Chapter 135 Nothing Is Nothing

"Six," said Luna.

It was the morning of Day 410. We were in the dome after the dawn count, all seventeen of us, with Dot in the doorway and the smell of Priya's bread coming in from the terrace. Luna stood in the middle of the floor with her slate.

"Six still out there," she said. "On the dawn line. Every morning. F-twenty-two, one. F-eight, one. F-twenty, one. F-twenty-six, two. F-thirty-one, which only ever flashes its number." She looked round. "We said we were coming for them. Juno's said it every dawn for two weeks. HOLD. WE ARE COMING FOR YOU." She lowered the slate. "It's time we did."

Nobody argued.

"Twenty-six first," said Juno.

She was sitting by the door with her knees drawn up. She hadn't said anything until then.

"It's my base," she said. "I left it. Two years ago. Going to look." Her eyes went away to the side, and came back. "Somebody's been sitting in it ever since, flashing my number. Two of them. Every dawn. And they can't walk." She looked at Luna. "I'd like to be the one who knocks on my own door."

"Two hundred kilometers," said Luna. "North-east."

"I know where it is," said Juno. "I always know where everything is."

So it was decided. The others would follow, one base at a time: F-twenty and F-twenty-two together, to the west; F-eight to the south. F-thirty-one last, because nobody knew what was there.

For F-twenty-six: Maris, with the second hull, in case. Me, to fly. Juno, to find it. Luna, because she wasn't letting me go anywhere without counting me. Toby, because he was the medic and because there was no relay pass at night anymore to stop his heart, only the dawn, and at dawn he could sit inside his wall wherever he was. And Sera, because when I said who was going she just went and got in the bow and sat there with her arms folded, and nobody tried to make her get out.

We left at sunrise on Day 411, after the count.

Thirty-one, and a gap, and one, said Dot, from the red glass, with her arms in Teo's wheat. All names now. All of them. And then, as I lifted Maris off the glass: Please come back. All of you.

"We will," said Luna. "That's what I'm for."

It was different, flying north this time.

I noticed it within the first hour. The green, under us. It still turned. Every frond, as we came over it. But it didn't turn toward me anymore, the way it had for a year, every silver tip straining after me like a field of faces after the sun.

It rippled.

A long slow ripple, spreading out from under the skiff on both sides as we went over, the way water spreads out from a boat. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down.

"It's saying hello," said Toby, from the second hull, very quietly. He had his eyes shut. "As we go past. Every bit of it. Hello. Hello. Hello." He opened his eyes and looked at me across the spars, and he was smiling. "It's not watching you anymore, Lucas. It's greeting you."

At noon, we came over a valley full of the Teeming.

Hundreds of them. A whole herd, if they were a herd, spread across the valley floor among the fronds, doing whatever it was they did when nobody was watching. A year ago, I'd have taken Maris straight up to a thousand meters and held my breath until we were past. A year ago, Sera would have had her hands white to the wrist.

Now she just leaned over the rim and looked down at them.

They stopped. All of them. Heads up. Watching us go over.

And one of them, at the edge of the herd, began to run.

It ran alongside us. Down below, through the green, on its jointed legs, keeping pace with the skiff. Not chasing. Running beside. Like a dog runs beside a cart. For a kilometer. Two. Five. Till the valley ended in a ridge of black rock, and it stopped at the top of the ridge and stood there, watching us go on.

Its hearts, said Toby, who could hear them through the bottom of the skiff, were doing the hello.

"I think that's the one," said Sera, still leaning over the rim, looking back. "The one that came up to Holt's rock. The one that came back across the glass to you. The polite one."

"How can you tell?"

"I can't," said Sera. "I just think it is." She sat back in the bow. "It's got a way of standing."

We flew six hours. Landed on a tor.

That night I woke, very late, on the rock, with Sera's scarf over my face and the stars going round, and heard voices. Low. Two of them. On the other side of the dying fire.

I didn't move. I should have. I should have coughed, or sat up, or said something. I didn't.

"You don't sleep," said Sera.

"Somebody has to count," said Luna.

"There's nothing to count. There's five of us and a rock."

"Then I count five," said Luna. "And a rock." A pause. "It helps."

The fire ticked. Sera put her hand out toward it without looking and it came up again, small and steady.

"He wrote his mum a letter," said Sera. "On the terrace. He thinks nobody saw."

"I saw."

"Course you did." Sera was quiet for a moment. "He's going to keep doing this. You know that. Kneeling on things. Holding people out to it. Falling over afterward. He's going to keep doing it until there's nobody left on any list anywhere."

"Yes," said Luna.

"And you're going to keep counting him."

"Yes."

"First," said Sera. "On the slate. He told me. Every night. The same place."

Luna didn't say anything for a long time.

"He's fourth," she said at last. "Not first. Liam, Seraphina, Toby, Lucas. Then me." A pause. "You're second, Calder. You've always been second. Since the cave."

Sera didn't answer that.

After a while I heard her get up. Heard her come round the fire, very quietly, and stop beside me. Felt the scarf move, very slightly, off my face, and settle again, tucked in under my chin, so the cold wouldn't get in.

Then her footsteps going away, round the other side of the rock.

And Luna, by the fire, very softly, to nobody: "Five. And a rock."

I lay there with my eyes shut until it got light, and didn't think about anything at all, very hard.

We flew again at dawn, after Toby came out of his wall and said the count had gone by overhead, quiet, eleven seconds, all names.

At dusk on Day 412, Juno sat up in the bow and pointed.

"There," she said.

F-twenty-six stood on a round green hill above a river, with the fronds coming up all round it, silver at the tops in the last of the light.

A dome. Small. Gray. A garden behind it, green, alive, somebody's work. A filter, humming. A mirror on a pole at the top of the hill, turned east, toward the dawn.

And in the doorway of the dome, as we came down out of the dusk, two people.

One was sitting. A big man, broad and bearded, in a chair that had been a kit's leg-frame once, with wheels on it made from something round and gray. His legs were thin under a blanket, thinner than his arms. Bent wrong, at the hip. He had a blade across his knees and he was holding it the way Holt held his stick, as if he'd been holding it for a very long time.

The other was standing. A woman. Tall. Thin. With dark hair in a long plait, and one hand on the man's shoulder, and her face turned toward the sound of us. Not toward us. Toward the sound.

Her eyes were white.

I set Maris down on the hilltop as softly as I've ever set anything down. Let the bucket go.

Nobody moved.

Then Juno got out of the bow.

She walked across the grass toward them in the dusk, very straight, not fast, not slow. She stopped about three meters from the door. The man lifted the blade an inch off his knees. The woman's hand tightened on his shoulder.

"Who's there?" said the woman.

Juno didn't say anything for a moment.

Then she said: "Pell."

The woman went very still.

Not like Luna. Not like Juno. Like somebody who's been listening for a sound for so long that when it comes they don't believe it, and they wait, very still, in case it comes again.

"Say it again," she said.

"Pell," said Juno. "It's Pell, Lena. I came back."

Lena Ashby took her hand off the big man's shoulder.

She came out of the doorway onto the grass, very slowly, with her hands out in front of her a little way, the way you walk in a dark room you know well. She didn't need to. She came straight to Juno as if she could see her, three meters, across the grass, and stopped, and put her hands up, and found Juno's face.

She held it. The way Maura Calder had held my face in her kitchen. Both hands. Very gently. Her thumbs moving over Juno's cheekbones, her jaw, the hair cut straight across.

"You cut your hair," said Lena.

"It got in the way," said Juno.

"Two years," said Lena Ashby. Her voice cracked right down the middle. "Two years, Pell. You said going to look. You flashed it at me. Dusk. The last thing. Going to look. And then nothing. And I waited, and I waited, and you didn't—"

"I know."

"I thought you were dead."

"I know," said Juno. "I'm sorry. North moved." Her eyes went away to the side. And then, for the first time since I'd known her, came back and stayed. "I'm facing it now."

They stood like that for a long time. In the dusk. On the hill.

And behind them, in the doorway, the big man put his blade down across his knees, and put his hand over his eyes, and his shoulders shook.

Toby got to him first. Of course he did. Out of the second hull with his bag on his shoulder before I'd even got out of my seat, across the grass, down on one knee beside the chair.

"Hello," he said. "I'm Toby. I'm the medic." He looked at the man's legs under the blanket, and I saw his face go very calm and careful, the way Halloway's used to. "How long?"

"Eighteen months," said the man. His voice was very deep. "Fell. Into the river gorge. First winter. Broke the pelvis, I think. Both sides." He wiped his eyes with the back of his huge hand. "Crawled here. Took me a month. She found me at the bottom of the hill." He nodded at Lena. "Dragged me up it. On her own. Blind."

"What's your name?"

"Matthias," said the man. "Matthias Roe. F-twenty-seven."

I looked into his hips while Toby talked to him.

I didn't mean to. I just did. The way I always do.

The bones had knitted. Wrong. The way Liam's leg had knitted in the cave, the body's best guess, gray mortar built up thick round both breaks. Eighteen months of it. Holding him together. Holding him in a chair.

I could ask it to let go. And build it again. Properly. The way I had with Liam. It would take a long time. More than forty minutes. Days, maybe. A little at a time.

But I could.

"Matthias," I said.

He looked up at me.

"When we get you home," I said. "To Scarecrow. Give me a week. And I think you'll walk."

The big man stared at me. Then at Toby. Then back at me.

"Who are you?" he said.

"He's the Dask," said Lena. From across the grass. Her hands were still on Juno's face. "The one on the radio. This is Scarecrow. Every hour. For fourteen days." Her white eyes were turned toward my voice. "We heard you, Dask. Both of us. We heard you, and then you stopped, and Pell's base was the only base we had, so we flashed its number every dawn, so that if anybody was still out there counting, they'd know there was somebody here."

"How did you flash it?" said Luna. Very quietly. "If you can't see. And he can't climb the hill."

Lena turned her face toward Luna's voice.

"Together," she said. "Every morning. He sits at the bottom with his blade on his knees and his eyes on the sky, and when the sun comes up he shouts. And I climb the hill and put my hands on the mirror, and turn it until he shouts there. And then I flash." She almost smiled. "He's the eyes. I'm the legs."

"Every morning?"

"Every morning," said Matthias Roe. "Eighteen months. Never missed."

Luna took her slate out.

She stood on the hilltop in the dusk and wrote, very small, very carefully. Two names. At the bottom of the column. I saw them.

Lena Ashby. Matthias Roe.

Then, after a moment, she drew a line under Lena's name. A neat one. The way Wren had drawn them on the canyon wall. Underlined is here.

"Nothing is nothing," said Luna, to nobody, very quietly. And put the slate away.

We stayed the night. Lena made something hot in a pot over a fire Sera lit with one finger, and we sat round it, seven of us, in the doorway of Juno's old dome, and Juno and Lena sat side by side with their shoulders touching and didn't say very much at all.

It was very late when Lena turned her white eyes toward me across the fire.

"Dask," she said. "Thirty-one."

"F-thirty-one? On the dawn line? It only ever flashes its number. We're going there last."

"I know," said Lena. "I've been answering it every dawn for eighteen months. It's the nearest base to us. Due east. Matthias can see the flash from the bottom of the hill." She was quiet for a moment. "It's not a person."

Nobody said anything.

"I can't see," said Lena. "So I listen. To everything. Matthias calls out the flashes and I count them. Every dawn. The same. Exactly the same. Not one flash longer or shorter than the day before. Not once in eighteen months." She turned her face toward the fire. "People aren't like that. People get tired. People's hands shake. People are late, some mornings." She shook her head slowly. "Thirty-one's never late."

"Then what is it?" said Sera.

"A machine," said Lena. "Flashing its own number. All on its own. Every dawn. Like it's waiting for somebody to come and tell it what to do next."

I looked across the fire at Toby. At Luna. At Sera, very still, with her arms folded.

I thought about Dot.

A gray shell. Waiting on the red glass for me to come back and give her a name. Saying this unit has gone to where the operator is and walking off into the green to find me.

A kit. With no operator. Flashing its number into the dark every dawn for a year and a half, because nobody had ever come to tell it to stop.

"Then we'll go and tell it," I said.

Day 410–412.

Six still out there. Luna: "It's time we did." Juno: "I'd like to be the one who knocks on my own door."

Dot, at dawn, as we left: "All names now. All of them." Thirty-one, and a gap, and one. All names.

The green doesn't turn toward me anymore. It ripples. Hello, as we go past. Toby: "It's not watching you. It's greeting you."

A valley full of the Teeming. They stopped and looked up. One ran beside us for five kilometers. Sera: "The polite one. It's got a way of standing."

The tor. I heard them talking. Luna: "You're second, Calder. You've always been second." Sera tucked the scarf under my chin. Luna: "Five. And a rock." I didn't think about anything, very hard.

F-26, Day 412, dusk. A big man in a chair made of a kit's leg. A woman with white eyes.

Juno: "Pell." Lena: "Say it again." "It's Pell, Lena. I came back." Lena held her face. "You cut your hair."

Lena Ashby. F-25. Door open, no body. Nothing is nothing. She walked to Pell's base and stayed.

Matthias Roe. F-27. Pelvis broken both sides. Crawled a month. She dragged him up the hill. Blind.

He's the eyes. She's the legs. Eighteen months of dawn flashes. Never missed.

I can rebuild his hips. A week. "Who ARE you?"

Luna underlined Lena's name on her slate.

Lena: F-31 isn't a person. Never late. Never tired. Exactly the same, every dawn, for eighteen months. "A machine. Waiting for somebody to come and tell it what to do next."

A kit with no operator. Like Dot, before.

Then we'll go and tell it.