At a quarter to two Marcus really had to pee.
He carefully got his bad foot off the milk crate with both hands and stood on the good one. The bathroom was on the other side of Seth, who was asleep on the floor by the door with his coat pulled up to his ears. Marcus hopped. On the third hop he caught the milk crate with his heel and it skidded across the floorboards and hit the hearth. Seth didn’t move. Vlad didn’t open his eyes. Cooper lifted his head off his paws and watched Marcus hop the whole way there and the whole way back, and then put his head down again like he’d seen enough.
Marcus sat back down, sweating. His shirt was stuck to him and his heel throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The red line Samantha had drawn was still where she had drawn it. He checked it twice with the flashlight on his watch and decided nothing had changed.
Twice since midnight he had caught his hand going to his back pocket for a phone that was in pieces in a freezer bag on the hearth. Both times he’d been about to text his mom. He had also spent a lot of time thinking about Vlad’s “okay.” Marcus wanted more than okay.
At two he leaned over and shook Vlad’s boot.
Vlad opened his eyes and looked at Marcus.
“Nothing,” Marcus said. “A train at one-ten. Another at one-forty. Cooper had a dream.”
Vlad nodded. He got up, took the black case from under the chair, and carried it out to the porch. Marcus heard the latches. Through the window he watched him set the dish on the railing and angle it at the sky between the trees. The tablet lit Vlad’s face blue from below. Vlad never left it on for more than four minutes.
Three minutes went by. Then five. Vlad came back in, closed the door behind him, and stood there with the tablet against his chest.
“Eleanor,” he said.
Marcus sat up.
“She saw the video from the parking lot. She wants to talk.” Vlad paused. “To you. I told her I could pass it along. She said no.”
Vlad had been rude to Eleanor every time the two of them had been in a room together. Marcus guessed she remembered every one. He tried not to look pleased and didn’t manage it.
Vlad looked at Samantha on the floor. She hadn’t moved since ten. Her mouth was open and one hand was tucked under her chin.
“We do not wake her,” Vlad said. “She has slept maybe nine hours since Thursday.”
“Agreed.”
“Seth,” Vlad said, louder, and Seth sat straight up with his coat falling off him. “You are in this. Come here.”
Seth came over with his hair standing up on one side and sat on the arm of the couch. Vlad crouched in front of Marcus and held the tablet out, then didn’t let go of it.
“This is outside the four of us,” Vlad said. “So it is all of us. You write it, you read it to me before you send it. All of it.”
“Okay.”
Vlad let go.
Marcus.
I’m here, he typed, and read it out loud, which felt idiotic. Vlad nodded. He sent it.
I watched a Range Rover with no back window drive over a curb in Boulder. I assume that was you being stupid.
“It was,” Seth said quietly.
It was. Everyone is okay. I’m sorry.
Don’t apologize. Listen.
The written estimate on the factoring job hasn’t changed. Weeks, possibly less. Moderate confidence.
Marcus read it out.
He had put possibly less in a board deck a hundred times, every time he didn’t want to commit to a number. He called Eleanor about everything, including things he’d already decided. She had made fun of him for that phrase every time she saw it.
He started typing, and wrote three lines explaining what he meant, and why he was asking, and that he knew what a hedged estimate looked like because he had produced a lot of them. He looked at it. Vlad was watching his thumbs.
Marcus deleted all of it, took a breath, and wrote four words.
What’s your number, Eleanor?
He read it to Vlad. Vlad looked at him a little longer than he needed to and nodded once. That felt good.
The answer took a while. Out the window the dish sat on the railing with frost starting on the edge of it. It had been up for nine minutes.
Days.
Nobody said anything. Marcus was scared. Cooper got up, turned around twice, and lay back down against Samantha’s back.
“Ask her how she knows,” Seth said.
How do you know? Marcus typed, and read it to Vlad before he sent it.
The man who said weeks on Monday called me at four this afternoon. He said days.
What happens on our side? Marcus typed. The rotation.
The vendors announce it at six in the morning Eastern. Every device that can take a new root will be offered one. The new root is post-quantum. Nobody can forge it, including them.
How long until it’s done?
Ten days for what can be updated electronically. I lost the argument about the ones that have to be manually updated.
Marcus read it out and then read it again in his head, slowly. Ten days for the people rotating. Days for whoever was running the job.
What happens if they get there first?
Then they can sign an update with the old root, and every device that trusts the old root will install it. They can make it refuse the new one. After that nobody gets it back without a person standing in front of it with a screwdriver.
“Ten days is a ship date,” Seth said. “That’s a date somebody gave a board.”
“Meaning what?” Vlad said.
“Meaning I’ve been in a lot of rooms where a guy said ten days. It’s never ten days. It’s fifteen if they’re good. Twenty if anybody important has to sign off. Nadia would know if it was real.”
Marcus had given boards ten days. He had never once hit one. He had always known it when he said it, and so had everybody at the table.
“Two more minutes,” Vlad said. “Then the dish comes in.”
He wanted, badly, to write Eleanor a long message — about the foot and the doctor’s phone and the text to Brett. He wanted her to tell him it wasn’t his fault.
Understood, he wrote, and read it to Vlad, and sent it.
The next message came fast.
One more thing. I need to know how long it would take Samantha to do what they are doing.
Marcus stared at it.
Eleanor didn’t ask questions. In all the years he’d known her she had asked him maybe five, and she had known the answer to every one. Marcus guessed she didn’t know this one. He guessed she wanted a number she could put on the table in front of the council.
Marcus knew the answer. He had been sitting right there when Samantha told Seth. Days, maybe more. He could type three words and be useful.
He looked at Vlad. Vlad was looking at Samantha.
Marcus turned the tablet face down on his knee. His heel was pounding again. He took a deep breath.
“That’s not mine,” Marcus said. “It’s Sam’s. I know we said let her sleep. We have to wake her up.”
Vlad didn’t argue. He took the tablet back, gently, out of Marcus’s hands.
Marcus slid forward off the couch onto his good knee. Samantha was breathing slowly through her mouth. The sleeping bag had left a crease down her cheek. Marcus didn’t know what he was going to say to her about the text.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
“Sam,” he said. “Eleanor needs you.”