Blackfish City

by Sam J. Miller

  “Yeah,” she said, “sorry. I just—”

  No big deal, she thought. The monkey that I’m now nanobonded to is climbing this building, that’s all. So it feels like I’m swinging through space. Like gravity just comes and goes.

  A door opened, and a nurse came out. He smiled, recognizing Fyodorovna, and saluted. She gave an impressive slow nod, every inch the monarch. Delusional even in her despair. Ankit caught a glimpse of the room he’d left—the bookshelf, the window, the curtain fluttering in the breeze from the heating vent.

  She wondered if Martin Podlove was in here somewhere, and decided she doubted it. He was on the attack, in temporary sociopath mode, and he’d want to be in the thick of it. He’d have his own protection, people he paid for, people he’d have had on retainer for ages without ever once needing to call on, whom he’d trust a lot more.

  And he wouldn’t want to chance a run-in with the woman he put here so long ago.

  The blue arrow curled around on itself, became a circle. Rotating swiftly; the universal signal for Wait just a second. A door opened where there had been only wall.

  “Hello,” said a stout staffer who wore the badges of both Safety and Health. “Body scans.”

  Ankit raised her arms—the instinctive, familiar posture of someone prepared to be scanned or crucified—but Fyodorovna did not budge.

  “I fail to see how this is necessary,” she said.

  “Rules of the ward,” the Safety woman said. “Everybody gets scanned. No screens, no trackers, implants sealed.”

  Implants sealed? Ankit felt panic rise. She stammered “I—” but the woman had already touched the wand to her jaw. The tingle told her the pulse had been successful, her implant would be bricked until she could get a revival pulse.

  “Welcome,” the woman said, and gestured for Ankit to enter.

  This was a problem. Without the implant Soq couldn’t find her, couldn’t talk to her. Couldn’t relay her location to Kaev and Masaaraq before the building killed internal comms. Ankit’s hands dampened. The fear again.

  Their plan was fucked. They were fucked.

  The nurse waited wordlessly. After less than a minute, Fyodorovna complied meekly. The blue circle became an arrow again and walked them the rest of the way.

  Fyodorovna’s room was astonishing. A salvaged-wood floor, shiny with age and use, something that could have spent a century in a Paris bistro. An earthenware pitcher on a squat dark hutch beneath the window.

  “Here we are,” she said, and Fyodorovna startled her with a sudden fierce embrace.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice more human than Ankit had ever heard it.

  “Hey,” Ankit said, uncertainly. “Hey.”

  “I’m so scared,” she whispered.

  “You shouldn’t be,” Ankit said. So am I. “Here is where you’re safest.” Her boss’s arms didn’t loosen. “I’ll stay with you. Okay? For a little while?”

  Fyodorovna nodded gratefully.

  Ankit went to the window. They were eighteen stories up. Down below, it looked like any other day in Qaanaaq. Fyodorovna poured out two glasses of water from the pitcher. Fyodorovna told her to make sure to call this person, file this document, all of which Ankit was already planning to do, and could not focus on. All she could think about was the chaos on its way, how helpless she was without her implant, the hundred million ways this could go down wrong.

  She closed her eyes and she was standing in the wind. Giddy. Happy. A tiny helpless unstoppable primate. None of the million things that had made her sad or scared an instant ago had any meaning, anymore.

  “What’s that?” her boss said suddenly.

  Ankit opened her eyes and came crashing back into her own body, her own life. Her monkey’s wild joyous freedom was gone. She ached for it. Had to fight to keep from shutting her eyes again.

  “What’s what?”

  Ankit heard nothing. And then she realized—that was the problem. Something you almost never heard in Qaanaaq. Silence.

  “The heat,” Fyodorovna said, getting up and putting her hands in front of the vents. “It stopped.”

  All her life, everywhere she went, Ankit had been hearing the low rumble and purr and hiss of the geothermals. And now there was nothing.

  “Perfectly normal,” she said, but she could see that Fyodorovna was not convinced.

  Time passed. An hour, two? There was no voice in her ear telling her what time it was.

  The plan was idiotic. They were idiotic. All of them. How could they not have anticipated that the implants would get pulsed, that they wouldn’t be able to communicate through this crucial phase?

  A shout from the hallway. More shouting in the distance.

  People are panicking. Health’s response software will be collating all this information, plotting out scenarios, issuing a decision.

  “You said I’d be safe here,” her boss said, sniffling.

  “And you are.”

  “Not safe from freezing to death.”

  “Shhhh,” Ankit said, and sat on the bed beside her. Took a blanket and draped it over her shoulders. Fyodorovna pulled it tighter, gratefully.

  The poor woman. She couldn’t help what she was. It took a special sort of insanity to run for public office. A fragile megalomania; a delusional ego.

  I’ve let my contempt for her become contempt for the office, Ankit realized. I came to share her crazy mistaken idea of what the job of an Arm manager could be.

  But there had been a time, almost forgotten now, when she’d enjoyed her job. What it had been for her originally. When she’d gotten something out of it. Something positive—not the energy and stress and urgency and self-importance, the negative things, the things she became addicted to. The fact that she could solve problems for people. That she could help them get through something bad.

  I could do this, Ankit thought, and almost choked on the realization, the suddenly seeing that she could do the thing she swore she’d never do. I could be the Arm manager.

  Someone ran past the door. A whole bunch of someones followed them.

  “Thank you for your patience,” said a voice from the ceiling. “We apologize for the sustained inconvenience.”

  Fyodorovna grabbed her hand.

  The voice continued: “Health has made the decision to evacuate the facility. The floors below have already been emptied. Please exit your room and follow the red floor arrows to the nearest exit.”

  The door swung open. Someone howled. Someone else joined in.

  “I’m not going out there,” Fyodorovna said.

  “Come on,” Ankit said, standing, feeling just as frightened.

  “Anything could happen to us. All these crazies running around? I’ll take my chances here. They’ll come for us eventually.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Ankit said, and tugged on her hand. “We’ll freeze to death if we stay. These walls are so thin. They hold no heat. It’ll be arctic in here in less than an hour, and who knows how long it’ll take for them to come find us. We’ll be fine out in the halls.”

  Fyodorovna looked up, her eyes frightened and trusting. She nodded.

  If I can help this hopeless creature, I can help anyone.

  “Should I leave the blanket?” she asked.

  “Keep it,” Ankit said. “It might be cold for the next little bit.”

  The door shut behind them. An explosion shook the floor beneath their feet. They began to move with the flow of other frightened people.

  Kaev

  Watching Masaaraq move was like watching some eerie artist, a terrifying ballerina who slowly and beautifully slaughtered her fellow dancers. The blade swung, it twisted, it slammed backward. She was a painter, sending artful sprays of blood onto the bare green canvas of the Cabinet. Kaev grinned, ecstatic.

  Masaaraq slapped him lightly.

  “You need to concentrate,” she said. “He smells blood, he sees all this frenzied motion, it’d be very easy for him to go into a total killer rampage and s
tart taking out patients along with security. Keep your attention on the people he needs to be focused on.”

  They moved through the crowd. People ran, people shambled. Some crawled. Many saw the bear and froze, fell backward, turned and ran in the opposite direction.

  “He won’t hurt you!” Kaev called, but he knew it was futile for a hundred different reasons. They were almost to the stairwells. All the patients would pass through this point. Ora would be one of them.

  She had to be.

  Would Masaaraq even recognize her? Could she even imagine what all that time could have done to Ora?

  A door slammed in front of them. He fired his gun at the glass twice, but only the tiniest cracks appeared.

  “Hand me one of Go’s explosives,” he said to Masaaraq.

  “No,” she said. “He can do this. Put both hands on the door.”

  Kaev did, and waited for the bear to join him.

  It is ice, Kaev thought, there is a seal on the other side.

  Break through the ice.

  Liam stood, leaned back, fell forward with paws extended, hitting the door hard. Did so again, and again.

  Nothing.

  Take the handle, Kaev thought, and showed him how. Pull.

  The bear pulled.

  Pull harder.

  Liam roared. The magnetic lock groaned, and then snapped. On the other side, a waiting room. Empty except for a couple of people cowering in corners.

  They followed the curving corridor and then turned. Running in the opposite direction of the red arrows. Ignoring the pleasant, urgent admonitions of the voice coming from the speakers overhead. The central aisle cut the circular floor in half; somewhere in the middle was the stairwell.

  “They know we’re here,” Kaev said, pointing to his screen, which Soq had synced to the public feed from Health.

  “Of course they do,” Masaaraq said.

  “No, I mean they know. The software. It’s already issued invasion protocols. A whole lot more Safety workers are already on their way. And there are probably threat neutralization devices all through here, designed to pinpoint us and take us out. Gases, explosions—who knows.”

  Masaaraq nodded grimly.

  Soq

  That is a deranged proposal.”

  “Maybe,” Soq said.

  “You think that because you’re my kid you can come in here and tell me what to do?” Go said, folding her arms tight in front of her chest. “You’re mine. Same as all those other grid grunts on my payroll. You have some magic software? You give it to me.”

  Soq stood slowly. “I’m not your kid.”

  Go flinched. Just for an instant, but enough for Soq to press their evident advantage. “If I was your kid, you wouldn’t have spent so long hiding from me. If I was your kid you’d be able to look me in the eye. And you definitely wouldn’t avoid the subject like the plague until it suits you.”

  “Stop pushing me,” Go whispered. Her face was inches away. “My skinners have never failed to get a secret out of someone. So if I want your software, I don’t need your permission to get it.”

  Neither budged.

  Soq wasn’t scared. Probably they should have been. But all they could think about was a series of exhilarating sentences that had been playing through their head for over an hour:

  I can conquer this city. I know all its secrets. My head is crammed with a thousand heads’ worth of knowledge. I know more than Go will ever know.

  “It’s in your interest to do this,” Soq said, finally. “This is what you want, isn’t it? Why you’re gathering intel on the empties? So you can take them over, rent them out, right? I’m handing you all of that, every empty, all at once. Or you could spend months, years, maybe, paying a small army of grid grunts to do it. This is a ton of money I’m offering you. You would be a direct rival to every shareholder in Qaanaaq. You’d show them that their days are numbered. I’m not trying to pick a fight. I’m trying to make sure you see this clearly.”

  A commotion from the deck: eight soldiers boarded, flanking a man who was plainly their prisoner. So old and frail that Soq thought it must be Podlove, but no—the skin was darker, the clothing cheaper. Go held up her hand impatiently, putting the conversation on pause, and opened the door to the cabin.

  “We’ve got him,” hollered the lead soldier from that squad, waving her brass-knuckled hand. Flashing a smile as wide as the horizon. With Dao dead, Go’s lieutenants would be angling for the spot at her side, and this one had just scored a major coup. Soq remembered the tireless jockeying for position at the slide agency, the clamor and barely concealed excitement when an accident took out one of the senior messengers. Soq had been into it then, had jockeyed with the best of them. Soq wasn’t, now.

  “Bring him to me,” Go called.

  He came slowly across the deck, up the steps to the cabin. Blinking like he was about to sneeze. The old man, Soq saw. The one from the video. The one who killed the shareholder’s grandson. Of course.

  “Ankit helped you find him?” Soq asked.

  “No,” said Go. “I have many ways of getting what I want.”

  The lead soldier entered, bringing the old man. Whose face, Soq was surprised to see, showed no fear. His hands were cupped like a Buddha statue’s; like a saint’s on the way to martyrdom.

  “Open up a line to Podlove,” Go said. The soldier tapped her jaw once—the call had been cued up already; the ability to anticipate her general’s orders was an excellent Prime Toady quality.

  On the screens, Podlove jerked his head up, looked out his window like he knew he was being watched, trying to make eye contact with Go through her drone. And then he smiled. His window ionized.

  “You’re good,” said their prisoner. “He had a whole fleet of drones after me. Piggyback software leapfrogging every cam in Qaanaaq.”

  “He puts his faith in machines,” Go said. “I think people are just as . . . useful. And no one gave you permission to talk.”

  “He’s not answering,” the soldier said.

  Go unstrapped her sidearm, aimed it at the old man’s head. “Send him a picture of the two of us.”

  Soq counted. Eleven seconds later, the soldier said, “Call coming in.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Podlove,” Go said when a new hiss through the cabin’s surround speakers told her the line was live.

  “Has his usefulness come to an end so soon?”

  “He’s not working for me,” Go said. “He never was.”

  “Of course that’s what you would say,” Podlove said. “That’s what I’d say, too, if I knew I had gone too far.”

  Go laughed. “For that scenario to make sense, I’d have to be afraid of you. And I’m not.”

  “And yet. Here we are. You called me for a reason, I must presume. Perhaps you just got word about your tube worm cake shipment? Pity all that food went to waste, but I’m afraid that is just the first of many such . . . interruptions.”

  Go laughed again. “You think my situation is so dire that one sunken tube worm skiff would have me calling you to beg? I had nothing to do with your grandson’s death. We may be at war, but we’re not monsters.”

  Podlove did not respond to this, but Soq heard skepticism in his silence.

  “I hunted down the man who did it,” Go said. “I found him when you couldn’t.”

  “Eventually, I would have. I wouldn’t have stopped until I did.”

  “He was heading for a mainland ferry.” The old man opened his mouth, as if to protest the inaccuracy of this, but then shut it into a smile. “You may have the resources for a worldwide hunt, but would you have the time? Either one of you might drop dead any day now. But now—here he is. All yours.”

  A pause. A hungry one. “In exchange for what?”

  “For nothing. He’s yours.”

  “Except that I have to come and take him. Or go collect him from somewhere, where your people will be waiting to ambush me.”

  “This isn’t a trap. It’s a gesture. I want to p
rove to you that we have an understanding. I didn’t do this. You and me, we’re on the same page. I am not trying to scorch the earth here. This is a guy with a grudge against you, for some fucked-up shit you did a long time ago. It has nothing to do with me. I have no interest in making this personal.”

  “Even if you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to my grandson, you did send soakers to hit two of my best managers. We’re not a syndicate, my darling.” Soq’s nostrils wrinkled at the archaic vulgarity of his misogyny. “You can’t treat us like we are and then expect us to believe you when you say we’re on the same page. To us, that was an unacceptable escalation.”

  Go sighed. “You’re right. I’m new to this.”

  “You’re not ready to play in the major leagues.”

  Soq and Go exchanged puzzled glances. The brass-knuckled soldier pantomimed hitting a baseball.

  “You New Yorkers love your baseball metaphors, never mind that no one else left alive on Earth knows what the hell you mean by them. Nevertheless. I am making this peace offering. Tell me how you want him. I’ll deliver him in whatever way would make you feel the most safe, the least like I’m setting you up for something. I can put a hood over his head, drop him in a canoe, push it off and let it drift in your direction. I can decapitate him right here and now, if you’d prefer. Bloody my hands so you don’t have to. Isn’t that how you operate?”

  “Come to me,” Podlove said after an instant of skilled internal debate, the consummate executive assessing a thousand scenarios. “The lobby of the Salt Cave. Don’t bring an army.”

  “Agreed.”

  Podlove chuckled. “That was fast. You’re not frightened to march into enemy territory unprepared?”

  “This is a parley, isn’t it? A presumably safe negotiation?”

  “You presume I see you as an honorable opponent. You’ve already broken the rules of engagement, such as they are. How do you know I won’t do the same?”

  “I don’t,” Go said. “This is a gesture of trust. I want you to know I had nothing to do with what happened to your grandson.”

  Sudden silence from the speakers.

  “Son of a bitch hung up,” Go said.