Osiris

by E. J. Swift

  Vikram wrote it down.

  “How do you know this stuff? Who taught you?”

  “You learn to pick things up. Odd jobs in the City—I always scan their newsfeed. Listen to them talking. Know your enemy, Vikram. It’s the oldest rule in the universe.”

  Then he began asking questions. So now we know what we want—how are we going to get it? It was we, right from the start. That had made them feel good. And it was a valid question, to which none of them yet had an answer. This was what they sat around arguing about for nights on end. They had been happy enough doing that for a while, with Vikram composing the letters, and occasional suggestions that they might organise a protest. Mikkeli had come up with a series of slogans. But after Eirik showed up they started noticing other things—like the fact that one electric bulb did not produce adequate light even in the summer, and that no amount of well-written words could assuage the fact that none of them had had a decent meal in weeks.

  “We need to engage with the early justice groups,” said Eirik. “Get right back to the start. The Western Repatriation Movement, they were good people—you know about them? They sent the first official refugee delegate to the Council, seven years after the Great Storms and the first immigrants arrived. The Council made promises, of course. The western quarter’s only temporary, they said. Give us eighteen months to restructure the city, we’ll find you somewhere decent to live. Eighteen months go by, the delegates return, they warn the Council that people are getting angry, and the Council places them under house arrest—idiotic move but they were probably scared shitless. That’s what led to the rise of the New Osiris Affiliation, and they led to the second wave of riots, and what happened at the Greenhouse, and finally, thirty-nine years ago, to the border. That border’s as old as I am. We’ve grown up together.”

  He sat back and held their eyes, one by one, steadily.

  “Everything,” he said. “Has a root.”

  Eirik’s voice was thoughtful and inevitable like a tide. They could listen to him for hours. It seemed that Mikkeli’s adulation had proved well founded. They had followed her and she had needed someone to believe in as much as the rest of them. It was only Eirik himself who seemed to wander, fleet as foam, unhindered by such petty concerns as doubt.

  As the weeks passed, Vikram noticed shifts in attitude. At first it was small things. There was less attention to the letters. Instead of helping him dictate, the others might talk about an incident at the border. A man who had been detained at the checkpoint for forty-eight hours without reason. A woman, beaten up, who had lost an eye. Phrases crept into conversation: if only I’d been there. Vikram found himself only too happy to join in.

  The lack of response to the Council missives began to feel like a personal insult. Did they even read what was sent? Was there any point in writing at all?

  He started revisiting old childhood haunts, by the border. The towers on the other side seemed brighter and more blinding than ever and his hands would itch with inactivity.

  He clearly remembered turning to Nils one day and saying, “If something happened this winter—if people decided to riot—what would you do?”

  Nils said without a flicker of hesitation, “I’d kill as many of those skadi bastards as I could.”

  “Not Citizens though.”

  “Course not Citizens. What d’you take me for?”

  And then came the morning of strange quiet, the day the riots began. The day that everything fell apart and the skadi came for Eirik. The City published findings that they said proved Eirik was NWO. He’d gone from group to group, they said, winning trust, gaining followers. Recruiting. They gave him a number.

  For Eirik, after three years in a seabed cell, death might be a relief. He wondered if Mikkeli’s ghost had lingered with the other man whilst he was underwater, the way she had with Vikram, presenting him with her lifeless body over and over again, the tattered yellow hood that fell back from her face drenched to ochre. Did Eirik even know she was dead?

  The second hand edged past eleven o’clock. Something was happening. Birds, alert to the change in mood, began to swirl overhead. A curious gull dove low over the boats. Of course the birds would come today.

  The hatch on the execution boat had opened. A skadi officer emerged. He came to stand at the rail, hands clasped behind him. Wide sunglasses wrapped around his head caught the sun as he turned this way and that.

  The officer barked an order. Eirik was led out from below deck. He must have been kept there all along, in darkness. Vikram strained his eyes, desperate for a glimpse of Eirik’s face, but it was concealed behind a dark hood, part of a prisoner’s suit.

  A frisson went through the crowd.

  “That’s him… that’s Eirik 9968…”

  Eirik seemed to move as one in a dream. His hands were manacled in front of him. The man leading him gave tiny jerks upon the chains, and Vikram could hear their clank beneath the ever present rush of the ocean and the whispers of the audience.

  The executioner checked the tank. He rapped the glass on each side and on the roof. Two skadi on either side of Eirik held his arms. They turned him towards the western crowd, but his head flopped on his chest, and his face remained in shadow.

  He’s drugged, Vikram realized. He felt anger stirring at their cowardice, mixed with a horrible relief that Eirik would barely be conscious.

  The air keened as a dozen loudspeakers were switched on. The wheezing woman next to Vikram covered her ears. The man to his right squeezed his boy’s shoulders. Vikram wanted to wrench the kid away and cover up his eyes. In the next breath he thought no, he should see this. He should know what the Citizens do to us.

  A voice began to speak. The tone was clipped and robotic.

  “The man known as Eirik 9968 has been sentenced for his actions against the city state of Osiris. He is found guilty of the following crimes: denouncing the Osiris Council, organising collective violence against the City, inciting aggressive action in westerners, acts of personal terrorism, assault and mass murder. In particular he is convicted for his role in reviving the illegal New Western Osiris Front, the organisation responsible for the atrocities committed at Oswua University in the year twenty-three eighty-eight, and for leading and instigating the July riots three years ago. He is judged responsible for both the deaths of Citizens and the necessary reprisals against the west.”

  Eirik made no reaction to this speech. His posture was bowed and defeated. It was doubtful whether he had even heard the accusations. Confronted with that small, lone figure between two cities, all Vikram could think of was Eirik sat cross-legged in Nils’s room, leaning forward, gesticulating as he spoke, his face intense and serious, half illuminated by the flickering light. Look, it’s not enough to know the history—we’ve got to know how these people think. Why won’t they take us seriously—why won’t they answer Vik’s letters? Because we don’t use their language and we don’t understand their systems. We don’t know who they really are.

  The memory was so strong it made him giddy. Vikram could hear Eirik’s voice perfectly; he could see that room, smell the empty wrappers of squid and kelp. His head swam.

  Instinct told him the truth. In that moment he knew, with absolute and shocking conviction, that everything that had been said about Eirik was a lie. Because Eirik, who did know the language, had been a threat. He might actually have made people listen. And the City couldn’t let anything threaten the divide, so the City were going to remove him.

  Maybe Eirik had helped to feed the riots. Did it matter? It was not a terrorist who had thrown the first fire torch. It was an ordinary westerner like Vikram, who had been up against the border and everything it represented too many times, and in a single moment of frustration had cracked. Anyone could have started the riots.

  The officer on the boat drew himself up, concluding his speech.

  “For this long and atrocious history of criminal activity, the Osiris Council has condemned Eirik 9968 to death by drowning.”
r />   The kid leaned forward over the boat rail, eyes wide and eager.

  Vikram felt a rising panic. It couldn’t happen. Eirik was innocent. Vikram knew he was innocent. Where were Nils and Drake? If he could find them—he had to explain. It was as though he had emerged from hibernation. How could he ever have imagined that Eirik could be involved with the NWO? The idea was insane. What had he been thinking?

  There was still time for a miracle. The speaker would reverse his statement. He would declare that the execution had been a warning to the west, and Eirik would be freed. They couldn’t—they couldn’t kill him.

  He willed Eirik to look his way. A moment of contact—he needed Eirik to know he was here—

  “Pardon.”

  The call came from the other side of the crowd. Quiet at first. Then another voice joined in.

  “Pardon.”

  The call rose, each voice creating a new bubble of sound. Vikram added his own plea, but his throat was tight and his voice hoarse and barely audible.

  “Pardon. Pardon.”

  The executioner stepped forward and zipped up the hooded suit, concealing Eirik’s face completely.

  No—

  One of the guards opened a door in the tank. They pushed Eirik inside. He fell against the side of the tank and slumped to the floor. The skad banged the door shut. Vikram felt the reverberations shudder all the way down his spine. You didn’t believe him, they said. You didn’t believe him, believe him, believe him…

  Wild ideas raced through his head. If he could get to the tank underwater—hold his breath long enough to swim—

  Chatter skittered through the crowd, small sounds of distress, quickly choked, others muttering in anticipation. The people around him were faceless and alien. The man on his right had lifted the kid to sit on his shoulders and someone behind was complaining that their view was blocked. Vikram could not see Nils or Drake anywhere. He was on his own.

  Two skadi went to their stations at the pumps. The executioner checked his watch, gave a curt nod. A stifling quiet fell over the crowd.

  It was so still that Vikram could hear water guzzling through the bilges. The first load splashed into the tank.

  He heard disjointed words behind him.

  “I can’t watch—”

  “Don’t look. Come here, just don’t look—”

  “Dad, the water’s going in—I can see it—”

  Behind the glass the water trickled, greenish in colour. It foamed and swirled with the pressure. Strands of floating kelp were sucked inside. A small fish was flung out of the pipe. Eirik lay prone against the tank wall, his hands still manacled.

  Stars—

  Help him!

  The water gathered around Eirik’s legs. At last he seemed to stir. The shock of the icy water must have jerked him from his state of comatose. He moved his head. He drew his knees to his chest. Every movement he made was infinitely slow.

  “It’s going to take ten minutes,” said someone on the next boat.

  “Ten? Fifteen at least.”

  “No, not fifteen. Not as long as that.”

  “I’ll bet you on it.”

  A girl began to scream, a long and eerie sound, rising and falling. A skad lifted his rifle and fired a warning shot into the air. The scream stopped abruptly. The crowd rippled with alarm. He saw several people duck, some hunching protectively over their neighbours, but no one shouted; no one dared to protest. It would have to be Vikram. If he spoke up, he could incite the crowd—they must be angry enough to act—surely they must want to stop this—surely they didn’t believe, as Vikram had—

  His body had turned to lead. Some part of his mind knew that this was self-preservation. That there was nothing he could do for Eirik now. He could only give Eirik the dignity of a witness. Someone to remember, to throw salt in Eirik’s name.

  The skadi bent and straightened as they worked the pumps, first in time, then in an almost comical seesaw motion. One paused to wipe his brow before he bent to the task again.

  “Get on with it!” a westerner shouted.

  “Why don’t they just shoot him?” muttered a girl on Vikram’s boat.

  The water swilled, a foot high.

  The woman beside Vikram gasped and let out a long sigh as she fainted, her weight a sudden heaviness against his own too-light frame. The man lifted the kid off his shoulders to help Vikram support the woman and the kid climbed up onto the boat rail to see better and stared and stared.

  The girl who had spoken before knelt to give the woman water. The woman’s eyelids were violet. Her lashes fluttered as she regained consciousness.

  “Is she alright?” Vikram’s voice came out ragged. He cleared his throat. The noise sounded as loud as a slap.

  “I’ll look after her,” whispered the girl. Her eyes met Vikram’s and for a moment held, whilst a slight frown creased her forehead. He froze, suddenly terrified that she had recognised him. Did he look like an insurgent? Could she ever have seen him with Eirik? He turned stiffly away.

  “Dad, look, the water’s up to his neck,” said the kid. “He’s going to die now.”

  “They’re killing him.” Vikram couldn’t stop himself. It was important that he said this, that this definition, at least, stayed with the kid, even if his father gave Vikram a peculiar glance and placed his hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders.

  Eirik tried to stand but slipped and crashed back. He tried again. His legs could not support the weight of his torso.

  “Well you know… if the NWO really had come back… maybe it’s better this way…”

  “You think..?”

  “The skadi would have crucified us… if you were old enough to remember what happened after Osuwa, you’d know…”

  “Please, don’t talk about Osuwa.”

  The snippets of conversation drifted from all sides like small feathers. Vikram could no longer tell where they came from.

  The water lapped at Eirik’s chin. He got clumsily onto his knees. The movement must be an exertion. Perhaps he was in dreadful pain. The black overalls hid his body; whatever previous tortures had been inflicted upon him were invisible. Vikram imagined the prison guards entering Eirik’s cell, taunting him, with words at first, the jeers giving way to cigarette burns, blows, worse. He winced.

  Time was winding down. The two skadi at the pumps seemed to move in slow motion. What kind of man could kill another in this way? Vikram looked around at the crowd. Every one of them was complicit. He was complicit himself, because to do nothing was to aid in the working of the pumps.

  Eirik floundered on his knees. His gloved hands slipped at the sides of the tanks. He fumbled to remove the gloves and they came adrift. Vikram saw Eirik’s bare hands slide against the glass, feeling to his left and right, reaching up to the top of the tank, finding this too blocked.

  Vikram folded over the rail, his head buried against his clenched hands. He did not care now who saw. He wanted to cry. But his eyes remained obstinately dry, and even if the tears had come he knew that they would be for himself, for his own stupidity and his failure to believe in a friend, as much as for Eirik who in many ways was already dead. The impulse shamed him. He lifted his head; he would make himself watch the end. It was the last thing he could offer Eirik.

  He heard the skadi at the pumps grunting with exertion. The water level rose and rose. It reached Eirik’s shoulders. Eirik was trying to undo the hood. His bound hands flapped ineffectually around his head. He didn’t seem able to bend his fingers.

  The crowd, sensing a conclusion, were growing voluble. From all sides a chorus lifted, the voices louder now and more aggressive. Shouts and insults, wailing, overlapping. The skadi fired a barrage of warning shots into the water. A girl, perhaps the same girl, started screaming. This time no one stopped her. Vikram’s boat rocked; the crowd was pushing at the barrier, jeering at the skadi. The man beside Vikram pulled his kid roughly from the rail and told him to keep his head down. Skadi boats sped down the crowd barrier, whipp
ing around, racing back again. Spray hid the execution boat momentarily. The boat in front moved sideways, blocking Vikram. He had to crane to see what was happening.

  The tank was almost full, and Eirik was fully conscious. His body convulsed like a bird hooked in a net. His feet thrashed the water white. He was floating on his back, head half submerged below the last few inches of air.

  That’s enough, he thought numbly. Just stop now. There’s still time, the lesson’s learned. He could live—

  “Oh, but there’s never enough time, Vik, that’s why you have to take it—”

  Mikkeli was speaking. No, Mikkeli was dead. Her body limp and sodden on the decking. Frost already forming on her eyelashes.

  “You have to take it from someone else!”

  Mikkeli’s ghost laughed, that big, slightly dirty laugh. She cocked her head at Eirik and winked, once. Ice splintered in Vikram’s ribs.

  “That’s right,” said Eirik. “She’s right. If you steal anything, steal time.”

  In the tank, the last inch of air disappeared.

  Vikram imagined Eirik’s mouth forced open as his lungs battled for oxygen. Water pouring in. Water like acid, water to burn away words. He had seen this in his dreams, his own body and those of friends, turning over and over. This was just a dream. It must be a dream.

  Eirik’s limbs jerked in spasms. His hands and feet pounded the ceiling of the tank. He was asphyxiating.

  The crowd fell silent. Vikram heard dry whimpers, or was it laughter? The girl behind him, crouched by her mother. The kid had gone quiet.

  A gull wheeled overhead. Its screech trailed across the bleached out sky. Eirik threshed, knocking the glass of the tank with dull thuds.

  Vikram could only observe. The waves moved, and the sun shone on the water, but time had finally stopped.

  The body stilled.

  What floated in a tank of seawater was no longer Eirik. Eirik’s spirit had been torn loose. He was out there with the ghosts now, a half thing condemned to the waves.