“I mean, if she can pay, I don’t see the problem,” Tim offered. “Look, what are you in the market for exactly?”
Nell could pay. She had tokens. She hoped it would be as simple as a financial exchange.
“Well,” she began slowly, cautiously, “I know—I know we aren’t really meant to go looking for these things, but the way some of the computers used to work was like the way we think. The way people think. Like, they have memories and respond to interaction. Verbally maybe. One that can speak. I want one that does that. With memories. That can respond to interaction.”
“Like a human brain,” added Oliver. Nell could have hit him. There was no way they wouldn’t guess.
The oooh rippled around the group again, with a little more awe this time.
“Trying to study thought processing?” said Rua.
“Language?”
“Recollection?”
They were interested. They understood.
“Maybe, maybe.” Nell raised her hands in defense. “It’s important that I get one that can respond to interaction.”
This time there was a mmm of what sounded like . . . Acceptance?
“Grand, so that’s no bother,” Rua said, striding out of their cluster into the workshop. “Easy-peasy. Most of the later handheld ones can do that. Now it’s getting them to wake up that’s the problem. We got one of them to talk once before it sparked out. That was the worst; think of what it could have told us! I reckon once we get one talking, then, then we can really make a go of taking this public.”
“Talk or no talk, it nearly burned the place down,” warned Tim.
“But it had a really cool voice,” Nic said. “Not like a person’s voice, though. A little bit like the singing”—they pointed at the wall—“in the video.”
Nell almost leaped out of her skin. “Really? That sound?”
Nic nodded. “Beautiful, wasn’t it?”
“The most beautiful,” Nell agreed.
Oliver tutted. “That wouldn’t be my choice of words,” and Tim gave him a firm elbow in the ribs.
“Would you stop?”
“We didn’t get to ask it many questions before it, well, exploded.” Nic shrugged, ignoring the boys. “We have a few similar models, though, that we’ve been moving a little more slowly with. It’s all electricity and wire if you can get a generator and the right adapters; it’s just a matter of finding one that’s not corrupted. Some will switch on and say nothing; others will just scroll code for screens and screens—impossible.”
Rua stood up on a stool and leaned into a cabinet mounted on the wall. He riffled through it for a moment, then carefully removed something from the back. The second Nell laid eyes on it, she knew she didn’t need their help anymore.
A silver box, almost all screen, almost flat, dwarfed in the size of Rua’s palm but around the same size as Nell’s hand. Identical to the box that her father had handed to her in the kitchen. Just run a few volts through it.
“Oh,” Nell said, “I have one of those.”
Every head in the room turned to her, all eyes on her, a murmuration of “What?”
“Yes. I didn’t think I’d be able to get it to light up. Wires, you said?” Her ticking wasn’t doing so great under all this pressure. Her voice stayed calm, but she was all roulette in her chest.
“Yes,” said Nic. “Special ones. We have lots of them. We could give one to you.” They shot a meaningful look at their teammates. “I mean, we have plenty to spare. Wires aren’t hard to come by. It could be a gift?”
Tim scampered across the room to a work desk. He opened a drawer, then another, then another, and grabbed a shallow box from it. He carried it back over and placed it in Nell’s arms.
“One of these should work. Some of them are dead, but a few of them can still carry a charge. Wear rubber gloves. You could hurt yourself otherwise. There’s more than one reason civilians aren’t allowed have computers anymore,” he said. “We weren’t raised harnessing them or electricity like this. It’s an uncontrollable force.”
“Look,” began Sheena sternly, placing her mug on the counter, “if you find any more of those computers, bring them here, yeah? Don’t be squirreling them away. You know where we are now. We’re happy to have you on board. When we find a way to present all this, it might blow up, divide people. You’re either with us, or you’re not.”
“I’m—I’m with you,” said Nell, a flicker of uncertainty flashing through her: Would they be with her? These people danced underneath historical projections of a future that never came; they unraveled dead machines without fear. They didn’t tolerate Oliver’s reservations for even a second. She felt like maybe she’d be able to trust them.
She looked for a second into the box of cables and wires and steel plugs. They were gray and white and blue and red, knotted and frayed, filaments sticking out here and there. Electricity would run through them into the little computer in her house and wake it up. And that, in turn, would wake up her creation, wouldn’t it?
Oliver yawned theatrically, stretched, and cracked the bones in his shoulders, back, then fingers. “Well, I don’t know about you lads, but I’m wiped out. Is this what you need, Nell?”
Nell nodded, opening her satchel and delicately placing the box inside. She wasn’t wiped out. She wanted to stay.
“Grand. We’ll be on our way. I’ll see you in the Bayou tonight, I’d imagine?” he said, beginning to walk out. Nell turned to follow him. This strange ordeal seemed too huge to be over so soon. She wanted to talk to Nic more, to say, “Hey, next time you’re in the parklands, stop by my house.” She wanted to ask Rua some questions. She—she wanted to—to get to know these people more. Not just as mechanics or bakers or researchers of plants. There was a tiny revolution beginning in this room.
“I’ll lead you out,” said Rua.
“Turn off the light when you leave,” said Tim. “One more time, you know?”
The small collective of revolutionaries and restorers chorused a good-bye and waved them out. Nell’s feet were heavy. Almost before she was at the door, the music struck up again, a thousand violins immediately major, immediately in a key of delight. The light switched off behind them, the door closed, and they were in the dark and dank again.
The wild spectrum of sound faded as she drew further into the darkness, one hand in Rua’s, one hand in Oliver’s. It didn’t feel so bad now. Not at all.
CHAPTER 15
Oliver had thought, when you stopped at the steps after saying good-bye, that you were going to invite him in. You could tell by the way his hands knotted in hope, his eyes eager, his mouth slightly open. He thought he had finally proven himself valiant enough for your courtship and partnership. He had let you place the hook in his mouth, and he had let you pull. He is ready to walk up those steps into your home, into your life. He is aching to.
When you tell him your plan, your reasons, it is a waterfall of agonizing honesty. Oliver cannot swim in it, not at all. Your excitement from the dancing and the pictures on the screen and finally peeking into the silent revolution of your peers had overwhelmed you to a bursting point. You need an assistant, you tell him. You’ve decided you’d like it to be him. He is the one with all the spare parts. He’s helped you so much, could he help a little more?
You wait for him to ask if he would be paid, if you could exchange anything for his assistance, if this meant you could go into business together. You are ready to let him down easy, to thank him for his friendship, to explain to him that he might make a fine replacement for Ruby, as long as he stops trying to touch you.
And he’ll tell you that you are a genius, that though his love for you is bursting and red, he would quell his stupid lust in order to be in the cool shadow of your genius, in order to help you rise above your peers and create the most magnificent, intelligent machine the planet has known since the Turn, since the day the taps ran a new, terrible black water and poison took the people of your land. He’ll help you compose the fo
rm for the conduit. A man of metal and wire awakened by dead digital magic. A man who can speak in code. You would be at the forefront of the revolution, and Oliver would aid you, wouldn’t he?
You hardly recognize yourself, the pulse of the beats from the Lighthouse still in your body. Your ticking is a joyous thing; you are utterly changed, and Oliver will help you, won’t he?
Oliver’s face splits in horror at your question. Funny, how “Will you help me?” can rupture a blooming friendship, a camaraderie, if it costs too much of a person. The undertaker’s son is hardy; he has seen death in progress and long after the fact. He has quietly looted the houses of the dead for mechanical treasures, all the while muttering rosaries of apology and grief under his breath, saying how sorry he is, how he is doing this to help those who still live, how he is trying to help.
But this, this bringing electric life out of the remains of the dead twists something inside him. With his blossoming hangover and face that can never disguise what he is feeling, he is disgusted and something else that looks an awful lot like fear.
His face says no before his mouth does: his thin, sallow face. He takes a single step backward, no spilling from his lips like waves of black water, like waves of poison, thrashing, cold rejection. You only hear panic. You feel wetness on your cheeks. You are crying. He calls you sick. He says he’s tried to help you and this is what you’ve been up to all along: this horrific, grotesque, pointless idea, this impossible plan.
Impossible. There. It has been said. Finally. The word rises in the garden like a sick flower, you have tears on your face, and there is nothing you can do but turn your back. You walk up the steps to your home, to your impossible plan, to your dead end.
He is still talking, but you aren’t listening now, the volume of your thoughts blaring stereo. Tick, tick, tick.
Will he tell Rua? Nic? Sheena and Tim? They’d never let you in their beautiful white room again; you’d never catch up to their pace. Between Oliver and Ruby the secret will leak, and you’ll be a pariah, even more of a misfit than you already are: sick. You’ll be sick for even thinking such a thing, a stupid, impossible thing.
Oliver shouts your name from his broken heart, from his ragged throat, and you turn to him at the top of the steps.
“I’m sorry!” he pleads. “I know this means a lot for you, but we need you. We need your talents and resources to help get our other apprentices, our peers, back on the ground. We’re trying to fix this city, Nell! We need you, your skill; certainly we need what you can do with a computer.”
“What’s the difference, Oliver, between what I’m building and what they’re doing in the Lighthouse?” you ask, looking down from the steps.
Oliver gapes up at you. “Nell, they’re archaeologists; they’re not cobbling together electric men to show off their discoveries. That’s what you should be doing, not just holed up here on your own!’”
“You saw the figures on the screen, Oliver. They aren’t building electric men; they’re resurrecting them. I want to make a real one, not just a picture on the screen. Something we can hold and touch!”
“Those were monsters on the screen. A monster, Nell, that’s what you want.”
You will not be told what to do any longer. This belongs to you and you alone. Your voice shakes, not with fear but with defiance,
“Oliver, I am the monster.”
Penelope,
I mixed some fresh rose petals into a cold glass of milk. It curdled when I said your name. Please write me.
Nan
CHAPTER 16
Nell slept through the day and following night in a soft, dark peace, as though her head were swaddled in black wool. She had no dreams, though she still felt the bright fireworks of electric music. Somewhere in her body “One more time” reverberated like the last battle cry of an army she would never belong to.
When she woke up, her mouth gelled shut with sleep and her eyes irritated by the light invading her bedroom, she realized she had no Ruby and no Oliver before she realized that she had slept in her boots. The two people on the planet she considered her friends had told her that her plan was insane and possibly dangerous. But something else happened inside Nell, too, as she lay there. She was awake, awake to so much.
Nell was free. She was a law unto herself now. She would make this creation by herself with her own hands. She knew exactly where to get the parts and now that Oliver had backed out, she could just take what she wanted without his judgment or supervision. There, on her desk, was the small computer full of whatever was going to be in this creation’s brain. Her satchel was full of wires. This was so simple now that she didn’t have to worry about those two.
Oliver and Ruby could just go and, well, do whatever it is they did with their time. Have secret societies. Court people. Go to the Bayou and hang around with rude barmaids. Run black markets. Hang around in shining white basements with revolutionaries and dance to music that sounded like it came from outer space. Whatever.
When they realized what she was capable of, they’d crawl back to her. Wouldn’t they?
Tea would be helpful. Hot, dark tea that bit the back of her throat. Skip the milk; skip the sugar. She rolled out of bed, the ghost of her mother scolding her as a child for placing a teabag in each of her cheeks. Cora had coaxed them out of her daughter’s mouth and stood with her at the bathroom sink while she scrubbed her blackened teeth with white mint paste.
Nell thought about her mother’s holding her up, how her arms were still strong even though she was thin by then, already on her way out. Nell did not have her scar then. This was before the ticking. She mustn’t have been more than four years old, but there it was, stark and mint and bitter in her memory. Cora, Cora, Cora, Nell thought, as she rumbled down the stairs. Cora Crane, Cora Starling-Crane. The laboratory door was closed. She walked to the kitchen. A single frog hopped away under a cupboard as she swept in.
When the kettle was full and on the hob, Nell gathered herself up onto the surface of the big wooden table. She pulled her knees up to her chin and her hands over her eyes. Her mother’s name was a rising tide. Would Cora have been proud of Nell? Nan was so worried; would Cora have felt the same way? The sound of the hob heating the steel kettle was a flutter in the corner. Freedom felt so strange, so heavy.
Footsteps fell down the corridor and into the room, and Nell pulled her head out of the comfort of her palms. Her father leaned into the doorway.
“You all right, girlo?” he said, his coat scorched, but his tie neat. She realized that she had not laid eyes on him days.
“Yes,” her mouth said, though her body and face said no no no. Tick, tick, tick.
Julian walked across the kitchen as the kettle began to sound.
“You’re up to something,” he said. “I know you are. You haven’t been out and about this much in—ever, I think. Missed heaps of deliveries; there were baskets of food left on the steps for the foxes to get.”
It had been unusually long since they spoke, days and days and days. Longer since they’d talked for real. His sleeve was rolled up over his arm. He’d been putting himself back together.
“‘I’m not going to pry,” he continued, searching for the milk. “But I’ve been speaking with your nan.”
Fear was an inconvenience of wet concrete in Nell’s gut, in her legs, her feet too heavy for her body, her blood thickening and turning heavy, the world around her slowing down. Nan. Nell hadn’t banked on Nan’s contacting Julian. The clock in her chest ticked fast and weighted.
Nell didn’t say anything because her throat was suddenly too narrow and her tongue huge, and she was fairly sure she had forgotten how to make sounds that sounded like language at all. All she could do was keep ticking and keep breathing. Julian poured the hot water into two deep mugs and turned to her. She could hardly bear to meet his eyes.
“So, are you going to tell me what you’re doing? Nan is fairly convinced that you’re not working on anything at all, and she’s going to be moving
you to the Pasture.”
Nell didn’t say anything, and Julian placed the mug in front of her boots on the table. She shifted to cross her legs and cradled the tea like something precious. The question hung in the air until her father snorted lightly.
“I don’t blame you. I never talk about anything I’m working on until I’m absolutely sure it’s going to work. Did you tell Ruby?”
“She’s not talking to me anymore,” Nell croaked.
“And Oliver Kelly?”
“He’s not talking to me anymore either.”
Concern flashed over her father’s face. “What kind of not speaking to you?”
“He’ll get over it,” Nell admitted, fairly certain that she couldn’t keep him away for long.
“Good.” Julian’s expression softened with relief, and he let out a low whistle. “Must be a pretty strange project then.”
Nell nodded. The steam from the cup comforted her, but it was too hot to drink yet, so she held it close to her face. The steam made her skin slightly clammy, but in a nice way. Her father climbed onto the table and sat opposite her, legs crossed himself. They just sat there on the old table together, quietly for a moment but for the ticking in Nell’s chest, the almost hum of Julian’s augmentation.
Her father offered his arm to Nell, revealing the steel machine that was his finest creation. He removed a tiny screwdriver from his coat pocket and, without speaking, began to unscrew the panels concealing the working mechanisms of his arm. He peeled them off one by one and placed them on the table between him and his daughter. Nell was transfixed. Wires, tiny gauges, and pistons, all there like veins and bones but cold and gray and clean—and beautiful.
He moved quickly, unhooking this and that, unscrewing and delicately laying out all the pieces. First the outside casing, then the fingers and palm, the hinges at his wrist all the way up to his elbow until he hit the last few wires plugged into a clean metal socket just below his bicep. It did not take him longer than five minutes to lay out all the pieces in front of them.
Spare and Found Parts Page 12
