Blackfish City(16)

“Evil has come to Qaanaaq,” the weird old woman said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ankit said, smiling. Fyodorovna never let them say even the most remotely negative thing to her constituents, no matter how crazy or malevolent they were. God forbid some fundie lunatic decide she hated her, start putting up flyers, spouting web hate.

“I want to know what she’s going to do about it,” Maria said.

“Did you submit a notice on her page? You know she takes constituent notices very seriously.”

“I will do so,” Maria said. “And then I will come back to find out what she’s going to do about it.”

“Great,” Ankit said, wondering just what evil had stirred up the wasps in the woman’s head this time. Islamic or Israeli refugees bearing insidious infidel ideas, most likely, or a fishmonger selling a new splice animal that a fundie sect had decided violated some weird sentence in Leviticus. Certainly not the breaks. Fundies didn’t care about that. Most of them welcomed it. Ankit thought of Taksa, blurred and happy and doomed.

Against her better judgment, Ankit asked, “What kind of evil?”

“That woman. That abomination. Who has wedded herself to Satan. Who rejects the dominion God gave us over the animals and uses witchcraft to merge with them. A killer whale and a polar bear. They have come here to kill, to hunt down decent Christians, and they must be stopped.”

“Of course.”

Ankit clicked off.

The monkey stood, screeched affably, and leaped fearlessly into the abyss. Ankit whimpered; reached out as if to save it. But the thing was safely scaling her neighbor’s window frame, scampering off to wander its city.





Kaev


Kaev walked in the direction of the vortex. Even with the windscreen, Qaanaaq’s gusts could be extreme, forming sudden swirling gyres that could push people off balance, stop them in their tracks, make a single step impossible. But one of Kaev’s favorite leisure activities was to walk with the wind, submit to it, let its violence and sudden shifts dictate his path. On reflection, he’d come to recognize it as an extension of the pleasure he took from fighting. The thrill of submission, of abdicating control, of letting the mind with all its capricious insatiable demands fall away. And it was good training. It took agility, dexterity, to keep from smashing into any of the people struggling against the wind. It took wisdom to know how and when to yield.

This was a good day. A strong wind, but not too cold. A belly full of noodles. No fights scheduled, but he was heading for a meeting with Go. She’d give him his next assignment. His money would last for two more months; as long as the fight came sooner, he’d be fine.

He’d always been fine. Somehow.

And then, boom. His good mood gone. Who could say why, something he glimpsed from the corner of his eye, a bratty child screaming at his mother, maybe, or a baby in its father’s arms, but it was always something, some reminder of what he didn’t have, what he would not be, and his mind seized hold of it, spun it out in a dozen directions, nightmare scenarios of suffering and pain, things that were probably fantasies but what if they were memories, glimpses he’d held on to from infancy, things he’d seen . . .

A woman interrupted the stream of hateful thoughts, but he was not grateful. She wore a ratty fur coat and a giant Russian-style fur hat and she was peering into his eyes, and what right did she have to make eye contact with him? He flinched away as if from an electric shock.

“You are American, no?”

“I’m—” he said, frightened, because who was she, why had she spoken to him? Did he look American? What did an American even look like? Was he American? “I’m.” And then a gibber, a bark, some loud panicky succession of syllables he couldn’t control, which made her flinch, which is what it did to everyone.

“Our people are in danger,” she said. “Evil has come to Qaanaaq. I need strong men. Men who are not afraid.”

Kaev wanted to laugh at the anachronistic use of the word men to mean people. But he could not laugh. I’m not strong, he wanted to say, and I’m afraid. All that came out was “I’m,” several times in quick succession.

“She is hunting us,” the old woman said. “That’s why she came. The woman who brings monsters. She blames us for righteously trying to wipe her sinful kind off the face of the earth.”

The orcamancer, then. His heart swelled, thinking of her. And her polar bear, hands and head caged. A fellow fighter had shown him photos, in the gym, a couple of nights ago. From the lowest level of the Sports Platform. She was real. She was in his city. He’d go to see her, soon. Not that he’d have anything in particular to do or say when he got there—he just wanted to see her for himself.

“Will you help me?”

Kaev fought the urge to yell at her, scold her, threaten to feed her to the orca himself, but his helpless years had taught him patience. She touched his sleeve. “God loves you,” she said. “Do you know that?”

Kaev nodded, because that was the expected answer, that was what fundies wanted to hear, but he didn’t believe God loved him. Quite the opposite, actually.

She pressed a scrap into his hand. “My church,” she said. “Come? Tomorrow night? We need you. Ask for Maria.”

And then she left, and he was grateful, except that now he felt bad for her, this sweet, sincere, deranged old woman, alone in a city where no one cared about her god, on a mission to destroy something beautiful, and if she thought that strong men could do something about the evil in Qaanaaq then she was even stupider than Kaev was.