Kate Day - In the Quick

Amelia, Carla called. You haven’t hung up—

The voices continued.

Amelia, you’re still on!

Her face appeared again. Oops. Then the screen went black.

Carla whipped around. What were you doing, interrupting like that? Her voice got higher. My sister doesn’t want to talk about a stupid water pump—

Seemed like she did, Nico said.

Carla’s face was furious.

You know your sister’s kind of weird, he said.

I don’t think she’s weird, I said. I think she’s—

No one cares what you think, Carla said.

She went outside, and Nico and I followed. A few wet snowflakes were falling.

Carla walked fast up ahead and Nico caught up to her, leaving me alone on the slippery path. It looked like he was trying to make up with her, to make her laugh. He picked up a handful of snow, packed it into a ball, and gave it to her. He said, loud enough for me to hear, Go for it. Right here. He pointed to his chin.

She threw it right at his head, hard, and he made a big show of wiping the dripping snow from his face. There was a big red spot on his cheek, and Carla laughed. They walked toward the cafeteria together, and didn’t look back. I stood still for a minute on the frozen walkway, and then I turned around and went back to Building 4. I sat down at a computer, opened up the Inquiry feed, chose a channel at random, and turned it up loud.

Every day I listened closely to the news reports about Inquiry; every morning I set my tray down on a chilly table in the cafeteria and felt certain today would be the day NSP would announce the rescue mission. But I was always wrong.

I kept returning to Building 4. I’d open up the Inquiry communications feed and click through all the recognizable channels, the sm or galley or stowage, and then through some with more inscrutable labels, listed as simply ext or int or aux followed by a number. Occasionally there was a distinct crackle or blip on the line, but when I asked Nico about it he said it was just meaningless interference, caused by any number of things between Earth and NSP’s deep-space satellites—a passing station, a random piece of space junk, a natural satellite.

I think I listened to every single channel for at least a few seconds. Each of them was different, and it was sort of fascinating, the contrasts in sound and volume. Some rushed like ocean water; another crunched like car tires on gravel. One sounded exactly like the steady patter of rain.

On the weekends I’d listen to the feed for hours, and certain channels became like old friends, their sounds familiar and comforting. I thought about how each was supposed to connect Earth and Inquiry, and a picture formed in my mind of threads that stretched deep into space, like a spacesuit’s tether cord but millions of miles long.

Sometimes I listened so long I thought I heard patterns in the feed’s seemingly random crackles. But when I told Nico about it, he said I was crazy.

You think you’re going to hear something NSP hasn’t? He laughed. Dream on.

But I kept listening and started plotting the crackles in a notebook of graph paper. Date, time, length. Pages and pages I filled in. But my system didn’t take into account intensity, or sound quality of any kind. I began listening carefully to discern differences in the noises, and after a while I came up with a code for recording each crackle and blip. A letter to denote sound quality, a number to denote length.

On some channels a sound appeared once and then never again. But on others there were little blips I got to know. A high whine, a quick tick, a bubbling hum. A3, E2, F5. On one of the auxiliary channels I regularly heard G1 and H2, which were maybe not two sounds but one because they always came together: a hum of low static and then seven snapping pops.

I kept asking Nico to come and listen, and he finally agreed. Once we were in front of the computer I pulled up the AUX27 channel and played back G1 and H2.

What do you think is causing those sounds? I asked.

It could be a million different things—

They come together every three days, I told him. Approximately every seventy-two hours, give or take a few hours.

His mouth turned up on one side, a slightly crooked smile. I’d only ever seen him smile that way at Carla. Whatever you think you’re doing, mission control has already done it, he said. And they found nothing or it would be on the news.

Nico, wait, I said. Can I ask you something?

I’ve listened to enough static for one day, he said.

The wind rattled the walls of the building. It’s about the hand.

What about it—

It’s not good enough, is it? Number five.

The thumb helped, he said.

A little.

Yeah. He shrugged. Only a little.

What can we do?

Not much unless you’ve got a better idea. He grabbed his bag. Then he paused. Do you?

I thought of the blown-up and shrunk-down hand that hung in my mind in Materials lab, and the hand prototype I’d left on James’s desk. But I shook my head no. Nico got up and told me he’d see me at dinner, and I stayed and listened to the hums and crackles of the AUX27 channel for a long time.

Lion was at breakfast the next morning; he walked slowly and his eyes were tired. I asked him how he was feeling and he said he’d woken up with a bad headache but it was better now. When we all sat down at a table with our cereal and toast I said I wanted to talk about the hand. I started to explain what was in my mind, slowly. I took out the notes I’d made when I was building my hand prototype. But Carla and Lion and Nico weren’t paying attention—they were looking at the television. On the screen a woman was talking about Inquiry. She said there was going to be an announcement momentarily, and the clank of utensils and the clatter of trays went silent.

The screen cut to a man standing in front of an NSP research building, where my uncle’s lab used to be. He said the rescue mission wouldn’t be going forward. It was too risky to send another crew after Inquiry when there was no definitive proof the crew were still alive, and when there were serious unanswered questions about the integrity of the fuel cells that powered both Inquiry and Endurance. He went on, saying that after long and careful consideration NSP was suspending the Explorer program, effective immediately.

I felt a cold sweat on my palms and heard a low buzzing in my ears. All around us, kids were talking loudly.

Lion leaned forward on the bench. June? he said. June are you all right?

I nodded. My head felt oddly separate from my torso. Heavy and unwieldy. Like it was full of sand.

The rest of the day the hallways were oddly subdued. Our teachers gave us work to do at our desks instead of at the whiteboard. Kids showed up at class late or not at all. When I arrived at Materials lab no one from my group was there. I sat with a girl from the adhesive tape group and two boys who had been working on a flotation device. The girl read a book and the two boys played a computer game, and after a while I got out my math book and did equations.

The next day was strange too. Everyone seemed sad or annoyed, even the teachers and the women who served us our food. A few girls from my dormitory went home. Carla showed up late to Materials lab, and then she and Nico left early. The short time we were all at the table wasn’t the same. Carla, Lion, and Nico didn’t talk like they used to. Lion didn’t draw and Carla didn’t boss us around. Nico didn’t argue like he did before.

The next day in the yard I saw Carla walking with Netty and Brianne. They passed by the cafeteria and moved into the field.