Chapter 328 Two at Once

"Faster than watching," said Okafor.

She said it on the first morning home. At the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, after the count. She said it again in the map room at noon, standing in front of Garnet's new map with its one circle crossed out and two left. And she said it a third time at dusk, on our porch, where she'd come up the street with her slate under her arm and sat down on the top step, which Okafor never did, and looked out at the plain.

"Every tower," she said. "On every world. Watching. For anything that doesn't do what it's told." She turned the slate over in her hands. "They watched the red world. They watched us come. The warden told you so. It was watching, and we came, and now it's sitting in the rain." She looked at me. "How long does a tower take to report?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I," said Okafor. "But I know it reported something. Before you folded it. Before the red queen sang into the big one." She put the slate on her knee. "Somewhere, a long way off, something knows that a tower on a red world went quiet. And then another. And then twenty-six." She looked at the two circles left on Garnet's map, folded in her breast pocket. "If we go to the next one, they'll be watching harder. And the one after that, harder still."

"So we go faster."

"So we go to both," said Okafor. "On the same day. At the same time." She looked at me. "And you can only be in one place, Dask."

I'd known it was coming.

Ruth had said it, a long time ago, with two hundred identical clamps on a table. Pell had said it with her hand on a doorframe. Kwame had said it at the top of the canyon. Hana had said it on the eastern plains with Bess's foot in her lap. Make something that works when you're not in it.

Everyone had been saying it for years.

And now it was a war. And I could only be in one place.

"Which one?" I said.

Okafor looked at me for a long time.

"Which one do you think?" she said.

The blue world was ice.

The blue queen had told Genny about it. Lying on the cold hill under the General's frost with her nine young beside her, her wide flat face pressed to the ice. A sea, frozen over. Very thick. Very deep. With dark water under it. And the young had lived in the water, in the dark, and come up to the ice to hear her sing through it. And once a year, when the sun came close, the ice thinned in places, and they came up through the holes to breathe the air and lie on the ice in the light.

The Sorn came, said the blue queen. And the ice stopped thinning.

"Why?"

They made it thicker. They made my young make it thicker. With collars. From underneath. A long pause. They wanted the ice. Not the young. The ice. Flat and hard and very wide. For something to stand on.

"For what?"

The blue queen didn't know. She'd been broken before she found out.

The green world was small.

Very small, the small green queen said. Two pieces don't remember much. A world so small you could walk round it in a few days. Green. Wet. Covered in something like moss, so thick and soft it went over your knees. And the young lived in the moss. Very small. Very many. And the queen lived at the middle, under the thickest moss, and sang up through it.

The Sorn came, said the small green queen. And cut the moss.

"Why?"

To find the young. They are very small. They hide. A pause. The towers sing them out.

"You," said Okafor, "go to the ice."

We were in the map room. Everyone. With both worlds drawn on the wall in Luna's hand, from what the queens remembered and what their young could tell us.

"The ice is big," said Okafor. "Flat. Thick. With young under it in collars, making it thicker. And something the Sorn wanted it for. I don't know what. I want the person who can see through anything looking at it." She looked at me. "And I want Windsor. Both of them."

The General nodded. Luna, at the map table, didn't look up.

"Ice is ours," said the General. Very quietly. "If they've made the young make it, we can ask it to be something else."

"Osei," said Okafor. "Hana. There'll be young coming up through holes that haven't thinned in years. Into air they've never breathed. I want you holding it for them."

"Yes," said Hana.

"Risa. If the weather's wrong. The Long Legs, with the marsh queen. The blue queen and her nine." Okafor wrote it. "That's the ice."

Then she turned the slate over.

"And the moss," she said.

She looked round the table for a long time.

At the twins. At Mother. At Sera and Liam. At Anja. At Tally and Reed, by the door. At Juno, with the seed.

"The moss," she said again. "Without Dask."

Nobody said anything.

"Small world," said Okafor. "Small queen. Two pieces. Small young, hiding in moss up to your knees. Towers singing them out, and something cutting the moss down so the towers can find them." She put her hand flat on the slate. "And nobody who can fold a tower."

"I can," said Garnet.

Everyone looked at her.

She went very red. She always did. But she didn't look down.

"Not like Lucas," she said. "Not fast. Not into a box. I can't do that." She looked at her hands. "But I've done a hundred and forty housings on the ward. With Genny. I've done a Kethri wing, and a heavy young, and bread." She swallowed. "A tower's just grey. Grown out of something. Grown wrong. Like a housing. Like a root round a nerve." She looked at Genny. "Genny asks it how it grew. And I touch it back."

"Into what?" said Okafor.

Garnet didn't answer at once.

"I don't know yet," she said. "Whatever it wants to be. Genny will find out."

Okafor looked at Genny.

Genny didn't say anything for a long time.

"The red queen sang into the big tower," she said. "And it sang back. It didn't need to be folded. It needed to be told what else it could do." She put her hand flat on the table. "The small green queen can't do that. She's two pieces. She's not strong enough." She looked at Okafor. "But I could sing with her. And every queen on Avalon under both of us. And Garnet could touch it while we did." A pause. "It would be slow."

"How slow?"

"A tower an hour," said Genny. "Maybe."

Okafor looked at the map on the wall. At the small green world. At the towers Luna had drawn on it from the small green queen's memory. Nine of them.

"Nine hours," she said. "And handlers."

"I'll hold the handlers," said Mother.

Nobody said anything.

Mother was sitting at the end of the table. In her dark coat. With Father's ring. With her hands perfectly still in her lap. She hadn't said anything all evening.

"I held every handler on the Kethri world," she said. "To the width of a hair. Hundreds. Coming down out of every finger of a new Hand. While the General froze them." She looked at the General. "I held sixty soldiers in the Senate Annex. I held a marsh." She turned Father's ring on her finger. "I can hold nine towers' worth of handlers for nine hours, Maris."

Okafor looked at her for a very long time.

Nobody called her Maris. Nobody had in years. Not to her face.

"Dorothy," she said.

"I'd like to go," said Mother. "With my girls. Without my son." She almost smiled. "It's time they saw what they can do when he isn't standing behind them with his hands in his pockets."

So that was the moss.

Mother. The twins. Sera and Liam, in case anything burned, because cut moss burns. Anja, for standing in front. Juno, for the seed, so we could hear each other across the dark, ice world to moss world, through every queen on Avalon. Ruth and Sigmund and Neve, for afterward. The Wing, with the three Kethri queens, who said they could carry the small green queen and her young in a room so small and soft she'd think it was moss.

And Okafor.

"I'm going to the moss," she said. When I looked at her. "Not the ice."

"Why?"

"Because if anything goes wrong at the ice," said Okafor, "you'll fix it. That's what you do." She put the slate under her arm. "And if anything goes wrong at the moss, someone should be there who's been standing on a plain counting for years and knows what to do when there's nobody to fix it."

Tally asked to go to the moss.

With Reed. And Moon, who wouldn't be left. Okafor looked at Moon for a long time, very small, asleep across Reed's lap, and then at Tally.

"No children," she said.

"She will stay on the ship," said Tally. "With Reed. I will stay on the ship." She held up the notebook. "But the young in the moss are very small. And they hide. And the towers sing them out." She looked at Okafor. "When the towers stop, they will not know what to do. They will hide more. Somebody should be on the ship who knows how to count something that hides."

Okafor looked at her.

"Halloway?" she said.

"No medical reason," said Ruth. From the door. "There never is. I've stopped saying damn it. It's just implied now."

We left at dawn. After the count.

Two fleets. Off the red glass. One after the other. The Long Legs and the Scarecrow first, toward the ice. Then the Wing, toward the moss.

On the glass behind us, Dory. With her hand flat on the ground. And all round her, the children who could hear queens. And on the porch, the ones who couldn't.

"Two," said Dory. Through everything. Very carefully. "I'm holding two. At once." A pause. "I've never held two." Another pause. "It's all right. I can. Go on."

The ice was white.

All of it. Flat and white and very hard, as far as I could see in every direction, under a pale cold sun. Not a sea. It didn't look like a sea. It looked like a floor. A floor someone had laid across a whole world, very carefully, so it would be flat.

And on it, towers.

Not like the red world. Not at the edges of cracks. In rows. Very straight. Going away across the white in lines, like the benches in the halls. Hundreds of them. Grey. Thin. Grown up out of the ice like thorns.

And between the rows, on the ice, very flat, very wide, something else.

I looked.

At first I didn't understand it. Shapes. On the ice. Grey. Very large. Laid out in a pattern. Like the outlines of something. Like the chalk Keir drew on the red glass when he was planning a ship, so big you had to stand on the porch to see it.

Then I understood.

"Hands," I said.

Not real Hands. Not yet. Outlines. In grey. Laid flat on the ice. Hundreds of them. In rows. Each one the shape of a Hand, fingers spread, palm open, very large. And in the middle of each one, where the palm was, a ring. Grey. The size of a room.

"A housing," said Luna. Beside me at the forward window. Very quietly. "For a queen."

"They're building Hands," said the General. "On the ice. That's what the ice is for. Flat and hard and very wide. Something to build on."

I looked down through the ice.

Under it. Dark water. Very deep. And in the water, pressed up against the underside of the ice, the young. Long and pale and blue at the edges, like their mother. With collars round them. Breathing cold into the ice from underneath, so it stayed thick. So it stayed flat. So the Sorn could stand on it and grow Hands out of grey.

And under every Hand-shape, where the ring was, a hole. Very small. Going down through the ice. Into the water.

Waiting.

"They'll put queens in those," said Luna. "When they're grown. The rings. And close them." She was very white. "Hundreds of Hands. With hundreds of queens."

"From where?" said the General.

Nobody answered.

"Lucas."

Juno. Through the seed. From the moss. Faint. Across the dark. Through every queen.

"Okafor says: we're down. Nine towers. Handlers coming out of the moss. Your mother's holding them. Genny and Garnet are on the first tower." A pause. "She says: don't come. Whatever you see. Don't come."

"I won't."

"She says she knows you won't. She says she's saying it so you can hear it said."

I didn't go.

I stood on the ice of the blue world with the General on one side and Luna on the other, and Hana behind us with her hands already out, and the blue queen and her nine young coming down the ramp of the Long Legs onto the white, and the rows of grey towers going away across the ice and the Hand-shapes laid out between them.

And I started with the towers.

They weren't like the red world's. They were older. They'd been standing in rows on the ice for years, pushing down through it into the water. Hold. Hold. Hold. Not dig. Hold. Keep the ice. Keep it thick. Keep it flat.

I folded the first one.

The handlers came up out of the ice. The General froze them before they were all the way out. Solid. Clear blue. Like the ones on the Kethri world, hanging in the air before Sigmund's fence. And I folded them in their ice, and put them in the box.

The second tower. The third.

And the ice under us started to groan.

"It's the young," said Luna. Very fast. Her hand flat on the ice. "Under us. When the towers stop, they stop holding. And the ice starts to thin. Here. Under the first three. It's—"

A crack. Long. Loud. Like a shot. Running away across the white from under my feet.

"It's going," said Luna. "All of it. If we take all the towers, the young stop holding and the whole sea thaws at once and everything on it goes down. The Hand-shapes. The towers. Us."

The General put his hand flat on the ice.

"No," he said. "It won't."

He held it.

Not froze. Held. The way Mother held things. The way he'd laid frost down a whole hill, all night, slow and even, for the furred young. He put both hands flat on the ice of the blue world and asked it to stay. Just stay. Just as it was. Not because the young were holding it from underneath. Because he was holding it from above.

And Luna knelt beside him.

And put her hands flat on the ice too.

Her father's cold. In her own hands. The way she'd frozen the top of the salt world's water a mile down. She held the ice beside him. And the ice stopped groaning.

"Go on," said the General. Through his teeth. Frost forming all down his coat. "The towers. We've got the ice."

"How long?"

"As long as it takes," said Luna.

So I went on.

Tower after tower. Down the rows. Folding. Handlers coming up and freezing and going into the box. And behind me, in a long line across the white, the General and Luna, side by side, with their hands flat on the ice, holding a whole frozen sea still while the young underneath let go of it.

And the young came up.

Through the holes. Under the Hand-shapes. The small holes in the middle of every ring, where the Sorn had meant to put queens. The young found them. In the dark water. When the towers stopped and the collars went quiet and nothing was telling them to hold any more.

They came up through the holes into the air.

And couldn't breathe.

Not properly. They'd never breathed air. Not for years. Not since the ice stopped thinning. They came up through the holes and lay on the ice, long and pale and blue at the edges, gasping, with their collars still round them, and their wide flat faces pressed to the white.

Hana was there.

She went down the rows of Hand-shapes, from hole to hole, with her hands out. Holding the air. A thousand ropes of it. Very cold. Very thin. She held it round every young as it came up and lay gasping on the ice. Not pushing it in. Holding it there. Close. So that when the young breathed, the air was there to breathe.

"Slowly," she said. To each one. Very quietly. "You don't have to do it all at once. It's there. It'll wait."

And the blue queen sang.

From the middle of the white. Lying flat on the ice with her wide flat face pressed down to it. Singing down. Through it. Into the water. The way she had, before. To any young that was still under there, that hadn't found a hole. That was still pressed against the underside of the ice in the dark, holding, because nobody had told it it could stop.

Her nine went out across the ice. To the holes. And lay down beside them. With their faces pressed to the white. And sang down too.

And one by one, the young that were left found the holes. And came up. Into Hana's air.

"Lucas."

Juno. From the moss. Faint.

"Garnet's done the first tower."

I stopped. On the ice. Between two rows.

"It took an hour and ten minutes," said Juno. "Genny sang. The small green queen sang. Every queen on Avalon sang under them. And Garnet touched it. A root at a time. Like a housing." A pause. "It didn't fold. It didn't go into a box. Garnet touched it back into what it was before it was a tower."

"What was it?"

Juno was quiet for a moment. Listening.

"Moss," she said. "It grew out of the moss. The Sorn put a piece of grey in the moss and told it to be a tower, and it grew up out of the moss into one. And Garnet asked it what it was before, and Genny found out, and Garnet touched it back." Another pause. "There's a patch of moss on the small green world now where a tower was. Very green. Taller than the rest. Okafor says it's the greenest thing she's ever seen."

I stood on the ice of the blue world and didn't say anything for a long time.

"She says," said Juno, "eight more."

It took all day.

On the ice, and on the moss. Two worlds. At once. With Dory on the red glass holding both, and every queen on Avalon singing under both, and every child with their hand flat on the ground holding Dory.

On the ice, I folded towers. The General and Luna held the sea. Hana held the air. The blue queen sang down, and her nine sang down, and the young came up through the holes under the Hand-shapes and lay on the ice in the cold pale sun, breathing.

On the moss, Garnet touched towers back into moss. One an hour. Genny sang. The small green queen, who was two pieces and very small and not strong enough, sang anyway, with every queen on Avalon under her. Mother held the handlers. All of them. Coming up out of the moss in the hundreds. To the width of a hair. For nine hours. Without letting go once.

And Tally counted the young.

From the door of the Wing. Very small. Hiding in the moss. Coming out, very slowly, one at a time, where the towers had been. Where the moss was greenest. She couldn't see most of them. She counted them anyway. By the moss moving. By where the small green queen's singing went quiet, because it had found someone.

At dusk, on the blue world, I came to the last tower.

At the end of the last row. On the far side of the white. Taller than the others. Older. Grown up out of the ice at the edge of the biggest Hand-shape of all. Pushing down. Hold. Hold. Hold.

I didn't fold it.

The blue queen asked me not to.

She'd come across the ice. Very slowly. With her nine young beside her. And stopped at the foot of the tower. And looked up at it.

It is made of my ice, she said. Through me. Of what my young held for the Sorn. For years. A long pause. I would like it to be something else.

"What?"

The blue queen didn't answer.

She lay down. At the foot of the tower. With her wide flat face pressed to the ice.

And sang down.

Not into the tower. Into the ice under it. The way she sang to her young. And the ice under the tower, very slowly, began to thin.

The tower went down through it.

Slowly. Into the dark water. Not falling. Sinking. The way the heavy young sank through the brown air over New Halcyon toward its mother. The ice thinned round it in a wide circle, and it went down into the water, still standing, still very straight, still pushing hold, until the water closed over the top of it.

And the ice closed over the water.

Thin. Clear. Like glass.

And through it, very faintly, from the dark water underneath, something.

The blue queen's sound. Coming back up. Through the ice. From the tower, on the bottom of the frozen sea, in the dark.

It was singing.

The General didn't take his hands off the ice until the blue queen told him he could.

She said it through me. Very quietly. Lying at the edge of the clear new ice over the sunken tower, with her face pressed to it. My young are holding it now. Not for the Sorn. For themselves. Because they want somewhere to lie in the sun. A pause. You can let go.

The General didn't move.

He'd been kneeling on the ice of the blue world since the third tower. With his hands flat on it. Holding a frozen sea still. His coat was white with frost all the way down. His face was grey. His hands, when I looked, had gone a colour I didn't like.

Luna was beside him. The same. Her hair white at the ends with frost.

"Father," she said. Very quietly. "She says we can let go."

"I heard," said the General.

He didn't let go.

"Father."

"Thirty years," said the General. To the ice. Very quietly. "I signed a paper. I froze the things they told me to freeze. And I held nothing. Not one thing. Because nobody asked me to hold anything. They only ever asked me to stop things." He looked at his hands on the ice. "I've been holding this all day. A whole sea. So that children could come up out of the dark and breathe." His voice was very rough. "I'd like a moment longer. If that's allowed."

Luna didn't say anything.

She took one of her hands off the ice. And put it over his. On the white. And held it there.

They stayed like that until the sun went down over the blue world. Father and daughter. Kneeling on the ice. With their hands one on top of the other. While all round them, on the white, the young lay in the last of the cold pale light with their faces pressed to the ice, breathing.

Then the General took his hands away.

And the ice held.

"Lucas."

Juno. Very faint. Very tired.

"Ninth tower," she said. "Garnet just did it. Ten hours. She's asleep on the moss. Genny's holding her." A pause. "Your mother's still holding the handlers. Okafor says to tell you she hasn't let go once. Not once. Nine hours." Another pause. "Okafor says to tell you that she's never seen anything like it. She says to tell you that she was wrong. About you being the one who fixes things."

I didn't say anything.

"She says," said Juno, "there are three of you now."

The Wing came down on the red glass an hour after us.

I was at the foot of her ramp before it touched. I didn't fly. I ran. Across the plain in the dark, with frost from the ice world still in my hair, and stopped at the bottom of the ramp, and waited.

Tally came down first.

With the notebook. Open. To a new page. She'd written at the top, in Genny's square letters, MOSS. And under it, marks. Pages of them. Very small. Very close together. Hundreds. Thousands.

"Eleven thousand, four hundred and two," she said. Before I could ask. "Young. That I saw. Or felt. Or heard the queen go quiet for." She looked at the page. "There will be more. They hide. They are very good at hiding. Some of them will not come out for days." She closed the notebook. "The small green queen says that is all right. She says they always hid. Even before. She says hiding is what they are for." A pause. "She says now they can hide because they want to. Not because something is looking."

Reed came down behind her. With Moon asleep on her back, tied there with a scarf. Moon had green on her fingers. Moss. She'd been holding it all day, Tally said. A handful of it. From the door of the Wing. Because she'd never touched anything that soft and she didn't want to let go.

Garnet came down carried.

By Genny. Who couldn't carry her far. Who'd got her as far as the top of the ramp and then sat down with her, and Liam had come and picked Garnet up very carefully, the way he picked up Rory the second when he fell asleep at the table, and brought her down.

She woke up at the bottom.

She looked at me.

"You weren't there," she said. Very sleepy.

"No."

"Nine," said Garnet. "Nine towers. All moss now." Her eyes were closing again. "The greenest moss. Okafor said." A long pause. "You weren't there and I did it anyway."

"I know you did."

"Genny said it twice," said Garnet. "Every root. Out loud. Like on the ward. Like the Kethri wing." She yawned. "I didn't need her to. I just liked hearing it."

She was asleep before Liam got her to the porch.

Mother came down last.

Slowly. Very straight. In her dark coat. With her hands at her sides, perfectly still. She stopped at the bottom of the ramp and looked at me for a long time.

Her face was grey. I'd never seen it so grey. Not since the chair. Not since the spoon.

"Nine hours," I said.

"Nine hours and twenty minutes," said Mother. "Okafor timed it." She didn't move. "There were three hundred and sixty of them. Handlers. Coming out of the moss. I counted. Every one. I held every one." She looked at her hands. "I didn't let go."

"I know. Juno told me."

Mother was quiet for a long time.

"I was frightened," she said. "The whole time. Every minute. That I'd let go. That one would get through. That it would reach the girls." She looked out at the plain. At the dark. "I was more frightened than I've ever been. More than the chair. More than the day they put us out through the locks."

I didn't say anything.

"And I held it anyway," said Mother. Very quietly. "Your father used to say that. About the war. That being frightened and doing it anyway was the only kind of brave there was." She turned Father's ring on her finger. "I never believed him. I thought he was just being kind. To himself. To the rest of us." She looked at me. "I believe him now."

Then she put her hand flat on my chest. The way Ruth had, in a doorway, a long time ago.

"Your sisters," she said, "were magnificent."

"I know," I said. "I heard."

"No," said Mother. "You didn't. You heard Juno say it." She took her hand off my chest. "You weren't there. That's the point. You'll never see it, Lucas. Not the way I did. Garnet on her knees in the moss at the foot of a tower, with her silver up her arms, small and wobbly, and her eyes on her sister's face. Genny singing so quietly I could barely hear her, and the tower listening anyway." She looked toward the porch, where Liam was laying Garnet down on the couch. "That's what it's going to be like now. Things happening that you'll only hear about."

"Is that all right?"

Mother looked at me for a long time.

"It's what your father wanted," she said. "For all of you."

Okafor crossed out two circles that night.

On Garnet's map. In the map room. At midnight. Both fleets home. Both crews asleep on their feet. The General and Luna with frost still on their coats. Mother in the chair at the end of the table with her hands in her lap, perfectly still, her face grey with tiredness, not having said a word since she came down the Wing's ramp.

Garnet asleep on the floor with her head on the old brown dog.

Genny beside her, awake, with her notebook. Writing.

Okafor drew a line through the second circle. Then the third.

Then she looked at the map for a long time.

At the dot. At the three crossed-out circles.

"The Hands," she said. "On the ice."

"Hundreds of them," said Luna. Very tired. "Laid out. Waiting for queens."

"From where?"

Nobody answered.

"They're making more," said Genny. From the floor. Not looking up. "Hands. With queens in them. Because they know now. That something's happening. In a line." She stopped writing. "They're getting ready."

At dawn, Dot came to the map room.

Okafor was still there. She'd slept in Holt's chair, sitting up, with the slate on her knee. Dot stooped in the door with all her hands folded and her grille very dim.

"Major," she said. "The heavy queen's young. On the Ground. Under the ring."

Okafor was awake at once.

"Go on."

"The young has reached down to this unit," said Dot. "Through the iron of the Ground. Across the dark. Through the hello. It has never done that. It is very slow. It took all night." Her grille dimmed further. "It says one thing."

"What?"

Dot was quiet for a moment.

"They are here," she said. In the heavy young's slow way. Every word a long time coming. "From home. Along the ninth line. At the ring." A long pause. "They are looking at the empty benches."

Another pause.

"They are looking at my mother."

Days 2653–2675. Two at once.

Okafor: faster than watching. Both circles on the same day, and I can only be in one place. I went to the ice with the General, Luna and Hana; the Sorn had made the blue queen's young hold a frozen sea flat so they could lay out hundreds of Hand-shapes on it, each with a ring for a queen. When I took the towers the young let go and the sea started to thaw, and the General and Luna held it still all day while Hana held the air at every hole the young came gasping up through. The blue queen sang the last tower down through the ice, and it sings now from the bottom of the sea. On the moss, without me: Mother held every handler for nine hours without letting go once, Genny sang, and Garnet touched nine towers back into moss, a root at a time. Okafor said there are three of us now. Two circles crossed out. Genny says they're making more Hands because they know. At dawn the heavy young reached Dot across the dark: they're here, from home, at the ring, looking at the empty benches, and at my mother.