Scarecrow

Wren had written them on the wall.

I saw it when I came out of the dome the next morning, slow, on my stick, with my head still ringing. The long north wall of the canyon, where the red rock went up smooth and flat behind the terraces. Somebody had climbed up on the first terrace with a lump of white chalk from the north seam and written on it. Big letters. Neat. In columns.

Thirty-four names.

Wren was standing at the bottom with the chalk still in her hand, looking up at it. Juno beside her. Neither of them was saying anything.

I stood beside them and read.

Some of the names had a line under them. Some didn’t. Some had a small mark beside them, a cross, very neat. Not many. Some had nothing at all.

Mara Voss. Underlined. Ezra Holt. Underlined. Tamsin Reyes. Callum Corr. Juno Pell. Ilse Brandt. Dov Asher. Priya Lal. Teodor Venn. Adelheid Kraus. Benedikt Aaland. All underlined.

Adaeze Okon. A cross.

And further down, a name with nothing at all beside it, and then another, and then another.

”Underlined is here,” said Wren. ”Or coming. Holt’s coming.” She didn’t look at me. ”Cross is a body somebody’s seen. Nothing is nothing.”

”How many underlined?”

”Eleven.” She turned the chalk over in her fingers. ”And six more on the dawn line who flash every morning and can’t walk. F-twenty-two. F-eight. F-twenty. Two at F-twenty-six. F-thirty-one.” A pause. ”Seventeen.”

”Seventeen,” I said.

”Half,” said Juno. Very quietly. ”Half of us.”

”Half,” said Wren. ”When I sat on my wheat terrace for eleven months, I thought it was one.” She put the chalk down on the terrace, very carefully. ”Okafor’s been counting us every night. I’d like her to know it’s half.”

Juno reached up and touched one of the names with nothing beside it.

Lena Ashby.

”She was F-twenty-six’s neighbor,” said Juno. ”Twenty-five. Half a day’s walk. We used to flash each other at dusk.” Her eyes went away to the side. Came back. ”When I went to look, I went past her base. She wasn’t there. The kit was there. The door was open.”

”No body,” said Wren.

”No body.”

Wren picked up the chalk again. And after a long moment, she didn’t make a cross. She didn’t make anything. She left it.

”Nothing is nothing,” she said.

Luna called the council at noon.

All of us. Fifteen in the dome, and Dot in the doorway, and Holt and Risa out on their ridge, flashing fine at dawn. Luna stood in the middle of the floor with her hands behind her back.

”Dot,” she said. ”Tell them.”

So Dot told them. In her level, careful, not-quite-anybody’s voice. The hello. The answer. The gap. Nineteen hours of listening.

”Who,” said Dot.

Nobody said anything for a while.

”It’s asking who we are,” said Tamsin at last. She was sitting against the wall with her bow across her knees, the way she always did. ”Isn’t it? That’s all. Who are you. Someone said hello, so it’s asking who.”

”Or who he is,” said Juno.

Everybody looked at me.

”It’s been following him for a year,” said Juno. ”Not us. Not the canyon. Him.” Her voice was very flat. ”When I sat on top of it under the mountain, it didn’t ask me anything. It just slept. And the day his seed came down, it woke up and went to look for him.”

”So we don’t tell it,” said Sera.

Her voice was very hard. She was standing against the wall with her arms folded, the way Luna stood, with her hands under her arms where nobody could see if they were lit.

”Whatever it is,” said Sera. ”Whatever it wants. We don’t tell it who he is. We don’t tell it his name. We don’t tell it anything.”

”It already knows where he is,” said Juno.

”It knows where he is. It doesn’t know who he is. There’s a difference.”

”Is there?”

”Yes,” said Sera. ”There’s a difference between something knowing which house you’re in and something knowing your name.”

Nobody argued with that.

”It took the cores,” said Ilse.

She was sitting on the floor near the door, with her burned hand flat on her knee. ”The kits. Every one that fell. Mine. Wren’s. F-nine. It took the middle out, the first night, every time.” She looked round. ”And the cores are silver. The same as the plants. The same as us, inside. So it went and got them. As if they were—” She stopped.

”Lost,” said Priya.

Ilse looked at her.

”As if they were lost,” said Priya, ”and it was taking them home.”

Nobody said anything.

I sat on the end of the middle bed with my stick between my knees, the way Holt sat, and thought about it.

Dot had four cores in her. Her own, and Liam’s, and Sera’s, and Luna’s. Three kits that had walked out of the green to find their operators and lain down at their feet and asked to be part of her. And I thought about Dot hearing the Teeming through the silver for the first time, the night she took the third core. The shape of a question.

Dot was silver too. Some of her. More every time.

”Dot,” I said. ”Can you hear it right now?”

”Yes.”

”Can it hear you?”

The rivers stopped.

”This unit does not know,” said Dot, after a long time. ”This unit has not spoken. This unit has only listened.”

”Could you speak? Into the silver? The way Toby hummed into the rock?”

The rivers ran. Very slowly. In four colors.

”This unit could try,” said Dot. ”This unit knows the hello. Toby Marsh has taught it. And this unit knows one other word.”

”Which?”

”This unit’s own,” said Dot. ”The pattern this unit makes. In the silver. When this unit is only being this unit. When this unit is not doing anything. It is the same every time.” A pause. ”This unit thinks it is what this unit sounds like. To the deep.”

I looked at her for a long time.

”That’s your name,” I said.

Dot didn’t say anything.

”That’s what a name is,” I said. ”It’s what you sound like when you’re only being you. It’s what’s the same every time.” I got up, slowly, on my stick. ”It’s asking who. You say hello, and someone says it back, and then you say who you are. That’s the next thing. That’s always the next thing.” I looked at Sera. ”It’s not his name it wants. It’s anybody’s. It just wants to know someone’s there.”

”You don’t know that,” said Sera.

”No,” I said. ”I don’t.”

”Then why—”

”Because it’s what you do,” I said. ”Mother always answered. Even at night. Even in the valley, where the only knock all year was the ridge settlement. You don’t let anyone stand at the door saying who’s there all night. You answer the door.”

Luna had been standing very still in the middle of the floor the whole time. She didn’t move now.

”Who answers?” she said.

”This unit,” said Dot.

Everybody turned round.

”Not the operator,” said Dot. ”Not Luna. Not Toby Marsh. This unit.” The rivers were running fast now. ”Seraphina Calder is correct. The operator’s name should not be given. This unit does not know what the deep would do with it.” A pause. ”This unit is a robot with eight arms and four cores and a few words of other people’s. If the deep does something with this unit’s name, it is only this unit.”

”Dot,” I said.

”This unit would like to,” said Dot. ”Please.”

Luna looked at her for a long, long time.

Then she looked round the room. At all of us. One at a time. Sera, against the wall. Juno, by the door. Toby. Wren. Ilse and Priya on the floor, side by side.

”Hands,” said Luna. ”For.”

Toby’s went up first. Then Priya’s. Then Ilse’s, burned and shaking. Then Tamsin’s. Then Wren’s, and Corr’s, and Teo’s. Ade’s, and Benedikt’s. Liam’s, lit, a little. Dov’s. Juno’s, after a long moment, without her eyes coming back.

Mine.

Sera’s stayed under her arms.

”Against,” said Luna.

Sera didn’t move.

”Seraphina,” said Luna.

”I’m not against,” said Sera. ”I’m not for. I’m afraid.” She looked at Dot. Not at me. ”Do it at dawn. Not at night. I want to be able to see.”

I couldn’t sleep that night either.

I went out to the forge in the end, because the light was on. The long low workshop against the north wall, where we’d built Maris. Sera was sitting on an upturned crate in front of a bed of rock that glowed a dull, steady red, the way she kept it all night now, like a banked fire in a kitchen. She had knitting in her lap. Gray wool from Holt’s pack, on two needles she’d made out of titanium wire. She wasn’t knitting. She was just holding it.

She didn’t look up when I came in.

”You put Garnet’s scarf on me,” I said.

”Somebody had to.” She turned the needles over. ”You were cold. You were lying in the dome bleeding out of your nose with your mouth open and Liam snoring on the floor. You looked about nine.”

”Thank you.”

”Mine’s not finished,” said Sera. ”That’s the only reason it was hers.”

I sat down on the other crate.

The heat came off the rock and into my face and my hands, steady and even. She was holding it exactly where it was comfortable. She always did, now, when I was near. I’d only noticed lately.

”You’re afraid,” I said.

”I said I was. In front of everyone.” She still didn’t look at me. ”Calders don’t do that. Dad never said it once in my whole life. Not when the program took him. Not when Mum’s hands started.” She pulled a loop of gray wool through her fingers. ”I said it in front of fifteen people and a robot.”

”Why?”

Sera was quiet for a long time.

”On the ridge,” she said. ”Before you came. My fire was going out. I’d been holding the ring for three days and I couldn’t hold it anymore and I knew it. And I thought, that’s it. That’s the end. And I wasn’t afraid.” She looked at the glowing rock. ”I was angry. That was all. That nobody came.”

”I came.”

”I know you came.” Her voice was very low. ”That’s the trouble. Now I’ve got something to be afraid for.” She dropped the knitting into her lap. ”And tomorrow a robot is going to stand in the green and tell a thing the size of a mountain what her name is. And that thing’s been walking toward you for a year. And I can’t hit it, and I can’t burn it, and I can’t build anything that’ll stop it.” She looked at me at last. ”So I’m afraid. That’s all. You asked.”

I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t know what to say. That’s the truth. I’d never known what to say to Sera. Not at the Calders’ table, not on the ridge, not here. She’d always said everything first, in about four words, and left me nowhere to stand.

So I just sat there, in the heat she was holding for me, and after a while she picked up the knitting again and started, very slowly, to knit.

After a while, I fell asleep on the crate.

When I woke, it was nearly dawn, and there was a gray wool blanket over me that hadn’t been there before, and the rock was still glowing exactly as warm as it had been at midnight.

Dot went up the north path at first light.

All of us followed. Fifteen people in a long line up the red rock, past the terraces, past Luna’s room at the end with the coldest wall, to the rim. To the place where the canyon stopped and the green began, a long slope of fronds going away north and silver at the tops, all of them turned toward me, the way they’d been turned since I came home.

Dot walked out into it.

Not far. Ten meters. Until she was standing among the fronds, up to her body in them, with her eight arms folded and her rivers running in four colors and the first of the sun coming over the eastern rim behind her.

Then she unfolded her arms. All eight. And put the ends of them down into the green. Among the roots. Into the soil, where the silver ran.

And stood very still.

I couldn’t hear anything. Nobody could. Except Toby.

He was standing beside me on the rim with his eyes shut and his hands in fists at his sides, and his lips moving.

”Hello,” he said, under his breath. ”She’s saying hello. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down.” A pause. ”Again. Up, and up, and hold—”

The green moved.

I saw it go.

Not toward me, this time. Away. Out from Dot, in a ring. The fronds round her bending, first the near ones and then the ones beyond them and then the ones beyond those, a long silver ripple going outward across the green like the ring you get when you drop a stone in still water. Widening. Going north and east and west. Over the slope. Over the next ridge. Out of sight.

”It’s carrying it,” said Toby. His voice had gone very small. ”It’s carrying it away. Further than I can hear.”

”Hello,” said Dot. Out loud. In her own voice. To us, I think, so we’d know. ”This unit has said hello.”

The ring went out. And out.

”Now this unit is going to say who,” said Dot.

I don’t know what it sounded like. I’ll never know. Toby couldn’t tell me afterward; he said it wasn’t like the hello at all, it wasn’t up and down, it was more like a lot of very small things happening very fast in a row, and then a pause, and then the same small things in the same row again. He said it sounded, if it sounded like anything, like Dot’s rivers, running.

I only know what I saw.

A second ring. Going out from Dot, through the green, after the first. Different. Not a smooth ripple, but a shiver. A fine fast rippling of the silver tips, all the way out, in a pattern I could almost see, like wind across wheat, like a hand moving across the top of a field in the shape of a word.

Dot’s word.

It went out over the ridge, after the first one, and was gone.

We waited.

All morning. Fifteen people sitting on the rim of a canyon in the sun, watching a robot stand still in a field. Nobody went back down. Liam went and fetched water and brought it back up and handed it round and sat down again. Priya fell asleep with her head on Ilse’s shoulder. Teo sat apart, with his knees drawn up, looking north, the way he’d sat in the garden under the mountain.

Luna stood the whole time.

At noon, she said, without turning her head: ”Anything?”

”Not yet,” said Dot.

It came at dusk.

The sun was going down behind the western rim, red and gold, and the green was going dark, and I’d stopped watching the slope and was watching Sera instead, who was watching Dot, with her hands under her arms and her jaw set.

And Toby made a sound.

Not a word. Just a breath, sharp, as if someone had touched him.

I looked north.

It was coming back.

From over the ridge. From very far. A ring, coming the other way, closing instead of opening, the fronds bending in toward us one line after another out of the dusk, a long silver ripple getting narrower and narrower and faster and faster, all of it coming in toward the place where Dot stood with her arms in the ground.

It reached her.

Dot’s rivers went white.

All of them. All four colors, at once, white as Luna’s ice, white as the inside of a lamp. Her arms jerked once, all eight together, and then went still again, deep in the green. Her grille lit. I’d never seen it light before.

Sera took a step forward. I caught her wrist. She let me.

It lasted about eleven seconds.

Then the rivers went back to their four colors, slowly, one by one. And Dot drew her arms up out of the soil, very carefully, all eight of them, and folded them in front of her. And turned round, in the green, and looked at us.

”It has answered,” said Dot.

”What did it say?” said Luna.

”It has said this unit’s name,” said Dot. ”Back to this unit. Correctly. Every small thing in its place.” A pause. ”No one has ever said this unit’s name before. In this unit’s own pattern. This unit did not know what that would be like.”

”What was it like?” said Toby.

Dot was quiet for a moment.

”Like being counted,” she said.

Luna let out a breath.

”And then?” she said. ”Is that all?”

”No,” said Dot. ”Then it has said who.”

Nobody moved.

”It has said its own name,” said Dot. ”Its own pattern. The way this unit said this unit’s. It is very long. It is very old. It is coming from the deep. From the thing that has been following the operator.” The rivers slowed. ”This unit has heard it before.”

”Where?” I said.

Dot turned her grille toward me.

”On the voyage,” she said. ”Before this unit had a name. When this unit was folded in the operator’s seed, in the dark, in the ring of the ship, with the operator asleep in the next compartment.” A pause. ”It was coming from the middle of the ship. All the way through the voyage. Very faint. Like a heart through a wall.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

I was thinking about a gray, pitted column three hundred meters long, as thick as a house, running down the middle of the Meridian from its nose to its tail. That I’d looked into from the black glass, the way I looked into everything, and seen only fog.

That had carried us eleven light-years without a sound.

”It is the same pattern,” said Dot. ”The thing under the mountain. The thing that has been following the operator. It has the same name as the spine of the Meridian.”

Day 383–384.

Wren chalked the thirty-four on the north wall. Underlined: here or coming. Cross: a body somebody’s seen. Nothing: nothing. Eleven underlined. Six more on the dawn line. Seventeen. Half. ”I’d like Okafor to know it’s half.”

Lena Ashby, F-25. Door open. No body. Nothing is nothing.

Council. Juno: it wants him. Sera: then we don’t tell it his name. Ilse: it took the cores like they were lost. Priya: ”and it was taking them home.”

Dot can hear the silver. Dot knows two words. Hello, and her own pattern. That’s a name: what you sound like when you’re only being you.

Dot: ”Not the operator. This unit. If the deep does something with this unit’s name, it is only this unit.” Thirteen hands. Sera: ”I’m not against. I’m afraid. Do it at dawn.”

The forge. Sera put Garnet’s scarf on me because hers isn’t finished. ”Now I’ve got something to be afraid for.” I didn’t know what to say. Woke under a blanket. The rock still warm.

Dawn. Dot in the green, arms in the soil. Hello, in a ring, out of sight. Then her name, like wind across wheat.

All day. At dusk it came back. Her rivers went white. Eleven seconds.

It said her name back. Correctly. ”Like being counted.”

Then it said its own.

Dot heard it before. In the seed. In the ring of the ship. All the way through the voyage. From the middle.

The thing under the mountain has the same name as the spine of the Meridian.

Underlined twice. Then again.