It was an oversimplification, of course; he’d left out Noah’s search for a similar tree in Brazil, based on latitude and humidity charts and the runs his cousin Ben did down south on the Reliant that made all his cable possible. To talk of any of that, he would have to tell her about Noah.
“I could say that’s where the idea of a worldwide telegraphic network came from,” Grayson told her. “From having the gutta percha to build it. But it was more than that. You see, our company is eighty years old. It seems like a great deal, but in the history of trade, it’s the blink of an eye. We’ve been trying to look for those second solutions—the ones that started off cheap and ended in expense and misery—for all that time. But the telegraph is building a new world, structured in a new way. It got us thinking. What if we were able to get in first? What if instead of trying to fix messes after they’d escalated into famine and rebellion, we did it right to begin with? The telegraph is new, but you can already see how it’s changing the world. Do you see what an opportunity this presents? To make the world right as it’s being made anew?”
“Amazing.” She was watching with wide, glowing eyes.
“That’s why I need you,” he told her. “Why I must have you. I needed something better than a list of numbers because what we invent in code today will determine how the Chinese language is transmitted. The moment I saw your position characters, I knew—”
He cut himself off, realizing what he’d been saying. I need you. I must have you.
Her eyes were focused on him though. She scarcely seemed to be breathing. And he couldn’t not tell her.
“You knew what?” Her voice was breathy.
“I knew,” he said, “that I had to let you loose on the world. We can’t do this without you.”
She exhaled, eyes bright and luminous.
“One question. Who is we?” she asked earnestly.
It was as if a cloud passed overhead, plunging him into cold air. For the space of a few sentences, he’d forgotten. He could see Noah standing next to him, talking excitedly about balata and latex. He could hear Harry and John argue about what it would mean to be able to send messages in minutes rather than months. He could see Noah, bright and lovable Noah, shaking his head and going to hide and think where their argument wouldn’t bother him.
It was ridiculous that he could still forget after all this time. But there was no we anymore. It was just him.
“We,” he said with a hollow pit in his stomach, “is me.”
She could not hear the ache in his heart. “Just you?”
“Just me,” he said softly. “I lost everyone who should have been with me cleaning up the biggest damned trade shortcut humanity has ever taken.”
Just him. It was just him and he had to finish this. Had to make what they’d planned a reality. And he could not stop until he did.
Her expression clouded.
“Merry’s finished,” he told her. “I’ll leave you to your other thoughts.”
He saw her a few hours later in the mess with Mr. Lightfoot at the Daily Disoccupation. Grayson had been pitted against Captain Bell, Jason Lu, and Alex Wang in a fiercely competitive, no-holds-barred game that involved shooting wooden disks into a jar.
Lightfoot was teaching her how to play. She needed all the help she could get. She could not aim her disks at all, sometimes making them limply jump a few inches, other times sending them off at wild angles.
Grayson was trying not to pay attention to her because he didn’t need to give in to his every urge, and besides, he had his own game to win.
He and Wang were paired against Bell and Lu, and Bell had managed to get five out of his six disks into the jar. Grayson was going to have to get all of his in to claim the victory. He’d measured the angle, calculated the precise force to use to send the disk tilting through the air to the pot.
Three feet away from him, she was laughing. “No, really,” she was saying. “This one will definitely go in!”
“Oh sure it will.” Lightfoot managed to sound both sarcastic and encouraging all at the same time.
“I’m giving it a great big push.”
Grayson was not going to let himself get distracted. He weighed his own disk in his hand and concentrated. One. Two—
On three, he pressed. On three, Mrs. Smith did as well. She did, indeed, give her disk a great big push. Her aim, unfortunately, was not as good as her vigor. The wooden disk sailed through the air to strike him in the side of his forehead. The disk slipped out of his hand, landing a few feeble inches away.
A look of horror spread over her face. Silence reigned.
Then Captain Bell started a slow clap. “Mrs. Smith,” he said, “you’ve done it. You’ve felled Hunter.”
Grayson picked up the disk that had gone astray and handed it back to her.
“That,” he said, “must count at least five times over.”
She stared at him for a little too long before she blushed and snatched the disk from his hand.
A storm was coming. God, why was he still feeling it? After so many days?
“Isn’t it a bad idea to encourage people to strike the captain?”
“Maybe,” Grayson said, “but Bell is the Captain of the Celerity, and you’re unlikely to replicate the endeavor.”
“Cold, Captain.” Lu shook his head. “Very cold.”
He saw her again the next morning in the early hours before dawn, when he’d crept out with his violin. For some reason, it took longer than his usual starting regimen of twelve-tone scales up into the harmonics to limber up his arm. That morning, he felt a bit of a Beethoven violin romance coming on. He shut his eyes and started.
He didn’t exactly have the piece memorized, and so the first minutes of music slid fluidly into something of his own invention, then into the long, slow notes of an old church hymn. Usually he could lose himself in the music, finding a place empty of thought and feeling where there was nothing but the press of the violin body between his chin and shoulder, the vibration of the strings under his fingers. Today, the dyad chords of the hymn seemed off. Nothing seemed to hang together. He could feel the frequency of each note like an echo in his hands, his body, and every single one felt out of place.
He started and restarted, shifting the music to a jig, then to a march he vaguely remembered, which truly was not suited for violin adaptation.
Finally, after a few minutes, he heard someone whisper behind him. “Merry. No. Come back.”
He opened his eyes to see her crossing the deck to him. He stopped, relaxing his chin against the chin rest, letting the weight of the instrument fall into his palm. She picked up her puppy, who was trying to crawl into his violin case.
The storm felt closer with every passing day.
“Sorry.” She waved her hands at him. “You’re very good. Sorry to interrupt.”
He shook his head. He wasn’t good. Not today. But he shut his eyes and tried to forget he’d seen her.
He managed to avoid her for most of the remaining days of the trip. He didn’t even have to try much; she retreated to the mess with Lightfoot, and he didn’t see her often. When he did, she was frowning over a notebook or talking with the engineer.