Osiris (3 page)

He said something odd. Have you heard about the balloon? Or maybe it was, did you read about the balloon flight? It might even have been, what do you know about the balloon?

Nothing worth paying attention to, anyway. Axel talked in riddles; he no longer made sense. Adelaide was late and the need to take a shower was pressing on her with her own damp odour.

“No,” she said. “Are you alright? Do you need anything?” If he did he didn’t tell her. He repeated the same question about the balloon. He did not turn. Fraying strands of denim, inches long, trailed on the floor behind his bare feet. His gaze was fixed beyond the glass, but there was no view. Osiris was held hostage by fog.

The tips of his hair, the same bright red as hers, attracted motes of light like a crown. She had a strange sense that he was smiling.

“I’m going to change,” she said. “I have to meet someone. You know where everything is, A.”

In the bathroom she peeled off her jogging pants and Urchin tank top and threw them carelessly on the floor. She stepped into the shower before the water had time to heat, gasping at the dousing. After, she wrapped herself in her kimono and went through to her bedroom. Carefully applying a sweep of scarlet lipstick, she almost forgot about Axel.

When she came back he was gone. He had left the front door ajar. She pounded it shut, purely for her own satisfaction, because she was sure he was nowhere near by and even if he was, the noise would have meant nothing to him. She went for lunch in the Hummingbird Café in S-771-E. Jannike was late too and had a tale about a faulty shuttle pod or some other transport problem. They ordered weqa. She remembered choosing the bottle because her staple choice was out of stock, and it was the first time she had read the wine list in several months of patronage. It was likely she had eaten bird.

That was the last time she saw Axel. A month had passed in the way that the months always passed, and sometimes she thought about him more and sometimes less, and then he was gone. It occurred to her, shivering in the glacial air, that it was impossible to say exactly when he had vanished.

She realized now who Sanjay Hanif had reminded her of: it was Dr Radir, the most recent of her twin’s consultants. Radir had failed to diagnose Axel with a condition. He said he had never treated anyone like Axel.

Adelaide let the cigarillo fall. She knew the reason she was out here. It was that nameless thing people did when they felt bereft of decision: waiting, seeing. There was something about Osiris that demanded this act of looking out, perhaps because there was nothing beyond the city to find. It was the behaviour of a fool. She had unearthed a fracture and did not know what to do with it.

One other resource remained open to her.

She took her scarab out of her purse and slipped in a jewelled earpiece. Then she entered the code that she had memorised two days ago. The o’comm at the other end buzzed twice before it was answered.

The voice that responded was curt but unremarkable.

“Yes?”

“My name is Adelaide Mystik. We spoke earlier this week.”

“Yes. You’ve decided?”

“I’d like to go ahead.”

“Very well.”

“You understand that this remains outside of my family’s jurisdiction?”

“I guarantee discretion.”

“Use this number only if you have to contact me. If I don’t respond, don’t speak. The funds will be with you within the hour. Start with the hospitals. I’ll relay Axel’s photograph to your scarab.”

“There are plenty of photographs of Axel Rechnov.”

“Not recent ones,” she said.

There was a pause.

“Send the photograph,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

“I want to meet,” she said quickly. “Let’s say Friday, the week after the execution. That should give you enough time. Eleven o’clock at the butterfly farm.”

“As you wish.”

The scarab emitted a tiny beep as the investigator disconnected from the Reef.

Adelaide brought up the last recorded image she had of Axel. He wasn’t looking at the camera. The miniature screen showed his pallor, the way his cheeks caved his face. It showed what remained. She entered the investigator’s code once more. Axel’s face hung there for a moment in profile before the picture blinked and the scarab went dark.

Her fingers fumbled as she put away the scarab, numb with cold. Nonetheless she stayed outside, exhausting the weqa, until the guests went away and she could leave.

2 ¦ VIKRAM

V
ikram’s watch ticked off the seconds with silent, calculated precision. It was nearing half ten o’clock; the appointed time of Eirik’s death was eleven. Vikram had already been here for over an hour. The boats had gathered early.

His hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists, catching shreds of torn lining in the pockets of his coat. Something had changed when he woke today. A tight band squeezed his chest, constricting the airflow and his heart. He could not have said what it meant; for so long he had felt only a blankness tinged with fear.

He stood at the boat rail of a rusting waterbus anchored far back in the crowd. The Council had chosen to stage the execution near the north end of the border, where four soaring towers cornered an impromptu square. On the western side, the sea was carpeted with boats, every craft jammed with westerners who had congregated, whether to witness a spectacle or out of disbelief that it would be carried through, Vikram could not tell. Apart from a few officials and the skadi, there were no Citizens on the surface. They were all inside, locked away behind window-walls, or listening to a reporter describe the scene on their o’dios.

“Mind if we squeeze in here?”

The man was a head shorter than Vikram, his breath misting in the cold, steering a child of perhaps eight in front of him. Vikram moved along the rail.

“Sure.”

What could he say? He glanced at the kid, a boy, whose expression was open and curious. He wanted to ask the man if it was right the boy should witness such a thing, but to draw any attention was risky. There was always a chance that one of the skadi might recognise him. They did as they pleased, and
in the event of any trouble, Vikram’s record would count against him. The thought of going back underwater was enough to bring sweat trickling down his back.

“They say he’s the NWO leader,” said the man. “Eirik 9968. They say he’s number one. What do you reckon?”

“I don’t know.”

He could have said a lot of things. He could have said that he had known Eirik like a brother, once. But between the rumours and the krill speculation and what Drake and Nils had told him, he no longer knew what or who to believe.

The kid pointed to the tank, sat on the deck of a barge a hundred metres away, beyond the front line of western boats. Behind it, the border rose out of the waves, its rippling mesh wet and dripping with seaweed.

“Is that it?” said the kid.

“That’s it.”

“Where’s the prisoner?”

“They’ll bring him out soon.”

Soon. In a matter of minutes, he had to watch Eirik die. Vikram thought he might cry, or shout out, or be sick. If he only knew if the man was guilty or not! He drew in a deep breath. When he exhaled the air came out loud, too loud, the woman on his other side turned her head to look. He had thought that his face was blank, but you never knew what really showed. Vikram had seen fear and horror spark in the most hardened of features: the emotion sudden and unexpected, like electric light in a dark window.

Keep yourself empty, he thought. A pebble at the bottom of the ocean. A bit of kelp. When it’s happened it’s over, done. Then you move on.

That was what the three of them had agreed, him and Nils and Drake. They would go to the execution, because they couldn’t stay away. But they would do nothing. There was nothing they could do.

Eirik’s sentence had finally been announced in early summer, eight months after Vikram was let out of jail. There had not been a public execution since the six Osuwa criminals were shot at the border twenty-eight years ago, for an alleged act of terrorism at the university. Even Vikram knew that Eirik had committed no acts of terrorism. The Citizens were going to execute him anyway.

Was the City actually scared of the west? How could they be, when there wasn’t a single coherent movement or activist group? The west was in chaos, crippled by food shortages and drug trafficking and the continual power failures. The shanty towns were terrorised by gangs who imposed illegal levees and warred continually amongst themselves. Once every few months there might be a straggly protest at the border, mute and seemingly purposeless, but it didn’t take a Councillor to work out that the west was in no position to threaten anyone.

Twenty minutes before eleven. The back of Vikram’s neck tingled with the bitter cold. He pulled up his scarf. In a couple of weeks, he’d need two to go outside.

It was an incongruously clear, pretty day, the sky palest blue and utterly empty. Under its expanse Vikram felt the unsettling jumble of freedom and an at times incapacitating terror of losing it again, which had dogged him ever since he got out. Around the towers, waves slapped the decking with light, almost playful gestures. The waterbus he stood upon with twenty other westerners rose on the swell.

A skadi boat glided down the edge of the crowd. They had a fleet of barges and speeders, and they had strung a line of buoys to fence in the western boats. The skadi were dressed bulkily in their habitual black. They were all armed with guns and tasers. One of them had a speakerphone.

“You will stay behind the barrier. You will not move your boats. Any attempted action will meet with severe punishment.”

The execution boat, anchored between the western crowds and the City, was a squat, ugly craft, surrounded by clear water and painted entirely black except for the prow, where someone had daubed two white orbs and the teeth of a shark. The deck was flat. On it, the transparent cube reflected the towers on either side and the people and the empty waiting sky.

The wind blew spray into Vikram’s face and he licked the salt from his chapped lips. It stung, an unwelcome reminder that he was really here. He was alive, and awake.

The speakerphone crackled. “You will stay behind the barrier. You will not move your boats…”

Vikram was nine years old when Mikkeli first brought him to the border. From his earliest memories, he had heard people talking about the infamous waterway. It was a subject which made voices change, and sometimes faces too. In Vikram’s young world, which consisted mostly of places he could not go or things he could not do, this barrier dividing the west from the City was a concept at once as solid and as transient as the sky.

On that day Mikkeli had blagged two passes on a waterbus and sneaked Vikram up to a balcony sixty floors above surface. Once they were safely installed, she unwrapped a package of fried squid and kelp. She said that someone had given her the food, which was a lie. Vikram knew Mikkeli had stolen it because he had heard the fry-boat woman yelling at them earlier as they ran away over the raft rack.

They shared the squid rings, greasy and chewy on the inside but coated with thick, salty batter. Mikkeli gave Vikram most of the kelp squares. She pointed outwards.

“Look over there,” she said. “See them towers?”

“Yeah. They’re all silver.” That was his first impression of the City. Silver and glorious, like the morning sun on the waves.

“We can’t go there,” said Mikkeli. Her voice sounded strange. Vikram could not work out if she was cross or if she might actually cry. He thought about what Mikkeli had said and decided that there must be a reason for it.

“Why can’t we go there?”

“’Cause we’re westerners, that’s why. We’re not allowed.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it’s the rules. The Council’s rules.” Mikkeli spat over the balcony rail. Vikram leaned forward to see the gob of spit fly and Mikkeli grabbed his collar and pulled him back.

“Who’s the Council, Keli?”

“Stupid old gulls, Naala says. Stupid gulls who make stupid rules. You see, Vik, our mum’s and dad’s folks, they weren’t born here. They came from some place else.”

“I know that. I’m not an idiot.”

“No, you’re clever, that’s why I’m telling you this. “’Cause it’s important. And it’s not fair. Why do we get left in this dump and them Citizens got heating and ’lectricity that works all the time and you know what else they’ve got? They’ve got the
o’vis
.” The yearning in Mikkeli’s voice reminded Vikram of hours spent waiting outside the fry-boats, smelling the smell of hot squid, knowing that it would be long past twilight before leftovers. “Naala actually saw an o’vis once. She said it’s amazing. You can watch ancient filmreels the Neons made; the newsreel and animés and
everything
.”

“What’s the newsreel?”

“This announcer thing they got, tells you information and stuff, like if someone dies, everyone knows ’cause it’s on the feed…”

Mikkeli talked on. She told him weird and wonderful stories of a fabulous world where people went to parties and wore beautiful clothes and watched acrobats and then stuffed themselves with weqa and fish until they vomited.

People didn’t get sick in the City, she said. They didn’t get horrible coughs and die in the night.

The Citizens did peculiar things. They kept animals in their rooms—as pets. They wore coats with bird feathers inside. They had gliders.

If they wanted to come to west Osiris, which they didn’t, they were allowed to whenever they liked.

Vikram listened. He looked at the sleek, silver towers. The shuttle lines looked like jets of blue fire leaping from one gigantic cone to the next. Fire was one of Vikram’s favourite things in his limited world.

“Can’t we just go to look around?” he asked.

“No. Look down there—careful! Naala’d murder me… See that net coming out the water? Goes down as far as the sea mud. People say the Tellers tied it, right at the centre of the earth. But that’s all lies. The Council wanted to keep us out so the skadi put it there.”

“We can’t go ever? Not when we’re older?” Vikram wanted to be sure.

“Did you listen to what I said? Never ever. You try and cross that waterway down there without a tag that says you’re a Citizen, the skadi shoot you—
zap!
Just like that. They hate us, they call us dogs. Look, look, there’s a boat of ’em going past right there, that dirty black speeder. Naala told me it all. I wasn’t even meant to bring you with me, it’s that dangerous.”

Vikram saw a gull fly past the nearest tower on the other side. The light, reflected from a window, turned the bird for a second into living gold. Everything that was beautiful belonged to the Citizens.

“Then why did you?” he said angrily. “Why did you bring me?”

It seemed like the most unfair thing that Mikkeli had ever done. But Mikkeli was unimpressed at his outburst.

“Because Vik, one day someone’s got to do something about it, and it might as well be us. Right?”

He looked from the waterway, where the low-lying skadi boat was gliding past one of the silver cones, and back to Mikkeli. Last week, she had stolen a new garment: a yellow hood. Within its furry halo her face was deadly serious.

Vikram would have done anything for Mikkeli.

“Alright,” he said. “How?”

Nine minutes to eleven. Vikram shivered uncontrollably. He could not take his eyes off the boat. With its unkind mission, the vessel itself seemed to have acquired a mesmerising power. Each of its component parts was imbued with more than simple menace; the cracked graffiti eyes, the crew posed at stiff attention, gun barrels protruding from their shoulders, the waves lapping and the creak of the hull. There was something inherently wrong about the scene. The boat’s natural purpose had been reversed. It would no longer protect life; it carried a tomb, clear and silent.

The kid on Vikram’s right fidgeted, looked up at his father.

“Not long now,” said the man.

Vikram wondered if there was anyone in the crowd who had plans to break Eirik out. He felt the tension of the crowd, really felt it, the way he’d sensed unease three years ago, the day the riots began. Who else had Eirik known? Did he have allies? Colleagues? Were there members of the New Western Osiris Front in the crowd? Had they ever been anything more than a rumour, or had all of those dissidents quietly disappeared after the riots were crushed? Perhaps everyone present today was simply relieved that a scapegoat had been found and that it wasn’t them.

He gauged the thickness of the glass construction, wondering if a single shot would break it. He remembered, distantly, the feel of a gun in his hand, that sense of absolute power and invulnerability. It had proved false, like everything else.

The skadi would have prepared thoroughly. They always did.

Only another few minutes. There was no sign of Eirik.

“Maybe they’ll cancel it,” said the woman next to Vikram.

He looked at her properly for the first time. She was old, at least fifty, and wheezing in the cold air. She probably had tuberculosis. He remembered Mikkeli’s lilting voice—
people don’t get sick in the City, Vik.
He wanted to ask the woman her name, but could not trust himself to know even this tiny piece of personal information.

“It’s just an act,” he said—whether to convince himself or the woman he did not know.

The crowd murmured impatiently. Where was the condemned man?

Vikram had not seen Eirik since before the riots. Even if he had wanted to, prisoners were allowed no visitors. Underwater, the information that Vikram overheard came in drips and leaks. A whisper, across cells, that Eirik had confessed. Months later, in the breakfast line, rumours of the tribunal.

He hadn’t been sure about Eirik at first. It had always been the four of them: Vikram and Mikkeli, Nils and Drake. Mikkeli, as the oldest, was the leader. None of them had family; they had grown up on the boat and later they lived together in a single room. They squabbled and got into fights, they tried and sometimes succeeded in finding work and eventually, when their circumstances could no longer be viewed entirely as a joke, they had talked, talked seriously, and they had founded the New Horizon Movement. Their ideas were popular. Others joined. The talks grew to meetings of fifteen or twenty people, but they were always the core.

One night, Mikkeli brought Eirik back to talk to them. Vikram remembered Eirik walking into their favoured bar for the first time, tossing his coat onto the table, drawing up an empty keg.

They had been in the middle of a heated discussion. When Eirik sat down, they all stopped talking. The silence was expectant.