Scarecrow

We knew he was coming three days before he came, because Okafor made us clean things.

Not the barracks. We cleaned the barracks every morning anyway. Everything else. The mess hall floor, on our knees, with brushes. The racks in the armory. The white lines on all four fields, repainted, by hand, by Squad Five, who had been caught laughing at something during drill. The burned rafters in the training hall, finally, after five weeks, taken down and replaced with new pale wood that smelled of sap.

”Who’s coming?” Toby asked, on the second day, scrubbing the mess floor beside me.

Liam, on my other side, didn’t look up from his brush.

”Windsor,” he said. ”The General.”

The brush in Toby’s hand stopped.

”Here?”

”Here,” said Liam. ”He’s commanding AVALON’s ground forces. He’s coming to see what he’s getting.” He scrubbed at a stain that wasn’t going to come out. ”Mum says he never comes anywhere unless he’s already decided what he thinks about it. He just comes to make sure everyone else knows.”

I looked down the mess hall.

Luna was at the far end, on her knees like the rest of us, scrubbing the floor under the long table where the Windsors and the families who sat with them ate. She was scrubbing very hard. Very evenly. The same stroke, over and over, as if the floor were a page she was determined to read all the way to the bottom.

She hadn’t said anything in the reading room the night before. Not about him. She’d asked me her questions from the cell biology book, and I’d got nine right. She’d written the number in her margin. She’d read book 61.

But the water in my cup had frozen solid by half past ten. Not a skin of ice. Solid, all the way through, so I couldn’t get the fern leaf out until I’d held it in my hands for ten minutes.

He came on a Wednesday, at nine in the morning, and we were standing in four long lines on field one to meet him.

Forty of us, in our gray training clothes, with our armbands on, in squad order. The instructors in a row in front of us. Okafor at the end of the row, with her hands behind her back, and her face perfectly still. The steel splash behind us in the middle of the field, gleaming.

And behind the glass of the observation room, Crane. On his stool. Watching.

The General came down the long ramp from the compound gate on foot. Alone, except for two aides who stayed a few paces behind him. He didn’t hurry.

He was tall. Taller than I’d expected. Nearly as tall as me. Lean, and very straight, with silver hair cut close to his head, and a face that looked like it had been carved out of something hard and then polished. He wore a plain gray uniform with no medals on it at all. Just a single small badge at the collar. I found out later that he had more medals than anyone alive, and wore none of them, and that this was considered by everyone on the upper floors to be the most impressive thing about him.

And the air came with him.

I felt it from fifty meters. Before I could see his face. Cold. Not the way it was cold around Luna, a cool, still, private cold you only noticed when the water in your cup froze. This was a cold that walked in front of him. That arrived before he did. The white lines on the field, which Squad Five had painted the day before, went faintly gray with frost as he came down the ramp toward them.

He didn’t seem to notice.

Or he noticed, and didn’t care.

He walked the lines.

All four. Slowly. Every cadet. He stopped in front of every single one of us, and looked at us, and said something. Quietly. Courteously. I couldn’t hear most of it from where I was standing, in Squad Eight, at the end. But I could see their faces after he moved on. Every one of them stood a little straighter. Every one of them looked as though somebody important had just told them something true about themselves.

He knew all our names. He didn’t have to ask.

He stopped in front of Squad Two, and said something to Brock that made Brock go red to the ears. He stopped in front of Risa, and said something short, and Risa said yes, sir in a voice I’d never heard her use, flat and polite and completely empty.

He stopped in front of Sigmund.

”Five minutes fifty-one,” said General Windsor. I could hear that. He didn’t lower his voice. ”In the Town. I read the report. That’s the best time on record, Friese.” He looked at Sigmund for a moment. ”Your father must be very proud.”

Sigmund’s face didn’t move at all.

”Yes, sir,” he said.

The General looked at him a moment longer. Then he nodded, once, as if he’d learned something, and moved on.

He came down the line toward us.

He stopped in front of Toby first. Toby, who was shaking so hard I could see his armband move.

”Marsh,” said the General. ”Sound. Like your father.” He looked down at Toby with his pale, hard face. ”I knew your father. On the western front. He brought down a bridge with his voice and held it on top of a column of their walkers for eleven minutes so my men could get out from under it.” A pause. ”I was one of the men.”

Toby stared up at him.

”He was a very brave soldier,” said General Windsor. ”You have his ears.” And something happened in his hard face. Not a smile. Something near one.

He moved on.

Liam. He said something about the Calders and the heat plant that made Liam grin. Seraphina. He looked at her for a long moment and said, ”I hear the training hall needed new rafters,” and Seraphina went white and said, ”Yes, sir,” and the General said, ”Good. The old ones were ugly,” and moved on before she could decide what that meant.

Then he stopped in front of his daughter.

Luna was standing very straight. Straighter than I’d ever seen her. Straighter than when Okafor read out the squads, or when she stood at the beam, or when she walked away down the corridor every night at eleven without looking back. Her chin was up. Her hands were at her sides. Her face was perfectly, absolutely still.

And the cold around her had gone. I couldn’t feel it at all. As though she’d taken all of it, every bit, and pulled it inside, and shut a door on it.

”Cadet Windsor,” said the General.

”Sir.”

He looked at her for a long time.

”You’ve lost weight,” he said.

”Yes, sir.”

”You’re not sleeping.”

”No, sir.”

”Fix it,” said General Windsor.

”Yes, sir.”

That was all. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t say her name. Not Luna. Not anything. He looked at her for one moment more, the way you’d look at a piece of equipment you’d been told was working and weren’t sure about.

Then he took one step to the side, and stopped in front of me.

He looked at me the way Crane did.

That was the first thing I understood, standing there on field one with the frost on the white lines around my boots. Not the way he’d looked at Toby. Not the way he’d looked at Sigmund, or Seraphina, or even at Luna. He looked at me the way Crane had looked at me across the kitchen table in the field, the morning they took Mother. The way you look at a piece of land you’re thinking of buying. Measuring. How big. How far. How much it would take.

”Dask,” said General Windsor.

”Sir.”

”You’re taller than your father.”

”Yes, sir.”

”He’d have hated that.” Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. ”He was very particular about being the tallest man in any room. He used to stand on the balls of his feet in briefings.”

I hadn’t known that. I didn’t know if it was true. I didn’t know why he’d told me.

”I knew him,” said the General. ”Better than most. He served under my command on the northern front for six years. He was the single most effective asset I’ve ever had.” He said it plainly. As a fact. As a compliment. ”Nothing else in the war came close. Not before, not since.” A pause. ”Until, perhaps, now.”

Asset.

I didn’t say anything.

”Crane tells me you turned my Town into a beach,” said the General.

”Yes, sir.”

”And put out a fire in the training hall one flame at a time. Two hundred and twelve flames, he says. Without touching the air anyone else was breathing.” He looked at me with his pale, hard eyes. ”That’s not something your father would have done. Your father would have taken the roof off.”

”I didn’t know what was holding the roof up, sir.”

The General was quiet for a moment.

”No,” he said. ”No, I suppose you didn’t.” He looked at me a little longer. ”On Avalon, you’ll be under my command, Dask. Directly. Not through your squad. Not through Sergeant Okafor. Through me.” He paused. ”I’m looking forward to it.”

He moved on.

Down the end of the line, where there was nobody left, and then away across the field toward the ramp, with his two aides falling in a few paces behind. The frost went with him. The white lines behind him came back from gray to white, slowly, one by one.

He hadn’t looked back at his daughter once.

That night, Luna Windsor was late to the reading room.

She’d never been late. Not once, in five weeks. She was always there when I came in, at her table or at mine, with the lamp a hand’s width from the edge of the book.

At ten past ten, the door opened, and she came in, and she didn’t come to my table.

She went to her old one. In the far corner, by the shelves of military history. The one she’d sat at the first week, when we didn’t speak. She took down book 64 from the bottom shelf, and opened it, and sat with her back very straight and her face to the page.

She didn’t look at me.

The room went cold.

Not the way it usually did, slowly, over the hour, so the water in my cup grew its skin of ice by eleven. All at once. In the time it took her to sit down. The air in the room went cold enough to see my breath. Frost came up the legs of the tables. The lamp on her table flickered and steadied.

The water in my cup froze solid in about four seconds.

And then the cup cracked. Straight down the side, with a small sharp sound like a knuckle cracking, and a line of white ice pushed out through the crack and stayed there.

Luna’s head came up at the sound. She looked across the room at the cup. At the ice coming out of it. At me.

Something went across her face.

”Sorry,” she said.

It was very quiet. And her voice wasn’t flat. It wasn’t the general’s voice that didn’t go up or down. It was somebody else’s.

I didn’t go to her table. I didn’t think she wanted me to.

I picked up the cup instead. It was a plain white mug from the mess, with a chip on the handle. And I held it in my hands, and looked at the crack.

Ceramic was easy. Clay, fired. Silicon and oxygen and aluminum, mostly, and a little of everything else, in a glassy lattice that had cooled too fast in a kiln somewhere a long time ago. I’d made pots out of riverbed clay with Father when I was eight.

I closed the crack.

Not all at once. Slowly. From the bottom up. The two edges of the break, finding each other again, the lattice knitting back together across the gap, one brick at a time, until there was no crack. Just a white mug with a chip on the handle and a block of ice inside it.

Then I warmed the ice in my hands until the fern leaf came free, and put it on a bit of paper on the table, and put the mug down beside it.

Luna had been watching the whole time.

”Some things you can put back,” I said.

She looked at the mug for a long moment.

Then she closed book 64, and stood up, and walked across the cold floor, past the two empty tables, and sat down at my table. In the chair across from mine. Where she always sat.

She didn’t open the cell biology book.

”He reads every list,” she said. ”Did you know that? Every list in every building he’s responsible for. He’s responsible for this one now.” She looked at the table. ”He read the list on this door. Before he came down to the field. He asked me about it at dinner. In the officers’ mess. In front of eleven officers.”

”What did he say?”

”He said,” said Luna, ”I see you’re spending your evenings with the old after-action reports, Luna. And with the Dask boy.” Her voice did the General’s voice. Not an imitation. Just exactly how it had been said. ”Reading history is a waste of a Windsor’s time. The future is where we’ll be fighting.”

”What did you say?”

”I said, yes, sir.” She looked up at me. ”I always say yes, sir.”

”Are you going to stop?”

”No,” said Luna Windsor.

She said it the way she’d said left is a dead end. Flat. Certain. A fact about the world.

”I’m on sixty-four,” she said. ”There are two hundred and six. I’m going to read every one of them. And then I’m going to know.” She paused. ”He can read the list on the door all he likes.”

”He told me my father was an asset,” I said.

Luna looked at me.

”On the field. He said the single most effective asset he’s ever had.” I looked at the mug. ”He said it like it was a compliment.”

”It was,” said Luna. ”To him. It’s the best thing he knows how to say about anything.” She was quiet for a moment. ”Do you know why he says asset? Why he says weapon, and tank, and equipment? About people like your father. And mine.”

”Yours?”

”He’s modified too,” said Luna. ”You felt it. On the field. Everyone did.” She looked at the frost on the legs of the table. ”Where do you think I got it?”

I hadn’t thought about it. I’d felt the cold walk in front of him down the ramp, and I hadn’t thought about it at all.

”But he wasn’t—” I stopped. ”He wasn’t a subject. He doesn’t have a number. He wasn’t exiled.”

”No,” said Luna. ”He wasn’t.” She folded her hands on the table. ”There were two programs, in the war. Did you know? Nobody talks about the second one. There was the one your mother was in. Orphans. Fifteen years old. From the halls. With numbers instead of names. They were the experiment. Most of them died.” She said it very evenly. ”And then, when it worked, there was the other one. The officers’ track. Volunteers. From the military families. Grown men and women, with ranks and names and fathers on the Council. They got the treatment that worked. The safe version. The one the orphans had already died testing.”

The room was very quiet.

”They kept their ranks,” said Luna. ”They kept their names. When the war ended, nobody exiled them. Nobody made them sign anything at a gate in the snow. They went on being officers. They went on being Windsors.” She looked at me with her pale eyes. ”And they went on calling the orphans assets. Because if the orphans were people, then the officers had let them die to make the safe version. And if they were assets, then it was just—” She stopped.

”Arithmetic,” I said.

She looked at me.

”Crane said that,” I said. ”About the Retention Act. It’s arithmetic.”

”Yes,” said Luna Windsor. ”That’s exactly what it is.”

We sat for a while without speaking.

The cold in the room was easing. Slowly. The frost was going off the legs of the tables. My breath had stopped showing.

”You didn’t smile today,” I said. ”On the field. You haven’t smiled since he came.”

”I don’t smile when he’s here.”

”Why not?”

Luna Windsor looked at me for a long moment.

”Because the last time I did,” she said, ”I was eight. On the stair. Behind the armory. He’d brought me up to the gallery on his inspection, and I saw the sky through the window for the first time in my life, and I smiled at it.” She looked at the mug. ”And he said, Windsors don’t gape, Luna. And I didn’t. Not for nine years.” A pause. ”Not until you showed me the moon.”

I didn’t know what to say.

So I didn’t say anything.

After a while, she opened the cell biology book. To a chapter we hadn’t done yet. Near the back. She turned it round on the table, so it faced me.

”Question,” she said. Her voice was back. The flat clear one. But not all the way. ”What happens to a cell if you freeze it?”

I looked at the page. I hadn’t read it. I thought about it instead. About what I knew about water, and ice, and walls.

”It dies,” I said slowly. ”The water inside it freezes. Ice is bigger than water. It grows. Crystals. Sharp ones. They tear the walls.”

”Usually,” said Luna Windsor. She turned the page. Put her finger on a paragraph. ”Read that.”

I read it.

It said that if you froze a cell slowly, the ice grew, and tore it, and it died. But if you froze it fast enough, so fast the water didn’t have time to make crystals, it didn’t tear. It turned to something like glass. Still. Unbroken. And if you warmed it again, just as fast, sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the cell woke up.

As if nothing had happened. As if it had only been waiting.

I read it twice.

Then I looked up at her.

She was looking at me with her pale, still face. And in it, very faint, at the very edges, the place where a smile would go.

”Cold keeps things,” said Luna Windsor. ”I told you. Nobody ever believes me.” She closed the book. ”Eleven o’clock. Go to bed, Dask. You look terrible.”

I wrote it down, that night, by feel, in the dark, at the bottom of the list.

Freeze a cell fast enough and it doesn’t tear. It waits.

Cold keeps things.

I didn’t know yet what it meant. I didn’t know if it would ever mean anything.

But I put the mended mug on the shelf over my bed, beside Mother’s photograph and the yellow socks and Father’s anatomy book, and I looked at it for a long time before I slept.