Austral

by Paul McAuley

  He liked to tour his fish farms at least once a year, travelling in a small plane he piloted himself. A rich man’s indulgence. One summer’s day he was flying with two passengers towards a kelp farm on the Oscar II Coast when his plane was hit by a storm that blew in from the Weddell Sea. He couldn’t fly above it, didn’t have time to fly around it. The little plane plunged through rain, hail and furious crosswinds, was slammed towards the ground by a wild downdraught, then caught in the wind shear of a tailwind that abruptly reduced the lift generated by its wings. Eddie fought to regain control all the way down, crash-landed on a pan of gravelly till close to a river south of Cape Disappointment. The plane’s cabin exploded with thousands of inflated balls to cushion the impact, but one of the passengers was killed outright, the other was badly injured, and Eddie broke a wrist and three ribs and was knocked unconscious.

  When he came to, the storm’s crashing rain had thinned to a mild drizzle and a rainbow spanned the seaward end of the river valley. Eddie helped the surviving passenger, his chief accountant, out of the wreckage and settled her as best he could under the stub of a torn-off wing. The plane’s comms had been knocked out, there was no fone signal, and it had come down in the middle of an unpeopled stretch of the coast. There was no sign of a settlement or even a road, but as Eddie was considering his options three mammoths appeared on top of the ridge on the far side of the river, each carrying a rider and bundles of cargo.

  Ten years before, a new act passed by the government had finally and absolutely outlawed the ecopoets. Some had moved into the cities and settlements during the so-called amnesty, or had quit the peninsula altogether. Some had been arrested. And some, like Isabella and Salix, and the three rovers who rescued Eddie, were still living in the back country. They’d set up caches and refuges, moved along hidden trails, and lived off the land as much as possible, assisted by supplies from sympathisers on the peninsula and supporters in Chile and Argentina who dispatched cargo drones across the Drake Passage.

  For a while, the government chose to ignore these self-styled free ecopoets. It had other, far more pressing problems to deal with. Establishing diplomatic and trade links with the other nations of the world, fixing an economy leaking below the waterline because productivity and earnings were far lower than wildly optimistic pre-independence forecasts, setting up a task force to police fishing grounds, negotiating with transnats over exploitation of the peninsula’s mineral and petrochemical resources. Public utilities and much of the infrastructure of Esperanza and O’Higgins had been sold off piecemeal to finance independence, subsequent problems with power and food supplies had triggered widespread civil unrest, and the cities had been placed under martial law for three of the first five years after the Republic of Antarctica’s declaration of independence. The people of the South Shetland Islands announced that they wanted to secede so that they could benefit from the sale of rights to oil and gas reserves under the seabed …

  So a few hundred mostly peaceable free ecopoets living out of sight in the back country, causing little trouble and doing useful work, were very low on the list of the government’s priorities. But then the Independent Democratic Alliance lost an election to the neoconservative National Unity Party, which immediately set about making good a pledge to deal with what they called the rebel scofflaws. Over a hundred free ecopoets were captured during raids on refuges in the north and more than twice that number of sympathisers were rounded up in Esperanza, O’Higgins and various coastal settlements. A carefully curated media campaign culminated in show trials, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the leaders of the movement, including Isabella Schilling Morales.

  The free ecopoets had mostly moved south, below the Antarctic Circle, but the trio which found Eddie Toomy after his plane crash were returning from stripping out equipment from a number of old refuges, and one of them recognised Eddie because they had both worked in the soil factory back in the day. There was his infernal luck again.

  The ecopoets gave Eddie and his injured companion such first aid as they could and called in the accident on the skywave net, an open system that bounced shortwave radio signals off the ionosphere. The woman who knew him from the old days told him that his former girlfriend and her son were both living free in the back country, and Eddie realised that the boy, born eight months after he’d left the peninsula for Australia, must be his.

  ‘Isabella should have told me,’ he said, forgetting that he’d burned all his social media when he’d left, hadn’t told her where he was going.

  ‘Well I suppose that was her choice,’ the woman said. ‘You didn’t ever try to get in touch?’

  ‘I feel bad about that. I do. But there were complications in my life, time passed … What’s his name? The boy?’

  ‘Salix. Salix Gabriel Morales. He looks a bit like you, I guess,’ the woman said grudgingly. ‘Same blond hair. And he isn’t a boy any more. He married just recently, and has a daughter. A fine husky girl born just two months ago.’

  Eddie pretended that his shock was entirely about discovering that he was a father and a grandfather. ‘At my age!’ he said. ‘Imagine!’

  The woman shrugged. She’d never much liked Eddie, who’d always preferred to complain about work rather than actually getting down to it, and she believed that she had said too much. Still, when Eddie asked her if she would tell Isabella that he’d like a chance to meet with his son and his granddaughter, she promised that she would pass on the message, adding that it might take a while for Isabella to receive it. Ecopoets used the skywave net sparingly, and because she had a price on her head Isabella took more precautions than most. She could be here, she could be there. It might take a year for her to receive the message, another year for Eddie to receive her reply. If she wanted to reply.

  Eddie said that he understood, said that he would be patient. He also said that he would repay the ecopoets for saving his life, claimed that his close brush with death had given him a new perspective. He wanted to atone for past mistakes, and most of all he wanted to meet Isabella and his son and ask for forgiveness.

  It was almost entirely bullshit, of course. The last thing that Eddie had thought before the plane smacked down was that it was so fucking unfair. But he had long ago mastered the knack of faking sincerity, and even managed to squeeze out a couple of tears. It helped that, despite the so-called painkillers he’d been patched with, his ribs were giving him hell.

  Soon after the ecopoets and their mammoths had disappeared over the ridge on the far side of the valley, a heli from Barilari Bay touched down next to the crashed plane. The chief accountant had lapsed into a coma by then, died the next day in Barilari Bay’s clinic without recovering consciousness. And Eddie returned to Esperanza and set about making good on his promise, donating to a charity that helped former ecopoets who had fallen on hard times after accepting the amnesty, establishing contacts among senior members of the community, and setting up a small operation that used drones to drop caches of freeze-dried rations, drugs and medical equipment in likely spots below the 67th parallel. Caches which reported that they had been opened were renewed, establishing several locations where free ecopoets could reliably find supplies.

  One day, almost exactly a year after the plane crash, one of the people Eddie employed to manage this little project forwarded a message sent via the skywave link of one of the caches. Isabella Schilling Morales had agreed to meet with him. A month later, he was on the west coast some fifty kilometres south of the Antarctic Circle. Waiting alone on a slanting shelf of fractured sandstone above the strand line at Bagnold Point. Summer, an armada of white clouds sailing the blue sky on a brisk west wind, patches of sunlight sparkling on the blue sea, Liard Island shimmering at the hazy horizon on the far side of Hanusse Bay. Eventually, an hour past the appointed time, two young men, both of them huskies, materialised from the rocks above him. They patted Eddie down and led him up a trail that climbed along the ridge and dropped to the rocky shore of a shallow bay on the far si
de. And there, by a tall slab of blood-red stone that had been levered upright and carved with elvish runes, he was reunited with his former lover and promptly betrayed her.

  Eddie counted several of the National Unity Party’s honourable deputies as his friends. One was the godmother of his eldest son, Alberto. Another often stayed at his holiday home on Joinville Island. It would be a tremendous scandal if it was revealed that Eddie had an outlaw son who’d edited his daughter, turned her into a monster. And if the bloody woman who had helped him after the crash knew about it, the rest of the so-called free ecopoets must know about it too. No way could it be kept secret for ever. It wasn’t just the personal embarrassment, although that would be pretty fucking bad. Opponents of the National Unity Party would certainly make use of the scandal, Eddie’s pet politicians would cut him off, and because every aspect of his business depended on his reputation, his contacts and his political influence, he’d be shamed and ruined.

  It was as if Isabella and Salix had been conspiring to damage him in the worst possible way. But they hadn’t counted on his cunning, because he’d seen at once how to turn it around by pulling one of his famous fast ones, a bold clever devious dodge that would neutralise any hint of scandal, strike a blow for law and order, and help the government to clear up an infestation of dangerous criminals. That was how he’d sold it to a friendly minister, and through her won the support of the police. Maybe he believed his own PR, his image of a buccaneering but essentially good-hearted rogue. ‘Life should be an adventure,’ he liked to say, ‘because otherwise what’s the point?’

  But he was also the same careless selfish man who’d quit the ecopoets and left his lover out of nothing more than boredom, not once thinking of the hurt it would cause her, and like all selfish men everywhere he believed that he had an absolute right to see the child he’d fathered. Confronting the boy and his mother was most definitely part of his plan, so imagine the anger he had to suppress when Isabella told him that Salix had decided that he would rather not meet him.

  Eddie pretended to be magnanimous. He said that although he was disappointed he completely understood why Salix might not want to meet the father who had never been part of his life, said that it must have been tough growing up on the run, hiding out in the wilderness without a proper home or education.

  ‘He had exactly the kind of education he wanted and needed,’ Isabella said. ‘While you, as I recall, quit university. Or were you thrown out? I can’t quite remember.’

  Eddie had given several versions of the story. Basically, he’d been sent down after he’d dropped classes because surfing and partying were more his idea of fun, hadn’t bothered to tell his parents about it. He hadn’t bothered to tell them when he’d headed off to the peninsula, either.

  ‘I turned out all right in the end I reckon,’ he said.

  ‘So did Salix,’ Isabella said.

  The implication being, no thanks to Eddie. Well he supposed that he deserved that little dig.

  Isabella wasn’t exactly forthcoming about their kid or her life, so Eddie found himself doing most of the talking, telling her about his business interests, his brilliant success. He even told her the true story about how he’d gotten hold of the seed money for the crab farm back in New Zealand, something he’d never told anyone else, apart from a woman he’d picked up in Buenos Aires one night a few years back, when he’d been up there on business. Oh, and that drunken night with an old mate in Auckland, after his father’s funeral … But those didn’t really count because his mate and the woman, he’d forgotten her name, had even forgotten what she looked like, both of them had thought it was just another of his tall tales. Hadn’t realised what it meant. Isabella, though, he could see that she understood, and it felt good to make a clean breast of it, to unstopper the secret he’d kept from everyone he knew, even his wife and kids. Isabella had known him back then, she knew what he’d been like, knew how he could have fallen into bad company by mistake. And besides, he could tell her what he liked and it didn’t matter, because when this was over no one would believe her if she repeated it, they’d just think she was trying to get back at him. It was, he thought, a tasty bit of revenge for not being allowed to meet his son and his granddaughter.

  ‘It turns out that the amount I’ve spent supporting your people is about equal to the cash money I found in that old duffel bag,’ he said. ‘So I suppose you could call it atonement for the whole stupid episode.’

  Actually, he’d blown more than three times that on this bloody operation, but why let the truth get in the way of a nice little embellishment?

  Isabella said that the ecopoets were grateful for his aid packages, but he didn’t have to help them just because he felt guilty. The two of them sitting on a rock together, or maybe walking on a moss lawn. The ecopoets had edited several species of moss that grew quickly, spreading in lush emerald carpets, breaking rock down into soil. Imagine Eddie and Isabella walking on such a carpet in bright cold summer sunlight, half a dozen ecopoets watching and waiting by the sea’s edge, where several small fast boats were drawn up among the rocks. Eddie dressed in brand new hiking gear, Isabella in a long coat woven from blond mammoth hair. His old honeyboo. She had aged more than he had expected, and she had an edge to her that he didn’t remember. She’d always been pragmatic when it came to her work, but it had been softened by a kind of romantic idealism. A touching innocence. No sign of that now. She was all business, briskly astringent, more than a little cynical. Life had toughened up both of them. It had a way of doing that.

  ‘If you really want to help us,’ she said, ‘there’s something that would count more than a few crates of food and medicine. You’re a supporter of the ruling party. You have contacts in government. You have influence.’

  ‘A little, I guess. Not as much as some people say. But a little. Have you been researching me, Iz? I suppose I should be flattered.’

  He was wondering, actually, just how long she’d known about him and his brilliant career. After all, he hadn’t exactly been keeping a low profile. She could have told him about their son years ago.

  ‘The point is that what you have to say counts for something,’ Isabella said. ‘It has weight. You could use that to do some real good. You could have a private word with your friends in government. You could start up a public campaign. I’m sure you have contacts in the feeds, too. I’m sure they’d want to hear what you have to say.’

  ‘And what exactly would I have to say?’

  ‘Your friends in the National Unity Party have passed a great deal of iniquitous legislation against huskies. Free clinics that encourage husky women to abort their children. Pass laws and the ban on huskies travelling outside the peninsula. The ban on huskies joining the police and the armed services, tacit encouragement of all kinds of petty discrimination … Speaking out about that would be hard, I know, but it would also be incredibly useful.’

  She talked for quite a while, lecturing him on the unfairness of the world, telling him what he should do about it. As if it was his fault. As if fixing it was that simple. Good old Isabella. She might come on as a canny weather-beaten rebel, but underneath it she was still a soft-hearted idealist. Telling him that if nothing else he should support husky rights for the sake of his granddaughter. The little girl who’d been turned into a monster because of her parents’ stupid beliefs. A monster whose mere existence might have derailed his career, if he hadn’t been smart enough to figure out how to deal with it.

  Eddie tried to make the right noises, expressed doubt that he could do very much. ‘It’s not really about the politicians, Iz. They’re only reflecting public opinion. As for persuading ordinary people to change their minds about ecopoets … Given what you’ve been getting up to, it would be a pretty tall order. Even for someone as influential as you seem to think I am.’

  He was having a little fun, but at last, growing impatient, wanting to wrap this up, he promised that he would see what he could do, said that he hoped they would be able to
talk again. And after they parted, the stealthed drones that had been watching over him, military kit, no way they could be spotted by civilian equipment, followed Isabella and her retinue as they made their way south in their fast boats, cutting through the strait between the Arrowsmith Plateau and Adelaide Island before splitting up and taking separate paths among the little islands beyond to separate refuges. Six of them, along with their families and associates, were arrested a few days later. The first of a chain of mass arrests that included the capture of Salix Gabriel Morales, his wife, and their young daughter. But Isabella Schilling Morales escaped, and although the police chased down every rumour and alleged sighting, once sending a team to China after someone claimed they’d seen her working on a project to rewild the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, they never caught up with her.

  Aside from that, Eddie’s scheme had been a terrific success, but he soon discovered that his tame politicians had become much cooler towards him. They no longer returned his calls, meetings were suddenly difficult to set up, deals stalled or evaporated. He’d done his bit, he was the hero of the hour, the man who’d put an end to the free ecopoet problem, but his so-called friends thought him an embarrassment and a liability.

  ‘Some believe that if you can betray your own people, you could just as easily betray them if you thought it might be useful,’ one of the few who’d stuck by him said.

  ‘The ecopoets never were my people,’ Eddie said. ‘And that bloody woman never told me I got her pregnant, never gave me the chance to meet our son, or his daughter. As for what I did, it was my duty as a citizen, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone like me isn’t trusted by the so-called elite.’