Blackfish City(43)
Go smiled. “I knew you’d see it that way. I want broader, more legitimate supremacy. I want to get off this boat.”
“What can I do for you?”
“The empty apartments. They’re the key to what I have planned. I need to establish a foothold. I want you to move into one. I’m asking all my warriors to do that, minus the ones I need for protection here on the barge, of course.”
“The empties are real?” Another one of those Qaanaaq stories that people loved to tell, right up there with the heat-resistant spiders that supposedly infested the geothermal pipes, and the threat of Russian invasion. Allegedly, it was common practice for shareholders to keep some of their holdings off the market. A sort of gentleperson’s agreement, to artificially inflate prices by increasing demand by keeping supply low. Soq didn’t doubt that the empties existed, but they were pretty sure their number was exaggerated, as was the extent of the conspiracy behind it. The more likely reason was the simple thoughtless wickedness of the rich, who had more money than they knew what to do with, who didn’t need the rental income and could keep an apartment empty for Grandma’s once-a-year visit or in memory of a loved one dead for decades. Either explanation was unacceptable. Shareholders were wise to keep themselves hidden, because surely Soq wasn’t the only one who would gladly stomp them to death if given the chance.
“They’re real. I’ve been collecting data on them for years. I know where many of them are. Not all.”
“Why do you need me there?”
“Don’t worry about that right now.”
Soq smiled. “You just told me ambition was essential for an underling.”
“No. I told you that’s what my mentor said. I also told you she thought small.”
Fill
The flat-bottom boat felt like a dungeon. Water dripped; red rust stains spread across cement walls.
“She must be here somewhere,” Barron said. They passed tents and shacks, lean-tos, yurts. The air felt tubercular, uncirculating.
“People live like this,” Fill said, and then regretted it. He’d spent all morning trolling through Grandfather’s software, surveying his holdings, everyone’s holdings, really, especially the ones marked Empties, and while it had bored him to tears at the time, it was presently making him sick with guilt, to think of so much space sitting empty for decades while these people lived packed together like splice shrimp in a jar.
“It’s warm, at least. A lot of these people are grid workers—vendors, food stall operators, sexual entrepreneurs—they spend all day in the shivering cold, so the warmth is a big part of the draw here. Of course, a few of them never leave at all.”
More than a few, to judge by the funk of feet in the air, of urine. Fill felt short of breath, angry at himself for coming down here. Why couldn’t they have made an appointment to meet her somewhere else? A brightly lit, above-sea-level spot? Surely this mythical maybe-Reader would have welcomed the opportunity for some fresh air and a cup of real coffee.
Barron, on the other hand, seemed to relish the dark, tight space. He looked almost disappointed when he stopped beside a ramshackle thing, a teepee made of sheets of hard plastic like some gritty closed flower, and said, “This is the place. But she’s out.”
“How do you know? These things don’t exactly have apartment numbers on them.”
“Patience, young Podlove.”
Five minutes passed like that. The longer he stood there, the more sounds Fill could make out in the space he’d mistaken for silent. Chatter, plucked instruments, squawking speakers, the clink of silverware. A nightmare confirmation of his worst imaginings of an urban underbelly. He wished he were less disgusted to be so close to the Poor Unfortunates he’d been idealizing as he listened to City Without a Map.
“Tell me a story,” Fill said. “I bet you’re full of them.”
“Very well, Your Majesty,” Barron said, and bowed. “I will tell you the story of how I came to Qaanaaq.”
“Sounds good.” Children scampered past, throwing deformed bottom-grade plastiprinted figurines at each other.
“I will tell you about the fall of New York. You’re a New York boy, aren’t you, Fill? Just a handful of generations back?”
“Two,” Fill said. “My grandfather.”
Barron rubbed his chin. “Like most cities, New York had managed to be both heaven and hell for a very long time. Filthy and beautiful, a playground for the rich and a shithole for the poor, sometimes leaning more toward one extreme and sometimes more toward the other. By the time I was in my twenties, most of the things that made it heavenly were gone. The transit system that was its pride and its lifeblood was largely unusable, ever since the storms that flooded the tunnels and forced the governor to agree to construction of the Trillion-Dollar Fail-Proof Flood Locks. And the Flood Locks themselves were widely believed to be bankrupting the city as a whole, but better to be bankrupt than dead went the common adage. Maybe your grandfather told you about that time, eh?”
“Not really. Just that it was miserable, and he was lucky to escape at all.”
“We all were. I lived in a place called Brooklyn. By that point, the situation was very dire. In New York City then, as in Qaanaaq now—as in most cities, always, I imagine—the landlords called the shots. It didn’t matter who was mayor, who was in the city council, what party a politician was from, real estate interests owned them all. They gave the most money to campaigns for public office, and electeds did whatever they asked. But by the time the Flood Locks were almost finished, Big Real Estate was in trouble. No one wanted to invest in the New York City housing market anymore. Banks pulled out. Foreign investors evaporated. The safest investment in capitalism was suddenly not so safe.”