drawn on it like my patterns, only more random. I was fascinated.
'Where did you get that?' I asked. I reached out to touch it, and he let me take it. I held it up to the light. The little bits were a faded green, like the moss-in-a-can.
'Plants,' he said. 'they're called ‘plants. ''
'Plants,' I said. 'Snazzy. '
'A-yap,' he said. 'the old world was full of them. '
'Who told you that?' I asked.
'The brainiacs,' he said. I stood up and hugged him tight.
'Make some plants with the factories,' he said. 'they'll be pretty. '
So we did. This time, the eggs were smaller, and we hid everywhere in the city. Niles helped me to make them. He understood the rightness of the animal bits, but to me, plants made more sense. They didn't move, except to stretch for sun or rain. Wherever you put them, that's where they stayed, just like murals.
The ache almost went all-away, for a while.
The little plant-eggs hatched and grew quickly all around the city. We Made so much more of them, and they lasted good. the tin men noticed them. Everywhere, arties were seeing the tin men staring at the little plants growing bigger every day. They didn't know what to do, but all arties knew what happened then: the tin men asked the Elderfolk.
While I Made plants, the other arties Made more little animals. Some that flew in the air, and some that could squeeze into tiny little cracks. This time, the little animals didn't die. They grew bigger too, like the plants had to come first for them to work. Niles said it was a secret why, and wouldn't tell me, which made me angry, but the ache was staying away so long as I made my plants, so I couldn't fight him over it.
Boo spent more time with me, too, when I was Making plants. She loved their shapes and would smile and point and smile whenever we found another one growing up in the cracks out on the street. One night, I even woke up and saw her toying with one of the silver disks when she thought no one was watching. The shapes on the screen were colorful, but they had no coherence, no pattern.
Sad, sad little Boo. She wanted to Make plants and animals too, but she was just a melodie and she couldn't Make.
I was in the white of Making when I heard the shouts coming down the stairs. 'Tin men coming! Tin men!' they cried.
'There's a brainiac with them!' Zinger shouted.
Everyone scattered like moss-dust on the breeze, no direction to go, just bumping around in the station. Only one way out, up, and the tin men had it blocked. I took the silver disk I was using and one of the factories and pushed them into the flooded part of the station, then tried to run for the door.
The tin men galomp-ed down the steps carefully, using their long arms to steady themselves on the uneven steps. They had three brainiacs with them. Each held their big heads in their hands and moaned from all the effort of walking. Brainiacs didn't like to do that if they could help it.
The tin man corralled us arties up into a tight bunch and others stole away with the disks and factories. One sheriff tin man, gold-coated and round, prodded the brainiacs, and they pointed at Niles, all three at the same time. Then the tin men took Niles too. We arties tried to fight then, and Boo did too. But we're not made for fighting, and we all hurt ourselves on the cold sleek shells of the tin men. When Niles was gone, they let us a-go, and left following the sheriff.
We wailed and cried. 'Doomed,' Topps moaned. 'Doomed. '
The ache wasn't over us yet, but it would be now.
'Every time we find something new to Make, they take it away,' Tess said, dabbing tears from her eyes.
'The tin men don't care,' Zinger said.
'Of course they don't,' I said. 'They only do what the Elderfolk tell them to do. And the Elderfolk don't care. they don't care about anything but themselves. '
'We have to get Niles back,' Topps said, starting to cry again. 'Arties are too dumb on their own. Too dumb!'
I snapped up at that. 'No!' I said. 'Arties aren't dumb! Niles said!'
'Doesn't matter anymore,' Zinger said. 'Niles is gone to the pokey-pokey. They'll never let him out. '
'Then we get him out,' said a tiny voice I had never heard before. It half-sung the words, just like a melodie did whenever it talked, but the sound was wrong, harsh around the edges. It was a bad Make.
Boo didn't look scared. She was younger than all of us, but she wasn't scared. Everyone tried to wipe up tears then, just so they didn't look like little babies when the real baby didn't even cry.
'Boo can talk!' Zinger said after a long silence.
'Of course she can talk,' I snapped. 'But she didn't want to before now. This is important. '
Boo nodded. 'Hurts. My—' she touched her throat, 'not made right. ' She winced from the effort of talking. I grabbed her and held her close.
'Boo is right,' I said. 'We arties have to get Niles back. '
'But how?' asked Tess.
I didn't know. I looked at Boo. Boo didn't know.
'We'll ask the brainiacs,' I said then. It was what Niles had done, and they owed us after turning Niles in.
The brainiacs spent most of their times at the libraries, and there was one on P-Street that I had remembered because it had pretty statues on each side of its big doors. Boo and I marched inside, past the tin men that watched the door, and inside, before they could get a good sniff of us. The first brainiac we saw, we cornered against a shelf. She was locked into her little wheelchair and couldn't move very fast.
'Tell us how to rescue Niles,' I demanded. Boo made menacing gestures with her hands that she must have learned from watching thicknecks.
'Who?' said the brainiac. 'Oh, that arty kid with the stolen gengineering kits? He's gone up-tower to see Council. The Elderfolk are real pissed about that little scheme of his. Not even a platoon of thicknecks could get in there. The Tower is crawling with tin men. '
I shuddered. The Council were the Elderfolk to the Elderfolk. They told everyone what to do. If they had Niles, then there really was no hope. The aching bent me over in two like a folded piece of paper.
Boo shook her head and pointed at the brainiac. I guessed at what she was trying to say, and fought through my pains.
'You're smarter than arties and the just-plains. The Council is just a bunch of just-plains all grown up. You can help us rescue him,' I said, not really believing but hoping.
The brainiac sighed and nodded. 'I can think of dozens, thousands of ways to free your friend, but logistically, you arties can't manage it. '
'What's logistically?' I said.
'Tools, resources,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'You're just a bunch of stupid beatniks. Maybe if you still had some gengineering factories, you could make something, but—'
'I hid one,' I said quickly. 'Under the water. When the Tin Men came. '
'Well then, you've ruined it. It's no good. '
'But you could fix it,' Boo rasped in sing-song. the brainiac nodded.
'I could fix it, but then you'd need to make something that could get you into the Tower without having to fight tin men, and that'd be almost impossible,' said the brainiac.
'Making is what arties do. You fix the factory, and we'll do the rest,' I said. I could see the shapes forming already. My fingers itched to work the disk.
'Fine, but this makes the arties and the brainiacs even,' she said.
'Deal,' I said.
The tin men were killing all the animals and plants in the city with ick. Someone must have changed their orders. They weren't supposed to do that.
It hurt us arties to know, but it kept the tin men busy while we Made in shifts with the factory. We had a plan, one that the brainiacs thought would get us all tossed in the pokey, but Boo and I both believed it would work. The other arties made animals that would go into the Tower and distract, and I worked on special plants with
