The Mortar & The Fall

They put us in a closet.

Okay, not a closet. A back room the size of a closet, wedged behind the counter of Griffin's Oddments on Level 7. One cot. One folding stool. One shelf of junk that smelled like machine grease.

I'm Luce Tanner. Twenty-eight. Bridge inspector for the Orbital Transport Authority, which sounds fancier than it is. Mostly I climb around the pedestrian spans of Hanging Grace and tell people their walkway is going to fall into the rings. Satisfying work. Quiet.

It stopped being quiet the day my patrol partner assigned me to a twenty-cycle stakeout in a pawn shop.

"I signed up for security patrols," I told Mindy Peabody, thirty-two, built like a bulkhead door. "Not retail."

"You signed up to catch Sablemark," she said. "Sablemark sells through this shop. Griffin's Oddments. That constitutes the entire lead. You sit in the back room, you watch, you report."

"And him?"

Calle Kepler was standing by the shutter with his arms crossed. Twenty-nine. Ex-soldier, current cargo runner, current something else he hadn't explained. His hair was shorter than the last time I'd seen him, which had been fourteen months ago, the day we broke up.

"Him you're sharing with," Mindy said. "Griffin owes the Authority a favor and the kid owes Griffin. Do the math. Shutter's coming down in thirty seconds."

The kid. He was twenty-nine and she called him the kid.

"Mindy," I started.

"Twenty cycles. Try not to kill each other." She stepped out. The shutters came down with a sound like a guillotine for very large people.

And then it was just us.

---

We did not speak for one hour and twelve minutes. I counted. I'm an inspector. Counting is what I do.

Calle sat on the floor with his back against the shelf, cleaning a pistol he probably wasn't licensed for. I took the stool. I read the manifest Mindy had left on the counter. I read it again. I memorized the serial numbers of three toasters.

At minute seventy-three, he said, "So."

"So."

"You look good."

"I appear like someone who has been sitting in a closet."

"A closet with good lighting." He put the pistol down. "You want to see something dumb?"

"Not especially."

He reached up to the shelf anyway, past a cracked lamp and a jar of what I hoped was dried fruit, and came down with something wrapped in rag. He unwrapped it like it mattered. Like it was a medal.

A mortar and pestle. Brass, dented on one side, green with age in the creases. Small enough to hold in one hand. The pestle was worn smooth in the middle, the way a thing gets when one person uses it for years and years.

My stomach did something I didn't authorize.

"That's from Forty-Nine," I said.

"Forty-Nine," he agreed.

Bridge Forty-Nine. Pedestrian span, Ring Sector E, built back when Hanging Grace was half the size it is now. I'd walked it a hundred times on inspection. Rusted trusses. Cracked anchors. I'd flagged it for full replacement, formally, in writing, and then I'd stood in the middle of it with Calle and we'd watched a cargo skiff pass underneath, way down in the ring haze, and he'd told me he was up for a promotion he didn't want and I'd told him to take it anyway, and that had been the beginning of the end.

Two weeks later we were done.

"You stole it," I said. Not a question.

"I lifted it. Stole is strong."

"You stole a mortar and pestle off a condemned bridge."

"It was going in the recyclery, Luce. The whole bridge. Crusher dust. That thing was sitting in the old caretaker's alcove like it was waiting for somebody." He turned it over in his hands. "So I waited for somebody."

"You."

"Sure. Me."

I stared at him. He stared at the mortar. There was a dent in the brass, right on the rim, and I remembered the dent. Somebody's grandmother had dropped it, he'd told me that day, grinning. Somebody's grandmother and her pepper. He'd made that up. He made everything up. He made up stories about every bridge we walked, and I'd believed every one, because he told them like they were true.

"Why do you have it here?"

"Because Griffin's shop was the only place I could stash it, and because I figured if you ever came here, you'd see it." He shrugged. "And because I'm an idiot."

"That's two true things in one sentence. New record."

The comms crackled. I grabbed it fast, grateful for anything.

"Tanner, this is Peabody." Mindy's voice, thin through the speaker. "We've got two sightings on Level 9, both garbage. A woman in a gray coat and a man in a gray coat. Neither of them is Sablemark. How's the shop?"

"Quiet," I said.

"Good. Stay on it. Peabody out."

I set the comm down. Calle was still holding the mortar.

"You took souvenirs off my bridges," I said.

"Off the bridges we walked."

"That's worse."

"Is it?"

"Yes, Calle, it's worse, because a souvenir off a stranger's bridge is just theft, but a souvenir off a bridge we walked is you keeping a piece of something instead of dealing with it." I was up off the stool now. I didn't remember standing. "You did that all the time. You'd take something. A bolt. A nameplate. You'd pocket it instead of saying what you actually thought, and I'd find it in your jacket three weeks later and pretend I didn't know what it meant."

"That's a hell of a reading."

"It's an inspection report."

He laughed, short and ugly, and stood up too. We were close now, in a room built for one cot and one stool, and the brass mortar was caught between us.

"You want to talk about stubborn?" he said. "You told me to take the promotion. You told me. You didn't ask what I wanted. You didn't ask if I'd rather keep walking bridges with you. You handed me a verdict."

"Because you wanted to be told to go! You'd been talking about command track for a year!"

"And you'd been talking about me like I was already gone. Two weeks later you filed the transfer paperwork, Luce. I hadn't even left yet and you were filing."

The room got very small.

He was right, which I hated. I'd filed the transfer to Sector D the same week I flagged Forty-Nine. Clean hands, clean slate, new span, no Calle. Fastest paperwork I ever did.

"I was being practical," I said.

"You were being first."

"You were being a coward!"

"Noted. Logged. Filed under L." He set the mortar down on the shelf, careful, gentler than he'd handled anything else in this room. "You always were faster than me. That was never the problem."

"Then what was the problem?"

"You know what the problem was."

The comm crackled again. "Tanner. Third sighting, Level 11 this time. Gray coat again. Either Sablemark owns a dozen gray coats or this station is messing with me. Any movement?"

"No," I said.

"Hold tight. Peabody out."

Calle sat back down on the floor. He picked the pistol back up, then put it down again, like he couldn't decide what to do with his hands.

"Twenty cycles," he said.

"Twenty cycles."

"In a closet."

"With one cot."

He looked up at that. Just once, quick, and then back down at the pistol. I sat back on my stool and picked up the manifest and read the toaster serial numbers for the third time and did not think about the cot.

Not once.

Okay. Once.

The comm crackled a third time and I was already reaching for it before it finished the first crackle.

"Tanner. It's Griffin." Not Mindy this time. The old man's voice came through dry and papery, like he was talking with a candy in his cheek. "Bad news, inspector."

"Give it to me straight."

"Sablemark missed his ferry. Dock incident on Level 12, nothing to do with us, but he's stuck topside. He won't come through this shop for another thirty cycles. Maybe thirty-two, if the ferries run slow."

I did the math. Twenty-cycle stakeout. Thirty-cycle delay.

"That's past the end of our assignment," I said.

"It is. The Authority knows. They're deciding whether to pull you or extend you. Could be a day or two before they decide."

"And meanwhile?"

"Meanwhile you sit in my back room. Mindy's got the floor rotation, she'll check in. There's water in the cooler and ration bars in the tin by the shelf. Don't sell anything."

He clicked off before I could answer. I looked at Calle. Calle looked at me.

"Thirty cycles," he said.

"Maybe thirty-two."

"In a closet."

"With one cot."

"Don't say it like that."

"I'm saying it like a fact."

He dragged a hand down his face. "Griffin could have led with that. He could have led with, hey, your twenty-cycle sit just became fifty."

"Fifty-two," I said. "If the ferries run slow."

"You're enjoying this."

"I'm an inspector. I enjoy accurate numbers."

He grunted and lay back on the floor with his arm over his eyes. The ceiling of the back room was maybe two meters up. His boots were still on. I told myself not to notice the boots and noticed them anyway.

Overnight in a pawn shop on Level 7. One cot. One stool. One ex.

The lights in the shop front dimmed to their night cycle. Somewhere down the corridor the recyclery started its low evening churn, the sound I'd already learned to ignore and then un-learned every twenty minutes.

"I'm gonna eat," Calle announced to the ceiling. He sat up, dug in the tin, and pulled out a ration bar. The dense kind, compressed, wrapped in foil. The kind you could technically chew but nobody had ever enjoyed.

He looked at it. Then he looked at the shelf.

"Griffin's grinder is busted," he said.

"So?"

"So watch."

He picked up the mortar. My mortar. The stolen one, the Forty-Nine one, the one with the dent on the rim. He unwrapped the ration bar, snapped it into chunks, dropped three chunks in the brass cup, and started grinding with the pestle. Slow circles. Steady wrist.

My stomach did something stupid.

I'd seen that exact motion a hundred times. Deployment years, both of us younger, him twenty-three, me twenty-two, cold mornings on the outer spans. The field grinder always jammed. Every unit's field grinder jammed. And Calle would dig in his pack and come out with whatever he'd pocketed that week, a brass cup, a stone bowl once, honestly, and he'd grind our breakfast bars down to powder in slow circles and swear it tasted better that way.

It never tasted better. It tasted like ground ration bar. But he did it every morning like it was a religion.

"You're doing the thing," I said.

"What thing."

"The grinding thing. You still do the grinding thing."

"It tastes better this way."

"It does not taste better. It has never tasted better. It's a ration bar, Calle."

"Powdered ration bar has a texture," he said, grinding away, circles, steady. "Chunk ration bar is a punishment. Powdered is a food."

"That's not a real distinction."

"It's a completely real distinction. Ask anyone I served with."

"I'm not asking anyone you served with. I'm asking you to admit you learned that from your grandmother's pepper story."

He stopped. Just for a second, pestle frozen mid-circle. Then he kept going, but slower, and I saw the corner of his mouth fighting him.

"That story was true," he said.

"The grandmother?"

"Somebody's grandmother."

"You made her up. You made her up on Span Sixteen in Ring Sector C, our third deployment week, and I believed you for a full year."

"She had pepper," he said. "That part was true."

Laughter came up my throat before I could stop it. I caught most of it behind my hand. Not all of it. Some got out, a short ugly snort, and Calle's head came up like he'd heard a sound from a dead man.

I put my hand down fast.

"That," he said, "is the first time I've heard you laugh in fourteen months."

"It was a cough."

"It was a laugh. It was almost a laugh. I'll take almost."

"You'll take nothing. Eat your powder."

He tipped the mortar and poured the powder into his palm and ate it off his hand like a horse, which was also the old way, and I had to look at the manifest again because watching him do that was dangerous in a small room with one cot.

He chewed. Swallowed. Offered me the mortar.

I looked at it.

"You want some," he said. "You're hungry. You've been pretending to read toaster serial numbers for two hours."

"I'm working."

"You're reading serial numbers. Work would be an insult to the word."

He was right, which I hated, which was becoming a theme. I took the mortar. It was warm from his hands. Brass holds heat, I knew that, I'd inspected enough old rail fittings to know that, but it still got me, the warmth of it, sitting in my two hands.

I ground the second half of the bar. Slow circles. Steady wrist.

"It is better this way," I admitted.

"Ha."