Teranesia

Grant had chosen six small islands from which to gather samples, lying in an arc that ran south-east from the Bandas to the Kai Islands. All were uninhabited, unless they had settlements so small that they’d escaped the notice of the official cartographers. The third was just seventy kilometres north-east of Teranesia, slightly closer than the Tanimbar Islands to the south; if it had been on the maps when Prabir was a child, he and Madhusree might have ended up stranded there.

When he’d joined Grant in Ambon, he’d imagined himself somehow ‘steering’ her towards the source of the mutations; fat chance of that, but the route she’d picked would already take them about as close as he wanted to get. He could only hope that whatever the biologists’ expedition had discovered was drawing them in the same direction; it seemed naive now to think that Madhusree – lowest of the low in the academic pecking order – could have swayed a boatload full of experts with their own theories and agendas.

They sailed out of Banda Harbour early in the afternoon, and it was close to sunset when they arrived at the first of the islands. They dropped anchor a hundred metres from shore and spent the evening recuperating, drawing entertainment off the net. To Prabir’s amazement, Grant turned out to like Madagascan music as much as he did, and she knew all the esoterica better. After a while he stopped trying to compete with her at naming performers and recordings, and just let her dazzle him with her erudition.

Grant winced suddenly. ‘Quarter to ten! I promised Michael I’d call him in his lunch hour.’

Prabir went out on deck to give her some privacy. He sat perched on the guard rail at the stern of the boat, swaying slightly to keep himself upright, the sound of the valiha still playing in his head.

If he agonised over it, he knew he’d never do it. He pulled out his notepad and hit three buttons in rapid succession.

Felix grinned up at him from the screen. ‘How’s it going?’

Prabir shrugged. ‘It was strange being back at first, but I’m getting used to it. How’s work?’

‘Dull beyond words. I’m disgusted that you’d even ask. Any sign of Madhusree?’

‘Not yet. I think we’re both heading in the same direction, but it’s going to be a matter of luck whether I catch up with her or not.’

Felix said tentatively, ‘I could always call her and tell her you’re on your way. It’s not as if she could really pressure you into turning back now, even if she wanted to. And she might take the whole thing better if she was forewarned.’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘Compared to what? Arriving unannounced?’

Prabir thought seriously about the suggestion. But why risk alienating her, when there was still no guarantee that their paths would actually cross? He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. If we meet, we’ll sort it out. If we don’t, I’ll confess everything once we’re back in Toronto, and she’ll just laugh and forgive me on the spot.’

He recounted as much as he could about the Bandanese pigeons; Felix seemed neither surprised nor offended that he couldn’t be let in on the sequencing results. They talked for almost half an hour, until Felix had to go and refill his pipetting robot’s reagent tanks.

When the window closed and Prabir looked up, his eyes still adapted to the brightness of the screen, he felt unspeakably strange. It wasn’t just a pang of loneliness; he wasn’t sure that it had much to do with Felix at all. It was the connection breaking, the image fading, the whole illusion collapsing in front of him, leaving him with nothing but darkness and the mechanical rocking of the sea.

He sat on the railing, watching Grant smiling and laughing in the cabin, and waited for the feeling to pass.

They circumnavigated the island, probing its fringing reef with sonar until they found a safe approach to a small sandy beach. Grant anchored the boat in a metre of water, and they waded ashore. Prabir looked down at the fine, bone-white sand with a jolt of recognition, but he let the feeling wash over him, neither fighting it nor pursuing it to its source.

He found some shade and sat to pull his boots on, squinting back at the sunlit water. Silver on turquoise, the view was indistinguishable from one he’d seen a thousand times before. The memory went deeper than vision: as he tightened his laces he grew aware of a disconcerting ease in his limbs, an assured and unselfconscious physicality beneath the fading ache from the plantation. A few laps in Banda Harbour could hardly have restored him to childlike resilience, but on some level his body still carried a trace of what it had once felt like to swim in this sea every day.

Grant said, ‘Are you ready?’ She gestured at the mine detector clipped to her belt. Prabir hit the self-test button on his own device; it chimed reassuringly and flashed a green light, whatever that was worth.