Kirindy Mitea, Madagascar
BY THIS POINT, Malcolm was in such a ferocious mood nearly all the time that no one but Ross McKay and Shapiro—and Dylan Connell, but only to get instructions—would go near him.
Even as he found himself cracking the whip, using words he’d picked up in a lifetime among people who didn’t care what came out of their mouths, he felt regretful. Even a little ashamed.
But not quite enough to stop himself. You didn’t spend two decades dreaming about something and be calm when you were just weeks away from finding out if your hopes were to be realized or dashed. Especially if you had to make a days-long stop on Madagascar. Not if you had a temper—and a tongue—like Malcolm’s.
Fucking Madagascar. Pretty much the only country Malcolm hadn’t visited during his old life, and thus a place he didn’t give two . . . figs . . . about.
But there’d been no choice. Even if it had been feasible to sail directly from Refugia to Lamu, even if the Trey Gilliard’s crew wouldn’t have put him on a waterlogged raft and sent him floating away, even if he wouldn’t have deserved being treated like Captain Bligh . . . the ship, this expedition, had a goal. A purpose.
And the purpose wasn’t to find Chloe. Not just to find Chloe.
They’d made three previous stops on the four-month journey. The one in Kissama, another in what had once been Namibia, and the third in eastern South Africa. Finding, in each case, abundant wildlife ranging from plains game to predators, big (lions) to small (mongooses).
Though virtually no primates anywhere. And no humans, or sign that any humans had been living there since the Fall.
Very few thieves, either—though there were always some, or at least the whiff of them—which had touched off a vociferous debate about how drastic the species’ apparent population crash had been. It was the kind of argument that, having no possible resolution, could keep otherwise bored, shipbound scientists occupied for weeks, on and off.
Only count Malcolm out. He couldn’t have cared less. He just wanted to get on with it.
Especially once they made it halfway up the east coast of Africa, making it feel like they were just a stone’s throw from his destination. Madagascar? He could have flown from Antananarivo to Lamu in, what, six hours? He could have been there by tonight, if he still had his old Piper. If he still lived in a world with airplanes.
Fuck.
But here they were instead, at anchor, not going anywhere, trekking instead around a godforsaken blasted patch of some island he’d never had the slightest desire to visit. A place so famous for its wildlife, its lemurs, that every square inch of it had been so exhaustively studied and analyzed and, in the way of the Last World, fought over, that even Trey Gilliard himself had had no use for it. One of the most famous wild places on earth, Madagascar, but to Trey—and therefore to Malcolm—it had been more like a zoo.
But not now. Not here. Not in this world. So here they were, and for at least two days.
Fuck.
* * *
WHILE MALCOLM FELT like a grumpy little kid, wanting to do nothing but kick rocks across the dusty ground (and there were plenty of rocks to choose from, and plenty of dust, too), the rest of the crew seemed to be fascinated by the bizarre environment of this dry and spiky corner of the island.
Everyone, but especially Ross McKay, who’d been anticipating this shore leave since the journey began. In truth, they’d stopped here for him because back in the Last World, Ross’s specialty had been lemurs.
Those primitive primates, whose strange shapes, faces, and habits had made them familiar worldwide, had been found in only one place—Madagascar—so Ross had spent about half his adult life on the island. Including this part, Kirindy Mitea, a national park he’d helped establish.
It looked like Mars to Malcolm. Mars’s rubbish tip. Plains of red and white sand, held together with the slightest fringe of coarse grass and bordered by the occasional bottle-shaped baobab tree and a forest of bare-branched, scrubby trees so spiky with thorns that it was a miracle anything would choose to live on them.
And, in truth, nothing much did seem to thrive there. Some little birds hopping among the thorns, a couple of dark hawks circling in the hot blue sky, a flock of flamingos they’d startled on the hike up from the beach. And one mammal flashing by: something with stripes and a bushy tail that was either a large squirrel or a small mongoose.
During the first few minutes of their exploration, Kait came walking up. Quiet and pale as ever, and wearing that big floppy shirt she always sported these days, but this time with a hunched, slow-moving lizard with googly eyes perched on her right shoulder.
Ross’s smile looked like it might split his face. “Labord’s chameleon!” he said in a tone of requited love. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Malcolm looked at the scaly, brownish green beast with the stubby horn that looked like a thumb protruding from its nose, and—for about the first time in forever—kept his mouth shut.
* * *
BUT AS ROSS wandered around the plains and forests, his beatific smile began to fade.
“They’re gone,” he said. Then again, “They’re gone.”
Malcolm, walking beside him, felt annoyance as a tingling sensation in his fingers. He was ready to head to a more fertile part of the island, a place with more accessible supplies of freshwater and even some fruit and huntable game. Ready to head on, then move out entirely.
But Ross seemed so sad, so lost, that Malcolm kept his voice patient as he said, “What’re gone?”
“The sifakas,” Ross said.
Malcolm just looked at him. After a moment, Ross frowned, and said, in a tone of uncharacteristic impatience, “Lemurs, Malcolm.”
His eyes shifted to the spiny forests beyond. “This place was full of them the last time I was here. Eight different species, including sifakas, red-tailed sportive lemurs, pale fork-marked lemurs, fat-tailed dwarf lemurs—”
Malcolm was quiet. Scientists had never thought of a stupid name they wouldn’t give to some poor beast.
Ross’s face was a mask of sorrow. “Them, too?”
* * *
A FEW MINUTES later, Darby Callahan came up to them. “Need to show you something.”
Her face held little expression. But there was something about the movement of her eyes, a quick flicker from Malcolm’s face to Ross’s, then back again, that made Malcolm feel cold.
“Oh, no,” Ross said, his voice little more than a breath.
* * *
A THIEF COLONY. The largest thief colony any of them had ever seen.
No. The largest former thief colony any of them had ever seen. Because it was empty, abandoned, and looked like it had been for months, if not years.
A ghost town. A ghost city, comprised of hundreds—maybe thousands—of windblown mounds and half-filled-in burrows spreading across the Mars-surface plain to the scraggly, unwelcoming forest beyond.
Lying amid the spiky grasses that outlined the mounds were bones. The weathered, bleached bones of uncountable mammals. Ribs and pelvises and femurs and tibias proportionately much longer than a monkey’s or human’s. Long finger and toe bones. And, scattered everywhere, strange sloping skulls with oddly foreshortened snouts and giant eyeholes.
So many different sizes. So many different species.
Even though he’d never seen a lemur skeleton before, Malcolm didn’t have to ask to know what he was looking at.
He looked around and saw that everyone else knew as well. Everyone understood.
* * *
ROSS CRIED. HE cried silently, tears dripping down his round cheeks while everyone else looked away awkwardly. Humans being no better in the Next World at dealing with unexpected emotion than they had been in the Last.
Everyone looking away except, surprisingly, for Kait, who’d returned her chameleon to wherever she’d found it and put her arm around Ross’s shoulders and led him away. Back toward the beach, the dinghies, and the waiting ship, with the others gradually following in their path.
Shapiro came up to stand beside Malcolm. Together, they watched the small, disconsolate group, so few and small against the tainted landscape, the sea, the sky.
“No human bones,” Shapiro said.
Malcolm had noticed this, too. “It was a national park,” he said. “Not many people around to start with.”
“True.” Shapiro turned to face him. “What’s your theory? The thieves used up all the hosts, then died out themselves?”
Malcolm shook his head. “Nah, I think they’re too fucking smart and well adapted for that.”
“But they’re all gone.”
“Yeah. Long gone.”
“So,” she said, “where’d they go?”