The Swimmers

by Marian Womack

  ‘What is that? What did you say?’

  The old woman ignored her.

  ‘There is only death in that fortress, child! Don’t be mistaken for a minute.’

  The wolves wailed in the distance. Florica shivered. The old woman felt sorry for her.

  ‘Wait, don’t go so fast, let me tell you something that may help you. I ignore why you can see the fortress, for not everyone can. It is there, but at the same time it is not. It is really above us, among the stars. I am afraid that the door is not through the mountain; that is an illusion. It is a round, white fortress, with only one door. And you can only get there if you can fly.’

  Florica thought for a moment. Even if the old woman was telling the truth, she had an advantage: the three magikal stones. She replied:

  ‘Many thanks for your help, old woman. You have shared your knowledge with me, and I want to reward you.’

  After saying this, she placed the first stone on the floor, took a step back, and suddenly there was bread and cheese and fruit and wine. She was going to offer this bounty to the old woman, who stood speechless before the miracle. But, thinking it better, she gave the old lady the stone.

  ‘You will not be hungry again, or ever feel the need to come to this place to collect bones to sell.’

  The old lady didn’t reply; her cynical eloquence seemed to have disappeared, but Florica could see her eyes shining, and a thick tear rolling down her cheek.

  All of a sudden, the old lady changed into the lady in white. ‘Florica, you have proven to be hard-working, brave and generous, and I want to reward you.’

  It got darker, and a cold breeze started floating in the air.

  ‘Think of your sisters,’ the lady in white instructed.

  Florica thought very strongly of Vertina. A rift appeared in front of her, a tear in mid-air. She advanced a foot towards it, and crossed towards the unknown. Her surprise was genuine when she found herself on the other side, floating over the ground, travelling up and up and up. So high she travelled that she left the planet, and still she had not reached the round white fortress. And she found herself swimming among the stars, and still she had not reached the white fortress.

  Eventually she arrived, and her floating took her directly to a window, behind which was her sister. Not knowing what to do, floating in the sky on the other side of the window, Florica looked in her velvet bag for the third stone. And then something else happened. A blue fluorescent light erupted everywhere, blinding her. Florica passed out. When she woke, she was lying by the mountain slope, but the mountain was now covered in a deep velvety substance. It was cool to the touch, fresh and covered in drops of water. The colours were impossible, a colour she had never seen before. Next to her were her two sisters, both asleep.

  ‘Vertina! Analetta!’

  Beside them there was the lady in white.

  ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘Leave us in peace!’ Vertina and Analetta cried out.

  ‘No,’ Florica explained to her sisters. ‘She has helped me find you.’ She knew of the immense power of the lady in white and realised that they would only stay together if it was her will.

  The lady in white continued, ‘You must love your sisters very much. You certainly deserve some reward for your bravery and perseverance. However, the three of you still need some sort of punishment for not fulfilling your promise to your father on his deathbed.’ The three sisters held their breath, awaiting the worst. ‘I will take Analetta to the white-ringed fortress to live with me.’

  ‘No! Why?’

  ‘Because you all need to remember the meaning of the word “duty”; for living up in the fortress will be a sacrifice that only a few will need to make in order to save us all. Vertina will need to apply herself to her books, and, if she wants to stay down here, she needs to become a more productive member of society. And you, Florica. You, the youngest and most beloved of all daughters. You have shown that you are capable of enduring great suffering and sacrificing yourself for others. So be it, then. Put to good use everything you learnt in your time with me, all the knowledge about herbs and remedies, and help Vertina to achieve her goal.’

  And that was how the sisters were given their tasks, and how the three castes of the world came to be.

  ARLO

  21

  I could have told her about the bacteria, then and there. I should have. But I didn’t. Now, she was gone from my life. It had been discovered by accident: some thought it was a mutation that had occurred spontaneously, due to the fact that, in some large sections of the planet, plastic was its only available food source. In any case, Ideonella sakaiensis 202-F5 was a plastic-eating bacteria; unfortunately, it did not eat every single kind of plastic that our ecosystem had inherited as debris. It was clear that there was a possible future solution if we continued researching the micro-organism; it was also clear that the Settlement did not intend to do this at all. In fact, the project was bound tight with the highest level of secrecy, and nothing could pass down here. When I had come down from the ring, I had signed NDAs to this effect, as well as for many other things. At the time, I had not seen any reason not to do so. I was happy to comply with what was required of me. Now, even after so little time down on Gobarí, I wasn’t so sure anymore that I didn’t want this to be revealed to the world: I could not find any other reason for the secrecy than the Settlement’s insistence on keeping power over the surface. At least, I thought, she ought to know.

  But, how to reveal it? Who to tell apart from Pearl? I did not have a sample with me. And I doubted there would be sophisticated enough labs down here to help us understand if the Three Oceans could be cleaned for future generations as a result of this research. No, down here there were no labs, not really. The surface was a place for the repositories, the curators, the objects, all of which kept their inhabitants entertained, so they did not have to think too deeply. The truth was, the ringers were not interested in Earth anymore; nothing called them here, they were not going to come back down to this mess. And, if they did not need the bacteria themselves, they would do nothing about its existence simply to help those below. And I was part of that. How could I live with myself?

  * * *

  So we said our goodbyes. I knew she would go back to the farm, for Eli. It was a sad goodbye; somehow I knew that eventually she would find a way of going up to the ring, without me.

  I found a small hut to rent in one of the settlements that I had used for my research. Days passed; my solitude was unbearable. I felt as if all the trees and all the leaves and all the flowers were laughing at me. I felt so lonely, I even started missing my family’s bio-engineered bird, a hybrid of pre-Winter bird types, which always kept me company whenever I escaped to read a book in the solitude of the deeper rooms of our little compound.

  Eventually, I couldn’t endure it any longer. I packed a few belongings and started walking. Once I was on the road, I turned in the direction of Benguele, almost without thinking what I was doing or where I was going. I had lost Pearl for good this time, that was clear. But, equally, I felt that we were not done yet, that our destinies were still interlocked, our story had not yet run its final course. I reached Benguele, but of course I didn’t see her: on arrival, my allocated quarters were placed in the barns, together with the rest of the volunteer land workers that had come to join Eli’s revolution.

  I was quickly allocated a set of daily tasks. There was some beauty in the simplicity of this life: hard work, rest, and eating all together around a fire at night. Other workers seemed bemused to find a starborn among them, but I never felt excluded, or in danger. Sometimes I would be surprised to see a woman looking in my direction; this happened more and more regularly, but I kept my distance. One day, we were picking mushrooms, and I teamed up with Vania and Dika, brother and sister. When we were done, everyone collected the different tools and took them back to the shed, and I caught Dika advancing in my direction, waiting, slowing down.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. />
  ‘Hey,’ I answered.

  ‘Look!’ and she opened her palm, slowly like a flower, and showed me some mushrooms she had kept. ‘Do you want to come and have some?’

  The way she was looking at me, I wondered if hallucinating mushrooms was all that she had in mind. I followed her behind the shed, and she put the little mushrooms onto her stuck-out tongue, and put her arms around me. I kissed her, deeply, partaking of her offering.

  * * *

  I woke up, as if from a dream without images, or as if someone had cut out the intervening hours between our kiss and this. I was in the middle of a crowd, the sky above me a furious blue. People were chanting my name, ‘Arlo! Arlo!’ as well as the names of others. The yellow sandy paths had disappeared, covered by leaves and flowers, making strange patterns, the constellations now formed on the Earth as well as above. Other ornaments were there, woven with sedge.

  It was that strange time of the year, when the colder months give way to a bursting spring. And the spring would make way for summer, and temperatures would soar, higher and higher, or so I had been told. Heat, heat, and more heat. The oleander flowers would die. For nature was meant to have its cycles, even now, even after all we have done, and all that had happened. I had been warned that the smell of carcasses would conquer all during those hellish months, those months when the cork sheets would pull easily from the trees. Their harvest would have begun then, exactly like every year. But not anymore… The cork was used to furnish the insides of the vessels, and no one was building vessels anymore.

  There would be no ascension, no Jump.

  Sitting at the table, we were enjoying an elaborate feast. What am I doing here? I was thinking. It became clear that Pearl was not in Benguele; or, if she had come here, she had not stayed long. She wasn’t at the feast, a feast partly in my honour. Those who marched were being celebrated like heroes. And that mimicking of the other ceremony, the Jump ceremony, was playing with my head, I know. Perhaps it was the feast, or the mushrooms I had eaten. We were wearing imitations of ceremonial robes, the women in the long white skirts and those crude woven garlands on their heads. Where were we sent? What was the mission? What had I done, or agreed to do? It hardly mattered. Recovering this or that or the other, something needed for the community, a missing piece in their never-ending puzzle of beating the end times.

  I felt sick, made sick by the wine, by the meal, by the mushrooms that I had taken. It would be time soon. The procession approached wearing their animal masks, like distorted creatures from Hell.

  When I was a boy, up in the ring, far away from here, so far away, the fashion for nostalgia reached new heights one season, and the cloned pets of extinct animals became the craze. Cats and dogs and even rats. Not our versions, of course, bio-engineered to be as clean as little birds.

  Little bird, little bird. Where have you gone, my little blue bird?

  Our own evolved species, the orange hare of Pearl’s childhood nightmares, those she had told me about on our afternoons by the pond, were very different. She was right to fear animals, for they were unpredictable, and all of them raged with hatred for us. The hares she feared so much were huge creatures, covered with yellow stripes as a kind of war paint; thankfully, they only lasted one summer, and disappeared as silently as they emerged. Or those wild horses that ate human beings; and all the birds, of course, huge and hairy and beautiful, that they now called abominations, unnatural; as if we had not done that to nature ourselves, as if she had chosen an uncanny path to spite us. All those species we did not care about up there, for we would not have to suffer them. We were clean of them, our pristine-tamed sections of generation-old exemplars, well-tended, well-kept.

  The same happened with the gardens of my childhood. It is absurd to say that they felt unreal, for they were unreal, of course. There were also, for a long time, the most real thing to me. Imitations of century-old gardens, they were, they are, with their geometrical designs and their lack of excess. Everything exactly as it ought to be, not in reality, but in somebody’s dream. Those images were the picture postcards of my childhood, and still I knew that the nightmare down here was the reality.

  The feast had finished, and I had yet to understand why I was being honoured with the others. The wine and the heat forced me not to mind in the slightest. Whatever was happening, I would submit to it, I would accept it.

  It was that hour I liked so much, when the light looked very alien to me, now bluish, now green; turquoise, someone had called it. Neither the colour of the ocean in the olden days, nor the colour the sky should ever be; but rather, I had understood, the colour of the atmosphere as it only looked in dreams. At the back of the field, the macheteros were still working hard, preventing the green from reaching the edge. With every thrust, a fresh smell of recently cut grass reached me, such a pure smell, exactly as real grass ought to smell. Above the house, the peaks of the mountain range shone indigo, cut against the now purple sky. I knew that I would say yes to anything, to everything.

  I volunteered. Once I understood what the new mission consisted of. There were many reasons for doing this, or at least that was what I kept telling myself. There were many reasons, but only one that mattered: Pearl. I wanted to explain, I needed to explain. But I couldn’t, of course, for she wasn’t there.

  Although it wasn’t exactly true that I hadn’t seen her: that day of celebration passed as if in a dream. The procession, the paths decorated with green, the feast. And, to top it all, the woman on the newly built wooden stage.

  She looked as if she was made of fire itself, as if she breathed fire, a bluish-reddish fire. And, out of this fire, a symphony of colours and sounds that weaved her tale.

  Through her storytelling, I saw the Kingfisher resolving itself into a Fox; and I understood this to be a bad omen for the days to come.

  I saw a group of warriors fighting a round metal monster; and I saw inside my mind’s eye all the injustices ever committed against beanies, techies.

  I saw an old building, with an egg-shaped dome, floating slowly into the stratosphere; I knew deep inside that the warriors were going to a certain death.

  I saw that they all knew, had known; or perhaps they didn’t but she was telling them now, then, at that moment: for I saw the ring circling over us, and sending the blue light into the sky, and the plants moving and covering all, farm, fields, machinery; men, women, children. Another settlement annihilated from above.

  It was only when I saw that I knew her, as the crowd dissolved, but Pearl looked at me.

  Alira, Alira, and how will we know if you are the one?

  There was an instant of recognition, perhaps; no, she was looking over me, at something behind me. I turned around, following her eyes, and saw nothing there.

  Still I am not sure if I lived through this scene, or if it was a dream after all.

  I could not sleep for days. I was scared; of her being right, the baby farms and all of that. I had never seen it happening, but, somehow, I knew it to be possible.

  Do you want to know the truth, little bird? Can you handle the truth?

  Up there, we had always known: those blue skies after each surge of energy sent from above, trying to ‘manage’ what cannot be managed, to recover what had been lost. Perhaps, I thought, when I come back, I will tell her. And perhaps, only perhaps, she will forgive me. It was a nice lie to tell myself.

  22

  Try as I might, I could not do it, I could not leave without speaking to Pearl. I appeared at Savina’s house unannounced, but she did not seem surprised to see me. There was a mocking smile on her face, dancing there. She hardly acknowledged my presence, and continued chopping her herbs, an acute acidic smell filling my nostrils with each one of her movements.

  ‘She is not here, jeré,’ she said. So she knew what I was doing at her door, of course. She said nothing for a few seconds; I said nothing for a few seconds. I felt lost, exhausted, out of my depth. But I did not want to give her the satisfaction of realising.
/>   Eventually, she took pity on me.

  ‘Do you know the coast well? I bet you look at us all the time from up there.’

  She was walking in my direction while she said this, slowly, moving like a snake. Of course, that part of the coast was engraved inside my brain, a circle curving upwards, and the blue sea pushing into it from one end, and the hellish green enclosing it from the other. The coast was a white curve there, minimal. I had not told anyone about this, but up there we all knew: that coast was going to vanish one day.

  ‘I think I do.’

  She smiled again. Her sly smile scared me.

  ‘There is a place up north, following the coast,’ she said.

  ‘North?’

  ‘It is between here and Old Town. There is a spot her family was fond of when Pearl was little. An alcove of rocks, a little beach like a half-moon, from which you can see the vessels sitting quietly in the distance.’

  ‘Is she there?’

  ‘She is there.’

  She said nothing else, and went back to her cutting and dicing and chopping. I thanked her and took my leave.

  It was called Kon-il. Once back in the house, I entered the coordinates in my HoveLight300, and saw that it was no more than forty minutes’ flight. If Pearl had gone by foot, it had probably taken her a morning to get there. I climbed into the machine, pressed the automatic, and let myself be taken.

  The sky was a strange violet colour, unusual. Horribly, I understood what was happening, although I wish I didn’t: up there, in the ring, someone had pushed a button. I remembered my childhood days, when I first asked about the strange lights and what they meant.