Scarecrow

By dawn it was eighty kilometers away.

Juno said so, standing on the north path with her arm out and her eyes shut, in the cold gray light before the sun. Her arm wasn’t shaking anymore. It had stopped shaking about four in the morning. It just pointed. North, a little east, and lower than it had been at midnight, the way your arm goes lower when you point at something that’s coming closer across a field.

”Eighty,” she said. ”Maybe less. It’s not stopping.”

”How fast?”

”Faster than a man can run.” She opened her eyes. ”It’ll be here by dark, Dask. Maybe before.”

Luna didn’t call a council. There wasn’t time for a council. She just went round the canyon in the half-dark, the way she had the night of the lander, and stopped in front of each of us, and said one or two words, and moved on.

To Toby, coming down the north path at dawn from the gray room with Risa and his blanket and his fork: ”Stay up there.”

”It’s the morning. It only sings at night—”

”It’s not singing,” said Luna. ”It’s coming. Stay up there. Till I come for you myself.”

Toby looked at her. Then at Risa. Then he turned round, and went back up the hill.

To me, she said: ”The window’s at noon.”

”I know.”

”He’ll be on it. Crane.” She looked at me with her pale eyes. ”He did this. He knew what it would do, when it heard Toby’s voice coming down out of the sky. He wanted it to come.” A pause. ”Ask him why.”

”I was going to.”

”Not Director,” said Luna. ”Not the way you always do. Polite. Careful.” She was very calm. ”Ask him the way Holt would. Ask Hal.”

The tenth comms window opened at noon on Day 398.

The dome. Father’s radio on the table. Dot’s long cold arm along the table beside it, listening. Luna in the doorway, where she could see the canyon.

And through the doorway, past her, the north rim. And the green on it. Every frond. Not turned toward me, now. Not turned toward the sky. Turned north. Toward the thing that was coming.

The handset hissed.

”Command to four-oh-one-dash-P-one,” said the relay. ”Report.”

”No,” I said.

The relay paused.

”Command to four-oh-one-dash-P-one. Report.”

”I’m not reporting,” I said. ”Not titanium. Not water. Not names. I want to talk to the Director. Now. Or I’m going to put this handset down and Dot is going to take the radio apart, and you won’t hear from Scarecrow again.”

A very long pause. Longer than any I’d ever heard.

Then a click. And a breath. Close. Very close to the microphone.

”Lucas,” said Crane.

”Hello, Hal,” I said.

Silence.

Not a pause. A silence. The kind that goes on long enough that you start to wonder if the line’s gone dead. I could hear the relay hissing faintly, eleven light-years of hiss, and under it, very faint, something else. Breathing. Slow, careful breathing. The way you breathe when you’re holding something very still with both hands so that you won’t drop it.

”Who told you that,” said Crane. Not a question.

”Ezra Holt. He’s here. He was in the second intake. He remembers you. Thin. Clever. Never ran the course. Held your pen with both hands.” I swallowed. ”You hold the microphone close. Every time. I always wondered why.”

The breathing went on for a while.

”Holt,” said Crane at last. Very softly. ”Ezra Holt. The bridge.” Another breath. ”I didn’t know he was alive. We had him as quiet in the seventh month.”

”He’s alive. He’s sitting outside on a terrace with his stick. His hands stopped shaking two years ago. He’s been living in the green.” I held the handset very tight. ”You know why. You’ve known since you heard Toby sing. You’ve got a file called Phase Two with thirty-one names on it, and a gap, and yours.”

”Yes,” said Crane.

”Why did you do it?” I said. ”Last night. Toby’s voice. Down from the sky. To the whole planet.”

”To call it.”

”I know you called it. It’s coming. It’ll be here by dark. Why?”

Another long breath.

”Because I’ve been listening for thirty years, Lucas,” said Halvard Crane. ”Since I was fifteen, in a room under a mountain, with a needle in my arm made from a splinter of one of their machines, and my hands going. The same stuff. Smaller pieces. And then they dragged the bone out of the Orme, the biggest piece anyone had ever found, and I asked to be put in charge of it, because I wanted to know what had done this to me. I’ve listened to it every day. In the mountain. In the hangar. On the plain, when they built the ship round it.” His voice didn’t change. Soft. Tired. Careful. ”It never said anything. Not once. Not a word. Thirty years. It was a stone.”

”Until Toby.”

”Until you,” said Crane. ”You landed, and it woke up. It sang. Through the relay. I heard it. The first time in thirty years.” A pause. ”And then the boy sang to your mother, and it answered, and your mother held a speaker in her own two hands.”

I didn’t say anything.

”A song works for an hour,” said Crane. ”I’ve had the clinic reports from your sister’s building. Thirty-one patients. Some of the families are humming it already, Lucas. Your sister wrote it out. They hum it, and the hands stop, and an hour later they start again.” A breath. ”An hour. Through eleven light-years of relay. Through a recording. A pale copy of a copy.”

”So you want the original.”

”I want the whole of it,” said Crane. ”The spine was never whole. A seed needs its soil. I sent the bone home so that it would wake, and it woke. Now I want what it was looking for. The rest of it. The part that’s been under your mountain. The part that’s coming to your canyon tonight, because it thinks a boy is calling it.” His voice went very quiet. ”I want to bring it home, Lucas. To the city. To the glass. Where thirty-one people can stand next to it every day of their lives and never shake again.”

”And you.”

”And me,” said Hal. ”At the bottom. After a gap.”

Luna, in the doorway, had gone very still.

I looked out past her. At the green on the north rim. At the shape of the land going north, where something the size of a mountain was coming toward us under the ground, faster than a man can run, because it thought it had been called.

”You never asked it,” I said.

”Things like that don’t ask, Lucas.”

”It does,” I said. ”It asked who. It asked who we were, and Dot told it her name, and it said it back. Correctly. Every small thing in its place.” My voice was shaking. I let it. ”It sent one of the Teeming up a slope to say good evening to a man with a bad knee. It took a piece of itself out of your lander and carried it home without touching one of us. It’s been on its own for longer than people. And it heard its name, and it came to see.” I swallowed. ”And you want to put it in a ship.”

”I want to cure people—”

”So do I,” I said. ”That’s why I’m not going to help you.”

Silence on the line.

”Lucas,” said Crane. Very gently. ”Your mother’s stabilizer is delivered every Monday. You know that. Your sister tells you. A new leaf on the lemon tree.”

I went cold.

”I’m not going to stop it,” said Crane. ”I want you to know that. I’m not that man. I’m not going to take your mother’s doses away to make you help me.” A breath. ”But I want you to understand that a song works for an hour, and the stabilizer works for a day, and in thirty-six months the authorization runs out, and I don’t know who will be sitting in this chair then. And the thing coming to your canyon tonight could make it so that nobody ever needs the stabilizer again. Not your mother. Not Mrs. Calder. Not me.” Another breath. ”Think about that. When it gets there.”

”Contact concluded,” said the relay.

The line went dead.

It came at dusk.

Not over the rim. Not like the Teeming. It didn’t come over anything. It came under.

I felt it first through my feet. Standing on the red glass in front of the dome with my stick, watching the last of the light go off the top of the tower. A hum. So low it wasn’t a sound. The kind of thing you feel in your teeth before you feel it anywhere else. The glass under my boots went faintly warm, and then faintly cold, and then something in the rock far below us moved, the way a sleeper moves under a blanket.

All round the rim, the green bowed.

Not up. Not toward me. Down. Every frond, fifty kilometers of them, bending toward the canyon, toward the floor of it, the way a field bends in a wind that’s blowing straight down out of the sky.

Juno, on the north path, lowered her arm.

Slowly. All the way. Until it was pointing at the ground between her feet.

”Here,” she said. Her voice was very small. ”It’s here. Under us. Right under the canyon.” She swallowed. ”It’s stopped.”

Nobody moved.

Seventeen of us on the red glass. Wren on the tower with her mirror. Holt on the terrace with his hands open on his knees, palms up, trembling very slightly, the way a needle trembles near a magnet. Dot in the middle of it all, very tall, with her eight arms folded and her rivers running in four colors, and the colors going pale.

And up the north hill, two hundred meters into the rock, a gray room with a ring of lamplight in it, and Toby, and Risa.

”Operator,” said Dot.

Her voice was strange. Doubled. As if there were two of her, and one was very far away.

”It is speaking. Through this unit. Through the silver in this unit.” The rivers flickered. ”This unit can hear it very clearly now. It is not saying its name.”

”What’s it saying?”

”It is asking,” said Dot. ”The same question. Who.” A pause. ”But not to this unit. Not to the operator.”

She turned her grille, very slowly, toward the north hill.

”To the one who has been singing.”

”No,” said Sera.

She was beside me. I hadn’t heard her come. Her hands were white to the wrist.

”No. He’s not coming out. Not for that. Not tonight. He nearly died, Lucas. He nearly—”

”I know.”

”Then tell it.”

”I can’t,” I said. ”It’s not asking me.”

I don’t know how long we stood there. A minute. Five. The hum in the ground went on, very low, very patient. The green stayed bowed. The question went on, over and over, through Dot, in a voice I couldn’t hear and everybody could feel.

Who. Who. Who.

And then, at the mouth of the titanium seam, up on the north hill, a ring of lamplight came out of the dark.

Toby.

With Risa beside him, holding his left hand in both of hers, pressed flat against her chest. With the fork in his right hand. With the air round the two of them going very slightly strange, the way air goes over a hot road.

His wall. Still up. Walking with him.

They came down the north path very slowly, the two of them, in their little ring of lamplight and bent air, past Juno, onto the red glass. Into the middle of us.

”Toby,” said Luna. Very sharp. ”I said stay up there.”

”I know,” said Toby. ”I heard it through the wall.” He was very white. But his voice was steady. ”It’s not calling me, Luna. It never was. It heard me singing to Lucas’s mum, and it heard me again last night out of the sky, and it doesn’t understand. It doesn’t know who I am. It just wants to know who’s been talking to it.” He swallowed. ”That’s all it’s ever wanted. Somebody to say who.”

”And if it stops your heart?”

”Then Risa will shout,” said Toby. ”And Lucas will come. And he’ll be very cross about it.”

Risa’s eyes were shut. Her lips were moving. Counting.

”Ninety,” she said. ”His. Fast. Scared.” She pressed his hand harder against her chest. ”But his. Not singing anyone’s name. His.”

”I’m going to make a hole in the wall,” said Toby. ”Just a small one. Just big enough for one word. And I’m going to say it, and then I’m going to close it again.” He looked at me. ”If my heart goes funny, you hold it. Like before.”

I looked at him.

Toby Marsh. The boy at the end of the Calders’ table with his armband slipping down, who cried every night for a month and pretended he didn’t. Who’d made a wall out of the lowest note he’d ever sung. Who’d put his name in fifteen stones on the way down a mountain so that somebody counting could follow.

”I’ll hold it,” I said.

He shut his eyes.

The air round him and Risa wavered. Very slightly. Like a window opening in a hot room.

And Toby sang.

Not the hello. Not the old song. Not anything I’d ever heard him sing. Something short. Something new. A small quick run of notes, up and down and up, bright and clumsy and a little bit wrong, like a boy tripping over the doorstep and laughing at himself.

I didn’t know what it was. I’d never heard it before.

But I knew what it was.

It was what Toby sounded like when he was only being Toby.

The air closed. The wall came back.

Risa, counting, with her eyes shut: ”Ninety-four. Ninety-six. Steady. Steady.” Her voice went up. ”His.”

The hum in the ground stopped.

All round the rim, the green went perfectly still.

And Dot’s rivers went white.

All four colors. All at once. White as lamps, white as Luna’s ice, white as the inside of a star. Her grille lit. Her eight arms came up, all together, slowly, palms open, the way Holt’s hands came up when the ship went over.

And she spoke. Not in her own voice. Not in anyone’s. A small quick run of sound, up and down and up, bright and clumsy and a little bit wrong. Through Dot’s grille. Out loud. So that all of us heard it, even me.

Toby’s song.

Toby’s name.

Said back to him. Correctly. Every small thing in its place.

Toby opened his eyes.

He stood in the middle of the red glass with Risa holding his hand to her heart and his own name ringing off the canyon walls in a robot’s voice, and he started to cry. Not the cracked wet laugh from the waterfall. Not the white-faced shaking from the dome. Just crying. Quietly. With his whole face.

”It said it right,” he said. ”Lucas. It said it right.”

”I know.”

”Nobody ever says it right. They always say Marsh. Or the sound boy. Or Cadet.” He wiped his face with the back of the hand that held the fork. ”It said me.”

Then the ship came over.

Two hours past midnight. We were all still there. Nobody had gone to bed. Toby had gone back into his wall, with Risa, sitting on the red glass in the middle of us with his knees up and the fork in his lap, humming the old song very quietly to himself, the way he did in the gray room.

”Coming,” said Dot.

And the relay came over the western rim.

I felt it. We all did. The hello, pouring down out of the sky, very loud, in Toby’s voice. In the old song. A recording of a recording, eleven light-years old, played down from a ship in the dark by a man holding a microphone close with both hands.

Toby, inside his wall, didn’t even look up.

But the thing under the canyon did.

I’d never felt anything like it. I never have since.

The ground moved. Not a hum, this time. Not a sleeper turning under a blanket. Something enormous, lifting. Something waking all the way up.

Because it knew.

It had heard Toby. The real Toby. His name, sung on the red glass in front of it, bright and clumsy and a little bit wrong. And now here was the same voice coming down out of the sky, singing the same song, and it wasn’t him. It was a copy. A shape with nobody in it.

Somebody pretending to be somebody it had just learned the name of.

The green rose. All of it. All round the rim, fifty kilometers of silver tips, lifting off the ground toward the passing ship like a field of hands.

And the thing under the canyon sang.

I heard it. That’s the only time I ever did. Not with my ears. With every part of me. With my teeth and my bones and the silver nobody had ever put in me that was in me anyway, from Mother, from Father, from two people a needle had touched before I was born.

One word. Very long. Very old. Up into the sky.

The spine’s name.

Said back to it. Correctly. Every small thing in its place.

And then, after it, something new. Something I’d never heard. Short. Low. Final. The way you’d say a word to a dog that’s been barking all night at the door.

”Gone,” said Dot.

Her voice was very small.

”The relay. The spine.” The rivers were running very slowly, in four dim colors. ”It has stopped singing. It has stopped carrying. It has stopped.”

”Over the rim?”

”No,” said Dot. ”It is still overhead. This unit can feel it. It is still going round.” A pause. ”But the spine has gone quiet. The way it was in the river. The way it was in the mountain, for thirty years. A stone.” The rivers stopped altogether. ”The deep told it to be quiet. And it was.”

I stood on the red glass with my stick and looked up at the stars.

All of them standing still. None of them moving. Somewhere among them, a long silver ship with a gray bone down the middle of it, going round and round over our heads.

Silent.

”The relay,” said Luna. Very quietly. ”If the spine’s stopped carrying.” She didn’t finish.

She didn’t need to.

No more windows. No more Command. No more Crane, soft and careful and close to the microphone. No more four minutes.

No more Genny, at the other end of the dark, saying a new leaf on Monday.

No more Mother.

Day 398.

It came under. A hum in the teeth. The whole green bowed toward the canyon floor. Juno’s arm pointed straight down. ”Here. Under us.”

Tenth window. ”Hello, Hal.” Thirty years listening to a stone. A needle at fifteen. Then the bone. It never said anything until I landed.

He wants the whole of it. To bring it home to the glass. So thirty-one people never shake again. ”And me. At the bottom. After a gap.”

”Things like that don’t ask, Lucas.” It asked who. It said Dot’s name back. ”That’s why I’m not going to help you.”

He won’t stop the doses. ”I’m not that man.” But thirty-six months. And then who sits in his chair.

Dusk. It asked who. Not me. Not Dot. The one who’s been singing.

Toby came down the hill inside his wall, with Risa holding his hand to her heart. ”It’s not calling me. It just wants to know who.” He made a hole in the wall for one word.

He sang his name. Bright, clumsy, a little bit wrong. Ninety-six. His.

Dot said it back. Out loud. In nobody’s voice. Correctly. Toby cried. ”It said me.”

Two past midnight. The relay played Toby’s recording down. The deep knew it wasn’t him. A copy. A shape with nobody in it.

It sang the spine’s name back up. Then one more word. Low. Final. Like you’d say to a dog barking at a door.

The spine is quiet. A stone again. Still going round. Not carrying.

No more windows.

No more Mother.

Underlined twice. I couldn’t make the pencil do it a third time.