The Take

The collar went aboard last.

Rin set it in the rack, closed the catches, and put her hand against the frame.

It was seated properly.

She took it out and set it in again.

The catches closed in the same way. The collar sat square. Nothing had changed.

She moved on without noticing she had checked it twice.

In the passage below the bays, Ferris sat on a crate with a packed bag between his boots. He had found a place against the wall where he was not in anybody’s way. The bag looked ready to go below. Ferris did too.

Eleven had been the number for days.

He lifted two fingers.

Rin lifted two back.

That was the whole of it. Nothing she was flying out to do was going to give him a place to lie down, and neither of them had anything useful to say about that.

She kept walking.

At the Mule, Tam had the tow gear out again.

He packed the line, settled the throw, and closed the housing. Then he opened it and began again.

Nobody told him it had been right the first time.

On this run, everybody understood wanting to be sure.

Rin climbed into Twelve and went forward.

“Shipmind.”

A chime answered from the panel.

“Pod Twelve. Going out.”

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

The panel settled to green.

Six days of the file growing had brought them here.

The plan had come out of it the way a loaf came out of flour. Marek had laid it out at the drum with the ladle still in his hand. Nobody argued because there was nothing left for them to argue with. The file had done that work.

Not the carrier.

Not yet.

The smallest thing on the road.

Suda had read her page plain.

“One picker works the far edge of the shoal. Fourth from the tail. It goes out alone, it goes out furthest, and it stays out longest. The guards hold their weave at the carrier and have never once gone out after it. Sixteen loads on its page.”

Marek had rested the ladle across the drum.

“Then that’s the first bite. The little one that wanders.”

Now the Kettle moved out ahead of them, broad and dark. The Mule followed with Nove on the stick and Tam at the reel. Rin took Twelve to the far side.

They went wide.

Dark.

Patient.

They reached the shoal’s edge and ran cold.

Then they waited.

Most of the day passed that way.

The Mule held nearest the working ground. The Kettle stayed back, Marek watching the whole shape of things. Twelve kept to the far side, where Rin could see the road and the open dark beyond it.

The chain went on working.

The guards held their weave near the carrier. The pickers crossed between the road and the shoal. Nothing turned toward the three cold craft lying beyond the edge of the work.

Rin folded her hands in her lap.

There was nothing wrong with the controls. She knew that because she had checked them. Her hands did not need to know it again.

She breathed the way she breathed in a room where somebody was asleep.

Slowly. Quietly. As though the person might wake if she got it wrong.

Nove talked.

She kept a thin line of nothing much running over the channel so the waiting had something to stand on. The talk wandered through the weather inside the Mule, the poor manners of tow hooks, and Tam’s failure to understand bowls.

“You don’t herd them,” Nove said. “You stack them.”

Tam’s answer came too carefully. “They slide.”

“Only if they sense weakness.”

“They’re bowls.”

“That’s what they want you to think.”

Marek’s voice came warm and steady from the Kettle. “How many did you lose?”

There was a pause.

Tam cleared his throat close to his pickup. “Tam. Sixth.”

Nobody had asked who it was.

Nove did not laugh.

Rin looked across at the Mule, a dark shape beside the shoal, and understood what Nove was doing. A girl of twenty was keeping a frightened boy light enough that he would never know he had needed lifting.

“Nine,” Tam said.

“Nine is not a loss,” Nove said. “Nine is a lesson with edges.”

“One went under the vat.”

“To study it.”

“It stayed there.”

“Dedicated student.”

Tam’s next answer came easier.

The hours went by.

The wait remained.

Then Marek’s voice came in over Nove’s, and Nove stopped where she was.

“Quiet now. Here it comes.”

Rin unfolded her hands.

The Mite left the road on its own time.

Exactly as the file said.

It came out alone, small against the shoal, and went farther than the other pickers. Nothing on the road was smaller. Set beside Twelve it would not have looked much bigger than the pod. It did not hurry. It knew where it was going.

Rin knew the hull.

She knew the forward seam and the collar disc behind it. She knew where the cutting head folded. She knew the line of the drive housing and the shallow cradle that lay forward of it. She had opened Mites split by impact, Mites crushed at one end, Mites so old their plating came away under the hand.

All of them had been still.

This one reached the shoal and worked.

Its cutting head unfolded. It turned around a loose length of wreckage, set itself against the piece, and cut clean through. The motion was small and quick. No part of it was wasted.

The piece shifted free.

The Mite caught it.

Rin leaned toward the glass.

She had known what the tool was for. She had held its dead parts in both hands.

She had never seen it do its trade.

The Mite moved to the next piece. It cut, gathered, and settled the take against its body. Good work. Fast work.

Nove spoke from the Mule, her glass-voice flat.

“Warm. Same as the rest.”

“Working things run warm,” Marek said.

He said it the way anyone said a thing everybody knew. The channel moved past it.

“When it’s deep in the picking,” he said, “walk the Mule in behind. Between it and the road. Slow as weather.”

Nove acknowledged him.

The Mule began to move.

It did not come straight at the picker. It drifted into the space behind it, a cold dark shape with nothing lit and nothing turning. Tam kept the reel ready.

The Mite went on working.

One cut.

Another.

The last piece came free. The Mite drew it in, folded its head, and began the turn toward home.

Then it found the Mule.

The turn broke in the middle.

The cutting head stayed half-folded. The Mite twisted away from the road and put its whole small body into the drive.

It ran.

Not around the Mule.

Not back to the chain.

Out.

It left its work unfinished and bolted into the open dark as hard as it could go.

Something sat down low in Rin’s chest and stayed there.

Nobody spoke.

The Mule turned after it.

Twelve followed.

The Kettle came last, holding the road behind them.

The Mite was fast. Small drive flares showed at its rear, steady and hard, while the shoal fell away beneath it. It did not look back because it had nothing to look with. It simply ran.

Nove worked the Mule closer.

The Mite swerved.

The Mule swerved with it.

“Tam. On my call.”

Tam’s breathing came once over the channel and stopped.

Nove held the Mule through the next turn. The picker swung wide, corrected, and laid itself straight for three heartbeats.

“Now.”

The throw left the Mule.

Rin saw it go flat and true through the dark. The loop opened, crossed the space between them, and dropped over the Mite’s rear course.

It drew tight.

The pull came through the Mule. Its nose dipped, then rose as Nove caught it.

Inside Twelve there was nothing to hear. Rin watched the line stand hard between them, and found her hands had closed on nothing.

“It’s on,” Tam said.

Then, quietly, to nobody, “Sorry.”

No one asked him what for.

Suda’s voice arrived from home, clean and exact.

“Filed. Line on at six past.”

The Mite pulled.

The Mule leaned against it. The reel gave, caught, and gathered. The two craft swung together, then apart, joined by the taut line Rin could see and could not hear.

The picker swerved wide.

The reel paid out.

It swung back.

The reel drew in.

Again.

Again.

The old throw had taken, but taking was not holding. The Mite ran at the end of the line and spent every turn trying to find a shape the Mule could not follow.

Nove stayed with it.

Her voice came short now. “Reel?”

“Good.”

“Heat?”

“Good.”

The picker snapped to one side. The Mule rolled after it. Rin felt Twelve’s own turn through her seat as she followed, keeping wide enough not to cross the pull.

Then the Mite’s cutting head unfolded.

It did not open toward the shoal.

It folded back against its own body and laid the edge against the line.

Tam’s answer came late.

“It’s cutting.”

Marek’s voice stayed level the whole way through the words, which was how everyone knew.

“Cutting is the whole of its trade. A picker that snags is a picker that cuts itself loose. That line is not going to hold it.”

Nove pulled the Mule through another swing. “How long?”

“Less than you’d like.”

The plan had been three things at the drum. Find the one that wandered. Come between it and its road. Put the line across it.

Then Marek had said the part that came after.

“Past that, we’ll be learning.”

The plan had run out under their feet.

Marek came back on the channel.

“It doesn’t come home running. That stands, whatever else happens. Nobody tows a live one into the town. It stops out here, or we cut it loose ourselves and go home empty.”

Nove had both hands full of the stick. Rin could hear the effort in the spaces between her words.

“Nothing we own stops a machine.”

Rin keyed the channel.

“We stop them every day.”

The channel went quiet.

Rin had not known she was going to say it.

The answer had come up whole, in the flat voice she used for calling a cut.

“You open the seam and you pull the brick. I’ve pulled a thousand of them.”

Marek answered at once.

“Off the dead.”

“The seam’s in the same place.”

Her hand was already turning Twelve.

The Mite swerved. The Mule followed. The line gave, gathered, and gave again.

Rin brought the pod down toward the running hull.

“Rin. Twelve. Going alongside.”

Nobody answered her.

The call belonged to Marek. Everyone on the channel knew what kind of call it was.

“Girl.”

One word.

Rin sat inside the breath after it with her hand on the stick.

He had taught her the telling. He had taught her the trade. Both of them were about to meet in a place neither had ever been put before.

“Go.”

She pushed Twelve in.

A thousand dockings.

Every one of them on a dead hull.

Dead hulls drifted. They rolled. They came apart if they had been out too long. They did not choose a new direction while she was closing.

This one ran on the Mule’s leash.

The reel gathered.

The Mite swung in.

Rin matched the turn and came down toward its upper plating.

Too fast.

She lifted clear.

The dark turned outside the glass. The line drew straight. The Mite cut back the other way.

She followed.

Not the hull.

The pull.

The reel gave. The Mite ran out against it. The reel gathered, drawing the running body back toward the Mule.

There.

The rhythm lived in the line.

Rin brought Twelve alongside on the second pass. The pod’s sill came within reach of the Mite’s upper course.

The picker swerved.

Her left hand followed. Her right hand corrected too far.

Metal filled the glass.

Rin pulled away.

Her mouth had gone dry.

The reel gave again.

She watched the line, not the Mite. Give. Gather. Give.

She and the picker were being played by the same slow hand.

On the gather, she went in a third time.

The pod came down with the Mite’s turn instead of against it. Rin held the gap. The running hull rolled beneath her, close enough now that her lights moved over old scars in its plating.

The clamps reached.

The first struck and slid.

The second caught.

The pod pulled sideways.

Rin held it.

The last clamp took.

The whole frame shook once through the seat. Then Twelve and the running machine went on through the dark like one badly built thing.

Nobody spoke.

Marek did not talk her in.

He had taught her every part of this. He left her alone inside it now, and Rin knew what that cost him because Marek filled silence whenever silence needed carrying.

“Easy,” he said softly.

Not to her.

Not to anyone.

Rin locked the stick and moved.

The collar was behind her in its rack.

She took it in both hands.

The pod rolled with the Mite. The tether clipped at her waist. She checked it, pulled it once, and stepped to the sill.

Dark below.

The Mite under it.

The Mule ahead, drawn sideways by the line.

Rin went over.

Her boots found the plating. Her knees came down hard enough that the strike travelled through the suit and into her legs.

The short tether caught, then slackened.

She put one palm flat on the hull before she had decided to.

The plating hummed.

She felt it through the glove.

Low.

Even.

Busy.

Warmth pressed into her palm. The machine worked beneath her hand the way the Ember’s decks worked beneath her bunk, saying the same plain thing through the bones: something here was running.

Every story she had ever been told was about these.

She was kneeling on the enemy out of the telling.

It was warm.

The Mite swerved.

Her arms wanted her off it.

Her hands wanted the work.

Rin let the hands win.

She set the collar against the forward seam.

The disc sat where it sat on every Mite she had ever opened. She could have found it with her eyes closed. Near enough, she had to.

The dark swung.

Her light crossed the hull, left it, found the Mule, then went out into nothing. She dragged it back.

The collar slipped.

She caught it with both hands.

The cutting head worked at the line a body-length away.

Rin did not look at it again.

She seated the collar.

The Mite rolled.

Her knee left the plating. The tether pulled hard at her waist. For one second only her boot and the collar held her there.

Then the hull came back under her.

She locked the frame.

The collar had been built for corpses.

It did not know the difference.

Rin started the cut.

The tool bit into the seam. She felt the work through the handles, clean and familiar. The hull bucked beneath her, but the cut went on in the same circle it had cut all her working life.

The reel gathered.

The Mite swung.

Her shoulder struck the plating. The collar stayed set.

The circle closed.

The disc came away.

Rin caught it against her arm and let it hang on its keeper.

The cradle lay open beneath.

The brick sat inside.

It was the same shape as every dead-wreck brick she had pulled. The same plain block. The same two catches. The same quarter-turn.

She reached in.

Heat met her gloves before her fingers closed.

Dead-wreck bricks were warm the way an oven was warm the morning after.

This one was cooking.

Her hands stopped.

The heat held them there.

The hull hummed under her knees. The drive pressed on. The cutting head kept its edge against the line.

Rin closed her fingers.

First catch.

The Mite swerved.

Second catch.

The tether dragged at her waist.

Quarter-turn.

Her hands knew it asleep.

She pulled.

The brick came free of the working body.

Everything stopped.

The hum went out from under her knees between one breath and the next.

The drive quit.

The cutting head hung where it was, finished with the line and everything else.

The Mite’s run straightened into the shape it had last been pushed. The tow line rode slack.

Rin stayed on her knees.

A wreck beneath her now.

The trade’s oldest day of work.

The whole difference between the two was warm and heavy in her hands, about the size of a loaf.

She became aware of her own breathing.

One breath.

Then another.

She keyed the channel.

“Twelve. It’s stopped. It’s whole.”

Her voice was level. She noticed that the way she noticed weather.

Nobody answered at once.

Rin looked toward the road.

The carrier kept its pace. The pickers worked in and out along the shoal. The guards held their weave.

Everyone was listening past their own hulls, waiting for the road to notice.

Nothing came.

No light turned. No guard left its weave.

One picker short, the chain went on being a road.

Somebody’s breath let go against a pickup.

Suda came back.

“Filed. Say what I’m to write.”

Marek took his time.

When he answered, the drum was in his voice.

“Write: one picker, taken whole and stopped. No harm done and none taken. Write the time.”

A pause.

“And Suda. Write it large enough to find again. People are going to want that page.”

“Filed.”

Rin looked down at the brick.

Her fingers had closed around it hard enough that the edges pressed into her gloves.

She did not open them.

The tow home wore the ordinary shape of a wreck coming in.

The line was dressed. The cutting head was secured where it had stopped. Twelve unclamped, and the Mite went dark and still behind the Kettle.

Rin stowed the brick beside her seat.

That was what she called it.

Her fingers would not open from it at first, so she let them keep it a while. Its small heat rode at her elbow like a passenger.

The chain went on behind them.

Nothing followed.

Nove spoke after a long stretch of empty channel.

“It didn’t—”

She stopped.

Twice now, nobody had said it.

Rin set the thought down like a tool she was finished with.

Nove drew a breath.

“Tam, when we get home, I want my bowl back.”

Tam’s voice was tired and careful again. “It’s under the vat.”

“I know.”

“Then why ask me?”

“To see your face.”

“You can’t see my face.”

“I know what it’s doing.”

Tam made a small, injured sound.

Nove kept talking.

She talked the day back down toward its ordinary size, bowl by bowl and vat by vat. Nobody told her to stop.

Rin flew.

The fear had never been needed. It had nowhere else to be, so it rode home with them.

The dock was waiting.

There were more hands than the unloading needed. The file had arrived before they had, and people had found reasons to be near the bay.

It looked like a big-haul crowd.

It did not feel like one.

Everyone on the dock knew both.

“Eleven,” someone said behind the first row.

“Eleven,” another voice answered.

The Mite came in behind the Kettle, dark and still.

Conversation fell away while the tow hands brought it down and made it fast. Nobody crowded close. Nobody stepped back either.

For a little while, the dock listened to a machine that had nothing left to say.

Then a clamp settled. A hand called the line safe. Somebody asked for room.

The dock became a dock again.

Marek stood beside the tow hands.

“Brix’s shop in the morning. Tell him to clear the long bench. Tell him he can say his thank-you with breakfast.”

That moved them. The first hands took the weight, the next cleared the way, and the Mite began its slow trip off the dock.

Rin stayed in Twelve long enough to log the return.

“Shipmind.”

The panel chimed.

“Pod Twelve. Run complete.”

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

The light went green.

She carried the brick down the ramp.

Marek waited at the foot.

He looked at the brick the way he looked at a pot deciding whether it was done. Then he laid one hand flat against it.

Not fingertips.

His palm stayed there.

When he took it away, he looked at his own hand before closing it.

“All my working life, and all of everybody’s before mine, we have taken from the dead, and the dead never minded.”

He looked at the brick again.

“Three thousand years, girl. That is the first thing anybody has taken back.”

He did not say from whom.

Nobody needed him to.

Marek lifted his eyes to her face.

“Now get some food in you. There’s more than we can eat.”

Late, at her bunk, Rin opened the logbook.

She wrote the date.

The field.

The counts.

Under the counts, she wrote one.

Then she sat with the pen in her hand.

Once, she had written Tam found one. against the whole form of the book. The book had survived it.

Rin put the pen to the page.

Took it whole.

She closed the cover and lay back.

Her hands still remembered the warmth.

She let them.