The receiver replaced, the laughter silenced. Adrenalin that (like that other bodily signal) hadn't risen for so long, sinks normally. Still addressing – Thapelo or self – something slowly enters as a third voice, insistent to be heard. Follows, to the garden. And then back to the telephone; is the machine staring mute, or being gazed at, unseeing. But it's not picked up. There are areas of thought not meant to be shared, they question certainties held in common. Neither of you could go on pursuing what you do, being what you are, without them.
Forever.
How long is forever. How old is the delta that is part of the cosmos visible from Outer Space? Astronauts report it. Will ten dams be visible, the scale of ponds, like all man-made scratchings and gougings in comparison with the planet's own design.
Maybe we see the disaster and don't, can't live long enough (that is, through centuries) to see the survival solution Matter with infinite innovation has found, finds, will find, to renew its principle – life: in new forms, what we think is gone forever. In millennia, what does it count that the white rhino becomes extinct, the dinosaur's extinct, the mastodon, the mammoth, but we have the ingenuity of the evolved design of the giraffe, the elephant with its massive hulk standing vestigially web-footed with the memory of the fish. The first fish that dragged itself out of the amniotic element.
So, what is this kind of stuff, thinking… Heresy, how can it come to one who when asked, And what is your line, answers, What am I, I'm a conservationist, I'm one of the new missionaries here not to save souls but to save the earth.
This heresy is born of the garden, as Evil was – like those other thoughts, to be forgotten, the garden engendered – it belongs to this state of existence that's about to cease to be. Whatever 'forever' means, irrevocably lost, or surviving eternally, himself in this garden is part of the complexity, the necessity. As a spider's web is the most fragile example of organisation, and the delta is the grandest. Return home; that's his loop in the thread from the spider's web to the Okavango system: Benni/ Berenice, small boy, Daddy! Paul! all the waterways and shifting sand islands of contradiction: a condition of living. Like another heresy, knowledge of what it is he came from into this state of existence, and what – if he survived – he would be returned to – the relationships of that home were not what he might have had; knows that. Doubt had come to him in the garden where he had begun to apprehend life as a boy. Biodiversity; Chief, say to yourself: professional jargon stuff. But it's within that term your place is, Chief, say it: I'm going home at the weekend. Always find the self calling on the terminology of the wilderness, so unjudgmental, to bring to circumstances the balm of calm acceptance. The inevitable grace, zest, in being a microcosm of the macrocosm's marvel.
Doubt is part of it; the salt content.
They are there at the gate. Berenice – but he must correct himself, Benni again – and the small boy, Nicholas, his son.
Lyndsay and Adrian are his entourage as he emerges from the family house, with Primrose helping to carry some of the things – folders of papers accumulated recently – that wouldn't fit into the suitcase Adrian insists on carrying. (The hospital hold-all Lyndsay has quietly disposed of.) They call out to one another across the length of the drive as if it were the length of time of the separation. Even Primrose, with her old-fashioned servitude, pre-liberation sense of propriety that you could be familiar with white kids as you should not with adults, shouted to the child joyfully – So now soon you'll come to play with me, like always, Nickie! – But there can be nothing ordinary about this approach to the gate. It's Benni who's clinging, arms lifted, to the bars this time. Smiling and cajoling – as if he needed any encouragement! He doesn't disappoint her, finds himself gathering the muscles, co-ordination.
She – Benni – sees coming towards her the long legs flung out sideways at the knees, the arms flailing like oars, the staggering gait, that of a child learning it can run.
As he gained the gate the electronic control in Adrian 's hand slid it open, Benni's image brought close-up to him with the pressure of her arms around his body: she was laughing, the lens of tears magnifying her eyes. She reached for his head and took his lips, mouth, into hers as a deep draft of something missing so long. But when he knelt to the small boy, his son stared at him a moment and turned away to hide behind his mother. Not forgotten, fingers prized from the bars of this gate, Daddy! Paul!, and the appeal terribly unheeded. Agitated, ashamed, his mother tried to urge him forward, he wriggled and struggled, ran back behind her.
It was understood: his son had suffered that state of existence, along with himself.
– No, leave him, it's all right. Give him time. -
iii / It Happens
Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be. The pebble-bed reactor project has not been abandoned by the entrepreneurs but it hasn't gone further than being claimed safe enough to walk away from. In the meantime there had been the other experience of the phenomenon of these small natural formations during a return to the normal custom of a couple taking their child to enjoy a week paddling and dabbling on a beach. Daddy! Paul! showing him how to collect the colours of land and sea in the shining pebbles sucked over by rills of surf.
The direst of all threats in the world's collective fear – beyond terrorism, suicide bombings, introduction of deadly viruses, fatal chemical substances in innocent packaging, Mad Cow disease – is still 'nuclear capability'. Another catch-all: the possession as natural resources, in a country, of certain primary elements and the ability to mine and refine these for its own nuclear armament or for sale to that of others; the construction of a nuclear plant/reactor; the testing of a nuclear weapon. Forecast prelude to the apocalypse by what are known as Weapons of Mass Destruction. The proposed reactor based on the harmless pebble a small boy takes home from the beach is a component in the production of Weapons not likely to be overlooked by the inquiry into nuclear facilities that is becoming vigilant all over the world, far if not near, since the power with a foot on everyone's doorstep, the USA, is one that doesn't support the nuclear non-proliferation requirement of efforts towards nuclear disarmament, except when this suits USA ambitions. Thapelo drops in over a weekend on the pretext, just to check up on you (they're back working together at their organisation's offices during the week) but really to analyse Gaddafi's sudden decision to announce and renounce Libya 's possession of nuclear capability.
Tell all. Come clean, brother. Haai, ma-an!
Neither sees any mystery in the decision. They laugh at the 'amazement' on newspaper headlines. Gaddafi either doesn't want American guests like the ones who've visited Iraq or he wants the embargo, imposed after his countrymen exploded a passenger plane, lifted so he can sell his oil. Or both.
But under the laughter the mates now may have some expectation an example has been set – and received with fulsome emotion from the world – that might lead to the pebble-bed reactor project being taken off hold and abandoned, for State reasons of adopting moral high ground, or rather choosing to stay up there since South Africa is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. There's somehow always been little socialising with Paul's colleagues, by contrast with hers, so Berenice/Benni sees the animating Sunday visit of this colleague as part of Paul's new return to his life and takes the opportunity of inviting his apparently special friend to share lunch.