Company Town (15 page)

Music rose. So did the congregation. Father Herlihy proceeded up the aisle swinging a censer and singing “Shall We Gather at the River?” off-key. As they watched, he circled Calliope's coffin, swinging and singing under the occasional twinkle of botflies whose lights strobed across the fragrant smoke. He turned to face the congregation, and he met Hwa's gaze and quickly looked away. Like her, Father Herlihy was one of the last few unaugmented people on the rig, and that meant he saw her true face. He had always looked away from it, ever since she was little, when Sunny forced her to go to his Sunday school. Sunny only let Hwa stop going after her First Communion, once the chance to tease her about how stupid she looked in her dumb white dress had passed. That was the only explanation Hwa could think of for her mother's insistence on Sunday school. It wasn't like their family believed.

The song ended, and the congregation sat. The pews creaked like real wood. You could get anything fabbed, these days.

“Calliope's was a beautiful soul,” Father Herlihy said. “And her relationship with this parish—and the Church itself—was a long and fruitful one. Her parents, who can only attend via telepresence—gave up everything to bring her to Canada from Greece. They escaped the Golden Dawn with a single hard drive. It had a few documents, but mostly it was just photos. Photos and video, from many generations of her family. Every birthday, every wedding, every baptism. I saw them, when she married Andrea. She brought them to their marriage workshop, after they were engaged.”

Beside her, Eileen bent over and appeared to stare at her shoes. It took Hwa a minute to realize she was crying. Hwa patted her carefully on the shoulder. Looking at her hand making its awkward motions made her feel like the coach of a losing team.

“I'm sorry,” Eileen whispered. “I know you don't like this kind of thing.…”

“Huh?” Hwa let her arm rest around Eileen's shoulders. “It's okay. You can cry. Just because I don't cry doesn't mean you can't.”

Eileen looked up and wiped her eyes. “You can cry, too, Hwa. It's okay. I won't tell.”

Hwa shook her head. “No, I mean I can't. I literally can't. Not out of this eye. So you have to go twice as hard for both of us.”

Eileen smiled and sat up. She leaned on Hwa. “You're so tough.”

“That's why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Not anymore,” Eileen said. She dug her head deeper into Hwa's shoulder. Hwa watched Calliope's friends queue up for Communion. They were all tattooed. Just like Calliope. Dragons. Crosses. Roses. Mecha. Kaiju. Skulls. Butterflies. Ripples of blue and black and red and pink across the flesh.

Oh, Jesus. How could she have forgotten?

*   *   *

Síofra lived on 5-15, nineteen floors down from the place where Joel and Zachariah lived. Hwa's sinuses flared up as the elevator climbed. The pain threatened to spike into a real headache.

The doors to 5-15 peeled back. Hwa stepped through. The hallway came awake as she stepped silently onto thick blue moss. On either side were more doors, each spaced a fair distance apart. Wreaths grew from their damp, thick surfaces. The walls were all indoor ivy and night-blooming jasmine. At any other time, it might have been pleasant. Pretty. Now it just smelled like failure.

How was she going to explain this?
I was wrong. I want my job back. Please give it to me, so that I can figure out who really killed my former student. I know she didn't kill herself, because she was getting a tattoo. She had plans. Permanent ones. And now she's dead.

The door opened before she could knock.

“You know, the homeowner's association has a bylaw against loitering.” Síofra leaned against the door.

“There's no such thing as a homeowner in this town,” Hwa told him. “Everyone rents.”

He shrugged. “Shouldn't you be in the hospital?”

“Shouldn't you be at work?” When he didn't answer, she peered around him into the unit. She glimpsed a gleaming kitchen lit like a jewelry store, and the curve of a huge window surmounting a long inset fireplace. Something bubbled in the stove. It smelled of sesame. Her empty stomach clenched like a child's grasping fist.

“Hungry?”

“What is it?”

“There is fainting imam in the oven and peanut soup on the stove.”

Hwa squinted at the kitchen. “Fainting…?”

“Imam. It's roasted eggplant, stuffed with tomatoes, dressed with yogurt, mint, and pine nuts.” He entered the kitchen. “Are you coming in, or do I need to show you a dessert menu?”

Hwa hastened inside. She shut the door behind her and removed her shoes. She placed them with all the other shoes and slippers on a rack, under a large mirror in an ornate frame. “Where are your boots?”

“Over there.” He pointed.

“Those aren't winter boots. You need something waterproof, with thicker tread, and better lining, and they should go up to here.” She pointed at the place where a doctor would test the reflexes in her knee. “Do you not understand how winter works, in Newfoundland?”

“Winter's the one with all the flowers, isn't it? The trees all bud and baby animals run around?”

Hwa threw up her arms. One of them, anyway. The one that didn't hurt. Then she let it drop. “I'm just saying, you need to get fitted and put in your order soon, before the stock runs out. Otherwise you'll have soggy socks from November to March.”

He rolled mint leaves into little cigars and then began slicing them into ribbons. The smell rose in the air, brightening the ambient scents of roasting garlic and cumin. “Did you really come here to criticize my choice of footwear?”

Hwa sighed. “No.”

He fetched down a very small glass bottle of jewel-red syrup from a cabinet over the worktop. It looked almost like perfume. “Do you want to talk about why you really came, or should we continue avoiding the issue?”

Hwa crossed over to the bar. Laid her hands on it, flat. It was the colour of good caramel, and very cold. Hwa saw little golden flecks of mica embedded in its surface. “I want my job back.”

Síofra uncorked the bottle and beaded a drop of the syrup inside on the tip of his middle finger. He sucked it off and nodded to himself. “Fine.”

“Because I know that I…” Hwa frowned. “What? Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Don't I have to sign something? Or interview again? Or, you know, grovel? Beg forgiveness?”

Síofra turned and picked up a wooden spoon from a rest on the worktop. It had a large, perfectly round hole in the paddle, and it looked very old. He stirred the soup slowly in lazy figure eights. He frowned at the spoon for a moment, changed his grip, and began stirring in the other direction. “Forgiveness for what?”

“I quit. I gave up. I abandoned my post.”

“No, you didn't. You took a bullet for Joel, and you lost a lot of blood, and you said something you didn't mean. Now you're feeling better, and we're having a conversation about it.” He returned the wooden spoon its rest and turned around. “And as part of that conversation, I should ask for your forgiveness.”

Hwa blinked. “Excuse me?”

“The exercise was meant to test your response to an armed threat, and the school's response to an emergency scenario. You and Joel were never supposed to be in any real danger. But you were. And you were hurt. And I'm sorry.” He stared out the window at the city for a moment. “Your job was to protect Joel, and mine was to protect you. I'm the one who failed you, Hwa. Not the other way around.”

Hwa looked away. She hadn't been expecting an apology. Much less a genuine one. “G'wan, b'y,” she muttered, letting her accent slip.

“I heard about your friend. You have my condolences.”

“Thanks.” She bounced on her toes. This was awkward. Unbelievably awkward. She'd come ready for a fight and now the fight had nowhere to go. It pooled inside her like acid in her joints, corrosive and irritating. “Can I help you? I can chop, or wash, or—”

“You can rest. Over there.”

He pointed at a long leather sectional with a full view of the window. Hwa had never seen so much of the material in one place. Síofra snapped his fingers twice, and the fireplace lit up. Warily, Hwa unbuttoned the jacket of her suit and laid it across the back of the sectional. She sat down and watched out the window. Clouds hung pink over the towers, lit by the dying sun. Its light cast the other towers in dark relief. She couldn't quite see Tower Two from here; from this vantage point it looked like it was hiding behind Tower Four like an older, simpler sibling hiding behind a much smarter one.

She knew the rationale behind sticking the schools in the farm tower—all those bees, all those plants, all that science, ready and waiting—but the farm levels had far better security than the schools did. Patented seeds. Scary pesticides. Enough fertilizer to take out half the tower. For that reason alone, sniffers were posted at each major entry point: transit, causeway, the elevator court. They'd added more, after the Old Rig blew. How had anyone smuggled in live ammunition?

“Red or white?”

“Sorry?”

“The wine. Red or white?”

“Oh. Sorry. I don't drink wine. Too much sugar.” She gestured at the stain he couldn't see, then dropped her hand quickly. “Abrupt changes in blood sugar are bad for … me.”

“That's a shame. Is there anything else I can offer you?”

“Vodka, if you have it.” It was the safest. But it sounded demanding, to be so specific. “Or gin. Or bourbon. Or—” She heard the sound of ice on steel. She turned, and he was shaking a martini. “Or martinis. Sure.”

As he poured, he asked: “Do you eat lamb?”

Hwa shrugged. “Don't know. Never had it.”

He paused. “Never? Not even once?”

Hwa gestured at the other towers. “I don't think you reckon how spendy meat is in this town.”

“Do you enjoy meat?”

“Well, yeah, it's good for me, and it tastes good, and—”

He opened the door to the freezer and cut off the conversation. Out came a packet that he tossed in the sink. “We'll eat the other things first, and this for dessert. Is tartare all right with you?”

“What?”

“Raw. Would you like to try it raw?”

The moment stretched on for longer than it should have. “Sure,” Hwa said, finally. “If that's how you like it. I mean, you know more about it than me, right?”

He smirked. “Indeed.” He put the drinks and the shaker on a tray and carried them out to her. When she picked up hers, he held his out. “To your return.”

It was a perfect martini. Literally. She'd had one once before, at the Aviation bar in Tower Four. Half sweet vermouth, half dry. Just the barest hint of sugar, the tiniest possible taste of what she wasn't supposed to have. She leaned into the moment the way she leaned into pain. Breathed through it. Inhaled deeply: leather and garlic and mint, the olive brine beading on her glass.

“I need you to tell me something,” she said, opening her eyes.

Síofra was watching her closely. “Yes?”

“Can you just level with me, and tell me you had somebody following me, the day of the shooting? Somebody wearing next-gen prototype camouflage, or something? Because if that's the truth, then now's the time.”

Síofra put his drink down and stared at her. “You saw it, too.”

Relief flooded her. She drained her martini. “I thought I was having a seizure.”

Síofra gestured at the windows, and suddenly surveillance footage was on the screen. There was the skullcap, staring at his guns. Checking and rechecking the clips. Sighting down the scopes. He bent down to tighten the laces of his boot, and there it was: a blip of pixellated white, a glitch. A glitch that looked vaguely human in shape. An invisible man, with his hands on the ammo.

Hwa pointed. “I saw this guy. In the sprinklers. The shape of him. Did you include this in the final report?”

“I did. But the live rounds left behind a trail. They were in a smart box. It looks like simple human error. And Silas wasn't interested in an alternative explanation.”

A shiver ran through her. She pointed at the martini shaker. “You got any more there, b'y?”

He poured her another. “When you start back, I'll thank you to stop calling me
boy
at the end of sentences.”

“It's just an expression. It's how we talk, out here. Besides, you're only ten. I can call you whatever I want.”

He laughed. Hwa reminded herself stop staring at him, and pulled her focus to the footage on the screen. She was here for more than just this job. She spoke the part she'd rehearsed. “Once I get my Prefect access back, I'll start looking for who's selling camouflage in town. But I want expanded access. The premium plan, like you have.”

“You mean to hunt down this phantom?”

Hwa drank. “Fucker got me shot. If he didn't want me hunting him, he should've finished the job.”

 

PART TWO

OCTOBER

 

9

Acoutsina/Nakatomi/Girders/Bentham

Hwa's days began to follow a certain pattern.

At 04:30, she woke up, drank a bottle of water with vinegar, and ran for an hour. Some of the time, Síofra came with. Otherwise, she ran the Demasduwit Causeway, circled Tower Two, then ran up the Sinclair and back down again toward the school. He ran the Fitzgerald to the Sinclair, and at the end of the run they met up. They had eggs in avocado and he asked her about what was going on in the city—whether he should tweak the register of the train's announcement voice, or if the streetlights should change temperature from warm gold to cold white as the night wore on, or whether they needed more sniffers in public places. After what had happened to Calliope, he was supposed to be getting more suicide prevention measures installed. She showed him how to skip stones through the gaps in the existing motion detection. He did not ask how she knew where they were.