One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (10 page)

“
It’s a good thing you guys came, then,” Kaneko said. “You taking this back to the taskforce?”

Palmer looked at her. “This is the taskforce.”

She nodded at her partner, an overweight man in a sagging trench coat. He was crouched on the staircase with the forensics team.

“
That’s it?” Kaneko asked.

Palmer nodded.

Kaneko said, “Off the record, though. There’s more of you, right?”

Palmer shook her head.

There was quiet.

“
So, this taskforce—” Kaneko began.

“
Forget it,” Palmer flipped her notebook closed and put it into a pocket of her jacket. “I’m not here to be interviewed.”

“
Might make a difference to people if they knew the police are already on the trail of … whatever it is that’s giving people these powers.”

“
Might make a difference to the bad guys, too,” Palmer replied. “But it’s not my call.”

“
I’ve got a superpower, too,” Kaneko said.

Palmer raised her eyebrows in a kind of
this will be interesting
expression. She crossed her arms and stood staring at Kaneko where she sat.
 

“
It’s called tenacity. I’m going to call you, Detective Palmer. I’m going to keep calling you and I am never going to stop.”

Palmer shrugged, like it was all the same to her. “I get that a lot.” Then she reached to put a hand under Kaneko’s elbow and eased her to her feet.

“
Ambulance is waiting,” Palmer said.

“
Wait.”

Kaneko threw her notebook towards the hallway side table, where it slid to the floor. Then she pulled a new one out from a drawer, holding it carefully between finger and thumb. It was a fat notebook with wide, lined pages. She figured she was going to need it.

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L
ea
h stood on the pontoon searching the twilight for the familiar blond head among the multitude of ebony ones bobbing up and down on the sampans below. Tiny lanterns flickered to life on the bows and the banter of the Malay rivermen rose to greet her.
 

“
Excuse me,” she called down to a wizened old man pulling his sampan alongside the pontoon. “I’m looking for Andy.”

“
Come, come. See fireflies. Very pretty,” he said, beckoning her to step onto his boat. “Ling take you.”

She shook her head. “I’m looking for an Australian. Blond hair. Tall.”

“
No blond man here.”

“
But I went down the river with him last night. Andy told me to meet him back here tonight.”

Ling shook his head. “No Andy here. You no wait. Come with Ling.”

Leah shook her head and walked away, the pontoon shifting with each careful step. She walked up the jetty, through the covered waiting area and across the picnic area to an empty bench. She gazed across the river, to the ramshackle flotilla and wondered where Andy was.

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“
I want to book your whole boat. One hundred and sixty
ringgits
for four people, right?” Leah said. “I don’t want some dumb-arse stranger, who can’t shut up, spoiling it for me.”
 

Having said her bit, she looked down into the fast-flowing Selangor River tugging at the edge of the pontoon, putting it into an ever-changing
pas de deux
with the sampan. All she could think about was how she would step into the tiny boat, in the fading light, without pitching herself into the muddy water.
 

“
Get on and we’ll discuss a fair price when you’ve stopped looking shit scared about falling in,” the blond-haired man said, reaching a hand out to help her on. “I’m Andy.”

“
Leah.” She grasped his hand in her sticky, damp one and they shook. “That obvious, huh.”

He nodded and she laughed, stepping off the pontoon.

The sampan pitched beneath her weight and for a moment she hung over the latte-coloured river, her body tensing to hit the water. His hand tightened on her forearm, her second foot hit the boat and she half-fell, half-sat and the boat righted itself.

“
You always so graceful?”

“
Pretty much.”

He watched her trying to reach the money in her pocket without moving too much. “Don’t worry about payment until I have you safely back on dry land.” He noted her bare arms and legs and said, “You do know about the mozzies.”

“
I’ve got so much insect spray on there’s probably a new hole in the ozone layer above my hut.” She ran a hand down her arm, nose wrinkling at the sticky residue. “I’m terrified it’s full of DDT. The girl in the pharmacy didn’t speak any English and the bottle’s all in Malay.”

“
Be more terrified of malaria. I’ve had it twice. Thought I was going to die the first time. Saw Steam Boat Willy come chortling through the wall the second time. That Lariam is heavy shit. Help yourself,” he said, pointing to an old flannelette shirt and an orange life jacket in the bottom of the boat. “I can’t vouch for the last time the shirt was washed, but it’ll keep the mozzies out.”

She grabbed the shirt. It smelled of engine oil and sandalwood when she pulled it over her head. The material stuck to her damp, tacky arms. It felt smothering in the heat and strapping the life jacket over the top only made it worse.

“
If I got malaria I’d probably be in a room full of Smurfs doing Beyonce covers.”

“
Sounds like a Gary Larson version of hell.”

“
We can always blame it on Wayne.”

“
Yeah, the world always needs a scapegoat.” They laughed and Andy threw his weight behind the long pole to push them away from the pontoon and out into current. “You’re a bit of a Larson fan then.”

“
Is there any other way to start the day … well coffee maybe. It was a sad day when there were no new Larson cartoons. At least there’s still coffee.”

She ignored the discomfort of the shirt and the life jacket and watched the slow, fluid movements he made as the sampan moved into the centre of the river.

“
So you’re travelling alone?” he asked, pulling the pole out of the water and letting the boat coast.

She looked up from watching the detritus speed by: plastic bottles, palms fronds, tangled netting, islands of filthy froth.

“
Mid-life crisis,” she said, and felt her cheeks burn, grateful the darkness hid them. “Oh shit, I can’t believe I just said that.”

“
People confess all kinds of stuff out here.” He picked up the pole and started to guide the boat toward the opposite bank.

Leah reached out and let her fingers skim across the river, mirroring the clouds brushing by the sickle moon overhead.

“
So no young lover or sports car then.”

Leah snorted. “I’d be happy to just have a lover.” She lay back as best as she could in the life jacket and watched the stars pass overhead. “I leased my apartment and quit my job to be landless for a year. Everyone said I was mad, but they’d all already done the backpacker thing while I was busy studying and climbing the corporate ladder. Now they’re all busy having babies. Losing their freedom, not going back to reclaim it.”

“
Sounds like you’ve come to find yourself,”

“
God you’re making it sound like
Eat, Pray, Love
on a
Lonely Planet
budget.”
 

“
Eat. Pray. Love. Sounds good to me!”

“
It’s a book.” When he didn’t say anything she continued. “Middle-class chick with a poor-me complex gets her publishing house to pay for her to travel through Italy, India and Indonesia to
find herself
. In the end she just
finds a guy
.”
 

“
Are you always this cynical?”

“
On good days.”

“
I just meant life is full of options and perhaps, excluding prayer, the other two are pretty reasonable ways to wind down the clock. Works for me.”

She tucked her arms under her head and asked, “So what do you do? Other than take tourists down the river and dispense gems of real life philosophy. I didn’t expect to come to Kuala Selangor and be shown the fireflies by an Aussie.”

“
I was doing research and discovered the facility that head hunted me for my innovation only wanted me to innovate
their
way. Only push the boundaries they said were okay to push. Publish only what they said was okay to publish.”
 

“
What were you researching?”

“
Brain waves. I discovered new low-level cycles that I called omega waves. But no one liked the idea that people declared brain dead still had cerebral activity.” His face hardened. “No one wanted
that
moral and ethical can of worms opened, so the university terminated my tenure and discredited my work.”
 

“
That’s a bit rough isn’t it?”

“
Add every swear word you know and you’re starting to get my frame of mind before I got here.”

He threw his weight into the pole, his body relaxing into the familiar motion.

“
What brought you here?”

“
It’s more what brought me back here.”

“
What brought you here the first time?”

“
The old man’s an Entomologist. Mum taught English. I grew up just down there, before they packed me off to boarding school in Sydney when I hit high school.” He pointed into the darkness and Leah tried to pinpoint a building. All she could see was more jungle. “That was when Kampung Kuantan was an even tinier village and fireflies
were only interesting to people like Dad.”
 

The boat shifted, rocking side to side. She took her hand out of the water, dried it on the bottom of the borrowed shirt and lay on her side to watch him manoeuvre the sampan into the slow-moving water closest to the bank.

“
Ever seen a firefly?”

“
What do the locals call them?”

“
Kelip-kelip.
Means ‘to twinkle’.”
 

“
No. I’ve never seen
kelip-kelip
, but I saw glow-worms in a cave on school camp in Year Nine.”
 

“
You’re in for a treat then.”

They floated around a gentle bend and the river opened up before them.

“
Oh my God,” Leah whispered, pulling herself up and staring down river in awe of the luminous green pinpoints, blinking messages of love, lighting up entire branches. “They’re like … fairy lights. But more … spectacular for being part of nature. More … I can’t describe it. It’s like I’ve died and gone to the most beautiful place in all the universe.”

“
I thought they were fairies until Dad let me look at one up close. Butt-ugly fairies let me tell you.”

They floated beneath overhanging branches, the limbs lighting up as they silently slid past.

After several minutes Leah asked, “Why aren’t all the trees lit up?”

“
The fireflies only come down to the
pokok
berembang
in the evening. They live in the long grass during the day.”
 

“
But there are
berembangs
which don’t light up. I can pick the shape.”
 

“
The fireflies are disappearing. When I was a kid it was like a German street at Christmas every night in the dry season. So many trees lit up.”

“
It must have been amazing.”

“
It was.”

“
What’s killing them? Pollution?”

“
Take your pick: pollution, development, tourism, the palm oil plantations, the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem. The rivermen blame the dam up the river at Kuala Kubu Bahru, but it’s anyone’s guess. Even the old man’s not sure what it is, if it is just one thing or a combination. Makes it hard to conserve when you don’t know the root problem.”

“
But you said tourism and you bring tourists down here.”

“
We do it with the least impact on the environment — no motor, no fumes, no leaking oil. Just old fashioned hard yakka. I bring you down here, the fireflies make an impression on you, and now you care about something I love. Maybe when you leave you’ll want to help protect it. Tell others. Help raise awareness.”

“
Is that why your parents stayed? Because they loved the fireflies?”

“
I don’t know. But it’s why I came back.”

They passed two more illuminated trees before Leah spoke again. “If you had one wish Andy, what would it be?”

Andy grabbed hold of one of the tree branches to stop them floating further down the river.

“
That no one had to turn off life support for someone they loved.”

She looked up the river to the next
berembang
flashing a syncopated code of longing, the thousands of tiny iridescent lights all flashing together, looking for a mate. “I wish the Selangor went on forever. That we never had to stop.”
 

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