‘But… that’s fantastic!’ Prabir’s anxiety gave way to relief, then pride. ‘Just two places for undergraduates, and they offered you one?’ He put down the plate he was drying and embraced her tightly, lifting her off the floor. ‘Of course you can have the money, you idiot! What did you think I’d say?’
When he drew away from her, Madhusree was blushing. Prabir berated himself silently; he hadn’t meant to go overboard and embarrass her.
‘So where’s the expedition going?’ he asked. ‘Not the Amazon, I hope. Apparently they’re so sick of naturalists there that they shoot them on sight.’
‘Not the Amazon. The South Moluccas.’
Prabir said, ‘That’s not funny.’ Neither was getting murdered in Brazil, actually, but he felt as if she’d responded to a playful jab by kicking him in the head.
‘It’s not meant to be.’ She met his gaze; she was more nervous than ever, but she wasn’t lying, or teasing him. ‘That’s where we’re going.’
‘Why?’ Prabir folded his arms awkwardly; he suddenly felt ungainly, his body strangely skewed. ‘Why there?’
‘Don’t get upset.’
‘I’m not upset. I just want to know.’
Madhusree led him to her room and picked up her notepad. ‘This screen’s too small. I’ll show you on the TV.’ They sat on the couch and she summoned up a succession of images from news reports and scientific papers.
The first discovery to attract the attention of the world’s biologists had been a fruit pigeon with strange coloration, a hitherto unseen mottled camouflage of green and brown. MRI scans and DNA analysis had yielded more radical differences; Prabir listened in a dreamlike state as Madhusree described structural anomalies in the bird’s internal organs, and a catalogue of useful mutations in key blood proteins. The Javanese zoologist who’d brought the specimen to light six months ago had only traced it as far as a bird dealer in Ambon, but after word had spread that anything unusual would fetch good money, two other genuine cases had emerged from a torrent of fakes and minor novelties. There was a dead tree frog with young that had apparently been maturing in a water-filled pouch. And there was a bat with the bones in its wings rearranged in an efficient, albeit unspectacular, fashion—thanks to a fully functioning gene for a protein controlling embryological development that did not exist in any other species on the planet. Both had been found on the island of Ceram, more than three hundred kilometres north of Teranesia.
Madhusree had to fight to contain her enthusiasm. ‘These are amazing discoveries—just like the butterflies, but who knows how many species are involved now? And there is noexplanation. There’s no way of making sense of this. Whatever the cause turns out to be, it’s going to shake up biology like nothing since Wallace.’ Madhusree would have none of this Darwin nonsense; Alfred Wallace might have been too much of a doormat to take the credit he was due, but that wasn’t going to stop her putting the record straight.
Prabir was numb. ‘You didn’t tell anyone? About the butterflies?’ The reports made no mention of any earlier find; apparently neither his parents’ academic colleagues in Calcutta, nor their sponsor at Silk Rainbow had felt inclined to volunteer anecdotal evidence about their unpublished work.
Madhusree said, ‘I probably should have, but I was afraid they’d suspect I was making it up just to get in on the act.’ She smiled proudly. ‘But I’m on the team by merit alone. I even said “no” on the questionnaire when they asked about “jungle experience”.’ She mused, ‘Maybe the best thing would be for me to keep my mouth shut, and let the expedition stumble on the evidence. I mean, the huts should still be standing, and most of the equipment should be recognisable. There might even be some records intact.’
Prabir regarded her stonily. She took his hand and said, ‘Don’t you think they’d be glad if one of us went back? Now that it’s safe?’ Prabir felt a chill at the base of his spine: whether by choice or out of habit, she’d slipped into the hushed voice she’d used when they’d talked about their parents in his room at Amita’s.
He said, ‘It’s not safe. Why do you think it’s safe?’
Madhusree examined his face. ‘Because the war’s been over for almost eighteen years.’
Prabir pulled his hand free, irritated. ‘Yeah, and there are lunatics in government in West Papua—’
‘I’m not going to West Papua—’
‘Who want to claim half the islands—’
‘That’s nowhere nearwhere we’re going!’
Prabir’s head was beginning to pound. If this wasn’t a dream, it was some kind of test. He’d brought her to safety, and now she was standing on the edge of the cliffs, babbling childish nonsense about diving back into the water.
He said, ‘There are still mines on those islands. Do you think someone’s gone through and de-mined them all?’
Madhusree rummaged through files, then waved her notepad at the TV. ‘You strap this device to your belt. If there’s any chemical explosive within twenty metres, it tells you.’
The gadget was about as big as a matchbox. Prabir said, ‘I don’t believe you. Buried explosives? How?You know the Indonesians had NQR-aware mines? If you send out a radio pulse, they’ll triangulate your position and give you a gut full of shrapnel.’
‘It doesn’t use Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance; it’s entirely passive. There’s a radiation signature from the explosive: secondary particles emitted from the constituent atoms due to background and cosmic radiation.’
‘And… that thing’ssensitive enough to identify chemical composition from secondary radiation?’
Madhusree nodded earnestly.
Prabir stared at the screen, feeling like a doddering centenarian who’d blinked and missed a decade. ‘I’ve been in banking too long.’
‘Isn’t that a tautology?’
Prabir laughed, and felt something tearing inside. He could give in; it would be easy. He could shout, ‘Go! Go!’ and dance around the room with her, playing proud supportive big brother. Then she’d fly off to salvage her parents’ reputation and complete their work, like a fairy-tale princess returning from exile to right all wrongs and avenge all injustices.
He said, ‘I can’t afford it.’
‘I’m sorry?’
He turned to her. ‘Five thousand dollars? I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t even have that much in my account. And without collateral…’ He raised his hands apologetically.
Madhusree bit her lip and eyed him with frank disbelief, but Prabir was almost certain that she wouldn’t call his bluff. She might have argued all weekend about the risks the expedition would face, but she wouldn’t make a scene over money.
She said, ‘OK. I knew it was a lot. I’ll have to see about raising it some other way.’
‘Some other way? How long do you have?’
‘Two months.’
Prabir frowned sympathetically. ‘So what were you thinking of doing?’
Madhusree shrugged and said casually, ‘I’ve got some ideas. Don’t worry about it.’ She stood and left the room abruptly.
Prabir put his face in his hands. He hated lying to her, but he was certain now that he’d made the right decision. Even if there really was some revolutionary discovery waiting to be made on the island—and not just a very unpleasant mutagen that left a vast number of stillborn victims rotting in the jungle for every spectacular survivor—she could read about it like everyone else.
That would make her angry. But it wouldn’t kill her.
‘Are you sure it’s all right for me to be here?’ Felix’s work room looked like a biology lab in which an eclectic art thief had stashed a few million dollars’ worth of stolen goods. Prabir didn’t recognise any of the paintings awaiting assessment, hanging in a rack like posters in a shop, but the richness of the pigments and the skill of the execution was enough to make him nervous just being near them. ‘I don’t want to get you into trouble.’