Chapter 101 The Processing Plant

"Message from orbital Command," said Dot, on the morning of the fourth day.

I was standing at the cistern, washing my face. The water came up cold from the cracks in the rock, so cold it made my teeth ache, and tasted of iron and something sweet.

"Read it."

"To Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one. Designation noted. Production log received. Operator is instructed to proceed with standard construction sequence, phase two: perimeter wall, storage, secondary atmospheric plant. Operator is reminded that feedstock reserves should be conserved. Operator is reminded that kit capacity is finite. Report."

"That's it?"

"That is the message."

I dried my face on the end of the scarf.

"Feedstock reserves," I said.

"Query."

"They think I'm going to run out of rock."

I want to explain this properly, because it matters for what came after, and because Genny will read this one day and check every word.

Every other kit on Avalon was hungry.

That was how they'd been built. Pryce had told us, in the hangar, with her eyes shining: You feed it, and it breaks the material down, and it builds with it. But a kit can only build with what's in the material. If you want iron, you feed it rock with iron in it. If you want copper, you need rock with copper in it, and you need to find that rock, and dig it up, and carry it to the kit's mouth, and feed it, and wait.

That was what the other thirty-nine cadets were doing, that morning. All over the continent. Digging. Carrying. Looking at the ground and hoping there was iron in it.

I'd seen the projected figures, in the cave. A good operator, with a good site, might feed a kit forty tonnes of usable material a day. A great one, sixty.

I'd fed Dot four hundred and twelve tonnes an hour, on the first day. Command had asked her to confirm it.

But that wasn't the important part.

The important part was the glass.

The floor of the canyon was red glass. Miles of it. Silicon and oxygen, mostly, with a little iron in it to make it red, and a little aluminum, and some other things in traces. It was the most common stuff in the world. On Earth or on Avalon. Sand, melted.

Any other cadet, landing in my canyon, would have looked at the red glass and seen nothing. Nothing useful. Nothing a kit could build a forge out of, or a wire, or an air plant.

I looked at it and saw everything.

Because an atom of silicon is fourteen protons and fourteen neutrons, more or less. And an atom of iron is twenty-six protons and thirty neutrons. And an atom of copper is twenty-nine and thirty-five. And the difference between them is only a matter of counting.

I'd known that since I was five. Father had sat at the kitchen table with his chemistry notebook open and a stub of chalk and drawn it for me. Lead into gold is easy, Lucas. Look. It's only three. You just ask three of them to leave. And then, more quietly, turning the page: Sand into bread is hard. Because bread isn't a thing. It's a thousand things, holding hands. You'd have to ask every one of them.

Silicon into iron wasn't bread. It was lead into gold. It was counting.

And I was very good at counting.

So I didn't feed Dot the canyon wall anymore.

I fed her the floor.

I walked out onto the red glass in the morning with Dot behind me on her six legs, and I put my hand flat on the glass, and looked into it, and asked it to be what we needed.

Iron, first. A great deal of iron. The silicon in the glass, a little patch of it at a time, a meter square, two meters, five, turning. The fourteen becoming twenty-six. Not all at once; that would have been too much heat, too much of everything, and I could feel the old weight behind my eyes starting to stir if I tried to go too fast. But steadily. A meter of red glass becoming a meter of gray iron, rough and dark and still warm, lying in the canyon floor like a paving stone.

Dot's arms came down and lifted it out.

Then copper. A smaller patch. Bright. The color of the sun here, almost. Then carbon, for the steel, black and soft and smudging on my fingers. Then aluminum, light and pale. Then a little patch of something I wouldn't have dared try on Earth, in the cave, with Okafor watching: tungsten, heavy as guilt, for the forge.

"Query," said Dot, after the third patch. Very carefully. "Is the operator changing the elemental composition of the feedstock?"

"Yes."

"At the nuclear level."

"Yes."

The little rivers ran back to the core and out and back for a long time.

"This unit will need to report that," said Dot.

"I know," I said. "Report it."

Day 301. Day four.

Command thinks I'll run out of rock.

Fed Dot the floor. Silicon into iron. Copper. Carbon. Aluminum. Tungsten for the forge.

Father: lead into gold is easy. You just ask three of them to leave.

Dot reported it. She said she'd have to. I said report it.

I counted that night, the way I always did.

Luna. West. A hundred and twenty miles now. Walking east, steady. Twenty miles in a day. She'd stopped twice, I thought, for a long time each. Rest. Water. Then on.

Liam. Northeast. A hundred and sixty. Walking fast. He'd covered forty miles in a day. He'd be dead on his feet. He'd never stop.

Seraphina. East.

Sixty miles. Thirty in a day, walking west, in a perfectly straight line.

And then, at dusk, she'd stopped.

Not to rest. She'd stopped, and turned, and gone north a little way. And then stopped again. And stayed.

Toby. North. Two hundred and sixty. High.

Still.

The next day, Seraphina didn't move.

All day. From the moment I woke to the moment the sun went down over the western rim, the clasp sat in one place, sixty miles east of me, a little north of the line she'd been walking. Still.

Not hurt, I thought. I hoped. When people are hurt, they move a little. Shift. Turn over. This wasn't that. This was the stillness of somebody sitting on a high place with her knees up and her chin on them, watching something.

Waiting for something to pass.

Or deciding not to go on.

"Query," said Dot, as I stood in the doorway of the dome, at dusk, with my eyes shut. "The operator's heart rate is one hundred and four."

"Seraphina's stopped."

"Seraphina Calder. East. Ninety miles."

"Sixty, now. She walked thirty in a day. And then she stopped. And she hasn't moved since."

The little rivers ran.

"Query. Is the operator going to walk?"

I opened my eyes.

"No," I said. "Lighthouses don't walk."

"Logged." A pause. "This unit could build something."

"Yes," I said. "Yes. Let's build something."

We built for a week.

I don't think I can tell it in order. It didn't happen in order. It happened all at once, every day, from five in the morning until the six-hour clock on my wrist went red and I had to go inside and sit by the purring wall for two hours, and then out again until dark. And then by moonlight, sometimes. The big gold one gave enough light to work by, if you didn't need to see with your eyes.

I didn't.

On the fifth day, Dot built hands.

That's what she called them. I'd have called them something else, but she'd asked me, the night before, what the things at the ends of my arms were for, and I'd told her, and she'd been quiet for a long time.

In the morning there were six of them. Small. The size of a dog. Six legs each, like her, and two arms, and no voice. They came out of the slot at the back of her one after another, unfolding the way she had, and stood in a row on the red glass, waiting.

"This unit's hands," said Dot. "For carrying. For fitting. For the small work." A pause. "This unit cannot be in more than one place. The hands can."

"Do they think?"

"No. They do what this unit thinks." Another pause. "Like yours."

The hands went to work. And Dot went on eating the iron I gave her, and making, and the hands carried what she made, and fitted it, and the base began to grow faster than I could keep up with.

The second day of Seraphina not moving, Luna turned north.

I felt it at noon. The snowflake had been coming east all morning, steady, the way it had for three days. A hundred miles away now. Then ninety-five. Then, very suddenly, it turned left. North. And kept going north. Not toward me anymore. Along something.

As if there were something between us she couldn't cross, and she was walking along the edge of it, looking for a way round.

I didn't know what. A river, maybe. A canyon bigger than mine. Something.

I held on to the snowflake until the sun went down.

Still north.

Day 303. Sera hasn't moved for two days. Luna turned north at noon. Something in the way.

Liam's still coming. 110 miles. Northeast. Too fast.

Toby, still.

Dot built hands. Six. "Like yours."

So I built bigger.

I don't know when I decided to. I don't think I decided. I think it just happened, the way the counting happened, every night, without my asking it to. I'd stand at the end of each day in the doorway of the dome and close my eyes and feel for them. Three of them stopped, or turning away. One of them still, high in the mountains, for six days now. And forty pods scattered across a continent. And thirty-four gray dots on a map that had gone quiet.

And I'd open my eyes and look at the dome. Three rooms. Five beds.

Five wasn't enough.

On the sixth day, I gave Dot the whole south wall of the canyon.

Not to eat. To live in. I asked the layers to step back, one at a time, from the bottom up, the way you'd cut steps into a hillside. Terraces. Ten of them. Each one a few meters deep and a hundred long, going up the face of the red rock like the tiers of a stadium. And on each terrace, Dot and her hands built.

Rooms. Small ones. Each with a bed, and a shelf, and a door, and a little round window looking out across the canyon. Each one fed from the air plant, which had become three air plants, and then five, purring in the rock behind the terraces like a whole house full of filters.

Forty rooms.

Then thirty-four more.

"Query," said Dot, on the evening of the sixth day, as the hands fitted the door on the seventy-fourth room. "The operator's squad is four people."

"Yes."

"This unit has built seventy-four rooms."

"Yes."

The little rivers ran.

"Forty," said Dot slowly. "Forty cadets." A pause. "And thirty-four."

"Yes."

"The thirty-four have gone quiet. That is what the operator said."

"Yes."

"Query," said Dot. "Why build rooms for people who have gone quiet?"

I stood on the bottom terrace with my hand flat on the warm new wall of the seventy-fourth room and looked up at all of them. Ten tiers of little round windows, catching the last of the sun.

"Because quiet isn't the same as gone," I said. "Not always. Okafor taught me that. You count them anyway. Especially the ones who've gone quiet." I took my hand off the wall. "And if any of them come, there should be somewhere for them to sleep."

Dot didn't say anything for a long time.

"Logged," she said at last.

The hands went on to the next room.

The messages changed.

I noticed it on the fifth day, and by the seventh I'd started keeping them. Dot read them to me, each morning, after the first pass. And I wrote them down in the back of the notebook, in order, in a column. Like Genny would have.

Day 301. To Unit 401-P1. Operator is instructed to proceed with standard construction sequence, phase two. Operator is reminded that feedstock reserves should be conserved. Report.

Day 302. To Unit 401-P1. Operator is instructed to report method of elemental conversion in full. Operator is instructed to limit conversion to quantities required for phase two. Report.

Day 303. To Unit 401-P1. Operator's production log noted. Operator is instructed to provide a sample of the unidentified mineral for analysis.

Day 304. To Unit 401-P1. Operator's production log noted with interest. Command would be grateful for a sample of the unidentified mineral at the operator's earliest convenience.

Day 305. To Unit 401-P1. Command acknowledges operator's construction. Command would welcome the operator's assessment of site suitability for expansion.

Day 306. Director's office to Unit 401-P1. The Director requests, if the operator is willing, a description of the method by which the operator locates subsurface water.

Day 307. Director's office, personal. The Director would be most grateful for any observations the operator cares to share. At the operator's convenience. With thanks.

I looked at the column for a long time.

Instructed. Instructed. Instructed. Grateful. Welcome. Requests, if the operator is willing. Most grateful. With thanks.

Seven days.

"Instruction four," said Dot, on the morning of the sixth day, before she read the message.

I put down the cup of cistern water I'd been drinking.

"Command has asked a question that is not output," said Dot. "This unit is informing the operator before answering. As instructed."

"What's the question?"

"Query from orbital Command: how does the operator locate the subsurface water source." A pause. "This is not output. Locating is not producing. This unit does not have an answer in its records. This unit has observed only that the operator walks to the rim, stands for some minutes, and returns. Then water arrives."

I thought about it.

"What would you say? If you answered?"

"This unit would say: the operator walks to the rim, stands for some minutes, and returns. Then water arrives."

"Is that accurate?"

"Yes."

"Then say that."

A pause.

"That is not a complete answer."

"It's complete for you," I said. "It's everything you know. You don't have to know more than you know. That's not lying. That's just being where you are."

The little rivers ran for a long time.

"Logged," said Dot. "Answer sent: the operator walks to the rim, stands for some minutes, and returns. Then water arrives."

The next day's message said the Director requests, if the operator is willing.

By the evening of the seventh day, it was a town.

I stood on the rim of the canyon at dusk and looked down at it, and couldn't quite believe it.

The dome, at the foot of the north wall, where it had started. Grown now. Seven rooms, round, connected, like a cluster of bubbles. The forge beside it, and a second forge, and a third. The cistern, and a long channel of clear water running the length of the canyon floor in a groove the hands had cut in the red glass. The terraces up the south wall, ten tiers, seventy-four little round windows, some of them lit, because Dot had put lamps in, without being asked, in case.

A wall. Round the whole canyon, top and bottom. Not high. Not yet. But there.

And on the floor of the canyon, where the red glass had been, gray paving. Iron, mostly. Squares of it. A great checkerboard of gray and red, from one end of the town to the other, wherever I'd taken the glass and turned it into something useful.

And in the middle of it all, Dot, on six legs, with her five arms, and her twenty hands now, going about the town in the dusk like a mother hen with chicks.

Give it a year, and a mountain to eat, Pryce had said, and it'll give you a fortress.

It had been seven days.

I counted from the rim.

Luna. North. Still walking north. Along the edge of whatever it was. A hundred miles from me now, and not getting closer.

Seraphina. East. Sixty miles. Still. Four days now. Not moving at all.

Toby. North. High. Still. Ten days.

Liam.

The buckle had been coming all week. Fast. Too fast. A hundred and sixty miles. Then a hundred and twenty. Then ninety. Then, yesterday, sixty.

Today it had stopped.

North-northeast. Fifty miles. A little more. At about two o'clock in the afternoon, it had stopped moving. And not started again.

Not a pause. Not a rest. I'd watched him rest. When Liam rested, he couldn't stay still; he'd sit down and then get up and walk round in a small circle and sit down again. This wasn't that.

This was the other kind of still.

I stood on the rim of the canyon with my town lit up below me, seventy-four little round windows and three forges and a river of clear water, and held on to Liam's buckle with everything I had.

Still.

Fifty miles.

Don't. Not on your own. Not until there's three of us with you.

Three of them. One stopped on a hill sixty miles east, for four days. One walking north along the edge of something she couldn't cross. One still, in the mountains, for ten days. And now Liam.

Nobody was coming.

Nobody was going to make three.

"Query," said Dot. She'd come up the wall behind me, quietly, on her six legs. She stood beside me on the rim, with her grille turned toward me and her fifth arm a little forward.

"The operator's heart rate is one hundred and thirty."

"Liam's stopped," I said.

"Liam Calder. Northeast."

"Fifty miles. North-northeast. He's been running toward me for four days, and this afternoon he stopped, and he hasn't moved."

The little rivers ran back to the core and out and back.

"Query," said Dot. Very quietly. "Is the operator going to build something?"

I looked down at the town. At the seventy-four windows. At the empty rooms, and the empty beds, five of them in a row in the dome, that Dot had counted.

"Yes," I said. "Something tall."

Day 307. One week.

Silicon into iron. Into copper. Into carbon. Into anything. Other kits dig. I count.

Dot has twenty hands. They do what she thinks. "Like yours."

Seventy-four rooms. Forty and thirty-four. Quiet isn't the same as gone.

Command's messages: Instructed. Instructed. Instructed. Grateful. Welcome. Requests, if the operator is willing. Most grateful. With thanks.

Dot answered the water question: the operator walks to the rim, stands for some minutes, and returns. Then water arrives. That's complete for her.

It's a town.

Luna's walking north along something she can't cross. Sera hasn't moved in four days. Toby, ten days.

Liam stopped at two o'clock this afternoon. Fifty miles north-northeast. He hasn't moved since.

Nobody's coming.

I can't make three.

Tomorrow I'm going to build a tower.