Scarecrow

Okafor keeps a second slate now.

Not the one on the long table, with the task forces and the rotations and the names. A smaller one. Black. That she keeps in the inside pocket of her coat, and takes out at the end of every day, alone, in the map room, after everyone’s gone.

I found out what was on it by accident. I came back for Garnet’s pencil.

Numbers. That’s all. Two columns. On the left, the ones who came home. On the right, the ones who didn’t.

She was adding up the left column when I came in. She didn’t put it away.

”Every day,” she said. Not looking up. ”I add up the left first. Then the right. Then the left again. To make sure it’s still bigger.”

”Is it?”

”Yes,” said Okafor. She put it back in her pocket. ”Today it is.”

That month it was bigger every day.

I’m going to write some of them down. Not all. There were too many for all. Genny has all of them, in volumes thirteen and fourteen; she started fourteen on the twenty-second day, because thirteen was full.

The sixty-nine.

The Lir children who’d gone on from the Barrow a week before we got there. Ruan found them on the thread on the fourth day. Faint. Still answering the tide queen. At a sorting station two crossings past the Barrow, which Garnet had drawn by then, because she went with the Meridian to look.

Saska went.

Okafor said it was Teshka’s choice who went, and Teshka chose forty, and one of them was her granddaughter. And the forty went in on Keir’s new wings, down out of the dark onto a sorting station the houses thought nobody knew about, a heartbeat ahead of every corrector on it.

Brock wasn’t on the slate. He was on the Harness rotation. He sat on the porch steps all night with his hands in his pockets and didn’t read anything to anyone.

They came back at dawn.

Sixty-nine. Every one.

Saska came down off the Steady’s ramp with a Lir boy on each hip and her training wraps torn and a cut across one cheek, and walked straight past Okafor and Teshka and the whole of the red glass to the bottom of the long road, where Brock was standing with his hands in his pockets.

”All of them,” she said.

”I know,” said Brock. ”Ruan said.”

”I wanted to tell you anyway.”

Garnet drew it. That’s forty-two.

A moss world. On the eleventh line. Where the houses had a mining colony and the miners were a people called the Hessan, small and soft and blind, who’d dug for the houses for so long they’d forgotten there was a surface. Okafor sent Liam and Anja and four hundred of Holt’s. They found nineteen thousand Hessan in the deep shafts. They found the moss queen at the bottom of the deepest one, so far down that Anja had to carry Liam on her back for the last mile because the air was too thin for him and she’d finished her silver and he hadn’t.

Nineteen thousand. Every one.

Left column.

A world of fog. On the fourth line. Where the houses had come down on a city of the Orrel the week before anyone knew there was a city there to come down on.

Mother’s task force went. Sigmund went with them, because Halloway asked for him. They found the city.

It was black.

All of it. From the edge of the fog to the other edge.

Mother came home without saying anything. She sat in Father’s chair on the porch, which she never sits in, and held her cup until it was cold.

Right column.

A ship. Drifting. On the edge of the ninth line, where Ruan heard something on the thread that wasn’t a thread. A Sorn hull, very old, with its engines dead and its holds sealed. Ruan took the Meridian to look.

The holds were full of people asleep. Not sung. Asleep. In the cold. In long rows of cases, like the cases the Council kept the seed vault in.

Six thousand of them. From a world nobody could find on any of Garnet’s sheets. Taken so long ago that the ship had forgotten where it was taking them, and stopped, and drifted, and the cold kept them.

Halloway’s people opened the cases one at a time over nine days on the red glass. Five thousand eight hundred and forty woke up.

One hundred and sixty didn’t.

Both columns.

I’m writing all this down because it’s what we did that month. Every day. And because of what was happening to me while we did it.

Because it was the same thing. In the end.

It started on the moss world.

I was in the deepest shaft. With Anja. With the moss queen in my arms, very small, very old, the colour of wet stone. And I was feeling for the walls of the shaft, the way I always do, so I’d know where they were in the dark.

And I felt the whole mountain.

Not the walls of the shaft. The mountain. Every atom of it. All the way up to the surface. All the way down to the hot rock underneath. I felt the miners in the other shafts, nineteen thousand of them, every one. I felt the moss growing on the surface in the light none of them had seen. I felt the air above it, and the clouds, and something above the clouds that I think was the edge of the sky.

I stood very still.

”Lucas?” said Anja.

”It’s all right,” I said. ”I can just— I can feel a long way.”

”How far?”

I didn’t answer.

It got further.

I didn’t tell anyone for a week. I should have. I know that. But I kept thinking it would stop. That it was the moss world, or the queen, or the dark. That I’d come home and it would go back to what it had been. A room. A house. A mile.

It didn’t.

I woke up on the eighth night in the crooked house with Risa asleep on one side of me and Hana on the other and Luna and Sera in the next room, and Dory in hers, and Trevor’s breathing through the wall like a small engine.

And I could feel all of it.

Not just the house. The town. The plain. The seventh lake, every atom of water in it, and every fish, and the General’s line where he’d left it on the jetty. The red glass. The town under the garden wall, fifteen thousand children breathing in their sleep. The Vaeli hall. The bean plant in the crack in its wall.

And further.

The mountains. All the way to the sea. The sea. The other side of the sea. The whole of Avalon’s crust, and under it, the hot heart of the world turning very slowly, and the old queen’s hum running through all of it like a root.

And above.

The moon.

I could feel the moon.

I got out of bed very quietly.

I went out onto the porch. In the dark. And sat down on the top step. And put my hands on my knees and didn’t move.

Dory found me.

She always does. She came out of the house in her nightgown, with Pebble behind her, and sat down beside me on the step, and put her hand flat on the wood. The way she does when she’s holding.

”You’re very big tonight,” she said.

I looked at her.

”You feel it?”

”Everyone feels it,” said Dory. ”Everyone who listens.” She leaned against me. ”The heavy queen says you’re as big as the sky. She said it a bit worried.”

So I went to the queens.

The next morning. Not on my own. Mother came. Because Dory told her, and Mother came out onto the porch at dawn with two cups and gave me one and said, ”Well?” and I told her everything.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

”We’ll go and ask,” she said. ”Together.”

They were in the grove. The Scarecrow queen. The old queen. The heavy queen, with the Ground lying in the grass behind her like a sleeping animal. The coral queen, who’d come in on the morning crossing from the shallow seas. And the ash queen, grey and gold now, all the way back.

They knew why I’d come before I said anything.

They always do.

Sit, said the Scarecrow queen.

I sat. In the grass. Mother sat beside me.

You can feel the moon, said the old queen.

”Yes.”

Last week you could feel the mountain.

”Yes.”

A year ago you could feel a room.

”A house,” I said. ”A year ago. A mile, after you gave me more.”

There was a long silence in the grove.

Then the old queen said: We do not know.

I’d never heard a queen say that.

I’ve heard them say a great many things. I’ve heard them say wait and listen and not still and everyone home. I’ve heard the old queen say she was sorry, once, and the far queen say broken isn’t dead. I’ve heard the Scarecrow queen tell me I was hers.

I’d never heard one say we do not know.

We gave you more, said the Scarecrow queen. All of us. On the night before the correctors. So you could stand against them. We gave it gladly and we would give it again. A pause. But silver listens to singing. That is what silver is. And you have been in the middle of more singing than anyone has ever been.

Every queen on Avalon, said the heavy queen. Every brood. Every night. The ninth line. The voice in its quiet places. The tide queen singing everyone home. All of it goes through you. Because you are the one who carries it.

And the silver in you is listening, said the old queen. And growing. The way Hana’s grew. The way all of yours grow. But faster. Because there is more of it. Because you are in the middle.

”What am I growing into?”

We do not know, said the old queen again.

Mother put her hand on my arm.

”Is he in danger?” she said.

The queens were quiet for a long time.

No, said the Scarecrow queen. Not from it. It does not hurt him. It will not.

”Then what?”

There has never been a person with this much silver who was not a queen, said the old queen. Queens are made to hold it. To sing it. To be in the middle. Lucas was not made for it. He was made to be a boy in a dome who could ask doors to open.

And now he can feel the moon, said the heavy queen.

We do not know what a person becomes, said the old queen, who can feel everything a queen can feel, and is not a queen.

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then I said: ”Am I still me?”

All five of them turned to look at me at once.

Yes, said the Scarecrow queen. You are still the one who asked us. You are still the one who said hello. You are still ours. A pause. Whatever else.

Whatever else, said the old queen, you are still that.

Mother, beside me, didn’t let go of my arm.

”Then that’s all right,” she said. To the queens. To me. Very firmly. ”He’s still that. The rest we’ll find out.” She stood up. ”Come on, Lucas. Breakfast.”

I told everyone that night. On the porch.

All of it. The moss world. The moon. We do not know.

Risa listened with her chin on her knees. Luna with one cold hand over her stomach, where the baby was, the cold one, kicking. Sera with her feet up and one warm hand over hers. Hana with the twins asleep against her. Ingrid and Konrad on the steps. Maura. Rory. The General. Genny and Garnet. Pip.

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Risa said: ”Can you feel me?”

”Yes.”

”Right now?”

”Every atom.”

Risa considered this.

”That’s either the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said, ”or the most alarming.”

”Both,” said Luna.

”Both,” said Sera.

Hana laughed. And the twins woke up. And then everyone was laughing, and the General had to go and get the bottle from the kitchen, and nobody went to bed for a very long time.

Doctor Bell came up the hill three days later.

With both pairs of spectacles. One on her nose and one on her head. With a slate under her arm and her coat buttoned wrong. Doctor Bell’s coat is always buttoned wrong. Halvard Ostrand says it’s because she’s always thinking about something else while she does it, and that the something else is usually more important than buttons.

She stood at the bottom of the porch steps and looked up at me.

”Dask,” she said. ”I’ve been talking to Okafor.”

”About what?”

”About you,” said Doctor Bell. ”She says you can feel the moon.”

”Yes.”

”Every atom of it.”

”Yes.”

Doctor Bell took the spectacles off her nose. And polished them on her coat. For a long time.

”Dask,” she said. ”Have you ever tried to split one?”

I looked at her.

”Split what?”

”An atom.”

”Why would I want to split an atom?”

Doctor Bell put her spectacles back on. And came up the steps. And sat down in the chair beside mine. Not Father’s. The other one.

”Because,” she said, ”that’s where the power is.”

I’m going to write down what she told me. Because I didn’t know any of it, and I should have, and I think a great many people on Avalon don’t either.

Doctor Bell said that every light on Earth, every dome, every pump that kept the air moving on the lower levels, every heater in every orchard floor, every engine in every Council ship, ran on what she called nuclear power. That nuclear just means the middle of the atom. The nucleus. The very small hard heart of it, that everything else goes round.

”And there’s an enormous amount of power in that heart,” she said. ”Holding it together. You wouldn’t think so. It’s so small. But the smaller a thing is, Dask, the tighter it’s held. And the middle of an atom is held tighter than anything.”

”How do you get it out?”

”Two ways,” said Doctor Bell. She held up one finger. ”You take a very heavy atom. A big one. With a great crowded heart. And you break it. Into two smaller ones. And when it breaks, some of what was holding it together comes out. As heat. As light. That’s fission. Splitting. That’s how the oldest of the domes’ engines worked, the ones under New Halcyon, before my time.”

She held up a second finger.

”Or you take two very light atoms. Small ones. The smallest there are. And you push them together. Very hard. So hard that they become one. And when they join, some of what was holding them apart comes out. Even more of it. That’s fusion. Joining.” She looked at me over her spectacles. ”That’s how the newer domes ran. And that’s how the sun works, Dask. Every sun. Every star. Every light you’ve ever seen in the sky over Avalon is something pushing small atoms together in its heart until they become one.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Sera,” I said. Eventually. ”When she— when the queens gave her the supernova. When she gets as hot as a star.”

”Yes,” said Doctor Bell. ”I’ve been wondering about that too. I suspect she’s doing it without knowing she’s doing it. The way you breathe.” She put her slate on her knees. ”But you’d know. If you did it. You’d feel it. Every atom.” She tapped the slate. ”That’s what I want to know, Dask. Whether you can feel the heart of one. And whether, if you can, you can ask it to open.”

”Why?” I said.

Doctor Bell looked at me for a long time.

”Because Avalon runs on the queens,” she said. ”And on Lucas Dask building things with his hands. And on Kethri wind and Rory’s ovens and Sera keeping the town under the garden wall warm at night.” She took her spectacles off again. ”And that’s lovely, Dask. It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s three hundred thousand people now, and it’ll be a million soon, at the rate Okafor’s left column’s growing. And every one of them needs light. And heat. And clean water pumped up the hill. And I can’t keep asking the queens to sing it all. They’re tired. They’ve been tired for eleven generations.”

”You want a power plant.”

”I want to know if you could be one,” said Doctor Bell. ”For a minute. Long enough to show me how. So I can build something that does it without you.” She put the spectacles back. ”I’ve got Earth’s plans. All of them. From the archives. I’ve got Halvard. I’ve got Aster and Keir. What I haven’t got is anyone who can see inside the heart of an atom and tell me what it’s doing.” She looked at me. ”Until now.”

I didn’t answer her that night.

I said I’d think about it.

Doctor Bell said that was the most sensible thing anyone had said to her all week, and went back down the hill with her coat buttoned wrong.

I asked Okafor.

In the map room. Late. With the black slate in her pocket.

She listened to all of it. Fission. Fusion. The heart of the atom. The newer domes. The sun.

Then she sat for a long time with her hands flat on the long table.

”You know what else it is,” she said.

”Yes.”

”Say it.”

”A weapon,” I said. ”If it’s enough power to light a dome, it’s enough to— if you let it all out at once. Not slowly. All at once.”

”Yes,” said Okafor. ”Earth had those too. Before the domes. Doctor Bell knows. She didn’t mention them.”

”No.”

”She didn’t mention them,” said Okafor, ”because she’s not a fool, and she knew you’d think of it yourself, and she wanted you to think of it yourself.” She looked at me. ”Have you?”

”Yes.”

”And?”

I looked at the map. Garnet’s sheets. All of them, laid out together now, so big they hung off the ends of the long table onto the floor. The sixty-four tithe worlds. The ninth line. The red trace going up from the reef. The Barrow, crossed out. The black city of the Orrel, in the fog, with a small square of paper pinned over it where Garnet had written all the names Mother could find.

”The houses would use it,” I said. ”If they had it. If they had me. They’d use it on the Orrel. On the reef. On everyone.”

”Yes,” said Okafor.

”I won’t.”

”No,” said Okafor. ”I know you won’t.” She put her hand on the black slate in her pocket. ”That’s why I’m going to let you try.”

We went to the moon.

Doctor Bell said it had to be somewhere with nothing in it. Nobody. Nothing living. In case. Not because she thought anything would go wrong; she said she’d done the sums nine times and anything I could do with one atom wouldn’t warm a cup of tea. But because, she said, she’d been a scientist for forty years and she’d never once regretted being careful.

So we went to the moon. On the Ground, because the heavy queen offered. With Doctor Bell and Halvard Ostrand and Okafor and Mother, because Mother wasn’t going to stay on the porch for this.

And Dory.

Nobody brought Dory. Dory came. She was on the Ground’s back before anyone had worked out how she’d got there, sitting cross-legged in the hollow behind the heavy queen’s head, with Pebble.

”You can’t come,” I said.

”I’m already here,” said Dory.

”Dory—”

”You’ll need someone to hold,” said Dory. ”In case.” She looked at me with her silver-ringed eyes. ”You always need someone to hold, Papa. You just never ask.”

The moon is grey.

Not Sorn grey. Not black. Just grey. Old stone, very quiet, with no air, and the stars very bright, and Avalon hanging over it green and blue and white, so big you could see the shape of the seventh lake.

The heavy queen held the air round us. In a bubble. I don’t know how. She said it was easier than holding up the black.

I stood on the grey stone.

Doctor Bell stood beside me. With her slate. With both pairs of spectacles on at once, which Halvard said he’d never seen before.

”Just one,” she said. ”One atom. A heavy one. There’s plenty in the moon rock, Halvard’s checked. Find one. And look at its heart. And tell me what you see.”

I found one.

It wasn’t hard. I can feel the moon. I’ve been able to feel the moon for a week. I put my hand flat on the grey stone and went into it, and down, and found one atom, very heavy, very old, deep in the rock.

And I looked at its heart.

I don’t know how to write what I saw.

I’ll try.

Everything I’ve ever changed, I’ve changed by asking. Doors. Fences. The metal of the Hands. The black. I ask the atoms to be something else, and they listen, and they move. Round each other. Holding hands in a different way.

But I’d never looked inside one.

Inside one is very small.

Smaller than small. Smaller than anything I’d ever felt. A heart. Very tight. Held. Holding. Crowded with things pressed so close together that they shouldn’t fit, and did, because something was holding them there harder than anything I’d ever felt hold anything.

It was like the queens.

That’s what I thought. Standing on the moon with my hand on the grey. It was like a queen holding her brood. All of them, pressed close, held so tight they’d never fly apart. Not because they were made to. Because they were held.

And it was tired.

The heavy ones are, Doctor Bell said afterward. The very heavy ones. Too crowded. They’ve been holding too much for too long. Some of them, left alone, let go on their own, a very little, over a very long time. That’s what makes some rock warm.

This one was very tired.

”Lucas?” said Doctor Bell. Very quietly.

”I can see it,” I said.

”What’s it doing?”

”Holding,” I said. ”It’s holding on. Very hard. It’s been holding on for longer than the moon.” I swallowed. ”It wants to let go.”

Nobody on the moon said anything.

”Can you let it?” said Doctor Bell.

I asked it.

The way I ask everything. Not hard. Not breaking. Just asking. Would you like to let go.

It did.

I felt it open.

Very small. The smallest thing I’ve ever done. A crowded heart going in two, like a loaf torn down the middle, and the two halves going apart, and between them, where the holding had been—

Light.

Not much. A spark. Doctor Bell said afterward it was less heat than a match. Less than a match by a long way. Halvard’s instruments barely saw it.

But I felt it.

I felt every bit of the holding that had been in that heart come out at once, all of it, and I understood for the first time how much there had been. How much. In one atom. In one heart. Smaller than small.

And I understood how many atoms there were in the moon.

I took my hand off the rock.

I stood up.

My hands were shaking. I didn’t tell anyone that. Mother saw. Mother always sees.

”Well?” said Doctor Bell.

”It’s a lot,” I said.

”Yes,” said Doctor Bell. ”It is.” She took both pairs of spectacles off. ”Now you know.”

Dory was holding my other hand.

I hadn’t noticed her come down off the Ground. She was just there. With her hand in mine. With Pebble behind her. With her silver-ringed eyes on my face.

”You let it go,” she said.

”Yes.”

”It was glad,” said Dory. ”I felt it. It was glad to stop holding.” She looked at the grey rock. ”But Papa. There’s so many. If you asked all of them at once—”

”I know.”

”You won’t,” said Dory.

”No.”

”I know,” said Dory. ”I just wanted you to say it.” She leaned against me. ”The heavy queen says you went very small. Just now. Smaller than she’s ever felt anyone go. She says it frightened her more than when you were as big as the sky.”

I’ve thought about that a great deal since.

That going small frightened the heavy queen more than going big.

I think I understand it.

Big is just feeling. Feeling the moon. Feeling the seventh lake and the town under the garden wall and the heart of the world turning. It’s a lot. But it’s only knowing where things are.

Small is where the power is.

We didn’t split another one.

Not that day. Not ever, Okafor said, not heavy ones. Not for this. Doctor Bell agreed. She said she’d seen what she needed. She said the heavy ones were the old way; Earth’s oldest domes; the way that left behind rock that stayed poisonous for longer than the Accord, and she’d never liked it, and she’d never build it on Avalon.

”The other way,” she said. On the Ground. Going home. With her slate on her knees, writing so fast Halvard had to hold the light for her. ”Joining. That’s the clean one. That’s the sun’s way.” She looked up at me. ”The smallest atoms there are. Pushed together until they’re one. That’s what I want to build.” She looked at her slate. ”And I’ll need hydrogen. A great deal of it. Very pure.”

I looked at her.

”Hana,” I said.

Doctor Bell looked up.

”Hana?”

”Her power grew,” I said. ”After the twins. It’s not just water any more. It’s what water’s made of. She can hold oxygen in her hands. And the other half.” I swallowed. ”Hydrogen. The smallest atom there is.”

Doctor Bell stopped writing.

She looked at me for a very long time.

”Dask,” she said. ”Is there anyone in your family who isn’t a scientific impossibility?”

”Pip,” I said. ”Pip carries bread.”

”Pip,” said Doctor Bell, ”carries bread in a basket Rory made that keeps it warm forever without any heat source I can find.” She went back to writing. ”Pip’s the most impossible of the lot of you.”

Hana said yes.

On the porch. That night. With the twins asleep. With her hands in her lap.

”Show me,” she said. ”What you want me to do.”

So I showed her.

Not on the moon. On the porch. In the dark. I held out my hand, palm up, and Hana put her hand over mine, not touching, an inch above, and from the air between our hands she drew out the smallest atoms there are. A few. Very few. Hydrogen. I felt them come, one at a time, out of the night air, out of the water in it, to the place between our palms.

And I looked at their hearts.

They weren’t tired.

That was the first thing. They weren’t tired like the heavy one on the moon. They were the opposite. Small and light and quick and alone. Each one with a heart so small it was hardly there at all. And not holding anything. Not crowded.

Lonely, I thought.

I didn’t say that out loud.

I asked two of them. If they’d like to be one.

It was harder.

Much harder than letting go. Letting go is just asking. Joining is pushing. Two hearts that don’t want to touch, because they’re both the same, and the same pushes the same away. You have to hold them so close and so hard that they stop pushing. The way the sun does. With its whole weight.

I don’t have the sun’s weight.

But I can feel every atom. And I can ask. And I can hold.

I held them.

Hana held the air round them so nothing else got in.

And Okafor, who’d come up the hill because she said she wasn’t going to read about it on Genny’s sheet in the morning like everyone else, stood at the bottom of the steps with one hand up, and made the space between my hand and Hana’s very, very heavy.

Heavier than anything. For one heartbeat.

And they joined.

Light.

On the porch.

Small. The size of a seed. Sitting in the air between my palm and Hana’s. White and gold. Not burning. Not hot. Just bright. The way the sun is bright, Doctor Bell said, when she came running up the hill with her coat buttoned wrong and both pairs of spectacles on and stood at the bottom of the steps and stared at it.

The smallest sun there’s ever been.

It lasted about as long as a breath.

Then it was gone.

Nobody on the porch said anything for a long time.

Then Pip said: ”Do it again.”

”Pip,” said Maura.

”Do it again,” said Pip. ”I want to see it again. It was beautiful.”

So we did it again.

And again.

Eleven times that night. On the porch. Hana and me and Okafor. With Doctor Bell at the bottom of the steps writing it all down, and Halvard holding the light for her, which was funny, because he didn’t need to; we were the light.

The twelfth time, Dory did it.

Not on purpose. She was on the top step, beside me, with her hand in mine, holding, the way she does. And when Hana drew the hydrogen and I held it and Okafor made the space heavy, Dory leaned in. Just a little. Just to see.

And the sun came up in her palm.

Instead of mine.

Mother was on her feet before anyone else moved.

But Dory wasn’t frightened. She was looking at the tiny sun in her hand with her silver-ringed eyes, very wide, and it was looking back, I think; it sat in her palm a heartbeat longer than any of ours had.

”Oh,” she said. ”It’s warm.”

And then it was gone.

And Dory looked up at me.

”Papa,” she said. ”I did your thing.”

”Yes,” I said. ”You did.”

”And Mama Hana’s. And Okafor’s.” She thought about it. ”All at once.”

”Yes.”

Dory looked at her empty hand for a long time.

”I’m not going to do it again,” she said. ”Not without asking you.” She closed her hand. ”It was very small. And it was very big. Both.”

Mother picked her up.

Dory’s too big to be picked up. She’s very nearly as tall as Pip. Mother picked her up anyway, and sat down with her in Father’s chair, which she doesn’t sit in, and held her.

”Grandma,” said Dory. Into her shoulder. ”Are you frightened?”

”Yes,” said Mother. ”A bit.”

”Of me?”

”No, love,” said Mother. ”Never of you.” She held her tighter. ”Of how fast you’re all growing up.”

Ingrid, on the steps, put her hand on Mother’s knee. Maura put a cup of tea down beside the chair. Nan Vey, who’d come up the hill with Rowan and Callum because Callum wanted to see the sun, said, ”They do that, I’m afraid. I’ve never found a way to iron it out of them.”

And the General, from the kitchen door, said: ”Bottle?”

”Bottle,” said Mother.

Doctor Bell stayed on the porch until dawn.

Writing. Talking to Halvard. Talking to Hana. Asking me questions I couldn’t answer, and then asking them a different way until I could.

At dawn she put the slate down.

”Six months,” she said. ”Halvard and Aster and Keir and me. With Hana for the hydrogen. And Lucas, once, to look at the heart of it and tell us if we’ve built it right.” She took her spectacles off. Both pairs. ”A small sun. In a bottle. Under the plain. That lights the whole of Avalon and asks nothing of any queen.” She looked at the grove. At the dark shapes of them, asleep under the trees. ”They can rest. For the first time in eleven generations, they can rest.”

I looked at her.

”You didn’t ask me to split an atom so I’d be a weapon,” I said.

”No,” said Doctor Bell. ”I asked you so the queens could sleep.” She put her spectacles back on. ”Okafor told you about the other thing. I know. She’d have been a fool not to.” She buttoned her coat. Wrong. ”I’m not a fool either, Dask. I’ve seen what the houses do with power. I’ve read every page of what Earth did with it before the domes.” She stood up. ”I’d rather build a lamp.”

The queens woke at noon.

And the old queen said, before I’d said anything, before I’d even come into the grove:

You went small.

”Yes.”

Smaller than anyone.

”Yes.”

There was a long silence.

We still do not know what you are becoming, said the old queen. But now we know you can go that far down, and come back up, and still be the one who says hello. A pause. That is something.

That is a great deal, said the Scarecrow queen.

The heavy queen wants to know, said the coral queen, very small, from the edge of the grove, if you will make her one. A sun. A small one. For her young. They are always cold.

I sat down in the grass.

”Yes,” I said. ”With Hana. And Okafor. And Dory holding.” I looked at the heavy queen. ”If that’s all right.”

The heavy queen hummed.

The whole grove felt it.

Okafor’s black slate, that night.

I saw it. She didn’t hide it. She took it out on the porch, after everyone had gone in, and showed me. Both columns. The month’s.

The left column was very long.

The right column wasn’t short. The Orrel. The hundred and sixty in the cases. The twenty-three. Others. It’s never short.

But at the bottom of the left column, under the last number, in Okafor’s square hand, something that wasn’t a number.

One small sun. On the porch. Twelve times.

”That’s not a rescue,” I said.

”No,” said Okafor. She put the slate away. ”It’s what rescues are for.”

I said it that night.

In order. Down the rail and off the steps and onto the grass, where Doctor Bell had fallen asleep against the porch post with her slate on her chest and both pairs of spectacles on.

I said it to her too.

She didn’t wake up.

Dory, on my lap, said: ”I’ll tell her in the morning. Twice.”

Days 3781–3820. Smaller Than Small.

Okafor’s black slate: left column, right column; left bigger every day. The sixty-nine Lir home, all of them; Saska told Brock anyway. Nineteen thousand Hessan and the moss queen. The Orrel city in the fog, black before anyone knew. A drifting ship of sleepers: 5,840 woke, 160 didn’t. On the moss world I felt the mountain; at home, the moon. The queens: we do not know what you are becoming; you are still ours. Doctor Bell: have you ever tried to split an atom? Fission, the heavy heart broken; fusion, the small ones joined, the sun’s way. On the moon I let one tired heart go: less than a match, and I understood how much. Not a weapon. Then Hana’s hydrogen, Okafor’s weight, my holding: a sun the size of a seed on the porch, twelve times. The twelfth was Dory’s. Doctor Bell: six months, a lamp, so the queens can sleep.