Austral

by Paul McAuley

  Her father reached for her and she slapped him hard and burst into tears, and that was all I saw, because Sabrina shut the damn droid down.

  29

  So there I was, free and clear and all alone, riding in a cargo drone above the icy spine of the peninsula. I was fried by sleep lack, the compartment was freezing cold and too small to stretch out in, and the stupid gash in my leg had begun to bleed again, but it was only a minor wound, I was built for the cold, it wasn’t a problem, and I was too jacked to sleep. I made myself as comfortable as possible, curled up on thin padding, brooding on Alberto Toomy’s claim that he’d tried to help Mama and me back when we’d been exiled on Deception Island.

  After looking at it from every direction I couldn’t see how it wasn’t a lie. Mama had blamed the Toomys for our family’s misfortunes, and if any one of them had tried to give her charity she would have told me all about it, used her refusal as a lesson. Don’t give in to them, Austral. Remember who you are. So on. As for Alberto Toomy’s suggestion that I should have asked him for help when Mama died … Fuck that noise. I had been twelve years old back then, hurt and confused and lost. Even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have known how to reach out to anyone. Especially to people who had shown in the worst way that they couldn’t be trusted.

  The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. At Alberto Toomy. And at myself, for not realising exactly what kind of a slippery son-of-a-bitch he was, for not realising that people like him would know how to deflect every kind of accusation, pull jujitsu moves that put the blame on their accusers. Then, like a fire burning to ashes, my anger turned to self-pity. It was obvious, I thought bitterly, that Alberto Toomy hadn’t been in any way interested in my stupid little life. He hadn’t even known that I was working as a CO at the work camp. Or if he had, he hadn’t given me a moment’s thought. And then there was all the rest, dismissal of my rescue of Kamilah, accusations about how I’d treated her …

  I hoped that some of the shit I’d thrown at him would stick. And if it didn’t, I told myself, it wouldn’t matter. I was leaving all that behind. All the bad history. All the bitterness. I was going to start over, and you were my shot at redemption. I would give you the kind of life Mama and I had been hoping to make for ourselves after we escaped from Deception Island. That dream had skipped a generation, was all. Meanwhile, I had to let my anger and self-hate go. Leave it all behind, Austral. Watch the damn view and look to the future.

  I was already further south than I’d ever been before. The sun was coming up and the Bruce Plateau was unreeling below, a rumpled expanse of ice dotted with blue meltwater lakes, dark shadows of glacial valleys scooped into its western flank. A snowy mountain top drifted past. Slessor Peak, still half-buried in ice despite the great melting. Soon afterwards I crossed the Antarctic Circle and was flying above the Avery Plateau, and at last the drone made a wide circle, the camera feed flaring with dawn light, and began to descend towards Square Bay and my rendezvous with the people smugglers.

  It was the site of another old failed ecoengineering project. Once upon a time, kelp had been harvested from farms in the bay and nearby fjords and processed into hectares of tough thermally reflective material that was flown south to the mainland and spread across glaciers that flowed into the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet. More than half of that ice sheet had been lost by then, undermined by warming sea currents. Wrapping the glaciers had been part of a desperate attempt to minimise and manage the retreat of what was left. The project had been abandoned after much of the ice had been lost in a series of catastrophic collapses, but there were still kelp farms in Square Bay. Smart fabrics spun from their biomass were exported all over the world, and fish caught off the coast were flown to Esperanza and O’Higgins.

  The cargo drone skimmed above ridges of bare rock. I saw rugged islands scattered across blue sea off to the west, an industrial park, and the huge airfield which had serviced the old project. And then the drone was dropping towards a corner of the airfield, kissing the ground with delicate precision, the roar of its rotors winding down to silence.

  When I cracked the hatch a frigid blast of air washed over me. Minus twenty-five degrees Celsius, clean and heady as a shot of aquavit. Hectares of white concrete, glass and steel administration buildings on one side, hangars and several big airships in blue and white livery and ranks of cargo drones on the other. A distant view of slopes of black rock striped with snow. Everything pin-sharp in the new light of the new day, realer than real, heightened by my eager anticipation. Extracting myself from the cramped compartment, taking my first tentative footsteps in this clean cold fresh world, was like a rebirth.

  First thing I wanted to do was find a café or diner, celebrate my freedom with the biggest breakfast I could buy. I started to walk towards the distant glitter of the administration buildings and a vehicle cut away from one of the hangars, a boxy all-terrain tractor painted shocking orange, beetling towards me on two pairs of triangular tracks, big windows darkly tinted so I couldn’t see if there was anyone inside. I watched, uncertain and afraid, as it drew up in front of me, hoping it didn’t have anything to do with police or airport security. A moment of stillness, and then doors slid back and Keever Bishop and Mike Mike and two bravos swung out.

  I was too amazed to move. Keever was on me in three strides, slapping my face, left and right and left again, hard blows that blinded me with blood-red shock and knocked me to my knees.

  30

  The two bravos hauled me to my feet and pinned my arms while Mike Mike patted me down, finding the disposable fone and a little blunt-tipped folding knife I’d filched from the life raft’s emergency pack, nothing else – Alicia had refused to return the pistol and Levi’s wolf claw. Keever watched with an expression of wry amusement, immaculate in a white parka with a fur-trimmed hood. Mr Snow. Always in control. Always wearing some kind of mask. Stepping forward when Mike Mike was done with me, starting in about Kamilah.

  ‘She was shot, according to the police. Is that true? Did she die? Did you say a prayer over her body and give her a burial at sea? Have you run all the way here because you’re scared about what her daddy will do to you when he finds out? Well, you don’t have to worry about him any more. He claims to be an important man, an influential man, but you know what? He’s actually a hollow man. A man without principles. A shonky wuss who makes promises he can’t keep, who doesn’t have anything like the power and influence he likes to boast about. Oh, maybe he’s something in the city. But out here he’s nothing. Out here, the only person you should fear is me.’

  I’d learned long ago that you didn’t interrupt one of Keever’s monologues. When I was sure he’d finished, I said, ‘The girl is alive and well and out of your reach. Back with her father, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You let her go?’

  ‘I ransomed her.’

  ‘Really. And how much did you get?’

  ‘A meeting with the Honourable Deputy and the price of a ticket out of here.’

  ‘And we thought we were dealing with some kind of criminal mastermind,’ Keever told Mike Mike.

  ‘I guess she doesn’t know,’ Mike Mike said.

  ‘Of course she doesn’t know,’ Keever said.

  His malicious delight – that wasn’t a mask. That was all too real.

  ‘Poor Austral,’ he said. ‘You’d been planning to escape for quite some time. Working for me, grovelling for kickbacks, saving pennies in that offshore account you thought I didn’t know about. Dreaming about getting out, running all the way to New Zealand. But you didn’t know that I have a piece of the people-smuggling biz, did you? You didn’t know that I knew all along what you so badly wanted. That after you escaped at Charlotte Bay I knew you would be coming here. And here you are, and here I am. And I have to ask, do you think it was worth it?’

  I flinched when a departing cargo drone roared low overhead, but Keever’s gaze didn’t waver. Fixed on me. Feeding.

  ‘I saved Kamilah Toomy from kidnap,’ I
said. ‘That has to count for something.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. Snatching that silly little girl was only ever a sideshow to the main event.’

  ‘Still, you went to a lot of trouble, trying to get her back after I rescued her. I guess you were planning to use her to force her father to do something for you,’ I said. ‘Something he didn’t want to do. Something you really needed.’

  I know, I know. Provoking Keever was a dumb thing to do. But at that moment I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, thought that I deserved to know what had kicked off the mess I was in. And as much as I could read him, he seemed to be amused by my sass.

  ‘When you gave up his daughter for that piddling ransom,’ he said, ‘didn’t you think to ask the Honourable Deputy about his connection with me?’

  ‘I told him that I knew he was involved with you. He didn’t like that.’

  ‘I bet he didn’t. We had a mutually beneficial business relationship, but like his kind always do, he got too greedy. I paid him a handsome fee to stop that extradition order, and after he took the money he didn’t do a thing except make all kinds of bullshit excuses about why he couldn’t swing it. And then he had the barefaced audacity to try to squeeze more out of me, claiming he had worked out a new angle and this time he could definitely make the extradition go away. Thinking that I’d be so desperate I’d agree to any price. By then I’d made other plans, but I reckoned I could turn his little scam around. Have some fun with him, cause him some grief. So I said that I’d be happy to consider his offer, but he’d have to come meet me, he could use the ribbon-cutting ceremony as cover. And when the arrogant son-of-a-bitch told me he was bringing his precious darling daughter along, she would provide extra distraction for his visit, I knew I could use her to show him who was in charge. And that, my big girl, is what you fucked up.’

  ‘What did you want him to do?’

  ‘Do? I didn’t want him to do anything. I was going to punish him for trying to fuck with me. Nobody does that and gets away with it. As you’re about to find out.’

  I thought of moray eels and cold pierced me through and through. Keever saw it, smiled his narrow knife-blade smile.

  ‘You could have come with me when I got out,’ he said. ‘We would have had such fine fun together. But no, you had to go and fuck it up. I always wondered if you were good at anything. Now I know. Fucking things up – that’s your special talent.’

  Another cargo drone roared overhead, its shadow flickering over the orange tractor, over our little tableau. I didn’t look up this time. I was too angry to be distracted.

  ‘You never wanted me to come with you,’ I said. ‘You wanted me to confront Alberto Toomy at the ceremony. You wanted me to get into trouble so you wouldn’t have to bother with me any more. You wanted to use me as a diversion while your bravos snatched that poor girl.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ Keever said to Mike Mike, still smiling that damn smile of his. ‘Sounds like someone finally woke up.’

  ‘Woke up too late,’ Mike Mike said.

  ‘I definitely see things differently now,’ I told Keever. ‘I see what you really are. And I also see that I was a silly little fool to get involved with you. To think we had some kind of relationship. To think it made me special.’

  ‘The only kind of relationship we had was strictly business, and you know it,’ Keever said calmly. He might as well have been talking about the weather in some other country. ‘It provided me with a little amusement, and you were trying, in your clumsy way, to hustle me. You didn’t manage it of course, you had to squeeze the money for your ticket out of the deadbeat Honourable Deputy instead, but as far as you were concerned that’s all our little thing was about. So don’t you try to make out you’re any better than me. I mean, you didn’t really rescue the girl, did you? You kidnapped her. You ransomed her. You used her, just like I was planning to use her.’

  That stung, as the truth always does when you hear it from someone you have good reason to despise.

  ‘What you wanted to do to her was cold, even for you,’ I said. ‘I’ve done some questionable things. Some bad things. But at least I never wanted to kidnap and kill someone’s daughter because they tried to fuck me over. I mean, people have been calling me a monster all my life, because of what I am, how I was edited. But you’re the real monster. Something heartless and cruel and calculating walking around in a human skin suit.’

  ‘Haul her up,’ Keever told the two bravos on either side of me. ‘Hold her straight.’

  They pulled me up by my arms, crucifixion style. The knife cut in my shoulder stabbed me afresh.

  ‘Let me give you an idea of what you’ve got coming to you,’ Keever said, and hit me in the gut with the iron heel of his palm. A hard jolting blow under my ribs, knocking all the wind from me. I was dry-heaving but air wouldn’t come. If those two bravos hadn’t been holding me up I would have fallen to my knees.

  Keever studied me as I gasped and choked. I could barely see him because my eyes were full of freezing tears. When at last I got my breath back, I said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Done what?’

  All innocence now. Framed by the fur hood of his parka, his face was as blank as a skim of snow over a cold blue empty chasm.

  ‘Shouldn’t have hit me.’ I coughed half a litre of snot and spit down the front of my windproof. Everything was haloed with rings of light. ‘Not there. Not in the belly.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, it was the solar plexus. And didn’t I have good reason?’ Keever said, appealing to Mike Mike and the pair of bravos. ‘Haven’t I been grievously provoked?’

  I told him why not. I told him about you.

  He didn’t believe me at first. He said to Mike Mike, ‘Can you believe this?’ He said to me, ‘That’s a new low, even for you. Did you think I’d forgotten about the implant I bought you?’

  ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘You can’t lie your way out of this.’

  ‘Get me a diagnostic stick. I’ll spit on it and then we’ll see who’s lying.’

  ‘Maybe we should get going, boss,’ Mike Mike said. ‘Find somewhere safe and quiet where we can sort this out.’

  ‘Don’t I pay the fuckers who run this place to look the other way?’ Keever said, and studied me for a moment. After that quick moment of anger he was Mr Snow again, coolly calculating angles, saying, ‘My big girl. If this is true, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘I suppose you were afraid I’d throw a wobbly.’

  He thought that being afraid of him was a compliment.

  ‘Who do you think it will look like?’ he said. ‘You or me?’

  I knew then he wasn’t going to kill me. Not straight away. Not until he was certain that I was pregnant. Not until after you were born. It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. I was already regretting telling him about you, didn’t like to think about how it would be, growing huge with you in Keever’s tender care. What he would do when you were born. To me. To you.

  Maybe he saw something of that in my face, because his smile deepened. ‘I was beginning to wonder if it was worth it, waiting to see if you’d manage it to make it here. Turns out I was right to hang on. Bring her along, boys. Time we were off.’

  They stuffed me on the bench seat in the back of the tractor, the two bravos either side of me, Keever and Mike Mike sitting up front. As the tractor drew a wide arc away from the drone and headed out across the runway Keever told me that we would be catching a ride on a ship the next day, first to Hong Kong, and then to South Africa.

  ‘Do you reckon South Africa will be too hot for a hairy old whelephant like you?’ he said, and something roared low overhead and a shipping container slammed down a dozen metres to the left of the tractor. A tremendous noise, fragments of concrete spraying out of an expanding dust cloud, something smacking into the windscreen. The glass sagged in a shattered web and Mike Mike grabbed the yoke and pulled a hard r
ight and we shot through the rolling dust and the container was behind us.

  Keever peered through the smashed windscreen, looking up at the sky, telling Mike Mike he better get a wriggle on, the fucking thing was circling back. The tractor accelerated and swerved left, Keever turned in his seat and told me that if this was anything to do with me I was fucking dead, and another container dropped out of the sky and hit the concrete right in front of us.

  We crashed into it a bare second later. The impact threw me forward and I shoulder-slammed Keever and broke his neck. Later, the prison authorities inserted a bionic spine into his brain so that he could control his wheelchair with his thoughts. When they don’t switch it off and leave him helpless after he kicks off about something, that is, which apparently is a lot of the time.

  Silence inside the wreck of the tractor. Sunlight slicing through settling dust. Crash bags deflating. The doors were buckled and the windows had blown out. Keever slumped in his seat, chin on his shoulder. Mike Mike was bleeding from ears and nose, gargling blood. The bravo on my left was stone cold unconscious, but the one on my right stirred when I started to scramble over him, caught at my legs, at one of my feet. I kicked out but he wouldn’t let go, and when I tumbled through the window I left a boot behind.

  I stood up and staggered a few steps. My shoulder was broken and my left arm hung uselessly. The tractor was crumpled against the container’s black cylinder, which leaned at an angle in shattered concrete like an elf stone that had erupted from the ground. It had split along its seams and rainbow banners of spilled fabric flapped and flared in the cold wind.

  As I limped past it, Mike Mike fell out of the tractor and picked himself up and started after me. Both of us hobbling along in slow motion, bleeding from various injuries. I ducked away when Mike Mike made a grab at me, and when he tried again I punched him square on his silly goatee and his legs buckled and he sat down.