by E. J. Swift
It’s strange. The idea of his dying here is entirely possible, even, if the scales have tipped, probable – but he cannot consider it seriously. He cannot believe it could actually happen, that the world could continue without him in it. Perhaps, he thinks, because I have so little to leave behind. Perhaps he should make a promise.
If I live – if I live I’ll—
He doesn’t know.
He’s humming again. He realizes the singing was not a part of his dream – or it might have been, but it is still resounding, the sound coming from outside, voices drifting up from the waterways.
Karis goes to the window-wall of his room and without turning on a light, switches the glass to clear. In the waterway below, a procession is passing. Hundreds of boats move slowly through the water. At the prow of each boat stands an Osirian woman, clad in white, hooded robes and holding aloft a torch. Others on accompanying boats hold images, or have their heads bowed in weeping. The larger boats are towing flat barges or rafts ablaze with fire. Through the flames, Karis glimpses the pale cloth of shrouds piled high upon the rafts, and he realizes that what he is witnessing is a mass funeral.
The Osirians are singing as they bear their dead through the city. Their voices rise, sometimes in unison, sometimes fractured by a lone note, projecting high or low through the throng. The singing makes Karis’s hair stand on end. With each suspended note he feels as though the music is burrowing deeper into his head. Now he can hear his mother’s voice, joining them, singing the funeral song of the Osirians. Why? he wants to ask her. But she just sings and smiles and sings. He wants to turn away and darken the glass, but he cannot. He watches, waiting for the boats to pass and the procession to end. But the boats keep coming.
PART EIGHT
NIRVANA
PATAGONIA
MIG WAKES IN a fit of coughing. His throat is raw and pulpy, like someone’s mashed it with a fork, and when he opens his eyes they sting as if he’s been rubbing lemon juice into the rims. He blinks. The sky shifts overhead, thick with congealing cloud. Branches of a tree, waving. Sky. Trees. He’s outside. He’s – where the fuck is he? He can’t remember anything. His brain has turned to soup, dislocated images floating around in it, rising to the surface and sinking back before he can grab at them. He closes his sore eyes and tries to swallow back the coughing. The ground beneath him is earth.
The camp.
It’s coming back. The Alaskan, on the cabin floor, her throat exposed beneath the rope – Vikram’s face tight with rage at what Mig had done, had tried to do – camp members, scattering into the forest, screaming. Mig running, someone shouting his name, the sudden bulk of a Tarkie in front of him – and then the gas, and in the gas everything got mixed up again – the Alaskan, the gun against her head – the Alaskan, who he came so close to killing – the Alaskan—
‘Mig. You’re awake.’
He freezes. The voice is the Alaskan’s. Very low, but unmistakably hers, coming from somewhere above his head.
‘Don’t move. Just tell me if you are awake.’
‘I’m awake,’ he whispers.
The light between the treetops is so horribly bright, even through the backs of his eyelids. The voice continues, like an ant crawling along his forehead. Or is there an ant? Yes, it’s an actual ant.
‘This is how things stand, Mig. I can, if I choose to, get us out of here with our bones and our fingernails intact. No, don’t open your eyes – not yet. Don’t let me know that you can hear me. Don’t move. That’s the first road you can take. I get us out and you stay with me, Mig. You help me. Then again, I can also get myself out of here alone and leave you to the mercy of the Antarcticans. You know a lot, Mig. More than anyone else here, perhaps. You know about our Osirian friend. I suggest the former. What’s it to be?’
He squints his eyes half open, and takes a quick scan of the periphery of his vision. Sees people, close by. Sitting and standing. Sees guards, armed and foreign. Sees the tall heads of trees that border the clearing. Sees a tail of smoke. Sees the wheel of a chair, a pair of shoes, the toes angled towards one another. He stays where he is, curled up. He doesn’t look at her face.
‘I’ll help you,’ he mutters.
‘Good. Then I will help you.’
He sees the chair turn and wheel one-handed through the mass of bodies, the chair pushing aside inert forms, the arm of the Alaskan reaching down to move a limb out of her way, ignoring the calls of the Tarkie guards to desist. At last one of them comes over to help clear a path, evidently realizing what Mig could have told them for a handful of peso: the Alaskan will not be deterred. Mig realizes that not all of the prisoners (for that is clearly what they are, him, the Alaskan, all of them) have regained consciousness. Typical of the Alaskan to recover first. Her lungs are probably immune to that poisonous shit.
Still feigning unconsciousness, Mig does a quick head count. Perhaps half of the camp are here, corralled together and ring-fenced by armed Tarkie guards. The Tarkies wear fatigues that blend in with the forest. At times the cloth seems to ripple, making them difficult to see and giving Mig an unpleasant, dizzy sensation. Some of the bastards are taking advantage of the camp’s stockpiles of food, enjoying a nice meal on the back of their attack. Mig imagines pissing on the food. He’d like to watch their faces contort as the ammonia hits their tongues.
There is no sign of the strange flying machines that gassed them in the middle of the night, but towards the perimeter of the clearing Mig notes the hump of bodies, covered over, but undeniably human-shaped. The sight turns him cold. Some of the camp members might have escaped. Some of them won’t ever be leaving this place. After seeing those bodies he doesn’t want to look at the rest of the prisoners, doesn’t want to work out who’s missing. It’s like Cataveiro all over again.
A familiar sound, a door creaking open, alerts Mig. Slowly, furtively, he directs his attention to the cabin where Vikram used to sleep. A woman stumbles out. Her face is scrunched and tear-stained. Mig recognizes her at once. It’s the doctor from Titicaca. It was Mig’s job to bring her here when she first came looking for them. He brought most of them here, blindfolded and desperate, and after a time the desperation receded from their eyes and was replaced with something else. Something like acceptance. But now that, too, has been extinguished from the doctor’s face. Mig can’t tell if she has been hurt. In the doorway is a Tarkie in fatigues and boots with an angular, uncompromising face. The kind of face worn by guerrilla warriors during an impromptu raid of Cataveiro. A face that sees a prize and blinds itself to any distractions on the path to acquire it, including pain and death. It seems to Mig that there must be unscrupulous bastards everywhere in the world, but the southernmost continent seems to have a particularly high concentration.
The Tarkie officer’s eyes follow the doctor as she is shepherded back to the group of prisoners, but are quickly diverted by the Alaskan, wheeling determinedly towards the cabin. Her presence seems to have paralysed the Tarkies. Perhaps the freak has cast a spell on them.
It is only then that Mig registers that Vikram is nowhere is sight.
What happened to the Osirian? Have the Antarcticans got him? Are they torturing him? Or did he get out before the gas? And if he did, what does that mean for Mig, stuck here with the woman he tried to kill?
He watches as the Alaskan wheels herself inside the cabin, dismissing an offer of assistance with one scornful hand. Her other wrist dangles uselessly. The flesh is bruised and unnaturally swollen. Mig’s doing. He should feel good about the damage he has inflicted but he only feels sick. He’s let down Vikram, again, not that it should matter or he should care.
With a lurch of dread, Mig realizes that his fate now rests with the nirvana. He doesn’t doubt she can get them out, although – uneasily, he breathes in the odour of anxious, perspiring bodies – these people won’t last five minutes under interrogation. They are idealists, not guerrillas, or even hardened street rats like Mig’s old crew. One of them is bound to snitch to the
Tarkies. All they have to say is that Mig knew Vikram well, he was close to the Osirian – and then Mig will be screwed.
It starts to rain. The prisoners who remained unconscious until now begin to revive, coughing and groaning, their red-rimmed eyes flickering open with the same disorientation Mig experienced earlier. They huddle together. He can hear the doctor relaying in broken murmurs the story of whatever happened inside the cabin to a group of other prisoners, until one of the Tarkie guards comes over and tells her in Portuguese to keep her mouth shut. Mig is suddenly certain that Vikram has escaped. Why else would the Tarkies still be here? They don’t give a shit about Patagonians. They’re only interested in the Osirian.
The thought doesn’t bring him any comfort. He lies on one side, feeling the rain sinking into his clothes, wetting his feet in their sandals. At least it’s some relief for his eyes. He has no desire to speak to any of the other camp members. Whatever it was that they made here, it’s been crushed.
The ground beneath the prisoners is growing muddy. How long has the Alaskan been in there now? What if she can’t protect him? And why would she, after what happened last night?
Mig feels a warm flood of shame when he thinks about those brief few moments. Last night it all seemed so clear. What he had to do. Like a mission. A destiny. And this morning, he’s woken up to a different world, with different rules, and he doesn’t know how to play the game.
Mig frowns. There’s someone else who should be here, and isn’t. What happened to that bitch Tarkie who betrayed them? He can’t see the one she was travelling with, either. He knew they were trouble from the start. And he tried to warn Vikram, but Vikram wouldn’t listen…
The door to the cabin opens. The prisoners tense nervously. Mig waits for the Alaskan to emerge, but she doesn’t. Instead, a Tarkie guard is stepping through the prisoners, her eyes roving, moving from prisoner to prisoner until they alight upon Mig. Her hand reaches down towards his shoulder.
‘Get off me!’ Mig snaps.
The Tarkie straightens. She jerks her head towards the cabin. Her eyes are cold, indifferent. Mig thinks again: they don’t give a shit about us, and fear envelops him. He gets to his feet before she can try and yank him up again.
Inside the cabin are the Alaskan, the Tarkie officer who seems to be in charge, and a second Tarkie officer, presumably subordinate to the first.
‘This is the boy?’ says the first officer, speaking in Portuguese. He is sitting at the table where Vikram used to sit. Vikram’s map is still there, spread out across the tabletop, the paper marked with little dots which show the places the camp members came from. The dots reach as far north as Titicaca.
‘This is him,’ replies the Alaskan. Mig glares at her. Now she’s turned him in?
‘Sit down, Mig, I’m trying to help you,’ she says. Mig detects a hint of impatience, quickly smoothed over. Resentfully, he sits. A quick look about the room tells him the map is not the only thing Vikram left behind. He was in a hurry.
‘Tell the Antarctican what you know,’ says the Alaskan. He gapes at her. Is she insane?
‘Tell him how you met the Osirian, and how long you’ve been here, and how the Osirian got away.’
Mig checks again but the Alaskan isn’t joking. She wants him to do this. Her black nirvana eyes focus on him and Mig reminds himself: the Alaskan is far from stupid. She must have her reasons. He hopes to hell she’s got both their interests at stake.
He tells the tale as briefly as he can. The Tarkie asks a few questions, but for the most part allows him to continue uninterrupted. The other one is listening closely. At the end of it, the Tarkie in charge says,
‘Where is he now?’
‘How should I know? He was meant to meet the pirate.’
‘This is El Tiburón?’
Mig nods. The two Tarkies say something in their own language and Mig looks at the Alaskan, trying to work out what’s going on. The Alaskan appears unflustered. Mig gives up.
‘And where was the meet point?’
Mig names the coordinates where they met El Tiburón.
‘Your stories corroborate,’ says the Tarkie officer. ‘But I’m afraid we can’t let the boy go.’
‘The boy was part of the deal,’ says the Alaskan sharply.
‘He is also the closest party to the man we are seeking.’
Mig looks frantically to the Alaskan.
‘You said you’d get me out!’
She gives him a silencing look but Mig is only aware of the two Tarkies, their faces as cold as their icy country, and he thinks of the stories of what they do to pirates caught in Antarctican waters, the way they are executed, the rumours of pirates suspended half underwater with bleeding feet to attract the fish, and the sharks.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong! This is my country and you’ve attacked us! You’re the ones who are in the wrong! You’re murderers!’
‘Mig—’
‘You’ve killed people!’ shouts Mig. ‘I saw the bodies!’
There is a rap at the door and someone enters the cabin behind them. The first officer looks up, frowning at the interruption. A brief exchange fires over Mig’s head. The Tarkies look first disappointed, then perturbed. The two officers move behind Mig and the Alaskan to convene with the newcomer at the door.
Mig looks to the Alaskan, agitated.
‘What did they say?’
‘They asked if the Osirian has been found. He has not,’ she replies.
The Tarkie officer comes back to the table.
‘You can go,’ he says.
‘Something’s happened?’ asks the Alaskan.
The Tarkie doesn’t reply. He is distracted.
‘Let me guess,’ says the Alaskan, folding her arms. ‘The Boreals have invaded the city of Osiris.’
The Tarkie stares at her. So does Mig, utterly confused. She’s talking about the war again. He never used to believe it but with the position they’re in right now, he has a nasty feeling she’s been right all along.
‘Who told you that?’ says the Tarkie sharply.
The Alaskan shrugs.
‘Just a hunch. And not a difficult one – it’s been on the cards for the last month. So now you’ll be heading that way yourselves, I assume?’
The Tarkie and the Alaskan face each other for what seems like an infinite amount of time. Mig squirms in his seat. He can sense the balance of power switching between them like a set of juggling balls. He wants desperately to run away, but to divert attention to himself in this moment would be cataclysmic.
At last the Tarkie speaks.
‘You should be careful, old woman.’
‘Take us to Fuego Town,’ says the Alaskan.
There is a long, strained pause before the Tarkie nods.
Mig understands that a transaction has taken place but he doesn’t understand what it is or how it has been achieved or, more importantly, what it means for him. On their way out of the cabin he snatches up Vikram’s little box of salt which the Osirian always kept with him. The Tarkie officer frowns, but lets him take it. Outside it’s still raining. The Tarkie soldiers are already on the move, pulling on their jackets, their packs and helmets. They melt away into the woods. The prisoners mill, surprised and suspicious at their abrupt release.
The officer barks orders to the remaining Tarkies. Mig and the Alaskan watch.
‘Why did you tell them about El Tiburón?’ asks Mig.
‘Because they’ll never find him,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Have you ever wondered, Mig, how El Tiburón has evaded capture for so long? That pirate has enough Boreal shit on his ship to ensure several lifetimes of executions. You might as well look for a ghost.’
They are not the only ones who have secured passage to Fuego Town. Mig spies the Tarkie woman, the one who betrayed them, sitting by the cabin windows, watching the islands slip by. Motionless. He positions himself nearby, though not too near, because there are enough Tarkie soldiers around eyeballing him with intent. It’s only after he’s been
standing there a good five minutes that the Tarkie woman notices him. She starts.
‘Fuck.’ Recovering, she glares at him. ‘What are you doing, creeping up like that?’ she says in Portuguese. Mig bristles.
‘You know, we were fine until you came along. Why did you have to fuck everything up?’
Shri Nayar ignores the question.
‘How old are you, thirteen, fourteen?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Mig. Which is the truth, and shouldn’t matter, though somehow the question stings and he’s annoyed with himself for answering.
‘You must be a couple of years older than my daughter. Kadi. She’s the eldest. A good kid.’
‘Why do I care about her?’
She shrugs. ‘It’s an observation.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘No,’ she says. He waits, but there’s nothing immediately forthcoming. Then she says, ‘You were in Cataveiro, weren’t you?’
‘I live there.’
Which used to be true.
‘What’s it like?’
What’s it like? That’s an impossible question, a stupid question. But now she’s the one waiting, apparently oblivious to the possibility that he might not answer, might not want to engage in casual chat with the person who betrayed the camp. Somehow he finds himself relating the story of the juggler, The Great Cataveiro, who played with air and gravity until the day he failed to catch something, which was his last day on this earth, thanks to a fool’s bargain. There’s a river, he tells her, where the jugglers work today. There’s bicycles, there’s trams, there’s a station called Sabado where an angel lived, though he doesn’t tell her that the angel had a name, and the name was Pilar. And there’s music – but no, he can’t be bothered getting into that. He’ll be here all day.
She sucks it all up eagerly.
‘Do you love it, the city? It sounds like you do.’