Scarecrow

On Wednesday, the padding came off the Town.

I saw it from the edge of field two at six in the morning, before anybody else was awake enough to notice. The engineers had been in all night. The fake shop fronts were the same. The fountain was the same, still with the long crack down it where Luna had frozen it in the second week. The bell tower was the same. But the arms that came out of the doorways, the ones that had been wrapped in thick gray padding for three months, so that when they hit you it was like being hit with a pillow, were bare.

Steel. Jointed, at the elbow and the wrist. Painted the same dull gray as everything else in the Town, so you’d only see them if you were looking.

I was looking.

I could see what they were made of. Good steel. Hard. Heavier than it needed to be. And the motors in the walls behind them, the ones that drove them out of the doorways, had been changed too. Bigger. Faster.

I stood at the edge of the field and looked at the nearest one for a long time.

It would break an arm. Easily. If it hit you the right way, it would break a neck.

”Real weight,” said Sergeant Okafor.

She stood in front of us at the edge of field two with her hands behind her back, the way she had on the first morning, and the forty of us stood in our lines in front of her, and nobody was fidgeting. Nobody had fidgeted since Monday.

”For three months,” she said, ”everything in this cave has been padded. The Town. The sim. The fire on field three, which was never as hot as it looked. The cold on field four, which was never as cold. The rounds on the range, which were wax.” She looked down the lines. ”We padded it because you were learning. You don’t teach a child to walk on broken glass.”

She paused.

”On AV-7,” said Sergeant Okafor, ”nothing is padded.”

Nobody moved.

”From today, the arms in the Town are steel, and they will hit you as hard as a man could. The fire on field three will burn you. The cold on field four will take your fingers if you leave them out too long. The sim goes to full depth: the constructs will hit you as hard as whatever they were built to be. And the range,” she said, ”uses live rounds.”

Somebody in Squad Five made a small sound.

”Live rounds,” said Okafor, ”fired by machines, at you, at speeds you can’t see, from directions you won’t expect. You’ll stop them. Or your squad will. Or you’ll be hurt.” She looked down the lines again, slowly, face by face. ”Dr. Halloway will be at the edge of every field, every session, for six months. She’s very good. You’ll meet her more than you’d like.”

At the end of the line, Halloway raised one hand, without smiling, the way you’d wave to a neighbour across a street. The silver case was at her feet.

”Some of you will find this too hard,” said Sergeant Okafor. ”I told you on Monday. My office. Quietly. No shame.” She stepped back. ”Squad One. The Town. Go.”

Squad One came out of the Town eleven minutes later with a girl carried between two boys, her arm held against her chest at an angle arms don’t go.

Halloway met them at the edge. She had the girl on the ground and the arm straight and splinted in less time than it took me to understand what I was seeing. The girl didn’t scream. She bit down on the strap Halloway gave her and went white and made a noise through her nose like a kettle, and then it was done, and Halloway was saying good, that’s good, that’s the worst of it, in a voice like Mother’s.

Then Squad Two went in, and came out in five minutes and fifty seconds, and nobody was hurt, and Sigmund walked off the course with his narrow face perfectly blank and blood running down the back of one hand from a cut he didn’t seem to have noticed.

Then Squad Three. Then Four.

Squad Eight was last.

We were always last.

”Lucas,” said Toby.

We were standing at the gate of the Town. The five of us. In a line. Luna at the front, the way she’d been at the front of every run since the jungle, even though nobody had told her to be yet. Then Seraphina. Then Liam. Then me. Then Toby, at the back, where he always was, because his walls went up behind us.

He was white. Not pale. White, all the way through, like paper. His big ears were white. His hands were shaking so hard I could hear the tuning fork rattling in his pocket.

”I can’t,” he said. Very quietly. Just to me. ”Lucas, I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I—”

”You can.”

”They’re steel.” His voice cracked. ”My walls are sound. They’re air. They were fine with pillows. They’re not going to—”

”They will.”

”You don’t know that.”

He was right. I didn’t.

I turned round and looked at him. At his white face. At the tuning fork, rattling.

”I don’t,” I said. ”But I know what your walls are made of. I’ve looked. Every time. In the Town, and the jungle, and the beam.” I breathed. ”They’re not air, Toby. They’re air pushed. Packed. So tight it’s nearly not air anymore. Like the steel splash on field one. Like stone.” I looked at him. ”I’ve seen your wall hold two arms at once, from two sides, in the second week. It wasn’t the padding that stopped them, Toby. It was the wall. I was looking.”

Toby stared at me.

”Go,” said Okafor’s voice, from the tower.

Luna went.

We went after her.

I don’t remember all of it. Nobody remembers all of the Town. It’s too fast. That’s what it’s for.

I remember the first arm came out of a doorway on the left, at Seraphina’s head, faster than any of the padded ones had ever come, so fast I heard it before I saw it, a sound like a door slammed in a wind. And Seraphina ducked under it and put her hand flat on it as it went over, and it went red, and then white, and then it sagged at the elbow like a candle and folded down toward the cobbles, dripping.

I remember Liam laughing. High. Too high. And the air round his hands going.

I remember the fountain. The cracked one. And the steel arm that came out of the bell tower above it, not swinging, dropping, straight down, at Luna, who was looking the other way.

And I remember that I wasn’t fast enough.

I saw it. I saw it the instant it started to fall. I saw every bit of it, what it was made of, the steel and the joints and the bolts and the little hard spring in the wrist. And I reached for it, the way I always reached for things, and started to make it into something else. Sand. Soft. Anything.

And it was halfway down. And then three-quarters. And it was so fast, and I was so slow, and I’d only got as far as the wrist.

And then there was a sound like a bell.

A deep, clear note. Low. Lower than Toby had ever sung in his life. And the air over Luna’s head went thick, and gray, and shimmering, like the air over a road in summer, like glass that wasn’t there. And the steel arm hit it at full speed, and stopped.

Just stopped. Dead. A hand’s width over Luna’s silver hair.

And hung there, quivering, in the air, with half its wrist turned to sand and pouring down in a thin gold stream onto the cobbles beside her.

Luna looked up at it.

Then she looked back, down the street, past Seraphina and Liam and me.

At Toby.

He was standing in the middle of the street with his mouth open and his hands up, and he was singing. One note. The first note of the old song. Low. Steady. Holding.

He didn’t stop until we were out of the Town.

Six minutes and forty seconds.

Our best time ever, by nearly a minute. Okafor wrote it on the board without looking up.

Nobody in Squad Eight was hurt.

Toby walked off the course, and past the board, and past Okafor, and past Halloway with her silver case, and round the back of the tower where nobody could see him. And I heard him, through the wall, because I didn’t need to see to hear that.

He was sick. Three times. Until there was nothing left.

Then he came back round the tower, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, white as paper, and stood in the line with the rest of us, at the back, where he always stood.

Nobody said anything.

Liam put a hand on the back of his neck. Just for a moment. Then took it away.

It went on like that.

Not just the Town. Everything. The safety limits came off all of it on the same Wednesday, and stayed off.

Field three, the fire field, was real fire now. The first time Liam went through it, his sleeve caught, and he didn’t notice for three seconds, because he never noticed fire on himself, and then Seraphina did, and put it out with her bare hand, and burned her palm doing it, and swore so loudly that Okafor wrote it down.

Field four, the cold field, was real cold. Not Luna’s cold. Machine cold. It came out of vents in the floor in long white breaths, and it got into your boots and your gloves and the gaps at your wrists, and by the end of the first session Toby couldn’t feel his fingers and couldn’t hold the tuning fork, and Luna took both his hands in hers without saying anything, and did something I couldn’t see, and the color came back into them.

The sim went to full depth.

That was the worst. I’m not going to write all of it. The red jungle was the same red jungle, and the mud was the same mud, and the constructs came up out of it the same way, long and jointed and wrong. But they hit like real things now. Like something heavy, with a reason. The first time one caught Seraphina across the back, it knocked her four meters into a tree, and she got up, and she was fine, and she was coughing blood for an hour afterward and Halloway kept her overnight.

And the range.

The range was a long low hall at the far end of the cave, past field four, cut deep into the rock. At one end, where we stood, there was a line painted on the floor. At the other end, in the dark, there were machines. You couldn’t see them. You could only see the little red lights on top of them, blinking, and hear them turn.

For three months, they’d fired wax. Little gray pellets that stung and left a mark and that was all.

On Thursday, they fired real rounds.

You can’t see a bullet.

I’d thought I could. I could see everything. Everything I looked at, all the way down. I could see the dust on the floor of the range and the grain in the rock walls and the springs inside the machines in the dark at the far end. I thought I’d see the rounds.

I didn’t.

They were too fast. Even for me. Especially for me. I was slow. I’d always been slow. That was the whole of what I was. The slowest thing in the cave, and the most dangerous, and those were the same fact.

The first round went past my ear before I knew it had been fired. I felt it go. A hot little push of air, and a sound like a whip, and then a crack in the rock wall behind me.

I stood very still.

The second one hit Toby’s wall.

It was up before I’d turned round. Low, steady, the bell note. The air in front of the five of us went thick and gray and shimmering. And the round hit it, and I heard it hit, a flat hard smack like a hand on a table, and then there was a small, bright, flattened piece of metal lying on the floor of the range, a meter in front of Luna’s boots.

Then the third. The fourth. Twenty of them. Faster and faster. From the left, from the right, from high up, from low. Smack. Smack. Smack.

Toby held it.

All twenty.

When the machines stopped, the floor in front of us was covered in little flattened bits of bright metal, like coins somebody had dropped. And Toby was standing behind us with his hands up and his mouth open, still singing, and he didn’t stop until Luna turned round and put a hand on his arm and said, very quietly, ”It’s done, Toby. It’s done.”

Then he stopped.

Then he walked out of the range, very fast, and was sick in the corridor.

Every session.

That’s what I want to put down, properly, because nobody else ever will. Not in a report. Not on a board. There’s no box for it.

Every session, for the rest of that week, Toby Marsh held the wall. In the Town. In the jungle. On the range. Against steel arms and constructs and live rounds. He held it longer than he’d ever held it. He held it lower and harder and denser than anyone had known a sound could be held. Squad Eight’s times came down and down and down until, by Friday, we were second on the board, behind Squad Two, and nobody in Squad Eight was hurt by anything that came at us from in front.

And after every session, Toby walked away from the rest of us, wherever we were, and was sick. Behind the tower. In the corridor. Once, in the jungle, in the sim, before it had even switched off, on his knees in the red mud, with the constructs folding away into the ground around him like they’d never been there.

And every morning, he came back.

I found him on the Saturday, at a quarter to five.

I’d gone to the fern, the way I always did, to give it its water. And on the way past field two, I heard something. A note. Low. Very low. Coming from the Town, in the dark, before the lamps were up.

I went to the gate.

Toby was standing in the middle of the street, by the cracked fountain, on his own. In his training clothes. With his tuning fork in one hand. He tapped it on his knee, and held it up, and listened. And then he sang the note back. Lower. Then lower again. Trying to find the bottom of it.

In front of him, the air went gray and shimmering, and then thin, and then thick again.

He was practising.

At a quarter to five in the morning. On his own. In the place that made him sick every day.

I stood at the gate and watched him for a long time. Then I went in.

He jumped when he saw me. Then he went red. Then white again.

”Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

”I won’t.”

”I’m not—” He stopped. Looked at the fork in his hand. ”I’m not brave, Lucas. I want you to know that. Everyone keeps saying it. Liam says it. Brave little Marsh. Even Okafor nearly said it, on Thursday, I saw her nearly say it.” He swallowed. ”I’m not. I’m frightened all the time. Every time. Of all of it. I’m sick because I’m frightened.” His voice shook. ”I just. I can’t stand the idea of it getting past me. Of it hitting one of you. Because I didn’t hold it.” He looked at the fountain. ”My dad got a dose that was wrong and nobody stopped it. Nobody was holding anything. So I hold it. That’s all. That’s not brave. That’s just the only thing I can do.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

Then I sat down on the edge of the cracked fountain, and took out notebook fifteen, and opened it at the back, where I’d been keeping the list I’d started the night Okafor gave me Father’s book.

To learn.

I turned it round so he could see.

At the bottom, in my handwriting, from the night after the announcement:

1. How signals travel. How far. What stops them.

And under it, newer, from Thursday night, after the range:

4. What makes a wall of sound hard. Density. Pressure. Frequency. Why lower holds better. Ask Toby.

Toby looked at it for a long time.

”I’ve been reading about sound,” I said. ”Every night. For you. The inner ear, first. Then waves. How they push air. How they pack it. I don’t understand half of it. Luna understands about two-thirds.” I looked at him. ”But I understand this much. Your wall isn’t stopping things because you’re brave. It’s stopping things because you found the right note. The low one. The first one. And you hold it so steady that the air can’t do anything except be a wall.” I closed the notebook. ”Frightened people can hold a note steady. I’ve seen one do it every day since Wednesday.”

Toby didn’t say anything.

”And you’re wrong,” I said. ”About brave.”

”I’m not—”

”Okafor told me something,” I said. ”On Monday. About my father. She said the bravest thing he ever did wasn’t going into the operations. It was that he kept asking the number. Even knowing he’d have to sit in the kitchens after.” I looked at him. ”You’re sick every day, Toby. And every morning, at a quarter to five, you come back to the place that makes you sick, and you practise. On your own. So it’ll be harder for anything to get past you.” I stood up. ”That’s not the only thing you can do. That’s the bravest thing in this cave.”

Toby looked down at the tuning fork in his hand for a very long time.

Then he tapped it on his knee.

One note. Low. Lower than I’d ever heard it.

”Again,” I said. ”I want to look.”

We did it for an hour. Him singing, me looking. Me telling him what I saw: there, it’s thin on the left, there, it’s packed, now it’s packed all the way through. Him finding the note, losing it, finding it again. By the time the lamps came up over the fields and the first squads came out for laps, there was a place in the air by the cracked fountain where, if you put your hand into it, it was like putting your hand against a wall of warm, solid stone.

I put my hand on it. It held.

Toby looked at my hand, flat on nothing, held up by his voice. Then he looked at me.

And smiled. Not much. But for the first time since Wednesday.

Then he stopped singing, and the wall went, and he walked out of the Town to go to laps, and on the way past the tower he stopped, and went round the back, and was sick.

He came out again a minute later, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

He was smiling still.

Day 100. Real weight.

Squad Eight: second on the board. Nobody hurt from the front.

Toby holds the wall. Every session. Then he’s sick. Every session.

Then he comes back. Every morning. 4:45.

I was too slow for the arm. Toby wasn’t.

To learn: speed. I don’t know how to learn speed. Ask Okafor. Ask Risa, she sees sparks before they jump.

And under it, smaller:

The bravest thing in the cave throws up behind the tower. Nobody’s going to write that down but me.

So I am.