Our Lady of the Ice

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  “I don’t know.”

  Marianella frowned. Luciano set his book down in his lap and looked over at Sofia with a calm expression. She should not have come out here with Marianella and Araceli. It was stupid—she didn’t need to eat. Marianella barely did. And yet she held on to those silly human practices anyway.

  Her thoughts flickered. The maintenance drones were nearby. Sofia tilted her head back and saw them sliding across the top of the dome, dark against the white lights. They dropped down, rotors whirring and stirring up a faint, chilly wind that rippled across the garden’s plants. As they moved closer, Sofia could see that the drone in the middle was propped up by the other two, wires strung around their bodies so that they carried it in a sort of net.

  “What is this?” She stood up, anxiety twisting in her system. Araceli and Marianella gathered up the remains of their lunch and stepped back, giving the drones space to land.

  “One of them’s been damaged,” Marianella said.

  “Then why didn’t the city take care of it?” Sofia frowned. “These are city drones.”

  “If they’re sentient,” Luciano said, “perhaps they don’t trust the city.”

  Sofia glanced at him. Yes, she supposed that was a possibility, but the sentient drones had been good about keeping their senti­ence a secret.

  The three drones landed, the metal of their exteriors gleaming. Sofia rushed forward and knelt beside them. She pressed her hand to the closest drone’s back, looking for any information.

  Damaged, the drone told her, in the zero-one language of computers. Virus.

  Sofia went still. “A virus,” she whispered. Then she shook her head, sent the question surging through her fingers. What sort of virus?

  Never seen before. You must look.

  “What is it?” Araceli moved closed. “Is something happening?”

  “They say the middle one is damaged.” Sofia kept her hand on the drone’s back. “A virus.”

  “Like the virus that’s causing the blackouts?” Marianella frowned. “Alejo—” Her voice trembled a little. “Alejo told me that’s what the city thought was causing it.”

  “I haven’t seen anything like that.” Sofia hadn’t taken her hand away, and the drone was still surging information up into her brain, A virus, you must check. “We need to look at it. Araceli, you’ll help. I don’t want to risk uploading it into myself somehow.”

  She pulled her hand away. Her fingers tingled. The infected drone looked the same as the others. But she knew the problem wouldn’t manifest itself on the drone’s exterior.

  “Take it to the workshop,” she said, and straightened up. Then, to the other two drones, she used the city command: “Stay. Await instructions.”

  Their lights fluttered, an unusual pattern she’d only seen in the sentient drones. It meant affirmation.

  Araceli unwound the wires from the infected drone. It was too heavy for her to carry on her own, but when Luciano moved to help her, Marianella stepped forward and said, “Please, let me. I doubt I can get infected.”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” Sofia said.

  Marianella looked over at her. “It’s less likely than with Luciano.”

  Sofia didn’t say anything. This virus wasn’t going to move through external contact; robotic viruses never did. They didn’t work that way. But Sofia was always irrational around Marianella.

  Marianella and Araceli lifted the drone and carted it toward the workshop. Sofia and Luciano followed, unspeaking. Sofia was nervous about what they were going to find. She should have done this much earlier. But none of the maintenance drones had ever mentioned a virus until today.

  Luciano opened up the workshop door so Marianella and Araceli could take the drone inside. They set it on the worktable. The drone’s lights flickered and sputtered to life after a few seconds’ pause, and the maintenance drone’s metal shell gleamed.

  Araceli pulled over a rotary display. “Safer than hooking any of you to it directly,” she said, and she took a deep breath and plugged in the display. The code clicked into place, all the usual lines of it, all those instructions for how to care for the city. The sentient drones knew to hide their sentience deep down—you had to go looking for it. That was how they’d stayed hidden from the city.

  “I don’t see anything,” Sofia said.

  Araceli didn’t answer. She crouched down so that she was eye level with the rotary display, frowning at it. The code clicked by. Sofia stood behind her, watching, looking for anomalies.

  “There!” Sofia said, and her hand slammed the stop button. The display froze midchange, but she could still see the line. “That’s not supposed to be there.”

  “You’re right.” Araceli turned back the code manually. Marianella crowded in next to her. “That is weird. It’s definitely not something that sprang up naturally—”

  Something not related to sentience, she meant. Sofia could have told her that.

  “—but it’s not typical code for the maintenance drones. It’s not telling the drone to do anything. That’s what’s strange.”

  “It’s a portal,” Marianella said.

  Sofia looked at her. “What do you mean, a portal?”

  “I put something similar in my own drones,” Marianella said. “It’s an easy way of reprogramming them, a way of hiding the reprogramming so that no one else can get to it. It’s not a virus, though. Funny they’d use that word.”

  Because it’s making them sick, Sofia thought, although she didn’t say it out loud. “Can you access the portal?”

  “I think so. I’ll just need a keyboard.”

  Araceli nodded and sprang up to grab one. But Luciano had beat her to it. Araceli plugged the keyboard into the drone, and Marianella started tapping away. The rotary display clicked out her progress. This was deep, almost as deep as the sentience.

  “There,” she said. Then, “Oh my God.”

  “Christ,” Araceli said.

  Sofia didn’t say anything, even though she saw it too. Such a simple thing, a short line, instructions like the sort that had been inside her for years and years, instructions she couldn’t help but listen to.

  It was an override, and rather clumsily done, which meant it could only have been entered in by a human. An override on the instructions to maintain the city’s power supplies.

  Don’t maintain, those instructions said. Destroy.

  Destroy a little at a time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ELIANA

  Eliana opened the door to her office for the first time in over a month. The air smelled musty and old, despite the lingering chill. It was as cold as outside, since the radiator had been shut off in her absence.

  Everything looked the same as she had left it. The files were still stacked on her desk, waiting to be tucked away in the metal cabi­net. The empty coffee bag still sat on the counter next to the sink. The chair behind her desk was still pushed out from when she’d stood up.

  It was disconcerting, being back here, starting work again, when Diego was dead. She’d put it off for weeks after she’d left the amusement park, and for a while she thought she might not go back at all. She had her money, didn’t she? Money to get her off the mainland—something Diego would never get to do now. But she needed something to fill her time, because otherwise, she worried about the future.

  She’d tried filing for her visa, but a week later, she’d received a typed note politely informing her that all applications would be held until the start of spring, when the passenger ships began running again. Eliana had crumpled the note up into a ball and tossed it at the wall of her apartment. Wasn’t that just like this place, to make her wait until she had the money, and then wait until the ships were running? And God only knew what would happen between now and spring, with Sofia scheming in the amusement park. Another reason, of the hundreds of reason
s, to leave: Eliana didn’t want to be here when Sofia finally put her plan into action. She also didn’t want anyone she cared about to be here, but when she’d gone to Maria and Essie, they’d dismissed her concerns. Essie because of her devotion to Independence and Maria because this was, as she said, her home, the only place she knew. And anyway there was no way the robots could take over everything. “You’re just being paranoid,” she said. “You should quit working as a PI when you get to the mainland. Otherwise you’ll start seeing conspiracies there, too.”

  Eliana shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on the coatrack. She switched on the radio. Threw out the coffee bag. Stuck the GONE ON VACATION sign into her desk. Put the files away.

  As good as new, for the rest of the uncertain winter. Of course, she needed clients. That had been the other reason for coming back, to save more money to expedite the visa process. She knew how Hope City worked. You could get pretty much anything if you paid someone enough.

  Eliana pulled out a notepad and wrote an advertisement to put in the classified section of the Hope City Daily. Suspicious about your husband’s fidelity? Worried about an employee’s honesty? I can help. Private investigator, fully licensed. It was hokey, but that’s all she wanted from her work right now, to tail some cheating husband around to all the different motels in the city. After a moment’s thought, she added, Very discreet.

  Writing that out reminded her of Marianella, the way she had stood by as Diego was attacked by a maintenance drone. She hadn’t even tried to help him.

  Eliana pulled out her typewriter and typed up the advertisement. Then she stuck it into an envelope along with the fifty cents it cost to place an ad in the newspaper, made out the address, added a stamp, and set the envelope on the corner of her desk for the mailman.

  The whole thing took fifteen minutes.

  “Oh, hell,” Eliana muttered. No one was going to come by her office, and she didn’t know if she could sit in here much longer, breathing in the thick musty air. Maybe she should open a window. She didn’t. Instead, she put her coat back on and slapped a sign on the door that said WILL RETURN IN FIVE MINUTES and walked down to the mailbox at the end of the block.

  It was nice to be out, nice to be moving—inasmuch as anything could be nice to Eliana these days. Quite a few people crowded along the streets, jostling one another, but Eliana knew that her grief set her apart. It was a knife that could slice through all the bustle of humanity, clearing a path for her. She was tainted.

  The same could be said for her knowledge about Sofia’s plans, that slow-growing crack in the glass of the dome. Her knowledge, and her willingness to believe it.

  She dropped the letter into the mailbox and stood for a moment, trying to decide if she should go back to her office. But if she didn’t, then what? She’d just wander back to her apartment, curl up on the sofa, listen to records, try not to think about Marianella or Diego or the city crashing down around her. She would fix her lunch knowing that her food had been distributed to the grocery store by fucking Sofia.

  The office was better.

  Eliana took her time walking back. The bustle distracted her. And when she came up the stairs, she found a man waiting outside her door. He wore a gray suit, a gray fedora, and he had golden eyes. She recognized him immediately.

  Juan Gonzalez.

  “I need to speak with you.” Then, lightly, “How was your holiday?”

  Eliana took a deep breath. “It was fine. Thank you.”

  “The files you gave me were most excellent,” he said, slipping off his hat. “And I’d love anything else you could bring me along those lines.”

  Eliana studied him closely, wondering if he knew they were fake. His face was so impassive, she couldn’t tell. His appearance here made her skin crawl.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how to get anything else,” she said. She unlocked the office door. She’d rather not have this conver­sation out in the hallway.

  They went in, bell jangling. Mr. Gonzalez draped his coat and hat over the coatrack, as always. Eliana tossed her own coat over the back of her chair.

  “Look,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what you expect me to do. I can’t exactly stake her out. I step foot into the amusement park, she knows I’m there, and it’s not like she ever leaves.”

  Mr. Gonzalez’s mouth turned up in a coy smile. “Ah, and that’s where you’re wrong, Miss Gomez. Our Sofia has come into some good fortune this last week, and I believe you’d have some luck lurking around a particular bar near the docks.”

  Eliana went rigid. She wondered if Mr. Gonzalez knew about Sofia’s plans, if that was why he’d had Eliana investigating her all along. Well, she wasn’t going up against Sofia. She was just going to get out before the city went to hell.

  “The Florencia, I believe it’s called?” He smiled again, more genu­inely this time.

  “I know it.” The words were thick in Eliana’s throat. “But the Florencia is Ignacio Cabrera’s place. I don’t know why you—”

  “Ah. Not anymore.” Mr. Gonzalez settled back in his chair and crossed his legs. “That was the good fortune I spoke of. She seems to have taken over Mr. Cabrera’s criminal dealings.”

  He was telling Eliana all this like he didn’t expect her to know. She let out a deep breath. She tried not to think about the last time she’d been to the Florencia, but it was no use. Her heart started to beat more quickly. Sweat prickled over her palms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not interested.”

  Mr. Gonzalez stared at her. His eerie light eyes bored into her thoughts.

  “I don’t want to mess with gangsters,” she said. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a man or an andie. Too dangerous. Come back when you think your wife’s cheating.”

  “I refuse to believe there’s so much infidelity in this city to allow that sort of thing to be your primary source of income.”

  “It is. Now, please leave.” Her body trembled, and she gripped the arm of her chair, trying to steady herself. She kept seeing Diego’s back, his skin ruptured, blood pooling around him. He didn’t even get a funeral, and she never got to watch the flames dance and the smoke and ash drift up through the narrow tube leading to the open air outside the dome. His soul, released to God. She didn’t get to see any of it, because Sofia had burned the bodies all together, at an abandoned factory on the edge of the dome. A sacrilege. Sometimes Eliana wondered what Marianella thought about it.

  Eliana didn’t care about sacrilege herself. She only cared that she never got to say good-bye to Diego. Not properly.

  Mr. Gonzalez was still watching her. “Are you sure you’re not interested?”

  “Yes, I’m sure!” she snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you?” Darkness moved over his features. She fumbled around for an excuse. “A friend of mine got hurt investigating a Cabrera case, and an andie’s a damn sight more terrifying than a human. So no, I don’t want to get involved.”

  For a moment she was afraid he wouldn’t leave, that he had been stringing her along all this time, that he worked for Cabrera, or he worked for the city, or he was here to take revenge for what Sofia had done. She expected him to pull out a gun and point it at her chest. But he only straightened his tie and said, “Forgive me, Miss Gomez. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Eliana’s trembling subsided. She slumped back in her chair and watched as he pulled on his coat and hat in smooth, easy movements. She wanted him out of her office. She wanted to forget everything that had happened these last few months—no, everything that had happened this last year. She wanted to go back to a time before she’d ever even met Diego.

  Mr. Gonzalez put his hand on the doorknob. Then he looked over his shoulder at her, his golden eyes unsettling.

  “I really would appreciate your help on this, Miss Gomez,” he said. “Sofia could bring a great deal of harm u
pon our city, if we let her.”

  If we let her, Eliana thought. It wasn’t a matter of letting her. It was going to happen.

  “You’ll have to find someone else,” Eliana said.

  Mr. Gonzalez smiled. “Yes, I suppose I will.”

  And then he left.

  * * * *

  Eliana almost didn’t bother returning to her office after lunch. No one other than Mr. Gonzalez had called or come by all morning, and it was dull sitting behind her desk, listening to the radio and reading over old case files to see if there were any former clients she could rope into a follow-up.

  But she didn’t want to risk losing out on a payment. An easy payment, not one that would anger Sofia.

  Instead, she ate a pair of empanadas from a stand on the street corner and then took the long way back to the office, twining through the narrow, crooked alleys between buildings. She held her breath as she walked up the stairs, but no one was there.

  Eliana didn’t know if she was relieved or not.

  She walked straight to the filing cabinet and opened up the L–R drawer. Not a lot of clients in there. She ran her thumb over the tabs. She’d intended to start calling about follow-ups, but none of these clients were worth it.

  Eliana slammed the drawer shut and opened the one above it. She told herself she wasn’t going for Juan Gonzalez’s file, but she pulled it out anyway. It was slim, not containing much more than an information sheet and some of her false notes from the first time she visited the amusement park. Still, she carried it over to her desk and looked over his information.

  Juan Gonzalez. There were probably a hundred different Juan Gonzalezes in the city, which made the name an appealing one, assuming you wanted to lie. The information sheet didn’t give her much. Just the name, an address, a telephone number, all his payment information. Nothing about a place of employment.

  She tapped her fingers against the desk. She’d always assumed, deep down, that Juan Gonzalez was working, through some convolution or another, for Cabrera, that Cabrera had wanted to check up on Sofia without her finding out. And she might still believe that, except the point was moot. Cabrera was dead. He’d lost. They’d all lost. If Mr. Gonzalez was still looking for Sofia’s weak spot, if he’d been hired by Cabrera, then Sofia had to know about him. She was a fucking andie, after all. She didn’t make mistakes.