force majeure (fors mahzher') n. Irresistible compulsion or coercion, unforeseeable course of events excusing from fulfilment of contract. [F, = superior strength]
Her fingers ached whenever she touched the cello.
After the demonstration they regrouped before dispersing, to see who had been arrested or injured. One of the students volunteered to go with the group of people who would follow the police buses back into the city and find out what had happened to those who were missing. The rest of them returned by cars and hired minibuses.
She found it easy to be quiet; her shock passed unnoticed. Everybody else was high on the exhilaration of the demonstration and the fact they'd survived with nothing worse than red eyes and sniffy noses. They chattered, relived and retold their experiences. Nobody seemed to have heard about the dead policeman.
They went back to the same bar she'd met them in earlier that week. She went to the toilets and threw up.
The television showed the news; the clash outside the airport was the lead story, with the murdered riot policeman providing the headline. The students were divided; some had bruises from the batons, or knew people who'd had arms broken by the riot police, at the University, the airport or in the streets on Vietnam demos, and muttered that the man probably deserved it, or that another policeman might have done it, settling some old score in the heat of the battle… while the rest went as quiet as Hisako.
She left as soon as she could, coughing and complaining of a headache. In the flat she sat in darkness, staring at the patterns of light the city cast on to the ceiling and walls through the window blinds. She was still staring at the white and orange barred wedges of light when they gradually faded under the pervasive grey of a new day.
She didn't know what to do; to confess, to run away, to pretend nothing had happened…
She didn't know what had made her do it. Anger and pain, perhaps, but so what? There must have been hundreds of people there who'd been more angry, and been hurt worse than she. They hadn't killed anybody.
What was in her that could do such a thing? She wasn't normally violent; she'd been accused of attacking the music sometimes, of being too aggressive with the bow and her fingers, but (as she put her hands into her armpits, staring at the grey day dawning) that wasn't murder.
She still could hardly believe she'd done it, but the memory was there, livid and raw, like the taste and sting of the gas. And the memory resided not just in her brain, behind her eyes, but in her bones; in her fingers. She could feel again the crumpling and cracking as they lanced into the man's neck; they hurt again as she thought of her bones and his, buckling, compressing.
She hugged herself tighter and put her head down on to her knees, sobbing into the jeans and forcing her arms into her sides as though trying to crush her hands.
It was impossible to sleep the next night too, so she walked through the city until dawn, through the Soapland sleaze and past the quiet parks and down the side streets where the pachinko parlours sounded like a million tiny nails being rattled in a drum and the karaoke bars echoed with drunk businessmen singing badly, down the streets where the plaster European models stood in bright windows, hung with million-yen dresses, and electronics companies displayed the latest crop of gadgets like glittering jewellery, and through suburbs, where the small houses sat crammed and dark and the only sound was the distant city grumble and faraway trains screeching through points.
That day she slept, fitfully, always waking with the feeling of shock, convinced that some incredibly violent noise had just stopped echoing, that a titanic explosion had caused her to wake and the air had barely finished ringing with the aftershock. Once a small earthquake did wake her, but it was only enough to rattle the flat a little; nothing remarkable. She'd never been bothered by quakes before, but now she lay awake, worrying that it was just a prelude to a big one; a shock that would bring all Tokyo down, crushing her in her flat, squashing her under tons of rubble suffocating her on the bed like a pinned insect, grinding her bones, destroying her while she tried to scream.
She got up, took to the streets again.
And when she did try to play the cello, her fingers ached. The left hand, the one that had been stepped on, hurt a little, but the right, which had to hold the bow, filled her with agony. It was as though all the bones had been recently. broken, and the act of trying to move the bow across the strings fractured them once more. She kept dropping the bow. Eventually she gave up. She walked, she sat in the flat, she ate next to nothing, she tried to sleep but couldn't, then fell suddenly asleep and had to claw her way out of dreams of cruelty and pain, and she waited for the police to come. They never did.
Later, she found it difficult to work out quite how she ended up in hospital. The orchestra came back, and the two girls she shared the flat with, but she hardly noticed. She had settled into a routine by that time, and the girls hardly impinged upon that. She knew without looking at a clock roughly when to try to sleep, when to go out walking, when to try and play the cello and have her fingers ache (sometimes she only thought about playing the cello, and her fingers ached anyway), when to eat a little from cold tin cans, when to sit and wait, drained, for sleep to take her, knowing that dreams and fear would wake her while sheer exhaustion tried to keep her under.
The girls tried to talk to her (she remembered them showing her photographs of the tour; bright, very colourful, but she had the impression all the smiles were somehow pasted crudely on and she couldn't work out why they were showing her these sad, obviously faked and painful photographs), and later one of the orchestra managers came as well, but he left, and another man came, who was very calm and quiet and professional and she trusted him and tried to talk to him, and the next day two young men who really did have white coats came and took her away without any trouble at all. Her two flatmates were there, and seemed to think she should take the cello with her, but she refused, wouldn't let them do it, made a scene and left the immediate source of her pain behind.
The hospital was in the hills near Uenohara. During the day, if it wasn't cloudy or foggy, you could see Fuji. In the evening, Tokyo blazed on the plain to the east. She spent the first week crying, unable to talk, her every expression a currency of tears, because she was sure this was costing so much money and she had spent all her savings running away and her mother would go into debt and bankruptcy paying for it all, until she managed to voice her anxiety to somebody from the orchestra who'd come to visit her, and they told her the orchestra 's medical insurance was paying, not her mother. She cried even more.
Her mother came to visit on the second week. She tried to explain to her that there was something she'd done, some terrible thing she was sure, and she couldn't remember what it was, but it was terrible, terrible, and nobody would ever forgive her if they knew; her mother buried her face in her hands. Hisako went to her and hugged her, which was very wrong, far too open and obvious, but she did it with a sort of glee that hurt, as though to take her own mother in her arms in a public veranda overlooking the wooded hills near Uenohara with other people near by and quite possibly looking on was some sort of secretive attack, and she really hated her mother and this was a way of getting back at her, subjecting her.
She tried to go for walks, tempted by the lights of the city on the plain and the mountain hovering like an immense black and white tent over the hills to the south. But they kept catching her, finding her, and she kept encountering locked doors and high fences too finely meshed to climb, and had to wait there, banging on the door or the fence with her palm or fist until her hands ached just enough or started to bleed, and they came to take her away.
She slept sitting up, propped by gaijin pillows, afraid to lie down in case the roof collapsed. The ward ceiling was too broad and big and she didn't think there were enough pillars or walls to support it properly; one good tremor and the lot would come down, smashing into her bed, flattening her there and grinding up her bones and crushing her neck with ferro-concrete beams and suffocating her over the years while the orchestra went bankrupt and her mother turned to prostitution and she lay not alive and not dead with a necklace of reinforced concrete slowly choking her, a burden upon all of them, hated but indulged.
Mr Kawamitsu came to see her. This confused her, because he was from another time, when she was young and still innocent and had no blood on her hands and no real dreams in her head and she couldn't understand how he'd got here from there; had they built the rail tunnel already? They ought to tell her about these things.
She was disturbed that day, anyway. They'd been watching television the evening before and the nurse had been out of the room for a while, during a programme about Vietnam which showed terrible, terrible things; things of suffering and flame and blackened flesh and the orange flash and white pulse in the green green jungle; a bruise in the forest while the sticky orange (sticks tumbling lazily from the pretty plane) fire and the white (explosion cloud and tiny trailing threads, medusa) phosphorus gnawed their way through the olive skin to the white bone, while the Rome ploughs ripped and the Hercules sprayed Agent Orange (ha, gasp pant, and she saw the word-picture for tree mutate before her eyes, and thought in English it would go trees ree re e…) and only the screams of some of the patients brought the nurse back Adjusting His Clothing (ho, she noticed), and turned the set on to a game show instead and everybody seemed to forget what they had seen.
Except her. She remembered, and dreamed that night, up-propped, muttering, plagued, asweat, and as she replayed and remembered and relived, she laughed with each flicked frame of pain and grief, because it had all already happened and demonstrating wasn't going to do any good now, and because it made her feel good, which made her feel bad, but still she felt good in the end.
The dawn was bright and clear and blue that morning. Mr Kawamitsu brought a cello.
He put her hands upon it, showed her how to hold the device. The sunlight leant shafts of gold against the walls of the room, and Fuji was invisible beyond the hills and inside the clouds. She stroked the instrument, remembering. It wasn't hers, but she remembered not just playing a cello, she somehow remembered this cello, even though she knew she'd never seen or held it before. It smelled good, felt good, sounded deep and rich and sensuous. It played her rather than the other way round, so her fingers didn't hurt. She was sure she'd talked to Mr Kawamitsu, but didn't remember what she'd said.
He left, taking the beautiful cello with him. The pillows were uncomfortable that night, and the ceiling looked a bit more secure. She swept the pillows from the bed and slept with her head on her arm, soundly until the morning light. She dreamed that her four fingers were strings, and her thumb was a bow. In the dream, the strings stretched and snapped, bursting and unravelling and disappearing in a cloud of mist. The bow scraped against the neck of the instrument and snapped, flailing; tendon still attached, bone broken. It ought to have hurt but it didn't, and she felt as though she'd been untied, let loose. She studied her fingers the next morning. They looked fine; nothing wrong with them. She made a tent of them and tapped the tips against each other, checking out the rainy weather and wondering what was for breakfast.
They put it down to her fear, and the idea that she'd been so ashamed at letting everybody else down she'd gone crazy; She felt demeaned by such a judgement, but accepted it as lenient compared to what she deserved for what had really driven her.
The cello belonged to a businessman in Sapporo who'd bought the instrument as an investment, and because he thought it looked a pretty colour. Mr Kawamitsu knew him. He'd persuaded the man that the Stradivari should be used rather than stored. Mr Kawamitsu always meant that Hisako should have the chance to play it, and perhaps own it one day. Bringing it to her now was all he could think of that might help. It did, but she told Mr Kawamitsu to take it back to Sapporo with him. When she could afford to, she'd buy it.
He went. Her mother stayed; she left. Her mother slept in the same room with her for the first two weeks after she moved back to Tokyo, back into the same flat with the other two girls (she couldn't believe it, they wanted her to be there. She wondered if maybe they were crazy too). Then her mother went back to Hokkaido, and she went to see the orchestra manager.
She could stay; as a guest soloist. She wouldn't be expected to tour abroad, she couldn't expect to be a fully paid-up member of the orchestra — no more subsidised stays in exclusive mental hospitals from now on — but she could play; play with the orchestra when it was in its Tokyo base, or anywhere else in Japan. It was more than she'd hoped for, much more than she deserved. She accepted, wondering as she did so what the down side would be; how life would get back at her for such apparent clemency.
She stayed and played. She found herself in another quartet, even more in demand than the first, and she was asked to do recordings. She was introduced to a man called Mr Moriya, who was professionally appalled to discover how much she was being paid, especially for recordings, and helped her make more.
Life went on; she visited, or was visited by, her mother; she took the occasional lover, in or out of the orchestra watched her savings mount up, and wondered what she was really doing with her life, and why. Her hands hardly ever ached, and even if she did wake up sometimes, in the early morning, with her hands crumpled and cramped and compressed into tearfully painful fists, nails digging into her palms, or caught between her arms and her chest, stuffed into her armpits, while she dreamed of fingers crushed in car doors (great too-thick car doors, with lots of handles and levers and patches of obscurely important writing on them) and even if she did wake panting and sweating now and again, it was still nothing; normal and fair and better than she deserved.
Came a day when she could afford the down payment on the fabulous Strad. She travelled to Sapporo to meet it and Mr Kawamitsu, and Mr Kubota, the owner. There; it was in her hands.
It was like meeting a husband picked out by your parents, yet who you'd already — secretly — known and loved.
She took the cello away to a ryokan just outside Wajima for two weeks. She had a double room in an outhouse across the courtyard from the main inn. She played there. It was a sort of honeymoon.
The cello was ancient, made sometime between 1729 and 1734. It had belonged to a San Marinan composer at the Hapsburg court, had narrowly escaped being used as firewood by Napoleon's army as it swept through Piedmont in 1796, travelled to America with an Italian virtuoso to celebrate fifty years of American independence, had its spike shot off in the Boxer Rebellion in Beijing, survived an entire string quartet during the Second World War because it was put on the wrong DC3, flying to Algiers, not Cairo (the Dakota flying to Cairo with the string quartet crashed below sea level, in the Qattara Depression, while the puzzled pilot tried to work out what had gone wrong with his altimeter), and spent thirty years in a bank vault in Venice before being sold at auction by Sotheby's of London, to Mr Kubota.
Mr Kubota brought the cello back from England on a JAL 747, strapped into the seat between him and his wife; he was watching from his first-class window as the plane came into land at Narita, and saw what looked like a medieval battle going on underneath; two armies; banners, smoke and fumes and lumbering cannon. He remembered pointing it out to his wife.
It was that day, that demonstration, she'd discovered, when — stuttering, incredulous, hardly daring to believe fate could dispense such undeserved balm — she'd asked him. But it was true.
She'd hugged Mr Kubota, startling him and Mr Kawamitsu.
Hisako Onoda saw the cello obliterated by AK47 and Uzi fire, ripped to splinters against the stem of the Nadia in the hazy sunlight of late afternoon.
Strings tugged, snapped, flailed. Wood burst and sprang, turned to dust and splinters under the hail of fire. Bullets sang and sparked against the metal of the bows behind the instrument as it disintegrated and collapsed in a cloud of dark and pale-brown fragments, strings waving like anemone limbs, like a drowning man's fingers. Blood was in her mouth and bruises puffed round her eyes and cigarette burns burned on her breasts and the seed of a boatful of men ran down her thighs and she kept seeing Philippe crumple under the first bullet that hit, but it was the cello; the needless, pointless (apart from to hurt) destruction of the cello that finally killed her. Old wood. New metal. Guess which won? No surprise there. Killed, she was free.
She heard the scream of the engines in the rasp of the guns. The sky was filled with thunder and fire, and she felt something die.
Now she couldn't be who or what she had been. She hadn't asked for this, hadn't wanted it, but it was here. Not her fault. There was no forbearance, no vengeance, just chance. But it had happened, all the same, and she did not feel she had simply to succumb; acceptance was not nearly enough and far too much. This took the scab off. Truth always hurts, she told herself; hurt sometimes truths. They made her watch, as the afternoon wore out and the clouds sailed and the wind moved as it always had and the water sparkled just so and the Kalashnikovs and Uzis barked and rapped and the cello dissolved under their fire.
She suspected she'd disappointed them; they'd ripped the masking tape off her mouth so they could hear her scream when they shot the instrument, but she'd kept quiet.
They took her away. But it wasn't the same person they led off, and something that was her lay there in the string-tangled debris of the wrecked instrument, turned to less than sawdust by the impact.
She was a toy, a mascot; they fucked her and made themselves whole, together. But toys could corrupt, she thought (as they took her away from the sunlight, back to her cage and captivity and torture), and mascots might bite back.
They showed her their other toys, too, on the bridge; the SAM launcher (they played at readying it to fire and pointing it at her, once poked it between her legs, joking about whether she was hot enough down there to attract the missile); the plastique charges they'd sink at least one of the ships with, once they'd downed the plane; the vencerista literature and equipment they'd leave behind with a couple of their uniforms, so that when the National Guard did come to investigate, there'd be no doubt who'd shot down the Americans and massacred the people on the ships.
The radio operators were dead too. She'd seen the bodies in the Nadia's radio cabin as they'd dragged her along to the bridge, past the scars and gouge marks of the fire fight Orrick had started. The ship's radio was officially out of action; the Americans were jamming every frequency in sight to combat vencerista radio signals, fearing a large-scale attack, they said. The soldiers let her listen to one of the infrequent news broadcasts. Radio Panama was playing martial music, apart from the news programmes, which were meant to be hourly but weren't. The jamming came right up against the station's frequency on both sides, producing a background of whistles and rumbles and a sound somewhere between a heavy machine-gun and a helicopter.
When they'd got to the bridge, they'd tied her to the Nadia's small wheel, forcing her to stand awkwardly, unable to rest her legs, her arms strapped to the wood and brass of the wheel. Her head was down, and sheltered behind her greasy, unwashed hair. She looked down at the bruised, burned body revealed by the ripped yukata, and listened to the sounds of a world losing its head.
Panama City was under martial law. The President of Columbia had been shot dead and five groups had claimed. responsibility. More US carrier groups were arriving off the Pacific Coast of Central America and in the Caribbean. Cuba said it was preparing to be invaded. The Kremlin was threatening a new blockade of Berlin. America and Russia had both called for an emergency session of the UN. The US peace mission was on again; the plane would leave Dulles the following morning. A thousand rioters were dead in Hong Kong, and the Azanian Army had found a giant glass crater in the sands three hundred kilometres east of Otjiwarongo, which they claimed was the site of Johannesburg's unsubtle cruise-missile warning shot. The news ended with American baseball scores, then the martial music resumed.
Hisako laughed until they hit her so hard she blacked out for a moment. She still giggled, even as the plastic restrainers bit into her wrists and the weight of her body tore at her arm sockets; she watched the blood fall like little bombs from her mouth to the cushioned deck of the bridge, and felt herself snigger. The music they were playing now was a Sousa march; it reminded her of a group of lecturers she'd known in the Todai English department who held a small party each week for staff and students. They'd invite visiting English speakers along; businessmen, scientists, politicians, and sometimes somebody from the American or British Embassy. A Brit diplomat appeared with a video tape one time, and some of them watched it. Not everybody found the programme funny or even comprehensible, but she loved it, wanted more. A sub-group formed to watch the latest tape, flown in from London in the diplomatic bag each week. She became addicted to the programme. The music — this music — had meant that and that only to her for almost a quarter of a century.
So Radio Panama played the Sousa march which had become the theme to Monty Python's Flying Circus, and she could only laugh, no matter how hard they hit her. The world was absurd, she decided, and the pain and cruelty and stupidity were all just side effects of that basic grotesqueness, not the intended results after all. The realisation came as a relief.
When Dandridge called through on their unjammed walkie-talkies, they put another piece of masking tape over her mouth. She had to swallow her blood. Dandridge said something about coming over to the Nadia, and they untied her from the wheel and after some discussion in Spanish took her down into the bowels of the ship through the engine room and locked her in the engineering workshop with the light off.
She slept.
Somebody had stabbed her. She had just woken up and she'd been stabbed; the knife hung from her belly, dripping blood. She tried to pull it out but couldn't. The room was dark, echoingly big. There was a line of red light at floor level, all around her. It flickered slightly.
She got up out of the dirty bed, tangled in the grease and grimy sweat of the sheets. She kicked them away and stumbled on the metal floor, holding the knife carefully so that it wouldn't move around too much and hurt her even more. There wasn't as much blood as she'd expected, and she wondered if there would only be a gush when she got somebody to pull it out. She wanted to cry, but found that she couldn't.
She came to the wall of the room and felt under the rim of the metal, between floor and wall, looking for a place to lift. She moved round, feeling under the wall with one hand, holding the knife in the other. Eventually she came to a set of steps leading up out of the room to a very dim red outside. where long, booming noises shook the air and the ground. The steps, made of compacted sand, were edged with wooden slats held in by little tuft-headed posts.
She came up out of the bunker into the gory glow of late evening; strips of close-packed cloud lay overhead, alternating with streaks of red, like blood staining black sheets. The thunder of the guns sounded in the distance, and the earth trembled. Down in the trench she found the men, lying exhausted against the sides of crumbling earth and rotten wood. The mud was up to their knees and their eyes were closed. Red light hung like oil on their rifles. They were bandaged; everyone wore a filthy grey bandage; on head or arm, or over one eye or both, or over their chest, over their uniform, or round one leg. She wondered why they didn't see her, and stopped and looked into the face of one whose eyes were open. Red light reflected in the darkness of his pupils. He sniffed and wiped his nose. She tried to talk to the soldier, but no noise came from her mouth, and the man ignored her. She started to worry that she wouldn't find anybody to take the knife out.
At the end of the trench were men who looked like their boots. Their eyes were threaded, up and down their leathery faces. Their mouths were stuck open, like the top of a shoe, tongues flapping spastically as they tried to talk to her. Their arms were like thick laces, and couldn't pull the knife out of her. One raised his foot out of the mud and she saw that the top of his boot melded naturally and easily into a naked human foot, without a break. She puzzled over this, sure she'd seen it before, but then the boot soldier put the foot under the mud again and a whistle sounded. The boot soldiers picked up their guns with all the rest and put rickety wooden ladders against the sides of the trenches. She walked up out of the trench, back to where a line of blasted tree stumps lay on the brow of a small hill, like teeth.
The village on the far side of the hill was wrecked; every building damaged. Roofs had collapsed, walls fallen, doors and windows been blown out, and huge holes filled the road and streets. She saw people in the town square, facing in towards the centre, where a red light shone.
She walked down the broad, crater-pitted streets, passing people who stood looking to the central square. She used sign language to ask for help, but they all ignored her.
It took a long time to walk through the suburbs; the crowd of silent, raggedly dressed people became gradually thicker until she had to push her way through them, which was difficult while she still held the knife. She could hear a roaring noise in the distance. The people looked exhausted and hollow-eyed, and some of them collapsed as she pushed past. The roaring noise sounded thick and heavy, like a great waterfall slowed down. The people fell around her, crumpling to the ground as soon as she touched them, no matter how careful she tried to be. She wanted to say sorry. She could see the silhouette of the giant fountain ahead against the crimson sky now. The people were thick about her; she pushed between them and they fell, knocking into their neighbours so that they fell, too, and hit the people near them, who also fell and took others down with them. The wave of collapsing people spread out like ripples in a pond, knocking everybody to the ground until only she was left standing and the fountain was there, huge, in front of her, with the lake beyond.
The fountain was tiered, shaped like a wedding cake. It gushed blood; blood roaring and falling and steaming through the cold evening air. She fell to her knees when she saw it, half-suffocated by the smell of it, mouth blocked. A cataract of blood flowed away from it to the inland sea beyond the city. She got up, stepped over the fallen people, stumbled down the steps by the side of the violet rapids until she stood on the shore of the lake, red waves lapping at her feet.
She pulled the knife out and threw it into the lake. No blood rushed out of the wound, but the knife splashed when it hit, and some of the blood splattered her face and feet, and some hit the place where the knife had been embedded, and a single strand dribbled down to the lake at her feet, and the strand thickened, and pulsed, and the blood flowed into her not out of her, falling up out of the lake, as if a tap had been turned on.
She tried to stop it, beating it down with her fists, but the blood burned her, breaking her fingers; she fell back, but the blood rushed out of the lake into her, the stream thick as an arm, filling her, bloating her, choking her, sealing her mouth. She lifted her ruined hands to the dark clouds and tried to scream, and the sky flashed once, above her; the lake shivered. The sky went dark once more. At last her lips tore open, and she screamed, with all her strength, and the sky lit up all over, as though the clouds were catching fire. The lake spasmed, whipping the strand that joined it to her, almost breaking its thin grip. She drew air in through her ruined lips, to scream with all the power of the lake itself, while the sky trembled above her, glittering and sparking on the brink of release, poised and ready to catch and blast.
She woke up on the floor. The place was dark, the deck hard and cold. Breathing sounded loud and ragged in the harsh steel container of the room, but it was only her own, coursing through her nostrils. The tape over her mouth still clamped her lips. Her breath quieted slowly while she sat, trying to ease the ache in her shoulders.
It was late. She didn't know how long she'd slept, but she knew it had been some hours; early morning by now, if not later.
She'd been secured against a metal bench, her hands attached to its leg by the plastic strap of the restrainer. As soon as she awoke she hurt; her backside had been spread in the same position for so long she felt welded to the deck, her shoulders ached, her wrists and hands felt numb, and the places on her breasts where they'd touched her with their cigarettes burned as though the glowing red coals were still there, sizzling through her flesh. Between her legs wasn't as bad as she'd expected. Sucre had been small and the rest had added their own lubrication with each violation. The pain didn't matter so much; it was the feeling of being used, of mattering so little as another human being, and so much as a warm, slippery container, to be taken and crowed over; look what I've done; I did this even though she didn't want to.
The ship hummed around her. She couldn't see a thing. The light in the corridor outside, between the engine room itself and the Nadia's steering-gear compartment, must be turned off as well. She tried to remember how the room had looked when they brought her in, but couldn't. Too complicated, for one thing; full of machinery, lathes and drills and benches with vices and tools. It ought to be an ideal place to escape from, but she didn't know how to begin.
She felt what she could, starting with her fingers.
And stopped.
The rear flange of the L-shaped leg supporting the bench, which the restrainer was looped around, was ragged. It rasped against her fingers, hurting. Blood welled on her fingers, making them slick then sticky. She explored the jagged edge. She pulled forward and moved her wrists quickly up and down, then stopped and felt the inner surface of the restrainer where it had been rubbing against the metal. The material felt roughened. She put it back where it had been and sawed up and down as hard and fast as she could.
She could hear it, and after a while she could smell it too, and that seemed like a good sign.
She was almost free when she heard steps, and the light outside in the corridor went on. She stopped for a second, then resumed her sawing, frantic with the effort. Footsteps clanged against metal, stopped at the door. She threw her hands up and down, drawing her spine back to the metal edge of the bench with the effort of forcing the restrainer against the leg.
The door swung open just as the restrainer snapped.
Light swamped in. She scuttled to the left, behind another bench. But too late; she knew it was too late. There was too much light and she must have been seen.
She expected the soldier to shout out, but he didn't. There was a noise like a chuckle, and the sound of a hand moving over metal. Something clinked on the far wall. The soldier spoke to her in Spanish but she couldn't make out the words. She peeped over the top of the bench. The opened white loop of the plastic restrainer lay by the leg of the bench she'd been attached to; it ought to be obvious, but the man hadn't reacted yet. He slapped the metal bulkhead at the side of the door, cursing. Looking for the light, but still it didn't come on.
She realised then that her eyes had adjusted over the hours, and his were still tuned to the wash of luminescence in the corridor outside and in the rest of the ship. She was looking for a weapon, but couldn't see anything on the surface of the bench she was hiding behind, or anywhere near by. A wrench; a big screwdriver or a length of angle iron; there ought to be hundreds of things she could use but she couldn't see any of them. She looked round in desperation as the soldier said something else and came further into the workshop. She peeped over the top of the bench again, hoping she'd missed something on its surface. The man was smoking; she could see the red glowing tip of the cigarette, being transferred from mouth to hand. Señorita…
Behind her she glimpsed something long and thin and glinting; stacked rods of some sort. She reached back, grasped. The soldier bumped into something, cursed in the semi-darkness.
It was like taking hold of a skeletal arm; two thin pipes, cold as bone and close together; ulna and radius. She felt up to a knurled collar like a cold brass knuckle. That was when she realised what she was holding. The soldier made a sound like hand rubbing flesh through cloth and said again, Señorita? The red tip of the cigarette glowed brighter, waving around in the darkness in front of the man. Light from the corridor reflected from his rifle.
She felt the end of the brasswork, then the twin hoses. They led back a few coiled metres to the tanks. They were upright but in the shadow of the door. She was still under the level of the bench. Her fingers crept up to the valves. She'd seen Broekman do this; even Philippe. She found the taps, whirled them round. The hiss of escaping gas sounded like a whole family of disturbed snakes. The soldier stopped, hesitated, then changed direction, came towards her. 'Hello…? he said. The glowing cigarette tip came closer, brandished like a sword.
When he was close enough, and the smell of the unignited gases was wafting back over her, making her dizzy, she threw herself forward, still holding the brass limbs of the oxyacetylene torch.
The gases flared on the tip of the cigarette, igniting with a whoosh and blowing flame towards the surprised soldier, flashing through the air in a vivid yellow ball. The man's hair caught; she saw his face, mouth opening, eyes closing as his brows sizzled and shrivelled and flamed blue. His burning hair lit up the beret stuffed underneath his left epaulette, the two grenades attached to his chest, the Kalashnikov strapped over his right shoulder and the belt with the oily black holster hanging over his left hip. He drew in a breath and screamed as his hair sputtered and crackled and lit up the whole workshop.
He lit the place well enough for her to see a massive wrench hanging on the wall not a metre away. She stepped smartly to it, unclipped and swung it in one movement. His scream had barely started and he had hardly moved — the cigarette he'd dropped hadn't even hit the deck — before the jaws of the wrench buried themselves in his skull, and he slammed into the metal deck as though he'd thrown himself there. His hair billowed yellow and blue for a moment, then sizzled out against his scalp, crisping it brown-black in places. The fumes stank, made her gag, and only then did she slowly pull the black tape from her mouth.
The last lick of flame, slowly consuming a set of curls over the soldier's left ear, was extinguished by the black ooze of blood welling from where the circular head of the wrench had hit.
She watched. Thought: How do I feel?
Cold, she decided. So cold. She kicked him over, pulled the assault rifle free and hoisted it, checking the safety was off. No noise from the open doorway. She waited for a few seconds then put the gun down and reached forward to take the man's uniform off. She hesitated before she touched him, then stood, hefted the wrench and smashed it into his forehead. Only after that did she strip him.
She whistled under her breath as she did it; Sousa.
She didn't mean to impersonate a soldier, she was just sick of the torn, soiled yukata. She wanted to be clothed again.
She tore some relatively clean strips off the yukata, wiped herself as clean as she could with a couple of them and tied one narrow strand round her head, keeping her hair back. The soldier wasn't too much bigger than her, so the uniform fitted. He'd been one of the ones who'd raped her; the one who'd bitten her ears. She fingered her earlobes; puffy and scabbed with blood.
She studied one of the grenades in the light spilling from the corridor. She even held the little shiny handle down, extracted the pin, inspected it, and then replaced it, letting the handle click back. She tried to recall how much time had passed between Sucre dropping a grenade into one of the groups of men, and the explosion. A bit more than five seconds, she decided.
The Kalashnikov was easier. She'd watched; safety, semi-automatic, automatic. The emplaced magazine was full and two more hung on his belt. The pistol was a Colt, just like Dandridge's; the safety was a simple switch, on and off. The soldier had a Bowie knife on the belt, so she gained that as well. A cigarette lighter and packet of Marlboros in one breast pocket. She threw the cigarettes away. She looked for a radio but he didn't have one.
She was at the door before she thought to go back and take his watch. The little Casio said 6:04.
She stared at it. It couldn't be that late. Next morning, already? She tilted the display. 6:04.
P, said the little letter to one side. P6:04.
Evening. The same day. She couldn't believe it. She was sure she'd slept for hours. She shook her head, stuffed the watch in a trouser pocket.
The corridor seemed very bright. The engine room was more brilliant still, and hummed noisily; it smelled of oil and electrics. Deserted.
She crept along the open grillework of the catwalk between the two main engines, towards the high girn of the donkey engine and the whining AC generator. The stairway to the main deck level left her feeling exposed and vulnerable, but nothing happened.
The evening air was still warm. In one corner of the sky, off to the west, a single dab of red hung thick and dim; above, over all the sky, a uniform darkness extended, starless and without moon. Thick cloud like a layer of something more than night. She decided the watch was right, and her senses had been wrong. She waited a moment, felt the eastern wind move across her face and hands, and watched the lid of cloud close over the red hole where the sun still shone, until darkness consumed the lake and the land.
The exterior of the ship was darker than she was used to; they'd turned the mast floodlights off or hadn't ever thought to turn them on. She slunk along the side of the superstructure, past dark portholes, heading forwards. She didn't know what to do. She'd dressed herself as a soldier but she wasn't one. She'd left the real soldier lying there and they'd have to go looking for him soon, so maybe she ought to forget about dressing as a soldier and strip off again and get into the water and swim away; she was a strong swimmer and the coast wasn't far…
She got to the forward edge of the superstructure. Light came from above. It wasn't the masthead floodlights; it seemed very bright in the darkness but it wasn't really, just the lights from the bridge. They weren't bothering to use the red night-lights which would keep their eyes adapted; maybe they didn't know about them. She looked at the deep shadows created by the hatches, and at the bows; the stem. Pale splinters. She went slowly forward, looking up. The bridge shone, end to end. She saw nobody. She walked backwards, then ducked into the shadow.
On hands and knees, she crawled up the slope of deck to the winches and lockers of the forecastle apron. She looked back at the bridge again; still nobody; it looked abandoned, until she saw a bloom of grey smoke climb into the air near midships, then another alongside. She waited for the smokers to appear, but they didn't. She edged forward to the closed-off V of the prow; and found herself stirring the splinters.
She was looking for the strings, but discovered the spike alone. The rest was matchwood. The pegs and strings must have been blown overboard. Whatever, she couldn't find them. She scuttled back into the shadows, the cello's spike jammed into the holster along with the Colt.
Back at the superstructure she could stand again, and did so, still trying to think what she was supposed to do. She took the spike out and felt foolish. She squatted down, gun between her knees, and looked out into the darkness beyond the bows. Insects curled above her, attracted by the lights of the bridge.
She saw Philippe fall, heard Mandamus shut up by a pistol shot, watched the cello blast out and fall, felt the soldiers push into her, smelled her own flesh burn as they pressed the cigarettes against her. She thought of the sky on fire, and looked up into the night, trying to imagine the stars beyond the cloud. The length of bridge-light was made busy by the circling insects.
She crept into the ship.
The saloon was dark and silent, and smelled of dried blood and expended smoke; the whole lower deck seemed deserted. The television lounge still smelled of semen. She sniffed the dark air, drawing the sharp, animal scent into her, stomach churning.
She took to the stairs and went up to the bridge.
Snoring came through the half-open door of the captain's cabin. She pushed the door further, waiting for a creak, or at least for the snoring to stop. No creak; the snoring continued.
She edged in, fingering the door a little wider behind her as she went, to give her more light. A suite, of course; another open door. She let her eyes adjust, then approached the bedroom. The cabin smelled of dampness and shampoo. There was a man lying on the bed, torso tangled with a single sheet, arms drawn up behind his head, face turned away into the corner of the bulkhead beneath and to the side of the porthole.
Sucre. His chest was smooth, almost hairless; nipples very dark in the half-light. She crossed quietly to the bed and fumbled with the holster at her hip.
She kissed him, hair brushing the sides of his face, shadowing. He jerked awake, eyes white. She drew back a little so that he could see her; he relaxed fractionally, then the eyes balled wide and he started up, hands clutching together at the sheet beneath him before one went back up to his head, fumbling beneath the pillow.
But he was too late, and she was already pumping down with the heels of her hands, the tip of the old cello spike on his chest then bursting through as she put all her weight on it, forcing it between his ribs and into his heart.
He tried to beat her face but she dodged, and waggled the spike inside his chest with one hand while she leant forward and round and slipped the pistol out from under his pillow with the other. He gurgled once, like somebody rinsing his mouth, and darkness spread around his lips and the hole the spike had made in his chest; the moon-white sheets turned black where his blood touched.
The last noise he made as his chest subsided surprised her; then she realised it came not from his mouth but from the wound around the cello spike. She watched the dark bubbles for a moment.
She put the pistol — another Colt — into a pocket in the fatigue jacket. There was a walkie-talkie on the bedside table, so she stuffed that in a trouser pocket. She left the spike where it was. She was terrified of one of them coming back to life, so she pressed her thumb down on to Sucre's right eye while she held the Colt against one of his ears. She pressed hard but nothing happened. She drew her hand away with a shiver, suddenly afraid of the eye bursting and the fluid trickling down his cheek.
She decided Sucre was really dead. She took his Kalashnikov because it had a nightsight and dumped the other one. There was an Uzi on the table; she took that, a silencer for it and a few extra magazines. She was starting to get weighed down, and had to walk carefully as she left, trying not to clink.
The bridge smelled of tobacco, but there was nobody there. She felt cheated. She looked in all the cabins on that deck, even the one where Orrick had killed the first soldier, but there was nobody in any of them.
She went down to the next deck.
Nothing. She looked out through the blinds covering the windows on the forward lounge and saw somebody at the bows; the light from the bridge was just enough to make the man out. She scratched her head, went back out into the corridor and stood by the companionways leading up and down but heard nothing. She went back down to the main deck level and out on to the external deck under the overhang. She could still see the man. He seemed to be leaning at the very prow of the ship, his feet in the cello splinters, looking out into the night to where the dimmed lights of the distant Nakodo shimmered on the water.
She took the beret out of the epaulette, pushed the hair not held by the strip of yukata up underneath the beret, and walked quietly up the deck towards the man. She glanced up once at the bridge as she went, seeing nothing but emptiness and lights.
He didn't even hear her until she was less than five metres away. He turned, saw her, turned away again, gazing out over the water, and only then looked back, face puzzled.
She was on him while the expression of puzzlement was starting to turn into suspicion and he was reaching for his rifle. She already had hers; it cracked up and into his chin, throwing his head back and whacking it off the bulwark. He clattered to the deck like a broken doll.
He was not one of those who'd raped her and she didn't have the heart to kill him just like that, so she dragged him to the starboard anchor's chain locker, stripped him of weaponry, chucked him in, gently closed the hatch and dogged it. Carting all this hardware around was exhausting her, so she tipped all his armament and one of the Colts overboard. The splashes sounded very small and far away. She crept away again, back to the main body of the ship.
Then she found the others.
They were playing cards, below deck level, under an opened skylight set in the deck just in front of the leading edge of the superstructure. Smoke drifted out of the aperture; tobacco and hash. She took a peek over the lip and saw a table, cans of San Miguel, a thick joint, and hands of cards and hands of men.
It had been a long time since she'd smoked any dope. She lay there, shoulder against the raised metal lip round the skylight, remembering, then quietly took a grenade out of its velcro fastening, clutched the handle, removed the pin, let go the handle, sub-vocalised 'wun-ih erephantu, two-ri erephantu, tri erephantu, fori erephantu, favi erephantu', and was still chuckling to herself as she reached up and dropped the grenade through the skylight.
She heard it hit, heard a few intakes of breath, but didn't hear it bounce before the deck beneath her slammed up, the skylight flipped back on a cloud of bright mist and smashed, and a noise like planets colliding boxed her ears like an angry school bully.
She lay waiting. Her ears were singing again, ringing with their own tired noise. She unholstered the Colt, heaved herself up, looked into the cabin beneath through the smoke, and couldn't see very much. She levered herself up further, stuck her head and gun, then her head and gun and upper torso in through the gap, took a look round, and decided they were all dead or very close to it. She let a little more of the smoke clear, listening as best she could, watching the bridge and the sides of the superstructure at main deck level.
Then she swung in through the skylight, on to the table. It had been blown almost in two; strips of brown laminate sticking up like obstreperous licks of hair. She had to swing her feet to make sure she landed close to the bulkhead so that what was left of the table would take her weight. She dropped down, through the stinging smoke. Her loosely booted feet grated on grenade shards and scattered playing cards. One of the men moved and groaned. She wanted to use the knife but somehow couldn't, so put the gun to his head and fired. She did the same with the other three, though only one other showed any signs of life. Blood was making the floor sticky, glueing the cards to the deck.
Incredibly, the joint was still alight and almost intact, burning a brown mark in a shrapnel-punctured plastic seat. She knocked the end of the tip off it where a little black bit of plastic hung, and took a toke. It still tasted bad so she ground it out under one heel. It sizzled.
She sauntered from the cabin, amazed nobody had come, and only then started to think that perhaps they were all dead.
Still she didn't believe it, and searched the entire ship. She found their SAMs and their plastique charges, in the chartroom off the bridge, looked again at Sucre, swathed in black and white, spike like a cupid's arrow in his unmoving chest, found the bloodstains on the bed in the cabin she'd been in briefly with Orrick (but could not find the body of the man Orrick had killed), found the three dead radio operators and the dead radio equipment (she tried to make it work, but couldn't even get the jamming signal; empty fuse cradles mocked her), looked again into the TV lounge where they'd raped her, and braved the shadowy depths of the main saloon, where the bodies still lay heaped and spread and she couldn't bear to turn on the light for fear of seeing one of them. She felt for the heavy machine-gun, needing both hands, and lifted a metal box full of ammunition. She left the gun lying in the corridor outside, then retraced her steps to the engineering workshop where the first one to die had spread his blood through his head over half the deck under the gleaming, businesslike benches.
An hour after she'd freed herself she was back on the bridge after a tour of the bows, where the soldier she'd poleaxed was making a fuss in the chain locker. She'd turned the bridge lights to red on her first visit, and strode through the blood-coloured gloom to the winch/anchor console. She tapped one finger against her lips as she inspected the controls, then reached out and flicked a switch. The starboard anchor dropped to the lake and splashed. Its chain rattled massively after it, links whipping through the chain locker where the soldier was.
The rasp of falling chain drowned the man's scream, though it must have been short anyway. If she'd waited till dawn, she thought, she'd have seen him exit through the eye of the anchor port in a red spray, but she shivered at the thought of his blood spreading over the surface of the lake. The anchor chain's thunder sounded through the ship, making the deck beneath her tremble. Unbraked, the chain kept on spilling out under its own weight. There was a boom as it stopped; she couldn't tell whether it parted or held. She rubbed one of her breasts absently, grimacing slightly when she touched one of the places where they'd burned her, and reflected that revenge could taste remarkably bland when you'd stopped feeling.
Hisako Onoda came to the conclusion there was almost certainly nobody left to kill on the Nadia. She decided to go and see Mr Dandridge, who deserved a visit like nobody else did.
It was all still hopeless, she knew, but this was better than doing nothing.
The crumpled black Gemini Orrick had knifed lay draped over one end of the pontoon. She looked at one of its bulky silenced engines, worked out how to take it off and dragged it over to where the Nadia's own inflatable lay moored. She stuck the military engine's prop in the water, pushed the starter. The engine trembled, rumbled; even idling, the prop tried to push itself under the pontoon. She switched the outboard off, unbolted the Evinrude from the sternplate of the Nadia's Gemini and let it slip into the black waters. She replaced it with the big military engine, working by the light from the ship above, and sweating with the effort, arms aching. The pontoon was on the near side of the ship to the other two vessels. She had the walkie-talkie switched on, and was vaguely surprised it had stayed silent; it seemed nobody had heard or seen anything on the other two ships. As she worked she waited for gunfire, or the radio to rattle off some incomprehensible Spanish at her, but — in that perverse sense — waited in vain.
It took her two trips to bring all the weaponry down to the boat. She topped up the outboard fuel tank with one of the jerry cans on the pontoon, then stowed that with the missile launchers and explosives in the bottom of the inflatable and restarted the engine.
She pushed the Gemini away from the pontoon. The inflatable purred off into the night, taking a curving course towards the bulky rectangular shape of the Nakodo.
Her mother kept a scrapbook. It glossed over the time she was in hospital. Sometimes when she was home she would look through the scrapbook when her mother wasn't there. The pages flipped through her fingers; the glued-in programmes with her name in them, the cuttings from papers mentioning her individually, a few cassette inserts, some magazine interviews and features, and as the pages slipped and sped and fell through her hands she thought that the times the heavy pages covered had themselves gone just as fast, just as suddenly and inevitably.
The years mounted up, like a sentence. She played, and her modest fame grew. She tried a few more times to board a plane, from single-engine Cessnas to 747 s, but could not ever suffer the doors to be closed. She got as far as Okinawa for a couple of holidays, and went to Korea for the Olympics and a few concerts, but pressure of work stopped her from making sea journeys that lasted any longer. There was talk once, by a Greek ship owner impressed with her playing, of her string quartet playing on board a luxury cruise ship for anything up to a year; state rooms, good money, and a world cruise… but she visited one of the cruise ships in Yokohama and decided she didn't much like the people, the decor or the idea of being expected to play the safe, predictable music that seemed to be expected of her. So it came to nothing.
She grew to know Japan well; the places she didn't go to with the orchestra she visited alone, on her frequent vacations. Mr Moriya fretted that she wasn't maximising her potential, which she took to mean making all the money she could, but then she scarcely knew what to do with what she did have. She paid off the loan on the Stradivarius, bought a house in the hills above Kamakura, which cost a fortune, and had long since paid the loan on her mother's little apartment, but she didn't know what else to do. Driving didn't interest her; she always had a small Ronda, but hated the crowded roads and was always relieved to get out of the machine. She felt awkward and conspicuous in very expensive clothes, and couldn't see the point of jewellery you worried about. She saved, for want of anything better to do, and thought vaguely about founding a school in her later years.
Mr Moriya decided she was right to go for quality rather than quantity, and renegotiated her contract with the orchestra. She started to ration public appearances, and only recorded when she absolutely had to. Western music critics who heard her made flattering comparisons; she thought about going to Europe but kept putting it off. She was looking forward to travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, but it seemed like something she should do only once each way (to reduce it to some sort of absurdist commuter journey each year would seem like sacrilege), and was anyway nervous of actually playing in Europe. At first she had worried that nobody would want to listen to her, then, when it became clear they did, that she'd been built up too highly, and they'd be disappointed. Mr Moriya, to her surprise, didn't try to pressure her into going. He seemed content to let the offers mount up, the venues increase in size, and the proposed money inflate.
She fell into the music, whenever she played. It was real; colourful. Her life, for all the friends and holidays and for all the respect of other musicians and adulation of audiences, seemed, if not actually monochrome, then missing some vital component; as if one colour was missing, one gun in the set misfiring, so infecting the image with its absence.
One day she trudged through the woods north of Fuji, taking the old path she'd first travelled as little more than a child, struggling with her water-warped and salt-stained cello and case.
When she got to the bald summit of the hill, the little clearing where she'd watched Fuji dance in the flames she'd made, she discovered it had become a picnic area; half a dozen smiling, chattering families sat at stout wooden tables, unpacking boxes, spreading dishes, opening bottles, taking their rubbish to cheerfully bright plastic bins which said 'Thank you' when you fed them. Children's laughter filled the place, and smoke from a portable barbecue wavered like some incipient genie. in front of the view of Fuji. Western pop music tinkled from a ghetto blaster hanging from a tree.
She turned and walked away, and never went there again.
She was halfway across the kilometre of dark water between the Nadia and the Nakodo when the radio came alive in her trouser pocket. The noise startled her, made her let go of the throttle, clutch at her thigh where the speech was coming from. She pulled the radio out.
'-hey; Sucre…? She let the Gemini's engine idle, looked round at the lights of the ships. 'Arturo, Arturo… La Nadia, 'allo? Yo, venceristas en La Nadia… muchachos? It was Dandridge's voice, chuckling. Despertad vosotros!
She heard other voices in the background. More Spanish, too quick for her to follow. Eventually; 'Sucre; anybody. Hello. Hello? God damn it, you guys. Hello. Hello! Hello! Jesus- The radio went dead. She looked round to the lights of the Nakodo.
She switched the engine off. It was very quiet.
She remembered the nightscope on the AK47 she'd taken from Sucre's cabin, lifted the gun and sighted.
The view of the Nakodo's hull was dim grey and grainy. There was no movement on the deck or in the bridge, though it was hard to tell in the bridge because the lights there were almost too bright for the nightsight. She dropped the sight, watched the pontoon and the steps down to it. Still nothing. She kept watching, and kept checking the radio, thinking she had somehow turned it off Then she heard something, behind her.
She swung, steadied the sight on the Nadia. She swept the ship, stem to stern, and found a Gemini, heading round from the rear of the ship, making for the pontoon. One man; that was all she could see.
She put the gun down, started the engine up again, and swung the inflatable back, towards the Nadia.
She kept checking with the rifle nightsight, in case whoever was in the Gemini approaching the ship showed any signs of having heard — or seen — her, but the inflatable just motored on, slowing, for the pontoon she'd left a few minutes earlier. She was a couple of hundred metres away from the Nadia when the other boat docked. One man got out. She saw him raise one arm to his face.
'Here, said the radio. The man hefted a rifle, started up the steps towards the Nadia's deck. She kept on motoring towards the ship. She was watching the single figure climb towards the top of the steps when he stopped. He looked down towards the pontoon. The view she had was made shaky by the progress of her own boat through the waves. She let go the throttle; the Gemini coasted forward, dropping and dying in the water. The man brought something up from his waist. 'Wait, said the radio. 'The Gemini; the other one. Did anybody — ? She saw him raise something else to his face; to his eyes; held like a pair of binoculars. He looked down, then out, scanning, looked straight towards her. 'Holy sh-, Arturo? Hello? Who is —
She had to look to find the safety, flicked it and resighted. The rifle filled the world with sound; the sight flared with the gun's own flame. 'Holy sh- the radio said again.
She had the impression of bullets flying and falling. She brought the gun up, kicking against her shoulder.
Fire came back from the ship, halfway up the steps to the deck. She dropped the rifle, hearing distant, tinny echoes of firing coming back from behind her, reflected from the boxy hull of the Nakodo.
She found the heavy machine-gun, lifted it rattling from the bottom of the Gemini. She supported it as best she could, fired.
The gun kicked against her shoulder, almost throwing her over the stern of the boat. Lazy lines of tracer swung round, heading towards the Nadia, spiralling into the night sky. The Gemini was turning, forced round by the weight of flung metal arching away from her towards the distant ship. Return fire flickered from the ship's hull.
She cursed, dropped forward, hearing splashy pops of bullets striking the water somewhere in front of her. She steadied the big machine-gun on the bulbous prow of the Gemini, swinging the inverted V of its barrel-support into place on the taut rubber of the bows. In the ship's own glow she could make out enough of the steps and pontoon to see where to aim. Light glittered there. By the time the noise arrived she was firing.
The tracer helped. She swung the stuttered trail and raised it, until the trail ended where the firing had been coming from. The Gemini was starting to swing again. The belt of bullets clinked and clattered like a bottling plant beneath her; the cartridges were thrown out to one side, hissing as they hit the waters of the lake.
'Hey! Get — ah! Son of a bitch! The radio came alive again with Dandridge's voice. She paused, and through the radio heard clinks and slaps that died away, and guessed those noises were her bullets hitting the hull of the ship. 'Get over here, you motherfuckers. Ah! Shit! The sound of something thumping and clattering.
She fired again. The chain of bullets ripped its way up into the gun and finished. She spun round, grabbed the ammunition box, found the end of the cartridge belt and snapped the gun open, hauling the weight of articulated belt up, fumbling with the first round until it clicked into place and she could close the breech mechanism again. She fired once more, having to angle out over the starboard bow of the inflatable as it twisted in the water, swung by the recoil. She put the gun's stock down, felt for the AK47 and studied the nightsight. Against the Nadia's hull, a figure limped and fell down the last few steps to the pontoon, threw itself behind the deflated corpse of the black Gemini.
'Hey! Hey! said the radio. 'Come on! Who is that?
'We coming, jefe.
She took the radio up, clicked the button that fell beneath her thumb. 'Mr Dandridge? she said. She leant forward, took up the machine-gun again, shifting it to the side of the Gemini, aiming at the pontoon, dimly seen against Nadia's hull.
'Wha-shee-it! Ms Onoda? Dandridge coughed, laughed. 'Our little yellow friend? That you out there with the heavy weaponry?
She clicked the send button again. 'Hello, she said.
'Jesus aitch, I do believe it is. You still alive?
'No, she said.
The Gemini was still drifting. She took up the AK47 again, scanning the grey view. The Nakodo still showed no sign of life. Le Cercle was hidden behind the stern of the Nadia. She listened for engines.
'Ha, Ms Onoda. The radio cut out, came back. Dandridge wheezed, 'Dead and kicking, huh? Who the hell taught you to shoot like that? She didn't reply. She checked the machine-gun again, put it down and went back to the stern of the boat, restarted the outboard. 'What've you been doing, lady? What you been up to? How come you got a radio? She angled the inflatable parallel with the ship, sent it in the direction of the Nadia's bows, away from the course a boat from either of the other two ships would take. Dandridge had come from Le Cercle, not the Nakodo. The AK47 sight still showed nothing happening on or near the Nakodo.
'Ms Onoda; talk to me. You're screwing things up here. I think I deserve a little explanation. Let's talk.
'Did I hit you? she asked, putting down the assault rifle to talk into the radio.
'Just a scratch, as we say in the trade, Dandridge laughed. 'You don't cease to amaze me, ma'am. Hell, what you got against us? He laughed again.
'You comfortable, Mr Dandridge? she said.
'Hell, never felt better. How about you?
'Same here. She was within fifty metres of the Nadia's port bow. She swung the Gemini round until it was pointing back towards the pontoon. She let the throttle go, killed the engine, and went forwards to shift the machine-gun to the inflatable's bows again.
'Great. Well, look, we seem to have a minor disagreement here, but I'm sure we can talk it out. I just want you to know I personally don't bear you any ill will, you know — she heard him grunt, imagined him shifting position on the pontoon. She took another look through the nightsight. No movement. - but this is a real stupid way to negotiate, you know? I realise you have your own point of view and all, but I want to talk to you for a moment, and I hope you'll do me the honour of listening, right? There are aspects to what we're trying to do here that I don't think you fully appreciate. Now, you don't have to tell me that every, umm, aspect of these guys' behaviour has been everything you might expect under the Geneva Convention and all, but —
She held one of the little metal legs of the machine-gun down on to the pliant rubber with her left hand, squeezed the trigger with the index finger of the right.
The gun tried to leap; it barked and rattled and hissed. Fire trailed out across the water, calm enough to reflect it in places, and raised white feathers of water around the pontoon. She heard Dandridge shout as she paused, adjusted. The gun pulsed against her shoulder again, tracer bowing and falling. She saw sparks, then a ball of flame as the jerrycans on the pontoon ignited.
She looked up. The little mushroom of fire rose rolling, doughnut-like, against the dark hull, gathering itself under and through like a woman hoisting her skirts. Beneath it, a neck of flame throbbed in and out, and fire spilled over the deck of the pontoon, spreading over the waters to either side. She put the gun down.
'Hot damn, Ms Onoda, good shooting! Dandridge shouted from the radio. 'Outstanding! Just when I was starting to feel cold. Well thank you, ma'am.
She felt back into the pile of weaponry in the bottom of the Gemini, found what she was looking for and lifted it. She turned away from the distant light of the burning pontoon and used the cigarette lighter from her breast pocket to inspect the device.
'Jefe —
'Shut up. Ma'am, you have me quite incredibly impressed. You should be on our side, and I mean that as a compliment, I really do. And that's what I want to talk to you about. See, there's things in all this I don't think you fully understand. We are talking about the geopolitical situation here. What I mean is, you actually are on our side, if you only knew it. I mean that. You're a mercantile nation; this is about what matters to you, too. Ah, hell, Ms Onoda, it's all about trade; yes, trade; trade and spheres of influence and… and opportunities; the possibility of influence and power… you still listening, Ms Onoda?
'Keep talking, she said absently, wishing she knew more about the Cyrillic alphabet.
'Good. We have to keep talking. That's very important. I. think that's very important. Don't you think that's important, Ms Onoda?
She lifted the weight to her shoulder, tried a couple of switches. The device whined but the sight stayed dark. She tried different sequences, found a trigger guard and pushed it up and forward. The whine altered its tone.
'Well, I'm sure you do. You're one sensible lady. I can tell that. Very sensible and very clever and very sensitive. I hope we can talk as equals, and that's just what I intend to do. See, the great have to stoop, sometimes, Ms Onoda. To stay great you have to stoop; no ways round that. You can try and distance yourself from the people who do the stooping; I mean distance yourself from the cutting edge, but it still remains your responsibility. You have to do bad things in a bad world, if you want to stay able to be good. Do you understand that? I mean, there's all these people think goodness and rightness is somehow indivisible, but it isn't; can't be, in fact. It's a razor's edge, Ms Onoda; a real razor's edge. You have to balance, you have to keep working, you know. You try to stop, you ever think you got it all taped so well you can just let things drift, and you're dead. Not the next day, not the next year even, but soon; and it starts as soon as you let go. Romans found that; the Spanish and the English too. You got to remain dynamic, or you fall down; you sink into your own indulgence; you get decadent. Free society… free society like America's, that sort of stuff is bubbling away under the surface all the time; always people want to have a quiet life, be hippies, live in what they think is peace… and damn it, it might be, for a little while, but-
She clicked a button. The sight came alive; grainier than the rifle's nightsight, but the boiling stem of fire on the pontoon showed bright, like a vivid tear in the night. Centring, the whine became a guttural coughing noise, a protesting, damaged clock stuttering in her ear. Red symbols lit up above the display. She squeezed the trigger.
There was a moment of hesitation, and she almost put the missile launcher down, preparing to look at it again.
But while she was still waiting, just starting to wonder what she'd done wrong this time and what she'd have to do to make the thing work, it happened.
The tube shook, hammered her shoulder, kicked against her neck and the side of her head. The noise was not a noise; it was the end of sound, an editing mark that cut her off from the world beyond her suddenly deadened ears.
Flame burst around her. It swept, narrowed, funnelled, while she was still trying to cope with the image of herself the backwash of light had thrown before her, over the grey plastic of the Gemini's bows and the rippled lake beyond.
The spark roared across the waters, dipping, swinging, spiralling.
It met the bloom of flame on the pontoon and burst.
The explosion seemed not to start; she thought she must have blinked, and missed the start. It was suddenly there; white, yellow; a jagged splayed froth of incandescence, already falling, collapsing, dimming through orange and red. The noise came through the ringing in her ears, and was followed by its echo, once sharply, then more muffled versions, fading and disappearing.
'Jeje! she heard through the radio. Then Allá!
The water jumped around the Gemini. The inflatable shuddered as she threw the SAM launcher away and saw the flickering light of gunfire over to her right. The Gemini shook again, and she heard a hissing noise. Sparks struck off the engine, and the dying, zinging noise of ricochets filled the air above as more white fountains leapt into the air in front of her. The Gemini bucked under her and the engine stopped suddenly. She had one hand on the side of the inflatable, and felt it go soft under her fingers. The flickering light went on; three or four ragged points of fire.
She threw herself backwards out of the boat, into the water.
The water was strange and cloying, insinuating through the fabric of the fatigues, slicking the material against her skin. She took a deep breath, sounded, struggling through the black water away from the Gemini. The bullets hitting the water made deep thrumming noises, starting loud and violent, quickly fading. The high whine of the other inflatable's outboard drilled through the water under the percussive bullet beats.
The boots were holding her back and dragging her down. She came up for air, twisting her head to look back at the inflatable; still dishearteningly close. She brought one foot then the other up, hauling the loose boots off. She hyperventilated as she watched; the other boat was hidden by the one she'd just jumped from, but the noise of the firing swarmed. through the air above her. Water burst whitely around the Gemini. She tore the remaining grenade from her breast and unbuckled the belt as she turned, took a last deep breath and dived again, heading away. Grenade and belt sank from her fingers into the dark lake.
She swam under water until she thought her mouth was about to open of its own accord and the darkness in front of her eyes had turned to a dreamy; pulsing purple, then she came up, surfacing as quietly as she could. Still no sign of the other boat, but the firing was much louder, and the Gemini she'd been on was half-collapsed in the water, shaking and bouncing as shots tore into it; sparks flew from the outboard casing, and as she watched, fire burst from the inflatable; at the stern first as the outboard's fuel tank finally gave way, then along the length of the craft; the jerry can must have ruptured. She didn't know if the plastique would explode or not. She gulped air, sounded, and angled away, hearing and feeling a last few shots thump into the water. Then the firing stopped. The note of the outboard was deepening, slowing. She waited for the blast and shock of the explosion, but it didn't come then. Her lungs burned and she surfaced once again, carefully. She looked back.
The second inflatable was silhouetted against the end-to-end flames of her Gemini; three or four men. The outboard revved, and the Gemini curved away from the burning inflatable, heading in the direction she'd swum at first. She went under, just as the ammunition on the burning Gemini started to detonate. It made a series of frenzied, booming bursts of noise, all but obliterating the sound of the outboard.
She swam until she thought she was about to black out, heading almost at right angles to the direction she'd taken initially. The outboard, when she could hear it, sounded distant. The next time she looked the ammunition in the burning. boat had reached the finale; tracer erupted into the night sky like fireworks. There was no sign of the other Gemini. She took another deep breath. An explosion kicked her, and she thought the plastique had blown, but then another came, and another, and the outboard noise whined closer. She wriggled away, changing course, realising they were using grenades.
When she had to come up, she tried not to make any noise.
The Gemini was twenty metres away; lit by flames. Four men. One with what looked like a set of stubby; large-lensed binoculars. Another threw something ahead and to port; something splashed into the water ten or fifteen metres away from her. She wanted to dive then, but didn't. She watched the man with the nightscope swing round towards her.
The grenade blew, pounding her, squeezing her. She heard herself gasp with the pain of it, though the noise was hidden in the roar of the water bursting and fluting out above the grenade. Just as the man scanning the waves came round to face her, she sounded, slipping under the surface. The out board grumbled and spat, this time close. Then it whined again, roared past her. Another grenade; close enough to hammer her ears but not as painful as the one before.
When she next surfaced they were a hundred metres away. The light from the burning Gemini was waning; she heard the sound of the fire through the ringing that had reestablished itself in her ears like an old friend.
After a few more grenades, the four men in the inflatable broke off and went to look at what was left of the Nadia's pontoon.
They cruised up and down that part of the ship's hull, tiny voices calling, Jefe! Jefe! Señor Dandridge!
She swam a little closer, wanting to see for herself. The Nadia's own lights and the dregs of the flames licking round the gutted Gemini shone upon the pontoon where Dandridge had been. A small fire burned there still, in the ripped fragments of the pontoon's wooden planks and empty oil drums. One of the men in the boat was scanning the water with the nightscope; another shone a torch. The Nadia's dark hull rose behind them like a cliff, glistening in the dying orange light of the foundering Gemini.
They called Dandridge's name a few more times, then one of them pointed at the water and shouted. The outboard was silent, but the boat surged forward, white under the bow, then fell and slowed again. One of the men pulled something out of the water. They shone a torch on it. Whatever it was it wasn't very big, and none of them said anything. It splashed when they threw it back. The black Gemini creased white from the surface of the lake, curving round and taking them back to the pontoon; two of them picked their way across the wreckage and went up the steps. Hisako looked back at the burning Gemini. Lit by the flames on what was left of its own crumpled bows, it slipped stern-first into the waves.
She trod water, moving a little all she time, letting the waves break over her, ducking her head under the water now and again. Torchlight swung haphazardly about the black Gemini waiting at the ruined pontoon.
The men on the ship were gone some time.
Once she sat in a train beneath the bottom of the sea.
The line from Honshu to Hokkaido had long since been completed; the tunnel ran under the waters of the Tsugarukaikyo for thirty kilometres, beneath the autumn fogs and the winter storms, from one island to the other. She took the train rather than the ferry between late autumn and spring, and whenever the weather forecast was bad. One December day her train broke down, ten kilometres from land, under a raging sea.
People talked nervously. They'd been told over the intercom a relief engine was on its way; there was no danger. The guard came down the carriages, reassuring people personally. Conversations started between strangers. Children played in the aisle, but she still sat looking out of the window, into the stony darkness. It had been black while they were moving; it was black now they'd stopped. She found you could ignore the reflections as long as nobody moved. The Strad occupied the seat next to her.
She wasn't afraid; she thought some people were, just because they were no longer moving, because something had gone wrong and things might continue to go wrong and it all might end in disaster, but she didn't think anything like that would happen; what would happen would be a long boring wait, then the journey resumed, some of the conversations maintained, some allowed to end. Finally everybody's own arrival, along the line, or in Sapporo; some met with smiles and helping hands, some walking quickly away, heads down, breath steaming from their mouths and noses, scattering for taxis, cars, buses and subway trains.
Life was not exotic; even disasters were almost welcome, sometimes. She put her elbow on the table in front of her, her chin in her hand, and studied her own dark reflection in the glass.
She was glad of the breakdown. Things could work too smoothly.
This was like a time out; somehow, even when there was time to think, there was never time to think. All her life was taken care of, each month and week and day and hour ascribed a certain function, filled with duties and performances, or left precisely blank, for the pan of her existence that was not encased by music; for friends and relaxation and holidays. Holidays. Most of the people she knew hardly had any, but she took days and weeks off all the time, and could not understand how everybody else got by with so little. She was meant to enjoy her work more than most, but she kept trying to escape from it.
Whatever; this interlude, stuck in a train in a tunnel, at night, beneath the sea bed, while the cold waves rolled and the spray filled the gale, seemed like a bonus, a siding. Now, unexpectedly, she could take a step back from her life, and think properly. She felt she needed to.
Sanae Nantomi wanted to marry her.
The water was warm; the fatigues trapped a layer at blood heat. She felt strong, and she knew she could tread water for hours; it was practically resting. The men on the ship came back to the rail; she could hear the shock and anger in their voices even over that distance, even without knowing the words. Muerto, she heard, over and again. She knew what that meant, could make that out all right. Muerto muerto muerto muerto muerto muerto muerto muerto.
The small fire on the pontoon guttered and went out. The men rejoined the Gemini, and took the inflatable back to Le Cercle; she followed.
It was a long swim.
They'd met at a reception; his reception, arranged by the orchestra in honour of his return to Japan after ten almost unbroken years in Europe, first studying, then composing and conducting, then zooming to sudden fame as the glamorous new orchestral star; of Paris, Europe, the world. The cover of Newsweek; invitations everywhere; documentaries on television; a film made about his tour through the Soviet Union with the Halle, which had been surprisingly funny, pleased the critics enough to win prizes at Cannes, and made money on general release; dates with starlets and models; a series of TV commercials for expensive Parisian colognes. Plus a workload her conducting colleagues shook their heads over; young as he was, he'd burn out.
She'd seen the Newsweek cover. San, as the gaijin had decided to call him, even looked like a film star. Jet-black hair, long and ringleted, inherited from his Eurasian mother, wild around a bright, pale, hawkish face, rarely photographed without a smile, a grin, a smirk. When there was no smile on his face he just looked broodingly romantic. He was still only thirty but he looked much less. Newsweek had made much of the number of pop idols ripped from teenage girls' bedroom walls to be replaced by San, grinning down, at once rakish and shy, head lowered, eyes half-hidden behind a tangled black fringe.
She'd been appalled. The performances she'd heard of his were good; full of fire and drama without being brash; innovative without being contemptuous of previous interpretations. He could conduct, certainly, but why all the rest? Such wilful self-promotion seemed vulgar, egotistical. She'd already decided not to go to the reception even before the invitation arrived. Most of the others in the orchestra were excited at the thought of meeting him — only a few of the older men didn't seem too impressed with the idea — but she wouldn't go to his court, she wouldn't pay homage to the boy wonder. Thirty, she thought; the child. She suddenly remembered when thirty had seemed ancient. She was thirty-six and had never felt old before.
Then she thought; she'd have gone anyway, if it was anybody else, and besides there was a music journalist, recently back from the States, she'd had her eye on for a while; this would be an ideal opportunity to get talking to him. She would go; she just wouldn't ask to be introduced to the Newsweek cover-boy. She went through about half her clothes before she decided on the right thing; not too dowdy, but not something that looked as though it was trying to catch the eye of the media star. A western-looking black suit, jacket cut high, like a male flamenco dancer's; slim skirt with a discreet slit, there more for mobility than excitement. White silk shirt and sheer black stockings; flat black shoes because the journalist wasn't tall.
She went late, in case they had some sort of formal receiving line set up at the start. The journalist had a bad cold and left before she had time to do more than exchange pleasantries and check he wasn't there with anybody else. She almost went then, but didn't.
She wandered a little, sampled the buffet, was talked to variously. She decided to go home and read a book as soon as the first bore even approached.
Mr Okamoto bowed to her as she turned away from the buffet table holding a little paper plate. Sanae Naritomi stood at his side, beaming at her, dressed, she thought, rather in the style of a Mississippi gambler. He stuck one long, white hand out to her as Okamoto said, 'Naritomi-san asked to be introduced to you…
She shifted the plate from one hand to the other. He shook her hand, bowed as well. 'Thank you, Mr Okamoto. Ms Onoda; I've wanted to meet you for years. I have all your recordings. He flashed white teeth, tossed his hair quite naturally and with a 'May I? took a roll of salmon from her plate and popped it in his mouth. Okamoto had gone; she hadn't noticed. 'Delicious, Naritomi said. 'Mmm. I hope we can work together; I'd count that a privilege.
'Well, she said, unsettled, putting the plate down behind her on the table, then taking it back up again in case he thought she was being rude and had only done it to stop him taking any more food. She felt warm. 'Well, she said again, feeling foolish and tongue-tied, as he probably expected all women to be with him. 'I do play with the orchestra. As you're going to guest, we're bound to work together.
'Ah, he snapped his fingers, shook his head quickly. 'I mean more closely than that. I'd be honoured to accompany you sometime; and I have some pieces… probably not very good, probably not much better than my barely competent piano playing- She'd heard his barely competent piano playing; he could probably have had a career as a concert pianist if he hadn't chosen conducting. - but I'd be just, he shook his head, clapped his hands together softly. She wondered if the scent she could smell was the same cologne he advertised, delighted if you'd play them. I've always loved the cello, and your playing especially. I'm serious; I really hope you'll do this for me. But hey, he slapped one hand gently off his forehead, mocking the theatricality of the gesture with a grin. 'I shouldn't be coming on like this, should I? What happened to small talk first, huh? I should soften you up with more embarrassing praise and tell you how much I love being back in Japan, and yes it was a good flight and yes I do wear the stuff I advertise on television and no the gaijin don't really — but now I'm rambling, yes? I'm just nervous. These salmon things taste really good you know; do you mind if I…?
He stood smiling, eating.
She realised she was smiling too, even more broadly; and wondered how long she'd looked like that. She nodded, bit down on her lips a little to help control herself. 'I'm sure we can arrange something, she said.
They talked. Eventually he was dragged away to meet the Sony top brass who were sponsoring some of the concerts. 'Don't try to escape without saying goodbye! he called back to her. She nodded, throat dry; face hot, eyes wide, and looked for a cooling, calming drink.
He begged her to stay an extra half-hour, to the end, when she tried to leave. There was a party in his suite in the New Otani; he insisted, pleaded.
More talk at the party; then the last half-dozen of them went to a gaijin club in Roppongi in the small hours. San played lightning-fast backgammon with a one-armed Australian (yes, he had fished for shark; no, a car accident), exchanged jokes with a mountainous Yakuza gangster with tattooed eyelids, and then played piano in the bar; he borrowed a waitress's little leather bag and stuck it on his head to do an impression of Chico Marx, plinking the keyboard with one flicked, pistol-like finger.
At dawn, he took the hired Mercedes down to the docks at Yokohama; in the back seat, the other two survivors — an early-balding television producer and a glamorous, long-legged advertising exec — had fallen asleep during the drive, and sat slumped on the brown leather, his shining head on her padded, sequined shoulder.
San looked vaguely disappointed they'd given up the fight for fun. He shrugged. They got out. San breathed in the dawn, then stood looking at the sleeping couple in the back of the Merc with a great grin on his face. It was the smile people normally wore when gazing at tiny babies. 'Don't they look sweet? he said, then turned and walked down to the edge of the dock, and stood looking out over the misty lengths of ships and warehouses to where the dim red sun rose above the masts, cranes and derricks of the port. Horns sounded, the air was cool, and the breeze smelled of the ocean.
He put his jacket over a bollard for her, and sat at her feet, legs dangling over the edge of the empty dock, looking down at the sluggish water, where half-waterlogged planks and wind-skittery grey lumps of polystyrene foam bobbed together on a film of oil.
He took out a silver cigarette case. She hadn't seen him smoke. Then she smelled the hash. 'Do you? he asked, offering her the joint after a couple of tokes. She took it.
He said, 'I've kept you up.
'That's OK.
'Had fun?
'Uh-huh. She passed the joint back.
'Think we can get on?
'I think we are.
'Didn't want to like me at first, did you? He looked up at her.
'No, she agreed, surprised. 'But I didn't hold out for long. Does everybody give in so quickly?
'Oh no, he said. 'Some people never get to like me. There was silence for a moment; she heard the water lap, watched steam plume from the funnel of a freighter — half a mile away, and heading for the sea — and then heard its horn, echoing off the warehouses and hulls around them, announcing its farewell. He handed her back the spliff. 'Did you sleep with all those film stars? she asked him.
He laughed. 'One or two. He looked up at her. 'I'm a man of easy virtue, Hisako.
'Easily led astray. She nodded through the smoke, feeling dizzy.
'I'm afraid so, he said, stretching his arms up behind his back, as though in a gesture of surrender, then reaching in and scratching the back of his neck vigorously.
'Yeah, she said, studying the end of the joint, 'same here.
He gave a sort of coughing laugh, looked at her. 'Really?
'Really. Dangerous these days, but… She gave him the joint back.
'Yes, of course, but… He nodded, looked out to the departing ship in the distance. He took a deep breath. 'Umm…
'Yes?
'Do you think…
'Yes?
'I might be able to tempt…
'Yes.
'… you back to… His voice slowed as he looked round at her.
'Yes.
'… my hotel? He grinned.
'Yes.
She rounded the stern of the Nadia, struck out for Le Cercle. The water stayed warm, and the waves small. She swam steadily, trying to find a rhythm that suited her body and the water, and felt half-hypnotised. She thought she heard thunder a few times. The wind did stiffen eventually, and the water became more choppy. The Nadia fell slowly behind her. The ship leaving for the open sea that misty dawn at Yokohama, years ago, an ocean away, had been a general cargo freighter.
She wondered vaguely what the chances were it had been the Nadia.
Le Cercle's pontoon was brightly lit; the rest of the ship looked dark in comparison. There was a man on the pontoon, scanning the waters with a nightscope. She angled away, towards the tanker's bows. Lightning flashed beyond the hills to the north-west, and thunder rolled across the dark lake, vague and long after. Rain was starting to patter down around her as she swam under the dark-on-dark cliff of the ship's port bow.
Fairy tale, she told her reflection in the dark train window. Too good to be true. Brilliant and handsome and now only a few months later he wanted them to be true only to each other, and to be married, and to live together (he'd stay in Japan, never fly again, if she wanted; she told him not to be crazy, and worried that he might have been even half-serious), and have children if she wanted. He loved her, wanted her, was made whole by her.
Sometimes he made her feel half her age, sometimes twice it. He could make her feel like a teenager, impressed by another's antics one second, struck dumb by his devotion; ardour, indeed, the next. Other times he seemed so energetically enthusiastic and excited — and even innocent, even naive — she felt like a grandmother, shaking her head over the wild excesses of youth, knowing it would come to no good, grumbling it would end in tears.
She'd said she'd go to see her mother, think it over, talk it over. He wanted to come too, but she wouldn't let him. He'd been subdued and sad at the station, and only brightened when he saw a flower seller and bought so many roses she could hardly carry them. She'd left all but one with the guard, too embarrassed to cart them through the train. The one she'd kept lay on the table in front of her, its dark image on the table reflected in the rock-backed window glass.
She rolled the rose around on the table, holding its stem and watching the velvet — soft petals flatten and spring back as they took the flower's weight on the table surface, then released it again. She wondered what to tell her mother. She'd kept the whole affair secret from her, as she always did. She didn't know if her mother had heard anything through the gossip pages or not; she didn't normally read them, and Hisako didn't think any of her mother's friends did either, but… Well, it would either come as a surprise or not; there wasn't anything she could do about it now. What would her mother say? She felt a heaviness in her at the thought her mother would probably be delighted, and encourage her. She wondered what that heaviness meant.
She kept on rolling the rose to and fro, to and fro. How happy she might become, she thought. How happy and fulfilled and content. She put her thumb on a thorn and pressed, felt the pain and watched a tiny bright bead of red form on the pale surface. She had spent, she thought, so much time playing music with the feeling that this was to compensate, that she did it to add to life, to make restitution. She had lived quietly if not virtuously, and if she took time off she always knew she'd play better at the end of it. She'd kept her head down; never tried too hard to enjoy herself beyond her own pleasure in the music, the occasional lover and a small group of friends. She wasn't supposed to make too much of life, wasn't supposed to glory in her own existence too fully, too vivaciously.
Because.
After a while she stopped rolling the flower to and fro on the table, and took the single red rose, and shut it in the cello case.
She still hadn't made up her mind when distant clanking noises, and a single rocking judder pulsing down the carriages announced the arrival of the relief engine. People clapped as the train moved. Life resumed, and she kept on thinking, round and round.
She didn't deserve it, but then how many people ever had just what they deserved happen to them? It would be hell; he'd philander, he was younger after all; it would pass, this sudden rush of enthusiasm. Or they'd grow together, and he would. always love what would always be there in her, what he must love anyway because she wasn't half so attractive as all those film stars and models. No, it was too much; she'd make a fool of herself… but life was short, and something had to happen. Her mother was at the station, bright and full of life, looking younger than Hisako could remember. She was excited, didn't mention the three-hour wait. She must know, Hisako thought wearily.
Mrs Onoda took her daughter's arm. She wanted Hisako to be the first to know. A new friend, a wonderful man; she was sorry she'd kept it quiet, but people talked and she had wanted to wait until it was official. She just knew Hisako would like him too. She was so happy! And, think; now you won't be a half-orphan any more!
Hisako smiled, said she was very happy for her.
Flushed the rose down the toilet that evening.
She found the buoy, climbed up on to it. The rain came down in big, unseen drops, cold and hard. She rested a few minutes, looking up at the inverted V the tanker's bows made above her. The shape was more imagined than seen; the lights above were few and dim. The rain came harder, raking her face. She sighed, looked down, then shrugged, stood on the slightly tipped, slick top surface of the buoy, and took hold of the hawser sweeping up to the ship. She gripped it; wet, but not oily. She wrapped her legs round it too, gripping it with her ankles. Tensing her legs, she reached up and pulled with her arms. No problem.
She went on up.
By the time she got to the top, the rain was crashing down like pebbles off the back of a dumper truck; thunder bellowed in the hills. She peeped through the hawse pipe, saw only dim grey-black deck and spattering rain. She stuck her head. through, remembering the cameras. They were pointed sternwards, away from her. She crawled through, on to the deck, and found cover behind a winch housing. Rain clattered around her. She raised her head again, looking down the pipe-cluttered length of deck to the island of superstructure.
She wondered what to do now. Why was she doing this?
Because. Because she couldn't think of anything better to do.
She laughed quietly to herself, and shivered inside the clinging fatigues.
They had the red lights on in the bridge. She could see somebody moving there, in the dry, red warmth. Lightning lit the starboard side of the ship, throwing electric blue shadows over the white cliff of the superstructure.
Not a weapon to her name, she thought. Not a thing to wield. Even the knife had gone when she took the belt off.
She saw movement, and a uniform appeared in the rain-scattered distance, coming up from the steps to the pontoon, from the blazing fan of rain under the lights into the shadow of the lower deck. She watched the soldier as he was met by another tiny figure; they disappeared into the ship. Shortly afterwards the remaining lights went out all over the tanker, leaving only the red night-lights of the bridge burning.
She was surprised at first, thinking that if they were really afraid of some sort of attack they ought to floodlight the vessel… but then she remembered the nightscopes. Perhaps it made sense after all; at first sight, anyway.
She let her eyes adjust. She could see them on the bridge, far away. There were several, all watching through the nightscopes at first. She could see a place to hide under a nearby pipe cluster, so that if they turned on the lights again and used the television cameras, or came out looking, she could hide. There were two soldiers looking out after a while, then only one, sitting on a stool near midships in the bridge, sweeping from side to side and now and again getting up to look from each wing of the bridge.
The thunder crashed and the lightning flickered overhead, lighting up the ships and hills and islands. After one flash, and while the man with the nightscope was looking out to port, she jumped over the first breakwater.
She waited for the same conjunction before tackling the next breakwater, then wriggled along the rain-slicked deck to the shelter of the main trunk lines. Under the pipes she felt relatively safe, and had a clear run — or crawl — along half the deck to the midships valve-head cluster, where the pumps and switch gear were sited that accepted and discharged the cargo. Lightning flashed blue images of the pipe network above her across the deck, catching a million falling raindrops in an instant of falling. She started edging forward.
She scraped and slid and coasted along the wet deck, blinking the rain out of her eyes. She pulled with her hands and elbows, pushed with her feet. She tried to think about what she ought to do, but nothing suggested itself. She suspected she'd had her share of luck that night, and these rattled, jumpy soldiers were not going to fall as easily as those on the Nadia. That had been a happy hunting ground; this felt wrong.
Her crotch itched; she stopped and scratched. Raw, and despite it all she ought to have taken the time to have a proper bath. But there you were; she hadn't had the time, and -
Suddenly, without warning, she was sick.
There was little enough in her stomach, so it was mostly bile, but she watched what there was come out, and tried to do it as silently as possible, while feeling the deepest surprise. This was unexpected. She hadn't felt sick. She forced the last heave, spat, then rolled over under a welded collar between two lengths of pipe above her, where the rain was dripping so hard and fast it was an almost unbroken stream. She let the water splash into her mouth, rinsing and spitting and rinsing and spitting and then swallowing and swallowing.
Huh, she said to herself.
She got back on her front, and kept on crawling. The rain would soon rinse the sickness away; there'd be no sign for them to find. The lightning glare burst through the pipes above and threw black bars across her back.
She got to the valve cluster and paused, looked up at the bridge again, through the pounding lines of rain. She watched for a while. Just the one man. Then two more came from behind. They held what looked like a SAM launcher. One of them took the nightscope and stood scanning the deck; she had to duck now and again, but watched when she could. It looked as though one of them was showing the man on the bridge how to work the launcher; holding it up, sighting, letting the other man repeat the actions. She ducked at each flash of lightning. The lightning was closer now, the thunder louder.
She stayed ducked after one flash, thinking. She looked around her, checking the bow cameras but unable to see which way they were pointing through the driving rain. She shivered again in the cool wash of water glueing the fatigues to her skin, and ran her hand over the rough-painted surface of the valve-head controls. Her hand stopped, invisible.
She patted the metal hatch cover.
The catches came undone easily, and the hatch swung open. She waited.
Darkness for a long time, then a brilliant flash, leaving an after-image. It was difficult to decide whether the controls here were set out similarly to those on the bridge, which she thought she could just about remember.
She remembered something else, and decided she was sufficiently hidden from the bridge by the high, thick pipes of the valve cluster. She took out the cigarette lighter from the fatigues' breast pocket. It sputtered, clicking. She blew on it, shook it hard, then tried it again, using her other hand as an umbrella. The lighter hissed, made a series of clicking noises at the same time, then lit. The clicking noises stopped. Still sheltering it, she held the little yellow flame to the open white cavity of the pump controls. The flame lessened, shrank, and the hiss decreased. She shook the lighter but its light continued to fade, running out. Never mind; she'd seen all she wanted.
She snapped the lighter off. Peeped at the bridge. No sign of concern; just the one man, scanning. The rain sang on the metal deck and pipes around her. She waited. The lightning preceded the thunder by ten seconds, then by five, then one or two. She put her hands on the switches.
Lightning flared and thunder bellowed all around the ship; probably hit it, she guessed. She turned the switches. The echoes of the thunder were still dying away as the pumps beneath her feet started up, making the deck thrum. Red lights appeared in front of her eyes.
She heard hisses and gurgles, then, over the noise of the rain, the rumble of the thick oil pouring out through the pipes and into the lake.
She wondered how long it would take them to realise. She watched the bridge for a few seconds. Nothing. Same man, same actions. Quite undisturbed. She felt the deck tremble as the pumps pulled the oil from the tanks and threw it into the lake. She watched the man on the red length of the bridge for a while longer, her eyes screwed up, trying to drill her sight through the waves of rain. Nothing; nada. Hadn't even seen the damn stuff spewing out from the sides of the ship. Hadn't noticed the lights on the cargo-handling board on the bridge. She looked at the lighter in her hand, thought about trying to set fire to the torrent of oil pouring from the pumps over the side of the boat and into the lake, then looked up, mouth opening, into the night, and with a last hurried look at the lighter, put it away, squatted on her haunches, and thought. She nodded once to herself, then spent a long time looking through the rain, through a small space between two pipes she reckoned would screen her from the nightscope and the lightning, watching the man on the bridge. She started to worry about the lightning.
After a while she got dizzy with tiredness. The storm was departing; the rain had settled to a steady downpour; the lightning had become less dramatic and urgent, the thunder less immediate and crackly.
She felt the deck resound beneath her, and lay down in the pouring rain, only half-sheltered by the thick pipes above. She curled up, and slept.
Hisako Onoda dreamed of a lake full of blood and a sky full of fire. She watched from the depths of space and saw a great lever strike the world; it rang false and shattered, disintegrating into all the separate states and creeds, beliefs and prejudices that had riven it over the years, blowing like seeds from a flower.
She kept waking up, thinking she'd heard steps, or voices. Or maybe she only thought she kept waking up, she thought later.
Blood and fire, the dreams were always there waiting for her when she drifted off again.
When she did awake, properly, finally, the rain was gone, the first light of dawn was trying to burrow under the dark lid. of the sky, the deck still trembled beneath her, the air smelled thick and the lake was full of blood.
Her father died three months before she was born; she had never been held by him. They told her she was lucky, all the same; she might have been born deformed. It was years after the Pikadon, and maybe he'd have died of cancer anyway. That was the way it worked, by statistics. It came down to probabilities, a cellular image of the jeopardising indeterminacies that lay beneath the physical world, and were its absolute — but absolutely uncertain — foundations. So maybe the bomb did kill him, eventually, or maybe it didn't.
They'd opened him up, hoping to deal with the tumour in his belly, but when they saw what was inside him, they just closed the incision again. He stayed in hospital, went home for a while to be with his pregnant wife, but after a few weeks the pain got so bad they took him back into the hospital once more.
He'd been with his unit in Kaita, a town a few kilometres from the city suburbs, when the Pikadon came. They'd seen the lone bomber from the barracks; tiny in the sky. One of the men claimed he'd seen the bomb itself, a dot falling. They heard the sirens from the city, went back to cleaning their rifles.
Then another sun lit the parade ground and the barrack buildings. They shielded their eyes, felt the heat, and watched dumbly while the light faded slowly and the vast cloud rose soundlessly into the sky, like the leg of a giant boot that had stamped upon the city. The noise came much later, like continuous heavy thunder.
On the way to the city, to help, they met the burned people, and once passed a group of soldiers; young men like themselves, but looking like black men, stumbling along in a crocodile line down the dusty road, each man with one hand on the shoulder of the man in front, following the leader. The soldier at the head of the strange, silent column had one eye left; the others were all blind. They weren't Negroes. They were Japanese. They'd been closer, and watched the bomb all the way, until it exploded in the air above the city, and that was the last thing they were ever to see; the light had melted their eyes. The fluids were still wet on their charcoal-black cheeks.
Through the increasing damage and the smoking wreckage, to the stripped centre, where the buildings had almost all gone, wiped from the ground-plan of the city as though by an immense scrubbing brush.
On the walls, he saw the shadows that had been people.
His unit stayed in Hiroshima, in the ruins and dust, for a few days. They did what they could. Ten years later, a quarter of the men who'd been there with him were dead. Eleven years later, so was he.
His widow went into labour just down the corridor from where he'd died. Hisako got tangled in her own cord, stuck and struggling, and had to be removed by Caesarean section; pulled from her mother's womb by the same surgeon who'd discovered the metastasising shadow of death in her father a season earlier.
Sanae was the first lover she'd ever told about it all. She told him the night she told him she would not marry him, and she cried as she told him, thinking about her father and the man she'd killed, and about something else she hadn't told Sanae about. He looked hurt and meek and pleading, like a beaten kid, like a whipped dog. She couldn't bear to look at him, so said what she had to say to the cup of coffee before her. They sat in a little kissaten in Roppongi, and he wanted to touch her, to hold her hand, to take her in his arms, but she wouldn't let him, couldn't risk him doing that and her dissolving, giving in. So she shrugged him off, took her hand away, shook her head. He sat, slumped and dejected on the stool, while she told him, but could not explain. It just didn't feel right. She wasn't ready. She'd hold him back. He mustn't distract himself from his career. She — here she had to swallow hard, fighting the tears again, biting her lip hard, squinting hot and angry into the brown dregs in the little white cup — she didn't want to have children.
It was the truth, but it was the hardest thing she could have said, just then.
Sanae left, eventually, in distress and despair, unable to understand. Her tears collected in the bottom of the coffee cup, turning the thick brown dregs watery again.
She had put off returning from Sapporo and meeting him and telling him until the day before he left for Los Angeles for a month to do some studio work.
She had the abortion while he was away; and the world went on.
Hisako Onoda woke to shouts and general consternation, and felt annoyed that her sleep had been disturbed. The deck was hard, the morning was cold and she yawned awake, aching and shivering and feeling like shit, itching and pained and with the hangover-like feeling that there was something very terrible she'd have to remember soon, and face.
The air stank of oil. Mist clung to the hills, hovered in discreet little clouds over the islands. Elsewhere there was mist, too; over the broad waters of the lake.
Not near by though, save on the ship itself. Near by the lake was thick and brown and perfectly, deathly, calm. Wisps of vapour were still rising from the broad, pipe-cluttered deck of the tanker, just parting enough now to reveal the gush of oil from the valve cluster, spreading in a dirty brown arc as it fell to the lake. The ship sat under a stem of mist in a cauldron of clarity, surrounded by cloud. She sat up, at once thrilled and appalled.
The oil stretched as far as the nearest islands, as far as the Nakodo, almost as far as she could see; the unsullied lake was just a blue sparkle beneath the mist in the distance. A disc, she thought; a great grubby brown coin of thick, glistening, stinking oil floating on the waters of the lake like a vast wet bruise. She looked to the bridge. Harder to see now the sun was up. Vague movements behind the tipped glass; two soldiers leaning out of the open windows on the starboard wing of the bridge, gesturing and shouting.
She checked the bow camera again, but it was pointed away from her. The pump controls were still set as she'd left them, and hadn't been shut off from the bridge. She inspected them, yawning and stretching. No, there wasn't anything she could do to make it any worse; she'd done all she could. She checked the lighter, but it was spent; no hiss of gas, and even the tiny clicks sounded tired now. She put it back in her breast pocket.
She looked to the sky. Too much mist and low cloud to tell what the day would be like. Maybe cloudy, maybe clear; it could go both ways. She realised that she'd heard a weather forecast, on the radio, just the day before.
A day. Felt like a week, a year; forever.
Whatever; she couldn't remember the forecast. Wait and see. She shivered again. How stupid germs were. She was probably going to die in the next few hours, one way or the other, and here she was maybe getting a cold. What was the point?
The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast. Feast before seppuku.
She stretched again, putting her arms out, fists by shoulders, then brought her hands to the back of her neck, scratching vigorously.
You bastards, she thought. I remember Sanae and I remember Philippe, but the last act I'll take with me is yours; squalid thrusting being egged on and waiting, sneers of victory; trying to judge the level of anguish and noise they wanted to cause so not too hysterical but not too placid; a final acting, a faking when in all her life she'd never faked, and had counted that strength, made it a point of honour, and they'd sullied everything; a retrospective act, casting a shadow all the way back to… to… hell, this was a terrible thing, that poor Swede; she'd forgotten his name; Werner? Benny? She thought you were meant never to forget the name of your first…
Sanae was energetic and wild, like a storm over her, beneath her, around her, all gestures and noise; still childlike in that adult act, so self-absorbed, distracted and distracting, almost funny.
Philippe dived, skin on skin in skin, sweeping and plunging and such sweet encirclement, concentric with his homed immersion; quietly, almost sadly studious in his abandoned absorption.
But if her life passed in front of her it would end with a gang-bang, and the applause would be the crackle of breaking bones and the spatter of spilled blood, signature of her revenge. Well, worse things happen at sea, she thought, and laughed out loud, before shushing herself.
She was feeling almost happy, resigned but oddly fulfilled, and at peace at last, when she thought of the dreams, and the lake of blood.
In the past, she'd always coped, she'd put up with it, with them. Dreams were dreams and took their cue from what had happened, accessories after the act. She'd dismissed those she'd been having recently as she'd dismissed those she'd always had. But now they spoke of a lake of blood, and it occurred to her that the brown slick of oil, the great dumped flat platelet she'd spread over the waters, was a kind of blood. Blood of the planet, blood of the human world. The oil-blood greased the world machine; the blood-oil carried energy to the workings of the states and systems. It welled and was pulled out, bled to the surface, was transfused and transported. It was the messenger of soil and progress; the refined lesson of its own development.
Now, a leech, she'd let it. She was making the dream.
She hadn't meant to pretend to such authority.
Hisako sat down heavily on her haunches, staring out at the brown horizon of oil. Well, she thought, too late now. She looked up at the sky. She heard the shouts of the soldiers over the thunder of the pumps, then stood again and peeped through the clutter of pipes, watching the superstructure. There was movement behind the glass of the bridge. Suddenly she heard clicks and buzzes to her left, and leapt away from the pump-control housing, heart hammering, dizzy with dread, waiting for the shots.
There was nobody there. The controls clicked again, and the pumps whined down to silence; the deck stilled. She was tempted to switch the pumps back on again, see who could overrule who with the controls. But then they might guess she was there. She left the controls alone and went back to watching through the square tangle of pipework.
After a few minutes, three men appeared at the top of the steps which led down to the pontoon. Even from a distance the soldiers looked nervous and harried; one was still pulling on his fatigue trousers. They all held bags and rucksacks, were weighed down with guns and missile launchers. They looked as if they were arguing; two disappeared down the steps to the pontoon. The third seemed to be shouting back into the ship. He dropped his rifle, jumped, picked the gun up quickly again, looking round as though he expected to be attacked at any moment. He shouted through the doorway again, then he too ran for the steps.
The fourth man followed a minute later, even more heavily laden than the rest. He looked up the deck, towards the bows, and for a moment she was convinced he was looking straight at her. He stayed in that position, and her mouth went dry. She wanted to duck but didn't; the soldier was too far away, and the gap she was looking through too small for him to be able to see her clearly; at most she must be a slightly odd pale dot in the midst of the pipework. He couldn't be sure the dot was a face. Only moving would settle the issue for him, so she stayed still. If he had binoculars, she'd just have to try and duck down as he brought them up to his eyes. He moved, turning to the gunwale and shouting down, then going quickly to the steps, disappearing down them. She let her breath out. She wondered if they'd use the outboard. A military engine was probably safe to use on the oil, in theory, but she wasn't sure she'd like to trust her life to it. She crawled under and through the pipework, towards the port rail. When she was there she raised her head enough to glance over. No sign of the Gemini. She was puzzled, then afraid, and glanced back at the top of the steps where they came through the gunwale, fifty metres away. Shouts came from that direction, but beneath, where the pontoon was. She edged closer to the rail, craned her head out.
She found them; the ship had risen so much that the steps, which for months had ended virtually at water level, now hung four or five metres above the pontoon, which was itself near the end of its travel on the ropes attaching it to the ship; it was canted at an angle of thirty degrees or more, the hullside edge pointing up towards the dangling steps. The soldiers were at the bottom of those steps, lowering a wire ladder to the pontoon.
She edged back from the rail, crawled to the centre-line pipework and got up on the far side. She kept ducked-down and ran sternwards, towards the superstructure. Her naked feet slapped quietly; the metal covering the half-empty tanks beneath her soles felt cool, and still wet from the morning mists
The soldiers were on the port side; she entered the superstructure from starboard. Comparative silence. Le Cercle's donkey engine was still running, creating that hardly audible, subtly soothing whine she'd grown used to in the nights aboard. She crept to the nearest companionway, listening, glancing all around.
The galley's gleaming surfaces were cluttered with opened tins and unwashed plates. Lekkas, she thought, would have had a fit.
She took the biggest kitchen knife she could find, and felt a little more comfortable.
The deck above was quiet too, and the one above that. She glanced into a couple of cabins, but couldn't see any guns. She'd hoped they might have left a few behind.
She approached the bridge deck slowly and carefully, then stole along it. The bridge was silent, a little messy, and smelled of cigarette smoke. From the port wing of the bridge she looked down to the lake surface.
There they were; rowing slowly away through the sticky brown mass of the oil, a man at each of the two stubby oars. The other two were shouting; encouragement, perhaps. They hadn't got very far. Two of them — one rowing — must have fallen in; they were brown with the clinging oil. She spared a few seconds for the view, surveying her handiwork; acres, hectares — a square kilometre perhaps, it was hard to tell with the islands and the other two ships blocking the view — of filthy brown, dead flat, glistening oil.
The boys at the nature reserve on Barro Colorado would probably have wrung her neck for this.
She took the flare gun from the chart room, loaded and cocked it, stuffed a few more rounds in her pockets and went to the radio room. No fuses, no power. The bridge radios were out too. She quickly searched the cabins, no guns or grenades. Another check on the progress the men were making through the sludge of oil; hardly out of the shadow of the ship.
She went outside to check the starboard lifeboat, feeling a sneer on her face as she thought of the fools taking to the Gemini.
Each of the tanker's lifeboats could hold the entire crew; they were big, bright orange, and fully enclosed. They were designed to survive high temperatures, and would work — and keep their occupants cool enough — on a sea on fire with spilled oil, if it came to it.
She came out on to the sunlit deck, beneath the starboard lifeboat.
It had been wrecked.
They must have machine-gunned it.
She looked at the ragged gap in the lifeboat's bows, at the bullet holes scattered around the main breach, and the shards of orange hull material lying on the deck. She ran back, into the ship and across the bridge, ducked down — the Gemini was still less than fifty metres away through the oil — and saw what was left of the port lifeboat. Smashed; a grenade, she guessed.
Hisako went back across the bridge, out on to the starboard lifeboat deck again and climbed up into the wrecked boat through its bow hatch. She held the kitchen knife in her teeth, and couldn't help but laugh at herself. Inside the lifeboat, she found the grey plastic flare container, twisted the thick red plastic top off, and rummaged through the big smoke-canisters and the hand-held flares until she found what she was looking for. She took two, just to be sure.
She stuffed the pistol from the chart room under one arm, walked back to the bridge, reading the instructions on the parachute flares.
Through the bridge, through the door on to the port lifeboat deck. The Gemini had been rowed another ten metres away; She tore the cap off the base of the flare, and hinged the trigger mechanism out, like a heavy-duty ringpull. She stood behind a life-raft dispenser, a sloped rack of three bright, white plastic inflatable containers. She stripped the sticky tape off the red top of the flare casing and removed. the plastic cap. Looking over the top of the life-rafts, she could just see the Gemini and the four men in it, still rowing carefully through the brown sludge, oars cloyed and dripping. They hadn't seen her. She put the kitchen knife down on the deck.
'Hey! she screamed, standing on tip-toes. 'Hey, punks! Make my day! Don't push me! That ain't nice, you laughin'!
They looked; the oars dipped, paused. Two looked straight at her, the pair in the stern of the inflatable turned, stared back.
Hisako waved the readied flare. 'Uncle Saaam!
One of the rowers reached back, started to stand, bringing his gun up; she heard shouting as she ducked, grabbing the flare pistol as it fell from her armpit, holding the parachute flare in the other hand. She peeked round the life-raft cluster. The Gemini was rocking, one of the men in the stern had stood up; he was grappling with the soldier holding the gun. She put the flare pistol on the deck, stood, stuck her finger through the ring-pull. The soldiers were shouting. She pointed the flare into the sky and pulled the ring.
A moment's hesitation; enough, in cartoon-land, for her to look puzzled, turn the flare round and stare into the business end of the tube.
She waited.
The canister leapt back against her hands; detonating. Echoes rang off the metal walls behind her. The flare rocketed into the misty blue sky, spiralling and arching with a firework hiss.
She ducked, but still looked.
The men in the Gemini were in tableau; stood and sitting, clean and oil-soaked, all four staring up as the flare rose above and beyond them, rasping into the air. She threw the spent, smoking container away; rattling on the deck.
The rocket slowed, wavered. It had just started to drop when it puffed, sent a tiny little white cloud to the top of its arc, and suddenly blazed; incandescently brilliant and swinging like a pendulum beneath a miniature parachute.
Screams, when they realised.
She dropped to the deck, looked over the little metal flange beneath the deck rails.
One of the soldiers started rowing desperately, yelling at the others. The one holding the gun shook the man from the stern off, leaving him teetering. The gun fired. She spread herself on the deck, heard shouting and screaming through the percussive clatter of the machine-gun. In a few seconds, the superstructure above her sang to the noise of the bullets hitting. The deck rattled to one side; a window in the bridge shattered. The firing stopped. She popped up for a look. Two rowing now, though the Gemini was still going in a circle. One soldier was stabbing at the outboard, trying to start it, the fourth… the fourth was overboard, in the lake, astern and to the side of the inflatable; a brown shape screaming and thrashing inside the thick brown mass of oil. The parachute flare dropped gently, spiralling slowly down towards the oil, a white hole in the sky.
The soldier at the stern stood up and screamed at the outboard, slapping at it. He crouched, started tugging at the back-up toggle which should start it even if the electric starter didn't. Pulled and pulled. The man in the lake was only a couple of metres behind the black Gemini, reaching for it, trying to swim through the oily sludge. The other two were rowing mightily, glancing behind them into the sky as they did so, shouting incoherently. The flare swung, describing lazy bright circles in the air as it fell.
Then one of the rowers shouted something while the man at the outboard tugged and pulled at the engine's lanyard — and took up a gun. He stood and fired at her; she ducked again, flattening, heard and felt shots slap and burst into the life-raft casings, sending curved white shards of plastic raining about her, bouncing over the deck, pattering on to her back like heavy snowflakes, making her flinch despite the relative weakness of each impact.
The firing went on, changing in tone, and the sounds around her ceased. She risked another look.
The man was firing at the flare.
The other oarsman tried to stop him, as the man at the outboard pulled again, snapped the lanyard and fell over backwards into the other two and the man in the lake splashed heavily towards the stationary inflatable.
The three men fell in a heap into the bows, gun still firing, then cutting off.
The flare had been hit.
The holed parachute sank through the air, ripped and fluttering. The white blaze of the magnesium charge plummeted to the brown surface of the lake.
They stopped, again. Frozen by the impending heat, like a photograph; three crumpled in the boat, in the act of scrabbling back up again; the one in the oil on the water like a dirty brown sculpture, one arm raised. All looking at the flare. The flare sank, diving; met the oil and disappeared. The tattered remnants of the parachute flopped into the greasy surface as the oil ignited.
She stood and watched.
The fire spread at a fast walk, blossoming outwards from the point of its birth in an ever-widening circle like a slow ripple on that thick brown tide. The flames were yellow and orange and red, the smoke dense and black.
One soldier went back to the outboard, stabbing at it again. The man in the lake did what looked like butterfly strokes towards the stern of the boat. One just looked at the spreading field of flame, the fourth one took up an oar again, screamed at the man still standing and looking, and with one foot kicked guns and missile launchers out of the bottom of the Gemini, sending them bouncing over the side, sliding into the brown surface without a splash.
She ran a hand through her hair, thinking how greasy it had become.
The boiling mass of yellow rolling flame expanded, smoke cutting off the view of the nearest island. The thick black billows rolled as high as the tanker's bridge, then its masts. The man in the lake reached, found one conical end of the inflatable's double stern; slipped off.
They were probably still yelling and shouting, but the noise of the blaze was starting to take over; roaring. Gradually, gradually increasing in volume.
The smoke was way above.
She took up the flare pistol, leant over the side, and fired directly down, the pistol jumping in her hand.
The flare burst upon the water to the stern of the canted pontoon, bursting fire around the impact point.
The smoke was starting to blank out the horizon, while the fire ate up the distance between it and the black Gemini. The man in the water reached between the stern hulls of the craft, grabbing at the outboard engine just as it fired. He was flicked round, oil splashing brown metres into the air; if he made a noise, she didn't hear it.
The outboard died; the man in the water floated broken behind the boat while the soldier at the Gemini's stern stabbed again at the engine casing and the other two rowed, trying to angle the boat away from the flames. But the fire was sweeping quickly round and past them, closing in on their bows, and the secondary wave-front was heading out towards the Gemini from the ship itself, sending billows of acrid, stinging black smoke up in front of her, blanking out the view.
She walked towards the stern of the lifeboat deck, to see.
When the fire was almost on them, one of the rowers took a pistol from his belt and put it in his mouth; his head jerked back and he flopped over the bows of the inflatable just as the flames got there.
The smoke swam up in front of her, hiding them. It was hot and windy now, even up where she was, and fire was almost all she could see.
She went back along the deck, ducking through the black clouds of smoke to the bridge.
Philippe's cabin; nothing.
The store where they usually left the gear; nothing.
Sweating, running and clattering down companionways in a daze, she burst into the engine room, through it to the engineering workshop.
Am I praying? she thought. No, I'm not, she decided.
The workshop.
There.
She hefted the gear. Full tank.
By the time she got out on to the starboard deck, the fire was closing round under the stern of Le Cercle, swinging in like a bright wave of cavalry wheeling for the final attack. She buckled in, checked her valves and gauges.
Glanced down. It was a long drop.
She looked up at what there was of the still unsullied sky, waited for her life to pass before her and decided that could wait, then climbed up and over the rail.
She hung there for a moment, gazing down at the flat shadow surface of the oil-carpeted lake. She put the mask over her eyes and nose, and held it there.
Ah, what the hell, she thought, and let go.
She dropped, crouched, foetal. She heard the wind whistle, increasing. The impact slammed her, made her think she'd somehow dropped off the wrong side and hit something solid; the pontoon; a boat; rock. The mouthpiece burst from her as her breath flew out. She was suddenly nowhere, struggling and bereft and windless, flailing for the metal and the rubber, surrounded by coolness and pressure going tic tic tic.
She righted, flapped round, found the mouthpiece and rammed it in, sucked and spat, sucked again and found air; opened her eyes. The mask was still there, but the view was black.
Well, what else?
Tic tic tic. She sank, gathering herself
Light from one side, slowly spreading. She drew on the air in the mouthpiece, then realised this was not her first breath. She calmed, swallowed a little water, tasting oil but finding clean sweet air after it. She was still sinking, so swam up a little, found a level, and stroked out, wishing for flippers.
The light spread over her. She kept her level by the clicking noises in her skull, unable to see the surface apart from the dimly burning orange light above, and without a torch to inspect the depth gauge. The current of air from the cylinders on her back was strong and sure, and the water coursed past, slower than with flippers but there… and the fire above covered the surface of the lake.
She waited for whatever had been wrong with the gear when Philippe had last used it to reassert itself, to stop and choke her — ha ha; not just a faulty needle after all; take that — but it didn't happen. The fire glowed overhead and she swam beneath it. She even rolled over at one point, and saw the burning oil above, and could have laughed.
Near to the edge where the ordinary light of day filtered down like a great gauzy curved curtain sheltering some vast and unseen stage Hisako Onoda looked back, and saw the blind spot, the black hole; the eye of the storm at the heart of the universe.
The fire was complete; it had covered all there was within its scope to cover (the water pulsed around her, and she guessed a tank on Le Cercle had blown, or some of the armaments still left on the husk of the soldiers' Gemini had exploded), and when the encircling arms of the blaze had joined, and the whole brown coin of oil was alight, there was no airspace left in or near its centre to feed any fire there, and all there was was the oxygen at the limit of the slick, round the circumference… so of course only the fringes burned; only the edge of the great circle could combust into the clear, isthmian air of Panama; a kilometre-wide ring of fire, enfolding and enclosing a dark and lifeless heart.
Hisako Onoda watched for a moment, then turned away, and swam on towards the distant falls of light, beneath a burning sky.
END