Our Lady of the Ice (13 page)

“You get food to the people who can pay,” she snapped. “You starve everyone else.”

“I’m a businessman, Lady, and it’s not my fault that I follow the price of goods. The mainland wouldn’t provide half the things I can provide if we left it to them. They don’t care about us. They have their own problems.”

“It seems you and Alejo agree on something, then.”

Ignacio laughed. “It doesn’t matter what we agree on,” he said, switching his dialect from the sharp vowels of Antarctican Spanish over to the whispery lisp of mainland Castilian. “I don’t want Independence any more than the assholes up at the city offices.”

Marianella worked at the binds around her wrists, but they were much too tight for her to believably pull them free.

“But I’m not here to talk politics.” Back to Antarctican again. “I won’t worry about the ag domes until I’ve seen one.”

Relief flooded through her body, and she sat still in the moving darkness, hands cramping behind her.
He doesn’t know,
she thought.
Thank the sweet Mother, he doesn’t know.

“I’m here to talk about a man named Pablo Sala.”

And with that, every part of Marianella’s system froze into place.

“Who?” she lied, her voice strained.

“He paid a visit to you a week or so ago and took something from you. Unfortunately, I never got to see it.”

She would not give him the pleasure of hearing her sputter and struggle for the right words. The car bumped along, the tires thumping against the ground, and the wind was louder now. And colder.

Beneath the straw scent of the bag, she smelled snow.

“Some whore stole those documents out from under him—at least, that’s what he claimed. I’d have him steal them again, given how he managed well enough the first time, but sadly, Sala’s dead now. You can thank Diego for that.”

A bead of sweat formed between Marianella’s shoulder blades and fell in a straight path down her spine.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sweated.

“I assure you Sala’s death is not my fault,” Cabrera said. “I don’t want you thinking I’m some sort of monster. But Diego, bless him, got a bit overenthusiastic while questioning him. Isn’t that right, Diego?”

There was a heavy silence in the car, and then a quiet male voice said, “Yes.”

“See? All Diego’s fault. But I still don’t know what was in those documents. Do you care to tell me yourself?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The car stopped. For a moment no one spoke, and there was only the sound of the idling engine.

And then that cut off too.

“You’re a lovely woman,” Ignacio said, “but I’m afraid I’ve never really warmed to you.”

A door opened. Cold air rushed in, smelling of metal and ice.

The edge.

A hand gripped Marianella’s arm and dragged her out of the car. The ground was hard and gravelly, and the wind stirring at her skirt wasn’t the artificial air that pumped through the dome’s wind generators but the real thing, a trickle of it through the cracks.

The hood came off in an explosion of light. Marianella’s pupils contracted. Ignacio stood in front of her, his hat shrouding his eyes.

Behind him: glass.

It was full dark now, with no fake stars or fake moon this far out. The car’s headlights shone on Ignacio, casting his shadow across the dark, ice-encrusted glass.

Marianella’s fear was a poison, breaking her down.

“It was easier to get here than I expected,” Ignacio said. “I have a spot in the main dome I favor, a place where I control the guard robots.” His voice was flat, emotionless, and his coat kept blowing in the wind, back and forth. Marianella stared at it and felt a metallic hollowness inside her chest.

“But you don’t pay much mind to the edges out here,” he went on. “Funny that you won’t depend on the city for your light or your heat but you’ll depend on it to keep the entrances locked.”

“Why are you doing this?” Marianella’s voice didn’t shake. She was proud of that.

Ignacio looked at her. “I haven’t done anything, Lady. Yet. If you want to stop me, just tell me what was in those documents.”

Nothing moved except the wind, whistling as it slid over the glass, a mournful, plaintive sound that reminded Marianella of weeping.

“A deed to an estate on the mainland,” she said.

“Don’t lie, Lady Luna. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m not lying.”

“So if we drive back to Southstar and you pull them out of the file, that’s all I’ll find? A deed?” Ignacio smiled, showing all his teeth. “I doubt it very much.”

Hector,
Marianella thought.
Why did you do this to me?

“I was promised a way to destroy you, but I don’t need papers to do that, really. And killing you helps with another problem of mine.”

Marianella glared at him. She shook with fear, with the rage of Hector’s betrayal.

“That problem being Alejo Ortiz, of course. I just can’t get to him yet. He’s too protected. That’s the problem with politicians. I kill him, I’ve just got a martyr on my hands. The Independence movement has gained enough traction for it. But if I kill you, well,
I’ve managed to send Ortiz a message, haven’t I? Especially doing it this way, where it looks like an accident, maybe even a suicide—the poor Lady Luna, distraught over the death of her husband.”

Marianella did not turn away.

“You really are a brave woman,” Ignacio said. “You do this with men, and they scream and beg for their lives.” He tilted his head. “It must be that aristocratic blood. You would never do anything so undignified.”

“It’s not my title keeping me dignified.”

Ignacio stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “Whatever it is, I find it admirable. Don’t worry, Lady. It’ll be like going to sleep. We’re long into winter. I imagine death will be a short time coming.”

Marianella was numb, as if she were already out in the cold. She thought about the black howling winds, the expanse of white desert. Anxiety crawled over her skin.

“May Hector forgive me,” Ignacio said, and one of the men in dark suits stepped away from her and walked up to the dome wall.

“May God forgive you too,” Marianella said.

“There is no God.”

The man tapped a code into the glass. The pattern reverberated through Marianella’s bones.

She held her breath.

The glass slid away with a loud screeching
clang
, and the snow billowed in, sparking and glittering in the yellow headlights. It scattered across the cement ground, spilled over Marianella’s shoes. The wind shoved her hair away from her face and plastered her clothes to her body, and she turned her head against the stinging in her eyes. The man with the gun shoved her forward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ignacio watching her, the collar of his jacket turned up, one hand holding on to his fedora. He didn’t speak. She didn’t speak. Her entire body was shaking.

A weight pressed into the small of her back. A shove.

And then she was outside the dome.

She whirled around, the cold clinging to her legs, to her face, to her hair, to everything. The opening to the dome slid shut, and through the iced-over glass she saw the haze of the car lights.

And then those pulled away, and she saw only darkness.

She stood, not moving. Her hands were still lashed behind her back. At the moment, this was more troubling to her than the cold. She edged forward, forcing her way through the freezing, slicing winds, until she bumped up against the dome glass. Marianella could withstand the cold, but if she wandered off into the desert, she would never find her way back, and she’d starve instead.
I imagine death will be a short time coming,
he’d said, in his dead devil’s voice.

For her, it would. Sometimes strength had its weaknesses.

She leaned up against the glass and took deep, gulping breaths. “Our Lady of the Ice,” she whispered, breath solidifying in the air in front of her. “Protect us from the cold. Draw us into the warmth of the Lord. Our Lady of the Ice, deliver us from evil’s winter darkness. Amen.”

The prayer gave her strength, but her body was shivering so hard that it was difficult for her to keep her thoughts in order. The maintenance drones. If she could find one, just one, with ties to Sofia and Luciano—

The drones came out in the morning. She knew that much. They came out in the morning, when the dome lit itself up from inside like a beacon.

She pressed against the glass and whispered another prayer to the Mother of the Ice, and closed her eyes, and waited.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ELIANA

Eliana poured the last of her office coffee. No sugar, no cream. She’d asked Diego if he could get some coffee from Cabrera’s shipments, and he’d looked at her and said, “I could. But do you really want to buy food from him?”

“Is there any way to avoid it?”

He’d shrugged, and that had been the end of the conversation. But as she stared at the crumpled-up bag sitting in the trashcan, she wished she’d pushed the matter further.

Eliana was in her office, prepping for one of the new cases she’d gotten from attending Marianella’s party. Three days, and two people had already called her, one hoping to find a son who’d run away and the other looking for information about a piece of property near the docks. Easy work, and neither with any connections to Cabrera. She was looking forward to both jobs—and looking forward to the cash they would bring in too. Money for a mainland visa.

Funny that she wasn’t as excited about that as she used to be. It was because of Diego. She might be able to leave Antarctica when the spring came, but it would mean leaving Diego. She hadn’t really thought, when they’d started seeing each other, that she’d still be seeing him when she left the city.

The bell over the door rang.

Eliana looked up from her files. A man stood in the doorway. He was handsome, his eyes a striking golden-brown color, like caramel. He wore a gray flannel suit, a black trench coat tossed over one arm. Expensive shoes. He wasn’t someone she’d met at Lady Luna’s party.

“Miss Gomez?” He slipped off his fedora and dropped it onto the coatrack beside the door, then draped his trench coat beside it.

“That’s me.” Eliana took a sip of coffee. “Can I help you?”

“Are you really a private investigator?”

“Yes. I can show you my license.”

He was looking around the office, studying the walls and her shabby furniture. “That won’t be necessary. I’d like to hire you.”

Three cases in three days. Well.

Eliana drained the last of her coffee. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me about it?”

He nodded and sat down. Eliana slid behind her desk and pulled out her pad and pen. The man watched her, his face pleasant and unexceptional save for his eyes. Eliana really hoped this wouldn’t have anything to do with Cabrera. She wouldn’t hear the end of it from Diego.

“So what do you need?” Eliana smiled. “Think your wife’s stepping out?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

Over in the corner, the radiator rattled, banging up against the wall.

“My name’s Juan Gonzalez. I work for the city.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Eliana. She accepted and leaned over the desk so he could light it. Then he lit his own and blew out a haze of smoke before continuing. “But this is a private matter. I expect discretion.”

Everyone expects discretion these days,
Eliana thought, but she said, “Discretion is my specialty.”

“So I heard.” Another curl of smoke. “It should be a simple matter. I need you to find out all you can about this—person.” He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a photograph, and laid it on the
table. It was at least thirty years old, yellowed and crumbling at the edges. A head shot, the woman staring at the camera with wide dewy eyes, her dark hair pinned away from her face in a fountain of jewels, feathers floating around her bare shoulders.

“Her name is Sofia,” the man said, dragging on his cigarette. “She isn’t human.”

“A robot?” Eliana picked up the photograph. She thought of the andie at Lady Luna’s party. You probably couldn’t tell what he was in a picture either. It was only when he was moving that he gave himself away.

“Yes. She was a performer and comfort girl when the amusement park was open. She’s still around.”

“In the city?” Eliana dropped the photograph onto the desk. “I thought all the andies got shipped out—” She stopped. “Most of them, anyway.”

The man shook his head. “It was part of the entire collapse of Autômatos Teixeira. They stayed. In the park, for city use. Most have been dismantled by now, or have been deactivated and locked away.” He shrugged.

“The park.” Eliana thought of all the stories she’d heard about the ruins of the amusement park, mostly when she’d been younger. Snatches of reports on the evening news as her mother set the table for dinner, about people disappearing. The assumption was always that they had gone into the park for some unsavory purpose that was never clearly explained. Or there was that time one of the roller coasters started up without warning and rumbled over its track until someone from the city went and stopped it—a rumor went around that there had been a decapitated human body in one of the cars, the head rolling around next to the body’s feet. Eliana knew, like all children of Hope City, that the park was a place You Did Not Go.

“Yes, the park. There’s a train that runs into the old underground station. You’ll want to go during the day, I imagine.”

“And do what, exactly?”

Mr. Gonzalez smoked his cigarette, giving away nothing. “Do what you do. Investigate her. I want to know anything you can find out.”

“Anything in particular?”

He shook his head. “No. Anything at all.”

Eliana sighed, frustrated. “It really helps if you give me a little more to go on.”

Mr. Gonzalez stared at her through the wreath of smoke. Then he jabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. His hands were long and graceful. Office hands. Not with the power plants, then.

“Find her,” he said. “Watch her. And tell me what she does.”

“She’s gonna see me if I go into the amusement park.”

“That’s not my concern.” Mr. Gonzalez reached into his coat and pulled out a thick white envelope. “Fifty up front.” He set the envelope down on the desk. “Another twenty a day when you report back to me. If you find anything interesting, I’ll double that.”

Eliana stared at him, her heart banging in her ears. With all the extra money from Lady Luna and her contacts, Eliana was closer to having enough money for a visa than she’d ever been. Than her own
parents
had ever been, and they’d scrimped and saved up until their deaths. At this rate, she might even be able to begin her application for the visa before the end of the winter, and be on her way to the mainland on the first ship setting out from the docks.

She didn’t let herself think about Diego.

“Well?” Mr. Gonzales said. “What do you think?”

Eliana picked up the envelope and opened it. She ran her thumb over the edges of the bills, her breath hitching in her throat. “What do you mean by ‘interesting’?” she asked.

“I’ll let you know if I hear it.” Mr. Gonzalez stared at her, his gaze heavy, stifling. “Will this arrangement work for you, Miss Gomez? If not, I can take my business elsewhere.”

Eliana kept running her thumb over the bills. She thought of Diego, lying naked in her bed, the sheets draped over his waist, frowning at her, telling her for the hundredth time not to take cases that involved Cabrera. She remembered racing out of the Florencia, her heart pounding so fast, she thought it would hurt her.

“One question,” Eliana said. “Does this have anything to do with Ignacio Cabrera?”

“The gangster? Don’t be absurd.”

Eliana nodded. She tossed the money onto the desk like it didn’t concern her. “Good. I’ll take the assignment.”

*  *  *  *

A few days went by while Eliana thought about the job. Mr. Gonzalez had said he’d come back to her office in a week to see what she’d learned. But a fucking robot would notice her wandering around the amusement park, so it wasn’t as if she could borrow Essie’s car and case the neighborhood. Eliana sat at her desk, doodling on her notebook paper, underneath the place where she had written
Sofia
and
andie
and
amusement park
. The photograph stared at her, Sofia’s eyes dark and glossy. She really didn’t look like an andie at all.

Meanwhile, Eliana scrounged up the deed to that storefront by the docks, and Mrs. Quiroga actually conjured a smile when she stopped by the office for the meeting. It was more satisfying than Eliana had expected.

Finding the runaway son was trickier—mostly, Eliana suspected, because he didn’t want to be found. As she rode around town, asking questions about the runaway, half her thoughts were always with that beautiful andie Sofia. She couldn’t turn the job down. The fifty-dollar retainer wasn’t enough money on its own.

One afternoon, Eliana was holed up in her office, making phone calls to all the bars on Hope City’s east side, since she’d gotten a lead about the runaway taking up work as a dishwasher. But so far, she hadn’t found anything.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s got brown hair, tallish—” The bell chimed. Eliana glanced up. At first she couldn’t place what she was seeing. A woman. A familiar woman.

Lady Luna.

The man on the other end was saying that their only dishwasher had black hair, and Eliana managed to sputter out a “That’s not him” before dropping the telephone back into the receiver. It was Lady Luna, dressed in sleek mainland clothes, her blond hair hanging loose to her shoulders.

She was coated in ice.

The ice sparkled across her skin as she stepped into the office
and closed the door behind her. Her steps were slow and jerky and punctuated by a horrible cracking sound, like her body was falling apart.

“Hello?” Her voice was rough and whispery. “Ms. Gomez?”

“Lady Luna?” Eliana stood up, kicking her chair away from the desk. “Are you—are you okay?” Her voice echoed in her head.

Lady Luna focused in on her.

“There you are,” she said.

Eliana opened her mouth. Lady Luna shuffled forward. Her hair clinked as she moved, catching the light, throwing off sparkles.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Eliana said, voice shaking, “what happened to you?”

Lady Luna shambled up to the desk. She looked around the room with a dazed, empty expression. Then she looked toward Eliana, and her pupils contracted into points. Creepy.

“Why did I come here?” She collapsed into the client chair. The dome light hit her, and dots of white light appeared all over the walls of the room. “I should have—” She looked at Eliana again. “I hope you’ll help me.”

“Lady Luna?” Eliana couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. “What— Are you
okay
?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?” Lady Luna put on a strained, painful-looking smile. “I would be—very much obliged.”

A request for a cigarette was so normal that Eliana knew exactly what to do. She fumbled around in her purse and pulled out her pack and her lighter. Lady Luna didn’t move. It seemed like it hurt her, moving. So Eliana stood up, walked around the desk, and placed the cigarette between Lady Luna’s lips. Lady Luna gazed up at her. Her pupils were still contracted, and something about her eyes seemed wrong. Dull. Distant.

Eliana stared at her, looking for the tells she had found on Luciano, but Lady Luna didn’t give herself away as a robot. Of course not; she’d
never
had those tells. Eliana flicked the lighter, touched it to the tip of Lady Luna’s cigarette. The ember flared; smoke twisted toward the ceiling.

Lady Luna took the cigarette from her mouth and blew out a stream of smoke.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit in need of fire at the moment.” She reached distractedly for her hair and pulled on a thin frozen chunk. It broke in half.

Eliana jumped.

“Fuck.” The word sounded elegant in Lady Luna’s soft voice. She tossed the broken hair to the floor. It hit with a clank.

Eliana slumped back against the desk.

Lady Luna smoked her cigarette without speaking. Eliana watched her. When the cigarette was burned down almost to the filter, Eliana handed her the ashtray, and Lady Luna snubbed it out.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Are you a robot?” Eliana blurted.

Lady Luna took a long time to answer.

“No,” she said. She traced her fingers over her hair again. The ice was starting to melt and it left dark puddles on the floor. “No, not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

Lady Luna closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come here.” Her voice wavered and her eyes opened. “You were right to warn me about Ignacio.”

“Cabrera?” Eliana felt cold.

“Yes, he tried to kill me.” A pause. “But he was unsuccessful.”

Dread gnawed at Eliana’s stomach. “Did he throw you out of the dome?” God, did Cabrera do that? Did
Diego
? Eliana tried not to think about Pablo Sala.
Mr. Cabrera had him killed.
If Diego was just an errand-runner, he shouldn’t know that. Should he?

Lady Luna nodded.

“And you survived?” Eliana was dizzy. “This has to do with your stolen documents, doesn’t it?”

Another pause. A drop of water slid down Lady Luna’s hair. “Yes,” she said.

“I don’t understand. It’s fine if you want to tell me you’re a robot. I won’t—”

Then Eliana gasped.

Lady Luna looked away, her face blank.

“You’re part-robot.”

The faintest hint of a smile, bitter and hard. “Part-robot. I like that better than the official term. But yes, that’s what I am.”

The office went silent save for the rattle of the radiator, the drip of melting ice. Eliana stared at Lady Luna. Cyborg, that was the official term. She’d heard about cyborgs before. They were banned in Hope City, banned in Argentina in general. Banned in most places, across the Americas, in Africa, in Europe. The only place where cyborgs were accepted was in certain countries in Asia—Japan, Korea, China. She’d never given them much thought beyond a ripple of discomfort whenever they were mentioned on the news. She understood robots and she understood humans, but she had never been able to understand both at the same time.

“Does it shock you?” Lady Luna’s voice was soft and melodious, the voice of a human.

“No.” Eliana wanted to seem polite.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Lady Luna pressed her hands against her lap. “I really didn’t mean to burden you with this. I can, of course, pay for your discretion, as I did with the documents.”

Eliana almost said that wasn’t necessary, but she caught herself at the last moment. It was good business sense, to take the money to keep a secret she would have otherwise.