Chapter 128 The Song Under the Song

We flew home in a day and a half.

Five in Maris, and the bucket barely half full, and Holt in the seat beside me with his stick across his knees, naming peaks again as if nothing had happened. Liam asleep in the stern with his head on Risa's shoulder. Risa with her eyes shut and her hand out over the rim, counting the Teeming under us, out loud, every so often, the way you'd count sheep.

Sera in the bow, not talking.

She hadn't said anything since the fire. Not to me. Not to anybody. She'd lain down on the rock at F-thirty with her back to the embers and her arms round herself, and when I'd woken at dawn she'd been sitting up in the same place with her eyes open, as if she hadn't slept at all.

Halfway through the first afternoon, she turned round.

"If it's following the loudest one," she said.

I waited.

"Then you're the bait." Her voice was very flat. "That's what they sent you for. Not to settle anything. Not to build a base. To be the loudest thing on the planet, and stand still, and see what came."

"Maybe."

"Not maybe." She was gripping the rim. "Crane picked you. Out of everyone. Out of the whole city. He came over the ridge in a craft and stood in your kitchen and picked you. The son of the two of them. The one with the most of the bone in him." Her knuckles had gone white. "And he put you in a seed and he sent you here, and he didn't tell you, and he sat back eleven light-years away and waited."

Nobody said anything.

Holt, beside me, had stopped naming peaks.

"Maybe," I said again. "Or maybe I'm the door."

Sera stared at me.

"The thing under the mountain said hello," I said. "It said Dot's name back to her. Correctly. Every small thing in its place. It sent one of the Teeming up a slope to say good evening to Holt." I looked down at the green, turning under us. "Bait is something you put out so something comes and you can kill it. I don't think it wants to kill anyone. I think it's been on its own for a very long time, and it heard its name, and it came to see."

"You don't know that."

"No," I said. "But I know what Crane thinks. He thinks it's a thing to be studied. That's what they did with the bone. Shaved it. Put it in children to see what happened." I looked at her. "I don't want to be his bait. I'd rather be its door."

Sera looked at me for a long time.

Then she turned back round in the bow, and didn't say anything else for an hour.

But she warmed the air round us the whole way home.

We came down into the canyon at noon on Day 388.

Luna was on the red glass. She'd been on the red glass, Wren said later, since dawn. She counted us out of the skiff, one at a time, out loud, and then turned round and counted everyone else, and then turned back.

"Seventeen," she said. "All breathing."

And then, very quickly, before anyone could see her face, she went and stood beside Dot.

Juno was waiting on the north path.

She didn't say hello. She just shut her eyes, and lifted her arm, and pointed. North. And a little east.

"It's turned again," she said. "Since you left. It went toward the ridge. Toward you." Her arm moved. A few degrees. "And this morning, it came back. Toward the canyon."

"Toward Dot," said Sera.

"Toward something here." Juno opened her eyes. "And it's closer. A lot closer." She lowered her arm. "Two hundred kilometers. Maybe less. It's not slow anymore, Dask. It was slow when it didn't know where it was going."

"And now?"

"Now it knows," said Juno.

Luna called the council that evening.

All seventeen of us. Holt on the middle bed, with his stick. Dot in the doorway, with the last of the light behind her. And this time, I told it. All of it. The bone in the Orme. The room in the mountain. The needles. The Meridian. Father in the yard at night. It's a seed. And somebody's going to want to plant it.

When I'd finished, nobody spoke for a very long time.

Then Corr, who almost never said anything, said from the back of the dome, in his rough burned voice:

"So Crane knows."

"Crane built the ship," said Luna. "Crane knows."

"Then why are we sending him anything?" said Tamsin.

She was sitting against the wall with her bow, the way she always did. "Tomorrow's the window. Day three-eighty-nine. Dot says so. And you want to put Toby on the radio and hum a thing at it that wakes up the bone. With Crane listening." She looked round. "Why would we tell him we've worked out how to talk to it?"

"Because my mother's hands shake," I said.

It came out harder than I meant. I didn't take it back.

"Three times a day," I said. "For years. Liam's mum too. And Ilse's, and Priya's, and Holt's for twenty-eight years until the green woke his. And every one of the thirty-one families in the city who've got someone on the stabilizer." I looked at Toby. "Toby woke Priya's silver on a rock above the green with nothing but his voice. If it works through the radio, it's not just Mother. It's everyone. Everyone they ever put the bone in."

"And Crane hears it," said Tamsin.

"Crane hears everything. Crane already knows what the bone is. He's known since before I was born." I swallowed. "What he doesn't know is that a boy who sings can wake it up. And that it doesn't need to be studied. It just needs to be said hello to."

"And when he does know?"

"Then he knows," I said. "And my mother can hold a cup."

Luna looked at me for a long time.

Then she looked at Toby, sitting on the floor by the door with his notebook on his knees and his face very white.

"Marsh," she said. "Can you hide it?"

Toby looked up.

"The hello," said Luna. "If you hum it straight into the dish, Crane hears a boy humming a strange noise at his mother, and he asks what it is, and he cuts the line. Can you hide it? In something else? So it sounds like something that isn't it?"

Toby was quiet for a moment.

Then something came into his face that I hadn't seen there since the cave. Since his sixteenth birthday, when he'd sung the old song on field four, every note, and hadn't got any of it wrong.

"Every song has a heartbeat," said Toby. "Under the drums. Under everything." He looked across the dome. "Risa says that."

"I do," said Risa. Her eyes were shut. "And the old song's got the slowest one I've ever felt. Your mother's song, Lucas. Like somebody asleep."

"Then it's halfway there already," said Toby. "I'll put it under a song. Very low. So low you'd only feel it. Like a heartbeat under the drums. And on top, something nobody would ever cut the line for." He shut his notebook. "The old song. The one on the fork. I'll sing your mum the old song, Lucas. And under it, the whole way through, I'll say hello."

The ninth comms window opened at noon on Day 389.

We did it in the dome, not the tower. Father's radio on the table in the middle, with its handset and its little dial, and Dot's long pale cold arm laid along the table beside it, her grille turned down, listening. Toby on a stool beside me, with his eyes shut and his hands flat on his knees. Everybody else outside. Luna said so. "If Crane hears seventeen people breathing, he'll wonder why."

So it was just the three of us. And Luna in the doorway, with her arms folded, where she could see us and the canyon both.

The handset hissed.

"Command to four-oh-one-dash-P-one," said the relay. Thin and clipped and very clear. "Report."

I reported.

Titanium. The seam in the north hill, half of it gone into Maris and the second hull, but I didn't tell them that. I gave them a number of tons. It was a true number. I just didn't say where it had gone. Water. The terraces. Seventeen operational personnel at this site, first-wave survivors included, names to follow on the dawn line by mirror, since the radio brought the Teeming.

A long pause. Longer than the relay usually took.

Then Crane.

"Lucas," he said.

Soft. Careful. Tired. Close to the microphone, wherever the microphone was.

"Director."

"Seventeen," said Crane. "That's remarkable. You've done remarkably." A pause. "Command will want the names, of course. For the families." Another pause. "I'll want them myself."

I didn't say anything.

"You've been travelling," said Crane. "North. And back. Twice." His voice didn't change at all. "Our instruments aboard the Meridian have noted it. They've noted a good deal, these last weeks. A very significant reorientation of the biosphere round your position. Some fifty kilometers of it. And movement in the deep formation. Rather rapid movement."

The Meridian.

I sat very still with the handset against my ear.

I'd thought it had gone. I'd watched it get smaller from the window of my seed, a long silver shape against the dark, with forty hatches in a ring and the gray spine running down the middle of it. I'd thought it had gone home. I'd never asked. Nobody had ever said.

The relay passes every nine days, Dot had said. It is narrow, and upward.

A ship in the dark, going round and round over our heads. With a bone down the middle of it. Singing its name.

"I didn't know the Meridian was still here," I said.

"Where else would it be?" said Crane gently. "It's how we talk, Lucas. It's how we see." A pause. "It's how we keep you safe."

Luna, in the doorway, had gone white.

I kept my voice exactly where it was.

"I'd like a family contact," I said. "Four minutes. The same as last time."

"I'm sure you would."

"Production's on schedule. Seventeen personnel. The names. I'll give you all of it on the dawn line." I swallowed. "Four minutes. My mother. My sisters."

There was a long pause. I could hear him thinking. I could almost hear what about.

"Four minutes," said Crane. "Monitored, of course." And then, very softly: "Give your mother my regards."

The line clicked. Hissed. Clicked again.

And then, very loud, very close, so loud I had to hold the handset away from my ear:

"LUCAS! Did you find any aliens? Genny says you won't have found any aliens. She says it's statistically—"

"Hello, Garnet."

"—improbable. Did you?"

I looked at Dot's arm lying along the table. At Toby. At the green through the doorway, turned toward us, every frond, fifty kilometers of it.

"Maybe," I said. "I'll tell you when I'm sure."

Then Genny. Very level. Very calm. Notebook voice.

"Hello, Lucas."

"Hello, Genny. How's the lemon tree?"

"A new leaf on Monday," said Genny. "Like always. Eighteen in a row." A pause. "It's doing well."

I breathed out.

"Genny," I said. "Listen. I've only got three minutes. Toby's here. Toby Marsh. He wants to sing something for Mother. The old song. The one without words." I held the handset very tight. "I want you to put the speaker in Mother's hands. Both her hands. Hold them round it. Like you'd hold the lemon tree pot if you were carrying it somewhere and didn't want to spill any." A pause. "And count. While he sings. The way you count the leaves."

Genny didn't say anything for two seconds.

Two seconds is a very long time on a monitored line eleven light-years long.

"Yes," said Genny. Just that.

I heard her move. A chair. Footsteps. A door. And then, very faint, further away from the speaker, a voice I'd have known at the bottom of the sea.

"Genny? Is that him? Is that—"

"Hold this, Mama," said Genny. "Both hands. Like this. Don't let go."

I gave Toby the handset.

He held it in both hands in front of his face, the way he'd held the tuning fork on field four, a long time ago, on the night before his birthday. He shut his eyes.

And sang.

The old song. The one without any words.

The first part, and then the first part again, very slow, very soft, in his thin clear voice that could make walls out of the air. Not loud. He didn't need loud. The radio carried it, and the dish on the tower carried it, and somewhere over our heads a ship in the dark carried it, eleven light-years, to a flat on the upper floors with a lemon tree in the bath.

And under it.

I couldn't hear it. I felt it. We all did. Dot's arm on the table shivered, all the way along, from the shoulder to the tip. The air in the dome went thick, the way it does before a storm. A slow swell, so low it was more in the floor than in the air, rising, and rising, and holding, and falling.

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

Under every note. The whole way through.

Hello.

The second part. The hard part. The part that went down and then up when you didn't expect it.

Toby's voice shook on it. It always had. It didn't break.

And from the handset, very small, over the singing, Genny's voice. Not to us. To herself. Counting.

"Forty-two. Forty." A pause. "Thirty-six."

Toby kept singing.

"Thirty-one. Twenty-eight." Her voice had gone strange. "Mama. Mama, look at your—"

"Twenty-four," said Genny. "Twenty."

I put my hands over my face.

I couldn't see her. Not with my eyes, not with the other eyes, not with anything. Eleven light-years. I could only hear. Toby singing the old song in a dome in a canyon on the other side of the dark. And under it, the hello. And at the other end of the dark, my sister counting, and her voice going higher, and higher, the way it never did, ever, not once in her whole careful life.

"Sixteen," said Genny. "Lucas. Sixteen."

Toby sang the last note. The one on the fork. And held it. And let it go.

Silence on the line.

Then, very close to the speaker, so close I could hear her breathing, a voice. Not Genny's.

"Lucas."

"Mother."

"Lucas, my hands." Her voice was very quiet. Wondering. The way she'd sounded when I was four and lifted the spoon. "Love. Love, they've stopped. Not all the way. But they've— I can hold it. I'm holding the speaker. I'm holding it myself." A breath. "It was like— someone said my name. In the next room. Someone I'd forgotten I knew."

I couldn't say anything.

"Do the right thing," said Mother. Very softly. "You are."

"Sing it slower next time," said Genny, from somewhere behind her, very fast, very fierce. "I'm writing it down. Every note. I'll—"

"Contact concluded," said the relay.

And the line went dead.

Nobody moved.

Toby sat on his stool with the handset in his lap and tears running down his face and didn't wipe them. Luna stood in the doorway with her hand over her mouth. Dot's arm lay along the table, very still.

Then her rivers went white.

Not all at once, this time. One color, and then the next, and then the next, until all four were white as lamps, and her grille lit, and her long cold arm drew back off the table and up, slowly, all the way up, until it was pointing at the roof of the dome.

At the sky.

"It has answered," said Dot.

"Who?" I said. "Mother?"

"No." Her voice was very strange. Very far away. "The relay. The ship. The spine of the Meridian." A pause. "It heard the hello. It carried it, and it heard it, going through. And it has said its name. Down. To the ground. For the first time since the operator's seed came down."

Outside, someone shouted.

Juno. On the north path. I knew her voice. I got up, and grabbed my stick, and went out past Luna into the canyon, into the white noon light.

Juno was standing halfway up the path with her eyes shut and her arm out. Everyone was staring at her. Wren, and Holt, and Ilse, and the rest. All of them, frozen on the red glass.

Her arm wasn't pointing north.

It wasn't pointing at the canyon. It wasn't pointing at me.

It was pointing straight up.

"It's stopped," said Juno Pell. Her voice cracked right down the middle. "Dask. It's stopped moving. It's turned. It isn't looking at you anymore." Her arm didn't waver. "It's looking at the sky."

Day 387–389.

Home in a day and a half. Sera: "You're the bait." Me: "Or the door." She warmed the air all the way home anyway.

Day 388. Luna: "Seventeen. All breathing." Then she stood by Dot so nobody saw her face.

Juno: it's two hundred kilometers away and not slow anymore. "It was slow when it didn't know where it was going."

Council. I told them everything. Corr: "So Crane knows." Tamsin: why tell him? Because my mother's hands shake.

Risa: every song has a heartbeat. The old song's is the slowest. "Like somebody asleep." Toby: "Then it's halfway there already."

Ninth window, Day 389. Crane: "Our instruments aboard the Meridian." It never left. It's the relay. It's been going round over our heads with the bone in it all this time.

"Give your mother my regards."

Garnet: aliens? Maybe. Genny: the lemon tree, a new leaf Monday, eighteen in a row.

"Put the speaker in Mother's hands." Two seconds. "Yes."

Toby sang the old song. Under it, the hello. Genny counted. Forty-two. Thirty-one. Twenty. Sixteen.

Mother: "Lucas, my hands. I'm holding it myself. It was like someone said my name. In the next room."

Genny: "Sing it slower next time. I'm writing it down."

Contact concluded.

Dot: the spine heard the hello going through, and said its name down to the ground. For the first time since we landed.

Juno's arm, pointing straight up. "It isn't looking at you anymore. It's looking at the sky."