by Adam Roberts
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ Issa asked.
‘To sea,’ said Mam Luda. ‘To live the life God intended us to live. Surrounded by free water and basking in the sunlight!’
‘I thought we were on our way to advance the revolution?’ said Issa.
‘Don’t mind Luda,’ said Mam Chen. ‘She’s ready to do her part. But it’ll be years before we get anywhere near that.’
‘And what’s the hurry?’ said blue-eyed Mam Elessa, who had the apexes of an isosceles triangle in three moles on her brown cheek. ‘It will come when it comes. Until then, the thought of all the water in the world is enough for thinking.’
‘You know what the revolution needs?’ said Mam Sofia. ‘Bodies. Yours, mine, lots of them. So here we are!’
The conversation moved on to rumours about the latest anti-longhair viral plagues.
‘How do they make these things so that they attack longhairs but leave the rich alone?’ asked Mam Elessa.
‘Oh that’s easily done,’ was Mam Chen’s opinion. ‘We’re the ones with Nick’s Bug, after all.’
‘I don’t see how a virus knows if you’re rich or poor,’ Mam Elessa persisted.
Mam Sofia said: ‘I heard this one kills you in three days. The first day you feel poorly. The second you feel worse. The third you start to feel better – then you fall down dead.’
Sudhir came aboard that afternoon, and there was a good deal of shuffling and agitation amongst the rafters. But even her appearance was not the signal for departure. She went into the cabin with her three deputies and didn’t come out.
‘She doesn’t mind staying out of the sun,’ said a pigeon-chested young lad, younger even than Issa. ‘She’s got a larder in there. You know what a larder is?’
‘Yes,’ said Issa, disdainfully.
‘It’s where you keep hardfood,’ the boy explained, superfluously, keen to impress her with his knowledge. ‘She’s got a frodge in there, full of hardfood.’
‘Fridge,’ said Issa, ‘and I don’t believe you.’
She moved away, but the boy came after her capering and hooting ‘Fridge-frodge! Fridge-frodge!’ The raft was not big enough for Issa to escape him, so instead she hugged her thighs to her chest and pressed her face into her knees whilst he danced about. He got tired eventually, and went away. But there were plenty of people on the raft who gossiped about Sudhir.
‘She’s having the Nick Bug removed, you know, so she can pass as a rich woman! It’s all part of the plan for revolution,’ said one frizz-haired woman.
‘That’s nonsense,’ said a young man. ‘They can’t take the Bug out. Once it’s in, it’s in.’
Two days later the motor was started, and the raft moved slowly away. There was a mild panic as too many people moved to the shoreside to watch the receding coastline, and the whole structure bucked and twisted, threatening to capsize altogether. But soon enough order was restored. Officers ran to and fro yelling at people to move back. Folk found places and settled. Soon enough a more-or-less spontaneous form of deck-order emerged: where if one person moved to one side, another would make her way to the other.
The land vanished, and then reemerged on the left-hand side, and then vanished again. Issa understood, from raft chatter, that navigation was being undertaken by Sudhir herself, aided by her magical Fwn technology. Issa thought of telling people that she had herself had a Fwn, once; but she decided the fact might not endear her to her new companions. The sun set in front of them, and rose behind them, and Issa set herself the task of adjusting to her new mode of life: the uneasy quake and jelly shifts of the raft’s floor; the sound of water hissing and smacking the superstructure. Waves flapping like many flags. There was, most of all, a constant queasy motion in everything. It took Issa a couple of days before she became used to it, but eventually she did. Some others never did, and spent their time hugging themselves and moaning, or lying on their sides curled up like a conch. They would take their turn at one or other desal pump, fill their bellies with water, and then almost at once vomit the fluid back up.
The weather improved: sunnier days, and so more energy for everybody. The mood on the raft lifted: people chatting animatedly, even dancing, couples trying to find discreet places to have sex. Issa spent most of her time watching the great gleaming ground of water, all about them, and the extraordinary sheen of colours folded into its generalized glaucous blue, like the iridescence just visible in pigeon feathers. For one long day, the last clear day of the year, the sky comprehended one concept only: blue.
Then nature got bored with its own monotony, and bleached the sky, and turned the western horizon to crimson. The heartbreaking clarity of western skylines. This is the stuff that lungs wrap themselves round.
The next morning it rained, as if the heavens were jealous of the sea, and wanted to imitate both its wetness and its symphony of shooshing and flushing sounds.
After that one perfect blue day, the weather became increasingly autumnal. The air became colder, and the rafters got into the habit of huddling together.
From time to time they would chance upon other sea-travellers. One day they saw another raft – much smaller, tiny by comparison. This craft was faster than they, and soon pulled alongside. There were, perhaps, forty longhairs aboard, mostly women.
‘Do you have anything to trade?’ the newcomers called across.
‘Join the revolution!’ people called back. ‘Come with us!’
At this the other raft became disrespectful, and ribald. ‘Oho, what are you – Marxists, or Spartacists?’
‘Spartacists!’ yelled several on the bigger raft.
‘Spartacists! Idiots! Fools! Off to waste your lifeblood on the beaches at Florida!’ the others hooted. ‘Goodbye, good riddance!’
Some rubbish was thrown, in anger, from the larger raft, but the smaller craft was much more manoeuvrable, and easily pulled away. The mewing of their laughter came over the low swell of the water for a surprisingly long time after they had departed.
If the weather was nice, rafters would dive in the water and swim about. The trick with this was to blow up a plastic bag and tie it around your torso, or else to get hold of one of the swimming vests piled by the cabin. Without buoyancy swimming involved a continual threshing of legs and arms that very quickly became exhausting. But with a little help floating, it was a pleasant way to pass the time.
One day they saw a huge structure, a pyramid of metal and plastic half a kilometre long, making its noisy way from west to east. They saw it at dusk and its various lines of dotted lights were both bright along its side, and smeared and shaky reflections in the black water below. Issa strained to listen, wondering if she could hear the sound of rich people laughing and enjoying themselves on the upper decks, but all she could hear was the drone of the craft’s giant engines.
A few days later they spotted another longhair raft, a boat at least as big as theirs, or even bigger. They went after it for a while, but it was travelling at an angle to their own route, and moved as fast as they pursued, and eventually they gave up.
The sky sometimes played host to planes, or flitters, and it rolled the noise of their flight around like a stone in a bowl.
It didn’t take long for Issa to lose track of how long she had been on the raft.
Day by day it grew colder, the sea more boisterous. Some of the swells were hill-sized humps that lifted the raft towards the sky and then slidingly dropped it dozens of metres. Having become accustomed to the constant movement, Issa became unaccustomed again, and felt the vomitous bulge of nausea pushing upwards from her empty stomach. Clouds owned the sky. It rained in violent, grit-hard bursts, and when it did the sea fizzed all around them. Some days it was calmer, but there was never quite enough sunlight to lift Issa’s energy levels to strong happiness. Most days were entirely dominated by the forceful tremor of the swell, the prodigious ebb, the headbutting intermittent forward motion of the voyage.
One morning, when the sea was all gentle wal
low, a fluid landscape of lowlands, a proper boat came out to meet them. It pulled alongside and fastened itself: a sailor jabbed a spike in the plastic body of the raft, and pulled his craft alongside on the attached rope. When they were docked a shorthair disembarked, wearing a little beret, as tight over his bald head as the cup of an acorn. People milled about him. He might have been a unicorn, they were so fascinated; but he went straight into the cabin in the middle of the raft and didn’t come out for half an hour.
When he did emerge, it was with Sudhir. They kissed, as the crowds on the raft watched. Then the stranger lifted his arms. ‘People!’ he cried. ‘I am here to let you know: not all shorthairs are indifferent to your sufferings, or hostile to your cause! Some of us, men and women like me, are disgusted by the oppression you have suffered, and will do our best to help you. Justice! Justice!’ Nobody cheered, not because the sentiment was unwelcome, but only because it was all unexpected, and early in the morning, and people were sluggish and tired. He looked a little nonplussed, but went back to his boat. Two more shorthairs appeared on the deck, and between them hauled a large plastic crate from their craft onto the raft. Sudhir organized four women to carry this to the cabin. ‘What’s in it?’ people asked. ‘What’s the deal with the crate?’ ‘Guns,’ said somebody, and the word ran all about the raft like the aftermath of a broaching wave. ‘Guns! Guns!’ The visitor got back on his boat and zipped away.
The following day Issa saw, like half-kilometre-wide pterodactyls, sunkites hovering above the horizon; and she knew that they were approaching a city.
That was the morning when, whilst she was waiting her turn at the desal pump for her morning drink, a couple of lads grabbed her and tried to get her trousers down. Some of the women around her moved away, or stood and watched stupidly; but a few of them slapped and pushed the boys to encourage them to desist, and eventually the two guys gave up and went away. The incident left Issa shivering and gulping air; more from the unexpectedness of it than anything.
The horizon thickened; the blunt serrations of mountains rising a millimetre or so towards the sky. ‘Stanbul,’ was the buzz that went around the raft, and the flock of sunkites certainly suggested a large conurbation. Overnight they must have moved quite a bit closer to the land, because the following morning they were near enough to see the hordes of longhairs filling the hillsides, and mobbing the beaches. Many waved, and some ran splashingly into the sea towards them and began swimming. It seemed a very long way to swim, to Issa, and she watched with distant interest as individuals gave up and returned to the shore. Some few struggled on. It wasn’t a very sunny day. It must have been exhausting. They must, she realized, have been desperate.
That was not a happy thought.
A military flitter overflew, and then came back. It zipped low over the raft, crossing the side opposite to where Issa was watching. She saw the rafters on that side leap and dance in defiance, throwing things at the plane. It didn’t seem like a very clever way of proceeding. Nor could she see what they were throwing, although they must be throwing something, because their projectiles, falling short, were going into the water with big gloopy splashes. She looked again. Something about the picture didn’t add up. She was still trying to work out what was happening when she saw a young woman – Bala was her name – spin three-sixty, unwinding a scarf of liquid blood from her neck. The flitter banked and turned and the screams from the far side came into focus in Issa’s mind. Then she understood. People were leaping into the water, and trying to push their way clear of the strafe path. It came over again. Great chunks of plastic leapt high in the air as the flitter went overhead, and Mam Chen did a crazy high somersault, kicking her legs and landing on her back in a splash of blood. Issa pushed forward, but the press was against her; in fact she was carried against her will towards the edge of the raft and over into the water. It was cold and salt and engulfing, and Issa wasn’t wearing any buoyancy. She struggled not only against the water but against the tangle of wriggling bodies that had come into it with her. Eventually she kicked herself to the surface and grasped the edge of the raft, but it took several minutes of draining effort to pull herself over the lip and on again. By then the flitter was a speck in the south sky.
Nine people had been killed, and two more must have drowned, because when everybody in the water climbed or was hauled back onto the raft they could not be accounted for. The raft had some manhole-sized holes in it, and a portion had been broken away from one corner; but it still floated. The women most skilled at the task did their best to repair the damage, with whatever material was lying around.
They watched and waited, for further attacks. But none came. As the sun went down, Sudhir made a speech. She sounded more weary than outraged. ‘Let none of us doubt that we’re at war,’ she said. ‘Let none of us forget our honoured dead! Mam Chen! Helena! Bella! The others!’ There were murmurs, but everybody was too tired and drained to respond more energetically. ‘We are going to New York,’ said Sudhir, and Issa’s heart leapt up – despite the horror of the afternoon, and the shock of the sudden bereavement, she felt some great wriggling joy inside her. They were going to New York! ‘We are going to seize the great emblem of the revolution – Neocles’ best friend himself!’ Sudhir was saying. ‘Rodion! His right-hand man! The last living remnant of the great Redeemer! We are going to liberate him from the prison of New York, and he will become the figurehead of the Third Spartacist Rising! We’re going to smash New York and free Rodion! With him as our banner, longhairs everywhere will join us! All who revere the Redeemer! With him as our banner, we will sweep the world in a united mass, and avenge the deaths of, uh,’ but her energy was fading, and the sun had buried itself behind the world, and the speech petered out. Life on the raft sank to muttering and shuffling and sleep.
Rodion, thought Issa. New York and Rodion.
The next morning Sudhir spent her time going from group to group, from individual to individual. This is what she said: ‘I wasn’t supposed to reveal our mission until we were past Gibraltar. But you know now, so we’re all in this together. The deaths shocked me, and I couldn’t keep it to myself any more. We’re going to smash New York and release Rodion! We’re part of the most important mission in the history of humankind!’
‘I think I know your Rodion,’ said Issa, when Sudhir came to her.
‘Of course you do – and you’re the Queen of New York.’
‘But I actually do.’
‘I thought,’ Mam Elessa put in, ‘that Rodion betrayed the Redeemer?’
‘No, no,’ said Sudhir, firmly. ‘It wasn’t like that. That’s a lie put out by the forces of evil. He was the Redeemer’s best friend! He was himself betrayed by the wealthy, who manipulated him and tricked him to reach the Redeemer.’
‘Yes,’ said a young man called Mika, with limbs skinny as rope, his knees and elbows like knots. ‘I heard that.’
The land came closer, and the rafters watched the skies anxiously. There was no trouble for three days, by which time land was visible on both sides of the water. Sudhir was very agitated, and kept running from one side of the raft to the other. The Fwn was always in her hand. ‘The bottleneck!’ she said. ‘The bottleneck!’
So: they had entered the bottleneck.
The land was scrub, pale brown and exhausted yellow-green. New houses, many built on elevator platforms – stalk-legs glinting in the sunlight – overlooked the waterway. From time to time it was possible to see the inhabitants of these expensive domiciles watching them from their terraces. Once, a figure aimed a rifle at them and fired – a little ragged ball of white smoke, as if he were puffing on a long thin cigar, and the crack of the shot seconds later – but he didn’t hit anything. With the following day’s dawn they discovered that another raft had come up behind them. It was just as densely packed, but was smaller; and its size gave it an advantage in terms of speed. During the course of the day it overtook them. ‘I wish we had their speed,’ cried Sudhir, in an ecstasy of agonized waiting.
And it was agony; the knowledge that there was nowhere they could go, and nothing they could do but carry on down this narrow channel, vulnerable to any attack that might be launched against them, existed for Issa like a sort of toothache of the mind. She never felt rested; sleep at night was fitful, dozing during the day would inevitably end with her jerking awake in blank fright.
The land to the west and the east closed in upon them like a press. And then they were drifting right down the middle of Stanbul, the sunkites sliding their shadows over the water, the land on either side crowded and busy, flitters in the air. The old Bosphorus road was visible just below the waterline. They floated between the two towers that had once supported the old road bridge; and then, an hour later, with a sense of déjà vu, they drifted past another set of submerged road-bridge towers.
They watched the sky anxiously, of course, but the flitters all seemed to be civilian, or at least uninterested in them. Night fell, and Issa drifted in and out of sleep to the sound of water’s incessant slurping and knocking, and the more distant, melodious distortions of Stanbul’s noise echoing off the flat. She woke properly when people started yelling. A flitter was coming. As it moved through the air, it opened and closed two massively elongated mandibles of light in front of it. The cones of these searchlights moved over the raft, and something dropped noisily into the water some metres from the raft. It sounded like a diver, leaping from the flitter to divebomb the water. And (count one, two, three) then there was a huge angry-god roar, a grinding cacophony, and a huge tree-trunk of water upthrust from the sea, white as bone and gleaming in the moonlight. The raft, entire, was lifted and shaken like a sheet. The shutter flash, like disco lights, snapping people in succession of frozen wrought postures, hands reaching, mouths screaming. Issa fell down. Everybody fell down. As she tumbled, her arms went between two sets of barrels – part of the fabric of the raft. It was this that prevented her from falling into the water. But the night was full of people yelling and splashing into the sea. Then the raft was laid back down flat upon the water, as a rug laid on a floor, and the great tree of water broke up into crumbs and splotches and fell as rain down upon Issa’s back. The sound was a million tons of gravel poured onto the ground.