Chapter Seven
The Wall
On the sixth evening, Suda read the file’s sum onto the channel while the bowls went round the drum.
The file had never stopped growing.
Every picker had another going-out and another coming-back. Every pass of the guards added another line. Six more days of counts and timings lay behind Suda’s voice, and the second plan came off the same pages as the first.
“No other picker leaves the road,” she said. “They work its sides, out and back, and none of them goes past the reach of the guards’ ride. The far one was the only far one. There is no other page like its page in the whole file.”
Marek dipped the ladle again, found the bottom of the drum, and gave Rin what remained.
“So the easy one is gone,” he said, “because we ate it.”
Nobody laughed.
Not quite.
The picker had gone onto the long bench. Its brick had gone into the ship. Six days ago it had been the answer to the whole road.
Now it was supper.
Marek hung the ladle on the rim of the drum and cleared a space between the bowls with one broad hand.
“The next one worth the going works here. Off the road’s third bend.”
He set a cup down for the road and moved a spoon beside it for the picker.
“Thirty-one loads on its page. Out and back off the side. Never far. Never long. Hand into the pantry, hand out again.”
The ladle became one guard. Marek walked it past the cup, wide around the bend, then brought it away.
Suda’s voice stayed clear on the channel.
“The ride has a rhythm. The guards pass any stretch of the road every fifty. The picker stays out twenty, twenty-five at a time. Between one pass and the next there is room to do what was done before.”
Marek put two fingers on the spoon.
“Same tools. Same take. The line, the boarding, the brick. In after the ride goes by, out before it comes round again. There’s no piece of it we haven’t already done once.”
Rin looked at the cup, the spoon and the ladle.
There was nothing in the plan she could argue with.
The file said the picker came out. The file said the guards went by. The space between those two things was wider than the time they had needed before.
That should have settled something.
Her thumb had found the worn edge of her bowl. She moved it away, then found it there again.
Across the drum, Marek put the ladle back where it belonged.
Guards were Wasps. The trade had been stripping dead Wasps since before anybody’s grandmother.
They were twice a picker’s length and more, several times the bulk. Lean where a picker was boxed. Their throwers where they had always been.
The ones with the guns.
Everybody knew that.
Rin had crawled through the dead ones. She had cut their plating, opened their housings and taken their drives down to the last useful piece.
Dead, a Wasp was three days of good work.
She had never seen one any other way.
At the dock, Rin checked the collar before she left.
The catches sat clean. The teeth were sound. The latch moved once under her hand and went home properly.
Her hand stayed on the latch.
For a moment she looked at her own fingers resting there. Then she took them away and climbed into Twelve.
The panel waited beside the cradle.
“Pod Twelve. Going out.”
A soft chime answered.
“Boarding Pod Twelve. Acknowledged. Logged to Salvage Watch, Shift Three.”
The panel returned to resting green.
They went out wide and dark and patient.
They lay off the shoal for the better part of a day.
Nove’s frame hung out ahead with its glass on the road, counting the ride. The six guards followed their weave as they had since the walking first found them.
Wide.
Even.
Regular as a kettle coming to the boil.
Nothing about the road had changed.
The one easy thing on it was already home, sitting on a bench. That was all.
Nove talked.
She ran a thin line of nothing much through the waiting so the rest of them had something to stand on.
“Nove. I have decided the drum was better before Marek learned seasoning.”
Marek’s answer came warm and level from the Kettle.
“Marek. You had two bowls.”
“I needed a fair count.”
“You went back for the same count twice.”
“I believe in checking.”
Tam bent over the Mule’s reel. He checked it once, sat back, then leaned in and checked it again.
Nove noticed.
“Nove. Tam believes in checking too.”
“Tam. Reel’s fair.”
“It was fair the first time.”
“It continued fair.”
“That’s very reassuring.”
Rin put her hand on the collar latch.
It did not need her hand.
She went over the catch, the teeth and the tether point. Then she did the catch again.
This time she did not pretend it was necessary.
Her hand stayed there until Nove’s voice changed.
“Ride’s past. Going away up the road.”
The glass-voice was flat. It was the voice Nove used when she wanted everyone listening and nobody talking.
Marek answered from the Kettle.
“Count it away. Then quiet, and in we go.”
The six shapes went on along the road.
The Mule slid in first, slow as weather, in behind the picker and between it and the road. Rin brought Twelve along the shoal’s open side. Marek stayed back in the Kettle where he could see the whole of it.
The picker worked its patch.
The cutting head came down. Ice went in. The little hull shifted under the load, corrected and took another clean bite.
Neat.
Sure.
The same working shape they had taken once already.
Then the picker stopped.
Its cutting head folded back against its body.
For a moment it simply hung there.
Tam’s voice came over the channel.
“Running.”
The picker ran.
It went flat out, dead straight, the whole small body laid into the running. Away from the road. Away from the Mule. Away from Twelve.
Out toward the open dark.
Marek did not raise his voice.
“Line.”
Tam threw.
The line went out flat and true across the picker’s course. It caught around the running hull and drew tight.
“It’s on.”
The Mule pulled.
The line straightened until Rin could see the vibration passing through it. The picker leaned into the pull and ran harder, its whole body held on one course.
“Hold it,” Marek said.
The Mule did not hold it.
The picker pulled harder.
Rin watched it fight the line.
The same low pressure she had felt six days ago settled under her ribs. She pressed one hand flat against the controls.
It wasn’t fear.
Not yet.
The line shivered. The picker kept running. Nothing about the pull looked like dead metal giving itself over to the reel.
Wrong.
Something was wrong.
Nove stopped talking.
Rin looked toward the road.
One of the Wasps had left its weave.
“Guard’s off the ride.”
Nobody answered.
The other five kept moving.
Wide.
Even.
Regular.
The sixth came down toward the shoal.
Rin stared at it.
She knew that shape.
She had known it all her working life.
She had crawled through that shape when it was dead. She had put a hand on its plating. She had cut pieces out of it and passed them down to waiting hands.
She knew where the guns sat.
She knew where the drives were.
She knew the long lean of its forward hull and the deeper body behind it. She knew which seams opened cleanly and which ones made a crew work for the day.
She knew what it did.
It guarded the road. It did not leave the road.
The Wasp kept coming.
Marek’s voice stayed level.
“Stand off. Everybody stand off.”
Rin pulled Twelve back.
The Wasp crossed the open space below the road and came down toward the shoal.
“Stand off,” Marek said again.
“I am.”
The Wasp changed course.
It had not corrected for drift. It had turned.
Short.
Clean.
Deliberate.
For one second Rin could not make the movement fit the machine she knew.
Then her body understood before her thoughts did.
“Back.”
Something arrived against Twelve’s forward plating.
A handful of gravel walked across the hull.
The strike came through the seat and up through her boots, close enough that her shoulders drew tight before she knew she had moved. The pod shuddered beneath her.
Rin pulled hard.
Twelve rolled away from the Wasp. Her hand found the control and drove the pod farther from the shoal.
Nove’s voice cut across the channel.
“Plating. Forward flank. Scoring.”
“Depth?” Rin asked.
“Shallow.”
The Wasp came around again.
Not drifting.
Not passing.
Coming around.
“Move,” Marek said.
Rin was already moving.
The second arrival ran across the plating in a hard rattle she felt through the seat.
Not one.
Several.
Small.
Fast.
She drew Twelve across the Mule’s wake and pulled away from the road. The Wasp turned with them.
“Hold,” Marek said.
“I’m holding.”
“Don’t chase it.”
“I’m not.”
The words came out too quickly.
The Wasp crossed above Twelve.
For an instant Rin saw the whole underside.
The guns.
The drive housings.
The seams she had known only from dead machines.
She knew exactly where she would set a collar if it were lying still.
It wasn’t lying still.
It was hunting.
The Wasp rolled away, came about and put its long forward hull straight toward them.
Her mouth had gone dry.
Nove’s glass-voice broke at the edge.
“That’s not a guard.”
Marek answered quietly.
“It is now.”
The pod was struck hard.
The blow came through the quarter and threw Twelve sideways. Her harness caught hard across her chest. The dark and the stars changed places, then changed again, and the controls kicked under her hands.
The channel erupted.
“Plating!”
“Hold the line!”
“Rin!”
She could not tell who had said what.
The pod spun.
Stars became black.
Black became stars.
The seat caught her.
Her hands stayed on the controls.
She waited for the instruments to settle.
They didn’t.
“Twelve?”
Marek.
She tried to answer.
Nothing came out.
The pod kept turning.
She looked at the panel.
Attitude unstable.
She reached for the control.
Missed it.
Reached again.
Her fingers found it.
“Rin.”
Marek again.
Whatever held his voice level had let go of it.
That was what brought her back.
She forced air into her lungs.
“Here.”
A pause.
“I’m here.”
The pod kept spinning.
The glass held nothing she could use. No road. No Mule. No Kettle.
Rin shut her eyes for one second.
Opened them.
Stars.
Panel.
Stars.
Panel.
She put both hands on the controls.
“Hold,” she said.
Her voice was shaking.
“Hold.”
She corrected the roll.
Once.
The pod swung past level.
She corrected again.
The stars steadied.
The instruments settled.
The road came back along one edge of the glass. The Mule was below it, pulling clear. The Kettle moved wide on the other side.
Rin drew the pod level.
“Rin?” Marek said.
She swallowed.
“Twelve.”
A pause.
“Still flying.”
Marek exhaled.
“Good.”
She moved Twelve farther off the shoal while the Wasp crossed behind. The seat carried the pod’s steady vibration into her back. Her breath came short and late, but the controls sat under her hands where they belonged.
The Wasp turned.
Not toward Twelve.
Back toward the road.
Rin watched it go.
It did not follow.
It did not need to. It had driven them away.
The shape grew smaller. The distance took the guns first, then the drive housings, then the long body she knew better than she knew some people.
It reached the road.
The other five had never left their weave.
The sixth slipped into the open place among them, and the ride closed as neatly as a hand closing around a handle.
Wide.
Even.
Regular.
Marek waited until the shape had settled.
“Weave’s the same as ever. Road’s the same as ever.”
The road carried on.
The picker was gone into the dark. Its load was not.
Ice turned slowly across the space where it had worked, bright at the edges when Rin’s glass found it. The spill had spread, but not far.
Marek brought the Kettle round.
“We don’t fly past ice.”
Nobody argued.
The Mule moved first. Rin brought Twelve in beside it, slower than she meant to. Her hand tightened on the control when the road crossed the top of the glass.
She loosened it.
The guards kept their weave.
The crew gathered the spill.
It was plain work. Find one piece. Bring the hull alongside. Take it in. Count it. Move to the next.
Rin’s hands were glad of it.
Nove called each piece as it came aboard the Mule.
“Three.”
Suda answered from home.
“Filed.”
The count went on one at a time.
It came to nine.
Nine of ice.
Not a take.
What the day had earned instead of one.
They turned for home with the road behind them.
For a while the channel held only the counts and the small calls needed to keep the three hulls together. Then Marek spoke.
“A throw leads a course. A runner gives you one. A turning wreck gives you a slow one. That thing’s whole trade is giving you none.”
Nobody answered him.
After a moment he went on.
“A pod rides a hull’s rhythm in. The give and the gather. A hull that keeps coming about has none to ride.”
Rin looked down at the collar latch beside her knee.
The whole take lived between a thing that held still and a thing that ran straight.
A hull that manoeuvred sat exactly in between.
She took her hand away from the latch.
Nobody spoke much on the ride home.
That was unusual enough that Rin noticed.
Nove normally filled the dark.
Tam normally asked whether the reel wanted anything.
Marek normally found small work for everybody’s hands, even when the hands had already done enough.
Tonight the Kettle held its course. The Mule held beside it. Twelve came behind with nine of ice divided across the three hulls and one shallow line on its quarter.
The silence went all the way to the dock.
Tam climbed out first.
He put one hand on Twelve’s side.
Then he pulled it away.
Rin saw him do it.
Neither of them said anything.
Marek came down from the Kettle and stopped beside the pod.
“How bad?”
“Shallow.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Rin looked at him.
For a moment she had no answer.
“The pod is fine.”
Marek nodded.
“Good.”
Suda waited on the channel.
Marek turned toward the dock panel. His voice became the drum voice again, plain enough to set the day down without bending it.
“Write: try made on the second picker. One guard came off the ride and kept us off. No take. Nine of ice off its spill. Nobody hurt, nothing lost. Write the time.”
“Filed.”
Under the dock lights, the marks showed.
The Mule’s forward flank carried a row of short bright lines across plating that had worn one colour for longer than anyone alive.
The Kettle had a spatter on its quarter.
Pod Twelve had exactly one shallow line low on the quarter, straight as a rule, about the width of a finger.
Rin crouched beside it.
She put her thumb near one end without touching the cut. The line was small. A few steps away it almost disappeared.
Behind her, the berth count passed between two voices.
“Eleven.”
“Eleven.”
Flat as the time of day.
Rin stood.
Supper went round the drum.
The crew worked the day back down to size because that was what supper was for. Nine of ice became three pieces that had been awkward to bring in, one that had tried to turn out of the grip, and a last piece Nove claimed had been hiding from honest work.
“It was behind you,” Tam said.
Nove moved her spoon through her bowl. “That is where hiding happens.”
Marek looked at her bowl.
“Your supper appears to be hiding too.”
The joke reached the others and went no farther.
Tam had not eaten.
His spoon lay across the rim. He kept one hand under the drum and the other beside his bowl, flat against the surface.
Nobody told him to eat.
Marek took another mouthful of his own supper and began working through the ice count again, one piece at a time, until the day was only a count and a filed page and three hulls waiting for inspection.
Rin listened.
Her shoulder had begun to ache where the harness had caught her. Each time someone shifted a bowl against the drum, her fingers closed once against her palm.
She opened them again.
Nobody said what came next.
At her bunk, the logbook lay where she had left it.
Rin opened to the next plain page and set the pen down.
Date.
Field.
Counts.
Her hand moved through the form without stopping.
Under the count, she wrote nine.
The book took it easily.
The page looked like every other page that had held a small day’s work. Date in its place. Field in its place. Nine where nine belonged.
Rin waited for her hand to add something else.
It did not.
She closed the logbook.
The day had gone into it.
Her shoulder still held the harness. Her boots still held the first rattle through the deck. When she put her hands flat on the blanket, they curved as if the controls were still beneath them.
She made them open.
A little later, they had closed again.