Read Elysium. Part One. for Free Online

could say to justify what she had done. It had taken her three years to afford the ticket to board the Tangaroa , and she knew there was every possibility that the ship would be destroyed by the United Nations vessels that patrolled the southern oceans; but at the time it hadn’t seemed to matter. ‘There was nothing to stay for,’ she said.
      ‘You left because you were bored?’
      ‘I don’t mean that. There was no future in New Zealand. They’d squeezed every cent out of us and still they wanted more, you know what it’s like, it’s the same everywhere. We lived without electricity for months on end, we rarely saw oil, and still they demanded higher rents, and higher utility bills. Debt was soaring everywhere, and jobs!’ She snorted in disgust, ‘You were lucky if you had a job for longer than a fortnight. Dad was convicted for outstanding payments to the council… the power had been down since Easter, but come August they expected us to pay for electricity! $2,500 for unused light bulbs! It was unbelievable. Well, he was locked up in the debtor’s reformatory and I knew I was going to shrivel and die if I stayed there. I had to get out.’
      ‘Where were you going?’
      ‘Russia. I have a cousin living there. She’s close with her employers and they said they would take me on. She’s been working for them for years… I couldn’t expect anything like that at home.’
      ‘Russia!’ Priya frowned. ‘Nasty.’
      ‘Free of flu for fifteen years,’ she said positively, before she pulled a face and looked to the ceiling, ‘well, apart from what you hear about the Georgian border,’ Selina shrugged, falling silent. She was overwhelmed by the thought that she would most likely never reach Russia, or her cousin. ‘There’s not much chance for us is there,’ they looked at each other for a moment, both knowing that, if caught, they would be arrested and detained indefinitely for boarding an unregistered haul.
      The conversation was sparse after that. They fell asleep on a dusty mattress as the wind outside provoked ghostly lamentations to sigh through the rafters. Selina had feared nightmares of the shipwrecked corpses and the limp bodies drawn down with the Tangaroa , but instead her sleep was long, soporific and dreamless.
      In the morning Priya constructed a rudimentary plan, intending them to return the way they had come the previous day and keep to the coast.
      They stayed on a road heading north and this time passed numerous signposts, shrouded by a century of growth, but printed unmistakably in English. Then, after returning to the coastline, they caught sight of the distant barrier and there was no refuting it, they were cast-away in the west of England.
      Selina watched the array of decaying wind turbines, her eyes glazed with tears. Her hopes were finally dashed, the last vestige of her optimism left hanging in the wind on that distant wire.
      ‘We’ll head up there, tonight,’ Priya said, hoping her voice was suitably comforting. She pointed to a ramshackle of houses on the horizon. ‘With any luck we’ll find a bite to eat as well. In the morning we’ll try to work out which way the nearest border is and head toward it.’
      ‘And we want to reach the border because?’ Selina asked, confused.
      ‘Look, what’s the alternative? Stop here for the rest of our lives? It’s been over twenty-four hours and all we’ve found to eat so far are a few blackberries. It’s going to be nigh impossible but we’re going to have to start from square one and find our way on to another ship somehow.’
      Selina looked at her with a smirk until she realised Priya was being serious. ‘Wait a moment, you’re suggesting we can make our way across the border without being seen? Not only that, you think we can evade the authorities, and anyone who might ask us any questions… somehow strike up a relationship with someone willing to get us on a ship…’ she ran her