A cry went up as the waterbus was sighted. The surge forward knocked him off balance. He suppressed the desire to shove back and used the momentum to inch his way past a mother clutching a child in each hand.
The ticket collector stood wide across the boarding gate. The waterbus pulled in with tantalizing slowness. Vikram saw a girl in a yellow scarf duck under a man’s arm and sidle around an old woman. His heart jumped with the thought that it was Mikkeli, before he remembered, again, that it was impossible. The ticket collector braced himself as he unlocked the barrier.
Vikram pushed a few peng into the ticket collector’s hand and fought his way into a place at the prow. On the landing stage, a squabble broke out among those left behind. As the waterbus angled around the circumference of 221-West, Vikram saw the man who had complained about being blocked in, crouched in his own boat, in the process of setting loose the offending vehicle. He was striking at the chain with a pickaxe.
The waterbus nosed into the main channel of the waterway. Vikram huddled over the rail watching the spit of spray. The western quarter of the city had never been finished, and when he glanced up he saw clumsily made, open bridges connecting building to building. Many of the graffitied towers were ringed by boats, homes to the very poor. On the outskirts, boats lined up like dominoes. Nobody could say for sure what was concealed within the rotting hulls. People went to the shanty-boat towns for drugs or women. They didn’t always come back.
He had to find a way to describe all of those problems. For months, he’d been composing a speech in his head. Now the carefully arranged lines were void. Events had overtaken him. He had to focus on the things that could be changed. He had to ignore what they had done to Eirik.
It was Drake who had told him to start writing again. Gotta have a purpose, Vik. Gotta have something to do. The subject of most of Vikram’s letters, and his primary focus today, was to ask for a winter aid programme. The most important thing he could secure would be repairs and insulation in the worst of the buildings. In winter, cold killed as many people as starvation. The last riots had been sparked by the City holding back food reserves. He would ask for kitchen boats too. And for restoration work to begin in the unremembered quarters.
How would the Council react? Would they deny the situation, pretend it was less severe? He was ready to argue.
He tried to recall Eirik’s advice, so readily available at the time, now distant through time and suppression. Eirik would have known exactly what to say.
At Market Circle, the hub of the western quarter, the ocean was almost invisible under its cover of boat traders and traffic. Vikram ducked as a gull skimmed low overhead. It came to rest atop a fry-boat selling hot squid, where many of the birds gathered, shuffling. Their cries pierced the clamour of human voices — selling, haggling, shrieking — that pursued the waterbus as it barged a way through the congestion.
People carried on. They had no choice.
On the other side of Market Circle, the waterbus began to lose passengers. It chugged past greenhouse towers and a recycling depot. Down a waterway clustered with rusting houseboats was Desalination Plant W-03, around which the decking bobbed quietly, as though nothing had ever happened. Still Vikram imagined he heard the splash, and he kept his eyes forward. They were approaching the border.
By the time the waterbus was in weapon range, only five people remained on board. Nervously, Vikram felt in his pocket for his day pass and the letter detailing his appointment with the Council. His ID had stood up to previous scrutiny, but he could never feel quite safe.
A narrow gap in the border mesh, barely wide enough to squeeze a waterbus through, allowed a clear glimpse of the glittering City. The checkpoint jetty ran out from the base of 774-West. Skadi boots rapped the decking. The skadi cradled their rifles with the loose, easy attachment one might assign to a fifth limb. They laughed and joked amongst themselves, but when their attention went westward, their expressions lapsed into something between inscrutability and a strange taut hunger. Vikram glanced quickly around and saw that the other passengers were trying to look as blank and dull as possible.
“Papers.”
There were two inspecting officers. The first vaulted the waterbus rail and strode across the deck. His coat, heavy and black, swung deliberately free, revealing both a hand pistol and patches of storm-flecked camouflage. He checked the driver’s licence first. The rifle muzzle fell lazily at his side. Vikram was intensely aware of it. When his turn came, he held out his ID and the letter in silence.
The officer read it, his eyebrows raised. He let out a fat laugh.
“Council, eh?”
Vikram nodded.
“What the hell d’you think you’re doing there?”
Vikram was not sure if it was a rhetorical question or not, and judged it best to keep quiet. But one of the passengers gave him a tiny nudge, and when he looked up he found the officer still staring.
“I’m giving a presentation,” he said.
The officer laughed again, but with less humour this time. “Fuck presentations,” he said. “And fuck the Council. Or maybe that’s what you’ll have to do. Fuck them.” The idea clearly amused him, and this time his mirth was shared by a couple of men on the jetty. “You’re wasting your time, terrier,” he declared, and offered Vikram a jab in the thigh with his gun before ambling on to the next passenger, a young girl. Vikram had passed.
But there was a dispute over the girl’s papers, and they were delayed for twenty minutes while the officer sent one of his subordinates to make a call. He filled the time by pointing out targets for his men — a floating crate, a resting seabird. Shots crackled sporadically. The bird rose with a squawk of alarm. The skad who’d missed swore. It was typical of a skad to shoot birds for entertainment.
Vikram tried not to look at the men too closely, wary of recognising or being recognised. There was a large part of him that wanted to. The part that did idiotic things. The part that followed naked impulse.
Witnessing the execution had been more than stupid. It had stirred up old grievances that he had barely begun to control. He folded his arms, squeezing with his fingers until it hurt. He had a chance with the Council. And they had to listen — now, they had to listen.
The man came back with the order for clearance. Frowning, the second officer, still seated in a deckchair on the jetty, beckoned him over. The two conferred. Then the second officer pointed.
“You. Over here.”
His target was unclear, and the five passengers looked nervously down. He beckoned.
“You. Woman in the green scarf. Here.”
“That’s you, gullhead.” The officer still on deck hauled the woman out of the line. “Off the boat.”
“My papers are in order,” she protested.
“That’s for us to say.”
Vikram kept his eyes on the deck.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Get off, bitch, and you’ll find out. Or do you want me to throw you off?”
The woman’s face crumpled. As she climbed over the rail Vikram saw her hands were shaking. The officer followed her onto the jetty and waved the waterbus on. As he turned away, Vikram saw that his scarf was deliberately wrapped low to reveal the eye tattoo on the back of his neck.