Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  ‘I lied,’ she whispers. ‘I said I wouldn’t… any more. But I did know. About the white fly…’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ says Mikaela. ‘Hush now. Don’t tire yourself.’

  ‘I’d like to take… the boat out.’

  Ole nods. Yes. Yes, we’ll go. We’ll go together. The three of us.

  Mikaela hushes.

  They are frightened. They are trying not to show it. They can’t hide it.

  Delegates of the summit file from the Chambers. In the rush to talk to their own people and to find food and fresh air, Boreals and Antarcticans are pressed against one another. Karis finds himself directly in front of the cherubic-faced Katu Ben. The Boreal leans forwards slightly. Karis can smell his cologne, a sweetness to it, reminiscent of greenhouse flowers. He murmurs, softly enough that no one but Aariak and Karis can hear.

  ‘We’re going to torpedo the shit out of you.’

  Karis feels Aariak stiffen, and his alarm deepens. For a moment he fears Aariak is going to punch the Boreal in the face, and Karis realizes with a slight shock that if she did he might be compelled to join her, and more, that he would relish the opportunity to bloody the Boreal’s smiling countenance, but then the funnel clears and they are through the other side of the doors, and Katu Ben is with his people and they are with theirs. He glances back once and sees the two Osirians in intense discussion.

  Without thinking, Karis makes a motion to return. His way is blocked by an African, who speaks stiffly in Boreal English.

  ‘I’m sorry, we can’t allow collaboration between parties.’

  ‘You should come and see the view,’ says Aariak tartly. Apparently she has taken it upon herself to take Karis under her wing.

  Karis follows. Some of the delegates are peering down into the open core of the tower, or studying the aquarium columns. They pass Luciana Tan examining a cabinet labelled as Neon artefacts, apparently unable to contain her mirth. Now he thinks about it, Karis has no idea what he would have said to the two Osirians.

  Aariak leads them out to one of the famous balconies. As soon as he steps outside, the wind pummels Karis with shocking force and the exit door slams shut behind him. Karis draws in gulps of fresh air.

  He has to admit that the view is impressive. You can see the peaks of the towers, attired in pleasing tones of silver and green, stretching away in regimented lines like oceanic warriors. Further away, you can also see the damage inflicted by a fluke missile: rents torn into the side of a tower, the solar skin at the edges of the crater burned and blackened.

  He looks down and instantly regrets doing so. He’s never been good with heights.

  He jerks back.

  ‘How do they live here?’

  Aariak shrugs. She’s chewing on something, her jaw working furiously. Probably an energy-releasing gum. Karis wishes he had thought of that. She doesn’t offer him a wad of the stimulant.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asks.

  ‘About?’

  Aariak waves an arm.

  ‘How it’s going.’

  Karis hesitates, still undecided as to how honest it is in his interests to be. He decides he has nothing to lose.

  ‘I think we’re fucked. I think we should never have come here. I’m worried about the rest of the fleet. We know the ships aren’t ready, we’ve already lost two.’

  ‘I thought you might be. Don’t worry. Qyn has a backup plan. That’s what I wanted to say.’

  ‘Backup?’

  ‘You don’t think she hasn’t considered this possibility? Qyn wouldn’t send us here knowing the Boreals had arrived if she didn’t have a plan.’

  Karis stares at her apprehensively.

  ‘What kind of backup plan?’

  She winks at him.

  ‘Best if you don’t know, Io. You’re an analyst, not a defender. Leave the action to us.’

  ‘Then what am I doing here?’ he says, with sudden anger.

  ‘We need analysts too. Keep a close eye on the Boreals. Watch their expressions. Their body language. Look, I understand. You’ve fallen into this. It wasn’t how you expected to spend your summer. But you can be useful.’ She gazes at him earnestly. She’s what the Republic would call a true defender, Aariak. Reliable. Devoted. Qyn’s protégée. ‘You can do your duty to the Republic, Io, and you can do it well. I have faith in you.’

  Her words prickle at him. He has a sudden, unpleasant memory of Shri Nayar sitting in his office while he issued the directive for her to do her civic duty.

  ‘And what about the city?’ he asks. He gestures towards the lines of towers. ‘What about them?’

  Aariak shrugs.

  ‘This is war. Sacrifices are necessary. We all know that.’

  She checks the time.

  ‘Recess is almost up. I’ll see you in there.’

  She pulls the door open, battling for a moment against the wind, and ducks inside, leaving him alone on the balcony. Karis shivers. Once again, he forces himself to look down. He can see the streak of the waterway, very far below. The silvery wash is dotted with boats. A lot of boats.

  Karis frowns. Even from this distance, there are definitely more boats than there were when they arrived. The Osirians, he thinks. They’re gathering.

  Again he is overwhelmed with a terrible sense of premonition. All these people in a room, weighing up benefit and cost, only the cost is in lives, his own included. It doesn’t feel real. Karis wrenches open the door and hurries inside, not wanting to see the gathering boats below, or the majestic towers, orphans in what has so abruptly become a war zone.

  He had never considered that open warfare might be possible within his lifetime. When he thought about life beyond Antarctica, which wasn’t often, it had a hazy quality, like a scene in a popcorn visual. He remembers an immersive where all of the Boreals had metal skins, and along these skins ran pulsing wires like veins, and the Boreals did inadvisable things like attempting to communicate with aliens, Karis had quite enjoyed it actually, in the way you can enjoy something stupidly brash and meaningless. Maybe it was in that immersive or maybe it was another one where they succeeded in making contact, and of course one of the characters had sex with the alien, which resulted in the birth of some diabolical cross-species which consequently evolved into a monster who consumed the entire planet, leaving only a few survivors exiled in outer space, and it was all the fault of the silver-skinned Boreal who couldn’t keep his bio-mechanical dick in his pants.

  The afternoon is long and unsatisfactory for everyone and descends too quickly into the evening. By the time they leave the Chambers it is dark. The summit delegates are advised to leave the tower by one of the shuttle lines, instead of returning by waterway as they arrived. When Aariak asks why, they are told there is a protest outside. As Karis steps into the pod of the shuttle, twenty floors above the surface, he can see the glow of hundreds of boats gathered in the waterways below. The light is coming from flames. Torches, held aloft. The scene is disturbing; there’s something primal about it that releases a deep-rooted inner fear. Anyone can become a barbarian. He looks away, focusing on the smooth, rounded interior of the tunnel in front of him, which quickly blurs into light as the shuttle pod whisks him from the Eye Tower.

  They have been given accommodation in an opulent Osirian tower. Karis and the other Antarctican delegates are each assigned a personal guard, something he finds more disconcerting than reassuring. Aariak invites him to join the defenders for dinner. She says they need to talk strategy.

  The food is delivered by Solar Corporation officers who assure them it has been checked for contamination. Karis examines his plate: a classic Osirian dish, he is told, and overpoweringly salted. The food tastes as bad as it smells. The Antarctican delegation discuss the day with a vigour that exhausts him, patois punctuated with the occasional emphatic word of their individual languages of the home. Karis listens, having no desire to contribute, until Aariak asks, ‘What were your impressions, Io?’

  She looks at h
im, waiting, and he hears again her earnest voice on the balcony.

  You can do your bit for the Republic, Io.

  Karis does his best to replicate her tone.

  ‘The Boreals are spoiling for a fight. They’ve as good as told us so. They don’t believe the Osirian. The Africans don’t believe the Osirian either but they have some sympathy for their situation.’ He is surprised by how rational he sounds. Even as he speaks he can feel his words dulling the situation, reducing it to language, to something conceptual. ‘They could have pushed them harder today but they didn’t. Unfortunately they also consider themselves bound by the rule book. Nkem Sosanya’s a stickler. She won’t budge from that.’

  Aariak nods approvingly. ‘I agree we won’t get any movement there. Which means we continue on the assumption that these talks will break down, tomorrow, perhaps the day after. In the meantime we retain our official line: we are here to liberate the city from its oppressors.’

  ‘If we’re here to liberate the Osirians, shouldn’t we be speaking up for them?’

  ‘Io, you just said it yourself. Sosanya won’t be swayed by emotion. She’s a cold-headed lawyer. There’s no point in us wasting energy on hopeless intercessions.’

  Murmurs of agreement from around the table.

  ‘The Boreals are talking about demanding truth drugs,’ says Aariak. ‘We cannot let that happen. Linus Rechnov knows far more than he’s letting on. It would be a debacle.’

  ‘Can we get to him first?’ asks another officer.

  ‘We’ve scoped that possibility. They’re all heavily guarded, just like us. But we’ve set up surveillance on all parties. If anything interesting happens outside these talks, we’ll be the first to know.’

  ‘Not to mention Io,’ says the officer. They all look at him. Karis realizes with alarm that his role in Atrak has made him a liability.

  ‘I can go back to the ship,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ says Aariak at once. ‘That will look suspicious. You need to stay where you are, with us. The important thing is we act before they can put Linus Rechnov on a drip. We need to move quickly now, before the Boreals do.’

  ‘Do you want these talks to fail?’ asks Karis.

  Aariak looks offended.

  ‘Of course I don’t. I’m just being pragmatic.’ She glances around the table. ‘It may well come down to a simple question: do we want to get out of here alive, or do we want to be annihilated? Because I know what I’d choose. Maybe you don’t, Io.’

  Karis sits back, defeated. Aariak is right: he’s not a defender, he never wanted to be one. He wonders what other discussions are going on at this very moment, in other rooms like this, with other delegates. He imagines the two Osirians, sat opposite one another with a small square table between them, ingesting a brine-heavy meal of the disagreeable Osirian diet, some kind of broth, he thinks, packed out with kelp, a forlorn quality apparent even in the food they are eating. Between them on the table is a glistening silver fish, its scales still wet from the ocean, its flat round eye upturned to the ceiling. The one from the east, Linus, with his smart, crumpled attire and handsome, weary face, the one from the west, Dien, whose disgust for humanity is evident in every contemptuous twirl of the spoon. Linus talking at first, a constant stream of patter as he tries to reassure himself and Dien, to pad out the silence, to push away the memory of words which fell in the Chambers like stones through water, all of which point to one outcome, but Dien’s monosyllabic responses are a clearer, more accurate reflection of the situation, and in the end Linus gives up, his resources drained, the pressure of the day too great to maintain any illusion of buoyancy. Mid-sentence, he simply stops talking. Whatever he would have said, it doesn’t matter. They sit in silence. The clink of the spoons against the bowls. The damp sounds of mastication. Dien pushes away her bowl, still half-full, then pulls it back, her disgust evidently extending to herself, and finishes the dish in a series of forced, unhappy mouthfuls. Then she pushes back her chair and stands up, looking at Linus but thinking about other people entirely, people who are important to her (who are they? Where are they? Are they with the people with the torches?), people she loves, deciding whether she should go to them, walk away from this farce – she has done what she can do.

  And in a white-sheeted bed the red-haired woman, the Silverfish. Flitting in and out of consciousness, her heart and her breathing erratic, like a butterfly blown about in a forest of young pines.

  And in another room the Boreals are lounging on sofas, relaxed, casual, their triumph already sealed. The one with the cherubic face crams something into his mouth, Boreal treats they brought with them in crate-loads, distrustful as they are of southern cuisine, and not without reason. Katu Ben’s smiling lips work around the sweet. The group is concentrating, but only in jest. They are playing some manner of game, a digital construct that flickers between them, divulging in its glare their faces, hungry and impatient, or laughing as they flick in their bets – yes, it’s a game of stakes, where everything may be risked on a single gamble – a game of winners and losers. Jokes fly between them, quick-witted and pitiless. In other circumstances, the competition might be more intense, but this is a mere dissipation of energy, a distraction before the storm, the clash of clouds before we torpedo the shit out of you.

  And in another room the Africans, delegation of the Solar Corporation, with their scripts of law. Going over the day, feverish, working like bees, considering solutions. There must be solutions. He has an idea of Nkem Sosanya with a set of scales before her, that beautiful head tipped to one side, considering, infinite and wise like a mythical goddess, but the image resists him; it will not resolve, and instead he sees her sat on the toilet, hunched over, her face strained with the movement of her bowels after the unfortunate consumption of a plate of Osirian seafood.

  The Antarcticans cradle glasses of another Osirian delicacy: coral tea. They are talking intently. The layout of the city, its strengths and stress points, the whereabouts of the Boreals, the likelihood of further, camouflaged submarines or submarines that have not yet surfaced, the movements of Antarctican underwater drones which even now are sweeping the city and its surrounding waters, penetrating the kelp forests and the darker depths of the ocean where the Atum Shelf falls away, searching, searching, searching.

  Karis rises and excuses himself. He meets with no resistance. In a moment of paranoia he wonders if Aariak has decided his usefulness has expired, but then he remembers what she said: it would look more suspicious were he to disappear. The idea of disappearing depresses him.

  Back in his room he paces up and down, running his fingertips along the strangely curving walls, marvelling at the architecture which has withstood the hyperstorms of the South Atlantic Ocean. The Boreals built this place, but it is beautiful. A conundrum. He examines everything in the room as though it might yield clues, to what he doesn’t know, or even answers, to questions he can’t bear to ask. He doesn’t think he will sleep but when he stretches out on the bed, burying his face in the soft covers, his whole body seems to sink down and he finds he can’t move and has no desire to.

  When the singing starts, Ole goes to shut the window.

  ‘Don’t,’ she says drowsily.

  ‘It’s too cold for you,’ says Mikaela.

  ‘I want to be… by the window. I want to see.’

  The nurses comply. They would grant her any wish; in any case, it doesn’t matter now. They sit her up in the bed. Together they watch the burning barges pass below.

  ‘That will be me soon.’

  ‘Will you stop being so defeatist?’ A new voice, sharp and cross. Dien is here.

  ‘Why not? It’s true. Promise me you won’t make a big thing of it. All that singing. All that… spectacle.’

  ‘Demanding to the end, aren’t you?’

  ‘I mean it.’

  She settles back with a sigh. The pain returns in vicious pangs and they increase the drug dosage again. It will take the pain away but it will take lucidity wit
h it. These windows of consciousness are becoming rarer. She looks at Mikaela and Ole at her bedside and understands that this might be the last time she is able to communicate with them, and slow tears trickle down her cheeks. She tries to fight it but it gets harder every time. She is losing the battle. She has always been a realist. It was Vikram who was the romantic. Vikram, on the expedition boat, who made it to land.

  She must be babbling, because Mikaela is placating her. Hush, hush. Save your strength. She wants to say things – I love you. You saved me. I don’t want to die, please don’t let it happen – but the morphine is doing its work. She tries to focus on those who are here. Linus, snatching an hour’s sleep on the couch. Dien, alert, pacing. Ole, stroking her hand. Mikaela. But there are others now, who might be here, who cannot be here. There’s the girl from the bridge, Liis. The girl who fell. There’s Nils and Drake, their hair on fire, rifles in their arms. There’s Jannike Ko in a seaweed dress. Her father, she thinks. Her mother. Vikram, waiting at the end of a pier, but despite everything that came after it’s the first time she saw him that persists, that strange, angry young man who walked into a room full of roses one cold autumn night.

  Then that image too evades her, and she’s sinking, back to the seabed, the surface now an inkling of light, ephemeral and frail.

  He wakes from a dream of a choir singing. He wakes muttering, or humming, words from songs he has long forgotten, songs his mother used to sing around the house, and for a few moments he lies there, thinking of her strong, forthright face, the bright eyeshadow she always wears, which used to embarrass him, and her voice as he heard it so many times on the weekends as a teenager, too lazy to get out of bed. He wonders if he will ever see her again. Or Bia, or his niece Grace. He wonders if Grace would miss him, and what Bia would say to the child about dead Uncle Karis, who told a lot of lies, some of them to Bia.