by E. J. Swift
‘I like to think it found me. But I had to make a deal with the government.’ She grimaces. ‘Give me sanction to fly, I said, and I’ll make you maps. I’ll find out what’s left in the habitable zone. Funnily enough, they weren’t so difficult to persuade …’
‘And you’re headed now to Panama?’
‘Yes. To the Exchange.’
‘We’ll be following you,’ says the older man.
Ramona hesitates. She does not want to bring bad feeling to the camp, but it would be foolish not to use the knowledge of these travellers.
‘Someone I know was taken, from a village in the highlands, by northern raiders, but that’s all I know. Have you heard anything?’
The atmosphere around the camp is suddenly charged. Conversations cease abruptly. One member of the group gets up and strides away, disappearing into the gathering darkness outside the camp.
The older man says quietly, ‘You are not the only one to have lost someone. We don’t speak of it. There is nothing we can tell you. Perhaps we will learn more in Panama.’
‘I’m sorry to upset anyone,’ she says. ‘But if we have information between us, we should share it.’
‘There is none,’ he says firmly, and to her annoyance, she understands the conversation to be closed. She listens to others take their turn to talk, but now she finds it impossible to concentrate.
As the sun disappears, the company draw closer together. A flask of sweetened rum is passed around. The alcohol makes Ramona drowsy. Voices rise and fall in quiet rhythm, faces are softened by the glow from the stove and the torches they have placed in the ground. Her tiredness is strong now. She wants to sleep; the faster the night is over, the sooner she can be on her way.
Then she hears the word north.
‘A few years ago, before I joined you, one of my old group split in Panama. No word to where he was going but we all knew. He’d talked about north before. He became obsessed. He had these mad ideas of stowing away on a Boreal ship.’
‘We’ve all heard of someone who’s gone north,’ says another. ‘And I tell you, the one thing’s the same for all – they don’t come back.’
‘I knew a boy who did.’
‘How d’you know he ever got there?’
‘Said so. He’d seen things.’
‘He said so?’
The man’s tone is sceptical, but he cannot quite conceal his curiosity. Looking around the circle, Ramona sees the same intrigue in each of the travellers’ faces. They know that the story will be exaggeration at best, but they have to hear it. The north is its own drug. The woman speaking, stretched out on her sleeping bag, knows this. She takes her time before replying, catching each pair of eyes around the circle, tiny spots of torchlight reflected in the centres of her pupils.
‘The people up there aren’t like us. They’re each hooked up to a web of robotics. They’ve got machines that sit between their shoulder blades.’ The woman gestures, twisting her arm behind her back. ‘And this web is alive. It can decide things, with or without them agreeing. And it makes them live for hundreds of years, whether they want to or not. It can fix when they’re sick, see.’
‘That’s a load of shit,’ mutters one of the party.
Another says, ‘What about the jinn, Cristina? Does it destroy the jinn too?’
Ramona feels a shiver run down her spine. She draws her coat more tightly around her. She can feel the cold now, a deep chill in her hands and feet, and on her bare face.
Cristina shakes her head. ‘They don’t have the jinn. And another thing this boy said. He said their eyes are weird from the web. It turns them black, like lava stone. Or maybe they’re born with eyes like that, he couldn’t tell. Then again, he had been talking to a nirvana, so he was probably mesmerized.’
A flutter of agitation runs through the camp. A nirvana? Why would he – how was there – are they – common, up there?
‘More than you’d think. They keep their heads down. Boreal law protects them, but it makes no odds. If they’re found out, they might as well kill themselves. Lots of them do.’
‘What’s a nirvana?’
Everyone turns to look at the speaker, the youngest member of the group. The others are incredulous. You don’t know? They’re freaks, they’re – not natural. Ramona says nothing, but she feels the collective terror of the camp. Nirvanas are an old dark dread, like witches or ghosts, to be evoked on a night such as this when anything could come out of the shadows. Ramona has never met one. She is not sure if she believes they truly exist.
The old man, Aris, says, ‘When the Blackout virus killed millions, there were a few, very few, who survived. The virus altered them. It rewired their brains. Nirvanas are their descendants. It is said they can read minds, among other things.’
There is a protracted pause while the company digests this. The conversation picks up again.
‘This boy you met, Cristina. I don’t believe he ever went north. People that go Boreal never come back. Never.’
‘He escaped, didn’t he. He was captured. They were going to cut him up and experiment on him, but he managed to get away.’
‘That’s what they do with the people they take. Experiment on them.’
Suddenly, Ramona’s heart is racing very fast.
‘You don’t know that,’ she says. ‘You don’t know that’s what they do.’
Aris interjects quickly. ‘Hearsay and rumour, that’s all. The truth is, we don’t know what the Boreal States do or don’t have, because they do not wish us to find out. They are secretive. They will keep their Neon technology from the Corporation and Antarctica at all cost, locked up in the knowledge banks, as they have done ever since the Blackout.’
‘You say they have Neon technology, Aris. What if it’s something different – something new?’
‘Neon or new is irrelevant,’ he replies. ‘Whatever it is, we don’t want it here.’
‘Fucking right. They can keep their robotics.’
‘Now think about it,’ says Aris. ‘Have you ever seen a Boreal crewman with wires? With eyes like lava stone? No. They look like us.’
The us is inclusive, and Ramona understands it to be not only Patagonians, but what they are, and what she is: traveller, or outlaw; those who flee before a wind they do not understand but know must be kept behind them at all times.
Cristina grumbles. ‘You ruin all the fun, Aris.’
‘You can rely on me for that,’ he replies.
Ramona’s attention is drawn inexorably to the old man. His skin is weathered and wrinkled, his white hair and beard are sparse, but he sits very erect, without stooping. And his eyes – his eyes she recognizes. They are the same eyes of the pedlar as she saw him for the first time in the sliding city. That man must be long dead, but they hold the same truths: a long life, witness to joy and horror in equal measure, although Ramona did not understand this dichotomy back then. She only saw the road.
Aris notices Ramona’s attention. ‘If the night is still young, then I have a story too.’
He glances around the company, but Ramona imagines that his eyes flick deliberately in her direction.
‘I want to tell you about my ancestor,’ he says. ‘Who remembered the fires and passed her story down to her children, until my mother told it to me.’
A silence has descended upon the party. Ramona becomes aware once again of the night breeze, sweeping across the desert, ruffling the stunted bushes at its border. Insects hum as they flit through the night air. Aris begins to speak.
‘When my ancestor was a girl, she lived by the jungle. Her village was in one of the last pieces of rainforest, and every day, she woke to the voices of animals. Strange, curious-shaped creatures that we can no longer imagine. She heard monkeys and birds and frogs. She would go into the jungle and collect fruits where they had fallen, and there were some that were edible and there were some that would kill you. There were flowers red as sunset over the sea, and there was water, drops as big as your fist, dripping from t
he leaves. But my ancestor noticed, as she got older, that the jungle was growing quieter.’
Aris’s voice is very soft, and Ramona leans forwards to catch his words. At times his breathing is laboured, and he pauses to recover it, but no one interrupts as he continues.
‘Of course, from their village, no one could imagine what was coming from the other side. Year by year, walls of flames swallowed up another stronghold of trees. Animals ran from it. Birds – paradise birds, they used to call them, and perhaps they were worshipped – exploded in the air. When the fires passed they left stumps of trees and carpets of ash. The land smoked for days.’
Aris pauses, gazing into the stove fire, as though he is seeing its terrible predecessors sweeping through the ancient jungle. A few of the party are nodding, and Ramona too recognizes this tale: it is a familiar one, relayed by many storytellers, with many different twists. But somehow it never grows old.
‘My ancestor knew none of this. She only knew that every year, the stream from where the villagers took their water grew thinner. From time to time, she would see a red bloom above the jungle. My ancestor liked to watch the skies on nights like these, not knowing what they heralded.’
Unconsciously, the company draws closer together. A woman brings her legs to her chest and inches forwards. Another leans his elbows on his knees.
‘Soon people began to appear out of the forest. They spoke of other villages, razed to the ground. Don’t stay, they warned. This place is cursed. But my ancestor did stay, although the stream was now the barest of trickles, and the animals were all but silent, and people kept coming out of the jungle with eyes that saw waking flames and would do for all the remaining days of their lives.
‘One day, my ancestor awoke early with prickles running from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. She went outside. The horizon was red. Thousands of birds flew overhead, making the air even darker so that now the whole world looked like a lake of blood. In the distance she heard a roaring noise. And then a magical thing happened.’
The word magic ripples at Ramona’s back. This is the part she has been waiting for.
‘From between the trees came a huge cat. My ancestor stood very still, facing it. It was as tall as her. Its fur looked like some rich Boreal material. On the gold were black rosettes. When it opened its mouth she saw its teeth. The cat could have bitten off her arm in a single mouthful.
‘The cat looked at my ancestor. She looked at the cat. Then the cat turned and leaped away. Now my ancestor could identify the sound of approaching fire, and other noises too – crashes as trees tumbled to the ground. The village was awake, gathering possessions and preparing to flee. But my ancestor could not leave, not yet. She was in a trance. She stayed, watching the cat until it disappeared.’
There is a long silence before someone speaks. ‘It was the jaguar.’
‘It was the last jaguar,’ says Aris. ‘Three days later, my ancestor, whose village had burned to ashes, caught up with a band of vagabonds. The vagabonds were kind to her, for everyone had witnessed the burning of the last piece of jungle, and there was a sombre air in the country. So they offered the travellers stew and water. Only later did my ancestor see the skin of the cat, stripped and stretched out to dry, and she met again the eyes of the jaguar. But this time, the eyes were empty.’
Aris lets his words hang, but the gravitas is broken by a flurry of responses.
‘No, that’s not how it ends. The jaguar was captured and taken south by the Tarkies.’
‘I never heard that.’
‘It’s true. They froze it into an iceberg.’
The circle is alive again, as each person puts forward their version of the jaguar’s fate. He bounded to the ocean and turned into surf; he ran to the Nazca Desert and imprinted himself in the ground; he was captured by the Solar Corporation agents; by a salt mogul and bought by the Xiomaras; by pirates and bartered for in Tasmania; El Tiburón carries him on his boat, preserved in a diamond case.
As she listens to the theories, Ramona feels an old irritation creeping over her. She has heard this story many times, and it is always the same outcome. The jaguar is always dead. It seems to her that the story of the jaguar is indicative of a greater malady: a resignation to the fate of the continent, despite all the restoration laws; a covert agreement that this is how it was always destined to be. It is exactly this kind of unthinking acceptance that caused the majority of Brazil’s population to decamp to Antarctica, and has produced a civilization of people like Taeo. And look where that has led us, she thinks, angrily remembering the state of the plane.
‘What if the jaguar survived?’ she asks.
They all turn to look at her.
‘What?’
‘What if the jaguar was taken north, or if it escaped, or its cells were cloned and a new jaguar was made …’
Their faces are sceptical.
Someone says, ‘For sure, there are those who say he’s still running about somewhere.’ But Ramona knows it is said as an appeasement, and she finds herself further annoyed.
The old man, Aris, glances around the circle. The gathered faces are sleepy now, reddened by the last glow of the fire. Aris is not looking at Ramona, but she feels as though his next words are spoken directly to her.
‘By the time I was born, sands had covered the scars left by the jungle’s burning. They are there now, those dunes. Tomorrow, we will begin our journey across them. So I have for you a warning. A million tiny lives are buried there, and they say that anyone who tries to cross the desert without the utmost precautions shall lose their life too. They shall die with visions of paradise birds in their eyes, and their body shall dry laid out under the sun while the ghost of the jaguar walks across it with his tailbone swishing in the sand.’
The traders offer Ramona the shelter of a tent but she declines. While they are setting out bedrolls, she catches the man who walked away when she mentioned the raiders.
‘I lost someone. You did too. We should talk.’
He turns away.
‘I’ve nothing to talk about.’
‘What’s your plan in Panama? You must have ideas. We could team up.’
‘I said, I’ve nothing to talk about. Now leave me alone.’
Ramona puts her hand on his arm. ‘But that’s crazy, you must know something, I know something, we’ve a far better chance of finding our people if we share our stories—’
‘Leave it!’ He shakes her off aggressively. Their encounter has drawn attention. Others glare at Ramona. Aris is watching her. She walks away, bewildered by the man’s reaction. Why wouldn’t he want to exchange information? It makes no sense.
She sleeps in the plane, wrapped in her bedroll in the hold in her usual spot, half-alert, her gun at her hip ready to grab. She rises before any of the camp. She leaves the plane only to urinate, crouching in the sand, the desert dark and cool on the boundary of the twenty degree line.
She is gone before anyone is awake, and as the sun comes up, she watches the birth of the desert around her, an immeasurable landscape, hushed and long abandoned.
27 ¦
IT HAPPENS EARLY in the morning. Mig is with Pilar in the stairwell of Station Sabado where they sheltered last night from the rooftop winds. He wakes, and at once feels something strange about the day, not heat or cold, or the pressure of a brewing storm, or even the ominous quiet that descends before a guerrilla invasion. For a few minutes he lies there, worrying at the coarse new hairs on his legs and puzzling over the odd sensation, and then he realizes. The radios have gone quiet.
Pilar is curled up, half of her head buried within her coat collar and her hands gripping the lapels as though someone might try to wrestle it from her. Mig nudges her with his foot.
‘Hey. Hey, wake up. Listen!’
Her eyes unscrunch groggily. ‘It’s early, kid, fuck off—’
‘Listen!’
She yawns. ‘You just woke me right in the middle of this crazy dream—’
�
�Pilar, the radio.’
She peers suspiciously above the collar of her coat, blinking, and cracks her neck to first one side, then the other.
‘You turn it off?’
‘No. There’s no broadcast.’
He holds up her radio, which is hissing static. Pilar’s eyes narrow. She grabs the radio and shakes it, turns it upside-down and every which way.
‘Fucking thing’s broken. I knew it was a con—’
‘No, it’s not just here, there’s nothing anywhere – listen.’
They climb out onto the roof, straining for any sound. Suddenly Mig is conscious of noises he would never usually notice – the trill of small birds alighted on the dome, his breathing, Pilar’s breathing, the sound of her swallowing. But of people, he hears nothing. It is as if there has been some massive terminal incident, leaving him and Pilar the only survivors in a devastated world. He feels fear, but it is laced with a peculiar excitement. What has happened?
Pilar gets to her feet and walks across the roof with slow, deliberate steps that sound infinitely loud. She cups her hands around her mouth.
‘Helloooo!’
The howl goes up into the air and dissipates and all is still again. Pilar pulls a face of clownish surprise.
The sound of static issues abruptly from Pilar’s radio, making both of them jump. They laugh nervously.
‘Loser.’
‘Twat.’
Pilar hits the radio and fiddles with the tuner until the sound resolves into speech.
‘… quarter of the city. Quarantine is enforced until further notice. We advise those who can to stay at home. All citizens are instructed to wear emergency masks. No one will enter or leave the city without permission. This is a broadcast for all residents of the city of Cataveiro. An outbreak of redfleur has been identified in the southern quarter of the city. Quarantine is enforced …’
Pilar stands and stretches her arms high above her head. She holds the pose, poised on the tips of her toes, like an angel at dawn. Mig senses no fear from her. But she must remember the last outbreak: it was five years ago. He was one of the younger ones then, but he remembers it. And he’s scared now. Not for himself. For Pilar.
