by E. J. Swift
He points at the bank of clouds. ‘That’s going to hit soon. What say we go for a drink while it passes, and continue this awkward conversation there? I am interested to hear more, you know.’ He smiles. He has a mobile, expressive face; thoughts run over it like weather. It is a face that might serve him well in this country, if he learned how to use it. She thinks: He will never learn how to use it. ‘And you can tell me the story of how you got Colibrí.’
Ramona is tempted. He is right, the conversation needs unpicking, and how often do you get to speak to an Antarctican, and tell them your side? It would be good to get out of the Facility, and talking to Taeo might take her mind off her mother. But she has a plan to formulate. There are routes to plot, clothes to wash while she has access to laundry facilities. She shakes her head.
‘Not tonight.’
Taeo’s smile fades away. All at once she notices his bloodshot eyes, the unshaven jaw, the tremor in that right hand with the index finger incessantly tapping against his thigh, and she is glad she refused. The man is a mess.
‘Good luck, then,’ he says abruptly, and runs down the steps without a backwards glance.
She feels a tug of guilt.
When she looks up, she can see the storm coming in, a black veil of rain sweeping across the island to the south and the strait. The sight reminds her of what this building used to be, a long time ago when doomed idealists built the lost city, before the Great Storm condemned those pioneers to the waves. Now the storytellers weave tales of a shadow city, where the old one fell. The ocean hides it. So many sailors try to find it and never do, their boats capsized and pulled down into the deeps. The true tragedy happened before Ramona’s lifetime, but she always thinks of the Osirian people when she is here at the Facility, and hopes their souls are kept safe, wherever they are now.
4 ¦
HE SPRINTS DOWN the winding, precarious road. Within seconds he is drenched. He can hear the roar of the sea, pounding against the flood barriers. Past the low concrete outhouses and army barracks; past the soldiers on duty huddled under their waterproofs who barely glance up as he runs by. Trees on the mountainside bend in submission to the wind. A blast catches him and he skids perilously close to the sheer drop at the edge of the road and he does not care, a strangely triumphant part of him almost wishing he would slip the final centimetres that will send him over, thinking that would show them. As he runs he screams, and the fresh cold water batters his face and fills his mouth. Does it taste different, the rain here? Everything is different. Everything is wrong. He runs on. He trips and falls and curses and pulls himself up again and runs.
‘You call this a storm?’ he yells. ‘You call this a storm?’
There is no one to hear. He is shivering now. The truth is, it is a storm, a powerful one, but he can see the sparse lights of the harbour town shimmering ahead through the scything rain. Arturo’s, he will make it to Arturo’s Place. He passes the first few houses. The streets of the town are like rivers, but the route is familiar, even in the half darkness. When he reaches the bar the windows are shuttered and only a faint glow comes from between the slats, but he knows there are people inside. There are always people inside this place. He pounds on the door and keeps pounding until Arturo himself opens it.
He senses that up to the moment he steps inside, the atmosphere has been jovial, buoyant. A group of four local men are sat together around a cards table at one end of the bar, while others overlook the game. All are fishermen judging by their attire and the lingering smell of brine. Most of the locals in this small port are fishermen or stevedores. They look at Taeo with distaste. There are mutters. Taeo ignores them. He goes to a table on the other – empty – side of the bar and asks for a double rum.
The storm sounds louder from inside. Rain drumming on the roof almost drowns out the fuzzy music emitted by the radio. Patagonians, always chattering on the fucking airwaves. Considering their hysterical technophobia, they’re happy enough to broadcast their life stories and those of everyone they know over a wavelength. It’s irrational.
One or two of the fishermen continue to cast suspicious glances in Taeo’s direction. The majority simply pretend he is not there. He drinks the first double and orders another, hunched over his table, feeling the water from his clothes seep into the chair and through his shoes to the floor. He wants opium but he is trying to stop. When the pilot knocked on his door he had the pipe in one hand, the little wire in the other. She saved him, momentarily. She has the kind of face once seen it is difficult to forget, though he would be pushed now to say why, exactly. Dark, enquiring eyes, strong eyebrows, her chin jutted forwards, as if pre-empting trouble. He has the impression she could have told him a lot, if she’d cared to. She refused to go for a drink with him, though. Just like the rest of them.
Fuck. He’d kill for a smoke right now. Why did he come out?
He thinks of Shri and imagines what she would say if she could see him now. He pushes away the thought because it is too awful to bear.
There is a place right here in the harbour town; that’s where he discovered it first. A nice place – a salon, the proprietor calls it – with soft chairs and pillows where there is tea if you want it and the radio plays only music, all tunes with a soothing, yet melancholy air, that the other clients nod along to, and sometimes hum. Pipes and syringes are offered to your preference (all completely hygienic, the proprietor reassured him, and there was further reassurance in his smart, clean attire and business-like manner). Taeo prefers the pipe. It’s the tradition of it, after the old Asian style, and this way the stuff is purer, botanical. At first he took regular trips to the salon, but now he prefers to buy in bulk, and smoke it in the solace of his own room, out of sight.
Maybe he should have stayed there tonight. But the energy’s gone and that man, Eduardo, goes out of his way to be unhelpful. After fixing the plane (that gorgeous machine – where the hell did she get that? The Patagonians scrapped every Neon aircraft they had) it just feels wrong.
His glass is empty again. Wordlessly he raises it, trying to catch the bartender’s eye. He orders wine. Marisa, that is her name. Marisa takes her time coming over with a bottle, also silently, without meeting his eyes. Is he imagining it, or does she deliberately arch away from the table as she reaches to pour the wine, keeping as much distance between herself and him as possible?
He thanks her. He says the bottle is a favourite, but he couldn’t care less what it is – doesn’t even bother to look at the label.
Her lashes flicker. There is no acknowledgement; she could be serving a ghost. As she moves away he sees her shoulders relax, her walk taking on a leisurely sway. She pauses by the card players.
‘More beer, boys?’
‘Yes, Señorita Marisa, more beer. And how about some of your pretty friends to join us too, eh?’
‘You’d have my friends out in this weather? Shame on you.’
‘Eh, they can’t be as pretty as Marisa.’
Marisa’s laugh is round and encouraging and her dark curls bounce when she throws back her head. Taeo would have liked to talk to her. He would like to talk to anyone. He takes a heavy swig of the red. The aftertaste of the wine here is sour and harsh, nothing like the sharp, clear heat of the sake back home. He watches the bartender and the fishermen flirting.
Since the day he stepped foot on Patagonian soil, an invisible circle has been drawn around him. If he squints, he can almost see its borders. Now and then he observes covert glances in his direction or catches the edge of a whisper. A part of him wishes he could hear what they are saying about him, and the other part is grateful for his ignorance. He drinks deeply from the glass, welcoming the haze of alcohol that is settling about him.
Shri jumps into his head again, and this time it is impossible to dismiss her. He thinks of the winters that are full of dark and Shri, and the summers that are full of light and Shri. He thinks of the beaches where they walk and the strange, luminous creatures that wash up from the ocean depths.
He thinks of Shri’s voice through mist too dense for the lights of Vosti Settlement to reveal a face, and her fingers locked through his, and the walk home with nothing but touch and voice, and he remembers her lips against his, when no one can see.
Not every moment was like this, it is true. The six months prior to his departure were not like this, but those moments are harder to reach, and anyhow, he does not want to think about those dreadful months, only the good times. The times that were golden.
By the time Ivra comes the rain has dropped to merely forceful and the bar’s clientele has doubled. Taeo has swaddled himself in memories. His bodyguard is angry. Taeo holds up a hand as though this might ward off the inevitable berating. He wonders if the salon is open and thinks about how long it would take to get there. About ten minutes. The pull on the pipe, slow, fills his mind, and how the smoke would taste.
Ivra sits heavily in the empty chair opposite, water cascading from his hood when he pushes it back from his face. He speaks in their home patois.
‘How many times do I have to tell you not to wander about without me?’
‘More than once, I suppose.’
Ivra’s voice drops to a furious whisper. Taeo avoids looking at him. Perhaps if he looks away for long enough, Ivra’s anger will wash up and over him, like a passing wave.
‘More than once? Do you think this is a joke? You know, I feel like I’m dealing with a child, not a senior Antarctican engineer.’
Taeo gives a humourless laugh. One of the fishermen glances up. When Taeo notices, the man swiftly averts his eyes.
‘Maybe it is a joke. Maybe that’s exactly the joke.’
‘You’re drunk again.’
‘Is there anything else to do in this fucking place?’ Despite the haze around his thoughts, he knows better than to mention the opium. He’s managed to keep that much a secret from Ivra.
‘How about keeping your head down and having some respect for your own skin, not to mention mine? You know the archipelago is crawling with pirates.’
Taeo picks up his glass. It is empty. Again. He raises it, but Ivra clamps a hand over the rim, forcing Taeo’s arm back down.
‘Enough.’
On the other side of the room, the bartender is hovering by the cards table, its places claimed by a new set of players. One slender hand leans on the back of a customer’s chair, the other rests jauntily on her hip. The game is growing raucous.
‘They won’t even look at us,’ says Taeo. ‘The Patagonians. They despise us.’
‘Not all of us.’
Taeo studies his bodyguard. The years abroad have made their marks. Warmer summers have darkened his complexion. Ivra is Brazilian-Antarctican like Taeo, but he has dropped his Portuguese entirely. His Spanish sounds like a native now. With the locals he adopts a convivial, disarming manner.
Ivra does not walk around with an invisible circle attached to him. But he has been stationed in Fuego for a decade. Taeo is not prepared to wait that long.
‘Have some wine,’ he insists. ‘It’s on me.’
‘We’re leaving.’
‘Even you refuse to drink with me?’
‘You know, you’re paranoid about people not speaking to you but you refuse to take the possibility of a kidnapping seriously. I fucking despair.’
Taeo says nothing. He has no desire for an argument, even through the immunity of alcohol. He pictures Shri, focuses on her warm, broad smile. But he can’t hold on to it. Shri’s brow knits, and she lets loose a tirade of anger. Instead, he thinks of the salon.
‘I have to get out of here, Ivra.’
‘We can both hope for that.’
‘This place is what theists would call actual hell.’
‘You’ve been here all of four months.’
‘It’s all been a big mistake. I’m not a …’ Even now he has trouble speaking it aloud. ‘… a dissident, Ivra. I shouldn’t be here.’
Ivra folds his arms across his chest. He is a big man and the posture makes him look more imposing. They never speak of it, but Taeo knows his bodyguard is a link in the Antarctican information network. The same network for which Taeo is now some kind of minion: a message-boy.
‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you transmitted an open holoma to the Republic,’ says Ivra steadily.
‘Have you seen my transmission, Ivra?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen it. I’m not surprised they sent you here.’
‘It was a mistake. I wasn’t myself. It was stupid.’
‘I’m not surprised by that either.’
‘They must realize that. I can’t stay here.’
Not without Shri.
He speaks her name silently, over and over, as though there might be some essence of her in the air that would communicate if she were here. Surely she will forgive him now. He’s done his penance. Missing her is too much to bear. How many times he said he loved her, meaning it, but not thinking about it, and now her absence is an open wound. He misses the children, their hugs, their funny direct questions, and the way they all giggle over things secret to themselves, the three children together, a perfect trio.
The door to the bar opens. A man runs inside, neglecting to close it behind him. The newcomer pushes back his sodden hood and starts gabbling in deep Fueguin dialect. Some of it evades Taeo but Ivra’s posture shifts. Taeo can see he is listening intently. The newcomer is gesticulating. The telling grows wilder and more dramatic as he goes on, until a chorus of exclamations drowns him out, and Taeo can’t catch a word.
‘What’s he saying?’ Taeo asks. Ivra motions: quiet. Taeo hears the word shipwreck, repeated over and over. There has been an accident, somewhere down the coast, earlier tonight, a ship on the rocks. The man’s story is drawing to a climax. He speaks faster and faster and suddenly he stops mid-sentence, as though the words have been snatched from his throat. He looks solemn now. The listeners have gone quiet and very still. When Taeo looks at their faces he sees a collective fear dawning.
Someone says, ‘Not possible!’
There is a long silence and then the newcomer whispers, ‘Yes, Osiris.’
Taeo stares at Ivra.
The door bangs shut and bounces open again. No one goes to close it.
‘No, no,’ says a voice, perhaps the one who spoke before, perhaps someone else. The newcomer insists, ‘Yes,’ and then everyone begins talking at once.
Ivra pushes back his chair and jerks his head towards the door. Bewildered, Taeo follows him outside. The rain is still falling heavily, spattering his face with cold droplets. The warm fogginess of the bar seeps away.
‘That man said there was a shipwreck,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘A ship from …’ He can barely say the name; his head feels light and dizzy. He finds himself whispering, as the Patagonian did, as though he too had always believed the city to be destroyed, ‘… Osiris?’
The name hangs. Taeo hears very precisely the sound of rain drumming on rooftops.
‘That’s what he said. But he only heard it from his cousin. There was a call placed from down the coast.’
‘That can’t be possible.’ He looks at Ivra, trying to read the other man. ‘Can it? Do you know something I don’t? I mean – why now?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t—’ Ivra’s expression falters; suddenly he looks shaken. ‘Anything’s possible.’
‘If it is an Osirian ship …’
‘The Boreal States will react,’ says Ivra.
They stand in the deserted street. Most of the town’s inhabitants are still inside, sleeping, unaware of the drama that is unfolding at Arturo’s. The rain falls. The puddles simmer about Taeo’s feet. Osiris. The sea city. Patagonians call it the lost city. That is what the world believes, and even in the Republic, where they know the truth, the lost city is rarely spoken of by name. Let ice lie quiet, they would say. It is an old motto and a backwards one, the underlying message being that ice does not lie quiet. It cracks and breaks and shatters glaciers
and swells the sea. Ice is a kinetic substance, which brings upheaval after upheaval – as is the course of history.
He thinks, almost wonderingly, this is it. This is the start of the war.
The very thing he spoke out against – and whatever he said in there to Ivra, he meant every word of that transmission – this is where it starts.
In unspoken agreement, the two men head out of the town, back up towards the Facility.
‘I’ll record a holoma tonight,’ says Ivra. ‘Someone should be due to make a collection soon.’
Taeo nods. He does not understand the complicated relay system of messages operated by the Antarctican network, but Ivra does.
‘What about our agents in the north? Shouldn’t we alert them too?’
Ivra frowns. ‘We should wait and see how the situation develops. We don’t yet know if the boat really is from—’
That’s not right, thinks Taeo. They can’t wait on this – they have to act. If what the Patagonian said is true, there is a huge political issue at stake for the Republic: a containment issue. The agents in the north need to be primed. They need to be on the watch for a Boreal response.
‘It’s probably a hoax,’ he says. ‘Or pirates. Didn’t you say the archipelago is crawling with pirates?’
Ivra frowns. ‘It could be a hoax. What if it’s a ploy by the Pan-African Solar Corporation? What if they’re trying to draw the Boreal States south and start a war?’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘If the Republic and the Boreal States cancel each other out, the Solar Corporation gets the pick of resources north and south. They’d love to see us at war with the Boreals.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing, Ivra. You’re forgetting what the Republic knows.’ He pauses to let this sink in. ‘We know the sea city was not destroyed. We know that it could only ever have been a matter of time before someone got out.’