Our Lady of the Ice (17 page)

“No,” Diego snapped. “Take me back to Hope City. Entrance 59
B
.” The closest land entrance to the docks, the closest land entrance to Mr. Cabrera’s office.

“Very well, Mr. Amitrano,” the robot said, and the automobile lurched backward, tires rumbling.

Diego settled back. He kept his gun in his lap, but once they were out in the desert, it would be worthless. If this robot decided he should die, then Diego would be dead.

They drove through the ice and snow.

*  *  *  *

Diego slouched in one of the leather chairs in Mr. Cabrera’s office, staring, bleary-eyed, up at the ceiling. The girl had given him something, drops that made the pain in his arm go away.

“Don’t move,” she told him, squeezing water from her rag into a metal bowl from the Florencia’s kitchen. “I’m about to start sewing.”

“Great.” Diego dropped his head to the side. The girl wore all black, her hair rolled up in a knot at the base of her head. Her hands were bare. At the hospital they wore gloves. But Diego couldn’t go to the hospital.

She had a medical emergency kit open in front of her, bottles with rubber stoppers and rolls of white gauze. She’d cleaned all the blood off his arm, and the water in the bowl was stained red.

“Shouldn’t feel anything, with the drops I gave you.” She peered up at him. Lines cracked around her eyes. “But I’ll put a topical on too. You’re lucky it just nicked you.”

“Tell me about it.” Diego turned away, focusing his gaze on Mr. Cabrera’s desk. It was empty; Mr. Cabrera was out on the floor of the Florencia, meeting with a group of city men on his payroll. Diego’d come stumbling in through the back door, waving his gun in the face of the skinny guy who was supposed to be watching the docks. He’d been mad with fear, his thoughts wild, his skin burning from the cold. All that anxiety had slipped away now, thanks to the drops from the emergency box. He still remembered the andie, though. Its blank, empty expression. The blast of its gun.

Diego was aware of the girl moving beside him; when he glanced at her, she clutched a needle strung with black thread, and the black thread was sliding through his skin. She was right, he couldn’t feel it, but his stomach clenched up and he looked away, down at the dusty floor.

The door creaked open.

“Everything all right in here?” Mr. Cabrera. Diego grunted in acknowledgment.

“He’s going to be fine.” The girl’s hands moved as if she were playing the violin, back and forth, back and forth. “I gave him something to calm him. Thanks for not slamming in here, by the way.”

“I never slam, my dear.” The door clicked shut, and Mr. Cabrera walked into Diego’s line of sight. “You’ve certainly been having a lot of excitement lately, haven’t you, Diego?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Diego’s words slurred. Mr. Cabrera arched an eyebrow and sat down behind his desk. He watched the girl work, his eyes following the movement of her hands.

“All done?” he asked after a time, and Diego turned to the girl, who was cutting out a length of gauze.

“Almost.” She wrapped the gauze around Diego’s forearm and secured it with tape. He felt this, but barely. Layers of cloth lay between his arm and her touch.

“Wonderful work as always, Laura,” said Mr. Cabrera with a grin. The girl didn’t return it, only packed up her things. She looked at Diego.

“If that gets infected,” she said, “tell Mr. Cabrera.”

Then she left the office, leaving the scent of hydrogen peroxide in her wake.

Mr. Cabrera laughed. “Laura. I picked her up on the mainland, you know that? I was in Buenos Aires, visiting a contact of mine. There was a spot of violence. It happens. She fixed me up in the hospital, and I offered her a job.”

“Oh yeah?” Diego studied the wrappings on his arm, then pulled his shirt back on, buttoning it up to his throat.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you personally, Diego.”

Diego nodded. “It’s okay.”

“Mr. Martinez had some concerns about all the recent troubles with the electricity. Thought I might have something to help, like I’m some city engineer. I told him the problem’s just that the domes are too old.” He waved one hand. “What happened, Diego? Who shot you?”

Diego turned back to Mr. Cabrera. The dim green lamplight distorted everything and turned the office nightmarish. Or maybe that was the drops.

“That’s why I asked for you,” Diego said. “It’s that andie you hired.”

“Sofia?” Mr. Cabrera gave away nothing, only tilted his head as if her name came as a surprise. Maybe it did. “Sofia shot you?”

“No.” Diego rubbed his forehead. “Her—friend, or assistant or whatever. The one that looks like a man, not the other one.”

“Luciano.”

“Yeah, I guess.
He
shot me.”

Wrinkles formed across Mr. Cabrera’s brow. Disappeared. “Was Sofia with him?”

Diego shook his head. “Not that I saw. One of the dome’s maintenance drones was, though.”

“Did he see you? Know who you were?”

This hadn’t actually occurred to Diego, that perhaps the andie hadn’t recognized him. But no, he was a
robot
. Of course he’d recognized Diego.

“I would assume so,” he said. “I didn’t talk to him.” He laid out the sequence of events as best he could; it was difficult with the fuzz from Laura’s drops.

When Diego finished, Mr. Cabrera didn’t react. His face gave away nothing. He might as well have been a robot himself.

“I see.” He stared at Diego for a moment longer, then pulled out a ring of keys from inside his coat pocket. They caught the light, gleaming. “You know you’re like a son to me, Diego.”

Even through the wall of drugs, Diego’s heart swelled. Mr. Cabrera opened one of the locked drawers in his desk and pulled it open.

“Sofia and her—
friend
—have not earned my trust the way you have. I’m glad you brought this to me.”

He dropped a stack of money onto the desk.

“I’m sorry you’re going to have to send someone else out there,” Diego said. “I probably missed something.”

“Not something you need to worry about. It wasn’t your fault.” Mr. Cabrera peeled away a section of bills, nearly a third of the stack, and slid it toward Diego. “Here. The least I could do.”

“Thank you, sir.” Diego never called anyone sir but Ignacio Cabrera.

Mr. Cabrera smiled and tucked the rest of the money back into his desk. “You got a girl, Diego?”

Diego thought of Eliana stretched out sleeping beside him on the bed, and drinking beer in the blue light of Julio’s, and walking up her stairwell dressed in her professional-looking outfits for work. He thought about her brushing her hair before bed and cooking dinner for him in the narrow space of her apartment.

He thought about the first time he’d seen her, at a friend’s party. She’d been dressed all in black, her hair loose around her shoulders. It made her look intelligent, he thought, all that black. He hadn’t
known he wanted a girl until he saw her, standing alone next to a lamp, swaying in time to the music. Thought he was too busy being Mr. Cabrera’s right-hand man, too busy being Mr. Cabrera’s
son
. But he’d gone up to her and asked her to dance, and she’d said yes, and the lights from the party had wrapped them in a warm golden glow. And it had been fucking perfect.

“Yeah,” he said. “I got a girl.”

This admission seemed to please Mr. Cabrera, like he’d been worried about Diego’s happiness. “Good,” he said. “You go see her. Take that money and buy her dinner. Be grateful you’re alive.”

Diego looked at the money on the table. After a pause, he reached over and took it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ELIANA

Eliana paced around her apartment, drinking watery Hope City tea and smoking a cigarette. Three days had passed since Lady Luna—no,
Marianella
—had showed up at the office covered in ice, but Eliana hadn’t heard from her once. She’d checked the papers, looking for mentions of her and finding only stories about unrest on the mainland and food shortages in the domes.

Isn’t that your fucking job, Cabrera?
Eliana had thought.
Bringing
us food?
She’d tossed the newspaper aside.

Probably what had happened was Marianella got her house security sorted out, and she was holed up in one of those big airy rooms drinking coffee with cream and planning all the ways she could rip Cabrera limb from limb with her cyborg strength if he tried to kill her again. Of course she wasn’t answering her telephone. Eliana had called a couple of times, trying to check on her. Never any answer.

Eliana probably wouldn’t answer her phone either.

In addition to trying to get ahold of Marianella, Eliana had looked over the photograph of the andie. She’d even called up the train station to learn what times the trains went into the amusement park (not often, as it turned out—only three times a day, morning, noon, and night).

Three days, nearly two hundred dollars on the line. Nothing to show for it.

She could always suck it up, keep saving. Other jobs would come along—they always did. But she didn’t want to turn this job down, even though something about Mr. Gonzalez left her unsettled. It wasn’t just the way his eyes didn’t seem real. He swore he didn’t have anything to do with Cabrera, and she was willing to believe him. But there were other factions in the city, other dangers. Still, it was a lot of money, and if she could face down Cabrera—well, she was willing to risk it.

Eliana pulled out the photograph of Sofia and sat beside her window, balancing the picture on her knee. She smoked the last of her cigarette, cracked the window, tossed the butt out to the street below. Bad habit. She did it anyway.

Cold air trickled into the apartment, and Eliana looked down at the photograph, which continued to tell her nothing. She looked out her window, at the gray building across the street.

She had to do something. She couldn’t just sit on this until Mr. Gonzalez came back asking about it.

She was just going to have to go to the amusement park.

She tapped her fingers on the glass, considering. The thought of going into the park made her skin crawl. She’d grown up with stories about the amusement park all her life, and when you hear something all your life, it’s pretty hard to shake it. The robots there were feral, dangerous. You could only trust the maintenance drones put out by the city.

Eliana took a deep breath and checked the time. Ten forty-five. She could still make the noon train. So she changed into some of her nicer clothes and put on a little makeup and tucked the photograph into her purse.

Then she knelt beside her bed and pulled out the cheap little safe where she kept her revolver. She counted the bullets—all accounted for. She’d only ever shot the thing at a target. But this was the amusement park. And she’d heard too many stories.

At first Eliana put the gun in her purse, but then she thought about it for a moment and stuck it into the inside pocket of her
jacket. It bumped against her waistline as she walked down the stairs and out onto the street.

She waited at the station for almost forty-five minutes, sitting on the bench with her hands folded in her lap as the usual city trains pulled into the station and then departed from the station on great clouds of steam. The humidity curled her hair, and the air smelled like metal and damp. Everyone ignored her.

And then, right as the bells of the church rang out noon, the amusement park train slid up against the platform.

It was rattling and run-down and painted with faded murals like the cruise ships. Peeling penguins and icebergs and starry nights. Eliana stood up. A crowd had gathered, but none of them looked at the train with any interest, and none of them climbed on board with her.

The car was empty. Eliana took a seat and gazed out the window at the station, her breath clouding the glass. She thought about a time as a child when she and a gang of kids from her school had trekked down to the amusement park wall one summer afternoon and dared each other to run up and touch the bricks. Eliana had gone first. She’d always been brave when she was younger. The bricks were cold to the touch, and her terror had transformed into a waterfall of hysterical giggles when she’d turned around and seen all her friends gaping at her.

“Approaching park entrance.” The announcer’s voice was cultured and soft, not at all like the voices on the city train. Eliana straightened up, her stomach tightening. The train sped into a tunnel, and for the first time Eliana realized how dim the car lights were, because everything turned murky and indistinct, as if she were underwater.

Eliana peered out the window, but all she could see in the darkened glass was her reflection. The train was slowing down. She gripped her purse and took a deep breath.

The train rumbled to a stop. The lights flickered twice and then stayed on, brighter than before.

The doors screeched open and Eliana stepped out onto the abandoned platform. She could see how it had once been part of an
amusement park: the murals of Antarctic animals greeted her from the walls, and on the platform was a line of wrought-iron metal benches that stretched out into the shadows. But the murals were faded and the benches covered in dust, and for a moment Eliana considered turning around and walking back into the train.

She didn’t.

She followed the faded arrows to the exit sign. The wooden escalator was frozen in place, and she took the steps carefully, one hand pressed against the railing, the other dangling beside the bulge in her coat that contained her gun. A point of light glimmered up ahead—street level. The park.

When she stepped out into the floodlights, the air was cold and still. The buildings all threw off sparkles of white light. Eliana tucked her hand into her pocket and touched the cold metal of the gun.

She had no idea which direction to go in.

After standing stupidly for a moment, listening for the sounds of approaching robots and hearing nothing, she decided to follow the amusement park signs. They were strung up on candy-striped poles and painted with the same white glitter as everything else. They directed her to attractions—the Antarctic Mountain, the Haunted Ice Forest, the petting zoo, the Fairy-Tale Village. Eliana remembered the story about the decapitated head on the roller coaster and shivered. She decided to go to the Fairy-Tale Village. If anyone was living in this place, robot or human, it made sense that they would be in a village.

Sometimes you had to stalk a neighborhood and stay under cover of shadows, and sometimes you just had to walk in like you owned the place.

Eliana marched along the faded path, listening to the dull click of her footsteps. The stillness unnerved her. It reminded her of the funeral home where her parents had been cremated. That place was all frozen white marble, sculpted to look like drifts of ice. Just like here. Just like the amusement park.

The path curved. Eliana found herself in a forest of metal trees, their trunks and branches painted white. A handful of the trees
were hung with glittering, brightly colored leaves, pinks and purples and blues and greens. Eliana stopped and tapped one of the leaves. It was made of glass and it swung back and forth, throwing off sunlight.

She wondered why all the trees didn’t have leaves. Probably they had, at one point.

The leaf stopped swinging, the dots of light settling in a pattern on her shoe. She thought about what this place must have looked like when the park was still open, all this color and light. It must have been beautiful.

And then she heard a noise.

Eliana froze. Her hand went to her gun and her head flushed with nightmares.

The noise was a soft, mechanical buzzing. A robot sound. Without thinking Eliana yanked the gun out of her coat and cocked it and waited, telling herself she was ready.

The buzzing faded away.

Eliana breathed hard. After a minute or two passed she dropped the gun to her side. The artificial forest no longer seemed beautiful but unnatural and eerie. Dangerous.

She forced herself to move on.

The path led to a metal gate overgrown with flowerless vines. She walked under the archway and into what must have been the Fairy-Tale Village. She was surrounded by gingerbread houses and faded metal statues of elves and gnomes and fairies.

The stillness felt like it could choke her.

She went up to one of the cottages and knocked. The door nudged open. Eliana gripped her gun tighter. “Hello!” she called out. “My name is Eliana Gomez, and I’m just looking to speak with someone.”

No answer.

Eliana crept in, her footsteps stirring up dust. The cottage was full of broken furniture and the glitter of shattered glass. And dust thick enough to make her sneeze. She thought she saw something small moving jerkily in the shadows, but when she moved in to investigate, she found nothing but smeared tracks in the dust, miniature footprints marching up to the wall.

Unsettled, she went back outside.

“Now what?” she said.

Her voice echoed. She checked two more of the cottages but found them as run-down and abandoned as the first. She followed the path to the edge of the Fairy-Tale Village, where she found a tangle of thorny plants that she thought might be roses, although there were no blossoms anywhere. She sat down on a nearby bench and lay her gun across her lap. Took a deep breath.

That buzzing began again. Closer.

Eliana leapt to her feet and spun around with the gun. But she didn’t see anything.

The buzzing stopped.

She rubbed at her forehead. Her adrenaline had her body drawn tight like a coil about to spring. She checked her watch, and her arm was shaking. She had over three hours before the next train would arrive in the amusement park. And she’d heard the city kept the front gate locked, so she couldn’t just walk back out onto the street. But maybe those rumors weren’t true.

She left the Fairy-Tale Village and walked until she found another signpost. This one pointed her to the Snow Village, concessions, the Ferris wheel, and the Ice Palace. She decided to try the Snow Village. The path twisted through snowdrifts carved out of painted cement. Eliana sweated beneath her coat and sweater. Not from heat—it was freezing here—but from a vague, unshakable sense of dread.

The Snow Village loomed up ahead. Behind it rose a huge white art deco structure Eliana could only assume was the Ice Palace. It seemed high enough to touch the top of the dome.

A speck of darkness slid down the Ice Palace’s side.

Eliana’s skin prickled. Nothing emerged from the Snow Village cottages. She slunk forward, cautious, holding her gun in front of her at an awkward angle. It occurred to her that if she was going to find someone—some
thing
—it would probably be in the Ice Palace. The speck of darkness was most likely a maintenance drone, and there might have been others with it, others that could lead her to an andie if she didn’t scare them off and if she could figure out how to ask.

But despite all that, she shivered at the thought of going to the palace, even with her gun. The cottages, she decided. The cottages would be safer.

She knocked on the door of the first cottage with her foot. No one answered, but the door nudged open a little, just like the door in the Fairy-Tale Village had done. She stepped inside. There was no dust and broken furniture here. The room sparkled with electronic parts, all set out on shelves and tables, lined up in neat rows like in a grocery store. Eliana fought the panic rising in her throat like bile; she fought the urge to run. Instead she slid forward, gun lifted, her finger on the trigger.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

Eliana screamed and whirled around. Her finger curled and there was a dazzling flash of light and a loud reverberating bang and a sharp burning pain in her ears. Her arms jerked back and slammed into her forehead. A man stepped forward and slapped the gun out of her hand, and it went clattering across the floor. Eliana stumbled backward, shaking. Half of the man’s face was missing, the skin blasted off and charred at the edges. Beneath it was dull burnished metal.

She screamed again.

The man picked up her gun and shoved it into the waistband of his pants, then grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up to standing. She tried to struggle against him, but his grip was too strong.

“Come along,” he said, in an even, pleasant voice.

A voice she recognized.

“Luciano?” she said, suddenly struck with a painful, piercing guilt.

He looked at her. With only half his face she could hardly see that it was him. “Yes. Hello, Miss Gomez.”

He led her out of the cottage and through the Snow Village. Eliana pulled against him, but he didn’t let her go, and her guilt was replaced with a trickle of fear.

“Please, Luciano—I’m sorry I shot you. I didn’t mean— I thought you were—”

“You thought I was some other robot,” he said, still in that even, pleasant voice. His grip tightened on her arm.

Eliana yanked against him. It didn’t work. Her vision blurred
with tears, refracting the light from the floodlights and the glittering white paint. Luciano didn’t say anything more; he kept walking. Her arm felt like it was being pulled out of the socket as she stumbled after him, her fear now so palpable, it was a physical pain.

Maybe Marianella wasn’t her friend at all. Maybe there was a reason cyborgs were so distrusted. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe Eliana was going to die.

Luciano took her to the Ice Palace, winding through fake glass glaciers covered in thick gray moss. When they came to the entrance, he pressed his hand against a sensor and the door swung open. Eliana choked back sobs.

“Where are you taking me!” she shrieked. “What are you going to do with me?”