Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  Ramona rips off the headset and hurls it from her. She clamps a hand over her mouth, retching, the bile corrosive against her teeth. Boreals and their robotics. Whatever it is, she’s already seen enough.

  The other stowaway finds her while she’s loading up the handler’s rifle. It must be the torchlight that gives her away – with only two of them creeping about in this part of the ship, the light would have drawn him. Ramona moves to hide the gun but it doesn’t matter: the man’s eyes are wide and crazed, he’s not interested in what she’s found. He says he’s located the crate.

  She follows him through the underbelly of the ship up into the container cells. Already she has a bad feeling about this, and when they reach the crate, her fears only intensify. He shows her the hatch.

  ‘You see – it needs two of us.’

  She helps him to lever it open. When a crack appears she hears the hiss of air escaping – and with it a smell, something rotten and pungent. Something bad.

  ‘Oh god,’ the man is saying, loudly, too loudly. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god—

  Cold with apprehension, Ramona shines her flashlight through the narrow aperture. The light falls upon figures, adults and children, balled or clinging together. Limbs entangled, features rigid in some last contortion – a prayer, a curse. Skin a colour skin should not be, a greenish hue creeping in. The fingernails of the adults are broken and bloody where they have tried to open the hatch. Their enabler lied, or something went wrong with the lock.

  It could have been Ramona.

  Close it up for god’s sake close it up.

  She pushes the hatch closed, sealing them back into their tomb. A part of her numb with anger.

  Who brings their children—

  The other part raging with despair.

  How far must you be gone to—

  She thinks of the north, the Boreals whose infinite wealth fuels this shipping route by stripping an impoverished country of its sole valuable resource, who have need of nothing except a window on the south and its unaccounted people.

  What were they thinking, those unfortunates in the crate? What were they hoping for from a life north of the belt? Did they expect to find kindness there? Because the Boreals show no kindness, no mercy that she can see.

  You have some things to answer for.

  They get away with it, she thinks. They’re answerable to no one except their own insatiable greed. They get away with everything.

  The stowaway man is rocking back and forth, groaning. As his sobs escalate, Ramona’s anxiety deepens. She cannot afford discovery, not now, when every day is a step closer to the halfway house and the plane.

  ‘Come on.’ She tugs at his shoulder. ‘Come on, there’s nothing you can do.’

  He looks at her, utter desolation in his eyes. He moves suddenly, and begins to scale the side of the crates with an agility she had not expected, manoeuvring himself up and between them, clambering gecko-like from crate to crate. Ramona watches, helpless, knowing even if there were something she could do, it is not her place to. The man’s life is his own to do what he wishes with, to discard if he feels fit. When he reaches the top she sees his figure in relief, a black shadow against the pale ribbon of sky, before he disappears from her sight. She doesn’t need to hear the splash to know what happens next.

  In a dreadful way it is a relief. Nothing she could do or say could ever assuage his grief, and she does not like to think what else he might have done.

  Ramona has lost weight. It’s not surprising, really – the stint in the desert, followed by her all-too-brief recuperation in Panama, and now she’s probably sweating off what’s left of her physique. But with her newly shorn head, she has to hope no one will notice the handler’s trousers are cinched a few notches tighter at the waist.

  The first time she makes her way up through the decks of the ship her heart is pumping so fast she feels light-headed.

  Just once a day, she reminds herself. Just for appearance.

  A crewman approaches. Ramona holds her breath, then pushes it out, forcing herself to breathe naturally. Hold your head high – don’t look at him – he’s not looking at you. He’s close now. Just keep walking.

  The crewman seems to suck himself to the wall as he passes, avoiding any possibility of contact.

  Ramona’s vision is spotted. From here she doesn’t know the way. From here, it’s guesswork.

  She keeps walking. Passes a canteen. Several crew members are eating breakfast. The smell of coffee meets her nostrils. A moment later it hits her stomach and she feels woozy again. Keep walking. A crewwoman passes her, averting her eyes over Ramona’s shoulder.

  She reaches the washrooms. There is another woman in there but when Ramona enters she departs immediately. Ramona goes into a cubicle, shuts the door and locks it. There’s a shower. She finds the switch, turns it on and strips off her clothes. Her legs seem too weak to hold her; she crouches under the running water and masked by the sound she starts to cry, her whole body shaking. There is no timer on the shower. The water runs on and on, sluicing off her skin in sheets, and the wanton excess of it only serves to intensify her rage.

  She pulls herself together. A box on the wall dispenses soap. She washes her newly cropped hair and dresses and goes back the way she came, barefoot.

  Later that day they hit storms and the ship comes to a frustrating halt. In their weakened state, the prisoners are badly affected by the rolling motion, vomiting until there is nothing left to evacuate, and even Ramona feels ill. The handler is also in a poor state. There is a strong stench of urine. The woman has pissed herself.

  Ramona switches on the torch. The handler flinches. Ramona gives her water. Some of it dribbles down the handler’s swollen face.

  ‘Listen to me. It’s time to decide what happens to you. Are you listening?’

  The handler’s eyes peel open. She nods.

  ‘Option one. I kill you now. Option two. I swap you out for one of your batch, and you can face whatever happens to these people on the inside. You’re wondering how I’ll get away with that one. Well, to be honest, it probably wouldn’t work, but more importantly, I don’t think your employers are going to think much of a handler who’s coming in as one of the batch, do you? So they’ll probably sign you up with the rest, regardless of what happens to me.’

  The handler’s eyelashes flicker, and again Ramona sees that trace of primitive fear. The handler does not want to go inside the compound.

  ‘Option three: I think you’ll agree this is the best pathway for both of us. When the time comes, I let you go, and you continue in your role as if nothing has happened. You smuggle me in with the batch. I’ll be armed, of course, and you won’t be, because I can’t trust you not to turn on me. So I’ll have a gun on your back all the way. But if you get me on board that plane, I swear I won’t hurt you, despite what you’ve done. I’ll let you go. What do you say?’

  The handler’s lips work, but no sound comes out. Ramona brings the water flask to her mouth. The handler sips slowly. She tries again.

  ‘What are you going to do with the plane?’

  ‘Did I mention I’m a pilot?’

  The handler looks at her with resigned animosity.

  ‘Doesn’t seem like much of a choice.’

  ‘No,’ Ramona agrees. ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good. Now tell me about the plane. Who else is on board?’

  ‘Just the pilot and the co-pilot.’

  ‘Do they see you coming on board? Do they count your batch?’

  ‘They’re in the fucking cockpit,’ says the handler.

  ‘But do you interact with them?’

  ‘Not unless there’s a storm, and we’re grounded. No one knows anyone else. No one sees anything. That way no one can recognize you.’

  ‘The pilots don’t know who you are?’

  The handler hesitates. Ramona tips the water bottle, allowing a few precious mouthfuls to dribble onto the floor between them.<
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  ‘If you betray me, I will kill you. That may mean I end up dead too, but then we’ll both be dead, and that doesn’t help anyone, does it?’

  ‘They know my face,’ admits the handler.

  ‘Walk me through it. I want to hear every detail.’

  For six days the ship remains grounded by storms. Ramona is terrified someone will come and check on the prisoners, but no one appears. Each day she takes their waste upstairs, showers and washes her hair. Each day she takes a ration of food and water to the handler, and watches the woman gobble up the food like a rat while Ramona fights back her own self-loathing.

  ‘What could the Boreals possibly offer to make you do this?’ she asks on one visit.

  ‘I like their lifestyle,’ comes the reply.

  ‘Their lifestyle? This?’

  The handler licks water from her upper lip.

  ‘Their stuff. Their robotics. Their country, one day.’

  ‘They don’t keep their promises. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘There’s more to life than Patagonia,’ says the handler.

  She worries about Inés too, but of all the prisoners her mother seems the least affected by seasickness. She says the jinn is the only one who has power over her stomach. What’s a storm at sea compared to that?

  Ramona is restless.

  ‘They can’t get away with this, Ma. Everything comes back to them. The poppy harvest. The jinn. This. No one stops them.’

  ‘When we take the plane home, you can tell your high-up friends,’ says her mother drowsily.

  ‘What friends? The Facility?’

  ‘These people you know. They can investigate.’

  ‘And what if it’s too late? What if we escape and the Boreals realize something’s wrong and they shut it all down?’

  ‘Then it’s shut down. And I can sit on my veranda until the jinn eats me up and I’m a dead woman and then you can sit on my veranda.’

  ‘They won’t stop taking people—’

  ‘Let it go, Ramona.’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’

  ‘Just drop it.’

  The storms pass. They recommence the slow crawl up the coast. She goes to fetch the handler and begins the process of unbinding her, cautious all the while as to the potential of a counter-attack. Ramona hands her back her trousers, a clean set of underwear and a top. When she steps back she keeps her gun trained on the woman.

  ‘You’ll have to change here.’

  She watches the woman’s movements closely, trying to ascertain whether the handler is as weak as she appears, or whether there is some greater deceit at work. Certainly, Ramona can’t imagine that anyone, however robust, would fare well after more than a week in the sweltering heat with barely enough water to stay alive. But the handler will have been chosen for this job for a reason. She’ll be resilient.

  ‘And by the way,’ she adds. ‘I’d behave if I were you. Those darts of yours – I’ve given them to the prisoners. You won’t want to upset them.’

  The handler gives her a look of hatred, but says nothing.

  As night falls and the hour approaches for the ship to make its appointed drop, the atmosphere in the compartment grows ever tenser. Ramona can sense it: the brittle nerves of the Patagonians, the brooding resentment of the handler. Whichever way she looks at what is to be done there is no good outcome. She came all this way to save her mother, but now she’s here, she faces a far worse dilemma. If she overpowers the pilots mid-flight, she could get them all away, and her mother out of danger, but then she will never know why the Patagonians were taken, or what is happening in the desert. There will be a short delay, while the break in the chain is identified and another handler found, and then the residents of the desert will start their raids and the whole cycle begins again.

  But if she does what she is thinking of doing, there’s no guarantee anyone will make it back.

  At last she senses the motion of the ship slowing. The engines wind down and quieten. The ship comes to a halt. Ramona nudges the handler, reminds her she has a gun on the woman.

  ‘No tricks.’

  The handler goes outside of the compartment and waits. Ramona shoulders her pack. In it she has the handler’s rifle, her knives and the dartgun. Her own handgun is concealed at her waistband. The other prisoners are carrying provisions of food and water, and each of them has a dart.

  ‘Stay with me, and act as you would with the handler.’ Ramona makes her tone as reassuring as she can. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

  It isn’t long before she hears footsteps approaching. No words are exchanged, but the handler comes to open up the compartment. At the other end of the narrow hold, she can see a crew member standing.

  ‘This way,’ says the handler. ‘You follow him.’

  The prisoners file out, Ramona at the back, keeping close behind Inés. All the way up to the deck of the ship she is intensely aware of the handler at her back, the woman’s snuffling through her broken nose, the measured pace of her step, the too-short distance between Ramona and the handler, which the handler could so quickly breach.

  When they reach the deck, the air is clean and blessedly cold on the back of her neck. After a few moments the thinly dressed prisoners start to shiver. They huddle together. Ramona puts a protective arm around her mother, keeping the gun shielded from view between them. We’re north, she thinks. We may be on the coast of a desert, but this side of the belt it’s midwinter, and the nights are bleak.

  The deck is deserted except for the crewman who brought them up. But across the water, Ramona can make out faint lights from a few isolated buildings on the shore. This must be the halfway house.

  The handler directs the prisoners into a boat lowered over the side. Ramona helps her mother struggle into the boat, half an eye on the handler, ready to counter any unexpected move. The handler climbs in after them, then the crewman. Ramona lets her hand rest at her side, where the gun is concealed, and makes sure the handler is aware of it. The crewman, at the head of the boat facing away, mutters an order and the boat is lowered until they hit the water with a soft splash.

  The crewman starts up the motor and steers the boat towards the shore. As they draw closer, Ramona counts the lights of three distinct buildings, set back and at some height above the waterfront. She guesses one of them is a small desalination plant. Now she can hear the shoreline, waves lapping against land. There is a landing stage marked by a single lantern.

  The boat moves steadily towards the stage. The prisoners, ostensibly roped together, sit in silence. What are they thinking? What if one of them panics and uses the darts?

  No doubt sensing her anxiety, Inés reaches back and squeezes Ramona’s hand. The contact gives her some comfort.

  The boat knocks against the landing stage. The handler jumps out.

  ‘Come on.’

  She tugs on the rope and one by one the prisoners climb awkwardly out, until they are all standing on the landing. The boat departs at once. Ramona hears the whine of the receding motor, but looking back, she can’t make out the outline of the ship at all.

  There is no sound from the buildings of the halfway house. No evidence of habitation.

  ‘This way,’ says the handler.

  She takes the lantern and leads them along the landing stage. And then Ramona sees a sight that despite everything about their predicament makes her heart lift.

  An aeroplane.

  It is much larger than Colibrí, built to carry passengers, rotund and sturdy-winged without the refined elegance of Ramona’s surveillance plane. It is nestling in the water, just offshore. A gangway extends from the fuselage across to the landing. The plane is waiting for them.

  The handler sets down the lantern at the bottom of the steps and they board the plane, still roped together, the handler following close behind.

  The prisoners take turns to keep watch on the handler through the night. Ramona is awake and alert at first light, the answer to her dilemma no clearer
than it was before she slept. She can hear the two pilots in the cockpit, both of them men, talking to one another, and although she cannot make out the exact words she guesses they are running through a pre-flight check. Inés has fallen asleep with her head resting on Ramona’s legs. Her breathing is shallow but steady. Ramona twists her upper body to try and see out of one of the small windows without disturbing her mother.

  Except for the buildings of the halfway house, the landscape she can see is flat and barren and entirely desolate. The remains of a road lead inland, and some way off she can make out the ruins of what must once have been a coastal town or city. An ashen light slowly lifts to a clear blue sky. She sees no signs of life.

  Opposite Ramona, the handler is also awake. Her expression is impossible to read.

  In the cockpit, one of the pilots is whistling. The other says something and he stops and they both laugh. Ramona bites down on her hatred. Her relief when she senses the aeroplane powering up is immense. If the pilots were to check the batch, she is certain she would stand out, and they’d have questions about the state of the handler too.

  The other prisoners wake with the movement of the plane gathering speed over the water surface. As they take off Ramona feels a peculiar lurch in her stomach. She isn’t used to being a passenger. The others peer through the windows, reporting on what they see, and the handler doesn’t bother to stop them. The coast is receding. There’s a huge desert! How huge? Endless. As far as you can see. To the end of the world. The small pleasure they take in the newness of flight is a source of both gladness and sorrow for Ramona.