Scarecrow

I read it to her.

All of it. In order. From the drop. Sitting on the floor of the second room in the dome, with my back against the wall and the notebook on my knee and the little lamp on its stalk, and Luna on the middle bed with her knees drawn up and her arms round them, listening.

She didn’t interrupt. Not once. Not at the canyon, or the cliff, or Dot unfolding. Not at the ring of three hundred and eighty, or the forge, or the seam I put in my own leg. Not at the mirror, or Liam’s clicks, or the spoon.

She didn’t say anything at all until I got to Day 322.

Rule five. If an order would make the count smaller, don’t follow it.

Luna’s going to kill me.

”Read that again,” said Luna.

I read it again.

She was quiet for a long time.

”Go on,” she said.

It took until two in the morning. My voice went, around the ridge. Luna got up without a word and brought me water and sat back down.

When I’d finished, I closed the notebook.

She didn’t say anything. She looked at the lamp.

”Day 322,” she said at last. ”Rule five.” A pause. ”You were right.”

”Luna—”

”I’m not saying it twice,” said Luna. ”I’m saying it once. You were right, and my order was wrong, and if you’d followed it Liam would have died in that cave. That’s all.” She didn’t look at me. ”Don’t make me say it again.”

”I won’t.”

”Good.” She unfolded her arms. ”Now I’ll tell you mine.”

She told it the way her father would have told it, I think. Like a report. Short sentences. Times and distances. No feelings anywhere in it, except in the places where her voice went very slightly too flat.

”I came down a hundred and forty miles west of you. In the hills. Pod intact. Kit intact. I stayed put two days, the way I told everyone to. Nobody came. Nobody called. And on the second night I thought: right. Plan B.”

”Everybody walks toward Lucas.”

”Everybody walks toward Lucas,” said Luna. ”And I knew where Lucas was going to be. Zone thirty-eight. On the map. In the northern hills, under the white mountains, where we were all supposed to land. Priority One. First pod down.” She looked at her hands. ”So I walked north. Toward zone thirty-eight. Toward where you were supposed to be.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I didn’t know about the wind,” said Luna. ”None of us did. I didn’t know you’d come down three hundred and ten kilometers south. I thought you’d be there. In the hills. With your tower. Waiting.” She swallowed. ”I walked a hundred and eighty miles to the place you were supposed to be. And you weren’t there.”

”I saw you,” I said. ”Every night. The snowflake. Going north. Away from me.” I looked at the notebook. ”I thought you were walking away.”

”I know,” said Luna. ”I worked that out. On the hill. When I saw the mirrors.” She looked at me. ”You must have thought I’d left you.”

”I thought you had a reason.”

”I had a reason,” said Luna. ”It was wrong. I followed the plan, and the plan was wrong, because the wind didn’t read the plan.” Her mouth went very thin. ”My father would say that’s not a reason. That’s an excuse with a map.”

”Zone thirty-eight,” she went on, after a moment. ”Day 338. I was slow. I checked every valley on the way, in case. Nothing there. Hills, and the green, and the white mountains, very close, and no tower, and no you.” She paused. ”And Risa.”

”Risa was there?”

”Squad Two’s zones were next to ours. Thirty-nine and forty. Her pod came down eight kilometers from thirty-eight.” Luna’s voice went flatter. ”She’d been alone for six weeks. She hadn’t moved. She was sitting in the door of her pod with her hands over her ears.”

I looked at the doorway.

Risa was in the next room. On the bed by the wall, asleep, I thought. But Risa was never quite asleep. Risa could hear your heart through a wall.

”You can come in,” I said, not loudly.

There was a pause. Then the door opened, and Risa came in, in her stocking feet, with a blanket round her shoulders, and sat down on the floor beside me, against the wall.

”I wasn’t listening,” she said.

”You were.”

”I was,” said Risa. ”But not on purpose. I can’t not hear. That’s the whole thing.” She pulled the blanket tighter. ”That was the whole problem.”

She told it herself. Slowly. Not like Luna. Like somebody describing a room they’d been locked in.

”In the cave it was fine,” she said. ”In the city it was fine. People. Hundreds of them. Thousands. All their hearts going, all the time, like rain on a roof. You get used to it. It’s company.” She looked at her hands. ”And then I came down here. In a pod. On my own. In the hills. And there was nobody.”

”Just yours.”

”Just mine,” said Risa. ”For two days. Just my own heart, very loud, in the middle of all that quiet. It’s horrible, Lucas. You can’t imagine. It’s like being shut in a cupboard with a drum.” She swallowed. ”And then on the third night they came.”

”The Teeming.”

”I didn’t know that’s what they were called. I didn’t know what they were. I just heard them. Coming over the hills. Hundreds of them. And every one of them had three hearts.” She closed her eyes. ”Three hearts each. All beating. And they all beat together.”

I sat very still.

”Together?” I said.

”Together,” said Risa. ”Not near each other. Together. The same beat. All of them. Every heart in every body, all over the hills, going thum, thum, thum, at exactly the same time, like one heart with a thousand bodies.” She opened her eyes. ”It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. Louder than the city. Louder than anything. And it never stops. It’s still going now. Out there.” She tilted her head toward the wall. ”I can hear it from here. Very faint. Like the sea.”

”So you put your hands over your ears.”

”For six weeks,” said Risa. ”And they came round my pod and sat there in a ring and the kit made walls and they took the walls down and the kit made more walls, and I sat in the door with my hands over my ears, because if I took them away I could hear it, and if I heard it I couldn’t think.” She pulled the blanket tighter. ”And then Luna came.”

”I froze them,” said Luna. Flatly.

”She froze all of them,” said Risa. ”Every one. In a ring. In about four seconds. I didn’t even see her come over the hill. I just heard a heart I knew, very fast, very cross, and then the beat stopped. All of it. All at once. The whole ring.” She looked at Luna. ”It was the quietest it had been in six weeks. I nearly cried.”

”You did cry.”

”I nearly cried first,” said Risa, with dignity. ”And then I cried.”

”I built a wall,” said Luna. ”Ice. Round both pods. Thick. They can’t dig ice, it closes behind them. And Risa’s kit and mine made a base inside it.” She paused. ”Risa’s kit fell on Day 346. They got a leg through the ice on the north side while I was sleeping, and went straight past Risa and straight past me and straight to the kit.”

”For the silver,” I said.

”For the silver.” Luna looked at me. ”You knew.”

”Holt told me. They go for it like a dog to a bone.”

”Mine held,” said Luna. ”Barely. I froze the ones in the base, and I froze the hole, and mine held. And on the morning of Day 351 I went up the hill behind the base to look at the damage, and there was a spark on a ridge, very far off, south and east, flashing. Somebody passing it on, the way they pass everything on now.” Her voice went very slightly too flat. ”Scarecrow is a place. Forty-one kilometers east of F-eleven. Seventy-four rooms.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I read it four times,” said Luna. ”Then I went down and told Risa to pack. And I told my kit to follow us, as fast as it could, and to go quiet if anything came.” She paused. ”It’s two days behind us. It’s slower than I am.”

”Everybody’s slower than you are,” said Risa.

”Seventy-four rooms,” said Luna, very quietly, to the lamp. ”You built seventy-four rooms.”

”For whoever came.”

”I know who they were for,” said Luna. ”You just read it to me. For people who’d gone quiet.” She was quiet herself, for a long moment. ”I’d gone quiet. Hadn’t I. For fifty days. I was walking north to a place you weren’t, and not calling, because I didn’t have a radio, and you were counting me every night and writing walking in a book.” She looked at me. ”You built one for me too. Didn’t you.”

”The one at the top of the third terrace,” I said. ”On the end. It’s got the coldest wall.”

Luna looked at me for a very long time.

Then she looked away, very quickly, at the lamp. And Risa, beside me, against the wall, with her eyes closed, said nothing at all, very loudly.

”Risa,” I said. ”The beat. The Teeming’s beat. You said it’s the same, everywhere. All of them together.”

”Yes.”

”Does it change?”

Risa opened her eyes.

She looked at me for a long moment, with her head on one side, the way she used to look at people at the fern, as if she were reading something on them that nobody else could see.

”Yes,” she said slowly. ”How did you know?”

”Dot can hear them now. Through the silver. Three cores together. She said it’s a pattern. Passed body to body. She said—” I hesitated. ”She said it’s the shape of a question.”

Risa was very still.

”It changes when you’re near,” she said at last.

The room went quiet.

”I didn’t understand it,” said Risa. ”Not until tonight. Not until we came down the path into your canyon. All the way from the hills, for fifty days, it’s been the same beat. Thum, thum, thum. Steady. Like a clock. Like the sea.” She swallowed. ”And tonight, coming down the path, it changed. Very slightly. A sort of catch in it. Every few beats. Thum, thum. Thum—” She stopped. Held the pause. ”—thum. A gap. Like somebody waiting for an answer.”

”When did it start?”

”When we came over the rim,” said Risa. ”When I could hear your heart.” She looked at me. ”It’s doing it now. Very faint. Out there. All of them.”

I didn’t sleep after that.

I sat on the step of the dome until dawn with the notebook on my knee, and wrote it down, all of it, and then sat looking at what I’d written.

The Teeming have one heartbeat. A thousand bodies, one heart. Risa can hear it.

When I’m near, it catches. A gap. Like waiting for an answer.

Dot: it is the shape of a question.

I didn’t know what the question was. I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer it. I didn’t know if I could.

I didn’t know if answering it would be the worst thing I’d ever done.

I underlined it anyway. Once. Not twice. I wasn’t sure enough for twice.

Luna called the meeting at noon on Day 358.

In the dome. All of us. She didn’t ask; she just went round the town at eleven, knocking on doors, saying noon, the dome, everyone, the way she used to go down the barracks at six in the morning before Okafor’s field, and everyone came. Even Sera, from the forge, with her hands black to the wrist. Even Corr, who didn’t like being indoors.

Nine of us. Ten, with Dot in the doorway.

Luna stood in the middle of the floor with her hands behind her back. The way her father stood. The way she’d stood on the first day she was squad leader, in front of the five of us, very straight, and said I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m doing.

She didn’t say that now.

”Toby Marsh,” said Luna, ”is two hundred and sixty miles north. In the white mountains. He hasn’t moved in sixty days, except once, on the first night, three meters and then three more. Lucas has counted him every night.” She looked round the room. ”F-five is in the same mountains, sixty miles east of Toby. F-five has asked where is he on the dawn line every morning since Day 337. F-five heard Lucas on the radio.” A pause. ”F-thirty and F-twenty-six are on the way, more or less. Both have wounded. Both have asked for help.”

Nobody said anything.

”We’re going to get all of them,” said Luna. ”Properly. As a squad.”

”How?” said Holt.

He was sitting on the end of the middle bed, where he always sat now, with his stick between his knees.

”Two hundred and sixty miles. Through the green. With the Teeming in it. Into mountains.” He looked at Luna. ”I came down those mountains, girl. On my own. It took me two months and I nearly died twice and then I fell off a cliff.” He nodded at me. ”And the boy can lift eighty kilos in a spoon for a day before his nose starts pouring. That’s him and one more. Maybe.”

”Two,” said Sera, from the wall. ”The new spoon holds two.”

”Two, then. Two of you. And the other seven walk? Two hundred and sixty miles?”

”No,” said Luna. ”Nobody walks.”

She looked at me.

I’d known she was going to. I’d been thinking about it since she came down the path, since before, since Sera said two, in case in the forge with her pink palm on the rim of the bent spoon.

”A spoon holds two,” I said. ”Because I can see two. Because I can look at the whole of it at once, sitting in it, and hold it all.” I looked at the floor. ”If I could see something bigger, all at once, I could hold something bigger. It’s not about the weight, really. It’s about the seeing. It always has been.”

”How much bigger?” said Luna.

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I’ve never tried. But Mother lifted a whole kitchen. Every morning. Three bowls and the flour and the eggs.” I looked up. ”And once, in the war, she tore a hole in the side of a ship the size of a city.”

Holt made a sound.

”She did,” said Holt quietly. ”I saw it. From the ground. Everybody saw it. The whole hull opened like a tin. She was standing on a roof with her arms out, and she wasn’t even touching it.” He looked at me. ”I never knew how.”

”She was looking at all of it,” I said. ”At once. That’s how.”

”So you want to build a bigger spoon,” said Liam.

”I want to build a boat,” I said. ”A skiff. Shallow. Long. Room for six, and water, and kits’ hands, and splints, and whatever we bring back. With a floor I can see all of, sitting in the middle of it. Every plate. Every rib. At once.” I looked at Sera. ”Light. Lighter than anything. And strong.”

Sera unfolded her arms.

”Out of what?” she said.

I turned round and pointed out of the dome door. Past Dot. Across the canyon, past the terraces, to the far wall, the north wall, where the red rock went up in a long bare slope to the rim. The hillside I’d been looking at every morning for sixty days without seeing.

”That,” I said.

”The hill?” said Liam.

”The hill. There’s a seam in it. Dot found it. Titanium, the same as the spoon. Only it’s not a seam. It’s half the hill. It goes back two hundred meters into the rock.” I looked at Dot. ”Isn’t that right?”

”Yes,” said Dot. ”This unit has been saving it.” A pause. ”For something. This unit did not know what.”

”For this.”

”Logged,” said Dot. And the little rivers ran very fast in all three colors, the way they did when she was pleased.

”Sera does the fire,” I said. ”The way she did with the spoon. All of it, all the way through, even. I do the shape. Dot’s hands do the carrying.” I looked round the room. ”Ten days. Maybe twelve.”

”And then you lift it,” said Luna. ”With six people in it. And fly it two hundred and sixty miles. Into the mountains.”

”Yes.”

”And if you can’t?”

”Then I’ll have learned something,” I said. ”And we’ll walk.”

Luna looked at me for a long time.

Then she looked at Sera, against the wall, black to the wrist. Sera looked back at her.

It was the first time they’d really looked at each other since Luna came down the path. I saw it. Everyone saw it. Liam saw it, and went very still on the floor. Risa saw it with her eyes shut, and I watched her face do something complicated.

I remembered the Town. The first squad exercise. Fire and ice meeting in the square, and the steam shearing the tower with Liam on it, because neither of them would give an inch.

”Calder,” said Luna.

”Windsor,” said Sera.

”Can you do it?”

”Yes,” said Sera.

”Will you?”

Sera looked at her. Then, very briefly, at me. Then back at Luna.

”I said two, in case,” said Seraphina Calder. ”I meant it. I’ll make it hold as many as he can see.”

Luna nodded. Once.

”Then that’s the order,” she said.

She gave the rest of it in two minutes. Who went: Squad Eight, the four of us, and Risa, because Risa could hear the Teeming coming before anyone could see them, and Holt, because Holt knew the mountains and had walked them. Who stayed: Wren, Tamsin, and Corr, to hold Scarecrow and keep the dawn line. Dot, to keep the lighthouse lit.

”Query,” said Dot, from the doorway.

Luna turned round and looked up at her. A long way up.

”This unit has been to where the operator is, twice. Because the lighthouse is a tower, so that the operator can be found.” The little rivers ran. ”This unit would like to know if Luna is instructing this unit to stay.”

Luna looked at her for a long moment.

”No,” she said. ”I’m asking.”

The rivers slowed.

”Then this unit will stay,” said Dot. ”Because you asked.” A pause. ”Please bring them back. All of them.”

”I will,” said Luna. ”That’s what I’m for.”

Day 357–358.

Read it all to Luna. Every page. She didn’t interrupt until Day 322. ”You were right. I’m saying it once.”

Luna walked north to zone 38 because that’s where I was supposed to be. The wind didn’t read the plan. ”That’s not a reason. That’s an excuse with a map.”

Found Risa at zone 38. Six weeks alone. Hands over her ears.

Risa: the Teeming have three hearts each, and every heart beats together. All of them. One heart, a thousand bodies. Like the sea.

Luna froze the whole ring in four seconds. Built a wall of ice. Risa’s kit fell Day 346. Luna’s held. Day 351: the dawn line passed it on. SCARECROW IS A PLACE. She read it four times.

Her room: third terrace, on the end. The coldest wall.

Risa: when I’m near, the beat catches. A gap. Like waiting for an answer.

Dot: the shape of a question.

Underlined once. Not sure enough for twice.

Day 358, noon. Luna: ”We’re going to get all of them. Properly. As a squad.”

A skiff. Out of the north hill: half of it is titanium. Sera does the fire. I do the shape. Ten days.

”It’s not about the weight. It’s about the seeing.”

Luna: ”Calder.” Sera: ”Windsor.” ”Can you?” ”Yes.” ”Will you?” ”I’ll make it hold as many as he can see.”

Dot stays. ”Because you asked.” ”Please bring them back. All of them.”