Feed the Machine (10 page)

Silver took a step and then looked behind her. She was leaving footprints. There was nothing she could do about it though. Bring dust with her to cover her tracks?

Except for an old wooden chair in the corner of the room, it was empty. The door was ajar, dim orange light filtering in from the other side.

Silver breathed and listened. The old man was sleeping on the other side of the mansion according to Hello. With any luck his cat was sleeping there too.

After a few minutes Silver moved to the door. Hello sat on her shoulder, under strict instructions to keep his beak shut unless it was an emergency.

The corridor outside stretched through the house, doors coming off it on both sides. Some were open or ajar, letting in light. Others were black pits. Towards the end of the corridor it sank into darkness, heavy curtains blocking out all the light.

Silver opened the door and slipped across the corridor into the room opposite it. No electronics here—only old books stored in glass cases covered in dust. She looked closely at one, her fingers itching open the case to touch it. The text was indecipherable—lots of squiggles, loops and dots.

Arabic.

“What’s that?” she whispered.

A dead language.

Hello moved his wing, gently brushing it against her neck. A subtle reminder to keep moving. Books were not what they came for.

Silver backtracked, crept down the corridor and entered the room on the left. The door creaked as it swung open, the sound seeming as loud as Hello cawing.

This room was filled with wooden tables covered in squares of soft fabric. On each square sat something dug from the Scour.

A perfect screw, shining silver with a bronzed tip.

Half a gold watch, the face cut away, the gears removed and arranged beside it.

A black plastic box, seamless, a faded image of a flame on the top of it.

Silver moved fast, each item calling to her. Pick me up! Look at me! Discover new things! She counted wires as thin as a hair, gears sparkling in the dim light as though they were lit from within. There were familiar objects (knives, a wheel from a small cart, half a pencil) and then things utterly incomprehensible. She brushed her fingers over a small square of black glass. A moment later a stream of colors shot across it before fading away.

Perhaps this will do.

She picked it up and found it was connected on the back with wires through a hole drilled in the tabletop. She squatted down and saw underneath the table there were batteries bolted, supplying power to any devices still functioning.

A moment’s work with her cutters and she slipped the black screen in her bag.

Don’t leave yet—look around some more.

When the voice was mean she found it easier to resist. But when it was telling her to do something she wanted to do?

Silver left the room and opened the door opposite it. Empty.

She moved on, opening doors and peering in.

A room, the entire floor covered in buckets. Each bucket was filled to the brim with shiny screws.

More books locked in glass cases. These ones were blackened as though they had been rescued from a great fire.

Another room of tables, each one holding varieties of the same object. Door handles in different shapes, sizes and metals. Spoons. Knives.

A room filled with black metal boxes, padlocked shut. Each box was covered in warnings written in different languages, a fading skull and crossbones emblazoned on each side.

“Something is coming!” Hello hissed in her ear.

Silver turned around and closed the door, leaving it ajar. She moved behind one of the boxes and crouched down. This was an internal room—it had no window to climb out.

All she could hear was her heart thudding loud in her chest. An itch started in the back of her throat and threatened to move down into her lungs.

The door creaked and swung open.

“Not the best room to hide in.”

A white cat with a long face jumped up on top of the box Silver was hiding behind.

Gress.

He tapped his paw on the box.

“These are bombs. Do you understand?”

Silver nodded, frozen.

Gress looked at his paw. The dust had stained his white fur. He gave it a lick and sneezed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, looking at Hello the way cats look at birds.

I thought this house was empty.

“I thought this house was empty.”

“No you didn’t. Try again.”

I was worried about Ijira. The house is dusty and no one has seen him for weeks.

“No you weren’t. Try again.”

Silver stood, feeling the itch in her throat start to creep down.

“I came here to steal a tablet so I can work out why my hasdee chip is tracking every single human. I’m also building a scanner so my brother can find gold and other precious metals.”

Gress swished his tail, flicking dust.

“That’s more like it.”

Chapter 13

“I don’t trust him.”

“Why?”

“He’s a cat.”

“Kin’s a cat.”

“Exactly.”

Silver looked back at the decaying mansion. Gress had marched them out the back gate and told them to never return or he’d inform the law. Then fifty of the bugs had split off from gathering resources and switched to guard duty.

“He let us go. I have something that might work as a screen for the hasdee information.”

“He’s up to something. I didn’t get my spoon either.”

Silver scratched behind Hello’s head. He resisted for a moment before leaning back into it. It was pointless arguing with him. Birds had a natural suspicion of cats. Gress could have given Hello a piece of meat and he’d still think he was plotting something.

It was… strange though.

The voice was quiet on the matter. It was off thinking about all the numbers, looking for correlations, teasing out meaning.

If it were feeling vicious or threatened it might have asked her to kill Gress.

Just like—

“Nope, not today,” Silver said, clenching her bag tight to her chest and stomping on the cobblestones. A dark memory trembled in the shadows and then slunk away.

“You should tell Nola about all the stuff he has. Steal it, pay off the quota.”

“Most of it’s not worth more than the weight of the metals. A book is a block of paper, a few cents per page.”

“He has five hundred bugs. I bet he has valuable shiny things hidden in that mansion.”

“You’re right.”

“I wish I had a room of shiny things,” Hello said, gazing off into the distance.

Stealing is wrong.

She heard the voice but she could tell its heart wasn’t in it. They’d reasoned through it this morning. Stealing
is
wrong but what about stealing food or medicine to stop someone from dying? That was stealing but it wasn’t wrong. If you stole money to buy medicine then that wasn’t wrong either. So if you stole a screen to figure out code to build a scanner or hack a hasdee to make endless food then that was…

Silver stopped next to a shop. The Sheriff was in the distance, thudding around town. He glanced at her, his face grim and downcast.

Then he winked.

He turned away and walked off down a side street.

He knows.

“No he doesn’t. No one saw us.”

That cat did. You should have—

“Stop it right now or I’ll smash that tablet to a million pieces I swear.”

The voice went quiet. She was bluffing and maybe it knew but had decided not to risk it.

So get home then.

“Not yet. More to do first.”

Chapter 14

Bell Dorrit was in bed huddled under thin blankets. The room was warm but she was shivering, her deep brown skin beaded with sweat. There were two empty bottles of orange heal next to the bed.

She’s going to die.

Her daughter Cora stood in the doorway, arms crossed, looking at the floor. She was the same age as Silver, a small duplicate of her mother.

This is a bad thing. She has lost her baby so she is sad. Tell her you’re sorry.

“I’m sorry,” Silver said, looking down at the empty bottles. Orange heal was the weakest medicine available. It would fix cuts and scratches, maybe fight off a weak virus. Bell needed blue heal or better. Maybe even yellow.

Silver walked to her bedside and knelt down. There was a smell in the room, blood and sweat and something else mixed together. Like rotting meat. A thin cat huddled under the bed.

“Mrs. Dorrit, can I ask you a question?”

Bell opened her eyes, her teeth chattering, and focused on Silver.

“Y—yes.”

“What date and time were you born?”

“This is what you wanted to ask her?”

Cora had her arms crossed. She was frowning.

Means she’s…

“I’m sorry you’re… upset? I need to know.”

“She’s thirty-seven. Now you can leave.”

“Please I just need the date at least.”

“Cora… it’s okay.” Bell looked at her daughter and swallowed. Her lips were cracked. The bottom one had a small split in it, showing red.

She told Silver the date but didn’t know the time. Somewhere near two a.m.

“She’s thirty-seven years, one hundred and four days, fifteen hours, six minutes and thirty-two seconds old, if she was born at two a.m.,” Silver told Cora.

“Please get out. You said you were here to help.”

“I am.”

How could she explain? If she could get the scanner working then she could find endless wealth in the Scour. She could buy Bell a bottle of yellow heal, make her better. The hasdee held an infinite ocean of information and it couldn’t all be about people. But she needed somewhere to start. A fixed point to start deciphering. She had the birth and death dates of the baby and had found the entry. If she could find Bell’s entry then she would have a spot on the map to stand.

“Get out right now.”

Time to go.

Silver almost protested but then Hello rubbed his wing against her neck. She stood and left the bedroom. Bell had closed her eyes and pulled the blanket up, trying to get warm.

Cora opened the front door and then stood to the side, glaring at Silver.

“Can you tell me your birthdate too?”

“What is wrong with you? My baby brother died yesterday. My mother is dying right now! Get out!”

She lunged at Silver and shoved her out the door before slamming it shut behind her. Silver stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. Hello took off before she hit the ground.

It’s a good question: what is wrong with you?

“I don’t know,” she told the dirt, tears spiking their way out.

Yes you do.

Chapter 15

Silver sunk into the information with a sigh of relief. It was as good as blue heal. She’d last had a dose eight months ago and if she closed her eyes she could still feel the cool relief as it washed through her body, healing her from the inside out. It had given her six months of wonderful health. Her pains weren’t gone but muted almost to silence. The red welts on her arms and hands faded away to near-invisible lines. Her lungs stopped itching, her cough vanished. Her nose still dripped and headaches came and went but she felt good.

At six months to the day it started its slow degrade. The itch in her throat shimmered into existence. Small aches made themselves known. The lines on her arms began to hurt and swell, the red welts returning.

Just like the toaster. Someone made a strength and end-date and did it deliberately.

There was no sense to it. Munro made all the colors of heal from his hasdee locked in the vault inside his shop. It held a sourcecube that provided information that took form as a colorful array of bottles. The digital became physical and somewhere along the way was limited, reduced, cut down to be less than it could be, made expensive.

The only difference between orange and black heal was potency and duration. Two numbers Silver was sure could be changed as easily as unlocking a hasdee to eat anything fed to it. That, in the end, was
one number
changed. A single number was all it took so you could tip a bucket of urine into a hasdee and have it make pure water.

What else could you change with a single number?

Silver let the problem of the heal go. It faded away and took Bell Dorrit and her daughter with it.

The stolen black tablet had cheerfully agreed to display the information flooding from the hasdee chip. There were no guards to trick, no secret ways to travel. It held only a small program that produced colored trails on the screen after it was touched. Compared to the tempcubes, it was a room of incredible size, like one of Fat Man’s warehouses.