Lament for the Fallen (16 page)

Oktar is seated, draped really, at the counter. The barman, bleached waistcoat and drooping bow tie, is mixing him a drink.

Why am I remembering this? wonders Samara. I know what happens next. I have no wish to hear Oktar rant once more. But he is drawn inevitably towards the bar, taking a seat alongside the man. He is relieved to see that he has returned his skin tone to a neutral, bland tan.

‘The Willard used to be one of the great hotels,’ says Oktar, without acknowledging that Samara has only just arrived. ‘See the pictures on the walls –’ he gestures ‘– what remains of them, anyway. All famous guests. The food here –’ his gaze fades into reminiscence.

‘Are we eating here, then?’ asks Samara.

‘You may be. I am eating out.’

‘May I enquire as to where?’

‘No, you may not. Now, have a drink.’ Samara moves as if to refuse, but Oktar continues without pause. ‘No, of course not, you Nine don’t drink. What a terrible way to spend twenty-five years. Nevertheless, we are celebrating.’

He raises the glass of cloudy liquid the barman has placed before him. Samara could analyse the components but chooses not to. It will be one of Oktar’s vulgar combinations. He resigns himself to hearing out a monologue. He need but nod occasionally.

‘A pity about the food here. The last truly great chef is now on Arc Royal. You may have eaten there when we had the round-the-sun race a few years ago? Splendid woman, that. I shall miss them when we go. Not this planet, though.’

Oktar purses his lips, contemplates the room and the glass before him. It is scoured to a white frost, like a bottle washed up on the shore.

‘The Europeans have their suicidal genomics policy: one hundred and fifty years of refusing to acknowledge technological change. And what has that gotten them? Their youth have fled, their population collapsed, their union fragmented, and what is left is a broken, impoverished set of states no one cares about filled with old people who can barely feed themselves.

‘And our American cousins? One nation torn asunder by religion. Theirs and everyone else’s’,’ he laughs, a bitter, false cackle. ‘India, Brazil. Each of the Earthly states, each with completely different problems, and one result. Everyone buys from the orbital cities, and Achenia is the largest. That way, they maintain their sainted morals and outsource all production that would otherwise offend them. It amazes me that they fool themselves like this. That we fool ourselves like this, too. We can buy nothing with their money. And every export diminishes our own environment.’

He taps his nose at Samara, winks, ‘Your mining friends down in Romanche have done very well out of us,’ and nods.

‘Not that we weren’t thinking ahead. We knew we would have to buy our freedom, and we have. We have paid off the Americans with trillions of dollars of their own worthless currency. Good thing there were no economists in the room otherwise they would have drowned in their own vomit.’

‘They don’t have to spend it, Oktar. They can destroy it,’ says Samara, instantly regretting his comment, knowing this will extend Oktar’s monologue.

‘You’re forgetting their precious blockchain. They don’t control the currency, and the supply of money is fixed. If they delete it, it is lost for ever. The wisest thing they could do is pay off their national debt, but that would kill the bond market. The president isn’t the only one with donors who won’t want to see their investments flatline,’ says Oktar.

‘Spend it or delete it, the result is the same. Their economy will be disrupted for decades, and we will be rid of them. We throw in a few sphere for what remains of their universities and a few printers to hold up their economy, for all the good that will do them. Engineers and scientists trained on divine intervention have proven useless at working with our research so far.

‘They get an elevator that hasn’t carried freight in fifty years, and a casino at the top that will close when we go. We have refused to leave them a dark fusion power source, and the old power systems we leave behind won’t protect the channel for more than a year.

‘That is the deal I have secured us.

‘We have parted with nothing we will miss, and they have gained nothing that will profit them.’

Oktar drains his glass and stands, slightly unsteadily. ‘We will leave this exhausted planet to die its slow, senescent death. Good luck to them. And now,’ he walks, almost directly, to the doorway, ‘I take my leave.’

He turns and smiles warmly at Samara, ‘Expect me back very late. Next week.’

[What a vile man.]

‘He’s right though, Symon. Shakiso told me we couldn’t keep the money because it would be the same as deleting it. I’d forgotten that would cause inflation too. We have to give it back. She wants them to set up a strategic stability fund. I don’t know if anyone here is listening. We leave behind too many who expect that today will continue much like yesterday. Too many old minds in old bodies.’

[And you still believe we should return one day?]

‘That is Shakiso’s plan, not mine,’ he smiles. ‘I adore her,’ loving, always, the way saying the words makes him feel.

[She and Nizena spend far too much time together. They’re planning something.]

He laughs, ‘My grandfather is always planning something.’

The barman stares sullenly at this impassive titanium-skinned man. ‘If you’re not going to drink nothing, then I’m going to close the bar,’ he says.

Samara slides fluidly off the chair and upright. ‘Your restaurant is still open?’

‘Take your pick, one of them should be,’ dragging a filthy cloth over the counter. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

Samara walks towards the restaurants across the lobby. The marble floor is stained and dirty. The marble pillars are cracked, and one is supported by a cellulosic cage. A large rug is as tattered as the carpet in the bar. Half the flame-lights, hanging in shallow glass goblets from the high vaulted ceiling, are no longer working. The reception is closed, and one bored night clerk is watching something on his set, his head enclosed and oblivious to anything around him.

[Remind me again why we chose this place?]

‘Apparently it’s extremely convenient and the nearby alternatives are worse. Now,’ opening a channel, ‘I will be having dinner with my wife.’

‘My darling,’ says Shakiso in delight as she takes his hand and he embraces her. ‘It’s not the same,’ she says.

‘Precious, this is the connect. We can be as intimate as if we were together.’

She pouts, teasing him. ‘Darling,’ adopting her most serious voice, ‘I can tell the difference.’

He laughs, pulling her close, breathing in the warmth of her, the scent of wildflowers in her hair. She smiles up at him, pixie face and snub nose, eyes adoring him in return.

They have some variation on this conversation at least once every time he goes away.

[Looks like it’s pizza for dinner.]

One of the restaurants is still lit. ‘Tuscan Dreams’ on the illuminated sign above the door.

[It’ll have red-and-white check tablecloths, baskets hanging from the walls filled with plastic flowers, and that chopped, synthetic garlic on the tables.]

[And those cans of tomatoes no one ever opens along the counters.] Synthia, Shakiso’s symbiont, giggles.

‘Behave, the pair of you,’ says Shakiso.

Samara pushes the door open and enters. There are a few guests doing their best impression of pretending this is the expensive meal they have always wanted.

[Told you.] Symon sounds entirely too smug.

Gurgling strains, which Samara at first takes to be the plumbing, turn out to be a musician waving away at a synthisphere in the corner near the entrance to the toilets. A man ducks under the waving arms of the musician as he opens the door.

Samara takes a table in the quietest corner and orders pasta.

[Should be hard to destroy penne arrabbiata.]

‘Go away.’

[I could change the flavour for you? You’ll never notice.]

‘You tried that once before and the experience was very unsettling. Now, go away.’

[I admit that getting boiled potatoes to taste like sashimi was a bit of a reach. Very well, call if you need me. Shakiso, Synthia, a pleasure.]

Shakiso laughs. ‘They’re like children.’

‘Exactly – tell your mother we already have two, we don’t need another.’ He shuts out the restaurant.

In his mind, he is seated outside on their deck. The waterfall pours down, plunging hundreds of metres to the lake below. Spray sometimes drifts, like mist, across the space. Shakiso walks out from their kitchen, carrying a bowl and chopsticks. She is barefoot, and her short white dress, light and fine as a cobweb, clings to her as she moves.

The light is golden and her face is joy.

She sits alongside him on the bench, leg against leg, skin on skin, and they look out across the valley; the great sweep of the city, falling in cliffs and swaddled in trees and flowers.

21

‘Where are you, my husband?’ asks Esther.

Joshua starts. It is early and the sun has not yet emerged. They are having breakfast together, maize porridge with milk, chopped bananas and wild honey. He has eaten most of it, but his thoughts have drifted. His spoon is trailing on the table, leaving milky tracks.

‘I am sorry,’ he says, wiping the mess with his cloth.

‘Do not apologize, my husband.’ She looks at him tenderly. He is so like a boy, lost, trying to have the answers. She reaches across the table, takes his hands in hers, holding them up to her face. ‘You need never apologize. You have done nothing wrong. You are a good man.’

‘I feel –’ he does not know how to finish.

She shakes her head, touches her lips to the palms of his hands. A gentle kiss: one for each.

‘Take care, my husband. Be kind to yourself. All you have to do is help Samara return to his people, then return to me. Stay safe.’

There is a knock on the kitchen door. It opens and Daniel is there, Abishai behind him.

‘We are ready, Joshua,’ he says.

‘I shall be with you in a moment,’ and he goes through to Isaiah’s room. The boy is still asleep.

Joshua stares in wonder once more at the skin on his son’s back, unmarked as if new-born. He kisses him on the back of his head and then returns.

‘Let us go,’ embracing Esther. He looks back only once.

At the east gate, Edith and Abishai hug and kiss. The younger woman looking vulnerable and confused.

Daniel turns to Samara – Symon. ‘Thank you, I heard from Absalom what you have done for us.’

Joshua furrows his brows. ‘Last night he worked with Absalom at the foundry printers. He has redesigned our weapons and shells so that they can penetrate that armour plate. He also retuned the sensitivity of the sentinels to detect those ghost helicopters. If the militia decide to return, we will be ready.’

Daniel hands Joshua a cellulosic rifle and pistol. ‘We are all using the new guns. We printed this for you last night.’

‘You have been busy?’ says Joshua, as he slings the rifle over his shoulder and holsters the pistol at his back.

Symon tilts his head.

‘I thank you,’ says Joshua, placing his left hand over his heart.

‘No,’ says Symon. ‘I must thank you and apologize. I am sorry for your loss. If not for me, I would not have put your people in such danger. We never imagined that we would complicate matters so.’

Joshua gives him a half-smile, nods.

The group head down the slope towards the jetty where four rowboats are tied up, already provisioned. Jason and Abishai take the lead boat, then Daniel and Joshua, Sarah and David, and Symon in a boat on his own. Symon’s boat leans towards the stern as he sits, but it is otherwise safe in the water.

They paddle upstream. It will be two and a half days through the network of rivers to Calabar. Bringing the battery back will be easier by boat.

They now assume that Calabar will have supplies when they get there. Their digesters should be able to extract the aluminium from the bauxite quite quickly. The aluminium spars Symon has packed are covered by a tarpaulin and roped to prevent them moving. This will cover some of their costs and provide a backup in case the bauxite did not get to Calabar.

The boats travel two abreast. Joshua falls in alongside Symon.

‘You mentioned that you can change your appearance. Does that mean you can look more Efik?’

Symon blinks. Looks at him. His eyes lose their glow. Brown irises, black pupils appear. His skin darkens; his body imperceptibly shifts. Hair sprouts out of his head, dark and curling tightly.

‘Will that do?’

Jason and Abishai, watching over their shoulders, almost capsize themselves. David and Sarah, turning to see, narrowly avoid colliding with them.

Joshua closes his mouth, nudges Daniel to do the same.

‘Yes, Symon, that will do,’ he manages.

‘Good,’ says Symon. ‘Now, it is many days to Calabar. Who knows a story?’

22

Cigarette smoke fills the air. The light is diffuse, and it is difficult to make out individual faces at the bar and on the dance floor.

‘This is that bar in Anacostia? What am I doing here again?’

There is no response. Samara is alone in his head.

A flash and he sees Ewuru, the river, running up the bank. Joshua and the child. I’m trapped in my memories. Symon is out there. He shouts, ‘Symon!’

His thoughts are a muddle, but he tries to remember what he needs to do when the link is broken. Too late, he finds himself dragged back, losing the path outside.

[Do you think it’s one of Oktar’s lady-friends?] ‘Symon, it’s me. Answer me.’

‘You think he finally insulted one of them enough for her to have a go at him?’

[We can always hope.] ‘Symon? Please?’

He looks around the bar. It is a disagreeable place. He can smell the people, sour sweat and overflowing toilets, rancid cooking fat in the kitchen grease traps. The floor is sticky. Not all of it is beer.