by E. J. Swift
“How did Adelaide get taken hostage?”
“I have no idea. It appears the little fool was in the west.”
“In the west?” He was temporarily stupefied. He had assumed, hazily, some sort of covert raid. What did Adelaide think she was doing in the west? He thought of the last time he had seen her, the reddened eyes, the bald stranger’s words: She’s under house arrest. Adelaide had run away then. From one imprisonment directly into the arms of another. Vikram’s lip curled. It was absolutely typical.
Linus looked away. “I was also… surprised, as you can imagine. It’s not like Adelaide to go slumming it.”
Vikram felt an intense wave of dislike for the man.
“Did you ever show her that letter?”
“The letter has no bearing on the matter,” Linus said testily.
“It might if it made her go off on some insane mission.”
“She hasn’t seen the letter. And why she is in the west is no longer relevant. The fact is, she’s there, she’s been caught, and she’s a bargaining chip. We need her back. The press are all over this.”
Linus had the expression of a man who needed something, needed it badly, but did not want to admit it.
“So what do I get for negotiating for you?”
“You’re out of prison, aren’t you?”
“For good?”
“You’ll get a full pardon and amnesty in the City if you cooperate fully with us.”
“Us?”
“Myself and my father.”
There had to be more to it.
“By amnesty, do you mean Citizenship?”
“Citizenship, amnesty, yes.” Linus’s lips compressed.
“They’re not the same thing.”
“Fine. Citizenship. As long as you cooperate.”
“And by as long as you mean…”
“You understand what I mean, Vikram.”
Linus sat back in the chair and folded his arms. Vikram understood the message, which Linus was so reluctant to spell out. Freedom he had got. That was the bait. Release, and medical care. It put him in debt, too. The drip, the expensive chemicals, the nurse’s smile-all paid for by the Rechnovs. Citizenship he would get, but at a further cost; the cost of being in someone else’s pocket.
“What do you want me to do?”
“We’ve been given a location. You’re to go there alone. When you get there, one of their people will take you to Adelaide.”
“Who am I dealing with? Is it the NWO?”
“No, we believe this is a new network. They’re calling themselves Surface. The leader, or leaders, refuse to give any names, but the ringleader is referred to as the Coordinator. So far, that is all we have managed to ascertain.”
“You’re making deals with people and you don’t even know who they are.”
“It’s a trait with the west,” Linus said smoothly. “You seem to prefer anonymity-a mistake, but there you have it. You’ll be tracked, of course.”
“Tracked?”
“You don’t think I’m actually sending you to negotiate, do you? You’re a bargaining chip yourself. We already tried to arrange a prisoner exchange, but the rebels have refused point blank. They’ve refused all deals. Besides, you might defect.”
“So what you’re really asking is that I betray my own people.”
Linus ignored this.
“Once you’re in, proceed as the rebels expect. They’ll think you’re on their side. Keep your ears open for information. I imagine it will be a simple procedure-they’ll give you a way of contacting us.”
“If they think I’m on their side, why would they use me to negotiate at all?” Vikram interrupted.
“Because they have to negotiate,” Linus said sharply. “I’m not going to play games with you, Vikram. You know as well as I do that the Home Guard could go into the west and crush these riots, and the City would turn a blind eye-more, Citizens would condone such a move. But this time, we can’t, because the rebels have Adelaide and they’ve informed the press. Besides, the Council is anxious to avoid excessive bloodshed. So yes, I think the rebels will be aiming to negotiate, and you, as an airlift, are the obvious choice.”
The word airlift sounded like a vulgarity on Linus’s lips. Vikram did not reply. He noticed a red stain blossoming through the drip gauze.
Linus continued. “You’ll have to make sure that it’s you who brings Adelaide out.”
“Whilst you’re tracking me,” Vikram said dully. He glanced up at the drip. The plastic crinkled inwards as the fluid ran dry. The nurse would be in to replace it soon.
“Precisely. Once you and Adelaide are out, you can leave the rest to the Guard.”
“Skadi. ”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He smoothed the gauze, trying to stem the blood. “I get it.”
“You’re in agreement, then?”
Vikram paused.
“What about the aid schemes?”
Linus shrugged. “They could be reinstated. Maybe next year. If the rescue operation goes successfully.”
“And if I don’t comply…”
“I only have jurisdiction to remove your sentence under the conditions that you are aiding the Osiris Council.”
It was as he had expected; as he had known, from the start of the conversation. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Not really, Vikram. No. I’m sorry.”
“When do I leave?”
Linus sat forward. Brisk and matter-of-fact now. “I’m told you need twenty-four hours before you will be fit to travel. A meeting place is being arranged with the rebels for early tomorrow evening. Your boat is already here. It will contain a decoy tracker. You can tell the rebels about that one. Someone is coming to fit you with a secondary device.”
“I want some things from my apartment. My outdoor clothes.”
“We can bring anything you need here.”
“I want to go myself.”
“Fine. You’ll have to leave earlier.”
Linus straightened his necktie. It had a subtle pattern, almost like wings. Something stirred in Vikram’s memory; slowly, he dredged it out. Adelaide. The jacuzzi. The last time he had seen Linus. A phrase that had been spoken by both siblings.
“What’s Whitefly?” Vikram asked.
“Whitefly?” Linus’s polite smile hovered, but instinct told Vikram that he had hit a nerve. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend it doesn’t mean something. You and Adelaide both mentioned Whitefly-”
“Adelaide-” Linus spoke too quickly, broke off just as fast. Adelaide isn’t supposed to know, Vikram thought. He watched Linus gather his composure. “You’re right, it does mean something. Something I wish I’d never been told, frankly. My advice, Vikram-and as you know, I don’t offer my advice arbitrarily-best forget you ever heard the word. You can consider that part of the terms of our agreement.”
Vikram looked at him squarely.
“One other thing, Linus, before you go. Tell me, how does a man so interested in promoting equality end up sending in guns on innocent people? Or was it all a big sham from the start, helping me?”
A shadow crossed Linus’s face. Vikram could not tell if it was anger, shame or simple contempt. He did not expect an answer from the other man, but there was some small satisfaction gained from posing the question.
“You once asked me something very similar, the first time we met,” Linus said at last. “I don’t suppose you remember now. Why would you? You’re not a politician, Vikram. And you’re not a Rechnov either. Take comfort in the fact that you have no knowledge of either.” He checked his watch. “I have to go. I won’t see you until your return. Good luck.” Linus stood, brushing down his suit.
“Any messages?”
“I’m sorry?”
“For your sister.”
For the first time, Linus hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll see her soon enough.”
The nurse prepared a bag of medication. “Ta
ke one of these every few hours,” she instructed, holding up a small plastic bottle. “They’ll keep your energy levels up.”
“Thanks.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, shaved and dressed for outdoors. His face felt light. The back of his neck tingled where they had placed the invisible tracker. He did not tell the nurse that taking medication would probably be the last of his concerns.
“If you feel very weak or faint, give yourself a shot of adrenalin. I’ve given you antibiotics too. All the dosages are on the bottles. Read them properly. Your body is still fighting off the infection. Don’t overexert yourself.” She was speaking very fast. He had a sudden sense of the pace at which his life was about to run, and was bewildered by it.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll read them.”
He held out his hand for the bag. The nurse stared at it. Then she blurted, “I think it’s outrageous the way they’ve treated you. Stitched you up. The Rechnovs. After all you’ve done.”
It had not occurred to Vikram that he might meet with sympathy. He was touched. The nurse pushed the bag into his hand.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. He read her name tag. “Thanks, Yilla.”
“It’s not fair,” she said.
It was paradoxical, he thought, that the first person this side of the border whose empathy he had recognized outright might also be the last.
Yilla escorted him to the lift. At reception he paused for a moment, observing the order of the place. Doctors in white coats held Surfboards with details ready to be checked. Patients waited to be called. He tried to imagine the resources it would take to set up three surgeries like this in the west. It occurred to him for the first time that such order might really be unattainable; he’d been shouting at the Moon.
“Vikram Bai?”
It was one of Linus’s people. Not in uniform but with a face that said skadi to Vikram as clearly as text. Hoisting the backpack, he followed the man outside. It was late afternoon and the sun hung low in the sky.
The skad directed him to his boat. He showed Vikram where the decoy tracker was. He gave him a map with the location where he was to meet the rebels in three hours time. Vikram stuffed it into a pocket. The man said good luck, but did not sound as if he meant it, and left him.
The world in his absence had become colossal. Vikram hunkered down in the boat, feeling small and scared. His stomach surged with the movement of the waves.
Boats raced by. There were so many of them and the passengers’ eyes were sharp like birds. He did not remember outside being this loud. The noise made him dizzy. He clamped his palms over his ears and bent over, putting his head between his knees. The gleaming towers bore down on him.
When he looked up, the world had not shrunk, and he still had to find his way through the waterways. Home. First he had to go home. The notion confused him: should he go east, or west?
Get a grip, Vik. Switch on the ignition. He leaned forward and turned the key.
A part of his consciousness observed the journey dispassionately. He understood that this time, prison would be with him forever. It would haunt him in every glimpse of green, in every wind-bitten cough. It would linger in his fear of small places, and his confusion at the very large. The three week spell had marked him in a way he would never again be able to ignore.
Whatever happens now, I can’t go back.
I’d rather die.
He breathed deeply, watched the water. He was, as Linus Rechnov had informed him, on a tight schedule.
39 ADELAIDE
The storm raged overhead. Purple clouds lurched across the night sky, disgorging sheets of rain. Adelaide stood in an open doorway thirty-six floors above the surface looking at a nylon and fibreglass bridge sheened with water. A bolt of lightning lanced through the rain. She saw gaps yawn between the planks. Clinging to the ropes, halfway across, the figures of Pekko and Rikard tottered forward. The bridge blew back and forth. Adelaide dug her nails into the walls.
You’ve done this before.
They had crossed nine bridges tonight. Bridges made of anything and everything, obstacles lashed together, pitted with holes and rockpools, each less solid than the last.
You just have to take the first step. You can’t let them see you’re scared.
But she could not stop talking. The sounds made little sense, then barely any, then none at all.
“I can’t do it, can’t do it, not that not that not that…”
Behind her, Nils and Drake were growing impatient.
“There’s no other way,” shouted Nils.
“We could blindfold her,” Drake shouted back. “She might go over that way.”
“She’ll panic more if she can’t see.”
“She won’t if she trusts us.”
“She won’t trust either of us.”
“She will if she wants to live.”
The rain splattered the fibreglass boards, making them slippery as ice underfoot.
Don’t look down-don’t Too late. There was the sea, showing the whites of its eyes. Those waves would smash her body against concrete towers. The currents would suck her underwater and rip the air from her lungs.
The wind shrieked through the doorway. Nils was tying a blindfold around her eyes. She did not even try to stop him.
“Listen to me!” Drake’s voice brushed her ear. “Do exactly as I say. If you don’t move when I tell you, you’re going to fall. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Put your left foot forward.”
They stepped onto the bridge. Her foot slid and her heart leapt before the boot sole gripped. She clung to the ropes. The wind lacerated them. Like a baby, Drake nursed her every step of the way.
At the other end they took off her blindfold. She held out her hands automatically for them to retie her wrists. She looked at nobody and nobody said anything.
They took her through another wet, dripping, crumbling stairwell. Upstairs this time. She had overheard them saying that they might be followed by boat; this, it appeared, was the reason they were moving westwards via bridges. The bridges were never on the same level. They had been moving up and across and down and across in a never-ending game of squid and kelp. Each tower was less inhabitable than the last. None of the towers had electricity, and if anyone was living there she did not see them.
When they went into an empty room and stopped she sat on the spot, dead with exhaustion, too tired to look around her or even imagine trying to escape. The floor was wet, as it always was. Icy trickles dripped from the sodden fur of her hood and down her neck.
“Someone check her wrists,” Pekko said curtly. He disappeared. The other three seemed to relax a little, although Nils sat in front of Adelaide and told her to hold out her hands. Pekko had tied the ropes against her skin, so that they could not slip over the material of her gloves, and in spite of the cold she could feel where it rubbed. Nils’s fingers brushed against her wrists as he checked each of the knots.
“Vikram told me you’re a good man,” she muttered.
“And he told me you’re a stupid bitch,” said Nils, but amiably, she thought. “Which of us d’you figure he’s lying to?”
She felt her bonds loosen, then tighten again as he secured them differently. The ropes lay flatter against her skin, and she realized that they would chafe less like that.
“Did he really say that?”
“He did.” Nils paused. “It was a long time ago.”
Adelaide wondered whether he felt sorry for her, and found the prospect more frightening than simple contempt. Nils probably knew what Pekko was planning to do with her.
She gave him a low lashed look, and as he tightened the knots, let her fingers curl up to his wrists.
“That’s not going to work,” Nils said.
“What’s not?”
“Any of your tricks. Listen to me, and I’ll tell you why, and then you can stop trying. I have nothing personal against you. Thousands might, but I don’t. But that girl who was
with us before-Ilona-I happen to love her. She sells her body to make a living and in these parts that means one thing-she’s bonded to someone. Because we found you, and on condition that we keep you safe, her cunt of a pimp is going to let her go. So d’you see why you might as well give up now?”
Nils drew the knots taut and let her hands go.
“I guess Vikram was right,” she said.
“Vikram’s underwater because of you,” he said roughly. “The way I see it, you don’t have the right to speak his name.”
“I never meant for him to get hurt. I tried to get him out.”
“Makes no difference to me.”
“Where’s Ilona now?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Why are these towers such a dump, anyway?”
“Because the City screwed us,” said Nils. “Over and over again. You never kept a single promise you made in the last fifty years.”
“Are you going to bargain for me?” she asked.
Whatever Nils might have replied was lost in a fit of hoarse coughing. His eyes streamed, he gasped for breath. Adelaide peered at him more closely.
“You’re sick.”
“Fuck off.”
He went to sit with Drake and Rikard and the three of them conversed in low voices. Adelaide’s hearing had grown sharper, but she could not make out what they were saying above the shrill of the storm.
Her captors were coordinating with other groups, but whenever Pekko took a call on his scarab he talked in secret. She had caught muttered references to the greenhouse and the desalination plant. They let slip no other information. She knew only that an insurrection was under way, and that she had become a part of it. She was the pawn.
The journey seemed to have taken aeons, but it was still dark. She could only have been awake for a matter of hours.
She had regained consciousness in the bottom of a boat, lying on her side, a tarpaulin covering her body to the nose. Her wrists and ankles were tied. When she tried to move she found that they were roped together. Her temples throbbed.
The splash of waves was strange from her position below the waterline, broken with knocks. The clacks were rhythmical. She realized they came from oars.
Her captors talked over her. Their heads were swollen lollipops against the fading sky. It swayed above her, the colour of a turning bruise, purple bleeding into sludgy green. The clouds looked ready to burst.