Scarecrow

We sat down.

The General had said we would want to, and so we did it before he arrived, as if sitting early might help.

We chose our own house this time. Luna’s decision again. The receiving room was for witnesses, she said, and this wasn’t testimony. This was something being handed to us, and she wanted it handed to us at our own table.

So the General came to the house at the second hour of Day 601, and found us waiting.

All four of us around the table. Holt in the chair by the window, because Luna had asked him and he had said he’d come only if he could sit somewhere he could get up from without anyone watching. Sigmund on the bench by the door, because Risa had asked him. Dot in the corner, lowered on her legs, her lamps dimmed to a quiet steady blue.

Adela came with the General, carrying her case.

She looked at Luna.

”Recorded?”

Luna glanced at her father.

”Yes,” the General said, before she could answer. ”Please. I want this one kept more than any of the others.”

He didn’t take the chair at the end of the table. He stood behind it with his hands resting on its back, and didn’t sit down until Luna looked at him and said, ”Sit.”

He sat.

He didn’t bring paper. He didn’t need it.

”I said I’d give it to you word for word,” he said. ”I’ll start at the beginning, because the end doesn’t make sense without it. It isn’t long. It was written by people who wanted it signed before anyone read it too carefully.”

He closed his eyes.

And he began to recite.

He did it the way Luna counted. Clearly. Without hurrying. Every word set down where it belonged.

Accord between the Human Species and the Patron Authority, entered into on the ninety-first day of the Northern Withdrawal.

Article One. The Human Species, through its surviving government, accepts the patronage of the Patron Authority in perpetuity, and in exchange is granted continuance.

He opened his eyes.

”Continuance,” he said. ”That was the word. Not peace. Not ceasefire. Continuance. As if we were a subscription.”

He closed them again.

Article Two. Hostilities against the Human Species shall cease. Atmospheric containment shall be provided for designated population centres. The surface outside those centres is ceded to the Patron Authority as a buffer.

The domes.

The poisoned land.

Father’s field.

Article Three. In consideration of continuance, the Human Species shall provide to the Patron Authority personnel of modified type for service on fronts designated by the Patron Authority. Quotas to be set by the Patron’s representative.

I felt Sera go still beside me. I knew she was thinking of her mother at the gate in the first winter, kneeling. The Kneeling Calder. Thrown out, after. When there wasn’t a war that needed her any more.

Article Four. The Human Species shall provide refined materials in quantities to be set by the Patron’s representative.

The quotas. Tess Ruan’s slate. The trial consignment that went up into the dark and never came down.

Article Five. The organisms designated by the Patron Authority as hostile are to be treated as hostile by the Human Species without exception.

Under the house, I felt our queen turn her attention upward, very slightly, at the word organisms.

I’d asked her if she wanted to listen. She’d said yes.

The General kept going.

Articles about secrecy. About the official account of the war, to be agreed between the parties and taught in schools. About the Patron’s representatives being exempt from human law. About the Project, which was to be maintained by a designated office and which was to report to the Patron directly on matters within its remit.

Holt made a small sound at that one. Not a word. Just breath let out through the nose.

”Crane,” he said.

”Crane,” the General agreed, without opening his eyes.

Then he stopped.

He was quiet for long enough that Risa shifted on her cushion, and Dot’s lamps brightened very slightly, the way they did when she was waiting for a sentence to end.

”Article Fourteen,” the General said.

He opened his eyes and looked at Risa.

He didn’t look away while he said it.

Article Fourteen. Exceptional Lineages.

Any human line in which the donor material demonstrates complete integration, whether arising naturally, through treatment, or by descent, shall be reported by the designated office to the Patron’s representative without delay.

Such lineages are the property of neither party, but shall be held in trust for the Patron Authority’s purposes.

The Patron’s representative may assess any such lineage at any time.

Where the Patron’s representative so determines, members of such a lineage shall be transferred to the Patron’s custody for cultivation.

The Human Species shall not obstruct such transfer.

Nobody said anything.

I heard the water in the queen’s channel under the floor. I heard someone in the street outside calling for a bucket. I heard Risa breathe in and not breathe out.

Complete integration.

Whether arising naturally. Through treatment. Or by descent.

I looked down at my own forearms, at the silver markings that had appeared the morning the queen gave me her share.

Through treatment.

I looked at Luna’s wrist. At Sera’s. At the silver rings around their eyes.

Through treatment.

I looked at Risa’s hand, flat on the curve of her stomach.

By descent.

”Cultivation,” Sera said.

Her voice was very quiet.

”Yes,” the General said.

”What does it mean?”

”I don’t know.” He held her gaze. ”I asked Crane once. Thirty years ago, after the signing, when we were all still sick with it. He said it was a provision for the future. He said the Patron had been looking for something for a very long time and believed humans might one day produce it. He said it would probably never be invoked.”

”And you believed him.”

”I wanted to.” He looked down at his hands on the table. ”And for thirty years it wasn’t invoked. Nobody’s donor material integrated completely. Everyone shook. Everyone needed the stabilizer, or died without it. I stopped thinking about it.” He paused. ”I’d almost forgotten it was there until last night.”

”Until you looked at Risa,” Luna said.

”Until Risa told me her daughter’s silver was whole.”

Risa still hadn’t breathed out.

I put my hand over hers on her stomach.

The baby was awake.

I felt her silver turn, small and bright, toward the place where my hand was. Then past it. Outward. Toward the voice at the end of the table.

Listening.

Sigmund stood up.

He did it so suddenly the bench scraped. He stood in the middle of our small front room with his hands at his sides, and I saw the air around his fingers shimmer, very faintly, the way it used to before he learned to hold it in.

”Who wrote it?” he said.

The General looked at him.

”Article Fourteen,” Sigmund said. ”Who wrote the words. You said Crane held the pen. Who wrote it?”

The General didn’t look away.

”Crane drafted the clause,” he said. ”Your father wrote the language. He wrote most of it. He had a gift for words that sounded like they meant less than they did.”

Sigmund went very white.

The shimmer around his hands brightened, and for a moment I thought he would lose it, the way he’d lost it on the training floor years ago, when one of the instructors had said his father’s name in the wrong tone of voice.

He didn’t.

I watched him do what Risa had been teaching him all month. He took a long breath, and felt for the charge building in his hands, and found where it wanted to go, and chose somewhere else. The air stopped shimmering.

He sat back down on the bench.

He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

”Held in trust,” he said through his fingers. ”That’s his. That’s exactly his. He used to say it about the family accounts. Held in trust for the family’s purposes. He said it about us.”

Risa reached out with her free hand.

Sigmund took it without looking up.

”The letters,” Luna said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

She was very pale. Her hands were flat on the table, the way they’d been flat on the slate at the lake.

”Lucas’s letters,” she said. ”And Sera’s. On Day 597. We sent them through the station mail. The pilot logged them for onward transfer.” She looked at me. ”We told them. About the baby. You wrote it in your letter to your mother. Risa is pregnant. We want the baby. She is well.”

The room went cold.

I’d written that.

I’d sat at this table, three days ago, with Risa reading over my shoulder and Sera telling me not to make it sound like a grooming accident, and I’d written it down. Risa had said I want them to know. We’d been so careful about who the news belonged to.

We hadn’t thought about who would read it on the way.

”Does Central Allocation read the station mail?” Luna asked her father.

The General’s face had gone grey.

”Everything addressed through the registry is opened by the designated office before onward transfer,” he said. ”It’s standard. It was standard before I was born. Security screening.”

”The designated office.”

”The Project’s office.”

”Crane’s.”

”Yes.”

Risa breathed out at last. It came out shaking.

”And the letter about my silver,” I said. ”I told Mother about the silver. That a friend had helped change it. That the pain was gone. I told her about the markings and the hair.”

”Complete integration,” Sera said softly. ”Through treatment.”

I stood up.

I didn’t decide to. I was just standing, and the table was very small, and the house was very small, and the station was up there somewhere in the morning sky beyond the roof, carrying my letter to my mother in a mail packet that someone in Crane’s office had already opened.

I could see the station from here. If I went outside. If I looked.

I could take the packet back.

I could take the whole station apart.

”Lucas,” Luna said.

”I know.”

”Sit down.”

”I know. I’m” I stopped. My hands were shaking. Not from the silver. From me. ”I can see it from the porch on the night passes. If I go up...”

”And then what?” Holt said from the window.

I turned.

He hadn’t moved from the chair. He was watching me with the same look he’d given me on the first night in the canyon, when I’d wanted to fly north alone after the deep.

”You take the letters back,” Holt said. ”The ones that were already read two days ago. You tear open a station with six hundred people on it. And Crane’s office sends a message to the Sorn, if it hasn’t already, saying the Dask boy has gone mad and torn open a station. And the next thing that comes down out of that sky isn’t a pilot with oranges.”

I stood very still.

”Sit down, son,” Holt said.

I sat down.

Sera’s hand found the back of my neck and stayed there.

”How long until the mail leaves the station?” Luna asked.

The General thought.

”The courier transit window is fourteen days after the last surface pickup,” he said. ”Sometimes longer. Packets are held, screened, logged, then loaded on the next courier jump for Earth. If your letters were picked up on Day 597, they’re still aboard. Probably.”

”Could you stop them?”

He looked at her.

Something shifted in his face. Not much. The same stillness I’d seen at the door the night before, when he’d heard the word whole.

”I could try,” he said.

”How?”

”I’m the head of Avalon Command. On paper. Station security answers to me. On paper.” He was already reaching into his jacket. ”Major Ruan is my officer. If I order the mail packet held for my personal review, she’ll hold it. Whether Crane’s office lets her is another question.”

”Do it,” Luna said.

The General looked at her for a long moment.

”If I do this,” he said, ”it’s the first order I’ve given in eight years that goes against Central Allocation. They’ll know. Crane will know. I won’t be able to tell them it was a formality.”

”Yes,” Luna said. ”I know.”

”Do you understand what that means?”

”It means you’ll have looked,” Luna said.

The General’s hand stopped in his jacket.

Then he took out a small flat receiver, not the station channel, something older, military, with a worn edge where a thumb had rested on it for years.

”My aide is on the shuttle,” he said. ”He can send it on the security frequency. I’ll need a few minutes.”

”Go,” Luna said.

He went.

He came back an hour later.

We hadn’t moved much. Priya had come with tea and bread, taken one look at the room, put everything down on the table, and left without a word. Sera had warmed the tea twice. Nobody had drunk it.

Risa had gone to lie down for a while, then come back because lying down made her feel worse. Sigmund had walked her there and back without saying anything.

Holt had gone down to the queen, and come back up, and sat in his chair by the window again.

When the General came in, I knew from his face before he said anything.

”Ruan replied,” he said.

”And?”

”She received my order. She went to the registry office herself. The mail packet from Day 597 was opened, screened, and copied by the Project office two days ago. The copy was transmitted via the high channel the same evening.” He paused. ”To Earth. Priority routing. Addressed to Director Crane.”

Luna closed her eyes.

”And the originals?” she said.

”Ruan has them. She’s holding them in her own safe. She asked whether I want them returned to the surface.”

”No,” Risa said.

Everyone turned.

She was standing in the doorway to the bedroom with one hand on the frame and one on her stomach. Her face was set.

”Let them go,” Risa said. ”Let them go to Mother. To Lucas’s mother. I wrote that for her. Crane’s already read it. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t.”

”Risa,” I said.

”No.” She came into the room. Lowered herself into her chair. Put both hands flat on the table. ”They’ve read it. They know. Fine. They’d have found out anyway. Toby’s reader is on the station’s medical inventory. The pilot saw your hair. Vennor saw Luna’s eyes.” She looked at me. ”We weren’t going to hide this forever, Lucas. You can’t hide a baby who builds herself.”

”I could have hidden her for longer.”

”For what? Until she’s born? Until she walks?” Risa’s voice cracked, and then steadied. ”Then what? We hide her in a room under the queen and never let her see the sky? That’s what they’d do. That’s what they did to everyone else.”

Nobody answered.

Then Luna said, very quietly, ”She’s right.”

I looked at her.

”She’s right,” Luna said again. ”We don’t hide her. We stop them.”

The General was watching his daughter.

”Ruan’s waiting for an answer,” he said. ”About the originals.”

”Tell her to send them on,” Risa said. ”To Lucas’s mother, with the courier, the way they were meant to go. And to Sera’s. Unopened again. If that’s possible.”

”It isn’t,” the General said. ”They’ve been opened.”

”Then tell her to send them anyway.”

The General looked at Luna.

Luna looked at Risa.

Then at me.

I thought of Mother at the table in the penthouse, opening a letter in my handwriting. Reading Risa is pregnant. We want the baby. She is well. I thought of her hands, which shook, holding the page still enough to read it twice.

Crane had read it first.

That didn’t make it his.

”Send them,” I said.

The queen asked to speak when the General had gone back out to his aide.

I went down alone. Risa wanted to come and I asked her not to, and she looked at me for a moment and then said all right, which meant she understood that I needed to be frightened somewhere she couldn’t see it.

Sera came instead.

She didn’t say anything on the way down. She just walked beside me with her hand in mine, and when we reached the ledge, she sat on it and pulled me down beside her.

The queen was waiting.

She had moved closer than usual. Her body filled most of the chamber, the new silver bright in the gaps between her plates. The mountain queen was with her too, through the connection they both allowed. I could feel the older mind like a wide slow tide beneath our queen’s quicker one.

Fourteen, the queen said.

I’d shown her the words. She’d heard them through me as the General recited them. She hadn’t understood all of it. The human ideas of trust and property and custody didn’t sit in her mind the way they sat in ours.

But she had understood cultivation.

They take what grows whole, she said.

I translated for Sera.

The mountain queen added something. Slower. Older. She showed me, rather than telling.

A world I didn’t recognise. Grey sky, low hills, a people who were not human and not Teeming, small and many-limbed and quick. Some of them carried silver. Not much. Fragments, given by a queen who had lived among them freely once.

And then the Sorn. Taking the ones who carried silver most completely. Putting them in rooms. Breeding them. Trying to make the silver grow whole in a body that wasn’t a queen’s.

It hadn’t worked.

The children had been born broken. Then their children. The Sorn had kept trying for a long time.

Then they’d stopped. Moved on. Left the world harvested and empty.

They have tried before, the mountain queen said. With other peoples. They want a mind that carries the whole pattern and is not a queen. A queen will not obey. A queen can refuse. They want something with our strength and none of our refusal.

I couldn’t speak for a moment.

Sera squeezed my hand.

”What did she say?”

I told her.

Sera’s face went very hard.

”So they want a queen they can order around,” she said.

”I think so.”

”And they think a human might be it.”

”I think so.”

”And they think the baby might be it.”

I didn’t answer.

The queen leaned closer. I felt her warmth through the stone.

She will not be it, the queen said. She is whole. That is not the same as empty. They have never understood the difference. They think a whole pattern is a vessel. A whole pattern is a person.

They will try anyway, the mountain queen said.

Then they will try, our queen said, against all of us.

She showed me the paths beneath Scarecrow. The deep refuges we’d opened together. The chambers below the chambers, where no shuttle could land and no scanner could reach. The routes to the neighbouring brood, and from there to the next queen, and the next.

If Risa needs to go where they cannot follow, she said, I will take her. I will take her farther than any human has gone. And the young one will be born among my young, and nobody will reach her who has not asked me first.

I translated that slowly.

Sera was crying a little by the end of it. She wiped her face with the heel of her hand and glared at the queen as if the queen had done it on purpose.

”Tell her thank you,” she said. ”Tell her we’ll come and get her if we need it. Tell her she’s a terrible influence.”

I told her the first two parts.

The queen understood the third anyway.

When I came back up, the house was full of noise.

Not bad noise. The kind I’d missed without noticing, the kind that had disappeared from the house for the whole of that morning.

Liam was there. Anja behind him. Toby and Wren. Priya and Dov with a pot of something. Keir, of all people, standing awkwardly by the door with Aster.

Juno, who never came to anyone’s house, sitting on the floor of the little room with her back against the wall below the cradle’s window, her arms folded, as if guarding it.

Somebody had told them.

Probably Sigmund. He was standing in the middle of the front room with his arms crossed, looking furious at nothing in particular.

Liam saw me come in.

”Nobody’s taking her,” he said. Before I could open my mouth. ”Just so you know. That’s decided. We had a vote.”

”There was no vote,” Anja said.

”There was a vote in my heart.”

”That’s not a vote, Liam.”

”It counts.”

Toby was beside Risa, holding the reader against her stomach, very quietly, while everyone else talked. He looked up at me.

”Twenty-five weeks,” he said. ”She grew while we were all sitting here being frightened.”

Risa laughed. It came out a little wild.

”Of course she did,” she said. ”She’s busy.”

It got quieter after supper.

People went home. Liam and Anja first, Liam still saying nobody under his breath every so often like a man practising a word. Then Toby and Wren. Then Priya and Dov, leaving the pot behind with instructions about reheating that Sera ignored.

Juno stayed on the floor of the little room until it was dark.

When she finally stood, I was in the doorway.

She looked at the cradle, under the window, with Toren’s hinge on the rocker and Gareth’s screen against the draught. Then at me.

”Mama kept me hidden,” she said. ”On Earth. Before the first wave. They wanted me for the program, and she lied about my numbers for two years.”

I hadn’t known that.

”She lied very badly,” Juno went on. ”She was a terrible liar. I don’t know how she got away with it.” She paused. ”I think it was because she didn’t care whether she got away with it. She just kept doing it.”

She walked past me to the door.

”I’ll lie badly for this one,” she said. ”If it helps. I’m good at it now.”

Then she went home.

The General came back at dusk.

He didn’t come in. He stood on the porch and knocked on the open door, and waited until Luna came out to him.

I was at the table. I could see them both through the doorway.

”Ruan has sent the letters on,” he said. ”With the courier, in eleven days. Unopened again, in the sense that nobody will open them again.”

”Thank you.”

”I’ve also sent a second order.” He hesitated. ”To my own office on Earth. Through a channel that doesn’t pass through Crane’s registry. I’ve placed a security detail on the Dask family’s residence. My people. Not the Project’s.”

Luna didn’t say anything for a moment.

I stood up from the table.

The twins.

I hadn’t thought about the twins.

I’d sat at this table all day thinking about the baby, about Risa, about the letters and the station and the queen’s deep refuges. I hadn’t once thought:

By descent.

Genny. Garnet.

Their silver had never been completed. They’d been born to Mother after the Project, with Father’s blood in them, and their telekinesis was enormous and their matter manipulation short-range. Halloway’s tests had said inconclusive about mine, once. I didn’t know what they’d said about theirs.

But if Crane knew my silver was whole now. If he knew my daughter’s was whole from the start.

He’d look at the twins next.

He might already be looking.

I came out onto the porch.

The General turned.

He looked at my face, and I watched him understand that I’d only just understood.

”Yes,” he said quietly. ”Your sisters. Your mother. They’re the reason I sent the order.”

”Will your people stop the Project’s people?”

”I don’t know.” He didn’t soften it. ”They’ll stop anyone from taking them out of the building without my signature. Crane can get my signature forged faster than I can get home. But it will slow him down. And it will tell him that someone is looking.”

”Are you?” Luna asked. ”Looking?”

Her father met her eyes.

”I’m going to have to stop being the man who signs things without reading them,” he said. ”I’m not sure I know how. I’m fairly sure it starts with going home.”

”When?”

”Soon. A few more days. I want to see the mountain first. The queen there. I want to stand where she was chained.” He looked out at the city. ”And I want to answer Lucas’s question, if he asks it.”

”About my father,” I said.

”About your father.”

I didn’t ask it.

Not tonight.

I looked at him for a long moment, and he looked back, and I thought: you denied him a commendation because he was brave and you weren’t. And then I thought: and today you sent an order against Crane’s office for the first time in eight years, and you did it in front of your daughter, and you knew what it would cost.

Both of those were true.

I didn’t know what to do with both of them yet.

”Tomorrow,” I said.

”Tomorrow,” the General agreed.

He went back down the steps into the dark.

Luna stood beside me on the porch for a long time without saying anything.

Then she said, ”He sent guards.”

”Yes.”

”To your mother.”

”Yes.”

”His people. Not Crane’s.” She shook her head slowly. ”He’s never once in my life done anything that might make someone important angry with him.”

”Maybe he’s starting.”

”Maybe,” Luna said.

She took my hand.

We went inside.

Risa couldn’t sleep.

She lay on her side with her back against my chest and her hand on her stomach, and every so often I felt her breathing change, as if she were about to say something, and then decide not to.

Sera was asleep on her other side. Luna was asleep on mine, finally, her page of questions folded under her pillow where she’d put it after the General left.

At last Risa said, very quietly, ”I’m not frightened.”

”I know.”

”I’m angry.”

”I know.”

”I keep thinking of my father writing it. Held in trust. He used to say it about the money. About Siggy and me. The children are held in trust for the family’s purposes. I used to think it meant he was keeping us safe.”

I held her.

”It didn’t mean that,” she said.

”No.”

She was quiet for a while.

Then I felt something I hadn’t felt before.

Risa’s anger had a charge to it. It always had. When she was furious, the air around her went sharp and dry, and small things in the room hummed. She’d learned to fold it down, the same way she folded her lightning at night so it wouldn’t spark in her sleep.

She was folding it now.

And under her hand, very faintly, something answered.

Not a kick.

A current.

Small and bright and clean, like a wire with nothing in the way, exactly as Sigmund had described it. It rose from inside her, met the edge of Risa’s folded anger, and pressed against it.

Not taking it.

Matching it.

Risa went rigid.

”Did you feel that?”

”Yes.”

”Was that her?”

I looked, carefully, with permission I’d been given for every night that week.

The baby’s silver had lit, very faintly, all along the paths Risa’s own silver ran in. Not copying them. Echoing them. The way a second string on an instrument hums when you play the first.

And the baby’s current was pressing outward, against the dark, toward the door. The same direction she’d turned when the General said Article Fourteen.

”She heard you,” I said.

Risa was crying again. Quietly. The way she cried now, which was often and without shame.

”She’s angry too,” she said.

”Or she’s on your side.”

”That’s the same thing tonight.”

The current faded.

The baby kicked once, softly, the way she did when she was settling. Then her silver went quiet and turned back to its work, lengthening something, laying something down, building.

Risa laid her hand flat over the place.

”Nobody’s taking you,” she whispered. ”Your uncle Liam had a vote about it in his heart.”

I laughed into her hair. I couldn’t help it.

She laughed too, wet and shaking.

And after a while, she slept.

Day 601. The Accord.

General Windsor recited the Accord to us from memory at our table, recorded at his request. Holt, Sigmund and Dot present. Our queen and the mountain queen listening through me.

Article One: patronage in perpetuity, in exchange for ”continuance.” Article Two: the domes, and the surface ceded as a buffer. Article Three: modified soldiers, quotas set by the Sorn. Article Four: refined material. Article Five: the Teeming to be treated as hostile without exception. The Project reports to the Sorn directly.

Article Fourteen. Exceptional Lineages. Any human line whose donor material shows complete integration, whether naturally, through treatment, or by descent, must be reported to the Sorn representative without delay. Held in trust. Assessed at any time. Transferred for ”cultivation” if the Sorn decide. Humanity may not obstruct.

Crane drafted the clause. Senator Friese wrote the words. ”Held in trust” was something he used to say about Risa and Sigmund.

My letters home went through the station registry on Day 597. The Project office opened and copied them two days ago and sent the copy to Crane by priority channel. He knows about my silver and about the baby. Ruan has the originals. Risa asked for them to go on to Mother and Sera’s mother anyway. They’ll leave with the courier in eleven days.

The mountain queen says the Sorn have tried this before with other peoples: taking the ones whose silver ran most complete and breeding them toward a queen’s strength without a queen’s refusal. It never worked. Our queen says a whole pattern is a person, not a vessel. She has offered to take Risa into the deepest refuges if she ever needs to go.

The General sent his first order against Central Allocation in eight years. Then a second: his own security detail on Mother and the twins, not the Project’s. By descent. I hadn’t thought of Genny and Garnet until he said it.

The whole house filled up this afternoon. Liam says nobody is taking her and that there was a vote in his heart. Juno guarded the little room until dark. She says she’ll lie badly for this one.

Baby: twenty-five weeks by size. She grew while we sat here being frightened.

Tonight Risa’s anger had a charge to it and the baby’s silver answered. Not taking it. Matching it. Then she pushed toward the door, the same way she turned when the General said Article Fourteen.

She’s on her mother’s side.

Tomorrow I may ask the General about Father.