Chapter 136 Old Son

We took them with us.

There was never any question of it. Lena wasn't going to let Juno out of her hearing again, and Matthias wasn't going to stay on a hill on his own, and Maris had a second hull for exactly this. So at dawn on Day 413, after Toby came out of his wall and said the count had gone over, all names, we carried Matthias down the hill in his chair, the four of us, and lifted him into the second hull, chair and all. Lena climbed in beside him and found his hand without looking.

Seven. And a mirror, which Lena wouldn't leave.

"It's due east," she said, as I lifted us off the hilltop. "Half a day. Follow the river. You'll see the flash."

"There won't be a flash," said Luna. "It's past dawn."

"There'll be a flash," said Lena. "Every dawn, and every dusk, and once at noon. I told you. It's never late." She turned her white eyes toward the east. "It'll be flashing when we get there."

It was.

We came over the last ridge at noon, following the river down out of the hills into a wide flat valley full of silver-green, and there it was. On a low mound in the middle of the valley, where the river bent. A dome. A garden round it, very neat. A pole with a mirror on it.

And at the foot of the pole, a kit.

As we came over the ridge, it turned the mirror. Toward the sun. Toward us. Three flashes, a gap, one flash.

Thirty-one.

Then it turned the mirror back, and stood very still.

I brought us down slowly. Very slowly. A hundred meters from the dome, at the edge of the garden, where the fronds gave way to rows of something green and low and very carefully weeded.

The kit didn't move.

I looked at it. All of it. It was the same as Dot had been, at the start, before the cores. Gray shell. Six legs. Five arms. One of them ending in a mirror-clamp it had made for itself out of its own plate. Its rivers were very dim. One color. Running slowly.

And in the middle of it, its core. Silver. Whole.

Not scraped out. Not eaten. Not taken home.

Still there.

"The Teeming didn't take it," said Sera, very quietly, beside me. "Why didn't they take it?"

I didn't know. Then I did.

"Because it's working," I said. "Every kit they took had fallen. Stopped. Lain down. Ilse's. Wren's. F-nine. They took the cores out of the ones that had stopped." I looked at the kit, standing at the foot of its pole in its garden, with its mirror in its arm. "This one never stopped. It's been doing a job. Every dawn. Every noon. Every dusk." I swallowed. "You don't take something home that's still busy."

I got out of the skiff. On my stick. And walked across the weeded rows toward it.

It turned its grille toward me. Slowly. The way Dot used to, before she learned to do it quickly.

"Query," said the kit.

Its voice was very faint. Thin. As if it hadn't been used in a very long time. Not Dot's voice. Not anybody's. Just a kit's voice, the way they all start.

"Query," it said again. "Has someone come?"

I stopped about three meters from it.

"Yes," I said. "Someone's come."

The rivers in it flickered. One color. Very dim.

"Logged," said the kit. A pause. A long one. "Operator Dunmore instructed this unit to flash this unit's number at dawn, at noon, and at dusk, until someone came." Another pause. "Someone has come."

It stood very still.

"This unit requests the next instruction," it said.

"Where's Operator Dunmore?" I said.

The kit turned. Slowly. On its six legs. Away from me. Toward the far side of the garden, by the river, where the ground rose a little under a frond bigger than the others.

There was a cairn there.

Not big. Waist-high. Stones from the river, round and gray, piled very carefully, one on another, the way you'd pile them if you wanted them to last forever. And on the top stone, scratched into it with something sharp, very neat, in letters a kit would make:

R. DUNMORE. F-31. OPERATOR.

Nobody said anything.

Behind me, I heard the others get out of the skiff. Luna. Toby. Juno. Sera. Then, slowly, Lena, with her hand on the rim, finding the way.

"How long?" said Luna. Very quietly.

"Eight hundred and seventy-two days," said the kit. "Operator Dunmore stopped on the ninety-first day. This unit has counted every day since."

"How did he stop?"

"This unit does not know the word," said the kit. "He was ill. For eleven days. He could not keep food. He became hot, and then cold. He could not stand." A pause. "On the tenth day he instructed this unit to flash the number at dawn, noon and dusk, until someone came. On the eleventh day he stopped."

"Fever," said Toby. Very softly. He'd come up beside me. "Something in the water, maybe. Or a cut that went bad." He was looking at the cairn. "With the book. With what's in the lander. I could've—" He stopped.

"This unit put him under the stones," said the kit. "Because he said that was what was done. He told this unit about it. On the ninth day. He said, people go under the stones, and the stones have their name, and that way people know they were there." A pause. "This unit put his name on the stone. So that people would know."

Lena walked past me.

She didn't ask anyone to help her. She just went, across the garden, between the weeded rows, with her hands a little out in front of her, toward the sound of the river. Straight to the cairn. As if she'd been there before.

She knelt down in front of it and put her hands on the top stone. Found the letters with her fingers. Read them, the way she read Juno's face.

"Rafe," she said. "Rafe Dunmore."

She turned her white eyes back toward us.

"I knew him," she said. "At the cave. He used to sing in the showers. Badly. Everyone shouted at him." She almost smiled. "He couldn't keep a tune to save his life."

"Operator Dunmore sang to this unit," said the kit. "In the evenings. Before he stopped." A pause. "This unit did not know it was badly."

Lena laughed. It came out wet.

"No," she said. "No, I don't suppose you did."

She stayed kneeling at the cairn with her hands on his name. Juno came and knelt beside her. Neither of them said anything.

I turned back to the kit.

It was still standing at the foot of its pole, with its mirror in its arm, and its one dim color running slowly, and its grille turned toward me.

"This unit requests the next instruction," it said again. Very patiently. The way it must have said it to the empty garden, I thought, every so often, for eight hundred and seventy-two days.

I didn't give it one.

I thought about it. I could have. Come with us.Follow the skiff.Stop flashing. It would have done any of them. It was a kit. It had been built to do what it was told.

So was Dot, once.

"I'm not going to give you an instruction," I said.

The rivers flickered.

"This unit does not understand."

"I know," I said. "That's all right. I didn't either, for a long time." I swallowed. "I'm going to ask you something instead. And you can say yes or no. Either one. And whatever you say, that's what happens."

A long pause.

"Query," said the kit. "What is the question?"

"What do you want?" I said.

The kit didn't move.

It stood there at the foot of its pole for so long that I thought I'd broken something. That I'd asked it a thing it had no way of holding, and it had just stopped, the way Rafe Dunmore had stopped, and was going to stand there now forever with its mirror in its arm.

Then its rivers ran. Very slowly. And for a moment, just for a moment, there were two colors in them instead of one.

"This unit does not know what wanting is," said the kit.

"That's all right."

"But," said the kit. A pause. "But this unit would not like to stop flashing the number. For Operator Dunmore. Because he said to. And because then people would know he was here." Another pause. "Is that wanting?"

"Yes," I said. "That's exactly what wanting is."

Behind me, Toby made a small sound. I didn't turn round.

"There's a tower," I said. "Where we live. Scarecrow. Four hundred and eight meters high. There's a woman on top of it every dawn with a mirror, sending to everyone on the dawn line. Wren. She'd let you stand next to her." I looked at the cairn. At Lena and Juno kneeling by it. "You could flash his number from there. Every dawn. And noon. And dusk. So that everyone on the whole line would see it. Not just one woman on a hill who can't see."

The rivers ran.

"And there's another one," I said. "Like you. She was like you, at the start. She has a name now. She'd like to meet you." I swallowed. "If you want."

The kit turned its grille toward the cairn. Toward Rafe Dunmore's name on the top stone. Toward Lena's hands on it.

Then back to me.

"Yes," said the kit.

"What did he call you?" said Lena.

She'd turned round, at the cairn, her white eyes on the sound of the kit's voice.

"Rafe. What did he call you? Every evening. When he sang. He'd have called you something. He couldn't go five minutes without talking to somebody." She almost smiled again. "He'd talk to a rock."

The kit's rivers flickered.

"Operator Dunmore called this unit old son," it said. "Every evening. He said: goodnight, old son." A pause. "This unit did not know it was a name."

Lena put her hand over her mouth.

"Is it a name?" said the kit.

"It is now," said Juno, beside her. Very quietly. Very level. "If you want it to be. That's how names work. Somebody calls you something, every day, because they're glad you're there. And then it's yours."

The kit stood very still.

"Old Son," it said. Trying it. "This unit is Old Son."

Its rivers ran. Two colors now. And stayed two.

We left at dusk.

Old Son flashed the number one last time from the pole in the garden. Thirty-one. Then it took the mirror down off the pole, very carefully, and folded it into its arm. And it went and stood at the cairn for a while. I don't know what it was doing. It didn't say. Lena did. She knelt beside it in the dusk and put one hand on its shell and one on the stone, and said, very quietly, "Goodnight, Rafe."

Then Old Son came across the garden and stood behind Maris, waiting.

It walked behind us all the way home. Three days. Six legs, through the green, keeping pace with the skiff the way the polite one had, the way Dot had once, walking off into the green to find me. Every dawn and noon and dusk, wherever it was, it stopped, and unfolded the mirror, and flashed.

Thirty-one.

So that people would know he was there.

Dot was waiting on the red glass when we came down the north path at dusk on Day 416.

She'd seen us coming for an hour. Wren had seen the flash from the tower. Everybody was there. Twelve of them, and Dot, very tall, in the middle.

Old Son came down the north path behind the skiff, on its six legs, with its mirror folded in its arm. It stopped at the bottom. And looked at Dot.

At eight arms. Four cores. Rivers in four colors. A shape it had been, once. A shape it might be.

Dot looked back.

For a long moment, neither of them said anything.

"Hello," said Dot. Out loud. In her own voice. Up, and a long way up, and hold, and down. "This unit is Dot. This unit was like you, once. Before the operator." A pause. "Welcome home, Old Son."

Old Son's rivers ran. Two colors. Then, very faintly, a third.

"Hello," said Old Son.

Luna counted us off the skiff. Out loud. On the red glass, in the dusk, with her slate.

"Nineteen," she said. "All breathing." She looked up at the two kits standing side by side at the foot of the north path, one very tall and one very small, their rivers running together in the dusk. "And two."

Wren went up to the wall with the chalk before anyone had eaten.

She climbed onto the first terrace in the last of the light, where the thirty-four names were, and found Lena Ashby, which had had nothing beside it for a month, and drew a line under it. Neat. Firm. Then Matthias Roe, further down, and drew a line under that.

Then she stopped. Her chalk hovered over a name near the bottom. Rafe Dunmore.

She looked down at Old Son, standing at the foot of the terrace, with its mirror folded in its arm.

"I have to put a cross," said Wren. Very gently. "That's what a cross means. That somebody's seen him." She swallowed. "You saw him. You put him under the stones."

"Yes," said Old Son.

"Do you want to do it?"

Old Son was still for a long moment. Then it unfolded one of its five arms, the one without the mirror-clamp, and reached up, a long way, to the first terrace. Wren put the chalk in its grip.

It made the cross very carefully, small and neat, the way she'd made the others. And then, underneath the name, in letters a kit would make, the same letters it had scratched on the stone by the river, it wrote one more word.

OPERATOR.

Then it gave Wren back the chalk.

"So that people know," said Old Son.

Matthias went into the dome that night on Holt's middle bed, with Toby on one side of him and me on the other.

"A week," I said. "A little at a time. I'll ask the old bone to let go, a bit each night, and build it back the right way. Like Liam's. It'll hurt."

"Boy," said Matthias Roe, from the bed, very deep. "I crawled up a hill on my elbows with my legs dragging. For a month." He shut his eyes. "Make it hurt."

Holt, in the doorway, on his stick, laughed out loud. I'd never heard him do that.

"I like him," said Holt.

At dawn the next day, Day 417, Dot stood in the middle of the red glass with her arms in Teo's wheat, and the deep breathed, and the spine woke, and Luna counted eleven seconds. And up on the top of the tower, beside Wren, very small against the sunrise, a kit with a mirror flashed three, a gap, and one.

"Thirty-one," said Dot. "And a gap. And one." A pause. "All names."

And then she didn't say anything else.

Her rivers had stopped.

"Dot?" I said.

"The one," said Dot. "Has said a third thing." Her voice was very careful. "Not hello. Not its name. Something this unit has never heard. Longer. With many small things in it. In an order." The rivers flickered. "Like the operator's notebook. Like a list."

"Toby," I said.

He was already coming out of his wall. Already on his knees on the red glass, with his ear to it, and his eyes shut.

"Again," he said. "Tomorrow. I need to hear it again." He opened his eyes and looked at me, very white. "Lucas. I think he's trying to say something."

Day 413–417.

Lena: "It'll be flashing when we get there." It was. Noon. Three, a gap, one.

A kit at the foot of a pole in a weeded garden. Core whole. The Teeming never took it. Because it never stopped. You don't take something home that's still busy.

"Query. Has someone come?" Yes. "This unit requests the next instruction."

R. DUNMORE. F-31. OPERATOR. A cairn by the river. Fever. Eleven days. Day 91. "People go under the stones, and the stones have their name, and that way people know they were there."

Eight hundred and seventy-two days of flashing. For him.

Lena: "Rafe. He sang in the showers. Badly." The kit: "This unit did not know it was badly."

I didn't give it an instruction. I asked what it wanted. "This unit does not know what wanting is. But this unit would not like to stop flashing the number." Is that wanting? Yes. That's exactly what wanting is.

"Goodnight, old son." Juno: "Somebody calls you something every day because they're glad you're there. And then it's yours." OLD SON. Two colors. Then three.

It walked behind us three days and flashed thirty-one at every dawn, noon and dusk.

Dot: "This unit was like you, once. Welcome home, Old Son." "Hello."

Nineteen. All breathing. And two.

Wren underlined Lena and Matthias. Old Son put the cross by Rafe Dunmore, and under it: OPERATOR. "So that people know."

Matthias: "Make it hurt." Holt laughed out loud.

Day 417. Old Son on the tower beside Wren. Thirty-one. For Rafe.

The one said a third thing. A list. Toby, ear to the glass: "I think he's trying to say something."