Matter Circus depended for its existence on the guild of trash-pickers who went into the wild to scour the junk piles and treasure hoards of fallen civilizations. (The fact that these civilizations all rose and fell long after the Anth remained, to me, a dizzying vexation.) They sought spools of corroded wire as eagerly as golden idols; in fact, the wire earned a richer balance at the recycling center. The wall of ferrous metal that brought Ariel out of the bog had been a great haul for some trash-picker, ages ago. Spool or idol, the trash-pickers hauled it back, deposited it with Comptroller
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