Chapter Six
Every now and then Garrett with his roboticized exploration of the flattened city found something of actual practical value, but perhaps even more interesting to the man were items that simply happened to strike his collector’s eye. Yes, the occasional useful tool or intact can of special-purpose machine lubricant was nice, but his deep-dug redoubt in the Marin Headlands already had been quite well stocked for tools, machinery of all kinds, and spare parts. His excavations sometimes yielded other, less utilitarian objects, though. And while collecting these various artifacts and oddments might not have been strictly necessary from the standpoint of physical survival, in the long run the mental benefits it brought were perhaps of even greater value.
The surface was grim—burned
