Vikram saw a gull fly past the nearest tower on the other side. The light, reflected from a window, turned the bird for a second into living gold. Everything that was beautiful belonged to the Citizens.
“Then why did you?” he said angrily. “Why did you bring me?”
It seemed like the most unfair thing that Mikkeli had ever done. But Mikkeli was unimpressed at his outburst.
“Because Vik, one day someone’s got to do something about it, and it might as well be us. Right?”
He looked from the waterway, where the low-lying skadi boat was gliding past one of the silver cones, and back to Mikkeli. Last week, she had stolen a new garment: a yellow hood. Within its furry halo her face was deadly serious.
Vikram would have done anything for Mikkeli.
“Alright,” he said. “How?”
Nine minutes to eleven. Vikram shivered uncontrollably. He could not take his eyes off the boat. With its unkind mission, the vessel itself seemed to have acquired a mesmerising power. Each of its component parts was imbued with more than simple menace; the cracked graffiti eyes, the crew posed at stiff attention, gun barrels protruding from their shoulders, the waves lapping and the creak of the hull. There was something inherently wrong about the scene. The boat’s natural purpose had been reversed. It would no longer protect life; it carried a tomb, clear and silent.
The kid on Vikram’s right fidgeted, looked up at his father.
“Not long now,” said the man.
Vikram wondered if there was anyone in the crowd who had plans to break Eirik out. He felt the tension of the crowd, really felt it, the way he’d sensed unease three years ago, the day the riots began. Who else had Eirik known? Did he have allies? Colleagues? Were there members of the New Western Osiris Front in the crowd? Had they ever been anything more than a rumour, or had all of those dissidents quietly disappeared after the riots were crushed? Perhaps everyone present today was simply relieved that a scapegoat had been found and that it wasn’t them.
He gauged the thickness of the glass construction, wondering if a single shot would break it. He remembered, distantly, the feel of a gun in his hand, that sense of absolute power and invulnerability. It had proved false, like everything else.
The skadi would have prepared thoroughly. They always did.
Only another few minutes. There was no sign of Eirik.
“Maybe they’ll cancel it,” said the woman next to Vikram.
He looked at her properly for the first time. She was old, at least fifty, and wheezing in the cold air. She probably had tuberculosis. He remembered Mikkeli’s lilting voice—people don’t get sick in the City, Vik. He wanted to ask the woman her name, but could not trust himself to know even this tiny piece of personal information.
“It’s just an act,” he said — whether to convince himself or the woman he did not know.
The crowd murmured impatiently. Where was the condemned man?
Vikram had not seen Eirik since before the riots. Even if he had wanted to, prisoners were allowed no visitors. Underwater, the information that Vikram overheard came in drips and leaks. A whisper, across cells, that Eirik had confessed. Months later, in the breakfast line, rumours of the tribunal.
He hadn’t been sure about Eirik at first. It had always been the four of them: Vikram and Mikkeli, Nils and Drake. Mikkeli, as the oldest, was the leader. None of them had family; they had grown up on the boat and later they lived together in a single room. They squabbled and got into fights, they tried and sometimes succeeded in finding work and eventually, when their circumstances could no longer be viewed entirely as a joke, they had talked, talked seriously, and they had founded the New Horizon Movement. Their ideas were popular. Others joined. The talks grew to meetings of fifteen or twenty people, but they were always the core.
One night, Mikkeli brought Eirik back to talk to them. Vikram remembered Eirik walking into their favoured bar for the first time, tossing his coat onto the table, drawing up an empty keg.
They had been in the middle of a heated discussion. When Eirik sat down, they all stopped talking. The silence was expectant.
“Well,” Eirik said. And looked at them all. A canny, knowing look, but somehow gleeful, as though he was pleased with life and what it offered, and even how it found him. “Well.”
He remembered Mikkeli, sidling forward, a shyness about her. Vikram had never seen her like that before.
“This is Eirik,” she announced. “He wants to hear about Horizon.”
Vikram was suspicious. He could tell that Nils and Drake felt the same way, sensed them bristling beside him.
“Show him the letters, Vik,” said Mikkeli. She spoke to Eirik. “Every week we send a letter to the Council. Vik does the writing for us. He’s the smart one.”
Vikram was embarrassed.
“He doesn’t want to see those, Keli.”
“Oh go on.”
“That’s our business,” Nils interjected. “We don’t know who this guy is. No offence, Eirik.”
Eirik smiled. “None taken. How about we all get a drink instead?”
Later, Eirik took Vikram aside.
“I didn’t want to make you feel awkward, Vikram, but I’d be interested to see what Horizon sends to the Council. There’s too much talk of violence out there. It’s understandable but it won’t work. We need to use our heads.”
“He’s a spy,” said Nils, when Mikkeli and Eirik had left and Vikram relayed what had been said to the others.
“He’s almost forty.” Drake emptied the dregs of a tankard into her mouth.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Old, but no grey hair,” she said simply. “Don’t you think that’s interesting?”
“Clearly Keli does,” said Nils sourly.
“I’m not sure he is a spy.” Vikram was thoughtful.
“Must be.”
“But he looks like us.”
Eirik had what they all had — the unmistakeable taint of the west. It wasn’t just the general shabbiness and the permanent smell of salt from water travel and poor diet. It was something in the eyes. Part wariness, part resignation; a continual expectation of the worst, as though by acknowledging, almost welcoming the worst of their situation, they could somehow ward off the reality. According to the only survey ever carried out in the west, by the Colnat Initiative, life expectancy in the west was an average of forty-three. The years before, filled with sickness and unemployment, would become increasingly harsh. They all carried this knowledge on their faces, and the only time Vikram actually noticed it was when he saw someone who did not look like that. Like the skadi.
Eirik came back. One by one he won them over. Part of the lure was undoubtedly that Eirik knew how to talk.
“You people are exactly who I’ve been looking for,” he said.
When Vikram showed him the transcripts of their letters, Eirik was visibly excited.
“These are great ideas! Joint fishing missions, that’ll appeal to the anti-Nucleites, they’re desperate to get further out of the city. And if you rephrased a few things — you don’t mind me making suggestions? Like here, you talk about reducing security at checkpoints — what you want to say is border reconciliation. It’s all about the jargon.”
Vikram wrote it down.
“How do you know this stuff? Who taught you?”
“You learn to pick things up. Odd jobs in the City — I always scan their newsfeed. Listen to them talking. Know your enemy, Vikram. It’s the oldest rule in the universe.”