Blackfish City(76)

“Easy for you to say, when you’re not sleeping in a fucking box every night.”

“Show me some respect in front of my soldiers, at least,” Go said, heading for the door.

“What about the other thing?” Soq said, feeling angry, impudent, desperate. “You can’t postpone that. It’s now or never. We don’t know how things are going in the Cabinet. What kind of—”

“I’m considering it. Get out of my way.”

“You’re not,” Soq said. “You’ve already made up your mind. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. If you did, this wouldn’t even be a question.”

Go’s eyes didn’t flinch away from Soq’s, but what did Soq see there, exactly? Whatever it was, it wavered. And wavering meant maybe.

Go beckoned for the soldier to follow, and to bring the old man. And after she’d left, her voice still echoed in Soq’s ears.

We’re on the same page.

Soq was startled to see that this was true. And that this troubled Soq profoundly.





Kaev


They pressed closer together without talking or even thinking about it, instinctively making themselves a smaller target, giving them some room to maneuver around whatever obstacles or weaponry might emerge from the walls. Eighteen floors up, the architecture felt different. The hallway widened as they went, and then there was suddenly a fertile garden on either side of them.

“Smoker’s lounge,” Kaev said, reading off Soq’s screen again. “Open-air spaces. Lie out in the sun, get some exercise. Very helpful for crazy people.”

“Which is the grid side?” Masaaraq asked. “And which is the sea?”

Kaev pointed each out.

My mother is close, he thought. For the first time since childhood, I will see her.

I am going to find her. I am going to free her.

They entered the central cylinder; a chaos of screams and wailing. Patients everywhere, and Health workers. Everybody stuck.

“The invasion protocol paused the evacuation protocol,” Kaev said. “Safety should be here by the billion in about three minutes, maybe four.”

“Safety’s already here,” Masaaraq said.

There was only one of her, a lone Safety operative, and apparently unarmed. Although her smile was a little too confident for that to be true. Something else, then. The patients made a space around them. Afraid of the polar bear, of the weapon Masaaraq carried, of the fact that they could see their breath steaming in the frigid air.

The Safety worker raised her arm, rolled up her sleeve. Subdermals twitched and glowed along her arms. She was one with the room, with the system, with the Cabinet. Seamlessly melded with its innumerable defense measures.

Kaev and Masaaraq backed away from the Safety worker. Kaev scanned the crowd, looking for a pocket of less deranged and disheveled-looking residents—who were easy to find, there at the wall, dressed in civilian clothes, one of them even holding a wineglass.

The woman from Safety advanced. Kaev tightened his fists, watched to see how Masaaraq would come at this new threat, wondered if she’d know enough to understand how dangerous this opponent was. But Masaaraq wasn’t looking at her at all.

“Ora,” she said.

The woman stood ten feet away, draped in blankets, bald, beautiful, her skin bright and brown.

“Kaev!” someone called—and he saw Ankit running toward them through the crowd. A crab-faced woman called her name, but was swept forward by the human current.

“Tighten up!” Ankit called, and Kaev was in fight mode now, his higher brain deactivated, all animal, all instinct and swift brutal action, he saw what she saw—the woman from Safety tapping at her subdermals—and he knew what that meant, somehow, even though he’d never seen something like this before. He grabbed Masaaraq, pulled her with him.

Ora alone seemed capable of independent action, and she alone seemed to pause, not from uncertainty or fear, but from the magnitude of the decision she had to make. The world she had to choose.

“Come on!” he called.

How can this even be a question for her? he thought, but the thought was gone in an instant.

The bear roared to frighten away bystanders. A space cleared for them as they backed toward the wall. Ankit arrived, grasped his hand.

A wave of polyglass rose up from the floor. At the sight of this, Ora finally moved. She ran for them, but the polyglass wall was moving faster. She dove, finally, and her whole body did not clear the closing wall, and it struck her in the leg and she fell to the floor beside them.

The new wall reached the old wall and melded seamlessly with it, boxing them in: Masaaraq, Kaev, Liam, Ankit, Ora. The woman from Safety smiled and came closer.

The bear roared, launched himself against the glass wall of his prison like it was ice, except this would not break any more easily than the window in the door had. There was a door in the wall behind them, but it would not budge. Ora felt her leg, nodded. Nothing broken, nothing bleeding.

Kaev reddened. His muscles tightened. He crouched, a fighter’s stance, waiting for the bell to ring to explode into violence. But of course he wouldn’t be fighting anyone. In an instant the ducts beneath the floor would rearrange, reconfigure, spray some fancy smoke to knock them all unconscious, and when they woke up they’d be imprisoned for absolutely ever. He could see Ankit taking deep breaths, preparing to have to hold one for as long as possible.