what country they’re in.”
Lily nodded.“Nathan sends ethnographers and anthropologists. Even their languages are unknown, in some cases. And there’s a danger of infection; colds can be lethal to them.”
“It’s all a great big flushing out, isn’t it?” Kris said. “Forest Amerinds mixing with people from the cities who might have been lawyers or accountants or computer programmers a year or two ago.. ”
Such stabs of insight, Lily thought, made her sound like her brother-and made her seem wasted up here, by this beautiful, lonely lake.
But Piers was still angry. “None of which,” he said, jabbing a finger, “makes him the genuine article. Ollantay. The name you were born with was Jose Jesus de la Mar.”
Ollantay shrugged. “That’s not the name I choose to die with.”
“But what kind of name is Ollantay? Do you know, Kris?”
“Yes, I-”
“Ollantay was the great general who built the Inca empire for Pachacutec. Not exactly a subtle choice, is it, Jose? And is that what you dream of, taking back the land for the Incas?”
Ollantay smiled. Lily thought he was actually enjoying Piers’s clumsy attacks.“Well, would we not be better off if the Europeans had never come? Or if the Incas had butchered Pizarro and his holy thugs? Would we now be huddled in shantytowns while you grow oil crops to drive your cars, and the world drowns because of centuries of your industrial excess?”
“Enough,” Lily snapped. “For heaven’s sake, Piers, what’s got into you?”
Piers stood. “I am not the problem. He is. This addle-brained boy hero who’s caught Kris like a fish on a line.”
Now Kris blazed at him. “Don’t you speak about us like that, you dried-up old fool. Who do you think you are, my father?”
Piers looked astonishingly hurt. But before he could reply Lily stood, grabbed his shoulder and dragged him away. “Out.”
“I’m not done-”
“Oh yes you are. Look-wait for me outside.”
Still he glared at Ollantay. Then, abruptly, something seemed to break. He turned and pushed his way out of the hut.
Lily sat again and blew out her cheeks. “I’m sorry about that.”
“You shouldn’t have brought him,” Kris said, subdued.
“I could hardly stop him.”
“You shouldn’t have come either.” Kris was visibly angry, the blood flushed in her cheeks, under her black hat. “I’ve had all I can take from my mother about this. Can’t you just accept that this is how I’ve chosen to live my life?”
Well, she had a point. But then Lily looked again at Ollantay, who was regarding her coldly.
She dug a cellphone out of her pocket and gave it to Kristie. “Take this. You’ve not been answering your old phone.”
Kris smiled. “It’s at the bottom of the lake.”
“Please. You don’t need to use it. Just have it. Let Amanda text you… It’s a terribly hard punishment, Kris, to cut her off altogether. And besides, shit happens, love. There will be times when you need to speak to us, believe me.”
Kris hesitated, for long seconds. Then she reached out, took the phone and tucked it inside her pink backpack.
Lily saw Ollantay watching this, and wondered if Kris would be allowed to keep the phone, if it had been he who had thrown the old one into the lake.
Kris said,“Actually I suppose I don’t have a choice. If I don’t take the phone Piers will probably arrest me and haul me back in plastic cuffs. That man is so controlling.” She bunched her fists.“So meddling. I feel as if he’s been there all my life. I wish he’d just leave me alone.”
“Oh, he can’t do that,” Ollantay said. “Not ever. He can’t help what he does.”
Kris looked at him, surprised. “Why do you say that?”
Ollantay smiled. “Because he loves you. Can’t you see that?”
Kris laughed. But the laugh died, and her face softened in astonishment.
And Benj saw it too, Lily realized. That was what he had been hinting at, in P-ville. But Lily had never realized it. She felt a deep, cold, savage surprise, and a sense of betrayal that thrust into her belly.
Piers pushed his way back into the hut, his phone in his hand.
Lily said, “My God, Piers, you pick your moments.”
Piers looked at her blankly, and at Kris who wouldn’t look back at him, and at his phone. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“What for?”
“Nathan is sending the plane back. It will take you home. You too, Kris, if-”
“Leave me alone,” Kris flared.
Lily was growing alarmed. “Piers. Tell me what’s happened.”
“It’s Benj,” Piers said reluctantly. “There was an incident. Another attack on a biofuel crop. The police opened fire-he tried to intervene-”
And Lily understood. She’d managed to save Benj from his conscience at least twice before, in Greenwich and then Dartmoor. But she hadn’t been there for him this time.
“Is he dead?” Kris ran up to Piers. “Is he dead?”
51
March 2025
From Kristie Caistor’s scrapbook:
The webcam focused on the round face of little John Ojola. He was six years old, but he looked much younger, three perhaps, his growth stunted by lack of food, his limbs like twigs, his belly swollen under a row of ribs. He lay cradled in the arms of a Christian Aid worker who had no food to give him, here in this refugee camp in Teso, Uganda. John’s huge, luminous eyes, unblinking despite the flies that sipped at his tears, seemed to stare through the camera at the viewer.
John was a sight you could have witnessed any time since the 1960s. His brief life was a cliche of pain. Few visitors to this voluntary-agency website lingered for more than a few seconds.
But now John was distracted; his head tipped sideways against the arm of the aid worker. She too was looking away, at something much more remarkable than another hungry child.
This camp had been here for several years-but this year was different. This year there was flooding across a swathe of Africa, from the Sahel to the Horn, from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso in the west, to Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia in the east, some of the continent’s poorest countries. There was already little food to spare, and now the floods were making it impossible for the local subsistence farmers to plant for this year’s harvest, the cassava, millet and groundnuts. The flooded roads hindered any attempts at relief. And as the rising water contaminated springs and wells, the numbers of cases of diarrhea and malaria were increasing fast.
John had no memory of the last great flooding episode in this part of Africa, back in 2007, caused by a La Nina event in the Pacific. In 2007 the waters had eventually subsided. These new floodwaters were still rising.
And John stared at the family who had just walked into the camp. They were dressed smartly, the two children in robust AxysCorp dungarees, the woman in a loose dress, though they were all dusty from their long trek. The man actually wore a business suit, so rapid had the family’s flight been from the drowning city of Kitgum.
They found an empty space in the dirt and sat down. The woman inspected her bleeding feet, and tended to her children.
The man in the suit looked up at the aid workers. He held out his cupped hands. “ S’il vous plait? Please?”
