Tamaruq (41 page)

‘The Boreals are spoiling for a fight. They’ve as good as told us so. They don’t believe the Osirian. The Africans don’t believe the Osirian either but they have some sympathy for their situation.’ He is surprised by how rational he sounds. Even as he speaks he can feel his words dulling the situation, reducing it to language, to something conceptual. ‘They could have pushed them harder today but they didn’t. Unfortunately they also consider themselves bound by the rule book. Nkem Sosanya’s a stickler. She won’t budge from that.’

Aariak nods approvingly. ‘I agree we won’t get any movement there. Which means we continue on the assumption that these talks will break down, tomorrow, perhaps the day after. In the meantime we retain our official line: we are here to liberate the city from its oppressors.’

‘If we’re here to liberate the Osirians, shouldn’t we be speaking up for them?’

‘Io, you just said it yourself. Sosanya won’t be swayed by emotion. She’s a cold-headed lawyer. There’s no point in us wasting energy on hopeless intercessions.’

Murmurs of agreement from around the table.

‘The Boreals are talking about demanding truth drugs,’ says Aariak. ‘We cannot let that happen. Linus Rechnov knows far more than he’s letting on. It would be a debacle.’

‘Can we get to him first?’ asks another officer.

‘We’ve scoped that possibility. They’re all heavily guarded, just like us. But we’ve set up surveillance on all parties. If anything interesting happens outside these talks, we’ll be the first to know.’

‘Not to mention Io,’ says the officer. They all look at him. Karis realizes with alarm that his role in Atrak has made him a liability.

‘I can go back to the ship,’ he says.

‘No,’ says Aariak at once. ‘That will look suspicious. You need to stay where you are, with us. The important thing is we act before they can put Linus Rechnov on a drip. We need to move quickly now, before the Boreals do.’

‘Do you want these talks to fail?’ asks Karis.

Aariak looks offended.

‘Of course I don’t. I’m just being pragmatic.’ She glances around the table. ‘It may well come down to a simple question: do we want to get out of here alive, or do we want to be annihilated? Because I know what I’d choose. Maybe you don’t, Io.’

Karis sits back, defeated. Aariak is right: he’s not a defender, he never wanted to be one. He wonders what other discussions are going on at this very moment, in other rooms like this, with other delegates. He imagines the two Osirians, sat opposite one another with a small square table between them, ingesting a brine-heavy meal of the disagreeable Osirian diet, some kind of broth, he thinks, packed out with kelp, a forlorn quality apparent even in the food they are eating. Between them on the table is a glistening silver fish, its scales still wet from the ocean, its flat round eye upturned to the ceiling. The one from the east, Linus, with his smart, crumpled attire and handsome, weary face, the one from the west, Dien, whose disgust for humanity is evident in every contemptuous twirl of the spoon. Linus talking at first, a constant stream of patter as he tries to reassure himself and Dien, to pad out the silence, to push away the memory of words which fell in the Chambers like stones through water, all of which point to one outcome, but Dien’s monosyllabic responses are a clearer, more accurate reflection of the situation, and in the end Linus gives up, his resources drained, the pressure of the day too great to maintain any illusion of buoyancy. Mid-sentence, he simply stops talking. Whatever he would have said, it doesn’t matter. They sit in silence. The clink of the spoons against the bowls. The damp sounds of mastication. Dien pushes away her bowl, still half-full, then pulls it back, her disgust evidently extending to herself, and finishes the dish in a series of forced, unhappy mouthfuls. Then she pushes back her chair and stands up, looking at Linus but thinking about other people entirely, people who are important to her (who are they? Where are they? Are they with the people with the torches?), people she loves, deciding whether she should go to them, walk away from this farce – she has done what she can do.

And in a white-sheeted bed the red-haired woman, the Silverfish. Flitting in and out of consciousness, her heart and her breathing erratic, like a butterfly blown about in a forest of young pines.

And in another room the Boreals are lounging on sofas, relaxed, casual, their triumph already sealed. The one with the cherubic face crams something into his mouth, Boreal treats they brought with them in crate-loads, distrustful as they are of southern cuisine, and not without reason. Katu Ben’s smiling lips work around the sweet. The group is concentrating, but only in jest. They are playing some manner of game, a digital construct that flickers between them, divulging in its glare their faces, hungry and impatient, or laughing as they flick in their bets – yes, it’s a game of stakes, where everything may be risked on a single gamble – a game of winners and losers. Jokes fly between them, quick-witted and pitiless. In other circumstances, the competition might be more intense, but this is a mere dissipation of energy, a distraction before the storm, the clash of clouds before
we torpedo the shit out of you
.

And in another room the Africans, delegation of the Solar Corporation, with their scripts of law. Going over the day, feverish, working like bees, considering solutions. There must be solutions. He has an idea of Nkem Sosanya with a set of scales before her, that beautiful head tipped to one side, considering, infinite and wise like a mythical goddess, but the image resists him; it will not resolve, and instead he sees her sat on the toilet, hunched over, her face strained with the movement of her bowels after the unfortunate consumption of a plate of Osirian seafood.

The Antarcticans cradle glasses of another Osirian delicacy: coral tea. They are talking intently. The layout of the city, its strengths and stress points, the whereabouts of the Boreals, the likelihood of further, camouflaged submarines or submarines that have not yet surfaced, the movements of Antarctican underwater drones which even now are sweeping the city and its surrounding waters, penetrating the kelp forests and the darker depths of the ocean where the Atum Shelf falls away, searching, searching, searching.

Karis rises and excuses himself. He meets with no resistance. In a moment of paranoia he wonders if Aariak has decided his usefulness has expired, but then he remembers what she said: it would look more suspicious were he to disappear. The idea of disappearing depresses him.

Back in his room he paces up and down, running his fingertips along the strangely curving walls, marvelling at the architecture which has withstood the hyperstorms of the South Atlantic Ocean. The Boreals built this place, but it is beautiful. A conundrum. He examines everything in the room as though it might yield clues, to what he doesn’t know, or even answers, to questions he can’t bear to ask. He doesn’t think he will sleep but when he stretches out on the bed, burying his face in the soft covers, his whole body seems to sink down and he finds he can’t move and has no desire to.

When the singing starts, Ole goes to shut the window.

‘Don’t,’ she says drowsily.

‘It’s too cold for you,’ says Mikaela.

‘I want to be… by the window. I want to see.’

The nurses comply. They would grant her any wish; in any case, it doesn’t matter now. They sit her up in the bed. Together they watch the burning barges pass below.

‘That will be me soon.’

‘Will you stop being so defeatist?’ A new voice, sharp and cross. Dien is here.

‘Why not? It’s true. Promise me you won’t make a big thing of it. All that singing. All that… spectacle.’

‘Demanding to the end, aren’t you?’

‘I mean it.’

She settles back with a sigh. The pain returns in vicious pangs and they increase the drug dosage again. It will take the pain away but it will take lucidity with it. These windows of consciousness are becoming rarer. She looks at Mikaela and Ole at her bedside and understands that this might be the last time she is able to communicate with them, and slow tears trickle down her cheeks. She tries to fight it but it gets harder every time. She is losing the battle. She has always been a realist. It was Vikram who was the romantic. Vikram, on the expedition boat, who made it to land.

She must be babbling, because Mikaela is placating her. Hush, hush. Save your strength. She wants to say things –
I love you. You saved me. I don’t want to die, please don’t let it happen
– but the morphine is doing its work. She tries to focus on those who are here. Linus, snatching an hour’s sleep on the couch. Dien, alert, pacing. Ole, stroking her hand. Mikaela. But there are others now, who might be here, who cannot be here. There’s the girl from the bridge, Liis. The girl who fell. There’s Nils and Drake, their hair on fire, rifles in their arms. There’s Jannike Ko in a seaweed dress. Her father, she thinks. Her mother. Vikram, waiting at the end of a pier, but despite everything that came after it’s the first time she saw him that persists, that strange, angry young man who walked into a room full of roses one cold autumn night.

Then that image too evades her, and she’s sinking, back to the seabed, the surface now an inkling of light, ephemeral and frail.

He wakes from a dream of a choir singing. He wakes muttering, or humming, words from songs he has long forgotten, songs his mother used to sing around the house, and for a few moments he lies there, thinking of her strong, forthright face, the bright eyeshadow she always wears, which used to embarrass him, and her voice as he heard it so many times on the weekends as a teenager, too lazy to get out of bed. He wonders if he will ever see her again. Or Bia, or his niece Grace. He wonders if Grace would miss him, and what Bia would say to the child about dead Uncle Karis, who told a lot of lies, some of them to Bia.

It’s strange. The idea of his dying here is entirely possible, even, if the scales have tipped, probable – but he cannot consider it seriously. He cannot believe it could actually happen, that the world could continue without him in it. Perhaps, he thinks, because I have so little to leave behind. Perhaps he should make a promise.

If I live – if I live I’ll—

He doesn’t know.

He’s humming again. He realizes the singing was not a part of his dream – or it might have been, but it is still resounding, the sound coming from outside, voices drifting up from the waterways.

Karis goes to the window-wall of his room and without turning on a light, switches the glass to clear. In the waterway below, a procession is passing. Hundreds of boats move slowly through the water. At the prow of each boat stands an Osirian woman, clad in white, hooded robes and holding aloft a torch. Others on accompanying boats hold images, or have their heads bowed in weeping. The larger boats are towing flat barges or rafts ablaze with fire. Through the flames, Karis glimpses the pale cloth of shrouds piled high upon the rafts, and he realizes that what he is witnessing is a mass funeral.

The Osirians are singing as they bear their dead through the city. Their voices rise, sometimes in unison, sometimes fractured by a lone note, projecting high or low through the throng. The singing makes Karis’s hair stand on end. With each suspended note he feels as though the music is burrowing deeper into his head. Now he can hear his mother’s voice, joining them, singing the funeral song of the Osirians. Why? he wants to ask her. But she just sings and smiles and sings. He wants to turn away and darken the glass, but he cannot. He watches, waiting for the boats to pass and the procession to end. But the boats keep coming.

MIG WAKES IN
a fit of coughing. His throat is raw and pulpy, like someone’s mashed it with a fork, and when he opens his eyes they sting as if he’s been rubbing lemon juice into the rims. He blinks. The sky shifts overhead, thick with congealing cloud. Branches of a tree, waving. Sky. Trees. He’s outside. He’s – where the fuck is he? He can’t remember anything. His brain has turned to soup, dislocated images floating around in it, rising to the surface and sinking back before he can grab at them. He closes his sore eyes and tries to swallow back the coughing. The ground beneath him is earth.

The camp.

It’s coming back. The Alaskan, on the cabin floor, her throat exposed beneath the rope – Vikram’s face tight with rage at what Mig had done, had tried to do – camp members, scattering into the forest, screaming. Mig running, someone shouting his name, the sudden bulk of a Tarkie in front of him – and then the gas, and in the gas everything got mixed up again – the Alaskan, the gun against her head – the Alaskan, who he came so close to killing – the Alaskan—

‘Mig. You’re awake.’

He freezes. The voice is the Alaskan’s. Very low, but unmistakably hers, coming from somewhere above his head.

‘Don’t move. Just tell me if you are awake.’

‘I’m awake,’ he whispers.

The light between the treetops is so horribly bright, even through the backs of his eyelids. The voice continues, like an ant crawling along his forehead. Or is there an ant? Yes, it’s an actual ant.

‘This is how things stand, Mig. I can, if I choose to, get us out of here with our bones and our fingernails intact. No, don’t open your eyes – not yet. Don’t let me know that you can hear me. Don’t move. That’s the first road you can take. I get us out and you stay with me, Mig. You help me. Then again, I can also get myself out of here alone and leave you to the mercy of the Antarcticans. You know a lot, Mig. More than anyone else here, perhaps. You know about our Osirian friend. I suggest the former. What’s it to be?’

He squints his eyes half open, and takes a quick scan of the periphery of his vision. Sees people, close by. Sitting and standing. Sees guards, armed and foreign. Sees the tall heads of trees that border the clearing. Sees a tail of smoke. Sees the wheel of a chair, a pair of shoes, the toes angled towards one another. He stays where he is, curled up. He doesn’t look at her face.

‘I’ll help you,’ he mutters.

‘Good. Then I will help you.’