Teranesia

Those that made as many copies of the São Paulo gene as possible.

They reached the island of the mangroves and made use of the same approach as before, then sailed around the coast inside the reef. As they drew nearer to the point where the expedition had set up camp, Prabir saw that the fishing boat was gone, but another vessel had taken its place alongside the research ship.

They dropped anchor and waded ashore. They were halfway to the camp when a young man appeared on the beach about fifty metres ahead of them, dressed in camouflage trousers, combat boots, and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. He raised a rifle and aimed it at them, then barked out a series of commands in English.

‘Halt! Put your hands on your heads! Squat down!’

They complied. The man walked up to Prabir and held the rifle to his temple. ‘What are you doing here? Where have you come from?’ Prabir was too agitated to reply immediately, but as he struggled to relax his larynx sufficiently to speak he took some comfort from the realisation that the man was probably not a pirate. Only a soldier would be so interested in their movements, and whatever misunderstanding was provoking his hostility would surely be easy enough to resolve.

Grant explained calmly, ‘I’m a biologist, this is my assistant. I have a permit from the government in Ambon.’

The soldier’s reaction to this last phrase was not encouraging. ‘Pig-fucking ecumenical heretics!’ Prabir’s heart sank. The man was not a Moluccan soldier: he was with the Lord’s Army, West Papua’s born-again Christian militia. Officially, they weren’t even part of that country’s armed forces, though it was widely assumed that they received clandestine government support. They’d been making trouble in Aru for years. But Aru was almost three hundred kilometres east.

‘Where have you been?’ the man demanded.

Prabir said, ‘On the other side of the island.’ If Teranesia’s infamy had spread throughout the region, it might not be wise to admit to having visited the place.

‘You’re lying. Yesterday, there was no sign of your boat.’

‘You must have missed us. We were halfway into the mangroves.’

The man snorted with derision. ‘You’re lying. You come and see Colonel Aslan.’

As they walked through the camp, Prabir saw three more armed men lounging around looking bored, and several of the expedition members standing nervously at the entrances to their tents. The biologists weren’t exactly being guarded like hostages, but this was definitely not a guest/host relationship. There was no sign of Madhusree. Prabir kept telling himself that there was no reason for the soldiers to have harmed anyone, but nor was there any obvious reason for them to be here at all. Maybe there’d been a case that Aru should have joined West Papua at independence — even if that was now about as attractive a prospect as West Bengal being declared a part of Pakistan — but it was hard to imagine what kind of mileage the Lord’s Army expected to gain for the cause by bullying foreigners deep in RMS territory.

The Colonel had taken up office in one of the expedition’s supply tents; Prabir and Grant were made to stand and wait outside in the early-afternoon sun. After twenty minutes, the soldier guarding them muttered something irritably in his native language and went and sat in the shade of a tree, his rifle propped up on one knee to keep it pointing vaguely in their direction.

Prabir whispered, ‘You do know who we’re dealing with?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll be on my best Sunday-school behaviour.’ Grant seemed more weary than afraid, as if this was just another tedious obstacle to get through, no different from slogging through the mangroves. But she’d travelled widely, so perhaps she’d grown accustomed to occasional periods of arbitrary detention.

‘ “Colonel Aslan”’ Do you think he’s a foreign mercenary? It sounds more like a name from central Asia than anything from around here.’

Grant smiled, somewhat condescendingly. ‘I believe it’s now a common choice upon conversion to Christianity all over the planet, at least when the evangelists get their hooks in early enough. Just don’t admit to a fondness for Turkish delight, and you should be OK.’

‘Turkish delight?’

‘Don’t worry. It would take too long to explain.’

A second young soldier emerged from the tent and shot a warning glance at their guard, who leapt to his feet. The two of them escorted Grant and Prabir into the tent, past drums of flour and boxes of toilet paper.

Colonel Aslan turned out to be a muscular Papuan man in his thirties, apparently devoted to the Dallas Cowboys. He was seated behind a desk improvised from crates. When Grant handed over her permit, he smiled graciously. ‘So you’re the famous Martha Grant! I’ve been following your work on the net. You’ve been to the heart of the contagion, and returned to tell the tale.’

Grant replied warily, ‘There’s no evidence that the mutations are contagious.’

‘Yet these creatures turn up hundreds of kilometres away. How do you account for that?’