Chapter 133 Thirty-One, and a Gap, and One

I didn't speak for most of Day 399.

Not because I couldn't. Because there wasn't anything to say. I sat on the third terrace with my back against the coldest wall, at the end, by Luna's room, with the notebook on my knee and the pencil in my hand, and I didn't write anything, and I didn't say anything, and people came and went and looked at me and went away again.

Nobody tried to make me talk. That was the kindest thing anybody did that day. They just came and sat for a while, one at a time, and went.

Liam came first. He sat beside me with his knees up and his hands in his lap, very carefully not lit, and didn't say anything for nearly an hour, which for Liam was a kind of miracle. Then he got up and went, and on the wall where he'd been sitting there was a cup of something hot.

Then Holt. He sat down heavily with his stick across his knees and looked out at the canyon and said, after a long time, "She'll be all right, boy. She held a ship," and then he got up and went.

Then Toby. With the fork. He didn't say anything either. He just struck it, once, very softly, on the edge of the wall, and let the first note of the old song ring in the cold air between us until it was gone, and then he went too.

And then Sera.

She didn't sit down. She stood in front of me with her arms folded, the way she always stood, and looked down at me.

"Is she going to die?" said Sera.

Nobody else had asked. Everybody else had been too kind to ask.

"No," I said. It was the first word I'd said all day. "Not because of this. Crane won't stop the doses. He said so. He's not that man." I looked at the notebook. "And Genny wrote the song out. They're humming it. All the families. For an hour at a time."

"Then what's wrong?"

"I can't hear her," I said.

Sera looked at me for a long moment.

Then she sat down. On the wall. Right beside me, this time. Close. Her shoulder against mine, warm through the scarf she'd made.

"My mum's on that list," she said. "Fifty-first floor. Third name. I can't hear her either."

I hadn't thought of that. I should have. I'd been sitting there all day thinking about my mother and I hadn't once thought about hers.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be sorry." She didn't look at me. "Be Lucas. Be the annoying one who always finds a way round. The one who flew. The one who made the moon wet." Her shoulder pressed harder against mine. "Find a way round, Dask."

So I did what I always do when I don't know what to do. I went and asked Dot.

She was on the red glass, where she'd been all night and all day, standing very still in the middle of the canyon with her arms folded and her rivers running very slowly, the colors dim.

The thing was still under us. I could feel it, faintly, through my feet. Not a hum anymore. Just a presence. The way you can feel someone sitting very quietly in a dark room, even when you can't hear them breathing.

"Operator," said Dot.

"The word," I said. "At the end. After it sang the spine's name back up. The last word. The short one. What was it?"

Dot's rivers ran a little faster.

"This unit has been thinking about that word," she said. "All night. All day." A pause. "This unit asked Toby Marsh. Toby Marsh heard it through his wall. Only a little."

"And?"

"It is the hello," said Dot. "Turned over."

I stared at her.

"Down," said Dot. "And a long way down. And hold." The rivers slowed. "And up. Once. Very soft." A pause. "It is the opposite of hello. Toby Marsh says it is the word you say to a child at night. When you have said hello all day, and now it is dark, and you want it to stop."

"Sleep," I said.

"Yes," said Dot. "This unit thinks so. The deep said to the spine: sleep. And the spine slept."

I stood there on the red glass and thought about that for a long time.

The deep had told the spine to sleep. And the spine had slept.

Which meant the spine listened to it.

Which meant, maybe, that if the deep said hello, the spine would wake up.

"Dot," I said slowly. "The spine. When it carried the comms windows. When it carried Toby's song all the way to Mother. Eleven light-years, in a few seconds. How did it do that?"

"This unit does not know."

"Guess."

Dot was quiet for a long time.

"This unit thinks," she said at last, very carefully, "that the silver is not many things. It is one thing. In many places." The rivers ran. "The green. The Teeming. The cores. The deep. The spine. When one part of it hears something, all of it hears. It does not need to send it across. It is already there." A pause. "This unit does not know how. This unit only knows that this unit heard the deep through the silver in this unit's own cores, from a hundred and fifty kilometers away, as clearly as if it were in the room."

"So the spine wasn't sending the windows across eleven light-years," I said. "It was just—"

"Hearing them," said Dot. "At one end. And being heard at the other. Because the other end was also it."

My hands had started to shake.

"The other end," I said. "At home. In the city. What was at the other end?"

Dot didn't answer.

She didn't need to.

I thought about a room under a mountain where they'd shaved bits off a gray bone and put them in children. In Mother. In Father. In Maura Calder and Ilse and Priya and Holt and a thin clever boy called Hal who held his pen with both hands. Thirty-one people in a city under glass, shaking, three times a day, because there was a piece of something in their nerves that was asleep, and lonely, and far from home.

Pieces of the bone.

Pieces of it.

"It's not a relay," I said. "The spine. It never was. It's just the biggest piece. The loudest. The one Crane could hear. But every person they ever put a needle in has a piece of it too." I was talking very fast now. "When Toby sang to Mother through the radio, the hello went through the spine, and the spine is the same thing as the silver in her hands, and so—"

"So it woke," said Dot. "For an hour."

"For an hour. Because it was a recording. A copy. A pale copy of a copy, Crane said." I looked down at my feet. At the red glass. At what was under it. "But it's not a copy down there. Is it."

"No," said Dot. "It is the original."

Luna let me do it on Day 400.

Not because of the number. She said that very firmly, standing on the red glass at dawn with her slate. "It's not because it's four hundred. Four hundred doesn't mean anything. It's a number." She made a mark on the slate. "It's because you didn't sleep, and you won't sleep until you've tried, and you're no use to anybody not sleeping."

"Thank you, Luna."

"Don't thank me. I'm still against it." She looked at me. "You're going to give it your name."

"Yes."

"Sera said not to."

"Sera's going to stand next to me while I do it," I said.

Sera, behind me, didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

I'd told her at midnight, on the terrace. What Dot had worked out. What I thought. That the deep couldn't say hello to Mother if it didn't know who Mother was, and it couldn't know who Mother was unless someone told it, and the only one of us who had any of Mother in him was me.

"It's following the loudest one," she'd said. "You said. The one with the most of it in him."

"I know."

"And now you want to go and stand on top of it and shout."

"I want to go and stand on top of it," I'd said, "and tell it who I am. And then tell it who she is. And ask."

She'd been quiet for a long time.

"Then I'm standing next to you," she'd said. "And if it does anything, anything at all, I'm going to set the whole canyon on fire. I want you to know that."

"I know."

"Good," said Sera.

So that was how it was done.

The middle of the red glass, at sunrise on the four-hundredth day. Dot, very tall, with all eight arms down in the soil of the lowest terrace, where Teo's wheat was coming up green and fine. Toby a few meters away, inside his wall, with Risa holding his hand to her heart and the fork in his lap, listening. Juno on the north path with her arm pointed straight down. Holt on the terrace with his hands open on his knees.

And Sera on one side of me, very close, with her hands white to the wrist.

And Luna on the other. Which I hadn't expected. She just came and stood there, with her slate under her arm, and didn't say anything.

I knelt down on the red glass.

And put my hands flat on it.

I didn't sing. I can't. I've never been able to hold a tune. Garnet used to say I sounded like a kettle with something stuck in it.

So I didn't try.

I did what Dot had said. What Toby had done. What a name is.

I was only me.

That's harder than it sounds. I'd never tried it before. I'd spent a year on this planet being the operator, and the squad, and the one who flew, and the lighthouse, and the boy who held a heart for forty minutes. I'd spent nine months before that being Cadet Dask. And before that, seventeen years in a valley being Father's son and Mother's son and the twins' brother.

I tried to be just Lucas.

And what came, when I tried, wasn't any of that.

It was a kitchen.

A kitchen in a valley at dawn, with a wall covered in a hundred and eighteen faded boxes, and the oatmeal smear across the noble gases. A spoon, floating. Mother laughing. Father at the table with his black spectacles and a book. The filter humming in the walls, that had woken at five every morning for seventeen years.

And a notebook. Number one. Water. Given to me on my tenth birthday. And on the wall, among the boxes, in Father's handwriting, very small and precise:

Everything alive. Respect this one.

That's who I was. When I was only being me.

A boy who counted things, and wrote them down, and looked inside them, and tried, every time, to respect the one in front of him.

I don't know how long I knelt there.

Then Toby, a few meters away, inside his wall, said very softly:

"It heard you."

And under my hands, through the red glass, very deep, something answered.

I felt it in my bones. Not my ears. My bones. In the silver nobody had ever put in me, that was in me anyway, from two people a needle had touched before I was born. A long slow ripple, coming up out of the deep through the rock and the glass and my hands and into me.

Not words. Not sound.

Me.

A kitchen. A wall of boxes. A spoon floating. A notebook. Respect this one. All of it, given back to me, from very deep and very far away, every small thing in its place.

My name.

Said back to me. Correctly.

I was crying. I didn't notice until Sera's hand came onto the back of my neck, warm, the way it had in the skiff. Luna didn't move. But I heard her breathe out, very slowly, beside me.

"Now," said Toby, inside his wall. "Lucas. Now's when you ask."

So I asked.

Not with words. I didn't have any it would understand. With the only thing I had.

I thought of Mother.

Not a picture. Not her face. Her. What she was when she was only being her. A girl from Orphan Hall Three who could lift a truck by looking at it. A woman on the roof of a burning ship with her coat smoking, pulling a man out of a hole. A kitchen, and three bowls and the flour and the eggs, all floating, every morning, without her hands. The way she said love. The way she said do the right thing anyway. The way her hands had gone still round a speaker, eleven light-years away, and she'd said it was like someone said my name, in the next room.

The piece of the bone in her nerves. Asleep. Lonely. Far from home.

That's who she was.

And I held it out. Down. Through my hands, through the glass, into the deep. The way you'd hold out a photograph to someone and say: her. This one. Please.

Nothing happened.

For a long time, nothing at all.

Then Dot's rivers went white.

"Operator," said Dot. Her voice was very far away. "The spine."

I didn't look up. I couldn't. I kept my hands flat on the glass and held Mother out, down, into the dark.

"The spine has woken," said Dot. "Overhead. This unit can feel it. It is not carrying the windows. It is not carrying Command. It is not carrying anything from here to there." The rivers were white all the way through, white as lamps. "The deep is speaking through it. Not to this unit. Not to the operator. Away. Very far away. To—"

She stopped.

"To every piece of itself," said Dot. "Everywhere. All at once."

"Saying what?"

"Hello," said Dot.

It lasted eleven seconds.

I know because Luna counted. Out loud, under her breath, beside me. One. Two. Three. All the way to eleven. Her voice never changed.

And at eleven, Dot made a sound I'd never heard her make. Not a word. Not a pattern. A sound like someone who'd been holding their breath for a very long time letting it out.

"It is answered," said Dot.

"By who?"

"By small things," said Dot. "Very far away. Very small. Very faint. This unit could only just hear them. The way you hear people in another building." The rivers flickered. "Many small patterns. Each one different. Each one answering hello."

"How many?"

Dot was quiet for a long moment.

"This unit counted them," she said. "As Luna would. This unit has learned that from Luna."

She turned her grille toward me.

"Thirty-one," said Dot. "And then a gap."

A pause.

"And one."

The spine went to sleep again. Dot felt it go. Overhead, among the standing stars, a long silver ship with a gray bone down the middle, going quiet.

The deep went quiet too. Under the glass. Under my hands. Not gone. Just resting. The way you rest after you've done something that took everything you had.

I lifted my hands off the red glass.

And fell sideways, into Sera, and she caught me.

"Is that it?" said Liam, from the terrace. His voice was shaking. "Did it work? Is she—are they—Lucas, is Mum—"

"I don't know," I said, into Sera's shoulder. My nose was bleeding onto her scarf. "I don't know if it's for an hour or for a day or forever. I can't hear them. Nobody can. There's no window. There's no Genny." I swallowed. "But they answered, Liam. All of them. Your mum. My mum. Thirty-one."

"And one," said Toby quietly, from inside his wall.

"And one," I said.

Day 399–400.

Day 399. I didn't speak. People came and sat and went. Liam left a cup. Holt: "She held a ship." Toby rang the fork once.

Sera: "Is she going to die?" No. "Then what's wrong?" I can't hear her. Sera: "My mum's on that list. Third name. I can't hear her either." I hadn't thought. "Find a way round, Dask."

Dot: the last word was the hello turned over. Down, a long way down, hold, up. Sleep. The deep said sleep, and the spine slept.

The silver isn't many things. It's one thing in many places. The spine never carried anything across eleven light-years. It just heard at one end and was heard at the other. And the other end was the needles. In thirty-one people. Pieces of it. All asleep.

Day 400. Luna: "It's not because it's four hundred." Sera on one side. Luna on the other.

Hands on the glass. I didn't sing. I was only me. A kitchen. A wall of boxes. A spoon. Notebook one. Everything alive. Respect this one.

It said my name back. In my bones.

Toby: "Now's when you ask."

I held out Mother. Down, into the dark. Her. This one. Please.

The spine woke. The deep spoke through it to every piece of itself, everywhere, all at once. Hello. Eleven seconds. Luna counted.

Dot: "It is answered. By small things. Very far away."

Thirty-one. And then a gap. And one.

I don't know if it's for an hour or forever. I can't hear them. But they answered.

All of them.

Underlined three times.