Been here before?

  You know I can’t answer that, I said with a grin.

  Used to be covered in forest, you know. This island. Cloud forest, they called it. Two hundred kinds of birds.

  I looked around at the bare, baked rock.

  The dying face of God, she murmured.

  You lost me.

  Sorry, she said. I guess it’s the meds.

  I hesitated. Then asked if she’d mind if I sat awhile. She gestured to the kit trunk beside her, and I perched awkwardly.

  You really were a handsome lug.

  I don’t remember, I said truthfully.

  She laughed.

  I don’t go for the God talk, I said.

  Fair enough. I understand.

  All this magic they’re into these days. Gives me the yips.

  Me too.

  So what’s the deal? The dying face of God?

  Oh, it’s just talk.

  Somehow I doubt that. I remember you. You believe that stuff?

  Magic? No. My mother was a crypto priest. As was her father before her. I guess the secret God talk runs in the blood.

  But not the magic?

  I don’t think it was ever about magic. To give them their due.

  Well, you’ve lost me again. Not that I should be surprised.

  My mother used to tell me that when Nature dies, God dies along with Her.

  And how’d she figure that?

  She said the first form of revelation is the natural world. Wild, living nature, coherent, intact, independent and unknowable in its abundance and fecundity – its fertility.

  Well, that’s a mouthful.

  I’m quoting, just so you know.

  I get fecundity. As in, I know what it means. But revelation —

  How we experience the divine. The ways in which it’s revealed to us.

  Okay. And the divine is God, right?

  Apparently, she said with a smile. I guess what my mother meant is that without clean, wild, healthy things that can generate and renew themselves, the idea of God is impossible to imagine.

  Isn’t it absurd anyway?

  Probably. Or should I say, possibly. If it’s beyond imagining, then it’s beyond reason.

  I really wouldn’t know.

  Mum said people could feel it, sense the creative potential for it, the example of it, in wild things. It being the divine.

  What about people? Aren’t they feral enough for you?

  I imagine that’s not quite the meaning she had in mind. Though why not? She was talking about healthy, fertile, creative creatures.

  For a moment I was lost for words.

  You look troubled, she said, in a way that took me back to Basic.

  You really buy this stuff?

  I don’t know. I guess now I’ll have more time to chew it over.

  But you don’t really believe it, do you?

  How could I? Even if I wanted to.

  Sounds to me like you need to.

  Ah, she said. You understand!

  I don’t think so.

  Have it your way, she said with a glint in her eye.

  The horn sounded. We both flinched and drew ourselves back into operative demeanour. A pair of orderlies emerged from the hab. I stood and stepped aside to give them room.

  Maybe we’ll chat on the trip back? she said as they hoisted her onto a stretcher.

  Sure, I said.

  She offered her hand, and I shook it.

  But I avoided her on the journey. We never spoke again. She was the most interesting person I ever met.

  It was only later that I understood what she was really trying to say. Without coming straight out and making assertions that would have her dishonourably discharged as a catastrophist and coward. I think she meant the world had taken a step away from us. While we weren’t looking, we’d let ourselves come adrift. And whatever we achieved from here on would be on alien ground.

  On the repat flight I spent every waking hour thinking about home. I pined for it in a way I hadn’t for years. And yet when I finally arrived, what I felt was indifference, not relief. I noticed my mother had developed a hunch. Her face and hands were frosted with lesions. She greeted me avidly, but after our initial reunion she was reserved, almost tentative. We were mindful of one another. Almost courtly. But also careful in the way of people no longer closely acquainted.

  The compound was in fine shape. In fact, it looked a little too good. My mother was an outstanding homesteader, but she’d clearly had lavish help keeping things afloat during my long absence. The kit we had now was first-rate. And the western bund was so high that from ground level it threatened to block my view of the foothills. She caught me up on the local news and, as night fell, fed me the freshest food I’d had in a very long time. We sat on her deck in the hot moonlight and spoke of inconsequential Co-op matters and Association politics. Things that were safe to discuss.

  When I walked back to my place, I saw it had been freshly cleaned. The linen on the bed smelt newly laundered. As if she’d been expecting me. I lay there all night, tired but unable to sleep.

  Before dawn I went downstairs and checked the quad. It was fully charged. I wrapped up and rode out across the plain until I reached the spur we favoured for hiking to the tops.

  I set out upon the rocky slopes, feeling the tightness from my puckered wounds. The usual frisson of anticipation was absent. Instead, I felt melancholy. Even a little haunted. This was more than ordinary exhaustion. I was disgusted. And this feeling was new. I’d experienced disenchantment before. But never about the project that had given shape to my life.

  I was still proud to have been chosen to serve. It was a privilege. But I could feel, as I walked, that I was already thinking of it in the past tense. Was that simply because I was a spent force? Or had the project itself lost its way? Serving had rescued me from drudgery. Given me knowledge and purpose. It had lifted my gaze. And yet at what cost?

  As the light came up, I was overtaken by a sudden, primitive urge. I wasn’t really thinking of comrades, of sweating bodies hefting kit. But I guess I caught the smell of damp webbing. And the cadence of my boots on the ground brought the chant to my throat like something too hot to choke back.

  I was alone up there. And so full of fury and grief. I let go. Like a crying child. And sang.

  O! Oh!

  Aramco, Sunoco, Conoco, Rio-Rio, Chevron

  Sinopeco, Shell-o, Shell-o, Peabod, BP, Climate Depot

  Oh!

  Woodside, Santos, Petrobras

  O!

  Koch

  Oh!

  Koch

  O! Oh!

  Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!

  Ooooooooooooooooooooohhhh!

  I sang until my throat burnt. Until it felt as if I were coughing up a second sun.

  There was no one there to hear me. And that was a mercy. But also, another reason to mourn.

  Well, says the bowman. You’re a sucker for the singing.

  I miss it. Don’t you?

  He shrugs.

  So, how big is this mine? I ask, blindsiding him a little.

  What?

  How many levels below this?

  I’m not gonna talk about that. What do you take me for?

  The other levels, can you stand in them? Or are they crawl spaces?

  Christ, man, why do you even care?

  Room to set up lights, run water. Is it big enough?

  You see? You’re getting your hopes up.

  I’m just curious, comrade. Indulge me.

  He sighs with exasperation. You’re a fool.

  I’m a grower, mate. What else am I gonna think about? Would you rather I spent the time wondering how I can cut your throat?

  Listen to you, he says. You talk and talk. And I keep listening, waiting. But you never say it. The one name. I reckon you’re afraid to say it.

  You think?

  Why else wouldn’t you say it? You think you’re still bound to secrecy?

  No, I say. All that’s done.

  Maybe you weren’t on the Utah job at all. Maybe your story’s all bullshit.

  Wouldn’t I be eager to say it? If I was lying? Wouldn’t I have waved that name around like a flag?

  The bowman chews his lips a moment.

  What I don’t understand, I say, is how you link Utah with the name.

  Well, because that was the job that finished them. Right?

  But how could you know that?

  It got around, he says. Late in the piece, when discipline was going to buggery, people blabbed. Utah was a big deal. I reckon they leaked it, actually. Deliberately. To boost morale. Jesus, man, why else would I be asking you about it? You said it yourself, you heard comrades starting to sing the name.

  True enough.

  You’re probably lying your arse off, anyway.

  I suppose I have every reason to make stuff up.

  No shit.

  But everything I’ve told you is true.

  I don’t think I believe you.

  So maybe it’s pointless. Maybe I should save my breath. Any old stager could utter the name and associate himself with it. Maybe I should sleep.

  Suit yourself.

  In the morning you’ll do what you’re gonna do.

  He shrugs.

  So I may as well get some kip, I say, scraping a bit of dirt clear to lie in beside the child.

  Ah, you’ve bottled out, he says. You get this far and pike?

  Oh, I say. What’s the point?

  What if I’m curious?

  What if you are? I say. I’m getting a picture here, comrade. You need the company, some entertainment, and in the morning you’ll get rid of me. Like I’m a serf and you’re some cartel prince in his lair. How does that sound to you? You smell something off about that?

  Cheeky old cunt, aren’t you? he says. You’ve got juice, I’ll give you that.

  First you reckon I’m scared to utter the name above all names. But then you say I’ve got juice. Which is it?

  Who can tell?

  You’ll always wonder, comrade. Down here on your own. In your hole. Anyway, time to sleep.

  I curl up next to the waif. She’s snoring lightly. I half close my eyes and watch him scratch his beard. I wait, trusting I have him on the hook.

  Look, he says. Every one-armed bastard and his uncle said he was on that show.

  I scooch in closer to the kid. Say nothing.

  How’m I supposed to believe you?

  I think you might be right, I say, still lying there. I think they leaked it. For a spike in morale.

  And you think that because?

  I was the one they leaked it to.

  Oh Jesus, he says, clapping his hands so suddenly the girl startles and stirs. I re-roll my scarf and wedge it back under her cheek.

  You’re right to be sceptical, I say. I don’t blame you.

  So, tell me.

  I’m thirsty, I say. The kid hasn’t eaten.

  Christ, he says getting up. I shoulda seen that coming.

  He leaves a lamp on. But he’s gone a long time. So long I fall into a kind of fugue. I haul myself back into a sitting position. Reorient myself. I need to stay awake. Better than that, alert. But my mind drifts to older stories. From the sagas, of all things. And I struggle to attach myself to one of them as they sail by in my head. Haul myself aboard. Just to keep going. I need him here. For focus. Otherwise it’s just a hot funk of memories. In which the red horizon waits, and after that, only darkness.

  Here, he says, arriving at last. He passes the dixy, steps back quickly as if I might try to strike him with it. And I gulp from it like a greedy child.

  You’re nattering about Basic again. I can’t even tell if you’re talking in your sleep.

  I never talk in my sleep. They cooked that up.

  Basic. For you, that must’ve been a thousand years ago.

  But you know, it feels like last week. Sometimes I wish I could go back there.

  The bowman snorts.

  No, not for the drills and the field exercises and all that. Just for the education. To go back as a grown-up, not a kid.

  Bollocks to that.

  Truly, brother. I wouldn’t mind.

  There’s an ancient myth, said Awe one afternoon. About a people in paradise. An orchard in which they were born, where they were safe. With food they could just pluck from the trees.

  I think I know this one, I said.

  Perhaps you do.

  There’s this one tree, right? It’s off limits to the people. There’s power in the fruit.

  Yes, knowledge.

  And they eat it.

  Yes.

  They were always going to. Eventually. Don’t you think?

  Yes, said Awe, squinching away a smile. I imagine so.

  So why the rule?

  Good question. Though there’s grief in knowledge.

  You think?

  How old are you, Volunteer?

  Seventeen. Nearly.

  Huh, she said, glancing up at the skein of camo overhead. So what happens to these people who eat the fruit of knowledge?

  Turfed out.

  They become exiles.

  And that’s the end of easy food.

  Well, said Awe, I’ve never quite thought of it that way, but yes. From that point on, the people must sow and till and make their own food.

  Grafting.

  The problem being, of course, there’s this tendency in them to fall back on the idea of getting, as you say, easy food.

  I don’t follow.

  You’re a grower, right? Think of all the ways to get easy food without labouring or trading for it.

  Bludging. Or thieving.

  Exactly. By loafing off others. Or stealing from them. Or enslaving them.

  And that’s the point of this story?

  Oh, I don’t know if there’s a point, exactly. But it does offer a chance to remind ourselves of what it means to be human. Don’t you think? Before they break their limits, those people are like us, but not quite us. We’re conscious. With knowledge. Curiosity. Imagination. It’s a reminder of the burden that comes with those gifts. And, I guess, the consequences that come from shirking that burden.

  You’ve lost me, I said, looking past her longingly to the squad of operators assembling and breaking down tools on a trestle in the distance.

  I think you know how the story goes after the tree and the garden. And you’ve read some history, seen the docs and pics at Induction.

  I licked my lips, anxious at losing the thread.

  All that genius, she said. All that potential. So much of it wasted on bastardry. Lies. Empires. Slavery. That was not inevitable. And it won’t happen again. Why?

  Us?

  Yes, Volunteer. Because we won’t let it.

  Back on the peninsula, after the years of relentless deployments and my reckless outburst at the debrief, I figured I was done. At home, months passed uneventfully. Then years. I plugged away like a good plainsman. Kept my head down. Met the perennial challenges – split hoses, fungal outbreaks, fried pumps – with the stoicism I’d been raised with. I tried to submit. Believed I was content. But I guess that’s what you tell yourself when you’re disenchanted to the point of heartbreak.

  Maybe it was unhealthy, that craving I’d developed. The need for action. Or the loss of a greater purpose. It’s no easy thing, returning to the patterns and habits of mind you’ve known since childhood. But there’s no shame in making soil and growing food, right? Sorrow burns so hot and bright at first. Then you tamp it down so hard you barely feel it anymore. Still, it smoulders on regardless.

  I couldn’t tell if I’d been stood down temporarily or cashiered for good. Nobody came. The discreet help the Service had given my mother in the years I was gone seemed to evaporate overnight. If she noticed, she didn’t say.

  We laboured together in the winter mornings. If we talked, it was work we spoke of. Underground, during the days and nights of summer, we could barely spare the breath for talk. Whichever the season, above ground or below, there seemed to be more space and time than I’d experienced in a long while. At first that made me anxious. After barracks life, hectic muster camps and crowded ships’ holds, the calm and the long silences took some getting used to.

  A couple of times those empty and sometimes fearful intervals sent me grubbing out the letters I’d written to Sun and Ester so long ago, but they just made the hollowness within me feel more perilous. I couldn’t afford madness. I had to retrain. Recalibrate. And when I steadied my mind, I found my senses grew keener. The taste of fresh food, real water, the many shades of light and shadow on the plain. Or just the shock of how gnarled my feet had become without me noticing.

  But the thing of greatest consequence I began to pick up on was the seasonal drift. Winters arrived late now. And they were short. Summers weren’t always hotter, but monsoons often failed to arrive. Despite the lack of rain, the humidity was increasing. And that left us slimy, gasping, at the edge of panic. For all our discipline and careful rationing, our choof supplies were running out by early March. One year we were reduced to chewing raw leaves from the growstock in the cellars. Which, as you’ll know, is a fruitless exercise. At least we weren’t demented enough to eat our own seeds. I used to fantasize about growing poppy, but imagine a summer on the poppy – you’d starve come winter.

  So, yes, the weather was becoming erratic. And mild stretches less and less common. Although the district was more thinly populated, on market days the queue for the clinic in the civil shelter tailed out into the market square. Folks had more eye troubles, cankers, gut worms, rickets, and some were so downcast they looked catatonic. I guess things had been changing for years without me seeing it. Plainsfolk were as hardy as they come, but the peninsula had become a tougher place to live.

  One winter night, I asked my mother if she felt compelled to stay. Given how hard conditions had become. Whether she felt obliged, somehow. To the memory of my father, say.

  Not at all, she said mildly. I choose to stay. Because the living’s good. It’s clean.

  You don’t think things are getting harsher?

  Life’s always been a challenge on the plain, she said. Extremes are a part of our lives. This is what we do – we endure and overcome.