Those Who Would Stay

The conduit answered on the fourth knock. Celia kept her pencil above the paper until the tapping ended. Four knocks meant the resident was ready to speak, not that she was ready to cross. Yesterday Celia had put both marks in the same column. She had ruled that column out this morning.

Mira held the speaking funnel steady against the pipe beneath the sail loft floor. Jonah sat by the window with his notebook shut. Rain had dampened the cuff of his coat, and he kept turning it back from his wrist.

Celia gave the address written on the dry impression. A voice came through the funnel, thin but clear.

“You have the right house,” the woman said. “Is the passage open?”

“Not yet,” Celia answered. “Before we ask anyone here to receive you, I need to tell you what has happened above.”

“You said there were changes.”

“A hundred years have passed. It is autumn, 1923.”

The pipe clicked. Water, perhaps, shifting inside it.

The woman asked, “Since Tuesday?”

“Yes.”

Mira lowered her gaze to Celia’s pencil. The date at the top of the sheet was plain enough. It had taken Celia two tries to write the sentence beneath it: The resident has been told the elapsed time. That was not the same as saying the resident understood it. How could anyone, with Tuesday still in her mouth?

“Then my boys are dead,” the woman said.

“I can’t establish that from here.”

“They were seven and nine. I left them upstairs with my sister when the gates closed. You needn’t measure every inch of a thing before you say it.”

Celia set down the pencil. “No.”

The woman breathed against the far end of the pipe. “I wanted to get back to them. That was why I kept answering. If your street opens, where would it take me?”

“To a willing person at an address above. We haven’t arranged one for you. We would ask first.”

“But not to my sister’s kitchen.”

“I don’t know who lives there now.”

A chair scraped faintly below. “Then don’t arrange anyone yet. Leave this address where I can reach it. I may ask you again.”

“You may,” Celia said.

The woman knocked once, and the line went quiet.

Celia wrote her answer in full. Not a refusal forever. Not a request for passage. The pencil point dug through the sheet where she had pressed on the word yet.

At the next address, a man wanted to know whether the upper quay still took cargo at dawn. He asked about work before he asked about the date. Celia told him the year, and after a pause he asked it twice more. On the third telling, he stopped her.

“No. Keep your witness.”

“You can speak with us again,” she said. “Declining passage doesn’t close the address.”

“Good. I’ve got nets to mend.”

His last words came faintly, as if he had turned away while saying them. Celia marked his answer and left room beneath it. A refusal was an answer, not an empty space to be filled by someone above.

By midday the floorboards were cold through her shoes. Mira brought bread from the kitchen and put a piece beside the atlas, well clear of the salt pages. Celia ate without tasting it. At another address, two sisters had answered together. One wished to meet a witness; the other wanted no such meeting, and neither would go alone. Celia had written their answers on separate sheets. The older sister had made her read each one back.

Jonah came from the window when Celia reached for the next impression. “How many willing to cross?”

“None so far.”

“And how many have we told?”

“Four people. Two spoke together.”

“That won’t sound like a rescue to anyone up there.”

Mira’s hand closed around the bread she had not eaten. Celia aligned the impression with the edge of the table before answering.

“It isn’t an account for the paper.”

“I didn’t say it was.” Jonah glanced at his shut notebook. “People will be asked to stand witness. If all they hear is that the people below want to stay, they’ll ask why we’re fighting to keep the routes open.”

“Then tell them the routes are how we can ask.”

“That’s a harder case.”

“It is.”

He waited, as if she might make it easier. She picked up the next address instead. Jonah drew out a chair but did not open his notebook.

The last line lay farther along the conduit. Brenda had tested the valve that morning and warned them it stuck near its stop. Celia turned it a little at a time. The brass bit into her palm. Air hissed from the joint; then the pipe carried three measured taps.

Mira repeated the address. A man replied, “We’re here.”

Celia laid a fresh sheet over the atlas. “How many of you?”

“Two. My wife cannot answer you. She has been lying unresponsive since the closure.”

A faint rustle reached the funnel. Bedclothes, perhaps. Celia kept her fingers off the rim. Sound traveled oddly along these pipes; it was easy to give a noise a shape it did not own.

“Has a doctor examined her?” Sable had helped prepare that question, along with several less useful ones Celia had crossed out.

“The one we had came before the gates shut. Her breathing hasn’t changed.”

“I can ask our physician about a way to examine her without moving her. I can’t promise there is one.”

“I didn’t ask you to promise.” The man’s voice stayed level. “Tell me about the opening.”

Celia explained the living witness at a designated address above, the resident’s separate assent, and the passage between. She explained the year. She let the silence after it stand. On her sheet, the blank for his answer took up half the page.

“She could not give you assent,” he said.

“No.”

“And if I went, I could not bring her by saying she would have wanted it.”

“No.”

“Then I stay.”

Mira shifted beside the funnel. “We could keep looking for a way to reach her. Dr. Sable may have questions that help.”

The man answered her gently. “Ask them. I’d welcome a doctor. But don’t set a place for me upstairs while she’s here.”

Jonah’s chair gave a small creak. Celia had questions too: whether anyone else below could sit with his wife, whether he had slept, whether he had considered what another century might do. Each one offered him a better reason to leave the bed. None belonged in the space after his answer.

“We’ll keep your address legible,” she said. “May we call again?”

“Yes. If you find a doctor who can speak through this thing, send him. She’s warm in the mornings and cold by evening. I’ve been putting another blanket over her, but I don’t know whether that helps.”

Celia wrote it down for Sable. “I’ll pass that on.”

The man gave the three taps once more and withdrew.

Mira eased the funnel from the pipe. The wet ring it left on the boards was no larger than a coin. She wiped it with her sleeve before it could reach the paper.

Jonah opened his notebook at last, then rested his hand across the page. “I won’t put his words in it.”

“Thank you,” Celia said.

“I still need to tell people what they’re being asked to do.”

“Yes. Ask for witnesses willing to receive someone who wants to come. And for help keeping a route to someone who does not.”

He rubbed the damp cuff flat. “Those are two different appeals.”

“They’re two different choices.”

Celia turned back to the atlas. The lines she had drawn last night ended in little arrows, all of them aimed upward. They were sound routes, as far as her measurements went. She erased the arrow at the man’s address, taking care not to rub away the line itself. The mark left behind reached the conduit and stopped.

On a clean sheet she wrote that no passage would be made at an address without the resident’s answer. Below it, she made room for a witness’s answer as well. She would have to check both again when an opening could truly be offered. Today’s words were not a claim on anyone’s tomorrow.

Mira leaned over the man’s sheet. “You left space by his name.”

“He asked us to call again.”

“And the woman with the boys?”

“Her address stays open too.”

Celia fitted the sheets into the atlas without covering the route marks. She would draw a map that could find these homes again. It would not carry their people out by force.

A soft knock came from the last pipe before Mira could put the funnel away. Celia set it back in place.

“Have you gone?” the man asked.

“No.”

“My wife’s name is on your sheet?”

“It is.”

“Good.” Cloth moved near the pipe, followed by the faint scrape of his chair. “Keep her address. I’m staying with her.”