The Chimes of Station Nine
The tape on the handrail had gone soft as moth-wing, worn furry where a thousand hands had held it. Zaid pulled himself along it, one grip at a time, through the dim of the sleeping corridor. Station night meant low light and lower power: the lamps turned down to embers, the fans hushed, the whole slow ring of Space Station Nine breathing at half speed. River drifted at his shoulder, whiskers forward, tail curling to steer. Somewhere far under the floor, something went tunk. A pause. Then tunk again, patient as a tap left dripping. That was the water loop, turning over in its sleep. Zaid had promised himself that tonight he would be the one to wake the station. Not the alarm. Him. He let go of the rail and floated, listening. "Slowly now," he whispered. "It's still half asleep."
In the hub, where six corridors met like the spokes of a wheel, the chimes hung in a ring from the ceiling. Eleven thin pipes, each a different length, tied with fishing line by someone long before Zaid was born. When the morning air came up through the vents, the pipes swung and touched and made a sound like water over stones. That was how the station was supposed to wake. Not with the alarm, which was loud and flat and made everybody grumpy before breakfast. Tonight the pipes hung dead still, as if holding their breath. River nosed one. It swung and knocked its neighbour, a small flat clunk, and went quiet again. "Not like that," Zaid said. "It has to come from the air." Below the floor, the water loop said tunk, and then nothing, and then tunk.
He started with the water, because the water came first. The loop ran behind a panel in the galley wall, a fat silver pipe sweating cold beads. Zaid braced his feet under the counter rail and found the valve wheel, cold as a stone from a river. He turned it a quarter. Down in the dark, the tunk came again — closer together now, tunk, tunk, like something remembering how to walk. He turned it another quarter and stopped. River had wedged himself behind the pipe where the warmth would come, belly up, paws folded, whiskers twitching every time the sound arrived. Zaid pressed his palm flat to the silver. Under it he felt the water begin to move, a long shiver travelling away from him through the whole dark body of the station.
The garden bay was two corridors on. Its shutter was down for the night, and the air inside smelled green and close, the way a coat smells when it has been folded in a box. Zaid lifted the shutter a hand's width. Grey Earthlight came through the round window and lay across the trays. The leaves did not move yet. They hung the way sleeping things hang, soft and heavy and slightly drooped. River slid into the shallow watering tray and rolled once, then hooked his paws over the rim and hung there, dripping beads that wobbled loose and floated. Zaid caught one on his knuckle. Behind him the pipes in the wall went tunk, warmer now, a rounder sound. "Slowly now," he told the leaves. "It's still half asleep."
The fans were the loud part, and the part he had thought about most. Their dial sat in a recess by the hub, a knob worn shiny in the middle. Zaid turned it, and the station drew a sudden hard breath — a rush, a rattle, papers lifting off a clip and flapping like startled birds. River flattened his ears. It was too much, all at once, like shaking someone by the shoulder. Zaid turned it back at once and the rush died to nothing, and the flapping papers settled, and the hub was quiet again, embarrassed. He let his heart slow. Then he turned the dial the smallest distance he could feel, barely a nudge, the width of a fingernail. A thread of air moved past his ear. The chimes did not stir. He waited.
Waiting was its own work. Zaid hooked one foot under the rail and let himself hang near the round window, and the window was cold enough to pull mist out of his breath. Below, Earth turned. He could see the line where night ended, a soft blurred edge travelling across an ocean, and cloud banks lying along it like drifts of wool. Lights freckled the dark side, orange and small, and went out one by one as the line reached them. River pressed his nose to the glass and left a mark shaped like a clover. Zaid counted the tunk of the water loop and found it had become a pulse now, steady, unhurried, the sound a house makes when it is warm. Sixty of them, he counted. Then ninety. The thread of air kept coming.
Next the lamps, because eyes need longer than ears. He brought them up one notch, and the corridor went from ember to candle. Colours came back in order: the red of the fire cabinet, the yellow rail paint, the blue cuff of his own sleeve, which he had forgotten was blue. Another notch. River's fur showed grey-brown again, and the pale muzzle, and the long whiskers beaded with water from the tray. He shook, and the drops went everywhere and hung there, and the new light caught in every one of them, so that for a moment the corridor was full of tiny lamps going nowhere. Zaid laughed with his mouth shut. Below the floor, tunk. He pushed off gently and floated back toward the hub, where the chimes were still refusing to sing.
The air was moving. He could feel it on the damp back of his hand, and he could see it in a loose thread of fishing line swaying at the ceiling. But the pipes hung dumb. River got there before him, the way River got everywhere, and hung nose-up beneath the ring, staring. Zaid followed the stare. The longest pipe had drifted sideways in the night and come to rest against the shortest, the two of them leaning together like friends asleep on a bench. Nothing could swing. Nothing could touch anything else. Zaid reached up. He did not pull them apart; he put one finger between them and drew it slowly down, and they parted and hung free, turning a little, each on its own line. He took his hand back and held on to the rail.
Nothing happened for a while. That was all right. Zaid had come to like the waiting part, the way the station's sounds arrived one at a time and stayed. The water loop below him. The thin hiss at the vent grille. His own breath. Then the thread of air climbed the last of the way to the ceiling, and the shortest pipe swung a finger's width and touched the next. One note. Small and round and clear, like a spoon on a cup in another room. River's ears went straight up. A second note answered, lower. Then a third, and the ring began to turn slowly, the way a mobile over a cot turns, and the notes fell over each other without hurrying, and the sound of them went out along all six corridors into the dark.
The station woke the way a cat wakes. A hatch clicked somewhere on the far curve of the ring. A kettle plate began its low mutter. Slippered feet whispered along a corridor, and a voice said something unfinished to another voice, and both of them laughed. Zaid stayed where he was, floating under the chimes with his ankles crossed, feeling the sound land on his face. He had heard this ring every morning of his life and never once heard it begin. In the garden bay, he knew, the leaves would be lifting on the new air, and the drops would be rolling off them, and the trays would be sitting in a long bar of Earthlight going gold at the edges. He would go and see. In a minute.
But his arms had gone heavy, the good heavy, and the hub was warm now with the air the fans were feeding it. River paddled over and bumped his head against Zaid's shoulder, which was River's way of saying a great many things at once. Zaid put a hand into the wet fur behind the otter's ears. Above them the pipes turned and touched, turned and touched. Below them, under everything, the water loop kept its patient tunk, and the two sounds fitted together without trying, like a slow song and a slower one. "Slowly now," Zaid said, to nobody, his eyes closing. "It's still half asleep." The chimes went on saying it after him in their own language, and the corridor lights came up one last notch, and Earth swung its bright rim into the window.
He did not remember letting go of the rail. He was drifting, that was all, turning slowly with his cheek against his own arm, and River had a paw hooked in his sleeve and was towing him — one lazy stroke, then a long glide, then another stroke, the way an otter moves a thing it does not want to wake. Handrail to handrail, past the garden bay with its green breathing smell, past the window with the clover mark still on it, down the soft corridor toward his bunk. The chimes grew smaller behind them and kept ringing. Under the floor the water said tunk, and tunk, and tunk. Zaid felt himself carried, weightless and warm, held by a small wet paw and a whole great turning house that was properly, quietly awake, and he slept.
