Chapter 246 Crane at Dawn

Crane came to the red glass on Day 728.

Not to the bench. To the glass.

I saw him come. I was on the north side, where I always stood, with Toby's hand on my wrist and Sera on my other side and Juno a little way off with her head turned east the way it always was, even now, even though the three were home. Habit, she said. She'd been feeling for them so long she didn't know how to stop.

Dot had just begun.

And Crane walked out of the shadow beside the guest house, past the ring of twelve soldiers, who didn't move, and down the street, and onto the edge of the red glass.

People turned.

He didn't look at them. He walked slowly, the way Holt walked, like a man whose knees had started to argue with him. He wasn't wearing his coat. Just a grey shirt, open at the throat, so you could see the band. Dark. Flat against his skin.

He stopped at the edge of the glass. Not in the middle. Not near anyone. At the very edge, where the red glass met the paving stones of the street.

And he stood there, with his hands at his sides, and listened.

Dot didn't stop.

She counted the way she always counted. The hello going up from the deep. The spine answering, through the station, through the voice that the quiet stones flattened every pass. The thirty-one, on Earth, eleven light-years away.

Mother, for nine seconds.

Nine. She'd been coming down, slowly, every morning since the birthday. Toward eleven, toward the others. Dot said it meant her silver was steadier. That it didn't need to hold on as long any more. That it could answer and let go, the way you let go of a hand when you're sure the other person isn't going to fall.

Then the gap.

And Dot paused.

The way she'd paused every morning since the spring. Listening for the one.

And Crane, at the edge of the red glass, opened his mouth.

"Hello," he said.

Out loud. Not through the band. His own voice. Hoarse and quiet and very tired.

Nobody on the glass moved.

"Hello," Crane said again. To the sky. To the place where the hello had gone up and was coming down. To the deep under the canyon, and the spine in the station, and the thirty-one fragments of bone in thirty-one people on Earth, and to whatever was listening at the end of all of it.

"It's Hal," he said. "Hal Crane." He swallowed. "I don't know if you can hear me. I've got something on my neck that stops me. But I wanted to say it anyway. Out loud. Where you'd know it was me."

Silence.

Dot's lamps had gone very still.

"I asked once," Crane said. "Before. And you said my name back. And my hands." He held them up. In the grey early light, in front of everyone. They were steady. Perfectly steady. Not still the way they went still when the band was lit and something else was holding them. Steady the way a man's hands are steady when he's not afraid of what they'll do.

"My hands stopped shaking," said Crane. "After you said my name. They haven't shaken since. Not once. Not for months." His voice cracked. "And they don't know. The Sorn. The band listens to everything I say, but it doesn't listen to my hands. And I haven't told it."

He lowered them.

"So I'm telling you," he said. "Here. Out loud. Where everyone can hear. I'm still listening. I haven't stopped. They put the band on and they closed the thread and I still hear you every morning." His voice dropped to almost nothing. "Thank you for my hands."

Dot waited.

The whole red glass waited.

Above us, the hello was coming down. The last of it. The tail end of the thread from the station, settling back into the deep under the canyon the way it did every morning when the count was done.

And at the very end of it, where the gap was, where the one used to be—

Something.

Not a name. Not an answer. Not the flicker I'd felt on the morning of the dose, so faint I'd thought I'd imagined it.

Something else. A pull. The thread, as it settled, bending. Very slightly. Toward the edge of the red glass. Toward the man standing there in his grey shirt with his steady hands.

As if the deep had heard him.

As if it were trying to reach.

The band on Crane's collar flickered.

Not lit. Not dark. Flickered. Like a lamp in a draught.

And Dot said, very quietly, so quietly I don't think anyone but me and Toby heard it:

"This unit counts the one."

Then louder. To the whole glass. To the guest house. To the window where the mirror stood.

"All names."

Crane didn't move for a long time after the count.

People left. Slowly. Back to their houses, to breakfast, to the forge. Some of them looked at him as they passed. Nobody spoke to him. But nobody looked away, either.

Holt came down off his wall.

He walked across the red glass with his stick, the way he walked everywhere, slowly, and stopped beside Crane at the edge. Didn't say anything. Just stood there. The two of them, side by side, looking at the sky where the hello had been.

After a while, Crane said, "They'll find out."

"Maybe."

"The band can't hear my hands. But it can hear this." He touched the band. "Everything I said. Every word. It's on its way to the Hand right now."

"Maybe," said Holt again.

"Ezra, I'm frightened."

Holt turned his head and looked at him.

"Good," he said. "That means you've got something to lose." He put his hand on Crane's shoulder. "You didn't, for a long time. I watched. You didn't have anything you were frightened of losing. That's what made you dangerous."

Crane looked at the ground.

"And now?"

"Now you've got your hands," said Holt. "And you've got a deep that says your name. And you've got a robot who just counted you, out loud, in front of everybody, on purpose." He squeezed Crane's shoulder once and let go. "Be frightened, son. It's the start of being worth something."

I went to the medical building after breakfast.

Jessa was sitting up when I came in. Not against the pillows. On the edge of the bed, with her feet on the floor and her hands flat on her knees, the way you sit when you've been waiting for something.

She'd heard. The whole city had heard by then. Crane on the red glass. Thank you for my hands.

"You said ask me tomorrow," I said.

"I did."

"It's tomorrow."

Jessa looked at me for a long time.

"I heard what he said," she said. "Crane. About his hands." She looked down at her own. They were steadier than yesterday. Still not quite still. "He signed my transfer. And Marlo's. Day 299, the night before the pods. He took our blood twice a week for six years." Her mouth tightened. "And he stood on your glass this morning and thanked the deep for his hands."

"Yes."

"I don't know how I feel about that."

"Nobody does," I said. "Holt doesn't. I don't."

Jessa was quiet.

Then she said, "Yes."

"Yes to what?"

"Finish it," said Jessa. "The silver. Whatever's left." She lifted her chin. "I want to see if I can feel him. Marlo. If I can feel up." Her voice didn't waver. "And if I can't, I want to know that too. I'd rather know."

Toby came.

He always came now. For every completion since Holt. He said he wanted to, and I didn't argue, because I'd found I worked better with him there. With his hand on someone's chest, keeping their heart steady, I could go deeper and faster without being afraid.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside Jessa and put his hand flat on her chest.

"Got her," he said.

I looked.

Jessa's silver was almost whole. Almost. The way Crane's route sheets had said, the way Halloway's blood work had said, the reason they'd been picked. The closest. Her paths branched the way all completed silver branched, fine and clean, like frost on glass. Most of them were open already. Most of them had opened on their own, over years, without anyone's help.

But not all.

There were narrow places. A few. Deep, near the base of her skull, where the disc had been, where the filament had woven in. The housing had kept them narrow on purpose. The column had needed her almost whole, not whole. Whole silver could resist. Almost-whole could be pulled.

And there was one more.

Not narrow. Closed. Very small. Very deep. Near her heart. A single path that branched off from all the others and went nowhere, and stopped, and had been stopped so long ago that her body had grown round it like a tree grows round a nail.

I looked at it for a long time.

It didn't go anywhere. Not in her. It started near her heart and reached outward, toward the edge of her, and stopped at the very edge, as if it were reaching for something that wasn't there.

As if it were reaching for someone.

"Jessa," I said. "When were you and Marlo separated? The first time?"

Jessa frowned.

"Separated?"

"Before the pods. Before the housing. The very first time anyone ever put you in different rooms."

She thought about it.

"When we were born," she said slowly. "Mother says. They took Marlo to the nursery ward and kept me with her. He was smaller. He needed the incubator." She swallowed. "Eight days. Mother says I cried for eight days. And then they brought him back and put him in my cot and I stopped."

I looked at the closed path.

Reaching outward, near her heart. Toward the edge of her. Toward someone who wasn't there.

Stopped. Grown round. Like a tree round a nail.

I opened the narrow places first.

Near the base of her skull. Where the filament had been. Gently, the way I'd opened Juno's, and Kellan's, and the others. One at a time. Each one widening, filling, branching, the way it was always meant to.

Jessa sat very still under Toby's hand.

Then, about halfway through, her head turned.

East. North. Toward the courts. Toward the queen at the garden wall.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, I can hear them."

"The Teeming?"

"All of them. The young. The queen. The—" She stopped. "There's so many. I didn't know there were so many."

"Juno says that too."

"Juno's right." Jessa's eyes were wide. "Lucas, they're singing."

I kept going.

When the last of the narrow places was open, I stopped.

And looked at the closed path, near her heart.

"There's one more," I said. "It's different. It's not narrow. It's closed. It's been closed since you were born. Since the eight days." I took a breath. "I think it's the path that reaches for him."

Jessa didn't move.

"If I open it," I said, "I don't know what happens. It might go nowhere. It might reach for him and not find him. It might find him." I looked at her. "Or it might find something else first. Something cold. Behind a wall. Like Juno's three were behind a wall. Like Dory found, when she reached for them."

Jessa's hands, on her knees, had gone very still.

"I'm asking," I said.

Jessa was quiet for a long time.

Toby's hand stayed on her chest. Her heart was going fast under it. I could see it.

Then she said, "Will you be here?"

"Yes."

"And him?" She looked at Toby.

"I'm not going anywhere," said Toby.

Jessa closed her eyes.

"Open it," she said.

I opened it.

Very slowly. Not like the others. The others had been narrow places, paths that had been stopped partway along and needed widening. This was a path that had never gone anywhere. That had been grown round. That had a body built on top of it, twenty years of bone and muscle and blood that had never needed it.

I didn't cut anything.

I went along it, from her heart outward, the way you'd follow a root through soil. Clearing. Gently. Making space. Not forcing. Asking the tissue round it, very politely, to make room.

It took twenty minutes.

When I reached the end of it, at the edge of her, where it had always stopped, I stopped too.

And let it go.

Jessa gasped.

Her head snapped back. Her eyes flew open. Her hands came up off her knees and gripped the edge of the bed so hard her knuckles went white.

"Up," she said.

Not looking at anything. Looking through everything. Through the ceiling of the medical building, through the roof, through the green sky.

"Up," she said again. "Up, up, he's up—"

"Jessa—"

"I can feel him." Her voice was cracking. "I can feel him, Lucas, he's there, he's so far, he's so cold, but he's there—"

Toby's hand pressed harder on her chest.

"Steady," he said. "Steady. I've got you. Breathe."

Jessa breathed.

Her eyes were still fixed on the ceiling. On the sky beyond it. Her lips were moving.

"Not the station," she whispered. "Further. Higher. Past the station. Past where the voice comes from." She swallowed. "There's a wall. Like you said. Grey. Very thick. Cold. So cold. And he's behind it." Her breath hitched. "He's behind it and he's—"

She stopped.

"What?" I said.

Jessa's face did something I'd never seen a face do. All at once. Like ice breaking on a river in spring.

"He felt me," she whispered.

I didn't understand at first.

Then I did.

Up. Past the station. Past where the voice came from. A place in the sky where the stars stopped, where nothing came back, ten times the size of the Meridian. Made of the grey.

The Hand.

Marlo Quint was on the Hand.

And his sister, in a medical building in Scarecrow, with a path that had been closed since the eight days they were apart as newborns, had just opened it and reached all the way up and touched him.

And he'd touched her back.

"He's alive," Jessa said.

She was crying. Not loudly. Tears running down her face, and her hands still gripping the edge of the bed, and her eyes still fixed on the sky.

"He's alive. He's cold. He's so cold, Lucas. He's in something like the housings but bigger. Lots of them. Lots of other ones." Her voice shook. "He's not alone. There are others up there with him. Lots. In rows." She swallowed. "But he felt me. He knows I'm here. He knows I'm out."

Toby looked at me.

I looked at the ceiling.

In rows.

The four empty housings in the east. The nine taken on Day 300. The eleven from Dane's base. Orrin Tal, with the disc behind his ear.

The Hand.

"Can you still feel him?" I said.

Jessa closed her eyes. Concentrated.

"Yes," she said. "Faint. But yes." She opened them. "It's like before. Like in the dome. Like the pods. I could always feel him, a little. And then the housing took it away. And now it's back." She let go of the bed. Put her hand flat on her chest, over Toby's, over the place where the path had been closed. "It's back."

I told Holt.

And Luna, and Sera, and Risa. And Juno, who sat down on the floor of the medical building very suddenly and didn't get up for a while.

And Dot, who went very quiet, and then said:

"Then the Hand is not only a ship."

"No."

"The Hand is where they go." Her lamps flickered. "The ones who are taken. The ones who are closest. The ones who are almost whole." A pause. "The Hand is a housing."

Nobody said anything.

"This unit wishes," said Dot, very carefully, "to know how many."

Lise Varga spoke that afternoon.

She hadn't said a word since the housing. Not on the transport. Not on the apron. Not in two days in the medical building, while Jessa talked and Pim slept and Edda came and went with her green book. She'd sat in the chair by the window and looked at the canyon, and when someone spoke to her she'd turned her head and looked at them, and that was all.

Edda said it was all right. Edda said she'd speak when she was ready.

Toby had sat with her every evening. He didn't say anything either. He just brought his fiddle and sat on the floor by her chair and played. Quietly. The slow songs. The one he'd written for my birthday.

That afternoon, after Jessa, he went back to the chair by the window.

Lise was looking at the canyon.

Toby sat down on the floor and took out the fiddle.

And Lise said, without turning her head:

"I could hear you."

Toby stopped.

"In the housing," said Lise. Her voice was very low. Rough. Like a door that hadn't been opened in two years. "When the column was pulling. Two years of it. Pulling and pulling. And then, that night, in the storm, something came in under it. A note. Low. The exact opposite." She turned her head and looked at him. "It was you."

"It was me," said Toby.

"It pushed the pulling away," said Lise. "Just for a moment. Before Lucas came. Before anyone opened anything. For a moment, for the first time in two years, nothing was pulling at all." Her mouth trembled. "And I could hear my own heart."

Toby didn't say anything.

"I put my hand on yours," Lise said. "On the plain. In the rain. I didn't know why. I just wanted to hold onto the person who made it stop."

"I know," said Toby.

Lise looked at the fiddle in his hands.

"Play it again," she said. "The low one. Not to cancel anything. Just so I can hear it."

So he did.

Pim found me in the corridor.

He was walking. Slowly, with one hand on the wall, the way Hana must have walked her eight steps in the medical wing two years ago. But walking.

"Dask," he said.

"You should be in bed."

"I've been in bed for two years." He stopped and leaned on the wall. "Jessa says you opened something. And she can feel her brother on the Hand." He looked at me. "Is it true?"

"Yes."

Pim was quiet for a moment.

"Then don't do mine," he said.

I looked at him.

"Not yet," said Pim. "Wren told me. About her list. Not yet. I want that." He rubbed the pink place behind his ear. "I'm almost whole already. Jessa needed hers opened to find someone. I don't need mine opened to find anyone. My father's on the Upper Ring fixing lifts." His mouth twitched. "Hana told him I was good with knots."

"I told Hana that."

"I know. Jessa read me the letter." Pim's face did something complicated. "I am good with knots. Best in the cohort. Okafor said so." He pushed off the wall. "When I've had a week of Priya's food and I can walk without the wall, ask me again. Until then, write not yet beside my name."

"I'll tell Wren."

"Tell her I want the same mark she's got," said Pim. "The line crossing itself."

Risa brought Dory to the medical building at dusk.

Jessa asked for her. She said she'd felt her, on the apron, the morning they came home. She counted me. She said she wanted to see what had counted her.

Risa sat on the edge of the bed with Dory in her lap.

Dory was awake. She looked at Jessa with her silver-ringed eyes. Jessa looked back with hers, newly whole, still bright from the afternoon.

And Dory's check came round.

All of us. The queen. Dot.

And then it stopped. On Jessa. On the place near her heart, where the path had been closed for twenty years and was open now. Reaching up. Up, up, past everything, toward a cold place in the sky.

Dory's check went along it.

Just a little way. Not far. The queens' hollow wouldn't let her go far. But a little way. Up the path that Jessa had opened. Toward Marlo.

And came back.

And Dory reached out one hand, very small, and put it flat on Jessa's chest. Over her heart. Over the path.

There you are, she said.

Not to Jessa.

Jessa felt the difference. I saw her feel it. Her eyes went wide, and her hand came up and covered Dory's, and she held it there.

"She found him," Jessa whispered. "Didn't she. Just for a second. Through me."

"I think so," said Risa.

Jessa held Dory's hand against her chest and closed her eyes.

"Then he's counted too," she said.

Nobody told Crane.

We didn't decide that. Nobody said don't. But nobody went to the bench. Nobody stood in front of him and said Marlo Quint is on the Hand, in a housing, in rows, with others. Not that day.

He'd stood on the red glass and said thank you for my hands.

He was frightened.

He'd find out. The band would hear something, somewhere. Or he'd see it in our faces. Or the Overseer would tell him, the way it told him everything else, in the flat even voice that came out of his own throat.

But not from us. Not that day.

That night, on the porch, Risa said, "We should tell him."

"I know."

"Not tonight."

"No."

Sera, on the step below, was sitting between Luna's knees with her back against Luna's legs. Luna had her hands in Sera's hair, absently, braiding it the way she braided her own when she was thinking. Neither of them seemed to have noticed they were doing it.

"Tomorrow," said Luna. "We'll tell him tomorrow. All of us. The way Holt says." Her fingers kept moving. "Nobody carries anything alone."

Sera tipped her head back against Luna's knee and looked up at her.

"You're braiding my hair," she said.

Luna stopped.

Looked at her hands.

"So I am," she said, and kept going.

Sera closed her eyes and let her.

Risa watched them from the chair, with Dory asleep on her chest, and smiled, and didn't say a word.

Day 728. Crane at dawn.

Crane walked onto the red glass for the count. Grey shirt, no coat, band dark. He stood at the very edge. Mother answered for nine seconds; she's been coming down toward eleven since the birthday. Dot says her silver doesn't need to hold on as long. Then the gap, and Dot's pause.

Crane, aloud, his own voice: "Hello. It's Hal. Hal Crane. I've got something on my neck that stops me. But I wanted to say it anyway, out loud, where you'd know it was me." His hands stopped shaking after the deep said his name, and haven't shaken since. The band listens to everything he says but doesn't listen to his hands, and he hasn't told it. "I'm still listening. Thank you for my hands."

At the end of the hello, where the one used to be, the thread bent toward him. As if the deep were trying to reach. The band flickered like a lamp in a draught. Dot, very quietly: "This unit counts the one." Then: all names.

Crane: "Ezra, I'm frightened." Holt: good, it means you've got something to lose. You didn't, for a long time, and that's what made you dangerous. Now you've got your hands, and a deep that says your name, and a robot who counted you on purpose. "Be frightened, son. It's the start of being worth something."

Jessa: yes. Finish it. She wants to know if she can feel up, and if she can't, she wants to know that too.

Toby's hand on her heart. Narrow places near the base of her skull where the filament had been, kept narrow on purpose: whole silver resists, almost-whole can be pulled. Halfway through she could hear the young singing.

And one more. Not narrow. Closed. Near her heart, reaching outward to the edge of her and stopping, grown round like a tree round a nail. She and Marlo were separated for the first time at birth: eight days, he was in the incubator, she cried until they put him back in her cot. I think it's the path that reaches for him. It might find him. It might find something cold first. I'm asking. "Will you be here? And him?" "Open it."

Twenty minutes, from her heart outward, asking the tissue to make room. Then I let it go.

"Up." Past the station, past where the voice comes from. A grey wall, very thick, so cold. He's behind it. "He felt me."

Marlo Quint is on the Hand. Alive. Cold. In something like the housings but bigger. "Lots of other ones. In rows." He knows she's out. She can still feel him, faint, like in the dome, like the pods. "It's back."

Dot: then the Hand is not only a ship. It's where they go, the closest, the almost-whole. "The Hand is a housing. This unit wishes to know how many."

Lise's first words, to Toby: she could hear him in the housing. In the storm, a low note came in under the pulling, and for a moment nothing was pulling and she could hear her own heart. She held his hand on the plain because she wanted to hold on to the person who made it stop. "Play it again. Not to cancel anything. Just so I can hear it."

Pim, walking with one hand on the wall: don't do mine. Not yet. He doesn't need his opened to find anyone; his father fixes lifts on the Upper Ring. Ask again after a week of Priya's food. He wants Wren's mark, the line crossing itself.

Dory with Jessa at dusk: her check went a little way up Jessa's opened path, toward Marlo, and came back. She put her hand on Jessa's chest. There you are. Not to Jessa. "Then he's counted too."

Nobody told Crane. Not that day. Risa: we should. Luna: tomorrow, all of us, nobody carries anything alone. She was braiding Sera's hair without noticing. Sera: "You're braiding my hair." Luna looked at her hands. "So I am," and kept going.