Scarecrow

The rain was so hard I couldn’t see the street.

I flew it anyway. Low. Over the roofs. With the water coming down on me like the lake had been turned over, and the lightning walking across the city in long white legs, and every dog on Avalon barking. I came down in the garden in front of the house, on the steps that go down to the quiet room under it, and the steps were running like a stream.

Dory was at the top of them.

Standing in the rain. Soaked through. With Pebble pressed against her legs and her hand flat on the wet stone of the garden wall. Not moving. Her eyes were shut. The lattice of silver round them was so bright it lit the rain.

”I’m holding everything,” she said. Without opening her eyes. ”Papa. I’m holding everything. But it’s very big.”

I looked up.

The storm was all over the city.

Not a storm. Risa. Pouring out of the quiet room, up through the faceted walls and the earth and the garden and into the sky, the way her storm had always poured out of her when she couldn’t hold it. I’d seen it before. On the Hesk ranges. In the gym, the night she fell asleep on my shoulder. The night Dory was born, sparks crawling over the quiet-room walls.

Never like this.

It went from the canyon rim to the edge of the new city. It was so low it touched the top of the silver tree in the square. And the lightning was coming down out of it every few seconds, white, enormous, and every time it came down Dory flinched, and somewhere under the lightning, before it touched anything, something stopped it. Held it. Turned it aside. Into the ground. Into the red glass outside the city. Into the rain.

Dory. Not five yet by the calendar, looking nine, standing in the rain at the top of the steps with her hand on a wall, holding a city out of her mother’s lightning.

”How long?” I said.

”Since Mama started,” said Dory. Her voice was very small. ”It keeps getting bigger. Every time she pushes.” Her lip shook. ”I don’t think I can hold it all, Papa. Not if it gets bigger. It’s like holding the wind on the plains world. I can hold it. But not forever.”

I could have held it. I could have gone up into it and asked the air to be still and the lightning to be nothing. I’d done it on the plains world.

But it was Risa’s. It was coming out of her because she was having our son, and if I put it out, I’d be putting out part of her while she did it. You don’t do that. Edda had told me. The night Dory was born. Whatever comes out of her, let it come. It’s hers.

And I needed to be in the quiet room.

”Hold on,” I said to Dory. ”One minute. I’ll get help.”

”Who?”

I didn’t know. I opened my mouth.

And down the street, out of the black rain, someone came running.

Sigmund.

In his shirt, no coat, soaked to the skin, his hair plastered flat. Running. Not flying; Sigmund had never flown. Running down the middle of the street, through the river the street had become, with Jessa a long way behind him shouting his name.

He came up the garden steps three at a time. He saw Dory. He saw the sky.

He didn’t say anything to me.

He went to the middle of the garden and stood there in the rain, and shut his eyes, and put both his hands up. Palms out. The way he’d put them up on the Kethri forest, at the edge of the palm, when the handlers came out.

And built his fence.

Not round a palm. Round a city.

White. Lightning, held. Not thrown. A long thin line of it, going out from his hands in both directions, round the garden, round the street, round the square, round the whole of the city, as far as I could see, the way the General’s ice had gone round the Kethri forest. Holding the sky up off everyone. And every time Risa’s lightning came down out of the black, it came down onto Sigmund’s fence, and the fence took it. Drank it. Held it there, a moment, white, and then let it down into the ground, gently, harmlessly, outside the city, on the red glass.

He’d spent his whole life holding lightning still so it didn’t hurt anyone.

He’d never held his sister’s before.

Dory opened her eyes. She looked up at the fence. Then at Sigmund. Standing in the middle of the garden with his hands up and his face very calm and the rain running off him.

”Oh,” she said. And sat down on the top step, very suddenly, the way Wren sat down on the north wall. ”Oh, thank you.”

”Go and sit with your grandmother, Dory,” said Sigmund. Not opening his eyes. ”I’ve got it.”

I went down into the quiet room.

It was very loud. Not with sound; the faceted walls kept the sound in, the way they always had. With everything else. With Risa’s storm, filling the room, sparks crawling over every facet of the walls in long blue lines, the air so full of it my hair stood up as I came through the door.

Edda was at the foot of the bed with her sleeves rolled up and her mouth in its line.

Ruth was at the head. In her coat. Buttoned wrong. With her hand flat on Risa’s chest, over her heart, the way she’d shown Sigmund on the model.

Mother was in the corner. In the chair. With her hands perfectly still in her lap and every jar and basin and cloth and instrument in the room held, very slightly, to the width of a hair, so that nothing fell when the sparks went over it.

And Risa.

She was on her back on the bed with her hair standing straight up off the pillow in a great dark crackling cloud, and her face wet, and her teeth bared, and her hands fisted in the sheets so hard the sheets were scorched where she held them.

She saw me come in.

”Where,” she said. Through her teeth. ”Were you.”

”Map room.”

”Of course you were.” The next wave came. Her back arched. The sparks on the walls went white. Somewhere overhead, through all that earth and stone, I felt the lightning come down and Sigmund’s fence take it. ”Of course. You were in the map room. Telling a man on Earth. That three million people can come and live in our garden.”

”Not in our garden.”

”I KNOW NOT IN OUR GARDEN.”

Edda didn’t look up. ”Good. Shout. That’s good. Keep doing that.”

I went to her side. I took one of her hands, out of the sheet. It was so hot it nearly burned. The sparks ran up my arm and into my chest and I let them.

”Sigmund’s up there,” I said. ”He’s built a fence. Round the whole city. Dory’s sitting down.”

Risa went very still. For a moment. Between waves.

”Sigmund,” she said.

”He came running. No coat.”

Something went over her face. Then the next wave came, and she shut her eyes, and pushed.

It was the longest night I’ve ever had.

Longer than the forge. Longer than the nine hours under the ring. Longer than the cistern, with my hands on Hana’s head, a long time ago, before anybody knew anything.

Ruth stayed at Risa’s heart the whole time. I watched her. She didn’t take her hand away once. Not when the sparks went over her and her hair stood up and her coat started to smoke at the cuffs. She just stood there, with her hand flat over Risa’s heart, counting. Very quietly. Under her breath.

”Fast,” she said once. To Edda. ”Faster than I’d like.”

”It’s always fast with this one,” said Edda. ”She was fast with Dory. She’s fast with everything.” She didn’t look up. ”Lucas. Look at the baby. Tell me where he is.”

I looked.

He was coming. Head down. Turned the right way. Small and furious and absolutely full of storm, a tight lattice of it in every thread, and at every crossing something that was mine. He wasn’t frightened. Not at all. He was impatient.

”He’s ready,” I said. ”He’s been ready. He wants out.”

”Of course he does,” said Edda. ”He’s a Friese.”

”He’s a Dask,” said Risa. Through her teeth.

”He’s both,” said Mother. From the corner. Very calmly. ”That’s the trouble with them.”

Near the end, Ruth’s hand went still on Risa’s chest.

Not off. Still. And her face changed. Very slightly. The way it had changed under the apple trees, when Toby said shivering.

”Edda,” she said.

Edda looked up.

”Her heart,” said Ruth. Very quietly. ”It’s skipping. Every fourth beat. It’s the storm. It’s too much. It’s going through her heart on its way out, and her heart’s—” She stopped. She looked at me. ”I need Sigmund.”

I didn’t ask. I went.

Up the stairs. Out into the rain. Into the garden, where Sigmund stood with his hands up and his fence round the city and his face very white now, very tired, the rain running off him.

”She needs you,” I said. ”Inside. Ruth says. Her heart.”

Sigmund opened his eyes.

”If I take the fence down—”

”I’ll hold the fence,” I said. ”Go.”

I took it from him.

I’d never held someone else’s lightning. You can’t, Maura said once, about fire. Nobody can hold somebody else’s fire. Maura had done it all her life, for Rory, and she said it was the hardest thing she’d ever learned.

I didn’t hold his lightning. I held the shape of it. The fence. Where it was. How far. I asked the air to be the fence that Sigmund had made, and to stay that shape, and keep holding the sky up off everyone. And the air listened. And Sigmund took his hands down, and the fence didn’t fall.

He looked at me for one second.

Then he ran down the stairs into the quiet room.

Dory told me afterward what happened. She’d gone down. Mother had let her stand in the doorway, with Pebble, because Dory had said very firmly that she wasn’t holding anything any more, Papa was, and so she was allowed to watch.

She said Sigmund went straight to the head of the bed. Ruth took her hand away from Risa’s heart. And Sigmund put his there. Two fingers. Exactly where Ruth had shown him on the model a hundred times.

And Risa opened her eyes and looked at him.

”Siggy,” she said. Nobody had called him that except her, since they were little.

”Hello, Ris,” said Sigmund. ”You’re making a terrible mess.”

”Shut up.”

”I’m going to hold your heart now,” said Sigmund. Very calmly. ”The storm’s going through it. I’m going to hold the spark. Just the spark. Where it needs to be and nowhere else. And let the rest go round.” He looked at Ruth. ”Like the fence.”

”Like the fence,” said Ruth.

And Dory said she saw it. A very small blue light, between Sigmund’s fingers and Risa’s chest. Steady. Not flickering. Not jumping. Just there. Like a lamp somebody had lit and set down very carefully on a table and wasn’t going to move.

And Risa’s heart, Ruth said, under his fingers, stopped skipping.

He was born a little before dawn.

Up in the garden, holding the fence round the city, I felt him come. Not through the hello. Through the sky. Because the moment he came the storm stopped.

All of it. At once. Every cloud over the city, every white leg of lightning, every drop of the rain. Like a breath held and let out. The black over Scarecrow went grey, then thin, then broke apart into long ragged pieces that blew away east toward the Hesk ranges, and behind them was the sky, very pale, very clean, with the two moons going down in the west and the first light coming up over the canyon rim.

And under it, very faint, through the earth and the stone and the faceted walls, a sound I’d never heard come out of the quiet room before, because the walls didn’t let sound out.

A crack of thunder. Small. Indignant.

Then crying.

I let the fence go and went down.

Risa was propped up on the pillows with her hair still standing up in a crackling cloud round her head. Edda was at the foot of the bed doing something with a basin. Ruth was in the corner, sitting on the floor, with her back against the faceted wall and her coat smoking very slightly at both cuffs and her eyes shut.

Sigmund was standing beside the bed. With his hand still raised a little, as if he’d forgotten to put it down.

And on Risa’s chest, wrapped in a cloth that had been scorched round the edges, a baby.

Small. Furious. Red in the face. With a thick dark crest of hair standing straight up off his head like his mother’s. Crying at the top of his lungs. And round his eyes, when he opened them to see what all this was, the rings. A lattice. Like Dory’s. But tighter. Fine and bright as frost on a window. With lightning in every thread.

He stopped crying. He looked at me.

There was a very small spark. From him to me. It went up my arm.

”There,” said Risa. Very tired. Very satisfied. ”He’s said hello.”

Dory came in from the doorway.

She came very slowly. With Pebble a step behind. She came all the way to the side of the bed and stood on her toes and looked at her brother for a long time.

”I knew he’d be loud,” she said.

”You told everyone,” said Risa.

”I told the Teeming.” Dory looked at the baby. At the lattice round his eyes. Then she put one hand out, very carefully, and put it flat on the cloth over his chest. The way she put her hand flat on everything.

She shut her eyes.

”He’s all right,” she said. ”He’s very cross. But he’s all right.” She opened her eyes. ”He’s storm. Like Mama. And change. Like Papa. And—” She frowned. She tilted her head. ”He’s got a fence. Inside. Round the middle. Like Uncle Sigmund’s. Very small.”

Everyone looked at Sigmund.

Sigmund looked at the baby.

”That’s not possible,” he said. ”I’m not—I’m not his—”

”No,” said Ruth. From the floor. Without opening her eyes. ”It’s not inherited. It’s learned. You were holding his mother’s heart for the last hour, with your spark, while he was coming through. Right next to it.” She opened her eyes. ”He felt the shape of it. That’s all. The silver listens. Ask Dask. It listened to you.”

”What’s his name?” said Mother.

Risa looked at me.

I looked at Risa.

”You said something long,” I said. ”With a hyphen.”

”I did say that.” Risa looked down at the baby. Then up. At Sigmund. Standing by the bed, soaked through, white as a sheet, with his hand still half raised and his shirt scorched in two places where her sparks had caught it. Who’d come running down the middle of the street in the rain with no coat. Who’d spent his whole life holding lightning still so nobody would get hurt, and had held hers.

”No hyphen,” said Risa. ”Just one.”

She held the baby up. Very slightly. Toward her brother.

”Sigmund,” she said.

Sigmund didn’t say anything.

He put his hand down at last. Very slowly. And then he put it out. And Risa put the baby into his arms. And he stood there in the quiet room, holding his nephew, with his face doing something I’d never seen Sigmund’s face do. Not at the palm. Not in the dark with the lightning in a perfect circle round him. Not with Hester Fenn’s hand in his.

Small Sigmund looked up at big Sigmund.

There was a very small spark. Between them. Blue.

And it stayed. Steady. Like a lamp somebody had lit and set down carefully on a table and wasn’t going to move.

”Hello,” said Sigmund Friese. Very quietly. ”You’re making a terrible mess.”

Jessa was at the top of the stairs when I came up. Soaked. She’d been there all night, Mother said. She hadn’t come down. She’d stood at the top of the garden steps in the rain with her arms wrapped round herself watching Sigmund hold the fence, and then watching me hold it, and she hadn’t said a word.

”Is he all right?” she said. ”Sigmund?”

”He’s holding the baby.”

Jessa put her hand over her mouth.

”They called him Sigmund,” I said.

Jessa sat down on the top step, very suddenly, in exactly the place Dory had sat. And laughed. And cried. Both. With her hands over her face.

”He’s going to be impossible,” she said, through her fingers. ”He’s going to be completely impossible for the rest of his life.”

Okafor came at noon with her slate.

She didn’t come in. She stood at the gate. She looked at the house. At the garden, steaming in the sun, every stone of it scorched in long pale lines where the lightning had walked. At the steps down to the quiet room. At me, on the porch, in Father’s chair, with my eyes shut, not asleep.

”Dask,” she said.

”Major.”

”I’m told there’s a new one.”

”Sigmund,” I said. ”Dask. Storm, change, and a fence.”

Okafor wrote it on her slate. I watched her. Under The children. Every one. At the bottom of a list that was very long now, longer than the slate, going onto the back.

Then she looked up.

”Halloway tells me the young Friese held the city’s lightning for six hours and his sister’s heart for one,” she said. ”And that you held the city for the last hour, and the boy held his own mother’s heart steady by the end, without being asked.” She paused. ”Is that right?”

”Ruth says so.”

”Then I’d like the young Friese on the first crossing,” said Okafor. ”With Halloway. Standing next to her. In case anyone on the Program floors has a heart that’s skipping.” She put the slate under her arm. ”Ask him. Don’t tell him. He’s had a long night.”

He said yes.

Not that day. Three days later. When he’d slept, and come back, and held his nephew again, and the spark had come up between them again, steady, blue, the way it did every time now. He gave the baby back to Risa. He went out onto the porch. I was there.

”The first crossing,” he said.

”Okafor asked. She said to ask. Not tell.”

Sigmund looked out at the plain. At the fourteen ships, lying on the red glass. The old three and the eleven new, iron, with their names in Garnet’s gold on their sides.

”Ruth taught me to start a heart,” he said. ”On a model. A hundred times. Then once under the apple trees. And then my sister’s.” He looked at his hands. ”There are thirty-one people on the Program floors who don’t know their names. And thousands in rows who don’t wake up.” He was quiet. ”I spent my whole life trying not to do anything at all. Father used to say it was the only thing about me that wasn’t polite.”

”And now?”

He looked back through the door. At Risa on the couch, asleep, with the baby asleep on her chest, both of them with their hair standing up a little.

”Now I’ve got a nephew named after me,” said Sigmund. ”I’d like him to have something to be named after.”

The month went fast.

It had to. Okafor had told Odell a month, and Okafor didn’t move dates.

The fourteen ships lay on the plain, and every one of them was full of people every hour of every day. Bram in the tanks. Keir in the holds. Meg’s daughter with three hundred people from the bakeries of the new city, baking, because Okafor said the first thing anybody coming off a ship should be given was bread. Voss in the room at the end of the arrivals hall, with the door open, and a list. Not of complaints. Of names. Every name Odell could get up the relay at midnight, every night, from every dome. Thousands. Then tens of thousands. Voss wrote them all down, and Wren counted them, and Luna put them on the arrivals list, which went across the whole of the map room floor now and out of the door.

Ruth built a ward.

At the end of the hospital, past the Karst hall. Long and quiet and dim, with thirty-one beds, then sixty, then a hundred, because she said that was only the ones Odell knew about. With a chair beside every bed. Not for doctors. For whoever would sit there in the evening and answer questions.

”Forty-one a night,” said Ruth. ”Voss had forty-one the sixth night. I’d like someone beside every bed who can do forty-one.”

People came. I don’t know how they knew. Voss didn’t ask them; Ruth didn’t post a notice. They just came, in the evenings, to the long dim ward with its empty beds, and sat in the chairs to see what it felt like. Pell. Priya. Two of the orchard keepers. Gareth, in the chair at the end, very upright. Hester Fenn. A woman from the third crossing who’d been a teacher on the lower floors for thirty years and said she’d been answering forty-one questions a night since she was twenty.

And the twins. Every day. In the long room. With Ruth.

Not bread any more. Not stone. Housings.

Odell had sent the plans.

Up the relay, at midnight, one sheet at a time, over a whole week. Every piece of the housing he’d been told to fit. How it went round the neck and down the back. Where the sliver sat. Where the hole was, the one he’d left. Small. In the back. Where nobody’d look.

I made one. From the plans. Exactly the same. Not the sliver; we didn’t have a sliver to spare, and I wouldn’t have put one in anything anyway. Just the housing. Grey. Very like a collar.

And the twins took it off.

Over and over. Every afternoon. On a model Garnet had drawn and I’d made, of the patient’s neck and back. Genny asked the housing where it was fastened. Garnet touched the fastenings open. Through the hole. Odell’s hole. The way you’d thread a needle.

”It’s like the collars,” said Garnet, the first time. Frowning. ”But it’s grown in more. It goes into the back. Into the—” She looked at Ruth. ”What’s that bit?”

”The spine,” said Ruth.

”It goes into the spine,” said Garnet. Very quietly. ”Little roots. Like the grey on Tally.”

”Then you’ll go slowly,” said Ruth. ”And your sister will tell you every root. Twice.”

”Twice,” said Genny.

The first crossing was set for the dawn after the thirtieth day.

Okafor laid it out in the map room the night before, with the slate and the arrivals list and everyone there. Not to Carver. Not first. Odell had asked, and Okafor had agreed.

”The thirty-one first,” she said. ”And the Program floors. As many as want to come. Before the Council knows we’ve started. Once we start on the domes, they’ll lock the Program floors. So we start there.”

”New Halcyon,” said the General.

”New Halcyon,” said Okafor. ”The Scarecrow over the central dome with her arms out. The Ground on the ash at the east locks, where Pell’s people always came out. Dask through the glass, to the Program floors. Halloway and the young Friese with him. The twins.” She looked at Tally, by the door. ”And Tally.”

”And Odell?” I said.

”Odell,” said Okafor, ”has scheduled all thirty-one for a housing adjustment. Tomorrow. At dawn. In the old suit bay.” She almost smiled. ”He says nobody comes down there any more. They’ve forgotten it’s there.”

Risa didn’t come to the ramp.

She couldn’t. Not yet. She was on the porch, on the couch, with small Sigmund asleep on her chest and a very small cloud over the two of them, keeping the sun off. She held my face in both her hands when I bent down.

”Go,” she said. ”He’ll be bigger when you’re back. They grow fast.”

”I know.”

”Bring Siggy home.” She looked over my shoulder. At her brother, at the gate, in a coat this time, with Jessa beside him. ”He’s never been anywhere. He gets lost going to the hospital.”

”I’ll bring him home.”

”And Lucas.” Her hands tightened on my face. ”Bring the thirty-one. All of them. And the rows. As many as want to come.” Her hair lifted, very slightly. ”Bring them all.”

Hana came to the ramp. And Sera, with Ash on her hip. And Luna, with Trevor, who froze the ramp in protest at being up so early, so that everyone slid. And Mother. And Dory with Pebble, who said come back, and I said yes, and she said good, and went to hold Risa’s hand on the porch, because Risa had asked her to.

The Ground lifted first. Very slowly. The width of a hand. Then a foot. Then up, enormous and dark, with her name in gold on her side and the heavy queen humming so low in her heart that the whole plain felt it through its feet, and every one of her decks empty.

Then the Scarecrow. Fins folded. The Drenn queen in her room, door open.

I stood at the forward window with Ruth on one side, and Sigmund on the other, and the twins behind me with Garnet’s drawing board and Genny’s notebook, and Tally on the floor by the Drenn queen’s door with a fresh page open on her knee.

At the top she’d written, in Genny’s square letters: EARTH.

And under it, thirty-one marks. Waiting.

”Ready?” said Safi.

Aster’s lamps came up.

”Who carries it?”

”She does,” I said.

”And can she leave?”

”Any time she likes.”

The Drenn queen sang one low word toward Earth, and on the other end of the thread something answered at once. Not a queen. Not a seed. Thousands of small, frightened, half-finished pieces of silver, in rows, on the Program floors of New Halcyon, that had never been taught not to answer.

It wasn’t heavy at all.

The Scarecrow turned the page.

Days 2104–2135. Steady hands.

Flying through rain like the lake turned over, lightning walking the city on long white legs. Dory at the top of the quiet-room steps, soaked, Pebble at her legs, hand flat on the garden wall, eyes shut, the lattice lighting the rain: I’m holding everything, but it’s very big. Risa’s storm from the canyon rim to the edge of the new city, low enough to touch the silver tree, and before every bolt touched anything Dory turned it into the glass outside the city. Not five by the calendar, looking nine. It keeps getting bigger every time she pushes; I can hold it, but not forever. I could have put it out. It was hers. Edda the night Dory was born: whatever comes out of her, let it come. One minute; I’ll get help. Who? Down the street out of the black, running, no coat, Sigmund, Jessa far behind shouting his name.

He stood in the middle of the garden, hands up, palms out, as at the palm on the Kethri world, and built his fence: not round a palm, round a city, the way the General’s ice went round the forest. Every bolt came down on it and the fence drank it and let it down gently onto the red glass. He’d spent his life holding lightning still so nobody got hurt; he’d never held his sister’s. Dory sat down hard: oh, thank you. Go and sit with your grandmother. I’ve got it.

The quiet room loud with everything but sound: blue sparks crawling every facet. Edda at the foot, sleeves rolled, mouth in its line. Ruth at the head in her coat, hand flat over Risa’s heart. Mother in the corner holding every jar and basin to the width of a hair so nothing fell. Risa’s hair a crackling cloud, sheets scorched where she gripped. Where were you? Map room. Of course. Telling a man on Earth three million can live in our garden. Not our garden. I KNOW NOT IN OUR GARDEN. Edda: good, shout. Her hand so hot it nearly burned; I let the sparks into my chest. Sigmund’s up there; he’s built a fence round the whole city. Sigmund.

The longest night. Ruth never took her hand away though her cuffs smoked. Lucas, tell me where he is: head down, the right way, small and furious and full of storm, mine at every crossing; not frightened; impatient. Of course; he’s a Friese. He’s a Dask. Mother: he’s both; that’s the trouble with them. Near the end Ruth’s hand went still: her heart’s skipping every fourth beat; the storm’s going through it; I need Sigmund. I’ll hold the fence; go. I didn’t hold his lightning; nobody holds someone else’s, Maura says; I held the shape of it and asked the air to stay that fence, and it listened.

Dory watched from the doorway now she wasn’t holding anything. Two fingers where Ruth showed him a hundred times on the model. Siggy; her nickname for him since they were small. Hello, Ris. You’re making a terrible mess. Shut up. I’m going to hold the spark, just the spark, where it needs to be, and let the rest go round, like the fence. A small blue light, steady, like a lamp set carefully on a table; the skipping stopped.

A little before dawn, the moment he came, the whole storm stopped at once, like a breath let out; the black broke into ragged pieces that blew east toward the Hesk ranges; two moons going down; and through walls that never let sound out, a small indignant crack of thunder, then crying. Ruth on the floor against the facets, cuffs smoking, eyes shut. Sigmund with his hand still half raised as if he’d forgotten it. A dark crest of hair standing straight up like his mother’s; round his eyes a lattice like Dory’s but tighter, lightning in every thread. He looked at me and a small spark went up my arm. There: he’s said hello.

Dory on her toes, hand flat on his chest: I knew he’d be loud; I told the Teeming. He’s all right, very cross; storm like Mama, change like Papa, and a fence inside round the middle like Uncle Sigmund’s, very small. That’s not possible; I’m not his. Ruth from the floor: not inherited, learned; you held his mother’s heart with your spark for the last hour while he came through right next to it; he felt the shape; the silver listens; it listened to you.

Mother: his name? You said something long with a hyphen. Risa looked at her brother, soaked, white, shirt scorched in two places, who came running with no coat and spent his life holding lightning still and held hers. No hyphen. Just one. Sigmund. Big Sigmund put his hand down at last and took him; a small blue spark between them that stayed, steady. Hello. You’re making a terrible mess. Jessa at the top of the steps all night in the rain: they called him Sigmund; she sat where Dory sat and laughed and cried: he’s going to be completely impossible for the rest of his life.

Okafor at the gate at noon, the garden steaming, every stone scorched in pale lines. Sigmund Dask: storm, change, and a fence. Under The children. Every one, at the bottom of a list onto the back of the slate. Six hours of the city and an hour of his sister’s heart, and the boy held his own mother’s steady by the end without being asked. I’d like the young Friese on the first crossing with Halloway, in case anyone on the Program floors has a heart that skips. Ask; don’t tell; he’s had a long night. Three days later on the porch: I spent my whole life trying not to do anything at all; now I’ve got a nephew named after me; I’d like him to have something to be named after.

The month went fast; Okafor doesn’t move dates. Every ship full every hour: Bram in the tanks, Keir in the holds, Meg’s daughter and three hundred bakers because the first thing anyone coming off a ship gets is bread. Voss at the end of the arrivals hall with a list not of complaints but names, every name Odell got up the relay each midnight, thousands then tens of thousands; Wren counted them; Luna’s list out of the map room door. Ruth’s ward past the Karst hall: thirty-one beds, sixty, a hundred, a chair beside each, not for doctors but for someone who can do forty-one questions a night. Nobody asked; they came to sit in the chairs: Pell, Priya, orchard keepers, Gareth very upright at the end, Hester Fenn, a lower-floors teacher who’s answered forty-one a night since she was twenty.

Odell sent the housing plans a sheet a night for a week: round the neck and down the back, where the sliver sits, where the hole is. I made one, no sliver; I wouldn’t put one in anything. The twins took it off every afternoon from a model of a neck and back: Genny asked where it was fastened, Garnet touched it open through Odell’s hole like threading a needle. It’s like the collars but grown in; little roots into the spine, like the grey on Tally. Then slowly, and your sister tells you every root. Twice. Twice.

Okafor the night before: the thirty-one first, and the Program floors, before the Council knows we’ve started; once we start on the domes they’ll lock them. The Scarecrow over the central dome with her arms out; the Ground on the ash at the east locks where Pell’s people came out; me through the glass to the Program floors with Halloway, the young Friese, the twins, and Tally. Odell has scheduled all thirty-one for a housing adjustment at dawn in the old suit bay. Nobody goes down there. They’ve forgotten it’s there.

Risa on the porch couch, the baby on her chest, a small cloud keeping the sun off: go; he’ll be bigger when you’re back; bring Siggy home, he gets lost going to the hospital; bring the thirty-one and the rows, as many as want to come; bring them all. Hana, Sera with Ash, Luna with Trevor who froze the ramp so everyone slid, Mother; Dory: come back. Yes. Good; and she went to hold Risa’s hand because Risa asked. The Ground lifted first, the heavy queen humming through the whole plain’s feet, every deck empty. Then us. Tally by the queen’s door with EARTH and thirty-one marks waiting. Who carries it? She does. Can she leave? Any time she likes. The Drenn queen sang toward Earth and something answered at once: thousands of small frightened half-finished pieces of silver in rows on the Program floors that had never been taught not to. Not heavy at all.