Tool of War by Paolo Bacigalupi
Tool quirked one melted eyebrow at Mahlia, his expression amused. “Go, see your promised land.”
With an apologetic smile, Mahlia got up and went to the rail, joining Van and Ocho and Shoebox and the few sailors who didn’t have tasks. Every time she saw the Seascape, she couldn’t help but feel a rising excitement.
The Seascape was different from any place she’d ever known. No fallen-down, crumbling buildings. No swamped streets where ocean had swallowed city. Instead, the Seascape gleamed, its proud arcology towers jutting high above the city-state’s massive seawall breaks. Bioengineered nut trees sprouted from balconies, and fruit vines tumbled down over multistory terraces, interspersed by the buildings’ glittering solar skins.
Mahlia leaned against the rail and breathed deeply. Now she could smell what Tool had scented long before. Citrus wafting from the city, along with the perfume of jasmine flowers. Fish and salt and ocean, too, of a certainty, but also those lemon and orange vines that everyone seemed to have, all designed to survive northern winters.
She remembered her first time in the Seascape, plucking oranges and strawberries from the vines on a quiet brick street in the ancient high neighborhoods of the city. Luxuries, free to anyone who cared to take them.
Luxury. That was the Seascape.
The Raker’s bells rang. The crew called out confirmations and orders. Ropes rattled and squealed through the ship’s jury-rigged, misaligned pulleys. Captain Almadi was lining up with the buoys that marked deepwater passage through the hurricane breaks and into the Seascape itself.
Another warning bell sounded and the ship’s booms swept across the deck. The Raker came about, sleek and nimble, far to port of a huge Orca-class trimaran with a Patel Global logo.
Mahlia watched the massive clipper make her own maneuvers. The ship sprouted an array of rigid-wing sails angled to catch the breezes, all electronically aligned by computer, sensors finding the optimum angles for maximum wind efficiency.
The Raker pitched and rolled as the larger ship’s wake struck them. In comparison with the Raker, the Orca-class was both larger and much more technically advanced—more crew, more cargo, and more profit. It was the kind of ship that reminded Mahlia that even though she owned the Raker, she was still a very small fish swimming amongst huge sharks.
The Raker fell in behind the Orca. Patel Global was more of a trade cooperative, in comparison with the militarized protectorates that Mercier ran, but at root they were nearly the same—companies with almost unlimited resources that could reach anywhere in the world.
Ahead, Seascape Boston’s seawalls loomed: piles of bricks, slabs of asphalt from old roads and overpasses, massive concrete columns bristling with rusting iron rebar, all of it covered now with barnacles and draped in seaweed spackled with anemones.
“What do you think of Kanodia’s legacy?”
Mahlia startled. Tool slumped hard against the rail, breathing heavily, having managed the short walk from the mast.
“He planned,” she said. “He saw everything coming, and he planned.”
“A very good general,” Tool agreed.
“He wasn’t no general,” Van objected. “He was, like, some kind of school guy.”
“A professor of biology,” Tool said.
“A professsssor,” Van mimicked.
Mahlia shot him a warning look. According to Seascape legend, Anurag Kanodia had been more interested in scientific research at one of the Seascape’s ancient universities than in the practical activities of the world. His family had a tradition in trading and finance, but he had always been driven by learning, rather than profit.
But then one day, the marine biologist had abruptly quit his academic life. He abandoned a treatise on the adaptations of corals to acidifying oceans, shut down his research, and then, as legend told it, he had walked out into the city, carrying a piece of chalk.
A piece of chalk in one hand, and an altimeter in the other.
According to the stories the Seascapers told, he’d circled through the city, marking a contour line with his chalk—a line many meters higher than most estimates of sea level rise.
The seas are coming, he said when anyone asked him why he was marking chalk on buildings.
People took it as self-aggrandizing performance art, and laughed. Then they scrubbed the silly man’s scribblings off their homes and offices. But when people washed off the chalk, he returned with paint, graffiti-spraying sea level promises in fuchsia and chartreuse, blaze orange and neon blue—gaudy colors, too rude to ignore. Colors that refused to wash away.
He was soon arrested for vandalism. Bailed out by a wealthy sister, he returned to his midnight graffiti raids. Marking and re-marking his city with the stubborn line. He was arrested again, and fined.
Then arrested again.
And again.
Defiantly unapologetic each time, he was finally jailed for a year. At his sentencing, he laughed at the judge. “People don’t mind that the sea will swallow their homes, but woe to the man who paints their future for them,” he said.
When he was eventually released from jail, his vandalism took a new form. If people only understood business, then business it would be. Kanodia had the blood of merchants in his veins and so now, with the help of his sister’s connections, he went about gathering investors, buying as much as he could of the city that stood above his old painted lines.
Eventually, he and a few major corporate partners purchased nearly all the real estate above the line. They collected rents, made steady money, and waited patiently for the inevitable Category Six hurricane that research told him must eventually arrive.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Upsilon, which destroyed much of lower Boston, Kanodia turned his investments to the devastation below the line, buying up the wreckage, and harvesting from it. He was an old man by then, but daughters and sons continued the project. The seawalls were the result. Rising high across the mouth of an anticipated bay, they were comprised of every bit of wrecked architecture that had lain below the storm surge line.
“He didn’t pretend things would get better,” Mahlia said. “He made things better, because he saw how things were.”
“Indeed. A rare talent,” Tool said. “Very few choose to have it.”
The Raker slipped in behind the first seawall break. It made its tack cleanly and sliced down the sea-lane between the first and second wave break. Seagulls roosted upon the anemone-clad ruins, pecking at crabs and seaweed that draped the shattered rubble of the ancient buildings. Seals sunned themselves on concrete slabs. Children fished all along the line and picked in the cracks for mussels that had attached themselves to the piled debris.
A girl waved at Mahlia as the Raker passed. Mahlia lifted her metal hand in turn.
“They live soft lives, here,” Tool observed.
Part of Mahlia felt jealous that they had it so easy, but another part found herself glad that somewhere, someone had grown up fishing and watching pretty ships sail by, instead of cowering from soldier boys in a jungle.
The Raker reached the final buoy and tacked again, came out beyond the third break. Before them, the Seascape lay revealed: calm and blue, dotted with the glittering, floating arcology islands of the wealthiest trading companies and combines.
Mahlia could make out the flags of corporate headquarters flying atop the floating islands in the center of the bay: Patel Global, GE, Lawson & Carlson… She wondered if Mercier was somewhere in the Seascape as well, keeping a corporate embassy here, even if they didn’t own territory the way these other firms did.
Along one edge of the bay, the dry-dock construction platforms of Patel Global bristled with cranes and swarmed with armies of workers as they laid the bones of huge hydrofoil trimarans. At the deepest edge of the bay, shipping and container facilities lined the waterfront. Ships and activity and prosperity, everywhere Mahlia looked. A safe, protected bay, busy with commerce, the beneficiaries of the visionaries who had planned for their previous city drowning.
Almadi joined Mahlia on deck. “Not much longer.”
“We have a slip?”
Almadi nodded. “Just beyond the Patel Global arcology.”
Now that they were inside the Seascape, the captain seemed more relaxed.
She’d probably grown up just like the kids Mahlia had seen fishing off the seawall breaks. Grown up soft, in a place where people had electricity all the time from solar power, and where the streets were always safe because of Shore Patrol security. A life where the worst things that happened were bar fights in Salt Dock, or maybe smugglers bringing refugees in from some beat-up orleans.
Almadi took a deep breath of Seascape air. “It’s good to be home.”
The words were pedestrian, but Mahlia caught an undertone of finality in them.
“Are you still going to ship with us?” Mahlia asked.
Almadi frowned. “I have my own home obligations.”
“I need a captain I can trust.”
“I need a crew I can trust,” Almadi replied.
“You questioning us?” Van demanded. “After all we done, scrubbing your decks and learning your knots and doing all your scut—”
“She means me,” Tool growled.
Almadi inclined her head.
“You’re afraid I’ll attack?” Tool asked.
Almadi regarded him with contempt. “You couldn’t hurt a child, the shape you’re in.”
Tool’s ears flicked back, a motion that Mahlia recognized as irritation, but all Tool said was, “Do not trouble yourself, Captain. Once we dock, I will not remain on your ship. I will not interfere with your business arrangements.”
“You don’t have to go!” Mahlia protested.
“I need a place and time to heal,” Tool said. “And”—he indicated Almadi—“I am not welcome here.”
“Is that how it is?” Mahlia demanded of Almadi.
“Don’t pretend I’m your enemy, Mahlia. This half-man is a danger to all of us. You saw what Mercier was willing to do. You think they would hesitate to destroy us all to get at him?”
“But they think he’s dead!”
“For now.” Almadi put her hand on Mahlia’s shoulder, but Mahlia shrugged her off and stepped back.
“Don’t.”
Almadi’s voice was soft. “I have a family of my own, Mahlia. There are some risks that are simply too great. Sail to the Drowned Cities and trade in the middle of a civil war? Yes, fine. I can do that. This?” She waved at Tool, shaking her head. “Absolutely not.”
And there are plenty of ships who need an experienced captain and crew, she left unsaid.
If Almadi left, the experienced sailors would leave with her. Ocho’s soldier boys had learned some of sailing, but they weren’t schooled enough to run a ship like the Raker on their own. They would never have survived the storm without Almadi’s skill and experience.
Tool laid a hand on Mahlia’s arm. “It is not necessary that you sacrifice your livelihood for me. Help me find rooms where I can heal. Quiet. Far from wealth.”
“I owe you everything.”
“The debt is already repaid.”
“What about Salt Dock?” Van suggested. “No one cares about anything in Salt Dock. Even your bacon-burned ass won’t stand out there.” He held up his hands. “No offense.”
14
TORY WAS BUSILY raining fire down on targets as Jones keyed back into her workstation. Information scrolled on her screen. A Manta-class clipper ship had entered the Seascape’s harbor.
Just drop Havoc on it. Just Havoc the hell out of them, and be done with it. Don’t try to be smart. Just follow orders and be safe.
She stared at the information on-screen. This was the moment. Whatever she did now would define everything about her future. Follow orders, or find another path? She wished she had more information to go on, a better way of testing the winds.
She could hear her mother mocking her. Some people, they’re so smart they’re stupid. You think of that? You ever think of that?
The Raker was docking. Time was passing.
Jones put a call through to the general. Caroa appeared on-screen, looking annoyed and vicious, as always.
“Sir. We have the clipper ship.” She kept her face bland, hoping Caroa wouldn’t sense duplicity. “But it’s reached the Seascape already. We missed them in international waters.”
“Hit them,” he said. “Hit them now.”
She pretended to check her monitors, feeling transparent, but pushing through with the ruse. She pretended surprise and apology.
“I’m sorry, sir. The Strike Raptors that were supposed to be patrolling the Seascape are down for repairs. Karakoram never notified me.” She made a show of checking her other birds. “The Raptors I have patrolling international waters are more than half an hour out. I—I can’t get them into range in time.”
“Is that so?” Caroa’s eyes narrowed.
“I—yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” Jones swallowed and plunged on. “I just… It’s bad luck, sir. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me that they hadn’t mobilized all the Strike Raptors. It must have been storm damage.”
Caroa favored her with a suspicious eye. She felt transparent. A part of her wanted to take it all back, to back down on the lie, to confess.
Too late for that. You already chose.
Caroa was glaring at her, but he didn’t reprimand her. “Do the Seascape authorities know we’re hunting for this augment?” he asked.
“No, sir. As a backup, I asked to be notified if the Raker requested docking facilities. We have mutual cooperation treaties with their Port Command. But that’s the only indication we’re interested in the ship. I’m sorry about the drones—”
“Fine.” Caroa waved an impatient hand. “Write up your report. You’ll take responsibility for failing to check your equipment. We’ll come up with suitable consequences. For now, I want you to put out a watch query in the Seascape for medical purchases, and on hospital facilities.”
“He could have dropped off and swum for the coast, anywhere on the way up. He could be in Manhattan Orleans, for all we know.”
“No. If he’s alive, he’ll be there.”
The general said it with so much confidence that Jones couldn’t help prodding. “Do you know something about the augment that I don’t, sir? Something that would help me do my job better?”
Caroa regarded her coldly. “Do I know something? Why, yes, I believe I do.” He began ticking points off on his fingers. “One: Our target is wounded, badly. Two: He is a military augment, intensely driven to survive. Three: This ship, this Raker, that you yourself found, was bound for the Seascape. Four: If he knew that, and we must assume he did, he would do anything to hang on. Now,” the general said pointedly, “why would he seek to reach the Seascape, Junior Analyst Jones?”
The question hung between them, redolent with contempt.
Jones swallowed. “Because the Seascape is full of augments?”
“And therefore…?” Still the contempt.
“He would blend in,” Jones said stiffly. “There are all kinds of augmented personnel there. Military. Security. Professional sailing castes for Lawson & Carlson, Patel Global, GE. Tayo Fujii Genetics. Jing He. All kinds.”
“So?”
“It’s the ideal location for him.” The general was almost smiling. She took it as a bullet dodged, and continued. “With such a large augment population, he’ll have access to specialized medicines that aren’t available elsewhere, in places where he’d be an exotic. It’s his best chance for real medical care.”
“I’m so pleased that my analyst can analyze,” Caroa said dryly. “Draw up a list of likely medical supplies. I want you to scan medical networks, hospitals, clinics. We’re looking for an augment with severe burns over nearly a hundred percent of his body, and purchases of medicines that would treat those wounds. Do you think you can handle that, without any mishaps?”
“He’ll want cellular repair meds. Nutrient boosters…”
“Indeed. We’re not looking for a needle in a haystack here.”
Jones started clearing her screens. “So we just bait the trap, and wait for him to pick up his meds.” She began typing commands, setting up the new operation. “We can have human S&D teams ready to strike. We can pull those in from Denali. They’re close. And augments won’t be involved, then.”
“Jones?”
She looked up from her work. Caroa was studying her closely, his eyes boring in, seeming to see into all her plans and schemes. She swallowed. “Yes, sir?”
“I expect that there won’t be any more mistakes after this. Not one. Not ever.”
“No, sir.” Jones swallowed. “I’ll have the target for you.”
“I look forward to it.”
15
THE MINGLED SCENTS of burning biodiesel, rotting fish guts, and sweltering humanity pressed down on Tool. He peered out at the Seascape through the hot, muffling folds of a hempen sackcloth shroud, and leaned heavily upon Mahlia and her soldier boys as they guided him through the crowds.
“Turn up here,” Van said, returning to them. “It’s not as crowded this way.”
Mahlia, Ocho, Stork, and Stick eased Tool around the corner, while Van squeezed ahead through the crowds again, scouting.
Tool’s muscles resisted every step and the supporting hands of the soldier boys felt like diamond rasps on his skin. His nerves had begun regenerating, and now they crowded his mind with pain wherever his skin touched cloth or guiding hands, or even Salt Dock’s hot breezes.
Ignoring the pain, Tool stretched his senses, tracking the activities of the port through smell and sound. Jasmine and marigold incense invoking Kali-Mary Mercy. The sharp reek of scotch hauled up in casks from the Northern Isle Alliance. The sour scents of jellyfish oranges twined with sweet Icelandic sugarcane in the wholesale markets.
Tinkling copper bells signaled devotees burning candles inside a Deepwater Christian shrine. Through his shrouding burlap, Tool glimpsed Saint Olmos, robed in decades of dripped red wax, the man holding out his hands to passersby, offering survival, if not salvation…