Scarecrow

Nell remembered the number while she was eating.

She put her spoon down so suddenly that Toby looked up from Safi’s bedding.

“Twenty-seven,” she said.

Wren turned.

“On Dena’s hatch. Not her squad number. There was a little panel beside the seal. Twenty-seven.”

She looked at Asha, who had gone still beside her.

“Wasn’t there?”

Asha closed her eyes.

For a while, nobody helped her by guessing.

Then she nodded.

“White writing. Under the red mark.”

Wren wrote it down exactly as they’d said it.

Day 442. Two days since the pods had fallen. Two trails still without places on the ground. A name we knew and a person we didn’t.

Now we had a number to look for as well.

It wasn’t much.

It was more than we’d had before breakfast.

Dot had spent part of the night examining Nell’s wrist panel.

With her permission. Nell had taken the suit off at last and seemed relieved to discover that the panel could be separated from the sleeve without anything happening to her.

It wasn’t talking to Earth.

It was sending the same short request into the air near it, then waiting for an answer from something called a reception station.

The little circle on the screen meant waiting.

It had meant waiting since the day she landed.

Dot showed us the repeated record after the dawn window had closed.

“This unit can listen for a matching request.”

“How far?” Luna asked.

“This unit does not yet know. Rock and ground position will affect the result.”

“And can we answer?”

“Not yet.”

Luna nodded.

“Listen first.”

Risa brought the panel to the edge of camp and held it beside one of the hands.

She didn’t put power through it. Just opened the outer casing carefully enough that Dot could see what was inside and compare it with the signals she was receiving.

I held the lamp.

It was a small job. Almost absurdly small beside the map full of hills.

Risa glanced up at me.

“Steadier.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m asking the lamp to be steadier, not you to feel worse.”

I smiled.

She touched the back of my hand with one finger before returning to the casing.

A few minutes later, Dot marked a new line on the slate.

A short burst. A pause. The same burst again.

Nell’s request, from the other side of the camp.

We had found something we could recognize.

Wren changed the search plan.

The wings would fly the edges of the two uncertain areas, listening as well as looking. We would follow the nearer route in the skiff, with enough water and room for both missing passengers if we found them together.

Luna came with me. Risa took the receiving equipment and the bag.

Sera stayed to work with Kellan and help Toby. Liam would lead the nearer ground search if a wing found anything within walking distance.

Before we left, Sera handed me a clean cloth.

“For your pocket. Use it before somebody else has to wipe your face.”

“I’ll try not to need it.”

“Excellent. It can have a quiet day.”

She kissed me, then stepped back so Risa could pass the equipment aboard.

Luna watched the wind moving above the rim.

“We go when you’re ready.”

I looked at all three of them.

Then at the hull I needed to keep in sight.

“Ready.”

We found the first signal above a valley none of the wings had been able to see clearly through yesterday’s cloud.

Risa heard it as a click in the receiver before the little display made a mark.

She held up one hand.

I slowed.

The next burst came weaker.

“Back toward the ridge.”

I turned.

Stronger.

We didn’t follow it straight down. Luna marked where it strengthened, then asked for a second pass from a different angle.

The two lines narrowed the place to a slope beneath a long shelf of white stone.

There was no smoke.

No obvious wreck from above.

Then Risa pointed.

A dark rectangle under the overhang.

And a flash beside it.

Not a proper mirror.

The lid of a water bottle, polished enough to catch the sun when it was turned carefully.

Someone was moving it from the shadow beneath the shelf.

Three flashes.

A pause.

Three more.

I brought the skiff toward the open ground below, and a figure crawled far enough out of the shadow to see us.

She lifted the little lid with both hands.

Kept flashing even after I could see her face.

Luna raised her arm.

“We see you.”

The girl couldn’t hear her yet.

She kept flashing.

We landed below the shelf.

Risa climbed out first with water. Luna went beside her, calling a name rather than an order.

“Dena?”

The girl stopped moving the lid.

“Dena Holt?”

She stared.

Then nodded once.

“Nell told us your name,” Luna said. “She’s safe. Asha and Tom too.”

Dena lowered the lid into her lap.

For a moment, her whole face seemed to empty.

Then she leaned forward and began to shake.

Risa sat beside her on the cold stone.

Didn’t try to make her stand.

I stayed with the skiff until Luna looked back and nodded that I could come nearer.

Dena was sixteen.

Her pod had slid beneath the shelf, out of sight of the sky, and stopped with the hatch against a shallow rise in the ground. She’d spent much of the first day moving the loose stones she could reach through the narrow opening.

Not all at once.

A little. Rest. A little more.

When she finally squeezed out, one shoe stayed inside.

She hadn’t gone back for it.

Her ankle was scraped. Her fingers were cut. She was thirsty and cold and angry in a way she hadn’t yet found the strength to use.

I looked at the opening she’d made.

At the small heap of stones beside it.

“You got yourself out.”

She looked at me.

“They said stay with the pod.”

“You did. Beside it, where you could breathe.”

She held the bottle lid more tightly.

“Nell’s really there?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, and this time some of the shaking stopped.

The number on the hatch was twenty-seven.

I recorded it before we left.

Inside the pod, a little indicator blinked against the darkness. No voice. No instructions changing to reflect the fact that the passenger had spent two days underneath a stone shelf.

I wanted to break something.

Instead, I recovered Dena’s shoe and the sealed food packet she’d been unable to reach, then brought both out to her.

She took the shoe first.

That was fair.

The ground between her and the skiff was sharp.

We were halfway back to Scarecrow when the second wing found another request.

Dot relayed it through the receiver in short, broken pieces. A direction. A place near a river bend. A landing shell visible between the branches.

I looked at Dena, seated beside Risa with a blanket round her shoulders.

Luna was already looking at the route.

“We can put her home first. The wing stays there.”

I nodded.

Dena looked between us.

“Someone else?”

“Yes.”

“I can wait.”

“You have waited,” Risa said.

Dena looked down at her hands.

We took her home.

Nell met us at the landing place.

So did Asha and Tom, moving more slowly because Toby had told them that needing to see someone didn’t make injured ankles stop being injured.

Dena saw all three before we touched down.

“Nell.”

Nell was crying too hard to answer properly.

I kept the hull still while the four of them found one another across its rim.

For a moment, the whole camp seemed to know how to look somewhere else.

Holt waited until Dena was seated before introducing himself.

“Ezra Holt,” he said.

She looked up at the name.

“Dena.”

“Aye. So I hear.”

They compared no family histories then. There was time for that if either wanted it later.

He simply handed her water and sat where she could see another person who had come a long way to be there.

I ate while Risa changed the receiver’s little cell.

Luna checked the wing’s pictures. The final pod was on a narrow strip of ground between a river and a steep wall of growth.

Its hatch stood open.

The wrist request was coming from somewhere beyond it.

Moving.

Not quickly. Not steadily in one direction.

Risa looked at the marks.

“Could be someone walking.”

“Could be carried,” Luna said.

We all remembered the ravine.

This time, none of us made carried mean the worst thing before we had seen it.

Sera came to the skiff with another vessel.

“Last known track?”

“Yes.”

She set the water down.

“Bring back the person. The pod can remain an inconvenience.”

I laughed a little.

She looked at my face.

“That wasn’t entirely a joke.”

“I know.”

She took my hand for a moment, thumb against the inside of my wrist.

Then let go.

Risa climbed in beside the receiver. Luna checked that the empty place was clear.

We went back out.

The river bend was farther than it had looked on the map.

The land folded between us and it, forcing us along a wider route where I could keep the skiff low and still see enough ground to judge the air.

By the time we reached the pod, the shadows had changed sides beneath the trees.

The shell lay open and empty.

A clean cut crossed one of the straps.

Another strip of cloth hung from the hatch, pale against the dark hull.

I landed on the gravel above the river and stayed seated while Luna and Risa looked at the ground.

Boot marks.

Teeming tracks.

Both leading along the bank.

Risa lifted the receiver.

The next request was stronger from upstream.

We called as we followed.

Not constantly. Often enough that anyone ahead could hear people approaching instead of footsteps and decide the rest for themselves.

The river narrowed between two shelves of stone.

Beyond them, a boy sat on a raised patch of ground with both feet out of the water. One hand held a strip of pod lining. The other rested against something wrapped around his calf.

Three Teeming stood nearby.

One had a curved plate full of water.

Another was working at a small pile of branches washed against the bank.

The third turned toward us.

I lifted my empty hand.

Luna stopped beside me.

The creature stopped too.

“Are you hurt?” she called to the boy.

He looked up.

His face changed so suddenly that I thought he might fall trying to stand.

“Don’t get up yet,” Risa said.

He stayed where he was.

“I thought the voice was broken.”

“Which voice?”

“The one in the wrist. It kept saying wait.”

Luna nodded.

“We heard it.”

He stared at her.

“You heard it?”

“Yes.”

The boy looked down at the panel on his sleeve.

Then back at us.

I could see the moment when waiting became something that had ended instead of something that had no edge.

His name was Ari Mercer.

Fifteen.

He’d got out of the pod and tried to reach the higher ground when the river began rising. A loose piece of shell had cut his calf. He could walk at first, then couldn’t.

The Teeming had arrived before nightfall.

He didn’t know whether to run, so he hadn’t.

“They brought this,” he said, touching the folded fiber beneath him. “And water. I didn’t drink it until this morning.”

He looked at the shallow plate.

“I was thirsty.”

Risa sat beside him.

“No one’s going to scold you for being thirsty.”

He nodded as though he wanted to believe that and would need to hear it again.

The wound needed cleaning and proper attention.

It wasn’t something I could dismiss because we’d found him talking. I told Luna what I could see, and she began preparing the carrying cloth while Risa checked whether he could keep water down.

The nearest Teeming came closer.

Stopped when Luna raised her arm.

She lowered it after moving the bag out of the narrow space between us.

The creature placed the water plate beside Ari and withdrew.

Risa looked at me over his head.

Neither of us smiled yet.

We had too much left to do.

But the water stayed within his reach while we worked.

I noticed the metal when we were ready to leave.

Not because it shone.

Because it didn’t belong among the stones the Teeming had piled beside the water.

A narrow dark strip, longer than my hand, with one end bent beneath a broken piece of pod bracket. The bracket was familiar metal. I could see the grain in it, the damage, the places where a tool had cut through its edge.

The dark strip was different.

I looked more closely.

Nothing opened.

No structure unfolding into the little parts I’d learned to see. No sense of where one thing joined another beneath the surface.

I knew that refusal.

My hand tightened on the stick.

“Lucas?” Luna said.

I didn’t answer quickly enough.

The Teeming nearest the strip moved between it and Ari.

Not toward us.

Between the boy and the metal.

It put one limb across the place where I was looking.

I stopped.

Risa followed my gaze.

Her face changed.

“I can feel something there,” she said quietly. “Faint.”

“Don’t follow it.”

She pulled her hand back from the wet stone.

Luna looked at both of us.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Then I made myself give her the part I did know.

“I can’t see into it. The way I couldn’t see into the ship.”

For a moment, the river seemed very loud.

Luna looked at the strip, then at Ari on the cloth.

“Was that in your pod?”

He squinted toward it.

“Under the seat, I think. They took something out. I couldn’t see properly.”

“The Teeming?”

He nodded.

The creature kept its limb where it was.

I thought of the lander sent for Toby. The piece taken from it and carried through the canyon while we stood watching.

A piece of something that had never been only machinery.

I wanted to turn the bracket over. Look for a fastening. Find the place the dark strip had joined the pod.

Ari shifted on the cloth and hissed through his teeth.

I looked back at him.

Sera had told me exactly what to bring home.

“We leave it,” I said.

Luna nodded.

Risa recorded the strip from where we stood, without moving closer. The wing came low enough to take another picture of the bracket and the stones around it.

Then we lifted Ari.

The Teeming lowered its limb only when we had passed.

It stayed beside the metal as we made our way along the river.

A second creature followed for a short distance with the water plate. When we stopped to change grips, it set the plate within Ari’s reach.

He looked at it.

Then at Risa.

She checked the water against what he’d already drunk and nodded toward his own vessel instead.

“Use ours now. We know where it came from.”

He did.

The creature picked up its plate and went back.

No argument.

No attempt to stop us taking him away.

We returned with the last known passenger before sunset.

Thirty-six humans now.

Fourteen from the new fall, matching the fourteen trails Dot had been able to separate in the sky.

That didn’t prove no other pods had fallen beyond our sight. We wrote the count carefully and kept the search map.

But the two empty ends of the tracks we’d been following had names now.

Dena Holt.

Ari Mercer.

Nell helped Wren add them to the board while Toby and Risa took Ari under the shelter.

The circle on his wrist panel was still turning.

Dot recorded it before someone covered the sleeve with a blanket.

Then the boy asked where he could put his cup.

Lena showed him a flat place beside the bed.

Dena kept the bottle lid.

She had it in her palm while Nell talked, turning it with her thumb so the firelight crossed the scratched surface. Tom asked whether he could see it. She handed it over, then reached for it again before he’d finished looking.

He gave it back without making a joke.

Nessa watched from the next shelter.

“Keep it where you can find it,” she said.

Dena looked at her.

“Mine’s beside the bed. The mirror.”

“Will I need it?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you’ll just want to know where it is.”

Dena closed her hand around the lid.

Nell found a short piece of cord, and together they worked it through the little loop on the bottle cap. Dena tied it to the strap of her bag.

Nobody called it rubbish from the landing.

Nobody offered her something shinier.

I went past on my way to tell Toby about Ari’s wound and saw the lid catch the firelight once more.

We had found her because she’d kept trying to make that small piece of metal visible.

It deserved a place among the things she’d brought home.

I told the others about the strip after Ari had eaten.

The people who needed to hear were close enough that I didn’t have to speak across the whole camp.

Luna. Sera. Risa. Wren. Holt. Dot.

Toby listened from the doorway, inside his wall. I hadn’t asked him to come nearer.

I showed the pictures.

The dark strip. The broken bracket. The Teeming placing itself between that and Ari.

“Same as the spine?” Holt asked.

“Same kind of blindness when I look at it. That isn’t proof it’s the same thing.”

Risa nodded.

“A signal, perhaps. Not enough to identify. I stopped.”

“Good,” Luna said.

Sera looked at the strip for a long time.

“Do all their pods have one?”

Nobody answered.

That was the next question.

We did not go out in the dark to find out.

Dot marked the wreck positions. Luna wrote down what could be checked from pictures and what would need somebody close enough to look.

No one was to pull at a dark piece beneath a seat because they wanted to be useful.

Toby stayed away from any recovered equipment until we understood it better.

He nodded before Luna had finished saying it.

“I don’t want to hear that by accident.”

“Neither do we,” I said.

His fork rested across his knees.

He hadn’t needed it to save anyone today.

I wanted to keep it that way for as long as he wanted it kept.

The queen’s guide came with the cup while we were still talking.

Dot met it at the field turn and called Luna. The ordinary water check, perhaps. The same familiar pause beside the scarecrow.

I went with Luna, carrying the slate with the picture of the strip.

Not the object itself.

Just what we’d seen.

We showed the water first. Both routes running. The marks where they belonged. The guide touched the cup and set it beside the trough.

Then I laid the picture where it could look.

It went still.

The limb above the cup lowered.

After a long moment, it touched the dark shape on the screen.

Then turned toward the upper opening.

It didn’t take the cup.

That was what I noticed most.

Every visit had become a small procession of vessels. Soil-marked cup. Clean cup. The pale fiber beside one, the dark smear inside the other.

Now it left ours on the stone and began walking back.

Stopped after a few paces.

Looked toward us.

Luna looked at me.

“Tomorrow. In daylight.”

I nodded.

We didn’t know how to say tomorrow yet.

So we stayed where we were, set the screen down beside the cup, and let it see us remain.

The guide waited.

Then went below alone.

Dot kept watching the opening long after it had disappeared.

Sera found me by the name board afterward.

I had been staring at the new names without reading them.

She took my hand.

“You brought him.”

“Yes.”

“And left the thing.”

“Yes.”

She leaned against my shoulder.

“Good.”

I looked toward the dark beyond the camp.

“What if it’s the answer to why they sent them?”

“Then it will still be a question in the morning.”

I let out a breath.

She turned toward me and kissed me, slowly enough that I stopped looking past her.

When she stepped back, Risa was coming along the path with two bowls.

Luna followed with a blanket over her arm.

We sat together before the food grew cold.

Day 442. What fell.

Nell remembered twenty-seven on Dena’s hatch. Asha confirmed the mark. Dot learned to hear the wrist requests.

Dena Holt, sixteen. Beneath the white shelf. Moved loose stones until she could get out. Signaled with a bottle lid. Nell’s squad together again.

Ari Mercer, fifteen. River bend. Injured calf. Teeming brought water and a dry place to sit.

Dark strip beside his pod bracket. Can’t see into it. Risa sensed something faint and stopped. Ari thinks it came from under his seat.

Teeming kept it apart from him. Stayed beside it when we left.

Recorded. Didn’t bring it home.

Fourteen observed trails. Fourteen passengers found. Thirty-six humans here. Two kits. Keep watching beyond the known fall.

Check the other pods carefully. Toby stays clear of recovered equipment.

Showed the guide the picture after the water check.

It left the cup behind and went toward the chamber.

Tomorrow, in daylight.