Debris by Jo Anderton Read Free Book Online Page A

fingers again. Twisted. Stunted. But fingers. A few days, and I could bend my left knee. I slid from my bed each morning and struggled the length of the apartment, moving, walking as much as I could. Gradually, my strength grew. I cleaned my wounds, washing the bandages in my bathroom sink. I stared at myself in the mirror each morning, wondering what kind of scars would they leave.
    Â Â Then I sat in the study, shutters drawn and only one lamp burning low. I had to turn the lamp on manually: remove the small latch on the side of its base – the Otherdamned thing was stuck, and I snared a fingernail in the process – stick my finger in and twist and curse until the valve opened enough to allow the pions to flow. For countless days I did nothing but peer at its light and wonder why I could see it, but not the pions that drove it. I supposed that was the point. In a factory somewhere on the outskirts of the city pions were being asked to create this light. Then, when they knew what was expected of them and were ready to perform it, they were rushed down one of the many great systems that spread across the city, just so they could arrive here, in this lamp, to bind this light for me. I didn't really know what they were doing to create the light. I was an architect, not a lamplighter. The pions had to be generating some kind of reaction, inside that ornate glass tube on its sculptured brass fittings, but I didn't know what it was. I'd never bothered to learn.
    Â Â I thought about the pion-binder, sitting in a lamplight factory with hundreds of others all bound in complex critical circles, coaxing an enormous number of pions across Movoc-under-Keeper to give me this small amount of light. A man, I decided, after much staring and thinking, there in the semi-dark, balding and fat. With poor hygiene. The members of his circle can't stand the way he stinks. And he sits there, in seven-bell shifts, after which he is even more pungent, and earns maybe two hundred kopacks a day with the rest of them.
    Â Â I sat for days alone in the study, at least a sixnight and one, probably more. Days covering my wrists, ankles, waist and neck with blankets.
    Â Â What was I doing?
    Â Â Giving up? That didn't take long, did it, Tanyana? A little push, a few cuts, some creepy statue-men and a bit of new jewellery and already you're sitting in the dark nursing your misery. That's the Tanyana who worked her way to the centre of a nine point circle, is it? Did you win the contract to build Grandeur by sitting around? Do you remember how you did all that? Hard work, skill, determination. Hardly the traits of a debris collector.
    Â Â I stood, left the room, and opened the valves for every light in the apartment.
    Â Â I shouldn't be a debris collector. And I wouldn't be, if someone hadn't pushed me. If the veche knew I was telling the truth.
    Â Â I rinsed my face and hair in the bathroom basin, and rubbed as much of myself as I could with a wet towel. I worked honey-scented nut oil into my skin, and dabbed vanilla onto my neck and wrists. My stomach gurgled with awakening hunger at the smell, and I allowed myself a chuckle as I pulled open the lacquered closet. Bears growled down at me from its corners, their eyes inlaid with beechwood, their teeth glinting mother-of-pearl. My hands shook slightly as I pushed aside the highnecked navy jackets I had worn on construction sites. Instead, I pulled on thick pants and a pale angora sweater. I had lost weight, and even these small, shapeless clothes were baggy on me. I rubbed gel over my hands and ran them through my short blonde hair so it stuck out around my face, not that different from the sleep-messed look, to be honest. I owned little in the way of cosmetics and jewellery. Nothing dusky to compliment my pale, almost grey eyes. Nothing to cover the freckles and sunspots endemic of a fair complexion subjected to too many days working in the sun. The only adornment I had to