Darra knew the boy was going to be sick because he had stopped asking questions. She handed his father a bag before the bus reached the bend.
“Thank you,” the man said.
“Hold the handles apart.”
The boy recovered before he needed it. He sat very straight, a bright orange dog lead wound around his fist. His father kept checking the time on a cracked wrist display.
Darra’s own display showed a perfect green bar. Six minutes ahead. If she completed the journey inside the new schedule, her monthly bonus would pay for the replacement cooker waiting in the depot shop. It had one small dent and three working rings. She had looked at it twice.
“North End after this?” the father asked.
“After the viaduct.”
He relaxed. The boy unwound the lead.
The bus made its own decisions on the express road. Darra managed boarding, fares and the incidents the designers had not given a button. There were seventeen passengers tonight. Two wore the uniforms of the sorting sheds. One slept with a cake box on her knees. At the back, a man had brought a bicycle too large for its allotted bay and was pretending not to notice.
Beyond the viaduct, the bus sign changed to TERMINUS.
Darra pressed the stop confirmation. The screen offered three legitimate destinations. North End was not among them.
She pressed again, harder, which had never helped any screen in her life.
“Darra,” said the bus, “the North End service has been consolidated.”
“It was there on Monday.”
“Effective Tuesday.”
She was a relief driver. Tuesday belonged to someone else’s roster. Through the windscreen she could see the turn for the estate, an amber strip branching off the express road. The bus continued straight.
The father stood. “That’s it.”
“Sit down,” Darra said. “I’m checking.”
“We’ve gone past.”
The boy looked from the lead to his father. At the back, the cake-box woman woke and tightened her arms around the lid.
Darra called dispatch. A recorded voice told her that journey changes were available on the rider portal. She selected crew assistance and waited through the same message in another language. On her screen, the green bar lengthened. Seven minutes ahead.
North End had never had many boardings. Four, perhaps six on a wet night. The stop was beyond a long dead-end loop, and the old timetable allowed too little time. Darra had saved time by collecting the waiting passengers at the estate turn on the return journey, then registering their tickets at Viaduct, where the fare was the same. They walked to the turn because they knew she would be there. The system recorded the place on her screen, not the place where they stood. Other drivers had done it too. On the monthly charts North End looked deserted, and Viaduct looked healthier than ever.
She had received a commendation for route efficiency in June.
The father leaned on the rail. “Someone’s waiting.”
“I’ll get you there.”
She regretted saying it immediately. The bus had entered the barriered corridor to the terminus. There was no turn and no authorized roadside boarding point. Its headlights illuminated a narrow strip of clean road. The city beyond the barrier was a clutter of windows, people getting home by other means.
“How long?” the father asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
He sat down. The boy wound the lead tightly around his hand again.
Dispatch answered at last. The supervisor, Perin, sounded as though she had been eating. Darra explained the omitted stop. Perin read the same service-change text from the rider portal.
“I know what it says. I’ve got two people for the stop.”
“They need the feeder from East Terminus.”
“When?”
A pause. “Tomorrow morning.”
Darra watched the father hear this.
“Then that’s not a feeder. That’s a bed.”
Perin said the evening feeder had been suspended for the trial. Passengers had been notified in the app. Darra asked what passengers without the app had been told. Perin said she would note the feedback.
The bicycle man came forward.
“I’ve got a cargo rack,” he said to the father. “It’s six miles from the terminus. I can take the boy.”
“No,” said the father.
“I know the estate.”
“No.”
The man went back without arguing. He did not try to explain the cargo rack a second time. Darra was grateful to him for that. She had been about to refuse on the father’s behalf, and he had enough people making his decisions already.
At East Terminus the cake-box woman got off. The sorting workers went toward their shuttle. Darra held the doors for the remaining passengers. Her screen asked her to confirm ROUTE COMPLETE.
The father called the person at North End. Darra heard him say they were trying, they hadn’t meant to be late, please don’t leave yet. Then he lowered the display. The person at the other end had ended the call.
“Our dog,” he said. “The woman who took him when we moved is moving too. She waited all evening.”
The boy spoke for the first time since the viaduct.
“He thinks we don’t want him.”
“He doesn’t think that,” his father said.
Neither sounded convinced.
Darra called Perin again and requested a service diversion. The answer was no. The next crew needed the bus in eighteen minutes; the corridor was booked for its return. The bus could make the North End loop under remote routing authority, but granting that authority would take longer than the remaining shift.
“Bring it in,” Perin said. “I’ll arrange a taxi if we’ve got an account car free.”
They waited eleven minutes. No car was free. The father kept his display dark now, preserving what charge remained. The boy fell asleep against his sleeve.
Darra put the bus into depot return. She had lost her green bar. The bonus was gone whether she rushed or not, an oddly freeing discovery. She told Perin she would take the two passengers with her to the crew gate rather than leave them at the deserted terminus.
“That’s outside the service.”
“Then send someone to collect them.”
Perin said nothing for several seconds, then authorized the transfer. The bus opened its doors for the bicycle man, who had been standing outside throughout the call.
“I’m coming too,” he said. “If nobody’s fetched them, I can show your car the back way.”
At the depot, Darra signed the late-arrival form. Perin was there in person. She looked tired, and the corner of her mouth carried a small smear of tomato sauce.
“I’ve found a car,” she said.
It was the depot’s parts van. A fitter moved a box of filters off the passenger seat and went looking for the keys. The bicycle man gave directions while Darra helped the boy climb in. His father sat beside him. There were three seats, all occupied, and Darra had reached the end of what she could do.
“Tell me,” she said to the fitter. “When you’ve been.”
He nodded. The van left with the orange lead visible against the boy’s coat.
Inside, Perin asked why the North End figures had fallen to almost nothing. Darra told her where she’d been registering the tickets. Perin set her fork down. Darra named the nights she remembered. She did not name other drivers; Perin could read their logs and ask them herself.
By the time Darra went outside, the shop had closed. The cooker stood behind its grille with a new card taped to the handle: RESERVED. Somebody else had bought it.
Her own bus home came in nineteen minutes. She sat on the bench and looked at the June commendation in her staff wallet. She could take it out tomorrow. Tonight she was too tired to find somewhere to put it.
The fitter called when her bus was approaching.
“They got him,” he said.
“The woman waited?”
“Not the woman. Her neighbor had him in the kitchen. He’d eaten half a packet of pastry.”
From somewhere beyond the telephone Darra heard the boy say Moss, get down, and then say it again, laughing. The bus pulled up. She let the other passengers board while she listened to the fitter try to retrieve his glove from the dog.
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