The People of the Nova

By Eric Brown

T

hat night the sun sank in a blaze of crimson and burnt-orange strata, and Jenner slept badly. He dreamed that his wife had returned to the Evacuation Station, emaciated and close to death after four years in the jungle. He experienced shock at her condition, elation at her return - soon dashed, upon waking, by the realisation that he was still without her.

In the quiet of the night he could hear the occasional call of a bird beyond the perimeter fence, foretokening dawn. As he watched the white light of day brighten, it came to him why he had dreamed, for the first time in months, of Laura.

He thought of his deputy, McKenzie, and wondered at the chances of establishing contact today.

* * * *

He carried a fruit juice from the kitchen and paused on the verandah. The Station overlooked a packed-earth compound, on the periphery of which were the hundred small timber huts, temporary accommodation for the tribal peoples before their transit off-planet. The provisional nature of the Station symbolised the eventual destruction of the planet, the day in ten years when the supernova would obliterate all life on Tartarus. The irony was that the very existence of the camp, and his post of Director of Evacuation (Southern Sector), was a nagging reminder that the people he was here to help, the tribes who dwelled in the hostile interior of the continent, were often resentful of his interference. More than one tribe had made it known that they wished to remain and perish with their planet.

He finished his drink and moved to the operations room. He would spend the next hour in radio contact with the teams working at sites across the continent, and then . . . He peered through the window, looking for the young girl he considered his adopted daughter. Later, he would seek out Cahla, perhaps play a game of out, or merely sit with her in companionable silence.

He contacted the teams one by one and found that, in general, things were going well. They had re-contacted nine of the ten tribes inhabiting the two thousand square kilometres of the continent, and perhaps half of them were proving amenable to reason: they had agreed to consider gathering at certain pick-up points when the evacuations began a year from now.

Jenner wished that the Ey’an people were so tractable. There had only ever been one meeting between them and an evacuation team, and though they said that they fully understood the implications of remaining on Tartarus, their religious belief forbade them to leave. Three days ago Jenner had sent in his best team to re-contact the hunter-gatherers.

The day before yesterday he had lost radio contact with Bill McKenzie and his colleague, Susan Patel. The situation called to mind what had happened four years ago, when he had lost the radio link with Laura, and now Jenner felt that he had every reason to worry.

He tried to raise McKenzie by radio, but the only reply was the buzz and hiss of static. ‘McKenzie . . . Jenner calling. Come in, McKenzie.’ He gave it three long minutes, then slammed down the speaker. He tried getting through to Patel on her own frequency, with the same result.

He wiped his palms down the front of his shirt and picked up the speaker. He drew his swivel chair closer to the desk and leaned over the set.

For the second time that morning he got through to Martin Chang, at a position not far from where McKenzie and Patel should have been. The receiver crackled. ‘Chang here, boss. Anything wrong?’

‘Martin, nothing to worry about.’ The lie came easily. He didn’t want to spook his men with alarmist talk of disappearances. ‘I’m having difficulty contacting Bob. He’s down in Ey’an territory. Will you try to raise him or Sue and have them get back to me?’

Chang was no fool. ‘The Ey’an sector should be within your range, boss . . . You don’t think they’re in difficulty? Their flier—’

‘There’s been no distress signals, Martin.’

‘What chance that both their radios packed in at the same time?’ Chang voiced the question that was worrying Jenner. ‘Okay, boss. I’ll try to raise Mac. Speak to you soon.’

Jenner replaced the speaker and leaned back in his seat. He had not seen or heard Cahla enter the room - her grace and poise was that of a practised hunter. She stood on one leg, the foot of the other tucked easily into her upper thigh, and leaned against the arm of his chair.

He reached up and took her hand. She could speak English, but silence was her preferred medium: she communicated her thoughts and feelings in other ways; touches, glances, gestures.

Jenner could never quite banish his amazement when he looked upon the tribes-people of the southern continent. They were a white race, with sun-bronzed skin and bleached fair hair - and it was incongruous to see an essentially European people so at home in the hostile environment of the alien jungle. The tribes were the descendants of German and Scandinavian colonists who had settled and farmed the continent hundreds of years ago. Their devolution to the status of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers was still more ironic when one considered the fact that the early settlers had belonged to a religious order seeking isolation in which to practise their fundamentalist beliefs.

The founding fathers would never have recognised the quick, wild spirits that haunted the jungle with the ease of natives born.

Cahla was seven years old, almost twelve by Terran reckoning, a slim, elfin creature with long, tanned limbs and ragged blonde hair, through the fringe of which her blue eyes gazed in characteristic silence, missing nothing.

Jenner often stared into her bright blue eyes and wondered at the world she looked out upon, and the alien landscape of her mind behind those eyes.

Now he squeezed her fingers. She gave him a glance - she almost never smiled - and slipped from the room.

He was startled by the chime of the radio.

‘Martin?’

‘No luck, boss. Not a word from McKenzie or Patel.’

‘Okay, Martin. Thanks.’

‘Ah, boss - do you want us to go south and search—?’

‘No, stay where you are. This is more than likely something of nothing.’

‘Very well,’ Chang replied, sounding far from convinced.

Jenner cut the connection.

Cahla was sitting on the bottom step of the verandah with her legs outstretched, the heel of her right foot notched between the toes of her left. Jenner pushed through the flimsy fly-netting door and eased himself down the steps, instantly wearied by the furnace-like heat. He sat down behind Cahla. She hung her arms over his legs and laid her head in his lap. He wondered how often they had been together like this over the past three years. Often when the teams were out, he and Cahla would seek each other, as if in some mutual empathic need, and spend silent hours together. Or, sometimes, when things were not going well, not so silent hours: he would talk to her at length, tell her his problems, how things were going with the evacuation plans - and she would listen, the expression on her fine, faceted face neutral as she stared off into the jungle.

He often wondered if he really knew the girl who called herself Cahla, or if what he assumed he knew of her, the girl’s likes and dislikes, reactions and mannerisms, were nothing more than a collection of details seen through positively prejudiced eyes. She was young, she was beautiful, and she looked so much as he imagined his daughter might have looked now, had she still been alive.

Absently he stroked her long hair. The sun was a hazy circle high above the horizon. In the five years since his posting to Tartarus, the sun had swollen to twice its former size, and the activity upon its bloody surface had increased. He often stared in fascination at the haemoglobin rush of sunspots across the swollen disc.

Cahla said, ‘Is missing, McKenzie? Worried, you?’

He laid a hand across the top of her head like some benign phrenologist. ‘McKenzie and Patel. I tried to radio them - no reply.’ He forever found himself mincing his grammar when talking to Cahla.

‘Tallman, darkman, funnyman, McKenzie?’

Jenner smiled to himself, smoothing her hair. ‘Yes, all those things. I feel responsible, Cahla.’

A hesitation. ‘Responsible?’

‘It means . . . because of me they went out this time, because of me they are missing.’

There was no response from the tamed jungle girl. He wondered if she understood.

Discounting the malfunction of both their radios, and the possibility that their flier had crashed, he wondered what else might have happened to McKenzie and Patel. They had never had any trouble with the tribes-people before. That left only the possibility of wild animals, the chowl and the ferocious primates that dwelled in the jungle. But both team members were armed and knew how to look after themselves.

‘I feel bad,’ Jenner said to himself. ‘Irrational as it is, that’s how I feel.’

Six months ago Director Magnusson, head of the evacuation programme based in Baudelaire, had contacted Jenner. He’d taken the call in the operations room, Cahla crouching by his chair and staring wide-eyed at the swollen image of the Director on the wall-screen.

Regarding the Ey’an,’ Magnusson said, glancing up from a computer read-out, ‘I’ve been assessing your report and we’ve come to a decision.’

Jenner had nodded, uncomfortable. He had petitioned the Director for more time in which to win the trust of the Ey’an.

‘We’ve decided to go ahead with the “gift to the natives” option,’ the Director said, holding up one of the seemingly innocuous oddments. ‘Time is of the essence. I’ll send down a consignment of knives, pots and pans for distribution among the Ey’an. Each item will contain a radio transmitter. When the time comes, we’ll use them to locate and round up the tribe - utilising force if necessary. Any objections?’

Jenner had a few, but the Director had heard them all before. He had asked a couple of routine questions before Magnusson cut the connection. Sensing his unease, Cahla looked up at him with concern.

When the crate of gee-gaws had arrived, Jenner sent McKenzie and Patel to Ey’an territory to hand out the gifts.

Four days ago he suggested that they return to monitor the success of the distribution. It should have been a routine field-trip; there was no way he could have foreseen the present situation. He told himself that he should not feel responsible for what might have happened out there, but that did nothing to ease his nagging guilt.

That afternoon he sat down at the computer in his study and began the monthly report. A couple of hours later, not halfway through listing his teams’ progress, he decided to complete the report later. He moved to the communications room and tried again to raise McKenzie and Patel, without success.

At sunset, Cahla found him staring at the wall. She pushed the fly-netting door open with her toes and laid her cheek against the jamb. ‘Jen, make food I. Hungry you?’

They dined on the back verandah as the sun slipped over the horizon and the evening cooled. Cahla had prepared a salad, and they ate in customary silence, Cahla sitting cross-legged on her chair and picking through her food like a bird. Later she fell into her hammock and swung herself to sleep, a negligent arm and leg hanging free.

Jenner sat and stared into the dark jungle beneath the fulminating sky, contemplating McKenzie and what action he should take. Tomorrow, if there was still no word from his deputy, he would contact Baudelaire and request, as he had done four years ago when Laura went missing, that Magnusson should send out a search party.

The sun was a burning filament on the horizon, giving off slow-motion fountains of molten ejecta, when he left Cahla sleeping peacefully and moved inside.

He sat wearily on his bed before undressing. He picked up the holo-cube from the bedside table and stared at it. His wife smiled out at him - an attractive woman, in her late thirties when the cube was made, with a tanned, lined face and short blonde hair streaked with grey. She had an arm around Rebecca, pulling the little girl to her chest.

Jenner had stared so often and so hard at the image of his daughter that now in his mind’s eye, when he thought of Rebecca, he saw only this likeness: a laughing face, fair hair, wide, bright blue eyes . . . Over the years the pain of grief had muted, from a sharp, insistent agony, to a dull infrequent ache. But the years had also dulled his memory. It was a cruel paradox that now, when at last he could bear to think about his daughter, he had difficulty recalling specific instances of their time together. He could no longer recall the sound of her voice, her laughter.

The death of their daughter, in a monorail accident on Earth seven years ago, had brought Jenner and Laura closer together. They had been approaching the end of their marriage contract, and in all likelihood might never have renewed it but for their loss. They had discovered more about each other in the hollow year that followed the accident than they had in the previous five. Jenner had found a strength and resolve deep within Laura that made the thought of being without her - of going through the process of finding someone else, and trying to get to know them just as well - impossible to contemplate, and clearly Laura had undergone a similar re-evaluation. When Jenner suggested, tentatively, afraid of being spurned, that perhaps they should take out another contract, she had agreed without hesitation.

Two years later Jenner was posted to Tartarus to work on the evacuation programme, and Laura had secured a grant from her university to study the planet’s tribal people.

They had lived together at the Station for a year, Laura going off on field-trips into the interior for weeks at a time, sometimes accompanied by students, but often alone. Their marriage settled into a comfortable, amicable relationship, no longer passionate, but full of trust and understanding. Their only difference of opinion concerned the fate of the tribes-people. Through her contact with the tribes, Laura had come to sympathise with their desire to die with their planet, a desire Jenner admitted he could understand, but could hardly accede to . . . Their infrequent arguments centred on the fate of the tribes: Laura had argued that as an intelligent people they should be granted their wish to remain when the supernova blew; Jenner that they were a primitive people who should not be allowed to commit collective suicide because of belief in pagan gods and a desire to be reunited with their ancestors.

They had argued bitterly on the night before she disappeared. She had tried to persuade him to talk to Magnusson about allowing certain tribes to remain on Tartarus, but Jenner had refused. He could not be part of sanctioning what might be described as genocide.

The following morning, Laura had taken a power-boat for a three week trip upriver with the intention of filming a local tribe. They had kept in radio contact for a day, and then she had failed to answer his call. He had not been unduly worried at the time. Laura knew the jungle well, knew how to look after herself. But as the next day passed without word from her, and then the next, his earlier confidence evaporated, turned to alarm. On the fourth day he called Baudelaire and, later, accompanied the search team on a sweep of the route she had taken. They had found nothing, no wreckage, no personal possessions, no trace of Laura’s passage upriver. Jenner had contacted all the tribes-people in the area, but they had come across no sign of his wife. After a fortnight the search was called off, and the sudden inaction pitched Jenner into despair. He thought back to their argument on the night before she vanished, and was consumed by guilt that their final words had been so bitter.

As the weeks turned into months, and then, incredibly, into years, he lived day by day with the thought always at the back of his mind that today she would return, and, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. Like this, bit by bit, he managed to survive. Over the past year he had even come to consider what before would have been unthinkable – how Laura might have met her end: an accident on the river, a wild animal attack, illness . . . He only hoped that, however she had died, it had been swift and painless.

He replaced the holo-cube on the bedside table, swallowed a couple of sleeping pills, and passed a dreamless night.

* * * *

The following morning Jenner was in the communications room, having once again failed to reach McKenzie and Patel, when Cahla burst in. The screen door smashed against the wall and shivered in its flimsy frame. She stood in the opening, eyes wide. ‘Jen! Come, now. Come!’

‘What’s wrong, Cahla?’ He had rarely seen her this animated.

She leaned forward, balling her fists and banging the air in frustration. ‘Come now! Out there - person!’

She grabbed his hand and tugged him from his chair.

They crossed the verandah and went down the steps, then halted in the compound. Jenner grimaced as the sunlight pounded his bare head. Silently, with a peculiarly alert stance and minute movements of her head, Cahla scrutinised the perimeter fence on three sides.

He put a hand around her shoulders. ‘I don’t see anyone.’

‘Here, was! Man!’

‘Who? A team worker? McKenzie?’

‘Nai - tribesman.’

At that second, Jenner saw him. Evidently, so did Cahla. Her body stiffened beneath his arm. She pointed. ‘There!’

The tribesman was jogging around the compound, inside the perimeter fence. From time to time he dropped to one knee, sketched something in the dust with his finger, then continued running.

‘What’s he doing, Cahla?’

‘Jungle spirits follow him,’ she said. ‘Do karakai, he.’

‘What does he want?’

Cahla twisted her lips to one side of her face, admitting puzzlement.

Never in his tour of duty here had a tribesman come to him - always it had been the other way around. He realised that he was sweating. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face.

The tribesman disappeared around the rear of the compound, and minutes later reappeared and jogged to the spot where Jenner had first seen him. Then he stopped, turned and faced them. For a couple of seconds he stood still, very upright, something proud and indomitable, almost arrogant, in his bearing.

Then he walked with measured paces across the compound.

He was tall and slim, tanned and blond. He wore a loincloth and body-paint, green stripes covering his torso and arms. In a diagonal from shoulder to hip was slung a thong of leather, holding a dozen darts like a primitive bandolier. In his left hand he carried a long blow-pipe.

Watching him, Jenner could not dispel the sense of incongruity at beholding a Caucasian in such a guise.

The tribesman stopped before them. His expression was neutral but bold, reminding Jenner of Cahla. Oddly, he felt suddenly possessive of the girl, and he tightened his grip around her shoulders.

He held out his free hand. ‘Welcome to the station.’

Cahla spoke in her own tongue, translating. The guttural sound seemed strange coming from lips he had heard speaking only fractured English.

The tribesman replied. ‘Dhaykum arkim, karan ee.’

Cahla glanced up at Jenner. ‘Tribesman, say he, “Honoured he. Be here pleased he.”‘

‘Can you ask him where he comes from? What he wants here?’

Cahla stared at the tribesman, repeating the questions. The tribesman shifted his gaze from the girl to Jenner, then back again. He nodded, tipping his head quickly upwards.

His reply was a rapid stream of incomprehensible plosives. Jenner assumed an expression of polite attention. In the full glare of the sun, he was beginning to wilt.

When the tribesman paused, Cahla said, ‘Far away from. Ey’an he. With you talk he. His name - Makhabi.’

Jenner took hold of Cahla’s chin. ‘Ey’an he? Are you sure?’

She gave a restricted nod. ‘Yay, Ey’an he.’

He felt suddenly dizzy with a combination of the intense heat and the unprecedented situation.

‘Will you tell Makhabi to come into the shade?’ he said, gesturing towards the verandah.

Reluctantly, it seemed, the tribesman agreed. He followed Jenner and Cahla up the steps. The transition from sunlight to shade was as refreshing as entering a pool of cool water. They sat in a triangle, cross-legged, on the rush matting.

‘Will you tell Makhabi that two of my workers visited the Ey’an people three days ago. Did he see them? Do his people know what happened to my friends?’

Cahla repeated the questions. Makhabi spoke quickly, perhaps dismissively.

Jenner nodded as Cahla translated the replies. Again, Makhabi assumed ignorance. He knew nothing. ‘Ask him what he wishes to discuss with me, what he wants to talk to me about.’

This question, when relayed, provoked a torrent of words from Makhabi. Cahla nodded at intervals, taking in his speech. At last the tribesman stopped, and the girl licked her lips, looking at Jenner from beneath her fringe.

‘Say he, with him go you. Land of Ey’an people. Will be safe you. Danger no.’

‘What do his people want with me?’

Cahla nodded. ‘Kancha ki, leader Ey’an people - with you talk. Ey’an people and dying sun about.’

Jenner released a breath, staring into the tribesman’s green eyes. He decided that there was no reason why he could not leave the station - it was the perfect opportunity not only to look into what had happened to McKenzie and Patel, but to speak face to face with the leader of the Ey’an people, an honour never before accorded to his team.

‘Very well, Cahla. Tell him, yes. I’ll go. I’ll ready a flier and we’ll set off in . . . say one hour.’

Cahla turned to the tribesman, repeated Jenner’s answer. Makhabi stared at Jenner, made a quick karate chop on the floor between them.

Cahla flinched.

‘What now?’

‘Say he, flier no! Flier evil. Up river in his boat go.’

‘Very well. But we’ll take my boat. Is that okay?’

Makhabi listened to Cahla, reluctantly nodded.

‘I need to collect some things, food and water, a tent.’ He hesitated, looked at Cahla. ‘Will you come with me, to translate?’

* * * *

On the few occasions that Jenner had seen the river from the air, it had appeared as a series of sluggish, serpentine loops and bends, the only interruption in the jungle which extended to the horizon in every direction. Seen from the boat, its speed reduced to walking pace by rafts of algae, the river was a claustrophobic avenue flanked by overhanging trees and often covered completely, a twilight tunnel in which everything, the heat, the animal cries, the very oppressiveness of this environment, was emphasised. From the air, the alienness of the jungle could be ignored - it might have been any tropical jungle, anywhere - but steering the boat upriver, passing grotesquely torsioned plants and trees, Jenner could be in no doubt that he was on an alien world a hundred light years from Earth.

Makhabi sat on the very prow of the boat, blow-pipe raised, his torso as erect as some primitive figurehead. The tribesman’s own boat was tethered to the stern by a length of plastic rope.

Jenner was at the stern, attending to the tiller. Between them sat Cahla, facing Jenner, her long legs outstretched. Before setting off, Jenner had erected an awning over the back of the boat. They were spared the full force of the sun, though nothing could be done to reduce the heat, and the humid air was as unbreathable as steam.

He glanced at his watch. They had been travelling for half a day. It was still a couple of hours from sunset. Ahead, the disc of the sun could be glimpsed down the channel of encroaching jungle. Tongues of flame licked from its circumference, and Jenner thought that it resembled those quaint illustrations of Earth’s own sun, drawn by ancient astronomers.

From time to time, great flying insects flickered from nowhere and alighted on the boat as if curious. Sometimes Cahla would put her face close to the magnificent, multicoloured creatures, admiring their beauty. Occasionally she flicked away the insects, her sour expression suggesting they were poisonous. Once she quickly plucked an insect between thumb and forefinger, pulled off its wings, removed its head and popped the resulting delicacy into her mouth.

Jenner sat back and watched the girl who over the course of the past three years he had come to love.

He often thought back to the day she arrived at the Station.

It had been almost a year after Laura’s disappearance, a year in which Jenner had become ever more withdrawn, unable to open up to those members of his team he had formerly considered his closest colleagues: Bob McKenzie, Chang and one or two others. He had been torn by the desire to leave the Station and Tartarus altogether, remove himself from the cause of his pain, and yet at the same time to remain there in the ludicrous hope that one day Laura might return.

Then one morning Martin Chang came running across the compound and into the operations room with news of the discovery. Jenner and a medic had followed him, leaving the compound and entering the margin of cleared jungle between the Station and the river. They had hurried down the timber walkway to where a tribal canoe was lodged in a tangle of reeds at the river’s edge.

The sight of the little girl lying in the canoe had taken Jenner’s breath away. Her resemblance to Rebecca was remarkable; the same fair hair, oval face, slightness of limbs. But perhaps what affected Jenner even more was that, laid out in the narrow confines of the canoe, she brought back memories of the very last time he had looked upon his daughter, at rest in her coffin on the day before the funeral.

He had left Chang and the medic to revive her, returned to his work, and tried to put the girl from his thoughts. She was taken to the infirmary, washed and examined and pronounced fit and well. Jenner heard from Chang that most probably the girl - Cahla, she called herself - had been fishing in the boat, had fainted and drifted downstream.

Jenner resolved to take no interest in the girl. He would detail one of his team to take her out on the next field-trip and reunite her with her tribe.

Then, one night, the cumulative loss of his wife and his daughter became too much, and had to be quelled in some fashion, with drink or drugs, or human contact. He crossed the compound to the infirmary, slipped inside and sat by Cahla’s bed, staring at her as she slept.

In the days that followed he had shied away from becoming involved with Cahla. She would be leaving soon, returning to her people, and to allow himself to get close to her would be folly. But the tribes approached by Chang claimed no knowledge of Cahla, and as the weeks turned to months, and Jenner found himself becoming involuntarily drawn to the girl, he ordered off the search for her people, claiming that his teams had better things to do. Not a day passed without his spending an hour or two in her company. He taught her to speak English, played simple games with her, showed her around the Station. Her savagery, her elemental nature, seemed at odds with the restricted environment of the Station, and yet she never made any move or request to leave. After a year with Cahla around the place, it came to Tenner with a sudden heart-stopping jolt of realisation that he could no longer contemplate life without her. She had ceased to be a replacement, a substitute for his daughter, but had become an individual in her own right, a person with her own characteristics, moods and temperaments. He decided that, when he left Tartarus, Cahla would leave with him.

And what cheered Jenner was that Cahla had taken to him; not with any demonstrative show of affection or emotion - hugs and kisses were not part of the way of life of the tribal peoples - but in her own, calm, neutral way, the way she followed him, watched him through her fringe, was always by his side when he talked to his team in the briefing room.

The first time she disappeared, Jenner thought that she had finally had enough of this strange new life, had decided to return to her true existence in the jungle, and despite the intellectual realisation that this was for the best, he still could not help mourning his loss.

Then, three days later, Cahla returned, the waist-thong of her loincloth hung with a dozen frogs, a furry monkey-like creature slung over her shoulder like a backpack. She carried a blow-pipe, fashioned from a bamboo-analogue, clutched in her small fist.

From time to time she would disappear like this, be gone two or three days, or sometimes longer, and then reappear - and Jenner’s guilt that he had perverted the course of her life was assuaged by the evidence that she could still function in her own environment.

* * * *

The sun had set, but the sky still glowed with flickers and pulses of orange light. Makhabi gestured that they should pull into the shore for the night. They made camp on a broad curve of sand. Makhabi moored the boat to the trees while Jenner erected the dome-tent and Cahla broke out the rations. They ate in silence, seated outside the dome, Jenner drinking water to replace the fluid lost during the day. When it came to the sleeping arrangements, Makhabi insisted on remaining outside, sitting cross-legged with his blow-pipe at the ready. Jenner shared the dome with Cahla, opaqued the membrane against the flickering night, and soon fell asleep.

He was disturbed only once during the night, and even then he was only half-awoken. He heard some small sound within the dome, and realised that it was Cahla, nestling close to him. She was crying quietly, inexplicably. Jenner put an arm around her, and after a while she ceased her sobbing and slept.

They set off before sunrise in the morning, the steady throb of the engine the only sound in the pre-dawn stillness. Cahla seemed her normal self, and Jenner refrained from questioning her about her sadness of the night before.

For the next few miles the river was entirely overgrown with a verdant mat of vegetation. They proceeded down a long, twilit tunnel in which the territorial cries of birds and beasts echoed eerily. Makhabi seemed all the more alert today. He sat bolt upright with his blow-pipe raised to his lips.

Cahla explained in a whisper, ‘Here, bad haranga from trees drop. Quickly kill us, eat. Careful. Careful must be.’

At last they emerged from the covered stretch of river, the daylight blindingly bright to eyes grown accustomed to the aqueous half-light. For the next few hours they made good speed along a winding length of river free from algae and weeds. Around noon, after a light meal, Cahla offered to take over at the tiller. They exchanged positions, and Jenner made himself as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the boat, and dozed.

* * * *

He was awoken by Cahla some time later. ‘Jen, Jen. Now wake up.’

They were no longer moving; the engine was silent. Jenner sat up, working the aches from his back. ‘Have we arrived?’

‘Nai,’ Cahla said. ‘Now long walk.’

He stepped onto the bank of the river and between them they ferried the provisions ashore. Makhabi unfastened his own boat, and tied both craft to the bole of a tree. Then he spoke to Cahla.

She translated, ‘Four, five hour walk, say he.’

They divided the canisters of water between them and set off into the jungle along a well-worn path, Makhabi leading the way and Cahla bringing up the rear. They halted repeatedly to allow Jenner to rest and take water. Already his shirt was rank with sweat, and he was feeling light-headed. After three hours he exchanged positions with Cahla and watched the girl negotiate the uneven surface of the jungle floor with swift-footed ease, effortlessly at home in this hostile environment.

They came upon the encampment of the Ey’an people without warning. One moment they were striding through the jungle, identical to every other stretch they had traversed, and then they were on the edge of a vast clearing, the absence of trees allowing the sunlight to fall en bloc - so that for the first few seconds the details of the camp were lost in a blinding dazzle. Jenner shielded his eyes, made out a series of small, conical huts flanking the clearing; at the far end was a long communal hut raised above the ground on stilts.

Only then did Jenner notice the people. They stood about in one and twos; men, women and naked children, all tall, tanned and fair, the males of the tribe daubed with verdant stripes like Makhabi’s. They had ceased what they had been doing to turn and stare at the sudden appearance of Jenner and his companions, and he felt uncomfortable under the weight of their collective attention.

Then he saw something which increased his pulse and sent a prickling sensation across his scalp.

Across the clearing stood McKenzie’s flier, its bulbous glass fuselage reflecting the sunlight, rotors drooping.

Before he could react, gather his thoughts and question Makhabi, a welcoming committee of three Ey’an people, two old men and a woman, approached from the communal hut and crossed the clearing. From somewhere, more tribes-people emerged. They stood on the periphery of the clearing, a packed gallery of silent spectators.

The three elders paused before Jenner.

Their expressions were unsmiling, which in itself was not unusual. Even so, Jenner thought he detected an air of hostility in their manner.

‘Jenner?’ the old woman said. ‘Come. Follow.’

Before the three turned, Jenner asked, ‘McKenzie and Patel? Where are they?’

‘Later. Now, come.’

Only then did he wonder how the woman had come to learn English. He looked around for Cahla, as much to see a friendly face as for some explanation, but in his trepidation he could not make her out among the other tribes-people.

He followed the three elders across the clearing, aware of a thousand pairs of eyes monitoring his progress. He arrived at the communal hut and followed the elders up a flimsy ladder lashed together from saplings.

The interior of the hut was dim. From the entrance he was unable to see more than a few metres before him. He could, however, make out the rattan walls on either side, and two rows of silent, seated Ey’an people. The elders proceeded slowly, with a certain ceremony, down the aisle formed by the tribes-people. Someone at his side - he saw that it was Makhabi - touched his arm in a gesture for him to follow.

As he walked, the far end of the hut resolved itself. Two figures were seated in front of him, cross-legged. The elders joined the seated figures, so that now a phalanx of five Ey’an people confronted him. Makhabi gestured for him to sit down. Stiffly, tired after the trek through the jungle, Jenner lowered himself to the floor.

Later he would look back in amazement at how the human mind could absorb so much shock and still continue to function. He was surprised at how calm he was, then, as he stared into the shadows and saw his wife.

‘Laura . . . ?’

It was Laura - four years older, thinner, totally grey-haired now, but Laura still. She was not smiling, but Jenner told himself that her expression softened as she looked upon his confusion.

‘Jen, welcome to the Ey’an-heth, the wise council of the Ey’an.’

She was naked but for a loincloth, and her tanned torso was painted with green slashes. The shock was making him dizzy. ‘Laura?’

‘I’ve been rehearsing this meeting for a long time, Jen,’ she said softly, ‘dreading the inevitable and knowing that it was necessary, for both of us. Listen to me and try to understand. I know you will feel anger, resentment - those feelings are natural - but try to control them, understand what I have to tell you.’

Jenner cradled his head in his hands. ‘I don’t think I can understand anything now. None of this makes any sense.’

‘Please, listen to me. Four years ago I left you and the Station and found ... I found what for years I had been looking for, without really understanding that I had been looking for anything. It happens like that - you know what you have been seeking only when you find it. And I found it among the Ey’an people.’

It was all he could do to stare at her.

‘Ever since . . . what happened to Rebecca, I was dissatisfied with what I had, with what I could attain from the life I was leading.’

‘I meant that little to you!’

‘It was nothing to do with you. It was just ... I needed another life. A life of simplicity and certainty, a life close to the earth.’

Jenner interrupted, ‘You can’t be happy here, among these people . . . You’re an intelligent woman.’

‘And I thought you were an intelligent man, Jen. I thought you might possibly have understood that even a so-called unsophisticated people can be wise and compassionate.’

As she spoke, Jenner recognised the Laura of old, the Laura he had loved — and he wanted to reach out and take her in his arms, and in so doing erase the misery of his loss.

She was speaking. ‘I wanted to tell you all this, Jen - but it was not the reason I asked you here.’ She paused, looked around at the elders. They gestured, inclined their heads.

She continued, ‘The Ey’an people want you to know that they are happy here and wish to remain on Tartarus until the very end, that they do not wish to undergo the evacuation you are here to oversee. The Ey’an worship the power and the inevitability of the supernova, and will seek its salvation when the great day comes. In the aftermath of the firestorm, we will be reunited with our ancestors, and the ones we have loved and lost—’

He stared at her. Slowly, understanding came to him. ‘You believe that by staying here, Rebecca will be returned to you?’

Her gaze was unremitting. ‘It is what my people believe. They crave reunion with their ancestors, who have become Gods. Don’t you see that to remove these people from here, from their very roots, would destroy them?’

He gestured feebly. ‘Laura . . . it’s my duty to ensure the complete evacuation of all tribal peoples from this continent. I . . .’

‘Let me warn you,’ Laura said, strength in her tone, ‘that we do not intend to leave Tartarus.’ She called out something in an alien tongue, and there was activity behind the seated elders.

‘This will serve as a warning,’ she said, and the brutality of her tone sent a shiver of foreboding through Jenner. ‘We had to make a stand, a gesture of our intent. I suggest that you take heed.’

As she spoke, four Ey’an people carried two crude stretchers from the shadows, and laid them between the elders and Jenner.

He could only stare. He felt something freeze within him as he looked upon the contorted bodies of McKenzie and Patel, at the long darts protruding from their chests. The shadows within the hut concealed their faces, and for this he was thankful.

‘How could you . . . ?’ he cried.

‘If it will persuade you of the wishes of the Ey’an people, then their sacrifice will have been worthwhile. It was the only way we had of demonstrating that we have the means to resist all your efforts to remove us. If you come for us in future, we will be ready.’

‘You don’t know what evil you’ve committed, in the name of your so-called freedom,’ he said. ‘Not only the deaths of McKenzie and Patel, but the genocide of the Ey’an, the extinction of all future generations.’

He climbed to his feet, sick with the heat and the turn of events. ‘If you think you’ve heard the end of this—’ he began.

Laura stood and faced him. ‘Is that a threat? Do you mean that you will return with reinforcements, after tracing us with your trinkets?’

He stared down at her. ‘How . . . ?’ he began.

He was aware of the eyes of the Ey’an people, laughing at his bewilderment.

‘You tortured—’ he said, gesturing towards the bodies. Before putting his friends to death, had they tortured them to extract the information about the gifts?

‘We tortured no one. They died swiftly and without pain.’

‘Then how . . . ?’

‘I thought you might resort to trickery to effect our evacuation. We fought like with like. We had to know what you were planning.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, his heart thumping with sudden dread.

‘We had to have someone in the Station itself,’ Laura said.

Her words filled him with disbelief. ‘Cahla?’ he whispered.

‘We had to do it,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘It was the only way.’

‘How . . .’ he managed, ‘how could you be so . . .’

‘We had to save our people. All else does not matter.’

Jenner cried openly. ‘She’s coming back with me! You can’t take her—!’

‘Jen,’ Laura said, something approaching tenderness in her tone, ‘please go now. Cahla is one of us, and always will be.’

No!’ He wanted to argue, wanted to hit out at her, and at the same time wanted only to be far away from the woman who had once been his wife.

Makhabi gripped his upper arm and escorted him from the hut and into the clearing. He shook himself free from the tribesman’s grip, calling Cahla’s name and dashing like a madman among the Ey’an. Makhabi caught him with ease, strong arms restricting his movement. A thousand pairs of eyes watched him as he stumbled towards the jungle path. He stared into every face; if only Cahla could see him now, witness the straits into which she’d cast him, then surely she would return with him ... He wanted to find her, tell her that he forgave her for what she had done, that he understood; he wanted to ask her if her affection had been genuine, or nothing more than an act.

But, though he often thought he saw her among the myriad Ey’an faces, he could not be certain.

He stopped defiantly at the edge of the clearing, looked back in an attempt to make out the girl, if only to retain in his mind’s eye a last picture of her to carry with him from the planet. The only face he recognised was his wife’s: Laura was standing beside the ladder of the communal hut, staring at him across the clearing.

Then Makhabi took his arm and forced him into the jungle.

He recalled nothing later of the long walk to the river, escorted all the way by the tribesman - only the eventual sight of the sluggish river and the ball of the setting sun. He climbed aboard his boat and started the engine. As he moved slowly away from the bank without a backward glance, his speed impeded by the surface weeds, he was overcome by the weight of a terrible depression at the thought of the fate to which his wife had consigned herself, Cahla, and the Ey’an people.

He sat at the tiller and wept.

* * * *

Jenner had no idea how long had elapsed when he heard a cry from the bank of the river. He looked up, but could make out nothing. Then the cry came again - animal in its urgency.

Something appeared from the foliage on the river bank and shot into the water like a spear. She did not emerge until the parabola of her dive brought her up beside the boat. She gripped the gunwale and pulled, so that the boat rocked and her streaming head showed above the side. Her bright eyes stared him through the wet strands of her fringe, her watchful expression caught between fear and entreaty.

His heart swelling with an emotion he found hard to contain, Jenner reached out and pulled Cahla aboard. Then, his arm around the quietly crying girl, he gunned the engine and steered the boat downstream, towards the Station and salvation.