We were all sulking in Niles' station, feeling the pain of not-Making like aching all over and Niles got mad and stomped off without even waking up Boo. We were a little scared, because Niles only left Boo behind when he was going to do something that might get him sent into the pokey for a long long time, and without Niles to keep everything straight, we'd all be in trouble. Boo woke up while we were fighting about what to do and came and cuddled up to me. I could almost feel the music vibrating through her into me. It made me feel a little sick.
"Don't know why she likes you so much," Tops said with a sneer. "Your Make sucks the big dong. "
I shrugged. Niles knew my Make was okay. Didn't much care if Tops and the other arties did. "I don't know," I said.
"Maybe because Mona isn't a ‘big dong' like you," sneered Tess. She helped whenever the boys thought they could gang-up on me. "And Mona's Make is okay. You're just scared because Niles is doing something bad. "
"Shut up," Tops said and turned away. Tess smiled at me a little. I tried to smile back, but the symmetry felt off.
Boo tapped me on the arm and I looked down. She raised her eyebrows at me, then looked at the steps to the street. I nodded. "He went upside for a while. He'll be fine. " She didn't look convinced. Neither was I. We held each other and it made the ache a little better.
I worried sometimes that Boo felt that way all the time. She was a melodie and had to Make just like we poor arties did, but nobody ever heard her sing and bang or anything. Broken little thing made me feel sorry and sad. It was a good thing Niles took care of her, or she'd be used up and swept away just like our mossy Makes.
Nobody went home to their Elderfolk while we waited for Niles to come back. That was a rule. If Niles never came back, then we wouldn't have to. Nobody wanted to see the meanies anyway. They had us Made and then hated us afterwards, which wasn't fair. All arties know you love the things you Make no matter what. But Elderfolk were just-plains all grown up and they didn't make any sense at all. Some of the younger arties started to talk about going back, but we older arties who knew Niles better said no, that we'd wait.
Three days passed before Niles came back. It was dark and everyone was sleeping but me, because little Boo's music itched in my brain. He came in carrying big boxes, and I cried big tears of happy at that. He'd brought some new supplies, and we'd be Making again in no time flat. I watched him for a while, carrying in box after box, and finally I fell asleep. It felt good knowing he was back.
In the morning, laughing woke me up. I turned to see what arty could be so rude. Niles was sitting in a corner with his back to the room, playing with something. He never laughed when he was Making so he had to be playing.
I left Boo to cuddle into the pile of other arties and crawled over to see what Niles was doing. He had some weird gadget, a silver disk covered in letter-buttons and it was projecting onto the wall some kind of tri-dimensional animal-thing. It had three legs and one arm and was galloping in place like a creature with three legs would, a kind of hop between steps. I laughed too when I looked at the weird little thing.
"What is it?" I asked in a whisper.
"I Made it, just now," Niles said. "It's complicated, but the brainiacs on P-Street showed me how. I only sort of made it. It's just pretend now, but I can send it into the factories," he pointed at the stack of boxes next to us, "then it'll Make for real. "
"Wow," I said. I couldn't think of anything else to speak. Niles was like that, always thinking ahead of the Elderfolk and the tin men.
"Does it help the ache?" I asked, my pulse racing. I almost felt good, even with the hurt, just at the chance.
"A-yep," he said. "Feels good. Like sculpting, sort of. But you can paint on them too. Paint in texture, scales, hair, you know. All sorts of things. But there's a sense to it, like how you know good colors going together?"
"Yes?"
"Like that. You can't just do anything," he said. He nodded, and pressed a large button on the disk. Words came up and the creature disappeared.
"What's that say?" I asked.
"Dunno," he answered. "But the brainiacs said if I push that button, the factory will Make. "
A humming sound came just then from one of the boxes, and then the other arties started to stir and wake.
"Here," Niles said, handing me the disk. "I'll teach you how it works. We have to teach everybody. The tin men can't kill animals besides pests, you know!"
We pretend-Made all sorts of little creatures on the screen, then pushed the button that Made for real. The little factories, we set up in one corner of the station, and they hummed and popped out little eggs of all rainbow-colors every few hours. Niles sent the little kids out onto the street with the eggs to hide them where the tin men and Elderfolk wouldn't see.
"The eggs will hatch and our Makes will come out alive, and the tin men can't do anything about it!" He said. His eyes were shiny. It made me ache a little, and I worried that maybe pretend-Making didn't count for arties. But Niles was always making me ache a little like that, especially when he left. It scared me, that maybe I was like little Boo and something wasn't right with me. Bum batch.
Pretty soon, we started seeing the little animals around the City. They weren't good Makes, though. They stumbled into traffic sometimes and got splattered. They fell off of roofs, got tangled in wires and cooked like bad soytein on a hot plate. They weren't there in the head. And they starved. Not a lot of food out in the city just for the taking. They couldn't take chits and buy it.
We were stumped. The tin men weren't doing anything, but our little Makes couldn't last on their own. I hated so much seeing them laying dead in gutters, in the street drains. Their little selves were all over, stinking and falling apart like wind-worn paints.
"I have an idea," I said to Niles after thinking as hard as I could. "Go to the brainiacs and ask them for help. They will tell us what we can do right. "
Niles thought for a moment and shook his head. "No. This is an arty problem. "
"But arties are too stupid," I said, raising my voice so everyone could hear it.
Niles bared his teeth at me, and I cried out, scrambling away from him. "Arties aren't stupid!" he shouted. "Arties aren't stupid!"
But we are, I said to my own head. We are not smart like brainiacs. I ran away, back to my stupid Elderfolks, but even they were smarter than arties.
I was drawing on the sidewalk, just to ease the ache, when Niles found me. I had stolen a little bit of charcoal from the crematorium and kept it in my pocket. I only used it when things were really bad, really really. And now I didn't know what to do.
"Your repeating. patterns?" Niles said. "What do you call them?"
I shrugged. "Can't think of words for it. Maybe your brainiac friends could guess. "
He frowned. "they could, but who cares?" He sat beside me and took out a piece of old paper. It had shapes 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.