Osiris

by E. J. Swift

  Stars knew what he’d been doing there; he must have been about twelve. He remembered a tarpaulin. Huddling under it, shaking, his fingers blank with cold. He remembered the rivulets of water that eased their way through the cracks, only to halt as the molecules contracted and froze. The floor inside a maze of glittering snail trails, outside, the sky sagging. It had been too cold to snow.

  Snow, in Adelaide’s world, was nothing but a pretty white blanket.

  Vikram knew the layout of the apartment. There were only three rooms between himself and the Architect’s granddaughter.

  He made himself recall the day Eirik was drowned. He remembered seeing Adelaide and her father, closer than a westerner could have imagined but impossible to reach. Adelaide was unprotected now. He could take her hostage. He could, if he wanted, go into her room, put his hands around her neck, and throttle her. He could strike a fatal blow to Feodor Rechnov right now, here, tonight.

  Stop it.

  He shoved the idea away in horror. It was as far from Horizon’s ideals as the stars; he could hardly believe the thought had crossed his mind.

  But it was an opportunity—he could not deny that. He would never have a chance like this again. Now—while she was sleeping. It wasn’t what Horizon had been about, but hadn’t that all changed? And he couldn’t trust Adelaide, she had told him that herself. Now she’d got what she wanted, what guarantee did he have that she would carry out her side of the bargain?

  She almost let you get caught tonight. She could turn you in just because she feels like it. Sticking with her isn’t worth the risk.

  For all you know, the skadi could be on their way over right now.

  Eirik, Mikkeli—they would have thought about it. There was no doubt that to many in the west, the act would make Vikram a hero.

  Stars, what was he thinking! And yet…

  Go on, another part of him urged. Do it. It’s what they all want.

  He pushed aside the rug. He could feel his knife sheath where it lay against his thigh. It could be done bloodily or it could be done with bare hands. For a more poetic justice, he could drown Adelaide Rechnov in her own bath.

  That would be the best way. A clear signal to the City. Explicable, and understandable.

  For a moment his own coldness froze him. And then he saw Mikkeli in her yellow hood. She came in through the window-wall and she walked across Adelaide Mystik’s floor and sat on the piano lid. She was still twelve.

  “You’re not going to let that bitch get the better of you, are you?” she said. Foam dribbled from her lips. Her voice was as dead and as empty as surf.

  You know it’s what they all want. And it’s so easy.

  He sat up and walked silently through the study into the kitchen, closing each door behind him to block off her escape route. Moonlight fell across the white tablecloth and crystal glasses in the dining room. The outline of the next door was a grey line around its pale panels.

  He stood looking at it. The only sounds he could identify were the thud of his heart and the drumming of his pulse in his ears. If he went through that door, he would be taking a step that could not be reversed.

  The door opened. Adelaide came out, one hand rubbing her eyelids. When she saw him she stopped.

  Their eyes met for a long time.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “I need some water.”

  He saw Eirik, in the tank, his mouth open. Perhaps she did too.

  She said, “Do you want a glass?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She walked around the table. She passed within a few inches of him. He recognized the effort it must have cost her, because she had seen his face. He turned and followed her into the kitchen, watched her bare legs crossing the tiles. She opened the fridge door. The light flooded her slender body, crouching naked beneath the slip of lilac. She took out a jug and poured two glasses of chilled water. Face averted, she placed one on the sideboard for Vikram.

  “Sleep well,” she said. She took her own glass of water and went back through the empty dining room and shut the door.

  21 ¦ ADELAIDE

  She slumped against the bedroom door. Her legs shook. Five minutes passed before she could stand, walk to the bedside cabinet, take out the gun, and go back to sit by the door.

  He was going to kill me.

  She kept the thought there, wrapped with her the way her fingers wrapped around the grip of the gun.

  He was actually going to kill me.

  And he’s still here, in my apartment, right now.

  22 ¦ VIKRAM

  Silently he opened the door that Adelaide had just shut. He knew that she would not hear him. He stood barefoot outside her bedroom. It was so quiet that on the other side he could hear her breathing, long and shaky.

  Minutes passed. He stood there, motionless. He took out the knife. He turned it over, noticing the network of scars on his hands and forearms, old and recent, in places overlapping.

  Adelaide, and people like her, had given him those scars. Whether she knew it or not, she was guilty.

  He sensed the west behind him, urging him to revenge. It was a simple emotion. He could not deny that he wanted it. Gently, he closed his fingers around the door handle.

  There was a tiny tremor in the metal, as though, sitting against the door, she was shivering.

  He hesitated. It was the briefest flicker of concentration, but within that second he felt his resolution slip away.

  Putting the knife back, he padded back through the apartment to the futon. He lay down and pulled the rug up to his neck. The soft fleece gathered at his throat like a noose.

  He let out a long, muted sigh. His heart was beating wildly. He was covered in sweat. The relief that flooded his body only mirrored the horror at what he had almost done. The footsteps made to Adelaide’s door and back felt like those of a stranger.

  “It was me who found you in the unremembered quarters, Vik. Nils dared you, remember? It was a stupid dare.”

  Mikkeli was waiting for him, hunched over, her feet skimming the piano keys.

  I’m sorry, he thought. I forgot.

  It was true; Mikkeli had found him. She’d shone a torch on his face. Or maybe that was a different occasion. There were so many other times, anyway; lying on the edge of starvation, his body sabotaged by hypothermia. Time losing all logic whilst he waited for warmth.

  Mikkeli climbed off the piano and stalked out of the window-wall, back to wherever she had come from. He remembered hugging her to him, trying to press some warmth to that lifeless body, but he’d had none to give, or she had taken it already.

  Lying on Adelaide Mystik’s futon, staring at her ceiling mural, Vikram promised himself he was never going to be that cold again.

  23 ¦ ADELAIDE

  “So the first thing you have to understand is how the Council works.”

  It was late morning. They sat on opposite sides of the table, the polished lake of wood between them. At one end, a pot of coral tea on a ceramic base steamed gently. Outside, heavy fog obscured the city entirely. The apartment felt like an oasis.

  Adelaide’s eyes were sore with tiredness, but the day’s agenda was full. She had people to see. She tied back her hair as though she was preparing for hands-on work. The action focused her mind. If she was going to help Vikram, and for today at least, that illusion must be maintained, then she had to dive deep into the recesses of memory. She must recover incidental conversations between her parents, old lectures from Linus. She must listen once more to her grandfather’s calm unhurried voice.

  When the dawn came she had dozed for an hour or so, the gun still resting in her hand. She thought about barricading herself in until Vikram went away. But it was light. He had let her live. She put back the gun. This morning Vikram was uncommunicative; both the strange intimacy of last night and the nightmarish tension in the kitchen had all but vanished.

  Adelaide reached behind her neck and unclasped a string of onyx beads. She arranged the necklace
in a half circle. Then she took a ring off her middle finger and placed it under the arch.

  “Here we have the Council, and here—” She touched the ring. “Is the Speaker. You probably stood on the podium just in front of him, right?”

  Vikram nodded.

  “The Council is like any other group. It has factions.” She unhooked an earring and put it at the left end of the beads. “Here sits my illustrious father Feodor, and his cronies.”

  “Yes, I remember your father. I think he might remember me too.”

  Abruptly Adelaide recalled the day she had gone to see Feodor. Hadn’t he said something about a westerner? The idea gave her a turn, almost as if they had met before, unwittingly. She tapped the earring with her forefinger.

  “Feodor doesn’t like anything to disturb the perfect order of his world. And he has to think about saving face. When the Council first established the border, Feodor was one of the Councillors who spoke out strongly for it. Any step towards unification, however small, will be an admission that they, and he, made a mistake.”

  Vikram’s eyes were watchful. She knew that he wouldn’t miss anything.

  “Why did they do it?”

  “What, divide the city?”

  “Yes.”

  Adelaide kept her tone brisk. “You know why, Vikram. The west got too violent. After what happened at the Greenhouse, the City didn’t have a choice. Harvests decimated, working citizens stabbed—I mean, there were children in there for stars’ sakes. Only three of them came out intact.”

  Vikram scowled. “Conveniently.”

  “What do you mean, conveniently?”

  “I mean it’s convenient that when the ’seventy-seven riots started, the Council decided it was a great idea to let school parties wander round public buildings. Don’t you think?”

  She stared at him. “You can’t accuse—”

  “I’m not accusing.”

  “What are you saying then?”

  “I’m saying that it was a long time ago. You can’t know what really happened at the Greenhouse.”

  “And I suppose you can’t know what really happened at Osuwa University, either. Perhaps that was allowed to happen too?” She strove to keep the anger out of her voice. Who was he to be lecturing her?

  “No,” he said. “That was a few individuals in a militant group called the New Western Osiris Front, which got out of hand. But I can tell you exactly what happened afterwards. The sk—the Home Guard let Citizens into the refugee camps. They even loaned them some guns. And your people used them. Like toys. I don’t suppose anyone noticed if there were children around then.”

  She picked up the onyx beads and let them clatter back, pointedly.

  “Well, as you so rightly pointed out, I wasn’t there. You can’t blame me for what other people did. You asked me why the border was created and I told you.”

  Vikram’s expression was almost mocking now.

  “I know the official line. I’m interested in why your father came to that decision.”

  “That depends upon who you ask,” said Adelaide. She was happier discussing her father. Feodor was easily culpable. “According to my brother Linus, there was a huge debate over the issue and Feodor felt some glimmer of guilt about it—they were refugees, after all, it wasn’t like the Council could ship them off somewhere else. But if you ask me, it was easy for Feodor. He was doing what he always does—protecting his interests. Now I’m telling you this, Vikram, not because I care, but so you know what you’re up against.”

  “We’re,” he insisted. “What we’re up against.” He grinned. The expression was slightly startling. “You’ll be the next Grete Kaat.”

  She dismissed this as too idiotic for words. “Grete Kaat was a criminal. She conspired to assassinate Alain and Helene Dumay. The parents of my compatriots.” Not that she had anything to do with the Dumay offspring, but Vikram did not know that.

  “Grete Kaat was never proved guilty.”

  “You believe she was innocent?”

  “Do you really believe she was guilty?” he countered.

  Adelaide gave him her blandest look. “Kaat is celebrated every year in the west for what she did.”

  “I’m sure that’s what they tell you. Actually she’s celebrated for what she didn’t do. Kaat died in jail of pneumonia. The only reason she was locked up in the first place is because she’d expressed sympathies with the west in the past—the perfect scapegoat. That was the so-called evidence.”

  Adelaide decided not to comment. She had better weapons at her disposal.

  “I’ll tell you something ironic, shall I Vikram? My grandmother was a refugee. Second Grandmother that is. The first one died when Feodor was a child.”

  Vikram’s face contracted. She had rattled him at last, although she was not sure now that it had been her intention. This kept happening with him, she thought. Things slipping out that she had not meant to say at all.

  “Is that some kind of secret?”

  “I’d hardly tell you if it was a secret. Don’t forget, west and City wasn’t an issue then. But imagine when Grandfather’s son grew up and joined the segregation movement. I think it broke his heart. Having said that, I didn’t see him jumping to live on the other side.”

  “Didn’t he contest it? Your grandfather? Surely when his own wife—”

  “No, no. My grandfather is the Architect, he was never on the Council. Feodor started that little dynasty. And besides, I don’t suppose Grandfather felt there was much choice, if they wanted to preserve anything of Osiris. Quite funny, really, isn’t it?”

  She was speaking faster. It must be lack of sleep. After all, she had spent the night with a gun in her hand, it was hardly surprising if she was a little on edge.

  Vikram looked at her straight on.

  “Answer me something,” he said. “Do you honestly believe the border is right?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

  “Humour me.”

  “I’m helping you, Vikram, because you helped me. But I’m not getting into discussions about morality with you.” She conjured her best mocking smile. “That’s not my style. Now, moving on from Feodor’s section—”

  She slipped off a bracelet and laid it further along the beads.

  “Here we have what I call the Executors—the departmental heads. Always look at the second row. That’s where the Board of Four sit, the top Ministers. First Security—supervises the Home Guard and the ring-net and the civilian police. Then Finance—responsible for maintaining the credit system, including the anon cash chips given to westerners, seeing as you’re not properly registered. After all, you can only get so far on peng.”

  “Which is another thing that could be sorted out if the border went.”

  “Are you listening to me or not?”

  “I’m listening. I was just wondering how long you’d last if you had to barter for your fancy jewellery, that’s all.”

  If he was trying to rile her, he was succeeding. But she refused to show it, and replied in her sweetest voice. “Luckily for both of us, that’s unlikely ever to be an issue, is it? Getting back to the Executors—after Finance comes Resources, who looks after greenhouse production, parts manufacture, and the mining operations.” She had an uneasy flashback to Linus’s speech, cast it quickly aside. “And then there’s Health and Science—self-explanatory. But also responsible for the meteorological facility up there.” She pointed to the ceiling. “You’ll notice that these four Ministers always get the people in the front row to speak for them. They don’t like getting their hands dirty.”

  Vikram raised his eyebrows, pointedly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just, coming from you…”

  Was that a joke? She wondered.

  “Actually, I don’t mind dirt. It’s people who piss me off.”

  “You should come to the west some time,” he said.

  “Maybe if we win.”

  “Deal.”

  “I th
ink we’ve made enough deals, don’t you?” One look at his face told her this time he was definitely joking. “Oh. Very funny. Anyway, the Executors tend to be the ones to suggest any new laws, but it doesn’t happen often. They’ll be violently against you.”

  Vikram rested his chin on one hand, looking at the beads.

  “Do Citizens hate the west that much?”

  The question surprised her. “Not hate, no. We don’t really think about you.” She considered for a moment. “I suppose it’s seen as a lost cause. We’ll have to pull out a few sob stories, Vikram, get the newsreels on side. Maybe you should tell them about Mikkeli. Do you have a photograph of her? A drawing?”

  Vikram looked uneasy. He shook his head. His silence indicated her transgression more clearly than any words would have done. Adelaide took off another ring and placed it next to the bracelet.

  “The liberal set. But rivals of Linus. They’re Nucleites—they believe we’re the last city on Earth,” she explained. Her other earring went beside the ring. “And Linus and co. Who are anti-Nucleite. They believe—”

  “In survivors outside Osiris.” Vikram looked at her. “What are you?”

  “Pro, of course. It’s only Linus who’s gone on this wacky spiritual kick. Why, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose I don’t see things quite so black and white. Things are different in the west.”

  Adelaide thought about Linus’s strange weather experiments. Less than a year ago she would have said he was mad, without question, but she knew better than anyone that madness could not be qualified.

  “I suppose you think we should renew expeditions too.”

  Vikram picked up the earring she’d just set down, toying with it. “That’s an interesting idea. Is that what your brother wants?”

  “I don’t know what Linus wants,” she admitted. “But I can tell you one thing. Whatever he says or does, there’s an ulterior motive behind it.”