Julian took off his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his jacket, flippant. He gave a tut.
“That’s what you get for straying so far with Ruby. Hopefully this shock will stop you going so far again. You’ve no business out on the motorway. Asking for an accident. You’ll know better now.”
Was she being scolded? Kodak crawled up around her, chirruping. Julian’s tone had a fresh edge, a wildness. Nell’s tongue was too soft, and her voice was too far away to summon. This new glint in him was dangerous, a match held too near the firewood. It sounded like a threat rather than a caution. Her new chiming slightly rose in tone against her numbed anxiety.
“But in fairness”—he paused—“the new one sounds just wonderful!” He threw his arms—one spindly, one mechanical—above his head, a proclamation of his genius. “Imagine, we had you walking around with that awful ticking for so long, when all it would have taken was the insertion of a slightly different quality of steel . . .”
He kept talking, but Nell couldn’t hear him. She began to clumsily button her nightshirt back up. Her scar was now a scarlet river over the flat horizon of her skin, each staple a bridge of gold from one shore of her flesh to the other. It was red running water.
“Why don’t I have bandages?” she asked, the simplest question she could pull from the thrumming wasps’ nest of curiosity beyond her haze.
Io spoke, his voice a measured and gentle contrast with her father’s mania. “You did. We took them off a few days ago.”
“And when—when—” Nausea began to roll a terrible ocean in Nell’s gut, and she was sure that she would vomit, her forehead wet now and the blood from her face making a swift tidal departure to her hands, the weight of them.
“Ten days ago. You’ve been sedated through your recovery, much, much less pain this way,” Julian said, glib. “No point in being awake while your body adapts to the new system, best to just keep you in the twilight until you’d almost healed, then wean you on to something lighter. I’m glad you’re responding so well to the Medi-Patch. We took you off all the drips this morning and moved you up here. You must be very hungry!”
Ten days. Twilight. New system.
“Would you like if I brought you some food?” asked Io.
Nell nodded. Perhaps water. Or soup, broth with rosemary and toasted bread, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted her father to leave. She thumbed the Medi-Patch. She wondered foggily what she would do without this haze.
Probably lose her mind. Or get angry. She’d scream, absolutely. She had these screams inside her, but they felt so distant, buried in flannel and cotton. How much longer would she feel this way? She’d ask Io later, she resigned, smiling feebly down at Kodak.
“Well, glad you’re awake all the same, girlo. I’ll check in on you soon. Call for Io if you need anything. Oh, oh, I’d better tell you now: I borrowed your drawings for Io. Just so I could help if he needed fixing up. They’re very good, Nell.” He turned his back to her and kept talking as he left the room and walked down the staircase, leaving his daughter alone with her benign steel giant.
After a moment Io spoke again.
“I am sorry I frightened you.” His voice was strangely dulcet, and Nell closed her eyes. “I am sorry you were hurt. I am so happy that you are awake.”
He sighed then, a relief.
“Thank you,” said Nell, marveling at his emotional fluency. With the Medi-Patch, it was easier to marvel than to worry.
Imagine, she had been frightened of Io. But she was so far away from it now. He had walked out in the rain, and he had carried her home safely! For now, in the dull padded chamber of her mind, that was enough. Besides, she was really hungry and wanted to listen to some music.
“I’m hungry, and I would like to listen to some music, please.”
“I will make you a meal; then I will play you some music,” Io said, standing up to leave. “I will return shortly. I will also bring some fresh Medi-Patches, and some tea. Is there anything else, Nell?”
She shook her head. “No, Io, thank you.”
As Io moved toward the door, Kodak popped up and scampered off the bed to his feet. The creation took the tiny animal in his big, strong hands and gently petted his head with his thumb and forefinger. Kodak’s eyes closed in appreciation. They walked away together.
Had Julian said something about taking her notes? Her walls were empty. Her desk was clear.
The Remaining Hibernian Senate
Thug gach duine cúnamh agus stróic leat!
For the attention of Penelope Crane:
Your Black Water City contribution is to be presented on the last day of August at the Olympia Council Building, Dame Street. Your time slot is 11:45 a.m. Your presentation will be capped at fifteen minutes. We have not received any preliminary forms regarding your contribution to this date; please arrive early and ensure that all paperwork is completed in full and handed to the mayor’s secretary before your time slot begins.
We look forward to congratulating you on completing your apprenticeship and receiving your contribution.
Carry on, at all costs
Sinead Burke
The Office of the Mayor of Black Water City
CHAPTER 11
Ruby came to visit the following day. She wasn’t ashamed to bunch up her face and cry with noisy joy at the sight of her friend propped up among crisp pillows and sheets, huge scarlet scar and pupils like gunshot wounds from the drugs. Without saying a word, she climbed into the bed beside Nell and listened carefully to the new melody of her best friend’s chest.
“Thank you for cycling after me,” Nell said softly.
Ruby wiped her eyes. “Of course. Why—look, why were you running away?”
Nell shrugged, feeling so distant from that day in the kitchen already. “I kissed Io. I got frightened.”
Ruby blinked, as though realizing that now wasn’t the time for her particular brand of real talk. “Are—are you going to contribute him?”
Nell sat up a little. “I am. I have to. There’s a letter here somewhere; it came while I was—you know. I’ve been given my date. It’s very soon, Ruby. Did you get one?”
Ruby nodded. “Yes, it’s not until winter. I’m well ready, mind you, been viewing shopfronts down by the markets. When you’re better, I’ll bring you there.”
Contributing to the city wasn’t just a notion in the distance anymore, wasn’t just static anxiety. It was upon both girls, ready or not. Laid up in bed full of stitches and new metal or not.
“Do you mind my asking . . .” Ruby looked down at the sheets, traced the flowers on the fabric. “How do you think they’re going to take it? I mean, take him, take Io?”
“I think they’re ready for something like him, Ruby. If the mechanics and bakers of this city are stowed away in an old picture house halfway electrocuting themselves to try to wake up computers holding this city’s past, people must be ready. They must be.”
“But what does he—what does he do, Nell? You can’t just walk out there and play a game of Snap in front of every apprentice in the city.”
“He plays music.”
“What music?”
“Music from before. I saw him bring a broken music tablet to life. I saw him read it and fill up with all its information. He played me songs.”
Ruby squinted. “Are you—are you serious, or did you dream it?”
Nell focused hard on remaining composed, running her fingers over the neat twin Medi-Patches on her arm. She didn’t want Ruby’s pity, didn’t want Ruby to think her deluded. Ruby and her shop, her earnest contribution. Ruby and her common sense. Nell hadn’t dreamed this; she had felt it more real than anything in her life before, even if it didn’t sound like common sense at all.
“I’m serious. I think he can access other broken machines, old computers, and talk to them. I think he can ask them about the past, even—even contact the rest of the world. He can find answers that’ll help us stop everyth
ing from getting in a mess again. People will like him because he doesn’t look like a computer; he looks like parts of them! He’s an oracle like Nan—but for the past. Not the future. He’s a door. He’s . . . a key. That’s what I’ll tell them. I’ll find a way to show them. Think of what we could learn.”
Nell had a deep suspicion that Ruby thought this was the Medi-Patch talking. She could feel her words slurring, her sentences melting into one another. Ruby hummed skepticism. “I’m not sure I should be asking you all this yet. It’s too soon. You’re barely awake.” She looked down at the bedsheets again. “Look, are you hungry? Can I bring you anything?”
Food. The haze of the Medi-Patch responded to thoughts of food. Nell looked off into the middle distance as though she were receiving delicious smoke signals from another realm. “A fat slice of soda bread, heated up under the grill, with ricotta cheese, oh, oh soft white cheese,” she whispered, like an illicit secret. “And honey.”
Ruby laughed, at ease now. “That’s easy. I’ve fresh soda farl wrapped in paper back in the house. I’ll fly back and get it in no time.”
“Ever since I woke up I’m so hungry,” Nell mused. “It’s—it’s so great. Food, Ruby”—she looked her friend square in the eyes with penetrative intensity—“is so great. I am hungry, and if I am hungry, that means I am doing all right, even if I am fuzzy.”
“Is it a bad fuzz or good fuzz?”
“Just fuzz. Io’s going to pull me down to one patch in a few days instead of two, then half, then quarter.” Nell sighed. “Looking forward to getting my brain back. And my legs. I want to go up to the roof to see what they’ve done to Kate while I’ve been gone. I want to get back to work again, Ruby. I need to.”
She closed her eyes. “I had a question for you and it was important and I’m trying to remember it, but I can’t, like . . . find it.”
Ruby took Nell’s hand. “Take all the time you need.”
They sat there together for a few minutes, reveling in the calm hush. Nell was so grateful for the softness of the bedsheets, galaxies away now from the harsh asphalt and barren fields and disaster of the last time they’d spoken. They were together there in the quiet.
“Will you—can I give you tokens for the fabric? Will you make me some new clothes? I—I don’t think I can wear any of Cora’s anymore. I don’t like them.” Nell strained to make this sound like less of a confession than it actually was. “I need a change.”
Ruby nodded, didn’t pry. “Of course. What would you like?”
She shrugged. “Something denim. A pinafore maybe. A striped cotton blouse. A red dress.”
Ruby smiled and squeezed her hand. “Do you have some paper and pencils? I can start now.”
“Oh, yes, yes!” Nell perked up significantly. “In my desk somewhere.”
Ruby disembarked the nest and pottered over to Nell’s desk, removing a pencil box and a slab of paper bound with three bright silver hoops. “There’s practically nothing left at all, Nell! It’s so organized!”
I’d better tell you now: I borrowed your drawings for Io—Had her father taken everything? The chill of Nell’s concern rose up against the balmy warmth of the Medi-Patch. She didn’t like this.
Ruby clambered back into the bed, pencils and brick of paper in hand.
“Tell me the shape you want to be,” she said, removing a graphite pencil, sharp as a needle and beginning to outline Nell’s figure on the page.
Nell closed her eyes and in the darkness saw herself: white skirt and blue blouse, twirling to music she couldn’t hear. In the shush of afternoon she told Ruby how she wanted to look, how many miles from her sables and sages she wanted to be, released from the earthen runway of her mother’s life. She asked for bright ribbons and pearlescent buttons. Could Ruby embroider her a sash? These shining distractions from the healing of her body, the persistent concern: I borrowed your drawings. For a moment Nell let her worry slip away.
The bright, sweet bond of their childhood sparkled out from beneath Nell’s grim concrete fortress of the last few years. It ran a shining river through the icy portcullis of the recent months. They sat in the flood of it. Here they were, redrawing Nell anew, as she wanted to be.
“Thank you for following me.” Nell looked into the smoke signal distance again, her eyes half closed.
“Thank you for not sending me away.” With a swoop of soft gray, Ruby completed the figure of her friend, dancing in the crisp whiteness. “You’ll look so smart during your presentation, whatever way it goes. You’ll be a new woman.”
Nell looked at the paper girl below Ruby’s pencil and felt determination rush under her haze. She would be a new woman, unveiling a new man. A man, a door, a key.
CHAPTER 12
Nell alternated the following days between sitting crouched over a thick notebook, developing her presentation for Io and taking slow, labored laps around the room. Sometimes out to the landing, sometimes just to the window and back. Nell’s chiming felt now like a countdown, and Io’s presence was just a reminder of what she had to do. She had to bring him out. She had to justify him. Her notes stacked up, her handwriting small and deliberate. Lead snapped into dust from her pencils; pen nibs burst under her determination.
On a brief vacation toward the kitchen, she tripped, halfway to the door. Io thundered up the stairs to her rescue when he heard her body collide with the floorboards.
“If you push your body too hard, healing will take longer, and you’re more likely to hurt yourself again,” Io had thrummed, helping her back into bed.
She’d given him a willful stare, settling herself back into her pillows and pages. “I’m not sure I should be listening to anything you have to say about human bodies.”
“I’m equipped with health and nursing applications,” Io had replied confidently, folding her blankets in around her. Nell had just about growled in frustration, reluctantly making a note of this ability in the margins of her notes, and Io gave a natural, affectionate laugh. It was a pleasing sound.
Io said something like “Don’t go anywhere” or “Don’t run off on me,” but Nell shooed him away.
“Come back up in a little bit. I want to read this to you, see what you think.”
Nell lost herself again in her pages, in her deliberation. Her speech was missing something still, but it was moving, growing. The Medi-Patch wasn’t helping, but better the fog than an aching chest, than an itching scar. Nell couldn’t quite place what to do while she was up on the stage; she needed to demonstrate Io’s abilities to the council. She couldn’t just stand him up and declare that he was incredible without any examples of why. All bees and no honey. He could play music; he could be an aide in illness. He could do all these things, but he needed to be as important to everyone else as he was to her.
It was quiet but for the rain smattering against the window. This fresh sound had become a pleasant static in the background of her world. Her eyes were drawn to her desk in the corner; it felt like months since she’d sat down to perform a button-eyed exercise. What did Io think of the steel sprites, his predecessors? His family even! She snorted, ridiculous, her remaining half Medi-Patch showing its bleary web over her perception.
Nell looked over her drafting desk, the wobbly tower of letters from the Pasture all that remained. Had Nan Starling sent any new packages lately? There surely would be one or two; was Julian keeping them from her? She didn’t like the creeping uncertainty around this; she didn’t like that Julian wasn’t at her bedside ever at all. Had he been in contact with Nan?
There she was, a pen in her hand, reams of work beneath her—and not a single word of it addressed to her grandmother. Nell should contact her, but what would she even say? News of Io wouldn’t sit with Nan’s view of the world at all. Nan came from a time too close to the horrors of the Turn to feel comfortable or safe around a computer, let alone a walking, talking computer with arms and legs, with hands and a voice. Nell tapped her pen on the page, half imagining a letter.
Beloved Nan,
I have built a man. He has a computer for a brain. He thinks and he talks and has applications that show him how to help sick humans. He also can cook. He knows lots of songs because I showed him a pre-Turn music box. I think the rest of the Pale and the Pasture will love him and will want to know more about computers because he is so nice. And also my chest augmentation broke down. Da had been keeping my mother’s body in his lab for reanimation, but it’s okay because I put her in the lake. How is the Pasture? How are the dogs? Kodak is great. I walked around the room three whole times today.
Nell whistled low to herself. Under no circumstances.
The thought of Nan’s reading the letter, then conducting months of prayer services and building skyscraping altars to pray for the fate of her grandchild. Useless, pretty words thrown at candles and crystals. How much did Io know about prayer, but just as she leaned over to ring for him, a soft knock came to her door.
“Perfect timing!” she called, but when the door opened, it was Oliver Kelly. Paler and more serious than usual. His work suit was a little crumpled from the rain; his hands were knotted together, white knuckled from worry.
“Howya, Nell,” he said, pausing in the doorway. He walked over the threshold cautiously, all the pomp and charm squibbed out of him. The bags under his eyes were especially purple; his jaw was rough with patchy stubble. Nell hadn’t seen him since she’d shoved him into a storage closet and raided his inventory of historically important augmented limbs. She’d robbed him blind, and she’d forgotten all about it. He was the last thing on her mind, but here he was.
“Howya, Oliver,” Nell replied tentatively. “Come in.”
Oliver was notably torn between whether to sit on the bed or sit on the guest chair, his eyes lingering on a prone spot by Nell’s legs. He resigned himself to the chair, stiffly placing himself on the seat’s edge. He shuffled it closer to the bedside, then gathered his thoughts for a moment.
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