by Greg Egan
A familiar crashing sound came from the edge of the kampung; a couple of fruit pigeons had landed on the branch of a nutmeg tree. The blue-white birds were larger than chickens, and though they were slightly more streamlined in their own plump way it still seemed extraordinary to Prabir that they could fly at all. One of them stretched its comically extensible mouth around a nutmeg fruit the size of a small apricot; the other looked on stupidly, cooing and clacking, before sidling away to search for food of its own.
Prabir had been planning to try out his idea for altitude measurement as soon as he was free of Madhusree, but on the way back from the beach he’d thought of some complications. For a start, he wasn’t confident that he could distinguish between the shore of a distant island and part of a cliff or an inland mountain, visible over the horizon because of its height. Maybe if he could persuade his father to let him borrow the binoculars he’d be able to tell the difference, but there was another, more serious problem. Refraction due to atmospheric temperature gradients – the same effect that made the sun appear swollen as it approached the horizon – would bend the light he was trying to use as one side of a Pythagorean triangle. Of course, someone had probably worked out a way to take this into account, and it wouldn’t be hard to track down the appropriate equations and program them into his notepad, but even if he could find all the temperature data he needed – from some regional meteorological model or weather satellite thermal image – he wouldn’t really understand what he was doing; he’d just be following instructions blindly.
Prabir suddenly recognised his name amongst the murmuring coming from the butterfly hut – spoken not by Madhusree, who could barely pronounce it, but by his father. He tried to make out the words that followed, but the fruit pigeons wouldn’t shut up. He scanned the ground for something to throw at them, then decided that any attempt to drive them away would probably be a long, noisy process. He rose to his feet and tiptoed around to the back of the hut, to press one ear against the fibreglass.
‘How’s he going to cope when he has to go to a normal school back in India, in a real solid classroom six hours a day, when he’s barely learnt to sit still for five minutes? The sooner he gets used to it, the less of a shock it will be. If we wait until we’re finished here, he could be … what? Eleven, twelve years old? He’ll be uncontrollable!’ Prabir could tell that his father had been speaking for a while. He always began arguments dispassionately, as if he was indifferent to the subject under discussion. It took several minutes for this level of exasperation to creep into his voice.
His mother laughed her who’s-talking laugh. ‘You were eleven the first time you sat in a classroom!’
‘Yes, and that was hard enough. And at least I’d been exposed to other human beings. You think he’s being socialised properly through a satellite link?’
There was such a long silence that Prabir began to wonder if his mother was replying too softly for him to hear. Then she said plaintively, ‘Where, though? Calcutta’s too far away, Rajendra. We’d never see him.’
‘It’s a three-hour flight.’
‘From Jakarta!’
His father responded, quite reasonably, ‘How else should I measure it? If you add in the time it takes to travel from here, anywhere on Earth will sound too far away!’
Prabir felt a disorientating mixture of homesickness and fear. Calcutta. Fifty Ambons’ worth of people and traffic, squeezed into five times as much land. Even if he could grow used to the crowds again, the prospect of being ‘home’ without his parents and Madhusree seemed worse than being abandoned almost anywhere else – as surreal and disturbing as waking up one morning to find that they’d all simply vanished.
‘Well, Jakarta’s out of the question.’ There was no reply; maybe his father was nodding agreement. They’d discussed this before: throughout Indonesia, violence kept flaring up against the ethnic Chinese ‘merchant class’ – and though the Indian minority was tiny and invisible in comparison, his parents seemed to think he’d be at risk of being beaten up every time there was a price rise. Prabir had trouble believing in such bizarre behaviour, but the sight of uniformed, regimented children singing patriotic songs on excursions around Ambon had made him grateful for anything that kept him out of Indonesian schools.
His father adopted a conciliatory tone. ‘What about Darwin?’ Prabir remembered Darwin clearly; they’d spent two months there when Madhusree was born. It was a clean, calm, prosperous city – and since his English was much better than his Indonesian, he’d found it easier to talk to people there than in Ambon. But he still didn’t want to be exiled there.
‘Perhaps.’ There was silence, then suddenly his mother said enthusiastically, ‘What about Toronto? We could send him to live with my cousin!’
‘Now you’re being absurd. That woman is deranged.’
‘Oh, she’s harmless! And I’m not suggesting that we put his education in her hands; we’ll just come to some arrangement for food and board. Then at least he wouldn’t be living in a dormitory full of strangers.’
His father spluttered. ‘He’s never met her!’
‘Amita’s still family. And since she’s the only one of my relatives who’ll speak to me—’
The conversation shifted abruptly to the topic of his mother’s parents. Prabir had heard this all before; after a few minutes he walked away into the forest.
He’d have to find a way to raise the subject and make his feelings plain, without betraying the fact that he’d been eavesdropping. And he’d have to do it quickly; his parents had an almost limitless capacity to convince themselves that they were acting in his best interest, and once they made up their minds he’d be powerless to stop them. It was like an ad hoc religion: The Church of We’re Only Doing It For Your Own Good. They got to write all the sacred commandments themselves, and then protested that they had no choice but to follow them.
‘Traitors,’ he muttered. This was his island; they were only here on his sufferance. If he left, they’d be dead within a week: the creatures would take them. Madhusree might try to protect them, but you could never be sure what side she was on. Prabir pictured the crew of a ferry or supply ship, marching warily into the kampung after a missed rendezvous and days of radio silence, to find no one but Madhusree. Waddling around with a greasy smile on her face, surrounded by unwashed bowls bearing the remnants of meals of fried butterflies, seasoned with a mysterious sweet-smelling meat.
Prabir trudged along, mouthing silent curses, gradually becoming aware of the increasing gradient and the dark rocks poking through the soil. Without even thinking about it, he’d ended up on the trail that led to the centre of the island. Unlike the path from the beach to the kampung – cut by the Kai labourers, and Prabir’s job now to maintain – this was the product of nothing but chance, of rocky outcrops and the natural spacing of the trees and ferns.
It was hard work moving up the sloping ground, but he was shaded by the forest, and the sweat that dripped from his elbows or ran down his legs was almost chilly. Blue-tailed lizards darted rapidly out of his way, barely registering on his vision, but there were purple tiger beetles as big as his thumb weaving over one fallen trunk, and large black ants everywhere; if he hadn’t smelt as vile to the ants as the tiger beetles did to him he might have been covered in bites within minutes. He stuck to bare soil where he could find it, but when he couldn’t he chose the undergrowth rather than volcanic rock – it was more forgiving on the soles of his feet. The ground was covered with small blue flowers, olive-green creepers, low ferns with drooping leaves; some of the plants were extremely tough, but they were rarely thorny. That made sense: there was nothing trying to graze on them.
The ground became increasingly steep and rocky, and the forest began to thin out around him. More and more sunlight penetrated between the trees, and the undergrowth became dry and coarse. Prabir wished he’d brought a hat to shield his face, and maybe even shoes; the dark rocks were mostly weathered smooth, but some had dangerous edges.
Come the revolution.
The sky was bleached white; when he raised his face to the sun it was like staring into a furnace – closing his eyes was useless, he had to shield himself with his arms. But once he was high enough above the forest to see past the tallest trees, Prabir emitted a parched whoop of elation. The sea stretched out beneath him, like the view from an aeroplane. The beach was still hidden, but he could see the shallows, the reefs, the deeper water beyond.
He’d never climbed this high before. And though his family certainly hadn’t been the first people to set foot on the island, surely no stranded fisherman would have struggled up here to admire the view, when he could have been carving himself a new boat down in the forest?
Prabir scanned the horizon. Shielding his eyes from the glare allowed enough perspiration to form to run down his brow and half blind him. He mopped his eyes with his handkerchief, which had already been marinated in sea water and an hour’s worth of sweat in the forest; the effect was like having his eyelids rubbed with salt. Exasperated, he blinked away tears and squinted, ignoring the pain, until he was convinced that there was no land in sight.
He continued up the side of the volcano.
Visiting the crater itself was beyond him; even if he’d brought water and shoes, the approach was simply too steep. On the basis of vegetation patterns in satellite images, his mother had estimated that the volcano had been dormant for at least a few thousand years, but Prabir had decided that lava was circulating just beneath the surface of the crater, waiting to break free. There were probably fire eagles up there, pecking through the thin crust to get at the molten rock. They could be swooping over him even as he climbed; because they glowed as brightly as the sun, they cast no shadows.
He stopped to check for land every five minutes, wishing he’d paid more attention to the appearance of various islands from the ferry; the horizon was such a blur that he was afraid he might be fooled by a bank of clouds, a distant thunderstorm approaching. He’d cut his right foot, but it wasn’t very painful, so he avoided examining it in case the sight of the wound put him off. The soles of his feet were thick enough to make the heat of the rock bearable, but he couldn’t sit to rest, or even steady himself with his palms.
When an ambiguous grey smudge finally appeared between the sky and the sea, Prabir just smiled and closed his eyes. He didn’t have the energy to feel properly triumphant, let alone indulge in any kind of victory display. He swayed for a moment in the surreal heat, acknowledging his stupidity at coming here unprepared, but still defiantly glad that he’d done it. Then he found a sharp-edged rock and scraped a line at the place, as best as he could judge, where the distant island first appeared.
He couldn’t write the altitude; it probably wasn’t all that different from the five hundred metres he’d naively calculated, but he’d have to return with his notepad to read the true figure off the GPS display. Then he could work backwards to determine the effects of refraction.
The bare line wasn’t enough, though. No natural markings on the rock looked similar, but it wasn’t exactly eye-catching; he’d be pushing his luck to find it again. Carving his initials seemed childish, so he scratched the date: 10 December 2012.
He headed back towards the forest in a happy daze, slipping and cutting his hands on the rocks twice, not really caring. He hadn’t merely named the island, he’d begun to measure it. He had as much claim to stay as his parents, now.
The afternoon thunderstorm came from the north, behind him as he descended. Prabir looked up as the first swollen droplets splashed on to the rocks around him, and saw dazzling beads of white light against the clouds. Then the fire eagles rose up out of the storm, leaving the sky a uniform grey.
He tipped his head back and drank the rain, whispering, ‘Teranesia. Teranesia.’
Prabir arrived back in the kampung around three. No one had missed him; when there was no school he went where he pleased, with his watch to call for help if he needed it. He was exhausted, and slightly nauseous; he went straight to his hut and collapsed into his hammock.
His father woke him, standing by the hammock in the grey light of dusk, speaking his name softly. Prabir was startled; he was meant to help prepare the evening meal, but he could already smell it cooking. Why had they let him sleep so late?
His father put a hand on Prabir’s forehead. ‘You’re a bit hot. How are you feeling?’
‘I’m all right, Baba.’ Prabir balled his fists to hide the cuts on his palms; they weren’t serious, but he didn’t want to explain them – or lie about them, if he could help it. His father looked unusually solemn; was he going to announce the decision to pack him off to boarding school, here and now?
His father said, ‘There’s been a coup in Jakarta. Ambon’s been placed under martial law.’ His tone was deliberately neutral, as if he was reporting something of no consequence. ‘I haven’t been able to get through to Tual, so I’m not sure what’s happening there. But we might not be able to bring in supplies for a while, so we’re going to plant a small garden. And we’ll need you to help look after it. Will you do that?’
‘Yes.’ Prabir examined his father’s half-lit face, wondering if he seriously expected Prabir to be satisfied with this minimal account. ‘But what happened in Jakarta?’
His father made a weary, disgusted noise. ‘The Minister for Internal Security has declared himself “Emergency Interim Leader”, with the backing of the army. The President’s under house arrest. Sittings of the MPR have been suspended; there are about a thousand people holding a vigil outside. The security forces have left them alone so far, which is something.’ He stroked his moustache, discomforted, then added reluctantly, ‘But there was a big protest march in Ambon when the news came through. The police tried to stop it. Someone was shot, then the crowd started trashing government buildings. Forty-six people died, according to the World Service.’
Prabir was numb. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘It is. And it will be the last straw for many people. Support for ABRMS can only increase now.’
Prabir struggled to read between the lines. ‘You think they’ll start sinking ferries?’
His father winced. ‘No, no! It’s not that bad. Don’t start thinking like that!’ He put a hand on Prabir’s shoulder and rubbed it soothingly. ‘But people will be nervous.’ He sighed. ‘You know how whenever we want to go out and meet the ferry, we have to pay the captain to make the detour? We’re quite a way off the normal route between Saumlaki and Tual; the money makes up for the extra fuel, and the inconvenience, with a little left over for every member of the crew.’
Prabir nodded, though he’d never actually realised before that they were paying bribes for a favour, rather than purchasing a legitimate service.
‘That could be difficult now. No one’s going to want to make unscheduled stops in the middle of nowhere. But that’s all right; we can get by on our own for as long as we have to. And it’s probably better that we make ourselves inconspicuous. No one’s going to bother us if we stay out of their way.’
Prabir absorbed this in silence.
His father tipped his head towards the door. ‘Come on, you’d better wash up. And don’t tell your mother I upset you.’
‘You didn’t.’ Prabir climbed out of the hammock. ‘But where’s it all headed?’
‘What do you mean?’
Prabir hesi
tated. ‘Aceh. Kalimantan. Irian Jaya. Here.’ Over the years, as they’d listened to the news together, his father had explained some of the history of the region, and Prabir had begun to pursue the subject for himself on the net. Irian Jaya and the Moluccas had been annexed by Indonesia when the Dutch withdrew in the middle of the last century; both were Christian to some degree, and both had separatist movements determined to follow East Timor into independence. Aceh, at the north-west tip of Sumatra, was a different case altogether – the Muslim separatists there considered the government to be too secular by far – and Kalimantan was different again, with a long, complicated history of migrations and conquests. The government in Jakarta had been talking reassuringly about ‘limited autonomy’ for these outlying provinces, but the Minister for Internal Security had made headlines a few weeks before with a comment about the need to ‘eliminate separatists’. The President had told him to moderate his language, but apparently the army had decided that this was exactly the kind of language they liked.
His father squatted down beside him, and lowered his voice. ‘Do you want to know what I think?’
‘Yes.’ Prabir almost asked, Why are we whispering? But he knew why. They were stuck on the island for the foreseeable future, and he’d had to be told something of the reasons why, but his father had been instructed, above all else, not to risk frightening him.