A Day's Work

Tam had asked twice whether he could sit up front.

Rin had said yes both times.

He was still standing behind her seat.

“There’s a seat.”

“I know.”

“It’s right there.”

“I know.”

Rin left him to it.

Pod Twelve ran quiet with two aboard. The hull ticked now and then as it warmed and cooled, small sounds passing through the metal. Rin only noticed because Tam had noticed them an hour ago and had been pretending not to ever since.

Outside, the field was still nothing.

That was normal. Nothing for a long time, and then everything at once, the way a room is there all at once when somebody opens the door.

“Twelve, you’re high.”

Nove’s voice came easily over the channel.

“I’m not.”

“You’re a little high.”

“I’m exactly where I mean to be.”

“That’s what high looks like.”

Rin did not answer that.

Off to her left, the Kettle held the same line it had been holding all morning. It was blunt and old and patient, with the winch drum sitting wound and idle on its back. It had been the Kettle since before Rin was crew, and she had never once heard anybody call it anything else.

Marek came over the channel.

“Nove.”

“Hm.”

“Frames.”

“Frames are out.”

“All of them?”

There was a pause.

“Most of them.”

“Ah.”

“Two are thinking about it.”

“Then we’ll wait for them to finish.”

Tam laughed before he could stop himself.

When Rin glanced back, he looked as though he had been caught doing it. She turned forward again and let him have the back of her head.

The field began as a smear of grey.

Then the grey broke into shapes, and the shapes became hulls, dark and pitted, turning slowly against the stars. Each one kept to its own patient hour.

Most were the long kind. Some had broken into two or three pieces that had drifted apart and were still travelling together out of habit.

Between them, easier to miss, was the ice.

Dull lumps under coats of dust. Some no bigger than a bread basket. Some the size of a workshop.

The sun was up there among the others, the brightest of them and no warmer. Rin found it without meaning to, the way she checked a clock, and then put her attention back on the field.

“Nove has the ice. Twelve, take the long one on the near side,” Marek said.

“The turning one?”

“They’re all turning, girl.”

“The one that’s showing off.”

“That one.”

Rin brought Twelve round.

The wreck came up under her, end over slow end, big enough that the stars went away on one side. Its broken flank passed across the pod’s forward glass, then the long dark back of it, then the broken flank again.

“Kettle’s throwing,” Nove said.

The line went out from the Mule and struck somewhere beyond the wreck’s middle.

For a while nothing happened.

Then the slow turn thought better of itself and stopped.

The hull hung there, steady, exactly as dead as it had been while it was moving.

“It’s still,” Marek said.

“It’s still.”

Behind her, Tam had his helmet half on and the chinstrap wrong.

Rin did not look round. “Other way.”

He turned it without answering.

Inside the pod there had been ticking metal and Nove talking. Outside, the quiet changed. There was Rin’s breathing and the small tug of the tether against her hip, and when somebody spoke there was the channel.

Nothing else.

She went along the wreck’s flank hand over hand and put her palm flat against the plating.

Cold.

She moved along and did it again.

Cold.

Tam followed to the third handhold. He was slower, doing everything correctly and twice. He laid his hand down like a man setting a cup on a table and waited.

“Flat. Not fingertips,” Marek said.

Tam flattened his hand.

“Anything?”

“No.”

“Good. That’s most of them.”

Rin carried on.

A long scar ran down one side of the wreck, older than anything she could put a number to. Dust sat in every seam, the same fine grey that came home on the pod and got wiped off by whoever had the panel.

Tam kept his hand down at every hold.

He was too careful. Everyone was, the first few runs. Then one day they weren’t, and you had to tell them to slow down.

Rin found what she wanted three ribs back from the neck of the thing.

She set the cutting collar against the plate. It made its circle. She lifted the disc away and put it aside, and it went off turning gently on its own.

Tam watched it go for longer than he needed to.

Inside, the good mass sat where the good mass sat. Rin worked the piece loose and passed it out. Tam sent it up the line to the Kettle’s hold.

That was that.

“Twelve’s got hers,” Nove said. “Hers is smaller than mine.”

“Everything’s smaller than yours, Nove, you’ve got a dozen arms,” Marek said.

“Ten.”

“Ten.”

“Two are still thinking.”

Rin went back down the hull the other way.

It was worth doing both sides. Tam had not found anything yet, and there was no hurry.

He reached the broken end before she did.

Then he stopped.

He put his hand down again and left it there.

“Rin.”

“Yes.”

“It’s warm.”

She came along the hull and put her hand beside his.

It was warm. Not much. The way a cup is warm an hour after somebody drank out of it.

Neither of them moved their hands.

“How warm?” Marek asked.

“Warm.”

“Then cut it out and stop showing me your manners.”

Rin took the collar from her belt and set it against the plate.

Tam held the light steady. He did not need to do that. She let him do it anyway.

The collar made its circle. Rin lifted the plate clear.

Inside, in a cradle built for it by somebody who had never heard of any of them, sat the brick.

Dull. Squared off. Fitted at the corners.

She worked it free and put it into Tam’s hands.

He held it the way people held something hot. Then he realised it wasn’t and shifted his grip, both gloves underneath.

“It’s heavy.”

“They are.”

“I thought it would be —”

He stopped.

There was no end to that sentence he liked.

“First one?” Marek asked.

“First one.”

“Then you carry it in.”

“I can put it in the hold.”

“You can.”

The channel stayed quiet for a moment.

“Or you can carry it in.”

He carried it in.

The pod’s docking collar mated to the Mule’s, and the hatches opened between, which meant the smell got through, which was the whole reason anybody ever docked early.

Marek had wedged a covered pot into a crate with a folded blanket round it. He ladled from it one bowl at a time with the seriousness of a man doing the most important work of the day.

There were wrapped rolls, still soft. There was more than four people could eat, which there always was.

Nove came down from the frames with her sleeves shoved up. She took a bowl in each hand without asking whose the second one was.

“Sit down, Nove,” Marek said.

“I’m sitting.”

“You’re hovering with your knees bent.”

Nove sat.

The three warm bricks lay along the wall out on the deck. Tam’s was on the end. He had put it there himself.

He had checked on it twice.

“You’ll want to stop doing that,” Nove said.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You looked at it.”

“I looked past it.”

Nove turned to the room.

“He looked at it.”

“Leave him be,” Marek said. “The first thing I ever brought home was a hinge.”

Rin already knew about the hinge.

She settled back to hear it anyway.

“A door hinge,” Marek went on. “Off one of the big ones. I had it in both arms coming down the corridor, and I wouldn’t let anybody take it.”

“What did you do with it?” Tam asked.

“My mother put it on a door. It is still on the door.”

“Which door?”

“If I tell you, you’ll go and look at it, and then you’ll be a man who has looked at a hinge.”

“I’d like to look at it.”

“Everyone would like to look at it. That’s how doors survive.”

Rin tore a roll in half.

“Jun would ask which door.”

“Jun did ask which door. Jun walked me back to my own door last night asking things, and it took an hour.”

“How long is it usually?” Nove asked.

“Nine minutes.”

He said it comfortably, the way he would report weather that suited him.

They finished the rolls. Nove took the last of what was in the pot and said it was only because leaving that little would be insulting.

Marek examined the empty pot.

“The pot is empty.”

That was how he ended things.

Everyone drew their own conclusions.

Later, with Twelve away from the field and Tam finally in the front seat, Rin opened the watch channel.

“Suda.”

“Rin.”

“What did we send you?”

There was a short pause. Suda never guessed at anything, and she never took long either.

“Two hundred and eleven of ice. Six bricks.”

Before Rin could take a breath, Nove came over the channel.

“Is that good?”

“It’s six,” Suda said, and was gone.

Tam had the brick on his knees with both hands resting over it. He had stopped pretending he was not looking at it.

“Is that good?”

“It’s a day.”

The bays smelled of cold metal and warm dust, which was what coming home smelled like.

Rin walked the length of Pod Twelve with one hand against the hull. It had come back grey in every seam. Somebody from the next shift would wipe it down and think nothing of it, the same way she had wiped it and thought nothing of it when she was Tam’s age and everything about it was new.

She put her palm against the maintenance panel.

“Shipmind.”

A soft chime answered.

“Twelve is in. Six bricks and the ice to the shops.”

“Boarding Pod Twelve. Logged to Salvage Watch, Shift Two.”

The panel settled to its resting green.

A maintenance robot stood halfway across the bay with one arm already unfolded, waiting for her to be finished with the pod.

Rin stepped clear.

It came on.

In the corridor, Marek had stopped to talk to two people who had been waiting for the Kettle. They were no longer talking about the Kettle at all.

He had one roll left.

He was giving it away.

Tam went past carrying the brick against his chest.

Without breaking off his conversation, Marek called after him.

“Workshop three. Theirs went cold last year and they’ve been sulking since.”

“Workshop three.”

“Ask for Delo. Don’t let him tell you it’s the wrong size.”

Tam stopped and looked back.

“Is it the wrong size?”

“It’s a brick, Tam.”

Tam carried on.

A woman came the other way with an armful of laundry. He turned sideways to get past her, apologised to her, struck the wall lightly with one shoulder and apologised to that too.

Rin watched him go down the corridor with the brick still held against his chest.

Later, in her bunk, she got out the logbook.

She turned to the next clean line and wrote the date, the field, six bricks and two hundred and eleven of ice.

Her mother’s hand ran up the facing page in short, flat entries. Counts and dates and nothing else. Her grandmother’s hand came before that, and none of them had ever put a name into the book that did not have to be there.

Rin looked at the line she had written.

Then she went back and added:

Tam found one.

It was not the sort of thing the logbook was for.

She left it in anyway.