.” Oh, yeah, a car wash, that was exciting, helloooo slipper!
The drone continued.
“The Foggy Bottom Children’s Library welcomes writer Wendy Heroumin for a reading of her latest book. The Purple Penguin.” Hey, hey, a children’s book! Whoa, tachycardia city!
“And the Sixth Annual Boomerang Tournament begins in Lonesdale Park at eight a.m.
Saturday and runs through Sunday at five p.m.” Tyrone was finishing his hands when he heard this last announcement.
A boomerang tourney? What was a boomerang tourney? Those aborigine things? The sticks?
Well, hey, slip, you got zip on your drive–why don’t you go and find out?
He grinned. All right. Yeah. He could do that.
The new park was only a dozen blocks away, so he wouldn’t even have to take pub trans. He could just Nike on over there and check it out. One thing for sure, he wasn’t going to run into Bella there.
Or likely anybody else he knew either.
Why not? He’d never even seen a boomerang, except in VR, and that only as background scenario. Why not?
A short guy built like a brick was in the middle of the soccer field. He reared back with a dayglow orange boomerang in his right hand, concave side forward, one end up, and threw the thing so hard his hand went forward and touched the ground.
The boomerang did this kind of eccentric egg-rolling end- over-end flight, swooped about fifty meters straight ahead, then started to curve to the left. It kept going up, twisted so it was flat-side-down, twirled and twirled and circled back around the guy, maybe ten meters high, went behind him, headed out in front of him again, a full circle, then did a little jog up and spun toward him. The spinning orange delta-shape came right at the guy, who held his hands about a dozen centimeters apart in front of himself, palms facing each other.
When the stick was just about to hit him in the chest, he slapped his hands together and trapped it.
The guy never moved his feet, he didn’t have to, it came right back to him.
This was so flowing fine! still got to have one of these!
Tyrone had been watching for about an hour. This was fantastic, there were ems and ferns out there doing things he couldn’t believe. They were making the things swoop and twirl, making them dive and circle, keeping two or three in the air at one time, running and catching them, laughing, tumbling, it was great.
His favorite demo had been–according to the woman narrating on the portable PA system–the war boomerang. Unlike the sport models, this one was not designed to return. The man who threw the thing was tall and thin. He wound up, putting everything he had into the throw, judging by what Tyrone could tell, and the stick, which was almost straight, and about twice as big as the sport models, flew like an arrow, straight ahead, maybe a meter and a half above the ground, it flew, and flew, and flew, just. kept going, on and on.
Man!
When it finally dropped, Tyrone couldn’t believe how far it had flown.
Two hundred and twenty meters, easy. It was like it had a jet motor in it.
There was a break in the action. Tyrone headed for the little tables they’d set up for sales. There were maybe twenty different models on the tables, various angles, sizes, colors. He couldn’t begin to figure out what they all meant.
“New at this, mate?” the man behind the table said.
He had an accent so thick you could lean against it.
Australian.
“Yeah,” Tyrone said.
“But I want to learn.” “Right. How much you lookin” to spend then?” Tyrone pulled his credit card out of his pocket and called up his balance. He’d floated a lot of shine on Bella, but he had about fifty in his account.
He told the seller the amount. What else did he have to shine it on?
“Hey, for that, you can get just about anything on the table.
Though you might want to start with a sturdy model until you get the hang of it.” The Aussie picked up a light-brown boomerang with one of the blade tips painted white. He handed it to Tyrone.
“You hold it by the white tip, if you’re right-handed, yeah, like that, just like making a fist, thumb on the outside, there you go. When you throw, it’s straight ahead, you put a little wrist into it. You need to allow for wind direction and all, but we toss in a little how-to chip let, tells you everything you need to know to get started.” Tyrone examined the boomerang. It was wood, plywood, and while it was flat on the bottom except for a scalloped outer edge under the paint, the top edges were angled. The leading inside edge was blunt, and the leading outside edge had been sharpened so that it sloped from the fall thickness to a thinner margin. The part you held onto was cut to mirror the leading edge–thick on the outside, thin on the inside. Tyrone guessed that the thing was almost half a meter long, maybe a centimeter thick in the center. Probably about a forty-five- or fifty degree angle. He turned it over.
Laser-cut into the center of the flat side was a tiny image of a black man holding a boomerang in one hand, ready to throw, and the words “Gunda- warra Boomerangs–Kangaroo– Grafted in Wedderburn, Victoria, Australia.” “Until you learn to throw it right, it’s gonna hit the ground pretty hard a few times. The plywood models tend to hold up longer than the solid wood ones. And they’re cheaper than No Chip. This one’ll run about twenty dollars U.s.” Tyrone hefted the stick. He realized he hadn’t thought about Bella but once since he’d gotten here, and then only briefly.
“Comes with a membership in the International Boomerang Association.
We’ve got a great web site.” Tyrone grinned.
“I’ll take it.”
Chapter 30 Saturday, January 15th, 11:55 a.m.
Eastern Oregon
Howard found a sunny spot to break for lunch.
The relatively level patch of snowy ground was partially sheltered from the weather by some Douglas fir trees and stunted shrubs on the east side, though the growth had collected its share of solid precipitation. A couple of the smaller trees were so heavy with snow, they leaned over precariously, branches drooping.
It was warming up under the clear skies, though it was still not what you’d call warm, probably a degree or two above freezing. Big clots of partially melted snow fell from the trees to splatter on the shallow snow below, landing with wet plops.
Howard chose his cook spot away from overhanging branches. He tamped the snow down with his snowshoes into a ragged circle next to a big flat-topped rock. He used his virgil to beep in, showing he was still alive, then shrugged out of his pack, pulled the snowshoes off, and set his stove up on the rock. He dumped a couple of handfuls of snow into his cook pot, then began melting the snow to reconstitute some freeze-dried chicken and vegetables, kind of like a pot pie without the crust.
He walked around the site as he waited for the water to heat up, stomping a more solid path in the relatively shallow snow.
He looked for signs of small animals, and checked for any tokens that humans had passed this way recently. He found nothing to indicate man or animal had visited here, and certainly there were no other tracks in or out but his own.
On his own, far away from home. He liked the feeling, being master of all he could see.
He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck, and did a couple of squats and toe touches to loosen his legs. It had been two hours since his last break, and two hours of snow shoeing took a lot out of you. No matter how old you were… The metal cup of water began to bubble. He circled back toward his stove, passing beneath the trees. He glanced up and saw a blob of melting snow slip from a high branch and fall, coming right at him.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” he said, laughing and dodging to the side. The big chunk missed him by a good two feet, but he stumbled and put one hand out to catch himself on the tree.
That was a mistake, because his weight was enough to shake the tree a hair, and that brought a big cascade of ready-to-fall snow. He laughed again, spun around the tree and away, pleased with himself at avoiding most of the icy bath.