Ninety Seconds

By the time the ferry docked, a government liaison had arrived with flowers.

They were expensive flowers, blue petals suspended in separate drops of nutrient gel. Lyra watched him arrange them on the medical room’s only clear surface while a nurse cleaned the scrape on her elbow.

“A moment of national pride,” the liaison said.

“It was a maintenance failure.”

“Of course. And an extraordinary personal development.” His gaze slipped toward her tablet. “Have you spoken with your partner?”

“I haven’t spoken with anyone I would call that.”

The nurse pressed fresh gauze against Lyra’s skin with unnecessary firmness, perhaps concealing a smile.

The liaison offered a cream envelope. “There are protocols for a parallax resonance involving a citizen of an associated region.”

Lyra recognized the seal of the public relations office. “Medical protocols?”

“Support arrangements.”

“Leave them with my lawyer.”

“Do you have a lawyer?”

She looked at the nurse. “I’m about to.”

After he left, carrying the flowers because Lyra had refused those too, the room seemed to exhale. The nurse introduced herself as Pell and drew a chair close enough for conversation.

“Any continuing sensations?”

“Wind. Pain in my right hand. An unreasonable certainty that someone else is curious.”

“The liaison certainly was.”

Lyra laughed, surprised by how near the sound came to a sob.

Pell waited without touching her. On the other side of the wall, rescued passengers called home. One woman kept repeating, “No, sweetheart, I’m here,” with a patience that made Lyra’s throat hurt.

“It doesn’t let him read your thoughts,” Pell said. “You can’t read his. You might misinterpret what you feel. People do.”

“And speaking?”

“With matched resonators, ninety seconds per alignment. Only if both of you open the channel. We have a portable unit.”

“Can I stop it?”

“The call? Whenever you want. The sensations? This will reduce them.” Pell set a gray cuff on the bed. “Longer options need a specialist. Separation is possible. Nothing must be decided today.”

Lyra turned the cuff over. It was warm from Pell’s pocket, plain and reassuringly material.

She thought of the green sky, and a face she had wanted a second longer to see. Of curiosity that had arrived without asking and belonged to someone she was supposed to judge.

“I need a witness for the technical discussion,” she said. “And privacy for everything else.”

Pell nodded. “You can have both.”

The resonator looked disappointingly like a desk lamp. Deni brought it in, along with Lyra’s battered case and a bag from the tea stall.

“They gave me six biscuits because you saved their cousin,” she said. “I ate two because I helped.”

Lyra accepted the bag. “Fair distribution.”

“I’m charging the station for my cutters.”

They ate in silence while the unit warmed. Lyra’s tablet displayed the same pending contact request. Beneath the official warning was Soren’s photograph: dark hair, direct gaze, a healed cut through one eyebrow. He looked younger than his reports sounded. Or perhaps his reports sounded old because she had read them looking for excuses.

She opened her own hearing brief. The phrase habitual disregard appeared twice.

“Record technical statements only,” she told Deni. “If he agrees.”

Then she pressed the button.

Light gathered above the resonator into a grainy rectangle. A man leaned into view, one hand wrapped in a yellow bandage. Green daylight entered through a window behind him.

Neither spoke.

The recognition was worse than surprise. Lyra had never seen this room, yet some part of her body expected wind through its open door.

“Lyra Dane?” he asked.

“Soren Taal?”

“Unfortunately.”

She almost smiled. “May we record the technical part of this conversation? The mechanic who recovered your bearing is here.”

He glanced offscreen. “My survey engineer is with me. Technical statements, yes.”

Deni switched on the recorder. A counter appeared beneath Soren’s face: 01:16.

“Your destination receipt repeated,” he said immediately. “I watched your beacon reject four position updates.”

“Our terminal recorded an arrival.”

“Mine recorded an empty corridor.”

Lyra sat forward. “That’s impossible.”

“That word’s been doing a lot of work today.”

Deni read out the local failure time. Soren repeated it, then held up a slate with a matching figure. Behind him a woman’s hand entered the image and pointed to another line.

“Reserve allocation,” he said. “What does yours say?”

Deni answered.

Soren became very still.

Lyra felt a cold pressure beneath her ribs, then realized it might be his alarm. She resisted the temptation to treat it as evidence.

“Explain,” she said.

“That’s our reserve authorization. Your station and ours were assigned the same energy.”

“Administrative duplication?”

“Or somebody sold one lifeboat twice.”

The counter showed twelve seconds.

“Send the underlying readings by public packet,” Lyra said. “I’ll preserve ours. No conclusions until we compare.”

“Will you accept a packet from an unauthorized operator?”

She deserved that. “I accepted your bearing.”

Something changed in his expression. “Then I owe you a better introduction.”

The light dissolved before she could answer, leaving her looking at an empty space she found unexpectedly interesting.

The absence had weight. Lyra placed both feet flat on the floor until her own body felt like the only place she occupied.

Deni checked the recording. “We got it.”

“Make three copies. One for the inquiry, one for the civilian registry, one for us.”

“You expect them to lose it?”

“I expect systems to fail.”

That had always been an adequate answer. Today it sounded unfinished.

Pell returned with a discharge form and instructions to rest before making consequential decisions. Lyra signed, then asked how long until the next resonance window.

“Six hours locally.”

Outside the medical room, someone had taped the ferry’s corrected passenger list to the wall. Forty-three names, each marked SAFE. Lyra stopped before it. A small boy sat beneath the list with his toy ship balanced across his knees.

“Did you open the door?” he asked.

“A lot of us did.”

He considered this. “Mum says doors should know where they go.”

“Your mum makes a strong argument.”

He offered her the toy for inspection. One wing had snapped during the docking. Lyra found a strip of medical tape still stuck to her sleeve and helped him secure it, crooked but serviceable.

When she stood, her tablet chimed with an official notice. Tomorrow’s hearing had been postponed. She was instructed to remain available for a confidential interview concerning unauthorized use of a restricted signal.

A second message followed through ordinary courier service. Its sender was Soren Taal.

There was a short line above the promised evidence packet, entirely absent from the formal survey record.

For the record, I am considerably more charming than my reports.

Lyra read it twice and felt an unwilling smile begin. Then she closed the government notice, found a bench beside the repaired toy ship, and began her reply: That would be a low bar, Mr. Taal.