Chapter 300 Ark

It was Garnet who said it.

At our kitchen table, the night we came home from the Kethri world. With the box in my coat pocket that had a Sorn in it, folded, not dead, and Okafor's slate on the table with 9 on one side and The children. Every one. on the other. With everyone very quiet, because the one with the face had said that is why we came, and nobody knew who else it had told.

Garnet had her drawing board on her knees. She wasn't drawing. She was looking at the window. At the plain, and the park, and the city north of the Hands, with its crooked lit windows.

"There aren't any dogs," she said.

Everybody looked at her.

"On Avalon," said Garnet. "There aren't any dogs. Or cats. Or horses. Hana's never seen a horse. She's got three books about them and she's never seen one." She turned round. "There's Priya's hens. And the goats the third wave brought. And that's all. Everything else is Teeming, or Kethri, or something from another world."

"Garnet," said Mother. Gently.

"And if they're coming," said Garnet. "If the Sorn are coming, because they know about the children. Then the next time we go to Earth might be the last time we go to Earth." Her chin came up. "And there won't ever be any dogs."

Nobody said anything.

"And my dog's still there," said Garnet. Very quietly. "On the sixtieth floor. With Mr. Dunmore." She looked down at her drawing board. "I haven't seen him since I came. More than two years. He'll think I forgot him."

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

Then she turned the slate over.

Not to 9. Not to The children. To a corner of it, at the bottom, where there was still a little space. And she wrote, very small, in her plain upright hand:

Dogs.

Garnet stared at it.

"And cats," said Okafor. "And horses. And everything else we can carry." She looked at the window. "She's right. If they're coming for the children, the next trip to Earth might be the last for a long time. So we'd better make it count."

She looked at me.

"Dask. How much can the two ships carry, if we fill every deck?"

"People? Twenty thousand. Maybe more."

"Not people," said Okafor. "Everything else."

So we made a list.

It took three days. It was the longest list anyone on Avalon had ever made, longer than Okafor's for the Kethri world, longer than Wren's rolls. Everybody added to it. Everybody had something they remembered from Earth that Avalon didn't have, and wanted.

Pell's network on Earth sent back what there was.

Not much. Earth was ash. Outside the domes, nothing had lived for thirty years. Inside them, there was only what people had kept, on purpose, because they couldn't bear not to.

But people had kept a great deal.

There were the agricultural levels.

Seven floors under the central dome, Pell's people said. Floors I'd never seen, in the weeks I lived on the sixtieth. Where the dome grew its food. Wheat, under lamps. Potatoes. Rice in shallow trays. Beans. Tomatoes. Rows and rows of them, under light that was never the sun.

And the orchards.

Two floors. Pell's people said nobody believed it until they went down and saw. Two whole floors of the central dome, near the bottom, given over to trees. Apple trees. Orange trees, lemons, pears. Plums. Cherries. A few hundred of each, in pots the size of rooms, under lamps, tended by people who'd tended them for thirty years and their parents before that. Grown from the seeds of seeds of seeds that had been carried into the dome on the day the bombs fell.

"Do they bear?" said Priya, when Pell read it out.

"Every year," said Pell. "Small. Not many. The lamps aren't the sun." She looked up. "But they bear."

Priya didn't say anything. She just put both hands flat on the table.

Dov, beside her, put his hand on top of hers.

There was the seed vault.

Under the agricultural levels. Older than the dome. Older than the war. A vault cut into the rock that the dome had been built on, full of seeds. Thousands of kinds. Millions of seeds. In sealed jars, in cold, in the dark. Corn. Barley. Oats. Squash, melons, peppers, carrots, onions. Grapes. Strawberries. Things nobody on Earth had grown in thirty years, because there wasn't room under the lamps, but which somebody had kept anyway, cold and dark and waiting, in case.

"In case of what?" said Garnet.

"In case of this," said Pell.

And there were animals.

Not many. Not like before the war, Pell said, when there'd been animals everywhere, wild and tame, in fields and forests and the sea. Inside the domes there'd never been room. But people had kept them. The way they'd kept the orchards. Because they couldn't bear not to.

Dogs. Hundreds of them. In flats on every floor, kept against the rules or with them, depending on the floor.

Cats. More cats than dogs. Pell said cats had always been better at not being noticed.

Hens, like Priya's. Goats, like the third wave's. Rabbits. Sheep, a small flock of them, on the bottom agricultural level, for the wool, tended by a family who'd tended them since before the dome was sealed. Pigs. Two cows, very old, and three young ones. Bees, in hives, among the orchard trees, because the trees wouldn't bear without them.

And horses.

Hana had been very quiet all through the list.

She'd sat at the end of our table with her father beside her, the way she always sat at councils now, very straight, with her new curves bright on her forearms. When Pell read out the bees, she'd smiled. When Pell read out the orchards, she'd put her hand over her mouth.

When Pell got to horses, she stood up.

"How many?" she said.

Pell looked at the list.

"Eleven," she said. "On the second agricultural level. Pulling the ploughs. They're very old breeds, Pell's people say. Heavy. Slow. Brown and white, with hair on their feet." She looked up. "The family that keeps them has kept them for four generations. Since before the dome."

Hana didn't say anything.

She stood at the end of our kitchen table with her hands at her sides and her eyes very bright.

"Hair on their feet," she said at last. Very quietly. "That's in the second book. The one Risa read me first. When I couldn't—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Before you finished me. When I couldn't say Mama. Risa read me the second book, and it had horses with hair on their feet, and she did the voices." She looked at Risa. "You did a voice for the horse."

"I remember," said Risa. Very softly.

"There aren't any horses on Avalon," said Hana. "Everyone told me. Over and over. There are no horses, but." Her voice cracked. "I'd like there to be."

Okafor added it to the slate.

Under Dogs. Very small.

Horses.

The hardest part was asking.

Not the queens. The queens said yes before anyone finished the question. The youngest of the Kethri said she would carry whatever the Open Hand could hold. The heavy queen said the Steady had carried a Hand's worth of grey across the dark, and a few cows would be nothing.

The hard part was the people on Earth.

Because the animals weren't ours. The orchards weren't ours. The seeds, the bees, the sheep, the horses, all of it belonged to people. People who'd kept it for thirty years. Four generations, for the horses. Who'd kept it under lamps, in pots, against the rules, because they couldn't bear not to.

"We don't take anything," said Okafor. "Not one tree. Not one seed. Not one cat." She looked at Pell. "We ask."

So Pell's network asked.

Every family. Every keeper. Every person with a dog in a flat on the fortieth floor, against the rules. Every person who'd tended an apple tree in a pot the size of a room for thirty years.

Would you like to come?

Would you like to bring them?

There's a world with a sky. With sun that isn't a lamp. With room.

They said yes.

Nearly all of them.

The family with the horses said yes before Pell's people finished asking. The old woman who kept the bees said yes and then asked whether there'd be flowers, and when Pell's people said a park, with a gardener who makes things grow, she sat down on the floor of the orchard level and cried. The family with the sheep said yes. The two old men who'd kept the cows since they were boys said yes. The keepers of the seed vault, who'd never seen the seeds they kept grow into anything, because there'd never been room, said yes so fast that Pell's people had to ask twice to be sure.

And a great many people with dogs.

And a great many more with cats.

Garnet went.

Nobody could have stopped her. Okafor didn't try. Mother didn't try. Pell didn't try, and Pell was the only one who might have managed it.

"He's mine," said Garnet. At the foot of the ramp of the Open Hand, with her drawing board under her arm because she said she'd need to draw everything. "He's been waiting more than two years. He'll think I forgot him." She looked up at Okafor. "I didn't forget him. I want him to see that I didn't."

"Then go and show him," said Okafor.

Both ships went. Every deck empty.

Keir flew the Open Hand. Safi Arden flew the Steady, with Aster beside her. Pell went, because they were her people. Hana went, and Kwame, because Hana said she wasn't letting anyone else carry the horses. Priya went, and Dov, for the orchards. Juno, for the queens. Marlo and the light-benders, to fold the light.

Genny went, because Garnet went.

And I went. Because Okafor said the orchards were a few hundred trees in pots the size of rooms, and somebody had to carry them down seven floors without breaking a single branch, and there was only one person on Avalon who could do that.

Two, said Mother.

So Mother went too.

We crossed in five minutes.

The youngest queen had been practising. She sang toward Voss's seed on its chain, and the heavy queen sang beside her, and every queen on Avalon sang under them both. And the dark between opened, and there was the moon, and there was Earth. Brown and grey and sick under its long yellow haze.

For the last time, maybe.

Nobody said that. Everybody thought it.

We came down at the east locks at midnight.

The light-benders folded the light round both ships, so that from the dome they were two patches of heat over a stove on the old battlefield. Voss opened the locks. The inner door stuck. I asked it to move.

And they came through.

Not just people, this time.

I'll never forget it.

The first night, through the east locks, there'd been teachers counting children, and nurses with bags, and old men with medals, and a boy with a dog.

This night there were animals.

Dogs. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. On leads, mostly, and some not, running ahead of their people down the long dark chamber of the east locks and out onto the ash, and stopping dead on the ash, and sniffing. At the dead grey air. At the ground. At the night. At things they'd never smelled in their lives because they'd never been outside a dome.

Cats in baskets. In bags. In arms. Yowling, most of them. One very large ginger one in the arms of a very small old man, perfectly calm, looking round at the ash and the two ships and the night sky with an expression of enormous contempt.

Hens in crates. Goats on ropes. Rabbits in boxes with holes in the lids. The sheep, a small flock of them, very confused, with a girl of about ten walking in front of them and her father behind, and a dog, black and white, very low and quick, going round and round them in the dark, keeping them together.

And then the horses.

They came through last.

Eleven of them. Very big. Very slow. Brown and white, with long hair on their feet that swept the floor of the east locks as they walked. Their heads down, because the chamber was low. Their breath smoking in the cold.

A family walked with them. A man and a woman and three children and a very old woman at the front, holding the lead horse's halter, very straight, the way Pell walked.

They came out of the dark of the east locks onto the ash. And stopped.

Hana was at the bottom of the ramp of the Open Hand.

She didn't move.

She stood on the ash at the foot of the ramp with her father beside her and her hands at her sides and looked at the horses. Eleven of them. Very big. Very slow. With hair on their feet.

The old woman at the front looked at her.

At the girl at the foot of the ramp, very still, with water curves bright on her forearms and silver round her eyes and her face doing something that didn't have a name.

"You'll be Hana," said the old woman.

Hana couldn't speak.

"Pell's people told us," said the old woman. "There's a girl on the other world who's never seen a horse. Who's got three books about them, and a friend who did the voices." She looked down at the halter in her hand. Then she held it out. "This is Bess. She's the oldest. She's very patient. She doesn't mind if you cry on her. My daughter did. And her daughter."

Hana took the halter.

She didn't say anything. She stood on the ash with the lead rope in her hand and the great brown and white horse looking down at her from a very long way up.

Then the horse put her head down.

Slowly. All the way. Until her great soft nose was against Hana's chest. And breathed out. Warm. Smoking in the cold.

Hana put her arms round the horse's neck.

And cried on her.

Bess didn't mind.

Kwame, behind her, had his hand over his mouth. The old woman put her hand on Hana's back.

"There," she said. "That's the first time. The first time's always like that."

I went up for the orchards.

Mother came with me. Through the east locks, and down the ring street, and through the doors of the central dome, and down. Seven floors. Into light that was never the sun.

Pell's people met us at the bottom. Old men and women, mostly, in work clothes with soil under their nails. They took us through.

Two floors.

Two whole floors of trees.

I'd never seen anything like it. Not on Earth. Not on Avalon. Not even in the gardener's park, or the forest of the Kethri. Rows and rows of them, in great pots the size of rooms, going away under the lamps further than I could see. Apple trees, low and wide, with small hard green fruit on them. Orange trees, darker, glossy, smelling of something I'd never smelled and knew anyway. Lemons. Pears. Cherries, with the last of their blossom still on them, white and pink, drifting down onto the floor of the orchard level like snow.

And bees.

The old woman who kept them was standing in the middle of the cherries with her hands in the pockets of her coat. Watching the bees go from flower to flower.

"They know," she said. When we came up. Not looking at us. "Something's different. They've been at the door of the hive all night. Looking out." She smiled. "Bees aren't stupid."

We carried them down together.

Mother and me. Every tree. Every pot. A few hundred apple trees and a few hundred orange trees and the lemons and the pears and the plums and the cherries. Out of the orchard level. Up seven floors. Down the ring street, past the dark shop with the green door and the light in the back. Through the east locks. Onto the ash. Up the ramp into the bottom deck of the Steady.

Not one branch broke. Not one leaf fell. Not one cherry blossom came off that wasn't already coming.

Mother held them. All of them. Every branch, every leaf, every blossom, to the width of a hair. The way she'd held three bowls and the flour and the eggs.

And I carried them.

The orchard keepers walked behind us the whole way. Not saying anything. Just watching their trees go past, floating, a few inches above the floor of the ring street, perfectly still. Like a forest walking.

At the east locks, one of them, a very old man with soil under his nails, stopped and put his hand on the trunk of an apple tree as it went past.

"Thirty-one years," he said. To the tree. "I planted you from a pip. Thirty-one years under a lamp." He let go. "Go on, then. Go and see the sun."

The seed vault was last.

Genny did that. Not me. She went down into the rock under the dome, into the cold and the dark, where the jars were. Thousands of them. Millions of seeds. And she listened.

She told me about it afterward.

"They're asleep," she said. "All of them. Millions. They've been asleep so long some of them have forgotten what they're for." She looked at her hands. "I asked them. Every jar. What they were. What they wanted to be." A pause. "Most of them remembered. Corn. Wheat. Barley. Squash. Strawberries." She smiled, very slightly. "Dory's going to be insufferable about the strawberries."

"And the ones that didn't remember?"

"I brought them anyway," said Genny. "The gardener can ask them. When we get home. She'll know how." She looked at the jars stacked in the bottom deck of the Steady, in rows, cold, dark. "Somebody kept them asleep for thirty years in case. In case of this." She swallowed. "The least we can do is wake them up."

Garnet went to the sixtieth floor.

She went alone. She asked to. She said she'd come down the ring street at six in the morning once with Lucas and Pell, a long time ago, before intake, and she'd come back up it alone, every morning, to get the loaf from Thorne & Daughter. She said she knew the way.

So she went. Up the Halcyon Tower in the lift. To the sixtieth floor. To the penthouse, where she'd lived with Genny and Mother and Pell, before. Where the Overseer's feed had shown me Mother in a chair between two beds, with a dish and a spoon and a calendar on the wall.

I didn't go with her.

But I felt it. Through the hello. Through Dory, on Avalon, holding the thread. Through Genny, who could feel Garnet anywhere, the way Garnet could feel her.

The lift doors opened.

The penthouse was dark. Quiet. The furniture under sheets. Father's wall in the kitchen, the one Mother had made us look at, still there, with the light from the dome coming through the big windows and lying across it.

Mr. Dunmore was in the kitchen.

Old. Older than when Garnet had left. In a dressing gown, because it was the middle of the night, with a cup of tea going cold on the counter. He'd been told. Pell's people had told him. He'd been waiting up.

He looked at Garnet in the lift doorway.

At the silver hair like a dandelion clock. At the drawings running up her arms in silver, small and wobbly. At the silver round her eyes.

"Miss Garnet," he said.

"Hello, Mr. Dunmore," said Garnet. Very politely. The way Pell had taught her to speak to visitors at the penthouse door. "Is he here?"

Mr. Dunmore didn't say anything.

He just stepped aside.

The dog was under the kitchen table.

Where he'd always been. Where he'd slept every night since the twins left, Mr. Dunmore said afterward, because it was where Garnet used to sit to draw, cross-legged on the floor with her board on her knees, and he'd always lain beside her.

He was old now. Older than when she'd left. Fat. Mr. Dunmore said he'd been feeding him too much because he looked so sad. Grey round the muzzle. A brown dog of no particular kind, with one ear that stood up and one that didn't.

He lifted his head when the lift doors opened.

He looked at Garnet.

He didn't move.

For a long moment, he didn't move at all. He lay under the kitchen table with his grey muzzle on his paws and looked at the girl in the lift doorway, who was taller than when she'd left, and whose hair was silver, and whose arms were covered in silver drawings, and who smelled of another world.

And Garnet, very quietly, said his name.

I won't set it down. She asked me not to. She said it was his and hers, and she'd tell people herself if she wanted, and she didn't want.

But I'll say this.

He came out from under the table.

Not walking. Not running, exactly. He was too old and too fat to run. He came out from under the table in a sort of scrabbling lurch, all four legs going at once, his claws skidding on the kitchen floor, his tail going so hard his whole back end went with it. And he hit Garnet in the doorway so hard she sat down. Right there. In the lift.

And he climbed into her lap. All of him. Too old and too fat and much too big, and he climbed into her lap anyway and pushed his grey muzzle into her neck and made a sound I'd never heard a dog make. High. Thin. Over and over.

And Garnet put her arms round him.

And cried.

Not the way she cried after a battle, in a heap, saying that was so rude. The other way. The way she'd cried on the red glass on Avalon, at my coat, you're taller, I knew you were taller. Holding on. As if he might blow away.

"I didn't forget you," she said. Into his fur. Over and over. "I didn't forget you. I didn't. I came back. I came back."

Genny, at the bottom of the Halcyon Tower, in the ring street, with her hand flat on the wall and her eyes shut, felt all of it.

She was crying too.

She said afterward she wasn't. Nobody believed her.

We came home at dawn.

Two ships, every deck full. Eleven thousand people, because once the word went round the lower floors that the ships were taking everyone, animals and all, more came than had come any night before. And with them, everything.

Dogs. Cats. Hens. Goats. Rabbits. Sheep, with a black and white dog going round and round them. Pigs. Five cows. Bees, in hives, humming. Eleven horses with hair on their feet.

Two floors of orchard. Every tree.

And in the bottom deck of the Steady, cold and dark and asleep, millions of seeds.

All of Scarecrow was on the red glass.

And the city. And the park. And the broods, and the Kethri in their ring, and the queens at the wall and on the mountain and in the Hands and on the rim. Everyone. Waiting.

The ramp of the Open Hand came down.

And the dogs came out first.

Nobody on Avalon was ready for it.

Hundreds of dogs. Out of the ramp, onto the red glass, under a sky that was blue and enormous and nobody's ceiling. Into a wind that smelled of the canyon and the park and the gardener's grass and the Nivi mountain and the Sef's warm sand.

They stopped. Every one. At the foot of the ramp. Noses up.

And then they ran.

Everywhere. Across the red glass. Into the city. Into the park. Into the broods' ground, where the Teeming young were playing, and stopped dead in front of them, and stared. And the Teeming young stared back.

And then one of the dogs, a small brown one with a curly tail, went right up to a Teeming young three times its size, and sniffed it, and wagged.

And the Teeming young hummed.

And then they were all running together.

Dory found Garnet's dog.

Of course she did. She walked across the red glass on her own two feet, with Pebble a step behind her and Ash a step behind Pebble, straight to where Garnet was coming down the ramp with the old fat brown dog beside her, not on a lead, because he wouldn't go more than a foot from her anyway.

Dory stopped in front of him.

The dog stopped too. He looked at her. At the lattice round her eyes like frost. At the fine silver net running up her arms.

Dory turned her silver all the way out.

There you are.

The dog's tail went once. Then twice.

Then he lay down. Very slowly. On the red glass, at Dory's feet. And rolled over onto his back, all four paws in the air, his fat stomach to the sky, his grey muzzle upside down, his one ear that stood up flopping sideways.

Dory looked at Garnet.

"He's checked," she said. Very seriously. "He's fine. He's very old. But he's fine."

"I know," said Garnet. She was still crying. She'd been crying since the sixtieth floor. "I know he is."

Pebble came round from behind Dory. Very slowly. And looked down at the old brown dog lying on his back on the red glass.

The dog looked up at Pebble. Upside down.

Pebble put down the stone he was carrying. Right beside the dog's head.

The dog sniffed it.

And then, very slowly, he licked Pebble's forelimb.

Pebble hummed.

The orchards went into the park that afternoon.

Not all at once. Priya wouldn't let anyone hurry. She walked the length of the park with the old man who'd planted the apple tree from a pip, and the bee keeper, and the last gardener moving slowly behind them across the grass with its small white queen, and they chose. A slope facing the morning for the apples. A sheltered hollow below the Kethri's trees for the oranges and lemons, where the Sef's beam reached in the afternoons. A long row of cherries beside the seventh lake.

I set them down where Priya pointed. Pots and all. And then I asked each pot, very politely, to go back into the ground.

And the last gardener spread its green round every trunk.

By evening the bees were out. Going from cherry blossom to cherry blossom under a sun that wasn't a lamp, and then out over the park, to the gardener's white flowers, and the grass, and the Sef's warm sand, as if they couldn't believe how much there was.

The bee keeper sat on the grass and watched them and didn't say anything at all.

And at the far edge of the park, past the marsh, on ground that had been bare red glass that morning, Genny knelt with the first jar from the vault open in her hands, and asked the seeds in it what they wanted to be.

Corn, they said.

So the gardener asked the ground. And the ground said yes.

Hana brought the horses out last.

Down the ramp of the Steady. Very slowly. Eleven of them, very big, with hair on their feet. Bess at the front, with Hana at her halter, and the old woman beside them, and the family behind.

They came out onto the red glass under the blue sky.

And stopped.

And Bess lifted her great head. And looked up. At the sky. At the sun, which was not a lamp. At the Sef spire on the rim, throwing its beam down onto the sand. At the Nivi mountain, white. At the park, and the green, and the Kethri's tall silver-green trees swaying in the wind.

She stood there for a long time.

Then she put her head down. To the red glass. To the edge of it, where the gardener's grass came in from the park.

And ate.

Hana sat down on the glass.

Right where she was. With the halter still in her hand. And watched Bess eat grass under a sky that was nobody's ceiling. And didn't say anything at all.

Risa came and sat beside her.

She didn't say anything either. She just put her arm round Hana's shoulders. The way she had, a long time ago, in the medical building, reading the second horse book, doing the voices.

"There are horses on Avalon," said Hana. After a long time. Very quietly.

"Yes," said Risa. "There are."

Days 1593–1606. Ark.

Home from the Kethri world, the folded Sorn in my pocket, Okafor's slate 9 on one side and The children on the other, everyone quiet. Garnet at the window: there aren't any dogs on Avalon. Or cats or horses; Hana has three books and has never seen one; Priya's hens and the third wave's goats and that's all. If they're coming for the children the next trip to Earth might be the last, and there won't ever be any dogs. And mine's still on the sixtieth floor with Mr. Dunmore; more than two years; he'll think I forgot him. Okafor wrote in the bottom corner of the slate, very small: Dogs. And cats and horses and everything we can carry. Not people this time; everything else.

Three days of the longest list ever, everyone adding what they remembered. Pell's network: outside the domes nothing has lived thirty years; inside, only what people kept on purpose because they couldn't bear not to, which was a great deal. Seven agricultural floors under the central dome, wheat and potatoes and rice and beans and tomatoes under lamps. Two whole floors of orchard, apples, oranges, lemons, pears, plums, cherries, a few hundred each in pots the size of rooms, from seeds of seeds carried in the day the bombs fell. Do they bear? Every year, small; the lamps aren't the sun. Priya's hands flat on the table, Dov's on hers. The seed vault in the rock under it, older than the dome: corn, barley, oats, squash, melons, peppers, carrots, onions, grapes, strawberries, kept cold and dark in case. In case of this.

Animals: hundreds of dogs in flats against the rules or with them, more cats (better at not being noticed), hens, goats, rabbits, a small flock of sheep, pigs, two very old cows and three young ones, bees among the orchard trees. And eleven horses on the second agricultural level, heavy old breeds, brown and white with hair on their feet, kept by one family four generations. Hana stood: hair on their feet is in the second book, the one Risa read me before I could say Mama; you did a voice for the horse. Everyone says there are no horses on Avalon, but. I'd like there to be. Okafor, under Dogs: Horses.

The queens said yes before the question ended. The hard part was the people: none of it was ours. We don't take one tree or seed or cat; we ask. Would you like to come and bring them? A world with a sky and sun that isn't a lamp and room. Nearly all said yes. The horse family before the question finished; the bee keeper asked if there'd be flowers, heard a park with a gardener who makes things grow, and sat on the orchard floor and cried; the sheep family; two old men who've kept the cows since boyhood; the seed keepers, who've never seen what they keep grow, so fast they were asked twice.

Garnet went, drawing board under her arm: he's mine; I want him to see I didn't forget. Then go and show him. Both ships, every deck empty: Keir, Safi and Aster, Pell, Hana and Kwame (nobody else carries the horses), Priya and Dov for the orchards, Juno, Marlo and the light-benders, Genny because Garnet went, me to carry a few hundred trees seven floors without a broken branch. Two, said Mother. Five minutes to the moon and Earth, brown and sick, for the last time maybe; nobody said it.

Midnight at the east locks, the inner door asked to move. This time animals. Hundreds of dogs stopping dead on the ash to sniff air they'd never smelled outside a dome. Cats yowling in baskets; a huge calm ginger one in a tiny old man's arms looking at the ash and the ships with enormous contempt. Hens in crates, goats on ropes, rabbits in holed boxes, the sheep with a girl of ten in front, her father behind, and a low quick black-and-white dog circling them in the dark. Last the eleven horses, heads down under the low chamber, breath smoking, hair sweeping the floor, an old woman very straight at the lead halter. Hana at the foot of the ramp couldn't move. You'll be Hana; a girl who's never seen a horse, three books, a friend who did the voices. This is Bess, the oldest, very patient; she doesn't mind if you cry on her; my daughter did, and hers. Bess put her great soft nose to Hana's chest and breathed out warm, and Hana held her neck and cried on her. That's the first time. It's always like that.

Mother and I went seven floors down into light that's never the sun: two floors of trees going away under the lamps, low wide apples with small hard fruit, dark glossy oranges smelling of something I'd never smelled and knew anyway, cherry blossom drifting down like snow, and bees. The keeper: they've been at the hive door all night looking out; bees aren't stupid. Mother held every branch, leaf and blossom to the width of a hair and I carried them, up seven floors, down the ring street past the green door with the light in the back, through the locks, into the Steady, like a forest walking a few inches off the floor. Not one branch broke. At the locks an old man with soil under his nails touched an apple tree's trunk: thirty-one years; I planted you from a pip under a lamp. Go on, then. Go and see the sun.

Genny took the vault, listening in the cold to millions of seeds asleep so long some had forgotten what they're for. Most remembered: corn, wheat, barley, squash, strawberries; Dory will be insufferable about the strawberries. The rest she brought anyway; the gardener can ask them. Somebody kept them asleep thirty years in case of this; the least we can do is wake them.

Garnet went up the Halcyon Tower alone; she knows the way. I felt it through Dory and Genny. The penthouse dark, furniture under sheets, Father's wall in the kitchen in the dome light. Mr. Dunmore, older, in a dressing gown, cold tea, waiting up: Miss Garnet. Hello, Mr. Dunmore. Is he here? He stepped aside. Under the kitchen table, where he's slept every night since because that's where she used to sit cross-legged to draw: old, fat from Mr. Dunmore feeding him because he looked so sad, grey-muzzled, a brown dog of no particular kind with one ear up and one not. He looked at her a long time without moving: taller, silver hair, silver drawings, smelling of another world. She said his name. She asked me not to set the rest down; it's his and hers. He came out in a scrabbling lurch, claws skidding, tail swinging his whole back end, knocked her sitting in the lift, climbed into her lap too old and fat and big, muzzle in her neck, a high thin sound over and over. She held on as if he might blow away: I didn't forget you. I came back. Genny at the bottom of the tower with her hand on the wall felt all of it and says she wasn't crying.

Home at dawn, both ships full: eleven thousand people, more than any night, once word went round that the ships were taking everyone, animals and all. Dogs, cats, hens, goats, rabbits, sheep with their dog, pigs, five cows, bees humming in hives, eleven horses, two floors of orchard, millions of seeds asleep in the dark. The dogs out first, stopping at the foot of the ramp, noses up to a wind of canyon and gardener's grass and Nivi snow and Sef sand, and then running everywhere; into the broods' ground where they stopped dead before the Teeming young and stared; a small brown curly-tailed one sniffed one three times its size and wagged, and the young hummed, and then they were all running together.

Dory walked straight to Garnet's old dog, off lead because he won't go a foot from her, and turned all the way out: there you are. His tail went once, twice, and he rolled onto his back, paws up, fat stomach to the sky, the up ear flopping sideways. He's checked; he's very old but he's fine. I know he is. Pebble set his stone by the dog's head; the dog sniffed it, then licked his forelimb; Pebble hummed.

That afternoon Priya walked the park with the apple-pip man, the bee keeper and the gardener and chose: a morning slope for apples, a sheltered hollow under the Kethri trees for oranges and lemons where the Sef's beam reaches in the afternoons, cherries along the seventh lake. I set the pots down and asked them back into the ground; the gardener spread green round every trunk; by evening the bees were out under a sun that isn't a lamp, as if they couldn't believe how much there was. Past the marsh, on bare glass that morning, Genny opened the first jar and asked the seeds what they wanted to be. Corn. The gardener asked the ground, and the ground said yes.

Hana brought the horses down the Steady's ramp last, Bess at the front. Bess lifted her head to a sun that isn't a lamp, the spire, the white mountain, the park and the tall swaying trees, a long time; then put her head down to where the gardener's grass meets the red glass, and ate. Hana sat down with the halter in her hand and watched. Risa sat and put her arm round her, as in the medical building reading the second horse book doing the voices. There are horses on Avalon. Yes. There are.