Canal Dreams

'Well, I'm sure you do. You're one sensible lady. I can tell that. Very sensible and very clever and very sensitive. I hope we can talk as equals, and that's just what I intend to do. See, the great have to stoop, sometimes, Ms Onoda. To stay great you have to stoop; no ways round that. You can try and distance yourself from the people who do the stooping; I mean distance yourself from the cutting edge, but it still remains your responsibility. You have to do bad things in a bad world, if you want to stay able to be good. Do you understand that? I mean, there's all these people think goodness and rightness is somehow indivisible, but it isn't; can't be, in fact. It's a razor's edge, Ms Onoda; a real razor's edge. You have to balance, you have to keep working, you know. You try to stop, you ever think you got it all taped so well you can just let things drift, and you're dead. Not the next day, not the next year even, but soon; and it starts as soon as you let go. Romans found that; the Spanish and the English too. You got to remain dynamic, or you fall down; you sink into your own indulgence; you get decadent. Free society… free society like America's, that sort of stuff is bubbling away under the surface all the time; always people want to have a quiet life, be hippies, live in what they think is peace… and damn it, it might be, for a little while, but-

She clicked a button. The sight came alive; grainier than the rifle's nightsight, but the boiling stem of fire on the pontoon showed bright, like a vivid tear in the night. Centring, the whine became a guttural coughing noise, a protesting, damaged clock stuttering in her ear. Red symbols lit up above the display. She squeezed the trigger.

There was a moment of hesitation, and she almost put the missile launcher down, preparing to look at it again.

But while she was still waiting, just starting to wonder what she'd done wrong this time and what she'd have to do to make the thing work, it happened.

The tube shook, hammered her shoulder, kicked against her neck and the side of her head. The noise was not a noise; it was the end of sound, an editing mark that cut her off from the world beyond her suddenly deadened ears.

Flame burst around her. It swept, narrowed, fu

The spark roared across the waters, dipping, swinging, spiralling.

It met the bloom of flame on the pontoon and burst.

The explosion seemed not to start; she thought she must have blinked, and missed the start. It was suddenly there; white, yellow; a jagged splayed froth of incandescence, already falling, collapsing, dimming through orange and red. The noise came through the ringing in her ears, and was followed by its echo, once sharply, then more muffled versions, fading and disappearing.

'Jeje! she heard through the radio. Then Allá!

The water jumped around the Gemini. The inflatable shuddered as she threw the SAM launcher away and saw the flickering light of gunfire over to her right. The Gemini shook again, and she heard a hissing noise. Sparks struck off the engine, and the dying, zinging noise of ricochets filled the air above as more white fountains leapt into the air in front of her. The Gemini bucked under her and the engine stopped suddenly. She had one hand on the side of the inflatable, and felt it go soft under her fingers. The flickering light went on; three or four ragged points of fire.

She threw herself backwards out of the boat, into the water.

11: Oneiric

The water was strange and cloying, insinuating through the fabric of the fatigues, slicking the material against her skin. She took a deep breath, sounded, struggling through the black water away from the Gemini. The bullets hitting the water made deep thrumming noises, starting loud and violent, quickly fading. The high whine of the other inflatable's outboard drilled through the water under the percussive bullet beats.

The boots were holding her back and dragging her down. She came up for air, twisting her head to look back at the inflatable; still dishearteningly close. She brought one foot then the other up, hauling the loose boots off. She hyperventilated as she watched; the other boat was hidden by the one she'd just jumped from, but the noise of the firing swarmed. through the air above her. Water burst whitely around the Gemini. She tore the remaining grenade from her breast and unbuckled the belt as she turned, took a last deep breath and dived again, heading away. Grenade and belt sank from her fingers into the dark lake.

She swam under water until she thought her mouth was about to open of its own accord and the darkness in front of her eyes had turned to a dreamy; pulsing purple, then she came up, surfacing as quietly as she could. Still no sign of the other boat, but the firing was much louder, and the Gemini she'd been on was half-collapsed in the water, shaking and bouncing as shots tore into it; sparks flew from the outboard casing, and as she watched, fire burst from the inflatable; at the stern first as the outboard's fuel tank finally gave way, then along the length of the craft; the jerry can must have ruptured. She didn't know if the plastique would explode or not. She gulped air, sounded, and angled away, hearing and feeling a last few shots thump into the water. Then the firing stopped. The note of the outboard was deepening, slowing. She waited for the blast and shock of the explosion, but it didn't come then. Her lungs burned and she surfaced once again, carefully. She looked back.

The second inflatable was silhouetted against the end-to-end flames of her Gemini; three or four men. The outboard revved, and the Gemini curved away from the burning inflatable, heading in the direction she'd swum at first. She went under, just as the ammunition on the burning Gemini started to detonate. It made a series of frenzied, booming bursts of noise, all but obliterating the sound of the outboard.

She swam until she thought she was about to black out, heading almost at right angles to the direction she'd taken initially. The outboard, when she could hear it, sounded distant. The next time she looked the ammunition in the burning. boat had reached the finale; tracer erupted into the night sky like fireworks. There was no sign of the other Gemini. She took another deep breath. An explosion kicked her, and she thought the plastique had blown, but then another came, and another, and the outboard noise whined closer. She wriggled away, changing course, realising they were using grenades.

When she had to come up, she tried not to make any noise.

The Gemini was twenty metres away; lit by flames. Four men. One with what looked like a set of stubby; large-lensed binoculars. Another threw something ahead and to port; something splashed into the water ten or fifteen metres away from her. She wanted to dive then, but didn't. She watched the man with the nightscope swing round towards her.

The grenade blew, pounding her, squeezing her. She heard herself gasp with the pain of it, though the noise was hidden in the roar of the water bursting and fluting out above the grenade. Just as the man sca

When she next surfaced they were a hundred metres away. The light from the burning Gemini was waning; she heard the sound of the fire through the ringing that had reestablished itself in her ears like an old friend.

After a few more grenades, the four men in the inflatable broke off and went to look at what was left of the Nadia's pontoon.