The Fall of Tartarus (22 page)

At
night she drank in a bar she’d heard was frequented by the last of the traders
who had once made regular forays into the heart of the continent. On the night
before her departure, she bought drinks for half a dozen sun-scorched,
jungle-toughened men and women, merchants and explorers, who sat around the
table on the verandah of the Ace of Spades bar.

She
spread her map across the table and told her story. She said that she was
trying to find out what had happened to her brother who had crash-landed in the
jungle.

A
bald-headed prospector looked up from the map. ‘How long ago did you say this
was?’

‘Three
years.’

‘And
he came down here, in Kruger territory? He’d be lucky to survive half a day.’

The
others nodded and murmured their agreement.

‘I’ve
good grounds to believe he survived the crash.’

A
muscled old woman with skin like mahogany peered at her. ‘You have? What
grounds?’

‘The
word of a future seer,’ Katerina said.

The
old woman laughed. A couple of her companions, more superstitious, made
gestures appropriate to their religions.

‘Surely
we’d have heard of a crash,’ the bald prospector said, ‘and for certain if he’d
survived.’

His
neighbour judiciously shook his head. ‘You think? In Kruger territory? When was
the last time we heard anything out of Kruger territory?’

One
or two of the others nodded, filling her with hope.

‘It’s
jungle heartland,’ the old woman explained. ‘Think of all the poisonous snakes
and plants you know, then double them and add a dozen nasty viruses for spice.
There’s only one tribe able to survive in there - the Bourgs, and they’re
nomadic. They pass through the Territory once a year to harvest the golden
fruit, and then get out.’

A
silence came down on the group as they contemplated their beers. Katerina
noticed an exchange of glances, as if the motley crew were trying tacitly to
determine whether or not to tell her more.

‘What
is it?’

The
bald prospector looked up. ‘Old Henrique,’ he said. ‘If you’re lucky you might
find him at Lapierre’s Landing.’

‘Heard
he’d caught a killer virus,’ someone said.

The
prospector shook his head. ‘If he had, he’s shook it off. He’s back on his feet
now and trading. Tough character, Henrique. If he’s not in the interior, he’ll
be found at Sookie’s place in Lapierre’s Landing, three hundred kays upriver.’

The
old woman nodded. ‘If anyone’ll be able to tell you about your brother, Old
Henrique’s your man. Knows Kruger territory like his backyard, has the ear of
the Bourg people. He’s partial to a flagon of sour
feti,
so make him a
present and tell him Lizzie sent you.’

Katerina
ordered another round. She raised her glass. ‘To Old Henrique,’ she said.

The
following morning, her head aching from the beer, Katerina boarded the
ramshackle steamboat, the
Iriarte Queen,
for the slow voyage into the
interior.

She
was allocated an insect-infested cabin on the top deck, with a narrow,
uncomfortable bed and a spluttering shower. There were only two other
passengers beside herself, a wizened old couple she saw boarding the steamer on
the morning of departure. The oldsters were white tribes-people, descendants of
the original European settlers. They went barefoot and wore baggy shorts and
soiled T-shirts, more to appease the nudity taboo of the so-called civilised
world than to make any fashion statement. Katerina’s only other travelling
companions were the Captain and his mate, a young Oriental barely into his
teens who doubled as ship’s cook.

She
soon slipped into the shipboard routine. This close to the equator, you slept
during the heat of the day and awoke at sunset to enjoy the relatively cooler
hours of night. There were two meals a day; a breakfast of fruit and bitter
coffee at sunset, and a spiced stew with rice in the early hours of morning.
Katerina spent the evenings in the ship’s mildewed bar, making the most of the
journey’s only luxury: a constant and cheap supply of bottled lager beer,
chilled to perfection. She interviewed the captain and his lad - local colour
for the film - but had no such luck with the tribes-people: they spoke a
corrupted form of German she had no hope of understanding.

The
river was a broad, brown swath winding between the monotonous, canyon-like
walls of the jungle. For a few hours on the first night, Katerina stared out
into the jungle from her seat in the bar, trying to discern some feature of
interest in the passing landscape. By the fourth night, alone in the bar, she
found the regularity of the jungle strangely threatening: other than the ship,
there was no sign that humankind had imposed its mark upon the land. The jungle
was inhospitable and inimical, and every hour she was travelling further into
its alien heart. The foliage that often overhung the river seemed to be
reaching out, eager to absorb both the water and the ship. She tried to busy
herself with filming and commenting on the journey so far, but there was only
so much to film, and she knew she would not use much of her narration: in her
films to date she preferred to allow the moving image and the words of the
locals to shape the course of the narrative. She was speaking now for the sake
of something to do, the sound of her voice intrusive against the incessant
throbbing of the ship’s engine and the occasional bird-call from the jungle.

By
the sixth night, a combination of the monotony of the journey, the succession
of beers, and a self-questioning doubt as to the sanity of her mission, pitched
Katerina into a philosophical mood. She realised that she had seen no other
ships heading into the interior. The few boats she had observed had been moving
in the other direction, half a dozen vessels overloaded with citizens eager to
flee the hostile southern continent and start a life afresh on some safe, new
world. She was going against the tide, both physically and in a more abstract
sense. As she slouched on the battered chesterfield that she had made her own,
and stared out into the night sky, a blood-red dome shot through with high gold
and silver cirrus, she realised she had only the dubious word of some cheap
fortune-teller that her brother was still alive. She had been told what she
wanted to believe by someone who perhaps had the ability to read her mind,
divine her most secret wishes. The chance that Bobby had survived the
crash-landing was slim indeed - even more so the idea that he might somehow
have survived for three years in the hostile jungle. Drunk, she told herself
that she should forget the film, turn back before she further endangered
herself. . . But even as she was thinking this, she knew she could not give up
now. Part of the drive to learn the truth, she knew, was not so much the love
she had had for Bobby, but a strange and unsettling hate. She resented him for
leaving her, for not coming back - so in lieu of his coming back for her, she
would shame Bobby by seeking him out, irrespective of the danger to herself.

At
dawn, the magnesium glare of the rising sun pushed back the blood-red night.
Katerina stood unsteadily, pitched her empty beer bottle at the far shore with
more venom than accuracy, and staggered to her cabin. She showered in the
lukewarm water pumped no doubt straight from the river, which neither cleaned
her nor cooled her down, fell into bed and within seconds was sweating again.
She slept fitfully as the temperature increased and the sun sent spears of
light through the gaps in the broken blinds. Lucid dreams merged with half-forgotten
memories of Bobby, so that when she was jerked awake by a sound from the jungle
he seemed to be with her in the cabin, the spectral presence of this half-man,
half-boy creature by turns frightening and reassuring.

She
recalled the fortune-teller’s words.

‘Tears
of joy?’ Katerina had asked.

‘No,’
Sabine had replied. ‘Tears of sorrow.’

As
the sun went down and the temperature dropped appreciably, Katerina lay with
her head buried in the sweat-soaked pillow and thought back to the last time
she had spoken to Bobby.

It
was two weeks before his sixteenth birthday, the time he would leave the
orphanage and make his way in the world. He was playing a hectic game of
football with a dozen other boys on the balding playing fields within the
grounds of the home. He drifted out of the game - it seemed with reluctance -
and made his way across to where Katerina was sitting by herself in the shade
of a flame tree, watching a film on her portable screen. He paused before her,
with the same hesitant uncertainty he had shown on leaving the game, and she
was alerted. This was quite unlike him.

He
squatted beside her, peering with feigned curiosity at the image on the small
screen. He knew nothing about films, never watched them, and now this show of
interest irritated Katerina.

She
killed the set. ‘What’s wrong?’

He
avoided her eyes. ‘Two weeks,’ he said, almost inaudibly.

She
smiled. ‘You getting cold feet, Bobby! Thought you didn’t like this place?
Thought you couldn’t wait to get out? That’s what you told me!’

He
shrugged awkwardly.

‘Don’t
worry. You can come back to visit me. And you can sit at the headmaster’s table
with the other old boys on feast days.’ Her tone was mocking, but she faltered
when he failed to respond.

‘Bobby,
what is it?’

He
was silent. She thought she knew what was troubling him. Most kids on leaving
the orphanage found work and accommodation in the town - there were schemes run
by local businesses to provide employment and shelter for graduates. Although
Bobby’s grades had been good, he’d said nothing to her for the past month about
finding a job.

‘Bobby,
you’ve nowhere to go to, have you?’ Sympathy was mixed with anger at his
lassitude. He was a bright kid when he applied himself.

Wordlessly,
he pulled a folded, glossy brochure from the back pocket of his shorts and
thrust it at her. It was an advertisement for the Sigma Corporation, recruiting
apprentice engineers.

‘I
sat the exam and passed,’ he whispered. ‘I leave in three weeks.’

‘The
Sigma Corporation? But that’s brilliant!’ And she flung her arms around him in
a hug that foundered on his mobility. She pulled away. ‘Bobby,’ she said,
exasperated, what’s wrong?’

‘The
Sigma Corporation’s based on Draconis IV,’ he said. ‘In three weeks I’ll be
leaving Earth.’

Something
deep within her froze. They had been together for as long as she could
remember. He had told her that when he left the orphanage he would get a place
in town and visit her every other day, and on weekends she could come and stay
with him. The idea of being without Bobby was unthinkable.

‘How
long?’ she managed at last. ‘How long will you be away?’

He
stared at the ground. ‘The apprenticeship is for three years,’ he whispered.
‘After that there’s secondment to one of Sigma’s sister companies.’

She
was silently shaking her head. ‘But how long will you be away?’ she almost
wailed.

‘Kat,
in three years I’ll come back for you, okay? On your sixteenth birthday, I’ll
be back. I’ll have earned enough by then to buy your passage to Draconis. I’ll
find you a place to live, a job.’

‘Three
years . . . ?’ She had never relished the thought of her three remaining years
in the orphanage, even with Bobby nearby to make it bearable. She told herself
that she would be unable to go on without him.

Then
she looked at her brother. He had known for weeks about his departure, and he
had been unable to bring himself to tell her, to hurt her. Yet she could sense
that a part of him was proud of his achievement, and excited to be leaving the
orphanage on an adventure to the stars - and she knew that she could not deny
him the chance of a lifetime.

She
reached out, flung her arms around his shoulders and wiped away her tears with
the cuff of her blouse.

Two
weeks later they said goodbye outside the gates of the home, while the taxi
waited to take Bobby to the airport. ‘I’ll be back in three years,’ he promised
again. ‘It might seem like a long time, but you’ll see how fast it goes.’

The
following three years were, contrary to Bobby’s forecast, the longest of her
life. Those aspects of the home which had been tolerable with Bobby around now
became impossible to bear: the lack of affection, the feeling that she was
special to no one, the fact that there was no one to whom she could unburden
herself. She became withdrawn, even from people she’d considered friends before.
She concentrated on her work, and counted the days to her sixteenth birthday
and Bobby’s return. His monthly letters spoke of an exciting new life, of
friends, of experiences she could only ever imagine.

Two
weeks before her birthday, it was announced that due to economic recession, and
the resulting shortage of jobs in the area, fifth form pupils would be required
to stay on at the home for another year. While those around her bewailed their
prolonged captivity, Katerina basked in the secret knowledge of her imminent
rescue.