The spare minute

At 4:12, with both hands inside the station clock, I learned that my son had changed the time of his solo.

The message lit up on the inside of my wrist. We go on at 4:45. They cut the speeches.

I was holding a gear in place with one finger. Letting go would have dropped it three decks down, where the transit authority would have bought a new one and charged my department for the pleasure of finding the old one first.

I dictated, “I’m at North Station. I’ll be there.”

Then I looked at the gap in the gear’s teeth.

It was a small gap, if you had never bought a gear. This one was brass, hand cut for a clock installed before the city had a second ring. The replacement in the depot cost more than my monthly food bill. I had brought the replacement anyway, strapped against my hip, because dispatch had called the clock “unreliable.” Dispatch liked words that saved space on forms.

Below me, passengers crossed the station’s curved floor with their magnetic boot straps ticking against the deck. Outside the wide windows, Earth lay under a band of cloud. Inside, the lime minute hand pointed to 4:09. It cast a separate oval shadow across the clock face, thanks to a lamp someone had bolted in the wrong place twenty years ago.

“North clock,” Dalia said in my ear. “Status.”

“Three minutes slow and missing a tooth. I’ve opened it.”

“Rush routing starts at five. I need it signed off before then.”

“I have a replacement.”

“Excellent. Use it.”

Dalia had learned management from a door that closed whether or not your coat was clear.

My son’s auditorium was six minutes away by tram. I needed to finish by 4:35 to get a seat before he walked onstage. A proper replacement, with the clock stopped and its calibration checked afterward, would take at least half an hour. I could call for another technician, but waiting for one would use the same half hour.

I eased my finger away from the damaged gear and caught it before it fell. Fine brass dust had settled along the edge of its housing. Under that dust was a narrow panel I had never seen on a station clock.

Its latch bore the old municipal seal: a circle with sixty little cuts around it.

Every public clock in the city stored its daily calibration error. A clock that gained a fraction of a second put that fraction away; a clock that lagged drew its correction through the same little mechanism. The newer models kept the accumulated time in sealed cartridges. This one had a pocket large enough for a full minute, fitted back when technicians were expected to make adjustments by hand.

According to the indicator behind the panel, nobody had used it.

“Come on,” I said to the clock. “You’ve had forty years.”

I knew what the pocket was for. I also knew why our training diagrams showed it behind a red line. Draw a minute and you get sixty seconds that the station does not. The pocket balances the draw by taking a minute from somebody else in the city. There is no way to choose whom.

I set the tool against the latch and checked my wrist again. Niko had thirty-three minutes.

I pulled.

The hollow station PA stopped halfway through “Platform.” A child below held one boot above the floor. Steam from a food stall remained curled over its vent.

My wrist display counted down from sixty.

I had meant to test the mechanism and stop. Instead I freed the damaged gear, seated the replacement, and got its retaining cover back on with nine seconds left. My hands moved well when nobody was around to tell them how long I was taking.

At zero, the child’s boot came down. The PA finished its word.

Across the platform, a woman reaching for a lunch tin vanished.

The tin stayed on the bench. I counted because the display on my wrist was still open, and because there was nothing useful I could do with my hands. Fifty-nine seconds later, the woman returned with her fingers closed around empty air. Her tram had left. She stared at the tin, then at the dark departure board above it.

She was perhaps thirty, with a security badge clipped to her coat. She picked up the tin and pressed her palm against its lid.

“Of course,” she said, loud enough for me to hear from the clock scaffold. “Today.”

She went to the service desk. I could see her explaining that she had been standing there, that the tram had been there. The clerk checked the board and pointed toward the next departure. The woman opened her tin, touched something inside, and shut it again.

The clock on my wrist logged an exchange. It did not give her name. Behind the panel, the pocket indicator had returned to sixty; the transferred minute was ready to be drawn again.

I checked the new gear. It ran cleanly. I still needed to stop the clock, inspect the damage behind it, and confirm that its displayed time matched the station reference. The borrowed minute had done the quickest part.

I told myself the woman had missed a tram. I had missed trams. She would get another.

Then Dalia called. “Your replacement is turning, but North is reporting a second fault. The hand skipped under load.”

“I see it.”

“Can you clear it by 4:35? I can send Bel.”

I looked at the lime hand. It had moved smoothly for three ticks, then hesitated. Whatever the broken tooth had struck was still inside the housing. Bel worked on the station’s moving access bridges. She knew where the clock’s old cables passed through the wall, and she was quick.

“Send her,” I said.

Bel arrived at 4:19 carrying a tool case with one corner polished bright from being dragged. She took one look at the open clock and held out her hand for my light.

“Your face says you found something expensive,” she said.

“Bent guide behind the new gear.”

“Expensive in parts or in your afternoon?”

“Both.”

She leaned in, then withdrew. “Clock has to come off the station feed. I’ll clear the access bridge and get you the isolation notice.”

Bel crossed the narrow service bridge that linked the scaffold to the wall panel. It retracted when a tram entered the adjacent berth. She had a safety line clipped to her harness, and there was time before the next arrival. She would be back with the notice in a few minutes.

My wrist showed another message from Niko.

Please don’t stand right at the front. I can see people there.

He had asked me at breakfast to fasten his left cuff before he went on. The button was stiff, and he expected his hands to shake.

I typed, Second row, left side.

I did not send it. I no longer knew if I could get there.

The bent guide sat behind the gear I had just fitted. If I borrowed one more minute, I could lift the cover, check whether the guide could be reseated, and tell Bel exactly what needed doing when she returned. I could still make the tram to the auditorium. I could still be in the second row.

I looked down at the passenger bench. The woman with the lunch tin had gone.

I put my tool against the pocket latch.

For the second time, the PA caught on a syllable. Bel stopped halfway across the service bridge, her hand near the rail. My wrist began its count.

The guide was bent too far to reseat. I found a crack at its base and took a picture for the repair record. At forty-two seconds, I had all I was going to get. I sat back against the scaffold and watched the last eighteen pass.

The station resumed. Bel took a step.

Then she vanished.

I shouted her name, though she could not hear me. On the bridge control panel, the arrival warning lit up. A tram was approaching the berth. With nobody on the bridge, its retraction cycle began.

I called dispatch. “Stop the bridge.”

“What?”

“Bel’s on it. Stop it.”

“The occupancy sensor is clear.”

“I know what it says. Stop it.”

The bridge folded into the wall. I climbed down from the scaffold and ran toward the berth, my boot straps snapping hard against the deck. The tram entered below, quiet until its brakes took hold. I reached the wall panel as Bel came back.

She reappeared where the bridge had been. Her right foot found nothing. The safety line caught her before she reached the tram roof, but it swung her into the wall. I heard the impact over the brake noise.

Bel hung there, gripping the line with her good hand.

“Bel!”

“I’m awake,” she said. “Get me up.”

A platform worker helped me bring her onto the deck. She held her left arm close to her side. When the worker asked what had happened, Bel looked at the empty space where the bridge was returning.

“I crossed it,” she said. “I was halfway across.”

Dalia came back on my earpiece. “Mara. Explain the occupancy fault.”

“There isn’t one.” My mouth tasted of the sour vending-machine orange I had eaten for lunch. I had bought it because it was the only thing in the machine that hadn’t been manufactured in a rectangle. “I opened the clock’s minute pocket. Twice. The first exchange took a commuter. The second took Bel.”

Bel turned to me. The platform worker kept one hand on her harness and looked at the clock above us.

“You did that while I was on the bridge?” Bel asked.

“I pulled before you reached the panel.”

“You saw me on the bridge.”

“Yes.”

She examined me for a moment. “All right. Help me sit down before I say something worth recording too.”

I helped her to the bench. Her fingers shook as she unclipped the line. Dalia ordered the bridge locked, a medic sent, and the clock taken off the station feed. Then she asked me to enter the two unauthorized exchanges in the incident register.

My application for senior technician was open on the same display. The appointment board met the next morning. My record put me first, if the quarter stayed clear. I had counted on the higher rate to replace the air unit in our apartment, which had begun making a grinding sound whenever Niko practiced.

The incident screen asked for my badge number. I entered it. My application status changed from eligible to review required. I watched it happen, then added the photograph of the cracked guide and both exchange records.

I sent Niko a message: I caused an accident at work. Bel is with the medic. I have to stay and repair the clock properly. I’m going to miss your solo. I’m sorry.

The typing indicator appeared, went away, then appeared again.

Is Bel okay?

Awake. Her arm hurts. They’re checking it.

A pause.

I’m still playing.

You should.

I know.

Bel let the medic examine her arm while she told me which cabinet held the old guide drawings. When I thanked her, she said, “Get the clock fixed, Mara. I want to go home through a station that knows what hour it is.”

The depot had the guide. A runner brought it at 4:32, and I fitted it with the clock stopped and the pocket sealed. The old screws had to come out without taking their threads with them. The new guide had to sit square. Brass dust stuck to the sweat at my wrist.

At 4:46, while I was checking the hand against the station reference, my display showed that Niko’s performance had started. I set the clock two seconds back, waited for the reference pulse, and checked it again. The minute hand went on turning.

Dalia signed the repair at 4:54. The first rush trams arrived at five, and the passengers beneath the clock read the same time as the ones by the doors. The sealed pocket still showed a full minute. Its indicator showed two exchanges. Nobody could put those minutes back.

Bel had been taken to the clinic before I finished. She sent a message that her arm was bruised, nothing broken, and that she would discuss the rest with me tomorrow. I replied that I would be there.

---

The auditorium had emptied by the time I reached it. Niko was outside with his clarinet case between his feet, watching a cleaning cart try to get through a door that was narrower than the cart.

He wore the black shirt he had pressed himself that morning. His left cuff button was still undone.

“Bel?” he asked.

“Bruised arm. She’s gone home.”

“Good.”

I sat beside him. “How was it?”

He nudged the case with his shoe. “I came in early.”

“Did you stop?”

“No. I caught the next bar.” He looked at me. “You said you’d be there.”

“I did.”

“I looked at the second row.”

I had no useful answer. The cleaning cart finally got through. Its driver gave the door a shove with one foot and disappeared inside.

“I don’t want you to tell me it was probably great,” Niko said.

“Okay.”

“And I don’t want to play it for you tonight.”

“Okay.”

He picked at the loose thread beside his cuff button. “I might tomorrow. I haven’t decided.”

We waited for the tram. When it came, he carried his own case on board and took a seat by the window. I sat next to him. His cuff caught on the case handle when he moved it onto his lap.

“May I?” I asked.

He gave me his wrist. I worked the stubborn button through the hole, careful of the loose thread, and let go. He set the case across his knees and watched the city turn past the glass.