Alex Garland - The Beach

'Now look down, then left, and...'

'Got it. Amazing...'

A satellite, reflecting what - the moon or Earth? Sliding quickly and smoothly through the stars, tonight its orbit passing the Gulf of Thailand, and maybe later the skies of Dakar or Oxford.

Étienne stirred, and turned in his sleep, rustling the bin-liner he'd stretched out beneath him on the sand. In the forest behind us some hidden night bird chattered briefly.

'Hey,' I whispered, propping myself up on my elbows. 'Do you want me to tell you something funny?'

'What about?'

'Infinity. But it isn't that complicated. I mean, you don't need a degree in—'

Françoise waved a hand in the air, tracing a red pattern with the tip of her cigarette.

'Is that a yes?' I whispered.

'Yes.'

'OK.' I coughed quietly. 'If you accept that the universe is infinite, then that means there's an infinite amount of chances for things to happen, right?'

She nodded, and sucked on the red coal floating by her fingertips.

'Well, if there's an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen — no matter how small the likelihood.'

'Ah.'

'That means, somewhere in space there's another planet that, by an incredible series of coincidences, developed exactly the same way as ours. Right down to the smallest detail.'

'Is there?'

'Definitely. And there's another which is exactly the same, except that palm tree over there is two feet to the right. And there's another where the tree is two feet to the left. In fact, there's planets with infinite amounts of variations on that tree alone, an infinite amount of times...'

Silence. I wondered if she was asleep.

'So how about that?' I prompted.

'Interesting,' she whispered. 'In these planets, everything that can happen will happen.'

'Exactly.'

'Then in one planet, maybe I am a movie star.'

'There's no maybe about it. You live in Beverly Hills and swept last year's Oscars.'

'That's good.'

'Yeah, but don't forget, somewhere else your film was a flop.'

'Oh?'

'It bombed. The critics turned on you, the studio lost a fortune,and you got into booze and Valium. It was pretty ugly.'

Françoise rolled on to her side and looked at me. 'Tell me about

some other worlds,' she whispered. In the moonlight her teeth

flashed silver as she smiled.

'Well,' I replied. 'That's a lot to tell.' Étienne stirred and turned over again.

I leant over and kissed Françoise. She pulled away, or laughed, or shook her head, or closed her eyes and kissed me back. Étienne woke, clasping his mouth in disbelief. Étienne slept. I slept while Françoise kissed Étienne.

Light-years above our bin-liner beds and the steady rush of the surf, all these things happened.

After Françoise had shut her eyes and her breathing had eased into a sleeping rhythm, I crept off my plastic sheet and walked down to the sea. I stood in the shallows, slowly sinking as the tide pulled away the sand around my feet. The lights of Ko Samui glowed on the horizon like a trace of sunset. The spread of stars stretched as far as my ceiling back home.

In Country

We set off immediately after breakfast: half a bar of chocolate each and cold noodles, soaked in most of the water from our canteens. There wasn't any point in hanging around. We needed to find a freshwater source, and according to Mister Duck's map, the beach was on the other side of the island.

At first we walked along the beach, hoping to circle the coast, but the sand soon turned to jagged rocks, which turned to impassable cliffs and gorges. Then we tried the other end, wasting precious time while the sun rose in the sky, and found the same barrier. We were left with no choice but to try inland. The pass between the peaks was the obvious goal so we slung our bin-liners over our shoulders and picked our way into the jungle.

The first two or three hundred metres from the shore were the hardest. The spaces between the palm trees were covered in a strange rambling bush with tiny leaves that sliced like razors, and the only way past them was to push through. But as we got further inland and the ground began to rise, the palms became less common than another kind of tree — trees like rusted, ivy-choked space rockets, with ten-foot roots that fanned from the trunk like stabilizer fins. With less sunlight coming through the canopy, the vegetation on the forest floor thinned out. Occasionally we were stopped by a dense spray of bamboo, but a short search would find an animal track or a path cleared by a fallen branch.

After Zeph's description of the jungle, with Jurassic plants and strangely coloured birds, I was vaguely disappointed by the reality. In many ways I felt like I was walking through an English forest, I'djust shrunk to a tenth of my normal size. But there were some things that felt suitably exotic. Several times we saw tiny brown monkeys scurrying up the trees, Tarzan-style lianas hung above us like stalactites — and there was the water: it dripped on our necks, flattened our hair, stuck our T-shirts to our chests. There was so much of it that our half-empty canteens stopped being a worry. Standing under a branch and giving it a shake provided a couple of good gulps, as well as a quick shower. The irony of having kept my clothes dry over the swim, only to have them soaked when we turned inland, didn't escape me.

After two hours of walking we found ourselves at the bottom of a particularly steep stretch of slope. We virtually had to climb it, pulling ourselves up on the tough fern stems to keep us from slipping down on the mud and dead leaves. Étienne was the first to get to the top and he disappeared over the ridge, then reappeared a few seconds later, beckoning enthusiastically.

'Hurry up!' he called. 'Really, it is amazing!'

'What is it?' I called back, but he'd disappeared again.

I redoubled my efforts, leaving Françoise behind.

The slope led to a football-pitch-sized shelf on the mountainside, so flat and neat that it seemed unnatural in the tangle of the surrounding jungle. Above us the slope rose again to what appeared to be a second shelf, and past that it continued straight up to the pass.

Étienne had gone further into the plateau and was standing in some bushy plants, gazing around with his hands on his hips.

'What do you think?' he said. I looked behind me. Far below I could see the beach we had come from, the island where our hidden rucksacks lay, and the many other islands beyond it.

'I didn't know the marine park was this big,' I replied.

'Yes. Very big. But that is not what I mean.'

I turned back to the plateau, putting a cigarette in my mouth. Then, as I patted down my pockets looking for my lighter, I noticed something strange. All the plants in the plateau looked vaguely familiar.

' Wow,' I said, and the cigarette dropped from my lips, forgotten.

'Yes.'

'...Dope?'

Étienne grinned. 'Have you ever seen so much?'

'Never...' I pulled a few leaves from the nearest bush and rubbed them in my hands.

Étienne waded further into the plateau. 'We should pick some, Richard,' he said. 'We can dry it in the sun and...' Then he stopped. 'Wait a moment, there is something funny here.'

'What?'

'Well, it is just so... These plants...' He crouched down, then looked round at me quickly. His lips had begun to curve into a smile, but his eyes were wide and I could literally see colour draining from his face. 'This is a field,' he said.

I froze. 'A field?'

'Yes. Look at the plants.'

'But it can't be a field. I mean, these islands are...'

'The plants are in rows.'

'Rows...'

We stared at each other.' Jesus Christ,' I said slowly. 'Then we 're in deep shit.'

Étienne started running back towards me.