Tamaruq (49 page)

‘Take us lower,’ she instructs.

‘That’s not a good idea—’

‘There’s space, you can manage it,’ says the Alaskan.

Ramona drops the plane into a corridor weaving between the conical towers. The radio crackles.

‘People are trying to hail us,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Ignore them.’

The pilot doesn’t respond. All her attention is focused upon navigating the perilous pathway between the towers, a pathway obstructed with slender bridges and sinuous transportation lines. The Alaskan and Mig hold on tightly as the plane jerks in a series of abrupt manoeuvres.

‘There!’ shouts Mig, pointing. ‘That one.’

It has to be the one. He’s never seen anything so magnificent. It makes his heart pound just looking at it; a place like this must have been built by giants.

Ramona risks a quick look. Mig is right. This is the tallest tower they have seen, rising several metres above the closest peak.

‘Down?’ she asks.

The Alaskan nods.

Ramona grips the yoke tightly. The aeroplane barrels out of the sky at speed. Ramona’s jaw is clenched as she lifts the nose of the plane over a bridge, then dives back down towards the waterway. The plane touches down heavily and sloughs a path through the water, its wings narrowly missing several small boats which slide sideways in the swell. Ramona powers down the engines and nudges the aircraft into a slow turn towards a star-shaped decking skirting the base of the Eye Tower. She can see people on the decking standing and pointing, their mouths agape. Like most Patagonians, they will never have seen an aeroplane before.

The plane comes to a stop. For a few moments there is silence.

‘I’ll guard the plane,’ says the Alaskan. Ramona turns in her seat.

‘Mig, you coming with me?’

‘Yes!’

He’s not going to miss this. Not for anything.

‘It’s going to be a short swim. Can you swim?’

‘No,’ says the boy.

‘Then hang on to me. And keep my rifle out the water.’

‘Get into the summit,’ says the Alaskan. ‘Find the Africans. Tell them Vikram Bai is in the city. Tell them everything you know. Don’t worry about the language, they’ll have a translation chamber. Don’t speak to anyone else. You can’t trust the Boreals or the Antarcticans.’

Ramona nods. She opens the hatch.

‘Remember the words I told you,’ calls the Alaskan.

‘Yes.
Redfleur
.
Cure
. I remember.’

She drops down into the water.

‘Come on,’ she shouts to Mig. The boy hesitates only a moment, staring at the turbulence of the waves, then jumps after her with a yell.

The Alaskan closes the hatch. She watches as Ramona swims the short distance to the tower decking, the boy clinging to her shoulders. For the first time in years she feels a spark of anger towards her inert legs. Someone gives the woman and the boy a hand out of the water. She sees Ramona exchanging a few quick words, then she strides into the tower, the rifle on her back, Mig scurrying after her. The attention of those on the decking turns to the Alaskan, trapped in the cockpit of the plane like an artwork on display. They wave at her. She gives them the finger. They look taken aback.

‘Heathens,’ mutters the Alaskan.

Karis Io sits in silent incredulity as the Chambers descend into chaos. The Solar Corporation leader is not even bothering to ask for quiet; she sits back with her chin resting on her knuckles while the delegates shout over and above one another. Evie Aariak is on her feet, shouting and pointing. The second officer twitches beside her. He’s only waiting to get back to the trigger.

He looks to the Solar Corporation convenor, issuing a silent plea. Surely there are persuasions she can use, some trick or slip of the law, or just the might of the Solar Corporation to force a resolution. Perhaps there are, and perhaps she has used them, or perhaps she has already decided that the situation is not worth what’s left in her arsenal. Her face is tired, and as the minutes tick by it alters further, a resignation identifiable that was not there in the previous day. Karis can imagine the second narrative that is running through her mind; she has the Corporation’s welfare to consider, and if the talks fail and hostilities resume, her responsibility is with the Corporation ship, now waiting alone and vulnerable to the east of the city. How fast can it get out of range? How fast can she get her people safe? She’s done what she can. She’s exercised her duty and if these people cannot reason or will not adhere, well, then she won’t compromise African lives. That’s not a part of the Nuuk Treaty.

Tuning out the noise of the summit, Karis becomes aware of some other kind of disturbance at the doors. Raised voices carry from outside. Nkem Sosanya has noticed too. She beckons one of the Corporation guards and gives him an instruction. He goes outside.

Aariak leans back.

‘Io.’

‘What?’

She doesn’t speak but jerks her head in the direction of the door. Karis gets the picture. She wants him to check it out. He resents the order, but then he thinks, why the hell not? He’s had enough of his seat in these chambers for one lifetime.

He slips from the tiered seats and makes his way around the back of the delegates. In the corridor outside, he finds the security guards and Sosanya’s man trying to pacify a fierce-looking woman with a rifle and an adolescent boy who darts at the door when Karis steps out, only to be caught and yanked away by one of the guards. Karis stops, taken aback. The woman is shouting in a language that sounds like Portuguese but isn’t. Spanish. Is she Patagonian? How the hell has she got here?

The situation is escalating. The woman grasps her rifle and speaks threateningly. The guards’ hands go to their guns. Now the boy is shouting too, jumping up and down. The woman turns in despair to Karis and tries again with him. He spreads his hands.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying.’

She raises her eyes to the ceiling and shouts something in her own language that Karis takes as a curse, directed at him, or some higher entity. Then she addresses him again.

‘Vikram Bai,’ she says. ‘Vikram Bai. Is. Here.’

The name goes through him like an electric shock. How the fuck does she know about Vikram?

He glances back at the doors. Has anyone else heard the commotion? Where have these two come from? He should go back in. Tell Aariak. Tell her they’ve been rumbled.

The woman’s eyes are fixed on his, the boy’s as well, the boy is looking at him like he’s a murderer. They can tell something is up. Move, he tells himself, but everyone is staring at him now and his feet refuse to obey.

The woman gestures; she wants something to write with.

Karis pulls the smartcloth they’ve been using to communicate while in session from his pocket and unfolds it. He offers it to the woman. She stares at it warily, then takes it with her fingertips. She taps out three words in Boreal English. She hands the cloth back to Karis.

Vikram.

Redfleur.

Cure.

He stares at her. She stares back at him, the desperation in her eyes clear as she tries to convey whatever it is that she needs to communicate.

Karis thinks of Vikram Bai, the Osirian man who the Antarcticans found through their spy cameras walking into the African tower last night. Vikram Bai, who Karis knows is their one remaining bargaining chip, a last chance to keep foreign feet from landing on the peninsula. Vikram Bai, who is rumoured to have a cure for redfleur, as this woman clearly knows.

He knows what Evie Aariak would do. She’d take this pair away and she’d shoot them in a deserted waterway.

If he lets Vikram go, he could be exiled for treason. Aariak will make it her mission to end him. She’s a true defender. He looks at the woman and the boy who are suddenly at his mercy. Everything he has heard within the Chambers and outside of it is tangled up with these two skinny Patagonians. The singing at the funeral, his mother’s singing, Shri Nayar, standing in his office:
you should be ashamed
. And it occurs to him that all his life he has done things without thinking about whether they matter.

‘Come with me,’ he says. He holds out his hand. ‘Come.’

The Patagonian woman looks at him suspiciously.

‘Antarctican?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You have to trust me.’

She might not understand the words but she takes his meaning. He can see the consternation in her face as she makes her decision. She looks to the doors of the Chambers. They can both hear the shouting on the other side. He senses there isn’t much time left. Then she nods.

‘Yes.’

The noise. Cutting through Vikram’s head like a laser bisecting ice. He doesn’t know where the commotion is coming from or what is making it but it hurts and he wishes it would stop. It doesn’t stop. It grows louder.

He hears the distinct sound of a shot.

His eyes open. His vision is blurred and he panics momentarily, thinking he’s been blinded but then it clears, leaving a bright keening pain behind his eyes. He finds himself lying in an empty bathtub, bound at the ankles and the wrists, in a bathroom he’s never seen before. Fragments of memory return one by one – last night, the shark – walking through the city – the silent towers – the assailants coming at him from either side—

He can hear the creak of footsteps making their way through what must be another part of an apartment. He wriggles backwards. Manages to get to a sitting position. Somehow it’s important to be sitting when he dies.

The footsteps grow closer. They’ll find him, any minute now. There’s a certain irony, he thinks, in having made it this far. Right to the heart of Osiris. One regret burns at him. Adelaide. He didn’t find her. She was here and he didn’t find her.

The door handle turns. Vikram keeps his eyes steady. Whoever it is, he’ll meet them face on.

A slight, furtive figure steps through the doorway.

‘Hello,’ says Mig. He is grinning.

Vikram looks at him and begins to laugh. He can feel the relief crashing off him in waves. The boy’s alive.

Mig explains as they untie him. They’ve all come. Him. The pilot. The Alaskan, though she’s in the aeroplane. This one – he jerks a thumb behind him, and Vikram sees an unfamiliar man hovering in the apartment behind – is a Tarkie. But he brought us to you.

‘What time is it?’ Vikram asks. ‘Are the talks still going?’

The pilot nods.

‘But I don’t think there’s much time.’

‘What about Adelaide? Adelaide Rechnov?’

The pilot looks blank, but the Antarctican obviously recognizes the name. He switches to Boreal English, resisting the urge to seize the man’s shoulders and shake the information out of him.

‘Do you know if she’s alive?’

‘I don’t know. They didn’t expect—’ He stops, seeing Vikram’s face.

‘I have to see her,’ he says urgently.

‘If you don’t go into the talks right now, this place will be bombed before you can. There’s no time for anything else. We have to get in there.’

‘Come on,’ says the pilot impatiently. ‘Why are we waiting?’

Vikram looks from face to face, divided. Mig. Ramona. Karis. Their expectation is perfectly clear. They’ve come for him. Why is he waiting? What could be more important than this? He knows they are right, but it doesn’t reduce the compulsion to run, run away, run to her, to rush into a room and say:
how is this possible that we are both here in this place, not dead?

But the three of them are standing there, waiting for him.

Mig puts a tentative hand on his elbow. He starts to steer.

‘This way.’

As they help him out of the apartment, Vikram sees the uniformed body of an Antarctican sprawled in the doorway. The pilot steps over it. Her face is grim. She still has her hand on the rifle. As they hurry back towards the Eye Tower, Mig begins to tell him their tale.

‘You can’t go in there, the summit’s still in session—’

‘And it’s about to break down,’ says Karis. ‘Unless I can get this man in front of Sosanya. So let us through or—’

The pilot raises her rifle and points it resignedly at the head of the guard.

‘I can vouch for them,’ says Karis. ‘They’re here to help.’

As the doors inch ajar Vikram can already hear the conflicting voices welling from inside. Numbly, he remembers there was a time when he was here before, when it was he and Adelaide against the world. Now the world is larger and darker and she’s gravely injured in a hospital room and he’s on his own.

He steps inside the Chambers. The other three move defensively to surround him. He sees the faces of those in the room, bright with anger, no one he recognizes, no one he knows except – he sees Linus Rechnov, the man turning pale with shock – people are turning towards the speaker’s platform where a woman with a shaved head rises, protesting over the intrusion, and the man called Karis runs up to the speaker’s platform and whispers in the woman’s ear.

She sits upright, startled. Her gaze settles upon Vikram. He is intensely aware of her scrutiny, of the others at his side, Mig bristling with preemptive outrage, the pilot warily resting one hand on her rifle; of the Antarcticans staring at him in trepidation, and one woman in particular at Karis with hatred.

Quiet falls through the room.

The Solar Corporation leader stands.

‘Lock down this room. No one leaves until I say.’ She beckons to Vikram’s party. ‘Come with me.’ She glances across to Linus and another woman who Vikram recognizes instantly as a westerner. ‘You two as well.’

There is one more person they need, the pilot tells him. The Alaskan. They sit around the table, Sosanya insisting upon silence until she arrives, escorted by Solar Corporation guards. The Alaskan settles into her chair with a grunt. She looks happier than anyone else in the room.

The African, Nkem Sosanya, folds her hands. She looks directly at Vikram and speaks in Boreal English, causing Karis to start with surprise; she’s been concealing her knowledge of the language all along.

‘Karis Io says you have an immunity to redfleur.’

Now that he is here, the focus of the room and of this quietly commanding woman, the words seem strange and difficult.