Tamaruq (45 page)

‘I have other sweets.’

Ramona takes a perch on the edge of a chair. She’s aware of the boy at the back of the room, fidgeting. He did help her. With Xiomara, when she believed Xiomara had medicine.

‘What happened to your wrist?’ she asks the Alaskan. A look passes between the woman and the boy, a look that Ramona does not understand.

‘I had an accident.’

‘Are you from Alaska?’

‘I’ve been in Patagonia for over fifty years.’

‘But you are from Alaska?’

‘I was born there.’ The Alaskan laughs. The sound sits deep in her throat, resulting in a spasm of coughing. ‘Honestly, Callejas, do you think I’d be living in this country through choice? Think of me as whatever you want, but believe me when I say I have little left in common with a nation you so clearly despise.’

‘They broke her spine,’ says Mig.

‘Enough!’ The Alaskan cuts through sharply. ‘Enough.’

Again, the lost memory flickers, but refuses to crystallize. Ramona considers the two of them; the boy and the old woman, bound by some strange and indefinable relationship which she cannot work out. A great weariness overcomes her. Why not tell these two? At least they are listening.

‘I found out something,’ she says. ‘Something the Boreals are doing. Something… despicable.’

The Alaskan waits quietly. Mig has stopped fidgeting, and is listening intently. Ramona is unable to restrain herself any longer.

‘They’re kidnapping southerners. The Boreals. They’re kidnapping them from their homes and taking them north of the belt and – and experimenting on them. With redfleur.’ She spits the word.

A shudder runs through the young boy.

‘It wasn’t only redfleur either.’ The words pour out of her; she knows she should hold back, should spare the boy, but having begun she can’t stop. ‘Before that, they were doing other experiments. Engineering people. Trying to change them. And not only up there. They had centres all over the place, in Sino-Siberia, and down here in the lost city—’

She stops abruptly, remembering the strange rumour told to her by Félix, back in Panama, a rumour that seemed too bizarre to be real, but has proved to be real, and then what Lygia said—

The Alaskan is staring at her, completely absorbed.

‘The lost city, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re behind the times,’ says the Alaskan. ‘The lost city – Osiris – has been invaded by the Boreals.’

‘Lygia told me.’ She slumps. ‘So the government won’t see me. They’re in a crisis meeting. Apparently it’s more important than this.’

‘Well,’ says the Alaskan. ‘I hate to break it to you, but it’s war. War has a tendency to redefine priorities.’

‘Not like this,’ whispers Ramona. ‘Not like this.’

The Alaskan’s mind is racing. Neurones surging towards one another, each pulse generating another connection of the greater, the overlying web. The lost city. The missing link.
Of course.

The fact that the Boreals are experimenting on southerners is a revelation, but if she thinks far enough back… When the Alaskan was ascending the giddy heights of power, there were rumours of such centres. They were never spoken of. Only hints. Allusions. Conversations not quite concluded. Gaps in reports. No one asked, and so no one knew, and no one could reveal. That was before the emergence of redfleur, but it makes sense that the purpose of these centres would be diverted to such a wide-scale threat.

She looks at the pilot’s tired, haunted face. It doesn’t make sense to the pilot. There’s a woman who’s seen some things she won’t forget. Such is this world. Not everyone can witness it and survive unchanged, or survive at all. Something about her – the impulsiveness, perhaps – reminds the Alaskan of the Scandinavian girl.

‘The man Vikram Bai,’ she says. ‘He has immunity.’

The Alaskan is thinking aloud. The pilot looks confused.

‘I don’t know him.’

‘He is Osirian. He was shipwrecked here, some months ago now. He is largely responsible for the rediscovery of Osiris. But he is of interest for other reasons. He has immunity to redfleur.’

‘Immunity?’ The pilot looks dazed at the idea. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Maybe not,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Think. Think what you have just this moment told me. The lost city was once an experimentation site. That is what you said.’

‘Yes, an ancillary centre, that’s what Kvest’s diaries—’

‘We know that the man who survived redfleur – the
only known survivor
– is from the lost city.’

The Alaskan waits, impatiently, for the moment of clarity to register. When it comes, elevating the pilot’s features into an entirely different plane of cognizance, the Alaskan feels for a few blissful seconds nothing but the thrill, the volt of pleasure that comes of a covert knowledge shared.

The pilot takes a little more time to catch up in full.

‘You think because of that he might – he might provide a cure?’

‘It’s possible,’ the Alaskan muses. ‘It is one possible explanation, anyway. And certainly the most tantalizing one, don’t you think? But in any case, we can’t ask him about his parentage because he’s no longer here. No, Vikram Bai has gone to a war zone.’

The pilot jumps up from her seat and begins to stalk the tiny room.

‘Then we need to get him back!’

‘A ridiculous idea. The city is trapped between the Boreals and the Antarcticans. The long-range signals indicate a ceasefire, but that will never last. Neither side will concede.’

‘Then we need to tell them. We need to get inside the city – find this Osirian – tell them what I know!’

The Alaskan casts a despairing glance in Mig’s direction.

‘Mig, you know what’s happening here. Help me talk some sense into this madwoman.’

Mig regards her steadily. That secretive, cat-like expression that marks a door to the boy’s other life.

‘She’s right,’ he says. ‘We have to find Vikram.’

‘Mig—’

‘We have to find him! You said he could provide a cure. That’s what they all thought, at the camp. That’s why they all came.’ Mig swallows. ‘That’s why I went with him, after Cataveiro.’

‘I said he might. Nothing is certain. How should I know, I’m not a scientist. I’m an old woman. What do I know?’

‘He can end the experiments in the north,’ says Ramona. She seizes Mig’s hands. ‘We’ll find him.’

The Alaskan pops a nougat into her mouth and sucks it slowly. She observes the two of them, boy and woman, so suddenly alike in their evangelical fervour. She despairs of the human race. How can people be so imbecilic?

‘Where did you find the site of the experiments, Callejas?’

‘In the desert, north of the belt. A place called Tamaruq. Why does it matter where? When you hear what they were doing…’ The pilot’s eyes slide to Mig. She doesn’t continue her sentence.

The Alaskan adjusts her weight in her chair and loads her next words with all the gravitas she can muster.

‘In the desert. North of the belt. Deep into the uninhabitable zone. And how many other secret places do you think the Boreals might have in this world, for this, for other, as you would call them, atrocities? You may expose these crimes, but believe me, by the time that site has closed, another will have sprung up in its place. If not redfleur, something else. The world is too vast, Callejas. You cannot find out all of its criminals.’

The pilot shakes her head.

‘I know what you’re trying to do. But I don’t care. This isn’t an option. Don’t you see? This isn’t a choice. I’ve made up my mind. I made up my mind when I went into that lab and almost got my ma killed. I’m going to Osiris.’

‘It’s a suicide mission,’ says the Alaskan.

‘I’m going with her,’ declares Mig.

‘And you should come with us,’ says the pilot. ‘We’ll need a navigator.’

‘I’ve never been to the sea city. What makes you think I can direct you there?’

The pilot taps a radio pointedly.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t know where it is.’

The Alaskan’s eyes gleam. ‘Sure you want an old nirvana with you on your little crusade?’

She notes the recognition spark in the pilot’s eyes at the word
nirvana
. Something has just clicked into place. But the pilot doesn’t flinch. She’s made of sterner stuff than that. The Alaskan respects that.

‘We’re going,’ repeats the pilot. ‘Mig here, and me, together. Are you with us?’

Getting the Alaskan to the plane is the problematic part. Ramona leaves Mig to stock up on provisions for the journey while she runs about town, trying to find one of the few drivers who can lend her a vehicle. The process is tedious and inevitably slowed by all the questions of people who want to know where she’s been, questions that Ramona cannot begin to answer. At last she tracks down an old army contact who says she can loan his truck for an hour.

She runs back to Arturo’s and finds Inés and her companions settled into a rhythm of steady drinking, surrounded by a rapt and growing audience. By the end of the day, each of the survivors will be famous across the archipelago. But the exhaustion on her mother’s face is evident.

Ramona slips through the crowd of spectators.

‘Ma, we need to get you a room.’

Inés shrugs her off.

‘No, no, no—’

‘You need to rest. I’ve spoken with Art. He’s going to put you up for now, until you’re strong enough to go home. Come on.’

She helps Inés climb the stairs, seeing with concern how slowly her mother moves, the extreme frailness of her body. In the relief of getting Inés to safety, she has almost forgotten that her mother is not safe at all; every day of the jinn is another day her immune system is defenceless. She tucks Inés into bed, wrapping the blankets securely around her, and places water and food at her bedside. There’s a radio in the room, and Ramona moves that too within easy reach of the bed. She lifts her mother’s wrist gently from the covers.

‘This is the first patch.’ She applies it carefully to her mother’s inner wrist. Inés twitches but does not protest. ‘Day one. It’s not going to be easy. You have to be strong. Promise me you’ll stay the course.’

Inés’s voice is a murmur.

‘Flying away, my little one?’

‘There’s something I have to do. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘You have it from me,’ says Inés.

‘What’s that?’

‘The going. You have it from me.’

‘Are you talking about the fugue?’

‘I don’t remember, Ramona. That is the thing.’ Her forehead crinkles. ‘I wake up in a place – oh, some places! and there is no memory. Where am I? How did I come to be here? Nothing. No places or people or things or… jaguars. Those journeys happened to a person who is not me. Sometimes I have a sense, in my stomach, a sense like my body has a memory that is not up here.’ She taps her head. ‘I have held this, I have done that. There are things I must have seen but… all I have is a fog.’

Ramona strokes her mother’s hand.

‘I’m so sorry, Ma. I didn’t know.’

‘No.’

‘I wish you’d said, before. You should have said.’

‘You ask me so many times. So I make up the stories. To have something… And now – now it’s your turn. Give me a story before you go. Maybe it’s my last.’

‘It won’t be your last. What story?’

‘Oh, any, I don’t care.’

‘All right. Let’s go with the parrot.’ Her mother smiles. ‘There was a parrot who lived in the jungle and rode on the back of the last jaguar,’ begins Ramona. ‘And as the years went by, the jungle grew smaller, and the animals grew fewer. But what most people don’t realize is their voices did not vanish with them. When an animal disappeared, its voice flew up into the atmosphere, and the parrot, spying the voice, flew up to catch it in its beak. Some of the voices were hard and reedy and some were soft and hissing but it didn’t matter to the parrot, it swallowed every single one. And when the jungle was gone the parrot had collected up all of the voices and had them safely in its stomach. But then a thing happened. The parrot…’ Ramona founders. This story should run off her tongue by rote, but the end is evading her; her mind has gone blank. ‘I’m sorry, Ma. I can’t think.’

Inés’s eyes are closed. For a terrible moment Ramona thinks she has slipped away while she was talking. Then she hears the soft hiss of an exhalation. Just sleeping. She presses her cheek to her mother’s chest, embracing her as best she can without disturbing her.

‘You’re safe now,’ she whispers. ‘Get some sleep.’

As Mig is on his way back to the Alaskan’s house a man steps directly in front of him, blocking his way. The man is heavy-set with a battered, pox-marked face and a tattoo at the edge of his eye. Mig, his arms full of bags, takes a step back.

‘Where you going with those, kid?’

‘Who wants to know?’

He darts to the side but the man moves and blocks him again.

‘I said where you going with those?’

Mig eyes the man’s frame warily, noting the way his jacket hangs. He is carrying a gun. Mig doesn’t like the look of this, he doesn’t like it at all.

‘To my employer.’

‘And who’s that?’

‘The Alaskan,’ he says boldly. He has no idea if the Alaskan’s name has the same effect here as it did in Cataveiro, but apparently she has made her mark in the few days they have been here, because the man hesitates.

‘And the pilot?’ he says.

‘What about her?’

A gaggle of young kids stream past them with minders in tow, heading for the harbour. The kids are jabbering away and the minders are hassled, struggling to keep the kids together. Mig notices they all have luggage. The town is evacuating. He uses the diversion to slip away, feeling the stranger’s eyes on his back as he hurries on.

He tells the Alaskan about the encounter.

‘He asked about the pilot. I think he’s looking for her.’

The Alaskan sighs.

‘It’s Xiomara. We have to be quick. Tell me, Mig, how is it that you always end up in the company of such dangerous people?’

None of them are as dangerous as you, thinks Mig, but now he looks at her again, something of the Alaskan’s menace seems to have diluted. She can’t force me to do what I don’t want, thinks Mig. And she knows it. For a moment, he almost feels pity.

‘She’ll be here soon,’ he says.