Scarecrow

The headsets came on a Tuesday, in long gray crates, and Okafor handed them out herself.

They were small. Smaller than I’d expected. A curved piece of black plastic that hooked over the ear, with a thin stalk that came round to the corner of the mouth, and a little light on the side that went green when it was on. They weighed almost nothing. Liam put his on and immediately started talking into it, to nobody, about breakfast, until Okafor looked at him.

”On Avalon,” said Sergeant Okafor, walking down the line of us on field one, ”you will not be able to see each other. You’ll be in jungle, or desert, or ice, or underground, or in the dark. You’ll be ten kilometers apart. You’ll be a hundred. And the only thing that will tell you whether the person on your left is alive is that.” She tapped the headset on Brock’s ear as she passed. ”And the only thing that will tell them it’s you talking, and not something wearing your voice, is a word.”

She stopped at the end of the line.

”Callsigns,” she said. ”One word. Short. Something you can say with a mouthful of blood and a broken jaw and still be understood.” She didn’t touch her own jaw. She didn’t need to. ”Something you’ll answer to when you’re asleep. Something nobody else in this cave would pick.” A pause. ”You choose it. Not me. Not your squad. Not your father.” She didn’t look at anyone when she said that. ”You’ve got until tomorrow’s drill. Then I write it down, and it’s yours until you’re dead or you’re home.”

She walked off.

The line broke up. Everyone started talking at once.

Liam turned round and looked at me with his eyebrows all the way up.

I didn’t say anything.

Everybody talked about it all day.

At breakfast. At the beam. At lunch, at the fern. In the showers. Callsigns were the only thing anybody in the compound could think about. You could hear them being tried out in corridors, under people’s breath, the way you’d try on a coat. Ember. Sable. Fang. Torrent. Somebody from Squad Four said Thunderbolt out loud in the mess and was laughed at so hard by his own squad that he went red to the ears and changed it to Bolt, and was laughed at again.

Liam had been right about most of it.

Brock put Iron. He said it once, at breakfast, flatly, to nobody. Nobody laughed. It was the only thing it could have been.

Seraphina put Ember. She said it at the beam, staring straight ahead, daring anyone. Liam opened his mouth. She looked at him. He closed it.

Risa put Pulse. She told me at the fern. ”Because of the hearts,” she said, without looking up from her tray. ”And because it’s what keeps going.” She glanced at me. ”Don’t make it a thing.”

”I wasn’t going to.”

”Your heart just did a thing,” said Risa. ”I can feel it from here.” But she was almost smiling.

Toby couldn’t decide. He spent the whole day in an agony of deciding. He tried Echo, and then Lark, and then Wall, and none of them were right, and he got whiter and whiter, and by dinner he was sitting at the end of the table not eating, with his tuning fork in both hands, staring at it.

Liam leaned over and looked at the fork.

”Fork,” he said.

Toby looked up.

”No, listen,” said Liam. ”Listen. It’s short. It’s yours. Nobody else in this cave would pick it. And when you say it on the comms, everybody’ll know it’s you, because nobody else would ever, ever say Fork on purpose.” He grinned. ”And it’s the thing that keeps the note.”

Toby looked at the tuning fork for a long time.

Then he said, very quietly, ”Fork,” and went red to the ears, and started eating.

Sigmund, Liam was right about too. I saw it happen.

Okafor had left the callsign forms in a box on the table at the door of the mess, for anyone who wanted to write theirs down early. Most people didn’t. Sigmund did. After dinner, when the mess was half empty, he went to the box and took a form and wrote on it, standing up, very fast, in neat narrow letters.

I was close enough to see. I didn’t mean to look. I just did.

He wrote STORM.

Then he stood looking at it. For a long time. His narrow face perfectly blank.

Then he crossed it out. One hard line, straight through. And wrote, underneath, smaller:

ARC.

He folded the form and put it in the box and walked out, and didn’t see me, and I never told anyone. Not even Liam. Especially not Liam.

Luna didn’t tell anyone hers at all.

Not at breakfast. Not at the beam. Not at dinner. When Liam asked her, at the beam, directly, the way only Liam would, she looked at him for a long moment with her pale still face and said, ”You’ll hear it tomorrow, Calder,” and went back to carrying her end of the steel.

That night, in the reading room, she didn’t ask me any questions from the cell biology book.

She sat across the table from me with her hands folded and looked at me.

”You’re going to say it,” she said. ”Tomorrow.”

”Yes.”

”Good.” She didn’t say anything else for a while. Then: ”Do you want to know mine?”

”Only if you want to tell me.”

Luna Windsor looked at the mended mug on my side of the table. At the fern leaf in it, on its bit of wet paper. At the water, which had a skin of ice on it, because it always did when she was there.

”Keep,” she said.

I looked up.

”Like a castle,” she said. ”The part in the middle. The last wall. The one that holds when everything else has fallen.” She looked at the ice in the mug. ”And the other thing. The thing I told you. The thing nobody believes.”

Cold keeps things.

”My father will think it’s the first one,” said Luna. ”He’ll approve. He’ll think I picked a soldier’s word.” She looked at me. ”I don’t care what he thinks it means. I know what it means.”

”So do I,” I said.

She held my eyes for a long moment.

Then she opened the cell biology book, and turned to the chapter on blood, and asked me what carried oxygen in it and why it was red.

I got it right.

On Wednesday morning, we stood in four lines on field one, in squad order, with the headsets on our ears and the little green lights on.

The observation room had people in it. I saw them from the line. Crane, on his stool. Two of his assistants. And a woman I didn’t know, in a dark suit, with a slate, who I found out later was from the Council’s information office, and whose job was to make sure the names of the cadets of Project AVALON sounded suitable when they were read out on the news.

Sergeant Okafor stood in front of the lines with a slate of her own in one hand and a pen in the other.

”Callsigns,” she said. ”On comms. When I say your name, you give me your word. Once. Clearly. Then it’s yours.” She looked down the lines. ”Channel one.”

The headset in my ear clicked. Her voice came through it, close and small, as if she were standing right behind me.

”Corran.”

”Torrent,” said a girl from the earth-wave family, in my ear.

Okafor wrote it down.

”Vell.”

”Sable.”

It went on. Down the first line. Down the second. Squad by squad. Each voice in my ear, small and clear and strange through the headset, saying one word. Okafor writing each one down without looking up, without reacting, the same short stroke of the pen every time.

”Haddon.”

”Iron,” said Brock.

”Friese. S.”

A pause. A short one. Then Sigmund’s cool, careful voice, very close in my ear.

”Arc.”

From the end of the Squad Two line, I heard Risa breathe out, just once, through her nose. Nobody else noticed. I don’t think anybody else in the whole compound knew what it meant, except me, and her.

”Friese. R.”

”Pulse.”

On. And on. Squad Five. Squad Six. Squad Seven. The light on my headset glowing green at the edge of my eye. My hands at my sides.

”Calder. L.” said Okafor.

”Hearth,” said Liam.

I turned my head. He was standing very straight beside me, with his chin up, and his face completely serious, for the fourth time I’d ever seen it.

He’d never told me. He’d never told anyone. He’d spent two days telling everyone else what to pick, and he’d never once said what he’d picked himself.

Hearth Block. Thirty-first floor. A small woman with flour on her arms, on her knees in the snow at the gate.

Okafor wrote it down without looking up.

”Calder. S.”

”Ember,” said Seraphina. Daring anyone.

”Marsh.”

”F-Fork,” said Toby. And then, again, steadier, because Okafor hadn’t moved her pen, ”Fork.”

Okafor wrote it down.

”Windsor.”

”Keep,” said Luna Windsor.

Behind the glass of the observation room, I saw the woman from the Council’s information office nod, approvingly, and make a note. A soldier’s word. Suitable.

Okafor wrote it down.

”Dask,” she said.

She’d gone in squad order. Squad Eight last. And in Squad Eight, me last. The way it had been since the first day, when they gave me the armband with forty-one on it.

The whole field went quiet.

Not because of anything anyone did. Because everyone had been waiting. All week. All day. Thirty-nine people on field one with green lights on their ears, and the woman from the Council behind the glass, and Crane on his stool, and every single one of them had heard the word in the corridors for five days. And every single one of them wanted to know.

I could feel the pressure behind my eyes. The steady weight. I could feel Liam not breathing, beside me.

I thought about a field a hundred kilometers away, going gold. Two fence posts and a feed sack and a brown coat patched at both elbows. A blue scarf. A charcoal face looking faintly disappointed at the sky.

Whoever’s left standing in the field when everyone else has gone inside.

”Scarecrow,” I said.

Nobody said anything.

Not a sound. Not on the field. Not in my ear. Thirty-nine green lights, and thirty-nine people breathing, very quietly, into thirty-nine headsets, and nobody saying a word.

Sergeant Okafor didn’t look up.

She wrote it down. The same short stroke of the pen. Exactly the same as she’d written Torrent, and Iron, and Fork. Not slower. Not faster. Not a flicker on the steel side of her face or the other side either.

Then she lowered the slate.

”Callsigns are logged,” she said, in my ear, in the same voice. ”Comms drill. Squad by squad. Acknowledge each other by callsign. Squad Eight, you’re first. Go.”

There was a silence on channel one.

Then a click, and Liam’s voice in my ear, very close. Very steady. Not laughing at all.

”Copy, Scarecrow.”

I turned my head. He was looking straight ahead, at the far end of the field. His jaw was tight.

Another click.

”Copy, Scarecrow,” said Toby. Only a little bit shaky.

Another.

”Copy, Scarecrow,” said Seraphina. Daring anyone.

And then the last one. Low and clear and level, in a voice that didn’t go up or down.

”Copy, Scarecrow,” said Luna Windsor.

I stood there on field one with my hands at my sides.

”Copy,” I said. ”Hearth. Ember. Fork. Keep.”

It was the strangest thing. The word had been in the corridors for five days. Chalked on walls. Spread on my pillow in straw. Thrown after me and laughed at and walked away from. And now it was in my ear, in four voices I knew, said the way you’d say someone’s name when you needed them to turn round.

It wasn’t theirs anymore.

It was mine.

The drill went on. Squad by squad, down the lines. Callsigns going back and forth on channel one, small and clear in my ear. Copy, Torrent. Copy, Sable.

And then Squad Two. Copy, Arc. Copy, Pulse.

And then, at the end of Squad Two’s turn, before Okafor moved on, there was a click on channel one that shouldn’t have been there.

”Copy, Scarecrow,” said Brock Haddon.

Flat. Heavy. Without any expression at all.

Nobody in Squad Two had been told to acknowledge Squad Eight. It wasn’t part of the drill.

Sergeant Okafor didn’t say anything about it.

At the far end of the Squad Two line, Sigmund Friese turned his head, very slowly, and looked at Brock for a long time.

Then he looked at me.

Then he looked away.

Crane sent for me an hour later.

His office was at the top of the compound, behind the observation room, up a narrow stair. I’d never been in it. It was small, and plain, and very tidy. A desk with nothing on it except a slate and a cup of tea gone cold. A window into the observation room, and through that, the fields. A chair for visitors. His cane, leaning against the desk.

Sergeant Okafor was already there. Standing, by the wall, with her hands behind her back.

And the woman from the Council’s information office, in her dark suit, sitting in the visitor’s chair, with her slate on her knee.

”Lucas,” said Crane. ”Sit down. Oh—” He looked at the visitor’s chair, which was occupied. ”Stand, I suppose. I’m sorry. Ms. Aldine, this is Cadet Dask.”

Ms. Aldine looked at me. Up. A long way up. She had a neat, pleasant face and very sharp eyes, and she smiled at me the way people smile at dogs they aren’t sure about.

”Cadet Dask,” she said. ”I won’t keep you. It’s about your callsign.”

”Yes, ma’am.”

”It’s—” She smiled again. ”It’s a little unfortunate. You understand. The cadets of Project AVALON are going to be very much in the public eye. Your callsigns will be read out on the news when you launch. People will remember them. Children will play at them.” She tapped her slate. ”And that particular word has certain associations, in the dome. Associations the Council would prefer not to encourage. I’m sure you can understand that.”

”Yes, ma’am.”

”So we’d like you to choose another,” said Ms. Aldine pleasantly. ”Anything you like. Something strong. Something about your gift, perhaps. Alchemist. Forge. Transmute.” She smiled. ”Something people can be proud of.”

I looked at her.

Then I looked at Crane, behind his desk, with his long thin hands folded in front of him.

Then I looked at Sergeant Okafor, against the wall.

”No, ma’am,” I said.

Ms. Aldine’s smile stayed exactly where it was. The rest of her face didn’t.

”I’m not sure you understand—”

”Callsigns are chosen by the cadet,” said Sergeant Okafor.

She hadn’t moved. She was still standing against the wall with her hands behind her back, looking at nothing.

”Program regulation fourteen, section two,” she said. ”The cadet chooses the callsign. The instructor logs it. Once logged, it stands until the cadet is dead or home.” She paused. ”I logged it at oh-nine-forty this morning, ma’am. In front of thirty-nine witnesses and the Director.” Another pause. ”It stands.”

Ms. Aldine turned in her chair and looked at Okafor for a long moment. Then at Crane.

”Director,” she said. ”Surely you can—”

Crane didn’t say anything.

He was looking at me. Not the way the General had looked. Not measuring. Something else. Something I’d seen on his face once before, in the field, on the morning Mother breathed, when he sat at our kitchen table and couldn’t look at any of us.

”I saw it,” he said quietly. ”The scarecrow. The day I came to your house. When you were six.”

The office was very still.

”In the middle of the wheat,” said Crane. ”In Trevor’s coat. I’d driven out across the flats for four hours, and there was nothing, nothing at all, gray from one edge of the world to the other. And then I came over the ridge, and there was this green. And in the middle of it, this—thing. With a face drawn on it. Looking at me.” He was quiet for a moment. ”I asked him what it was for. While we were standing on the porch. Before the soldier went for the stairs. I asked him why a man would build a scarecrow where there aren’t any crows.”

He looked down at his hands.

”He said, it’s for when you come back.”

Nobody said anything.

Ms. Aldine looked from Crane to me and back again, and didn’t understand, and knew that she didn’t, and didn’t like it.

Crane looked up.

”Thank you, Ms. Aldine,” he said. ”I think the callsign stands. As Sergeant Okafor says. Regulation fourteen.” He smiled at her, very slightly, very tiredly. ”I’m sure the Council’s information office can find a way to make it sound suitable. You’re all very good at that.”

Liam told everyone it was his idea.

He told them at lunch. He told them at the beam. He told them in the showers, and in the corridors, and at dinner, and in the barracks after lights out, to the ceiling, at length. He told the two boys from Squad Six, who said it in the corridor that afternoon, out of habit, laughing, the way they’d been saying it all week.

”Scarecrow,” one of them said, as I came round the corner. And laughed.

And Liam, beside me, said, ”That’s right. That’s his callsign. Logged at oh-nine-forty this morning, regulation fourteen, section two. It was my idea.” He beamed at them. ”You’re welcome.”

The boy from Squad Six stopped laughing.

He looked at Liam. At me. At the word, still hanging there in the corridor between us, which had stopped meaning what he’d meant it to mean somewhere in the last few hours, and he hadn’t noticed it go.

He didn’t say it again.

Nobody did. Not like that. Not the old way. They said it, after that. All the time. On the comms. On the field. In the mess. Scarecrow, you’re on the beam. Scarecrow, Okafor wants you. Pass the salt, Scarecrow. They said it the way you’d say anyone’s name.

Because that was all it was now.

I told Mother on Sunday.

I hadn’t been sure I would. I’d thought about it all week. Whether she’d understand. Whether it would hurt her. The word they’d called her for nineteen years, on the outside, in the dead flats, the word the pickup had shouted as it fishtailed away into the ash.

But she’d said come home on Sundays, even when you’ve nothing to tell me. And I had something to tell her.

So I told her. The headsets. The forms. Liam on the roof with the puddings. Brock’s voice in my ear. Ms. Aldine, and regulation fourteen, and Crane looking at his hands.

It’s for when you come back.

Mother didn’t say anything for a long time.

She was sitting in her wheelchair in the big room with the glass walls, with the gray shawl round her shoulders and Maura’s hearthstone in her lap. The city was behind her, all its lights. She looked thinner than last week. Not much. She always did, a little.

Her eyes were wet.

”He said that to me too,” she said finally. ”The night he built it. I asked him what on earth it was for, and he said—” She stopped. Smiled. ”He said, so they’ll know where to find us, Dot. And then he said, and so they’ll know we’re still here.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I used to hate it,” said Mother. ”That scarecrow. Did you know? When he first put it up. For a whole summer, I used to look at it out of the kitchen window and hate it. Because of the word. Because of what they called us.” She looked at the hearthstone in her lap. ”And then one morning, I saw you out there. Five years old, in your bare feet. Fixing its coat. Because the wind had pulled it crooked in the night, and you didn’t like it crooked.” Her voice went very soft. ”And I stopped hating it after that.”

The screen was quiet. Behind her, out of the frame, I could hear Garnet singing, and Genny telling her to stop, and Miss Pell telling them both to stop.

”Scarecrow,” said Mother. Trying it. The way you’d try on a coat. ”Lucas Dask. Callsign Scarecrow.”

”Is it all right?”

My mother looked at me through the screen, from sixty floors up, in a city that had thrown her out, with her hands shaking a little in her lap and her eyes wet and a warm stone from an old friend under her fingers.

”Your father would have stood on the balls of his feet,” she said. ”The whole day. To be the tallest man in the room.”

She smiled.

”It’s perfect,” she said.

That night, in notebook fifteen, I didn’t write anything about cells, or markers, or walls that chose. I wrote the callsigns. All five of them. In a list. The way Father wrote lists.

Hearth.

Ember.

Fork.

Keep.

Scarecrow.

I looked at them for a long time. Then I wrote one more line underneath, very small.

Squad Eight.