There had always been a secret joy to it—the idea that Fat Man carried a scar reminding him that he was not all-powerful. That for all his guards and fistful of debt, a knife would still make him bleed.
The secret joy that it had been her husband who did it. The one who did not fear a bully.
But now, watching Fat Man methodically shred the roll into pieces on the table, it was clear the scar was one last poisonous gift from her husband. Sent through time, a long cut and attack that went unavenged and if he wasn’t disfigured perhaps she could negotiate twenty percent.
“Twenty percent.”
Fat Man dropped what was left of the roll and picked up a blood-red grape. He rolled it between his fingers.
“A sugary bag of water. So fragile, it’s hard to believe such a thing grew naturally.”
He squeezed the grape. It split, dripping red juice on the pile of torn bread. He dropped it and waved a server over who passed him a hot towel.
Hands clean, he looked at her and smiled.
“The next word out of your mouth will be yes. If it is anything else then there will be no deal and I will sit with the rest of Cago and watch the silver bugs tear your recalcitrant family to pieces. If you leave without selling me your debt then there will be no deal. Ten percent, terms previously mentioned.”
He waved to another server who again poured him a cup of hot coffee. This time he picked it up and breathed in the rich scent.
Dia took a breath and let her gaze pass over the sharp carving knife that sat beside a roast duck glistening with fat.
Two guards, two servers, Ledger man, a broad table and distance between them.
Too much distance.
“There is no miracle coming to save you,” he whispered into his coffee.
She knew in that moment he’d sent the men to attack them last night. He had stolen the sourcecube, had stolen the hasdee and the gold watches that would have kept them free for another year.
“Yes,” Dia said.
Ledger man instructed her to follow him out of the room and to the Machine. Guards followed, one carrying a heavy bag. It took but a minute for her to request joining Fat Man’s family, pressing glowing buttons on the screen and pressing her hand against it. Ledger man accepted the application on Fat Man’s behalf.
It was nothing really, a brief animation of their names joining a list of hundreds. The Gould Riley family. The debt moved across and then one of the guards methodically fed platinum bars into the Machine until it was cleared away.
“At two o’clock your family will report to the main gate at the end of Golden Street. No pets. Don’t be late.”
Ledger man wrote something in his book and walked away, leaving Dia standing before the Machine.
The chill of Fat Man’s room was still on her, fighting a losing battle with the hot sun climbing across the sky. It felt like relaxation, a gentle warmth, a calmness and peace. Dia knew it was just a trick—her stupid skin unaware of the why of the chill, ignorant of the why of the heat.
There was calmness down somewhere deep but it had nothing to do with avoiding death at the claws of silver bugs.
Her husband had sliced a knife down the side of Fat Man’s face.
She was going to finish the job and cut his fucking head off.
Chapter 38
Silver
Between one tick of time and the next, a new number added to their files and she knew it was done.
They were now part of the Gould Riley family.
“How the fucking fuck does your name and a message get etched into the bottom of a trapdoor? That was Fat Man’s trap.”
“It was done with bugs I think. I dug down and there was the bomb. Who put it there?”
Nola and Ash were ranting, arguing, questioning, taking fury and passing it back and forth between them.
“That fucking asshole has a room full of collars. There are a hundred families out there paying off quota debt they don’t have to because he has their collar.”
“More people must have fallen into his traps and died. Damn I wish you hadn’t lost that map. It was evidence.”
“There were fucking Scabs chasing us!”
“Yeah, I know.”
She idly surfed through the information on the tablet. Bell Dorrit was still alive, her numbers now even further out of alignment. Without heal she’d die soon. Thirty-one people had joined Fat Man’s family today. Nola was wrong—there were three hundred and forty-one collars locked in Fat Man’s palace.
“I guaran-fucking-tee Fat Man stole our hasdee and the sourcecube. Silver found one of his bugs under our house while you were gone.”
Ash looked to her.
He wants confirmation. Nod.
Silver nodded.
“So he has a bug under our house and when I bring the sourcecube in he knows it. He waits until night and sends in his thugs with some sort of knockout gas to steal it and the watches.”
“He’s probably done it a hundred times! People go missing all the time but we think its hazels or Scabs or the fucking pile falls on them! It’s him!”
The voice was stubbornly silent on the topic of the dead Silver and Hello. The still-living Hello seemed to have been shocked into speechlessness by seeing a dead version of himself. Currently he was sitting high on a shelf watching Kin who was stalking around the house sniffing everything.
“Kin, come here,” Silver said. Kin walked over and nuzzled his head against her hand, purring. She watched the tablet searching, the temperature rising. Before it hit the cutout it found an entry. It wasn’t like a human. Some of the variables looked familiar—heartbeat, weight, location—but there were ten thousand more. Kin nipped her and walked away. The location changed. She’d found him.
“We break the fuck in, get the fucking collars and show them to everyone. Then the whole town marches in and strings that fat shit by his balls. If he has any.”
“How did the power to the gate get cut off? Who talked to you through Garrick?”
Silver slipped in the ebb and flow of their conversation. It looped and shivered down dark alleys, hit dead ends and turned back on itself. Nola wanted war—find some way to get the collars out. Ash wanted to be patient, be cautious. Back to the bomb waiting for Ash to find it. His name scratched into the bottom of a trapdoor. Hefnan ready to help at just the right time. They returned to Garrick, nose bleeding, speaking in a strange accent. Silver hadn’t told them about Sheriff Toll doing the same or the cat in the Collector’s house who let them go.
There was much she hadn’t told them.
The dead Silver.
The voice down the deep dark hole giving instructions. Build the compass. Kill Gould Riley. Kill Fat Man.
An entire alternate family, fat and rich, laughing as they walked through town dressed in the finest clothes, a million years from worry.
It’s a trick. You’re being fooled and you’re too stupid to see it.
“Explain,” Silver mumbled.
Nola glanced at her but then returned to planning bloody revolution. She’d already told Ash about attempting to steal platinum bars from Fat Man’s storeroom. The way she skipped about her story Silver knew she’d left parts of it out. It was a family trait.
It just is.
“How very helpful.”
“Silver has a screen that displays the collars locked up. We could show people!”
Nola and Ash turned to her and the loose objectives that had been floating around contracted and crystallized into a plan.
First, a lie.
“The screen is broken. I need some materials to make a new one. We’ll have to steal them from Fat Man.”
Next, some truth.
“This shows everyone and everything. People, gold, valuable metals. Once it’s repaired we can use it to get free of Fat Man.”
Ash came closer and looked at the screen.
“It does that? It shows all the gold?”
Keep lying.
“It did. Since it broke it do
esn’t work so well.”
Silver tapped a few commands and nonsense flooded across the screen.
“Can you make a list of what you need?”
Silver nodded and returned to tapping away at the screen while Ash and Nola built a plan.
She didn’t listen much but she caught the gist of it. Join Fat Man’s family. No murder. No going crazy. Watch and be careful. Steal small things and find a way to get them out of his compound. Build a new tablet. Then either get rich and pay their way out of debt and reveal the collars or go straight to revealing the collars. Don’t tell their mother—she has enough to worry about.
Silver scrolled the materials list for the cutter compass. There were some rare items required. More than simple metal and flecks of gold. She wiped it away and went to the countdown. Not long until it ended. But what would happen then?
Something terrible.
“Yes, yes,” Silver whispered.
Chapter 39
Nola
“The world fell because of greed. Not the greed of those who worked for a better life, of those who strove hard… but the greed of idleness. Of wanting reward but not wanting to work for it.
“Those who worked hard became wealthy through the sweat of their brow and through their labors employed thousands more. A community of people, striving towards a single goal: a better world.
“But those who chose idleness, who chose not to work… their numbers grew, a burden at first and then a sickness.
“A sickness that poisoned the world and sought to destroy it!”
Nola stood in the crowd watching the Mayor give his yearly Feed speech. Ash and Silver were with her. Dia had wandered away, crushed under the burden of what she’d done today to keep them alive. She’d returned home only in time to get them out of the house to attend Feed. She told them they were now members of Fat Man’s family and it would be okay. Nola, Ash and Silver had a plan that required theft so they nodded, hugged her (Ash and Nola, not Silver) and put on their unchanging masks of acceptance.
The Mayor’s voice echoed over the crowd thanks to the mic-dot stuck on his throat. His speech every year was largely the same. A few tweaks here and there but he always hit that line with great power. To destroy it! He waved his hand in the air and then lowered his voice, looking out into the crowd like he could see into their hearts.
“There was a war between those who worked together and those who wanted only to take what was not theirs.
“The world fell.”
A few children near the front gasped right on cue.
“We are the descendants of the few remaining survivors. Our ancestors built the Machines and gave us the quota so every person could be measured by their contribution and judged. And those who do not contribute, those who seek to profit from the kindness of our hearts, are judged indeed. Their poison is cut away—”
Another sweeping arm, his face turning a deeper red.
“So we may live.”
A whisper this year. Last year he’d yelled it and received a roaring cheer that only covered the wealthier parts of the crowd.
Now there was silence. She saw the Mayor look around, his self-satisfaction bubbling beneath the surface.
He took silence for reverence. But silence is easily mistaken. The quiet of the hungry, the downtrodden, the exhausted is indistinguishable from the silence of those whispering lest we forget.
“Ah fuck off!”
Hefnan staggered out from behind a building. He was wearing a new gray suit, polished black shoes and a crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He looked like a rich man on his way to a dinner party. He had a half-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand—something old and valuable. Stolen? He took a swig of it, rivulets of liquid escaping the corners of his mouth to stain his immaculate shirt. The crowd murmured, some laughed.
“If you took all the wealth these rich fuckers had and divided it up there would be more than enough for everyone!”
“That’s exactly the—”
Hefnan waved his hand at the Mayor and his voice died in a crackle of static. Then he slapped a mic-dot to his throat and burped. It echoed out of the speakers. This time people in the crowd laughed properly rather than the few nervous twitters a moment ago.
“What do you say we go to the rich end of town, smash down every door and bring all their fucking wealth back here to throw it in that fucking Machine? We’d be free forever yeah.”
Hefnan took another long swig of whiskey and staggered through the crowd. Toll’s men moved around the outside but couldn’t make good progress through the packed streets. Fat Man signaled some of his own thugs to move in.
“Woo Hefnan!” a young man yelled out from the crowd.
“Woo whiskey!” Hefnan replied, waving the bottle around. The front of his white shirt was quickly discoloring.
“Actually, I have a better idea, listen, no listen.”
Hefnan stopped in place and held up his arms for quiet. He had the bottle on a right angle, amber liquid sloshing to the bottle top and back again.
“How about, how about—”
His voice went low and whispery, like the Mayor’s before but there was a warm rasp to it too. Something that said let’s be naughty. Let’s do what we’re not meant to.
“How about we take all the explosives we can gather and we pile it against that shitting Machine and blow the fucking thing into a million pieces? Who’s with me?”
No cheer this time. Not for heresy.
Nola saw the crowd loosening around Hefnan. Making a clear space for the lunatic. It was nearly twelve and that meant soon the bugs would emerge.
And when they did…
If he doesn’t join Fat Man’s family now, he’ll die.
The pain of it stabbed her and in an instant she was off, shoving her way through the crowd towards him.
“Hefnan! Join Fat Man’s family and live! Please!”
The crowd parted and Nola found herself next to him.
“Hey Nola,” Hefnan slurred, his voice echoing.
“Please. Save yourself. Live.”
Hefnan smiled at her and took another drink. His hands were trembling.
“It’s not living Nola. Now, you better step back.”
She wanted to shake him until he gave in. Fat Man had his arms crossed, watching the crowd with a bored expression on his face. There was no way he’d waddle down to the Machine to stop what would happen next.
“Please Hefnan. Don’t go.”
He moved closer and took her hand.
“You’re a good person. We need more of you.”
Then he stepped back.
“You saved us. Please, save yourself.”
Hefnan winked.
“See you next time.”
Nola went to speak but was drowned out by the low horn that blew from somewhere inside the Machine. It was deep and powerful. The bins on each side sprung open as the tone ended. Silver bugs flooded out.
Some took to the air, zipping away on translucent wings that seemed too fragile to bear their weight.
The rest ran straight for Hefnan. He lifted his arms and started shouting.
“This is what you chose. Rather than sharing for the good of all, some feast and others starve. Why aren’t you better? Why don’t you ever change?”
Someone pulled Nola back and she nearly fought before realizing it was Ash.
The bugs ran up Hefnan’s legs, biting his clothes away so they could get to his flesh. He screamed a pure note of agony and dropped the bottle. It shattered on the ground. For a moment he stood, a man made of living silver bugs and then he toppled. The crowd yelled, some in anger, others in surprise, some cheering.
The bugs tore off his skin, bit into his muscles and ripped his flesh away.
All Nola could see was blood and wet meat that was still alive, still struggling. Bugs, stained red with blood scurried back to the Machine, swollen with meat. Hefnan had breath enough to scream once more and then his flesh was gone, stripped away to reveal t
he bones beneath.
Silver bones, sparkling in the light. Polished metal.
The crowd began screaming.
The bugs couldn’t bite through it. There was a low cracking sound—not of bones breaking but claws and mandibles shattering.
The metal skeleton that was Hefnan was cleaned of meat but still it moved, still it gasped though he had no lungs, just wet shining ribs filled with bugs cleaning out the last of him.
The bugs swirled around him, apparently understanding they could not tear him to pieces. Hefnan was aloft on a river of bugs, sliding him towards the Machine. He flailed his hands, striking sparks from the cobblestones. The bugs dragged him close and then washed around the skeleton, folding him in half. He rose off the ground, held by a pillar of bugs and fell into an open bin. The door closed with a clang and the bugs fell away.
Most of them scurried back into the Machine. A few gulped down any flesh fragments of Hefnan and then quickly followed. They even took off the top layer of stone and within moments there was no trace of blood.
There was a grinding sound from within the Machine and then the familiar throb from beneath their feet began.
The Machine was printing.
Behind that, lost in the noise, Nola screaming at the world.
“Fuck you all!”
Chapter 40
Ash
The crowd was a sea of a thousand conversations. Hefnan, that old drunk? Metal bones that moved like a living man even after all the flesh had been stripped away?
Some of the older people talked about vague myths half-remembered from childhood. Miracles of the past. Replacing worn hips and cracked spines with titanium. But was that titanium? His entire body?
No different from a pet some said. Cut open a hazel and you’ll find meat and wires. A bird has some bones made of plastic—why not a man?
Feed the Machine Page 17