by E. J. Swift
He does not tell him about the hours he has spent daydreaming about how to kill the Alaskan. He doesn’t want to have to see the freak’s face when he does it – the idea of looking into those cold, soulless eyes as she dies is intolerable – so his options are limited. But there are ways.
He does not tell Vikram that at the last farmhouse he visited, the farmer took hold of Mig’s arm and grasped it with the kind of fervency usually displayed by Born Again Mayans.
‘You’re a traveller, aren’t you?’ said the farmer.
‘I’m going to sea,’ said Mig. His revised cover story, dull but safe.
‘Then maybe you’ve heard. On your travels. Have you heard – about the man?’
‘What man?’
The farmer’s grip on his arm increased and Mig twisted away, annoyed, and knowing what was coming but seeing no way to avoid it. The farmer’s eyes shone.
‘The man who survived the redfleur!’
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Mig. ‘Who is he?’
‘How do you like the ocean?’ Vikram asks him.
Mig doesn’t want to sound too impressed. He doesn’t want Vikram to know that his heart is racing at the sight of the waves, their fierce white caps, the way they crash with such wanton aggression upon the rocks. Or that his only wish is that Pilar could be standing beside him, for him to sweep his arm wide across the vista and say to her, as though he had conjured it, what do you think of this? A flock of birds take turns diving at the ocean, the successful returning with some unlucky fish to screech and squabble over. How he longs for wings, or a flying machine like that woman he helped in Cataveiro, to take him away from here, back in time, before it all went so wrong.
‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s where I come from,’ replies the Osirian. His face is impassive.
Mig licks his lips and tastes salt. He watches a boat move slowly across the water, drawing a white tail behind it. He imagines Pilar is alive and on that boat.
‘So what do we do now?’
‘We find somewhere to hide.’ The Osirian turns away from the sea. ‘Come on. We’ve got work to do.’
TIERRA DEL FUEGO
THE ALASKAN WHEELS along the quiet, cool corridors of the island’s hospital until she finds the room she is looking for. It is easy to identify: two plainclothes bodyguards stand to attention outside. They eye the Alaskan with suspicion, one moving away from the door, posture shifting in intent, until she holds something up.
‘She will want to see me.’
Señorita Xiomara is in a bad state. A web of intravenous tubes push clear fluids into her veins. Her body lies slack, blood-drained, and her luxurious length of hair has declined to a limp black wing against the pillow. Appraising the pitiful sight in front of her, it is hard to believe that this is a woman who controls the country’s desalination empire, a woman of wealth and power. But the Alaskan has witnessed many a rise and descent; she never settles on a judgement. People vacillate too frequently for that.
When Xiomara sees the Alaskan, her face tightens in anger. If this were a snake it would spit.
‘What are you doing here?’
The Alaskan wastes no time with preambles.
‘I went to your house, Xiomara. A delightful abode. And a most impressive stock of medicine you have too. I believe it’s this one in particular you’re after?’
She holds aloft a box of skin patches. Xiomara’s eyes widen.
‘Somewhat ironic that you should flee south to escape the epidemic, only to contract something almost as bad,’ says the Alaskan, extracting the first patch, which is marked one of thirty. ‘Who was it – guerrillas? Dangerous, they are. Rabid sorts. I always heard they kept syringes of jinn-blood, but I’ve never known anyone fall prey to their ministrations. Until now.’
A bead of sweat glistens in the perfect curl of Xiomara’s upper lip. It is the first time the Alaskan has seen the lower part of her face without a mask. Even in sickness, there is no denying the beauty of the bone structure beneath the skin. She lifts Xiomara’s wrist from the covers.
‘No, don’t clench your fist – it’s got to go on smoothly, against the veins. You’d better prepare yourself, Xiomara. You’re in for a rough time with this. Not everyone survives a treatment for the jinn.’
She presses the skin patch into place.
‘There.’
With the brief moment of contact, memory floods the front of the Alaskan’s brain. Deep in the Alaskan’s past, there was a girl, a Scandinavian girl. The Alaskan remembers her, meandering down the forest track, bare feet making imprints in the mud. Her head turning. A smile, offered as a token, though it seemed like something more.
Señorita Xiomara snatches her hand away, rubbing at her wrist as though to wipe clean the Alaskan’s touch.
‘I am indebted to you,’ she says stiffly. ‘What is it that you want? The enclaves, is that it? Access? It can be arranged.’
The Alaskan considers her for a moment. A thousand things run through her head, things which are overwhelmingly uncomplimentary to Xiomara. Past slights. Small setbacks and small victories. She can see that Xiomara is trying quite desperately to read her, but to no avail, and Xiomara should know that by now. She should know that you do not mess with a nirvana.
Eventually she says, ‘There is nothing you have that I need.’
Xiomara’s frustration is evident.
‘Then why are you here? Why now? It’s been years, years since you’ve been outside the city – you’ve never even left your bed. What happened, Alaskan? Did all of your fetid little slave children run away?’
‘I brought you something,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Just a token. Really, it was quite the bargain.’
The Alaskan takes a battered old radio out of a bag. She places it on the table beside Xiomara, just out of the woman’s reach, and switches it on.
‘Story time,’ says the Alaskan.
The flare of triumph she feels is a gold nugget in her tired old heart. She wheels around, not needing to see Xiomara’s face. On her way out, she hears the beginning of the broadcast, crackling over the long-range wavelength.
In the city of Cataveiro there was a man who survived the redfleur. He was a man from nowhere. He was a man without a name, although some say that he had scales like a fish, and could swim for hours underwater without coming up for air. The redfleur had him, and the redfleur let him go. Who can say, listeners, why some are spared? The man lived…
Stories on the radio. So many stories in this garrulous country, cartwheeling like tumbleweed. But stories flower from a seed of truth. The Alaskan thinks about what it means to emerge alive from a brush with redfleur. Redfleur, the virus that always comes back, leapfrogging every advance of the scientists in the north with a newer, more lethal strain. Not that the classification matters here: the Patagonian government can’t afford to import Boreal medicine, so redfleur is redfleur, except that the man was in Cataveiro and the Cataveiro epidemic was a Type 9, and not even the northerners have a cure for Type 9.
The man lived.
‘Now that is one fish I failed to catch,’ says the Alaskan aloud.
Xiomara’s bodyguards stare at her disconcertedly. She lets them meet her eyes, knowing how her black irises unnerve the weak. She used to cover those irises, in her own country. She doesn’t bother here. Doubtless they would like to know more but she will leave them with the line as it is, a cryptic offering for them to relay to Xiomara when she wails and curses and vomits her way through her medication. If Xiomara dies it is no great loss to the Alaskan. She has been a worthy antagonist but this is the sweetest of victories: revenge in the act of saving. If Xiomara lives, knowing she owes her life to the Alaskan will drive her mad daily.
Meanwhile, the Alaskan has that last elusive fish to pursue.
She missed him once, in Cataveiro. She miscalculated – a rare mistake, but she is not too proud to deny she made one. Now she has a second chance.
The
Osirian.
ANTARCTICA
SHRI’S SON SASHA comes home from school with one eye swollen to black and his face tight and closed, and will not say a word to her. She bundles his coat off him, his arms pulling, pulling away from her, to get away from her, and runs instantly upstairs. She hears his feet pound each step. There is a moment when the house seems to hold its breath, and then she hears the door slam, and realizes she was only waiting for that sound.
She looks to Kadi, her eldest.
‘What happened?’
Kadi shrugs. She looks resigned rather than angry, which worries Shri more. Kadi goes over to Nisha’s pen and climbs inside, offering her hand to the toddler to clutch and play with. Shri trails her, still holding on to Sasha’s coat.
‘Kadi, tell me. Why has Sasha been in a fight?’
Kadi glances up at her and returns her attention to Nisha.
‘Why do you think?’
‘Just tell me.’
‘Because they found out,’ says Kadi, matter-of-factly. ‘They found out about Dad.’ She turns to the child. ‘Hey, Nish. What’s this? What’s this? Pen-guin. Say the word. Say “pen”.’
Shri knows she should ask what they are saying, the other kids, those little shits, but she doesn’t have the energy. She can only think about how it was before, when Taeo was first convicted: remembering the names, the daily scrapes and bruises, the puddle of urine on the front step and the shit smeared on the door, having to scrape it off; the smell seemed to linger for days and even when it was gone it was there in her nostrils. By comparison, the humiliation of having to leave her job barely registered. She stands in front of the pen, looking at her two daughters, feeling a sense of panic infusing her body until she can’t do anything except force herself to stay upright, holding Sasha’s coat tighter and tighter against her body. Nyari Town is the absolute back-ice. How much further will they have to go to get away from this? Where else is left to them?
Kadi gets to her feet with Nisha hanging on to one hand.
‘It’s okay, Mum. We’ll deal with it.’
That is not your responsibility, thinks Shri. She can hear thuds from upstairs which must be Sasha taking out his rage on something, and as happens at least once a day, she is filled with grief that this has happened to her children, and fury towards Taeo that he has done this to them.
‘I’m going to make Nisha’s tea,’ says Kadi.
Shri nods, wearily. She slumps on her back on the sofa and gestures up the most mindless of channels (Taeo’s cousin would not approve, but Taeo’s cousin is not back for at least an hour), fighting the temptation to lose herself in a trashy immersive. She’s always scorned those particular genres but lately her brain can’t engage with anything more intellectual than Last of the Penguins. She’s spent hours zoned in to the Adélie penguin colony on the far side of the continent, following them around. It’s not like they do anything – walk around, come back, dive into the ocean, come back, catch fish, eat fish. This is what her days are reduced to. She wonders whether it’s time to tell Taeo the truth. She’s kept the worst of it from him, not even to spare him so much as out of a sense of pride, not wanting to admit that this is out of her control. She can’t handle it. I can’t do it on my own, there isn’t enough of me. On a spur of action, she jumps up from the sofa, grabs a holoma and activates the recording. She’ll tell him everything. He deserves to know.
She pauses, holoma in hand.
She can’t do it.
How many times has she been here, propped up by rage, on the verge of speech? Every time, something stops her. The thought of Taeo, alone, in Patagonian exile, hearing this about his children. She can’t do it. She can’t. A bomb like this might derail him completely. And even now, after everything they’ve been through, she just can’t bear to hurt him that much.
You’re an idiot, Shri, she tells herself.
And she laughs.
‘Ha!’
The sound short and compressed. Masked by the inane chatter from the channel.
From the kitchen, she hears Kadi singing to Nisha. A Portuguese song. For a week after Taeo’s departure she refused to speak his language of the home, insisting upon Hindi or patois, an act of revenge which hurt only herself and which Kadi and Sasha openly defied, so now they’re back to their usual hybrids.
She mutes the holovid and orders the holoma to record. She’ll send the singing. She’ll send the lie.
Things go on this way, no better, no worse, until the news comes, on a Tuesday late in November. After it comes, Tuesdays will be different, but Shri doesn’t know that when she wakes up, in the narrow single bed of Taeo’s cousin’s house, and checks on Nisha in her cot. Nisha’s small agile limbs have managed to twist all the blankets around her, like a cocoon. Her eyes pop open as Shri leans over the railing and she stares curiously up. She has a persistent stare, this one. Stubborn, like her fool of a father. Shri straightens the blanket. She gives the mobile a tiny push and the metal birds dance and Nisha’s eyes follow the birds, follow the birds in their many colours. Shri smiles. She tries to appreciate the moments like this – to make herself notice them – stacking up the tiny victories like seeds, as though their multitude might distract her from the greater, deeper gulf of the days. She wiggles Nisha’s fingers, wraps her dressing gown around her, pulls on her slippers – it’s cold, the heaters are on low to save energy – and goes to wake Kadi and Sasha in the bunk beds.
‘Up, you two, up now. Who’s first in the shower?’
In the top bunk, Kadi groans and pulls the duvet over her head.
‘It’s too early…’
Shri takes hold of a visible foot and pulls steadily until Kadi begins to slide.
‘Up, madam. Haven’t you got that test today? Siberian, isn’t it?’
‘I feel sick. I can’t go in.’
‘Shower, now.’
Kadi grumbles her way into the bathroom. Shri makes breakfast for the children and they eat like they always do, as if the apocalypse is coming. Taeo always made breakfast. He is a morning person. She is not. Mornings to Shri are things to be endured. Taeo’s cousin Felícia eats a bowl of porridge that wouldn’t feed a flea and her gaze skims over the family with that vaguely disapproving air that Shri has learned to ignore. Shri checks her son anxiously for signs of resistance, but today he eats his breakfast, face blank as a virgin ice field.
After breakfast, Felícia goes to the lab to work and Shri walks the children to school. It’s always a wrench at the gates, seeing their faces drop. She hardens herself. What choice do they have? Their father’s actions have already put them at a social disadvantage; without an education, their chances of success will plummet even further.
‘Good luck with the Siberian!’ she calls to Kadi, who pulls a face, then runs up to a couple of friends. That’s progress, thinks Shri. Another seed in the pile. Briefly she scans the other kids, who are mucking about with their snowboards, watching for signs of trouble and wondering which ones are responsible for the now-regular bruises on her son – Sasha will never tell her. She can’t bear to watch his slouching progress into the playground and she turns away quickly, determined not to cry.
She walks back home, hands dug deep in her pockets, boots crunching in the snow. She thinks about what she will do with her day. There are some bits of accounting work that have come in, mercifully, so she can give Felícia some money for rent. She should finish those first. She should contact her lawyer about the appeal. There’s been no movement for weeks, and at the amount he charges they are almost bankrupt. She has done so much research she feels like she knows the law better than he does by now.
An official is standing outside the apartment block where Taeo’s cousin lives. He’s in Civilian Security uniform. As she approaches, unease growing, he says, ‘Shri Nayar?’
Shri’s throat is suddenly very dry. There is only one reason in the world for Civilian Security to speak to her. Her partner. Taeo.
‘Yes. Yes, that’s me.’
; He says they should go inside. She refuses. Going inside is final, and this cannot be final. Going inside is something that cannot be undone. She will not go inside. She tells the official this: I will not.
She does not really hear the next words. When the official speaks, his breath mists in the air. She watches the mist made by the words sorry and tragic death and overdose. She watches how it is made and how it dissipates. Different shapes from different words. It is cold out here. It is very cold.
The official asks if she understands. She says she does, and then she shouts, surprising herself. What does that mean? What does it mean, overdose?
He says it all again. He gives her a holoma. His blunt, rough-hewn features are scrunched in sympathy. She turns and stumbles away, down the road, holding the holoma. She cannot bear to see the sympathy, or his face, any longer. She passes rows of buildings covered in snow. A plough drives slowly past, clearing the night’s fall from the tracks. She staggers out of the way. The driver calls out, asking if she is all right there. She ignores her. Keeps walking. When the tears make it impossible to see where she is going she stops and sits where she is in the street. She takes her gloves off and holds the holoma in her chill hands and activates it.
The projection is a senior Civilian Security official, her uniform marked with multiple signatory leaves of the Republic. Her face bears a stern, resolute empathy. She relays what Shri has heard: that Shri’s partner died abroad, in service to the Republic. The circumstances were tragic and deeply regretful. In recognition of Taeo’s service, he has been issued a posthumous pardon for his breach of the official secrets act. A statement will appear in the press tomorrow. There is a contact number if Shri has any questions.
Shri cups the holoma in both palms. She feels the cold burrowing into her hands and her feet. It is a terrible thing, the cold, and yet she would happily lie down in it, right now, let it take her, embrace her, encompass her like a lover. She would let it turn her heart to ice, because it would be easier, that way. She thinks of the pile of seeds she has amassed and she knows that all the seeds in all the world will not be enough now, or ever again. But she does not lie down. She sits, her frozen hands cupping the holoma, unable to let go. A part of her is surprised, that the world still exists, that people hurry past, noses in their snoods, that clouds still move in the sky. Around her, fresh snow starts to fall, very gently, carpeting the streets of Nyari Town. In a burst of clarity it comes to Shri, who has always considered herself a patriot, that the Republic is responsible for her partner’s death. One way or another, they have killed him.
