The Pulse

Tszuvok arrived at Crivsola's workshop one morning holding his left arm at a careful angle. The arm had been broken months ago — a carpentry accident involving a poorly secured beam — and the healer who set the bone had told him to press two fingers against the inside of his wrist each day and count to thirty.

"Why?" Crivsola asked.

Tszuvok shrugged. "She said it tells her the arm is healing properly. Something about the throbbing."

The Throbbing

Crivsola placed two fingers against the inside of her own wrist. She pressed lightly. Nothing. She pressed harder, shifting the fingers slightly toward the thumb side, and there it was — a rhythmic throbbing under the skin. A tiny, steady beat, pushing against her fingertips at regular intervals.

She counted. The rhythm was even. One beat, then another, then another, perfectly spaced.

Everywhere

"Give me your wrist," she said to Tszuvok. He held it out. She found the same rhythm — the same speed, the same steady beat.

Then she pressed the side of her own neck, just below the jaw. The throbbing was there too. Stronger, in fact. She checked her temple. There. She pressed behind her ankle, in the soft spot between the bone and the tendon. There.

The same rhythm, everywhere in the body, all at the same time.

This was not a local phenomenon. Whatever was throbbing in her wrist was also throbbing in her neck, her temple, her ankle. And it was all beating together — the same pace, the same interval.

One Source, Not Many

Crivsola sat back and considered what this meant. If each part of the body had its own independent throbbing, you would expect different rhythms in different places — the wrist doing one thing, the neck doing another. That was not what she found. Every location beat in unison.

A single rhythm everywhere implies a single source.

Something, somewhere in the body, was pushing in a steady beat. And whatever it pushed was traveling through channels — the internal rivers she had predicted back in the prison, when she reasoned that food-fuel must somehow reach every part of the body.

A Pump

She had predicted rivers. Now she had evidence that something was pumping fluid through them — rhythmically, steadily, without pause.

The rivers were not passive streams flowing gently through the body. Something was actively pushing. A pump of some kind, beating away inside her, beating inside Tszuvok, beating inside every living person she had ever met.

She needed to find it.

"Where do you feel it strongest?" she asked Tszuvok.

He thought about it. Pressed his neck. His wrist. Then he placed his hand flat against his own chest. "Here," he said. "I think."

Crivsola placed her hand on her own chest. And felt it — a steady, rhythmic thumping, stronger than anywhere else.