Scarecrow

The answer about Sigmund arrived before breakfast.

Not among the twelve.

No confirmed information about his present location.

Wren brought the words herself. She stood outside our door until Risa told her to come in, then handed her the slate without trying to arrange her face into something comforting.

Risa read it.

Read it again.

“Thank you.”

Wren nodded.

“The full list came too. Dot has a copy.”

“Was there anything else about him?”

“No.”

Risa set the slate on her knees.

I sat beside her without speaking.

It was Day 479.

Outside, someone was arguing with a pot lid. The ordinary morning went on being ordinary, which seemed both unkind and necessary.

Sera brought Risa’s cup.

Luna asked Wren whether the list had been repeated back and confirmed. It had. Twelve names, including Harrow Dane. All described as second wave.

Names supplied by one sender.

We hadn’t met the people yet.

Wren left us the slate and went back to the signals.

Risa rubbed her thumb along its edge.

“I thought I’d be disappointed.”

“Are you?” I asked.

“Yes. And relieved that I don’t have to know what to say to him today. Then I feel horrible about being relieved.”

Sera sat on her other side.

“You haven’t been given a chance to feel one simple thing about him.”

Risa looked at her.

“No.”

Luna put the cup within easy reach and sat down too.

For a while, the four of us watched the light move across the table.

Nobody tried to turn the answer into closure.

It wasn’t an answer that could do that.

After breakfast, Risa put the slate with the other records.

Then she asked to see the route plan.

“Do you want work,” Luna asked, “or somewhere to put your hands?”

“Both.”

“All right.”

We spread the map out.

The northern sightline was still a line through air. Dot’s wing had followed the visible approach as far as its link would hold and returned with pictures of a broad saddle, a narrow descent, and trees thick enough to hide what lay beyond.

Dane had sent a rough route from his end.

The two accounts didn’t meet yet.

Between them was a space none of us could responsibly call a road.

I put my finger beside it.

“We begin here.”

Luna moved my finger back to the western shelter.

“We begin where someone can reach us when the next part goes wrong.”

She was right.

I let the line become shorter.

We had three directions worth planning for.

The western ridge, where the new mirror had found people.

The lower green, where a fallen path had recently introduced Risa to a root she had strong opinions about.

The colder northern ground, where weather and distance made even a simple journey expensive.

We couldn’t fill all three with buildings because we’d found a clear morning.

We could begin a chain of useful places.

A shelter. Water. A lamp. A mirror where the sun could reach it. A marked path to the next point, with the uncertain stretches still marked uncertain.

Sera looked at the little symbols Luna had drawn.

“They all need to work when Lucas isn’t there.”

“Yes,” Luna said.

I looked up.

Sera smiled at me.

“That wasn’t an insult.”

“I know.”

But I hadn’t known until she said it how much I’d still been imagining the whole thing as another way to keep myself holding everything up.

That afternoon, I took Luna to the saddle.

A short flight. Open ground. Time to return before the light changed.

Corr came with us and stayed at the broad lower shelf while we walked the final rise. He wanted to check the approach on foot with a pack rather than accept what it looked like from a hull.

The wind was sharper above the ridge.

Luna pulled her jacket closed and stood looking north.

Beyond us lay more green, more stone, and the faint pale line of higher ground.

Somewhere beyond that, twelve names had been written by a person we’d never seen.

I stood beside her.

“Do you think they’re all right?”

“I think somebody wanted us to believe they were.”

“That isn’t much.”

“No.”

She turned toward me.

“It’s still more than we had before the mirror.”

I nodded.

She reached for my hand before we began looking at the ground.

The best place for a shelter was not the best place for a mirror.

That became clear almost immediately.

The mirror wanted height and open sky. A person trying to sleep wanted something between their ribs and the wind.

We chose two places joined by a short, broad path.

I checked the exposed stone. Luna walked the turn twice, once looking up and once watching her feet.

Corr came up with the pack and changed where we thought the first step should go.

Then we sat behind the low shoulder and ate.

Luna kept looking at the pale distance.

“Cold?” I asked.

“A little.”

I moved closer.

She leaned against me, and for several minutes we were simply two people sharing warmth behind a rock.

Corr was busy with the route markers farther down. He had the tact to remain busy.

“I used to think I’d have to become useful enough that nobody could send me away,” Luna said.

I looked at her.

She kept her eyes on the distance.

“Not here. Before.”

I waited.

“If you were necessary, you had a place. If you were excellent, perhaps they wouldn’t look too closely at what else you wanted.”

“What else did you want?”

She turned toward me then.

“This,” she said.

It was so quiet that the wind almost took it.

I touched her cheek.

“You don’t have to earn it.”

“I know you believe that.”

“I’d like you to believe it too.”

She smiled, not quite sadly.

“I’m practicing.”

I kissed her until the wind stopped being the thing I noticed most.

When we drew apart, she rested her forehead against mine.

Then Corr called that he’d found a place where runoff crossed the approach, and we went to look.

We returned with a plan instead of an outpost.

Sera approved of that when she saw the marks.

Risa wanted to know whether the path could be walked without making a person look at their feet the whole time.

“Most of it,” Luna said.

“Then mark the part where they can’t.”

We did.

Risa tested her ankle around camp that evening, slowly, with Toby watching the first stretch and then leaving her to report honestly rather than following her like a suspicious shadow.

She came back tired but pleased.

“Farther.”

“How much farther?” I asked.

She gave me a look.

“Enough to be pleased about. Not enough for you to send me over a ridge.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I know. I’m enjoying getting the warning in first.”

I took her hand and kissed her knuckles.

She let me keep it while she told us where it had begun to ache.

The first small northern shelter went up over the next two days.

A place on the approach to the colder ground, not a claim that we had conquered the ice.

Holt came to inspect the route and contributed three complaints that made it better. Corr and Ilse carried ordinary panels while I fitted the supports. Liam came for the second trip and spent part of it arguing with a roof joint until Sera’s drawing won.

The mirror stood on the higher stone.

The shelter sat below the wind.

Between them were steps wide enough for two tired feet, a handhold at the turn, and a marker visible from both directions.

We put water inside.

Food in a sealed container.

A copy of the route back to Scarecrow, drawn large enough that somebody wouldn’t need a perfect lamp to read it.

I wrote the name myself.

Scarecrow.

Then I stood back and let Corr check the spelling, because being able to change stone had never made my handwriting trustworthy.

On Day 481, the western mirror spoke to the new northern one.

Wren stood at the western mast. Luna stood beside me at the northern frame.

At first, there was only light and too much sky.

Then Wren found the angle.

A clear flash came across the gap.

Another.

Luna read it aloud.

“Seen.”

Such a small message.

I looked back toward the shelter below us, where Liam was fitting the last shelf.

If someone had to wait there, we could know they were waiting.

If the path failed, they wouldn’t have to spend their strength walking to tell us it had failed.

I sent the answer under Luna’s instruction, slowly enough that she could correct my hand.

Seen.

The far mirror answered again.

Luna laughed and put her hand on my shoulder.

We stayed until the bearings were written down properly.

Then we went home.

At camp, Anja had taken over labeling the supply bundles.

Not because anyone had assigned her the work. Because she’d opened one marked cloth and found three things that weren’t cloth, and decided the labels were a lie that could be fixed.

Liam put down the tools beside her.

“Successful expedition,” he announced.

“Did you bring the empty water vessel back?”

His expression changed.

She smiled.

“I saw it. It’s by the hull. I’m asking whether you remember doing it.”

“That feels unfair.”

“Good. Sit down.”

He sat beside her.

She kissed him before he could begin another account of the roof joint.

I kept walking.

Sera met me at our door and looked over my shoulder.

“They seem all right.”

“They do.”

She took my hand.

“How are you?”

I answered that question before telling her anything about the mirror.

“Tired. Happy to be back.”

She smiled.

“Come in.”

The official name arrived on Day 482.

It came in a packet from the station, brought by a shuttle whose pilot asked whether there was material to collect before he asked where to put the packet.

Luna told him there was no further consignment agreed.

He wrote that down without arguing and handed over the documents.

The first was addressed to PRIMARY BASE.

Below that, in smaller text, it said formerly Forward Base One.

Below that, smaller still, Scarecrow.

Liam leaned over my shoulder.

“They’ve made you smaller on the page.”

Luna took the document to the table.

I followed, with the old uncomfortable feeling that a thing could happen to us because somebody elsewhere had found a blank space and typed into it.

There was useful information in the packet.

A passenger manifest for the third-wave launch we had witnessed. Fourteen names. The fourteen we’d recovered.

We checked every one against the children themselves, not only the spelling we’d copied while they were hurt.

It didn’t tell us about every person sent to Avalon.

It did confirm that the batch whose trails we’d counted had contained fourteen passengers.

For the first time, we could close that particular question without pretending it answered all the others.

Nell read her own name and handed the sheet to Dena.

Their shoulders touched while they looked at it.

A second page confirmed that the family notifications had been forwarded beyond the station.

No acknowledgments from the families yet.

Wren copied exactly that.

Forwarded.

Not received.

The third page was about production.

It referred to an expected recurring contribution from Primary Base and attached the same monthly figures under a new heading.

Sera read it beside me.

“Apparently changing the name was meant to change the answer.”

Luna asked Dot to place the document with our previous refusal and the receipt for the single trial consignment.

Then she turned to the last page.

A routing acknowledgment for the material we’d already sent.

Station receiving had accepted it.

The destination after that was identified by a code without a plain name.

I read it twice.

“Can we find out what that is?”

Dot examined the record.

“I have no mapping for this destination code.”

“Could it be Earth?”

“It could refer to many things. The record does not say.”

Risa rested her hand on my arm.

I put the page down before hope could do the work the document hadn’t.

The pilot was still waiting by the shuttle.

Luna took our response to him before he began the departure checks.

The manifest had been received. The missing routing information remained requested. We had not agreed to recurring quotas.

And the name on our outgoing message was Scarecrow.

He looked at it.

“The station designation has changed.”

“We can read it,” Luna said.

“That’s what the system will call you.”

Holt, who had come down the path with his stick, looked up at the hull.

“Systems have called me all sorts of things. Most of them weren’t names I’d answer to.”

The pilot glanced at him, then at Luna.

After a moment, he accepted the packet.

“I’ll carry it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He looked surprised by the thanks.

We let him have it anyway.

That afternoon, Wren received a reply from Dane.

Not to the question about medical needs. That had been answered with no urgent need, repeated from before.

This one concerned a meeting.

He proposed a place between our newly surveyed approach and his outer path. A broad stone shoulder that appeared in both sets of directions.

Then he used the new name.

PRIMARY BASE REPRESENTATIVE.

DASK REQUIRED FOR TERMS.

Wren brought the slate into our room.

Sera looked from it to the station packet.

“How long has he known that name?”

We didn’t know.

We didn’t know whether he’d heard it from the same office that had sent us the page or from somebody else who liked repeating official things.

But the two messages had arrived close enough together to sit beside each other on our table.

Luna drew a line beneath the word required.

“No,” she said.

Risa read the proposed meeting place again.

“We can meet people without agreeing that Lucas is the price of the conversation.”

“He might mean he wants someone who can answer the technical questions,” I said.

“Then he can say that,” Sera answered.

I looked at the slate.

I didn’t want to be unfair to a man I’d never met.

I also didn’t want to become so frightened of being unfair that I stopped hearing what he’d actually asked.

Luna turned the page over and began a reply.

We would discuss a meeting after confirming the approach. We would choose our own representatives. Human needs could be sent now, without waiting for trade negotiations.

No promise about me.

No accusation about him.

I read it and nodded.

Wren took it back to the mirror.

After she left, the room felt smaller.

Too many papers on the table. Too many people we’d never seen finding reasons to put my name beside quantities.

I stood and went to the window.

Sera followed.

She didn’t ask whether I was all right when she could see I wasn’t.

She put her hand between my shoulders and waited.

“I want them to need me for something I can actually help with,” I said.

“I know.”

“A roof. Someone hurt. A pump that doesn’t work.”

“Those things may be there too.”

“Then why don’t they ask about those first?”

She leaned against my side.

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t a comforting answer.

Her being there was.

Luna came to the other side of the window.

Risa stayed at the table long enough to gather the papers into one stack, then joined us.

For a moment, we stood too close for anyone to move comfortably.

I liked it.

“What are we called here?” Risa asked.

I looked at her.

“Scarecrow.”

“I meant in this room.”

I thought about it.

Not Dask required for terms.

Not production capacity.

“Lucas.”

She nodded.

Sera slid her hand into mine.

Luna rested her forehead briefly against my shoulder.

I breathed out.

There were very few things in the world that became clearer because three people stood close enough to keep me from pacing.

This was one of them.

We put the official papers away before supper.

Then Sera took out the drawing of our room and asked whether anyone wanted the shelf moved before she drew it again.

Risa said the shelf was fine, but its owner might consider keeping his notebook on it.

Luna said the window seat needed another cushion.

I said nothing because my notebook was beneath the edge of the blanket again.

Sera saw where I looked.

She began to laugh.

That set Risa off, and then Luna, quietly at first and then not quietly at all.

I took the notebook out and put it where it belonged.

It did very little for my dignity.

It improved the room enormously.

Before supper, Risa took a folded blanket to the medical shelter.

I went with her to look at the adjustment Toby wanted made to Merrin’s leg support. Merrin was sitting up when we arrived, looking considerably more like a man who might complain about the food than one who had needed carrying off a ledge.

Risa put the blanket within reach.

“Better?” she asked.

“Much.”

He looked at her for a moment longer than the question required.

“You could stay and talk. If you’re not busy.”

“I’ve got a few things to do.”

“Later, then? I haven’t had much chance to meet someone as pretty as you.”

I became very interested in the fastening beside his knee.

Risa smiled, kindly enough that he didn’t have to feel foolish before he’d finished asking.

“Thank you. But I’m with Lucas.”

Merrin looked down at me.

Then back at her.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“All right. Sorry.”

“You didn’t know.”

She touched my shoulder as she passed and said she’d meet me at the room.

I watched her go for a moment before returning to the support.

Merrin watched me watching her.

“Lucas.”

“Yes?”

“Seraphina’s with you too, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And Luna?”

I looked up.

“Yes.”

He stared at me with an expression of such honest bewilderment that I couldn’t decide whether to be embarrassed or offended.

Then he asked, “How did you manage to get the three hottest girls in the camp?”

My hand slipped off the fastening.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been changing anything important.

“I don’t think managed is quite the word.”

“It’s the word I’ve got.”

I sat back on my heels.

“They chose me. I love them. I’m still surprised about the rest.”

“That isn’t much of a method.”

“I didn’t have one.”

He considered this.

Then looked toward the doorway again.

“Well. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“And for what it’s worth, I won’t bother her.”

“She can tell you that herself.”

“I noticed.”

He smiled, and I went back to the fastening.

Risa made me tell the others what he’d asked.

I protested that she hadn’t been there to hear it.

“No,” she said. “But you came back looking as though someone had asked you to explain weather.”

Sera laughed when I repeated the question.

Luna raised an eyebrow.

“And what did you say?”

“That I didn’t have a method.”

“You certainly didn’t,” Sera said.

“Months of evidence,” Risa agreed.

Luna’s mouth curved.

“He does listen, eventually.”

I looked around at the three of them.

“I’m beginning to think Merrin overestimated my position here.”

Risa leaned across and kissed me.

“No,” she said. “He just hasn’t seen you looking for your notebook.”

Later, I walked with Risa as far as the bend above the field.

Her ankle was better. Not ready for an ambitious journey, but ready for this without needing to stop halfway.

We stood beside the water channel and listened to it running.

“Still thinking about him?” I asked.

She knew which him.

“Yes.”

I took her hand.

“I keep hearing not among the twelve as if it means not anywhere,” she said. “Then I tell myself it doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I know.”

She leaned into me.

“I like hearing you say it anyway.”

I kissed her temple, then turned her gently toward me and kissed her properly.

The water kept running beside us.

When she was ready, we went home.

Luna had left the lamp low.

Sera sat on the bed brushing her hair, her drawing put away for the night. She looked up when we came in, and the smile she gave me had nothing to do with what I’d built that day.

I sat beside her.

She handed me the brush.

“Carefully.”

I was careful.

Risa settled near the window with her leg supported. Luna sat beside her and told us about the last signal from the northern mirror: all secure, shelter dry, route clear.

Then she stopped giving the report and came to sit close enough to put her hand against my back.

We had made another place people could rest.

We had kept this one.

For tonight, both were enough.

Days 479–482. The name we kept.

Dane supplied twelve names. Sigmund not among them. No confirmed location for him. No conclusion beyond that.

Northern saddle surveyed. Shelter below the wind, mirror above. Connected to the western mast. Lower green route still planned, not finished.

Manifest received for the observed third-wave launch. Fourteen passengers. All fourteen here. Other launches still unknown.

Family notices forwarded. No family acknowledgments yet.

Trial material accepted at station receiving. Next destination coded. Meaning not provided.

Command now calls us Primary Base. We still call ourselves Scarecrow. No quotas agreed.

Dane used the new name. Asked for Dask at a meeting. We choose our representatives. Needs can be sent without waiting for terms.

Luna is practicing believing she has a place without earning it.

So am I.