The crowd, sensing a conclusion, were growing voluble. From all sides a chorus lifted, the voices louder now and more aggressive. Shouts and insults, wailing, overlapping. The skadi fired a barrage of warning shots into the water. A girl, perhaps the same girl, started screaming. This time no one stopped her. Vikram’s boat rocked; the crowd was pushing at the barrier, jeering at the skadi. The man beside Vikram pulled his kid roughly from the rail and told him to keep his head down. Skadi boats sped down the crowd barrier, whipping around, racing back again. Spray hid the execution boat momentarily. The boat in front moved sideways, blocking Vikram. He had to crane to see what was happening.
The tank was almost full, and Eirik was fully conscious. His body convulsed like a bird hooked in a net. His feet thrashed the water white. He was floating on his back, head half submerged below the last few inches of air.
That’s enough, he thought numbly. Just stop now. There’s still time, the lesson’s learned. He could live—
“Oh, but there’s never enough time, Vik, that’s why you have to take it—”
Mikkeli was speaking. No, Mikkeli was dead. Her body limp and sodden on the decking. Frost already forming on her eyelashes.
“You have to take it from someone else!”
Mikkeli’s ghost laughed, that big, slightly dirty laugh. She cocked her head at Eirik and winked, once. Ice splintered in Vikram’s ribs.
“That’s right,” said Eirik. “She’s right. If you steal anything, steal time.”
In the tank, the last inch of air disappeared.
Vikram imagined Eirik’s mouth forced open as his lungs battled for oxygen. Water pouring in. Water like acid, water to burn away words. He had seen this in his dreams, his own body and those of friends, turning over and over. This was just a dream. It must be a dream.
Eirik’s limbs jerked in spasms. His hands and feet pounded the ceiling of the tank. He was asphyxiating.
The crowd fell silent. Vikram heard dry whimpers, or was it laughter? The girl behind him, crouched by her mother. The kid had gone quiet.
A gull wheeled overhead. Its screech trailed across the bleached out sky. Eirik threshed, knocking the glass of the tank with dull thuds.
Vikram could only observe. The waves moved, and the sun shone on the water, but time had finally stopped.
The body stilled.
What floated in a tank of seawater was no longer Eirik. Eirik’s spirit had been torn loose. He was out there with the ghosts now, a half thing condemned to the waves.
The body, face down, rotated half a circle, drifted slowly back again. It bobbed against the tank ceiling. The arms hung loosely down, Eirik’s bare hands indistinct shapes in the subsiding water. There was nothing but silence in the two crowds. The silence pressed on the space between Vikram’s shoulder blades. He hunched over the rail like an old man.
On the barge, a medic stepped forward. Two skadi slid open the ceiling of the tank with a grating noise. Some of the water splashed over and they stepped quickly back, as though it were poisonous.
The medic reached into the tank and lifted Eirik’s arms. He had to tip over the body first, and the movement dislodged more water. The medic rolled up Eirik’s sleeve. Vikram saw him examine a red band around the elbow. He nodded, looked at his watch, and said something to the officer wearing the sunglasses.
The loudspeakers crackled.
“The convict Eirik 9968 is pronounced dead, at oh-eleven hundred hours and thirteen minutes.”
Vikram stared at the body. He felt the steel band that had gripped his chest all day dissolve at last, and with it, the past three years. He was back on the decking, holding Mikkeli’s body. The pain was as sharp and as real as it had been on that day, but this time he knew that it would not disappear. It expanded in his ribs like a lungful of broken glass.
The City had won. They had won at the moment they arrested Eirik. They had won when Mikkeli burst into Vikram’s room, yelling, “Vik, get out, they’ve taken Eirik and we’re next!” He had found it so easy to believe in Eirik’s guilt. Underwater, that belief had manifested as rot, slowly eroding the will to survive — and for what? So that he could watch the New Horizon Movement die with a clear conscience?
Did he know himself at all?
The skadi had not replaced the lid of the tank. Their procedure from this point seemed unclear; they were standing about uncertainly. A seagull landed on the rim of the tank and a skad butted it away with his rifle. The medic had gone below deck.
The show was over. Vikram needed to get out. There were too many people. One by one, the other passengers came into focus, like ghosts emerging from the mist. The waterbus was hemmed in on every side.
“What will they do with the body?” the kid was asking.
Vikram crouched to see if the woman who had fainted was recovering. Some of her colour had returned. Recognising him, she gave a weak smile.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need more water?”
“Thank you — I’m sorry, it was the crowds and so — so horrible — it’s over now?”
“It’s over.”
He wondered what were her reasons for coming today.
There was a scuffle at the front of the crowd. A man had pulled his row boat a little way out, past the barrier of buoys. He was pointing at the tank and yelling. Vikram could make out one word, over and over again. Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!
Seagulls screeched overhead. Their cries merged with the man’s—Murderers! Murderers!
Another boat nudged forward. Others were urging the protestor to get back. Now the skadi had seen what was happening. Three of their own boats began powering towards the barrier.
A noise like scraping metal sheets came out of the loudspeakers, before the sound settled into speech.
“All westerners get behind the barrier. Get behind the barrier now.”
“Get back, you idiot,” Vikram muttered.
The skadi arrowed in. A shark-faced prow rammed the rowboat. The protestor clutched the rocking sides of the boat and managed to stay afloat.
“Murderers!” he yelled.
“Get back!” Vikram wasn’t the only one who called out. The shouts converged from every side. It was impossible to know who was saying what, whether they were yelling at the protestor to save himself or at the skadi to retreat.
Still defiant, the protestor raised his arm.
“Mur—”
Vikram saw a parallel movement as the barrel of a rifle took aim at the man’s head.
There was a single shot.
A red fog filled Vikram’s head.
He never knew who made the first move. Maybe it was him after all. Maybe it was Nils or Drake, or someone else in the crowd. He locked his gaze on the speeder where the skad was now lowering his rifle. Vikram had only one intention. He was going to get to that boat. And when he got to it—
The red fog had him. He took no time to consider the ramifications of his actions. His movements seemed ahead of him as he leapt agilely over the rail of the waterbus, landing in the stern of a smaller rower. It rocked with the impact.
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
“What the fuck—”
Vikram was already gone. Scrambling from boat to boat, he bounded across the unstable carpet. Some tried to stop him. Others joined the push forward. The weight of the crowd was all around him, no longer dormant but a physical, surging force. Gaps of sea widened before his feet. He saw the waves surge as he jumped from boat to boat.
Boats crashed into one another. He was close. There were only three rows between him and the skadi speeder.