by E. J. Swift
‘What does that mean?’
The mechanic comes forwards and takes a seat at the table.
‘Can I…?’
Vikram passes him the device. The mechanic turns it over in his hands, frowning.
‘These things are coded to imprint. There’s no way of accessing what’s on it, or deleting it. Only an Antarctican can do that. But if you want to use it for yourself, I can do that.’
‘I want to send a message,’ says Vikram.
‘Something wrong with a letter?’
‘A letter can be forged. I want the recipient to know it’s not a fake. Also, it’s a matter of returning some property.’
‘All right.’
The mechanic unrolls a cloth and assesses the instruments fastened inside. His fingers are dry and callused and have a delicacy in their movement which reassures Vikram. He selects a blunt-ended screwdriver and unfastens a small pouch on the bag. From this he extracts a minute, sparkling stone.
‘Diamond’s the only thing tough enough to break this.’
‘You’re going to break it?’
‘I’ll put it back together again.’
Vikram looks from the holoma to the mechanic.
‘You fix cars, is that right?’
‘And an aeroplane.’ He sets the diamond carefully on the table. ‘But that was before the pilot – before she disappeared.’
‘I’ve heard a lot about the pilot. You know her?’
‘I fix her plane. I guess you’d say I know her.’
‘Where do you think she went?’
‘Ramona’s a friend,’ says the mechanic. ‘So I’d rather not talk about her, if you don’t mind. I prefer to think of her as still alive.’
Vikram gestures.
‘I understand. Do your worst.’
He watches the man turning the holoma over in his hands, running his fingertips over the surface, until he pauses.
‘There.’
‘What is it?’
The mechanic rotates the holoma towards Vikram.
‘Feel that?’
When Vikram runs his finger over the holoma, he feels an almost imperceptible dimple in the surface of the little machine. He wonders how he failed to notice it before.
The mechanic places the tiny diamond on the dimple and rests the screwdriver on top, then takes up a hammer. Vikram has a moment of foreboding but before he can say anything the hammer comes down on the screwdriver with a heavy crack. The holoma bisects into two halves as neatly as a melon.
The interior is a cluster of intricate mechanisms fused together in copper and silver and green. Vikram watches, intrigued, as the mechanic deliberates over the device.
‘Where did you learn how to do this?’
‘An Antarctican spy showed me.’
‘Why would a spy show you a secret like this?’
‘He’d been here a long time. I’m not sure he was doing much spying any longer. When the Tarkies send people over here, they rarely get to go back, whatever they tell them. And the spies get disillusioned – know what I mean?’
Apparently satisfied, the mechanic takes a pair of gloves and presses the two halves of the holoma together. They fuse back into a perfect sphere. Still gloved, he slides the holoma towards Vikram.
‘Hold your hand around it for ten seconds, then let go, then five.’
Vikram does as instructed.
‘Should be coded to you now. But like I said, whatever was on here, it’s locked away. This is just an override.’
‘That’s fine. That’s all I need it for. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
The mechanic replaces the little diamond and rolls up his toolkit.
‘Who’s the message for, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Someone I owe an apology.’
Once the holoma has been coded to his palm print, Vikram finds it simple and intuitive to use. He records and deletes his message several times until he is satisfied with what he wants to say. It’s a wrench to let the device go – but it does not belong to him, has never belonged to him, and every day it remains in his care is a reminder not only of the guilt he feels over Taeo’s death, but of a world he does not have the time or liberty to explore. When he decided to return to Osiris it felt like a choice, but the reality is there is no alternative – there never has been – and with each new arrival at the camp comes another obligation, another inescapable responsibility for him to fulfil.
He talks to Mig about the best way to slip the holoma into the Antarctican network, and they assign three camp members to the task. At the last minute, Mig says he wants to go with them. Vikram is reluctant. The boy out of his sight is out of his protection, and Mig is not happy, and therefore he is unpredictable, and that worries Vikram. Then again, perhaps it will do the boy some good to get out of the camp. In the end he acquiesces, and watches the little expedition setting out, walking in single file between the trees until they disappear among the denser foliage of the forestry.
The holoma goes with them, bound for Antarctica, and a woman Vikram has seen but never met. As soon as they are out of sight he is filled with misgivings. He has set something in motion, and there is no taking it back.
Evening falls and the camp members who are not on scout or perimeter duty gather in circles to sit and eat, exchanging stories and histories. Fires are not permitted, for fear of the smoke giving away their location, but torches set into the ground cast a low, white illumination across the clearing. Some groups are content to talk; others entertain themselves with cards or dice games or the radio. In just a few short weeks, the concealed glade with its two abandoned hunting cabins has evolved into a tiny community.
Vikram observes the doctor from earlier today and joins the circle where she is sat. His presence is acknowledged, but the conversation continues uninterrupted. Vikram sits quietly, listening. The camp is used to his ways, and rarely ask questions, except those of practical matters – regarding how their mission is to proceed. That they accept the mission so unquestioningly remains a thing of astonishment to him, but they all have their reasons for being here. Sometimes he is not sure that he can bear the weight of their belief.
It is a rule of the camp that no one raises their voice. The murmurings of the conversations run over and under one another, defined only by the silvery glow of the torches, voices out of the darkness, bled through a crack from another world.
The first speaker is a spice trader; he’s been cultivating chilli plants in the camp. He begins slowly. It’s always the same beginning. I knew someone. Actually, I didn’t know him that well. He was my father. Does that surprise you? We were never close. It was always that way, even when I was a child. He played the violin. Every evening the house would be full of the sound of him practising, not just playing but the technical elements, scales, that sort of thing. I didn’t like that kind of music – I didn’t understand it. I’d put the radio up loud to annoy him, but when I went to sleep I could still hear those fucking scales, up and down, up and down. After I left home we hardly spoke. The last twelve months we had no contact at all. Then I heard the news. He was in the city, when the epidemic came. Since he died, I’ve been listening non-stop to the music he liked, but I still don’t understand it.
He stops, looks down. An exhalation of breath. Another camp member begins. I knew someone. My mother’s auntie. Seventy years old! Her skin was wrinkled as hemp from the sun, but her mind was sharp as a pin. We talked about everything. Then she got the jinn. Ten kilograms she lost in the conversion, but she didn’t die. She was tough. She lived another three years. Seventy-three! Then we had a redfleur case in the village. The doctors weren’t sure if it was that or something else that took her in the end, but they burned her anyway. These people came, masked, with a truck. They put us in isolation. We couldn’t take a shit without saying please. I was almost glad, then, that she went so fast. She would have hated it. The confinement. I don’t know where they took her ashes. I’d like to know that. I’d re
ally like to know.
I knew someone. No, not knew, exactly. We hardly exchanged a word, to tell the truth, but there was an accord. Every day I’d take the boat out on my fishing run at dawn and about the same time I’d see this woman driving her boat back to the harbour, dragging her nets. You know how sometimes you can have an understanding with someone, without needing to speak? It was like that. We’d nod to one another and sometimes we’d wave. Sometimes it was misty and I only caught a glimpse of her, hunched over the tiller, the water just drifting like silk below. I never saw her anywhere else. One day I took the boat out and she wasn’t there. Or the next day, or the next. I asked about but no one knew who she was. Then I heard there’d been an outbreak.
I knew someone. He sold lemons on the promenades in Cataveiro. We said hello every morning.
I knew someone. A bicycle courier. For years I’d been trying to work up the courage to ask her out, but I never did.
I knew someone. A parrot girl. My parrot girl. I knew someone.
The night deepens and the stories ebb away, leaving only the soft fuzz of the radio hub set up by Mig, which is continually monitored despite the intermittent signal. Vikram sees the doctor watching him from across the circle. He knows that however many people come, he will always carry their stories, because even while they are shared with the camp the stories are invasive, spoken directly to and for him. The one who didn’t die. Why him? And how? Is it the coral tea he still sometimes craves? Is it something in his blood? Is it a fucking cosmic joke? And all at once he has a feeling of intense claustrophobia, and has to get up and leave the circle, not wanting to hear, or see, any more.
The expedition returns with news and provisions and a look of distraction, a look which says they have seen something strange and can’t stop thinking on it. This is how it went: they wound their way back to Tierra del Fuego, travelling at first through the dusk, using the half-light to mask their journey, and then openly, as a small fishing crew, trailing a net behind them as camouflage, pulling in coils of cephalopods and silver-backed fish, moving in and out of the drifts of island mist, eventually rounding the shoulder of del Fuego to bring their haul to the harbour, where two of them began to haggle with the locals, and the third took the holoma, and went to a bar called Arturo’s, where you will meet all kinds of people, and listened and learned some names, and obtained an address.
And meanwhile, the two at the harbour sold their squid at a price not good but not bad, you could say it was fair, and they heard a rumour, which everyone in Fuego is talking about, from the smallest child to the oldest fish-skinner. Some time ago – days, certainly, and maybe even weeks, the time varied according to who you spoke to, but the story is the same – a distress signal was detected. It came over the radio. There was a voice. The voice asked for help. And the word from the harbour front is that it came from the lost city. That’s right. From Osiris.
Vikram interrupts. ‘Osiris? You’re sure about that?’
Yes, they’re sure.
He listens with increasing alarm. The news raises a thousand questions to which there can be no hope of answers, not here, not cut off in necessary exile as he is. Where has the signal come from? Who set it off? Who received it? And yet – he dares to hope – could this also be cause for optimism?
Someone in Osiris has managed to get the signal out.
Someone else knows, or believes, there is life beyond the ocean.
While the expedition recount the rest of their tale, Vikram can see that something is wrong with Mig. The boy has nothing to contribute. He stands at a slight distance to the other three, glowering, with one hand in his pocket, clenched into a fist.
Vikram takes him aside.
‘What is it? What’s happened? Did something go wrong with the holoma?’
‘No. It’s gone. They left it at the house. The Tarkie will find it.’
‘Then what?’
A shudder runs through the boy. Vikram takes him by the shoulders and looks into the boy’s face. He can feel the tension locking Mig’s skinny frame.
‘Mig, what is it?’
When Mig looks up at him his eyes are blazing with hate.
‘It’s the Alaskan,’ he says. ‘She’s in Fuego.’
At that moment Vikram wants more than anything to tell Mig not to worry, that it will be all right, that Mig will never have to deal with the Alaskan again. But he can’t lie to the boy.
Vikram needs her.
ANTARCTICA
‘YOU CAN GO in now.’
The defender holds the door for her, a courtesy Shri would prefer to throw back in his face, regardless of his complicity, or not. She hesitates before entering. Her gut tells her that to step over the threshold is to give ground in some way, to accept a change in state not yet perceived, but whose consequences are already preset. Nothing good can be inside.
The stomach of the man holding the door eases in and out as he waits. Shri sets her shoulders and walks inside, hearing the door closed discreetly behind her.
She would have thought a military room would be tidy, but this one is not. The work station and the comms desk are grubby, littered with holomas and stray pots lined with coffee grains which are adding, she suspects, to the tinge of mustiness on the air. A room that has the sense of having seen, lately, a lot of the person who now occupies it. The man sitting behind the desk is African-Antarctican. He wears a Republican security uniform with a high-level insignia at the collar. The uniform is sharply cut and suits the slim figure of the man, but the material is rumpled. He looks tired. Thinking of the distress in her children’s faces as she said her goodbyes, Shri cannot help but feel glad as she notes this.
I hope you’ve had as many sleepless nights as I have.
The man waves at a chair in front of the desk. A piece of amateur artwork has pride of place upon it, something Shri suspects is meant to be a penguin, clearly the work of a child.
‘Come in, take a seat.’
Shri does not move.
‘Sit down, please.’
She senses the man suppressing his irritation. Slowly, Shri comes forwards and settles in the chair, placing her feet neatly together, hands in her lap. These days (these days? She cannot comprehend that the path of her life should have led to this conclusion, how it could be this way) she has the sense that if she does not hold herself physically together, it will all be too late. Too late for what, she is not sure, but she doesn’t want to find out.
‘I’m Commander Karis Io,’ says the man behind the desk. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘Is this about my partner? I’ve been trying to speak to someone in Civilian Security for weeks. No one will tell me what happened. They say he overdosed.’
‘I’m afraid that’s the case.’
‘They won’t tell me how, or why – no one will tell me anything—’
‘Citizen Nayar, if you’ll let me explain why you’re here…’
‘Yes?’
‘My remit is Special Unit Atrak, which monitors the ocean city known as Osiris.’
This is not what she was expecting. She stares at him, confused.
‘What does this have to do with Taeo?’
‘You have been sent a holoma,’ says the commander. ‘From a man who calls himself Vikram Bai. An Osirian.’
‘I haven’t received it.’
‘I’ll show you now.’
He retrieves a holoma from the collection on his desk and activates the device. Shri waits.
The hologram that appears is not her partner. It is a man she has never seen before. A slender man with Indian features and scarred cheeks who speaks in careful, oddly accented Spanish. This is a message for Shri. He says he is from the sea city, Osiris. Two months ago he landed on the coast of Patagonia. He was rescued by her partner. Taeo tried to help him. He says her partner told him about his family. Shri and Kadi and Sasha and Nisha. He says Taeo would have done anything to get back to them. Taeo had a plan. They intended to return to Antarctica, himself and Taeo, togeth
er. He says that Taeo was a good man. He says he is sorry.
‘Oh… oh shit…’
She can feel the tears pricking at her eyes and she does not want to cry. Not here. Not in this office, in front of this man.
‘Who is he?’
‘Someone we need to find.’
‘He’s – Osirian?’
The word sits uncomfortably in her mouth. With it come to mind other, disturbing associations, like that man in the news who says he detected a radio signal. Masay? Mesay? She can’t remember. She’s been distracted. Now she thinks about it, haven’t there been protests? The lost city, always unspoken, is suddenly thrust into the spotlight, and this man is saying her partner was caught up in it. Why did you have to get caught up in it, Taeo? Why couldn’t you leave well alone?
‘So he claims. This holoma belonged to your partner. It contains messages sent by yourself. It’s been hacked, evidently, and has fallen back into the Antarctican network. Now you see why you are here?’
‘Yes – no. So he sent me a message. Why couldn’t you just forward it to me?’
‘This man, Vikram Bai. Like I said, he’s someone we need to find. I’ve watched the recording several times. I’d like to know what you make of it.’
Shri feels a spark of anger at the idea of her personal correspondence being analysed and discussed by others. She wonders how long this Special Unit Atrak had the holoma in their possession before she was even allowed to see the damn thing. She presses the heels of her hands tightly against her knees, striving for control.
‘What do you mean, what do I make of it?’
‘This man is a fugitive. But he made a great effort to ensure that this device reached Antarctica, and more specifically, you. What do you make of that?’
‘How the hell should I know? You’ve watched it more than I have. You saw what he said. What more is there to say about it? I don’t know what he wanted. I don’t know anything about him.’
Shri senses the commander’s gaze on her, an assessor’s gaze, judging the likelihood that Shri will fall to pieces, disintegrate on him like paper in water. He weighs up his next words.
