Chapter 234 Hal

The shuttle came down at nine in the morning on Day 687.

Not the courier shuttle. Not the supply drop. Something else. We heard it long before we saw it, a low steady hum from the east that didn't rise and fall the way the Meridian's shuttles did, but stayed exactly level, like a held note.

Toby heard it first.

He was on the red glass for the dawn count, which had finished an hour before, and hadn't left. He'd said he wanted to be outside when it came. He stood at the edge of the glass with his fiddle case on his back and his head tipped to one side, and when the hum began, his face went very still.

"That's not an engine," he said.

"What is it?"

"I don't know." He listened. "It's tuned."

The whole city was out.

Not in the street. Holt had been clear about that. Show them everything. But don't crowd them. So people stood where they'd have been standing on any ordinary morning. Gareth at the forge door. Priya and Dov at the kitchen. Nessa at the schoolroom window with the little ones behind her, and Wren on the wall with her book. The young in the shadow of the meeting passage, with Pebble at the front.

Our queen at the garden wall.

Her head on the stones. Her great dark plates with their fine frost-lines catching the morning light. She hadn't moved since dawn.

And under the garden, behind her, the quiet room.

Risa was sitting in front of the door.

On a chair Liam had carried down the stairs at six that morning and set at the bottom, facing out. With her back to the faceted dark and her hands folded in her lap and her chin up. Dory was behind her, in the basket Dov had made, on the floor of the quiet room, asleep.

I couldn't feel her.

That was the strangest thing. For six weeks I'd felt Dory every minute of every day. Her check coming round, every four minutes, bright and quick. There you are. I'd stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing your own breathing.

At dawn, the queens had drawn in.

All fourteen. The way they had when she was born. One after another, across the whole of Avalon, going quiet. Holding the world still. And the quiet room, which had always let a little through, the gap shaped like Risa's voice, had closed.

I stood at the top of the garden stairs and looked down at Risa in her chair and couldn't feel my daughter at all.

"She's there," Risa said, without turning round. She'd felt me looking. "She's asleep. She's fine. I can hear her breathing."

"I know."

"You can't feel her."

"No."

"Good," said Risa. "Then neither can they."

Holt was on the apron when the shuttle landed.

Alone. As he'd said. No stick. He'd left it at the map room. He stood at the edge of the red glass with his hands at his sides and his back very straight, the way I'd never seen him stand, the way I imagined he must have stood years ago when he was a captain and the first wave was thirty-four strong.

The shuttle came down very slowly.

It was grey.

Not the grey of the station shuttles, which were dull and scuffed and patched. This grey was smooth. Seamless. It had no windows I could see. No markings. It was long and narrow at the front, like the hull Dot had seen at the Meridian's dock, and it came down onto the apron without a sound except that low steady hum, and settled, and the hum stopped.

I couldn't see inside it.

I tried. I stood at the top of the garden steps with half the city behind me and looked at it the way I looked at everything, and my sight slid off it like water off glass. The material I couldn't change. The material I'd first touched on the ship, on the pod ring, before any of this began.

A ramp came down.

Crane came first.

I'd seen him last on the ship. At the hatch. The morning we launched. He'd shaken my hand and said Do well, and your sisters will never want for anything, and meant it kindly, and I'd hated him for meaning it kindly.

He'd been sharp then. Quick. Always moving, always talking, always holding something. A slate, a clipboard, a pen. Hands never still.

The man who came down the ramp was older.

Not much older. Two years. But it looked like ten. He was thinner. His hair had gone grey at the sides. His face had changed in a way I couldn't name at first, and then I could: it had stopped moving. All the quickness had gone out of it. He looked like a man who'd been very tired for a very long time and had stopped noticing.

And his hands were steady.

That was the thing I noticed most. He had nothing in them. No slate. No pen. They hung at his sides, perfectly still. The General had told us about the Accord room, how Crane's hands had shaken so badly he'd had to hold the pen in both. These didn't shake at all.

He had a thin silver band round his collar. Like a necklace. Flat against his throat.

He stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

He looked at Holt.

Holt looked back.

For a long time, neither of them said anything at all.

Then Holt said, very quietly, in a voice I'd never heard him use:

"Hal."

I was too far away to hear the rest.

I could see them, at the bottom of the ramp, on the red glass, in the morning light. Holt's back. Crane's face. I could see Crane's mouth move, once, and then stop. I could see Holt step forward, one step, the way you'd step toward a dog you weren't sure would bite.

And then I could see Crane's face change.

Just for a moment. Something moved in it. Something broke loose, the way ice breaks on a river in spring, all at once, with a crack you can feel in your feet.

He looked, for one moment, like a boy of nineteen holding a clipboard.

Then it closed again.

Holt told me afterward what they'd said. Not all of it. He said some of it wasn't mine to know. But he told me the first part.

Hal, he'd said.

And Crane had said, Ezra. You're still alive.

So are you, said Holt. I wasn't sure. From the look of you.

Neither was I, said Crane.

And then, Holt said, he'd asked the question. The one he'd come to the apron to ask. Not why. Not how could you. Just:

Are you all right, son?

And that was when Crane's face broke.

For one moment.

And then, Holt said, before Crane could answer, something moved at the top of the ramp.

And Crane's face closed like a door, and his hands went perfectly still again, and he said, in a voice like a recording:

I'm fine, Captain. Please step aside.

The Overseer came down the ramp.

I'd seen pictures. Everyone had. Old war footage, from before the surrender, played over and over in every dome schoolroom on Earth. The grainy shapes on the burning plains outside the old cities. Tall. Too tall. Wrapped in something that caught the light like a mirror and threw it back.

The pictures hadn't been wrong.

It was seven feet tall. Perhaps more. It was a shape, mostly human in proportion, two arms, two legs, a head. But the proportions were wrong in small ways you couldn't stop noticing. The arms too long. The neck too long. The legs bending very slightly backward at the knee.

And all of it covered in mirror.

A shell. Seamless. Perfectly smooth. Curving over every part of it, so that you couldn't see anything of what was underneath. Only yourself. The red glass of the apron, and the green sky, and the city, and Holt, all bent and stretched across its surface like reflections in a spoon.

It didn't have a face.

Where a face should have been there was only more mirror. Curved. Blank. Showing the whole of Scarecrow, upside down and tiny, in the middle of it.

It came down the ramp very slowly.

Behind me, along the street, I felt the city go still. Not quiet. Still. Every person who'd ever sat in a dome schoolroom and watched those pictures, standing frozen in the morning light, while the thing from the footage walked down onto Avalon.

Behind it, twelve soldiers came down.

Human. In grey uniforms without insignia. Rifles slung. Faces blank. They spread out along the edge of the apron in a line and stood there, not looking at anything, not moving, the way the brood had stood in the dry valleys when the voice was on them.

I looked at them.

I could see them. They weren't behind the grey. Their bones, their blood, their hearts beating slow and even. Too slow. Too even.

And behind every one of their left ears, very small, set into the bone of the skull, a disc of grey material I couldn't see into.

The Overseer stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

Beside Crane.

It turned its head. The whole of it. Smoothly, the way a lamp turns on a swivel. The mirror where its face should have been swung round, slowly, across the apron, across the city, across the red glass and the north wall and the meeting passage and the young in its shadow.

It stopped on the garden.

On the wall. On our queen's great dark head, resting on the stones.

On the steps behind her.

On me.

I didn't move. I stood at the top of the garden stairs with Risa below me in her chair and the quiet room behind her and my daughter asleep in the faceted dark where I couldn't feel her, and I looked at the mirror, and saw myself in it.

Small. Curved. Upside down.

And something behind the mirror looked back.

I knew it. The cold. The patience. The thing that had taken hold of the rope at the end of the hello and looked down along it. The thing at the wall in the east, round Juno's three.

It had been in the spine chamber.

It was here.

It didn't speak.

Crane did.

Or rather, the band on Crane's collar did. It lit, very faintly, a thin line of pale light. And Crane's mouth opened, and the voice that came out wasn't quite his. It was his voice. His throat, his tongue, his breath. But the words came out in a rhythm that wasn't his, flat and even, every syllable the same length.

The Overseer of the Avalon front greets the population of Primary Base.

Nobody answered.

The Overseer has come to observe. To assess. And to recover property.

Crane's hands were perfectly still at his sides. His eyes were open. They were looking at me. And they were, I realised, the only part of him that was moving at all. Fixed on mine. Very wide.

As if he was trying to tell me something.

The Overseer requests, said the voice in Crane's throat, that the population remain calm. No harm is intended to any person who does not obstruct the recovery.

Holt, at the bottom of the ramp, didn't move.

Neither did I.

Then, very slowly, I went down the garden stairs. Past the queen's head on the wall. Past Risa in her chair. I didn't look at the quiet room. I didn't let myself. I walked out through the garden gate and down the street toward the apron, with the whole city watching me, and stopped at the edge of the red glass, ten feet from the thing in the mirror.

"I'm Lucas Dask," I said. "What property?"

The mirror turned toward me.

I saw myself in it. Close now. Every line of my face. The silver around my eyes, bright in the morning light.

Item one, said the voice in Crane's throat. Designated asset. Dask, Lucas. Priority One. Complete integration, arising naturally, confirmed. Property of the Project under Article Fourteen of the Accord. To be recovered for evaluation.

Behind me, I heard Sera's breath catch.

Item two, said the voice. Property removed without authorization from the mountain installation. One planetary-class queen. Formerly assigned to coercion amplification. Currently located on the terrace of the installation, in violation of the custody terms of the Accord. To be returned.

A sound went through the courts behind me. Not a sound. A feeling. The young in the passage shadow, every one of them, going rigid. Pebble's hum stopping dead.

And at the garden wall, our queen lifted her head.

Slowly. All the way. Until she was standing at her full height, dark and enormous, with the frost-lines on her plates catching the light, and her great head turned toward the apron.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't need to.

The Overseer turned its mirror toward her.

It looked at her for a long time.

Then it turned back to me.

Item three, said the voice in Crane's throat.

And stopped.

Crane's mouth stayed open. The band on his collar stayed lit. But nothing came out. For a long moment there was only silence on the apron, and the twelve soldiers standing in their line, and the mirror, turned toward me.

Then Crane closed his mouth.

The band went dark.

The Overseer turned. Slowly. Its mirror swung past me, past the street, past the city, back toward the garden.

Toward the wall. Toward the queen at her full height.

Toward the stairs behind her.

Toward the chair at the bottom of the stairs, and the woman sitting in it with her chin up and her hands in her lap, and the door behind her.

It looked at that door for a very long time.

Then the band on Crane's collar lit again.

Item three, said the voice, will be discussed at a later time.

Dane was the one who recognised the soldier.

He came to find me at noon, white-faced, from the yard behind the forge, where you could see the guest house over the wall. Keir was with him. That was the first thing I noticed. Keir, a step behind him, with a hand on his shoulder.

"Third from the left," Dane said. "On the east side of the ring. The tall one with the scar through his eyebrow."

I looked.

A soldier in grey. Rifle slung. Face blank. Standing exactly as still as the other eleven, his eyes fixed on nothing, his heart going slow and even.

"His name's Orrin Tal," said Dane. His voice shook. "He was one of my twelve. He fixed the water tanks. He used to sing when he worked. Badly. All the time." He swallowed. "He was on the list. The eleven they took on, at the relay basin, when they locked Keir in with Aster."

Keir's hand tightened on his shoulder.

"He looked at me," Dane said. "When they came down the ramp. Just for a second. He looked right at me." He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "And then he didn't."

Toby had come up behind us. He stood at the wall with his head tipped toward the guest house, listening.

"The discs," he said quietly. "Behind their ears. They're humming."

"The voice?"

"Not the words. The click. The fast one. The one that keeps the broods in step." Toby's mouth went thin. "That's what's in their heads. Something to keep them in step."

Nobody said anything.

Then Dane said, very low, "If Orrin's here, the other ten might be."

"Somewhere," said Keir.

It was the first time I'd heard him speak to Dane since the map room. Not kindly. Not unkindly. Just a word, put down between them, like a plank across a ditch.

Dane looked at him.

"Somewhere," he agreed.

Luna had her ten minutes that afternoon.

The Overseer had gone into the guest house. It had asked for it, through Crane, with the same flat courtesy it asked for everything. The Overseer requests accommodation. The Overseer requests that it not be disturbed. The twelve soldiers stood round the guest house in a ring. Nobody went near it.

Crane didn't go in with it.

He sat on the bench outside. The same bench the General had sat on for an hour while I finished Holt. With his hands on his knees and his eyes on the ground and the band on his collar dark.

Luna went and stood in front of him.

I went with her. So did Holt. Neither of us said anything. We stood a little behind her, one on each side, the way Sera and I had stood beside her on the landing apron the day her father left.

Luna held out the page.

Nine names. Nine pod numbers. Nine dates. Arden, Pim. SQ 5. Pod 14. Day 300. And at the bottom, underlined twice: Who signed these?

Crane looked at it.

He didn't take it. He looked at it in her hand, for a long time, reading every line. His eyes moved down the names. Stopped. Moved on. Stopped again.

At Quint, Marlo. Quint, Jessa.

His hands, on his knees, moved.

Just slightly. The first time I'd seen them move since he came down the ramp. The fingers curled. Very slowly. Into fists.

"You can talk," Luna said. "It's not on. The band. It's dark. You can talk to me."

Crane didn't look up.

"It's always on," he said.

His own voice. Finally. Hoarse and quiet and very tired. Nothing like the flat even thing that had come out of his throat on the apron.

"It's always on," he said again. "It only lights when it's speaking. It's listening all the time." He swallowed. "It's listening now."

"Then let it listen," said Luna. "Who signed these?"

Crane closed his eyes.

"I did," he said.

Nobody moved.

"I signed the recovery orders," Crane said. His eyes were still closed. "All nine. On Day 299. The night before the pods went down. The Overseer's office sent me the list. I read the blood work. I agreed with it. Those nine were the closest. The Quints especially." His fists tightened. "I'd been taking their blood since they were eleven. I knew exactly how close they were."

"Where are they?" said Luna.

"I don't know."

"Where are they."

"I don't know." Crane opened his eyes. They were wet. "I signed the orders. The station's shuttles collected them. The Overseer's office took custody. That's the last I was told. That's the last I was allowed to know." He looked at the page in Luna's hand. "I asked. Every year. On Day 300. I asked where they were and how they were. The answer was always the same. Evaluation ongoing."

"Juno can feel three of them," Luna said. "In the east. Behind a wall. Not moving. Held."

Crane went very white.

"Three," he said.

"Three."

"Not nine."

"Not nine," said Luna. "Three. That we can feel."

Crane looked at her for a long time.

Then he looked past her. At Holt. At me. And something in his face that had broken for one moment on the apron broke again, and this time didn't close.

"Ezra," he said. "I asked."

"I know," said Holt.

"I asked every year."

"I know you did, son."

"And I kept signing."

Holt didn't say anything.

Behind Crane, on the guest house door, something moved. Not the door. The air in front of it. A shimmer, like heat over stone. As if the mirror inside had turned toward the bench.

The band on Crane's collar lit.

Crane's face closed.

All at once. Like a shutter coming down. His fists uncurled. His hands went flat and still on his knees. His wet eyes went blank and fixed and very wide.

And the flat even voice came out of his throat.

The Director is fatigued, it said. The Director will rest now. Further questions may be addressed to the Overseer at a later time.

Luna didn't move.

She stood in front of the bench with the page in her hand and looked at the thing that was wearing Crane's face. And then, very deliberately, she folded the page into quarters and put it inside her coat, against her chest, beside the arrivals list.

"I'll ask again," she said. "Tomorrow. And the day after. Every day, until someone answers."

The voice didn't reply.

But Crane's eyes, fixed and wide and blank above it, moved.

Just once.

Down. And up.

A nod.

I went down to the quiet room that night.

Risa was still in her chair at the bottom of the stairs. She hadn't moved all day, except to go in and feed Dory and come back out. Sera had brought her food. Luna had sat with her for an hour. Liam had tried to take her place and been told, in a voice like a closing door, that he could sit on the stairs.

He'd sat on the stairs all afternoon.

I sat down on the stone floor beside Risa's chair.

"It looked at the door," she said quietly. "Didn't it. On the apron. Item three."

"Yes."

"It knows she's here."

"It knew before," I said. "Now it's seen where."

Risa didn't say anything for a long time.

Behind her, in the faceted dark, Dory was asleep in her basket. I still couldn't feel her. The queens were still holding the world quiet. All fourteen of them. They'd held it since dawn, and they'd hold it, our queen said, for as long as the mirror was on Avalon.

But I could hear her.

Very faintly. Through the open door. A small, steady, ordinary sound. A baby breathing in her sleep.

"She hasn't checked on anyone all day," Risa said. "She can't. The queens have closed everything." Her voice wobbled. "She doesn't know where any of us are. She's been in there all day not knowing."

"She's asleep."

"She was awake at noon. And at four. I went in. She looked at me." Risa pressed her lips together. "She didn't check. She just looked. Like an ordinary baby. Like she didn't know how."

I put my hand on Risa's knee.

"She knows how," I said. "She just can't right now. The queens are holding her. The way you hold a hand over a candle in the wind." I looked at the door. "When it's gone, she'll check. And she'll find all of us. And she'll be cross that we were gone, and she'll scream the house down, and Sera will walk her up and down the porch telling her the names."

Risa laughed. It came out wet.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

That was the third promise I'd made my daughter. She was six weeks old.

And above us, at the garden wall, the queen stood at her full height in the dark, with her head turned toward the guest house where the mirror was, and didn't sleep at all.

Day 687. Hal.

The shuttle came at nine. Toby: "That's not an engine. It's tuned." Grey, seamless, no windows. My sight slid off it.

At dawn the fourteen queens drew in and closed the quiet room completely. Risa sat in a chair at the bottom of the garden stairs, facing out, with Dory asleep behind her. For the first time in six weeks I couldn't feel my daughter. Risa: "Good. Then neither can they."

Holt on the apron alone, no stick, standing like a captain. Crane came down first. Older by ten years in two. Grey at the sides. His face had stopped moving. His hands were perfectly still. A thin silver band round his collar.

Holt: "Hal." Crane: "Ezra. You're still alive." "So are you. I wasn't sure, from the look of you." Then Holt asked: "Are you all right, son?" For one moment Crane's face broke and he was nineteen with a clipboard. Then something moved at the top of the ramp and his face closed. "I'm fine, Captain. Please step aside."

The Overseer. Seven feet. The thing from the dome schoolroom footage. Mirror shell, no face, the whole city upside down in it. Twelve soldiers in grey without insignia, hearts too slow and too even, and a grey disc set into the skull behind every left ear.

It looked at the garden. At me. It is the cold from the spine chamber.

It speaks through the band on Crane's collar, in Crane's voice, in a rhythm that isn't his. Only Crane's eyes move. Wide. As if he is trying to tell me something.

Item one: Dask, Lucas. Priority One. To be recovered for evaluation. Item two: the planetary-class queen, formerly assigned to coercion amplification, on her terrace in violation of custody. To be returned. The young went rigid. Pebble stopped humming. Our queen stood up to her full height.

Item three. It stopped. It turned and looked at the door behind Risa's chair for a long time. "Item three will be discussed at a later time."

Dane knew one of the soldiers: Orrin Tal, third from the left, scar through his eyebrow. One of his twelve, taken on with the eleven from the relay basin. Fixed water tanks, sang badly. He looked at Dane for a second, then didn't. Toby: the discs behind their ears hum the click, the one that keeps the broods in step. Keir to Dane: "Somewhere." The first word between them since the map room.

Luna's ten minutes on the bench. The page of nine names. Crane's hands curled into fists at the Quints. "It's always on. It only lights when it speaks. It's listening now." "Then let it listen. Who signed these?"

"I did." All nine, the night before the pods went down. He'd taken the Quints' blood since they were eleven. He asked every year on Day 300 where they were. Always: evaluation ongoing. When Luna said three, held, in the east, he went white. "Ezra, I asked." "I know, son." "And I kept signing."

The band lit. His face shut like a shutter. "The Director is fatigued."

Luna: "I'll ask again. Every day, until someone answers." Above the flat voice, Crane's eyes moved: down, and up. A nod.

Risa hasn't left her chair. Dory hasn't checked on anyone all day. She looked at Risa like an ordinary baby, like she didn't know how. I told Risa: when it's gone, she'll check, find all of us, be cross, scream the house down, and Sera will walk her up and down the porch telling her the names. Promise?

Third promise. Six weeks old.

The queen at the wall didn't sleep.