Грег Иган - Teranesia

It was several weeks before it occurred to him that the location had been chosen for precisely these reasons.

The ABRMS guerrillas had dumped Prabir and Madhusree on Yamdena, where a Chinese woman from eastern Java had taken pity on them and paid for them to join her family on a boat south. But the family had relatives in Sydney to sponsor them, and they’d left the camp after a month.

Six months later, Prabir overheard a social worker telling one of the guards, ‘I’m sure we can adopt out the girl; she’s young enough, and she’s pretty cute. But her brother’s a complete basket case. You’re going to be stuck with him for years.’

The next time the lawyers made their trek into the wilderness, Prabir spoke his first words to anyone but Madhusree since the Chinese family had left.

He said, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want asylum here. We have to go to my mother’s cousin Amita, in Toronto.’

The lawyer said, ‘Cousin Amita? Do you know her full name?’

Prabir shook his head. ‘But she teaches at a university there. She’ll be in their directory. You could find her email address in no time.’

The lawyer looked sceptical, but she slid her notepad across the desk to Prabir. ‘Why don’t you do the honours?’

He stared down at the machine. ‘I’ll look up her address, but would you talk to her, please?’ Prabir had never met Amita, or even spoken to her. ‘I might say something foolish and ruin everything.’

Amita and her partner Keith met them at the airport, signing for them and taking them from the social worker. Madhusree allowed them each a turn at holding her and pulling baby faces; Prabir had lectured her for hours on the need to make a good impression.

In the car, Keith drove, and Amita rode in the back with them. Madhusree — who’d stayed awake for all five flights, entranced by the views — fell asleep in Prabir’s arms. Keith pointed out Toronto’s landmarks, and seemed to expect Prabir to be amazed by every large building.

Amita said, ‘I have something for you, Prabir.’ She handed him a small, moulded plastic object that looked like a hearing aid.

Prabir said, ‘Thank you.’ He was too nervous to ask what it was. He slipped it into his pocket.

Amita smiled indulgently. ‘Put it in your ear, darling. That’s what it’s for.’

Reluctantly, Prabir fished it out and complied. A woman’s voice said, ‘Don’t be sad.’ What was it, a radio? He waited for something more. After a few seconds, the voice repeated, ‘Don’t be sad.’

Amita was watching him expectantly. Prabir thought it best to tell her straight away, lest he be blamed for damaging the gift. ‘I think it’s broken. It just keeps repeating itself.’

Amita laughed. ‘That’s what it’s meant to do. It’s a sample mantra: it reads your mood, and gives you a message to cheer you up, whenever you need it.’

‘Don’t be sad,’ said the earpiece.

‘I chose the sample myself,’ Amita explained proudly. ‘It’s taken from an old Sonic Youth song. But of course you can reprogram it with anything you like.’

Prabir tried hard to look grateful. ‘Thank you, Amita. It’s wonderful.’ He had to wait until they were home and he was safely in the toilet with the door locked before he could free himself from the inane chant. He unscrewed the device easily, and his first thought was to drop the battery into the toilet bowl, but then he feared it might resist flushing, or Amita might ask for the device back to show him how to load a new sample, and realise what he’d done from its diminished weight.

Inspiration struck: he reversed the button-shaped cell, swapping positive for negative, and re-assembled the earpiece. It was mute. It also rendered him partially deaf, but that was a small price to pay. He could find out later how to wipe the sample while still running the circuitry that let him hear normally.

Prabir stared down at his shoes. He was shaking with anger, but he had to be polite to Amita and Keith, or they’d separate him from Madhusree.

The house was an endless succession of cavernous rooms painted white; it made him feel disembodied. Amita had put Madhusree down to sleep, in a room all her own. Now she showed Prabir his room; it was even larger than Madhusree’s, and despite all the furniture and gadgets it contained, there was a vast amount of unused floor space. Prabir thanked Amita for everything — struggling to conceal his dismay at the sense of debt he felt from being showered with gifts like this — before suggesting that they move Madhusree in with him. ‘She’s not used to being alone.’

Amita and Keith exchanged glances. Amita said, ‘All right. Maybe for a week or two.’

After dinner, Keith bade them goodnight and drove away. Prabir was confused. ‘Doesn’t he live here?’

Amita shook her head. ‘We’re separated. But we’re still good friends, and he’s agreed to spend some time here now that you and Madhusree have arrived.’

‘But why?’ Prabir wanted to kick himself as soon as the words escaped his lips. Amita had made great sacrifices for his sake; he had to put things more diplomatically.

Amita explained, ‘I decided that you and your sister should be exposed to both male and female narratives.’

‘You mean … he’ll help you read to us?’ Prabir didn’t want to sound ungrateful, but surely Amita would be relieved to hear that there was no need to have her ex-lover hanging around just to do the male voices in bedtime stories. ‘I can read for myself. And we could take turns reading to Madhusree.’

Madhusree interjected. ‘I can read, too!’ This wasn’t true, but Prabir had taught her the Latin alphabet in the camp, and her spoken English was already as good as her Bengali.

Amita sighed with amusement and tousled Prabir’s hair. ‘I meant our personal narratives, funny boy. Though all such texts are fluidly gendered, in order to decode and contextualise your own experiences you’ll benefit from familiarity with at least the fundamental binary templates.’

Prabir glanced discreetly at the wine bottle in the middle of the table.

In bed, he lay awake for hours, cocooned in crisp sheets and a heavy blanket. It was cold, he needed the bedclothes, but he felt like he was in a straitjacket. He wasn’t troubled by the unfamiliar shadows in the room, or the faint traffic sounds that faded into silence, though he’d grown used to listening to the chain-smoking men in the camp hawking up mucus all night. It wasn’t just pointless feeling homesick, it was meaningless: there was no right way the room could have looked, no comfort the sounds of the night could have delivered. From his hammock on the island, or his bed in Calcutta, his parents would still have been dead.

He watched Madhusree sleeping. They would never reach the shore, they would never reach safety. There was no such thing. It had all been in his head.

The next time Keith was in the house, Prabir took the opportunity to interrogate him.

‘How did you meet Amita?’ he asked innocently. Amita was out on some errand, so they were alone in the living room with Madhusree, who was playing delightedly with the puppy Keith had brought for her.

‘It was at a performance space in the city,’ Keith began tentatively. ‘Twelve years ago.’ He frowned, struggling to dredge up details. ‘The Anorexic Androgynes were reciting the Unabomber Manifesto, with backing music by Egregious Beards.’ He added helpfully, ‘They were a Country Dada band, but they broke up years ago.’

Prabir wasn’t interested in any of this; he wanted to hear about the couple’s passion for knowledge. ‘So how did you end up working at the university together?’

‘Well, I’d already done a PhD in X-Files Theory at UCLA, and Amita was just starting her Masters in Diana Studies with the University of Leeds, via the net. U Toronto was in the process of opening its own Department of Transgressive Discourse — at last! — so it was only natural that we both applied for positions.’