The Mother Fault Read online

  Praise for The Mother Fault

  ‘Sublime… With its superb storytelling and capacity to spark reflection on the way we live, this timely, riveting, warning bell of a book can be confidently recommended.’

  Books+Publishing

  ‘Clever, political, pacy and exciting. The Mother Fault is pure diamond-edged propulsive power. Book of the year.’

  Chris Flynn, author of Mammoth

  ‘Brilliant. A raw, urgent, white-knuckle ride through a world only a heartbeat away.’

  James Bradley, author of Clade and Ghost Species

  ‘From the first few pages, I knew I was going to be finishing The Mother Fault the same day I had started. Kate Mildenhall has imagined a world as terrifying and visionary as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead, with the pace of the best thrillers – and characters I’ll never forget. This is a novel of rare insight from a rising literary star.’

  J.P. Pomare, author of Call Me Evie and In the Clearing

  ‘The Mother Fault is a clarion call, wrapped in vivid prose, inside a truly thrilling read. Mildenhall has written a page-turner that also delivers on beautiful language, vivid characterisation and emotional complexity. It is a sensual delight. When I wasn’t gasping in suspense, I was sighing with pleasure at the dazzling prose. I felt so close to Mim, I wanted alternately to shout at her and cheer her on. A novel for our times.’

  Angela Savage, author of Mother of Pearl and Behind the Night Bazaar

  ‘In The Mother Fault, Kate Mildenhall has achieved that rare thing – a book that at once tackles the big issues and is an addictive page-turner. The near-future Mildenhall has created is not only believable but disturbingly familiar. At its heart is a timeless story of motherhood – an expert and moving portrayal of the lengths a mother will go to in order to save her family. A smart, confronting and compelling read.’

  Melanie Cheng, author of Australia Day and Room for a Stranger

  ‘Compelling and deeply human. The Mother Fault is an urgent call from a future which is at once terrifying and familiar. The mother of the title — the gutsy, flawed, heroic Mim — is a triumph. She will stay with you long after you finish this compelling, visceral and very human story.’

  Kristina Olsson, award-winning author of Shell and Boy, Lost

  ‘Kate Mildenhall raises big questions in this riveting thriller about the moral reckoning that will be demanded of us by future generations for our actions and inaction. But at the heart of The Mother Fault is a deeply human tale, one that prevails against and rises above political agendas: the need to protect those we love. This is exactly the kind of story we need right now; one that observes with lacerating honesty what we risk becoming.’

  Sally Piper, author of The Geography of Friendship and Grace’s Table

  ‘The Mother Fault looks unflinchingly into a terrifyingly plausible future. I could barely catch my breath while reading… The Australia Mildenhall conjures is at once recognisable and destabilising, beautiful and horrific, taut and emotionally resonant. It shook me to my core. I could not put it down.’

  Alice Robinson, author of Anchor Point and The Glad Shout

  ‘A shattering lightning bolt of a book.’

  Karen Viggers, author of The Lightkeeper’s Wife and The Orchardist’s Daughter

  ‘A rare creation. It is a work of powerful urgency, a literary thriller decorated with luminous sentences and meditations on motherhood, totalitarianism, love and independence. In painting a realistic portrait of tomorrow, Mildenhall sounds an urgent clarion for today. She has crafted a brilliantly pacy, visceral and intimate adventure story, demonstrating an unparalleled ability to convey tenderness as acutely as violence. The Mother Fault is an emotional and political powerhouse.’

  Simon McDonald, Potts Point Bookshop

  ‘A tour de force. Compelling characters and gripping plot set in a not-too-distant future which is disturbingly real. The Mother Fault grabs your attention, your emotions and your intellect from the first page to the last page without losing a beat. You find yourself barracking for Mim and hoping against hope that she will succeed in her desperate mission which takes her and her children across the country and across the seas.’

  Carmel Shute, Sisters in Crime

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  It is not for my children I walk

  on earth in the light of the living.

  It is for you, for the wild

  daughters becoming women,

  anguish of seasons burning

  backward in time to those other

  bodies, your mother, and hers

  and beyond, speech growing stranger

  on thresholds of ice, rock, fire

  bones changing, heads inclining

  to monkey bosom, lemur breast,

  guileless milk of the word.

  from ‘Mother Who Gave Me Life’

  Gwen Harwood, 1981

  ‘…but no one bothered to read the terms and conditions.’

  Professor David Carroll,

  The Great Hack, Netflix 2019

  1

  Mim runs hot water in the sink, plunges her hands beneath the suds and gasps at the scald of it. Ben is particular about knives. She has to handwash them, even with the restrictions. She runs the blue cloth up and down each blade, feeling the smooth heat of the steel.

  Missing.

  He is missing.

  Your husband is missing.

  ‘Mum!’

  She turns to her daughter leaning over the kitchen bench, scowling. Still in her soccer gear, she is long-legged and ponytailed. It is untenable how much longer she gets each day.

  Essie holds out her screen. ‘The Friendship Project – you haven’t signed the form.’

  There is always something else. ‘You sure I didn’t sign it already?’

  Essie sighs. ‘No, you didn’t. Everyone else got to start uploading today and I didn’t. ’Cos you haven’t signed the form.’

  Mim takes the screen. Apologises. Swipes her finger in a squiggle across the flashing rectangle.

  ‘Thank you,’ Essie says, taking the screen back and muttering, ‘Wasn’t that hard, was it?’

  ‘Careful,’ Mim says, trying to keep her tone light. ‘Tell Sammy bath time, can you?’

  Since when did eleven-year-olds have so much attitude? Ben will laugh when she tells him.

  Mim puts one hand on her sternum, thinks she will vomit.

  Keep it together.

  She washes each knife. Pulls out a clean tea towel and dries each blade, sliding them one by one into the wooden knife block in the corner.

  * * *

  ‘What do you mean – missing?’ she had said when the phone call had come that afternoon. She had been distracted by the kids tumbling their bags in the door ahead of her, trying to get her earplugs in to hear the call properly.

  ‘It appears Mr Elliot has disappeared from the mine site at the Golden Arc. GeoTech have confirmed this with us.’

  ‘But he’s due back in a few days. Couldn’t he just be on his way home?’

  ‘We don’t believe so.’

  Essie called from in front of the open fridge. ‘What is there to eat?’

  Mim had frowned, pointed to her earbuds, turned away.

  ‘Why am I hearing this from you?’ She had tried not to raise her voice. There are ways to speak to the Department.

  ‘We’re working closely with GeoTech.
Protocol, Mrs Elliot, on foreign investment sites, you understand.’

  ‘But how can he be missing? He’s chipped. Can’t you just geolocate him?’

  They had ignored her question. Asked if they could send someone around. She had asked again, but there was nothing they could tell her.

  She had pictured the grey SUV parked in the driveway, the white concentric rings of the Department logo, the faces behind the curtains in the street.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she had said, ‘we’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’ll let us know if he makes contact?’

  As if they wouldn’t already know. ‘Of course,’ she had replied.

  * * *

  When the kids are in bed, she pours wine. Tries to think. She should call her mother. That’s what you do when you have stressful news. But what can her mother do from up there at the farm? She’d only worry, call Mim back endlessly until there was an answer. And she’s still so tender. Michael, then Dad.

  ‘Call Ben,’ she tells OMNI, even though she knows what the result will be. OMNI has a woman’s voice, a soft, slightly clipped accent. The feedback from previous operating systems all pointed to people having a higher compliance with female voices. It was traumatic for the kids when they updated. Sam had only ever known SARA. OMNI took some getting used to.

  ‘Unable to make contact.’

  It’s not unusual. She hasn’t been able to call him onsite the entire time he’s been gone. He could make scheduled calls with the rest of the crew from the IT room, hardwired in, so at least they get to see his face. They laughed before he left about what they should and shouldn’t say. It’s a well-known secret what the flagged words under the Department are. They can only imagine how many flagged words there are under China’s security services.

  She thinks of the last time they spoke, and realises she can’t remember the specifics.

  ‘OMNI, call GeoTech.’ It’s the kind of company they would have laughed at together in the past. Big money.

  ‘Calling GeoTech now.’

  It’s after hours so she’s not really expecting anyone to pick up, but what else can she do? She drums her fingers against the stone benchtop.

  She leaves a message and rings off. They’ll call. It will all make sense.

  She gulps the wine.

  What the fuck, Ben? Where are you?

  She puts the glass down, and it clinks violently against the hard surface. Maybe he’s just been delayed on the island. Her theories begin reasonably, but as the glass empties, she imagines him with a drink in his hand, then drunk, sitting with his back against a wall in a dark lane. Then in a hotel room, where there is skin, pulled sheets, the heavy groan of illicit sex. A mangled taxi, suitcase thrown against the traffic. A foreign emergency ward.

  The glass is empty. Another glass means another bottle. Maybe it will help her sleep.

  She scrolls the feeds for news from Indonesia. But there is nothing about a missing Australian engineer. Nothing but apocalypse stories, or that’s how it reads. The equatorial region is beginning to really sweat it, the patterns of climate refugees marking trails like new currents on the maps as they swarm to higher, cooler, ground. Ben was mad to go there, but the money! The fortunes to be made there before the whole region swallows itself. Plus the danger money. Thanks to the ever-increasing frequency of seismic activity. Quakes. Aftershocks. The suck and spill of tidal waves. For people like Ben, like her to a lesser extent, there was a thrill in that. The added frisson of knowing how the earth worked, or thinking they knew, anyway. There was a need for people like Ben to extract the wealth from the fault lines before tectonic movement, the spluttering, violent earth, made it impossible. He had promised it’d only be another couple of years, then they’d be set. He could work less, she could take the helm, if she wanted, and they’d be secure, financially at least.

  She missed work. The brain stretch of geology. That’s why she was so keen to take Heidi up on her recent offer. Being out in the field, even being back in the front of a lecture theatre, would be thrilling. She was pretty sure that she was the one who suggested she give over her tenured position. The groundwater project needed someone who could work fulltime and she couldn’t go back with Essie so young, but she wishes she hadn’t. Wishes they had made it easier for her to stay. It’s not just the brain drain heading back to their countries of origin after graduation – it’s the ones who are wiping bums and pureeing organic fucking vegetables, too.

  She keeps scrolling. She no longer reacts to the images. They are all the same and she has no feeling left. The stories are the same too. And who knows if what they say is true.

  The world shifted slowly, then so fast, while they watched but didn’t see. They weren’t stupid. Or even oppressed in the beginning. Let the record show that. There were no assassinations. No riots. The people invited the new government to take charge at the ballot box. The two parties had consumed themselves. Left the system wide open for a third option. Reasonable, populated by diverse public figures, backed by both big money and big ideology. On a platform of innovative and economically viable responses to the climate emergency, a rehaul of the health, housing and disability schemes that would see the most vulnerable members of the community cared for, and a foreign policy that miraculously spoke to fear of the other and fluid borders ideal for capital in and capital out, the new party was humbly triumphant on election night. Simple, elegant. No need for finite portfolios and the bullshit of bureaucracy (their words, appealing to the everyday Australian). Centralised power was the answer: One Department for One Nation. The Department of Everything. A party who promised a different way, a better way, and a populace who needed to believe them. Like geology, history repeats itself. Sometimes it’s just hard to see.

  And then, within their first one hundred days in office, their greatest test. Mim didn’t personally know anyone at the MCG on the day of the attacks, although, by degrees of separation, there were a few. Someone shoots that many footy fans in a city like Melbourne during a preliminary final and everyone’s going to know someone. Likewise, the bank hack didn’t affect them directly. She didn’t go through the months of hell of getting the administration of their life back on track. But, like everyone else, they did bear the pain of soaring interest rates.

  And then the bio-threat. The government tried to keep everyone level-headed, at the start at least. There were protocols in place for the media by then, supposedly to counteract scaremongering and division. So for a while they only knew that security at the MediSec facility outside of Geelong had been compromised. Eventually it got out. Two security officers and a virologist were dead. The terrorists had known what they were doing. They only took one frozen vial. Only needed one. Enough terror in that particular strain to last a generation.

  So that’s what they lived with. The knowledge that nothing was sacred, and nothing was safe. Not their money, not their health and not their football games.

  After that, the government changed the terror laws again. People could be detained without charge for six months while investigations were pending. A new Treason Code. The punishment for violations? Loss of citizenship. The offender and their family. Loss of all assets. Stateless. You bring terror to our nation, you don’t deserve a nation. No one could argue with that kind of rhetoric.

  The ensuing authority creep hardly caused a ripple. In this, the lucky country, the land of the lackadaisical larrikin, no one demanded you jumped on board the new system. No one legislated. No, it was much more powerful than that.

  You got a chip to protect a mate.

  You got a chip ’cos you had nothing to hide.

  Because we are all in this together.

  The publicity campaign was a triumph. Rumour has it that they paid 5 million to one influencer alone to livestream her own chipping through her social media feed. Football clubs got chipped together. There were cross-cultural chip days in the inner suburbs – even the most strident of small L liberals on board.

  And all in all, it seeme
d a rather small price to pay. It seemed increasingly likely that there might be a moment when you would like to know that your loved ones could be located in the blink of an eye. Less.

  They were all doing it anyway, more or less. Geolocating their every move in exchange for Points! Rewards! (conditions apply).

  You want to know where your people are when the world becomes a shifting, wild, hungry thing. When there are mass evacuations at least three times each summer on the outskirts of every city, tidal floods up the mouth of the river, a wave of eco-terrorism – bombings at a proposed radioactive waste repository site, and that storm – they couldn’t call it a hurricane on an atmospheric technicality but anyone within fifty kilometres would say it was.

  When they brought in the legislation she was heavily pregnant and had to wait until she’d given birth before she could get herself chipped. And Essie. Easier to do it now for her, the smiling nurse had said, she won’t even remember the nick. Mim – leaking, weeping, feeling like she had been torn asunder – said, Yes, of course.

  They did Mim first, a click, pearl of blood, nothing compared to the blind vortex of pain she’d just endured.

  And then her tiny daughter, Essie, another click, a scream, eyes squeezed shut then open – the treachery of it! Of what she’d let them do to her. The nurse soothed, Now you’ll always know where she is. Doesn’t that feel wonderful?

  She had grown this child, had been attached. How would she ever not know?

  I will always know where you are, she had whispered.

  * * *

  By the time Essie arrived, the Department had started rolling out the estates. She remembers watching it on her feeds while she nursed Essie late at night, and feeling hopeful that there was finally a solution to some of the problems that had plagued the city. The residents of those first estates were homeless women, crushed by poverty, violence, and the market crash that ensured their already minuscule super accounts crumbled to dust. Their children went too, of course. The overworked and underpaid former Human Services workers collectively breathed a sigh of relief. The Department had this in hand. Children in safe and secure housing with equitable access to education, adults in work and re-training programs, their healthcare and finances all overseen by the high-tech, omniscient eyes of the benevolent state. BestLife, they called it. No pun intended.