Osiris

by E. J. Swift

  Vikram had made her a promise. He had done it with rites, made an incision in his own skin and sealed it with salt. As much as to himself, he owed it to Mikkeli to pursue every avenue.

  In the dirty bufferglass reflection he saw her nod approvingly. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re not going to let that bitch get the better of you, are you?”

  When the labouring work came to an end Vikram began his research. He went first to the recycling depot. The caretaker was old, with soft indoor skin and a frostbite scar where one ear was missing. He was mostly deaf, but insisted on taking Vikram on a tour of the depot. They looked into room after room full of City junk, the old man mumbling things that Vikram could not understand, pointing at the piles of unsorted plastic and broken parts that were waiting to be disassembled, melted down and returned to the Makers that had produced them.

  When they reached a room of discarded Neptunes, Vikram stopped. Some of the machines still worked. He pulled up story after story about the Rechnovs on the cracked screens. The old man peered curiously over his shoulder. He touched a creased fingertip to the fuzzy picture of Adelaide, stroked the line of her hair.

  “They call her the flame.”

  His voice was like crackling paper.

  “Yes. Yes I’m looking for stuff on her. Can you help me?”

  The caretaker grinned, showing blackened gums, and beckoned. Vikram followed his shuffling progress to a room where discarded paper newspapers and pamphlets, which had been a fad for a few years in the City and were still used in the west, were piled high in precarious stacks. The caretaker let him take what he wanted.

  Back at 614-West, he holed up in his room. The papers were thin and had curled with the damp air. Some were full of holes where small creatures had chewed through. He ran a finger down columns of print, marvelling as always that something so flimsy could come from something as solid and compact as rock.

  At first Vikram tried to organize the information, making notes in the margins of articles, scribbling ideas on a patch of the wall. The krill loved Adelaide: she was a tabloid goldmine. Vikram couldn’t say exactly what he was looking for, but he wanted to extract some nugget of truth from the speculation. The cuttings grew too many; soon they made an overflowing pile on the floor.

  He wanted to dismiss her. She had everything. She was clever though; she had all but renounced her family without losing any of her inherited privileges. Then she had established her reign as undisputed leader of the Haze. The parties grew bigger and wilder and still the city forgave her. The media chronicled her exploits in tones of indulgence, the Daily Flotsam with a more malicious glee. She never gave interviews.

  He found a ten-page feature on the Rechnov family. Here they were lined up in a formal portrait: the Architect and his wife, now deceased, Feodor and Viviana Rechnov, the four children. The same proud, haughty faces, an extended version of the representation at Eirik’s execution. Vikram thought this quite naturally, and realized with a shock that he was able to consider the execution almost abstractly. It still enraged him, and the guilt remained, but Eirik’s death had become part of a sum; immersed into a greater mission.

  In the older pictures, Adelaide was always beside her brother, identical with their oversized shades and their smiles full of open confidence. Here they were at some party or other. Getting out of a shuttle pod, late at night and drunk. Axel in a hang-glider. Adelaide jet-skiing. The pair of them on the roof of the Eye Tower, preparing to abseil past the Council Chambers. Vikram thought of the single photograph in Adelaide’s bedroom.

  Something very odd had happened to Axel. Vikram had never paid much attention: these people were fairy tales to him. Now he examined the pictures with renewed interest. In one photo, Axel’s eyes were averted from the lens while his sister stared directly, accusingly ahead. Was there something protective in the way she stepped forward before Axel, her fingers at his elbow as though she’d just let go his arm?

  Vikram tossed the photo aside. He was forgetting his original mission: to find Adelaide’s weaknesses and work out how to use them. He settled down with yet another article and began to read.

  Hours later, the window-wall had drained of light but he had gathered several pieces of information that he could assume were factual. His eyes strained. Lost in thought, he had barely noticed the onset of dusk. He took a pinch of salt from his tin and threw it at the window.

  What to do? By all accounts, Adelaide Mystik was particular in her habits. She opened her flat once a year for the Rose Night. Other than that, the Red Rooms were closed off to visitors. As an honorary member of the Gardeners’ Guild and a sporadic landscape designer, Adelaide was occasionally seen on botanical sites. For lunch, she frequented four or five select restaurants, and she dined late at night from an equally exclusive list. She was glimpsed in the famous bars and nightclubs of the Strobe. She took a lot of milaine and she drank.

  Crucially, Adelaide was inaccessible without the aid of credit. Vikram didn’t have credit, so he was going to have to tackle her at home. There was one detail that had caught his attention. It was in a magazine interview with one of Adelaide’s alleged rivals.

  Adelaide’s an insomniac, he read. That’s why she parties all night, because she can’t sleep. It’s nothing to do with stamina.

  The by-line was attributed to a journalist called Magda Linn. The rest of the interview was useless; if Vikram hadn’t seen the sleeping pills beside Adelaide’s bed, he would have ignored it.

  The next morning, when he reviewed his plan in the light of day, it seemed flimsy. Tangling with Adelaide Mystik was getting into political games; games whose rules he did not know and whose outcomes he could not predict.

  He did not confide in Nils. He was probably wasting his time anyway. Linus’s idea was a good one but impractical, exactly the sort of thing a Citizen would suggest. Maybe Vikram should stop trying to decipher the bizarre world of the Rechnovs and go back to what he knew: to protests and waterway violence. He understood violence. Its mechanics, its randomness. Its lack of mercy. He thought of Drake’s casual hello to Rikard and wondered if there might be anything more to the connection than she claimed. He dismissed the idea. They’d known a lot of people back then; it was impossible to avoid running into a face from the past.

  He began to work out the practicalities of the plan. His pass had expired, he would have to sneak across the border. By Undersea or by boat? Either way he’d have to bribe someone.

  Night, then. Night held his best chance. From a practical viewpoint, there would be fewer people about. But he also reasoned that Adelaide, on some level, must be like everyone else. At four or five in the morning, furthest from the warmth of the sun, her body would be at its lowest ebb. Her heart would slow, her lungs shallow. In those hours, dark thoughts often invaded the mind. This was the time to find her, when she was vulnerable.

  13 ¦ ADELAIDE

  The curtain, a waterfall of white velvet, was lifted at one side by an invisible hand. The assistant extended his arm silently, inviting them to go through. Adelaide folded her arms and gave Jannike a pointed look.

  “Off you go.”

  “Come on, Adie. I paid three hundred lys for this appointment.”

  “Three hundred lys! For a single consultation! It says here she’s only been Guild ratified for the last five years.” Adelaide pointed to the Teller’s certificate, prominently displayed on a stand. “You’ve been conned, Miss Ko.”

  “I haven’t, she’s the best. She has contacts outside Osiris.”

  “Who with, the ghosts?”

  “No! Anyone can contact the ghosts. She finds living souls, on land.”

  “Then she’s definitely a fraud.”

  “What if she could contact Axel?” Jannike said boldly. Adelaide stared at her, so intensely that she might have unnerved another woman. Jannike’s brown eyes gazed back, unperturbed. There was little that could rattle Jan. The hidden hand holding the curtain jostled it, a reminder that time was booked and bookings w
ere money.

  Adelaide and Jannike stared at one another for a fraction longer. Then both girls ducked under the curtain. It swung back into place behind them. Adelaide blinked, surprised by an intense brightness.

  There was only one visible source of light. It was star-shaped, sunk into the floor, and emitted a silvery glow that steeped the tent. As Adelaide’s eyes adjusted, she realized they were in a triangular enclosure lined with the same velvet drapes. Sitting on the other side of the star-light was the Teller. Her legs were crossed. She was clothed in a pyramid of folds.

  “Sit,” she said.

  The two girls perched obediently, echoing the Teller’s pose.

  “There are two of you,” said the Teller.

  “I’ve just come to watch,” Adelaide said.

  “Your hand,” instructed the Teller, and Jannike put hers forward promptly. The Teller reached for it. Her hand brushed past Jan’s before connecting with it. As she leaned forward over the star-light Adelaide saw her eyes. They were milky white, blank inside of blank. Adelaide had an unnerving sense of pitching forward into water. Her vision grew cloudy, as though she had swum into the unplumbed depths of a kelp forest, chasing the tail of a fish which each time she neared it shot further away into the weed.

  The woman was blind. She was young, too, without lines or wrinkles, the youngest Teller Adelaide had ever seen.

  Beside her, Jan tensed as her hand was enclosed.

  “There will be deceit,” said the Teller.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Look to those close to you. Your friends shall become stronger but so shall your enemies.”

  “How about me?” said Jan. “How about all the beautiful sirens out there waiting for me to swim into their lives?”

  “You are impatient,” said the Teller.

  “Yes I am.”

  Adelaide half listened as the Teller predicted Jannike’s near future; read her palm lines and the channels of her wrist veins, then handed her a salt vial and told her to scatter the grains. The whited out tent was soporific.

  “And you, my sister.” The Teller’s hand trembled, midair, seeking what her eyes could not. “You have already been told your fate.”

  Adelaide realized she was being addressed.

  “I’ve been told many fates,” she said. “None of them match.”

  “It has been spoken, sister, spoken in the salt. The place you shall go to. Not yet, perhaps. It cannot be forced. But when you are ready, you shall go willingly.”

  “Where’s she going?” Jannike asked. The Teller’s head bowed.

  “It has been spoken.”

  “What about Axel?” Jan nudged Adelaide. “Go on, ask!”

  “For the boy, nothing.”

  Adelaide was taken aback by the abruptness of the response.

  “What do you mean?” She leaned forward, eager now, and gripped the woman’s hand. It was incredibly thin. She could feel the web of bones shifting in the scoop of the palm. “Can you see where my brother is?”

  The Teller’s eyelids lowered in a mockery of demureness.

  “Has Axel left Osiris?”

  “Nobody leaves Osiris.” The Teller’s voice took on a chanting quality, and a higher harmonic pierced the low hum, eerily, so that it sounded as though two voices emerged from her swathed throat. “Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her. Thus it was ordained, thus it is.”

  “That old rant,” said Jannike. Adelaide knew that Jan’s eyes were rolling upwards, although she also sensed the other girl’s interest in what had not been said. Adelaide was equally annoyed by the retreat into seer speech.

  “If he hasn’t left, then where is he?” she pressed. She turned to Jan. “I want to see her alone.”

  “I thought she was a fraud?”

  Adelaide stared at her. Jannike got awkwardly to her feet. Adelaide waited until the white curtain had descended behind her friend’s back.

  “I’ll pay you double what she did. Triple. A thousand lys, untaxed credit. Tell me what you know about my brother.”

  “My knowledge is no greater than yours.”

  “I’m a Rechnov. I’m ordering you.”

  “Tellers obey a higher order.”

  “Just tell me if he’s alive, at least tell me that. Please, I need to know.”

  But the Teller would say no more. She shook off Adelaide’s grasp with an irritated gesture and her hands disappeared into the folds of her garments. The curtain lifted behind Adelaide. The brightness inside the enclosure diminished and she had a brief glimpse of the Teller under normal electric light, the shadows of tiredness on her young face. The man who had ushered Adelaide in beckoned her out.

  Adelaide’s scarab was glowing. She checked the screen, looked for Jannike and spotted her friend browsing salt tins at a craft stand. Adelaide walked over to the opposite side of the hall where a plasma display depicted the history of Tellers through the ages.

  “Yes?” she spoke into the scarab.

  “I hear you’ve been staking out Sanjay Hanif’s office.”

  Adelaide spoke sharply. “I’ve been trying to contact you.”

  “At first I thought you were being extraordinarily stupid, but then I decided it may work in our favour. After all, if they know you were camping out across the way, it detracts from any possible connection with me.”

  “Have you been following me?”

  “I’m aware of your movements.”

  “How thoughtful of you. And do you have any information about my brother, or did you just contact me to explain how you’ve been misusing my funds?”

  “At this stage I have no concrete evidence to report. The witnesses’ stories all corroborate Hanif’s versions.”

  “So there’s nothing.”

  “I said nothing concrete. I have a potential lead. The maid you employed—Yonna—she mentioned seeing an unfamiliar woman leave the penthouse one day before she started work. She was able to give a rough description.”

  “A woman? What kind of woman?”

  “Unlikely to be a sexual liaison, if that’s what you’re thinking. The maid said it was a plain woman who looked to be in her forties. Possibly an airlift.”

  “And you think you can find her?”

  “I’m looking. If she is an airlift, it will make it all the easier. Ex-westerners are distinctive whether they wish to be or not.”

  “Call me when you do. And whilst you’re talking, there’s something else.” She lowered her voice. “We need to get into the penthouse where my brother lived.”

  “Can’t do it. Possible crime scene, Hanif’s put high security on the entrance. His people won’t be bribed.”

  “I’m sure in your line of work, Mr Lao…”

  “Absolutely not. Forget this idea.”

  “But I need to—”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  The line went dead.

  “You’d better be,” she muttered. Masking her fury at Lao’s insouciance, she stood in front of a looping documentary about Seela Nayagam, the first official Teller to work in Osiris. Footage from 2372, read the caption. The images were forty-five years old. Everyone visited Tellers, whether they heeded them or not. Axel used to wind them up. Adelaide had always felt more ambiguous.

  Jannike was haggling when she returned. She held out her prize for Adelaide to examine; an oval tin with crocodile pattern etchings.

  “Nice,” Adelaide agreed.

  “So did she say anything? Why did you ask if Axel had left Osiris?”

  Adelaide thought of Axel’s last words, of the balloon. “Just a whim,” she said. The Teller’s words echoed in her head. Nobody leaves Osiris.

  “You never talk about him, not even to me. I know you miss him, I know you must be miserable. And he was my friend as well, you know. Remember when we used to sneak out to the Roof and drink Kelpiqua? Remember when we stayed out in that crazy storm for a dare?”

  “Axel was furious.”

&nbs
p; “Of course he was, that was a proper Tarctic. We could all have died.”

  “Or one of us.” He was afraid of us being separated, she thought. More than the storm. “There’s no point in talking about it, Jan. There’s nothing to be done.”

  Jannike sighed. She took Adelaide’s hand and squeezed it and let go. Briefly Adelaide considered telling her about Lao, and what she had paid him to do, before dismissing the notion. She loved Jan, but her friend was a liability.

  “I’d rather drink,” she said.

  “Come on, then. I’ll take you to a new place.”

  They went to the neon emporiums of the Strobe. The towers threw out light and noise and the whole was cut by laser lines from the Rotating Towers central to it all. Every night, packed with frantic pulses, the Strobe’s towers vibrated with renewed intensity. Hour after hour, from east to west, they branded the darkness until the grey light of day stripped it of all effect and nudged the ravers home. From boats, even from beyond the ring-net, people said you could see it beating like a great cold heart. They said it woke the ghosts.

  Autumn lingered. The ice season was drawing near. They danced, and they drank. They split a bag of milaine along the length of the bar, made patterns in the jade green powder, took turns to imbibe. More people came. They danced, and they drank; they drank and they danced some more. By midnight, the world had become an inchoate place. Neither Adelaide or Jannike could stand straight. Adelaide knew that it did not matter. They were young, and they cared for nothing, because nothing in Osiris cared for them.

  14 ¦ VIKRAM

  He heard the door handle twist. In the second the door swung open, anticipation dried his throat.