Blackfish City

by Sam J. Miller

  Zarif stroked himself to full tumescence, which was an astonishing one, but Barron seemed not to notice.

  “I saw him by accident. Fifty years ago—a man my own age, handsome in that cruel way that powerful men often are, the fearless confident stare of someone who knows he can do whatever he wants to you. An expensive nondescript car that pulled up to the quiet late-afternoon South Bronx street where a demonstration was about to get started. He got out of the car, along with three other men and one woman. He scanned the crowd. No one stood out to him. None of us had faces. But I saw him.

  “Fifteen seconds. I counted them, breath held. The invaders got back in their car. The afternoon moved forward, implacable as a glacier. People trickled in. The protest got started. The counterprotesters arrived, poorer tenants from two neighborhoods over, accusing me and my crew of having pushed them out—which was, alas, true, but I knew them, had knocked on their doors and tried for weeks to get them to come to meetings, fight together against the city’s latest ‘rezoning’ plan.

  “Someone was behind this. Someone had pitted us against each other, with surgical precision.”

  Zarif shut his eyes, imagined himself fucking his favorite beam fighter senseless. He knew, from very fortunate friends of friends, exactly what Hao Wufan was into.

  “Things got bloody. People died. Buildings burned. When I got out of the hospital I spent a week staring into my screen. I was determined to find out who he was, who they were, the people who arrived in the hush before the violence began. It took me a long time before I found them, a fledgling midlevel department at an undistinguished security firm. Creators of a new kind of PR animal, custom-made for the Multifurcation, which of course hadn’t gotten that name yet. Micro-audiences; hypertargeted messaging. Directing people not to consumption or to voting, but to action. Bespoke mobs for the twenty-first century.

  “I stalked Podlovsky for the few months that New York City had left. I went to his office. Bought tickets to galas to watch him smile. Found his house, his gym. Charted his habits. Maybe I intended to murder him. I never thought that far ahead. All I knew was, this was my enemy, and sooner or later I would have the chance to bring a reckoning.

  “And then: The fall. The breach. The collapse. Survival became my only concern. Other enemies intervened—men with guns, men who demanded awful things in exchange for food or a ferry ride out of the city or simply not murdering someone. But once I was safe in the FEMA camp—or, at least, a little less unsafe—I had time to think about Podlovsky again. Had the chance to search for him. Found him mentioned in some of the outlets, setting up shop in Qaanaaq. His firm still garnering headlines, still controversial. Something to do with the neo-Inuits up north, one of his pharma clients needing something hushed up, deeds so ugly that only something uglier would be sufficient. And dumb incredible luck, that I’d searched in that narrow window. Two weeks later, Martin Podlovsky did not exist. Which could only mean shareholder invisibility.

  “I spent years stockpiling the money to make it to Qaanaaq. But this place quickly drained my hunger for revenge. There were too many other hungers, too much other pain. Too much beauty. Rage is a hard armor to wear indefinitely, and mine would have destroyed me.

  “So: Life happened. The fire of my hate died down. I fell in love, and out of it, a time or two. I found a job, built a career. Got sick. Discovered mysterious broadcasts that spoke directly to my soul. Dull embers were all that was left of my rage by the time Martin Podlovsky’s flamboyant grandson landed in my lap by pure outrageous unimaginable coincidence, sick with the same fatal illness as I, and happened to blurt out his last name over coffee.

  “Like fate. Like the gods hadn’t forgotten about me; like the cold and hostile universe still held goodness in it.

  “These past few days I’ve marveled at my bad fortune, to find myself in the middle of something so much bigger than my own vendetta. What an unlucky coincidence, to get caught in the cross fire between a crime boss and a real estate mogul and who knows who else. But now I know it has nothing to do with luck. Monsters like Podlove, they make a lot of enemies. Those enemies will try and try, one at a time, and never get anywhere, and eventually they’ll all start striking at the same time, and that’s when they’ll win.”

  Zarif finished. The mess he made was immense. “Marvelous,” Barron whispered, pale, as if his story or the sight before him threatened to break him in half.

  “On the house,” Zarif said, smiling as the old man made his way out, and then whispering, “Now,” into his implant—

  —Barron descended to the grid, where a woman was waiting, her hands pressed together in front of her chest so he could see the thick braided brass that girdled them. “Mr. Barron?” she said. Snow cycloned in the space between them. Behind her, the light and heat of the Arm lay hidden. “Will you come with us?”

  Soq

  Soq could see her, pacing. Alone in her room, a massive cloud of anxiety shoehorned into a tiny body. Never looking out the portholes. Staring into screens. Fifteen, twenty of them lay strewn across the tables, and Go was constantly getting new ones out of drawers and boxes, opening up some new software, calling up the footage from some additional drone. Impressive, how hands-on she was with all this. No flunkies to do it for her. If Dao weren’t dead, would he be doing it? But if so, that made it all the more impressive—so many kingpins would be utterly helpless without the people who normally did everything for them.

  As far back as Soq could remember, Go had been there. An idol, someone whose successes and setbacks Soq followed the way other grid kids followed beam fighters. Soq’s own career trajectory, their dreams of savage revenge on this shit city, had been modeled on Go’s.

  Go was fearsome; Go was magnificent. Wise, cunning, bloodthirsty, brilliant. That had never been in question. What Soq was wondering now was something completely different: was Go a halfway-decent human being?

  Other questions, too. Ones that hadn’t stopped bothering Soq since they first started popping into and out of that rich kid’s memories. What was the point of rising to the top? Conquest had always seemed like its own goal, but what did one do when one got there?

  For almost an hour, Soq was sure of it, Go had been trying her hardest not to look out the portholes. Because she knew she’d see Soq there.

  And for almost an hour, Soq had been trying to knock on the door. Why hadn’t they? Fear rarely stopped them. Soq could remember the first time they’d strapped on slide boots, how fearlessly they’d clomped across the grid, how effortlessly they’d vaulted up and onto the incline. Stepping forward without a second’s pause. People broke limbs every day on the inclines; people died. But pain and death never frightened Soq. Soq had nothing; nothing could be taken; no attachments bound them to the earth.

  And now? What stopped Soq? A newly discovered mother? A father? Some corny fantasy of pre-fall family life? Was Soq so weak that ceasing to be an orphan for a few days had turned them into one of those weak wide-eyed children from Arm One whom they’d spent their whole life despising?

  Soq knocked. Hard.

  “What?” Go said through a speaker. Soq could see her, framed by the porthole. Her back to the door.

  “You need help,” Soq said.

  “I don’t.”

  Soq knocked again. And waited. Sixty, ninety seconds later, a soft thump from the latch. Soq turned the knob and entered.

  “What do I need help with?” Go asked.

  “Where to begin?” Soq said, slumping into an ancient filthy recliner. The closest thing Go had to a throne.

  “Watch yourself,” Go said, her back still to Soq. “Don’t think you have some special license to be disrespectful with me.”

  “Don’t I, though?”

  Go whirled around, eyes wide. Soq flinched at the anger they saw there, but anger was what they had been looking for. Anger, violence, something. Some sign that Soq’s existence impacted Go in some way. Soq stood, stepped over to the table. Watched ten separate screens showing ten d
ifferent live drone shots. Five of them aimed at the same person. An old, old white man in a big office. Paper thin. Pacing back and forth like some flimsy doppelganger for Go. “The guy from the video,” Soq said. “Whose grandson got killed.”

  “Martin Podlove,” Go said.

  “What syndicate?”

  Go laughed. “No syndicate. Or the very biggest syndicate of all, depending on your political stance. He’s a shareholder.”

  Soq whistled, squatted lower to get a better look at the screens. A shareholder. Like seeing a unicorn. Growing up with nothing in Qaanaaq, you wondered about everyone you met—was this chubby man a shareholder? What about that woman in rags over there? Of course, lots of them would dress expensively, but Soq had always been certain that most wore shitty clothes, blended in, looked for all the world like any other piece of Qaanaaq flotsam. Who did they have to impress, after all? They were already the masters of the universe.

  “How do you have so many eyes on him?”

  “Microdrones, mostly. Outside his office.”

  “He never heard of curtains? Ionizing the windows?”

  “He doesn’t care who sees him. He believes he’s invincible.”

  Too weird. Too fucking weird. Too many roads leading back to this boy, the one who gave Soq the breaks. Life doesn’t work like this, they thought, in a city so big—so many bizarre and separate strands coming together. Forming a pattern, a mesh. A net. And Soq was caught in it. Being hauled up, out of the sea where they’d spent their whole life, where they felt safe, where they could breathe, into a harsh killing light.

  Soq’s vision blurred. The image flood came again. The vacant apartment they’d met in.

  But this time, Soq was ready. Soq would not be overwhelmed; Soq would not be drowned in the dry air like a fish. Soq had—whatever Masaaraq had given Soq. The nanites. The power. The control.

  Empty rooms. So much space. A long line of beautiful boys. Hunger; so many hungry people.

  Software.

  Passwords.

  Soq scooted the armchair closer to the table. “Tell me what you’re so upset about,” they said, almost startled to hear how authoritative their voice sounded, how confident of being obeyed, as if they knew what they were doing—and, stranger still, beneath that, the knowledge that they did.

  “I can’t believe this is happening right now,” Go said, standing behind Soq to watch what they did with the screen. Her voice was not annoyed. Her voice was scared.

  “This? The Cabinet mission?”

  “I’m at war here. I don’t have time to go rescuing somebody’s missing mommy.”

  “Why not fire a missile at that old man’s office and be done with it? I know you have the firepower.”

  “Because he has the firepower, too. Or at least, he pays a security company well enough to cover all contingencies. Money and wealth and power are abstractions to people like this. They wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to do in a real fight—but they pay people to handle their problems. There are rules to war. Things you don’t do. I kill him, his people kill me.”

  Something glimmered in the floodwaters. Something shiny in the rush of drab images. Soq made a choking sound and snatched up one of Go’s screens.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Soq said. “Accessing something, I think. A program.”

  “What program?”

  “I’m not sure,” Soq said. “To be honest, I’m not entirely certain that it exists at all. Or how to use it if it does. Or what it will do if I can.”

  “Great,” Go said, turning away, shuffling through the other screens.

  “I saw it in a vision,” Soq said, and Go didn’t respond, because Go wasn’t listening.

  “The Cabinet mission is no skin off your nose,” Soq said. “They make it, they make it. They don’t, they don’t.”

  Go said nothing.

  “You mad because Dao is dead?”

  “Yes,” Go said nonchalantly.

  “You’re angry at her. You hate her. Masaaraq.”

  “Yes,” Go said.

  Soq thought for a second. Surfed a long slow crashing wave of images, memories bound up inside the coding of the breaks. Soq looked for Go, and found her. A hundred different outlet stories; a million shitty photos. A legendary figure. Spoken of in whispers. Superhuman; unstoppable. Emotionless. That was the most important part of Go’s facade: the idea that she felt nothing.

  “It’s him. You’re worried about him.”

  “He can take care of himself. He has a fucking polar bear.”

  “Polar bears are mortal. You have no idea what kind of firepower is in that place. What kind of weapons.”

  Go stared at her hands. “It’s not just him,” she said, finally.

  It took several seconds for Soq to realize they were holding their breath. When they did, they didn’t let it out.

  Go laughed. “You can’t imagine, Soq,” and there was a softness to the name that Soq had never heard anyone say it with before. “I had everything planned, everything under control. I was on track. Nothing could hurt me. Nothing could hold me back. Now there’s him—now there’s you . . .”

  Go trailed off.

  Soq’s eyes shut. Overwhelming, to hear Go express this kind of warmth, this humanity—but frightening, too, because Soq could hear how it broke Go up inside, how angry she was with herself, the war she was fighting to master these emotions. “It’s okay,” Soq hazarded. “It’s okay to worry about something else besides the blood-spattered bottom line.”

  They both avoided eye contact. They stared at the screens where Martin Podlove paced, where back-alley empires and fortunes were being bought and sold in subsurface trough meat bubbles, where spreadsheets and dossiers documented the profit and the loss. Sucking in breath, Soq stuck out a hand and grabbed Go’s.

  The crime boss flinched back. “You don’t know me.” Her voice was stern, hardening fast. “You don’t know me at all.”

  “Don’t I?” Soq said, and there it was, the anger Soq had been sitting on their whole life, the rage that had never found a focus before, the blind fury that spawned a thousand dreams of burning Qaanaaq up, breaking its legs and watching a million people freeze to death in the Arctic waters. The city was not a person, the city had done nothing but exist. Go, on the other hand, had done things. Made decisions. Maybe some of them came from a good place. But maybe not. And maybe it didn’t matter that somebody meant well, if the end result was misery. Soq stood. “Tell me I have it wrong. I know how you operate. How you got where you are. How you treat your workers. I know you’d gut me like a fish in a second without giving it a second thought, because who the fuck am I? Some kid you gave up ages ago, wrote off—kept tabs on, found a spot for, a job you’d give me, but only if I was good enough, only if I somehow passed your little personality test, turned out sufficiently savage and unscrupulous. And if I ended up as anything other than what I am, you’d have gone on ignoring me until the day you died.”

  “That’s not true,” Go said, and her voice was harsh, but the harshness was shallow and choppy. “I had more to do with how you turned out than you think. I’ve been far more present in your life than you could guess. Nudging you; sculpting you. I’ve been taking care of you all this time. And Kaev, too, whether you believe it or not. Think it was easy, keeping him from killing himself, accidentally or on purpose, for a decade or two? I always had someone close to him, a friend of his who was in my pocket or a grid grunt assigned to keep an eye on him, to get him out of any situations that could have been dangerous. And there were dozens. Just like I made sure you got that slide messenger job. And paid off Registration four or five times a year, so they wouldn’t dig too deep at your agency.”

  “I believe that,” Soq said, reining in the anger, because too much was happening, too much was at stake, time was too short—and Soq could see that this, too, could have come from Go. “But I’m not talking to you like this because I think you’d hesitate to kill me because I�
�m your kid.”

  One of Go’s exquisite eyebrows rose.

  A shout from above. The ship was in position at the base of the Cabinet.

  Soq tapped a final sequence on their screen and handed it to Go. “I’m talking to you like this because I have something I know you would be very, very eager to get your hands on. And I have some conditions before I consider giving it to you.”

  Ankit

  Protective Custody felt like a totally different Cabinet. The curving walls made her feel embraced, enfolded, protected. Light panels pulsed in pleasant colors. Huge screens showed waterfalls, horses, slow-motion waves breaking on beautiful beaches.

  Fyodorovna, on the other hand, was agitated. Her eyes blinked and twitched; her hand was tight on Ankit’s. She was looking for the Victorian asylum horrors, the screaming and the laughter, the gibbering lunatics finger-painting masterpieces in shit on the walls, the rusty torture devices masquerading as therapeutic tools.

  “They’re at the spot now” came Soq’s voice through her implant. “Masaaraq will dive soon. Could take five minutes, could take an hour. Or more.”

  Ankit tapped her tongue to her palate to acknowledge. A sky-blue arrow slithered along the floor, moving at precisely the same pace as they did, just the slightest bit ahead. It seemed to flicker and twitch, a tiny carefully programmed bit of animation intended to make it seem alive, trustworthy, and Ankit rolled her eyes—but almost immediately after that she saw Fyodorovna smile faintly, looking down at it, making Ankit feel even more impressed and safe in the hands of the kind and wise machines that ran the Cabinet. And all of Qaanaaq, really.

  A sudden lurch caused her to stop, grasp her chest.

  “Are you okay?” Fyodorovna asked.