Teranesia

He picked up one of the dormant adults he’d taken from the forest. ‘This insect hangs there, looking like a nutmeg fruit, unable to fly away. So presumably it has some defence: it must smell bad, or taste bad, to the birds that would otherwise want to eat it on sight.’

‘Presumably.’

Prabir approached the cage where they’d placed the fruit pigeons, and gave Grant a questioning look.

She said, ‘Go ahead, please. I want to see this too.’

He opened the door just wide enough to toss the dormant adult on to the floor of the cage. All of the fruit pigeons rushed forward; one of them managed to shoulder the rest aside and grab the insect. The bird stretched its jaws to their full extent and swallowed the sleeping butterfly whole.

Grant sat down heavily on one of the stools. After a long silence, she declared, ‘Maybe there’s a parasitic larval stage. Maybe the adults don’t lay their fertilised eggs; maybe they’re incubated inside the pigeons, after the adults act as a lure.’

‘And that’s why we’ve seen no larvae?’

‘Maybe.’ Grant stretched her arms and leant back on the stool. ‘I suppose it could burrow out through the skin, but I’m beginning to have visions of sifting through a large pile of pigeon shit.’

Prabir walked over to the butterfly cage. They’d placed some foliage in the bottom, but there’d been no elevated twigs or branches from which the would-be martyr could hang itself. He squatted down to try to get a better view of it, and saw a long string of dark-grey beads sticking to the underside of one of the leaves.

He said, ‘Was this foliage clean when you put it in the cage?’

‘I believe so. Why?’

‘I think I’ve just found some butterfly eggs.’

Prabir lay awake, listening to the waves breaking on the reef. The eggs would allow them to observe every stage of the butterfly, but that still wouldn’t be enough. The butterfly’s genome would be stable now; only samples from the kampung could show the way the Sao Paulo protein had changed it, from generation to generation, twenty years before. They needed to extract every clue the island held; if they didn’t finish the job properly, the expedition would follow them here.

He went into the cabin and woke Grant, calling out to her from the doorway. Her bunk was hidden in shadows, but he heard her sit up. ‘What is it?’

He explained what he’d seen from the treetops. ‘I know where it is now. I can get to it from the beach.’

She hesitated. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You could draw me a map, I could go by myself.’

Prabir was tempted. The place meant nothing to her: she could walk in and take whatever she needed, ransacking the site unflinchingly, immune to its history.

But this was his job. He couldn’t claim to be sparing Madhusree the pain of returning, only to hand the task over to a stranger.

‘I’d rather go alone.’

Grant said decisively, ‘We’ll go together, first thing tomorrow. I promised you after the mangrove swamp: we won’t get separated again.’

12

Prabir took comfort in the usual routine: wading to the beach, insect repellent, mine detector checks. Looking back at the reef as he pulled on his boots. They’d gather some samples and return to the boat. It would be a day like any other.

He’d estimated GPS coordinates for the kampung, from his notepad’s log of its position the previous day and his recollection of the treetop view. They picked their way laboriously through the shrubs; this was the first time they’d had no choice about their destination, no option of taking an easier route. Grant had once tried clearing a path in the undergrowth using a parang she’d bought in Ambon, but it had been a waste of effort; the machete was perfect for chopping through occasional vines, but the knee-high thicket was too tangled, there were too many strands to sever.

Grant was unusually quiet; she might have done this easily enough alone, but his presence must be making her feel more like a trespasser. Prabir said, ‘You wouldn’t believe it only took me half an hour a day to maintain this path.’

‘That was one of your jobs?’

‘Yeah.’

She smiled. ‘I thought I was hard done by having to clean the bath. And at least I had somewhere to spend my pocket money. I suppose you got paid in net privileges?’

‘I don’t remember.’

Prabir’s eyes kept filling with sweat. As he wiped them clear, he could almost see the approach as it had once been. He’d heard the thud of the mine and raced towards the kampung with Madhusree in his arms. Sailing past the trees ever faster, as if he was falling.

Grant spotted one of the huts before he did: it was leaning precariously, covered in fungus and lianas. Unlike the roofing panels he’d seen from above, the walls were stained and encrusted to the point where they might as well have been deliberately camouflaged. Prabir was suddenly much less sure that they’d followed the old path; he didn’t expect the hut to be recognisable, but its position was not where he’d imagined it. Maybe they’d taken a different route entirely, one that had always been uncleared jungle.

Even when they were standing at the edge of the kampung, it took him a while to find all six huts amid the trees. He said numbly, ‘I don’t know where we are. I don’t know where to start.’

Grant put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s no rush. I can look inside one of these buildings and describe it for you, if you like.’

‘No. It’s all right.’ He turned and walked towards the hut on his right. The doorway facing the centre of the kampung was hidden beneath a dense mat of creepers, but the walls had split apart at one corner, leaving a gap that made a much easier entrance.

Grant came after him. ‘You need a torch, and we need to do this slowly. We don’t know what’s in there.’

Prabir accepted the flashlight from her. She unslung her rifle and followed behind him as he ducked down to enter the hut. Enough soil had blown in, and enough sunlight came through the gap in the walls and the vine-draped windows to cover the floor in pale weeds. There was a hook on one wall, and the cracked, shrivelled remnants of a rectangle of canvas curled up beneath it.

He said, ‘This was mine.’ He gestured at the hammock. ‘That was where I slept.’

‘Right.’

Termites must have devoured the packing crate where he’d kept his clothes, once the preservative had leached out of the wood. The hut looked barer than a prison cell now, but it had never been full of gadgets and ornamentation; all the possessions he’d valued most had been stored in his notepad.

He’d looked out at night from this hut, his stomach cramped with anxiety. And then he’d thought of an act that would justify everything he was feeling: a crime to match his sense of guilt, an alibi to explain it.

Guilt about what, though? Had he stolen something, broken something? What could be worse than sabotaging his parents’ work?

‘The butterfly hut.’ He backed out, then tried to orient himself. ‘It was straight across the kampung.’

He threaded his way between the trees, with Grant walking beside him in silence. It was the most direct route, but he lost sight of the surrounding huts, lost count of their position in the circle.

The door had fallen off the hut he approached, leaving an entrance curtained with creepers. Grant handed him the parang and he slashed them away. Then he pointed the flashlight into the darkness.

Madhusree’s plastic cot was covered in fungus, warped and discoloured but still intact. Behind it, his parents’ folding bunk was strewn with debris, the foam mattress rotted, the metal frame a shell of corrosion.

He’d been afraid for them. Afraid the war would reach them, in spite of the island’s obscurity, in spite of his father’s reassurances.