Scarecrow

It happened at the very end. When it was nearly over.

The music had stopped. The chandeliers had been turned down by half, which was still too bright, but bearable. People were leaving in long slow glittering clumps, saying goodbye to each other in the doorways as if they’d never see each other again, and then saying goodbye again. Okafor was at the gold lift, counting us down in tens. Squad Two had gone. Squad Five. Squad Six.

I was waiting with Squad Eight by the glass wall, at the back, looking at the floor, when a young man in a gray coat stopped in front of me.

”Cadet Dask,” he said. Very politely. ”Senator Friese would like a word.”

He was in a side room.

Small, off the main corridor outside the Great Hall. Wood-paneled, with one lamp, and two chairs, and a little table with a glass on it, half full of something gold. A coat room, maybe, once. Or somewhere people went to say things they didn’t want four hundred people to hear.

The Senator was standing by the window. There was a small window, even here. Looking out over the city. He was holding his hands behind his back, the way Sigmund did. Exactly the way. I’d never noticed that before.

”Thank you, Mr. Haskell,” he said, without turning round. ”That’ll be all.”

The young man in gray went out. He left the door half open behind him. I could hear the clumps of people in the corridor, saying their long goodbyes.

The Senator turned round.

He was taller than he’d looked behind the observation glass. Not as tall as me. But tall. Narrow, like Sigmund. With very neat gray hair and a narrow, clever face, and light gray eyes. Risa’s eyes. Colder.

He looked at me. Up and down. Slowly. The way the General had, on field one. The way you look at a piece of land.

”Your father was tall,” he said.

”Yes, sir.”

”I met him once. Did you know that? At the end of the war. A ceremony. Medals.” He picked up the glass from the little table, and looked at it, and didn’t drink. ”He refused his. Did you know that too? Stood there in front of the whole Council and said no, thank you, and walked out. Took his unit with him.” He put the glass down. ”I was a junior aide. Holding the box with the medals in. I’d polished them myself.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I’ve always wondered,” said Senator Friese, ”what kind of man refuses a medal.”

”One who didn’t want it, sir.”

The Senator smiled. Very slightly. Not with his eyes.

”Yes,” he said. ”That’s what I was afraid of.”

And I looked.

I’m not proud of it. I want that on the record, the way Sigmund wanted things on the record. I’d promised myself. All night. In the hall, walking past four hundred people, I’d kept my eyes on the floor and not looked.

But he was standing in front of me, alone, in a small room, with one lamp. And Risa had taught me. And something in his voice, very calm, very cool, very careful, was wrong.

So I looked. Loosely. Just at the wires. Just at the heart.

And it was going like a bird’s.

Fast. Very fast. Faster than anyone’s in the Great Hall. Faster than the waiter’s with the chattering glasses. Faster than Toby’s at the gate of the Town. A small, hard, frightened drum, going and going and going, in the middle of a man whose face hadn’t moved at all.

He was more frightened of me than anyone in the building.

And he’d sent for me anyway.

”I want to be honest with you, Mr. Dask,” said the Senator. ”Because I think you’re a person who values honesty. Your file says so. Unusually direct. Crane’s words, I think.”

”Yes, sir.”

”Then honestly.” He folded his hands behind his back again. ”People like your father were necessary. In the war. Nobody disputes it. Without the program, without the things they put into those children, we’d have lost. There’d be no dome. No city. No Council. No gala.” He gestured, very slightly, at the door, the corridor, the glittering clumps of people. ”We owe all of this to people like your father. I’ve said so in the Council chamber. More than once.”

”Yes, sir.”

”And people like your father,” said the Senator, ”were also the most dangerous things that have ever walked on this earth. Including the things we were fighting.” He looked at me with his cold gray eyes. ”One man. Alone. Who could look at a city and turn it to sand. Who could look at the air in a room and take the breath out of it. Who could look at you, Mr. Dask, and turn the iron in your blood into something else, and you would never know why you’d died.” He paused. ”Who refused a medal. And walked out. And went somewhere nobody could watch him. With a woman who could do the same.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Necessary,” said the Senator. ”And dangerous. Both. At once. That’s what you are. That’s what your sisters are. That’s what my own children are, God help them, because their grandmother was in the program, and I married their mother anyway.” He looked at the window. ”I don’t hate you for it. I want you to understand that. I don’t hate any of you. You can’t help what you are.”

”Then what do you want, sir?”

He looked back at me.

”I want you to understand,” he said, ”that the program will keep you on a leash.”

He said it very simply. Not loud. Not angry. The way Liam had said I’ll set you on fire. The way you’d say it’s raining.

”Not a cruel one,” he said. ”Not a short one. A long, comfortable leash. With a good view. Your mother on the sixtieth floor, with a doctor and a cook and a matron for your sisters. Your sisters in a school. Your own name on a badge.” He looked at the silver seed on my chest. ”A kit, the biggest ever built. A landing site of the Director’s choosing. A green world to farm, like your father’s field. All of it.”

He came a step closer.

”And at the other end of the leash,” he said, ”a small glass vial. Three times a day. Delivered on Mondays.”

I went very still.

”You know where it comes from,” said the Senator. ”The vial. You’ve wondered. Your notebook’s been wondering. I’m told you keep a notebook.” He watched my face. ”The Council’s pharmaceutical works, on Level 62. Under the authority of the Council’s health committee.” He smiled again. Very slightly. ”I’ve chaired the health committee for nine years.”

The room was very quiet.

I could hear my own heart. I could hear his. Both of them going much too fast.

”I’m not threatening you,” said Senator Friese. ”I’d like to be very clear about that, Mr. Dask. I’m not threatening you, or your mother, or anybody. I’m telling you. So that you understand where you stand. So that you understand that when you stand in a corridor in front of forty cadets and tell them my son burns his sister, I hear about it. At three separate dinners. And when my daughter is forbidden to speak to you and is seen at a fern every morning at five anyway, I hear about that too.” He was very close now. ”And when my son, my son, who carries my name into the most important program this city has ever paid for, stands in a corridor at five in the morning and takes an apology from a farm boy from the flats, and says noted, and writes it down in a notebook he thinks I don’t read—”

He stopped.

For the first time, something moved in his face. Just at the corner of his mouth. Gone again at once.

”That,” said the Senator, very softly, ”is the great disappointment of my life.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

I was thinking about Mother. On the sixtieth floor, in her blue cardigan, walking to the lift and back. Marker down six weeks running. We’ll see.

Three vials a day. Delivered on Mondays.

From Level 62.

It has been regular.

”Your father refused a medal,” said Senator Friese. ”And walked out. And everyone in that Council chamber watched him go and thought, there goes a free man.” He picked up his glass again. ”He wasn’t. He just had a longer leash than he knew. We had a satellite on his valley for eleven years, Mr. Dask. And when his wife started to die, we were there in five minutes.” He drank, finally. A small sip. ”That’s not a threat either. That’s just how it works.”

He put the glass down.

”Be a good boy,” said the Senator. ”Go to Avalon. Build us a city out of rock. Bring us home a green world. And your mother will grow old on the sixtieth floor, and your sisters will grow up in the best school in the dome, and nobody will ever have to say any of this to you again.” He looked at me. ”That’s all. That’s the whole of it. I wanted you to hear it from someone who’d say it plainly. Crane won’t. He likes you. Liking makes people vague.”

He turned back to the window.

”You can go,” he said.

I didn’t go.

Because the door, which the young man in gray had left half open, wasn’t half open anymore.

It was all the way open.

Sigmund was standing in the doorway.

In his black dress uniform, very straight, with his hands at his sides. His narrow face was perfectly white. Not pale. White. Like the walls of Laboratory One.

I didn’t know how long he’d been there.

I could guess. I could see it. He’d been standing just outside the half-open door, in the corridor, where the clumps of people were saying their long goodbyes, the way he stood outside Okafor’s office, in case his father wanted to see him. He’d been waiting. He was always waiting.

And he’d heard.

I didn’t know how much. But I could see that it was enough. It was in his face. In his hands, at his sides, which weren’t quite still. In his heart, if I’d looked, which I didn’t. I didn’t need to. I could feel it from where I stood. Not going like a bird’s. Going the other way. Slowing. Slowing down, all at once, the way Risa said their father’s did. The way a heart goes when the worst thing has finally happened and there’s nothing left to be frightened of.

The Senator turned round.

His face didn’t change. Not a flicker. If he’d been surprised, or sorry, or anything, none of it got as far as his face. He looked at his son in the doorway the way he’d looked at me. Up and down. A piece of land.

”Sigmund,” he said. ”Your squad’s gone down.”

”I know, sir.”

”Then you should be with them.”

”Yes, sir.”

Sigmund didn’t move.

It was a long moment. I don’t know how long. The gold lift hummed somewhere, going down, coming back up. Okafor’s voice, faint, counting. The clumps of people by the main doors, laughing at something.

Sigmund stood in the doorway and looked at his father.

And I watched something happen in his face that I’d never seen happen in it before. In five months. Not at the comms drill, when he said copy, Scarecrow. Not in the corridor by the fern, reading his list. Not on field two in the dark when the stopwatch fell.

It went open.

All of it. All at once. The careful, narrow, blank Friese face, that he’d been holding still since he was six, since he was seven and started keeping lists, since the first time his father walked out of a room without looking at him. It just. Stopped holding. And underneath it was a sixteen-year-old boy, standing in a doorway, who had just heard his father say the great disappointment of my life to the person he’d spent five months saying he couldn’t stand.

And who’d also heard everything else.

Necessary and dangerous.

A leash.

I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you.

Your mother.

He looked at me. Just once. Across the little side room. And I saw that he’d heard that part too.

And then he looked back at his father, and something in his face that I didn’t have a word for went very hard and very quiet.

I found the word later. In bed, in the dark, between Liam and Toby, thinking about it.

The word was ashamed.

Not of himself. For the first time in his life, I think, not of himself.

Of him.

”Sir,” said Sigmund.

”Sigmund.”

”Cadet Dask’s squad is waiting for him at the lift.” His voice was perfectly level. Cool. Careful. Very precise. Each word on its own. ”Sergeant Okafor sent me to find him. I’m to escort him down.”

That wasn’t true.

I knew it wasn’t true. Okafor never sent anyone to find anyone. She stood at the door and counted, and if you weren’t there when she got to you, she came and found you herself, and you ran the beam for a week.

The Senator knew it wasn’t true too. I could see him know it.

”Did she,” he said.

”Yes, sir.”

”You’re very obliging, Sigmund. To the sergeant. And to Mr. Dask.”

”Yes, sir,” said Sigmund. ”I’m learning.”

The Senator looked at his son for a very long time.

Then he looked at me. And picked up his glass from the little table. And smiled, very slightly, very coldly, the smile of a man who has played a card and seen it trumped and is already thinking about the next hand.

”Then you’d better take him,” he said. ”Goodnight, Mr. Dask. Do give your mother my regards.”

He walked past Sigmund in the doorway, without looking at him, and out into the corridor, and was gone.

Neither of us moved for a while.

Sigmund stood in the doorway with his back very straight and his hands at his sides. He was looking at the place where his father had been. At the little table by the wall. At the faint wet ring the glass had left on the polished wood.

His hands were shaking.

Not like Maura’s. Not a tremor. Just shaking. The way Toby’s shook at the gate of the Town.

”How much did you hear?” I said.

”Enough.” He didn’t look at me. ”From your father was tall.” He was quiet. ”I was outside. I always wait outside. In case he—” He stopped. ”In case.”

”I know.”

”You don’t know.” But he said it without any heat. Just tired. ”The leash. The pharmaceutical works. Your mother.” He looked at the wet ring on the table. ”He chairs the committee. That’s true. Nine years. He’s very proud of it. He talks about it at dinner.” A pause. ”He’s never said it like that before. Not at dinner.”

”He meant me to understand.”

”Yes,” said Sigmund. ”He’s very good at that.” He was quiet for a moment. ”He says it about us, you know. At home. Not those words. But that. Necessary and dangerous. About Risa and me. Because of the stain. Because of what we can do. Because Mother’s mother was in the program, and he married her anyway, and then we came out sparking, and he’s been—” He stopped. ”He’s been keeping us on a leash since we were born. A comfortable one. A long one. With a view of the city.”

He looked at me, finally.

”I’ve been on the end of it my whole life,” he said. ”And I thought it was love. I thought if I was good enough, and fast enough, and Squad Two enough, he’d—” His voice cracked. Just once. Very small. Like a hairline in glass. ”He’d notice. And put it on the list. And the list would get longer.”

I didn’t say anything.

”The great disappointment of my life,” said Sigmund Friese, very quietly. ”Because I said noted.”

We walked to the lift together.

Through the side room door. Down the corridor. Past the last clumps of people by the main doors, who looked at us, two cadets in black, and stepped back a half pace without knowing they’d done it. Past the curtain that hid the door to the balcony. Past the end of the glass wall, where the cadets had stood, where the night was.

Sigmund walked half a step ahead. Very straight. Not saying anything.

At the gold lift, Okafor was standing with Squad Eight. Liam, and Toby, and Seraphina, who looked like somebody had set her on fire and she’d decided to enjoy it. And Luna, back in her black uniform, her hair tied back again, very straight.

Okafor looked at Sigmund. Then at me. Then at Sigmund again.

”Friese,” she said. ”I don’t recall sending you.”

”No, Sergeant,” said Sigmund.

Okafor looked at him for a long moment. At his white face. At his hands. At whatever was in his eyes.

”Then you’ll ride down with Squad Eight,” she said. ”Your squad’s gone. You’ve missed it.”

”Yes, Sergeant.”

He got in. We all got in. The man in the white coat with the gold braid pressed the button, and the doors closed, and the gold lift began to go down. A hundred and forty floors.

Nobody said anything.

Sigmund stood in the corner, very straight, and looked at the doors.

At about the eightieth floor, without looking at anyone, he said, very quietly:

”I still can’t stand you, Dask.”

”I know.”

The lift went down. Seventy. Sixty. Fifty.

”I can stand him less,” said Sigmund Friese.

Nobody said anything else all the way to the bottom.

But at the fortieth floor, Liam, who’d been looking at Sigmund with his mouth slightly open, reached out without saying anything and put a hand on his shoulder. Just for a second. The way he had for Toby, outside the Town.

Sigmund didn’t shake it off.

Day 160. The gala. Senator Friese.

”Necessary and dangerous.” ”A leash.” ”I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you.”

He chairs the committee that releases Mother’s vials. Level 62. Nine years.

His heart was going like a bird’s. He was more frightened of me than anyone in that hall. He came anyway.

Sigmund heard. All of it.

”I can stand him less.”

And at the back, on the list, under number seven. Under What’s in the stabilizer and What’s in Mother’s vials.

Who makes them.

And how to make them without him.