Chapter 307 Six Hundred and Fourteen

Voss read the names every morning.

Nobody asked her to. Nobody would have. She just went.

The first morning after we came home from Earth, before the dawn count, before the hello, before anyone was up but Dot and the queens and the old orchard keepers who got up in the dark because they always had, she walked out alone to the scarecrow field. Where the names are. Where every one of the forty is cut into a post, and every one of the forty after them, and every name anybody ever brought to the field and asked to have put there.

She stood at the first post.

And read the first name out loud.

Then she went home.

The next morning she read the second. And the morning after that, the third. One name a morning. Out loud. To nobody. In the same voice, Wren said, she'd used to say Harriet's name in her empty office in the dome, every night, before she'd ever seen Harriet's face.

There were a great many names in the field.

"She's worked it out," Wren told me. We were walking home from the north wall, with Harriet asleep against Toby's chest ahead of us. "One a morning. She's done the sums. If she lives as long as her mother did, she'll get to the end." Wren looked at the field, grey in the half-light, the scarecrow standing at the far end of it with its arms out and Mother's blue scarf faded nearly white at its neck. "She says she signed every one of them. So she can say every one of them."

"Does anyone go with her?"

Wren shook her head.

"People cross the street," she said. Quite calmly. The way Wren said things she'd counted. "Not everyone. Most. The ones from the third crossing mostly don't know her face. The ones from the dome do." She walked a little way. "Gareth spat once. Not at her. On the ground. Near her. She said thank you."

"Thank you?"

"She said he was entitled to," said Wren. "She said everyone on Avalon is entitled to. She said she'd rather they spat than pretended." A pause. "She says I'm not to stand next to her at the field. She says it isn't mine to carry."

"Do you stand next to her?"

Wren looked at me.

"Every morning," she said. "I'm not finished. I don't have to do what anybody says."

It was Holt who gave her something to do.

I don't think anyone else would have. Okafor wouldn't. Okafor was polite to Voss, in the way Okafor was polite to a storm, and never once in that whole season did she say Chancellor again. The General nodded to her when they passed. Luna did the same as her father, exactly the same, so that you could see where she'd learned it.

But Holt sat in the map room with his stick across his knees, the stick he didn't need any more and carried anyway because he'd carried it so long his hand felt wrong without it, and said, "Sit down, Renata."

She sat.

"There are tens of thousands of people on Avalon who came through the glass in the last two years," said Holt. "And tens of thousands more who came through it last season. Every one of them has a complaint. The roof leaks. The neighbour's dog. The Karst are singing under the floor at night. Someone put their nails in the wrong place. Someone's mother wants to go back." He shifted the stick. "I've been hearing them for two years. I'm tired. You've been hearing complaints for twenty."

"I didn't listen to most of them," said Voss.

"I know," said Holt. "Now you will."

So she did. There was a room at the end of the arrivals hall, on the edge of the new city, with a table and two chairs and a door that stayed open. She sat at the table from nine in the morning, after the field, until the light went. And anybody who wanted to could come in and sit in the other chair and tell her what was wrong. And she wrote it down. Every word. In a book.

Most people didn't come at first. Then some did, to see. To see the Chancellor sitting in a room with the door open, writing down what they said about their leaking roof. Some came to shout at her. She let them. She wrote that down too.

After a while they came because she fixed things.

Not like me. She couldn't ask a roof to stop leaking. But she knew who to ask. She'd run four million people for twenty years. She knew how a city worked the way Keir knew how a ship worked. Which roofs had been put up by the same crew, and so would leak in the same place. Which neighbour's dog was really about a fence. Which mother who wanted to go back really wanted someone to sit with her in the evenings.

"She's very good at it," Holt told me. Not happily. Just true. "I'd forgotten. That's how she got the chair. She was the best clerk in the Senate for eleven years before anyone noticed her."

"Do you forgive her?"

Holt looked at his stick for a long time.

"No," he said. "But I'm old, Lucas. I haven't got time to not use somebody."

Mother went to see her in the second week.

I didn't know she was going. I found out because Dory told me, at supper, with her mouth full, the way she told me everything. "Grandma went to the shouting room," said Dory. "She took bread. She didn't take me."

Mother didn't say anything. She was cutting Trevor's potato into very small pieces, which he would then freeze and eat like sweets.

I asked her that night. On the porch, after the children were asleep. Hana had gone up early with Risa, and Sera and Luna were in the kitchen with the arrivals list, arguing about rooms in low voices. Mother was in Father's old chair, the one I'd made the same as his, with her hands in her lap.

Still.

They were always still now.

"What did you say to her?"

Mother didn't answer for a while.

"I sat in the other chair," she said at last. "She'd been writing something. She put the pen down. She knew who I was, of course. I'd been in a file on her desk for twenty years." Mother looked at her hands. "She said Dorothy. And then she stopped. As if she'd been going to say something else and it wasn't good enough."

"And you?"

"I told her about the spoon," said Mother. "Not angrily. I just told her. What it was like. Every morning. Waking up and finding out how bad my hands were before I opened my eyes, by whether I could feel the sheet. How long it took to button a coat. How Garnet used to do it for me, at six, standing on a chair, and tell me it was a game." She was quiet. "I told her Genny used to count my tablets into the dish so I didn't drop them. Every morning. For years. Before she was old enough to be at school."

The lamp hissed a little, in the kitchen behind us.

"What did she say?"

"Nothing," said Mother. "She wrote it down. Every word. In her book. Like a complaint about a roof." Mother almost smiled. "And then she asked me what I'd like her to do about it. The way she asks everyone. And I said nothing. Nothing at all. It's done. He fixed it." She nodded at me. "I said I didn't come to have anything done. I came because I'd been in her file for twenty years and she'd never been in mine."

"Do you forgive her?"

"No," said Mother. Simply. The way Holt had said it. "I don't think I'm going to. I don't think I need to." She looked out at the dark, toward Father's house at the end of the street, with its field, and its scarecrow, and the scarf. "But I'm not going to hate her either, Lucas. I haven't got room. I've got three grandchildren and two girls who still need a mother and a hospital that wants to look at my knees." She turned her ring on her finger. "I left her the bread. She said thank you. She said it was the best bread she'd had in twenty years. I told her it was Meg's. She said she knew. She said she used to send a clerk down to the ring street for it, once a week, because Meg's was the only thing in the dome that tasted like it was made by someone who wasn't afraid."

It was Voss who started the rest of it.

She didn't mean to. She'd come to the map room at the end of a long day, with her book under her arm, to tell Holt about a family on the north edge of the new city whose house had been put up on top of a Karst cave, so the floor sang at night, and they couldn't sleep, and they didn't want to complain because the Karst had been there first.

Okafor was there. And the General. And Luna, with the map. And me, because Luna had asked me to look at a wall on the far side of the park the Drenn young kept walking into.

Voss told Holt about the singing floor. Holt said he'd talk to the Karst queen. Voss wrote that down.

Then she stopped. With her pen above the page.

"It used to ask questions," she said.

Nobody knew what she meant. Okafor looked up from the map.

"The small polite one," said Voss. "When it first came. To replace the—" She glanced at the door, toward the canyon, toward the hollow where the Overseer sat at the mouth of its passage with its bread. "The other one. The tall one. When the small one first came to the dome, it used to ask me things. Not about the tithe. Not about the Accord. Small things." She put the pen down. "What the window was for. Why I kept the scissors in the drawer. What the word niece meant."

Nobody said anything.

"It stopped," said Voss. "One day. About a year after it came. I came into the office and it was sitting in my chair, the way it did, practising sitting the way I sit. And I asked it a question. Just a small one. I asked whether it would like the window open." She looked at the map without seeing it. "And it didn't answer. And it never asked me anything again. Not one question. Not ever. Not in all the years after." She was quiet. "As if somebody had told it not to."

Nobody moved.

Then Okafor took her slate from under her arm. And turned it over. To the side that said The children. Every one.

She looked at it for a long time.

"Dask," she said. Not looking up.

"Yes."

"The keeper. In the garden. What did it say about the children they take?"

I didn't need to think. I'd thought about it every day since. "The best are taken young. Before anyone can teach them to ask. And taught not to." I swallowed. "Taught to hold, and push, and carry the voice."

"And the small one. On Earth." Okafor looked at Voss. "It was small. It was neat. It wasn't a keeper. You said so yourself, Dask, in the hall. It was smaller."

"Yes."

"It used to ask," said Okafor. Very quietly. "And then it was taught not to."

Nobody said anything for a very long time.

"It's in a box," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "On the north shelf. With the others. I folded it." I could feel my hands. "I folded it fast. Not gently. In the chair. In front of everyone."

"I know," said Okafor. "I told you to."

We took it out at noon.

In the light. At the garden wall. The way we'd taken out the keeper. Okafor's rule: not in the dark, not in the hollow, not alone.

So: Okafor, and the General, and Mother, very straight, with her hands still. Sera beside me, with her hand on my arm, already testing how hot I was. Juno, for what was under the words. Genny, cross-legged on the grass with her hand flat on it, for what the grey was thinking.

And Voss.

Okafor had asked her. I hadn't expected that. Okafor had stood in the door of the complaints room that morning and said noon, the garden wall, and gone, and Voss had put her pen down and sat still for a long time and then picked it up again and finished the line she'd been writing.

And Wren. Nobody asked Wren. Wren came with Harriet in her sling and stood beside her aunt, and nobody told her to go.

The queen was at the wall above us, at full height. Gold and silver in the noon light. Very still. The Overseer sat at the edge of the garden with its long grey limbs folded and Thorne's rye in its hand and Garnet's old dog leaning on its leg, the way the dog always did now.

The box was very light.

I put it on the grass.

And opened it.

I unfolded it slowly.

Not like the keeper. I'd unfolded the keeper just enough to have a face. Just enough to talk.

This time I went slowly all the way. A fold at a time. The way the Drenn queen's housing had come off her arms. Out of the small grey stone, a little bigger. Then a little bigger. Then a shape. Then the shape I'd last seen in the Chancellor's chair at the head of the Senate Annex, neat and still and folded, with its hands in its lap.

It was sitting on the grass.

The way Voss sits. Very straight. Hands together.

No face. Just a smooth grey curve where a face would be.

It didn't push. I'd been ready for it to push. I'd had every bit of silver I had out round Wren, round Genny, round Harriet asleep in the sling, round everyone in the garden. It didn't push. It just sat.

Then it turned its smooth grey face. Not toward me.

Toward Voss.

"Chancellor," it said.

In Okafor's tongue. Very politely. The same voice it had used in the great hall.

Voss looked at it.

I don't know what I'd expected. I think I'd expected her to be afraid. It had sat in her chair. It had read the charges against her. It would have watched her die in front of the whole Senate, and written it down.

She wasn't afraid. She looked at it the way she'd looked at the people who came into her room at the end of the arrivals hall to complain about their roofs. Steadily. With her pen in her hand. As if she'd been doing this all her life and was quite prepared to do it a little longer.

"I'm not the Chancellor any more," said Voss. "They charged me. I'm a clerk. I sit in a room with the door open and people tell me what's wrong."

The smooth grey face stayed turned toward her.

"You sat in my chair," said Voss. "For a long time. You learned to sit like me. I watched you do it." She tilted her head. Very slightly. Exactly the way it was sitting. "You used to ask me questions. What the window was for. Why I kept the scissors in the drawer. What the word niece meant."

Nothing.

"I'd like to know why you stopped," said Voss.

Genny's hand moved on the grass.

Just slightly. Her fingers spread. Her eyes were shut.

"It's thinking," she said. Very quietly. "It's thinking it isn't allowed."

"Isn't allowed to what?" said Okafor.

"Answer," said Genny. "Not because of us. Because she asked it. She asked it a question. And it's been taught—" Genny's face tightened. "It's been taught that when you're asked a question, the asking is what's wrong. Not the answer. The asking. It doesn't know what to do with someone asking it."

The keeper had said it. Keepers do not answer questions. Keepers answer power.

I'd let the keeper see all of my silver. That had been power. That had made it answer.

I didn't want to do that to this one.

I didn't have to.

Voss put her pen down on the grass.

Then she did something none of us expected. She got down. Off her knees, where she'd been kneeling, very straight. Onto the grass. Sitting. The way it was sitting. Facing it. At the same height.

The way Ruth had sat across from Genny in the long room, at the same height, the first night.

"I know," said Voss. Very gently. "Somebody told you it wasn't allowed. I know what that's like. I had somebody tell me that too. For twenty years. I had papers put in front of me, and somebody told me that asking what they were for was what was wrong. So I stopped asking." She looked at it steadily. "And I signed them. And people died. Thousands of them. Their names are in a field over there, and I read one every morning." She paused. "I stopped asking. That was the worst thing I ever did. Worse than the signing. The signing came after."

The smooth grey face didn't move.

"So I'm going to tell you something," said Voss. "And you can do what you like with it. You're allowed to ask. Here. In this garden. You're allowed to ask anything you want. Nobody here will tell you the asking is wrong." She glanced up at Okafor. "Will they, Major?"

"No," said Okafor.

"General?"

"No, ma'am," said the General.

Voss looked back at the small grey shape on the grass.

"There," she said. "That's power. If that's what you're waiting for. That's the most power there is in this garden, and it's saying you can ask."

For a long time nothing happened.

The queen didn't move on the wall. The Overseer had stopped eating its bread. Garnet's old dog lifted its head off the Overseer's leg and looked at the grey shape on the grass with its ears forward.

Then Genny drew in a breath.

"It's going to," she whispered. "It's going to. It's—"

The small polite one spoke.

"Why did you stop?"

It was a question.

You could hear it. Even in the flat polite voice. It went up at the end, very slightly, the way a question does. As if it was trying the shape and didn't know if it would fit.

Voss didn't move. But her eyes went bright.

"Why did I stop signing?" she said.

The smooth grey face dipped. Once. Yes.

Voss looked at Wren. Standing behind her, with Harriet against her chest. Very still, the way Wren stood on the north wall, with her head tilted, listening to everything.

"Because my niece counted me," said Voss. "She counted every face in the hall. She was the only person who'd done that for me since I was a girl. And I was the last one. Six hundred and thirteen." Voss's voice was perfectly steady. "And when she got to me, I knew I'd rather be counted than be the Chancellor. I'd rather be one of six hundred and thirteen than in the chair."

The small polite one sat very still for a long time.

Then it asked another question.

"Will someone count me?"

Nobody breathed.

Then Wren stepped forward.

Past her aunt. Onto the grass. And knelt down in front of the small grey shape, with Harriet still asleep against her chest. The way she'd knelt down in front of her aunt in the middle of the Senate Annex, with her hand flat on her knee.

"I already did," said Wren.

The smooth grey face turned toward her. Slowly.

"You were in the hall," said Wren. "You were the one pushing. You found my door and you pushed it and I could feel you on the other side of it the whole time I was counting. Pushing. Very politely." Her head tilted. "You can't push on a door that long without somebody on the other side noticing what shape you are."

She put out her hand. Not touching it. Just near. Flat. The way you put your hand out to a horse you haven't met.

"I counted you," said Wren. "After my aunt. I didn't say it out loud. Nobody heard. I thought you'd want it said if you ever asked." She was quiet for a moment. "Six hundred and fourteen."

The grey came off its face.

Not all of it. Not the way the housing had come off the Drenn queen. Just the front. The smooth grey curve. It went soft, like a fold loosening in old grey on the Kethri world, and opened, a little at a time, very slowly, like someone taking off a mask they'd worn so long it had grown on.

And under it was a face.

A child's face.

Not human. Not anyone I'd seen. Not Kethri or Drenn or Hesk or Karst or any of the nine worlds on Garnet's map. Narrow, and pale, almost silver itself, with large dark eyes set wide apart. Very young. Younger than the twins had been when I left them in the penthouse. Younger than Genny on the roof stairs, when I promised.

And round each eye, a ring.

Silver. Whole.

Not cut. Never cut.

I looked inside.

I couldn't help it. I'd been holding still for so long, and I'd been so careful, and then there was a face, and I looked.

The grey went all the way through. Like a coat grown into the skin. Like the old Hand grown round its queen. But under the grey, all the way through, there was silver. Not program silver. Not made silver like the Overseer's, from grey and a piece of a queen and an order. Born silver. Whole. Branching fine and open from the heart outward, both sides, the way Dory's did. The way Ash's did. The way Trevor's frost-silver did, every time he laughed.

Born whole. Taken before anybody could teach it to ask.

And taught not to.

Sera's hand was very hot on my arm.

"Lucas," she said. Low. "Put it back."

I don't know what my face was doing. I know the garden wall was ringing under my feet, very slightly, the way it had rung when the keeper said most of what's at the top of us was once a child like yours. I know the grass round me had gone very still, every blade.

I put it back.

It took a long time.

When I could see again, Mother was kneeling on the grass beside Wren. Not touching the child. Just there. With her hands, her still hands, in her lap.

"How old are you?" said Mother.

The dark eyes turned to her.

"I don't—" It stopped. The flat voice wavered. Then, slowly, trying the shape again. "Is that a thing I am allowed to know?"

Mother didn't say anything for a moment.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

"Then I would like to," said the child. "Please."

Ruth Halloway put it in the ring that afternoon.

Not the child. Ruth wouldn't call it it. She stopped everyone who did. "If it asked how old it is," she said, very sharply, in the corridor, to a Kethri orderly who'd said it, "then it's a person, and a person's a she or a he or a they, and we'll find out which when she tells us. Until then, it's the patient."

So the patient lay in the ring, with Voss on one side and Wren on the other, very still, while the ring went round, not humming.

On the wall, a body. Narrow. Light-boned, like a bird. A heart with four parts, but in a different order from ours. And everywhere the grey, thick and grown in. And under it, all through, fine silver.

Ruth stood in front of it for a long time.

"Toby," she said.

Toby came in from the corridor. He listened.

"Fast," he said. "Faster than Dory's. Light. Like Harriet's, but—" He stopped. Frowned. "There's something else. Under it. Like a note held down. Like someone with their hand over a string so it can't ring."

"That's the grey," said Ruth. "Holding it."

She turned to me.

"Can you take it off?"

"Not without asking her," I said. "Not unless she wants it off."

"Then ask," said Ruth.

I asked.

In the long room, that evening. Just the patient on a bed with the lamps turned low, and Voss in the chair beside it, and Wren, and Genny on the floor, and me.

"The grey's grown into you," I said. "All the way through. It's holding you down. Like a hand over a string. I could take it off. A fold at a time. Slowly. It wouldn't hurt." I swallowed. "But only if you want it off."

The dark eyes looked at me for a very long time.

"Want," said the patient.

"Yes."

"I do not know how to do that."

Nobody said anything.

Then Genny, from the floor, very quietly.

"That's all right," she said. "Nobody here knew either, at first. My brother didn't know how to want things for a long time. He used to write lists. In a notebook." She held up her own. "I'll lend you one. You can write down things you might want, and then cross them out if you don't."

The patient looked at the notebook.

"Can I ask what a notebook is for?"

"Yes," said Genny. And told her.

The grey came off over eleven days.

A fold a morning. Two on the good mornings. The way I'd opened Mother's narrow places, long ago, out from the heart. Every morning I'd ask, would you like another one today, and every morning, after a long time, the answer would come. Yes. Please.

And every evening, after, Voss would sit with her. And answer questions.

There were a great many questions.

They came slowly at first. One an evening. Then two. Then, round about the sixth day, Voss came to the porch after dark looking more tired than I'd ever seen her look, even in the Senate Annex, and sat down on the step and said, "Forty-one tonight. What is the moon for. Why does the dog lean. What is bread. Why did the old woman clap. What is a niece." She put her face in her hands. "She asked what a niece is again. I told her the first time. Years ago. In the office. And she asked again, tonight, as if she'd never heard it. And I realized she'd been taught to forget it."

"What did you tell her?"

Voss took her hands away.

"I told her it's someone whose hair you cut," she said. "Every month. With the post scissors. Until she's twelve. And you sing to her while you do it, because it's the only place you sing." She looked out at the dark. "She asked if anyone would cut her hair. She's never had hair. Under the grey. Ruth thinks it might grow, now it's coming off."

"And if it does?"

"Then I'll cut it," said Voss.

The patient told us where she'd been taught on the ninth day.

Not because anybody asked. Okafor wouldn't let anybody ask. Okafor stood in the door of the long room every evening for a minute with her slate under her arm and looked, and went away again, and never asked one question. "She's learning to ask," Okafor said, when Luna wanted to know why. "If we start asking her things now, she'll think that's what asking's for."

The patient asked Garnet.

Garnet had been coming in the evenings since the third day, with her drawing board and the old brown dog, because Voss had told the patient about the dog that leaned, and the patient had asked if it could lean on her, and Garnet had brought it. The dog leaned. The patient sat very still, with the dog's weight against her narrow side, for an hour. Then she asked Garnet what she was drawing.

"Everyone," said Garnet. "I draw everyone. Everyone who's here. So I don't forget." She turned the board round. It was the patient. Sitting on the bed. With the dog. "That's you."

The patient looked at it for a long time.

"Can you draw where I was before?"

"I don't know where you were before," said Garnet.

"I can tell you."

So she told her. And Garnet drew it.

It took all evening. Genny sat on the floor with her hand flat on the bed and said, every so often, no, smaller, or the other way, when what the patient said and what the patient meant weren't quite the same thing. Juno came, with her eyes shut, and listened under the words.

What Garnet drew was a place with no sound.

Long, low halls of grey. Grey that wasn't asleep. Grey that had never been anything else. Rows and rows of small shapes in it, sitting still, very straight, with their hands together. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. Every one with a smooth grey curve where a face would be. Above them, high up, in the grey, somewhere they couldn't see, a voice. Not loud. Never loud. Telling them how to sit. How to hold. How to push. Telling them, over and over, the one thing.

Asking is not how it's done.

And outside the halls, through one narrow window that the patient had seen once, a long time ago, when she was very small and had been carried past it: the sky. Garnet drew that last. Black. With a great pale ring across it, edge on, like a blade. And under the ring, very low, two suns. One blue. One red. Going round each other.

"That is all I saw of it," said the patient. "Once."

Garnet put down her pencil.

She looked at the drawing. At the rows and rows of small shapes with their hands together, sitting straight.

"They're all children," said Garnet.

"Yes."

"Like you."

"Yes. From many worlds. Born whole. Taken before." A pause. "I was sent out early. To learn the humans. To sit in the chair. I was the smallest. The others were still there when I left."

"How many?" said Garnet.

The patient was quiet for a long time.

"I did not count them," she said. "We were taught not to count each other." She looked at Wren, in the corner, with her head tilted. "I would like to have."

The queens knew the sky.

Not ours. The oldest of them. The heavy queen, from the world where everything weighed ten times what it should, very slow, very old, humming on her stone shelf at the heart of the Steady. Juno took Garnet's drawing up the ramp at dawn and held it in front of her. And the heavy queen looked at it for a very long time, longer than she'd ever looked at anything, and said one word, through Juno, through the hello, down into every queen on Avalon.

There.

She didn't know the name. The Sorn don't name places, she said. They number them. But she knew the ring and the two suns. Before she was put into a pillar, a very long time ago, before she forgot almost everything, her own young had been taken there. Not all. The best. The ones born whole. She remembered the ring and the two suns because she had stood at the top of her heavy world and looked up at the sky, every night, for a long time, toward where they went. Listening. And never heard anything.

Not on Garnet's map, said the youngest queen. Not on any line. A different direction.

How far? said Okafor. Through Juno. Standing on the red glass at the foot of the ramp in the dawn light.

Further than the ninth, said the heavy queen. Not as far as the keepers' home. But far.

Okafor took the map out of her breast pocket. Garnet's map. Eight circles crossed out. The ninth line going out nearly off the edge of the page.

She turned it over.

And on the back, which was blank, she drew one circle. Small. Neat. In the corner.

And wrote inside it, very small, 10.

Then she turned the slate over. To the side that said The children. Every one.

She looked at it for a long time.

"I thought it meant ours," she said. To nobody. "When I wrote it. I thought it meant ours."

She called the map room that night. Everyone.

The General. Luna, with the map. Holt with his stick. Keir and Aster. Rory and Maura. Liam and Anja, with Rory the second asleep on Anja's shoulder and very slightly smoking. The twins, because Okafor said so. Wren, and Toby. Voss, at the back, by the door, where she always sat. Ruth, who'd never been in the map room, and looked round it once and said it's smaller than the Senate and sat down.

And Pip.

Nobody had asked Pip. Pip had come because Liam came, the way she came to everything Liam came to, and sat on the floor under the map table with her knees up and her chin on them, and Maura had looked at her and opened her mouth and then shut it again, because Pip was old enough now, very nearly, and Maura knew it, and didn't want to.

Okafor put the drawing on the table. Garnet's drawing. The halls. The rows. The ring and the two suns.

"This is where they're taught," she said. "The ones they take. Born whole. From every world they've ever held." She put her finger on the rows of small shapes. "This is what they wanted Article Fourteen for. This is what Dory would have been sent to. And Ash. And Trevor. And Harriet, and Rory, and every one of Edda's forty or fifty this year." She looked round the table. "This is where the keepers come from. Before they're keepers. When they're still children."

Nobody said anything.

"I'd like to go and get them," said Okafor. "All of them."

It wasn't a speech. Okafor never made speeches.

She just laid it out, the way she laid everything out. It was far. Further than anything we'd done. It wasn't on any line, so the Sorn wouldn't see it coming as part of a pattern. That was good. But it was the place the keepers came from. That was bad. Whatever was there, it would be the most guarded thing in the Sorn empire, because it was the thing the Sorn empire was made of.

"We don't know what's there," she said. "We know what one small child saw through one window, once. We need more than that."

"Scouts," said the General.

"Scouts," said Okafor. "One ship. Small crew. Not to fight. To look. To count." She looked at Wren. "To find out how many. And where. And what's standing over them."

"The Scarecrow," said Keir. At once. "She's the fastest. She doesn't look like a Hand. She doesn't look like anything they've got. And the grey in her doesn't hold anybody, so if they've got anything that listens for grey holding something—"

"—it won't hear her," said Aster. Her lamps very bright. "Who carries it?"

"The Drenn queen," said Keir. "She's in her room. She's always in her room."

"And can she leave?"

"Yes," said Keir. "Any time she likes."

Okafor nodded.

"The light-benders," she said. "Marlo and two of his. So nothing sees the ship. Juno, for the seed, so we can hear you. Wren, to count."

Wren didn't say anything. She just nodded once. Toby's hand tightened on hers.

"And Dask," said Okafor. "Because if there are thousands of children in that grey, and the grey is the kind that's never been anything else, I want the only person who's ever asked grey to be something else standing next to it." She looked at me. "To look. Not to fight. Not to open anything. Not to fold anything. To look, and to count, and to come home and tell me." A pause. "Can you do that?"

I thought about the rows of small shapes in Garnet's drawing. Sitting straight. Hands together. Thousands.

I thought about the patient asking if she was allowed to know how old she was.

"I don't know," I said.

Okafor looked at me for a long time.

"That's the first honest thing anyone's said in this room tonight," she said. "Good. You're going."

From under the table, Pip said, "Can I come?"

Every Calder in the room said "No" at exactly the same time. Rory and Maura and Liam and Sera, all four, in four different voices, like a chord.

Pip put her chin back on her knees.

"I was only asking," she said. "The lady in the shouting room says it's allowed."

Voss, by the door, put her hand over her mouth. I'm fairly sure she was laughing.

The patient asked to come.

I didn't know she'd heard. She hadn't been in the map room. But the long room was at the end of the hospital, and the hospital was on the square, and the map room's windows were open, and she'd been sitting at hers, with the dog against her side, listening. The way she'd been taught to listen in the halls, to the voice from above.

She asked Voss. That night. Voss told me on the porch.

"She said she knows the halls," said Voss. "She said she knows how the grey sits there, and how the voice comes down, and where the window is. She said she'd like to show you." Voss turned her pen over in her fingers. "She said: I would like to count them. I was taught not to. I would like to be the one who does."

I didn't say anything.

"It's the first thing she's wanted," said Voss. "Genny gave her a notebook. She's crossed out everything in it. To have hair. To go outside. To eat bread. All of it crossed out. Not because she doesn't want them. Because she doesn't know if she does." Voss looked at me. "That's the first thing in it she hasn't crossed out. She underlined it. Twice. Genny showed her how."

"She's a child," I said.

"Yes," said Voss. "So were they. So are they." She stood up. Slowly. She was older than she'd been when I first saw her on the screen in the dome, a long time ago, telling the cadets what an honour it was. "I sent my niece, Lucas. I signed her name. She was a child too." She tucked the pen into her coat. "I'm not telling you to take her. I'm telling you she asked. That's all I'm telling you. She asked."

She went down the steps.

At the bottom she stopped.

"She has hair," she said. Without turning round. "Did Ruth tell you? Very short. Silver. It started coming through on the fourth day." A pause. "I'm going to cut it. Next month. Whether she wants it cut or not. Every child should get to say they didn't want their hair cut."

Then she went home.

I went in and found Mother.

She was in the children's room, in the chair between the beds, the way she was most nights now. Dory asleep with Pebble at her feet. Ash beside her because she won't sleep anywhere else. Trevor in his cot under a thin crust of frost, sleeping with his mouth open. Mother had a blanket on her knee and Father's ring on her hand and her eyes shut, but she wasn't asleep. She never is when I come in.

I told her. All of it. The rows. The ring and the two suns. The scouts. The patient.

Mother didn't open her eyes for a long time.

When she did, she looked at Dory. At the frost-lattice of silver round her eyes in the dark, faintly lit. At Ash's branches. At Trevor's breath, crystallizing very slightly on the air.

"They'd have gone there," she said. "All three. If we'd stayed. If you hadn't gone. If your father hadn't—" She stopped. "They'd have sat in those halls with their hands together. And somebody would have told them, every day, that asking was wrong. And they'd have forgotten what a grandmother was. They'd have forgotten what a niece was."

"Yes," I said.

Mother turned her ring on her finger. Once. Slowly.

"Your father said something to Alaric," she said. "The night of the Accord. Thirty years ago. When they came out of the room into the corridor. Your father put his hand on his shoulder and said—"

"Then bring them home, Alaric," I said.

"He didn't mean the modified," said Mother. "I thought he did. All these years, I thought he did." She looked at Dory's sleeping face. "I think he knew. I think he'd seen the clause. Or by descent. I think he meant them. The ones who'd come after." She looked up at me. "Go and look, Lucas. Count them. And then come home and tell Okafor how many. And then go and get every one."

"All of them?"

"Every one," said Mother. "Not ours. Not humans. Every one." She shut her eyes again. "You're the one who stands in the field. That's what a scarecrow's for."

Days 1901–1948. Six hundred and fourteen.

Voss read one name aloud at the field every morning before the count. She's done the sums: if she lives as long as her mother she'll reach the end; she signed every one, so she can say every one. People cross the street; Gareth spat on the ground near her and she said thank you; she'd rather they spat than pretended. She told Wren not to stand next to her; it isn't hers to carry. Wren stands next to her every morning; I'm not finished, I don't have to do what anybody says.

Holt: sit down, Renata. Tens of thousands through the glass and every one with a complaint; I've been hearing them two years; you've been hearing them twenty. I didn't listen to most. Now you will. A room at the end of the arrivals hall with the door open; she writes every word down; they came to shout, then to see, then because she fixes things. She was the best clerk in the Senate eleven years before anyone noticed. Do you forgive her? No. But I'm old; I haven't time to not use somebody.

Mother took bread to the shouting room. She told her about the spoon; buttoning a coat; Garnet doing it at six on a chair, calling it a game; Genny counting tablets into the dish. Voss wrote it down like a roof. I didn't come to have anything done; I came because I was in your file twenty years and you were never in mine. Not forgiving; not hating either; no room; three grandchildren, two girls who still need a mother, and a hospital that wants my knees. Meg's bread; she used to send a clerk to the ring street for it once a week; the only thing in the dome made by someone who wasn't afraid.

Voss in the map room about a house on a singing Karst floor, then her pen stopped. It used to ask questions: what the window was for; why I kept the scissors in the drawer; what niece meant. A year after it came, it stopped. Not one question ever again. As if somebody told it not to. Okafor turned her slate to The children. Every one. Taken young, taught not to ask. It used to ask. I folded it fast, not gently. I know; I told you to.

Noon at the garden wall, in the light: Okafor, the General, Mother, Sera's hand, Juno, Genny's palm on the grass, Wren with Harriet, and Voss. The Overseer with its rye and the old dog. Unfolded slowly all the way. It didn't push. It turned to Voss: Chancellor. I'm a clerk now. You used to ask; I'd like to know why you stopped. Genny: it thinks the asking is what's wrong. Voss sat down on the grass at its height: I stopped asking too; that was the worst thing I ever did; the signing came after. You're allowed to ask here. Major? No. General? No, ma'am. That's power, if you're waiting for it. Why did you stop? Because my niece counted me; I'd rather be one of six hundred and thirteen than in the chair. Will someone count me? Wren knelt with Harriet: I already did; you were pushing on my door the whole time and I felt what shape you were. Six hundred and fourteen.

The grey came off its face. A child. Not any of the nine worlds: narrow, pale, nearly silver, large dark eyes wide apart, younger than the twins when I left the penthouse. A whole silver ring round each eye. Born silver, branching open both sides like Dory's, under grey grown through like a coat. The garden wall rang. Sera: put it back. It took a long time. Mother on the grass: how old are you? Is that a thing I am allowed to know? Yes. Then I would like to. Please.

Ruth: not it; the patient, till she tells us. Bird-light bones, four-part heart in a different order. Toby: faster than Dory's; something under it like a hand on a string so it can't ring. That's the grey. Not without asking her. Then ask. Want: I don't know how. Genny: nobody here did at first; my brother wrote lists; here's a notebook; write what you might want and cross it out if you don't. Can I ask what a notebook is for? Eleven days, a fold a morning, two on good ones; would you like another today? Yes. Please. Forty-one questions on the sixth night, niece again, taught to forget it; someone whose hair you cut every month with the post scissors and sing to. Will anyone cut mine? Then I'll cut it.

Okafor never asked; if we start asking now she'll think that's what asking's for. She asked Garnet, with the dog leaning: can you draw where I was before? Halls of grey that's never been anything else; rows of small shapes with smooth faces, hands together, hundreds, thousands; a voice above: asking is not how it's done. Through one narrow window once: black sky, a pale ring edge-on like a blade, two suns low, blue and red. They're all children. Yes, from many worlds, born whole, taken before; I was the smallest, sent early to learn the humans. How many? We were taught not to count each other. I would like to have.

The heavy queen on her stone shelf looked longest she's ever looked: There. Her best young went there before she was a pillar; she stood at the top of her heavy world every night listening that way and never heard anything. Not on Garnet's map; a different direction; further than the ninth, not as far as the keepers' home. On the blank back of the map Okafor drew one small circle in the corner: 10. The slate: I thought it meant ours.

The map room, everyone, Ruth (smaller than the Senate), Voss by the door, and Pip under the table with her chin on her knees, old enough now very nearly, and Maura knowing it. This is where they're taught; this is what Article Fourteen was for; where keepers come from before they're keepers. I'd like to go and get them. All of them. Scouts: the Scarecrow, fastest, looks like nothing they have, its grey holds nobody. The Drenn queen in her room; yes, she can leave. Marlo and two light-benders, Juno for the seed, Wren to count, and Dask: look, count, come home; not open, not fold. Can you? I don't know. First honest thing said in this room tonight. You're going. Pip: can I come? Four Calders, no, like a chord. I was only asking; the lady in the shouting room says it's allowed.

The patient heard through the open window. I would like to count them; I was taught not to; I would like to be the one who does. Every other line in her notebook crossed out: hair, outside, bread; that one underlined twice. Voss: I'm not telling you to take her; I sent my niece; I'm telling you she asked. She has hair now, very short, silver, since the fourth day. I'm going to cut it next month whether she wants it or not; every child should get to say they didn't want their hair cut.

Mother in the chair between the beds, Dory's frost-lattice faint in the dark, Ash's branches, Trevor's breath crystallizing. They'd have gone there, all three, and forgotten what a grandmother was. Your father to Alaric the night of the Accord: then bring them home. I thought he meant the modified. I think he'd seen the clause. I think he meant the ones who'd come after. Go and look. Count them. Then go and get every one. Not ours. Every one. You're the one who stands in the field. That's what a scarecrow's for.