Scarecrow

The notice went up on the second morning.

It was pinned to the board outside the mess, between the laundry rota and a list of who’d lost what in the showers. A single sheet. Typed. With the Director’s seal at the bottom, very small.

An equipment fault in Pressure Chamber One on Wednesday resulted in a medical incident involving one cadet. The cadet has been treated and is recovering. The fault has been rectified. Cadets are reminded that discussion of training incidents outside the chain of command is prohibited under Regulation 8.

That was all.

No name. No squad. No a blood vessel split inside a girl’s head because the Director ordered her into a chamber over the objection of the medical officer.

An equipment fault.

I stood in front of it for a long time. People came past behind me on the way into breakfast, and slowed down when they saw who it was, and went round. A yard. Two yards. Like water round a stone.

Orrin from Squad Three stopped beside me.

He was big and slow and I’d barely heard him say ten words in seven months. He stood next to me and read the notice, moving his lips a little. When he got to the end, he read it again.

”There wasn’t any fault,” said Orrin.

”No.”

”I was in there. The suits were fine. The tank was fine.” He looked at the notice. His big hands were opening and closing at his sides. ”She just fell. She was pouring water and she just—” He stopped. ”They told us at the debrief. Not to talk about it. Not even to each other. Regulation eight.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Is she all right?” said Orrin. Very quietly. Not looking at me. ”Nobody’ll tell us. We’re her squad.”

”She’s alive,” I said. ”She’s asleep a lot. She’ll be slow for a while.”

Orrin breathed out. Long. All the way down. Like something had been sitting on his chest for two days.

”Thanks, Dask,” he said.

He reached up and took the notice off the board. Very carefully. He folded it in half, and in half again, and put it in his pocket. And walked into breakfast.

Nobody put up another one.

I saw her that night. At nine. Before my first lesson.

She was in the end bed of the infirmary, behind a curtain, with the lamp turned right down. Her head was bandaged on the left side, where they’d shaved it. Her face wasn’t gray anymore. It was just tired. Very young. Younger than she’d looked at the cistern.

She was awake.

She looked at me when I came round the curtain. And I watched her find me. It took a second. Two. Like somebody looking for a word in a book they’d been reading before they fell asleep.

”Lu,” said Hana. And stopped. Her mouth moved, trying. ”Lu—”

”Lucas.”

”Lucas.” She closed her eyes, annoyed with herself. Then opened them. ”Words are. Slow.”

”Halloway says they’ll come back.”

”She said.” Hana moved her left hand on the blanket. It didn’t move very much. The fingers twitched, and lay still. She looked at it as if it belonged to somebody else. ”This. Too. She said.”

I sat down in the chair beside the bed.

I didn’t look inside her. I’d decided that, on the way in. I’d been looking inside Hana Osei for three weeks, measuring and counting, and it hadn’t done her any good. I looked at her face. The outside. Just what anybody would see.

”I’m sorry,” I said.

Hana looked at me for a long time.

”You. Didn’t. Tell,” she said. Slowly. Each word on its own, like stones put down on a path.

”No.”

”I. Asked.”

”Yes. And I should have told anyway.”

She thought about that. I watched her think about it. It took a long time, and her face went through several things on the way, and she let it, because she was too tired to stop it.

”Risa. Told,” she said.

”Yes.”

”Good,” said Hana.

Then her eyes went to the end of the bed. To a piece of paper clipped to the rail, under her chart. Halloway’s writing. A copy of the form. Full service stipend to the family for life.

”Halloway. Showed. Me,” said Hana. Her mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile. ”Mama. Will buy. Meat.”

And she fell asleep. All at once. In the middle of it. The way the twins used to at the table when they were very small, with a spoon in their hand.

I sat with her for a while.

Then I went to find Halloway, because it was nine o’clock.

The assembly was on the Friday.

All of us. Every squad. Every instructor. In the briefing hall at the top of the engineering wing, where Crane had shown us Avalon on the big screen four months before, green and empty, with two moons. None detected. The same rows of seats going up in a curve. The same screen. The same stage.

The General was on the stage. And Crane. And beside them, in a chair at the end, a narrow man in a gray coat I didn’t know, with a slate on his knee.

”Health committee,” said Luna, beside me. Very low. Not moving her lips. ”Under-secretary. He works for Friese.”

Three rows in front of us, Sigmund was sitting very straight at the end of the Squad Two row. I saw the back of his neck go stiff when the man in the gray coat sat down.

Crane spoke first.

He stood at the front of the stage without his cane, which he’d leaned against the General’s chair, and he spoke without notes, the way he always did. Quietly. Clearly. So that two hundred people had to lean forward a little to hear him, and didn’t notice they were doing it.

He told us we were sixty-eight days from the Meridian.

He told us the final trials had gone well. Better than projected. Thirty-nine of forty cadets in the pressure trial completed the full descent with nominal readings. He said it the way you’d say it’s a fine morning. He let it sit.

”And one did not,” said Crane.

The hall was very quiet.

”Cadet Hana Osei of Squad Three,” said Crane, ”suffered a serious medical event in Chamber One on Wednesday. She has received the finest care this program can offer. She will recover. She has been withdrawn from the AVALON program on medical grounds, with full honors, and her family will be provided for.”

He paused.

”I want to say her name,” said Crane, ”because I think it matters that we say it. Hana Osei. She knew the risks. Every one of you knows the risks. And she went into that chamber anyway, because she believed in what we are trying to do. That is what courage looks like.”

I felt something go very cold in my stomach.

She went into that chamber because your office sent a note at half past seven ordering every cadet to complete the trial without exception.

”I’m told,” said Crane, ”that there has been talk. In the corridors. In the mess. That this was somebody’s fault. That it could have been prevented.” He looked out at us. Up the curve of seats. Slowly. Not at anyone. At everyone. ”I want to address that directly. Because I think you deserve honesty.”

Beside me, Luna’s hands were flat on the desk in front of her. The frost was starting. Very faint. Spreading out from her fingertips in thin white lines.

”Every great endeavor,” said Crane, ”carries a cost.”

He said it simply. Not grandly. The way Father used to say every field needs water.

”The men and women who held the line in the war knew that. Many of your parents knew it. Some of them paid it.” He folded his hands in front of him. ”The first wave knew it. Thirty-four volunteers who went to a world nobody had ever stood on, eighteen months ago, so that you could follow them with better suits and better kits and better maps. Nine of them are still with us. Still calling in, every nine days, from the far side of the dark. Still building.” He paused. ”Some of their numbers are remarkable.”

I didn’t move.

I didn’t look at anyone. I held my face exactly still, the way I’d held it in the ring with Fenwick’s voice in my ear. But somewhere three rows in front of me, a long way down at the end of the Squad Six row, Risa’s head turned very slightly. Just a fraction. Toward me. And then back.

”We do not send you because you are expendable,” said Crane. ”We send you because you are necessary. Because nobody else can do what you can do. And because what you can do is the only thing standing between the last of humanity and the end of it.” He let that sit too. ”And necessary things are not free. They have never been free. There will be losses. In training. On the Meridian. On Avalon. That is not cruelty. That is arithmetic.”

Arithmetic.

Luna had said that word to me, months ago, on the gallery. About the officers who called orphans assets. Because if the orphans were people, then the officers had let them die to make the safe version.

”The program has a term for this,” said Crane. ”I know it sounds cold. I’d rather you heard it from me than read it in a file one day and thought we’d hidden it from you.” He looked up the curve of seats. ”Acceptable attrition. The number of losses a mission can sustain and still succeed. Every mission in history has had one. Ours does too.” He smiled, very slightly. Sadly. ”I think it’s more honest to say so.”

The hall was absolutely silent.

”Which brings me,” said Crane, ”to the changes.”

He said them very clearly.

The final trials would continue unchanged. All of them. On schedule.

Link sessions would be extended from one hour to two. To compensate for lost training time.

And then:

”Concerns have been raised by the medical staff,” said Crane, ”about the pace of the final trials. Those concerns have been reviewed.” He turned slightly, toward the narrow man in the gray coat at the end of the stage. ”By the Council’s health committee. Who have kindly sent Under-Secretary Marlowe to be with us this morning. And the committee has found that the trial schedule represents an acceptable level of risk, and has overruled the medical objection.”

He turned back to us.

”Dr. Halloway’s concerns are noted,” said Crane. ”And appreciated. They have been noted.”

Three rows in front of me, Sigmund Friese stood up.

He didn’t do it fast.

He didn’t push his chair back. He didn’t make a noise. He just stood up, very straight, at the end of the Squad Two row, in his black uniform, with his hands at his sides. The way he’d stood in the doorway of the little side room at the gala, listening to his father.

The man in the gray coat on the stage looked at him. So did the General. So did two hundred cadets, in a long slow turning of heads that went up the curve of seats like a wave.

Crane stopped talking.

Not for long. Half a second. Then he said, quite gently, ”Cadet Friese? Is something wrong?”

Sigmund didn’t answer.

He turned, very precisely, the way he did everything. And walked down the end of the row. And along the front of the stage, past the General, past Crane, past the man from his father’s committee, close enough to touch all of them, without looking at any of them. Not fast. Not slow. The way you’d walk across a room you’d decided you didn’t need to be in anymore.

And out of the door at the side of the hall.

It swung shut behind him.

Nobody moved.

Crane stood at the front of the stage with his hands folded. And for one second, one, I saw something in his face. Not anger. Interest. The way he’d looked at the screen with my eyes on it.

Then the smile came back.

”Well,” he said. ”I’m sure Cadet Friese has his reasons. It’s been a difficult week for all of us.” He turned toward the screen. ”Now. The Meridian loading schedule—”

I stood up.

I want to say I thought about it. That I decided. I didn’t. Not really. I was standing before I’d finished thinking anything at all. The way Seraphina was standing in the corridor before she’d finished deciding to be angry.

Beside me, Luna didn’t move. Her hands were flat on the desk, and the frost had spread right across it, a thin white sheet, under her palms. She didn’t look at me. She couldn’t. She was Squad Eight’s leader, and her father was on the stage, and the whole hall was watching.

But as I stepped past her, out of the row, her right hand moved. Very slightly. Just her little finger. It touched the side of my leg as I went by. Just for a second. Cold.

On the other side of her, Liam had half stood up. Toby had a hand on his arm. Seraphina was looking straight ahead at the stage, and the air round her was shaking with heat.

I walked down the end of our row.

Along the front of the stage. The same way Sigmund had. Past the General, who looked at me the way he’d looked at me on field one, like a piece of land. Past the man in the gray coat, whose heart went like a bird’s as I went by. Past Crane.

Crane didn’t stop talking this time. He went on, very smoothly, about the loading schedule and the three lifts and the first group to board. He didn’t look at me. But as I passed him, close enough to touch, I looked.

Sixty beats a minute. Calm. Like a man reading the newspaper.

At the back of the hall, standing against the wall by the door with her arms folded, was Okafor.

She didn’t stop me.

She was looking at the ceiling.

Sigmund was on a bench.

At the edge of field one, under the cave lamps, where the gravel path ran round the outside of the running track. There were benches along it every fifty yards, for instructors. Nobody ever sat on them. Sigmund was sitting on the third one, very straight, with his hands on his knees, looking at the empty field.

I walked down the path.

He heard me coming. He didn’t turn round.

I sat down on the other end of the bench.

We didn’t say anything.

I want to describe that properly, because people have asked me since, and they never believe it. They think something must have been said. Something important. Some speech. The beginning of something.

Nothing was said.

We sat on the bench at the edge of field one, at either end of it, with about four feet of cold wooden slats between us, and looked at the field.

The lamps were at midday white. The track was empty. Somewhere on the far side, a groundsman was raking the sand pit where we did the long jump, very slowly, back and forth. You could hear the rake. That was the only sound.

Sigmund’s hands were on his knees. I could see them. Not with my page. Just with my eyes. They were shaking. Not much. The way they’d shaken in the doorway at the gala. And every few seconds, very faint, a thread of blue went between two of his knuckles, and was gone. Like a nerve twitching.

He didn’t seem to notice.

I thought about the things I could say.

Your father’s committee.

That was brave.

I’m sorry.

She’s alive. She can’t say her words yet but she’s alive. Risa told. Risa went through Halloway’s door at three in the morning in her nightgown. Your sister. You should know that.

I didn’t say any of them.

I don’t know why. I’ve thought about it. I think it was because anything I said would have been about me. About what I knew, or what I’d done, or what I hadn’t done. And Sigmund hadn’t walked out of that hall so that somebody could come and sit next to him and talk about themselves.

He’d walked out because he couldn’t sit there.

So I didn’t sit there either. I sat here. That was all I had.

After about an hour, the rain came.

It was the scheduled cycle. The afternoon one. You could hear it start at the far end of the cave, the hiss of the ceiling sprinklers opening, a long way off, and then coming closer. A gray curtain moving across the field toward us.

Sigmund didn’t move.

The rain reached the far side of the track. The groundsman put down his rake and walked off toward the sheds. The rain crossed the track. The sand pit. The grass. It was ten yards away. Five.

Sigmund’s hands were still on his knees. Still shaking. Still sparking, faintly, between the knuckles, every few seconds.

I looked at him. Then at the rain.

I don’t know much about lightning. Risa’s taught me some. But I know water, and I know what water does to a boy who can’t stop his hands sparking.

So I looked up.

At the rain coming down over our bench. Every drop. All at once. The way I’d looked at the mist in the training hall, only small. Gently. And as each drop came down over the bench, I took it apart. Just a little. Not into anything else. Just into finer and finer water. Until it wasn’t drops anymore. Until it was mist. Soft and cool and harmless, the kind that hangs in the valley at home on autumn mornings and doesn’t make anything wet.

The rain fell everywhere else. On the field. On the path. On the benches either side of us. Hard and gray and loud.

On our bench, it was just a fine cold mist. Drifting. Settling on our hair like dew.

Sigmund looked up.

He looked at the mist over the bench. At the rain falling on the path a yard away, bouncing off the gravel. At the edge between the two, where hard rain turned to nothing.

Then he looked at me.

I didn’t look back. I kept my eyes on the rain. I had to. It took looking.

He didn’t say anything.

But the sparks between his knuckles stopped.

We sat in the mist for the whole of the rain cycle. Forty minutes.

At some point, Okafor came down the path from the training halls. In her patched gray uniform, with her hands in her pockets, walking slowly in the rain without seeming to notice it.

She didn’t come to our bench. She sat down on the next one along. Fifty yards away. In the rain. With the water running off her cropped gray hair and the steel side of her face.

She didn’t say anything either.

She just sat there. With her hands in her pockets. Looking at the field.

Three of us. On two benches. In the rain and the mist.

When the cycle finished, and the sprinklers shut off with a long sigh, and the lamps began to turn from white to yellow for the evening, Sigmund stood up.

He stood for a moment with his back to me, very straight, looking at the field.

Then he nodded. Once. Not at me. Not at anything. Just a small, precise, Friese nod. The kind you’d give at the end of a list, when you’d checked everything off and found it correct.

And walked away up the path toward the barracks.

He went past Okafor’s bench. She didn’t look up. He didn’t stop. But as he passed, I saw him slow down. Just very slightly. Just for one step.

Then he went on.

At nine o’clock, I went to Halloway.

She was at her desk, with a single sheet of paper in front of her, and her spectacles pushed up on her forehead. She didn’t say anything when I came in. She turned the paper round so I could read it.

It was her stipend form. The one she’d shown me. Over the objection of the medical officer. And under her signature, in small neat handwriting that leaned slightly forward, like somebody walking into a wind:

Approved. Full stipend. — C.

Dr. Halloway’s objection is noted.

I read it twice.

”He approved it,” I said.

”Of course he approved it.” Halloway took the paper back. ”If he didn’t, I’d appeal. And the appeal would go to the Chancellor’s office. And the Chancellor’s office would read the words over the objection.” She put it in a drawer. ”Cheaper to pay the Oseis for fifty years than to let that sentence go upstairs.”

”And noted.”

”Noted,” said Halloway. She took her spectacles off her forehead and put them on properly. ”That’s what they say, Lucas, when they’ve heard you perfectly clearly and decided it doesn’t matter. Noted.” She pulled a heavy book off the shelf behind her and put it on the desk between us with a thump. ”Sit down. Page one.”

I sat down.

She opened it. A drawing. A head, cut in half from front to back. Bone. And under the bone, a layer. Tough and gray and smooth.

”This,” said Dr. Halloway, ”is the dura. The leather. You’ve met it.” She put her finger on it. ”By the time the Meridian leaves, you’re going to know the name of everything under it. Every map. Every road. So that next time, there doesn’t have to be a doctor standing next to you.”

”There should always be a doctor standing next to me.”

Halloway looked at me over her spectacles for a long moment.

”Yes,” she said. ”There should.” She turned the page. ”And on Avalon there won’t be. Page two.”

I wrote it down that night. Late. After two hours of the leather and the bone and the names of things I’d seen all my life and never known.

Day 209. Acceptable attrition.

”Thirty-nine of forty.” He said it like a good morning.

He said her name so he could use it.

”Nine are still calling in. Some of their numbers are remarkable.” He knew. He said it to my face, in front of everyone, and smiled.

Sigmund walked out. So did I. Luna couldn’t. She touched my leg with one finger as I went.

The bench. Nothing said. The rain. His hands stopped sparking.

Okafor on the next bench. In the rain.

And at the bottom, under the rest, because it had been going round in my head all day, ever since the stage:

Acceptable to who?

Not to anyone on the bridge.