by Chris James
The middle and upper classes had taken flight. In their attempts to reach the US and Europe, and with no commercial flights out, many well-heeled refugees had taken to their private planes and luxury yachts, often with inadequate supplies and non-existent navigational skills. It had followed that many of these wealthy Brazilian Boat People had been swept down by the prevailing current into the South Atlantic Gyre and a languishing death through cold and thirst. The last known sighting of the President of Brazil himself had been at Rio’s most exclusive marina.
The rot had begun to set in years before with the cancellation of the Olympic Games due to global instability. This event had landed the knockout blow on Brazil’s fragile glass jaw. Her collapse – not just on paper, which happened to countries all the time, but in real and tragic terms – had been no surprise to Lonnie Pilot. He had followed the news knowingly as 220 million people had been thrown back in time a thousand years – a far bloodier version of what had already taken place in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Only the millions of shanty town and slum dwellers were experiencing a happy upturn in their standard of living. Many from the favelas now occupied the empty hotels and luxury apartment blocks of Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo, albeit without utilities. But that was nothing new for them. Dysentery and cholera were rife. That was nothing new either.
The outside world had been conspicuous by its absence during the disastrous chain of events in Brazil. While this much-respected member of the Country Club jigged and foamed in the throes of a fatal fit, the other members could only look on in mute horror.
The citizens of Eydos, by contrast, were seeing it as another arrow for their quiver…
XXI
Steven Schwartzman, like Harvey Giles, had decided to settle on the island after his contract had expired. But, unlike Giles, who had brought his long-time lover to the island to work as a physiotherapist, there was no woman in Schwartzman’s’s life, just his plants, foremost among them Jane Lavery’s bonsai tree, which he had adopted and lovingly nurtured over the years. Lately, he’d been experimenting with new varieties of edible flora, aided by the recent installation of three vast greenhouses to replace the Island’s weather-beaten polytunnels. (The greenhouses had been donated by Clarence Drance, former Disciple of the Seraphic Prodigy, who had derived material salvation in California from a chain of cycle-through juice bars.) One entire greenhouse, plus half the other, was given over to Paola Rendina and her team of gardeners, with a small section reserved for the horticultural education of the island’s children. Doctor Steve was allowed free rein to potter about in the remaining half. He was well aware of Rebecca Schein’s sauce experiments, but as for people not liking the taste of his plants, Schwartzman considered it more of a challenge than an insult and he was determined to come up with something novel and nutritious which could be eaten without being smothered in sauce first.
The answer lay in kelp, laver and, most of all, rock tripe, a strange lichen that had begun growing in dense mats over the rocks and was nourishing if not tasty – something like licorice-flavored tapioca pudding. To improve the palatability of these abundant natural food sources, the Doctor had begun cultivating samphire, coriander, wild basil, corn mint, fenugreek, lovage, parsley and sand leek, a relative of garlic.
Before the arrival of the greenhouses, only lentils and other leguminous plants had been grown with any success outdoors and in the hoophouses, but now everyone looked forward to regular harvests of Rendina’s aubergines, peppers, marrows, tomatoes, spinach, French beans, and lettuce. The third greenhouse was a living, hydroponic memorial to Jane Lavery, with Moringo oleifera leaves being harvested by the bushel-load.
In other areas things were also coming together. Ten crew had been apprenticed to a retired fisherman from Newlyn, who had spent two months teaching them how and where to fish. The boat Pilot had purchased from him was a traditional Newlyn trawler with a difference – it carried no nets. Pilot had no intentions of joining in the gang rape of the North Atlantic. All their fish would be caught by handlines. It was a time-consuming process, owing to decimated fish stocks off Nillin. As a result, every single line-caught fish was given reverential treatment when it reached the kitchen.
The fish and the newly arrived herd of goats were bringing welcomed variety to the Nillin menu. As was the case with the male lambs, which could not be milked, the male kids also posed a dilemma. The solution was considered cruel by many. But it did furnish the settlers with a different tasting source of protein. Only a few people knew the identity of the volunteer who had come forward to take on the unpopular job of dispatching the young animals− a task she performed with skill, speed and compassion.
Then there were the orchards. For three years, Harvey Giles had been struggling with the problem of how to make fruit trees grow on the island. From his early experiments he had determined which varieties did and did not like living in sediment and had then instituted a massive grafting project. Large pockets of deep, rich sediment had been discovered in sheltered areas sixteen miles southeast of Nillin and it was in these that the orchards had been planted – apple mainly, but also some plum, pear and peach stocks. They had their first fruit harvests after three years. After ten years, the orchards were well-established and productive enough to allow Eydos to cancel its apple imports from the Duchy of Cornwall.
The island’s face was filling out daily, due mainly to the achievements of the lichen spores, grass pollens and other windborne immigrants. Ten years and eight months after emerging from the sea, less than a quarter of the shelf remained in its original grey and barren bleakness.
The other great natural gift to the island – its wind – was being harnessed by a new form of generator developed by one of Forrest Vaalon’s companies. Instead of a machine of the windmill variety, this one, set atop the basin rim above Nillin, comprised an intake duct fifty metres across by eighteen inches high. Inside, over a thousand small propellers generated electricity at any wind speed over three knots. Being so low to the ground, the Wide Mouth Generator was visually unobtrusive, was far less prone to wind damage than blades on towers, and supplied more than enough power for the settlement’s meager needs.
There was, however, one conventional wind turbine on the island, and this was being used with good effect at the barge landing site. The reason it had been erected there was to provide electricity for some very important visitors. The idea to turn the convoy into a ‘sponge’ with which to soak up knowledge and information of particular relevance to the Big Idea had been Macushla Mara’s. “When it comes time to act, we can’t afford to come across as ill-informed tree-huggers with no grasp of reality and no real understanding of the issues,” she had argued. “And the best way to get inside the human machine is to talk to it… without giving too much away, of course.”
Work parties had spent nearly a year preparing the site for its first guests. A large table with seating for twenty-four had been built inside Bimbo’s Kraal and skylights installed in the deck above it; King Solomon was now a comfortable library containing books in sixteen languages; a cloister had been fashioned around the inner three barges of the middle row; flowers had been planted in cavities and crevices throughout the wreckage where none were growing wild already; and the canteen and mess room had been spruced up to two-star hotel standard.
Because of the angle at which Ptolemy was lying, it had been necessary to adjust her bunks and table tops to the horizontal, and this task, followed by the redecoration of all the cabins, had taken four months. A separate suite comprising bedroom, study, bathroom and kitchenette had been built in Fort Lowell to accommodate a person whose identity the crew knew, but were forbidden to reveal to outsiders.
Twenty people−identified by Forrest Vaalon as being in the vanguard of their respective fields of finance, medicine, climate change studies, industry, ecology, demographics, information technology and policy-making− were scheduled at monthly intervals to come to the island for two or three days to have their brains harv
ested through ‘friendly inquisition’, as Mara called it.
The first to arrive was a high-ranking Japanese executive from Toyota. Pilot wanted to know how malleable the motor industry was to change, what the main blocks to change were, and how these could be overcome. Although unable to speak for the other automotive giants, Mr. Takada was able to impart invaluable information, only some of which was encouraging. Allinformation was welcomed, though. After fifteen meetings, the Islanders−individually and in their respective task groups− had received an education money can’t buy, or in this case, through Forrest Vaalon’s bottomless pockets, did buy.
Lonnie Pilot coasted gently downhill on his mountain bike, its flywheel storing energy with every rotation. As he approached the convoy for his third meeting with a high-ranking officer from the World Bank, he marveled at a sight which never failed to impress him. So ugly on the one hand and yet strangely beautiful and powerful on the other. Fourteen massive, rusting barge carcasses rose up before him and exuded a comforting stillness and steadfastness from their dead weight. Colourful strips of wild flowers seemed to tape the rusting hulls of the barges to the grey-green rock on which they rested. Over the years, billions upon billions of nutrient-laden particles – the dead skin shed by continental Europe, Africa and the Americas – had been carried on the wind to their current resting place at the base of each exposed barge side. There they had rested until the time came for the sleeping seeds within to awaken and throw back their covers.
On his arrival, Pilot went straight to Ptolemy’s galley for some water. He was early and had three hours to kill before his meeting with the banker, but he had someone else with whom to kill them. Pilot finished his drink, climbed the ladder to Fort Lowell’s deck, knocked on the door of the wheelhouse and went in…
Pilot knew that something was amiss when Serman met him at the top of the escarpment above Nillin with a face like death. “What’s up, Aaron?”
“Josiah’s dead.” The words ripped through Pilot like bullets. Three seconds earlier, he had been brimming with purpose and hope, the rub-off from his productive meetings at the convoy. Now, all he could see were multiple images of Josiah Billy framed in black.
“How did… what happened?”
“He jumped off the cliff at the fjord entrance. Budd and Highbell were fishing just off shore and saw him drop,” Serman said. “We haven’t found his body yet. He left a couple of notes – one for us and one for Paola – plus this verse carved in wood, which we found at the top of the cliff.” Serman handed over a large canvas sack, along with the note, which Pilot read first.
I’m sorry it’s come to this. Suicide is a selfish act, especially among such a small and close band as we are. You’re great people and I was proud to include myself as one of you. This voyage we’re on is an impossible one, though. That’s how I see it. We’re going down with the rest of humanity sure as eggs is eggs and there’s nothing we can do about it. I’ve wrestled for years trying to hold on to hope, but outside events keep ripping it out of my hands. That’s the reality. It’ll soon be over. I’m leaving the losing game early by way of the coward’s exit. That in itself takes courage, right?
Pilot folded the note and handed it back to Serman. “How’s Paola taking it?”
“I don’t know. Macushla’s with her.”
Pilot walked his bike into Nillin with the canvas bag under his arm and went straight to Josiah and Paola’s dome. Inside, Billy’s distraught partner was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. She clutched his four-page letter in her hand, but no length of explanation could have lessened her anguish. Macushla was sitting in a chair next to the bed, her hands folded over her belly. Pilot went over and hugged her, then stooped down and kissed Paola on the forehead. No words were necessary. He sat down next to his partner and placed his hands over hers. When Rendina at last closed her eyes and fell into a shallow sleep, Pilot whispered, “I had no idea Josiah was so near the edge.”
“No one did. Not even Paola.”
“He never talked to her about it?”
“That’s what she told me.”
Pilot remembered something he’d read in Billy’s file – that he had attempted suicide once before after being dropped from the Ireland rugby squad – a flaw in his character that had now come back to bite them all. Then Pilot picked up the canvas bag containing Josiah’s final poem, took out a length of weathered driftwood and held it up so that he and Macushla could both read it at the same time. It was short but potent.
When the Earth was flat we had a fear
Of falling off the edge.
Now the earth is round we’ve lost that fear,
And all hope of staying on.
XXII
May Day, as celebrated by the inhabitants of Eydos, didn’t have the pagan or political connotations as elsewhere. The date was used instead as a collective birthday and was the second most important day in the island’s calendar after August 4th. For Lonnie Pilot it also marked the anniversary of his meeting with Forrest Vaalon – in this case, eleven years.
Normally, it would have been a day of merrymaking, but Josiah Billy’s suicide had thrown a blanket of melancholy over Nillin that was difficult to kick off. To lift the somber mood, Rebecca Schein suggested a moonlit bike race to the convoy and back in Billy’s memory. Everyone but Paola Rendina, whose initial shock at the loss of her partner had been replaced by anger at his selfishness, thought this a great idea. Twenty years earlier, Schein’s mother had killed herself with champagne and tramadol. But in the time since, Rebecca had reasoned that her mother’s inner anguish must have far outweighed all other considerations, including the feelings of her teenage daughter. Schein had long ago forgiven her mother and took that same reasoning to Rendina’s dome. It worked. Twenty minutes later, Paola wheeled her bike out to join the others. Only the women in the latter stages of pregnancy and those with young children (Eydos now had seven youngsters ranging in age from two months to four years) were missing from the start of the ‘Tour d’Eydos’.
The first stage to the barges, being all downhill and with a strong following breeze, lulled everyone into a false sense of achievement, in marked contrast to the return leg, which presented not only the incline to fight against, but also a westerly wind gusting to 30mph.
Nirpal Banda won the race, but there was no one at the finish to cheer him home. Pilot himself, on coming in fifth from last, downed the remainder of a flagon of cider and went home, knowing Macushla would still be up. Three hours of painful uphill peddling had been a physical reminder to him of what lay ahead vis-á-vis their Big Idea and he needed to talk to her. Not about the speech they’d been painstakingly crafting for the past six months, but about how they were going to operationalize the concept.
For five years, the Islanders had been applying their imagination and energy to analyzing global threats and concocting cures. They viewed each situation from afar, like Martians. But then, they were the nearest thing the Earth had to aliens. It certainly made for some novel thinking. Task groups had been formed around each issue− working independently, mostly, but in concert if two or more of the ‘cancers’ overlapped. One overriding peril seemed to engulf them all, and this forum Pilot led personally. Crew were encouraged to move from group to group to ensure that lines of thought would always be fresh, wide and inventive. As with any proposal, there had to be some kind of editorial shaping and polishing and this was exercised by Pilot, Mara and Serman. The final word on everything, however, was Lonnie Pilot’s. The fact that Eydos had still not set out its stall in the outside world was because he felt they weren’t yet ready. Ultimately, the Big Idea would be viewed as a preposterous intrusion if it were presented half-baked, so it was still in the oven.
Pilot’s immediate problem was how to remove the tension that was beginning to grip him like angina. He lay fully dressed next to his partner for a long time, not wanting to wake her, but knowing that the tension in his body would soon permeate her sleep. I
t didn’t take long.
“What are you thinking, Lonnie?” Mara asked.
It took him a few seconds to realize he was being spoken to. “Ah… I’m glad you’re awake,” he said. “What am I thinking… I was thinking about thought… about the thinking processs.”
“And?”
“Here’s the question. How do a billion cells in Person One’s brain link together to write a poem… a billion cells in Person Two’s split an atom… and a billion cells in Person Three’s kill hitchhikers?”
“Or hurl themselves off a cliff,” Macushla said.
Pilot stood up and peeled off his cycling shorts. “Speaking of cliffs, how do we get the brain cells of nine billion people to follow the same line of thought as ours and pull away in unison from the edge of their cliff?”
Macushla helped Lonnie pull his T-shirt up and over his head. “First of all, I don’t think you need all nine billion,” she said. “There are leaders and followers. All we need to do is convert the leaders, and the rest will follow.”
“Hmmm. Mrs. Normal raises her ugly head again.”
“Mrs. Who?”
“Normal.” The eleven-year-old image of Jane Lavery sitting across from him in Ptolemy’s mess room flitted across Pilot’s mind’s eye. “Normal isn’t always good, Coosh, it’s what usually happens. We don’t want leaders and followers. Everybody needs to be enfranchised in their own salvation and liberation. There’s a blanket of fear and apprehension descending on the entire world and it’ll take all of us to throw it back.”