Heat and Light (7 page)

‘You don’t feel pain?’

‘Not that sort of pain.’

‘What kind?’

‘When I’m away from sunlight. When I see others ripped. But not death. Death doesn’t affect me.’

We talk a little more as she walks me back along the sandy path and to the main beach. The day has faded red in the sunset. We decide we won’t talk about the politics. What side we’re on.

In the morning I pick up the formula from the lab and take the boat out by myself. On the first islet I see both Larapinta and Hinter, whom I have been introduced to. Hinter is very different to Larapinta. I observe the smaller plantpeople next to them, half the height but still the same width. They are a community with no hierarchy of age or gender. They stand in a row, long and thin figures. They make the sky seem pale and the individual seem insignificant.

When I approach to give them the formula, they greet me in a distracted sort of way, like they’re half there. Names do not seem of significance; they don’t bother with mine or their own. They only seem of relevance when they need something from the human world, like Larapinta does. She needs her books. And I don’t know what Hinter needs, but he is always at the Centre, too. When I ask Larapinta where she got her name, she said it was the name of the scientist’s daughter. I say it’s better than a number. She puts her head to the side and says she likes numbers. I can’t help but laugh at the thought of her being into numerology, believing in it. But who am I to judge, I think later when I’m back at home and all is quiet in the night. I don’t believe in anything.

You should see the way they walk through water. Their heads like a tangling piece of reed. And you’ll look closer and see their shoulders swing back and forth like some smooth stroke and it’s frightening.

It’s a short stretch from the bank to each island. It takes me about ten minutes to line the boat out and reach the other side. Yet going back and forth this short distance all day sometimes gives me a feeling of dizziness, like I can’t remember which bank is which, and all the edges, the coastal shrubbery, look the same. And the distances add up.

Early in the day, while I’m on the water, the time seems to go really slow, and my thoughts cramp. I’m bored and anxious, like when I worked at the biscuit factory. But after a while, the tasks on the water become relaxing and I find myself thinking of Dad, and other things. Maybe I can find some sort of peace with myself out here.

Larapinta offers to accompany me. I try not to show my surprise to her when, at the end of the delivery round to each island, all plantpeople have taken the formula, every single one of them. She did say to trust them, that things would run smoothly. I help the plantpeople with the buckets, filling the containers with water from the sea. When the formula buckets are ready I watch the plantpeople in fascination as their feet change, gain curve and lose their definition, transform into roots. They move their roots into the bucket and roll their heads back.

‘How long?’ I mouth to Larapinta.

‘Until you come back. After the sun is at its highest.’

I wait until we are further away and back into the boat before I speak privately to her. I’ve noticed that Larapinta hasn’t taken her own formula yet.

‘What does it feel like?’

‘Digesting.’

When we’re moving, she curls herself up between the stern of the boat and the seat, and I ask her more than once if she’s comfortable where she is or if she would like to move.

She just looks at me. I think she would be amused by me if she could be amused.

‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ she asks as we make our second journey across the stretch of water to the next island and secure the boat.

I look at her. ‘Are you going to tell me the person before me didn’t last a week on the job?’

‘There was no one before you,’ Larapinta replies.

When I see her take the formula, her roots soaking in the bucket, I ask her if she likes it.

She answers: ‘It keeps the soapberry bugs away. They usually come in this season.’

‘Why do you like to come in the boat with me? Not that I mind, you’re a big help.’

‘I have time to myself.’ She’s on her e-reader again.

After a week I am getting fit from rowing, my arms are built and tanned. My skin, which was always quite brown, the colour white people are when they are really tanned, is darker. My legs and arms and feet are the colour of wood, though my face is red and blotchy and when Milligan sees me he tells me I should be wearing the sunscreen.

My mother would tell me, too. She burnt from getting the newspaper off the porch stairs. She had a melanoma cut out of her hand. But when I was little, Dad and I lived off the sun. We spent the whole day in the fields. Never in the shade. And I lost the wide-brimmed hats my mother bought me on purpose.

My shoulders are always tight. I usually prop up an elbow on the side of the boat and scrunch up the hair that falls on my forehead.

My body is mostly covered in scratches from the reeds and bites, I think they’re mosquitoes. The next time I’m in the office I ask Milligan for some repellent. He just shrugs and says that eventually, when my body is covered in bites, even my arse, and the sandflies try to bite the bites, they will stop and I will be immune. I have a feeling I should have asked Sophie instead.

I get some spray from Jim’s shop on the way home and put it in my boat bag. I also allow myself the same treat after each day’s work. The creamy custard tarts from the kiosk are unbelievable. I have usually finished one before I reach my front door.

My knots are getting quite good. It was Larapinta that showed me how to do them. The way she talks is like a computer program, always in stages. She’s been hanging around me too much already, though – sometimes she’ll say one of my expressions, and roll her words out more casually.

When I tell her about it she says she has to do more reading. She is determined to learn
casual English
. Maybe I’m a bit determined to figure her out – well, at least plantpeople in general.

I exhaust myself on the boat, especially when Larapinta is not available to help me. I need to be faster. At night I do crunches on the bed until I can feel my dinner.

I’m always interested in what Larapinta’s reading. Yesterday it was Mills & Boon. Today it is the encyclopaedia, she’s up to volume M. She reads unbelievably fast, absorbs the words, though I wonder if they hold any meaning for her. I want to tell her there’s not much point knowing everything, when you don’t know one thing well.

I haven’t been able to stop staring at her. I know she’s not a freak show, believe me. I watch her extract water from her hands. It doesn’t get old. She tells me that she will grow flowers soon. She points out one of the sandplants on the second island. When we are closer, I see that he or she indeed has flowers growing on their body.

She liked a scarf I was wearing, the flowing green one my mother bought me for Christmas, so I gave it to her. It sits on her shoulders and waltzes in the wind. I tell her it suits her.

I never see anything in the water. Only the occasional brown swarm of catfish. Larapinta told me of the dugong she saw one day behind the boat shed, she was holding one of the plantchildren, walking with her in the sandy enclave.

‘What was it like?’

‘It was like seeing a shooting star in the sky.’

‘You’ve been reading too much romance,’ I say. ‘Stick to the encyclopaedias.’

It’s the second Friday – burger day in the office. After I go out in the morning, I take the boat back to the mainland around 12 p.m. and walk up the sand to the office.

Everyone is there, crowding around in Milligan’s office, as there is no kitchen, and I realise I still haven’t met half of these people, my coworkers. They are a combination of office workers and scientists. I see the young man who gives me the formula every morning and go stand next to him in the corner. Sophie passes me my burger. I’m surprised it’s still warm.

‘So you got the satay tofu one, too, hey?’ the young botanist says to me.

I nod. From his eagerness, he seems not to know anyone either.

‘How are the specimens taking to the formula?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, no problems,’ I say.

‘Good. Hopefully that stays the same when the dosage changes.’

‘The dosage changes?’ Milligan didn’t tell me about this.

‘Oh well, it’s a gradual increase in the percentage of … chlorine … this will make them more docile …’

I look at him and realise my mouth is hanging open and my reaction is showing.

‘Are the plantpeople aware of this? This changed formula?’

He shrugs and looks across at Milligan. ‘Not entirely. I don’t think you should be discussing it with them.’

‘I feel it’s part of my job. It’s ethical.’

He snorts. ‘We’re talking about plants here.’

‘They’re not just plants, you must know that.’

‘They’re not entirely human, though, are they? Not close. We’ve been having these debates for years. About scientific testing on animals for medical research. At the end of the day, we have to put humans first.’

‘So that’s science? Science is biased to the human race? This is sounding like social Darwinism, like the twisted justification of treating black people worse because of their race and skin colour.’

He’s looking pained. ‘I’d keep it quiet, if I were you. Milligan’s just over there.’

I cross my arms over my chest. My first job, in the biscuit factory, was when I was in high school. I’ve developed a robust operational style – and am always described as hard-working. I don’t usually let people get me off course.

He continues in a reasoned voice. ‘Look, obviously we’re from different schools of thought. But as long as we keep doing our individual
jobs
, we’ll be fine.’

Larapinta touched me. It was an accident, I think. A miscalculation. But how does a plant miscalculate? A plant is a subject of environment.

I tell her about the pool I used to swim every afternoon. Larapinta, with her usual bluntness, asks why I don’t swim in the sea. I shrug, and don’t have an answer. Larapinta tells me she’ll take me out when the tide is low.

We find ourselves talking about gender. We are of two different societies. She asks me if I feel like a woman, even though I have short hair. I tell her that hair is the least of it. She asks me about my Aboriginal identity. I tell her that it is easy to pretend that I am someone else, but I don’t want to pretend.

‘And your sexual identity?’ She is really in the mood for grilling me.

‘Queer, I guess.’ I say. ‘I know it’s an old-fashioned word …’

‘That is fine. I do not know the common usage of words. They are bricks, aren’t they?’

‘Some words are loaded,’ I continue. ‘Will always be loaded.’

‘I must return to my reading,’ she says.

She is brushing up against me in the dinghy again. Surprisingly, her prickly skin doesn’t irritate mine. I have found that some plants thrive on neglect. I try to push her away but she comes at me with the power of the bloom.

She is not human, so she can stare until her eyes tear up and it doesn’t mean anything.

‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ she says after my third week on the job. We are at our favourite spot, by the derelict jetty, my shoes off and my feet dangling over, the storm clouds eating away at the last light in the sky.

‘You don’t think,’ I say. ‘It’s just processes.’

‘I have been thinking … a lot. I have enough intelligence; what I’m lacking is the emotional intelligence … But I think we do have what you call a “sparkle”.’

‘It’s a spark. It’s not a fucking
sparkle
.’

She’s not taken aback at my outburst. ‘Finally. A political statement.’

I shift my body and our shoulders brush. We don’t find each other. Then I feel her foot tangle around mine and she puts her arm around me.

‘Two worlds?’

‘I don’t know if …’ I move away. ‘You’re not …’ I can’t offend her.

‘What you expected?’ She’s getting used to the patterns of speech. ‘Humans never see what’s coming. Everything is seasonal, cyclical, dependent on environment and weather conditions. Would I love you in the winter, when my toes are frost? Would I love you in the summer, when the wind comes tumbling on me?’

To understand, I give myself the first question. What is a plant? A plant is a living organism. A plant has cell walls with cellulose and characteristically they obtain most of their energy through sunlight. Plants provide most of the
world’s molecular energy and are the basis of most of
the world’s ecologies, especially on land. Plants are one
of the two main groups into which all living things have been traditionally divided; the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who distinguished between plants which generally do not move, and animals which often are mobile to catch their food.

The second question is harder. It is: What is a human?

When I walk the beach at night the sandplants are folded. Larapinta is in the line. Her chin is tucked, her arms by her sides. They look like scarecrows standing there under the moon. I don’t tell Larapinta how near I am to the jetty if she should need a place to rest her head.

I remember a conversation I had with Milligan, early on. He cleared his throat and I looked seriously at him.

‘Kaden, it’s come to my attention, through research, that as these sandplants can closely resemble us and mimic our behaviour – well, some people in close proximity can find themselves getting quite attached. Now that’s fine, in the same way that of course we get attached to our cat or dog, maybe even to our mango tree that’s been in the backyard for a few generations. But there have been cases of sexual attraction. Some lost souls. Now, strictly off the record here, as a male I find, say, Larapinta, slightly of an attractive quality, it’s natural, she’s more human-like than the others in the way she looks. And females may feel the same way about Hinter. But it is unnatural if you take it that couple of steps further.

The government has recognised the danger – it is, of course, illegal to be in any way romantically involved with them. There was a fellow who, I won’t go into details, he got himself
engaged
with one of them, and hurt himself quite badly. It was unnatural and not possible.