“That isn’t true, Osmond. A BlackBean shows up on scans. Remember when the fire department burned, and they scanned the ruins for the fire chief’s Bean? They’ve done it with others too—that Laidly brother, the Tangs’ last nanny…”
“But that’s preposterous. We have no idea where he is. I would have to cruise a low-flying craft over the whole of Empire Island and the outlying environs, touching down to investigate every blip on the viewscreen.” In the cloudscape of his drowsy eyes, a spark catches, ignites. “It would be…a quest.”
So Katya sounds the call once more: “Will you please find my son?”
“Very well. But you must do me a favor in return.”
“Anything, Osmond.”
“Fetch me a smoked porter from the icebox.” He pats the armrest of his wheelchair. “Since you’re already up.”
Katya’s demeaned herself enough for one afternoon, but she smiles placidly just the same. “Bring my son home, and I’ll fetch you anything you want.”
* * *
A ceiling of electric white. Rats with eyes like blood drops. Tile everywhere, gleaming. The People Machines have caught Abby. They have beamed her up into their Contraption and will never bring her home. They watch her through their one-way glass. They think she cannot see them, but she can: their bleached robes are half-materialized ghosts haunting her reflection.
As Abby gazes into the mirror, she sees too that they’ve turned her small again. They’ve taken her back in time to the days before the moon blood came, before her hair grew long enough to tangle, before words even, when she was just a wisp of herself, a soul awaiting a woman’s body.
Abby hears footsteps in the hall, shouts, crashes, rodent squeaks. Abby hears, and she feels fear, because this has all happened before. Someone is coming for Abby—more than one Someone. And the Lady is with them.
“Ow! Abby, what the snuff?”
Abby and Ripple are wrapped in the old green coat, zipped up together, and he’s grabbing her hands to keep her from punching him. Feathers erupt from a new rip in the jacket’s shoulder as she twists and squirms.
“Sorry, sorry,” she pants. She snuggles against his chest. Her heart is still jumping.
“You really got my bad arm there.” Ripple unzips them, sits up. They’re spending the night camped out on the Pier, a stack of busted packing crates near the water’s edge; a cool breeze makes the air smell almost clean. Or maybe, after ten days and nights, Ripple is just getting used to it. He gently prods his bandage to gauge the damage. “Fuuuuck.”
“Sorry.” Abby clumsily drapes the jacket around his shoulders. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Nah, I know. It’s cool. I’ll shake it off.” He squints at her. “What was up with that anyway? You OK?”
She nods. “Bad dream.”
“I figured.” He pauses, watches, as Abby scoots to the edge of the pier and dangles her legs off. “I used to have some scary ones when I was a kid. Like I had this one that the dragons burned down our house and Hooligan—he’s my dog—was running around with his fur on fire, and everyone was like, ‘Dunky, save him, save him, you have to save him!’ And I woke up, and my mom was all, ‘Pro, you wet the bed,’ and I was like, ‘Oh yeah? One minute ago you were calling me a hero.’?”
Abby gazes off across the waves, at the distant lights of the Electric City. The ripples on the water distort them, mix them with the moon.
“Get it? It’s a joke. Because I had to pee on him to put out the fire. I didn’t actually wet the bed.” Ripple stretches. His recappers out in the Sprawl were always talking about how funny he was, but you’d never know it from this audience. “Stop being so quiet. It bugs me.”
“Dunk?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you go back to the city?”
“Uh…I hope so. I mean, I guess it just depends.”
“Depends?”
“You know, on if I get rescued or not.” Ripple picks at an insect bite on his thigh. “Were you having nightmares about how it would be if I left? Because I’d understand if you were. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you, I get that. With great power comes great responsibility. Like, I own you, you know?”
Abby leans her head on his shoulder. “You own me.”
“Achievement unlocked.” Ripple fondles her breasts. “Mmm. You’ve got such primo ta-tas. They’re, like, exactly the same size.”
“Dunk?”
“Yeah?”
“When you get rescued, will you still own me?”
“Sure. I own you forever.”
“So you’ll come back?”
“Yeah…or…” He hesitates, glances around. There’s Cuyahoga, some yards away, perched sleeping on a hat rack like a huge feathered chapeau; there’s a mound of broken bottles, glinting in the moonlight. Amid the trash dunes there is stirring, but nothing human—no sign of visitors from land or sea. No witnesses. “Or maybe I’ll take you home with me.”
“Home? To the Electric City?”
“Why not? I have a ball pit in my bedroom. You’ll like it.”
“I don’t know…”
“Relax, it’s never going to happen. Just let me have my fantasy.”
“What’s a fantasy?”
“Something so sweet and weird, it could never ever happen.” Ripple contemplates this. “Like being stranded here with you.”
Abby grabs him by the ears and pulls him into a kiss. Ripple pushes her onto the pier and puts a hickey on her collarbone. They’re deep into the making out when Ripple hears something—a grumbling in the distance. He freezes.
“What was that?” he whispers. They lie still. Abby gazes past him, wide-eyed. Her lower lip trembles.
“The People Machines,” she whispers. “They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“The People Machines.” Abby starts to cry. She smacks her head. “The Lady warned me. She sent me the scary dream.”
“Fuck that.” Ripple rolls off of her, knots the jacket like a loincloth around his waist. The grumbling noise is louder now. He squints up into the night sky. “I’m gonna flag them down.”
“Dunk, no!”
“Don’t daunt me.” He grabs a splintery plank with nails stuck in it and brandishes it, caveman-style. “I got this.”
Ripple scrambles up over a mountain of disassembled refrigerators and past a leaning tower of truck tires. Abby whimpers. The grumbling noise is overpowering now, more thunderous than the voice of God. Then, descending through the low-hanging violet clouds, it emerges: an enormous, darkly gleaming craft, all curves and chrome and circular headlights. It is shaped like the body of a spider, armored in a carapace of black steel. Smoke pours from it, and Abby can feel the heat of its churning engines from the ground. A yellow beam sweeps the garbage dunes, searching, searching. Abby cowers in the shadows of the pier. She hears Ripple yelling, but his words are consumed by the roar of the Contraption and her own white-hot terror.