Tamaruq (16 page)

She cannot take her eyes from his face, and she has to speak, she has to say the things that are tumbling around her head.

‘You know what they’re saying about you. That you’re something new. Something genetic. Maybe northern, maybe not. They say you have scales. You can breathe like a fish, stay underwater for hours. I know it can’t be true but people talk about it like it’s real.’

The man studies her for a moment. He says, ‘I know exactly what they’re saying about me.’

‘I—’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Nothing more. Not now.’

He opens the door, and a surge of bright light spills across the threshold. It is summer outside, and warm. She can hear birds. She stares through the doorway, not knowing what to do or what has just happened. The man holds the door, waiting. She gets to her feet. As she passes him, he says, ‘We’ll speak again,’ and she sees in the harsh clarity of daylight the details of the scarring on his face, the ridges and the discolouring of the skin, where the redfleur has razed, and the redfleur has let him go. She thinks about what is in his blood, tries to imagine the value of the body standing before her, so quiet and still. She tries to guess at his age, and cannot. There is something timeless about him. Again she recalls the stories she has heard, the firefly words on the radio, and she thinks, now I understand.

Vikram watches the doctor go out into the camp. She looks bewildered, passing a hand over her eyes, her head turning slowly from one side to the other as she takes in the site, the people engaged in their various activities, who nod to her as she passes or extend a hand to introduce themselves. If he’d had that effect on people back in Osiris, things might have been different.

He might never have left.

He looks for Mig and finds the boy playing with a piece of rope, alert, waiting. Someone in the camp has taught the boy a range of knots. Mig is a quick pupil.

‘No trouble getting her here?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well done,’ he says.

‘Is she going to stay?’ Mig asks him.

‘I’m not sure. What did you think?’

The boy shrugs. ‘She’s a doctor.’

Vikram guesses he is thinking about Pilar, and does not push the question. The relationship between himself and the boy is a delicate one, webbed as it is with the peculiar circumstances of their meeting: his being alive, Pilar being dead, Mig showing Vikram a way out of the city, Vikram showing Mig the place where Pilar died, as they had agreed. They couldn’t go inside – the building had taken on the function of an incinerator. The smoke and stench of burning fat was leaking through the vents, permeating the air for streets around, a smell that Vikram had faced before, at Osirian funerals, but which was new to Mig. He wanted to protect the boy from it, but he couldn’t – not that Mig would have let him, even if it were possible.

Sometimes Vikram thinks that Mig must resent him, for having lived. Other times he feels that the boy is more philosophical than he has ever been. At any rate, Mig is here, and since the farmhouse episode has given Vikram no reason to believe that he wishes to be anywhere else, which means he’s Vikram’s responsibility now. He does his best to keep the boy occupied, not wanting him to brood.

‘Have you thought any more about my suggestion?’

‘It’s a bad idea,’ says the boy violently. ‘A bad, bad idea.’

Vikram lets it go, but he knows he can’t postpone for much longer. Volunteers are all very well in this venture, but soon he will need someone with real contacts. Someone who knows all the ins and outs of Patagonian society, and anti-society. Someone who can pull in favours.

Someone like the Alaskan.

‘What about the other thing?’ he asks.

‘The Tarkie thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘I found someone for you.’

‘Good. Send them in.’

Inside the cabin Vikram examines the holoma that belonged to Taeo Ybanez, passing it from hand to hand, admiring the smooth black surface and satisfying weight of it. The holoma fascinates him. On their journey south from Cataveiro the device has been knocked about in his backpack, thrown carelessly to the ground on more than one occasion, but its exterior remains unmarked. He has seen it operational only once, when Taeo showed him a projection of his partner Shri. He will never be able to forget finding Taeo dead, the holoma in his palm, the projection frozen with Shri in the act of leaning over his body, her presence in the room at once static and shimmering, as if she were there for some form of valediction. Vikram managed to turn it off by wrapping Taeo’s fingers around the sphere, as he had seen the Antarctican do before. But the holoma does not respond to Vikram’s touch.

Outside the Council Chambers of Osiris there are dozens of objects enthroned in glass cases which, according to Osirian history, were relics and antiques. Vikram does not know whether the Antarcticans possessed this technology before Osiris was built, or have developed it since, but either way, it is a brutal reminder of the reality of the city’s schism from the rest of the world. In fifty years, while Osiris has stagnated, others have grown, altered, moved on. Things have appeared – like redfleur. Things have disappeared.

A knock at the door interrupts his thoughts.

‘Come in,’ he calls.

The man who enters is small and angular, with hair greying at the temples and heavy pouches under his eyes. Vikram recognizes the face: he has been with them for a few weeks. He recalls the man’s history. A mechanic, he lost his father recently; it wasn’t redfleur, but a sudden fever.

‘Mig says you can unlock this.’ He holds the holoma aloft, watching the man’s reactions closely. Most Patagonians would be horrified by the sight of foreign technology, but this man does not display any unease. He squints.

‘I can’t unlock it but I might be able to hack it.’

‘What does that mean?’

The mechanic comes forwards and takes a seat at the table.

‘Can I…?’

Vikram passes him the device. The mechanic turns it over in his hands, frowning.

‘These things are coded to imprint. There’s no way of accessing what’s on it, or deleting it. Only an Antarctican can do that. But if you want to use it for yourself, I can do that.’

‘I want to send a message,’ says Vikram.

‘Something wrong with a letter?’

‘A letter can be forged. I want the recipient to know it’s not a fake. Also, it’s a matter of returning some property.’

‘All right.’

The mechanic unrolls a cloth and assesses the instruments fastened inside. His fingers are dry and callused and have a delicacy in their movement which reassures Vikram. He selects a blunt-ended screwdriver and unfastens a small pouch on the bag. From this he extracts a minute, sparkling stone.

‘Diamond’s the only thing tough enough to break this.’

‘You’re going to break it?’

‘I’ll put it back together again.’

Vikram looks from the holoma to the mechanic.

‘You fix cars, is that right?’

‘And an aeroplane.’ He sets the diamond carefully on the table. ‘But that was before the pilot – before she disappeared.’

‘I’ve heard a lot about the pilot. You know her?’

‘I fix her plane. I guess you’d say I know her.’

‘Where do you think she went?’

‘Ramona’s a friend,’ says the mechanic. ‘So I’d rather not talk about her, if you don’t mind. I prefer to think of her as still alive.’

Vikram gestures.

‘I understand. Do your worst.’

He watches the man turning the holoma over in his hands, running his fingertips over the surface, until he pauses.

‘There.’

‘What is it?’

The mechanic rotates the holoma towards Vikram.

‘Feel that?’

When Vikram runs his finger over the holoma, he feels an almost imperceptible dimple in the surface of the little machine. He wonders how he failed to notice it before.

The mechanic places the tiny diamond on the dimple and rests the screwdriver on top, then takes up a hammer. Vikram has a moment of foreboding but before he can say anything the hammer comes down on the screwdriver with a heavy crack. The holoma bisects into two halves as neatly as a melon.

The interior is a cluster of intricate mechanisms fused together in copper and silver and green. Vikram watches, intrigued, as the mechanic deliberates over the device.

‘Where did you learn how to do this?’

‘An Antarctican spy showed me.’

‘Why would a spy show you a secret like this?’

‘He’d been here a long time. I’m not sure he was doing much spying any longer. When the Tarkies send people over here, they rarely get to go back, whatever they tell them. And the spies get disillusioned – know what I mean?’

Apparently satisfied, the mechanic takes a pair of gloves and presses the two halves of the holoma together. They fuse back into a perfect sphere. Still gloved, he slides the holoma towards Vikram.

‘Hold your hand around it for ten seconds, then let go, then five.’

Vikram does as instructed.

‘Should be coded to you now. But like I said, whatever was on here, it’s locked away. This is just an override.’

‘That’s fine. That’s all I need it for. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

The mechanic replaces the little diamond and rolls up his toolkit.

‘Who’s the message for, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Someone I owe an apology.’

Once the holoma has been coded to his palm print, Vikram finds it simple and intuitive to use. He records and deletes his message several times until he is satisfied with what he wants to say. It’s a wrench to let the device go – but it does not belong to him, has never belonged to him, and every day it remains in his care is a reminder not only of the guilt he feels over Taeo’s death, but of a world he does not have the time or liberty to explore. When he decided to return to Osiris it felt like a choice, but the reality is there is no alternative – there never has been – and with each new arrival at the camp comes another obligation, another inescapable responsibility for him to fulfil.

He talks to Mig about the best way to slip the holoma into the Antarctican network, and they assign three camp members to the task. At the last minute, Mig says he wants to go with them. Vikram is reluctant. The boy out of his sight is out of his protection, and Mig is not happy, and therefore he is unpredictable, and that worries Vikram. Then again, perhaps it will do the boy some good to get out of the camp. In the end he acquiesces, and watches the little expedition setting out, walking in single file between the trees until they disappear among the denser foliage of the forestry.

The holoma goes with them, bound for Antarctica, and a woman Vikram has seen but never met. As soon as they are out of sight he is filled with misgivings. He has set something in motion, and there is no taking it back.

Evening falls and the camp members who are not on scout or perimeter duty gather in circles to sit and eat, exchanging stories and histories. Fires are not permitted, for fear of the smoke giving away their location, but torches set into the ground cast a low, white illumination across the clearing. Some groups are content to talk; others entertain themselves with cards or dice games or the radio. In just a few short weeks, the concealed glade with its two abandoned hunting cabins has evolved into a tiny community.

Vikram observes the doctor from earlier today and joins the circle where she is sat. His presence is acknowledged, but the conversation continues uninterrupted. Vikram sits quietly, listening. The camp is used to his ways, and rarely ask questions, except those of practical matters – regarding how their mission is to proceed. That they accept the mission so unquestioningly remains a thing of astonishment to him, but they all have their reasons for being here. Sometimes he is not sure that he can bear the weight of their belief.

It is a rule of the camp that no one raises their voice. The murmurings of the conversations run over and under one another, defined only by the silvery glow of the torches, voices out of the darkness, bled through a crack from another world.

The first speaker is a spice trader; he’s been cultivating chilli plants in the camp. He begins slowly. It’s always the same beginning. I knew someone. Actually, I didn’t know him that well. He was my father. Does that surprise you? We were never close. It was always that way, even when I was a child. He played the violin. Every evening the house would be full of the sound of him practising, not just playing but the technical elements, scales, that sort of thing. I didn’t like that kind of music – I didn’t understand it. I’d put the radio up loud to annoy him, but when I went to sleep I could still hear those fucking scales, up and down, up and down. After I left home we hardly spoke. The last twelve months we had no contact at all. Then I heard the news. He was in the city, when the epidemic came. Since he died, I’ve been listening non-stop to the music he liked, but I still don’t understand it.

He stops, looks down. An exhalation of breath. Another camp member begins. I knew someone. My mother’s auntie. Seventy years old! Her skin was wrinkled as hemp from the sun, but her mind was sharp as a pin. We talked about everything. Then she got the jinn. Ten kilograms she lost in the conversion, but she didn’t die. She was tough. She lived another three years. Seventy-three! Then we had a redfleur case in the village. The doctors weren’t sure if it was that or something else that took her in the end, but they burned her anyway. These people came, masked, with a truck. They put us in isolation. We couldn’t take a shit without saying please. I was almost glad, then, that she went so fast. She would have hated it. The confinement. I don’t know where they took her ashes. I’d like to know that. I’d really like to know.

I knew someone. No, not knew, exactly. We hardly exchanged a word, to tell the truth, but there was an accord. Every day I’d take the boat out on my fishing run at dawn and about the same time I’d see this woman driving her boat back to the harbour, dragging her nets. You know how sometimes you can have an understanding with someone, without needing to speak? It was like that. We’d nod to one another and sometimes we’d wave. Sometimes it was misty and I only caught a glimpse of her, hunched over the tiller, the water just drifting like silk below. I never saw her anywhere else. One day I took the boat out and she wasn’t there. Or the next day, or the next. I asked about but no one knew who she was. Then I heard there’d been an outbreak.