Chapter 221 Of the Brood

Dot taught Toby his mother's pattern at dawn on Day 606.

I didn't go down to the glass. I'd decided in the night that I wouldn't follow the hello again, not yet. Not until I knew what I was doing, and not until I knew whether reaching into the spine from the surface would bring Crane's instruments down on us faster than we were ready for.

Toby went anyway.

He told me about it at breakfast, sitting on our porch step with a cup of tea between his hands and his eyes red.

"She's near the end," he said. "Twenty-ninth. Dot says she's quiet. Not careful, like your mum. Just quiet. Like she's listening for something."

"She's listening for you," Risa said, from the window seat behind us.

Toby looked down into his cup.

"Dot says she's been doing it every morning for months," he said. "Since the first time you held your mum out on the glass. She answers the hello, and then she waits. Like she's waiting for someone to say something back."

"Did you?"

He shook his head.

"Not yet." He turned the cup in his hands. "I didn't know what to say. Years of not being able to talk to her properly, and now I've got eleven seconds and a pattern, and I couldn't think of one thing."

Sera, sitting on the step below him, reached up and put her hand on his knee.

"You'll think of it," she said.

"I know." Toby drank his tea. "Tomorrow, maybe."

Risa wanted to go to the nursery courts.

She'd been in the quiet room most of the day before, and half the night. She said she'd slept better than she had in weeks and that she'd go back there whenever the baby needed it. But she said she was going to lose her mind if she didn't see some sky.

"I'll go mad," she said. "Faceted walls. Lovely. I'll go mad anyway."

So after breakfast we walked her to the courts.

Not far. The receiving courts beside the broad passage, the ones we'd built for the mountain's rescued young. They'd been empty for weeks after the last mother came for her thirteen, and then the neighbouring brood had asked whether their own young might use them in the daytime, for play. They were sheltered and safe and full of warm stone, and the young liked the strips of bare earth we'd left through each court.

So now there were young there most mornings.

Twenty or so. The neighbouring mother's brood, the ones she'd brought from the old receiving place and settled beyond the outer ridge. Some of them were the thirteen who'd been held in the mountain. The rest were their brothers and sisters who'd stayed behind with the mother through the long flooded months.

They'd grown since we found them.

The smallest were still small enough to fit in the crook of an attendant's forelimb. The largest were nearly the size of a dog. They chased each other along the bare earth strips, and climbed the warm walls, and tapped at each other in quick patterns I'd only half learned, and made small vibrating sounds that Toby said were laughing.

Two attendants watched them from the shade.

They lifted their heads when we came to the low wall at the edge of the nearest court.

Dot was with us. She'd come up from the glass after the count. She tapped a greeting on the stone and the attendants answered and lowered their heads again.

Risa sat on the wall.

She sat carefully, the way she sat everywhere now, one hand on the stone and one on her stomach, easing herself down.

Sera sat beside her. Luna stood, the way Luna always stood.

I sat on the ground at Risa's feet, where I seemed to live.

For a while, nothing happened.

The young played. The sun climbed over the canyon rim. Risa closed her eyes and turned her face up to it and sighed.

Then the baby moved.

I felt it first through Risa's knee against my shoulder.

Not a kick. A shift. The whole small body turning inside her, slowly, the way a sleeper turns toward a window when the light changes.

Then her silver lit.

Not the way it had lit at dawn the day before, reaching for the spine. Not the way it had lit at night when Risa was angry, pushing toward the door.

Softer than that.

Curious.

It turned toward the court.

Toward the young.

Risa opened her eyes.

"Lucas."

"I feel it."

"She's" Risa stopped. Pressed her hand flat to the side of her stomach. "She's turning. Toward them."

I looked. With permission. Risa didn't even need to nod any more.

The baby's silver had gathered on the side nearest the court, the way a child gathers at a window when something interesting is happening outside. Bright and quick and busy. And from it, faint, so faint I almost didn't catch it, came a pulse.

Not a word. Not a sound.

A pattern.

Short. Short. Long. Short.

I knew that pattern.

I'd heard it a hundred times in the courts. Dot had taught it to me in the first week the thirteen's young were here. It was one of the first things young Teeming learned to say. It meant something like come here, only lighter than that. Brighter.

Come and play.

In the court, every young Teeming stopped.

All twenty of them, at once, mid-chase, mid-climb, mid-tap. They went still the way the young always went still when an adult called, heads up, forelimbs tucked.

Then they turned.

All of them. Toward the wall where Risa was sitting.

The two attendants in the shade lifted their heads too.

One of them stood up.

"Dot," I said quietly.

"This unit heard it," Dot said. Her lamps had gone very bright. "This unit did not make it."

"No."

"The young one did."

"Yes."

Risa had both hands on her stomach now. She was staring at the court, at the twenty small faces all turned toward her.

"What did she say?" she whispered.

"Come and play," I said.

Risa made a sound I'd never heard her make. Half a laugh, half something else.

"She can't," she said. "She's not born."

"I know."

"She can't come and play. She doesn't even have legs yet. Well, she has legs, but."

"I know," I said.

In the court, the smallest of the young had started moving.

It was one of the thirteen.

I knew it because it had a pale mark on its left foreplate, where the mountain's machines had pressed against it as a hatchling. I'd healed the plate, months ago, the day we brought the thirteen home, but the mark had stayed. Its mother said it would stay. Some scars did.

It came across the bare earth strip slowly, looking back once at its attendant.

The attendant tapped something. I caught careful and slow and something I didn't know.

The young one kept coming.

It reached the base of the wall where Risa was sitting and stopped.

It looked up at her.

Not at her face. At her stomach.

Risa held very still.

The young one tapped the stone. Once. Twice.

I see you.

The same tap the young one at the mountain had given the General at the edge of the hollow.

And Risa's stomach answered.

I felt it. We all felt it. A pulse of silver from inside her, bright and clean and quick, pushing outward through her skin and the air and the stone of the wall and into the ground at the young one's feet.

Short. Short. Long. Short.

Come and play.

The young one went very still.

Then it made a sound I'd heard the young make only to each other. A small rising chirr, like a cricket asking a question.

And it climbed the wall.

Risa didn't move.

I thought she was frightened. I was ready to reach for the young one, to lift it gently away, to tell the attendant it was all right.

I looked at Risa's face.

She wasn't frightened.

She was crying, with her mouth open, absolutely silent.

The young one reached the top of the wall and stopped beside her hip. It looked up at her face for a moment, the way the young looked at a strange adult, deciding.

Then it pressed its head against the curve of her stomach.

And held still.

The baby's silver went bright. All of it. Not reaching any more, not pulsing. Just bright, the way the queen's silver went bright when she was pleased. I felt it under my hand on Risa's knee, a warmth that wasn't heat. A humming.

And the young one hummed back.

That low vibrating chirr. The sound Toby said was laughing.

Inside Risa, the baby kicked.

Right where the young one's head was.

The young one jerked back, startled. Looked at Risa's stomach.

Then pressed its head back against it, harder, and chirred louder.

The baby kicked again.

"Oh," Sera said, very softly. "Oh, they're playing."

By the time the attendants came over, there were six of them on the wall.

Then nine.

Then the attendants gave up trying to call them back and simply came and stood at the base of the wall with their forelimbs tucked, watching, the way I'd watched mothers at the edge of the schoolroom when their children did something unexpected.

Risa had stopped crying.

She was laughing. Helplessly, silently at first and then not silently, her hands spread on either side of her stomach to give the young room. Every time one of them pressed its head against her the baby kicked, and every time the baby kicked the young one jumped back and then came closer, and chirred, and the others chirred with it, and the baby's silver went brighter and brighter until I could almost see it through her shirt.

"She's laughing," Risa said. "She's laughing. I can feel her laughing."

Luna had sat down on the ground beside me.

She never sat on the ground. She was sitting cross-legged in the dirt at the base of the wall with her hands in her lap, watching, and her face had done the thing it did when it came undone.

"Lucas," she said. "Can you hear them?"

I could.

Not with my ears. With the queen's silver. The same way I heard the queen, and the mountain queen, and the young when they called to each other in the courts and I was close enough to catch it.

The young weren't just chirring.

They were talking.

To the baby.

Who? Who are you? What brood? Which mother?

And the baby, who was thirty-one weeks by size and twelve and a half by date, and had never been born, and had no words in any language at all, was answering them.

Not in words.

In the brood-pattern.

The same pattern our queen made when she called her own young. The one I'd learned to recognise over the months. Ours. Scarecrow's.

The baby didn't know it was making it.

She was just answering the way the young answered. The way a child answers in the language of the house she's growing up in.

This brood. That mother. Here.

Our queen came up through the broad passage before the morning was out.

She didn't usually. The courts were close to her chambers, but she rarely came all the way up into them. She'd say the young were the neighbouring mother's, and it wasn't her place to watch them play.

But she came.

I felt her before I saw her. Her attention reaching up through the stone, broad and warm and bright with the new silver she'd grown. And with it, something I'd never felt from her before.

Startled joy.

She stopped at the mouth of the broad passage, where it opened into the courts. Her head lowered. Her forelimbs tucked.

The young on the wall went still.

All of them. At once. They turned toward her the way the young always turned toward a queen, even one who wasn't theirs.

And the baby's silver turned too.

Bright, quick, curious. Toward the queen. The way it had turned toward the young.

And it called.

Not come and play.

Another pattern. A longer one. Slow, rising, then falling. One I'd heard only from the young, and only toward a queen, and only when they were very small.

Toby told me afterwards, when I described it to him, that it was the call a hatchling makes the first time it sees its mother.

The queen stopped breathing.

I felt it. Her whole body went still. Her attention, which had been broad and warm and bright, narrowed to a single point.

To Risa's stomach.

Oh, the queen said.

Just that.

Oh.

She came closer.

Slowly. More slowly than I'd ever seen her move. The young on the wall scrambled down and out of her way, chirring, and went to stand with their attendants at the edge of the court.

The queen lowered herself until her head was beside the wall. Beside Risa. Close enough that Risa could have reached out and laid a hand on her plates.

Risa didn't move.

The queen didn't touch her.

But her attention, which I could feel the way you feel warmth on your skin, folded around Risa's stomach. Around the baby. Gently. Carefully. Not reaching in. Just there.

The baby's silver pressed toward it.

And the queen answered.

The answering call. The one a queen gives back to a hatchling who has called her for the first time. Low and steady and certain.

Here. I am here. You are of my brood.

Risa was crying again.

So was Sera. So, I discovered, was I.

The queen stayed there for a long time, her attention folded around the baby, saying nothing more. The baby's silver had stopped calling. It was just pressed toward her, bright and quiet, the way a child presses against someone's shoulder.

Then, very carefully, the queen drew her attention back.

She lifted her head.

She looked at me.

She called me, she said. As my young call me.

"I heard."

She speaks as my young speak. She has never been taught. She speaks it as if she grew in my chambers.

"She's been near you every day," I said slowly. "Since before she had a heartbeat. Risa's been coming down to you. Sitting by your water. And the quiet room has a gap for your voice."

Yes, the queen said. She has been listening to me. Before she could listen to anything.

She turned her head toward the young at the edge of the court, still standing with their attendants, still watching.

And she has been listening to them. Through the gap you left for my voice. All my brood's voices come through me. She has been hearing them every day.

I thought about that.

The baby, thirty-one weeks by size, lying in the quiet room with her silver settled. Hearing nothing of the world except four human voices and one queen's.

And through the queen's voice, every voice of the queen's brood.

The young chirring in the courts. The attendants tapping. The workers calling to each other in the passages.

She'd learned it the way a child learns the language of the house she grows up in.

The neighbouring mother came while we were still sitting there.

Her young had told her. Or her attendants had. I didn't know how the news travelled, only that it did, and that within an hour the mother herself came up her own passage from beyond the outer ridge and stopped at the far edge of the courts.

She looked at her young.

At the one with the pale mark on its foreplate, still standing close to the wall where Risa sat.

At Risa.

At our queen, lowered beside the wall.

She asked a question I didn't catch.

Our queen answered.

The mother was quiet for a long time.

Then she came forward. Not as close as our queen. She stayed a few lengths back, the way she always stayed a few lengths back from humans she didn't know well. But close enough.

And she turned her attention toward Risa's stomach.

The baby's silver turned toward her.

And called.

Not the hatchling's call this time. A different one. The one a young makes toward an adult of another brood. Polite. Respectful. I see you. I am not yours. I am glad you are here.

The mother went very still.

Then she answered. The answering pattern. I see you. You are not mine. You are welcome among mine.

She turned to our queen and said something long and slow. I caught some of it. Whole. And young. And something that I thought might mean the old way, or the way before.

Our queen answered her.

Then they were both quiet.

And I felt something pass between them that I didn't understand. Not words. Not a pattern. A decision.

The queen explained it to me that evening, in her chamber, with Risa sitting on Sera's ledge beside the water.

The mountain queen was there too, through the connection they shared. I could feel her, wide and slow, listening.

Among the great ones, our queen said, before the war, a young one was of her mother's brood. Always. That did not change.

"Yes."

But a young one might also be claimed by another brood. If she spoke as they spoke. If she called their queen as a hatchling calls. If the queen answered. A pause. It was rare. It happened when broods lived very close. When young grew up together.

I translated for Risa.

Risa had her hands on her stomach.

"Claimed," she said. "What does that mean?"

The queen thought about how to say it.

She is yours, the queen said. First. Before anything. Your young, and Lucas's. Born of your bodies, grown of your silver. Nothing changes that. I would not let anything change that.

She paused.

And she is of my brood. Because she called me, and I answered. She will have my brood's pattern. My young will know her as one of theirs. My workers will carry her if she needs carrying. My chambers will open to her as they open to my young. If she is frightened, she may come to me. If she is lost, my brood will look for her.

Risa was quiet for a long time.

"Is that a lot?" she asked at last. "Being claimed?"

I asked the queen.

She answered with a feeling rather than words. Warmth. Fierceness. Something I'd felt only once before, the morning she gave me her silver and said there you are.

It is everything I have, she said.

The mountain queen spoke then.

Slowly, the way she always spoke. From very far away.

The neighbouring mother has claimed her too, she said. Not as fully. A young of another brood, welcome among hers. That is a smaller thing. But it is not small.

I translated.

Risa let out a breath.

"So she's" She stopped, laughing a little, wiping her face. "She's not even born and she's got three families."

More than three, the mountain queen said.

I went still.

I heard her too, the mountain queen said. This morning. Through your queen. When she called. A long pause. I am old. I have not heard a whole-born young call a queen for longer than your species has had cities. I did not think I would hear it again.

I didn't know what to say.

I would like to answer her, the mountain queen said. When she is born. If her mothers permit it.

I looked at Risa.

Risa looked at Sera, sitting beside her on the ledge with her hand on Risa's back.

Sera looked at me.

"Ask her," Risa said, "what answering means. From her."

I asked.

The mountain queen was quiet for a long time.

It means, she said at last, that the oldest free queen on this world will know her name. And will come if she calls.

The General had been in the courts that morning.

I hadn't seen him. He'd come up the broad passage with Luna an hour after the young first climbed the wall, and stood at the back by the passage mouth, out of the way, and watched.

He was there when our queen came. When the baby called her. When she answered.

Luna told me afterward that he hadn't said anything. He'd stood with his hands behind his back and his face very still, watching the young press their heads against Risa's stomach and chirr, watching the queen lower herself beside the wall.

When it was over, he'd turned to Luna.

"The Teeming," he said. "They claimed her."

"Yes."

"As one of theirs."

"As one of the brood. Ours first. Then theirs."

He'd been quiet for a long time, Luna said.

Then he'd said, "Crane would never understand that."

"Understand what?"

"That she could belong to them and to you at the same time. Without either one owning her." He'd looked at the young, still watching Risa from the edge of the court. "Article Fourteen says held in trust. That's ownership with a polite name. This is" He'd stopped. "I don't have a word for this."

"Family," Luna had said.

He'd looked at his daughter for a long time.

"Yes," he'd said. "I suppose that's the word."

The General's aide came to find him in the afternoon.

I was in the receiving room with Holt and Luna, looking again at the drawing of the Meridian on Holt's table. The aide came in at a near run and saluted, which nobody in Scarecrow did, and handed the General a slip of paper.

The General read it.

His face didn't change.

He folded the paper, very carefully, and put it in his breast pocket beside the maintenance plate.

"The station," he said. "Crane's office has sent a query."

Nobody moved.

"To me," the General said. "Through Ruan. Asking whether I'm aware of any 'unusual surface activity' near Primary Base in the last thirty hours. Specifically, whether any personnel have been observed in contact with the drive core."

"The spine," Holt said.

"The spine."

"What are you going to tell them?"

The General was quiet.

"I'm going to tell them I'm aware of nothing," he said. "Which is the first lie I've told on behalf of this city. I'd like you to know it's a lie."

Luna looked at him.

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't." He looked at the drawing on the table. "But Crane's office is asking because they saw something on their instruments. Two things. One of them whole. And if I tell them the truth, the next query won't come through Ruan. It'll come through the Overseer."

"The what?" Holt said.

The General went very still.

Then he looked up.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "I thought you'd been told. In the reports. The Sorn representative on the Avalon front. They call it the Overseer."

Nobody said anything.

"It's on the Meridian," the General said. "It's been on the Meridian for eight years. In the wardens' quarters, beside the spine chamber. It doesn't come out. Most of the crew don't know it's there."

Holt's knuckles had gone white on the edge of the table.

"You drew four wardens' quarters," Luna said. "Yesterday. On the drawing."

"Four wardens," the General said. "Three of them are wardens. The fourth room is the Overseer's."

I went down to the quiet room that night.

Risa was asleep on the bench. She'd fallen asleep almost the moment she lay down. Sera had gone back up to the house to fetch blankets, and Luna was sitting at the top of the steps with her knees drawn up, looking at the sky.

I knelt beside the bench.

The baby was awake.

Her silver was settled. Quiet. Building. Except for two fine lines.

The first ran up through the gap in the wall, out and up toward the sky. The spine. The thread she'd found yesterday at dawn.

The second ran down.

Through the floor. Through the stone. Through the gap the queen had left for her own voice.

Toward the queen's chamber.

I followed it with my sense, not touching, just feeling where it went. It ran down through the dark stone to where the queen lay in her chamber, beside her water, with her young settled in the hollows around her.

And it rested there.

Not pulling. Not calling. Just resting against the queen's attention, the way a young one rests against its mother's plates when it's tired.

And the queen's attention rested back.

She is asleep, the queen said softly, in my head. Or nearly. She has had a very large day.

"So have you."

Yes.

"Are you all right?"

The queen was quiet for a while.

I have had many young, she said. I have lost some. I did not think I would claim one who was not mine. I did not know I would want to.

"Do you?"

Yes, the queen said. Very much.

I sat back on my heels and looked at Risa asleep on the bench, her hands on her stomach. At the two fine threads, one up, one down.

"The Overseer is on the station," I said. "In the room beside the spine. The General told us today. It's been there eight years."

I felt the queen's attention shift. Sharpen.

The one who holds the lock, she said.

"Yes."

And the young one has a thread to the spine.

"Yes."

The queen was quiet for a long time.

Then the thread must be watched, she said. By me. By you. By the one who makes silence. A pause. She is mine as well as yours now. I will not let anything reach down that thread that she has not asked for.

"Thank you."

Do not thank me, the queen said. She called me. I answered. That is not something you thank a mother for.

Toby measured Risa in the quiet room before he went home.

Thirty-one and a half weeks.

He wrote it in the book. Then he wrote, under it, slowly, in his small careful hand:

Called the young to play. They came.

Called the queen as a hatchling calls. The queen answered.

Claimed by the brood. Ours first.

He looked at it for a while.

Then he added one more line.

Called the neighbouring mother politely. Has manners already. Not from Lucas.

Risa, half asleep on the bench, read it upside down and laughed so hard she woke herself up.

Day 606. Of the brood.

Toby learned his mother's pattern at dawn. Twenty-ninth. Quiet, Dot says, like she's waiting for someone to say something back. He doesn't know what to say yet.

Took Risa to the nursery courts for sky. Twenty of the neighbouring brood's young at play. The baby's silver turned toward them and pulsed: short, short, long, short. Come and play. She has never been taught it. Every young in the court stopped and turned.

The smallest of the thirteen, the one with the pale mark on its foreplate, came to the wall and tapped "I see you." The baby answered "come and play" through Risa's skin. It climbed up and pressed its head against Risa's stomach, chirring. The baby kicked right where its head was. They played. Nine young on the wall by the end. Risa laughing. The baby laughing too, she says; she could feel it.

The young asked her: who, what brood, which mother. She answered in our queen's brood-pattern, the way a child answers in the language of the house she grows up in. She has been hearing the brood every day through the gap in the quiet room left for the queen's voice.

Our queen came up into the courts. The baby called her with the call a hatchling gives the first time it sees its mother. The queen answered: here, I am here, you are of my brood.

The neighbouring mother came. The baby called her politely, as a young calls an adult of another brood. She answered: you are welcome among mine.

The queen explained. Among the great ones, a young who calls a queen as her hatchling, and is answered, is claimed. She is ours first, Risa's and mine, and nothing changes that. And she is of the queen's brood: their pattern, carried if she needs it, chambers open to her, looked for if lost. "It is everything I have." The neighbouring mother has claimed her too, as a welcome young of another brood. The mountain queen heard her call and wants to answer when she's born, if her mothers permit. The oldest free queen on this world will know her name and come if she calls.

The General watched. Article Fourteen says held in trust; he had no word for this. Luna told him: family.

Crane's office sent a query through Ruan: any personnel observed in contact with the drive core in the last thirty hours? The General will say he's aware of nothing. He told us it's the first lie he's told for this city.

Then he told us the fourth room beside the spine chamber isn't a warden's. It's the Overseer's, the Sorn representative on the Avalon front. It has been on the Meridian for eight years.

Tonight the baby has two threads: one up to the spine, one down to the queen. The queen will watch the upward thread and let nothing come down it that the baby hasn't asked for.

Baby: thirty-one and a half weeks. Toby's book: "Has manners already. Not from Lucas."

She's ours first. And she's theirs.

I don't think either of those has to be smaller for the other to be true.