Spare and Found Parts (2 page)

There are three rules:

1. The sick in the Pale, the healed in the Pasture.

2. Contribute, at all cost.

3. All code is blasphemy.

J
ust under the surface of the waves where the ocean met the land, a hand without a body reached out for someone to grab it. The hand was wrapped in plastic, so time and water hadn't eaten it, and its fingers, unmoving, were poised and ready to be held. Nell Crane picked it up out of the foam. She placed it quietly into her satchel.

Right where the black river split into the big wild blue, Nell and Ruby Underwood were collecting bits of treasure from the foam. They were farther out than they were supposed to be, out on the city's jagged edge, the pair of them charged with rebellion. Besides, this was where all the best stuff washed up. Right before the hungry sea gobbled the old pieces of the city into oblivion, the estuary caught them and spread them all out on the beach. Treasure among the pebbles.

Nell wouldn't take her boots off and stood at the kissing lip of the water, keenly eyeing the drift. A lightbulb, a coil of wire: she snatched them and tucked them away. Only useful things. Maybe they'd be the very things that would spark off a great idea—she needed one, and fast. Summer would be over soon. Days like today were a distraction from the forms Nell had not yet filled out, the letters she hadn't answered, the end of apprenticeship project she had not yet begun. Here by the waterside she could forget, at least for a little while.

Her small pet stoat, Kodak, was far more courageous, leaping about in the foam. Ruby, however, bravest of them all, was in up to her knees, a net in her left hand, a long stick with a pincer at the end in her right, and a basket thrown over her shoulder. She was a round, bright pinwheel in the water, and Nell was drawn out like her long shadow on the land.

The shoreline was pocked with dilapidated signage roaring impotent scarlet warnings like
TURN BACK NOW
or
NO ENTRY
. The girls ignored them. Quarantine was over; there hadn't been an aftershock in years. The two of them had been touched by the epidemic in different ways, both their families scarred by the toxic electromagnetic pulses of the Turn, but these times were for healing. This water was theirs.

The fat old sun wouldn't lower into the horizon for another hour or so, and the heat of the day was beginning to weigh heavy. The salty air helped, alluded to a breeze, but it was still so hot. The sky had been a too blue blankness for months now, so quiet that it had long since become suspicious. Sweat beaded down Nell's forehead and nose, gathering at the tip of her chin, where a chalky ashen scar began.

Despite the heat, she was covered almost head to toe in linen and cotton. Her hair was a black crow's nest, impossibly thick and just about persuaded into a bundle, speared with a thick graphite pencil. She'd deal with the sweat; it was the price she paid for invisibility. She'd never shown anyone the whole scar, the path of it down the center of her body. Her chest cavity at least ticked only faintly this afternoon, a soft metronome against the laughter of the waves. She would have traded the scar and the ticking for a mechanical arm, or leg, in a heartbeat—or whatever the machine did, close enough to a heartbeat that her body believed it was real.

It was commonplace to sport an arm, a leg, a set of ears, two fingers, or even the bottom half of a jaw crafted from exquisite, intuitive prosthetic. Absent limbs were part of the price the people of Black Water City paid for surviving the cruel touch of the epidemic.
Nell, however, was the only person with all her metal inside. She was the only person who ticked.

Ruby surveyed the murky water. She dug up hunks of sea glass and other shining scraps, sometimes whole objects that had been fed to the Livia River by accident, or perhaps sacrifice, during the Turn. With salty fingers, she adjusted the patch that sat comfortably over her right eye socket. Ruby staunchly refused prosthetic or augmentation, wasn't keen on the machines; she always said, “What's good for the rest of you is good for the rest of you.” Thick eyelashes framed her left eye, so dark brown that it was almost black. Today she had painted all around it in gold and jade powders a proclamation: “You'd better look right at me. I survived!”

Ruby looked up. Kodak had gone and got himself into a spot of bother. The stoat floundered barely a foot offshore; something had caught his tiny leg. He barked softly, fighting it but losing. She stomped toward him and pried his leg free as he squirmed.

“Ah, would you look!” she exclaimed, tossing the offending object to Nell. “That's for you!”

The tall girl shrieked and clumsily batted away the slimy, cold web of seaweed. Ruby cackled, and Nell thought for a moment about rushing in and splashing her as watery revenge but looked down at her boots: not going in there proper, not today. The beach was
good for combing, but farther in, you never knew what you could find or what could find you.

Not that they'd ever come across anything made of flesh and bone, but the abandoned pieces of people's lives were sad and terrible enough: drowned blank books, washed of ink, useless pieces of unconscious technology, scraps of the old world swallowed up while the town was burning.

Behind the girls and the beach and the dunes lay ghostly industrial estates, tall and gray, with scorched black windows like rows of blank eyes. Beyond and to the west, past the factories, stood a stone monument—a woman, towering more than a mile high over the rest of Black Water City. Beyond the devastated capital, western still, sat the Phoenix Parklands, where Nell's and Ruby's homes lay. It was a long ride back, and the girls' bikes waited for them in the pebbles, like spindly steel horses.

“All right! I'm done!” announced Ruby, storming back to shore. “I won't be able to carry all this if I keep at it!” She staggered a little under the weight of her basket as she strode from the water. “Ugh.” The seaweed was oily on the soles of her bare feet.

Nell was glad she'd kept her boots on. As they walked up the stony shore, Ruby said, “Well, give us a look at what you found.”

“Just scraps. And this.” Nell took the hand she'd picked from the drift. Kodak flounced out of the water and ran in circles on the beach, shaking himself off with the disgruntled gait of a wet cat and the enthusiasm of a puppy. They planted themselves on the stones by the bikes for a moment. Ruby was panting a little, and her basket landed on the beach with a thud. It was almost completely full of smooth glass shards but for the occasional iceberg of bright plastic breaking the little sea of green.

Nell peeled the briny plastic wrap from the hand, cellophane strips placed there in some attempt at preserving it. The plastic was old but held strong. She unwound it like bandages and revealed the too pink painted skin. The hand was posed as though it were holding something invisible, painted crudely but with the intent of looking marginally lifelike—pinker nails, clumsily engraved knuckles. It stopped just below the wrist, with a screw protruding from a flat base. It was weirdly big, an ungraceful thing. Nell turned it over and over in her own hands, fascinated.

“What do you think, Ruby?” asked Nell, locking her fingers with it, her own hand small against it.

“Well, it's useless to me,” answered her friend, absentmindedly combing through her basket of treasure. “If it were a bit more elegant, I'd use it for displaying
rings, but it's too masculine for what I'm working on right now.”

Nell hadn't thought about giving it boyness or girlness, but now it certainly seemed boy
ish
. A boy's hand.

“Huh, I suppose so,” she mumbled.

“Look, you can keep him. Show him off down the Bayou; take him home to meet your father. Then all your problems will be over!” jibed Ruby, planting an elbow into Nell's ribs.

“Piss off.” Nell elbowed her right back.

“Get him involved in the family business. Break Oliver Kelly's heart once and for all.”

Oliver Kelly. Trust Ruby to conjure him to their quiet afternoon—in revenge, she placed the long, strange fingers of the hand on Ruby's face. She shrieked, and Nell cackled. Ruby had meant it, though, had thrown Oliver Kelly's name like the seaweed, slimy and cold, unpleasant.

“Can we go home?” asked Nell, retreating and discreetly placing the hand back into her satchel. She eyed the tide, a little greedier now, eating further into the land.

Ruby rolled her eyes. “So early.”

“I know, I just . . . Da worries.”

“It's what, five o'clock? It won't get proper dark until ten. Your da needs to calm down.”

“I know,” Nell repeated, her voice sinking quietly in her throat. Her ticking escalated ever so slightly; she could just about hear it.

Ruby groaned and stood. “Fine, fine. Let's go.”

They affixed their belongings to their bikes and took off in silent flight down the beach and out onto the deserted roads. They didn't say much as they shot along, their empty shadowbox city offering a meager welcome.

The population sign at the leaning harp of Godot Bridge boomed: Welcome to Black Water City, We're Well Again! Population 10,07
6
. It had been 74 that morning, and the paint was still wet. The number hadn't taken a significant dive downward in quite some time. It flickered week to week—three up here, three down there—marking the revolving door on the city. Nell took small reassurance from it; chances were that the babies had arrived safely, maybe had even been born without missing any parts. Or maybe it would be just a missing finger or toe or a cavity somewhere innocuous—lower back was common and easily repaired. They'd be due a good life in the Pasture; a whole body could be a ticket out of the Pale. The number would waver but would never plunge deep again.

Every time the number on the sign rose, though, their city gained strength. Glasses would be raised in
the three taverns; the bands would play later. For all the gray and gloom, the people who remained in the city were happy and eager and strong. Their world was small, but they were content to try to make it bigger, one brick at a time.

By the looks of it, the construction workers were being let out an hour early, too. The girls found themselves cycling amid the daily exodus from the site of the giant woman.

Strong, stony-eyed folk, decked out in flannel and denim, hard hats under their arms, marked out with neon vests and heavy boots, strode toward the city in clusters. The women wore their hair in efficient braids; the men were largely bearded. They'd a style of their own, a culture developing all along the skirts and curves of the monument. Their kinetic limbs were bigger and gaudier than the rest of the civilians—part statement, part function. Their smart biorobotic arms and legs needed to support more movement, lift heavier things.

Altogether around a thousand people worked on the statue and would work on the next when this one was finally done. Some were older than Ruby's and Nell's fathers, some were just about their age, a couple here and there were younger. They were a vast collective, a village almost, working together to erect the closest
thing their island had to a beacon. These folks had hope. Some sang their way home, others chatted. The news of the two births had spread.

The giant woman was Nell's titanic sister; her plans had been Nell's mother's contribution to Black Water City. Like any sister, Nell wasn't sure if she loved her or hated her and was almost certain she'd never live up to her. Best to admire her from a safe distance. The scale of her importance was staggering when she got too close. Nell's achievements—or striking lack thereof—were shameful in the shadow of what her parents had made.

Each lamppost they passed had the same stack of flyers hung on a shiny nail, declaring, “Dr. Julian Crane's Marvelous Augmentations—Present This Flyer and Construction Collective Membership Card for a Free Strength Upgrade!” Nell's father's sharp cheekbones and glinting eyes and round spectacles peered out from the ink. A genius, folks would say, but
so
reclusive. Such a shame what happened to Cora Starling-Crane! He must
still
be heartbroken. She was so young, they'd say. It was her death that drove him to be so passionate about his work; it was he, you know, who brought the first prosthetic to life! The augmentation! A miracle! And he was only
twenty-one
when he came up with it! Unheard of, that level of prodigy. And his tiny daughter! Well—

Somebody called out, “Look, it's Nell Crane! Heard you'll be joining us soon!” A ricochet reply: “Nah, she's going out to live with the preachers in the fields, aren't you, Nellie?” Other workers hooted and cheered, but Nell kept her head down, her skin crawling. Under no circumstances would she be joining them
or
going out to live in the Pasture. Ruby didn't say anything.

The pair coasted up the boardwalk alongside the Livia River, past the hodgepodge markets of downtown. The city was a labyrinth of burned-out houses littered with small pockets of community. It had taken almost a hundred years for this quiet to fall, for the fires to stop. It had once been so vibrant, so full of technology and ideas. Too much technology, some thought. Too many ideas.

That bright city was a thing of the past. Strictly rationed electricity dimmed the glow of the place to embers. They'd scorched it out, renamed it, started from nothing. But it was a peaceful ash heap at least. The blue turning violet of the sky was scored with black wires that had once carried power and information; now they simply hung there, making the sky a harsh dead grid above them, thin square shadows on the paths.

Nell and Ruby raced up the quays of the murky river and swung north for the Phoenix Parklands, where
their fathers' houses were. The hungry, pulsing trees and tall ferns filled the air with their dense aroma as the girls passed through the ancient iron gates and made their way up the winding road home. The parklands was almost a village scattered throughout a huge forest, pocked with old family houses, just outside the city. It had made a good retreat when the Turn had become violent: a dense, leafy stronghold, bubbling with swamps.