The Rover Graveyard

The Fence

A passing vehicle set him down at the fork and left. Wren watched until its lights shrank to a dot. Then he picked up his bag and started down the road.

In the bag were a pair of old gloves, a paper map, and three passes with expired dates. The passes were for different stations, no two the same. The map was covered in pencil dots, one at every transfer, every port. Next to the dots stood durations: two days, a week, four days. Not one was longer than a month. There was also a bundle wrapped in cloth. Wren hadn't touched it since the last transfer.

The fence showed up before anything else. Wire mesh two men high, posts, ribbon wire along the top with no current in it. An emblem of the Service hung on the gate. The paint had flaked off and rust had eaten half the sign, but Wren knew it the way you know handwriting.

Behind the mesh stood machines. The rows ran off toward the low sun, and there was no end to them in sight. Crawlers, haulers, ambulance boxes. Some had their wheels pulled, others had no transmission. The wind moved through the empty cabs and hummed in them the way it hums across the mouths of bottles.

A man in a Service jacket sat on a folding stool by the gate. The jacket was too big for him. A thermos stood between his knees.

“You're Wren?”

“Yes.”

“Took you long enough.”

“The letter chased me across five stations. And ships fly when they feel like it.”

The man poured coffee into the thermos cap and held it out. Station coffee, yesterday's, bitter. Wren drank it and handed back the cap.

“You were on the field roster,” the man said. “Of the ones I could find, you're the only one who answered.”

“I didn't answer.”

“You came.”

Wren said nothing.

“I'm the last one,” the man said. “The division closes at the end of the month. Papers are signed, people have scattered. What's left is me, the intake channel and the call archive.”

“The archive of the calls the corporation won't take,” Wren said.

“That's right,” the man answered.

“A rescue costs more than whoever gets rescued,” Wren said. “The call gets closed, the drone reports: ‘Search terminated.’”

“Yes. Exactly that,” the man said.

“And if you go anyway?”

“It's not forbidden. They don't care. You go without their status, they owe nothing to you or to whoever you find. No pay.”

Wren nodded. He was looking not at the man but past the fence.

“How many machines out there?”

“Nobody counted. Hauling them off costs more than the metal. The dump is pretty much nobody's.”

“Anything running?”

“I didn't find anything.”

“Then I'll build one.”

The man looked at his hands, then at the bag.

“You know how?”

“I used to.”

The gate was locked. The man took out a key and held it out without getting up.

The handle turned hard. The leaf crawled along its rail with a screech and opened just wide enough to pass through sideways. Wren leaned into it. The leaf slid back to the stop.

He swung the bag onto his shoulder. He didn't close the gate.

“Leave the key in the lock,” the man said behind him.

Wren left it.

The first machine stood without a cab. He walked past it, ran a glove along its side, cold and rough, and went on down the row.

Six Crews

For three days he walked the rows and touched nothing. He slept in the first cab with intact windows. The dispatcher left canned food by the gate, without coming inside.

On the fourth day Wren picked six machines.

The first stood in the third row, long, with a level deck and a whole cab. Its motor had burned out, but the hull was in decent shape. He took off the panel above the reactor. The shielding inside was clean, the gaskets new. Someone had probably replaced them before the last run. The door was marked “Crew 4.” In the holder by the panel sat a mug with a chipped handle.

The second stood in the sixth row. Its drives and joints were intact. On the inside of the door a calendar was taped, the days crossed off up to the twelfth. After that, empty squares. Wren looked at them longer than at the joints.

In the eighth row he found the third. The receiver with the direction finder sat in its frame, and a photo stuck out of the frame's corner. Two men against a cliff. One man's face had faded to white; the other held him by the shoulder. Wren took the frame out whole, photo and all.

The fourth was the oldest. He took the breaker and the power panel from it. On the cover, in marker: “Don't touch until cool.” The contacts were an old pattern. They could only be fitted with a homemade adapter, and after the rework the breaker clicked half a beat later than it should. Wren listened, thought, and decided it would do.

The fifth machine had a winch. A name on the door: SAVELYEV. The hook on the drum was worn bright on one side. The cable was orange, nearly whole.

The sixth stood at the very end of the row, by the fence. No name, no mug, no calendar, no photo. Someone had stripped this machine long ago, and very carefully. In the niche under the dash one unit remained, in its casing. Wren pulled it out, wrapped it in a rag, and laid it in a toolbox. Closed the lid. He never went into that machine again.

Then two weeks passed. He cut, welded, patched. He dragged the units over to the first machine with its own winch. The hull kept growing iron from different machines. The orange stripe along its side was now made of several shades: orange by the cab, faded to yellow at the stern.

The dispatcher brought cables, coolant, canned food. Set them down by the gate and left. Once he came to take a look, stood by the stern, and said nothing.

On the last evening Wren found a can of orange paint and a brush. On the left door he painted the emblem from the gate. From memory; the left edge came out crooked. He didn't fix it.

The reactor took a long time to warm up. Red, then yellow, then it came up to white. The magnetic joints came alive, and a hum ran through the hull, through the seat, through his palms on the wheel. One amber indicator lit. The rest stayed dark.

The box with the rag sat beside him on the seat. Wren buckled it in with the belt.

The Patch

The reactor hummed down and dropped to idle. The cab went quieter. Only the cooling metal ticked somewhere under the floor, counting off seconds.

Wren sat with his hands on his knees. The dispatcher had left the gate, and from the driver's seat he could see only the fence and the rows of machines beyond it.

He took out the bundle. Unwrapped the cloth.

The patch was worn, with a frayed edge and faded embroidery. An eyelet in the top rim, a scrap of cord still through it. The stitching on the back had come loose but held.

His partner used to hang it from the ceiling, in front of the windshield. The knot never came out centered, so the patch hung tilted, left edge down. Wren straightened it every time, and every time his partner said, “Leave it. Looks better that way.”

Wren found a coil of cord in the box above the dash. He threaded a new end through the eyelet, tied it, and fixed it to the hook under the ceiling.

The patch swung and hung there, left edge down.

Wren looked at it. Didn't straighten it.

“Well, old girl,” he said.

The joints answered with a low hum, quiet and brief. Nothing more.

He lifted the box off the passenger seat. Unbuckled the belt, opened the lid, unwrapped the rag. The unit lay in its casing, scuffed at the corners. No serial number. Just three connectors on the side and one scratch along the housing.

The niche under the dash was exactly the right size. Wren seated the unit. One connector went in at once. The second needed filing. The third clicked into place as if it had been expected.

The screen above the dash flickered. Amber light ran across the glass and gathered into a line:

“MATTHEW WREN. POWER: NOMINAL. UNITS OF DIFFERENT GENERATIONS: SIX. COMPATIBILITY: PARTIAL.”

Wren read it and said nothing. He only looked up: the line hung there as if it had been waiting. A question without an answer surfaced in his head: how did the unit know his name?

A few seconds later a second line arrived.

“BREAKER LAGS BY 0.4 SECONDS.”

“I know,” Wren said.

“THE DIFFERENCE WILL GROW UNDER LOAD.”

“I know.”

The screen stayed silent. Wren looked at it a little longer. Then he picked up the thermos the dispatcher had left at the gate. The coffee in it had gone cold.

Under the ceiling the patch swung with the reactor's hum, stilled, and swung again.

“Messages?”

“QUIET.”

“Wake me if anything comes in.”

The screen paused.

“YES.”

Wren tipped the seat back and closed his eyes. The patch was still swinging under the ceiling.

The Call

The amber line lit up in the dark and held until he opened his eyes.

“MATTHEW WREN. SIGNAL.”

Wren sat up. His neck was stiff. The patch under the ceiling swung in time with the reactor's hum.

“Where from?”

“DIVISION CHANNEL. REROUTED FROM ARCHIVE.”

The screen rebuilt itself. At the top: “DISTRESS SIGNAL DETECTED.” Below, coordinates and a steady tone on a single frequency, no text, no voice. Three beats, a pause, three again. The sound was too clean, as if drawn with a ruler.

Five seconds later a second line crawled out beneath it, red, in small corporate type.

“SEARCH TERMINATED.”

The radio clicked.

“Wren?”

“I hear you.”

The dispatcher's voice came from the trailer by the gate. A light burned in the trailer window; Wren hadn't noticed it before.

“See what came in?”

“I see it.”

“By regulation the call is closed. I'm obliged to say so.”

“Said it?”

“Said it.”

A pause. A rustle of paper.

“It comes in regularly. They close it, and it comes again. Three weeks, and nobody went.”

“Far?”

“Thirty hours or so down the old road. Past the abandoned fuel stop there's nobody.”

Wren took the paper map from his bag. Unfolded it on his knee, found a pencil, and put down a dot. The dot landed at the very edge of the sheet.

“TO TARGET: SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY KILOMETERS. RANGE: SUFFICIENT. RETURN WITHOUT RECHARGE: NO.”

Wren looked at the number. Then at the patch. Then at the number again. He didn't say anything.

He had always named his rovers. A nameless machine stayed a heap of iron, and spending two days in a heap of iron was no fun. He pictured how the rover would look from the outside: cab in front, bed at the back, six wheels. The front legs came out longer.

“Spider.” The first thing that comes to mind. “Arachne.” From that book they made everyone read in school, in literature class. The weaver challenged the goddess to a contest and wove a better tapestry. The goddess tore her work apart and turned her into a spider until the end of time. Wren weighed the name. The story ended in punishment. Not exactly inspiring.

From the same book came another story. “Ariadne.” A thread and a labyrinth: whoever goes in comes out by the thread. He raised his head. Rows without end, everything the same, impossible to tell apart from above. A labyrinth, and a ready-made one. A rescue winch always comes with an orange cable.

“Ariadne,” he said aloud.

He put the map away. Took hold of the lever.

The joints hummed up on their magnets, and the vibration ran through the hull, the seat, the wheel. “Ariadne” pulled out. He drove her down the row between the empty cabs.

The gate stood open. Beside the post the dispatcher waited in his jacket. Wren stopped the rover and opened the window.

The dispatcher looked the machine over.

“Spider,” he said.

“Ariadne.”

“Long,” the dispatcher said. “Adna. On air you want shorter words.”

Wren didn't correct him.

The dispatcher wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the door.

“That's a corporate emblem,” he said. “Strictly speaking, you're not allowed to wear it.”

“Strictly speaking, I don't have any status either.”

“Exactly.”

The dispatcher stepped back. He kept his hands in his pockets.

“How do you copy?” he asked, the way they say it on air.

“I hear you.”

The dispatcher nodded. Then he turned and walked to the trailer without looking back. The light in the window burned until Wren reached the road.

“Adna” rolled out through the gate. The track under her wheels was smooth, too smooth for an abandoned road. Someone still drove it.

In the speaker the tone ran steady, without gaps: three pulses, a pause, three pulses. On the third cycle the air clicked, and the voice from the trailer was gone. The screen wrote:

“DIVISION CHANNEL: NO LINK.”

The Road

On the second day the old road ended.

The abandoned fuel stop fell behind: rusted pumps, not a single light. Beyond it the asphalt went under sand, and the track ran into a hollow. Its floor had once been a river channel; the crust on top held, but beneath it lay liquid clay.

For the first two hundred meters Adna went through at speed. Then the wheels began to sink. The joints droned, the reactor's pitch climbed. Wren eased off and bore right, where the crust looked darker. It didn't help.

The slope on the far side wasn't steep, but it was long. The wheels flung mud in every direction. The orange stripe along her side was coated in brown clay.

The monitor put up:

“DRIVE: INSUFFICIENT CHARGE.”

“I know.”

“CAN CUT POWER TO: HEADLIGHTS, WINDSHIELD HEATING, DIRECTION FINDER. ALL TOGETHER: SUFFICIENT.”

“How do we manage without the direction finder?”

“TARGET IS SET. BEARING ONLY NEEDED CLOSER IN.”

Wren looked at the charge gauge. Then at the slope. Then at the patch swinging under the ceiling.

“Cut it.”

The headlights went out. The windows fogged at once along the edges. The beacon signal from the speaker, which had been running all this time, broke off mid-pulse.

The wheels bit. Adna crawled up the slope, slowly, straining, but she crawled. Wren took her in a zigzag, steering around the dark patches. Forty meters remained to the crest.

Something clicked in the cab, and it did not sound good.

Not loud. Somewhere behind the seat on the right, where the old power panel was. The click came a fraction of a second later than it should have, Wren realized. The drive sagged at once, and then the current cut out entirely.

The machine stopped.

The slope pulled her backward. Wren stamped on the brake, and Adna slid down about two meters, leaving two furrows in the clay. She stopped. A drone filled his ears, and a line glowed on the screen.

“BREAKER TRIPPED.”

Wren exhaled.

“Yeah. This is exactly what we needed.”

“WARNED.”

“You did,” he agreed.

Wren jabbed at the panel. No power, not a single light, the buttons dead. Then he got up, opened the cover on the right and took a flashlight from his bag.

The breaker cover was warm even through the glove. The marker on it had worn off, but the writing was still legible: “Don't touch until cool.”

“How long?”

“TWENTY MINUTES.”

The drive had dropped out together with the main circuit, but the reactor was running. The hum was steady, without strain, and all the current went into the battery. The charge gauge, wired to the battery circuit, slowly climbed. Wren looked at it every two or three minutes, the way you look at the clock in a waiting room. Then he looked away. Then he looked again.

Outside the wind picked up and carried dust. Adna creaked in her right front joint. The sound was shrill and dry, and Wren laid his palm on the dashboard, the way you lay it on a horse's neck.

“Just a bit more, old girl.”

The joint answered more quietly.

When the twenty minutes were up, he stood. The cover was warm, but he could hold his hand on it without being burned. Wren opened it and found the reset switch. Pressed it. Click. The panel on the door blinked, lit one lamp, then a second, then a third, and came fully alive.

“RESERVE: SUFFICIENT. RETURN: FORECAST WORSE.”

“Worse than it was?”

“WORSE.”

Wren nodded. He put the cover back and fastened the latch. Then he switched the direction finder on. The tone came back into the speaker, three pulses and a pause.

He turned the headlights on and moved off. The slope gave way more easily now: power was up, the batteries had recharged.

On the crest he stopped the rover. Briefly. He took out the thermos and finished what was left. The coffee was cold, bitter, station coffee.

Then he drove on.

Someone to Talk To

He reached the beacon toward morning.

At first the direction finder showed it only as a heading, then the bearing tone came in. Then, over the ridge, a mast with two dishes appeared, a hut of gray blocks beside it, solar panels furred with dust. An amber beacon blinked under the mast.

The screen wrote:

“SOURCE: HERE. CORPORATE STATUS: SEARCH TERMINATED.”

“I see it.”

He shut off the drive, left the reactor running, and climbed out. His legs were stiff. The door of the hut opened, and an old man in a knit cap appeared on the threshold, wearing a jacket like the one the dispatcher wears. In his hands he held two mugs.

“Ah,” he said. “Figured as much.”

“Hurt?”

“No.”

“Food? Water?”

“Got everything,” the old man said.

Wren looked into the hut anyway. A cot, a hot plate, canned food. A reactor in the corner, running.

“Then who called?”

“I did.” The old man held out a mug. “Tea. Real tea. Not the station kind.”

Wren took it. The tea was hot and sweet.

“Honestly,” the old man said, sitting down on the step, “I knew the Service wouldn't come. They put me on the blacklist for false calls. Which meant someone like me would turn up.”

“Like you?”

“Someone who still cares.” He looked at the rover. “You came in that? Built it yourself?”

“Myself.”

“Not bad,” the old man said approvingly.

“What is this place?”

“A relay. It used to carry comms for the whole sector. Now the corporation has satellites. Writing it off costs more than keeping it, so it runs. They forgot me here. Nobody ever cancelled the maintenance contract, so I look after it. Log the readings every day.” He nodded at the hut. “Nobody reads them.”

“Why turn on the distress beacon?”

“My radio burned out three weeks ago. Went quiet. I like quiet, but it turns out not that much.” The old man sipped from his mug. “I've only got the one beacon. All it can do is shout ‘help.’”

Wren said nothing.

“Don't be cross,” the old man said. “You came, didn't you? Did your duty.”

“Two days on the road.”

“There you go.”

Through the window Wren saw a line on the rover's screen update itself:

“CORPORATE STATUS: SEARCH TERMINATED. ACTUAL: SEARCH COMPLETED.”

The corner of his mouth moved, barely.

The old man looked at the left door, at the pale paint of the emblem.

“You're with the Service, though, aren't you?”

“No.”

“And the emblem?”

“Painted it myself. I used to be with the Service,” Wren corrected himself.

“Well, aren't you a relic,” the old man said with respect, the way you'd speak of a good acquaintance.

Wren said nothing. But the word stuck.

The old man had his own solar panel, and a reactor on top of it. Wren hooked the rover up to them for six hours. While it charged they sat on the step, and the old man talked. About the weather along the road, about how the receiver died, about a neighbor who used to live out here, left, and never wrote. Wren listened. Only once did he say, “Mm-hm.”

The rover's AI reported on the screen:

“RESERVE: SUFFICIENT. RETURN: SUFFICIENT.”

Wren got up. From a box he took two handheld radios. He'd found them recently in the rover graveyard, both working.

“Here. It'll reach the dispatch post I started from.”

“Who's there?”

“A man. He's got nobody to talk to either.”

He put one radio in the old man's hands. The old man turned it over, found the button, pressed it and let go.

“Turning on a distress beacon isn't a crime,” Wren said. “But when you feel like talking, use this instead.”

The old man said nothing. Then he nodded and straightened his cap.

The drive back took almost two days. Twice he caught himself smiling: relic. And once he covered his face with his hand without thinking, as if someone might see.

The gate stood open. A light burned in the trailer window. Wren stopped the rover, got out, and knocked.

The dispatcher took a while to open. The jacket still hung on him like a sack.

“What was out there?”

“A false call.”

“False?”

“The man was bored.”

The dispatcher didn't answer. Wren held out the radio. The dispatcher took it, looked at it, then at Wren.

“Switch it on.”

He pressed the button. Hiss, static. Then through it, distant and unclear:

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

The dispatcher stood with the radio in his hands. He raised it to his mouth and pressed.

“Here.”

Wren didn't stay to hear more. He went back to the rover, took a scraper from the box and walked up to the left door. The paint came off easily. Orange shavings curled and fell into the dust; the left edge of the emblem held out longest. Then it came off too. A pale scar was left on the door.

The dispatcher saw it through the window and turned away.

Wren got behind the wheel. The rover pulled out. The patch under the ceiling swung, stilled, and swung again.

“Adna, then,” he said aloud, half to himself.