Chapter 134 The Dawn Count

I slept for fourteen hours.

When I woke it was dark again, and Sera was asleep in a chair beside the middle bed with her knitting in her lap and her head on her chest, and Liam was asleep on the floor, and the lamp was turned very low. I lay there for a long time and looked at the ceiling of the dome and didn't think about anything.

Then Dot said, from the doorway, very quietly, "Operator. It is nearly dawn. This unit thinks the operator will want to be outside."

"Why?"

"Because it is going to happen again," said Dot.

I didn't ask how she knew. I got up, very carefully, so as not to wake Sera, and stepped over Liam, and went out onto the red glass in my socks with my stick.

It was cold. The stars were going pale over the eastern rim. Juno was on the north path, as she always was at dawn now, with her arm pointing down at the ground under our feet. Luna was on the terrace above, with her slate.

Dot stood in the middle of the glass with her arms in the soil of the lowest terrace, where the wheat was.

"Now," she said.

The first edge of the sun came over the eastern rim.

And under my feet, very deep, something stirred. Not much. A breath. A sleeper turning over in the first light. I felt it in my teeth.

Overhead, somewhere among the fading stars, the spine woke.

"Hello," said Dot. Out loud. So we'd know. "The deep is saying it again. Through the spine. To all of them."

Luna, on the terrace, began to count. Very quietly. One. Two. Three.

At eleven, she stopped.

And Dot's rivers ran very fast, in all four colors, the way they did when she was pleased.

"Thirty-one," said Dot. "And a gap. And one." A pause. "All of them. Again."

I sat down on the red glass. I couldn't help it. I just sat down, in my socks, in the cold, and put my hands over my face.

It had happened twice. Not once. Not a single hello that might have woken them for an hour, like Toby's song, and then faded. The deep had done it again, on its own, without anyone asking. At dawn. Because the day before, at dawn, someone had knelt on the glass and held out his mother, and the deep had remembered.

"It will do it every dawn," said Dot. "This unit thinks so. This unit cannot know. But this unit thinks it has decided that this is a thing it does now. The way Luna counts."

Luna, on the terrace, made a mark on her slate.

When I looked at it later, there was a new line, at the bottom of the column, under the six on the dawn line. In her very small, very precise hand.

Home: 31. And 1.

It happened the next dawn. And the next.

Every morning, just as the sun came over the eastern rim, the deep breathed, and the spine woke for eleven seconds, and the hello went out to every piece of itself in the dark eleven light-years away. And every morning Dot listened, with her arms in the soil, and counted the answers. And every morning it was the same.

Thirty-one. A gap. One.

It became the way the day started. Before breakfast. Before anything. Everyone came out onto the red glass at dawn, all seventeen of us, in coats and blankets and bare feet, and stood in a ring round Dot, and waited. Holt on his stick. Toby inside his wall, with Risa, because the spine sang a little and he wasn't taking chances. Liam yawning. Teo with his hands still black from the wheat terrace.

And Dot would say thirty-one, and a gap, and one, and everyone would breathe out, and then go and eat.

"What do they sound like?" said Liam, on the third morning.

He said it very quietly, for Liam. He was standing beside me in the ring with his hands in his armpits, not lit, and he didn't look at Dot when he said it. He looked at the ground.

"This unit does not understand the question," said Dot.

"The answers. The thirty-one. You said every one's different. Each pattern." He swallowed. "What do they sound like? Can you tell them apart?"

Dot's rivers ran slowly.

"Yes," she said. "This unit has been learning them. Every morning. The way Luna learns a list."

"Can you tell which one's—" Liam stopped.

Sera, on the other side of me, had gone very still.

"Which one's Mum," said Liam.

Dot was quiet for a long time.

"This unit cannot know their names," she said at last. "They only say hello. They do not say who." A pause. "But this unit can tell Liam what they are like. If Liam wants."

"Yes," said Liam. "Please."

"There are thirty-one," said Dot. "Some are small and quick. Some are slow. One is very quiet, like someone answering from under a blanket." The rivers ran. "One is warm. Very warm. Like the air when an oven door opens. It answers fast. Every morning it is the first." A pause. "It answers as if it has been waiting all night by the door."

Liam didn't say anything.

Beside me, Sera made a very small sound.

"That's her," said Sera. Her voice was perfectly flat, and her eyes were full. "That's Mum. That's the pie. She always stood by the oven door. She always—" She stopped.

Liam put his arm round his sister. She let him.

They stood like that, in the ring, on the red glass, while the sun came up, and nobody said anything at all.

"There is one more," said Dot. Very gently. To me, this time.

I looked up.

"It answers slowly," said Dot. "Not because it is weak. Because it is careful. Like someone lifting something heavy without their hands." The rivers ran in four colors. "It is not like the others. It is like the operator's. This unit has heard the operator's name, said back by the deep. This one is like the operator's name. The way a word is like another word that comes from the same place."

I couldn't speak.

"This unit thinks," said Dot, "that it is the one this unit was named after."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Then I said, "Every morning?"

"Every morning," said Dot. "Slowly. Carefully. Never first. Never last." A pause. "In the middle. Where she can see everyone."

That was Mother. That was exactly Mother. At the kitchen table, at the end of a long day, in the middle of everyone, watching all of us at once without seeming to.

That night I took Garnet's scarf out of my coat and laid it across my knees on the terrace, and looked at the first six inches of it for a long time. Mother's six inches. Smooth and flat and even, every stitch the same as the one beside it, from before her hands stopped.

Then I opened the notebook to a clean page and wrote her a letter.

I'd never done that before. There'd never been any point. Every word I'd ever sent her went through Crane's dish, four minutes at a time, with somebody listening. And now there wasn't even that.

So I wrote it anyway. In pencil. Small. The way Father wrote.

Dear Mother. You're the one in the middle. Dot says so. Slow and careful, like lifting something without your hands. I'd know you anywhere.

I can't hear you. But something can. And it's saying hello to you every morning, from me.

I don't know if your hands are still. I don't know if it lasts. I'm going to keep asking anyway.

Do the right thing anyway. You said. I'm trying.

Your son. Lucas.

I didn't hear Toby come up the terrace. I never do. He sat down on the wall beside me, a little way off, with his fork turning in his fingers, and didn't look at the notebook.

"You could send it," he said.

"There's no window."

"There's the deep." He looked at the red glass below. "It says hello for you every morning. It said your name back. It knows who she is now." He turned the fork over. "I don't know if it can carry words. I don't think it can. But it can carry you. That's what you did on the glass. You held her out. Maybe you can hold this out too."

I looked at the page.

"Not tonight," I said.

"No," said Toby. "Not tonight. But it's there." He stood up. "It's always there now. Under us. Like a phone nobody's hung up."

On the fifth morning, Day 405, something changed.

We were in the ring, all of us, as usual. The sun came over the eastern rim. The deep breathed. Luna counted. Eleven seconds.

And Dot didn't say thirty-one.

She didn't say anything. Her rivers had stopped. All four colors, perfectly still, the way they went when she was listening so hard she forgot to do anything else.

"Dot?" I said.

"Wait," said Dot.

We waited.

It was the longest I've ever heard Dot be silent. Longer than the night she took the fourth core. Longer than the dusk the deep first answered. The sun came all the way over the rim, and the shadows on the red glass got shorter, and nobody moved.

Then the rivers began to run again. Very slowly.

"Thirty-one," said Dot. "And a gap. And one." A pause. "But one of the thirty-one did not say hello."

My heart stopped.

"It said something else," said Dot. "Something longer. Slower. Careful. Like lifting something heavy without hands." The rivers ran faster. "It said who."

"Who?" I said. My voice came out wrong. "What do you mean, it said who? It asked—"

"No," said Dot. "It did not ask who. It said who. The way the operator did, on the glass. The way Toby Marsh did. The way this unit did, in the green." The rivers were running very fast now, in all four colors, faster than I'd ever seen them. "It said its own name, operator. On purpose. Not hello. A name."

She turned her grille toward me.

"And this unit knows the name," said Dot. "This unit has always known it. It is the name this unit was given."

I don't remember sitting down. I remember that I was sitting on the red glass, and Sera was kneeling beside me with both her hands on my shoulders, and Luna was standing over us with her slate pressed flat against her chest.

"She has learned," said Dot. "The operator's mother. She heard the hello every dawn, for five dawns, and she has learned what it is. And she has done what the operator did. She has been only herself, and said it."

"How," I said. "How could she know to—"

"Because she's her," said Luna.

Very quietly. From above me.

"She tore a hole in a ship, Lucas. With nothing but looking at it. Nobody taught her how to do that either." She was still pressing the slate to her chest. "You told me. In the cave. She worked it out on a roof, in an hour, with her nose bleeding." Her voice almost went. Didn't. "Five dawns is a long time. For your mother."

Dot.

My mother's name. Dorothy. The name I'd given a robot, a long time ago, because I was alone and it was the only name I could think of that made me feel less alone.

Said by my mother. Through a piece of bone in her nerves. Eleven light-years away. On purpose.

So that I'd know.

It was like someone said my name, in the next room, she'd said.

Now she'd said it back.

"Again," I said. "Tomorrow. Will she—"

"This unit does not know," said Dot. "This unit will listen."

She did it again the next morning.

And the morning after that, so did the warm one. The one like an oven door. The one that answered first, every dawn, as if it had been waiting all night.

"Again," said Dot, on Day 406, very gently. "Another name. The warm one. The first one."

Liam didn't say anything. He just sat down on the glass where he was, very suddenly, the way I had.

Sera stood beside him with her arms folded and her face set and the tears running straight down it, and didn't wipe them, and didn't move, and didn't say anything at all, for a very long time.

Then she said, to no one, very quietly: "Maura."

Over the next days, more of them.

Not all at once. One or two at a time. Every dawn Dot listened, and counted, and every dawn one or two more of the thirty-one stopped saying hello and started saying who. Saying their names. On purpose.

"Your sister," said Luna, on the evening of Day 407, on the terrace, with her slate. "Genny."

"What about her?"

"She'll have worked out what your mother was doing. By the second day. She'd have watched her do it." Luna made a mark. "And then she'd have written it down. In the notebook. Number sixteen, or seventeen by now. How to say your name to a bone. In columns." She looked up. "And then she'd have gone round the building and taught it to everyone. All thirty-one families. In the order of the clinic invoices."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was exactly what Genny would do.

"You've never met her," I said.

"I've heard her on the radio," said Luna. "Twice. That's enough."

By Day 408, it was twenty-six.

Twenty-six names, at dawn, through the spine. Five still saying hello. And the gap. And the one.

Holt stood in the ring every morning with his stick, and his hands open, and every morning when Dot said and one, I watched his face.

"Still hello," said Dot, every morning. "The one. Still hello. Only hello."

"He'll not do it," said Holt, on the morning of Day 408, very low. "Hal. He'll not say who. He never would. He sat at that desk for thirty years and never once said who he was to anyone. Just the Director." He shook his head. "He'll say hello till he dies. And never ask."

On Day 409, the sun came over the rim, and the deep breathed, and Luna counted to eleven.

And Dot said: "Thirty-one."

And then she stopped.

"And a gap," said Dot.

She stopped again.

Holt, on his stick, had gone very still.

"And one," said Dot. "The one has said who."

Nobody moved.

"It is very quiet," said Dot. "Very careful. Like someone holding something with both hands so that they won't drop it." The rivers ran slowly. "It said its name. And then it said one more thing. After the name. A thing this unit has heard before."

"What?" I said.

"The hello," said Dot. "Turned the right way up. Said slowly. To the deep." A pause. "Not answering. Asking."

Holt sat down on the glass. I'd never seen him sit on the ground before. His bad knee didn't like it. He sat anyway, with his stick across his lap and his still hands on it, and looked up at the sky, where somewhere among the standing stars a ship with a bone in it was going round.

"Hal," he said. Very softly. "You stupid, clever boy."

"He asked," said Luna.

She was standing with her slate against her chest. Her face didn't change. Her voice didn't. But her hands, on the slate, were very slightly white at the knuckles.

"Thirty years," said Luna. "And he asked."

I looked at Dot. At her arms, down in the soil, among Teo's wheat. At the red glass under us, and the thing resting under it, very deep, that had said all our names back to us correctly, every small thing in its place, and asked nothing of anyone except who.

"Then we answer," I said.

I knelt down on the glass, and put my hands flat on it, and held out a thin clever boy who held his pen with both hands.

Him. This one. Please.

And under my hands, very deep, something said a name back. Slowly. Correctly.

And somewhere very far away, at the bottom of a list, after a gap, a man at a desk heard it.

Day 401–409.

Day 401, dawn. It happened again. On its own. The deep breathed. The spine woke for eleven seconds. Hello, to all of them. Thirty-one. A gap. One.

Dot: "It has decided this is a thing it does now. The way Luna counts."

Luna's slate, new line at the bottom: Home: 31. And 1.

Every dawn now, all seventeen in a ring round Dot. Then breakfast.

Liam: "What do they sound like?" Dot: one is warm, like an oven door opening. First every morning. As if it's been waiting all night by the door. Sera: "That's Mum." Liam put his arm round her. She let him.

Dot: one answers slowly. Careful. Like lifting something heavy without hands. In the middle, where she can see everyone. "The one this unit was named after."

Wrote Mother a letter I can't send. Toby: "It's always there now. Like a phone nobody's hung up."

Day 405. One of the thirty-one didn't say hello. It said who. On purpose. Dot: "It is the name this unit was given."

Mother. In five dawns she worked it out. Luna: "She tore a hole in a ship. Nobody taught her that either."

Day 406. The warm one. Sera: "Maura."

Luna: Genny will have written it down. In columns. In the order of the clinic invoices. Twenty-six by Day 408.

Holt: "He'll not say who. He never would."

Day 409. The one said who. And then the hello, the right way up. Not answering. Asking.

Holt sat on the ground. "Hal. You stupid, clever boy."

Luna: "Thirty years. And he asked."

I knelt and held out a thin clever boy who held his pen with both hands. It said his name back.

Somewhere very far away, at the bottom of a list, after a gap, a man at a desk heard it.