The spongy metal tires made a sandpapery sound on the icy road. My watch beeped and we stopped long enough for me to step outside and give Marygay a progress report.
There weren’t any suburbs on this side of town; no building was allowed in the direction of the spaceport. Once we passed the five-kilometer limit, though, we were in the city.
It was an interesting part of Centrus. The oldest buildings on the planet were here, squat rammed-earth structures with log framing on the doors and windows. They were dwarfed by the brick buildings of the next generation, two and three stories high.
One of the old houses was standing with its front door open, hanging loose on one hinge. We stopped, and walked over to take a look. I heard the sheriff unsnap his holster. Part of me said What the hell does he expect to find? and part of me was reassured.
Dim light came through the dirty windows, revealing a horrible sight: the floor was scattered with bones. The sheriff kicked at a few and then squatted to inspect a pile of them.
He picked up a long one. “These aren’t Man or human bones.” He tossed it away and stirred the pile. “Dogs and cats.”
“With the open door, this was the only shelter for them when winter came,” I said.
“And the only source of food,” Charlie pointed out. “Each other.” We’d brought dogs and cats to this place knowing they’d have to be dependent, parasites, for most of the year. They had been a welcome link to the chain of life that began on Earth.
And ended here? I felt a sudden urgency to get on into town.
“Nothing here for us.” The sheriff felt it, too; he stood up abruptly and wiped his hands on the greasy coveralls. “Let’s move on.”
Interesting that we had instinctively assumed that I was in charge from the time the shuttle left orbit, but now the sheriff was in the driver’s seat, figuratively as well as literally.
As the sun rose higher, we drove down Main Street, steering around abandoned vehicles. The road and sidewalks were badly in need of repair. We lurched over a choppy sea of frost heaves.
The cars and floaters were not just abandoned; they were piled up in knots, mostly at intersections. People go off automatic inside the city limits, so when their drivers disappeared, the vehicles just kept going until they ran into something heavy.
Most people’s homes were open to the sun. That was not reassuring, either. Who leaves for a long journey without drawing the curtains? The same people who leave their floaters in the middle of the street, I guess.
“Why don’t we just stop at random and check a place that’s not full of dog bones,” Charlie said. He looked like I felt: time to get off this rocking boat.
The sheriff nodded and pulled over to the curb, in case of a sudden onrush of traffic. We got out and went into the closest building, a three-story apartment cluster, armed with our big screwdrivers, to pry open locks.
The first apartment on the right was unlocked. “Man lived here,” the sheriff said, betraying some emotion. Most of them didn’t need to lock their homes.
It was functional and plain past austerity. A few pieces of wooden furniture without cushions. In one room, five plank beds with the wooden blocks they use for pillows.
I wondered, not for the first time, whether they had pillows stashed somewhere for sex. Those planks would be hard on knees and backs. And did the other one and a half couples watch while a couple was coupling? Adults always lived together in groups of five, while children lived in a supervised crèche.
Maybe they all had sex together, every third day. They didn’t differentiate between home and het.
The place was completely devoid of ornament, like a Tauran cell. Art belonged in public places, for the edification of all. They didn’t keep souvenirs or collect things.
There was a uniform layer of dust on every horizontal surface, and Charlie and I both sneezed. The sheriff evidently lacked that gene.
“We might be able to tell more from a human place,” I said. “More disorder, more clues.”