Our Lady of the Ice (20 page)

“The roller coaster,” Inéz said, voice sharp. “Come.”

She took off down the path.

Marianella hesitated. It happened too fast, the transmission from Sofia. She stared at the path, hoping Sofia would reappear. But there was only stillness.

“Marianella!” Inéz called out. “Come! Please! There are three paths away from the workshop. We need one for each path.”

Of course. One for each path. Marianella choked back her fear and joined Inéz on the path toward the roller coaster. She could already see it, twisting up over the park, dark wood against the white sky.

“Where’s Sofia?” Marianella asked. “Do you know?”

“Intercepting them at the penguin pond,” Inéz said. She stared straight ahead, focused. “She’s going to bring them to the roller coaster, and then we’ll fan out, drawing them away from the workshop.”

The plan didn’t make any sense to Marianella. It wouldn’t coalesce inside her head. She only saw fragments of it—vulnerable Luciano, Sofia racing through the open park, a man in a gray suit
cutting Marianella open and finding the machinery that took away her humanity.

Marianella whispered a Hail Mary, the prayer that always brought her the most comfort. The Virgin had once appeared to a pair of Antarctic explorers trapped on the ice, in the years before the city was built. She came to them covered in ice and wrapped in furs, a mother of Antarctica. Marianella wondered if the Virgin ever came to cyborgs, her holiness shot through with machinery. Robots didn’t need her. But a cyborg was not a robot.

Maybe she would come to Marianella today.

Marianella whispered the prayer over and over. Inéz said nothing about it, out of deference, most likely, because, like Luciano, she would see Marianella as mostly human. The prayer calmed Marianella’s nerves, enough that she became aware of her surroundings again. Aware that they were at the base of the roller coaster.

“Quiet, Marianella,” Inéz said politely, laying one hand on Marianella’s wrist.

Marianella tensed. Her body shuddered as it drew her defense mechanisms to the fore. She took a deep breath. The white paint covering the asphalt glittered beneath the dome lights. The roller coaster lurked like a sleeping dragon.

“They’re approaching soon,” Inéz whispered. “Sofia is bringing them straight to us. Be prepared to run.”

Marianella nodded. Her muscles were imbued with a sudden energy from her computer parts.

Silence.

Stillness.

And then, Marianella’s ears perked—footsteps. She heard footsteps.

Sofia burst out of the path, her dark hair streaming out behind her like a comet.

Two men followed.

For a moment Sofia was there in the light, a blazing streak of power, and then she disappeared into the overgrown path leading to the gardens.

“Now!” Inéz broke away from Marianella and leapt across the
roller coaster platform. She hit the asphalt and ran, faster than a human could. The men shouted.

“Split up!” the taller said. “Follow the other one.”

The shorter nodded and veered off into the tangle of vines, after Sofia. Inéz looped around the base of the roller coaster, the taller man following her.

Sofia.

Sofia was in danger.

This was enough to spur Marianella into action, and she leapt out of the path and raced across the platform, not thinking about anything but Sofia, and saving Sofia, and keeping the shorter man from hurting her—

A woman screamed.

The sound jarred Marianella out of her trance. Sofia didn’t need her help; Sofia had survived the cullings for years. But Marianella could not let either of these men see her face.

Another scream. It was close, and Marianella knew it belonged to Inéz. She dove into the vines, hiding in the shadows.

More screaming.

She peered through the vines, her breath coming short and fast. The taller man stood directly in her line of sight, his back to her. He was hunched over the fallen figure of Inéz. He wore a businessman’s gray suit. The fabric shone a little in the sun, and that meant the suit was expensive.

Marianella didn’t dare move, afraid of making noise. She didn’t understand why a man with an expensive suit would be culling robots in the park—hadn’t Sofia said they came from the city? No one running errands for the city wore a suit like that.

The man pulled a radio out of his pocket. “Echo to Swan. You got the other one?”

Marianella’s entire body turned to ice, but the radio crackled and the voice on the end said, “Negative. Lost her. Not sure where I am—the old hotels, maybe. Don’t see anything else, though. They’re smarter than we expected.”

The other end of the park from the workshop.
Marianella closed her eyes. Luciano was safe. Sofia too. But Inéz—

The man shifted his weight. “Too bad. I got one andie. Not sure how much use it’ll be. Spotted the third one, but I can’t see where it went.”

He kicked at Inéz’s body.

Horror spread through Marianella’s system. She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. The man stepped away and tilted his head up at the sky. She still couldn’t see his face.

“Not seeing much of anything here. Where’d you say you are again, the hotels?”

Crackle. “Looks like it.”

The man didn’t say anything else. He slipped the radio back into his pocket and looked down at Inéz’s body. Walked around it in a circle, like he was appraising her for slaughter.

And, like that, Marianella recognized him.

She had seen him at parties before, galas she and Alejo Ortiz threw for their fund-raisers, for the agricultural domes. His name was Andres Costa. He was one of Alejo’s many political aides, young men in suits who petitioned the city and helped plan Alejo’s reelection campaigns.

He did not work for the city.

He should not be here, culling robots. That was not part of Alejo’s work.

Marianella felt like she was sinking into the soil. Andres walked around Inéz’s body; then he pulled out the radio and said “Halo Codex Marrow” and dropped it back into his pocket. Inéz didn’t move.

Inéz was dead.

Andres scanned over the roller coaster platform, his hands tucked into his pockets. Then he kicked at Inéz’s body again—Marianella stiffened with disgust—and walked away. He strolled past the vines where Marianella was hiding, but he didn’t look at them. He didn’t look at her.

She listened to his footsteps falling away. Tears streaked over her face and dropped onto her blouse. She folded her hands and whispered a death prayer: “Saints of God, come to her aid. Come to meet her, angels of the Lord.” It was probably heresy. She didn’t
care. The Church was changing anyway, pulling itself into the modern world. Spanish masses and Protestant hymns. If God could accept that, then certainly He would accept a prayer for an android.

She finished the prayer and listened again for the sound of humans. But there was only silence.

Marianella crawled out of the vines, leaves sticking to her hair and dirt staining the hem of her skirt. Inéz lay in a crumpled heap on the asphalt. Her stomach had been split open, and wires spilled out, illuminated golden-white by the dome light. Marianella had seen the inside of a robot before—she had seen the inside of an android before, in fact. But this left her cold and afraid.

She knelt down beside Inéz. The wires were sliced in half. Severed. There was no way of repairing her.

Marianella leaned back on her heels. She was still crying, slowly and silently. She said the Memorare and an Our Father. Then she stood up, shaking. Andres might have ordered maintenance drones to come here, to collect Inéz in some way. Marianella wasn’t sure if the park drones could stop them. She shouldn’t be here if they arrived.

She stumbled away, sticking close to the vines in case she needed to dive into the shadows again. She could not escape the feeling, subtle and insidious, that Inéz was dead because she, Marianella, was a coward. Because she did not want to be discovered.

And yet it was one of Alejo’s men—

She was too terrified to sort out mysteries right now. But the mysteries came to her anyway, questions made to look like pieces of information. And there was one piece of information that kept coming to her, over and over.

The wires that had been severed in Inéz’s stomach were some of the most expensive and sophisticated technology in the world, despite their age. In fact, it was because of that age that they were irreplaceable. If someone were culling androids for parts, they would never cut them. Never.

Marianella stumbled her way toward the Ice Palace, a single question blazing in her head:

What the hell was Alejo doing?

*  *  *  *

Marianella paced in her bedroom, her rosary wound around her wrists—Luciano had brought it back with her clothes and documents. She hadn’t asked for it, but he’d told her that he thought she might want it. Then he’d added, “And your house is quite secure,” although she hadn’t asked about that, either, and he hadn’t explained further.

Marianella rubbed at the beads thoughtlessly. She wasn’t praying. That had been her intention, when she’d pulled the rosary out of the top drawer of her vanity—to pray for Inéz. But her mind was too caught up in the possibility of Alejo’s involvement.

If he had sent Andres, he had known she would be here. But maybe he’d assumed she would hide when the cullers came in; maybe he’d wanted her to see.

But then, it could just be some city work, something unavoidable. He hadn’t meant to put her in danger.

Or maybe Andres had come here on his own, for reasons unrelated to Alejo.

Marianella kept moving, walking back and forth across the length of her room. Her motions were mechanical, rote. She was hardly aware she was doing it.

In her head, she replayed the moment of Inéz’s death. She thought of the scream, the wires glittering in the dome light. She thought of Andres kicking at the body.

Anger bubbled up inside her, startling in its intensity. She stopped. She was in front of the window, the curtain dragged back to reveal the view of the garden outside, ghosted over by her reflection. The rosary beads looked like stars twining around her wrists.

Marianella had stayed hidden in the vines long after Andres had left, too afraid to move. Sofia eventually found her and told her it was safe. When Marianella stepped out of the vines, the dome light was too bright. She couldn’t look at Inéz’s body. Sofia wouldn’t look anywhere else. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, staring down at the shining tangle of wires.

“We need to honor her,” she said, her voice very far away.

Marianella nodded. She knew they couldn’t release her to the air—there was no funeral home in the park, no funeral home for robots. But Sofia scooped Inéz up in her arms and carried her toward the Ice Palace, her steps steady and purposeful. Luciano and Araceli were waiting in the foyer. His repairs had completed without issue during the culling, and it was a relief to see him whole again.

Araceli let out a strangled cry when she saw Inéz.

“It’s my fault,” Sofia said. Marianella wanted to protest—no, of course it wasn’t Sofia’s fault. It was Andres’s. He’d been the one to slice through Inéz’s belly and cut the wires. But she couldn’t find her voice.

That evening, after the dome lights faded into darkness, they buried Inéz in the snowflake garden, the way people did on the mainland. There was no ceremony, no priest, no singing of hymns or uttering of prayers. Even Marianella didn’t pray, not then. She only hung back amid the overgrowth, trying not to think of how she’d hidden herself as Inéz had died. Luciano dug the grave. Araceli wept, handkerchief pressed to her cheek. And Sofia laid Inéz into the ground, every piece of her. She told Marianella that it was because she didn’t want to see Inéz used for parts. There was no way to repair Inéz, but she wouldn’t be scavenged, either. Not by the city and not by Sofia, when she went to repair the broken androids. Instead, Inéz would lie in the ground, guarded by flowers.

Now the memory made Marianella’s anger surge again. Inéz was dead, and if it was Alejo’s fault, she wanted to know. And she wanted to know
why
.

Marianella tossed the rosary back onto her vanity and walked out of her room, heading toward the control center. That would be the easiest way to contact a drone for programming. But halfway down the stairs, she stopped, one hand on the banister, her anger pounding inside her head. If she sent a drone, she wouldn’t be able to look at Alejo as she demanded her explanation. He could record his answer as easily as he could record his press conferences.

He could lie.

Marianella walked down the rest of the stairs, but she stopped
on the first-floor landing and did not continue down to the control center. The hallway was dim and empty. She couldn’t even hear the chatter of the television Luciano liked to watch.

It was stupid, leaving the park. She could hide herself from Ignacio with a scarf and sunglasses, but that was not foolproof, and she knew it. She slumped against the wall, taking in deep breaths. Her machine parts churned, trying to compensate for her quickened heart rate and the flush in her cheeks. But they didn’t understand emotion. They didn’t understand fury, or betrayal, or grief.

This was a risk worth taking.

Marianella took one last deep breath. She gripped hard on the banister. She wouldn’t tell Sofia that she was leaving—Sofia would try to stop her. But she could leave a message with one of the drones, programmed to report to Sofia or Luciano if she didn’t return.

She knew she couldn’t think about this any longer, because if she thought about it, she wouldn’t do it.

Marianella walked back up the stairs, back to her room, to pick out clothes with which to disguise herself.

*  *  *  *

Alejo’s office had the ambience of most offices that Marianella had been in—fluorescent lights set in the low-hanging ceiling, the smell of paper and toner and men’s aftershave. She sat in the waiting room as his secretary clattered away on the typewriter. Every now and then male voices spilled in from the closed door leading into the hallway. They were laughing.

Marianella tapped her finger against her thigh, nervous. The secretary kept typing.