Scarecrow

He found me in the garden on the roof.

The hospital had one. A long strip of grass and trees along the top of the building, beside the place where the craft had landed, with benches, and paths, and a little stream running through it in a channel of stone. People sat out there in white gowns, with nurses beside them, in the sun that came through the dome. When I came out, three of them got up and went inside.

I sat on a bench at the far end, by the rail, where you could see the city.

Crane came out about ten minutes later. Slowly, with his cane. He walked the whole length of the garden, and the people on the benches watched him go by, and then watched him stop beside me.

”May I?” he said.

I didn’t answer. He sat down at the other end of the bench anyway, with a careful space between us, and laid his cane across his knees.

We looked at the city for a while.

”Ruth tells me she squeezed your hand,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

”That’s very good,” said Crane. ”Better than I’d hoped. She’s strong. She always was.” He was quiet a moment. ”Ruth also tells me you asked her about the families.”

I turned my head.

He was looking at the city, not at me. His scarred face was calm.

”She told me to ask you,” I said.

”She told me she’d told you,” said Crane. ”She’s very honest, Ruth. It makes her a terrible employee and a very good doctor.” He folded his hands on the head of his cane. ”So ask.”

”Who are they?”

He told me.

He told it the way he told everything, plainly, in order, in that soft hoarse voice, looking at the city.

”Eight months after Directive Nine,” he said, ”the Council discovered that it had a problem. It had put three hundred and eleven Cinder subjects outside the dome. Most of its army’s best soldiers. Most of its engineers. Several of its generals. And the invaders’ wrecks still needed clearing, and the outer domes still needed defending, and there were things still out in the wasteland that needed killing. The ordinary soldiers couldn’t do it. The Council had been very frightened of the modified. It found it was even more frightened without them.”

He paused.

”So it passed the Retention Act. Some of the exiles would be allowed back. Not all. Thirty-one families. Those whose gifts were most useful, and most controllable, and who would sign a lifetime contract of service. Registration. Monitoring. Their homes inside, on the lower floors. A stipend. And treatment.” He turned his hands over, palms up, on the cane. ”The first stabilizer was ready eleven months after that. They’ve had it ever since. Nineteen years, some of them. Ruth knows what normal is because she’s treated thirty-one families every week for nineteen years.”

I was very still.

”Their children were born inside,” Crane went on. ”In the dome. Second-generation. Your age, many of them. They’re the training class for AVALON. The one I told you about.” He paused. ”You’ll meet them.”

”Thirty-one families,” I said.

”Thirty-one.”

”And my parents.”

He didn’t answer straight away.

”Were they on the list?” I said. ”The Retention list. Were they offered?”

Crane looked at the city for a long time.

”No,” he said.

”Why not?”

”Because I drew up the list,” said Halvard Crane. ”And your father was not controllable. And I was frightened of him.” He said it without any expression at all. ”Your mother could have been. On her own. She was Class A. Very useful. I was asked if she should be offered a place without him. I said she’d never accept. I was right. But I never asked her.”

The garden was very quiet. The stream ran in its stone channel. Somewhere behind us, a nurse laughed at something.

Nineteen years.

She could have had it nineteen years ago. Before the coughing. Before Father’s last notebook, with its column of numbers shrinking down the margin week by week. Before the bed by the stove. Thirty-one families had been getting it every week, on the lower floors, the whole time, while Father built a filter out of a burned-out truck and Mother knitted socks for a child who’d be born in a tent.

I could feel the air changing around the bench. I could feel the rail under my hand start to hum.

Crane could feel it too. He went very still beside me, the way he had in the field with his back turned. He didn’t move away.

”I’ve told you,” he said quietly, ”because Ruth told you to ask. And because you’ll meet those children in eleven days, and they’ll know who you are, and some of them will know their parents came back and yours didn’t. You’d have found out. I’d rather you found out from me.”

I put my hands over my eyes.

I sat there on the bench, in the sun that came through the dome, with my hands pressed over my eyes, until the rail stopped humming.

Crane didn’t say anything the whole time. He didn’t leave, either.

When I took my hands away, he was still there. Looking at the city.

”Why are you telling me all this?” I said. My voice came out rough. ”What do you want?”

”You know what I want,” said Crane. ”You’ve read it.”

”Then say it.”

He turned and looked at me, finally.

”Avalon,” he said.

And he told me. The world eleven light-years away, green and gold and alive. The kits, great machines the size of a house when packed, that unfolded into fortresses if you fed them raw matter. The first wave, thirty-four of them, sent down two years ago, and how many weren’t there anymore, which he wouldn’t say. The new training class. The Retention children, my age. Eleven days.

”We need someone like your father,” he said. ”Someone who can feed a kit a mountain in an afternoon and turn back anything the planet sends at him. We need someone who can make a lake on the moon from his bedroom.” He paused. ”I won’t pretend it’s safe. It isn’t.”

”And my sisters?”

”A home on the sixtieth floor of the Halcyon Tower. Over the gardens, with a pool on the roof. Tutors. Doctors. Every book they could want.” He reached into his coat and took out a thin gray slate and laid it on the bench between us. ”Their medical projections. Your sisters carry what your parents carried. Without treatment, twenty-five years. Perhaps thirty. With it, we don’t know. A great deal longer.”

I didn’t touch the slate.

”And my mother,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

”Your mother,” he said, ”is the difficult part.”

”The stabilizer is a Project resource,” said Crane. ”It’s very expensive to make. Very slow. There’s never enough. The Council allots it by law: to the Retention families, to Project personnel, and to the dependents of Project personnel. Nobody else.” He looked down at his hands on the cane. ”Your mother is a Directive Nine exile. Legally, she has no claim on a single dose.”

”You gave her one.”

”I gave her one this morning on my own authority. I’ll give her another next week. And the week after. As long as my authority lasts.” He looked up. ”But I’m not the only one who decides, Lucas. The Council is very frightened of you. They saw the crater. And frightened people are very careful with their medicine.”

I looked at him.

I’d heard it. Under the soft voice and the careful words. I’d heard exactly what he was saying.

”Say it plainly,” I said.

He held my eyes.

”If you join the Project,” said Crane, ”your mother becomes the dependent of Project personnel. By law. Nobody on the Council could touch her treatment. Not ever. Not for any reason.” A pause. ”If you don’t, I’ll fight for her. With everything I have. And I’ll probably lose.”

The garden was very bright. The stream ran in its stone channel. Down in the city, a thousand windows caught the sun.

”That’s a threat,” I said.

”It’s arithmetic,” said Crane. ”I didn’t write the law. I can’t change it. I can only tell you what it says.”

”You could have left her in the field.”

”I could have,” he agreed. ”She’d be dead now. Would you prefer that?”

I didn’t answer.

He didn’t make me.

He stood up, slowly, both hands on the cane.

”I’m not going to ask you for an answer today,” he said. ”She’s not awake yet. You’ll want to talk to her. You should. She’ll tell you not to trust me.” Something moved at the corner of his crooked mouth. ”She’ll be right. She always was.”

He looked down at the slate on the bench.

”Take as long as she’s in Ruth’s care,” he said. ”A week. Two. There’s no hurry. She’s safe here, whatever you decide. For as long as I can keep her that way.”

He turned and walked back down the length of the garden. The people on the benches watched him go.

I sat there a long time.

Then I picked up the slate, and put it in my pocket without looking at it, and went back downstairs.

Genny was sitting on the bench outside the doors with the round windows, with notebook fourteen on her knees. Garnet was asleep beside her, under the blanket with ducks on it, with chocolate on her chin.

Genny looked up when I came round the corner. She looked at my face for a long moment.

”What did he say?” she asked.

I sat down beside her.

Through the round window in the door, I could see the white bed. The machines blinking in the dimness. Mother’s hand on the blanket, where I’d left it. Her chest rising and falling, without having to think about it.

”He named a price,” I said.