Lad kept close to me as we walked. I couldn't help but glance at the symbols, hard to read in the light and in their bloated closeness. Sure enough, there was Lad, his hill with a dot close to mine. And there was debris, right in front of me, the lightning strike sharply detailed amidst ill-defined lines. But as I lowered my wrist I saw it. A cipher I hadn't noticed before, not while the rest of the figures were spaced out. Made of the map itself, yet brighter, sharper, very much a symbol in its own right. Another debris sign. One that encompassed all of us, one made up of us. It was everywhere, it was everything.
I looked up into the darkness, to the grey shapes of a curved roof and snake-twisted pipes.
"What is that?" I whispered to myself.
I am here.
And sure enough, my suit-light fell on a crack in the floor. A pipe ran beneath it and we could hear the sound of water rushing through iron. But from the gap, the dark corners between pipe and cement, debris grew like a fungus. Bulbous, patchy, and swaying as though in a breeze.
"That's it." Kichlan crouched beside the crevice. "Oh, very well done."
I said nothing. Something was tickling my stomach, something like the first buds of laughter. If I opened my mouth nothing but giggling, inane chuckling, would burst out. Beside me, Lad let out a little laugh, and was ignored.
"Uzdal, the jars." Kichlan held out his hand, and Uzdal slung the bag's strap into his palm. "Let's work, shall we."
I have been waiting. I am glad you came.
As the others set to scooping, prying and pinching the debris from its hold beneath the building, I lifted my hand and stared at the scrap I held between my fingers.
"Why are you talking to me?" I breathed over it, and it jiggled.
They are here, did you see them? Watching you like they watch me. Together we can fight them. Together, we are strong.
Then something touched my shoulder. A hand, light, warm. It brushed my neck with soft fingers and a warm breath.
I am sorry for you, Tanyana. Truly, I am. But I cannot be sorry you are here.
I spun. The room behind me was empty, save for storage crates and shards from broken ceramic loops.
"Tanyana?" Kichlan looked up from his work. "What's the matter?"
"He scared her and now he's gone," Lad answered for me, his words nonsense. "He didn't mean to."
"You didn't scare her, Lad," Kichlan said, full of patience.
I stared between them. The phantom memory of the hand on my skin was warm, and everything jumbled together in that heat. Eugeny's warning, Kichlan's explanation. Lad, with his inexplicable connection to debris and the voices within his head. The voices he had always heard and sometimes, the voices he obeyed.
And I had no idea which one of them was right, if anyone understood anything properly, if I had any idea what was going on.
"Tanyana?" Kichlan stood. Concerned, he approached me, a half-filled jar held in front of him. "It's been a strange morning, hasn't it? Are you all right?"
I nodded. A lie, if ever there was one.
He held out the jar. "Drop that grain in here and take a moment to rest. We've almost got this finished."
I held the debris over the open jar. It felt like a chasm, the lip a gaping mouth.
"Go on." Kichlan smiled.
Goodbye. For the moment.
I dropped the debris and watched Kichlan seal the lid. "Where do the jars go when they are full?" I asked him. I had to concentrate to retract my suit, and my hand shook.
"To the technicians. From there, I don't know."
"Oh." The technicians. Devich.
"Come and give us light. We're nearly done."
Leaning over the rest of the team I watched them collect. Sure enough, the fissure was close to empty. What had caused the debris to rise, to swallow the factory whole?
Lights started to reignite in the factory above us. Voices echoed down from the stairwell.
"It's come up from the old city, hasn't it?" I whispered. The Movoc-under-Keeper built long before Novski's revolution, and the small patches of it that still remained. Like the wall that had fallen on me on my first day as a collector. I squinted hard into the tiny gap between pipe and cement, but try as I might I couldn't see deeper. No ruins, no hand-laid stonework, and not the wellspring I believed had to be there, the untapped oceans of debris.
"No," Sofia answered. "Debris like this is created by the new world, by massive levels of pion manipulation." She hesitated. "But I know what you mean. It likes old places, doesn't it?"
Lights flickered on in the basement, drowning out my suit. In the crevice, no shadow of debris remained. Not even a grain.
When we climbed out of the basement to a world lit again by steady, strong lamplight, I saw them. At the edge of the crowd of surprised but grateful debris collectors, half hidden by the rain and the shadow of a building, stood two of the puppet men. Their faces pale, expressionless, bodies wooden and unmoving, they watched me.
11.
By the time I returned home, it was late Mornday evening and the skies had not brightened once. Rain fell constantly, I was soaked through and so chilled I couldn't keep my finger steady on the lock. It took three tries to convince the pions I was me. And I had just managed to unlock the door and shrug off my jacket when footsteps sounded behind me.
"Vladha?"
I spun. Two large men filled the small, paved courtyard. Both were swathed in coats constructed of dark material, heavily patched, and wore tight knitted hats pulled down to prominent eyebrows.
"Are you Vladha?" the left one asked again. His voice was low as the thunder, his eyes two glinting spots in the shadows of his face.
"Miss Vladha," I answered, already stepping back into my hallway, already reaching to close the heavy wooden door between us.
But large, meaty hands held it open, and wide arms kept it there.
"Landlord sent us," the man on the left said.
"He's not happy," said his fellow.
"Doesn't like tenants who cannot pay."
"Doesn't like losing kopacks."
"Doesn't like it at all."
I stumbled into the hallway, coat dropped to the floor. Suddenly they were inside, filling the small space, invading my home.
"You can't," I whispered.
They gave an identical snicker of contempt. "Oh, we can," the left one chuckled. "We do, in fact, more often than you'd think."
"Places like this." The other was walking down the hall, eyeing the walls, the pictures, the lamps. The little statue of princess Ludmilla that Mother had given me when I graduated, the best she could hope to afford. His eyes were like fingers the way they touched, the way they caressed and pried. "Always in demand. You're not the only one. Buy out of your range, live beyond your kopacks. But there's always someone willing to take what you drop. Always the next arrogant idiot with an overfull rublie in line."
"You wait right here."
The wall I stood against moved. Hands reached from the marble and wallpaper. They gripped my arms, clutched at my waist and thighs. The man chuckled as I strained but had no way to hold back the pions, no way to calm my own wall into submission.
"What have we got, then?" He followed his fellow into my bedroom and left me pinned to the hallway, straining like a fly in a web.
My rublie felt heavy in the pocket of my pants, but I knew with a horrible certainty that they wouldn't go for it. There was nothing left in it, not enough, at least, to cover the debts I had so wilfully ignored. The rent, the water, the pion heat. How many kopacks did I owe and what would these men do to get them?
Unwelcome hands rattled through my bedroom. Voices laughed. Something smashed. I tried to ignore them, as though I could will them out of my home, out of my memory, by staring at the closed wooden door.
"Hey!" A gruff voice spoke and a large hand gripped the side of my head, shaking until I snapped my gaze to his face. "None of that!"