down. That was survival. Perhaps the condemned man had played the same trick, the night before, sitting in his cell. Had he wanted to remember everything or nothing?
The man was drowned. He floated to the top of the tank. Where his face would have been the zipped up hood pressed against the glass.
The frothing water subsided. He drifted. The tank looked serene.
She heard his name again on the loudspeaker. Eirik 9968.
What he was What he isn’t The birds circled and she shivered.
The medic pronounced him dead. She sensed a shift in the western crowd, their hostility sharpening.
A small rowboat ventured past the buoys. The rower was standing upright, shouting.
“What’s he saying?” Dmitri asked.
“He’s calling us murderers,” said Feodor.
A rippling movement ran through the crowd. The mass altered; as she watched, transfixed, the hundreds of individual figures turned into one vast contraction, heaving and surging towards the Home Guard boats. The Guards began to fire. At first they aimed into the air. Then they sprayed the water before the barrier with warning shots.
“Shit-” Linus swore. “Tell them to stop firing.”
Dmitri grabbed Adelaide’s shoulder and pushed her down. She got to her feet impatiently.
“I’m alright, Dmitri-”
She was pushed back.
“Keep down, Adelaide-”
Security formed a line in front of them all, blocking everyone’s view except Feodor’s. Linus, still standing, strained to see between their shoulders.
“Linus! Linus, what’s going on?”
“You’re perfectly safe.” The head of security spoke to Feodor. “The barrier is secure.”
“Then move,” snapped Feodor. “The last thing we want is for the terriers to think we’re afraid of them.”
The security reinforcements stepped aside and Adelaide got to her feet. In the chaos below, she began to see lines within the crowd. A man ran over the boats as though they were nothing more than an inconvenient obstacle course. Go on, she willed him. But there was nowhere for him to go. Others were making similar dashes- like rays returning to the sun, they were all set to converge on a point at the barrier. She followed, horrified but fascinated, as they drew nearer.
The Guards will kill them At the last moment, the man she had first noticed veered sharply to the left. He collided with another figure. They toppled into the sea and went under. She waited for them to surface, but they did not reappear. Water foamed where they had fallen. The noise of boats crashing together was punctuated by screams and gunshots.
“They’ll have to use gas,” remarked Dmitri. His hands, clasped behind him, were fidgeting. Adelaide could tell that he wanted to brush down his suit, but that would look indecorous. All three Rechnov men stood stiffly.
“They should have used it ten minutes ago,” said Feodor irritably. “Look at that rabble-and people question my judgement over today.”
The gas subdued the crowd. The Home Guard speeders continued to steam up and down the line. They had rounded up a few westerners on another boat and were systematically handcuffing them.
The mat of lifeless boats rocked as one. Vehicles at the edge gradually separated off and slunk back into the channels of drab western towers. A waterbus, tipping smaller boats aside, was trying to nudge a pathway out of the centre.
“What will they do now?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Don’t care,” said Dmitri. “Stars, it’s freezing out here. We must be done by now.”
Feodor glanced across at the Ngozis, who were being shepherded back inside. He nodded gruffly.
“Goran will take you back, Adelaide.”
“I don’t need an escort,” she said coldly. She hated Goran, and the way he crept about the family lodgings like a soft amphibian.
Feodor looked like he might hit her, but Linus stepped in. “Let her go, Father.”
“Thank you, Linus.”
A blast of wind hurried her inside. She collected her handbag from a carrier girl. She never came this far west; she would have to take the Crocodile shuttle line.
“Adelaide.” Linus caught up with her in the stairwell outside. His tone was stern but not unkind. She gave him a blank look. There was no point in offering words. Words were ammunition.
Linus hesitated before speaking again.
“Empty threats are useless,” he said at last. “I may not always agree with Father’s policies, but sometimes action is inevitable. I just want you to know that I wish it hadn’t been necessary.”
“I see.”
“And Adelaide.” His voice was different this time.
“What?”
“Be careful.”
“Why should I need to be careful, Linus?”
Her brother did not answer, but she did not require a reply. Her thoughts were elsewhere. The dead were dead, but the missing were still out there, waiting to be found. The investigator she had employed was even now at work. In seven days, they would meet.
The shuttle lines were busy on her way home. As the pod skimmed east through its glowing chute, Adelaide leaned against the smooth fibreglass sides, watching her reflection flicker. She wondered who else on board had been watching the execution.
She wondered what Eirik 9968’s last thought had been.
I’d remember-I’d have to remember Axel, crouched in a myriad of broken glass.
Hiding behind a curtain, in the Domain with Axel, at the theatre with Tyr.
The Roof. The double-A parties.
Horses’ hooves.
Don’t think.
She knew that from tomorrow she could not remember this day. She would relive it as she drank her late night voqua and watched without taking in a reel on the o’vis. If she slept tonight, the scene would haunt her dreams. But after tomorrow, today had to go. Today had never happened.
4 VIKRAM
Vikram woke to a morning that was almost colourless in its brightness. He stretched, gradually persuading his reluctant limbs to leave blankets that were warm with body heat. The window-wall was wet with condensation and he wiped a patch clear. His hand came back dirty with grease.
In a couple of months, ice would freeze the window-wall shut. Days would come when he barely left the flat. He had let the place go. Mould sprouted in a corner of the ceiling and meandered down the walls. The tiny room pressed on his sanity.
With a jolt, he remembered that today was different. Today he was going east. Into the City.
His heartbeat quickened even as he tried to relax.
Can I really do this? Do I even want to?
You don’t have a choice, he told himself firmly. He’d screwed up the order when it was delivered by hand- reading its solid formal prose had filled him with rage. But later he’d smoothed the letter out, read it again, thought about the implications. He’d wanted a political opportunity and here it was. Clearly it was no coincidence that after twelve months of writing letters, he had been granted an audience with the Council less than a week after the execution-but that did not give him an excuse.
The mayhem surrounding Eirik’s death must have struck a chord with the City as well as the west. Vikram- what was left of Horizon-was finally being taken seriously.
