The Ultimate Sacrifice

By Eric Brown

T

here was a spectacular aurora in the early hours of the morning, a dancing sheet of magnesium-white light which illuminated the night sky and brought a premature daylight to the darkside of Tartarus Major.

The flare awoke Katerina from a dream about her brother, and it seemed a long time before she could get back to sleep. She woke again when the rapid increase in temperature indicated that the sun was up, and she was instantly aware of noise in the street outside: the loud discontent of a mob. From research she’d conducted before arriving on Tartarus, she knew that the flares always provoked civilian unrest, riots the result of genuine fear that the supernova had come fifteen years too soon, and a desire by a minority to take advantage of the chaos to loot and pillage. As she took a cold shower, then dressed in her near-weightless tropical garb, she listened to the chanting. She made out calls for the Director of the Evacuation Force to be replaced, mixed with cries from cultists that the end was nigh. She applied uv-block to her face, neck and arms, gathered her dreadlocks in the headband which also contained her camera, then left the hotel.

She activated the camera and filmed as she made her away across the city. The shots would provide good background and incidental detail for the documentary. Within minutes of leaving the hotel, she was roasting in her own juices. Sweat dribbled between her breasts and over her stomach. Despite the increasing heat, there were still angry crowds gathered at strategic positions in the city: government buildings, travel agencies, and the square of St Christopher in the centre of town. The racial mix on this continent was largely Latin and Asian; since her arrival two days ago she’d noticed only three or four blacks. She’d worried at first that she might fall victim to prejudice - some colony planets of her experience were notoriously racist - but on the whole she’d found the Tartareans friendly and helpful. She wondered if the natives were so preoccupied with ensuring their flight from the planet that they had little time to worry about things like the colour of a stranger’s skin.

She heard the sustained, muffled chanting well before she reached its source. As she approached the turning into the square, she knew the crowd would be surrounding the building that was her destination. She should have realised before she set out that the headquarters of the TWC Evacuation Force would be at the epicentre of the current unrest, and called ahead to ensure she could gain admittance.

Perhaps two or three hundred jeering citizens were held back behind a cordon of crash-barriers. Behind the barriers stood a line of armed security guards. The crowd hurled insults, and the occasional bottle or brick. Once or twice the guards fired over the heads of the protestors. They cowered as one for a moment, then gained in courage and spat curses and threats with even greater zeal.

Katerina pushed through the crowd and came up against the crash-barrier. She reached out and showed her press card to a stern-faced guard.

‘I’m meeting Director Magnusson at ten.’ She smiled at the guard and glanced around at the crowd. ‘I didn’t realise that half the city would want to see him, too.’

In other circumstances she might have interpreted a tacit racial insult in his uncompromising expression, but she reminded herself that she was on Tartarus now. ‘Not funny? Okay, I’m no comedian. But I am Katerina De Klien, and if Magnusson gets to know that you wouldn’t let me through he’ll have your balls for breakfast.’

Maybe he’d caught one of her shows and knew her tag, or her tone intimidated. He took her card, backed off and spoke quickly into a communicator, his glance shuttling between Katerina and her mug-shot on the card.

He came back to the barrier, returned her card and nodded. He even made to assist her, but Katerina ignored the proffered hand and jumped over by herself.

She strode across the cleared cobbles before the building, filming all the way. Another guard checked her identity before the big double doors, and yet another - a woman this time - behind a desk in the shivery-cold atmosphere of the air-conditioned foyer. The woman escorted her wordlessly along a corridor and into an elevator. They rode three floors and stepped out into an identical corridor, the sky blue carpet matching the officer’s uniform.

Across from the elevator was a polished wooden door. Katerina’s escort knocked, waited for a reply, then opened the door. She stood aside, gestured for Katerina to enter, then left her alone but for a dark-haired man seated behind a desk at the far end of a long, long room.

‘Ms De Klien,’ Director Magnusson said in a voice so smooth it was almost a purr. ‘I’ve always wanted to ask you if your name was a pseudonym.’

Katerina took an instant dislike to the Director.

‘I often wondered if such a surname existed—’ he said.

‘It’s the professional name I took when I entered journalism,’ she snapped in a tone intended to show the Director that she had more important things to discuss.

She dropped into a big leather bucket seat without waiting to be invited, lay back and lodged a booted foot on her knee.

Magnusson, she decided, had the darting eyes of a libidinous pimp, and skin as pale as semen. She judged he was in his fifties, handsome in a washed-out, etiolated kind of way.

‘I know your work,’ he said. ‘One cannot get away from it, even on Tartarus. When we began work here, it was decided that the workers of the TWC should have the benefit of holovision, for their amusement. Though quite how your … shows . . . passed the censor, I shall never know.’

Katerina made a tired gesture. ‘Look, you don’t know how many times I’ve met jerks who hate my work. I’m used to getting shit, understand? You’re not going to intimidate me by telling me how much you hate my programmes.’

Magnusson gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I hate your work. In fact I’ve found a couple of your films quite compelling, if cynical and hopeless.’

‘You sound like my best critic.’

‘So when I heard you wanted to interview me, of course I was intrigued.’

Don’t be, Katerina thought, you’ll not like this one bit.

‘I take it you have a concealed camera? Is it running?’

‘Since I walked through the door, Director.’

Some people, on learning they were being filmed, lost their cool: Magnusson, to his credit, remained courteous and rather formal.

‘In that case perhaps you can tell me what your film will be about?’

‘Sure.’ Katerina sat forward in her chair, elbows on knees, and stared at the Director. ‘It’ll be a little different from my usual films. More personal, emotional. Critics have panned my work for lacking feeling, empathy. They say I’m cruel.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not cruel, it’s just that I don’t moralise about what I point my camera at … Anyway, this film’ll be from the heart.’

She paused. ‘Imagine a young boy, an orphan in a government home, intelligent, ambitious. He reaches sixteen and skips Earth, goes to see the stars. He moves from world to world, working at whatever he can. Then he decides to join the TWC, undergoes the training, and three years later graduates. He’s posted to the Evacuation Force, sees his first active service on Salenko before the comet wipes out the planet. He does okay and he’s promoted, then sent to Tartarus Major. He works here in Baudelaire a couple of years, then gets shifted to the southern continent. On furlough back here, he comes down with some tropical disease and dies in three days … Just another TWC casualty, one among hundreds every year …’

Magnusson cleared his throat and interrupted. ‘If you could get to the point.’

Katerina gave him a long, silent stare. ‘You asked me what the film was about. I’m telling you.’ She closed her eyes, gathering her thoughts.

‘So …’ she went on, ‘the TWC tries to contact his next of kin. They know he had a sister, but they can’t trace her. Meanwhile, little sister grows up in the orphanage in Senegal. One day she gets the chance to quit the place - so she runs away and never goes back. She lives on the streets in Dakar, gets a few breaks, works hard and gets successful. She decides to try to trace her brother. She’s a journalist, and film-maker, so she has contacts and skills. After lots of hard work, she finds out the TWC version of the truth - the tropical disease bit, the dead-in-three-days-and-nothing-could-be-done story. So little sister grieves for the man she didn’t know, the brother she loved and hoped would one day come back for her.’

Katerina stopped there, staring at her clasped hands. Her long nails dug imprints into the skin.

‘Then last year I’m working on Mars on a big story about government corruption over the Olympus dam project, and I get a call from this guy who says he worked for the TWC and knew my brother on Tartarus. He wants to see me, so we arrange to meet in a bar in New Vilafranca. He tells me that my brother didn’t die of some tropical disease as it was widely believed. He says my brother left Apollinaire and flew south into the interior, not north to Baudelaire. Only, this guy says, he never came back. He disappeared and no trace of him or his flier was ever found.’

Katerina fell silent, counted to ten. She looked the Director directly in the eye. ‘My film is about my brother, and about what really happened, and why the TWC decided to cover up his disappearance with lies about some tropical disease.’

She knew, already, how she would use this footage, her little speech. She would intercut it with stills of Bobby as a young boy, with snippets from the video home-movie he’d left with an old girlfriend on Salenko.

Along with her slow-burning resentment, she felt that quickening visceral thrill of creating something lasting and worthwhile.

For someone who knew he was captured on camera, Magnusson was handling the situation with remarkable aplomb.

He sat back in his chair and stared levelly at Katerina, a judicial finger placed against pursed lips. ‘You tell an interesting story, Ms De Klien.’

‘It’s no “story”, Director. I have proof.’

She pulled a message disc from a pocket in her shirt. ‘It’s from Bobby, to me. His friend found it in Bobby’s locker when he heard from his commanding officer that Bobby had died in Baudelaire.’

‘That proves nothing,’ Magnusson began.

Katerina raised her eyebrows. ‘No?’ She tossed the disc across the desk, indicating the screen to Magnusson’s left. ‘Go on, access it,’ she said. ‘And don’t think about destroying it. I’ve taken the precaution of making copies.’

Magnusson took the disc, his expression rigidly neutral. He slipped the disc into the screen. Katerina had viewed the message many times before, but she could not bring herself to look upon the image of her brother now: the lean, crew-cut twenty-two-year-old, talking to the camera on the verandah of a hostel in Apollinaire.

She closed her eyes as his words spoke directly to her. ‘Kat, it’s Bob. It’s been a long time. I … This probably won’t ever get to you - like all the other discs I’ve made and never sent. I want to explain, Kat, apologise. I want to tell you how it was from my point of view, and then maybe you’ll begin to understand. I’m leaving for the interior tomorrow, hiring a flier and heading south—’

The screen blanked there, became static.

‘He terminated the message,’ Katerina explained. ‘Perhaps he meant to continue, but never got the chance.’ She stared at Magnusson. ‘Now, Director, are you going to tell me what really happened?’

Magnusson rotated his swivel chair, rose and strode to the window overlooking Baudelaire. He remained with his back to Katerina for long minutes. She kept her camera on him; the shot would create a nice period of tension in the film.

He turned and regarded her, forthright. ‘I’ll tell you what I can,’ he said, surprising her. ‘I don’t know if you came here out of genuine sentiment for your brother, or in the hope of making a popular film.’

‘I came here to find out what happened to Bobby,’ she said angrily, because Magnusson was uncomfortably close to the truth.

He regarded her for what seemed like a long time before saying, ‘As it happens, I can shed light on the mystery surrounding your brother.’

He returned to his desk and sat down. ‘Three years ago I was not in charge of operations here on Tartarus. A certain Director Haller had control of policy. Of course, when I took over from him I was apprised of the various activities, both overt and covert, that Haller had sanctioned.’ Magnusson paused. ‘How well up are you on the history of Tartarus?’

‘I did a little research.’

‘Did you read up on the southern tribes?’

She frowned. ‘The descendants of the original European colonists? I know of them, but next to nothing actually about them.’

Magnusson nodded. ‘Five years ago the policy of the TWC concerning the tribes of Iriarte, the southern continent, was to leave well alone. They had devolved a lot since their forbears took to the jungles. By our standards they were a primitive people, with correspondingly primitive belief systems. Certain tribes held that their destiny was with the planet, and even when informed of the impending supernova they refused the offer of evacuation and relocation on some analogue planet in the Thousand Worlds. They were reconciled to the thought of dying in the supernova - they even celebrated the coming conflagration. Haller estimated that some hundred thousand tribal peoples would perish if TWC policy remained as it was.’

‘So he intervened?’

‘He decided that he couldn’t sit idly by while an entire race of people went happily to their deaths, no matter what they believed. At that time, a large sector of Iriarte was out of bounds to the TWC. Off-world observers monitored TWC duties on Tartarus and ensured that they did not overstep their designated bounds.’

Katerina was one step ahead of him. ‘So Haller sent Bobby in to reconnoitre?’

Magnusson smiled. ‘He sounded out a few trusted officers. Your brother agreed with him about the fate of the tribes. Bobby was a good worker, very dedicated. Just over three years ago, Haller sent him with another officer to learn the views of certain tribes in the interior of the continent, to see if perhaps they might be persuaded to leave the planet. The mission was covert, of course. Haller risked losing his post if his superiors on Earth got wind he was contravening TWC policy.’

Magnusson stopped there, and the silence stretched. Katerina was aware of a tightness in her throat. At last she asked. ‘And what happened, Director?’

‘Their flier went down, some kind of systems failure. The wreckage was discovered a few days later.’

‘And Bobby?’

Magnusson seemed unable to meet her unwavering gaze.

‘His partner was discovered in the wreckage. He’d died instantly upon impact. There was evidence that Bobby had managed to extricate himself from the wreckage.’

‘What evidence?’ she whispered. It was imperative that she gather every detail, be in possession of every fact, no matter how trifling or insignificant.

Magnusson sighed, something in the sound indicating distaste. ‘If you must know, Ms De Klien, there was a lot of blood leading from the flier into the jungle.’

‘What happened to him?’

Magnusson shook his head. ‘His remains were never found. The area where they came down was dangerous and impenetrable. The rescue mission did all it could.’

‘Then he might still be alive?’

‘I’m sorry. That’s impossible. The jungles of Earth are hostile enough - those of the Iriarte are hell by comparison. Quite apart from the intense heat and lack of water, the diseases, the poisonous insects and plants … Expert opinion reckoned that he would have been lucky, even if fully fit, to have survived a day in those conditions.’

Katerina thought through what the Director had told her. ‘So Haller concocted the story about Bobby dying of a tropical disease in Baudelaire?’

‘He would have lost his command if the truth had reached the observers. He decided that a cover-up was necessary. Since then, TWC policy has changed as regards the southern tribes. We’re doing everything we can to facilitate their evacuation.’

‘Do you have information about where Bobby went down, maps of the area?’

‘You aren’t thinking of venturing into the interior? I wouldn’t advise—’

‘Director Magnusson, I don’t give up on a story halfway through. I want to find out exactly what happened to Bobby.’

Magnusson turned to the screen on his desk, typed a command into the keyboard set in the arm of his swivel chair. Seconds later a large-scale map of Iriarte appeared on the screen. He magnified a certain section, bringing geographical details into sharp relief. He ordered a printout and passed the resulting hard copy to Katerina.

‘I’ve marked where the flier went down.’

Katerina studied the map, aware that her hands were shaking. She was holding, here, the first evidence she had as to Bobby’s fate. She spread the map across the desk and pointed. ‘What are these features, here and here?’

‘Those are native settlements, temporary villages. The natives of this region are nomadic. The settlements are situated about a hundred kilometres south of where the wreckage was found. This is a monastery, a couple of hundred kays south of where the flier went down - some schism of the Church of the Ultimate Sacrifice.’

‘And this is a river, right?’ She indicated a broad band of blue winding its way between the green shading of the jungle, at it closest point about fifty kays from the crash site. She looked up at Magnusson. ‘What about transport?’

‘There’s a daily ferry from Baudelaire to Apollinaire. From Apollinaire, ferries into the interior run about once a week.’

‘What about fliers?’

Magnusson was smiling. ‘Even the famous Katerina De Klien would have difficulty finding a flier for hire since the evacuations began.’

Katerina folded the map and made to leave. ‘I appreciate your help, Director. You’ve made my job a lot easier.’

‘But I still advise you not to venture south,’ he began.

Katerina just stared at him. ‘And I’ll give your advice the consideration it deserves,’ she said.

Magnusson inclined his head. ‘Good luck, Ms De Klien.’

Katerina left the TWC headquarters. The protesters had disappeared, driven away by the merciless heat of the midday sun, and the streets of Baudelaire were deserted.

Alien and off-world fortune-tellers had set up their tents inside the terminal building of the Baudelaire-Apollinaire sea ferry. The vast shed was packed with travellers. Families camped in the central area, huddled around the pathetic bundles of their possessions. Katerina bought a ticket for the Apollinaire ferry, due to depart in one hour, a tortilla and some strange-looking fruit from a vendor, and lugged her pack into the cavernous building. A warm breeze lapped in from the ocean beyond the open end of the shed, stirring the hot air and circulating the combined smells of sweat and cooking food. The sun had set one hour ago, leaving in its wake a flickering aurora of crimson and gold as brilliant as any cinematic effect.

She sat on her pack and ate, looking around at the crowd milling to and from the ferries constantly docking and embarking. The criss-crossing melee of scurrying individuals resembled one vast beast, a gestalt organism continually renewing itself. She recalled arriving in Dakar all those years ago and sitting on the corner of Hugo boulevard, watching the crowd swarming through the junction and thinking how insignificant and alone she was.

She had been taken in by Sophia, a mountainously fat women in her forties who read palms and told fortunes and claimed that her father had been a Fulani witch-doctor before the war. On their first meeting, Sophia had taken one look at Katerina’s soiled palm and made eyes as big as the moon. ‘Girl, are you gonna go places, and I mean go places!’

Now Katerina scanned the bizarre and gaudy tents set up around the walls of the terminal. There were at least a dozen fortune-tellers to choose from, native Tartareans and off-worlders alike. She’d heard bad stories about alien tellers, like some who could and would tell you the exact day you were due to die, others who could take over your body and use it for their own purposes in the dead of night.

She was intrigued by one particular tent, and the figure who sat outside it. The tent was conical and silver, with words in French scrolling down its sloping sides. It advertised the skill of Sabine, mind-reader and future-seer. The girl on the stool before the tent was young and beautiful, her head shaven and embroidered with a micro-mesh scalp implant. She looked North African, her skin as gold as the Saharan sand at dawn, her pose noble and yet resigned, as if she were burdened with the knowledge of some terrible and inexpressible tragedy.

Katerina activated her camera, shouldered her pack and approached the tent. The girl regarded her from beneath long eyelashes, and casually turned her wrist to gesture Katerina through the flap. The girl slipped in after her, indicating that Katerina should remove her shoes and sit on a cushion on the ground. The girl - Sabine, presumably - seated herself opposite with a negligent languor born of repetition.

Her eyes downcast, Sabine murmured her rates. ‘For one week ahead, one hundred units, for two, two hundred - like this, okay?’

‘Two weeks will be fine,’ Katerina said.

Sabine placed a velvet pillow between them, then nested upon the pillow a magnificent, many faceted crystal.

‘Put your hand there, listen to my questions and answer them truthfully.’

Katerina accommodated her palm to the crystal’s uneven surface. The girl placed her small hand on Katerina’s and bowed her head. As the seconds passed, Katerina watched the symmetrical pattern of silver wires on her scalp begin to glow.

Sabine asked, ‘Tell me why you came to Tartarus?’

Katerina said that she had come to learn the fate of her brother.

‘And have you learned of his fate?’

‘I fear he’s dead.’

Sabine looked up, her large oasis eyes enquiring. ‘But I feel you knew this before you left Earth?’

‘I had been told that he was dead, but I didn’t know the exact circumstances.’

Sabine fell silent. She bowed her head again, as if in concentration.

‘But you cannot bring yourself to grieve for your brother, for Bobby.’

Katerina stared, shocked. ‘How do you know his name?’

Sabine merely smiled and repeated her question. ‘You cannot grieve for your brother, no?’

Katerina gathered herself. ‘I … I feel a sadness, a loss. But we had no contact for years.’

‘This is not the only reason you cannot grieve for Bobby.’

It was a statement of fact that shocked Katerina. ‘No … No, it isn’t.’

‘You feel anger, resentment.’

Her mouth suddenly dry, Katerina nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’

She recalled how Bobby had left the orphanage when he was sixteen, had left her to face alone the harsh and loveless routine of the institution that he had hated as much as she did. He had known the hell to which he had consigned Katerina, and yet that had not stopped him walking out.

And then one day at dawn she had slipped from the orphanage to bathe illicitly in a nearby river. She had spent the morning swimming naked beneath the sun, and by noon she had made her decision: she would not return to the orphanage. She left her uniform beside the river, changed into her casual clothes, and caught the three o’clock express to Dakar. She had rode all the way on the roof, and the wind that roared in her face was her first real taste of freedom.

Sabine lifted Katerina’s hand from the crystal, then placed the stone in her lap. She hung her head low, her eyes closed, both hands resting on the crystal.

At last she looked up. ‘I feel now that I know you. I can tell you what lies ahead.’

Katerina felt the tension build within her. Unlike her Western colleagues back on Earth, who sometimes mocked her belief as superstitious, she had faith that fortune-tellers’ predictions would to varying degrees come true. How it worked, how these people could read the future, she had no idea - all she knew was that in her experience the many tellers she had consulted, from Sophia onwards, had correctly divined her destiny.

Now Sabine said, ‘Your brother is alive. You will find him, and he will apologise and explain himself. That is all I can see.’

Katerina shook her head, unable to speak. She experienced an effect of shock: a rapid warmth rising from her chest. At last she managed, ‘But I was told he was dead. That there was no way could he have survived …’ She pressed fingers into her eyes, then stared through the gloom at the Arab girl. ‘How … where is he? How do I find him?’

‘I’m sorry. I know none of these things. I see you speaking to him, I see your tears.’

‘Tears of joy?’

Sabine avoided her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Tears of sorrow.’

From the pier outside the terminal building, the ugly double note of a klaxon rent the humid air. ‘My boat. I must go.’

‘Take care,’ Sabine said. ‘And good luck.’

It was the second time she had been wished good luck that day. Impulsively, she leaned forward and touched the fortune-teller’s cheek. Then she paid Sabine and hurried from the tent, and when she looked back the girl had emerged and resumed her seat, the knowledge of future events informing her pose with tragedy.

That night, as she slept in her berth aboard the ancient diesel-powered ferry that carried her south across the Sea of Baudelaire, Katerina dreamed of Bobby. He was standing in the jungle, blood flowing from a dozen lacerations, his arms outstretched in supplication.

And he was calling out her name.

Katerina arrived in Apollinaire at dawn and booked into a quiet canal-side hotel. The ancient metropolis consisted solely of two-storey timber buildings on a grid-pattern of man-made waterways. The place had about it an air of premature abandonment, as over the years half the population had moved to Baudelaire, and then off-planet. The citizens who remained did not fill the city, and entire quarters had succumbed to gradual neglect. The jungle, hacked back when the city had been built hundreds of years ago, was reclaiming its territory street by street: creeping vines and huge tropical blooms gave buildings the surreal appearance of things at once familiar, yet strangely transformed.

Magnusson had been right about the impossibility of hiring a flier for the trip into the interior. Of the three vehicle hire agencies in the city, two had long since closed and the third hired out only ground-effect vehicles. The owner told her that with the exodus from Tartarus there was no longer a demand for the fliers from the rich and adventurous, and that the only way to travel into the heart of the continent was by steamer.

She made enquiries at the steamboat headquarters and learned that the next ferry left for the interior in three days. She spent the period wandering through the moribund city, talking to those citizens yet to be evacuated and creating, through a montage of interviews, a picture of life on the dying planet of Tartarus.

At night she drank in a bar she’d heard was frequented by the last of the traders who had once made regular forays into the heart of the continent. On the night before her departure, she bought drinks for half a dozen sun-scorched, jungle-toughened men and women, merchants and explorers, who sat around the table on the verandah of the Ace of Spades bar.

She spread her map across the table and told her story. She said that she was trying to find out what had happened to her brother who had crash-landed in the jungle.

A bald-headed prospector looked up from the map. ‘How long ago did you say this was?’

‘Three years.’

‘And he came down here, in Kruger territory? He’d be lucky to survive half a day.’

The others nodded and murmured their agreement.

‘I’ve good grounds to believe he survived the crash.’

A muscled old woman with skin like mahogany peered at her. ‘You have? What grounds?’

‘The word of a future seer,’ Katerina said.

The old woman laughed. A couple of her companions, more superstitious, made gestures appropriate to their religions.

‘Surely we’d have heard of a crash,’ the bald prospector said, ‘and for certain if he’d survived.’

His neighbour judiciously shook his head. ‘You think? In Kruger territory? When was the last time we heard anything out of Kruger territory?’

One or two of the others nodded, filling her with hope.

‘It’s jungle heartland,’ the old woman explained. ‘Think of all the poisonous snakes and plants you know, then double them and add a dozen nasty viruses for spice. There’s only one tribe able to survive in there - the Bourgs, and they’re nomadic. They pass through the Territory once a year to harvest the golden fruit, and then get out.’

A silence came down on the group as they contemplated their beers. Katerina noticed an exchange of glances, as if the motley crew were trying tacitly to determine whether or not to tell her more.

‘What is it?’

The bald prospector looked up. ‘Old Henrique,’ he said. ‘If you’re lucky you might find him at Lapierre’s Landing.’

‘Heard he’d caught a killer virus,’ someone said.

The prospector shook his head. ‘If he had, he’s shook it off. He’s back on his feet now and trading. Tough character, Henrique. If he’s not in the interior, he’ll be found at Sookie’s place in Lapierre’s Landing, three hundred kays upriver.’

The old woman nodded. ‘If anyone’ll be able to tell you about your brother, Old Henrique’s your man. Knows Kruger territory like his backyard, has the ear of the Bourg people. He’s partial to a flagon of sour feti, so make him a present and tell him Lizzie sent you.’

Katerina ordered another round. She raised her glass. ‘To Old Henrique,’ she said.

The following morning, her head aching from the beer, Katerina boarded the ramshackle steamboat, the Iriarte Queen, for the slow voyage into the interior.

She was allocated an insect-infested cabin on the top deck, with a narrow, uncomfortable bed and a spluttering shower. There were only two other passengers beside herself, a wizened old couple she saw boarding the steamer on the morning of departure. The oldsters were white tribes-people, descendants of the original European settlers. They went barefoot and wore baggy shorts and soiled T-shirts, more to appease the nudity taboo of the so-called civilised world than to make any fashion statement. Katerina’s only other travelling companions were the Captain and his mate, a young Oriental barely into his teens who doubled as ship’s cook.

She soon slipped into the shipboard routine. This close to the equator, you slept during the heat of the day and awoke at sunset to enjoy the relatively cooler hours of night. There were two meals a day; a breakfast of fruit and bitter coffee at sunset, and a spiced stew with rice in the early hours of morning. Katerina spent the evenings in the ship’s mildewed bar, making the most of the journey’s only luxury: a constant and cheap supply of bottled lager beer, chilled to perfection. She interviewed the captain and his lad - local colour for the film - but had no such luck with the tribes-people: they spoke a corrupted form of German she had no hope of understanding.

The river was a broad, brown swath winding between the monotonous, canyon-like walls of the jungle. For a few hours on the first night, Katerina stared out into the jungle from her seat in the bar, trying to discern some feature of interest in the passing landscape. By the fourth night, alone in the bar, she found the regularity of the jungle strangely threatening: other than the ship, there was no sign that humankind had imposed its mark upon the land. The jungle was inhospitable and inimical, and every hour she was travelling further into its alien heart. The foliage that often overhung the river seemed to be reaching out, eager to absorb both the water and the ship. She tried to busy herself with filming and commenting on the journey so far, but there was only so much to film, and she knew she would not use much of her narration: in her films to date she preferred to allow the moving image and the words of the locals to shape the course of the narrative. She was speaking now for the sake of something to do, the sound of her voice intrusive against the incessant throbbing of the ship’s engine and the occasional bird-call from the jungle.

By the sixth night, a combination of the monotony of the journey, the succession of beers, and a self-questioning doubt as to the sanity of her mission, pitched Katerina into a philosophical mood. She realised that she had seen no other ships heading into the interior. The few boats she had observed had been moving in the other direction, half a dozen vessels overloaded with citizens eager to flee the hostile southern continent and start a life afresh on some safe, new world. She was going against the tide, both physically and in a more abstract sense. As she slouched on the battered chesterfield that she had made her own, and stared out into the night sky, a blood-red dome shot through with high gold and silver cirrus, she realised she had only the dubious word of some cheap fortune-teller that her brother was still alive. She had been told what she wanted to believe by someone who perhaps had the ability to read her mind, divine her most secret wishes. The chance that Bobby had survived the crash-landing was slim indeed - even more so the idea that he might somehow have survived for three years in the hostile jungle. Drunk, she told herself that she should forget the film, turn back before she further endangered herself… But even as she was thinking this, she knew she could not give up now. Part of the drive to learn the truth, she knew, was not so much the love she had had for Bobby, but a strange and unsettling hate. She resented him for leaving her, for not coming back - so in lieu of his coming back for her, she would shame Bobby by seeking him out, irrespective of the danger to herself.

At dawn, the magnesium glare of the rising sun pushed back the blood-red night. Katerina stood unsteadily, pitched her empty beer bottle at the far shore with more venom than accuracy, and staggered to her cabin. She showered in the lukewarm water pumped no doubt straight from the river, which neither cleaned her nor cooled her down, fell into bed and within seconds was sweating again. She slept fitfully as the temperature increased and the sun sent spears of light through the gaps in the broken blinds. Lucid dreams merged with half-forgotten memories of Bobby, so that when she was jerked awake by a sound from the jungle he seemed to be with her in the cabin, the spectral presence of this half-man, half-boy creature by turns frightening and reassuring.

She recalled the fortune-teller’s words.

‘Tears of joy?’ Katerina had asked.

‘No,’ Sabine had replied. ‘Tears of sorrow.’

As the sun went down and the temperature dropped appreciably, Katerina lay with her head buried in the sweat-soaked pillow and thought back to the last time she had spoken to Bobby.

It was two weeks before his sixteenth birthday, the time he would leave the orphanage and make his way in the world. He was playing a hectic game of football with a dozen other boys on the balding playing fields within the grounds of the home. He drifted out of the game - it seemed with reluctance - and made his way across to where Katerina was sitting by herself in the shade of a flame tree, watching a film on her portable screen. He paused before her, with the same hesitant uncertainty he had shown on leaving the game, and she was alerted. This was quite unlike him.

He squatted beside her, peering with feigned curiosity at the image on the small screen. He knew nothing about films, never watched them, and now this show of interest irritated Katerina.

She killed the set. ‘What’s wrong?’

He avoided her eyes. ‘Two weeks,’ he said, almost inaudibly.

She smiled. ‘You getting cold feet, Bobby! Thought you didn’t like this place? Thought you couldn’t wait to get out? That’s what you told me!’

He shrugged awkwardly.

‘Don’t worry. You can come back to visit me. And you can sit at the headmaster’s table with the other old boys on feast days.’ Her tone was mocking, but she faltered when he failed to respond.

‘Bobby, what is it?’

He was silent. She thought she knew what was troubling him. Most kids on leaving the orphanage found work and accommodation in the town - there were schemes run by local businesses to provide employment and shelter for graduates. Although Bobby’s grades had been good, he’d said nothing to her for the past month about finding a job.

‘Bobby, you’ve nowhere to go to, have you?’ Sympathy was mixed with anger at his lassitude. He was a bright kid when he applied himself.

Wordlessly, he pulled a folded, glossy brochure from the back pocket of his shorts and thrust it at her. It was an advertisement for the Sigma Corporation, recruiting apprentice engineers.

‘I sat the exam and passed,’ he whispered. ‘I leave in three weeks.’

‘The Sigma Corporation? But that’s brilliant!’ And she flung her arms around him in a hug that foundered on his mobility. She pulled away. ‘Bobby,’ she said, exasperated, what’s wrong?’

‘The Sigma Corporation’s based on Draconis IV,’ he said. ‘In three weeks I’ll be leaving Earth.’

Something deep within her froze. They had been together for as long as she could remember. He had told her that when he left the orphanage he would get a place in town and visit her every other day, and on weekends she could come and stay with him. The idea of being without Bobby was unthinkable.

‘How long?’ she managed at last. ‘How long will you be away?’

He stared at the ground. ‘The apprenticeship is for three years,’ he whispered. ‘After that there’s secondment to one of Sigma’s sister companies.’

She was silently shaking her head. ‘But how long will you be away?’ she almost wailed.

‘Kat, in three years I’ll come back for you, okay? On your sixteenth birthday, I’ll be back. I’ll have earned enough by then to buy your passage to Draconis. I’ll find you a place to live, a job.’

‘Three years … ?’ She had never relished the thought of her three remaining years in the orphanage, even with Bobby nearby to make it bearable. She told herself that she would be unable to go on without him.

Then she looked at her brother. He had known for weeks about his departure, and he had been unable to bring himself to tell her, to hurt her. Yet she could sense that a part of him was proud of his achievement, and excited to be leaving the orphanage on an adventure to the stars - and she knew that she could not deny him the chance of a lifetime.

She reached out, flung her arms around his shoulders and wiped away her tears with the cuff of her blouse.

Two weeks later they said goodbye outside the gates of the home, while the taxi waited to take Bobby to the airport. ‘I’ll be back in three years,’ he promised again. ‘It might seem like a long time, but you’ll see how fast it goes.’

The following three years were, contrary to Bobby’s forecast, the longest of her life. Those aspects of the home which had been tolerable with Bobby around now became impossible to bear: the lack of affection, the feeling that she was special to no one, the fact that there was no one to whom she could unburden herself. She became withdrawn, even from people she’d considered friends before. She concentrated on her work, and counted the days to her sixteenth birthday and Bobby’s return. His monthly letters spoke of an exciting new life, of friends, of experiences she could only ever imagine.

Two weeks before her birthday, it was announced that due to economic recession, and the resulting shortage of jobs in the area, fifth form pupils would be required to stay on at the home for another year. While those around her bewailed their prolonged captivity, Katerina basked in the secret knowledge of her imminent rescue.

Her sixteenth birthday came and went, though, with no sign of Bobby. In the days that followed the longed-for hour of liberation, she told herself that he had been delayed, that today he would come for her, and like this weeks and months passed by. She had not received a letter from him since before her birthday, and every month, as often as she could afford, she wrote to him, imploring him to get in touch. Six months later, with no sign of Bobby and still no word from him, she admitted to herself that life on Draconis was too good for Bobby to waste time and money rescuing his kid sister … So she let her studies slip, and dodged lessons when she could. Then one morning she skipped literature studies, went swimming in the river, and then caught the express to the coast.

The sun had set by the time she rose, showered, and made her way to the bar for the breakfast of fruit and coffee, which she would eat in silence with the old man and woman. It was the seventh day of the journey, and they were due to dock at Lapierre’s Landing at midnight. After breakfast, Katerina resumed her station on the chesterfield by the open window, drank beer and stared out at the dark jungle beneath a fiery night sky.

She was on her third beer when her attention was attracted by movement on the bank of the river. She made out the fleeting glimpse of a human figure dashing through the foliage. As she leaned forward and stared, she caught fight of more and more figures, perhaps a dozen, as they ran swiftly through the jungle, paralleling the course of the boat. They emerged upon a projecting, moss-covered rock at a bend in the river, stood in absolute silence and watched as the boat passed by. Katerina was up and filming, aware of the quality of the shot. The tribesmen were tall and sun-bronzed, with fair hair and blue eyes. Some wore loincloths, others went naked. All carried spears or bows and arrows. They stood in a still and silent tableau, watching the slow passage of the boat with no sign of either hospitality or Hostility. The river turned again and the tribesmen passed from sight. Katerina resumed her beer and contemplated existence in such hostile terrain.

One hour later, as they approached the rotting timber settlement that was Lapierre’s Landing, she activated her camera and composed an establishing shot.

She had expected a small town, at least a settlement of a hundred or so cabins. Her heart sank when the boat pulled into the L-shaped jetty and she made out a dozen ramshackle timber huts in a clearing surrounded on three sides by jungle. There was no sign of activity on the shore, though trails of smoke did rise from a couple of the cabins. Katerina collected her pack and carefully negotiated the precarious gangplank.

She spotted a crude sign nailed to a timber construct on the river’s edge. The sign read, ‘Sook’ - with the remaining three letters, ‘ie’s’, hanging on a loose board at right angles. Katerina made her way along the muddy bank, the humidity sapping her strength, and ducked into the doorway beneath the dangling sign.

Tables and benches, constructed from the ubiquitous timber planking, filled the gloomy interior - the crowded seating arrangements suggesting that Sookie’s had seen busier days. An old woman, her European face lined with wrinkles, sat beside a huge, throbbing refrigerator. She stared with an expression of frank amazement as Katerina sat herself down on a bench and mopped the sweat from her brow.

There was no sign of Old Henrique.

Recovering her composure, the woman hauled open the fridge door and pulled out an ice-cold beer. She removed the cap with an opener tied to the hinge of the fridge door with a length of twine, and passed the bottle to Katerina.

Liquid had never tasted so good. Katerina held up the empty and nodded for a second bottle.

Two beers later, she lined up the empty with the others and smiled at the old woman. ‘Look. I’d like to go on drinking all day, but I came here for a reason. I’m looking for Henrique. Old Henrique.’

The woman stared and shook her head. She muttered something in a language Katerina did not understand, perhaps corrupted German.

‘Old Henrique,’ she spoke loud and clear. ‘Where can I find him?’

Enlightenment showed on the woman’s face. ‘Ah, Henrique?’ she said, then babbled on and pointed towards the jungle.

At last she climbed to her feet, took Katerina by the hand and led her outside. She walked her to the centre of the clearing and pointed up the slight incline. Katerina made out a raised timber walkway disappearing into the jungle. ‘Down there? I’ll find Henrique down there?’

The woman nodded, almost pushing Katerina on her way. ‘Ja, Henrique.’

Shouldering her pack, Katerina walked from the river, passing timber huts on stilts, mangy dogs sleeping in their shade and filthy, naked children watching her silently from doorways.

The walkway was a death-trap of treacherous mould and missing planks. She clutched a loose handrail and inched her way forward, peering into the gloom ahead for any sign of habitation. A hundred metres further on, the walkway terminated at the front porch of a long, low hut. The door was open and an orange light glowed within.

Katerina knocked on the timber frame, only then remembering the old woman’s advice to present Henrique with a bottle of feti to keep him sweet. Damn - she’d promise him an entire crate if he could help her.

‘Enter,’ a gravelly baritone sounded from inside.

She stepped into a one-room building entirely in shadow but for a globe of light which illuminated a big man seated in an armchair. She had expected some diseased and weather-worn trader in his hundreds. Old Henrique, despite his title, was perhaps fifty, massive-chested, bald-headed and emanating, even when seated, an awesome sense of power.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said in French. ‘Lizzie sent you, right? And she suggested you bring feti as a gift. But Sookie’s doesn’t sell the stuff, and you’re wondering if you’ll still get your interview.’

‘Almost right,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want an interview.’

‘You don’t? You’re not a journalist?’ He smiled to himself at some personal joke. ‘You’re not here to quiz me about what it’s like to be afflicted?’

‘Well, I am a journalist, but I haven’t come to ask about your health.’

‘That makes a change, girl. I get medical hacks come from all over the Thousand Worlds to pry and poke and ask a hundred stupid questions. Then of course they all want the photograph.’ He stared at her, his eyes large beneath his bald head. His stare seemed to challenge her.

She accepted the challenge. ‘The photograph?’

Smiling, he lifted his hands from the arms of the chair and slowly unfastened his shirt. Despite herself, Katerina stared. His chest and belly was covered with a thousand blood-red writhing tentacles, each perhaps as long as a finger, embedded in his flesh.

He smiled in satisfaction at her expression, and then slowly fastened his shirt.

‘I was way down south one night and I hadn’t fumigated the tent, and in the morning something had laid its egg in my chest. By the time I got to Apollinaire it was too late. Yekini’s, after the prospector who was first afflicted. It’s a symbiotic creature which usually lives on Leverfre’s mandrills, but humans’ll do at a push. It isn’t life threatening, and the pain can be kept in check with pills. On the plus side, it releases a mild hallucinogen into my bloodstream, which I must admit I find rather pleasant.’ His expression hardened. ‘Now, you’ve got what you want, so why don’t you go back to where you came from?’

Katerina matched his stare. ‘I’m a journalist,’ she said, ‘but I’m not a ghoul. I didn’t come here because of the Yekini’s.’

He gestured at her to explain herself, his expression half-amused.

‘Lizzie told me you know Kruger territory and the Bourg people.’

He bunched his lips in contemplation. ‘And if I do?’

‘I need your help. I can pay, and pay well.’

Henrique was silent for long seconds. At last he asked. ‘Pay for what?’

‘Information, first - then maybe advice and help.’ He rested his head on the back of his chair, the tanned skin of his face highlighted by the lamp beside his chair, ‘What do you want to know?’

Hesitantly, picking her words with care, Katerina told him about her brother and the crash-landing. Then she asked Henrique if he had heard or seen anything that might corroborate the fortune-teller’s claim that Bobby is still alive.

He heard her out without a word, staring up at the thatched ceiling of the hut, his face impassive. The silence continued long after Katerina had finished speaking.

At last he said, ‘Chances are if he came down in Kruger territory, was injured and wandered off into the jungle, then he’s dead.’

‘Not according to the fortune-teller.’

Henrique closed one eye and regarded her askance. ‘And you believe in fortune-tellers?’

Sophia told me I’d go places, Katerina thought, and I did: perhaps it was only because someone believed in me, after the disappointment of Bobby’s broken promise, that I began to believe in myself and strove to succeed.

She shrugged. ‘Yes. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I want to believe so much that I do.’

Henrique listened without mocking her, then nodded. ‘When did your brother go down? What time of year?’

Katerina calculated. ‘Three years ago, St Bede’s month.’

‘High summer. Golden fruit’s harvested in summer, so the Bourg people might’ve been in the area.’

‘But if they’d found him, then surely you’d have heard about it?’

‘Not necessarily. I trade with the Bourg. I barter knives for golden fruit, but we talk about nothing other than the goods. They’re an insular, suspicious people.’

‘So Bobby might have been found by the Bourg?’

Henrique scowled and shook his head. ‘If he survived, then why didn’t he return to civilisation? On their yearly migration, the Bourg come within twenty kilometres of Lapierre.’

‘So maybe he didn’t survive. Maybe he died. I need to find out, whatever happened.’ She paused, then asked, ‘Can you take me to the Bourg people? Maybe they can tell me what happened to Bobby?’

He seemed to consider her request for a long time. ‘What month is it?’ he asked.

‘St Mary’s.’

He smiled. ‘I lose track. Sometimes, Yekini’s puts me out for days at a time. Get me that.’ He indicated a worn map on a nearby table.

Katerina passed him the map and he pored over it, tracing a route through the jungle with a blunt forefinger and talking to himself.

‘The Bourg’ll be here,’ he said, pointing, ‘two hundred kays south of Lapierre.’ He looked up at Katerina. ‘There’s no reason why I can’t take you. But my services don’t come cheap. There’s the hire of my flier, my fee as a guide and translator …’

‘How much?’

‘Five thousand shellings, Tartarean.’

She would have paid ten times that amount for information about her brother. ‘That sounds reasonable,’ she said.

She reached out and shook Old Henrique by the hand.

For the first two hours of the journey south they flew above the jungle, a dark expanse that rolled away for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Above them, the heavens were afire, the night sky streaked with great arching blood-red and amber cloud formations. Later, at the first sign of dawn on the far horizon, Henrique lowered his battered, open-top flier through the jungle canopy and into a jade-tinted twilight.

She took her mind from what lay ahead by filming their passage through the jungle. At one point Henrique dropped her on a fan-shaped cantilever of fungus growing at right angles from a tree trunk, then turned back and repeated his approach, so that she could get a shot of the vehicle in flight.

Resuming their journey, she provoked Henrique into conversation and filmed him.

‘The traders at the Ace of Spades called you “Old” Henrique,’ she said. ‘I was expecting some grizzled ancient.’

Sitting back in the driving seat, Henrique glanced at her. ‘I had a son, also named Henrique. Young Henrique.’

For the sake of the film, she asked, ‘What happened to him?’

Henrique stared straight ahead, his big hands wringing the apex of the steering wheel. ‘He died. We worked together, trading. He was attacked by a chowl. He was twenty.’

She murmured her condolences.

He flashed her a glance that said he could do without her spurious sympathy.

The white light of day fell through gaps in the foliage high overhead like great probing searchlights, illuminating motes of dust, air-borne seeds and the occasional giant butterfly and insect.

‘What will you do when you leave Tartarus?’ she asked after an interval. ‘Have you decided where you’ll go?’

‘I’m not leaving,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve decided to stay on Tartarus.’

She wanted to protest that he was still young, that there were other planets similar to Tartarus among the Thousand Worlds. ‘That’s a brave decision.’ She shrugged. ‘Can’t say I understand it.’

He turned to her. ‘I’ve lived all my life in the jungle. I can read the place, the flora and the fauna. I can track every animal bigger than a rat through the undergrowth for kilometres, if needs be. I can tell by scent alone every creature within a fifty-metre radius … Tartarus is unique. If I resettled on some other jungle world I’d have to relearn everything. I can’t begin all over again.’

‘But surely any life is preferable to death? As for work, you could do something completely different.’

‘This is all I know. All I want to know. I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with the end. I want to die with the planet.’

‘Like some of the tribes … Are the Bourg people staying here?’

‘They worship the supernova. They couldn’t leave the land where their ancestors are buried. According to their beliefs, they’ll be reunited with their dead when the sun blows.’

They flew on in silence for the remainder of the journey. As the day advanced, the heat and humidity within the jungle increased correspondingly. Even the headwind was hot, like the backblast from a jet engine. A cocktail of uv-block, insect repellent, and sweat filmed Katerina’s skin in an uncomfortable, sebaceous membrane.

She dozed fitfully, bullied awake each time by the discomfort of her posture. Each period of sleep she dreamed of Bobby, as he was as a boy, and how he might be now - a succession of hopeful images that contrasted cruelly with her waking pessimism.

When she resurfaced from her last period of sleep, the roar of the engine was noticeable by its absence, a loud silence that seemed to fill her head. She stretched and yawned, then stared about her. Henrique had brought the flier to rest amid a tangle of undergrowth. He stood nearby, holding a large leaf between thumb and forefinger. He was staring through a thicket of foliage, the dome of his bald head cocked to one side.

‘They’re not far away,’ he called to her. ‘A group of Hunters passed this way two days ago - a band of about six. That means the tribe will be camped in a nearby clearing.’

He climbed back into the flier and fired the engine, rutting a path through the undergrowth at an altitude of a couple of metres, occasionally stopping to inspect the foliage.

He nodded with evident satisfaction. ‘The same group came by here six to eight hours ago. We’re almost there.’

Katerina filmed for the next hour, not wanting to miss their arrival at the tribal clearing. When they came upon the encampment, they did so suddenly and without warning. One second they were moving through the whipping foliage, and the next they had burst through into an open space rilled with the harsh white glare of the risen sun.

Perhaps two dozen pyramidal tents woven from large, waxy leaves stood around the clearing. The tribes-people had been slumbering in their shade - as evidenced by a few who still did so - but the majority had been alerted by the sound of the engine and were on their feet and cautiously approaching the flier.

They were tall, blond and blue-eyed. Some wore loincloths, others went naked; all wore body-paint, mud-coloured chevrons on chest and stomach. Katerina could not help but consider how incongruous it was to behold an essentially European people in such a state of nature.

They surrounded the flier, fifty men, women and children, some clutching spears and bows, and stared with unreadable expressions. Katerina felt that she was the focus of their attention. She wondered if that was because they had never seen black skin like hers before - or because they had.

Henrique spoke in a halting, guttural tongue to a tall, patriarchal tribesman who had stepped forward from the crowd. The tribal elder responded, gesturing back towards a large communal tent.

Henrique turned to her. ‘I said I’ve brought a guest who wishes to pay compliments. We’re invited to join the oldster and his council in the meeting place.’

They crossed the clearing, followed by the tribe, and ducked into the designated construct. Katerina sat cross-legged next to Henrique, while four other men and women, beside the old man, entered the leaf-tent and sat across from them.

The oldster spoke. Henrique replied, and then translated. ‘He welcomes you on behalf of his people, and I replied on your behalf that you are honoured to be here.’

‘Can you ask him if he knows anything about my brother?’

‘Eventually, but not yet. There’s a certain protocol to follow before we get down to business. They’ll ask you questions and judge you by your replies. Don’t worry,’ Henrique smiled, ‘I’ll say the right things.’

There was a question from each of the tribal council. A woman asked her age, and Katerina told Henrique twenty-three. A man asked the next question. Henrique said, ‘He wishes to know if you are married.’

‘I’m not.’

‘As of now, you are. They’re suspicious of mature women who remain unmarried.’ He relayed this, and listened to the next question, smiling to himself. ‘And how many children do you have?’

‘Children? I …’

‘Four seems like a nice round number. That’ll earn you respect.’

Katerina bit back her protest as Henrique spoke the tribal language.

‘Do you believe? They know of only one deity, and expect everyone to believe in it. So just nod and say yes.’

She did as she was told and Henrique relayed the lie.

An old woman asked another question. Henrique stared at her in silence for a time.

‘Henrique?’ Katerina asked, touching his sleeve. ‘What did she say?’

He shook his head. ‘The woman asked if you will join your cousin in the sky.’ He spoke again to the council as Katerina tried to control her thoughts.

The glottal dialogue went back and forth, with much gesturing from all parties. Henrique chopped the ground from time to time, the gesture taken up and repeated by the elder.

At last a silence fell. Henrique shook his head and turned to Katerina. ‘Three years ago, a man with skin like yours fell from the sky in a flier. His companion was dead, and he was badly injured. They did what they could for him, healed his wounds and set his broken bones. He remained with the Bourg people as they moved through the jungle on their migration. He learned their language and, according to the council, accepted their belief.’ Here, Henrique broke off his resume and spoke again to the old woman, shaking his head in seeming frustration.

Katerina sat and stared, words beyond her. That Bobby had indeed survived the crash and joined the Bourg people filled her with hope - but where was Bobby now? If he had survived his injuries, then what had become of him? What did the old woman mean when she asked if Katerina would join her cousin in the sky?

Henrique listened to what the old woman had to say. ‘He stayed with them for six months,’ he told Katerina, ‘and then he joined his brothers in the sky.’

‘What does she mean?’ She felt a mounting dread. ‘Did he die? Is Bobby dead?’

‘I’ve asked them that. A literal translation of the reply is, “All who join the brothers are considered dead”. I’m trying to work out what that means. Have patience.’

He spoke to the council again. They replied, and Henrique nodded. Enlightenment showed on his face.

‘Good God, of course …’

‘What? He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘No … No, he isn’t. I asked them where they were when he left them. They said somewhere south of here, west of Kruger territory, in the lee of the central mountains. That can mean only one thing. It’d explain “his brothers in the sky” …’

Katerina gripped his arm. ‘What? For God’s sake tell me!’

‘Your brother’s still alive. He survived the crash and was nursed back to health by the Bourg people. He even took their faith … and then he left them for his brothers in the sky.’ Henrique stared at her. ‘Bobby joined the monks of the Order of the Nova, Katerina, at the monastery of St Chrysostum.’

They flew south in silence for a long time, Katerina trying to order her thoughts. There were so many questions she wanted to ask Henrique that she did not know where to begin. Hard upon the joy she had experienced at learning that Bobby was alive, she felt apprehension at the idea that he had joined a religious sect. What had the Bourg council said? All who join the brothers are considered dead.

‘The monastery’s a few hours away.’ Henrique said at last. ‘Part of a mountain range that spans the continent.’

‘Why this remote?’

He glanced across at her. ‘They’re an hermitic order. They’ve turned their backs on the world. They need privacy to practise their beliefs.’

‘The oldster said that all who join them are considered dead.’ Katerina watched his face for reaction. ‘What did he mean?’

She felt sure that Henrique knew more than he was willing to tell her. He shook his head. ‘I wish I knew.’

She persisted. ‘Do you know what they believe?’

‘They’re a sect of the Church of the Ultimate Sacrifice. They believe that through mortification they’ll stop the supernova.’

She felt the weight of a subtle depression settle over her. ‘I suppose I should be thankful he survived the crash.’

Henrique stared straight ahead and said nothing.

Two hours later he eased the flier up through the jungle canopy. Ahead, rearing majestically from the jungle like a dozen overlapping scimitar blades, were the silver peaks of the central mountains.

It was all Katerina could do to concentrate and film the establishing shot as the flier climbed towards the nearest peak. As they approached, a man-made edifice resolved itself in the vertical rock face. She made out a hundred slit windows, their multiplicity giving some indication of the vast extent of the monastery in the mountainside. Beneath the monastery was a great outcropping of rock bearing an incongruous garden. Evidently, their approach had been observed.

A welcoming committee of a dozen monks in long black habits stood together on the wide, flat lawn.

Henrique lowered the flier and cut the engine.

The monks of the Order of the Nova comprised a cross-section of the racial types on Tartarus: Latinos, Asiatics, even a couple of tall, blond Scandinavians. They regarded Katerina and Henrique with evident interest. She wondered how many casual visitors passed this way each year.

Henrique spoke to them in French.

The Nordic monk raised a hand. ‘You are welcome, of course. We never turn away weary travellers.’

‘We are more than … travellers,’ Henrique said. ‘We’re here to contact a relative, Katerina’s brother.’

At this, the monk turned his cowled head to Katerina. ‘That would be Brother Robert?’

‘He’s alive?’ she said.

‘He is alive,’ said the monk. ‘I trust you are not here in an attempt to take him from us? Brother Robert has taken his vows. He is one of us, now, and committed to the cause.’

Katerina shook his head. ‘I only want to meet him, to talk.’

‘In that case I see no reason to delay the reunion.’

At his words, Katerina almost wept.

They crossed the lawn behind the dozen silent monks and approached a tall arched doorway in the face of the cliff. After the searing heat of midday, the interior of the monastery was blessedly cool. The other monks ushered Henrique into a side room, leaving Katerina with the tall Scandinavian.

Still filming, Katerina followed him down long, chiselled corridors lighted by guttering candles. They climbed numerous narrow staircases, each step worn to a curve with the passage of centuries. At last they came to a wide corridor at the end of which was a timber door. Her guide knocked lightly, opened the door and gestured Katerina inside.

The room overlooked the jungle. A dozen slit windows admitted piercing shafts of light. Unlike the bare corridors, the room appeared comfortable, furnished with a carpet, chairs and a writing desk.

The monk told her to remain by the door, then crossed the room. He paused before a brown Hessian curtain that hung in an archway, and addressed quiet words to someone beyond. Katerina heard a sharp exclamation, then hurried words.

The monk turned and gestured to Katerina. He positioned a stool before the curtain and invited her to sit. ‘Brother Robert,’ he said.

Katerina sat down. Her voice tight with emotion, she said, ‘Can I see him?’

‘That is for him to decide. You may speak to him.’

The monk retreated to the slit windows at far side of the room and stood with his back to Katerina, contemplating the jungle below.

‘Bobby?’ she whispered.

‘Kat … Kat, is it you? Is it really you?’ She recognised his voice, fraught with disbelief.

‘It’s me,’ she said. She paused, considering her words. ‘You didn’t come for me, Bobby … so I came for you.’

She heard a stifled cry.

‘Bobby?’

‘No!’

‘Bobby … please, what is it?’

She heard a deep, drawn breath as he gathered himself. ‘No…you’re dead. They told me you were dead!’

‘Bobby …’ she said. ‘Who told you?’

‘The teachers at the home … they told me you’d drowned in the river, your body swept downstream.’

Katerina held her head in her hands. ‘I went swimming, Bobby. I had to get away from the orphanage. I took the train to Dakar, started a new life.’

Katerina heard a cry from behind the curtain. ‘I thought you’d taken your own life when I failed to come for you. I was delayed, Kat. Sigma sent me out to the Rim. Oh, my God … For so long I thought you were dead. You can’t imagine the guilt I felt.’

Katerina recalled the message disc, the others that Bobby had spoken of recording. ‘But the disc you left,’ she began. ‘If you thought I was dead, then—?’

‘It was because I thought you were dead that I made them,’ Bobby replied. ‘I made dozens, hundreds, explaining myself to you, asking for your forgiveness.’

Katerina rubbed tears from her cheeks. ‘For so long I hated you, Bobby. I hated you for not coming for me. For years I couldn’t bring myself to forgive.’

She reached out to take the curtain. She hesitated. ‘Bobby, can I …’

‘Yes?’

‘I want to see you.’

‘Kat … Please, don’t. I have undergone penance.’

‘What have they done to you?’ she whispered. ‘What penance?’

‘Penance physicale,’ Bobby said, ‘that most holy of sacrifices.’

She snatched the curtain aside. She stood and stared at the revealed sight, disbelief quickly followed by understanding, and then revulsion. She slumped onto the stool and looked upon the remains of her brother.

He was seated in an invalid carriage, to serve as the legs he’d had removed. He was without arms to hold her, eyes to look upon her. His face was a parody, with evacuated eye sockets, and two hideous holes where his nose should have been. He was naked and Katerina saw - the final depredation - that he had been emasculated, too.

She wanted to cry out in denial at the thing her brother had become. She cursed the past, the terrible sequence of events that had brought him to this end.

‘Bobby …’ she managed at last. ‘Why … ? Why this?’

‘Don’t you understand, Kat?’ He turned his head towards her, his stitched-up eyelids staring blindly. ‘For a long time I had been searching for something,’ he said. ‘And then I crashed in the jungle and was saved by the Bourg. They accepted me as one of them, and initiated me into their religion. From time to time one of their number would join the Brothers. I had so much guilt to atone for, and above all the desire to sacrifice myself for the salvation of others. My suffering will halt the process of the supernova.’

Katerina stared at him. ’No… !’

‘Tomorrow,’ Bobby went on, ‘I make the ultimate sacrifice. With the other brothers of my year, I will take to the cross beneath the sun and allow its heat to flense my soul.’

Katerina moaned in pain. She reached for her brother, wanting to take him in her hands, but recoiled from the limbless torso he had become.

‘You can’t do this, Bobby!’ she cried. ‘What’s happened to you? Don’t you see, it won’t work! Your sacrifice… Think about it. How can your death stop the process—?’

His lips formed a rictus of pain. ‘Kat … Kat, I believe. Don’t you understand that? Faith is all. If you believe in something with sufficient conviction, then you will succeed. The age of miracles is upon us, Kat! Believe and you will be saved!’

‘What happened to you, Bobby?’ she whispered. ‘What happened?’

What had happened to him on the day he had returned to Earth, to discover that she had drowned? If only she had returned to the orphanage …

Into her head came an image of the boy Bobby had been, the awkward, studious child she had loved. She looked upon the person he had become, the mutilated wreckage of his body, and it came to her that she no longer knew the man who called himself Brother Robert.

‘Kat, don’t you see? Don’t you understand? I need to do what I am doing in order to make myself whole again in spirit.’

He had gone too far, she realised, to be saved as she wished to save him. She had to let him go, now; somehow manage her pain and try to come to some acceptance her brother’s choice.

She reached out and touched Bobby’s shoulder. In response - perhaps the only gesture of reciprocation he could make in the circumstance - he moved his head and touched her fingers with his cheek.

They remained like this for long minutes, Katerina lost in contemplation of past events and their consequences.

She recalled her meeting with the fortune-teller, Sabine.

Tears of joy? No, tears of sorrow …

Silently, so that Bobby might not hear her, Katerina hung her head and wept.

*

She slept badly that night, and in the early hours left her cell and crossed the corridor to Henrique’s. She lay beside him on the bed, and presently he put an arm around her shoulders and drew her to him.

In the morning they were escorted from the monastery to a high, lonely plateau of rock. Bobby and the other sacrificial monks sat in carriages beneath the burning sun. A dozen crucifixes lay upon the rock.

Steeling herself, Katerina released Henrique’s hand and crossed the plateau to where Bobby sat in his carriage. She knelt beside him, touched his shoulder. ‘Bobby, it’s me.’

His lips twitched in the semblance of a smile. ‘Kat … Kat, I’m glad you’ve come. I wish … Oh, I wish there was some way I could make you see how … how right this is for me.’

She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. ‘There’s no need, Bobby,’ she whispered. ‘I think I understand.’

Someone touched her arm. It was the Nordic monk. ‘The ceremony is about to commence.’

A choir of monks began a dolorous plainsong.

‘Goodbye, Bobby,’ she said.

She stood quickly and hurried over to Henrique. As they watched, the dozen monks were taken from their carriages, carried with loving care across the plateau, and lashed to the timbers. Then the crucifixes were hauled upright and slotted into holes in the rock.

Even as Katerina watched, some part of her - that hardened half that had made her what she was, that had fought to succeed against all odds, considering no one but herself and her own interests - realised what a fitting finale to her documentary this crucifixion would make. She could envisage the power of the shot: Bobby’s limbless torso lashed to the cross in the full heat of the midday sun.

But she could not bring herself to activate the camera.

After perhaps an hour, Henrique touched her hand and suggested that she had seen enough. She nodded, dumbly, and he walked her from the plateau to the garden and the flier.

They rose and banked from the monastery, heading out across the jungle. Katerina stared down at the rapidly diminishing plateau, at the dozen crucifixes and their burdens.

Then she looked ahead and considered the long, long journey home.

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