Cataveiro

by E. J. Swift

  ‘No, some of it … There is a military programme. I spoke out against it. It was my decision. I went public. That’s why they sent me here. But you have to understand, that decision, I spent years … I didn’t know what to do or who to speak to … I was good at what I did. I was starting something new, something no one had done before. All my research, I had to hand it over. Even now, I don’t know if it was the right thing. And then you appeared. Like some kind of cosmic joke.’

  He laughs raggedly, but it hurts too much and he has to hold himself still. Silence falls between them. The rain drums relentlessly on the roof. A truck swishes through the waterlogged road in the street below. When Vikram begins to speak his voice is low and trancelike, as if he is speaking to himself.

  ‘It’s Osiris too,’ he says. ‘We only escaped because we’d been secretly armed. Linus Rechnov supplied us. He’d found out about Whitefly. Operation Whitefly, they called it. A plan to keep the city secret. His family were part of it. He knew – I knew – there would be a fight. The others didn’t believe me until it happened. Half of them died right out, the night after we left. We couldn’t give them a proper send-off, we had nothing to burn them with. We had to drop them in the ocean and leave them to sink.’

  A trickle of blood works its way down Vikram’s jaw and neck. He makes no effort to wipe it away.

  ‘We weren’t supposed to leave Osiris,’ he says.

  Taeo probes his throbbing lip experimentally with his tongue and discovers a split. A fresh influx of pain sears through him. He speaks awkwardly.

  ‘There’s so much I need to tell you. One day, Antarctica will be the wealthiest nation in the world. The land is so vast. Under the ice – we can only start to imagine. Untouched resources. We’re discovering precious materials. Strains of diamond. Rare metals for electronics – stuff the Neons were mad for, and the Boreals pay well for them. Gas and oil. And that’s not all. As the ice melts, we’ll be able to recreate the kind of world that hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years. Already it’s beginning. There’ll be beaches. White sand. We’ll plant forests. New coral reefs. We’ll import animal DNA. Grow plants from seed banks. Antarctica will be … a paradise.’ He pauses, swamped by another wave of sickening pain. ‘I won’t … live to see that. It’s going to take hundreds of years. But the Republic will make it happen, and maybe my descendants will live to see the day.’

  ‘Paradise,’ says Vikram. The word is hard and angry.

  ‘One day …’

  ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘Only one thing could stop it. The war. Between south and north. It’s always been there, behind the scenes, since the first colonies set up on Antarctica. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? We’ll build this paradise, and everyone will want it. The Boreal States. The Solar Corporation. All of them.’

  ‘And Osiris?’ says Vikram.

  ‘Osiris was another move in the war. It was made out to be – a philanthropic exercise. A new utopia for a broken world. After the Blackout, something was needed. But it was a Boreal thing. The Osiris Knowledge Bank poured funding into it. Everyone knew the real reason the city was built, but nobody could ever say. Your city is a military base. It’s a stepping stone for the north to invade us, whenever they feel fit.’

  Taeo touches his head gingerly, and feels the stickiness of blood.

  ‘Why Osiris? Why couldn’t they use Patagonia?’

  ‘Setting up a base here would directly contravene the Nuuk Treaty. Nothing is ever said outright, it’s all chasing shadows. That was the thing about Osiris – it was the perfect cover. Until the year of the Great Storm. That must have been a blessing for the Republic. I can imagine how it happened. Your city seemed to disappear, but that couldn’t be right. There was still energy output. There were still ships appearing on Antarctican radars. It can’t have taken long to find out the truth. And since then … well, the Republic has been happy to maintain Osiris’s myth.’

  Something flickers in Vikram’s face with his last sentence. ‘A myth,’ he repeats softly. ‘Yes. Like the Tellers, I can see how they worked. I can see it now. But you’re forgetting something. Osiris doesn’t belong to the Boreal States. Osiris is independent. Nobody has any right to it.’

  ‘Do you think that would stop the Boreal States? You think those countries would give a shit about the independence of a single city?’

  ‘Osiris would defend itself,’ says Vikram, but uncertainly now. Watching the other man through his one good eye, Taeo feels a weight of sorrow and guilt descending. He has done this to Vikram, to someone he considered a friend. Someone would have, some day, but it has proved Taeo’s responsibility, and Taeo’s load to carry. Vikram, who thought he had the measure of a world he had never believed existed in the first place, now finds that beneath it there is a network of hollow caves.

  He speaks gently. ‘I’m sorry, Vikram. If the world finds out Osiris exists, your city wouldn’t stand a chance. The problem with Osiris is it means too much, to too many different players. For the Boreal States, it’s the platform they made to spy on us. To Antarctica, it’s a Boreal outpost which we’ve ignored for fifty years precisely to keep the north from our back door. It would be a symbol of hope for some – those isolated civilizations left in Tasmania and the far south of India. The Solar Corporation is something else again – for them it’s leverage, a way to toy with south and north – and the Corporation has a stake in Osiris too. An energy stake. And for the people in any of those nations, your city is something else. It’s stories to scare children, rumours and fantasies. A dream.’

  The speech exhausts him. He wants to lie down and smoke and never wake again.

  Vikram says, ‘You haven’t said what it means for Patagonia.’

  ‘The discovery of Osiris would be a nightmare for this country. Patagonia is just another victim of the war. It’s a trading station. They don’t want the Boreal States here any more than we do.’

  ‘And you want to take me to Antarctica to keep the secret.’

  Taeo bows his head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do I know they won’t just kill me when we get there? If I’m that important?’

  ‘That wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I wouldn’t let it.’

  Vikram shakes his head. ‘You’re an exile. What leverage could you have?’

  ‘There would be no point. Besides, people are curious. People would want to know about Osiris. They’ll want information.’

  He thinks of Kadi and Sasha with their holobooks. He imagines them listening to tales of the sea city, their faces rapt, spellbound in the glow of the bluish night lights.

  Vikram gets to his feet and walks painstakingly across the floor. He opens the shutter. The rain is louder. Strains of guitar trickle through from Madame Bijou’s night-time radio. From elsewhere, a late-night report on the redfleur outbreak, low and urgent.

  ‘I should tell you something about Osiris,’ says Vikram. ‘Because there are things you don’t understand too. And the thing is, however hard you try to stop it, people like me are going to appear. And keep appearing. I might be the first but I won’t be the last.’ He pauses, watching the rain. ‘You probably can’t imagine how it feels, to live believing there’s no one else out there. Thinking this is your world and none other exists. Knowing what the edges are, the boundaries … the border.’ He peers out, looking down into the street below. The overhead light is on and, instinctively, Taeo wants to stop Vikram showing his face, but the power has shifted. It is all too late.

  ‘I spent my entire life wondering.’ Vikram’s voice is quieter now, withdrawn, as though Taeo is no longer present. ‘Not knowing, not quite believing, but sometimes, in a dream, you sense something, or you feel something, and you think, perhaps there could be … And then you wake up, and you know it couldn’t, and yet there’s always this doubt, this lingering, nagging doubt. Sometimes I thought I was going mad. Now I know I’m not. I wasn’t. I wasn’t mad to think like that. Kn
owing. Being certain. It changes you. It’s changed me. Maybe I only realized it now.’

  He turns to face Taeo squarely. There is a light in his eyes, something surprised, almost evangelical in its fervour, that takes Taeo aback and makes him feel at once sad and relieved. As though he has been absolved.

  ‘There are lots of people like me in Osiris,’ says Vikram. ‘I won’t be the last. Your Republic will have to deal with that.’

  He moves, awkwardly but with sudden purpose. He goes into the next room and comes out, pulling on a waterproof jacket. Taeo watches, powerless.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going out,’ says Vikram. ‘I need to clear my head. I won’t be long.’

  ‘But the quarantine …’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ says Vikram. ‘I can look after myself. Stay here. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  The door clicks shut behind him. Taeo lies back where he is. There is no part of him that does not hurt. He wonders where Vikram is going and what he is planning to do. He wonders if Vikram will ever forgive him, and wishes now he had said something more. I’ll make it up to you. Something like that. But what do words mean anyway? He made promises to Vikram, but he made promises to Shri too, and did not keep them. I’ll never leave you, he said. And she said, I know, I know you won’t. I know you.

  There is a ringing in his ears and the rain drums through it. They play a futile battle in the centre of his head. He wonders, if he imagines the effects of opium, if it is possible to trick his body into feeling them. He closes his eyes, and the world is mercifully dark.

  PART THREE

  EL CINTURÓN / THE BELT

  28 ¦

  SHE HAS NEVER been this far north before. The Amazon Desert surrounds her on every side, stretching away as far as she can see. It has a strange, bleak, unspeakable beauty. Striations of ochre and soft gold merge into burnt orange and umber. She is mesmerized by the shape of the undulating dunes, the way shadows dapple the peaks and troughs. The shadow of the plane skims over the sand, there, then gone, then there again, and there is a part of her that cannot quite believe the scene is real, as though she too is skipping in and out of existence, and which side she will land upon has not yet been determined.

  At first, in the outer reaches of the desert, she sees the remains of cities half submerged in sand. Further in, towards the basin, there are strange, twisted shapes: the burned carcasses of trees still standing. And then there is only sand. With the plane on autopilot, she maps what she can, a cairn of rock here, the sweep of an old river bed there. Rough sketches, notes and measurements. She is cutting across the centre of the desert. It is the fastest route to Panama, and she has no time to lose.

  Somewhere in the upper half of the continent, the raiders are making their way north. If they plan to make the Exchange, they must have transport. She suspects they are taking the eastern coastal route, but she cannot be sure, and so her plan is to make it to Panama ahead of them, and wait.

  Rescue Inés, find medicine, take her mother home.

  Where is Inés now? Are the raiders hurting their prisoners, or cajoling them? Is Inés in the back of a truck, every bouncing motion jolting her jinn-ridden body as they navigate the crumbling highways? Are they travelling by ship? Have they bribed a member of the fleet or a pirate vessel and locked Inés in a cabin, dizzy and nauseous as the ship braves the waves of the Atlantic?

  She doesn’t know.

  Inés could be anywhere between the Highlands and Panama and she doesn’t know where and the not knowing takes up the hot, dry space in the cockpit, and the whole of the canopy of the sky around them, and the vast plains of the desert below. Even though there is nothing there, she is scanning every ripple of the sand, as if the desert might reveal Inés at the edge of her vision, a fierce, tiny figure, striking out alone.

  As the day wears on, the heat in the cabin intensifies. Her back and thighs against the seat are soaked with sweat and every movement becomes an effort. Her feet swell and throb. She considers landing and resting over midday, but presses on. Best to make as few landings as possible, with the plane in this state. At first the whining was just a small, persistent sound, like an insect veering suddenly close to the ear. But it has got steadily worse, until it is as bad as it was when she left the Nazca Desert, before the Antarctican fixed Colibrí.

  If he fixed Colibrí. That seems increasingly doubtful now. She puts on a set of headphones to block out the noise. There is no radio signal, so there is no sound. She sings loudly to herself. Old Nazca songs, familiar as her hands. The parrot who ate the voices of every living thing, the hummingbird who stole the winds …

  She tries to picture the landscape of Aris’s stories, the jungle with its dripping canopies and chattering creatures. It feels important, to be able to picture it. But all she sees is sand. The sand is so majestical, so absolute, it is impossible to visualize anything but what is here.

  For the first time she finds herself seriously considering the Antarctican’s offhand suggestion that she might find work in the south. He is right. To map the ice continent would be a challenge, the greatest challenge she could accept. It would be a joy. She imagines a land where there is always water, where rivers form at the ice frontier and there are no ocean dead zones; where there are fish and green grass grows in the lush fields. She imagines towns full of people who use robotics for all things as if it were a second skin. She imagines taking Inés there. She could bargain for that. Inés would be safe. Inés would have good medical care. And old age. A comfortable one.

  Inés would never go.

  Movement catches her eye on the desert floor below. At first she thinks it is a trick of the light. But the movement is linear, and steady. It’s a vehicle, she realizes. A truck painted in desert colours.

  A truck.

  The man at the plant said a ship, but what if he’s wrong …

  She circles back, dropping lower, wanting a better view, and as she does the whining noise increases even through her headphones. The plane banks violently, tilting far further than she intended. She is staring at the sky with the world falling away below.

  She kicks the pedals and hauls the plane back, but they are moving away from the truck now, heading in the opposite direction. She can feel that something is terribly, terribly wrong. Banking to make another turn could be fatal. But she is off course now.

  Then they lose height. The plane starts to shake. There is a crash as something comes loose in the hold and starts to shunt back and forth. Ramona’s stomach leaps with the sudden steep drop in altitude. She stares at the instrument panel. The altimeter needle swings rapidly to the left. Two thousand metres. Fifteen hundred. The pressure in her ears is horrendous. She wrestles with the controls.

  ‘Come on, Colibrí! Come on now! Fuck!’

  The plane is plummeting and she knows she is going to crash.

  The hum of the engine magnifies into something colossal, screeching in her ears and all around her. The plane shakes so violently she feels like all her bones are going to break. It begins to spin. Sky, dunes, sky, dunes. They are in free fall.

  Out, get out!

  She checks her parachute straps. One solid strike on the ejector when the sky is where it should be. The plane will survive the crash. It will. Time to save herself. She hits the ejector. Nothing happens. She hits it again, punching with increasing desperation.

  ‘No, no, no!’

  The plane nose-dives. Land careers towards her. In the last few seconds she hangs on to the yoke with grim desperation, trying to wrench back some level of control. The plane is completely unresponsive.

  She wraps her arms around her head and braces for impact.

  Rolling crests of pain. There is something wet sliding over her face, across her chin and down her neck.

  She opens her eyes.

  It is dark. The instrument panel has gone dead. The windshield is entirely blocked with sand. Ramona is tipped forwards, the safety harness holding her into her seat a
nd pressing into her shoulders. Her left shoulder has dislocated from the socket. Blood drips from a head wound. Her ribs scream when she breathes.

  She puts out her right arm to brace herself against the panel and releases the harness, then shrugs painfully out of the parachute. She tries opening the cockpit hatch but it has jammed. She has no idea how much sand is weighing it down. She’s going to have to get out through the hold. She feels for her pack; it’s fallen out of the passenger seat. The pack is heavy and she’ll need her good arm. She hooks it over one foot.

  Gingerly, every movement revealing a fresh root of pain, she hauls herself up through the back of the plane, dragging the pack behind her. Her ribs and shoulder are agony. The hold door sticks and she is scared she won’t get out, that they are entirely buried in sand, but then it releases. The desert light temporarily blinds her. She blinks away tears. She slithers out onto the sand and stumbles away.

  She staggers fifty metres and collapses, lying on her back, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. She fishes in the pack and retrieves a water bottle. She presses it to her lips, taking small sips, holding them in her mouth and letting each precious drop slide down her throat.

  The sky overhead is infinite blue, the sand a dry, baking amber. Squinting, she can see a long furrow scattered with debris, where the plane skidded on its belly before plunging into the side of a dune.

  Lucky, she thinks. Lucky again. If you call this luck.

  Her mother’s voice echoes in her head.

  Ramona, Ramona, Ramona.

  Always you try to fix things.

  And some things, they cannot be fixed.

  When she is certain she can stand it, she bites down on the piece of rubber she gave the girl in the highlands, bites down hard, and snaps her dislocated shoulder back into its socket. The tears that stream down her face feel like treachery. She cannot afford to lose water through tears.