The Two Fangs

Chapter 8

Dresden took them to his dining hall, which was underground. So much so, in fact, that it protruded below the steel-stone-dirt platter, along with the stabilizers and the bubble's other workings. The wall facing the machinery was opaque, while the others - including the floor - were glass. They looked out into the depths of the glass sphere, and beyond it the ocean. The faint, faint cluster of domes that was Eurasia just barely showed in the distance below their seats. Birds and bats flew in the empty space.

"People usually think of the deluge as happening all at once," Dresden lifted a cat onto the table, one of the several that had followed him to the elevator. "like the antediluvians built the domes and then a six-mile-tall tidal wave just came up out of the ocean and covered everything. But it actually took hundreds of years to happen. About a hundred to cover the continents, and another three hundred to get this high. Even when the tops of the domes could see out of the water, where we are would've been far up in the sky. The domes were under construction for literally generations before the water reached them."

Servants brought in the food, which appeared to be roasted slabs of real-culture meat tossed with vegetables Valle had no names for, as well as a dish of krill paste for the cat. Valle wasn't hungry, but despite her discomfort Grid lay into it with urgency.

"America and Eurasia weren't the only continents," Dresden continued. "The dome project was trying to make habitats for all of them; Africa, South America, and Australia, too. And bubbles like this one throughout the world for the islands. But these two were where the money was, and they undercut the others at every chance. In the end they said, 'Oh, it's too late, we have to cancel those and finish ours as fast as we can.' They built city-ships to send to the other continents, that would float on the water, but they didn't last. How could they be maintained? And that was if the air above hadn't become toxic and radioactive. So, what did the founders of our homes do with the money they stole from the other continents?"

Valle began to test the meat. He knew the answer.

"They founded companies," Dresden said. "They founded the one that still owns all the pumps. And the one that still owns all the rails. And the one that still keeps the glass up."

And the one that...

"They're all human-run," Grid mumbled around a beak full of culture meat.

"Mostly human-run. Human institutions created us to be their labor, then we built them their homes, now we've been free for centuries, but we live completely at those institutions' mercy. These are big, crushing forces, and they're the enemy."

"I was just telling him about the graves."

"It's terrible."

"I knew about the graves," Valle defended himself.

"He didn't know about the graves," Grid ate another handful.

"We're free under the law," Dresden continued. "but ultimately we'll always be their workforce."

"Rich zoans and poor humans," Grid agreed. "That's what we..."

She stopped and lowered her eyes to the floor and the empty miles below it, without finishing the thought.

"The point is," their host folded his arms, another cat in his lap. "that within this bubble, zoans are friends and allies. Whatever your conflict is, consider it mediated until you leave."

Grid harrumphed at that, half-heartedly. Good news as it was, Valle found that he couldn't eat any more.

They finished the meal in quiet, Grid scarfing ravenously, Valle uneasy, and their host watching them both surreptitiously.