The Apocalypse Ocean Read Free Page B

still see the wormholes floating just off the edge of Harbortown. Two tall disks of pure black, with blinking red lights all around the edges. It had been fun to watch ships emerge bow first from the nothingness.
    That was how Placa del Fuego had grown. A spit of land on a large ocean around which the wormholes could be floated. Ships coming from Reception were from the Xenowealth, and would dock here to unload cargo. Trumball’s wormhole led “upstream” to League worlds. Trade happened at Placa del Fuego at first. As the dead zone expanded people had built longer and longer piers extending out of the harbor, so ships could dock outside the slowly growing dead zone. Eventually the floating docks appeared and turned into floating cities that could keep moving away from the dead zone.
    Now the big cities and their docks floated around the wormholes and Placa del Fuego was just a place people drifted to.
    Some people on the island believed that alien immigrants had buried a device under the island during the human war for independence, intending to use Placa del Fuego as a last stand.
    Four years ago a bunch of angry older women from a slum farm tower on Elysium Street lynched Raskassus, a Gahe immigrant alien. They’d hung him from a street lamp by his mouth tentacles and beat him like a piñata until Raskassus stopped screaming and just hung there.
    When the island police arrived the women rioted, barricading the street and setting furniture on fire. Three whole nights the street burned, and it wasn’t until the island rained fire that everyone scattered and returned to life.
    Those old women blamed the aliens. But it didn’t matter what or who caused the dead zone, Tiago thought. The end effect was that the town made do. It used pneumatic tubes to send messages. Ox-men from Okur pulled rickshaws around, or people used the compressed air-powered trolley cars. Everything ran on compressed air: the town’s reservoirs were filled by the wind turbines that festooned the harbor entrance and the exposed ridges of the mountain.
    But because of all that, life as usual on Placa del Fuego, this woman shouldn’t have been standing in front of him, Tiago knew. She shouldn’t even work . Yet the cyborg woman now squatted on Tiago’s hand-carved wooden stool in the center of his room.
    He led her in to avoid all the prying eyes now crammed into the corridor, trying to see this wonder talking to him.
    Our Tiago, people tittered.
    Tiago turned on a bright white LED lamp as she counted off a lot more money than he’d stolen, or given back to her. Bill after bill after bill. A massive fistful. A month’s takings. He was glad he’d come back to his room and drawn the curtain.
    The massive stack of cash hovered between them.
    “Before you tagged me and made the pick,” the cyborg lady said, “you seemed to know your way around the harbor. I need someone like you.”
    Tiago took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure if he needed someone like her.
    She was trouble.
    She smiled as he hesitated to take the money. “Okay. I’ll double what you think you want.”
    Tiago thought about that. He could want quite a bit.
    She added more bills to the stack, to the point where Tiago could not ignore it. Even if it meant trouble. Even with Kay’s cut off the top.
    He’d be a fool not to.
    “What do you want?” he asked.
    “I’m looking for someone.” The woman shifted, and the stool creaked. Tiago grimaced. It was made of imported wood, and it was his most precious possession. 
    “Who are you looking for?” he asked.
    “I’m looking for Kay.”
    “Kay?” Fear stabbed at him as Tiago feigned confusion. He felt trapped. And a little bit scared again.
    “You know who I’m talking about.”
    He did. He so did.
    This woman was as scary as Kay about being able to read your face and study you, tell that you were lying.
    And Tiago had never been a good liar. He was quick with his fingers, for sure. Not good at playing cool. He swallowed