Free Tamaruq by E. J. Swift Page A

about Patagonia and Patagonian people, questions which Mig sometimes struggles to answer, or answers warily, unsure if they contain some trick or test. Eventually he works up the courage to ask.
    ‘What’s that gun?’
    ‘You mean where did it come from?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘It was made in Osiris.’
    ‘Your city?’
    Vikram hesitates before he says, ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you’re going back there?’
    ‘Yes.’
    They assess one another. Mig is no longer sure, if he ever had an inkling, of what is going through the Osirian’s head.
    He is surprised when Vikram reaches into his pack and withdraws the mysterious black stone which Mig has seen him examining in secret on so many nights.
    ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asks.
    ‘No.’
    ‘It’s a holoma. You’ve never seen one before?’
    ‘No. What does it do?’
    ‘It’s a way of sending messages. It belonged to the Antarctican.’
    Mig looks at him uneasily.
    ‘Like robotics?’
    ‘Something like that.’
    Mig makes the sign of the spider. He isn’t superstitious, not remotely, not like the kids back home, but you can’t be too careful with shit like this. Robotics are a breeding ground for demons.
    ‘What do you want it for?’
    ‘I need to send a message.’ Vikram pauses and Mig guesses he is weighing up whether to trust him. ‘The Antarctican. Taeo Ybanez. He had a partner back home. She deserves to know the truth about how he died. But we should get some rest. We need to make progress tomorrow.’
    Mig takes the hint and goes to lie down, but finds it impossible to sleep. As he lies awake, riddled with remorse, listening to the steady rhythm of the Osirian’s breathing and the click of night-time insects, Mig wonders what Pilar would have made of this odd man and his faraway city in the ocean. He sees her squatting on the roof of Station Sabado, her hair a tangle of bright dyed feathers, her expression caught between habitual truculence and the quiet bliss that enters her face only when listening to music. He sees her looking down on the plaza with the Cataveiro trams approaching the station, and his heart breaks over again.
He’s a madman, Mig
. That’s what Pilar would say.
This one’s touched
.
    Touched or not, Mig sticks with him. But when, after weeks of travel, they arrive at the coast and look out over that same ocean – which Mig has never seen before, an unimaginable, restless thing which fills him with an equal sense of limitlessness and terror – there are things which he does not tell Vikram.
    He does not tell him about the hours he has spent daydreaming about how to kill the Alaskan. He doesn’t want to have to see the freak’s face when he does it – the idea of looking into those cold, soulless eyes as she dies is intolerable – so his options are limited. But there are ways.
    He does not tell Vikram that at the last farmhouse he visited, the farmer took hold of Mig’s arm and grasped it with the kind of fervency usually displayed by Born Again Mayans.
    ‘You’re a traveller, aren’t you?’ said the farmer.
    ‘I’m going to sea,’ said Mig. His revised cover story, dull but safe.
    ‘Then maybe you’ve heard. On your travels. Have you heard – about the man?’
    ‘What man?’
    The farmer’s grip on his arm increased and Mig twisted away, annoyed, and knowing what was coming but seeing no way to avoid it. The farmer’s eyes shone.
    ‘The man who survived the redfleur!’
    ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Mig. ‘Who is he?’
    ‘How do you like the ocean?’ Vikram asks him.
    Mig doesn’t want to sound too impressed. He doesn’t want Vikram to know that his heart is racing at the sight of the waves, their fierce white caps, the way they crash with such wanton aggression upon the rocks. Or that his only wish is that Pilar could be standing beside him, for him to sweep his arm wide across the vista and say to her, as though he had conjured it,
what do you think of this?
A flock of birds take turns diving at the