A light mist trickled into the harbour as their speedboat approached. It blurred the hulls, red with rust, of gigantic ships whose load lines sat high above the water. It touched cool fingers to Vikram’s face. Only the cries of circling gulls broke the silence, and there was nobody present to hear them, except for Vikram and Adelaide, and Adelaide’s boatman.
The craft pulled up alongside a jetty which sloped down into the water. A maze of piers and walkways crisscrossed the harbour. Most were visible; some, more dangerously, were submerged. Vikram and Adelaide climbed out. They wore thermal wetsuits: Vikram’s red, Adelaide’s green. Adelaide’s hair swirled in the wind as she crouched to say something to the boatman. Vikram stood motionless, struck by the stillness, and the quiet.
“Let’s go!”
Adelaide started walking. Vikram gave chase and they ran, shrieking, to the jetty’s edge. The sea before them had a brownish hue; their forms were murky shadows.
“You know smugglers used to come here,” said Adelaide. “Before the border.”
“Maybe they still do.”
“No. It’s deserted now. Sometimes this place gives me-a queer feeling.”
They turned back and crossed a bridge into a floating cabin. Inside sat two identical waterbikes, sleek and silver. At the sight of those beautiful crafts, Vikram felt a surge in his head like the release of a pressure valve.
It had been building over the last few weeks. Subtly, so subtly that at first he barely recognized them, the responsibilities had been lining up: to the west and to the City. He needed this break.
Adelaide had mounted her bike. “What are you waiting for?”
He climbed onto the other bike and squeezed the handlebars, as she did. The motor hummed into life. They eased the bikes down a ramp and bobbed into the water, the aerodynamic bodies lying low. They emerged on the opposite side of the cabin, out into the mist.
Adelaide leaned over and grabbed Vikram’s handlebars. She had tucked her hair under a green hood.
“You ready?” she said.
Vikram pulled a pair of goggles over his eyes. “Absolutely.”
“Watch out for floating junk. This place is a scrap heap.”
She squeezed the handlebars, increasing the power. He did the same and felt the engine reverberating. Ripples of froth welled around both crafts. They leapt forward.
Out of the fog loomed the vast shapes of forsaken ships. Vikram glanced up as they skirted the length of a tanker. Its parts creaked like old bones. The hull was bleached with salt and green with algae. Despite their physical deterioration, the ships seemed to him to be sleeping, still semi-conscious.
The bike veered close to the hull on a wave. He edged left, maintaining a wider corridor. Ahead he watched the streamlined shape of Adelaide and her bike weaving under the shadows of the abandoned vessels. Several times he had to angle around debris or nudge the bike over a hidden walkway. The air on his face was freezing but it was good to be out here, with the elements, on his own terms. Winter and work had been choking him.
They passed between the last two ships, prows angled together to form a gateway. Before them lay the open sea. The mist was clearing. Some way ahead, Adelaide stopped and wheeled around.
“I’ll race you to the ring-net!”
She was already leaping forward in the water, streaking away so fast that the spray almost obscured her completely. He gave chase. The wind battled him, the waterbike bucked and rolled beneath him and at first he felt almost sick, but then he got used to it, and was aware only of speed.
Minutes passed but it felt like nothing. He was filled with exhilaration. He opened his mouth and had to shout, not words, just joyful noise.
Suddenly there it was, a vast dark wall rising twenty metres out of the water. It loomed closer and closer. The sea soaked him. Salt was bright in his mouth. Adelaide wasn’t far ahead now, swivelling left and right and left again, over the waves, down into the troughs. Glancing up he saw it for the first time in daylight, a series of interlocking chains: the ring-net. He was on Adelaide’s tail, in her slipstream, close enough to hear her laugh above the sea and the wind and the metallic music. Then she cut sharply to the right and he was under it. Horror clenched him. He was going to crash. He wrenched the handlebars with all his strength, panic sucking the oxygen from his lungs. The Dolphin careered right until he was practically lying along the waves, and the engine cut.
He wrested the bike upright, sucking in air, scared and exhilarated in equal measure. Five metres away, Adelaide’s waterbike was also at rest. She leaned over and touched the ring-net with one hand. He knew she was grinning.
“I won!” she shouted.
He looked up. The chains of the ring-net clinked and chimed, the whole construction rippling like a ponderous sheet of material. The metal was covered in algae. The net stretched from outpost to outpost in a giant fence, but wherever they were, the nearest one was too far away to see. So was the border, which ran up to the ring-net. He looked beyond Adelaide. The green lights he’d seen before illuminated the ring-net’s path. It curved away as far as he could see, cutting through the ocean until it was lost in the distance.
“Quite colossal, isn’t it?” Adelaide cried. “Keeps out the sharks.”
“Not always,” he yelled back. Adelaide nudged her Dolphin the short distance to him, and took hold of his handlebars once again. They rose and fell together on the waves.
“What?”
Beneath the goggles her face was pink and glowing.
“I said not always,” he repeated. “I saw sharks when I was underwater.”
Her mouth opened dramatically.
“Big ones?”
“Big enough.”
He felt a sense of menace, knowing what was on the other side of the net, and yet knowing nothing at the same time. The significance of the net overwhelmed him. Even here, in the middle of the ocean, with as much space around him as he could have desired, he was both locked in and locked out.
“If anything got through the net now we wouldn’t know anyway. Not since the alarm system broke.”
Vikram stared at the interlocking chains.
“It doesn’t work?”
“Hasn’t for years. My grandfather told me. Can’t even zap a shark.”
She pushed a button on his handlebars, then on hers. The Dolphins turned luminous. Against the brightness, the rest of the sea turned black. He realized it was already nearing dusk, and he was cold.
“You’ve not looked back,” Adelaide said. “Axel never looked back. Always out there, beyond the net.”
“You came out here together?”
“We did everything together.”
She was looking past him, back the other way. He spun the Dolphin around. With the onset of dusk it was difficult to distinguish the outlines of the towers; he saw only a geometric construction of light. Osiris a blazing star in the crepuscular ocean. If anyone had been left to find us, he thought, it wouldn’t have been hard.
“Have you ever gone past the ring-net?” he asked Adelaide. She did not respond, gazing at the City with an intensity that was uncanny. He repeated his question. He thought she hadn’t heard, but as she gunned her Dolphin into life she yelled, “There’s nothing out there.”
They sped back across no-man’s-land. He felt the gridlock of the City pulling him in. Adelaide poised rigidly on her bike, her head pushing forward. He saw huge waves breaking against her bike, and prepared himself for the same impact. It never came. It took him a few seconds to realize she must be deliberately colliding with the swells. At the same time he realized she had speeded up.
They were approaching the harbour. Vikram accelerated. His bike skimmed the sea like a petrel, almost flying now. Adelaide remained ahead. He could see the gateway from where they had ridden out before, the two ships pointed towards one another. The gap seemed narrower, and she was travelling far faster, hurtling at impossible speed, plunging her bike nose first, leaping up again, almost invisible behind a mask of spray.
“Adelaide!” he shouted.
She shot across the final stretch of water.
The bike and the hull smashed together. She was a bolt of green through the air-his own bike was charging forward, some part of his brain telling him to slow down and she was falling, almost gracefully. She was face down in the water. She didn’t move.
The waves raised her and lowered her, and her body bumped once against the ship’s side.
Vikram surged his bike forward. His heartbeat trebled in his chest. He leaned into the water and grabbed her arm, pulled her almost viciously towards him. Her body was cold and awkward. Not again, not Adelaide too. The suit, he told himself, it’s just the suit, she’s warm inside it. Please, not Adelaide too. The bike tipped as he hauled her up, both arms around her. Stars, if she was dead they would never believe he hadn’t killed her. He pressed his hands beneath her ribs and jerked, once, twice. They’d drown him the way they’d drowned Eirik. Please breathe. Her chest heaved and her mouth opened and water poured out. She gasped, choked, spat. Spasms racked her body.
He pushed her goggles up. Her eyes wheeled crazily, then settled on his face. She tried to say something. It might have been “A.”
“Adelaide,” he said weakly.
“I’m okay,” she rasped. “I’m fine.” She glared up at him. “I’m fine!”
Relief gave way to anger in a blink.
“Your bike fucking isn’t, though, is it?”
The Dolphin floated listlessly on its side, handles twisted. Its light had gone out.
“What the fuck were you doing?” he shouted.
Adelaide’s head was shaking. He was clasping her so tightly she could barely move. Her body was shaking too and he felt each tremor hard against his ribs.
“Let me go.” Her teeth chattered.
“You’re going to have to ride back on my bike.”
“It’s not your bike,” she said. “It’s Axel’s.”
He wanted to hit her. He looked around him and saw the waves slapping against the ships. Seagulls rose from their perches to circle overhead. Adelaide gasped as the birds came into her line of sight.
“We have to get back,” he said. “Can you climb on behind me?”
She hauled herself up, wrapped her arms around his waist. One of the birds dove low and she screamed and lashed out at it.
“Leave it alone!”
“I hate them.”
“It’s not going to hurt you.”
He nudged the bike across to the other Dolphin and tried to start it but they both knew that it was futile.
“The speedboat can pick it up,” she said.
But a storm was coming in and they knew that as well. Vikram did not respond. If he opened his mouth he would say unforgivable things. He wove back through the harbour with grim determination. When they reached the pier the man in the speedboat gave a shout of mingled relief and alarm.
“What happened to the other bike?”
“It broke,” said Adelaide shortly. They climbed into the speedboat stern, shivering. The boat took off at once. Incoming hail chased them all the way back, sweeping across the ocean and the harbour before it slammed into the walls of the pyramids. The deluge caught them moments before they banged to a halt against the first decking they found. Adelaide leapt out and darted inside. Storm sirens began a wailing crescendo. The boatman cursed as he secured the craft with fingers already deadened by the cold, Vikram straining to hold the boat steady. Hailstones whipped against them. The decking was treacherous with ice, and they almost slipped running inside. Vikram heaved the doors shut.
The sirens ceased. The door sealed with a soft hiss. Vikram listened to the barrage, gasping for breath, praying that none of his friends were outside.
They were on an empty floor. Lifts and stairs ran up the back of the tower, a couple of flat trolleys were parked by the lift. Faint sounds of machinery, the lifts and other workings, filtered down the building.
“We’ll have to wait it out,” said the boatman. His voice echoed in the open space. “Unless you two want to hop on a shuttle line?”
Vikram glanced down at the puddle forming around his feet. A watery trail crossed the concrete floor to the other side of the tower, where Adelaide sat on the first steps of the stairwell, arms wrapped around her knees. Her eyes were cloudy.
“We’ll wait,” he said. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Probably some kind of storage place,” said the boatman.
Vikram slumped against the wall. It was warm compared to outside, but Adelaide should get dry or she’d catch hypothermia. She didn’t look like she wanted to move though, and he told himself it was her own stupid fault. Nils had been right about her.
He had seen his friend a couple of days ago. Vikram was holding a meeting of representatives from the west who would be heading up work parties in the spring. He’d asked Nils to come, but Nils was being oddly cagey, and had only shown up afterwards. He had brought fish from Market Circle. They drank coral tea and ate the fish with their fingers in Vikram’s office.
“What’s your new place like?” Nils asked.
“You know. Big. Clean. It’s nice.”
“I bet.”
“When are you going to come and see it?”
Nils wiped his fingers on the already greasy paper.
“Whenever you have the time.”
“I always have the time.”
“I thought you were all taken up with the crazy girl these days.”
“She can be demanding,” Vikram acknowledged. Nils laughed.
“Fucking Citizens, huh. So what’s she really like? You still think she’s a bitch?”
A bone was stuck in Vikram’s teeth. He worked his tongue, trying to free it. He wanted to explain that there was a connection between himself and Adelaide, but could not find the words to justify it.
“She has her moments.”
He hesitated. Nils, taking a large bite of white fish and batter, raised an eyebrow.
“I think she has a secret. Something she’s not telling.”
“Are you kidding me? She’s a Rechnov, they probably have more skeletons than they have closets, and that’s saying something. What, you think she’s going to bare her soul to you?”
“No, of course not. It’s just-” He stopped. It was no good, he did not even know what he meant himself. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. I found something. A letter. It’s from Axel to Adelaide.”
Saying it aloud, he felt the heat of it, transferred from pocket to drawer to pocket and back, burning a hole in every garment it touched. Nils shrugged.
“So give it to Adelaide.”
“It’s a goodbye note. You know what that means.”
“Then you’d better burn it,” said Nils.
“I can’t burn it, it’s probably the last thing he ever wrote.”
“Exactly. You want to be caught with that on your hands?”
Vikram’s hand went to his jacket.
“Actually, I have it here-”
“Are you crazy?” Nils hissed. “You’re walking around with a dead guy’s-you know, I don’t even want to know what it says. Burn it. Here.” Nils delved into his jeans and produced a lighter. He flicked it on. “Get rid of it now.”
“I thought you could look after it. Until I decide what to do.”
Nils wiped up a few last crumbs of batter and scrunched up the paper. He tossed it into the bin.
“Think again. I’m not touching it. You give it to me, I’ll burn it for you. I want nothing to do with their pretentious society.”
“What I am going to do with it then? I can’t give it to Adelaide.”
“Why not? It’s her letter.”
“You don’t get it. If I give it to her, she’ll stop working with me. The only reason she’s helping me is because she needs to find out what happened to her brother.”
“And what if it’s a fake?” Nils demanded. “What if it’s a plant? Where did you even find the bloody thing?”
“This woman turned up at the door. Said if Axel went away, she’d been instructed to deliver this. Adelaide wasn’t there and I was.”
Nils shook his head. “Fucking hell. You’re meant to be the smart one.”
“I can’t tell Adelaide.”
“Why not? So she stops seeing you, so what? They’re not going to take away your flat.”
“I still need her. I can still use her.”
Nils gave him a shrewd look. “I think you’ve gone past that.”
“She’s not a bad person, Nils.”
“Fine, I believe you. Does that make her any less dangerous? You can’t trust these people, Vik. They’re eels, they’d turn on you in a second. Take you in, and spit you right back out. You should be trying to set yourself up, not holding out for some celebrity pin-up.”
Vikram was angry at that. After all, Nils had encouraged him to go to the Rose Night in the first place. He was the one who’d suggested meeting Adelaide.
“You’re determined not to give her a chance.”
“How can I when I’ve never even met her?” Nils protested.
“You don’t want to meet her.”
“Well, she don’t want to meet me. You see her coming down here? Dazzling us all with her presence? I don’t think so. This is a game for her. And you knew that, before.” Nils paused. The rest of the sentence, unsaid, hung in the air. “Look, Vik, I don’t mean any harm. Maybe you really like this woman for whatever reasons I don’t get. But if you’re asking me for advice-and it seems like you are-I say you’ve got two options. You give her the letter and take the consequences, or you destroy it right now and pretend you never saw it. Your call.”
Vikram fell silent. Nils didn’t understand that the choice was much more subtle, more complicated than that. Vikram couldn’t just destroy the final words of a dead man. It would be wrong. But neither could he show them to Adelaide. She was the only thing guiding him through this nest of eels. He couldn’t lose her. Not yet.
Nils clapped him on the arm.
“Look, I’ve got to go. Just-” He broke off. His voice when he spoke again was strained. “Just don’t forget what these people have done. Not just Eirik and Mikkeli. Osuwa, even the greenhouse, they’re not that long ago. For all we know, our families died in the reprisals. Maybe at the hands of people you’ve met,” he said pointedly.
Vikram winced. “Osuwa is complicated.”
“What happened afterwards isn’t. Giving Citizens guns? Murdering children? You know what they say. When the executions took place you could hear the shots right the way to the edge of the city, it was that quiet. Sound of a guilty conscience, I say.”
Nils gave him a hard, almost a challenging look. He was driving the conversation into territory Vikram wasn’t sure he wanted to cover. Not today.
He thought of what Shadiyah had said. They is an elusive term. But she had also told him something else: home was in the west.
“We could torture ourselves forever wondering about our families,” he said. “But what good will it do us? Or them. It doesn’t help them. They’re beyond our help.”
Nils shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Come over and see the new place,” said Vikram. “We can talk properly then.” He wrapped up the remains of his fish. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry.
“Sure.” Nils still sounded reluctant.
“You don’t want to?”
“No, it’s not that.” Nils screwed up his face in admission. “I’ve been sort of seeing that girl.”
“The one I met? Ilona?”
“Yeah. Her.”
It was Vikram’s turn to be worried. He had hoped that Ilona was a one-off occurrence.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Nils.
“Do you?”
“The answer’s yes. She works on the boats.”
Vikram remembered the dyed wing of hair. The averted gaze. “You mean she’s a prostitute.”
“She’s a nice girl.”
“It’s not that she isn’t nice and you know it. It’s that she could get in real trouble for seeing you. You know what the shanty town’s like, you’ve seen the corpses, what happens to those girls, we both have.”
Nils’s shoulders quivered. He squared them.
“I like her. I want to get her out.”
“Well, why didn’t you say before? I’ll help you, we’ll sort something out-”
Nils shook his head then bent double in a sudden convulsion of phlegmy coughs. Vikram stared at him.
“Are you alright? That doesn’t sound good.”
“I’m fine-” Nils cleared his throat. It was a loud, tearing sound.
“Are you sure?”
I’m fine. And I know you would help me. But I want to get her out. Myself.” He glanced at Vikram, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Anyway, I think you’ve got enough to deal with.”
They parted, each looking a little wearier than when they had met an hour before.
/ / /
The squall passed over the northern quarter, leaving a clear icy night. The boatman dropped them at the waterbike centre, where Adelaide stalked into the changing rooms without saying a word. Vikram followed her. He wanted an explanation, any kind of response. She gave none. She went to her locker and began taking out her clothes. The ordinariness of the action was too much for Vikram.
“Well?” he exploded. “Are you going to tell me exactly what you thought you were doing out there? You could have been killed!”
Finally she spoke.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Vikram. You think I haven’t had accidents before? The sea’s unpredictable. I know what I’m doing.”
Vikram banged open his own locker and yanked out his jeans. He began to change as quickly as possible.
“If I hadn’t been there you would have drowned!”
“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” she snapped. “I wasn’t drowning. You didn’t give me a chance to drown before you yanked me out the water. I practically dislocated my shoulder.”
“So next time I should leave you there, should I?”
“Maybe you should,” she said. “Maybe you should just keep out of my affairs.”
“You’re the one that wanted to go out there.”
“And you wanted to come. So stop acting like you’ve done me some kind of favour.”
He shook his head. “You’re an ungrateful bitch.”
Adelaide shrugged. “Told you that when I met you.” She presented him with her back.
He wanted to take hold of her shoulders and rattle her until the truth came out with her teeth. She began to peel off her wetsuit, top to bottom, stripping as though he wasn’t there. She hung up the suit and walked naked into the showers. A moment later he heard the patter of water on her skin.
The first night he stayed in her bedroom, she’d passed out on him. He’d smelt the fumes of alcohol on her breath, seen almost invisible particles of green powder on her upper lip. She slept the deep, dead sleep of a body that rarely let go consciousness, and when it did, surrendered completely.
They had each set out to use the other, but the ties had become more complex than that. Now they were tangled in each other’s lives.
He could smell the perfume of her shampoo rising with the hot water. She stepped out of the shower, towelling her hair. Everything about her actions said unconcern, but he didn’t believe it. He couldn’t.
“I thought by now you trusted me,” he said. Adelaide sighed, as though she was surprised to find him still there. She rooted through her bag for a hairbrush, and attacked her hair with fierce strokes.
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“It didn’t look like an accident.”
She whipped round to face him. He saw then what there was to see, the anger and the fear.
“You know nothing about biking, Vikram.”
“I know what I saw,” he shot back. “So were you showing off, is that it? Or have you got some kind of death wish?”
Adelaide’s hands clenched. “You insult me now? You’d accuse me of that, would you, accuse me of that-monstrosity? Go on, spit it out, say what you want to say!”
He looked at her.
“You fucking bastard.” She hurled the hairbrush at him. It slammed against the metal locker and clattered to the floor. He bent and picked it up. There were dozens of strands of her hair caught in its bristles. Her face challenged him to lob it back.
He took a step away from the locker. “Why don’t you answer the question.”
Adelaide turned away. When she spoke, her words ricocheted off the wall.
“I snagged on a current. The bike veered. That’s all there is to it. And don’t you ever suggest that again.”
She began to dress, twisting her arms behind her to hook up her bra and then her suspender belt. He had thought of the garments as camouflage, but the nights he’d spent holding that body naked had given him no further insights.
He tried one more time.
“Just tell me what happened. I want to understand-I have to understand. Or I’m out. Done.”
Adelaide slipped into her heels. From head to toe, she looked immaculate. When she spoke, her voice was as stripped as it had been when she had said goodbye to him that very first time.
“You must really hate my family, Vikram. I am aware of this. What I don’t get is, why don’t you hate me too? After all, we’ve done some pretty terrible things, haven’t we? Even I don’t know the half of it.”
“I’m not talking about your fucking family, Adelaide, I’m talking about you.”
Adelaide continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “So you probably do hate me too. You’ve probably hated me all along. This isn’t really anything to do with the biking, is it? This is about you and me. And the truth is, there is no you and me. Oh, you’ve been entertaining for a while, I’ll grant you that. But sooner or later, it had to end. It might as well be now.”
She paused only to draw breath. It was as though she had become a mouth; every other part of her diminished.
“You know what, Vikram? I’ve been so caught up in your miserable activities, I’ve almost forgotten about what’s important to me. Well, enough. I’ve got my own mission. I’m going to find my brother, and I’m not going to let anything distract me. Especially not some righteous westie trying to tell me how to run my life.”
She flung each word at him like a specially prepared, poison tipped dart. He ignored their impact. Like all wounds, the sting would come later. But he couldn’t suppress his rage. He almost blurted out about the letter, the truth about her brother, but some reserve of caution held him back. There was an alternative, and if Adelaide wanted to play dirty, he’d send it straight back at her.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said slowly. “Maybe we should be talking about how I hate your family. While we’re at it, maybe we should talk about how you’re exactly like them. You can give yourself a new name, but you can’t change yourself, can you Adelaide? However hard you try to get away from it, you’re just another Rechnov liar.”
He knew that would hit home. He saw her eyes narrow and he pushed his advantage.
“You told me once that lying was the one thing you couldn’t stand. But if we’re honest, it’s the thing you do best, isn’t it?”
Her mask remained intact, but he knew her better now. He could hear the tiniest crack in her voice when she spoke again.
“If we’re really being honest here, I have to say that you’re delusional. Do you imagine anyone takes you seriously? You think your schemes will make one jot of difference? The Council will never remove the border. You’re up against my lying bastard family, Vik, and they will never, never let you win.”
He felt that. He felt it now, and he would feel it more later.
He had to get out.
“I feel sorry for you, Adie.”
“Don’t you dare call me that!”
“I’m done. Goodbye.”
He hiked his bag onto his shoulder. Axel’s letter was crumpled in the inside pocket of his coat. As he walked out, his lungs burned as though he were breathing in acid. But he had made his decision, and Adelaide had clearly made up her own mind. If she wouldn’t give him his answers, he wouldn’t give her hers.