Blackfish City(83)

“He did what?” Kaev said, but he wasn’t the only one who said it.





Soq


Welcome,” Podlove said, looking for all the world like some combination of hotel concierge and mad sea captain. Soq could see the uncertainty in his eyes. Go had been correct—he was a banker, not a fighter.

“Ahoy,” Go said.

They stared at each other across the opulent lobby of Podlove’s corporate headquarters. Salt crystals everywhere. Sharp and sparkling. Intended to impress and intimidate. Behind them, across the glass, Arm One traffic was reaching its early-morning peak.

But the place would be bristling with well-hidden weaponry. Podlove was confident, secure in the familiar center of his universe, but he wasn’t stupid. He would have fearsome muscle in his corner. Drones and bots and autoturrets.

Soq shut their eyes, and they could see it. Could recall the schematics, taste the bite of the drill bit installing a toxin pod. Remembered her name, the woman who’d led up the installation six years back. Knew that she was dead.

Two flunkies stood behind Podlove. Go had two of her own. Soq, and the brass-knuckled soldier whose name they had never gotten.

And, between the rival parties, the man with the sack over his head.

Swallowing, finding their mouth so dry it was almost impossible to do so, Soq felt the full gravity of the situation. If anything went wrong, they would be right in the line of fire. What kind of guns and blades and projectiles and lasers were aimed at them right this second? Podlove flashed a frigid snake smile, savage and cynical all at once, but Soq could see that he was scared. And that was scary. Because scared people were dangerous. Soq made eye contact with one of Podlove’s flunkies, a scrawny thing who looked as frightened as Soq felt, and gave him a little smile, at which he snarled.

Soq stood up straighter.

They’d been frightened, at first, after they’d learned Go was their mother. They’d feared losing their objectivity, letting their emotions and the personal bond between them render Go perfect, special, beyond reproach. And while Soq was happy to be a henchperson, they knew that flunkies who thought their employer was always right started making dumb decisions.

The opposite had happened. Rage, not love, tinted how Soq saw Go. The woman had abandoned Soq. Every awful thing that had happened in Soq’s life could be laid at Go’s feet.

Either way, Soq’s objectivity was compromised, and that was a problem.

But maybe objectivity wasn’t everything. Maybe it wasn’t even real. Soq’s head buzzed with a hundred different takes on objective reality, and—coolly, effortlessly—they could compare the times two people remembered the same things differently. Both convinced they were right. Soq could see Go as a dozen people saw her—cruel bully, magnanimous boss, ignorant grid-grunt upstart.

Go didn’t know what Soq knew: that Ora and Masaaraq and Ankit and Kaev were on their way over. To complicate matters. Soq had meant to tell Go, and now was glad they hadn’t.

“Is this how you dreamed it would be, when you got to the top?” Podlove said.

“This isn’t the top,” Go said.

“No. I suppose it’s not. But it’s as high as you’ll get. This ends today.”

“I told you, we’re on the same page.”

“This is him?” Podlove said, advancing to the sack-headed man. “I’m not going to pull this off and find a lit stick of dynamite?”

Go moved to unmask the man, but Podlove stopped her with a gentle hand.

“A curious play, at the Cabinet,” he said. “Taking all those people. What could you possibly plan to do with them, little girl?”

“Maybe I want to found a city of my own,” Go said.

It had given Soq hope, when Go finally agreed to Soq’s plan. Liberate not just Ora, but every Cabinet prisoner who wished to be liberated. Which had turned out to be a far higher number than projected—Soq had imagined that most would be too afraid to choose a rusty crime syndicate ship over the safe warmth of their prison. They were still belowdecks on Go’s rusty freighter. Still frightened. But free.

The second part of Soq’s plan was still up in the air. Waiting on Go to give the go-ahead, which she might never do. Run Podlove’s program, the one Soq got from his grandson, the software that would tell them the location and access code of every empty unit being kept off the market by every shareholder, and move those people in. And then head out to Arm Eight and offer a place to every grid rat and box sleeper and overcrowded unhealthy unregistered resident. Move them from disgusting and precarious housing to impossible luxury. Balance the scales.

Found a city within the city.

A city of my own.

A city where Go was the sole shareholder.

Of course, Go wasn’t being altruistic. Soq could see that now. Go would want money, maybe just a little at first, but more and more, and Go had plenty of unbreakable men and women to drag you out of your place if you couldn’t afford it. And then rent those fancy spaces to people who could afford to pay through the nose . . . once Go got a taste of that, it wouldn’t be long before all those box sleepers were back in the boxes, and the empty units were full of one more wave of wealthy refugees. Being a landlord was the biggest racket in town, in every town, in every city, across history, and when Soq ran that software they’d be handing Go a massive empire.