Winter 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.