by E. J. Swift
‘Fuck, Rechnov! You were meant to be here hours ago!’
‘No time – we need to get out of here. Linus said the Tarcticans are attacking.’
And he also said—
‘The Tarcticans?’
Dien’s hands keep working, pressing layers of gauze into place, although her face is frozen in disbelief. ‘Why would they attack us?’
‘You know as much as me. Are you coming?’
‘Let me just finish this – is the meet still on?’
‘I don’t know.’ She drops her voice. ‘But I don’t want to be inside.’
Dien finishes her bandaging and complies wordlessly, pulling on her coat, grabbing her scarab.
‘When you say attacking,’ she says, ‘you mean they’re attacking the city, or the Boreals?’
‘Both. Or the Boreals, but they don’t care if we get in the way.’
As they exit the tower, a team of paramedics are rushing inside with a body on a stretcher. Dien lingers, clearly torn, then follows Adelaide. The driver has moved the boat a short distance away from the tower. Adelaide realizes why when she sees the crowd. Those without transport are endeavouring to beg, coerce or steal a ride. Where they want to go is unclear, but it does not matter: they want to get away from the tower. At the back of Adelaide’s mind is the collapsing tower in the unremembered towers; the night Vikram—
Did he really get out? Could he be alive? Is it possible?
‘So?’ she asks Dien.
The other woman looks at her, back at the tower, at their driver muscling the boat towards the decking. She realizes Dien doesn’t have a plan any more than she does.
They fight their way through. She can feel the force of the surging crowd, some injured, some not, pushing and pulling, the edge of the decking a perilous place to be, shifting underfoot, the looming blackness of the water as they teeter on the edge, struggling for balance. She sees something tall and narrow, slicing through the water.
‘Shark!’
The cry cuts through the crowd. Adelaide strains to see. She tries to push back, where was it, she saw something, it was there, but now it’s gone, or dived, in preparation, they come from below—
‘We’re going to have to jump for it,’ yells Dien.
The boat is coming in. The crowd’s eagerness turns towards it. Someone grabs Adelaide’s shoulder, intending perhaps to use her as a launching point. She shoves back. The boat curves, side to the decking, in a throw of spray. Dien leaps expertly on board. Adelaide follows her and lands, rolling into the well, and the boat is already powering away, accompanied by shouts and curses, and Dien has a manic smile on her face, but it is not a smile that’s reassuring in any way.
‘Where to?’ asks the driver.
Dien looks at Adelaide and Adelaide looks at Dien.
‘The City,’ says Adelaide. ‘I need to get over the border. Find Linus.’
Dien shrugs.
‘Why not? I doubt anyone’s left guarding it now.’
‘And I want to check on the Larssons.’
‘Do it.’
The driver calls back to them.
‘If you’re going east you’re on your own. I’ve got to find my kid.’
‘You go,’ says Dien. ‘Find her.’
The driver jumps out near the desalination plant and Adelaide takes the wheel.
‘How much charge have we got?’ asks Dien.
She checks the gauge.
‘Enough to get us City-side.’
But only just enough.
The sound of the battle between the Boreals and the Antarcticans ebbs and falls as it moves around the city with the oscillating lights. They check the Larssons’ tower first, but their boat is gone and the apartment is empty.
‘They’ll be safer out,’ says Dien.
Adelaide nods. ‘The City, then.’
For a few blocks they progress without incident. Then Adelaide notices a disturbance in the water ahead.
The waterway between the two towers begins to froth and seethe. The two women watch, incredulous, as something gargantuan pushes at the surface of the water. For a moment Adelaide expects the razored mouth of a monster to emerge. Then the water sluices away, revealing the glossy hide of a Boreal submarine. The submarine rises majestically, a storey high, two storeys. Caught in the displacement of the water, their boat skids outwards on a tidal wave.
‘Look out!’ shouts Dien.
Turrets swivel on the submarine. It begins firing. They hunker down in the boat, arms covering their heads. The submarine’s shots are directed at an Antarctican ship that has breached the western quarter, but stray bolts catch the walls of western towers. All around Adelaide can hear the shower of breaking bufferglass and the impact of firepower against steel. The sudden heat in the air burns against her face. A return shot strikes the submarine. Fire blooms and almost immediately dissipates, the submarine seeming to suck in the fire, ready to turn its energy back on the aggressor. It appears immune to destruction.
The Antarctican ship is being annihilated. Adelaide can see it listing; the ship seems to shudder with each additional impact, isolated fires bubbling up and jetting from vents, shades of grey and blue and green rippling over its superstructure in complex, nauseous patterns. Crew members scramble over the doomed vessel, fighting to escape. Some topple into the water. Dien is shouting, let’s go let’s go! but she’s mesmerized, hands clenched to her head, she can’t look away, they’re trapped between ship and sub. Over the groans of the sinking vessel she hears shouts for help. The sub refocuses, fires again, concentrated bursts. Some of those still on board the ship manage to get a lifeboat out, but in the efforts to do so others are lost to the waves. She hears a piercing shriek. A crew member that was treading water vanishes. Moments later, a yawning mouth breaches the surface and fastens almost delicately around the torso of a screaming Antarctican.
Adelaide stares. It’s the last thing she witnesses before an explosion temporarily wipes her vision and her hearing.
Next thing she knows she’s on her back in the boat. Her ears ringing. Hot sparks stinging her face. Debris hitting the water all around. The air clears slowly. Something is wrong with the scene in front of her. The submarine is—
The submarine is gone.
Dien is standing over her. Dien’s mouth opens and closes. She can’t hear a word. Dien repeats whatever she is yelling and Adelaide reads her lips.
Get us out of here!
Dazedly, she levers herself up, takes a hold of the wheel. They push the boat onwards, away from the forsaken ship, the obliterated submarine, back into the city. She struggles to collect her thoughts. Even if they make it east, soon they’ll need to recharge. And then what? What’s going to be left there, how far have the ships penetrated? She thinks of Linus. The sudden silence. What he said. She tries his scarab, expecting and making no contact.
‘Nothing from your brother?’ asks Dien.
Adelaide shakes her head.
‘He’ll look after himself. You know he will.’
They pass a converted waterbus whose upper deck is ablaze with fire, adorned with drummers who are half-naked, their upper bodies glistening with grease. They appear immune to the flames and the immediate danger they have placed themselves in, and are shooting flares into the air. Their voices lift in guttural, harmonic chants. The boat proceeds slowly, imperiously through the city. The drummers wail. The drums beat on.
‘The Rochs,’ says Dien, gazing after them. ‘The gangs are going to war.’
‘At a time like this?’
‘What better time? There’s no place to hide tonight.’
‘No.’
They drive on.
As the battle moves into other parts of the city, they have company. At first Adelaide assumes people are trying to get away from the fighting zone. But as they draw closer to the border, she realizes something else is happening. There’s a unity to the movement, a direction.
Boats packed with westerners brandishing banners and weap
ons alike are swarming as one towards the border. Their shouts urge one another on. Boat by boat noses ahead, taking turns to lead the procession, Adelaide and Dien caught up in the flow. As they draw closer to the line between west and City, the westerners resemble a small army going into battle.
‘Oh my stars.’ A look of wonder arrests Dien’s face. ‘They’re going for the border.’
The same idea has occurred to Adelaide. They look at one another excitedly. This is something unforeseen.
Adelaide and Dien let the boat drift with the throng and stand side-by-side at the prow, hoods thrown back, both caught up in the momentum and careless of being recognized. A cheer goes up when they are spotted. Someone shouts, the Silverfish! The chants resume.
‘Down with the border! Down with the border!’
Adelaide joins in.
‘Down with the border!’
She hears Dien laugh beside her, a joyous laugh. Searchlights wash over the netting, illuminating the faces of the protesters, the rippling banners with their printed slogans. She sees a banner with the sign of the Silverfish and her chest warms with pride. A Teller is balanced astride two boats, her greying robes flapping in the breeze, her text a hybrid of prophecy and political apocalypse. The metal links of the border clank with the disturbance in the water, as if it is breathing. Adelaide has never been so aware of its physical presence. This close, draped with kelp strands and crusted with salt, the netting looks at once immutable, and strangely fragile. It looks – the word comes to her. Biological. As though it has always been here, since before the city’s creation, since the birth of the ocean itself.
It’s survived this long because it’s a living thing. A thing that grows inside minds, feeding off thought.
At the edge of the mass, only metres away, Adelaide is aware of skadi boats lurking with idling motors. She thinks of their guns and their paralysis gas and her heart shrinks, but then a great roar goes up from the crowd and her fear falls away – yes, they can attack, but more western boats are arriving every moment, massing on the water, carpeting this part of the ocean as far back as there is light to see.
The boats part to make way for Adelaide and Dien’s boat, drawing them deeper into the safety of the pack. People reach out as they inch forwards, wanting to touch them, to press wrists to theirs. She sees pinches of salt tossed into the air; this isn’t just for them, it’s for those who have come before, those who have died seeking justice. The chants coalesce around them. Adelaide’s head tingles with it. She feels the scent of danger – the skadi-turned-Boreal moving closer – and braces herself. Whatever is coming, she is a part of it. And at the same time she is aware of an incredible exhilaration, a sense of momentum so overpowering it makes her head giddy.
A ladder extends upwards from one of the boats and clatters against the border. A woman begins to scale it. Searchlights converge on her body, so small and slight, and Adelaide’s breath stalls, waiting for the inevitable shot.
Then she hears something. Voices, raised in unison.
Singing.
She sees, on the far side of the border, a conglomeration of City boats. They too have banners. They too are headed directly for the border.
‘Fuck!’ Dien grasps her arm.
‘No – no, it’s all right – it’s all right!’
She points.
‘They’re here for the same thing!’
They exchange incredulous looks. The sound of voices reaches an apex, shouting and singing, yelling encouragement to one another. As one, the two crowds draw together to attack the border. She sees axes hack at the metal links; laser cutters usually applied to dismantling ice sheets rent through the netting. Two hands from either side clasp together and the crowd cheers. The rent widens, stretching until it is large enough to accommodate at first a small boat, then a waterbus, which powers through into the City. Others are scaling the netting, waving torches and banners aloft.
Adelaide looks at Dien and is shocked to see the other woman is crying.
‘Don’t fucking stare at me, Rechnov.’
She puts an arm around Dien’s thin shoulders.
‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ says Dien.
But Vikram did. And he might be alive—
A firework whistles upwards and explodes overhead. People who have never before exchanged a word are embracing like sisters.
The two collectives continue to attack the border, tearing down segment after segment. Adelaide and Dien push closer. Adelaide gets her hands to the meshing, feeling it come away in her fingers. On the outskirts of the city, pulsing lights mark the ongoing battle. The skadi boats slink away, or ditch their guns and join in. Dien clutches a fragment in her hand, rolling the metal links about her palm as though she never intends to let go.
‘That’ll be worth something one day,’ says Adelaide. ‘You should put it somewhere safe.’
Dien smiles dizzily. She seems incapable of speech.
‘You know this is only the beginning.’
Her friend nods, but the smile remains on her face.
‘I know.’
‘We might all be dead this time tomorrow.’
‘I know.’
They grin at one another deliriously. On either side, figures hang from the border-netting, backlit by the explosions that ripple through the sky, bathing the city in molten colours. Under this peculiar light the figures appear to Adelaide like ghosts torn from another world, where a rift has opened up in the stratosphere above Osiris, disgorging souls. And even as westerners and Citizens reach to embrace, it seems to her like the last gesture of souls damned years, even centuries, before, who have waited all this time to receive their particular retribution.
Amid the chaos she sees two familiar faces. A man and a woman, a little older than the average protestor, but joyful, jubilant, as they steer an old blue and white striped boat on a careful path towards what remains of the border. Adelaide’s rescuers, who pulled her from the waves. She raises an arm in greeting, shouts their names. Mikaela Larsson’s face lights in recognition. She touches Ole’s shoulder, and he turns, surprised. Adelaide waves again. The Larssons return the gesture. She indicates she will head over to join them, and steps up, balancing on the edge of the boat.
There is no warning of the shot. It hits her in the chest, straight on. She sways, arms limp at her side, before folding backwards into the well of the boat. She hears screams and does not at first comprehend why. She sees Dien’s face, very close to hers, frozen with shock. Dien’s voice. Saying her name. Her name. What was once her name. Rechnov! Rechnov! Blooming in her chest, the pain a thing too complete to register or to comprehend. Dien’s voice, urgent, full of horror. Adelaide!
Flashes of light sear across her vision. She wants to say something to Dien. It is important, to say something, in this moment which she realizes with surprise must be a departure. The departure. She wants to take Dien’s hand, to hold it tightly, reassuringly, as others have done for her, but she can’t move. She wants—
The lights on the backs of her eyelids grow dimmer. The voices fade. She can’t hear anything.
And then the lights too, slide away, and there’s nothing.
PART SIX
THE POLAR STAR
THE PILOT
IT’S DARK. NOT the thick, clotted darkness of the city, or the crystalline infused darkness of the desert at night. Darkness complete, undisturbed except for a tiny, greyish column of light through a minute hole drilled into the upper wall of the shipping container. Ramona Callejas holds on to that. She puts the back of her hand against it, although if there is movement in the slender airstream, she doesn’t feel it. It’s her only air vent.
She hears the sounds of the docklands machinery moving closer, and then an ear-splitting clang reverberates through the shipping crate as the gantry crane deposits another one-and-a-half metre cube on top of the one she is hidden inside, the crate connecting and locking into place, its weight undetectable as a physical force but she senses it, pressin
g down as if she is being buried. All around her crates from the Panama Exchange are being dropped, stacked up on the container end of the Polar Star. They carry the poppy harvest, solar cells for reconstitution, and a runaway pilot without a plane. The column of light from the air vent grows dimmer as the rising crates block out the dawn sky. She fights down panic. What if they’ve blocked her in? What if she can’t get out?
The machinery subsides.
Ramona waits.
Around her, she hears the papery slither of boxes shifting as she adjusts her position. The rasp of her shorts against her thighs. Her sweat dripping on the floor. The rap of her knuckles, hesitant, against the wall of the crate:
tap tap.
The sound tumbles away into nothingness.
After a time, there comes a deep groan that could come from hell, if you believe in hell, if you believe in an afterlife, which she doesn’t; the too-soon deaths of her younger siblings quashed any thoughts of life beyond life. The only family she has left is her mother, who is somewhere on this ship, in the custody of an unknown perpetrator. She doesn’t know who and she doesn’t know why, but she will find out. That thought is the only thing that keeps her from screaming.
That sound again. The bowels of the ship, girding into action.
Motion. Slow and ponderous. She feels it through her entire body, a tremor that thrums against her coccyx and up the length of her spine. Creaks and scrapings, cargo straining against its moorings. Motion. She feels it with a crash of relief and a wash of pure, unadulterated terror, because this is the moment, the line, the belt between north and south, and she has committed herself and there is no turning back and if anyone finds her who shouldn’t, they will probably kill her on sight.
At last the Boreal ship begins the long crawl which will take it across the gulf and up the coast. Inside the crate, Ramona Callejas sweats and shivers like she has a fever. It’s sweltering. The equatorial sun is soaking into the metal and Ramona knows her time inside the crate has a stamp upon it. She has to trust that the truck driver at the Exchange told the truth, and if he didn’t, she will have to shoot the lock off the hatch to get out and hope by all the Nazca that it opens. She doesn’t have much ammunition left.
