Except that of survival.
If you thrust a toll highway through the centre of endemism, the great botanical marvel, n'swebu, and you gouge ten million tons of heavy minerals and eight million tons of ilmenite from the sea-sculpted landscape of sand dunes, isn't that the morality of survival. Isn't that to industrialise? And isn't industrialisation, exploitation (it's termed that only in its positive meaning) of our rich resources, for the development of the economy, the uplift of the poor. What is survival if not the end of poverty. It's been pledged at the third inauguration of democratic government: the end of poverty. And if Abel has to be thrown from the nest by Cain; isn't that for a greater survival. The eagle allows this to happen, its all-powerful wings cannot prevail against it. Survival. Ten dams for one delta seen from Space. Civilisation goes against nature, that's the credo for what I do, I am. Protect. Preserve. But is that the law of survival. You preserve, Chief, and you're the one who trusts nature? Co-existence in nature is limited brutally – Cain throws Abel out of the nest – among creatures of which we're an animal species. Knowledge come in the quarantine of the childhood garden that perhaps whatever civilisation does to destroy nature, nature will find its solution in a measure of time we don't have (the pamphlet informs that this area was a sea, uncountable time before the rocks were pushed upward), that knowledge doesn't go far enough. A cop-out. Civilisation as you see it in your opposition of nature to the Australians' mining, the ten dams in the Okavango – it's child's play, a fantasy, when you admit the pragmatism in nature. No use returning to the photograph reproduced of the piece of fluff, morsel of life that is Abel, and looking for a solution.
The family outing is over. Monday the four-wheel drive back to the wilderness with Derek, Thapelo, according to the week's plan of research to which there is never a final solution, ever. That's the condition on which the work goes on, will go on. Phambili.
Benni was approaching, in her face the questioning brightness of one who has been wondering where he's got to. Berenice's had enough of nature, then, is coming to suggest they go home.
But when up the rock she reaches him, she says nothing. Their attention is attracted by an intense shadow above the trees whose lighter shade and sunlight break up the solid outlines of his face and body and hers. The grand stunt of the eagles, there, maybe the courting display described in the pamphlet.
The eagles have lifted away to their higher altitudes. The branches obscure viewing.
She has taken a step down, from him, backwards.
– Paul -
A signal for him to follow; he hands her the pamphlet, souvenir.
– I'm pregnant. Another child. -
– How did that happen. -
She shakes her head tenderly, in guilt. It's not because she tried another man, the cruelty he sees, of that solution. – I didn't tell you, but I haven't been taking any precaution. -
– So. For how long. – If the roving cells had continued to survive in his body, they could have disappeared by now, the pilot light of deadly radiance that he believed pursued them, could have gone out.
– Only the last two months. -
– So. What do you want to do. -
– Want to tell you. -
'So': it means there is an alternative he wants, abortion.
If Berenice would crumple into tears, effective in TV imagist resolution of confrontation, Benni waited steadily, only her hands came up, the fingers interlaced and her chin rested on this fist of – supplication, defiance.
He did not jump down to embrace her he stretched out his hand the palm wide the fingers spaced and curved and her hand came from support of her face to meet his grasp as if she were to be pulled from a foundering boat or a landfall.
Not an epiphany, life moves more slowly and inexorably than any belief in that. Except there's the question of why she chose that moment and place to announce herself. Well. Did she think, was she given courage (what a bastard to have said, Get yourself another man), the telling of the abortion of Abel from the nest made time and place propitiate, for the right perception.
Lyndsay was told. A sibling for Nicholas. Although he was not so much an only child now that Klara was – an unexpected form of relationship, unnamed, as she had been. Lyndsay herself doesn't define it, the child has not been taught to call her mama, or should it be grandma – that's the question but not a problem: she's Lyndsay to the child, and this doesn't undermine authority; or what looks like love, apparently.
Benni is overwhelmingly energetic, working in her advancing position at the Agency to take advantage of the improvement in the economy, as beautiful as ever, the face above the thickening body. When gestation is over (difficult not to think in terms of the vocabulary familiar for the other mammals that should be saved from extinction) will be the time to judge. If what is born is not affected, mutated in some way by sperm spurted from a body that had emanated radiance. Only then. In the meantime have to trust. What? Benni's instinct. Her contribution to starting over in a new state of existence. She has had a scan which reveals the curled-up foetus has male genitals already formed. A son. Be able to think of this being as a son when other things have been verified. You can be guilty of what you were not responsible for. Derek and Thapelo are congratulatory when they notice, on Sunday lunch invitations, the mound his wife carries under her flowing robe (Berenice's flair has taken to African dress as most attractive, in her present shape). Their jubilation – did they think a man wouldn't be able to make it after the state of quarantine – is infectious, it calls for a few beers Thapelo contributes to be enjoyed with rations in the wilderness. Nickie's hand is taken by his mother and placed on her belly; your little brother's waiting in there. He won't be as big as me. Everyone laughs at the premature one-upmanship. But there is a gleaming joy of curiosity and anticipation that may be what will banish for good the fingers forced from the iron gate, Daddy! Paul! Klara hears she too will have a little brother. Why not? A family has to be constituted for one who has none. She has been introduced to Jacqueline, the one of Paul's sisters who lives in the city, not Brazil or on an ostrich farm. Jacqueline's adolescent daughters make a great fuss of the little girl, putting bangles on her arms and bows on her dreadlocks. Likely Lyndsay may have told the prospective grandfather of the new addition expected by his son, in one of the occasional letters to Stavanger. No response to Paul and Benni, from there. If the father writes to her, the mother doesn't bring letters to the family, any more; the absence is not noted, perhaps not noticed, Klara and Nickie are playing a wild game, friends are expected. Lyndsay has sat for the first time in her judge's robes, at her elevation in court. If she's mentioned that, tie must be allowed to be proud of her. Still.
Lyndsay came with a letter again one day, without the accompanying happening of the child, and after calling to ask if he was alone. Yes, his wife Benni couldn't forego a promotional cocktail party which Berenice should host despite the hard swell under the beaded African robe that announced, in medical jargon, her term was approaching.
His mother ignored Nickie watching the children's television programme he demanded with Benni's inherited charm. Taking it out of a courier's plastic packet she, once more, gave over the letter. The son found the envelope unopened – uncomprehending, ready to be irritated, what's this for, Ma, looked away from her. The address: the writing unfamiliar.