Ash didn’t answer. He put half the watches on the counter and stared at Munro. Behind them Raj groaned and turned his head, vomiting on the floor. Munro visibly flinched.
“Okay fine. Half but then you get him out of here.”
He took the watches and went out through the double vault security doors, returning with two bottles of blue.
Ash opened one and swallowed it down in a single gulp. It was cool and sweet, tasting of vanilla and berries. It hit his swollen throat and put out the pain like a bucket of water on a fire. The cool relief spread down his throat and into his body.
“Now get out,” Munro said, folding his arms across his chest.
The door crashed open and Raj’s parents stormed through, closely followed by Raj’s younger sister.
“What happened?” Raj’s father shouted.
The crossbow bolt in Raj’s side fell to the floor as silver liquid pushed it out of his body. The wound closed over.
“We got attacked,” Ash said, swaying on his feet, feeling the cool rush of blue heal tingling down his legs.
He felt inside the pack, calculating weight and size and money and then took out three watches. He gave them to Raj’s mother, pressing them into her hands.
“Get warm,” he told her.
Then he put his arm around Nola and she pulled him out the door.
Chapter 35
By the time they got home, Ash was walking on his own, the blue heal rushing through his body, stitching damaged muscle, repairing him from the inside out. His face was tingling as the wound closed. The red swollen flesh around his ear smoothed over.
Their mother opened the door, her face turning pale as she looked them up and down. Both were covered in mud and smears of blood.
“What happened?” Dia asked as they walked inside.
“I got blue heal for Silver,” Ash replied, handing her the bottle.
Silver was on her bed, gasping for air and coughing, flecks of blood on her lips. Dia took the bottle, hugged him and then knelt beside her daughter.
“Here Silver,” she said. She opened the bottle and trickled a little between her lips. The heal was too precious to risk being wasted if she coughed too hard. Within a moment Silver stopped coughing as the heal made its way down to her lungs.
Silver took the bottle from Dia and gulped the rest of it down before lying back with a sign of relief. The red raised lines of infection on her neck started to fade away.
“How did you afford that? What happened to the pair of you?”
“I’ll explain in a minute but for now we need to bar the door.”
“With what?”
“Silver’s table. Help me.”
Together the three of them hauled the table over to the door. It was flimsy but it was the best they could do.
“We found watches,” Ash explained, opening his pack and pulling out the remaining three. He’d held a fortune in his hands and now they were down to this. It wouldn’t clear the quota but it was enough to keep them free of Fat Man this year.
“There is something else though. We need to keep this secret,” Ash said.
He waved Kin over and held out his hand. Kin looked at it with disdain.
“Yes?”
“Give it to me.”
“Give you want?”
“The cube!”
“Holy fucksticks,” Nola said. “You found a cube?”
“I want cheese after we’re rich,” Kin said, licking his shoulder.
“Okay fine, now give me the cube!”
Kin opened his mouth and coughed. He made a choking sound and then spat the cube out into Ash’s hand.
Silver sat up from her bed and coughed into her hands.
“Is that a sourcecube?”
“I think so.”
Ash walked over to their hasdee and knelt beside it. With shaking hands he slipped the cube into the slot where the tempcubes went. It clicked into place.
The remaining bugs on his belt began scrabbling at the leather, trying to get out. Ash pulled the bag open and they poured out like a stream, running for the hasdee. The other ten which had been cleaning the buckets left their task and ran too. They climbed the side and threw themselves in. A grinding clunk as the hasdee broke them down.
It shuddered and chugged and then came the familiar jit jit jit as it started printing a new bug. It was big and silver, the size of a palm. It looked the same as the bugs that came out of the Machine. Over the next ten minutes it printed ten bugs. They gathered beneath the hasdee, waiting.
“This is crazy. What do you think it is?” Nola said, watching the bugs.
“I hope it’s cheese,” Kin said, looking at Ash.
The moment the final bug came to life they swarmed over the hasdee, ripping it to pieces, eating it down to the ground. Within a minute it was gone and the bugs were fat, three times the size they were before. They gathered in a circle and shining silver liquid poured out of their mouths. It formed a square frame and then flowed in streams upwards, defying gravity.
“They’re building a hasdee,” Silver said.
As the liquid poured out, the bugs shrunk in size. The liquid trickled to a halt, the hasdee only half-built and one of the bugs made an interrogative chirping noise at them.
“They need more metal. Use anything on the right side of my table,” Silver said. She stood, swayed in place for a moment and then laughed before leaping across to Ash and wrapping her arms around him.
“I can breathe!”
He blinked in surprise. Silver never hugged.
The bug made another noise at them.
“Okay, okay,” Silver said. They took old toaster parts and bits of wire off her table and fed them to the bugs. They chewed them down. Silver liquid came trickling out of their mouths to build the hasdee. They fed them plates, spoons, all their cutlery. Soon there was nothing left but Dia’s cart.
“Tear it up,” she said.
They pulled the cart over to the bugs. They broke it down and poured out more silver liquid. The hasdee was nearly complete.
Soon there was nothing metal left in the house but the three watches and the rest of Silver’s gear.
“C’mon be enough,” Ash whispered.
One of the bugs turned to another and chewed it down in a flash, swelling. The rest lined up to be eaten one after the other. Soon there was only one bug, gigantic and swollen. Silver liquid ran out of it until it was as small as a marble. Then it climbed the hasdee and into the sluice at the top.
The final rolling bead of silver dribbled up the hasdee and shimmered into place. The hasdee shook and then firmed, changing from silver to deep red. A glass screen floated up from the liquid and lit in glorious color. Beneath it buttons and dials appeared.
There was a cracking sound underneath the hasdee.
“What is that?” Ash asked.
Silver knelt down beside it.
“It’s putting down roots.”
The buttons shimmered and symbols appeared on the screen above each one.
“Pap, water, fabric and I have no idea,” Silver said.
Floating above the final button was a symbol that looked like a jagged mountain range.
“Electricity?” Ash guessed.
“Press it,” Nola said.
Silver touched it with her finger and options appeared on the screen.
Volume: 1.823kg (total stores)
Complexity: 0.21 (0.01-1.0)
P-dist: 1/1200 (1/1200—600/1200)
Era: Mixed
“I have no idea,” Silver repeated.
She stepped through each option. Volume could only go down. The hasdee only held 1.8 kg of material and couldn’t produce more than it held. Complexity went from 0.01—1.0. P-dist from 1/1200—600/1200.
Era: 2020/2030/2040/2050/2060/2070+
Silver kept spinning the dial and the numbers kept rising until it hit 2082. Then it listed MIXED/RANDOM/ATTENUATE.
She set it to mixed.
“Press it! Let’s get
rich!” Nola insisted.
Silver hit the button.
There was no sound as the hasdee started. Even a top-of-the-line hasdee would shudder a little or jolt, making the familiar jit jit noise. This one was silent. Liquid silver poured out of the nozzle and filled the area under the hasdee. It solidified into a silver lump, piling into shapes—sharp edges, crumbled, something rounded.
The last drip fell and the hasdee dinged. COMPLETE scrolled across the screen.
The silver shimmered and ebbed away, soaking back into the hasdee, leaving… junk. Twisted screws, old pieces of paper that were yellowed and ripped, broken concrete with bits of metal sticking out of it. Ash reached in and pulled at the paper. It was some sort of old advertising. A man in a red-checkered shirt sitting on a lawnmower, faded green grass beneath him.
“Is that junk? We made junk? What the fuck,” Nola said.
“Nola please,” Dia murmured.
Nola reached in and pulled out a broken tin can, pockmarked with holes, rusted through completely.
“I repeat: what the fuck.”
This time Dia didn’t tell her off.
Chapter 36
Silver
It was some kind of crazy miracle. She had an actual sourcecube to study! Yes, it only made junk but still it was junk in unlimited quantities. If she could crack the nature of unlimited she could free them… and everyone else. No else would have to starve to death.
They fed all the junk back into the hasdee and reprinted over and again, hoping for a different result but nothing changed despite them fiddling with the options. Choosing 2082 yielded a junk laced with broken green circuitry and shards of hardened glass. Putting complexity to 1.0 gave them busted watches with fine gears, broken machinery with smashed microchips and fragile webs of silver. Sometimes it was all rubble. Concrete and metal looking like it had been scooped direct in the Scour and dumped on the floor.
“We have a hasdee that makes junk out of junk,” Ash said, staring at it. A cube that should have pulled their family out of poverty and it was useless. Some of the finer circuitry or broken watches might fetch a slightly higher price from a collector but it was marginal. It wasn’t beer or steak or anything good they could sell.
“Maybe we can sell the cube. Say we found it, have no idea, buyer beware, all that. Get a chunk of money for it,” Nola said.
“We can’t sell it. This is the fastest hasdee in the world right now. We’re keeping it,” Silver replied.
She adjusted the dials and pressed the button again. The silver liquid flowed out and ebbed away, leaving a pile of mixed junk. Silver started looking through it.
“Oh wonderful, more junk,” Nola said. She turned to Ash. “You want to give me those watches now and I’ll put them in the Machine so we can see if we’re going to get free of Fat Man?”
“Look!” Silver called out.
There, sitting in the middle of the pile covered in a chalky white residue was a cube.
“Oh fuck.”
“Nola!”
“Shit, sorry.”
Silver slipped it into the slot on the side. The hasdee swallowed it with a liquid gulp. Three new buttons shimmered to the surface. The first had a symbol of a cow, the second a sheep and the third a fish.
“Get a plate,” Silver commanded.
“We threw them all in,” Ash said.
“Give me something flat. Now!”
Ash found a sheet of laminate folded into the back of his pack. Silver held it under the nozzle and pressed the cow button.
Silver liquid poured down onto the sheet, piling into a shape. Then it flowed off, dropping down into the junk and soaking back into the hasdee.
It left behind a perfect raw beefsteak. It was red and wet with a strip of white fat running down the side.
“This makes cubes,” Silver breathed. “The cubes make stuff.”
Ash reached forward to touch the steak, to make this dream real and then the world exploded.
PART FOUR
Chapter 37
Dia
Dia had awoken with dirt in her mouth and fear in her heart, groggy from the attack. Now she was outside Fat Man’s building. The dirt was gone and the fear had seeped through every cell.
It was early, about eight and Cago was abuzz. The gates were locked—no scavenging on Feed—and it seemed like half the town was out running around. In four hours the quota would reset.
In four hours silver bugs would swarm out of the Machine and kill anyone who owed more than a thousand.
“You going in?”
The guard by the front door was slender—unlike most of Fat Man’s thugs—but wore the same shaved head as the rest of them. He must be new Dia thought. He didn’t have that same bitter scowl, as though you were polluting the air by being near him.
Dia looked past the guard and at the door. Behind it Fat Man sat in a room waiting for people to sell them their quotas. In the week leading to Feed he’d sit day by day in the chilled room, eating food, a platter of cheeses, meat, and other delicacies spread out before him. Come in, sell yourself and then you can eat like this.
Food didn’t matter now.
The quota didn’t matter.
Only the percentage she could negotiate. The difference between slavery eternal or eventual freedom.
“Hey, I’m talking to you. Come in or move along.”
Dia focused on the guard. Ah, there it was. That look.
“I’m here to sell our quota.”
The guard patted her down for weapons and then waved her in.
A blast of cold air hit her, pushing away some of the headache that had been throbbing since she’d awoken on the floor of their house. Nola had been awake, slurring her words and trying to stand. Ash and Silver were still unconscious, victims of whatever they’d been hit with. There was a scent in the air—something burnt—and a thin chalky residue coating every surface. Some sort of gas? The hasdee was gone—sliced off at the base—along with the remaining few gold watches. The sourcecube went with the hasdee.
The door closed behind her and Dia stopped, breathing in the refrigerated air. It was cold and pure. The type of air only the rich could afford. She closed her eyes and let heat of her skin radiate away.
There was only one goal: negotiate for twenty percent. Don’t get angry, don’t beg, don’t go crazy.
Don’t push your thumbs into Fat Man’s eyes until the feeble orbs burst.
Dia took a few deep breaths of the cold air and then opened her eyes. This wasn’t the end. It would be okay.
Silver had grabbed her on the arm—a miracle in itself—and told her so. It will be okay she’d slurred.
Dia walked down the corridor and into a larger room. Fat Man sat behind a table that stretched down most of the room. Saliva squirted into her mouth. Roast chicken, slices of beef pink inside scattered with thyme, fish in a white sauce, slices of cold meat, cheeses of every color and hue. Bottles of wine, beer, spirits.
Two guards, not quite as fat at their master glaring at her. Ledger man holding a black book filled with debt entries. Two servers waiting for commands.
“Debt?”
Fat Man picked up a grape, dropped it in favor of another.
“Minus eight zero one,” Ledger man said.
“Ooh, did you feel that chill? Cold in here.”
Fat Man laughed at his own joke, his fat jiggling as he shook himself. He still hadn’t looked at Dia.
“All finds you get ten percent. Work is sunup to sundown Monday to Saturday. Sunday off. You do not own a hasdee. All purchases are made through me.”
“Twenty percent.”
Fat Man continued on as though he hadn’t heard her.
“You can stay in your own home but there is also mandatory paid accommodation available. Hot water, clean clothes, good food, all for a minimal fee.”
“Twenty percent,” Dia repeated again.
“In exchange for all this, I will buy your quota debt and pay it off. You will join my family. Agreed?�
��
“I. Want. Twenty. Percent.”
Fat Man looked up from his food at Dia, his blue eyes twinkling with delight.
“In a few hours, silver bugs will come streaming out of the Machine to kill anyone below negative one thousand. If you accept my offer, you and your family will live. If not…”
He waved his hand dismissively.
Dia looked at the food. A beef roast sat surrounded by glistening vegetables. Roast potatoes still hot from the hasdee. Did he have it brought out deliberately before each petitioner walked into the room? A curl of steam twisted from it and vanished in the cold air. It couldn’t stay hot for long. It was… performance.
“I know you negotiate. This is a big debt and we’ll be paying it off for years. You want this debt. You know my son finds the best in the Scour. Nola is the bartender who will pull back everyone you lose to the Wire Pub. Silver is clever and can repair anything. So you want this debt and I want twenty percent. We keep twenty percent.”
Fat Man nodded to one of his servers. He brought over a silver steaming pot, pouring hot coffee into a white porcelain cup. Dia tried not to breathe in, coffee a distant memory, but failed. It brought back memories of a table, a red tablecloth, a husband, two younger children eating and a baby sitting in a high chair, sneezing through mouthfuls of porridge.
“You’re right. I do negotiate and I do want your debt. It would please me greatly to buy the Rose family debt, especially given what your husband did to me.”
He stroked his finger down the scar running from temple to jaw. Then he leaned forward.
“But there is a certain satisfaction to seeing your shit-eating family wiped from existence, too. Ten percent. Take it or die, I don’t care.”
He waved his hand at the coffee, had the server take it away, began tearing a crusty bread roll apart.
Dia glanced at his scar and then down at the food again. The story of the scar was hazy. A year after Hanlon arrived in Cago and swept Dia off her feet one of the other circus performers, Yull, had somehow become indebted to Fat Man. It was so many years ago—he was only just beginning to build his tangled web of debt, obligation, control and power. They were living together then and she was pregnant with Ash. Yull arrived late in the evening babbling about debt and death. She was sick with that morning sickness that lasted all day and only overheard fragments. Hanlon took him outside and calmed him down. Later that night she awoke to an empty bed and Hanlon sneaking back into the house. He brushed aside her questions and she’d let it go. A few days later Yull left town debt-free and a week after she saw Fat Man at the Machine, a long livid red scar down the side of his face.
Feed the Machine Page 16