Cloud Permutations (5 page)

PART TWO

NARAWAN

— Chapter 9 —

NARAWAN

AT SIXTEEN KAL WAS STILL SLIM, though he had shot upwards the year before like a seed that was indeed, if at long last, flowering. He had begun to shave and thus, by Tanna
kastom
, he was now officially old enough to drink kava. His uncle had shaved him, in the small
nakamal
near the family’s home, before everyone, and a pig had been killed for the occasion (a small one), and Kal was given a shell to drink, and then another, and after the second one he could not keep his eyes open and had fallen asleep. There was much hilarity over this.

Life, as it is wont to do, continued at a gentle pace. His grandfather came to visit him once, but by now the island of Tanna had sailed a long way from Epi, towards the distant cluster of islands that were called the Tusk, for they were shaped from above (or so it was said, since who really knew?) in the form of a boar’s tusk. The sea was a little rougher here, the water greyer, and the air a little cool. The clouds in this region, too, were a little different. They drifted high in the sky, seldom touching one another, absorbing energy and water until their contours turned darker and darker, and one lived in the constant anticipation of rain.

Yet it never rained.

The people who came to Port Cargo at this time were different to the ones Kal had seen until now. The Tusk was scarcely populated. The people who lived there were quiet and shy, for the most part, and seemed to have little need for trade with Tanna. And yet, a trade was going on, for goods that arrived in late-night boats at the abandoned docks of Naetsaed, and was conducted in silence.

What it was, Kal didn’t know. It was left up to Bani, then, as had become almost a pattern between the two of them, to provide an answer.

At seventeen, Bani was tall, muscled, and had taken to wearing bright ostentatious clothes, with a penchant for ruby-coloured capes and velvet trousers, which made his skin stand in sharp contrast. He also took to wearing wrap-around mirrorshades, and—occasionally—to holding a long silver-topped cane. He grew his hair long (it fell down to his shoulders) and he wore it loose, sweeping it back from his eyes, from time to time, with something of a flourish.

Kal thought he looked ridiculous. Though some of the girls, he had to admit, evidently thought otherwise. Listening to Bani, at least, one would have got the impression that his main occupation these days was the planting (as they say) of manioc.

He came sailing in one day, in full and regal costume (cape and fur-lined hat, tight purple trousers and bare feet, cane twirling in one hand, a cigarette in the other, his pale eyes twinkling even in the dim light of the Tannese Institute of Higher Learning’s
nakamal
). Kal had been waiting for him. He said, ‘It’s your turn to buy a round.’

Bani laughed. ‘A shell for my friend!’ he announced, to the world in general it seemed. ‘And one for myself, too, please, Matthias.’

The man serving kava smiled. You did not serve kava to students for many years without holding on to a certain outlook on life. He said, ‘Shall I put it on your tab, Professor?’

‘Please,’ Bani said graciously.

The two shells materialised on the counter. Bani carried both over to Kal (the cane was discarded. The cigarette was kept) and handed him one. They went to the edge of the
nakamal
(which was situated, as was
kastom
, under a great banyan tree, beneath the grassy hill the Institute sprawled on), drank, and spat almost in unison. Bani smiled. He seemed to be in remarkably good spirits.

‘How would you like,’ he said when they had sat down, ‘to go on a little trip?’

‘If you’re talking about your cousin’s mushrooms again,’ Kal said, ‘then the answer is no.’

‘Awo!’ Bani said. ‘That is not what I am talking about.’ He gave Kal a look of slight reproach. Kal grinned. ‘So what is it?’

‘Hemi wan smol trip nomo,’ Bani said noncommittally
. It’s only a small trip.

‘Yes,’ Kal said, patiently. ‘Be yumi go wea?’
But where are we going?

‘Yumi,’ Bani said, grinning over his half-smoked cigarette, ‘Yumi, Kal, go long wan aelan nomo.’
We’re just going to an island
.

‘Wanem aelan?’ Kal said.
What island?
And Bani grinned even harder and said, ‘Wan ailan blong ol Narawan.’

The island of the Narawan
. In Bislama, the word
narawan
means ‘different’, or ‘other’. In this, the new world of the Ni-Vanuatu people, it had taken on another meaning.

One could say, perhaps, that it was taken to mean ‘alien’.

In any event, Bani did not give Kal much time to refuse. ‘Come on,’ he said, and stood up, stretching. He flicked his cigarette away. Kal watched it sail briefly across the sky and come to land, still burning, on the broken stones. For a moment it made him uncomfortable … then he shook his head, and followed his friend. ‘We’re going
now
?’ he said.

‘Now,’ Bani said. ‘The ship is sailing in half an hour from the South Docks.’

‘Naetsaed?’

‘Discretion,’ Bani murmured, ‘needs to be maintained.’

Kal followed him out of the
nakamal
. They began walking. ‘I put you on the register as a porter,’ Bani said, smirking. ‘Not that there
is
a register, as such. Officially, we’re going to see the chief of the 41 neighbouring island in order to record samples of the oral history of the Tusk, for the anthropology department. I don’t know if you know this’—this was an expression Bani had become exceedingly fond of, particularly when talking to Kal—’but the people in these parts seem to have some sort of anti-technology sentiment. Which still doesn’t quite explain why the chief can’t just record himself, but never mind.’ Bani liked technology. He
loved
computers. Why no one on the islands particularly wanted to use them was beyond him. Kal, remembering a childhood spent in the long and patient pace of the surf and the land, never argued with him. What use was there for a computer, he privately thought, in catching fish or making a fire? You can’t swim in the shallows or bask in the sun with a computer.

Yet Bani could not bask in the sun, Kal thought. Nor could he swim in the sea, not until the sun had almost set. Perhaps, then, for him, the computers were a substitute. Or perhaps they were just things he loved, and was unlucky in that the majority of people didn’t share his passion. Some people, after all, were like this about bird-watching, or about stamps, or collecting different seashells …

‘Come on!’ Bani said, impatient. Kal had been dawdling. ‘Ask me what we’re
really
going to do.’

‘What are we really going to do?’ Kal said.

Bani came closer and lowered his voice. ‘We’re going to dig,’ he said.

‘Dig.’

‘See, that’s why I could bring you along. Yu wan boe blong bus, no?’ Bani grinned. Kal, who rather resented being called a boy from the bush, said, ‘And what will you be doing, exactly?’

‘Me?’ Bani said, feigning surprise. ‘I’m the leader of the expedition.’

‘And leaders don’t like to do any of the hard work, right?’ Kal said.

‘That’s right!’ Bani said, and twirled his cane. He seemed almost manic, full of suppressed excitement Kal didn’t—at least then—understand. ‘We leave that to the people from the bush … ‘

‘Fuck you,’ Kal said, and Bani laughed. ‘Wait and see,’ he said, putting on something of a mysterious air. ‘Wait and see.’

The sun had set by the time they arrived at the old docks. An eerie silence hung over the wharf, and the water was a dirty darkness sourly absorbing the last rays of light. Clouds massed high above, and the air had a hushed, expectant stillness, an uneasy anticipation of rain.

The ship was waiting for them.

It was a cargo ship, a low-lying iron hulk that looked a little (so Kal thought) like the curved tusk of a pig. It was old, the paint on the hull faded, while rust had settled in creakily at the joints. It was called, appropriately, the
Sanigodaon
, which meant ‘sunset’ in Bislama.

Huddled on the dock, evidently waiting for them, was a small group composed, Kal saw, of three students. He recognised a couple of them—Tanuaiterai, a short, bespectacled, smooth-faced anthropology student, and Toa, a quiet man from Futuna whom Kal vaguely thought might have been a computer programmer—and said hello when they joined the group. Tanuaiterai grunted. Toa nodded back but didn’t speak. They seemed to be waiting for something. There was an air between them like the crackling of electricity between two groups of clouds. The third man was fat and quiet, and he introduced himself as Georgie.

‘Let’s go,’ Bani said.

It must have been what they had been waiting for, Kal thought. As soon as Bani spoke the group stirred. They carried backpacks, Kal saw, and these looked heavy.

They climbed onto the waiting ship. It was piloted by a single man, whom Bani introduced briefly as Captain Desmon. Bani disappeared into the shadows while Kal and the others waited. When he returned, the ship had begun to move.

The
Sanigodaon
sailed out of Naetsaed with its engine muted. It moved like a blade on the water, sliding out of the disused harbour like a dagger being drawn in anticipation. A slightly rusty dagger, perhaps, but one still capable of inflicting damage. But damage on what? Why that image, that sense of approaching violence? Kal stood on the deck and watched the lights of Port Cargo grow faint in the distance. Above the island clouds grew, spreading out like a dome that prohibited stars. The air was humid and still. The small breeze created by the movement of the ship failed to cool Kal. Bani came and stood beside him, his hands resting on the ship’s railing. Behind them came the flare of a match, and the first tendrils of cigarette smoke. For a long time neither Bani nor Kal spoke. They stood in companionable silence, and watched the massing clouds.

— Chapter 10 —

WAN LESEN BLONG ALIEN ARCHAEOLOGY

‘WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?’ Kal said, and Bani grinned back at him and said, ‘Ol smol grinfala man oli no blong ples ia.’ Which translates, roughly, as ‘little green aliens’.

‘Was that a joke?’ Kal said. Bani shook his head. ‘We’re looking for
Narawan
ruins,’ he said. He had discarded the cape and cane for a pair of paint-splattered blue overalls.

‘Well, what do they look like?’ Kal said, and Bani shook his head, reaching for a cigarette, and said, ‘I don’t know.’

The journey on the ship took several hours. The group of students (and Kal) sat on the deck. Bani smoked. A couple of the others tried to sleep. Kal ended up talking in hushed fashion to Toa, who turned out not to be a computer programmer after all, but a xenohistorian. Kal’s obvious first question was, ‘What’s a xenohistorian?’

‘Someone who studies the history of alien cultures,’ Toa said. ‘I think that, before the Exodus, it was just a word. But now, at least here on Heven, it’s a real discipline. Or it could be,’ he added, ‘if they would just let us study it properly.’

‘You study the
Narawan
?’ Kal said. Toa nodded. ‘The few remains there are. The few sites we can access. But it’s …’

‘
Tabu
?’

‘Yes.’

Like flying.

‘So why are we going now?’ Kal asked. Toa looked at him and smiled, and said, ‘Because sometimes we do things despite their being
tabu
, Kal,’ and Kal fell quiet.

They did not spot the island until they were almost on it. No light showed through the darkness. Kal could hear the breaking of water on the shore, and the humming of insects, and as he looked ahead he could see a mass of blackness that may have been a thick forest. The air remained still, motionless. Kal’s clothes stuck to his skin, and with a grunt of annoyance he removed his shirt. The air cooled him down for a brief moment; then he was sweating again.

From somewhere in the forest ahead came a shriek that made Tanuaiterai, the anthropologist, jump. ‘What was that?’ he said nervously. No one replied.

It felt, Kal thought, like the raid of an ancient army, preparing to go ashore in search of an unseen enemy. He did not know these islands. And the moisture hanging in the air felt more than just unpleasant; it had the hint inside it of fragmented madness that sometimes came with rain, and that he had experienced twice before. Sometimes he still woke up from dreams, thinking he was falling. For a moment he thought of just staying on the ship. Then he looked at the others, landing clumsily on the beach, and he could see that they were just as nervous. But still they went on. And so he jumped down to the muddy sand (it stank, as though too many small, dead sea creatures littered the shore, unseen in the darkness) and shouldered one of the heavy backpacks.

Ahead of him, Bani had lit a torch. In the dancing light his face was demonic in its paleness, and his red eyes shone, giving him the appearance of some ancient, vanished enemy. Then the torch moved, and Bani looked towards him, and it was him again, Kal’s friend, and Kal said, ‘What are we looking for?’ and Bani grinned back at him and said shortly, ‘Ol Narawan’.