Teranesia by Greg Egan Read Free Book Online Page B

act before he changed his mind. When he reached the butterfly hut, he didn’t hesitate: he slid
     the bolt open in one smooth motion. But when he began gently pushing the door, the whole fibreglass panel squeaked alarmingly,
     picking up the vibrations as its bottom edge scraped across the floor. He knew at once how to remedy this – the door to the
     kitchen made the same kind of noise – but he remained frozen for several heartbeats, listening for a sound from his parents’
     hut. Then he steeled himself and flung the door open; the panel flexed enough to gain the necessary clearance, and there was
     nothing but the sigh of moving air.
    Prabir had seen most of the inside of the hut through the windows, by daylight, but he’d never had reason to commit the layout
     to memory. He stood in the doorway, waiting to see how well his eyes would adapt. Anywhere else it would have barely mattered;
     he could have marched in blindfolded. ‘This is my island,’ he whispered. ‘You had no right to keep me out.’ Even as he said
     the words, he knew they were dishonest – he’d never actually resented the fact that the butterfly hut was out of bounds –
     but having stumbled on the lame excuse, he clung to it.
    A patch of floor a metre or so ahead of him was grey with starlight, preceded by what he guessed to be his own shadow, unrecognisably
     faint and diffuse. The darkness beyond remained impenetrable. Switching on the light would be madness; there were no blinds
     or shutters for the windows, the whole kampung would be lit up. He might as well wave a torch in his father’s face.
    He stepped into the hut. Groping around with outstretched arms would have been a recipe for sending glassware flying; he advanced
     slowly with one hand in front of him, just abovewaist height, close to his body. He inched forward for what seemed like minutes without touching anything, then his fingers
     struck Formica-coated particle board. It was the stuff of all their furniture: his own desk, the table they ate from. Unless
     he’d veered wildly off course, this was the main bench that ran along the length of the hut, not quite bisecting it. He glanced
     over his shoulder; he appeared to have walked straight in. The grey afterimage of the doorway took forever to fade, and when
     it did he could still see nothing ahead of him. He turned to the left and walked beside the bench, his right hand brushing
     the side of the benchtop, the left on guard for obstacles.
    After sidestepping a stool and a chair on castors, Prabir came to a patch of starlight falling on the bench from one of the
     windows. He moved his right hand tentatively into the faint illumination, complicating the already baffling shadows and hints
     of surfaces. He touched cool metal, slightly rough and curved. A microscope. He could smell the grease on the focusing rack-and-pinion;
     it was a distinctive odour, summoning memories.
His father propping him up on a stool so he could peer into a microscope, back in Calcutta. Showing him the scales on the
     butterfly’s wings, glinting like tiny emerald prisms
. Prabir’s stomach tightened until he could taste acid, but that only strengthened his resolve. The worse he felt about doing
     this, the more necessary it seemed.
    He pictured the daylight view through the window. He’d seen his father hunched over the microscope; he knew where he was now,
     and where he needed to go. Opening a cage full of adults in the dark would be asking for trouble; he could hardly expect to
     find their bodies by touch without waking them, and even if none escaped, their wings were easily damaged. The larvae were
     covered with sharp bristles and spurted a malodorous brown irritant. He could probably have overcome his reluctance to touch
     them – they were only caterpillars, after all; it wouldn’t be like thrusting his handinto a cage full of scorpions – but he’d seen the kind of stains the irritant left on his father’s skin. He’d be hard