Текст книги "Our Lady of the Ice"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

MARIANELLA

Marianella sat in Alejo’s office, staring at his secretary typing over at her desk. She hadn’t told Eliana she was coming here—hadn’t told Eliana anything. They’d sped away from Andres’s apartment in that hulking old-fashioned car, and Marianella had gripped the steering wheel tightly enough that her fingers ached. But she’d taken Eliana back to her apartment in the smokestack district. “Stay here,” she’d said. “Don’t answer the door.”

“What! Why!”

Marianella shook her head. “Because it’s not safe yet.”

And then she’d driven to Alejo’s office.

He was in there, tucked away in the back hallway. She could sense him—smell him, with her activated machine parts. Pine trees and European cologne wafting through the recycled air.

“How much longer will it be?” Marianella asked. She’d been waiting for five minutes, and it had been torture waiting even that long.

“I told you, Lady Luna, he’s meeting with some men from the city. Without an appointment—” The secretary lifted her hands, questioning. “He’s a busy man these days.”

“Yes, I imagine he is.” Marianella crossed her legs, patted the side of her hair. Adrenaline surged through her. Seeing that business card calling for her disposal had coalesced into the strength she’d used to rip the door from its hinges. But that one act hadn’t been enough to burn up all her anger.

She stood up.

The secretary glanced at her over the typewriter, agitation making her vibrate.

“I told you, it will only be a few moments,” she said.

“No, it won’t.” Marianella strode forward. She walked quickly and purposefully, and she kept her head held high. The secretary shrieked behind her and followed.

“Lady Luna, he doesn’t want to be disturbed!”

“I don’t care.” Marianella flung his office door open. There were no city men in there. Just Alejo. He looked up at her, his face blank. The secretary babbled apologies at Marianella’s side, and for a moment Marianella felt sorry for her.

“See?” Marianella said, in as sweet a voice as she could muster. “His meeting’s all finished up.”

Alejo glared at her. Marianella went in and shut the door, leaving the secretary out in the hallway.

“You’re a liar,” she said.

“Technically,” he said, “Rosa is.”

Marianella walked forward and sat down across from his desk. Her heart pounded; heat flushed in her cheeks. She kept seeing the bomb in Andres’s apartment. Alejo had done that. Alejo had asked for that.

Alejo was a monster.

“What do you want?” he said. “Is this about another donation? You know you can just send them—”

“You destroyed the agriculture dome,” she said.

Alejo fell quiet, and his face went slack. The silence in the room buzzed.

“You tried to have me deported,” she whispered. “And then you destroyed all my work.”

Alejo shifted in his seat. He brushed his hair back with one hand. Looked at one of the walls.

“It was brave of you,” he finally said, “to come here. To accuse me of that.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. You did it.”

He looked at her. There was that glitter in his eyes that should have told her all those months ago that something was wrong with him. He was no better than Ignacio.

“Someone’s been snooping,” he said.

Marianella let out a long breath. “Why did you do it?” she whispered.

Alejo sighed. He threw up one hand, pinched the bridge of his nose. Shook his head. Stupid human politician tics. “I had to,” he finally said. “When Cabrera tried to kill you at the Midwinter Ball, I knew I couldn’t fuck around anymore.”

Marianella stared at him in horror. Then she leapt to her feet and pressed her hands into the top of his desk and leaned close to him, pressing so hard, her hands indented the wood.

Alejo jumped, glanced down at the marred desk.

“You bombed the dome.” Saying it aloud was painful. It made the truth become real.

He didn’t answer.

“All our work.” Marianella stumbled away from the desk. “All my work. You destroyed it—because of Cabrera?” She looked up at Alejo. The room spun. “I don’t understand. What did you think this was going to accomplish? That you could just beat him to it, and that would be okay?”

“No!” Alejo shook his head. “I wanted to blame him for it, don’t you understand? Show the people that the dome was possible, and turn the tide against him. Show them they don’t need his food. All politics are theater, remember?”

Marianella collapsed back down in her chair. Her mechanical parts clicked and whirred inside her, trying to calm her heartbeat.

“I wanted to make a deal,” Alejo said. “But you kept refusing. I knew this was going to happen. If Sala had just done his job—”

“Yes,” Marianella snapped. “I’d love to hear your justifications for that, too.”

Alejo slumped back in his chair. He looked tired. Old. “It’s the same thing,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a danger, your involvement with Cabrera—”

“It wasn’t my involvement!”

“Your husband’s, then! Christ, does it matter? I thought if I could get you sent to Asia, it would smooth things over for all of us, and you’d have a happier life there anyway, getting to live with your own kind.”

Her own kind. Marianella glared at him. “Did it ever occur to you that I consider humans my own kind? That that was the reason I was helping you in the first place?”

“I didn’t think about it that much, for God’s sake. I just needed to get you out of the city before Cabrera found out. I knew you wouldn’t go on your own. I’m sorry that Sala turned out to be a selfish prick. He was trying to get paid twice, I figure, once from me and once from Cabrera. I paid him up front to get the documents. Big mistake.” Alejo rolled his eyes. “This was supposed to be easy.”

“Easy?” Marianella took a deep breath. Alejo was still hunched up in his chair, his eyes wide. He was pulling away from her, like he was afraid of her. And why wouldn’t he be? He was right, she wasn’t human—humans had never been her kind. At least he hadn’t killed her. At least he’d thought he’d been trying to protect her.

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” she said, her voice sharp and cold. “The virus that makes the maintenance robots malfunction, was that you too?”

She had spat the question without thinking, but she realized, as soon as she asked it, that the suspicion had always been there, in the back of her mind. And when Alejo gasped and stared at her, she knew she was right. He was responsible for the blackouts. It had never been Sofia, had never even been the maintenance drones.

She stood up, forcing her movements to be slow and measured despite her surging anger.

“Why?” she said. “What good could that possibly do?”

“It makes the people realize they need us.” Alejo peered over the desk at her. “Same as with the explosion.”

“The city was right.” Marianella could hardly think straight. “All this time—it really was the AFF.” She turned away from Alejo, her heart pounding. Her feet didn’t seem to touch the floor. “But you made me check up on the ag drones, you were so worried.”

“I thought they might have gotten infected.”

Marianella looked at him over her shoulder. He gave a shrug. “It’s a hard thing to control. And at that point I didn’t want the ag domes failing. The explosion had always been the contingency plan, you know. In case we couldn’t buy off Cabrera.”

“I don’t understand.” Marianella shook her head, trying to jostle her thoughts free. “I can’t believe you would do that and put all those people in danger just to convince them of something they already know—”

“Actually, a lot of them don’t already know it. And what the fuck do you care, living out in your private dome? This is why I didn’t tell you about it from the beginning. You don’t even live in Hope City. You don’t know how desperate things are here.”

“I know you’ve only made things worse. You’ve thrown the city into chaos.”

“I did what I had to.” He looked up at her. “So tell me, are you going to kill me yourself, or are you going to get that robot bitch to do it for you?”

“Her name’s Sofia,” Marianella said. “Which you would know. You’ve been investigating her.”

Alejo laughed. “You have been busy playing detective! Well, yes, I was investigating her. At first it was because I needed her robots, the ones she’s got squirreled away in park storage—”

“The broken androids,” Marianella said. “Why? What possible good could—”

“Their parts, Marianella. I was trying to stockpile my own supply to help with Independence. The city didn’t want to bother getting to them. That’s how I first met Pablo, may he rest in peace, even if he was a greedy bastard. He’d been the one to tell me about those poor little broken-down androids and how they were guarded by a sentient comfort girl. So I looked into it.” He shrugged.

“You killed Inéz,” she said, “because you wanted robot parts? Why didn’t you just take hers?”

“That,” Alejo said, “was a scare tactic. I said I was only concerned about the parts at first. I knew about Sofia, sure, but then I started hearing things, rumors about an android working for Cabrera. And I never ignore a rumor, Marianella. That’s why I asked my men to destroy Inéz. I wanted to scare Sofia into submission. I thought it might work on a sentient robot. When it didn’t, I went after her schematics. I needed to know what I was up against.”

Something snapped inside Marianella, a key turning into place. She froze into a cold resolve. He’d known about Sofia all this time and he’d played games. He’d toyed with all of them.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Alejo said, after a pause. “Are you going to kill me, or are you going to get Sofia to do it?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Marianella said.

“If you go public with this,” he said, “you know exactly what information I’ll be taking to the city.”

They stared at each other across the desk. Marianella thought of Sofia, sitting in operations, watching Hope City unfold in front of her. Marianella had chosen her side correctly after all.

“Good-bye, Alejo,” Marianella said, and then she walked out of the office, climbed into her car, and drove back to the amusement park.

*  *  *  *

Marianella didn’t bother with the locator. It would have been faster, but she wanted the time to meditate on everything she’d learned. She wanted time to assuage her anger. To decide what to do about Alejo.

Right now, he stood in the way of Sofia taking over the city. Sofia still had not cemented her hold on the Independents, which meant there were gaps in her control sprinkled throughout the city authorities. If Alejo continued unencumbered, his deviousness would win him the support of the city. No doubt he planned on swinging in with a solution to the power outages at some point in the future. And so Alejo couldn’t stay.

He could be killed. The thought made her squeamish, the way it always did. Cabrera’s men had been enough death.

But there was another way, a way of giving up the stalemate. It would fit within Sofia’s framework, of destroying the city from the inside out, and it would remove Alejo in only a few days’ time, without having to worry about interference from those authorities not on Sofia’s payroll.

But that was one of the things she had to think on as she wandered through the worn-down paths of the amusement park, through the gardens and clumps of cottages, past the lake, through the palace, into the operations room. She didn’t find Sofia, and that was good. The walk calmed her and helped her think straight.

The plan, her idea, bubbled in the back of her head. She stopped in the ballroom. It was empty, dust floating through the dome light. She walked over to the windows, knelt down, said a brief prayer. She hadn’t spoken to God in a long time, but she needed to right now. She asked Him if her decision was the right one, and the dome light was warm against her skin, and she knew that yes, it was, because it was the only way that wasn’t evil.

Marianella lifted her head. She looked across the ballroom and thought about the night she had danced here with Sofia, and she smiled to herself. The dust looked like flecks of gold, like fragments drifting down from heaven. She prayed to the Virgin Mary for strength, and then she checked the last place in the palace that she hadn’t—the kitchens.

That was where Marianella found Sofia, hunched over a maintenance drone, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Marianella stood in the doorway and watched her work, watched her hands moving in a blur over the drone.

“What’s wrong with it?”

Only then did Sofia look up, her face pale in the bright lights.

“It’s infected by the virus,” she said. “It’s not sentient. The other drones brought it to me.”

The mention of the virus twisted Marianella’s stomach.

“It’s not exactly a virus, you know,” she said.

Sofia frowned. She knew that, of course she did, but Marianella also knew that admitting to the truth meant admitting that a human had found another way to overcome a robot.

“And as it is,” Marianella said carefully, “you might want to leave it.”

Sofia went very still. She almost looked as if she’d been turned off. Marianella took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen, and Sofia followed her with just her eyes, dark and unblinking.

“Why?” she said when Marianella had come to the counter.

Marianella looked down at the black-and-white marble of the countertop. It gleamed in the lights.

“Alejo did it,” she said.

“What?”

“Alejo is responsible for the blackouts.”

Sofia’s hands still hovered above the drone. She had been in the process of taking out its motherboard, and the lights blinked back and forth in twin rows.

“I should have seen it.” Marianella touched one hand to her forehead. “It was so similar to the way I programmed the drones in the ag dome. He stole the idea from me.” She laughed, once, bitterness rising up in the back of her throat. “That’s not all he stole from me either.”

Without speaking, Sofia slid the motherboard back into the drone, although she didn’t bother to close the shell. Then she walked over to Marianella and looked her straight in the eye.

“What,” she said, “are you talking about?”

Marianella drank in Sofia’s features. “I’m afraid I did something rather ill-advised.”

“Will it be a problem?”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Sofia stepped away. She was beautiful in her old housedress, her hair pulled back. Marianella wanted to reach out and rub her thumb against Sofia’s jawline. Wanted to touch her one last time.

“What’s going on?” Sofia asked.

The room was too hot. Marianella wished her robot parts would activate and bring her body temperature down.

“Eliana and I broke into the apartment of one of Alejo’s aides.”

“Why? Because you were investigating the viruses?”

Marianella nodded. And then she told her what they’d found.

Sofia listened with her head tilted to the side. She twisted a lock of hair back and forth between her fingers. Marianella watched that hair as she spoke. It was a metronome that counted the time to her story.

When Marianella finished, Sofia dropped her hand to the side.

“You know I can kill him for you,” Sofia said.

“No.” Marianella shook her head and then collapsed into a nearby chair. “No, that’s not what I want to do.”

“You’re too generous,” Sofia said. “You told me yourself that he killed Inéz just to frighten us, to scare me out of working with Cabrera. How could you possibly let this man live?”

Marianella sat very still. She remembered praying in the ballroom.

“I don’t want anyone else to die,” Marianella said. “This city, this new city, it’s my dream too. A place for people like me.”

Sofia didn’t say anything.

“And I don’t want it to be founded on blood. Not any more than it has been already.” Tears formed in Marianella’s eyes. She blinked, hoping they would disappear. “I know how to discredit Alejo Ortiz. But if we do it, then I have to go away.”

Sofia opened her mouth to protest.

“Only for a little while,” Marianella said. “While you take the city. I know you can do it. Everything’s already starting to fall into place. Soon, people won’t want to live here. It’ll be easy to convince them to leave. For you to take control. And then you’ll open the doors to all the robots of the world. And all the cyborgs.” She smiled a little, the warmth of pride swelling inside her chest. “Those blackouts he devised, those will help, won’t they? That’s why you shouldn’t treat the drones, not right now.”

Sofia stared at her. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

Marianella took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you something. And you can go public with it. Use your city contacts. I just can’t be on the continent when it happens.”

Sofia’s face went dark.

“Alejo Ortiz took funding from the AFF,” Marianella said. “For his campaigns. They’re one of his largest contributors, in fact. All secret. When Hope City achieved its independence, Alejo would become president, of course, and at that point he’d officially pardon the AFF as actual freedom fighters.”

“They would be,” Sofia said. “Freedom fighters.”

“They’re terrorists,” Marianella said. “And that’s how the city sees them now. If you take that information public, Alejo will be arrested and deported to the mainland. They won’t let him back into the city.”

Sofia’s eyes glittered in a way that made Marianella feel hollow.

“I remember the day I told him about my nature. We were in the Dockside Motel. The neon lights were shining through the window.” Marianella laughed at the memory, and it was a laugh like a stab wound. “He’d already told me about the AFF by then. I thought trading secrets would be romantic, like trading wedding rings. I’m so stupid.”

“Not stupid,” Sofia said. “Only naive.”

And then she walked across the room and sat on the arm of Marianella’s chair. She brushed the hair away from Marianella’s face. “It’ll only be temporary,” she said. “Your departure.”

“Yes, of course. When the city completely belongs to you, I’ll come back.”

“You can’t possibly go alone.”

“I won’t.” Marianella took a deep breath and lifted her face to Sofia’s. “Book passage for Eliana as well. I promised her you could do that in exchange for her helping me find out about the virus, and it will be good to have a human with me.” Marianella wondered when that had happened, when she’d begun thinking of humans as something other.

“It’s too dangerous,” Sofia said. “A human can’t make that trip yet.”

“Your icebreakers are safer than any run by the city. I trust you.” Tears glossed Marianella’s eyes. “You need to be rid of Alejo as soon as you can. Even if it’s just for me, for what he did.”

“We’ll find some other way,” Sofia said, cupping her hand under Marianella’s chin.

“There is no other way.” Marianella looked at her. “Unless you want to leave the city to the humans.”

There was a moment, brief and flickering, when Marianella thought that Sofia would agree. That she would give up her goals, just to keep Marianella at her side.

But then it was gone.

“If it’s the only way,” Sofia said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

ELIANA

Eliana smoked a cigarette in front of her tenement building. It was late enough at night that even the smokestack district was silent. No voices echoed through the night, no music spilled out of the windows. The air was still and cold. It reminded Eliana of the amusement park.

A suitcase sat at her feet. It contained as much of her life as she could put into one piece of luggage. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t much at all.

She smoked her cigarette down to the filter and flicked the butt into the darkness. She hadn’t said good-bye to anyone. Not Maria, not Essie, although she hoped both of them would stop thinking of this place as home and heed her warnings and get out of the city if they could. She couldn’t say good-bye to Diego. At least her parents had memorials at the mausoleum, twin urns with twin plaques. But she hadn’t said good-bye to them, either.

It was too risky even to say good-bye to the dead. Ortiz could be watching the mausoleum. The only thing that Eliana had done to prepare was to look up Mr. Vasquez’s forwarding address. At least they’d have a place to go once they landed on the mainland.

The clock tower struck three. Eliana jumped at the sudden noise. Just as the last gong faded away, a sleek black limousine pulled up in front of Eliana’s building. Luciano stepped out and opened the door for her.

“Miss Gomez,” he said, and his soft voice sounded like screaming in the darkness.

Eliana picked up her suitcase and carried it down to the car. Luciano took it from her and slid it into the trunk. Marianella had called her yesterday afternoon and told her the payment for helping Sofia was ready. Eliana had thanked her and placed the phone back into the cradle and stood there with her head buzzing. Last night Eliana couldn’t sleep. The knowledge that her dream was so close to becoming real kept her up. She’d ridden the trains with no destination in mind, staring out at the gray buildings and the gray people and the silver-gray light of the streetlamps. She’d gone to the edge of the city and put her hand against the dome’s glass. And she knew nothing was keeping her here.

It wasn’t a decision. It was just a fact. Hope City was no longer Eliana’s home.

Marianella and Sofia were sitting side by side in the backseat. Eliana sat across from them. She felt empty without her suitcase. Marianella smiled when Eliana climbed in, but she didn’t say anything.

The driver’s door slammed shut, and the engine hummed to life. Luciano pulled the car away from the sidewalk. When Eliana tried to look out the window, she only saw her reflection.

Marianella and Sofia didn’t speak. They didn’t look at each other. But Eliana noticed how Sofia’s hand was laid on top of Marianella’s, a gesture of comfort she’d never expected to see.

Eliana didn’t speak either. After all, there was nothing to say.

They arrived at the docks, which were as desolate as the smokestack district. The air was colder than Eliana had expected. Luciano opened the door again, Eliana’s suitcase sitting at his feet. They stood off to the side as Marianella and Sofia climbed out of the car. Sofia pulled Marianella’s suitcase out of the trunk and held it for her. Marianella smiled.

“The ship is waiting for you,” Luciano said—unnecessarily, because there was only one ship in the water, an old cruise ship, all the painted figures along the side faded into ghosts. The gangplank was down.

“Give us a moment,” Sofia said.

Luciano nodded, and then gestured for Eliana to follow him on board the ship. She trailed behind him, breathing in the scent of salt and metal. When they reached the gangplank, she looked over at Marianella and Sofia. They were kissing in a pool of yellow light from the streetlamps, Sofia’s hands in Marianella’s hair, Marianella clutching at Sofia’s dress like the world was ending.

Eliana stared in surprise. She couldn’t help herself.

“We should give them privacy,” Luciano said softly into her ear.

“Are they really—” Eliana didn’t quite know how to ask the question. She looked away, over to Luciano. Her face burned. He didn’t seem particularly bothered.

“I believe they love each other,” he said, and carted Eliana’s suitcase up the gangplank.

Eliana looked over at Marianella and Sofia again. They weren’t kissing anymore, but their bodies were pressed close together, and they looked at each other the way Eliana had once looked at Diego. It struck her as strange that Sofia could love at all.

Eliana left them to each other.

Luciano was waiting for her on the walkway of the ship. He smiled at her like a porter and led her away from the gangplank. Walking into the ship was like walking into catacombs. The hallways were narrow and low-ceilinged, and the few scattered lights flickered in time with their footsteps. Everything was old and stank of the sea.

“How long is the trip going to take?” Eliana asked. She thought about asking him about the reprogramming that Marianella had mentioned, but she wasn’t sure it would be appropriate.

“About two weeks.” Luciano glanced at her. “But there’s enough food and water to last for four, in case of an emergency. The ship is connected to the operations room at the amusement park, so you’ll always been in contact with Sofia.”

Eliana nodded. Two weeks and she’d be on the mainland, where she had always wanted to be. All the humans in Hope City would be there soon enough. Sofia’s takeover was inevitable. Eliana just hoped she’d let the humans leave.

“Your cabin,” Luciano said, stopping in front of a door. “Marianella is across the hall.” He pushed the door open and turned on the lights. The cabin was spacious, with two glass doors leading out onto a balcony. Everything in the cabin looked brand-new, and the lights didn’t flicker.

“Sofia.”

Eliana jumped; it was Marianella’s voice. She turned around, and Marianella stood in the hallway alone, carrying her own suitcase.

“Yes.” Luciano smiled. “She wanted it to be a surprise.”

Marianella wiped at her eyes. “Tell her ‘thank you’ for me.”

And then she disappeared into her own cabin across the hall.

Luciano set Eliana’s suitcase on the bed.

“The ship will be departing soon,” he said. “I’m afraid I have to stay in Antarctica.”

“I know.” Eliana watched him from across the room. She didn’t want to leave him without saying good-bye.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, and she meant it, because he had been a comfort to her in these last few weeks in Antarctica.

“I’ll miss you as well.” He walked up to her and pulled something out of his jacket. It was one of the books he was always reading, slim, the cover dark blue. “I wanted to give this to you.”

Eliana stared down at the book, surprised. Yellow letters spelled out Le Petit Prince in curlicue script.

“A book,” she said stupidly.

“Yes, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think you will like it as well.”

Eliana couldn’t take her eyes off the book. “Is it in French?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know French.”

“I think you could learn.” Luciano pressed the book into Eliana’s hand, and she wrapped her fingers around it and didn’t want to let go.

He smiled. Eliana thought how this would be the last time she’d see him smile, and she wondered if she’d find someone to share walks with on the mainland. If she’d find someone who knew how to listen. “Have a nice journey,” he said.

“I’ll try.”

They stood in a heavy silence. Neither of them moved for several moments.

And then he said, “I hope you enjoy your first real rainstorm. Perhaps when you see it, you’ll remember me.”

Something quivered inside Eliana. There was a sense of waking up. “I’m sure I will,” she said, and she knew it wouldn’t just be the first rainstorm, but all the rainstorms she’d ever encounter.

And then, like that, Luciano was gone.

Eliana sat in her room for a while, in the chair beside the window. She flipped through the book’s pages and tried to decipher the words. Some of them were similar to words she knew, but there weren’t enough of them for her to understand the story. She thought about knocking on Marianella’s door but decided that Marianella must want to be alone. Although really, Eliana knew, she wanted to be alone.

The ship engines switched on.

Eliana straightened up in her chair. The engines roared around her, a cottony white noise that created a buzzing in her head. She’d never heard anything like it.

And then the room lurched and there was a great groaning from outside, and Eliana knew they were leaving Hope City.

The realization that she would never see the city again hit her like a punch.

Eliana set the book on the bed and left the room and jogged through the corridors. The ship creaked and moaned, and Eliana was struck with the thought that she was the only human thing aboard.

The corridor opened suddenly onto an outside deck. The wind rushing over her was colder than any she’d ever experienced, and she knew she wasn’t dressed properly, but she pulled her coat more tightly around her chest. Five minutes wouldn’t kill her.

The lights of the docks twinkled in the distance. Eliana stood in the center of the deck and watched the city grow smaller. She didn’t cry. As much as she had wanted to see the city lights one last time, she didn’t feel anything but a vague sense of hope, like the city’s name came from leaving it.

And then, without warning, the sky was dotted with light.

Stars. She’d only ever seen pictures.

The ship had passed through the dome wall without Eliana realizing, and now those millions and millions of stars swirled overhead. Eliana craned her head back, her breath solidifying on the air, and stared at them in wonder. Pictures hadn’t prepared her for the enormity of the night sky, the enormity of the world beyond the dome.

And then the stars were falling, in fits and starts, drifting and scattering across the deck. No, not stars—snow.

Eliana shivered violently. Soon the cold would be too much, and she’d have to go down below and find solace in the manufactured heat. But in this moment, this last good-bye, she stood in the biting wind with her head tilted back so the snowflakes could melt on her tongue.

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