Tamaruq (31 page)

There are six in total. Three women, one man, a teenage girl and an adolescent boy. She recognizes two of the names. They were taken from the village raided in the highlands, where Ramona landed in the midst of the storm, when she first suspected something was wrong. She doesn’t tell them she was there. They crowd around her, offering their stories.

‘I was putting out the washing—’

‘I was going to visit my uncle in the next village—’

‘They came in the night, in the middle of a storm. They set our house on fire—’

‘They fired a dart into my belly.’ Inés’s voice, weak and tired. She begins to chuckle softly. ‘Didn’t know they’d picked themselves a dead one, did they?’

‘What are you going to do? How are we going to get out?’

‘I have a plan,’ says Ramona. It’s half true. She has half of a plan. But she can’t tell these people that. She has to give them some semblance of hope, however slim. However unlikely the outcome.

When she’s replenished the food and water, Ramona speaks to her mother aside.

‘Carla told me what happened. Her niece saw the kidnappers take you. And Carla told me about the jinn. Ma, I thought I’d be too late. I thought you’d be dead before I could find you.’

A flicker of amusement enters her mother’s face.

‘I might as well be dead, my lucky one.’

‘Oh shush, Ma. You’re alive. And I’m going to help you.’

‘Not for long. This jinn is a malevolent one. I can tell.’ Inés slaps the loose folds of her stomach. ‘It’s been squashed inside here wishing me ill for a very long time, yes, and now it’s got its wish. This jinn is happy, I can tell you. Happy and fat.’

‘Ma, you’re not listening. Listen to me. I’ve got medicine. It won’t be happy and fat for long. We’re going to get rid of it.’

Inés tuts impatiently.

‘I don’t want medicine. It’s northern anyway, don’t tell me it isn’t. Why would I put that poison inside me?’

‘Because it will save your life. Simple, isn’t it?’

‘How do you know it will save my life, eh?’

‘Because – I know.’ Her hesitation is only momentary, but it is long enough for Inés to pounce.

‘Ha! You don’t know at all. Someone told you a thing and you believed it. Let me guess, this medicine makes me worse before it makes me better.’

‘How do you know that—’

‘Because I’ve been in the world, Ramona. Maybe you forget this. You think of your ma all weak and frail, like a used-up yam you think of me. You forget where I’ve been. I’ve been to some places. I’ve been about. Did I tell you the story about the jaguar? I saw that cat with my own eyes, did I tell you this?’

It is the closest Inés has ever come to alluding to her fugue years, even if it is a barefaced lie. All those days lived far from home, disappeared for months at a time, a lost, wandering soul, her past a blank, no future except the day ahead, the road, her last remaining child forgotten. Or so Ramona imagines; only Inés can know the truth. It makes her at once terribly sad and terribly angry. Why does her mother have to leave everything to the last minute? Why now, when they have less time than they have ever had, and maybe no time at all?

‘You never told me where you went, Ma. How am I supposed to remember if I’ve never been told? I don’t know where you went or what you saw or what you were told or if you saw a jaguar or if you’re making up some story to pacify me now.’

‘Eh, don’t get cross on me. What’s the need to know everything? I went places. I saw people. These medicines, they’ve been around longer than you think. Rare, yes, very rare, but that doesn’t mean it’s a secret.’

Ramona sighs. ‘If you know they exist, then you know they could save your life. I went through a lot of trouble to get this. To find you. Félix as well. I’m indebted to him.’

‘Oh, that boy adores you. Always has. He’d do anything for you. Don’t you love him too?’

‘I’m not with him, am I? I’m here. Look. It’s a patch a day for thirty days. We’ll start today.’

Inés pats her hand.

‘Ramona look at me. No, look at me. I can’t take this medicine now. Not here, not on this ship. It will kill me. And why waste it if I die anyway? You tell me that, eh?’

Ramona looks at her mother and knows, inescapably, that she is right. If she takes it now, in this state, she won’t make it. Ramona puts her hands on her mother’s shoulders. She’s wearing an old blouse that might have been red once but now is a dirty faded pink. She’s had that blouse for thirty years. The sight of it here in this hellish place breaks Ramona’s heart. She squeezes Inés’s shoulders gently.

‘Ma, you have to promise me something. Promise me if I get you out of here, you get back home, you will take this. I’ll help you through the course. Me and Carla will, together. You can get better. You have to make this promise. You can tell me all the stories then, Ma. About the jaguar. All of that.’

Inés doesn’t say anything.

‘Ma!’

‘All right, all right. Won’t give me a moment’s peace, will she, even when I’m all but in the ground.’

‘I need to hear you say it.’

‘I promise.’

‘That’s something.’

‘But, Ramona. How are you going to get us out of here? Look at this place. So you get rid of that other one, that bitch. That is only one. You say you have a plan but I know you, my girl. You left your luck behind, didn’t you? There’s no luck in this place.’ Inés glances around the cabin, at the huddled bodies, the other prisoners pretending not to listen to their whispered conversation. ‘This is a place for the already dead. It’s a coffin, my girl. And I don’t want you in it.’

She leans close to Ramona and drops her voice.

‘You should go. Leave us. Get off. Where’s that flying machine of yours? Fly away while you still can.’

‘It crashed, Ma. You’re right. My luck did run out.’

Inés sighs.

‘It happens to us all.’

‘Doesn’t mean I’m giving up, though.’

‘Well, you always were a stubborn one. What was I to do with a one like that? Eh?’

‘Help me to figure this out.’

Inés looks at her shrewdly.

‘I thought you had a plan.’

‘I mean after – after we get off this damn ship.’

‘What are you plotting, Ramona? What are you trying to fix this time?’

‘Nothing. I’m just thinking out loud. Will you help me tidy up my hair?’

‘It’s a mess,’ says Inés critically. ‘What’s this great hole here? You lost a chunk.’

‘I don’t have scissors. You’ll have to use the knife. I need it short. Make me look like her.’

‘Yes, I see. All right.’

Inés’s fingers curl gently around the knife handle, then grip it tightly. She begins to shear the remaining sections of hair, tutting to herself.
Such a shame, all this good hair, it won’t suit you so short, still it’s greasy as butter, maybe for the best after all
. Shanks of hair fall to the floor around her. There’s something soothing in the muttered litany, the light but firm touch of her mother’s fingers against her scalp. If she closes her eyes she can almost imagine herself back in the shack above the sliding city, with the sun streaming through the shutters and the earthy scent of peas steaming in a pan.

‘There,’ says Inés, squinting. ‘The worst haircut I ever give you.’

She goes through the handler’s possessions. There is a Boreal rifle, and an untouched stash of paralysis darts with a dartgun. She counts them: twelve in total. She sets some of them aside to give to the prisoners. Then she finds the peculiar headset which was entertaining the handler on that first night. Boreal. She tosses it aside in disgust, then changes her mind. What if it’s important?

Cautiously, she pulls on the headset.

It’s like falling backwards into quicksand. The ship disappears and a three-dimensional world springs into life around her. She’s in a forest, but like no forest she’s ever seen – the trees sprout colossal black and purple leaves in the shape of tongues, leaves which are dripping with some thick, poisonous-looking unguent. She can hear the noise of animal life, unearthly screechings, terrifyingly close. There are figures spread out in a line to left and right. They are all masked and helmeted and armed to the teeth. One of them is carrying a mauled head – a human head – fingers interlaced in its hair. The figure closest to Ramona turns its head and looks straight at Ramona and through a slit in the mask says, ‘Are you ready, soldier?’

Ramona rips off the headset and hurls it from her. She clamps a hand over her mouth, retching, the bile corrosive against her teeth.
Boreals and their robotics
. Whatever it is, she’s already seen enough.

The other stowaway finds her while she’s loading up the handler’s rifle. It must be the torchlight that gives her away – with only two of them creeping about in this part of the ship, the light would have drawn him. Ramona moves to hide the gun but it doesn’t matter: the man’s eyes are wide and crazed, he’s not interested in what she’s found. He says he’s located the crate.

She follows him through the underbelly of the ship up into the container cells. Already she has a bad feeling about this, and when they reach the crate, her fears only intensify. He shows her the hatch.

‘You see – it needs two of us.’

She helps him to lever it open. When a crack appears she hears the hiss of air escaping – and with it a smell, something rotten and pungent. Something bad.

‘Oh god,’ the man is saying, loudly, too loudly.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god—

Cold with apprehension, Ramona shines her flashlight through the narrow aperture. The light falls upon figures, adults and children, balled or clinging together. Limbs entangled, features rigid in some last contortion – a prayer, a curse. Skin a colour skin should not be, a greenish hue creeping in. The fingernails of the adults are broken and bloody where they have tried to open the hatch. Their enabler lied, or something went wrong with the lock.

It could have been Ramona.

Close it up for god’s sake close it up.

She pushes the hatch closed, sealing them back into their tomb. A part of her numb with anger.

Who brings their children—

The other part raging with despair.

How far must you be gone to—

She thinks of the north, the Boreals whose infinite wealth fuels this shipping route by stripping an impoverished country of its sole valuable resource, who have need of nothing except a window on the south and its unaccounted people.

What were they thinking, those unfortunates in the crate? What were they hoping for from a life north of the belt? Did they expect to find kindness there? Because the Boreals show no kindness, no mercy that she can see.

You have some things to answer for.

They get away with it, she thinks. They’re answerable to no one except their own insatiable greed. They get away with everything.

The stowaway man is rocking back and forth, groaning. As his sobs escalate, Ramona’s anxiety deepens. She cannot afford discovery, not now, when every day is a step closer to the halfway house and the plane.

‘Come on.’ She tugs at his shoulder. ‘Come on, there’s nothing you can do.’

He looks at her, utter desolation in his eyes. He moves suddenly, and begins to scale the side of the crates with an agility she had not expected, manoeuvring himself up and between them, clambering gecko-like from crate to crate. Ramona watches, helpless, knowing even if there were something she could do, it is not her place to. The man’s life is his own to do what he wishes with, to discard if he feels fit. When he reaches the top she sees his figure in relief, a black shadow against the pale ribbon of sky, before he disappears from her sight. She doesn’t need to hear the splash to know what happens next.

In a dreadful way it is a relief. Nothing she could do or say could ever assuage his grief, and she does not like to think what else he might have done.

Ramona has lost weight. It’s not surprising, really – the stint in the desert, followed by her all-too-brief recuperation in Panama, and now she’s probably sweating off what’s left of her physique. But with her newly shorn head, she has to hope no one will notice the handler’s trousers are cinched a few notches tighter at the waist.

The first time she makes her way up through the decks of the ship her heart is pumping so fast she feels light-headed.

Just once a day
, she reminds herself.
Just for appearance.

A crewman approaches. Ramona holds her breath, then pushes it out, forcing herself to breathe naturally. Hold your head high – don’t look at him – he’s not looking at you. He’s close now. Just keep walking.

The crewman seems to suck himself to the wall as he passes, avoiding any possibility of contact.

Ramona’s vision is spotted. From here she doesn’t know the way. From here, it’s guesswork.

She keeps walking. Passes a canteen. Several crew members are eating breakfast. The smell of coffee meets her nostrils. A moment later it hits her stomach and she feels woozy again. Keep walking. A crewwoman passes her, averting her eyes over Ramona’s shoulder.

She reaches the washrooms. There is another woman in there but when Ramona enters she departs immediately. Ramona goes into a cubicle, shuts the door and locks it. There’s a shower. She finds the switch, turns it on and strips off her clothes. Her legs seem too weak to hold her; she crouches under the running water and masked by the sound she starts to cry, her whole body shaking. There is no timer on the shower. The water runs on and on, sluicing off her skin in sheets, and the wanton excess of it only serves to intensify her rage.

She pulls herself together. A box on the wall dispenses soap. She washes her newly cropped hair and dresses and goes back the way she came, barefoot.

Later that day they hit storms and the ship comes to a frustrating halt. In their weakened state, the prisoners are badly affected by the rolling motion, vomiting until there is nothing left to evacuate, and even Ramona feels ill. The handler is also in a poor state. There is a strong stench of urine. The woman has pissed herself.

Ramona switches on the torch. The handler flinches. Ramona gives her water. Some of it dribbles down the handler’s swollen face.