Tamaruq (26 page)

‘Better?’ he explodes. ‘
Better
?’

‘We’re both negotiating here. You for your side, me for mine.’

‘If you do this to spite me, you’ll be condemning the entire city.’

‘It’s not about spite. It’s about survival.’

She stares at the spotless white platform.

‘Do you ever think about all those people whose murders you authorized, Feodor? All those lives? Boreal lives, some of them. I’m not surprised you burned that laboratory.’

‘Your problem, Adelaide, is that you never look at the bigger picture. You’ve spent your entire life playing with your heritage as if it were a toy. You’ve never been put in a position where the only options are impossible ones.’

She looks up then, looks at him straight on.

‘I might have done that once but I’m not playing now. Work with me here.’

Feodor ignores her.

‘The fact is, I did what I had to do to protect this city and I’d do it over again.’

‘You make me sick.’

‘And your grandfather? Does he make you feel the same way? You should talk to him. Ask him why he initiated this. It might give you some perspective. We’re a small fish in an ocean of sharks, Adelaide. Our only hope was camouflage. I didn’t create Whitefly – I inherited it.’

‘Why don’t you send Linus in your place? He knows how to negotiate. He and I could work together. We might have a chance.’

‘I can’t trust Linus any more than I can trust you.’

‘What have you done with him, anyway?’

‘He’ll stay out of sight. Out of trouble.’

‘Put the bodyguard on him, have you? How is Goran these days?’

She turns away, too angry to continue. How can he remain so blinkered, after everything they’ve heard today? The call light on the platform is flashing, but there’s no sign of the approaching pod. Outside, the towers loom as dim, indistinct shapes through the translucent tunnel walls and the misty rain.

‘There has to be something we have,’ she says. ‘Something we can offer them, to leave us alone.’

‘Are you out of your mind? You heard what I said in there – Osiris can barely cover its repairs. You know the only way this city stays afloat is by keeping the west in its place. With a proper decision, taken with care, we might have found a way to contact land – the Antarcticans, perhaps, or the Solar Corporation. Maybe.’

His voice drops. He might be talking to himself.

‘It’s too late for that,’ he says. ‘You’ve doomed us.’

Adelaide looks at him. She can see the tiredness, the dejection, and for the first time she thinks there might be something behind that draconian exterior, some hitherto unsuspected emotion driving her father’s actions. But she cannot sympathize. She knows that nothing she could possibly say would convince him to see things differently. He might make a show of it now, but Feodor would never have made contact with land. The idea is outside of his lexicon.

‘Where’s this fucking shuttle?’ he snaps.

‘I don’t think it’s coming. You’ll have to walk.’

She leaves him alone on the platform, peering into the tunnel, as if by sheer force of will he can conjure up the pod. If they can’t work together, they’ll have to work apart. He to his people and she to hers.

Unless, she thinks. Unless there’s another way. If I can only get hold of Linus, we might have a chance to redeem this mess.

Twenty westerners and Adelaide Rechnov gather in an undersea room of an old warehouse tower. Dien. The gang lords: a Roch leader, the chain-link tattoo lurid around his bare neck. The leader of the rival Juraj gang, resurrected by his niece after Juraj’s assassination last year. The shadow-figures behind the manta trade, the black market. A table. A conference where guns are laid down in front of their owners and bodyguards hover at the exits. They talk. Lay out the possibilities, unfolding each like a piece of silk wrapped around a jewel. They let the possibilities shine, clear and unambiguous. Assassination. Rebellion. A strike on a Boreal submarine, knife to the heart, show them some southern steel. Dien argues. We need the City now. Over there they have firepower; stand together and we have a chance. A Roch counters: but then again, what if we’re better without them? What if we use them, what if this is our chance to set the City straight? How can we trust
her
, the Silverfish, a Rechnov? Why should she represent our interests?

Adelaide shrugs. You can go, she says. You can go, but know this. Your interests are tiny to theirs. They come from a bigger world, a world where cities are pieces in a game of dice. We’re krill to them, and they don’t care if we put a name to this article or not, but if we don’t I can promise you one thing: they’ll burn us to the Atum Shelf.

After the meeting she takes out her scarab and enters the code for her brother Linus. She can hear the whisper of static as the scarab attempts to connect with the Reef, but there is no response: the Boreals must be blocking the channels.

Let’s do it western-style, then. She dispatches one of Dien’s crew to the Undersea, bound for the City with a handwritten note. The Boreals might have their submarines, but they can’t monitor every one of the city’s security points.

In Dien’s apartment she lies awake, haunted by thoughts of the Boreals: the memory of their cold eyes and soft hands, the smiling one impassive at their centre. Questions run through her head. Who are these people? Can she use them? Should she use them? Is she on the side of the west or the side of the City, or on the side of Osiris? How can she advocate for one without the other?

The schism between themselves and the Boreals seems insurmountable. The northerners have not sent diplomats to negotiate; they have sent an army to conquer. She knows, with absolute certainty, that they will never understand what it is to be Osirian, and they will not try to. They will never know the desolation of believing themselves the last. They will never feel the siren lure of the water, a call to abandon, to drown because there is nothing else, only this glittering, decaying, impossible city. They will not throw salt over their shoulders or raise a glass to the ghosts. They will not press wrists in greeting. To Adelaide, so often scornful of these customs that run through the fabric of Osirian society, they now seem infinitely precious. And she feels strongly, fiercely Osirian in a way she has never conceived of before.

But she has nothing. Her hands are not only tied, they are empty. What can Osiris offer the might of the Boreal nations? The City is already in turmoil, torn between the ungiving will of her father and the evangelical fervour of her brother. The west has been poised to spiral into gang warfare for months. Even if we unite, she thinks, what do we have?

‘Rechnov. Are you awake?’

Dien’s voice is soft as a feather.

‘Yes, I’m awake.’

‘I can’t sleep.’

‘Nor can I.’

She senses Dien feeling for words, battling with the thing she has been battling with since the Boreals appeared.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ says Dien at last.

‘I didn’t expect it either.’

‘I can’t help thinking… that it’s my fault.’

‘If it’s your fault, then it’s my fault too. I was the one who suggested activating the signal. We sent a cry for help, not invasion.’

‘All my life I’ve dreamed of what might be out there. Do you have ground-dreams, Rechnov?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘There’s one I get over and over. It’s land, but there’s towers, just like in Osiris, with raft racks running between them even though there’s no water, not a drop in sight. I’m on the ground, and I’m running, following these footprints in the ground, golden footprints – and whoever made them, I know I’m trying to catch them up but I can’t, however fast I run, I can’t get a glimpse. I keep running, keep following those footprints. Until the city ends. And there’s this flower field, flowers as tall as me, taller. I can hear something crying inside. A horrible cry. I know I’m meant to go in, under the flowers, but I can’t. I’m too scared. And that’s where I wake up.’

‘You think it means something?’

‘That I’m scared to go in the fucking flower field? I don’t know. Fear, fear of something. That’s the usual explanation, isn’t it.’

A minute passes before Dien speaks again.

‘I never told you this, Rechnov, but I used to want a kid, I really, desperately wanted a kid. And I got pregnant. But I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it, because all I could think was this kid was going to have the worst, the most shitty life, and I knew I couldn’t give her anything better. There was a choice, I thought, and this choice was irresponsible. So I had the operation – in the western hospital, obviously. Only something went wrong. And afterwards, they told me that was it. There wouldn’t be another chance.’

She falls silent. Adelaide can hear her breathing, shallow but sharp, the breathing of someone trying not to cry. She gets up and crosses the room. Dien doesn’t resist when she puts an arm around her shoulders.

‘I’m not giving up, you know. Not this time. And you can’t either. My great-grandfather built an extraordinary city. I know there must be something here that we can use.’

On the afternoon of the second day of occupation, unidentified strikes are launched against a Boreal submarine, killing two crew members, and at dusk the Boreal-conscripted skadi line up a dozen suspected perpetrators at the border and they bring out the Osirian execution tank. From the back of a subdued western crowd, Adelaide and Dien watch as the tank is filled and the suspects are drowned, pair by pair. When it’s done, the bodies are dropped into the sea. The Boreals forbid their recovery. The bodies float, at times apart, then jostled against one another by the motion of the waves, a head against a foot or a shoulder to a knee, and after a time the circling gulls descend and perch upon the dead and begin to open up holes.

Not long after the gulls descend, one of the bodies disappears. No one sees what took it, but elsewhere there are sightings: a fin, passing through the city. A silken shadow below the surface. By the end of the day, all twelve bodies have gone.

In the evening of the second day the Boreals announce an investigation into the purposeful concealment of the city. They introduce curfew. Those who break it are detained. Those who are suspected of having a role in the concealment of the city receive a knock on the door in the night. Some of them are witnessed to leave their homes and do not return.

On the third day of occupation the city of Osiris signs an unconditional declaration of surrender. The signatories are Feodor Rechnov, City Councillor, and the Silverfish. After they have signed, Feodor Rechnov goes back to the Domain and does something he hasn’t done for a long time: sits at the bedside of his father, the Architect, and listens to the old man babbling in Siberian, not sentences, just fragments, although even if he were speaking in sentences Feodor Rechnov would not understand a word. He’s never spoken Siberian or tried to learn it. This is the new world. Now the old is shouldering in. He pours himself a glass of vintage raqua and downs it and pours another. A larger dose. He looks at it and considers forcing the contents down his father’s throat, this measure and another and another, until the babbling ceases and there is silence. He drinks the measure and pours another. He tells the old man, slowly and without sparing any detail, what has happened today. The Architect blinks, but does not acknowledge. It’s not our city any more, says Feodor. You hear me? We’ve lost it. He slams his glass against the table.
You’ve
lost it. The Architect blinks. Siberian words slip from his lips. His hands flutter at his sides. Feodor should have burned the old man in the tower with the rest of Operation Whitefly. It would have been a mercy.

Later that day, by which time Feodor is very drunk, his bodyguard Goran comes to find him. There are people at the door, he says. Councillors. Shall I let them in? Feodor shakes his head. He pulls himself upright. Hears the old man’s ragged breathing. Still alive. Slowly he makes his way to the entrance of the Domain.

There are ten of them. One of them is his younger son, Linus. He can see it in their faces before they speak. Cowards, the lot of them. He hasn’t represented their interests, they say. They had to release Linus Rechnov from an underwater cell. There’s been a vote. Feodor’s resignation papers are here. They’ll leave them with him. He knows the procedures.

‘Fuck you all,’ says Feodor Rechnov. And closes the door.

At twenty hundred the Boreals sound an alarm for curfew. One by one, Osirian boats pull into deckings and their occupants retreat inside. In the City, the external lights of the rotating towers power down; there will be no patrons tonight. Somewhere below the surface, the shark glides silently between the city’s foundations, its nose tormented by competing scents. This one? Or this one? Where does it begin? Tellers link hands and murmur to one another: it’s here. It can’t be stopped. We said it was coming.

When it begins it’s past curfew, and Adelaide is out on the waterways.

A pulse of light appears in the sky over to the east. In its brief, fierce effulgence the city is visible for a moment: the western towers outlined against the clouded night sky, the shadow of other boats on the water, moving slowly, furtively, dreamily through the darkened waterways. The light vanishes, and the dull boom of an explosion echoes in its wake.

Adelaide waits, unsettled by the strange display. Sounds that were barely audible before now register insistently. The murmur of boat motors, tuned discreetly low. An oar lifting and dropping in the water. The patter of feet, swift, over a raft rack. The west have turned off their lights, and the darkness brings with it the feeling of a silent consensus within the city, although of what and what it means remains to be resolved.

As her eyes readjust, Adelaide senses the driver turn her head, away from the direction of the light.

‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she answers.

‘The Boreals playing games?’

‘I can’t see why. Maybe it was one of ours?’

‘Maybe…’

Adelaide can hear her own uncertainty reflected in the driver’s voice.