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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
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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
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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
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