Scarecrow

The briefing room was the only room in the compound with chairs.

Real chairs. Forty of them, in curved rows, going down in steps toward a low stage at the bottom, the way seats go down in a theater. Gray cloth on the seats. A wooden rail along the front of each row. And on the back wall of the stage, filling it from floor to ceiling, a screen.

We’d never been in it. It was past the armory, behind a door that was always locked, and Liam had a theory that it was where they took cadets to be executed, which he told Toby on the first night and had been apologizing for ever since.

On the Tuesday, after laps, Okafor unlocked it and stood beside the door with her hands behind her back while we filed in.

”Sit,” she said. ”In squads. Front to back. Don’t touch anything.”

We sat. Squad One in the front row. Squad Eight at the back, high up, where the curved rows met the wall. I took the seat at the very end, by the aisle, because my rib still didn’t like bending, though it was nearly knitted now. Toby beside me. Then Liam. Then Seraphina. Then Luna, at the far end, with her back very straight and her hands folded on the wooden rail in front of her.

The lamps went down.

And the screen lit up, and it was a world.

It was green.

That was the first thing anyone said. A girl in Squad Four said it out loud, before she could stop herself, the way Garnet had said what’s chocolate. It’s green.

It was. A planet, hanging in black, turning very slowly. Green, and blue, and white. Wide green land with long blue seas between, and white cloud spiraling over all of it in great slow curls. A thin bright line of atmosphere at the edge, glowing where the sun caught it. Two small moons, one gray, one faintly gold.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I’d grown up in a gray world. Gray dirt and gray sky and gray hills, with one small square of green in the middle that my father had made with his hands. The dome had been gold. The cave had been brown and gray and lamplit. I’d seen pictures of the old world, before the war, in Father’s books. Blue skies. Forests. But they’d been faded, and flat, and old.

This was green the way the fern’s new frond was green. Alive. Everywhere. As far as you could see, all the way round the curve of it.

Nobody in the briefing room said anything for a long time.

”AV-7,” said a voice from the stage. ”We call it Avalon.”

Crane was standing at a lectern at the side of the stage, in his gray suit, with his cane hooked over the edge of it.

I hadn’t seen him come in. Nobody had. He was just there, in the light from the screen, thin and tired and stooped, with his long hands resting on the wood. Behind him, in the shadow at the back of the stage, two figures I could just make out. A woman with a slate. And a tall man, standing very straight, with silver hair cut close to his head.

The air at the back of the briefing room went cool.

At the end of our row, Luna’s hands went very still on the rail.

”Eleven light-years from here,” said Crane. ”Four hundred and twelve days away in real time, by the route we’ve found. Three weeks by the route you’ll take.” He didn’t explain that. He moved on. ”A world almost exactly the size of this one. Slightly heavier. Slightly warmer. Days thirty-one hours long. An atmosphere you can breathe, with help. Water. Weather. Seasons.” He paused. ”And life.”

The picture changed.

A forest. Seen from above, from very high, from a ship coming down. Green, endless, folded over hills, with silver rivers threading through it. Then closer. Trees taller than any tree in Father’s books, with leaves the size of doors. Then closer still. A clearing, with tall grass, a pale green-gold, moving in a wind.

”Plant life,” said Crane, ”is abundant. Animal life is present. Mostly small. Mostly insect-analogous, as far as we can tell. Grazers. Burrowers. Nothing we’ve yet found that poses any significant threat.” He tapped the lectern with one long finger. ”And no intelligent life.”

He let that sit.

”None,” he said. ”None detected. No cities. No signals. No structures. No tools. Nothing. Our surveys have covered the planet from orbit, pole to pole, for two years.” He looked up at the forty of us in the dark. ”Avalon is empty. It’s waiting. It’s the first world in the history of our species that we will not have to take from anyone.”

Beside me, Toby let out his breath, very slowly.

Down in the front row, somebody started to clap. Just once. And then stopped, because nobody else did, and the sound went out into the dark of the briefing room and didn’t come back.

He told us about the kits.

The picture changed again. A shape on the screen. A long gray cylinder, like a seed, or a bullet, with fins at one end and a heavy blunt nose at the other. Standing on its end on a stand, in a white room, with men in white suits standing round it for scale. It was taller than three of them.

”Each of you,” said Crane, ”will go down with one of these.”

He walked us through it.

It would come down from the ship in a pod, with the cadet inside, and land wherever the pod landed. And then it would open. And inside it there’d be a machine that unfolded. A processing plant. You fed it material, rock, ore, sand, anything, and it broke the material down and built with it. Walls. Floors. Power. Air. A shelter first, then a base, then more. It would grow as long as you fed it. The more you fed it, the bigger it got. And it had an intelligence inside it, a mind of its own, small at first, that would learn as it grew. That would run the base, and talk to you, and talk to the ship in orbit, and help.

”Think of it,” said Crane, ”as a seed. You plant it. You water it with whatever you can dig up. And it grows into a home.” He looked up at the rows. ”And the bigger it grows, the more of the land around it is secured. For you. For us. For everyone who comes after.”

Secured.

I didn’t know why that word caught. But it did. Like a hook in a sleeve.

”Some of you,” said Crane, ”will be very good at feeding it.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it. He didn’t need to. Thirty-nine heads didn’t turn round to look at the end of the back row either. But I felt every one of them not turning.

”And the first wave,” said Crane.

The briefing room went still.

The picture changed. Faces. A grid of them. Small, square photographs, the kind they take for armbands and files. Thirty-four of them, in rows. Boys and girls, about our age, some a little older. Serious. Some trying to smile. Some not trying.

They were all wearing the same gray training clothes we were wearing.

”Eighteen months ago,” said Crane, ”the first thirty-four cadets of Project AVALON landed on the surface of AV-7. They were the bravest people I have ever known. They trained in this compound. They sat in these seats. They ran on your fields.” He paused. ”Some of their names are still on the walls of your barracks, if you look behind the lockers.”

I hadn’t known that. I’d never looked.

”They established the first bases,” said Crane. ”They proved the kits work. They proved the air can be made breathable. They proved the processing plants can grow. Everything you’ll do there, they did first, and we know how to do it because they did it.”

”Are they still there?”

It came from the middle rows. Squad Four. A boy I didn’t know well. He said it too loudly, and then went red, the way Toby did.

Crane looked at him.

”Yes,” he said. ”Many of them.”

Many.

”The first wave,” said Crane, ”is struggling with conditions.” He said it very evenly. Very carefully. The way Okafor had said constructs, mechanical. ”AV-7 is not easy. It’s a new world, and new worlds are hard, and they went down with less than you’ll have. Older kits. Less training. No sim.” He looked at the boy from Squad Four. ”Communications from the surface are intermittent. Some bases have reported difficulties. Some have gone quiet.” A pause. ”We’ve learned from every one of them. Everything you’ll go down with, every improvement in your kits, every hour in that sim, is because of what they’ve taught us.”

He didn’t say a number.

He didn’t say how many.

He looked at the grid of thirty-four small faces on the screen behind him for a moment. Just a moment. And something went across his long tired face that I’d seen once before, at our kitchen table, on the morning Mother breathed.

Then he turned back to us.

”Questions,” he said.

There were a lot of questions.

There always are, when forty people have been shown a green world and told they’re going to it. A girl from Squad One asked what the food was like, and Crane said processed, at first, and then you’ll grow it, and three people laughed. A boy from Squad Three asked whether you could see the stars, and Crane said better than you’ve ever seen them, there’s no dust, and the boy sat back looking pleased. Sigmund asked about the comms delay, in a voice so precise it sounded like it had been ironed, and Crane answered him with numbers, and Sigmund wrote them down.

Liam asked if there was anything on Avalon that was on fire.

”Not yet,” said Crane, and the whole briefing room laughed, and Seraphina put her hand over her eyes.

I didn’t ask anything. I sat at the end of the back row, with my rib aching quietly, and looked at the green world turning on the screen, and looked at the grid of thirty-four faces that had come up again beside it. And I did what I always did when I didn’t understand something.

I looked closer.

The screen was light. That was all it was. Light, from a machine behind the wall, thrown onto white cloth. I could see the machine, through the wall, if I wanted to. A box of glass and wire and a hot bright bulb. I could see the pictures moving through it on a long clear strip.

I could see the strip.

And on the strip, in the gap between the forest and the faces, there was a frame they’d cut. You could see the join. A neat straight line where two pieces of strip had been glued back together. Something had been there, between the forest and the first wave, and somebody had taken it out.

I didn’t know what it had been. It was gone. You can’t see what isn’t there.

But I wrote it down later. The join.

Luna put her hand up.

She didn’t do it the way the others did. She didn’t wave it. She just raised it, very straight, from the elbow, and held it there, and waited. At the back of the stage, in the shadow, the tall silver-haired man shifted his weight, once.

”Cadet Windsor,” said Crane.

”Director.” Luna’s voice was very clear and very cool, and it carried all the way down the steps to the stage without her raising it at all. ”In the simulator. The constructs.”

”Yes?”

”They’re very detailed,” said Luna. ”The way they move. The way they react to fire, and cold, and noise. Their joints.” She paused. ”Sergeant Okafor told us they were based on survey data.”

”They are.”

”From the surface?”

Crane looked up the steps at her. He had very pale eyes, Crane. I’d never noticed that before. In the light from the screen, they looked almost colorless.

”From projections,” he said. ”Based on the survey data. Our scientists looked at what’s down there, the grazers, the burrowers, the environment, and projected what might plausibly develop. What you might have to deal with. The sim is designed to prepare you for the worst case.”

”Projections,” said Luna, ”of what?”

The briefing room was very quiet.

”I’m sorry, Cadet?”

”You said there’s no intelligent life,” said Luna Windsor. ”No structures. No tools. And the animal life is small. Insects. Grazers.” Her hands were folded on the wooden rail, perfectly still. The air at the end of our row was so cold I could see Seraphina’s breath. ”The constructs use cover. They flank. They fall back when they’re losing and they come back with more. Squad Eight was in the jungle for a few minutes and they changed what they were doing four times.” She paused. ”Insects don’t do that. So I’d like to know what the projection was of.”

Nobody moved.

Down in the front rows, thirty-five people were very carefully not turning round. Beside me, Toby had stopped breathing. Liam had his mouth slightly open.

Crane opened his.

”That’ll do, Cadet Windsor.”

It didn’t come from the lectern. It came from the shadow at the back of the stage. A man’s voice, deep and level and quiet, the kind of voice that has never once in its life had to be raised to be obeyed.

The General didn’t step into the light. He didn’t need to.

Luna’s hand came down. Slowly. Very straight. She folded it back on top of the other one, on the rail.

”Yes, sir,” she said.

And at the end of the row, so quietly I don’t think anybody but me saw it, frost spread across the wooden rail under her hands, white and fine and feathered, like a fern.

I put my hand up.

I hadn’t meant to. It was up before I’d decided. And Crane saw it, and something went across his face very quickly and was gone.

”Mr. Dask.”

Mr. Dask. Not forty-one. Not Cadet. Thirty-nine people heard it.

”The first wave,” I said. ”You said many of them are still there.”

”I did.”

”How many?”

It was very quiet in the briefing room.

Crane looked at me for a long moment. Not unkindly. He looked at me the way he’d looked at me across our kitchen table, the morning Mother breathed. Like I was a sum he’d worked out and was pleased with, and was also, somewhere, a little sorry about.

”I’d rather not give you a number,” he said gently, ”that I can’t stand behind. Communications are intermittent, Lucas. A base that’s gone quiet isn’t a base that’s gone. Some of them come back. Some of them have come back.” He tapped the lectern. ”When I have a number I’m certain of, you’ll have it. All of you. That’s a promise.” He looked round the rows. ”Anything else?”

There wasn’t anything else.

Nobody asks a question after that kind of answer. That’s what that kind of answer is for.

”Mr. Dask. A moment.”

The others were filing out. Okafor at the door, with her hands behind her back, counting them through the way she counted us onto the fields. Toby looked back at me. Liam looked back at me. Luna didn’t look back. She walked out with her back very straight and her hands at her sides, and the frost on the rail where she’d been sitting stayed there, slowly melting, catching the light from the screen.

The General had gone. I hadn’t seen him go. The woman with the slate had gone with him.

I went down the steps.

Crane was sitting on the edge of the low stage, with his cane across his knees, looking up at the green world, which was still turning. He looked very tired. Close up, he always did. Older than he was. The skin under his eyes was gray.

”Sit,” he said.

I sat on the step below him.

”How’s the rib?”

I didn’t ask how he knew. ”Nearly better.”

”Already?”

”Yes.”

He nodded slowly, as if that was the answer he’d expected, and looked up at the screen. ”Sergeant Okafor tells me you’ve read every book on biology in the reading room,” he said. ”Twice. And most of the chemistry. And you’ve started on the physics.”

”Yes, sir.”

”For your mother.”

I didn’t say anything.

”She’s doing very well,” said Crane. ”I had the report this morning. Walking further every day. She walked to the end of the corridor and back on Sunday without the frame.” He smiled faintly. ”Your sister Genny walked behind her the whole way with her arms out, in case she fell. Like a goalkeeper.”

That was exactly what Genny would do. My chest went tight in a way that had nothing to do with the rib.

”Her treatments are holding,” said Crane. ”The doses are steady. As long as they stay steady, there’s every reason to think she’ll go on getting better.” He looked down at me. ”I want you to know that. I want you to know she’s safe. That I’m looking after her. Whatever else happens.”

As long as they stay steady.

”Thank you, sir,” I said.

”I’m putting you on Priority One,” said Crane. ”It means a larger kit. The largest we’ve built. A processing plant twice the size of anyone else’s. More intelligence. More material capacity. A landing site of my choosing.” He turned the cane slowly on his knees. ”I think you could build something down there, Lucas, that nobody’s ever built. I think you could build a city. On your own. Out of rock.” He smiled. ”Your father would have liked that.”

”Why me?”

”You know why.”

I did.

Some of you will be very good at feeding it.

”And the more I build,” I said, ”the more land’s secured.”

Crane looked at me for a long moment. Down from the edge of the stage. With his pale, almost colorless eyes.

”Yes,” he said. ”That’s right.” He picked up his cane and stood, slowly, leaning on it. ”You listen very carefully, Lucas. Your father did too.” He touched my shoulder, once, lightly, as he went past. ”Get some sleep. Your mother says to eat more.”

He went out.

I sat on the step for a long time, looking up at the green world.

Then the screen went dark.

Luna was already in the reading room when I got there.

She wasn’t reading. The cell biology book was shut in front of her. Notebook fifteen was shut beside it. She was sitting with her hands flat on the table and the whole room was cold, the deep still cold of the dome window in winter, and the water in the glass by her elbow had frozen solid in the shape of the glass.

”He told you to stop,” I said.

”He told me that’ll do,” said Luna. ”He always says that’ll do. He’s said it since I was four.” She didn’t look up. ”It means, you are embarrassing me in front of people who matter. It doesn’t mean stop. It’s never meant stop.” A pause. ”It means later.”

I sat down across from her.

”Will there be a later?”

”Yes,” said Luna Windsor. Very quietly. ”There will be a later.”

Neither of us said anything for a while. The lamp over the table hummed.

Then she opened notebook fifteen, and found a clean page, and uncapped her pen, and wrote, in her small precise hand, two words, one under the other.

Detected.

Secured.

She turned the notebook round so I could see it.

”He said no intelligent life,” she said. ”And then he said it again. None. None detected.” She tapped the first word with the end of her pen. ”People don’t say detected when they mean none, Lucas. They say detected when they mean none that we’ve counted.” She tapped the second word. ”And he said the bigger the base grows, the more land is secured. You don’t secure something that’s empty. You secure it from something.”

”I heard it too,” I said. ”Secured. It caught.”

”I know. I saw your face.” She looked at me across the table. ”What did he want? After.”

I told her. Priority One. The biggest kit. A city out of rock. Mother walking to the end of the corridor without the frame. Genny behind her with her arms out.

As long as the doses stay steady.

Luna listened to all of it without moving.

”He told you your mother’s well,” she said at the end.

”Yes.”

”In the same breath as he told you to build.”

”Yes.”

Luna Windsor looked at me for a long time across the cold table. And then she reached across it and, very lightly, so lightly I almost didn’t feel it, put two fingers on the back of my hand. Cold. Just for a moment.

”Then she’s the reason he’s being kind to you,” she said. ”Not the other way round.”

She took her hand back.

I’d known it. Of course I’d known it. I’d known it since the morning Mother breathed and Crane sat at our kitchen table and looked at me like a sum. But nobody had said it out loud before. And it’s different, when somebody says it out loud. It turns from a thing you know into a thing that’s true.

I told her about the join.

The strip in the machine. The gap between the forest and the faces. The neat straight line where somebody had cut something out and glued the pieces back together.

She went very still.

”How long was the gap?”

”I don’t know. I didn’t see what was cut. Just the join.”

”Can you see it again? Tomorrow? If the machine’s still there?”

”If they leave the strip in it.”

”They won’t,” said Luna. ”Not now. Not after I asked.” She closed her eyes for a moment. ”That was stupid. I should have waited. I should have let you look first, and then asked.”

”It wasn’t stupid.”

”It was early,” said Luna Windsor. ”That’s the same thing, where my father’s concerned.” She opened her eyes. ”I won’t do it again.”

I wrote it all down that night. In the dark. In the barracks. Between Liam, who was already asleep and snoring faintly, and Toby, who wasn’t, and who was lying on his back looking at the ceiling with the tuning fork in his hand.

Day 82. Briefing room. Avalon. It’s green.

Eleven light-years. Thirty-one-hour days. No intelligent life DETECTED.

The more the base grows, the more land is SECURED.

Constructs are projections. Luna asked of what. The General said that’ll do.

A cut in the strip between the forest and the first wave. A join.

Thirty-four went down. Crane says many are still there. He won’t say a number.

Priority One. The biggest kit. ”Some of you will be very good at feeding it.”

Mother walked to the end of the corridor without the frame. As long as the doses stay steady.

I looked at that last line for a long time.

Then, underneath, I wrote one more.

Okafor trained all thirty-four. She’ll know.

Ask her the number.

In the bunk beside me, Toby said, very quietly, into the dark:

”It was so green.”

”I know.”

”My dad would’ve—” He stopped. Breathed. ”He’d have liked to see it. That’s all.”

”I know,” I said.

We lay there, and didn’t say anything else, and on the other side of me Liam snored, and somewhere far above us, eleven light-years up, a green world turned under two small moons with thirty-four names on it.

I didn’t know yet how many of them were still answering.

I was going to find out.