Chapter 111 The First Wave

We listened to it in the dome, after dark, with the lamp turned low.

Liam sat up on the middle bed with his leg on the sandstone block and the crutch I'd made him across his knees. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall. Dot stood in the doorway with her grille turned in toward us, and the little rivers running very slowly.

"The second unit logged the signal on its second day," said Dot. "And its third. And its fourth. It repeats every ninety-one minutes. This unit will play one repetition. Then this unit will play the record attached to it." A pause. "Query. Is the operator ready?"

"Yes."

"Query. Is Liam ready?"

Liam looked at me. Then at the doorway.

"No," he said. "Play it anyway."

It started with a tone. Three notes, rising. The same three notes that started every call-in we'd ever practiced in the cave, at the comms desk, with Okafor standing behind us.

Then a voice.

Not a kit's voice. A person's. A woman's, quite young, a little hoarse, a little bored, the way you sound when you've said the same thing every nine days for months.

"Base F-nine, cycle thirty-one. Operator Adaeze Okon. Still here. Plant at ninety-four percent. Wall complete. Two new terraces. Wheat's up. Nothing to report." A pause, and you could hear her smile. "Tell my brother I said hello. Okon out."

The tone again. Falling.

Then nothing.

"She sounds all right," said Liam. Very carefully. "She sounds fine."

"That is the repetition," said Dot. "It is the same each time. The same words. The same pause. The same breath, before 'hello.'" The little rivers ran. "This unit has compared one hundred and nine repetitions. They are identical. To the smallest unit this unit can measure."

I didn't say anything. Neither did Liam.

People don't say things the same way twice. Not to the smallest unit. Not even when they're bored. Not even when they've said it a hundred times.

A recording does.

"This is the record attached to it," said Dot.

A different voice. Flat. Level. Not quite anybody's. A kit, speaking its log.

"Base F-nine. Cycle thirty-two. Perimeter breach, south wall. Hostile biological, multiple. Operator engaged."

A pause. The length of a breath.

"Operator status: deceased."

Liam made a small sound. I didn't look at him.

"This unit requests instruction," said the kit. "This unit has no operator. This unit requests instruction."

Hiss. A long time. Then a third voice, from far away. From the sky. Thin and clipped and very clear, the way the relay voice always was.

"F-nine. Command acknowledges. Maintain call-in schedule. Substitute operator's last nominal call-in. Do not report breach on open channel. Command out."

The hiss again. Then the kit, once more, very level.

"Acknowledged. Substituting."

And then the tone. Three notes, rising.

"Base F-nine, cycle thirty-one. Operator Adaeze Okon. Still here."

"Stop," said Liam. "Stop. Please. Stop it."

Dot stopped it.

None of us said anything for a long time.

The purr in the walls went on. The lamp burned. Outside, very faintly, a hand went by on the wall on its round, its feet clicking on the red glass.

"When," I said at last. "When was cycle thirty-two?"

"Cycle thirty-two of the first wave," said Dot, "was approximately ten months before the operator landed."

Ten months.

Crane, on the stage in the hall, with the lights on him and the city watching. Nine of them are still with us. Still calling in, every nine days, from the far side of the dark. Still building.

Some of their numbers are remarkable.

Wheat's up. Two new terraces. Ninety-four percent.

A dead woman's voice, saying still here, every ninety-one minutes, to the relay, for ten months. And the relay saying thank you and writing it down in a column with a tick beside it, and Crane reading the column out to forty children on a stage.

"They knew," said Liam.

His voice was very quiet. His hands weren't lit. That was how I knew how bad it was. Liam's hands always lit, when he was angry. They were dark, on his knees, and very still.

"They knew," he said. "Ten months. They knew she was dead. They told the kit to pretend she wasn't. And then they stood up in front of us and said nine. And they put us on the ship." He looked at me. "They sent us anyway."

"Yes."

"How many of the nine are like that?"

I didn't know. I said so.

"This unit can estimate," said Dot. "The second unit heard four first-wave signals, in four days, from the north. This unit has compared them. Three are identical across all repetitions." A pause. "One is not."

I looked up.

"One varies," said Dot. "Slightly. Each time. As a person varies."

"Which one?"

"In the far north. Under the white mountains." A pause. "The signal is weak. This unit cannot resolve the designation. Only that it varies."

I wrote it down anyway.

One in the north. Varies. Somebody's still breathing between the words.

I sat on the floor with my back to the wall and the notebook on my knee and turned it to the back. To the page I'd copied from the locker in the cave, months ago, letter for letter, scratched into the metal with something sharp by someone who'd had that locker before me.

MARA VOSS. WREN. 11/34. Back for the wheat.

"Dot," I said. "The second unit. Liam's kit. Did it have the map? The landing map. The one the General showed us, with the forty blue and the thirty-four gray."

"Yes," said Dot. "Each kit carries it. For navigation. This unit's own copy was damaged in descent. The second unit's was not."

"Where's F-eleven?"

The little rivers ran.

"Forty-one kilometers west," said Dot.

I didn't understand, at first.

Forty-one kilometers. From here. From Scarecrow. Not from where I'd been meant to land, in the hills under the white mountains, with the other four. From here.

"The operator's assigned landing zone," said Dot, "was zone thirty-eight. On the northern map. The south wind displaced the operator's pod by three hundred and ten kilometers." A pause. "The operator's pod came down within a day's walk of a different first-wave base. By chance."

I thought about the General's map. The forty blue dots, every one of them next to a gray one. Within a day's walk of a base that had gone quiet. Sera's voice, very level, in the dark. So they put forty of us next to thirty-four empty bases and see what happens to us.

The wind had blown me off their map.

And put me down next to Wren's.

"Is it calling in?" I said. "F-eleven. Did the second unit hear it?"

"No," said Dot. "The second unit was too far north. This unit has not heard it either." A pause. "This unit has been listening since Day 299. F-eleven does not transmit. Not upward. Not along the ground."

"So it's dead."

"This unit does not know," said Dot. "This unit knows that it is quiet."

Quiet isn't the same as gone. I'd said that to Dot myself, on the terraces, when she asked why I was building rooms for people nobody had heard from. You count them anyway. Especially the ones who've gone quiet.

"I'm coming," said Liam.

"Your leg—"

"My leg's had ten days. You said yourself it's knitting. You said the right shape." He picked up the crutch. "And I'm not staying in this dome on my own with a kit that keeps calling me love while you go and look at a dead base by yourself and come back with that face on."

"Which face?"

"That one," said Liam. "The one you've got on now."

"This unit can carry Liam," said Dot. "On the frame. As before."

"And the lighthouse?"

"Fourteen hands," said Dot. "Two wings. The tower. As before." A pause. "This unit has reviewed the instruction. The lighthouse is lit so that people can be found." The little rivers ran. "Query. Is the operator going to find people?"

I looked at the line in the notebook. Back for the wheat.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe."

"Then this unit is coming," said Dot.

We left at dawn on Day 335.

West. Out of the gate and up the path onto the rim and across the rolling red rock, and then down off it into the green. Dot in front, with her five arms folded. Six hands with the frame between them, and Liam on it, sitting up this time, with his leg strapped straight and the crutch beside him and his hands ready. Four wings behind.

Me in the spoon, ten meters up. In front.

"Up," said Liam, every half hour.

"Up's clear?"

"Up's clear."

Nobody said anything else. Not all morning. It wasn't like the walk home from the ravine, when we'd talked the whole way, about the cave and the trees and Dot's beverage and who was going to tell Luna. This was quiet. The heavy kind.

I kept thinking about the breath. Before hello. The same breath, a hundred and nine times. To the smallest unit.

The green changed in the afternoon.

I saw it first from the spoon. The rolling silver-green tops of the fronds, going on and on to the west, the way they'd gone on and on to the north on the way to Liam. And then, about thirty kilometers out, a line. A long straight edge, running north and south across the country, where the green stopped.

Not stopped. Changed. On the far side of the line the fronds were shorter. Thinner. Grayer, with no silver at the tops at all. And when I looked down into them, all the way, the threads of silver in the stems and the roots and the soil weren't there.

Not asleep. Not fogged. Gone.

As if something had come along and pulled every thread out.

"Dot," I said. "Are you seeing this?"

"Yes," said Dot. "The plants beyond the line do not turn." A pause. "This unit's sensors detect no silver signature in them. None." The little rivers ran. "This unit has not seen this before."

The spoon went over the line. The fronds under me didn't move. Not toward me. Not away. They just stood there, gray and thin, the way plants stand on Earth, in a field, in a dome, with nothing in them but plant.

No ripple. No wake.

Nothing saying hello.

We came to F-eleven an hour before dusk.

It was in a shallow valley, with a stream at the bottom, and low hills round it, and the gray thin green going up the sides. I saw the dome first. It was the same as the training dome at the cave, the one they'd painted AV-1 and FIRST WAVE on, to look old. Small. Gray. Round.

But nobody had painted this one.

Half of it was gone. The south side had fallen in, the gray panels peeled back and torn like the skin of an orange, and the inside open to the sky. The wall round it had been a wall once, low, fitted stone, the kind of wall you build with a kit that doesn't have much to work with. Most of it was down. What was left stood in pieces, like teeth.

And everywhere, on the ground, in the gray green, in the stream, round the dome, the plates.

Black. Chitin. Fourteen-legged shells, empty, scattered all over the valley floor, half sunk in the soil, with the gray fronds grown up through them. Dozens. More. Old, all of them, bleached at the edges, the way bone goes in the sun.

The Teeming had been here.

A long time ago.

And somebody had killed a great many of them before they got in.

The kit was in the middle of the dome.

What was left of it. A gray shell, the same as Dot's, the same as Liam's half-kit, sitting on its folded legs on the floor of the dome under the open sky. Its arms were down. Its grille was dark. There was moss growing on the top of it, gray, without any silver in it.

I looked inside.

And I wish I hadn't, and I'm glad I did, and both of those are true.

The core was empty.

Not broken. Not burned. Empty. Where Dot's core was a dense bright knot of silver threads, all lit up and humming, all reaching for each other, this was a hollow. The shape of a core, in the gray shell, like the hole a stone leaves in mud. And all round the edges of the hollow, tiny torn ends. Silver. Pulled.

Something had reached in through the grille and taken the silver out of it. Thread by thread. The way you'd pull the wool out of a jumper.

Like the plants beyond the line.

"Query," said Dot, behind me. Very quietly. "What happened to it?"

I didn't know how to say it to her. I didn't know how to say it to a kit, about a kit.

"They ate it," I said.

Dot didn't move for a long time.

The little rivers behind her grille ran slowly, and then stopped, and then ran again.

"Query," she said at last. "Did it know?"

"I don't know."

"Query. Does the operator think it—" She stopped. "This unit does not have the word."

"Hurt," said Liam, from the frame. Very gently. "The word's hurt, Dot."

"Yes," said Dot. "That one."

"I don't know," I said. "I hope not."

"This unit also hopes not," said Dot.

The records were in a cell under the floor.

Not in the core. Kits keep their logs in two places, Dot said, in case one goes, and the second place is a small hard crystal under the shell, near the feet, wrapped in lead. The Teeming hadn't wanted the crystal. There was no silver in it.

Dot didn't integrate. I asked her not to and she didn't argue. She lifted the crystal out with her fifth arm and held it against her grille and listened, the way she listened to the tower, without touching anything inside it she didn't understand.

"This unit will play the relevant entries," she said.

"Base F-eleven. Day one. Operator Mara Voss. Callsign Wren. Landed. Pod intact. Operator well."

"Day four. Wall begun. Operator has planted wheat. Earth wheat, from the operator's personal allowance. Four hundred grams. Operator says it is for later."

"Day fourteen. Hostile biological. Multiple. Perimeter."

"Day fifteen. Breach. Operator engaged. Operator is very effective."

"Day sixteen. Breach. Operator engaged. Operator has not slept."

"Day nineteen. Breach. South wall. Operator engaged. Operator wounded. Operator has left the perimeter." A pause. "Operator has instructed this unit to keep calling in. Operator has instructed this unit to say that the operator is still here."

Liam closed his eyes.

"Day nineteen. This unit reports breach to Command. This unit requests instruction."

And then the relay's voice. Thin and clipped and very clear.

"F-eleven. Command acknowledges. Maintain call-in schedule. Report nominal values. Do not report breach on open channel. Command out."

It went on. Cycle after cycle. The kit, calling in. Still here. Nominal. Every nine days for seven months. And under the call-ins, in the log, the truth. Hostile biological, perimeter. Engaged with available defenses. Two hands lost. Four hands lost. South wall down. And every so often, a line I didn't expect.

"Day one hundred and twelve. Operator returned to perimeter at night. Operator watered the wheat. Operator left before dawn."

"Day one hundred and forty. Operator returned. Operator watered the wheat."

"Day two hundred and three. Operator returned with a second person. Not of this base. Male. Injured. Operator watered the wheat."

I sat very still on the floor of the broken dome.

Back for the wheat.

The last entry was eleven months old.

"Day two hundred and forty-one. Hostile biological. Multiple. Inside the dome. This unit has no remaining hands." A pause. "They are at the grille."

A longer pause.

"This unit reports to Command. This unit—"

And then nothing. Not a word. Not a tone. The crystal went quiet in Dot's arm and stayed quiet.

Dot put it down on the floor, very carefully, in front of the empty kit. As if she were giving it back.

"Eleven months," said Liam.

He'd got himself off the frame. I don't know how. He was sitting on the floor of the dome beside me with his leg out straight and the crutch on the floor and his face white.

"Eleven months ago, this thing told Command they were at its grille. And Command said maintain call-in schedule. And it went quiet. And the relay kept saying still here for it, in her voice, every nine days, the way it did for that girl in the north." He was shaking. "And Crane got up and said nine. And they sent us. Forty of us. Each one next to one of these."

"Yes."

"They sent us anyway, Lucas."

"Yes," I said. "They did."

I went out of the dome because I couldn't stay in it.

Round the broken wall, on the north side, the side that faced away from the valley, up a little way onto the slope. The gray green, with no silver in it. The old plates, half sunk. The light going.

And then the green stopped.

Not changed. Stopped. A neat edge, cut. And beyond it, going up the slope in long narrow steps, terraces. Stone-faced, low, fitted by hand, not by a kit. Six of them. Seven. Hidden from the valley by the shoulder of the hill and a screen of the gray fronds that somebody had left standing on purpose, all along the bottom edge, so that from below you'd never see.

And on the terraces, gold.

Wheat.

Earth wheat. Real wheat, the kind Father had grown in the valley, the kind I'd lain in as a boy with the sky going blue overhead. Standing up to my waist on seven narrow terraces on the side of a hill on a world eleven light-years from home, heavy in the ear, swaying very slightly in the evening wind, and gold, gold, the only gold thing on all of Avalon.

The rows were weeded. Every one. The stones on the terrace faces had been reset where they'd slipped. At the end of each row there was a little channel cut in the soil, running from a cistern dug into the hillside at the top, so that water could be let down the terraces one at a time.

I knelt down and put my hand in the soil at the end of the nearest row.

It was wet.

Not damp. Wet. Cold, and dark, and soft, the way soil is for a few hours after somebody's let the water down it and not before.

I looked down at the soil. All the way in.

And there, in the wet earth between the rows, pressed in, very clear, two sets of footprints. Small ones, quick and light, close together, walking. And beside them, larger, uneven, one foot set down flat and the other dragged, the way you'd walk if something had happened to your knee a long time ago and never been set right.

Fresh. A few hours old. No more.

Going up the slope. Toward the hills.

I stayed there on my knees in the wheat with my hand in the wet soil until Liam came up the slope on his crutch, slowly, swearing, and stopped beside me, and saw it.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

"Somebody watered it," he said at last.

"This morning," I said.

Day 333–335.

F-nine. Adaeze Okon. "Still here. Tell my brother I said hello." The same breath, 109 times. A recording.

Command: "Maintain call-in schedule. Substitute operator's last nominal call-in." Ten months before we landed.

Crane: "Nine of them are still with us. Some of their numbers are remarkable."

They knew. They sent us anyway.

One signal in the north varies. Somebody's breathing.

F-eleven, 41 km west. The wind blew me next to Wren's base.

A line in the green. Past it, the plants have no silver. Nothing turns. Something pulled it all out.

F-eleven's core: empty. Eaten. Dot: "Did it know?" Liam: "The word's hurt, Dot."

Log. Day 19: Wren wounded, left the perimeter. "Say that the operator is still here."

Day 203: Wren returned with a second person. Male. Injured.

Day 241: "They are at the grille." Eleven months ago. Then nothing.

Seven terraces of Earth wheat behind the hill. Gold. Weeded.

The soil is wet.

Two sets of footprints. One drags a foot.

Back for the wheat.