Blackfish City(36)

“Thank you,” he said.

“And anyway, you paid for it already.”

“I did?”

“You gave me something just as valuable,” she said. “I saw you fight. Hao Wufan. Shame about him.”

“Terrible,” Kaev said, lowering his face to the broth, letting the steam warm him, wondering what shameful fate had befallen the boy.

“Some people aren’t ready for success,” she said. “You fight beautifully, though. I’ve seen you before.”

“I told you,” he said. “I’m old. Been fighting forever.”

“A journeyman,” she said, and so she was a true fight follower, someone who could appreciate his role in the ecosystem. A rare thing. He still got recognized sometimes, and that was always nice, but most casual fight fans considered him a chump, a loser. “The noodles are a belated payment, for all the pleasure I took in watching you fight.”

“The pleasure is always mine, believe me,” he said, and handed back the empty bowl. “Thank you. The noodles were delicious.”

Eventually she too departed, taking back the tarp with an apology, telling him she didn’t want to see him there when she returned in the morning.

It happened soon enough after her departure that he knew they’d been waiting for it. Twelve men, dressed in the nondescript black of syndicate security, clutching obvious weaponry inside their jackets. One of them was Dao, who smiled and did not hurry. Kaev’s thigh muscles tightened, preparing to leap into horse stance. He took off his hood, which would impair his peripheral vision. Cold wind sharpened his senses.

Something came up from the water across the Arm from him. A sea lion, he thought at first, turning around, because there were lots of those that lived on Qaanaaq’s garbage and fish-gut castoffs. But it was big, bigger than any sea lion, bigger than any animal Kaev had ever seen alive, up close, and white—

The polar bear opened his eyes and looked at Kaev.

In the instant of that eye contact, Kaev felt like he had broken free of his body. A happiness surged through him, warm as the sun, blissful as a thousand orgasms. The peace he’d felt while sitting there had been ten times greater than the joy of fighting, but this new sensation was ten times greater than that peace had been.

“Hello, Kaev,” Dao said. He and his soldiers had their backs to the grid edge; they could not see the polar bear. “You’ve been sitting here for a long time. I’ve got to presume that means you wanted us to find you.”

But Kaev could not hear him.

We are one, he thought, eyes locked with the animal’s.

And it felt: Different. Stable. Like if he looked away, like if he took a step back, it would not diminish. Like now that he’d found it, now that they’d recognized each other, they were linked, and nothing on earth could break that connection. Like nothing could hurt him anymore ever. Like nothing confused him; like he saw how the world worked in a whole new way.

“Dao,” he said, blinking, turning. “You should probably leave now.”

The man laughed. A couple of his soldiers followed suit. “That’s not going to happen, Kaev.” He held up a handful of zip ties. “Are you going to let us put these on you? Or is it going to be a whole thing?”

“You need to leave. Now.”

More laughter. Kaev took a step forward. One of Dao’s men shot his arm out, flung something, a sharpened shard of windscreen glass, Qaanaaq’s own homegrown answer to the shuriken. It struck him in the cheek with terrifying precision—a warning shot, but a stern one.

Kaev grunted in pain, but the grunt was bigger than him. With a roar, the polar bear pulled itself out of the water mere feet from where the men stood. Water coursed off it, like it was made of water. And it was as fast as water, as implacable. It swung its bulk around to knock the man into the sea and then dove in after him, all before any of the others had had time to aim and shoot.

And Kaev shut his eyes and he was in the water, he was biting into the man’s arm and pulling him down, down, until he could feel the warmth of the geothermal cone, until the man ran out of air and opened his mouth and breathed in water, and the bear released him and swam for the surface—

Kaev opened his eyes to see the men scrambling, aiming weapons into the water. Nervous, yelling, unsure where the bear would emerge next. And Kaev knew, somehow, that the bear could see what he saw, could tell where the men were standing. So it knew the safest place to emerge, to take them by surprise. In the instant before it did, Kaev gave out a shout. He ran at them so that they turned, aimed weapons. One of the men was yanked back before he could pull the trigger, the bear grabbing hold of his leg and pulling him into the water, breaking that leg effortlessly and then the other one, and Kaev was crouching down to avoid the shots from the others, slamming into another man, knocking him off balance, taking the gun from his hands and turning it toward the man’s accomplices, holding down the trigger so that bullets splattered indiscriminately.

He grinned at the fear on their faces, caught between him and the bear. Two expert killing machines. One thing, one organism. Acting in concert in ways that had nothing to do with language, planning, rational thought. One animal. Dao was yelling orders—Focus on the bear!—even as he ran for safety, saving his own skin—but they were not enough; these people with their mighty weapons and separate fragile minds could not get past themselves, could not trust one another, could not know what someone else was supposed to do. One bullet, two, struck the bear. Kaev felt the pain of them, but he also felt the animal’s comforting fearlessness.