by E. J. Swift
Another senseless question.
‘I never lived anywhere else.’
‘I used to be a patriot,’ says Shri.
Mig realizes that the conversation he thought he was having is not the same as the one Shri Nayar is having, though what that is he couldn’t say.
‘What happened to your friend?’ he asks.
‘My friend?’
‘The spy. Ivra.’
‘He’s dead.’ Her voice is abrupt. Strained. ‘It happened in the raid.’
Shri doesn’t say whether it was a Tark or a camp member who killed him, but Mig can smell her guilt. Poor, hopeless Ivra. Mig could have predicted it.
‘Are you going to Cataveiro?’ he asks. She has one hand to her throat and there’s a faraway look in her eyes, a yearning look, that makes him think she’s about to say yes, she wants to go to Cataveiro, like a lunatic, to a city full of burning corpses, to search the ashen streets. They have something in common, though Mig doesn’t care to admit it. Perhaps she’s going to ask him to be her guide.
‘No,’ says Shri slowly, and this time there’s a finality in her tone. ‘I’m going home. To Nisha, and Sasha, and Kadi.’
Twenty-four hours later the Alaskan has a room in Fuego Town and a dozen second-hand radios and a strong inkling of déjà vu and a sensation of colossal momentum all at once, a sensation of speeding through time and space, galaxies unfolding around her, of moving at such velocity that it makes her lungs wheeze and her chest tight. Or maybe that is old age. Who can tell? The radios are saturated, dripping with news. It makes the Alaskan’s heart skitter. Information. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, as long as there’s plenty of it. The Alaskan would thrive in the Blackout or she’d thrive as a brain fused into a metal carapace. Information. The oxygen she needs.
First there are broadcasts from the Boreals, claiming the city of Osiris. Then there are broadcasts from the Antarcticans, liberating the city of Osiris. Every now and then there is the sliver of a voice from the city itself, a feeble plea for help like a mouse caught between the jaws of a snake in the moment of dislocation, before the jaws snap closed, ensuring the mouse will never squeak again. The signals from Osiris are short-lived and quickly silenced – whether by the Boreals or the Antarcticans it is impossible to know.
The Alaskan listens. The Alaskan waits. All games must be played to the end, and the end is approaching fast. It’s only a matter of who triumphs.
In the days after the Antarcticans drop them off at Fuego, Mig comes and goes and explores the town and prowls the harbour, listening for news of the pirate, of Vikram, but there is none.
The Alaskan enquires as to the health of Señorita Xiomara at the Fuego hospital. Xiomara lives. She has survived the course of medication and is being monitored closely. The Alaskan is not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed, but she cannot resist a visit. She retraces her path back to the hospital, down the long corridors with their antiseptic stench.
Xiomara’s appearance is vastly improved; she has the luminous, martyr-like quality of one who has suffered and overcome. Irritatingly, it suits her.
‘What are you doing here, Alaskan?’
Her tone is bullish, although she does not look as distressed as the Alaskan had hoped at the sight of her old nemesis. Fuego must be short of worthwhile antagonists.
‘Passing through, passing through,’ says the Alaskan. ‘I trust you haven’t been too bored without our little appointments?’
‘Not at all.’ Xiomara’s girlish laugh ripples from behind a lace-edged mouth-and-nose mask. ‘Things are changing, Alaskan. We have new people around here now, and I like that, I really, truly do. The Boreals.’ She caresses the word. ‘The Antarcticans. Such interesting people. There is… how shall I put it, how shall I…? A new order in play.’
‘You’ll be letting go some of the old baggage, then?’ the Alaskan returns. ‘Like the pilot?’
Xiomara’s face darkens. Oh yes, she thinks gleefully. That still hurts.
‘I will find the pilot,’ says Xiomara. ‘Eventually, even the teensiest of lizards must crawl out of its burrow. And when she does, I’ll be here.’ She gifts the Alaskan with a dazzling smile, or at least, it would be dazzling if the Alaskan could see her teeth. ‘But do tell. What have you been up to?’
In the evenings, the Alaskan and Mig engage in stilted, wary conversations.
‘Have you given any more thought to your future, Mig?’
‘There’s a war on,’ says the boy flippantly.
‘Oh, there’s a war on? You believe me now, do you?’
‘Maybe. Seems like it.’
‘Seems like it.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Do you miss Cataveiro?’ she asks.
Mig shrugs. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he wants and so he cannot know what he misses, what he will never see, or never do or know. Too young for regrets, thinks the Alaskan. Yes, he will experience sorrow, but it will wash off him like water. That is the power of the young, to reinvent.
‘Do you miss Alaska?’ the boy asks boldly.
‘What about it?’
‘All that stuff you told me about. That robotics. Those… immersives.’
The boy utters the word with care. The Alaskan thinks of immersives. She remembers sinking through realities like falling backwards into the depths of a swimming pool, the realities folding over her like water closing over skin. She remembers the way they ripple through your brain, furrowing, burrowing, teasing out strands of experience and memory, shaping and restructuring, fitting the immersive around the way you view the world like slipping into a particularly well-made dress. She remembers the feeling of coming out of an immersive, like swimming from a great depth up towards the light, and the burst of disorientation as the surface breaks, followed by a light-headedness, a sense almost of transgression, the snap back to grey reality and almost at once the desire to repeat the experience. Many people in her country suffer from immersion addiction, especially with the onset of winter, but the Alaskan has never been one of them. The Alaskan can draw a box around pleasure the way she can draw a box around anything. Except perhaps love, if the Alaskan ever believed in love, which perhaps she did once but now the emotion seems both sordid and despicably innocent, a primitive gushing of oxytocin which the Alaskan should have put a box around the way she put a box around everything else. Where is the Scandinavian girl now? Old, decrepit, dead? The Alaskan imagines her body laid out on the forest floor, an oblong imprint on the peat, gradually covered in fallen pine needles until nothing can be seen but the tip of her patrician nose, the ends of her toes sticking up, toenails still growing, beetles in her hair. But that is probably not how it is at all. Probably she died in bed, in a luxurious retreat in the highlands of Veerdeland; the girl had ambitions for the law, although the Alaskan personally considered her too impulsive a character for such a calling. A cesspit of a country, Veerdeland. The Alaskan hates it, she hates Veerdeland and she hates Veerdelanders.
Mig is watching her, with that so-familiar combination expression of curiosity and wariness. She considers trying to explain immersion addiction and immigrants who steal your soul but discards the notion at once. The power of a word. The nothingness of a word. She thinks of lengths in a pool, a time when her legs worked, kicking through the water in smooth, streamlined motion. She thinks of redfleur manifestations and stricken towns exorcised from history. She thinks of a trip to Khabarovsk where she ate crab, a rare delicacy in these acid seas, and after the crab she delivered a presentation on a biomedical company’s plans to regenerate the blood of pandas. Her eyes itched in the too-hot climate, she had to change her contact lenses, and in the bathroom someone saw her eyes and recoiled. There are mobs for nirvanas in Sino-Siberia. They crucify them.
And much, much further back: she hasn’t thought of this for years, she remembers growing up on the Arctic Circle coast, long walks along the harbour front with a bracing wind at her back, or in her face, pushing back her hair; w
atching the shipping fleets coming in from across the Arctic Ocean, bringing goods from the Sino-Siberian Federation, bringing travellers, tourists, opportunists, informants. Watching the Boreal States play at trade and the seagulls spiral overhead, and it was the seagulls that interested the Alaskan, because they were always there but often overlooked, and in the moment of turning away, they acquired things.
In contrast, the Alaskan’s darker-than-normal irises made people look at her twice. But just as kittens begin life with blue eyes, so the Alaskan’s eyes were a shade lighter, a shade more innocuous, as a child. The nirvana gene came down the Alaskan’s mother’s side, not her father’s; her father was in any case a feckless character, and her mother little better, although the mother had hyper-intelligence, like all nirvanas. You can take a lot away from a nirvana but you can’t take that. She could have used it for almost anything but she chose to use it for gambling, and growing up the Alaskan was either very rich or very poor. She found both states interesting: preferred wealth, found her creative entrepreneurship flourished during poverty, but that wealth was needed to realize her ambition, so it was a vicious circle, one that ended in the Alaskan disowning both parents. They were a burden upon her and when they were gone she felt light.
She feels light now. Giddy. Almost manic.
‘Do you?’ Mig presses, tugging her back to the present. ‘Miss it?’
The Alaskan reflects.
‘No,’ she says. ‘It was a shithole.’
Shri collects the box from Ivra’s house. Taeo’s shoes. His shirts. A dead man’s things in a dead man’s home. There are some samples of dried grasses and seeds in jars which make no sense until she remembers he was meant to be posing as a botanist. That was his cover. For a mad moment she thinks about destroying everything, burning it or throwing the box into the sea, because what will she do with it all? When she puts these things next to the things back home, with his gloves and his skis, with their carnival masks from the day they met, that blazing day in Vosti celebrating First Light, will they be different? Will she shed more tears over these shoes, these shirts, because they came with him to Patagonia? Or will they just remind her every day of the might-have-beens, the things they could or should have done, the both of them?
But no. It wouldn’t be fair to the children. They have to learn to live with grief, all of them, even Nisha, who will one day feel the loss for a father she was not old enough to remember, except perhaps as a feeling, an intuition of missing, a tale told by other people that she begins to believe is a memory. She told them she was going to find out what happened, and what happened is here, in this box, with its scraps of flora which if she looks closely enough includes the petals of a poppy, dark and curled.
Shri picks up the box. She says her thanks to the Antarctican who let her into Ivra’s empty house (and who will mourn for Ivra? Does he have a partner, a family back home? She never asked) and makes her way down to the harbour. The town is on high alert, busy with soldiers and chattering civilians, a town on the brink of war, but she doesn’t care about any of that. Her kids are waiting. They need her, and she misses them.
Ramona has never been so happy to see the silver lakes and sea channels of the archipelago come into view. Every part of her aches. Her knee and ankle joints are swollen and tender and her body is starting to rebel; she’s going to pay for this expedition. But watching the mountainous islands peering through their misty crowns, she forgets her cramped muscles, forgets her smarting eyes, overwhelmingly conscious that a part of her expected never to see this landscape again. She said her goodbyes, way back in Panama, had thought herself resigned. Now the landscape appears to her with a new clarity, a place which possesses the uncommon beauty of water and prosperity, however small, however squeezed it might be between the ambitions of other, greater powers. The sight of it makes her heart sing.
Right now, though, she needs to worry about landing. Inés is chattering in her ear as she has been for the past hour, a pleasure and an irritation Ramona would not give up for the world, but one that is going to distract her at a time when she needs to focus.
‘Ma, I have to concentrate now.’
‘Yes, yes, all this asking and now she wants rid of me—’
‘I’ve got to land this thing!’
‘I’m going! Can she see I’m going?’ Inés retreats into the passenger area, muttering to herself in a sulk which is either genuine or entirely fabricated, it’s impossible to know.
Ramona tunes out her mother’s grumbles, and puts her attention to the land below. She had been planning to take the plane directly to the Facility, but as they approach the harbour she sees an unusually large number of Antarctican ships lining the strait. She looks for Félix’s ship, the Aires, but it isn’t there. She notes the absence almost with relief; right now she just doesn’t have the reserves to see him. In fact, there’s barely a Patagonian vessel in sight. All at once she is wary of what might have happened in the time she has been away. It has been months. The journey south has not been kind.
Changing her mind, she banks and takes the plane away from Fuego, back over the mountains. She can make an aquatic landing in one of the lakes. Cautious of executing an unfamiliar procedure, she extends the landing gear well in advance. The plane seems to lose height very fast, and she needs all her remaining strength to control the landing. The lake rears up. It feels wrong, to land on water, she can’t quite believe it will take the plane’s weight, but she’s put her faith in the foreign aircraft and it’s got them this far. The nose of the plane hits the water with an awkward splash, then the belly crashes down. For an awful moment Ramona fears she has misjudged the landing. But the plane cruises forwards, rocking, then steadies. She taxies slowly over the water, bringing the plane as close to the shore as she can, and activates its exterior camouflage.
For a few minutes she sits in the cockpit, allowing herself to breathe, feeling the tears rising and doing nothing to stop them.
I thought I’d never see this place again.
She wipes her face and takes a long, shuddery breath. There are still things to be done.
Together, she and the passengers manage to get the bulky inflatable boat out of the plane and row themselves the short distance to shore. When she steps onto land, it feels unsteady. She supports her mother as she climbs out of the inflatable. Inés’s breath is shallow, her first few steps are shaky. But she’s alive, and standing on Patagonian soil, breathing in the warm archipelago air. Ramona feels the flood of emotion overtake her.
‘Ma—’
‘Yes, yes.’
The passengers hug one another, hug Ramona. For a while they are unable to let one another go. They are all weeping openly, and Ramona makes no attempt now to contain her own tears.
The Alaskan is dreaming. In the dream she is rattling along the rough track of a barren landscape on an old solar-cycle. There is no end to the track. It goes on, perhaps forever. There is a purpose to the journey but the Alaskan has forgotten what it is, only that she must keep going at all costs. The sky is red and apocalyptic and from time to time Jurassic birds flap across it in great flocks, and their calls sear the air like the calls of the last residents on earth. As she rounds an outcrop of rocks the Alaskan is confronted with a field of enormous solar panels, stretching away in front of her for as far as she can see. And she sees that the track stops where the solar panels begin. The only way across is to ride over the solar panels, which will result in burning, in the complete excoriation of her skin, in certain death. And while she is contemplating her next action, the Alaskan is dimly aware that she has been to this place before, that the solar fields of the Corporation are not unknown to her, and one by one the panels begin to turn towards her, swivelling on their stands with measured, robotic intelligence. When they all face in her direction the Alaskan knows what will happen next. They will collect the sunlight into a great lance and it will blind her.
Mig bursts into the Alaskan’s room, upsetting one of the radios as he enters.
The boy fumbles to pick it up but drops it again almost immediately in his excitement.
The Alaskan rubs at her eyes. The shadows of giant birds continue to march slowly across the backs of her eyelids. She feels groggy. Disorientated. This is what comes of wallowing in the past.
‘Try and have a little care, won’t you? What is it?’
Mig sets the radio straight. He is panting with exertion.
‘The pilot. She’s back.’
The Alaskan struggles upright in her chair.
‘Good work, Mig. Very good work. You need to find her, right away.’
She thinks but doesn’t add: before Xiomara hears the news.
When the boy is gone she looks around the sparse rented room. At the radios. The information. It’s done its purpose. Perhaps soon she’ll be bidding farewell to this sequestered country after all.
Ramona accompanies her mother and the crew of survivors as far as Arturo’s Place in the harbour town and leaves them there to decompress. They’ll talk of course, but she isn’t worried about that; it won’t do any harm for them to tell the world their story – the faster and more widely it’s broadcast, the more chance they have of action against the Boreals. She looks longingly at the interior of the bar, with its worn, comfortable seating, and offerings of wine and rum. A number of leisurely card games are in progress and Ramona is struck by the slowness of everything, the little hubbub that their entrance has generated. Nazca keep us but she could do with a drink herself.
Leaving Inés, she hesitates.
‘You’ll be all right here, Ma? I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Inés gives her a look of what can only be described as outrage. Reassured, Ramona continues on her way.
Heading up through the harbour town to the Facility she notes the hurried, distracted appearance of those out on the streets. There are more soldiers visible than usual. Residents are staggering home under the weight of their purchases, or have children in tow, carrying extra bundles. Stockpiling, she thinks. Something’s happening here. Or something’s about to happen. But despite the tension in the air, everything looks disconcertingly as it was. The old road up the hill is quiet. Here are the soldiers’ billets, here are the gates to the Facility, the checkpoint, and the face of the young soldier waving her through is familiar, unchanged. Here is the approach to the building that was once a centre for the architects of the forsaken sea city, Osiris, a pathway she has walked a thousand times. Could Osiris really be out there, as Félix suggested in Panama? She thinks again about those Antarctican ships and her misgivings double.
