by E. J. Swift
She once heard the symptoms of going and returning described by a doctor in Cataveiro. A fugue state, she called it. The wanderer, as if in a dream, is a different person entirely. But Ramona found this explanation lacking. Inés is too present, too solid, to lose half of her self.
Even though she spent only the first thirteen years of her life in the highlands, the shack has always stood in Ramona’s mind as home. She only has to close her eyes to hear the way it creaks: the floor underfoot, the doors and shutters that bang in wind and have to be stuffed with bits of cloth to jam them in the worst of the storms. Inés’s hands: sewing, stirring, hammering, bandaging. The shack was always busy. It was always full. At first it held voices: Camilo and Paola, arguments and mock fights. Later it held traces, traces of Ramona’s burned-up siblings, Paola’s skip in the sand. In the empty years, the fugue years, it was alert with Inés’s absence, murmuring, whispering to Ramona: when is she coming back? And each time that Ramona came back, stood on the creaking floor in her mechanic’s boots, looked at the table and the vegetable jars covered in dust, her answer had been the same:
I don’t know. She never told me she was going. How can I know?
Maybe that is home, a question hanging in an open doorway. Even now, since Inés returned, home holds the secrets of what she has and has not done. She will never tell.
If the jinn takes her mother, Ramona will be alone in the world. Who else is there? Félix. But Félix is a wanderer, an itinerant, like Ramona. Their paths cross and when the day of their last meeting comes neither will know it. They will attach no more import to the occasion than they did the time before, and when they part, it will be with a raised hand: keep safe. All as usual. But if – when – her mother dies, the voices in the shack will stop. There will be no whispers, no scuffling in the shadows. There will only be a shack.
Is that what it means, to be truly alone, when a place has been abandoned even by its ghosts?
Below, dirt track roads converge upon a small town. At its outskirts are the factories where they process the poppy yield into morphine and other drugs run by the cartels. A sign that the sprawling maze of Cataveiro is not far ahead.
The city gives her hope.
Now is the time to concentrate. She wants a safe hiding place for the plane, not too close, and not too far from the city. In flight, she activates the chameleon. From here on, she is invisible.
9 ¦
TAEO WATCHES THE unconscious man’s chest rise and fall in not quite even cycles, listening to the hiss of his breathing. He has a young face. There is evidence of sunburn and dehydration, but the man’s skin bears no signs of what the Patagonians call their thousand curses, diseases they claim come from the north, leaving those who survive scarred or crippled.
At a glance, there is no reason why the man could not pass as Antarctican. Taeo stores away the thought for future reference.
He leaves the man sleeping and goes to stand by the entrance to the cave he stumbled upon earlier today: the perfect hiding place. He had made more progress than he thought. They are high above sea level and a dull light floods the mountain. He looks out down the hillside through the rustling trees that seem to lean and creak even when there is no wind. There are only the beginnings of forests in Antarctica. Antarctican trees are young. These Patagonian trees are old, their bark cracked and greying, like wizened sentinels. This is an old place, and Taeo feels himself to be old in it.
The thirty-six hours that have passed since Arturo’s feel like a much longer span of time. He finds himself thinking of the day he recorded his transmission, that day that started it all. Except that it started a long time before that, back when he was first elevated from junior engineer attached to Civilian Transport to a senior position within the Civilian Security fleet. They made him sign a secrets act (this, after all the furore died down, was what they eventually exiled him on). They never used the word military.
The security shipping fleet was the big one – the super-ships project. The Republic had been working on them for years, and although, again, it was not explicitly said, the super-ships were part of the race between north and south; the race to create ships capable of withstanding hyperstorms, hurricanes and typhoons, not to mention the methane explosions rumoured in the tropics. The work appealed to Taeo; it was varied and centred around problem-solving. One day he could be experimenting with resistance to wind flow, the next, testing the strength of newly mined metals. Before he left, he had been researching a new type of hybrid fuel. The fleet was excited about it, although it would be years in development, and thinking about it now Taeo can hardly bring himself to care; the ambition of the project seems both foolish and egotistical.
The Boreal States were working on submarines.
Taeo never saw any of the spy reports (the engineers weren’t allowed to use the word spy either, they were referred to as agents, although of course they did among themselves) but it was always evident when something had filtered through. A briefing would be called, and the engineers would be asked to test some new alloy, or given a blueprint and told: make this.
Even now, he is not entirely sure when the doubts began. Was it after Kadi was born, or before? It wasn’t through Shri. Shri, who was so sure of everything, was sure on this too. She was proud of his work. She said they had to protect what was theirs.
He remembers Kadi, so little then, sat in a tub of warm water, Shri shampooing the child’s hair which was dark and silken like Shri’s, but curled like his.
This is our country, Taeo, and we’ll fight for it. Fuck the Boreals.
She rubbed the child’s head vigorously. Shampoo bubbles blossomed.
We’ll fight for it, said Shri.
Perhaps it was then, looking at Kadi with her eyes screwed up against the sting of the soap. Perhaps that was the moment that the thought seeded: we shouldn’t have to. Our children shouldn’t have to.
Gradually the suspicion, at first just a nagging doubt, an inkling, grew and grew until it became an overwhelming revelation that followed him everywhere and subsumed everything he did. He thought about it when he dropped the children at school. He thought about it while he was arguing the best employment of diamond with a colleague. He thought about it while Shri was curled against him in bed, her leg hooked over his hip, her face pushed between his shoulder blades, and he lay awake, unable to sleep, thinking, thinking, thinking.
What he was doing was wrong. The shipping race was wrong. The super-ships were wrong, the subs were wrong. And if they – south and north – continued along this path, they would inevitably arrive back where they had begun, with another Blackout and the world consumed in yet another war.
That, finally, was the message he recorded and transmitted, late one night at the end of a bottle of sake, with the children and Shri asleep upstairs and the dim lights of Vosti Settlement casting a blueish glow to the streets outside. When he reviewed it the next day, sober, the recording had a surprising clarity. Although by then he had been drinking heavily for some time.
It is the arguments with Shri that haunt him now.
Did you think about the children? Did you think for one minute about Kadi and Sasha and Nisha and what this will do to them?
The arguments that had stood so clear and impregnable in his head dissolved before Shri’s wrath. He had done this for the children – because of the children. Because of the father he wanted them to have and the world he wanted them to inherit. This was about ethics, he said.
Shri said she did not care about ethics. Now her children would have no father, would be spat at in the playground and called traitors by their peers. Was this ethics?
You’ve destroyed their lives, she said. And you’ve destroyed ours too. And for what?
Because it had to be said.
That was all he could offer her. Someone had to say it. Someone had to offer an alternative. To suggest that the thing they all believed was inevitable might not be inevitable. That minds could change.
He hadn’t
quite believed that the courts would go through with the exile. Send him to the ice frontier, perhaps, or to some dead-end job. But Patagonia?
Even through the harrowing goodbyes to the children, he was convinced that he had done the right thing. It was only when he boarded the ship, alone because Shri had refused to see him off, that the regret began. A great swamping tide of it armed with Shri’s words and the children’s whys and how longs. He was on deck when the horn blew. The ship’s solar sails rose and swivelled, seeking maximum light. The ship juddered, scraping from the docking point, and began to edge away.
Then he saw a tiny figure, walking down towards the harbour front. The right height, the right build. Was it? Had she come, in the end? He couldn’t tell. It might be. But it was too late. The ship was leaving, a ship whose schematics, perhaps, he had influenced over the course of his work in the past eight years. The gap between harbour and ship widened. Birds darted down into the foam, plucking up the small creatures stirred up by the motion of the ship’s propellers.
He waved frantically. He shouted: I love you Shri. I love you!
If it was her, she made no sign.
When he turns away from the whispering world outside he finds the man from Osiris is awake, watching him silently from his prone position. Taeo’s unease increases. How long has he been standing here, oblivious to the other man’s surveillance? Now he finds himself wondering what sort of ambassador the City of Osiris would send on such a hazardous mission. Would they send soldiers? Trained killers? Until he knows, he has to work to gain the man’s trust.
He speaks in Boreal English.
‘You’re awake. That’s good. Don’t worry, I have brought you inland. Away from the beach.’
The man stirs. ‘Inland,’ he repeats. He utters the word slowly, wonderingly.
‘Yes. You’re safe now. There were people coming who would have killed you, back there. But I got you away.’
The man looks at him and says nothing. Taeo notices a repetitive movement of his hands, holding the hem of his jacket, squeezing and releasing. Nervousness? Fear?
‘Do you understand me?’ he asks.
‘Yes, I understand. You rescued me.’
The man’s tone is flat and Taeo is unsure if the statement is an affirmation or a query. ‘What’s your name?’ he asks.
‘What’s yours?’
‘Taeo,’ he answers, provoked by the somewhat hostile response. He keeps an eye on the man’s hands, wary of sudden movement. No one has seen inside Osiris in fifty years. Who knows what kind of agenda they have? ‘I’m Antarctican.’
‘This is Tarctica?’ Expression flickers across the man’s face: bewilderment, joy, quickly chased by suspicion.
‘No. This is Patagonia.’
‘Patagonia,’ says the Osirian. He repeats it, more quietly. ‘Patagonia.’
For several long seconds there is silence and Taeo thinks about his next question, and how to phrase it, and then the man says:
‘There were no maps.’
He lifts his head, struggling to sit up. Taeo supports him until he is able to rest against the wall of the cave. The man is still weak. Even such a small exertion brings sweat to his face. This is good and bad, thinks Taeo. The Osirian will be dependent on him, there is no way he will be running off into the wilderness. But he won’t be able to run if they are discovered, either.
The man’s eyes flick to the cave entrance. Taeo strains his ears but can hear only the sound of the trees stirring on the mountainside. But the Patagonians are far more familiar with this territory than he. No doubt they can move silently, when they need to.
‘My name is Vikram,’ says the man.
‘Vikram,’ Taeo repeats.
He sits so that he is facing the other man, and offers him the water bottle.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m sorry, but I have to ask. I saw the boat. I saw the name. You say you’ve come from …’ Taeo puts hesitancy into his voice, dropping it to almost a whisper. ‘Osiris?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘It’s just a question.’
Vikram looks as though he might deny it and then he nods, reluctantly, it seems to Taeo. Despite everything he knows, he feels a shiver at the affirmation. It is a strange thing, to have known of a place for so long, yet it has never been more than a neglected awareness, like the small insects that live in the cracks of your house but are rarely seen. Osiris is a composite of data, shipping movements and energy outputs, something countable, not a place where people live and breathe and die. But here is one of them: a man called Vikram, and he is alive, at least for now.
Taeo lets out a long breath. Now he needs to lie convincingly. ‘We thought the city had been destroyed,’ he says. ‘In Antarctica, that’s what everyone believes – and here in Patagonia, and everywhere – Osiris is known as the lost city. How can it be?’
‘It can stay lost,’ says Vikram, with sudden, surprising vehemence. ‘I don’t want to remember it, any of it.’
Step carefully, thinks Taeo.
‘It’s true, though?’ he says. ‘The city is still there?’
‘I wish it were a dream.’
‘And the boat – the crew? There were others, I know—’ Again he sees the hump of bodies on the beach. The corpse in her red jumper with a gun wound in her stomach. ‘I mean, it wasn’t you alone?’
‘The rest of them are dead, aren’t they.’ It is a statement rather than a query.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s a miracle we got this far.’
‘The boat didn’t look in a good state.’
‘That, and everything else. We weren’t meant to get out.’
‘Are you saying you escaped?’ Taeo’s mind goes into overdrive.
Vikram gives him a twisted smile. ‘You just said, you thought the city was destroyed. Now you know it isn’t. I’ve nothing to say. I want nothing more to do with … Osiris.’
Taeo watches Vikram’s face for signs he might be lying, but can detect none. If this is the truth, it will make Taeo’s job easier, that is certain. But the Osirian could equally be bluffing him.
‘You have to understand,’ he says. ‘This is a huge shock to me – and to anyone who was down there on the beach of Patagonia, and they will talk. It’s like you’ve landed from the moon. I need to know why you’ve come here, now, after all this time.’
‘Why did you rescue me?’
‘It wasn’t safe for you to stay there. Other villagers were coming, soldiers would have been next. I can’t say what they might have done to you, but I don’t think you’d be sitting here now.’
The young man does not react; he does not seem to care. His eyes are dull.
‘I came because I wanted to leave the city,’ he says. ‘I’m grateful that you helped me, but you can leave me alone now. I’ll make my own way from here.’
We’ll see about that, thinks Taeo. But he nods.
‘Let me help you until you’ve recovered, at least.’
Vikram looks at him, a shrewdness in his face battling with exhaustion. He’s going to ask why, thinks Taeo, but the other man merely shrugs.
‘If you want. I can’t offer you anything in exchange.’
‘That’s not the point,’ says Taeo. ‘People help one another, don’t they? You and I are both outsiders here.’
Vikram gives a slight laugh. The emotion seems to take the last of his energy; he closes his eyes, his face drawn.
‘How’s your leg?’ Taeo asks.
Vikram peels back the torn flaps of material around the wound in his thigh. The herbalist’s stitches show clearly against the swollen flesh, but as far as Taeo can tell, there is no infection.
‘I’ve had worse,’ he says. ‘I don’t even remember how it happened. The last thing I remember, I was on the ship, in the storm …’
‘Your boat ran aground. You must have tried to get to shore, and cut yourself on the rocks.’
Vikram looks at Taeo. ‘Was it you who sewed me up?’
/>
It is tempting to claim the credit, but Taeo has an inkling this might be a test. He cannot trust the Osirian’s apparent lack of memory.
‘No. The villagers pulled you out the sea, and their herbalist stitched you up. But they were charging people to see you. Making themselves some cash, until … well, until somebody else came.’ He gets to his feet. ‘I’m going back to take a look at the beach and find out what’s going on. Stay here where it’s safe. The Patagonians will be looking for you. And the chances are, Vikram, if they find you, they will kill you. This is a lawless place. I have learned that much from my time here. So stay hidden.’
‘I don’t need your help,’ Vikram insists.
But as Taeo ducks out of the cave entrance the Osirian’s eyes are already drooping with fatigue. The message has hit home, he thinks. Vikram is not going anywhere.
It is more difficult than Taeo anticipated to retrace his path back to the village. Where he finds evidence of their trail, he does his best to conceal it. He thinks about the story he will tell Vikram when the time comes for answers. How best to frame it. Lying to the Osirian makes him uneasy in the same way the lies he told the pilot make him uneasy; he is tormented with flashes of sudden guilt. But he cannot deny a sense of purpose, which he has not known since he was shipped out to this hostile continent. He has a task. A dangerous one, but an important one. Even his cravings are drastically reduced; he feels invigorated by the fresh mountain air.
The land slopes inevitably towards the coast, and soon he can hear the cry of seabirds alongside the smaller residents of the forest. When the trees begin to thin he proceeds more cautiously. The smell of smoke permeates that of the foliage; something is smouldering. The Osirian boat?
Other than the birds, it is strangely quiet. He can hear no evidence of human activity. The acrid smoke mingles with the briny scent of the sea. He must be close to the village now. Another few hundred metres, slowly advancing, and he can see the end of the tree line and the low-roofed houses in the clearing beyond it. He retreats back into where the cover is deeper.