‘Hey, hey!’ Oates said. He rubbed his hands together as he entered the home. ‘We’re in business. Nice work.’
A smile briefly formed on Sawyer’s lips, then disappeared. Eerie as it was to see a hex without any stuff in it, a home still full to the brim with belongings was worse. Free of gravity, every piece of furniture and everything that had been on them was afloat, drifting in a bizarre jumble. Oates pushed things out of his path as he walked through, like a parody of a man wading through water. The objects tumbled into each other, set in motion by the intrusion.
A sock floated past Sawyer’s face. He saw a fork, a kettle. A frozen, dilapidated piece of fruit. A horrible thought struck him. ‘Are there any . . . um . . . there aren’t still . . .’
Oates looked at him. ‘What?’
Sawyer wet his lips. ‘Bodies.’
‘Oh, stars, no.’ He made a face. ‘Couldn’t pay me enough to come here if there were. No, after it happened, the Aeluons, they’ve got these . . . I dunno what they’re called. Some kind of bots that detect whatever organic form you tell ’em to look for. They use ’em to retrieve their dead after battles in zero-g. You know what I’m talking about?’
‘No.’
‘Well, anyway, the Aeluons gave us a bunch for clean-up. They can bore through walls and whatnot, so if you’re in a closed-off space like this and you don’t see a big hole in the wall, it means there was nobody in here, and nobody’s been in since.’
There was nobody in here. A small comfort, but Sawyer took it.
‘Okay,’ Oates said. ‘Cloth and metal, those are always good to grab. Anything that can be made into textiles or melted down.’ He grabbed a floating storage crate, put it beneath one boot, and began to pry the lid up. ‘Tech takes priority over everything. Broken is fine, intact is better, functional is best. We can’t grab everything, so use good judgment. Find things people can make use of.’
Sawyer looked around. Everything in there had had a use, once. Everything in there had been brought in for a purpose. He shook his head. Job. He had to do his job. Okay, he thought. He reached out and grabbed the floating kettle. ‘Like this?’
‘Yeah. Someone can smelt it, if nothing else. Remember, we’re on the clock. Grab and go.’
Sawyer grabbed. Utensils, tech bits, blankets. He brought handful after handful to one of the autocarts, steadily filling its enclosed compartments. The grimness of the place was starting to ebb into the background. Instead there was just the work, the task at hand. There were creds to be made, and crew to win over, and – he paused. He’d opened a decorative box – no, not a box. An old cookie tin someone had painted. The contents inside drifted up to greet him. Sawyer’s chest went tight. There wasn’t much in the box, nothing that Oates would want, nothing that was of any use. There were kitschy figurines, a pair of Aandrisk feathers, an info chip, a handful of yellow stones washed smooth by an alien sea. He took the info chip, which had a name printed on it. Myra, it read. He turned his attention to the wall of painted handprints, which he’d been steadfastly ignoring since the moment they walked in. Okoro, it read. The hands reached nearly to the ceiling. He wondered which of them was Myra’s. He wondered where she’d been during the accident, if she hadn’t been here. He wondered if she’d made it.
‘Hey,’ Sawyer said. ‘What about things like this?’ He gestured to the floating mementos.
Oates was busy carving hunks of stuffing out of the sofa with his knife. ‘Like what?’ He looked over. ‘Just junk. Leave it.’
‘It’s got a name on it. If she’s still around, she’d be in the directory, yeah? Doesn’t weigh much, and I bet she’d be happy to get her stuff back.’
Oates paused. He lowered his knife. ‘We’re here for salvage,’ he said. ‘Not lost and found.’
‘But—’
Oates’ voice changed. Sawyer couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but he didn’t like it. ‘On the clock, remember?’ Oates said. ‘You pick up every piece of junk you find, and we’ll be here forever.’
Sawyer frowned. An uneasiness filled him, the same feeling he’d gotten after the tunnel hop, the same he’d gotten in the airlock when competition arose. Competition. He looked at Oates, speedily tearing away hunks of fibre as if someone might take it away at any moment.
‘Oates,’ Sawyer said slowly. His tongue felt thick. He knew what he wanted to ask, and he knew how stupid it was. He knew he’d sound like an idiot, that it was probably nothing to worry about, that this might take him down a few points in the eyes of the man who’d picked him out of a crowd. But the needling grew stronger, and his stomach felt sour, and . . . and he had to. ‘Are we allowed to be here?’
Oates sighed, his helmet angling toward the floor. ‘Can we have this talk once we get back to the ship?’
‘Um—’ Sawyer shook his head, a bright panic growing in his chest. ‘No, I want to talk about this now. Are we allowed to be here?’
Oates gave him a look of pure exasperation, then returned his attention to the sofa. ‘You’re a grounder, so you’ll understand this analogy. Imagine you’re with a bunch of people wandering out in the desert. I mean a real desert, nothin’ anybody can use. There are jungles nearby, but you can’t go there. The jungle will eat you up. You’ll get lost in there. You’ll disappear. Now, sometimes, the people in the jungles will throw you a bag of food, but it ain’t much. Not like you’d get if you actually lived in there. But you’re desert people, and you’re not goin’ anywhere. One day, you stumble across a big, dead animal. Like a . . . I dunno, I was never good at animals. What’s a big one?’
‘I—’
‘A horse. That’s big, right? You stumble across a dead horse. Biggest horse you’ve ever seen, and it’s freshly dead. You could cut it up and eat it right now. It’s there for the taking. But the leaders of your group, they say, no, no, we need to talk about this. We can’t do this now. We need to talk about how to do this fairly. We have to make sure everybody’s getting the exact same amount of horse. We’re going to cut just a little bit of horse off, but oh, wait, no, now we need to reorganise all our satchels so we have room for the horse bits. And while we’re doing that, we should really talk about which of us could use some horse more. So everybody sits in the sand, doing fuck all but talk about the horse instead of actually using it. Meanwhile, everybody’s hungry, and they’re getting hungrier. Your family is getting hungrier, and that horse isn’t getting any better as the days go on. So some of your group, they decide to just cut up the damn horse already, because the people in charge are going to talk forever anyway, and you can feed a few mouths in the meantime.’ He shoved an armful of sofa stuffing into the nearly-full autocart. ‘What’s the harm in that?’
Sawyer stared at him. ‘That’s . . . this isn’t a horse. The Oxomoco isn’t rotting. And nobody’s starving. Nobody’s gonna die without . . . without . . .’ He gestured emptily at the cart.
Oates opened a closet and began working his way through the floating clothing. ‘I didn’t say it was a perfect analogy. But we’re getting people the things they need. We’re not hurting anybody. We’re helping. If the council’s gonna sit on its ass, somebody else is gonna step in.’
‘But you’re . . . you’re . . .’ Sawyer tried to work some moisture back into his mouth. ‘You’re stealing.’