by E. J. Swift
The briefest hesitation before he says a price. A high price, and she suspects he has adjusted it to her benefit.
‘I don’t have enough,’ she says. ‘I can’t pay you.’
‘I do.’ Félix taps his pocket. ‘I don’t have much, but I have some savings. The captain stood me it. She knows I can repay her back in Fuego.’
‘I can’t take this from you. What if you – what if Carla needed—’
‘Shh.’ He puts a finger on her lips. ‘It’s done, Ro. I’ve already paid.’
She feels something inside her break then.
‘Félix, I can’t—’
‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he says. ‘You know that.’
His smile says the rest. I love you, I have always loved you, I will do anything for you.
And it is only now, seeing that love in his face, that she knows why she lied about Inés before. Because she did not want to say goodbye. She had always assumed that if – when – they parted for the last time, neither of them would know. They would go their separate ways, spared the sorrow of goodbyes because they would not realize that it was goodbye. In this way, their last memories of one another would be happy.
She had not thought of the possibility that one of them would know the truth.
The truth is, she will not be getting up with Félix in the morning, and rousing the Patagonian crews, and storming the Boreal ship. By the time Félix wakes, if all goes to plan, she will already be on the ship. There is a fair chance that she will not be coming back. It is as though the belt, where the edge of the south meets the edge of the north, is where her luck runs out.
This is the last time. She feels it in her bones. But she cannot take this ignorance from Félix, even though her betrayal tomorrow, when he realizes she has gone, will be a terrible thing. She cannot take this last memory from him.
34 ¦
THE GRAVE-WATCHER SITS on the steps, as far away from the infected as possible. He cannot remember ever having felt afraid like this. His mother used to describe seeing ghosts. She was religious, and believed in reincarnation, and she believed that ghosts were souls who had not managed to reincarnate, and they petrified her. He always thought it silly but he feels that fear now.
There’s another hour to go of his shift. He wishes his replacement would come early and take over. The minutes crawl by. Every time he raises the light a little to check the clock, he is afraid the man will be awake, staring at him with that healing face. Who is he? What is he? What if he’s one of them from the north; what if there’s robotics in him; what if he’s – the grave-watcher shudders now – a nirvana? Do they get sick, nirvanas? Unnatural things they are, born of folk who should have died and didn’t. It makes your skin crawl just thinking of it.
Twice now he has hovered near the bell, wondering if he should call a doctor, but each time something stops him. He is afraid that if he makes the call, the man down there will do something.
Instead he puts his headphones on and flicks through the radio channels, turning the volume up high. He wants something that will distract him. It’s all talk of the redfleur and the quarantine, like he needs to hear it. Government promises, reassurance from the army: they have it all in hand. You haven’t seen what’s here, thinks the grave-watcher. And you’ve forgotten what’s coming. I remember the last time. He switches to another channel. And then he finds it. The purest, saddest voice he’s ever heard. Pilar y el Loro, says the broadcaster, at the end of the song. Recorded only the other night, at a secret gig. She’s a homeless girl. A homeless singing sensation. She sings fado, explains the broadcaster. A voice for our times. Here’s another, have a listen to this.
The grave-watcher listens, transfixed. His head empties. For a few minutes, it doesn’t matter that he watches over the dying, and is reviled for it. It doesn’t matter that he lives a solitary life, never quite sure how to speak to other people, wondering what is the right way to do it. It doesn’t matter that his replacement is late. Alone with his headphones in this dark basement where no one comes and no one wants to believe exists, he listens to Pilar y el Loro. The broadcaster isn’t exaggerating. She’s something special all right. You can hear the tension in the room where she sings, the audience hanging on to every note.
Although he is facing the basement, the grave-watcher senses, rather than hears, the figure lurching to its feet.
His heart pounds. It hurts his chest, it’s beating so bad. He clutches a hand to his sternum, scared he’s going to have an attack. He can’t bring himself to take off the headphones or turn the light on full. The figure is fumbling about in the darkness. Down there, where the dying are, there’s someone who isn’t dying.
He is coming towards the grave-watcher. Heading for the stairs. The grave-watcher can see him now, a darker shadow swelling against the dark basement. It’s the man. He looms at the bottom of the stairs. The grave-watcher presses against the wall, terrified. For a moment he sees the man’s features in the dim lights. The scabbed, brown cheeks. The red-rimmed, hallucinatory gaze. The man looks at the grave-watcher. The grave-watcher’s lungs constrict.
His chest is on fire.
‘Help me,’ says the man.
The grave-watcher’s limbs are frozen. All he can do is point to the card. The man takes it. He hears the man ascend the stairs in slow, awkward movements, one step at a time. He hears the card swipe and the beep of the lock releasing. He hears the door open. The card is thrown back, pattering down the stairs. The door shuts.
When his heart rate has slowed enough to move, the grave-watcher checks his records. Carefully, meticulously, he removes all evidence of the man who walked away.
He was never here.
The grave-watcher says it to himself, over and over. I never saw him, because he was never here.
At the end of his shift the burners come. They take away five bodies. He waits for the next intake of the infected, but none arrive. When he goes upstairs to scrub up and hand back his suit, they tell him the basement is no longer in use. There are too many now. It is an epidemic.
35 ¦
VIKRAM IS GONE.
Twenty-four hours have passed since he left, and he has not returned. Another night has set in. The temperature has dropped, the stars have come out, the curfew trucks roll through the street once an hour and the redfleur death toll rises on the radio. Vikram is gone.
It is Taeo’s fault. He can see it all quite clearly now. He should have been straight with the Osirian from the start. If he had only had courage enough to tell him the truth, to trust him and ask him to trust Taeo, they might have come to an agreement. Now he has told the truth and with it, the truth of all the lies, and now Vikram has gone.
Where he has gone, Taeo has no idea, but he no longer doubts Vikram’s last words – the Osirian can look after himself. Perhaps he was only waiting for Taeo to break down. Perhaps he has been using Taeo as much as Taeo has been using him: gathering information, practising the foreign sounds of vowels and consonants until he believed himself equipped to get by alone. The more Taeo thinks about it, the clearer the case.
Vikram has run away. Perhaps he decided to strike out for Antarctica alone; perhaps he plans to head north; or just find a place to hole up in Patagonia; maybe he wants to go home, warn his people, tell them the truth. Whichever it is, he has decided he doesn’t need Taeo.
The worst of it is, Taeo can’t blame Vikram for acting that way. It is his fault. He brought Vikram to Cataveiro. From beginning to end this has been nothing but a farce. They should have stayed at Tierra del Fuego, waited out the harbour lockdown and jumped on the nearest Antarctican ship. Swum to it, if necessary. Instead he entrusted a holoma to a renegade pilot who is wanted for the attempted murder of a desalination mogul, and dragged the only physical proof of Osiris to a city terrorized by the world’s deadliest disease, where he is now left – alone – barely able to walk, with nothing. And to think he used to consider himself an intelligent individual.
He remembers the b
oy. The one that works for the Alaskan. What is his name? Mig. He should go to the Alaskan, put her on the case. But no, he can’t betray Vikram. Not even now. He should find Mig and speak to him directly. That is a plan. He needs a plan. He needs to do something, anything.
He raids the flat for whatever cash he can find, checking the floor, the drawers, under the beds. He pulls together a decent amount. He should feel angry about having his wallet stolen, but he no longer has the energy for it.
He nudges the shutters open and checks the streets below before heading out, but he can see no one. Day three – or is it four? – of the quarantine. After the riots and castings-out of those first nights, a nervous hush has descended over the city. He imagines others, opening their own shutters, peering down and seeing his figure limping down the street. Wondering where he is going. What he is up to.
By now he knows the way to the Alaskan’s by heart. He sets out purposefully. His body is stiff and bruised and every step is a battle. It quickly becomes evident he will never make it as far as the Alaskan’s. He sits on the nearest step, a looted pharmacy, kicking away the broken glass from the windows.
Directly across the street, the teenager squats on the steps that lead down to the opium den. Taeo looks at her. He begins to laugh. The laugh is infinitely painful; his one-eyed vision dances and for a moment he thinks he is going to black out. He wonders if Vikram broke some of his ribs.
The teenager’s chin lifts a fraction as Taeo shuffles across the road. Her eyes lock onto Taeo’s battered face.
‘You got money today, señor? You want croc? O? She’s got new stuff in …’
The teenager’s eyes are strangely imploring.
‘How can she,’ says Taeo, ‘when nothing’s getting in or out the city?’
‘You think that, señor, you think that; but there’s ways, there’s holes in the circle, there’s places to slip in and out, there’s routes, señor …’
Places to slip in and out. Places for Vikram to make his escape, alone, leaving Taeo to rot.
Suddenly he is overwhelmed with rage. Whatever his intentions were at the start, he tried to help Vikram. He could have killed him right there in the cave in Fuego and rid the Republic of a problem. He could have. But he didn’t. He chose to help the other man. He kept him safe. They had a pact. And this is how Vikram thanks him: by running off on his own, abandoning Taeo in a city full of disease.
He remembers Vikram’s words.
I hope you die of redfleur.
‘Señor, you want something? You should say so now, don’t wait around like that, don’t draw attention here—’
‘Yes. Yes, I do. Take me in.’
The transaction is brief. He has no desire to linger in the opium den. The look in the proprietress’s eyes is almost enough to deter him, but the scent of the opium is stronger.
Why fight it? Why pretend to be something you are not? Give in. You are an addict. This is all you have left.
He hands over the remainder of his currency. She gives him the croc. He can’t afford the opium.
He unwraps the stuff with trembling hands and looks at it.
Don’t be fucking stupid, this is the last thing you need.
He wraps it back up. Puts it down and goes into the other room and returns and takes it out again. The teenager lied. This isn’t the good stuff – the pure stuff straight from the pods – but it’s packed full of opiates and that’s all that matters. He chucked out the pipe when they made the pact; how the hell is he going to do this? Something metal, a spoon. Just inhale it straight. But he hasn’t got any fire. Fuck! He runs out, bangs on Madame Bijou’s door. A girl lends him a lighter, asks no questions, but stares openly at his face and raises her eyebrows in a knowing arc. Her knowledge shames him but he doesn’t care. All he wants now is the hit. He wants to be dead to the world.
Back to the apartment. His fingers tremble in anticipation as he preps the spoon and sets light to the stuff. Tiny translucent bubbles form out of the resin, swelling and imploding like primeval soup. He has missed this. The little rituals of the preparation. The magic of it.
He sits back and inhales. It feels like coming home.
The warmth that suffuses him is such a beautiful thing that he could almost cry, but he doesn’t; he doesn’t need to now.
He hunches over the spoon, takes another inhalation. He turns on the radio and finds a station playing gentle, ebbing music. Funny that he used to hate it so. Now he feels odd if it isn’t there.
For a long time he is floating on the surface of the ocean. The waves rock him gently. He realizes he has reached the sea city. Pyramids rise before him, vast silver constructions that could only be the work of gods or aliens. Wet seaweed drips from their sloping walls, and clinging on are strange people who are not people. Taeo observes them curiously. Their throats flap; they have gills. Taeo touches his neck. He has them too. When he looks at his hands, they are webbed. Slender fins rise from the Osirian spines. They look at him with round fish eyes. He should be afraid but he is not, because he knows this is Vikram’s story, he has fallen into Vikram’s story, and he will fall back out of it, soon enough.
The pain returns with sudden, shocking speed. He is sweating and shaking. He needs a second hit. But he will do it properly, with etiquette, the way he was shown in Fuego. Respect the O, they told him. He does respect it, or he respects whatever shit this is. Once again he goes through the ritual lighting. Inhale. Lie back. Inhale. The room shifts around him. His visions grow stranger. Now he sees that his hands are covered in scales. Something is walking up his leg, a weird hybrid animal, insectoid with fins. Its knobbly legs march steadily on, proceeding up his shin, onto his knee. It has hard black eyes. Pincers and fins. There are others, rows of them crawling up the walls of the room. How strange they are. How strange the world and the people in it, what strange things they do. It is strange that Vikram did not take any money. He only thinks it now. It is strange to run away with no money and no belongings. Perhaps Vikram did not run away after all. Perhaps he is coming back. He will have found a way out. They can go to Antarctica after all.
The finned insects are on the ceiling now. Their many eyes stare down at him, but he is not afraid. It’s only a hallucination. There are things far worse to fear.
A voice, singing. He knows it is coming from the radio but it seems to come from someplace else entirely, an ethereal place, a fantastical place, like the very centre of the ice or up in the clouds where the pilot flies. Another song, the same voice again. All the insects on the ceiling are singing, their tiny mouths opening and closing in unison. They are the voice.
He inhales and falls back on the bed, his muscles lax, his body floating. This beautiful stuff. This beautiful stuff in this shitty country.
He remembers the holoma in his hand and squeezes it gently, activating the machine. He brings up the projection of Shri and watches for a few moments, then pauses her. She hovers over him, her lips slightly parted, as if she might bend closer for a kiss. He reaches his arms towards her.
The angelic voice stops abruptly but the insects’ mouths on the ceiling continue to move. They are talking gravely now. Their eyes are solemn. Taeo hears the words crisis and epidemic and the revelation comes to him that everyone in the city must be dead. He is the only one left. Dimly, he is aware that he should feel something – horror or grief – but the truth is he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because he is high and because he is high Shri is in the room with him. The radio burbles. It is Shri’s voice that is transmitting. The insects have it. They are playing: her heart to his heart on a never-ending loop.
36 ¦
THE ALASKAN IS talking and Mig wishes more than anything that she would shut up and never speak again. The sound of her voice grates on him; it feels as though every word is a thumb pushed into an open wound. He doesn’t want to hear. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t care about her agendas and schemes, he doesn’t care about her money. All he wants is to find Pilar, or what is left of her
.
He replays those moments over and over. Pilar’s body, whisked away. The soldiers in their hazard suits. The truck. The Osirian man from the Tarkie’s apartment.
‘Are you listening, Mig?’
‘Yes, señora.’
‘What did I say?’
‘You said—’ he stops. He has no idea what she just said. He keeps his eyes down. He can feel the laser beam of the Alaskan’s gaze upon him. You would have thought that the quarantine would slow her down, even frighten her – after all, he and Maria are the only help she has in the city, and Maria has not been seen since the outbreak – but the Alaskan seems to thrive upon the drama. She has at least ten radios tuned to different stations. She listens to them simultaneously, comparing the mounting figures of the epidemic, a few individual cases now stretching to tens and hundreds. Thousands will die by the time it is over. That is what the radio says. And something else: guerrilla forces are gathering on the outskirts of the city. Redfleur does not deter them. The army is nervous.
‘Go on,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Tell me.’
‘I wasn’t listening.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I wasn’t listening.’
He keeps his eyes down, waiting for the tirade. When it does not come, he dares to glance up. The Alaskan’s eyes are upon him. She looks very calm and very cold. The kind of cold so severe it burns you. Concentrate, he thinks. Keep the witch happy. With her contacts, she is his best chance of finding where Pilar was taken.
‘Did I ever tell you,’ asks the Alaskan, ‘about the time the guerrillas came to kidnap me?’
‘No.’ Mig racks his brains – did she tell him? For insurance he adds, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘They came here,’ says the Alaskan. ‘It was during the coup of oh-six, before the government took back power in oh-eight. They came to this room, where you and I are sitting right now. They broke the door down, waving their guns about. They knew about my legs, so they brought a sling. A sling, I say! They expected to carry me out all rolled up like a cigar.’
