It was Teo's back.
I lay against it for what might have been an hour and might have been four minutes, with Jory's hair in my mouth and a stranger's spine along mine, and I didn't move, because moving meant finding out. His breathing was slow and even. Mine wasn't. Every time I breathed in, my shoulder blades pressed into him, and every time, he gave a little, and came back, as if he were a wall that had decided to be polite about it.
Then Abe's watch went off at the far end, three thin beeps, and somebody groaned, and a lamp came on.
The back left mine. Not quickly. It just lifted away, and the cold came into the place where it had been, and I rolled over so fast I kneed Jory in the kidneys.
He was getting up off the edge of my mat. My mat, the blue one with the burn hole in the corner from Pim's stove last winter. He knelt up on it, rolled his shoulders once, put his helmet on, and crawled off down the chamber to where the tackle bags were piled, without a word to me or a look back. Like a man getting out of his own bed. Like he'd done it every night of his life.
The mat was still warm where he'd been. I put my hand on it, and took it off again as if it had bitten me.
"He was on my mat," I said.
Nobody answered.
"He was on my mat. He was asleep against my back. Did you see that? Somebody tell me they saw that."
"There," said Abe, from his end, pulling his boots on. "What did I say? Nobody's having a go at you, love. Two nights, I said."
"I've never had him on my mat in my life."
"You've had him on it all night," said Hana, sitting up with her hat on sideways. "He'll have been cold, poor lad. It's cold by the wall."
I opened my mouth, and Ilan's lamp, turned down, went into my eye.
"Follow my finger," he said.
"Get that out of my face."
"Follow my finger, Sabine. Humour me. Left. Right." He was very close, smelling of yesterday's coffee, frowning with his whole forehead. "Pupils equal and reactive. Bit dry. You need two litres and something with salt in it. Any headache? Nausea? Did you dream?"
"Thank you, Doctor."
I said it like you'd say it to a traffic warden. He took it as he takes everything, as a symptom, and wrote it down somewhere behind his eyes.
We packed. It was three in the morning by every watch in the Pantry and it was the same black it had been at nine the night before, and everybody went about it like a morning anyway, because that's what you do. Mats rolled. Bags stuffed. Somebody's sock steaming on the stove. Pim sat in his sleeping bag with his eyes shut eating a cereal bar without unwrapping it properly.
Thirteen hours to the Toll. Abe said seven of them would be the crawl out, going light, and the rest was walking. Nobody was looking at their watch more than once. I looked at mine every couple of minutes.
Teo was packing a tackle bag by the pinch, coiling a sling, slow and careful, like Jory. He had his back to me. Everybody kept their eyes off him, not like you keep your eyes off a stranger but like you keep them off somebody who's had a bad night, out of kindness. Kindness. I wanted to scream.
I decided to catch him.
I'd never in my life caught anybody out. I can't play cards. I can't do surprise parties. When I was eight I told Mum I'd not eaten the icing off the cake, with icing on my chin, and Jory has been telling that story at Christmas ever since. But I had a plan, and it was a good plan, and I went over to it before I could think about it, which is how I do most things.
I crawled over and knelt next to him and started helping with the sling, which he didn't need.
"Long way from the van, this," I said. Bright. Far too bright. My voice had gone up half an octave and come out like a hostess's. "You came down in the red one, didn't you? With Pim?"
There wasn't a red van. There was Abe's, which was blue, and Corwin's car, which was grey, and that was the lot. I'd stood in the lay-by in the rain on Thursday morning and watched them both being unloaded.
He didn't look up. He finished the coil and threw the tail through and pulled it tight.
"Abe's is blue," he said.
That was all. Three words, flat, no change in his face. And mine went hot. I could feel it go, up from my neck into my cheeks into my ears, hot enough to steam the clay. Pim had stopped chewing. Hana had stopped with a mat half-rolled. Corwin had his camera halfway out of its case, and he left it there.
"I thought there was a red one," I said. "There's always a red one. Every trip. Somebody always comes in a red one."
"Smooth, Sab," said Pim, and laughed, and stopped.
I went back to my own bag and stuffed my sleeping bag into it so hard the drawcord snapped.
Jory was kneeling by the wall, packing the rigging bag. She didn't look up. "What was that?"
"Nothing."
"You can't lie, Sabby. You never could. Don't start learning in here." She pulled a drawcord tight with her teeth. "Pack your bag."
Then the stove went out.
It didn't go out nicely. It coughed, and spat a yellow flame up the side of the pan, and Hana snatched her hand back, and it popped and died, and the smell of raw petrol came across the chamber. Hana said a word I'd never heard her say. She pumped it. She turned the key. She pumped it again and turned the key and it hissed and gave her nothing.
"That's breakfast," she said. Flat. "That's that."
Teo put down his bag and came over on his knees. He didn't ask. He took the stove off her, and turned it upside down on a square of foil, and had the burner head off with his thumbnail, and then the jet, and the little needle that cleans it, before Hana had finished telling him not to. His fingers were black with clay to the second knuckle and he didn't wipe them. He blew through the jet, once, hard. Looked through it at my lamp. Blew again. Put it back together in the time it would have taken me to find the right pocket for the spanner, pumped it four times, and lit it, and it went up blue and roaring and steady, and he handed it back to Hana by the legs.
"Ta," said Hana. She looked at it, then at him. "Ta, love."
"Jet was dirty," Teo said.
Pim had the cereal bar halfway to his mouth. "What d'you do, Teo? When you're not fixing Hana's stove."
"Build houses."
He said it to the stove. Then there was a pause, long enough for Pim to start a grin, and Teo said: "Built."
Nobody had anything to say to that. Pim laughed, and the gap took it and stayed a gap. Teo went back to his tackle bag. The pan started to tick.
"Here, Abe," said Pim, a bit too loud, because he wanted the gap gone. "I saw the Trust's form on the table at the hut. Abram Ostler. Since when are you an Abram?"
Abe was rolling his mat. He didn't look up. "Only my mother and the tax man."
"Like in the Bible?"
"Like in the Bible."
"Father of multitudes," I said. I don't know why. It was the only thing I remembered from Sunday school. "Is that why you can't stop counting us?"
Abe laughed, big and easy, and the chamber let go a bit, the way it does when Abe laughs. I'd made a joke that worked. I felt it work. I had about two seconds of it.
"You're Milo's surveyor," said Teo.
He said it across the stove. Not loud. He wasn't looking at me. He was threading a strap through a buckle on the tackle bag, and the words came out flat and level, as if he were telling the time.
Hana said, "Teo," low, like a warning. Ilan looked at his own hands. Corwin cleared his throat, and then didn't say anything after it. At the wall, Jory had stopped with her helmet halfway onto her head, and she left it there, half-on, with the strap hanging.
"I'm the surveyor," I said. It came out small, which I hated. So I made it bigger. "I'm everybody's surveyor. I'm the surveyor for this trip. Who are you the anything for?"
He pulled the strap tight. He didn't answer. He didn't look at me. He put the bag on his back.
My mouth was dry as a biscuit. I drank half a litre out of my bottle without stopping, because Ilan was watching, and I wanted him to have that, at least.
"He's Milo's," I said to Ilan, low, while he was still watching me drink. "That's what this is. He's something of Milo's. A brother. A mate from his club. He's come down here for me and Abe, and you're all passing him the sugar."
"Sabine."
"He knew my face. I've never seen his in my life, and he knew my face."
"Everybody in the club knows your face," said Ilan, and then heard himself, and went pink under the clay, and bent over his pack.
Breakfast was porridge out of a bag, made in the pan with too much water and passed round in two mugs with one spoon. Hana gave the first mug to Teo. Nobody remarked on it. He ate sitting on his heels by the tackle bags with both hands round the mug, blowing on it, like anybody. When the spoon came round to me I wiped it on my sleeve, hard, and Pim saw me do it and looked at the roof.
Hana was going down the line of packs, counting the morning's bags out of her big sack for the feeds ahead, the marker writing on each one in her round hand. She counts bags. She doesn't count people; people are Abe's. She was talking to herself under her breath, like she does in her kitchen.
"We never saw the riggers from Thursday to the Crawl head, did we?" she said, to nobody, to the bag in her hand. "Two nights. He'll have been with them, love. That's all it is. You never saw him because he was with Abe's lot."
I sat back on my heels.
"Abe said I shared a mat with him," I said. "Abe. You said two nights. You said I'd shared a mat with him for two nights. Which is it? Was he with you, or was he with me?"
"Lamps off," said Abe. "Names."
He said it over the top of me. Not rudely. He just said it, as he says it every time, with his big hand already going to his switch, and everybody else's hands went to theirs, because that's what hands do when Abe says lamps off. Mine went too. And the black came down again on all of us.
"Abe," said Abe.
Slap.
"Jory."
Slap.
"Ilan."
Slap.
"Hana."
Slap.
"Odalys."
Slap.
"Pim."
Slap.
"Corwin," after his little cough.
Slap.
"Sabine," I said, "and that's eight—"
"Thank you, Sabine," said Abe, over the top of it, warm and loud, and slapped.
"Teo."
It came from behind me. Close. The hoarse voice, a body's length from my back, from where the tackle bags were.
Slap.
"Nine," said Abe. "All well."
The lamps came back up, and everybody was exactly where they'd been, and Teo was by the bags with his helmet on and the lamp on it dark, looking at nobody.
Abe stood up as far as the roof would let him, which was nowhere, and did his leader's voice.
"Crawl out. Seven hours if we're sharp. I'll go first. Then Pim, with the batteries, where I can keep an eye on them. Jory. Odalys. Hana. Ilan. Sabine. Then Teo. Corwin last, because he'll want to stop and take pictures and I'd rather he held nobody up but himself."
"Fair," said Corwin.
"I'm not having him behind me," I said.
"Sabine."
"I'm not, Abe. Put him in front of me. Put him in front of you. Put him in your bag, I don't care. I'm not having him behind me for seven hours."
"Teo's steady," said Abe. "You're the one we'll want somebody steady behind. You were sick going in, at the Wringer."
"I was not sick. I was nearly sick. That's different."
"I'll go behind her," said Pim. "I don't mind."
"You've got the batteries, lad. You're up front with me." "That's the line," said Abe.
Seven hours. I knew that crawl. I'd done it going in, eleven hours of it with the gear: the Wringer, the Elbow, the long wet stretches where the roof comes down to a hand above your helmet and the stream runs under your chest. All of that with him at my heels. Close enough to touch my boot. Close enough to take hold of my ankle, if he wanted, in a place where I couldn't turn round to see him do it.
Odalys was crouched at the stream with her hand flat in the water, as if she were feeling a radiator. "Stream's up," she said. "Two fingers since last night." She stood up and wiped her hand on her suit and said nothing else, and nobody asked her anything, and I liked her for not making it a speech.
I looked at Jory. Jory looked at her harness.
She came past me to the crawl mouth, and as she went her hand went out sideways without her looking, and found my cowstail, and tugged the stopper once, hard, to check her own knot. Then she was gone into the crawl, her boots going away from me, and then Odalys's, and Hana's, and Ilan's.
That's the thing nobody tells you about a crawl. In a crawl you see boots, not faces. Single file, flat on your front in a pipe of rock, you get the soles of the person in front of you and a light behind you and nothing else, for hours. You can't turn round. There isn't room to turn round.
I got down on my elbows at the mouth of it. The rock was cold and wet and I could hear the stream in there, louder than last night, the way Odalys said.
Teo was crouched behind me. I could feel him there. I didn't look round.
"Go on," he said.
I went in. Behind me, his lamp came on, and my own shadow went into the crawl ahead of me.