Chapter 247 The Offer

We told Crane on the morning of Day 729.

All of us. The way Luna had said. The way Holt's first wave used to stand outside the command tent: everybody, together, so nobody had to carry it back alone.

Me. Luna. Sera. Risa, with Dory in the sling. Holt. Toby. Juno. And Jessa Quint, who'd walked from the medical building on her own, slowly, with one hand on Juno's arm, and who stood at the front.

Crane was on his bench.

The band was dark. The Overseer's window was empty; it hadn't come to the dawn count. It hadn't come to the dawn count since Crane said hello into the hello.

He looked up as we came across the street.

He saw Jessa.

I watched his face. I watched him see the long hair, tied back now, and the grey skin starting to warm, and the pink new place behind her ear where the disc had been. I watched him see her eyes, ringed with silver, whole now, brighter than they'd ever been when he was taking her blood twice a week in the dome.

He stood up.

He didn't know what to do with his hands. For a moment they hung at his sides, and then he put them behind his back, the way a schoolboy does when a teacher comes into the room.

"Miss Quint," he said.

Jessa looked at him for a long time.

"Marlo's on the Hand," she said.

Crane sat down.

Not on purpose. His knees went, and the bench was there.

Jessa didn't move. She stood in front of him with her hand on Juno's arm, and she told him. All of it. The path that had been closed since the eight days. Lucas opening it. Reaching up. Past the station, past where the voice came from. The grey wall, very thick, so cold.

And Marlo behind it. Alive. In something like the housings, but bigger.

"In rows," Jessa said. "Lots of them. Lots of other ones." Her voice didn't waver. "He felt me. He knows I'm out."

Crane didn't say anything.

He sat on the bench with his hands on his knees, and his face had gone the colour of ash, and he looked at Jessa the way you'd look at a bill you'd known was coming for a long time and had hoped would never arrive.

"In rows," he said at last.

"In rows."

"How many?"

"I don't know," said Jessa. "I could only feel him." Her mouth tightened. "Dot wants to know how many. So do I."

Crane closed his eyes.

"So do I," he whispered.

The band lit.

Of course it did. It had heard every word. It always did.

Crane's face shut. His hands went flat. And we all stood there, waiting for the flat even voice to come out of his throat and say the Director is fatigued, or the Overseer notes, or something about terms and weather events and doubled quotas.

It didn't.

The band stayed lit. Crane's face stayed shut. But his eyes, wide and fixed above it, moved.

To Jessa.

And held there.

And then, very slowly, so slowly that if I hadn't been able to see his bones I wouldn't have known, his right hand moved on his knee. The index finger. It lifted, just slightly. And came down.

Tapped.

Three times.

Then two.

Then one.

Jessa didn't know what it meant. She'd been in the housing when Pebble said it to the Overseer in the courts.

But Toby knew. And Juno. And Holt, who made a sound in his throat like something cracking.

I see you.

The band went dark.

Crane's face came back.

He looked at his own hand on his knee as if it belonged to someone else.

"I don't know how many," he said. His own voice. Hoarse. "But I'm going to find out."

The Overseer sent for him that afternoon.

Not through the band. A soldier came. One of the twelve. He walked from the guest house to the bench, stopped in front of Crane, and said nothing at all. He just stood there, with his blank face and the disc behind his ear humming the timing click, until Crane got up and followed him inside.

He was in there for three hours.

When he came out, he didn't go to the bench. He walked across the street, past the forge and the schoolroom, all the way up the street to our porch, where the four of us were sitting with Dory in the last of the light.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps.

He had something in his hands. A slate. The first thing I'd seen him carry since he came down the ramp.

"I'm to make you an offer," he said.

The band was dark. His voice was his own.

"From the Hand," said Crane. "Through the Overseer. Through me." He looked at the slate. "I've been told to present it. I've been told to present it well." His mouth twisted. "I used to be very good at that."

"Then present it," said Luna.

Crane looked at her.

Then he came up the steps, slowly, and sat down on the top one, the way I'd seen the General sit on it the morning he left. With his back against the post and the slate on his knees.

And presented it.

It was very generous.

That was the worst part. Crane said so himself, afterward. He said it was the most generous offer the Sorn had ever made a human, as far as he knew, and he'd read every file the Project had.

AV-9. The next world. Eleven jumps out. With eleven queens, and broods beyond counting, and a voice that would need to be driven, and a war that would need to be won.

A command, Crane read. Of the asset's own. Over the human forces assigned to the AV-9 campaign. Full authority. Answerable to the Hand alone. Not to the Project. Not to Central Allocation. Not to the Senate.

Not to Friese, I thought. Not to Voss.

Material resources without limit. Personnel as required. The asset's associates to accompany him at his discretion.

Crane looked up at the four of us on the porch. Sera with her jaw set. Luna with her notebook. Risa with Dory asleep against her shoulder. Me.

"That means you," he said. "All of you. Whoever he wants."

Then he looked down at the slate again.

For the asset's family, he read. A residence. On Earth, or on any world of the asset's choosing within the Hand's reach. Of the asset's own design. With the full protection of the Hand. The asset's mother to receive treatment of the Hand's own provision, superior to the stabilizer. The asset's sisters to be educated as the asset sees fit.

He stopped.

"A palace," he said quietly. "That's what they mean. A palace for Genny and Garnet. Anywhere you like. Built however you want. With the Hand standing over it, so that nobody, not Friese, not Voss, not Central Allocation, could ever touch them again."

Nobody said anything.

Dory stirred on Risa's shoulder, and made a small sound, and settled.

"And in return," said Luna. Very evenly.

Crane didn't look up.

"In return," he said, "the asset takes AV-9."

"With the voice," said Sera.

"With the voice. With amplifiers. With the queens put in housings and drawn down a little every day. With modified soldiers who've had discs put behind their ears." Crane's hands, holding the slate, had gone very white at the knuckles. "With everything I told you in the map room. Everything I said was a war, and was a harvest. He'd be the one harvesting."

"And Substrate S-1?" said Luna.

"As much as the Hand wants," said Crane. "For as long as the Hand wants. The asset makes the grey, and the Hand never has to make it again."

He put the slate down on the step beside him.

"That's the offer," he said.

I didn't answer.

I sat on the porch and looked at the slate, and at Crane, and at the garden. At the queen's great head on the wall at the end of it, frost-lines catching the last of the light.

A palace for Genny and Garnet.

Anywhere I liked. Built however I wanted. With nobody ever able to touch them again.

Mother treated. Not the stabilizer. Not the spoon in the dish, the calendar on the wall with the red circle. Something better. Something that would make her hands stop shaking, not because someone at dawn said her name, but because they'd stopped.

I could have it.

All I had to do was go to AV-9 and do to eleven queens what had been done to the mountain queen for four hundred years.

I looked at Dory, asleep on Risa's shoulder. At her woven silver. At the lattice the Overseer had looked at through a door at the bottom of the garden stairs, and called item three.

Fresher.

"He thinks it's generous," Sera said quietly. Not to me. To Crane.

Crane looked at her.

"It is generous," he said. "By their measure. That's what you need to understand. They're not lying. They're not trying to trick him. This is the best they have. A command, and a palace, and a cure. They've never offered anyone anything like it." His voice dropped. "Because they've never needed anyone like him."

"And what do you think?" said Risa.

Crane didn't answer for a long time.

Then he looked up. At the four of us. At Dory.

"I think," he said, "that if I'd been offered this when I was nineteen, holding a clipboard, I'd have taken it before they finished reading." He swallowed. "And I'd have spent the rest of my life telling myself it was for my family."

Luna wrote the answer that night.

Not an answer. Luna said that was the point. You don't answer an offer like that. You ask for something first. Something they'd have to give before you said yes or no. Something that would tell you what they really meant.

She sat at the kitchen table with the lamp turned low and her notebook open and wrote for an hour. Sera sat beside her with her chin on Luna's shoulder, reading every line as it went down, and occasionally pointing at something and saying no or better. Risa was in the chair by the stove with Dory, half asleep.

I watched them.

Sera's chin on Luna's shoulder. Luna's free hand resting on Sera's knee under the table, absently, while she wrote with the other. When Luna got stuck, she turned her head and Sera kissed her temple without looking up from the page, and Luna went back to writing.

I don't think either of them noticed.

At midnight, Luna turned the notebook round.

One line.

Before the asset answers, the asset's sisters will visit Avalon, so that he can see with his own eyes that they are well.

I read it twice.

"That's all?" I said.

"That's all," said Luna. "It's reasonable. It's exactly what anyone would ask. A man's been offered his family's safety; he wants to see his family first." She tapped the line. "And it puts Genny and Garnet here. On the ground. In Scarecrow. Away from the penthouse and the lens and the guards on the door." She looked at me. "Under the queens."

"And then?"

"And then we see," said Luna.

"Mother too," I said.

They all looked at me.

"Put Mother in it," I said. "The twins and Mother. If they're coming, she comes too." I pressed my hands flat on the table. "I'm not bringing my sisters eleven light-years and leaving her in that chair with a spoon and a calendar."

Luna didn't say anything for a moment.

Then she picked up the pen and added it.

Before the asset answers, the asset's sisters and mother will visit Avalon.

Risa, in the chair by the stove, opened her eyes.

"They'll say no," she said quietly. "To your mother."

"Why?"

"Because she's the one they've got the spoon for," said Risa. "Genny and Garnet are leverage. Your mother's the leash." She shifted Dory on her shoulder. "They'll let the leverage go, for a visit. If it gets them what they want. They won't let go of the leash."

I didn't answer.

But I didn't take the line out, either.

Crane took it to the Overseer the next morning.

He came back at noon. He didn't come to the porch this time. He sent Toby, who'd been in the guest-house yard with the soldiers, listening to the click in their discs, and Toby came up the street very fast and stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"Yes to the twins," he said. "Yes to Miss Pell, as their guardian. They'll come on the next transport the Project sends. Four weeks, maybe five."

"And Mother?"

Toby didn't answer at once.

"Halloway," he said.

Crane came himself, an hour later.

With a sheet. Not a slate. A paper sheet, from the Project's medical office, with the Project's stamp at the top and a signature at the bottom.

Assessment of the Retention subject designated Dask, D.

Subject is dependent on the stabilizer at current dosage. Subject's tolerance of physiological stress is severely reduced. A jump transit of eleven light-years would subject the subject's modification to stresses incompatible with the stabilizer's function.

In the medical opinion of this office, the crossing would kill her.

— Halloway, Medical Director.

I read it three times.

Then I looked at Crane.

"Is it true?"

Crane didn't look away.

"I don't know," he said. "Halloway believes it. I've read her notes. She's not lying." He hesitated. "But she's never seen what you can do. She's never seen Holt. Or Jessa. Or the dawn count." His voice dropped. "She's never seen your mother hold a spoon by herself."

"Then let me look," I said. "Let me see her silver. On a feed. On a call. Anything. Let me look."

Crane's face shut.

Not the band. The band was dark. Crane shut it himself. I watched him do it. Like a man closing a door he knows he'll have to open again.

"No," he said.

"Why?"

"Because the moment you look at her silver," said Crane, very quietly, "you'll see how to fix it." He held my eyes. "And then you'll want to. More than anything. More than you want the twins safe, more than you want the queens free, more than you want to stay on Avalon with your family." His voice cracked. "And that's what they're waiting for. That's what the offer's for. The palace and the cure and the command. They want you to look at her and know you can save her and not be able to reach her. And then they'll offer you a way."

Nobody on the porch said anything.

"I'm not letting you near her silver," Crane said. "Not because the Overseer told me not to. It hasn't. It doesn't need to." He looked down at Halloway's sheet. "Because I took the Quints' blood twice a week for six years, and I know exactly what it looks like when someone finds out they can save someone and can't."

He left after that.

He went back to his bench and sat with his hands on his knees. Steady. Very steady.

I sat on the porch with Halloway's sheet in my hands for a long time.

The crossing would kill her.

You'll see how to fix it, and then you'll want to.

Sera took the sheet out of my hands, very gently, and put it face down on the step.

"Four weeks," she said. "Maybe five. And Genny and Garnet will be standing on this porch."

"Without Mother."

"Without Mother," said Sera. "This time." She took my hand. "We'll get her. We'll get her the way we got Jessa. And Pim. And Lise. The way we got Bryn, and Port Ash, and the old queen's brood." She squeezed. "Not today. But we'll get her."

Luna, on the step below, had gone back to her notebook. The page headed Earth. She didn't say anything. She just wrote, underneath all the other names, in her small exact hand:

Dask, Dorothy. Not this time. Next.

Then she reached up without looking and found Sera's hand on the step, and held it.

And Risa, in the chair, shifted Dory so she could reach down and put her other hand on the back of my neck. Warm. Steady.

Dory's check came round.

All four of us. The queen. Dot.

And then, along the thread she'd found in me on the day of the call, further. Out. Toward a woman in a chair, eleven light-years away, holding a spoon by herself.

There you are, she said.

Holt found me at the forge the next morning.

I was making tungsten. Double, now. The quota had doubled and the next delivery was in nine days, and I'd been at the anvil since before the count, climbing silicon to iron to everything, block after block. My hands didn't need me. My head was somewhere else.

Holt sat down on his stool in the corner and watched me for a while.

"You're thinking about it," he said.

"Yes."

"Good. You should." He leaned on his stick. "Anyone who says that offer's easy to turn down has never had a mother in a chair."

I put my hands on the next block.

"What would you do?" I said.

Holt didn't answer for a long time.

"I had a mother," he said at last. "In a dome. In the old days, before the Project. She had the cough. The one that came with the second filter failure, when half the outer blocks got it." He looked at the furnace. "If someone had come to me and said, Ezra, take this world for us and she'll never cough again, I'd have taken it. I'd have taken ten worlds."

"Did anyone come?"

"No," said Holt. "Nobody came. She died coughing, in a bed in the outer blocks, while I was on a troop transport to the Varran pass with your father." He was quiet for a moment. "So I don't know what I'd have done. I only know what I'd have wanted to do. And I know the difference matters."

I stopped climbing.

"The old queen sang their voice for one season," I said. "To get her young back."

"I heard."

"She says she doesn't tell me what to do. Only what she did."

"Wise queen," said Holt. He stood up. "Here's what I did, Dask. Since you're collecting. I went to the Varran pass, and your father stood up in a trench and said not at dawn, and I stood up beside him. Not because I knew he was right. Because he was the one who said it out loud first, and I didn't want him standing up alone."

He walked to the door.

"Whatever you decide," he said, "you won't be standing up alone. That's all I've got. It's not much."

"It's enough," I said.

Holt grunted and went out.

I told Dory that night.

Not that she'd understand. She was fourteen weeks old. But she understood more than she should, every day, and Edda had given up writing impossible and started writing of course.

I sat on the floor of the quiet room with her in my lap. Risa on the bench above us, half asleep.

"Your aunts are coming," I said. "Genny and Garnet. My sisters. On a ship. In four weeks, or five."

Dory looked up at me.

"Genny's very clever," I said. "She does chemistry. She asked me a question in a secret code, and I answered it the same way. She'll want to know everything about you. She'll ask you questions you can't answer yet, and then she'll write them down so she can ask you again when you can."

Dory's silver turned toward me. Listening.

"And Garnet sings," I said. "All the time. Badly. Wonderfully. She turns pebbles into strawberries and rocks into cakes. She drew you a picture of the scarecrow." I swallowed. "She tied Mother's scarf round its neck so it wouldn't be cold."

Dory was quiet.

Then her check came round. All of us. The queen. Dot.

And then, along the thread from the day of the call, further. Out. Toward a penthouse under a dome. Toward two girls on a sofa. One straight-backed with her hands folded. One sideways with a drawing board.

It didn't reach. Not past the hollow.

But it tried.

And when it came back, it carried something. A shape I'd never felt from her before. Rising, the way forager had risen. Uncertain. Hopeful.

Coming?

Coming, I told her.

Dory's silver settled, slow and warm.

And then, from the courts, through the stones, I felt Pebble wake. And go, very quietly, to the back of the lower court, where the young kept their hollow-stones. And pick one up. And then another.

Two stones.

Smooth and round and grey.

And carry them, one at a time, up the agreed path in the dark, to the bottom of our porch steps. And put them down side by side on the bottom step.

And go home.

"Nursery stones," said Dot, from the garden wall, in the morning, when we found them. Her lamps flickered. "For two new ones. Coming to the hollow."

That night, I went to the garden wall.

The queen lowered her head.

They offered you a world, she said.

Yes.

And a palace. And a cure.

Yes.

And in exchange, eleven of us. Her voice was very calm. In housings. Drawn down. For a thousand years.

I didn't answer.

The queen was quiet for a long time.

The old one asks me to tell you something, she said at last. She says: when they first came for her, under the mountain, four hundred of your years ago, they offered her something too.

I looked up.

They offered her young, said the queen. Hers. That they had taken. Returned to her, safe, if she would sing their voice for one season. Only one. A pause. She sang it.

And?

And the season did not end, said the queen. And the young were not returned. And four hundred years later, a boy came up the mountain and returned them himself.

She lowered her head until it rested beside my hand on the stones.

She does not tell you what to do, said the queen. She only tells you what she did.

Days 729–731. The offer.

We told Crane together, the way the first wave stood outside the command tent. Jessa at the front, walking on her own with a hand on Juno's arm. He saw her and stood up and put his hands behind his back like a schoolboy. "Miss Quint." "Marlo's on the Hand." His knees went. "In rows. How many?" "I don't know. Dot wants to know. So do I." "So do I."

The band lit and stayed lit, and no voice came. His eyes on Jessa. His right index finger lifted and tapped his knee: three, two, one. I see you. Holt made a sound like something cracking. When it went dark: "I don't know how many. But I'm going to find out."

A soldier fetched him to the guest house for three hours. He came to the porch with a slate, the first thing he has carried since the ramp. The offer from the Hand: AV-9, a command of my own, answerable to the Hand alone, not the Project, Central Allocation or the Senate. Material without limit. My associates at my discretion. For my family, a residence anywhere, of my design, under the Hand's protection; Mother treated by the Hand, better than the stabilizer; the twins educated as I choose. A palace. In return: take AV-9. The voice, amplifiers, eleven queens in housings, discs behind ears. And S-1, as much as the Hand wants, forever.

Crane: it is generous by their measure. They're not lying. They've never offered anyone anything like it because they've never needed anyone like me. At nineteen he'd have taken it before they finished reading, and spent his life telling himself it was for his family.

Luna wrote the reply at the kitchen table with Sera's chin on her shoulder, Luna's hand on Sera's knee, Sera kissing her temple when she got stuck. Neither noticed. One line: before the asset answers, his sisters visit Avalon so he can see they are well. It puts Genny and Garnet on the ground, under the queens.

I made her add Mother. Risa: the twins are leverage; Mother is the leash. They'll let go of leverage for a visit. Not the leash.

Toby: yes to the twins, and Miss Pell as guardian, next transport, four or five weeks. Then Halloway's sheet: the crossing would kill her. Crane doesn't know if it's true. Halloway believes it, but has never seen what I can do. Let me look. "No." Not the Overseer's order; his own. If I look at her silver, I'll see how to fix it and want to more than anything, and that's what the offer is for. He knows what it looks like when someone finds out they can save someone and can't.

Sera: four or five weeks and they'll be on this porch. We'll get Mother the way we got Jessa and Pim and Lise and Bryn and Port Ash. Not today. Luna wrote under Earth: Dask, Dorothy. Not this time. Next.

Holt at the forge: anyone who says that offer is easy to turn down has never had a mother in a chair. His mother died coughing in the outer blocks while he was on a troop transport to the Varran pass. He doesn't know what he would have done, only what he would have wanted to do, and the difference matters. He stood up beside Father in the trench because Father said it out loud first. "Whatever you decide, you won't be standing up alone."

I told Dory her aunts are coming. Genny will write down questions to ask again when she can answer; Garnet turns pebbles into strawberries and tied the scarf on. Dory's check reached toward the penthouse and came back with a new shape: coming? Coming. In the night Pebble left two nursery stones side by side on the bottom porch step. Dot: for two new ones, coming to the hollow.

At the wall: four hundred years ago they offered the mountain queen her stolen young back if she would sing their voice for one season. She sang it. The season didn't end. The young weren't returned. Four hundred years later a boy came up the mountain and returned them himself.

She doesn't tell me what to do. She only tells me what she did.