'As soon as they heard the shooting, they were talking, and some started to… rise, get up, Philippe told her, when she asked what had happened. 'They must have planned for a time before, I think. It was as if they would go then, but they did not, and the man with the machine-gun shouted at them; at all of us, but then, when the firing stopped, that was when they jump up… and run towards the gun. Philippe took a long breath, closed his eyes. She put her hand to his neck, stroked him. His eyes opened and he took her hand, smiling ruefully. 'Was not very nice. They fell. He shook his head. 'Fall everywhere. Is big machine-gun, he looked towards the bar. 'Big bullets, on… a chain. So he just shoots and shoots and shoots.
His hand clenched, almost crushing hers. She tensed her own hand.
The saloon was quiet. It was late afternoon, the heat just waning. The thick atmosphere in the lounge sat like a weight on them all. The blood-matted carpet gave off a rich, iron smell. Some people were trying to sleep, propped up against seats and couches, or lying on the floor, shifting uncomfortably, trying to move their trapped arms and ease the ache in their shoulders. Mandamus's snores sounded vaguely plaintive.
'Maybe, Philippe said, looking over at the bar, 'if we all had run en masse… Maybe we take the gun. But we did not… we did not run… together. He turned to her, and Hisako had never seen him look like he did then; younger than he was; almost boyish, and somehow lost, adrift.
She had told him more details of what had happened after the call from Mr Moriya; the rest had been given only a brief account of Orrick's vain attempt to help them. Philippe had been admiring and chiding, impressed that she had dared lash out at Sucre, but concerned for her safety; they were at the mercy of these people, after all.
She'd listened to the men talk. The feeling now was that there was nothing they could do; they would just have to wait and hope that whatever the venceristas had come here to do would soon be over with. The guerrillas had shown themselves quite able to deal with both the lone commando and the mass attack; to attempt anything now, when they were keyed up after these two incidents, would be suicidal. So they had convinced themselves, breathing the air of the Nadia's lounge, with its scent of smoke and blood. Nobody talked about the planeload of congressmen, except to say that there was probably some other reason for the venceristas to want to take over the ships.
The disturbed siestas went on into the late afternoon; sunlight made bar-shapes through the blinds behind the curtains. Gordon Janney mumbled something in what might have been his sleep; it was becoming difficult to determine when he was awake and when not, as though his brain — confused into accepting any sort of stability — was trying to average out his awareness over the whole day and night, leaving the man aground on the same dozy level of semi-consciousness all the time.
The cartridges went chink chink chink.
Philippe was talking quietly to Bleveans and Broekman. Hisako sat against a chair, trying to recall each second between the time she'd first seen Orrick that morning, and her last view of him, floating face down, body jerked by bullets, the water white around him. They had heard the grenades in here, Philippe said.
'You OK? Mrs Bleveans knelt in front of Hisako. Her face looked haggard, the last traces of make-up producing an effect worse than none at all.
Hisako nodded. 'Yes. She thought more was expected of her, but she couldn't think what else to say. Her ears still weren't right.
'You sure? The American woman said, frowning a little. Hisako thought Mrs Bleveans had never looked more human. She wanted to say that, but she couldn't.
Hisako nodded again. 'Really, yes.
Mrs Bleveans patted her leg. 'You get some rest. She moved back to her husband, then went over to Marie Boulard.
Hisako listened to the ringing in her ears and the chink chink chink noise coming from the bar, like a currency of death.
Her head nodded, jerked back up. The noises around her sounded far away and somehow hollow. She wanted to move her leg but she couldn't.
There was a stairway underneath the ship; they were led down through the vessel, past holds full of plants and gardens and huge rooms full of furniture, through another hold where hundreds of cars sat, engines droning, horns sounding, drivers leaning out of the windows and doors with big red faces, shouting and cursing and waving their fists in the air. Beneath that came a dark space full of rods and levers and strange, sickly smells. She couldn't make out who she was with, or who was leading them, but that was probably because the light was bad. She thought she was probably dreaming, but dreams were real too, and sometimes what wasn't a dream was too real; too much for reality to support, too much for her to cope with. A dream could actually be more real, and that was good enough for her.
Under the ship the air was stifling and humid; it was like walking into a thick blanket soaked in something thick and warm. The surface of the lake was red glass, and supported above the undulating dark floor of the lake by enormous, grotesquely gnarled red pillars; they looked like immense wax-smothered bottles, holders of a thousand gigantic candles each of which had burned down and left its solidified flow behind. One of the pillars supported the ship they were. descending from.
The steps ended on the dark ash of the lake floor. It was difficult to walk in, and they were all struggling. She looked up through the glass — there was a hole there, burned as though the glass was plastic and saw Steven Orrick painting the bows of the Le Cercle, standing on a little wooden plank. He was working very slowly, as though in a trance, and didn't notice the people underneath him. Some of the people with her let little fluttering balloons go, releasing them like doves; they beat nervously up through the air, past the great red pillars, through the melted hole in the glass, and up towards the young man painting the hull around the Nakodo's name.
The balloons got bigger as they rose, and when they got to Orrick they were larger than he was; they spread their wings and wrapped themselves round him; he dropped the brush, dropped the paint tin, and was held there on the little wooden plank, gripped by first one, then two, then many of the expanded balloons, which nestled tighter and tighter in with their wings, and then soundlessly burst apart, blowing out in a scattering of white feathers that rained slowly down while Orrick's shrivelled body fell, cartwheeling lazily, from the bows, and crashed through the red lake surface. He fell in a hail of quick red glass and slow white feathers. Where the paint tin had fallen against the bow of the ship, it had left a long streak of red lead over one of the letters of the ship's name, so that the letters now spelled out NADA.
She didn't see where Orrick landed. The air was full of white feathers. The lake surface healed up where he'd fallen through.
At the end of the lake, where the dam had been, the surface ended abruptly above them, while the lake floor continued out into the open air, down the course of a long dry river. She felt glad to be back, and to have left the other people behind. Above her, the milky clouds let through a diffuse glow of sunlight.
The clouds had a grid written on them; dark lines stretching north-south and east-west. She walked the dry, black dust, passing shattered and deserted buildings in the distance to each side, and watched the grid of the sky gradually fill up with huge circular shapes; they occupied the interstices of the grid; some were dark, like the ash beneath her feet, and some were milky, like the clouds themselves, and hardly visible; just giant halos of light in the sky. It became darker as more of the huge shapes floated down into place. DNA, said the shapes.