Suddenly aware that she hasn’t heard from Noah since she put his breakfast in front of him she goes back through to the kitchen, the living room, but both are empty. Anxiously she calls his name, once, and then again, louder, moving quickly through the rooms until finally she comes to the front of the house and sees that the door is ajar.
Racing out into the bright air she shouts his name, but there is no answer. Her legs trembling, she runs to the gate, stands staring up and down the road; still there is no sign of him. Activating her earpiece, she calls up Noah’s number but it is offline. She calls Adam, heart pounding. He answers cheerfully but she cuts him off immediately.
‘Noah’s disappeared.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s vanished. I was in my studio and when I came out he’d gone.’
There is a moment of silence. When Adam speaks again his voice is deliberately calm. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘he won’t have gone far. Have you tried calling him?’
‘Of course I did. He’s offline.’
‘That doesn’t mean much, the network isn’t great out there.’
‘Do you have any idea where he might be?’
‘He was talking about looking for somewhere to set up the telescope the other day. Perhaps he’s gone to do that.’
Ellie is already heading down the road. ‘Did he say where?’
‘No, but I guess he’d be looking for a patch of clear ground away from the road.’
As he speaks Ellie receives an alert, and remembers her arrangement with Amir. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she says. ‘I’ve got somebody coming, I need to tell them to cancel.’
She calls up Amir’s number; he answers almost at once. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, trying to keep the note of panic out of her voice, ‘I’m not going to be able to make it this morning. My grandson has disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Yes. I left him in the kitchen and when I came back he was gone.’
‘Could somebody have come in and taken him?’
‘I don’t think so. I think he’s just wandered off.’
‘Are his parents nearby?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘His grandfather is in the city.’
‘Where are you? I will come help you look.’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘please.’
At Amir’s suggestion she heads back up the road while he checks the old farm buildings. As she moves further from the house she runs faster, calls louder, fear like a space inside her. About five hundred metres from the house she notices a track leading into the scrub and heads up it, still calling for him over and over. Away from the road it is quieter, the trees closing in, the silence triggering memories of stories about children getting lost in the bush, or being kidnapped, their bodies turning up months or years later in some out-of-the way place.
And then, just as she is slowing, ready to head back to the road, she gets a call from Amir.
‘Amir?’ she asks breathlessly, but before she can finish he is speaking over her, telling her not to worry, he has him.
She slumps against a tree, her legs trembling.
‘Ellie?’
‘Is he okay?’
‘He is all right. He was sitting in one of the houses down here. Do you want to talk to him?’
‘Yes,’ she says, and a moment later Noah joins the call.
‘Noah,’ she says, ‘where were you?’
‘I was looking for somewhere to put the telescope,’ he says.
‘You can’t just walk off like that, without telling me where you’re going.’
Noah pauses. ‘All right.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes,’ he says petulantly.
Ellie ignores his tone. ‘Can you go with Amir? He’s a friend.’
There is no response.
‘Noah?’
‘Okay,’ he says at last, his voice sullen.
By the time she nears the house, the two of them are visible on the road ahead. Seeing her approach, Amir points her out to Noah but the boy hangs back, his face turned away as if afraid, or ashamed.
Kneeling down she looks up at him.‘I’m not angry,’ she says. ‘But you frightened me really badly. I didn’t know where you were.’
‘Sorry,’ Noah says, his face still turned away.
‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘Will you walk with me now?’
Back in the house she shuffles Noah into the living room and agrees he can play his game for a while. Watching him pick up his lenses she feels her anxiety of a few minutes before replaced by a sudden wash of love, made raw by fear for his vulnerability, the difficulties that lie ahead for him.
Turning back to Amir, who is standing in the doorway, she asks, ‘Would you like something to eat? A drink?’
Amir smiles. ‘Some water will be fine.’
Ellie opens the fridge, takes out one of the bottles. Since the water restrictions tightened she has taken to bottling water when it is available and storing it. Placing two glasses on the table she sits down opposite him.
‘Thank you again for helping find him,’ she says. ‘It was very kind of you.’
Amir smiles. ‘Please, it was nothing.’
‘It wasn’t, and I appreciate it.’
In the living room Noah makes a sound that might be pleasure and might be irritation. Amir catches Ellie’s eye.
‘He is your grandson?’
‘My daughter’s son.’
Perhaps hearing the hesitation in her words, Amir does not press the point. ‘You have him a lot?’
‘No. He lived in England until recently.’
‘It is not easy, I think, minding children who are not your own.’
Grateful for his reluctance to press her Ellie smiles. ‘I’m sure you have better things to do than sit here. Perhaps I can show you some of what I’m proposing?’
‘Thank you,’ Amir says. ‘I would like that.’
Ellie often finds the process of discussing her projects before they are fully realised uncomfortable, embarrassing even, but as she outlines her ideas to Amir she is encouraged by his tact and thoughtfulness, the care with which he listens and examines the images and plans she has assembled. Even his questions are intelligent, revealing a genuine interest in the thinking behind the things she shows him.
‘It is very impressive,’ Amir says when she is done.
‘Thank you,’ Ellie replies. ‘You can see why it matters to me that I work with real bees, though?’
‘I do,’ Amir says.
‘But?’
He looks uncomfortable. ‘It is not as simple as you think. I am frightened for the bees.’
‘Because of the colony collapses?’
He nods, and she glimpses some deeper reticence in him, a sadness, perhaps, of which the bees are only one part.
‘Is it that bad?’
‘I am afraid it might be. None of the collapses before have been anything like this. It began in Europe but spread through America and Asia in less than a year. For a while we were protected, but now the colonies here are dying as well.’
‘What’s causing it?’
‘Nobody knows. Some people believe it’s due to toxicity, chemicals in the environment. Others say it’s about climate. Some think it’s viral, or a combination of all three.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t know. Some species seem to be more resistant, especially the native bees. But last summer the native colonies started collapsing as well.’
She draws a breath. His face is careful, closed, as if afraid of what he might say next. When she speaks her voice is quieter, more careful.
‘Were you always a beekeeper?’
He looks at her incredulously. ‘What, you think I kept bees back in Bangladesh?’
‘I don’t know. You seem to know a lot about them.’
‘I was a doctor,’ he says. ‘In Dhaka.’
‘Really?’
‘That surprises you?’
Ellie grins. ‘A little, I suppos
e. How did you end up here?’ she asks, then catches herself. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, that is.’
She sees his reticence again, knows it for the wound it is.
‘After the government fell, we fled.’
‘We?’
‘I had a wife and a daughter.’
‘What happened?’
‘They died,’ he says quietly.
Ellie watches him without speaking. ‘And then you came here?’ she asks at last.
He nods. ‘I was in the camps for a long time. One day I escaped. I didn’t know where to go. I was hurt in my heart, depressed, almost catatonic, but I couldn’t bear the thought of them taking me back there so I hitchhiked my way south.’
‘And the bees?’
‘They came later. After I came south I met a man who said he’d been working on a property out west. He gave me the name of somebody there who might help me. But on the way I met another man, an Iraqi. He was sick and needed somebody to take the hives.’
Amir is silent then. Ellie wants to take his hand but is worried he might not welcome her touch.
‘It is foolish, I know, but the bees helped me. The first time they landed on me, enveloped me, it was as if I was no longer simply me but part of them, as if they connected me to something that went beyond myself.’ Amir’s eyes meet hers. ‘Perhaps you think I am being ridiculous?’
Ellie shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not at all.’
That night Noah agrees to go to bed earlier than normal, disappearing into his room almost without resistance. Relieved to find herself alone Ellie retreats to her studio and calls up her research.
Unsettled by her conversation with Amir she begins by seeking out more material about ACCD, and the more she reads, the better she understands his concern. This new wave of collapses is certainly different from those in the past, both in severity and distribution. In some parts of Europe and the United States bee populations have gone altogether, and farmers have been importing bees to pollinate their crops.
Yet it is not the speed with which colonies are collapsing that is most frightening, but the fact that there appears to be no pattern to the process, no single factor that can be isolated as a cause. In some places the problem seems related to the release of genetically engineered plants into the wild, but elsewhere it seems to be about infections overwhelming already stressed colonies, or the build-up of pesticides or other toxins. The collapses are either due to a convergence of factors or, perhaps more alarmingly, some kind of spontaneous event.
She remembers Adam suggesting many years before that something like this might happen, that the planet’s ecosystems could reach a point where they simply began to collapse, seemingly spontaneously, the addition of one more factor to the equation triggering a phase of transition, in much the way that a single snowflake can be said to cause an avalanche. It was a process he claimed was visible in the die-offs of frogs and birds, the disappearance of marine species, as well as in the increasingly convulsive changes in the climate, the accelerating feedback loops of melting ice and methane release. And in time, according to Adam, something would trigger a similar collapse in the human population, causing it to crash as well.
As she reads it is not just the bees she is thinking of, but Amir. He is illegal, that is clear, yet so much else about him is mysterious. Where does he live? Why has he chosen to help her? Her younger self might have just accepted these gaps in her knowledge of him, but at her age it is difficult not to be wary. Briefly she considers calling Bec, asking her opinion, but already able to hear her friend’s incredulity, she decides not to. And so instead she finds herself reading about the illegals, trying to imagine their lives. Their presence is a debate that has filled the media for as long as she can remember, a constant rumble of anger and paranoia, but over the years she has learned to tune it out. Tonight she finds herself assailed by it all over again, by the descriptions of the camps, the random harassment by police, the detention and forced expulsion of anyone the government deems undesirable. It is ridiculous, monstrous. Where, after all, are those who have sought refuge here meant to go? The islands of the Pacific are disappearing, Bangladesh is gone, as is much of Burma and coastal India; hundreds of millions have been displaced and are in need of assistance. Yet in the face of their suffering, politicians do little more than posture and parrot slogans.
Eventually, vertiginous with agitation and despair, she puts down her screen and steps out into the night. In his room Noah is asleep, his soft snores audible through the open window. Somewhere to the west lightning dances against the purple sky; overhead a flying fox crashes and shrieks amongst the branches. Turning back towards the house she looks in through her studio window, sees the insects moving like a halo in the light, silent but for the beat of the moths against the flyscreens. She had thought that getting older would mean it got easier, that she might feel more settled. Yet standing here now she feels as raw as a teenager, her confusion like an ache within her.
In the weeks that follow she begins work in earnest. As with most of her projects the installation will be accessible through lenses and overlays, which means that much can be done by fabricators, software agents capable of constructing the virtual environment that will house the installation. But as is her habit she spends considerable time thinking through the arrangement of the spaces, developing different ways for visitors to interact with her creations.
Although she has already decided that the centrepiece will be a series of virtual sculptures and two-metre close-up photos of the bees, she knows these will need to be complemented by video sequences, some constructed by her from footage of Amir’s hives, others sourced from archives. Finding material suitable for these latter elements is a slow process, a matter of hunting through reams of information online, although in fact it soon becomes apparent that the pieces which will work best are mostly older – early- and mid-twentieth-century videos transferred from ageing 8mm and 16mm film, their images flickering by slightly too fast. Choosing from amongst them is partly a matter of eliminating those lacking the quality of mute strangeness and unrecoverability she requires, but while the possibilities are many and various, encompassing old footage of bees moving through hives, bees on flowers, bees crawling over honeycomb or swarming in trees, there is one she cannot put out of her mind. It was shot nearly a century earlier, and shows a man dressed in shirt and pants standing in an orchard with bees swarming onto him, covering first his arms and then rising slowly up as their numbers swelled to obscure his chest, and finally his face and head.
At first she thinks it must be a fake, an early exercise in special effects – certainly it is reminiscent of one of the nitrate dreamscapes of Cocteau or Buñuel – but as she sets it running in an endless loop, the bees massing on his body and face and disappearing over and over and over again, she begins to accept that it is real, not just the bees, but the way in which the man raises his head as they alight on him, his only concession to their presence his closed eyes and mouth, the beatific expression on his face as it vanishes beneath their bodies.
With the videos selected and sequenced, she turns to the other elements of the installation, allowing the project to absorb her, working long into the night. It is always striking to her how often these periods of creativity seem to be connected to the advent of spring, the strange timelessness of the warm evenings, although whether this is innate, a tic in the chemistry of her brain, or a habit ingrained during her time as a student, those formative years when the most intense periods inevitably coincided with the sudden explosion of spring, is unclear to her.
When she lived in the city she would often spend the evenings sitting on the front steps and staring into the night, listening to the sound of the traffic and thrilling to the sense of a secret world unfolding in the sleeping streets. Out here the night is quieter, the sounds – those of shrieking possums and feral cats or the distant barking of dogs – are stranger, less easy, yet the sensation that time is expanding, that a different way of be
ing lies just beneath the skin of the moment, is no less strong.
Occasionally her afternoons or evenings are interrupted by visits from Amir. Despite the gulf between them she quickly finds herself looking forward to his company.
She knows the risks, the possibility of looking foolish, or worse. Every day there are stories about illegals breaking into houses, about muggings and attacks, and while she is certain Amir is not violent, that his interest in her is genuine, she remains uncomfortable with how little she knows about him. Sometimes when she calls him he speaks in a hushed voice, as if he is not alone, not able to speak properly; at other times he is somewhere noisy. Never does he attempt to explain where he is or who he is with.
And then one afternoon he calls and asks if she is alone.
‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘If I give you an address can you come to it?’ he asks.
She hesitates. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Where are you?’
He gives her directions to a place on the outskirts of the city, half an hour’s drive away. The area is unfamiliar – a maze of apartments and houses built around the turn of the century – but eventually she arrives at a block of flats. As she pulls up, Amir appears.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he says as she climbs out of the car.
‘That’s fine,’ she says. ‘What is it?’
He glances up the street as if concerned they are being observed. ‘Come inside.’
She follows him up a flight of stairs and into a passageway. At the end of it he stops in front of a door.
‘You don’t have to agree to any of this,’ he says.
Ellie laughs a little uncomfortably. ‘I still don’t know why I’m here.’
‘My friends are inside with their daughter. She is sick, and we need medicine.’
‘Why not take her to a hospital?’
Amir hesitates, and as he does Ellie understands. ‘You’re afraid of being arrested.’
He nods.
‘What can I do?’ she asks.
The plan is simple. Ellie will drive the girl, Nisha, to a nearby clinic and register her there herself. Because Nisha is a minor Amir thinks that if Ellie says she is her niece from overseas she will be able to use her own ID to have the girl admitted. ‘They’ll ask you to pay her costs up front because she’s not a legal resident,’ he says, ‘but if you can do that there probably won’t be too many difficult questions.’
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