Chapter 318 The Token

The seventh crossing went to Stillwater.

It was the dome Odell had named first, that night on the screen in the dead suit bay, reading off his old paper. Carver. Stillwater. Ashby. A dome on a lake. Or what had been a lake, before the war, before the poison came down out of the sky and turned everything outside the glass to ash. They'd built the dome over the water, the people of Stillwater, so that half of it stood on the shore and half of it stood on stilts out over the lake, and the lake was still there. Under the glass. Black and very still and full of things nobody had named, because nothing had been able to live in it for thirty years except what had been trapped inside when the dome went up.

A hundred and forty thousand. They came out over the water on long wooden walkways, in boats, carrying their children on their shoulders. And Kwame Osei stood at the edge of the Long Legs' ramp and looked at the black lake under the glass, and put his hands out, and asked it a question.

It answered.

He told me about it afterward. On the porch, with Kwame his grandson asleep on his chest, the way Kwame slept on mine. He said the lake had been sitting under that glass for thirty years in the dark, not going anywhere, not turning, the way water hates. He said it had forgotten it was a lake. It thought it was a hole full of something.

"So I told it," said Kwame. "What it was. Where the other water is. That there's sky. That rivers go somewhere." He looked down at his grandson. "It was very glad. Water's always glad when somebody tells it it's allowed to move."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing," said Kwame. "I can't move a lake eleven light-years." He shook his head slowly. "But I told it that when everyone's gone, if anybody ever comes back, it should let them know it's still there. That it remembers." He smiled. "It said it would."

The eighth went to a dome called Bellmouth, up in the hills to the east of Carver, very old, half collapsed, with forty thousand people living in the half that wasn't. The ninth went to the Reach, a long thin dome strung along the bottom of a dry valley like a string of beads, three hundred thousand. The tenth went back to New Halcyon, and took three hundred and sixty thousand, because the Council had stopped trying to lock anything, and people just walked out of every door in the glass all day long.

The eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth.

I stopped counting. Wren didn't. Wren counted every one. And Tally counted every one. And between them, at night, in the map room, they put the numbers on Luna's list, and Luna put them on the map, and the map grew.

That was what I remember most about that season. The map.

It hung on the wall of the map room where Holt's map had hung, the big one, with the fourteen queens and the red line. But Holt's map was gone. Holt had taken it down himself, one morning, and rolled it up very carefully and put it in the corner. "It's the old one," he said. "It's what we had. It was right for then." And he'd put up a new one. Blank. All of Avalon. Every coast, every range, every lake, as far as Genny and the queens could tell us.

And every week Luna put new marks on it.

North of the ninth lake, a town. Then another. Then a string of them along a river nobody had named, going north into the cold. Carver's, and Halden's, and the north rim's. East past the Hesk ranges, out onto the plains that went further than the Hesk had ever gone, the Reach, strung out along a valley that looked very like the one they'd come from. West, toward the coast, Ashby, still underground, and Stillwater, on the shore of a lake the furred queen had shown them, very clear, very cold, very glad.

Every town crooked. Every town different.

And between them, roads. Just the first ones. Just enough to walk on.

"There'll be cities," said Luna. Standing in front of it one night with her pen. "In ten years. In twenty. Not the way you'd build them. The way they'll build them." She looked at the map. At all of it. "Three million people, Lucas. On a world with a sky. Building crooked houses."

"Two million, one hundred thousand," said Wren. From the door. "So far. Not counting babies. There've been a lot of babies."

There had.

Everyone who came through the glass and stayed long enough to sit on Ruth's ward, or Edda's, and be finished, was having children. Every child born whole. Every child stronger than its parents, with both their powers, with silver round its eyes and markings up its arms. Edda had stopped writing them in the green book. There were too many. She had a clerk now, from Carver, who wrote them in a new book, a plain brown one, very thick. And Okafor had stopped writing them on her slate.

She'd written one thing instead. At the top of the new slate, the big one, on the wall beside Luna's map.

Every one.

Just that.

The twins were doing four a day now.

The slivers were quiet. That was the thing. Since Halden, since every queen on Avalon had sung with Genny through the doors, the slivers in every housing on Ruth's ward had been quiet. And quiet slivers didn't hold on. The roots let go. Not easily. Not on their own. But when Garnet's silver went in through Odell's hole and Genny asked them, very quietly, which way they'd gone in, they told her, and let go.

Four a day. Then five. Then six, on the good days. And still the eighth day for sleeping.

"I don't need the eighth day," said Garnet. At supper. Very cross. "I'm not tired. I'm not even a little bit tired."

"You fell asleep in your soup on Thursday," said Genny.

"That was once."

"Twice," said Mother. From the stove. Without turning round. "The other time was Monday. You had peas on your face."

Garnet put her face in her hands.

"Eighth day," said Mother. Very calmly. "Ruth said."

And every housing gave a sliver.

And every sliver went on a white cloth on the floor of the long room. On the right line. Genny's drawing had grown so big it didn't fit in her notebook any more. Garnet had drawn it on the wall of the long room instead, from floor to ceiling, in chalk, in every colour she had. Lines going out from a dot in the middle, like the spokes of a wheel, like the nine had been, but many more. Forty-one lines by the end of the season. Forty-one queens. And on every line, the slivers. One, or three, or twenty.

And the longest line. Going out past all the others. Nearly to the corner of the wall.

THE FIRST NOTE.

Tally's.

She was at every crossing. Like she'd said.

Not on the ramp. Not counting people on, any more; Wren did that, and the clerks from Carver, and Voss. Tally went with Ruth and the twins and Sigmund and Neve Ashworth to wherever the housings were. The pumps. The Program halls. The soldiers' barracks in the Reach, where the Council had sent eighty in housings to keep order and nobody had told them to stop keeping it.

And when the twins took a housing off, and the sliver came out, Tally was there. Kneeling. Very still. Listening.

Most of them weren't her queen.

She'd listen, and her face wouldn't change, and she'd say, "Not her," very quietly, and Genny would put the sliver in a small box with a cloth in it, for the long room, for whatever line it belonged to.

But sometimes.

Sometimes the sliver came out and Tally's face changed. Her silver hummed. Very faint. And the sliver in Garnet's hand hummed back.

And Tally would take out the notebook, and turn to THE FIRST NOTE, and make a mark.

Twelve. In Stillwater, from a woman who'd worked the boats.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, in Bellmouth, all from one family. Three brothers. Who'd come to the Program floors together for the same ration card, Odell said, and been put in rows together, and fitted together, and sent home to Bellmouth together to work the old mine.

Twenty-three, in the Reach.

Thirty-one.

Thirty-eight, by the end of the season.

"How many does she need?" Tally asked Genny. One night. In the long room. Kneeling by the long line on the wall, by the thirty-eight slivers on their white cloths underneath it, humming.

Genny was on the floor beside her. With her notebook. She'd been sitting with the slivers every night. Singing to them. Listening.

"I don't know," she said. "I still don't know." She looked at the line. "But she's louder. With every one. The nine were faint, Dot said, when they first started pointing home. Like the first note toward Voss's seed. This is—" She stopped. "This is louder than that. She's starting to remember things."

"What things?"

Genny shut her eyes. Put her hand flat on the floor beside the thirty-eight.

"Water," she said. After a long time. "Green water. Very shallow. Warm. And something tall that grows in it. Like reeds. Silver at the tips." She opened her eyes. "And young. Lots of young. Very small. Pale. With—" She stopped. Looked at Tally. "With large dark eyes. Set wide apart."

Tally didn't say anything for a long time.

"That is my world," she said at last. "I think. I do not remember it. But that is what I would remember. If I could." She looked at the thirty-eight. "She is remembering it for me."

Jory went to every crossing too.

He'd asked. Ruth had said damn it and let him. And he went where the housings were, with Tally, and when a housing came off and the person in the bed or on the floor or at the pump took their first breath without the sliver pushing, Jory was the second face they saw. After Tally.

He didn't say much. He was never going to say much. But he'd sit down beside them, wherever they were, on the floor of a barracks or the edge of a boat or the cold stone by a pump, and show them his neck. The thin pale line round it. Almost gone.

"I had one," he'd say. Very slowly. Finding each word. "Like yours. It was in my back. It told me what to do." And then: "It wasn't your fault. Whatever it made you do. And it wasn't its fault either." And he'd point at the sliver, in Garnet's hand, or Genny's box. "That's a piece of somebody. A queen. They broke her up and put her in us. She didn't want to push. She didn't know how to stop."

Most of them didn't understand. Not at first.

But some of them did. And some of them cried. And some of them, after a long time, put out one finger, very lightly, and touched the sliver that had been in their back. And said something to it. Or didn't.

Jory always waited. However long it took.

Neve Ashworth learned to button her coat wrong.

Not on purpose. Ruth told me that, laughing, the only time I ever heard Ruth laugh about anything on the ward. Neve had followed her everywhere since the Program floors. Every round. Every bed. Every crossing. Writing down every name, because Ruth had told her to, the first night, and she'd never stopped. Taking blood. Writing numbers. Sitting with the ones who were still grey and slow in their fog, while I went down the rows on the good days and told the silver where it was meant to go.

And one morning in the Reach, in the soldiers' barracks, kneeling beside a man whose housing the twins had just taken off, Ruth had looked across at her and seen it.

Every button one hole off. All the way down.

"I said to her, Doctor Ashworth, your coat," said Ruth. "And she looked down and went red to the ears and said I didn't sleep. And I said no, you didn't, and you won't, not for about forty years." Ruth shook her head. "And then I looked down at my own."

"Wrong?"

"Wrong," said Ruth. "Same hole. Both of us." She almost smiled. "I told her to leave it. It's the only thing in my life I've never fixed. She might as well have it too."

Pip came on the eleventh crossing.

Nobody let her. She just came. She'd been asking at every crossing since the map room, sitting under the table with her chin on her knees, can I come, and every time four Calders had said no at exactly the same time, like a chord. And then, on the morning of the eleventh, Meg's daughter had said she needed someone to carry bread on the Harness, because one of her bakers had a cold, and Pip had been standing right there, and had picked up a basket before anyone could stop her.

Maura found out when the Harness was already in the air.

She stood on the red glass with her hands on her hips and her face going very red, and Rory standing beside her, and Liam, and Sera with Ash on her hip.

"She's a child," said Maura.

"She's nearly grown," said Rory.

"She's a child, Rory, and she's on a ship going to the human world with a basket of bread—"

"Meg's girl's with her," said Rory. "And Halloway. And the twins. And Dask's on the Scarecrow right over the top of it." He put his hand on her shoulder. Very warm. "Love. She's carrying bread. To people who've never seen a sky."

Maura stood there for a long time with her face red.

"When she gets back," she said at last, "I'm going to set fire to her room."

"I know," said Rory.

Pip carried bread all day.

At the foot of the Harness's ramp, on the ash outside a dome called Gallow Cross, in the far south, where the poison was worst and the sky was nearly black even at noon. Forty thousand. They came out very slowly, because the air was bad and the walk was long, with cloths over their faces. And at the foot of the ramp a girl with a Calder face held out a basket and said, to every single one of them, "Bread?"

And they took it.

And some of them stopped, at the foot of the ramp, on the ash, with the bread in their hands, and looked at her. At the small fierce face under the ash.

One old man with a cloth over his face crouched down in front of her.

"You're from up there," he said. "Aren't you. From the world with the sky."

"Avalon," said Pip. "Yes."

"What's it like?"

Pip thought about it very seriously.

"It's loud," she said. "My family's very loud. And it's warm. And there's a wheel in the park, and the Kethri fly over it, and my brother sets fire to things and then puts them out." She considered. "And there's a sky. It's blue. In the day. And at night there's two moons and one of them's very small and my sister says it's got fish on it but I don't think it has."

The old man didn't say anything for a long time.

"Two moons," he said.

"Yes."

He took a piece of bread from her basket. And held it. And stood up, very slowly, and went up the ramp.

At the top he turned round.

"Thank you," he said. "Miss—"

"Pip," said Pip. "Pip Calder."

"Thank you, Pip Calder," said the old man. And went in.

Maura didn't set fire to her room.

She stood at the foot of the Harness's ramp when it came down on the red glass that night, with her arms folded and her face red. And Pip came down the ramp last, with the empty basket, and her hair full of ash, and her face very tired and very pleased, and saw her mother.

And stopped.

"I carried bread," said Pip.

"I know you did," said Maura.

"To forty thousand. Meg's girl counted." Pip held up the basket. "An old man asked me what the sky was like. I told him. He said thank you. He said Pip Calder."

Maura looked at her daughter for a long time.

Then she knelt down on the red glass. And put her arms round her. Basket and ash and all.

"You're still in trouble," she said. Into Pip's hair.

"I know," said Pip.

"Terrible trouble."

"I know."

"Next time," said Maura, "you ask."

Pip went very still.

"Next time?" she said.

Maura didn't answer. She just held on.

Behind her, Rory looked at me over the top of their heads. And very slowly, the way a Calder never does anything, he smiled.

The token woke on the fourteenth night.

I didn't feel it. I wasn't the one it was meant for.

Voss felt it.

She was in the room at the end of the arrivals hall. Late. With the door open, the way it always was, though nobody came to complain this late. She was writing names. The ones from Gallow Cross. Forty thousand of them, from the clerks' lists, copied into her own book in her own hand, one at a time, so that she'd have said them, at least once, the way she said one name every morning at the field.

And the seed round her neck went cold.

The seed. On its chain. That Crane had given her, a long time ago, from the Overseer, as a token of the Accord. That she'd worn round her neck in the Senate for twenty years. That she'd held up in front of four million people in the great hall, the day she told them about Article Fourteen. That Juno had sung through, across the dark, the night Voss sent the message that she'd been charged.

It was a sliver. A piece of a queen. The way all the tokens were.

And it had gone cold.

Not quiet. Not still. Cold. So cold it burned her through her dress. She pulled it out and held it up in the lamplight, and it was frosting over. Very fine. Like Trevor's frost. And humming. Not the way it hummed when Juno sang through it. A different way. Very thin. Very high. Pointed somewhere.

Not at Avalon.

Not at Earth.

Somewhere else.

She ran.

Voss, who never ran. Who walked everywhere very straight, in her plain coat, at the same pace, as if she had somewhere to be and you were welcome to come. She ran out of the room at the end of the arrivals hall, with the door still open behind her, and across the square, and up the canyon, in the dark, to the hollow.

To the Overseer.

It was standing.

It never stood. Not since the day at the garden wall, when the keeper had said most of what's at the top of us was once a child like yours, and it had stood up all the way and held out its bread to Mother. It sat at the mouth of its passage with its long grey limbs folded and Thorne's rye in its hand and Garnet's old dog leaning on its leg. It always sat.

It was standing. All the way up. Its head level with the top of the passage. Its long grey face turned up. Not at the sky. At nothing. At something very far away that only it could see.

The dog was standing too. Pressed against its leg. With its hackles up.

Voss stopped at the mouth of the hollow.

She held up the seed. Frosting over. Humming its thin high note.

"What is it?" she said.

The Overseer turned its long grey face down. Toward her. Toward the seed.

And it spoke aloud.

"Someone has lit a token," it said.

Its voice was very strange. Not like a keeper's. Not hard, not grabbing. Thin. Dry. Like paper that had been folded and unfolded too many times.

"On the human world. A token of the Accord. There were six. Given to the Council when the paper was signed. Five kept in the Senate's vault, for the Council. One worn by the Chancellor." Its pale eyes looked at the seed in Voss's hand. "That one."

"I know," said Voss. "Crane gave it to me. What does lit mean?"

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

"A token is a piece of a queen," it said. "Broken. Given. To be held by those who signed the paper. While it is held, it is quiet. It is only a piece of a queen." It looked up again. At the far nothing. "But the Sorn made them so they could be lit. If the paper was broken. If the humans needed—" It stopped. "If the humans wished to call."

"Call who?"

"Whoever is nearest," said the Overseer. "Who listens for tokens. A keeper."

I was there by then.

Voss had sent Juno. Juno had sent Dot. Dot had knocked on the shutter, twice, very lightly, Operator, the way she always did, and I'd come up the canyon in the dark with Okafor beside me in her coat over her nightshirt and the General behind her.

The Overseer was still standing. Still looking up.

"Selwyn," said Okafor. Very quietly.

"He has lit all five," said the Overseer. "At once. In the vault." Its long face was very still. "That is not a call. That is a shout."

"Who hears it?"

The Overseer didn't answer at once.

Then it turned its long grey face. Very slowly. Away from the far nothing. Toward me.

"You have been there," it said. "You counted."

I knew. Before it said it. I knew.

"The nearest keeper," said the Overseer, "is under the ring."

Nobody said anything.

I stood at the mouth of the hollow with Voss's seed frosting in her hand and the Overseer standing over us with its face turned up and the old brown dog's hackles still raised, and I thought about it. The small grey world under the ring. The halls going down and round like the inside of a shell. Fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve children on grey benches with their hands together.

And at the top, grown into the grey, so you couldn't tell where it stopped and the world began, a keeper. Very old. Very large. With many pale eyes, looking down into the halls. All the time. Never shutting.

It had never looked up.

Nothing had ever come.

"It will hear," said the Overseer. "It has never heard a token before. Not in all the time it has been there. Nobody calls a keeper that is teaching. Nobody would dare." Its thin dry voice went quieter. "But five tokens at once. Lit by a human. From a world it has been told is a fault. Where one keeper did not return." It looked at me. "It will look up."

"And then?"

"Then it will want to know what is there," said the Overseer. "It will not come itself. It cannot. It is the top of its world." A pause. "It will send."

"Send what?"

The Overseer looked at me for a long time.

"What it has," it said. "It has three Hands at the ring. Old. Tired. Asleep." Another pause. "And it has fifty-eight thousand children who have been taught to do what they are told."

Okafor's hand went very still on her slate.

I didn't move at all. I couldn't.

Behind me, I heard Voss make a sound. Very small.

"It will not send all," said the Overseer. "It is not a fool. It will send what is ready. The oldest. The ones nearly finished being taught. The ones who no longer remember there was anything to ask." It looked down at the seed in Voss's hand, frosting over, humming its thin high note toward the far nothing. "It will send them to the human world. To see who called. And what is there."

"And when they see?" said Okafor.

"Then they will do what they are told," said the Overseer.

The General spoke for the first time.

"How long?"

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

"A token's call goes along the silver," it said. "Like the hello. It is already there. The keeper already hears." It looked up again. At the far nothing. "But a keeper that has never looked up must first learn how. It has been looking down for a very long time." A pause. "Days. Not many. Then it will know where. Then it will wake the Hands."

"And the Hands?"

"Old. Tired. Slow. They have not crossed in a long time." The Overseer's voice went very thin. "They will be heavy. They will carry children who have been taught not to want to go anywhere." It looked at me. "Weeks. Perhaps more. But not many weeks."

Okafor stood there in her coat over her nightshirt for a long time.

Then she took the stylus out of her pocket.

She didn't write on the slate. She turned it over. To the back. To where she'd written Selwyn, and drawn a line under it.

She drew another line. Under that.

"He's done something stupid," she said. Very quietly. "Odell said he would."

"Yes," said the General.

"He's done it in a hurry." Okafor looked at the slate. "Because he's frightened. Because three hundred soldiers went to Halden and didn't come back and he doesn't know why. And he's got a map." She put the stylus back in her pocket. "He's called the Sorn. Two years early. With a shout. To the one place in the whole of their empire where there are fifty-eight thousand children who'll do exactly what they're told."

She turned to me.

"Dask."

"Major."

"How many crossings left?"

"Sixteen."

"How many people still on Earth who want to come?"

"About a million," said Wren. From the mouth of the hollow. She'd come up behind us. Of course she had. "And Selwyn. And everyone who stayed."

Okafor nodded slowly.

"And fifty-eight thousand children coming to look at them," she said. "Who've been taught not to ask."

She looked up. At the sky over the hollow. At the stars. At the place, very far away, past all of them, where a keeper that had never once looked up was learning how.

"Then we're going to need," she said, "to be there first."

Odell was on the screen at midnight.

Not on the old band. On the Meridian's relay, the way he'd talked to us every night from the dead suit bay before he came home. He'd gone back. On the thirteenth crossing. To New Halcyon. To the old bay, with his one lamp, because, he said, somebody had to be on the band when the domes called, and the domes only trusted him.

"It's true," he said. His face was grey in the lamplight. "He went down to the vault this evening. Selwyn. With two of his aides. I've got a friend on the Senate floor still, a cleaner, she's been on my list since the start, she's coming on the next crossing." He rubbed his face with one burned hand. "She says he came back up white as paper. She says the aides wouldn't look at anyone. She says the whole of the Senate floor went cold. Frost on the windows. Inside."

"Does he know what he's done?" said Okafor.

Odell was quiet for a long time.

"I don't think so, Major," he said. "I think he thinks he's called someone to come and take Avalon off his hands. I think he thinks they'll be grateful." He looked at the camera. "He's never seen a keeper. He's only ever seen the small polite one, sitting in a chair. He thinks they're all like that."

Nobody in the map room said anything.

"Major," said Odell. "Whatever comes. I'll be on the band. Every night. Until the last crossing."

"You'll be on the last crossing," said Okafor.

"I'll be on the last crossing," said Odell. "If there's room."

"There'll be room," said Okafor.

I went home at two.

They were all up. Of course they were. Juno had told Dot, and Dot had told the house, and the house was awake. Luna at the kitchen table with the map spread out and her pen in her hand, already working. Sera at the stove, because Sera always went to the stove when something was wrong, with Ash asleep in a chair beside her. Risa on the couch with small Sigmund on her chest, crackling, and a cloud over the two of them the size of a plate. Hana in the big chair with Efua and Kwame, one in each arm, both awake. Watching.

I told them. All of it.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

"Children," said Sera at last. Very quietly. Her hand was flat on the stove and the iron under it had gone dull red. "He's called them. And they're sending children."

"The oldest," I said. "The ones who don't remember there was ever anything to ask."

Risa's cloud went dark. Very slightly. Small Sigmund stirred on her chest, and a spark ran up her arm, and she put her hand on his back without thinking, and the spark went quiet.

"Then they'll come down out of the sky," she said, "with three old Hands, onto the human world. Where a million people are still waiting to walk through your doors. And Selwyn's sitting in the Chancellor's chair waiting to be thanked." She looked at me. "And when they get there, the keeper will tell them what to do."

"Yes."

"And they'll do it," said Luna. Not looking up from the map. "Whatever it is. Because that's all they know."

Hana didn't say anything. She was looking at Kwame. Who was looking at me, very calmly, the way he looked at everything. As if he was counting.

"Then we'll have to ask them," she said at last. Very carefully. Every word right. "Like Tally asks. Like Genny sings." She looked up at me. "They won't hear telling, Lucas. They've had nothing but telling. They'll only hear asking."

Tally was on the end of the porch rail when I went back out.

I don't know how long she'd been there. She'd been at the mouth of the hollow, behind Wren. Very small. Very straight. With the notebook against her chest. She'd heard all of it. She always did.

She didn't say anything. She just looked at me.

Then she opened the notebook. To THEM. To the one mark, under the word, that she'd made at the window of the Scarecrow under the ring. For the child on the end of the bench, who'd put her finger on the empty place.

"The oldest," she said. Very quietly. "The ones nearly finished being taught." She looked up at me. "She was older than me. On the bench. She has been there a long time."

I didn't say anything.

"If they send her," said Tally, "she will not know she is allowed to ask. She will do what she is told." Her finger moved, very slightly, on the page. On the mark. "But she put her finger on my place. For a long time after I was gone. She answered the rope."

She closed the notebook.

"I would like to be there," she said. "When they come. Please. I would like to be the first face she sees."

Days 2237–2302. The token.

Stillwater's black lake had forgotten it was a lake until Kwame told it there was sky. Then Bellmouth, the Reach, New Halcyon again, more; two million one hundred thousand so far, not counting babies, and Okafor's new slate just says Every one. Holt took his old map down himself. The twins do six a day; Garnet fell asleep in her soup twice. Tally's queen is on the long room wall in chalk: thirty-eight pieces, and she's started remembering warm green water, silver-tipped reeds, small pale young with wide dark eyes. Jory sits with every freed person and tells them it wasn't their fault, or hers. Pip stowed away with a bread basket to Gallow Cross and told an old man about two moons; Maura said next time, ask. Then Voss's seed went cold and the Overseer stood: Selwyn has lit all five Accord tokens at once, and the nearest keeper is the one under the ring. It will look up. It will send the oldest children. Weeks, not many. Tally wants to be the first face the child from the bench sees.