Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

Another stare, longer this time. Four Warm Currents joined in, scraping sound across the architecture of the city, mapping curves and crevices, spars and spires.

“Before they were dragged off, they dropped one last globe,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “It was your name, fresh, mixed with a decay scent. They said you’re a monster, and if nobody stops you, you’ll end the world.”

Four Warm Currents shivered, clenched hard against the noxious fear threatening to tendril into the water. “Fresh?”

“Yes.”

Who had it been? Four Warm Currents thought of the many workers and observers jetting up and down the tunnel, bringing status reports, complaints, updates. Any one of them could have come close enough to coax their chief engineer’s name taste into a concealed globe. With a start, Four Warm Currents realized Six Bubbling Thermals was not gazing pensively over the city, but keeping watch.

“I know you won’t consider halting the project,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed. “But you need to be careful. Promise me that much.”

Four Warm Currents remembered the councillor’s warning and stroked Six Bubbling Thermals’s egg sacs with a trembling tentacle. “I’ll be careful. And when we break through, this will all go away. They’ll see there’s no danger.”

“And when will that be?” The mauve worry was creeping back across Six Bubbling Thermals’s skin.

“Soon,” Four Warm Currents signed. “Seven work cycles.”

They enmeshed their tentacles and curled against each other, bobbing there in silence as the City of Bone’s ghostly blue guide lights began to blink out one by one.

The first attack came three cycles later, after shift. A pair of free-swimmers, with their skins pumped pitch-black and a sonar cloak in tow, managed to bore halfway through the Drill’s protective shell before the guards spotted them and chased them off. The news came by a messenger whom Three Jagged Reefs, unhappily awoken, nearly eviscerated. Bare moments later, Four Warm Currents stroked goodbyes to both mates and took the skiff to the project site, tentacles heavy from sleep but hearts thrumming electric.

Nine Brittle Spines somehow contrived to arrive first.

“Four Warm Currents, it is a pleasure to see you so well rested.” The councillor’s tentacles moved as smoothly and blandly as ever, but Four Warm Currents could see the faintest of trembling at their tips. Mortal after all.

“I came as quickly as I was able,” Four Warm Currents signed, not rising to the barb. “Were either of the perpetrators identified?”

“No.” Nine Brittle Spines gave the word a twist of annoyance. “Assumedly they were two of yours. They knew the thinnest point of the shell and left behind a project-tagged auger.”

One tentacle produced the spiral tool and set it drifting between them. It was a miniature cousin to the behemoth Drill, used to sample ice consistency.

Four Warm Currents inspected the implement. “I’ll speak with inventory, but I imagine it was taken without their knowledge.”

“Do that,” Nine Brittle Spines signed. “In the meanwhile, security will be increased. We’ll have guards at all times from now on. Body searches for workers.”

Four Warm Currents waved a vague agreement, staring up at the burnished armor shell, the hole scored in its underbelly. The workers would not be happy, but they were so close now, too close to let anything derail the project. Four Warm Currents would agree to anything, so long as the Drill was safe.

Tension became a sharp, sooty tang overlaying every conversation, so much so that Four Warm Currents was given council approval for a globe of artificially mixed happiness to waft around the tunnel entrance. It ended being mostly sucked up by the guards, who were happy enough already to swagger around with screamers and combat hooks bristling in their tentacles, interrogating any particularly worry-spackled worker who happened to look their way.

Four Warm Currents complained to the councillor, but was soundly ignored, told only that the guards had been instructed to treat the project site and its crew with the utmost respect. Enthusiasm was now a thing of the past. Workers spoke rarely and with short tempers, and every time the Drill slowed or an error was found in its calibration, the possibility of sabotage hung in the tunnel like a decay scent. Four Warm Currents found a slip in the most recent density calculation that promised to put things back a full work cycle, but still the Drill churned.

At home, they began receiving death threats. Six Bubbling Thermals found the first, a tiny automaton that waved its stiff tentacles in a prerecorded message: “We won’t need a drill to puncture your eyes and every one of your eggs.” Three Jagged Reefs shredded it to pieces. Four Warm Currents gave the pieces to the council’s investigator.

Then, two cycles before breakthrough, black globes of artificial malice were slicked to their spire with adhesive and timed to burst while they slept. Only one went off, but it was enough to necessitate a pore-cleanse for Six Bubbling Thermals and a dedicated surveillance detail for the house.

Three Jagged Reefs fumed and fumed. “After the Drill breaks through, you’ll let me borrow it, won’t you?” The demand was jittery with skimmer venom, and made only once Six Bubbling Thermals, finally returned from the cleansing tanks, was out of sight range. “I’m going to find the shit-eater who blacked Six and stick them on the bit gland first.”

Three Jagged Reefs had been pulled from smelting after an incidence of “hazardously elevated emotions,” in which a copper-worker trilling about the impending end of the world had their tentacle held over a geyser until it turned to pulp. Staying in the house full cycle, under the watchful eyes and mouths of council surveillance, was not an easy transition. Not even stocked with high-quality venom.

“It’ll all be over soon,” Four Warm Current signed, mind half-filled, as was now the norm, with figures from the latest density calculation. One final cycle.

“Tell it to Six,” Three Jagged Reefs signed back, short and clipped, and turned away.

Four Warm Currents swam into the next room, to where their mate was adrift in the sleeping harness. The egg sacs were bulging now, slick with the constant emission of birth mucus, bearing no trace of black ichor stains. The cleansing tanks had reported no permanent damage. Four Warm Currents sent a gentle prod of sonar and elicited a twitch.

“I’m awake,” Six Bubbling Thermals signed, languid. “I’d sleep better with you two around me.”

“They’ll catch the lunatics who planted that globe,” Four Warm Currents signed back.

Six Bubbling Thermals signed nothing for a long moment, then waved a sad laugh. “I don’t think it’s lunatics. Not anymore. A lot of people are saying the same thing, you know.”

“Saying what?”

“You spend all of your time at the Drill, even when you’re here with us.” The accusation was soft, but it stung. “You haven’t been paying attention. The transit currents are full of devotees calling you a blasphemer. Saying you think yourself a Leviathan. Unbounded. The whole city is frightened.”

“Then it’s a city of idiots,” Four Warm Currents signed abruptly.

“I’m frightened. I have no shame admitting it. I’m frightened for our children. For them to have two parents only. One parent only. None. For them to never even hatch. Who knows?” Six Bubbling Thermals raised a shaky smile. “Maybe the idiot is the one who isn’t frightened.”

“But I’m going to give them an altered world, a new world…” Four Warm Currents’s words blurred as Six Bubbling Thermals stilled two waving tentacles.