Chapter 238 What It Doesn't Know

The Overseer asked to see the courts on Day 698.

Not the forge. Not the square. The courts. The nursery courts, down the agreed path and through the meeting passage, where the young tumbled over each other in the mornings and the attendants kept them in line and the queen's hum ran under everything, low and constant.

It asked through Crane, at the dawn count.

The Overseer requests an invitation to observe the nursery courts of the resident brood.

The whole of the red glass went quiet.

"No," said Sera. Before anyone else could speak. She said it loud enough that it carried across the glass to the guest house window. "No. The terms say no. Not the courts. Not the deep."

The band on Crane's collar stayed lit.

The terms state that the Overseer will not enter the courts, said the voice. The Overseer does not propose to enter. The Overseer requests an invitation. The terms permit invitation.

Sera opened her mouth.

Then she closed it again, because it was right. Luna had written it that way. Not in any house unless invited. And the courts were somebody's house.

"It's not ours to give," said Luna quietly. "It's hers."

Everyone turned toward the garden wall.

The queen didn't answer at once.

She lay with her great dark head on the stones, the frost-lines on her plates catching the dawn light, and she was quiet for a long time. Long enough that people on the red glass began to shift their feet. Long enough that the band on Crane's collar went dark.

Then she spoke to me.

It held the old one, she said. For four hundred years. Under the mountain. Its machines pressed the plates of the young. The little one who brings stones to the porch still has the mark.

I know.

And now it wishes to see my young.

You can say no.

I know that I can say no. Her voice was very calm. That is why I am thinking.

She thought for a while longer.

Then she lifted her head. Slowly. All the way up, until it was higher than the garden wall, higher than the porch roof, and turned it toward the guest house.

And spoke. Not to me. To all of us. Through the stones, through the young, through Dot, so that her voice came out of the dawn-count speaker on its pole at the edge of the red glass and filled the whole of the morning.

Let it come, she said. Let it see what it has called weapons.

It came at noon.

Down the agreed path. Alone. The twelve soldiers stayed at the guest house; the queen had said the invitation was for one. It walked past the garden, past the wall, past our queen's head on the stones, and didn't stop or turn.

I walked behind it.

So did Holt. So did Toby, and Juno, and Dot. The queen had asked for us. Those who speak for the city, she'd said, should see what it sees.

Risa didn't come. She stayed on the porch, inside the garden wall, with Dory against her shoulder. Inside the small hollow the queens had left. Dory could check on the four of us and the queen. Nothing further. When the mirror passed the garden, Risa turned her body so Dory faced the house, and didn't look round.

The meeting passage was dark and warm and smelled of stone and the queen. The Overseer had to stoop the whole way. Its mirror scraped the roof of the passage every few steps, a long thin sound like a blade on glass, and every time it scraped, somewhere ahead of us in the dark, something went still.

Then the passage opened out, and we were in the courts.

They were all there.

The lower court, the warm stone floor, the walls the young climbed. The attendants, a dozen of them, standing along the edges. And the young. Thirty or forty, the ones who'd come up from the hollow that morning to play.

They'd stopped playing.

Every one of them had stopped. They stood where they were, on the floor, on the walls, on each other, and every flat head was turned toward the mouth of the passage. Toward the mirror.

The Overseer straightened up.

It looked at them.

I could see them in its shell. Thirty small dark shapes, curved and tiny, scattered across the surface like seeds on glass. And behind them the attendants. And behind the attendants the far wall of the court, and the opening down into the deep, where the queen's hum came up from below.

Nobody moved.

Then Juno said, very quietly, "They're all facing it. Every one."

"They're afraid," said Toby.

"No," said Juno. She turned her head, slowly, the way she did when she was feeling every brood on Avalon at once. "Not afraid. Or not only. They're looking." She frowned. "They know what it is. I can feel them knowing. The mountain's young told them. Through the ring. What it did." She swallowed. "They're looking at it the way you'd look at something you'd only heard about in stories."

The Overseer took a step into the court.

One step. Onto the warm stone floor.

The attendants along the walls shifted. Just slightly. Their plates rising, the way plates rise when something's about to happen. And through the stone under my feet I felt the queen, far below in the deep, go very still.

But the young didn't move.

The Overseer took another step.

It turned its mirror. Slowly. Across the court. From the young on the floor, to the young on the walls, to the attendants. Measuring. The way Crane used to look at me across the dome. The way it had looked at the block of tungsten in the forge.

Count, it said.

Its own voice. Sand on glass.

Thirty-four juveniles. Twelve mature non-reproductive. One reproductive, below. A pause. Health: excellent. Development: advanced for age. Coordination: high. Another pause. No coercion apparatus. No restraints. No amplifiers.

It turned its mirror toward me.

How are they directed?

"They're not," I said.

The mirror didn't move.

Every brood is directed, said the Overseer. By coercion or by the reproductive. A brood without direction disperses. Feeds without discipline. Attacks without purpose.

"They're not directed," I said again. "They're raised."

The Overseer was silent.

That was when Pebble came.

I hadn't seen him. He'd been at the back of the court, by the opening to the deep, where the youngest ones stayed close to the queen's hum. He came forward now, slowly, through the others, the way he'd come up the agreed path that first morning to the porch. Carefully. Close to the ground.

He stopped in front of the Overseer.

Three feet away. Less.

He was so small. Smaller than the others; he'd always been small, the smallest of the thirteen we'd brought home from the mountain. His head came up to roughly the mirror's lowest joint, the same height as Nessa's.

And on his foreplate, very pale, the scar.

I saw it in the mirror. Pebble's head, tiny and curved in the shell. And on it, the pale mark where the mountain's machines had pressed against him as a hatchling. Where the Overseer's machines had pressed.

The Overseer saw it too.

I watched it see. Its mirror stopped turning. It held still, looking down at the small dark shape in front of it, at the pale mark on its plate.

For a long moment, nothing moved in the court at all.

Then Pebble lifted one forelimb.

And tapped the ground.

Three taps. Then two. Then one.

I knew it.

So did Toby. So did Holt. So did everyone in Scarecrow who'd spent a morning in the courts since the Accord. It was the first thing Pebble had ever said to any of us, before he had a name. Before the quiet stones and the ring. The morning the smallest of the thirteen, the one with the pale mark, had come to the courtyard wall where Risa sat, and tapped the stone.

I see you.

Pebble tapped it again.

Three. Two. One.

I see you.

And then he waited.

The Overseer didn't move.

I watched it. Everyone did. The attendants along the walls. The young on the floor. Toby and Juno and Holt beside me. Dot with her lamps turned low.

The Overseer stood on the warm stone floor of the nursery court with its mirror turned down toward the small dark shape in front of it, and it didn't move at all.

Not a step. Not a turn. Not a word.

It stood there for so long that Toby, beside me, began very slowly to breathe again. For so long that the young on the walls began, one by one, to climb down and come closer. To stand in a ring round Pebble, a little way back, the way the children had stood round Ada Fen on the refuge route.

For so long that I began to understand.

It didn't know.

It had held the mountain queen for four hundred years. It had pressed the plates of her young into the shapes it wanted. It had driven broods across a thousand miles with a voice from the sky. It had counted the courts in a single glance, thirty-four juveniles, twelve mature, one reproductive. It knew the fold. It knew my father's notebooks, page by page.

And it had never been told I see you.

Not once. Not by anything. In four hundred years of cages and channels and voices, nothing it held had ever looked up at it and tapped the ground and waited for an answer.

It didn't know what to say.

What does it want? said the Overseer, at last.

To me. Not turning. Its mirror still pointed down at Pebble.

Its voice was different. Not much. But I'd heard it in the forge, and on the street, and at Nessa's door, and I knew it. This was different. Slower. As if the words were coming from further away.

"It's saying I see you," I said.

Why?

"Because it does."

That is not a reason. That is a description.

"It's the first thing he ever said to us," I said. "Before he had a name. He said it to Risa, at the courtyard wall. It means I see you, and I'm not going to pretend I don't." I looked at the mirror. "He's asking you to say it back."

Why?

"So he knows you see him too."

The Overseer was silent.

Pebble tapped again. Three. Two. One.

And waited.

The Overseer didn't answer.

It stood for a long time longer. And then, very slowly, it turned. Not toward the passage. Not away from Pebble. It turned its mirror upward, toward the roof of the court, the way you'd turn your face up to the sky if you didn't want anyone to see it.

Then it turned all the way round, and stooped into the meeting passage, and walked back up toward the city.

Its mirror scraped the roof the whole way.

Nobody followed it.

Pebble stood on the warm stone floor where it had left him, with his forelimb still raised, and the young in a ring round him, and the attendants along the walls. And after a while he lowered the forelimb. And turned. And went back to the opening to the deep, where the queen's hum came up from below, and pressed his flat head against the stone.

And hummed.

The hollow-song. Five notes. All the way through. Third note right.

Here. I'm here.

Down in the deep, our queen hummed it back.

And then, one by one, the young in the ring round where he'd stood joined in. Then the attendants along the walls. Then, from somewhere very far away, through the long thread under the world, so faint I almost didn't hear it, the mountain queen. On her terrace. In the light. Where she'd said she would be.

The whole of the court was humming by the time we reached the passage.

I looked back once, from the mouth of it.

On the warm stone floor, in the place where the mirror had stood, there was nothing at all. Just the stone, and the faint marks of the young's feet all round it, in a ring.

And in the middle of the ring, where Pebble had tapped, three small scratches. Then two. Then one.

"It didn't know," Toby said, on the way back up the passage.

"No."

"It knew everything. The fold. Your father's notebooks. How many of them there were, just by looking." He shook his head. "And it didn't know what to do when a three-foot Teeming said hello."

"It's never been said hello to," said Holt.

We both looked at him.

He was walking slowly, with his stick, in the dark of the passage, and his face was very thoughtful.

"Four hundred years," Holt said. "Holding queens. Pressing their young. Driving broods across continents. And none of them ever said hello. Because you don't say hello to the thing that's got its hand round your throat." He was quiet for a few steps. "Then the smallest one, with its mark on him, walks up and says I see you. And waits."

"And it ran," said Toby.

"It didn't run," said Holt. "It walked. Slowly. And it looked at the roof first." He tapped his stick on the passage floor. "I've seen men do that. In the first wave. When someone said something they weren't ready for. They look up. So nobody can see their face."

"It hasn't got a face," said Juno.

"No," said Holt. "But it looked up anyway."

Crane was on his bench when we came back up.

The band on his collar was dark. The Overseer had gone straight into the guest house and shut the door. The twelve soldiers stood in their ring. Nobody else was near.

He looked up as I passed.

"What happened?" he said. His own voice. Very low. "It came back up the path and went inside and it hasn't moved. It's standing in the middle of the room. It's never done that." He swallowed. "It always sits at the window."

I stopped.

Holt stopped beside me.

"One of the young said hello to it," I said.

Crane stared at me.

"Hello."

"I see you. Three taps. The little one with the scar from the mountain." I watched his face. "It didn't know what to say. It stood there for a long time and then it left."

Crane didn't say anything for a while.

Then he laughed.

It wasn't a happy sound. It came out of him cracked and quiet and went on too long, and he put his hand over his mouth to stop it, and his shoulders shook.

"Of course it didn't," he said through his fingers. "Of course it didn't know."

"Why?"

Crane lowered his hand. His eyes were wet.

"They don't have young," he said. "The Sorn. Not the way you mean. Not the way anything on this planet means." He looked at the guest house door. "I've read the files. The ones they let the Project see. They don't hatch. They don't grow. They're made, Lucas. Grown in vats, on the ships, from a pattern. Fully formed. Already knowing what they're for." His voice dropped. "Nothing has ever looked at one of them and been glad it was there. Nothing has ever waited to see if it would answer. Not once. Not in the whole history of their species."

The band on his collar flickered. Very faintly.

Crane went still.

But it didn't light. Not fully. It flickered, and settled, and stayed dark.

"It's not listening," Crane whispered. "Right now. It's too busy. Standing in the middle of that room." He looked at me. "Thinking about a three-foot Teeming that said hello."

Holt put his hand on Crane's shoulder.

"Then so are you," he said. "Thinking about it."

Crane looked at the ground.

"Yes," he said.

The first delivery went up on Day 701.

Forty tonnes of tungsten. Eight of iridium. Cobalt, rhodium, osmium, the whole list, in neat grey crates on the red-glass apron, stacked by Gareth and Dov and half of the third wave in the order Luna had written down.

All of it except Substrate S-1.

Not available, in Luna's hand, on the manifest. Next to the spectrum.

The cargo shuttle came down from the Meridian at noon. Not the grey one. An ordinary station shuttle, dull and scuffed, with a crew of four in ordinary station uniforms who didn't look at anyone and didn't have discs behind their ears. They loaded the crates without speaking. It took them three hours.

The Overseer watched from its window.

It didn't come out. It didn't say anything about S-1. When the shuttle lifted off with its forty tonnes of tungsten and the rest, it watched it go, and then the window was empty.

Nobody said noted. Nobody said anything.

That was worse than if it had.

Dot tagged every crate.

She'd asked me the week before, in the forge, while I was building the first block of tungsten. She'd rolled up beside the anvil with her lamps very low, which meant she'd been thinking about something for a long time.

"This unit wishes to know where the material goes," she'd said.

"To the Meridian."

"And after the Meridian."

I'd stopped working.

"The Project says Earth," Dot said. "The Project has always said Earth. Material from Avalon, for the domes. For the air plants and the water and the walls." Her lamps flickered. "This unit has believed the Project before. This unit was three days old."

"What do you want to do?"

"This unit wishes to put something in the material," Dot said, "that only this unit can find."

So we did.

It was my idea, how. Dot's idea, what. In every crate, in every block, deep inside the tungsten where no assay would ever find it, I folded a pattern. Not a fold, exactly. I didn't fold anything. I only climbed, the way I always had. But I climbed a few hundred atoms of every block into an isotope of tungsten that doesn't occur anywhere in nature, and arranged them in a shape.

Dot's shape.

The same shape as her lamps. Four dots in a curve, and one in the middle.

"It will not be detectable by any instrument the Project has," Dot said. "It is too few atoms. It is too ordinary an element. They will assay the tungsten and find tungsten."

"Then how will you find it?"

"This unit cannot," said Dot. "Not from here. Not yet." Her lamps steadied. "But the ring can hear the voice when it reflects off the sky. The ring can hear the station's instruments. The ring can hear a great many things this unit cannot." She paused. "And the queens know the shape of this unit's lamps. The little one taught them. When she was learning the brood-speech, she used this unit's lamps to show them what a robot was."

I stared at her.

"If the material goes somewhere a queen can hear," Dot said, "a queen will know it. Because it will be in a shape she has seen before."

Sera came to the scarecrow field with me that night.

The field of names. At the edge of the valley, beyond the north wall, where I'd built the first scarecrows in the first year, for Brock and the others nobody else would name. Sixty names, by the end of that year. More now. Wren kept the count. The scarecrows stood in their long rows in the dark, with their arms out and their names on their chests, and the wind off the canyon moved their sleeves.

We walked down the rows.

Sera had her hand in mine. She hadn't said anything since the house. She'd been quiet all evening, since the courts, since I'd told her about Pebble and the mirror and I see you.

At the end of the last row, by the newest scarecrow, she stopped.

It was blank. Gareth had built it in the spring, for whoever came next, the way Holt said you should always have one ready. No name on it yet. Just arms out, in the dark, waiting.

Sera looked at it for a long time.

"It didn't know what to say," she said.

"No."

"Four hundred years and nobody ever said hello to it." She was still looking at the blank scarecrow. "I keep thinking about that. I don't want to. I want to hate it. It's got your mother on a wall and the Quints in a hole in the east and Orrin Tal with a disc in his head." Her hand tightened in mine. "But it stood there in the courts with Pebble tapping at it, and it didn't know what to do."

"Holt says it looked up. So nobody could see its face."

"It hasn't got a face."

"That's what Juno said."

Sera laughed. Not much. A breath.

Then she took my hand, the one she was holding, and put it flat on her stomach. Low. Below her belt. The way she had on the porch, before they landed. The way she had in the quiet room, the day of the feed.

"Look," she said. "I'm asking."

I looked.

The spark was still there. Bigger, now. Not much. A few weeks. Still smaller than anything I'd ever seen with my own sight. A cluster of cells, folding into each other, beginning to take a shape I could almost recognise.

And in the middle of it, the thread of silver. Whole. Brighter than before.

I watched it.

I'd watched it every night since the porch. I couldn't help it. A few seconds, before sleep. Just to see it was there.

It had never done anything. It was too small to do anything. It just was. A spark, and a thread, growing.

Tonight, it turned.

I felt it. Under my palm. Under Sera's skin, under everything, so small I'd have missed it if I hadn't been watching. The thread of silver, which had always lain still in the middle of the spark, moved. Just slightly. The way a compass needle moves when you bring a magnet near.

Toward my hand.

I didn't breathe.

Sera felt me go still.

"What?" she said. "What is it?"

"It moved."

"It can't move. Edda says it's too small to move."

"Not the baby," I said. "The silver." My voice wasn't working properly. "It turned. Toward my hand. Toward me."

Sera didn't say anything.

She stood in the dark at the end of the last row of scarecrows, with my hand on her stomach and her hand over mine, and the wind moving the sleeves of all those names around us, and the blank one in front of us with its arms out, waiting.

"Does it know you?" she whispered.

"I don't know." I swallowed. "I think it's saying the only thing it can."

"Which is?"

I looked at the blank scarecrow. At its arms, held out in the dark. Waiting for whoever came next.

"I see you," I said.

Sera made a sound I'd never heard her make.

Then she put her face against my shoulder, and held my hand flat on her stomach with both of hers, and didn't let go for a very long time.

Days 698–701. What it doesn't know.

The Overseer asked for an invitation to the nursery courts. Sera: no, the terms say no. But the terms permit invitation, and the courts are somebody's house. Luna: it isn't ours to give. It's hers. The queen thought a long time: it held the old one for four hundred years, and the little one who brings stones still has its mark. Then, to the whole red glass: "Let it come. Let it see what it has called weapons."

It came alone down the agreed path and stooped through the passage. Its mirror scraped the roof the whole way. Risa turned Dory toward the house as it passed.

Every young in the court stopped and faced it. Juno: not afraid, or not only. Looking, the way you look at something you'd only heard about in stories.

It counted in one glance: thirty-four juveniles, twelve mature, one reproductive below. Health excellent. No coercion apparatus, no restraints. "How are they directed?" "They're not. They're raised."

Pebble came through the others and stopped three feet from it. The scar on his foreplate was in its mirror. It saw. Pebble tapped three, two, one: I see you. Again. Then waited.

It didn't move. Four hundred years of cages and channels and voices, and nothing it held had ever looked up and said hello and waited for an answer. It didn't know what to say. "What does it want?" "He's asking you to say it back. So he knows you see him too." It turned its mirror up at the roof, then walked out slowly. Pebble went back and hummed the hollow-song, all the way through. The queen hummed it back.

Holt: in the first wave, men looked up when someone said something they weren't ready for, so nobody could see their face. Juno: it hasn't got a face. Holt: it looked up anyway.

Crane on the bench: it's standing in the middle of the room, which it has never done; it always sits at the window. When I told him, he laughed until he cried. The Sorn don't have young. They're grown in vats from a pattern, fully formed, already knowing what they're for. Nothing has ever been glad one of them was there, or waited for it to answer. The band flickered and stayed dark: it isn't listening, it's too busy thinking about a Teeming that said hello. Holt: "Then so are you."

Day 701. First delivery: forty tonnes of tungsten, eight of iridium, the whole list, and "not available" beside S-1. An ordinary station crew, no discs. The Overseer watched the shuttle go and said nothing. That was worse.

Every block carries Dot's shape, a few hundred atoms of an isotope that doesn't occur in nature: four dots in a curve and one in the middle. No Project instrument can find it. But the queens know that shape. Dory used Dot's lamps to show them what a robot was. If the material goes anywhere a queen can hear, she'll know it.

Night, the scarecrow field. Sera at the blank scarecrow at the end of the last row: she wants to hate it, but it didn't know what to do. Then my hand on her stomach. "Look. I'm asking."

For the first time, the thread of silver in the spark moved. It turned toward my hand, like a compass needle near a magnet.

Sera: "Does it know you?"

I said: I think it's saying the only thing it can.

I see you.