Terra Nullius

by Claire G. Coleman

  There was nothing to do but wait. Nothing that is except investigate the school in the outback that was his official, but really a cover, mission on this planet.

  Chapter 16

  For too long we have seen the Native as either a hindrance or a cheap, if somewhat unreliable, source of untrained labour. Their technology was primitive, they lack our education, they are provincial and naive, having never seen someone from elsewhere, having barely left their planet. They had never even sent anything more advanced than an unmanned drone out past the moon of their own tiny planet.

  Being technologically more advanced than them, we have always assumed they must be stupid; after all, we build FTL drives, we invented the plasma cannon, we use fusion generators. It has taken us too long to realise they are not stupid, they are not primitive animals.

  Until we came here we had never heard of the thing that humans call ‘Art’ – forms of creative decoration, forms of expression that our culture has never produced. Humans have made Art, it seems, for as long as they have been humans, if not for longer. Humans have been producing Art since before we started talking. Using Art they can say things we have not ever learnt how to say.

  Now, having consolidated our control of this planet, having enslaved its people completely, we have time to better examine this place, this planet, this culture we have taken over. It has taken us too long to understand this Art thing that humans create; we are only now, decades after the colonisation, learning to appreciate it.

  We are searching for Art and discovering, too late, that the works of Art we destroyed when we destroyed museums and galleries were the greatest treasure we have ever found in the galaxy. We want more Art, yet we have discovered that we have mostly destroyed the vibrant human culture that created it, that nurtured it, that made it possible. Years on and we are desperate to salvage what fragments of human Art are left. The ‘junk’ we destroyed, that humans guarded with their very lives, was an irreplaceable treasure. From what we discovered, from the scraps we can find, we destroyed a lot.

  What Art we have collected has been taken by ship back home, there to be kept safe in universities and museums. What Art we have salvaged has amazed and astounded, delighted and enlivened the people back home. What’s more, our collection is the envy of all the other planets in the Home Sector of space.

  Now we want more, Art is potentially the most valuable commodity this planet can produce, and we can get more. Although the cultures that created the most profound of the Art we lost are also gone, the human tendency to produce Art still exists. Children when left alone, when they have a moment without something important to do, will ‘doodle’ to use a human word, will scribble small fragments of Art on whatever surface they have with whatever medium they have available. If there is nothing else, not even a rock and a piece of blackened wood, they will draw on the sand with their fingers. Seemingly the human tendency to produce Art is innate and cannot be eliminated, even if we now wanted to.

  I call upon the Colonial Administration for help. Humans who know about Art, humans who remember any culture at all, must be found. Native children who draw, who ‘doodle’ must be collected. We must bring these humans together and give them nothing to do, no task other than to produce the Art that is, as far as we know, the unique talent of the humans.

  – Julas Salis, Chief Executive Officer, Louvre Art Centre and Gallery, Paris

  Johnny Star set a punishing pace as they raced south-east towards Jerramungup, and away from the inevitable pursuit. As they had hoped, the homestead they had raided had a map, something they had not bothered to look for before Jacky came. What use was a map when it didn’t matter where you were going? Johnny had used one many times so he controlled it, he consulted it regularly – an electronic device smaller than his palm that projected a hologram of the terrain around them.

  He knew that humans once had paper maps – strange 2D representations of the land. He had seen them, had confiscated them from human rebels in his old life. He had once even seen in a museum a device humans called a GPS. It was small and plastic, and he had heard that when it was working it was a lot like a map, although surely the small 2D screen it displayed on would not compare favourably to a Holo.

  Rising as the sun peeked over the horizon they walked towards it, keeping away from the Settler roads, deep calm canals cut through the forest, through hills, caring not what damage they did. Settler roads, crossroads, beacons, were used as navigation aids, and the map made navigation easy. Whenever they could do it while invisible in the scrub they watched the road; how better to see if Settlers suddenly entered the area, suddenly got too close.

  With caution again bordering on the paranoid, they even avoided what was left of the ancient Native roads – ribbons of hard black stones held together with solidified petroleum. Johnny marvelled at the effective, efficient use of low-technology materials – a perfect road for wheeled vehicles. The petroleum base, a bi-product of fuel production, gave the roads a flexibility and durability that was frankly astounding. If he needed more proof that the humans were more intelligent than other Toads believed them to be, here it was.

  Now the roads were cracked and potholed by the ages, cut through in places by the Settler canals that disregarded the Native roads when they did not follow them. The Settlers often utilised the already cleared ground, using the cuttings through hills the humans had made long ago.

  Surely they were still pursued; Jacky was wanted for absconding, at least, and the Settlers must have identified Star’s gang when they stole the map. The Troopers would be coming. Their best hope was that the Troopers didn’t know where they were going, if they did then they would take fliers and get there first. Nobody complained, although you could tell from their laboured breathing by the middle of the day that they were suffering. How could they talk about the heat and the dry, about their discomfort, when Johnny, less adapted than them, suffering more than they were, did not whine?

  The landscape dried out as they walked east, the trees first getting taller, more impressive. Breaking eventually out of the tall-tree country they found a more open area, drier, grasslands with scatterings of trees. The trees were young, they might have not been there when the Settlers took the planet.

  ‘There were over six billion, maybe even seven billion Natives, humans,’ Johnny quickly corrected himself, ‘when we arrived here, and all this land looked empty then,’ he mused. They walked a bit longer in silence. ‘I think these fields were used to grow grain, for humans to eat, or maybe it was grassland for those animals you called sheep.

  ‘I saw a sheep in the zoo back home. There are still some out here in the wild I have heard. Not the woolly ones – they can’t live unless someone trims their wool and the humans are not caring for them anymore, we won’t let them; but there were other sheep – they shed their wool, they might have survived. Them and things called “goats”, which are like them but tougher. If there are any human farm animals still running wild it would be goats, I think. There are other human animals that survive out okay on their own; they are apparently still out there. I wonder if we will see one.’

  ‘Why did you even come here?’ Jacky sounded like he was struggling to articulate his thoughts. ‘You don’t belong here, you have another world, one that is yours.’ Johnny turned to look at Jacky and stopped, the young human’s face was writhing with thoughts and emotions he could not begin to articulate.

  ‘Other worlds actually, although this one was the least well-suited we have colonised. It’s too dry, the whole planet is too dry, this continent is even drier, this continent is as dry as bone.’

  ‘Then leave,’ Jacky snarled, ‘leave and let us have our planet, leave and take your animals with you, take it all with you. Go home and let us have our home.’

  ‘I would love to go home.’ Johnny’s tone was strange, he tried to show Jacky with his eyes how he felt and saw nothing but anger and confusion on the human
’s face. ‘They will not let me go home, they will kill me if they catch me, that is one way of being rid of me I guess. Besides, if I go home it won’t help, I can’t make them all come with me.’

  A silence descended that everyone was scared to break, the tension threatening to tear them apart. Johnny felt like the whole gang was made of tissue, of spider’s web. What was it that was keeping them together? They knew from the map that Jerramungup was not far. Jacky started to walk like the drive to move was all he had left, like he was walking a race where the prize was survival, forcing the others to almost run to keep up, unable to contain his excitement, unaware he was almost running. Tucker admonished him for running several times and then gave it up as pointless. After that the gang just matched his punishing speed.

  Entering a cool dark thicket of trees, tall and straight, narrow trunked, the undergrowth wild and dangerous, they slowed. Johnny Star stood for a moment, relaxed in the cool shade as he could never do in the hot, dry grasslands. His stance, his walk, felt subtly yet recognisably hopeful, he even felt hopeful. Maybe he would finally be able to do something useful, something right, in the pathetic, selfish, pointless shadow of a life he had been living. Maybe he could do something other than just survive.

  ‘I can’t go home,’ Johnny mused to his friends, ‘and I don’t even have to, if I could get passage on a ship. There are other worlds. I could try and find a way onto a ship, go to one of our other planets, or even to another empire. There are other people nothing like us, they have planets too.’ A cool breeze flowed over Johnny’s skin bringing memories of home. ‘We would never let them come here, the other species, even the ones we have conquered, even the ones in our Empire, even when we lie to them and tell them they are equal citizens. This planet is for us, for the Toads.’ He did not see the filthy look Crow Joe threw in his direction.

  ‘Ah, what’s the point, I don’t want to go to another world, another empire. I want to go home and I can’t. I may as well die here where I have friends, looking after my friends is all I have left.’

  Returning Jacky to his home, to his family, might not quite make up for all the evil Johnny had done, all the evil his people had done and were doing, but it would be better than nothing. He hoped it would be better than nothing.

  Reaching the daylight at the edge of the trees they stopped, cautious, curious, staring out onto an old human road, a distant town. It did not look promising; weedy trees, clumping grasses, strangling vines grew among damaged buildings. The gang just stood there and stared, a bleak hopeless look on Jacky’s face. Johnny recognised the look, he’d seen other faces wear it; what the face wears when the soul behind it has lost everything, even hope.

  Nothing like a family could live there, in that emptiness. It was as bleak as Jacky’s experience, as his life. Surely this was a home for rats, for rats and ghosts – even dogs would desert this place. They could not even see a sign of a Native camp; if anyone lived there they were well hidden. There was no noise from the tiny knot of men, no noise from the ruin before them as Jacky fell to his knees.

  He only stirred when the wind changed, blowing the faintest whiff of old smoke into his nostrils. Jacky followed the scent like a questing dog. All the others, all but Johnny, reacted like they could smell it too. They slowed, holding back so Jacky, frantic as a moth batting itself to death against a light, could find whatever, whoever it was first. He dashed this way and that, down cracked roads and weedy paths, through dead buildings and around rusted hulks of cars. Pebbles and ground glass crunched underfoot as he ran, then small stones scattered like a scared school of tiny fish when he suddenly came to a halt.

  The man was wiry and old, dressed in rags, seated with his back to Jacky, hunched almost into a ball. Before him were the embers of a fire, smouldering, dying, merely glowing, a thin wisp of smoke fleeing to the sky. Maybe he lacked the strength or the emotional capacity to get more wood, maybe he was lazy. His hacking cough – surely his lung was trying to escape – was the only sound in a world holding its breath. His grey hair was as long as a woman’s, greasy enough to cook with.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Jacky’s voice was shy, shamed, tentative, yet still it broke the silence like a gunshot. The old man showed no signs of hearing.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Jacky said again, louder, as the group with him held their collective breath.

  The old man turned, casually, as someone who had heard a noise but was clueless as to its source. It took his eyes a moment to focus, to see that he was not alone. The scream he released then almost ended his life as every armed man drew at once. It was not a human-sounding scream, nor was it Settler; Johnny was reminded of the screech of a terrified rat.

  Backing away on his arse he continued to scream, the painful noise only getting shriller as his watery eyes lay on Johnny’s Settler face.

  ‘Whu? Wha? Whoareyou?’ When he found the words they poured out in a rush, ‘whayoudoing here?’

  ‘Please, friend,’ began Johnny in his most amicable voice. The rest – ‘we mean you no harm’ – was buried under the weight of the screaming that rose in tone and lost the rest of its intelligibility.

  Shrugging away the futility, Johnny stepped back, behind his friends.

  ‘Please, sir,’ Jacky tried, pushing the nearest drawn gun down with his hand, ‘we will not harm you, we need your help.’ The old man stopped screaming, then stopped his desperate back-pedalling when his hand, leading the way where he could not see, contacted the hot edge of his fire. The fire was almost dead but was still hot, the burned hand must have hurt a lot, he screamed again. Jacky walked a pace closer then turned to Johnny and the gang.

  ‘Please, gentlemen, this poor old man must be cold without his fire.’ Although the air was not cold, they nodded. ‘Could you help him with some wood, so we can sit around his fire and warm ourselves?’

  When finally alone with the old man Jacky sat on his haunches reducing his unintended threat. ‘Please, sir,’ again, ‘is this Jerramungup?’

  ‘It was called that,’ came the belated, surprised reply, ‘“the place of the tall trees” in the language of the blackfellas who lived here, who lived here through two colonisations. There aren’t any left now. Now this is nowhere, and I must be nobody to still be here.’ The old man chuckled at that, clearly accustomed to laughing at his own jokes. ‘Who are you and why do you care?’

  ‘My name is Jacky, I think I was born here. I was taken from my family from here.’

  The old man stared hard at Jacky’s face, as if it was a book to read and he was missing his reading glasses. ‘I think I know your face,’ he said finally. ‘Your parents were here – you look a bit like old Fred anyhow, so you must be his kid they took. Your name wasn’t Jacky then; you were Fred Junior, or little Freddie.’

  Jacky leaned in closer, ready to jump into the old man’s eyes to steal the memory of his parents he did not have. ‘Where are they now?’ The hope in Jacky’s voice was louder than the words. From nebulous connections, from nothing but a name and a direction he had something, someone who knew them. He felt almost home.

  ‘They aren’t here,’ the old man said in a tone that dropped ‘you idiot’ at the end of the sentence. ‘The Settlers cleaned this place out years ago. They took everyone to the missions – everyone they didn’t kill that is. They came in the morning, first thing, took us all by surprise. We thought they wouldn’t bother, we kept to ourselves, never even stole anything.

  ‘No matter, they came talking about stealing, about someone stealing their livestock, they took everyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight.’

  ‘What about my parents?’ Jacky seemed trapped halfway between eager and terrified – here was the answer to the whereabouts of his long-lost family. ‘What about my parents?’

  The old man nodded, beaming, proud to deliver good news. ‘Your daddy, Fred, he fought hard, he had been a soldier before the Toads came, but, well, their guns were too st
rong. He’s rotting out there,’ he waved his hand vaguely, ‘near the old war memorial. Your mum, old Hattie, she gutted a Toad with a kitchen knife, bless her soul, she died just about right where you are standing.’

  Jacky’s heart followed his body to the ground, the ground where his mother had died, embraced him, nursed him, held him up.

  ‘We must be prepared,’ Esperance was firm, adamant, ‘they will come for us and we will be enslaved or worse, the women could end up in a baby factory . . . The lucky ones might be those who get killed.’

  The council sat in a circle in the middle of the biggest open space in camp, their grey hair the main reason, it seemed, for their status. Esperance paced the open space like a caged tiger, her agitated movements the main indicator of her mood. One of the elders, Old Bob, spoke, his scraggly white beard dancing with the rhythm of his whiny voice. ‘If they come, if they come, we will run as we always have.’

  The other grey-hairs in the circle nodded, their nods varying in tone from wise to sleepy, sometimes both. Exasperated, failing in her attempt not to show it, Esperance turned to look at her grandfather. The bemused smile on his face broke into a wild grin of affection; he looked almost ready to laugh. He seemed to be enjoying himself when the safety of the entire camp, their entire mob, was at stake.

  ‘We have moved and moved, every time we are worse off, every time we lose ground, lose possessions. Each camp is worse than the one before; we arrive weaker to a worse place and have less material to set up. One day a time will come when we don’t have the strength, the resources to move.’ Esperance was sick of repeating herself, surely they were sick of hearing it too.

  ‘There is no way we can stand and fight, we will all die.’ Another elder had spoken this time, and again they all nodded sagely, except Grandfather whose manic smile just got wider.