by Greg Egan
After sidestepping a stool and a chair on castors, Prabir came to a patch of starlight falling on the bench from one of the windows. He moved his right hand tentatively into the faint illumination, complicating the already baffling shadows and hints of surfaces. He touched cool metal, slightly rough and curved. A microscope. He could smell the grease on the focusing rack-and-pinion; it was a distinctive odour, summoning memories. His father propping him up on a stool so he could peer into a microscope, back in Calcutta. Showing him the scales on the butterfly’s wings, glinting like tiny emerald prisms. Prabir’s stomach tightened until he could taste acid, but that only strengthened his resolve. The worse he felt about doing this, the more necessary it seemed.
He pictured the daylight view through the window. He’d seen his father hunched over the microscope; he knew where he was now, and where he needed to go. Opening a cage full of adults in the dark would be asking for trouble; he could hardly expect to find their bodies by touch without waking them, and even if none escaped, their wings were easily damaged. The larvae were covered with sharp bristles and spurted a malodorous brown irritant. He could probably have overcome his reluctance to touch them – they were only caterpillars, after all; it wouldn’t be like thrusting his hand into a cage full of scorpions – but he’d seen the kind of stains the irritant left on his father’s skin. He’d be hard pressed to explain an equally bad case as the product of a chance encounter.
A couple of metres further along the bench, he found what he hoped was the right cage. He flicked the taut mesh a few times, and listened for a response. No nervous fluttering, no angry hiss. He put his face to the mesh and inhaled; behind the metallic scent there was sap and leaves. Prabir had seen the pupae hanging by narrow threads from the branches in the cage, lumpy orange-black-and-green objects, each supported by a coarse silk net – what his father called a ‘girdle’ – like small, misshapen, fungus-rotted melons in individual string bags. The larvae spun no proper cocoon to hide their metamorphosis; they did it naked, and it was not a pretty sight. But however ugly their jumble of dissolving parts, they wouldn’t be half as unpleasant to handle as they were before the process began.
Prabir opened the cage and reached in.
He pulled his hand back. Idiot. He couldn’t trust a vague memory of how the cage had once looked to guide him. He had to start near the bottom and work his way up, lest he sever one of the supporting threads. And he needed sweat on his fingers now, so the first touch would count.
His arms and sides were dripping from the night’s humidity; he soaked his right hand and placed it, palm up, on the bottom of the cage. Then he raised his arm slowly. The empty space above the floor of the cage seemed to go on forever; he could feel his palm drying while the rest of his skin shed nervous rivulets. He tried to remember what his father had told him about the breeding cycle. Maybe there were no pupae in the cage at all.
When his hand was shoulder-high, his wrist finally touched something.
It was cool and springy. One of the branches.
He withdrew his arm. It was trembling.
One more time, he decided. If he failed again, he’d walk away.
As he stood beside the cage, trying to remember exactly where he’d placed his hand the first time, Prabir became aware of a faint, unfamiliar drone coming from somewhere outside the hut. He was puzzled; he knew the sound of every machine in the kampung, whether they were working smoothly, labouring against an overload, or seizing up completely. If there were any mysteries left, they’d be in here with him: some automated piece of lab equipment or refrigeration pump, too quiet to hear from the outside. But the source of this sound was not in the hut, he was sure of that.
It was a jet. Flying lower than usual. Or maybe not; maybe the night air changed the acoustics. The sound was so faint it would never have woken him. He couldn’t be sure that this was anything new.
He stood in the dark, listening to the aircraft approaching. If it was flying lower, what did that mean? If he ran and woke his parents, no one would demand to know what he’d been doing. He’d been woken by stomach pains, that was all he’d need to say.
The drone grew louder, then suddenly dropped in pitch. Prabir remained paralysed, picturing bombs tumbling through the air, falling towards their target as the plane accelerated away. But as the retreating engines faded, nothing followed. Only frog calls from the jungle.
Prabir almost laughed with relief, but the sound stuck in his throat. Maybe the signs had protected them, the paint visible against the warmth of the roof panels, black-on-green in the false colours of an infrared display. But if the plane’s destination had been elsewhere all along – if Teranesia had meant nothing to the pilot but a fleeting piece of scenery beneath the flight path – then the bombs could still fall tonight. On some other island.
Prabir stared into the darkness, a hollow ache in his chest. He put his hand into the cage again, and continued the search. This time he was rewarded: his fingertips brushed against the side of a chrysalis. The impact set it swinging, but the silk thread holding it was resilient. He waited for the oscillations to die down, then cupped it gently in the palm of his hand. The surface was cool and smooth, like shellac.
He wasn’t sure now how much sweat he’d had on his palm, and he didn’t want to try to move his left hand into the cage as well – that would mean twisting his body, and worrying about new obstacles. He stood perfectly still for a while, fixing the position of the chrysalis in his mind. Then he withdrew his hand, coated it thoroughly, and wiped a second, surer dose of poison across the surface of the sleeping insect.
He closed the cage and walked out of the hut the way he’d come. Belatedly, he crouched to check for footprints, but there was enough grass along the route he’d taken to keep him from making any impression in the soil, and to keep his feet from being dusty enough to have left a visible trail indoors.
As he lay down in his hammock, he felt physically drained, more exhausted than when he’d half climbed the volcano. But everything he’d done in the butterfly hut already felt less real than a dream. Not having seen the crime would make it easier to keep the guilt from his face when he heard the news. By the time the poisoned butterfly failed to emerge – or unfurled its wings and died in the sunlight – no memory would remain of the faint mental image of his hand inside the cage.
Prabir was walking back from the beach, Madhusree in his arms, when he heard a loud, dull thud from the direction of the kampung. It could almost have been a tree toppling, but there’d been no screech of tearing wood, no rustle of branches.
Madhusree gave him a puzzled look, but didn’t press him for an explanation; she was perfectly capable of inventing one herself. They’d all get to hear it at dinner: a new creature on the island, probably, blundering around in search of children to eat.
Prabir heard his mother cry out, her voice rising in horror. ‘Rajendra!’ Madhusree looked startled, then her mouth curled. Prabir put her down on the path. ‘Stay here.’ He began running towards the kampung. Madhusree screamed wordlessly after him; he turned and saw her flapping her arms in distress. He stopped and gazed back at her, torn. What if there was danger here, too? If soldiers had parachuted from the plane, they could be anywhere.
He ran back to her and lifted her up. She clawed at his cheeks and pummelled his neck, tears and mucus streaming down her face. Prabir ignored the assault and started jogging down the path again, indifferent to her weight and her struggling. It was like running in a dream; the jungle flowed past him, but it took no will, no effort to move. The dream itself propelled him forward.
His mother was standing alone in the middle of the kampung, distraught, looking around as if searching for something. When she spotted Prabir she started banging her fist on her forehead. She screamed at him angrily, ‘Take her away! She mustn’t see!’
Prabir stopped at the edge of the kampung, confused, fighting back tears. Where was his father? ‘What happened? Ma?’
His mother stared at him as i
f he was an idiot. ‘Where’s the ladder?’ she wailed. ‘What did you do with the ladder?’
Prabir couldn’t remember. He’d meant to put it in the storage hut when they’d finished painting the roofs, but that would have been the first place she’d checked.
He stepped forward uncertainly. ‘I’ll help you look.’
His mother waved him away miserably, then started walking in circles around the middle of the kampung.
Madhusree was scarlet-faced, screaming and trying to slither out of his grip. Prabir ran over to his parents’ hut and placed her in her cot. She was tall enough now to climb over the sides if she wanted to, but smart enough to realise that the fall would do her serious harm. Prabir knelt down and pressed his face against the bars. ‘I’ll be back soon, I promise. With Ma. OK?’ He didn’t wait for an answer.
He found the ladder in the undergrowth behind the butterfly hut, the last place he’d used it. He picked it up one-handed and started running towards his mother; it wasn’t all that heavy, but it swayed sideways as he moved, throwing him off balance.
He called out nervously, ‘Where should I take it? Where’s Baba?’
She stared at him blankly for several seconds, then put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. Prabir stood watching her, his skin growing icy.
When she opened her eyes she seemed calmer.
She said softly, ‘Baba’s been hurt. I’m going to need your help. But you have to do exactly what I tell you.’
Prabir said, ‘I will.’
‘Wait there.’ She vanished into the storage hut, then emerged with two empty wooden packing crates. ‘Listen to me carefully. I want you to follow five metres behind me. Walk where I walk, nowhere else. Bring the ladder, but don’t let it touch the ground.’
As she spoke, Prabir heard doubt rising in her voice, as if she was beginning to think this was too much to ask of him. He said firmly, ‘Follow five metres behind you. Walk where you’ve walked. Don’t let the ladder touch the ground.’
She smiled reluctantly. ‘OK. I know you’re not stupid, I know you’ll be careful. Can you be brave for me, too?’ She searched his face, and Prabir felt his chest tightening.
‘Yes.’
His father was lying in a shallow crater in the middle of the garden behind the storage hut. His legs were mangled, almost shredded. Dark blood was spurting from his thighs, welling up through a layer of sand that must have rained down on top of him from the blast. His eyes were closed, his face set against the pain. Prabir was too shocked for tears, and when he felt a plaintive cry of ‘Baba!’ rising in his throat, he silenced it.
His mother spoke almost in a whisper. ‘I’m back, love. It won’t be much longer.’ His father showed no sign of having heard her.
She turned to Prabir. ‘There could be more mines buried in the garden. So we’ll put the ladder between the crates, like a bridge. Then I’ll walk across to Baba and bring him back. Do you understand?’
Prabir said, ‘I can do it. I’m lighter.’ The ladder was aluminium, and he was afraid that it might not take the weight of two adults.
His mother shook her head impatiently. ‘You couldn’t lift him, darling. You know that. Just help me get the ladder in position.’
She placed one of the crates squarely on the ground at the edge of the garden, at the point nearest his father. Then she walked a couple of metres away, and motioned to Prabir to approach the crate. When he was standing beside it, he swung the ladder towards her, and she took hold of the end. She was still carrying the second crate in her left hand, gripping it by one exposed side.
As his mother walked around the edge of the garden, Prabir fed her more of the ladder, until he was holding it by the opposite end. She smiled at him encouragingly, but he felt his heart pounding with fear for her. Staying out of the garden was no guarantee of safety. The rectangle of cleared soil must have looked like an ideal target from the air – and maybe it was easier for a self-laying mine to penetrate the ground and cover its tracks where there was no vegetation – but there could still be others, buried anywhere at all.
As his mother approached the far corner, they both had to stretch their arms to keep their hold on the ladder, and it was soon clear that even this wouldn’t be enough. She seemed to be about to cut across the garden, but Prabir shouted out to her, ‘No! I can move closer to you!’ He gestured towards the corner nearest to him, where she’d already proved the ground safe. ‘I’ll stand over there. Then once you’ve turned the corner I can walk back towards the crate, keeping step with you.’
His mother shook her head angrily, but she was cursing herself for not thinking clearly. ‘You’re right. We’ll do it that way.’
Once they were holding the ladder across the full width of the garden, carrying it straight towards his father, Prabir began to feel hopeful. Just a few more steps and his mother would have no untried ground left to walk. He kept his eyes averted from his father’s legs, but a cool voice in his head was already daring to counsel optimism. People had survived these kinds of injuries, in remote villages in Cambodia and Afghanistan. His mother had studied human anatomy and performed surgery on experimental animals; that had to be of some use.
Prabir waited for her to put the second crate on the ground, then they lowered the ladder into place together. He didn’t doubt that the crates would take the load; there were a dozen of them scattered around the kampung, and he’d seen his father standing on them to reach things. If the ladder didn’t buckle, the one remaining problem was the far end sliding off the crate.
His mother followed his gaze.
She said, ‘You watch that, and tell me if it moves. If I shift it one way by accident, I can always shift it back.’
She took off her shoes and climbed on to the crate. The ladder’s steps were sloped so as to be horizontal when the ladder was a few degrees off vertical; the sides they presented now were curved metal, with none of the non-slip rubber that covered the tops. But as Prabir looked on, his mother found a way to balance with her feet resting on both the supporting rails and the sides of the steps. Still above the crate, she screwed her eyes shut and began swaying slightly, her arms partly raised at her sides – rehearsing the moves that would restore her equilibrium without compromising her footing, so she wouldn’t have to guess them when she was halfway across. Prabir’s throat tightened, his fear for her giving way to love and admiration. If there was anyone in the world who could do this, it was her.
She opened her eyes and started walking along the ladder.
Prabir kept his hands on his end of the ladder, pushing it down firmly against the top of the crate, and fixed his gaze on the other, unattended crate. He could feel a slight vibration with each step his mother took, but the ladder wasn’t trying to jerk sideways out of his grip. He risked a quick glance at his mother’s face; she was staring sightlessly over his head. He looked down at the opposite crate again. A wooden plank might have bowed enough to push the crates apart, its curvature redirecting the load, but the ladder was far too rigid for that. It would take the weight of both of them, easily; he was sure of that now.
His mother paused. Prabir watched her feet as she took one more step forward on her left, turning her body partly sideways so she could face his father. She dropped slowly to a crouch, then reached down towards him. The ladder was about half a metre from the ground; she could just touch his face with her fingertips.
‘Rajendra?’
He moved his head slightly in acknowledgement.
‘I’m too high to lift you from here. You’re going to have to sit up.’
There was no response. Prabir pictured his father rising from the sand into her arms, like a water man rising from the waves. But nothing happened.
‘Rajendra?’
Suddenly his father emitted a sobbing noise, and reached up with one hand and touched her forearm. She clasped his hand. ‘It’s all right, love. It’s all right.’
She turned to Prabir. ‘I’m going to try sitting down, so I ca
n get Baba on to the ladder. But then I might not be able to stand up with him, to carry him. If I leave him on the ladder and walk back to my end, do you think the two of us could carry the ladder to the side of the garden with Baba on it – like a stretcher?’
Prabir replied instantly, ‘Yes. We can do it.’
His mother looked away, angry for a moment. She said, ‘I want you to think about it. Don’t just tell me what you’d like to be true.’
Chastened, Prabir obeyed her. Half his father’s weight. More than twice as much as Madhusree’s. He believed he was strong enough. But if he was fooling himself, and he dropped the ladder …
He said, ‘I’m not sure how far I could carry him without resting. But I could slide the crate along the ground with me – kick it along with one foot. Then if I had to stop, I could rest the ladder on it.’
His mother considered this. ‘All right. That’s what we’ll do.’ She shot him a half-smile, shorthand for all the reassuring words that would have taken too long to speak.
She gripped the ladder with her hands on either side, raised herself slightly with her arms, then brought her legs forward and lowered herself until she was sitting. She was still facing at an angle to the ladder; she curled her right leg up behind her and hooked her foot over one of the steps. Prabir pushed down nervously on the opposite rail. He had no way of sensing any change in the balance of forces as his mother shifted her weight, but he had a sickening feeling that the ladder might suddenly flip over sideways if he wasn’t ready to prevent it.
She reached down and took hold of his father by the chest, one hand beneath each armpit, her own arms fully extended. Prabir had imagined her wrapping his father in a bear-hug and hefting him up in one smooth motion – he’d seen her handle ninety-kilogram gas cylinders that way, in her lab in Calcutta – but it was clear now that she could stretch no closer. She took a few deep breaths, then attempted to lift him.
The geometry could not have been more awkward; that she could hold him at all was miracle enough, but everything she’d had to do with her body in order to reach him worked to undermine her strength. As Prabir watched, the top of the foot that she’d hooked over the ladder turned pale, then darkened with violet bruises. A resonant sound started up in her throat, an almost musical droning, as if she’d caught herself on the verge of an involuntary cry of pain and decided to make this sound instead, full of conscious anger and determination. Prabir had only heard her do this once before: in the hospital in Darwin, during labour.
