Chapter 107 The Signal

By the fifth day I could stand.

Not well. Not for long. The muscle at the back of my thigh had knitted enough to hold me, if I didn't ask it for much, and Dot made me a stick out of iron with a sandstone grip shaped to my hand, and I walked with it, slowly, from the dome to the hut at the foot of the tower and back. A hundred meters. It took me ten minutes the first time.

"Query," said Dot, walking beside me. "Is the operator in pain?"

"Yes."

"Query. Should the operator be walking?"

"Halloway would say yes. A little. Every day. Or it'll set wrong."

"This unit does not have Halloway in its records."

"She's in mine," I said.

I spent the days on optics.

Dot read to me. Every afternoon, while I sat outside the dome with my leg up, and every night, when I couldn't sleep. Page after page, in her clear level voice. And I tried things. Small things. A curved mirror instead of a flat one, the size of a dinner plate, that she ground for me out of glass and silvered on the back. A lens, thick in the middle, that I held up to the tower and looked through and felt the line go out from behind my eyes and gather, somehow, narrow, the way the sun gathers through a magnifying glass onto a dry leaf.

Most of it didn't work.

Some of it did, a little.

I got it wrong the first time. And the tenth. I kept going.

Day 321.

Can stand. Stick. 100 meters, 10 minutes. Then 7. Then 5.

Concave mirror: wider, weaker. Lens: narrower, stronger, but blurred at the edges. I don't understand why yet.

Page 288.

Liam, still. Sera, still. Toby, still. Luna, north, 160 miles now. Still walking.

Squad Eight, this is Scarecrow. Every hour.

It came on the sixth night.

I was asleep. For once. Properly asleep, on the middle bed in the second room, with the optics notes on the floor where they'd slid off my chest, and the purr in the walls. I hadn't broadcast since ten. I'd meant to wake at eleven. I hadn't.

"Query," said Dot.

Her voice came through the door, very close. Closer than usual. She'd put her whole front through it, I found out afterward, as far as she could get, with her grille right beside the bed.

"Query. The operator should wake."

I opened my eyes.

"What time is it?"

"Eleven forty-one."

"I missed eleven."

"Yes," said Dot. "Query. The operator should wake."

"I'm awake. What—"

"This unit is hearing something," said Dot. "On the tower."

I don't remember getting to the hut.

I remember my leg folding under me halfway there, and Dot's fifth arm catching me under the arm before I hit the glass, and not putting me down again. I remember the iron stick falling and not going back for it. I remember the hut door, and the box, and the dial, and the ugly cells fizzing along the north leg of the tower in their sandstone jars.

And the sound coming out of the box.

Hiss. Mostly hiss. The long soft roar of nothing that I'd listened to for thirteen nights, every hour, after I'd said Squad Eight, this is Scarecrow and waited.

And under it, in it, very faint, something else.

Clicks.

Not random. I knew random. I'd listened to the hiss long enough to know every sound it made. The crackle when the wind came over the rim. The long whistle when the small moon crossed. The pops, when something far away on the green world did whatever it did.

These were clicks. Short and long. Short, short, short. Long, long, long. Short, short, short.

Again.

Short, short, short. Long, long, long. Short, short, short.

I'd learned it in the cave. Everyone had. Okafor had made us learn it the first month, tapping it out on the mess tables with our spoons until Brock Haddon threw his across the room. When the link goes down. When there's nothing else. You'll have a stick and a rock and something to bang it on. Learn it.

Three short. Three long. Three short.

Help.

"Dot," I said. "Where's it coming from?"

"This unit has been instructed not to operate the tower," said Dot. "This unit has not been instructed not to listen." A pause. "This unit estimates north-northeast. Range: seventy to ninety kilometers."

Eighty kilometers.

Fifty miles.

North-northeast.

I didn't need to close my eyes. I'd had them on it for fourteen days. Every night. Every morning. Every hour, after every broadcast. A grain of iron in the buckle of a boot, fifty miles north-northeast, that had come running toward me for four days and then stopped at two o'clock one afternoon and never moved again.

Liam.

I keyed the transmitter.

"Liam," I said. "Liam, it's me. It's Lucas. I can hear you. I can hear you. If that's you, if you can hear me, do it again."

Hiss.

Then:

Short, short, short. Long, long, long. Short, short, short.

And then, very fast, not help, something else. Something that took me a moment, because I hadn't used it since the cave, and because my hands were shaking. Two letters. Over and over.

L. C. L. C. L. C.

I put my head down on the top of the box.

I didn't cry. I want that on the record. I put my forehead down on the cold metal of Father's radio and stayed there, breathing, for a while, and Dot stood in the doorway of the hut with her fifth arm still out where she'd held me up, and didn't say anything.

Then I sat up.

"Liam," I said. "I can't hear your voice. Only the clicks. If you've got a voice, use it. If you haven't, keep clicking. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

Hiss.

A long time. A minute. More.

And then the hiss changed. Not clicks. A rough, rising crackle. Something being switched on that hadn't been switched on before, or that someone had been trying to switch on for a long time and had just, now, at last, got to work.

And out of it, very faint, very far, broken up by the hiss and the distance and the curve of the world, a voice.

"—working? Is it—oh, for the love of—is this thing working—"

I knew that voice.

I'd have known it anywhere. Through any amount of hiss. On any world.

"—three days I've been trying to get this rotten thing to talk, three days, and it's been clicking at me like a—like a beetle, and if this is just me talking to myself in a cave again I swear I'm going to set fire to it and then I'm going to set fire to the cave and then I'm going to—"

"Liam," I said.

The voice stopped.

Hiss.

A long time.

Then, very small, very far away, not like Liam at all:

"...Lucas?"

"It's me."

"It's you."

"It's me."

"It's actually you. You're not—I'm not—" The voice broke. Cracked down the middle, the way it had in the wild zone, the night he'd circled the edge twice in the dark crying. "Oh, mate. Oh, mate. I can hear you. I've been hearing you. Every hour. For ages. 'Squad Eight, this is Scarecrow.' 'Squad Eight, this is Scarecrow.' Every single hour, like a cuckoo clock, and I couldn't—I couldn't say anything back, I didn't have a—"

He stopped. I heard him breathe. Long and shaky.

"You're very boring on the radio," said Liam Calder. "Did anyone ever tell you that? You say the same thing every time."

I laughed.

I sat in the hut at the foot of a four-hundred-meter tower in the middle of the night on a world eleven light-years from home with my forehead on my wrist and my leg out straight and laughed until I couldn't breathe.

"Is he laughing?" said Liam's voice, very far away. "Is that—are you laughing at me? I'm dying in a cave, Lucas."

He wasn't. Not yet. But he wasn't far off.

He told me. In pieces, through the hiss, with the signal coming and going as the small moon crossed and whatever he'd built in his cave struggled to hold it. I asked questions the way Halloway would have. In order. Not what you feel, Cadet. What happened. In order.

He'd landed in trees. Not the green, not the silver-green fronds I'd sat among. Something else, further north. Trees taller than the tower, he said, with bark like iron and roots like walls. His pod had come down through the top of one of them and split. Clean in two, down the middle, like an egg.

"Half the kit's still up the tree," said Liam. "Forty meters up. I can see it, sometimes, when the wind blows. Just sitting there. The good half. The half with the arms."

He'd got the other half. The half with the core in it, and the fabricator, and no legs, and only one arm. Enough to make air, slowly. Enough to make water, if he fed it. Not much else.

And on the fourth day, he'd started walking.

"Everybody walks toward Lucas," said Liam. "So I walked. Toward you. I didn't know where you were. I just walked south. Luna said you'd be the one who knew where everyone was, so I thought if I walked toward where I'd want you to be, you'd probably be there." A pause. "That's not how it works, is it."

"No," I said. "But it worked."

He'd walked for four days. Fast. Too fast. I'd watched him do it. Forty miles a day, through the trees and then out of them, across country, carrying half a kit on his back.

And on the fourth day, at about two in the afternoon, he'd come to a ravine.

"I didn't see it," said Liam. "It was full of the green stuff. The plants. All the way up to the top. You couldn't tell there wasn't any ground under them. I walked straight off the edge."

Fifteen meters, he thought. Onto rocks.

"My leg," said Liam. And then didn't say anything else for a while.

I didn't ask. I waited.

"It's the shin," he said at last. "Both bones. It's—it's wrong, Lucas. It's the wrong shape. I can see it's the wrong shape. I splinted it. Like Okafor showed us. With a bit of the kit. But it's still the wrong shape."

He'd crawled. That was the rest of it. Crawled, with the half-kit dragging behind him on a strap, along the bottom of the ravine, until he found a cave. Not deep. Ten meters into the rock. Granite, he thought, very hard, very dark, the walls glittering.

And he'd stayed there.

For fourteen days.

He'd fed the half-kit rock from the cave walls and it had given him air, and water, a cup at a time, and a gray paste that he said tasted exactly like the ration bars on the Meridian, which he'd claimed to love and now never wanted to see again. He'd taken his boots off, because his foot had swollen so much he couldn't bear the boot on it, and he'd put the boots in the back of the cave, side by side.

The buckle. In the back of the cave. Still.

That was why. Not because he'd stopped. Because his boots had.

"And then I heard you," said Liam.

On the second night. His suit link had been dead since thirty-eight kilometers up, same as mine. But the suit's receiver still worked, a little, on the short-range band, if you held your wrist right up against your ear. And on the second night, lying in the cave with his leg on fire and the half-kit making its slow gray paste, he'd heard it.

Squad Eight, this is Scarecrow.

"I thought I was dreaming," said Liam. "The first time. I thought I'd gone mad. Then it came again. An hour later. And again." His voice went very quiet. "Every hour. You never missed one. Did you know that? Fourteen days. Every hour."

"I missed eleven tonight."

"Yeah," said Liam. "I noticed."

He couldn't answer. The suit's transmitter was dead. So he'd started building one.

Out of the half-kit. With one arm and a fabricator and no instructions and a broken leg, lying on his back in a cave, using everything his dad had ever taught him about the furnace controls at the heat plant, and everything he'd half listened to in the cave about link systems, and a great deal of swearing.

"Twelve days," said Liam. "It took me twelve days. You'd have done it in an afternoon. You'd have looked at it and said please and it would have turned into a radio." A pause. "I don't have that. I have fire. Fire isn't good for radios."

"You did it."

"I did it," said Liam. And there was something in his voice I'd never heard in it before. Not pride. Something quieter. "I actually did it."

"Liam," I said. "When did you first transmit? With the radio. Before tonight."

A pause.

"Three days ago," said Liam. "I got it clicking. Just clicking. I couldn't get the voice to work. But I could make it click. So I clicked. Every hour. After you. Like an answer."

I closed my eyes.

"And when did they come?"

The hiss filled the hut for a long time.

"How do you know about them?" said Liam.

"Because they came here too."

Three days ago.

He'd been clicking for an hour, maybe two. And then, at the mouth of the cave, in the dusk, something had moved.

"I thought it was an animal," said Liam. "At first. It was dark. They're dark. They're the same color as the rocks. And then there was another one. And another. In a line. Standing very still. Exactly the same distance apart. Like posts in a fence."

Fourteen point two meters.

"Twelve," said Liam. "Twelve of them. At the mouth of the cave. And they just—sat there. For an hour. And then one of them came in."

"What did you do?"

"What do you think I did?" said Liam Calder. "I set it on fire."

He'd been setting them on fire for three days.

Not killing them. He didn't think he could kill them. Their plates didn't burn, he said, not properly, they just went black and smoked. But they didn't like it. When he filled the mouth of the cave with fire, they stopped. Backed off. Waited.

And then, after a while, one of them would try again.

"They're learning," said Liam. "Aren't they. They're learning how long I can keep it up. They come at different times. Day. Night. Two at once. One. They're timing me."

"Yes."

"I'm getting tired, Lucas."

I didn't say anything.

"I haven't slept," said Liam. "Not properly. Three days. I sleep for ten minutes and then I wake up and one of them's halfway in and I set it on fire and it goes back out and then I can't sleep again. The kit can't make enough paste. I've got maybe two days of water. And it's fire. Fire takes it out of you. You know that. You saw what it did to Sera, that first year."

He stopped.

"I'm not complaining," he said. "I just thought you should know. In case."

"They hear the radio," I said.

Silence.

"That's what brought them. To me, and to you. Not the kits. The kits only talk to the sky. It's when you shout along the ground. They hear it. They come." I swallowed. "I've been shouting every hour for fourteen days. You started clicking three days ago. That's when they came for you."

"Oh," said Liam.

Just that.

"So I should stop."

"Yes. Stop. Don't transmit. Not unless you have to. Once at dawn, so I know. That's all."

"And you?"

"I'll stop too."

The hiss.

"Lucas," said Liam. "What are you going to do?"

I looked at the box. At my hand on the dial. At my leg, straight out in front of me, wrapped in Dot's careful wrapping.

Eighty kilometers.

Don't. Not on your own. Not until there's three of us with you. That's the only time I'll ever tell you not to go back.

Luna's voice. On the roof, in the dark. The pool steaming. Because if you go, and something happens to you, nobody can find anybody. You're the lighthouse. Lighthouses don't walk.

She was right. She was always right. If I went, and something happened to me, nobody would know where Seraphina was, or Toby, or Luna herself. Nobody would be counting.

And there was only one of me. There weren't three. There weren't going to be three. Seraphina hadn't moved in nineteen days. Toby hadn't moved in a month. Luna was a hundred and sixty miles north and walking away.

But there was another voice.

Not on the roof. On Okafor's step, with the five of us in a row in front of her, and her voice going lower instead of louder. And then all of us saying it back.

Five. If an order would make the count smaller, don't follow it.

The mission is the people standing on the land.

Luna's order was right. Luna's order kept the lighthouse lit.

And Luna's order would make the count smaller by one.

"I'm coming," I said.

"No," said Liam at once. "No. Luna said. You don't walk. Lighthouses don't—"

"I know what Luna said."

"Then—"

"Okafor said something too. Rule five." I kept my voice very steady. "If an order would make the count smaller, don't follow it."

The hiss filled the hut.

For a long time.

"...Yeah," said Liam, at last. Very quietly. "Yeah. She did say that." A pause. "Luna's going to kill you."

"I know."

"She's going to kill you and then she's going to kill me for letting you."

"I know."

"It's eighty kilometers, Lucas. Through the green. With those things in it. And you—" He stopped. "Wait. Are you all right? You sound wrong. You sound like you're sitting funny."

"I hurt my leg."

"How badly?"

"I'm walking with a stick."

The hiss.

"Oh, brilliant," said Liam. "That's brilliant. So it's two of us with bad legs, eighty kilometers apart, and you're going to limp across a continent full of murder beetles on a stick to come and sit in a cave with me. That's the plan. That's Scarecrow's big plan."

"I'm not going to walk," I said.

Silence.

"Then how—"

"I'll be there," I said. "Two days. Maybe three. Keep the fire going. Sleep when you can. Click once at dawn so I know you're still there. And Liam—"

"What?"

"Your boots. In the back of the cave. Put one of them on. The left one. The one with the buckle."

"My foot doesn't fit in it."

"Then hold it. Keep it with you. Whatever you do. Don't let go of it."

"Why?"

"Because that's how I'm going to find you," I said.

The hiss.

"Right," said Liam slowly. "Right. The buckle. The lighthouse." A pause. "You did one on my boot. On the gallery. I forgot."

"I didn't."

"No," said Liam. "You wouldn't."

The signal was going. I could hear it fading, the hiss rising up over his voice, the small moon going down behind the western rim and taking whatever thin path the signal had been using with it.

"Lucas," said Liam. Very faint now. "Lucas, are you still—"

"I'm here."

"Bring something to drink," said Liam Calder. "Rule. You promised. All five of us. I want a head start."

And the hiss came up and took him.

I sat in the hut for a long time with my hand on the dial.

Then I turned it off. All the way. The box went quiet. The ugly cells along the north leg of the tower kept fizzing in their jars, for nothing.

Like a lighthouse.

I'd go dark. For a while. For Liam.

"Query," said Dot, from the doorway.

She'd heard all of it. She always did.

"The operator said: 'I'm not going to walk.'"

"Yes."

"The operator cannot walk eighty kilometers. The operator can walk one hundred meters in five minutes with a stick."

"Yes."

"This unit cannot carry the operator eighty kilometers. This unit's legs are rated for forty kilometers per day over broken terrain. This unit has been instructed not to assist in the operation of unauthorized infrastructure." A pause. "This unit does not know if the operator counts as infrastructure."

"I don't want you to carry me."

The little rivers ran.

"Query," said Dot. "Then how will the operator go?"

I looked out of the door of the hut. Up. Past Dot's gray shell, past the iron lattice of the tower going up into the dark, past the copper mast at the very top of it, to the stars.

When I was very small, before I knew anything about chemistry, Mother used to make the spoons float.

Just a little. At the kitchen table, from her chair, the old way. To make me laugh. She'd look at a spoon and it would lift off the table, a finger's width, and turn over in the air, slowly, and settle again. And once, only once, when I was four, and had been very brave about something I don't remember, she'd looked at me.

And I'd floated. A hand's width off the kitchen floor. For about three seconds. Laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.

It's the same as the spoon, she'd said, afterward, when Father had finished laughing and started worrying. You're just a heavier spoon.

I'd never done it since. Not more than a few seconds. Not more than a few centimeters. In the cave, Okafor had tested it, once, and written telekinesis: weak, short range, small mass on her slate, and moved on.

A heavier spoon.

Eighty kilometers.

"Dot," I said. "How much do I weigh?"

Day 322. 11:41 p.m.

Clicks. Three short, three long, three short.

L. C. L. C. L. C.

Then his voice. "You're very boring on the radio. You say the same thing every time."

He heard me. Every hour. Fourteen days.

Landed in trees. Pod split. Half a kit. Walked four days toward me. Fell in a ravine full of green. Shin, both bones, the wrong shape.

A cave. Granite. Fourteen days. Took his boots off. That's why the buckle didn't move.

Built a radio. Twelve days. One arm and a fabricator and a broken leg. "I actually did it."

Clicked for three days. Then they came. Twelve. Fire. Three days without sleep.

They hear the radio. I've turned mine off.

Rule five. If an order would make the count smaller, don't follow it.

Luna's going to kill me.

"Bring something to drink."

Mother, when I was four: "You're just a heavier spoon."

Eighty kilometers.

I'm going to fly.