Chapter 148 Acknowledged

The mirror at twenty was too low.

That was the first thing Wren said when we found the flash. It came from the side of the ridge instead of the top, appearing and disappearing behind a stand of silver-green as the wind moved it.

“Below the old mark,” she said.

I slowed the skiff.

“Has something happened?”

“I don't know.”

She lifted her own mirror and answered.

The light ahead stopped.

Then came back, three quick flashes and a long pause, followed by the same two numbers.

Twenty.

Still twenty.

Luna leaned forward to look at the slope beneath us.

“Come round from the open side. Give them room to see us.”

I turned into the wind and went slowly.

There was a narrow shelf beneath the ridge, partly sheltered by an overhang. Someone had cleared the loose stones from it and stacked them along the outer edge, leaving a flat way between the shelter and the mirror.

A board lay on that path.

A man sat on it, one hand braced against the ground. Small rollers beneath the board caught the light as he pushed himself toward the shelter.

His legs lay straight in front of him.

He saw the skiff coming and stopped.

Wren lifted her free hand.

The man looked at her, then at the hull, then at the empty place between Liam and Luna.

He went back toward the shelter anyway.

“Wait,” Luna said quietly.

I held us above the open ground beyond the shelf.

We waited.

He came out again carrying a narrow metal strip.

Held it up where we could see.

Something had been scratched into it, but I couldn't read it from where we were without trying to look through too many things at once. The skiff needed my attention.

Wren could read it through the glass.

“Name your base,” she said.

Liam looked at her.

“He's asking us.”

Wren sat down, laid the telescope across her knees, and began with the mirror.

SCARECROW.

Then, after a pause:

WREN. F-11.

The man's shoulders moved.

He lowered the metal strip.

Then pointed at the clear ground beside his path.

I set the hull down.

Nobody climbed out until Wren had called to him and he'd answered. His voice was rough, stronger than I'd expected.

“Come where I can see your hands.”

Wren stepped out first.

Both hands open.

“It's me.”

“I can see that.”

He looked at her face for a long moment.

“I mean, I can hear it.”

Wren crouched so he wouldn't have to keep looking up.

“What's your name?”

The man's mouth moved as though he'd been about to give a different answer.

“Ellis. Ellis Venn.”

“I'm glad to meet you, Ellis.”

He looked past her.

“Who's flying it?”

I lifted a hand.

“Lucas.”

“The black eyes.”

“Yes.”

He considered me for a moment.

“Your landings need work.”

Liam laughed before he could stop himself.

I looked at the hull. It had left a shallow scrape where the ground rose under one side.

Ellis was right.

His knees wouldn't bend.

Not properly. I could see that before he told us. His legs were scarred, with old changes around both joints, and the way he shifted his weight suggested that movement hurt even where it was still possible.

The board had handles fastened to its sides. He used them to lift himself over the places where the rollers caught.

The mirror stood at a height he could reach sitting down.

Behind it, the path climbed toward the old signal mark in a series of short, cleared strips.

“I used to get up there,” he said, following my eyes.

“What changed?”

“Got tired of coming down badly.”

He pushed one palm against the ground and shifted the board closer to the shelter.

“Most things change for a reason like that.”

Liam offered water.

Ellis took it, drank, and handed the cup back without the long hesitation Anja had needed.

“I have some,” he said. “It's the carrying that's a nuisance.”

“We can leave you more.”

“Are you leaving me?”

“No,” Wren said. “Not unless you want us to.”

He looked at her.

The cup stayed halfway between his hand and Liam's.

Then he let it go.

“Good.”

We told him where we'd come from.

Twenty people at Scarecrow. Two kits. Shelters on the high ground because the lower canyon had been damaged. Food. Water. Somewhere to lie down where he wouldn't have to get himself up a ridge before sunrise.

He listened without interrupting.

At the mention of the kits, his eyes narrowed.

“Working?”

“Yes.”

“Both?”

“Yes.”

He looked away toward the mirror.

“One of them kept flashing thirty-one for a long time,” I said.

“I know.”

His voice changed.

“We all did.”

He didn't ask how long he'd have to wait before we left.

He asked whether we could carry a box.

I thought of Anja and her letters, but this one was bigger. A shallow crate pushed beneath a shelf, wrapped against the damp with two layers of old packing cloth.

Liam brought it out while Ellis watched.

“Level,” Ellis said.

Liam adjusted his hands.

The crate held slates, thin pieces of metal, strips of stiff material with writing on both sides. Some were tied together. Some had numbers cut into their corners.

“Messages,” Ellis said.

Wren went still.

“All of them?”

“All I could keep.”

He lifted the top slate.

Rows of numbers. Days. Times of morning. Short phrases in a hand that grew smaller toward the bottom.

RAIN. NO SUN.

HOLDING.

WATER LOW.

One row had only a number and three marks beneath it.

“I couldn't get the rest,” he said. “Cloud went over.”

Wren touched the edge of the slate without taking it.

“How far back?”

“Before you started saying Scarecrow.”

He looked at her.

“Before some of the numbers stopped.”

Luna knelt beside the crate.

“Did anyone answer them?”

“Sometimes.”

He pointed to the second column.

“If I saw an answer, it went there. If I didn't, I left it empty.”

There were a great many empty spaces.

I looked at one line where the writing had been pressed deep enough to score the slate beneath it.

STILL HERE.

No answer beside it.

Ellis followed my eyes.

“Doesn't mean nobody heard.”

“I know.”

“Doesn't mean they died either.”

I looked at him.

He held my gaze until I nodded.

A silent mirror wasn't a grave.

We'd learned that enough times that I should have remembered without being told.

Wren turned one of the metal strips over.

On the back were neat printed letters, faded but still readable. Part of a field report, cut down and used again.

OPERATOR ACTIVE.

OBSERVATION CONTINUES.

Below that, a time and an acknowledgment mark.

Ellis saw what she was reading.

“Old receipt,” he said. “When the machine still worked.”

“What did you send?” Luna asked.

“That I couldn't leave the base on foot. Asked whether they were sending transport.”

I looked at the printed words again.

“Was that the answer?”

“That was the receipt.”

He took the strip gently from Wren.

“The answer never came.”

For a little while, I could hear only the wind moving through the growth beyond the shelf.

Liam set the cup down too carefully.

Luna's face had become very still.

Ellis looked from one of us to the next.

“You aren't them.”

“No,” said Luna.

“Then don't stand there looking as though I asked you to explain it.”

He put the strip back in the crate with the writing uppermost.

“I kept the blank side useful.”

Wren pulled the packing cloth over the slates.

“We'll take them.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

He nodded, and for the first time since we'd landed, his shoulders came down.

I asked before looking more closely at his knees.

He gave me permission, then watched my face while I worked out what I could see and what I couldn't yet understand.

It was old damage. Enough of it that a quick change would be a very bad way to begin.

“I can't give you a day when you'll walk,” I said.

He looked down at the board.

“Can I bring this?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have something for getting about while you decide.”

I almost told him I wasn't deciding whether to help.

Then I understood that wasn't what he'd meant.

We worked out how to move the board with him on it, keeping his legs supported. Liam and Luna lifted while Wren guided the front end. I held the skiff steady against the uneven ground.

Ellis told us when to stop.

We stopped.

It took longer than carrying him would have.

It was his way of leaving.

The crate went beside him, tied where it couldn't slide.

We put food and water in the shelter, covered them, and left a message at the old mirror stand. Ellis read Wren's lettering before he let us take the mirror down.

ELLIS VENN. ALIVE. GONE TO SCARECROW.

He nodded.

Then pointed to the lower corner.

“Put the day.”

She added it.

Day 431.

He sat back with his hands on the crate.

“All right,” he said.

I lifted us off the shelf.

We were halfway home when he asked about the Teeming.

Not unexpectedly. We'd passed a cluster of them moving along the bank of a stream below, and his hand had tightened on the side of the hull until the knuckles went pale.

“They don't come near your camp?”

Luna looked at me.

I kept my eyes on the rim and answered him.

“Some have. We're trying to learn how to live beside them.”

For several breaths, he said nothing.

Then, “Is that why you've come for us now?”

“No.”

“Because you think it's safe?”

“No. Because we said we'd come. Because you shouldn't have had to stay there alone.”

The wind caught the corner of his blanket. Liam tucked it back beneath his hand.

Ellis watched him do it.

“Tell me about the camp first,” he said.

So we did.

We stopped once.

I drank and rested my leg while Wren checked the way ahead. Ellis asked Luna how many people could help him off the board if he got stuck somewhere.

“More than one,” she said.

He considered that.

“Good.”

Liam offered him a piece of bread.

Ellis ate it with one hand resting on the crate, as though the messages might be left behind if he stopped touching them.

When we climbed back aboard, I made sure the tie around it was still firm.

He saw me check.

Said nothing.

Kept his hand there anyway.

Sera was waiting when we came over the canyon rim.

I saw her beside the landing place, red hair moving in the wind, one hand lifted. Dot stood behind her. Ilse was keeping the path clear.

I hadn't looked for the clasp once.

Not because I'd forgotten her.

Because I'd been carrying someone else home, and she'd said she would take the step.

I landed more carefully than I had on the western ridge.

Ellis watched the ground come toward us.

“Better,” he said.

Liam made a noise that was almost a cough.

Luna got out before either of us could answer.

We brought Ellis into the camp on his board.

Liam had wanted to carry it, but Ellis asked to try the path first. Dot walked beside him, moving small obstacles with two hands before his rollers reached them.

He looked up at her once.

Then again.

“Thank you.”

“This unit is pleased to assist.”

He stopped beside a shallow join in the paving.

“Left side catches.”

Dot lowered a hand, felt the edge, and laid a thin flat piece over it.

The board went across.

Ellis looked back at the join, then at her.

“I could get used to that.”

“This unit hopes so.”

Anja heard his name before she saw him.

She pushed herself higher on her bedding.

“Twenty?”

Ellis turned toward her voice.

“Twenty-two?”

She nodded.

He looked at the mirror beside her bed.

“Your hinge always slipped.”

“Only in the wind.”

“It was always windy.”

She smiled.

A real smile, this time, with something tired and astonished beneath it.

I left them talking about mirrors while we found a place for his bedding.

Twenty-one people.

I counted when nobody was looking.

Then I went back to help Liam with the crate.

Toby asked whether Ellis wanted him to look at the places where the board had rubbed.

Ellis said yes after Toby explained what he meant.

I told Toby what I'd seen in the joints. He listened, asked two questions I hadn't thought of, then wrote them down for tomorrow instead of making me begin again while I was still tired from the flight.

“You can rest,” he told me.

“So can you.”

“I did. You were away.”

That was fair.

I sat outside the shelter and took the bowl Priya handed me.

Sera came over with her own.

“How was the step?” I asked.

She looked at her hands.

“Different.”

She told me while we ate.

Dot had stayed at the opening. Sera had gone down to the upper shelf with Corr, who wanted to see the arch and had agreed to turn back whenever either of them asked.

The light had come first.

They'd answered with the lamp.

Then one of the Teeming had climbed toward them, stopped below the same place as yesterday, and set something on the step.

“A stone?” I asked.

“Not quite. A piece of plate, I think. Empty. Curved like a little dish.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, at first.”

She took another mouthful before going on.

“I was very good at that part.”

The creature had moved back.

Sera waited. Then she went forward far enough to look at the thing without reaching across the space it had left.

It was wet inside.

Cool water. A thin film of it, caught in the curve.

She touched the rim, then drew her hand away. The Teeming came forward again and put one limb against the same place.

“I thought it wanted it back,” she said. “So I moved.”

“Did it?”

“No. It touched the rim again. Then the wall beside it.”

She frowned.

“I didn't understand.”

That sounded like the most useful part of the story so far.

Dot showed me the recording when Sera had finished eating.

I watched the little curved object on the step. Sera's hand. The Teeming touching the wall.

There was a thin silver thread in that patch of stone.

It brightened when the limb rested beside it.

Then dimmed.

Below, beyond the edge of the picture, the queen moved. I could see only part of the pale body, but a strand lifted into view and settled against the lower ledge.

A small pool of light appeared along it.

Sera moved the lamp closer to the dish.

The Teeming didn't move.

Then she lowered it again.

The creature touched the dish once more.

“What made you think of heat?” I asked.

“I didn't. Not at first. Corr said the wall looked wet, and I put my hand on the stone. It was warmer where the thread was.”

On the screen, she touched the wall with the back of two fingers.

Then the empty curve of plate.

“I warmed the edge. A little. No flame.”

I watched.

Nothing leaped. Nothing recoiled.

The Teeming reached forward and touched the warmed place.

Stayed there.

Then it lifted the little dish and carried it down the track.

The hand's camera followed as far as it could.

Below, the Teeming brought the dish beside the queen's extended strand. The strand curved toward it. Touched the rim.

Light moved along the silver.

The creature waited.

Then returned with the dish.

Sera looked at me.

“I did it again. Just the edge.”

“Did they take it to the water?”

“No. Back to the strand.”

We watched the second journey.

Touch. Light.

The dish came back up.

This time, Sera left it alone.

On the screen, she held her hands against her knees and waited.

The Teeming touched the rim.

Then the wall.

Then pushed the dish a small distance toward her.

Sera looked toward Corr, outside the picture.

“What did you think?” I asked.

“That it wanted the change again.”

“Not necessarily that the water needed warming.”

“No.”

She leaned closer to the screen.

“Maybe it was trying to work out what I do.”

The third time, she warmed it and moved back.

Below, the strand touched the rim and held there longer than before.

I couldn't see any mouth. Any eyes. Nothing I knew how to read as interest.

But it had been given something three times, and each time it had made contact with the place she'd changed.

“Did you keep going?”

Sera shook her head.

“Three was enough. We left the dish on the step. I showed my hands, and we came up.”

“Did it follow?”

“No.”

I sat back.

The fire in her hands had kept her alive on a ridge where they hadn't stopped climbing.

Now something below our canyon was learning about the same hands through the warmth left in a little dish.

I didn't know what would come of it.

For once, I didn't need to decide before letting myself be glad.

Sera watched my face.

“No one burned,” she said.

“No.”

She looked back at the still picture.

“I'd like to try again.”

Risa and Ilse had news too.

They brought Teo's slate after supper and spread it beside the contact notes.

The leak above the lowest wheat bed was still running. From the safe path, Risa had followed a damp seam downward far enough to know it headed toward the side of the chamber. She couldn't tell whether it entered the nursery pools or passed behind them.

“I stopped there,” she said. “Too many branches.”

Ilse pointed to a mark near the surface.

“We can catch some before it goes in. Put it back into the field channel.”

“All of it?” asked Teo.

“That's the question,” I said.

The slate lay between us.

A line for our water. A space below it where somebody else's water might begin.

“If we stop it,” Sera said, “and it is going to their pools, they won't know why.”

“No.”

“And if we leave it, we lose water the wheat needs,” Teo said.

I nodded.

Neither of them was wrong.

We could have built a wall across the leak in an afternoon. It was the sort of problem I'd once been delighted to find, because I could see the place to change and nobody needed to wait for a tool.

Now there were things below it I couldn't see.

“We measure first,” Luna said. “How much goes past the bed. How much we can spare. Then we show them the water before we change its way.”

“Show them how?” Corr asked.

Sera looked toward the screen.

“Perhaps with a dish.”

We didn't call that a plan yet.

It was something to try. Two little channels where the queen could see them, water passing from one place to another, a way to show what happened when one was closed.

We would begin with water already in a bowl, somewhere safe. No dye in the pools. No closing a passage to see which creature came looking for it.

Risa drew two lines on the slate and a little crosspiece between them.

“I can help build the demonstration,” she said. “Without putting anything through the rock.”

Teo leaned closer.

“And I'll tell you how much the field actually needs, before we argue about giving it away.”

Sera smiled at him.

“Good.”

The thing we were trying to make was still peace.

It was beginning to look like work people could share.

Ellis asked for his crate before bed.

Wren and Dot sat with him while he explained the marks. A line through a date meant uncertain. Two small cuts beside a number meant he'd seen it himself instead of receiving it through another ridge.

An empty space meant no answer recorded.

Nothing else.

Dot repeated that carefully.

“This unit will not infer death from an empty field.”

Ellis looked up at her.

“Good.”

He gave her permission to copy the messages.

Wren sorted them in the order he showed her, asking before moving a strip from one bundle to another.

At the bottom of the crate lay the old printed receipt.

Luna picked it up.

OPERATOR ACTIVE.

OBSERVATION CONTINUES.

She turned it over.

On the back, in Ellis's handwriting, was a message from someone who had needed water.

She set it down with that side facing up.

I wrote late, but not very late.

Sera had gone to bed. Toby had put the bag away. Dot was still with Ellis, the low sound of their voices carrying from the shelter as she asked him to clarify one faded number.

There was one person left on the known line.

Eight, to the south.

Wren had put that slate beside my notebook before she went to sleep.

I looked at it, then at the rows of old messages being copied in the shelter.

One left that we knew how to find.

That was a different sentence.

I wrote it correctly.

Day 431. Acknowledged.

F-twenty flashed from the lower shelf. Ellis Venn.

Old damage to both knees. Uses a board with rollers. Brought it. Make the camp paths usable before making promises about his legs.

He kept the dawn messages. Dates. What he saw. What was passed to him. Blank means no answer recorded.

Asked Command for transport when he couldn't leave on foot. The machine acknowledged him. No transport.

We brought him and the crate.

Twenty-one people. Two kits. Anja knew his mirror habits.

Sera went back with Corr. Dot at the opening.

A curved plate with water. A warm thread in the wall. She warmed the rim. They carried it to the queen's strand.

Three times. It touched the changed place each time.

No flame. No injury. She wants to go again.

The field leak may feed the lower water. Measure before changing it. Make something small to show what we mean.

Dot is copying Ellis's records with his permission.

Eight next. One left on the known line.

Acknowledged isn't the same as answered.