The Blanket
The telegraph code had been built on a simple principle.
Each letter of the alphabet was matched to a combination of signals—one at the shortest, four at the longest. Length followed frequency of use: letters that appeared often were given short, simple marks, while those rarely used received more elaborate ones. E was a single · ; Y was — · — —. In essence, it was a modest script composed of only two kinds of sign.
Putting it to real use, however, was another matter entirely.
Director Lovelace said as much, touching a flame to her pipe.
"A telegraph operator? Not just anyone can do it. It isn't a matter of memorizing the chart. Your body has to remember it. Telegrams deal in urgent business more often than not, so mistakes have to be cut to the bone. There's a reason it's skilled work."
I agreed. Between tasks I stole what moments I could to learn the code table, then tried listening to the operators' tapping and reading the messages out of the sound. It was anything but easy.
Still, the effort was not wholly wasted. In the end it left me with an idea. An operator's work, at bottom, was memorizing a pattern and feeding it into the machine by rote. If that was so, could magic not be applied to make the process semi-automatic? Cast from the code table stored in one's mind, and the signals could be entered with near-perfect accuracy. The speed demanded would have to match a trained operator's, so the magic scholars capable of it could be counted on one hand.
In any case, the chance to try had not yet come. I was nothing but a junior clerk. And I did not have the strength to throw myself into the work in earnest.
"I—I solved it!"
Thud.
In the dead of night, I finally finished the third mathematics workbook I had been using to prepare for the entrance examination. I folded forward onto the desk and looked at the calendar. Barely a month remained until the exam. The calm before the storm.
Lena had been living, of late, at a pace that left her no room to breathe.
Six hundred pounds enclosed. Please invest them in the Eastern Telegraph Office.
A single letter, arrived out of nowhere. It was a small beginning. Anonymous though the investor was, this was the first capital ever to enter the Eastern Telegraph Office—money entrusted to her when both her credibility and any visible record were still thin. Lena set to work determined not to waste a single penny. She divided the six hundred pounds with care, part into shares, part into the office's equipment and the rest of its needs.
The seeds she sowed bore fruit faster than she had expected. The share price began to climb by a meaningful margin. Word then spread that Director Lovelace had drawn on her family's influence to bring in new investors, and the stock rose all the more sharply. The moment had come, quite literally, to break the shell and take flight.
And today was the day the Eastern Telegraph Office would spread its wings and leap. Its equipment was still meager beside that of the Western Telegraph Office. New machinery was arriving in bulk, and several investors were coming to inspect the premises themselves. The morning of a day that important.
Clang!
The piercing ring of metal snapped Lena awake. Susan and Sally stood before her, watching with pity.
"Lena."
"...Huh?"
"You can't nod off at the table. You dropped your fork."
"Ah..."
Only then did she realize the noise had been her own fork striking the floor. She snatched it back up, and the thought came at once. This is bad. My head is completely empty. Perhaps it was the nights she had stayed up. An all-nighter was one thing, and a second another—but once they went on, the fatigue had begun to leak into ordinary life.
"I-I'm fine. I'm only a little tired."
She said it and tried to work the fork as if nothing were wrong, but it kept striking the bowl and finding nothing. Susan's glare sharpened.
"Ha ha ha..."
At that, strangely, her mind cleared. She laughed, awkward, and lifted her head—and met Eugene's eyes, which happened to be turned her way. Lena caught her breath.
Worry and displeasure shared his gaze. The black eyes gleaming between strands of gray hair looked perfectly lucid. But Lena, for whom exhaustion was practically a way of life, could tell. That was a kind of forced wakefulness: the look of someone already at the far edge of fatigue, holding on by will alone.
In her chest, competitiveness rose where the tiredness had been. She did not want to look small—not in front of Eugene, of all people. The spark gathered at her mouth as a smile. She set down her utensils and grinned.
"Today's going to be the busiest day yet. You're confident, aren't you?"
Eugene nodded.
And so the two of them left for the Eastern Telegraph Office.
"The new telegraph machines go to the left of the ones already here. Ah—a little farther left. Yes. Thank you."
"The wire installation? That's the staff over there..."
"Who has the line inventory?"
It was autumn, the season just beginning to turn cool, and still a line of sweat ran down Lena's cheek. Busy. Busier than she had expected. The most chaotic air the Eastern Telegraph Office had known since its founding was driving her mad.
Ordinarily she kept to clerical work and consulting, as befitted an advisor's title. Today she had taken on part of the director's duties as well and was commanding the staff herself. Director Lily Lovelace—whose habit of puffing at her pipe and stroking Lena like a cat usually sent Lena dodging out of reach—was, for once, a face she missed. Asking her for help was impossible. The director was occupied with one of the weightiest tasks of the day: escorting the investors.
"So this is the Eastern Telegraph Office."
"Hmph. Rather a mess in here."
"Now, now. Let's step into the inner room, have a cup of tea, and talk!"
Having coaxed the displeased investors along and herded them into the room, Director Lovelace glanced suddenly up toward Lena on the second floor. What did it mean? A look half worry and half complaint—the very same look she had seen in Eugene that morning—and Lena could not begin to guess what it was for.
Some time passed. Then word came from the operators' side: an emergency. Lena hurried down to the first floor, where a veteran whose hair had gone white let out a heavy sigh and explained.
"We added lines, didn't we? Telegrams are piling up faster than four operators can handle. We're past capacity. We need more people."
"...We did post for new operators."
"When do they start?"
Lena bit her lip. She could not bring herself to answer honestly that it would be a few days. That would be telling them to endure this misery for several days more. But it was the truth. A failure of scheduling. But hiring was not even her jurisdiction, in principle. Is this my fault? But—
"Ah..."
Around then, Lena realized she had reached some kind of limit. Her head spun. Her lips would not part. Her mind washed white, and the noise around her receded into the distance, as if she had been left alone in the world. Brilliant as she was, she had no way of knowing it was panic. She only trembled in the chill and the fear closing over her whole body.
Just before the moisture gathered at her eyes could fall—
Thud.
Someone caught her shoulder and called out.
"I'll help!"
It was Eugene. In that instant the strength went out of her. She caught his arm and dropped into a nearby chair. Voices gradually blurred.
"What? You...? Advisor Lena may have brought you in, but even so."
"I've memorized the entire code chart. And I have an idea..."
"Magic? Instant entry with Move? Does that even make sense?"
"Nothing to lose by trying..."
"Hah—fine! See that machine? Sit there and..."
"The mana supply..."
"Connect the wire and..."
She felt as if she had fallen into water. In the cold closing in from every side, the only thing she could hold to was the warmth of a hand still joined to someone's.
That was the finishing blow. In her blurring sight, Lena closed her eyes.
Pat. Pat.
A periodic sound reached her, and consciousness slowly rose toward the surface. Disheveled blonde hair tickled her face without mercy.
"Oh. You're awake?"
"...Director."
She was half in a dream. Her mind would not come clear, so she spoke while still mostly asleep.
"Don't pet my head..."
"Don't feel like stopping."
"This isn't the time... I haven't even compiled the documents... the settlement's still left..."
"It's all finished, and finished properly. Your brother helped, too. I keep telling you our little advisor is a treasure."
"It's finished...?"
"Mm. We wrapped it up neatly among ourselves."
"You shouldn't have... I can't trust that..."
"This child. Nothing you won't say to your director."
Thump.
A pain flicked against her forehead, as if someone had snapped a finger there.
"That hurt..."
"It was meant to. Lena."
She was still dreaming. The director's voice echoed so wildly that the words would not settle, and yet the plaintive discontent woven through them came through all the same.
"..."
"Sorry for waking you. Rest well, then... Oh, right. I handled the investors perfectly. I'm a proper director now, so don't look down on me, hm?"
A wink—and in the haze, Director Lovelace drifted away. Lena closed her eyes again.
Sway. Sway.
How many times did the rocking chair go back and forth? When she opened her eyes again, a gray-haired man was in her view, trying to lay some sort of blanket over her. Still half dreaming, she said,
"...What is it?"
"No. It's just—"
"...Are you copying me?"
"Huh?"
"The blanket..."
In the full dark, the gray-haired man's eyes widened slightly. Only then did she understand. That's Eugene. She let the words come as they would.
"Why do you work so hard...? You must have had it as hard as I did. No. Harder..."
"..."
"I can't stand it..."
A single drop traced the corner of her eye. It did not keep falling without end. Midway, Eugene wiped it away with a handkerchief. No answer came. Instead, in the dream, she felt herself floating.
"Hup."
Only after blinking and glancing around did she realize someone was carrying her on his back, out through the telegraph office gate. She had no strength left to answer. The rocking, like a chair, was terribly comfortable. Lena sank into sleep, her weight settled against him, the warmth of that broad back felt in full.
The season was autumn. It was a day in autumn, when red and yellow leaves embroidered the night road.
And time flew.
At last, the hour had come.