Spare and Found Parts

by Sarah Maria Griffin

  “Fine,” you manage, defeated.

  It’s not fair. It’s not fine. But Oliver Kelly isn’t going anywhere.

  CHAPTER 9

  The undertaker’s son flashed her a wolfish grin. “How’s it going, Nell? I’ll take one of those, too, Anto, thank you.”

  The barkeep nodded and took off, her beauty gracing the other end of the bar. Oliver Kelly sat down on the stool beside Nell. She kept her eyes on the swaying of the dance floor and tried to look as if she were more interested in that than in the spindly young man who had just imposed himself, as usual, on her evening.

  Oliver was taller than Nell, and thinner. His skin was a little lighter than Nell’s, and he had a bloom of freckles over his nose. He had teeth that looked too sharp and eyes that were too big in his head, too blue. His hair was black and curly and coiffed in a pompadour. He was all narrow monochrome, black pants and a thin gray cardigan, starched white shirt. Aggressive, formal. In some lights he was handsome in a way, but that was sharply undermined by the uneasy, greedy energy he exuded.

  His mothers were the proprietresses of Kelly & Kelly, a florist and an undertaker. He’d been adopted as an infant out of the orphanage; he had no augmented limbs, nothing visibly missing. Despite this, he received no preferential treatment from the other apprentices—an undertone of resentment at most. After he made his contribution, Oliver’s whole, healthy body could be his ticket out into the Pasture. Thing was he seemed intent on sticking around.

  Nell wished he’d go. She’d wave him off, throw flowers after him as he left town. She’d seen enough of him for a lifetime. At least the Saturday classes she’d shared with him had ended last year so that they could each focus on their contributions, but he still rattled around the house too often, asking her father questions and making a nuisance of himself.

  Those who didn’t have profitable enough trades to afford new models of their augmented limbs or those who couldn’t afford maintenance or needed a fix in a tick and didn’t have the time to go on Julian’s waiting list would go to Oliver, down at the morgue, and he would repair them for a discounted fee. This system, when perfected, would be his contribution. And there it was: he’d have to stay in the city to maintain it. Stay near Nell.

  Oliver had taken this upon himself. Julian hadn’t stopped him; he was happy to have somebody else cover the things he couldn’t. He was happy his machines were getting reused; but he didn’t have time to dote on Oliver, and Nell was already technically his apprentice.

  “So, how’s it going?” Oliver tried again, leaning closer to her.

  Nell stiffened; his cologne and the scent of formaldehyde were oppressive. She pulled her scarf higher around her chin.

  “I’m grand, Oliver. Same as usual.”

  Antoinette slammed down two short, fat tumblers of spirits, and Nell turned to her to pay. She had a small purse full of clunky plastic tokens; so much of the things they needed they got by trade, but the tokens still went an awfully long way. Ugly blue disks, something from a time long behind them.

  “It’s fine. The Cranes and Kellys drink for free around here,” said Antoinette. “Remember that when the two of you get hitched and set up shop; I need regular fixes for the amount of action this old girl sees.” She flexed her beautiful, silent augmented arm. She waltzed off before they could thank her and left them alone.

  “What does she mean by that?” Nell snapped. “Do we have to go over this again, Oliver?” She wrapped her fingers around the glass. It was full of ice, and it was a relief against the heat of the room. If this conversation was about to go how she thought it would, it would mark the eighteenth time that Oliver had propositioned her to go into business together. Which implied courtship. Which implied marriage. Which implied kissing and sex. It was the sex part that irritated her most because naturally he would expect that immediately; clearly he expected it already. It utterly enraged Nell, and she had told him so. Seventeen times. And here he was again.

  Her no always fell on deaf ears with Oliver. Every few months he’d boomerang back to her with a new angle on the proposal. Sometimes it was because he truly loved her; others, because he could make sure they were wealthy. Once he promised that the relationship and marriage could be completely lavender—strictly chaste—as long as she convinced her father to teach him everything he knew. Worse than this, Oliver truly felt that if he kept telling everyone he was going to marry into the Crane legacy, eventually it would happen. At first his enthusiasm was endearing, and Nell and Ruby had giggled over it. But over the past year it had escalated. He seemed to assume that she would eventually break. Nell, however, was not a girl in the business of breaking.

  His eyes kept flicking down to her neck and sternum, covered completely, but ticking at volume, slightly out of sync with the music. Nell imagined little teeth in his pupils, chewing away at her clothing. She clenched her fists.

  “Well, you know how it is, Nell. Everyone with an ounce of common sense can tell that we’re perfectly suited. I can offer you a lovely time, you know that.” He took out a slim silver case full of hand-rolled cigarettes, removed one theatrically, and lit it up. He offered Nell one, too, and she glared at him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Oliver smiled, eyes on her neck and chest again. Tick, tick, tick.

  Nell took a long pull from her drink. It burned but helped. She was also prepared to throw it at Oliver if he made any moves. Kodak was staring straight at him with his tiny bullet hole eyes.

  “I’m not having this conversation with you again. Not tonight. Not ever. It’s a party. Everyone from all corners of the city is here. Go and dance. Constance Cleary’s eyes are just about falling out of her head looking at you,” Nell said flatly.

  “I’m not interested in Constance Cleary—” Oliver began, but Nell cut him off sharply.

  “Of course you’re not. What use would you have with a girl from a family of cobblers and shoemakers, couldn’t use them to advance your career at all.”

  Oliver pouted at Nell. “Harsh, Crane.”

  “Leave me alone, Kelly.”

  They sat beside each other in silence, watching the dancers and crowds, occasionally catching glances from passersby, for whom their silent, tense vignette was surely gossip fodder for the coming weeks. Nell sipped her drink and thought about ordering another. Oliver finished his in a single gulp, then turned completely to face Nell and put his hand on her knee.

  “Nell, I want to come clean with you. There’s something I haven’t told you, and I think if you knew, you’d probably want to spend some more time with me.”

  Nell looked at his hand. She could see the gray-blue of his veins and the bones of his knuckles, his neat, surgically clean fingernails. She could hear only the steady, escalating clockwork inside of her and the rushing of blood and fury. She had not told him he could put his hand on her.

  Oliver was entirely oblivious. He took her intense, furious stare as interest and continued softly.

  “Aside from my current operation in the morgue, I’ve, em”—Oliver’s composure dropped a little with his volume—“I don’t think I should tell you this in here. Will you come outside with me?”

  Before Nell could answer, the music ended with aplomb. Antoinette and Tomas took to the tiny rickety stage then with a fanfare. They each held a full glass in their hands. The singer handed Tomas the busted-up microphone.

  He was handsome and tall, not unlike Antoinette. All blond wavy hair and bright eyes. His right leg was his augmented limb, but there was utterly no way of telling which was which in his fine suit pants and spats and shining black shoes. He passed his sister the mic.

  The crowd hushed at their presence. Even Nell listened as Antoinette began to speak, though she hadn’t intended to.

  “Five years ago the city was a very different place. Many of you here tonight quite literally helped raise this roof. We’re only up on our feet, but we’ve pints of heart. Before the Turn, in our great- or great-great-grandparents’ time, this country was sung about a
ll over the world, known for the parties we’d throw. Now, who knows what the rest of the world thinks of us? Who knows what they’re even doing out there or if there’s anyone out there at all? The world could still be growing, and we’d never know. This bar was our contribution, but it’s just a place to keep us looking inward. So, as we raise our glasses, we should look outward, hope that someday we’ll get to dance with the rest of the world, not just each other. I know there are full bars all over the planet tonight.”

  Antoinette’s voice caught in her throat for a moment, and the beat of silence had a pull to it. Members of the crowd shot one another glances; eyebrows lifted; fingers tightened around glasses. Tomas motioned to take the microphone, but she waved him off. “Sorry, hold on.” She took a deep breath and then a long drink from her glass. The air in the room was thick.

  Nell felt a tug at her sleeve. Oliver was nothing if not persistent. She rolled her eyes.

  “Oliver, I’m not going outside with you,” she whispered, drawing the attention and a few hushes from the patrons around her.

  “I can’t go into it in here, and I really, really think you’d be interested in what I have to say. Ruby was anyway.” His voice was urgent and low.

  Nell froze. “What has you talking to Ruby?”

  Shushed again. Antoinette was continuing her speech. Nell tutted in frustration.

  “Maybe Ruby was the one doing the talking to me, thank you very much. I’ll tell you if you go outside with me.” Oliver ran his finger around the edge of his empty glass. Nell watched and shuddered.

  She took a deep breath and adjusted her scarf up around her chin. If this was something to do with Oliver’s apprenticeship, surely she should know about it. She drained the last floral dregs of her gin and tonic and thought, well, what had she to lose?

  Antoinette finished her speech, and the crowd erupted with cheers and confetti. Nell scanned around for Ruby amid the kaleidoscope. Not a sign of her. Typical.

  “Fine. You have until I’ve unlocked my bike. Start now.”

  They left the ballroom, the big gilded doors swinging shut behind them, and padded down the carpet toward the door. Janey had left her post; the corridor was empty; the night air was almost upon them. The undertaker’s son could barely keep up with her but began to talk anyway, his tones hushed and urgent.

  “Look, Nell, I’ve been stepping a bit outside my bounds with what I’ve been doing. I—this sounds really bad, but I went into the Gonne Hospital around six months ago and did some looking. What you and Ruby do at the water. I found some really, really amazing things, things almost too good to be used by people.”

  Nell slowed to listen. Too good to be used by people? She hadn’t realized the Gonne Hospital had been safe enough to go inside. The great ancient building presided over what would have once been a main street; before the Turn it had been a department store, a strange urban landmark crowned by a great clock. But after the first toxic pulses rattled through the island and the epidemic struck, it had been converted into an emergency hospital. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people had died there. The old building had become so contaminated that the council had decreed it unsafe and ordered that it be burned. Ostensibly this was to kill the ends of the virus and stop outbreaks during aftershocks: but the whole city donned gas masks and gathered to watch it, a terrible red ceremony. It felt like an exorcism, the ghosts of their sick past scorched out. Nell was only very small when it happened; Cora had held her hand as they watched the terrible blaze.

  “And lo and behold, there are rooms in there untouched by the fire, and they’re just full of old safes and boxes of, well, of early robotics. Of prosthetics from before your father’s inventions. I’d never seen the like of them. Old porcelain arm plates that survived the blaze. Some are wooden, I’ve even found a whole case of glass eyes; they’re so delicate!”

  They exited to the outside world, and the night air was barely a touch cooler than the heat inside the building. The sky was black and clear and pocked with a clatter of white stars. Nell didn’t stop, despite her curiosity. She headed straight for the bike racks, taking Kodak in her arms so as not to dislodge him from his perch as she marched.

  “Oliver, I’ve seen glass eyes before. So you found a whole load of old limbs. You—you shouldn’t even be in the hospital; you have no idea what’s still in the air. You’re healed, and you’re taking stupid risks. What is the point in telling me this?”

  “Nell, I’m going to start selling them. I’m going to test them to see if they’re contaminated, clean them up, then run them as a special service. Roll them out as vintage. A lot of them are beautiful, with handmade casings. They’d be worth a fortune, especially to folks who don’t like machines. I’m going to—”

  Folks who don’t like machines. Nell busied herself placing Kodak safely into the basket on her bike, threw away the question. “Have you been talking to Ruby about an eye?”

  Oliver went quiet for a moment. “Yes. And—”

  “She didn’t tell me.”

  Nell held the chain lock from the bike in her hands and squeezed, the metal pressing into her flesh. She breathed steadily. She wasn’t going to show Oliver she was upset; the ticking gave her away enough as it was.

  “She also said”—Oliver was desperate—“that it would be good for me to tell you; that the time’s coming up for your contribution, and you don’t have one; that you’re on a straight track to end up halfway up Kate’s stony armpit. Look—”

  Nell cocked her head to the side. “When did she say this to you?”

  “Oh, we went for a drink last night to discuss pricing—”

  Nell’s surprise crystallized into something that rang deep like hurt but had all the volatility of rage. She was just about ready to storm back inside and pull Ruby from her tangle of friends and give her a piece of her mind.

  “I’ve heard enough, Oliver. I don’t care. You can go risk your life in a burned-out old hospital, make profit out of artifacts belonging to the dead, and give my best friend an operation she’s been refusing for her entire life all you want; just please leave me out of it. I have my own work to do.”

  “Do you, though?” he asked her. “Do you really? Nell, come with me and see the workshop I’ve made. Nobody even knows it’s there yet; it’s brand-new. I built it myself. There’s real enterprise to be had from passing these old limbs on; it’s a real contribution. If you band with me, you’ll be spared the statue. You’ll get a second chance. To get involved, you know? Really contr—”

  “The next person who says the word contribute anywhere near me is liable to get physically injured. Don’t you dare turn this into another proposition. I am leaving.”

  Nell kicked the stand up and hopped on her bike. Oliver reached out to touch her arm, but she gave him a look so dark that he retreated.

  “But Ruby said—”

  “Ruby apparently says a lot of things, Oliver.”

  Nell put her foot down on the pedal. Her whole body was on fire, and somewhere in the blaze a small voice asked if maybe Oliver was on to something. A chamber of possibility, a way to quiet Nan. A suitable partner whose contribution aligned with her own. Maybe, ugh, it wasn’t wise to blow him out of the water yet—just in case. He was so desperate. Cruelty wound its way up Nell’s throat, and she said, “Let’s talk in a few days.”

  She didn’t even look at him.

  Oliver gasped with joy. Nell rolled her eyes and began to cycle away.

  “Good night, Nell! I’ll see you soon!” she heard, echoing down the path behind her. She didn’t look back.

  Nell waited until she was far into the thicket to let the hot tears pour out of her tired eyes and roll down the colors Ruby had so delicately painted on her lids and temples. There was nobody out in the parklands to see her as she tore through the blackness; it was just she and Kodak. She’d go home, and she’d draw the boy some more. She’d sleep, and she’d wake up and make some plans, figure out how to start. In a few days she’d talk to blo
ody Oliver if she hadn’t thought of another way by then.

  As she passed through the wilds, in the distance she saw an elephant, slowly and gracefully walking across the meadow. She’d seen it before, when she was alone. Her mother had drawn the tall gray creatures for her when she was a child.

  She didn’t know much about them because she’d never seen one up close, but Cora had told her that they never forgot. They had vast and endless memories; they were wise and gentle. In hushed tones Cora had told Nell that some of the elephants were hundreds of years old; something to do with experiments around the time of the Turn had slowed their aging. Nell looked at the great shadowy creature and wondered what it knew, what it had seen.

  She thought about that all the way home.

  CHAPTER 10

  The door of her father’s laboratory was cold against Nell’s cheek as she knelt against it, her face wet, kohl and purple powder streaking her cheeks. Her eyes were heavy and sore from crying, but the argument trickling through the wood hooked around her and pulled her closer.

  “You’re sick, Crane, sick!” came Daniel Underwood’s voice. It was an awful shock, the sound of Ruby’s father, raising his voice like this to her da.

  “I should have known you wouldn’t understand! You can’t understand what I do!” her father shouted back, furious, desperate.

  The rest was barely decipherable through the heavy old door.

  She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop. When she’d gotten home, she’d dashed up to her bedroom without thinking, ignoring the commotion coming from the lab, assuming it would die down. But it rose and rose.

  Nell had spent years listening to her father and Ruby’s father roar with laughter at each other; she knew that tune well. This was different. Something was badly wrong. She locked a skittish Kodak in her room and crept back down the stairs as quietly as her ticking would let her, the mannequin hand in hers, offering some strange but solid comfort.