Chapter 278 Operator

Dot called me Dask on the third morning of the crossing.

I almost didn't notice. That was the worst part, afterward. I'd been on the glass since before the light, the way I was every dawn, with my hands flat on the red and Risa's knees against my back and Dory in her lap, holding the net. The net was thin. The Hands were a long way out now, further every morning, and the first queen was barely there at all on the other end. But she was there. And through her, faint, Mother. And Luna. And Toby, carrying.

Dot was counting.

She always counted. Every name. Every base. Every brood. In her level clear voice that wasn't quite anybody's.

And in the middle of it, she said:

"Dask."

Not Dask, Lucas, the way she'd say it in the count. Not Operator, the way she'd said it every day since the first week, when she was three days old and decided what to call me.

Just Dask.

Flat.

Like someone reading a name off a list.

I turned round.

Dot was beside Holt, where she always sat at dawn. Every one of her hands was still. Her wings were folded. Her grille was quiet.

"Dot?" I said.

"This unit," said Dot, "is counting."

And went on.

Every name. In order. The way she always did.

I watched her for a long time.

She didn't say Dask again.

Holt noticed it too.

He waited until we were off the glass and up the street and in the kitchen with the door shut. Then he said, very quietly, without looking at me:

"She's never called you that."

"No."

"Not once. Not since the first week." He folded his arms. "Not even when you'd done something stupid. Operator. Always."

"I know."

"So why would she now?"

I didn't have an answer.

Sera did. She was at the stove with her feet bare on the warm floor and her hand on her stomach, twenty-three weeks. She didn't turn round.

"Because somebody else told her to," she said.

Before that, there was Sigmund.

I didn't see it myself. Luna told me. Through the net, at the end of the hello, in the little time the thread stayed open before the first queen was too far to hold it. She didn't say much. Luna never said much about things like that. But she'd written it down, the way she wrote everything down, and she read it to me in her careful voice from the dark of the first finger, eleven light-years and three days out.

Jessa wakes in the night, Luna read. Every night. She reaches up. For Marlo. Out of habit. The way she did for a year in the housing, when he was up and she was down and she could feel him going further away. A pause. He isn't up any more. He's three rows along, asleep. But she still wakes and reaches.

Sigmund sits with her.

He doesn't say anything. He sits with his back against the wall of the finger beside her, with his arms folded, and when she wakes and reaches, he puts his hand flat on the grey beside her, and lets a little of his lightning go into it. Very little. Just enough that the grey hums. She says it sounds like something being there.

Last night she didn't wake.

She was asleep against his shoulder. He didn't move all night. When I came past at dawn he looked at me as if he dared me to say something.

I didn't.

I'm saying it to you.

On the glass behind me, I heard Risa make a very small sound.

"Siggy," she said. Under her breath. As if she couldn't decide whether to laugh.

I didn't say anything. Neither did Sera. But Sera's hand found mine on the glass, and squeezed once, hard.

I asked Dot that afternoon.

Not straight out. You couldn't ask Dot things straight out; she'd answer exactly what you asked and nothing else. I sat down beside her in the workshop, where she was helping Keir and Aster with the charging racks the way she did most afternoons, and I said:

"Dot. What's my name?"

Dot stopped.

All of her hands. All at once. Mid-movement. The rivers of light that ran across her casing, the four colours she'd had since she took in Luna's kit, went still.

"Lucas Dask," she said.

"What do you call me?"

A long pause.

Longer than Dot ever paused.

"Operator," she said.

"This morning you called me Dask."

Another pause. Her grille didn't move.

"This unit," said Dot, "has no record of that."

Beside her, Aster had stopped too. Keir's kit. The one we'd found locked in a lower room at the relay basin with her power removed. Her door switches, the dual grips she'd designed herself so nobody could lock anyone in by accident, had gone very still.

Keir looked up from the rack.

"Aster," he said.

Aster didn't answer.

Old Son was the one who told us.

He was on the tower. He'd been on the tower for as long as anyone could remember, flashing the dawn count with his mirror, holding angles. He'd chosen to be on the HERE board, the first year, when Dot wrote her own name there. OLD SON. He didn't talk much. He'd said, once, to Dot, when they were studying flawed glass together: Removing the housing is not the same as removing the core.

That evening he flashed something that wasn't the count.

Nessa saw it. Nessa saw everything. She came running down the street, and banged on our door until I opened it.

"Old Son's flashing wrong," she said. "Not the numbers. Letters. The old way. The one Wren taught Crane."

I went out onto the porch and looked up at the tower.

The mirror flashed. Long. Short. Gap. Long, long.

Wren was already on the street below, with her book open, reading it.

"S," she said. "T. O. P."

The mirror kept flashing.

"Stop," said Wren. "Stop. Stop. Me. Stop me."

It was Ruan who told us why.

The pilot's channel. Late. Dot took it in the map room, the way she always did, and Ruan's face on the screen was grey and frightened and very close to the lens.

"The tender," she said.

Nobody in the map room moved.

"At the dock. It's been dead since you came up. Since the spine-queen. Nothing in it moving. We thought the wardens were gone. We thought it was empty." She swallowed. "It isn't. It woke up an hour ago. The doors opened. And something's—" She stopped. "Something's singing in it. Not her. Not the spine-queen. Something else. Lots of voices, all at once, all the same. Like a choir that only knows one note."

I went very still.

"Slivers," I said.

Ruan looked at me through the screen.

"What?"

"They cut queens," I said. "They take the pieces. They put them in collars. In bands." I looked at Crane, on the bench by the wall, with the grey band on his collar. "They tried to make a voice out of the first queen, from her pieces, when she wouldn't carry theirs. They didn't get enough." My mouth was dry. "Somebody else did."

"Lucas," said Ruan. "It's pointed down. At you."

Dot stood up.

In the map room. In the middle of Ruan's sentence. All of her. Her wings unfolded. Her hands came up. The rivers of light across her casing, four colours, went one colour.

Grey.

"Dask," she said.

Flat. Like reading a name off a list.

"Dask will come with this unit."

Holt was on his feet before I'd seen him move.

"Dot," I said.

"This unit," said Dot, "is instructed."

And every one of her hands reached for me.

I didn't move.

I could have. I could have held her. Every one of her hands, every rivet, every core. The way Mother held three bowls. I could have unfolded her, if I wanted to. She was mostly ordinary metal, Dot. Steel and titanium and glass, the things I'd made her out of, the things she'd made herself out of since.

Except the cores.

Four cores. Hers and Luna's kit's and the two she'd taken in since. And every one of them, at the centre, the thing I'd never been able to see into when I was a cadet. Fog. Sorn grey. The same grey as the shuttle and the collars and the Overseer's shell. Folded so tight I'd been afraid of it, the first year, before the ice.

I could see into it now. I'd been able to since the ice. I'd looked into Dot's cores a hundred times since and never seen anything but Dot.

I looked now.

And there it was.

Not Dot. Under Dot. Folded in at the very bottom of every core, where I'd never thought to look because I'd never thought there'd be anything there. A small grey knot. Tight. Hard. Like the thing inside a handler.

And it was singing the choir's one note.

Dask will come with this unit.

Dot's hands closed on my arms.

Gently. That was the thing. Even now, even with the grey knot singing at the bottom of her cores, her hands closed on my arms the way they'd always closed on anything she carried. Carefully. The way she'd carried Toby home from the queen's chamber, the first year.

She didn't want to.

I could feel it. Through her hands. Through the cores. Under the grey knot, under the one note, Dot.

Screaming.

The way the Hesk had screamed. The way the two hundred and eleven in Halden had screamed while they opened the doors.

"Lucas," said Holt. Very quietly. From his chair. "Look outside."

I looked.

Through the map-room window. Into the square.

People were walking.

Not running. Walking. Slowly. All in the same direction. Out of their doors, out of the houses, out of the kitchen and the schoolroom and the forge. Toward the meeting passage. Toward the hollow.

Brock. With iron coming up his arms.

Juno, with her eyes shut, walking straight, the way she'd walked north her whole life.

Wren. With her book still in her hand. Walking.

And from our porch, coming down the steps one at a time with her hand on her stomach, Sera.

I knew what it was.

Everyone in that room knew. Crane had told me, on his bench, at night. Two hundred and eleven people with silver in them walked to every door in Halden and opened it.

The tender's choir was singing down from orbit. Through the kits' cores, which had grey at the bottom of them. Through every bit of Sorn grey on Avalon that could hear it. And through the grey, into everyone whose silver had come out of the program.

Everyone I'd finished.

They had program silver. Made silver. Silver that had come, a long way back, from somewhere the Sorn had been. I'd opened it, and completed it, and given it its own way, but I hadn't changed what it was.

And the choir knew what it was.

They were walking toward the hollow.

Toward the young on their shelves. Toward our queen. Toward the east wall, with nine slivers asleep in nine small round cups.

And toward the north shelf, where there was a small grey box with a handler inside it.

To open it.

Risa wasn't walking.

She was in the doorway of the map room with Dory on her hip, and her face was white, and her silver was crackling.

"I can feel it," she said. Her voice was very level. The voice that meant storms. "Lucas. I can feel it pulling. Like the column. Like Jessa said." Her jaw was set. "I'm not going."

"How?"

Risa looked down at Dory.

Dory was awake. Very bright. Her silver turned all the way out. Not checking. Holding. Holding the net, the way she'd held it for three days. And holding Risa inside it.

"She's got me," said Risa. "She won't let go."

Dory looked up at me.

She didn't have the words. She had a handful. Dot. Mama. Gar. Lu. The brood-word.

She used the first one.

"Dot," she said.

Out loud. Very clearly. Looking at Dot, in the middle of the map room, with every hand closed on my arms and the grey knot singing at the bottom of her cores.

And Dot's hands stopped.

Not let go. Stopped.

The way the handlers' blades had stopped in the air when Mother held them. The way the Hesk had stopped when the second queen let go of the voice. Dot's hands on my arms, gentle, closed, not pulling any more.

Dory's first word.

The first thing she'd ever said out loud. Dot. Before Mama. Before anything.

And somewhere at the bottom of four cores full of grey, under the one note, Dot heard it.

I felt her hear it.

"Operator," said Dot.

Very faint. From very far down. Her own voice. Level and clear and not quite anybody's.

"Operator. This unit cannot—"

The grey knot sang louder.

"Dask will come—"

"Operator—"

Both at once. Out of the same grille. Dot and the one note, fighting.

I had to choose.

Dot, or the people walking.

Dot was holding me. Not hurting me. Holding. And if I opened her cores now, and pulled the grey knots out the way I'd pulled the handlers' shells apart, I didn't know what would happen to her. I didn't know what was Dot and what was the knot. Removing the housing is not the same as removing the core. Old Son had said it. I hadn't understood it then.

I understood it now.

And out in the square, Sera was walking toward the meeting passage with her hand on her stomach.

"Genny," I said.

I didn't shout it. I didn't need to. Genny was already in the doorway behind Risa. She'd come down from the twins' room the moment Ruan said tender, because Genny always came when something was wrong. Garnet was behind her, two feet off the floor, with her silver hair standing out round her head like a dandelion.

"I know," said Genny.

"You're not walking."

"No." Her face was very white. "It's pulling at me. I can feel it. But it can't get in. It's like pulling at a door that isn't there." She swallowed. "It's the queens' silver. It doesn't know what it is."

"Garnet?"

"It's loud," said Garnet. Furious. "It's being rude."

The queens' silver. Genny's, and Garnet's, and mine. Given by the old one and our queen and the first queen. Not program silver. Not made. Grown. The choir didn't know what it was.

Neither did the Sorn.

"Go," I said. "Both of you. Hold them."

Genny looked at me.

"Hold who?"

"Everyone," I said. "Everyone walking. Don't stop them. Don't grab. Hold. The way Garnet held you on the glass. Every thread. Every buckle." I looked at Garnet. "Go round the outside first."

Garnet's eyes went very wide.

Then she was gone.

I felt them do it.

Through the net. Through Dory. Through the queens' silver in all three of us, which wasn't the choir's and didn't answer it.

Garnet first. Out of the map-room door, over the porch, into the square. Two feet off the ground. And then not two feet. Ten. Twenty. Up over the square, over all of it, with her silver hair standing out and her arms spread wide.

And she held them.

Every one. Every person walking toward the meeting passage. Not lifting them. Not grabbing. Holding. Every thread of every coat. Every buckle. Every button. Every hair. The way she'd held Genny six inches off the glass, the day I taught them. The way Mother held three bowls and the flour and the eggs.

They stopped.

All at once. Mid-step. Brock with iron halfway up his arms. Juno with her eyes shut. Wren with her book in her hand. A hundred people, two hundred, everyone with program silver in Scarecrow, stopped in the middle of the square in the evening light like a picture.

Garnet, twenty feet over them, with her arms spread wide and her face screwed up with effort, holding all of it.

"I've got them," she shouted. "Lucas, I've got them, but they keep pulling*—*"

And Genny went to Sera.

She didn't fly. She ran. Down the porch steps to where Sera was standing, held, at the bottom, with her hand on her stomach and her eyes open and terrified, because Sera knew. Sera knew exactly what was happening to her and couldn't stop it.

Genny put both hands on Sera's arm.

And listened.

I couldn't help them.

Not yet. Dot had my arms. Gently. Still. Her own voice and the one note fighting out of her grille.

And I couldn't open her. Not without knowing.

"Dot," I said. "Dot, listen to me."

"Operator—"

"Dask will—"

"Dot. I'm going to look inside you. All the way. Further than I've ever looked." My voice wasn't steady. "I'm not going to change anything. Not yet. I'm going to find out which part is you." I swallowed. "Will you show me?"

The grille was silent for a long moment.

Then:

"This unit," said Dot. Very faint. Very far down. "Would like that."

I went in.

Not the way I went into people. Not from the heart. Dot didn't have a heart. She had four cores, and rivers of light, and rivets, and wings, and a grille that had grown itself on the first night, in the canyon, when she said a number is for counting, a designation is for calling.

I went into the cores.

All four. One after another. Through the steel and the titanium and the glass I'd made her out of. Into the grey.

And I listened.

The way the queen listened to stone. The way Genny listened to slivers. The way Dory waited by the Tharn. Not looking for the grey knot. Looking for Dot. For where she was. What she'd been, all this time. What she'd been trying to become, since the first night in the canyon when she chose her own name.

She was everywhere.

That was what I found. Dot wasn't in one place. She was everywhere in the cores. Woven through them. Every fold of grey had a little of her in it. Every river of light. The way the silver was woven through Dory, every path joined to every other. She'd grown herself into the grey, over two years, the way roots grow into rock. Without asking it. Without knowing she was doing it. Just growing.

And at the bottom of every core, under all of her, the knot.

Small. Hard. Clenched. Not part of the grey. Put there. Folded in at the very bottom, before the kit ever left Earth, before Dot ever woke up and chose her name. Waiting. The way the handlers had waited in the knuckle. For a voice to tell it what to do.

It had a voice now.

I didn't pull it out.

I couldn't. Dot had grown round it. Two years of roots, through every fold. If I pulled the knot out, I'd pull her out with it.

So I did what I'd done for Jessa. For Pim and Lise and Marlo. For Sesh.

I closed it off.

One place at a time. Every place where Dot touched the knot. Every root of her that had grown down into the bottom of the core and wrapped round it without knowing what it was. I found each one, and I closed it. Not cutting. Closing. The way you'd close a door very gently in a house where someone is sleeping.

And where each one closed, I gave her back her own way. The way her roots would have grown, if the knot hadn't been there.

It took a long time.

I don't know how long. Holt said afterward it was the whole of the evening. Risa said it was longer. The light went out of the map-room window. Ruan stayed on the channel the whole time with her face very close to the lens, saying nothing.

Four cores.

Every root.

And all the time, out in the square, Garnet holding everyone in the air by every thread, and shouting that they kept pulling, and getting more and more furious.

And Genny with her hands on Sera's arm.

When the last root closed, the knot in the fourth core went quiet.

Not unfolded. Not broken. Just alone. Sitting at the bottom of the core with nothing touching it. Singing its one note into nothing.

I unfolded it.

All four. One after another. The way I'd unfolded the handler's shell. And took them out, very carefully, through the steel and the titanium and the glass, without touching a single root of Dot on the way.

Four small grey knots in my palm.

Not slivers. Not pieces of a queen. Something the Sorn had made. In a vat, maybe. The way they'd made the handlers. Hard and small and clenched, with no song of their own. Only the one they'd been given.

I closed my hand on them.

And Dot's hands let go of my arms.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

She stood in the middle of the map room with her wings half open and her hands at her sides and the rivers of light across her casing very slowly coming back. Not grey. Four colours. Then more than four. Colours I'd never seen on her. As if, with the knots gone, there was more room.

Then her grille moved.

"Operator," said Dot.

Her own voice. All the way up. Level and clear and not quite anybody's.

"Yes."

"This unit called you Dask."

"I know."

"This unit did not want to."

"I know, Dot."

A long pause.

"This unit," said Dot, "would like to never do that again."

"You won't," I said. "They're gone. All four."

Dot looked at my closed hand.

"This unit," she said, "would like to see them."

I opened my hand.

Dot looked at the four small grey knots in my palm for a long time. Then she put out one of her hands. The smallest. The one she used for fine work, for reading Wren's book and threading needles for Priya.

And very gently, she touched one.

"They were in this unit," she said, "before this unit was this unit."

"Yes."

"This unit grew round them."

"Yes."

"This unit did not know."

"Nobody knew, Dot."

Dot took her hand back.

"Old Son knew," she said.

Old Son was still flashing.

Stop me. Stop me. Stop me.

He'd been flashing it all evening. Up on the tower, in the dark, over and over, holding his angles. Keeping the knot in his own core from doing whatever it wanted to do by doing the only thing he knew how to do. Counting. Flashing. Holding.

He'd known.

Removing the housing is not the same as removing the core.

He'd felt the knot in himself, the first year. He'd tried to tell us. Nobody had understood.

I went up the tower.

Not climbing. Up. The way I went everywhere now. And I knelt on the platform at the top beside him, and I said:

"Old Son. I'm going to look inside you. I'm not going to change anything until I know which part is you."

His mirror stopped.

Then it flashed once. Short.

Yes.

It went faster with him.

He knew where he was. He'd always known. He'd been holding himself away from the knot since the first year, the way Brock had held the ford. Not growing round it. Growing away from it. Every root of him pointed up, toward the mirror, toward the light.

There was hardly anything to close.

When the knot was out, he flashed for a long time. Not letters. Not numbers. Just light. Long. Bright. Steady. Out over the canyon in the dark, the way he'd flashed the dawn count every morning since before most of Scarecrow had arrived.

Wren, at the bottom of the tower, didn't read it.

She didn't need to.

Aster next. Then Reed. Then Vell. Then the small one that had never chosen a name.

Every kit in Scarecrow. Every core. Every knot.

I did them all that night.

And by the time I'd finished Aster, the square was quiet.

Not because of me. Because of Garnet. And Genny. And the queens.

I didn't see it. I was in the cores. But Risa saw it, from the doorway, with Dory holding everyone. And Holt saw it from the window. And afterward, they told me.

Garnet held them for the whole of the evening.

Every one. In the air. By every thread. Twenty feet over the square with her arms spread wide and her silver hair standing out, and her face getting redder and redder, and tears running down it, and not letting go.

And Genny listened to Sera.

To her program silver. The silver the choir knew. She found the place where the one note was going in. Not a knot. Not a thread. A door. A small one, at the very centre of Sera's silver, where the program had built it, a long time ago, before Sera was born, in Maura and Rory and Maura's mother before them. A door the Sorn had known about all along.

The same door Halden had.

The same door every program family on Earth had.

Genny couldn't close it. Genny didn't change things. Genny asked.

So she asked.

She asked our queen.

Down. Through the glass of the square, through the rock, through the passage, to the hollow where our queen was standing at her full height in front of her young, with her plates raised, waiting for two hundred people to come down the passage and open the doors of her nursery. Not because they wanted to. Because a choir in orbit was telling them to.

How do I close a door in someone, Genny asked her, when I don't change things?

And our queen said:

You do not close it. You sing to what is on the other side.

So they sang.

Our queen first. Then the old one, from the mountain. Then every queen in the ring of fourteen. Then the youngest queen of the Kethri, from the Hand, a very long way out, very faint, singing her hatchling note down the thread as if she'd been waiting all evening to be asked.

The lullaby. The one they'd sung to the slivers round the handlers' necks on our plain. The one they'd sung to bring the youngest queen back.

Not to the choir.

To the doors.

To every small door at the centre of every piece of program silver in Scarecrow. Two hundred of them. The queens didn't close them. They sang through them. Into the other side. Into the place where the choir's one note was going in.

And the one note couldn't get through.

It was too loud in there. Too full. Fourteen queens and the youngest of the Kethri, all singing a hatchling's lullaby into the same small door, and there was no room left for anything else.

Sera stopped pulling.

That was the first. Genny felt it, with her hands on Sera's arm. Sera's silver, which had been straining toward the meeting passage for hours, went slack. And then, very slowly, turned. Away from the passage. Toward the song.

Then Juno.

Then Wren, with her book still in her hand.

Then Brock, the iron going back down his arms.

Then everyone. One after another. All over the square. Every person Garnet was holding in the air by every thread stopped pulling against her, and hung there, and listened.

And Garnet, twenty feet up, with her arms spread wide and her face red and wet, felt them stop.

And very, very carefully, she put them down.

Every one. Gently. Feet first. Exactly. The way I'd put everyone down in the hollow.

Then she came down herself. Not gently. She came down onto the glass of the square in a heap, all at once, and sat there with her silver hair everywhere and her arms round her knees.

"That," she said to nobody, "was so rude."

And burst into tears.

I came down from the tower near midnight.

With four small grey knots in my left hand from Dot, and one from Old Son, and four more from Aster and Reed and Vell and the one with no name. And one more thing, in my right hand, that I'd gone back for last, after everything else was quiet.

The box from the north shelf.

The handler was still inside it. I hadn't opened it. But I'd felt it, all evening, under everything. The one thing on Avalon the choir had been trying hardest to reach.

They'd been walking to open it.

Two hundred people with program silver, walking down the passage to open a small grey box on the north shelf of the hollow, and let out the one thing on Avalon that knew how to make the choir's note into a voice.

I put it on the kitchen table.

Holt looked at it for a long time.

"What are you going to do with it?" he said.

"I don't know yet."

"And the tender?"

I looked up. Out of the window. At the sky. At the place where the Meridian would come over on its track, sometime in the night, with Ruan and six hundred and four crew aboard and a spine-queen singing in the walls.

And a tender at the dock, still singing its one note down at us. Not getting through any more. But still singing.

"I'm going up," I said.

Nobody argued.

Days 811–813. Operator.

Third dawn of the crossing, mid-count, Dot said "Dask." Flat, like a name off a list. Not once in two years. "This unit is counting." Holt in the kitchen: she's never called you that, not even when you did something stupid. Sera at the stove, twenty-three weeks: because somebody else told her to.

Luna, at the end of the hello: Jessa wakes every night reaching up for Marlo out of habit, though he's three rows along asleep. Sigmund sits against the wall beside her and puts a little lightning into the grey so it hums like something being there. Last night she slept against his shoulder and he didn't move till dawn, and looked at Luna as if he dared her. She didn't. She's telling me. Risa: Siggy. Sera squeezed my hand once, hard.

In the workshop: Dot, what's my name? Lucas Dask. What do you call me? A long pause. Operator. This morning you called me Dask. This unit has no record of that. Aster went still beside her. Keir: Aster. No answer.

Old Son flashed letters, the old way Wren taught Crane. Nessa banged on our door. Wren read it from the street: Stop. Stop. Me. Stop me.

Ruan, late: the tender at the dock, dead since the spine-queen, woke. The doors opened. Singing, not her: lots of voices all the same, a choir that only knows one note. Slivers. They tried to make a voice from the first queen and didn't get enough. Somebody else did. It's pointed down at you.

Dot stood up mid-sentence, wings open, four colours gone to grey. "Dask will come with this unit. This unit is instructed." Every hand reached for me. Her cores, fog to me once, never anything but Dot since the ice. Now, under Dot, at the very bottom of every core, a small hard grey knot singing the choir's note. Her hands closed on my arms gently, the way she carried Toby home the first year. Under the note, Dot, screaming, like the Hesk, like Halden.

Holt: look outside. Everyone with program silver walking slowly toward the meeting passage. Brock with iron up his arms. Juno eyes shut. Wren with her book. Sera down our steps with her hand on her stomach. Through the kit cores into everyone I finished: I completed their silver but didn't change what it was, and the choir knew. Toward the young, our queen, the nine cups, and the north shelf, to open the box.

Risa not walking: I can feel it pulling like the column; I'm not going. Dory had her and wouldn't let go. Dory looked at Dot and said her first word, out loud: Dot. Dot's hands stopped. From far down, her own voice: Operator, this unit cannot. Dask will come. Operator. Both out of one grille.

Dot or the people walking. Old Son: removing the housing is not the same as removing the core. I understood it now. Genny not walking: it pulls but can't get in, like pulling a door that isn't there; queens' silver; it doesn't know what it is. Garnet: it's loud; it's being rude. Go. Hold everyone. Don't grab. Every thread, every buckle. Go round the outside first.

Garnet went twenty feet over the square, arms wide, silver hair like a dandelion, and held two hundred people mid-step like a picture. I've got them but they keep pulling. Genny ran down to Sera, held exactly at the bottom of the steps, eyes open, knowing, and put both hands on her arm and listened.

Dot: I'm going to look all the way in and change nothing until I find which part is you. Will you show me? This unit would like that. Four cores, and I listened the way the queen listens to stone, looking for Dot, not the knot. She is everywhere. Woven through every fold and river, grown into the grey over two years like roots into rock, without asking, just growing. The knots were put there before the kit left Earth, before she woke and chose her name. I couldn't pull them without pulling her. So, as for Jessa, Pim, Lise, Marlo, Sesh: I closed every place she touched a knot and gave her back her own way. All evening; Risa says longer. Ruan on the channel the whole time, saying nothing.

The knots went quiet, alone, singing into nothing. I unfolded them out without touching a root. Four in my palm: not slivers, made, hard, no song but the one they were given. Her hands let go. Her rivers came back four colours, then more, colours I've never seen, as if there's more room. "Operator." This unit called you Dask; did not want to; would like never to again. You won't. She touched one with her smallest hand, the one for Wren's book and Priya's needles: they were in this unit before this unit was this unit; this unit grew round them; did not know. Nobody knew. "Old Son knew."

Old Son flashing stop me all evening, holding the knot off by counting. He tried to tell us the first year. I went up the tower: I'll look and change nothing until I know which part is you. One short flash: yes. Faster with him: he'd grown away from the knot every year, every root pointed up toward the mirror and the light. When it was out he flashed long and bright and steady over the canyon. Wren didn't read it. She didn't need to. Then Aster, Reed, Vell, and the one with no name.

What Risa and Holt saw: Garnet held them all evening, red-faced and crying, not letting go. Genny found where the note went into Sera: a small door at the centre of her program silver, built before she was born, in Maura and Rory and Maura's mother. The same door Halden had. Every program family. Genny doesn't change things; she asked our queen how to close a door when you don't change things. You do not close it. You sing to what is on the other side.

Our queen, the old one, all fourteen, the youngest of the Kethri faint from the Hand: the lullaby, not to the choir but through every small door, two hundred of them, until it was too full for the note to get in. Sera's silver went slack and turned toward the song. Juno. Wren. Brock, iron going back down his arms. Everyone stopped pulling and listened. Garnet put every one down feet first, then came down in a heap on the glass: that was so rude. And cried.

Near midnight: ten knots in my left hand, and in my right the box from the north shelf. The handler inside, the one thing on Avalon that knows how to make the choir's note a voice. They were walking to let it out. I put it on the kitchen table. Holt: and the tender? Still singing at us, not getting through. I'm going up. Nobody argued.