Terra Nullius

by Claire G. Coleman

  If they could defend the camp, they would, and then those who had run would return. They were no longer safe there; they would pack and move again if they fought off this attack. If they could not defend the camp, if the enemy were too many, or too well armed, they would delay the foe with their deaths. Maybe someone they loved would get away, maybe somebody would get away.

  Sister Bagra carefully concealed her rage. Such anger was not becoming for a nun of her rank, that was reason enough. However, the real reason was that the excremental inspector, Father Grark from home, was still at her mission, still watching. If she was seen to lose her temper he would surely believe what was said in the letter.

  She had only a few days to go, he was being recalled home. She had discovered this fact only that morning.

  ‘Well, Mother Superior,’ he had said when they met outside just after breakfast, ‘it seems that the accusations in the letter must be untrue. I have seen no evidence of cruelty and abuse against these Natives.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied, ‘I would not allow anything in my mission that would cast the Order or the First Church into disrepute.’

  Grark nodded. She could see nothing on his face that gave any clue to what he was thinking.

  ‘Of course. The only concern we have,’ he continued, ‘and by “we” I mean the Church as a whole, is that you, and the other sisters, need to follow the official line on the status of the Natives.’

  ‘Which is?’ Bagra’s voice was so carefully emotionless it froze the air.

  ‘The Natives are sentient,’ he said with utter certainty. ‘They might not be as intelligent as you and me but they are sentient beings. Thus they are people, they are our equals in the eyes of the Church if not yet in the eyes of the government, and are to be treated as such. We have concerns about reports, about evidence of slavery in the colony. Slavery cannot be tolerated.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Bagra’s voice was too adamant. She almost flinched away from her own tone.

  ‘Once you treat them as our equals I have no doubt that the slavery will end. I don’t know if you are aware of this, but the servants you send from here are generally paid nothing but rations, nothing but room and board. They are arrested for running away if they ever find the courage to do so.

  ‘If you are working without pay, and arrested for leaving, you are, by definition, a slave. Slavery is illegal in the Empire and against the strictures of the Church.’

  Bagra fumed inside. Surely this imbecile didn’t actually believe the children, the Natives, were people? He had been there with them, he had seen what she was working with, what the children were, how could he have concluded they were people? She had one path of appeal left against this madness and she fully intended to use it.

  ‘God created the universe, he placed life on home, it says nothing in the Holy Book about other planets, about this place. Therefore, he could not have created life on this planet, therefore they are monsters, or demons, or animals. In fact, by the scriptures they cannot even be alive, they should not even exist.’

  ‘Then the Book is wrong. It makes no mention of the other planets in our Empire or of the other empires we have fought in the wars either.’

  Bagra choked back a scream, turned and walked away. He followed, faster than she would have expected from someone of his age. ‘Sister Bagra,’ he said when he finally caught up, ‘I have to leave in a few days. I received communication stating that I have to return to report my findings back home. It must be important – they sent a fast courier with the letter.’

  Bagra carefully controlled her features, letting not even the slightest sign of triumph escape, walked away fast, yet calmly. She would be disciplined, she would be strong.

  The sun was setting, it was time to go inside to finally eat, when Bagra caught Mel walking towards the visitors’ quarters. ‘Where are you going? It is almost time to eat,’ Bagra said, all sweetness, no sign of her anger at all.

  ‘Ah, I had a question, a spiritual question to ask Father Grark,’ the girl said, sounding nervous.

  ‘Surely,’ said Bagra, frost forming on her words, ‘you can ask such questions of me, your Mother Superior. If you cannot find me, there are other nuns in the mission with about as much knowledge, as much authority. You can speak to them.’ Her voice became somehow even colder, ‘Surely you have nothing to speak to an outsider about.’

  The girl hissed and sighed, her breath heavy, her eyes were darting as if she was trying to see everything in the world at once and was therefore seeing nothing.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Bagra had reached the end of her tether, she had no ability left to hide her displeasure. Anger turned her voice into the hiss of a venomous snake; she had to speak or she knew she would explode or do something worse, something unforgivable. ‘You sent that vile letter, such horrible accusations against your own people, so vile. You are one of us yet you would betray us.’

  Mel shook her head from side to side, a bad habit she had learnt from the disgusting humans, and then lowered it in firm submission. ‘I . . .’ her voice was tiny, almost inaudible. Bagra leaned closer to hear better. ‘I . . . I did nothing, I didn’t.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Bagra hissed, ‘who else could it have been?’

  Turning suddenly and wailing, Mel ran out into the descending night. Bagra was not sure it had been a good idea to provoke the girl but nevertheless she quietly went back to her cell. Grabbing her plaque, she slipped her tap into the security cameras, watching the guestroom.

  Father Grark was triumphant though he was careful not to let it show.

  He had gone to bed early after a simple repast. Nothing was likely to happen that night so it was no good getting tired waiting for it.

  When morning came he checked his plaque as normal, expecting to see nothing, yet this time something was there. A flashing code on the screen told him that someone, and he would know who in a moment, had hacked into the security camera system. Highly illegal, and all the proof he needed. Success! His own hack had detected and identified the hacker, or the hacker’s plaque at least.

  Sister Bagra. He might not be able to prove abuse of the children but he could at least have her removed.

  Dressing quickly he stepped with false calm out the door of the guestroom. Striding across the compound he noticed an unusual turmoil. Nuns paced around the compound, children ran, searching for something. One of the nuns, a younger one, walked over so fast, with so little grace she might as well have run.

  ‘Father,’ she puffed, ‘have you seen Mel?’

  ‘Pardon, who?’

  ‘Mel. She was the newest, the youngest here, she is missing. Her bed was not slept in last night, she isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘We will search, we will find her.’

  Some hours later, when she was not found, a runner was sent to find the tracker. He was glum when they returned with him, though completely professional. Grark understood he stayed in the nearby camp because, just like everyone else there, he had a child in the school. At least being the tracker gave him access to the school. He could, unlike the other parents, at least see his daughter even though he could never get permission to speak to her. Grark was not even certain she knew he was her father.

  Later that night, Grark held off confronting the Mother Superior for to do so would throw the already tense mission into deeper turmoil. The tracker returned. He had followed tracks; they staggered like those made by someone insensible, he said; he had marked where to begin tomorrow morning.

  The next morning broke clear, the sky yellow-blue, terrifying to those born under the grey, damp, skies of home. The tracker was gone before light, starting at dawn in the place where he had left off when it got dark. Grark strolled around the mission, waiting for news, waiting for the opportune moment to confront Sister Bagra.

  Not waiting for the tracker to succeed or fail, all the nuns led groups of the
children on a search. Seeming to not understand the gravity of the situation they were screaming and giggling, delighted to be outside. The noise was piercing, threatening to give him a headache, though it was good to see the children acting like children.

  That night, again, the tracker returned without the missing nun. The other searchers staggered in with nothing to show for a day in the heat. Grark then finally thought of checking the video stored from the mission’s cameras. Making sure to lock the door to the guestroom he entered his access codes to the system. There she was, on the night she disappeared, walking through the convent rooms. He programmed the system to track her movements; when she left the view of a camera the screen automatically flitted to another.

  She left the building, with all its cameras, and for a moment the system lost her, then it picked her up again on an outside scan. It was too far away to see clearly but she appeared to be heading to the guest quarters. She must have been on the way to see him but didn’t get that far.

  Suddenly another nun appeared out of the darkness into view of the camera. He could not see who she was, it was too far away, but maybe the computer could. Typing a command he let the artificial intelligence analyse shape and movement while watching for what happened next. It appeared to be a confrontation. Mel was taking a submissive stance, the other nun was aggressive, dangerously so.

  Mel walked away from the confrontation, breaking into a run just before she left the range of the camera. A line of text appeared at the bottom of the screen, ‘Subject lost’, as if he did not know that. He had at least discovered why she had run, even if he knew no more about where. The tracker was searching in the right direction.

  He kept staring at his screen, watching the ‘processing’ icon whirl. Finally it stopped and he saw what he had suspected: ‘Second Subject – Mother Superior, Sister Bagra.’ He had found some proof of wrongdoing, enough to get her removed. Fearing another ‘incident’ with the servers he backed up the relevant video and went to sleep. Tomorrow would bring conclusion, or it would bring more crisis, there was nothing more he could do that night.

  Chapter 20

  You think you are smarter than us, you think your brains are bigger, you think we can’t learn. We know more than you, we have stories and songs, we have art and culture. What do you have? You have guns and fury and hate. The war has so far been about guns and death. When you think we are defeated the war will change.

  The next war will be about resilience and survival, culture and art. When that war begins you will discover you are not well armed. You have no art, your stories have no power.

  – Gigi Greyhair

  Esperance was following when the Troopers and Rohan picked their careful, meticulous way towards the camp. She had turned the radio off as soon as she sent the warning. The noise of a radio would not help, she knew where the enemy were and unless her radio made a noise they would not know where she was. There was no way for her to get to camp before the interlopers. There was no choice but to hope, to trust that someone, everyone, had responded to her alarm.

  It was the first time she had drawn her gun in preparation for using it, first time that was not just dry-firing practice. As always there was the fear: what if she was unable to pull the trigger, what if she failed to shoot and somebody died? What if the gun, not fired for who knew how many years, didn’t even work? She and Grandfather had maintained it well, but the fear was still there, it was always there. Again she wished there had been enough ammo in the camp for her, and everyone else in the camp, to learn to shoot by actually shooting.

  They thought they were being quiet and sneaky, these Toads, dressed in camouflage as if their mottled grey-green skin was not already the same colour as the few trees scattered around the landscape. Esperance had spent most her life in the bush, her senses were tuned to survival. The small rhythmic noises of someone trying to sneak, like the rustle of a giant goanna scurrying through the undergrowth, were to her like sirens. She did not even have to use eyes to follow the interlopers, she could just follow her ears.

  She was still behind them, carefully not being seen or heard, when they halted, confused. The camp was empty, seemingly abandoned. Esperance smiled. Someone had listened, someone had made the right decisions; that meant that some of her people had run for it. They would not necessarily survive this attack, coming as it had from nowhere, but as she had warned them, some of them might get away.

  Despite herself, she choked back a squeak when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning with studied calm she saw the face of one of the camp’s best hunters, Art. He too was armed, with a short bow, silent, deadly, a far more sensible weapon than the pistol, as noisy as it was, that Esperance was holding in shaking hands. Then again, he would have to stand to fire.

  In rapid hand signs, glad they had developed and practised that language, they discussed the situation. As Esperance had hoped, what non-combatants there were, the elderly and infirm, little kids, the one pregnant woman, had hidden when she had alerted them. The hunters, the fighters, the stronger and larger children, they were all hiding as best they could in the surrounds, waiting to turn the easy victory the Toads had expected into a deadly ambush.

  Unfortunately there were just too many, Esperance knew that, and they were simply too well armed. There was a good chance that none of the defenders, none of her people waiting in ambush would walk away from there alive. She hoped they did not know that, or if they did, she hoped they would not fear it, hoped it would not stay their hands. If they fought hard enough those who had run, who had hidden, might get away.

  Jacky was torn. When the desperate plans were made he could have run, could have joined those running, they at least had a chance. He doubted any of the fighters, those preparing to die to give the others that chance, would hold it against him if he ran. Yet he did not. Always he had run, when injustice, when torture, when pain threatened, he had fled, yet he did not. He was not a man of action, he was not even really a man, not much more than a boy; he was no fighter, no soldier, yet he did not run.

  His whole life was behind him, a road travelled mindlessly, his barely remembered childhood, his incarceration in that place they called a school. He winced internally to remember his slavery at the Settler farm, the casual cruelty, the conviction in the minds of the Settlers that he was just an animal. Nothing in his life had prepared him for these unaccustomed thoughts, the pride in his humanity that rose unbidden.

  Not for the first time he wished he could remember his parents; he searched for them yet could not remember their faces. Anyone there, in those trees, running for their lives, or preparing to die, could have been his family. Maybe they were.

  ‘We are here for the fugitive Jacky Barna, also known as Jacky Jerramungup, and the known outlaw Johnny Star,’ a trooper’s voice rang out. ‘My name is Sergeant Rohan, of the Colonial Troopers. If you have heard of me you will know I am not known for my ability to control my temper. I know somebody is out there, I know you can hear me. Hand them over and I will let the rest of you run away like the cowardly animals you are.’

  He turned to his men and spoke again. ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘they are not going to cooperate, so I guess we get to go hunting.’ He laughed. ‘This is not war, this is not murder,’ he growled theatrically, ‘this is pest control.’ The troopers around him grinned like skulls. Jacky did not expect it, and was unprepared for it when he paced calmly into the centre of the camp. Therefore, nobody else could have possibly known what he was going to do, he did not know what Johnny would have done had he been prepared. A part of him watched himself from the sidelines as he stopped still in the centre of that open space, facing down so many guns without visible fear.

  ‘I am Jacky, some call me Jacky Jerramungup,’ his calm voice said. ‘I think you are looking for me.’

  Carefully keeping his face as expressionless as he could, a facsimile of the impassive face of the hunters, of Paddy, the man from the desert
who showed no fear, Jacky watched as Rohan, smiling, walked towards him with cuffs in his hand. He thought he would die with fear when Rohan reached out and put the cuff on his right hand. Rohan bodily turned him to cuff the left hand, and Jacky, using the momentum the trooper had given him, added speed to the turn. He pirouetted on his heels faster than Rohan was ready for, and spinning, dug his stolen kitchen knife into his captor’s ribs.

  If his life taught him one thing, he would never be captured again.

  The stifling hot air was filled with the tension of everybody, Natives and Settlers alike, holding their breaths. Even the air was silent, dead, unwilling to breathe on the land. Heat and the weight of history caught in a hundred throats, oppressive, as thick as treacle. Rohan folded over the knife, his wide-mouthed face stuck in an expression between shock, awe and horror, mingled with a touch of surprise. He did not speak, maybe his lungs had been punctured on the way to the organ the Toads use for a heart.

  With a soggy, weak thud he hit the ground.

  There were over thirty Settlers out there, surrounding the camp. When they fired it was like a song, a slippery discordant tune, magpies amplified and distorted, requesting a dance from Jacky. They must have hit him twenty times at least, each hit adding a step to his dance. He fell, a look of total contentment, utter peace on his face. Again the breathless silence descended. Jacky made not a sound, everybody watched as he lay on his back with his head turned to one side. Everybody watched his chest rise and fall, the breaths getting more laboured. Everybody, human and Settler alike, was watching when Jacky Jerramungup, faintly smiling, breathed his last.

  For an immeasurable length of time – it felt like forever, yet might have been only a few breaths – nobody knew what to do. The fugitive and the hunter, both were dead, there was no purpose left to the already pointless-seeming search. None of the troopers wanted to be there, facing an enemy, unknown, who knew how many Natives were out there? For the Natives, the refugees, Jacky was a stranger, he had brought this attack upon them, they owed nothing to his memory.