Chapter 305 The Last Door

Okafor had nine days.

She said so at the map table, at dawn, the morning after Juno banged on our door. She didn't sit down. She stood at the head of the table with her slate in her hand and her other hand flat on Garnet's map, and she looked at all of us.

"Nine days," she said. "Then they put her in front of the Senate, in public, and read the charges, and kill her."

Nobody said anything.

"She opened the east locks for two years," said Okafor. "Every night. Every person who came through. Every dog. Every orchard. Every seed." She looked at Pell, in the corner. "Every one of your people, Harriet."

"Yes," said Pell.

"So we're going to get her," said Okafor. "And we're going to bring every one of your people who wants to come. And then we're never going back." She put the slate down on the table. "And this time, we're not going to be heat over a stove."

That was the thing nobody had expected.

For two years we'd gone to Earth like a fault in the glass. At night. Quietly. With the light-benders folding the light round the ships so that nobody on the dome would see anything but a wobble in the stars over the old battlefield. Through the east locks, because Voss opened them. Out before dawn.

"They've sealed the east locks," said Okafor. "Voss said so. They'll be watching the sky. They'll be looking closely, now." She looked round the table. "So we're not going to hide. There's no point. They know we're coming. Every person on the Senate floor knows exactly what we are and where we come from and what we've been doing."

"And the four million?" said Luna. Very quietly.

Okafor looked at her.

"The four million," she said, "are going to see us."

"Okafor," said Holt. From the window. "The Sorn."

"I know."

"The small polite one. On Earth. Sitting in her chair." Holt didn't turn round. "If we go in daylight, with three ships, it sees all of it. And when the next keeper comes looking, it'll know exactly what to tell it."

"Yes," said Okafor. "It would."

She looked at me.

"So it doesn't get the chance," she said.

We went on the ninth morning.

All three ships. The Open Hand, with the youngest queen on her perch and Keir at the front. The Steady, with the heavy queen on her low stone shelf and Safi Arden flying. And the Scarecrow. Long and dark, with the blue sheen on its grey and its four fins along its sides like arms, and the Drenn queen in her room at the heart of it, her four arms folded into the four places in the walls, her door open.

Okafor read the list on the red glass.

It was the longest list she'd ever read. Longer than the Kethri world. Longer than the forest.

I'll set down the names that mattered.

Wren.

Okafor didn't read her name. Wren read it herself. She came to the front of the red glass at dawn with her book under her arm and Harriet in a sling against her chest, and stood in front of Okafor, very straight.

"I'm going," she said.

Okafor looked at her.

"She's my aunt," said Wren. "She signed my transfer. Nobody made her. She cut my hair every month with the post scissors until I was twelve, and sang, the only place she ever sang." Her voice didn't waver. "She's said Harriet's name out loud every night since, in her office, to nobody. And on the ninth day they're going to stand her up in front of four million people and kill her." She held Okafor's eyes. "I'm not finished. I can't throw fire or hold anything. But I'd like to be the first face she sees when the door opens."

Okafor didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then she held out her hand. For the baby.

Wren looked at her.

"I'll hold her," said Okafor. "Till you're on the ramp. Then she goes to Marsh's mother."

Wren gave Okafor her daughter.

Okafor held Harriet very carefully. Like something that might break. Harriet looked up at her with fine silver lines round her eyes like the lines of a song, and opened her mouth, and sang Toby's note. Very quietly. Just for her.

Okafor's face didn't change. Okafor's face never changed.

But she held Harriet a lot longer than it took Wren to get to the ramp.

Toby went with Wren. Of course he did.

Mother went. Okafor said so. Everything you can hold, Mrs. Dask. And Mother said yes.

Sigmund went. Okafor said she wanted a Friese in the Senate Annex, because the soldiers at Voss's door were Friese's old aides, the ones he'd moved into his own office years ago, and she wanted them to look at a Friese who didn't sign first.

Jessa went with Sigmund. Nobody asked her. She just went.

The General went. And Luna. And Risa, with her sky. And Sera and Liam, in case anything burned. And Anja, in case anything needed standing in front of. And Rory and Maura, because Maura said she'd knelt in the snow at a gate in that dome once with her baby in her coat, and she wasn't going to let it take anyone else's.

And Pell.

Pell went first. Up the ramp of the Open Hand, very straight, in her grey, with her hands folded.

She didn't look back. She didn't need to. Juno was right behind her.

Garnet came to the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp as I was going up.

With the old brown dog at her heels. She didn't ask to come. She knew Okafor's answer. The twins were staying, this time. Okafor said if it went wrong, she wanted two people on Avalon who could fly and hold and open collars and weren't me.

"Lucas," said Garnet.

I stopped.

"The scarf," she said.

I looked at her.

"It's still there," said Garnet. "On Father's scarecrow. In our field. Pell went and looked, a long time ago. She said it was still there." Her chin came up. "And this is the last time anybody's going to Earth. Okafor said. Ever."

"Garnet—"

"You left it bare," said Garnet. "Father's scarecrow. Here. In the field. You built it with his coat and left its neck bare because you said I'd want to do the scarf myself." She held my eyes. "I can't do it if the scarf's on Earth."

I didn't say anything.

"Please," said Garnet.

We crossed in four minutes.

All three ships. Together. The youngest queen singing toward Voss's seed, the heavy queen singing beside her, and the Drenn queen, in the Scarecrow, singing her one word, very low, the one she'd sung to the grey. And every queen on Avalon under all of them.

And the dark between opened.

And there was Earth.

We didn't come down over the old battlefield.

We didn't come at night.

We came at noon, straight down out of a sky that was never blue there, through the long yellow haze, over the dome. Over the middle of it. Over four million people under glass.

And we didn't fold the light.

I've thought about it since. What they saw. The four million. From the ring street and the Halcyon Tower and the lower floors on Harbor Block 44 and the orchard levels that were empty now and the windows of the Senate Annex.

Three ships, coming down out of the haze.

The Open Hand, long and grey, narrow at the front and broad at the back, with gold letters on its point. The Steady, beside it, heavier, slower. And between them, lower than both, the Scarecrow. Dark. Sharp. With a blue sheen on it like the shell of a beetle in the rain. Coming down over the dome until it hung directly over the middle of it.

And then, very slowly, opening its four long fins.

Out. Wide. Like arms.

Over the whole dome.

That was what Aster had built them for. She told me afterward. She said she'd never told anyone because she'd wanted to see if anyone could guess.

The fins didn't steer. Not really. Keir could steer without them.

They held.

Not the way a Hand held. Not closing. Not round anything. They opened over the dome and the grey in them, the grey the Drenn queen had told over and over that nothing on this ship holds anyone, went very still. And very cold. And very hard.

And nothing could come through it.

"A shield," said Aster. Very quietly. Through the hello. "Over the dome. Nothing from the sky can reach the people under it while the arms are out." A pause. "This unit thought: if the Sorn ever come back for the human world, someone should be standing over it with their arms out."

"Like a scarecrow," said Garnet. On Avalon. Through Dory. Very small. "I told you. Those are its arms."

The Senate Annex was full.

The trial had started an hour before. In the great hall on the ground floor, the one with the high windows and the gallery all the way round. Full of Senators in their seats. Full of aides. Full of soldiers along the walls, Friese's old aides at the front, in their grey.

And full of people.

Not invited. They'd come anyway. From the lower floors and the ring street and the Halcyon Tower. Pell's people, and people who'd never heard of Pell, and people who'd heard the charges read out on the radio that morning and come to see for themselves whether it was true. Packed into the gallery. Standing at the back. Out of the doors and down the steps and into the street.

And in the middle of the hall, in a chair by herself, with a soldier on each side of her, the Chancellor.

She was very small.

I hadn't seen her recently. Not with my eyes. Not since th gala. I'd felt her once, through the seed, the night she climbed twenty-three floors to Okafor's flat. I'd heard her through Juno. I'd watched Wren's face when Juno said she put both hands over her face.

She was small and grey and straight-backed, in a plain coat, with her hands in her lap and a seed on a chain round her neck. Not afraid. That was what I noticed most, from the high windows of the hall. She wasn't afraid.

And in front of her, in her chair, at the head of the hall, the small polite one.

It wasn't a keeper.

I knew that at once. I'd stood in front of a keeper at the bottom of a Hand and felt it look at me with its pale eyes. This wasn't that.

It was smaller. Neat. Grey and folded and very still, sitting in the Chancellor's chair at the head of the hall with its hands in its lap, the way she sat. As if it had learned how to sit by watching her. With no face. Just a smooth grey curve where a face would be.

It had been reading the charges.

When the Scarecrow came down over the dome and the light through the high windows went blue and dark, it stopped.

And turned its smooth grey face up. Toward the windows.

Toward me.

I came through the window.

I didn't break it. I asked it. Very politely. The way I asked doors to open. And the glass of the high window over the gallery of the Senate Annex opened like water and let me through, and closed again behind me.

Okafor came through after me. And Mother. And Wren, with Toby holding her hand. And Sigmund, with Jessa. Down through the air of the great hall, very slowly, the way I'd taught the twins, past the gallery full of faces turned up to watch. Onto the floor in the middle of the hall.

Between the small polite one and the Chancellor.

Nobody moved.

Not the Senators in their seats. Not the soldiers along the walls. Not the people in the gallery, who'd gone so quiet that I could hear the Sef-light from the windows humming very faintly on the floor.

Okafor stood in the middle of the Senate Annex in her plain dark coat with her hands behind her back.

"Senators," she said.

She didn't make a speech.

Okafor never made speeches. She stood there and said it plain, the way she'd read names off a slate on the first day in the dome, a long time ago, when we were cadets and she was a Sergeant and none of us knew what Avalon was.

"You know who I am," she said. "Some of you signed my retirement papers. Some of your children came through my training hall." She looked round the hall. "You know what Avalon is. You know what's been going through the east locks every night for two years. You know because you counted the empty floors."

Nobody said anything.

"You charged the Chancellor with conspiring against the human race," said Okafor. "For opening the locks. For letting people go to a world with a sky." She paused. "I'd like to know which human race you mean."

The small polite one stood up.

Very slowly. Neatly. Out of the Chancellor's chair. With its smooth grey face turned toward Okafor.

"The Accord stands," it said.

Not in the old tongue. In Okafor's. Very clearly. Very politely.

"The human world is in the tithe. Its rulers sit. Its paper is signed. The Chancellor broke the paper. The Chancellor will be—"

It stopped.

Because Mother had lifted her hand.

Not at the small polite one. At the soldiers.

Along the walls of the great hall. Friese's old aides at the front, in their grey, with their weapons. Fifty of them. Sixty. And every weapon, every buckle, every badge, every nail in every boot, stopped. Held. To the width of a hair.

The way she'd held three bowls and the flour and the eggs.

The soldiers stood very still along the walls of the Senate Annex. Not because they wanted to. Because they couldn't do anything else.

Mother looked at the small polite one.

"Go on," she said. Very calmly. "I'm listening."

The small polite one didn't go on.

It turned its smooth grey face toward me.

And I felt it. The voice. Not loud. Not hard, like the new Hand over the Kethri forest. Small. Polite. Pushing very gently into everything in the hall that had any silver in it.

Into Wren.

Wren wasn't finished.

She'd never let me. She counted. That was what she did. And if I'd opened her up and she'd turned out to be something else, she didn't know if she'd still be able to count.

So her silver was still the program's. Narrow. Cut. With a small door in the middle of it, built before she was born, the way Sera's had been. The same door the choir had used, the night it came for Avalon. The same door Genny had sung through.

The small polite one found it.

And pushed.

Wren went very still.

Toby, holding her hand, felt it. I saw his face change.

And then Wren turned. Away from her aunt. Toward the small polite one. The way the people of Scarecrow had turned, the night the choir came. Walking. Slowly. Toward the head of the hall.

"Mara," said Voss. From her chair. Very sharp.

Wren didn't stop.

"Wren," said Toby.

She didn't stop.

Toby let go of her hand.

He didn't have his fiddle. It was on the Open Hand, with Harriet's blanket. He didn't have anything. He stood in the middle of the Senate Annex with his empty hands at his sides and watched his wife walk away from him toward a small grey thing in a chair.

And he sang.

Not the old song. Not the lower-floors song his mother sang. Not anything I'd heard before.

One note.

The counter-note. His note. The one he played to carry. The one Harriet had hummed since she was smaller than my thumb, and sung on the north wall the morning she was born, and sung every dawn since. The one that went out across the whole of Scarecrow every morning and came back off every person it touched, so that Wren, standing on the north wall with her eyes shut, could hear the shape of everyone.

Wren heard it.

She stopped.

In the middle of the hall. Halfway to the small polite one.

She stood there for a long moment, very still, with her head tilted. The way she stood on the north wall at dawn. Listening.

And then she counted.

I felt her do it. Not with silver. She didn't have any to spare; the small polite one had its hand on the door at the middle of it. With the other thing. The thing she'd always had. The listening.

Toby's note went out from where he stood, into the great hall of the Senate Annex, and came back. Off every wall. Off every Senator in every seat. Off every soldier Mother was holding. Off every face in the gallery.

Off her aunt.

And Wren counted them. Every one. Out loud.

"One," said Wren. "Two. Three. Four."

The small polite one pushed harder.

Wren kept counting.

"Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two."

It pushed harder.

"Two hundred and six. Two hundred and seven."

I could see her shaking. I could see the door in the middle of her silver, held half open by the small polite one's push, and the counting going past it, round it, under it. Not through it. Round it. The way water goes round a stone.

"Six hundred and eleven. Six hundred and twelve."

And then she got to the end of the hall. To the last face in the gallery. To the last soldier on the wall.

And the last one was her aunt.

"Six hundred and thirteen," said Wren.

And turned round. Away from the small polite one. Back toward the chair in the middle of the hall.

"Aunt Renata," she said.

The small polite one stopped pushing.

Not because it wanted to. Because I'd folded it.

I'd been waiting. Okafor had told me to wait. Let it show itself. Let them all see what it is. Then.

So I'd waited. And when Wren said six hundred and thirteen and turned round, I folded it.

Very fast. Not gently. Smaller and smaller, into itself, in the middle of the Chancellor's chair at the head of the hall, in front of every Senator and every soldier and every face in the gallery. Until there was nothing in the chair but a small grey stone.

I picked it up.

It was very light.

I put it in a box. And put the box in my pocket.

Nobody in the Senate Annex said anything for a very long time.

Then, at the back of the gallery, somebody started to clap.

Just one person. Slowly. An old woman, very small, in a coat, with soil under her fingernails. One of the orchard keepers who hadn't come, the first time, because she'd been too frightened.

Then somebody beside her.

Then the whole gallery.

Wren went to her aunt.

She knelt down beside the chair in the middle of the hall. Level with it. And put her hand flat on Voss's knee. The way she'd put it on the stone beside the band in the hollow, a long time ago, the night she said Aunt Renata for the first time in years.

Voss looked at her.

At the niece she'd signed onto the transfer list herself. Whom nobody made her sign. Whose hair she'd cut every month with the post scissors until she was twelve, and sung to, the only place she ever sang.

"Mara," said Voss.

"I counted you," said Wren. "You were the last one. Six hundred and thirteen."

Voss's face did something I'd never seen it do.

Then she put both her hands over it.

Wren put her arms round her.

"Chancellor," said Okafor.

Voss took her hands away from her face. Slowly.

"Major."

"There's a ship over the dome," said Okafor, "with its arms out. And two more at the edge, with their doors open. And every one of Pell's people who wants to come is walking toward them right now, through doors Dask has put in the dome glass that will close behind the last of them." She looked at Voss. "You're coming."

Voss looked at her for a long time.

"No," she said.

Wren went very still.

"Aunt Renata—"

"I'm not staying to die, Mara," said Voss. Very gently. "I'm not a fool." She looked round the hall. At the Senators in their seats, very still. At the soldiers on the walls, held by Mother to the width of a hair. At the gallery, full of faces. "But I'm not leaving either. Not yet. Not until they've heard."

"Heard what?" said Okafor.

Voss stood up.

She told them.

Not just the Senate. Everyone. The hall was broadcast. It always had been, trials always were, to every screen in every flat on every floor of the dome, so that four million people could see justice being done.

So four million people saw her stand up.

And heard her.

She told them about Article Fourteen.

All of it. The night the Accord was signed. The Sorn in the room. Friese drafting the clause that said the children of the modified so that it didn't sound like what it was. The program, and the cutting, and the stabilizer, and Retention. The forty, and the forty after them. The thirty-one, in their chairs, with their spoons.

And then she told them what the Overseer had told me. What the keeper had told me, in the garden at noon.

Not the parents. The children. Born whole. Born both. Taken young, before anyone could teach them to ask. Taught not to. Made into the ones at the top.

The gallery was very quiet.

"I signed," said Voss. "I signed every one of the papers they put in front of me for twenty years. I told myself it was the price of the human race surviving. I told myself somebody had to pay it, and it was better paid by the children of the modified than by everyone." She looked at Wren. "I sent my niece."

Wren didn't move.

"I was wrong," said Voss. Very simply. "We were all wrong. It was never the price of anything. It was only ever the thing they wanted."

She stopped.

She looked out at the gallery. At the high windows, dark blue now with the Scarecrow hanging over the dome with its arms out.

"There's a world with a sky," she said. "I've never seen it. I've only heard it through a piece of a dead queen on a chain round my neck. But I'm told it has horses. And orchards. And a city where people build their own houses, crooked, and nobody tells them where to put the nails." A pause. "And I'm told the children there are born whole. And nobody's coming to take them. Because there are people standing in front."

She took the seed off its chain.

And held it up. So everyone could see.

"This is the last time," she said. "The ships won't come again. If you want to go, go now. The doors are open." She looked at Okafor. "And if you stay, stay knowing."

Then she came.

She walked out of the great hall of the Senate Annex between Wren and Okafor, with the seed in her hand. Past the Senators in their seats, who didn't move. Past the soldiers on the walls, whom Mother let go the moment we were through the doors, all at once, so that sixty weapons clattered to the floor and nobody bent to pick them up.

Down the steps. Into the street.

The street was full.

They were walking.

Not running. Pell had told them not to run, the first time, and they'd remembered. Walking. From every floor of the dome. Toward the doors I'd made in the glass at the edge, three of them, one for each ship. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.

Not four million.

Most people stayed. I want to be honest about that. Most people looked out of their windows at three ships and a Chancellor walking down the Senate Annex steps with a dead queen in her hand, and listened to what she'd said, and stayed. Because it was the only place they'd ever known. Because they were afraid. Because somebody had to.

But tens of thousands walked.

Meg's daughter came.

From the ring street. From the shop with the dark green door and the light in the back. She came down the street toward the Open Hand's door in the dome glass with flour to her elbows and a sack of starter in her arms like a baby. And over her shoulder, wrapped in a blanket, something heavy and flat.

The sign.

THORNE & DAUGHTER. BAKERS.

And in her other hand, on its curl of iron, the brass bell.

"My grandad's," she said, when I took the sign from her at the door so she could climb in. "Mum said you'd made him a new one. On the other world. She said it's green." She looked at me. "I'd like to see if it's the right green."

"It's the right green," I said.

Dr. Halloway came last.

Not last of everyone. Last of the ones I was watching for. She came down the ring street toward the Open Hand's door with a case in each hand, heavy ones, the kind doctors carry files in, and a coat buttoned wrong because she'd done it in a hurry. Older than when I'd last seen her. Greyer. The same straight back. The same way of walking, as if she had somewhere to be and you were welcome to come but she wasn't going to wait.

Ruth Halloway. The best doctor in New Halcyon. Who'd run across a hospital roof beside Mother's stretcher still holding the mask, a long time ago, and turned in a doorway and put her hand flat on my chest. Who'd delivered half the dome. Who'd sent word to Avalon through Miss Pell, in one line, that she'd find a way.

She stopped at the door in the dome glass.

Mother was standing just inside it. Beside me. Very straight. With her hands perfectly still at her sides.

Halloway looked at Mother's hands for a long time.

She'd held them herself. In the hospital. Shaking so hard they rattled the bed rail. She'd measured the stabilizer into the dish. She'd written the sheet that kept Mother home when the twins came out: the crossing would kill her.

"Dorothy," she said.

"Ruth," said Mother.

Halloway put down one of her cases. And reached out. And took Mother's hand. Turned it over. Held it in hers, the way a doctor holds a hand, two fingers on the wrist, counting.

It didn't shake.

Halloway didn't say anything for a long moment.

"I said I'd find a way," she said at last. Very quietly. Not to Mother. To the hand.

"You did," said Mother. "He did." She looked at me. "Both of you."

Halloway let go of Mother's hand. And looked at me. Up at me, the way she had in that doorway. At the silver round my eyes, whole.

"I'd like to see how," she said. "All of it. Every scan. Every one you've finished. I've got thirty years of files in these cases about people I couldn't help." She picked the case back up. "I'd like to know what I got wrong."

"There's a doctor on Avalon called Edda," I said. "She's got a green book. It's got a page in it called things I'm no longer surprised by. It's eleven pages long."

Halloway looked at me for a moment.

Then something happened to her face that I'd never seen it do. Not in the hospital. Not on the roof. Not in the corridor.

She laughed.

"Then I'd better start reading," she said. And went up the ramp with her cases, her coat still buttoned wrong.

I went to the field last.

While the ships filled. While Pell stood at the door of the Open Hand counting, and Juno felt for the frightened ones and sent them to Rory and Maura, and the General stood at the door of the Steady very straight, saying walk to anyone who tried to run.

Mother came with me.

Eighty miles. West, across the dead country. Over the ash and the broken glass and the long low dunes the wind had made out of thirty years of nothing. Past the ridge. Into the valley nobody had any reason to look at.

Father's field.

It wasn't a field any more.

It hadn't been for a long time. Since the day we left. Without Father, without anyone, the soil he'd made a few yards a day had gone back to ash, slowly. The wheat was gone. The house was there, grey, with its roof sagging and its porch rail broken. The filter under the kitchen floor hadn't woken at five in a very long time.

But the scarecrow was there.

At the edge of where the field had been. With its arms out. In Father's old coat, brown and patched at the elbows, the coat I'd copied on Avalon from memory. Leaning a little. Grey with ash.

And round its neck, a scarf.

Blue. Faded nearly to white. Knitted. Mother's.

Tied on, a long time ago, by a girl of nine who'd gone out in the dark in her nightdress because it was cold.

Mother stood at the edge of the dead field and looked at it for a long time.

She didn't say anything. She didn't move. Her hands were perfectly still at her sides.

Then she walked across the ash. To the scarecrow. And reached up. And untied the scarf.

Very carefully. The way you'd untie something you'd tied yourself, a long time ago, for someone who was gone.

She held it in her hands.

"Your father made this," she said. To me. Not looking at me. "The scarecrow. Before the twins. Before any of it. He said every field needs someone standing in it with their arms out." She looked at the scarf. "I knitted this the winter you were born. Garnet put it on him when she was seven. I never told her I'd seen her go out."

She folded the scarf. Small. And put it inside her coat. Against her chest.

Then she looked up at the scarecrow. At Father's coat. At its arms, out.

"Leave him," she said. "He's standing in his field. That's where he should be."

We left Earth at dusk.

Three ships. Every deck full. More than we'd ever carried. Aster counted, and then counted again, and said a number I won't set down, because Wren said afterward that some numbers are too big to write in a book and she'd carry it in her head instead.

The Scarecrow folded its arms last. When the Open Hand and the Steady were already up, past the haze, singing. It hung over the dome for one moment more. With its four long fins out. Over four million people who'd stayed.

Then it folded them.

And came after us.

Garnet was waiting at the foot of the ramp when we came home.

On the red glass. With the old brown dog. And Genny beside her. And Dory, and Ash, and Trevor in Luna's arms, and everyone.

Mother came down the ramp. Very slowly. With her hand on her coat, over her chest.

She stopped in front of Garnet.

And took out the scarf.

Blue. Faded nearly to white. Knitted the winter I was born.

Garnet looked at it.

She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She took it out of Mother's hands, very carefully, the way you'd carry water. And turned. And walked across the red glass, through everyone, with the old brown dog at her heels. Through the city. Past our crooked house. To Father's house, at the end of the street, the one I'd built from memory. To the field in front of it, with its rows ready.

To the scarecrow with its arms out and its neck bare.

She tied it on.

Standing on her toes. Because she was taller now, but not quite tall enough. She tied it the way she'd tied it when she was nine, in the dark, in her nightdress. A big loose knot, slightly crooked.

Then she stood back and looked at it.

"There," said Garnet.

And sat down on Father's bench on the porch, with the old brown dog's head in her lap, and cried.

Not the battle way. Not that was so rude. The other way. The holding-on way.

Genny sat down beside her.

She didn't say anything.

She was crying too. She said afterward she wasn't. Nobody believed her.

Days 1841–1850. The last door.

Okafor standing at the map table: nine days, then they stand her before the Senate in public and kill her. She opened the locks two years, every person, dog, orchard, seed; every one of your people, Harriet. Yes. We get her, bring every one who wants to come, and never go back. And this time not heat over a stove. They've sealed the locks and they're watching; there's no point hiding; the four million are going to see us. Holt: the small polite one sees all of it and tells the next keeper. So it doesn't get the chance.

Ninth morning, all three ships, the longest list. Wren read her own name: she's my aunt; she signed my transfer; nobody made her; she cut my hair with the post scissors till I was twelve and sang, the only place she sang; she says Harriet's name aloud every night to nobody. I'm not finished; I can't throw fire or hold; I'd like to be the first face she sees. Okafor held out her hand for the baby: I'll hold her till you're on the ramp. Harriet sang Toby's note just for her. Okafor's face didn't change; she held her a lot longer than it took Wren to reach the ramp. Toby; Mother, everything you can hold; Sigmund, a Friese before Friese's old aides; Jessa unasked; the General, Luna, Risa, Sera and Liam in case anything burned, Anja to stand in front, Rory and Maura, who knelt at that dome's gate once with her baby in her coat. Pell first up the ramp, Juno right behind. The twins stay: two who can fly and hold and open collars who aren't me. Garnet at the Scarecrow's ramp with the old dog: the scarf is still on Father's scarecrow in our field; you left the one here bare so I could do it myself; I can't if it's on Earth; please.

Four minutes: the youngest toward Voss's seed, the heavy queen beside her, the Drenn queen's one low word, every queen under them. Noon, straight down over the middle of the dome, no light folded. The Scarecrow lowest, dark with its beetle sheen, hung over the centre and slowly opened its four fins over the whole dome. Aster had told no one, to see if anyone guessed: they don't steer; they hold; not closing round anything; the grey told nothing on this ship holds anyone went still and cold and hard and nothing can come through. A shield; nothing from the sky reaches the people under it while the arms are out; if the Sorn ever come back for the human world, someone should stand over it with their arms out. Garnet through Dory: I told you; those are its arms.

The Senate Annex great hall, high windows and a gallery all round, packed: Senators, aides, soldiers on the walls, Friese's old aides at the front, and people uninvited from the lower floors and ring street and tower, into the street. Voss small and grey and straight in a chair between two soldiers, a seed on a chain, not afraid. In her chair at the head the small polite one: not a keeper; smaller, neat, faceless, sitting the way she sits as if it learned by watching her. It turned its smooth face up to the windows when the light went blue. I asked the high window to open like water and came through; Okafor, Mother, Wren with Toby, Sigmund with Jessa came down after, between it and the Chancellor. Okafor plain as a slate: some of you signed my retirement; some of your children came through my training hall; you know what's been going through the locks because you counted the empty floors; you charged her with conspiring against the human race; I'd like to know which human race you mean.

It stood: the Accord stands; the Chancellor broke the paper; the Chancellor will be. Mother lifted her hand at the walls and every weapon, buckle, badge and boot nail on sixty soldiers stopped to the width of a hair. Go on. I'm listening. It turned to me and pushed, small and polite, into everything with silver. Into Wren, unfinished, program silver with the small door in its middle built before she was born, the door the choir used. She went still and turned and walked toward it. Mara. Wren. She didn't stop. Toby let go of her hand. No fiddle, nothing. He sang one note, his counter-note, Harriet's, the one that goes out across Scarecrow at dawn and comes back off everyone so Wren can hear their shape. She stopped halfway, head tilted as on the north wall. And counted, not with silver, with the listening she's always had, as his note came back off every wall and Senator and soldier and face, out loud. One. Two. Forty-two. Two hundred and seven. It pushed harder; she shook; the counting went round the half-open door like water round a stone. Six hundred and twelve. The last face was her aunt. Six hundred and thirteen. She turned back. Aunt Renata.

Okafor had told me to wait till it showed itself to everyone. Then I folded it, fast, not gently, in the Chancellor's chair before the whole hall, to a small grey stone, into a box, into my pocket. A long silence; then one old orchard keeper at the back of the gallery, soil under her nails, who'd been too frightened the first time, clapped slowly; then the whole gallery. Wren knelt with her hand on Voss's knee as on the stone in the hollow. Mara. I counted you; you were the last; six hundred and thirteen. Voss put both hands over her face; Wren held her.

Okafor: a ship over the dome with its arms out, two at the edge with doors open, your people walking now through doors Dask put in the glass that close behind the last. You're coming. No. Not staying to die; I'm not a fool; but not leaving till they've heard. The trial was broadcast to every screen on every floor. She stood and told four million: the Accord night, the Sorn in the room, Friese's clause, the program, cutting, stabilizer, Retention, the forty and after, the thirty-one with their spoons. And what the keeper told me in the garden: not the parents; the children, born whole, born both, taken before anyone teaches them to ask, made into the ones at the top. I signed every paper for twenty years and told myself it was the price of survival, better paid by the modified's children than by everyone. I sent my niece. I was wrong. We all were. It was never the price of anything; it was only the thing they wanted. A world with a sky I've only heard through a dead queen on a chain: horses, orchards, crooked houses where nobody tells you where to put the nails, children born whole and people standing in front. She held up the seed. The last time; if you want to go, go now; if you stay, stay knowing.

Out between Wren and Okafor past the still Senators; Mother let the soldiers go at the doors and sixty weapons clattered down and nobody bent for them. The street full, walking, not running; tens of thousands toward the three doors in the glass. Not four million; most looked out their windows and listened and stayed, because it was the only place they'd known, or fear, or because somebody had to. Meg's daughter with flour to her elbows, starter like a baby, the sign over her shoulder in a blanket, the brass bell on its iron curl: Mum says you made him a new one, green; I'd like to see if it's the right green. It's the right green. Dr. Ruth Halloway with two cases of files and her coat buttoned wrong, who ran beside Mother's stretcher on the hospital roof long ago, sent word through Pell that she'd find a way, and wrote the sheet that said the crossing would kill her. Dorothy. Ruth. Two fingers on Mother's wrist, counting; it didn't shake. I said I'd find a way. You did. He did. Both of you. I'd like to see how; thirty years of files on people I couldn't help; I'd like to know what I got wrong. Edda has a green book with a page called things I'm no longer surprised by, eleven pages. She laughed, which I'd never seen: then I'd better start reading.

Last, with Mother, eighty miles west over ash and broken glass and thirty years of dunes, past the ridge into the valley nobody looks at. Not a field any more: the soil Father made a few yards a day gone back to ash, the wheat gone, the house grey with a sagging roof and broken rail, the filter under the kitchen floor long past waking at five. The scarecrow at the edge, leaning, grey with ash, in Father's patched brown coat, and round its neck the blue scarf faded nearly white. She untied it the way you untie something you tied yourself for someone gone. Your father made him before the twins: every field needs someone standing in it with their arms out. I knitted this the winter you were born. Garnet put it on him at nine; I never told her I saw her go out. She folded it small inside her coat against her chest. Leave him; he's standing in his field; that's where he should be.

Dusk, every deck full, a number Aster counted twice and Wren says is too big for a book; she'll carry it in her head. The Scarecrow held its arms over the four million who stayed one moment more, then folded them and followed. Home, Mother came down the ramp with her hand on her coat and gave Garnet the scarf. Garnet carried it like water through everyone, past our crooked house, to Father's house at the end of the street and the scarecrow with its arms out and its neck bare, stood on her toes, and tied it the way she did at seven in the dark, a big loose knot, slightly crooked. There. Then sat on Father's bench with the old dog's head in her lap and cried the holding-on way. Genny sat beside her, crying too. She says she wasn't.