She had learned that from a man who documented his findings at 4 in the morning and put his name on the bottom line and went to sleep on the concrete because there was nothing left and the work was done. The evening that stayed with her came in October, almost exactly 13 months after the morning that had started everything. She had come down to the hangar at the end of a long day, not for any specific purpose, just the habit she'd built of ending there. The main bay was quiet with the particular end of shift quiet of a space winding down. Equipment put away, lights dimmed in the bays that weren't in use.
A single aircraft sat in the center bay with its navigation lights running through a systems check, pulsing red and white against the high ceiling in a slow rhythm. Caleb was there, which she hadn't expected. It was past his defined hours, and she had noticed over the months that he held to those hours with the consistency of someone who understood exactly why they existed. He was standing near the open bay door at the far end, looking out at the tarmac. He had his jacket on.
He wasn't working. She walked over and stood beside him. The tarmac was lit by the amber flood lights along the perimeter, and beyond it, the sky had gone the deep blue of early evening, and a single aircraft was on approach in the distance, its lights descending in a long, slow line toward the runway. They watched it without speaking. The navigation lights pulsed.
The approach lights along the runway came on in sequence, illuminating the path. The aircraft landed cleanly and rolled out and turned off at the far end, and its engine sound diminished into the ordinary noise of the evening. Mia is reading a book about the Wright brothers. Caleb said, "She came to me last night with 11 questions and wouldn't accept approximate answers." "What kind of questions?
Why did they use a chain drive instead of a direct drive? Whether Kittyhawk was chosen for the wind or the sand? Whether Orville was actually the better pilot or if Wilbur just got less credit?" He paused. I got 8 out of 11.
She graded me. What was your grade? She said B+ was actually quite good for a maintenance person. He said she used the phrase quite good in that tone she has. Sloan laughed.
It came out genuine and unguarded in the way that things come out when you're standing in a quiet space with someone you've stopped performing for. She heard herself and didn't try to recover from it. She's nine, Sloan said. She's nine going on a problem I'm not equipped to solve. He said.