Blackfish City(70)

“Like fate. Like the gods hadn’t forgotten about me; like the cold and hostile universe still held goodness in it.

“These past few days I’ve marveled at my bad fortune, to find myself in the middle of something so much bigger than my own vendetta. What an unlucky coincidence, to get caught in the cross fire between a crime boss and a real estate mogul and who knows who else. But now I know it has nothing to do with luck. Monsters like Podlove, they make a lot of enemies. Those enemies will try and try, one at a time, and never get anywhere, and eventually they’ll all start striking at the same time, and that’s when they’ll win.”

Zarif finished. The mess he made was immense. “Marvelous,” Barron whispered, pale, as if his story or the sight before him threatened to break him in half.

“On the house,” Zarif said, smiling as the old man made his way out, and then whispering, “Now,” into his implant—

—Barron descended to the grid, where a woman was waiting, her hands pressed together in front of her chest so he could see the thick braided brass that girdled them. “Mr. Barron?” she said. Snow cycloned in the space between them. Behind her, the light and heat of the Arm lay hidden. “Will you come with us?”





Soq


Soq could see her, pacing. Alone in her room, a massive cloud of anxiety shoehorned into a tiny body. Never looking out the portholes. Staring into screens. Fifteen, twenty of them lay strewn across the tables, and Go was constantly getting new ones out of drawers and boxes, opening up some new software, calling up the footage from some additional drone. Impressive, how hands-on she was with all this. No flunkies to do it for her. If Dao weren’t dead, would he be doing it? But if so, that made it all the more impressive—so many kingpins would be utterly helpless without the people who normally did everything for them.

As far back as Soq could remember, Go had been there. An idol, someone whose successes and setbacks Soq followed the way other grid kids followed beam fighters. Soq’s own career trajectory, their dreams of savage revenge on this shit city, had been modeled on Go’s.

Go was fearsome; Go was magnificent. Wise, cunning, bloodthirsty, brilliant. That had never been in question. What Soq was wondering now was something completely different: was Go a halfway-decent human being?

Other questions, too. Ones that hadn’t stopped bothering Soq since they first started popping into and out of that rich kid’s memories. What was the point of rising to the top? Conquest had always seemed like its own goal, but what did one do when one got there?

For almost an hour, Soq was sure of it, Go had been trying her hardest not to look out the portholes. Because she knew she’d see Soq there.

And for almost an hour, Soq had been trying to knock on the door. Why hadn’t they? Fear rarely stopped them. Soq could remember the first time they’d strapped on slide boots, how fearlessly they’d clomped across the grid, how effortlessly they’d vaulted up and onto the incline. Stepping forward without a second’s pause. People broke limbs every day on the inclines; people died. But pain and death never frightened Soq. Soq had nothing; nothing could be taken; no attachments bound them to the earth.

And now? What stopped Soq? A newly discovered mother? A father? Some corny fantasy of pre-fall family life? Was Soq so weak that ceasing to be an orphan for a few days had turned them into one of those weak wide-eyed children from Arm One whom they’d spent their whole life despising?

Soq knocked. Hard.

“What?” Go said through a speaker. Soq could see her, framed by the porthole. Her back to the door.

“You need help,” Soq said.

“I don’t.”

Soq knocked again. And waited. Sixty, ninety seconds later, a soft thump from the latch. Soq turned the knob and entered.

“What do I need help with?” Go asked.

“Where to begin?” Soq said, slumping into an ancient filthy recliner. The closest thing Go had to a throne.

“Watch yourself,” Go said, her back still to Soq. “Don’t think you have some special license to be disrespectful with me.”

“Don’t I, though?”

Go whirled around, eyes wide. Soq flinched at the anger they saw there, but anger was what they had been looking for. Anger, violence, something. Some sign that Soq’s existence impacted Go in some way. Soq stood, stepped over to the table. Watched ten separate screens showing ten different live drone shots. Five of them aimed at the same person. An old, old white man in a big office. Paper thin. Pacing back and forth like some flimsy doppelganger for Go. “The guy from the video,” Soq said. “Whose grandson got killed.”

“Martin Podlove,” Go said.

“What syndicate?”

Go laughed. “No syndicate. Or the very biggest syndicate of all, depending on your political stance. He’s a shareholder.”

Soq whistled, squatted lower to get a better look at the screens. A shareholder. Like seeing a unicorn. Growing up with nothing in Qaanaaq, you wondered about everyone you met—was this chubby man a shareholder? What about that woman in rags over there? Of course, lots of them would dress expensively, but Soq had always been certain that most wore shitty clothes, blended in, looked for all the world like any other piece of Qaanaaq flotsam. Who did they have to impress, after all? They were already the masters of the universe.