The descent, p.16
The Descent, page 16
To be honest, when I’d first heard their plans for the pandemic at that meeting in the Seychelles, I’d imagined much worse. Shit, how could I even think that. Thirty million people died. The drugs were frying my brain, I knew, but at that stage they were the only thing keeping me sane. I know that sounds insane. Maybe it was. Hatred was too tame a word for how I felt about myself. I’d thought about ending it, but to be frank, I was far too scared to even try, and I was having way too much fun. Not this stuff at work, but away from that. Life was great, sort of. I was making more money than I’d ever imagined. I had a great new car and a bigger place. Somehow, I even had time for a couple of boyfriends, regular hookups would be a better term for them, nice guys who wanted to treat me well when what I thought I really needed was a good thrashing. I was so fucked up.
And then towards the end of the month we flew down to Grenada. Valliant was setting up a new place there with the profits from the pandemic, at the recommendation of Trig apparently. Leopold was going to unveil his big idea, and the Boss had been canvassing for it in the background for the last few months. Valliant was already on board and had offered to host.
I didn’t want to go. I knew what was coming. It was all too much. The morning that we were supposed to leave I called the Boss and told him I was too sick to travel. It was the truth. I was so hungover and strung out I could barely move, let alone pack for a trip. Looking in the mirror that morning I scared the shit out of myself. Literally. I spent the next half-hour in the toilet purging myself. I was twenty-three and I felt like a fifty-three-year-old, or what I imagined a fifty-three-year-old menopausal woman must feel like. I was so fucked up and so thin from the drugs and starving myself that my periods were becoming erratic and sometimes didn’t come at all.
But the Boss wouldn’t have it. No one knew how to blow him like I could. He even said it on the phone. ‘You’re getting on that plane. No one can blow me like you can.’ My minutes weren’t bad either, and after all we’d done together, he trusted me, called me his good-luck chick. Twenty minutes later Max the driver was at my apartment helping me dress and pack. He made me a protein shake in the blender and handed me some ibuprofen and a couple of Valium and some other stuff that he said would help, and basically carried me to the car. By the time we pulled up at the airstrip, Bryce had the engines going and Max helped me up the stairs and into my seat and did up my seatbelt. Five minutes after take-off I stumbled to the toilet and puked my guts out.
I’ll never forget that meeting. Valliant’s new place in Grenada was still taking shape, half built. Not what we were used to. Trig started off with an update on the same stuff he had been telling us since 2024. There was only so much of that you could hear before you just went numb to it. Drugs helped. But then it was Leopold’s turn. I was told to take minutes, so I was able to record it verbatim.
‘Gentlemen,’ he began. ‘The time has come for us to decide, once and for all, the future of the planet and the human race. We are now at a unique point in history, and the opportunity that presents itself will likely never come again.’
He looked around the room, rolled his shoulders. He had everyone’s attention. ‘The pandemic and the response to the crisis have been a huge success. Not only do we here now control the majority of the wealth on the planet, we also control, directly or indirectly, all of the most powerful governments in the world, and a huge part of its media. The governments we control have used their popularity and the fear generated by the pandemic to pass sweeping new laws that have limited the ability of the public to protest, appeal, and otherwise stand in the way of our activities. For the moment, those that have always resisted us – even while they have been largely unaware of our existence as a collective – so call it instead those who have resisted our policies, have been neutralised. Well done, everyone.’
Maddisson glowed as if he had assumed that this was praise largely directed at him. Li sat implacable as usual. Yu Wan was grinning like a viper, his tongue darting red and thin between his teeth. The Boss knew what was coming and had that smug look on his face that everyone hated. The rest of them looked like a bunch of old men waiting for the stripper to pop out of the cake.
And she did. In the form of a plan to move the world decisively, once and for all, towards a purely anthropocentric state of being, where resources were to be exploited for the wealth of humanity. Prosperity would be the watchword, income generation, security, whipped cream dripping from her big fat tits and her wide, oh so fecund hips. The environmental movement would be outlawed and discredited utterly. Huge incentives would be put in place to accelerate development. They would ride the wave of gold for as long as they could before the system tanked, which they now knew it would.
Leopold asked Trig to come up again. A map of the world was projected on the screen. Overlaid on the map were coloured pixels. Red for bad, and blue for good.
‘We have modelled the best places that will remain on Earth as the temperature rises,’ said Trig. He ran through the slides for two degrees, already reached, then three, then four. Most of the globe started going deep red. A few places stayed white, some remained blue. He kept going. Five degrees, then six. Small pinpoints of blue in the central Pacific, the southern Caribbean and Central America, southern Africa, the southern tip of Madagascar, big parts of Chile, New Zealand, and the south coast of Australia, including Tasmania. The Northern Hemisphere was pretty much as red as my favourite lipstick.
‘Here they are. The refuges. Places where conditions will be largely favourable for growing food, harvesting resources, and life in general.’
He sat and Leopold continued. ‘Buy up these places. Move out whoever currently lives there. Get ready.’
The Repudiation had commenced.
Athena
Sometime later I wake in the dark, covered in sweat, that vision come to me again. Mum and me and the little copper-skinned girl, splashing in the pale blue of the lagoon. New details emerge, the little girl’s dark eyes and teak-coloured ringlets, the red welted stripes across my mother’s back. And that flight along a dark street, my mother’s voice a tense whisper, big gates looming up before us in the darkness.
And then another, more powerful goddess, born fully grown and suited in the finest armour, aegis shield in hand, adorned with the image of Medusa. A protectress in times of peril. Goddess of wisdom and warfare and the feminine arts. Goddess of justice. But we are long past the time of gods, or God even. Replaced with what? Knowledge. Science. Logic? How well that experiment has worked for us.
Sparkplug’s voice echoes in my head. It does not seem possible. The manufactured pandemic, the plans for a huge sanctuary in Madagascar where Leopold and his progeny could live out their lives. How much of Patricia Leopold’s autobiography was true? A rebel acting against her father’s wishes, or a cynical opportunist who saw the chance to create her own version of her father’s vision, with herself at the top?
Three days to wait, the bitter acid of worry eating away every sane part of me. Mistress of disguise, transform me as you did Odysseus. That I might walk into the village as Zana himself and reclaim what is mine. Lift the veil of confusion from my beloved’s eyes, that she might see the truth.
Goddess, guide me.
The weather has finally turned. Over the last two days the winds have calmed and then slowly, surely, veered. When I reach the point two days later Providence is still there at anchor. I half expected her to be gone. It doesn’t take me long to find the cave. Its entrance is sheltered by low green scrub and a screen of boulders. There is a fire pit near the edge of the overhang and a small supply of dry wood. A few overturned crates and other salvage from the freighter make it passably comfortable.
I look across the bay towards the village. Julie and the kids are up there somewhere – thinking what? Will Amsterdam show tomorrow as promised? And if he does, what news will he bring? I read Homer, plan, pace the confines of the cave. At times the urge to swim out to Providence, pull out my AK and storm in there and carry them away is almost too much to bear.
Night comes, another tortured one, then grey, worried dawn.
I scan the freighter with my binoculars. Superficially, she looks in bad shape, but there are telltale signs of careful maintenance recently performed that I haven’t noticed before. Smudges of grease in hoist bushings. Anchor rode unfouled and clean. Traces of soot at the edges of the stack. Amsterdam lied that first day when I met him. This vessel is operational, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
The sun rises, also, makes slow transit across a clear-blue sky, that same sky I saw for the first time with Zana’s rifle pointed at my chest, a different colour somehow, a different intensity. I break out the last of my rations, sip at the water left in my bottle.
The sound of rustling vegetation sends me spinning around. I freeze.
‘Kwek, you there?’
I peer out of the cave.
It is Amsterdam. He is alone. ‘Settled in nicely, I see.’
‘Right.’
‘You look like hell.’
‘Are they here?’
‘Hold up, Kwek. We’re not there yet.’
‘Julie?’
‘Not good. When First Governess told her you’d been killed, she went berserk.’
‘And now? Will she leave?’
‘Yes. She’s ready. Hasn’t told your kid yet. You can talk to her about it. I don’t have long. Sabre is watching me.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight. Just after sunset. I’ll get them out. Bring them here. You need to get your dinghy, bring it over. Be ready. I’ve already loaded Providence with as much fresh food as she’ll carry.’
‘And Zana?’
‘Don’t worry about him.’
‘What will happen when First Governess realises they’re gone?’
‘That’s my problem.’
‘You lied to me about the freighter.’
Amsterdam paws at the ground with one foot. ‘She’s very shrewd, our leader. You don’t think she’d just wait here with no exit plan, do you? It’s our lifeboat. The whole community. We can up and go and find somewhere else if we have to.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad.’
‘Sure,’ says Amsterdam with a flick of his upper lip.
‘You look surprised,’ I say.
‘Well, after everything. I’m sorry about what happened back there, Kwek. Really.’
I’ve been through it so many times in my head, it doesn’t matter anymore. ‘The world needs more places like this. Just not for us. Not right now. Just get rid of the death penalty. Other than that, good.’
Amsterdam flicks me a quick smile. ‘Come with me. Something we have to do.’
I follow him out of the cave and down to the water. We swim over to the freighter. A rope ladder hangs down the port side and we climb up to the deck in the bright sunshine. Amsterdam leads me to the bridge and then to the radio room. He sits at the console, flicks a switch and the radio lights up.
‘Someone wants to talk to you.’
I stand open-mouthed as he dials in 4.75 megahertz. The line hisses a while, warbles. Amsterdam speaks into the microphone. We wait. And then that voice comes, so familiar now, like an old friend.
‘The Forcing, from Australia?’
‘Yes. Here. Good to hear your voice, Sparkplug.’
‘You’ve gone quiet. I was worried.’
‘We were attacked. Our transmitter was destroyed.’
A gap, the band hissing.
‘I know what you are looking for.’
I look at Amsterdam. He shrugs. ‘I’ve been listening to her for months,’ he says. ‘Told her awhile back about your niece.’
‘Go to Grenada, in the Caribbean, if you can,’ says Sparkplug. ‘There is an Alpha Omega slave market there for children. It’s your best bet. Find Elvira.’
‘Elvira who?’
‘That’s all I can give you. Time to move again. Good luck, Australia.’
‘Wait, what is alpha omega?’
But there is no answer. She is gone.
We swim back to the cave and Amsterdam turns to leave. ‘Tonight,’ he says. And then he is gone and I am alone.
The minutes and hours drag by, seconds of angle, the sun moving slowly towards the horizon. The dinghy is tied up nearby and ready to go. The western sky blushes in latent anger, that overhead darkening. The first stars appear, the world in its ceaseless spinning, night coming. Anytime now.
An hour passes, another. I think about Becky, finally a glimmer of hope, a trail that might lead us to her. I think of Mum, and Papa’s son, Lachie Ashworth. He would want to read his father’s story. If I can get him a copy of the manuscript maybe he can fill in some of the blanks for me. If he can’t then no one can. Maybe he could even help me get it published.
Midnight comes and lapses into history. I stand at the mouth of the cave, looking out along the arc of the bay. But there is nothing. Just the splash of the spiked moon across the dark water, the village walls a faint swath of silver moonlight above the clifftop, the dark mountains rising jagged in the distance. Everything, the whole world, but nothing. Something has happened. They aren’t coming.
‘Kwek.’ A whisper in the half-darkness. I must have fallen asleep.
‘Kwek.’ Again.
I jump to my feet, suddenly alert, run to the front of the cave. The first grey light is showing through the trees. Up on the clifftop where the village is, a faint orange glow of fire reflects from the trees, smoke rising thick into the air. And there they are. Amsterdam, swollen lip, blood dribbling from his nose and a long gash across his right arm, clutching his rifle. Julie, hair in tangles, tears in her eyes, Leo sleepy-eyed, staring up at me. Fema is there too, bags slung across her shoulders.
I pull Julie into my arms.
‘You have to go,’ Amsterdam says. ‘Now. They’re coming.’
I start towards the dinghy, help Julie and Leo in. Then Fema. They are silent, compliant.
I shake Amsterdam’s hand. ‘Thank you.’
He hands me my pistol, the one he’d picked up from the ground back at the bridge. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he says. ‘I did it for her. Now go.’
I breathe out. ‘What will you do?’
‘Haven’t thought that far. I don’t care. Just go.’
I wade into the dark water, get into the dinghy, grab the oars. Amsterdam stands on the rocks, watching us go.
We reach Providence, get everyone aboard. Fema takes Leo below. I raise the anchor, set the jib, get some boat speed up and throw in a jibe, head towards the gap in the reef. When I look back, Amsterdam is still standing where we left him. Julie stands with one arm wrapped around the mizzen mast, staring back in Amsterdam’s direction. In the light from the fire in the village, now burning bright, the flames high, we see a group of men emerge from the trees beneath the village cliffs and start running towards the cave. Amsterdam waves. Julie waves back. He is still waving when we round the point and set sail for the Cape.
Mortals
Cape Town
Twenty-three days after leaving the village, we sight the Cape of Good Hope.
I don’t know what happened here, besides the obvious. What led to this, who decided to do this thing and why, will surely be pondered over by historians in some happier future. Me, I have no narrative account, no testimony of witness, no first-hand reports. I have no time for detailed exploration, for scholarship. No books about this exist that I can read, or likely ever will. And yet what happened here requires some mark of passing, some acknowledgement of those who were ended by it.
It is a beautiful place, despite everything. That cloud-draped tabletop visible from sixty nautical miles, growing as we get closer, steepening, catching the light as the sun turns low on the horizon. Julie stands next to me in the cockpit, takes my hand. The Cape of Good Hope, the strange resonance of that name, the joy I feel at her touch, all that is unspoken in that simple gesture.
It is the stillness we notice first. The silence. The lack of birdsong, the absence of cavorting gulls, of the high sweep of broad-spanned albatross. A sense that we are alone here, completely alone.
Nothing remains of the city. It is as if it has been razed from the surface of the Earth, scoured of buildings, the flanks of the hills wiped clean. Dozens of ships of all sizes lie scuttled across the great harbour, bows thrust skyward. Not a fire, a concussion. The push of a finger on a button.
As we come closer, details emerge. The strange orderliness of what remains, concrete walls and pillars and entire buildings flattened out, smeared across the land in pebble beach imbrication. The way the vessels pattern the hills like driftwood thrown up on a beach, the giant vitrified mirror of its epicentre glowing in the late-afternoon sun.
I heard Mum and Papa talk about nuclear weapons. Papa even taught Lewis and me the principles of atomic fission and fusion. The sheer stupidity of it wells up inside my chest as if to drown me. It seems beyond possibility that this, spread out before us in all its dazzling, ordered desolation, was a decision. Presumably a rational, well-considered deliberation, perhaps by a committee, advised by experts, with consequences weighed, results predicted, reactions anticipated. The result of a similar decision made elsewhere? A retaliation or a warning? Who knows. Men behaving as gods.
August 2027
That summer was the worst yet. The temperature hadn’t dropped below ninety-nine (that’s thirty-seven Celsius for the rest of the world) for five weeks, even at night. During the day it was killer, literally. In New York alone thousands died from heat stroke and dehydration. Not a good time to be old, infirm, or very young. People flocked to shopping malls and train stations, anywhere that had AC, and rich people ran theirs constantly so that there were rolling brown-outs across the whole northeast.
