“The roof is gone,” the caller said. “A tram is due in twenty minutes. Who stops it?”
Jessa looked out of the switchboard room at the station roof. It was there, green and dull under the lamps.
“Which station?”
“North Arch. The old booking office gave me this number.”
“You’ve reached North Arch’s exchange. My name is Jessa.”
“Or. I’m standing where the roof fell.”
She pressed the call button for Paz, her night supervisor.
“Possible roof damage at North Arch,” she said. “Caller at the old office.”
Paz sent the local tram crew to check. He didn’t tell her to hang up.
“Stay away from the track,” Jessa told Or. “Can you see a street sign?”
“Bread Lane. Three steps below the cracked arch. I came along the road because the bridge is shut.”
Bread Lane crossed beneath her window. Its bridge was open. She could see a cleaner pushing his cart over it.
Through the phone she heard a bell: three slow notes.
Outside, the station clock rang two notes.
Jessa touched the edge of her headset. There had been stranger calls during the hour before dawn. Once a woman had reported a fire in a street that had been a river here for fifty years. The exchange engineers said that, briefly, this one number joined two worlds with the same old street names. Only sound crossed. No one had found a way to call the other world back.
She had taken that fire call. At sunrise it had cut off. She still didn’t know what happened to the woman.
Paz returned to her desk.
“Crew says our station is sound. No debris. No one at the old office.”
“His bell has three notes.”
Paz listened on the second headset. Or was breathing hard.
“The dawn connection?” he asked Jessa.
“I think so.”
“Then keep our crew out of his directions. They have a tram to run here.”
He spoke to Or. “We can’t stop your tram from this exchange. Our rails and yours are in different places.”
“I don’t care where you are. The line still goes through the rubble.”
“I know,” Paz said. “We need your local dispatcher.”
“I called the number on the board.”
“The old board?” Jessa asked.
“Half of it. The other half’s under a beam.”
Beyond Or’s voice came the three-note bell again. Jessa watched pale light gather above her intact roof.
“What else is open there?” she asked. “A new ticket booth? A gate with a phone?”
“There was a new booth up the ramp. I couldn’t see it from the road. The steps here are covered.”
“Don’t cross the wreckage. Can you reach the ramp from Bread Lane?”
Or moved. She heard stones shift and told him to stop until he could see where he was putting his feet.
“I can go back to the street,” he said. “There’s a painted arrow toward the ramp.”
“Follow that. Keep this phone with you if the cord reaches.”
“It doesn’t. It’s an old wall phone.”
She swallowed. She couldn’t send a map from her world. “Before you leave it, tell me what the arrow points to.”
“A blue railing. There are lights along it.”
“Is it blocked?”
“No. It goes behind the office.”
Paz pointed to the clock. Eleven minutes before sunrise.
“There should be a current emergency contact card inside your new booth,” Jessa said. “Check that, not the old timetable. You need whoever runs the tram now.”
“What if they’re not there?”
“Look for the booth phone. Use the number on its card. Tell them which track is blocked and what you can see. They’ll need your station name.”
“You can’t make the call?”
“Your local numbers aren’t on my network. You can reach them from there.”
Or was quiet. She could hear a thin scraping in his room, as if a loose piece of the roof moved in the wind.
“I was told not to leave until help came,” he said.
“Who told you?”
“The old recorded message. When I first dialed.”
“You got through to me after that. I’m telling you where to seek help now.”
She didn’t promise the booth would be open. He had seen it earlier, but she couldn’t.
“All right,” he said. “Blue railing. Current card. My own dispatcher.”
“Yes.”
He hung up.
Jessa kept her hand above the switch. The screen showed no number she could return. Paz went to the window and watched their own first tram stop beneath the green roof.
“He has to walk it,” he said.
“I know.”
Four minutes before sunrise, the line lit again.
“Jessa?”
“Or?”
“The booth was open. I called. The dispatcher stopped the tram at South Bridge.”
In the background she heard the three-note bell. His voice sounded less close; he was calling from the booth phone through the same shared exchange number.
“Stay with your local crew,” she said. “They can reach you.”
“I will. Thank you for getting me off that old phone.”
The line crackled. He said something else, but sunrise broke the connection before she could hear it.
At the end of her shift Jessa crossed Bread Lane. The cleaner had gone. Under the sound roof, the tram doors stood open and warm light fell onto the platform.
She stopped by the green railing. Then she took the ordinary steps up, watching each one.
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