Chapter 236 Terms for Time

Holt went to see Crane at midnight.

Alone. He didn't tell anyone. I only knew because I was awake on the garden steps, the way I'd been awake every night since the shuttle came down, and I felt him go past. His old rough silver, wide at the root like the mountain queen had shown me, moving slowly down the street toward the guest house.

Not to the guest house. To the bench outside it.

Crane was there.

He hadn't gone in. He'd sat on the bench every night since he landed, Wren said. The Overseer went inside, and the twelve soldiers stood round the house in their ring, and Crane sat on the bench in the dark with his hands on his knees and the band on his collar, and didn't sleep.

Holt sat down beside him.

I didn't follow. I didn't listen. It wasn't mine.

But Holt told me afterward. The next morning, in the map room, under the map, with a cup of Priya's tea going cold in his hands. He told me most of it. He said some of it wasn't his to tell either.

This is the part he told me.

They didn't say anything for a long time.

Holt said that was the way it had always been, with Hal. Even when he was nineteen. He'd come to Holt's bunk shaking, the night Trevor's eyes went, and he hadn't said anything for an hour. Just sat on the end of the bunk with his clipboard in his lap, staring at the wall.

So Holt waited.

After a while, Crane said, "It's listening."

"I know," said Holt.

"Everything you say. Everything I say."

"I know."

"Then why are you here?"

Holt thought about it.

"Because I've been listening too," he said. "Every morning. For months." He turned his head. "Day 409, Hal."

Crane went very still.

I knew about Day 409.

Everyone in Scarecrow did. It was the morning the count changed.

For eight days before it, the deep under the canyon had been sending the hello up through the spine every dawn, on its own, without me. And every dawn, the thirty-one had answered. Thirty-one fragments of the spine-queen's bone, in thirty-one people on Earth, who'd been kept alive on the stabilizer since the Retention Act. Mother. Maura Calder. Toby's mother. All of them.

And after the thirty-one, a gap.

And then one more.

One more silver, very faint, very far away, that answered every morning a moment after the others. That Dot couldn't put a name to. That Luna wrote down on her slate as And 1.

On Day 409, the one more had spoken.

It had said its name.

And then, after its name, it had sent the hello back up the thread. Not answering. Asking. The way you'd knock on a door you'd been standing outside for a very long time.

Dot had said the name aloud on the red glass.

Hal Crane.

And Holt, on his wall, had put his face in his hands and said, Hal. You stupid, clever boy.

And I'd held Crane's thread out to the deep, the way you'd hold a child up to see over a crowd. And the deep had said his name back.

"You asked," Holt said, on the bench, in the dark.

Crane didn't answer.

"Thirty years you'd been listening to that bone," said Holt. "Since the salvage. Since you were holding the clipboard and I was cleaning it with my hands. You had a sliver of it put in you. Didn't you. To understand it. To hear what it was saying." He waited. "And then one morning you asked."

"I asked for myself," said Crane.

His voice was very quiet.

"Not for them. Not for the thirty-one. Not for you. Not for the queen in the station." He swallowed. "For me. Because I'd been listening for thirty years and nobody had ever answered, and I was so tired, Ezra. I was so tired of being the only one in the room who knew what was in the walls." He stopped. "I wanted to hear it say my name. That's all. I wanted to know that something knew I was there."

Holt didn't say anything for a while.

Then he said, "That's where everybody starts."

Crane turned his head.

"Asking for yourself," said Holt. "That's where everybody starts. Dask started there. He finished himself in the dark on the mountain because he was frightened and alone and he wanted to stop hurting. Not for anyone else. For himself." He looked at the guest house. At the ring of soldiers. "And then he finished thirty-four more, because once you've asked for yourself and been answered, you find out you can ask for other people too."

"I never did," said Crane.

"No," said Holt. "Not yet."

That was when Crane told him about the band.

Holt didn't tell me everything. But he told me this.

The band was put on six weeks after Day 409.

The Overseer's office had heard. Not the Overseer itself, not then. It had still been in its quarters, beside the spine chamber, where it had sat for eight years. But the instruments in the spine chamber had heard. One fragment, out of thirty-two, answering wrong. Asking. Saying a name.

They'd traced it.

They'd found him.

"They didn't punish me," Crane said. "That's what I keep thinking. They didn't hurt me. They were very polite. They said my connection to the asset had become compromised. That it was unhealthy. That for my own protection, and the protection of the Project, they would provide a device to regulate it." He touched the band. "It doesn't hurt. It doesn't do anything at all, most of the time. It only listens. It only speaks when it wants to." His hand dropped. "And it closed the thread. That's the first thing it did. Before it did anything else."

"The count went to thirty-one," Holt said quietly.

"The count went to thirty-one," said Crane.

I remembered.

Somewhere in the spring. One morning Dot had counted the thirty-one, and then the gap, and then nothing. And she'd stopped, and waited, and said This unit does not hear the one. And Luna had written it down on her slate, under And 1: Silent.

We'd thought he'd stopped asking.

He hadn't stopped. They'd stopped him.

"I hear it," Crane said. "Every dawn. Still. Through the band. I hear the hello go up and the thirty-one answer and Dorothy Dask stay longer than all the others." He closed his eyes. "I hear the deep say all names. In that robot's voice. I hear you all say it on the glass."

"And you can't answer."

"I can't answer."

They sat for a long time after that.

Then Holt said, "You saw her hands stop."

Crane flinched.

"On the wall. Yesterday." Holt's voice was very low. "Dorothy Dask, in her chair between those two little girls. When she looked at the camera. Her hands stopped. You saw it."

"I saw it."

"Do you know why she did that?"

Crane didn't answer.

"She did it for her son," said Holt. "So he'd know. So he'd hold still. Because she's been sick for years and she knows exactly what happens to the people around her when they don't hold still." He leaned forward. "She did that from eleven light-years away, Hal. With a camera on her. In a cage. For him."

Crane's face was wet.

"I know," he whispered.

"Then you know what asking for someone else looks like," said Holt. "You've seen it now." He stood up, slowly, the way he always stood, and stood there on the path in the dark. "Next time you ask, ask for her."

That was all Holt told me.

He finished his tea. It was cold, and he grimaced, and put the cup down on the table under the map.

"Did he say anything?" I asked. "After that?"

Holt was quiet for a moment.

"He said I don't know how," he said.

"And you said?"

"I said, Nobody does. You do it anyway." Holt picked up his stick. "Then the band lit, and the other thing said the Director was fatigued, and I came home."

Luna drafted the terms that afternoon.

The Overseer had asked for them. Through Crane, in the flat even voice, at the dawn count. The Overseer invites Primary Base to state its terms for the continued cooperation of the asset.

"Invites," Sera said, at the kitchen table. "It invites us."

"It's a negotiation," said Luna. "It wants us to think it's a negotiation. That means it wants something it can't just take." She had her notebook open. "Otherwise it would have taken it."

"It wants Lucas," said Liam.

"It wants Lucas willing," said Luna. "That's different. If it just wanted Lucas, it would have tried to take him on the apron. It didn't. It showed him the feed instead." She looked at me. "It needs you to do something. Something you'd only do if you agreed to. So it's going to try to make you agree."

"To what?"

"I don't know yet," said Luna. "That's why we're going to make it tell us."

She wrote for three hours.

She brought it to the map room at dusk.

Not to the guest house. To the map room. Under Holt's map, with the fourteen queens and the red line and the three black marks overhead. She said if they were going to negotiate, it would be on our table, under our map, where the Overseer would have to stoop through Holt's door and scrape its mirror on the lintel to get in.

It came.

It stooped. It scraped.

Crane came behind it and sat in Holt's chair again. Holt didn't give it up this time. He'd brought a second chair, and put it beside his own, and Crane sat in that instead. Next to Holt. At the head of the table.

The Overseer stood at the end, under the edge of the map.

Luna stood up and read.

Terms for the continued cooperation of Primary Base.

One. The planetary queen of the mountain installation remains free. She is not property. She will not be returned, transferred, collected or confined. She remains on her terrace or wherever she chooses to go.

Two. No person of Primary Base will be transferred, collected or removed from Avalon without their own consent, freely given, in the presence of witnesses of their choosing. This includes any person whose silver is complete, by whatever means.

Three. No brood, queen, young or attendant of the Listening Ring will be collected, transferred, driven or confined.

Four. The stabilizer will continue to be provided, on schedule and in full, to every person on the Retention list. Without condition.

Five. In return, Primary Base will not act against the Meridian, its crew, or any Sorn vessel in orbit around Avalon, for so long as these terms are kept.

Luna lowered the notebook.

"That's all," she said.

The Overseer didn't move for a long time.

Its mirror was turned toward Luna. I could see her in it. Small. Curved. Standing very straight with her notebook in both hands, the way she'd stood at the foot of the shuttle ramp to count her father on.

Then the band on Crane's collar lit.

The Overseer has considered the terms.

Crane's face had gone still again. His hands, on the table, were flat. But his eyes were on Luna. Wide. Moving. The only part of him that was his.

Term one is acceptable, said the voice. For the present.

I heard Sera breathe out beside me.

Term three is acceptable. The broods of the ring are of limited interest at this stage.

Term four is acceptable. Provided the asset's cooperation continues.

Luna didn't move.

Term five is acceptable, said the voice. The Overseer notes that the asset could not act against the Meridian without great loss of life among its human crew. The Overseer notes that the asset is aware of this. The Overseer therefore regards term five as costless to Primary Base.

"It's not costless," said Luna. "It's a promise."

The mirror didn't change.

Term two, said the voice, is not acceptable.

Nobody said anything.

The Overseer proposes amendments, said the voice.

Term two is struck. In its place: Primary Base will provide the Project with processed material, refined to the Project's specifications, in quantities to be determined, on a monthly schedule, delivered to the cargo spine of the Meridian.

And: The asset will submit to evaluation. At a time and location to be determined by the Overseer.

"No," said Luna.

The mirror turned toward her. Very slightly.

"No," Luna said again. "Material, yes. Lucas can make anything from anything. Tell us what you want and how much and we'll put it on the apron every month." She closed the notebook. "But term two stays. No one leaves without their consent. And Lucas doesn't submit to anything."

Term two, said the voice, conflicts with Article Fourteen of the Accord.

"Then Article Fourteen conflicts with term two," said Luna. "You asked for our terms. Those are our terms. You don't get to strike the one you don't like and keep the rest."

The silence went on for a very long time.

Crane's eyes moved. From Luna to me. To Holt. Back to Luna. Very wide. Very fast.

Then the voice said, The Overseer proposes a further amendment.

Term two is suspended. Not struck. Suspended. For a period of observation. During that period, no person of Primary Base will be collected or transferred. The asset's evaluation is deferred.

In exchange, the Overseer will remain on Avalon. To observe. The Overseer requests accommodation within Primary Base for the period of observation.

At the end of the period of observation, term two will be reconsidered.

Luna looked at the mirror.

"How long?" she said.

Undetermined.

"That's not a period. That's a threat."

It is the Overseer's offer.

Luna turned and looked at me.

So did everyone else.

I thought about it.

I thought about the penthouse. The two beds. Genny's fist under her chin. Garnet's foot hanging off the edge. Mother in her chair, with the dish and the spoon and the calendar on the wall with a red circle. Eight days now.

Term four. The stabilizer. Provided the asset's cooperation continues.

I thought about the mountain queen on her terrace, in the light, where she'd said she'd be. Term one. For the present.

I thought about Dory, in the quiet room, in the dark, held so still by fourteen queens that she couldn't even check on her own mother. Item three. Will be discussed at a later time.

And I thought about what Luna had said at the kitchen table.

It needs you to do something. Something you'd only do if you agreed to.

The Overseer wanted material. Fine. I could make material in my sleep.

It wanted to watch me. To stay. To observe.

That was what it really wanted. Not the evaluation. Not yet. It wanted to stand in my city and look at everything and learn what I could do. What the queens could do. What the ring could do. What was behind the door at the bottom of the garden stairs.

And in exchange, nobody would be taken.

For now.

"Material only," I said. "Not me. Not evaluation. Material, on the apron, every month. Whatever you need. And you can stay and watch."

The mirror turned toward me.

"But you stay where we put you," I said. "You don't go into the courts. You don't go into the deep. You don't go into any house unless you're invited. And you don't go down the garden stairs."

Silence.

The Overseer accepts, said the voice.

Luna wrote it all down.

Every word. Every amendment. In her small exact hand, in two copies, one for us and one for the Overseer. Terms one, three, four and five, as written. Term two, suspended. Material only, monthly, to specification. The Overseer to remain, under the conditions I'd given, for a period undetermined.

She signed it.

Then Holt.

Then me.

Then she turned it round on the table and held out her pen to Crane.

Crane looked at it.

The band on his collar was lit. It had been lit the whole time. His face was still. His hands were flat.

But his eyes were on the pen.

The Director will sign on behalf of the Project, said the voice.

Crane's hand came up. Slowly. Like something being moved by someone else. It took the pen.

And then, just as the nib touched the paper, it stopped.

For one moment. One second. Two.

Crane's hand was perfectly still above the paper. Not shaking. Not moving. Still. The way Mother's hands had gone still on the wall.

His eyes came up and met mine.

Then the hand moved again, and signed.

H. Crane. Director.

And underneath it, in smaller letters, crooked, as if the hand had slipped, so that you could almost believe it was an accident:

Witnessed.

I didn't understand what I'd seen until later.

Luna did. She came and found me on the garden steps at midnight, with the signed copy in her hand and the lamp turned low, and showed me.

"Witnessed," she said. "That's what I wrote. Under my father's signature. On his letter to Crane's office, the week after the Accord. Do you remember? The one that said he wasn't aware of anyone touching the spine." She touched the word with one finger. "Witnessed. Crane's office got that letter. Crane read it. He'd have seen my handwriting."

"So?"

"So he wrote it back to me," Luna said. "The same word. In the same place. Under his own signature, with the band lit and that thing standing at the end of the table." She looked up at me. "He's telling me he's there, Lucas. Under it. He's watching. He's witnessing."

I looked at the word.

Crooked. Small. Like an accident.

"Holt told him," I said slowly. "Last night. On the bench. Next time you ask, ask for her."

"For your mother?"

"For someone else."

Luna looked at the paper for a long time.

"Then that was him asking," she said.

The Overseer moved into the guest house that night.

Properly. Not as a guest. As a resident. The twelve soldiers took up positions round it, and the grey shuttle lifted off the apron and went back up to the Meridian, and didn't come back.

The mirror stayed.

Under the conditions. Not in the courts. Not in the deep. Not in any house unless invited. Not down the garden stairs.

It stood at its window every morning for the dawn count. Watching. Every name.

And every morning, after the thirty-one, after the gap, Dot paused.

Just for a moment.

Listening for the one.

It didn't come.

But Dot paused anyway, every morning, the way you'd leave a door open for someone you were expecting. And then she said All names.

And Crane, on the bench outside the guest house, with the band lit on his collar and his face perfectly still, closed his eyes.

The specification came down with the next supply drop.

A single sheet, in a grey case with no stamp, addressed to the asset. Gareth brought it up the street the way he brought everything, as if it might bite.

I read it at the kitchen table.

Most of it was ordinary. Tungsten. Iridium. Cobalt. Rhodium. Things that were rare on Earth and easy for me. Quantities in tonnes. A delivery date: the first of every month, on the apron, for the cargo shuttle.

The last line wasn't ordinary.

Substrate S-1. 400 kg. Spectrum attached.

The spectrum was a strip of lines, printed very small. Dot read it twice. Her lamps flickered.

"This unit does not recognise it," she said. "It is not on any table this unit has. It is not on any table the Project has ever given this unit."

I looked at the lines.

I knew them. Not from a table. From my own eyes, every time they'd slid off something grey. The shuttle on the apron. The panels on the ship. The disc behind Orrin Tal's ear. The band on Crane's throat.

"It's the grey," I said. "It wants me to make the grey."

"Can you?"

I looked at the spectrum for a long time.

"I don't know," I said. "I've never been able to see into it." I put the sheet down. "I'm not going to find out for them."

Luna took the sheet and read it, and read the terms again, and put her finger on a word.

Material only.

"Then we deliver everything else," she said. "In full. On time. Every month. And we write not available next to that line." She looked at me. "And we see what it does."

That night the queen spoke to me at the wall.

We cannot hold the world this still forever, she said. Not all fourteen. Not for a season. The broods need their queens. The ring needs to listen.

I'd been afraid of that.

Then what happens to her?

We have thought, said the queen. The old one and I. We will let go of the world. But not of the house. She shifted her great head on the stones. The quiet room will stay closed to everything beyond the garden wall. To the mirror. To the sky. To the city. But inside the wall, the little one may reach. As far as the house. As far as the four of you.

She'll be able to check?

On you, said the queen. On her mother. On the one called Sera, and the one called Luna. On me, at the wall. Not further. A pause. It is a small hollow. But it is a hollow.

The fourteen let go at dawn.

I felt it happen. The world coming back, one queen at a time, like lamps being lit in a long street. The ring waking. The broods stirring. The deep breathing under the canyon.

And under the garden, in the quiet room, a small bright spark, waking all at once, furious.

She checked.

Me, on the steps. Risa, in her chair. Sera, asleep in the bedroom. Luna, at the kitchen table. The queen at the wall.

There you are. There you are. There you are.

And then she screamed the house down.

Exactly as I'd promised. A long, outraged, three-days-of-it scream that brought Sera out of bed at a run and Risa up out of her chair and Luna to the top of the stairs with her pen still in her hand.

Sera took her up to the porch. Inside the garden wall. Walking up and down, up and down, in the grey early light, saying the names.

Risa. Here. Luna. Here. Lucas. Here. The queen. Here.

The screaming stopped.

Dory lay against Sera's shoulder, hiccupping, and her silver went round once more. Slowly. All four of us, and the queen.

Everyone home?

Everyone home, said Sera.

Across the street, at the guest house window, the mirror turned toward the porch.

And saw a woman walking a baby up and down in the dawn. And nothing else at all.

Days 689–691. Terms for time.

Holt sat with Crane on the bench at midnight. "Day 409, Hal." The morning the one after the gap said its name, Hal Crane, and sent the hello back up. Asking. Holt: "You asked." Crane: "I asked for myself. I wanted to know that something knew I was there." Holt: "That's where everybody starts."

The band was fitted six weeks after Day 409. The spine-chamber instruments heard one fragment of thirty-two answering wrong, and traced it. Very polite: his connection to the asset had become "compromised." The first thing the band did was close the thread. That's when the count went to thirty-one. We thought he'd stopped asking. They stopped him.

He still hears it every dawn, through the band. Mother staying longest. Dot saying all names. He can't answer.

Holt: she held her hands still from eleven light-years away, in a cage, for her son. "Next time you ask, ask for her." Crane: "I don't know how." Holt: "Nobody does. You do it anyway."

The Overseer "invited" terms. Luna: it wants me willing, so it needs me to do something I'd only do if I agreed. She drafted five terms at Holt's table, under our map. One, the mountain queen stays free. Two, no one leaves without consent, including anyone whose silver is complete by whatever means. Three, no brood of the ring collected or driven. Four, the stabilizer to everyone on the Retention list, without condition. Five, in return, we don't act against the Meridian or any Sorn ship.

Accepted: one ("for the present"), three, four ("provided the asset's cooperation continues"), five ("costless"). Luna: "It's not costless. It's a promise." Term two: not acceptable. It wanted material on a monthly schedule and my evaluation.

Luna: you don't get to strike the one you don't like and keep the rest. It offered term two suspended, not struck. No one collected, evaluation deferred, the Overseer to stay and observe for a period undetermined. Luna: "That's not a period. That's a threat."

I said: material only. Not me. You can stay and watch, but not in the courts, not in the deep, not in any house uninvited, and not down the garden stairs. "The Overseer accepts."

Luna, Holt, me. Then Crane, the band lit, his hand moved like something worked by someone else. It stopped above the paper for a second. Two. Still. His eyes met mine. Then he signed, and under it, small and crooked, like an accident: "Witnessed."

Luna: that's what she wrote under her father's letter to Crane's office. He's telling her he's there under it, watching. Then that was him asking.

The grey shuttle went back up. The mirror stayed. It stands at its window for every dawn count.

The specification: tungsten, iridium, cobalt, rhodium, by the tonne. And "Substrate S-1, 400 kg," with a spectrum Dot has never seen. I have: every time my sight slid off something grey. It wants me to make the grey. I don't know if I can. I'm not going to find out for them. Luna: deliver everything else, in full, on time, write "not available," and see what it does.

The queens can't hold the world still forever. They let go at dawn, except for the garden: Dory can reach as far as the house, the four of us and the queen at the wall. A small hollow. She checked, found everyone, and screamed the house down, exactly as I'd promised. Sera walked her on the porch saying the names. Everyone home. The mirror watched from its window and saw a woman walking a baby. Nothing else.

Dot pauses after the gap every morning now, listening for the one, like leaving a door open.

Eight days to Mother's dose.