Osiris (32 page)

A wistful expression occupied his face and Adelaide knew that he was seeing those strange, wonderful visions from decades ago. The cat’s purrs reverberated against her legs, a warm, steady rhythm that reminded her of time moving on. But she could not tear herself away. Not yet.

“Tell me more about Patagonia, Grandfather.”

“Ah, Patagonia… it was a beautiful place. Yes, I remember land. I remember the rocks, especially. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore. Of course, even then the storms were terrible and pirates were forever raiding the local towns. My grandparents died there, they were too nervous to take to sea. So they never saw Osiris. But I believe they were happy, and proud.”

He pushed the photograph abruptly towards Adelaide.

“All those people will be dead now,” he muttered.

“But some of the refugees must have come from Patagonia?”

“They came from everywhere, Adie, everywhere. Every place was destroyed. You’ve been taught all of this.”

“Yes, I know.”

He passed a hand over his face. Adelaide put the photograph back, afraid that it was distressing him. She regretted now that she had kept him talking.

“You still miss Second Grandmother, don’t you?” she asked quietly.

“Every day. I miss a lot of things, Adie.”

“Land?”

“Land, yes. The things that were… the things that should have been.”

She waited, aware that there was more, not wishing to rush him. The pipe clacked between his teeth.

“Osiris was an experiment,” he said. “To herald a new era. Osiris was meant to reunite nations in a way that had long been lost. To bring the hemispheres together again. That was the intention.” He was silent for a moment. “But the world changed too quickly to see if it worked. And the City has changed because of that.”

She looked at him, not understanding. He said, “Your generation is the evidence of it.”

The words were gentle, but without comfort. Adelaide felt as though he was trying to explain something to her, something important, but he wanted her to work out what it was for herself. She was ashamed to ask; to confirm her ignorance.

“I should leave before Feodor finds me here,” she said.

“Come and visit again some time.”

She crouched, and took her grandfather’s mottled hand.

“You could always visit me.”

He chuckled. “At your fancy apartment? I hope you are enjoying it, by the way. But no. I can keep an eye from afar. I follow your adventures rather avidly in the feed of—what is it, that rag—the
Daily Flotsam
.”

“Magda Linn.”

“That’s the woman. She has a void where some of us have a semblance of moral integrity. One has to admire her for it.”

“Admire, and destroy,” said Adelaide, standing. She dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “I really must go.”

Leonid’s hand curled around hers, holding it fast. The joints were swollen. They looked painful.

“Before you go,” he said. “I would like you to promise me one thing.”

“What is it?”

“You’re a smart girl. Young, impulsive. You must be wise as well. Don’t be too quick to judge, when the time comes. Don’t be too quick to judge me.”

“Why would I judge you, Grandfather?”

He squeezed her hand with his trembling one.

“Adelaide.” Her name alone seemed to cost him a great effort. She was startled to see the change in his expression—as though he were abruptly battling great pain.

“Grandfather, do you need the morphine? Where is it?”

The words rushed out of him.

“Adie, the truth is this family has done some terrible things. Terrible things.”

“Do you mean the execution, is that it? You mean the west?” Her heart pounded. “Axel?”

Leonid shook his head, impatiently. Still clinging to Adelaide’s hand, he pulled her very close. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I have to tell you something, Adie. I have to tell you. There was a boat. Years and years ago. Long before you were born. But after—after the Silence. There was a boat.”

A tingling sensation spread from Adelaide’s scalp, to her neck, one by one down her vertebrae. When she spoke, she struggled to keep her voice steady.

“I don’t understand. There were no boats after the Silence. There was no contact.”

There couldn’t have been.

“That’s what they all think. But there was one. It came many miles—an inconceivable feat of seafaring! They had been at sea for over two hundred days. And they got almost as far as the ring-net. And then—everyone on board—every one of them—killed! Shot in the dark. The boat was sunk, out beyond the Atum Shelf. We couldn’t let them go. We couldn’t bring them in. It was a great secret, d’you see, a secret. No-one can ever know about that boat. No-one. No-one can find out.”

He’s starting to ramble, she realized. He’s old. He’s old, and his imagination is bringing dark things into the room. That’s what it is. It must be. And yet—

“Where was the boat from, Grandfather?”

There was an almost cunning look about the old man now.

“The Boreal States,” he whispered. “From Siberia. They came to look—”

A cough seized his throat.

“Grandfather.” Her own voice was trembling now. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Nothing more to tell.” He coughed. “Nothing but the white—”

His eyes bulged. Adelaide ran to get him a glass of water. She held it to his lips, but the coughs still hacked at his throat, and he could not swallow.

“I’ll get someone—”

“No.” He grabbed her wrist. “No—no.” The fit subsided. He drank a little water. The gulps resounded in the room. The cat’s purrs grew stronger. “Nothing but the white fly,” Leonid muttered.

“You’re talking in riddles, Grandfather. What is the white fly?”

He interrupted. “No, that’s not important. Not what I meant to say at all. What I meant to say is, whatever our family has done, they would not hurt Axel. No one would ever hurt your brother. Believe that, if you believe nothing else.” His face was open again; relaxed and smiling. She could not quite believe that the last couple of minutes had been real.

Leonid tapped her hand. “Goran is upstairs. I know his tread. Go now, Adie, if you don’t want them to find you.”

“But the boat—”

“What boat? What are you talking about?” He looked confused. “Remember, my girl, my darling girl. No decision is lightly undertaken. Reversal is—impossible.”

“I’ll remember.” She was worried and frightened, and wanted to say more, but there seemed no conceivable response. She doubted her own sanity. She needed to get out. “I promise. Goodbye, Grandfather.”

She checked there was nobody in the corridor outside before shutting the door behind her. She was no closer to finding out what had happened to Axel; if he had left or if he had been taken. And now, it appeared, there were other secrets that her grandfather wanted her to know—secrets, if he was to be believed, too terrible to speak. Secrets that had walked the deepest trenches of his mind for years, the way cantering horses had followed Axel across the waves.

There was no sign of Goran.

Barefoot, Adelaide ran down the staircase. The Domain was quiet, as though it awaited a long overdue arrival. Or a departure, she thought.

“Axel?” she whispered. Her voice echoed back at her:
Axel Axel Axel Axel.
She called again, louder.

“Axel!”

Nothing. She stepped out of the front door and was faintly surprised, as always, to find the lift before her. The cables clunked. The glass car began to rise. Adelaide slipped on her shoes, leaving the straps undone. She had a terrifying sense of things diminishing. A pan of events from before her time receding into the distance, like stills from an archive reel being blotted out: pixel by pixel, image by image. At the very end, last to disappear, was a tiny Siberian boat.

30 ¦ VIKRAM

W
inter had Osiris under siege. Daylight was fleeting. The entire city glittered, like an ice ship dredged up from a century’s slumber in the deeps. At the shelter, people arrived with ice in their hair and beards. The doctors treated cases of frostbite. Sometimes they had to cut off fingers, toes, parts of limbs. The nights were loud and long with the sounds of hacking coughs. Vikram and Shadiyah did the bed rounds with extra blankets, tucking them tightly around the thin shivering bodies, feeding bowls of soup where hands were too shaky to hold a spoon. Not everyone who came in made it through to the morning.

Late one night he arrived at the Red Rooms. Adelaide opened the door and exclaimed.

“What happened to you?”

He looked down and saw that the blood had seeped through his jacket and there was dried blood all over his right hand.

“I’m okay. Marete patched me up.”

She took his bloodied hand and led him inside, easing the jacket carefully from his shoulders and placing it on the back of the futon. A month ago she wouldn’t have let it touch the floor. She lifted his bandaged arm.

“Do you remember the guy I told you about last week?” he said. “The one using the shelter, that we weren’t sure was genuine?”

“I remember. He did this?”

“He was an ex-Juraj gang member. Shadiyah caught him trying to recruit some kids. When we challenged him, he pulled a knife.”

“Stars, Vik. Does it hurt? Have they given you painkillers?”

“Marete gave me a local anaesthetic.”

He didn’t tell her of the terror that had blocked his throat when he saw the knife, not for himself but for the people he worked with, the people sleeping in their beds that he was meant to be protecting. It was terror that had delayed his responses for a full two seconds. That was the reason he had been injured; he’d been too slow.

“I don’t like to think of you in this kind of danger,” said Adelaide.

“Our security man caught him. The police have taken him away now.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m cold.”

But he could feel himself sweating; his head felt like it was on fire.

“Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

After she had washed the dried blood from his hands, she coaxed him into the bath and they sat opposite one another, her ankles resting on his thighs. Adelaide turned on the jacuzzi and foam billowed on the surface of the bubbling water. She was trying to help but he could not relax.

“Being here—all this luxury—it makes me feel so guilty,” he said.

“Hush. Think about what you do every day. You’ve earned it, far more than anyone else I know.”

“It’s difficult to think like that when you see people freezing to death.”

“Not the ones who come to your shelters.”

“Not all of them.”

Now that he was back in Adelaide’s world, Adelaide’s life, something was bothering him.

“You know that guy we were talking to at the party last week? The one that works for your father?”

Adelaide drew circles in the bubbles.

“You mean Tyr? What about him?”

Vikram tried to recall the scene, the smooth expression of the man’s face, the same man who had thrown him out of here all those weeks ago.

“This might sound weird but... I got the impression that he was spying on you. If he tries to get anything out of you about the aid schemes, you will tell me?”

“I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about, Vik.”

“He works for your father. Your father hates me.”

“Alright. I’ll keep an eye on Tyr.”

“Thank you.”

He sank lower amidst the bubbles. He wanted nothing more than to let his mind unravel, drift, forget.

“You still look worried,” said Adelaide.

“I am worried. I’m worried about the aid schemes. That they’re not doing enough.”

“Would more money help? We could canvas. Approach private funders. We could do other things.”

“I don’t think it would make a difference. I mean, yes, of course we can use more money, it’s just—I think the problem’s deeper than that.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know. This sounds crazy, but sometimes Adelaide, I honestly think people want me to fail.”

“Then you’ll prove them wrong.”

“I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I was insane to think I could make a difference.”

“Vik.” She leaned forward and ran her hands up his good arm. “I understand. You know, it’s like when Axel—when he vanished. I thought, Osiris is so huge. How on earth will I begin to look for him? But you have to start somewhere.”

She smiled at him, encouraging, and he nodded tiredly. She was right.

“I had a letter from my mother today,” she said. “Viviana is disowning me.”

“Will you be able to tell the difference?”

He wondered after he’d spoken if the question sounded callous, but Adelaide did not look offended.

“Not really. But it’s more of a statement, coming from her. She said she was disgusted with my behaviour at the dinner party.”

“I was proud of what you said.”

“It was unwise.” Her wet fingers trailed his chest as she leaned back, mirroring him. “But you know, Vik—more and more I can’t bring myself to care. About any of it. I missed Gudrun’s party last week. She’ll take it as a snub but I couldn’t bear to stand there, seeing the same faces, hearing the same conversations... Jan’s calling me every day about organising her twenty-second, I keep making promises and I haven’t done a thing.”

“Then don’t. Let them fend for themselves.”

She ran her toes down the inside of his thigh.

“That’s not very altruistic, is it?”

Vikram captured her nudging foot in his hands. There were calluses on the tendon where one of her absurd shoes had rubbed. Adelaide wriggled her toes, trying to free herself.

“That tickles!”

“Do you hate being tickled?” he asked.

“Ye— no. No, I don’t. Stop it!”

He moved his finger slowly along the inside of her foot. Adelaide solved her dilemma by sloshing water at him. He cupped a plume of foam and sent it back. Adelaide returned a larger plume. They sank back and she rested her ankles once again on his legs.

“Adelaide, there’s something I need to—”

“Vikram, have you ever heard—”

The sound of popping bubbles filled the room. Steam was beginning to varnish the tinted window-wall.

“What is it?” Vikram asked.

“You say first.”

“No, you go.”

Adelaide pushed a damp strand of hair behind her ear. She was wearing her serious face.

“Vik, you won’t fall in love with me, will you?”

He laughed. “No.” He thought about turning the question on her, teasingly, but she had a habit of only getting her own jokes.

“It would be a shame if you did,” she said. “Because I can’t care about anybody.”

“I can see how that would be inconvenient.” He flicked foam at her. “I’ll try and restrain my passion for you for as long as possible.”

“Don’t be a gull. I have a reason, you know.”

He sensed that she was, in her convoluted way, trying to tell him something. He remembered knocking on her door in the middle of the night, a stranger who might have been anyone, an amusement for an insomniac girl. Here he was in the austere beauty of her bathroom, their skin brushing, almost fused by the distortions of water. There must have been a transition, a moment of impasse. He searched his memory; he could not find it.

“Well, what’s the reason?”

“Osiris—Osiris demands some sacrifice on our part. It’s not a lovers’ city. That’s the price we pay for our hospitality here.”

“Is that your doctrine?”

“It has to be.”

“I can’t agree.” Osiris takes so much from us, he thought. Surely what Adelaide was talking about—intimacy, companionship in the night—was one of the few things they could hope for.

“What’s your doctrine?” she asked.

“I don’t see things as clear-cut as you do.”

“Things aren’t always complicated. Sometimes they just are.” Adelaide popped a bubble with one fingernail. “Anyway, I interrupted you, before. What were you going to say?”

Vikram thought of Axel’s letter. He should tell Adelaide. Stars, he should really tell her. Now was as good a time as ever.

She smiled at him, waiting. He tugged her leg, pulling her towards him. Her body slid underwater until he could see only her hair, spreading out in a three dimensional fan through the bubbles. She resurfaced in front of him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. He kissed her back. “Nothing important,” he said.

“Tell me.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, what were
you
going to say before? You changed your question.”

“Oh. That. I was going to ask if you’d ever heard of something called white fly.”

“What’s white fly?”

“Just a phrase I heard and I didn’t know what it was. I wondered if it was a western thing?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Adelaide twisted in the water so that she could lie against his chest. He poured a globule of shampoo into his hand and began to lather her hair.

“That feels nice. You know Vik, what you’re doing—it’s really, really important. You mustn’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“I’m glad you think so. Without your blessing, I probably would have quit the entire programme.”

“Ha ha. No, I mean it.”

His hands, massaging her scalp, slowed. Despite his efforts to keep it dry, the bandage on his arm was soaked and had turned pale pink. He could see tiny strands of red diffusing through the water.

“Adelaide, what are you doing with me? Honestly?”

She had her eyes closed, so as not to get soap in them.

“You can’t ask me that.”

“I just did.”

“Well, I can’t answer. I told you I wouldn’t lie, didn’t I?”

Vikram rinsed the soap from her hair, watching the water turn opaque.

“What are you doing with me?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But you know what, Adie? You could do so many things, if you wanted to. Not what your family wants. Not like Linus, or Dmitri. But things that make a real difference. Think about that, will you?”

/ / /

Hours later when it was still dark he woke and Adelaide was sitting upright, her body pale in the twisted sheets, her eyes wide and staring.

“Adie, what is it?”

“I had a nightmare.”

He put a hand gently on her shoulder. Her skin was covered with sweat.

“Tell me.”

“There was this giant thing—crawling, crawling everywhere, up the towers and over the bridges, and I knew wherever I ran, however fast, it would find me. It had these twitching—feelers, and its wings made a noise—an awful scraping noise. It plucked people out of the towers and grabbed them in its mouth and then it flew them out past the ring-net and into the sea and it—drowned them.”

He squeezed her shoulder.

“It’s just a dream. It’s over now.”

“A dream?” Her voice was uncertain, barely audible.

“Monsters in the night, Adie.”

He pulled her against him and they lay down, his body curled around hers. Her back was cool and damp. For minutes, hours, he held her like that while she trembled, unprotesting, and he wondered what it was that could make her so afraid when he’d never known her to be scared of anything.