Our Lady of the Ice

At the time, Alejo had only wanted her money and her influence. He’d already told her about the funding he’d received from the Antarctican Freedom Fighters, despite the risk it posed to his career—a shocking bit of information that appalled Marianella and excited her as well, at least at the time. Back then she liked to think of herself as the respectable alternative to money from terrorists, a group the chief of police called Hope City’s number one enemy.

She and Alejo became lovers not long after, a dalliance designed to alleviate boredom more than anything else. Certainly Hector didn’t mind; he had his own affairs. Even after Hector was confined to his bed, she and Alejo kept it up, those clandestine meetings in shabby motel rooms on the edge of the dome, her wine-colored lipstick smeared on his shirt collar. More like a film than anything real.

Afterward, Alejo would always talk about the ag domes. Engineers from the mainland he’d spoken to, permits he’d acquired through contacts at the city offices. They’d raised almost enough to build one dome at that point, although Alejo wanted to keep it a secret. “It’ll be great political theater, don’t you think? To a

Marianella could only agree.

“I want to time it to coincide with the mayoral election.”

There were problems, of course. The engineers insisted the work couldn’t be done in secret, that they didn’t have the capacity to program enough robots to do what Alejo wanted. Marianella remembered sitting on the floor in a white slip, smoking a cigarette while Alejo paced back and forth, his hair wild, ranting about the inefficiency of mainland engineers. “If only we had more engineers who’d grown up here,” he said. “They’d understand. They’d have a reason to find a way. Why should they waste all their intelligence on power for the mainland?”

Marianella had hardly been listening. Her thoughts had been with the domes. With the robots Alejo needed.

I could do that.

Her nature made it easy to speak with robots. She could slip inside their programming and twist it around to suit her purposes. That was why full humans hated her nature so much—because ultimately, they feared her. She had all the abilities of a robot but remained completely unprogrammable.

Up until that point robotics had been a hobby, one Hector had tolerated only because she programmed their private maintenance drones. But as Alejo paced back and forth, the muscles in his neck tightening with anxiety, she thought back to the day Alejo had first told her of the domes. This was an opportunity, a chance for her nature to be something other than a failed scientific experiment.

And then Hector had died.

It wasn’t a shock, not really; he’d been bedridden so long. Still Marianella mourned him, not because she’d loved him or because he had loved her, but because he had known. As she watched his smoke and ashes drift up through the transparent chimney, into the open Antarctic air, she wondered if she and Araceli could bear the weight of that secret, after so long with Hector to take on part of the burden.

In that way, the pieces fell together. Alejo was at the funeral too, standing across the room with his assistant, and in that moment, surrounded by the cold air and her husband’s ashes, she made a decision. It was the most dangerous thing she’d ever done.

She waited until their next afternoon together. As Alejo touched her, she felt like a glint of mainland sunlight bouncing across a hardwood floor. Afterward they lay stretched out on the bare mattress, the sheets and blanket kicked to the floor. She stared up at the light in the ceiling as she spoke.

“I can build the dome for you,” she said.

And Alejo had turned to her, his eyes glittering. He didn’t laugh, like she’d expected. He took her seriously. And so she told him, her heart beating so fast, she thought she might break herself.

She wasn’t human. She had machine parts embedded in her body. She was illegal.

There followed eleven and a half seconds of silence, just enough for her to recite the Hail Mary inside her head.

“You can go outside in the cold?” Alejo asked. That was his first response. His arm was around her shoulder, and he didn’t take it away.

“For a few hours, yes,” Marianella said. “And I can program your robots better than any engineer in the city or on the mainland.”

It was enough. Alejo kept her secret, and a month later she had programmed an army of Vaz models to build the dome on the southern side of the city, hidden away among the other private domes. She and Alejo planted the first seeds by hand—wheat, the same sort that grew around Southstar. And then they appeared on television and continued to sell the lie that they pla

“Where would you like this?” Luciano was back, peering around the fan of fuchsia blossoms from the hothouse she kept on the estate. Such flowers were an extravagance in a place like Hope City.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Marianella stood up and swept around the room. “Where do you think they should go?”

“They’d look lovely at the bar, I think. It’s a bit empty at the moment.”

“At the bar, wonderful.” Marianella smiled. “You can watch to make sure no one knocks them over.”

“Of course.” Luciano walked across the room and arranged the vase behind the rows of liquor bottles. He’d started coming over after Hector had died, offering his services as a butler. They’d met at the same time that she had met Sofia, shortly after Marianella had moved to Hope City. They’d become friends, although his friendship always seemed strangely subservient to her. And so she’d refused at first, not wanting to trap him back into servitude, but he’d looked her straight in the eye and said, “It’s not slavery with you, Marianella. It’s friendship.”

Sofia would have called it slavery. But Sofia and Luciano had always been different, for as long as Marianella had known them.

Marianella joined Luciano at the bar as he fiddled with the fuchsias’ leaves. He seemed content, she thought, like the way she felt when she was programming Southstar’s maintenance drones, or walking through the rows of crops in the agricultural dome.

“It looks fine,” she said. “You can stop messing with it.”

Luciano glanced at her and took a step back. “I want everything to be perfect.”

“I know you do.” Marianella looped her arm around his and squeezed him in a half hug. He smiled at her, that halfhearted robot smile she found so comforting.

The doorbell rang.

“They’re early,” Luciano remarked.

“I bet it’s the Mendezes. They’re notorious for it.” She took a deep breath. “I guess I have to be ready, don’t I?”

“You look beautiful.”

Another bit of programming. Marianella didn’t care. “Thank you, Luciano.”

He took his place behind the bar, where all her guests would see him not as a friend but as a quirky throwback to the city’s heyday. She checked her hair and makeup in the window’s reflection one last time.

Back in society again, she thought, and then she glided down the hallway to answer the door.

*  *  *  *

Two hours later, the house was alive with people. Night had fallen completely, and the bright golden lights inside turned the window into a dark mirror that reflected Marianella’s party guests as if they were ghosts. Luciano served behind the wet bar, demurring if anyone offered him a tip. Marianella flitted from person to person, a glass of red wine in one hand. She only drank from it occasionally, and Marianella was relieved to find how easily she slipped back into this role. She laughed and pressed her hand to her chest and conjured up small talk with hardly any concentration.

Every now and then she caught Luciano’s eye, and he smiled encouragingly, as if he understood the way some silly party could help rejuvenate her.