by E. J. Swift
‘Ready?’ says Dien.
‘Don’t have a choice, do I?’
‘No.’
Dien jumps onto a keg to speak. Her introduction is quick and energetic. She has a natural way with a crowd.
Having caught the room’s attention, Dien gets down to business.
‘All right. I said I had a surprise for you. And here it is. Or rather, here she is.’
Adelaide senses the people surrounding her tense in anticipation. Fear stiffens her spine.
This is it.
She has a fleeting memory, of standing on a podium amid the old-world grandeur of the Council Chambers, beckoning Vikram to join her.
‘I present to you our new speaker for western rights – Adelaide Rechnov!’
Dien bends down and with a theatrical, if slightly clumsy gesture, whips the hat from Adelaide’s head.
There are a few moments of silence during which Adelaide feels the weight of scrutiny, her face under the lens of a magnifying glass, like never before. Then the room erupts. Dien’s people gather closely around her, forming a barrier between Adelaide and the crowd, crushing her. Voices are raised in uproar. Through the barrier of familiar bodies she feels the impact of strangers, lunging to get at her.
If they reach me, I’ll be crushed before anyone can even pull a knife.
She hears a glass shatter. She hears Dien shouting above the melee, telling everyone to calm down. Hands grasp at her, pulling her up onto the table. Whichever way it goes she will be exposed. Now she’s standing next to Dien, an easy target. Dien has taken up a defensive stance, using her body to shield Adelaide from assault. A splash of liquid catches Adelaide square in the face and splatters over both of them. She can taste the tartness of alcohol on her lips, shocking in its sudden intensity. Dien is shouting and gesticulating with both arms.
‘Shut up! Shut the fuck up and listen to what she has to say!’
She shouts into Adelaide’s ear.
‘Go on. Go on! You’ll just have to start.’
A glass flies overhead, narrowly missing both of their heads.
‘This is insane!’
Dien shrugs and ducks.
‘Do or die, Rechnov.’
Adelaide pulls out the piece of paper on which she had painstakingly written out her speech. She glances at it once, then screws the paper up into a ball. She gathers her breath.
‘I used to live over there, with those people.’
‘Louder,’ hisses Dien.
‘I used to live over there,’ she shouts. The room reacts with jeers, but others shush them. She says it a third time, quieter this time, forcing the volume of the room to lower, until an abrupt, ambivalent hush settles. The westerners watch her mistrustfully, accusingly.
‘I used to live over there. There was a man I knew, a westerner. His name was Vikram. For a while, he lived where I lived. But he was never at home there. You know what they call people who cross over – what we call them. Airlifts. And Vikram – he could never find a balance. He was torn between two places.’
She gathers the courage to let her gaze settle on individuals, forcing herself to meet their eyes. Some look away but others hold her gaze. These westerners. These westerners, who she does not know.
‘I understand now how he felt. I don’t belong there any more. I can’t go back. You’re wondering what I’m doing here when the o’dio says I’m dead. Well, I could tell you how but the only thing that matters is that I was rescued, by two of you. Two westerners, who were kind to me. Who didn’t know, or care, who I was. They only wanted to help. Only, I’ve realized I don’t belong here either. I don’t belong anywhere.’
The room has fallen silent, enough to hear the sound of the wind whining through the shutters, the distant blare of a waterbus horn.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ she says quietly. ‘My brother – my twin – he went mad. That’s the truth. I didn’t want to believe it but it’s what happened, he went mad, and he killed himself. I know, I know, I shouldn’t speak of it. We never speak about that. But it happened. He believed in horses. He heard them speaking to him. Sometimes I see them and I think I might be going mad too, and then I think, no. It’s just this place. This city. What it does to us.’
She wavers. Dien is at her side, nodding encouragingly. She remembers Vikram, his voice falling onto the ears of the Council, his confidence in the face of impossibility. Both their confidence, that they could make something happen. She cannot help glancing at the photograph on the wall.
‘I’m here today without any expectations. I can’t condone the things my family did. The things I did, without knowing. Or maybe I knew but I didn’t care enough to stop. It doesn’t really matter which, I did them. And to be honest with you, I’m here because I was blackmailed into being here.
‘But now that I am here, I realize I can do something. This city isn’t a fair place – but it could be. It could become what it was meant to be, a long time ago. I can help. I can’t give you much but I can give you my voice, if you’ll have it. I’ll fight for you. I’ll give you whatever I have left, because I owe it, to that man.’ She points at the photograph. ‘I owe it to Vikram Bai, who I loved, and never told. And I owe it to all of you.’
She gazes around.
‘That’s all I’ve got. There’s nothing else.’
In the ensuing silence, Adelaide senses the mood in the room teetering, tipped to go either way with the least bit of provocation. Has she done enough?
A woman with grey hair says, ‘Why have you brought her here, Dien?’
Dien answers the question directly.
‘Because we can use her.’ She glances at Adelaide. ‘And because, despite everything, I think she means what she says.’
The room divides into clusters of mutterings. Adelaide hears, quite distinctly, a voice saying, ‘We should just kill her now and be done with it.’ And someone else: ‘What about the prophecies? What if it’s her?’
Her life hangs now on her ability to act a part, or to tell the truth, or some convergence of the two.
She waits. Dien waits.
A man at the bar says, ‘You haven’t said you’re sorry.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. Of course I’m sorry. There’s a lot of things I regret, that I’d take back now if I could. But you can’t live a life like that. Or you’re no better off than a ghost.’ Even as she speaks, the truth of what she is saying sharpens its focus. This is how she has been living, and from here she too has a choice: a path is being offered to her. She looks at the grey-haired woman who first spoke. ‘Well, you have a choice as well. You can use me, or not.’
The room is pregnant with anticipation. Adelaide can hear the breath moving in and out of her lungs. In these moments, she still has her life. How could she have been so careless with it?
The grey-haired woman says, ‘I’m with them.’
Adelaide has made enough speeches in her life to know, in that moment, that she has won. It’s a bittersweet victory, the kind that is squeezed from ashes and tears, but it is a victory. A binding one. Dien meets her eyes. There is no hugging, no screams of exhilaration. Just a nod of acknowledgement from the other woman, which Adelaide translates as: You did all right.
One of Dien’s crew comes up and murmurs, just loud enough for Adelaide to hear.
‘That little eel Ren snuck out five minutes ago.’
Adelaide notes the shift in Dien’s expression.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means we’ve got about five minutes to get out of here.’
Dien jumps up onto her keg.
‘All right, people. There’s going to be a skadi raid in about five, that’s five minutes! So get the hell out of here unless you want to wake up feeling even worse tomorrow than you’re going to already!’
No one needs to be told twice. What was boisterous chaos is now a systematic evacuation as punters stream from the bar. As Dien puts a hand on Adelaide’s shoulder and steers her towards the exit, she sees hands tearing d
own the photographs from the wall, all of the west’s dissidents, faces gathered up and shoved unceremoniously into a folder. This was just an arena, a pop-up show. Outside, people are splitting, heading either upstairs or down.
‘We’ve got the boat,’ says Dien, directing them downwards.
‘Is there time – you said five minutes—’
‘There’s time. Anyway, you should always go the way they don’t expect.’
They cram into the lift with a dozen others and drop down through the tower in a series of juddering fits and starts. The raft racks are crammed with people unmooring their boats. Dien leaps into theirs and starts the motor. Adelaide scrambles in after her and Dien powers the boat away at once. Looking back, Adelaide can see other boats moving out, their wakes creating a star-like formation around the base of the tower, licks of white extending over the surface, before their makers duck away into darker corners of the west. For a few moments, the tower appears as dark and desolate as any other western building at night. The air still, the water lapping. Her breath in the arctic night. Then they hear the whine of approaching boats.
Skadi boats.
‘Right on time,’ says Dien with satisfaction.
Dien is relaxed at the wheel; they are well away now, the tower receding fast behind them. By the time the skadi reach the bar, all they will find is a deserted room with a few empty kegs, and the dregs of beer in tankards.
‘So, Rechnov,’ Dien shouts above the engine. ‘You ready to do it all again?’
‘Who’s Ren?’
‘A snitch. Don’t worry. We keep an eye on those people.’
‘Will it be like this every time?’
‘Worse, probably. Once they get wind something’s up.’ Dien glances back. ‘But you can handle it, right?’
Adelaide nods. The evening is sinking in on her now. As Dien steers expertly through the darkness, she hears again the jeers of the crowd, her voice against theirs. The outcome tonight was as fine as the edge of a blade, and the sense of danger, absent in the adrenaline of the moment, now crawls back to nuzzle at her throat.
When they reach Dien’s tower she gets out of the boat first, then waits for the others to catch up. As Dien approaches the tower entrance she calls out.
‘Hey, Dien?’
The woman turns. Adelaide takes a step towards her.
‘You don’t fucking threaten my friends.’
She swings hard and fast. At this range it’s impossible to miss; her fist connects with Dien’s nose with a satisfying crack. Dien staggers back, hand to her face, eyes wide with shock. When she takes her hand away, blood is dribbling from her nostrils.
Someone grabs Adelaide’s arms.
‘You little—’
‘No!’ snaps Dien. ‘This is between us.’
Adelaide feels her arms released. Her knuckles sting with the impact of the blow, but it’s a good pain, a welcome pain. Dien’s people move back, giving them space. Dien wipes her face and shakes droplets of blood from her hand. All of her focus is on Adelaide.
They move warily around one another. At the entrance to the tower and on the far side of the decking, Adelaide is aware of other, shadowy figures, watching the scene unfold.
Dien rushes her, left arm swinging. Adelaide lifts her arms to protect her head and Dien undercuts with her right fist. The blow hammers her stomach. It’s Adelaide’s turn to reel off balance, winded and gasping. She takes a few unsteady steps backwards before catching herself. Dien moves in, aiming a second punch. She ducks it, darts out of reach. At last she’s found a use for all those fencing classes, her feet moving nimbly over the decking as she recalls long-forgotten sequences.
‘Come on then,’ taunts Dien. ‘Rechnov.’
The use of her name is enough. They come together in a fury. Adelaide relishes the moment of impact. There’s no finesse, only passion as she implements every resource she has – fists, feet, teeth, nails – on whatever parts of Dien’s body are exposed. Dien’s headscarf comes off as she yanks at her hair, hearing it tear, bringing tears to the woman’s eyes. Next thing there’s a knee in the small of her back and she feels herself retch in response.
By the time they hit the floor, grappling and scrabbling like two rats in a pit, Adelaide knows she’s going to lose but she doesn’t care; it’s about pride now. All she wants is to inflict as much damage as she’s capable of. She lashes out indiscriminately and hears a yell of protest, knowing she connected with something tender. Then a blow to the temple sends her vision spinning. She collapses against the decking. Oxygen comes in sharp, jagged breaths. Everything hurts.
‘Are you done?’ pants Dien.
Adelaide squints upwards. She is grimly pleased to see Dien’s right eye is swelling viciously. She hopes she’s broken the woman’s nose.
Experimentally, she tries to move. Pain flares through her body.
‘I’m done.’
Dien digs into her pocket.
‘Take this. You’re going to need it.’
She throws something down. It’s a scarab. An old recalibrated model, undoubtedly stolen. Adelaide looks from the scarab to Dien, hair askew, face a bloody mess, and understands that this is an expression of trust.
From here, she knows, there is no going back.
PART TWO
LAST OF THE PENGUINS
PATAGONIA
THE OSIRIAN ATTACHES only one condition to their travelling together: he does not want to be seen. Under this understanding, Mig is the one who goes into the farms and negotiates for food and, on the few occasions when the Osirian agrees they need it, to scout for shelter. The Osirian prefers to stay in the open, regardless of rain or winds, and more than once the pair of them have sat out in the midst of a deluge with thunderclouds clashing overhead, spears of lightning illuminating the flat, miserable land, with Mig curled up soaked to the bones, shivering like he will never stop and cursing himself for throwing in his lot with this casual lunatic.
The storms crash around the valleys, the light a strange yellowish-brown that lifts in the moment the clouds roll away, peeling back like the skin of an orange to reveal clear skies and drenched, sparkling fields. The late spring sun burns the water from his clothes within minutes. Mig is suspicious of these abrupt transitions. It isn’t right. It wouldn’t happen in the city.
The Osirian, by contrast, seems unfazed, sitting with all the serenity of an acolyte of the Houses of the Nazca, watching the skies as though he was born to do nothing but sit beneath storms and observe their passing. Sometimes, when Mig is pretending to sleep, the Osirian opens his pack and takes out a mysterious object – a shiny black stone, about the size of Mig’s clenched fist, but it has no purpose that Mig can see – and sits there, puzzling over it. Mig wonders if having such a close encounter with death has scrambled the man’s brain.
Mig has never been outside of the city before. Without buildings, the world seems vast and achingly empty. He misses the narrow streets of Cataveiro, the way the city is always colliding with itself, the noise and the raw stink of it. He can’t feel at ease out here. The country is too exposed and there’s nowhere to hide, not from the elements, and not from whoever they are running from. Because however calm he might look on the outside, the Osirian – Vikram, as he says Mig should call him – is clearly on the run from someone.
It doesn’t matter to Mig who the hunters are. Nothing much matters now, only the terrible crater ripped into his chest by Pilar’s death. He could throw himself into the river and all of its stinking water wouldn’t be enough to fill that hole. He still has the green feather she gave him the first time they talked, a ragged bit of crap now, its fibres all stuck together with sweat and lint, but he could never get rid of it. In the day he walks with his hand in his pocket gripping the feather, and at night he holds it against his lips, as if there might be something left of Pilar in it, something to soothe the inescapable despair of knowing she is no more in the world.
With each step further south, Mig berates himself. He should
have looked for her sooner, that day. No – before that – from the second they heard the broadcast about the outbreak, he shouldn’t have let Pilar out of his sight. He should have told the Alaskan to go fuck herself. All those years in her service, running her errands, feeding her and cleaning her, and for what? While Mig and his gang of street kids put themselves at risk, the Alaskan lay on her back like a beetle, antennae twitching, stirring up shit from the safety of her attic. If it weren’t for that nirvana freak and her manipulative schemes…
He can’t suppress a shudder at the memory of their last conversation. A nirvana. What she is. Yes, it explains things – like her seeming omniscience, that almost abnormal intelligence that she loves to parade – and it’s not like Mig hadn’t suspected, but it’s different having it confirmed from the source. You can no longer pretend it doesn’t exist.
He nurtures his hatred carefully. It gives him something to focus on. Something that belongs to him and him alone. He doesn’t know if the Alaskan managed to avoid the epidemic but he would bet on it, he’d bet the last of his stash, the stash that was meant for him and Pilar, the two of them, their future – he’d bet every last peso of it that she’s still out there, alive and plotting. The freak is indestructible.
Well, if she is, she won’t remain so forever. He, Mig, will find a way to change that. The Alaskan isn’t the only one who can cook up a plan.
For now, he’s here with the Osirian. Vikram. It’s strange that the man behind the door has a name, after all this time. In his head, Mig still thinks of him as the Osirian. Sometimes he wonders what he’s doing with the man, feels even a little afraid of him – he is, after all, a man who should not exist – but it isn’t fear that keeps him at Vikram’s side, not that. He couldn’t say what it is, exactly. Only that he couldn’t remain where he was. Not in Cataveiro. Not where she died. And this man was going south, and Mig has never been south, and why not? Besides, there’s something about the Osirian, something – Mig can’t think of a better way to put it than special. He has a sense. A feeling in his gut. The little kids at the old warehouse would say that the jaguar has passed him by.