The other men had fallen silent; they were looking around themselves in a new way—appraising, even hopeful. “We’re outside the lockstep,” said one.
“You’re in the Weekly,” corrected Toby. He pointed at the distant lantern sphere hanging kilometers overhead. “Or you will be, as soon as we get up there.”
“But they won’t have us!” It was the first man who’d spoken. He had the same wealthy air that Ammond had exhibited, and he had a whole team of bots to carry his luggage. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 360 or the Weekly. We’re banned for twelve months!”
“You were,” said Toby. He was beginning to enjoy this. “As to the Weekly, leave it to me.”
“And who are you?” demanded Halen.
“Somebody whose life your sister saved.” It looked like the last elevator had unloaded, and the lounge was now full of scared but defiant-looking people.
Toby turned to the five men who’d confronted him. “Can you keep a lid on things here for an hour? There’s an … important reunion I want to arrange.”
They glanced at one another, and then a sly grin appeared here, a brusque nod over there. “You’re going to take us into the Weekly?” said the rich-looking one. “We could visit it back on Thisbe, but not stay or pass through—”
“This time is different.” I hope. Toby didn’t know what power he might have over the Weekly’s government, but unloading the passengers into the Weekly had been part of Corva’s original plan. She must think it would work.
“Come on,” he said to Halen and stepped into the fearsome cold of a connecting corridor. As they walked, Toby couldn’t help glancing over at Corva’s brother. He was tall and strong looking. Toby was acutely aware of how pale and scrawny he looked in comparison. What did Corva see when she looked at him? Certainly something substandard, if Halen was what she was used to.
“Where is she?” her brother repeated. “And how did you wake us up in the middle of winter?”
“I’ve … got an interface to the McGonigal clocks,” Toby told him as they slid carefully down an ice-sheeted ramp. “I was able to override them.”
“But … but nobody’s ever been able to do that! How—” Halen had breathed the dangerously cold air too deeply and started coughing.
“It’s a long story. I’ll let your sister tell you.”
THE MCGONIGAL BOTS LET them into the high-security area, and Toby led Halen to the chamber where Kenani had imprisoned him and the others. When he opened the door, Orpheus came bounding up and in his usual style climbed Toby with his claws out; luckily he was in the suit, which the denner’s claws wouldn’t penetrate. Still, Toby said, “Hey, watch it!” and only when he had the denner settled on his shoulder did he see it wasn’t just the denners who were awake. Shylif and Jaysir stood over Kenani’s bed. Shylif was pensively sipping a steaming cup of something. And Halen … where had he gone?
Corva sat on a crate in the next room, one hand tightly clutching her oval locket. Halen knelt in front of her and was speaking to her in an insistent way. Toby hesitated a moment in the doorway, then backed away to give them their privacy.
Jaysir noticed and grinned. “You did this, didn’t you? But how?”
“Nothing magical,” mumbled Toby, trying, while trying not to be obvious about it, to eavesdrop on Corva and Halen. Distractedly, he continued, “I just set Orpheus’s clock before we were separated. He woke me up.”
Jay nodded, and a grin battled against Shylif’s serious demeanor. “But your bed wouldn’t have let him do it,” said Jaysir. “Not unless you overrode that. Ours, too.”
Toby shrugged. “The secret was out the instant I reprogrammed the passenger unit. I can’t stop the McGonigal network from broadcasting my presence—it already did it, seven years ago.”
Of course, Peter and Evayne had already known. Were there others, though, like Kenani, for whom the news would just be arriving? He didn’t know how public the log-in details on the beds were. Or who might be monitoring them.
He stole a look at Corva and her brother. She seemed heartbroken. Why? Did Halen seem older? She’d spent all her effort to rescue him and the rest of her family, but now that it had actually happened, she would be faced with the reality of how time had already altered them.
Had it been too late all along? What was lost in time couldn’t be returned, and here in the locksteps, any innocent sleep might cleave you from those you loved by years, by generations. Toby hugged himself and turned away again, tears starting in his eyes. Finding a bench (all its frost gone now, he noticed with some remote part of his attention), he sat.
He gathered Orpheus into his lap and sat there hunched over until murmured conversation arose behind him. He turned to find Corva, Halen, and Jaysir standing there. They were all looking at him. “What?”
“Toby,” said Corva, alarm sharpening her voice, “where’s Shylif?”
PEOPLE WERE YELLING IN the passenger lounge. As Toby and the others ran in, he saw that a knot had formed over by the elevator doors; someone there was bellowing louder than anybody else. Around this cyclonic eye, other passengers milled like frightened clouds. The bots he’d left to guard the place were ignoring the chaos. As long as nobody tried to leave the lounge, they had no orders.
“Coley!” It was Shylif’s voice but transformed by rage into that of a stranger. “Sebastine Coley?”
Toby pushed his way through the encircling crowd to find one man standing in the open space at its center. Shylif was glaring down, fists balled, at a man who crouched at his feet. “Please—” this man whimpered. “I’m not—”
“You’re Coley! You said you were Coley!” Shylif’s denner, Shadoweye, was slinking back and forth behind Shylif’s feet, wailing and hissing. His tail was fluffed out, like a scared cat’s would be.
“Shylif, stop!” Corva stepped unafraid into the ring. “You don’t want to do this.”
He spared her an indifferent glance. “I’ve waited forty years to do this.” He reached for the man at his feet.
“He’s not Sebastine Coley!”
The voice was thin, barely audible over the jumble of voices surrounding them. But Shylif paused and looked over.
“He’s not Sebastine Coley,” repeated the very old man who stood, his weak legs braced by an exo, with a group of women and children.
“I am.”
Shylif blinked at him, and in that moment of indecision, Toby suddenly realized what he should have been doing all along. “Bots! Restrain this man!” Shylif straightened and began to turn, but the security bots were faster and he was lifted off his feet before he could even uncurl his fists.
Toby went to stand next to Corva. He offered his hand to man on the floor, who hesitated, then took it.
“I … I’m Miles Coley,” he said, ducking his head and looking around at everyone but Shylif. “This man said he was looking for a Coley, and I said, ‘I’m a Coley.’ Then he knocked me down!”
Toby turned to the old man. “You’re Sebastine Coley?”
“He’s my grandfather,” said Miles in a surprised tone. “Granddad, what’s this about?”
“I … I don’t—” But the old man wouldn’t look at them.
“You know.” It was Shylif, still straining against the implacable grip of the security bot that held him. “Her name was Ouline. You stole her from Nessus.”
“Ah. Ah!” The old man suddenly wilted, and he would have fallen over had his exo not compensated to prop him up.
“You lured her into the lockstep fortress and stole thirty years from her—from me!” Shadoweye was clawing at the security bot’s ankles, wailing. The bot ignored the denner, but Corva knelt down and clucked at him. Reluctantly, he climbed into her arms.