House of Gold, page 16
“And what do you know of suffering, hmm? I love my hands. And those metal things are just ugly and unnatural. A chore to maintain as well, probably. No. I kept your mother away from that nonsense, and I’m sure as hell not getting it myself.”
“But Papa—”
“I’ve been through worse, my boy, and I’ll get through this,” Ode cuts in. “I just gotta work harder. That’s all.”
His grandson pauses the side part he’s shaving onto my scalp so he can glare at the old man. “You said that two years ago, and you’re not getting younger. Feels like every time you get close, they raise the price.”
“Silly boy. You think they’d raise the price just for me?” Ode kisses his teeth in annoyance. “I’m not that important. Like I said, these things happen. My grandfather had nothing when he came here from Tripoli V. But he worked hard every single day to give his family a chance, and now his grandson owns a shop in a gold district. I’ve lived in this city my whole life, and I can tell you this: if you want something, you work hard for it. Anything is possible so long as you set your mind to it and put in the effort.” He eyes Jamal through the mirror. “You understand, don’t you, young Jamal?”
I sense the scathing response Jamal keeps to himself. Outwardly he remains charming and affable. “I defer to your wisdom, Papa,” he says.
The barber turns to his grandson with a lifted brow. “See? Now why can’t you be more like him?”
Jamal’s quiet outrage remains strong even after we leave the barbershop and begin a slow walk back to the apartment. “The human capacity for self-deception is astounding, isn’t it?” he says. “That poor old man lives in a society advanced enough to extend his life indefinitely yet instead chooses to make his arthritis treatments unattainable; and he thinks the solution is to work harder.”
“It’s all he’s ever known,” I say in the barber’s defense. “It’s what he’s been told his whole life. The same way we were told if we impressed the Custodians enough we’d help civilization, or whatever.”
Jamal lets out a sigh, shaking his head. “A fair point, I guess.”
Right then a beeping sound comes out of a pocket on his black felt overcoat. He reaches into the pocket and takes out his PCU; I glimpse myriad lines of text on the screen, but I see nothing I can make immediate sense of.
A smile breaks on his face as he scrolls through the text. “Looks like our friend just came through for us. Let me send him a message of thanks.”
Speaking into his mobile, he says, “Good work, Mr. Yakubu. You’ve met your end of the bargain, so your secret is safe with me. I’d get rid of that drive if I were you. Crush it or throw it into the bay—doesn’t matter. Just don’t get caught with it. And for fuck’s sake, stop stealing from people who already have so little. Life is hard enough in this city without you adding to their misery.”
Jamal breaks off the communication and puts his PCU back into his pocket, thrumming with the kind of self-satisfaction that always fills me with dread.
“I take it you now have your paws in the police database,” I say.
“That might come in handy, I suppose. But it’s really their access to the Nzuko I care about.”
I almost miss a step. That word again. Access. Plots. Schemes. Danger. “Jamal, what are you planning?”
“It’s like you said.” The determination in Jamal’s eyes wouldn’t take a Prime to see. “We were fed lies all our lives, and we believed them because we didn’t know better. The people on this surface are no different. I just want to see what happens when they learn the truth.”
There’s no one home when we arrive. As usual, Jamal retreats to the terminal in our room to plot or scheme or whatever else he does there. Left alone, I turn on a news feed on the holo screen, then take my stylus and sketch tablet and sit on a comfortable chair by the windows, facing the lanes of aerial traffic outside. I rest my feet on a low stool and resume the drawing I began yesterday.
There’s something about the Free People on the news. Apparently two of the biggest flotillas have decided to stop fighting and reached some kind of agreement to cooperate. Highly bodymodded analysts and government spokespeople with artificially perfect faces drone on and on about what this means for the cities and their ongoing conflict with the Free People.
I tune their voices out, my stylus moving on the tablet in sure but idle strokes. If Nandipa were around, we might have gone down to the gymnasium. I love it there. Even with our Primes engaged in a cold war, nothing’s changed between us. When we’re alone, I feel I’m not just imagining the lingering looks, the meaningful smiles. “Yes,” she said when I asked her if she would, in another life.
Save my first meeting with Jamal, I can’t recall anything that’s ever made me so happy.
My mind strays into my drawing, my hand deepening the shades of black in the pair of eyes staring up at me with the sharpness and confidence of a shrewd queen.
“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about Clarice,” Adaolisa says behind me.
I knew she was there even before she opened the door and entered the apartment. Now her perfume fills my nostrils as she grabs the sides of my chair’s backrest, looking over my shoulder at my sketch tablet. I’ve already blanked my mind of all emotion, shrouding my thoughts the way Jamal taught me so I don’t inadvertently give anything away. To the untrained ear, Adaolisa and Nandipa might sound alike. But Adaolisa’s voice has a weight to it, a gravity that can pull you in if you’re not careful, making you sit up straighter and listen, making you want to listen, and it’s a subtle thing all too easy to miss.
I keep my attention on my portrait of Prime Clarice, exerting deliberate control over every movement of my body. “Clarice despised my Prime and thought me a dog,” I say. “She never even spoke to me. Not once in nineteen years.”
“And yet here she is,” Adaolisa points out, “rendered in loving detail by you.”
I make a noncommittal sound. “I’m working on portraits of all our siblings.”
“Is that so? May I ask why?”
In the Habitat, a wise Proxy always knew better than to get trapped in conversation with someone else’s Prime. I have already erred by letting this conversation go on for so long. “We all have our own ways of grieving, I suppose. Where’s Nandipa?” I ask to change the subject.
Adaolisa lets go of my chair and moves to stand closer to the windows so that I can see her from the back. She folds her arms as she stares out at the traffic, a statuesque silhouette against the busy skyline. “Running an errand for me in the city,” she says.
I can’t help myself; I stare at her. With her patterned head wrap, a sheath dress of cream-colored silk, and dark boots with a low heel, she would be eye catching in any high-tier neighborhood. As with Jamal, I can’t say if this new style of dress is more expressive of who she is or if it’s simply another weapon she realized she could add to her arsenal.
While Jamal and I went gallivanting through the Jondolos, she and Nandipa leaned into their supposed noble heritage and made friends in the highest places of the city. I don’t know what they’re planning, but it would be foolish to assume it isn’t as far reaching as whatever Jamal is about to do.
“She let you come back here alone?” I ask. I’d have at least made sure Jamal was in the apartment before I let myself go off on my own.
“She trusts that I’m safe here.” Adaolisa turns around with a raised eyebrow, arms still folded. “Am I not?”
“Of course you are,” I rush to say, giving myself a mental kick. “That was not a threat. In fact, I’d not let Nandipa’s Prime come to harm if I could help it.”
“Yes, the two of you have become good friends, haven’t you?” She watches me for a reaction. I make sure I don’t give her one. She tries again. “The Rat and his Dog. I don’t imagine you ever liked that moniker.”
“I didn’t care for it, no.”
“It was because our siblings saw you as something wild to be kept on a leash. And while you certainly possess the necessary cold-blooded streak to complement your Prime’s ruthless ambition, I now see that we completely misunderstood the dynamics of your relationship.” Adaolisa’s gaze bores into me. I begin to feel like she’s a cat and I’m the food she’s playing with. “You complement him, yes, but it is you who holds the leash, not the other way round.”
All right. This has gone on for too long. “Prime Adaolisa, I sense you have something to say to me. Perhaps you should say it so we can end this conversation.”
She gives me a little smile that lets me know I’ve gained a measure of her respect. “You are the only person in the world whose opinion Jamal actually cares about; do you know that?”
“Naturally,” I say. “I’m his Proxy.”
“Yes, but you’re the only person he’d ever listen to.”
“He respects your opinions,” I argue.
“To an extent. But I cannot change his mind if he has set it upon a course of action. Only you can do that.”
“I follow his lead. I don’t tell him what to do.”
“And I’m not saying that you should,” Adaolisa counters. “What I’m saying is, you have a restraining effect on him. You temper his wilder impulses, and I’m now convinced this is what kept you both alive in the Habitat when most other expies would have been recycled after the first war game.”
I’m getting annoyed now, but I keep it masked. “What’s your point?”
“I know Jamal is planning something—”
“With due respect, Prime Adaolisa, so are you.”
“Yes, I’m not denying that,” she says firmly. “But take my advice or leave it: Jamal will go only as far as you let him. It might fall on you to remind him of the difference between changing something and destroying it. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
I don’t like this, how she’s getting into my head. I shouldn’t let her. “Consider me warned, Prime Adaolisa.”
Her point made, she leaves me alone with my sketch tablet once again, and I return to the drawing, pretending not to think about what she said.
CHAPTER 10:
NANDIPA
Getting the audition is easy. The bar is in a bronze-tier neighborhood close to the largest technical college in the city; it sees a lot of traffic, but they don’t get to be picky about entertainment options. When I stumble in like a tipsy wannabe starlet and ask for a performing gig, the mustached bar manager takes one look at my silver stilettos and the glittering tassels of my dress and shows me to the stage.
“If you sing half as good as you look, you’re hired.”
My privacy filter has told him nothing about who I am, but given my appearance, my slight intoxication, and the fact that I’m asking for a job in some run-down bronze-tier bar, I know he’s made a few assumptions about me. Probably some rich man’s ditzy plaything who got cast aside and is now feeling desperate.
It’s early enough the lunch crowds won’t be arriving for a few more hours, and the students don’t show up until after dark, so my audience is no more than a pair of janitor drones, an absentminded man taking stock of the inventory behind the bar, and the manager himself. I still suffer a nervous tingle as I wobble onto the stage with my archtop guitar.
I’ve never performed for anyone before—Adaolisa doesn’t count; she’s incapable of being critical of my music. I’ve never even wanted to perform. Music has always been a personal experience for me, a pastime like watching drama episodes, something that belongs to me and me alone.
But I don’t show my nerves, putting a lid on my drunkenness and beginning my rendition of a pre-Artemisian Afro-soul number with the confidence of a seasoned performer. My hands never stumble on the fretboard; the lyrics ooze from my lips like syrup.
And slowly the tenor of the static changes in the room. The man behind the bar stops what he’s doing. The manager sits down near the stage, his cleaning cloth draped over one shoulder, eyes shining as he looks up at me.
I barely understand this gift the Custodians built into me. Are these pheromones? Do I have an extra lobe in my cerebral cortex? Whatever it is, I feel it working. I find myself performing for their static, drawing it around me, reeling them in like fish on a hook.
The manager doesn’t stop me when I improvise my way into another song. The man behind the bar folds his arms, watching me with eyes that carry a blue cybernetic luminescence. He’s light complexioned, with short fuzzy hair and a trimmed beard bodymodded to the color of ivory. My expensive Nzuko-enabled eye contacts tell me his name is Aart Mwila and that in addition to working here, he moonlights as a freight handler at ZimbaTech’s spaceport. Scree status: bronze.
I play just one more song before I stop. As I come down from the stage, the manager gets up, clapping his hands. He’s trying to play it cool, but his static is all over the place.
“Tell me something: Ever played in a band?” he asks.
“No. But I’d love to,” I say, and this isn’t exactly a lie.
“Come by at around six, and we’ll talk some more.”
I shouldn’t be excited, but I don’t have to fake a smile. “Really? Oh, thank you!” I surprise the manager by throwing my arms around him. “Thank you so much.”
Cybernetic irises watch us from across the room.
“You’re welcome,” the manager says with a somewhat uncomfortable laugh. “Just don’t audition for anyone else, all right?”
I smile back and promise not to. As I leave the bar, my guitar case slung over my back, I frown to myself, analyzing the spark of excitement I suddenly feel.
Is this something I actually want to do?
The world blurs around me as I make my way toward the nearest maglev station. I draw my coat closer to ward off the crisp air, but it sobers my walk, though I’m still careful with any stairs I have to navigate.
This part of town isn’t as dicey as the Jondolos, but poverty leaves its mark in the age of the concrete buildings and the muck gathering along the sides of the roads. In my desire to get to the station faster, I decide to take a shortcut, turning into a narrow alleyway that even in the morning is draped in shadows from the adjacent buildings.
The alley is empty. The windows on the buildings have bars of steel bolted over them on the outside and give the impression that they’ve never been opened. This is no place for a lone young woman, but the station is not far away, so I should be fine.
My stilettos click on the ground as I walk. I hear another sound behind me, so I look over my shoulder, but there’s nothing. Maybe I imagined it, but I pick up the pace anyway.
Suddenly I hear footsteps. I look again, and this time there’s a white-haired man running toward me. I let out a scream and try to flee, but I’m not quite sober, and my ridiculous stilettos were not meant for running, so he catches me. My guitar case falls away, and I’m pushed violently against the wall. My eyes widen with terror when the point of a knife comes to rest against the skin of my throat.
“Scream again and I’ll cut you,” he whispers.
Aart Mwila smells like sweat and beer. His white shirt and denims strain against his physical strength, excitement shining in the electric blues of his cybernetic eyes. He wants me to put up a fight, to struggle and resist. He’s done this before and knows he’ll win. I’m nothing but a foolish drunken girl.
I don’t let him realize his mistake. Faster than he can think, my hand chops the side of his neck, striking a carotid sinus and temporarily cutting off the flow of oxygen to his brain. His static dulls as he crumples in a dead faint, hitting the ground hard enough he’ll have a terrible headache when he regains consciousness. I plan to be long gone by then.
With one ear paying attention to the surrounding static, I pull out the blood-microsampling device and the syringe that were in my coat pocket. I use the first to collect a sample of his blood. When that’s done, I use the syringe to inject a microchip tracker into his bloodstream; it’s supposed to be so stealthy he won’t know about it unless he goes for a full-body scan.
A cold rage takes me as I stand over his unconscious form. It shouldn’t have been so easy. All I did was exist in his space, minding my own business, and for that he decided I was yet another thing to victimize.
I should kill him.
But that’s not what I was sent here to do, so I pick up my guitar and walk away before I do something stupid.
A few minutes later, I claim a lone seat inside a maglev heading back home. As we depart the station, I pull out my mobile and make a voice call to Adaolisa, using the encryption system she set up. “It’s done,” I tell her.
“I saw the tracker going active,” her voice says into my ear. “Excellent work. Did you have any trouble?”
“Leaving that slimy bastard alive took everything I had.”
“He’ll get what he deserves. Where are you now?”
“On the maglev back home.”
“Marcel wants to meet up for cocktails. He’ll be sending a car over soon. I think now’s the time to make our move.”
We’ve gone so far already. I have a blood sample in the pocket of my coat. Adaolisa never acts unless she has contingencies in place; I know she knows what she’s doing. But I have a niggling worry in the back of my throat, and I think speaking to her on the mobile, with distance between us, makes it easier for me to voice my doubts. “Are you sure about this?” I ask.
I hear the sound of boots on concrete. I think she’s out on the landing pad. “Can we ever be sure of anything these days?”
“We don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Yes, we could sit back and watch Jamal burn the world down around us.”
“So this is about stopping Jamal?”
“You know me better than that, my love. I don’t like to react. Better to set my own agenda.” Adaolisa sighs, and I can picture her standing outside the apartment, one hand on the rails of the landing pad, eyes looking out over the city. “This world is a powder keg waiting to go off. It would be so easy for Jamal to light the fire and make things worse. I’m not specifically trying to stop him. I think we both seek the same end. But I want to make sure there’s something still standing when all is said and done. You trust me, don’t you?”
