Cataveiro

by E. J. Swift

  She opens her pack and takes out the contents one by one, laying them on the sand. Water bottles. Canned fruit and vegetables and protein slips. Malaria pills. A sunhat. The emergency medical kit.

  She straps up her shoulder as best she can without assistance. Her ribs are burning. She lifts her T-shirt and runs fingers lightly over the bones. Nothing broken, but almost certainly cracked.

  Next she pulls out a light tarpaulin to deflect the sun. She unfolds the tarpaulin and sits underneath it like a tent, grateful for the semblance of shade.

  What else? A mapping book and pencils. A flare. A combination knife. A gun. What use is a gun in the desert? Unless the truck …

  The truck is gone, raiders or not. Forget about the truck.

  The Antarctican’s holoma has also survived the crash. She stares at it with hatred. Of course their Neon technology would crawl through unscathed, of course it would.

  She looks at the meagre little pile of belongings. Under strict rationing, there is enough food and drink to last her for a week. There are more rations in the hold of the plane, but she isn’t sure how much she will be able to carry with cracked ribs and a shoulder that won’t take any weight. How many days’ walk to get out of the desert? A week? A fortnight?

  She lies on her back under the tarpaulin. Her breath hisses against its pale cover. She can hear the minute skittering of grains of sand in the hint of a wind that brushes against her face. She closes her eyes but the light remains intense through her eyelids, the veins within the skin glowing red like the lines on a map. She pulls the sunhat over her eyes to shut out the light.

  The heat. The midday desert heat.

  The pain catches her and pulls her up into some distant place. She drifts away.

  She wakes parched and stiff. The sun is low in the sky. Time to get moving. She opens a can of tofu and eats the sticky mess inside. Each swallow hurts.

  She climbs painfully back into the plane and tries to get the engine going. Nothing. Not even a flicker of power. She disconnects the batteries and takes a few more rations from the hold. There is no more she can do. Not alone, not in the desert. She will have to abandon the plane. She stares at Colibrí’s long wings, the hummingbird glyph that runs the length of the fuselage. The solar cells draw down power but there is nowhere for it to go. She remembers the bones of Violeta del Torres, her neck broken, the remains of her body slowly crumbling.

  ‘I’m coming back,’ she speaks aloud, to make it more certain, but she does not sound certain. ‘Colibrí, I’m coming back.’

  There’s nothing for it: she is already weak and she might as well make the most of the cool night. She rearranges her pack with the heaviest items at the bottom. When she eases her shoulders into it the weight is too much for her sore ribs. She ropes the pack to her waist so that she can drag it behind her like a sledge. Loaded up like this, she is able to walk.

  She sets out north across the dunes, following the compass and the path of the sun. Even this late in the day, she can feel the heat rising off the land. She thinks of the pedlar’s stories. Aris’s warning. She will have to travel at dusk and start anew before dawn. At night, too, the heat will drop away and she is going to be very cold. She tries not to think of the sandstorms …

  Her progress is slow. The sand is hard to walk on, even if she were without injury, and despite her best efforts, the pack is a terrible strain. Several times she slips and falls, shouting aloud with the pain. Her shadow marches beside her, elongated then shortened as the shape of the sand alters.

  The sun sets in an infernal blaze, and night falls almost at once. When it is too dark to see, Ramona wraps herself in the tarpaulin and lies flat, watching the stars come out one by one, very sharp and clear, as they were in that other desert, a long time ago.

  She thought the desert would be silent, but it is full of whispers. The sand shifts like a living thing. Spirits of the jungle, she thinks uneasily. Here in the desert basin, the jaguar is abroad, with his tailbone swishing in the sand. In another world monkeys are climbing the ghosts of trees and birds of paradise are singing unearthly songs as they spiral on a slip of air.

  It turns very cold. She buries herself in the sand, seeking warmth. She thinks of her mother, and wants to cry, but stops herself. Instead she imagines Inés speaking. What did you expect, eh? You and that aeroplane, unnatural it is. Such a one as this I have raised and now she is surprised – now she wonders, how is it that I am alone in the desert days and days from anyone and anything? I tell you how it is, Ramona. This is the Neon end – what comes of meddling. I told you this aeroplane is no good. But you will try and fix things.

  But I was trying to find you, Ma …

  Eh, always an answer, always an answer, she has. My lucky one.

  She sleeps uneasily and wakes in pain.

  On the second day she finds the bed of a river and follows it north-west. She walks along the fissured yellow earth and the piles of silt woven into ridges, like fingers winding through dust. The riverbed is at once hard and soft beneath her feet, sometimes crumbling where she steps, sometimes sinking her whole body as though it will drag her down into the depths of the earth’s core.

  She sees, on the opposite shore where the bank rises steeply, a serpentine breakage in the sand. As Ramona moves closer she sees that the long curve is sectioned into small hillocks, and that the hillocks are bones, the vertebrae of some long-dead animal. She squats beside it. The sand is hot under her hand when she brushes it away. The bones are yellowish, smoothed to glass. She brushes away at the dirt, gradually exposing a long tail, ribs and four blunt legs. Further up, bits of bobbled skin still cling to the vertebrae, but when she touches them they disintegrate in her fingers, just like Violeta del Torres. All we are, she thinks. The skull is elongated, and the jaw holds an impressive array of teeth. A caiman.

  She uncovers the rest of the skeleton. When the whole animal is clear, she sits back on her heels, marvelling at the sheer engineering of the thing, trying to imagine how it must have moved in the water. The bones shine in the sunlight. The light dances among them and the shadows cast by the legs and spine, as though it can lend the animal a second life. The heat is a fierce beam on the back of her neck. Time to move on.

  She needs to find cover before the midday heat becomes too punishing to move. The land slopes away red and charred. The weave of the river is the only marking in miles. She could find shade under an outcrop of rocks, perhaps, and sit with the lizards. Their scampering company is one of few survivors she has seen among this desolate land with its half-buried ossuaries.

  She cannot remember how long she has been walking. The pack drags behind her, a dead weight. The old break in her thigh bone is coming back to haunt her; she should have known it would. She is starting to limp. Hours have passed. Days and nights have passed. She can barely imagine a time before the desert. The food is gone. Her tongue lies in her mouth like a sponge, sucking up every scrap of moisture. There is a foul taste when she swallows.

  She talks to her mother regularly now. Inés walks just behind her, but whenever Ramona turns and tries to see her, she disappears.

  She tries to explain about Colibrí. She wants her ma to understand.

  The thing is, you see the world differently from above.

  Different? Ha. I see what I see and I know what I see.

  No. I mean … you see how things fit together. You can see where people were, and where they are now. You can see a story.

  I don’t need to go into the air to see a story. I’ve got stories coming out my ears.

  But you’ve got no one to talk to. You’re mean to Carla, and you frighten away little Gabi. Where do you get your stories from?

  All over the place. The lizards. The lizards tell me.

  You’re being silly.

  I suppose it’s the birds who talk to you, do they? Up there? In your Neon flying machine?

  It’s not just the thing, Mama, it’s the use of the thing.

  The sun beats down on her h
ead. Through her blood. Its light pulses with her heartbeat. The world throbs as though the sand itself is alive.

  Strange things come out of holes in the ground. Crawling things, scuttling things. Eyeless shadows grown bodies and wings. The horizon shimmers. Blue lakes materialize and vanish. An approaching motorcycle turns into the trunk of a lone, long-dead tree. A voice tells Ramona to take her eyes away, not to look, and not to believe. But the voice is small and tremulous. Ramona looks again. She sees it, at last.

  A city. A city of living, breathing gold.

  Panama.

  ‘The Exchange.’ Her throat, parched and swollen, produces no sound. ‘It’s the Exchange!’

  She looks down at her shuffling feet. So slow. At this rate, it will take days to reach the city, and days she does not have. Her water is almost gone.

  ‘Come on,’ she orders herself. ‘Faster. Faster!’

  She trudges on, buoyant now with hope. People are ahead. You see, Ma. I told you so! I told you I’d make it. She looks to the city. But now the horizon is bare and blue. Uncomprehending, she scans its length, turning, gazing in every direction.

  Where has it gone? Where has it gone?

  Tears fill her eyes. She blinks. They trickle down her face, a scant two drops. She reaches with her tongue to capture their moisture. The salt stings her lips. She keeps walking. It’s there, somewhere. Just in hiding. Spots decorate her vision, like stars coming out at night, slowly crystallizing. Then they vanish; it becomes entirely dark. Night has descended quickly tonight. Today. The night in the day. She is upside-down. Colibrí is hanging in the sky. Remarkable. She feels the darkness envelop her as she topples sideways.

  I’m sorry, Ma. I did try, you know.

  Inés’s hand fastens around hers. She can feel how thin her mother’s fingers have become.

  I’ll bury you with Camilo and Paola.

  At the end of the veranda?

  Yes, my lucky one. In the ground. That’s what we were made for.

  All right, Ma. I’m ready now.

  Consciousness slips away from Ramona. Her heart begins to slow. Her breath rattles, and the wind blows reddish sand over her face.

  Breathe in, breathe out. The rhythm of the world. Breathe in, breathe out.

  Breathe in—

  29 ¦

  VIKRAM RUNS DOWN the five flights of stairs, quickly and silently, without hesitation. He has had plenty of time to memorize the stairs: where they creak, where they are robust.

  What to do?

  Outside the rain continues to fall thick and steady. Each drop is a minor explosion against the ground (the ground! Even now, every time he puts a foot outside he is unable to suppress a leap of amazement). Water gathers in pools, runs off in minor diversions that rush down the streets. The rain patters against the light waterproof material of his jacket, soaking his hair. He starts to walk. Does it matter which way?

  What to do?

  He can hear the rain clattering into the bathtubs and buckets left out on the balconies, the stream of water being siphoned indoors into sinks. The Patagonians are conservationists; this much he has learned. A people both careful and reckless.

  Careful and reckless.

  Stay or go?

  What to do?

  He walks. Head down, purposeful. It is about faking it. Making it look like you belong, even when you don’t. Especially when you don’t. Taeo, who before he came to Patagonia must always have belonged, has never had to learn that.

  Taeo.

  Did he ever trust him, really? The Antarctican’s explanations were always too suave, even when his honesty was evident. Vikram has known enough people capable of true evil to believe Taeo did not mean him any harm; nonetheless, it is easy to do harm without intent. He should know. He has kept secrets that do not belong to him. No, the real shock is the magnitude of the revelation.

  Taeo knew. All along, Taeo knew. But Taeo is only the beginning of an infinitely long chain. He is the tip. It’s as if Vikram has plucked a strand of kelp from the surface of the ocean, only to discover that the strand willows down under the water, spiralling deeper and deeper and deeper, evolving into some obscene, ever-expanding farm on the seabed.

  Antarctica.

  The war between south and north.

  He has never thought of his city as small before.

  All he wanted was to forget. Erase the past. The past will trap you. This he knows; this he has learned, the hard way. And throughout the journey from Osiris, the battle with the skadi boats, the days adrift on the open ocean, the terrible storms, his thoughts were simple. Just get through it. Stay alive. Make it to land, if land exists. And if it doesn’t, you’ll die a free man. A better fate than many he has faced.

  Some of the crew died in the initial skadi attack the night after they departed: shot, or lost overboard. Those that survived were left in shock. They had not expected to be attacked. They did not know what Vikram knew, about Whitefly, even though most of them were Linus’s people. Or they knew, but could not believe it, until it happened. They could not imagine that a place they had known all their lives, a place they called home, could turn on them so maliciously, and without remorse.

  But Vikram knew Osiris, knew its nature and the people in it. He did not want to be Linus’s ally any longer. Yes, it was Linus who got him out the tower and onto the expedition boat, giving him the promise of land. A new life, this time for real. But it was also Linus who got him into the tower in the first place. He is done with Linus and Linus’s fucked-up schemes.

  Just make it to land, if land exists.

  It does exist. And there are people. There are cities like Cataveiro and strange countries to the north and the south that he has only ever heard named in history. There are fields full of flowers. There are guanacos. There are mountains and rivers. There is grass you can feel on bare feet, earth you can walk on – and you do not wake to find it was a dream, although often in the past few weeks he has felt as though his dreams are unfolding around him, opening into dimensions that can barely be trusted, despite the evidence of his senses. What makes it real: it is not a paradise. There is disease and quarantine but there is hope here too, because the people here know the world is larger than their place within it.

  Now he knows things even Linus, who knew all about Operation Whitefly, did not know.

  Antarctica.

  The war.

  The truth about Osiris.

  What to do?

  The city in quarantine is silent under the rain. It offers no answers, no obvious solutions. He has wandered some distance, into a part of the city he has not previously explored. In the last couple of weeks Vikram has been careful, going out only when he is sure Taeo will be absent some time. He has been reckless, risking talking to strangers with his fledgling Spanish, aware that they may have seen his face on a poster. Careful and reckless. Patagonian.

  He crosses tram lines, but there are no trams. Most lights are off or turned down low. The bars are closed. Once he hears the rumble of a truck and he ducks into a doorway.

  He notices two hunched figures ahead. They are too small to be adults. He follows the kids – the only people he has seen out on the street so far. They move furtively, skirting close to the buildings. Once they glance up to check the name of a street. They turn into a little alleyway which opens up into a small square, shielded from the street.

  He hears music. At first he thinks it must be the radio, but then he realizes it is coming from a building within the square. Raucous piano playing, and voices, and clapping. It is so long since he has been among people socializing, people celebrating, even if all they are celebrating is having made it through another day. There is something Osirian about such a celebration. He catches sight of the kids running down a flight of steps and sees a glimmer of light from below street level. He follows. The door is just ajar. He peers through the gap and sees the crowd, gathered around a tiny stage with just enough room for a piano.

  On the piano top is a single red rose.
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  Memory paralyses him. In an instant, Vikram is transported back to the Rose Soirée, less than a year ago, in the City. He can see the languorous figure of Adelaide Mystik leaning against the piano in her dark scarlet dress, surrounded by fawning acolytes. The scent of roses is everywhere, thick and sweet and cloying. You can’t escape it.

  For a moment it is difficult to breathe.

  Some mornings, in that ephemeral time between sleep and full consciousness, he can picture a world where she is still alive. In this world she is in hiding, biding her time, or perhaps even happy with her lot, glad to be alive. He can picture her in his old room in the west, with ice frozen over the window, her red hair covering her face for added warmth. He can picture her breath misting in the cold air. At first he tried to exorcize these half-dreams, but now he clings to them, drawing the fantasy out. Soon enough the moment comes where he is awake, and he knows, without question, that Adelaide is dead.

  The rose is there. The piano is there. They are real, solid things. A young man is perched on the stool, riffing on the black and white keys. People. Just people. People drinking and talking. Spanish. A language new and old. He understands snippets of conversation. It is warm inside. The room invites him.

  He pushes the door open and slips through. People adjust to make room for him. People are laughing and smiling, clinking glasses. They do not look like the city is in quarantine. They do not look like the city is plagued by redfleur, or in the middle of a war.

  He looks about for the kids he followed, but cannot spot them.

  The pianist finishes with a flourish, stands and bows. Applause. He exits. A woman comes onstage. She raises her voice, speaking over the chattering crowd.

  ‘And now, we have a brand-new act. She’s never played the circuit before, but I can promise you, she’s something special. And don’t forget, we’re broadcasting, so please keep your voices down. Now, for the very first time, please welcome to the stage Pilar y el Loro!’

  El loro, he thinks. The parrot. An animal of the Nazca, like the girl from Bijou’s told him.