Idols Page 12

  The junkbucket lurches, the whole deck vibrating and the air whistling past me. We have picked up speed, which means we must be leaving the Porthole.

  Now I know we’re gone. Bigger and Biggest. The Padre and the Bishop. La Purísima and the Idylls and the Hole.

  Gone.

  I shiver from the cold, wishing I hadn’t ripped quite so many holes in my Remnant clothes.

  I shiver for other reasons too.

  As the others settle in for the night around me, I reach out through the darkness to the ones I have lost, over and over, until I can’t think and I can’t feel and I can’t do anything but fall into the kind of sleep that only means defeat.

  You’re supposed to save the world, Doloria. Better get on it, already.

  That girl isn’t going to find you. The world isn’t going to save you, either.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  Scan of a tattered partial page burned by fire.

  Found with the remains of the Belter community formerly known as the Idylls.

  16

  IN A HEARTBEAT

  When the morning comes, the light slicing between the racks of boats and skiffs is so bright I have to shield my eyes. Everything is bright out there, and dark in here. Dark, and damp. Fortis’s hiding hole has served us well.

  He really is good at lying low. Merk trick of the trade.

  My body is stiff and I can’t feel my feet. I’ve slept in a ball like a potato bug, only I wonder if a potato bug has this much trouble uncurling.

  The air around us smells like salt and feels like water. Like the Porthole. Like the sea, back in the Californias. Back home, back in all my homes, which it seems I do nothing but leave behind.

  I breathe deep—and wrinkle my nose.

  The air may smell like salt, but we smell like a pig farm. I try to remember what we used to blacken our faces and our clothes. I hope it had nothing to do with pigs.

  I sniff again.

  Pigs, and wet dogs. Everything is damp from the sea air. As if the misery of sleeping rolled in a ball shoved behind a rack of boats on a hard wooden deck weren’t enough.

  I twist my neck, turning to see the others wedged next to me. They’re still sleeping. Ro is practically standing up, sleeping slumped against the boat rack. Lucas is bent at an awkward angle, favoring his good side. I bite my lip, thinking of the times when he would sneak his jacket to me in the night. There’s no chance of that now; no Remnant has a proper jacket. He’s as tattered and filthy as I am.

  Tima, by his side, is folded into a small sleeping bundle as usual, compact and neat. Her head rests on his shoulder, where mine should be. Brutus is nowhere to be seen.

  I look away.

  On my other side, Fortis is snoring, arms folded across his chest. His jacket is wedged behind his head like a pillow. Fortis could sleep anywhere, anytime. Another signature Merk trait—stealing sleep as easily as anything else.

  I have to get out of here. I have to stretch my body back into a line, the way it was built to be. I pull myself up behind the skiffs, slowly, inhabiting the small strip of vertical space as a snake would, slithering its way up an old pipe. I can’t feel my feet at all, though, or most of my legs. If there were enough room to collapse, I’d already have fallen back down to the wet deck floor.

  I slide past the tangle of human bodies until I can squeeze my way past the life rafts and out into the open air of the deck.

  I look out from the shadows, cautiously at first—but I relax when I see there is no crew in sight. It must be very early.

  I take a step forward, staggering from the pain and from the rolling of the deck beneath my feet.

  The sea is everywhere.

  The hugeness of it almost knocks me off my feet.

  I clutch the skiff rack, steadying myself.

  One step at a time.

  As I slowly move farther away from the skiff rack, I begin to understand that I have never seen the ocean, not like this. I’ve never been on the water, surrounded by it—excepting the brief ride back and forth from the Porthole to Santa Catalina.

  I make my way to the rusting rail along the edge of the bow. At least, that’s what Tima called it, this end of the ship. I lean over the water, as far as I can go.

  I have never seen this kind of water, dark and fast and loud. I have never felt this kind of wind, either.

  The air rumbles, almost groaning. Even the drifting clouds of smoke from the ship’s vents are tossed off course—soaring and recovering and soaring again, like the Padre on Christmas Eve, when he’d had too much mulberry wine.

  My hair whips around my face, stinging my cheeks like hundreds of salty thorns. All around me, the water churns into tiny peaks of white foam, hitting against itself, over and over again, so many impossibly shoreless shores.

  I’ve never seen anything like it, never seen the sea—or, for that matter, the world—from the deck of a ship.

  Everything looks different from here.

  For this one moment, I am the only living thing in the universe—and then I see a pale green lizard wander up the side of the deck railing. He alone does not seem bothered by the crushing rush of air.

  “You like it? The sea? She’s big, eh?”

  Fortis stands behind me while Brutus slides along the deck behind him. I almost don’t recognize Fortis without his jacket, and in the pleasant sunlight. I nod, holding my hair out of my eyes with one hand.

  He looks out to the horizon, then back to the deck. “Probably safe for another few minutes. Watch will change again soon, though. Then we’ll have to crawl back in the hidey-hole, so don’t get too comfortable.”

  “Got it.”

  He stretches into a long line, like a cat. “So just try to blend in with the crowd and lie low.”

  “The crowd? You mean the Remnants?”

  He nods. “They’ll mostly be belowdecks, though. Caged an’ chained like animals.” He looks down at Brutus, shaking his head. “It’s not just not human, it’s not humane. Poor sods. Can you feel them?” Fortis scratches Brutus by the ears. “We wouldn’t do that to you, now, would we?”

  I shake my head. I will myself not to feel them, the anxiously beating hearts, the simmering anger, the despair. They may be belowdecks, but I know they’re there. I can feel them, every one of them, whether or not I want to.

  Today I wish I couldn’t.

  Today is hard enough on my own.

  Fortis straightens, leaning next to me against the railing. “Unlucky buggers. Just trying to make their own life outside the cities. One minute you’re just a Grass like the rest of us, down on his luck an’ lookin’ for a bit of food an’ work—an’ the next, you’re stuck on the Tracks an’ headin’ for the Projects. Or tossed onto this junkbucket an’ shipped off to the SEA Colonies. How is it right, for one human to treat another like that?”

  “It isn’t,” I say. “And I’d be one of them, if the Padre hadn’t found me.”

  “Unclaimed masses of humanity, my arse. Remnants aren’t the embarrassment. No such thing as human garbage. Don’t see why they put up with it.”

  “Who gives them the choice, Fortis? The Brass? Catallus? The GAP? The Lords? They don’t put up with it.”

  “They won’t forever. That much I know. History has a way of repeatin’ itself, even if you don’t know it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. But I do know it ain’t the Lords herding these people into the Projects. Those are human beings in those Sympa uniforms. Working the Embassies. Maybe there are worse things than the Lords,” Fortis says. “Sometimes humanity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Seems like we make it easy for them. Did you
ever think of that?”

  I don’t know what he’s really saying. I’m not sure I want to. “No.”

  “Really?”

  “The Lords killed my parents on The Day. There is nothing worse than the Lords. So don’t say that to me, Fortis. Never say that.”

  I turn and see that he’s studying me, as if I were the lizard on the railing. Then he smirks.

  “Even Catallus? He’s a right bastard, if I recall.” The words float out over the water, and I don’t answer. Instead, I wait for them to disappear.

  Then I change the subject.

  “Why send a boat full of Remnants to the SEA Colonies’ Projects, anyway, when the Hole has Projects of its own? It makes no sense.” The boat rolls beneath my feet, and I grab the rail again to steady myself.

  Fortis smiles. “Sea legs, Grassgirl. We’ve got at least a week on this ship. You’ll get them yet.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. And don’t change the subject, Fortis. What’s so different about these Projects, that they have to ship in Remnant slaves from around the world?”

  “All right, then.” Fortis gives me a strange look, as if I don’t really want to hear what he is about to say, which is wrong. It’s all I want to hear, at this particular moment. “I told you I’d help you find your little jade girl. This missing fifth Icon Child, if you say she exists. The girl of your dreams. And I will.”

  “Which is why we’re on this Remnant ship,” I say, prodding him along.

  “Which is one of the reasons why I agreed to see to your passage on this Remnant ship,” Fortis corrects. “I probably should have told you I have a few reasons of my own.”

  He looks back out to the water. “I also probably should have told you that the SEA Colonies are home to the biggest Project in the world.”

  Biggest. In the world.

  Out of all the Icons and all their fallen cities, that is no small claim.

  He nods, as if I’ve asked a question, which I haven’t. “Entirely built on reclaimed land, pushin’ so far out into the big blue sea that it’s not really clear what part of what country or city or government it ever actually was. A bit of Greater Bangkok at first, I think. Modeled on United Singapore. With a bit of the Eastasia Coast and the Viet Collective thrown in for good measure.” He smiles, humorlessly. “The SEA Colonies used to be home to something called the Golden Triangle. Now it’s more like the Golden Pentagon. An’ within spittin’ distance of the Shanghai Icon.”

  I try to take it all in. “Hard to imagine anything bigger than the Porthole.”

  “Bigger than the Porthole? This little Project of Projects makes the pyramids look like ant farms. They could fill every ship on this planet full of Remnants, ten times over, and still not be able to fully man the SEA Projects.”

  I can’t even imagine it. The Porthole Projects seem hulking and horrible enough. Something bigger—something worse—it’s not a pleasant image.

  “Are there Grass like us there? I mean, not Remnants? Is there an organized resistance?”

  People to help us take on the Icon?

  And if so, are we going to take it out?

  That’s the real question. Because the Idylls have fallen, Nellis has fallen, and the way I see it, we’re running out of time. Time and support—and options. And on top of all that, the thing I’m worried most about is getting sucked into battle when all I want to do is find the one person I came here for.

  The one person who matters, according to the old man from the Benevolent Association. According to my dreams. According to every cell in my body, whether I’m asleep or awake. The person for whom I carry this small menagerie of jades.

  “Not so fast. I’ll answer all your questions. But this isn’t just about an Icon. There’s something else—a little thing we need to take care of first.”

  “There is?” Little things, to Fortis, are sometimes near catastrophic to the rest of us. This much I know.

  “The SEA Colonies,” Fortis says, his eyes glinting, “are also home to the General Embassy and GAP Miyazawa himself.”

  “What?” I feel like he’s just taken a bucket of seawater and dumped it over my head. Walking into the home of the GAP, that’s more than I ever intended. “How did I not know that?”

  “The General Embassy moves from continent to continent—safer that way. Harder to target, harder still to rebel against. Only now it seems that the GAP, he’s settling in over at SEA. Hence the overgrown Projects, I suppose. If you think about it, it makes a kind of sense. Bad apple like that, wants to make sure his tree is bigger than anybody else’s.”

  Of course.

  I shiver at the name. Not just an Embassy, but the General Embassy. The whole place will be crawling with Sympas. Sympas, and who knows what else.

  Because GAP Miyazawa isn’t just an Ambassador, he’s the Ambassador. The direct line to the Lords themselves. The ultimate traitor to humanity.

  A slave trader to a planet.

  Because he’s the richest man on Earth—and his only trade is human flesh.

  Even the thought of him makes me physically sick. I look at the Merk. “What are we doing, Fortis?”

  “We’re going to find your girl, and like I said, we’ll see what she brings to the table. If she really is one of you—well, you’ll only be that much stronger.”

  “And?”

  “And then it’s time to destroy the GAP and his overgrown Projects.”

  Fortis’s face darkens and his words cut. Everything becomes perfectly clear.

  “I thought we were trying to destroy the Icons. That without the Icons everything falls apart. You never said anything about the Projects. Our powers can’t do anything about human cruelty. We can’t do anything about the GAP and all his Sympas—and all their guns.” Even for Fortis, it’s madness.

  “We’ll find a way. One way or another, we’re here to take down the whole SEA Colonies, love.”

  I’m staring. I can’t believe what he’s saying. It’s all so—big.

  I can’t do it.

  He can’t think I’ll do it.

  Can he?

  “Don’t look at me like that. You wanted this, Grassgirl. It was your idea to come.”

  “To find the Icon Child. To destroy the Icons and break the grip the Lords have on our planet. Not to destroy the whole Colonies. I don’t know what the Lords did to you up there, but you’ve lost your mind, Fortis. We need to keep our eyes on our actual capabilities here.”

  “Not the first to tell me that, pet.” His eyes grow wilder. “But maybe we’re closer aligned than you realize. Think about what you were able to do in the Hole, just yourself. Imagine what you could do now, with all four of you, or if there really are five.”

  “We don’t know anything about her.”

  “No, we don’t. But we know you shouldn’t have to be hiding, or living on the run. We know you could put a stop to all of this.”

  “One day, maybe. Twelve Icons from now.”

  “Maybe we don’t need to take out one Icon at a time. Maybe we should be taking out the entire system, the network. From the top.”

  “You sound like Ro.”

  “I sound like a soldier, which is what I am.” The words have a familiar ring, and I think of the desert, when we imagined Fortis was dead.

  A soldier’s death.

  Maybe that’s still waiting for him, for all of us.

  I look at Fortis. “You’d really do that?”

  “Cut off the head of the Embassies? Blow open the Projects? Kill the GAP? End it—the time of willing human slavery to the Lords?” He looks at me, and his eyes are cold. “In a heartbeat.”

  I think of the sudden silver ships. I think of the Icons themselves, threatening every skyline, every city that matters. I think of the jade girl—the jade bird—living in the shadow of it all.

  The whole world is a dark place now.

  The blue sky above us, the warm sun—it all seems strangely incongruous. Suddenly I’m not sure we’re headed toward hope.


  Where we’re headed is somewhere I’ve never been at all.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  FORTIS

  Transcript - ComLog 12.31.2052

  FORTIS::NULL

  //comlog begin;

  comlink established;

  sendline: Good morning, NULL. So, I wanted to verify that you do realize I am an indigenous biological entity, correct?;

  return: Yes.;

  sendline: So I am to be recycled?;

  return: Yes.;

  sendline: You know, there are a lot more like me here. Quite organized, stubborn, prepared to fight back. Could make your job quite difficult.;

  return: I was provided tools in the event of some indigenous resistance.;

  sendline: I noticed. However, I can tell you, if you want to succeed, you could use some help. Expert opinion.;

  return: I do want to succeed. That is why I exist.;

  sendline: Well then, why don’t you tell me more about your plans? Perhaps I can be of service. Perhaps I can offer my aid in exchange for, say, not being recycled?;

  return: This is outside the bounds of my initial tasking. I will attempt to evaluate your offer and return with a reply.;

  comlink terminated;

  //comlog end;

  //lognote: Did I push too hard? Happy New Year, NULL.;

  17

  MERK SECRETS

  Fortis and I don’t speak. We just look out at the horizon, side by side, as if it is the one thing we have in common.

  “That’s some talk, Fortis. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Did I ever?”