On the afternoon of the fourth day the ring stopped sounding like a place Mara could leave for another morning.
She was in the service passage when the alarm began. A sharp note, then the speaking alert, then a knock in the wall. The pressure trend for an outer residential section had changed. Not a broken sensor. She asked Suri to confirm at the second point and took her kit down the stair.
A man stood outside his room in socks.
“Is it the circuit again?”
“Bring everyone out.”
“But is it—”
“Everyone. Now.”
Mara put a hand on his shoulder so he had a person to obey rather than a sound. He turned and called into the room. At the far end of the walk a seam had opened. The escaping air tugged at the little hanging plants somebody had tied near the door. Nothing flew away. That made it look manageable, like something a more resourceful person could apologize for and mend.
She had once believed that of almost everything.
Suri came back on the link. “Second reading confirms.”
“Clearing the sector. Keep the uphill route open.”
“Already open.”
Mara checked the isolation position and called Keon. “We'll be moving the remaining residents aboard today.”
“All accommodation ready.”
“Departure unchanged?”
“Unchanged.”
She repeated it for the people nearest her. “The ship's ready for you. There's time to move. Don't stop to pack the room.”
They stopped anyway: a child for a stuffed toy, a woman for the bag she'd kept beside the door, the man in socks for shoes. Mara let the shoes come. He needed to keep being an adult she was helping, not a bundle she was carrying.
They moved toward the stair. The floor pressed their bodies downward, ordinary weight becoming a burden because they were trying to take too much. At the first turn Ivo was bracing against the railing, passing a bag upward while a frightened little boy held his wrist.
Mara saw him explain something without bending into the child's face. He gave the boy his other hand and showed how a foot could leave the stair, come back, leave it again. A lesson. The same long patience he gave adults too embarrassed to risk an ugly beginning.
“Don't jump yet,” he said. “Let the stairs get easier first.”
The boy tried it. Behind him his mother began breathing differently.
Mara went past them to check the last rooms. She didn't enter any farther than she had to. One resident had left a cup on a windowsill, a few drops of tea inside. It was a foolish thing to notice when she was counting people. She counted again.
“Sector clear,” she told Suri.
She closed the isolation and watched the readings. On the other side of the closure, the leak kept taking what was left. The damage stayed confined. That was success. When she put her hand on the door, she could feel no difference between it and every door she had opened on an ordinary day.
Ivo came down a few steps to meet her.
“Everybody out?”
“Yes.”
“The other homes?”
“All of them now. We don't wait for the next seam.”
His eyes went past her toward their walk. The old room lay beyond the next bend, safe for the moment and no longer a place anybody should sleep. She had refused it while it was still an option.
“What do you need?” he asked.
She almost said nothing. It was her familiar answer to being afraid.
“Help people uphill. Bags second. Keep them moving into the hub, not waiting in the transfer.”
“Done.”
He touched her arm once and turned.
The rest was hours of leaving. Not dramatic hours, except to those performing them. Elderly neighbors stopped to rest. Children wanted to be told whether the last dinner would still happen. Bags snagged. A resident threatened to go back for a quilt until Alma took his face between her hands and said she would make him a better one if he could stop being an idiot.
At the inner terrace a teenager pushed off too hard with a case and began to turn sideways. Ivo caught the case handle, folded himself around its momentum, and brought it against the rail. Mara recognized the movement before he finished it. She caught his forearm to take the rest of the load. A strap buckle flicked up against her chin; she felt the sting and kept her grip.
For one instant they were joined around a very badly packed case. It made a loud sound of objects disagreeing inside.
“Who brought stones?” Ivo asked.
“My collection,” the teenager said.
“Of stones?”
“Obviously.”
Mara laughed, breathlessly. Ivo gave her the case and guided its owner up toward lighter weight.
Later she found him beside the last open cupboard, collecting the bowls that had escaped everyone else's claims. His face was streaked with dirt. One of his yellow shoulder stitches had pulled loose.
“They're just bowls,” he said when she looked at them.
“I know.”
“I don't.”
She held the bag open while he put them in.
The fern terraces were quiet now. The drying cloths still hung over the table, but their owners had gone aboard. Without people moving under them, the leaves seemed unexpectedly large.
Mara had wished for silence here. She didn't want this silence.
“We'll need safe work access later,” she said. “Not homes. I'll confirm the isolated commons route before anyone goes down.”
He nodded. He understood what he was still allowed to ask of the place.
At Traverse, Keon stood at the arrival hatch receiving people with no particular ceremony. A frightened woman asked whether they would have to leave early.
“No,” he said. “End of the seventh day. As planned. Come in.”
Mara watched Ivo take the bowl bag from her. He held it between both hands, still full of motion from his work. She wanted him with a suddenness that had nothing to do with persuasion.
“I'll wash,” she said. “Then I'll find you.”
His look changed. He didn't try to make it into a joke.
“All right.”