Della
At a quarter to two on Friday afternoon a man said "Hi" in my headset and I said "Hi" back like a woman at a bus stop, and then he told me everything in forty seconds in a voice I'd never heard, with no bit in it.
They knew, all four of them. Boyd had called it a mutiny and the cabin had called it a vote, and at four o'clock, in practice mode, Boyd and Ronnie would each fly the rehearsal while Hazel counted.
I said, "Okay," nine times over, and he said, "I know," each time, in the new voice, while I stood in the Fishbowl with both hands flat on the table and the glass all round me. Royce was already on his way.
He'd got it from Ailsa, who'd got it off Boyd's radio at ten to two, a call from the cabin in a thick Texas drawl saying he'd claimed the chair, and by ten past Royce was on his feet behind his desk in the quarter-zip with his hands out like a man carrying a tray, with the green sofa and its price tag between us like a witness.
"Boyd flies," said Royce.
"No."
"Hear me out. Stay with me. A billionaire, hand-flying a billion-dollar ship round the Moon, live, on the stream. A real man. A real hand. That's not a malfunction, Della, that's the biggest story since the Moon." He was looking over my shoulder at the wall. "The buyer saves us himself. I couldn't write that."
"You couldn't write it because it isn't true. He's a passenger."
"He's a pilot."
"He was in a recruitment programme thirty years ago. It's a fact on a jacket."
"My client's not flying anything," said Ailsa Strachan.
She was in the chair by the window with her laptop open on her knee and her tea going cold on the sill, and she hadn't looked up. A mint cracked. On her screen, the flight plan, October revision, in very small type.
"Ailsa."
"Mr Castellane called me at ten to two. He's told me he's flying it. I told him to ask for the seat, Mr Ambler. I did not tell him to sit in it." She turned a page without any sound at all. "His insurers have views. If he does it and it goes wrong, I'm the one explaining it to his board, and I don't enjoy being the one explaining. I want him alive and the price down. That's two things. One of them's arithmetic."
"And the other?"
"Is also arithmetic," said Ailsa. "It's just got a pulse."
Royce looked at her. Then he looked at me, and he did a thing I'd never seen him do in all that time, which was shut his own office door. He did it with his foot. He sat on the edge of the desk. His phone buzzed on the blotter. He looked at it, said, "Mum, not now, I'm in a—yes, I'm eating," and turned it face down.
"Della. Come here. Sit."
"I'll stand."
"I want to make you an offer." He took a breath through his nose, and the voice came down off the tray. "Silence. Until after the burn. No calls, no FAA, no sheriff, nothing, no Jail. And on Sunday, the day after, we sit down, you and me, and we talk about everything. Everything. All of it. I'll put it in writing."
"Everything."
"You've got my word."
My word, said Royce, in an office with a price tag on the furniture. He was grey under the eyes. He hadn't been to bed since Wednesday. I know what a man looks like when he's holding up a ceiling.
I looked at him for a count of about three. I had the FAA on a word, and a man at the duty desk who still wrote on paper, and a list in my head with four plans on it. But there were four people in a tin can and a man with a stick. There was one plan that kept the channel. It was the dull one.
"After the burn," I said.
"After the burn."
"Fine."
I said it twice, because the first time it came out short. Royce took it for enthusiasm. He clapped me on the shoulder, once, and went to open his own door, and I went out through it and stood in the corridor and said into my phone, very quietly, "One. Do not keep that promise. Two. Do not hit Royce. Three. Plan B. Find a name at the FAA with a direct line. Not a duty desk. A person." I stopped. "Four. Water."
The wall screens still had the card up, the cartoon wrench, BRIEF MAINTENANCE BREAK, BACK SOON, and under it the comments had been going for nine hours while the room gave up pretending not to read them.
"BRIEF," read the engineer next to Kip, aloud, in a cold voice. "BRIEF. IT'S BEEN NINE HOURS."
"BLINK TWICE, MACK."
"THIS IS A HOSTAGE SITUATION. BLINK TWICE IF BIG LINDA HAS YOU."
The announcer got to his mic in his cardigan, two desks from Sully, with the three o'clock script in one hand, and said, in his calm voice, to the whole world: "Folks, Halyard flight operations continue to monitor the situation. Constance, or Big Linda as she's become affectionately known, is resting comfortably, and her crew is in good spirits." He paused. "The brief maintenance break will be, ah, brief."
On the screen the comments went up like a flock. BIG LINDA IS RESTING COMFORTABLY. THAT'S WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT HOSTAGES.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them Kip was looking at the ceiling with a can in each hand.
Kip said, to nobody, in the voice of a boy reciting the Stations of the Cross, "In order. Number five, the green one, because it tastes of a lawn. Number four, the one with the eagle, which is just fizz and a promise." He drank. "Number two, the one with the lightning bolt, which is a lie but it's a nice lie. And number one." He lifted the silver can like a priest. "Number one, I only have on burn days."
"Kip."
"It helps me think."
"Think about the numbers."
"I am," said Kip, "basically, thinking about the numbers," and the engineer beside him put his head on his desk.
At half past three Royce went up the step to Sully's console, and I followed him, carrying a cup so that I'd look like I was going somewhere.
Sully was in his chair with his glasses on, reading something with a lot of columns, and he didn't turn round while Royce stood at his elbow with the tray hands.
"Sully. I need a word. I need the cabin told, on the loop, that Flight recommends Boyd Castellane for the rehearsal. Just a recommendation. A man with experience."
"No."
"It's a recommendation."
"Flight doesn't pick," said Sully. He didn't look up from the columns. "The cabin picks. That's in the licence. They vote, I read the clock."
"But you could say—"
"I could say a lot of things. I'm not going to say any of them on the loop." A page turned. "Four o'clock, Royce. Go and sit down."
Royce went and sat down. It was the quickest I'd ever seen anyone obey a man who was reading.
At four o'clock I put the headset on the table and the laptop on the headset and pressed the speaker. Royce had said, "I need to hear it," and I'd said, "It's a private line," and he'd said, "Everything in this building is a private something, Della," and sat down in the Fishbowl on the only other chair. Ailsa took the corner. Kip, who had no reason to be there, stood just outside the glass with a printout, very still, pretending to be a coat stand.
The channel came up in the middle of the table, and it wasn't Ronnie, it was a room, with a lot of fans in it and a pump ticking and somebody praying at the back.
"Order," said a voice, very dry. Hazel. "Mr Castellane has the seat. Practice mode. You have twelve minutes to put the cross in the ring and hold it. I shall count the seconds. Mr Lark, you will remain at the porthole."
"Smooth is fast," said Boyd, big and warm, and I heard the chair take him. "Y'all keep your eyes on the pretty lady with the pencil. Watch a man fly."
A chime, then a second one, and then in the room a little ripple of three people not breathing.
"Aligned," said Hazel. "Twenty seconds."
"Told you."
A chime again. A different note. "Not aligned," said Hazel. "Mr Castellane, the cross has moved."
"She's got drift in her."
"It is practice mode, Mr Castellane. I believe the drift is there to keep one honest."
I heard it before I understood it. His voice had slowed, by a small amount, as a note drops when somebody lifts a finger off a string, and the chimes came further apart, and under the Texas there was a sound in his chest like a bellows with a hole in it.
"Boyd," said Ronnie. Close to the mic. Low. "Boyd, look at me."
"I'm all right, son."
"Okay."
"I'm just tuning her. I've got the feel."
A long chime. Not aligned.
"I can't feel my hands."
It wasn't Texas. It was a different man, flat, clipped, careful, every consonant in its place, like a boy who'd been taught to talk at a school with a motto. "I can't feel my hands. I can't—is that normal? Is that normal?"
Nobody in the Fishbowl moved, and in the corner Ailsa had stopped crunching.
"It is common," said Hazel, steady as a table. "I once taught a boy who could not feel his hands for forty minutes on the morning of his mock examination. He achieved a distinction. Mr Castellane, I should like you to put your hands in your lap. Mr Mabry, if you would."
"I've got him," said Otis. High, shaking. "I got him, Commander, I got his arm."
"I washed out," said the other voice. It was very quiet. It didn't stop. "Years ago. The centrifuge. I told them it was my ear. It wasn't my ear. I went white and I couldn't see, and they took me out of the room. I've not flown a thing since I was fifty. Not a Cessna. I don't—" and here his voice cracked, like a plate, "I don't know which screen the flight plan is on. I've never known. Which one's the flight plan?"
"The left one," said Ronnie. "I'll show you after."
"Greenwich," said Ailsa Strachan, in the corner, to nobody, flat and quiet. "His father had a yacht club."
Royce said nothing, and looked at the laptop with the face of someone who'd put a coin in a machine and been handed a wasp.
"I shall count the hands," said Hazel, in the room, "for Mr Lark. He flew it in the small hours of Thursday, in the dark, when he believed the cabin asleep, and the screen said within tolerance. I do not require a second performance." A pause. "One. Mine."
"Ronnie," said Otis. "I mean the commander. I mean—Ronnie."
"Two."
"Chat's not here," said Tess, quietly. "So it's me. It's Ronnie."
"Three. Mr Castellane?"
A very long beat, in which a man in a flight jacket with patches he hadn't earned decided something.
"Put mine down for the clown," said Boyd. It was almost the Texas. It was just a small distance away from it, like a man standing next to his own coat.
"Four hands," said Hazel, "and the candidate's own, which I shall allow. The commander flies. The meeting is adjourned."
Royce took the phone call in the Fishbowl doorway, with one foot out of it, to somebody in Houston.
"Yes. Yes. No, I heard. Tell Mr Castellane we respect his judgment completely. It's what a team does, it goes the extra mile." He listened. The tray hands had gone. "Fine. Yes. Fine. The clown flies."
He hung up and stood for a moment looking at the showroom carpet and its stains, and then he went out across the floor, and Ailsa picked up her laptop and followed him, and I heard her say to his back, very dry: "That's one problem I don't have to explain."
When I got back to my desk at half past five there was a paper cup of coffee on it, and Kip three desks away pretending very hard he hadn't put it there, and I drank it, and it tasted of sofa.
At six o'clock I took the headset out to the Sentra, because I'd run out of glass and I wanted a room I could swear in.
"You there?" said Ronnie.
"Where would I—" I stopped. I'd used it so many times it had gone off. "I'm here."
"I did it. I mean, I didn't do anything. Boyd did it. He did the whole thing himself, you should have heard him. I've never been so scared for somebody I wanted to push out of a chair."
"I heard."
"Good. I thought you should."
"It's me who put it on speaker in the Fishbowl with Royce and Ailsa listening. I'd like you to know that."
"That's okay."
"It isn't okay, it was an error, he made me." I put the seat back. The security light came on over the car park and lit the windscreen like a stage. "Ronnie. New terms."
"Go."
"I'll tell you the plans."
"All of them."
"I always have plans."
"I know. I like your plans. They're the only thing up here with a shape." He said it very plainly. There wasn't a voice on it. "No more plans I don't know about. That's the deal. You can have a hundred. I'd just like to be told."
"Fine."
"Fine from you's like a standing ovation from anybody else. I told you that on day four."
I looked across the tarmac at the control room, a lit box with a cartoon wrench the size of a bus on its front wall. If Royce was on the line, Royce could have it. He'd hear worse on Sunday.
"One sentence," I said. "I've got one for you. Bette found her own sleeping pills by the pool on the Monday morning, with the lid off, and she thinks he did it himself, and she hid the bottle."
Nothing, except the cabin around him, the pump and a man somewhere behind him saying a small amen.
"Della."
"I know."
"I'm going to do a bit."
"Don't."
"I wasn't going to. I was going to do Bette."
"Don't do Bette."
"Okay," said Ronnie. "Okay."