Chapter 125 The Answer

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

Ade was still standing on the rock with her coat round her and her lips half open, the way you stand when you've read something out and don't yet know what it meant. The sun was coming up behind her, gold and green. Down the slope, under the ridge, the fronds were turning toward me in the first light, the way they always did. A long silver ripple.

Toby sat at the end of the rock with his notebook on his knees and his face the color of paper.

"Marsh," said Luna. Very quietly. "What did you do?"

"I said it back," said Toby.

"Said what back?"

"The hello." He looked at me. Not at Luna. At me. "At F-five. On the shelf. You said it wasn't a sound. And I said everything's a sound if you go slow enough. And I stood at the edge and I listened. For an hour." He swallowed. "And it is a sound, Lucas. It's just very slow. And very low. Lower than anything I've ever heard. Lower than the note I made the wall out of in the sim. It's not in the air. It's in the silver. In the fronds. It goes from one to the next to the next, all the way across the green, like a ripple going across a pond." He put his hand flat on his notebook. "Up and down. Up and down. Once every eleven seconds."

"You heard that?" said Risa. Very sharp.

"I heard it."

"I've never heard that. I hear hearts."

"Plants don't have hearts," said Toby. "They've got this instead."

He opened the notebook and turned it round so I could see.

Lines. Not words. Lines across the page, rising and falling, long slow curves, drawn very carefully in pencil, one under the other. Dozens of them. Every one the same shape.

"I wrote it down," said Toby. "Every night. On the shelf. And then on the tors, coming south. To be sure it was always the same." He touched the top curve. "It is. It's always the same. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down. That's the hello." He looked at me. "That's what Holt's silver's been listening to for two years."

"And then," said Luna.

Toby didn't look at her.

"And then on the first night coming south," he said, "on the tor, when everyone was asleep, I hummed it."

"Marsh."

"Very quietly! Very low. Into the rock. Rock carries sound better than air. I wanted to know if it would—" He stopped. "I wanted to know if it was a word. Or just a noise. If it was a noise, nothing would happen. If it was a word, then saying it back—" He spread his hands. "Something would."

"And something did," said Luna.

"Not that night." Toby's voice had gone very small. "Nothing that night. So I did it again the next night. Louder. And the next." He looked down at the curves on the page. "And on the third night, it changed."

"Changed how?" I said.

Toby turned the page.

The same curves. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down. Row after row. And then, halfway down the page, a curve that was different.

Up. And a long way up. And hold.

And then, where the curve should have come down, a gap. A short flat line. Nothing. And then down.

"It stopped," said Toby. "In the middle. Every time. All across the green. As far as I could hear. Up, and up, and hold—" He held his breath, a second, two. "—and down. It put a gap in."

Behind me, I heard Risa breathe in.

"Thum, thum," said Risa. Very quietly. "Thum—" She stopped. Held it. "—thum."

Nobody moved.

"That's the catch," said Risa. "That's the gap. In the Teeming. In the beat. That's the same gap." She was staring at Toby's page. "It's the same shape, Lucas. The plants and the Teeming. It's the same shape. It's—"

"It's one thing," I said.

I didn't know I was going to say it until I'd said it.

But I'd known it, I think, for a long time. Since Dot first heard the Teeming through the silver, three cores together, and called it a pattern passed body to body. Since the plants' silver first said hello to me on the north slope. Since Holt's hands stopped shaking, two years in the green. Since Ilse's kit had its core scraped out on the first night, and the Teeming took the middle and never came back.

Silver in the plants. Silver in the Teeming. Silver in the kits' cores. Silver in Holt's nerves, and Ilse's, and Priya's.

Silver in Mother's.

"It's all one thing," I said. "The green. The Teeming. Whatever's under the mountain. It's all connected. Through the silver. Like Dot's rivers." I looked down the slope at the fronds, turning up toward me. "The plants say hello. The Teeming beat. The thing under the mountain moves. It's all the same voice."

"Saying what?" said Liam.

"Hello," said Toby. "And then I said hello back." He shut the notebook. "And it stopped. And it waited. Because when you say hello to someone, and they say it back, you don't just say hello again. You say the next thing." He swallowed. "And it doesn't know what the next thing is. So it's waiting. For one of us to say it."

"The shape of a question," I said.

"Yes," said Toby. "That."

Luna stood very still on the rock with her arms folded.

"You did something nobody understood," she said, "on a planet nobody understands, in the middle of the night, without telling anyone. Three nights running." Her voice was perfectly level. "And now fifty kilometers of it has turned round to look at us."

"Yes," said Toby.

"Why?"

Toby looked at her for a long moment. Then at Priya, sitting by the dead fire with her hands in her lap. Then at Ilse. Then at me.

"Because I'm the medic," he said. "Up there, I was the only one. Two years they'd had nobody. I've watched Priya's hands for seventy-four days and written them down and I couldn't do anything. Not one thing. I read the book eleven times." His voice cracked. "And then Lucas said the silver's asleep, and the plants wake it, by saying something. And I thought: if it's saying something, it's a sound. And if it's a sound, I can make it. And if I can make it—"

He stopped.

"Show me," I said.

He looked at me.

"Not to the green," I said. "Not the ground. To her." I turned round. "Priya. Would you?"

Priya Lal looked up from the fire. At me, and at Toby. And then she held out her hands, the way she had on the shelf at F-five. Small and brown and square-nailed and shaking. Fine and fast.

"Up here?" she said. "Above the green?"

"Up here," I said. "On the rock. Where the plants can't reach you."

Luna opened her mouth. Shut it again.

Toby came across the rock and knelt in front of Priya, and put his hands round hers. Very carefully. The way he used to hold the tuning fork. And put his face close to them, and shut his eyes.

And hummed.

I couldn't hear it. Not really. It was too low. I felt it, more than heard it. In my chest. In the rock under my knees. A slow swell, rising, and rising, and holding. And falling.

Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down.

I looked into Priya's hands.

The nerve. Long and pale, branching. And the silver, threaded through it, fine as hair, asleep. A seam in a rock nobody had ever struck.

Up, and a long way up, and hold—

The silver moved.

Not much. A flicker. The way a sleeper's eyelids move when someone says their name in the next room. A tiny bright tremor, all along the thread, from her wrist to the ends of her fingers. And then down, and still again.

Up, and a long way up, and hold—

Again. Brighter.

And again.

"Count," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "Somebody count her hands."

Ilse was already counting. She'd been counting Priya's hands for two years. She knelt beside Toby with her lips moving, and her own burned hand flat on the rock, and her eyes on Priya's fingers.

"Forty," said Ilse. "Thirty-eight." A pause. "Thirty." Another. "Twenty-six."

Toby didn't stop. His eyes were shut. Up, and up, and hold, and down.

"Twenty-two," said Ilse. Her voice had gone very strange. "Twenty. Priya."

Priya Lal was looking at her own hands.

They weren't still. Not like Holt's. Not like they would be in the green. But they were slower. Much slower. The fine fast shiver had gone long and soft, like a leaf in a breeze instead of a gale.

"Oh," said Priya. Very quietly. "Oh. Oh."

Toby stopped.

He had to. His voice had gone. He knelt there with his hands still round hers and his head bowed, breathing hard, like he'd run the beam.

Priya's hands stayed slow for nearly an hour. Ilse counted them every five minutes, out loud, and wrote the numbers on a strip of plate with the point of a knife. Twenty. Twenty-four. Twenty-eight. Thirty-five.

And then forty again. And then forty-four. Back to sleep.

But for an hour, on a rock above the green, with no plants near enough to reach her, the silver in Priya Lal's nerves had woken up.

Because a boy had sung it a word.

I sat on the rock and looked at my own hands.

Not can't. Not yet.

"Toby," I said. "If it's a sound. If you can make it with your voice—"

"Then anybody can," said Toby. He'd lifted his head. "If I write it down right. If I get the shape exactly. Anybody can hum it. Or play it. Or—"

He stopped. He'd got there too. I watched him get there. His face changed.

"Or send it," I said.

Nobody spoke.

I thought about the comms window. Every nine nights. The dish on the tower at Scarecrow. Okafor in her cold room under a dish eleven light-years away, waiting for names. A voice, going out, and a voice coming back.

A sound.

I thought about Mother. In bed, with the twins. Three times a day. A lemon tree with a new leaf every Monday. And the silver in her nerves, asleep, a seam in a rock that nobody had ever struck.

"We can send it home," I said.

My voice had gone. I tried again.

"We can send it home. To Mother. To Liam's mum." I looked at Liam. He was standing on the rock with his hands lit and his face wide open, like a child's. "Over the radio. In the comms window. Toby hums it into the dish, and it goes out, and Genny holds the speaker against Mother's hands—"

"And Crane listens," said Luna.

I stopped.

She was still standing with her arms folded. She hadn't moved. She was looking at me the way she looked at a map.

"Every comms window is monitored," said Luna. "You know that. You told me. Every word. Crane hears all of it." She unfolded her arms. "And every time we've used the radio on this planet, the Teeming have come to it."

Nobody said anything.

"I'm not saying no," said Luna. "I'm saying we're on a rock in the middle of the green, with fourteen people and a boat for twelve, and fifty kilometers of the planet looking at us." She turned toward Maris. "We go home. We get everyone inside the canyon. We sit down with Dot. And then we decide what to say to anybody. Including the green." She looked at Toby. "No more humming, Marsh. Not one note. Not till I say."

Toby looked at her for a long moment.

"Yes, Windsor," he said.

Fourteen people.

Twelve seats and a floor, and Benedikt Aaland was the size of a door. We left the shelter of black plates on the ridge, and the bundle Luna had dropped, and most of the water, and Ilse's mirror, wrapped in her coat and tied down on the top of the shelter where we could come back for it. Dov had carved three more birds on the tors coming south. He gave them to Ade, and Ade lined them up on the rim of the shelter, facing south, the way he'd lined up the others at F-five.

"For next time," said Dov.

"There won't be a next time," said Ade. "I'm never coming back to this ridge as long as I live."

"Then for whoever does," said Dov.

I closed my eyes. The ordinary ones.

Let the other sight go out. Round me. Both hulls. Seven spars. Fourteen people, and Benedikt's crutch, and Priya's pot, and Toby's notebook.

One thing.

I opened my eyes and held it.

And the bucket went over.

Not all at once. Not like a door slamming. Just over the rim. A little. And then more. The way water goes over a dam when the rain's been coming down for a week: not a burst, a sheet, steady, endless, coming over the top no matter what you do.

Maris came up off the rock. A meter. Two.

And hung there.

And the inside of my head filled up with red.

"Down," said Luna. "Lucas. Put it down."

I put it down.

Gently. I'm still proud of that. It came down onto the rock so softly it didn't make a sound. And then I let go of the bucket, and the bucket let go of me, and I sat in the middle seat with blood coming out of my nose and my ears ringing and my hands shaking worse than Priya's had ever shaken.

"Too much," I said. "Fourteen's too much."

"Then twelve," said Luna. "And two walk. And you come back for them."

"It's three hundred kilometers—"

"Then it's three days instead of two. And you sleep in between." She was already turning round, already looking down the two hulls at all of us, already choosing. "Holt. Benedikt."

"No," said Ade.

It was Benedikt who stopped her.

He didn't say anything. He just put his big hand on her arm, very gently, the way she'd had her hand on his when we first came over the ridge. And she stopped.

"No," said Holt, from the stern. "Not Benedikt."

Everybody looked at him.

"Not the boy with one leg," said Holt. "Not on his own, in the green, with a river of the Teeming going up and down under him every other night." He got up. Slowly. On his stick. "Me. I've walked this country before. I walked it two years. And I'm the heaviest thing in this boat after him." He looked at me. "And somebody else. Somebody who can see them coming."

"Me," said Risa.

So it was twelve. And Holt and Risa on the rock, with water and paste and a blade and Liam's flask, and Ade's shelter at their backs.

"Two days," I said to Holt. "I'll come back in two days."

"I know, boy."

"Two."

"I heard you the first time." He sat down on the rock, with his stick across his knees, and his still hands on it. "Go on. Your mum's waiting. And your robot."

Risa stood beside him with her eyes shut and her hand out flat toward the green.

"I'll count you," she said, without opening them. "Every hour. Till you're out of range. Thum, thum." A pause. "Go."

I lifted twelve.

Full to the trembling edge. Not over.

And we went south.

I don't remember the first day.

I remember the second, a little. Luna's voice. Hold this heading. Lucas, drink. Lucas. Lucas, drink. Sera's hand on the back of my neck, very warm, for hours, keeping the cold off. Liam talking. He talked for the whole of the second day without stopping, about everything, his mum's pie and his dad's furnaces and the still and the moon and the first time he saw Sera on fire in the Town. Talking so I'd have something to hold on to that wasn't the bucket.

And the green.

All the way south, under us. Turning. Every frond. The long silver ripple of it going away from us on both sides, as far as I could see, all of it bent toward the skiff, the way a field bends toward the sun. Not just the ones underneath. All of them. Kilometers of it.

Watching.

We came over the north rim of the canyon at dusk on Day 382.

I saw the tower first. Four hundred and eight meters of iron lattice standing up out of the red rock into the last of the light, the copper mast at the top catching it, gold. And the terraces. And the dome. And the red glass of the canyon floor, with Luna's ice gone and Sera's forge-light glowing in the north wall.

And on the red glass, very small, a shape with eight arms.

Waiting.

I brought us down the north path, the way Luna and Risa had come in, very low, very slow, a meter off the rock. Onto the red glass. In front of the dome. In front of her.

I put it down so gently that it didn't make a sound.

And then I let go.

I didn't fall over. I'd like that on the record.

I sat in the middle seat of Maris, with my nose pouring and my eyes full of red and the bucket draining out from behind them like a river, and I looked up at Dot.

She was taller again. Her eight arms were folded in front of her, the way she folded them when she was waiting, and her rivers were running fast, very fast, in all four colors, and her grille was turned down toward me.

"Operator," said Dot.

"Hello, Dot."

"This unit has counted every dawn." A pause. "Eleven."

"I know. Luna said you would."

"This unit was asked." The rivers ran. "Please. How many."

Luna stood up in the bow.

She looked round. At the canyon. At Wren, coming down from the tower at a run. At Tamsin with her bow, and Corr with his burned face, standing in the door of the dome. And then back at the two hulls, and the people in them.

And she counted. Out loud. The way she did. Each name.

"Liam Calder. Seraphina Calder. Toby Marsh. Lucas Dask." Her voice didn't change. "Juno Pell. Ilse Brandt. Dov Asher. Priya Lal. Teodor Venn. Adelheid—"

"Ade."

"Ade," said Luna. "Benedikt Aaland. Luna Windsor." A pause. "Twelve. Here." Another. "Ezra Holt. Risa Friese. On the ridge at F-thirty. Waiting." She looked up at Dot. "Fourteen. All breathing."

Dot didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then she unfolded one of her arms. The eighth one. The long pale cold one, that had been Luna's kit, that made frost on the glass where it moved. And she reached down, very carefully, a long way down, and put the end of it on the rim of Maris, in front of Luna.

Not on Luna. Beside her. The way you'd put your hand on the table beside someone's, and leave it.

"Well done," said Dot. In her own voice.

Luna looked at the arm for a long time.

Then she put her hand on it.

That was when I fell over.

I woke up in the dome.

The middle bed, where Holt usually sat. Dark. Night. The lamp turned low. Somebody had washed the blood off my face, and somebody had taken my boots off, and somebody had put Garnet's scarf round my neck, out of the bottom of my pack.

Liam was asleep on the floor beside the bed, with his back against it and his mouth open.

And in the doorway, very tall, against the stars, Dot.

"Operator," she said. Very quietly. "Awake."

"How long?"

"Nineteen hours."

I lay there and looked at the ceiling. My head hurt the way a bruise hurts. All the way through.

"Holt," I said. "Risa. I said two days."

"Luna has said the operator will not lift anything tomorrow," said Dot. "Luna has said the operator will lift Holt and Risa the day after. Luna has said nobody argues."

"That sounds like Luna."

"Yes." The rivers ran. "This unit has kept the dawn line. Holt and Risa flash every dawn. Fine. Fine. Fine."

I breathed out.

"Dot," I said. "The green."

"Yes."

"Fifty kilometers of it. Turned north. You said it was an answer."

"Yes." Dot was quiet for a moment. "It has turned again. Since the operator came. It has turned to the canyon." A pause. "To this dome. To this bed."

I didn't say anything.

"Toby Marsh has told this unit what he did," said Dot. "Toby Marsh has played this unit the hello, and the answer, with his voice. This unit has compared it with what this unit hears through the silver. From the Teeming. From the cores. From the deep." The rivers slowed. "Operator. This unit could not understand the question before. It was a shape with nothing in it. A gap."

"And now?"

"Now the gap has something in it," said Dot. "This unit has listened for nineteen hours. This unit has heard it a great many times. It is not long. It is very simple. It is the simplest question there is."

I sat up.

My head went white for a second. When it cleared, Dot was still there, in the doorway, very tall against the stars, with her rivers running slow in four colors, and her grille turned toward me.

"What is it asking, Dot?"

The rivers stopped.

"Who," said Dot.

Day 381–383.

Toby heard the hello. It's a sound. Slow. In the silver, not the air. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down. Every eleven seconds. He wrote it down a hundred times.

He hummed it back into the rock. Three nights. On the third, the green put a gap in it. Risa: that's the catch. The same gap. The Teeming and the plants. Same shape.

It's all one thing. Plants, Teeming, cores, the thing under the mountain. Holt's nerves. Mother's. All the same voice. We said hello back, and it's waiting for the next thing.

Toby hummed to Priya's hands, up on the rock, away from the green. Ilse counted. Forty. Thirty. Twenty-two. Twenty. For an hour. A boy sang it a word and it woke.

If it's a sound, it can be sent. The comms window. Genny, a speaker, Mother's hands. NOT CAN'T.

Luna: Crane listens. The Teeming come to radios. Home first. "No more humming, Marsh." "Yes, Windsor."

Fourteen was too much. The bucket went over. Holt and Risa stayed on the ridge. "I'll count you." Day after tomorrow.

The green turned under us all the way south. Kilometers of it. Watching.

Scarecrow, Day 382, dusk. Dot: "Eleven dawns. Please. How many." Luna counted fourteen. Dot put her cold arm beside Luna's hand. "Well done." Her own voice. Luna held it.

Then I fell over. Nineteen hours.

Dot: the gap has something in it now. The simplest question there is.

"Who."