Chapter 269 Behind the Ridge

Okafor told me at dawn.

Through Mother. Through the hello, with the queen at the bottom of the Hand holding the door open and Dory's net round all of us and the Tharn on the plain below the glass, four hundred and twelve small hills feeling the light come up on their plates and still not quite believing it.

I didn't go down to open any doors that morning. There weren't any left to open in Mother. I'd opened the last of Hana's father on the sixth day of the first finger, and the last of Ines Tarrow the day before that, and Okafor had moved the next names up her list and I'd been working through them every dawn since. But that morning I didn't.

I waited.

She's here, said Mother.

I know.

She says she'll tell you why. She says you'll listen to all of it before you say anything. A pause. She says she knows you, Lucas. She says she's known you since you were a boy in her dome asking her for medical books. She says you'll want to argue before she's finished, and you're not to.

I won't.

She says you will, said Mother, and I could hear her smiling. But she says she'll allow one interruption.

She says, said Mother, the first reason is the second finger.

I'd known it would be.

She says something in there moved. The tall ones. They were in the first finger when you went in after Marlo, and when you went back, they'd gone. Further in. Where you haven't been. Mother's voice was careful. Reading. She says something that moves away from a boy who's taking collars off isn't running from the collars. It's running from something else. Or toward it.

She says she doesn't know which. Neither do you.

She says until somebody does, the Hand isn't safe to cross in.

I didn't say anything.

The second reason, said Mother. She says when every Hand hears what happened at the bottom of this one, they'll come. To Earth, because I live there. But not only to Earth. A pause. To the place where it happened. To the queen who let her handlers be killed. To the planet where the collars came off.

Here.

Here, said Mother. She says Earth is where the families are. But Avalon is where the war is. And she says a general who takes his best soldier off the line to fetch the families is a general who comes home to find the line's gone.

She says you're the line, Lucas.

The third reason, said Mother.

She stopped.

I waited. The hello held. On the glass beside me, Risa had her hand flat on my back. Luna was on my other side, with her notebook shut on her knee. Sera behind us, with her hand on her stomach. Twenty weeks. You could see it properly now, when she stood.

Okafor says, said Mother, and her voice had changed, that she'd like to tell you this one herself. Through me. In her own words. She says I'm to say it exactly.

All right.

And Mother said, very quietly, in a voice that was hers but with words that weren't:

Dask. I've watched your mother for a month. Every dawn. Through the hello. Since the night she lifted my table an inch off the floor and didn't know she'd done it.

She's whole. She can stand. She can hold three men in the air by their buckles and twelve handlers at the bottom of a Hand from eleven light-years away. She's the strongest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen a great many strong things.

She's not seen you in a year and a half.

Not in a room. Not without a screen between. Not with her own eyes.

I won't have the first time she sees her son be in a dome under glass with Central Allocation's men on the stairs and the Hands coming. I won't have it be on a gantry, in a hurry, with three hundred people to load and a clock running.

I want it to be on your glass. On Avalon. With your queens behind you and your children in your arms and every brood on that world on one side and everyone you love on the other.

I want her to walk down off that Hand onto the ground you made, and see what you made. All of it. At once.

That's the third reason.

And it's the one that matters.

I didn't say anything for a long time.

I'd been going to. I'd had it ready, all through the first two reasons. The argument. I'm the only one who can open folds. I'm the only one who can take collars off. If something goes wrong on Earth, I'm the only one who can—

And then she'd said the third one.

And I couldn't remember any of it.

On the glass beside me, Risa's hand pressed harder on my back. Luna had opened her notebook, but she wasn't writing. She was looking at me.

Lucas, said Mother. Her own voice now. Are you there?

Yes.

She says that was your one interruption. Not saying anything. A pause, and the smile was back. She says she'll count it.

I laughed. It came out wet.

Tell her yes, I said.

She knows, said Mother.

She says now she'll tell you who goes, said Mother.

And then she read the list.

Windsor, A. Commanding.

On the glass, the General, at the end of the row, didn't move.

She says he knows the dome. He knows Avalon Command. He knows the Senate and the Project and every officer on every floor who's ever signed a route sheet. She says he's the only one who can walk into Central Allocation's second floor and have every man in the room stand up. A pause. And she says he's got ice now, and she wants it where the families are.

Windsor, L. Second.

I felt Luna go still beside me.

Not surprised. I don't think Luna was ever surprised by anything Okafor did. But still.

She says she named Windsor leader of Squad Eight in the dome, said Mother. She says she hasn't changed her mind. She says every one of the three hundred and four on her list is going to be frightened, and old, and some of them have never been outside the dome in their lives, and they're going to be put in the finger of a Hand that carried collared people to other worlds for longer than anyone can count. Another pause. She says they need somebody at the door who'll tell them where to stand and make them believe it. She says that's Windsor. It's always been Windsor.

Luna didn't say anything.

She shut her notebook.

Then she opened it again, and wrote something, very small, and turned it so I could see.

I'll come back.

The rest of the list was shorter.

Calder, L. Liam. For his parents. And because Okafor said Rory was going to want to see what his son could do with fire, and she wanted him to see it before the Hands did.

Marsh, T. Toby. To carry. The hello had to go with the Hand, all the way, so the families could be counted and Mother could stay in the net. And because Adaeze Marsh had asked for him by name.

Osei, H. Hana. For her father, who'd held the floodgates alone for two days and wouldn't come out when Okafor called retreat. And because water moves where people can't.

Friese, S.

That one stopped everyone.

Sigmund was at the edge of the glass. He'd come every dawn since the Hand, the way everyone did now. He stood very straight with his arms folded and his lightning held so tight it was still.

She says, said Mother, the Senate will be at the gantry. Some of them. The ones who signed the Accord and never stopped. She says when they see the families going, they'll try to stop it. Not with guns. With papers. With votes. With names. A pause. She says they'll say a Friese name. She wants a Friese standing there who doesn't sign first.

Sigmund didn't move.

Then, very slowly, he unfolded his arms.

"Tell her yes," he said.

She heard, said Mother.

And Sesh, said Mother. And whoever of the Kethri will come. She says the families can't fly. Somebody has to carry the ones who can't walk.

That was all.

No Sera. No Risa. No Dory. No Holt.

No me.

She says, said Mother, the rest of you hold the line.

Luna didn't say anything on the way back from the glass.

Neither did I. We walked up the street together, the four of us, with Dory on Risa's hip and Sera a step behind with her hand on her stomach, and nobody said anything until we got to the porch.

Then Luna sat down on the top step.

She sat there with her notebook in her lap and her coat buttoned to the neck, very straight, the way she'd sat on the roof in the dome the night before the pods sealed. Looking out at the plain. At the Hand.

Sera sat down beside her.

She didn't say anything either. She put her arm round Luna's shoulders and her head against Luna's head. After a moment Luna leaned into her. Not much. Just enough.

Risa sat down on Luna's other side, with Dory in her lap.

Dory looked up at Luna. Checked her.

There you are.

Luna looked down.

"I'm going to be gone," she said to Dory. Very quietly. "For a while. You'll be bigger when I come back. You'll probably have more words. You'll probably have opinions."

Dory considered this.

"Lu," she said.

Out loud. A new word. The newest one she had.

Luna's face did something I'd only seen it do once before. The morning on the apron when her father came down the ramp and said I brought the oranges.

It broke.

All at once. Like ice on a river in spring.

Sera held her. Risa held her. Dory reached up with both hands and grabbed a fistful of Luna's coat and held on too.

I sat down on the step below them, with my back against Luna's knees, and didn't say anything at all.

I asked the queen in the Hand that afternoon.

Okafor's way. I didn't say will you carry our families. I went out to the plain with Dory and Juno and the Overseer and its bread, and the thread came down, and Dory touched it, and I said:

The first finger is empty.

Yes, said the queen. I can feel it. It is very strange. I have never felt it empty.

Is it what you needed?

She was quiet for a long time.

It is what I needed first, she said at last. It is not all I need. A pause. There are still the other two. And the ones who moved.

I know. We'll empty them too.

I know you will, said the queen. I have watched you empty one. Another pause. I will carry your families in the empty one. I will go to your mother's world. I will go past the moon. And I will bring them here.

I closed my eyes.

Thank you.

Do not thank me yet, said the queen. I have not said when.

I opened them.

When?

The thread was very still.

When the ones who moved have spoken, said the queen. Not before.

The ones who moved spoke to Marlo.

That night. In the medical building. He'd been moved to the small room at the back, the one the queens had grown in the spring, because Edda said he needed quiet and the main room had Pim in it, and Pim, now he could walk, talked all the time.

Jessa was with him. She was always with him.

She came to get me at midnight.

"He's talking to them," she said. In the doorway of our bedroom. Not quietly. Jessa didn't do anything quietly any more. "Lucas. Get up. He's talking to them."

"To who?"

"The tall ones," said Jessa. "The ones the light bends round." Her face was white. "They came. They're here."

They weren't in the medical building.

They were outside it. In the street. In the dark. And I couldn't see them.

That was the first thing. I could see into anything. I'd been able to since the ice. Stone and iron and the deep and the grey. I'd looked into ten thousand folds of the Hand and seen her at the bottom of them. I'd looked into Tharn and Mirri and Kethri, and found their hearts.

I looked out of the medical building door into the street, and saw nothing.

Not darkness. Not an empty street. The street was there. The cobbles, and the third-wave houses opposite, and the lamp on the corner that Priya kept lit all night because Nessa was afraid of the dark. All of it, exactly as it always was.

And in the middle of it, something I couldn't see.

Like a heat haze. Like the air above the forge on a summer afternoon, when everything behind it goes soft and wavering and you can't quite tell what shape it is. Only there was no heat. The night was cold. And the haze was tall. Taller than Sesh. And there were three of them.

Standing in the street. Very still.

Looking at the medical building. At the small window at the back. At Marlo.

"They've been watching him," said Jessa. "Since the Hand. Since you brought him down. Every night." She was standing very close to me. "He says he could feel them. Out there. Every night. He thought he was imagining it."

"He wasn't."

"No." Jessa swallowed. "Tonight he opened the window and said: I know you're there. And they came closer."

Marlo was at the window.

Sitting up in bed, with the window open and the cold coming in and his terrible hair loose on his shoulders, looking out at three shapes in the street that nobody else could see.

He wasn't frightened.

He was talking to them. Very quietly. Not in words. In the way Juno talked to the queen in the Hand. The way Dory talked to everyone. Silver to silver. I could feel it going out of him. Thin and ragged, because I hadn't finished him yet and a year in the housing had worn his silver down to threads. But going out. Toward them.

And something coming back.

I couldn't hear it. I couldn't see it. It was like listening through a wall, the way Marlo had said. But I could feel the shape of it. Something very careful. Very old. Very, very afraid.

Marlo turned his head and saw me in the doorway.

"Lucas," he said. "Come here. Slowly. They want to see you."

I went to the window.

Slowly.

The three shapes in the street didn't move. But I felt them turn. All three of them. Toward me. Not their bodies. Their attention. The way a field of wheat turns all at once in the wind.

And I felt them look.

Not at my face. At my eyes. At the silver round them. At the queen's gift, the night in the snow at Luna's ice outpost, when she knelt and gave me a share of her silver and I could see into everything.

Everything except them.

"They say you can't see them," said Marlo.

"No."

"They say nobody can." Marlo's voice was very quiet. "They say that's what they are. That's what the Sorn wanted them for. Things nobody can see. To put in places. To watch." He swallowed. "They say they've been watching for the Sorn for longer than they know. On every world the Hand went to. Standing in streets. Looking in windows." His voice cracked. "Like this."

I didn't say anything.

"They say they watched Halden," said Marlo.

Behind me, Jessa made a sound.

"They say they were there. In the streets. When the doors opened." Marlo was crying now. Not loudly. Tears running down his face while he talked, the way Toby cried. "They say they had to watch. The collar made them. They say they've watched every world the Hand ever went to. Every one. And they had to watch all of it, and they couldn't look away, and they couldn't help, and nobody could see them to ask them to."

"Why are they here?" I said.

Marlo listened.

For a long time.

Then he turned his head and looked at me.

"Because you looked at me," he said. "In the hold. When I was in the housing. You looked in and saw me and stopped. You couldn't stop. You had to keep going down. But you looked." He swallowed. "They say nobody ever looked in before. They say on every world, in every hold, nobody ever looked in to see who was there."

"And you looked back," I said.

"Every time the voice stopped," said Marlo. "I could feel them. And I looked." He wiped his face. "They say I'm the only one who ever did."

They told him the rest an hour later.

I sat on the floor of Marlo's small room with my back against the bed. Jessa sat on the bed with Marlo. Juno came, because Juno had felt the wall where they were move from the second finger to the street, and came running. Then Luna, because Juno went to Luna with everything. Then Risa, with Dory asleep. Then Sera.

Then the General.

He stood in the doorway, the way he always did. Not close.

Marlo told us.

"They say the second finger isn't full of captives," he said. "Not the way the first was. Not hundreds of housings." He stopped. Listened. "They say it's full of them. Their whole kind. Everyone that's left. The Sorn took their whole world, and put them all in the second finger, because they were useful, and the Sorn wanted to keep them all together. In case they needed more watchers." He swallowed. "There are two thousand of them. That's all there are. Anywhere."

Nobody said anything.

"They say when you emptied the first finger," said Marlo, "they were afraid. They didn't know what you were doing. They thought maybe you were taking the collars off to put new ones on. That's what the Sorn did, when one queen stopped working. Cut a new one." His voice was very careful. "So they went to the second finger. To be with the others. To be together. In case."

"And now?"

"Now they've watched you for nine days," said Marlo. "They've watched Dory wait. They've watched Genny ask the slivers where they want to go. They've watched the Tharn open their eyes and the Mirri sing." He listened. "They say they know you're not putting new ones on."

"Then what do they want?"

Marlo was quiet for a very long time.

Then he said:

"They want to tell you about the third finger."

The General came in from the doorway.

He didn't ask. He came and stood at the foot of Marlo's bed, very straight, with his right hand bare at his side.

"Tell me," he said.

Marlo looked at him. Then at the window. Then back.

"They say the twelve at the bottom weren't all of them," he said.

The General didn't move.

"The handlers," said Marlo. "The twelve round the queen. And the hundreds in the palm, that Sera burned. And the hundreds in the folds, that Lucas's mother held." He swallowed. "They weren't all. They say there's a knuckle. At the base of the third finger. Where it joins the palm. Sealed. Folded shut, every fold turned away from every other, so nobody can see in. Not even the queen."

"How many?" said the General.

Marlo listened.

"They say they don't know. They say they can't see in either. Nobody can." He closed his eyes. "But they say they watched them go in. Before the Hand came down over the plain. When the voice was still on. They say the handlers went into the knuckle and folded it shut behind them, and the light-benders were told to stand outside and watch the door."

"How many went in?"

Marlo opened his eyes.

"Four hundred," he said.

Nobody in the small room said anything for a very long time.

The General was the first to move. He looked down at his right hand. Bare. Frost just beginning at the tips of the fingers, very faint, the way it did now when he was thinking hard.

"They're waiting," he said.

"Yes," said Marlo. "That's what the light-benders think."

"For what?"

Marlo listened.

"For the Hand to move," he said. "They say when the Hand came down over the plain, it was supposed to review the city. And if the city didn't do what it was told, the knuckle would open. Four hundred handlers. On the ground. In the city." His voice dropped. "But then the queen stopped carrying the voice. And the twelve went to the bottom to cut her. And the knuckle stayed shut."

"Because the four hundred didn't know what had happened," said Luna slowly. "They're sealed in. They can't see out. The same way nobody can see in."

"Yes."

"So they're still waiting for the signal."

"Yes."

"And they'll wait until—" Luna stopped.

"Until the Hand moves," said Marlo. "The light-benders say the knuckle's set to open when the Hand leaves the ground it was sent to. If the Hand goes back to the other Hands, the handlers wake up and find out what happened. If the Hand goes somewhere else—"

He didn't finish.

He didn't have to.

"If the Hand goes to Earth," said the General, very quietly, "with three hundred and four people in the first finger—"

"The knuckle opens," said Marlo. "In the middle of the crossing. With the families in the dark. And four hundred handlers who've just woken up and found out a human woman killed twelve of them from eleven light-years away."

I went out to the plain at dawn.

All of us did. The hello went up, and the queen at the bottom of the Hand caught it, and Dory put the net round us, and Mother came through.

I told her. All of it. The light-benders. The two thousand in the second finger. The knuckle. Four hundred.

Okafor says, said Mother, after a long silence, that's what moved.

Yes.

She says she didn't know what it was. She knew there was something. A pause. She says that's why you're the line.

I know.

She says the Hand doesn't move until the knuckle's open. Mother's voice was very level. She says you open it. On your ground. On Avalon. Under your queens. With every brood on that world on one side and everyone you love on the other. Before the families get anywhere near it.

Four hundred.

She says she knows.

They've been sealed in since before the Hand came down. They don't know about the twelve. They don't know the queen stopped carrying their voice. They'll come out expecting to take a city.

Okafor says, said Mother, then they'll be surprised.

The light-benders came to the glass that morning.

All three. Standing at the edge of it, in the light, where nobody could see them. I could feel them. Everyone with silver in them could feel them now, the way you can feel someone standing behind you in a room. But nobody could see.

Except Garnet.

She'd come down to the glass with Pell and Genny, the way she came every morning now, with her drawing board under her arm. She stopped at the edge of the red. Looked at the place where the three of them were standing.

And frowned.

"There's something there," she said.

Everyone turned.

"There," said Garnet. Pointing. "Where the air's wobbly. Like the bit over the stove." She tilted her head. "It's tall. There's three." She squinted. "They've got collars."

Nobody moved.

"Garnet," I said. Very carefully. "Can you see them?"

"Not see," said Garnet, with enormous patience, as if I were being very slow. "It's not seeing. It's like when you draw something and you get the outside right first and then you can see what goes in the middle." She sat down on the glass and opened her drawing board. "I'll show you."

She drew.

Very fast. With her tongue between her teeth. Not looking at the paper. Looking at the place on the glass where the air wavered.

When she'd finished, she held it up.

Three tall thin shapes. Taller than Sesh. Narrow. Long-limbed. Faces that weren't quite faces, smooth and pale, with eyes that were too large and set too far apart. And round each long thin neck, a grey band.

Collars.

Marlo, at the edge of the glass on Toby's back, made a sound.

"That's them," he whispered. "That's what they look like. That's what they showed me."

Garnet turned the drawing round and looked at it critically.

"I didn't get the eyes right," she said. "They keep moving."

Then she looked up at the place where the light-benders were standing.

"You should stop moving your eyes," she told them. "The queen does that too. Then she stopped."

And very slowly, so slowly that only Garnet could have seen it, the wavering in the air at the edge of the glass went still.

Days 794–795. Behind the ridge.

Dawn: no doors left in Mother. Okafor allows me one interruption. First reason: the second finger. Something that moves away from a boy taking collars off is running from something else, or toward it. Until someone knows which, the Hand isn't safe to cross in. Second: every Hand will come to Earth because Mother lives there, but also here, where it happened. A general who takes his best soldier off the line to fetch families comes home to find the line gone. You're the line.

Third, in her own words through Mother: she's watched Mother a month. Whole, the strongest thing she's seen. She hasn't seen her son in a year and a half without a screen. Okafor won't have the first time be under glass with Central Allocation on the stairs, or on a gantry with a clock running. She wants Mother to walk down off the Hand onto the ground I made, with my queens behind me and my children in my arms, and see all of it at once. That's the one that matters. I couldn't remember my argument. I said nothing. She counted that as my interruption.

Who goes. Windsor, A., commanding: he knows the dome and every officer, can make Central Allocation's second floor stand up, and has ice now. Windsor, L., second: she named her Squad Eight's leader in the dome; three hundred and four frightened people need someone at the door who tells them where to stand and makes them believe it. Calder, L.: Rory will want to see. Marsh, T.: to carry the hello all the way; his mother asked. Osei, H.: water moves where people can't. Friese, S.: the Senate will come with papers and say a Friese name, so a Friese who doesn't sign first should stand there. "Tell her yes." Sesh and the Kethri, to carry. The rest of us hold the line.

Luna's notebook: I'll come back. On the porch Sera held her and Risa held her. Dory checked her and said "Lu," a new word. Luna broke like ice on a river in spring. Dory grabbed her coat. I sat below with my back against her knees.

Afternoon, the plain: the first finger is empty, the first time she has felt it so. It's what she needed first, not all. She'll carry our families in it to Mother's world and past the moon and bring them here. Don't thank her yet. Not until the ones who moved have spoken.

Midnight. Jessa: he's talking to them. Three in the street outside the medical building that I couldn't see. Like heat haze with no heat, taller than Sesh. Marlo at the open window, his worn silver going out to them. They want to see me. They looked at the queen's gift in my eyes. Nobody can see them; that's what the Sorn wanted them for, watchers put in places. They watched every world the Hand went to. They watched Halden, in the streets, when the doors opened, and the collar made them watch. They came because I looked into Marlo's housing in the hold and stopped, and Marlo looked back every time the voice stopped. Nobody ever looked in before. He's the only one who ever looked back.

The second finger is all of them, two thousand, all there are anywhere. They hid there with the others in case I was taking collars off to put new ones on, as the Sorn did when one queen stopped working. Nine days of watching Dory wait and Genny ask, and now they know.

The third finger: at its base where it joins the palm, a knuckle folded shut so nobody can see in, not even the queen. Four hundred handlers went in before the Hand came down, to be let out on the city if it didn't obey. Then the queen stopped carrying the voice and the knuckle stayed shut. They can't see out. They don't know about the twelve. It opens when the Hand leaves the ground it was sent to. If it goes to Earth, it opens mid-crossing, with the families in the dark and four hundred handlers who've just learned a human woman killed twelve of them from eleven light-years away.

Okafor at dawn: that's what moved. That's why you're the line. The Hand doesn't move until the knuckle's open. You open it here, on your ground, under your queens. They'll come out expecting to take a city. "Then they'll be surprised."

At the glass Garnet saw them. Not seeing: like drawing the outside first so you can see what goes in the middle. Three, tall, thin, too-large eyes set too far apart, collars. Marlo: that's them. "I didn't get the eyes right. They keep moving." She told them to stop moving their eyes; the queen does that too, then she stopped. The air at the edge of the glass went still.