Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  His chest contracts.

  ‘What was—’

  Juan shakes his head, more vigorously than before. He lifts the oars and leans forwards, preparing for the backstroke. The oars dip again.

  Juan stops his stroke. The boat drifts forwards a few more metres with the momentum and in the light from the tower Vikram can see the silhouette of Juan wrestling with the oar, pulling back at it with all his strength. Then he releases it. The oar clatters out of the oarlock. The boat rocks. Vikram stares at Juan. A terrible premonition creeps over him. Juan has frozen, both hands clutching the remaining oar.

  ‘Row—’

  Something bombards the boat from beneath. Vikram feels it topple, feels himself falling, the boat lurch beyond the point of no return. He grabs at the side of the boat and in the instant it capsizes he has time for one brief gasp of air before he hits the water.

  Cold submerges him. He goes under.

  He opens his eyes but he can’t see anything. He kicks out but he can’t feel anything. He can’t tell where Juan has fallen. Something’s in the water. Something’s in the water with them—

  Get to the boat!

  Frantically, he kicks upwards. His head breaks the surface but still he can’t see anything, he can breathe but he can’t see. He flounders, hitting out, and realizes he’s come up on the inside of the boat. His breath, short and petrified, is deafening within the confined space.

  Something brushes against his foot.

  He curls his legs upwards to his chest, his heart spasming in terror.

  It’s in the water. It’s below you—

  The boat won’t protect him. He has to get to the tower.

  He takes a deep, shuddery breath, and ducks under the upturned gunnel of the boat. He comes to the surface. Intake of air. Cold. Sharp. The tower, fifty, maybe seventy metres away. In the water behind him, Vikram can hear something thrashing.

  He strikes out, moving as fast as he can with his numb, cold-shocked limbs. The tower decking is in sight. Forty metres away. Thirty—

  He hears a single scream. A scream that goes on for a long time, echoing around the arena of the ocean.

  Still he can hear the sound of limbs thrashing, limbs in desperate throes – he can imagine what is happening – twenty metres from the tower, ten—

  The scream cuts off. The water has gone quiet. He forces himself to keep moving. The sea is buffeting him. His arms and legs feel as though he’s swum a hundred times the distance, heavy and throbbing – his heart is a spike of pain in his chest—

  His hand touches the platform. He hauls himself up and rolls away from the edge. He is shuddering uncontrollably. He thinks he sees something, pale and upright, moving at speed, moving towards the tower. He rolls again, forcing himself further away from the water. He feels a bump against the decking and then it’s gone.

  When he looks back, all he can see is the outline of the boat, upturned in the water, and the faint glimmer of the stars.

  He’s on his own.

  He enters the tower, soaked and shaken to the core. It’s a City tower, residential, and at this time of night he doesn’t expect anyone to be about. But when he takes the lift and steps out at the level of the first bridge, he finds a group of Citizens gathered in the lobby area nearby, drinking and talking animatedly. They are dressed in a way he hasn’t seen since one of Adelaide’s notorious parties, draped in jewel-coloured velvet and silks, the women wearing extravagant headdresses and corsages at their wrists, teetering on elevated heels.

  As Vikram approaches, dripping seawater with every step, they look at him in surprise.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Shark,’ he says. ‘My friend—’

  He can’t manage anything more: the horror is still too near. Their faces turn to aghast. They crowd around him, touching and stroking him, an air of wonderment about their gestures. Vikram gets a whiff of alcohol and realizes they are all very drunk.

  ‘The Boreals let it in,’ says one of the party. ‘It’s something old, you know. All this time it’s been out there, waiting…’

  ‘It’s just a large white. A fucking enormous one, I’ll give you that—’

  And, ‘That’s the fifteenth attack.’

  ‘I heard it was more like twenty—’

  ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway—’

  ‘We’ll all be dead soon—’

  ‘It can have its pick.’

  And they laugh, collectively, hysterically, for a long time.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Vikram says.

  The first speaker, a woman, shrugs. ‘The talks won’t last another day. That’s what they’re saying, isn’t it? Tomorrow it’s war!’

  One of the men begins to caper, dancing around the younger, shorter woman and pulling faces until she bends double with laughter. He grasps her hands and whirls her about.

  ‘Oh stop, stop,’ she says, gasping and laughing at once, but the man won’t take no for an answer. She kicks off her shoes and they gallop away down the corridor, both shrieking. The first woman watches them go. Her eyes are bright and her make-up is smudged.

  ‘It’s only a matter of who strikes first,’ she says. ‘Either way, we’ll be dead by tomorrow night. Perhaps your friend was lucky.’ Vikram thinks of the scream and cannot suppress a shiver. She squeezes his arm kindly. ‘Here, have a drink.’

  She passes him a bottle of voqua.

  Vikram takes a glug. That sharp tang. That red-haired girl.

  ‘Adelaide Rechnov,’ he says.

  ‘The Silverfish?’

  ‘I don’t know – the Rechnov girl, the Architect’s granddaughter – is she alive?’

  ‘She was this morning—’

  ‘But they say there’s no hope—’

  ‘That family is cursed.’

  Each utterance feels like another kick slamming into his chest.

  ‘But where is she? Which hospital?’

  They don’t know. Vikram struggles to gather his wits.

  ‘What about the Solar Corporation? Linus – Linus Rechnov, the Councillor – is he alive? I need to find them. I have something that can stop this.’

  They look at him pitiably and he can tell they don’t believe him. But one of them says, ‘They’re all lodged in the area around the Eye Tower, on the Crocodile line. The Africans are in S-twenty-three-east.’

  ‘No, that’s the Antarcticans. S-twenty-four-east.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, I thought—’

  The gallopers are on their way back, their faces flushed and sweaty. They grab the voqua bottle and take long, greedy gulps. The girl hiccups.

  ‘And Linus?’

  ‘Have you been hitting the manta a bit too hard? He’s in the talks.’

  ‘I’ll go that way,’ says Vikram. Linus will know where he can find Adelaide. ‘Thanks.’

  He heads for the bridge.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to stay?’ calls the first woman. One of the others drapes his arm about her shoulders and adds, ‘Yes do, do stay.’ Their expressions are at once forlorn and inviting.

  Vikram shakes his head. He has no time to waste now. They shrug – a joint, philosophical kind of shrug – and turn back to their party.

  He crosses the bridge quickly. These City towers are heated but his clothes are damp and his shoes squelch and he can’t shake the feeling of cold. As he makes his way through the eastern quarter, wending up and down the towers and over the closed, slender tunnel bridges, he comes across many parties like the one in the first tower. Citizens, out of their apartments, gathered in groups and talking at speed, aware there may be only hours left to expel all the thoughts they have left unspoken for years. People kissing. People crying. People confessing secret, never-disclosed passions. People embracing lifelong enemies. And not only Citizens. He sees people who are unmistakable as westerners, in the same towers, in the same groups, together. All with the same, frantic intensity. He passes a couple, fucking aga
inst the wall, oblivious to him or to anyone else in the vicinity. He passes a man slumped against a door, a knife sticking out of his chest, his palms open at his sides. He sees fireworks to the left of a bridge, clusters of gold and silver and purple and green, one burst after another, spheres exploding within spheres. He hears shouts and cheers from a roof terrace. He sees a figure plummet from a balcony. He sees a glider angling between two towers, the athlete suspended like the body of a moth beneath the wings, and people gathered at windows and on balconies, watching, pointing. Some of the towers have been bombed. Some have craters etched into their walls. In some of the craters are people, dancing to torchlight, their shadows dancing behind them. He hears strains of music. Jazz. Piano. The shudder of bass.

  At each tower he asks the same question. Where are the Africans? Where is the Solar Corporation? The answers vary. S-twenty-five-east. No, S-twenty-four. It’s definitely S-twenty-four. What floor? The fiftieth. The fifteenth. The fiftieth, it’s the fiftieth, I’ve seen them with my own eyes, I’ve seen them. He passes a convention of Tellers, sat in a circle, their eyes closed and their voices incanting in dual tones and their bodies swaying in harmony. He hears the story of the last balloon flight narrated in quiet voices, only now there is a new ending, the balloon will arrive, it will take them far from the city, it will bring rescue. He hears stories of the shark: it’s rabid, it’s prehistoric, it’s sentient, it’s come to enact justice. He sees a symbol painted on doors, a silver fish in the act of leaping. After what feels like hours of walking he reaches the district of the Crocodile line. Hands tug at him as he passes through the towers. Join us! Join us! Tomorrow we’ll be dead. Tomorrow we’ll drink with the ghosts. He half-expects to see a familiar face, a Shadiyah or a Jannike Ko or a Linus Rechnov. He half-expects to see Adelaide, the woman he thought was dead and is not, so why shouldn’t she cheat death a second time? But no one recognizes him. No one calls his name. And as he nears the Eye Tower, which stands in the ocean alone and magnificent, the towers begin to quieten.

  He doesn’t hear music now. He doesn’t see people. The doors are shut and the stairwells are empty again.

  He checks his bearings. S-twenty-four-east is the next tower.

  He takes the lift to the fortieth floor and walks slowly across the bridge. He wishes now that there were people here. That he didn’t have to do this alone. He feels the weight of it on his shoulders and he longs more than anything to be able to return to that first group, share their voqua, dance like a demon around the window-walls and drink to death and destruction.

  He enters S-twenty-four-east and looks about. Everything is quiet. It’s an opulent, residential Osirian tower. Vikram can imagine the kind of people who would live here. People like Adelaide Rechnov.

  People like Adelaide Rechnov used to be.

  It could be any floor. They said the fiftieth – many of them said the fiftieth. So he’ll start there. He’ll look all night if he has to. Knock on every door. Tell them what he knows and find out where she is. He climbs the stairs. It’s so quiet. As if they’ve already evacuated. He finds himself thinking about the time they broke into her dead twin’s apartment, Adelaide and he, the strange conversation that followed in the tea house. A softening between them, although he hated her, at the same time. A beginning.

  Someone will listen to him. They have to.

  He exits the stairwell.

  The assailants step out from both sides. Before he can react, hands seize him, a blindfold comes over his eyes and he feels something stick into his stomach. For a few, futile seconds he tries to move. But his body is failing to respond.

  He falls limp.

  In the minutes that follow he feels himself being carried, although his eyes refuse to open and he cannot sense his hands or feet. He hears voices.

  ‘Careful—’

  ‘Get the door!’

  ‘Here, lift his feet – that’s it.’

  ‘No one saw you—’

  ‘Of course not—’

  A pause.

  ‘Is that – is that Vikram Bai?’

  ‘Shut up, Io—’

  ‘But what—’

  And then blackness.

  They find El Tiburón on the side of the city furthest from the Boreals, outside of the ring-net. Ramona listens to the pirate’s voice over the radio channel, distant and faintly distorted. ‘He was here, but he is gone.’

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  She scans the waves below but can see no evidence of El Tiburón’s ship. Not that she expected to do so. She maintains the plane on a wide curving course around the outskirts of the city.

  ‘He went into the city last night. My man went with him. Neither of them has returned.’

  ‘And you’ve heard nothing?’

  ‘I did not expect to hear,’ replies the pirate. ‘But I expected my man to have returned by now.’

  Ramona and the Alaskan exchange glances.

  ‘Where was he headed?’

  ‘He intended to find the Solar Corporation. The international police.’

  ‘Maybe he found them,’ says Ramona. ‘Maybe he’s in the summit now.’

  The Alaskan shakes her head.

  ‘There would be talk of it. We’ve heard nothing, only that the talks are in progress. There’s been no mention of his name.’

  ‘Then we need to get inside ourselves—’

  ‘If you find my man, tell him to come back,’ says the pirate. ‘There is a code. He would not have left without incident. And don’t forget the deal. I’ll be here. Waiting.’

  The channel closes abruptly.

  ‘What’s happened? Where’s Vikram?’ demands Mig.

  ‘We don’t know,’ says the Alaskan.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Find him.’ She looks to the pilot. ‘Callejas, you can navigate through the city?’

  ‘Yes, if I’m careful. But we don’t know where we’re going.’

  ‘We’re going to the Eye Tower. Look for the tallest building. It will be in the heart of the city. Mig, you keep a look-out for Callejas. She needs both our eyes.’

  The boy nods. Ramona’s shoulders are rigid as she takes the plane in over the city, slowing as much as she dares. There is too much at stake now, thinks the Alaskan. Vikram’s disappearance is a blow, but they can’t go back now even if they wanted to. She peers down. The city glints back at her. With the sky so clear, it is impossible to see anything other than the sun refracting off the solar skins and the sea sparkling between them.

  ‘Take us lower,’ she instructs.

  ‘That’s not a good idea—’

  ‘There’s space, you can manage it,’ says the Alaskan.

  Ramona drops the plane into a corridor weaving between the conical towers. The radio crackles.

  ‘People are trying to hail us,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Ignore them.’

  The pilot doesn’t respond. All her attention is focused upon navigating the perilous pathway between the towers, a pathway obstructed with slender bridges and sinuous transportation lines. The Alaskan and Mig hold on tightly as the plane jerks in a series of abrupt manoeuvres.

  ‘There!’ shouts Mig, pointing. ‘That one.’

  It has to be the one. He’s never seen anything so magnificent. It makes his heart pound just looking at it; a place like this must have been built by giants.

  Ramona risks a quick look. Mig is right. This is the tallest tower they have seen, rising several metres above the closest peak.

  ‘Down?’ she asks.

  The Alaskan nods.

  Ramona grips the yoke tightly. The aeroplane barrels out of the sky at speed. Ramona’s jaw is clenched as she lifts the nose of the plane over a bridge, then dives back down towards the waterway. The plane touches down heavily and sloughs a path through the water, its wings narrowly missing several small boats which slide sideways in the swell. Ramona powers down the engines and nudges the aircraft into a slow turn towards a star-shaped decking skirting the base of the Eye Tower.
She can see people on the decking standing and pointing, their mouths agape. Like most Patagonians, they will never have seen an aeroplane before.

  The plane comes to a stop. For a few moments there is silence.

  ‘I’ll guard the plane,’ says the Alaskan. Ramona turns in her seat.

  ‘Mig, you coming with me?’

  ‘Yes!’

  He’s not going to miss this. Not for anything.

  ‘It’s going to be a short swim. Can you swim?’

  ‘No,’ says the boy.

  ‘Then hang on to me. And keep my rifle out the water.’

  ‘Get into the summit,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Find the Africans. Tell them Vikram Bai is in the city. Tell them everything you know. Don’t worry about the language, they’ll have a translation chamber. Don’t speak to anyone else. You can’t trust the Boreals or the Antarcticans.’

  Ramona nods. She opens the hatch.

  ‘Remember the words I told you,’ calls the Alaskan.

  ‘Yes. Redfleur. Cure. I remember.’

  She drops down into the water.

  ‘Come on,’ she shouts to Mig. The boy hesitates only a moment, staring at the turbulence of the waves, then jumps after her with a yell.

  The Alaskan closes the hatch. She watches as Ramona swims the short distance to the tower decking, the boy clinging to her shoulders. For the first time in years she feels a spark of anger towards her inert legs. Someone gives the woman and the boy a hand out of the water. She sees Ramona exchanging a few quick words, then she strides into the tower, the rifle on her back, Mig scurrying after her. The attention of those on the decking turns to the Alaskan, trapped in the cockpit of the plane like an artwork on display. They wave at her. She gives them the finger. They look taken aback.

  ‘Heathens,’ mutters the Alaskan.

  Karis Io sits in silent incredulity as the Chambers descend into chaos. The Solar Corporation leader is not even bothering to ask for quiet; she sits back with her chin resting on her knuckles while the delegates shout over and above one another. Evie Aariak is on her feet, shouting and pointing. The second officer twitches beside her. He’s only waiting to get back to the trigger.

  He looks to the Solar Corporation convenor, issuing a silent plea. Surely there are persuasions she can use, some trick or slip of the law, or just the might of the Solar Corporation to force a resolution. Perhaps there are, and perhaps she has used them, or perhaps she has already decided that the situation is not worth what’s left in her arsenal. Her face is tired, and as the minutes tick by it alters further, a resignation identifiable that was not there in the previous day. Karis can imagine the second narrative that is running through her mind; she has the Corporation’s welfare to consider, and if the talks fail and hostilities resume, her responsibility is with the Corporation ship, now waiting alone and vulnerable to the east of the city. How fast can it get out of range? How fast can she get her people safe? She’s done what she can. She’s exercised her duty and if these people cannot reason or will not adhere, well, then she won’t compromise African lives. That’s not a part of the Nuuk Treaty.