Scarecrow

On the last day of the month, Okafor named the squad leaders.

She did it on field one, at six in the morning, with the forty of us in our lines and the lamps only half up and frost on the white paint. She had a slate under her arm. She didn’t look at it.

”Squad One,” she said. ”Arden.”

A tall girl in the front line nodded once, as if she’d been told the time.

”Squad Two. Friese.”

Nobody even turned round. Sigmund’s narrow face didn’t change. Beside him, Brock Haddon stood very straight and looked at the ground, and further down the line, Risa looked at the ceiling of the cave as if she’d been expecting something more interesting.

Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Names I knew and names I half knew. Each one said once, flat, the way Okafor said everything, and written on nothing, because the slate stayed under her arm.

Then she stopped.

”Squad Eight,” said Sergeant Okafor.

Down our row, I felt Luna go still. Not cold-still. The other kind. The kind I’d seen on the gallery, in the rain, before she told me the thing she’d never told anyone.

Okafor didn’t say a name.

She took the slate out from under her arm, and looked at it for a long moment. And then she put it back.

”Squad Eight,” she said, ”stays behind after laps. The rest of you, run.”

They ran. We stayed.

The five of us, standing in a row on field one, in the frost, with the lamps coming up. Okafor in front of us. She waited until the last of the others had gone round the far bend of the track before she spoke.

”On the first day,” she said, ”I told this squad it would pick its own leader. When it could walk down a street.” She looked at us, one at a time. ”You’ve walked down a street. You’ve walked down it in six minutes and forty seconds with steel coming out of the doors. You’ve stopped twenty live rounds. You’ve carried your heaviest member out of the jungle like a plank.”

Liam snorted. Okafor looked at him. He stopped.

”So I’m going to keep my word,” said Okafor. She took the slate out again. She didn’t look at it. She held it up, so that we could see the screen. ”I’ll tell you plainly what’s on this. Yesterday afternoon, I was instructed by the General’s office to name Cadet Windsor as leader of Squad Eight. In writing. That’s the instruction.” She lowered the slate. ”I’ve been a sergeant for twenty-two years. I follow instructions. If you don’t give me a name, I’ll give you hers, and that’ll be that, and nobody in this squad will ever be sure whether it was her or her father.”

Nobody said anything.

At the end of the row, Luna was standing so straight I thought something in her might snap. Her face was perfectly still. Her hands were at her sides. The frost on the white line under her boots had spread a meter in every direction, and was still spreading, very slowly, toward mine.

”But if you give me a name,” said Sergeant Okafor, ”I’ll write down yours. And I’ll tell the General’s office that the squad chose. Which is what I told them on the first day would happen.” She looked at us. ”So. Who leads Squad Eight?”

”Lucas,” said Liam immediately.

”No,” I said.

”Lucas,” said Liam again, louder, as if I hadn’t heard him. ”Obviously. He’s the—he can do—everyone knows he’s the—”

”No,” I said.

Liam stared at me.

”I can’t lead,” I said. ”I’m slow. I see everything, and I go into all of it, and I pick one thing at a time. You can’t lead like that. Leading’s the opposite of that.” I looked down the row. ”You have to see everyone at once. And decide fast. And say go before you’re sure.”

”You’re not that slow—”

”I was too slow for the arm,” I said. ”In the Town. The one over Luna’s head. I saw it the second it started to fall, and I’d only got as far as the wrist.” I looked at him. ”Toby wasn’t too slow.”

Toby went bright red to the tips of his ears.

”Not me,” he said, very fast. ”Not me. Please. I’d be sick on everyone.”

Liam opened his mouth.

”Windsor.”

It was Seraphina.

Everybody turned and looked at her. Even Okafor’s eyebrows moved, very slightly, which was more than I’d ever seen them do.

Seraphina Calder was standing at the other end of the row from Luna, with her arms folded and her chin up, looking straight ahead at nothing. The way she’d looked on the beam, on the first day, when she and Luna had pulled it in two different directions and nearly dropped it on Toby.

”Windsor,” she said again. ”Obviously.”

”Sera—” said Liam.

”Don’t,” said Seraphina. She didn’t look at him. ”I don’t like her. I’ve never liked her. She’s cold and she’s stiff and she reads too much and she looks at people like they’re a sum she’s already finished.” She breathed in through her nose. ”And she’s been at the front of every run since the jungle. Nobody told her to be. She just was. And every time she’s been at the front, we’ve come out.” She looked at Luna then, finally. Straight at her. ”I’ve watched her. I watch everybody. She sees all of us at once. She doesn’t skip anybody. And when the arm came down over her head in the Town, she didn’t duck. She looked back to see if we were all right.”

Luna didn’t move.

”She’s better at it than any of us,” said Seraphina. ”She’s better at it than she knows.” Her chin came up a little higher. ”Windsor. That’s my name. I want it on the record that it came from me and not from her father, and I want it on the record that I still don’t like her.”

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

Then Toby said, very quietly, ”Luna,” and went red again.

I said, ”Luna.”

Liam looked at the three of us. Then at Seraphina. Then at Luna, at the end of the row, white as frost.

”Fine,” he said. ”Fine. But I want it on the record that I voted for Lucas first. Out of principle.” He folded his arms. ”Luna.”

Okafor looked down the row. At four of us. Then at the fifth.

”Windsor,” she said. ”You don’t get a vote. But you get to say no.”

Luna didn’t say anything for a long time.

The frost under her boots had stopped spreading. It had stopped about a hand’s width from my left foot, and was just lying there on the white paint, fine and feathered, not moving.

”Sergeant,” said Luna Windsor.

”Windsor.”

”Before I say yes.” Her voice was very quiet and very clear. ”I have a question.”

Okafor waited.

”In the sim,” said Luna. ”At full depth. And on the range. And when we land.” She swallowed. I watched her do it. ”How many of my squad am I expected to bring back?”

The cave went very quiet.

Okafor didn’t move. She stood in front of us on field one, in the frost, with the slate in her hand, and looked at Luna Windsor for a long, long time. And something happened to her face. Not much. Just at the edges. Just round the eyes.

I knew what she was hearing. I was hearing it too.

How many are we expecting to bring back?

”All of them, Windsor,” said Sergeant Okafor quietly. ”That’s the number. All of them. Every time.”

Luna nodded once.

”Then yes,” she said.

Okafor took the pen from behind her ear, and wrote on the slate. One word. She turned it round so we could see.

WINDSOR. (Chosen by squad. Unanimous, less one on principle.)

Liam made a sound like a kettle.

Her first order came at the gate of the sim, at two o’clock that afternoon.

We were in suits. Helmets on. The round door in front of us, with the red light over it. Okafor in the tower. And behind the glass of the observation room, a tall straight shape with silver hair, standing very still, which none of us looked at.

Luna turned round. In the suit, with the helmet on, she didn’t look like Luna. She looked like all of us. Gray plates and a dark window for a face. But her voice, in my ear, through the comms, was hers.

”Keep to Squad Eight,” she said. ”Formation.”

We waited.

”Ember, front left. Spark—” She stopped. Spark was the name behind Liam’s locker. ”Sorry. Hearth. Front right.”

Liam made a small noise in the comms that might have been a laugh or might not.

”Fork, center, behind me. Walls up the moment the door opens. Low. Lowest you’ve got.” A pause. ”Scarecrow.”

”Keep.”

”Back. Behind Fork. Eyes on the mud. Not on the constructs. The mud.” Another pause. ”You don’t change anything unless I say. Not one thing. Not even if something hits you. Especially if something hits you.” Her voice didn’t change at all. ”Copy?”

I thought about the suit going black down my left side. Squad Eight carrying me out of the jungle like a plank.

”Copy, Keep,” I said.

There was a sound in the comms. A very small, strangled sound. It took me a moment to understand that it was Liam, trying with every fibre of his being not to laugh.

”Hearth,” said Luna. ”Copy?”

”C-copy,” said Liam, in a voice like a teakettle with a cracked lid. ”Copy, Keep. Absolutely. Totally copy.” A wheeze. ”Scarecrow’s at the back. Scarecrow’s taking orders—”

”Hearth.”

”Copy, copy—”

The red light over the door went green.

”Go,” said Luna Windsor.

The red jungle. The same as always. Hot and thick and wet, with the air thin in your chest and the rubber leaves slapping at your visor and the mud, the red mud, sucking at your boots.

Luna didn’t run.

That was the first thing. Every other time, we’d run. Every other time, we’d gone in fast, the way the drills said, the way Squad Two did it, and the constructs had come up out of the mud on all sides, and we’d fought them, and come out, and Okafor had written a number on the board.

Luna walked.

Ten steps in. Twenty. Slowly. Steadily. With Seraphina on her left and Liam on her right and Toby’s wall humming, low and gray, behind her. And me at the back. Eyes on the mud.

I looked.

The mud was fog. A meter down, all of it, the way it always was. Too much. Everything at once. I couldn’t see what was under it. I never could.

”Scarecrow,” said Luna. ”Report.”

”Fog,” I said. ”Past a meter. All of it. I can’t see under.”

”I know,” said Luna. ”Wait.”

And she knelt down.

She knelt down in the red mud, in her gray suit, in the middle of the jungle, with her squad around her. She took off one glove. And she put her bare hand flat on the mud.

And the jungle went white.

Not all of it. Not the trees. Not the air. Just the mud. In a great widening circle, out from her hand, fast, the way frost runs across a window. White. Hard. Solid. The red going pale and then white and then a deep, clear blue-white, like old ice on a pond.

And it went down.

I watched it go. Not across. Down. A meter. Two. Three. Freezing the mud from the top downward, solid, all the way through.

And as it froze, it stopped being fog.

That was the thing. That was the thing I hadn’t known, that Luna had known, or guessed, or worked out at our table in the reading room over a notebook page that said mud is fog to me past a meter. Mud was fog because it was everything at once, wet and moving, all of it shifting into all the rest. But ice doesn’t move. Ice holds still. Every grain in its own place, locked, one thing beside another.

I could see into ice.

I could see all the way down.

And there they were.

Under us. All round us. In the frozen ground, three meters down, curled up and waiting, caught in the ice like flies in amber. The constructs. Long and jointed and wrong. Eleven of them. In a ring. Their arms folded against their bodies. Their heads, or the things where heads should be, turned up toward us. Toward where we’d have been, if we’d run in the way we always did.

”Scarecrow,” said Luna. Her voice was perfectly calm. ”Report.”

”Eleven,” I said. My voice wasn’t calm at all. ”In a ring. Three meters. They’re waiting. They were waiting for us to get to the middle.”

”Positions.”

I gave them to her. Clock positions, the way Okafor had drilled us. Two o’clock. Three. Five, deep. Seven. Eight, two of them. Ten. All of them.

”Thank you,” said Luna Windsor. Then: ”Now, Scarecrow. All eleven. Sand.”

I didn’t wait. I didn’t need to. I could see them. Every one. Clear as glass, all the way down, held still in the ice.

Pick one thing.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Eleven.

Fourteen seconds, maybe. Slow. Thorough. I didn’t skip.

And under the white ice of the red jungle, eleven constructs turned quietly to sand, and lay there in the shapes they’d been in, and didn’t move.

We walked out of the sim four minutes and twelve seconds after we’d walked into it.

Nobody in Squad Eight had been touched. Nobody had been hit. Nobody had even run.

Okafor wrote it on the board.

It was the best time on the board. Better than Squad Two’s. Better than anyone’s. By more than two minutes.

Nobody in the cave said anything for a long time.

Then, from the far end of the field, where Squad Two was standing, Sigmund Friese looked at the board, and then at Luna, and very slightly, so slightly you’d have missed it if you weren’t looking, he nodded. Once.

Behind the glass of the observation room, the tall straight shape with the silver hair turned round, and walked out.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t come down. He didn’t send a note.

Later, Luna told me that at dinner that Sunday, at the officers’ mess, he said one word to her about it, over the coffee. Adequate. And then went back to talking about the Meridian.

She told me it didn’t matter. And for the first time since I’d known her, I think she meant it.

Liam laughed for three days.

Not all the time. But often. At breakfast, when Luna told me to pass the salt, and I passed the salt. At laps, when Luna told me to keep up, and I kept up. On the range, when Luna said Scarecrow, hold, and I held, and stood perfectly still with live rounds smacking into Toby’s wall in front of my face, and didn’t change a thing.

”Scarecrow,” Liam kept saying, at night, in the barracks, in the dark, in a voice so full of joy he could hardly get the words out. ”Copy, Keep. The most dangerous person in the program. The kid who turned the moon white. And he goes copy, Keep.” He rolled over. ”I’m going to tell your sisters. I’m going to tell Garnet. She’ll put it in a song.”

”Go to sleep, Liam.”

”Copy, Lucas,” said Liam, and dissolved again.

On the third night, Toby said, very quietly, from the bed on my other side: ”I don’t think it’s funny.”

Liam stopped laughing.

”I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen,” said Toby. ”He could do anything. Anything at all. And she said wait. And he waited.” He was quiet for a moment. ”And nobody got hurt.”

Liam didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Yeah,” he said finally. In a different voice. ”Yeah. I know.”

And then, after another long pause, very quietly, into the dark: ”It’s still a bit funny.”

I found Luna in the reading room that night, the way I always did. She was at our table, very straight, with the cell biology book open in front of her.

She wasn’t reading it.

”Was I—” she said, when I sat down. And stopped.

I waited.

”I didn’t know it would work,” she said. ”The ice. I thought it might. I’d been thinking about it since the kit. Since you said fog without a reason. And I thought, if the mud’s fog because it moves—” She stopped again. ”But I didn’t know. I knelt down in the mud and put my hand on it in front of my father and I didn’t know.”

”You asked the number first,” I said.

She looked at me.

”On the field,” I said. ”Before you said yes. You asked Okafor how many you were expected to bring back. In front of everyone.” I looked at her. ”You know who used to ask that?”

Luna Windsor looked at me for a very long time.

”Okafor told me,” she said quietly. ”On the way to the sim. She walked beside me for a minute and didn’t say anything, and then she said, You asked his question, Windsor. Word for word. I’ve waited half my life to hear somebody else ask it.” She looked down at the book. ”And then she walked off.”

The lamp hummed.

”And then I said wait,” said Luna. ”And you waited.” She turned a page she wasn’t reading. ”I thought you wouldn’t. I thought you’d see them under the ice before I said, and do it on your own. You could have. You’d have been faster.”

”You said not unless I say.”

”I know what I said.” She looked up. ”I didn’t think you’d listen.”

I thought about it.

”You’re better at it than me,” I said. ”Seraphina’s right. You see all of us at once. I can’t. I see everything, all the way down, and I pick one thing.” I shrugged. ”Somebody has to tell me which thing.”

Luna Windsor didn’t say anything.

She pulled notebook fifteen across the table toward her, and opened it at a clean page, and wrote in her small precise hand. Then she turned it round.

Day 118. Keep leads. Scarecrow waits.

4:12. Nobody hurt.

All of them. Every time.

Under it, very small, almost too small to read, she’d written one more line. I read it upside down. She’d taught me how.

Heart: 52 in the sim. 80 now.

She saw me read it. And she didn’t take the notebook back.