The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

  Okay. Maybe not flooding. Or maybe an earthquake and then flooding, followed by chunks of the East Coast falling into the sea. So many choices, really.

  Everyone looks floored. Manny’s feeling it, too, but maybe the person he used to be has a lot of practice at reacting quickly to shocking, horrific news. “You’re lying,” he snaps. Hong’s jaw tightens, though he seems more disgusted than angry. “You’re trying to manipulate us. Scare us, into doing…”

  Into doing what the city requires. Into sacrificing themselves, if that’s what it takes to keep the Woman in White from turning the Tri-state area into a crater.

  “I’m telling you what has to be done,” Hong says. He says it slowly, in icy-crisp English, as if they are all bad students whom he’s been forced to teach. “I’m telling you what has happened, in every other case where a composite city—a city made of cities, like yours—has been born. There’s a primary avatar and one or more sub-avatars of the boroughs or exurbs or shantytowns or whatever they’re called. The birth is incomplete, and the city isn’t safe, until the primary devours the others.”

  “If this is a story you’ve heard, ‘devour’ doesn’t have to be literal,” Bronca says. She’s speaking slowly, too, though Manny suspects this is a processing thing for her. Chewing the idea over, out loud. “It could be… I don’t know. Spiritual. Sexual, who knows.”

  “Sexual is not better!” says Padmini. She sounds horrified as she glares around at them.

  “I don’t know how the ‘devour’ part works,” Hong admits. “But I told you: with London there were many, and then there was one. She was traumatized. For many years she would not speak at all. Now, she is… different, even for one of us. When she’ll talk about the issue at all, she claims that she doesn’t remember what happened.” He sighs and folds his arms. “It clearly isn’t anything good.”

  Manny wants to attack someone. Anyone. The urge to do violence runs under his skin like a current—but violence toward whom? He will not hurt the primary avatar. Lashing out at anyone else is pointless, because everyone in the room is either the messenger or another passenger on this ride to surreality. When he takes a deep breath to try to calm himself, it actually works, and has the feel of old habit. Yes. He is not some monster, lashing out wildly. Violence is a tool to be controlled and directed, and used only for worthy purpose. That is the man he has chosen to be.

  He focuses on Paulo, not to attack, but to understand. “There is no way,” he says, “that you could have soft-pedaled this to us.”

  Paulo still doesn’t look good, Manny thinks, assessing him clinically. Here in Bronca’s office, he’s standing on his own near the microfridge, but his posture is decidedly off from true vertical. There are dark circles under his eyes. Still, he draws himself up with careful dignity. “I would have begun by explaining the stakes,” he says. “You’re all selfish. Anyone would be—but one cannot be, and be what we are. Thousands or millions of lives depend on a city’s avatar. The Enemy is within the gates; there’s no more time. If you have located the primary, then you must go to him.” He takes a deep breath. “And then do whatever is necessary.”

  Padmini is the one who explodes. Manny wasn’t expecting that. She seems like a nice girl. But she pushes away from the wall and lunges at Paulo, shoving him into the microfridge. “You want to let that—thing—kill us? Eat us? You haven’t even been here when we needed you, and you just show up and tell us to die? How dare you! How dare you!”

  Manny reacts without thinking, catching her by the shoulders before she can do more. He does this for two reasons: first because Paulo grimaced when she shoved him, as though he has injuries greater than what they’ve realized—or as if her shove hurt much more than it should have. Only New York can injure São Paulo so badly, here within the city. Unreliable ally or not, Manny suspects they still need Paulo.

  The other reason that Manny reacts is more visceral. It’s because Padmini called the primary that thing. “Stop it,” he snaps at her. He knows he shouldn’t. She’s upset for good reason. But he cannot bear her rejection of the primary—of New York. They are all New York. He feels it, too, in the parts of himself that did not exist before three days ago: the same thing that any of them can do to a foreign city, they can do to each other. But New York cannot war with itself without dire consequences, any more than a man can stab himself in the guts and still be fine.

  Padmini wrenches away from him, her hands immediately turning to fists. Manny braces himself for a fight, both as a man and as an island of fragile, built-by-the-lowest-bidder skyscrapers. Fortunately, she only shouts. “Be quiet! I don’t want to hear anything more from you! You’re crazy. You probably want to be eaten by him. Why would I want to be part of you? Oh—” And she turns away, hands in the air, making a sound like a growl.

  “I don’t want to die, either,” he replies, then pushes on before he has time to think about Padmini’s accusation, that he wants to be devoured. “And we don’t know that we will! Paulo said it himself: something different has been happening here, beyond the usual process.” He lifts his gaze to glare at the foreign cities. Paulo is trying not to be conspicuous about leaning on the microfridge to keep from falling over. Hong merely regards Manny impassively. “I know tap dancing when I hear it. Everything from the way we’ve awakened to the way the Enemy is acting—time after time, you’ve both been surprised by what’s happened in this city. You’re nearly as in the dark here as we are!”

  “Maybe so,” Hong agrees readily. He looks bored. No wonder Paulo hates him. “It’s true that every city birth is different. Would you rather I not have mentioned that in every precedent we know of, the sub-avatars have vanished?”

  “No. We needed to know that,” Brooklyn says. Alone of all of them, she hasn’t gotten to her feet. She still sits in the largest of Bronca’s mismatched chairs, her legs primly crossed and hands folded in her lap. Maybe only Manny sees how pale her knuckles have gone.

  Hong regards her for a moment, then inclines his head to her in a “just so” nod.

  Padmini turns away to begin pacing in the narrow space on that side of Bronca’s office, muttering to herself. She’s meandering between Tamil and a few creative English imprecations. Manny tries to ignore her muttering, to leave her that much privacy—but then she says, “Kan ketta piragu surya namashkaaram,” which translates to something like Why look at the sun after you’ve already been blinded or Why bother doing morning yoga if you got up late, and he cannot stop himself from reacting.

  “None of us are enemies to each other,” Manny says. Padmini stops and stares at him. “We’ve got one enemy—the one who’s already attacked each and every one of us, sometimes more than once. The primary hasn’t done anything to harm us. He’s on our side. He has no reason to want to kill us—”

  “You don’t know that,” Bronca says, with a sigh.

  “It doesn’t matter if he wants to kill us or not, new guy,” Brooklyn says. Her voice has hardened. She folds her hands, regarding Manny over them. She’s still showing the toll of both her battle against the creatures that attacked her family, and the shock of learning that she’s lost her home. “Lots of bad things that happen ain’t personal. This primary could love us all like brothers and sisters, but in the end he’s going to do what he’s got to do. So would we in his position. Millions of lives in exchange for four?” She shrugs. It looks nonchalant but isn’t. “That ain’t even a debate.”

  Manny nods at her, grateful for the support. She regards him back, her gaze frank and cool. By this he knows that she did not say it for him.

  Hong then nods, too. “Well. Now you know. Let’s go, then.”

  They all turn to stare at him. Even Manny shakes his head in pure incredulity at the man’s complete lack of tact. “Too soon, man,” says Veneza. God knows what she thinks of all of this, but it’s clear that she gets the dynamics. “Way too fucking soon.”

  “I don’t care if it is or not,” Hong says, without heat. “All of you deserve to know wh
at will happen, but Paulo is correct in that there’s no more room for sentimentality or individualism or cowardice. Just on the ride from JFK, I saw blankets of white tentacles covering entire blocks. They are forming structures; did you notice that?”

  “Structures?” Bronca frowns. “Like what?”

  “Like nothing I have seen that can be compared. On Staten Island, I saw…” For the first time, he hesitates and seems disconcerted. Then he shakes his head, and it’s gone. “A tower, of sorts. I have no idea what it’s for. But if our enemy has built it, there can be no good reason for that.”

  Veneza abruptly gets up and exits Bronca’s office, leaving the door open. It’s getting late, though sunset-tinted light still comes in through the main gallery window because they haven’t put down the shutters yet. They all stare as she stops at the big window, bathed in slanting red rays, and leans forward, peering at something in the distance. Then she points out the window, and turns to call to them, “A tower, right? Uh, like that?”

  They all hurry into the main gallery and cluster at the window beside her.

  It’s difficult to see from here. Small with distance, though it arcs above the trees and buildings and the zooming cars of some kind of highway. Manny has to squint to see it—but it looks like a cross between a giant toadstool and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis: an arch that is irregular, misshapen in its twists and curves, and flattened at the top. There are slowly undulating streamers coming off the flat top’s edges, attenuating into a thinness too difficult to see clearly from this distance and angle. It’s easy to guess where most of those streaming, moving tendrils are going, though. Down. Thinning into filaments and spreading onto the streets below.

  “I saw that when I went out for lunch today,” Veneza says softly as they all stare. “I thought it was, you know, a guerilla art installation, bad marketing gimmick, whatever. I was going to go check it out after work today. But when I texted a friend about it—she lives there, it’s Hunts Point—she said she didn’t see anything.”

  Bronca groans softly. “I live in Hunts Point. Fuck, that thing is probably right over my house.”

  Hong regards Veneza for a moment. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to go near it.”

  “Yeah, you think?”

  “What is it?” Paulo asks.

  “No idea.” Hong sighs. “I suppose you were right about this city being an unusual case.”

  “Yes, I was.” Paulo glares at him. “Thank you ever so much for throwing me under the bus, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome,” Hong says evenly.

  “Look,” says Bronca, in a soft tone of horror. She’s pointing at the street right in front of the Center. On a sidewalk across that street, a group of Latino teenagers walks by, perhaps heading home from an after-school activity. They’re laughing and joking with each other, punching each other as boys do, making a lot of noise in their young joy.

  There are six of them. Three have tendrils curling up from the backs of their necks or shoulders. One of the infected ones has fronds all over his arms, too, and a small one growing from his face just below one eye.

  Everyone falls silent for a while.

  Bronca breaks the silence with a noisy deep breath. “I need… shit. Let’s go for a walk.” When the stares turn to her, she tightens her jaw. “Just around the block. I’ve been in here without a break for going on forty-eight hours. I need more than just talking with you people to get a feel for what’s really happening out there.”

  They look at each other. Hong starts to open his mouth, and Paulo elbows him. Bronca makes a sound of annoyance, then turns to go on her own.

  Manny immediately moves to join her, though she stops and glares at him. “You can’t go alone,” he says. She narrows her eyes at him, and it’s definitely an intimidating look, even though she’s shorter than him. He doesn’t care. (He’s faced worse, he knows, though he doesn’t remember what.) “None of us can go anywhere alone until this is done.”

  “This is bullshit,” Padmini mutters. Veneza claps her on the shoulder awkwardly, but then moves to join Bronca and Manny.

  “Do you have a construct ready, to defend yourself should the Enemy attack?” Hong asks.

  Bronca curls her lip at him; it’s not a smile. “I always have my boots.” She’s not wearing boots at the moment, Manny notices, but Hong seems satisfied with that. Hong eyes Manny, who grimaces as he realizes he doesn’t. It’s not difficult to guess what Hong means—but what quintessential Manhattanism can he think of to weaponize in a crisis? He’s been here three days and spent less than one of them in his own borough.

  Well—He reaches back and finds his wallet. There’s the debit card. As long as he’s not broke.

  Hong gives him a skeptical look, then nods at Bronca. “Well, it’s her borough, anyway. Try not to get in her way.”

  Manny winces, but follows Bronca and Veneza outside.

  The instant they step outside, however, Bronca stops, frowning. Manny notices her wince and put a hand to one hip, as if it pains her. “Shit, I should’ve come out of there before. Everything feels wrong.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat,” Veneza says. Bronca only shakes her head and starts walking, with a noticeable limp.

  The Center sits on the gradual slant of a hill, so they start up its slope toward some smaller avenue that Manny can see up ahead. Everything looks fine to his eye, apart from the occasional people or cars that pass by with tendrils on them. There are no big, FDR Drive–esque plumes of tendrils that Manny can see, but if this many denizens of the borough are being infected, then there’s something, somewhere. Those structures, maybe. Maybe the thing on FDR Drive was developing into something like them—a tower—when he stopped it.

  Bronca strides forcefully despite her age, glancing at every example of the infected and muttering something in a language Manny can’t parse, for once. Something that apparently isn’t spoken much in Manhattan. She’s rubbing at her side, too, in addition to the hip. Both gestures feel familiar. When she does it again, grimacing as if she’s got heartburn, Manny says, “When I fought that thing on FDR, it felt like it was digging into me, not just the asphalt.”

  Bronca sighs. “Oh, good. I was worried it was rheumatism.”

  At the corner, however, Bronca comes to an abrupt halt in front of them, her face a study in shock. Manny tenses, sliding a hand into his pocket for his debit card, but what she’s staring at is simply an empty rubble field on the opposite corner. It looks like a building there has been recently torn down. There’s nothing left but tumbled bricks, and a newly painted plywood fence announcing whatever’s coming soon to replace it. He can’t see anything to be upset about, but Veneza, too, inhales as she sees it. “Oh noooo,” she says. “Oh, my God. Murdaburga.”

  “What?” asks Manny.

  “Murdaburga’s gone!” Her whole posture radiates tragedy. “Those were like the fattest, juiciest burgers you ever had. And that place had been there longer than I’ve been alive. It’s a Bronx institution. When the fuck did they knock it down? And why? There were always people inside buying burgers. I thought it was doing okay!”

  Bronca sets her lips in a grim line and stomps across the street, her shoulders tight. Manny hurries to keep up. When she stops again, he realizes she’s staring at the poster that’s been put up on the fence. LUXURY LIVING, it reads at the top, above a lovely architect’s drawing of a modernist mid-rise stack building.

  “Condos,” she snarls, in the same tone that others might say cobras. “Murdaburga was the storefront on a building that dozens of families lived in for years. I’d heard there was trouble a couple of months ago, something about jacked-up rents—but my God. They just threw all those people out. For overpriced, ugly-ass condos.”

  “Yo, Old B,” Veneza says, with sudden urgency. She has peered through one of the murky plastic windows set into the plywood fence; now she steps back and points at it, wordless and wide-eyed. When Manny and Bronca share the view, it’s hard to see at first—but the
n Manny catches his breath.

  All over the brickyard, like the newest of sprouted seedlings, short white tendrils have wriggled up from between or within the bricks. It’s a whole field of them. As they watch, an older woman totters past the far edge of the brickyard, pushing a granny cart laden with laundry and groceries. She stumbles suddenly, frowning as she catches herself on the cart, and bending for a moment to rub at her ankle. When she straightens and resumes walking, there is a white tendril sprouting from the back of her hand. Probably one on the ankle, too, though Manny can’t see it.

  Bronca’s breath quickens. She rounds on the coming-soon poster and narrows her eyes. “This didn’t just start when the city came to life,” she growls, scanning the text in a rapid left-right scroll. “I don’t care how many people they’re paying off or mind-controlling, even eldritch abominations can’t get a construction permit overnight in this city. Which means Dr. White has been planning her move for a lot longer than just the past two or three days.”

  “How can that be, though?” Manny’s still peering through the window, though now that he knows the white tendrils are on the other side, he’s keeping his feet well back from the bottom edge of the fence. “Did she know the city was about to be born?”

  “No idea. Been so caught up in Raul’s political bullshit…” Bronca’s engrossed in the fine print, muttering as she does so. “Didn’t notice what I should’ve noticed. The land here hasn’t been healthy for a hundred years, but this is a new sickness, and I should have noticed. They’re destroying everything that makes New York what it is, replacing it with generic bullshit.” She swats the poster—

  —and then she blinks, drawing back a little in surprise. “Better New York Foundation?”

  The name sounds familiar. Manny leans in to see. Yes; tucked into the corner of the sign text is a little logo. It’s a stylized letter B and the miniature skyline of New York—well, of Manhattan.

  Then his skin prickles as he belatedly realizes that’s not the Manhattan skyline. The longer he looks, the more anomalies he notices. There’s a distinctive-looking structure in the middle of it that at first he thinks is something like Seattle’s Space Needle: a long tapering column topped with something flatter and wider. Then he notices the odd lumps spaced irregularly along the column’s length. Also, the structure at the top doesn’t look like a restaurant or observation booth. It’s more organic. Polyp-like, like some kind of deep-sea organism.