Will Adams - The Eden Legacy

‘Don’t do that,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘Lemurs aren’t domesticated. They’re not pets’

He took the ring-tail off his head, set him down. ‘He seems happy enough.’

‘And how would you know? An expert on Lemur catta, are you?’

‘That’s not exactly-’

‘Ring-tails are social animals,’ said Rebecca. ‘They need their own kind.’ Even to her own ears, her voice sounded unnecessarily strained. She was aware of other diners falling quiet around her, but there was something inside her that had to get out. ‘They need to groom and be groomed. They need their family. They need to be part of a group, not isolated by themselves and tied on strings for the amusement of moron tourists.’

He looked strangely at her as he came to sit back down. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

‘No,’ she said stiffly. ‘Evidently.’

A forty-year-old tourist with a paunch and thinning brown hair entered the restaurant at that moment, wearing leather trousers and a gaudy shirt, holding hands with a dazzlingly beautiful young Malagasy girl. You found plenty of Europeans like this in Madagascar. They couldn’t hack it back home, so they came out here, taking advantage of the poverty to hire themselves a succession of teen dolls and make out like they were studs. He took the neighbouring table, leaned back in his chair, shouted out for a carafe of red wine in a manner designed to let everyone know he was on cordial terms with the patron. He glanced across at Rebecca, looked her up and down with approval, then threw Daniel a smirk of congratulation, along with an inquisitive little raise of the eyebrow, as if to suggest they might want to try trading sometime.

Daniel sagged visibly in his chair, as though sensing trouble, but Rebecca felt only an icy calm. She said in a deliberately loud voice: ‘Did I ever tell you about the study of sex tourism we did when I was at Oxford?’

The man was clearly startled by her English. He pulled a self-deprecating face to acknowledge and apologise for his gaffe. Rebecca ignored him. ‘It was fascinating,’ she went on. ‘Did you know that men who pay for sex have shorter, thinner penises than normal men? That they masturbate more and earn less. And that they’re more likely to live with their mothers into their thirties.’

‘Come on, Rebecca,’ said Daniel. ‘Let it go.’

She frowned in feigned puzzlement. ‘It’s only a study,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d find it interesting. I’m sure you’d never use whores yourself. You’re not the type, after all. I’m sure that girl at the hotel was just being friendly, like you said. I mean, sex tourists are usually obese, ugly and of subnormal intelligence. And you’re not remotely obese.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Rebecca.’

Their neighbour looked a little sick too. He leaned across, his voice low. ‘I think maybe I make offence,’ he said. ‘I am sorry if this is-’

‘Not at all,’ Rebecca assured him. ‘I’m just telling my friend here about a study I did at university.’ She turned back to Daniel. ‘Where was I? Yes. Did you know that sex tourists are twice as likely to be bald as normal men, and that they suffer disproportionately from premature ejaculation? It’s quite true. And not-as you might think-because they pay by the minute and are too cheap to hold back. No. It’s because they’re socially inadequate, very low-status, I mean full-blown omegas. They usually only ever have the chance for opportunistic sex, when the-’

‘That’s enough,’ said Daniel.

‘-real men are away. Premature ejaculation helps them deposit their sperm and get away before the alpha males return to kick their-’

‘I said that’s enough.’ He grabbed her wrist and squeezed it so tight she flinched and looked at him in surprise. ‘Typical biologist, aren’t you?’ he said softly. ‘Tolerate frailty in every species but your own.’

‘We should know better.’

‘And you do, I suppose. That must feel good.’ He held her a moment longer then let go, sat back in his chair. She could feel her wrist throb where he’d held it, but she didn’t look down, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Their food arrived at last. They ate, paid and left without exchanging another word.

Knox was suffering a little from remorse when he banged on Rebecca’s door at five the next morning. That man in the restaurant last night had been a dick; she’d been entitled to her revenge, especially considering the extraordinary strain she was under. His job had been to back her up, not slap her down. But when he tried to make amends by offering to carry her bag down to the taxi, she shook her head and assured him coolly that she could handle it fine by herself, thanks.

The port was already buzzing when they arrived, though the sun wasn’t yet up. High on a crane, a welder showered sparks as if celebrating fiesta. Ropes creaked alarmingly as a container vessel unloaded a huge net swollen with wooden crates. Last night’s whores boiled up coffee and rice for their men; children huddled beneath blankets on the sea wall, and fished for crabs. Small waves rocked the Yvette softly against the tractor-tyre buffers of the port wall. Knox jumped down on to its deck, turned to help Rebecca, but she ignored him, pointedly making her own way down.

He checked over the boat once more. A moderate westerly was pinning them to the jetty. He started the motor and left it idling while he freed the fore and aft mooring ropes from their steel mushrooms, stowed them away. He pushed against the harbour wall, burbled them clear of the harbour and its traffic. Then he turned the engine off again, unfurled their mainsail, took his seat at the stern and adjusted the rigging until suddenly it swelled pregnant with the breeze and they were off, passing through thin banks of predawn mist.

The sky began to lighten over the rocky silhouette of land, revealing thatch shanty towns on the shore, the marooned and rotted carcasses of metal and wooden hulls. Herons, whimbrels and plovers waded the mudflats and shallows with their curious jerky, backward walks. A pair of fishermen pushed their pirogue out into the shallows, then jumped aboard and paddled vigorously out towards them. Knox looked at Rebecca, sitting on the starboard bench, staring out towards land. ‘So was it true, then?’ he asked.

She turned to him with a raised eyebrow, though he was sure she knew what he was talking about. ‘Was what true?’

‘That stuff last night. About sex tourists having dicks like betting-pencils, living with their mothers until they’re ninety-five.’

Her chin lifted defiantly. ‘It was true of him.’

He couldn’t help but laugh, and his laughter was so obviously unaffected that it seemed finally to thaw her. Their eyes met briefly but then she hurriedly looked away again, almost in confusion. ‘So you’re a freelance, eh?’ she asked. ‘Any particular specialty?’

Knox shrugged. He’d been expecting this, had decided to hew as close to the truth as possible. ‘Archaeology and history, mostly.’

‘Hence that salvage ship?’

‘Yes.’

‘The interview I read with that guy. He reckoned the Chinese made it to America before Columbus.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Knox. ‘That’s what he reckons.’

Rebecca laughed. ‘So weren’t the Chinese frightened of sailing off the edge of the world, then, like all the Europeans?’

Knox hesitated. ‘That’s a bit of a myth, actually,’ he said finally. ‘No one ever truly believed the earth was flat.’ He pointed away to the western horizon. ‘Think about it. Any sailor could tell you the world was round. All they had to do was climb their mast and look at the curvature of the sea. You didn’t even need a boat, just a high cliff. And if there was no sea to hand, there were plenty of other ways. You could watch the shadow cast by the earth during a lunar eclipse, or measure the different lengths of shadow similar objects left at different latitudes.’ He sat forward, his enthusiasm getting to him. ‘There was this extraordinary Alexandrian called Eratosthenes. He actually calculated the circumference of the earth that way back in around 300 BC, and he got it right to within a percentage point.’