Terminum was half an hour’s walk across a dry yellow plain littered with the abrupt white stumps of acacias felled to make way for the juggernaut. A group of zebras were cropping the sparse scorched grass. They looked dry and dusty, thirsty for the rains. Everything looked dry and dusty, the plains, Tsavo West, the hazy colours of the Chaga. Waiting for the rains.
The refectory took up a full quarter of Level Two. It was bright and busy and smelled of breakfasts from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Tembo and Faraway were drinking coffee in a small booth under a window with monumental views of the station and the Chaga rising toward the cloud-hidden heights of Kilimanjaro.
‘Alas, I have missed my great chance,’ Faraway said. ‘An entire night of you without any clothes on. Of course, you know that they only do it so the women can look at
‘Ignore my friend,’ Tembo said gravely. ‘How are you, Gaby?’
‘I feel like everyone in this place has been watching me but isn’t going to say.’
‘It is disconcerting, the first time,’ Tembo said.
‘When you have been into the Chaga as often as we have, they know all about you and you are in and out in under two hours,’ Faraway said.
‘What about the disc, Tembo?’
The small man shook his head.
‘They did an internal examination.’
‘Shit. We have to get that disc before UNECTA looks at it.’
‘There is more, Gaby. I called my wife last night; UNECTA had already been in touch with her to let her know we were safe and well. They have also been in touch with T.P. Costello. I have been in contact with him: I have done what I can, but he wants very much to talk with you, Gaby.’
‘Fuck.’ No disc, no story, no car, no camera. No job, when she got back. Then: ‘Tembo; where’s William?’
‘I was hoping you would be able to tell me that, Gaby.’
‘He’s still in decontamination?’
‘When I asked, they told me they were carrying out further tests. They will not let me speak to him.’
‘What could he need testing for that I don’t? We were all together all the time, anything he’s picked up, we have too.’
‘Further tests, that is all I know,’ Tembo said. ‘Gaby, I am worried for my wife’s sister-in-law’s cousin.’
The black lesbo-sado-dominatrix with the French accent who had released Gaby from solitary confinement came to the booth. Faraway brightened visibly. Flirtation was everywhere.
‘Ms McAslan, the director would like to see you, if you are ready. If you will follow me, his office is in the main unit.’
‘The director.’ Right. As if one headmasterial bollocking from T.P. Costello would not be enough. ‘Okay. Might as well get it over with.’
‘Gaby. William.’
‘I’ll try, Tembo.’
‘Gaby.’ This from Faraway.
The black lesbo-sado-dominatrix with the French accent introduced herself as Celeste and took Gaby up the outside of the unit to a fourth-level walkway and across the gap into corridors marked with black and yellow biohazard warnings busy with people in colourful casuals who could not proceed more than a few feet at a time without meeting someone they had to tell something important. Facial hair, baggy shorts and friendship bracelets were
‘There are three hundred staff here at Tsavo,’ Celeste said, tormentor turned tour-guide, leading Gaby up a clattering iron staircase. Gaby practised the role of Hard-Nosed Journalist with Big Questions that Demanded Answers. She was not convinced. Oh God. T.P. Costello was going to fry her.
The Director’s office was on the penthouse level. Celeste entered without knocking. There was no receptionist, just a carpeted room filled with collegiate clutter, the inevitable computer equipment, a picture window looking out over the Chaga, a battered leather-topped desk. And,
‘You!’
‘You.’
‘You.’ Hard-Nosed Journalist with Big Questions that Demanded Answers hissed out of her in a whisper.
‘Your choice of cliches: “Fancy seeing you here”; “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” or “We can’t go on meeting this way”?’
‘What about: “You utter utter utter asshole, I have just had the worst night of my life?”‘
‘I thought they taught you journalists about things like not using the same word more than once in a sentence. Celeste, any chance of you scaring us up some coffee and a bite to eat? If I remember decontam right, Ms McAslan won’t have had too much to eat.’ When the black woman had gone, Dr Shepard took a more conciliatory tone. ‘Decontamination is pretty scary, though. They’re a law unto themselves over there. Different division. Luckily, when I found out who they’d gotten hold of, I was able to get one of my team over there to keep an eye on you. I’m genuinely sorry you had a bad experience; but it is necessary. Back in the old days, before we got up on to our tracks, there was a contamination incident over at Tinga Tinga. Months of work down the toilet, not to mention a million dollars of equipment. So we have to be cruel to be kind. If it’s any consolation, we all have to go through it.’
His apology seemed genuine. Celeste returned with coffee and a micro-waved cheese-bacon croissant. Gaby fell on it.
When she could speak again, she said, ‘Shepard. I need to ask. One of my friends. His name’s William Bi. He’s still in there.’
‘In decontam?’
Gaby nodded. Shepard frowned.
‘He shouldn’t be. Excuse me a moment.’ He swivelled his peeling leather chair to address the server. His frown deepened. He placed a call on the videophone. While he gave monosyllabic replies to the wheedling whisper on the handset, Gaby drank her coffee and studied his desk. A man’s soul is like his desk, she had found. Except when it is like his penis. Shepard’s desk looked like the result of much rummaging in Arab markets along the coast. The wood could be ebony. There were worn gold-leaf elephants embossed around the edge of the leather top. It said much about Dr Shepard – Dr M. Shepard, according to the name sign – that he had had it brought cross- country and manoeuvred up in all those vertiginous freight elevators and along the narrow, ship-like corridors and into this office with its God’s-eye view of the end of the world. Desk decor heavy on Africana: all fine wood. Probably genuine. Small: they invited you to pick them up and enjoy the feel of their grain against your nerve endings. Half-a-dozen coffee mugs with sad black salt-pans of dried grounds in the bottom. Framed photographs of two boys, grinning, displaying several thousand dollars of orthodontistry. One about twelve, the other nine, ten. Tousle-haired, freckle-faced. All-American kids. Could be the last of an endangered species. A photograph of the younger M. Shepard, in a pink-and-lilac speed-skating suit, with that yearning pose of ready-for-the-off peculiar to speed-skaters with twelve inches of steel on each foot. Shame about the colour-scheme, but check out the thighs. Those were thighs to coat with aerosol chocolate mousse and slowly lick clean. She tried to see if he had kept them in condition.
Dr Shepard came off the phone.
‘They’re a bit concerned about some of William’s results and want to run further tests.’
‘What way concerned?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The director of Tsavo West doesn’t know?’
‘Like I said, they’re a different administration. The decontamination and medical facilities report direct to Regional Headquarters at Kajiado. But I shouldn’t worry; it’s not unusual for folk in decontam to develop mild viral infections. We just have to make sure it isn’t something new from out of the Chaga. They usually clear up after a few days.’
‘Days.’
