Ronnie
Saturday, twenty to six, and there's no Earth in any window.
There's the Sun. It's in the big window, because the ship's turned its nose to it all on its own, like a cat finding the warm spot, and it's white and it's everywhere. Hazel has her hand up against it. Otis has his eyes shut.
And there's the Moon. It's under us now, not out there, under, close enough to drop a coin on.
The last thing on Tess's tablet was Della's face, a second late, saying sixty. Then a grey square, and then nothing at all.
The commander's screen is black. I push the joystick left and right, and it goes where I push it and nothing else does. It's a toy with no batteries in.
"Okay," I say. "Okay."
Nobody says anything back. The fans fan and the pump ticks.
"Hazel. How long?"
She doesn't look at the clock. "Nineteen minutes and some seconds to the burn."
"And to them hearing us?"
"Thirty-eight minutes. If we are where we ought to be."
Nineteen minutes. I've done a whole birthday in nineteen minutes, cake and candles and a relight and a song, but I've never done one with the power off.
Here's what she told me on Wednesday night, the piñata night. Sully can make it go to sleep on his own, and that's the only thing anybody can do alone. She didn't say how you wake it up, and I didn't ask, because I was busy being a piñata. Hazel said something about it this afternoon, and I didn't listen, because I was busy watching my left ear.
The panel's two hundred switches with little words under them, and I don't read the little words. I read faces.
So I read faces.
"Who's ever restarted anything?"
Boyd looks at his hands. Tess looks at her dead tablet. Hazel says, "I once restarted a photocopier. It was not a success."
Otis opens his eyes.
"Buses," says Otis.
"Buses."
"Every bus I ever fixed. Something goes stupid, you don't fight it. You kill it, you count to ten, you bring it back." He's already unclipping. His voice has gone down a floor, which for Otis is a basement. "Where's the one for the stick?"
"I don't know, buddy. I don't read the words."
"I read the words. I read 'em all afternoon." He pulls himself along the panel, upside down again, nose to the switches. His lips move. He reads them like a menu in a language he half knows. "Cabin fan. Cabin fan two. Water. Hand controller, primary." He puts his finger on a little switch under a little guard. "That's it. That's our boy."
"You're sure?"
"It's got a guard on it. They put a guard on the ones that matter. Same on a bus." He flips the guard. He looks at me. "Commander?"
"Do it."
He kills it with a click, and nothing else changes, because it was already dead.
And then Otis does something I didn't know Otis had in him. He takes a big breath and puts his free hand up by his mouth like there's a microphone in it, and he does the ring announcer, the big one, off the wrestling on a Saturday night.
"In the blue corner," says Otis, "weighing in at, I don't know what it weighs. Ten!"
Tess laughs, and it comes out of her like a sneeze.
"Nine! Eight!"
Boyd's mouth goes. Hazel says, "Oh, for heaven's sake," and counts with him. "Seven."
All of us. "Six. Five. Four."
I'm counting and I'm crying a bit, and I don't know which is which.
"Three! Two! One!"
He flips it back.
Nothing happens. Then, from somewhere behind the panel, a hum, small and steady, like something deciding to live.
"It was in the passenger briefing," says Hazel. "Four minutes before the screen returns. I mentioned it to Mr Mabry this afternoon. Nobody else was listening."
"Four minutes," I say. "Okay. We can do four. I've done a whole magic act in four."
Hazel's got the graph paper flat on her knee, with her foot hooked through a strap, and the pencil's going. I can't read it, but I can watch it.
"Ms Quint gave the first line twice," says Hazel. "One hundred and twelve. She gave the second line twice. Thirty-eight." She writes. "Then she gave a total. Twice. Four hundred and seventeen. As temperature, and then as wind."
"Stormy Norm," I say.
"I am told so." She doesn't look up. "And then she said two hundred and sixty. And then the Moon."
"So we don't have it."
"We have arithmetic, Mr Lark." She draws a line under something. "Four hundred and seventeen. Take away one hundred and twelve. That is three hundred and five. Take away thirty-eight. That is two hundred and sixty-seven." She looks at me over Lionel's glasses. "She got as far as sixty. Sixty is right."
"So it's two hundred and sixty-seven."
"If the total is the total of those three, yes." She puts the pencil behind her ear. "If it is the total of something else, then I am wrong. We shall find out at eighteen minutes past six."
"That's not very comforting, Hazel."
"No," says Hazel. "It is only correct."
Three minutes to the screen.
I unclip Mack's card from beside the screen.
It's been there since Tuesday, his big blue loops, the numbers he was given and would have flown. I hold it a second. Then I give it to Tess.
She looks at it for a while, at the M in the bottom corner where he signed it.
She puts it in her pocket and zips the pocket.
Two minutes to the screen. Nobody talks, and I'm the one who always talks, and I can't.
I press the button on the channel. I don't know why. It's habit, and the hand does it.
"You there?"
Hiss. Not even hiss. The sound of a line with a whole Moon on it.
"I know you're not," I say. "I know. It's okay. I'm just. I'm going to say it anyway, because it's quiet up here and I don't do quiet." I stop. "You did the weather on television. I saw it. You did Norm in front of everybody. You were terrible. You were the best Norm I've ever seen."
And I hear it. I hear what I'm talking in.
It isn't Mack and it isn't Norm. It's Titusville and a tyre shop, high and fast, with a crack in the middle.
I take my thumb off the button and hold it in my other hand for a bit.
The screen comes back.
It comes back friendly. Green letters and the little chime, like a cash machine giving you your card. The white cross in the middle, and the green ring.
The ring's in the wrong place, and I know it before Hazel says a word.
It's off to the left and down, a good way off. The ship knows where the ring is, because the ship put it there: the last numbers it was given. The card's numbers. Sully's.
And the ship starts to go to it.
I feel it in my seat first. A small push in the back, a lean, like a car taking a bend nobody's driving. The Moon slides across the window. The cross on the screen starts walking toward the ring, slow and sure.
"No," I say. "No, no, no. Not you. Sit."
I take the joystick.
It's alive and it fights me. Not a lot. It's a steady pull, like a kid tugging your sleeve in a supermarket. I push it back and the cross stops walking.
"Hazel. Read me the numbers."
"Which?"
"The ones on the screen. Under the cross. Where we're pointing. Read them out."
She leans over my shoulder and reads three numbers, and they mean nothing to me.
"Okay," I say. "Okay. We're doing hot and cold."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The party game. Something's hidden in the room, I walk about, you tell me hot or cold. I don't need the numbers. I need you to tell me if I'm getting warmer."
"Mr Lark, I am not going to say warmer."
"Hazel."
The cross twitches toward the ring. I hold it.
"Warmer," says Hazel, with enormous dignity.
I move it a hair.
"Warmer. Warmer. Cold. You have gone cold. Back. Back. Warmer." Her finger's on the screen, on the numbers, ticking them against her paper. "The first is right. Hold the first. The second wants more. More. Stop."
"Tess. Window."
"The Moon's going left." Tess is right up against the glass. Her voice is quick and clear. It's the stream voice with nobody to stream to. "It's going left. Slowly. There's a big crater on the edge and it's sliding. More. More. It's stopping."
"Third, Hazel."
"Cold," says Hazel. "Very cold. Oh, you are freezing. The other way."
I go the other way, slowly, with my whole arm.
The ship chimes. Not Aligned. In friendly green.
"It thinks we're wrong," says Otis.
"It thinks it's a bus on a route," I say. "We're taking the shortcut."
"Warmer," says Hazel. "Warmer. Hot. That is hot. Hold that. Mr Lark, hold that."
I hold it.
Not Aligned, says the ship.
The ring sits off to the left on its own, being right about the wrong thing. My cross sits where a teacher from Gainesville says, two hundred and sixty-seven from a sum, and it chimes at me every few seconds, Not Aligned, and every time I want to say sorry to it.
"Hazel?"
"It is where she said," says Hazel. "To the best of my arithmetic."
"Okay."
The pull's still there, and it's going to be there the whole time. Point, elbow on the knee, the way I practised. I hold the stick with my whole arm, and the ship leans, and I lean back.
"Helmets," I say. "Boyd."
Boyd's already got them.
He goes round the cabin: Otis, Tess, then Hazel, who holds very still and lets him do it like a woman at a hairdresser. Every seal gets his thumb round the ring, a click, a tug, and on round. He doesn't say a word. No five by five, no angels, nothing.
He comes to me last. I can't let go of the stick, so I lean my head back and he puts the helmet over me from behind. The cabin goes small and close, my own breath in my ears. He clicks the seal.
And then he doesn't let go.
He holds the helmet with both big hands, one on either side, from behind the seat, steadying my head. I can feel his fingers through the shell.
He doesn't say anything.
Tess's camera's on the arm in front of her with its little red light on. It's been on since Otis did his surgery, filming into a Moon that can't send anything anywhere. She looks at it. Then she reaches up and turns it off.
Hazel's at the porthole.
She's got her helmet on and her face right up to the glass. Under us is the far side, grey and lit and close, holes inside holes, long white lines like somebody threw flour.
Lionel's far side. Thirty years of photographs. Seven hundred names, none of them official.
She just looks.
"One minute," says Otis.
He's got the orange stopwatch on his chest, with the strap wound twice round his wrist and his thumb on the button. His voice is high again, but it's holding.
"Okay," I say. "Here's the bit."
Five people breathing in helmets. It sounds like the sea.
"Two hundred and fourteen seconds. Hazel worked it. Six verses is two hundred and ten, then four more seconds. Ten, nine, eight. Then I stop."
"Ten, nine, eight," says Hazel. "Then stop."
"Otis calls the thirties. I sing, and nobody else sings, because if you sing I'll speed up. Everybody speeds up when people join in. It's a known thing at parties."
"Thirty seconds," says Otis.
I put my left hand on the little guard over the doorbell. I flip it up.
The ship pulls. I hold the cross. Not Aligned, says the ship.
"Ten seconds," says Otis. "Ten. Nine. Eight."
His count, not mine. I let him have it.
"Three. Two. One."
"Go," says Hazel.
I press the doorbell, and I hold it.
It isn't loud.
That's the thing nobody tells you. There's no roar. It's a push, a big flat hand in the middle of your back, and a hum that comes up through the seat into your teeth. The Moon in the window doesn't move. Everything inside the cabin leans the one way, very gently, like a bus pulling off.
The stick fights, and I hold it, and I sing.
"Ten, nine, eight, it's your birthday. Seven, six, five, don't be late."
My voice is thin and shaking in my own helmet. I keep it slow, because slow's the whole thing.
"Four, three, two, hear the roar. One, zero, one year more."
"Thirty," says Otis.
Second verse. The hum's in my teeth, and the cross sits on the screen where Hazel put it, with the ring off to the side and the chime going. Not Aligned. Not Aligned. I sing over it.
"One minute," says Otis.
Third verse. I've sung this at four hundred birthdays. I've sung it with a cake on fire and a dog under the table, and to a kid who'd just been told his grandad died. I've never once sung it wrong.
"One thirty."
Fourth. The pull's steady and my arm's gone hot. Boyd's hands are on my helmet, Tess's face is at the window, and Otis is behind me somewhere, breathing in little bursts, keeping his count.
"Two minutes."
Fifth verse. "Ten, nine, eight, it's your birthday. Seven, six, five, don't be late."
"Two thirty—"
And there's a snap.
It's small, like an elastic band. And Otis says, "Oh—"
The stopwatch goes past my face.
It's orange and turning over, slowly, how things go up here, with the frayed strap trailing behind it like a tail. It floats past the side of my helmet. It floats past Boyd's nose. Boyd's eyes follow it, cross-eyed, and his hands don't come off my helmet. It sails on behind Otis's head toward the back of the cabin. Otis is strapped into his seat, Boyd's got my head, and the only clock on the panel does minutes.
"I've lost it," says Otis. "I've lost it, I've lost the clock, Ronnie—"
"I've got it," I say.
I haven't got anything. I've got a song.
"Four, three, two, hear the roar."
"Ronnie, I don't know where we are—"
"Fifth verse, buddy. We're in the fifth verse. One, zero, one year more."
And I keep going. Nobody calls the thirties now, and there's nobody counting but me. Just my voice in the helmet and the hum in my teeth and the chime going Not Aligned and four people not singing, because I told them not to.
Sixth verse.
I want to speed up. It's all I want, every bit of me wants to get to the end, and I make it slow. I make it as slow as a seven-year-old blowing out candles, one at a time, with everybody waiting.
"Ten, nine, eight, it's your birthday. Seven, six, five, don't be late. Four, three, two, hear the roar. One, zero, one year more."
Then the extra.
"Ten," I sing. "Nine. Eight."
I take my thumb off the doorbell.
The hum stops, all at once.
The hand in my back goes away, and everybody in the cabin drifts a little, forward, all together, like passengers when the bus stops. Hazel's pencil comes loose and floats up off her knee.
Nothing on the screen. Then, green: Burn Complete.
Nothing under it. No Within Tolerance.
Nobody says anything.
I take my hand off the stick and it shakes, and I look at it. It's my hand. It's smaller than Mack's. There's foam in the fingertips of the glove to make up the difference.
"Was that it?" says Otis.
"That was it."
"Was it right?"
I don't know. I'm a man who does birthdays. I don't know if it was right.
"Hazel?"
Hazel's got her helmet against the glass again. She's not looking at the paper. She's looking at the Moon going by underneath.
"We shall know at eighteen minutes past," says Hazel. "When they ought to hear us."
Fifteen minutes.
Nobody takes their helmet off. I don't know why. It seems rude.
Boyd lets go of mine at last. He takes his hands away very carefully, like he's taking them off a card house, and sits back in his seat, and he still hasn't said anything.
Tess has her hand on her pocket, flat, over the card.
Otis is turned round in his seat, looking for the stopwatch. He can't see it. It's somewhere at the back, up by the hatch, behind the sleeping bags. "It's still going," he says. "I didn't stop it."
Hazel's at the porthole with Lionel's camera still on its strap round her wrist and the cap still on. The far side goes by underneath, Lionel's far side, and she watches every bit of it.
At eighteen minutes past six I key the loop.
"Halyard, Constance."
My voice goes out, and I wait for the delay to bring something back.
Nothing.
"Halyard, Constance. Do you read."
Nothing. Not the gravel, not the announcer, not even hiss.
I wait, and I count, because I always count. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
"Halyard."
Hazel doesn't turn round from the window. Otis has his hands pressed together inside his gloves, and Tess is looking at me.
Nothing.
Somewhere at the back of the cabin, behind Otis's head, the stopwatch is still counting.