Teranesia by Greg Egan

pressed
     to explain an equally bad case as the product of a chance encounter.
    A couple of metres further along the bench, he found what he hoped was the right cage. He flicked the taut mesh a few times,
     and listened for a response. No nervous fluttering, no angry hiss. He put his face to the mesh and inhaled; behind the metallic
     scent there was sap and leaves. Prabir had seen the pupae hanging by narrow threads from the branches in the cage, lumpy orange-black-and-green
     objects, each supported by a coarse silk net – what his father called a ‘girdle’ – like small, misshapen, fungus-rotted melons
     in individual string bags. The larvae spun no proper cocoon to hide their metamorphosis; they did it naked, and it was not
     a pretty sight. But however ugly their jumble of dissolving parts, they wouldn’t be half as unpleasant to handle as they were
     before the process began.
    Prabir opened the cage and reached in.
    He pulled his hand back.
Idiot
. He couldn’t trust a vague memory of how the cage had once looked to guide him. He had to start near the bottom and work his
     way up, lest he sever one of the supporting threads. And he needed sweat on his fingers now, so the first touch would count.
    His arms and sides were dripping from the night’s humidity; he soaked his right hand and placed it, palm up, on the bottom
     of the cage. Then he raised his arm slowly. The empty space above the floor of the cage seemed to go on forever; he could
     feel his palm drying while the rest of his skin shed nervous rivulets. He tried to remember what his father had told him about
     the breeding cycle. Maybe there were no pupae in the cage at all.
    When his hand was shoulder-high, his wrist finally touched something.
    It was cool and springy. One of the branches.
    He withdrew his arm. It was trembling.
    One more time
, he decided. If he failed again, he’d walk away.
    As he stood beside the cage, trying to remember exactly where he’d placed his hand the first time, Prabir became aware of
     a faint, unfamiliar drone coming from somewhere outside the hut. He was puzzled; he knew the sound of every machine in the
     kampung, whether they were working smoothly, labouring against an overload, or seizing up completely. If there were any mysteries
     left, they’d be in here with him: some automated piece of lab equipment or refrigeration pump, too quiet to hear from the
     outside. But the source of this sound was not in the hut, he was sure of that.
    It was a jet
. Flying lower than usual. Or maybe not; maybe the night air changed the acoustics. The sound was so faint it would never have
     woken him. He couldn’t be sure that this was anything new.
    He stood in the dark, listening to the aircraft approaching.
If it was flying lower, what did that mean?
If he ran and woke his parents, no one would demand to know what he’d been doing. He’d been woken by stomach pains, that
     was all he’d need to say.
    The drone grew louder, then suddenly dropped in pitch. Prabir remained paralysed, picturing bombs tumbling through the air,
     falling towards their target as the plane accelerated away. But as the retreating engines faded, nothing followed. Only frog
     calls from the jungle.
    Prabir almost laughed with relief, but the sound stuck in his throat. Maybe the signs had protected them, the paint visible
     against the warmth of the roof panels, black-on-green in the false colours of an infrared display. But if the plane’s destination
     had been elsewhere all along – if Teranesia had meant nothing to the pilot but a fleeting piece of scenery beneath the flight
     path – then the bombs could still fall tonight. On some other island.
    Prabir stared into the darkness, a hollow ache in his chest. He put his hand into the cage again, and continued the search.
     This time he was rewarded: his fingertips brushed against the side of a chrysalis. The impact set it swinging, but the silk
     thread holding it was resilient. He waited for the