Chapter 319 The Question

Okafor didn't sleep that night.

Nobody in the map room did. She called them all at three in the morning, the way she had the night Odell first came up the relay, and they came in their coats over their nightclothes and stood round the table under Luna's new map. Holt with his stick. The General. Keir and Aster. Luna, who'd never gone to bed. Ruth, with Neve Ashworth behind her, both their coats buttoned wrong in the same hole. Voss by the door with the seed in her hand, wrapped in a cloth now because it was still too cold to hold.

And the Overseer.

It had come down the canyon from the hollow. It had never done that. It stooped under the map room door, scraping its long grey head on the lintel the way it had the night of Luna's terms, and stood at the end of the table with its limbs folded and Thorne's rye in one hand, because Garnet had given it a fresh loaf on the way and it didn't know what else to do with it.

Garnet's old dog had come with it. It lay down across the Overseer's feet.

"Sixteen crossings," said Okafor. "A million people. Weeks, not many." She put both hands flat on the table. "I want them all off the human world before the first Hand comes out of the dark. Every one who wants to come. Every housing. Every person who's ever been told to stand in a row."

"Sixteen crossings at one a week," said Keir, "is four months."

"Then not one a week," said Okafor.

Keir looked at Aster.

Aster's lamps had been low all night. They came up now. Slowly.

"The queens are not tired," she said. "Not the way we thought. A crossing is not heavy if the ship wants to go and everyone sings under her. The heavy queen has said so. The furred queen. The marsh queen." Her lamps went brighter. "They have been resting between crossings because we asked them to. Because we thought they should. Not because they needed to."

"Then ask them," said Okafor. "Don't tell them. Ask them if they'd like to go every day."

"And if they say yes?"

"Then fourteen ships," said Okafor. "Every day. Two a day, if the ships can turn round that fast."

"They can't," said Keir. "Unloading takes a day. Loading takes a day. Bram's water—"

"Then make it faster," said Okafor. "All of you. However you need to." She looked round the table. "I don't care how many people it takes. I don't care if every person on Avalon stops what they're doing for a month and stands at the foot of a ramp handing out bread. We have weeks. Not many."

The queens said yes.

All of them. Before Juno finished asking. The heavy queen on the Ground. The furred queen on the Harness. The marsh queen on the Long Legs. The three Kethri queens together on the Wing. The coral queen in her pool on the Pool. The Drenn queen on the Scarecrow. And the others. Every queen on every iron ship.

And then the ones who weren't on ships.

The Karst queen, who was too frightened of the dark between to cross, said she would sing under every ship that did, day and night, for as long as it took. The moth queen, who couldn't bear the light of a crossing, said the same. The salt queen. Our queen at the garden wall. The first queen in the hollow.

We have sung across the dark for a long time, said the first queen. Through Juno. Mostly alone. Mostly in chains. We would like to sing across it together. For children.

Avalon stopped.

Not all at once. Not because anyone told it to. But in the next three days, the farms on the plain went quiet, and the new towns north of the ninth lake sent people south, and the schools closed, and the orchards were left to the bees. And everyone came to the plain.

To the fourteen ships.

Bram had four thousand people in the tanks by the second day. Meg's daughter had eleven thousand baking. Not just in the bakeries of the new city; in every town, in every kitchen, in Carver's square and Ashby's tunnels and Stillwater on the shore of the clear lake, baking bread and sending it down the roads on carts to the plain. Pell organized the carts. On Bess. In her best coat. Riding up and down the line of them all day with a list.

Voss had the names.

Every name Odell got up the band, every night, from every dome. She sat in the room at the end of the arrivals hall with the door open and wrote them down, and Wren counted them, and Luna put them on the map, and the clerks from Carver copied them onto the lists for the ramps. So that when every person came off every ship, someone at the bottom had their name, and could say it.

"Every one," said Voss. When I asked her why. When I found her at two in the morning, still writing, with the seed in its cloth on the table beside her still cold. "Every one of them gets their name said. When they step off. Out loud." She didn't look up. "I signed a great many papers with a great many names on them that nobody ever said. I'd like to even it up."

The ships went every day.

Fourteen of them. At dawn, after the count. Up off the red glass, one after another, into the sky, and through the page. And back at dusk. And unloaded all night, under lamps, while Bram filled the tanks and Meg's daughter's bakers carried bread up the ramps, and the people of Avalon walked the newcomers off the plain and onto the roads north and east and west, in long lines, with lanterns.

And at dawn again. After the count.

Every day.

Tally was at every crossing. Jory was at every one. The twins went every other day, and slept on the ships on the days between. Ruth made them. She went every day herself. With Neve. With Sigmund.

And I went every day. On the Scarecrow. With her arms out over whatever dome we came to. Putting doors in the glass.

And every night, when the ships came home and Tally came down the ramp with the notebook, Genny was waiting at the bottom. With a box.

And Tally would open it. And listen.

And sometimes, make a mark.

Fifty-two. Fifty-six. Sixty.

Sixty-one, from a soldier the Council had stationed on the east locks of New Halcyon, who put his weapon down on the ring street on the fifth day and walked through a door with everyone else. Tally knelt beside him on the ramp of the Ground while Garnet took his housing off, right there, in the doorway of the ship, because Ruth said there was no time to get him to the ward first. And when the sliver came out, Tally's silver hummed, and she made the mark.

"Sixty-one," she said. To the soldier.

He was lying on the iron with his eyes shut, breathing very slowly.

"What does that mean?" he said.

"It means you carried a piece of my queen," said Tally. "For a long time. Thank you for carrying her." She closed the notebook. "She was very heavy. I think."

The soldier opened his eyes.

"She was," he said.

On the eighth night of the crossings, the heavy queen spoke to Okafor.

Not through Juno. Juno was asleep. Not through me. Through Dot. Who'd been standing on the plain at the foot of the Ground's ramp at dusk, counting everyone off, the way she counted everyone up the steps of Scarecrow every evening. And the heavy queen in the room in the middle of the iron ship had reached down, very slowly, through the iron and the ramp and the red glass, and touched the soft door in Dot's side where the nine had been.

And Dot came to the map room.

All her hands folded. Her grille dim. She stooped in the door the way the Overseer did.

"Major," she said. "The heavy queen would like this unit to say something to you. This unit does not usually carry messages. This unit has agreed to carry this one."

"Go on," said Okafor.

Dot was quiet for a moment.

"The heavy queen says," said Dot. "My young are among them."

Nobody moved.

"The ones taken," said Dot. In the heavy queen's slow way. Every word a long time coming. "To the place under the ring. Before I was a pillar. The best. Born whole." A long pause. "It has been a very long time. They will be the oldest. The ones nearly finished being taught."

"The ones the keeper will send," said Okafor.

"Yes," said Dot. "If it sends anything. It will send them first. Because they are most ready." Another long pause. "I have been listening. Every night. Since the girl who counts came back from the ring with fifty-eight thousand on paper. I have been listening that way. The way I listened from the top of my world." Dot's grille dimmed a little. "Tonight I heard something. Very faint. Very far. Under the voice that says asking is not how it is done."

"What?" said Okafor.

"Mine," said Dot. For the heavy queen. "I heard mine."

Okafor sat down.

She never sat down in the map room. She stood at the head of the table with her slate, every night, every meeting, for years. She sat down now. Slowly. In Holt's chair, which Holt had left empty when he went home at midnight.

"Ask her," she said. "Dot. Please. Ask her if any of the others have heard theirs."

Dot was quiet for a long time.

Then: "This unit has asked. The heavy queen has asked. Through the hello. All of them." A pause. "The Kethri queens say: yes. Some. Very faint. The Drenn queen says: yes. A few. I did not know they had taken any. I thought only that we fought. The furred queen says: one. I think one. The marsh queen says nothing. She is listening. She has been listening since the girl came back." Dot's grille brightened, very slightly. "The first queen says: it was always going to be this. They took from everyone. Everyone will have someone there."

I understood it then.

What Hana had said. On the couch, at two in the morning, with Kwame looking at me as if he was counting. They won't hear telling. They've had nothing but telling. They'll only hear asking.

And what Genny had done at Halden. Not stopping three hundred soldiers. Singing to what was on the other side of the door. To the pieces of queens in the housings. Who'd listened. Because queens listen when other queens sing.

And the children under the ring weren't slivers in housings. They weren't pieces of queens.

They were the young of queens.

Every one. Born whole. On some world, to some brood, under some queen. Before they were taken and put on a bench and taught to forget there was ever anything to ask.

And every queen on Avalon had been listening for them. For years. In pillars. In collars. On stone shelves in the hearts of ships. Since before most of them remembered anything.

"They'll come down out of the sky," I said. Out loud. To nobody. "In three old Hands. Doing what they're told. And every queen on Avalon is going to be singing to them."

"Not telling," said Okafor. Very quietly.

"No," I said. "Calling them by name."

The Overseer had been very still at the end of the table all this time. With its loaf. With the dog across its feet.

It spoke.

"The keeper will not expect that," it said. Its thin dry voice. "Keepers do not know about queens singing. Not that way. A keeper is a child who was taught not to hear its own queen. That is the first thing they teach. Before anything else." It looked down at the loaf in its hands. "It is very hard to teach. It takes a long time. Most of the teaching is that."

"Can it be untaught?" said Ruth.

The Overseer looked at her for a long time.

"I was not a child," it said. "I was made. From grey and a piece of a queen and an order." A pause. "And a girl left bread on a stone. And I did not know there was anything else. And now I sit at the mouth of a passage and the dog leans on me." It looked at the dog across its feet. "I do not know if a keeper can be untaught. I do not know if a child who has forgotten its queen can hear her again." Its pale eyes came up. "I would like to find out. I would like to be there. If that is allowed."

Okafor looked at it for a long time.

"It's allowed," she said.

The last crossing went to New Halcyon.

That was what Odell said, on the band, at midnight, the night before. There's no one left in the outer domes who wants to come. They've all come. Carver's empty. Stillwater's empty. Ashby, Bellmouth, the Reach, Gallow Cross, the north rim. Halden. He'd looked at the camera. There's only New Halcyon. And the people in it who've been waiting to see if it's really true. And the people who'll never come.

How many who want to come?

Three hundred thousand, said Odell. Give or take. And the ones in Selwyn's barracks with housings. Another two thousand. Maybe more.

And Selwyn?

Odell was quiet for a long time.

He's in the Chancellor's chair, he said. He hasn't left it since he lit them. He sleeps in it, they say. The whole Senate floor's frosted over. Every window. Every wall. Nobody'll go in. He rubbed his face. He's waiting for them to come, Major. He's sitting in that chair waiting to be thanked.

Okafor came on the last crossing.

She'd never come. Not once. She'd stood at the foot of the ramps and watched every ship go and every ship come back, and written it on the slate, and never come. I'm needed here, she'd said, every time anyone asked. Someone has to stand on the plain and count.

She came on the last.

She walked up the Scarecrow's ramp at dawn, after the count, in her plain dark coat, with her slate under her arm, and stood at the forward window beside me, and didn't say anything at all. The General came behind her. In his greatcoat. And Voss, with the seed in its cloth. And the Overseer, stooping very low under the Scarecrow's door, with the old brown dog at its heels, because the dog had refused to be left.

"I told you," said Okafor. Not looking at me. At the window. "A long time ago. When there's nobody left for him to hold over us, you and I go and see Harlan Selwyn. In the Chancellor's chair."

"And ask him a question."

"And ask him a question," said Okafor.

New Halcyon was waiting.

Not the city. The people. Three hundred thousand of them. In the streets. On the ring street. At every door I'd ever put in the glass, and at the places where there'd been doors before and weren't now. Packed, with their bags, with their dogs, with their grandmothers. Not pushing. Waiting. Very quietly. Looking up.

The Scarecrow came over the top of the dome and opened her arms.

And they started walking before I'd put a single door in the glass.

I put them in. All the way round. Hundreds. And the people of New Halcyon walked out through them onto the ash, to the fourteen ships lying in a great ring round the dome with their ramps down, and Meg's daughter's bakers at the top of every one, and the clerks from Carver at the bottom with their lists. And as every person stepped off the ash and onto the iron, a clerk said their name. Out loud.

Every one.

And then I went to the Senate Annex. With Okafor. And the General. And Voss. And the Overseer, stooping. And the dog.

The frost started on the steps.

Very fine. White. Over the marble. Up the great doors, which were shut. I asked them to open and they opened, and the cold came out of the hall like breath from a cellar, and the frost was everywhere. On the floor. On the benches. On the gallery rail. On the high windows I'd come through once, a long time ago, when Voss sat in a chair between two soldiers and a small polite one sat in hers.

The hall was empty.

Nobody on the benches. Nobody in the gallery. Nobody on the walls.

Just one man. At the head of the hall. In the Chancellor's chair.

Harlan Selwyn was very still.

He was sitting the way the small polite one had sat. Very straight. With his hands in his lap. I don't think he knew he was doing it. His dark coat with the crest on it was white at the shoulders with frost, and his hair was white with it, and his face was grey, and his eyes were open, looking at nothing. At the far end of the hall. At the doors.

In front of him, on the floor, on a cloth, five slivers.

The tokens.

Lit. All five. Frosting the floor round them in a wide white circle. Humming. Very thin. Very high. A note I'd heard once before, at the mouth of the hollow, coming out of the seed in Voss's hand. Pointed somewhere very far away.

Toward the ring.

He looked up when we came in.

He didn't stand. He looked at us. At me, at the silver round my eyes. At the General in his greatcoat. At the Overseer, stooping in the doorway, very tall, very grey, with a loaf of rye bread in one long hand and a dog leaning on its leg.

His face changed when he saw the Overseer.

Something went over it. Something like hope.

"You came," he said. To the Overseer. His voice was cracked. "You came. I called and you came."

The Overseer didn't say anything.

Selwyn half rose out of the chair. "They took them. All of them. Three million. Through the glass. They took the Program assets and the doctors and the soldiers and—" He stopped. Looked at the Overseer. At the bread. At the dog. "You're—"

"I am not who you called," said the Overseer.

Selwyn sat back down. Very slowly.

Okafor walked down the hall.

She didn't hurry. She walked the way she walked down a line of cadets on the first day, a long time ago, in a dome with a training hall, reading names off a slate. Down the middle of the frosted floor of the Senate Annex. Between the empty benches. Until she was standing in front of the Chancellor's chair. Just outside the white circle round the tokens.

She looked down at Harlan Selwyn.

He looked up at her.

"Major Okafor," he said. He knew her. Everyone did.

"Deputy Chair," said Okafor.

"Chancellor," said Selwyn. "I'm Chancellor now. The Council—"

"There isn't a Council," said Okafor. "They've all gone. Through the glass. With everyone else." She didn't look round at the empty benches. She didn't need to. "There's you. And a chair."

Selwyn didn't say anything.

"I've come to ask you a question," said Okafor.

She took her time.

She stood there in the cold with her slate under her arm and her breath smoking very faintly and looked at him. At the frost on his shoulders. At his hands in his lap, sitting the way the small polite one had sat.

"You lit the tokens," she said. "All five. At once. In the vault. Three weeks ago."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Selwyn's mouth worked.

"Because you took them," he said. "Three million people. The assets. The Program. Everything we'd built. Everything we were going to pay with." His voice cracked. "The tithe ship comes in two years and there was nothing left. Nothing to give them. When they come and ask why the observer's gone and the floors are empty—" He stopped. "I had to give them something. So I called them. Early. To give them you."

"To give them Avalon."

"Yes."

"And you thought," said Okafor, "they'd be grateful."

Selwyn didn't answer.

"That's not my question," said Okafor.

She knelt down.

In the frost. On the marble. Just outside the white circle. At his height. The way Voss had knelt on the grass in front of the small polite one. The way Tally knelt in front of everyone.

"Here's my question," said Okafor. Very quietly. "Do you know who's coming?"

Selwyn looked at her.

"The Sorn," he said.

"Which ones?"

He didn't answer. He didn't know. You could see he didn't know.

"There's a place," said Okafor. "Under a ring. With two suns. Dask has been there. He counted. Fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve children. From every world the Sorn have ever held. Born whole. Taken before anyone could teach them to ask. Sitting on benches with their hands together while a voice tells them, every few minutes, every day, for years, that asking is not how it's done." She didn't raise her voice at all. "That's where you called. That's the nearest keeper. The one who teaches them."

Selwyn had gone very white.

"It's never looked up," said Okafor. "In all the time it's been there. Nothing's ever come. And you shouted at it. With five tokens. From a world it's been told is in the tithe." She looked at him. "So it's going to send what it has. Three old Hands. And the oldest children. The ones nearly finished. The ones who don't remember there was ever anything else. And they're going to come down out of the sky onto this dome, Deputy Chair. Where three million people still live who decided to stay. And you."

She stood up.

"That's who's coming," she said. "Children. That you called. To be told to do something to you." She looked down at him. "That was my question. Do you know who's coming. And the answer's no. You didn't. You never asked."

Selwyn didn't move for a long time.

Then he put his face in his hands.

Not crying. Just sitting there, in the Chancellor's chair, in the frost, with his face in his hands, very still.

Okafor looked at him for a while.

Then she turned. And looked at the Overseer, stooping in the doorway.

"Can they be put out?" she said. "The tokens?"

The Overseer came down the hall.

Slowly. Its long grey limbs unfolding. The dog at its heels. It stopped at the edge of the white circle and looked down at the five slivers on their cloth, humming, frosting the floor.

"They can be quieted," it said. "Not put out. The call has gone. It is already there. The keeper has heard." It crouched. Very slowly. All the way down. Until its long face was close to the slivers. "But they can be told they do not have to keep shouting."

It looked at me.

"I cannot sing," it said. "I was made. Not born. I have no queen."

"I know," I said.

"The girl who asks," said the Overseer. "She is not here."

"No."

"Then perhaps," said the Overseer, "you."

I'd never sung to a sliver.

Genny did that. Genny and the queens. I changed things. I asked them what shape they wanted to be and made them that shape. I'd never once sung to what was on the other side.

But I knelt down. At the edge of the circle. In the frost. Beside the Overseer.

And I didn't sing. I can't sing. Toby says I can't hold a note in a bucket.

I just told them.

Not with my mouth. With the silver. The way Genny had told her sliver, under her bed, at night, for weeks. The way she'd told the three hundred at Halden, with every queen on Avalon under her.

You can stop now. You've called. It heard. You don't have to keep shouting.

Nobody's going to make you push any more.

They stopped.

One at a time. The thin high humming going out of them, one after another. The frost round them stopping. Then, very slowly, starting to melt. A thin wet ring on the marble round the cloth. Spreading.

Five slivers. Quiet. On a cloth on the floor of the Senate Annex.

The Overseer reached out. One long grey finger. And touched the nearest one. Very lightly.

"They are tired," it said. "They have been shouting for three weeks." It looked up at me. "They are pieces of queens. They would like to go home."

"They'll go to the long room," I said. "With the others. Genny will find their lines."

The Overseer folded the cloth round them. Very carefully. With its long grey fingers. The way you'd wrap bread.

And handed them to Voss.

Selwyn took his face out of his hands when the frost started melting.

He looked at the wet ring on the floor. At the cloth in Voss's hands. At Voss.

"Renata," he said.

"Harlan," said Voss.

He looked at her for a long time. At her plain coat. At the seed in its own cloth in her other hand, the one Crane had given her, still very faintly cold.

"You told them," he said. "In this hall. In front of everyone. About Article Fourteen. What it was for." His voice was very hoarse. "I watched. From the benches. I thought you'd gone mad."

"I'd stopped," said Voss. "Signing. That's all. I'd stopped."

"Why?"

Voss looked at him for a long moment.

"Because my niece counted me," she said. "She was the only person who'd done that since I was a girl. And I'd rather be counted than sit in that chair." She looked at the chair. At him in it, with the frost melting off his shoulders. "You've been sitting in it for three weeks, Harlan. Has anyone counted you?"

Selwyn didn't answer.

Okafor walked back up the hall toward the doors.

At the doors she stopped. She didn't turn round.

"There's a ship," she said. "On the ash. The last one. It goes at dusk. There's a room on it with a door that closes from the inside." A pause. "There's no one left here to tell you what to do, Deputy Chair. Nobody's going to tell you to get on it. Nobody's going to tell you not to." She put her slate under her arm. "You'll have to decide. On your own. For the first time. That's all."

She went out.

The General went after her. Then Voss, with the five slivers in their cloth. Then the Overseer, stooping very low under the doors, with the dog.

I stopped in the doorway.

Selwyn was still in the chair. Very straight. With his hands in his lap. Sitting the way the small polite one had sat. Looking at nothing.

Then, very slowly, as I watched, one of his hands moved.

Off his lap. Onto the arm of the chair. As if he was going to push himself up.

It stayed there.

I don't know if he stood. I didn't wait to see. Okafor had said: you'll have to decide. And you can't decide something with someone in the door, watching.

The General stood on the ash outside the dome for a long time that afternoon.

Alone. In his greatcoat. With his back to the ships and the lines of people going up the ramps, looking at New Halcyon. At the great grey bubble, with the towers inside it like bones, and the Ministry on its hill. Getting emptier. Every hour. Every door.

I went and stood beside him. He didn't look round.

"Thirty years," he said. After a while. "I came out of that hall with your father, the night it was signed. Into the corridor. I didn't know what I'd put my name to. Not really. Not the clause at the bottom." He was quiet. "Your father put his hand on my shoulder and said then bring them home, Alaric."

"Mother told me."

"I thought he meant the soldiers," said the General. "The modified. The ones in the field. I spent twenty years thinking I'd failed him, because I never did." He looked at the dome. At a family coming out of a door in the glass, a grandmother on a man's back. "Then Dorothy told me, a while ago, what she thought he meant. The ones who'd come after." He was quiet for a long time. "I think she's right."

"So do I."

The General nodded slowly. Frost had formed very faintly at the edges of his coat. It always did when he felt something and wasn't going to say so.

"Then I'd like to be there," he said. "When the Hands come. Wherever they come. I'd like to be standing in front of them." He turned, finally, and looked at me. "Not to fight. I've frozen enough things for one life. I'd like to stand there so that when they look out of those Hands, the first thing they see is an old man who should have done this thirty years ago." A pause. "And is doing it now."

At dusk, the last ship lifted.

The Ground. Last, because the heavy queen had asked to be last. Every deck full. Every room. Three hundred thousand, and the two thousand from Selwyn's barracks, and the six young doctors from the Program floors who'd gone back for them, and Odell, with suit three over his shoulder and his old paper with the names of the domes on it, every one crossed out.

Tally was at the top of the ramp. Counting.

I was on the Scarecrow, over the dome, with her arms out. Watching.

And at the very end, when the line had gone, when the last family had walked up the ramp with their dog and the clerk at the bottom had said their name, there was someone else.

Walking across the ash. From the dome. Alone. Very slowly. In a dark coat with frost still very faintly white at the shoulders.

He stopped at the foot of the ramp.

The clerk at the bottom looked at her list. Then at him. She didn't know his name. It wasn't on the list. Nobody had put it there.

Tally came down the ramp.

She stopped in front of him. Very small. Very straight. With the notebook.

He looked down at her.

She didn't say anything. She opened the notebook to a clean page. And held out the pencil.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he took it. And wrote, at the top of the page, very badly, his hand shaking:

HARLAN SELWYN.

Tally took the pencil back. And under it, she made one mark.

"Someone knows you are here," she said.

That night, in the dark between the pages, crossing home, the heavy queen spoke to Dot again. And Dot told Okafor. And Okafor told me.

It has looked up.

Very slow. Every word a long time coming.

I felt it. Through my young. Under the ring. The keeper at the top of the world has lifted its eyes for the first time. It is looking at the human world. It is learning where.

A long pause.

It has woken the Hands.

Days 2303–2324. The question.

The queens weren't tired; they'd only rested because we asked. Fourteen ships a day, every queen singing under them; Avalon stopped and came to the plain, and Voss made sure every person was named aloud stepping off. Tally reached sixty-one. Then the heavy queen, through Dot: my young are among them. Every queen has someone there. The children under the ring are young of queens; they won't hear telling, but their queens are already calling them by name. The Overseer asked to be there. Okafor came on the last crossing and knelt in the frost of the Senate Annex in front of Selwyn: do you know who's coming? He didn't. He never asked. I quieted the five tokens; the Overseer wrapped them like bread for the long room. At dusk Selwyn walked to the Ground alone and wrote his own name in Tally's notebook. That night the heavy queen felt it: the keeper has looked up. It has woken the Hands.