Tamaruq (27 page)

‘Are we going on?’ the driver asks. They are meant to collect Dien, who has been working at the hospital for the past twelve hours, before heading to another illicit meeting of western leaders. Adelaide hesitates. She doesn’t want to keep them waiting. But this – this is something new.

‘No. Head over that direction. Where the light was,’ she adds unnecessarily.

The driver obeys. They switch course, gliding between the lightless western towers, easing past boats who are also breaking the curfew, their passing without acknowledgement, although Adelaide feels a surge of camaraderie with each fellow transgressor. The new regulations are easier to enforce in the City, where the glow of night-time towers and the guiding lights of the waterways lay malefactors bare. Westerners, accustomed to skulking, have the advantage in this transfigured Osiris.

Adelaide gnaws at the chapped skin of her lips. The light worries her. What was it and where did it come from? They know so little about the Boreals. Once again she thinks: there must be something Osiris, with all its ingenuity, can offer their invaders to make them go away. And if anyone would know, it would be Linus…

She takes her scarab from her pocket and enters the code for her brother. She waits impatiently, but there’s still no signal.

‘Hell’s teeth,’ she mutters. Without communications, they have no hope. The Boreals know that, of course. The Boreals are not stupid. But then again, the Boreals have never had to live like westerners. That’s another advantage.

They have just skirted the perimeter of market circle when another pulse illuminates the night. This time she counts: one, two. It vanishes. The light seemed closer to the city this time, and brighter.

A boat moving down the waterway in the opposite direction alters its course and heads across to them. One of the two passengers leans over.

‘Hey, did you see that?’

‘We saw it. Hard to miss it.’

‘What was it?’

‘I don’t know—’

‘You’re heading that way?’

‘We’re going to take a look.’

‘We’ll come with you.’

Adelaide directs her driver eastwards, taking a route near the edges of the western quarter, using the outermost towers to maintain their cover. The driver maintains a moderate speed, not dawdling, but not moving fast enough to warrant attention from any patrolling forces, Boreal or skadi. The other boat tails them. As they pass another tower, Adelaide feels a sudden anxiety to be as far as possible from the city’s architecture. At this moment, the sea feels like the safest place to be, despite the terror of the roaming shark who is already rumoured to have snatched several people from the deckings.

As they near the border, a third, much closer light blooms in the sky, gleaming against the blanket of cloud cover. This time, Adelaide has a clearer sense of its origin. The light seems to emanate from a region outside the city, but within the perimeter of the ring-net.

Again, the sound of an explosion follows the light, but there is no accompanying evidence of fire or smoke. What the hell is going on?

‘Take us outside the city,’ she says impatiently.

‘Silverfish, are you sure? The curfew—’

‘I need to see what’s going on. If we see skadi, we scarper.’

‘All right, all right… But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘I won’t.’

Cautiously, the driver eases the boat out from between two towers.

‘I’ve got your back,’ Adelaide assures her.

Adelaide listens to the open waves ahead, but she cannot hear a single skadi patrol boat. The night is bound in the same muffled quiet that has defined the past few days.

They skirt around the sweeping path of a searchlight and head directly south, tracing a course parallel to the border, moving out towards the southern side of the ring-net. As they clear the city’s grip, Adelaide has a view of not only the glimmering towers beyond the border, but also of the Boreal fleet, anchored to the east.

‘Bring us nearer to the border,’ she requests. The driver does so, and cuts the motor to idle. The boat rocks freely with the waves until the driver throws a hook, securing them to the mesh. Adelaide weaves her fingers into the border netting and pulls her face close until she can see through. She blinks, confused. Half of the Boreal fleet seem to have disappeared.

‘That’s weird…’

‘What is it?’

‘I think they’ve moved, but it was so fast—’

She waits, confused but expectant. Minutes pass.

‘See anything?’ asks the driver.

She shakes her head.

‘Not a soul—’

A pinpoint of light ejects from one of the Boreal submarines still visible and arrows away, quickly pursued by a second bolt. Moments pass, then a fourth flare, apparently reacting to the Boreal bolts, identifies a lone ship situated between the Boreal fleet and the ring-net.

‘There’s someone out there,’ breathes Adelaide.

‘Who? Who is it?’

‘I’ve no idea. Another ship. Not a submarine—’

She is still watching, her face pressed against the ring-net, when the game changes. A missile from the outer ocean hurtles upwards and arcs across the sky. Adelaide doesn’t see where in Osiris it hits but she feels the impact as a physical shock. A white fireball blazes over the eastern side of the city, before a vast plume of smoke obscures Adelaide’s view of the fire.

The aftershock ripples through the border. Adelaide and the driver can hear the wave before they see its approach – an ominous rushing, then the white tidal crest racing from east to west, directly towards the border—

‘Hold on!’ yells the driver.

The wave slams into the border, drenching them instantaneously. The boat rocks violently and for a terrible moment Adelaide thinks they are going to capsize, the boat lurching in the wake of the wave, water slopping in the well, before it regains equilibrium.

Adelaide hauls herself to her feet, spitting saltwater. She looks back east. She can see the glow of fire, red and sinister.

‘Help! Help over here!’

The boat that was tailing them has not been so lucky. Adelaide can hear the two passengers splashing about in the water, trying to right their stricken craft.

Her driver steers the boat in their direction while Adelaide grabs a bucket and starts to bail, already consumed with shivers. The douse of Tarctic water cuts to the bone. They reach the capsized boat and help the passengers on board their own.

‘Something touched me – in the water.’ The man’s voice is fraught with horror.

‘It must have been kelp—’

‘It didn’t feel like kelp—’

‘What the fuck
was
that, anyway?’

‘I saw a ship,’ says Adelaide. ‘I don’t think it was Boreal. I think it was attacking us.’

They begin the precarious drive back, still bailing water, the boat riding dangerously low. To the east, the sky pulses with the light of now recurrent explosions. There is something about the play of the light that is eerily reminiscent of the aurora australis, something almost beautiful but far more deadly that transfixes everyone in the boat. Once again Adelaide tries to contact Linus. Once again, the signal is jammed.

As they move back into the cover of the towers, she can see fragile, intermittent lights blinking on across the west. The deckings are crowded with westerners who have been drawn outside by the flares. The traffic on the waterways has doubled. Adelaide and the driver drop off their two passengers. They are reluctant to leave, begging Adelaide to keep them with her, but she has no notion where the night will take her, and cannot risk them being caught up in it. As they drive away from the tower she sees their faces, anxious, receding, swiftly swallowed up in the mass of other spectators.

‘The hospital,’ she instructs.

They head on, back through the west. She hears footsteps running over the connecting bridges, voices shouting from tower to tower. Fragments of renegade o’dio broadcasts spill from open windows.

‘This is going to be a bad night,’ says the driver.

‘I know.’

The restlessness is palpable. A mood that could turn so quickly and irreversibly to panic, and from panic to anarchy.

She tries one more time to contact Linus and to her surprise she gets a connection.

‘Linus? Linus, are you there, can you hear me?’

‘Adelaide? Is that you?’

His voice is faint and the signal is producing intermittent static.

‘Linus, what’s going on?’

‘Adelaide, I can’t—’

‘Linus!’ she shouts. ‘Hell’s teeth.’

‘Adelaide, where are you?’

‘I’m in the west, where else would I be?’

‘Good. Good, stay there—’ There’s a delay, and then he says. ‘They’re bombing us.’

‘Who? Who is it, Linus?’

‘The Tarcticans—’

‘Tarcticans?
That’s
who’s attacking us?’

In the background of the call she can hear noises: frenzied voices, thudding feet.

‘Adelaide—’

The sound of an explosion, shockingly loud. A scream. Then moments of silence.

‘Linus! Linus, are you still there?’

She hits the scarab. A buzz in her ear and she hears his voice, quick and urgent.

‘Adelaide, there’s something I have to tell you, I should have told you. Vikram was on the expedition boat. He was on the boat—’

‘What?’

The scarab falls abruptly silent. Frantically, Adelaide tries to reconnect, but the signal has now gone completely.

‘What did he say?’ asks the driver.

‘He said – he said it’s the Tarcticans.’

But she is not thinking about the Tarcticans. She is thinking about what Linus just said. What she thought she heard him say—

The driver is silent for a moment. ‘Tarctica,’ she says at last. Both a finality and a wonder in the tone. ‘I’ve had ground-dreams about that place.’

Vikram was on the expedition boat. He was on the boat.

That’s what she heard.

‘Are you all right?’ says the driver.

Distantly, Adelaide hears herself reply.

‘I don’t think they’re here to rescue us.’

‘Doesn’t seem that way.’

They reach the hospital in silence.

‘I should stay with the boat,’ says the driver.

‘I’ll be quick.’

She hurries inside the tower, suddenly worried that Dien may not even be here, that she’s left already, ventured out into the night on her own, to investigate – that would be like Dien. The waiting area is rammed and the hospital staff look grim and harried. Adelaide scans those on duty. She can’t see Dien anywhere. She pushes through a set of doors into the area for emergency treatment. No one stops her. Patients are doubled up on beds with more laid out on the floor or propped against the walls. Finally she spots Dien, dressing a nasty-looking head wound on an elderly woman. Dien looks up as she approaches.

‘Fuck, Rechnov! You were meant to be here hours ago!’

‘No time – we need to get out of here. Linus said the Tarcticans are attacking.’

And he also said—

‘The Tarcticans?’

Dien’s hands keep working, pressing layers of gauze into place, although her face is frozen in disbelief. ‘Why would they attack us?’

‘You know as much as me. Are you coming?’

‘Let me just finish this – is the meet still on?’

‘I don’t know.’ She drops her voice. ‘But I don’t want to be inside.’

Dien finishes her bandaging and complies wordlessly, pulling on her coat, grabbing her scarab.

‘When you say attacking,’ she says, ‘you mean they’re attacking the city, or the Boreals?’

‘Both. Or the Boreals, but they don’t care if we get in the way.’

As they exit the tower, a team of paramedics are rushing inside with a body on a stretcher. Dien lingers, clearly torn, then follows Adelaide. The driver has moved the boat a short distance away from the tower. Adelaide realizes why when she sees the crowd. Those without transport are endeavouring to beg, coerce or steal a ride. Where they want to go is unclear, but it does not matter: they want to get away from the tower. At the back of Adelaide’s mind is the collapsing tower in the unremembered towers; the night Vikram—

Did he really get out? Could he be alive? Is it possible?

‘So?’ she asks Dien.

The other woman looks at her, back at the tower, at their driver muscling the boat towards the decking. She realizes Dien doesn’t have a plan any more than she does.

They fight their way through. She can feel the force of the surging crowd, some injured, some not, pushing and pulling, the edge of the decking a perilous place to be, shifting underfoot, the looming blackness of the water as they teeter on the edge, struggling for balance. She sees something tall and narrow, slicing through the water.

‘Shark!’

The cry cuts through the crowd. Adelaide strains to see. She tries to push back, where was it, she saw something, it was there, but now it’s gone, or dived, in preparation, they come from below—

‘We’re going to have to jump for it,’ yells Dien.

The boat is coming in. The crowd’s eagerness turns towards it. Someone grabs Adelaide’s shoulder, intending perhaps to use her as a launching point. She shoves back. The boat curves, side to the decking, in a throw of spray. Dien leaps expertly on board. Adelaide follows her and lands, rolling into the well, and the boat is already powering away, accompanied by shouts and curses, and Dien has a manic smile on her face, but it is not a smile that’s reassuring in any way.

‘Where to?’ asks the driver.

Dien looks at Adelaide and Adelaide looks at Dien.

‘The City,’ says Adelaide. ‘I need to get over the border. Find Linus.’

Dien shrugs.

‘Why not? I doubt anyone’s left guarding it now.’

‘And I want to check on the Larssons.’

‘Do it.’

The driver calls back to them.

‘If you’re going east you’re on your own. I’ve got to find my kid.’

‘You go,’ says Dien. ‘Find her.’

The driver jumps out near the desalination plant and Adelaide takes the wheel.

‘How much charge have we got?’ asks Dien.

She checks the gauge.

‘Enough to get us City-side.’

But only just enough.

The sound of the battle between the Boreals and the Antarcticans ebbs and falls as it moves around the city with the oscillating lights. They check the Larssons’ tower first, but their boat is gone and the apartment is empty.