"Seventy-three people is an acceptable weight of losses."
The duty officer said it in the everyday voice of a weighman. Outside the window two orderlies were already welding a steel strip across the door. The glass whitened under the welding, and a girl in a red mitten beat on it with her fist and asked them to open it.
They did not hear her. Or they behaved as though they did not.
The hospital train had been stopped on the viaduct a few kilometres short of Tarvel. Beneath the wheels lay the Ash Lowland, and above the roofs of the city the Ring of Silence glimmered dully. Normally it turned the memory storms aside. Today a white mark had appeared on the inner wall of the carriage, and the Chamber of Silence had decided not to find out whether it was genuine.
The carriage was to be uncoupled and dropped over the side.
Marek Sol was inside it by accident. He had been checking the brake line when one of the orderlies shut the door. Then grey lines came up on the wrist of the woman beside the girl, and Marek tried to tear the emergency lock open. For that they hit him with a handle, shoved him back inside and declared him part of the quarantine.
Now he knelt down to the floor and listened to the metal.
He had not been taught this in the Chamber. Track workers knew a sound train by a palm laid flat against the wall. An even tremor meant a free run. A double jolt warned of a burst rod. If the metal went quiet under your fingers before the train did, then somewhere a part of the train was already coming away.
Marek could hear that kind of silence under the rear coupling.
Once he had thought the skill would make him a shift master. Then, at sixteen, Irsa lit in him. At the trial every pupil's personal fire took a useful shape: a hammer, a shield, a cutting cable, the outline of a beast. Irsa stayed a cold spark. She did not warm so much as a cup of water, and the examiner wrote two words on his card: "zero residue".
After that Marek was allowed to mend track but not to lead people. He could be the first to find a fault and still had to wait until a man with a suitable fire confirmed the obvious. Today there was nobody to wait for.
"Are they really going to drop us?" the girl asked.
She was about nine. One hand was bare, the other wore a red woollen mitten. The woman with the grey mark held her by the shoulders and breathed fast, with a dry whistle.
"First they'll try to uncouple us," Marek answered.
He did not say that the locks of the coupling had already begun to turn.
The floor shook unevenly. The brake circuit was still alive, but pressure was going out in three places at once. One man could not hold them. Marek had no tools, no clearance and no right to give orders. For years his personal fire had been counted a zero residue: a cold red-grey spark that gave no warmth, turned into no weapon and could barely shift a splinter.
Irsa hung above his palm, dull as ashes in the rain.
In that moment Marek heard not a voice but several short wishes at once.
Find the gap.
Hold the bracket.
Call from outside.
The cold spark reached towards the passengers. Panic sent up a heat around every one of them, invisible to an ordinary eye. There was so much of it that it would have been enough for dozens of new forms.
Marek closed his hand.
"Don't touch the living."
The spark went still. The offer came again, more insistent now: quick material, quick strength, quick way out.
"No."
In the corner of the carriage stood a small service stove. Its fire had gone out at the previous station, but the bricks still held a residual heat. The trace did not belong to a person. The old carriage fire had wanted only to give warmth while the train was running.
Marek scraped clean mineral ash out of the pan and held it up to Irsa. The cold spark dropped into the grey handful. The ash stirred, gathered into six lumps and slowly began to redden.
Nothing happened straight away.
Marek set the people out the way he had once set out a repair shift, though formally he had no right to command. Two held the woman with the mark so she would not be thrown about at the jolt. Four took down the upper bunks and wedged them under the door. An elderly apothecary found bandages in his bag and bound up a boy's split forehead. Yuna crawled between the adults, gathering the buckles they dropped from shaking.
Every thirty seconds Marek struck the pipe with a spoon. There was still no answer.
In the third minute one passenger suggested knocking out a window and jumping to the next track. Marek pointed at the gap that had already opened between the carriage and the rail: the jump would end under the wheels or in the lowland.
In the fourth minute the woman with the mark asked for water. Yuna brought the flask, but her mother could not swallow. The grey lines on her arm neither moved nor pulsed the way they do in a real infection. Marek did not know the rules of memory storms, but he knew a crude forgery at once. Someone had drawn a sentence onto her skin and counted on a hurried inspection.
The woman found an unfastened button on Yuna's sleeve and tried to say something. Through the pain it came out only as "blue". The girl decided her mother was asking for the blue flask and held out the water again. The woman shook her head, but by then could explain no further.
In the fifth minute the orderly outside finished the welding. He knocked on the glass and held up two fingers: two minutes until they uncoupled.
Marek raised the spoon and beat out the living code again. Yuna added her own five quick knocks to it. One after another the adults picked up the rhythm with heels and palms. The carriage spoke with all its metal.
At the door the welding arc went on blazing. The passengers were shouting. Under the floor the teeth of the coupling clicked one after another.
Inside Marek an exact knowledge appeared: the firebox needed seven minutes. No less. Every spark to come would need ash and heat of its own. There was only one way to hurry it – to turn again to the panic of the living.
He refused a second time.
The seven minutes had to be bought with hands. Marek told the passengers to take the straps off their bags and lash the inner handrails together with them. Three men lay down on the floor and held the cover of the brake circuit with their palms. The woman with the mark sat her daughter by the pipe and asked her to count the knocks.
Outside there was still no answer.
After five minutes the carriage jerked. The uncoupled gangway flashed past the window. Beyond it there was no neighbouring train any more, only rails, sky and the lowland far below.
After six minutes the woman with the mark lost consciousness.
In the seventh minute the ash flared without heat.
Irsa rose first, and after her six small sparks slipped out of the stove, none of them copies of her. Two fastened at once onto the brake brackets. Three ran along the floor in thin threads and began searching for hollows. The last darted to the ventilation grille.
Marek felt every task separately. Not thoughts, not voices, but the rhythm of work: found, holding, not enough strength, a way through here.
One listener reached the roof and beat the track code out on the panelling.
This time there was an answer.
Three short knocks. One long.
Marek lifted his head. On the next section of the viaduct stood an old track master with a metal left hand. Beran Dov had heard them.
And almost in the same moment the last tooth of the coupling came out of its lock.
The carriage began to crawl towards the edge.
One holder closed around the brake bracket and began to whiten. It held the metal even as its own body was turning to cold powder. Marek wanted to pull it away, but then the carriage would have gone at once.
There were no more than ninety seconds left before the fall.
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