Perihelion Summer

by Greg Egan

  A few blocks along, he saw a large, silver-furred dog lying stretched out on the road. He lowered his eyes, but then raised them again as he unpicked the afterimage; there was a girl, or a short, slight-framed woman nestled against the animal’s belly. Matt approached, refusing to be deterred by the stench in case it had only one source, but once he was closer it was apparent that both had been dead for a while. The girl still held the dog’s leash; a metal disk on its collar with cursive engraving caught the starlight. He took out his phone and checked for a signal, but the towers hadn’t magically sprung back to life. He squatted down to photograph the tag in close-up; even if the phone number never worked again, the police might be able to use it to trace the girl’s family. When the flash went off, he tried to stay focused on the screen, but everything the burst of light revealed in the periphery stamped itself into his brain.

  He kept walking, crossing back and forth to make a closer inspection of any car that might have been his family’s. The feeble lighting robbed him of most of the depth cues he was used to, undermining his sense of the shape of each vehicle almost as much as it flattened out the difference between paint jobs. All he could do was err on the side of thoroughness, and hope that the shadows couldn’t camouflage the thing he sought so perfectly that he’d walk right past it.

  When he looked back at the fire the flames appeared more vigorous. He tried walking faster, telling himself it didn’t matter if his limbs and lungs felt as strained as if he were sprinting; he wasn’t old or sick, he could run for hours if he needed to. In front of him, the stars blazed above the dark buildings, as fierce as they had ever been at sea.

  He lost count of the intersections he passed, and it was impossible to make out the street signs, but as he approached the second set of dead traffic lights he smelled the river nearby and thought he knew more or less how far he’d come. As he turned to see if he could glimpse the water, instead he saw a muted hint of artificial light, coming from a building a few stories high, off the main road but not far. He stared at the curtained window; maybe the room itself was in darkness, but an adjoining one was lit. As he stood wondering what to do, he realized that he could hear the hum of air conditioners. He took a swig of water; his ears closed off as he drank, but when he stopped the hum remained.

  It would be a short detour; he could knock and ask, just in case his family had taken shelter there. He turned down the street toward the river.

  He’d been expecting an apartment block, but what he found was a small private hospital. There were no inviting, illuminated signs, but if the occupants had been aiming for stealth mode they should have tried harder: none of the windows or balconies were lit up directly, but they were all showing shades of gray. The glass doors at the front exposed a lobby in a similar twilit state. Matt banged on them with what he hoped was the right compromise between inaudible timidity and any hint of aggression.

  He received no response, so he tried again more forcefully. In the corner of the lobby, someone moved: a heavily built, uniformed man talking into a radio clipped to his shirt pocket, glancing Matt’s way warily without meeting his gaze, as if hoping to pretend he couldn’t actually see him.

  Matt swung his arms above his head like a castaway hoping to be spotted by a search plane. The security guard grew sheepish and approached the doors.

  “We can’t take anyone else,” he said, shouting to be heard through the glass. “You’ll have to try another place.”

  “I don’t want to stay, I’m just looking for my family.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “If I can’t come in, can I give you their names?”

  The guard grimaced. “There are a couple of thousand people in here, on top of the patients. They’re not on the computer.”

  “Then let me come in and check. I’m here to take them with me; either way I don’t want to stay.”

  The guard shook his head regretfully. “Can’t do it, bro. Maybe when the buses come you can check out people as they’re boarding.”

  “What buses?”

  “To evacuate the patients to Subiaco.”

  “You have contact with other hospitals? You still have phones, internet?”

  The guard glared at Matt as if he’d been tricked into revealing a secret, but it wasn’t the one Matt had been hoping for. “No, but that’s the protocol for a fire risk. The buses will come from Subiaco.”

  Matt didn’t know if this was wishful thinking, but if the hospital chain had the resources to keep the lights on, maybe they really could make a vehicle run, if only in the relative cool of night.

  “How long until they come?”

  The guard turned his palms up.

  “Can I wait in the car park?”

  “No problem.”

  Matt withdrew. There were a dozen or so cars arrayed haphazardly on the lot, but behind them another set were parked neatly between the lines. He hadn’t taken the time to examine any of them closely, thinking he’d get the quickest answer just by asking, but now he saw that there were at least three that might have been Selena’s.

  He walked from one to the other. The third one looked less and less familiar the closer he came, but when he reached a vantage where the license plate was visible, it was hers. He froze for a moment, doubting his eyes; if they’d been on foot they might have followed the same signs of life here that he had, but if the car had still been running why hadn’t they driven on farther?

  He returned to the entrance and banged again. The guard appeared, stern-faced.

  “My sister’s car is here,” Matt explained. “So they must be inside.”

  “Yeah, that’s easy to say.”

  “I’m trying to take them off your hands!” Matt protested. “Don’t you want three less people to evacuate?”

  “Just wait for the buses.”

  Matt said, “I have a boat.” He gestured toward the river. “I can take fifty people to Fremantle, right now.”

  “Do you have paramedics on board?” the guard asked mockingly.

  “I thought you had a couple of thousand non-patients. If there’s anyone who can walk a hundred meters, I can take them.”

  The guard stepped back from the door, then spoke at length into his radio. Eventually, he approached Matt again.

  “If you’re fucking with me . . .” he warned.

  Matt couldn’t think of anything to say to placate him. After a moment, the guard unlocked the door.

  When Matt stepped into the lobby, his skin tingled strangely and he felt his heart racing, as if his body’s shock at the abruptness of the change was threatening to overwhelm its relief.

  The guard patted him down and searched his backpack. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Matthew Fleming.”

  He repeated that into his mic, then told Matt, “They’re expecting you.”

  The bulbs in the stairwell were out, leaving only the glow of green emergency lights. When he reached the first floor, he pushed through the exit into the subdued brightness of a ward.

  People were sitting in the carpeted corridors, packing the floor as far as he could see. The place stank more strongly of sweat than disinfectant, and the air seemed to vacillate between a welcome chill and the inside of an armpit, as if each stroke of the air conditioners’ compressors left them on the verge of being overwhelmed by the sheer wattage of assembled body heat.

  There was a narrow path left between the evacuees. Matt wove his way along it gingerly, asking anyone who met his eyes, “Selena, Jim and Alison Fleming?” Most people ignored him, but a few shook their heads or muttered, “Sorry.” Some clutched shopping bags stuffed with papers and items of clothing; others seemed to have no possessions but their phones, which they peered at and fidgeted with, but never pocketed, as if they might be reconnected at any moment.

  It took him half an hour to search the whole floor; he moved on to the next. The car proved that they were here, somewhere. Unless he was wrong about the license plate. Unless he’d misremem
bered it, or hallucinated the match.

  A guard on the second floor stopped him and discussed his mission on the radio for a couple of minutes before begrudgingly letting him proceed. “There are surgical patients in the rooms, so don’t go traipsing filth in there.”

  “I won’t.” Matt looked across at the carpet-dwellers, who seemed more despondent than those below. There was a crying toddler squirming in his father’s arms, but everyone else seemed crushed into a defeated silence. How long had they been waiting for the mythical buses? Matt’s intestines spasmed and he made a detour into the toilets, which had somehow been kept spotless; every bowl and every floor tile gleamed, even as the air reeked with its own unscrubbable record of the traffic.

  He spread sanitizer on his hands and scrubbed his face, afraid he might look so haggard that the world he’d come from would seem even less appealing to his family than this disintegrating city. At least he’d kept shaving on the Mandjet, even when it began to feel like a vain self-indulgence, but his hair had gone wild and his bottom lip had split open from the desiccating wind and sprouted an elaborate protruding scab as it tried to heal under constant flexion.

  Back out in the ward, he trod slowly through the crowd. “Selena, Jim and Alison Fleming?” he repeated.

  A nurse caught his eye. “Are you a relative of James Fleming?”

  “I’m his son.”

  “Can you come with me?”

  Matt followed her, a few steps behind; the throng parted for her more willingly than for him. She led him to a room; Selena and his mother were inside, seated by an empty bed.

  When Selena recognized him she approached and embraced him. His mother stayed seated, not looking up.

  “Dad had a heart attack,” Selena said quietly. “They tried a few things, but he died about an hour ago.”

  Unwillingly, Matt started sobbing. Selena clung onto him until he went quiet.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “We were leaving the house,” Selena replied. “As soon as he stepped out, he got a pain in his chest. He didn’t tell anyone until we’d driven for a while, but then Mum saw it on his face and asked him what was wrong, and we turned back to the hospital.”

  Matt went and sat beside his mother. He tried to put an arm around her, but she pushed him away irritably.

  “Every summer, your father made sure the yard was clean,” she said. “There were no dead leaves in the gutters, and there was always a firebreak around the house. We have nothing to reproach ourselves for.”

  “I know,” Matt replied. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

  His mother glared at him. “Really? Someone must have been neglecting their property to allow it to spread like that.”

  Matt said, “It’s still spreading. So we can’t stay here.”

  “Selena’s going to drive me to Leo’s house.”

  Matt glanced at Selena; that was thirty kilometers away. “Are you sure he still has power?”

  “No,” Selena admitted. “And I’m not sure the car would make it that far; it was already acting strangely when we left.”

  Matt said, “My friend has a boat down on the river. We’re going to take as many people as we can to Fremantle.” He decided not to press things any further; there’d be time to talk about the Mandjet later.

  His mother turned to him angrily. “Who do we know in Fremantle?” she demanded.

  “No one,” Matt replied. “But we can’t stay here, the fire’s coming.”

  He explained his plans to Selena, then stepped out of the room and approached the guard who stood glowering by the stairwell. Once he had permission, he turned to address the evacuees.

  “If there’s anyone who wants a ride down the river, I can take about fifty people. Just walk east through the park, then wait by the yacht club; I need to bring the boat there from farther upriver.” He glanced at his watch. “We should be leaving at one A.M., and we can stop at any jetty along the way. But it’s up to you to get to safety from there; I can’t offer anything but the boat trip.”

  A few people stirred tentatively, but most of the looks he got back were dubious.

  “Does your boat have aircon?” a woman asked.

  “No, it’s got a stinking fishing hold with a melting block of ice.”

  Matt forced himself not to walk back into the room where his father had died; nothing he said to his mother seemed to be helping. He took the stairs down to the lobby.

  “Did you find your family?” the guard asked.

  “I did, thanks. I’m going to bring the boat now.”

  The guard grunted noncommittally; Matt probably looked like someone who’d have trouble finding an acquaintance who’d loan him a surfboard. He waited for the guard to unlock the doors, then braced himself and pushed through.

  He walked back the way he’d come; the winding route along the riverbank might have been cooler, but it would have been three times as long. Marching toward the flames against the protests of his body felt like a surreal, interminable torture, the kind of thing his mind might invent while he was aching and shivering in a fever dream.

  When he reached the rowing club jetty he couldn’t see the trawler anywhere, and his knees almost buckled in despair. Why would Thiru have set off downriver already, when the plan had been to wait until dawn?

  He gathered up some loose rocks from the ground, then went to the end of the jetty and hung the flag from the edge, anchored in place by the rocks. Then he lay down on the jetty and closed his eyes. If he’d thought things through before he’d left the Mandjet, he could have asked Arun to cobble together a portable VHF radio for him, so he could talk to the trawler from land. Maybe Thiru had decided that the fire was coming so close that there was no chance of a rendezvous here. That was perfectly reasonable. He couldn’t have expected Matt to find his family so soon.

  Matt got to his feet, packed up the flag, and trudged back up to Guildford Road. He knelt down and vomited into someone’s barren garden, then he started shaking, too weak to stand again.

  “Brother, where you going?”

  He looked up and saw Thiru approaching, but it was hard to be sure it was not a hallucination; Matt had never seen him on land before. He didn’t have the strength to call out to him; he waited until Thiru arrived before he spoke. “I thought you’d already gone west.”

  “No. There was a police boat coming up this side, so I thought I’d make myself scarce.”

  “Good call,” Matt declared. Thiru had his passport on the trawler, but a sufficiently officious prick might still have made trouble over the lack of an entry visa.

  He sat down beside Matt. “Let me catch my breath.”

  “Is the boat tied up?”

  “Of course. You found your family or not?”

  Matt told him everything that had happened at the hospital.

  Thiru shook his head sadly. “Sorry about your father.” He glanced toward the fire then got to his feet and offered Matt a hand up. “Better not keep the passengers waiting.”

  * * *

  The engine took six tries to start. “From now on, we leave it idling,” Matt suggested. Thiru said nothing, but his expression made it clear that this advice was superfluous.

  Matt had feared that no one would take up his offer, but as the trawler approached the yacht club jetty he counted at least forty people waiting for them. At first he couldn’t see Selena or his mother, but then he spotted them near the back of the queue.

  He jumped off and secured the ropes, then helped Thiru get a ramp into position. The deck of the trawler sat about a meter higher than the jetty, but the river was still and though the ramp creaked and shifted a little, no one lost their footing coming on board.

  When the trawler was untied and Matt was back on deck, Selena approached him.

  “I tried the car, but it wouldn’t even start,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Where would we go, if we got off in Fremantle?”

  Matt shook his head. “I have no idea.” />
  Only about a dozen people took refuge in the hold, all families with young children in obvious distress from the heat. Matt’s mother sat on the crowded deck, her eyes to the floor. He took her a water bottle; she accepted it but stared back at him accusingly, as if he were willfully making things hard for her.

  Once the trawler was underway, a group of teenagers came forward, asking to be dropped off at a jetty near the middle of the city. Matt joined Thiru at the helm and pointed out the way, then went to help the kids disembark. As they walked away across the dead grass of the picnic grounds, he saw two patches of yellowish light in the distance. Maybe they’d be lucky.

  Another, slightly older group got off at the university boat club, heading for a residential college they’d heard was well-equipped to ride out the summer. Then one of the families left to walk among the discreetly illuminated mansions of Dalkeith, sure that the children’s grandparents had a safe place for them all.

  After that, there were no more requests to stop.

  As they passed under Fremantle Bridge, Selena said, “If we go around to the fishing boat harbor, it’s just a short walk from there to the hospital. That’s worth checking out, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” The trawler had sailed straight into the mouth of the river, but the harbor she was talking about was on the ocean, and if there’d been signs of life behind it Matt could easily have missed them. He went to the helm and told Thiru the plan.

  The harbor was almost empty; Matt could only see two other boats moored. When they came alongside the jetty, three of the passengers jumped off before Matt had even begun tying up the boat, and they disappeared into the night without a word.

  The rest, though, seemed reluctant to disembark. Matt guessed that they’d just wanted to travel as far from the fire as possible, but they had no friends or family nearby.