Chapter 129 Eleven Seconds

Juno stood on the north path with her arm pointing at the sky until it shook.

Then she lowered it, slowly, with her eyes still shut, and stood there. Nobody went to her. Nobody knew what to say.

"Where?" said Luna at last. From the door of the dome, very quiet. "Where in the sky?"

Juno's eyes opened.

"Moving," she said. "East. Slowly." She lifted her arm again, a little way, and traced a line across the green ceiling of the world, from the west rim to the east. "Across. The way the sun goes. Only faster." Her arm stopped at the eastern rim. Dropped. "Gone. Over the edge."

"The relay," I said. "The Meridian. It's gone over the horizon."

"And it's still looking," said Juno. "The thing under the ground. It's still looking at where the ship went." She swallowed. "Like a dog at a door."

Nobody slept much that night either.

I sat with Dot on the red glass and watched the sky. The stars here are wrong. I'd stopped noticing, after a year. That night I noticed. I watched every point of light go over, waiting for one of them to be moving, and none of them was.

"The relay passes every nine days," said Dot. "The next pass is Day three hundred and ninety-eight."

"Then we've got nine days."

"This unit thought so," said Dot. "This unit was wrong."

I turned round.

Dot's rivers were running very slowly. In four colors, but the colors were dim.

"At two hours past midnight," she said, "the relay changed its course. This unit felt it. In the silver. The spine's name, very faint, and then much less faint." A pause. "It is lower. It is closer. It is going round faster."

"How often?"

"This unit has counted," said Dot. "If it does not change again, it will pass over this canyon once every night. Starting tomorrow." The rivers stopped. "Every night, operator. Not every nine days."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

"Crane," I said.

"This unit cannot know who moved it."

"It's Crane." I looked up at the stars, all of them standing still. "He heard Toby sing. He heard the spine answer. And he wants to hear it again. Every night. As close as he can get."

"Yes," said Dot. "This unit thinks so too."

I told Luna at dawn.

She stood on the red glass with the slate in her hand and listened, and didn't say anything until I'd finished. Then she wrote something on the slate. A time. Two hours past midnight.

"Then that's when we'll be awake," she said.

We spent the day getting ready for something nobody could describe.

That was the strangest part. Luna gave orders, and people did them, and none of us knew what any of them were for. Wren on the tower with her mirror, in case. Tamsin with her bow. Corr and Benedikt at the mouth of the canyon, in case the Teeming came. Sera at the forge, with the fire up. Holt on the middle bed in the dome, because Holt's hands listened.

And Toby on the floor of the dome, cross-legged, with his notebook in his lap, writing down the hello over and over in curves.

"I want to hear it," he said, when Luna told him to sleep. "When it comes. The spine's name. I want to hear what it actually sounds like. I'll never get another chance."

"You'll get one every night, apparently," said Luna.

"Then I want to hear the first one."

Luna looked at him for a long time.

"Then you hear it in here," she said. "With Lucas. With Risa. Where I can see you."

Two hours past midnight. Day 391.

The dome, dark except for the low lamp. Toby on his blanket in the middle of the floor. Risa beside him with her eyes shut and her hand out. Me on the end of the middle bed with my stick. Holt on the other bed, with his still hands flat on his knees. Luna in the door, with her slate. Dot outside, a tall shape against the stars, with her arms in the soil of the terrace.

And Juno, on the north path, with her arm out, pointing at the western rim.

"Coming," said Dot.

I couldn't hear it.

I want that understood. I couldn't hear anything. None of us could, except one. What I saw was the green.

All of it, all round the canyon rim, every frond, as far as the starlight went, turning. Not toward me. Not toward Dot. Up. All of them, at once, like a field of faces lifting to look at something passing overhead. Fifty kilometers of silver tips, bending back, straining up, toward one point of light I couldn't find among all the others.

And Holt said, very quietly, "Oh."

I looked at him. He was looking at his hands. They were lifting off his knees. Not shaking. Not still. Lifting. Palms up. Like someone holding them out to be warmed.

"Toby," said Risa. Very sharp. "Toby."

He was sitting up on his blanket with his eyes wide open and his face turned up to the roof of the dome, and he was smiling. The smile I'd seen on him once, on field four, when the first note of the old song and the fork lay on top of each other so perfectly that there was only one sound.

"I can hear it," he said. "Lucas. I can hear it."

"Toby—"

"It's so big," said Toby. "It's not a pattern. It's not small things in a row. It's—" He stopped. His mouth stayed open. "It's the whole sky. Singing its name. And under us—" He put his hand flat on the floor. "Under us, the other one. Singing back. Both at once. Like two bells. Like standing between two bells."

"Toby, lie down."

"I can't hear anything else," said Toby.

And then he did lie down. Not because I'd told him to. Because he fell.

I was off the bed before he hit the floor.

Not my legs. My eyes. I was inside him before I'd stood up, the way I'd been inside Hana Osei's skull in the chamber, the way I'd been inside Liam's leg in the cave. Skin. Ribs. The long pale bundles of nerve. And in the middle of him, behind the breastbone, the thing I was looking for.

His heart.

It was beating.

Slowly.

"Risa," I said. "Count."

She already was. Her hand was flat on his chest and her eyes were shut and her lips were moving.

"Forty," she said. "Forty a minute. Thirty-five." Her voice went up. "Lucas, it's slowing—"

I could see it. The muscle squeezing, and letting go, and squeezing. Every squeeze slower than the last. Not weaker. That was the strange part. Each one was strong, and full, and long. As if it had all the time in the world.

Up. And a long way up. And hold.

And down.

"It's following it," I said.

My voice sounded very far away.

"His heart. It's doing the hello." I was staring at it. At the slow, enormous, patient squeeze. "He's been listening to it for weeks. Humming it. Writing it down. Singing it into the radio. And now it's everywhere, all at once, louder than anything, and his heart's—"

"Twenty," said Risa. "Lucas."

"—his heart's joining in."

Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down.

Once every eleven seconds.

That's what the hello was. That's what Toby had said, on the rock at F-thirty, with his notebook open. Once every eleven seconds. It was a beautiful slow thing for the green to do. It was a beautiful slow thing for a bone in the sky to do.

A boy's heart can't do it.

A boy's brain needs blood every second. Not every eleven.

"Twelve," said Risa. Her voice cracked. "Ten."

Luna was across the dome. I didn't see her come. She was just there, on her knees on the other side of Toby, with her hands on either side of his head.

"How long has he got?"

"I don't know."

"Guess."

"Minutes," I said.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I took hold of it.

His heart. With the other eyes. The way I took hold of a spoon, or a stone, or twelve meters of titanium with six people in it. I looked at the whole shape of it, all at once, the four rooms and the walls between them and the thick muscle round the bottom. One thing.

And squeezed.

Not hard. I'd learned that much from Halloway. Only what you need. Nothing else. A heart isn't a stone. A heart is a fist that opens and shuts, and if you crush it, it doesn't open again.

So I squeezed it the way it squeezed itself. From the bottom up. Gently. And let go.

And squeezed.

And let go.

Once a second. The way it was supposed to. The way it had his whole life without ever being asked.

"Sixty," said Risa. Her eyes snapped open. "Sixty. Lucas, that's you. That's not him. That's you."

"I know."

I don't know how long it was. Luna does. She counted. She told me after: forty-one minutes.

I didn't know that then. I only knew the heart. Squeeze, and let go. Squeeze, and let go. And under my hands, every time, the heart trying to go the other way. Trying to slow. To hold. To wait eleven seconds, with the whole sky singing its name overhead and the whole ground singing back.

It wasn't fighting me. That was the worst of it. It wasn't sick. It wasn't broken. It just wanted to sing along.

My nose went in the first five minutes.

I felt Sera's hand on the back of my neck. Very warm. I hadn't heard her come in. She held it there, and the heat went into me, steady and even, the way it had in the skiff for two days. Somebody wiped my face. Liam. His hands were lit, very faintly, and shaking.

Luna's hands on either side of Toby's head had gone cold. Very cold. Frost on her knuckles. Frost forming on Toby's hair, very fine, in the lamplight.

"Cold slows the brain," she said, without looking up. "It needs less. Halloway's book. Chapter nine. You read it to me." Her jaw was set. "I'm buying you time. Keep going."

I kept going.

At twenty minutes, I started to lose it.

Not the heart. The bucket. It was so small, a heart, a fist, nothing at all next to Maris. But I'd never held anything that moved before. That needed me to change what I was doing every second, open and shut, open and shut, and never once look away. And every time I squeezed, it pulled the other way, gently, toward eleven seconds.

My hands were shaking. Worse than Priya's. Worse than Mother's.

"Holt," said Luna, very sharp. "His hands. Your hands. What are they doing?"

"Listening," said Holt. His voice was strange. "To the sky."

"Then that's what Toby's doing. He's listening. He can't stop. He needs something else to listen to." She looked up at me. "Lucas. He needs a third bell."

A third bell.

I couldn't think. I couldn't take my eyes off the heart. Squeeze, and let go.

But my hand went into my pocket on its own.

The fork. I'd taken it off its string in the pod, and put it in my pocket, and carried it every day since. The tuning fork I'd made him in the cave out of a bead of the steel splash. Tuned to the first note of the old song. With a grain of iron in it with one flaw, so I'd always know it.

I held it out. I couldn't look at it. "Somebody. Strike it. On the floor. Put it against his head."

Risa took it. She struck it on the stone floor of the dome, once, hard.

And held it against Toby's temple, just above Luna's frosted hand.

The note.

Very high. Very pure. The first note of the old song. The one Toby had sung on field four, a long time ago, with the fork in his hand, so perfectly that the two lay on top of each other and there was only one sound. The one he'd put in fifteen stones on the way down a mountain, so that somebody counting could follow.

His own note.

His eyes moved. Under the lids. Very slightly.

"Again," I said.

Risa struck it again. And again. And held it to his head every time, and the note rang in the dome, thin and clear and stubborn, a small bright thing between two enormous ones.

"Toby," said Risa. She leaned down, close to his ear, with the fork in one hand. And took his hand, with her other one, and pressed it flat against her own chest.

Her heart. A bird's heart. Fast. It always had been. A hundred and forty when she was calm, Luna told me once. Faster when she wasn't.

"Listen to mine," said Risa. "Toby. Listen to mine. You hear hearts too, a bit. You always did. You told me, at the fern. You can hear mine. It's not singing anybody's name. It's just going. Fast. Stupid. Like a bird. Listen to that." Her voice broke. "Please. You're always listening to the wrong thing."

I felt it.

Under my hold. The heart pulling the other way, gently, toward eleven seconds. Pulling. Pulling.

And then, very slightly, not.

A flutter. Against my squeeze. A tiny, quick, clumsy little beat of its own, in the middle of my slow one. Like somebody stumbling. Then another. Then another, too fast, too soon, all wrong.

His own.

"Let go," said Risa. Her eyes were wide. "Lucas. Let go. He's got it. He's listening."

I let go.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than lifting twelve. Harder than letting the bucket go over the rim. I'd had his heart in my hands for forty minutes and every part of me said if you let go he stops.

I let go.

And Toby Marsh's heart went on beating on its own.

Fast. Ragged. Stumbling. A hundred. A hundred and twenty. Chasing Risa's bird heart under his hand like a child running after an older sister.

Not singing anyone's name.

Just going.

"Gone," said Dot, from the doorway. "The relay is over the eastern rim."

Outside, the green was lowering. All of it. Fifty kilometers of silver tips coming down from the sky, slowly, like a field when the wind drops.

And on the middle bed, Holt's hands came down onto his knees, and were still.

I fell over sideways onto the floor of the dome, and didn't get up.

When I woke it was full morning.

The first thing I saw was Toby. Sitting up on his blanket, with a cup in both hands, very white, with frost-burn on his temples where Luna's hands had been and a dark bruise on his chest in the shape of somebody's fingers that weren't anybody's. Risa asleep against his shoulder. Liam asleep across his feet.

He looked at me.

"Did I miss anything?" said Toby.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out wrong, cracked and wet, the way his had at the waterfall. I lay on the floor of the dome and laughed until I couldn't breathe, and Toby sat there with his cup and watched me with an expression of enormous patience, and after a while he started laughing too, and then he winced and put his hand on his chest and said "ow," and that made it worse.

"You stopped," I said, when I could. "Toby. You nearly stopped. Your heart. It was doing the hello. Once every eleven seconds. You were—"

"I know," said Toby.

I stopped laughing.

"I heard it," said Toby. Very quietly. He looked down at his cup. "All of it. The whole thing. The spine's name. And the one under the ground. Both at once." He swallowed. "It wasn't trying to hurt me, Lucas. It didn't know I was there. It was just so big. And so glad. Two halves of something that hadn't heard each other in—" He stopped. "I don't know how long. Longer than people."

"Glad," I said.

"Glad," said Toby. "That's what it sounded like. That's why I wanted to go with it." He looked up. "And I can sing it now. Its name. I've got it. All of it. I could sing it to you right now."

"Don't," said Luna, from the doorway.

Toby almost smiled. "I wasn't going to."

Dot was standing behind Luna, very tall, in the morning light.

"Operator," she said. "This unit has to tell you something. This unit has waited until the operator was awake."

I sat up.

"At the end of the pass," said Dot, "as the relay went over the rim, there was a transmission. Not a comms window. Not scheduled. Short." The rivers ran very slowly. "This unit recorded it."

"Play it."

A hiss. A click. And then, very faint, very clear, put through so many machines on the way down that it sounded like a voice from the bottom of a well:

"Command to four-oh-one-dash-P-one. Command has observed an acoustic event of significant interest at operator's location. Command notes the involvement of Cadet Marsh, Toby. Command notes Cadet Marsh's medical condition with concern." A pause. "Cadet Marsh is to be prepared for retrieval and specialist assessment aboard the Meridian. A lander will descend on the next pass. Command thanks the operator for his continued cooperation."

Click.

And then, softer, very close to the microphone, as if he'd leaned in at the last moment:

"Look after him for me, Lucas. Until tomorrow night."

Nobody in the dome said anything.

Toby sat on his blanket with his cup in both hands and his face gone the color of ash. Risa had woken up. She was holding his arm with both of hers.

I looked at Luna.

Luna looked at the sky, through the doorway, where the relay had gone.

"Then he'll have to come down here and take him," said Luna Windsor. "Past seventeen of us."

Day 389–391.

Juno's arm traced it across the sky. West to east. Over the rim. "Like a dog at a door."

Dot: the relay changed course at two past midnight. Lower. Faster. Every night now, not every nine days. Crane wants to hear it again.

Day 391, two past midnight. The whole green lifted to the sky. Holt's hands turned up, like being warmed. Toby: "I can hear it. Like standing between two bells." Then he fell.

His heart was doing the hello. Forty. Twenty. Ten. Once every eleven seconds. A boy's brain needs blood every second.

I held his heart. Squeeze, let go. Once a second. Forty-one minutes. Luna counted.

Sera's hand on my neck. Luna froze his head to buy time. "Chapter nine. You read it to me."

Luna: "He needs a third bell." The fork. His own note. Risa struck it, again and again.

Risa put his hand on her chest. "Listen to mine. You're always listening to the wrong thing."

His own heart. Stumbling. Too fast. Chasing hers. I let go. Hardest thing I've ever done. It kept going.

Toby: "Did I miss anything?"

He heard all of it. "It wasn't trying to hurt me. It was so big. And so glad." He can sing its name now. Luna: "Don't."

End of the pass. Crane: "Cadet Marsh is to be prepared for retrieval. A lander will descend on the next pass." "Look after him for me, Lucas. Until tomorrow night."

Luna: "Then he'll have to come down here and take him. Past seventeen of us."

Toby is alive.

Underlined twice.