TE KENEHI TUARUA

Tane turned the outside lights on for a while to watch the fish at play, twittering around beneath the ceiling of the cave. They fascinated him.

It had been three days.

Three days since the wild ride down Hobson Street in the runaway fire engine. Three days since his brother had given up his own life for his. Three days since the end of the world.

No, not the end of the world. Just the beginning of the end of mankind.

There were millions, billions, of life-forms on the planet Earth, this tiny rock hurtling around the sun. But the human species was the one that had overstepped the mark. Pushed the boundaries a little too much. Tried to conquer and dominate that which could be neither conquered nor dominated.

Pride cometh before a fall, they said, and mankind certainly had had pride. Building monuments and civilizations that they thought would last forever, yet were just a pinprick in the long roll of fabric that was the history of the planet.

Three days, and he had spent most of them sleeping, according to Rebecca, who had somehow cared for him, despite grievous injuries of her own. Concussion, she thought, but she wasn’t a doctor, so who could really know.

She wasn’t a doctor, and neither was Tane. There soon would be no more doctors. Nor lawyers, nor stockbrokers, nor movie stars, nor presidents.

The view from the periscope camera was always the same. Endless banks of white fog, stretching in all directions.

By now it might have covered the whole of the country. Perhaps already made its start toward Australia. The Pacific Islands, and on to the coast of South America.

They’d try to stop it. They might even get better and better at fighting it. But it was too big. Too hungry. And there wasn’t enough time.

There was good news, though. Rebecca’s arm had regained a little bit of movement. She still couldn’t walk, but she could feel her toes again, so that indicated that her system was slowly recovering from the tentacles of the antibodies.

Not Fatboy, though. There was no coming back from what had got him.

         

Rebecca smiled up at Tane from the bunk as he entered with a can of Diet Coke.

“There you go,” he said, handing it to her one good arm. “Ready for some exercise?”

“What do you have in mind?” Rebecca smiled.

“I thought a little aerobics, maybe followed by some kickboxing, and a little mountain biking to round it all off.”

She laughed.

Tane said, “Or we could just do the stretching exercises, like yesterday.”

Xena flipped herself down from the topmost bunk as Tane grasped Rebecca’s right ankle and bent her knee, pushing her ankle up to her backside. He held it there for a moment, then repeated the process on the other leg.

“Progress,” he said cheerfully. “You were helping a bit that time. I could feel it.”

She smiled again. “Every day it gets a little better. I don’t think it’s a permanent thing.”

“Thank God.”

“Indeed.”

He stretched and bent her right leg a few more times.

Rebecca said wistfully, “I had my whole life mapped out, you know. Ever since I was twelve. I knew what university I wanted to go to, what I was going to major in. Where I was going to work. Everything like that. But life kept changing things. First my dad died. But after a while I thought I could cope with that and still stick to my plans. Then there was that thing with Mum. But I was on top of that, too, I thought.”

Tane thought he caught a glimpse of a tear, but nothing more.

She said, “Then all this happened. Now nothing is the same. Nothing is ever going to be the same.”

Tane changed legs. “Not me. I didn’t know where I’d be, one year ahead. Most of the time I didn’t know where I’d be one day ahead. But whatever I expected to come from my life, I sure as hell didn’t expect to be sitting on the bottom of a cave in the Hauraki Gulf in a yellow submarine, drinking Diet Coke during the apocalypse.”

Xena grabbed the can out of Rebecca’s hand and wandered off toward the cockpit, chattering happily. She had quite a taste for it, they had discovered.

A brightly colored school of fish surrounded the port-hole for a moment, as if fascinated by what they saw inside. Here, we are the goldfish bowl, Tane thought, but didn’t say it out loud. It took a bit of getting used to, this life under the sea.

“Did we save them?” Rebecca asked. “Do you think?”

Tane smiled and took her hand. “I think we bought them a little time. We slowed down the fog enough to let them evacuate Auckland. But the fog won’t stay still. It’ll keep moving south, and so will the…” He paused, searching for the word.

“Refugees,” Rebecca contributed, and she was right, but it seemed an odd word to be using for the population of Auckland.

“And pretty soon they’ll run out of room to run.”

Rebecca clasped her other hand over his and he felt the tension in her grasp.

“Is there any way to stop it? If only we—”

“I thought we agreed never to say ‘if only.’” Tane forced a smile.

“Yeah, but if only—”

“If only this, if only that. If only we’d done things a little differently, we might have stopped the Chimera Project. You can never say ‘if only.’”

“I know.”

Tane closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get it out of his head. If only…

He looked up to see Rebecca smiling at him.

Tane fingered the patu pounamu hanging from a cord around his neck. He hadn’t remembered grabbing it, but Rebecca had apparently had to prize it out of his fingers after she had got him on board.

“You think we’re supposed to start over?” Tane asked.

She nodded. “I think so. Once it is all over and the clouds of fog have slowly dissipated. Maybe months, maybe years from now. I think we get a new beginning. This time we will do it like your father said, as family with the world around us, not as conquerors of it.”

He took her hand and held it, thinking about her words.

He tried to imagine it but a flood of images kept intruding. Fatboy in the door of the fire engine. His mother and father waving goodbye at the entrance to the Marae. Rebecca’s mother, watching events on her television that were unfolding outside her window.

Xena sat in the corner of the cabin and slurped at her Coke and grinned at him.

“No,” he said finally.

“No?” Rebecca’s eyes were wide, questioning.

“Too many people died,” Tane said. “Too many people died.”

“But Kaitiakitanga,” Rebecca protested. “Building a new race, teaching them to live in peace with the planet…”

“All of that I agree with,” Tane said. “The teachings of the ancestors, the responsibility, the guardianship of all that lies around us. Kaitiakitanga.”

He clasped her hand in both of his.

She said nothing, but he didn’t need her to.

“You asked if there was any way to stop it, and I think there is. Nobody has to die.”

“Nobody has to die.” She twisted the words around in her mouth. “What do you mean?”

“The only way to stop it is to stop it from starting.”

“Stop it from starting?”

She looked at him blankly and he asked, “Where’s that notebook of yours with all the messages in it?”

“It’s in my pocket. Why?”

“Those aren’t the messages we’re going to send.”

She caught her breath, catching on to his meaning. “We change the messages!”

“Nobody has to die,” Tane said. “If we change the messages, we can change the past.”

“If we change the past,” Rebecca breathed, “we change the future!”

“Our present.” Tane smiled. “We can change our now.”

“Then nobody has to die. Not Fatboy, not your mum and dad, my mum. Not even Zeta.”

“Not even Zeta.” Tane smiled. “I’m not sure about Grandad, though.”

Rebecca laughed, and said, “Just when I was getting used to the idea of being stuck in a submarine with you for the rest of my life.”

Tane laughed, but then his face grew serious. “But we can’t make the same mistakes we did last time.”

He paused and looked her straight in the eye before continuing. “So this time…let’s get it right.”