Chapter 228 A Voice from Above

The pilot missed her second contact on Day 630.

Dot called her on the night pass. Then on the afternoon pass. Four times each, on every channel she had, the way she'd called every day for nine months.

Nothing.

The station came over on schedule. Its lights were on. Its track was right to the second. The supply drop came down on the afternoon pass exactly when it should have, and Gareth went through it with Dov, crate by crate, and found everything on the manifest and nothing that wasn't.

No courier case.

No answer.

"She has not missed a contact in two hundred and seventy-one days," Dot said, at the kitchen table that evening. Her lamps were low. "She called this unit on the morning of the third wave, before we knew the sorn were present. She called on the night the Meridian came over and you held Toby's heart." A pause. "She told this unit once that she made the calls because nobody else on the station would talk to a machine."

"Maybe they've taken her off the rota," Sera said.

"Maybe."

"Maybe someone told her not to."

"Maybe," said Dot. "This unit has considered that also."

Luna said nothing. She had the page of numbers on the table in front of her, the key and the empty space under it where the next message should have gone. She'd been sitting with it for an hour.

"Two drops," she said at last. "No case. No nothing yet. No careful." She folded the page. "He's not ill. If he were ill, his aide would send it. If he were busy, he'd send one line. He'd send busy."

"So someone's stopping them," I said.

"Someone's stopping them."

"Before they reach the station? Or after?"

Luna looked at me.

"That," she said, "is what I'd very much like to know."

Dot found out the next morning.

Not about the cases. About the station.

She'd been watching it. She always watched it, on every pass, with every instrument she had. But that night, after the second missed contact, she'd turned all of them on it at once. Every lens. Every receiver. Every scrap of the third wave's kit that Gareth had wired into her over the summer.

She came to the porch at dawn, before the count, and stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"Lucas," she said. "There is traffic at the Meridian."

I came down.

"Heavy traffic," Dot said. "Seven shuttles docked at the cargo spine on the night pass. This unit has never seen more than two. They were not supply shuttles. Their mass is wrong. They are carrying people, or equipment, or both." Her lamps flickered. "And there is a hull at the main dock that this unit does not recognise."

"What kind of hull?"

"Grey," Dot said. "Long. Narrow at the front. No markings that this unit can read. It did not come up from Avalon. It did not jump in on the scheduled lane. This unit does not know where it came from." A pause. "It is very large, Dask. Larger than anything the Project has sent here. Nearly a third the length of the station."

I looked up.

The sky was going pale over the canyon rim. The station wasn't overhead. It wouldn't be, for hours.

But I knew where it was. I always did. The way Juno knew north.

"Is it Sorn?"

"This unit does not know," Dot said. "It is not built like the Sorn ships this unit has records of. It is not built like the Project's ships either." Her lamps went very low. "It is built like something that was designed by one, and made by the other."

I thought of Dane's gate. The grey shuttle that had landed inside it, with the Sorn marks on its hull. Twelve people, a carrier and a kit, gone in a night.

"Yes," Dot said, before I could ask. "The same material. This unit has checked twice."

The dawn count came anyway.

It always did. Dot went to the red glass, and Holt to his wall, and Toby to his place with his hand on my wrist. The city came out. Not as many as usual. People were tired, the way you're tired after something big, and Dory had kept half the street up two nights running with her checking.

The hello came down.

The way it always did. Up from the deep. Up through the rock. Up through the sky to the station, and the spine-queen stirring in her housings, and the answer coming back.

And the thirty-one, on Earth, waking for eleven seconds.

Thirty for eleven seconds.

Mother for nineteen.

She'd been longer every morning since Dory was born. Forty-one, the first day. Then thirty. Then twenty-six. Then twenty-two. Falling back toward eleven, slowly, the way a bell stops ringing.

Dot counted them all. All names.

Then the spine-queen stopped answering.

Not the way she usually stopped, at the end of the hello, settling back into sleep. She stopped in the middle. All at once. As if someone had put a hand over her mouth.

Toby's fingers went tight on my wrist.

"Lucas."

"I know."

"She stopped."

"I know."

I reached up. Along the hello. Up through the thin bright thread to the station, the way I'd done the morning Toby first held my wrist. Up to the spine-queen in her housings.

She was there.

She wasn't dead. She wasn't even hurt, not more than she'd always been hurt. She was there, asleep, tired, pinned, exactly as she'd been every morning for weeks.

But something was beside her.

Something new.

I couldn't see it. My sight didn't reach that far, not really; I was only following the hello, like a hand on a rope in the dark. But I could feel it. A presence in the spine chamber that hadn't been there before. Cold. Patient. Very close to her.

Close enough to touch.

And then it noticed me.

I don't know how to describe it.

The nearest I've come is this. Imagine standing in a dark room with your hand on a rope. You've been in the room many times. You know where the walls are. And suddenly, with no sound, something at the other end of the rope takes hold of it, and holds it still, and you understand that it has been in the room the whole time, waiting for you to reach.

It didn't pull.

It didn't speak.

It just held the rope.

And I felt it look down along the thread. Down through the sky. Down to Avalon, to the canyon, to the deep. To the red glass where I stood with Toby's hand on my wrist.

To the city behind me.

To the house.

To the garden.

I let go.

I let go of the hello so fast that Toby staggered. I let go and pulled everything back, every thread I had, the way you snatch your hand from a fire. I stood on the red glass with my heart going like a drum and the city staring at me and Holt half off his wall.

"Dask," Holt said. "What was that."

I couldn't answer.

Under the garden, two streets away, I felt Dory wake.

She was screaming when I got there.

Not crying. Screaming. A newborn's scream, thin and high and terrible, the kind that goes into your spine. Risa had her up against her shoulder in the bedroom and was walking up and down, up and down, saying shh, shh, shh in a voice that wasn't working.

Sera was in the doorway, white.

"She just woke up," Sera said. "Like that. All at once. She was asleep and then she was"

I took Dory.

I don't remember Risa giving her to me. I just had her, against my chest, with her face red and her fists clenched and her whole small body rigid.

Her silver was everywhere.

Not checking. Not reaching. Thrashing. Flung out in every direction at once, bright and frantic and enormous, the way a young one thrashes when it falls out of the hollow and can't find the queen.

And underneath it, very faint, I felt what had woken her.

The cold thing.

Not here. Not near. Very far away, at the other end of a thread. But she'd felt it. Through me. When it took hold of the rope and looked down along it, it had looked through me, and she'd felt it look.

And she was a day old in every way that mattered, and she didn't have any walls.

No, I said to her. Silver to silver. No, no, it's all right. It's gone. I let go. It's gone.

She didn't hear me. She was screaming too hard.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

I did what Sera did. On the garden steps, in the dark.

I told her the names.

Risa, I said. Here. Sera. Here. Luna, at the table. Dot in the garden. The queen at the wall. Pebble in the lower court. Liam. Toby. Sigmund. Holt on his wall. Juno. Wren. Nessa. Gareth. Priya. Dov. I went on. Every name I knew. Every name on Luna's list. Every name in the city. Here. Here. Here. Everyone's here.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the queen joined in.

I felt her at the wall. Her great slow voice under mine, saying the names of the brood. Every young. Every attendant. Pebble, by his pattern. All of them.

And then the mountain queen, through her.

And Lantern. And Hollow. And First Garden, and the Spire.

Every queen on Avalon, the way they'd done when Dory was born. Drawing in. Going quiet. And then, one by one, very softly, telling her the names of their broods.

Here. Here. Here.

Dory's screaming broke.

Faltered. Turned into ragged gulping sobs.

Then stopped.

Her silver came back in. Slowly. From everywhere. Drawing in, the way it had before she was born.

And then, very small, very tired, it went round on its check.

Me. Risa. Sera. Luna, in the doorway now. The queen. Pebble. Every name.

Everyone home?

Everyone home, I said.

She fell asleep against my chest with her fist in my shirt.

The queens came to the wall that afternoon.

Not all of them. That would have been impossible. But our queen was already there, and the mountain queen came through her, and Lantern and Hollow and the First Garden and the Spire came through them, the way they had for the Accord. Six voices, so close I could feel the weight of them in the stones.

I sat with my back against the wall.

Risa sat beside me with Dory asleep in her arms. Sera and Luna sat on my other side. Holt had come, and Toby, and Juno, who'd been turning her head toward the south all morning and couldn't tell anyone why.

You touched it, the mountain queen said.

It touched me.

Yes, said the mountain queen. That is worse.

Nobody spoke for a while.

Then our queen said, There is something else. We did not wish to tell you while the little one was so new. But you have felt it now. And so you should know.

Tell me.

There is a voice in the sky, the queen said. A new one. It began three nights ago. We hear it every time the station passes over the south.

What kind of voice?

The queens were quiet.

Then the Spire spoke. I'd only heard her a few times. She was old, older than the mountain queen, and her voice was thin and dry like wind over stone.

It hurts, she said.

They tried to tell me what it was.

It took a long time. They didn't have words for it, not words I had, and the brood-speech couldn't hold it, and Dot, who'd come to the wall to help, kept stopping and starting and saying this unit is not certain.

But in the end I understood.

It was like the machines in the mountain.

I'd seen those. The housings Crane's people had built around the hatchlings. The plates that pressed against their skulls. The silver drawn out of them through narrow channels and pushed back in, shaped, bent, until they did what they were told. The thirteen we'd brought home still had the marks. Pebble still had the pale scar on his foreplate.

The machines had been close. Touching.

This wasn't touching.

This was coming from the sky. From the station. A pattern of silver, pushed down from orbit through the spine-queen like a voice through a speaking-tube. A pattern that reached into the broods it passed over and pressed on them the way the plates had pressed. Not hard. Not all at once. Slowly. A little more each pass.

Do this, it said. Go there.

Who's it talking to? I said.

The south, said the Spire. Broods we do not know. Far beyond Lantern, beyond the Hollow. Past the great river. Queens who have never heard of you, or of the Accord.

Can you talk to them?

We are trying. The Spire's voice was very tired. They are a long way. And when the voice passes over, they cannot hear us. It is too loud. It is all they can hear.

What's it telling them to do?

None of the queens answered.

Juno did.

"North," she said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

She was sitting on the grass a little way off, with her arms round her knees. Her head was turned south. It had been turned south all morning.

"I can feel them," Juno said. "Since this morning. Since Lucas let go of the rope. I can feel all of them. Every brood on Avalon. Where they are and which way they're facing." She swallowed. "Most of them are facing the way they always face. Toward their queen. Toward home."

"And the south?"

"The south," Juno said, "is facing north."

I couldn't see them.

That was the worst of it. I'd been able to see everything, for so long. Every bone in every body for miles. Every vein of silver in the deep. Every tunnel under the canyon, every brood in every hollow, the mountain, the courts, the city. All of it, always, like a map spread out under my hands.

But a map ends somewhere.

Mine ended at the horizon.

Not exactly. I could feel further than I could see, the way you can hear further than you can see. I could feel the queens, all of them, through each other. I could follow the hello up to the station and down to Earth. But to see, really see, bones and silver and the shape of things, I needed to be close. Fifty miles, on a good day. A hundred, with the queen's help.

The south was a thousand miles away.

Past the great river. Past Lantern and the Hollow. Past anything I'd ever seen or touched.

"I can't see it," I said.

Nobody answered.

"I can feel the queens, but I can't see what the broods are doing. I can't see where they're going. I can't see how many." I pressed my hands flat on the grass. "I can't see anything."

Risa shifted beside me.

"I can," she said.

She'd been quiet all afternoon.

Holding Dory. Listening. Her face turned south, the same way as Juno's. And I hadn't noticed, because I'd been so busy trying to see, that she'd been doing what she always did when she was listening.

Feeling the weather.

"There's a front," Risa said. "Coming up from the south. It's been building for three days." She closed her eyes. "I thought it was ordinary. Spring storms off the great river, the way they always come. But it's wrong. It's moving wrong."

"Wrong how?"

"It's not moving with the wind," Risa said. "It's moving with something on the ground. Something big. Lots of something." She frowned. "When the Teeming moved in the canyon, the first time, before we knew what they were. Do you remember? The dust they kicked up. The heat off them. It made its own weather. Little storms, along the edges."

I remembered.

"It's like that," Risa said. "But much bigger. Hundreds of miles of it. A long line of heat and dust, running east to west, all along the south." Her eyes opened. "And it's moving north."

The queens had gone very still.

How fast? said the mountain queen.

Risa listened.

"Slowly," she said. "Twenty miles a day. Maybe less. It stops at night." She paused. "It stops when the station's on the other side of the world. And starts again when it comes back over."

It stops when the voice stops, said the Spire.

"Yes."

And starts again when the voice comes back.

"Yes," said Risa.

Nobody spoke.

Then Luna said, very calmly, "How far is it?"

Risa closed her eyes again.

"The front edge is past the great river," she said. "North of it. Just." She frowned. "There's something else. Something in front of it."

"What?"

"Weather," Risa said slowly. "Little weather. Not the big front. Little storms. Hot spots. Ahead of the line, scattered. Like" She stopped. "Like when you throw a stone into a pond, and the ripples go out in front of it."

"Teeming?"

"I don't think so. Too small. Too spread out." Her eyes opened. She looked at me. "I think they're people."

I asked the queens.

It took them a long time to answer. Lantern was the closest. Her brood was at the very edge of what our queens could reach, a long way south-east, in the forested hills above the river. She'd been listening all afternoon, as hard as she could, past the voice and through it.

When she spoke, it was very quietly.

There are human places in the south, she said. Small ones. The ones that came down after the first ship, and did not come to Scarecrow. Some of them we know. Most we do not.

Other bases. The ones that had survived on their own, or refused to join us, or been too far away to walk. There'd been a good many, once. Wren had a list.

The broods in the south are moving toward them, Lantern said. Not all. But some. And the people in them are running.

North?

North, said Lantern. Toward the river. Toward the forest. Toward us. A pause. Toward you.

Wren brought the list at dusk.

She'd had it since the first month. Every base on Avalon that had ever sent a signal. Every one that had stopped. Every name she'd been able to get. She'd kept it up to date with Dot's help, for nearly two years, even after most of the bases had gone quiet, because she said you didn't stop counting just because you couldn't see the end of the list.

She put it on the table.

Eleven bases south of the great river. Four of them hadn't sent a signal in a year. The rest were small. Thirty people. Fifty. One of them, Port Ash, near the coast, had sent a message only three weeks ago, asking whether it was true about the Accord and whether Scarecrow was taking people.

Wren had answered yes.

They hadn't come.

"How many people?" I said.

"On the list?" Wren looked at it. "Four hundred and twelve. If they're all still alive." Her voice was very flat. "I don't think they are."

I looked at the list.

Four hundred and twelve names. Some of them names. Most of them just numbers. Port Ash, approx. 60. Redwater, approx. 45. Unnamed, approx. 30.

And behind them, a thousand miles of broods, driven north by a voice from the sky. Twenty miles a day. Stopping when the station went round the world. Starting again when it came back.

"It's not attacking them," Sera said slowly. "Is it? The voice. It's not telling the broods to attack."

No, said the mountain queen. It is telling them to move. Only that. Move north. Move together.

"Then why are the people running?"

"Because they don't know the difference," Luna said. "They've never heard of the Accord. They've never heard a queen. All they know is that a thousand miles of Teeming are coming toward them out of the south." She looked at the list. "And they've heard what happened at Dane's gate. Twelve people, gone in a night. No bodies."

I went down to the quiet room that night.

Not to sleep. I couldn't have slept. Just to sit there, in the dark, where the world's noise slid off the walls.

Risa came down after a while with Dory.

She didn't say anything. She sat on the bench, and I sat on the floor with my back against it, and Dory lay asleep in her arms with the swift feather in one fist and the nursery stone tucked into the blanket beside her.

"He did it on purpose," I said at last.

"Who?"

"Whoever's on the station. In the grey ship. Whatever was in the spine chamber." I stared at the dark. "The voice started three nights ago. The cases stopped two days ago. The pilot stopped calling. And this morning it was waiting at the end of the hello for me." I pressed my hands against my eyes. "They want me to go south."

Risa didn't answer.

"Four hundred people running north," I said. "A thousand miles of broods behind them. If I stay here, they die. If I go, I'm a thousand miles from the city. From the queens. From you. From her." I looked up at Dory. "And whatever's on that station knows exactly where she is now. Because I showed it. Because I was holding the rope."

"You didn't know."

"I know now."

Risa was quiet for a long time.

Then she said, "You don't have to go south to see it."

I looked at her.

"I saw the front," Risa said. "From here. From the porch. A thousand miles. I felt it the way I always feel weather. And Juno felt the broods turn. And Lantern heard the people running." She looked down at Dory. "You can't see past the horizon. Fine. But you're not the only one who can see any more."

"Risa"

"Listen to me." Her voice was very steady. "Five weeks ago, you were the only one. You saw everything, and the rest of us followed you around and did what you said, because you were the only one who could. You're not, now. You finished us. Juno can feel every brood on Avalon. Holt can hear the bone. I can feel weather on the other side of the river. The queens can hear the voice." She reached down and put her free hand on my head. "We're your eyes, Lucas. All of us. You made us that way."

I didn't say anything.

I couldn't.

Dory stirred in her sleep. Her silver came round on its check, slow and drowsy. It found me. Found Risa. Found the queen above us at the wall, and Pebble in the lower court, and every name in the city.

And then, for the first time since she'd been born, it went somewhere new.

Not up. Not toward the station.

South.

Out through the gap in the wall shaped like Risa's voice. Out through the queen. Through the mountain queen. Through Lantern, at the very edge of everything our queens could reach.

And past her.

I felt it go. I couldn't follow it. It was too far, too fast. Further than I could see. Further than I'd ever reached.

It went out past the river. Past the forest. To the edge of the long line of heat and dust that Risa had felt from the porch.

To a queen who had never heard of Scarecrow.

Who couldn't hear any of us, because the voice from the sky was too loud.

Dory didn't speak to her.

She was nine days old. She didn't know what to say.

She just did what she did every four minutes, for everyone she knew.

She checked.

There you are, she said.

And very far away, under the noise, something answered.

Days 630–632. A voice from above.

The pilot missed her second contact. Two hundred and seventy-one days and she never missed one. No courier case on either drop. Luna: if he were busy, he'd send "busy." Someone is stopping them.

Dot turned every instrument on the station. Seven shuttles docked at the cargo spine overnight; she has never seen more than two. And a grey hull at the main dock: long, narrow at the front, a third the length of the station, no markings. It didn't come up from Avalon and didn't jump in on the scheduled lane. Dot: built like something designed by one and made by the other. Same material as the grey shuttle at Dane's gate.

Dawn count. Mother answered for nineteen seconds. Falling back toward eleven, like a bell. Then the spine-queen stopped in the middle, as if a hand were over her mouth. I followed the hello up. Something new was in the spine chamber beside her. Cold. Patient. Close enough to touch. It took hold of the rope and looked down along it. At the canyon. The city. The house. The garden. I let go.

Dory woke screaming. It looked through me and she felt it, and she has no walls. I told her every name I know. The queen joined in, then every queen on Avalon, the names of their broods. Here. Here. Here. She stopped. Everyone home?

The queens: there is a voice in the sky. It started three nights ago. The Spire: it hurts. It's like the mountain machines, but from orbit, pushed down through the spine-queen like a voice through a speaking-tube. Move north. Move together. It's speaking to broods past the great river that have never heard of us. When it passes over, they can't hear the queens. Juno: the south is facing north.

I can't see past the horizon.

Risa can. She felt a front coming up off the river for three days, moving with something on the ground, not the wind. Hundreds of miles of heat and dust. Twenty miles a day. It stops when the station goes round the world and starts when it comes back. Little hot spots ahead of it, scattered, like ripples from a stone. People.

Lantern: the human places in the south. The people in them are running north. Toward us.

Wren's list: eleven bases south of the river, four hundred and twelve people if they're all alive. Port Ash asked three weeks ago if we were taking people. Wren said yes. They didn't come. Luna: they don't know the difference between moving and attacking. They've heard about Dane's gate.

I think they want me to go south. A thousand miles from the city and the queens and her. And whatever is on that station knows where she is now, because I was holding the rope.

Risa: you don't have to go south to see it. You finished us. Juno feels every brood. Holt hears the bone. I feel weather past the river. We're your eyes now.

Then Dory's check went south for the first time. Through the queen, the mountain, Lantern, and past her, further than I've ever reached. To a queen under the noise who has never heard of us.

She didn't know what to say. She's nine days old.

She said what she always says. There you are.

Something answered.