She frowned at him, and replied in English. ‘You’re not Moluccan? I knew there were no villages here, but – are you a scientist?’
Prabir laughed. ‘I must be, mustn’t I?’
Stick to the cover story
. His legs collapsed.
She crouched beside him. ‘OK. We’ll rest for a bit, then I’ll get you back to base camp.’
‘What were you doing here?’
She nodded towards the snake; its head was still lying exposed on the mangrove roots where she’d cornered it, but it was showing
signs of regaining consciousness. ‘Observing them, amongst other things. Though I prefer not to get quite as close as you
did.’ She smiled uncertainly, then added, ‘You’re lucky; given that it already had prey secured, I wasn’t sure that even the
most frantic imitation of an animal in distress would catch its attention. There’s a paper in there somewhere, on supernormal
stimuli versus inhibition signals.’
The snake slid drunkenly off the mangroves, its body rising to the surface in a horizontal sine wave as it swam away. It had
to be at least twenty metres long.
Prabir asked numbly, ‘What do they live off? There can’t be that many tourists.’
‘I think they eat wild pigs, mostly. But I’ve seen one take a salt-water crocodile.’
He blinked at her, then jumped to his feet. ‘There are crocodiles? My friend’s back there!’ He started running frantically
towards the shore. ‘Martha?
Martha!’
Grant appeared suddenly out of the jungle behind him. She seemed about to berate him jokingly for his tardiness, then she
saw his rescuer. She hesitated, as if waiting for introductions, then made her own. ‘I’m Martha Grant. I’m with Prabir, we
got separated.’
‘Seli Ojany.’ They walked up to each other and shook
hands. Grant turned to Prabir expectantly, clearly aware that she was missing something significant, but he didn’t know how
to begin. If the python hadn’t fled, he would have just pointed at it and mimed the rest.
Ojany was staring at him too, with an expression of disbelief. ‘You’re not Prabir Suresh? Madhusree’s brother?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You followed her here, all the way from Toronto?’
‘Yes.’
Ojany broke into a wide, delighted grin.
She said, ‘You’re in trouble!’
The expedition’s ship was anchored outside the reef; the biologists had landed in small boats and set up camp in half a dozen
tents on a grassy plain not far from the beach. It was mid-afternoon, and the camp was almost deserted; nearly everyone was
still out in the field. But one of the expedition members taking a day off was a woman with medical training; she examined
Prabir to confirm that he had no broken bones, and gave him glucose and a sedative.
The three of them were covered in swamp matter; they washed themselves in the ocean, and Ojany found them clean clothes. Prabir
was still shaky; he was being led through everything like an infant. Ojany said, ‘Come on, champ, you can use my bed for now,
and we’ll organise something later for tonight.’
Prabir lay down on the rectangle of foam and stared up at the roof of the tent. He had a sudden, vivid memory of lying exhausted
in his hammock, the day he’d walked halfway up Teranesia’s dead volcano to try to measure the distance to the nearest island.
There was nothing especially poignant about the memory itself, but the sharpness of the recollection was enough to make him
want to bash his head against the ground. He was tired of having to think about that idiot child, tired of having been him,
but every attempt to get rid of him was like trying to slough off dead skin, only to find that it was still full of living
nerves and blood vessels.
Grant shook him gently. It was dusk. She said, ‘Everyone’s eating now. Do you want to come join us?’
At least thirty people were gathered in the space between the tents. There were hurricane lamps set up, and a man was serving
food from a butane stove. Grant said, ‘This isn’t just the expedition. A fishing boat turned up while you were asleep. Word
seems to have leaked back to Ambon; a few people hitched a ride down.’
Prabir followed her into the serving line, looking around for Madhusree. He spotted several of the barflies from Ambon; Cole
was wandering about delivering Delphic pronouncements to anyone who’d listen, his eyes glistening in the lamplight. ‘I have
pursued the black sun across the salt flats of millennium, into the heart of the primeval calenture!’ Grant whispered to Prabir,
‘For God’s sake, someone give that man an antipyretic.’
When his turn came, Prabir gratefully accepted a steaming plate of stew, though he was unable to determine its exact nature
even after he’d taken a mouthful. He walked to the edge of the gathering to eat; he could see Grant talking shop with Ojany,
but he wasn’t in the mood to join in. As some of the diners began to improvise seats out of packing crates or rolled-up sleeping
bags, he saw Madhusree standing with two other women, talking and laughing as they ate. She saw him watching her, and stared
back for a moment with an utterly neutral expression, neither welcoming nor angry, before rejoining the conversation. Someone
would have broken the news of his arrival to her as soon as she’d returned to the camp, but perhaps she still hadn’t decided
whether or not to forgive him.
Cole’s student, Mike Carpenter, wandered over from the serving line. He stood beside Prabir, eating in silence for a while,
then said, ‘You know Sandra Lamont?’
‘Not personally.’
‘I saw her once, in real life,’ Carpenter boasted. ‘She’s got terrible skin. Pores, wrinkles. They just smooth it all out
with software.’
‘Gosh. How scandalous. Would you excuse me?’
Prabir made his way across the camp. A man with a Philippines accent in a Hawaiian shirt and a Stetson was saying to a similarly
attired companion, ‘… welcomed by an animatronic dinosaur! Full marina facilities! And the hook-line is, “
Earth
is the alien planet!” ’ Two biologists were arguing heatedly about transposons; one of them seemed to have independently reached
an idea similar to Grant’s: ‘… shuffles back in the sequence for a
complete functional protein domain
that was cut out and shelved aeons ago … ’
He walked up to Madhusree and touched her arm.
‘Hi Maddy.’
She turned to him, and smiled impassively. ‘Hi.’
Her friends smiled too, but they appeared distinctly uncomfortable. Madhusree said, ‘This is Deborah, and Laila. This is my
brother Prabir, who narrowly avoided becoming one of Seli’s stomach content samples.’ Prabir nodded in acknowledgement; they
were all holding plates, it was too awkward to try to shake hands.
He said, ‘How’s the work going?’
‘Good, good,’ Madhusree replied smoothly. ‘We’ve gathered lots of data: behavioural, anatomical, DNA. No conclusions yet,
but we’ve started posting it all on the net, so everyone can take a look for themselves.’
‘Yeah? I should tell Felix about that.’
Madhusree frowned. ‘Don’t you think he’d already know that he could follow everything from back in Toronto? I would have thought
it would be obvious to anyone, how easy and convenient that would be.’
Prabir was impressed by her self-control. The message wasn’t exactly subtle, but she hadn’t let the slightest hint of anger
spoil her innocent delivery: there was no flash in her eyes, no tension in her voice. He said, ‘I’m not sure. I’ll have to
ask him.’
Madhusree glanced at her watch. ‘You could do that right now. It would be the perfect time to catch him.’
‘Yeah. Thanks. That’s a good idea.’
He nodded again to her friends, and turned away. As he hunted for a place where he could stand and finish his meal alone,
he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He’d done what he’d done, and she’d told him how she felt, and now that it was over
it was insignificant. He’d no more seriously undermined her dignity than those embarrassing parents who’d turned up with forgotten
boxed lunches and sent his sixth-grade classmates into paroxysms of humiliation. And unlike schoolchildren, most of her colleagues
would surely sympathise with her, rather than ridicule her, for having to go through life with such a cross.
He could see now that she’d be safe here, his own close call notwithstanding; she had ten times as many people looking out
for her. He’d leave in the morning with Grant; the sting of resentment would wear off in a day or two, and when they met again
in Toronto she’d punch him in the shoulder and call him a shit and laugh without malice, and the whole thing would be transmuted
into a joke forever.
‘Come out of the tent. I want to talk to you.’
Madhusree was standing over him in the darkness, prodding his chest with her foot.
Ojany shared the tent with two other postdocs, but they’d found some spare bedding, and agreed to let him stay for the night.
The tents all had insect-proof groundsheets; though it was unbearably hot, Prabir wouldn’t have liked to have tried sleeping
outside, tempting the ants.
‘What time is it?’ he whispered.
‘Just after two,’ she hissed. ‘Now come out of the tent.’
Prabir grinned up at her. ‘When they ask me back at work what I did on my vacation, do you think I should admit to
having spent a night with three beautiful women on a tropical island?’
Madhusree was infuriated. ‘Don’t fuck me about! Just get up!’
‘All right. It might help if you take some of your weight off me.’
He followed her out, into the deserted centre of the camp.
She said, ‘How dare you! How dare you come here!’
Prabir had never seen her so enraged, but he was having trouble adjusting; in his mind it had all been resolved, she’d already
punished him.
He said gently, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you. I just wanted to see for myself how you were. I wanted to see what it
was really like here.’
Madhusree stared at him, almost weeping with frustration. ‘I don’t care if you
embarrass me!
Just how shallow do you think I am? What do you think I used to say to my friends at school? Do you think I renounced you
every day? Do you think I made up pretend parents? I don’t give a fuck what anyone here thinks about either of us. If they
don’t like my family, they can screw themselves.’
Prabir ran his hand through his hair, touched by her passionate declaration, but a great deal more afraid now.
He said haltingly, ‘What then? Treat me like an idiot. Spell it out.’
She wiped her eyes angrily. ‘All right. How’s this for a start? You couldn’t trust me to make this
one decision
, and live with it. You couldn’t trust me to look into the risks myself: the mines, the border skirmishes, the diseases, the
wildlife. They’re not trivial. I never
said
they were trivial. But I’m nineteen years old. I’m not retarded. I had access to people who could give me good advice. But
you still couldn’t trust my judgement.’
Prabir protested, ‘I never stopped you doing anything in your life! What have I ever done, before this? Did I interrogate
your doped-up boyfriends? Did I stop you going to nightclubs when you were fourteen years old? Name one thing I did that showed
I didn’t trust you.’
She bit her lip, breathing hard. Finally she said, ‘That’s all true, but it’s not good enough. You didn’t treat me like a
child then. Why do you have to treat me like one now?’
‘I’m not treating you like a child. And you know why this is different.’
Madhusree’s face contorted with pain. ‘That’s the worst part! That’s the worst insult! Different for you, but not for me?
You think it isn’t hard for me too, coming back to where they died? Just because I don’t remember them the way you do?’
She started sobbing drily. Prabir wanted to embrace her, but he was afraid he’d only anger her. He looked around helplessly.
‘I know you miss them too. I know that.’
‘I’m
sick
of having to go through you to reach them!’
That was unfair. He’d told her every detail of their lives that he’d remembered, and a few he’d invented to fill in the gaps.
But what else could he have done? Offered her a ouija board?
He said, ‘I never wanted it to be like that. But if that’s how it felt to you, then I’m sorry.’
Madhusree shook her head wearily; she wasn’t forgiving him, but she didn’t have the energy to resolve the matter now. Prabir
could see her putting aside all her grief and anger, steeling herself for something more pressing.
‘I made a promise in that note I left you,’ she said. ‘And I’ve kept it: I haven’t told anyone about the butterflies. But
tomorrow, I’m going to the head of the expedition and explaining everything. Our parents’ work was important. What they did
was important. Everyone should know about it.’
Prabir bowed his head. ‘All right. I have no problem with that. Just promise me you won’t go to the island yourself.
Leave it to someone else. There must be plenty of work to be done right here.’
‘I have to go. I’ll check the huts for records while the others are gathering samples. And if I can find the remains, I’ll
have them taken back to Calcutta for the proper ceremonies.’
He looked up at her, stunned. ‘ “Proper ceremonies” What the fuck does
that
mean?’
Madhusree said calmly, ‘Just because they weren’t religious, it doesn’t mean we have to leave them lying where they fell.
Like animals.’
Prabir’s skin went cold. She was saying this just to wound him. The implication was that if he’d loved them enough, he would
have done this himself long ago, instead of cowering on the other side of the world like a scared little boy for eighteen
years. But it was all right now: an adult had come along, with the strength to do what needed to be done.
He turned away, unable to look at her.
She said, ‘It’s the right thing to do. You know that. I wanted to talk to you about it, but you just shut me out.’
Prabir said nothing. He knew that if he opened his mouth and spoke now, he’d pour out so much contempt for her that they’d
never be reconciled.
‘You should be happy. We’ll finally put them to rest.’
He stared at the ground, refusing to reply, refusing to acknowledge her. She stood there for a while, repeating his name,
pleading with him. Then she gave up and walked away.
Prabir found Grant in the third tent he entered; she woke instantly when he whispered her name, and followed him out without
a word.
She must have sensed the seriousness of his purpose; once they were beyond earshot of anyone who might have been awake, she
asked without a trace of irritation, ‘What’s going on?’
Prabir said, ‘I know where this all began. Do you want me to take you there?’
‘What are you talking about?’ But he could already see her reassessing their old conversations. ‘Are you telling me you saw
something as a child? When you were travelling with your parents?’
‘Not travelling. My parents knew exactly where they wanted to go, long before we left Calcutta. We spent three years there.
They were biologists, not seafood exporters. They came here to study the very first mutant, back in 2010.’
Grant didn’t waste time contesting this possibility; she just demanded, ‘What species? Where?’
Prabir shook his head. ‘Not yet. This is the deal: you post all the data you’ve gathered on the net, so everyone has access
to it. Just like the expedition scientists. If you agree to that, I’ll take you there, and I’ll tell you everything I know.’
Grant smiled wearily. ‘Be reasonable. You know I can’t do that.’
‘Fine. It’s your loss.’ He turned and started walking away.
‘Hey!’ She grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘I could always ask your sister.’
He laughed.
‘My sister?
You’re a complete stranger to her, a rival scientist and a data burier, and you think she’s going to give you a better deal?’
Grant scowled, more baffled than angry. ‘Why are you being such a prick? You might as well have kept me in the dark completely;
at least I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.
I can’t do what you’re asking
. I’ve signed a contract; they’d cut my hands off.’
‘Would you go to prison?’
‘I doubt it, but that’s hardly—’
‘So it’s just money? They’d just need to be bought off?’
‘Yeah, that’s all. Is this the point where you reveal that you’re also Bill Gates’ love child?’