Scarecrow

The Overseer came up out of the hollow at eight.

Not fast. It never did anything fast. It came up the meeting passage in its long slow way, folding round the curves of the wall, and out into the square, and stopped. Not at the passage mouth, where it had crouched for eight days. Further out. On the red glass in the middle of the square, in the open, where everyone could see it.

It was still holding the bread.

Garnet saw it first. She’d been on the porch steps with Genny, both of them in their coats, both of them watching the sky, because everyone in Scarecrow was watching the sky that morning. She stood up.

”It’s still got it,” she said.

”Garnet,” said Genny. ”Sit down.”

Garnet didn’t sit down.

The Overseer turned its mirror toward the porch. Toward her. And then, very slowly, it lifted the hand with the bread in it, the way you’d lift something to show it to someone across a room.

Garnet lifted her hand back.

Nobody had taught her that. Nobody had taught the Overseer either.

I came down the steps.

”You unfolded,” I said.

”Yes,” said the Overseer.

Its own voice. In the air, this time, and in me as well, both at once, as if it hadn’t decided yet which one it was supposed to use.

”When Dory said the word.”

”Yes.”

I could see into it. I always could. The grey shell. The small soft thing inside. And it wasn’t folded tight any more, the way it had been at the passage mouth and on the north shelf. It was opened out. Not all the way. But further than I’d ever seen it.

”Why?”

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

”It has a word now,” it said.

I waited.

”The one in the Hand.” The mirror tilted up, toward the sky, and then down again, to me. ”In the vat, it was not given a word for her. It was told: the Hand. It was told: the source. It was told: what you are made from.” A pause. ”The juvenile has a word for her.”

”The brood-word,” I said.

”Yes.”

”It means a queen who’s yours but didn’t bear you.”

”Yes,” said the Overseer.

It looked at the bread in its hand.

”It was grown from her,” it said. ”In the vat. In the Hand. All of them were. The handlers. The ones in the collars’ masters. The ones on the tender. All of it.” Another pause. ”It did not know that she was a queen. It was not told. It did not know that what it was grown from could sing.”

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t.

”She is not its mother,” said the Overseer. ”It was not borne. It was made. From her. Without asking.” It held the bread a little higher. ”But the juvenile’s word is right. She is its. And it did not bear her. And she did not bear it.”

It lowered its hand.

”It would like,” said the Overseer, ”to be on the ground when she comes.”

The Hand came down at noon.

We saw it long before it arrived. Everyone did. A darkness on the edge of the sky to the east, where the sky shouldn’t have been dark. Then larger. Then not a darkness at all, but a shape. Three shapes. The fingers of something very large, turning, slowly, the way it had turned at the Meridian, so that you saw the palm.

It didn’t make any sound.

That was the worst part. Something that size should have made a sound. Thunder, or wind, or the scream of the air getting out of its way. It didn’t. It came down out of the east over the plain in perfect silence, and the light went out of the morning underneath it, and the shadow it threw on the plain was so dark that the red glass under it went black.

Every brood on Avalon was facing it.

I could feel them. All of them. Fourteen queens in the ring and every brood under every queen. Not moving. Not running. Facing it, the way Okafor had said. Every brood on Avalon on the other side.

They’d come in the night. The ones who could. I’d felt them coming. Our queen had sent for them, and the queen in the bowl had sent for hers, and the old one on the mountain had sent for every brood that still listened to her, which was most of them. By dawn the canyon was full of Teeming. Along the rim. On the terraces. In the gardens and the fields and the courts. Thousands of them. Pale plates and dark plates and the ones from the south with the red stripes on their forelimbs. Standing very still, in the open, facing east.

And on the human side, everyone.

Everyone we loved. Exactly the way Okafor had said.

We’d argued about it. Of course we had. Sera wanted the children in the hollow. Risa wanted Dory in the quiet room. Luna wanted half of us on the north path, behind the ridge, the way Okafor kept half the line back, in case.

Holt settled it.

”She said everyone,” he said. ”On one side. With every brood on the other.” He’d looked at each of us in turn. ”If it’s reviewing the city, then it’ll review whatever it finds. If it finds us hiding, it’ll learn we hide. If it finds us standing in a row in the square with our children, it’ll learn something else.”

”What?” said Sera.

”I don’t know,” said Holt. ”That’s the point. Nor will it.”

So we stood in the square.

All of us. Two hundred and eleven of the people who’d lived in Scarecrow before the General came, and the nine we’d found since, and the twelve who’d come down on the transport. The four of us at the front. Dory on Risa’s hip, awake, very bright. Genny and Garnet beside me. Miss Pell behind them, with her hands folded. Juno beside Pell, closer than she’d stood all week. Hana with her new curves bright on her arms. Holt in his chair. Toby with his fiddle. Wren with her book.

The General, on the end of the row. Very straight. His coat off, for once, and his right hand bare.

And in the middle of the square, on its own, a little in front of all of us, the Overseer.

Holding a piece of bread.

The Hand stopped over the plain.

Not over the city. Over the plain beyond the canyon, a mile out, where the red glass ran flat to the horizon. It hung there. The three fingers spread. The palm turned down. So big that from the square, looking east, there was nothing else. No sky. No horizon. Just the grey.

I looked into it.

I’d looked into it from the relay the night before, through a crewman’s handheld camera on the outside of an egg-dock. That had been a long way off. This wasn’t.

The folds went down forever.

Tens of thousands of them. Each one turned a little away from every other. So many that looking into the Hand was like looking down a well and seeing your own face at the bottom, very small, and then realising it wasn’t your face, it was a mirror, and the mirror was looking back up at you from under ten thousand others.

And at the bottom, past all of it, she was singing.

Louder than the night before. I could hear her properly now. Not well. Not clearly. But properly. A long low sound, like the hum our queen made for the young, only older. So much older that it didn’t sound like a hum at all. It sounded like the bottom of the sea.

”Can you hear her?” I said.

”Yes,” said Dot, beside me. Every one of her hands was still. ”This unit has not counted her.” A pause. ”This unit does not know where to put her in the count.”

”First,” said Juno.

We all looked at her.

Juno had her eyes shut. She’d had them shut since the Hand came over the horizon. Her head was turned, very slightly. Not east. Up.

”She goes first,” said Juno. ”Before the one. Before any of them.” Her voice was very quiet. ”She’s the first queen I’ve ever felt that’s older than north.”

Nobody said anything.

Then the Hand opened its palm.

It wasn’t a door.

I’d expected a door. A ramp, the way the shuttle had come down. A hatch, the way the tender had docked. Something with soldiers in it, or handlers, or more Kethri in collars.

It was a thread.

A single grey thread, coming down out of the centre of the palm. Thin. So thin you could barely see it against the grey above. It came down slowly, the way a spider lets itself down on a line, and touched the plain a mile out.

And began to come toward us.

Across the plain. Not walking. Growing. The grey spreading along the glass in a line, like frost spreading along a windowpane, straight toward the canyon and the city and the square.

Toward us.

I could see into it.

It was the same grey as the column in the east. The one that had been sunk into the ground for two years, pulling silver out of three people’s skulls. The same folds. The same tight dense shape. But that column had been a sliver of a dead queen wired into a housing. This was a thread straight down from the bottom of the Hand.

From her.

”It’s reading,” I said.

”Reading what?” said Luna.

”Everything.” I watched it come. ”The glass. The ground. The water. The roots. Every brood it passes.” I swallowed. ”It’s what the Overseer does, when it looks at me. Only it’s not looking. It’s touching.”

It reached the rim of the canyon.

The Teeming along the rim didn’t move. The thread went between them. Through the gap in their line where the path came down. Down the path, along the canyon floor, past the fields and the gardens and the first of the third-wave houses.

Every brood it passed went very still as it went by.

Not frightened. I’d have felt it if they were frightened. Listening. The way the young listened in the hollow when their queen came close.

It came into the square.

It stopped.

In front of the Overseer.

The Overseer didn’t move.

It stood on the red glass in the middle of the square, with the grey thread lying across the glass in front of it like a line drawn on a map, and it held out the bread.

Not to the thread. Up. To the Hand.

The thread lifted.

The end of it. The tip, the part nearest the Overseer. It lifted off the glass, very slowly, the way the queen lifted her head off the wall when something interested her. It rose up. Level with the Overseer’s mirror.

And touched it.

I felt it. Everyone with silver in them felt it. A jolt, through the square, through the glass, through the soles of my feet. The Overseer’s mirror went black. Not dark. Black. The way the Hand was black, eating the light and giving none back.

The Overseer folded.

Not down. In. All the long grey limbs, curling inward at once, until it was hardly taller than Garnet. The bread fell out of its hand onto the glass.

And the band on Crane’s collar lit.

He was on the end of the row, beside Holt. He hadn’t wanted to be at the front. The band went blue, and his face went still, and the voice came out of him across the square.

Not the handler’s. Not the Overseer’s.

A new voice.

Very low. Very slow. So deep it was almost not a sound at all. So deep I felt it in the glass, and in the porch boards across the square, and in the walls of every house. The way I’d felt our queen hum on the day Dory was born.

Who sings?

Nobody answered.

I don’t think anyone could have. The voice had gone into all of us. Not just through the band. Through the thread, and the glass, and the silver. Every person in the square with silver in them had heard it the way you’d hear someone speak your name from inside your own head.

Who sings?

And then, under it, very thin, very fast, another voice. Through the band as well. Tangled up in the first one, like a second thread twisted round the first.

The handler’s.

Review. Review the asset. Review the city. The source will review the—

Who sings?

The thread jerked.

Not toward the Overseer. Away. Toward the row of us. Toward the front of the row.

Toward Dory.

I moved.

I didn’t decide to. I was in front of Risa before the thread had gone a foot. My hand was up. I could see into it. I could see every fold. I knew how to unfold it. I’d unfolded the mirror. I’d opened a shuttle like a tin. I’d taught a station to stand up by itself.

I could take it apart. Here. Now. In one breath.

Never fight on the ground they choose. Let it make the first move. Then don’t make the second one it expects.

I stopped.

The thread stopped too.

A foot from my hand. Hanging in the air. Very still. The tip of it trembling, very slightly, the way Mother’s hands used to tremble.

And I saw what was happening.

The voice that said who sings wasn’t moving it. The voice that said review was. The handler’s voice. Through the band. Through the Hand. Down the thread. Pushing. The way the voice in the sky had pushed the broods for four hundred years. Move. North. Together.

And at the bottom of the thread, at the bottom of the Hand, the queen was holding it back.

Not well. Not easily. The way the spine-queen had held the hello on the first morning, with the channels still on her. Tired and far away and pulling against something much stronger than she was. But holding.

She didn’t want to touch Dory.

She wanted to know.

”She’s asking,” I said.

I didn’t turn round. I didn’t lower my hand.

”She’s asking who sings,” I said. ”And something’s pushing her. The handler. Through the Hand. Through her.” I stared at the trembling tip of the thread. ”It’s what they did to the spine-queen. They’re pushing the voice through her. She’s not reaching for Dory. She’s being pushed at Dory. And she’s holding back.”

”Then answer her,” said Holt.

I looked at him.

He was in his chair at the end of the row. His hands were folded on his stick. His face was very calm.

”She asked a question,” said Holt. ”Answer it.”

”Which of us?”

”Who sings?” said Holt. ”All of us.”

And Toby lifted his fiddle.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t look at anyone. He put the fiddle under his chin, the way he had on the morning of the spine-queen, the way he had every dawn since, and drew the bow across the lowest string.

One note.

The first note of the old song. The one his father had sung. The one I’d made a tuning fork for, out of a bead of steel, back in the dome.

It went out into the square.

And every brood on Avalon picked it up.

I’d heard the queens sing before. I’d heard our queen hum for the young. I’d heard the ring carry the hello. I’d heard the spine-queen singing in the walls of the Meridian loud enough for Ruan to hear through a bulkhead.

I’d never heard them all at once.

Fourteen queens. Every brood under every queen. Thousands of Teeming on the rim and the terraces and in the gardens and the courts. All of them, at once, taking Toby’s note and carrying it. Not changing it. Carrying it. The way you’d carry a full cup up a flight of stairs.

The sound came up out of the ground.

Out of the canyon. Out of the red glass. Out of the walls of every house. Up through the soles of my feet into my bones, and through my bones into my silver, and through my silver into everyone’s. Sera’s hand found mine. Luna’s found hers. Risa’s hand was flat on my back.

And then the humans started.

Not on purpose. Not because anyone told them. Garnet first, I think. Garnet sang the old song every night, because Mother sang it, and Mother sang it because Father did. She opened her mouth and sang it, very loud and slightly flat, the way she always did.

Then Genny.

Then Pell. I didn’t know Miss Pell could sing. Her voice was very thin and very clear.

Then Hana. Then Wren. Then Juno. Then Priya and Dov and Nessa and Gareth and Edda and Liam and Sera and Luna and Risa and me.

Then everyone.

Two hundred and thirty-two people in a square, singing the old song in a hundred different keys, on top of a sound that came up out of the ground from every brood on Avalon.

The General didn’t sing. Windsors don’t.

But I saw his mouth move.

And Dory answered.

On Risa’s hip. Behind me. With her woven silver brighter than I’d ever seen it, brighter than the morning before, brighter than the day she was born. She reached out past my shoulder, past my raised hand, past the trembling tip of the thread, up. All the way up. The way she’d reached the morning before. Along the thread. Up through the palm of the Hand. Down through ten thousand folds, each one turned a little away from every other.

To the bottom.

And said the brood-word.

The word for a queen who’s yours, but didn’t bear you.

The thread went still.

Completely still. The trembling stopped. The tip of it, a foot from my hand, hung in the air and didn’t move.

Then, very slowly, it lowered.

Not toward Dory. Not toward me. Down. To the glass. To the piece of bread that had fallen out of the Overseer’s hand.

It touched the bread.

Very gently. The way Garnet had touched Dory’s face.

And the voice came through the band one more time.

Not who sings.

Something else. A word. Very low. Very slow. One I’d only heard once before in my life, from our queen, on the day Dory was born, when she called her the brood-word back.

Mine.

The handler’s voice screamed.

There’s no other word for it. Through the band, through the thread, through the Hand, the handler’s voice went up and up and up, thin and fast and tangled, review the asset review the city the source will review the source will—

And the queen at the bottom of the Hand stopped holding it back.

Not the way the handler wanted. The other way.

She let go of it.

I felt it happen. The voice that had been pushing down the thread from the Hand suddenly had nothing to push through. The queen had been the channel. All of it, every word, every order, went through her. And she’d stopped carrying it.

The handler’s voice went thin.

Then thinner.

Then it was talking to nothing. Shouting down a well with no bottom. Shouting into ten thousand folds, each turned a little away from every other, so that nothing came back.

It stopped.

The band on Crane’s collar went dark.

Crane fell forward onto his hands on the glass.

Holt caught his shoulder before he hit his face. Held him there. Crane was shaking. Not his hands. His hands were steady, flat on the red glass. All the rest of him.

”It’s gone,” he said. ”Lucas. It’s gone. The handler. It was always there. Always, even when the band was dark. Like a hand on the back of my neck.” He was crying. ”Eight years. And it’s gone.”

Behind us, at the edge of the square, someone gasped.

Sesh.

The tall Kethri had been standing at the edge of the square with the others, the way she always stood. Behind the line. Collar on her neck. She’d been there all morning.

She had both hands over her collar.

And the collar was silent.

Not held. Not silenced the way she’d silenced it herself on the night the handler pulled. Silent. The sliver of a dead queen inside it, singing for however long it had been singing, because nobody had told it to stop.

It had stopped.

Every collar had stopped. All ten. I could feel it. Ten slivers of nine dead queens, all at once, gone quiet.

Not because the handler had told them to.

Because the queen at the bottom of the Hand had heard them. And told them, very gently, the way you’d tell a child in a nightmare, that they could stop now.

Sesh’s beak opened.

She clicked. Once. A long, falling whistle.

Dot translated it without being asked. Very quietly.

”She says: it is quiet.”

The Overseer unfolded.

Slowly. All its long grey limbs, one at a time. Off the glass. Up. Until it was its full height again, standing in the middle of the square with the thread lying at its feet and the bread on the glass in front of it.

Its mirror was still black.

But not the Hand’s black. Not eating the light. Just dark. The way a window goes dark when someone inside it has turned the lamp off to look out.

It looked at the thread.

Then, very carefully, it bent down. Folding. All the way. And picked the bread up off the glass.

And held it up.

To the Hand.

The thread rose. Touched the bread, one more time. Very lightly.

Then it went.

Back across the square, the way it had come. Back down the path, along the canyon floor, between the Teeming on the rim. Out across the plain. Not growing now. Drawing back. Like frost going off a windowpane when the sun comes up.

Up into the palm of the Hand.

The Hand closed.

It didn’t leave. It hung there, over the plain, a mile out, with its fingers folded and its shadow lying black across the glass. Very still. Very silent.

But it didn’t leave.

And under all the folds, at the bottom of it, she was still singing.

Only now she was singing with us.

Nobody moved for a long time.

Then Garnet said, very loudly, into the silence:

”It ate the bread.”

Everyone looked at her.

”It did,” said Garnet. ”The string. It touched it twice. That’s eating, for something that doesn’t have a mouth.”

Genny opened her mouth to argue.

Then shut it again.

”Maybe,” she said.

Garnet nodded, satisfied, and sat down on the glass, and started drawing the Hand.

Beside her, the Overseer was still holding the bread. It turned its mirror toward her. Toward the drawing board. Toward the shape coming out under her pencil, three fingers and a palm and a shadow on the plain.

”She is drawing it,” it said.

”Yes,” I said.

”Why?”

”So she can keep it,” I said. ”And bring it back when somebody wants to look at it.”

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

Then it folded down. Slowly. Until it was sitting on the glass beside my little sister, not close, but not far. Holding a piece of bread that had been touched twice by the first queen any of us had ever met.

Watching her draw.

That night the General found me on the porch.

He sat down on the top step. He didn’t ask if he could. He’d stopped asking, sometime in the last week.

”Okafor,” he said.

”Yes.”

”She knew.” He looked out at the dark, where the Hand was, a mile out over the plain, invisible now except as a place where there weren’t any stars. ”You won’t be the only thing on that ground it doesn’t understand.” He shook his head. ”She didn’t know there was a queen in it. She couldn’t have. Nobody did. But she knew something in that city would surprise it. She bet everything on it.”

”She bet on Dory,” I said.

”She bet on all of it,” said the General. ”On a boy who wouldn’t raise his hand. On a baby who checks everyone. On a fiddle. On two hundred people who’d stand in a square and sing instead of hiding.” He was quiet. ”On a Sorn that wanted to be on the ground holding a piece of bread.”

”She didn’t know about the bread.”

”No,” the General agreed. ”But she’d have sent somebody out with bread if she’d thought of it.”

I laughed. I didn’t mean to. It came out of me all at once, the way it had on the call with Garnet.

The General almost smiled.

Then he held up his right hand. Bare. In the porch light.

Frost ran down his fingers. A breath of it. White and fine and glittering. It ran down to his fingertips and stopped there, in five small six-sided flakes, one on each finger.

”I had a wall ready,” he said. ”In front of the children. If the thread had touched any of them.” He looked at the flakes. ”A mile long. The way I used to. I could feel it, all morning. Waiting in my hand.” He closed his fingers. The flakes melted. ”I didn’t need it.”

”You’d have done it, though.”

”Yes,” said the General. ”I’d have done it.”

He looked at me.

”Tomorrow at dawn,” he said, ”you’ll open another door in your mother. And Mrs. Calder. And Mr. Calder’s arm.” He paused. ”And you’ll tell Okafor what happened. All of it. In order.”

”Yes.”

”And you’ll ask her what we do next.”

”Yes.”

”Good.” The General stood up. He looked down at me, very straight, in the porch light, with the frost gone from his hand. ”Then tell her this as well. From me. In exactly these words.”

I waited.

”Sergeant. You were right. I’m sorry I court-martialled you.” He paused. ”Twice.”

Day 771. Who sings.

The Overseer came up out of the hollow at eight and stood in the open, in the middle of the square, still holding the bread. It lifted it to show Garnet. She lifted her hand back. Nobody taught either of them that.

It unfolded when Dory said the word because it has a word now. In the vat it was told: the Hand, the source, what you are made from. All of them were grown from her: handlers, the collars’ masters, the tender crew. It didn’t know she was a queen, or that what it was made from could sing. Not its mother; it was made from her without asking. But the juvenile’s word is right: she is its, and neither bore the other. It wanted to be on the ground when she came.

Noon. The Hand came out of the east in silence. Every brood on Avalon came in the night to stand facing it, thousands on the rim and terraces and in the courts. On our side, everyone, in a row in the square with our children, because Holt said if it finds us hiding it learns we hide, and if it finds us standing it learns something else, and neither of us knows what. The General at the end, coat off, right hand bare. The Overseer in front with its bread.

It stopped a mile out over the plain and I looked: folds forever, and her at the bottom, singing like the bottom of the sea. Dot doesn’t know where to put her in the count. Juno, eyes shut, head turned up: first. Before the one. The first queen she has ever felt that’s older than north.

Not a door. A thread from the palm, growing across the plain like frost on a window, touching everything, glass, water, roots, every brood it passed, and every brood went still and listened. Into the square. It stopped in front of the Overseer, who held the bread up to the Hand. The tip lifted and touched its mirror. The mirror went black. It folded in, small as Garnet, and dropped the bread. Through Crane’s band, a voice deep as the glass: Who sings?

Then the handler’s voice tangled under it: review the asset, review the city. The thread jerked at Dory. I was in front of Risa with my hand up before I’d decided. I could have taken it apart in one breath. Okafor: let it make the first move; then don’t make the second one it expects. I stopped. It stopped, a foot from my hand, trembling like Mother’s used to. The handler was pushing the voice through her, the way they did to the spine-queen. She was holding back. She didn’t want to touch Dory. She wanted to know.

Holt: she asked a question, answer it. Who? All of us. Toby drew one note, the first of the old song. Every brood on Avalon carried it, out of the canyon, the glass, the walls. Then Garnet, loud and flat. Genny. Pell, thin and clear; I didn’t know she could sing. Hana, Wren, Juno, everyone. Two hundred and thirty-two people in a hundred keys. The General doesn’t sing. His mouth moved.

Dory reached past my hand, up through the palm, down ten thousand folds, and said the brood-word. The thread went still, lowered, and touched the fallen bread, gently, the way Garnet touched Dory’s face. Through the band: Mine.

The handler’s voice screamed. She stopped carrying it. Every order went through her, and she let go. It shouted into folds where nothing comes back, and stopped. Crane on his hands on the glass, Holt holding him: it was always there, like a hand on the back of my neck. Eight years. Gone.

Sesh with both hands on her collar. Silent. All ten collars, ten slivers of nine dead queens, quiet at once. The queen in the Hand heard them and told them gently, like a child in a nightmare, that they could stop. Dot: she says it is quiet.

The Overseer unfolded, its mirror dark like a window when someone turns the lamp off to look out. It picked up the bread and held it up. The thread touched it once more, then went back across the plain and up into the palm. The Hand closed, and stayed. Under the folds she is still singing. With us now.

Garnet: ”It ate the bread. It touched it twice. That’s eating, for something with no mouth.” Genny: maybe. Garnet drew the Hand. The Overseer asked why. So she can keep it, and bring it back when somebody wants to look. It sat down beside her, not close, not far, holding the bread, watching her draw.

The General on the porch: Okafor bet everything that something here would surprise it. On a boy who wouldn’t raise his hand, a baby who checks everyone, a fiddle, two hundred people singing instead of hiding. She’d have sent someone out with bread if she’d thought of it. Frost on all five fingers. He had a wall a mile long ready in front of the children all morning. Didn’t need it. Would have.

At dawn: doors for Mother, Maura, Rory’s arm, then tell Okafor everything in order and ask what next. And this, in exactly these words: ”Sergeant. You were right. I’m sorry I court-martialled you. Twice.”