Tamaruq (15 page)

‘It’s the story that counts,’ says Adelaide.

‘That’s right.’

‘Is this what you had in mind? When you recruited me?’

‘It was a gamble. You were a gamble. I didn’t know which way you’d jump.’

‘You think I’ve jumped?’

‘You tell me.’

‘What I said in that broadcast. It wasn’t true.’

Or at least, it’s not the whole truth. Or even, necessarily, a large part of the truth. While the City’s fishers strike and a long-lost radio signal reverberates around the Council Chambers, Adelaide, the Silverfish, is forging ahead with a dead man’s soul. Holding up their fleeting hours together as if they are a shield, or an amulet, or a light that is too bright and blinding to see past or through – anything but what it was: two people who used one another, a liaison like a Tarctic vortex, spiralling to something which neither of them could accept or articulate, at least not then. Only later. Only in absence. Adelaide’s penitence has become the west’s greatest weapon.

Sometimes she considers a life where Vikram is not dead, where Vikram might return, and the idea is heady, almost intoxicating, and at the same time it is desolate. She imagines their meeting, standing on a pier with the boat drawing closer and closer, the boat pulling in, Vikram stepping out. The two of them, walking towards one another. There’s a blue sky, of course, and the waves are sparkling, and the city is sparkling. His face. Tired but happy. His eyes, meeting hers. The moment closes in.

And there, at the point they come together, the reverie stops. Adelaide doesn’t know what happens next. She has no idea what she would say to him.

‘The thing is, Dien, I’m not doing this for Vikram – not any more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I loved him. Or I could have loved him. But this – I’m doing this for me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that’s mattered. It’s all I’ve got left.’

She looks at Dien.

‘There. You know the truth now, even if no one else does.’

THE TWO FIGURES
wind steadily through the forestry, the boy moving lithe and silent, the woman in front awkward, clumsy, clutching at branches when she misses a step, not always successfully. A muttered, interrupted litany flows between them: the woman huffing, this way, is it still this way, Mig’s reply, yes, yes, keep walking. Now over that way. To the left.
Left.
Occasionally the woman sighs and asks, how much further? Mig: it doesn’t matter. The woman: I didn’t expect to be walking so far. Mig: what did you expect?

She doesn’t reply. The answer is curiosity, of course, but more than that, a burning necessity to see for herself, to know the truth of it. She has always sought out the truth of it. This impulse could not be ignored, although the journey south has been fraught, and she has left things behind that she should not have left, people and work, because of a few words snagged from the radio, hooked like fireflies out of the dark. Because of a story.

They progress. The trees are in full leaf and the light falls in narrow strips between them, reminding Mig of other things, corrugated iron and metal railings, tall, straight pillars in Station Sabado. Despite the absence of human life this place carries an echo of where he used to live. The woman blunders on, making enough noise to alert every wild creature on the island, making Mig uneasy – there might be snakes here, concealed in the undergrowth. Mig insists the woman stays in front. He doesn’t trust her.

He doesn’t trust any of them. Many have come. They all have to prove themselves. Some of them do, some of them don’t. He keeps a knife strapped to his body, the blade a constant pressure against the soft casing of his skin. This woman, with her loose words and awkward gait, does not appear dangerous – but those are always the ones you should watch the closest.

When the trees grow denser, the light more sporadic, the woman slows. Mig senses a tentativeness in her step which was not there before. He nods to himself, satisfied. It is right that she should feel this. After all, she has come for the miracle, and miracles are never cheap. Someone always has to pay.

The forest opens out abruptly to reveal a stream and the woman stops, dazed by the transition in light. For a moment she stays where she is and looks about her quietly. At the running water that splits around a series of rocks. The sunlight bouncing off the current.

Mig scans up and down the stream. The boat is where he left it. No signs that anyone has been here.

‘You know, you forget about this,’ says the woman. ‘You forget it’s all here. Where I am. Up by the marshes. The sand. I’ve been there so long now. I had these ideas. I thought I’d make a difference. All those things. You know? You don’t think about it while you’re there. It’s only here… Gods, look at the water. It’s so clear.’

Mig is not interested in her rapture, he’s interested in keeping both of them out of sight. He indicates.

‘We take the boat,’ he says. He takes a blindfold from his pocket. ‘You wear this.’

The woman hesitates, then closes her eyes. Mig helps her into the boat. When she is settled in the stern he also ties her hands – something he’s gained expertise in lately. He could truss up a goat in sixty seconds. The woman’s hands lie meekly in her lap, the skin dark, the nails cut short and blunt. Mig looks at them, thinking about what she is. Wondering who she has saved and who has died on her watch.

Neither of them speaks during the remainder of the journey. Both are immersed in their private thoughts, Mig intent upon the careful steering of the boat, alert always to any suggestion of human presence along the banks, but all is quiet, as it should be, only the birds and the wind ruffling the trees, quiet in a way he still finds disturbing to the ear. Since Pilar died he has felt different, like the old Mig was spirited away somewhere, wherever she went, and this place with its emptiness and its salt winds and secretive trees is like a second life, an afterlife. Where the abandoned go. The people who seek them out are pilgrims, earnest and determined, with ideas and things to prove, to other people, or to themselves. He looks at this new one, the doctor from the uninhabitable zone. He is not yet sure which category she falls into.

The woman resists the urge to scratch at her blindfold. Her back aches from the hike but she keeps her spine erect. It is important not to show fear, even to a boy. Is she afraid though? Not exactly. Rather she feels the rush of anticipation, adrenaline pushing through her body. The words from the radio rest against the darkness of the blindfold. Glowing there, tantalizing her. A call that could not be ignored. Her colleagues asked her not to go and she shut all of them out.

On an impulse.

‘We’re here,’ says the boy.

As she climbs out of the boat there are other voices, greeting the boy. She feels hands on her shoulders and back, guiding her forwards. She senses she is surrounded. Ridiculous, really, the idea of her being brought here in blindness as if she were one of those characters from the radio stories about northern spies, who always operate in secret, and practise deceit. She is a smart woman who went away to do something good, and here she is on a remote archipelago island whose name and location she does not even know, being shepherded to see a man who has no name, only a reputation which has spread from the archipelago to Titicaca, and beyond.

When they remove the blindfold it takes a moment for her eyes to focus. She is inside a small log cabin, rudely furnished and stocked with camping equipment which looks like it’s seen better days. There is a table in front of her. A man is sitting in the chair on the other side of the table. He is so still that for a moment the eerie idea crosses her mind that he might be robotized. Then he gestures.

‘Please sit down.’

A thin, intense face, not South American. The features are – memory jogs, a flicker of a country in the old world order that she struggles now to recall the name of and quickly gives up trying, because his eyes are fixed on her, studying her, appraising her, and she finds she can’t look away. There are scars across his cheeks, evidence of tissue damage. It’s the pathway of a consuming virus that blasts through the skin’s cells, leaving marks that may not ever disappear. The scarring pattern classic of an older, curable strain, you see it occasionally on foreigners – but the outbreak in Cataveiro wasn’t an older strain, and it wasn’t curable. By the gods, he is lucky. More than lucky – he is something that should not exist. He is a miracle.

She can feel the acceleration of her heartbeat telling her that she was right: right to leave, right to come here.

She says, ‘You’re the man that survived the redfleur.’

He doesn’t answer her directly.

‘Are you thirsty? Can I get you some water? We have coffee, too.’

She shakes her head. She doesn’t want to wait.

‘You are, aren’t you? You’re him?’

‘I’m told that’s what people say. Mig tells me your name’s Beatriz?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t tell you my name. Not yet, anyway. You understand why?’

His Spanish is accented but confident; she can tell he’s a foreigner but she couldn’t say how long he’s been here. She nods.

‘Of course.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘Titicaca. The marshes.’

The man who survived redfleur unfolds a map and spreads it across the table, orientating it towards her. The map has the hummingbird glyph in one corner and a signature the doctor recognizes: it is a Callejas map. Once again she feels a tug at her memory, something she heard about the pilot, something recent. Wasn’t there talk of a reward? The salt woman was involved, the pilot had gone rogue, killed someone… The doctor remembers she came to the clinic once, brought an injured boy for treatment. Didn’t seem like the killing type.

She points to Titicaca.

‘Up here.’

He studies the location.

‘You’ve travelled fast, to come so far.’

‘There was a west-coast ship heading south.’ She pushes away the memory of seasickness. ‘You’re not from this country?’ she asks.

He smiles. ‘No.’

She sits back in the chair, gazing at him frankly.

‘Is it true you survived it?’

‘I survived an illness.’

‘But the redfleur?’ she presses. ‘In Cataveiro?’

He doesn’t answer.

She shakes her head. ‘That was a Type 9. Even the Boreals don’t have a cure. This is incredible. If it’s true, we need you. I’m a doctor. I work in the outback. There’s nothing much up there, and we’re lucky, it’s never come to us. But I know what it does. I know what happened in Cataveiro. And it’s not just here – up in the north as well, it’s getting much worse, they say, they haven’t had a breakthrough in years.

‘We need you,’ she repeats.

The man looks unconvinced.

‘You mean you want to study me.’

‘Yes! Of course I do. I’m not a virologist, but I know people – scientists, teachers, in the university—’

‘Is that why you came, Beatriz? You want to persuade me into a laboratory?’

‘Do you know how many people die every year from redfleur? If you have immunity—’

‘I’ve heard the numbers.’

‘Then come with me,’ she says passionately. She cannot believe he would refuse her.

The man gets to his feet and goes to stand by the single high window, looking out. She has no idea what he is looking at. She hasn’t seen anything of what there is between the boat and this hut.

‘Save your entreaties,’ he says. ‘You won’t persuade me to go anywhere with you.’

‘Then what are you doing here, hidden away in the middle of the forest? Where have you come from? Who are you?’

He speaks without looking at her.

‘You’ve heard enough to find me here. Surely you must have some idea?’

She stares at the pilot’s map. The familiar, tapering contours of the South American continent. The less familiar outline of the mass below it, and between them, the breadth of blue. She speaks slowly.

‘I’ve heard… strange things.’

‘You call it the sea city,’ says the man. ‘Where I’m from. Also the lost city, I believe. Its true name is Osiris.’

The colours on the map seem suddenly brighter, the blue more vivid and intense. She wasn’t scared before, but she feels something close to it now.

‘You want to take me to a laboratory, cut me open and look at my blood,’ says the man calmly. ‘But you’re asking the wrong question. The question is not what. It’s where.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If it’s true, as you think, that I survived the redfleur, and if it’s true that this has never been seen before, then it has nothing to do with who I am and everything to do with where I come from.’ Still facing away, the man’s voice is low and hypnotic. ‘It’s the only logical answer.’

She thinks about this, struggling to process the implications of what he is saying. It all seems so impossible.

But you came here because of impossible.

‘You mean… you’re saying there might be others? People like you? People who have immunity?’

‘I have no idea. But I plan to return there and find out. If I can find it again, that is.’ A touch of irony tinges his voice. ‘Which brings its own challenges.’

She is astounded.

‘You’re going back to—’ she thinks the word, but cannot say it. No one says that name. ‘You’re going back?’

‘I’m taking an expedition.’

There are a thousand questions that enter her head. The one that comes out is the least relevant of all of them.

‘How are you going to get there?’

He turns back to face her.

‘Forgive me if I don’t tell you the full details of my plan. You’re not the first to seek me out. There are others. Some have left. Others have stayed. The choice is entirely yours. Take a look around, see what you make of us. You’re free to spend as long as you wish here. But if you try to leave without an escort, I warn you now you will be detained. As you’ve already experienced, we keep tight security here. No one leaves or enters the camp without an escort. It’s imperative that no one finds out where we are. The day they do is the day I’m dead. If you want any chance for a cure for redfleur, you’ll respect that.’