The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

take me fifteen years to tell you,’ Tallis rejoined. ‘I like the empty hills and the dead lakes.’

      I murmured some comment, and aware that I wasn’t satisfied he suddenly scooped a handful of grey sand off the seat, held it up and let it sift away through his fingers. ‘Prime archezoic loam. Pure bedrock. Spit on it and anything might happen. Perhaps you’ll understand me if I say I’ve been waiting for it to rain.’

      ‘Will it?’

      Tallis nodded. ‘In about two million years, so someone who came here told me.’

      He said it with complete seriousness.

      

      During the next few days, as we checked the stores and equipment inventories and ran over the installation together, I began to wonder if Tallis had lost his sense of time. Most men left to themselves for an indefinite period develop some occupational interest: chess or an insoluble dream-game or merely a compulsive wood-whittling. But Tallis, as far as I could see, did nothing. The cabin, a three-storey drum built round a central refrigerating column, was spartan and comfortless. Tallis’s only recreation seemed to be staring out at the volcano jungle. This was an almost obsessive activity – all evening and most of the afternoon he would sit up on the lounge deck, gazing out at the hundreds of extinct cones visible from the observatory, their colours running the spectrum from red to violet as the day swung round into night.

      The first indication of what Tallis was watching for came about a week before he was due to leave. He had crated up his few possessions and we were clearing out one of the small storage domes near the telescope. In the darkness at the back, draped across a pile of old fans, track links and beer coolers, were two pedal-powered refrigerator suits, enormous unwieldy sacks equipped with chest pylons and hand-operated cycle gears.

      ‘Do you ever have to use these?’ I asked Tallis, glumly visualizing what a generator failure could mean.

      He shook his head. ‘They were left behind by a survey team which did some work out in the volcanoes. There’s an entire camp lying around in these sheds, in case you ever feel like a weekend on safari.’

      Tallis was by the door. I moved my flashlight away and was about to switch it off when something flickered up at me from the floor. I stepped over the debris, searched about and found a small circular aluminium chest, about two feet across by a foot deep. Mounted on the back was a battery pack, thermostat and temperature selector. It was a typical relic of an expensively mounted expedition, probably a cocktail cabinet or hat box. Embossed in heavy gold lettering on the lid were the initials ‘C.F.N.’

      Tallis came over from the door.

      ‘What’s this?’ he asked sharply, adding his flash to mine.

      I would have left the case where it lay, but there was something in Tallis’s voice, a distinct inflection of annoyance, that made me pick it up and shoulder past into the sunlight.

      I cleaned off the dust, Tallis at my shoulder. Keying open the vacuum seals I sprung back the lid. Inside was a small tape recorder, spool racks and a telescopic boom mike that cantilevered three feet up into the air, hovering a few inches from my mouth. It was a magnificent piece of equipment, a single-order job hand-made by a specialist, worth at least £500 apart from the case.

      ‘Beautifully tooled,’ I remarked to Tallis. I tipped the platform and watched it spring gently. ‘The air bath is still intact.’

      I ran my fingers over the range indicator and the selective six-channel reading head. It was even fitted with a sonic trip, a useful device which could be set to trigger at anything from a fly’s foot-fall to a walking crane’s.

      The trip had been set; I wondered what might have strayed across it when I saw that someone had anticipated me. The tape between the spools had been ripped out, so roughly that one spool had been torn off its bearings. The rack was empty, and the two frayed tabs hooked to the spool axles were the only pieces of tape left.

      ‘Somebody was in a hurry,’ I said aloud. I depressed the lid and polished the initials with my fingertips. ‘This must have belonged to one of the members of the survey. C. F. N. Do you want to send it on to him?’

      Tallis watched me pensively. ‘No. I’m afraid the two members of the team died here. Just over a year ago.’

      

      He told me about the incident. Two Cambridge geologists had negotiated through the Institute for Tallis’s help in establishing a camp ten miles out in the volcano jungle, where they intended to work for a year, analysing the planet’s core materials. The cost of bringing a vehicle to Murak was prohibitive, so Tallis had transported all the equipment to the camp site and set it up for them.

      ‘I arranged to visit them once a month with power packs, water and supplies. The first time everything seemed all right. They were both over sixty, but standing up well to the heat. The camp and laboratory were running smoothly, and they had a small transmitter they could have used in an emergency.

      ‘I saw them three times altogether. On my fourth visit they had vanished. I estimated that they’d been missing for about a week. Nothing was wrong. The transmitter was working, and there was plenty of water and power. I assumed they’d gone out collecting samples, lost themselves and died quickly in the first noon high.’

      ‘You never found the bodies?’

      ‘No. I searched for them, but in the volcano jungle the contours of the valley floors shift from hour to hour. I notified the Institute and two months later an inspector flew in from Ceres and drove out to the site with me. He certified the deaths, told me to dismantle the camp and store it here. There were a few personal things, but I’ve heard nothing from any friends or relatives.’

      ‘Tragic,’ I commented. I closed the tape recorder and carried it into the shed. We walked back to the cabin. It was an hour to noon, and the parabolic sun bumper over the roof was a bowl of liquid fire.

      I said to Tallis: ‘What on earth were they hoping to catch in the volcano jungle? The sonic trip was set.’

      ‘Was it?’ Tallis shrugged. ‘What are you suggesting?’

      ‘Nothing. It’s just curious. I’m surprised there wasn’t more of an investigation.’

      ‘Why? To start with, the fare from Ceres is £800, over £3000 from Earth. They were working privately. Why should anyone waste time and money doubting the obvious?’

      I wanted to press Tallis for detail, but his last remark seemed to close the episode. We ate a silent lunch, then went out on a tour of the solar farms, replacing burnt-out thermo-couples. I was left with a vanished tape, two deaths, and a silent teasing suspicion that linked them neatly together.

      Over the next days I began to watch Tallis more closely, waiting for another clue to the enigma growing around him.

      I did learn one thing that astonished me.

      I had asked him about his plans for the future; these were indefinite – he said something vague about a holiday, nothing he anticipated with any eagerness, and sounded as if he had given no thought whatever to his retirement. Over the last few days, as his departure time drew closer, the entire focus of his mind became fixed upon the volcano jungle; from dawn until late into the night he sat quietly in his chair, staring out at the ghostless panorama of disintegrating cones, adrift in some private time sea.

      ‘When are you coming back?’ I asked with an attempt at playfulness, curious why he was leaving Murak at all.

      He took the question seriously. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be. Fifteen years is long enough, just about the limit of time one can spend continuously in a single place. After that one gets institutionalized –’

      ‘Continuously?’ I broke in. ‘You’ve had your leaves?’

      ‘No, I didn’t bother. I was busy here.’

      ‘Fifteen years!’ I shouted. ‘Good God, why? In this of all places! And what do you mean, “busy”? You’re just