Scarecrow

New Halcyon was still asleep when we came out of the dark.

Not the city. The dome. The great grey bubble on the brown poisoned plain, with the ring street round the inside of its wall and the towers going up in the middle like the bones of something, and the Ministry on its hill. It was the hour before the lamps came on. The hour the filter used to wake, at home, at five. Everything inside the glass was dim and blue and very still.

The Ground went down first. Slowly. Out to the east, on the ash, at the place where the east locks opened onto nothing, where Pell’s people had come out at night for two years, a family at a time. She set down on the ash so gently it barely lifted, and opened her ramp, and the heavy queen in her heart hummed, so low that I felt it in the Scarecrow’s deck from three miles off.

Then the Scarecrow went over the dome.

She went up over the top, the way she had the first time, with Voss in the Senate Annex below. And hung there. And the Drenn queen in her room unfolded her arms from the rests and held them out. And the four long fins of the Scarecrow opened, slowly, one after another, over the whole of New Halcyon, the way a scarecrow’s arms go out over a field.

Nothing from the sky would reach anyone under them, Aster said, while the arms were out.

Nothing from inside would get the chance to look up and be afraid of the sky, either. We’d come in the dark on purpose.

”Two hours,” said Safi. At the helm. ”Then the lamps come on, and everyone looks up.”

”Two hours,” I said.

I looked down through the deck. Through the dome. Through the ring street and the towers and the hill. Down, past the Ministry, into the floors under it, where the old Program halls had been when Mother was young. Where Ruth had been twenty-three and sat up with the ones who didn’t wake.

I’d known there would be rows. Odell had said rows.

I hadn’t known how many.

”Lucas,” said Ruth. Beside me. Very quietly. ”Tell me.”

I didn’t, for a moment. I couldn’t find where to start.

Long halls. Low. Under the Ministry, four floors of them, one under another, going down into the rock. Lit very faintly blue. And in every hall, beds. Not benches. Beds. In rows. Close together. So close you couldn’t have walked between them without turning sideways.

And in the beds, people.

Thousands.

Most of them asleep. Some of them not asleep. Some of them the other thing. The thing Ruth had sat up with, at twenty-three. Still and grey, with the silver in them gone wrong, spreading through them in a fog that didn’t know where it was supposed to go, because nobody had gone slowly enough to tell it.

And some of them awake. Lying on their backs in the blue light with their eyes open, looking at the ceiling. Waiting to find out which kind they were going to be.

”How many?” said Ruth.

I counted. Not the way Wren counts. The way I count, by looking.

”Eleven thousand,” I said. ”Four floors. About eleven thousand. Maybe—” I stopped. ”About two thousand of them aren’t going to wake up. Not without help. Soon.”

Ruth didn’t say anything at all.

Then she buttoned her coat. Properly. All the way up. The first time I’d ever seen her do it right.

”Then we’ll need to go slowly,” she said. ”And fast.”

The suit bay first. Okafor had said. The thirty-one first.

I took us down through the glass. Ruth, and Sigmund, and the twins, and Tally with Genny’s notebook. I asked the dome to open the way I’d asked it the first time, and it opened like water, and closed behind us, and we went down through the blue still air of the dome, past the towers, past the ring street, past the long dark windows of the lower floors, to the old bay on the far side of the training levels where I’d learned metallurgy every evening when I was a cadet who’d never seen a forge since Father’s.

The doors were the same doors. Heavier than I remembered. Rustier. I asked them to open.

He was at the bench.

The same bench. With the same lamp, the one lamp, that I’d seen on the screen every midnight for a month. Old and white-haired and bent, with his burned hands flat on the steel in front of him. Not working. Just sitting. Waiting.

He looked up when the doors opened.

He didn’t stand. I don’t think he could, for a moment. He just sat there on his stool and looked at me in the doorway, with Ruth behind me, and Sigmund, and the twins, and a small silver-haired child with a notebook.

”Dask,” he said.

His voice cracked on it.

”Odell.”

He looked at me for a long time. Up and down. At the silver round my eyes. At my hands. At the scarf round my neck, Garnet’s grey one, lumpy where her rows began.

”You got bigger,” he said at last.

”So did you,” I said. ”Older.”

”Older.” He laughed. It turned into a cough. ”That’s the word.”

Then he stood up. Very slowly. With one hand on the bench. And walked across the bay to me, and stopped, and put out one burned hand. And I took it.

It was exactly the same. The burns in exactly the same places. The grip exactly as strong.

”I’ve got something of yours,” said Odell.

He went to the back of the bay. To the old racks, where the suits had hung. They were mostly empty. Dusty. A few old housings. A few broken plates.

And one suit. On the end. Hanging very straight, the way he’d always hung them, with the helmet on the hook above.

Suit three.

I’d built it with him. Every evening, for weeks. My first. Before I knew what I could do. Before I knew anything. I’d stood in this bay with a file in my hand and learned how steel wanted to be shaped, slowly, the way Father had, and Odell had shown me where the seams went and where the plates overlapped and where the holes were. The holes, in the back, at the joints, where Odell’s design had left them for the plates to flex. Where the steel was thin. Where anything could get in.

I could have closed them. I’d known, even then, that I could have closed them. I’d stood behind the suit with my hand on the cold steel and felt exactly how easy it would be.

And I’d left them.

Because Odell had put them there. Because they were his. Because closing them would have been saying his suit was wrong, and it wasn’t wrong, it was his.

He took it down off the rack. Very carefully. And turned it round. And showed me the back.

The holes were still there. Every one.

”I kept it,” said Odell. ”Thirty years in this bay, and every suit I ever built went out to someone and came back broken or didn’t come back. And this one I kept.” He put his thumb on one of the holes. ”Because you left them. When you could have closed them. And nobody had ever done that before. Not for me.” He looked up. ”Every housing they sent down here after the Chancellor’s broadcast, I thought about this suit. I thought, if he left a hole, I’ll leave one.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

Behind me, Genny wrote something in her notebook.

”They’re in the back,” said Odell. ”All thirty-one. I scheduled them for adjustment. Nobody checked. Nobody checks anything down here.”

”Can they walk?”

”They can do what they’re told,” said Odell. Quietly. ”That’s the trouble. They can do anything they’re told. Walk. Sit. Stand. Stop. They’d walk into the furnace if I told them to.” He looked at Tally. ”I haven’t told them anything since they came. Not one thing. I just told them someone was counting. Like I said I would.”

He opened the door at the back of the bay.

They were sitting on the floor.

In rows. Of course in rows. Thirty-one of them, on the cold floor of the old fitting room behind the bay, sitting very straight with their hands in their laps. Grown men and women, most of them. A few very young. Lower-floor faces, thin, tired, the kind of faces that had been promised a ration card and a higher room.

And round each neck, a housing. Grey. Grown in. Going down the back of each one, under the shirt, in a long smooth curve, into the spine.

And in each housing, where the sliver sat, I could see it. The little piece of queen. Not singing. Not humming. Just pushing. Quietly. All the time. Into the silver round it. The same shape, over and over.

Do what you’re told. Do what you’re told. Do what you’re told.

They didn’t look up when the door opened.

They didn’t look at anything. They sat with their eyes open, looking at the floor in front of them, waiting to be told what to do.

All except one.

At the end of the second row. A young man. Very thin. With dark hair that somebody had cut very short, not well. He was sitting like the others. Straight. Hands in his lap. But his head had turned. Very slightly. Toward the door. Toward us.

Toward Tally.

Tally walked into the room.

Past me. Past Ruth. Into the middle of the rows. With the notebook open on her arm to the page that said EARTH, and thirty-one marks under it, and the pencil in her other hand.

She stopped in front of the young man at the end of the second row.

”You asked,” she said. ”What counting was. Odell told us. You asked him.”

The young man looked at her.

He didn’t answer. His mouth moved. Nothing came out. The sliver in his housing pushed. I could see it. Do what you’re told. Do what you’re told. And there was nothing to do. Nobody had told him anything. He was sitting very still in the gap between one thing he’d been told and the next.

And in the gap, very small, something was trying to ask.

”I will show you,” said Tally.

She knelt down in front of him. At his height. The way Voss had sat down on the grass in front of her. She held the notebook up so he could see the page. The thirty-one marks. Four lines down, one across.

”This is you,” said Tally. And put her finger on the first mark. ”One.”

The young man looked at the mark for a long time.

”It means someone knows you are here,” said Tally. ”It means if you are gone, someone will notice.” She looked up at him. ”That is what counting is for.”

The young man’s hand moved.

Out of his lap. Very slowly. Shaking. The sliver pushing against it the whole way. Do what you’re told. Do what you’re told. And nobody had told him to move his hand.

He moved it anyway.

Out. Toward the notebook. Toward the mark.

One finger. Out.

He put it on the mark. Very lightly. Beside Tally’s.

Ruth made a sound behind me. Very small.

Then she was moving. Past me. Into the room. Her coat buttoned all the way to the top. She went down on her knees beside the young man, on the cold floor, the way she’d gone down on her knees in the mud for eleven thousand crossing points with Bram.

”Genny,” she said. ”Garnet. Here. Now.”

They came.

I didn’t move. I stood in the doorway with my hands at my sides. Ruth hadn’t asked me. She’d asked them.

Genny knelt on one side of the young man. Garnet on the other. Behind him, where the housing went down into his back.

”Sigmund,” said Ruth. ”His heart.”

Sigmund knelt in front. Beside Tally. And put two fingers on the young man’s chest. Very lightly.

”Fast,” he said. ”Frightened. Steady enough.”

”Genny,” said Ruth. ”Where’s it fastened?”

Genny put her hand flat on the housing. Shut her eyes.

”Everywhere,” she said. Very quietly. ”It’s grown in. Like Tally’s grey. Little roots. Into the spine. Forty—” She stopped. Counted. ”Forty-three roots. And the sliver’s in the middle. It’s pushing. All the time. It’s—” She swallowed. ”It’s very sad. The sliver. It doesn’t want to push. It doesn’t know how to stop.”

”Can you open it?”

”Through the hole,” said Genny. ”Odell’s hole. In the back. Garnet can get in through there.” She opened her eyes. ”One root at a time. I’ll tell her every one. Twice.”

”Garnet?”

Garnet’s silver had come up her arms. Small and wobbly. Her face was very white.

”Yes,” she said.

”Then go,” said Ruth. ”Slowly. If I say stop, you stop.”

It took forty minutes.

I stood in the doorway and watched. My hands were at my sides and they were shaking and I could see every root, every one, all forty-three of them, exactly where they went into his spine, and I could have had the whole housing off in less than a second.

I didn’t move.

Odell stood beside me. He didn’t say anything either. He watched the twins with his old pale eyes and his burned hands hanging at his sides.

”First root,” said Genny. ”Top. On the left. Near the neck. It’s very small. It goes in like a hair. Garnet. Top, left, near the neck.”

”Top, left, near the neck.”

Garnet’s silver went in through the hole. Very slow. Following her sister’s face. Not the housing.

”Out,” said Genny. ”Gently. It’s coming. It’s—there.” A breath. ”Second root. Just under it. Same side.”

”Same side.”

Forty-three times. Every one. Out loud. Twice.

Sigmund’s two fingers on the young man’s chest the whole time. Ruth’s hand on his wrist. Counting. Tally in front of him with the notebook, with his one finger still on the first mark and hers beside it.

And the young man sat very still. Not because he’d been told to. I could see it. Because Tally was in front of him with her finger on the mark. Because she’d said someone knows you are here. Because he was holding on to that the way Wren held on to the stone.

At the forty-third root, the housing came off.

Garnet lifted it away from his neck. Very carefully. Grey and curved and empty, with forty-three tiny roots hanging off the inside of it like the hair of something drowned. And in the middle, the sliver. Very small. Pale. Not pushing any more. Just lying there in the housing, very quiet.

Genny held out her hand for it.

Garnet gave her the housing.

Genny looked at the sliver for a long time. Then she put one finger on it. Very lightly.

”It’s all right,” she said to it. Very softly. ”You can stop now. Nobody’s going to tell you to push any more.” She looked up at Ruth. ”It wants to go home. To the rest of the queen it came from. It doesn’t know where she is.” She closed her hand round the housing. ”I’ll keep it. Until we find out.”

The young man’s head dropped forward.

All at once. Like a string cut. His shoulders went. His hands fell out of his lap onto the floor. And Sigmund said ”steady—” and Ruth said ”his heart—” and Sigmund said ”I’ve got it—”

And then the young man took a breath.

A long one. Ragged. The kind you take when you’ve been holding your breath for a very long time and didn’t know you were.

And he lifted his head.

And looked at Tally.

Not because he’d been told to. Because he wanted to see her.

”Where,” he said. His voice was very hoarse. As if he hadn’t used it in a long time. ”Where am I.”

Tally didn’t answer at once. She looked at the notebook. At the first mark, with his finger still beside hers.

”That was a question,” she said.

”Yes,” said the young man. Slowly. Looking at her. ”I think it was.”

His name was Jory.

He knew it. That was the thing. He hadn’t known it was a thing he was allowed to have. But when Ruth asked, very gently, with her hand still on his wrist, he thought about it for a long time and then said it. Jory. As if he’d found it at the bottom of a pocket.

”Jory Hale,” he said. ”From Forty-one. The waterworks. My mother—” He stopped. His face did something. ”I came for the ration card. For her. They said a higher room. I don’t—” He looked down at his hands on the floor. ”I don’t remember after.”

”That’s all right,” said Ruth. ”You don’t need to. Not today.”

Tally wrote something on the page. Under the first mark. Very small, in Genny’s square letters.

JORY.

Thirty more.

Odell’s two hours had become one. Ruth knew it. She looked at the rows. At the thirty, sitting very straight with their hands in their laps and the slivers pushing. Then at the twins.

Garnet was grey under the white. Genny’s hands were shaking.

”Forty minutes each,” said Ruth. ”Thirty more. That’s twenty hours.” She shook her head. ”We don’t have twenty hours. They don’t.”

”We take them with us,” said Odell. From the doorway. ”They’ll walk. If someone tells them to.”

Ruth’s mouth went into a line.

”I don’t want anyone telling them anything,” she said.

”Then ask,” said Tally.

Everyone looked at her.

She’d stood up. She was standing in the middle of the rows, very small, very straight, with the notebook.

”They cannot hear asking,” said Tally. ”Not yet. The slivers push too hard. But Jory heard. He heard because I showed him the mark.” She turned the notebook round so that it faced the rows. ”If I show them their marks. Each one. And ask. Maybe some of them will hear.”

She went down the rows.

One at a time. Thirty times. She knelt in front of each of them. At their height. She held up the notebook. She put her finger on their mark.

”This is you,” she said. ”Two.” And: ”This is you. Three.” And: ”Someone knows you are here. Will you come with me?”

And most of them didn’t hear. They sat with their eyes on the floor and the slivers pushing and nothing changed at all.

But some of them did.

Not much. Not like Jory. A finger moving. A head turning, very slightly, toward the mark. Something in the eyes. Ruth went down the rows behind Tally and watched each one, and every time she saw it she put her hand on their shoulder and said, very quietly, ”Good. Thank you. Stand up when you’re ready.”

And some of them stood up.

Nine. The first time down the rows.

Tally went down the rows again.

Fourteen.

And a third time. Very slowly. With Jory beside her now. Walking very carefully on legs that didn’t remember how to walk unless they’d been told. Holding her notebook for her so she could kneel.

Twenty-two.

”The rest I’ll tell,” said Odell. Quietly. To Ruth. ”I’m sorry. I’ll tell them. Just to walk. Just to the ship. And then I’ll stop and never tell them anything again.”

Ruth looked at the nine still sitting. At their eyes on the floor.

”Yes,” she said. ”Do it. I’m sorry too.”

So Odell told them. Very gently, in his old cracked voice, standing in front of the rows with his burned hands at his sides. Stand up. Walk with the girl. Up the stairs. Onto the ship.

They stood up. All nine. At once. And walked. Very straight. Exactly as they’d been told.

Odell watched them go. His face was grey.

”That’s the last thing I’ll ever tell anyone,” he said.

I took them up through the glass.

All thirty-one, and Odell, and Ruth and Sigmund and the twins and Tally. Up through the dome, in the last blue dark before the lamps, the way I’d taken people up out of New Halcyon before, more than once. Into the Scarecrow’s belly. Where Safi had the hold lit and warm and blankets laid out on the floor and bread, because Okafor said the first thing anyone gets is bread.

At the top of the ramp, Tally stood with her notebook. And as each one came up, she made a mark. Not on the EARTH page. On a new one. That she’d headed, very carefully, in the dark, while the twins worked: HOME.

One mark for Jory. Who’d walked up holding her hand.

Thirty more.

Odell came last. He stopped at the top of the ramp. Tally looked up at him. At the old white-haired man with the burned hands, carrying suit three over his shoulder like a sack.

”Are you to be counted?” she said.

Odell looked at her for a long time.

”I don’t know,” he said. ”I’ve never been.”

Tally made a mark.

”Thirty-two,” she said.

Then the Program floors.

I’m not going to tell all of it.

Not because I don’t remember. I remember every bed. I’m not going to tell all of it because Ruth asked me not to. She said some of it belongs to the people in the beds, and they’ll tell it when they want to, or they won’t, and either is their right.

I’ll tell this much.

We went down. Ruth and Sigmund and me. The twins stayed on the Scarecrow with the thirty-one, because Garnet was grey and Genny’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking and Ruth said, very firmly, no more today. Down through the dome. Down through the hill and the Ministry and into the rock, four floors, to the long low halls with the blue light and the beds in rows.

There were doctors there. Not many. Six, on the night shift. In the Program uniform. Very young, most of them. They looked up when we came through the ceiling and didn’t run, because there was nowhere to run, and because, Ruth said afterward, they’d been waiting for someone to come through the ceiling for a long time.

One of them was sitting beside a bed at the end of the first hall. A young woman. In the uniform. With her hand on the wrist of the man in the bed, who was grey and still and going wrong in a fog. She was writing numbers on a chart.

She looked up at Ruth.

Ruth looked at her.

”How old are you?” said Ruth.

”Twenty-three,” said the young doctor.

Ruth didn’t say anything for a long moment.

”What’s your name?”

”Ashworth. Neve Ashworth.” The young doctor looked at the chart in her hand. At the numbers. ”I’m the youngest. On this floor. I take blood. I write the numbers.” Her voice was very steady and her hands weren’t. ”I sit with the ones who don’t wake up.”

Ruth put her hand on the young doctor’s shoulder.

”So did I,” she said. ”Come with me.”

Two thousand and some, that night, who weren’t going to wake.

I did what I could.

Not all of it. Not finishing them. Not the way I’d finished Holt and Jessa and the thirty-one in their chairs, slowly, a door a morning, out from the heart. There wasn’t time. There were two thousand of them and the lamps were coming on in less than an hour.

But I could tell the silver where it was supposed to go. Not all the way. Just enough. Just the fog, going wrong, spreading where it shouldn’t. I could look at it and tell it, not there. Here. This is the shape you’re meant to be. Hold this until someone comes and finishes you properly.

It listened. Mostly.

I went down the rows. Every one. Ruth behind me with her hand on every wrist. Sigmund behind her, with two fingers on every heart that skipped. Neve Ashworth behind him, with her chart, writing down every name, because Ruth told her to, and because she knew them. Every one. She’d been sitting with them.

I didn’t get to all of them.

I want that written down too. In the same place on the page as the line of children with faces, under the ring. So Ruth reads it every year.

I didn’t get to all of them. There were a hundred and twelve I was too late for. They were already gone into the fog when I reached them, so far there was nothing left to tell. Neve Ashworth wrote down every one of their names. Ruth made her. And then Ruth took the chart from her and wrote them again, herself, in her own small upright writing, under the forty-one from Program Cinder.

The lamps came on at dawn.

All over New Halcyon. In the towers. On the ring street. In the windows of the lower floors. And everyone who looked up looked up through the dome at a long dark ship hanging over them with her four arms out, and a name on her side in gold.

And then they looked east. Where the Ground sat on the ash at the east locks with her ramp down.

And I put doors in the glass.

Three of them. At the east. The way I had the last time, for Voss’s broadcast. And the people from the Program floors came up out of the rock, the ones who could walk, holding each other up, in the old Program gowns, with Neve Ashworth and the other five young doctors walking with them. Eleven thousand, less the hundred and twelve. Less the ones who couldn’t walk, who I carried, a hall at a time, up through the hill and the glass, the way Mother carried three bowls and the flour and the eggs.

And behind them, the others.

Not everyone. Not four million. Not even most. But people who’d seen the Program floors from their windows and been waiting, Odell said, for anyone to open a door. Families. Grandmothers. Dogs. A man with a violin. A woman pushing a cart full of seed trays. Walking. Not running. East. Through the doors. Onto the ash. Up the ramp of the Ground, where the heavy queen hummed so low that every one of them felt it in their feet the moment they set foot on the iron, and stopped, and looked down, and some of them cried.

Meg’s daughter’s bread was at the top of every ramp.

Nobody stopped us.

I kept waiting for it. Soldiers. The Council. Something from the Ministry. Someone to stand in the street and say the Accord stands.

Nobody came.

”They don’t know what to do,” said Odell. Standing beside me at the top of the Scarecrow’s ramp, with suit three still over his shoulder, watching the line of people walking east through the glass. ”The small polite one used to tell them. Now there’s no one to tell them.” He looked at the Ministry on its hill. ”They’ve had thirty years of being told. They don’t know how to decide anything.”

”They decided Cinder.”

”They decided Cinder because they were frightened,” said Odell. ”That’s not deciding. That’s the other thing.” He shifted the suit on his shoulder. ”They’ll decide something soon. When they work out what’s happened. They’ll lock the Program floors. They’ll close the outer domes’ bands. They’ll do something.” He looked at me. ”So you’d better be quick, Dask. With the rest.”

”We will.”

”Good,” said Odell. ”Thirty-one crossings, the Major said.”

”Thirty.”

”Thirty.” He was quiet. ”I’ll help. If you’ll let me. I know every band on every dome. I built them.” He looked at his hands. ”And there’s a lot of housings out there now. In the outer domes too. They’ve been sending them out. I’ll need to know where to look.”

The Ground lifted at noon.

Full. Every deck. Every room with a door that closed from the inside. Eleven thousand from the Program floors and the rest from the city, more than sixty thousand, Wren said through Juno when she counted them. And the heavy queen, humming, carrying, with her young in a ring round her in the room in the middle with the door open.

Then the Scarecrow folded her arms.

I stood at the forward window. Ruth on one side. Sigmund on the other, with his two fingers still a little blue at the tips.

And behind us, on the floor of the hold, in a long row, the thirty-one. On blankets. With bread. Some of them eating, because someone had asked, and they’d heard. Some of them just holding the bread, because no one had told them what to do with it, and they were waiting.

And in the middle of the row, Jory.

Sitting very straight. With his hands in his lap. Not because he’d been told to.

Because Tally was beside him with the notebook open on her knee, and he was watching her make a mark for every person in the hold. One at a time. Four lines down. One across.

”What is the last one?” he said. Pointing.

”That is Odell,” said Tally.

”Why is he last?”

”Because he asked to be counted,” said Tally. ”No. He did not ask. He said he had never been. So I counted him. That is a thing you can do.” She looked at Jory. ”Count someone who has never been.”

Jory looked at the mark for a long time.

”May I,” he said. Slowly. Finding each word. ”May I have the pencil.”

Tally gave it to him.

And Jory Hale, from Forty-one, the waterworks, who’d been told what to do every day since he came for a ration card for his mother, turned to a clean page in Genny’s notebook. And wrote at the top, very slowly, very crookedly, not in Genny’s square letters, in his own:

TALLY.

And under it, one mark.

Tally looked at it.

She didn’t say anything for a very long time.

Then she put one finger out. And touched the mark. Very lightly.

The Scarecrow turned the page.

Day 2136. Suit three.

New Halcyon still asleep, the hour the filter used to wake at five. The Ground set down on the ash at the east locks where Pell’s people came out, so gently it barely lifted, the heavy queen humming three miles into our deck. The Scarecrow went over the dome and the Drenn queen held out her arms, and the four fins opened over the whole city like a scarecrow’s arms over a field. Safi: two hours, then the lamps, and everyone looks up.

Under the Ministry, four floors of long low halls lit faint blue; beds in rows so close you’d turn sideways to pass; eleven thousand. Most asleep; some awake looking at the ceiling waiting to find out which kind they’d be; and about two thousand going the other way, the silver gone to fog that didn’t know where it should go because nobody went slowly enough to tell it. Ruth buttoned her coat properly, all the way up, the first time I’ve seen it. Then we go slowly. And fast.

The suit bay doors heavier and rustier; Odell at the same bench under the one lamp, waiting. Dask. You got bigger. So did you; older. He laughed into a cough, then crossed the bay and gave me his burned hand, the grip exactly as strong. I’ve got something of yours. Suit three on the end of the rack, my first, built with him every evening before I knew anything; the holes at the back joints where his design let the plates flex, which I could have closed and didn’t because they were his. Thirty years every suit went out and came back broken or didn’t; this one he kept because nobody had ever done that for him. If he left a hole, I’ll leave one.

Thirty-one on the floor of the fitting room in rows, hands in their laps, lower-floor faces promised a ration card; housings grown down their backs into the spine; in each a sliver pushing, not singing: do what you’re told. They’d walk into the furnace if told. I haven’t told them anything since they came; I told them someone was counting. All eyes on the floor but one, a thin young man at the end of the second row, head turned a little toward the door, toward Tally.

Tally knelt at his height with EARTH and thirty-one marks: you asked what counting was. In the gap between one thing he’d been told and the next, something very small trying to ask. This is you. One. It means someone knows you’re here; if you’re gone, someone will notice; that’s what counting is for. His hand came out of his lap, shaking, the sliver pushing the whole way, nobody telling him to; one finger on the mark beside hers.

Ruth on her knees: Genny, Garnet, here, now. She didn’t ask me. Sigmund’s two fingers on his chest: fast, frightened, steady enough. Genny: grown in like Tally’s grey, forty-three roots into the spine, the sliver pushing in the middle; it’s very sad; it doesn’t want to push and doesn’t know how to stop. Through Odell’s hole; one root at a time; I’ll tell her every one twice. Forty minutes, me in the doorway with my hands shaking at my sides, seeing every root, not moving; Odell beside me silent. Top, left, near the neck. Top, left, near the neck. Forty-three times, out loud, twice. He sat still not because he’d been told but because Tally’s finger was on the mark.

The housing came away, forty-three roots hanging inside like the hair of something drowned, the sliver lying quiet. Genny, one finger on it: you can stop now; nobody will tell you to push any more. It wants to go home to the rest of its queen and doesn’t know where she is; I’ll keep it till we find out. His head dropped like a cut string; Sigmund: I’ve got it. A long ragged breath; he lifted his head to look at her because he wanted to. Where am I. That was a question. Yes; I think it was. Jory Hale, from Forty-one, the waterworks, found like something at the bottom of a pocket; came for a ration card for his mother; doesn’t remember after. Not today. Under the first mark, small: JORY.

Forty minutes each, thirty more, twenty hours we didn’t have; the twins grey and shaking. Odell: they’ll walk if told. I don’t want anyone telling them anything. Tally: then ask; they can’t hear asking yet, but Jory heard because I showed him the mark. Down the rows thirty times at their height: this is you; two; three; someone knows you’re here; will you come with me? Most didn’t hear. Some did: a finger, a head turning, something in the eyes; Ruth’s hand on each shoulder: good; thank you; stand up when you’re ready. Nine. Again, fourteen. A third time, Jory beside her on legs that don’t remember walking unless told, holding the notebook so she could kneel: twenty-two. The last nine Odell told, gently: stand, walk with the girl, onto the ship. That’s the last thing I’ll ever tell anyone.

Up through the dome in the last blue dark into the Scarecrow’s hold, warm, blankets, bread. At the top of the ramp a new page: HOME. Jory, who walked up holding her hand; thirty more. Odell last with suit three over his shoulder like a sack. Are you to be counted? I don’t know; I’ve never been. Thirty-two.

The Program floors I won’t tell all of, because Ruth asked; some of it belongs to the people in the beds. The twins stayed aboard; no more today. Six young doctors on the night shift who didn’t run because they’d been waiting a long time for someone to come through the ceiling. At the end of the first hall a young woman writing numbers, hand on a grey man’s wrist. How old? Twenty-three. Name? Neve Ashworth; the youngest; I take blood, write the numbers, sit with the ones who don’t wake. Ruth’s hand on her shoulder: so did I. Come with me.

Two thousand and some that night who wouldn’t wake. Not finishing; no time; I told the fog where to go: not there, here, hold this shape till someone finishes you properly. It listened, mostly. Down every row; Ruth on every wrist, Sigmund on every heart that skipped, Neve writing every name because she knew them. A hundred and twelve I was too late for, already gone too far into the fog. Written where the line of children with faces is. Neve wrote their names; then Ruth wrote them again in her own hand under the forty-one from Program Cinder.

The lamps came on and everyone looked up at a dark ship with her arms out and a name in gold, then east at the Ground on the ash. Three doors in the glass, as for Voss. Eleven thousand from the Program floors less the hundred and twelve, in gowns, holding each other up, the six young doctors with them; those who couldn’t walk I carried a hall at a time like Mother’s three bowls. Behind them people who’d watched the Program floors from their windows waiting for anyone to open a door: families, grandmothers, dogs, a man with a violin, a cart of seed trays. They stepped onto the Ground’s iron, felt the heavy queen hum through their feet, stopped, and some of them cried. Meg’s daughter’s bread at the top of every ramp.

Nobody stopped us. Odell: they don’t know what to do; the small polite one used to tell them; thirty years of being told and they can’t decide anything. They decided Cinder. Because they were frightened; that’s not deciding, that’s the other thing. They’ll lock the Program floors, close the outer domes’ bands; be quick. I know every band on every dome; I built them; there are housings in the outer domes now too.

The Ground lifted at noon, every deck, more than sixty thousand, Wren said through Juno. The Scarecrow folded her arms. In the hold the thirty-one on blankets with bread, some eating because someone asked and they heard, some holding it waiting to be told. Jory, sitting straight, not because he was told, watching Tally mark everyone. What’s the last one? Odell. Why last? He said he’d never been counted, so I counted him; you can do that; count someone who has never been. May I have the pencil. A clean page, crooked, his own hand, not Genny’s letters: TALLY. One mark. She said nothing a long time, then put one finger out and touched it. The Scarecrow turned the page.