Adelaide first felt something was wrong in the aftermath of the speech. Her father had voiced the formalities, and now those who remained had the chance to speak to the family. The guests were tentative. They offered their sympathy like a gift, of whose appropriateness and reception they were as yet unsure. Buoyed by weqa or coral tea, a few dared to meet Adelaide’s eyes, but most looked at the bridge of her nose or into a space over her shoulder. She watched them hunting for the right words. They wanted to say something. Or at least they wanted to be seen to say something. Unfortunately, none of the usual phrases- we’re so sorry for your loss- were much use. How do you condole for a missing person? How do you grieve?
Her father had managed it very well. It was a month since Axel’s disappearance, and Feodor had staged this event. He named it a service of hope. The phrase was written out on a diminishing supply of cards, by hand: the Rechnov family invites you to a service of hope for our son and brother, Axel. There was no order of ceremony on the cards, but it was firmly established in Feodor’s head. First the assembly, with a pianist providing background music. The repertoire was classical; nothing too well-known, or too sentimental. A few words explaining the situation, for protocol’s sake rather than to fill anybody in. And then Feodor’s speech.
He spoke adeptly, as he always did, his voice carrying to every nook of the panelled suite. The rooms were quiet and graceful, their walls striped with narrow ribbons of mirror, red cedar and sequoia. Subtle lamps drew out the natural richness of the wood, whose polished surface gathered hazy impressions of those who passed. Other than the ferns and a scattering of tables and chairs, the rooms were unadorned. They were also windowless. Adelaide’s brothers had hoped that the informality of a small, intimate space would make for a more congenial atmosphere than was traditionally associated with the Rechnovs.
At the walls, security guards stood rigidly enough to be all but invisible. Only their eyes, constantly roving, revealed alertness.
Adelaide had wedged herself into an alcove. The space was wide enough to seat two people, but Adelaide crammed her legs in too, denying anyone else access. Two things separated her further from proceedings: a lace veil covering the upper half of her face, and the fronds of a metre-high fern. From her semi-hiding place, the rooms, full of figures and reflections, did not look quite real. She couldn’t help hearing her father though.
Incense and cedar permeated the air. Adelaide hadn’t eaten all day; the sweetish smell and lack of food were making her feel nauseous. She loosened her tie and undid the top button of her shirt, and felt a little better.
“…finally, the family would like to thank you for your continual support and your generous messages. We await news of Axel with anticipation, and as always, with hope.” There was a pause. Adelaide knew that Feodor was taking a pinch of salt from a tin and throwing it, in the direction where a window would have been. “Thank you, once again.”
Syncopated claps rang through the rooms. When the sound died out there was a difficult silence, before murmurs and music recommenced. The service, despite the oration, remained unresolved.
Adelaide stayed where she was and wondered what she should do next.
Feodor’s speech had already triggered numerous arguments amongst the family. The idea of the service was despicable to Adelaide. Nothing, she knew, would dissuade the family, but she spoke out nonetheless.
“Nobody understands Axel, not before and certainly not now. Nothing you can say about him is worth saying.”
Those words resounded only a fortnight ago, and they had all been present, sitting around an oval conference table on the ninetieth floor of Skyscraper-193-South. It was neutral ground. Beyond the immense glass window-walls, Osiris lay bathed in a clementine sunset. The city’s conical steel towers were burnished gold, and as a flock of gulls swept past the scraper, their wings caught flashes of red as if they were afire. Adelaide paid no heed to the view; she had seen it all her life. Her attention flicked between her grandfather, her parents, and her two other brothers. Dmitri’s fiancee was not at the table. The Rechnovs were clannish. A matter of blood was a matter for blood.
The meeting was the first time Adelaide had spoken to any of them in months, and she was wary. She seated herself at the south end of the table, deliberately facing everybody else. Her mother’s eyes, the same green as Adelaide’s and Axel’s, pleaded with her for compassion, or perhaps for leniency. Viviana would try to use the catastrophe as a catalyst for reconciliation. Adelaide folded her arms on the table. The wood was cool on her bare skin, but sweat lined the hollows of her palms. A grain of salt for every harsh word, she thought. For every tear.
Feodor cleared his throat. He thanked them all for being there, a sentiment clearly directed at Adelaide as the estranged member of the family. Then her mother stood up. She had the blanched face of someone who had not slept in days. Adelaide hardened herself against sympathy.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Viviana. She stopped, and for a moment it was not clear whether she would continue. Then she seemed to gather her strength. “I’ve been thinking about what we should do,” she said. “And I think-we must have a-a service. Some sort of gathering, so that people can pay their respects. To commemorate Axel.”
It was the wrong choice of word. Adelaide knocked back her chair as she stood, words feverish on her lips.
“How can you even think about saying that? We don’t know Axel’s dead. We have no idea where he is. You just want him gone so you don’t have to worry about him showing you all up any more.”
“Unjust, Adelaide,” said Linus mildly.
“Is it? I don’t think so. Feodor paid for just about every shrink in the city but he wouldn’t set foot in Axel’s home. None of you would. Deny it if you can.”
After that there were tears, and shouting. Only when her accusations ran dry did Adelaide look at her grandfather, his shoulders stooped, weariness articulated by every line in his face. He was still, except for his hands, one resting on top of the other, shivering every now and then like two dry leaves stirred by a breeze. He was old, the Architect, over ninety years old.
Something about her grandfather’s silence induced Adelaide’s own. She returned to her seat, and folded herself inward.
The rest of the family accepted her retirement as a compromise and for an hour they tried to discuss objectively what form of service might be held. Her brothers decided that Feodor must say something. If the entire script could be reported in full, it eliminated the necessity of delivering a press statement. Adelaide listened and said little more. She felt numb. She wished she could expand that emptiness until it filled the cavern in her chest.
Viviana talked about the candles she wanted with a specificity verging on the deranged.
“We’ll have a large red one directly beneath Axel’s photograph, and smaller orange ones surrounding it. I’ll arrange them in a half moon shape, very simple… And then the layout repeated on each table, I suppose it will have to be the same colours, orange and red, or red and orange, we must put the order in with Nina’s…”
“You know, I’m not sure about having the photograph,” said Linus. “It might give the impression Axel’s dead.”
“But how can anyone think about Axel if there’s no reminder of what he looks like?” Viviana’s eyes glistened. “We haven’t seen him… in so long.”
“That is a consideration,” Feodor said. “When was the last time anyone had contact with Axel? A year ago? More?”
He did not say, apart from Adelaide, which would have been a concession. Viviana was incapable of replying. She buried her head in her arms, strangling her sounds of distress. Streaks of grey meandered through the deep red of her hair, almost conquering it at the roots. Adelaide wondered how much of that was a recent development. Her mother was a strong woman; Adelaide could not remember ever seeing her cry.
“I saw Axel eight months ago,” said her grandfather. “After Dr Radir’s last report.”
“Did you? How was-” Feodor stopped himself. “Oh, there’s no point.”
“He was the same,” her grandfather replied.
The last remnants of pink and red light infused the room, rendering its occupants unnaturally soft. The room hushed under this elemental spell, and the heavier mantle that fell with it, of guilt.
“What will you say it is?” Adelaide’s voice startled her, reinserting itself into the discussion almost without her consent. The others looked at her with equal surprise.
“What?”
“What will you call it? I mean-the gathering, or however you’re going to describe it.”
That was when Feodor came up with the phrase service of hope. He said this was the reason they were holding it, so they might as well make their intentions clear. There was no verbal dissent. Viviana got up and went to stand by the window-wall, staring vacantly out as though the regimented rows of skyscrapers would yield the whereabouts of her son. She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, her arms cradled. The familiarity of the pose unnerved Adelaide. For the first time that day, she wanted to reach out and pull her mother back.
They progressed inevitably to the content of Feodor’s speech. No-one could work out how to talk about Axel’s life without implying that it was over, which as Feodor pointed out, would be a strategic blunder. At the same time, Viviana was adamant that her son’s achievements should be mentioned. In the end they agreed that Feodor should compose the speech and send it to the others for approval.
Discussion returned to the mundane. Dates and times. Who should be invited. Where it should be held. They hammered through decisions with a rigidity of conduct, faces disciplined tight. Only at the end did anyone raise the question of the Council investigation, and then it was in passing-Dmitri mentioned to Feodor that they had been asked for access to Axel’s bank records. Feodor frowned and said he supposed they couldn’t refuse.
Such easy capitulation infuriated Adelaide, but she saw no profit in expressing it. The choice had been made a long time ago. She no longer warranted a say in Rechnov affairs.
Two weeks later and here she was. From the alcove, she watched the guests circulate, half eavesdropping on their conversations. The whispers made her angry. Axel had been whispered about for too long.
Adelaide’s mother had chosen her candles and arranged them in small clusters on every table. Even grouped together like that, the flames they emitted seemed frail. Viviana sat at the head of one table as if she were holding court, but the glass at her elbow was untouched and she displayed no interest in conversation. A pocket-sized version of the photograph eventually designated inappropriate lay on the table in front of her. From the briefest of glimpses, Adelaide knew that this had been taken some years back. The directness of Axel’s gaze was a shocking memory.
A curious mix of people had come. There were a few wild cards-she noticed Zadiyyah Sobek, head of the electronics corporation, chatting to one of the family Tellers-but most were her father’s crowd, either politicians or other venerated family members. They had split into cliques. The Dumays, of Veerdeland extract, occupied one corner. The Ngozis, descendants of the Pan-Afrikan Solar Corporation, whispered in another. Adelaide’s father and brothers worked the rooms, careful to acknowledge every guest.
The Rechnovs traced their own roots to the Sino-Siberian Federation. At its conception, the City of Osiris had attracted the world’s most brilliant minds, rich and poor, from the northern hemisphere to the south. Looking at the assembled congregation, Adelaide felt that there was little evidence of that intellect visible today, and particularly amongst the Councillors.
With their upright carriage and pinched expressions, they were easy to spot. Some of them wore the formal session surcoat over their suits, the sweeping garments giving them the appearance of doleful bats doused in cherry juice. Linus and Dmitri had already established themselves within the illustrious hallmark of the Council Chambers. Linus’s personal mission was to convert his sister. He liked to dangle words like future and ramifications under Adelaide’s nose, fish on a hook she never bit. As a Rechnov, even a renounced fourth gen one, Adelaide retained the respect, prominence, and wealth afforded all of Osiris’s founders: this was her inheritance.
But she had her own name now. Adelaide Mystik. She had her own set, too. They were known as the Haze. A few of them were here, distinguishable by their roving butterfly wariness and adherence to fashion. Beneath cloche hats, the girls’ lips were matte in red or mulberry. Their diamond-patterned legs shifted as they tested standing in one spot, then another. The boys, usually so at ease, loitered self-consciously amongst the Council members and founding families.
Adelaide saw Jannike, one of her oldest friends, bend over to say something to her mother. Viviana did not glance up.
A smattering of reporters completed the parade. Some of the krill journalists had attempted to glam up their shabby hemlines with a belted coat or a hat, but nothing could disguise their insidious manner. Perhaps it was the proximity of these conflicting factions as much as the event itself that produced such an air of uncertainty. A Councillor bumped into a socialite and both parties blushed and fell silent, alarmed by the prospect of conversation. Under other circumstances, Adelaide might have found the interaction comical.
Her part had been clearly appointed.
“Just show up and don’t cause a scene,” Feodor had said.
“Fine. But that’s all I’m doing.”
“I wouldn’t trust you with anything else.”
“You’re wise,” she said, though she bit her tongue not to let her resentment show.
So she had stayed on the edge of things, waiting with almost malicious intent for another unfortunate to approach and offer some convoluted form of condolence. She imagined herself glittering like some hard bright object. Go on, she willed them. Try me. But fewer and fewer people did. The rest of the family were more accessible, even her mother. Her own friends seemed confused by their leader’s withdrawal from centre stage. They clung together in tiny shoals, chattering over the rims of their glasses.
In the next room, the pianist picked his way through the second half of the programme. A Neon Age interlude drifted into the Broken Ice sonata. Adelaide’s throat tightened. Axel loved this piece. Axel used to play it, badly. Such was the intensity of her longing that she believed, for a second, that she saw her twin standing there-and then she blinked, and the ache of missing was as vast as it had been before.
Adelaide leaned out to get a better look at the performer. It was Ruben Tallak, the composer, who had tutored both her and her brother. Standing alone by the piano was her grandfather.
He had seen her. Slowly, Adelaide extracted herself from the alcove and made her way over, straightening her collar and tie. Her grandfather, though in many ways the most lenient of the family, was meticulous about presentation. Above the lapels of his velvet jacket, his face was an intricate network; a history contained in every line. He held a glass less than half full of an amber weqa. She knew it was because of his shaking hands. He was worried the liquid might spill.
“Alright, Adie,” he said gently.
“I want to go, Grandfather. Please, say I can leave.”
Leonid’s hand rested for a moment on her hair, as it often used to when she was a child. She felt it tremor. She wished that her grandfather could give her a hug. But they were in public, and besides, she had given up that right.
“I’m sorry, Adie. We need you to stay.”
“Leonid.” One of the Councillors approached her grandfather, solemn faced. Adelaide melted away. The Councillor’s pompous tones echoed after her. “Such a tragedy. Barely come of age…”
She stumbled upon other conversations, each flirting sombrely around the same topic, each fading away at her approach.
“Poor Viviana, have you seen her? So wan.”
“She should drink an infusion of red coral tea every night. It may not restore the spirits immediately, but it does energise the body…”
Low murmurs; a group around the canape table.
“-can’t help noticing that this is the second incident involving a founding family. Has anyone even considered that it could be the same people who killed the Dumays? What if…?”
“My dear, that was almost twenty years ago-”
“Eighteen, to be precise-may they rest with the stars.”
“-and anyway, Kaat was convicted.”
“Actually, she was never officially convicted because she never confessed.”
“A sure sign of guilt… of course I am not saying he is dead, you understand, but one does fear the worst. And it might have been easy, you know, the way he was, to lure-”
Finding Adelaide’s eyes cold upon her, the speaker stopped abruptly.
“Adelaide, my dear-” someone else spoke.
Adelaide turned away. She saw Linus talking to one of the krill, and watched him for a moment, wondering what he was saying. The journalist was listening intently, nodding through Linus’s sentences. Then she reached out and put a hand on his arm. It might have been a gesture of sympathy, nothing more, but Adelaide saw him shrink. And something about Linus’s reluctance struck her as important, as if, having listened to a song a thousand times over, she had suddenly noticed a flat note in the vocal. She continued to survey him for some time before she realized it was not her brother she should be concerned with. The discordance lay elsewhere.
“I’m sorry about Axel.”
The voice from behind her was Tyr, who worked for her father. Generally they would exchange pleasantries, but today she did not turn to look at him. She couldn’t.
“Why? He’s not dead.”
Tyr paused. “I mean the not knowing.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that is something to be sorry about.”
Through the doors, she saw her father was engaged in discussion with a black-suited man she did not recognize.
“Who is that?” she asked Tyr.
“I believe it’s the new man in charge of the investigation.”
Her father was tall, but his companion stood half a head above him, a thin angular streak of a man. His head was inclined politely towards Feodor.
“For Axel?”
“Yes.”
She moved away before Tyr could tell her more, pushing through the mourners, or whatever they thought they were. Feodor saw her coming. She knew he was aware of her intent, half expected him to vanish the visitor away before she had a chance to speak to him. But when she reached them, Feodor made the obligatory introductions.
“This is my daughter, Adelaide. Adie, this is Sanjay Hanif, who took over the investigation when it went to Council.”
There was nothing in this pronouncement out of place, other than the abbreviation, which suggested an affection entirely absent from their relationship. Adelaide contrived an equally fake smile.
“Hello. We’ve not seen you before. I haven’t, anyway.”
“How could you have, Adelaide.” Feodor’s voice was light in its warning. Hanif appeared not to notice. He had dark sombre eyes, a listening face. He reminded her of someone but she could not think who.
“I was only recently assigned,” he said. “I read your statement.”
“I hope you enjoyed it.”
He looked at her curiously. “It was through you the family discovered Axel was missing, was it not?”
“Indirectly. It was the delivery girl, Yonna.”
“A girl you employed.”
“That’s right.”
Feodor interrupted before she could say any more. “It was very important to Adelaide that her brother was well looked after. She undertook a lot of organization on his behalf.”
“It is very important,” Adelaide clarified. “And it’s alright, Feodor, I’ve been through these questions before. I have no objection to going over them again if it helps to find Axel.”
An awkward silence followed. Sanjay Hanif glanced at his watch.
“I’m deeply sorry for what you are all going through,” he said. “Hopefully we will have new information soon. But I’m afraid I cannot stay any longer. Thank you for your time.” He pressed his inner wrist to Feodor’s, then Adelaide’s, in formal greeting. She waited as he stepped swiftly through the crowds, gauging the optimum moment for pursuit. Feodor took her arm.
“You can’t go after him.” The genial tone of this pronouncement did not deceive Adelaide. She had grown up in a public environment; she knew the duality a voice could hold.
“Why not? I have to talk to him.”
Her skin was drained of colour where he gripped it, and there was a nerve twitching just above his left eye that she knew of old. She saw it for the first time the day Axel let out a cage of geckos at one of their parents’ anniversary parties. The twins were six years old. The stunt had earned them both a beating. Open it. You open it! I dared you first. Old friends, these memories. She almost smiled, but a twinge of pain shot through her arm as Feodor’s fingers squeezed harder. She wriggled, trying to free herself without drawing attention to her captive status.
“You promised not to make a scene. Osiris’s eyes are upon the family today. You promised.” Her father was struggling to keep himself in check. His reaction seemed entirely disproportionate to what she wanted. She wondered if he too was remembering the geckos.
“I didn’t know Hanif was going to be here then. Let go of my arm.”
He maintained his grip. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Let me go!”
They stood locked in mounting fury. Words raced through her head: all the things she could and would say to Feodor, after. What right did he have! — how dare he stop her-what did publicity matter, what did the Rechnov name matter? He didn’t care about Axel, never had, none of them had The crowds were closing in on Sanjay Hanif. In a moment the doors would do the same. It might be the one opportunity she had to catch him outside of Rechnov supervision, she couldn’t follow beyond the gathering, there were too many krill. She twisted her arm once more, biting her lip to suppress an exclamation. Her eyes grew hot. She despised herself for the tears gathering there, though they were not the product of pain but of frustration. Why could her father not understand that she had to know? She blinked furiously.
Now Hanif was nodding to security. His black-coated figure was sliding away, subsumed by the closing doors. Gone.
“Why was he here?” She wrenched her arm free. Feodor nodded to a passing Councillor. “What was he doing here?” she repeated, louder this time.
“He probably thought it was as good a time as any to introduce himself.”
“What about the rest of us? Why couldn’t I talk to him? Axel’s my twin for stars’ sake!”
“Because this is a public event.” Feodor had subsided into a low hiss. “And we are meant to be presenting an appearance of unity. If you can’t behave yourself for us, then at least do it for your brother. Now pull yourself together.”
She threw him one look of derision and walked away. The gathering did not permit her to walk far, but the gesture felt right. She wanted the numbness back. She craved its anaesthetic. How stupid she was to even attend this pathetic event. Their father was wrong, Axel would not want her to behave. Axel would scorn everything about his service of hope: the pomp, the speech, the piano. She imagined him appearing like a magician from under the instrument’s lid, hopping onto the stool, striking a jaunty note whilst the guests stared, flabbergasted. “Did you miss me, A?” he’d say.
At least, the old Axel would have done.
That sense of the off-key clanged again. Even her own role today was unforgivable.
By the refreshments table, two of the Ngozi girls had given up discussing Axel and had moved on to the next prominent item of society’s speculation: the execution of the westerner Eirik 9968.
“Are you attending?”
“Well, I’m not sure. Aunt Mbeke says we all should and I suppose she’s right. It might be a bit unpleasant though.”
“I shouldn’t worry. We’ll be miles away from the westies.”
“I suppose. And I’m quite intrigued to see, you know, what he looks like.”
“You should have said. Dad could have got us into the trial. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it either.”
Eirik 9968 was the last thing that Adelaide wanted to hear about. There was something eagerly nasty in the girls’ fascination with the execution that told her they had been talking about her twin in exactly the same way.
Ignoring them both, she took an open bottle of weqa from the table and went to the next room where earlier she had noticed a balcony door. She slipped out. It wasn’t a large balcony, only a few metres wide, a cuboid sanctuary seventy-eight floors above sea-level. She sank to the ground, knees drawn to her chest and her back to the closed door, shivering violently. The regulation strip of soil in front of the railings supported trembling plants. Autumn had arrived. It was freezing.
The veil itched her skin. She tore the hat off, feeling the pins in her hair come loose, and flicked the hat over the balcony rail. The sunshine made her blink.
Osiris lay before her, a shimmering metropolis sunk shin deep into the ocean. Before dawn, mist obscured the entire city, enveloping the thousands of pyramid skyscrapers in its damp, arcane touch. It was noon now, and the fog had mostly dissipated. Deceptive sunshine polished the tapering structures of glass and metal, turning the bridges and shuttle lines that webbed them into silver threads. The solar skins of the towers greedily reaped this bounty of heat and light.
Adelaide took a gulp of weqa. The wine had a sharp, tangy taste. She read the bottle label: seaweed farmed from the northern kelp forests. In Osiris, every possession or belonging or simple luxury was representative of an achievement. Adelaide ate avocados that germinated under artificial light. She smoked cigarillos rolled from tobacco nurtured in the greenhouses of Skyscraper-334-North. Nestling in the heights of the eastern quarter, the Rechnovs lived off the produce of Osiris ingenuity, first sown over one hundred and forty years ago with the establishment of the Osiris Board in remote Alaska.
It had been drilled into her since birth: Osiris’s history, the Rechnov history. She had never felt further from it.
In the distance she saw a man abseiling down one of the gardens. His yellow jacket wove steadily through the green canvas. He was probably repairing storm damage. Adelaide lit a cigarillo. The nicotine rush caught her by surprise, and for a second she had the peculiar sensation that the city was melting, its majestic horizon stretching and reforming into new, unexpected shapes. She reached for the sculpted bars of the balcony railings and pushed her face between a spiral and a serpentine curve. The metal chilled her skin.
The building opposite was a tightrope walk away. Several floors down, a shuttle line fed into its belly like an intravenous tube, and snaked out the other side to continue its journey through the eastern district.
Adelaide pulled herself up and folded her arms along the balcony rail, resting her chin upon them. Ahead and behind, to left and right, the pyramids marched away in ordered lines. The sea rushed between them. From this height the waterways looked harmless, like washes of blue tinted paint. But in the sometime erratic progress of the boating traffic, there was a hint of the sea’s underlying menace.
She thought, as she did at least ten times a day, about the last time that she had seen her brother.
It was midweek. Adelaide had been to a fencing class in the studio fifteen floors down from her apartment. Her muscles were stiffening after the workout and sweat still clung to her body. She was running late to meet Jannike for lunch. She didn’t hurry, though. Inside, she was never seen to rush. Outside she rushed everywhere, on speedboats, on jet skis and on waterbikes. Adelaide had cultivated this image over the years.
On that particular day, the lift swished up through the core of the skyscraper and she got out on the ninety-ninth floor. When she entered her apartment, a figure was standing by the glass wall, facing out. None of the lights were on and darkness lined the flat like velvet. But she knew it was Axel because of his stillness.
She flicked the wall switch.
“You found your key then?”
That was definitely her opening line. Not said in an accusing way. By that stage, resignation had become the dominant frame of mind with her twin.
He said something odd. Have you heard about the balloon? Or maybe it was, did you read about the balloon flight? It might even have been, what do you know about the balloon?
Nothing worth paying attention to, anyway. Axel talked in riddles; he no longer made sense. Adelaide was late and the need to take a shower was pressing on her with her own damp odour.
“No,” she said. “Are you alright? Do you need anything?” If he did he didn’t tell her. He repeated the same question about the balloon. He did not turn. Fraying strands of denim, inches long, trailed on the floor behind his bare feet. His gaze was fixed beyond the glass, but there was no view. Osiris was held hostage by fog.
The tips of his hair, the same bright red as hers, attracted motes of light like a crown. She had a strange sense that he was smiling.
“I’m going to change,” she said. “I have to meet someone. You know where everything is, A.”
In the bathroom she peeled off her jogging pants and Urchin tank top and threw them carelessly on the floor. She stepped into the shower before the water had time to heat, gasping at the dousing. After, she wrapped herself in her kimono and went through to her bedroom. Carefully applying a sweep of scarlet lipstick, she almost forgot about Axel.
When she came back he was gone. He had left the front door ajar. She pounded it shut, purely for her own satisfaction, because she was sure he was nowhere near by and even if he was, the noise would have meant nothing to him. She went for lunch in the Hummingbird Cafe in S-771-E. Jannike was late too and had a tale about a faulty shuttle pod or some other transport problem. They ordered weqa. She remembered choosing the bottle because her staple choice was out of stock, and it was the first time she had read the wine list in several months of patronage. It was likely she had eaten bird.
That was the last time she saw Axel. A month had passed in the way that the months always passed, and sometimes she thought about him more and sometimes less, and then he was gone. It occurred to her, shivering in the glacial air, that it was impossible to say exactly when he had vanished.
She realized now who Sanjay Hanif had reminded her of: it was Dr Radir, the most recent of her twin’s consultants. Radir had failed to diagnose Axel with a condition. He said he had never treated anyone like Axel.
Adelaide let the cigarillo fall. She knew the reason she was out here. It was that nameless thing people did when they felt bereft of decision: waiting, seeing. There was something about Osiris that demanded this act of looking out, perhaps because there was nothing beyond the city to find. It was the behaviour of a fool. She had unearthed a fracture and did not know what to do with it.
One other resource remained open to her.
She took her scarab out of her purse and slipped in a jewelled earpiece. Then she entered the code that she had memorised two days ago. The o’comm at the other end buzzed twice before it was answered.
The voice that responded was curt but unremarkable.
“Yes?”
“My name is Adelaide Mystik. We spoke earlier this week.”
“Yes. You’ve decided?”
“I’d like to go ahead.”
“Very well.”
“You understand that this remains outside of my family’s jurisdiction?”
“I guarantee discretion.”
“Use this number only if you have to contact me. If I don’t respond, don’t speak. The funds will be with you within the hour. Start with the hospitals. I’ll relay Axel’s photograph to your scarab.”
“There are plenty of photographs of Axel Rechnov.”
“Not recent ones,” she said.
There was a pause.
“Send the photograph,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
“I want to meet,” she said quickly. “Let’s say Friday, the week after the execution. That should give you enough time. Eleven o’clock at the butterfly farm.”
“As you wish.”
The scarab emitted a tiny beep as the investigator disconnected from the Reef.
Adelaide brought up the last recorded image she had of Axel. He wasn’t looking at the camera. The miniature screen showed his pallor, the way his cheeks caved his face. It showed what remained. She entered the investigator’s code once more. Axel’s face hung there for a moment in profile before the picture blinked and the scarab went dark.
Her fingers fumbled as she put away the scarab, numb with cold. Nonetheless she stayed outside, exhausting the weqa, until the guests went away and she could leave.