Грег Иган - Teranesia

She finished her inventory. ‘OK, this is great. You start unmounting these and stacking them on the deck. I’ll go and get the inflatables. I should be back in about ten minutes.’

Prabir said, ‘I must be slow, but I think I’m missing something. Where are we going with all this? What’s the plan?’

Madhusree smiled, proud and conspiratorial, as if Amita might walk in at any moment and ask why they were whispering.

‘What do you think? We’re heading south.’

Prabir followed his instructions while Madhusree swam out to the expedition’s ship. Then he checked the sentry curled up on the deck; the man was still breathing, slowly and deeply.

He stood and waited for Madhusree to return. Simply by travelling with her, he’d endanger her to some degree. But Grant had remained uninfected, after handling every Teranesian species he’d touched himself, after they’d kissed. With no one to keep him grounded he’d let his imagination run wild: the only hard facts were that a trace of the gene had been found in his bloodstream, and the fishermen had changed in some way that nobody wanted to talk about.

Madhusree appeared from behind the ship, rowing a bright-orange inflatable dinghy towards him, with a second one in tow, loaded with cargo. For one awful moment, Prabir wondered if she planned to get to safety under human power alone, but both dinghies had outboard motors, she was just minimising noise. He looked back towards the camp; the sentries had been changed around ten p.m., and it was now nearly twenty to three. In the moonlight, the orange polymer might as well have been fluorescent. Would they have until dawn, or just till the hour, to vanish over the horizon?

Madhusree brought the dinghies up against the boat. ‘Hand those down to me, one at a time.’

Prabir passed her the first of the machines. ‘What’s this all for?’ There were already half a dozen identical silver boxes in the second dinghy, as well as bottles of reagents, and four large fuel cans.

‘To monitor you, of course. And treat you, if necessary.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I hope it won’t be necessary. I’m hoping nothing will happen before we reach Darwin.’

‘ Darwin ? If the Australians get the slightest idea of what I’m carrying, they’ll lock me in a hut in the middle of the desert on top of their nuclear waste dump.’

‘No, they’ll deport you back to Canada in a military jet with biohazard containment facilities, then send you the bill. I can think of worse fates if we head in other directions.’

Prabir said, ‘What exactly is it you’re hoping won’t happen en route ?’

‘If I knew that, we’d be travelling lighter.’ She slid the last machine into place between the others and tested the whole pile for stability. Then she tossed him a life jacket; she was already wearing one herself. ‘OK. Get in.’

‘I’ll ride in the back.’

‘You just don’t want to help me row.’

Prabir climbed over the guard rail and lowered himself into the second dinghy. He was afraid it would sink perilously low, but the air-filled walls gave it a lot of buoyancy and his weight barely made a difference. The tide was high, and Madhusree seemed to have crossed right over the submerged reef on her way in, without bothering to steer any special course.

She began rowing them laboriously towards the open sea. ‘Remember Orr, in Catch-22 ?’ she asked cheerfully. ‘He rowed a lifeboat all the way to Sweden.’

‘I remember.’ He’d given her the book for her eleventh birthday. ‘But I take it we’re going to stop at Yamdena and hitch a ride in something more seaworthy?’

‘That’s the plan. I wouldn’t want to cross the Arafura Sea in these things.’

Prabir was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Are you angry with me?’

Madhusree laughed. ‘How can I be angry? Not only do I have the first authenticated specimen of a Teranesian mammal, I have exclusive access to all his biochemical data. I’ll be able to spin this into a PhD, for sure.’ She turned to him without missing a stroke and said, ‘We should have done all of this differently. You should have come along as part of the expedition. We should have been open about everything from the start. But it doesn’t matter now. Their work’s been acknowledged, and someone will complete it. That’s good enough for me.’

They were well past the reef, but still in easy sight from the beach. Madhusree’s arms were trembling from fatigue; she’d swum several hundred metres before picking up the oars. Prabir said, ‘Swap places, I’ll do some rowing.’

‘OK.’

They swam between the dinghies; it was easier than trying to leap across the gap without landing on something. Prabir took the oars and settled into a rhythm. The emptiness ahead of them, the useless stars, the circle of moonlit water that followed the boat were all the same as they’d been eighteen years before.

He struggled to stay in the present. ‘How many people are hiding in the jungle?’

‘Ten, now.’

‘So what are they going to live on?’

‘It’s not that hard to smuggle out food. Anyway, we’ve already sent word up to Ambon; the situation should be resolved in a couple of days. I gather that it’s all a matter of diplomats calling in favours, until one of West Papua’s major aid donors agrees to apply some muscle. I know that sounds horribly convoluted, but it’s probably a lot safer than Ambon sending in a warship.’

‘Yeah. Can you see anything happening back on the beach?’

Madhusree had brought a pair of binoculars. ‘That guy’s still lying where he fell.’ She added teasingly, ‘Still glowing at body temperature.’

‘I never thought you’d killed them,’ Prabir protested.

‘You’re a bad liar.’

‘Martha might have. Not you.’

‘You don’t think I’m commando material?’ Madhusree sounded disappointed.

‘I certainly hope not.’ He glanced over his shoulder at her; she was grinning. She didn’t remember the soldier in the grass, bleeding slowly to death. He joked, ‘I knew I should have never let you take up muay thai. All that brutality. You’ve been scarred for life.’

After a while they swapped places again. Prabir looked back with the binoculars in IR mode, waiting not only for the prone soldier to vanish, but for the haze of distortion above the water to swallow the entire beach.

‘You can start the motor.’

Madhusree hit the ignition and her dinghy shot forward, pulling the connecting rope taut. The motor was running on diesel, but it was so quiet that Prabir almost wept. They could have fired it up half an hour ago; they’d been making more noise just by talking.

‘Do you think they’ll come after us?’ she asked. ‘It might not be hard to guess the right direction.’

Prabir said, ‘I don’t know if I’m worth the trouble to them. As long as I’m not heading for their country, I’m someone else’s problem now.’

The dinghy’s outboard motor had its own GPS, its own inertial navigation, its own autopilot. Madhusree zeroed in on their chosen destination on a map displayed on a small panel, confirmed the choice, then left the machine to steer. The only thing not automated was obstacle avoidance; they’d have to take over manually if they ran into shipping, and with any luck that would mean cutting the motor and waiting to be rescued, not swerving wildly to avoid getting mown down.

As dawn approached, she tossed Prabir a plastic-wrapped hypodermic. ‘If you’re going to be paranoid, you’ll have to take your own blood samples.’

‘Urgh. This should be fun.’ He tore open the packet; there was a disinfectant swab enclosed, like an airline’s miniature scented towel. He pulled off his belt and tightened it around his left arm. ‘I feel like a drug addict.’