He tried that same night, alone in the cottage while Victoria slept, though he'd promised her he wouldn't do it without her there. He broke the promise within the hour, unable to bear the waiting once the idea had lodged itself in him.
He didn't know the proper way to ask. There had never been a proper way — the relay had spoken to him only twice in three years, both times unprompted, both times in the disorienting first weeks after the anomaly when he'd barely understood what he was looking at. He typed anyway, into the same blank field he'd once used to search for anything at all about his impossible situation, a habit long since abandoned once the valley had given him more urgent things to think about.
Are you still there.
Nothing. The screen held its ordinary green glow, battery at ninety-one percent, anchor at twenty-one, no different than it had been an hour before.
He tried again, three nights running, and it was on the fourth night, with Victoria beside him this time, her hand resting on his knee in the dark, that something finally answered.
Not words. A single number, appearing without preamble where the search field had been, gone again before he could be certain he'd truly seen it.
19.
"That's not an answer," Victoria said, watching it fade. "That's just the reading again."
"Maybe it's the only answer left to give." Thomas stared at the space where the number had briefly appeared, feeling something cold settle into him that had nothing to do with the cottage's cool night air. "Maybe whatever used to explain things to me doesn't have the strength left to explain anymore. Maybe all it can still manage is confirming how much worse it's gotten."
They sat with that a long moment, the valley quiet outside, the towers' small lights burning steady on the ridge.
"Then we stop waiting for it to tell us what to do," Victoria said finally, "and we start deciding for ourselves. If the connection is failing regardless of what we choose, Thomas, I'd rather spend whatever time it leaves us building the things that matter most, instead of standing still, afraid to move, waiting for a voice that may never speak clearly again."
"What matters most?"
"You already know the answer to that." She took his hand from the phone, gently, and held it instead. "You've spent three years building a valley for the people in it. I think it's time you started building something for the version of yourself that might not get to keep it much longer, too."