Blackfish City(64)

“Met up with an old, old friend.”

“The same one who made you so upset the other day?”

Masaaraq glared at Soq, like she was surprised they were paying attention. Soq decided that the rules of human conversation were largely meaningless to Masaaraq. “I’ve been thinking,” they said. “I thought it was special machines. In the blood. I thought that was the secret to how you bond with animals.”

“Nanites,” she said. “It is.”

Schematics lay in front of Soq, on the small bit of bare floor space. Special architectural-quality screens, thin and rollable, loaded with the plans for the Cabinet. Go had gotten them when Soq asked. Though she’d laughed when she asked why they needed them and Soq said, To bust somebody out of there.

“But I don’t have those. Do I? How would I? Maybe if my mother were one of you, it could have passed on to me while I was in her womb, but that’s not the case. It’s not like it would have been in my father’s sperm.” Soq rubbed Liam’s belly. “So how come he isn’t eating me right now?”

“You’re right,” Masaaraq said. “You don’t. Have them. Not yet.”

“Not yet? You can give them to me?”

She laughed wearily. “Nothing to it. They’re very smart, very hardy little buggers. Otherwise none of this would work at all. If I introduced some of my blood into your bloodstream, even just a drop, they’d start to replicate inside you. They’re a lot like viruses—they assemble by hijacking cells, reconfiguring them to do what they want. And they’re programmed to recognize once they reach a certain density in the body, and stop reproducing. Otherwise they’d start to metastasize uncontrollably. Your body would swell up unevenly, your organs would be crushed, bones would break or extend, you’d die. And they’d keep on reproducing after that.”

“Amazing. Who created something like that?”

“Some very bad people. They were trying to create something much uglier. They failed.”

“If it’s so easy to pass on, why are you the last one? Why not give it out to lots of people? Get them on your side? Build an army, slaughter the bastards who came for your . . . tribe?”

“I’m not the last one,” Masaaraq said, eyes on the schematics, fingers walking the halls of the Cabinet. “And giving it to outsiders is a very grave sin.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re not worthy. Because they’d use it for evil. And because if they were worthy, if they wouldn’t use it for evil, sharing our curse with them would mean condemning them to death. They’d be slaughtered just like we were.”

“Well. You saw what happened to the last people who tried to come for you. Times have changed. Maybe you don’t need to be afraid anymore.”

Masaaraq considered this possibility, but only for a second.

“Anyway, you said not yet,” Soq said. “Does that mean you’re going to give them to me?”

“You’re one of us. It’s different. I am obligated to give them to you.”

“But you just met me.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Masaaraq said, and for the first time Soq had an inkling of the vast and terrifying tangle of expectations and obligations and pain and bliss that lay hidden in the word family. “He smells that you’re one of us,” she said. “That’s why he isn’t eating you right now. He smells your father. Your DNA, your pheromones, are half his. The bond is not nearly as strong—he could still hurt you, in certain circumstances, whereas he’d starve to death before laying a paw on Kaev—but there’s something there.”

“For real, why are you in such a good mood?” Soq asked. “Because of your old friend?”

Masaaraq nodded. “Because of her, we have a plan. Finally. The beginnings of one, anyway. These pipes”—Masaaraq pointed to a spot on the schematics—“they’re for the geothermal heat?”

“Red, yup,” Soq said, and rolled up their sleeve to show the sprawl of red-ink pipes tattooed on their arm, knotted and coiled, fading in and out in spots to resemble veins. A common enough motif for grid kids, but Soq was proud of theirs. A talented artist had done it, someone much in demand, whom Jeong had talked into inking Soq at a significant discount.

“They look thick. Thick enough for someone to crawl through?”

“Only if that person didn’t mind being boiled alive instantaneously.”

Masaaraq paused. “But the heat could be turned off?”

“Even if it was, these pipes are superinsulated. It’d be hours before they’d cool enough for someone to survive in there.”

Soq gasped at a new flood of data through their head. Apartments. Listings of hundreds of apartments. Accompanied by sharp pain below the ears. They cried out, pressed their palms to the sides of their head. They tried to scribble down the details, but could capture only one in ten at most.

When Soq looked up, Masaaraq was staring at them.

“I’m fine,” Soq said.

Masaaraq kept staring.

“Really!”

“And what would the authorities do,” Masaaraq wondered aloud, “if the heat went out? In a big building like this? Full of people with health challenges?”

“I don’t know,” Soq said, fighting to return to the here and now. “Whatever the protocol software told them to do, probably. People are awful cowardly about making actual decisions.”