Spare and Found Parts (22 page)

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

R
uby 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 everything 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.

N
ell 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.

“Everything is wrong, Nell.”

Nell could tell immediately that Oliver was not talking about an accident, or a death, or the Lighthouse's getting shut down, or his trade's getting audited by the council. He didn't even seem angry, as if he were coming to read her the riot act for drugging him and looting his lab. No.

Oliver was talking about his feelings.

Nell set her jaw. Here we go.

“You probably think I'm only after one thing with you.” Oliver's eyes were on the floor. There was something different this time.

“Oliver, I know you're only after one thing. Well, two things, and if you pretend one of them isn't my father's trade, I will have to ask you to leave.” Nell's light tone sank. Oliver wasn't here for banter. They weren't Crane and Kelly, a hermit and a barfly here. This wasn't going to be any fun. Nell took stock and mentally put down her sword. No duel today.

“Nell, my whole life I've been convinced that it would come down to you and me.” Oliver spoke softly, still not looking at her, worrying the cuff of his jacket. “And even all the times you said no, I thought it just meant you weren't ready yet. Or that somehow you couldn't quite see what I see. I always thought that someday something would happen that would shake up your perspective and that finally”—he exhaled deeply, these awful words—“you might see me how I see you.”

They hung against the patter of rain on the window and the thickness of sleep in the air and the chiming in her chest, and Nell couldn't say anything to him at all. This wasn't just attempt nineteen for Oliver. This was something real. Something final.

She began to say something like “Oliver, I'm sorry” or “Oliver, you know this already,” but got only as far as the end of his name before he stopped her.

“I'm sure you think all this is just about the trade, the honor of continuing your family's work. But you've had it mixed up all along. The limbs, the weekend studies with your father, I—Nell, maybe it started out being about the job, but it became about—about you. How you make me feel. That's what's kept me going.” He stopped, his face ruddy with vulnerability.

Nell felt a flash of something under her rib cage. Alien and strange and bright. Oliver's voice had a strong and lovely timbre to it that she spent most of her time ignoring, but on that last word it was a thunderclap. The brightness rose into her mouth—an awareness, a knowledge—but then it left her as quickly as it had arrived. She said nothing and looked at the white florals of her sheets.

“I know you made Io because you find it hard to connect to the rest of us, and I want you to know that he is the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life—may ever see in my life. When the folks at the Lighthouse see him . . . They need him down there. He could wake every single one of their old computers. He's a conduit, Nell. You could, well, you
two
could change everything.”

He spoke slowly, his voice trembling from the confession. Nell didn't take her eyes off the blanched cotton garden around her. The shock of emotion lingered in her; maybe that was all the love and desire she'd meant to have for him over her whole life flaring up at once. But then it left, a ghost. She had nothing to give him. He'd just handed her a massive compliment, but all she could muster was a quiet “Thank you.”

“I wonder what I could have been part of if I hadn't said no to you that day on the steps.” His voice was bitter now.

“You were part of it, Oliver!” Nell couldn't snuff the pity from her voice. “I mean, you had all those parts first. You're—you're part of him, too.”

Oliver looked up at her then finally. His cheeks were still pink, and his eyes were enormous, and he shook his head. “No. I'm not.”

It wasn't self-pity, but it was heartbreak. And it was true. Oliver had been telling himself the same love story for years and had come to believe it, and now he was ending it, on his own terms.

“I just need you to tell me no, once more, for real,” he said, and Nell mentally drew a different blade. Their dueling days were over. This was an execution.

She tried once more to summon that flash of
lightning, but there was nothing, only the lame, hushed drizzle against the window.

“I don't love you at all, Oliver.”

“But could you?”

Her blade was in his body, but he wouldn't fall; he wanted so desperately for this to live. She'd never stopped to think maybe he was hurting. But Nell wasn't anyone's happy ending. She was always a more likely executioner.

“No. Never.”

She wanted to offer him some consolation, but none would come. He didn't say anything for a moment, just shook his head, absorbing the fullness and finality of no
.
Of never. She thumbed the Medi-Patch. Was it the gauzy medicinal filter that allowed her to maintain distance from this, or was she really so cold that she couldn't even tell him she was sorry?

Oliver rose to leave, his face ashen, humiliated, his breathing edging toward that awful syncopation that leads to a very particular kind of crying. She reached a hand up to him, and he took it in both of his. Oliver held it for a moment, steadied his breath, and said, “All right. My presentation is this Monday. I know you probably won't be on your feet. But I'll be thinking of you when I'm up there.”

He turned away and left her room. Nell sat amid the
eiderdown and paper and found, as if from nowhere, fat tears on her cheeks. Relief, she thought it must be, as she wiped them away. Just relief.

The front door clicked shut in the distance, and she returned to her work.