Ronnie
Saturday, half past one in the afternoon, and the commander's screen goes white.
It's the font, the airline one. Sleep tight, Commander. Big day tomorrow. The same letters, small and neat and level, like a boarding pass for somewhere you don't want to go.
Updated burn plan. Issued by Flight. For the commander's reference.
Under it, numbers. The burn time, the start time, the pointing in three lines. Hazel's off her porthole before I can say her name, with the graph paper in one hand and Mack's card in the other, and she holds the card up beside the screen.
She doesn't need the pencil.
"They are the card," says Hazel. "Every figure. They have sent us the card."
"Two hundred and thirty-one," says Otis, from by the hatch. "That's the one we've been practising. Six verses and a bit."
"Yes, Mr Mabry," says Hazel. "That is the one."
Nobody says the next thing. Della said it on Wednesday night, backwards and then forwards. Too short, we miss. Too long, we burn.
The loop wakes up in both ears.
"All stations, Flight." Gravel, calm, late, like it's been somewhere first. "Stand by for an announcement on the open loop. This is going out to the press. Announcer, your mic."
On the ground a room goes quiet, and I can hear it go, like rain stopping on a roof.
"Constance, Flight. Commander, I'll be plain with you, because you've earned that." He's kind, and that's the worst of it. He's kind the way he was kind to Otis about the stopwatch. "For some days the flight surgeon's had concerns about the commander's behaviour on the private medical channel. We haven't raised them. We hoped they'd pass. They haven't. I'm going to play thirty seconds, so the public understands the decision Halyard's taking."
There's a click. A little hiss.
And out of both my ears, out of the loop, to the press, to the news, to every kitchen in America with the radio on, comes a pirate.
"Arrr, Cap'n. This old sea dog heard that parrot squawk not ten minutes since. And I'll tell ye for nothin', it weren't in a parrot's voice."
It's me, an hour and a half ago, on the line nobody hears. Then the worst pirate in the world. Aye. Keep yer ears open for the weatherman, matey.
Boyd has gone very still in Tess's old seat. Otis has let go of his strap by the hatch and is turning over, slowly, with his mouth open.
He's playing the line he isn't supposed to be able to hear.
"That's the commander," says Sully, very gently, "four hours before he flies a burn by hand behind the Moon. Halyard has taken medical advice. As of now the commander is declared medically unfit to fly the return burn.
"On day two I said I wouldn't give the engine back to the autopilot. I stand by what I said with what I knew. I know more now. The autopilot is the safer pilot. I'll be invoking the two-key override with Mr Ambler. The autopilot will fly the burn on the official numbers. The commander's hand controller will be locked." A pause, steady. "Mr Ambler is on his way to the floor. Flight out."
The loop goes back to its hiss.
Nobody in the cabin moves. The fans go on fanning, because fans don't know anything. The pump ticks behind the panel.
Two keys, two thumbs, and one of the thumbs has just played my pirate to the world.
The other one's in a car park, somewhere, with his seat belt chime going.
"Can he do it?" says Tess. Her voice is small. No chat in it. "Can they just take it?"
"Not alone," says Hazel. "It wants two."
"And the other one's Royce," I say.
Tess looks at me. "Royce cried this morning."
"I know."
"Is that good?"
I don't know. I've done Royce, and I've heard him fall through the floor this morning, right through to the basement. I don't know what a man does with his thumb when he's got nothing left to stand on.
I put the headset back on. My hand's on the loop button, and I can feel my own pulse in my thumb.
And then Boyd reaches past me. He doesn't ask. He takes Otis's headset off its hook by the hatch, where Otis left it, and he keys it, and his voice goes out over the loop like a brass band coming round a corner.
"Flight, Castellane. Y'all know who I am. I'm the man buying that building you're sitting in." He doesn't do the drawl. He does something bigger than the drawl, something with money in it. "The commander flies. That's five by five, and you can put it in the paperwork."
He hands the headset to Hazel.
Hazel holds it in front of her mouth like a hymn book. "Flight. This is Hazel Whitcomb. I taught mathematics for forty-one years. I have checked the commander. He is perfectly fit. He is considerably fitter than the numbers."
She hands it to Otis, who's upside down.
"Flight, it's Otis Mabry, I'm upside down, I'm sorry. He's fit. He did the stop arm. He did the flasher relay." His voice goes up and cracks. "Ruby, baby, if you're listening, Daddy's fine, Daddy's just upside down."
Otis hands it to Tess.
Tess holds it for a second without speaking. Then she keys it.
"This is Tess Aldana. My father was Rafe Aldana." She stops. In both ears, a long way off, I can hear the room on the ground stop with her. "The commander flies."
She lets go of the button. The loop hisses.
"Copy, Constance," says Sully. "All noted. The decision's medical."
He doesn't sound angry. He sounds like a man who's been told it's raining and has an umbrella.
I take my thumb off the button.
"Otis," I say. "Tess's cable." It's still hanging out of the panel by my knee, where Boyd pulled it like a weed. "If her red light comes on, the whole world hears this cabin without it going through his desk first. Can you make it come on?"
Otis looks at the cable for a long time, turning it over in his hands like a fish he's deciding whether to keep.
"It's wires," says Otis. "Wires I can do."
So he's upside down under the panel by my knee, with his feet hooked through a strap and a torch in his teeth, and the butter knife from the lunch kit, which is the only thing aboard with an edge. Tess is holding the other end of the cable and reading him the little coloured stripes. Boyd is holding Otis's ankles, because every time Otis twists a wire he floats off it.
"Blue," says Tess.
"Mm," says Otis, round the torch.
"Blue with a white line."
"Mmf."
"He says that's a different blue," says Boyd. "Son, I've stripped wire on a carrier deck in a crosswind."
Otis takes the torch out of his mouth. "Mr Castellane, with respect, you've told us that, and you've told us you flew jets, and I've seen you try and park a cross in a circle."
Boyd thinks about that. "Fair," he says, and holds the ankles.
Otis's torch goes along the row of little switches over his face, and his lips move. "Hand controller, primary," he reads. "Got a guard on it. On a bus, anything goes stupid, you kill it, count to ten, bring it back."
"Leave that one alone, Mr Mabry," says Hazel. "It was in the passenger briefing. If it is turned off and on, it takes four minutes to come back, and it brings back the commander's screen and his stick and his button. It does not give the engine to the computer. That wants the two keys. I underlined it."
"Wasn't going to touch it," says Otis, and doesn't.
At two o'clock the loop does the hour.
It isn't Royce. Royce hasn't done an update since the car. It's the announcer, in his cardigan voice, the calmest man in Florida, reading something somebody's handed him off a sheet.
"Halyard confirms that, on medical advice, the return burn will be flown by Constance's automatic systems. The commander is resting. The crew is safe. Further updates will follow." A paper rustles. "Mr Ambler is expected on the floor shortly."
"Expected," says Boyd. "In aviation, son, that's what we call a holding pattern."
"We are in a holding pattern around the Moon, Mr Castellane," says Hazel, without looking up. "Quite literally. I should not use it as a figure of speech."
Boyd opens his mouth, shuts it, and goes back to Otis's ankles. Otis has untwisted the same two wires three times now, and he's got a third one in his teeth. Tess is holding the torch now, so close to his face he's squinting, and saying, "Left. Your left. Your other left," in a voice that's nearly hers again.
I watch the panel clock. I watch my left ear, if you can watch an ear. Keep yer ears open for the weatherman, she said. I've got my ears so open I can hear the Moon.
At ten past two, the weather comes on.
"Gooood afternoon."
Left ear. Bright, big and fake, a local news anchor at six o'clock with a map behind him and a moustache, except it's a woman from Atlanta trying very hard. It's the worst Stormy Norm I've ever heard. It's beautiful.
"I'm Stormy Norm, and here's your weekend forecast. Sorry it's late, folks. The weather center ran it three times, and it came out the same three times."
I don't laugh. I hold up one hand to the cabin, flat, and they stop. Hazel's got her pencil out before I've finished the hand.
"Tomorrow's high," says Della, as Norm, "two hundred and fourteen." A breath. "Winds two hundred and fourteen out of the, the northwest."
"Two hundred and fourteen," I say to Hazel. In Norm. I can't help it. If I come out of the voice I'll lose the number. "Twice. Two hundred and fourteen."
Hazel writes. Her pencil's going like a sewing machine.
"Cold front arriving at six o'clock sharp," says Della. "That's six, folks. Six o'clock."
"Six o'clock. Twice."
"Scattered showers of, of seconds," says Della, and there's a terrible little pause where Stormy Norm forgets what weather is. "Of rain. Showers of rain. Later in the day."
Otis, upside down, has the orange stopwatch pressed flat to his chest with both hands. His lips are going. Not out loud. For once in his life not out loud.
"Our pollen count today," says Della. Every line arriving late, so she's always ahead of me, talking into a gap. "Pollen count one hundred and twelve. Winds one hundred and twelve."
"One hundred and twelve," I tell Hazel. "One hundred and twelve."
"Overnight low," says Della, "thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight—"
The loop wakes up in both ears.
"Constance, Flight. For the commander's wellbeing, Flight is closing the medical channel."
"Winds thirty—" says Della, in Norm, a long way off.
Then she drops it. Norm's gone. It's her, low, Atlanta, nothing ironed on it, the one I heard in the car park in the rain.
"Ronnie—"
And then there's nothing in my left ear. Not the hiss. Not breathing. The kind of nothing you get when somebody takes the wire out of the wall.
I keep the headset on. I press the button for the channel, and then I press it again.
"You there?"
Nothing.
"Della. You there?"
Not even the thing she always says.
In both ears, the loop. "Constance, Flight. Commander, rest. We'll take it from here."
I take my hand off the button. It's shaking, so I sit on it. Sully's rules: sit on your hands. I sit on my hands in the commander's chair, with his numbers on the screen in his font, and Mack's card beside it saying the same thing.
Boyd's got the little radio out of his sleeve. He clicks it on. The red light comes up, and nothing comes back. Not a crackle. Not a mint. He clicks it off and on again and holds it to his ear.
"Same pipe as yours, son," says Boyd. "Ailsa said. He's shut the whole thing."
Hazel floats up beside me with the graph paper. She holds it so I can see.
"I have the time," she says. "Two hundred and fourteen. I have the start. I have the first line of the pointing, twice. I have the second line once." She taps it with the pencil. "I do not have the third."
"Can you work it out?"
"Not from this. Not yet." She looks at the paper as if it were the Moon. "I need one more number."
"How long have we got?"
"Until the Moon is in the way?" She checks the clock on the panel. She doesn't need to. "Three hours and twenty-six minutes."
"And the override?"
"That wants Mr Ambler's thumb," says Hazel. "Nobody knows where Mr Ambler's thumb is."
Under the panel there's a small click. Then a spark, a tiny one, blue, and a smell like a toaster.
"Lord," says Otis, softly, and puts the butter knife in his mouth, and keeps going.