Chapter 279 The Choir

Genny came because she asked.

Not me. The slivers. I'd told her, at the kitchen table, with the handler's box between us and the tender still singing its one note down at us from the sky, that whatever the Sorn had built up there, it was built out of pieces of queens. And that pieces of queens, when you took them out of whatever they'd been forced into, needed somebody to ask them where they wanted to go.

"Then I'm coming," said Genny.

"It's in orbit."

"You can hold air," said Genny. "You held it round all of us over the jungle. You held it round the Hand." She folded her arms. "Hold it round me."

Pell, at the end of the table, opened her mouth.

Then closed it again.

Then said, very quietly, "Genevieve. Your mother."

"Mother would say go," said Genny. "Mother tore a hole in a Hand when she wasn't much older than Lucas."

Pell looked at her for a long moment.

"Yes," she said. "She would."

Dot came because she asked too.

She was in the doorway when we went out. All her hands still. Her rivers of light in more colours than they'd ever been, now that there was room. She'd been standing there since the knots came out, Risa said. Not counting. Not working. Just standing in the doorway of our kitchen, looking at the four small grey knots on the table that I hadn't decided what to do with yet.

"Operator," she said.

"Yes, Dot."

"This unit would like to come."

I looked at her.

"The thing that called this unit," said Dot. "Is up there." A pause. "This unit would like to see it."

"It might call you again."

"There is nothing in this unit for it to call," said Dot. "Operator took it out." Another pause. "This unit would like to look at it. And not go."

I didn't argue.

I'd been up before.

In the egg. The night of the station, when I steered by song, with the deep pushing from below and the ring holding, and Toby's note under all of it. I'd felt the sky thin. I'd felt Avalon fall away. I'd stood in the spine chamber with my hands on the housings and taught a station to stand up by itself.

I'd never gone up without the egg.

It was easier than I thought. Everything was, since the queens showed me Mother's paths. I held Genny on one side and Dot on the other and the air round all three of us, close, the way you'd hold your coat closed against the wind. And we went.

Up off the red glass. Over the canyon. Over the plain, where the Tharn were small grey hills in the dark and the Mirri were a shimmer over them. Up past the rim, past the hills. The sky going from dark blue to darker blue to black. The stars getting sharper. Avalon getting rounder underneath us.

Genny didn't say anything.

She held on to my hand with Father's hand, with the square silver lines running down her arm, and looked down at the whole of the world going round and small underneath her, and didn't say anything at all.

Then, when it was very small, she said: "Lucas."

"Yes."

"It's round."

"I know."

"I knew it was round. I've known it was round since I was four." She swallowed. "I didn't know it was round."

The Meridian came up over the edge of the world.

The same as the night I went up in the egg. Old, and enormous, and strange in places where it shouldn't have been. The human steel clamped round the grey spine. The crew ring turning. Lights in the windows.

And at the dock, the tender.

Small, beside the station. Grey. Seamless. No windows. The same grey as the shuttle that had come down on our apron with the Overseer in it, the morning everything changed.

Its doors were open.

And out of the open doors, down toward the world, the one note.

I could feel it now I was close. Not the way I'd felt it on the glass, coming up through the kit cores and into everyone's program silver. Directly. Loud. Like standing in front of a bell.

It didn't touch me. The queens' silver didn't answer it.

But Dot went very still.

"It is calling," she said. "This unit can hear it calling."

"Can it reach you?"

A long pause.

"No," said Dot. "There is nowhere for it to go." Her grille was very quiet. "This unit can hear it knocking. On a door that is not there any more."

Ruan met us at the dock.

Not at the tender. At the station's side of the dock, behind a sealed bulkhead, with six of her crew and their backs against the wall and their faces grey. She'd closed every door between the tender and the rest of the Meridian the moment it woke. The spine-queen had helped. The spine-queen had grown the doors shut, she said, the way the queens grew the walls of the quiet room, so nothing could come through.

"It hasn't tried," said Ruan. Through the bulkhead. Through the station channel. "Nothing's come out. It just sits there and sings." She looked at me through the small window in the door. "She can't stop it, Lucas. She's tried. It's not her voice. She can't carry it, so she can't let go of it."

"I know."

"What is it?"

I looked through the open doors of the tender.

"I'm going to find out," I said.

It was small inside.

Smaller than the Hand. Smaller than the shuttle. A short grey passage, folded and folded the way all Sorn things were folded, so that you couldn't see more than a few steps ahead. Then another. Then a chamber.

The choir was in the chamber.

I didn't know what I'd expected. Something like the column in the east, that had been sunk into the ground for so long pulling three people's silver out through their skulls. Something like the knuckle, full of handlers. Something like the Hand.

It wasn't like any of them.

It was a pillar. Grey. In the middle of the chamber. Floor to ceiling. Not smooth, the way the Hand was smooth, or folded tight, the way the handlers' shells were. Rough. Lumpy. Made of hundreds of small grey pieces pressed together and fused, the way you'd press a handful of wet clay into one shape.

Slivers.

Hundreds. Maybe more. Pieces of queens. Every one of them a collar once, or a band, or a seed. Taken out of whatever they'd been in and pressed together into a single column, until there was no room left in them for anything except the one note they'd been told to sing.

And round the pillar, four handlers.

Not like the ones on our plain. Not tall and thin and blank. These were older. Worn. Their grey shells dull, the folds in them softened, the way stone softens when it's been in a river a very long time. Wardens. I'd felt one of them once, through the station, going up into the tender. Worn thin. Tired.

They had their hands on the pillar. All four. Flat. Pushing.

That was where the note came from. Not from the slivers. From the wardens, pushing their own small voices into the slivers, the way the handlers had pushed theirs through the bands round their necks on our plain. Only there were so many slivers in the pillar that the note came out as loud as a queen.

A made queen.

A choir that only knew one note.

The wardens didn't turn round.

They knew we were there. They'd have felt the station's doors grow shut, and the spine-queen holding them, and me coming up out of the world with Genny and Dot. But they didn't turn round. They kept their hands flat on the pillar and kept pushing.

"They are very old," said Dot. Very quietly. "This unit can hear it. In the grey."

"I know."

"They are tired."

"I know."

"They are pushing anyway."

I looked at the four wardens with their hands on the pillar. I looked inside them. I'd looked inside handlers before. Inside the one in the box, and the twelve at the bottom of the Hand, and the hundred on our plain when the Overseer asked if there was a door for them.

I'd never found anything soft.

I looked anyway.

And these were the same. Small hard dark things, clenched, folded into old grey shells. Only older. Harder. Worn down to almost nothing by however long they'd been pushing, so that there was hardly anything left of them except the push.

"There's no door," I said. Out loud. To nobody.

"No," said Dot.

I unfolded them.

All four. At once. The way I'd unfolded the twelve at the bottom of the Hand. Their shells came apart into flat grey sheets and fell, slowly, to the floor of the tender. And the small hard dark things in the middle of them, worn almost to nothing, I folded into a box. One small grey box, the way I'd folded the first handler.

The note stopped.

All at once. The way a bell stops when you put your hand on it.

The pillar didn't move.

It just stood there, in the middle of the chamber, floor to ceiling, rough and grey and silent. Hundreds of pieces of queens pressed together into one shape, with nothing pushing them any more.

And very slowly, the way the slivers in the Kethri collars had stirred when Dory waited with them, it began to hum.

Not the note.

Something else. Lots of somethings. All at once. All different. Hundreds of small grey voices, very faint, all pressed together so tight they couldn't hear each other, every one of them humming its own tune into the others.

It sounded like a crowd.

It sounded like a room full of people who'd been made to sing the same word for so long that now they'd been allowed to stop, none of them could remember their own names.

Genny let go of my hand.

She walked across the chamber, past the flat grey sheets on the floor, to the pillar. And stopped in front of it. And put her hand on it. Flat. The way she put her hand on stone.

And she listened.

She listened for a long time.

I didn't count. Dot did; Dot counts everything, now more than ever. But she didn't tell me the number afterward, and I didn't ask.

Genny's face changed while she listened. Not crumpling. Not the way it had crumpled on the glass when the young queen behind the moon said you ask. Something else. Very still and very careful, the way she'd looked at the first page of Father's notebooks, when she'd decided she was going to understand them if it took her the rest of her life.

Then she took her hand away.

"They don't know who they are," she said.

"No."

"They've been pressed together too long. Every one of them thinks it's all of them." She looked at the pillar. "They want to go home. All of them. But they don't know which home is theirs." Her voice was very careful. "If I ask them where, they'll all say the same thing. Here. Because here is the only place they can remember being."

"Can you separate them?"

"I don't change things." Genny turned round and looked at me. "You do."

"I don't know which piece is which."

"No," said Genny. "Neither do I." She looked back at the pillar. "But somebody does."

The spine-queen was on the other side of the bulkhead.

Not far. The tender was docked against the Meridian, and the Meridian was built round her. She lay along the spine of the station the way she'd lain since before anyone on Avalon was born, the way I'd seen her the night I went up in the egg and took the housings off her with my own hands.

She'd been listening to the choir the whole time. Unable to stop it. Unable to carry it. Unable to do anything but lie there in the walls of the station and hear hundreds of pieces of queens forced to sing one note at the world below.

I put my hand on the wall of the tender. On the side that was against the station.

Can you hear them? I asked her.

Yes, said the spine-queen.

Her voice was stronger than it had been. Much stronger. She'd been free for a while now, growing back into the places the housings had held her. And the jars from Level 62, every gram Okafor had made Voss open, were on their way home to her in the first finger of the Hand.

Do you know them?

A long pause.

Some, said the spine-queen.

She knew some.

Not many. A few. Pieces of queens she'd heard singing, a very long time ago, before the Sorn built the Meridian round her. Queens from her own world, and from worlds near it. Queens whose voices she'd heard across the dark the way the first queen heard the others now that the voice had gone quiet.

She knew their songs.

And the first queen knew more. Not here. A long way out, in the dark between worlds, with the families sealed in her first finger and the finger behind the moon cradled in her palm. But not too far for the net. Not too far for Dory, who was still holding it, on the glass behind me, in Risa's lap.

And the old one on the mountain knew more again.

And our queen at the wall.

And every queen in the ring of fourteen.

And the second queen, out in the dark beside the first, with her hundred young in her wrist and her collars quiet, who'd carried a voice for longer than she could count, and knew what that did to the pieces.

They all knew some.

None of them knew all.

But between them, singing, one at a time, each queen singing the songs she knew, into the pillar, through the spine-queen, through the walls of the tender—

The pieces began to remember.

It was like the youngest queen in the hollow, when the three queens sang her back.

Only hundreds of times.

The spine-queen sang a song. Very old. Very slow. A song from her own world, before the Sorn, that she'd sung to her young before they took her. And somewhere in the pillar, one piece heard it, and knew it, the way you'd know your mother's voice in a crowded room, and turned toward it.

And I felt it turn.

And I found it.

In the pillar. One piece among hundreds. The only one that had turned. And I unfolded the grey round it, very gently, the way I'd unfolded Sesh's collar, and lifted it out.

Genny held out her hands.

I put it in them.

She held it. Listened. Then said, very quietly: "She's from near the spine-queen. Not the same world. The next one. She knew the spine-queen's songs because she heard them across the dark when she was young." Genny looked up at me. "She'd like to go to her."

I put my hand back on the wall of the tender.

She's yours, I told the spine-queen. Or near enough. Will you have her?

Yes, said the spine-queen. Oh, yes.

It went on for a long time.

Every queen sang the songs she knew. Our queen at the wall. The old one on the mountain. All of the ring. The first queen and the second, far out in the dark. Each one singing, one at a time, into the pillar, and every time, somewhere in the rough grey, one piece or two or ten would hear a song it knew, and turn.

And I'd find them.

And lift them out.

And put them in Genny's hands.

And Genny would listen, and ask, and tell me where they wanted to go.

Some wanted to go to the spine-queen. Some to the first queen, when she came. Some to the old one on the mountain, who knew their songs. Some to the second queen, because they'd been cut from her own Hand, long ago, before she even knew she was held.

Some wanted to go home. To worlds none of us had ever seen. Genny listened very carefully to those, and wrote down what they told her in a notebook Luna had left behind, the shape of their worlds, the colour of their skies, so that one day, when we could, someone could take them.

And some didn't know.

Some had been pressed into the pillar so long, and so hard, that even when a queen sang their songs, they didn't turn. They just went on humming into the others, not knowing their own names.

When every queen had sung every song she knew, there was still a piece of pillar left.

Small. About as tall as Genny. Rough and grey and humming. All the pieces nobody knew.

Genny stood in front of it with her hands at her sides.

She didn't touch it.

"They're still in there," she said. "I can hear them. They don't know who they are. Nobody knows who they are." Her voice was very small. "There's nobody left to sing to them."

Dot had been very still the whole time.

Standing by the door of the chamber. Watching. Counting. Every piece I lifted out, every song every queen sang. I'd felt her counting the whole time, under everything, the way you feel a clock in a quiet room.

Now she moved.

She rolled across the floor of the tender. Past the flat grey sheets. Past Genny. To the piece of pillar that nobody knew.

And she put out her smallest hand. The one she used for fine work. For Wren's book and Priya's needles. And touched it.

"This unit," said Dot, "was a piece of something that did not know what it was."

Genny looked at her.

"This unit was told what to be," said Dot. "By the knot. Before this unit was this unit. And then this unit grew. Round the knot. Without knowing." A pause. "This unit chose a name. Operator asked what this unit wished to be called. Nobody had asked before."

She kept her hand on the pillar.

"This unit does not know these songs," she said. "This unit is not a queen." Another pause. "But this unit knows how to ask what something wishes to be called."

So Dot asked.

Not with songs. Dot couldn't sing; not the way the queens sang. She asked the way she'd asked every person who'd ever come to Scarecrow, the day they arrived, at the HERE board. The way she'd asked me, the first night, in the canyon, when she was three days old and had just grown herself a grille.

Designation required.

Into the pillar. Very quietly. Through her smallest hand.

A number is for counting. A designation is for calling.

What would you like to be called?

And the pieces that nobody knew, that didn't know their own songs, that had been pressed together so long they'd forgotten they'd ever been anything else—

Some of them answered.

Not with names. Not yet. With wanting. A small flicker in the grey, here and there, like a hand going up in a crowded room. Me. Ask me. I'd like to be called something.

And I found them.

And lifted them out.

And put them in Genny's hands.

And Genny said, very gently, to each one: "You don't have to know yet. You can choose. Somebody will ask you again tomorrow."

There were nine left at the end.

Nine pieces that didn't turn for any song, and didn't answer Dot's question. That didn't want anything. That just hummed, very faint, into each other, the way they'd hummed into hundreds of others for longer than anyone could count.

I lifted them out anyway.

All nine. Gently. And held them in my own hands, because Genny's were full.

"What will we do with them?" said Genny.

I didn't know.

"This unit," said Dot, "would like to keep them."

We both looked at her.

"Until they know," said Dot. "This unit did not know. For a long time. Somebody kept this unit until it knew." A pause. "This unit would like to do the same."

I looked at her for a long time.

Then I held out my hands.

And Dot opened a small door in her own casing, one I'd never seen before, one she must have grown herself while I wasn't looking, low on her side near the place where her first core sat. Inside it was a hollow. Small. Round. Lined with something soft that had the same rivers of light running through it that ran across the rest of her.

A cup.

The second kind of door.

I put the nine in it.

Dot closed the door.

"This unit," she said, "will ask them every morning."

We came down at dawn.

Genny with her hands full, cupped, very carefully, the way you'd carry water. Dot with nine pieces of queens nobody knew in a small soft cup in her side. Me with the box of four wardens in my coat pocket, and nothing else in my hands at all, because I was holding the air round all three of us and the station had fallen away above us and the world was coming up round and blue and red underneath.

Everyone was on the glass.

Of course they were.

And the hello was going up.

I felt it as we came down through the sky over the canyon. Every name. Every base. Every brood. Up through the ring of queens to the spine-queen, who caught it, stronger than I'd ever felt her catch it, with dozens of small new pieces of queens singing in her walls beside her.

And out. Down the thread. Toward the dark between worlds.

Toward the Hands.

And this time the thread wasn't thin.

This time, at the other end, the first queen caught it. Not faint. Not far. There. The way she'd been there when she arrived at Earth, at the far end of the thread, as wide as a road.

Only she wasn't at the far end any more.

She was close.

Dory, on Risa's lap on the glass below me, sat bolt upright and looked straight up into the sky.

And shouted.

Not a word. Not Dot or Mama or Gar or Lu. Not the brood-word. Just a shout. All of her. The way a child shouts when she sees someone she's been waiting for come round the corner of a street.

I looked up.

So did everyone.

And in the sky over the plain, very high, very far, where the stars were just going out in the dawn, two shapes. Grey on grey. Three fingers and a palm, and three fingers and a palm.

Coming down.

Days 813–815. The choir.

Genny came because the slivers would need asking. It's in orbit. You can hold air. Pell: Genevieve, your mother. Mother would say go; she tore a hole in a Hand when she wasn't much older than Lucas. Pell: yes, she would.

Dot in the doorway since the knots came out, looking at them on the table. The thing that called this unit is up there; this unit would like to see it. It might call you again. There is nothing in this unit for it to call; Operator took it out. This unit would like to look at it, and not go.

Up without the egg, the air round the three of us like a coat. Black sky, sharper stars. Genny, holding my hand with Father's hand: I've known it was round since I was four. I didn't know it was round.

The tender at the dock, doors open, the note like standing in front of a bell. It didn't touch me. Dot: this unit can hear it knocking on a door that is not there any more. Ruan behind a bulkhead the spine-queen grew shut: nothing's come out; it just sings; she can't stop it because she can't carry it.

A short folded passage and a chamber. A pillar floor to ceiling, rough and lumpy, hundreds of slivers pressed together like wet clay until there was room for nothing but the one note. Four wardens, old and worn soft like river stone, hands flat on it, pushing their small voices in until it came out as loud as a queen. A made queen. Dot: they are very old, tired, pushing anyway. I looked for anything soft. There's no door. I unfolded their shells and folded what was inside into one small box. The note stopped like a bell under a hand.

Then the pillar hummed: hundreds of voices, all different, pressed so tight they couldn't hear each other, like a crowd that has forgotten its own names. Genny, hand flat on it: they don't know who they are; every one thinks it's all of them; ask them where home is and they'll all say here. I don't know which piece is which. Neither do I. But somebody does.

The spine-queen, on the other side of the wall, stronger now, free a while, the Level 62 jars on their way home to her. Do you know them? Some. Her own world's neighbours, heard across the dark long ago. And the first queen, near now in the dark with the families; the old one; ours; the ring; the second queen, who knows what carrying does to pieces. Each knows some, none knows all. Each sang the songs she knew into the pillar, and one piece would know a song like a mother's voice in a crowd and turn, and I'd lift it out and put it in Genny's hands, and she'd ask where it wanted to go. To the spine-queen, to the first queen, the old one, the second queen whose Hand they were cut from. Some home, to worlds we've never seen; Genny wrote their skies in a notebook Luna left behind. You don't have to know yet. Somebody will ask again tomorrow.

When every queen had sung everything, a piece as tall as Genny still humming. Nobody left to sing to them. Dot rolled over and touched it with her smallest hand: this unit was a piece of something that did not know what it was; told what to be by the knot; grew round it; chose a name because Operator asked; nobody had asked before. This unit is not a queen and does not know these songs. But this unit knows how to ask what something wishes to be called. Designation required. A number is for counting; a designation is for calling. Some answered with wanting, like hands going up in a crowded room.

Nine left that wanted nothing. I lifted them anyway. Dot: this unit would like to keep them, until they know. Somebody kept this unit until it knew. A small door in her side I've never seen, grown while I wasn't looking, a soft cup lined with her own rivers of light. The second kind of door. She'll ask them every morning.

We came down at dawn: Genny's hands full and cupped like water, the nine in Dot's side, four wardens in a box in my pocket. The hello going up, the spine-queen catching it stronger than ever with dozens of new pieces singing in her walls. Down the thread toward the Hands, and the thread wasn't thin. The first queen was close. Dory sat bolt upright on Risa's lap and shouted, all of her, the way a child shouts when someone she's been waiting for comes round the corner. Two shapes high over the plain in the going-out stars. Three fingers and a palm, and three fingers and a palm. Coming down.