Scarecrow

On the second day home, Sera found the forge.

I wasn’t there. I was on the terraces with Holt, measuring rooms. Seventy-four of them, and in four days we’d need five, and after that, if the dawn line meant what it said, a great many more. Holt walked the terraces with me on his new knee, slowly, with a stick I’d made him to match mine, and counted beds out loud and argued with me about who should have the ones with the best view.

”The old ones,” he said. ”Obviously.”

”The hurt ones.”

”The old ones are the hurt ones, boy. That’s what old means.”

That was when we heard the forge.

It wasn’t a loud sound. The forge was never loud. Dot had built it on its five meters of iron floor at the far end of the canyon, with a chimney and a long low hearth and a ring of her hands round it, feeding and turning and lifting. It made a steady roar when it was working, like wind in a tunnel, and you stopped hearing it after a day.

This was different. This was the roar going up.

Not louder. Higher. A long rising note, like somebody blowing across the top of a bottle and blowing harder and harder, until it went thin and clear and sharp, almost a whistle.

And then, over it, a voice. Sera’s.

”Out.”

I got there as fast as my leg would go, with Holt behind me.

The forge was white.

Not orange, the way it always was. Not even yellow. White, from one end of the hearth to the other, so bright I had to look at it sideways, and so even that I couldn’t see a single place in it hotter or cooler than any other. Like a sheet of paper with the sun behind it.

And the hands were outside.

All six of them. Standing in a row on the red glass outside the forge door, very still, with their little grilles turned toward the inside. Not working. Not feeding. Not doing anything. Just standing there.

As if they’d been sent out of a room.

Sera stood in the middle of the forge with her back to the door.

Her hands were bare. The wrappings were gone, lying in a heap on the floor by the anvil. Her palms, pink and new and shiny where the burns were healing, were held out in front of her, low, over the hearth. Not touching it. A hand’s width above. And the whole white length of the fire was lying under them, flat and still and perfectly even, like a cat under a hand that’s stroking it.

”Sera,” I said.

”I said out,” said Sera, without turning round. And then: ”Oh. It’s you.”

”Your hands.”

”My hands are fine.”

”They’re not healed.”

”They’re healed enough,” said Sera. ”Fire doesn’t burn me. Only my fire does. And this isn’t mine.” She tilted her head at the hearth. ”This is your kit’s. I’m just telling it what to do.”

Dot was in the doorway behind me. All of her, now, half again as big as she’d been, with her seven arms folded and her rivers running in their three colors.

”Query,” said Dot. ”The operator’s friend has instructed this unit’s hands to leave the forge.”

”Yes,” I said. ”I can see.”

”The hands are not certain whether to obey,” said Dot. ”The operator’s friend is not the operator.” A pause. ”This unit is also not certain.”

Sera turned round.

She looked at Dot. Up, quite a long way. At the wide grille and the three-colored rivers and the seventh arm with the fingers at the end of it.

”Your hands,” said Sera, very politely, ”were making a mess of it.”

”This unit’s hands were operating within specification.”

”Your specification’s a mess.” Sera turned back to the hearth. ”It’s too hot at that end and not hot enough at this end, and it wobbles every time one of them puts something in. You’ve been making iron that’s soft in the middle and brittle at the edges and you didn’t even know.” She lowered her palms a fraction, and the white fire lay down flatter under them. ”Look at it now.”

I looked.

Into the hearth. Into the bar of iron lying on it, white-hot, the bar one of the hands had put in to heat before Sera had sent them all out. All the way down.

And I’d never seen iron like it.

Every grain the same. Every grain. All the way through the bar, from one end to the other, from the skin to the heart. Not one hotter than the next. Not one cooler. I’d made iron out of red glass for a month, with the other thing, grain by grain, asking each one, and I’d never got it this even. And the hands, with their bellows and their tongs and their careful steady specifications, had never got close.

”Dot,” I said. ”Look at the bar.”

The little rivers ran for a long time.

”This unit has looked,” said Dot.

”Well?”

”It is,” said Dot, slowly, as if the word were coming from very far away, ”better.”

Sera didn’t say anything. She didn’t turn round. But I saw the back of her neck go pink, and the white fire under her hands flicker, very slightly, just once, the way a candle does when someone opens a door.

”Query,” said Dot. ”Does the operator wish this unit’s hands to leave the forge?”

I looked at Sera’s back. At her new pink palms over the white fire. At the bar of iron that was better than anything I’d ever made.

”I think,” I said, ”it’s not my forge anymore.”

”Logged,” said Dot.

The hands, outside on the red glass, sat down.

She didn’t come out for three days.

Not properly. She slept in the forge, on a heap of the silver-green fronds by the wall, and ate there, when somebody brought her something, and worked. All day. Half the night. The roar going up and down, high and thin and then low and steady, like somebody learning an instrument.

She made bars. Iron, then steel, then something that wasn’t either, that she made by telling the fire to do things I didn’t have words for, holding it one way at one end and another way at the other, so that the metal came out hard on the outside and soft in the heart, like a good bread. She made titanium sing. She made glass so clear I couldn’t see it at the edges.

And anybody who touched anything got growled at.

Not shouted at. Growled. A low sound, in the back of the throat, like Biscuit used to make when you went near her bowl. Liam came in on his crutch on the first afternoon to see what she was doing and picked up a pair of tongs, and she growled at him, and he put them down very slowly and backed out of the door.

”She growled at me,” he said, outside. He looked shaken. ”My own sister. She growled.”

”She growled at Dot this morning,” I said.

”She growled at Dot?”

”Dot sent a hand in with more titanium. It put it on the wrong bench.”

Liam thought about that.

”I’m going to start my own thing,” he said. ”Somewhere she can’t see me. Where nobody growls.”

On the third evening I went in.

I knocked on the doorframe first. She was at the anvil, with her back to me, and a bar of something pale and bright lying on the hearth under her left hand while her right held a hammer.

”It’s me,” I said.

She didn’t growl. She didn’t turn round either.

”The spoon,” I said. ”It’s bent. From the ridge. When I came down on the glass.”

”I know,” said Sera. ”I saw.”

”I was going to ask Dot to fix it. But.”

She put the hammer down.

”Bring it here,” she said.

I brought it. The hands carried it in and set it down on the floor of the forge and backed out very quickly, before she could look at them.

She walked all the way round it. Slowly. With her arms folded. Looking at it the way Okafor used to look at us on the field, at six in the morning, in the frost.

”It’s titanium,” she said at last.

”Dot made it.”

”It’s good titanium.” She crouched down and put one pink palm flat on the rim, where it was bent in, and left it there. ”It’s the wrong shape.”

”It’s the shape of a spoon.”

”I know it’s the shape of a spoon, Lucas, I’ve been hearing about it from Liam for four days.” She ran her hand along the rim. ”It’s too deep. You sit too low in it. You can’t see over the edge without looking up, and every time you look up you drop. Liam told me. He watched you do it over the green.” She looked up at me. ”And it only holds one.”

I didn’t say anything.

”You can lift more than eighty kilos now,” said Sera. ”I’ve watched you. Coming down onto my ridge, you were carrying the spoon and you and four liters of water and a bag of splints, and you did it at forty meters in a crosswind with your nose pouring. You’ve been getting stronger every time.” She stood up. ”So it should hold two. And it should be shallow. So you can sit up. So you can see over the rim and still look down into it.”

”Two,” I said.

”Two,” said Sera. ”In case.”

We built it together. Over two nights.

She did the fire. I did the metal. She held the titanium at exactly the heat it wanted to be at, all the way through, so it went soft and pale and willing, like dough. And I looked into it and asked it, grain by grain, to be the shape we’d drawn on the forge floor in charcoal. Long. Shallow. Two seats, one behind the other, with a low back to each. A rim you could see over sitting up.

And a floor, between the seats, smooth and pale and polished, where whoever was flying could look down into the spoon without bending their neck. A floor you could keep your eyes on.

I’d never made anything with someone else before. Not like that. Not with my hands and their hands on the same thing at the same time. Odell, at the cave, a little, with the suits. But Odell had been teaching me. This wasn’t teaching. This was two people who both knew exactly what they were doing, doing it together, and not having to say anything about it.

We didn’t say much. She’d say now, and I’d ask the metal. I’d say there, and she’d move the heat. Sometimes neither of us said anything for an hour.

It was the quietest I’d been since Avalon. The quietest, maybe, since the field.

At about three in the morning on the second night, she said, without looking up from the hearth:

”Your face goes different. When you’re doing it.”

”Different how?”

”Still.” She moved the heat a fraction to the left. ”Most of the time you look like you’re counting something. Even when you’re asleep. Liam says you count in your sleep. Names.” She didn’t look at me. ”When you’re doing this, you don’t. You just look.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I didn’t say anything, and I asked the titanium to curve, and it curved.

”It’s nice,” said Sera, to the hearth. ”That’s all.”

Liam’s thing was in the old hut at the foot of the tower.

He’d moved Father’s radio box out of it, very carefully, into a corner of the dome, and moved in instead: two of Dot’s spare water jars, a coil of copper pipe that he’d talked a hand into making for him, a sandstone trough, a great many silver-green fronds, a pot of Dot’s salt, and a lid.

”What is it?” said Holt, on the second day, leaning on his stick in the doorway.

”It’s a still,” said Liam.

”A what?”

”A still. For making drink. You heat the stuff in that jar, and the steam goes up the pipe, and you cool the pipe in that trough, and what comes out the other end is—” He paused. ”Stronger.”

”Stronger than what?”

”Than Dot’s,” said Liam. ”Dot’s was a good start. Dot’s was a beginning. But Rule says all five of us, together, and Toby’s going to be there, and Luna’s going to be there, and if we’re going to do it properly, it has to be proper.” He looked at the copper pipe with deep love. ”This is going to be proper.”

”Query,” said Dot, from outside. ”Is Liam making the beverage?”

”Liam’s making a better beverage.”

The little rivers ran for a long time.

”Logged,” said Dot, and something in her voice, under the level clear not-quite-anybody’s, sounded very much like hurt feelings.

The first of it came out of the copper pipe on the evening of Day 350.

A drop. Then another. Clear as water, into a little titanium cup Sera had made him without being asked and without growling. Liam held the cup up to the lamp and looked at it the way Garnet had looked at the strawberry ice cream.

”Who’s first?” he said.

Nobody said anything.

”Holt,” said Liam. ”You’re the oldest. It’s an honor.”

”I’m the oldest,” said Holt, ”which is why I’ve lived long enough to know better.”

”Lucas.”

”I’m the operator,” I said. ”Somebody has to stay conscious.”

Liam looked at Sera. Sera looked at him.

”You made it,” said Sera. ”You drink it.”

He drank it.

I’ll write down exactly what happened, because I promised to write everything down, and because I don’t think anybody who was there will ever forget it.

He put the cup to his lips. He tipped it back. He swallowed.

For about two seconds, nothing happened.

Then his eyes went very wide. Then very wet. Then his face went red, and then a color I’d never seen a face go, and his hands lit, both of them, all on their own, white, and a column of fire went straight up out of each of them into the roof of the hut, and he made a sound like a kettle, and sat down on the floor.

The fire went out.

He sat on the floor of the hut with smoke coming off his knuckles and tears running down his face and looked up at us.

”It’s perfect,” he said, in a voice like a rusty hinge.

Holt laughed so hard he had to sit down too. On the sandstone trough, with his new knee out straight, wheezing. Sera put her hand over her mouth and turned round and faced the wall and her shoulders shook. Dot, in the doorway, was very quiet, and the little rivers ran in all three colors at once, very fast.

”Query,” said Dot. ”Is Liam’s beverage better than this unit’s beverage?”

Liam looked up at her from the floor with his streaming eyes and his smoking hands.

”No,” he said hoarsely. ”No, Dot. It’s not. Yours is better.”

The little rivers slowed.

”Logged,” said Dot. And this time, under the level voice, she sounded very pleased.

Holt’s knitting started that night too.

I don’t know whose idea it was. I came back from the forge at midnight and found the two of them sitting on the step outside the dome in the light of the big gold moon: Holt with his leg out and his stick beside him, and Sera beside him with her knees up, and between their four hands a tangle of silver-green fiber, spun from the fronds, and two needles Sera had made in the forge out of something pale and bright.

”Over,” Holt was saying. ”And through. And off. No. Off. Off, girl. You’re holding it like a hammer.”

”I hold everything like a hammer.”

”Well, stop it. It’s wool. It’s not trying to kill you.”

”It’s not wool. It’s plant.”

”It’s wool if I say it’s wool. Over. Through. Off.” He looked up and saw me. ”Go away, boy. This is classified.”

”Holt knits?” I said.

”Every soldier knits,” said Holt. ”Who do you think darned your father’s socks in the war? Your father?” He snorted. ”Trevor Dask couldn’t darn a sock to save his life. He could see every thread in it. Didn’t help. Over. Through. Off.”

Sera didn’t look up at me. She was looking very hard at the needles. Her ears were red.

I went to bed.

On the evening of Day 351, the dawn line came home.

Holt saw them first, from the top of the tower. He’d been going up every dusk, with two of the hands, and he called down the speaking tube Dot had run for him, in a voice that cracked in the middle:

”West. On the rim. Three of them.”

I went up in the new spoon. The two-seater. Shallow and pale and polished, sitting up, with the rim low enough to see over. For the first time since I’d learned to fly, I could look down into the spoon and out over the edge at the same time.

Sera had been right.

I went up past the terraces and over the western rim, and there, coming down off the rolling red rock into the canyon in the last of the light, was Wren.

Quick and straight-backed, with her knife at her belt and her mirror in her hand. And behind her, a tall woman with gray-blond hair cut short and a bow over her shoulder, walking easily, as if eighty kilometers were nothing. Tamsin. Always fine.

And between them, with one arm in a sling made of a torn first-wave suit and the other arm round Wren’s shoulders, a young man with a burned face and his eyes on the tower. Corr.

They stopped at the top of the path when they saw me. The spoon, hanging there over the canyon in the dusk. Me in it.

Tamsin looked at me for a long time. Then at the tower. Then at the town below. The wall, the terraces, the seventy-four round windows, five of them lit now. The dome. The forge at the far end, glowing white.

”Wren,” said Tamsin. ”You said a spoon. I thought you were joking.”

”I never joke,” said Wren.

”You said a spoon and a kit with seven arms and a tower four hundred meters tall and rooms.”

”I did.”

Tamsin looked down into the canyon for a long moment.

”Seventy-four,” she said, very quietly, as if she was counting the windows. ”He actually built seventy-four.”

”I said he did,” said Wren.

We put them in the rooms on the second terrace. The ones with the best view. Holt insisted. He said they were old enough.

Liam brought them each a titanium cup of his beverage, and warned them, and they drank it anyway, and Corr cried, and Tamsin didn’t even blink, and Wren made a face I’d never seen on her before and then laughed, out loud, twice.

Sera stood in the door of the forge at the end of the canyon with her pink hands in her pockets and watched.

When the lamps were all lit and everyone was in, I went and stood beside her.

”Seven,” she said. ”In the town. Now.”

”Eight,” I said. ”Counting Dot.”

”You count Dot?”

”I count everyone,” I said.

Sera looked at the lit windows for a long time.

”I know,” she said. ”I’ve noticed.”

Day 348–351.

Sera took the forge. The hands sat outside. Dot: ”It is better.”

She growls at anyone who touches anything. Liam. Dot. Not me.

The new spoon: two seats, shallow, a rim you can see over. ”Two. In case.” We built it together. Two nights. Hardly talked.

”Your face goes different when you’re doing it. Still. You don’t count.”

Liam’s still. Copper pipe. First drop Day 350. He drank it. Two columns of fire. ”It’s perfect.” It was not perfect.

Dot: ”Is Liam’s beverage better than this unit’s?” Liam: ”No. Yours is better.” Dot: pleased.

Holt is teaching Sera to knit. On the step. ”Over. Through. Off.” Father couldn’t darn a sock. He could see every thread. Didn’t help.

Day 351, dusk: Wren, Tamsin, Corr. Over the western rim. Tamsin: ”He actually built seventy-four.”

Seven in the town. Eight, counting Dot.

Sera: ”I know. I’ve noticed.”

Chapter 118: Command Calls

The fifth comms window opened at noon on Day 353.

I was waiting for it. I’d been waiting since Dot told me about the fourth one. Command asked for squad status. Liam Calder is alive. Liam Calder is at Scarecrow.Acknowledged. And then nothing, for nine days, which wasn’t nothing. It was somebody, a long way up, writing something down.

So I was sitting in front of Father’s radio box in the corner of the dome at a quarter to twelve, with Dot in the doorway and the little rivers running slowly in their three colors, when Holt came in on his stick and sat down on the end of the middle bed.

”You want me here,” he said, ”or you want me gone?”

”Here.”

”Good,” said Holt. ”Because I wasn’t going.”

They came in one by one, after that. Nobody asked them to.

Liam, on his crutch, who sat on the floor by the box. Sera, from the forge, still smelling of hot metal, who stood against the wall with her arms folded. Wren, quick and quiet, who sat on the step in the doorway beside Dot’s leg. Tamsin, with her bow over her shoulder, who leaned on the doorframe and didn’t come in. Corr, who stayed outside, on the red glass, where he could see the sky.

Seven of us. Eight, with Dot.

Nobody said anything. We just waited.

At noon, the three notes. Rising.

”Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one. This is Command. Operator, respond.”

The same voice it always was. Thin and clipped and very clear, the voice of the relay, coming down from somewhere in the dark over our heads. Not a person’s voice. Or a person’s voice, put through so many machines on the way down that you couldn’t find the person in it anymore.

I picked up the handset.

”This is Scarecrow,” I said.

A pause. Longer than the relay usually took.

”Operator will use designation.”

”This is Lucas Dask,” I said. ”Operator of Scarecrow. Go ahead.”

Another pause.

Then:

”Command has received a report of squad-level co-location at Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one. Squad member Calder, Liam. Command has received a report of unauthorized kit integration at Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one. Command has received a report of operator absence from production site on Days three-two-four through three-three-zero, and three-three-five through three-four-one, and three-four-two through three-four-seven.”

I looked at Dot. The little rivers ran. She’d told them. Accurately. Every time they’d asked. And every time, she’d told me first.

”These activities contravene protocol,” said Command.

”Which protocol?”

”Operator will not interrupt.”

”Command instructs as follows,” said the relay. ”One. Squad member Calder, Liam, will return to assigned landing zone forty-one and establish independent base operations. Two. Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one will separate integrated kit units and return secondary units to their assigned operators. Three. Operator will resume production at assigned levels and will not leave production site without authorization. Four. Squad-level contact remains suspended pending assessment.”

A pause.

”Operator will acknowledge.”

Nobody in the dome moved.

I looked at Liam, on the floor by the box, with his leg out straight. Assigned landing zone forty-one. In the trees. With the good half of his kit forty meters up an iron-bark trunk, and a ravine full of green, and a cave I could find in my sleep.

I looked at Sera, against the wall, with her pink new hands and her arms folded.

I looked at Dot. Half again as big as she’d been. Seven arms. Rivers in three colors. Separate integrated kit units.

I picked up the handset.

”No,” I said.

The relay didn’t answer for a long time.

Long enough that Liam looked up at me. Long enough that Holt, on the end of the bed, very slowly put both his big still hands on the head of his stick and leaned on it.

”Operator will repeat.”

”No,” I said. ”I won’t send Liam back to zone forty-one. He landed in a tree. His pod split in half. He walked four days and fell into a ravine and broke both bones in his shin and lived in a cave for fourteen days on paste and set fire to twelve of them a day to stay alive. I flew eighty kilometers to get him. I’m not sending him back.”

Silence. Hiss.

”I won’t separate the kits,” I said. ”They asked to integrate. Both times. I watched. If I take them apart now, I don’t know what happens to them. Neither do you.”

Hiss.

”And I’m not going to sit at the production site and turn red glass into iron for you while my squad is out there in the green and the Teeming are walking up to their walls.” I took a breath. ”That’s not what I’m here for. You can write that down.”

The pause this time was so long I thought the window had closed.

Then:

”Command notes operator non-compliance.”

”Yes.”

”Command advises operator that continued non-compliance will result in a reduction of support to Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one.”

I looked at the handset in my hand.

Behind me, Holt made a sound. Not a laugh. Something under a laugh.

”Which support?” I said.

Hiss.

”Operator will clarify.”

”Which support,” I said again. Very evenly. The way Okafor used to say things on the field, at six in the morning, when somebody had done something stupid and she was giving them a chance to notice. ”You said reduction of support. I’d like to know which support you mean. So I can tell the others what they’re losing.”

Nothing.

”Because I’ve been here fifty-six days,” I said, ”and I’ve had a kit, and a comms window every nine days that says suspended pending assessment. That’s all. No supplies. No medicine. No help. When I reported the Teeming you said retain an intact specimen. When I reported my leg you said operator is advised to rest.” I swallowed. ”So I’d like to know what support there is. So I know what you’re taking away.”

The hiss went on and on.

Then a different voice.

Not the relay. Not thin and clipped and put through machines. A man’s voice. Older. Quite close to the microphone, wherever the microphone was. Tired. Careful. A voice that was used to being listened to, and was being, at that moment, very careful indeed about what it said.

I knew it.

I’d heard it on a stage in a hall full of chandeliers. Forty. I’d heard it in a white office with a pen in its hand. Do well, Lucas, and your sisters will never want for anything.

”Lucas,” said Halvard Crane. ”It’s been a long time.”

Nobody in the dome breathed.

Wren had gone completely still on the step. Holt’s hands were white on the head of his stick. Liam was looking at the box as if it might bite him.

”Director,” I said.

”I’m going to be honest with you,” said Crane, ”because I think you’d know if I weren’t, even from here.” A small dry sound. Nearly a laugh. ”Your father always did. You’ve done remarkable things, Lucas. Remarkable. The production numbers from the first thirty days were the best this program has ever seen. Your tower is visible from orbit. And you’ve done something with your kit that our engineers have been arguing about for a week.” A pause. ”I’d very much like you to keep doing remarkable things.”

”Then let me.”

”Within protocol.”

”Protocol sent forty of us to sit next to thirty-four dead bases,” I said, ”and see what happened.”

Crane didn’t answer that.

Not for a long time. When he did, his voice had changed. Not harder. Softer. Which was worse.

”Your mother is doing very well,” he said. ”I had a report this week. She walked to the end of the corridor on the sixtieth floor and back without the frame. Four times. Miss Pell says she’s started cooking again. The girls are thriving. Garnet’s teacher says she’s the most remarkable child she’s ever taught.” A pause. ”The doses I signed for your mother are good for thirty-six months, Lucas. I signed them gladly. They’re a promise, and I keep my promises.”

I didn’t say anything.

”But promises,” said Crane gently, ”work both ways.”

I felt the dome go cold.

Not the air. The people in it. Sera, against the wall, unfolded her arms. Liam’s hands, on his knees, went from dark to a dull red glow, all on their own. Holt took one hand off his stick and put it, very slowly, on my shoulder.

I sat there with the handset in my hand and Halvard Crane’s soft careful voice coming out of Father’s radio, eleven light-years and a relay and a ship in the dark away, telling me my mother had walked to the end of the corridor four times.

Do well, Lucas, and your sisters will never want for anything.

It had always meant this. I’d always known it had. I’d just never heard him say the other half out loud.

”Director,” I said.

My voice was very steady. I don’t know how. I think it was Holt’s hand.

”I’m going to keep doing remarkable things. I’m going to keep producing. More than you asked for. You’ll have your numbers.” I looked at the box. ”But Liam stays. The kits stay as they are. And when my squad needs me, I go.”

”Lucas—”

”And if my mother’s doses stop,” I said, ”I’ll know. I’ll know the day it happens. I don’t know how yet. But I’ll find out how, and I’ll know.” I took a breath. ”And then I’ll stop producing. All of it. And I’ll tell everyone down here why. And everyone who comes after.”

Silence.

”You sent us to learn things,” I said. ”I’ve learned some. You’d like to know what they are. So would I, in your place. But you won’t, if you touch her.”

The hiss went on for a very long time.

Then the relay voice came back. Thin and clipped. Not Crane.

”Command notes operator’s position. Command will review. Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one, maintain production. Command out.”

The three notes. Falling.

The window closed.

I put the handset down.

My hand was shaking. I hadn’t noticed until I saw it, on the top of the box, shaking, the way Maura’s hands shook, the way Mother’s had before the vials, and I took it off the box and put it in my lap and held it with the other one.

Nobody said anything.

Holt’s hand was still on my shoulder. He didn’t take it off.

”Your father,” he said at last, very quietly, ”said almost exactly that to a general once. In a tent. The night before the bridge.” He squeezed my shoulder, once, hard. ”Different words. Same face.”

”What happened?”

”The general went white,” said Holt, ”and gave him what he asked for.” A pause. ”And never forgave him. And neither did anyone above him, ever, as long as he lived.”

I looked at my hands.

”Good,” I said. ”That’s what I wanted to know.”

They went out, after a while. One by one, the way they’d come in. Wren first, without a word, but she touched the top of my head as she went past, very quickly, like you’d touch a dog. Tamsin, who stopped in the doorway and looked at me for a long time and then nodded, once, as if she’d decided something. Holt, on his stick, slowly.

Liam stayed on the floor by the box.

”Your mum,” he said.

”I know.”

”He’d do it. Wouldn’t he. If he had to. If it made his numbers better.”

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I don’t think he wants to. I think that’s the worst bit. I think he doesn’t want to, and he would.”

Liam looked at his hands. They’d stopped glowing.

”Mine’s on it too,” he said. ”My mum. And yours. And Toby’s. Thirty-one families.” He swallowed. ”And he’s the one who signs for it. Isn’t he. All of it. Every vial.”

”Yes.”

”Then we can’t stop,” said Liam. ”Can we. Not ever. Not until you’ve found the hello.”

Sera stayed too.

She didn’t say anything. She just stood against the wall with her arms folded the way she’d been standing the whole time, until Liam got up on his crutch and went out. Then she came over and sat down on the floor beside me, against the radio box. Not touching. Just beside. The way I’d sat beside her on the ridge.

We sat there for a long time.

”I’m frightened,” I said at last. I hadn’t meant to say it. ”For her. For the twins. I can see everything on this planet, every grain of everything, and I can’t see one corridor on the sixtieth floor.”

”I know,” said Sera.

”I can’t do anything from here.”

”You just did,” said Sera. ”You told him you’d know. He believed you.” She looked at her pink hands. ”I watched your face. I’d have believed you.”

After a while she leaned sideways until her shoulder was against mine.

And stayed there, again, until the light went.

Dot came to the doorway that evening. All of her, seven arms and three colors.

”Query,” she said. ”The operator said: I don’t know how yet. But I’ll find out how, and I’ll know.”

”Yes.”

”This unit would like to help the operator find out how.”

I looked up at her.

”The relay passes every nine days,” said Dot. ”Each time, it opens a channel to Earth. This unit hears it. This unit has always heard it. It is narrow, and upward, and it does not bring the Teeming, much.” The little rivers ran. ”This unit cannot send on it without authorization. This unit is instructed not to. But this unit can listen. And three cores together hear further than one.”

”How far?”

”This unit does not yet know,” said Dot. ”This unit would like to find out.” A pause. ”And there is a second thing.”

”Go on.”

”The operator wishes to say hello to the silver in the operator’s mother. From far away.” The rivers slowed. ”This unit can hear the silver in the plants say hello to the silver in Holt. It is a pattern. This unit has been listening to it for three days.” A pause. ”This unit could record it.”

I sat very still.

”Record it,” I said.

”Yes.”

”The hello. The pattern. The thing that woke him up.”

”Yes,” said Dot. ”This unit does not know if a recording would work. This unit does not know if it could be sent. This unit does not know if the silver in the operator’s mother would hear it, from eleven light-years, through a relay, in a recording.” The little rivers ran in all three colors. ”But this unit would like to try. Please.”

I couldn’t say anything for a while.

”Yes,” I said. ”Yes, Dot. Please. Record it.”

”Logged,” said Dot. ”Thank you, love.”

And then, after a moment, because she couldn’t help it: ”That was two words. This unit is not sorry.”

I went up the tower that night to count.

I hadn’t been up since Sera’s ridge. Holt had been doing the dusk and the dawn, with the hands. But I needed to be up there. Four hundred and eight meters up, beside the copper mast, with the wind coming up the lattice and the whole country spread out below me in the starlight, and nobody’s voice in my ear but my own.

I shut my eyes.

Liam’s buckle. In the dome below me, in a boot by the bed.

Sera’s clasp. In the forge, where she’d gone back to work and wouldn’t come out.

Toby’s fork. High in the mountains. Still, the way it had been for weeks.

And Luna’s snowflake.

I’d been counting it every night. North, and west. A hundred and seventy miles, walking. Then a hundred and eighty. North and north and north, as if she was walking off the edge of the map, toward the white mountains, toward the place where Squad Eight had been meant to land.

It wasn’t north anymore.

It had turned.

Southeast. Toward me. Not slowly. Fast. Faster than I’d ever felt it move, faster than a person walking, a long straight line across the country with no stopping in it at all.

A hundred and thirty miles.

Coming here.

I didn’t understand it. I sat at the top of the tower with my eyes shut and felt for it again and again, the snowflake clip, the grain of iron I’d put in it on the roof the night before quarantine, with one flaw in it so I’d know it anywhere. It was her. It was moving. It was coming.

And beside it, a little behind it, on the same line, something else.

Not a lighthouse. Not anything I’d made. I couldn’t see it the way I could see the snowflake, a hundred and thirty miles off, one grain of iron I knew by heart. But I could feel the snowflake’s path, and the path wasn’t straight. Every few miles it bent. Very slightly. And came back. The way you bend when you’re walking beside someone slower, and you keep stopping to let them catch you up.

Luna wasn’t walking alone.

The dawn line answered at a quarter to six.

Wren flashed from the top of the tower, the way she did every morning now, with Holt beside her. Scarecrow’s number. Here. The count. Tamsin and Corr flashed beside her with their own mirrors, because they could, and because Tamsin said it felt good to say here from somewhere that held.

The answers came in from the high places. F-three’s ridge, empty now, silent. F-seventeen, silent. F-twenty-two. F-thirty. F-eight. F-twenty. F-twenty-six. F-thirty-one, still flashing only its number. F-five, far north on the mountain.

And then, from the northwest, from a high bare hill I didn’t know and Wren had never seen anyone on, a spark.

Not a first-wave spark. I knew that straight away, from the way it moved. Too fast. Too sharp. Too exact. Every short exactly as short as every other short. Every long exactly as long as every other long. Like somebody who’d learned Morse on a mess table with a spoon in the cave and practiced it every night for a year in the dark until it was perfect, because she couldn’t stand for anything she did to be less than perfect.

I read it out loud, standing on the platform at the top of the tower, so that Wren could flash it down the line. I didn’t trust my voice. I read it anyway.

L. W. S. Q. 8.

R. F. S. Q. 2.

C. O. M. I. N. G. 3. D. A. Y. S.

A pause. Then, slower, as if the hand making it had had to stop and think about whether to say it at all:

T. E. L. L. S. C. A. R. E. C. R. O. W.

L. I. G. H. T. H. O. U. S. E. S. D. O. N. T. W. A. L. K.

S. I. T. S. T. I. L. L. A. N. D. W. A. I. T.

Wren lowered her mirror and looked at me.

”Who’s L.W.?” she said.

I couldn’t answer. I was laughing. Standing on the top of a four-hundred-and-eight-meter tower at dawn on a world eleven light-years from home with the tears running down my face, and laughing, and I couldn’t stop.

”Luna Windsor,” said Holt, beside her, watching my face. ”That’ll be the Windsor girl. The General’s daughter. The squad leader.” He looked at the spark on the far hill. ”Sounds just like him.”

”And R.F.?”

”Risa,” I said, when I could. ”Risa Friese. Squad Two. She hears hearts.” I wiped my face. ”She’ll have heard mine from the hill.”

”Then she’ll know you’re laughing,” said Wren.

”Good,” I said.

Down below, at the bottom of the canyon, Liam had come out of the dome on his crutch, and Sera out of the forge with her hammer still in her hand, both of them staring up at the tower.

”What?” Liam shouted. ”What is it? What’s it say?”

I leaned over the rail.

”Luna,” I shouted back. ”Three days. With Risa.”

Liam stood very still on the red glass for a moment.

Then he sat down. Right where he was. On the ground, with his crutch across his knees.

”She’s going to kill you,” he called up. ”You know that. She told you not to walk.”

”I know.”

”She’s going to kill all of us. In order. Alphabetically.”

”I know.”

Sera, beside him, didn’t say anything. But I saw her put the hammer down, very carefully, on the red glass. And I saw her face. And I wasn’t the only one, on that tower, at that dawn, with something wrong with their eyes.

It was the smoke, probably.

Day 353–354.

Fifth comms window. Command: send Liam back to zone 41. Separate the kits. Stay at the site. I said no.

”Which support?”

Then Crane. Himself. ”Your mother is doing very well.” The doses: thirty-six months. ”But promises work both ways.”

I said: if her doses stop, I’ll know. I’ll stop producing. I’ll tell everyone why.

”Command will review.”

My hands shook after. Holt: ”Your father said almost exactly that to a general. Different words. Same face.” The general never forgave him.

Liam: ”We can’t stop. Not until you’ve found the hello.”

Sera: ”You told him you’d know. He believed you. I’d have believed you.”

Dot can record the pattern. The plants saying hello to Holt’s silver. ”This unit would like to try. Please.” She’s not sorry about ”love.”

Luna’s snowflake turned. Southeast. Toward me. Fast. Somebody beside her, slower.

Dawn line, from a hill nobody’s ever seen anyone on:

L.W. SQ8. R.F. SQ2. COMING. 3 DAYS.

TELL SCARECROW LIGHTHOUSES DONT WALK. SIT STILL AND WAIT.

I’m sitting still.

I’m waiting.