Scrap 'N Scrap ran six locations across New Eridu, if you believed the business registry, which most people in the outer ring didn't consult and most people in the inner ring had never heard of.
The one nearest the outer ring boundary was a narrow storefront on Boundary Road, District 9, wedged between a gas station and a Bangboo repair outfit that smelled strongly of solder and optimism.
Its sign was hand-painted, slightly crooked, and its window displayed a rotating selection of secondhand appliances in various states of being either for sale or cannibalised for parts. It was difficult to tell which was which, and Cael suspected that was intentional.
He pushed the door open. A small bell chimed. The interior was cool and cluttered, every surface occupied by components, stripped casing, wire coils, and the occasional piece of kit that had no obvious civilian application unless the civilian in question was doing something the HMB preferred civilians not do.
Behind the counter, sorting a tray of capacitors with the methodical contentment of something that had found its purpose, was a Bangboo.
It was roughly knee height, round-bodied in the way most Bangboo were, with a casing that had been painted a shade of green that had faded to something closer to the colour of old money. It wore a small apron with a pocket that currently held a screwdriver and what appeared to be a half-eaten rice cracker.
When Cael walked in it looked up with the particular attentiveness of a Bangboo that had been instructed to pay attention, and said, in a voice like a radio finding a signal:
"Ehn-nah-ehn-na! Ehn-na-nha. Ehn-na ehn-na-nah." (Welcome to Scrap 'N Scrap! The Fixer is remote today. One moment.)
George the Bangboo set down the capacitor tray, produced a compact comms unit from the apron pocket with the air of someone who had done this many times, and placed it on the counter facing Cael. The unit's display flickered on. The video feed was deliberately low resolution, pointed at a ceiling he couldn't identify, and the voice that came through it was run through enough signal processing that it could have belonged to almost anyone.
Almost. He'd been dealing with the Fixer for two years and had developed, in that time, a working theory that the processing was heavier on some days than others, but he kept that observation to himself on the grounds that it was not his business.
"You're back earlier than I expected," the Fixer said.
"Hey, what do you take me for? Is this how you treat your loyal customer?"
"You're still walking, so I'll take that as acceptable losses. Do you have it?"
He set the extraction case on the counter. George the Bangboo immediately waddled over and began running a scanner over the seal with the focused energy of something that had also been instructed to do that.
"Module's intact. Encryption's intact. I didn't read it."
"I know you didn't. You don't have the clearance and you're not stupid enough to try anyway, which is one of several reasons you're still on my list." A pause, brief, the kind that meant she was checking something. "George, confirm the seal."
"Ehn-na-nha," (Seal confirmed intact,) George announced, in the tone of a Bangboo announcing something it found genuinely satisfying. "Ehn-nha-na-ehn-nha." (Commission item authenticated.)
"George's pleasure is noted," the Fixer said. "Cael. The commission is complete. Payment transfers in the usual window."
"Twenty-four hours."
"Twenty-four hours. Unless you'd like to dispute the timeline, in which case I'll remind you that the previous holder…"
"I'm not disputing anything."
"Good. You never do, which is the other reason you're still on my 'good' list."
George had finished scanning and returned to its capacitor tray with the serene efficiency of something that had completed its task and was moving on. Cael leaned against the counter and looked around the shop. It was, as all the Scraps N' Scraps locations he'd visited were, immaculately cluttered: every piece of apparent disorder was actually organised in a system that made sense to someone who wasn't him.
"How many locations are you running right now?"
"That's not a question that's relevant to your commission."
"Oh don't take this the wrong way. I'm not asking about my commission. I'm asking how many shops you're running remotely with Bangboo staffs."
"George and the others is not just 'staff.' They are all an essential operational partner."
From across the shop, George made a sound that a Bangboo makes when it agrees with something and is too occupied with capacitors to say so at length.
"I'm sure George is. How many?"
"Enough. Unless you're looking to do commissions elsewhere. Well knowing you, I say you fit in just fine here."
He looked at the comms unit, at the deliberately uninformative ceiling behind it, at the voice modulation that told him exactly nothing about where she actually was.
The Fixer was, in the parlance of the outer ring contractor network, a fixed point: always available, always accurate, never present. Contractors talked about her the way they talked about hollow geometry: as a fact of the environment rather than a person. Nobody he knew had ever met her in person. Nobody he knew had ever seriously tried.
He had, once, mentioned this to a aquantance who had responded with the look of someone who considered that kind of curiosity professionally reckless.
He'd thought about it since, occasionally, mostly in moments like this when the signal processing slipped slightly and she sounded, very briefly, like a specific person rather than an abstraction. He kept those moments filed away. He wasn't sure why.
"There was a fight outside the access point," he said.
"The Kettlemen and Sable Column dispute, yes. I'm aware. They've been contesting that loading bay for three weeks."
"You knew about it before you gave me the commission?"
"I did."
"And you didn't mention it."
"Would it have changed your approach?"
He thought about the gantry, the gap between the fighters, the ice shard that had grazed his heel.
"No."
"Then it wasn't relevant information. I give you what's relevant. Everything else is noise." Another pause. "You came through the fight rather than around it."
"Around it would have taken me past the Kettlemen's lookout position on the north wall, which would have meant a conversation I didn't have time for."
"Through it instead."
"I wasn't in the fight. I was in the same space as the fight. Had to put down one of them, but yeah I could use a heads up next time."
"Well did they notice you?."
"The Sable Column didn't see enough of me to notice anything."
The signal processing shifted slightly. What came through it might, in a different register, have been amusement.
"You're the only contractor currently on my active list who I don't have to caveat," she said. "I give most of them commissions with a footnote. 'Exercise caution.' 'Assess before entering.' 'Do not engage the locals.' I gave you this commission with no footnotes and here you are."
"I-Is that a compliment?"
"It's a simple observation, my dear. Don't let it make you careless."
"I'm never careless."
"No. You're the other one. The kind that thinks being careful about the right things means you can afford to be casual about everything else." A beat. "It's a more interesting problem."
He didn't answer that. She wasn't wrong, and arguing with observations that were accurate was a waste of both their time, which she had told him at least twice and which he had quietly agreed with.
George had finished the capacitor tray and was now, for reasons of its own, rearranging a shelf of stripped power cells with an expression of deep professional satisfaction. The shop bell hadn't rung since Cael walked in. It was mid-morning; the outer ring was awake but not yet busy. Through the window he could see the repair shop across the way opening its shutters, and a pair of HMB perimeter technicians walking the boundary marker line with the expressions of people whose shift was going well.
Five years ago, that line had been further out. Ten years ago, further still. The hollows expanded when they weren't managed and contracted when they were, and the outer ring Districts 8 through 12 had been watching the line move for as long as anyone who lived there could remember. The HMB gave press releases about containment benchmarks. The outer ring watched the amber markers and drew its own conclusions.
"Was there something else?" he asked. "You're still on."
The Fixer was quiet for a moment. Not the processing delay that sometimes interrupted the signal, but the specific quality of quiet that meant she was deciding something.
"There's a secondary item," she said. "Not a commission yet. A briefing."
"What's the difference?"
"A commission, I pay you to retrieve something. A briefing, I pay you to listen to something and tell me whether you're willing to retrieve it." She paused. "The two are usually the same thing. In this case I wanted to separate them."
Cael went still, the way he went still in hollows when the geometry shifted and he needed to process new information before moving.
"Why?"
"Because the item in question is a W-engine."
He said nothing.
"A W-engine of a particular grade, in a hollow of a particular depth, with a particular history."
"What kind of history?"
"The kind," the Fixer said, "that has already made seven contractors before you decide whether they wanted the commission."
The shop was very quiet. George's power cells clicked softly against each other as it arranged them.
"And the seven?"
The Fixer let the silence run for exactly one beat.
"None of them decided no."
He looked at the comms unit. The uninformative ceiling. The voice that told him nothing except everything it was choosing not to say.
"I'm listening," he said.