Terra Nullius

by Claire G. Coleman

  Briefly he even considered stealing a vehicle, a thoroughly illegal act which would also be totally pointless. For some reason he could not sufficiently explain, he had never learned to fly and learning over somewhere as dangerous as the deserts of the driest continent on the driest inhabited planet in the galaxy would be worse than foolhardy. He could hijack a flier and pilot but he was unarmed. Adding the purchase of an illegal firearm to the crimes of hijack and kidnap would certainly make his superiors back home more than a little upset.

  There was no transportation to have for love, which he was out of, or money, which he never had, having long ago taken a vow of poverty. The Church, however, had plenty of both. For that reason Grark decided that it was high time the Church bought a flier and hired a driver.

  He had reached the limit of his patience; after his time in the city, after all the investigations he lacked the will to find a driver, buy a flier. He did what he had always done; he dropped unsubtle hints while making it clear he was short on patience, until the Church made an underling do it. In the meantime he explored the city, the luxury hotels where every hall, every room had a misting sprinkler, cooling and humidifying the air in an attempt to make the patrons forget they were on Earth.

  They had servants there, all Natives. From his enquiries, despite the evasions, Grark believed it quite unlikely that such servants were being paid. That defined them as slaves no matter what their masters wanted to call them. This could not be tolerated: the Church and the state had abolished slavery at home and, they thought, every colony. Grark was ashamed of what he saw, yet there was little he could do about it. All he could do was report it to home, let them handle it.

  His people had long been a slave-keeping race, having even raided other countries on their own planet for slaves before their planet united under one government to fight the enemies who had come from the stars. They had taken slaves from the whole galaxy as soon as they could reach out to take them. Recent cultural developments, mostly instituted by the Church, had led to the abolition of slavery and the liberation of the slaves. They had all been sent back to where they came from.

  Grark had seen the correspondence, had seen the news reports, the comments, he had studied the issue on the ship. ‘There is no slavery,’ said the officials of the colony when asked by the government back home, ‘we are perfectly aware that slavery is illegal.’ That was their official stance, ‘no slavery here’. The reports from the media on this planet were different, even those he managed to read on the ship; Natives were not allowed to have money yet they were forced to work. The Natives cannot be slaves, the reports read, because they are not people. Slavery will not be tolerated.

  All throughout the city Grark heard and saw the same thing. Whenever he mentioned that home considered Natives to be people, to be citizens of the Empire and therefore not to be slaves they looked at him like he was crazy. His words fell on deaf ears, to the people of this planet there was no debate: Natives are animals and to be used as you would use any other animal.

  He dreaded what he would find when he left the city; he had heard that the slavery was worse the further you head out from civilisation. In the city they were aware that slavery was illegal in every colony of the Empire yet did it anyway in plain view of the administration. Surely in the desert, where nobody was watching, where they could claim they were not aware of the law, things must be far worse.

  So he lay under a misting sprinkler in an embarrassingly expensive hotel room, all muted greens and clear plastic, dark green, large-leaved plants from home and water, water everywhere. He was grateful for the cooling water, keeping his thin soft skin moist, though he wondered where in this desert planet they got all that water. There was plenty of it in the oceans; they must desalinate it.

  The depth of water in the waterbed – it filled only four inches before draining off – was perfect. It helped his mood, it kept him comfortable, though he would love to have a swim later if his car and driver didn’t appear first.

  Jacky was lost; he had absolutely no idea where he was, and no clue where he was going. ‘East’ had been a deceptively simple instruction: he had travelled towards the rising sun, or at least as close as he could get to that direction. Unfortunately, it is hard with very poor bearings, no landmarks and little experience to find the same direction every time. In the morning it was easy – walk towards the sun. In the evening it was easy – walk away from the sun. In the middle of the day it was virtually impossible to keep a completely straight bearing.

  He was sure, however, he was not going in circles, as bearings from the sun would surely stop him from veering west. He had to be going mostly east, for finding approximate east is laughably easy as long as you can see the sun. Unfortunately, approximate east leaves too much room for failure. From north-east to south-east there is an arc of exactly ninety degrees. With no other directions, no more information, he had virtually no chance of reaching his goal.

  The real problem was he was too scared to ask anyone where Jerramungup was. Settlers would ask too many questions, would want to know who he was, where he was going, who was his master . . . they would ask who gave him permission to travel.

  Most of the humans he saw were slaves – destroyed, broken, little more than empty shells. Initiative was no use to the Settlers; everyone left with willpower had it beaten out of them. Those who could not be punished into submission were killed. Once he had tried to ask one for directions. The look he got was blank, as if the human could no longer speak his own human language.

  The young man, bent and scarred, had rambled in pidgin Toad – a monologue that, most likely, would have made little sense in any language. Jacky could speak Settler, he could still speak the human language a bit and being away from the settlement was bringing more back, yet this mix of both seemed to carry no meaning or its meaning was opaque.

  Nor could he ask the few free humans he saw – the campies, the outlaws – those who avoided Settler control or were useless to the Settlers. Most were drunks, or strung out on the new drugs the Toads had brought onto the planet; drugs humans seemed to have no tolerance for. Those who were not actually drunk, or stoned, were broken-hearted, heartsick. They had lost their homes, their families, their children, and they were second-class citizens where once they had ruled. They had lost everything; having no hope they had slipped into a deep depression. That mood was everywhere – there was nothing positive, nothing left to hope for. How can you hope when everything, even your future, has already been taken away?

  Everybody despaired, or was paralysed by fear. Many were consumed by both fear and despair, so tired, so depressed they were not even of use to the Settlers anymore. They lived on handouts of rations from friends and family, from anyone who could still work, still bring in something to eat, only if those friends and family had some to spare.

  People died, or lay down ready to die, resigned to ending their lives in filth, in squalor. How do you clean up your life with nothing to live for? How do you build a future when everything tells you there is no future for your people?

  An old man at the settlement where they were slaves had told Jacky that his people, the humans, had once created a great society, built great cities, farmed, engineered. Once his people, the humans, had controlled this entire planet as the Toads had for Jacky’s entire memory. Looking at the world you could see the remains of the human presence: the old roads, the ruined buildings, traces of farms. Despite all that it was hard for him to believe that the humans he was seeing were capable of such things, of building worlds.

  Humans had once enslaved other humans, deciding their fate based on the colour of their skin. Racism, the old man had called it. When he described it Jacky was shocked. Humans were not nice people, humans had war and despair and theft even before the Toads arrived. The very land he walked on, the continent of Australia had been home to one of the oldest cultures on the planet, maybe even in the galaxy. Then a younger warlike
culture had come and stolen their land, enslaved the people, killed thousands.

  The arrival of the Toads had eliminated all racism and hate within the human species. It was not that with a common enemy the humans decided to work together – humans never made a decision to no longer fight between themselves. Instead the colonisation by the Settlers simply ended all discrimination within the human race by taking away all the imbalance. There was no caste or class within humans; to the Toads who now owned the planet and everyone on it all humans had the same low status. To the Toads, all humans were nothing more than animals.

  With no distinction between humans, no rights, no countries, the human race was in the process of homogenisation. A slave is a slave is a slave. Humans had in the past sought to assimilate all humans into one group – to breed out colour, destroy other cultures. Where they had failed the Toads had been successful.

  He was still lost.

  He could have already passed Jerramungup, or it could still be hundreds of miles away. It might not even exist, might not have ever existed. It could be north of him, south of him, there was no way for him to know. After many days, more than a month of walking, he lacked even the faintest idea. He needed directions, or a map. He had never read a map, never even seen one until the nun had shown him where his home was; they knew of maps in the settlement but the Toads never let the human slaves see one. Jacky knew from experience, and from logic, that it would be impossible to keep slaves if they knew the way home or maybe if they even knew where they were.

  Despair polluted his every thought. Lacking his usual energy, lacking direction and impetus, he had slowed to a purposeless walk, almost stopped. He had seen humans with broken hearts, broken minds, in the Native camp near the settlement. They paced slowly and aimlessly, no energy, no direction. Jacky recognised the first signs of their soulless walk in his own.

  Stopping through complete lack of impetus as much as for a rest, he leaned against an ancient gum tree, its bark rough and soft, almost padded, its foliage mysteriously the colour of Settler skin. A strange sound reached his ears – not something that belonged there under the trees, not an animal sound but still something he did not understand. Again it came, a scraping rustling sound, almost but not quite the sound of a small animal running for cover through the leaves.

  ‘Water.’ With a start he understood it – not a mysterious sound at all but a voice, a word, a single word in the Settler tongue. Again he heard it, then again, the third time in Jacky’s own human language. Speech implied a speaker, unless he was going mad. He had seen it before on the farm – one of his people lost his mind, talking of the voices in his head. Talking to the voices in his head.

  Unlike the other broken souls in the camp – those who paced and circled, eyes so closed it was hard to imagine how they didn’t walk into things, those who just lay down to die – the madman was loud, would not shut up. The Settlers had killed him, mocking him as he ranted, mocking him, laughing at him, even as they shot him then claimed he had tried to escape. They drove him mad, then he was no use to them anymore.

  If Jacky could find the voice it would mean he had not lost his mind. He searched, in no organised way, letting his eyes fall wherever his thoughts took them. It was some time before he found it, and even longer to work out what it was – all wrinkled skin, the colour of dead gum leaves. A mouth opened, twisted by the wrinkles; how could there be a mouth in that mass of wrinkled paper? How could it be a face when it looked like someone had screwed up a ball of correspondence and thrown it under a tree?

  The mouth gaped red, in startling contrast to the pale white ruin of a face surrounding it. Red, white, red, white, it flashed, like the opening and closing of butterfly wings, like blood dripping into water.

  He studied the thing before him, mouth now opening and closing with no more sound coming out, whatever it was lacked the strength to talk. It could be a Settler, dying from the heat and the dry as everyone said they did, soon to be nothing more than a squashed frog. He should leave it there to die, it certainly deserved a painful death, like most of its species it had taken his land, taken him from his home, taken his family. Jacky needed his water, needed it more, he believed, than a dying Toad. He turned to walk away, took one step into the sun and stopped. He needed directions, he needed a Settler to help him find his home. Here was a Settler in a rare position of disadvantage.

  Water is heavy – a litre of water weighs a kilogram, the two litres humans need daily for survival is two kilograms, Toads need even more. Therefore Jacky didn’t carry much of it, just his old crinkled plastic water bottle, fortunately, for the Toad, full. He had been walking all day, conserving his water, living on the sloshing mass in his stomach. The mouth before him was clicking open and closed, with a sound like someone turning the pages of a bible. Uncapping his precious water Jacky poured some into the dry, dust-red mouth.

  The water disappeared into that flaking dry hole and he knew it would not be enough. He knew a Settler finding him on the verge of death would walk away, leaving him to die, not even taking the time to end his pain. Was he so concerned for this Toad because he had been trained to respect the Toads, to call them master, to be concerned for their wellbeing? Jacky hoped, instead, that it was a vestige of humanity, of human kindness. Carefully, knowing his actions might lead to his own death, he poured more water into the parched mouth.

  Would he even have enough? It seemed pointless to pour so much life into someone who would die anyway; if there was not enough water to save the Toad they might both die. No matter, Jacky had little hope left anyway. He carefully poured water into the desiccated Settler until his precious water was gone.

  With a rustle, with a rattle like the wind through scrub, the Toad tried to speak. ‘Thank you,’ was all he managed to say but it struck Jacky like lightning into his mind, his soul. Never before had he been thanked by a Settler.

  In heavily accented Settler, Jacky spoke. ‘Can you get up?’ He successfully resisted the conditioned urge to call the Toad ‘Master’. ‘I don’t have enough water for you, I have to find more.’

  ‘My friends,’ the Settler coughed – a sound loud enough to make Jacky jump – then he paused, then moaned, ‘my friends are looking for water, I hope.’ His voice was quiet, not much more than a hiss, ‘They were looking for water.’ It was such a struggle for him to speak that Jacky was filled with profound pity, a feeling he had only felt before for himself, and for the new children brought as slaves into the homestead. ‘I don’t have any more,’ he said, ‘I have to find some more. Don’t know if I can, if your friends are not back, have not found some I dunno how I can.’ Jacky had no idea why he was so worried, he simply was. Maybe it was the thanks, the gratitude he could not remember ever having received before. Now there was no way that he could leave the Settler to die.

  ‘I will look.’

  Chapter 14

  Hundreds of years ago the empires of what was then called Europe were driven by a strong, some would say insatiable, desire to expand. Using their superior technology they invaded the land of peoples less technologically advanced than them. They did not always call it invasion yet that is exactly what it was.

  Being armed with spears, with bows and arrows, having never invented firearms, sometimes having not even discovered metalworking, they were an easy target. These so-called primitive people had learnt to live in peace for the most part, and in harmony with their environments. Europeans colonised, they killed and destroyed, they enslaved. It took centuries for the majority of humans to abandon these habits, these traditions, of invasion and slavery, to realise that the people they had colonised had rights, that the people they had enslaved had something more to offer.

  Now you Settlers have come with a vastly superior technology to colonise, to invade our world. We were just learning to live in harmony with our fellow man, most of us had learnt to hate war, slavery was abolished and discrimination was decreasing. We could not f
ight you, our technology was to yours what sticks were to guns in our past.

  You came here, you conquered us like Europe conquered other countries, you are trying to exterminate us, to destroy our culture, just as Europe did to other countries long ago. We learnt the folly of our ways, we hope you do as well, before our unique human culture is destroyed.

  We ask you, beg of you, that you learn to live in harmony with us as Europe once learnt to live in harmony with the rest of the world. We have something to offer you, if nothing else you can learn from our difference, as we can learn from you. It would be a tragedy for you, and for us, if you discovered there is or was something that we knew, something human culture could offer, after everyone who knew of it was dead.

  Rather than thinking of what you can take, I beg you to consider what our two peoples can offer each other.

  – Verity Jones in a speech outside Colonial Administration at the 75th Anniversary Invasion Day protests.

  Esperance stood alone among the trees, listening to her favourite song – the complex warbling, the heartbreaking chorus of the magpies. She had heard that the magpies of the Australian continent were the only species of bird on the planet that did this: sung in chorus, in harmony, every bird in the flock, in the family, singing its part. She could not imagine living away from them, never hearing them again.

  They are like us, she thought – interwoven, interdependent, the mob unable to survive as individuals. No matter where they had come from before, whatever culture or ancient human race they had been part of, Esperance’s people were one mob, one people, now. For all intents and purposes they were all family.

  They had to learn to sing in harmony like the magpies.

  Like any family they had their fights, over little things mostly. They squabbled over the best morsels of food, fought over blankets and shelters, had fist fights over booze and drugs. Most disturbingly they argued over status and rank. You see that in all of nature, even the beloved magpies fought, not adverse to jumping on a family member and giving a good show of an attempt to peck them to death.