kilometres of water—and much less during ice ages—was no real barrier to migration on a time scale of tens of millions of years.
He left any mention of politics to the end, and ran through the words in his head a dozen times before committing a first draft to the notepad. He had to sound like his father, but firmer and clearer, so Eleanor wouldn’t keep questioning his decision to stay. Instead of dismissing her fears that the worst might happen, he’d welcome the possibility with open arms.
‘By the way, I checked out that State Department report you mentioned, and I agree completely with your analysis of the situation. The brutal, corrupt Javanese empire is finally coming to an end! Like the Portuguese, and the Dutch, and the British, they’re going to have to learn to live within their own borders. And if they can’t read the lessons of history, ABRMS is going to have to teach them the hard way.
‘But please don’t worry about me and my family. The army will never even think of coming here. We have all the equipment and supplies we need, so we can stay holed up here for as long as we have to. And it’s not as if Radha and I have nothing to do! We’ll continue with our work, until it’s safe to leave.’
Prabir hesitated. It still sounded a bit like whistling in the dark. He needed to sign off on a positive note, or Eleanor would think it was all bluster.
He closed his eyes and swung the hammock, sighing with frustration.
Then inspiration struck.
‘As ever, your friend Prabir. Long live the Republik Maluku Selatan!’
3
‘Be careful!’ Prabir’s mother shaded her eyes and looked up at him, shifting Madhusree to one side to free her arm. Prabir stepped off the ladder on to the gently sloping roof. There were no gutters, so there was nothing to stop him falling if he started to slide, but the surface of the photovoltaic composite felt reassuringly rough beneath his feet. The modified fibreglass gained efficiency from its lack of polish; the polymer strands could gather more light if they stuck out in random tufts.
Prabir crouched down slowly, legs spaced, balancing carefully. He’d managed to convince his parents that they were both too heavy to walk on the roofs of the huts, and though he’d been arguing entirely for the sake of doing the job himself, it seemed he’d been right: he could feel the panels flexing beneath his feet. They still felt springy, but it probably wouldn’t have taken much more force to buckle them.
He shook the spraycan and began to paint an ‘I’. His parents had argued it through the night before: no elaborate messages proclaiming neutrality, no Indian flag, no sycophantic declarations of loyalty to either side, no praise-be to Allah or Jesus. Just one word on every wall and every roof of every hut: ILMUWAN. Scientist.
The hope remained that no sign was needed. No one had troubled them so far, and since it seemed unlikely that their presence had gone unnoticed, perhaps their purpose was already known. Jets had flown over the island a few times, tiny soundless metallic specks, so small that Prabir could almost believe that they were just flaws in his vision, like the swimming points of distortion he saw when he stared too long into a cloudless sky. Whether they were scanning the island for rebel bases, or merely passing over on their way elsewhere, it was hard to feel threatened when all you could see was a glint of sunlight.
The whole Emergency was becoming like that: distant, hallucinatory, impossible to resolve in any detail. Their access to the net had been cut off since the beginning of February; presumably Jakarta had pulled the plug on the entire province. They could still get BBC shortwave, but the reception was very patchy, and there was only so much you could cram into an hour-long bulletin that covered all of East Asia. It was clear that the regional independence movements were taking advantage of each other’s actions: the separatists in Aceh were now fighting government troops for control of the district capital, and in Irian Jaya the OPM had bombed an army base in Jayapura—an unexpected move from a group whose weapons were usually described as ‘neolithic’. But while dramatic events like that made it into the bulletins, the day-to-day situation in Tual or Ambon never rated a mention. A web site in the Netherlands had been offering individual reports for every inhabited island group in the Moluccas, and its operators had successfully evaded the Indonesian censors with some fancy rerouteing tricks, right up to the moment of the uniform black-out. Prabir’s father had warned him that the site was probably run by expatriate ABRMS members, but Prabir didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in the voice of neutrality. He wanted a flood of propaganda washing over the islands, proclaiming bloodless victory to the rebels. He wanted everyone in Indonesia to talk themselves into believing that they could walk unharmed out of the ashes of the burning empire.
Prabir completed the final ‘N’ and sidled back towards the ladder. The paint would reduce their power supply by about one-fifth, but with the satellite link switched off they’d still have enough to keep everything else running. As he approached the ground, Madhusree started wailing because she wasn’t allowed to climb up and see what he’d written. His mother began fussing over her as if she was in genuine distress, cooing and stroking her brow. Prabir said mischievously, ‘She can do the next one. I don’t mind. Would you like that, Maddy?’ He gave her an aren’t-you-adorable look, and she stared back at him in amazement, her bawling dying down to a half-hearted wheezing sound.
His mother said wearily, ‘Don’t be stupid. You know she can’t.’ Madhusree started screaming. Prabir moved the ladder over to the next hut.
‘I wish you’d grow up! You’re such a baby sometimes!’ Prabir was halfway up the ladder before he realised that these words were directed at him. He continued on, his face burning. He wanted to shout back:
When he came down, Madhusree was still whimpering. Prabir said, ‘She can help me do one of the walls.’
His mother nodded, and stooped to put Madhusree down. Madhusree gazed resentfully at Prabir and clung on, sensing a chance to milk the situation further. Prabir gave her a warning look, and after a moment she changed her mind and waddled over to him. He handed her the spraycan, then crouched behind her, guiding her arm while she squeezed the button.
‘You know we almost sent you off to boarding school this year. Would you have liked that?’ His mother spoke without a trace of sarcasm, as if the answer wasn’t obvious.
Prabir didn’t reply. It was no thanks to her that he’d been spared; only the war had saved him from exile.
She said, ‘At least you would have been out of all this.’
Prabir kept his eyes on the job, doing his best to compensate for Madhusree’s enthusiastic random cross- strokes, but he thought back over the conversation he’d heard between his parents in the butterfly hut. It was true that his mother had suggested sending him to her cousin in Toronto… but that had only served to put his father off the whole idea, a response that might not have come as a great surprise to her. So maybe he’d judged her too harshly. Maybe she’d actually been fighting to keep him here.
He said, ‘If I was away I’d be worried about everyone. This way I know you’re all safe.’
‘That’s true.’
Prabir glanced over his shoulder; his mother was smiling, pleased with his answer, but she still looked uncharacteristically fragile. It made him very uneasy to think that she might need reassurance from him. Ever since she’d gone soppy over Madhusree he’d longed for some kind of power over her, some means of extracting revenge. But this was too much. If an illchosen word could truly hurt her, it was like being handed the power to shut off the sun.
The sign on the wall resembled one of Prabir’s attempts to write with his foot, but the word was recognisable. He said, ‘Well done, Maddy. You wrote “Ilmuwan”.’
‘Mwan,’ Madhusree declared confidently.
‘Ilmuwan.’
‘Ilwan.’
