by E. J. Swift
Once more Mig creeps up the stairwell and knocks on Madame Bijou’s door. A girl answers. Scrawny with exploding spots and greasy spikes of hair, clearly not the immense bulk of Bijou herself.
‘I want to see Madame Bijou,’ says Mig.
‘Bit young aren’t you? Go home to your mama.’
Mig scowls.
‘I’m not here for the girls. I want to see Bijou.’
‘Fuck off.’
The girl shuts the door. Mig wants to shout fuck you too through the door, but he can’t risk the Tarkie hearing his voice.
He listens again at the Tarkie’s door, but this time there are no discernible voices, only the radio tuned to Station Cataveiro. He retreats.
People come home. The counted children emptying out of their schools, the factory workers and the data drones, their faces tired and lined. They go into their homes. Some of them gather in the bar at the end of the street. An enforcer walks through, slapping her baton against her leg. In the summer heat the enforcers are like crazed rats, spoiling for someone to bite. Mig has seen shins splintered with a baton just like that. He ducks into the next street and waits for the enforcer to pass before he returns. Munching on an empanada, he thinks about Pilar. He wonders where she is and what she is doing. He imagines her singing, the huge voice and the moody face. He imagines her on the roof of Station Sabado, perched among the birds with feathers falling out of her hair. He still has that green one in his pocket. His parrot girl. He imagines taking off her jumper, then her T-shirt.
The light slowly fades. Dusk creeps through the street. If lights come on behind the shutters of the fifth-floor apartment, he does not see them. Who is in there? Who is the Tarkie hiding?
Mig knows what it is to hide. He knows what it is to want to stay hidden. There is a part of him that does not want to give away the Tarkie’s secret.
But the Alaskan pays, and Mig’s funds must grow. It’s his and Pilar’s future.
24 ¦
‘YOU ARE NOT dead then,’ says the Alaskan humorously. The woman who is perched like a jewelled beetle on the edge of the opposite chair, not quite willing to commit her full arse to its dubious surface, does not laugh. She is not the laughing kind. It is one of the reasons the Alaskan enjoys manipulating her.
‘As you see, I am well,’ says the woman. Her famously high, girlish voice is slightly muffled behind a designer mouth and nose mask. It does not sound like the voice of a woman who pushes people into ravines, but the Alaskan does not doubt that Xiomara is capable of such an act, nor does she underestimate her intelligence, as so many do.
‘Certainly, you don’t have any signs of redfleur that I can see. Your skin’s still on for a start. Unless that’s the reason for those gloves.’
‘You are crude,’ says Señorita Xiomara.
The Alaskan chuckles.
‘In my own den, I am what I am. Honoured by your presence, in this case. What do you want? Come on now, out with it.’
Xiomara smoothes out a wrinkle in one white elbow-length glove. They are gloves, the Alaskan can tell, that keep the skin cool. Northern tech. The Alaskan used to own materials like those. She remembers the feel of the sheer fabric: at once weightless and protective. It made you feel invincible. The saliva is gathering under her tongue just thinking about it. Yes, she used to have things. Now she has a trunk full of grubby Patagonian peso under the bed, cash stained with other people’s messy lives and transactions.
‘I want the one who offended me,’ says Xiomara.
‘Ah, the pilot. Elusive, that one. Played you at your own game, did she?’
Xiomara’s voice becomes shrill. ‘She infected me!’
‘Then don’t come any nearer. My immune system is a puny thing.’ The Alaskan hacks wetly, not bothering to reach for a tissue. Señorita Xiomara’s nose shifts under the mask.
‘Remember who you are talking to, Alaskan.’
‘With that length of hair, could I forget?’
‘Tell me now. What do you know about the pilot?’
The Alaskan shrugs. ‘Not so much. She first appears on the map here in Cataveiro, a garage apprentice fixing cars. Cars like yours, I imagine. Maybe she even shined up your car, Xiomara, there’s a thought, isn’t it? Callejas’s hands all over your pretty engine? Later on, let’s see, she finds the aeroplane, somewhere in the desert, so the story goes. Now she freelances for the government. Maps what’s left outside the habitable zone.’
‘It is true she is a cartographer?’ Xiomara’s tone is incredulous.
‘Mapping is a useful exercise, as far as it goes. I’m fond of maps, myself. And you’re rather short on them in this country. But you’re right. Doubtless she is useful in other ways too.’
‘And it is the del Torres plane?’
‘Is there more than one?’
‘No.’
‘Then you are safe enough to bet on del Torres. Who is del Torres?’
‘The plane belonged to the del Torres family, they preserved it when others were destroyed. Del Torres herself was insane, a lunatic. No loss to the world. Where did the pilot come from?’
‘Do I look like an oracle to you? I don’t know. Mig! Where’s that pilot from, what does the radio tell you?’
‘Highlands,’ comes the boy’s voice from the next room.
‘There you go. Mig says she is from the highlands, one of those small villages that scrape out a living up there. I’ve never been but I wouldn’t recommend it as a holiday destination. Or if you do go, pack your malaria pills.’
Señorita Xiomara’s brow creases. ‘What are her weaknesses?’
‘I don’t know her personally, Xiomara. I could find out more, but that would require facilities, obviously.’
‘Whatever it takes.’
Mig’s voice sounds thinly from the next room. ‘You should be careful. She’s the lucky one.’
Xiomara tilts her head enquiringly. ‘What was that?’
‘Ignore him,’ says the Alaskan. ‘He’s full of absurd superstitions. Here, have a nougat.’
She rattles the tray of sweets under Xiomara’s masked nose.
‘You shouldn’t mock so easily, Alaskan. What do you mean, boy?’
The Alaskan is irritated by the interruption. She scratches at an insect bite on her arm. ‘Tell her, Mig, if you must.’
The boy talks through the screen. ‘She’s lucky, is all. That’s what people say. She has the spider’s luck. It was spiders who led her to the plane, two hundred of them. It was in the desert. Before she came there was nothing there alive and when she arrived the spiders appeared. They showed her the way.’
The Alaskan and Xiomara wait, but nothing more is forthcoming.
‘Interesting,’ says Xiomara.
‘Don’t tell me you believe in these ridiculous stories?’
‘I think luck is a curious concept, Alaskan, very curious. I would not expect one of your … kind to understand. There are those who might say I was unlucky my parents died. Others might say I was lucky, for I survived.’ Xiomara’s voice hardens. ‘Lucky or not, I want the pilot, and I want her alive. Sooner or later, everyone’s luck runs out. Hers will too.’
‘And what are you planning to do with her, when you find her?’
‘I have not yet decided.’ Xiomara sits in deep reflection for a few moments, doubtless imagining the tortures she will inflict on Ramona Callejas when she gets her hands on the pilot. Two visitors in as many days – the Alaskan should count herself lucky. It is lucky, she supposes, that Xiomara came the day after the Antarctican, that there was not some unfortunate collision. The Alaskan feels a greedy hunger when she thinks about the Antarctican. He is her secret. No one else is having him – not unless the price is right, anyway.
Now that he is coming back, she will have to keep a sentry. Xiomara has a bad habit of turning up uninvited. She never gives warning, such is her terror of being assassinated. The Alaskan has occasionally toyed with the idea of having Xiomara assassinated herself, if only to see the diplom
atic mess that would unravel. For now, though, Xiomara is too interesting an opponent to remove, and the book of debt is waiting.
Through the wall, the Alaskan hears a quiz show on her neighbour’s radio. She listens out for the questions with one ear, answering them one by one in her head.
‘You know that my parents died of redfleur,’ says Xiomara quietly. ‘For three days they lay in our house dying, and the only people who saw them were doctors in hazard masks and suits. I could tell they were terrified. I was not allowed to see them, of course. But I could smell it. I could smell the blood and the rotting flesh. One of the nurses came out with a bucket each day and each day I wondered what part of my parents it might contain.’
‘You think too much on it,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Keep a gun or a syringe on yourself. If you get infected, do it quick. Make sure your bodyguards are loyal enough that they’ll kill you before they kill themselves. That’s my best advice.’
Señorita Xiomara gazes at her. With her perfect oval face it is the gaze of a robot, but a robot who has a secret life in the moments its owner turns away. The salt woman’s brown eyes are accented with soft purple shadow; the rise of her cheekbones is artfully highlighted in blusher. The mask, in hiding the lower half of her face, only serves to accentuate the beauty of what is on display. It is not often the Alaskan sees anyone so well made-up. Looking at Xiomara makes her feel mournful for her younger self. She was radiant once. She was adored.
‘There have been new cases,’ Xiomara says.
‘I’ve heard.’
‘Six months ago the government found bodies near the archipelago. An entire village of bodies. The rumours say only one girl survived. That was the first.’
The Alaskan squeezes the insect bite until it produces a perfect bead of pus. ‘You only have to shake a hand. It’s no surprise the entire village succumbed.’
Xiomara ignores her.
‘Two months ago, I heard of a poppy farm whose workforce were wiped out within days. And only three weeks past, a remote case, further north, but most certainly redfleur.’ Xiomara pauses. ‘The army have investigated, of course, and all the quarantines are in place, but I am highly concerned. I want you to be alert to any more cases. If necessary, I must evacuate. I cannot put myself at risk. The plants would suffer.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ says the Alaskan, looking at Xiomara’s long, luscious sweep of treated hair. It reminds her of a girl … what was the name? Ah, she’s forgotten. A girl from Veerdeland, with old Scandinavian blood. A girl whose hair the Alaskan once wrapped herself in like a silk veil. She knows perfectly well, as does the woman herself, that Xiomara has nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the desalination plants whose water supplements so much of the city.
Xiomara smiles prettily.
‘I brought you a gift. One of those street vendors was offering them – really quite a bargain, my bodyguards tell me.’
With the contrived gesture of a magician, Xiomara produces a handheld plastic fan with a miserly solar wrap. She thrusts it before her.
‘To hold off the heat.’
‘Thank you,’ says the Alaskan. She manages to mask her anger as Xiomara zips up her handbag, rises, smoothes her northern gloves and her northern dress, and rustles through the screen. Only when the door to the apartment has shut behind her does the Alaskan feel the heat of rage rising to her face.
A gift. A gift! This cheap tawdry thing! She flicks the switch. A whisper of warm air moves against her face. The Alaskan hurls the fan across the room. It clatters against the wall and drops to the floor. It does not break. That it does not break further incenses the Alaskan.
‘That woman insults me, Mig!’
‘Yes, señora.’
‘She cannot think beyond her own paltry empire. She has no true ambition, only more wealth, the illusion of power, as if there is any true power to be had in this country. You know it’s that woman’s fault we are in this shithole. It’s her who keeps me out of the enclaves. There’s enough cash under this bed to purchase a river view and enough energy for you to take a hot shower every day, but they block me at every turn.’ The Alaskan scrapes viciously at the insect bite. It starts to bleed. She smears the blood over the bedsheets. ‘If she really knew who I had been—’
‘Who were you, señora?’ asks the boy dutifully.
‘I was … someone.’
She thinks longingly of cool Arctic seasons. Every year the Alaskan dreads the onset of summer. Even in the relatively temperate climes of Patagonia, the city heats to the point of combustion. The Alaskan sweats into her bedsheets and wakes each morning with a pounding head. Sometimes she cuts her painkillers with opium, but it makes her mind lurch in a way that is both pleasant and unpleasant, like masochistic sex. Northerners like to punish the freaks. Sometimes in those days she would be overcome with recklessness and tell her lovers the truth in the middle of fucking, just to see what would happen. It was rarely good but there was a moment of giddying power in the telling.
She examines the smear of blood on the sheets. Something for Maria to wash later.
‘What do we know about the pilot?’
‘What I said. That’s all.’
The Alaskan remembers something. ‘Did you send that telegram? The first posters?’
‘No, señora. You said don’t send it.’
‘Send it now. See what you can find out. Report only to me. I don’t want you to have any dealings with that despicable woman. Understand me? No more.’
Mig nods but looks uneasy.
‘Yes, señora. I mean no, señora.’
‘Go. Go now. Get out.’
‘Yes, señora.’
‘Yes, señora, yes, señora,’ mutters the Alaskan. This is what she is reduced to. Yes, señora.
Xiomara’s desire is not limited to vengeance, the Alaskan is well aware of that. Xiomara wants the plane. And the more the Alaskan thinks about it, the more she begins to wonder. She has been in Cataveiro a long time. Perhaps it is time to move on. Perhaps Xiomara’s tawdry barbs are a sign.
The Alaskan is wasted here among the damned. She can see exactly how Patagonia’s future will pan out, clear as a knife shells peas. If the rumours about the sea city are true, and it seems likely given Mig’s evidence, then her countrymen will come south. It is the perfect excuse. There will be a battle. A full-scale Boreal-Antarctican war. Someone will weaponize redfleur and make a fat profit. Patagonia will be squeezed in the middle until the country falls into a second Blackout. The survivors will go north or south, or regress to primeval status. Plants and insects will choke the continent. It will be a living dead zone.
The Alaskan needs new challenges.
She has never seen Antarctica.
25 ¦
TAEO GAZES AT the contents of the shop’s first aisle. Soap, toothpaste, mouth-and-nose masks, cheap painkiller patches – he takes a packet. Strange that the contents of a shelf can say so much, and so little. The packaging of the goods is plain, marked with the spider glyph that denotes government-issue produce. He hesitates, then puts two face masks into his basket. The next aisle offers potatoes and quinoa, dried packet soup, imported grain. Alaskan grain. Antarctican rice – the expensive stuff – is at the back of the store. Taeo is not sure he can afford Antarctican rice, but he craves it.
At home they each had their own method, but despite Shri’s antipathy for cooking it was her way that prevailed in the end; she would not give up until he seceded. An announcement in the store makes him jump, but then he realizes it is Shri speaking, offering her instructions in a slightly distorted voice. First soak the rice. A few drops of oil – no, not that much. Cloves, cinnamon, cardamom. Let it cook through its own steam.
Taeo can see it: the bowl on the table full of the hot fluffy lozenges. The rice in Cataveiro is extortionate, and he has no idea how long he is going to be here, and even if he had limitless cash there is no stove to cook it on. He carries his life on his back, like the pilot said he should, and what he has found i
s that his life is small. As small as a box of rice. He stares at the shelves and upon the shelves, the boxes and tins and glass jars that contain the ingredients for the preservation of life, and he notices a hole in one of the boxes. As he stands there, staring, a small insect crawls out from the hole and along the shelf.
The burst of vertigo catches him unaware. He puts his hand to his temples, startled by the giddiness. His vision fades at the edges. That’s weird. What he sees tunnels to the slow motion of the bug as it traverses the shelf, its tiny feelers probing the air ahead.
‘Do you mind, I need—’
A woman manoeuvres herself in front of him. When he steps back, Taeo feels a wash of nausea, and for a moment he thinks he might actually faint.
The sick feeling fades. His vision clears.
He is standing in the aisle of the store, clutching a basket containing two masks and a packet of painkillers. The woman gives him an odd look. She skirts around him. Around the circle that goes with him everywhere. One thing he does not need to pack.
He puts some things in the basket, hardly caring what they are, just wanting to get out of the airless shop. He pays and walks out into the sunlight. It is mid-afternoon and already the temperatures are soaring. This morning he visited the Alaskan for a second time. Once again they talked. Once again in circles. Once again she intimated the things she knew, the many things. But when he pressed her on progress with the Antarcticans, he received nothing but a canny smile.
I told you, it takes time. They’re careful, your lot. Very careful. Don’t leave clues.
But you do think—
Oh yes. It’s only a matter of time.
He trusts her less today and he barely trusted her yesterday. He cannot be sure he is doing the right thing. If she doesn’t come through, what will they do then? Could he commandeer a Patagonian boat, take Vikram home himself? The only other option is to return to Fuego and throw himself upon Ivra’s mercy, and he cannot bear the idea of having gone through all this for nothing.
