by Amy Thomson
The Aboriginal elders watched intently as he performed for them, their faces calm, like a wide river where the water runs smooth and deep. They had the patience and deliberation of boulders, as though they had existed for centuries, despite their short-lived humanity.
Ukatonen stood silent and still for a moment after the quarbirri ended. Then he held out his arms, offering to link with them. The two elders reached out and grasped his arms as he instructed them. Moki joined them, holding out one hand to Eerin, who joined the link.
Ukatonen felt a moment of panic from the man. He reached out and enfolded the elder in calmness, steadying him until he could get his balance in the rush of sensation. There was an internal complexity to the woman that belied her stolid outward appearance. Her presence reminded him of a stretch of bright, rippling water. The man felt dark and solid all the way through, a good, well-worn darkness like the wooden handle of a tool, polished and stained from years of use. The human’s sense of patient craftsmanship reminded Ukatonen of Domatonen, the enkar who had trained him in healing and allu-a.
The memory of Domatonen triggered a sudden, explosive upwelling of longing and loneliness. As he struggled io control himself, he felt the sudden sharpness of surprise from Moki, Eerin, and the two elders. Moki and Eerin moved first, enfolding Ukatonen in reassurance. Slowly and uncertainly, the Aboriginal elders opened themselves :o him, exposing the depths that lay under the bright rippling thoughts and the core of dark wood to comfort him.
Ukatonen struggled against their help, but the pressure of loneliness was too much. He gave up and opened himself to them. He had not realized how much loneliness and homesickness had poisoned his spirit. He let go of his oneliness and pain, allowing the others to wash it away, antil the link dissolved. He felt light, almost hollow, like iie shed skin of a snake, empty of all the pain that had rilled him.
’You have been too long in the cities of the ghosts,” -.he man told him. “You need to go walkabout in the bush : or a while.”
Ukatonen nodded. They were right. He needed to lose himself in the familiarity of the forest.
Stan Akuka stood. “Thank you,” he said. “Come visit us. There’s a lot of good jungle up around the north end of Queensland. We’ll share songs, and dance and eat and talk, and do this new thing you have shown us.” He took a battered card out of his waist pouch. “Here’s my comm number. Let me know when you’re coming, and I’ll get everybody together. We’ll have a right big party.”
“You and the little one should come too,” the woman told Eerin.
Eerin nodded, and then the Aboriginals filed out of the room, leaving the ship as unceremoniously and quietly as they had come.
Ukatonen looked out the window of the lounge and saw them heading, not for the airdrome, but across the hot tarmac and into the grey-green bush.
Juna touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, en,” she said. “I should have gotten you down here sooner. I didn’t know how bad it was.”
“You did the best you could, Eerin,” Ukatonen reassured her. “We are here now, and we will be in the forest in two days’ time.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said, yawning sleepily.
Ukatonen nodded absently. He was thinking about the Aboriginals, and their warnings. He would have to go to Darwin and talk to them someday soon.
A day and a half later, the zeppelin touched down at Darwin. When they reached the arrival lounge, Juna looked around. Selena had arranged for one of the family’s older sons, Marcus Fortunati, to meet her here. He would look after her and the Tendu until she went back up to the station.
A tall, dark-haired man came up to them. “Dr. Saari?” “Marcus?” Juna inquired. Juna had remembered him as a solemn-eyed toddler when she was a teenager. He had become a handsome adolescent while she was in the Survey Academy. She hadn’t seen him for years, and the image of him as a handsome teen had remained in her mind’s eye. He must be in his early thirties by now.
“Marcus? Is that you?”
“Hello, Aunt Juna.”
“For some reason, I thought you were younger.”
He blushed, looking suddenly a lot more like the teenager Juna remembered. “It’s been a long time, Aunt Juna.”
It was Juna’s turn to be embarrassed. “I know,” she said. “I was expecting a twenty-year-old. Selena told me you were in college.”
“I’m in graduate school now,” he told her. “I wanted to go to the Survey Academy, but they’ve cut back on admissions.”
Juna touched his arm sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Marcus.”
He shrugged. “It’s all right, Aunt Juna.”
“Please, Marcus, don’t make me feel any more of an old lady than I already do. Just call me Juna.”
“All right,” he said with a grin. “You look too young to be my auntie, anyway.”
Juna blushed at the compliment. Then she introduced him to Analin, the Tendu, and their squad of security escorts.
“If we had an elephant and a tent, we could call ourselves a circus,” she quipped.
Moki got their luggage while Marcus arranged for a shuttle to take them to the airport for their flight to Jakarta.
“What are you studying?” she asked him, when they were settled in the shuttle.
“I’m getting my Ph.D. in Anthropology,” he said. “I thought about doing Alien Contact studies, but since I couldn’t get into the Academy, anthropology seemed like a more practical goal.
“It’s just as well,” Juna said. “The A-C people are all theory and no practice. You’ll learn more in Anthropology. Where are you doing your fieldwork?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t decided yet. I was hoping I’d find something interesting in Indonesia.”
“I’m sure you will,” Juna told him. “It’s an interesting part of the world.”
Ukatonen and the others said goodbye to Analin in Palang, then flew on to Medan. They got to their hotel, ate a quick meal and collapsed into bed. The next day, a ranger from Gunung Leuser Park collected them in a van, glancing sidelong at the Tendu. Her name was Nesa, and she let Moki help load the bags, which endeared her to him immediately.
An hour out of the city, trees closed over their heads, and they were in the forest. Ukatonen had to fight the urge to leap out of the truck and head for the treetops. They stopped at a village market to pick up supplies. He and Moki were immediately surrounded by eager, staring children, chattering at them in their native language and broken Standard. Their security guards shifted nervously, but Eerin shook her head.
“Let them go,” she said.
Ukatonen bought two beautifully made mesh bags that looked rather like Tendu gathering bags except for their longer straps and their weaving pattern. He and Moki filled the bags with ripe fruit. They found a quiet corner of the market and spread the fruit out to eat, sharing it with the curious crowd of children, who darted in to take pieces from the aliens’ hands then darted back again, exclaiming at their own bravery. By that time, a crowd of adults had gathered and stood watching. When the fruit was all eaten, Ukatonen stepped onto a packing crate, and, drawing himself up, performed the bird chant.
The villagers clapped excitedly, and then one old man, clad in a faded sarong, his face a mass of wrinkles, brought out a gong and started to play. Other people came running with their musical instruments. Soon the air rang with complex rhythms and plaintive chants. People started dancing, drawing the Tendu and Juna and the park ranger into the performance. Ukatonen wove snatches of quarbirri into the dance. Moki simply improvised.
The villagers were absolutely delighted, and it was several hours before they got out of the village and back on the road, laden with gifts of fruit, cloth, and a couple of small flutes. Ukatonen felt more lighthearted than he had in months, and Moki was so excited that he could hardly sit still.
Nesa, the park ranger, was grinning from ear to ear as they pulled out of the village.
“We’ll have to arrange a show for you some evening,” she said. “The
rangers and some of the villagers have put together an orchestra, and we can have some dancing and puppets.”
“I’d like that,” Ukatonen said. “I would be happy to perform a quarbirri for them, if you think they would be interested.”
“What you did in the village was incredible,” Nesa told him. “I’m sure they’d be eager to see you perform again.”
They reached the research station just before dark. Juna and the Tendu piled out of the van, and followed Nesa to their rooms in a traditional high-roofed adat house with its beautifully carved and painted roof gables. Ukatonen threw his suitcase in the corner, picked up one of the gathering bags, swung down off their balcony, and walked into the forest. Juna didn’t try to stop him. She knew how much he needed the peace and familiarity of the jungle. Moki put Juna’s suitcase on the bed and looked at her pleadingly.
“Go ahead, Moki. Come back when you need me.”
He [[Mowed Ukatonen in(6 Cfe 6mt JBSt Si MSfddS ]] stepped onto the balcony of Juna’s room.
“Are they going to be all right?”
Juna smiled. “They’re going to be happier than they’ve been since they left Tiangi. It’s as close to home as they can come on Earth. They’ll be back in a couple of days, full of questions.”
“But aren’t you worried about Moki?”
“Moki can survive anything this rain forest can throw at him, Marcus.”
“I— ” Marcus began. He looked terribly crestfallen, like some wet baby bird.
“You wanted to spend some time with them, is that it?” Juna said. “Don’t worry, you will, but they’ve been through so much in the last few weeks. It’s time to let them be who they are without humans around.”
Her stomach growled loudly. “The baby says it’s time to eat,” she said, patting her swelling belly. “Come on, let’s go find out what’s for dinner. We’ll see the Tendu when they’re ready for our company and not before.”
Ukatonen sat on a high branch, feeling a welcome warm rain running down his skin. He had a rain forest around him, this time for more than a few days. He could actually get to know this forest, and compare it to those on Tiangi. He took a deep breath, breathing in the warm, sweet scent of this forest. It was different from the forest in Monteverde; the underlying scents were spicier and more pungent here.
Somewhere nearby, a bird honked loudly. Ukatonen sat still, waiting, and soon an ungainly black bird with an enormous bill fluttered onto a nearby branch. He watched as it gazed suspiciously around for a few moments, then settled into the serious business of stripping fruit off the branch it was perched on.
Watching the bird, so reminiscent of the poo-eet bird of Tiangi, yet so different, Ukatonen felt a weight lift from his heart. He was home and not-home simultaneously. He was surrounded by the familiarity of a rain forest that was different from anything on Tiangi. Here was what he had traveled so long and so far to see.
Moki swung up beside him, startling the bird, which flew off, honking sonorously.
“I wish we could stay longer,” Moki said in skin speech, “It’s nice being back.”
Ukatonen flickered agreement, but looked away. Sadness clouded his skin at the thought of going back to Berry Station. Interesting as it was, it didn’t feel like home.
“I’m sorry, en.” Moki said. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“Let’s just enjoy the time we have here,” Ukatonen told him. “We can think about going home when the time comes.” But as he said this, he knew he couldn’t go back with Eerin and Moki. It would be hard on Moki, but he was clever and adaptable. He would be all right. Perhaps Moki would learn more about humans without another Tendu around to distract him.
For Juna, the green and golden days passed swiftly. Moki and Ukatonen emerged from the forest a couple of days later, their bags bulging with freshly gathered fruit. Ukatonen spent several days conferring with the researchers, while Moki spent time lounging on the riverbank with her. Then the Tendu vanished into the forest again. Each time they emerged from the green gloom they seemed happier and more relaxed, but also more alien. Moki and Ukatonen spoke more in skin speech and less in Standard. It was as though they were shedding the part of themselves that had learned to live in the human world.
Marcus hung around Ukatonen whenever the enkar was in camp. Ukatonen seemed to enjoy his company. He took Marcus along on walks through the forest, and started teaching him how to climb trees.
When he was not exploring with Marcus, Ukatonen spent most of his time talking with the researchers, listening to their plans for restoring the original ecology. Moki and Juna spent most of their time swimming in the river or resting on the shore, watching flocks of brilliant butterflies alight on the sandy bank to drink and sun themselves. Sometimes Juna closed her eyes and let herself imagine that they were all still on Tiangi.
A few days before they were due to leave, Ukatonen came down and sat beside Juna, on the bank of the river. There was a serious, thoughtful cast to his skin.
“What is it, en?”
“Dr. Sivagnam has invited me to work with the restoration team. I want to stay here.”
Juna felt a welling of sadness within her, like blood from a wound, but she wasn’t surprised by the enkar’s decision. She propped herself up on her arms to see him better. “What about Moki?” she asked.
“He’ll be all right. He’s happy to be wherever you are, you know that. But I— ” He hesitated. “I need this, Eerin. I can’t go back to Berry, not yet. I’ll be there to help you have the baby, but then I’ll come back here. I need to be here.”
“Who’ll look after you?”
“Marcus has offered. He wants to study me, and how I interact with humans.” He shrugged, looking away. “I’ll get a comm account, so that we can talk.”
“We’ll miss you,” she said, squinting up at him.
Ukatonen brushed her shoulder affectionately with his knuckles. “I’ll miss you too.”
They sat there for a long time, watching the sun dance on the river and the butterflies and birds come and go. Then Ukatonen got up, ducked into the river, and came out again, gleaming in the sun. He touched her shoulder again and walked into the forest.
The last few days were very subdued. The three of them spent a lot of time together. They linked as often as they could, bringing themselves into a strange, almost prescient state where each knew what the other was going to do almost as soon as the other thought of it. They spoke very little, there was no need.
At last it was time to go. Ukatonen went with them to the airport in Medan. They clasped hands in a last brief link and then Moki and Juna turned and got on the plane.
Ukatonen spent most of the next month alone in the forest. It felt good to have cast off his connections again, to be free of obligations, free to study this strange and tattered ecosystem. He had seen enough restoration projects to appreciate how much the humans had done to repair this badly damaged ecosystem. Still there were holes, places where species were missing. He brooded over his observations, trying to create a pattern out of the remnants of the whole.
Finally he returned to the research station.
“The forest is too broken,” he said, defeated. “I cannot repair it without samples from the creatures that are dead now,” he told them. “Without samples, I cannot re-create the species that the forest needs in order to be whole again.”
“How big a sample do you need?” Dr. Fardhi, the head biologist, asked hesitantly.
“Just a few cells.” He looked up in surprise. “You mean you’ve got some? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Here,” he said, and led him to a computer.
“We have a database containing all preserved samples of extinct species. If a sample exists, we can find it for you.”
Ukatonen watched columns of names and code numbers scroll by. “I don’t know the names of the animals we’re looking for. I know what they do, though.”
“We’ll help you,” Dr. Fardhi said eagerly.
Se
veral hours later, they had come up with several possibilities.
“How about this one?” Dr. Karim suggested, pointing at the listing for a bird. “We have a lot of samples of that one.”
Ukatonen shook his head. “It would be better to start with something small and simple. An insect, perhaps.”
“Let’s use this butterfly, then,” said Dr. Nugroho, the entomologist. “We have samples on site.”
“Yes,” Ukatonen replied. “It would pollinate several important species. I’ll need some supplies, though,” he said, picking up a pencil and some paper to make a list.
Three weeks later, Ukatonen peered into the cracked aquarium that held the pupating butterflies.
’They’re hatching,” he said.
Dr. Nugroho leaned forward, his breath fogging the glass, as a wet-winged butterfly emerged from its smooth brown pupa, and slowly flapped its wings to dry them.
“Look at it! Look at it!” he whispered, as excited as a child. “I can’t believe it’s real!” He remembered himself long enough to stick his head out of the door to the lab and shout that the butterflies were hatching, before he returned to watching them emerge. The room filled with people. Ukatonen waited until the initial excitement had died down, then picked up the aquarium.
“What are you doing!” Dr. Nugroho cried.
“I was going to set them free,” Ukatonen said.
“But— ”
“There are three more tanks full of butterflies, if you want to study them,” Ukatonen said, a flicker of amusement running down his back.
Dr. Nugroho nodded grudgingly. “All right,” he said. “We’ll let these go.”
They trooped out into the forest. Ukatonen set the tank of butterflies down in the middle of a sunbreak near the trees they pollinated. He put his arms into the cage, drops of nectar beading up from his spurs. Soon his forearms were covered with butterflies, eagerly drinking nectar from his spurs. He lifted his arms up into a shaft of sunlight, waited a few moments while the sun warmed the insects, then gently shook his arms. The startled butterflies fluttered up into the air like colored pieces of paper caught in an updraft. The humans watched quietly, their faces alight with awe. One or two of them had tears running down their cheeks.
