Lorraine’s swollen yellow tongue ran around the outside of her lips like a dry sponge over cracked parchment.
Please, can I have some water please?
There was no answer. She only thought she spoke. Every time she took a breath her throat burned. She ran a hand over her distended abdomen. I must not die. Her head rolled side to side in the powder-dry, red earth, like someone in the grip of a nightmare seeking the comfort of a dream.
It’d been . . . think . . . three years . . . not that . . . how long been here . . . no meant . . . to know since, they went . . . where did they go? Once again for a second in her nostrils was the smell of Gerry. She remembered. At the thought, in acknowledgment, her mind dropped a wall. Be dead soon. No, stay alive, must stay alive. Am alive, will stay alive. Alive.
Her thoughts went wandering back to the early days, and their enthusiasm - their zeal. She saw in her mind, like a snapshot secretly taken, Gerry and herself by the dock just after arriving, behind them the ropes and containers of Environ equipment and supplies, and the bow of the ancient-looking junk, `Java Star', brought back into service because of carbon dioxide restrictions. It could have been centuries ago, but it was only six years. They had both decided to join up and fight in the war together. The girl in the mental photo seemed so naive to her now. She smiled as much as her cracked lips would allow - at the innocence they shared. Now she was dreadfully mature of course, and about to die.
The position they were to assault was two hundred and fifty miles west of the Darling River Valley; the closest town a thousand miles away. It was a two hundred mile swathe in the shadow of a large ridge, selected by Environ leaders as a good proposition reclamation site. Scientists were convinced the Indian Ocean Dipole was going to return to negative with significantly cooler water off Western Australia and warmer water to the north of the continent. This encouraged winds that carried rain-bearing cloud. At the very least a neutral evaluation was expected this year. Most agreed though, over the next ten years at least, the area would enjoy increasing levels of rainfall. The opportunity existed to grab something back from the desert. There was theoretical talk of the inland sea returning, and if this was so, the trees they were planting, in the future, might stand upon its shore. The shade of the ridge, the bonus of liquid run off, the relative closeness of the river water through irrigation pipe to the site, made it a good prospect. If the site could be reclaimed, they could isolate the desert between them and the river which occasionally ran. Slowly over years and with care they could regain it all - inherit the Earth. She did not think it was idealistic at the time, nor had she any conception of the events which were to shake the organisation, or how they would be affected.
There were ten members of the team altogether, although Gerry and she always worked as a smaller unit. They used a mixture of old and new technology and everything went well at first. Propagation frequency was excellent and as for the species selection, the first two, a strain of Melaleuca and one of Casuarina, seemed to thrive in the nurturpods. Each nurturpod contained its own initial water and nutrient supply. The rate of supply and concentration could be adjusted to plant needs and climatic conditions, as could the rate of protective decay; weanlng the plant from the nurturpod’s assistance and hardening it to the local environment. Eventually the nurturpod itself would fall away and decay, being mainly made of reconstituted waste. The electronic components would be collected and recycled.
From the gibber desert they laboriously gathered larger stones which were stacked in a circle around each nurturpod. During the night, what surface vapour there was, condensed about the stones, aiding the moistening of the earth around the young tree. As the trees grew the stones would be pushed aside, becoming shelter and ballast for the roots from the sun, wind and soil erosion. When the trees matured, members of the team came back and cut off the lower branches and laid them down the slope for the same reason.
They set a fast pace getting in approximately four and a half to five thousand plants a month, before moving on to the next group. Then they would return to the previous patch for early growth attendance. Thus they progressed across the side of the ridge, planting an all time annual record of forty two thousand trees, a feat which they never bettered. The next year the weather was not as amenable, and they were held up several times as they ran out of nurturpods, and waited months for resupply by air. The pipe they laid from the river did not run with water during the dry season. The hydrogen accumulators, the only other source of water, often broke down. Their capacity was over-estimated in any case. They lost over five thousand plants because of these factors, the second year. The third year was much the same, and it was not until the fourth and fifth years they made real progress, establishing another fifty three thousand trees.
Looking after plants manually, long after their nurturpods disintegrated, became the bulk of their duties, but still they moved on, pushing themselves to the limit of their physical endurance. Each day they would work like slaves to the almighty leaf and each night they would sleep like logs. They lived in the climate creeper; a propagation lab on tracks, to minimise exposure to the radiation of the daylight hours. Only this last year had they faltered. Rainfall was non-existent and the sparseness of earlier years returned. Ground cover, flourishing for season after season, died off to brown splinters that crunched beneath the feet as the weather went into what they hoped was a temporary relapse. The water in the line from the river was only a trickle due to other parts further up country also being affected by the lack of rainfall. Most of the water went to keeping the existing forest alive. They fully expected rain to fall during onset of summer as the low depressions invaded the continent from the North West driving rain down from the tropical climes. It did not come to pass.
They began strict rationing of water and six of the team members wisely decided they would lessen the load on supplies and left for greener pastures. That left Michael and Vanya, Gerry and herself to look after the requirements of the new forest.
They moved camp into the shade of the oldest stand of saplings. At night in the shadow of their successful charges they would bolster their spirits by reiterating the premise that the most important thing was not the number of trees planted, but that some survive, secure a foothold on the desert, however small and tenuous. This meant week after week decisions needed to be made for the greater good. Some trees sacrificed, so others might survive. During the twilight hours they trekked out to the limit of their shrinking domain, checking drip lines, trimming where possible to reduce expiration and collecting plant litter for reuse as protective mulch. Each day brought new heartache as they saw one after another of their cherished young plants, the once thriving products of their labour, shrivel and die under the merciless onslaught of the sun.
Early December, in an analysis of the river water, Gerry discovered what he suspected was a mutant form of blue algae, and from that time on they drank only the water they recycled from their own bodies and caught by the condensation traps at night. One night, Michael told them he had done a sounding of the basin below and there were good indicators of sub-surface water approximately fifteen metres down trapped in a lens of clay. Gerry got in touch with Environ HQ to see if they could arrange drilling equipment. Environ had not forgotten about them, he was told, but there were too many higher priority projects at the moment to provide any assistance. For one, they had taken over ocean algae sowing from the UN, a huge exercise on-going since the first Green War. In addition they were pouring funds into new satellite monitoring. Michael contacted the massive geo-electric plants near Alice and Birdsville, who agreed to supply equipment on loan, but it would take them six months to disengage and transport to their location, if transport could be arranged at all.
The four of them knew if only they could get to the sub-surface water, the security of the project would be assured. Fifteen metres was a long way down, but in their frame of mind, it seemed so close they could almost taste it. They decided two would maintain the trees while the other two went out onto the basin and began digging a well. They would rotate a month at a time. Lots were drawn and Gerry and she won the wishing well - Gerry's little joke. Their experience of the country should have told them better, but after all the setbacks and disappointments of the last years, the idea of a new water source was such a cause for hope, they probably could not have gone on without risking it.
They travelled seven kilometres before they reached a site the sensor indicated was propitious. The clay reservoir was only twelve metres below the surface. Looking back up the valley, it appeared to be an ancient river bed, almost indiscernible in the baked and eroded plain. It explained the sensor’s register of conglomerate between them and the precious liquid.
They believed the maps which described the ground as medium density conglomerate, until they started to excavate. The basin floor was composed of stones ranging from a granule up to the size of a football, all suspended in deep red clay, compressed and baked hard for centuries in the searing radiation until a solid mass, only slightly less resistant than actual stone. She remembered trying to turn the first spade load and jarring her leg as the spade hit earth and refused to enter, leaving an indentation only a couple of centimetres deep in the dust.
Gerry grabbed a pick and began breaking up the surface. They both knew it was not going to be easy. The heat was so intense, and the atmosphere so oppressive, they only worked in ten minute periods; any longer risked physical collapse. The shelter they erected over the excavation was an insulating thermo-repellent fabric thrown over a framework of old split agpipe. As the hole deepened, the excavated earth formed mounds on either side. These were used to fashion a gantry for hauling earth up in a container on a cable, and also provided more shelter from the incapacitating rays.
At the end of the first two weeks the hole was a metre square and about two metres deep. They were worn out and looked forward to the respite offered by a spell amongst their much loved green forest.
The days of the following two weeks flowed together in a rhythm of work, sweat, sleep and aching muscles. The continual heat was debilitating and they found their physical condition deteriorating as their weakened bodies called on stored energy reserves. The lengthy trip back up to the ridge was torturous. Gerry told her he did not think anyone could survive it repeatedly. They knew must return at least twice to complete the well. He thought it would have been better to stay at the excavation site and conserve their energy. There was a case for moving the climate creeper to the site until the well was completed and the project was out of jeopardy. They decided to discuss it with Vanya and Michael, when ahead, obscured, but magnified by the heat haze rising from the ochre-red slope, she saw something glinting. As they went further they saw it was radiation bouncing off the silver crown of an enthrosuit helmet, and a body was stretched out face down in the hot red dust. Michael.
Gerry squatted, rolled him over and checked his neck pulse.
“He’s dead,” said Gerry, as if to convince himself.
For her, the glassy eyes staring up at nothing, was enough, but then her intuition told her he was dead the moment she saw him.
Gerry ran his hands over the body looking for a tear or rupture. “All the suit’s reservoirs are bone dry.”
She walked around the corpse. “Gerry, look at his feet.”
Gerry came around to where she was standing. The terrain soles were missing. Each enthrosuit came with a selection of soles for varying terrains and surfaces that fitted onto the base of the foot, and which could be removed when not required, or for replacement.
“I can see skin - what the hell was he thinking?"
“Maybe Vanya can tell us,” she answered.
They gathered stones and stacked them around and over Michael’s body until completely covered. In respectful silence they walked on. Michael had been a real character, a bit of a joker, always the cheerful one, the helpful one - how he doted on Vanya. Vanya would be in despair at his death and she wasn't looking forward to telling her. Perhaps Gerry would do it. She knew he would, if she asked him, but it was her duty really.
As they neared the site they knew something was wrong. Equipment and the furniture they used in the evening were strewn about.
“Vanya! Vanya! It's me, Gerry and me. Vanya are you there! Vanya!” They walked towards the climate creeper. Through several huge slashes in the fabric of the wall they saw Vanya's turned out feet.
“Vanya?” They entered the creeper through the opening. At the sight of her slumped body they both immediately turned away. Vanya was sunk to the floor, her back resting against the nutrient store. She was gripping the hilt of a large knife protruding from her solar plexus. Her head and shoulders were bent over the knife as if, like some dutiful concubine, she committed hara kiri.
She held onto Gerry tightly. “What’s going on Gerry? This is horrible."
He bent down and attempted to push Vanya's head back, but rigor mortis had set in, and it wouldn't budge. The climate creeper, although damaged, would have still slowed the rate of putrification for some days until the air conditioning burnt out. He stood up to catch his breath. “Why on Earth would Vanya kill herself? It's like they were both possessed or something."
The clue came while they were laying her to rest. They carved out a shallow oval in the earth to meet Vanya’s awkward form as neither of them could bear to break her limbs. Pushing Vanya’s body into the grave they caught sight of her grim contorted face; the lips stretched back revealing her teeth and gums.
She turned her head away, not able to bear looking at Vanya in that state.
“There’s blue fibre stuck to the bottom of her teeth, and there's specks of blue in the corner of her mouth.”
“Oh, Gerry . . ." She wanted Vanya at peace quickly, covered up so as to allow the picture of the friend she had known in life to return.
“I think that's it, Lorraine. Her enthrosuit has a small tear in the sleeve. I think she was drinking the river water. It sent her crazy."
“Blue algae.”
That Vanya and Michael were martyrs to the cause and would become one with the Earth they loved was the only consolation Lorraine could eke out from the mother lode of grief. For six long years they had fought the war, suffered all sorts of privations and hardships, experienced the pain of clinging onto the cliff edge of life, continually struggling for a better grip, all for what they believed was right and necessary. She remembered stepping out of the putrid air of the creeper, out into the freshening cooler air of early evening and looking up into the burgeoning canopy and being reminded what it was all for.
Later that night, she and Gerry tried to reconstruct events. The best they could come up with was Vanya tearing her suit and losing the majority of her water reserve before she could repair it. Being Vanya, she kept it from Michael so as not to jeopardise his life, because they all were existing on unsupplemented water. Stupidly, she drank river water. If only she had told Michael; together they might have found some way of replenishing her supply. Perhaps they could have collected enough through transpiration bags. By the state of the campsite something violent had happened and they speculated Vanya had truly gone crazy and chased Michael with the knife, finally scaring him out into the desert towards them, without his soles. Completely mad, or in unbearable pain, alone, Vanya ended it all. Or perhaps, Michael also drinking the river water, acted of his own accord.
Lorraine sighed heavily and felt the being inside her stir in response. Quiet darling, quiet. Oh Gerry! Gerry I wish you were here, Gerry. Out above the desert sands where the air glowed with reflected radiation, she saw a form, an outline walking toward her, stumbling now and again. The closer he got the more distinctive, familiar, the gait became. Gerry, she was sure of it. She sat up a little. Thank God. She was overcome with relief. After all this time, there he is. She watched him coming toward her for a long time, but he never got any closer, and then the twilight came, and he disappeared. With the onset of the cool night air her senses returned, and she remembered; he was dead too.
After they buried Vanya, they surveyed the state of the trees. Some of them in the fringe zones were extremely stressed and close to dying. They spent the next two days clearing the drip lines and laying more pipe, so that more trees were served. Even if only some moisture got through on a regular basis, maybe they could save most of them, until they got the well going. They must survive, otherwise everything they worked to achieve would be worthless - Michael's and Vanya's lives given up for nothing. On the evening of the second day they collected what equipment and supplies they could carry, and because the climate creeper was out of action, headed back to the excavation on foot.
If only they had known. She cupped her arm around her stomach and rocked slowly from side to side. But I did know, or suspected. But she couldn't tell Gerry and stop him doing what they were both supposed to be doing; fighting the war, not adding to the problem. As the pregnancy advanced she felt ever more guilt. Fortunately, the enthrosuit was elastic enough to accommodate the both of them, and eventually at about four months to communicate her condition to Gerry. She knew he was immediately struck with the responsibility; giving life could be no simple thing to Gerry. He didn't criticise or rebuke her, or get angry at her for the position it put them in, but he was straight to it, practical on what needed to be done. The well needed to be completed long before originally planned; this was the first priority, he told her. He became like a madman, slaving down the pit twelve to fourteen hours at a time. Often there would be no tug on the line to pull up the container of earth, and by the snores echoing up to her she knew that, completely exhausted, he was asleep at the bottom. At these times she would curl up in what shadow there was and rest, until she heard him calling impatiently from the pit to raise the container again, as if there had been no interlude at all. Across her lips crept a little smile.
She opened her eyes. Night was falling, and with the retreat of the sun came the cold. How long been here? Lost track. A full moon tonight shared the sky with the death star as it sank, gilding the rubble undulations of the red plain. She stretched behind her and took hold of a satchel which she placed on her stomach before opening. From it she retrieved a small foil-enclosed snack called Johnson’s Mana; a protein-enriched, vitamin-packed, fibre-filled, dehydrated meal. The preparation instructions were for it to be simmered in hot water, for she could not remember how long. Lacking water, she was eating them dry. They tasted like a cross between fruit salad, spaghetti, and wheat flakes, and they were incredibly hard to swallow. Eating was a slow process and accompanied by pain, as her constricted intestines strained to digest the barely glutinous mass. It upset the baby and she was so sorry, for the death and pain she had caused, and for that to come. She ran her hand across her abdomen. Not fair of me to bring a child into the world; to create something, only for it to die. Not fair to Gerry either. Never have need give me his water if . . . If only . . .
A strong wind started to blow and she sealed her mouth piece completely from the sand, and closed the eye flaps, so she was completely sealed from the outside environment. She lay in darkness listening to the wind-blown sand buffeting the exterior of her suit in waves. She was so alone. I am going to die. Oh God. Be calm. Be calm. The sand against the enthrosuit became over the hours a rhythm that absorbed her remaining consciousness, and in this way she eventually escaped her hallucinations and fell into a deep defensive sleep, numb to the protests of her starving body.
She awoke, with the stirring of the little one within her to the morning heat on the exterior of the enthrosuit. She unsealed the eye and mouth flaps and sucked in a breath of the fleeing night air. The sun was already high and it would be another three hours before the structure of the collapsed gantry offered her any shade. She squirmed under the deadly rays and attempted to push further into the mound of excavated earth. Over the months she had carved out a decent hollow in Mother Earth. The day’s heat was retained in the stones she mounded up around her, and during the day they shielded her a little from the intensity of the radiation. Contemplation of the progress of this daily simple physical principle was one of the things she focused on to keep her sane.
She groaned, and rolled to one side and back again to relieve the pressure from the hard ground. Her whole body ached. Each day she was surprised at the persistence for life her body expressed. On her own summation of her chances, she would have died long ago. She took a small sip of water from a straw at the side of her mouthpiece. As usual it was warm and tasted terrible. Her mouth was so foul even the purest water would taste bad. She could not remember the taste of sweet pure water, though every pore of her body cried out for it - to shower, to be cleansed, to swallow great mouthfuls, to drown in its cool embrace.
Water, her mind dwelt on a cool pond deep in the shade of trees fed by a trickling creek. The sound ran about inside her skull, gurgling and bubbling over moss covered rock, before dropping off over a singing waterfall. Midst the rapture of the song it sang she swooned, raising a puff of red dust as her head hit the earth.
* * *
© Brian Armour 2009
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