Blackfish City(55)

“I want a city where people don’t have to do what I did.”

“Seems like a pretty good reason to me. Is that what all this is about? Is it why you had me soak those guys?”

Go nodded.

“Shareholder, right?”

She nodded again.

“These are some dangerous moves you’re making. They run this city. Run the AIs that run it.”

The city sparkled. The polar bear was letting Soq climb onto its back, with the expression of a patient long-suffering parent. At the end of their Arm, methane flares as big as buildings parabolaed up into the sky, prompting shouts of joy from the spectators who watched for them every night.

“I want you,” Go said. “And Soq. And Qaanaaq. And we can have it. I want to think big.”

I want to think big, too, Kaev thought, but there was no need to say it, because if there was one thing he’d learned from years of being a brain-damaged lunk, it was how words were way more likely to get in the way than help you out.





Fill


Where are we?” Fill asked. Wind whistled through an open door or window ahead of them. The room was freezing, and dark except for the faint green omnipresent light of nighttime Qaanaaq coming through the window. He’d met Barron outside an Arm Three apartment building that had seen better days, and followed him to the end of a hallway and through a hatchway. “What is this place?”

“A pod,” Barron said.

“You can afford a privacy pod?”

“Good heavens, no,” the old man said, and laughed. “Belongs to a friend of mine.”

Laughter from the grid outside, and the churn of the sea. Both seemed so distant. The polyglass bubble felt tiny, fragile, even though it was one of the largest and most lavish Fill had been in. He rubbed at the goosebumps on his arm. “I thought we were meeting at your place.”

“No, alas,” Barron said. “I am far too ashamed of my little nook. Would never survive the ignominy of your sainted grandfather seeing it.”

Lights. The walls ionized and came to life. People surrounded them. Portraits, cropped close so they could have been anywhere. Old people and young ones. Their faces empty, hunted. The pod they stood in was medium-sized and completely empty. Eight people could have fit comfortably inside it, but for the moment they were alone. Ionization and the portrait projections prevented them from seeing out. Fill wanted to focus on the imagery, but he was shocked at how nervous he was for these two men to meet.

“Hello?” came a voice. On the wall, where an angry little girl frowned out from her mother’s lap, a rectangular hole appeared in the projected image as a door slid open.

“Grandfather!” Fill said, obscurely grateful to see the old man walk in. Something about the setup unsettled him. The distant tone to Barron’s voice, the eerie imagery that surrounded them. The door slid shut and the illusion was complete again. Cold faces appraising them, finding them wanting.

“Grandfather, this is my friend Barron. Barron, this is my grandfather.”

“Mr. Podlove,” Barron said, his face as rigid as the ones on the walls. “I cannot tell you how happy I am to finally be formally meeting you.”

“Please,” Grandfather said. “Martin.” They shook hands. Side by side, they looked so similar.

A hydraulic whine, and then a sense of motion. “Are we moving?”

“We are,” Barron said.

Grandfather laughed. “I assure you, all these theatrics aren’t necessary. My grandson says you need help, and that you deserve our assistance. I just wanted to talk out the details. I don’t need a sales pitch. Whatever song-and-dance routine you two have put together, I appreciate it, but—”

“This is all new to me,” Fill said. His laughter felt forced. “We’re not going underwater, are we? I’ve always hated submersible pods. I don’t know why. Ever since—”

“Don’t you worry,” Barron said, his tongue probing his cheek, controlling the pod’s struts. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“Who are these people?” Martin said, gesturing to the walls.

“I think they’re City Without a Map listeners,” Fill said. “Right? Or potential listeners? The target audience, anyway.”

“Not exactly,” Barron said. He probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue again and the portraits uncropped, providing the context of where these people stood.

New York City, Fill saw. The elevated subway tracks, the blackened stadium. In the decline but before the end.

“Victims,” Barron said. “People who died with the city.”

“How much are we talking about?” Martin said, hands in pockets, every inch the consummate financial wizard. “For the project you two are working on. Some kind of performer, you mentioned? A reader?”

“We don’t need your money,” Barron said. “And there is no Reader.”

Fill frowned. “Sure there is. Choek. She said—”

“What I paid her to say.”

“Then . . .”

The portraits vanished. The lights went out. Fill heard the hush of a door sliding open, and then a second.

Moving with surprising speed, Barron shoved Fill forward and pulled his grandfather back. Two doors slid shut. Locks magnetized. The walls de-ionized, and Fill could see outside. Two separate pods: he, alone, in one, the two old men in another. The city below, unspeakably beautiful.