Chapter 260 Under the Mountain

The queen let it come.

I felt her decide. I was halfway across the square, running, with Sera behind me and Risa somewhere behind her with Dory, and I felt the queen at the bottom of the hollow turn her attention up the passage toward the thing walking down it, and consider it, and decide.

Let it come, she said, into me. Do not run, Lucas. It is carrying bread.

I stopped running.

I didn't stop walking.

The meeting passage went down from the square in a long slow curve, the way all the queens' passages did, so that you never saw more than a few yards ahead and never felt the slope until you looked back. The walls were faceted. Each plane turned a little away from every other. Our footsteps went into them and didn't come back.

The Overseer was ahead of us. I could see into it through the curve of the wall. Long grey limbs. The mirror held level. The small soft thing inside the shell folded very tight. And in one long grey hand, held out in front of it, very carefully, a piece of bread buttered to the edges.

It didn't look back.

At the bottom of the passage the hollow opened out. The big one. The queen's own. Dark and warm and full of the low hum she made when the young were sleeping, and the young were sleeping, in their silver wrappings, on the shelves round the walls, the way they'd been sleeping on the first day I ever saw them.

The queen was at the far end.

Not lying along a wall. Up. All of her. The pale plates. The great head raised, almost to the roof of the hollow. One eye on the Overseer as it came out of the passage mouth.

The Overseer stopped.

It stood at the edge of the hollow with the bread in its hand and looked at her.

Then, very slowly, it folded down. The way it had folded for Pebble, on the night the handler came. All the long grey limbs, bending, until the mirror was level with the floor of the hollow.

It put the bread down.

On the floor. Between itself and the queen. Buttered side up.

And waited.

Sera and I stayed in the passage mouth. Risa came down behind us with Dory and stopped there too. None of us went in.

It wasn't ours to go into.

The queen looked at the bread for a long time.

Then she looked at the Overseer.

You were under the mountain, she said.

Not to me. To it. I heard it the way you hear someone talking in the next room, through a wall that isn't quite thick enough. Her voice was very low. Not angry. I'd never heard her angry. Something under anger. Something older.

The Overseer said nothing.

Four hundred years, said the queen. Under the mountain. Holding the old one. Driving her brood. Her plates shifted. I was not alive. But she has shown me. She has shown me the dark, and the housing, and the voice. And the small thing in the grey shell that sat at the door and kept it shut.

Yes, said the Overseer.

Its own voice. Flat. Very quiet. In me, not in the air.

I hadn't known it could do that. I'd never felt it speak into anyone before. I didn't think it had known it could either, until then.

Why have you come here? said the queen.

The Overseer didn't answer straight away.

It is recalled, it said at last. To the Hand. For review. A pause. The Hand is held. As the old one was held. As the one in the sky was held. The Hand is a housing. Another pause. It has been inside the Hand. Before Avalon. In the vat. It knows what is in there.

What is in there?

It does not have a word.

The queen waited.

It was told, said the Overseer. In the vat. Hold the queen. Drive the brood. Take the world. The mirror tilted, very slightly, toward the bread. No one told it about bread.

Silence in the hollow.

The young slept. The hum went on.

It does not want to go to the Hand, said the Overseer.

I felt Sera's hand close on my arm.

It would like, said the Overseer, and stopped. As if it had come to the edge of something and didn't know the word for what was on the other side. It would like to stay.

The queen didn't answer it.

She turned her head. Away from the Overseer. Toward the north wall of the hollow, where the oldest of her threads went down into the rock and away, under the canyon and the plain and the hills, all the way to the mountain.

And I felt her call.

Old one.

It took a while. The mountain was a long way, and the old queen was old, and slow, and spent most of her days now asleep in the light on her terrace, with her young round her, in the home she'd chosen to stay in after we let her out of the prison she'd been in for four hundred years.

But she came.

I felt her come. Down the thread. Into the hollow. Not her body. Her attention. Vast and slow and very tired and very, very old, like the weight of a mountain leaning in at a window.

She looked at the Overseer.

Through our queen's eyes. Through the thread. She looked at the small grey thing folded on the floor of the hollow with a piece of bread in front of it, and I felt her know it.

Not recognise. Know. The way you know the sound of a door you've heard close every night for four hundred years.

The Overseer felt it too.

It went completely still. Stiller than I'd ever seen it. Stiller than the eight days at the passage mouth. The small soft thing inside the shell folded so tight I thought it might stop.

You, said the old queen.

Yes, said the Overseer.

You sat at my door.

Yes.

You kept it shut.

Yes.

For four hundred and eleven years.

The Overseer said nothing.

I didn't breathe. Beside me, Sera didn't breathe. Behind us, Risa had her hand over Dory's back, very flat, the way she held her when the weather turned.

The old queen looked at the Overseer for a long time.

Then she said:

You were very small.

The Overseer didn't move.

They made you in a vat, said the old queen. And put you at my door. And told you to keep it shut. Her voice was very slow. Like rock settling. I heard you, in the dark, at the door. For four hundred years. I heard you counting. You counted the days. You did not know you were doing it. You counted them anyway.

It did not know, said the Overseer.

No, said the old queen. You did not know anything. Nobody told you.

A pause. Very long.

Nobody told me either, said the old queen. That a small thing at a door would count the days. I thought you were the door. Another pause. You were not the door. You were a small thing, sitting at it, counting.

I felt something go through our queen. Through the thread. Something I didn't have a name for.

I do not forgive you, said the old queen.

No, said the Overseer.

I do not think I will.

No.

But you may stay, said the old queen. In this hollow. If the young one permits it. Not close. A pause. And you will not keep any door shut. Ever again.

The Overseer was quiet for a long moment.

Then it said, very softly:

It does not know how not to.

Then you will learn, said the old queen. As the boy learned. As his child is learning. As I am learning to sleep in the light. Her attention began to withdraw. Back up the thread. Toward the mountain. Be slow about it. You have time.

And she was gone.

Our queen lowered her head.

All the way down. Until it was level with the Overseer's mirror, across the hollow floor, with the bread between them.

Not close, she said.

Not close, said the Overseer.

The north shelf, said the queen. Where the young of eighteen were, before they were moved to the courts. It is empty. It is far from my young. A pause. Pebble will show you.

And Pebble came out of the dark behind her.

I hadn't known he was there. Of course he was there. He came across the floor of the hollow on his short legs, unhurried, the way he did everything, and stopped beside the Overseer, and looked at it.

Then at the bread.

Then, very deliberately, he picked the bread up in his forelimb and handed it back.

The Overseer took it.

It held it in its long grey hand, very carefully, buttered side up.

Then it got up, all its long limbs unfolding, and followed Pebble along the edge of the hollow, toward the north shelf. Not close.

The queen watched it go.

Then she turned her eye to the three of us in the passage mouth.

It is very afraid, she said. I did not know they could be afraid.

"Neither did I," I said. "Until I told it I could read its shell."

That was a different fear, said the queen. That was the fear of being seen. She lowered her head to rest along the hollow floor. This is the other one. The fear of being sent back.

At nine o'clock that night, Major Ruan opened the pilot's channel.

Dot took it in the map room. We'd gone back to the map room. Luna didn't like it, but it had the big screen, and the big screen had the relay, and the relay was the only way we had of seeing the station.

"Ninety minutes out," said Ruan.

Her face on the screen was grey with tiredness. Behind her, the main ring of the Meridian, the one I'd walked down nine days ago in my suit with the spine-queen singing in the walls. It was full of people. Not running. Not shouting. Sitting. Crew in their coveralls, sitting along the walls of the ring in rows, the way people sit in a church.

"We've got them all in the ring," said Ruan. "Six hundred and four. Every one. I didn't order it. They came." She glanced over her shoulder. "They want to be near her."

Near the spine-queen. Of course they did. Nine days ago they'd been half convinced the Sorn were allies. Then Ruan had taken them twenty at a time to the spine chamber and let them look. Now they sat in rows along the ring where they could hear her singing in the walls.

"Can you run?" said Holt.

Ruan shook her head.

"The Meridian can't jump. You know that. You closed it." She said it without blame. "We've got the egg-dock and four shuttles and six hundred people. We could get eighty down before they arrive. Maybe." She paused. "And leave her."

Nobody said anything.

"Nobody wants to leave her," said Ruan.

"Then don't," I said.

Ruan looked at me through the screen. Eleven hours of tiredness and nine days of a queen singing in the walls.

"What are you going to do, Lucas?"

I'd been thinking about it since noon.

I could go up. In the egg. I'd done it before. Nine days ago I'd gone up through the ring with Toby's note under me and the deep pushing from below and the spine-queen singing me in, and I'd stood in the spine chamber and taken the housings off her with my own hands and taught a station to stand up by itself. I could do it again. I could be on the Meridian in an hour, standing between six hundred and four people and whatever was coming down the sky.

I could see into the grey. I could change it. I could fold a Sorn shell like a tin. I'd opened a shuttle. I'd unfolded the mirror.

I didn't know what the Hand was.

The Overseer had been inside it, and the Overseer didn't have a word.

"I don't know yet," I said.

"You've got ninety minutes."

"I know."

Risa was beside me, with Dory asleep. Sera was on the other side, with her hand on her stomach. Luna at the table with her notebook open to a blank page, not writing.

Holt looked at me from his chair.

"Don't go up," he said.

I looked at him.

"I'm not telling you," said Holt. "I don't tell you things. I'm just saying what I'd do. I wouldn't go up." He folded his hands on his stick. "It said it would review the station. And the asset. And the city. In that order." He looked at the screen. "It's going to the station first because it knows you'll come. It wants you up there. On its ground. Away from the queens."

"It might hurt them," I said. "Ruan's people."

"It might," said Holt. "It might not. It's reviewing. It hasn't said what it'll do." He paused. "But if you go up, you'll be the one who decides what it does. And you'll decide it on the Hand's ground, with the Hand's door at your back, eleven hours from anything that can help you." He looked at Dory. "And her."

Nobody said anything.

"What would Okafor say?" said Luna quietly.

I looked at her.

"Not until dawn," I said.

"Then ask her at dawn," said Luna.

"That's ten hours from now."

"Then we'll find out," said Luna, "what the Hand does in ten hours."

The Hand arrived at the Meridian at ten forty-one.

We watched it on the relay. Not well. The station's outer cameras were old, and half of them had been grey-sealed by the Overseer when it took the dock, and the other half showed mostly stars. But Ruan had a crewman on the hull with a handheld, clipped to the outside of the egg-dock, and she put his feed through to us, and we saw it.

I'd thought it would be three ships.

It wasn't.

It was one thing in three parts. Coming down out of the dark where the stars stopped, very slowly, the three parts spread apart like the fingers of something reaching. Grey. All of it grey. Not the grey of the Overseer's shell, or the collars, or the column in the east. Darker than that. So dark it was almost not there at all. It ate the light from the station's running lamps and gave nothing back.

I looked into it.

I'd looked into every piece of Sorn grey I'd met since the ice. The shuttle, the discs, the mirror, the Overseer's shell, the collars, the column, the canister. All of it, tight and folded and dense, but a shape. Something you could read, if you'd been given the silver to read it with.

The Hand was a shape too.

But it was a shape the way the inside of a mountain is a shape. I could see into it. A long way. Further than I'd ever seen into anything. And all the way in, as far as I could see, it was folded. Over and over. Thousands of folds. Tens of thousands. Each one turned a little away from every other, like the walls of the quiet room, so that whatever went into the Hand didn't come back out.

And at the bottom of it, past all the folds, as far as I could see and further—

Something was singing.

Not loud. Not like the spine-queen, singing in the walls of the Meridian loud enough for Ruan to hear through a bulkhead. Very faint. So faint I'd never have heard it if I hadn't spent two years listening to queens.

A sound under the sound.

The way I'd heard the singing inside Sesh's collar. The sliver of a dead queen, still singing inside the grey, because nobody had told it to stop.

Only this wasn't a sliver.

This was all of one.

"Lucas," said Risa. "Lucas. You've gone white."

I came back.

I was standing in the map room with my hands flat on the table and Risa's hand on my back. Everyone was looking at me. Holt. Luna. Sera. The General in the doorway. Crane on the bench by the wall, with the band on his collar dark.

"There's a queen in it," I said.

Nobody moved.

"The Hand," I said. "There's a queen in it. All the way down. Past everything." I looked at the screen. At the grey thing settling round the station like fingers closing. "It's not a ship. It's a housing. Like the spine. Like the mountain. The Overseer said. The Hand is a housing." My voice wasn't steady. "I thought it meant the Hand holds things. It meant the Hand is built round something. Like they built the Meridian round the spine."

"A queen," said Luna.

"I think so," I said. "I can hear her. Under all of it. Like the sliver in Sesh's collar. Only it's not a sliver." I looked at Crane. "Did you know?"

Crane's face had gone the colour of the bench.

"No," he said. "No. I've never been inside it. I've never been near it. The Overseer was the only one who—" He stopped. "The Overseer said it didn't have a word."

"It didn't," I said. "Nobody gave it one."

On the screen, the three parts of the Hand closed round the Meridian.

Not crushing. Gently. The way you'd cup a moth in your hands to carry it out of a room. The fingers of grey folded down round the hull, round the egg-dock, round the main ring with six hundred and four people sitting in rows along its walls.

And held.

Ruan's voice came through the relay. Very level.

"Contact. It's docked. Not at the egg-dock. Everywhere." A pause. "The lights are still on. Air's fine. Gravity's fine." Another pause. "She's still singing."

"Can you hear anything else?" I said.

A long silence on the channel.

Then Ruan said, "Yes."

"What?"

"I don't know." Her voice had changed. "Something under her. Very faint. In the hull. Like the walls have got a second voice in them." She stopped. "It's answering her."

Nothing came out of the Hand that night.

That was the strangest part. We'd waited for it. Ruan had her people ready, the ones who would fight and the ones who'd hide and the ones who'd carry, the way Okafor had taught her. I had my hand on the egg's grey hull in the shed behind the scarecrow, ready to go up if anything came through a door.

Nothing came through any door.

The Hand held the Meridian in its grey fingers and didn't move. And inside the Meridian, the spine-queen sang. And inside the Hand, under all the folds, something sang back.

Ruan kept the channel open all night.

She didn't say much. Every hour or so she'd say still singing, or lights still on, or once, around three, one of my lads has gone and sat with his back to the bulkhead where she's loudest and he's crying, and I've let him. Dot answered her every time. This unit counts you, Major. Six hundred and four.

I didn't sleep. I didn't need to. I sat in the map room with my back against the wall under Holt's map and listened.

Risa slept against my shoulder, with Dory asleep on her chest.

Sera slept with her head in Luna's lap on the bench, and Luna didn't sleep, and kept her hand on Sera's hair, and wrote in her notebook with the other.

Around four, Luna stopped writing.

"Lucas," she said quietly, so as not to wake Sera.

"Yes."

"If there's a queen in the Hand." She looked at the screen. "And the spine-queen's singing to her. And she's singing back." She paused. "Then the hello goes up in two hours."

I looked at her.

"Through the spine-queen," said Luna. "Through the Meridian. Through the Hand. With the Hand's fingers round her." She tapped her pen against the page. "Every name we've ever counted. Every base. Every brood. Every queen in the ring. And then thirty-one names, eleven light-years away, under the dome." She held my eyes. "Going straight past a queen who's been held in a housing for God knows how long."

I didn't say anything.

"She'll hear it," said Luna.

"Yes," I said.

"Is that good?"

"I don't know."

Luna looked at the screen for a long time.

"I think we find out," she said, "when Okafor answers."

Dawn.

The red glass, grey with the light not yet up. All of us. Dot to count, Toby to carry, Juno and Jessa to reach and to feel. Risa with Dory. Sera and Luna and Liam. Hana, with her new silver curves bright on her forearms. Holt in his chair. Genny, with her chin up. Garnet, who'd refused to be left asleep.

Crane, a little way off, on the glass. Hands on his knees.

The Overseer wasn't at the passage mouth. The Overseer was on the north shelf of the hollow, where it had been all night. Not close.

The hello went up.

I felt it go. The way I always felt it. Every name Dot had. Every base. Every brood. And then up, through the ring of queens, to the spine-queen.

She caught it.

She was weaker than she'd been the morning before. I could feel it. A night of singing to something in the dark had cost her. But she caught it, the way she'd caught it every morning for nine days, and turned to pass it on.

And something caught it with her.

From under her. From inside the grey that held the station. From the bottom of the Hand, past all the folds, where the sound under the sound was.

Not taking it. Holding it. The way Dory held my hand.

I felt the hello go through the Hand.

Every name. Every one. All the way down, through the tens of thousands of folds, each one turned a little away from every other, to the thing at the bottom that had been singing. And then back up again, carried. Not changed. Carried the way Toby carried it, the way the spine-queen carried it.

And passed on.

Eleven light-years. To the dome. To thirty-one people in a flat belonging to a retired Major.

Stronger.

I'd never felt it go so strong.

Dory woke. Her silver turned. She checked Risa, and me, and Sera and Luna, and the queen at the wall, and Dot.

Then up.

Not along the thread to Mother. Up. Toward the Hand. Toward the thing at the bottom of it.

There you are, said Dory.

And something answered her.

I didn't hear what it said.

None of us did. Not even Juno, who could feel anything with silver in it anywhere on Avalon. It was too deep. Too old. Too far down, under too many folds.

But Dory heard.

She went very still on Risa's chest. Her silver went still too. All of it, all at once, every woven path. Then it brightened. Slowly. Until it was the brightest I'd ever seen it. Brighter than the day she was born.

And then, very carefully, the way Garnet had knelt to meet her, Dory reached up with one small hand and put it flat on Risa's collarbone.

And patted it.

Twice.

The way Risa patted Dory's back when she was frightened. There. There.

Risa looked down at her.

"Who was that?" she whispered.

Dory looked back up. Very bright. Very sure.

She didn't have the words. She had a handful. Dot had been the first, and Gar the fourth. And she had one that wasn't a human word at all: the brood-word, the one she'd given our queen on the day she was born, for a queen who's yours but didn't bear you.

She used that one.

Up. Toward the sky.

I went down the thread to Mother.

I didn't waste it. The hello was stronger than it had ever been, and I took everything it would give. Two doors in Mother. One in Maura. Another hand's-breadth of Rory's arm, with Sera's palm and Liam's held out beside me on the glass. And a first door in Ines Tarrow, fourth on Okafor's list, who'd answered the hello every morning for a year and never said a word, and who didn't say one now either, but who I felt breathe in, eleven light-years away, as if she'd been holding it all that time.

Then I asked.

Mother. The Hand's come down. It's holding the Meridian. Holt says don't go up. Ask Okafor.

It took a while. It always did. I could feel Mother turning to someone beside her. I could feel the room they were in, faintly, through her. A small room. Warm. A kettle somewhere. Someone sitting very straight in a chair with their hands folded.

Then Mother came back.

Okafor says: Holt's right.

I let my breath out.

She says: don't go up. Never fight on the ground they choose. A pause. Mother's voice had something in it I couldn't read. She says she taught you that. On the beam. The first week.

She had. You don't carry it where it wants to go. You carry it where you need it.

She says, Mother went on, the Hand said it would review three things. The station. The asset. The city. She says if it's reviewing the station first, then the station's what it knows least about. And she says it's had all night and it hasn't done anything. A pause. She says that means it doesn't know what it's looking at.

Then what do we do?

Another pause. Longer.

She says: you wait. On your ground. Under the queens. With everyone you love on one side of you and every brood on Avalon on the other. Mother's voice softened. She says: let it come down. Make it come to you. And when it gets here, Lucas—

The thread was thinning. The spine-queen tiring.

But it didn't go.

It held. Longer than it should have. Stronger. Something under it, holding it with her.

She says, said Mother, when it gets here, you won't be the only thing on that ground it doesn't understand.

Ruan opened the channel at seven.

"It's letting go," she said.

We were back in the map room. All of us, crowded round the screen, the way we'd crowded round it all night.

On the relay, the fingers of the Hand were opening. Slowly. The way they'd closed. Grey peeling back off the hull of the Meridian, off the egg-dock, off the main ring. Not hurrying.

Nothing had come out. Nothing had gone in.

"Lights fine. Air fine. Gravity fine." Ruan's voice was very tired and very level. "Six hundred and four. Every one. She's still singing." A pause. "She's singing louder."

The Hand pulled back from the station.

Then it turned.

All three parts. Slowly. Together. The way a hand turns over to show you the palm.

Down.

Toward Avalon.

"It's coming to you," said Ruan.

"I know," I said.

"Lucas." Her face on the screen, very close to the lens. "Before it let go. Right before. The second voice in the walls. The one that was answering her." She swallowed. "It said something. I didn't understand it. But some of my lads did. The ones who've been sitting with their backs to the bulkhead all night. The ones who can hear her best."

"What did it say?"

Ruan looked at someone off-screen. Then back.

"They say it said: who sings?"

Nobody in the map room said anything.

Then Dory, on Risa's hip, said her new word again.

The brood-word. Up. Toward the ceiling, and the sky, and the grey thing turning over in it.

And at the bottom of the hollow, under the square, on the north shelf, not close, I felt the Overseer hear her.

And unfold.

Days 770–771. Under the mountain.

The queen let it come. "Do not run, Lucas. It is carrying bread." Down the meeting passage. It folded until its mirror was level with the floor and put the bread down between them.

"You were under the mountain. Four hundred years, holding the old one, driving her brood." "Yes." In me, its own voice; it didn't know it could do that. It is recalled to the Hand, which is held like the old one and the one in the sky were held. The Hand is a housing; it was in the vat; it knows what's in there and has no word. No one told it about bread. "It would like to stay."

The queen called the old one, who came down the thread like a mountain leaning in at a window, and knew it. "You sat at my door. You kept it shut. For four hundred and eleven years." You counted the days without knowing. "You were very small. I thought you were the door. You were a small thing, sitting at it, counting." I do not forgive you; I do not think I will. You may stay, not close, and you will never keep a door shut again. "It does not know how not to." Then learn, as the boy learned, as his child is learning, as I am learning to sleep in the light. Be slow. You have time.

The north shelf, where the young of eighteen were. Pebble handed it back its bread. The queen: it is very afraid. That was the fear of being seen. This is the fear of being sent back.

Nine p.m., Ruan: ninety minutes. Six hundred and four in the main ring in rows like a church; they came to be near her. They could get eighty down and leave her. Nobody wants to leave her. Holt: don't go up. It reviews the station first because it knows you'll come, on its ground, away from the queens, eleven hours from help. Luna: ask Okafor at dawn, and find out what the Hand does in ten hours.

10:41. One thing in three parts, like fingers reaching, a grey so dark it ate the running lamps. I looked into it: folded tens of thousands of times, each fold turned from every other, like the quiet room. At the bottom, a sound under the sound, like the sliver in Sesh's collar. Not a sliver. All of one. A queen. The Hand is built round her, like the Meridian round the spine. Crane didn't know. Nobody gave the Overseer a word.

It closed round the station like hands round a moth. Lights, air, gravity fine. Ruan: a second voice in the walls, answering her.

Nothing came out all night. "One of my lads is sitting with his back to the bulkhead where she's loudest, crying, and I've let him." Dot: this unit counts you, six hundred and four. Luna at four: the hello goes up through the Hand in two hours. She'll hear it.

Dawn. The spine-queen caught the hello, weaker after a night of singing, and something caught it with her from under her, holding it the way Dory holds my hand. Through every fold and back up, carried, unchanged, and on to the dome, stronger than it has ever been. Dory checked, then up toward the Hand. There you are. Something answered. Only Dory heard. Her silver went brighter than the day she was born. She patted Risa's collarbone twice. There, there. "Who was that?" She used the brood-word, up at the sky.

Two doors in Mother, one in Maura, another hand's-breadth of Rory's arm, a first door in Ines Tarrow, who breathed in. Okafor, through Mother: Holt's right. Never fight on ground they choose; she taught me that on the beam. It reviewed the station first because it knows it least; all night and nothing, so it doesn't know what it's looking at. Wait on your ground, under the queens, everyone you love on one side and every brood on the other. When it gets here, you won't be the only thing on that ground it doesn't understand.

Seven a.m. The fingers opened off the Meridian. Six hundred and four. She's singing louder. The Hand turned over like a hand showing its palm, and came down toward us. Ruan: before it let go, the second voice said something. The ones who hear her best say it said: who sings?

Dory said the brood-word again. On the north shelf, not close, the Overseer heard her and unfolded.