by Eric Brown
Jenner had a few, but the Director had heard them all before. He had asked a couple of routine questions before Magnusson cut the connection. Sensing his unease, Cahla looked up at him with concern.
When the crate of gee-gaws had arrived, Jenner sent McKenzie and Patel to Ey’an territory to hand out the gifts.
Four days ago he suggested that they return to monitor the success of the distribution. It should have been a routine field-trip; there was no way he could have foreseen the present situation. He told himself that he should not feel responsible for what might have happened out there, but that did nothing to ease his nagging guilt.
That afternoon he sat down at the computer in his study and began the monthly report. A couple of hours later, not halfway through listing his teams’ progress, he decided to complete the report later. He moved to the communications room and tried again to raise McKenzie and Patel, without success.
At sunset, Cahla found him staring at the wall. She pushed the fly-netting door open with her toes and laid her cheek against the jamb. ‘Jen, make food I. Hungry you?’
They dined on the back verandah as the sun slipped over the horizon and the evening cooled. Cahla had prepared a salad, and they ate in customary silence, Cahla sitting cross-legged on her chair and picking through her food like a bird. Later she fell into her hammock and swung herself to sleep, a negligent arm and leg hanging free.
Jenner sat and stared into the dark jungle beneath the fulminating sky, contemplating McKenzie and what action he should take. Tomorrow, if there was still no word from his deputy, he would contact Baudelaire and request, as he had done four years ago when Laura went missing, that Magnusson should send out a search party.
The sun was a burning filament on the horizon, giving off slow-motion fountains of molten ejecta, when he left Cahla sleeping peacefully and moved inside.
He sat wearily on his bed before undressing. He picked up the holo-cube from the bedside table and stared at it. His wife smiled out at him - an attractive woman, in her late thirties when the cube was made, with a tanned, lined face and short blonde hair streaked with grey. She had an arm around Rebecca, pulling the little girl to her chest.
Jenner had stared so often and so hard at the image of his daughter that now in his mind’s eye, when he thought of Rebecca, he saw only this likeness: a laughing face, fair hair, wide, bright blue eyes . . . Over the years the pain of grief had muted, from a sharp, insistent agony, to a dull infrequent ache. But the years had also dulled his memory. It was a cruel paradox that now, when at last he could bear to think about his daughter, he had difficulty recalling specific instances of their time together. He could no longer recall the sound of her voice, her laughter.
The death of their daughter, in a monorail accident on Earth seven years ago, had brought Jenner and Laura closer together. They had been approaching the end of their marriage contract, and in all likelihood might never have renewed it but for their loss. They had discovered more about each other in the hollow year that followed the accident than they had in the previous five. Jenner had found a strength and resolve deep within Laura that made the thought of being without her - of going through the process of finding someone else, and trying to get to know them just as well - impossible to contemplate, and clearly Laura had undergone a similar re-evaluation. When Jenner suggested, tentatively, afraid of being spurned, that perhaps they should take out another contract, she had agreed without hesitation.
Two years later Jenner was posted to Tartarus to work on the evacuation programme, and Laura had secured a grant from her university to study the planet’s tribal people.
They had lived together at the Station for a year, Laura going off on field-trips into the interior for weeks at a time, sometimes accompanied by students, but often alone. Their marriage settled into a comfortable, amicable relationship, no longer passionate, but full of trust and understanding. Their only difference of opinion concerned the fate of the tribes-people. Through her contact with the tribes, Laura had come to sympathise with their desire to die with their planet, a desire Jenner admitted he could understand, but could hardly accede to . . . Their infrequent arguments centred on the fate of the tribes: Laura had argued that as an intelligent people they should be granted their wish to remain when the supernova blew; Jenner that they were a primitive people who should not be allowed to commit collective suicide because of belief in pagan gods and a desire to be reunited with their ancestors.
They had argued bitterly on the night before she disappeared. She had tried to persuade him to talk to Magnusson about allowing certain tribes to remain on Tartarus, but Jenner had refused. He could not be part of sanctioning what might be described as genocide.
The following morning, Laura had taken a power-boat for a three week trip upriver with the intention of filming a local tribe. They had kept in radio contact for a day, and then she had failed to answer his call. He had not been unduly worried at the time. Laura knew the jungle well, knew how to look after herself. But as the next day passed without word from her, and then the next, his earlier confidence evaporated, turned to alarm. On the fourth day he called Baudelaire and, later, accompanied the search team on a sweep of the route she had taken. They had found nothing, no wreckage, no personal possessions, no trace of Laura’s passage upriver. Jenner had contacted all the tribes-people in the area, but they had come across no sign of his wife. After a fortnight the search was called off, and the sudden inaction pitched Jenner into despair. He thought back to their argument on the night before she vanished, and was consumed by guilt that their final words had been so bitter.
As the weeks turned into months, and then, incredibly, into years, he lived day by day with the thought always at the back of his mind that today she would return, and, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. Like this, bit by bit, he managed to survive. Over the past year he had even come to consider what before would have been unthinkable – how Laura might have met her end: an accident on the river, a wild animal attack, illness . . . He only hoped that, however she had died, it had been swift and painless.
He replaced the holo-cube on the bedside table, swallowed a couple of sleeping pills, and passed a dreamless night.
* * * *
The following morning Jenner was in the communications room, having once again failed to reach McKenzie and Patel, when Cahla burst in. The screen door smashed against the wall and shivered in its flimsy frame. She stood in the opening, eyes wide. ‘Jen! Come, now. Come!’
‘What’s wrong, Cahla?’ He had rarely seen her this animated.
She leaned forward, balling her fists and banging the air in frustration. ‘Come now! Out there - person!’
She grabbed his hand and tugged him from his chair.
They crossed the verandah and went down the steps, then halted in the compound. Jenner grimaced as the sunlight pounded his bare head. Silently, with a peculiarly alert stance and minute movements of her head, Cahla scrutinised the perimeter fence on three sides.
He put a hand around her shoulders. ‘I don’t see anyone.’
‘Here, was! Man!’
‘Who? A team worker? McKenzie?’
‘Nai - tribesman.’
At that second, Jenner saw him. Evidently, so did Cahla. Her body stiffened beneath his arm. She pointed. ‘There!’
The tribesman was jogging around the compound, inside the perimeter fence. From time to time he dropped to one knee, sketched something in the dust with his finger, then continued running.
‘What’s he doing, Cahla?’
‘Jungle spirits follow him,’ she said. ‘Do karakai, he.’
‘What does he want?’
Cahla twisted her lips to one side of her face, admitting puzzlement.
Never in his tour of duty here had a tribesman come to him - always it had been the other way around. He realised that he was sweating. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face.
The tribesman disappeared around the rear of the compound, and minut
es later reappeared and jogged to the spot where Jenner had first seen him. Then he stopped, turned and faced them. For a couple of seconds he stood still, very upright, something proud and indomitable, almost arrogant, in his bearing.
Then he walked with measured paces across the compound.
He was tall and slim, tanned and blond. He wore a loincloth and body-paint, green stripes covering his torso and arms. In a diagonal from shoulder to hip was slung a thong of leather, holding a dozen darts like a primitive bandolier. In his left hand he carried a long blow-pipe.
Watching him, Jenner could not dispel the sense of incongruity at beholding a Caucasian in such a guise.
The tribesman stopped before them. His expression was neutral but bold, reminding Jenner of Cahla. Oddly, he felt suddenly possessive of the girl, and he tightened his grip around her shoulders.
He held out his free hand. ‘Welcome to the station.’
Cahla spoke in her own tongue, translating. The guttural sound seemed strange coming from lips he had heard speaking only fractured English.
The tribesman replied. ‘Dhaykum arkim, karan ee.’
Cahla glanced up at Jenner. ‘Tribesman, say he, “Honoured he. Be here pleased he.”‘
‘Can you ask him where he comes from? What he wants here?’
Cahla stared at the tribesman, repeating the questions. The tribesman shifted his gaze from the girl to Jenner, then back again. He nodded, tipping his head quickly upwards.
His reply was a rapid stream of incomprehensible plosives. Jenner assumed an expression of polite attention. In the full glare of the sun, he was beginning to wilt.
When the tribesman paused, Cahla said, ‘Far away from. Ey’an he. With you talk he. His name - Makhabi.’
Jenner took hold of Cahla’s chin. ‘Ey’an he? Are you sure?’
She gave a restricted nod. ‘Yay, Ey’an he.’
He felt suddenly dizzy with a combination of the intense heat and the unprecedented situation.
‘Will you tell Makhabi to come into the shade?’ he said, gesturing towards the verandah.
Reluctantly, it seemed, the tribesman agreed. He followed Jenner and Cahla up the steps. The transition from sunlight to shade was as refreshing as entering a pool of cool water. They sat in a triangle, cross-legged, on the rush matting.
‘Will you tell Makhabi that two of my workers visited the Ey’an people three days ago. Did he see them? Do his people know what happened to my friends?’
Cahla repeated the questions. Makhabi spoke quickly, perhaps dismissively.
Jenner nodded as Cahla translated the replies. Again, Makhabi assumed ignorance. He knew nothing. ‘Ask him what he wishes to discuss with me, what he wants to talk to me about.’
This question, when relayed, provoked a torrent of words from Makhabi. Cahla nodded at intervals, taking in his speech. At last the tribesman stopped, and the girl licked her lips, looking at Jenner from beneath her fringe.
‘Say he, with him go you. Land of Ey’an people. Will be safe you. Danger no.’
‘What do his people want with me?’
Cahla nodded. ‘Kancha ki, leader Ey’an people - with you talk. Ey’an people and dying sun about.’
Jenner released a breath, staring into the tribesman’s green eyes. He decided that there was no reason why he could not leave the station - it was the perfect opportunity not only to look into what had happened to McKenzie and Patel, but to speak face to face with the leader of the Ey’an people, an honour never before accorded to his team.
‘Very well, Cahla. Tell him, yes. I’ll go. I’ll ready a flier and we’ll set off in . . . say one hour.’
Cahla turned to the tribesman, repeated Jenner’s answer. Makhabi stared at Jenner, made a quick karate chop on the floor between them.
Cahla flinched.
‘What now?’
‘Say he, flier no! Flier evil. Up river in his boat go.’
‘Very well. But we’ll take my boat. Is that okay?’
Makhabi listened to Cahla, reluctantly nodded.
‘I need to collect some things, food and water, a tent.’ He hesitated, looked at Cahla. ‘Will you come with me, to translate?’
* * * *
On the few occasions that Jenner had seen the river from the air, it had appeared as a series of sluggish, serpentine loops and bends, the only interruption in the jungle which extended to the horizon in every direction. Seen from the boat, its speed reduced to walking pace by rafts of algae, the river was a claustrophobic avenue flanked by overhanging trees and often covered completely, a twilight tunnel in which everything, the heat, the animal cries, the very oppressiveness of this environment, was emphasised. From the air, the alienness of the jungle could be ignored - it might have been any tropical jungle, anywhere - but steering the boat upriver, passing grotesquely torsioned plants and trees, Jenner could be in no doubt that he was on an alien world a hundred light years from Earth.
Makhabi sat on the very prow of the boat, blow-pipe raised, his torso as erect as some primitive figurehead. The tribesman’s own boat was tethered to the stern by a length of plastic rope.
Jenner was at the stern, attending to the tiller. Between them sat Cahla, facing Jenner, her long legs outstretched. Before setting off, Jenner had erected an awning over the back of the boat. They were spared the full force of the sun, though nothing could be done to reduce the heat, and the humid air was as unbreathable as steam.
He glanced at his watch. They had been travelling for half a day. It was still a couple of hours from sunset. Ahead, the disc of the sun could be glimpsed down the channel of encroaching jungle. Tongues of flame licked from its circumference, and Jenner thought that it resembled those quaint illustrations of Earth’s own sun, drawn by ancient astronomers.
From time to time, great flying insects flickered from nowhere and alighted on the boat as if curious. Sometimes Cahla would put her face close to the magnificent, multicoloured creatures, admiring their beauty. Occasionally she flicked away the insects, her sour expression suggesting they were poisonous. Once she quickly plucked an insect between thumb and forefinger, pulled off its wings, removed its head and popped the resulting delicacy into her mouth.
Jenner sat back and watched the girl who over the course of the past three years he had come to love.
He often thought back to the day she arrived at the Station.
It had been almost a year after Laura’s disappearance, a year in which Jenner had become ever more withdrawn, unable to open up to those members of his team he had formerly considered his closest colleagues: Bob McKenzie, Chang and one or two others. He had been torn by the desire to leave the Station and Tartarus altogether, remove himself from the cause of his pain, and yet at the same time to remain there in the ludicrous hope that one day Laura might return.
Then one morning Martin Chang came running across the compound and into the operations room with news of the discovery. Jenner and a medic had followed him, leaving the compound and entering the margin of cleared jungle between the Station and the river. They had hurried down the timber walkway to where a tribal canoe was lodged in a tangle of reeds at the river’s edge.
The sight of the little girl lying in the canoe had taken Jenner’s breath away. Her resemblance to Rebecca was remarkable; the same fair hair, oval face, slightness of limbs. But perhaps what affected Jenner even more was that, laid out in the narrow confines of the canoe, she brought back memories of the very last time he had looked upon his daughter, at rest in her coffin on the day before the funeral.
He had left Chang and the medic to revive her, returned to his work, and tried to put the girl from his thoughts. She was taken to the infirmary, washed and examined and pronounced fit and well. Jenner heard from Chang that most probably the girl - Cahla, she called herself - had been fishing in the boat, had fainted and drifted downstream.
Jenner resolved to take no interest in the girl. He would detail one of his team to take her out on the next field-trip and reunite her with
her tribe.
Then, one night, the cumulative loss of his wife and his daughter became too much, and had to be quelled in some fashion, with drink or drugs, or human contact. He crossed the compound to the infirmary, slipped inside and sat by Cahla’s bed, staring at her as she slept.
In the days that followed he had shied away from becoming involved with Cahla. She would be leaving soon, returning to her people, and to allow himself to get close to her would be folly. But the tribes approached by Chang claimed no knowledge of Cahla, and as the weeks turned to months, and Jenner found himself becoming involuntarily drawn to the girl, he ordered off the search for her people, claiming that his teams had better things to do. Not a day passed without his spending an hour or two in her company. He taught her to speak English, played simple games with her, showed her around the Station. Her savagery, her elemental nature, seemed at odds with the restricted environment of the Station, and yet she never made any move or request to leave. After a year with Cahla around the place, it came to Tenner with a sudden heart-stopping jolt of realisation that he could no longer contemplate life without her. She had ceased to be a replacement, a substitute for his daughter, but had become an individual in her own right, a person with her own characteristics, moods and temperaments. He decided that, when he left Tartarus, Cahla would leave with him.