Gudsriki (35 page)

“Is it safe?” asked Vibeke.

Nel scanned the fluid. It was only slightly less acidic than the acid rain they'd encountered previously. What wasn't powerful acid or alcohol was neurotoxic.

“It will work in my energy stores because they run on methyl alcohol. It won't kill you outright if you drink less than one fifth of a liter.”

Vibeke smelled it. The fumes hurt her nostrils and eyes. Nel took a sip and nodded. Vibs sipped a bit and felt her mouth go numb briefly, then erupt in pain that shot down her throat and into her stomach. A terrible burp fled her gullet like the acid ghosts of her murdered stomach lining escaping. She felt her absorption implant dissolve completely.

“Do… do you… agh. Do you… ach, churp. Do you have anything to—churp—eat?”

“Fish,” said the bartender.

“Anything else?”

“Crab.”

“Can we see a menu?”

The tender was getting fed up. “There's fish, crab, fish, fish, or if ordered in advance, fish.”

“I'll have the fish.”

The bartender set a whole raw fish on a plate on the bar. Vibeke looked around the room. They hadn't been bamboozled. The other patrons were eating whole raw fish and live crabs. Vibeke took another sip of grog and bit into the raw mudskipper.

She ate her fish; it tasted fishy. They drank more grog. It made them groggy. Vibeke felt light-headed and noticed Nel was reeling as well.

“I thought you ran on this stuff.”

“It has other toxic ingredients, including—” She hiccupped loudly, then drank more.

For some time they were drunk and lightly happy. The fish didn't taste too bad anymore, and Vibs wasn't thinking about war and death and plans to fight again. With her brain running drunk, Nel seemed almost human, and Vibs let herself forget that she was anything but. Anyone in the groggery might have mistaken them for typical friends, stuck underwater for whatever reason but nothing out of the ordinary.

When filled they walked around the village for a while. They saw Cetaceans and a human or two, and were not bothered by anyone. They didn't offend or provoke anyone by mistake. They just wandered and saw a village that was untouched by the war overhead, safe from the radiation, devoid of rape gangs or cannibals (other than Vibeke) or armies. They listened to the gentle shrieking speech of the residents. It lost its harsh alien tones and became almost musical once more familiar. The more they saw, the less they remembered the priggish introductions and enjoyed the peace. In all her memory files, Nel realized that Violet had seen few times so quiet and calm. Vibs could remember none.

They found themselves in a vast atrium filled with reclining Cetaceans and a few human children. They were all born human. The transition to Cetacean was a long and painful process they all had to endure. Vibeke watched them and wondered what kind of bond that must have formed among them. Surely something akin to pain training and death training.

She watched a couple that appeared to be on a date. An entourage of similarly patterned family followed them, chaperoning. The couple spoke in shrieks and moans that Vibs couldn't begin to make out, but the etiquette they observed was palpable. It struck her somewhere between noble and grotesque. She felt a slight wave of guilt for bursting into their world without knowing a thing about how to act. They must have seemed boorish in the extreme, as if a drunk had wandered into the ravine screaming and defecating on the floor.

The drunkenness brought on by the grog was unlike that of mead. It wasn't an innocent tipsy tone but a dull rumble of malfunctioning muscles and the sound of crickets. There was something impure about it, polluted. Vibeke sat down on a thwart and tried to keep her senses active. Her vision flickered, and her sense of touch was hyperactive. The wood she sat on felt incredibly hard.

Nel sat beside her, arms touching, and she felt incredibly soft. Softer than Vibs would've thought for a humanoid combat chassis. She leaned toward Nel and let the soft skin warm her own. She wondered if the grog contained MDMA.

Nel was breathing heavily, zoned out and staring intently at a blank wall.

“Are you okay?” she asked the robot.

“I am operating within—” She burped loudly. “—normal parameters.”

“Batteries all recharged?”

“They are recharged.”

“That's good.”

“Yes, it is good.”

“Use contractions for fuck sake.”

“I'll.”

Vibeke laughed and hiccupped.

“What do you think of this place?”

“It's better than the war on the surface.”

Two kids ran past.

“I can't believe people have those.”

“Violet has no memory of ever wanting them.”

“Me neither…. What did Violet want out of life?”

“Aside from you she had no tangible wants. She enjoyed a good fight and a mission done well but had no aspirations, at least none she remembers thinking about.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“What was she like?” asked Nel.

“Thought you knew her better.”

“But I never ‘met' her.”

Vibeke looked at her. She was slumped. She looked more human than ever.

“She was ravenous. Ferocious. Angry most of the time.”

“She sounds awful.”

“To everyone but me. Her team. The ravine. You wouldn't want to run into her as a stranger. She never had time for anyone else. But she was self-conscious around people she liked, people she wanted to impress. I wouldn't say kind. She wasn't a kind person. But she was adorable sometimes. She came out of her shell sometimes.”

“She was nicer to you?”

“Sometimes. Everything was sometimes. Sometimes she was flirtatious and lovable. Sometimes she was abusive and obsessed. She wasn't perfect. Far from it. Didn't get why sex was a sensitive subject, why you couldn't be ferocious when it came to that. She broke my bones a hundred times, but when she did it because I wouldn't fuck her….”

“She really did that?”

“Yeah, it's a bad thing.”

“I know. I can't believe she would.”

“How the hell do you have moral sense?”

“From her memories.”

“Then how is yours better than hers?”

“I don't know.”

They sat still. Vibeke couldn't figure it out. Nel somehow had more sense than Violet did. The AI must have had something programmed in. But it was a killing machine. There was no reason she should have had such sense.

“You find a thousand-euro temp chip on the ground. You pick it up and consider yourself lucky. Then a guy comes along and asks if you've seen his thousand-euro chip that he lost. What do you do?”

“Kill him so as to cover my tracks.”

“Okay, so you're not hardwired to be good—”

“That's not good?”

“Not by any common standards. Okay, you see someone you want to fuck, but—actually, do you have any sex drive?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

Nel remained silent rather than admit her thoughts about the girl beside her.

“Okay, so you see someone you wanna fuck, but they're asleep. You know they won't wake up; they're drugged or something. Do you fuck 'em?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. But the thought makes me sad.”

Vibeke looked her over.

“Well, you're one up on Violet for that.”

Vibeke stood up and Nel joined her. They walked clumsily toward a large passageway. K team entered the atrium seconds after they left.

“So you have a sex drive, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Who's it for?”

“There's a surprising amount of bacteria and microscopic life living in the corners of this passageway.”

Vibeke nodded. “You can see that with Niide's eyes?”

“Yes.”

“So you can x-ray anyone just looking at them?”

“Yes. You have no new major fractures at this time.”

“Neat.”

“Yes.”

“Now tell me who activates your sex drive.”

“I hoped the grog had dulled your memory.”

“Yeah, but evading that question earns you my full attention, such as it is.”

“I have memories of numerous attractive women.”

“Like?”

“Rebecca, Nachtgall, DeMurtas, you, Gorgo, Luzie, even Mishka still stands out as physically attractive.”

“Physically.”

“Violet hated her for what she did to you.”

“Do you hate her too?”

“Violet did.”

“You're an evasive creature.”

“Tikaris have extensive evasion protocols.”

“I didn't miss you including me.”

“I'd not have included you if you weren't meant to.”

Vibeke stopped. “What does that mean?”

“It means grog interferes with inhibitions.”

Nel kept walking. Vibs limped back to her pace.

“What do you want to do when we kill Mishka? Veikko if we can?”

“We would be wise to escape the planet.”

“Yeah.”

They found themselves at the end of the passageway, a giant window looking out on the ocean, a few decks up from the lowest. There was life outside, Cetaceans in their element. Vibeke tried to wrap her brain around the village they were in being their second home. The air interior wasn't like a human city. It was more like a garage where they stashed the parts of their lives requiring air. The thought vanished, succumbing to the grog's effects.

“We need to get to that guy's place before we forget where it is.”

“Yes,” said Nel.

They didn't speak on the way back. They got briefly lost in the corridors outside the atrium, but they found the proper route and returned to the Cetacean's house and managed to whistle the right notes.

He let them in, though the door had no locks, and they retired below. The guest berth had a shower. Both took off their sealskins and walked into the tight space. It was exactly like every shower Vibs had taken with Violet. A thoughtless one. It felt amazing to get the grime off, but she felt nothing else. She didn't turn to sneak a peek at the body she'd seen a thousand times, or lend any thought to the warmth of their proximity.

Only the grog made her lose her balance and bump into the robot, which didn't react. It just went back to washing itself, carefully avoiding its hair. It wanted to keep the red blood-dyed hair, though in truth it had turned more brown long ago. Vibeke wondered what it meant, that the machine wanted a certain hair color.

There were no towels. Vibeke grabbed the bedsheet, but it was made of some sort of water resistant material. There was nothing to dry off with. Of course there wouldn't be for Cetaceans; they had to keep their skin wet. The two shook off what water they could and put the sheet back in place.

The desire to fall into bed and sleep was overwhelming. Vibeke was conscious of it and wondered briefly what Nel would do given her irregular sleep. Nel answered her by falling into the bed first and passing out so thoroughly that her skin panels fell ajar, her arm deconstructing completely as it fell off the bed and left its weapons systems strewn across the deck.

Vibs climbed into bed beside her and reached for the sheet. It wasn't cold, though. Even out of the hot shower, the room was still hot and humid. She looked over at Nel and wondered if she should put her back together. She decided against it, too nervous to touch her at first.

She convinced herself otherwise. It was her robot, and she could do with it as she pleased. She reached over and closed up her arm. It fit back together on its own when she closed its topmost plates. She pushed half her chest back in but then spotted it—Violet's heart. Beating inside Nel's chest. She stopped putting the chest back together and stared.

She pushed open the seams and brushed the ribs aside to look at it. She could almost hear it in the open air, through the transparent plastic pericardium. She leaned in closer and closer, and the sound became just barely audible. She leaned in so closely that when Nel awoke startled, she closed her chest up so fast that Vibeke's hair was caught in the seams.

She immediately understood what happened and opened her chest to let Vibeke's hair free. But didn't close up again. She reclined and let Vibs look in. Pulled aside her left breast and the ribs beneath it to let her look. She understood Vibs was looking at Violet's heart. She felt her breath, warm on her bare intercostal muscles, hot against the warm wet air. The heart started beating faster. Vibeke was overcome; she pushed Nel's chest back together and kissed her on the lips. Nel kissed back. Vibs kissed her again and again on her neck and breasts.

They made out on top of the slick blanket, Vibeke with desperation to feel something good, something familiar. Nel felt something more acute, more profound. She thought at first it was mere form, doing what made Vibeke happy. But the lust she felt for Vibeke was her own, a new variety of want. She rolled over and threw Vibeke to the bed and kissed her neck and her collarbone, then brushed her lips downward to her sides, nibbling and making her squeal with pleasure, then across her hips and down farther between her legs. Vibeke pulled on her hair and moaned, moaning so loudly the Cetacean heard her from the deck above.

He found the moans and shrieks indecipherable.

 

 

S
OLOMON
DISEMBARKED
in Itämeri. He got stares right off the boat. Humans were rare in Pohjanlahti but unheard of in the metropolis. He headed straight for the barracks. He traversed the long docking pylons and then the long ladder down to the benthic level and beyond. Deep into the rock.

He headed to Pytten's room and blew the whistle. It was only a few seconds before the door opened.

“Solomon? What are you doing in Itämeri Kaupunki?”

“Here for ye, Pytten. Tully says ye 'ave 'e admiral's ear.”