Spare and Found Parts (9 page)

Penelope,

My last letter has gone unanswered. I am sure you are simply rushed off your feet with your project, or at least this is what I hope, given that you haven't even delivered a proposal to the Youth Council yet.

Last night I dreamed of your face, your bright eyes the spokes of a bicycle, frogs on your tongue, your cheeks scorched with ash, your hair wet. You said something I could not hear, your tongue too cold, your mouth a lake. I am worried. Tell me how you are. I don't want to have to go through Julian to make sure you are all right.

Write me soon, please. All my love, all my blessings.

Nan

T
wo days later, Nell sat with her knees to her chest in the great, cavernous hall of the Youth Assembly. Her eyes were closed, and in the darkness she placed together limb after limb, the pieces of her plan. Normally Youth Council made her anxious; every session that passed was a reminder of her lack of a contribution. This time was different. It would be her on the deep stage soon, her in the footlights. A creation by her side.

Determination flourished inside her as she watched her peers milling about. They had no idea what she was planning. They had no idea what she was capable of.

She was folding and unfolding Nan Starling's latest letter as she sat, fresh that morning.

Once there had been schools, order, organized education. Julian had told Nell all about it. His
great-grandparents had sat in classrooms with teachers. They'd even been able to speak more than one language; they'd known things about other countries in the world. But after the toxic pulses, as the epidemic tore down the city, the next generation had been sent to work. All their learning had to be practical, so they could contribute as soon as possible. How else would they rebuild?

Now the mayor called together the young apprentices between ages thirteen and twenty once a month, and those who had contributions ready would present them to their peers. The mayor and treasurer sat side by side at a small desk, adjudicating, taking questions from the crowd. It was meant to be encouraging. It bored Nell to tears.

She had a huge woolen shawl draped around her and the mannequin hand nestled in her satchel. Her wrists ached from drawing plans, and her eyes were dry and sore. She sipped her flask of tea as she looked down onto the auditorium.

This building, before the Turn, had been a theater, a fabulous ancient thing, tucked subtly between buildings on the south side of the river, still posing defiant and beautiful. After the Turn it had been repurposed by the surviving city dwellers for the government because it wasn't too decrepit, had a stage and some
functioning electricity lines leading through it. The government buildings from before the Turn were long, long gone; all that was left were burned-out unwalkable halls.

Nell had seen pictures of how this theater had once looked: stained-glass awnings and delicately carved buttresses and dark velvet curtains. It felt haunted; that fine layer of mystery that hung in the air was especially dense here. How many places were rife with ghosts after the great descent of death over the city? Where might her mother haunt? Nell prayed it wasn't the hospital, but somewhere warmer, maybe even their home. She wouldn't mind or be scared; even the imagining of it gave her comfort.

She picked at her bootlaces, mostly ignoring the presentation being made by Mara, the baker's daughter, and Timothy, the budding confectioner, about the shopfront they were repurposing to become the first cake shop since the quarantine had ended. Cake shop. Mercy. Nell rolled her eyes. Something about its being important for community, for morale. They were bright eyed, full of ideas and plans. Optimistic, though she had no idea how they summoned the bright tone in their voices, the genuine hope.

Nell smirked to herself, wishing Ruby were sitting beside her so she could give her a nudge. But Ruby was in
the ground seating, sitting close to a familiar curly mop, Charlie Klaxon. Looking over the balcony, Nell could just make out Ruby resting her head on his shoulder.

More secrets. Ruby would probably slap her wrist for being judgmental, for being a snob, and remind her that people needed distractions, that they needed to be happy. And cakes and good food were the easiest way to give people something to smile about.

Cakes were one thing. Code, now
that
was what Nell dreamed of.

Nell had not spoken to Ruby since the Bayou, and she was strangely eager to share her fresh, shiny plan; what if she couldn't carry it out alone? It had blossomed into a vast, potentially dangerous web of almost insane steps, but it would eventually lead to her possessing enough spare parts to build an invention surpassing even her parents' contributions.

She held on to the glow of the thought. A machine that is also a person. A whole person. Arms and legs and hands and a smile.

It was the smile that was the thing. The smile summoned out of helixes and rites of ones and zeros and ciphers—reams of language Nell could never speak or even hope to parse, let alone write. Without access to this knowledge, Nell would need something very dangerous to make a heap of clever metal feel.

She really, really wanted to tell Ruby. What good were secrets unless they could be poured into the ears of your best friend? Maybe Nell's secret would encourage Ruby to share hers, too. Ruby used to tell her secrets all the time, usually sordid and occasionally hilarious, full of detail, but because Nell could never bring herself to court anyone, she never had any secrets to exchange. She just listened, scandalized, envious.

She'd softened under the construction of her new plan; there was no use in holding grudges. She'd need Ruby's help if this was going to happen. She had to apologize for being so distant. She slipped her hand into the satchel to touch the cold, solid firmness of the hand, but just as she closed her eyes, she heard movement, scuffing, someone—

Embalming fluid, cologne, there he was again. Nell fought the urge to lean over and growl, “Get away from me. I don't want to look at you,” and instead trilled, “Hello there, Oliver, lovely to see you again!” while quietly putting Nan's letter away in her bag, out of sight.

A grin broke across Oliver's face: pure delight. Nell was never glad to see him, but she was going to need access to his room in the hospital again. She was going to need everything he could give her. And he couldn't know why—not yet.

She would tug the fishhook gently, keep him where she wanted him. Confiding in Ruby would be one risk; Ruby would stand by her no matter what. Oliver, however, was an opportunist. He had to think he was gaining something by helping her, and for now it would be the illusion of her interest, the possibility that she might finally be breaking. She smiled back at him with her mouth but not with her eyes—it was dark enough that he couldn't tell—as he sat down right beside her. Nell breathed slowly and deliberately to stop the ticking's rising and adjusted her scarf.

“What has you up here hiding all on your own?” he asked, his voice flirtatious. Sickening, like too much dark treacle. Nell held her nerve.

“Much better view in the circle. What brought you this far from the crowds?” she replied, her voice singsong and cheery. This was the hardest part, this smoke and mirrors. Nell would have made a really bad magician, but even a single flower produced from thin air would have been enough to enchant the poor fool.

“Bored down there. Not interested in a lot of the commercial contributions. I mean, fair enough, they're important, but I've got bigger things on my mind. All I have to do is be seen here once a month; everyone knows what my projects are and what my contributions are. So
as soon as I've checked in, I go for a wander around the theater. And look, I stumbled upon a leading lady.”

Disgusting.

Nell fought the urge to throw up on him, and instead summoned all of her guts, gritted her teeth, and placed her hand on his leg. “You're
so
sweet.” She looked at him from under her eyelashes.

Her whole deck of cards fell to the floor. The rabbit scampered away before she could pull it out of her hat.

Oliver looked at her hand on his thigh. His face hardened.

“What do you want, Crane?” he asked low. “You looking to buy something?”

“Maybe,” she replied, withdrawing her hand sharply. “But I'm not sure if you've got what I'm looking for in that clean room of yours.”

Oliver's eyebrow did the thing again, the angular challenge. “Oh?” His eyes had begun to wander, his mouth curving in an irritating, slightly hungry way.

“Yeah. I just—I don't think there's any of them left, not really. Oh, I've already said too much.” She shifted, feigning discomfort in her seat, hand on her scarf, her ticking a steady, confident march. Maybe she still had a few doves up her sleeve after all.

“Stop, please.” Oliver spoke softly. “Just be straightforward with me, and I'll help you as best I can.”

Nell took a deep breath, part for effect and part for courage. “I know this sounds insane. I know if there was another aftershock, we'd be in trouble. But I need a computer, one that works.”

A silence hung in the air for too long then, the quiet of a mistake Nell couldn't undo.

Asking for a computer was like asking for a gun; no matter what side of the folklore and history told in stories your family fell on, everybody knew that computers were at the root of the Turn, at the root of the epidemic. They frightened the wrong people, and the wrong people wanted them gone. There was a reason they were nowhere to be found among the wreckage of the city. Still, they had the capacity to imitate a human brain. She
needed
one.

Oliver whistled to himself, a low and hesitant note. Surely he couldn't say no to her when he was like this, but she had to feed him a little more first, to draw him back in.

“Nell, I don't deal in relics,” he said. “That's some real contraband talk.”

“I'm just curious to see how they work,” she admitted, a half-truth; she was curious to see if a computer, a working computer, could tell a series of interconnected
biomechanical limbs to work like a human. If she got the limbs, she'd need a commanding force to get them to move like a person, to turn them into a person.

“Look, I can't promise you anything. I'll have to think about it. Leave it with me,” Oliver mumbled. He was copping out on her.

“Can you help me or not, Kelly?” Nell sharpened her tone. “If you can't, I'm sure I'll find someone out there who can.”

“Out there? No, you won't. You have no idea where to start looking. You don't know any of these people, not like I do.”

He gestured over the balcony to the full rows of seats below. How many members of the council had he quietly reassembled, how many spare parts had found their way to new bodies because of him?

Nell huffed. He was right. Oliver looked her over again and she hated the feel of his eyes on her. They sat in silence a moment before he caved.

“Look, I wouldn't do this for anyone else, Nell.”

“Thank you, Oliver,” Nell said, meaning it, containing her surprise.

“I'll put out some leads, hopefully something will come back. I'll be at the Bayou every night this week, the usual. Drop by in a few days.” He fished a notebook out of his pocket and wrote down a few words
with a slim black pen. The scratch of the pen and the smug snap of the notebook as it closed set Nell's teeth on edge. A wave of his wand and it was done.

“This isn't the first time you've had this conversation, is it?” she asked, suspicious, slightly bitter.

“What? Somebody needs something and I find it?” The eyebrow was up again.

“Yes.”

“Of course it isn't the first time. But it's unique.” Oliver stood up and dusted himself off, preparing to leave.

“How?”

“Well, this computer isn't going to get attached to anyone's body, is it?”

Nell smiled, and as if by magic, the warmth this time wasn't forced. Maybe Oliver was a wizard after all. Below them a gavel struck a table three times, and the room was dismissed; voices rose, a chorus of gossip. Bodies began to move.

“I'll head down now; you wait here a few minutes. Don't want people talking, do we?” Oliver flashed her a crooked smile. He grabbed his bag and promptly disappeared.

Black Water City's almost evening was a warm lavender mist, a density upon her as Nell walked out of the old theater onto the street. She waited by the
door as her peers left for home, giving them nods of acknowledgment and half hellos—“Howya?” “How's it going?” “Nice to see you”—barely under her breath, trying to make her eyes smile. Ruby took forever to leave council sessions, always, flitting around, all small talk. She was one of the last to bounce through the ancient wooden doors and out into the darkening air.

“Here—Ruby. Hi, how—how are you?” Nell reached out and touched her arm lightly.

Ruby turned, and her face split open with delight. “Nell! I thought you'd dropped off the face of the earth!”

“Are you walking back to the parklands or biking?”

“I've got my bike, but I can wheel it,” Ruby offered.

“Me, too. Can I walk you home?”

“We need a chat, don't we?” Ruby put her hand on Nell's shoulder.

“Yeah,” Nell said, instead of “Please take your hand off me.” She was getting better at not telling people to not touch her. She awarded herself a silent medal for achieving such patience.

Nell and Ruby walked to the bike rack over the road and unlocked their bicycles. Taking the handlebars in hand, they began to walk up the sloped hill toward the Cathedral District, where they'd cross the Livia River toward their homes.

“So, was that Charlie Klaxon I saw you sitting with?” Nell ventured.

“Ah, yeah, he's”—Ruby shrugged—“he's grand for now, like.”

“Wasn't it barely a fortnight ago you were saying to me you were going to open a fabric emporium with the lad?”

“Well, some things just—” Ruby made a face as if she'd too much teeth and laughter in her mouth. “Oh, God above, Nell, I'm probably going to have to cut the poor creature loose. Look, there just isn't any chemistry at all; you know what I mean?”

“I think I do,” Nell replied stiffly, staring at the street in front of them. “Yeah. Chemistry.”

“I know you find these things difficult,” Ruby said, “and probably a bit hard to understand, considering—”

“Considering I've never courted any of the other apprentices. I know, I know.”