Chapter 198 Warm

Dov brought his own chair.

He arrived outside the medical room with Priya beside him and a small wooden box on his lap. She carried the tools he usually kept within reach when he worked.

“You won't need those for this,” I said.

“They're not for you.”

He looked towards the table inside.

“I thought there might be waiting.”

Priya set the tools down beside the chair.

“He sharpened everything twice before breakfast.”

“Some of them needed it.”

“All of them?”

Dov looked at me.

“Is she staying?”

“Do you want her to?”

He glanced towards Priya.

The answer took longer to reach his mouth than it had taken to reach his face.

“Yes.”

She sat beside him.

I closed the door.

It was Day 566.

There were people waiting after Dov, and people who had asked for another day to think, and people who wanted to know whether an old injury counted if they'd already learned to live with it.

I had told the last group yes.

Living with something did not mean they had agreed to keep it forever.

Dov looked at the silver markings on my hands while Toby brought his notes to the table.

“Does it really not hurt you?”

“Really.”

“And you don't get tired afterwards?”

“Not from changing things.”

He nodded, but I could see the question still working in him.

I had spent months making everyone around me watch for the moment helping became too expensive.

They would not forget that because my hair had changed colour.

“You don't have to save your place for someone worse off,” I said.

Dov looked down at his lap.

Priya put her hand beside his.

He took it.

“All right,” he said.

Restoring his feet did not take long.

Talking beforehand did.

He wanted to know what they would feel like. Whether the old pain would remain. Whether I could make them belong to the rest of him, rather than giving him something that only looked right.

I explained the living structure I could see and the missing continuation I could restore.

Toby asked him what he wanted to do first.

Dov looked towards the box on his lap.

“Stand at my bench.”

Priya smiled without looking at him.

I remembered all the little things he had made while sitting, balancing work across his knees, asking someone else to reach the piece that had fallen just beyond his chair.

Shelves.

Birds.

A wedge for Priya's serving table.

I took care with his feet.

Not because there was a limit approaching.

Because they were his.

When he stood, he kept hold of Priya's hand.

Toby was on his other side.

Dov looked down.

Then across the room.

Then down again.

“I've forgotten how high everything is.”

“You've been glaring at me from that chair for months,” Priya said. “I thought you had the measurements.”

He laughed.

The sound shook.

He took three steps, stopped, and put a hand against the table.

His body was sound. His certainty would take longer.

We let it.

After a while, he turned back towards Priya.

“I had another answer.”

“To what?”

“What I wanted to do first.”

She waited.

“I wanted to stand beside you without everyone pretending they weren't helping.”

Priya's face changed.

She stepped close and put her arms around him.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Toby suddenly found something that needed checking on the far side of the room.

I helped him check it.

Lena came later with Juno.

She found the chair with one hand and sat without waiting for anyone to arrange her.

“I want to see Old Son,” she said.

I looked at her.

“I thought you should know what the answer is before you ask.”

Juno rested a hand on her shoulder.

I sat in front of Lena and explained what I could repair.

Her eyes. The damaged structures that should have received light. The paths that should have carried it clearly.

I could see the whole problem now.

She asked whether it would be like waking up.

“I don't know what the first moment will feel like to you.”

“But you can make it work.”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“Then let's stop talking about it.”

Toby laughed softly.

We did.

When Lena opened her eyes, the room held still.

Her gaze moved past my shoulder to the window.

Light lay across the wall in a pale rectangle.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she turned towards Juno.

“Oh,” she said.

Juno knelt beside her chair.

Lena put a hand against Juno's face, though she no longer needed touch to find it.

“Oh.”

I looked at the floor until they were ready.

Toby asked a few quiet questions. Lena answered without taking her eyes off Juno for very long.

When we opened the door, Old Son stood outside.

Dot had brought him.

Lena rose and went towards him, one careful step at a time.

He held still while she looked.

At his legs.

His arms.

The lights moving within his frame.

Then she smiled so broadly that I had to swallow before I could speak.

“There you are,” she said.

Old Son reached towards her.

She took his hand.

At noon, he flashed thirty-one.

Three. A pause. One.

Lena stood where she could see it.

She cried while he did it, and Juno stayed beside her, and nobody asked whether recovering something meant she ought to be happy about everything.

Rafe was still dead.

The years on the hill had still happened.

Sight did not undo them.

It let her look at the person who had kept the light going.

I stood with Risa beneath the common roof until the sequence ended.

She put her hand in mine.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

The next morning, Sera unfolded the house drawing.

Our house drawing.

The old one, creased along the same lines, with four names and a date in the corner.

She set it on the table while Luna was drinking and Risa was trying to decide whether breakfast smelled inviting or offensive.

“I've finished the changes.”

I looked up.

“To what?”

She gave me a patient expression.

“The thing we've been calling a house for months while using the paper to hold down other paper.”

Luna put her cup down.

“Really?”

“The sleeping rooms are dry. Toby has somewhere to work. The wash shelters are finished. Gareth has enough furniture jobs to complain about for a season.”

Sera smoothed the drawing.

“We're allowed a home too.”

Risa moved her bowl aside.

I leaned over the page.

It was not a palace.

A sheltered entrance opened away from the prevailing wind. A common room had space for a table that did not need to become a bed every evening. Sera's work corner faced the morning light.

There was a washroom with room to move without turning sideways.

A bedroom with the wide bed we already knew how to share.

A smaller room beside it, marked with a question rather than a name.

Risa touched that one.

“And if we need it for something else first?”

“Then we use it for something else,” Sera said.

Luna traced the porch.

“Still a chair for someone visiting.”

“Several, if they behave.”

“And if they don't?” I asked.

“They can sit farther apart.”

I looked at the place where Sera had drawn a narrow shelf beside the bed.

The bird's shelf.

Included without discussion.

I realized I was smiling.

“We should choose the windows before I make them.”

Luna looked at Risa.

Risa looked at Sera.

Then all three looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” Sera replied. “I expected to argue with you for longer.”

The site was on the checked inner bench above the new rooms.

Close enough that we could hear someone calling from the common shelter. Far enough that a conversation at our table did not automatically become a conversation with everyone passing the door.

The queen knew the ground beneath it.

I asked her about the old channels before we marked the final position, and she showed me how her workers used the deeper passages, through thought and patient explanation.

No load over a fragile opening.

No new drain into her nursery route.

A home above another home.

We chose it together.

Then the four of us stood inside the lines Sera had marked while the rooms were still only spaces in the air.

Risa stood where the bed would be.

Luna tried the path from the door to the table.

Sera moved her work corner twice.

I did not change anything until they were satisfied.

After that, the building was easy.

The stone rose without a sound like breaking.

I drew from the material we had prepared and the exposed ground we had agreed to use, shaping structure and finish together.

Walls. Roof. Windows. Channels for water. Floors that would not become treacherous when someone came in wet.

I understood how to keep warmth where we wanted it without making the air close or stale. The small warming system beneath the inner floor used a controlled ordinary energy source, with its workings accessible instead of buried where no one could inspect them.

I could make such things now as easily as I had once made a cup.

I still showed Luna where the shutoff would be.

She appreciated that more than the polished surface of the table.

Sera tested the light at her work corner.

Risa opened the bedroom window and laughed when she saw the field below.

I stood in the doorway and waited for the familiar sense of having given something away from myself to make it real.

There was none.

Only the house.

Only the people inside it.

We carried our belongings up by hand.

Not because I couldn't have moved them together.

Because Sera wanted to decide what belonged where as we brought it in, and because moving a home turned out to involve discovering how many things four people could put on one small shelf.

Luna found three pencils she had accused everyone else of losing.

Risa discovered a cup in a place no cup should have been.

I declined to explain it.

Nessa came to carry the wooden bird herself.

She walked the whole way on her own feet, holding it in both hands.

At the new bedroom, she inspected the shelf.

“That's right.”

“I'm relieved,” I said.

She put the bird down carefully.

Then she looked into the smaller room beside ours.

“Is that for the baby?”

“Eventually,” Risa said.

Nessa nodded as though she had expected nothing less.

“You'll need more shelves.”

Sera made a note on the drawing.

We did not sleep there that first night.

The bedding still needed moving, and Luna wanted the following day's route settled before she let herself become distracted by arranging a house.

We ate at the new table instead.

Four bowls. Four cups. The window open to the last light.

Sera had warmed the food herself.

No shaking hands.

No pause afterwards to let the weakness pass.

Risa noticed me watching and nudged my foot beneath the table.

I smiled at her.

Luna put the route map between us after the bowls were empty.

The relay lay beyond our known paths, but its recorded position was precise enough to find.

We would go in daylight.

We would look before entering.

We would bring enough room for people, because finding someone and then leaving them while we went for a larger craft was a problem I no longer needed to accept.

Sera looked at the point on the map.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Luna said.

Risa's hand found mine beneath the table.

The queen asked her neighbours about our route that night.

By morning, two had answered.

They knew the basin. They avoided the bare rise at its centre. Old signals had passed from it before, but there had been more movement recently.

The northern queen whose people had been compelled did not ask us to destroy it from a distance.

She asked us to make certain it could not hurt her brood again.

I understood the difference.

I promised to find out what was there first.

Then I made a craft with a broad enclosed passenger space, clear windows, proper restraints, and room to carry someone lying down.

No opaque propulsion I had to pretend I understood.

I could move the whole craft without strain, and I could now build its structure from materials suited to the work instead of whatever had been easiest to shape while tired.

Dot inspected the fittings with Luna.

Risa added water, food, coverings, and Toby's medical supplies.

I left more room than I expected to need.

That felt better than leaving just enough.

Sera stayed at Scarecrow.

She had patients to help Toby organize, and she wanted to be there when the next group of people began using the new rooms.

Before we left, she stood beside the craft and looked at its empty passenger places.

“I hope you need all of them.”

“So do I.”

She kissed me, then Luna, briefly against her cheek, and embraced Risa.

“Home after,” she said.

Risa nodded.

“To the new one.”

Sera smiled.

“To the new one.”

I carried that with me as we rose above the camp.

The basin was farther than any flight I'd made in the old hull.

Distance did not bring pain now.

I could hold the craft steady while watching the land open beneath us, adjusting our course around cloud and higher ground without counting how much of myself remained for the journey back.

The absence of that calculation was almost distracting.

Luna sat beside the forward window with the route marked on her slate.

Risa watched the ridges as we crossed them.

Dot compared the recorded position with the terrain.

We passed beyond the last country I recognized.

There were forests there, and broken plains, and pale stretches of exposed stone where water had stripped the slopes. In one valley, a line of Teeming moved beneath the trees without looking up at us.

Independent lives.

Not a single enemy covering the world.

The queen's presence remained with me, clear when I addressed her and quiet when I didn't.

I told her when the basin came into view.

The relay was built into a bare rise.

From above, only a low grey structure and a cleared landing area were obvious. A few dark openings faced the surrounding ground. One narrow mast stood beside the roof.

No people moved outside.

I took us around it once at a distance, keeping high enough that no one could mistake our approach for a landing already agreed.

Dot listened without transmitting.

There was an active signal from the mast, brief and repeating.

No response from another craft that she could identify.

Luna looked at me.

“What can you see?”

I concentrated on the structure.

The grey material opened to my understanding.

Power paths. Communications arrays. Storage spaces. A lower room built behind the exposed face of the rise.

A human body inside that room.

Alive.

Another complex shape beside it.

A kit.

My breath caught.

“One person,” I said. “And a kit.”

Risa turned towards me.

“Can you tell who?”

“Not from here.”

Luna put down the route slate.

“Then we find out.”

I disabled the relay's outward transmission before landing.

No broad pulse.

No heat or blast sent into the rooms below.

I separated the transmitting structure from its power and preserved the local systems that were keeping the occupied room habitable.

Then I held the outer access open and set the craft down where its landing feet rested on sound ground.

Dot remained connected to our craft's ordinary records system while one hand went ahead to look through the entrance.

No movement in the passage.

No one waiting behind the first doorway.

Luna took the front with me beside her. Risa carried the medical bag. Dot followed with light directed towards the floor.

The place smelled of metal and dry air.

Not decay.

Not smoke.

A door waited at the lower end of the passage.

It was locked from the side we stood on.

I changed that.

Keir looked up when the door opened.

For a moment, he didn't seem to understand what he was seeing.

He sat against the wall with one arm held awkwardly across his body. His face was pale beneath a rough growth of beard.

Beside him, a kit stood with several limbs drawn close and one hand resting near his shoulder.

“Keir,” Risa said.

He stared at her.

Then at Luna.

Then at me.

His eyes stopped on my hair.

“Oh,” he said.

His voice cracked.

“I thought I was doing that again.”

“Doing what?” Luna asked, crouching in front of him.

“Seeing people who weren't here.”

Risa set down the bag.

“We're here.”

He looked past us towards the open door.

“Don't let it close.”

I took the entire locking mechanism out of the frame and laid it on the floor where he could see it.

“It won't.”

Only then did he begin to cry.

His shoulder had been injured badly enough that he couldn't use the arm properly. He was dehydrated and weak, though someone had left enough water to keep him alive if he used it carefully.

The kit had been measuring it.

I could see the marks on a cup beside the wall.

Risa stayed with him while I explained what I could do for the shoulder.

He looked at my hands.

At the silver patterns.

Then he nodded.

I repaired the injury without making him move first.

When the pain stopped, he closed his eyes and made a sound that frightened me until I understood it was relief.

Luna helped him drink slowly.

I turned towards the kit.

Dot was already speaking to it.

Its lights moved faintly behind a darkened panel.

“You came from Dane's base?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The voice was quiet and level.

“Do you need repairs?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“May I look?”

Another pause.

Then it unfolded the damaged limb.

The damage had been deliberate.

A control connection severed. Two joints crushed. Power storage removed, leaving the kit dependent on the room's supply and unable to walk farther than the cable allowed.

I did not need someone to explain how that had happened before making it whole again.

I asked permission for each part, then repaired the structure and restored an independent ordinary power store.

The kit lifted its freed hand.

Turned it.

Opened and closed the fingers.

Dot stood very still beside it.

“What is your name?” she asked.

Keir opened his eyes.

“I asked that yesterday.”

The kit looked towards him.

Then towards Dot.

“Aster,” it said.

I waited for it to explain whether that had been an operator's name, a designation, or something chosen.

It didn't.

I realized it didn't owe us the explanation.

“I'm Lucas,” I said.

“I remember.”

The words settled heavily in the room.

We had met before.

This time, I had asked.

We did not make Keir tell the whole story before leaving the locked room.

Luna helped him stand. His shoulder worked now, but he was still a man who had spent days afraid and barely fed.

Risa walked beside him to the craft.

Aster followed under its own power.

At the top of the passage, it stopped and looked back.

Dot waited with it.

I wondered whether it was recording the place.

Or making certain it no longer had to remain there.

Then it continued into the daylight.

Risa had already opened the passenger compartment.

Keir sat on a proper padded place with water within reach and no locked door between him and the sky.

He touched the edge of the seat.

“You made this?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the open spaces around him.

“Better straps than the old hull.”

“I had a good example.”

He understood after a moment.

Then he put a hand over his face again.

Luna stayed with them while Dot and I copied the relay records.

The transmitter remained disabled.

There were no other living people in the structure. I checked the remaining compartments, and Dot's hand confirmed the visible spaces as we opened them.

The records contained an arrival entry corresponding to the shuttle's visit to Dane's base.

Twelve humans.

One kit.

A carrier listed separately among the equipment.

A later departure listed eleven humans and the carrier.

The kit and one human had been retained at the relay.

Keir and Aster.

We now knew that much independently of whatever he might be able to tell us.

The outgoing destination was another coded position beyond the basin.

Dot saved the complete records before we tried to interpret it.

Then we removed the relay's ability to operate any of the coercion devices linked to it.

I left shelter, water, and ordinary local power functioning.

If someone else was brought here, I wanted a place they could survive.

I did not leave a locked room.

Keir spoke during the flight home.

Not all at once.

Risa sat beside him. Luna asked only enough questions to keep the sequence clear. I listened while guiding the craft south-west towards familiar ground.

The shuttle crew had looked human.

Two people in clothing with station markings. Another whose face he hadn't seen clearly.

Dane had told his group the transfer was authorized and that the receiving facility would have proper medical equipment and an onward route.

Keir had asked where.

The answer had remained an office name and a promise.

“I should have walked up to you,” he said.

Risa shook her head.

“You were trying to speak to the others.”

“I did. Some wanted to go. Some didn't know. Dane said staying would cost us the transport arrangement. Said there wouldn't be another chance.”

Luna's face had become very still.

“What happened at the relay?”

“Another craft. More people waiting. They started separating us from the equipment.”

He looked towards Aster.

“They told it to erase the local records after transfer. It didn't.”

Aster's lights shifted.

Keir swallowed.

“I said we wanted to leave. I thought if we both said it—”

His hand moved to the shoulder I had repaired.

Risa took that hand before he could finish.

“You don't have to do the rest now.”

He stared out of the window.

After a while, he nodded.

He had seen the other eleven taken into the second craft.

Alive.

Dane among them.

He could not tell us what Dane had known before the first shuttle arrived. He could tell us Dane had been angry at the relay when the terms changed, and frightened when nobody cared that he was angry.

That did not make every choice he'd made harmless.

It did make the picture less simple than the one fear had tried to draw for us.

“Did he try to help you?” Luna asked.

Keir looked down.

“He said I was one of his people. That we were meant to move together.”

“What did they say?”

“That the schedule had changed.”

No one spoke for a while after that.

I kept the craft steady.

There were things I could now reshape without effort.

The sound of those words in Keir's voice was not one of them.

The queen knew we were bringing two home before the camp could see us.

I told her their names.

Keir.

Aster.

A person and a kit who had waited in a locked room while everyone at Scarecrow kept a place for them.

Her answer reached me with a warmth I still hadn't learned to receive without emotion.

*The missing have become found.*

*Two of them.*

*Then we hold the other names.*

I looked at the copied departure list beside Dot.

*Yes.*

I told her the other eleven had been alive when Keir last saw them.

She asked me to send the outgoing position once Dot understood it.

She would ask who knew the country around it.

We would keep looking together.

Sera was waiting when we landed.

So were Toby, Holt, and enough other people that Luna had to ask for space before we opened the passenger side.

Keir came down slowly.

He saw the new buildings and stopped.

“This is Scarecrow?”

“Yes,” Risa said.

“You've been busy.”

“A little.”

Then Aster stepped out.

Dot moved beside it.

Old Son approached from the water station, stopped far enough away to leave room, and raised one hand.

Aster looked at him.

Then raised its own.

I had no idea what either of them was saying.

I hoped they would tell us if they wanted to.

Toby led Keir towards the medical room, where Sera had already put a dry blanket beside the bed.

We had brought him to somewhere that existed before he needed to ask for it.

That mattered to me more than I could explain.

Holt changed the count after the first checks were finished.

One hundred and six.

One hundred and three humans.

Dot, Old Son, and Aster.

He moved Keir's name from the missing page to the people-home page.

Then he wrote Aster beneath it.

The space where the kit's unknown name had been was no longer empty.

Eleven human names remained on the other sheet.

Holt underlined the note that they had been seen alive at the relay's outgoing transfer.

“That's something,” he said.

“Yes.”

“It's not everything.”

“No.”

He looked at me.

“Don't let the second fact eat the first.”

I sat with that for a while.

Then I went to see Keir.

He was asleep.

Toby had checked him, given him food he could manage, and stopped asking questions when his answers became slow.

Aster stood beside the bed with a connection to the room's supply available but no longer required for every movement.

It turned when I approached.

“Does he need something?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you?”

Aster considered that.

“May I stay here?”

“Beside him?”

“Yes.”

“As long as you both want.”

It turned back towards the bed.

I stood there for a moment, then moved towards the door.

Behind me, Aster spoke again.

“Lucas.”

I looked back.

“The door remains open?”

“It can. Or you can close it from this side when you want privacy. You can open it again yourself.”

Aster looked at the latch.

Then it crossed the room and tested it.

Closed.

Open.

Closed.

Open.

After the fourth time, it left the door halfway between the two.

I let that be the answer.

At supper, Dov stood beside Priya while she served.

He had been helping all afternoon. I could tell because she was telling him he had done enough, and he was pretending the bowls needed rearranging.

When the last people had food, he took the cloth from her hands and set it down.

She looked at him.

“What?”

“I've been trying to ask you something for a while.”

“You've asked where the clean bowls go six times.”

“Something else.”

I should have looked away.

Risa should have too.

Neither of us did quickly enough.

Dov offered Priya his hand.

“There isn't any music,” she said.

“I noticed. It's been making this harder.”

Her face softened.

Then she took his hand.

They moved into the clear space beside the table, slowly, laughing when he looked down at his feet instead of at her.

After a few steps, she lifted his chin.

“Here.”

He looked at her.

She kissed him.

Risa leaned against my shoulder with a pleased little sound.

Across the shelter, Toby put his arm around Wren. Liam found Anja's hand beneath the table.

For once, nobody needed me to improve anything.

We slept in the new house that night.

Sera had moved the bedding while we were gone. She had also put the old cup on the shelf near her work corner, where she could reach it if she wanted water.

My stick stood beside the door.

Risa's books were beneath the window.

Luna's map case hung where she could find it without waking everyone.

The wooden bird kept watch beside the bed.

I stood in the common room after the lamps were lowered and listened to the small sounds of people I loved getting ready to sleep.

There was warmth beneath my bare feet.

No draught found the place where the door met the wall.

Outside, Scarecrow held a hundred and six people and the queen's nursery neighbours.

Eleven names still waited on a page.

Tomorrow, we would read the next coordinate.

Tonight, Keir was asleep behind a door he could open.

I went to bed.

Day 566–568. Warm.

Restored Dov's feet and Lena's sight. Other treatment appointments continuing. No pain or exhaustion from changing matter. Lena watched Old Son flash thirty-one. Dov danced with Priya after supper. She kissed him. Both seemed pleased with the arrangement.

Built our house on checked ground from Sera's revised plan. Four names still on the drawing. Sheltered porch, proper washroom, work corner, shared bedroom, smaller room beside it. Bird's shelf included. Moved in tonight.

Reached the relay basin with Luna, Risa, and Dot. Disabled outward transmission without disturbing occupied-room support. Found Keir and the missing kit alive, locked in the lower room. Kit's name is Aster. Repaired injuries and damage with permission. Brought both home.

Records confirm arrival of twelve humans, one kit, and Dane's carrier. Later departure recorded eleven humans and the carrier. Keir and Aster retained. Keir saw all eleven alive boarding the outgoing craft. Crew appeared human and wore station markings. Identity and authority unconfirmed. Dane protested the separation at the relay.

Outgoing coded position recovered. Dot interpreting. Queen will ask about the country when we have it. Relay cannot transmit coercion commands now. Shelter, water, local power left usable. Locked room opened permanently to the passage.

One hundred and six people home. One hundred and three humans, Dot, Old Son, Aster.

Eleven still missing.

Keir has a bed. Aster has chosen to stay beside him.

Our floor is warm.