Terra Nullius

by Claire G. Coleman

  An eagle cried overhead, a message he knew he was incapable of reading. He didn’t know if even Tucker knew the language. He wished the eagle would talk to him, tell him everything would be okay, that one day there would be peace, that one day he and his people could earn the right to belong there.

  ‘I was not at this one,’ Johnny said eventually. ‘These bones are old, twenty years at least, back then I was still in the swamps back home.’

  ‘They are older than that,’ Tucker said, ‘might have been from the beginning, from when your people first came from the sky, when so many of us died.’

  ‘I was probably at school then, if I was even born,’ Johnny said. ‘I hated school, the teachers were even worse than parents, worse than the parents I only saw at holidays. As soon as we were hatched they took us there to that school, taught us to obey, to follow their damned rules, no matter how stupid the rules were. I have never known for sure how they kept track of whose parents were whose – just tagged eggs, hatched at the school, surely they get mixed up.

  ‘I hated them and they hated me, those things I called my parents. They didn’t care what happened to me, they didn’t help when I was arrested and sent here.’

  ‘I love my parents,’ Jacky said in an almost whisper, ‘I don’t remember them, at all really, but still I love them.’ The other humans nodded their understanding.

  ‘You people,’ Deadeye hissed at Johnny, ‘your people, they think we don’t love our children, that they can just take the children away and we won’t give a shit. You monsters are the ones who don’t even know what love is.’

  ‘While I regret you have placed me in the same category as the other Toads I have to agree with the sentiment.’ Johnny had slipped back into his mask of the suave outlaw; the conversation had helped him regain his composure. ‘My people don’t have the same family life as yours. We put society first and family second, you are the opposite. Yes, that makes us monsters compared to you.’

  That first night Father Grark was at the school they picnicked under the alien stars – the adults, the Settlers, seated at a long table, constructed from boards laid across trestles. They sat along one side, Grark in the middle with Bagra at his right side. The table was covered with an abundant, if simple, feast. The children sat on blankets, on stained sheets of canvas, on unrolled sheets of scuffed and scratched plastic, on the ground, getting up when brave enough to raid the food on the table. All of the Native children were too nervous, it seemed, to talk to the Settlers.

  There was nothing notable about the feast, except the quantity, but the children, though subdued, nevertheless reacted as if they had never seen so much food. Maybe they hadn’t, but that did not prove they were abused; maybe there had not been a feast for a long time. Certainly he would not expect to see a feast like this every day – it would be lacking in piety. Maybe they were just children – those of his own people would eat too much with a feast before them.

  ‘The children cooked the food in home-economics class – we take great care to teach them to cook well,’ Bagra said. ‘They don’t get to cook so much party food often. They are very excited to see what you think of the food.’

  Grark nodded and smiled, turned to the children and shone his smile over them. ‘It is certainly delicious and abundant, and they have got the spicing exactly right. Everything is pretty much perfect. Well done, little ones.’

  ‘We have found that young ones who can cook fare better when they leave here and look for work.’ Bagra looked pleased with herself as she spoke. ‘Most houses look for cooks, they will hire a cook even if they cannot afford any other servants, so we concentrate on teaching domestic chores, particularly cooking. Even if they do not find work as cooks it serves the girls well to learn how to do it. They might have families one day and will need to cook good food for them. The food they ate before they came here was not always the best, sometimes not even edible at all.’

  ‘How did they eat before, before we came?’

  ‘Their parents were neglectful – they seem incapable of feeding their children to a standard we would think even adequate, even edible. The children in the camps live short, empty, pointless lives, those we cannot get to a mission to teach. We do our best to educate, to care for the Natives, but their parents don’t seem to want us to bring them in, they resist, but they seem to forget their children after a while. At least they stop looking for them.’

  Grark nodded slowly, politely, although he was unsure what he believed. The Natives he had seen seemed to care for their children as much as his own people did, maybe more. What free children he had seen outside the mission seemed to be as well looked after as the conditions the parents lived in allowed. Schooling his expression well, he simply kept nodding, not trusting his mouth should it fall open.

  That night, as the moon rose, the Natives demonstrated their Native dance and song. Grark noted to himself, not yet trusting his mouth, that all their culture was considered worthless, except those parts that his people found beautiful. After the dance they sang a haunting lullaby from his own people. They performed it perfectly, with a soulful quality he could not pin down, a quality missing when the song was performed back home.

  There was something unfathomable about the Native voices; no two sang exactly the same note, yet the different tones combined to make the whole unfathomably much larger.

  He was surprised to be so moved – if he had been human he would have been moved to tears.

  ‘It’s called “harmony”, something primitive the Natives do,’ said the nun who had taken an interest in teaching the children to sing, ‘we don’t teach it to them. We cannot even get them to stop it when we try.’ Grark didn’t think it primitive at all. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard: massed voices singing in ‘harmony’, turning a song from his language – admittedly relatively tuneless compared to Native songs – into something that filled the ears and heart.

  When he went to bed, after being introduced to the children, that sound, that singing was still playing in his ears.

  Chapter 18

  We have overwhelmed them completely, we have taken them down, we control everything, everywhere and every one of them. They were defeated almost as soon as we landed, we rule this planet. There is nothing the Native, the human, can do to stop us or to kick us off the planet. Why, therefore, are you so damned scared of them?

  – Captain Baalaas, Colonial Troopers

  Esperance didn’t often go hunting, although she wanted to. She had other jobs, other draws on her time, things that were much more important and far more boring. There were always arguments to break up and people to placate, water to cart and children to mind, shacks to repair and first aid to administer. When there was nothing else, Grandfather’s failing health was a constant presence, though she did not begrudge that work.

  It had been a surprise to her, as much as it was to anyone else, that she had shown real talent for hunting in the desert. When Paddy took the women out into the sand, showing them what he knew of the traditional ‘women’s work’ of his people, none had shown much ability except for her. Now whenever she went out she could find a lizard if not more, preferably one of the frightening large ones that haunted the spinifex, to bring back to the communal cooking fire.

  Lizards and desert rats, rabbits and feral cats. These were the foods they lived on out there in the drylands, where they were safer.

  Since their last move they no longer cooked and ate as families, as individuals, well mostly not anyway. Food was in such short supply that a kind of emergency socialism had ensued – everyone who could manage it gathered food, everyone who was hungry ate. Nobody was really getting enough, no matter how long the group spent hunting, yet nobody took more than their share even though the food was cooked then left for whomever wanted it.

  Esperance suspected that many, especially the older women and her grandfather, were consistently taking less than
their share, to the detriment of their health. As the food got short there were even suicides – people who believed they had nothing to contribute, who believed they were a waste of good food, who felt too powerful a weight of despair, took their lives or, in some cases, wandered out into the desert, staying hidden until they died.

  The discovery of her natural talent for tracking and catching small game such as lizards and rabbits came as a relief to everybody in the camp. Everyone was hungry, so volunteers had taken on Esperance’s other tasks to free her for hunting. Nobody was particularly keen on lizards, yet in their desperation they would eat pretty much anything; unfortunately the desperation would not stop any of them whining about the food.

  The men went hunting with spears and bows; they could not use guns, they were too noisy and ammunition too precious. The large game they could find would feed many, but too often they hunted all day and found nothing. So Esperance led a small group of the younger women in the search for forage. Armed with sticks and crowbars, shovels and empty tins, they had wandered off on a meandering trail through the spinifex following the slightest of tracks.

  They found a rabbit warren in the bank of the dry river, some way downstream of the camp. This was a boon – rabbit was the most popular small game at camp. There were smiles all around, snatches of song, as they dug out the small hole wider. It was hard work in the baking sun – it was unfortunate that the hole was not under an overhanging tree, or on the side of the river shaded by the high banks.

  A rabbit bolted out through the legs of the girl whose turn it was with the shovel. Another girl, laughing, chased it down, thwacking it on the head with her stick. The digger went back to digging, other girls watching for more escapes as a couple went to look for lizard tracks. She loved being out there looking for food to feed their people, far from the questions and complaints of the old and infirm.

  Esperance was the oldest of this group. It was a delight for her to not have the old people question her every move, every decision, even every word. Out there with those girls she was the elder.

  They were tired from the digging. All singing, laughing and chatting had stopped, and there was no noise but the sound of the shovel hitting the sand, the swoosh of girls emptying cans of sand outside their circle, the breathing of those waiting to see another rabbit.

  Therefore the hunters were as surprised as the Toad looked when he almost tripped over them while walking down the river. A yelp burst out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Surprised as they were, the women reacted faster. The girl with the shovel threw the shovelful of sand in the Settler’s direction as the others stepped towards him armed with their sticks and crowbars. He backed away, making no move towards any weapon. If he drew a gun, or even attempted to there were two most likely ways it would go. Either these women would kill him, or he would be forced to kill one or more of them.

  He backed away slowly down the riverbed. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I mean you no harm. My name is Johnny Star, the outlaw.’

  To his visible surprise, his name caused no reaction at all. He shrugged while still backing away. ‘I thought I was famous, damn I wish my face didn’t cause such a reaction,’ he laughed a hysterical facsimile of human laughter. ‘Please,’ he almost sounded like he was pleading, a very human tone, ‘I’m a friend, I mean you no harm. I like humans, my only friends are humans. I . . . my people want to kill me . . . I like humans so much. My friends will explain. I don’t want to hurt anyone, you want to hurt me – I don’t blame you for that but I am a friend, truly.’

  It was Esperance, crowding him to make sure he had no time to draw, who spoke. ‘You are alone,’ then continued to advance.

  ‘I hate Toads,’ Johnny’s voice was frantic, panicked, ‘no, that’s not true, I don’t hate all Toads. I had friends back home, I don’t hate them, and there are, I am sure, some Toads who are okay people but I hate what the Toads have done on this planet. I want them to go home, I want them to leave you alone.’

  ‘But you are a Toad,’ Esperance half laughed, half screamed, he was so infuriating.

  ‘I know that,’ Johnny’s laugh was manic, terrified, ‘I want me to go home too.’

  Johnny backed away from the girls as fast as he could as he spoke. They were, however malnourished they appeared, fitter than him and he, unlike them, was walking backwards. He tripped and staggered, just managing not to fall. Esperance wondered what he was doing out there, further out than a Toad should be, alone. He should be dead.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the drawling voice came from the trees and a brown-skinned human followed the sound out, an axe in each hand. ‘They call me Crow Joe, and you are scaring my Toad.’ Crow Joe was bouncing on the balls of his feet with manic energy. He looked ready for a fight, dangerous, violent, unhealthily energetic. Esperance froze.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Johnny Star said more calmly than should have been possible, ‘let us not hurt anyone, there has been enough killing. These ladies and I have merely had a misunderstanding, they would not really hurt me, I am sure they don’t want to hurt me, and I know you won’t want to hurt them. They might feel better if you came out and said hello, surely we can talk all this over.’ A young scared human appeared, like a ghost, from the trees behind the women, unarmed, harmless. Two more, so alike they had to be twins, stepped onto the riverbank, one on each side of Johnny and stopped there, lowering their guns. A man, made of wire and leather, slipped out of the trees and was standing erect between the women and Johnny before anyone really noticed him moving.

  ‘Deadeye, don’t shoot anyone, I am in no danger now, we are all going to be friends.’ Johnny Star sounded as nervous as Esperance felt.

  For a time those standing in the riverbed would never be able to measure, the tension was almost unbearable. Nobody moved, nobody felt there was time to move, there was no space to move, it was not safe to move. Nobody breathed, there was no time to breathe. There was a nearly imperceptible noise, like a rat running over sand, and Deadeye appeared, at Johnny’s shoulder, just behind. Esperance could tell the sudden arrival was as startling to the Toad as it was to her. Automatically, almost as a twitch, she raised her crowbar slightly.

  ‘Please, let us not fight,’ Johnny said amicably, ‘we can be friends, my friends were out of sight, they could have hurt you, but they did not. I am armed, I could have drawn on you, I did not.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Esperance’s voice was toneless with enforced calm, fear and anger kept barely under control. She would not let it show. ‘If you had reached for a gun I would have gutted you, if you reach for a gun now I will dash out your brains, armed friends or not.’

  ‘We are on the run. I am Johnny Star, outlaw, fugitive, deserter – they will call me all those things. What I really am is someone sick of watching your people, any humans die. They made me join the Troopers, brought me here, then one day I had only two choices: keep assisting in the murder of humans, or desert and go outlaw.’

  ‘I bet you killed people – you are a Toad, you were a trooper, you must have killed people, my people,’ Esperance said, continuing to talk for all the women with her, for they all seemed too scared to talk.

  ‘Yes, I have killed people, it was my job to control humans and often that control was done through violence. Then one night during a raid on a human camp I . . .’ he paused, panting as his people do when upset, ‘I realised we were killing people, not the animals I was taught you were. I sickened, I couldn’t fight anymore, I killed nobody that night although death was all around me.

  ‘The very next day I ran. I would have died from heat exposure, from the dry, if Tucker here hadn’t done a humane thing, a very human thing, and saved my life. Your people are better than mine – mine are monsters. If it is in my power, no human will die in my presence. If I could send my people back home, I would.’

  Esperance turned slightly to stare Tucker in the face, then back to Johnny, finding his large watery ey
es. There was something in his face she did not expect to see. She believed she could see he was a good man. Things like that turn up in the eyes of humans, yet rarely in the slimy eyes of the Toads. It was as if somehow his eyes, his face, his expression had been humanised. ‘Is what he said true?’ she asked. ‘I can’t trust a member of the people, the things, who killed my family, killed countless people, yet I can’t kill him outright in cold blood while he just stands there.

  ‘This must be why the Toads won.’ Esperance sighed, ‘They have no mercy, we have too much.’

  ‘Hand her your weapons,’ Tucker said, ‘I am sure she will be calmer if you are unarmed.’

  Johnny looked nervous, but he appeared to have no choice. He could either hand his guns over or he could fight the humans he said he didn’t want to harm. Esperance stared. Would he take the risk, the gamble? It was not a risk really – if his ‘friends’ were really friends he was not truly defenceless, surely he knew that as much as she did.

  ‘I doubt she wants to see them in my hands, Tucker,’ Johnny said finally, nodding with what was again a very human gesture, ‘please disarm me, hand the humans all my guns, then we can all relax.’

  Tucker walked behind Johnny, pulling his cream plastic pistol from his hip and the Settler rifle from the holster on his back. Walking back to the front he handed the two guns to Esperance. ‘Now you are armed and he is not,’ said Tucker, as she took them.

  ‘Please remember, my new friends,’ Johnny said, ‘you did not capture us. We surrendered. We had you out-gunned.’

  Esperance nodded, then stepped behind Johnny. ‘You surrendered but I would feel better if I could see you. Walk along the river, and don’t do anything to make me regret accepting your surrender.’