by E. J. Swift
Unnerved by the quietness of his companions, Mig goes to stand by a wall which is made entirely of window and taps the glass experimentally. It sounds like glass, tough and satisfying, and through it he marvels at the view. There are towers like nothing he has ever imagined, conical towers draped in greenery with shimmering tubes winding in and out of the towers like coral snakes, and when he looks down he can’t see the sea, or he sees something but it makes him dizzy just to look, never mind focus. When he looks up again he catches a glance of something perched like a statue on the tower opposite, something that might be Pilar’s spirit, there for a second then invisible again to the eye. Mig flattens his hand against the glass and puts his forehead against it too, staring at the tower’s peak, acknowledging that he’s seen her; he knows she’s here, looking out for him. Then he lets his gaze wander again and he sees a boat moving in the water, a long way down but fast, pleasingly fast, and Mig imagines himself on the boat with the wind in his face and everything that passes a blur. He likes the idea. He likes it a lot.
The Alaskan observes the boy goggling. It’s lucky for his sake she prepared him; if it weren’t for her telling him something about the world beyond Cataveiro his poor brain would have overloaded by now, he’d be catatonic with information. The rest of the party is certainly feeling the strain. The Alaskan assesses them critically and considers her options. Antarctican citizenship: yes, she’ll take it, if only as a safeguard, but Antarctica is almost too easy, too safe an option. The Alaskan can imagine life there. It will be comfortable, very comfortable, and she will have asylum, better protection than her own country ever offered, but she’ll always be a Boreal to them. Whereas here… Here it’s messy. There’s feuds and factions; it’s a city that does not yet know what it is or what it could become. Yes, the Alaskan can see that her particular set of skills could be put to use in Osiris. It’s only a shame she’ll never persuade the pilot to stay. It would have been nice, she muses, to have a private aircraft again.
Callejas herself is deep in thought. Troubled, thinks the Alaskan. She’ll always be troubled now, although in fact Ramona’s thoughts are with her mother, as she counts the hours in her head since Inés took the first patch. It’s only the second day of the course. It feels like she has been away for weeks. She cannot bear to think of her mother alone for a moment longer, or of the dreadful possibility that Inés might not be strong enough to endure the next twenty-eight days. As soon as the Solar Corporation leader has tied up the mess here, and she knows that Tamaruq is in someone else’s hands, she’ll be out of this strange city, and at Inés’s side, and she won’t leave her until the course is done. Whatever happens.
You just have to wait for me, Ma. I won’t be long now. I promise.
And then, my lucky one?
I don’t know, Ma. I don’t know. I don’t have a plan. I never did. Does anyone, really? Do these people in here? Do you?
But something tugs at her. Colibrí, in the Amazon Desert, the sun scorching on the broken fuselage, the soft piling dunes. She restored the plane once.
The sun moves and a stripe of morning light falls across Karis’s face, making him squint. When he glances across to the window-wall, where the boy is drawing shapes on the bufferglass, he sees the unmistakable shape of a fin to the east, slicing through the waterways, a severe and unflinching line as the shark heads towards the edge of the city, as though it wants to be witnessed leaving. Karis thinks of the Bokolu. He realizes with a jolt of regret that he will never finish that game. Even if he makes it back home, he can’t go back to Tua’pala. This, and other aspects of his life, will have changed too greatly. A part of him will always be left with the elusive Bokolu just in his sights, knowing the creature has met his eye, knowing they have seen one another, acknowledged one another, but unable either to advance or retreat.
When he looks back at the ocean, he can no longer make out the fin, and wonders if he imagined it after all. The shark is far away now; it passes the easternmost structure and dives. Building speed, it continues, out towards the ring-net, where the Atum Shelf drops away and the open waters beckon, deep and impenetrable. There is a still a gap. The shark slips through. Now there is a voice, an irresistible voice that sings of sleep and dreams to come, and with a flick of its tail, the shark is gone.
Sosanya returns. The mood in the room sharpens, immediately alert.
‘We have a ceasefire,’ she says. ‘Testings for immunity will commence as soon as the conditions are suitable.’ She looks around the table, acknowledging each of them. ‘This is a good outcome. We’ve made progress today.’
‘And Adelaide?’ asks Dien.
Vikram looks to Sosanya and her face gives him his answer before she speaks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Adelaide Rechnov died thirty minutes ago. The surgeons did everything they could. She wasn’t in pain.’
He turns away, from her, from the sudden, unbearable sympathy in the room, from Linus’s agonized face. His throat is strangled. There’s a wail of anguish inside him but it won’t come out; something is blocking it.
He’s too late.
In the central part of the city, the border is gone. The posts which supported it protrude starkly at intervals along the waterway, stripped of the netting which for so many years has obscured one side of the city from the other. Some of them bear banners which lift and flutter in the wind, the slogans now faded but the banners clinging tenuously on.
It is not difficult to find the site. The flowers have mostly faded, and some are beginning to rot, but the salt tins tied to the post make it impossible to miss; salt tins in their hundreds, tier upon tier of them, cheap and precious, worn and new. A temporary raft rack has been built out to the memorial. Two other visitors are ahead of Vikram, and he cuts the motor, holding back. A man and a woman stand quietly. The woman has a salt tin and while Vikram waits the woman opens the tin and throws the salt over her shoulder, and hands it to the man to do the same. Then the man closes the tin and the woman attaches it carefully to the border post. They walk back along the raft rack to an old blue and white striped boat.
Untying the boat they nod, briefly, to Vikram.
He approaches the memorial, aware of his Solar Corporation escort, who is never more than a few metres away. He looks about, trying to imagine the scene. Dien has told him about that night. The two crowds. The lights in the sky, the shouts and the banners and the lasers and axes tearing down the border, the jubilation in the air. Adelaide, standing upright, shouting with the westerners. He tries to imagine it, but the sky is misted, the sea is sullen and there’s nothing here but a post with some tins attached.
We don’t know who it was, said Dien. A skad, or a Boreal. Maybe even one of our own.
Vikram looks up. A boy in a boat is watching him. It’s Mig. The boat is a neat little craft, sleek and motored. Mig looks pleased with himself. Behind Mig, clinging to the gunnel with both hands, is the Alaskan. She is drenched, and does not look pleased at all. Vikram has the unfortunate suspicion that the boy’s driving prowess is not as advanced as he hopes or believes it to be.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asks.
The boy shrugs.
‘It doesn’t belong to you, does it?’
Mig grins. Then his face turns serious.
‘Is this the place?’
‘Yes. This is it.’
‘I brought something. You left it in Patagonia.’ The boy holds aloft a small salt tin. ‘I thought you might need it.’
The Alaskan is studying the memorial.
‘Who was she?’
Who was she? He thinks of a red-haired woman with green eyes and a bold stare. Of roses, and a piano, and drowsy limbs on silk sheets. He thinks of a room in a derelict tower, Adelaide curling against him, her arms fragile like petals, as if she were already disintegrating, Adelaide whispering, hold me. He thinks of his last glimpse of her, through the dust and debris of an explosion, her eyes wide with shock and terror, stumbling to her feet. He thinks of the interview on the
o’dio which Dien played for him, the voice so calm and steady and certain. Familiar and unfamiliar. These are the words left for him, words she spoke to other people, in another life. I’m doing this for Vikram Bai.
He speaks without looking at the Alaskan.
‘She was someone I knew.’
‘Do you want the box?’ Mig asks. ‘I put more salt in it.’
He shakes his head. ‘You keep it. Go on, I’ll catch you up.’
Silently, he says goodbye to Adelaide, the woman he loved, to the Silverfish, who he did not know. The woman who died a second death. Across the waterway he can see Mig driving away, the boat jerking in haphazard motion, throwing up spray, the Alaskan shouting in protest. He wonders what they make of his city, a place of possibility, or a place that has run its course, or something else that Vikram cannot envision at all. Overhead he hears the flap of wings. A gull lands on the post of the memorial. Its wings lift and settle. It cocks its head, considering him, and for a moment he thinks of the old saying, that the souls of dead Osirians come to rest in the hearts of birds. And then he remembers that Adelaide never liked birds. A few towers along, Mig and the Alaskan have stopped. They’re waiting for him. He pauses, watching for the gull to fly off, but it remains stubbornly where it landed, one dark eye locked to his, and he finds he can’t look away.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My sincere thanks to the many friends who have supported me from the beginning to the end of The Osiris Project. In particular, I want to thank my agent, John Berlyne; my fantastic editors: Michael Rowley, Emily Yau, and Rob Clark; Clare Stacey, for her beautiful, evocative cover designs, and all the supporting team at Del Rey UK who do so much behind the scenes. Thank you to M-P, who was there at the very start of it, and with whom I’ve mulled over many an idea; to book friends Clare Bullock, Alexa Brown, Camilla Corr, Bridie France, who continue to inspire and encourage me; to my wonderful family; and to James, who picks me up when I’m down, and reminds me that sharks make everything better.
Also in the Osiris Project series:
OSIRIS
Nobody leaves Osiris.
Adelaide Rechnov
Wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, she spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.
Vikram Bai
He lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the coming brutal winter promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.
As tensions rise in the city, can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?
Also in the Osiris Project series:
CATAVEIRO
A shipwreck. And one lone survivor.
For political exile Taeo Ybanez, this could be his ticket home. Relations between the Antarcticans and the Patagonians are worse than ever, and to be caught on the wrong side could prove deadly.
For pilot and cartographer Ramona Callejas, the presence of the mysterious stranger is one more thing in the way of her saving her mother from a deadly disease.
All roads lead to Cataveiro, the city of fate and fortune, where their destinies will become intertwined and their futures cemented for ever …
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Copyright © E. J. Swift, 2015
E. J. Swift has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
This edition published in 2015 by Del Rey
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ISBN 9780091953102