Our Lady of the Ice (8 page)

Jesus fucking Christ.

Diego stared at Sala, and Sala crawled backward across the floor, eyes darting back and forth. Looking for some weapon, probably. Diego couldn’t stop shaking. How could she be so stupid? So fucking stupid. He’d told her to stay away from Mr. Cabrera. That fucking
PI
who’d hired her had told her to stay away from Mr. Cabrera.

“You tell Cabrera,” Sala said. “Tell Cabrera about the girl. Once he finds her, then he’ll find the documents, I swear—”

Diego lifted his gun and shot him.

He did it without thinking. It was the idea of Mr. Cabrera finding out about Eliana that moved his hand, that pulled the trigger. If Sala was dead, he couldn’t tell Mr. Cabrera himself.

Diego stood up and reholstered his gun. Sala’s blood crept across the floor. Diego always felt disoriented after it happened, like he wanted to curl up and go to sleep. It’d been that way since he was a kid, but you did what you had to. Diego remembered the dismantled robot, the way its insides had glittered in the studio lights. It was the same thing he had just done, really, only broadcast on television. Maybe that was why he’d watched it.

Diego left Sala on the floor and walked out of the house. The street was still empty. No cars, no people. Just another desolate Hope City neighborhood.

The lights were still too dim.

Mr. Cabrera wouldn’t be happy about Sala’s death. Diego would have to come up with some excuse. But at least Mr. Cabrera wouldn’t find out about Eliana. At least he wouldn’t go looking for her.

Diego hoped.

CHAPTER SIX

ELIANA

Eliana waded through the golden grass, the train rumbling away in the distance. The brown envelope was tucked inside her coat. So was her gun.

She still couldn’t quite believe it had worked, the grab-and-run back at the Florencia. She’d gone back to her office afterward, locking the door and keeping the
CLOSED
sign displayed. Then she sat at her desk with the lights off and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves. The envelope sat on the desk and seemed to hum along with the buzzing in Eliana’s head. She wanted to look. What could it hurt, as long as she didn’t tell anyone? She’d even held the envelope up to the weak, dim dome light filtering through her window, looked at the outline the document created against the brown paper.

In the end, she didn’t do it. Lady Luna had paid her too much. That meant it was probably something Eliana didn’t want to know about.

Now it was late in the day, coming on into evening, and her adrenaline had mostly worn off after a glass of beer and a couple of cigarettes down at Julio’s. The dusky light was both brighter and more subtle here than in the city proper. Soft and glowing like golden dust. It was a troubling contrast to the city lights, which had been dim and flickery lately.

Lady Luna’s house was as stark as Eliana remembered. She pressed her thumb against the doorbell and waited. Her heart fluttered. She didn’t know why she was nervous—something about that sea of golden grass, the imposing house, the whisper of wealth everywhere around her. Or maybe she thought Cabrera would come slinking out of the shadows, a gun pointed at her head.

Lady Luna answered the door. Eliana wondered where the andie had gone off to.

“Well, I’m a little later than I promised,” Eliana said. “But I got ’em.” And she pulled the envelope out of her jacket.

Lady Luna’s eyes went wide and bright. “My documents!” she exclaimed. “You recovered my documents!”

Eliana nodded.

“Oh, come in, dear. Let me get you something to drink. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” She stepped away from the doorway, and Eliana slipped cautiously into the foyer. Everything glittered in the falling dome light. Eliana held up the envelope like an offering, but Lady Luna was already gliding down the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “Come along. I’ll set you up in the parlor.”

Eliana had no choice but to follow.

Lady Luna sat Eliana down in one of the curved Danish chairs and then disappeared into the hallway. Eliana balanced the envelope on her knee. The house was silent. Eerie. Why wasn’t the andie getting the drinks? It occurred to Eliana that maybe he wasn’t Lady Luna’s butler at all, but her
companion
. Eliana wondered how that would even work, from a physical standpoint.

“I’m so glad to see you got them back.” Lady Luna reappeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with a sleek metal teapot and a pair of teacups. She sat down next to Eliana and set the tray on the coffee table. “Where’d you find them? Was it terribly difficult?”

“Yeah,” Eliana said. “About that.”

Lady Luna looked at her with pure, lucid eyes.

“Do you know a guy named Pablo Sala?”

Lady Luna’s expression didn’t change. She stayed so still, in fact, that Eliana found it odd—suspicious, maybe, although she didn’t know why, or what the suspicious stillness could mean.

“No.” Lady Luna poured tea into one of the cups and handed it to Eliana. “No, I don’t believe I do.”

“He’s the one who grabbed them. If you wanted to, you know, press charges.”

“I don’t want to involve the police at all.” She filled the second cup. Her face was still oddly blank. “Is he dangerous in some way?”

“Sala? Probably not.” Eliana stared down at the surface of her tea. “But here’s the thing—he, ah, he was taking the documents to Ignacio Cabrera.”

Heavy silence filled the room. Lady Luna set her teacup down and folded her hands in her lap. “That’s not terribly surprising.”

There it was, the crack in her exterior. A line of panic shuddered through her features and then disappeared.

“Cabrera didn’t actually see them,” Eliana added. “The documents.”

“What did you say his name was again?” Lady Luna stared out the window. “The man who—who had them?”

“Pablo Sala. He works for the city. Engineer, like I thought.”

“Interesting. Thank you.” There was an uncanny coldness in her voice. “I’m sorry it did turn out that Mr. Cabrera was involved in this affair, however tangentially. I was hoping my suspicions would be wrong on that count. I’ll compensate for the danger. Twice what I said I’d originally pay.”

“That really isn’t necessary,” Eliana said, out of politeness rather than sincerity.

“I insist.”

Eliana decided not to feign politeness longer than she needed.

Lady Luna picked up her teacup and took a neat, elegant sip.

“I can go ahead and give you the papers now.” Eliana set the envelope on the table. “Didn’t mean to hold on to it for so long. I didn’t peek, I swear.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“What?”

Lady Luna didn’t explain, only set down her teacup and picked up the envelope. Undid the fasteners, slid the parchment out, nodded once.

“Everything is in order,” Lady Luna said. “Thank you.” She stood up, holding the envelope at her side. “If you wait here, I’ll fetch your payment. I really am so grateful for everything you’ve done.”

“No problem.” Eliana still wondered how in hell Lady Luna knew she hadn’t looked at the documents. She wished she had looked now. She wouldn’t have done anything about it; she just wanted to
know
.

Lady Luna left the parlor, her footsteps echoing down the hall. She took the envelope with her. Steam curled out of the teakettle. The room was so quiet that Eliana could hear her ears buzzing. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her clothes neat but worn, her hair unstyled. She didn’t belong here. Never would either. This was the only way to live on Antarctica, in a private dome with its own generators. Otherwise you were better off on the mainland, where you didn’t risk dying just by going out in the open.

Eliana wondered if the mainland looked the way Southstar did, all those fields of golden grass. When she was a little girl, her daydreams had been informed by the mainland television shows that broadcast during the day. Blue oceans and jungles and palm trees. But then her mother had explained that only the northern part of Argentina looked like this, and that the programs were mostly from Brazil and dubbed into Castilian. The amusement park had been built by a Brazilian company, Autômatos Teixeira, and there were still a handful of people from Brazil living in Hope City, and they liked to watch programs from their homeland.

That was all a long time ago, though. Autômatos Teixeira had long since gone bankrupt, and the amusement park had given way to power plants in order to justify the existence of the city. “One day you’ll leave this place,” Eliana’s mother had told her. “And you’ll see palm trees for yourself.”

Eliana reached over and poured herself a second cup of tea. It was stronger than she was used to. No milk. Well. Winter must hit the private domes too. She imagined that when she was on the mainland, like her mother used to dream for her—and that goal was closer than it had been for a long time, with the extra money from Lady Luna—she’d have all the milk she wanted.

“Here we are.” Lady Luna stepped into the doorway. The brown envelope was gone, replaced by a slim checkbook and a pen. She sat down. “I assume this is all right?” she asked, holding up the checkbook.

Eliana nodded.

Lady Luna smiled. “I wasn’t certain when I came to visit you for the first time. I’ve never hired a private investigator before.” She flipped open her checkbook and began scribbling.

“My business is registered with the city.”

“Oh, I apologize. That was rude of me. It’s just—it’s not the world I’m used to.”

Liar,
Eliana thought. Lady Luna might have an airy way of speaking, but it was weighed down by something indefinable, like she was only playing at being stupid. And the way she said it,
not the world
I’m used to
—Lady Luna knew exactly that sort of world better than she let on.

And what world was that? Eliana wondered. One where you buy things in cash, where private investigators are criminals?

She reminded herself that she had broken into Sala’s house to get those documents.

“Here we are, dear.” Lady Luna ripped off her check and handed it to Eliana. She’d doubled her payment, just like she’d promised.

“Thank you.” Eliana folded up the check and slipped it into her purse. Lady Luna watched her over the top of her teacup, eyebrows arched.

Eliana stood up. “I should go. I don’t want to trouble you any more—”

“It’s no trouble. I really don’t mind if you stay and finish your tea.”

She seemed sincere. But Eliana shook her head. “It’s been a long day.”

“I can only imagine.” Lady Luna smiled and stood up, smoothing out her skirt. “Oh, one last thing before you go. I can’t express to you how thankful I am that you brought these documents back to me.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that.” Eliana grinned to show it was a joke. “It’s just my job, Lady Luna. You paid me, I did it.”

“Yes, but—” Lady Luna waved her hand, as if to dismiss her own
words. “I’m throwing a little party in a few days, on Saturday. I’d be delighted if you could come.”

“A party,” Eliana said.

“Yes, it’s nothing much, just cocktails and music. But I have some friends who might be interested in meeting with you, who might have need of your . . . services, and I would love a chance to bring you some more business.” She smiled, and there was the Lady Luna that Eliana had seen on television so many times. “Oh, please say yes, Ms. Gomez. It’d mean the world to me if I could help you acquire a few more clients.”

“Fine.” Eliana held up one hand. “Yes. I’ll come.” She couldn’t believe she’d just agreed to it, but the promise of clients seemed genuine, and if they all paid as well as Lady Luna, then she might have her visa money by the end of winter. Besides, Eliana realized she had more of a desire to find out about Lady Luna’s documents than she cared to admit. “Saturday?”

“Yes, at eight o’clock. Nothing too formal. A cocktail dress would be fine.”

Eliana had to give Lady Luna credit for answering the question about the dress code before she’d even asked it.

“All right,” Eliana said. “I’ll see you then.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

SOFIA

Sofia and Luciano sat side by side at a table close to the Florencia stage. A human girl was swaying in time to a burlesque song from the mainland, too modern to be a danger. When Sofia had brought Ignacio Cabrera the information about the new icebreakers and he’d hired her as his new reprogrammer, those were the terms she’d established: he would not play any music from before 1936 in her presence.

Tonight was her first assignment in this new position.

“He’s late,” Luciano said.

“He’s always late.” Their table was empty. No plates, no silverware, no wineglasses. Sofia refused to play into the trappings of humanity. The desire to do so was a small program, one she could override if she concentrated hard enough.

Someday, she’d have no programs to override. That was why she was here.

Even though it was the dinner hour, the restaurant was only half-f, and most of the patrons sat talking and eating and ignoring the poor dancing girl. Sofia watched her, remembering the years of the amusement park, her own time on a stage.

“Perhaps we should come back,” Luciano said. “He shouldn’t make us wait.”

“He makes everyone wait.” She turned away from the dancing girl. Luciano stared guilelessly at her through the golden lamplight. “It’s how he makes himself feel powerful.”

“They all have their ways of establishing power.”

“Yes.” She folded her hands in her lap. Although she would not admit this to Luciano, she was also angered by Cabrera’s rudeness. Unfortunately, he was an integral part of her plan. She could slip into her old role of servile robot easily enough, knowing payment was coming. Cabrera was the only person in Hope City, human or not, who could acquire the parts she needed to cut out her treacherous programming once and for all.

A waitress approached the table, a liquid shadow in her black uniform. “He’s ready to see you,” she said.

Luciano and Sofia nodded at each other, then stood up and followed the waitress through the dining room, then into the narrow dimly lit hall that led to the back of the building. The music from the show thumped through the walls, setting Sofia on edge.

The waitress stopped at the metal door leading out to the docks. She looked at Luciano and Sofia. Sofia doubted she knew what they were. She was young. She wouldn’t remember a time when robots looked like humans.

“Have a nice talk,” the waitress said, and pushed the door open.

It was cold, the way it always was at the docks, the freezing outside wind coming in through the big dome gates with the ships. Cabrera was standing beside his car with his two bodyguards, Diego Amitrano and Sebastian Calvo. She’d learned their names when she’d first decided to target him. She’d learned everything she could.

“Sofia, my dear,” he said. “I’m sorry for my lateness, but I had a bit of business to attend to.”

“Nothing distressing, I hope,” Sofia said. A gust of wind blew off the water, smelling of the Weddell Sea. A ship was entering the dome, although too far away for them to see.

“I’ve had easier business in my time.” He smiled. His smile wasn’t like most humans’. No kindness or sincerity ever informed it. “But we don’t need to talk about that, do we? We’re here about the icebreaker.”

“The icebreaker,” Sofia said. “Was another one captured?” She knew that it had been; she monitored the transmissions out of the city offices from the operations room at the park. But she also knew how to keep a secret.

“Of course. Don’t you listen to the news broadcast there in your robot park?”

“No.”

Cabrera shrugged. “I suppose the affairs of humans aren’t much of your concern, are they?” He smiled again, flicked his gaze between Sofia and Luciano. “Come on, then. Ship’s waiting. The
Ice Delight
. Fine vessel. You’ll like it. Left over from the amusement park.”

Sofia and Luciano trailed behind Cabrera and his bodyguards as they walked along the rickety dock. Sofia liked nothing from the days of the amusement park, but she didn’t expect Cabrera to understand that. Whether Luciano agreed or not, she couldn’t say—she had difficulty understanding Luciano sometimes, the way she had difficulty understanding the maintenance drones. He had been built to serve in more traditional ways, to prepare food and lay out clothes. That disconnect existed between all robots. She suspected Autômatos Teixeira had designed them that way on purpose. It made it difficult for them to band together. But a generation after the company had fallen and Bruno Teixeira had vanished with the knowledge about how to build androids like Sofia and Luciano, they had banded together anyway.

The
Ice Delight
was a cruise ship, one of the smaller ones that had run only between Hope City and Ushuaia. Sofia had never been installed on this one, although when she climbed up the gangplank, she saw it was identical to several of the cruise ships she
had
been installed on—the same maze of cabins and corridors, the same cramped dining room with its cramped stage. She shivered.

“Are you cold, my dear?” Cabrera asked, hand on her shoulder, directing her to turn left, toward the bow of the ship.

“I don’t get cold.”

Cabrera glanced at her, but he said nothing, only led her to the engine room. No one had ever bothered to clear the ship of its decor, and now that old amusement park glamour rotted all around them,
moldy carpet and ripped wallpaper and broken glass. The engine room was the only place that had been modernized, outfitted for one of the newer models of shipping robot. The robots were set into their alcoves in the walls, designed to look like an extension of the ship—pipes and matte metal in the bipedal composition that worked best on these cruise ships, which had once been manned by humans.

They were sleeping.

The
Ice Delight
belonged to Cabrera, acquired through some complicated, illegal bartering system. He ran his icebreakers to the mainland for his wintertime business arrangements, and every time the city captured one of his ships, they reprogrammed the robots back into the city’s systems. It was less than what they should have done. Even Sofia knew that running in food independent of the mainland’s efforts was punishable with jail time. But Cabrera never went to jail; he never lost his ships or his robots. He only had to reprogram them. It was a game he played with the city, a constant back-and-forth of programming and reprogramming. In the grand scheme of things, a minor irritation.

Sebastian pulled a chair around for Cabrera, who sat down, settling into his weight. Sofia was aware of the motion of the ship, the motion of the sea.

“You have until morning,” Cabrera said. “We can pay off the night guards but not the day ones.”

“Are you going to stay here all night with me?” Sofia asked. She nodded at Luciano, who walked across the room and activated the lead shipping robot. It looked around the room with blank bright eyes.

“You know as well as I that I’m not leaving you alone.”

Sofia shrugged. Cabrera had hired her to do a simple thing. She didn’t care if he watched. Sofia was used to being watched.

“Bring him here,” Sofia said to Luciano, and Luciano led the shipping robot to where Sofia stood, next to the ship’s navigation system. The robot stared at her, not comprehending. She looked too human for it, most likely, and it was befuddled by the conflict between her exterior and the very inhuman readings it was getting from her interior.

“Sorry, friend.” Sofia deactivated the robot, and it slumped, letting out a sound like a sigh. She pried open the panel in its torso and ran her fingers down the switches and controls. “They didn’t change the hardware.”

Luciano nodded, handed her a thin curl of cable. She connected herself with the robot. The information rushed in—not much. This one was simple, designed for a set of specific tasks. Navigation, maintaining the engines, plus the handling of the other shipping robots, who took care of the products on board.

“I looked at the work your previous programmer did.” Her voice was far away and webbed with static. “It was sloppy. I can do better.”

“Is that so?” Cabrera asked.

She nodded.

Reprogramming the city’s robots was easy work. She’d done it several times already for her own purposes, on different models. The previous reprogrammer had been lazy, but Sofia expected nothing less. He’d been human.

The reprogramming didn’t take long. She did what Cabrera asked of her, and then she inserted lines of invisible programming that no human could see and only she could activate.

She updated the captain’s robot and moved on to the others. Cabrera sat in his chair, flanked by his bodyguards, and watched her. Luciano stood off to the side, hands folded behind his back, aiding her as needed. Sometimes she wondered if he saw her as human. It was not the sort of question she could ask him directly.

When she finished, Luciano helped her replace the shipping robots in their alcoves. Cabrera stood up, his bodyguards moving in beside him.

“Diego,” Cabrera said. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight, sir.”

“Midnight!” Cabrera laughed. “Horatio took until three, four in the morning sometimes! I’m very impressed with you, Sofia.”

Sofia smiled the way she’d been programmed to do whenever a human complimented her.

They left the ship, stepping back out into the cold windy air
of the docks. The Florencia was lit up in the distance, yellow and green lights staining the darkness. Cabrera stopped in the middle of the dock and turned to Sofia and stuck out his hand. She stared at it. He laughed.

“I have a good feeling about this arrangement,” Cabrera said. “But you’re going to need to learn some of our ways. Isn’t that right, Sebastian?”

Sebastian nodded.

“Shake my hand, dear. I know you’ve seen it done before.”

Sofia had not been programmed to shake hands, only to offer hers, for kisses or dances or other frivolities. But Cabrera was right; she had seen it done. And so she gripped his hand and shook.

“I look forward to our future endeavors.” Cabrera tipped his hat. “I have an icebreaker leaving the mainland in half an hour. The best in my fleet. I’ll make sure those items you requested find their way on board.”

“So soon?” Sofia asked, with forced levity.

“Only the best for the best.” Cabrera grinned. “But it’ll take a bit of time. Two weeks, perhaps.”

Sofia had waited forty years. She could wait two weeks.

“I’ll be expecting them,” she said.

Beside her, Luciano smiled.

*  *  *  *

The train into the amusement park didn’t run this late, and so Sofia and Luciano walked through the city, side by side and unspeaking. Sofia did not know what Luciano thought of, but she imagined the turn-of-the-century supplies she had requested making their way aboard an icebreaker, and then that icebreaker sailing through the frozen seas to Antarctica.

Cabrera had no idea what the parts did, she was certain of that. Why would he? They were almost seventy years out of date. Araceli, in her skillful human way, was only filling in the gaps of what had been left behind when the amusement park had closed. She was the best at that, and Sofia was lucky that Araceli, despite being human and a former park engineer, was sympathetic to their cause.
Without her help, the reprogramming would be nearly impossible. And so Sofia allowed her to live in the amusement park.

Still, Sofia was grateful that the particular items Araceli needed— a bundle of antique vacuum tubes, three clockwork micro-engines, ticker tape, a blank programming key—were innocuous when viewed together. They meant nothing.

She smiled to herself.

Sofia and Luciano came to the amusement park gate, wrought iron and once painted white, patterns of Victorian fairies twisting through the metalwork. The road was inlaid with bright circles of glass, leading the way inside. Sofia rarely saw the gate from the city side, but she knew that it should be shut, that the original lock from the 1890s had been replaced with a new one, modern and electronic.

But tonight, the gate hung open.

“Oh no,” Luciano said, in the same tone of voice he had probably once used on sick children.

Sofia didn’t say anything. All her systems felt as if they were shutting down. For a moment she stopped in the middle of the road and stared at the open gate. There was no wind here, and the gate was frozen into that position like in a photograph.

A culling.

Luciano rushed forward, and that was enough to jar Sofia back into motion. She followed behind him. Her systems sent warnings straight into her subconscious, and she wanted to hide, to slip away into the shadows. But she didn’t. She picked up speed until she was running, her hair loosening from her beehive and streaming out behind her. She was aware of Luciano somewhere ahead, his footsteps echoing against the cobblestone.

“Sofia!”

Araceli’s voice cut through the night air. Sofia stopped. She’d made it to the Sugar Garden. The garden had long ago overreached its boundaries, and flowering vines curled over the pathway, trampled beneath her feet.

Araceli was sitting on the bench beneath the streetlamp, Inéz leaning up against her. Inéz had been like Luciano once, had tended
to humans in the amusement park hotels. Now she looked worn- out, like a discarded doll. Part of her hair was missing.

“Who was taken?” Sofia asked sharply.

“Maintenance. One of the Scala models. Yellow-8.” Inéz closed her eyes. Just like a doll.

“That’s it? Just one?” Sofia walked over to them. Luciano was already there, fussing over Araceli. As a human, she brought that out in him.

“Inéz needs comforting more than me,” Araceli told him. “They weren’t going to drag me away.” Luciano nodded, looped around behind the bench. Sofia turned to Inéz.

“What happened?”

“They almost got me.” Inéz gave a weak smile as Luciano took her hand. “They stunned me. But Araceli distracted them.”

“I just fired a flare.” Araceli rubbed her forehead. “I saw they were coming on the transmissions, so everyone hid before they arrived.”

“There was a programming issue,” Inéz said apologetically. “That’s why they almost got me.”