Scarecrow

On Sunday, I gave Mother the message.

I said it at the end of the call, the way Okafor had told me to. After Garnet’s nose and Genny’s marker report and Mother walking to the lift and back, which she’d done three times now, and the lemon tree, which had a lemon on it. When the corporal outside knocked twice on the frame, I leaned in close to the screen.

”A friend of Father’s would like to come to tea,” I said. ”The Saturday after this one.”

Mother didn’t move.

She sat very still in the chair in front of the screen, in her blue cardigan, and looked at me. And I watched her understand it. All of it. Who, and why, and what the friend was going to say when she came.

”Four o’clock,” said Mother. ”Tell her four. Harriet will make the tea.”

The screen went dark.

On Monday, they fitted the suits.

The suit bay was behind the range, through a set of steel doors I’d never seen open. Inside, it was like the inside of a bell. Tall and round and bright, with white walls and a white floor and a smell like hot metal and oil and something sharp, like the air after lightning. Around the walls, in a ring, there were forty frames. Tall, man-shaped, made of steel tubing. And on each frame, a suit.

They were gray. A dull, dark, matte gray, the color of rain on a slate roof. Not one piece, the way I’d imagined. Hundreds of pieces. Small curved plates, overlapping, like the scales on a fish or the feathers on a bird, from the throat to the ankles. Each plate no bigger than my palm. Under them, something black and close-fitting, like skin. And on top, on a shelf above each frame, a helmet, smooth and round, with a long dark window across the front of it like a closed eye.

There was a name on a strip of card at the foot of each frame.

Mine was at the end. Of course it was.

DASK, L. 41. SQ 8.

The chief engineer’s name was Odell.

He was old. Older than Crane. Short and wide, with a bald head and a gray beard cut very close and a leather apron over his white coat. His hands were burned. Both of them. All the way up past the wrists, the skin shiny and pink and pulled tight, the way skin goes when it’s healed from something very hot. He held a slate in one of them and a long thin steel probe in the other, and he didn’t look at any of us when we came in.

”Don’t touch anything,” he said, to the slate. ”Stand by your frame. Wait.”

We stood by our frames. We waited.

Odell walked round the ring, slowly, stopping at each frame, looking at the suit on it and then at the cadet beside it, and then at the slate, and then making a mark with the probe. He didn’t speak. When he got to Liam, he stopped for a long time.

”Calder, L.,” he said. ”Fire.”

”Yes, sir.”

”Don’t sir me. I’m not a soldier. I make things.” He tapped one of the scales on Liam’s suit with the probe. It made a small, high, clear sound, like a spoon on a glass. ”Your plates have vents. Here. Here. All down the back. When you burn, they open. When you stop, they close. If you burn so hot the vents can’t keep up, the suit will lock your arms at your sides until you cool down.” He looked at Liam for the first time. ”It’s for your own good. Don’t argue with it. It won’t listen.”

Liam opened his mouth. Then, for once, closed it.

Odell moved on.

He did all of us. One at a time.

Seraphina’s suit had channels running all through it, under the plates, thin as veins, full of something silver that moved. ”Coolant,” said Odell. ”You’ve no damper. Everybody knows. So I built you one. When your core goes over forty, it pulls the heat out of you and dumps it through the plates.” He looked at her. ”You’ll glow. Don’t be alarmed. Glowing is better than fever.”

Seraphina looked at the silver channels for a long time. She didn’t say anything. But her chin, which had been up, came down a little.

Luna’s suit was lined on the inside with something white and soft, like felt. ”Insulation,” said Odell. ”Not for you. For the suit. You freeze things. I’d rather you didn’t freeze the joints of your own armor at a bad moment.” He looked at her very briefly. ”Windsor.”

”Yes.”

”I knew your grandfather,” said Odell. ”Built his first suit. The war one.” He tapped the white lining with his probe. ”This is better.” And he moved on, and didn’t say anything else, and Luna stood very straight beside her frame and didn’t look at anybody.

Toby’s helmet had holes in it. Small, round, neat, in a ring round the mouth, covered in fine steel mesh. ”Ports,” said Odell. ”Acoustic. So your voice gets out. You’re no use to anybody singing inside a bucket.” He tapped one with the probe and listened to the sound it made, and nodded, as if he’d heard what he wanted. ”Marsh. Sing me a note.”

Toby went white. Then he tapped his tuning fork on his knee, and sang one. Low.

The air in front of the helmet went thick and gray for half a second.

”Good,” said Odell, and made a mark, and moved on, and Toby stood there with his mouth still open, looking like nobody had ever said good to him about anything in his life.

Then Odell got to me.

He stopped in front of my frame for a long time. Longer than Liam’s. He looked at the suit, and then at the slate, and then at me. And then at the suit again.

”Dask,” he said.

”Yes.”

”Nothing special about yours,” said Odell. ”No vents. No coolant. No ports. Standard plate. Standard skin. Standard seal.” He looked at me with small pale eyes under heavy brows. ”The Director’s office sent me your file. Fifty pages. I read four of them and stopped.” A pause. ”I can’t build you anything for what you do. Nobody can. So I built you the best ordinary suit I know how to build, and I’m hoping you leave it alone.”

”I’ll leave it alone.”

”Hm,” said Odell, which was the first time I’d heard anyone outside my family say it. ”Put it on.”

Putting on a suit takes twenty minutes the first time.

The black layer first. It was like putting on a second skin, cold and tight, all the way from the ankles to the throat. Then the plates, which weren’t separate at all, it turned out. They were all one thing, a long jointed shell that opened down the back like a seed pod. You stepped into it. The engineers closed it behind you. It sealed, with a long soft hiss, from the ankles up the spine to the base of the skull.

And then the helmet.

It came down over my head and settled on the collar of the suit and locked, with a click I felt in my teeth. And the world went dark, and close, and very quiet, with the sound of my own breathing loud inside it.

Then the dark window across the front of the helmet cleared, and I could see the bay again. Brighter than before. Sharper. With small green lines and numbers floating at the edges of everything, telling me things. Air. Temperature. Pressure. Heart rate.

And something cold touched the back of my neck.

Just at the base of my skull. Where the suit sealed. A small, flat, cold place, the size of a coin, pressing very gently against the skin.

”Hello,” said a voice.

Not in my ears. Not through the helmet. Inside. Right in the middle of my head, the way your own thoughts are. A calm, quiet, polite voice. Not a man. Not a woman. Not anything.

”I am a test instance,” it said. ”When your base is planted, you will be linked to its intelligence instead of me. I am here so that you can grow used to the feeling. Please do not be alarmed. You may speak to me by thinking clearly in words.”

I stood very still.

Hello, I thought. Clearly. In words.

”Hello, Lucas Dask,” said the test instance. ”Your heart rate is elevated. This is normal. Most cadets find the first link unpleasant.” A pause. ”I have been asked to tell you that the suit’s plating is a titanium-lattice alloy with engineered microvoids for flexibility and shock dispersal. I have been asked to tell you this specifically. I do not know why.”

I did.

I could see it. I’d been seeing it since the helmet closed. I couldn’t stop seeing it.

The plates.

The alloy.

And the tiny holes all through it, thousands of them, millions, scattered through the metal like bubbles in bread. Little empty places. Little flaws. Everywhere.

And something in me, the hot thing under the boards, the thing that always wanted things to be right, looked at those flaws, all over my body, pressing against me from every side, and didn’t like them at all.

I didn’t mean to.

That’s what I told Odell afterward, and it was true. I stood in the middle of the suit bay with my arms at my sides and my eyes open and I didn’t mean to do anything at all.

But I was wearing it. It was all round me. Pressing on me. And every one of those millions of tiny holes felt like a stone in a boot. Like a crooked picture on a wall. Like a fence post leaning, in a field, that you know you’ll have to go and straighten before you can sleep.

And the hot thing under the boards reached out and straightened them.

All of them.

At once.

”Lucas,” said the test instance, inside my head. Calm. Polite. ”Something is happening to my housing.”

The plates went dark.

Not dark gray. Dark. Almost black. A deep, smooth, shining black, like the black on the ring round my eyes. It started at my chest and ran outward, down my arms and legs and up my throat, scale by scale, faster and faster, with a sound like ice settling on a pond. And as it ran, the lines between the scales closed. The little gaps where they overlapped. The joints at the knees and elbows. All of it. Pulled tight and smooth and seamless, until I wasn’t wearing hundreds of plates anymore. I was wearing one.

One piece. Solid. Perfect. Without a single flaw in it anywhere.

And I couldn’t move.

I tried to lift my arm. It didn’t lift. I tried to bend my knee. It didn’t bend. I stood in the middle of the suit bay inside a perfect black shell of metal, as rigid as a statue, as rigid as the steel ball on field one, and I couldn’t move anything except my eyes.

”The microvoids have been eliminated,” said the test instance. ”The plating is now a single crystal. Its hardness has increased by approximately four hundred percent. Its flexibility is zero.” A pause. ”Lucas. I think you have made it too good.”

Across the bay, somebody started to laugh. Liam. Of course it was Liam.

Then Odell came across the white floor, very fast for a short wide old man, and stopped in front of me, and looked at the suit. Up. Down. At the black, seamless, flawless shine of it.

He didn’t laugh.

He put out one burned hand and laid it flat on my chest, on the black metal, and left it there for a long moment.

”Good God,” said Odell quietly.

It took four engineers and a cutting torch to get me out.

They did it carefully. Down the back, along the line where the seal had been, which wasn’t a line anymore. The torch hissed and spat and the metal glowed and I stood very still and didn’t look at it, because if I looked at it I’d want to fix that too. When they peeled the two halves apart, I stepped out of them in my black skin layer and stood on the white floor, and the halves stood there without me, a perfect black shape of a boy, split down the back, hollow.

Nobody said anything.

Odell picked up one of the pieces of the shell. He turned it over in his burned hands. He tapped it with the steel probe. It didn’t make a sound like a spoon on glass. It made no sound at all. Just a dull, heavy tock, like tapping a stone.

”Do you know what you did?” he said.

”I fixed it.”

”You broke it,” said Odell. ”Perfectly.” He held up the piece. ”The holes were there on purpose. Every one of them. Eleven years of my life, working out where to put them. They let the plate bend. They let it take a blow and spread it out, instead of passing it straight through to you.” He looked at me. ”This would stop a round. It’d stop a falling wall. And if anything hit it hard enough, it’d stop you. It’d pass the whole blow through into your body and break every bone you’ve got, and the suit wouldn’t have a mark on it.”

I looked at the black shell.

I didn’t say anything.

”Some flaws,” said Odell, ”are the point.” He put the piece down. ”I’ll build you another.”

He built me another.

It took him two days. I put it on on Wednesday, and stood in the middle of the bay with my eyes closed, the whole time, so I couldn’t see the holes. And it was fine. For an hour, it was fine. I walked. I bent. I lifted. The test instance told me my heart rate was normal and the plating was nominal and it was glad to be talking to me again, if a test instance could be glad.

Then Okafor sent Squad Eight into the sim, in suits, for the first time.

And a construct came up out of the red mud on my left, faster than I’d turned, and hit me across the ribs. The same ribs. Full depth. As hard as whatever it had been built to be.

The suit took it. It worked. Odell’s holes did exactly what he’d built them to do. The plates bent and spread the blow out across my whole side, and it felt like being kicked by a horse instead of being hit by a train, and I went down in the mud on one knee.

And I was frightened.

And when I’m frightened, the hot thing wakes up.

And it looked at the suit, which had just let something hurt me, and it was angry with it.

”Lucas,” said the test instance. ”It is happening again.”

I felt the plates going black down my left side. Running. Closing. Hardening.

I shut my eyes. Tight. As tight as they’d go. Like the locker room. Close your eyes. Then you can’t do anything at all.

It stopped. At the elbow. At the hip. Half my left side gone black and seamless and rigid, the rest of me still gray.

Squad Eight carried me out of the jungle like a plank.

Odell didn’t build me a third one straight away.

He sat me down on a stool in the corner of the suit bay that night, after everybody else had gone, with my half-black suit propped on its frame beside us like a scarecrow. And he sat down on another stool opposite me, with his burned hands on his knees, and looked at me for a long time.

”I can’t build you something you won’t fix,” he said. ”It’s not possible. I’ve thought about it for two days. There’s no alloy in the world you won’t look at and want to make better.”

”I’m sorry.”

”Don’t be sorry. Be useful.” He leaned forward. ”You fix things because they look wrong to you. Because you can see the holes and you don’t know why they’re there. So they look like mistakes.” He tapped his own temple with one burned finger. ”So learn why they’re there. Then they won’t look like mistakes. They’ll look like what they are.”

I looked at him.

”The Director’s file says you’ve read every biology book in the reading room,” said Odell. ”Twice. For your mother. It says you can tell what a man’s blood is carrying by looking at it.” He jerked his chin at the suit. ”That’s eleven years of my life. Every hole in it has a reason. You want to stop breaking my armor, you sit here, every evening, for a week. And I’ll tell you the reasons. All of them.” A pause. ”And then you can help me build the third one. And you’ll know what not to touch.”

I thought about the reading room. About Luna across the table, waiting.

I thought about Father’s margins. Here. Here. Here. Don’t guess.

”Every evening,” I said.

”Every evening,” said Odell. ”Bring your notebook. I hear you’ve got one.”

I went every evening that week. Luna came too, on the Thursday, and sat on a crate by the door with the cell biology book open on her knees, and asked Odell harder questions than I did, and he answered every one of them without looking up, and at the end of the night he said Windsor, you’re wasted on soldiering, and she went pink to the ears.

He taught me metal. Not the way Father had, in the field, which was what a thing was and how to change it. The other way. Why. Why steel was strong and why it broke. Why a sword is soft in the middle and hard on the edge. Why a bridge has joints that move and a building has a frame that sways. Why the strongest thing isn’t always the hardest thing. Why the hardest thing is often the first to shatter.

He showed me the holes. One by one. On a slate, magnified. This one here, so the plate bends at the elbow. These, in a ring, so a round that hits spreads out instead of punching through. These, very small, very many, so the plate rings like a bell when it’s hit and the ring carries the force away.

Some flaws are the point, I wrote, in notebook fifteen. And under it: Like the holes in a fern leaf, so the air gets in. Like the gaps in Toby’s wall, if there weren’t any, it would break. Like Mother’s song with no words. If it had words, it would only mean one thing.

On the Friday, he let me help.

We built the third suit together, in the corner of the bay, after midnight. Odell cast the plates. I looked at them, one at a time, and didn’t fix anything. I just told him where his holes had come out wrong. A cluster too close, here, so it would crack. A line too straight, there, so it would tear. And Odell grunted, and moved them, and grunted again.

And at the end, when it was done, and standing on its frame, gray and dull and full of millions of tiny careful holes, every one of them where it was meant to be, he looked at it for a long time.

”Best plate I’ve ever made,” said Odell. ”By a long way.” He looked at me. ”Don’t tell the Director you helped. He’ll want you making them for everyone, and you’ll never sleep again.”

I put it on.

I looked at the holes.

I left them alone.

”Hello again, Lucas,” said the test instance. ”Your heart rate is normal. The plating is nominal.” A pause. ”I am glad you are not fixing me.”

On Sunday, Mother read me Miss Pell’s report. Week fifteen.

It was the same as always. Health. Lessons. Moods. Mother’s marker down another point. Garnet’s lemon picked and eaten by Garnet, with salt, and Garnet sick. Genny asking Mr. Ashby for the next one again.

And then Mother came to the end. Remarks.

She stopped.

She looked up at me through the screen, and her face was doing something I’d only seen it do once before. In the field. On the morning she breathed.

”Remarks,” read Mother, very quietly, in her own voice, not Miss Pell’s. ”On Saturday, the household received a visitor. A friend of the late Mr. Dask’s. She stayed three hours. Miss Pell has nothing further to report.”

She put the page down.

”Then she went into the kitchen,” said Mother, ”and made a lemon cake. On a Saturday afternoon. And sat at the table and ate a piece of it. With the sergeant. Both of them.” A pause. ”Neither of them said anything. They just ate the cake.”

I didn’t say anything either.

”And she asked me to tell you something,” said Mother. ”Just one thing. She said you’d know what it meant.” She leaned in close to the screen. ”She said: Tell Lucas that north was never wrong. Not once.”

The corporal knocked twice on the frame.

The screen went dark.

I sat in the booth that didn’t quite close for a long time after.

Day 108.

Odell. Some flaws are the point.

Third suit. I left the holes alone.

North was never wrong. Not once.