by E. J. Swift
‘No, no, you do it. You know the name.’
Maria’s eyelashes flicker in a quick, frightened glance. At the bottom of the list, in painstaking, childishly rounded letters, she writes the name of the pardoned rebel. Tonight, half the country will be fearing for their hands and their heads, but the Alaskan is not among them.
She gazes at the list. Some hundred or so names. The Alaskan owns every one of them: it is a list of debt. A satisfying sight, and yet every time she adds to it, she is overcome with a feeling of hollowness. There is a space at the end of the list that never gets any smaller.
‘One day we will add her too.’
‘Señora?’
‘Xiomara, Maria. Señorita Xiomara. And plenty will thank me for it. After all, Xiomara fries little girls like you for breakfast.’
A look of panic crosses the girl’s face.
‘That is why you work for me, and not for her,’ says the Alaskan, relenting. There is no joy in tormenting someone who never stands up for herself. Sometimes she is tempted to torture the girl out of sheer boredom, and has to remind herself that she has more important opponents to consider. ‘Finish the floor,’ she says. ‘Your pay is in the tin.’
Maria moves to take the book.
‘No. Leave this.’
She stares at the list while Maria finishes the cleaning. The handwritten letters coiling into the syllables that make up a name. Each is a slice of power, but will it ever be enough? Enough for what? Not to return, there can be no return. Irritated now, she pushes the book aside and gives the radio dial a sharp twist. The rebel is dealt with. What next?
Another station. A capella singing, Nazca songs. No, no, she doesn’t want this.
Crackle. Pipe music.
Crackle. Weather report. A storm is coming. A storm is always coming.
Crackle. Polemic from a religious cult which sounds like a splinter group of Born Again Mayans. The end of the world is due. Souls should prepare, because in just three years’ time, in 2420, to be exact, the apocalypse will arrive. In the meantime, anyone is welcome to join the group, and cleanse themselves in readiness.
The Alaskan snorts. The end of the world has come many times. The end of the world came during the Migration Wars and the race to the poles. The end of the world came when humanity went mad with weaponry, bio-weaponry, nano-weaponry. Nuclear was outdated, unimaginative. Things that attacked the senses and the mind – those were what mattered. The end of the world came when the Blackout virus caused billions to drop dead like ants. The end of the world came fifty years ago, with the Great Storm.
And yet the world is still here, and humans cling to the planet’s surface as if embedded in it, the way bacteria burrows into human skin, the way mites reside in eyelashes.
Parasites.
She turns the dial.
Crackle. An attack by pirates on the coast of Tierra del Fuego. The army has cordoned off the coastline. Why would they need to do that?
Crackle. Suspected redfleur case in Cataveiro’s closest neighbouring town. There is always a suspected redfleur case. Two doctors are arguing over the treatment of redfleur victims. Isolation once the victim is symptomatic is almost ineffective, says one. It’s those they have been around that you need to watch. A person can be contagious and walk about for days, infecting others, and no one would know. The other disagrees. There’s no evidence for an incubation period, he says. And there’s no room for sentiment with redfleur. You have to ask questions later. The Alaskan agrees with that.
Then she hears something interesting. An unofficial station, an unofficial statement. The pilot is in town. They do not need to say her name because here in the forgotten south there is only one aeroplane, and one pilot. The Alaskan already knows the pilot’s name.
Ramona Callejas is wanted.
But who wants her?
The Alaskan listens.
13 ¦
‘I’VE GOT A question for you. Is there a cure for the jinn in this city?’
The chemist’s soft, delicate hands flutter against a pristine white coat. His manner is mild. His eyes bear no discernible expression, except perhaps a distant curiosity. There are speckles of grey on his shaved head. He does not look capable of doing the things he is said to have done, but Ramona does not doubt for a second that he has done them.
When there is no answer she says, ‘All right. Another question. Do you have a cure for the jinn?’
‘No,’ he says at once.
‘But it does exist?’
‘There are treatments,’ he says. ‘They are … rigorous.’
‘Does anyone else in the city have a cure?’
He does not answer. They say this is the man who always tells the truth, or does not speak at all. So he does not know, or he cannot say for sure. Or, he will not tell.
It was a long shot, she thinks. It would have been real luck. Back to the secondary plan.
‘What can you give me that mimics redfleur?’
The chemist looks at Ramona with surprise, as though she is the one who is suspect in this room full of chilled metal lockers, concealed in the basement below the clean, respectable pharmacy upstairs. Everything that means anything in this city is below ground level.
‘Why would I have something like that?’ asks the chemist.
‘Because you’re an expert in replication,’ she says. ‘I lived in this city for a long time. I lived on the streets. I know your name.’
‘I know yours too.’
Ramona holds his gaze. She has heard the radio broadcast. Alejandro is making his move; every hour she stays in the city is a risk. But what this man does is illegal too. He is an illusionist of the worst kind: one that creates panic.
‘I need something that looks like redfleur,’ she repeats. ‘The signs have to manifest in a matter of hours. And I need it in a form that can be transferred without the recipient’s knowledge.’
The chemist turns neatly on his heel. He opens one of the lockers. There is a hiss of white ice. He pulls on a single plastic glove and holds up a syringe.
‘You don’t want a dilution of the real thing?’
Ramona forces herself not to recoil.
‘I don’t believe you have the real thing.’
The chemist returns the syringe and closes the door.
‘You said you knew my name.’
He stands, arms loose at his sides, head tilted slightly in enquiry. She can feel the hairs rising all over her skin. ‘Redfleur was curable once. It altered. Viruses do this. They are infinitely complex. More intelligent than us. More resistant than us.’
‘I just want something that looks like redfleur. Something that isn’t dangerous.’
‘That will cost you. The more specific the request, the higher the level of expertise. That’s how it is, I’m afraid.’ The chemist smiles gently. ‘And then, of course, there’s the cost of vaccinating you first. I assume you will be undertaking the transmission?’
‘Yes. Give me a price.’
They haggle. Ramona pays with more reluctance than she has ever felt in a financial contract. She can feel her skin crawling with each minute she spends inside this room with no natural light and its freezers full of disease. What this man does is despicable; what she is planning to do to Señorita Xiomara is despicable, not that Xiomara deserves pity from anyone. But it is this or let her mother die. She buys morphine from him too. She knows it will be pure.
The Antarctican’s cash is disappearing fast.
The Xiomara house is over a hundred and fifty years old. The family has lived here a long time. It was redfleur that took Xiomara’s parents, and left the young Señorita the inheritance of the desalination empire and, so it is said, a fiendish obsession with the collection of cures. Now the Señorita controls salt extraction and deposition. Eighty per cent of the energy-eating plants belong to her, all of those marked with the orca glyph: Xiomara’s logo. It is Xiomara water that flows across the continent, surging through pipes from coastlines to the capital and the surr
ounding towns. Xiomara water irrigates the lemon groves and mists the poppy fields, filling the water troughs of the multitudes, lining the basins of the Houses of the Nazca in still, candlelit pools.
There is a rumour that within this house lies the skin of a jaguar.
After sunset the temperature drops, and in her hiding place which is in eyeshot of the Xiomara gates, Ramona shivers. This is where the wealthy of Cataveiro, those who have not defected north, live in their enclaves north of the river. There is night lighting here. There are driveways for the cars that Ramona used to fix. From here, the wealthy drive out from the city on pleasure jaunts to lush oases.
Her stakeout is a gamble. There is no knowing if Xiomara will emerge, tonight, or any other night. Ramona waits nervously. Surrounded by such clear evidence of power, she cannot help but think of all the rumoured disappearances.
Shortly after ten o’clock, she hears the friction of car wheels against the driveway. Yes – this is her, it must be her. There is a heavy clunk as the huge gates unlock and the car glides through the gates and past Ramona, almost silent, the windows darkened, the chassis polished and gleaming under the lights mounted on the gate. It’s a thing of beauty.
She follows, jogging after it. She loses the car but does not worry; by the time it reaches the dense inner-city streets where the trams almost brush the walls of buildings, she will catch it up. Cataveiro was not designed for cars. There is no point in driving through these roads, unless you wish to make a statement. Once they are in the city, she is able to locate and follow the car at a walking pace. She keeps her head down, maintaining her step with that of the evening crowd.
The car draws up outside a tango club. Two bodyguards get out, both large, both carrying guns. Xiomara steps daintily from the car. She wears a flowing purple dress and matching nose-and-mouth mask, and her nightshade hair spills in glossy curlicues to her waist. In one hand she holds a plastic beaker with a straw. It is well documented that Xiomara makes her bodyguards taste any food and drink which is brought to her. She has gone through several. One was lucky; he only lost his stomach.
Xiomara proceeds with quick, abrupt clicks of her stiletto heels down a flight of stairs to the tango club, flanked on either side by bodyguards. The car pulls away. The gap it leaves is swiftly filled by pedestrians.
Ramona does not want to go into that club. It is another enclosed space, and underground, which is even more of a potential trap. As she hesitates, people walk past, intent on their own business. This is her best chance. She feels the gun concealed beneath her clothes. Not much use in a crowded space, but it gives her courage. She crosses the street and runs down the stairs.
The tango club is a cavernous structure, unfolding into dark corners and curtained alcoves. Smoke stirs in the somnolent air. Cages hang from the wall. There is a bird and a striped lizard, and in one suspended glass box there is an orange-patterned snake.
Small round tables are set out before a stage, all occupied by young and well-groomed patrons, but Xiomara is sat at none of them. She has taken one of the alcoves at the side of the room. Her bodyguards hover close by. Xiomara lifts her mask to sip from her beaker. She appears oblivious to everyone around her.
Ramona buys a bottle of the cheapest beer the club offers and scans the room. This is a place for romance. Couples in corners. Hands held under tables. She thinks fleetingly of Félix, trying to imagine him in a club like this, but she cannot. Musicians play strong, insistent beats. Two dancers emerge from either side of the stage. The music becomes brooding and aggressive. The dancers approach one another.
The audience hushes, enough to hear the scrape of the dancers’ shoes against the floor. Ramona watches, mesmerized by the sinuous grace of the performance. The dancers circle, their story told in taut, arching movements: wary, then passionate, then hating, then adoring once more. There is such a sad, dark beauty in the old Argentine dance. Now she thinks of Paola and Camilo burned up with the fever, their small bodies placed in the ground, and her heart aches for the things they will never see, simple things like this dance. Her poor siblings, they were so young. Left alone, she could weep.
She is not the only one affected. Xiomara is on her feet, clapping and crying all at once. The dance builds to a climax. The woman is thrown to the floor and the man steps away, triumphant yet bereft.
Xiomara brings her hands together. ‘Bravo, bravo!’
Rapturous applause. The dancers bow, and Ramona forces her thoughts to the moment. She borrows a pen from the bar and writes on a napkin.
I am the one with the aeroplane. Do you want to talk?
When the bartender passes, she slips the napkin and some peso into his hand.
‘For Señorita Xiomara.’
He looks at her, curiosity in his eyes, swiftly disguised. She watches him move across the room, pause by Xiomara’s alcove and deliver the napkin. A moment later he nods discreetly in Ramona’s direction. Xiomara leans forwards. Ramona meets her gaze firmly. Xiomara nods.
At the alcove the bodyguards bar her way. One male and one female, both have the look of ex-guerrillas about them. They point at the pack on her back. Ramona shakes her head.
‘I come as I am. This is a public place.’
Xiomara nods.
‘Sit down, sit down.’
There is a low but feverish excitement in her voice. Ramona knows instantly that her judgement is accurate. Now she has to play it to her advantage.
New dancers enter the stage, but Xiomara ignores them. She scrutinizes Ramona. The trace of a single tear is discernible through the immaculate make-up of her upper left cheek. It gives her a tragic, soulful look. Perhaps that was the intent, thinks Ramona.
‘It’s true what you say? You are the pilot?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m surprised you’re so bold to come to Cataveiro. It must be dangerous for you, I would think.’
‘I’ve a particular reason to be here.’
‘You want something. Yes, yes, I can see it. There is something you want very badly. Tell me, Ramona Callejas – oh yes, I know your name – what is it you want?’
‘I’ve never hidden my name, so it’s no surprise you know who I am, any more than it is no surprise I know who you are.’
Xiomara laughs, a high, glittering display.
‘You wish to play? You wish to play? Well, so do I, I love a game. All right, little pilot. Let’s lay down our cards, shall we? Who shall be the queen? Who the jester? You tell me.’
‘It’s said you have a cure for the jinn.’
‘A cure for the jinn? What an idea. Nobody in this country has that. No one! You’d better go north, little pilot. What lies in the north we can only imagine. And what dark things we do imagine …’
‘I don’t need to go north.’ Ramona keeps her voice as steady as she can. She feels the shifting presence of Xiomara’s bodyguards, alert and watchful. She feels the metal of the gun against her skin. ‘Because you have a cure here, in this city. And I think that I have something you want.’
She watches Xiomara’s face closely. Like Alejandro, it is the mogul’s lust for power that betrays her. Desire emanates from her, strong and heady.
‘Your plane?’ says Xiomara softly.
Ramona smiles, but says nothing. Xiomara takes a mirror from her handbag. She dabs at her forehead. Ramona can smell the powder on her skin and the sweet chemical scent of her cosmetics.
‘You know,’ says Xiomara idly. ‘I have been asking my friends in the government for a long time, oh a very very long time, to sell me that aeroplane.’
‘It isn’t theirs to sell.’
‘So they tell me. But what makes it yours, little pilot? And more importantly, what makes them humour you by letting you keep it? Really, your activities are not even legal. We should lock you up!’
Ramona ignores the irony of Xiomara talking about technicalities of the law.
‘I found the plane, Señorita Xiomara. I repaired it. I own it. Some things are simple. As to why I�
��m permitted to use the airspace – the government have a need. We help one another out. They trust me. You can’t trust just anyone with an object like this.’
Certainly, she thinks, Lygia would never allow a player like Xiomara into the air. But Xiomara’s cheeks hunch in a smile.
‘Yet now you are offering it up? Do they trust you now, little bird? Do they?’
‘I wouldn’t give up my livelihood so easily. But I might offer a share in the plane.’
Xiomara snaps the mirror shut. She runs a finger down her silken length of hair, and twirls a hank about her thumb.
‘Is it yours, the jinn?’
‘No.’
‘Sometimes the fight is stronger for another. I wouldn’t know. I was never given that opportunity. There was no cure for the ones I would have saved.’
‘Señorita Xiomara, would you like to know how it feels to fly?’
Xiomara’s eyes sparkle. It is the same hunger to acquire, so familiar. Xiomara and Alejandro are bred from the same mould. Any reservations they might have about Neon technology would be suppressed in a heartbeat in exchange for that kind of power.
‘Tell me, little pilot.’
On the stage, the female dancer raises her arms and falls into the clasp of her lover. They are no longer the only ones dancing. Some of the couples in the audience are on their feet, embracing, swaying, kissing, lips tracing shoulders and cheeks, immersed in the languor of the dance.
Ramona holds Xiomara’s gaze. She speaks softly.
‘I took a woman into the sky,’ says Ramona. ‘And she cried from the moment she left earth. Not in sadness. She wasn’t afraid. But when we went into the skies, something changed in her. When you fly, you are higher above the world than any mortal. The entire continent lies beneath you. The sun is closer than you have ever seen it. You could catch the moon in the palm of your hand. When you are flying, you own the world. You own the stars and the planets, the land, the sea. When you look down, you see the things others cannot. Secret pathways. Borders. Where things begin and where things end. And you alone possess this knowledge.’