Tool of War

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Mahlia handed over the scream sheets without comment after that. Tool read them in silence.

  One day, he returned from a hunting swim in the bay, bearing fishing rods. As he dragged heavy barbed hooks out of his skin, he commented, “I took them from fishermen on the pier. They were not expecting a fish such as I.”

  After that, on certain days, Tool would announce that it was a fine day for fishing and would send her out along the seawall to fish and watch the shipping, ordered to return with the names of all the arriving ships memorized.

  Mahlia would scramble out along the seawalls with her pole, pick a spot, and set herself up. On occasion, Tool would emerge from the waves below, having swum for miles across the open Seascape waters.

  The first time she chose an observation spot, Tool told her it wasn’t good and made her move farther down the seawall, near its very tip.

  “It’s all the same view!” Mahlia protested. “There’s the Seascape! There’s the ocean! There’s the ships! There’s the seagulls and their crap! What’s the difference?”

  But Tool made her move anyway.

  Mahlia decided that Tool just liked swimming, and wanted to swim farther. But it was a pain for her. Clambering along the seawall wasn’t easy. Her prosthetic hand had been damaged in the fighting and didn’t grip the way it should have. The seawall, too, was uneven—piled stone and mortar and broken concrete, sharp with barnacles, slimy with mosses. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to depend on the luxury of having two reliable hands until her prosthetic stopped working right.

  “Why won’t you tell me what you’re looking for?” she asked one day when Tool surfaced from the waters.

  “I told you,” Tool said. “I am looking for the names of ships. Have you memorized their names?”

  They were positioned far out on the very edge of the seawall. Mahlia had her pole propped against a rock, but she’d given up on actually fishing. Tool could catch more fish in a few minutes in the water than she could catch all day. Instead, she propped the pole with its line trailing into the water, to make herself look as if she were a native Seascaper, but no longer bothered baiting her hook.

  Tool tucked himself into a protected V of balanced concrete slabs and turned his attention to the shipping as it came through the first of the seawall breaks.

  “What ships have arrived so far?” he asked.

  “Saltillo. MingXing. Pride of Lagos. Lucky Lady. Sea Dragon. A couple of big fishing ships—”

  “I don’t care about those.”

  “How long are we going to do this?”

  “You should bait your hook.”

  “What’s the point? You catch more fish in a minute than I do in a day.”

  “The point is to look as if you are fishing.” Tool focused on the waters, then lashed forward, his hand striking the waters with a sharp report. He came up with a small silvery fish. Ripped it in half. “Bait with this.”

  Mahlia gave him a dirty look, but she hooked the bloody mess on her line. “You said you were going to fight, but we’re just sitting here. How are you going to climb into the sky if you don’t ever do anything?”

  “Murdering one’s gods is not a simple task. In the meantime, we are fishing. Cast your line.”

  “We fish all the time, now.”

  “What ships arrived yesterday?”

  “I already told you. Quit asking.”

  “Maybe I forgot.”

  “You never forget.”

  “True.” Tool smiled contentedly.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re annoying?”

  “If you wish to be a child, go find children to play with. I will fish.”

  “I’m not a child.” Mahlia gave him a hard look.

  “No. You are simply human.” Tool glanced over at her, a dark humor showing in his expression. “And that means there are still a few things I can teach you. Do you know why I was able to take the Drowned Cities, when all the humans before me failed?”

  “Because you’re a military genius?”

  “It’s because I understand what is necessary to win the greater war. The other warlords had great passion for their fighting. They had fervent soldier boys. They had superior positions. Impregnable, some of them. I, on the other hand, knew how to wait.” He smiled slightly, his eyes hooded. “So. Now I wait. And you, cast your line.”

  Mahlia gave him another dark look. They were quiet awhile, Mahlia fishing, Tool watching the shipping traffic.

  “Enjoy it,” Tool said.

  “Enjoy waiting?”

  “Peace. Soon it will end.”

  Something in Tool’s tone made Mahlia glance over. “Why do you say that?”

  Tool was looking out at the horizon, his ears cocked forward, his nose twitching. Mahlia followed his gaze. A clipper ship was clearing the first of the Seascape’s breakwaters.

  Tool was focused on it, intensely watchful in a way that he hadn’t been since—

  Since the kill squads attacked.

  Mahlia felt a chill. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Tool didn’t reply, just kept staring at the ship with an intentness that reminded Mahlia of a tiger stalking prey.

  “Is that the ship you were looking for?”

  Tool was growling now, ears laid back and fangs showing.

  “Tool?”

  Tool’s growling increased as he tracked the ship. “Sometimes, Mahlia, waiting for the right moment is more important than the strike itself: the where, the when, the how. Children lash out; warriors plan. That is why you humans are so easily conquered.”

  “What’s so important about that ship?”

  “It does not concern you.”

  “I think it does!”

  Tool’s scarred gaze settled upon her. “Our paths must separate now, Mahlia. Where I go, you cannot follow. What I must do now, I must do alone.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought we were in this together.”

  Tool shook his head. “No. I am alone. And you, too, must seek your own path. One separate from me. You have fulfilled your obligations to me, Mahlia. It is time you were on your own. And safe.”

  “What’s so special about that ship?”

  “Forget everything about me, Mahlia. Leave the Seascape. Leave this place, and never come back.”

  “But—”

  “In the den I dug for you, there is an oilskin bag that I have stocked for your future needs. I was able to steal money from the ships here. Yuan and Bank of Seascape dollars. It is for you. It is no clipper ship, but it should help you find a niche in a place far away from here. With the money, you can buy passage anywhere in the world. Do so. Disappear.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I will hunt my gods.”

  “I want to help you!”

  “You have given too much already, Mahlia. Here, our paths separate.”

  Before she could protest again, he dove into the water. Mahlia glimpsed his shadow shape in the deeps, swimming strongly, and then he was gone entirely, lost to the ocean, leaving Mahlia to stare, abandoned, after him.

  She followed the distant clipper ship with her eyes, trying to discern what had so entranced Tool.

  Ignoring his final words, she gathered up her fishing pole and made her way farther down the seawall, to its very tip, trying to get a better view.

  The clipper ship was slicing cleanly through the gap in the last seawall break, hydrofoils spraying salt water. Clean and sleek, leaving a triple V of wake curling behind.

  Mahlia reached the waterline just as the clipper swept past. On its prow, the logo of Patel Global gleamed prominently, and beside it, proudly visible, the ship’s name:

  Dauntless.

  29

  TOOL FLOATED IN the warm waters of the Seascape, down below the Dauntless, listening.

  The boy had changed.

  No longer the skinny, scarred, feral child of Bright Sands Beach, who had survived by tearing copper from the guts of rusting ancient oil tankers, but someth
ing else entirely. Assured. Professional. Part of the crew of a globe-sailing clipper ship. Well fed.

  Extraordinary to see the changes wrought by time and distance from the boy’s original broken place and broken family. Extraordinary to see how humans grew and mutated into something utterly unlike their childhood selves.

  The clipper ship was busy unloading. Tool watched from deeps, patient. He needed to speak to the boy without eyes and ears listening. It wouldn’t do to pursue him into the Seascape.

  But so far the young man wasn’t disembarking. Even now, after all the cargo had been unloaded, he still lingered on deck, bantering with the last of the crew, seeing off humans and augments as they caught their own launches to the shore, all of them excited to return to families or else spend their paychecks on the liquor and flesh of Salt Dock.

  But the former ship breaker lingered.

  Perhaps the boy kept no permanent home here. Certainly, the Seascape was not his native port as it was for the rest of the crew. So perhaps the boy lived aboard the ship, and would not debark at all. That would be ideal. Tool would wait until the midnight watch, when there was but a skeleton crew, and then make his approach.

  Even now, the last of the augments were leaving the ship, two hulking creatures, laughing with the others, climbing down the ship’s ladders to their launch.

  Tool felt his lip curl in disgust. He sank deeper beneath the waves so that the augments would not sense his presence. They looked so… content.

  Tool could barely control his contempt.

  They lived amongst humans as slaves, and thought of themselves as anything but. Disgusting that they did not see themselves for what they were. Tool felt rage rising, and was surprised by its sudden surge. He had thought himself no longer victim to these reactions after passing through the crucible of Mercier’s attack in Salt Dock.

  But these ones particularly offended him. So contentedly loyal. So obedient. These ones would undoubtedly lay down their lives for their owners, and never hesitate. It was their duty to serve. They drooled to submit to the whims of humanity. If they were challenged on their obedience, they would most likely claim their owners were worthy, deserving loyalty.

  Are you jealous that you did not have masters such as theirs? Tool wondered. Is that why they enrage you so?

  He forced down the churning emotions. The augments weren’t worth his attention. They were dogs. He was not. They obeyed. He did not.

  That’s right, Tool thought, watching as they boarded the launch with the rest of the humans. Go on. Go with your owners, who will sacrifice you in an instant if it serves their purposes. Go.

  If they loved their slavery, it was no business of his. Let them have their contented subservience.

  The launch sped shoreward, leaving the young man still on deck, chatting with a few last companions. He looked well, Tool thought. Stronger, taller, darker. More assured. Hardened and developed from his time on ships. Taller, and not only because someone had apparently been feeding him. He seemed to stand up straighter as well.

  There was less fear in him. A different creature entirely.

  When Tool had known him, the boy had been constantly alert and crouching. A child who knew that he was in danger at all moments, and was attuned to it. The boy’s father had bullied and abused him, and the weak were always prey on Bright Sands Beach, but the boy had been a survivor.

  Seeing him brought back memories. The scents of salt and iron and rust; beach fires sending up black smoke like signal flares; oil residue sheening the shallows, multihued, staining the sands; colorful flakes of plastic wire sheathing tumbling in the beach foam and waves, floating and bobbing, forming long lines of debris on oil-soaked shores—a boy, skinny and desperate, and willing to risk anything to escape.

  “No,” the young man was saying, “we can clean the hull at the same time as we do the hydrofoil inspection. That last storm put more torque on the foils than I would have liked.”

  “Thank the Fates they held,” a crewman commented.

  “We’ll inspect them this week,” he said. “Maybe refit early, depending on what we find.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll take care of it, Mr. Lopez.”

  Sir? Mister? Tool listened, fascinated. The boy had done well for himself. Not simply a young sailor grudgingly accepted amongst others, but someone who had gained respect.

  Tool peered up through the waters, trying to see if he wore some insignia of rank, but the waves made it too difficult. Even picking out the conversation at this depth was a trial. He swam closer, rising through the waters to gain better vantage.

  The young man continued. “And have Mills scrub out the oxygen exchangers and change the membranes on the dive masks. The last time I was down, I swear I tasted mold.”

  “He says he already did it.”

  “Will he say that if I run the air through chem analysis?”

  Chuckles all around.

  The sound of another launch approaching interrupted Tool’s observations. He sank deeper beneath the waves, swam a little more distant, scattering schools of fish. At a safer vantage he surfaced, the barest part of him above the waterline, twitching his ears, listening without the impediment of water. From this distance, he could easily be mistaken for a bit of debris, or a dead animal. A seal, perhaps…

  The approaching launch was fast and sleek, a knife blade in comparison with the lumbering crew launches he had been watching. Not some old barge, baggy and clumsy and rusted and exhausted from the labors of ferrying sailors into port. This was a gleaming dagger boat, fast and nearly silent except for the hiss of its hull as it shot across the waves, electric props churning the water into foam behind it.

  It closed on the clipper ship, sleek and assured and expensive, much like the girl who piloted it. She slewed the dagger boat hard at the last moment, sending up a spray of water and coming about smartly, then killed the motor.

  The sleek watercraft settled into the waters, bobbing wildly as wake slapped and rebounded from the hull of the Dauntless.

  “Nailer!” she called up.

  Nailer turned and waved to her, his face breaking into a wide grin as he leaned over the rail. “Nita! I’ll be right down!”

  The girl, too, had grown and changed, as humans were wont to do. Less of a girl, more of a woman. She had passed out of puberty, and was now clearly one of the young humans who existed in that strange twilight space of near-majority that the wealthy sometimes stretched out for years. But there were other differences as well.

  When Tool had known Nita Patel, she, too, had been a frightened soul. On the run. Alone and desperate. Clinging to any bit of flotsam that might assure her survival. Now, though, she was in her own element, clearly. It showed not just in her ease and expertise with the dagger boat, but in the way the ship’s crew stiffened and came to attention and saluted her when they realized who had arrived.

  All except Nailer Lopez. Nailer only smiled and waved, pleased and casual, and finished his final instructions to the crew. He clambered down the debarkation ladder and dropped his crew bag in the dagger boat’s cockpit, before turning to Nita.

  An embrace.

  And not an insignificant one. Their lips met. A kiss. And this, too, was charged with familiarity and significance.

  Even after the kiss, they held close to each other, lost to the crew above, unaware of anything around them.

  Interesting.

  Useful.

  For the first time since Mercier had rained fire down on him, Tool allowed himself a twinge of optimism as stratagems became available that he had not anticipated. But still, he wouldn’t allow himself too much hope. Both of these young people had changed greatly since he had known them. Perhaps they had changed completely.

  Too, Nailer’s connection to Nita created certain logistical problems of its own. Her dagger boat was far too fast for Tool to pursue on his own, and if they were headed to Patel Global’s private island arcology, the intense security there would make approaching even more difficult. />
  He swam closer to the dagger boat. He had little hope of clinging on. This sleek boat, with its powerful motors and knifelike little hydrofoils, would fly across the waves like an osprey. He needed to find a way aboard, and yet there was no subtle way to do so, without drawing more attention.

  He watched, irritated, considering options. Nailer was securing his crew bag and pulling in the buoys as Nita took the wheel and eased the dagger boat away from the looming shape of the Dauntless. In a moment she would engage the engines, and they would be lost to him.

  Long ago, a trainer had once told him, “If you don’t like the tactical situation, make a better one.”

  Tool submerged and swam beneath the dagger boat.

  Nita shifted Meethi out of neutral as Nailer unhooked the Dauntless’s ladders and hauled in the buoys that had protected the hull from the bulk of the clipper ship.

  She felt a small catch in her throat as she watched him work. He was so quick and assured, so comfortable here now.

  Sometimes, though, she was struck with an unnerving double vision, able to see this version of him in the here and now, but overlaid with the memory of what he’d been like when they’d first met: the cruel and feral and alien creature, tattoos on his face and scars on his body and nothing but hunger in his eyes.

  That old version of him was still there, just as he’d kept the scavenge crew tattoos that marked his cheeks. She could still remember him and Pima, his fierce associate, their knives drawn, eager to cut off her fingers.

  And yet even then, she hadn’t felt afraid of Nailer.

  Or perhaps she’d been afraid, but she hadn’t blamed him or Pima for what they planned to do to her. Their violence wasn’t personal. It was just hunger. Just a desperate hunger that held them completely in its grasp. Nita wouldn’t have blamed a tiger in the jungle for pouncing on her, any more than she blamed those two for how they planned to harvest the gold from her fingers.

  But then she’d seen something else in Nailer’s eyes, and felt a bloom of hope that she might be safe—

  “Hey!” Nailer waved a hand. “You ready?”