Chapter 312 Who Carries It

Juno asked the queens in the morning, after the count.

She did it the way Okafor said. Not in the map room. On the red glass, at the edge of Scarecrow, where the hello came down at dawn and everyone stood to hear the names. She sat down cross-legged on the glass when the last name had been said and shut her eyes and held the seed in her hand. And she told them.

All of it. Odell, in the dark bay. Cinder, in rows. The slivers. The registry. The children the Council meant to make and pay the tithe with. And the list on old paper. Carver. Stillwater. Ashby. The north rim. Halden. Three million, one hundred thousand.

Then she asked.

Can Avalon hold them?

The queens didn't answer for a long time.

I could feel them, through the hello, thinking. Not the way people think. Slower. Wider. The way a whole forest thinks when the wind comes. Our queen at the garden wall. The first queen in the hollow. The heavy queen on her stone shelf in the Steady. The youngest, who was never slow, being slow. The Kethri queens in the forest out past the park. The Karst queen under it. The salt queen on her terrace and the furred queen on her cold hill and the moth queen in the dark grove, awake in the day for once, because Juno had asked.

The Drenn queen, in her room on the Scarecrow, with her door open.

Then the first queen answered. For all of them.

Avalon is very large, she said. You have lived on a small part of it. By the canyon. Because that is where we were. There is more. A great deal more. There are lands north past the ninth lake that no one has walked since before the Sorn came. There are plains east past the Hesk ranges that go further than the Hesk have ever gone. There is a coast, west, very far, that the salt young can taste on the wind and have never seen.

A pause.

Avalon can hold them, said the first queen. Avalon could hold ten times them. That is not the question you are asking.

Juno's eyes stayed shut.

What is the question? she said.

Who carries them, said the first queen. And whether she can leave.

Aster heard that. She was standing at the edge of the crowd with Keir, her lamps very low in the dawn. When the first queen said it, through Juno, out loud, in front of everyone, Aster's lamps went up so bright that people turned to look.

"That is my question," she said. Very quietly. "That is the one I ask."

"I know," said Keir. He put his hand on her limb. "She's been listening."

The question was ships.

Okafor laid it out that afternoon, in the map room. It was very simple and very hard, the way all Okafor's problems were.

Three ships. The Open Hand, the Steady, the Scarecrow. On the last crossing from Earth, with every deck empty and people sleeping in the fingers and on the floors, the three of them together had carried something over forty thousand. And the animals. And the orchards.

"Three million one hundred thousand," said Okafor. "At forty thousand a crossing. That's seventy-eight crossings." She wrote it on the slate. "If nothing goes wrong. If the Council lets them walk out. If every crossing takes a day. Which they won't." She put the stylus down. "Two years. More. And every week of it, another few thousand in rows on the Program floors."

"More ships," said the General.

"From where?" said Keir.

Nobody answered.

The Open Hand had been a Hand. A Sorn Hand, old and tired, that had chosen to be something else. The Steady had been another. The Scarecrow had been a new Hand over the Kethri forest, that fought, and then remembered what the Drenn queen had been, and decided it would rather be like her. Every ship we had was grey. Every ship we had was something the Sorn had built, that had changed its mind.

"There aren't any more Hands," said Luna. "Not near. Not ones we can ask."

"There's one," I said. "Three. Moored at the ring."

Everyone looked at me.

"Not yet," said Okafor. "Not those. If we touch those, the keeper at the top knows." She shook her head. "We need ships that aren't grey."

That was when Garnet put up her hand.

She was at the back of the map room, sitting on the floor with the old brown dog, drawing. Nobody had asked her to come. Nobody ever did. She'd come because Genny came, and Genny had come because Ruth had asked her, and Ruth had come because Ruth went to everything now that had anything to do with the slivers.

She put her hand up. Like at school.

Okafor looked at her.

"Dask," she said. "The younger one. Go on."

"Lucas makes things," said Garnet. "Out of anything. Out of stone and glass and iron. He made the whole city. He made the hospital in a season. He made the cisterns." She held up her drawing. It was a ship. Not grey. Long, and broad, with a wide flat belly, and a room in the middle, with a door on the inside. "Why can't he make the ship? Out of iron? And then ask a queen if she wants to carry it?"

Nobody said anything.

"The Scarecrow's grey," said Garnet, "because that's what it was made of. That's not why it goes. It goes because the Drenn queen's in it. Aster said. A ship goes because a queen's inside it and wants to go somewhere and takes her friends." She looked at Aster. "Didn't you say that?"

Aster's lamps had gone very bright.

"The first queen said it," said Aster. "In the hollow. A long time ago. A queen who can leave whenever she likes is not carrying a ship. She is choosing to go somewhere and taking her friends."

"So it doesn't need to be grey," said Garnet. "It needs to be a room. With a door on the inside. And a queen who wants to go."

Keir sat down very slowly.

"Iron," he said. "Iron won't fly."

"Neither will grey," said Garnet. "Not on its own. You said. It's the queen."

"The grey listens," said Keir. "When the queen sings. The whole ship listens. That's how it moves. The whole thing goes with her because the grey wants to. Iron doesn't want anything."

"Iron listens to Lucas," said Genny. From beside her sister. Very quietly. "It listens to me. I asked it. Iron's stone, mostly. It's very old and it doesn't say much. But it listens." She looked at Aster. "If a queen sang to it, it would listen to her too. Not the way grey does. Slower. It'd take longer to get it to go. But it'd go."

Everyone looked at Aster.

Aster's lamps had gone completely white.

"This unit would like to try," she said.

So we tried.

On the plain, past the Scarecrow, where the red glass went flat and wide out toward the Hesk ranges. Keir drew it in chalk, the way he'd drawn the Scarecrow, so big you had to stand on the porch to see it. Not like Garnet's drawing. Like Garnet's drawing after Keir and Aster and Safi and the General and Bram Okonedo, who'd come because somebody said water tanks, had all argued over it for three days.

Long. Broad. Flat-bellied, so she could set down anywhere. Decks, one above another, with rooms. Not bunks. Rooms. With doors that closed, from the inside, because Voss said three million people who'd been told where to sleep for thirty years ought to get to close a door. Water tanks Bram drew himself, with the outflows on the right side. A hold for animals. A hold for seeds.

And in the middle, at the heart, a room for a queen.

Not a housing. A room. With rests at the height of whatever she wanted to rest. With a window. With a door, on the inside, that she could open or close or leave open. And nothing outside it. Keir wrote that underneath, in big letters, the way he had on the Scarecrow.

Nobody opens this door except the one inside.

I made her out of iron.

It took eleven days. Not because iron was hard. Because she was big. Bigger than the Steady. Bigger than anything I'd made except the cisterns. I stood on the plain every day from the dawn count to dark and asked the iron in the ground under the red glass to come up, and be a keel. And then a hull. And then decks. And then a room in the middle with a door on the inside.

Bram walked round her every evening with his list. Keir crawled through her every night with a lamp. Garnet painted the inside of the queen's room, very carefully, in the colours of every brood on Avalon, so whoever came to sit in it would see their own.

Genny sat in the middle of the hull, every afternoon, with her hand flat on the iron, and listened.

"It's very slow," she told me. "It doesn't know what it is. It thinks it's still in the ground." She frowned. "It's not unhappy. It's just—asleep. Like the heavy young. It'll take a long time to wake up."

"Will it wake up?"

"If someone sings to it," said Genny. "Long enough."

On the twelfth morning, after the count, Juno asked who would like to try.

Not who will. Not who must. Okafor had been very clear. Okafor had said it to Juno in front of everyone, so everyone heard. "Ask. Don't tell. If nobody wants to, we'll think of something else."

So Juno sat on the glass with her eyes shut and the seed in her hand and asked every queen on Avalon.

There is a ship on the plain. It is iron. It does not know what it is. It is very slow. It has a room in the middle with a door on the inside. Would any of you like to sit in it and sing to it, and see if it will go, and go to the human world, and bring people home? You can leave whenever you like.

For a long time nothing happened.

Then the ground shook.

Very slightly. Once. Then again. Then again. Slowly. The way it shook when something very heavy walked.

Everyone on the plain turned.

Out of the Steady's open ramp, very slowly, came the heavy queen.

She'd never left the Steady. Not since she came back. She lived on her stone shelf at the heart of the ship, humming, the way she'd lived for a very long time in a pillar before that. She was small and dense and grey and slow, the shape of a stone that walks. She didn't fly. She didn't hurry. She'd never, in all the time anyone had known her, done anything she didn't have to.

She came down the ramp of the Steady.

And out onto the red glass.

And across the plain. Toward the iron ship. Very, very slowly. One step. Then a long time. Then another. Her young came out behind her, small and dense and slow, in a line, and followed.

It took her all morning.

Nobody left. Two hundred thousand people, and the broods along the rim, and the Kethri in their ranks on the wind, and they all stood on the plain and watched a small grey queen walk very slowly across the red glass toward a ship that didn't know what it was.

She reached the ramp at noon.

She stopped at the bottom. And looked up it. At the iron. At the dark inside.

Then she spoke. Through Juno. Through the hello. Very slowly. Every word a long time coming.

My best young went to that place, said the heavy queen. The place under the ring. You saw it. You counted. A long pause. I stood at the top of my world every night and listened that way. I never heard anything. I could not go. I was too heavy. I have always been too heavy.

Another pause. Very long.

I am heavy, she said. Iron is heavy. Iron does not know what it is. It thinks it is still in the ground. Her great slow head turned toward Genny, at the foot of the ramp. The girl who asks says it is asleep. Like my young. Like me. For a very long time.

I know how to sing to something heavy that thinks it is still in the ground.

She went up the ramp.

It took her the whole afternoon to reach the room in the middle.

When she got there she stood in the door for a long time. Looking at the rests. At the window. At the colours Garnet had painted on every wall, every brood, the Teeming and the Kethri and the Drenn and the salt young and the furred and the moth, and in one corner, small, the heavy young, grey and dense and slow, exactly right.

She went in.

She didn't close the door. She lowered herself onto the floor, not the rests, the floor, flat, heavy, the way she'd lain on her stone shelf. And put her head down against the iron.

And began to hum.

Nothing happened for three days.

She hummed. Day and night. Very low, so low you felt it in your feet more than heard it. Her young sat round her in a ring with their heads against the iron too, humming with her.

Genny went in every afternoon and sat with her hand flat on the deck.

On the first day: "It's still asleep."

On the second: "It's still asleep. But it's dreaming. It's dreaming about the ground."

On the third day, Genny came out of the iron ship at dusk with her notebook against her chest and her face very strange, and walked straight across the plain to me, where I was standing with Okafor at the foot of the Scarecrow.

"It asked her something," said Genny.

"What?"

"It asked her what it was," said Genny. "If it wasn't in the ground any more. It's never asked anything. Iron doesn't. It's been in the ground since before Avalon had a sky." She swallowed. "And she told it."

"What did she tell it?"

"She told it it was a ship," said Genny. "She told it it was going to the human world. To bring people home." Genny's eyes were very bright. "And then she told it its name."

On the morning of the fourth day, the iron ship lifted off the plain.

Not far. The width of a hand. Then a foot. Then hung there, swaying very slightly, enormous, dark, with the sun coming up behind her and the red glass under her and every person on Avalon looking up.

And from inside, very low, through the iron, through the ground, through everyone's feet, a hum.

Two voices. The heavy queen. And under her, slower, deeper, very new, like something that had just learned it had a voice and wasn't sure what to do with it, the ship.

Aster's lamps were so bright you couldn't look at them.

"Who carries it?" she said. Very quietly. To nobody. To the ship.

From the open door of the room in the middle, through Juno, through the hello, so slow it took a whole breath for every word:

I do. And she carries me. We are both very heavy. That is why it works.

"And can she leave?"

Whenever she likes, said the heavy queen. She has decided she would like to go somewhere first.

Garnet painted her name on the side that afternoon. In gold. Very big. Standing on Keir's tallest ladder, with the old brown dog barking at the bottom.

The heavy queen had told Genny. Genny had told Garnet. Garnet hadn't told anyone. She just climbed up and painted it, and when she climbed down everyone stood back on the plain and read it.

GROUND.

"Because it's where she came from," said Garnet, when Okafor asked. "And because it's what she's going to stand on, for everyone. When they come off. The first thing." She wiped gold off her hands onto her trousers. "Somewhere to stand."

After that, the queens came.

Not all at once. Not all of them. Some of them couldn't. The moth queen couldn't bear the light of a crossing. The salt queen couldn't go anywhere with that much water in the tanks. The Karst queen was too frightened of the dark between, and said so, very honestly, through Juno, and nobody asked her again.

But they came.

The furred queen, from her cold hill, who said she knew what it was to be cold and pulled in harness and wanted to bring someone home who'd been cold too. The marsh queen, tall and grey-blue on her long legs, who said very little but walked down to the plain and stood on one leg at the foot of the next iron ship and waited. Three of the Kethri queens, together, who said they'd carry one between them and sing it across on the wind. The coral queen, who asked if the ship could have a pool in the room, and Bram put one in, with the outflow on the right side.

And the Drenn queen, who already had a ship, and said she would carry the Scarecrow to the human world as many times as anyone liked and stand over the dome with her arms out every time.

Eleven ships, in the end. Iron. With a room in the middle and a door on the inside.

Plus the three we had.

Fourteen.

Okafor stood in the map room in front of the slate with all of it on. Fourteen ships. Every queen's name. Every ship's name, the ones the queens had told Genny and Garnet had painted. Ground, and Harness, and Long Legs, and Wing, and Pool, and the rest.

She did the sums again.

"Fourteen," she said. "The iron ones bigger than the old ones. A hundred thousand a crossing. Maybe more." She wrote. "Thirty-one crossings. A crossing a week, if the queens don't tire." She looked at it. "Seven months. Eight."

Nobody said anything.

"That's still a long time," said Ruth. From the door. "For the ones in rows."

"Yes," said Okafor.

"And the halls," I said. "Fifty-eight thousand."

Okafor looked at me for a long time.

"The halls next," she said. "Not first. Next." She put her hand flat on the slate. "They're not dying in rows, Dask. They're being taught. That's terrible. It's slower than dying." Her voice didn't change at all. "The ones in rows on the Program floors are dying this week. And next week. And the week after. I'll bring every one of the fifty-eight thousand home. I'll stand under the ring myself. But I'm not leaving people to die in rows while I do it."

I didn't say anything.

By the door, Tally stood up.

She came to the table. Very straight. With Genny's notebook. And she looked at Okafor, and then at me.

"They can wait," she said.

Nobody answered.

"In the halls," said Tally. "They can wait. They are very good at waiting. It is the only thing we were taught that was not to stop asking." She opened the notebook. To the page that said THEM. To the one mark. "She has been waiting a long time. She put her finger on my place for a long time after I was gone. She will keep doing it." Tally looked up at Okafor. "The ones on the Program floors cannot wait. Odell said. They do not wake up."

She turned to the next page. EARTH. With thirty-one marks.

"These first," said Tally. "Then her."

Okafor looked at her for a very long time.

"Thank you, Tally," she said.

"You are welcome, Major," said Tally. Carefully. She'd learned it from Voss. "I would like to be on the first ship. To count them on."

"Halloway?" said Okafor.

Ruth's mouth was a line.

"She weighs less than Dory," said Ruth. "She's had the grey off for half a season. She's been asking questions for less than that."

"Is there a medical reason she can't?"

Ruth looked at Tally. At the notebook. At the thirty-one marks.

"No," she said. "Damn it. No."

Voss counted Avalon.

Not the way Wren did. Not with a note. Okafor asked her to, in front of everyone, in the map room. "You ran four million for twenty years. I'd like to know if two hundred thousand want this. Not the Council of Avalon. Not the map room. Everyone."

So Voss did what she'd done in the Senate for eleven years before anybody noticed her. She made it simple.

Every house on Avalon got a stone. Two stones. One red glass, one grey. Garnet and Genny made them, thousands, on the plain, one afternoon. Every brood got stones too. Through their queens. Every person over the age they'd have been a cadet, and every brood, put one stone in a box at the end of the arrivals hall, in the room with the door open. Red if yes. Grey if no.

Three days.

Voss sat at the table in the room with the door open the whole time, from first light to dark, and didn't say a word to anyone who came in. Just watched them put their stone in the box. And wrote down how many.

People came. All of them. Third crossing and dome and Scarecrow and first wave. Bram, who put his stone in and said "water for three million, give me a year" and walked out. Meg's daughter, with flour on her hands. Gareth, who'd spat on the ground near Voss in the spring. He came in and put his stone in the box, red, very deliberately, where she could see it.

"Nobody asked me," he said. To her. Not kindly. Not unkindly either. "When they sent me. Somebody ought to be asked." And went out.

Voss wrote it down.

The Hesk came with their stones in their jaws. The Kethri dropped theirs from the air through the open window. The Karst young brought their queen's up from under the floor of the arrivals hall, which nobody had known you could do. Pebble brought our queen's, very solemnly, in one forelimb, with Dory a step behind him.

Wren counted the stones.

Voss could have. Voss had. But Okafor asked Wren, so that it wasn't only Voss's number. So Wren sat in the room at the end of the arrivals hall on the last night with the box tipped out on the floor and counted every stone, red and grey, the way she'd counted fifty-eight thousand in the halls under the ring.

It took her until midnight.

"Red," she said. Out loud. To Voss and Okafor and me, in the door. "A hundred and ninety-three thousand, four hundred and eight." She moved her hand. "Grey. Nineteen thousand and twelve." She looked at the grey pile. "And every brood. Every one. Red."

Okafor nodded slowly.

"Nineteen thousand," she said.

"They're frightened," said Voss. From the table. Very quietly. "Most of them. I watched every one. They're frightened there won't be enough. Water. Room. Bread. Frightened that three million people will come and the place they've only just stopped being frightened in will be full of people who haven't." She closed her book. "They're not wrong to be frightened. I'd want them told they're not wrong."

"I'll tell them," said Okafor.

So at midnight that night, I sat in front of the screen in the map room with Ruan's relay open, and Okafor beside me this time, and the General, and Luna, and Voss by the door with Tally.

The screen went grey. Then the dark bay. Then Odell.

He'd been there every night. Every midnight. For eighteen nights. Looking at the camera. Waiting for the box to say something more than listening.

He looked at all of us. At Okafor.

"Major," he said. He knew her. Of course he knew her. Everyone in the old suit bay had known Okafor.

"Odell," said Okafor. "Tell them yes."

Odell didn't move.

"Yes," he said. As if he wasn't sure he'd heard.

"Yes," said Okafor. "Fourteen ships. A crossing a week, starting in a month. Every dome on your list. Every person who wants to come. Not a few at a time. All of them." She leaned forward. "Tell them to be ready. Tell them to pack light. Tell them to bring their dogs and their seeds and their grandmothers and whatever they can carry, and nothing they'd be afraid to lose. Tell them there's water. There's bread. There's room. Tell them there's a sky."

Odell put one burned hand over his face.

"And tell them this," said Okafor. "Nineteen thousand people on Avalon put a grey stone in a box and said no. Because they're frightened there won't be enough. Tell them that. Tell them people here are frightened too. Tell them they're not coming to somewhere nobody's frightened. They're coming to somewhere people are frightened and said yes anyway."

Odell took his hand away from his face.

"I'll tell them," he said. "All of it." He looked at the camera for a long moment. "Major. The thirty-one. The ones with the housings. With the holes in the back."

"First ship," said Okafor. "Halloway's waiting. And the twins. And Voss." She paused. "And Tally."

Odell's face did something.

"I told them," he said. "Like I said I would. That someone's counting." He looked down at his hands. "One of them asked me what counting was."

By the door, Tally went very still.

"He asked," she said. Very quietly. "He asked something."

"He did," said Odell. "First thing he's ever asked anyone."

That was when the window went dark.

All of it. The whole map room window, onto the square. One moment the stars and the silver tree and the lamps along the hospital corridor. The next, black. Thick. Pressing against the glass.

Then the thunder.

Not distant. Not a little cloud the size of a hat. A crack so loud the slate jumped on the table and Luna's pen rolled off onto the floor and every dog in the city started barking at once.

And through the black, down the street, from our crooked house at the end of it, a voice I'd know anywhere. Shouting. The way she shouted at weather that wasn't listening.

"LUCAS—"

And under it, smaller, very clear, a second voice. Through the hello. Through every queen on Avalon. Through me.

Dory.

Papa. Mama's started. Come home. Come home now. I'm holding everything.

The rain hit the window like a wall.

I was already gone.

Days 2085–2104. Who carries it.

After the count on the red glass Juno told the queens everything and asked: can Avalon hold them? The queens thought the way a forest thinks when the wind comes. The first queen for all: you've lived on a small part, by the canyon; lands north past the ninth lake no one has walked since before the Sorn; plains past the Hesk ranges further than the Hesk have gone; a coast far west the salt young taste on the wind. Avalon could hold ten times them. That's not the question. What is? Who carries them, and whether she can leave. Aster's lamps went so bright people turned: that is my question. She's been listening.

Okafor: three ships carried something over forty thousand on the last crossing; three million one hundred thousand is seventy-eight crossings, two years, more, and every week another few thousand in rows. More ships from where? Every ship we have is grey, something the Sorn built that changed its mind. There are three at the ring. Not those; the keeper would know. We need ships that aren't grey.

Garnet on the floor with the dog put her hand up like at school. Lucas makes things out of anything; why can't he make the ship out of iron and ask a queen if she wants to carry it? The Scarecrow goes because the Drenn queen's in it, not because it's grey. A queen who can leave whenever she likes is choosing to go somewhere and taking her friends. Keir: iron won't fly; grey listens, iron doesn't want anything. Genny: iron listens to Lucas; it listens to me; iron's stone mostly, old, doesn't say much; if a queen sang to it, it'd listen, slower. Aster's lamps white: this unit would like to try.

Keir's chalk on the plain toward the Hesk ranges after three days of everyone arguing, Bram for the tanks: long, broad, flat-bellied to set down anywhere; rooms, not bunks, with doors that close from the inside, because Voss said people told where to sleep for thirty years ought to get to close a door; a hold for animals, a hold for seeds; in the middle a room for a queen, rests, a window, a door on the inside. Nobody opens this door except the one inside. Eleven days asking the iron under the red glass up into keel, hull, decks. Garnet painted the queen's room in every brood's colours. Genny's hand on the iron: it thinks it's still in the ground; asleep like the heavy young; it'll wake if someone sings to it long enough.

The twelfth morning Juno asked, not told: would any of you like to sit in it and sing and go to the human world and bring people home; you can leave whenever you like. The ground shook, slowly, the way it does when something very heavy walks. Out of the Steady's ramp, the heavy queen, who has never left her stone shelf nor done anything she didn't have to; her young in a line behind. All morning across the plain; two hundred thousand and the broods and the Kethri on the wind watching and nobody leaving. At the ramp at noon: my best young went to that place; I listened every night and never heard; I could not go; I have always been too heavy. Iron is heavy; it thinks it is still in the ground; the girl who asks says it is asleep like my young, like me. I know how to sing to something heavy that thinks it is still in the ground.

All afternoon to reach the room; she saw the colours and, small in a corner, the heavy young exactly right; lay flat on the floor, door open, head to the iron, humming so low you felt it in your feet, her young round her. Three days. Genny: asleep; dreaming about the ground; then at dusk on the third: it asked her what it was, if it wasn't in the ground; iron doesn't ask; it's been in the ground since before Avalon had a sky; she told it it was a ship going to bring people home, and told it its name. The fourth morning it lifted a hand's width, a foot, swaying, two voices humming through everyone's feet, the queen and under her a very new one unsure what to do with its voice. Who carries it? I do, and she carries me; we're both very heavy; that's why it works. Can she leave? Whenever she likes; she's decided she'd like to go somewhere first. Garnet on Keir's tallest ladder in gold: GROUND. Where she came from; what they'll stand on first when they come off. Somewhere to stand.

Then the queens came. Not the moth queen, the light; not the salt queen, the water; not the Karst queen, too frightened of the dark between, said honestly, and nobody asked again. The furred queen, who knows cold and harness. The marsh queen on one leg at the foot of the next. Three Kethri queens carrying one between them on the wind. The coral queen, who asked for a pool; Bram put one in, outflow on the right side. The Drenn queen will carry the Scarecrow and stand over the dome with her arms out as many times as anyone likes. Eleven iron, three old: fourteen. Ground, Harness, Long Legs, Wing, Pool, and the rest.

Okafor's sums: a hundred thousand a crossing, thirty-one crossings, one a week if the queens don't tire; seven months, eight. Ruth: still a long time for the ones in rows. And the halls. The halls next, not first; they're being taught; terrible; slower than dying; the ones in rows are dying this week. I'll stand under the ring myself. I'm not leaving people to die in rows while I do it. Tally stood: they can wait; they're very good at waiting; it's the only thing we were taught that wasn't to stop asking; she'll keep putting her finger on my place. EARTH, thirty-one marks. These first, then her. Thank you, Tally. You are welcome, Major; from Voss. I'd like to be on the first ship to count them on. Halloway? Lighter than Dory, half a season off the grey. A medical reason? No. Damn it. No.

Voss counted Avalon: everyone, not the map room. Two stones to every house, red glass and grey, thousands made by the twins in an afternoon; every brood through its queen; a box in the room with the door open; three days; she wrote down how many and said nothing. Bram: water for three million, give me a year. Meg's daughter with flour on her hands. Gareth, who spat near her in the spring, put a red stone in where she could see: nobody asked me when they sent me; somebody ought to be asked. The Hesk with stones in their jaws; Kethri dropping theirs through the window; the Karst up through the floor, which nobody knew you could do; Pebble with our queen's, Dory a step behind. Wren counted them till midnight: red, a hundred and ninety-three thousand four hundred and eight; grey, nineteen thousand and twelve; every brood red. Voss: frightened there won't be enough, that the place they've only just stopped being frightened in will fill with people who haven't. They're not wrong. I'd want them told they're not wrong.

Midnight, the eighteenth night Odell has waited. Major. Tell them yes. Fourteen ships, a crossing a week, starting in a month, every dome, everyone who wants to come. Pack light; dogs, seeds, grandmothers, nothing they'd be afraid to lose; there's water, bread, room, a sky. And nineteen thousand said no because they're frightened; tell them they're coming to somewhere people are frightened and said yes anyway. The thirty-one with the holes? First ship; Halloway, the twins, Voss, and Tally. I told them someone's counting. One asked me what counting was. First thing he's ever asked anyone. Tally very still: he asked something.

Then the map room window went black, thick, pressing on the glass; thunder so loud the slate jumped and every dog in the city barked; Risa shouting from the crooked house at the end of the street like at weather that isn't listening: LUCAS. And through every queen on Avalon, very clear, Dory: Papa. Mama's started. Come home now. I'm holding everything. Rain like a wall. I was already gone.