Our Lady of the Ice

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  Luciano set his book down and looked up at her. A pale line cut across his face, old skin meeting new. “How was your meeting? I’m sorry I couldn’t accompany you.”

  Sofia looked at him for a moment, thinking on what Cabrera had told her. “Some of my supplies were ready.” She sat on the bench beside him. Then she folded her hands in her lap, crossed her legs at the ankles, and stared out at the empty pavilion where children and families used to wait in winding lines to ride the roller coaster. “He told me something interesting.”

  Luciano didn’t answer.

  “He told me you shot Diego Amitrano at Marianella’s house.”

  Silence. This time, Sofia waited. They were robots, and both of them could wait forever, but she knew—she thought she knew—that Luciano would answer eventually.

  In this case, she was right.

  “Yes, I did. I purposefully missed him.”

  “Why, Luciano? He recognized you.”

  Luciano hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wanted to. I wanted to shoot him. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to see him bleed.”

  “Because he’s human?”

  Luciano stared into the darkness, holding the book in his lap. A Prayer Book of Catholic Devotions. He must have gotten it at Marianella’s house.

  “Yes,” he said. “No. Not exactly.” Luciano’s features twisted. Like all robots, he was uncomfortable with in-betweens. He preferred things black-and-white. Binary. Sofia knew the world was easier to read that way.

  “You can tell me.”

  “It’s frightening.” Luciano glanced at her and smiled. “But I don’t think it’ll frighten you.”

  “Just tell me, Luciano.”

  “My programming tells me to help humans.”

  “I know.”

  “It tells me to help you, because you seem human. More human than the other robots, even what I remember of the other androids. I always do as my programming asks—how can I not? You know what it’s like.”

  Sofia thought about the parts sitting in Araceli’s foyer, the keys to her freedom. Some of them.

  “I never questioned my programming until recently. Working for Mr. Cabrera—it feels the way it did before, when the amusement park was open, when I was installed at the penthouse suite of the Iceside Hotel. Like I don’t have control over my life anymore.”

  Sofia nodded. “I know what you mean. But it won’t be like that for long. We have to make sacrifices before we can—”

  “I know.” Luciano smiled. “I don’t mind. But I was growing impatient. Isn’t that funny? I was never impatient at the Iceside.”

  Sofia studied him in the silvery darkness. They had all evolved in the years since the park had shut down, the androids most of all, even before they had begun breaking down and had to be placed in storage to await repairs, when the time was right. Their ­isolation, the fear of the cullings, the city growing like a cancer around them—this had jump-started their civilization. What would become their civilization.

  “You’re growing up,” she finally said, although that wasn’t quite the right phrase.

  Luciano lifted his face to her, his eyes clear and guileless. “I shot Mr. Amitrano because I wanted to see what it was like to hurt a human, instead of help one. I’d never hurt a human before, and I was afraid he was there for Marianella’s documents, and I was armed.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to kill him.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  They fell silent. Sofia was surprised to hear all this from Luciano, surprised to hear that he was rebelling, in his small ways, against his own programming.

  It brightened her spirits.

  “I told Cabrera that you were scavenging the houses of the dead, and you took the gun to protect yourself, and you aren’t good at shooting it.” She glanced at him. “He believed me.”

  Luciano didn’t react, only stared off in the darkness.

  “I don’t think it will be a problem for us.”

  “I hope it isn’t.”

  Sofia nodded. She sat for a moment longer, and then she stood up and left Luciano to his reading. As she walked away, she heard the soft sigh as the book fell open on his lap, as he turned through the pages.

  * * * *

  The Ice Palace echoed with Sofia’s footsteps. Fake moonlight glowed in the glass of the windows, although the bulbs had started to die recently. One window at the end of the hallway flickered, on and off and on and off.

  Sofia went down to operations. It was cool there from the fans set into the wall. Most of the computers were as defunct as the park rides, although Sofia had saved a handful, forbidding Araceli from ever breaking them open for parts. She hooked up to one of those computers now, connecting with the thick, old-fashioned cables she had been so familiar with forty years ago. Her programming came up on the dusty, mechanical rotary display. The lines of code clicked into place one after another. Sofia scrolled through them, reading each one in turn. Her programming was a strange thing. She was aware of it, inside herself, without ever thinking on it. Only when she hooked into a computer did she understand her programming entirely.

  She was vaguely aware that she wasn’t supposed to, that some earlier programming had been left in to keep her from exploring her own existence. In fact, the first time she ever looked at her programming was only twenty-two years ago, after eighteen years of living in the empty park. Reading through it had been a reve­lation. She had experimented, trying to change things, but doing so had made her dizzy and nauseated, the way humans got when they were ill. Later, after Araceli had joined them, she had explained to Sofia that it was a fail-safe, designed to keep robots from rebelling against humans.

  “I can change things for you,” Araceli had said. “Certain things. Small things.”

  It had been summer, the floodlights bright for the season. Araceli had been living at the park for a few months at that point, repairing what broken robots she could and trying to find her old happi­ness from the days when the park had been open, before she’d been forced to adhere to the city’s dictates. Sofia had not been sure about Araceli’s presence in the park until that moment. The next day, Araceli slivered away the basic programs put in place to ensure Sofia wanted to please humans. Araceli made a hmmn sound as she worked, and Sofia, awake with her insides glittering beneath the lights, said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think anything’s wrong.” Araceli squinted at the computer monitor. “Only that the programming isn’t what I expected. I’ve worked on your model before and you’re—different.”

  That had been the first sign that the robots were changing. Araceli had tried to place when it had begun, but it was impossible, since none of the robots had had any inclination to check their own programming until recently, not even the strange-minded maintenance drones. The city gathered robots only when they needed them, and so the robots had had to survive, instead of serve. And that had changed them.

  Ever since that day, Sofia checked her programming regularly, looking for transformations in the code. They were always small, subtle. “Evolution usually is,” Araceli had told her, and Sofia had latched on to that “usually.” She wanted to change completely, suddenly, violently. The new parts would allow her to do that, with Araceli’s help. With the parts, Araceli could customize her, shape her into whomever Sofia wanted to be.

  The code whirred through the display, stirring up a thin cloud of dust. Sofia didn’t bother to wipe it away, because it wasn’t so thick that she couldn’t see.

  There—her vision had changed slightly, become sharper. That was an evolution she had been tracking for some time. When the park had been open, her vision hadn’t been particularly important. She’d only needed to see well enough to identify clients and keep track of what she was doing. But the cullings had clarified her eyesight.

  Sof
ia made a note of the change.

  She continued to read through her programming, not noticing anything of interest. She was about three quarters of the way through when the door to the operations room clanked open. Sofia stopped the computer. She didn’t have to look to know who it was; she could smell the scent of her skin, human and atomic at once.

  “What are you doing?” Marianella slid the door shut.

  “I was looking at my code.” Sofia pulled out the wire and dropped it onto the table. Marianella stood beside her. She wore the nightdress Luciano’d brought back from her house, a flower-printed silk kimono over that. Her hair was mussed from sleep.

  Even in the harsh fluorescent lights of operations she looked beautiful.

  “Didn’t want me to see?” Her voice was light and teasing. She pulled a plastic chair up beside Sofia and sat down, tucking her ankles up against one of the chair legs and folding her hands in her lap. She stared at the rotary display, her head tilted, as if she could read the ghost of Sofia’s programming that way.

  “Do you want to see it?”

  Marianella shrugged. “I’ve seen it before. I just couldn’t sleep.” She sighed, and Sofia smiled to herself—it was endearing, how Marianella pretended to need sleep.

  “Where were you?” Marianella asked suddenly. “Just now? I came down earlier, but Araceli said you were gone.” She paused “Were you doing something dangerous?”

  Sofia hesitated. “No, not exactly.”

  Marianella’s fingers tensed, as if they wanted to curl around Sofia’s hand but Marianella wouldn’t let them. Another familiar gesture.

  “I tried to get Araceli to tell me,” she said. “But she didn’t.”

  “Araceli knows how to keep secrets.”

  “So do I.” Marianella’s expression was unreadable.

  “Of course you do.” Sofia reached over and took Marianella’s hand, wanting to comfort her, wanting to pull her close the way she had over ten years ago, a few months after Marianella had first arrived in Hope City, a lovely mainland girl who’d come to the park after she’d been damaged in a fall at her house.

  “So tell me where you went.” Marianella pulled her hand away and stared down at it, frowning. Her other hand hovered at her throat, at that cross necklace she always wore. “I’m worried about you, Sofia. I don’t want anything to happen—” She looked up. Her eyes glinted. She knew something. Sofia could tell. Something that made her angry.

  “You spoke to Luciano, didn’t you?” Sofia looked away. “What did he say?”

  “Something he wasn’t supposed to.” A pause. “He mentioned Ignacio Cabrera.”

  Sofia closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing with him, Sofia?” Marianella’s hand was on Sofia’s upper arm, her touch as soft as cotton. She leaned in close, her breath warm on Sofia’s skin. That little reminder of Marianella’s humanity. The humanity she was always trying to cling to, the way she clung to the Church. “He tried to kill me, don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I remember!” Sofia jerked away. “I’m not working with him because I think he’s such an upstanding citizen.”

  Marianella leaned back, stone-faced but red-cheeked, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “He can give me the equipment I need,” Sofia said in a flat voice. “The old vacuum tubes and the Teixeira micro-engines and the programming key. He’s gotten me most of what I need already. It’s an arrangement that I set up for that one purpose, to bring in old parts from the Teixeira building in Brazil. That’s all.”

  She watched Marianella’s face carefully as she spoke, studying her, the way she would a human. Marianella had enough humanity that this trick worked most of the time. It worked today. Maria­nella’s expression softened, just enough that Sofia could sense her sympathy.

  “I want to be free,” Sofia said. “This is the only way.”

  Marianella didn’t answer. She toyed with the cross at the end of her necklace, twisting the chain around her fingers. Sofia wondered if she was praying.

  “I could have helped you get the equipment,” she finally said. “I have the money—”

  “Yes, but you don’t have the connections.” Sofia kept her voice firm. “Cabrera can get anything from the mainland, if he likes you well enough. I had to ensure that he liked me. Once I have the rest of the parts and Araceli’s able to complete the procedure, I’ll be rid of him.”

  Marianella’s shoulders hitched. “Rid of him,” she whispered. “You don’t mean—”

  Sofia smoothed a loose strand of hair away from her face. “It would solve your problem, wouldn’t it?”

  Marianella went silent. She understood the desire for freedom, Sofia knew that, but she was a pacifist through and through, and just as she thought she could achieve freedom with agricultural domes and fund-raisers, she’d rather mollify Cabrera with monthly checks from her account for the rest of her life.

  Marianella stood up, dropping her hand to her side. The necklace settled back into place, gleaming at the base of her throat. She and Sofia stared at each other, intensity crackling between them. It always did.

  Marianella reached out and ran one hand down Sofia’s hair. Her fingers trembled. She seemed afraid.

  “Don’t become a monster like him,” she said.

  Sofia caught her hand and kissed its palm. Marianella sucked in her breath and looked off to the side, her face blank with guilt, but she didn’t take her hand away.

  “I won’t,” Sofia said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ELIANA

  The bell chimed against the door in Eliana’s office. She was hunched over the open drawer of her filing cabinet, rifling through old files—a former client had called because her husband had showed back up, and the client had a question about the legalities. Eliana looked up at the sound of the bell.

  “Oh,” she said, her heart pounding. “Hello, Mr. Gonzalez.”

  Mr. Gonzalez stepped into the office. He slid off his hat and hung it on the coatrack. His eyes glowed golden in the dome light beaming in through the window.

  “Miss Gomez,” he said. “I was in the neighborhood. I hope you have some information for me.”

  “What? Oh, sure. Yeah. Have a seat.” Eliana plastered on a bright smile. Mr. Gonzalez did not return it, only strode forward and dropped into the client chair. He watched her as she jammed the files back into the cabinet; she could feel it, his eyes boring into the back of her head like a gunshot.

  She whirled around. “You having a good day?” she asked, trying to buy herself some time.

  “Yes. What do you have for me?” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wallet fat with bills. Eliana slid into her seat behind her desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. She’d stuck her notebook in there. It was currently filled with two pages of fake notes that she’d scribbled down three nights ago.

  “Not a lot.” She set the notebook on the desk and opened it to the first page. Her handwriting looked huge and loopy and unfamiliar. “Normally I gather evidence—photographs, documents, that sort of thing. But it was pretty much impossible with a robot.”

  Mr. Gonzalez watched her and said nothing.

  Eliana took a deep breath. “I went down to the park, walked around a bit. It’s creepy.”

  “Yes, it’s certainly seen better days.”

  “That’s putting it lightly.” Eliana smiled at him, trying to be disarming. He kept his face blank. Not a single hint about who he really was or who he was working for or what he wanted with Sofia. “I couldn’t find this Sofia. I spent a good three hours wandering around the park, and the only robots I came across were those old-fashioned steam-powered maintenance drones, the ones the city doesn’t use anymore. You know the kind I’m talking about?”

  Mr. Gonzalez frowned slightly, the first show of emotion she’d seen from him, and nodded. “And that’s al
l you found?”

  Eliana shrugged. “None of the maintenance drones could talk. I tried. Probably looked like a fool, trying to carry on a conversation with one of those things—and, well, I guess I was a fool, seeing as they didn’t actually tell me anything.”

  “She was most likely hiding. You can go back, try again. I’ll pay you.”

  Underneath her desk, Eliana pressed her nails into the palm of her hand. “I didn’t see any signs there were andies living out there. She’s probably rusted into parts now. Or been stolen away by some rich guy—”

  “If that’s the case, then you’ll need to track her down. This is what I hired you to do.” He leaned forward over the desk, and Eliana kept her spine straight, didn’t recoil at all. The air shimmered with a sense of menace.

  “If you’re not interested in working with me,” Mr. Gonzalez said, “I can always take my business elsewhere.”

  Eliana surged with panic. She sat very still, but inside her chest her heart pounded and pounded. She’d come up with the false information so she could get rid of him and get the second half of his payment, but now she realized she hadn’t thought her plan through. If he went elsewhere, off to one of the big PI offices downtown, they’d find Marianella and they wouldn’t keep her secret. Digging up a cyborg was the sort of thing those assholes lived for. And Eliana couldn’t let that happen.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” she said, smoothing out her voice. She folded her hands on the desk. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to track her down. All due respect, she’s a robot, and most of my techniques won’t work with them. But I still might be able to help you.”

  “And how’s that?”

  Her brain whirred. He wanted a robot, and if she couldn’t deliver the robot itself, what was the next best thing? Information. And that was easy. Robots were nothing but information.

  “She was part of the amusement park, correct?”

  “I already told you that.”

  “Of course.” Eliana waved one hand dismissively and prayed that uneasy feeling she got from him wasn’t the result of him being high up in the city’s bureaucracy. “Here’s what I’m thinking. The city keeps all their old records, as I’m sure you know. I’ve got some contacts down there, so I may—and this is a big ‘may’—be able to yank some of her files.”