No, child, El Rey answered.
Mrs Travers stamped her foot. ‘I’m entitled to it,’ she said crossly. ‘If you could give Darwin the gift I should have the same right. And I’m not a child.’
El Rey pondered. Ah well, he began arrogantly, I suppose it will not hurt to tell you what Father Christmas will leave you under the Christmas tree. You may ask your question.
But when Mrs Travers whispered her question into his ear, El Rey was horrified. He gave a roar of such intensity and pain that all who lived in Orbis Terrarium heard it. The sun ceased its passage across the sky. The world stopped still. Then El Rey blinked. I underestimated you, child. It is the same question that Darwin asked me, the most sacred question of all. No inhabitant of Orbis Terrarium, no bird or animal or sea creature, would ever ask it. Only a human would ever dare to ask the unaskable.
‘I demand my answer.’ Mrs Travers compressed her lips.
El Rey nodded. I suppose I will have to promise you what I promised him. And my promise is this: when you are dying, I will come and give you the answer.
‘But I’m dying now!’ Mrs Travers shouted petulantly from her bed. ‘You promised.’
And the voice came sighing from beyond the window. Won’t you release me from it?
‘No,’ Mrs Travers answered grumpily.
Then she gave a small gasp and put her wrinkled and veined hands to her face. ‘But I can’t remember the question now.’
Oh, but I do, El Rey sighed. I remember everything. My cross is to never forget.
IV
At long last, Elliot finally arrived.
He had his little cry with his sisters and dutifully sat by the bedside and looked into Mrs Travers’ eyes. He could never hide anything from her. She saw into his soul, and it wasn’t love she saw there but horror. Was this old woman really his mother? Is this what death looked like? The silly boy was scared. But then he’d always been scared of his own shadow.
‘We will let Mummy go now,’ he said.
With a nod, he consented to the dialysis machine being turned off. How long would it take? Molly insisted that a priest come to administer the last rites.
Such sentimental children.
Half past four, half past four.
There was a fluttering sound and, suddenly, a host of doves and finches settled on the windowsill — and then proceeded to come through and perch on Mrs Travers’ bed.
Are you coming with us now? they chirped.
‘All right,’ she said.
What had Father taught her about the finches? Oh yes, they were another example of Darwin’s theory of adaptive radiation, evolving into thirteen species.
Mrs Travers felt very strange, very strange indeed. She looked around the hospital room and saw that her daughters were there. And who was the male stranger with them? Why, it looked like Father!
The toxins were flooding freely through her body, poisoning her to death. One by one her organs were shutting down. But she was pumped so full of drugs to alleviate the pain that she was passing in and out of consciousness. She felt very queer.
Mrs Travers looked at her children one by one without any sense of emotion: Molly, Kate, Joan and Elliot. She wished they would go home, put up their feet and watch a bit of telly, and leave her to get on with it.
Oh, and now she did feel quite queasy, and her body was starting to itch all over. She was having hot and cold flushes. She felt sluggish, extraordinarily tired, and she was aware of her heart going thunkety-thunk and the blood banging around her body like old pipes beginning to freeze when winter comes around.
Time was running out. She’d better get going, and follow the finches. Come along then, they called to her.
She sat up. At least, she thought she sat up, but nobody in the room seemed to take any notice of her. And when she pushed down the covers and got out of bed, why, they didn’t seem to care. Warner didn’t even call her ‘lovey’ and scold her.
Then somebody did bar her way. It was Father.
And she wanted to scream at him, just scream and scream.
He hadn’t told her what he was doing in the Galapagos Islands. She only discovered it for herself when she was on the way back home on the Artemisia. She liked exploring, and found the passageway leading to the hold.
It was filled with Father’s herpetological and other specimens, all nicely tagged and tabulated: birds, fishes, plants. And stacked to the very top of the hold, upside down, hundreds of giant tortoises. Most had been killed; some were still alive, kicking and moving their arms and legs, slowly.
Right at the top was El Rey.
Don’t fret, child, El Rey sighed. It had to happen one day. And don’t blame your father. He is no better or worse than all the rest.
Mrs Travers did scream then. Oh, she had been wanting to scream for years at her father because he was supposed to be better, he really was.
‘You told me you didn’t believe in intervention,’ she accused him.
‘I was collecting herpetological specimens.’
‘No, you were just as bad, just as culpable as the buccaneers, whalers and sailors before you.’
‘I took only specimens from Isabela where the tortoise herds were secure.’
In a fury, she hit him. Humanity had indeed evolved to fill every available niche, even when that niche was already filled by others; humanity, the greatest predator.
She wanted to hit him again, but …
Mrs Travers found it so difficult to breathe, and gave a huge inward gasp. She floated, yes, floated over the sill of the window and out of the room, away from them all, away.
The sky widened and whitened and, far away, she could see the sea. Running, she made her way down among the rocks where scarlet-grey lizards were sunning themselves. Then some of the lizards did an extraordinary thing: they leapt into the water, making humorous plopping noises, and when she peered into the water, Mrs Travers could see them feeding on underwater seaweed. The seaweed looked so delicious that she couldn’t help herself.
Nightdress and all, she dived into the sea and joined the feeding lizards. Shoals of scintillating fish surrounded her. But they weren’t fish at all but rather seabirds coming back to their colony. Mrs Travers walked among them and knelt beside a dead booby chick.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Gloria, I’m so sorry.’
She wanted to weep, but something lovely, it must have been a tropicbird, lifted her up and carried her to an island — and below the rim of a volcano was a pass studded with candelabra cactuses.
Hello, a voice said. El Rey had arrived. He had kept his promise. Around him, a herd of giant tortoises was waiting. Strangely, there was a windowsill and, on the other side of it, she could see her grieving children beside a bed in which lay an old woman.
Time to go, El Rey said.
She nodded, lifted up the hem of her nightdress and slid onto the carapace. Smiling, Mrs Travers turned to the children on the other side of the window: ‘Goodbye.’ Then she gasped, ‘But I can’t remember the question.’
Oh I do, El Rey sighed. Lean down and I’ll whisper it in your ear.
Mrs Travers heard El Rey’s voice and nodded when he told her the question. ‘Yes, I remember it now,’ she answered.
Come along then, child, El Rey said, and as I did with Mr Darwin, I will show you the answer. He gave a guttural roar and, at his command, the herd made way for him as he moved forward. A dark dust cloud rose, radiant, glistening.
There was a moment in the Galapagos, Mrs Travers remembered, just before the sun went down, and the waves were darkening, when the horizon went smoky grey as if many fires were being lit along it. The smoke billowed through oranges and reds, which became pastel shades of cerise, vermilion and blushes of pink within a vault of celestial blue. The reds lasted for a long time. It was the sea that darkened quickly, advancing to the rim of red and, above, one by one, the stars began to appear.