Part 7 (1/2)
Orville. He must truly be rattled if he was using his real name.
There was a light tap on the door, and Maynard, G.o.d himself, opened it up.
”You're awake.”
”Yes.” Tinker wondered what G.o.d wanted with little her.
”I didn't make the connection between you and the the Tinker until Windwolf told me about some of what you did to keep him alive.” Tinker until Windwolf told me about some of what you did to keep him alive.”
She shrugged. ”Happens all the time. No one expects the legendary Tinker to be a little snot-nosed girl.”
No smile. Maybe G.o.d didn't have a sense of humor. She often suspected that.
”How old are you?” Maynard asked. ”Sixteen? Seventeen?”
”Eighteen, as of last month.”
”Parents?”
Little alarms were going off. ”Where's this going?”
”I like to know who I'm working with.”
Make that big alarms. ”Since when am I working with you?”
”Since today. I've got a bit of a mystery I need solved, and maybe you can help. They say you're fit to leave.”
He left it nebulous as to whether this was a declinable personal request or an official demand. Maynard certainly wasn't someone she wanted to alienate; as G.o.d of Pittsburgh, he could make her life h.e.l.l. Now that she was a legal adult, she had nothing to hide. At least, she didn't think she did.
”Okay. Let me figure out what they did with my clothes, and you can show me this mystery.”
Clothes found, and Maynard carefully shooed off, she got up to change.
Under the cotton gown she was naked. She put on her panties and bra without taking off the gown, eyeing the door-which had no lock. Luckily no one burst in to catch her dressing. She pulled on her carpenter's pants, and then in one quick motion pulled off the gown and slipped into her team s.h.i.+rt. With her back to the door, she took her time b.u.t.toning it up.
The hospice had cleaned her clothes, managing to get all of Windwolf's blood off her carpenter's pants and to find a replacement for the bottom b.u.t.ton of her team s.h.i.+rt. It had gone missing weeks ago, and she'd been at a loss as to how to replace it. Cleaning clothes she could do. Repairing was something she could only do to machines.
She stepped into her steel-toed boots, sealed them, and clonked about the room, feeling more able to take on Maynard.
The contents of her pockets sat elegantly arranged in an elegant rosewood box. Elves stunned her sometimes. Most humans probably would have gone through her pockets and tossed most of her treasures. The hospice staff, however, had not only cleaned all the old grease-coated nuts and bolts, but had properly mated them together, and then arranged them by size on green velvet. They looked like bits of silver jewelry. Her spare handmade power lead (extremely crude looking but actually poly-coated gold) had been coiled and tied off with a strand of blue silk. They'd even kept the interesting-looking twig she'd pocketed the day before Shutdown, which now seemed weeks ago, instead of two days. It pleased her (she would have been unable to rebuild three separate projects without the various bolts), but still it weirded her out. When one was immortal, apparently, one had time to waste on other people's little details of life.
She pocketed her eclectic collection and went out into the hall to find Maynard waiting. He led the way out to the sun-blasted parking lot, towering over her. The flatbed was gone; Oilcan must have driven it back to the yard. Looking at the empty parking s.p.a.ce where the tow truck had sat made her feel horribly alone and vulnerable. Stripped of her powerful toys and standing beside Maynard, she felt all of her five feet nothing. Nathan was as tall as Maynard, but he was a friend, so she never felt particularly small around him. Maynard was EIA. Her grandfather had viewed all forms of government with deep suspicion, which she of course had inherited in some part. After her grandfather had died, and she had been left an orphan in a town that exiled stray human children, the EIA had grown to bogeyman proportions.
I have nothing to fear from the EIA now. She and Oilcan had coasted a year, staying low, until Oilcan hit eighteen. At that time he could stand as head of household, and they were legal again, barely. There was the little matter that they were living in separate houses by that time. Last month, though, she had finally turned eighteen herself.
Maynard traveled in style; a big, black, armored limo rolled up to the curb, stopping so that the back pa.s.senger door could swing open without hitting them, and not an inch farther away. Maynard indicated that she was to slide into the air-conditioned comfort first.
”Parents?” Maynard asked after they pulled out of the hospice's parking lot.
”I'm eighteen-a legal adult.” She tried dodging around the whole parent thing. G.o.ds knew it was far too complex to go into. ”I'm also a legal citizen: I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. I'm sole owner of Pittsburgh Sc.r.a.p and Salvage. I did a quarter million dollars in business last year, and all my taxes are paid.”
”Your cousin works for you?”
”Yeah.”
”Any other family?”
She tried to bluff him off. ”Should I save us both the effort and just dump a whole family history on you?”
”Like I said, I like to know who I'm working with.”
She considered him and decided that meant ”yes.” She made a note not to bluff with Maynard again. ”My grandfather had two kids: my father, Leonardo, and Oilcan's mom, Aunt Ada. That's all the family that I know of.”
”Oilcan?” Maynard lifted one eyebrow. ”Surely that's not his real name.”
Apparently the loss of their ID cards had slowed down the EIA network. ”No, it isn't. Aunt Ada was married to a man named John Wright. Oilcan's real name is Orville John Wright. I'm sure it was Grandpa's idea; he had a thing about inventors.”
”Orville Wright.” Maynard proved he had some sense of humor and smiled. ”I can see why he goes by Oilcan. How did you and Orville end up here in Pittsburgh? You're too young to immigrate.”
”Grandpa immigrated during the first year. I was born here. Oilcan came to live with us when I was six.”
”What about your parents? Both yours and Orville's?”
”Both my dad and Aunt Ada were murdered.”
”I'm sorry.” Maynard thought for a moment, and then c.o.c.ked his head. ”Not here in Pittsburgh, or I would have known about it.”
”My father was killed in Oakland before the first Startup. John Wright was a man with a temper; he killed Aunt Ada in Boston. I stayed with Lain when Grandpa went to Boston to get Oilcan; I've never been on Earth.”
Maynard looked at her for several minutes through narrowed eyes. ”Your father was killed-what-ten years before you were born?”
So, one couldn't slip things easily past this man. ”Yes. My grandfather never got over my father's death. Grandpa used cryogenically stored sperm to have my ovum inseminated in vitro ten years after my father died.”
”But your mother is still alive?”
”Technically, no.” Tinker sighed-so much for trying to avoid complexity. ”My birth mother wasn't the donor of the egg that my grandfather had inseminated. He also used a cryogenically stored egg. My real mother was also dead before I was born.”
Maynard stared at her for several minutes before asking, ”Did your parents, your real parents, even know one another?”
”I don't think so.”
”Your parents, who had never met, were dead when you were conceived?”
”Yeah.”
”Doesn't that bother you?”