Teranesia Read online

  CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR GREG EGAN

  ‘One of the genre’s great ideas men’

  The Times

  ‘The universe may be stranger than we can imagine, but it’s going to have a hard time outdoing Egan’

  New Scientist

  ‘Science fiction as it should be’

  Odyssey

  ‘Brilliant. Fantastic, mind-stretching … Revel in it. We’ll not see its like for a while’

  Starburst

  ‘Greg Egan is central to contemporary science fiction’

  Interzone

  ‘Qualifies as grand speculation in the purest sense … stunning’

  Locus

  ‘Greg Egan is the 21st century’s most important SF writer … Read Egan today, because it’s what everybody else will be reading tomorrow’

  Stephen Baxter

  ‘Immensely exhilarating. Sweeps the reader along like a cork on a tidal wave’

  Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘[Greg Egan] reveals wonders with an artistry to equal his audacity’

  New York Review of Science Fiction

  ‘Wonderful, mind-expanding stuff, and well written too’

  Guardian

  ‘In a time when it’s frequently claimed that SF holds no more surprises Egan casts a coldly innovative eye on old themes … Egan’s visions of the future glow with gloomy intellectual fire. Luminous indeed’

  Amazon.co.uk

  ALSO BY GREG EGAN FROM GOLLANCZ

  Quarantine

  Permutation City

  Axiomatic

  Distress

  Teranesia

  Luminous

  Schild’s Ladder

  TERANESIA

  GREG EGAN

  CONTENTS

  CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR GREG EGAN

  ALSO BY GREG EGAN FROM GOLLANCZ

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 5

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 6

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  PART ONE

  1

  The island was too small for human habitation, and too far from the commonly travelled sea routes to serve as a navigation point, so the people of the Kai and Tanimbar Islands had never had reason to name it. The Javanese and Sumatran rulers who’d claimed tributes from the Spice Islands would have been oblivious to its existence, and Prabir had been unable to locate it on any Dutch or Portuguese chart that had been scanned and placed on the net. To the current Indonesian authorities it was a speck on the map of Maluku propinsi, included for the sake of completeness along with a thousand other uninhabited rocks. Prabir had realised the opportunity he was facing even before they’d left Calcutta, and he’d begun compiling a list of possibilities immediately, but it wasn’t a decision he could make lightly. He’d been on the island for more than a year before he finally settled on a name for it.

  He tried out the word on his classmates and friends before slipping it into a conversation with his parents. His father had smiled approvingly, but then had second thoughts.

  ‘Why Greek? If you’re not going to use a local language … why not Bengali?’

  Prabir had gazed back at him, puzzled. Names sounded dull if you understood them too easily. Why make do with a lame Big River, when you could have a majestic Rio Grande? But surely his father knew that. It was his example Prabir was following.

  ‘The same reason you named the butterfly in Latin.’

  His mother had laughed. ‘He’s got you there!’ And his father had relented, hoisting Prabir up into the air to be spun and tickled. ‘All right, all right! Teranesia!’

  But that had been before Madhusree was born, when she hadn’t been named herself (except as the much-too-literal Accidental Bulge). So Prabir stood on the beach, holding his sister up to the sky, spinning around slowly as he chanted, ‘Teranesia! Teranesia!’ Madhusree stared down at him, more interested in watching him pronounce the strange word than in taking in the panorama he was trying to present to her. Was it normal to be near-sighted at fifteen months? Prabir resolved to look it up. He lowered her to his face and kissed her noisily, then staggered, almost losing his balance. She was growing heavier much faster than he was growing stronger. His parents claimed not to be growing stronger at all, and both now refused to lift him over their heads.

  ‘Come the revolution,’ Prabir told Madhusree, checking for shells and coral before putting her down on the dazzling white sand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll redesign our bodies. Then I’ll always be able to lift you up. Even when I’m ninety-one and you’re eighty-three.’

  She laughed at this talk of the metaphysically distant future. Prabir was fairly sure that Madhusree understood eighty-three at least as well as he understood, say, ten to the hundredth power. Looming over her, he counted out eight hand flashes, then three fingers. She watched, uncertain but mesmerised. Prabir gazed into her jet-black eyes. His parents didn’t understand Madhusree: they couldn’t tell the difference between the way she made them feel and the way she was. Prabir only understood, himself, because he dimly remembered what it was like from the inside.

  ‘Oh, you pretty thing,’ he crooned.

  Madhusree smiled conspiratorially.

  Prabir glanced away from her, across the beach, out into the calm turquoise waters of the Banda Sea. The waves breaking on the reef looked tame from here, though he’d been on enough queasy ferry rides to Tual and Ambon to know what a steady monsoon wind, let alone a storm, could whip up. But if Teranesia was spared the force of the open ocean, the large islands that shielded it – Timor, Sulawesi, Ceram, New Guinea – were invisibly remote. Even the nearest equally obscure rock was too far away to be seen from the beach.

  ‘For small altitudes, the distance to the horizon is approximately the square root of twice the product of your height above sea level and the radius of the Earth.’ Prabir pictured a right-angled triangle, with vertices at the centre of the Earth, a point on the horizon, and his own eyes. He’d plotted the distance function on his notepad, and knew many points on the curve by heart. The beach sloped steeply, so his eyes were probably two full metres above sea level. That meant he could see for five kilometres. If he climbed Teranesia’s volcanic cone until the nearest of the outlying Tanimbar Islands came into sight, the altitude of that point – which his notepad’s satellite navigation system could tell him – would enable him to calculate exactly how far away they were.

  But he knew the distance already, from maps: almost eighty kilometres. So he could reverse the whole calculation, and use it to verify his altitude: the lowest point from which he could see land would be five hundred metres. He’d drive a stake into the ground to mark the spot. He turned towards the centre of the island, the black peak just visible above the coconut palms that rimmed the beach. It sounded like a long climb, especially if he had to carry Madhusree most of the way.

  ‘Do you want to go see Ma?’

  Madhusree pulled a face. ‘No!’ She could never have too much of Ma, but she knew when he was trying to dump her.

  Prabir shrugged. He could do the experiment later; nothing was worth a tantrum. ‘Do you want to go swimming, then?’

  Madhusree nodded enthusiastically and clambered to her feet, then ran unsteadily towards the water’s edge. Prabir gave her a head start, then pounded across the sand after her, bellow
ing. She glanced at him disdainfully over her shoulder, fell down, stood up, continued. Prabir ran rings around her as she waded into the shallows, the soles of his feet slapping up water, but he made sure he didn’t get too close; it wasn’t fair to splash her in the face. When she reached little more than waist height, she dropped into the water and started swimming, her chubby arms working methodically.

  Prabir froze and watched her admiringly. There was no getting away from it: sometimes he felt the Madhusree-thing himself. The same sweet thrill, the same tenderness, the same unearned pride he saw on his father’s and mother’s faces.

  He sighed heavily and swooned backwards into the water, touching bottom, opening his eyes to feel the sting of salt and watch the blurred sunlight for a moment before rising to his feet, satisfyingly wet all over. He shook his hair out of his eyes and then waded after Madhusree. The water reached his own ribs before he caught up with her; he eased himself down and started swimming beside her.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She didn’t deign to reply, merely frowning at the implied insult.

  ‘Don’t go too far.’ When they were alone, the rule was that Prabir had to be able to stand in the water. This was slightly galling, but the prospect of trying to tow a struggling, screaming Madhusree back to safety was something he could live without.

  Prabir had left his face mask behind, but he could still see through the water quite clearly with his head above the surface. When he paused to let the froth and turbulence he was making subside, he could almost count grains of sand on the bottom. The reef was still a hundred metres ahead, but there were dark-purple starfish beneath him, sponges, lone anemones clinging to fragments of coral. He spotted a conical yellow-and-brown shell as big as his fist, and dived for a closer look. In the water everything blurred again, and he almost had to touch bottom with his face to see that the shell was inhabited. He blew bubbles at the pale mollusc inside; when it cowered away from him he retreated sheepishly, walking a few steps backwards on his hands before righting himself. His nostrils were full of sea water; he emptied them noisily, then pressed his tongue against his stinging palate. It felt as if he’d had a tube rammed down his nose.

  Madhusree was twenty metres ahead of him. ‘Hey!’ He fought down his alarm; the last thing he wanted to do was panic her. He swam after her with long, slow strokes, reaching her quickly enough, and calming himself. ‘Want to turn back now, Maddy?’

  She didn’t reply, but a grimace of uncertainty crossed her face, as if she’d lost confidence in her ability to do anything but keep swimming forward. Prabir measured the depth with one glance; there was no point even trying to stand. He couldn’t just snatch her and wade back to the shore, ignoring her screams, her pummelling and her hair-pulling.

  He swam beside her, trying to shepherd her into an arc, but he was far more wary of colliding than she was. Maybe if he just grabbed her and spun her round, making a game of it, she wouldn’t be upset. He trod water and reached towards her, smiling. She made a whimpering noise, as if he’d threatened her.

  ‘Sssh. I’m sorry.’ Belatedly, Prabir understood; he felt exactly the same when he was walking on a log over a stream or a patch of swampy ground, and his father or mother grew impatient and reached back to grab him. Nothing could be more off-putting. But he only ever froze in the first place when someone was watching him, hurrying him along. Alone, he could do anything – casually, absent-mindedly – even reversing high above the ground. Madhusree knew she had to turn back, but the manoeuvre was too daunting to think about.

  Prabir cried out excitedly, ‘Look! Out on the reef! It’s a water man!’

  Madhusree followed his gaze uncertainly.

  ‘Straight ahead. Where the waves are breaking.’ Prabir pictured a figure rising from the surf, stealing water from each collapsing crest. ‘That’s just his head and shoulders, but the rest will come soon. Look, his arms are breaking free!’ Prabir imagined dripping, translucent limbs rising from the water, fists clenched tight. He whispered, ‘I’ve seen this one before, from the beach. I stole one of his shells. I thought I’d got away with it … but you know what they’re like. If you take something from them, they always find you.’

  Madhusree looked puzzled. Prabir explained, ‘I can’t give it back. I don’t have it with me, it’s in my hut.’

  For a moment Madhusree seemed about to protest that this was no real obstacle; Prabir could simply promise to return the shell later. But then it must have occurred to her that a creature like this wouldn’t be so patient and trusting.

  Her face lit up. Prabir was in trouble. The water man lowered his arms and strained against the surface, forcing more of his body into existence. Bellowing from the pain of birth, baring glistening teeth.

  Prabir turned a nervous circle. ‘I have to get away before his legs are free. Once you see a water man running, it’s too late. No one’s ever lived to describe it. Will you guide me back to shore? Show me how to get there? I can’t think. I can’t move. I’m too frightened.’

  By now Prabir had psyched himself up so much that his teeth were chattering. He only hoped he hadn’t gone too far; Madhusree could gouge agonising furrows in his skin without the slightest qualm, ignoring his screams of protest, but she’d also been known to burst into inconsolable tears when anything else distressed him.

  But she gazed at the water man calmly, assessing the danger. She’d been treading water since the creature appeared, and she’d already drifted around to face sideways. Now she simply leant towards the shore and started swimming, all difficulties forgotten.

  It was hard work feigning panic without overtaking her, when her arms were about a quarter as long as his own. Prabir glanced over his shoulder and shouted, ‘Faster, Maddy! I can see his ribs now!’ The water man was leering angrily, already assuming a kind of eager parody of a sprinter’s crouch. Rocking back and forth on the tips of his splayed fingers, he dragged more of his torso out of the waves. Prabir watched as the creature inhaled deeply, driving water from his lungs through his glassy skin, preparing himself for the world of air.

  Madhusree was beginning to slap the water open-handed, the way she did when she was tired. Prabir suspected that he’d be able to stand soon, but it didn’t seem right to intervene before he had to. ‘I’m going to make it, aren’t I? I just have to breathe slowly, and keep my fingers together.’ Madhusree shot him an irritable don’t-patronise-me look, and clawed the water in an exaggerated fashion before accepting his advice and powering ahead.

  Prabir stopped dead and turned to examine their would-be pursuer. The last stage was always difficult; it was awkward trying to brace yourself as you dragged your legs up beneath you. Prabir closed his eyes and imagined that he was the water man. Crouching lower, forearms to the waves, he strained with his whole body until his muscles expelled a visible surge of brine. Finally, he was rewarded: he felt the warm air on the back of his knees, on his calves. His right foot broke free; the sole rested lightly on the surface, tickled by the choppy water as if each tiny crest was a blade of grass.

  He opened his eyes. The water man was rising up, ready to spring forward, with just one foot trapped below the waves to hold him back.

  Prabir cried out and started swimming after Madhusree. Within seconds, he knew the chase had begun. But he didn’t dare look back: once you saw a water man running, you were lost.

  The violence of his strokes made Madhusree turn; she lost her rhythm and began to flounder. Prabir caught up with her as her head dropped beneath the surface; he scooped her into his arms and reached for the bottom with his feet. His toes hit the sand with Madhusree cradled safely against his chest.

  Running through the water was nightmare-slow, but he pushed his leaden body forward. He tramped right over a bed of brown sea-grass, shuddering with each step; it wasn’t that the blades were sharp, or slimy, but it always felt as if something was hiding among them. Madhusree clung to him, uncomplaining, staring back, transfixed. Skin crawled on Prabir’s scalp. He cou
ld always declare that the game was over, there was nothing following them, it was all made up. In his arms Madhusree was a passenger, immune to the rules, but if he turned and looked for himself now, the simple fact of his survival would prove beyond doubt that the water man had never been real.

  But he didn’t want to spoil the game for Madhusree.

  His legs almost folded as he hit the beach, but he caught himself and took a dozen more steps; just walking on dry land made him feel stronger. Then he crouched down and stood Madhusree on her feet before turning to sit facing the sea, his head lowered to help him catch his breath.

  He was dizzy from the sudden end to his exertion, and his vision was marred with dark after-images. But Prabir was almost certain that he could make out a damp patch glistening on the sun-baked sand, one step beyond the water’s edge, evaporating before his eyes.

  Madhusree declared calmly, ‘Want Ma.’

  *

  Prabir wasn’t allowed inside the butterfly hut. Because the malaria vaccine didn’t work for him, he’d had a pellet inserted beneath the skin of one arm that made him sweat mosquito repellent. The mere smell of the stuff probably wouldn’t harm the butterflies, but it could affect their behaviour, and any risk of serious contamination would be enough to invalidate all of his parents’ observations.

  He put Madhusree down a few metres from the doorway, and she waddled towards the sound of her mother’s voice. Prabir listened as the voice rose in pitch. ‘Where have you been, my darling? Where have you been?’ Madhusree began to deliver an incoherent monologue about the water man. Prabir strained his ears long enough to check that he wasn’t being libelled, then went and sat on the bench outside his own hut. It was mid-morning, and the beach had grown uncomfortably hot, but most of the kampung would remain in shade until noon. Prabir could still remember the day they’d arrived, almost three years before, with half a dozen labourers from Kai Besar to help them clear away vegetation and assemble the pre-fabricated huts. He still wasn’t sure whether the men had been joking when they’d referred to the ring of six buildings with a word that meant ‘village’, but the term had stuck.