Chapter 245 Twenty

I didn't know it was my birthday until Liam told me.

That sounds stupid. It is stupid. But I hadn't counted. Not properly. I counted everything else: the names on the north wall, the dawn seconds, the quiet stones, the tonnes of tungsten, the four minutes between Dory's checks. I hadn't counted my own days since I was sixteen and living in the wasteland house with a scarecrow in the field.

Liam had.

He was waiting on the apron when we came down the ramp. Grey-faced from no sleep, with green drink on his shirt and Toby's understudy's drum under one arm. He watched Juno help Jessa down. Watched Sera carry Lise. Watched Pim come down on his own, holding the rail. Watched Dory count them from Luna's arms.

Then he looked at me.

"Happy birthday," he said.

I stared at him.

"It's Day 727," said Liam. "You were born on the twelfth. Under the old calendar. That's today. I worked it out in the third week, in your base, with a broken leg and nothing better to do." He shrugged. "I told everyone it was mine because it's easier to get people to come to a party if it's for the idiot."

"You lied to the Overseer."

"I lied to everyone," said Liam. "It's a birthday party. That's practically required." He looked at the three in their blankets, being led toward the medical building. At Risa, on the ground, with Sigmund holding her up. At the grey sky going pale over the canyon rim.

His face did something complicated.

"Happy birthday," he said again. More quietly. "You got three presents."

I was twenty.

I stood on the apron in the first grey light with that word in my head and didn't know what to do with it.

Twenty. Father had been younger than that in the war. Holt said so, once. Younger than me, and already the one everyone looked to when the officers stopped answering.

I'd always thought of twenty as old.

I didn't feel old. I felt the way you feel after you've carried something heavy a long way and put it down. Light. Shaky. As if, now that you weren't holding it, your arms didn't know what to do.

Three people in blankets. Taken, not lost. Home.

And somewhere in the south and the west, two pieces of two queens, back where they belonged.

And somewhere in the guest house, a mirror that had turned east and west and south at one in the morning, and then turned back to Liam.

It knew.

I didn't know what it would do about it.

I stood on the apron and found I didn't care, just for a moment. Just for this morning. Twenty, and wet, and very tired, with three presents in the medical building.

Then Sera came back from the medical building and walked straight up to me and kissed me, hard, in front of everyone. And then turned round and kissed Luna, who'd come down the apron with Dory, and then went to Risa on the ground and kissed her too, on the forehead, gently, because Risa could barely lift her head.

"Happy birthday," Sera said, to me, over her shoulder. "Don't you dare go to bed. Priya's made a cake."

Priya had made a cake.

She'd made it the day before, Nessa told me. In secret. After Liam had told her the truth about the party. She'd hidden it in the back pantry behind the flour sacks, where nobody went, and Nessa had guarded the door all night with a rolling pin in case anyone tried.

It was huge.

Three layers. Some kind of fruit from the canyon gardens that the growers had been nursing all summer and that nobody had a name for yet. Cream. Real cream, from the goats the third wave had brought down in their cargo, which Priya had been saving for weeks.

And on top, in red sugar, very carefully, a scarecrow.

With its arms out. And round its neck, in blue sugar, a scarf.

I stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at it.

"Garnet's drawing," said Priya, from behind the range. Her voice was a little thick. "Luna described it. I did my best."

I couldn't say anything.

"There's twenty candles," said Nessa, "except there aren't, because we don't have candles, so Dot's going to light them." She looked at Dot, who'd rolled in behind me, scraping both lamps on the frame. "Aren't you?"

"This unit has been asked," said Dot, "and this unit will."

She turned her lamps on the cake.

And made twenty small points of light. Very small. Very bright. In a ring round the scarecrow. Each one flickering, very slightly, the way a real flame does.

"Blow," said Dot.

So I blew.

And Dot turned all twenty off at once.

And the kitchen, which was full, the way it always was at breakfast, cheered so loudly that the young in the courts on the far side of the city heard it, Juno said later, and stopped what they were doing and turned their heads.

The Overseer came to the dawn count.

Late. It had been at the party until dawn, and then it had stood beside Liam at the door and said The Overseer understands that it was meant to be, and gone back to the guest house. And I'd thought it might not come out again for a while.

It did.

It stood at its window the way it always did. While Dot counted. While the hello went up and came down. While the thirty-one answered, and Mother answered for eleven seconds, and the gap came, and Dot paused for the one.

Then Dot did something new.

"Three more," she said.

Everyone on the red glass turned.

"This unit is counting three more this morning," Dot said. "They are not in the hello. They are in the medical building. This unit would like to count them anyway." Her lamps steadied. "Quint, Jessa. Arden, Pim. Varga, Lise."

A pause.

"Taken," said Dot. "Not lost. Home."

Wren, on the north wall, wrote it in her book. I watched her do it. Three lines, beside three names that had been blank for two years.

Home.

"All names," said Dot.

And the red glass said it with her. All of it. Every voice.

All names.

At the guest house window, the mirror didn't move.

But it had heard. I was sure of it. Three names it would have known, from the column in the east. Three amplifiers. Three of seven housings, emptied in the night. Counted on the red glass at dawn, in front of everyone, by a robot who'd told it to its face that she only lied to people who didn't ask.

The band on Crane's collar lit.

The Overseer notes, said the voice in Crane's throat, that a weather event occurred overnight across three regions of the continent.

Silence.

The Overseer notes that relay installations in those regions have ceased transmission.

Nobody on the red glass moved.

The Overseer notes that the terms of cooperation concern the Meridian, its crew, and Sorn vessels in orbit. The Overseer notes that relay installations are not named in the terms.

Luna, beside me, went very still.

The Overseer has reported the weather event to the Hand, said the voice. The Hand has replied.

A pause.

The material quota is doubled. Effective with the next delivery.

The band went dark.

That was all.

Nobody said anything.

People looked at each other. At me. At Luna. At Holt, on his wall, with his hands open on his knees.

Then, slowly, people began to go. Back to their houses. To breakfast. To the forge, the kitchen, the schoolroom. The way they did every morning, after the count.

Luna didn't move.

"That's it?" she said. To me. To Holt. To nobody. "That's all? Doubled?"

"That's the price," said Holt.

He'd come down off the wall. He stood on the red glass beside us with his stick, looking at the guest house window, where the mirror still stood.

"It's telling us it knows," Holt said. "Every word of that was telling us it knows. Weather event. Three regions. Ceased transmission." He tapped his stick on the glass. "And then it's telling us it's not going to call it a breach. Because it can't. Because Luna wrote the terms and didn't write the ground." He looked at Luna. "So it's letting us pay instead."

"Double," said Luna.

"Double tungsten," said Holt. "Double iridium. Double everything." He shrugged. "Dask can make double. Dask can make ten times. It knows that too." He looked up at the window again. "It's not a punishment. It's a receipt."

"For what?"

Holt was quiet for a moment.

"For three people," he said. "And two pieces of two queens. And a storm."

He turned and walked toward the kitchen.

"Cheap," he said, over his shoulder. "If you ask me."

Holt found me after the count, before I went to Crane.

He didn't say anything at first. He walked beside me along the edge of the red glass with his stick, slowly, the way he always walked, until we were past the north wall and nobody could hear.

Then he stopped.

"Your father turned twenty in a trench," he said.

I looked at him.

"Outside the old Varran pass. Before the surrender. Before any of it." Holt leaned on his stick and looked at the canyon. "We didn't know it was his birthday. He didn't tell anyone. I only found out because he got a letter. From your grandmother. It came three weeks late, through the field post, soaked through. He read it in the trench with the rain coming down and the Sorn lights on the ridge, and then he folded it up and put it in his boot."

"What did it say?"

"I asked him," said Holt. "He wouldn't tell me. He said it was his." He was quiet for a moment. "But that night, when the officer with the polished boots came down the line and told us we'd be going over at dawn, your father was the one who stood up and said no. Not no, sir. Just no. Not at dawn. They'll see us. We go at noon, when the sun's behind us, or we don't go at all."

"And?"

"And we went at noon," said Holt. "And we came back. Most of us." He tapped his stick on the glass. "I've always thought it was the letter. That whatever your grandmother wrote, it made him decide he was going to see twenty-one."

I didn't say anything.

Holt reached into his coat.

He took out something small and flat, wrapped in an oilcloth, and held it out.

"I took it out of his boot," he said. "After. When he wasn't using it any more. I meant to give it to your mother. I never did. I don't know why." His jaw moved. "I think I wanted to keep a piece of him that nobody else knew about."

I unwrapped it.

A letter. Very old. The paper brown and soft, the ink faded almost to nothing. Folded so many times the creases had worn through.

I couldn't read it. The rain, and the years, had taken almost all of it.

But at the bottom, where the paper was folded inward and the ink had been protected, two words were still there. In a careful, unsteady hand.

Come home.

I stood on the red glass with my father's twentieth-birthday letter in my hands.

"Happy birthday, Dask," said Holt quietly.

He walked away before I could say anything.

Crane was on his bench.

I went over after the count. I didn't know why. Maybe because it was my birthday and I was twenty and I'd never once in my life walked up to Halloran Crane on purpose.

He looked up.

The band on his collar was dark. His face was grey. He looked like he hadn't slept either. Maybe he hadn't. Maybe he'd sat on the bench all night, in the storm, listening to the voice go flat in three places at once through the band he couldn't take off.

"Quint," he said.

His own voice. Barely there.

"Jessa Quint," I said.

Crane closed his eyes.

"Not Marlo."

"Not Marlo."

He sat there with his eyes closed for a long time.

"Marlo was moved," he said. "A year ago. I signed the transfer." His hands, on his knees, curled into fists. "I didn't know where. Evaluation. It said evaluation. I signed it." He opened his eyes. "I took their blood since they were eleven, Dask. Twice a week. I knew their veins better than their mother did." His voice cracked. "And I signed him away and I didn't even ask where."

I didn't say anything.

"Is she," Crane said. "Jessa. Is she—"

"She's alive," I said. "She's in the medical building. Edda's with her. Her silver's almost whole. Like you said. The closest." I looked at him. "She asked about her brother before she asked about anything else."

Crane put his face in his hands.

I stood in front of him for a while.

Then I said, "It's my birthday."

He lifted his head.

"I'm twenty," I said. "Priya made a cake. With a scarecrow on it." I didn't know why I was telling him. "Father built a scarecrow. In the field. Behind the house. You know that. You came to the house."

Crane looked at me for a long moment.

"I remember the scarecrow," he said.

"Garnet tied Mother's scarf round its neck. So it wouldn't be cold."

"I didn't know that."

"It's still there," I said. "Miss Pell went and looked."

Crane didn't say anything. But his fists, on his knees, slowly uncurled.

"Happy birthday, Lucas," he said.

It was the first time he'd ever used my first name.

The courier case came down at noon.

On the supply drop, the way it always did now. Gareth brought it up the street. Luna opened it.

It wasn't numbers.

It was a small grey disc. The size of a coin. And a note, in the General's handwriting, plain:

This came to my flat. Through the same door as Luna's pages. I don't know who brought it. I've listened to it. It's for Dask.

Twenty seconds. That's all there was room for.

Happy birthday.

Dot played it.

In the kitchen. With the cake still on the table, half eaten, and the scarecrow's sugar arms broken off and given to the children. With Sera and Luna and Risa round the table, and Dory in Risa's lap, chewing on a piece of cream-covered crust that Edda would have had words about. With Holt and Liam and Toby and Sigmund.

The disc went into a slot in Dot's front casing. Her lamps went dim.

Then a voice came out of her speaker.

Quiet. Careful. Very slightly unsteady, the way it had always been unsteady, for as long as I'd been alive.

Lucas.

I stopped breathing.

This is your mother. They tell me I have twenty seconds.

A pause. A breath.

I'm holding it myself now. The spoon. I hold it myself. I don't need anyone to help.

Another pause.

Someone at dawn says my name. Every morning. I know it's you. I know you know.

Happy birthday, my darling. Twenty.

Your father would be

And it stopped.

Twenty seconds.

Nobody in the kitchen moved.

Dot's lamps came back up, very slowly. The disc clicked out of her casing. She didn't say anything.

I sat at the table.

I'm holding it myself now.

The spoon. The silver spoon in the glass dish beside her chair, in the feed. The stabilizer. For years she'd had to have someone hold it for her. Me, when I was home. Genny, after. Her hands shook too much to get it to her mouth without spilling.

She was holding it herself.

Someone at dawn says my name.

The hello. Every morning. Thirty-one, and Mother staying longer than all the others. And on the morning Dory was born, forty-one seconds. Like a hand on my face.

It had been helping.

I hadn't known. I'd thought it was only a hello. A thread, reaching. But every morning, through the spine and the deep and the eleven light-years, something bright had touched her silver and said her name.

And her hands had got steadier.

Your father would be

Twenty seconds.

She hadn't finished.

Risa reached across the table and took my hand.

Then Sera took my other one. And Luna, from beside Sera, put her hand on top of both of ours.

And Dory, in Risa's lap, with cream on her face, slapped her small sticky hand on top of the pile. The way she had at the kitchen table the day of the call. As if she'd decided it was a game.

"Proud," said Risa quietly. "That's what she was going to say."

"You don't know that."

"I know that," said Risa. "Everyone at this table knows that."

I looked round.

At Sera, with her jaw set and her eyes wet. At Luna, very straight, very composed, with her free hand pressed flat against the arrivals list inside her coat. At Risa, who had held three storms for three hours and could barely sit up and was holding my hand anyway.

At Dory.

Who looked back at me with her silver-ringed eyes and cream on her nose, and whose check came round, all four of us, the queen, Dot, and then, through the thread she'd found in me on the day of the call, further.

Toward a woman in a chair, eleven light-years away, holding a spoon by herself.

There you are, Dory said.

That afternoon I went to the medical building.

Jessa was awake. Sitting up, against the pillows, with a bowl of Priya's soup in her lap and her long tangled hair pulled back in a tie that Edda had found. She looked a little less grey. Her hands were steadier on the spoon.

Pim was in the next bed, asleep.

Lise was in the chair by the window, looking out at the canyon. She hadn't said anything yet. Edda said that was all right. Edda said she'd say something when she was ready.

Jessa looked up when I came in.

"Lucas," she said.

"How do you feel?"

"Strange." She put the spoon down. "I can feel everything. Everyone. All the people out there with silver. The Teeming. The queen at your wall. Juno says that's normal. She says she feels it too." She looked at her hands. "In the housing I could only feel the column. Pulling. That's all there was for two years. Pulling."

"It's stopped."

"I know." She swallowed. "I keep waiting for it to start again."

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Juno says you can finish it," Jessa said. "The silver. She says it's almost whole already. She says you could open the last bits." She looked at me. "Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Would it help? With—" She touched the place behind her ear. Where the disc had been. Where the skin was still pink and new. "With finding Marlo?"

I thought about it.

"It might," I said. "Juno can feel everyone on Avalon with silver. Since I finished her. Every one. If Marlo's anywhere on this planet, Juno would know." I hesitated. "She doesn't feel him."

Jessa's face didn't change.

"Then he's not on the planet," she said.

"No."

"He went up." She was very calm. "I felt him go up. So he's on the station. Or the Hand. Or somewhere else." She looked out the window at the sky. "If you finished me. Would I be able to feel up? Further than Juno? We're twins. We were always—" She stopped. "I could always feel him. Even before. Even in the dome. Even in separate pods."

I didn't know.

"I don't know," I said. "But I'll ask you again when you're stronger. And you can say yes or no. And either way, we'll look."

Jessa looked at me for a long time.

"You asked," she said. "Before. You didn't just do it. You asked."

"Yes."

"In the housing, nobody asked." She picked the spoon back up. Her hand was steady. "Ask me tomorrow."

At dusk I sat on the porch with the three of them.

Risa asleep in Gareth's chair, finally, with Dory asleep on her chest. Luna on the top step, reading the General's note again, the one that had come with the disc. Happy birthday. Sera beside me, with her head on my shoulder.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Down in the street, Toby sat on the bottom step of the house opposite with his fiddle and played. Not for anyone. Just played. Something slow that I didn't know, that went up and came down and went up again, like someone walking a long road and stopping now and then to look back.

When he finished, he looked up at the porch.

"That's yours," he said. "I made it this afternoon. It hasn't got a name."

"It doesn't need one."

"Everything needs one," said Toby. "Dory would tell you." He tucked the fiddle under his arm and stood up. "I'll call it Twenty. Until you think of something better."

He walked off toward the meeting passage, where the young were waiting in the shadow for the evening's music, the way they did every night now.

Then Sera said, "Twenty."

"Twenty."

"How does it feel?"

I thought about it.

"Heavy," I said. "And light. Both."

"That's a stupid answer."

"It's my birthday. I'm allowed stupid answers."

Sera laughed into my shoulder.

Luna looked up from the note. She reached over without a word and took Sera's hand, the one that wasn't round my arm, and laced their fingers together. And held on. And went back to reading.

Sera squeezed back without looking.

From the chair, Risa murmured something in her sleep. Sera reached over with her free foot and nudged the chair, gently, so it rocked. Risa settled. Dory, on her chest, didn't wake.

"Next year," said Sera, "there'll be two of them on this porch."

"Two of them."

"And the year after that, Risa wants about nine."

"Risa wants a loud house."

"Risa's going to get one," said Luna, without looking up. "I've done the arithmetic. If the rate holds, we'll need a bigger porch by Day 1500."

Sera laughed again. Louder.

And from the garden wall, the queen lifted her head and hummed.

Here. I'm here.

And I sat on the porch with the people I loved, on the night I turned twenty, with my mother's voice in my head holding a spoon by herself, and three names on the north wall that said Home.

And for one evening, I didn't count anything at all.

Day 727. Twenty.

Liam on the apron: "Happy birthday." Day 727. He worked it out in the third week, on the walk to my base, with a broken leg. He told everyone the party was his because it's easier to get people to come if it's for the idiot. "You got three presents."

Father was younger than twenty in the war. I always thought twenty was old. It felt like putting down something heavy you'd carried a long way. Sera kissed me, then Luna, then Risa on the forehead because Risa couldn't lift her head. "Don't you dare go to bed. Priya's made a cake."

Three layers, canyon fruit, real goats' cream, and on top in red sugar a scarecrow with a blue sugar scarf. From Garnet's drawing, as Luna described it. Nessa guarded it all night with a rolling pin. No candles; Dot made twenty points of light. "Blow." The young in the courts heard the cheer.

Dawn count. Dot: "Three more. Not in the hello. In the medical building. This unit would like to count them anyway. Quint, Jessa. Arden, Pim. Varga, Lise. Taken. Not lost. Home." Wren wrote "Home" beside three names that had been blank for two years.

The band: a weather event across three regions; relays ceased transmission; the terms concern the Meridian, its crew and Sorn vessels in orbit; relays are not named. The Hand has replied. The material quota is doubled. That was all.

Holt: it's telling us it knows, and it can't call it a breach because Luna didn't write the ground, so it's letting us pay. "It's not a punishment. It's a receipt. For three people, two pieces of two queens, and a storm. Cheap, if you ask me."

Holt, past the north wall: Father turned twenty in a trench outside the Varran pass. A letter from my grandmother came three weeks late, soaked through. He read it in the rain and put it in his boot, and that night he told the officer with the polished boots no: not at dawn, at noon, with the sun behind us. Holt took the letter out of his boot afterward and never gave it to anyone. Almost all of it is gone. The fold kept two words: Come home.

Crane on the bench. Marlo was moved a year ago; he signed the transfer, "evaluation," and didn't ask where. He knew their veins better than their mother did. I told him it was my birthday, and about the scarf. "I remember the scarecrow." "Happy birthday, Lucas." The first time he has used my first name.

At noon, a grey disc in the case, with the General's note: it came to his flat through the same door as Luna's pages. Twenty seconds. Mother: "I'm holding it myself now. The spoon. Someone at dawn says my name. Every morning. I know it's you. Happy birthday, my darling. Twenty. Your father would be—" and it stopped.

The hello has been helping her. Every morning, something bright says her name, and her hands got steadier.

Risa: "Proud. That's what she was going to say." Everyone at that table knows it. Dory slapped her sticky hand on top of ours and checked, through the thread from the call, toward a woman holding a spoon by herself. There you are.

Jessa, in the medical building: in the housing she could only feel the column pulling, for two years. She keeps waiting for it to start again. Juno doesn't feel Marlo anywhere on Avalon, so he went up. If I finished her, could she feel up, further than Juno? They're twins; she always felt him. I don't know. I'll ask again when she's stronger. "You asked. In the housing, nobody asked. Ask me tomorrow."

Toby played a slow song from the step opposite, like someone walking a long road and looking back. He made it that afternoon. He'll call it Twenty until I think of something better.

Dusk, the porch. Twenty: heavy and light, both. Luna laced her fingers through Sera's without looking up. Sera rocked Risa's chair with her foot. Next year two on this porch; Risa wants about nine; Luna has done the arithmetic and we'll need a bigger porch by Day 1500.

For one evening I didn't count anything at all.