Scarecrow

Okafor said no.

Not straight away. She took a day over it. That was the first thing anyone on Avalon learned about how Okafor made decisions: she took exactly as long as she needed, and not one minute more, and she didn’t apologise for either.

I’d told her at dawn. Through Mother, through the hello, wide as a door, with the Hand holding it open from a mile out over the plain. I’d told her what the queen in the Hand had said through Juno. There are others. More than broods on this world. All singing very quietly under everything. And what she wanted.

For them to hear the hello too.

Okafor didn’t answer that morning.

She says, said Mother, that she’ll give you an answer tomorrow. She says she needs to think about the ground.

So we waited a day.

It was a good day, as days went.

I don’t think anyone in Scarecrow had had a good day for a long time. Not a whole one. There’d been good hours. The wedding in the square. The night the station stood up by itself. The morning Hana said what do you want me to say with both sides of her mouth. But there’d always been something under them. The feed, or the Overseer, or the terms, or the Hand coming down out of the east.

That day there wasn’t.

The Hand hung over the plain with its fingers folded and its queen singing with us. The Overseer sat on the north shelf of the hollow, not close, holding a piece of bread that it still hadn’t eaten and still wouldn’t put down. The handler was in the guest wing, silent, with nothing to say into and no one to say it through. The Kethri walked out of the guest wing that morning, all ten of them, with their collars quiet, and stood in the square for an hour without anyone telling them where to stand, and then went off in ten different directions. Sesh went to the garden wall and lay down beside the queen. Nobody stopped her.

And on Earth, my mother was whole.

I kept thinking it. All day. At the forge, making the lid for the north hollow that Pell had wanted and I’d never finished. In the courts, mending the cracked plate on Pebble’s cousin’s foreleg. At the kitchen table, at noon, eating bread and cheese with Risa and Sera and Luna and pretending I was listening to what they were saying.

My mother is whole.

”He’s doing it again,” said Sera.

”I’m not doing anything.”

”You’re smiling at the cheese,” said Luna.

”I’m allowed to smile at the cheese.”

”Nobody’s ever smiled at Priya’s cheese like that,” said Risa. ”Not even Priya.”

I looked at them. All three. Sera with her feet up on the chair beside her and her hand on her stomach, which was starting to show now, if you knew where to look. Luna with her notebook open beside her plate, the way it always was, and her pen in her hand, not writing. Risa with Dory on her lap, feeding her small pieces of bread, which Dory was mostly turning into other things. A strawberry. A pebble. Something that might have been a very small cheese.

”She’s whole,” I said.

They all stopped.

”I know,” said Luna gently.

”I keep thinking it. I can’t stop.” I put the bread down. ”Twenty-four years. Every day. Every morning, since before I was born. And now it’s—” I didn’t have a word for it. ”It’s done.”

Risa reached over and put her hand on mine.

Sera took her feet off the chair and leaned across the table and kissed me. Quick and easy. On the corner of my mouth. Then she sat back and put her feet up again.

”Smile at the cheese all you like,” she said. ”We’ll allow it.”

Luna wrote something in her notebook.

I leaned over to see. She tipped the page toward me.

Day 773. Lucas smiled at the cheese.

Dory walked that afternoon.

Edda said it was impossible. Edda’s green book had been saying impossible for five months. She was a hundred and fifty-one days old, Dory. Babies don’t walk at a hundred and fifty-one days. Edda had looked it up in the third wave’s medical library, twice, to be sure.

Dory didn’t care what Edda’s books said.

It happened in the courts. Pell had taken her down after lunch, the way she’d been taking her down every afternoon since she’d arrived. Pell had decided, without asking anyone, that Dory ought to spend time with the young. She’s going to grow up with them, Pell said. She might as well start now. Nobody argued. Nobody argued with Pell.

So Dory spent her afternoons in the east court, on a blanket, in the middle of the young of eighteen.

They loved her. Of course they did. The young loved anything small and warm that checked them. And Dory checked them constantly. Every one of them, over and over, her silver going out and touching each of them in turn the way she touched us. There you are. There you are. There you are. And they hummed back, every time, so that the east court in the afternoons sounded like a hive.

That afternoon, Pebble came.

Pebble didn’t usually go into the east court. The young of eighteen weren’t his. He was older, and he had a sense of his own dignity that Garnet said reminded her of Genny. But that afternoon he came down the passage from the hollow, unhurried, on his short legs, and stopped at the edge of the court.

And Dory saw him.

She’d been sitting on her blanket with three of the young of eighteen curled round her like cushions. She looked up. Her silver turned. Checked him.

There you are.

And she stood up.

Not pulling herself up on anything. She just stood. Out of the middle of the three young, on her blanket, the way she’d done everything since she was born: all at once, as if she’d been thinking about it for a while and had finally decided.

Pell, on the bench at the edge of the court, didn’t move.

Dory took a step.

Then another. Wobbling. Arms out. Straight across the blanket and off the edge of it, onto the warm stone of the court, toward Pebble.

Four steps. Five.

On the sixth she sat down hard.

She didn’t cry. She looked very surprised, and then very cross, and then she put her hands flat on the stone and pushed herself up again and took four more.

And reached Pebble.

She put both hands on his plates. Flat. The way she put her hand on Risa’s collarbone when she checked her. And looked up at him with her woven silver so bright it hurt to look at.

Pebble lowered his head.

All the way down. Until his face was level with hers.

And hummed.

The sound I’d heard once before. The day Risa held Dory up to him in the doorway for the first time. And again, the night the handler came, when the Overseer folded down to tap three, two, one. Welcome.

Pell sent Toby running for Risa.

By the time Risa got there, running down the passage with her hair coming loose and her face white, Dory was sitting on the stone between Pebble’s forelimbs, holding onto one of them, and Pebble was very carefully walking her round the court. Very slowly. One step at a time. Pell walked beside them with her notebook, writing.

Risa stopped dead in the doorway.

Dory saw her.

Let go of Pebble.

And walked to her mother. Eleven steps. Straight across the court. Without sitting down once.

Risa caught her at the end of the eleventh step and held her so hard that Dory squeaked.

”You’re not supposed to do that yet,” Risa said into her hair. ”You’re not supposed to do anything yet.”

Dory checked her. Very bright. Very sure.

”Mama,” she said.

Out loud. As she did before. Not the thread, not the silver, not the brood-word. The word. The human one.

Risa sat down on the floor of the court with her daughter in her arms and didn’t say anything for a long time.

Pell wrote in her notebook. I saw it later. She’d underlined it twice.

Day 773. Walked. Eleven steps. Pebble taught her. Said Mama.

And underneath, in smaller letters:

Uneventful.

Sera felt the baby move that night.

She told me in bed. Not loudly. She’d gone very still beside me in the dark, and I’d thought she was asleep, and then she’d taken my hand and pulled it over and put it flat on her stomach.

”There,” she said.

I didn’t feel anything.

”Wait,” said Sera.

I waited.

And there it was. Very small. Like a fish turning over in a pond. Under my hand. And under it, so faint I’d never have heard it if I hadn’t spent two years listening to queens, a sound.

A hum.

The same note it had been humming since the twelfth week. Toby’s counter-note. The one he played under the first note of the old song, at dawn, to carry the hello.

”It’s been doing it all evening,” Sera whispered. ”Every time Toby plays. Even when he’s at the forge and I can’t hear him. It hums. And then it moves.” She pressed my hand down a little harder. ”Lucas. I think it’s carrying.”

”Carrying what?”

”I don’t know.” Her voice was very quiet. ”Whatever Toby carries. The way Dory checks. The way Dory holds the net.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at me. ”I think it’s going to be a carrier.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

Then Risa, on Sera’s other side, rolled over. She’d been awake too. Of course she had. She put her own hand on Sera’s stomach, next to mine.

”Hello,” she said. To the baby. Very softly.

The hum went on.

And then, from the basket at the end of the bed, very faint and very sleepy, Dory checked.

There you are.

The hum changed. Just for a moment. Went up a little. Like a note answering a note.

Then settled.

Luna, on the far side of Risa, didn’t open her eyes. But she reached across Risa without looking and found Sera’s hand on the blanket, and held it.

”She said hello back,” Luna murmured. ”Didn’t she.”

”Yes,” said Sera.

”Good,” said Luna, and went back to sleep.

Okafor’s answer came at dawn.

She says no, said Mother.

I didn’t say anything. I waited. The hello was wide, and the Hand was holding it, and Mother’s voice came down it whole.

Not yet, said Mother. She says no, not yet. She says she’s not saying it’ll never happen. She’s saying not now.

Why?

She says—and I could hear Mother reading it from somewhere, a page, a list, Okafor’s square blunt handwriting—that if the hello goes out past north, every Hand will hear it. Every queen. That’s what the one in the sky wants, and Okafor says it’s a good thing to want and she’d want it too.

But every Hand has a handler.

And every handler will hear it too.

I went very still.

She says, said Mother, the handler in your guest wing was cut off because the queen in your Hand stopped carrying its voice. That’s one Hand. One queen. One handler. And we only found out she’d do it because a baby said a word and two hundred people sang. A pause. She says you don’t know if the next queen will stop carrying. You don’t know if she can. You don’t know what her handler will do when it hears a song coming in from somewhere it can’t see.

She says: you don’t send up a flare until you know who’s going to see it.

That was the beam. The first week. You don’t carry it where it wants to go. You carry it where you need it.

Then what?

She says: home first, said Mother. Earth first. All thirty-one whole. Then the Project. Then the Senate. Then the dome. A pause. She says when every Retention family on Earth can stand up out of its chair without putting its hands on the arms, then she’ll talk about flares.

And the queen in the Hand?

Okafor says: tell her why.

Another pause.

She says: tell her the truth. All of it. That we want what she wants. That we’re not ready. That we’ll tell her when we are. Mother’s voice softened. She says you never lie to an ally. Not even to make them feel better. Especially not then.

I told the queen in the Hand that afternoon.

Out on the plain. In the shadow. With Dory on Risa’s hip and Juno beside me and Toby with his fiddle. The Overseer came again. It always came now, holding its bread.

The thread came down. Dory touched it.

And I told her. All of it. Through Dory, through the net, through our queen at the wall who was listening along a thread of her own. What Okafor had said. Not yet. Home first. You don’t send up a flare until you know who’s going to see it.

I didn’t know how she’d take it.

I’d been afraid of it all morning. She’d been held in a housing for longer than she could count. She’d heard her own kind singing for the first time in all that time, only the day before. And I was telling her to wait.

She was quiet for a long time.

Then she said something. Long and slow and deep, in the old tongue.

Juno listened.

”She says she understands,” said Juno.

I let my breath out.

”She says,” Juno went on, slowly, ”that she has waited longer than this world has had broods. She says she can wait until the boy’s mother’s people can stand.” A pause. Juno’s face changed. ”And she says she’s glad somebody told her the truth. She says nobody has. Not once. Not since they took her.”

The thread touched Dory again. Very lightly.

”She says,” said Juno, ”the small one is very good at asking.”

Dory, on Risa’s hip, looked up at the folded fingers of the Hand.

”Mama,” she said.

Risa went pink.

”That’s me,” she told Dory. ”Not her. I’m Mama.”

Dory considered this.

Then she reached up toward the Hand again and said the brood-word instead.

That evening I decided to ask Mother about the ship.

Genny had asked me to. She’d been asking me since the morning on the glass, every few hours, very politely, with her chin up. Have you asked her yet? Will you ask her tomorrow? I’d kept putting it off. I didn’t know why.

Then that evening, on the porch, I knew why.

Because I was afraid of the answer.

The next dawn I asked anyway.

Mother. The ship you tore open. In the war. The one the size of a city.

The thread went quiet.

Not thin. Quiet. The way a room goes quiet when someone asks a question that everybody in it has been not-asking for years.

Yes, love, said Mother.

Was it one of these?

A long pause.

Not a whole one, said Mother.

I waited.

It was a finger, she said. One finger. The rest of it was up past the clouds, where we couldn’t see. The finger came down over the northern front. Your father’s front. Alaric’s. Another pause. It was the second bombardment. The one that failed. Everyone says it failed. They say it was the guns.

It wasn’t the guns.

No, said Mother. It was me. I tore a hole in the side of it. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was a ship. I thought there’d be engines in it, or weapons, or men. I tore a hole, and your father went in.

Holt said he couldn’t see into it. Fog.

He couldn’t, said Mother. Not the walls. Not the folds. He said it was like walking into a cloud. He went in for an hour. He came out on his own.

What did he find?

The thread was very quiet.

He never said, said Mother. Not to the officers. Not in the report. He wrote it down as nothing. Nothing of military value. A pause. He told me. Once. That night. In the tent. He sat on the end of my cot with his hands between his knees and he said: Dot. There’s someone in there.

I couldn’t speak.

He said he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see anything. Fog, all the way in. But he could hear her. Very faint. Under everything. Mother’s voice was very low. He said she was singing. And he said: I’ve spent my whole life climbing. Up and down. Every element. And she doesn’t climb at all. She just sings, and the walls do what she says.

Notebook four, I said. Page two hundred and twelve.

Why must I climb, said Mother. There must be a shorter way.

He was asking her.

He was asking her, said Mother. Every day. For the rest of his life. He never found out the answer.

A pause.

And three months later, said Mother, they sat down in a room and signed the Accord. And Article Fourteen sold the children of the modified to the Sorn before they were born. And your father read it, and stopped, and said: what’s this for. And put the page down on the table, square with the edge. And walked out.

He knew.

He knew there was someone in there, said Mother. He didn’t know who. He didn’t know what. But he knew we were signing her away along with everyone else.

I told Genny.

On the porch, after the dawn. With Garnet asleep across her lap and her hands folded on Garnet’s back. I told her all of it. The finger over the northern front. The hole. Father going in. Dot. There’s someone in there.

Genny didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she looked out at the plain. At the Hand, a mile out, fingers folded.

”He was asking her,” she said. ”Not that one. One like her.” She swallowed. ”His whole life. Why must I climb. And she could have told him. If anyone had asked her properly.”

”Yes.”

”And now I don’t climb.” Genny looked at her hands, folded on Garnet’s back. ”Because the queen at the wall showed me. Because a queen showed you.” Her voice was very careful. ”Lucas. We’re the answer to Father’s question.”

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t.

Genny looked out at the Hand for a long time.

”I’d like to tell her,” she said. ”The one in the Hand. That he asked. That he asked her every day, even though he never knew who she was.” Her chin came up. ”I think she’d want to know that somebody did.”

That night, the band on Crane’s collar lit for the first time in three days.

Not blue. It had always been blue, when the handler spoke through it. This was something else. Something paler. Almost white.

Crane was on his bench in the square. He went very still. And then, instead of the flat voice coming out of him across the square, he spoke in his own.

”Lucas,” he said. ”It’s the hello.”

I came down the porch steps.

”It’s not dawn,” I said.

”I know.” Crane’s hand had come up to the band on his collar. Not to cover it. To touch it. Very lightly. ”It’s not the hello. It’s through the hello. Someone’s using it.” He looked up at me. ”Someone on Earth.”

”One of the thirty-one?”

”No.” Crane’s face had gone the colour of the bench. ”No. I know all thirty-one. I’ve known them for twenty years. I signed for every one.” He swallowed. ”This one isn’t on the list.”

I looked into the band.

It was grey. Sorn grey, the same as the collars. And inside it, the sliver. The piece of a dead queen that the handler had used to speak through Crane for eight years. It had been silent for three days, the way all the collars had been silent, since the queen in the Hand told them they could stop.

It wasn’t silent now.

It was listening.

To something very far away. Something very small. A sliver of the same kind, eleven light-years off, under the dome. Singing back.

”Dot,” I said. ”Can you count it?”

Dot was at the top of the porch steps. Every one of her hands went still.

”This unit,” she said slowly, ”has not counted this before.” A pause. ”It is not a fragment. It is not one of the thirty-one. It is very small. It is shaped like a seed.”

Crane closed his eyes.

”Oh, God,” he said quietly. ”Renata.”

Wren came down off the north wall at a run.

She never ran. She’d run once before that I knew of, the night Crane said the stabilizer provision was suspended. She ran now. Down the steps of the wall and across the square, with her book under her arm and her face very white.

She stopped beside the bench.

”Say that again,” she said.

Crane opened his eyes.

”Chancellor Voss,” he said. ”She wears a seed. On a chain. Silver. You’ll have seen it. Everyone in the dome has seen it; it’s on every portrait.” His voice was very low. ”I gave it to her. Twenty years ago. When she was made Chancellor. The Overseer gave it to me to give to her. A gift. From the Sorn. A token of the Accord.”

”It’s a sliver,” I said.

”I didn’t know that,” said Crane. ”Not then. I didn’t know what anything was, then.” He looked down at his hands. ”It’s the same as the band. The same as the collars. A piece of something. I thought it was ornamental.”

”She’s been wearing a piece of a dead queen round her neck,” said Wren. ”For twenty years.”

”Yes.”

”And it’s been—” Wren stopped. ”What’s it been doing?”

Crane didn’t answer.

I did.

”Listening,” I said. ”The same as all the others. The same as Sesh’s collar. The slivers listen for the voice, and carry it.” I looked at the band on Crane’s collar, glowing pale, almost white. ”But it’s been on Earth. Eleven light-years away. Too far for the voice. Too far for anything.” I stopped.

”Except the hello,” said Luna, behind me.

Wren turned round.

Luna was on the porch steps with her notebook. She’d come out when I did.

”Every morning,” said Luna. ”For more than a year now. Every dawn, the spine-queen reaching thirty-one people with fragments of her bone in them. And a sliver round the Chancellor’s neck.” She looked at Wren. ”Wren. Your name’s in the hello. Dot counts it every morning. Voss, Mara.”

Wren went completely still.

”She’s heard it,” said Luna. ”Every dawn. For as long as you’ve been counted. She’s heard your name.”

The band on Crane’s collar pulsed.

Pale. Almost white. Once. Twice. Like something knocking.

And then a voice came through it.

Not the handler’s. Not the queen in the Hand. A human voice. A woman’s. Thin and faint and very far away, the way Mother’s had been on the first morning, before the Hand caught the hello and opened the door.

I’d heard it once before. At the garden party in the dome, two years ago. Greeting every cadet by name, in a plain white dress, with a silver seed on a chain round her neck.

Mr. Crane.

Crane flinched.

I know you can hear me, said Chancellor Renata Voss. I don’t know how. I don’t understand any of this. I’ve been wearing this thing for twenty years and I thought it was jewellery. A pause. Three days ago it started to sing.

Nobody in the square moved.

It sings every morning now, said Voss. At the same time. I hear names in it. I’ve been hearing them for a year, very faint, and I told myself I was imagining it. I told myself it was guilt. Her voice cracked. I’m not imagining it now. It’s too loud.

Another pause.

I hear my niece’s name, said Voss. Every morning. Mara. Counted. With the living.

Wren didn’t move.

I sent three men to Major Okafor’s flat, said Voss. That same morning. With a paper I signed myself, under two names that weren’t mine. I’ve signed a great many papers like that. She stopped. They came back down the stairs on their feet. Without the paper. They said a woman held them in the air by their buckles and didn’t hurt them.

They said she was smiling.

The band pulsed again.

I’d like to speak to my niece, said Chancellor Voss. If she’ll let me. I don’t expect her to. A long pause. And then I’d like to speak to Major Okafor. In person. Tomorrow. At her flat.

Alone.

Tell her I’ll come up the stairs.

Days 773–775. The seed.

Okafor took a day to answer about the flare. She needed to think about the ground.

It was a good day, the first whole one in a long time. The Kethri walked out of the guest wing with quiet collars and went off in ten directions; Sesh lay down beside the queen at the wall. At noon I smiled at the cheese. Sera kissed the corner of my mouth: we’ll allow it. Luna wrote it down.

Dory walked. A hundred and fifty-one days; Edda looked it up twice. Pell takes her to the east court every afternoon to grow up with the young of eighteen, who hum back every time she checks them. Pebble came to the edge of the court; she stood up out of three young like cushions, walked to him, sat down hard, got up, reached him. He lowered his head and hummed welcome and walked her round the court one step at a time. Then eleven steps to Risa, without sitting down. Called to her Mama. Pell underlined it twice. Uneventful.

In bed Sera put my hand on her stomach: a fish turning over, and Toby’s counter-note humming under it. It hums whenever Toby plays, even when she can’t hear him, and then moves. ”I think it’s going to be a carrier.” Risa said hello to it. From the basket Dory checked; the hum went up like a note answering a note. Luna, eyes shut: she said hello back. Good.

Okafor at dawn: no. Not yet. If the hello goes past north every queen will hear it, and every handler. Ours was cut off because one queen stopped carrying, and we only learned she would because a baby said a word and two hundred people sang. You don’t send up a flare until you know who’ll see it. Home first: all thirty-one whole, then the Project, the Senate, the dome. Tell the queen why. Never lie to an ally, especially not to make them feel better.

I told her on the plain. She has waited longer than this world has had broods; she can wait until my mother’s people can stand. Nobody has told her the truth once since they took her. The small one is very good at asking. Dory called her Mama; Risa went pink: that’s me. Dory said the brood-word instead.

I asked Mother about the ship. Not a whole one: a finger, over the northern front, in the second bombardment. It wasn’t the guns. She tore a hole, Father went in, an hour, fog all the way in. He wrote it up as nothing of military value. In the tent, hands between his knees: ”Dot. There’s someone in there.” He could hear her singing. ”She doesn’t climb at all. She just sings and the walls do what she says.” Notebook four, page 212: he was asking her, every day, for the rest of his life. Three months later, the Accord. ”What’s this for.” Page square with the edge. He knew we were signing her away with everyone else.

Genny: he was asking one like her. And now I don’t climb, because a queen showed me. We’re the answer to Father’s question. She’d like to tell the queen in the Hand that somebody asked.

Night. Crane’s band lit pale, almost white. Not the handler; through the hello, someone on Earth, not on his list. Dot: not a fragment, very small, shaped like a seed. Crane: ”Renata.” Wren ran. The seed on Voss’s chain, a gift from the Sorn twenty years ago, which Crane gave her and thought was ornamental. A sliver. Luna: Wren’s name is in the hello every morning. Voss, Mara. She’s heard it.

Voss through the band, faint as Mother on the first morning. She thought it was jewellery; three days ago it started to sing; she told herself the names were guilt. ”I hear my niece’s name. Mara. Counted. With the living.” She sent the three men with a paper she signed under two names not hers. They came back on their feet and said the woman was smiling. She’d like to speak to her niece, and doesn’t expect her to. And then to Okafor, in person, tomorrow, alone.

Tell her I’ll come up the stairs.