Three hours till dawn. Four kilometres to row. Sydney’s city heart was shaped like a partially unfolded fan, with the Spire in Hyde Park located on the lower right edge of the narrower southern end. Woolloomooloo Bay sat just east of the fan’s top right stretch of parkland, and they were aiming to row out of the Bay and curve around the cove-notched upper edge, keeping to a central point between the north and south shore until they’d passed beneath the Harbour Bridge and could turn down the western side of the fan to the newly-developed waterfront area called Barangaroo.
It had seemed a vast distance when they were poring over maps, but caught up in the sensation of floating through blackness, Madeleine found their arrival in the open water of the harbour came disconcertingly quickly, their narrowed view opening up to the shimmering golden sweep of the North Shore. Constellations of abandoned apartment blocks, and suburban nebulae: terrestrial stars which spun and bobbed as the dinghies hit the swell outside the shelter of the bay.
Facing the wrong direction to appreciate the vista, Fisher said: "The current’s not too bad. Tell me when we reach the turn point."
The turn point was halfway to a small island called Fort Denison, helpfully furnished with a squat lighthouse. When Noi gave the word, Fisher and Min backed their oars, slowing forward motion.
In the relative quiet which followed, they could clearly make out the creak and splosh of the second dinghy, and Noi called softly: "Duk-duk! Duk-duk!" A nonsense sound, their chosen signal to try to orient the two boats in the dark. Their theory was that the noise could be mistaken for a bird, and Madeleine supposed it was mildly less obvious than "Over here!", but it did sound silly, and Emily’s stifled giggle in response came to them clearly over the shush of the ocean.
Nash and Pan succeeded in following the sound, and Madeleine’s straining eyes caught the shape of them just before a thin, wet rope smacked her in the face. She managed to catch it, and with a small amount of manoeuvring the two boats were soon side-by-side, temporarily lashed together.
"Any sign?" Nash asked, serious, but with a measure of exultation lighting his voice. Desperate and dangerous as this might be, the Harbour was transcendent.
"No movement to the west," Fisher replied.
Noi had the binoculars, and was peering as far down to the Harbour entrance as the angle would permit. "I think those lights belong to one of the big ships," she said. "It must have moved in from the Heads, but doesn’t seem to be coming any closer. You four fine to go on after a couple of minutes' rest, or do you want to try swapping about?"
"It’s easier than I expected," Min said. "Not that I won’t complain about it later, but I shouldn’t have problems with the full run."
"My only worry is I don’t want to stop," Pan said. "This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever done. I feel like I’m flying." He went on, whispering, but his stage-trained voice lifting irresistibly:
"Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay – oof!"
"Enough, Juliet," Nash said, sitting ready to bop the shorter boy again. "You can give us a command performance in the refrigerator."
"Somehow, I don’t think that’ll have quite the same atmosphere." Pan heaved a great sigh, a combination of regret and sheer delight, but didn’t argue further.
"After the challenge," Noi said, a smile in her voice. "We’ll find a stage and you can perform for all of us. Right now, everyone take a few breaths. We need to calm down."
They drifted slowly, giving themselves another few moments to enjoy their surroundings, then separated the dinghies and returned to the business of escape. Madeleine’s role as a non-rower was both lookout and defender, should they encounter anything. The fact that a well-aimed punch could scupper a boat had been part of the arguments both for and against trying to make a dash out through the headlands, and there’d also been an amusing discussion on whether shields could be used as a form of propulsion, or would merely be a spectacular way to overturn.
The long dark stretch of the Royal Botanic Gardens gave way to curving white shells lit by spotlights. Madeleine wondered if the lights were automatic, or if the Moths or Greens were turning them on. Perhaps they, too, were reciting Shakespeare or, more likely, singing in their oscillating language. The world knew so little of what the Moths were like, what they were doing with their hosts, whether glowing balls of light had any interest in the words, the music, the pictures to be found in the cities they had stolen. There had been indications – Greens sent to obtain fresh milk and meat – that the Moths were at least interested in Earth’s food, but given the Blue hunger drive that was hardly surprising.
It wasn’t until the dinghy was almost past the Opera House that they had a good view into the rectangular notch of Sydney Cove, with the ferry docks and train station at its southern end. Noi, peering through the binoculars, murmured that there was no sign of anyone, but Fisher and Min still increased their pace as they approached Dawes Point and the sweep of well-lit bridge above. The Harbour Bridge was such a focal point, and at some angles the passage of even a low boat might be visible against the lights of the North Shore, so they’d planned to get through the area as quickly as possible. Madeleine found herself holding her breath, especially when she spotted Nash’s boat well ahead, tiny wake shattering golden reflections. Passing beneath the huge span, they were so small, and yet seemed so obvious.
Panting, Min and Fisher scudded after them, and Madeleine forced herself to strain for any glimpse of movement on the shoreline rather than gaze up and up at the bar across the sky. They turned directly after passing beneath, and drew the dinghy to a stop in the shadow of the first of the Walsh Bay piers.
The map had shown a hotel at this location, so they didn’t dare speak, simply waited till the two rowers had their breathing under control, then pushed back out of the bay and pressed on toward the turning point marked by Barangaroo’s northern park.
"Duk-duk! Duk-duk!"
Something had gone wrong. Min and Fisher stopped rowing, though they didn’t back paddle, allowing the dinghy to continue slowly onward. They could hear the dip and creak of oars ahead of them, coming closer, and after a long hesitation Noi responded, and the two dinghies found each other north of Walsh Bay’s central pier.
"What is it?"
Noi sounded as sick as Madeleine felt. They’d taken less time to cross the Harbour than expected, but they had few contingency plans, none of them ideal.
"There’s something in the water off Headland Park."
Nash’s whisper was calm, unhurried, and Emily better summed up the situation by adding: "Glowing eyes. There’s glowing eyes, looking."
"Did it spot you?" Noi gazed anxiously past them.
"Don’t think so," Pan replied. "We didn’t get close, saw it as we started around the curve. Scurried away like mice."
"It’s not visible from the near corner of the park?"
"We didn’t spot it till we were past the initial bump of the sea wall."
Noi lifted the binoculars and peered into the gold-striped dark. Barangaroo was broken into three sections grouped into a north-south rectangle. The north was covered in trees, sandstone blocks rising out of the sea to a grassy hill. The south was crowded with apartments and skyscrapers under construction. The middle, separated from the other sections by two small coves, was a mixture of garden and cultural sites – Madeleine had visited it the previous year to see an open-air sculpture exhibition – but several large buildings sat on its southern edge, including the enormous Southern Sky Hotel, a 6 Star extravagance which, before the Spires interrupted, had been in final preparations for a grandiose opening gala. The plan had been to row down to the cove nearest the Hotel, risking only the briefest amount of time travelling by foot.