Tamaruq by E J Swift

Author:E J Swift [Swift, E J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780091953102
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2014-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

PART SIX

THE POLAR STAR

THE PILOT

IT’S DARK. NOT the thick, clotted darkness of the city, or the crystalline infused darkness of the desert at night. Darkness complete, undisturbed except for a tiny, greyish column of light through a minute hole drilled into the upper wall of the shipping container. Ramona Callejas holds on to that. She puts the back of her hand against it, although if there is movement in the slender airstream, she doesn’t feel it. It’s her only air vent.

She hears the sounds of the docklands machinery moving closer, and then an ear-splitting clang reverberates through the shipping crate as the gantry crane deposits another one-and-a-half metre cube on top of the one she is hidden inside, the crate connecting and locking into place, its weight undetectable as a physical force but she senses it, pressing down as if she is being buried. All around her crates from the Panama Exchange are being dropped, stacked up on the container end of the Polar Star. They carry the poppy harvest, solar cells for reconstitution, and a runaway pilot without a plane. The column of light from the air vent grows dimmer as the rising crates block out the dawn sky. She fights down panic. What if they’ve blocked her in? What if she can’t get out?

The machinery subsides.

Ramona waits.

Around her, she hears the papery slither of boxes shifting as she adjusts her position. The rasp of her shorts against her thighs. Her sweat dripping on the floor. The rap of her knuckles, hesitant, against the wall of the crate:

tap tap.

The sound tumbles away into nothingness.

After a time, there comes a deep groan that could come from hell, if you believe in hell, if you believe in an afterlife, which she doesn’t; the too-soon deaths of her younger siblings quashed any thoughts of life beyond life. The only family she has left is her mother, who is somewhere on this ship, in the custody of an unknown perpetrator. She doesn’t know who and she doesn’t know why, but she will find out. That thought is the only thing that keeps her from screaming.

That sound again. The bowels of the ship, girding into action.

Motion. Slow and ponderous. She feels it through her entire body, a tremor that thrums against her coccyx and up the length of her spine. Creaks and scrapings, cargo straining against its moorings. Motion. She feels it with a crash of relief and a wash of pure, unadulterated terror, because this is the moment, the line, the belt between north and south, and she has committed herself and there is no turning back and if anyone finds her who shouldn’t, they will probably kill her on sight.

At last the Boreal ship begins the long crawl which will take it across the gulf and up the coast. Inside the crate, Ramona Callejas sweats and shivers like she has a fever. It’s sweltering. The equatorial sun is soaking into the metal and Ramona knows her time inside the crate has a stamp upon it.

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