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
