Osiris (17 page)

He began to work out the practicalities of the plan. His pass had expired, he would have to sneak across the border. By Undersea or by boat? Either way he’d have to bribe someone.

Night, then. Night held his best chance. From a practical viewpoint, there would be fewer people about. But he also reasoned that Adelaide, on some level, must be like everyone else. At four or five in the morning, furthest from the warmth of the sun, her body would be at its lowest ebb. Her heart would slow, her lungs shallow. In those hours, dark thoughts often invaded the mind. This was the time to find her, when she was vulnerable.

13 ¦ ADELAIDE

T
he curtain, a waterfall of white velvet, was lifted at one side by an invisible hand. The assistant extended his arm silently, inviting them to go through. Adelaide folded her arms and gave Jannike a pointed look.

“Off you go.”

“Come on, Adie. I paid three hundred
lys
for this appointment.”

“Three hundred
lys
! For a single consultation! It says here she’s only been Guild ratified for the last five years.” Adelaide pointed to the Teller’s certificate, prominently displayed on a stand. “You’ve been conned, Miss Ko.”

“I haven’t, she’s the best. She has contacts outside Osiris.”

“Who with, the ghosts?”

“No! Anyone can contact the ghosts. She finds living souls, on land.”

“Then she’s definitely a fraud.”

“What if she could contact Axel?” Jannike said boldly. Adelaide stared at her, so intensely that she might have unnerved another woman. Jannike’s brown eyes gazed back, unperturbed. There was little that could rattle Jan. The hidden hand holding the curtain jostled it, a reminder that time was booked and bookings were money.

Adelaide and Jannike stared at one another for a fraction longer. Then both girls ducked under the curtain. It swung back into place behind them. Adelaide blinked, surprised by an intense brightness.

There was only one visible source of light. It was star-shaped, sunk into the floor, and emitted a silvery glow that steeped the tent. As Adelaide’s eyes adjusted, she realized they were in a triangular enclosure lined with the same velvet drapes. Sitting on the other side of the star-light was the Teller. Her legs were crossed. She was clothed in a pyramid of folds.

“Sit,” she said.

The two girls perched obediently, echoing the Teller’s pose.

“There are two of you,” said the Teller.

“I’ve just come to watch,” Adelaide said.

“Your hand,” instructed the Teller, and Jannike put hers forward promptly. The Teller reached for it. Her hand brushed past Jan’s before connecting with it. As she leaned forward over the star-light Adelaide saw her eyes. They were milky white, blank inside of blank. Adelaide had an unnerving sense of pitching forward into water. Her vision grew cloudy, as though she had swum into the unplumbed depths of a kelp forest, chasing the tail of a fish which each time she neared it shot further away into the weed.

The woman was blind. She was young, too, without lines or wrinkles, the youngest Teller Adelaide had ever seen.

Beside her, Jan tensed as her hand was enclosed.

“There will be deceit,” said the Teller.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Look to those close to you. Your friends shall become stronger but so shall your enemies.”

“How about me?” said Jan. “How about all the beautiful sirens out there waiting for me to swim into their lives?”

“You are impatient,” said the Teller.

“Yes I am.”

Adelaide half listened as the Teller predicted Jannike’s near future; read her palm lines and the channels of her wrist veins, then handed her a salt vial and told her to scatter the grains. The whited out tent was soporific.

“And you, my sister.” The Teller’s hand trembled, midair, seeking what her eyes could not. “You have already been told your fate.”

Adelaide realized she was being addressed.

“I’ve been told many fates,” she said. “None of them match.”

“It has been spoken, sister, spoken in the salt. The place you shall go to. Not yet, perhaps. It cannot be forced. But when you are ready, you shall go willingly.”

“Where’s she going?” Jannike asked. The Teller’s head bowed.

“It has been spoken.”

“What about Axel?” Jan nudged Adelaide. “Go on, ask!”

“For the boy, nothing.”

Adelaide was taken aback by the abruptness of the response.

“What do you mean?” She leaned forward, eager now, and gripped the woman’s hand. It was incredibly thin. She could feel the web of bones shifting in the scoop of the palm. “Can you see where my brother is?”

The Teller’s eyelids lowered in a mockery of demureness.

“Has Axel left Osiris?”

“Nobody leaves Osiris.” The Teller’s voice took on a chanting quality, and a higher harmonic pierced the low hum, eerily, so that it sounded as though two voices emerged from her swathed throat. “Osiris is a lost city. She has lost the world and the world has lost her. Thus it was ordained, thus it is.”

“That old rant,” said Jannike. Adelaide knew that Jan’s eyes were rolling upwards, although she also sensed the other girl’s interest in what had not been said. Adelaide was equally annoyed by the retreat into seer speech.

“If he hasn’t left, then where is he?” she pressed. She turned to Jan. “I want to see her alone.”

“I thought she was a fraud?”

Adelaide stared at her. Jannike got awkwardly to her feet. Adelaide waited until the white curtain had descended behind her friend’s back.

“I’ll pay you double what she did. Triple. A thousand
lys
, untaxed credit. Tell me what you know about my brother.”

“My knowledge is no greater than yours.”

“I’m a Rechnov. I’m ordering you.”

“Tellers obey a higher order.”

“Just tell me if he’s alive, at least tell me that. Please, I need to know.”

But the Teller would say no more. She shook off Adelaide’s grasp with an irritated gesture and her hands disappeared into the folds of her garments. The curtain lifted behind Adelaide. The brightness inside the enclosure diminished and she had a brief glimpse of the Teller under normal electric light, the shadows of tiredness on her young face. The man who had ushered Adelaide in beckoned her out.

Adelaide’s scarab was glowing. She checked the screen, looked for Jannike and spotted her friend browsing salt tins at a craft stand. Adelaide walked over to the opposite side of the hall where a plasma display depicted the history of Tellers through the ages.

“Yes?” she spoke into the scarab.

“I hear you’ve been staking out Sanjay Hanif’s office.”

Adelaide spoke sharply. “I’ve been trying to contact you.”

“At first I thought you were being extraordinarily stupid, but then I decided it may work in our favour. After all, if they know you were camping out across the way, it detracts from any possible connection with me.”

“Have you been following me?”

“I’m aware of your movements.”

“How thoughtful of you. And do you have any information about my brother, or did you just contact me to explain how you’ve been misusing my funds?”

“At this stage I have no concrete evidence to report. The witnesses’ stories all corroborate Hanif’s versions.”

“So there’s nothing.”

“I said nothing concrete. I have a potential lead. The maid you employed—Yonna—she mentioned seeing an unfamiliar woman leave the penthouse one day before she started work. She was able to give a rough description.”

“A woman? What kind of woman?”

“Unlikely to be a sexual liaison, if that’s what you’re thinking. The maid said it was a plain woman who looked to be in her forties. Possibly an airlift.”

“And you think you can find her?”

“I’m looking. If she is an airlift, it will make it all the easier. Ex-westerners are distinctive whether they wish to be or not.”

“Call me when you do. And whilst you’re talking, there’s something else.” She lowered her voice. “We need to get into the penthouse where my brother lived.”

“Can’t do it. Possible crime scene, Hanif’s put high security on the entrance. His people won’t be bribed.”

“I’m sure in your line of work, Mr Lao…”

“Absolutely not. Forget this idea.”

“But I need to—”

“I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead.

“You’d better be,” she muttered. Masking her fury at Lao’s insouciance, she stood in front of a looping documentary about Seela Nayagam, the first official Teller to work in Osiris.
Footage from 2372
, read the caption. The images were forty-five years old. Everyone visited Tellers, whether they heeded them or not. Axel used to wind them up. Adelaide had always felt more ambiguous.

Jannike was haggling when she returned. She held out her prize for Adelaide to examine; an oval tin with crocodile pattern etchings.

“Nice,” Adelaide agreed.

“So did she say anything? Why did you ask if Axel had left Osiris?”

Adelaide thought of Axel’s last words, of the balloon. “Just a whim,” she said. The Teller’s words echoed in her head.
Nobody leaves Osiris.

“You never talk about him, not even to me. I know you miss him, I know you must be miserable. And he was my friend as well, you know. Remember when we used to sneak out to the Roof and drink Kelpiqua? Remember when we stayed out in that crazy storm for a dare?”

“Axel was furious.”

“Of course he was, that was a proper Tarctic. We could all have died.”

“Or one of us.” He was afraid of us being separated, she thought. More than the storm. “There’s no point in talking about it, Jan. There’s nothing to be done.”

Jannike sighed. She took Adelaide’s hand and squeezed it and let go. Briefly Adelaide considered telling her about Lao, and what she had paid him to do, before dismissing the notion. She loved Jan, but her friend was a liability.

“I’d rather drink,” she said.

“Come on, then. I’ll take you to a new place.”

They went to the neon emporiums of the Strobe. The towers threw out light and noise and the whole was cut by laser lines from the Rotating Towers central to it all. Every night, packed with frantic pulses, the Strobe’s towers vibrated with renewed intensity. Hour after hour, from east to west, they branded the darkness until the grey light of day stripped it of all effect and nudged the ravers home. From boats, even from beyond the ring-net, people said you could see it beating like a great cold heart. They said it woke the ghosts.

Autumn lingered. The ice season was drawing near. They danced, and they drank. They split a bag of milaine along the length of the bar, made patterns in the jade green powder, took turns to imbibe. More people came. They danced, and they drank; they drank and they danced some more. By midnight, the world had become an inchoate place. Neither Adelaide or Jannike could stand straight. Adelaide knew that it did not matter. They were young, and they cared for nothing, because nothing in Osiris cared for them.

14 ¦ VIKRAM

H
e heard the door handle twist. In the second the door swung open, anticipation dried his throat.

Adelaide Mystik’s face was clean and angry. She was wearing a see-through kimono over something made out of silk and lace. Both garments stopped at her thighs. She did not look like someone who had just woken up, although Vikram had been knocking persistently for the past ten minutes.

“Hello,” he said. “Is this a good time?”

“Who the hell are you?”

She did not look especially vulnerable either.

“My name’s Vikram. I met you once before. Well, not met exactly. Actually you threw me out.”

Her eyes narrowed into mossy crevasses. “Rose Night,” she said. “Linus’s spy. I thought you’d got the message. Now fuck off before I call my security.”

She slammed the door.

Vikram waited. The corridor was impossibly quiet. He could hear his own breathing. He reminded himself that it was almost four in the morning; on this side of the city, people were sleeping, and silence the norm. The twist of apprehension loitered nonetheless.

He plunged his hands into his coat pockets to stop himself fidgeting with a new rip. It was not an unpromising start; it looked as though his insomnia theory was correct, and Adelaide had given him an ultimatum before actually calling for security. He assumed. Noise distracted him, a faint progression of clicks like the second hand of a watch magnified tenfold. It seemed to come from the ceiling. He looked up. The chandelier shone dimly. Who lived above Adelaide Mystik?

Five minutes later he banged on the door again. This time it flew open immediately.

“Who the hell do you think you are? I said fuck off.” She glared at him.

It was the aggression of the girl which convinced Vikram he was safe. Brazen, but theatrical. It lacked the edge of promise.

“Aren’t you curious about why I’m here?”

“No. Double fuck off.”

The door started to shut. Vikram wedged his foot to block it. Through the gap, Adelaide stared down at his dirty boot. Her attitude changed. She arranged herself against the mirrored wall of her hallway, delivering an evil smile. Her lack of fear was almost insulting. He supposed it came hand in hand with her arrogance—as the Architect’s granddaughter, she’d never had to be afraid.

“Have you ever been in jail, what was it—Vikram?”

“For a number of days. And yes, it’s Vikram.”

“What’s it like down there?”

He ignored this. “Contrary to what you might think, I’m not a spy. Not for Linus, or for anyone. I’m here for my own reasons.”

“To be arrested?” she enquired.

Vikram remembered Linus’s reaction the first time Vikram had sought him out. There were similarities between brother and sister, and not just their looks. Confidence rose from them like a costly, seductive perfume.

“That’s up to you,” he said.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “It is.”

She surveyed him speculatively. Something had given him the edge of advantage. She had not called for backup, as he had thought she might. There was a reason for that; she might be unafraid, but presumably she wasn’t stupid. Perhaps she did not trust her own people.

Perhaps she was just bored.

“I’m here because I think you’re the only one who can help me,” he said.

Adelaide cocked her head.

“That’s entirely possible. But you’re missing one crucial element. Why would I want to help you?”

He shrugged, following instinct. “Because you’d be doing something you’ve never done before.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You’d be helping people.”

She looked unimpressed.

“And it would make you look good,” he added.

“I don’t have an issue with the way I look, do you?” she said sweetly, and if he did not meet that gaze he had to look at the rest of her, which was no doubt what she intended. There was only one way to play this game. He stared at her openly for a good ten seconds before replying. The posters did not lie: she was that beautiful.

“Not especially,” he said.

“Good.” There was a pause, and he wondered if he had read her right. Then she said, “Two minutes then.”

Vikram looked past her into the apartment. A lone red petal wilted on the floorboards of the mirrored hallway.

“Can I come in?”

“I’m fond of the doorstep.”

“Fine. But I don’t think you’re very hospitable.”

Adelaide’s eyes snapped with apparent delight at this game. “You’ve lost a good twenty seconds already.”

Inside his coat pockets, Vikram crossed his fingers.

“Listen,” he said. “This city has everything. It wouldn’t take much to give some aid to the people who need it. I know it doesn’t affect you now but one day it might. People are angry, over there, in the bit you forget about. But we do exist. There will be more riots and one day the violence will come here and then you’ll wish you did something about it before. But if you used your influence like Linus said you could—”

“Leave Linus out of it,” Adelaide interrupted. “More. Seconds. Lost.”

He looked at her for a moment, not as he had before, but as though he was searching her out. Testing her. He doubted anyone had ever looked at Adelaide Mystik this way before, and he was not sure how she might react. But she seemed to lean into his gaze. She did not break the silence.

“Have you ever seen anyone dead?” Vikram asked.

“Yes,” she said. “My grandmother.”

“Did you see her die?”

“She died in her sleep. I saw her afterwards.”

“It’s different when you watch them die.”

“Is it.”

“You should know,” he said. “You were at the execution.”

She stared back at him in a way that should have been frank, if she had been capable of frankness. He sensed catacombs beneath her expressions.

“You knew that man?” she asked. “Eirik 9968, you knew him?”

“Not personally.” Once again, a flutter of guilt accompanied the lie. It was impossible to tell whether she believed him.

“Then who died on you? Death seems important to you, so who was it?”

“I’ve known a lot of people who died.”

“It’s never about the many. Nobody’s that philanthropic.”

“Her name was Mikkeli,” he said blankly.

“Ah. A girl.” Adelaide twirled a strand of red hair between two fingers. “And is that why you want to help your people, for this dead girl?”

Her words were probing fingers, digging through his hair and his skull to root around inside. Vikram told himself it did not matter what he said now. Adelaide could have what answers she wanted as long as she helped him.

“Something like that.”

“Something like that,” she repeated. Her gaze idled up and down him. Vikram matched it.

“Yes.”

“And what exactly do you want to do for your westerners?”

“Food. Warmth. Jobs. Hope. Is that concise enough?”

“I’m not sure,” she mused. “I suspect it might turn out to be rather more complicated than that.”

“I could tell you more, but it might take longer than your two minute allocation.”

“You are insolent.” Adelaide toyed with the lace of her nightclothes. “What are you going to do for me in exchange for my voice?”

“What do you need?” He kept his face expressionless. A smile lit up her beautiful, flawless features.

“I’m sure I can find something. Let’s just call it an i.o.u. for now, shall we? Meet me at The Stingray on Friday. Fourteen o’clock. Don’t be late.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

She reached out, past the doorway for the first time, ran her finger lightly along the edge of his jawline. Her face was close to his. She looked incredibly young; only the traces of lines in their making showed she had left her teens behind. Perhaps it was that that made her so unreadable, like a slate yet to be written.

“You know it won’t bring her back,” she said.

It wasn’t a compassionate line. He wondered why she had said it.

“I think I know that.”

“Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

The door shut. There was no sound from the other side, or from upstairs. Vikram stayed for a minute, memorizing the patterns of the wood, and those of the girl behind it.

He waited another hour before the first Undersea train of the morning. He had bribed a man to smuggle him over the border by barge, a quarter of the credit from the two weeks work. The man had hidden him in a cupboard-sized compartment, and when they reached the checkpoint, Vikram had heard skadi
guards banging up and down the length of the barge and his heart had leapfrogged. It irked him that Adelaide hadn’t asked how he had got to her, hadn’t cared, even if it was better she didn’t know.

The Undersea was dark and virtually deserted. Vikram had earmarked a hiding place in his carriage, but no one checked the train going back west. When he finally reached 614-West it was still dark and he was burning with a low exhilaration. He debated banging on Nils’s door. Nobody liked to be woken before dawn, though, and he hadn’t decided what to tell Nils when he did see him. Out of habit he tried the lift. Its OUT OF ORDER sign had been graffitied long ago. Vikram was tempted to add his own mark: an affirmation of the night’s work, but he had nothing to scratch or spray with.

He ran up the first couple of flights, then slowed, stopping every few floors to catch his breath. After thirty-six floors he felt leaden with tiredness. He fumbled with the key in the lock—still weak—and collapsed onto a stew of rugs and clothes. He pulled everything over him. He expected to sleep instantly, but his brain thwarted him, spinning into action. He replayed each moment of his conversation with Adelaide. Was she lying awake now, or was she sleeping? If she was sleeping, what was she dreaming? Did she have ground-dreams like everyone else?

Vikram’s dream was always the same: a stretch of golden sand. A beach. He walked along it, at first near the surf where it was damp, and then inland, past tufts of vegetation. The vegetation gave way to waving grasses. Where the grasses grew through the sand there were pebbles, smooth and white. In the dream he picked one up, one by one, and dropped them into a bucket that never filled.

Vikram lay awake a little longer. Sounds dulled by memory now crept back to taunt his hope of sleep. An itinerant banging from the floor above. The stamp of footsteps up and down stairs. Shouting. Always a dispute somewhere that could only be resolved when one throat grew too hoarse to continue or a raised fist brought an end. Beneath it, the ever present chatter of a city that had not known unconsciousness for a long time. Osiris articulated itself in waves of vocals, rising, falling, meandering through his subconscious like the disparate moods of the sea.

He was woken by persistent hammering. Dozy with dreams, he stumbled to the door. A flashlight temporarily blinded him, then dispelled the darkness of the room. Behind the torch he made out the faces of Nils and Drake. Drake’s wayward hair was squashed beneath two woollen hats and a hood. She was grinning.

“How d’you fancy collecting an iceberg?”

Vikram stared at them both.

“What time is it?”

“Dunno. ’bout nineteen o’clock?”

“Shit.” He’d slept right through the day. He rubbed his eyes, replaying Drake’s previous words. “Iceberg? You mean?”

“I mean there’s a space on the boat if you want…”

She wiggled the flashlight helpfully. Vikram located the water bucket. It was still a quarter full. He splashed his face, pulled his own coat out of the bedding and slung it over his shoulders. “I’m in.”

Twenty minutes later, they were aboard a motor boat in pursuit of three industrial barges. Above them, the Moon moved in and out of its cloud cover. The sea was calm and dark. Vikram stayed by the rail with Nils, keeping out of the way of the crew. There were six of them including Drake, but no one else he recognized.

“Can you hear it?” Nils whispered.

Vikram listened. Beyond the engine motor, he heard a metallic susurration, like the sound of pooling chains. Ahead of them, high above sea level, a line of green lights stretched to left and right. He nudged Nils and pointed. It had been years since either man had passed the ring-net, but Vikram knew that Nils was thinking the same thing as him, that those were no lights: they were the glowing eyes of the dead.

The net was invisible in the darkness, but the windows of one of its watchtowers shone. The fleet of barges approached. Heavy clanking told Vikram that a curtain of the ring-net was lifting. The barges slid past the watchtower, slipping under the gap in the net. The smaller western boat followed in the swell. As they passed beneath, Nils’s and Drake’s faces were bathed in the green glow from the capping beacons. Vikram held up his hands. His gloves were tipped with the same green. The chains clinked in a tug of wind. Then they were through, the other side of the boundary.

Osiris waters lay behind them.

Vikram felt suddenly hollow. Who knew what had really happened to all those boats that left the city and disappeared? If only they had left a trail, a length of string that could be followed, hand over hand, by those that might wish to go after. Vikram leaned forward, straining his eyes. The Moon had gone behind a cloud.

The boats drove out for twenty minutes before they began to slow. Everyone on board fell silent. There was no noise except the sea, the humming motor, and a dull creaking.

Ahead, the sea turned entirely white.

“Is that…?” Vikram murmured.

“Yeah,” said Drake. “That’s it.”

The phosphorous island stretched away beyond the barges’ searchlights. The boats continued cautiously and came to rest at a point where the ice cut away smoothly, a sloping three metre cliff rising from the waves. Searchlights trained upon it. The air filled with the whirr of gears and engines.

Two platforms extended horizontally from the first of the boats. They were crowded with men and machinery. When the platforms reached the ice field, the workers clambered onto it, unloading their equipment with practised efficiency. Against the ice they looked like busy black insects.

Vikram watched in fascination as the process he had heard explained but never seen began. The crew dragged giant lasers into position. Through the night they would cut the ice sheet into many separate pieces, then tow them inside the ring-net. The freshwater bergs would relieve the load of the desal plants, which guzzled energy.