The Fall of Tartarus (11 page)

‘In
one or two hundred years from now?’

I
nodded. I had never really stopped to think that the beauty I took for granted
would one day be no more. To a child of fourteen, a century or two means the
same as a million years.

My
father said, ‘The scientists have revised their estimates. They’ve noticed
increased activity in the sun itself.’

He
smiled at my expression of blank incomprehension. ‘The scientists say that the
sun will blow not in a hundred years, but in fifty or sixty.’

Now
fifty years is a sum manageable to the mind of a young boy; fifty years was
well within the expectancy of my life span, and my father’s words touched
something deep, and until then unplumbed, within me. I felt a kind of awed
appreciation of the fate that would befall Tartarus, my home and all I knew.

Beyond
my mother and father, through the arch, I saw a group of kids running down the
lane that led to the lake. I made out Gabby and Bobby, Satch and Rona. Then I
saw the detestable Hulse, whose name seemed to suit him, and saw too that he
had his arm about the shoulders of little Leah Reverdy, and that she seemed not
at all bothered by this gross imposition - in fact, by her tinkling laugh that
reached me on the wind, was rather enjoying his attention. The sudden surge of
jealousy I felt then was overtaken by pique that they had not called upon me to
join them - then I rationalised that they could not have known I was home.

I
was impatient to join them, to impart the portentous news that
within our
lifetimes
Tartarus would be destroyed. It seemed important that I share my
discovery with them, so that perhaps I might judge from their reaction how I
myself felt about the impending catastrophe.

‘The
reason we’re telling you this,’ my father continued, ‘is that we want to know
what you would like to do.’

I
shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You
were due to leave school next year,’ he said, ‘and work a year with us before
starting college at Baudelaire.’

My
mother took over. ‘If you did that, you might feel . . . shall I say,
emotionally tied to Tartarus? You would be in your twenties before you
graduated, and feel less like leaving the planet. By the time you are fifty,
the evacuations will have begun, and it will be much more wrenching to leave
then.’

‘The
alternative,’ my father said, ‘is to attend college next year on Earth, break
the link with Tartarus now.’

My
mind was in confusion. For so long my future had been certain - study at
Mallarme, then Baudelaire, with frequent visits home - and I could hardly
conceive of this new plan.

‘No.
No, I don’t want to leave.’ I thought of Leah, and the hopeless possibility
that one day I might have her as my own - and it seemed that if I left Tartarus
next year then my chances, even as slim as they were now, would be nil.

‘Perhaps
you should have some time to think it over,’ my mother said. ‘It’s different
for your father and I. By the time of the supernova, we’ll no longer be
around.’

I
could not bring myself to meet her gaze. If I indicated that I understood her I
would seem heartless, while if I feigned ignorance I might appear foolish.

‘At
least you know the situation now,’ my father said, bringing the subject to a
close.

‘May
I leave now?’

‘What
about breakfast?’ my mother asked.

I
told her that I’d grab some fruit on the way down to the lake - berries and
citruses were bountiful in the hedges of the lane - and left the room. I could
have gone around the desk and through the arch, but I felt that I would be
impinging on my parents’ territory, and perhaps by doing so provoke more
questions. I wanted nothing more than to rendezvous with my friends.

I
left the house and sprinted down the track to the tall hollow-tree that over
the years we had made our own. So impatient was I to tell my news that I failed
to gather my breakfast on the way.

The
entrance in the bole of the tree was concealed by ferns, which I brushed aside.
Over the years, since first discovering the tree, we had worn the bark of the
narrow defile to a lustrous glow with our continual passage back and forth. I
slipped easily inside, found the footholds in the darkness and climbed. The
tight chimney corkscrewed up the trunk of the tree, and I wondered how Hulse
was finding the climb these days. He was a year older than me, and big for his
age. I considered what might happen when he found he could no longer fit
through the entrance: he was the nominal leader of our little gang, and knowing
him as I did I guessed that he would call the hollow-tree out of bounds, a
childish rendezvous anyway, and suggest that we meet at the cafe on the jetty
instead.

My
ascent was illuminated by the leaf-filtered sunlight that spilled through the
exit hole in the trunk high above. I came to the oval slit, breathing hard, and
paused before climbing through. The wide branch thrust from the tree at right
angles, and over the centuries a great fungal growth had spread from this branch
to the next, creating a triangular platform perhaps ten metres in length.
Seated at the far end of this platform, their backs to me and their legs
dangling over the edge as they stared down at the lake, were Rona, Gabby, Bobby
- and Hulse, with his arm around Leah. I looked up to find Satch, and as
expected detected his shape through the membrane of the dream-sac suspended
from the branch above. For as long as I’d known him, he’d made every excuse to
slope off and climb into the parasite plant and hallucinate the hours away.

Now
that the time had come to tell my friends about the imminence of the supernova,
I was overcome with an odd reluctance. Although we all, with the exception of
Leah, attended boarding schools in Mallarme, these schools were different and
we rarely saw each other during term. Only three times a year, during the
holidays, did we renew our friendships: always the reunions were fraught and
embarrassing affairs, for me at least, as I fought to overcome my shyness and
regain the degree of intimacy attained during the last break.

Rona
turned and saw me. ‘It’s Joe,’ she said, waving.

Gabby
and Bobby both turned and waved in greeting, but, pointedly I thought, Hulse
and Leah remained with their backs to me, absorbed in each other.

Forced
to make an entry now, I waved and crawled on hands and knees from the tree
trunk and across the fungal platform. Rona, Gabby and Bobby joined me and we
exchanged the usual stilted greetings. We chattered about the past term, and I
made a joke of my poor grades, only to be matched by Bobby who had failed all
his major subjects and would be kept down next term. Of all of them, Bobby was
my best friend, the one with whom the gap of months between meetings seemed
like mere hours. He and Gabby were brother and sister, both tall and blindingly
blonde, but whereas Gabby was all laughs and chatter, Bobby was quiet and
self-absorbed, perhaps even a little slow. Rona was small and freckled and
really quite ugly, but friendly and funny.

Gabby
grabbed my hand to silence me, opened her eyes wide and leaned forward. She was
about to divulge a secret, and I sensed that Rona and Bobby were far from
happy.

‘Joe,’
said Gabby, prolonging the suspense, ‘guess what?’

‘What?’
I laughed, looking from Bobby to Rona.

‘Gabby
. . .’ Bobby protested.

Gabby
threw back her blonde head and laughed. ‘Rona and my brother,’ she declared in
a primly theatrical voice, ‘are lovers!’

Oddly,
it was me who reddened. The couple in question just looked at each other with
that quiet complaisant smile of all newly joined couples.

Bobby
then elbowed his sister in the ribs. ‘And who does it in the sac with Satch?’

Gabby
bit her bottom lip and frowned up at where the dream-sac hung heavy with
Satch’s weight above us. ‘Well, where else can we
do
it? He never comes
out of there!’

Rona
clasped her hands over her heart. ‘Can you even imagine it? Gabby and Satch in
love!’

‘It’s
not love,’ Gabby said with a frankness beyond her years, ‘just lust. How could
I love someone who’s always so high?’

Rona,
perhaps to make me feel less left out of the pairing off that had gone on in my
absence, took my hand and hauled me to the edge of the fungal patio. ‘Just look
at the view, Joe! I swear it gets better every year.’

We
sat side by side, our legs dangling over the edge, and stared out across the
lake. We were perhaps twenty metres above the scintillating blue expanse, and
the aerial view of the long body of water wedged between the gentle green hills
made me think, as always, that I must surely live in the most beautiful region on
all Tartarus. In the middle of the lake was the Zillion’s island, but there was
no sign of the creature today.

‘Joe
bombed and had to resit his maths exam,’ Gabby told Hulse and Leah.

Hulse
just grunted. ‘You never could count, kid,’ he said.

Beyond
him, Leah leaned forwards, like a queen in a hand of cards. She pushed her lips
to the side of her face in a
too-bad
grimace that sent my heart
pounding. ‘Hi, Joe,’ she said, lazy and laconic, and in the same way waved her
fingers at me, minimally.

I
had purposefully not looked Leah’s way until now: I could no more acknowledge
her liaison with Hulse than I could have faced the possibility that she might
snub me. She was the youngest among our group, at least in terms of years,
though she had about her the natural sophistication of a woman twice her age. I
had worshipped her from afar since I was ten, and just a year ago a miracle
occurred when she became Gabby’s best friend and, in consequence, a member of
our group.

Not
long after that she took up with Hulse, perhaps impressed by his bravado, his
leadership skills; I should have hated her for it, but I could only feel sorry
for her and wait until the day when she saw through his swaggering act.

She
was as slim as a moonfern, brown as a coffee bean. When alone in her company I
was almost always speechless. On one embarrassing occasion, which she either
did not notice, or deigned to overlook, she had playfully grabbed my arm and
asked me a question, and in a paroxysm of fright and delight I had lost control
of my bladder.

I
recalled what I had rushed here to tell them.

‘Have
you heard about the supernova?’ I asked. ‘It’s due to blow in fifty years.’

Hulse
turned to me, something like heroic forbearance in his attitude. ‘When did you
find
that
out, kid?’

‘Just
now. This morning. My father told me.’

Hulse
flicked a fashionable lock of hair from his eyes. ‘Just what do they teach you
at
your
school?’ he sneered at me. How I hated his heavy-featured face,
with its expert appropriation, freakish in someone so young, of adult disdain.

I
glanced around. Bobby and Rona and Gabby were silent, gazing down at the lake.
Leah was concealed behind my tormentor; I could only see her bare legs,
embraced by her equally bare, brown arms.

‘Supernova
in fifty,’ Hulse reeled off, ‘evacuation plans begin in thirty, actual
evacuation in forty. Citizens to be evacuated by provinces, to designated
planets in the Thousand Worlds. Communities to be kept intact, unless
individuals wish otherwise, in which case they pay their own way.’

I
tried to hide my unease, but that was impossible. I had a face that flared as
red as a beacon at the slightest perceived affront.

‘I
had no idea ...’ I stammered. ‘Nobody told me.’

Hulse
rolled his wrist in a haughty gesture. ‘Consider yourself told.’

‘Are
... are any of you leaving before . . .’ I stuttered. ‘That is, before the
actual evacuation?’

Gabby
glanced at her brother. ‘Daddy said he’s thinking about taking us back to
Earth. But I hope he doesn’t.’

‘I’m
leaving anyway when I graduate,’ Hulse said, ‘but I expect I’ll come back from
time to time, for old time’s sake.’

I
cleared my throat. ‘Leah?’

She
leaned forward again, and her smile banished all my self-doubt. ‘I’m staying
here until the evacuation,’ she said, and I was cheered by the thought that her
declaration intimated her independence from Hulse. ‘What about you?’

Timorously,
I returned her smile. ‘I’m staying too,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t imagine living
anywhere else.’ Perhaps boldened by her attention, I went on. ‘It’s hard to
believe that in fifty years this ... all this . . .’ I gestured in lieu of
words.

Rona
said in a whisper, ‘All destroyed in the ultimate firestorm.’

‘God,’
Bobby said, as if the thought had just struck him, ‘Mallarme, the mountains and
the lake . . . even Baudelaire!’

I
glanced across at Leah. Tears filmed her vast, brown eyes.

Hulse
said, ‘Yeah, just think of it. Every last bird and beast burned to a cinder.’

I
expected Leah to protest, to cry at least. Instead she laughed and hit out at
Hulse with a tiny, ineffectual fist. ‘Oh, you . . . you typical
man,
Hulse!’ and there was something close to admiration in her tone.