Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  Vikram drops silently to the ground and follows her.

  Mig waits until Vikram has left the cabin and then he goes inside and finds the Osirian’s pack and retrieves the gun. He holds it in both hands, getting used to the weight and heft of it, the strange rounded contours, the coldness of the steel that slowly warms within his hands. With the weapon finally in his grasp he feels a flood of relief and triumph, even as he notices his fingers are trembling. But that’s all right. It’s all right to be scared. He always told his crew that. It means you’re ready. Once the barrel of this thing is up against the Alaskan’s head, he won’t be trembling any more. He rests one finger lightly on the trigger.

  Now is the moment.

  The Alaskan sleeps in the other cabin. Mig knows she was unarmed when she entered the camp because all of her belongings were searched, and they confiscated the pistol she used to keep under her pillow in Cataveiro. But he wouldn’t put it past her to have secreted a knife, or some other implement, into her possession since she has been living in the camp. Nor does he doubt that the Alaskan has other things, things Vikram’s people wouldn’t have spotted, wouldn’t have known to look for, things which are fatal. Mig will remain at arm’s length, and ensure the Alaskan keeps her hands within his sight. If all else fails, he has the rope in his pocket. He hopes he won’t have to use this. The gun will be quicker.

  As he approaches the cabin he rehearses his opening line. She may scream for help, so he won’t have much time. But it doesn’t matter if they all come running. It only takes a second to shoot someone. The freak is lucky. She’ll die fast. It wouldn’t have been like that for Pilar. His parrot girl had a slow, agonizing death. She was alone. There was no one there to hold her hand.

  Pilar’s dead because of you.

  He’ll begin with that.

  You killed her.

  In the forest gloom Vikram can barely make out the outline of Shri Nayar, but despite her efforts to keep quiet, she’s making more noise than he. They can’t have country like this in Antarctica, or at least, she’s never had to move through it in silence, in the dark. Shri is fumbling with something in her hands, something too small to see. Vikram moves closer. He sees a minute speck of light between her cupped hands. Realization floods him.

  He sprints forwards. She looks up, startled, but reacts too late. Vikram knocks her hands apart, grabbing her around the waist with one arm, and clamping his other hand over her mouth. Shri struggles in his grip, kicking out and biting at his hand. Whatever she was holding has fallen to the floor, and the light has gone out. Vikram drags her awkwardly back through the trees, swearing under his breath. He can feel her shaking with suppressed shouts.

  A sentry comes running as he enters the clearing, quickly followed by another. Vikram relinquishes Shri into their care.

  ‘Get her inside the cabin, and keep her quiet! And find the other one, Ivra – he may be involved.’

  Shri Nayar continues to struggle as the sentries haul her across the camp. The disturbance has woken more than one person. Vikram follows the sentries inside before anyone can ask him questions and closes the door.

  ‘What the hell were you doing out there?’

  The woman is breathing heavily. She looks at him with fierce, accusing eyes. One of the sentries is binding her to the chair.

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything.’

  ‘You snuck out of the camp. I saw you. What were you doing?’

  ‘As if I’d tell you,’ she sneers.

  Vikram draws up a chair and sits facing her.

  ‘Don’t make me ask again.’

  ‘Are you going to interrogate me? Torture me? What would your precious followers make of that?’

  ‘If you’ve threatened this camp, there isn’t a soul here who’ll lift a finger to save you. Now you’re going to tell me – what were you doing out there in the forest?’

  She glares at him defiantly.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Have you betrayed us?’

  ‘Why did my partner die? Tell me that. Tell me what happened to Taeo!’

  ‘Your partner was an opium addict.’

  He sees her wince. ‘Show me your hands.’

  The sentry forces her to place them on her lap, fingers splayed. On the fingernail of her right index finger, Vikram sees a slight stickiness, like a residual glue.

  Outside he can hear a commotion. Quick footsteps followed by a banging at the door.

  ‘Vikram – you’d better come – it’s the Alaskan—’

  He swears.

  ‘Keep her here! And search the forest floor where I found her – you’re looking for something robotic. Something very small, as small as a fingernail.’

  Mig eases open the Alaskan’s cabin door and pushes it gently, silently, shut. It’s dark. Her breathing is shallow and gurgling. As if there are things in her throat. Demons, he thinks. From all the people she’s had killed.

  The gun is solid in his hand. He takes a step towards the bunk. She breathes in and coughs. He freezes. He can hear her hacking, the phlegm sticking in her throat. Her breathing pauses. If she’d only choke herself to death he wouldn’t have to do this. Then it evens out. Regular. In. Out. In.

  He will need the torch to be sure of what he is doing. He’ll have to move quick.

  His own breathing is rapid now. He’s scared, horribly scared. What if she has powers he hasn’t yet witnessed? What if her nirvana mind can somehow overcome her spine and she’ll crawl from the bed, breaking out like a creature from a shell, seize a hold of his ankle—

  There’s no time for deliberation. He needs to act, now.

  He flicks on the torch, blinks in the light, stumbles to her bedside. The gun in his hand. The gun in his hand, rising, the barrel pointing, the muzzle of it, up against her temple.

  The Alaskan’s eyes snap open.

  Black. Pitiless. Soulless.

  Her lips part. Her jaws work, chewing, and then her gums bare in a grimace. He can smell the cloying sugar that she loves so much. It makes him gag.

  ‘Mig,’ she says.

  ‘You killed her.’

  ‘Who did I kill, Mig?’

  ‘You killed Pilar!’

  ‘I have no idea who Pilar is. Who is she, and why do you think I killed her?’

  ‘Stop it!’ He is trembling. ‘She’s dead because of you.’

  ‘Oh, she’s dead because of me? Because you said I killed her, before, and they’re not quite the same thing. Especially as I don’t even know who you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m talking about Pilar! My girl Pilar! Just because you never asked, you never cared. I didn’t tell you everything, you stupid freak.’

  There’s a power in using that word, a sense of victory, that swells up inside him. He says it again, with more force.

  ‘You fucking freak!’

  ‘I know, Mig. I know you had secrets. And yet I did so much for you. Didn’t I pay you well enough? Didn’t I let you run your crew, just as you liked, no questions asked? Didn’t I give you a life, Mig?’

  ‘Stop talking. Stop talking now!’

  ‘I can stop talking when I’m dead, I might as well talk while I’m not.’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘If you need to announce it, you’re not much of a killer. Not much of anything. A nothingness, Mig. A shrimp.’

  ‘I’ll do it!’

  ‘Then go on.’ The Alaskan grins at him. Yellow teeth in a dry mouth. Sugar smell, overpowering. ‘Go on then, shoot me.’

  Mig’s finger rests on the trigger. His arm is shaking so much he has to grip it with his other hand to steady himself. The muzzle of the gun knocks against the Alaskan’s slack skin. In the torchlight he can see the veins running across her forehead. The blood pulsing within them.

  She raises her voice.

  ‘Shoot me!’

  ‘You deserve to die,’ he says, shakily.

  The Alaskan grabs the pistol and pushes it into her mouth. Her lips work around the barrel.
<
br />   ‘Shoot – me.’

  He closes his eyes and pulls the trigger.

  Nothing happens.

  He pulls it again, eyes open. Nothing. What’s wrong with the gun?

  The Alaskan seizes his wrist and pulls the gun from her mouth, forcing his arm aside.

  ‘Nirvana!’ he gasps.

  ‘That’s no magic, boy. The gun’s all out of charge, as any amateur can tell.’

  She tugs on his wrist, pulling him closer to her. Her strength is terrifying. Her face is inches below his.

  ‘But now you’re a killer, Mig. Just like me!’

  ‘Stop saying my name!’ he howls.

  The Alaskan laughs. The sound of her laughter, cackling on and on, enrages Mig. His vision is blurry. She’s jerking on his arm, manipulating him like he’s a puppet. He can’t think straight. He can’t think! There’s still the rope. He can’t back out now. The rope – in his pocket—

  He lets her jerk one more time on his arm. In the moment her grip slackens, he pulls back with all the strength he has, and lets himself fall from the bed. She tumbles after him with a shriek. On the floor they tussle, but now Mig has the advantage – the Alaskan can’t move her legs, writhing on the floor like the squid he saw plucked from the nets in Fuego. He gets the rope. Her eyes widen. She shrieks.

  ‘Help! Help now!’

  She pushes at his chest with one hand. Her breathing is laboured. Mig stretches the rope across her neck and lets his weight lean in. The cords of her neck jerk and tighten.

  ‘You killed her,’ he whispers.

  The Alaskan gurgles.

  The door bursts open. Vikram runs inside, flanked by two camp members.

  ‘Mig, get away from her! Get away from her now!’

  Vikram, shouting.

  Mig pushes harder. She has to die. She has to.

  The Alaskan’s face is changing colour.

  Hands grab at Mig, pulling him away from his prize.

  ‘No! No, no, no!’

  The Alaskan draws in a sharp, ugly breath. She rubs at her throat, continuing to make those sounds. Mig can see where the abrasion of the rope has left its marks. His eyes mist over.

  ‘You see, Osirian,’ croaks the Alaskan. ‘You have a snake in your midst. He betrayed me – it’s no surprise that he would betray you too.’

  Vikram’s hand clenches on Mig’s shoulder.

  ‘What are you thinking? She’s our only way out of here, our only way back to Osiris!’

  ‘She killed Pilar.’

  ‘Pilar was infected days before she died! That’s how redfleur works. You know that, Mig. You know that.’

  He has never seen Vikram so angry. The man’s rage is like a force, rippling against him. He staggers back. He wants to crawl into the ground and die.

  The Osirian curses in his own language. Someone helps the Alaskan back onto the bed.

  ‘He broke my wrist,’ she says. Mig can see it, her hand bent at a horrible angle, the flesh swelling up. Somehow it is worse than seeing her dead.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ says Vikram. ‘Keep them apart. I need to find out what the fuck the Antarctican woman’s done.’

  Shri wriggles helplessly against the ropes. The more she wriggles, the tighter the bonds seem to become. Her allotted guards, people who have shown her kindness in the past couple of days, are looking at her as if she’s an abomination.

  ‘I’m not the one who’s abducted and trussed someone up in a chair!’ she says, but they look at one another blankly. They don’t speak Hindi. She says it again in Portuguese, Taeo’s language of the home. They ignore her, conversing in their own Spanish dialect, low-voiced and too quick for her to comprehend. They seem to be debating something. Now it’s she who doesn’t understand.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  She doesn’t know what to do. She’s angry and frightened and worse than that, she’s caught. It was meant to be simple – sneak out of the camp, activate the tracker, sneak back in, and go back to bed as if nothing had happened. Come morning the camp would be breaking up. Shri could go on her way, and no one would ever be the wiser. By the time her countryfolk moved in, she would be kilometres away, safe with the Antarcticans.

  She’s waited longer than she should have done to act. If she’d followed orders, the camp would have been exposed within hours of her arrival. Instead, she’s given them time.

  Vikram returns, his body rigid with fury. For a moment their gazes lock, each reassessing, adjusting to this new awareness of one another. When she left Antarctica he was one person: the man who had last seen her partner alive. The man who apologized. Now he is something else: a saviour, a piece of political dynamite, survivor of a disease which has the potential to wipe out every living person in the Boreal States. She wishes she had never seen these other faces.

  ‘I trusted you,’ he says. His voice is tight with compressed rage. She can see him struggling to maintain control. ‘I let you in. The people here, they trusted you too, because I asked them to.’

  ‘It’s stupid to trust people,’ she says dully. ‘They always let you down.’

  ‘Tell me what you’ve done.’

  ‘I waited,’ she says quietly.

  Vikram takes up the position he left, facing her.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was meant to do it as soon as I found you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Antarctican government sent me.’ The exhaustion she has felt for days returns in force. ‘I’m the bait,’ she says.

  Vikram looks at her. She senses his thoughts rippling beneath that scarred face, the growing comprehension of her position, and she hates him a little for it. It would be easier to be enemies. Gradually, the fury drops away from his face, leaving only sadness.

  ‘And Ivra? What about him?’

  ‘He knew why I was here. He didn’t know about the tracker.’

  ‘How long do we have?’

  ‘I don’t know. An hour? Hours? I don’t know how close they are.’

  Vikram stands, wipes his hand across his face, stops where he is. The others ask a question in Spanish. He responds. She sees the alarm spread across their faces. They stare at her in horror. Vikram gives an instruction and they leave at once.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asks.

  ‘Evacuate. Now.’

  But he doesn’t move immediately.

  ‘Can you untie me?’

  He does so without comment, but says, ‘You might be safer staying in here.’

  She assumes he means the other camp members. It occurs to her that Ivra, too, may no longer be on her side. The realization of danger to herself is sudden and shocking. She cannot orphan her children.

  ‘You said Taeo was an addict,’ she says.

  ‘He was.’ But she senses Vikram is no longer with her. He’s already thinking ahead. ‘He missed his home,’ he says. ‘Like I told you.’

  His hand drops. He moves with sudden decision. She watches as he throws a few things into a pack. He has a knife but no firearms. At the door he pauses.

  ‘If you’d told me the truth—’

  He appears to collect himself. He shakes his head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Keep your head down.’

  And then he’s gone.

  The camp has descended into pandemonium. All about him, people move in a frenzy, rushing to strike their tents and gather up belongings in the dark, only switching on the torches for brief moments of visibility. Those who have just woken run up to Vikram.

  ‘What should we do? Where do we go?’

  ‘Go into the forest,’ he tells them. ‘Get as far as you can from here and hide. Get off the island if you can. Take the boats. You know where they are.’

  Some disperse at once. Others linger, worried, frightened, seeking reassurance. He repeats his words, trying to stay calm, to fight a feeling of rising panic. He’s fucked up. He’s fucked up. One person, that was all it took. One person to flatter him. He’s fallen victim to his own guilt.


  ‘Go,’ he urges them. ‘Now, quickly. Get away. We don’t know how long we’ve got.’

  Those who are due to make the journey to Osiris gather round. He tells them to fetch the Alaskan and make for the meeting point. They’ll have to carry her; it’s the quickest way. Mig isn’t with the party. They tell him the boy ran off after he tried to murder the Alaskan. Vikram works his way through the camp, waylaid at every step, shouting for the boy.

  Then he hears it.

  A low, droning sound passes overhead. Like the wings of an insect, multiplied a thousand-fold. He freezes.

  There is a moment’s respite and then the droning thing makes a second sweep.

  Bright lights burst overhead, breaking through the canopy of the forest to illuminate the camp in dazzling shafts. It’s some kind of machinery, flying at speed, exposing their camp, exposing the clearing, the cabins and tents, the people, paralysed with shock.

  ‘Run!’ he bellows.

  Those who remain scatter. Vikram runs from one side of the camp to the next, desperately searching for Mig. He can’t see the boy anywhere. The lights sweep overhead. People lurch in and out of the shadows, running. He can’t tell if they’re his own people or hostiles.

  ‘Mig! Mig, where are you?!’

  The drones pass over again.

  ‘Mig!’

  He draws a breath and inhales something bitter. He starts to cough. At the next sweep of light he sees a yellowish mist is creeping through the camp. The Antarcticans have dropped something.

  He runs in the opposite direction. The gas is making him tight-chested. His eyes are streaming and disorientation is setting in. Strange shapes move in front of his vision. A figure rushes past, screaming, he can’t see who, too tall for the boy.

  It’s the gas. There’s something in the gas.

  ‘Mig!’ he shouts hoarsely. ‘Mig! Mig, where are you? Mig!’

  The gas is spreading, billowing outwards like smoke. He can’t go into it. He has to move away. He can’t see anyone now. His chest burns. He’s on the wrong side of the camp to the Alaskan’s cabin. He doesn’t know if the Osiris party got her out in time. He moves into the trees and as he does he hears the crack of a shot striking against something, the cabin, or the trunk of a tree.