Chapter 10: The Offload
Behind him, on the rails, the woman got a knee under her. She pushed with her folded arm and the arm bent at a place an arm doesn't bend, and she did it without a sound.
"Stay down," Tommie said.
The cage speaker crackled by the controls. "Volume eleven seven. Dock offload. Hold the bay."
On the floor the woman got her other knee under her. Her head came up. The band at her temple was dead and dark and she looked at the open cage doors the way a dog looks at a door it hears behind.
Wendell stepped forward.
He went past Tommie, close enough to touch, and Tommie's free hand came out and caught at his sleeve. Wendell took the wrist and put it down, easy, not rough, and kept walking.
His bare feet left prints in the grease on the rails. He favored the right leg all the way across the dock, and he stopped at the open side of the cage where the comm speaker sat bolted under the running light.
He put his palm flat on the housing.
"Eleven seven dock," he said. "Bay held."
The lift frame ticked. The white light came down on him and made the seam behind his jaw stand up like a cord. Hazel watched his shoulders and waited for the answer and got nothing.
"Bay held," he said again. Same cadence as the voice. Flat, no lift at the end of the words, every syllable the same weight as the last.
The speaker clicked twice.
"Speaker unidentified. State tenant of record."
"Corridor C." Wendell kept his palm on the housing. "C. Lease four four one nine. Wendell."
"You are dark on the bus. Corridor C feed is off profile."
"I know."
"State purpose at the dock."
"Your cage came down," Wendell said. "I rode it. I'm telling you the bay is held so you don't send another one."
Hazel heard Tommie breathe out through his nose. Down on the rails the woman had crawled two lengths toward the cage, hands and knees, quiet as anything, and no one but Hazel had seen her do it.
"Offload is not scheduled," the speaker said. "Cage was dispatched on a dark-volume chime. Chime is not cleared."
"Then clear it," Wendell said.
"Volume reading is required."
Silence. The crane arm ticked somewhere above them in the dark and the light stayed on Wendell's back like a hand.
Hazel understood, standing there in the grease with the torch dead against her thigh, what he had just offered. The bus wanted a reading of the bay. It wanted to know the count and the drivers and the temperature of the stock, because the volume had gone dark twice tonight and the box upstairs did not like being blind.
Wendell could tell it. Or he could not.
He turned his head, just his head, and found Hazel over his shoulder. He didn't ask. He looked at her the way a man looks at a door he isn't allowed to open yet, and then he turned back to the speaker.
"Bay holds," he said. "Twenty-three cradled. Drivers nominal. Bus nominal. Nothing to offload."
Hazel put her hand on Tommie's arm because Tommie had taken a step, and the step needed stopping.
The speaker sat quiet for four seconds. The white light did not flicker.
"Reading logged," it said. "Cage will remain docked to clear chime. Do not cycle the dock line."
"Understood."
"Tenant of record will complete status in person."
Wendell's hand came off the housing. "Say that again."
"Tenant of record Wendell will complete status at the dock. Cage will not lift until he is aboard."
He stood very still with the light on him. Away up the shaft something turned over, deep and slow, an old drum taking up slack.
"They want me to ride back up," he said. Not to the speaker. To the room. "That's the offload. It's not the stock. It's me."
"Because you have the lease," Tommie said. "You're the only thing in this bay they can log."
"I'm the only thing in this bay that ever had a door." Wendell wiped his palm down his thigh. His face in the white light was the oldest face Hazel had seen in a while, and he wasn't much older than her. "Six months I sat in that room with my hand on the breaker plate. Now they know where I am and the cage won't lift without me, and if I get on it, this." He tipped his head at the tiers.
The woman on the rails reached the dock edge.
She came up slow. From her knees to her feet, and her folded arm swung out and stayed out and she did not put it down. She stood facing the cage, and the dead band at her temple caught the white light, and the rest of the bay stayed flat and still on the webbing behind her.
Wendell turned and saw her.
"Ah, no," he said.
She stepped onto the dock. Barefoot, one arm out at a bad angle, her underlayer dark down the front from lying on the grease, and her eyes on the open cage doors. She wasn't looking at Hazel. She wasn't looking at Tommie. She was walking at the light.
Wendell stepped forward again, this time at her, and got both hands flat on her chest and stopped her.
She didn't fight him. She just kept her weight leaning into his palms like a door leaning on a stuck hinge, and her feet kept moving under her, small steps, grinding grease into prints, and her face was level with his and looking past him at the white.
"Driver's off," Tommie said. "Bus line's dead. What's walking her?"
"Same thing that walked her over the tier rail." Wendell had his arms locked and his heels dug in. "Her body did it once tonight. Nobody's running her now. She's doing it herself, and she wants the light, and I can't hold a grown woman on ice grease forever."
"Let her go," Hazel said.
Wendell's head came around.
"Let her go," she said again. "She breaks the count. If she leaves the bay the count might follow her, and if the count follows her up that shaft, upstairs gets twenty-three of them loose in the spine at four in the morning."
The speaker crackled behind them.
"Tenant of record. Cage will not lift until you are aboard. Confirm."
Wendell looked at Hazel. He looked at the woman in his hands, lean, grey, hungry for the light.
Then he let go and stepped back out of her way.
She walked into the cage.
The doors came off their tracks with a dry grinding haul and met in the middle. Steel on steel. The seam closed on the dark, and the white light inside the cage laid a hard edge under her bare heels.
The speaker clicked once.
"Bay held."
The frame shuddered. Up in the shaft the drum took up slack, and the whole cage lifted two fingers off the dock before it settled back down. Not leaving. Just finding its weight.
Wendell stood where he was with his hands open at his sides.
"That's it, then," he said. "She's the offload."
Tommie came around her, spanner down at his thigh. He watched the door seam instead of Wendell. "It'll lift when it's got what it came for. It came for a body and it's got one."
"It came for a lease," Wendell said. "It'll figure the difference on the way up."