Eirik 9968 had not shown mercy. There were charges of false confessions eked from force-fed drugs; scarrings on the soles of feet.
There was a strange precision in the scene below: the four corners of the square, the buoys and the Home Guard speedboats cordoning the western crowd; a barge, solitary oblong in gunmetal water, its glass cube catching the light. The hooded figure stumbling within it.
He’s guilty. He deserves this. He must deserve it.
Except that his sentence had been orchestrated by her father. Glancing once more at his set, determined profile, she was suddenly certain that the method of execution was Feodor’s choice.
The Ngozis and the Dumays were grouped at the other end of the balcony. Each founding family formed a tight core. If one of them wished to leave, she could go with them. It only took an ally.
No one met her gaze.
A gun was fired and Adelaide jumped. The westerners were growing restless. The waterline was at the man’s neck.
She couldn’t watch any longer. She held her breath, trying to bring on a fit of dizziness. She waited for lines to split her vision, removing what was before her eyes, but nothing happened. She had to draw breath. When she exhaled, the air came out shakily.
“Adelaide?” Linus had noticed.
“I need to leave,” she said. “I’m going to have to leave.”
“Then do. If that’s really what you want.” Feodor’s voice was casual, but she heard the subtext. You know the consequences.
She thought of the investigator and the transaction that had just been made from her bank account. She thought of the resources she would need.
I can’t abandon Axel.
The water in the tank rose. She focussed on the boat, counted the teeth of its shark face. They ran in two zigzag rows, thirty in the top, twenty seven in the bottom. But the tank drew her back. She watched it the way you walked in a ground-dream, observing the phenomenon but knowing, even as your foot brushed the grass, that the scene could not be real.
Adelaide had seen live fish pulled from the water in restaurants that writhed the way the dying man did now.
In his final moments she felt oddly absent, as though she were observing herself from a long way off. The man was drowning, and there were lines being drawn before her. She felt the chalk on her back. She felt very cold. She thought of the day of the Great Silence—the day they said the world had drowned. There were connections to be made, but she would not make them. One level of consciousness, the part that would allow her to sleep through future nights, the part that allowed her to breathe when the man down there could not, closed her mind quietly 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
There was a strange precision in the scene below: the four corners of the square, the buoys and the Home Guard speedboats cordoning the western crowd; a barge, solitary oblong in gunmetal water, its glass cube catching the light. The hooded figure stumbling within it.
He’s guilty. He deserves this. He must deserve it.
Except that his sentence had been orchestrated by her father. Glancing once more at his set, determined profile, she was suddenly certain that the method of execution was Feodor’s choice.
The Ngozis and the Dumays were grouped at the other end of the balcony. Each founding family formed a tight core. If one of them wished to leave, she could go with them. It only took an ally.
No one met her gaze.
A gun was fired and Adelaide jumped. The westerners were growing restless. The waterline was at the man’s neck.
She couldn’t watch any longer. She held her breath, trying to bring on a fit of dizziness. She waited for lines to split her vision, removing what was before her eyes, but nothing happened. She had to draw breath. When she exhaled, the air came out shakily.
“Adelaide?” Linus had noticed.
“I need to leave,” she said. “I’m going to have to leave.”
“Then do. If that’s really what you want.” Feodor’s voice was casual, but she heard the subtext. You know the consequences.
She thought of the investigator and the transaction that had just been made from her bank account. She thought of the resources she would need.
I can’t abandon Axel.
The water in the tank rose. She focussed on the boat, counted the teeth of its shark face. They ran in two zigzag rows, thirty in the top, twenty seven in the bottom. But the tank drew her back. She watched it the way you walked in a ground-dream, observing the phenomenon but knowing, even as your foot brushed the grass, that the scene could not be real.
Adelaide had seen live fish pulled from the water in restaurants that writhed the way the dying man did now.
In his final moments she felt oddly absent, as though she were observing herself from a long way off. The man was drowning, and there were lines being drawn before her. She felt the chalk on her back. She felt very cold. She thought of the day of the Great Silence—the day they said the world had drowned. There were connections to be made, but she would not make them. One level of consciousness, the part that would allow her to sleep through future nights, the part that allowed her to breathe when the man down there could not, closed her mind quietly 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
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