Osiris (osiris project)

by E. J. Swift

  He started from fits of dozing to find himself battering the concrete with his fists. The cell was growing smaller. This has happened before, you know how prison messes with your head. But this time it was happening faster. As the cell grew closer and the puddle grew larger, he recognized the seeds: fear that he would never get out, and worse, fear that he would not want to. He knew how it ended. Osiris became too terrible to envisage. The city’s hand clenched cold around your heart and you preferred to stay submerged, away from sunlight and eyes that might stare.

  Finally, like the man five cells around, you no longer cared for your own convictions and you found a way to hang yourself.

  Her undine spirit haunted him. He replayed her, opening the door in black lace, telling tales of the rainbow-fish with her viridescent eyes wide, the slope of her back rising and falling, slumped in sleep against the lilac sheets. He watched the waterbike leap over the waves and her hair stream in a banner behind her. He felt the warm unconscious weight of her pushing on his chest. The smell of lemons and limes permeated the cell, for a day or so. Then he had to hunt for it on the air. Then it was just an idea.

  Sometimes he heard his breathing and thought that it was hers. He saw her floating, face down in the water and she was both herself and Mikkeli, water and ice, the two fused in some halfway state between liquid and frozen. A bird rested on each of their backs. Its beak plunged. Their lungs had forgotten how to breathe.

  The puddle grew. He had heard you could drown in an inch of water.

  The woman in the cell next door wailed. At least, he thought it was her, but it might be Mikkeli howling with a chorus of ghosts out by the ring-net, or it could be Adelaide. If Adelaide existed.

  Perhaps he had never left jail. He had been here all the time; everything had been a protracted dream, the produce of his brain, a diversion, a defence mechanism. He marvelled at the power of his own invention. He had conjured Adelaide out of adverts and headlines from years before the riots. Here she was walking along a red carpet. Clear voqua poured onto a mountain of ice which imprisoned her in a great column and melted from the inside out. He watched her drown. She turned blue.

  His lungs were thick; he lay on the bed, too weak to move. Black lace curled around the door frame and produced twine that grew into her mouth and pierced the back of her head. Her hair writhed and bound her to the waterbike. She was pulled beneath the surface with it. On the seabed he watched fish turn her to mud. She stretched out a dissolving finger and he knew that when she touched him he would turn to mud too.

  Her touch was liquid. The mud took his hands first, and last his eyes.

  His ground-dreams wrapped around his nightmares. He began to think of land. A boat would come, a lost boat, a found boat. It would take him away from Osiris. Away from staring eyes. Better to die on the open ocean, with clean air on his skin and the sun on his face.

  Adelaide whispered to him.

  And when I come back we can find the sand. You’ll like that.

  I will, he said. I will.

  No more mazes, no more clouds.

  Another drip landed in the puddle. Everything returned to the sea.

  PART FOUR

  37 ADELAIDE

  It took until two o’clock for Goran’s breathing to regulate and his pulse to slow. Adelaide stood under the mezzanine, watching his slack face. The eyelids slumped on their dual-coloured irises, heavy and creased, thin-lashed. The nostrils quivered. It had taken her a full week to remember the drugs she kept stashed in a hidden compartment of her bathroom; another week to summon the courage to use them. Goran woke at the tiniest disturbance. She was surprised he didn’t sleep with his eyes open, like a snake.

  She crept forward and placed the soaked cloth delicately over his nose and mouth. He inhaled normally, then with a sudden, violent breath. She shrank back. His lungs sucked in the opiate fumes. She waited. This was where Vikram had first slept. Vikram, who thought she had betrayed him. She made herself entertain the thought, holding it hostage for her heart, testing. She willed herself to care.

  Nothing. She had spent the two weeks well. She had been in limbo, floating, in all the gaps between time. She had been lighter than vapour and thinner than air, but she was frozen now.

  She was ready.

  After a minute she took Goran’s wrist. It was thick, muscle bound, and she had to push her finger deep to feel the pulse. As she expected, it had slowed.

  For a further ten minutes she waited, allowing herself to hate him but coldly. Then she unbuttoned his jacket and felt inside the pocket and retrieved her keys and his scarab. She went to her room, put on her outdoor gear and picked up her waterproof haversack. Her boots were rubber soled and noiseless as she walked through the apartment, checking once more under the mezzanine. This time she trussed him, tying his hands together and then his feet, her heart jumping every time he shifted. The apartment was filled with the sounds of his laboured breathing and the oscillating machinery from the floors above. Goran would be in trouble for her escape. She was neither happy nor sorry. She was steel.

  She slipped the key into the lock. A bubble of pleasure rose as she heard it turn-but she pushed it down, no time for that. She locked the door from the other side.

  “Goodbye, Goran. I hope they give you hell.”

  The corridor seemed overlarge after her incarceration. She glanced at the ceiling. As she lay night after night, thinking, plotting, she had wondered who knew about the facility, about the Siberian boat. Did Linus know? Had he lied to her all along? She had considered trying to break into the facility. But it would do no good; the scientists would hand her back to the Rechnovs the moment she was caught. The white fly had to wait.

  She ran silently down the stairs, nervous of being trapped in the lift. Her lungs and calf muscles, inactive for too long, protested fiercely at the exertion. Once an apartment door opened and she froze in fear, but it was only a man staggering home drunk.

  Surface level. This was the wager: her boat would still be here. There was no reason for them to move it, not with Goran guarding the door. She stepped out into open air. It smelled clearer and crisper than ever before. She walked around the decking, her heart thudding with anticipation.

  And yes. There it was. Release gurgled in her chest. This time she let it, but kept her head focused as she stepped into the craft, reached under the seat where the spare key was taped, felt it drop into her palm. The electronic hum of the motor was one of the sweetest sounds she had ever known.

  The dashboard flashed up with symbols. The battery was fully charged; she had at least twenty-four hours of driving before she’d need to stop at a charge point. Would charge points be easy to find where she was going? Someone would tell her.

  As the boat pulled away from the decking, she allowed herself one glance up. She could make out a glimmer at the top of the scraper which might be from her apartment, or from the facility above. Steering with one hand, she tapped the familiar code into Goran’s scarab. Somewhere in Osiris, Lao’s o’comm rang and rang, but he didn’t answer. He was no use to her anymore. She disconnected from the Reef and hurled Goran’s scarab into the sea.

  The water was choppy, crusted with foam. The towers slipped by with maddening slowness. Every impulse told her to increase speed-but it was a quiet night, and she could not attract attention. She avoided the main waterways lit with floating night lamps, and took a winding route through the outskirts. She aimed to reach the border at one of the sub-checkpoints. A transport barge passed her, carrying the stench of a fresh fish haul into the City. A late night waterbus followed it. The windows spilled orange rectangles onto the sea. Adelaide averted her face.

  The wind picked up and she took the boat up a speed. Scores of towers lay between her and Goran; she was well away. She tipped back her head and relished the feel of the cold on her face, brittle and clean. Axel, if the delivery girl was to be believed, had spent entire days out on the balcony. Maybe her brother had not been so mad after all. Maybe he had realized wh
at she had come to see: the City was a prison, which must be escaped.

  He had to be there. She had scoured the City; there was nowhere left but the west. She could imagine it now: Axel packing his bags. The Whitefly documents-some part of his mind would have known they were important, had made him lock them up safe. And then he had run. Go west. The horses would have told him.

  She was always destined to go there. The blind Teller had known it. She had told Adelaide months ago, but Adelaide hadn’t listened.

  It has been spoken, sister. Spoken in the salt.

  She glanced up at the stars, half hidden by cloud, and imagined Axel watching the same patterns. Waiting for the arrival of his twin.

  What took you so long?

  That was what he would say.

  Twin searchlights beamed across the gap in the border netting, one from either side. There was a gap of seconds before they crossed. On the jetty, about fifty metres away, Adelaide saw the shadow of a guard.

  Her heart began to thud. The full realization of what she was doing-what she had done-hit her forcefully. For a moment she was paralysed with doubt. Axel, she thought. Think of Axel. She waited, watching the circular arcs, counting the seconds between their passage. The searchlights crossed and separated, crossed and separated. The guard walked slowly across the jetty. At the edge he stopped, looking about. Adelaide cringed back inside her hood. Then his hands moved away from his gun, and as the searchlight swept over she saw that he was unbuckling his trousers to relieve himself.

  Now was her chance. Keeping the motor to an almost inaudible hum, she urged the boat forward into the hundred metre stretch of water.

  Manoeuvring between the beams of the searchlight, she used all of her strength to haul the boat this way and that. It seemed to take forever. The searchlight drew near. With a final wrench, the boat slipped past the narrow gap in the netting, only metres from the jetty and, she saw with a shock, a hulking barge.

  She bent low to the boat and, not daring to look back, shot into the maze of the west.

  On the other side there were no lights. Her thrill of exhilaration dissipated in the odd stillness. She looked about: up at the tower window-walls, ahead at the waterways. Not a glimmer. Vikram had told her about the west’s eternal problems with electricity, but this total darkness could not be right. Could it? She brought the boat’s engine down to a bare minimum and kept her lights off. Now she was crawling forward in near blackness, with only the glow from the retreating City to guide her on her way. It was fading all the time.

  Fear gripped her. She was tempted to retreat, to get back into the City and find a friend’s apartment or a Boatel to hole up for the night. She turned the boat around, but the shadow of a bigger craft, crawling along the border, its searchlights seeking out the deepest troughs, made her steer towards the nearest tower.

  You’re a Rechnov, she reminded herself. You’ve got no reason to be afraid.

  But there was no reason for a Rechnov to be this side of the border, and if Vikram had taught her anything, it was that the Home Guards shot first and investigated afterwards.

  A pale lambency drew her south, only to find that the light came not from any artificial source but from the sky itself. Her lips whispered silently as the spectacle became clear: aura australis. The aura dappled the night, shifting from green to yellow and back like a living, chameleon thing. She gazed skyward. Can you see this, Axel?

  But as soon as they had appeared, the southern lights retreated. The boat rocked as she shifted her weight. What was down there, far below the surface? For the first time, she felt alien to her terrain.

  She carried on, further into the west. The darkness was complete. She had planned to head for Vikram’s old tower, and from there to gain directions to the shelter, but without lights to guide her she had little chance of finding the right way. The lack of noise was beginning to spook her. It was as though the entire community had died.

  She decided to navigate towards Vikram’s tower anyway. She had to judge the route based on her knowledge of the city’s contours, and an instinctive awareness of the west’s structural layout. The boat responded dutifully to her steering, although the sea was growing more aggressive and her hands inside their gloves were numb. She flexed her fingers. She could barely feel them. She wondered if her hearing had been similarly impaired by the cold.

  A light winked over the waves, flashed against Adelaide’s boat and cut out.

  “Psst! Get over here!”

  After such a stretch of nothingness, she could hardly believe that the sound was real. But it had been human, that voice. She nosed the boat in its direction. The light winked on and off again, as she grew nearer. Her boat bumped against a decking.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  “Stars! Are you crazy? Get inside!”

  A hand latched onto Adelaide’s shoulder and tugged. She followed its pull, helpless in the darkness to do anything else, and climbed out of the boat.

  “I need to tie up-”

  “Pass me the chain, I’ll tie her.”

  Adelaide hesitated, loathe to obey the anonymous voice. But neither did she want to return to the inky silence. She pocketed the keys and handed over the chain. Their gloves brushed. If the boat was secured, it was done noiselessly. The stranger’s hand found her arm once more and she was guided across the decking. There was a swish as the doors parted. They went into the tower.

  The reek caught her by surprise. She coughed and swallowed the noise.

  The voice switched on a penlight. Its tiny glow illuminated a blue hat pulled low over straggly hair, bright eyes in a dirty face. The girl was young; she could not be more than about fourteen. She cupped a hand around the penlight, shielding it between their two bodies.

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “I got lost,” Adelaide said.

  “Lost? You lose track of time, or something?”

  “I made a few bad turns, before I knew it…”

  “Before you knew it, you were past curfew. You got to be careful, lady! Them boats out there, they don’t listen to excuses!”

  “Yeah, I–I know.”

  “Lucky I spotted you. I’m on watch here. They say I have seagull eyes. You want to sit with me for a bit? Gets boring on my own.”

  “Sure.”

  The girl switched off the penlight. Adelaide heard her fumbling with a lever. The tower doors opened with a soft whoosh and the girl settled down in the entrance. Adelaide sat beside her. Stationary, she felt the bitter cold. She wrapped her arms around her, wondering how many hours until daylight.

  “You see a light-the slightest light-you tell me,” said the western girl, keeping her voice low. “And if you hear talking and all. That’s the one thing about them skadi. ” She spat the word with venom. “They make one hell of a racket-always know when they’re coming.” She added, more bitterly, “Guess you don’t need stealth when you got guns.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” Adelaide promised. The stars knew she had her own reasons to keep her distance from the Guard. Skadi. She practised the word in her head. In the darkness the watch-girl would not see her lips moving.

  It gave her an idea. She rubbed her gloved palms silently over the floor, and then over her face. She didn’t want to think about what was on the decking floor, but she was sure it had dirtied her face.

  “They haven’t done this tower yet,” said the girl. “They might tonight. If they come we’ve got to shut this door quick. Ain’t no locking from inside but we got a good warning system. Kind of relay thing.”

  “Do the boats come past here often?” Adelaide asked. She could not remember Vikram ever telling her about an alarm system, nor, now she thought about it, of patrol boats going through the western waterways so regularly.

  “This neighbourhood there’s one every hour or so,” said the girl. “But they’re getting more often since the greenhouse. You must have been lucky not to meet one. Horrible things. I hate the way they sort of glide by, you kno
w, as if they wasn’t really there.”

  “ Skadi,” said Adelaide, putting enough contempt into the word to cover, she hoped, any mistake in pronunciation.

  “Yeah.”

  Waves lifted the decking. Spray landed on Adelaide’s nose and cheeks.

  “Have you been on watch long?” she asked.

  “Three hours. I’m relieved soon. Gets a bit lonely, you know, but someone’s got to do it. I volunteered.” The girl spoke proudly. “They wanted people who were involved, y’know, last time, but I said I wasn’t old enough last time and you got to start somewhere. Fifteen, ent I? Got a good pair of ears. Heard you, didn’t I? And you got a good quiet boat there. Why were you out so late anyways?”

  “I’m looking for my brother. He’s disappeared.”

  The girl gave her arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Everyone’s gone disappeared round here. Gone off to take a crack at the skadi, has he?”

  “I think so.”

  “My little bro’s talkin’ about joining Maak’s people-y’know, Maak. Ma’s got a hell of a time keeping him in. I know how he feels. Sometimes I want to go and join up myself but a knife ent much use against one of them. Not if you only use it once. Reckon I’d be good at stealth work, though.”

  Something had happened since Adelaide had been locked up, something nobody had told her about. Home Guard boats belonged on the border, not in the western quarter, not unless there had been violence. What was the greenhouse? Who was Maak? Further questions would betray her ignorance, and her background, but the watch-girl seemed friendly, eager to talk, if Adelaide could find the right angle.