‘They’re not small animals,’ her husband said. He was looking in the same direction as Dieterling, his eyes squinting intently at something. ‘You’re right. That tree must have had — what, eight or nine fusions?’
‘At the very least,’ Dieterling said. ‘The most recent fusion might still be in its transition state.’
‘Still warm, you mean?’ Cahuella said.
I could see the way his mind was working. Where there was a tree with recent growth layers, there might be near-adult hamadryads as well.
We decided to set up camp in the next clearing, a couple of hundred metres further down the trail. The drivers needed a rest after a day pushing through the trail, and the vehicles tended to accumulate minor damage which had to be put right before the next stage. We were in no haste to reach our ambush point and Cahuella liked to spend a few hours each night hunting around the camp’s perimeter before retiring.
I used a monofilament scythe to widen the clearing, then helped with the inflation of the bubbletents.
‘I’m going into the jungle,’ Cahuella said, tapping me on the shoulder. He wore his hunting jacket, a rifle slung over one shoulder. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
‘Go easy with any near-adults you find,’ I said, only half joking.
‘This is just a fishing trip, Tanner.’
I reached over to the card table I had set up outside the tent, with some of our equipment on it. ‘Here. Don’t forget these, especially if you’re going to wander far.’ I held up the image-amp goggles.
He hesitated, then reached out and took the goggles, slipping them into a shirt pocket. ‘Thanks.’
He stepped away from the pool of light around the tents, unhitching the gun as he went. I finished the first tent, the one where Gitta and Cahuella were sleeping, and then went to find her to tell her it was ready. She was sitting in the cab of the vehicle, an expensive compad propped on her lap. She was thumbing through something indolently, skimming pages of what looked like poetry.
‘Your tent’s done,’ I said.
She closed the compad with something like relief and allowed me to lead her towards the tent’s opening. I had already checked the clearing for any lurking unpleasantnesses — the smaller, venomous cousins of hamadryads which we called dropwinders — but the place was safe. Still, Gitta moved hesitantly, afraid of putting her foot down on anything other than a brightly lit spot of ground, despite my reassurances.
‘You look like you’re enjoying yourself,’ I said.
‘Is that sarcasm, Tanner? Do you expect me to enjoy this?’
‘I told him it would be better for all of us if you stayed at the Reptile House.’
I unzipped the opening. Within was a pantry-sized airlock which kept the tent from deflating whenever someone came or went. We set up the three tents at the apexes of a triangle, linked together by pressurised corridors a few strides long. The tiny generator which fed the tents the air which kept them inflated was small and silent. Gitta stepped within and then said, ‘Is that what you think, Tanner — that this is no place for a woman? I thought attitudes like that died before they ever launched the Flotilla.’
‘No…’ I said, trying not to sound overly defensive. ‘That’s not what I think at all.’ I moved to seal the outer door between us, so that she could enter the tent in her own privacy.
But she put a hand up and held mine from the zip. ‘What is it you think, then?’
‘I think what’s going to happen here won’t be very pleasant.’
‘An ambush, you mean? Funny; I’d never have guessed that for myself.’
I said something foolish. ‘Gitta, you have to realise, there are things you don’t know about Cahuella. Or me, for that matter. Things about the work we do. Things we have done. I think you will soon have a better idea about some of those things.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I think you should be ready for it, that’s all.’ I looked over my shoulder, towards the jungle where her husband had vanished. ‘I should get to work on the other tents, Gitta…’
When she answered her voice had an odd quality to it. ‘Yes, of course.’ She was looking at me intently. Perhaps it was the way the light played on it, but her face seemed extraordinarily beautiful to me then; like something painted by Gauguin. I think it was in that instant that my intention to betray Cahuella crystallised. The thought of it must have always been there, but it had taken that instant of searing beauty to bring it to light. If the shadows had fallen slightly differently across her face, I wondered, would I still have made that decision?
‘Tanner, you’re wrong, you know.’
‘About what?’
‘Cahuella. I know a lot more about him than you think. A lot more than anyone here thinks they do. I know he’s a violent man, and I know he’s done terrible things. Evil things. Things you wouldn’t even believe.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ I said.
‘No; that’s precisely the point, I wouldn’t be. I’m not talking about the violent little deeds he’s committed since you’ve known him. They’re barely worthy of consideration compared to the things he did before. And unless you’re aware of those things, you really don’t know him at all.’
‘If he’s so bad, why do you stay with him?’
‘Because he isn’t the evil man he used to be.’
Something flashed between the trees; a stammer of blue-white light, followed a moment later by the report of a laser-rifle. Something dropped through foliage to the ground. I imagined Cahuella stepping forward until he had found his kill; probably a small snake.
‘Some people would say that an evil man never really changes, Gitta.’
‘Then they’d be wrong. It’s only our deeds that make us evil, Tanner; they’re what define us, nothing else, not our intentions or feelings. But what are a few bad deeds compared to a life, especially the kinds of lives we can live now?’
‘Only some of us,’ I said.
‘Cahuella’s older than you think, Tanner. And the evil things he did were a long, long time ago, when he was much younger. They were what led me to him, eventually.’ She paused, glancing towards the trees, but before I could ask her what she had meant by that, she was already speaking again. ‘But the man I found wasn’t an evil one. He was cruel, violent, dangerous, but he was also capable of giving love; of accepting love from another human being. He saw beauty in things; recognised evil in others. He wasn’t the man I’d expected to find, but someone better. Not perfect — not by a long stretch — but not a monster; not at all. I found that I couldn’t hate him as easily as I’d hoped.’
‘You expected to hate him?’
‘I expected to do a lot more than that. I expected to kill him, or bring him to justice. Instead…’ Gitta paused again. There was another crack of blue light from the forest: the deadfall of another animal. ‘I found myself asking a question; one I’d never thought of before. How long would you have to live as a good man — doing good — before the sum of your good actions cancelled out something terrible you’d once done? Could any human life be long enough?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered, truthfully. ‘But I do know one thing. Cahuella may be better than he used to be, but he’s still not anyone’s idea of citizen of the month, is he? If you define the way he is now as a man doing good, I’d hate to think what he was like before.’
‘You would, yes,’ Gitta said. ‘And I don’t think you could handle it, either.’
I bade her goodnight and returned to preparing the other tents.
TWENTY
In the midmorning, while the others struck camp, five of us walked back on foot until we had reached the point in the track where we had seen the hamadryad tree. From there it was an uncomfortable but short scramble through overgrowth until we reached the flared base. I led the party, sweeping the monofilament scythe ahead of me in an arc which cleared most of the vegetation.
‘It’s even bigger than it looked from the trail,’ Cahuella said. He was rosy-cheeked and jovial this morning, for his hunting last night had been successful, as we had discovered by the carcasses hung up outside the clearing. ‘How old do you think it is?’
