Stop talking before he summons the law.
“Sorry,” Silver muttered, thinking that was perhaps the appropriate thing to say. She turned and walked away.
“I ever see you again I’m calling the law!” Gress yelled before turning tail and stalking inside.
Hello fluttered down to land on her shoulder.
“Want me to shit on him?” he asked.
Chapter 19
Silver sat in the cool dark of her workroom trying to surf the waves of information. They lifted her, pulled her along until they crashed into a froth of bubbles that smelled of blood and dirt.
There were too many questions, not enough answers and far too much flooding from the hasdee chip. Gress who had set them free with their stolen tablet and then didn’t remember them. A guard supernaturally fast who had defended himself.
The ache in her cheek had deepened, spiking into her head, summoning old and new pains with it. Silver tried to dive deeper into the information but failed—her body was holding her to this plane, this place of suffering. She coughed and lost five minutes, her body trying to expel something but failing. She sipped water tasting like mud, her throat filled with broken glass.
She was getting sick again. A sick that should be in all capitals. SICK. A sick that should be shouted from the roof, a sick that in a better world would bring immediate aid, bottles of cool blue heal or better to fix her.
That was the best she could hope for. A temporary fix. Never a cure.
She was heating, her body trying to cook the invading force to death. Again, pointless. Especially since it appeared the illness came from within.
It would come in waves now, each growing higher and only in the brief respite between them would she be able to think, to move, to change the variables of the world around her.
Soon she would sink under completely, lost from the world, the only hope a bottle of heal that may never come.
Silver looked at the fractured screen, her mind chasing solutions but none were caught. She could find anyone—but how could she turn that to money? There was no time to collect bounties, to hunt down criminals across the Scour. She could find gold if only she was allowed to touch gold but the wealthy kept their precious things guarded away. She had a device that could tell you a million things about your body but none of them were of any use. She looked at her own file. The vast majority of the numbers were meaningless. Was there a number determining how likely she was to murder?
The voice had been quiet on the topic of the guard. A move she knew well. It was pretending it never happened, hoping Silver would not dare to question its urging to kill the man.
“Hello, could you check if the hasdee can make any pap for me?” Silver asked, the pain in her lower left side flaring. Food sometimes made it better.
He fluttered out his small hinged door and over to the house.
“Why did you tell me to kill the guard?”
Silence.
“Answer me! There are many storerooms with different guards. There are mansions we could sneak into, maybe even people on the streets who might help us!”
Nothing.
“I could have been killed!”
Are you done?
“Please answer me. Please.”
No.
“Why?”
It doesn’t matter if you found all the gold. It’s over in sixteen days anyway.
Hello flew back and pushed through the door. He held three pap cubes in his beak. He deposited them on the bench.
“That’s all there is.”
“Thanks.”
Silver forced herself to eat one. Her appetite was gone and wouldn’t return unless she had some heal.
“What is happening in sixteen days?” she said.
Look.
Silver closed her eyes. When she opened them again she was standing on a field of green synthetic grass. The sky above was blue with the occasional fluffy white cloud. The horizon was a flat line.
In a blink she was no longer alone. Cold marble statues appeared on both sides. Her brother Ash carved in cool white lines, dressed in his exploring gear, their father’s pack slung over one shoulder. Nola, one hand on hip, scowling. Their mother, bent double, exhausted. Their father, his features a blur, his statue carved in the deepest black, a man of shadow.
Another blink and she saw they were in a line of thousands. The people of Cago and other towns. Smaller statues appeared ahead of them. Children and babies.
It was easy to understand. Birthdates and times represented.
A rumble and a black wall a hundred kilometers high shot out of the ground. It blocked out the sun, casting them into deep shadow.
Then the grass jerked them forward, a conveyor belt ending at the wall.
The small newborn statues went first, bursting apart, breaking down into dust with an unholy crunch. Then the toddlers, their small frozen faces contorted with fear. The young children crying silent marble tears.
Before the wall hit, Silver turned around and saw another behind her, a hundred kilometers high.
A scream from a woman. Her voice was joined by thousands more. Men terrified, gasping as though they’d been running, sobbing, pleading.
Silver shot up into the sky, above the two walls, so high they were only black lines. Hundreds more shimmered into existence behind their start point, like the colored bands sometimes found in wood.
“Black line, ten years and twelve days, another black line,” Silver said. She counted lines.
Seven hundred and thirty-four of them.
From her high vantage point she saw tens of thousands of statues appear in white streaks next to each wall. Then they slid forward until they were pulverized to dust against the wall ahead. The dust sucked away and formed the statues in the next band.
The image vanished and left Silver facing the raw numbers. Anyone older than ten had the same number recorded against their file. For anyone younger that variable was blank. Another number appeared. It was identical for every single person and it was counting down.
In sixteen days it would reach zero.
The world returned and so did the pain. The heat of her fever, the deep ache in her bones. Silver wiped her nose, the red welts on her hand stinging.
See? It is counting down. Something terrible will happen when it reaches zero.
“I don’t understand.”
Yes you do.
Chapter 20
Silver snapped back to reality when Hello dug his beak into her hand. She’d slipped away from the world, her fever spiking, her mind going hazy.
“Ouch! What are you—”
His wing was wet with blood.
“I found you gold! Hurry!”
Sitting at his feet was a gold ring, gleaming warm and a small nugget.
“What happened?”
He pecked her again and then the table.
“People may be coming so you need to hurry,” he said.
Silver touched the tablet and cleared away all her settings. The infinite ocean returned. She pressed a virtual button she’d programmed and “found” her hand. Then she picked up the nugget, making sure it touched the healing wound.
The tablet began questioning the hasdee and as the answers flowed back, the temperature on the screen began to climb.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Silver asked, watching the temp rise past ninety degrees.
“I found a gold ring and a nugget. Then a cat scratched me.”
“Did you find these things inside someone’s house?”
“I don’t know,” Hello mumbled.
“If this works, do you need to take these back to where you found them?”
“Not a good idea. You need to throw them in the Machine or down a hole.”
The temperature hit ninety-five. The flood of answers from the hasdee was cutting down.
Three more degrees and she found the gold nugget. Most of its variables were static—it had no heart to beat.
Designate gold.
&nb
sp; Silver picked up the tablet and blew underneath it, trying to speed the cooling process. It had jumped from eighty-two to ninety-eight finding the nugget.
Fifteen tense minutes passed, Silver blowing air on the tablet, Hello glancing at the door and back to the stolen gold.
It hit eighty-two again and Silver ran the search on the ring. This time it was much faster, only taking a few minutes and breaking ninety degrees.
Silver dropped the ring on the tablet and started typing code, comparing the gold nugget and gold ring entries.
The ring wasn’t solid gold but rather a cheap common metal plated with a thin shell.
Silver sorted through the variables, finding those that were the same. There were many of them however. Which one was gold?
She selected one variable at random and searched within one meter of her for it. It found only the ring.
She searched again on another variable. The ring again.
And again. The ring. Again. The ring.
Silver had no idea what the variables meant. Things that were round? Things that were jewelry? Things stolen by crows?
“We need to hurry,” Hello said, stepping from foot to foot.
“I am,” Silver replied, searching again.
It found the ring and the gold nugget. Only one way to test out if it was finding gold.
Silver took a pair of snips and cut the gold nugget in two. She moved the pieces apart on the table and ran the search again.
Ring, nugget, nugget.
“It works!”
“We’re dead,” Hello replied.
Someone bashed on the door, a thunderous echoing sound. They opened it without waiting for a reply.
It was Sheriff Toll.
He looked at the gold ring, the two golden nuggets and then at Silver.
“Come with me,” he said, walking into the room and scooping the gold from the table.
Chapter 21
Silver scuttled alongside Sheriff Toll through Cago. She’d been sure she was going to jail, to sit in a cell until a criminal trial ended in her taking a long drop at the end of a short rope.
But they turned off the path to the cells and headed towards the rich end of town.
Keep your mouth shut.
Hello sat on her shoulder, wings folded close to his body. The voice was telling her not to speak but curiosity was burbling in her belly, trying to force its way out.
“Where are we going?”
“To see your victim.”
“Oh.”
They entered the rich area and walked to a white mansion. It had marble columns next to both sides of the white door, much like Fat Man’s palace.
Sheriff Toll knocked on the door.
A thin servant opened it. He was dressed in an all-white suit.
“Please fetch Ms. Hartigan for me.”
The servant didn’t have time to comply. A pale old woman forced him aside, flapping her hands at him and telling him to move aside.
She stopped at the door and glared at Hello and Silver.
“This is them! That’s the crow that stole my gold!”
Sheriff Toll held out his hand with the ring and cut nugget sitting on his palm. Ms. Hartigan snatched them up.
“What happened to my nugget?”
“I had to cut—”
Sheriff Toll quieted her with a wave of his hand.
“Crows like to pick up shiny things. It was a small malfunction Silver here would like to apologize for.”
He looked down at her.
Say you’re sorry!
“I’m sorry,” Silver mumbled.
“When will they be hung?”
Ms. Hartigan said it like it wasn’t really a question but an expectation.
“We don’t hang children.”
“They stole from me. From me! I want action taken! These criminals—”
Sheriff Toll put up his hand and she stopped talking.
“We don’t hang children. It was a mistake and you have your goods back. That is the end of it.”
“It is most certainly not.”
Sheriff Toll turned around and walked away, Silver following close behind him.
“I’ll see her at the end of a rope! I will!”
She kept yelling until they turned the corner and left her street. Then they heard her front door slam shut with a heavy bang.
The Sheriff stopped and knelt down to Silver’s level.
“I know it wasn’t a malfunctioning crow. Don’t steal anything else. No jewels, no gold, nothing. And don’t hide outside Fat Man’s warehouses trying to work out how to break in, okay?”
Silver went to protest but then saw the look on his face. He was angry but also trying to help her.
Yes, very good, you got it!
“Okay,” she said.
“What were you doing with—”
Sheriff Toll stopped and closed his eyes before opening them again as though he’d just awoken. He looked down at Silver, his eyes unfocused.
Leave now!
Silver turned and walked away. Sheriff Toll took a step as though considering whether to grab her but then stopped, swaying in place. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. He wiped away a small trickle of blood coming from one nostril.
Then she was around the corner and gone.
Chapter 22
“They do hang children.”
“I know.”
Silver typed code as an image of the hanging slipped into her mind.
Their mother warned them to keep away but she was working hauling buckets and couldn’t stop Silver and Hello creeping out of the house to the gallows. The Nicol family. Father, mother, boy and girl.
Screaming and crying.
Begging.
Four black bags. Four ropes.
Clunk and snap.
The boy was six and the girl five. Thieves. They and their parents were breaking into rich homes.
Sheriff Toll stood there with his grim face and watched it all happen without blinking an eye.
Theft was a death sentence.
Arguably so was not-theft if it meant starving to death.
Again, it all came down to numbers. An almost-certain chance of death if you didn’t steal versus the lower chance of being caught. One number was higher than the other and so it directed peoples’ choices and actions.
“Why did he let us go?”
“I don’t know,” Silver said, frantically writing code.
A small gray dot appeared on the screen in the center. It was meant to be silver to designate her but she hadn’t worked out the color values properly. Silver set a search to find the first five gold objects around her.
The hasdee flooded back information and the tablet temperature rose. Yellow dots appeared all around her, overlapping her dot.
She spent another ten minutes working out how to zoom in and out. The first gold was in the hasdee chip itself. She examined it but couldn’t see any gold. The rest of the gold was in broken circuits scattered around the room. Fragments only, too small to see, ultra-thin layers used to make electronics work.
“Thanks for getting the gold for me Hello. Oh, that’s okay Silver. My pleasure.”
Hello sat down in his usual spot and closed his eyes.
Silver ignored him and kept coding. Finding gold was no use if it showed every tiny fleck around.
Time slipped by as she found their last remaining fork and sliced it down, cutting weight away, making it smaller, working out the variables for length, width, volume and shape.
There were still hundreds of variables with no meaning. She guessed they might be color, composition, temperature, circumference, radiation… but who knew? It didn’t matter so long as she could find gold lumps in the Scour.
Silver swam back to the infinite ocean and sent her queries off. The water dropped away and left her standing on the dry dirt. Five lumps of gold appeared, clustered together near Fat Man’s house. They were underground.
No use. They belonged to him a
nd would be under heavy guard.
She excluded Cago, guessing its general size and searched a ten-kilometer strip outside the city. One piece of gold appeared, nine kilometers away.
“That’s all the gold heavier than fifty grams and lighter than five hundred?”
The tablet temperature was barely moving now—the hasdee chip was flooding back the same volume of information but Silver was cutting most of it off.
She searched further out—within fifty kilometers.
Still one piece of gold. The temperature trembled up a degree.
She changed it to five hundred kilometers.
This time the temperature almost hit one hundred before the screen zoomed out and yellow dots appeared all over it. Silver had seen bastardo maps of the Scour before. They all varied as they were made by people who guessed distances wrong but all had the same basic shape. The light in the middle, the Gap, cities scattered around in the enormous circle surrounding it before you hit the edge and the endless nothing.
The yellow dots made a map of the Scour for her.
Maran had only one dot, Tempest had so many they overlapped. There were gaps where she knew there were cities. Obviously they didn’t have any gold nuggets sitting in vaults.
There were only three nuggets outside cities at all. One at nine kilometers from Cago, the other two on the far side of the Gap. The closest one was only fifty-five grams. A long walk into dangerous territory for something so small.
She increased the upper weight limit but all it did was make more gold appear in the cities. If she reduced it too much then a thin haze of dots appeared across the Scour, turning the screen into a solid block of yellow. The temperature ticked up and she had to stop it searching before it overheated and shut down. The dots vanished.
“So much for gold,” Silver said, swiping her fingers on the screen. A colored trail followed them.
“I like gold.”
“I know.”
“You should like gold too. It’s shiny.”
His piece said Hello closed his eyes and appeared to go back to sleep.
Hello had risked his life (and their necks) to steal the samples she needed but it had come to nothing. It appeared gold was rare in the Scour and what there was had already been collected, pooling in the cities, melted into blocks for rich people to keep.
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