Chapter 334 The Answer

Dory slept for two days.

Ruth said it was the right amount. She came to the house morning and evening and sat on the edge of Dory's bed and took her wrist and counted, and every time she said the same thing. She's all right. She's sleeping. Let her. Pebble didn't leave the foot of the bed once. Ash slept on the floor beside it, on a blanket, because Ash had decided that was where she slept now.

Mother sat in the chair between the beds. Both nights. With her hands in her lap.

I sat on the porch.

Listening.

The question didn't stop.

That was the thing. It wasn't a voice that said something once and went away. It was a question. And it stayed. Along every thread, from the end of the ninth line, very quiet, very large, very patient. The way the children on the benches had been patient.

Who is singing?

Not pushing. Not one note. Not take them or asking is not how it's done. Just the question. Going out along every thread to every tower on every world the Sorn held. And coming back. And going out again.

Waiting for an answer.

Luna came out at two in the morning on the first night.

With two cups. She gave me one and sat down in the other chair. Hana came out a little after, with Kwame, and sat on the top step. Nobody said anything for a long time.

"Is it still asking?" said Luna.

"Yes."

"The same thing?"

"The same thing. Over and over. Very quiet." I held the cup. "It's not pushing. That's what I can't stop listening to. Everything I've ever heard from them pushes. Even the small polite one. Even the keeper in the box, when it was telling us what it knew." I looked out at the plain. "This doesn't push. It just waits."

Hana, on the step, put her hand on Kwame's back.

"Like the children on the benches," she said. "When nobody told them anything."

"Yes."

"That's sad," said Hana. Very quietly.

Luna looked at her.

"It's the thing that made the benches," said Luna.

"I know," said Hana. "It's still sad."

Luna didn't say anything for a long time. Then she put her cup down on the porch rail.

"Okafor's going to say don't answer," she said. "In the morning. I know she is. I've drafted it for her twice in my head already." She looked at me. "And I'm going to say the other thing. And she's going to look at me the way she looks at me when I've drafted something she hasn't." A pause. "I'd like you to know I'm going to say it. Before I do."

"Why?"

"Because it matters," said Luna. "And you're the only one who can hear it asking." She picked her cup back up. "You'd know if I was wrong."

"You're not wrong."

Luna looked at me for a long time.

"Write that down," she said. "I'd like it in the book."

The heavy queen spoke at dawn.

Through Dot. At the foot of the steps of Scarecrow. Before the map room. She lay on the red glass beside the Ground with her head turned toward the sky, the way she lay every night now, listening.

"Major," said Dot. "The heavy queen says her son has heard the question."

Okafor stopped on the steps.

"He heard it go past," said Dot. In the heavy queen's slow way. "Along the thread. From the middle. Who is singing." A long pause. "He says he knows that voice. He says it is the one that taught the ones that taught him."

"What does he want?" said Okafor.

Dot was quiet for a long time.

"He wants it answered," she said. For the heavy queen. "He says when he was asked, under the ring, what he was, by the ones from home, he said no. And it was the first time." Another pause. "He says he would like the one at the middle to have a first time too."

"Don't," said Okafor.

In the map room. At dawn on the first day. With everyone. Coats over nightclothes. Again.

"Don't answer it," she said. "Not yet. Maybe not ever." She put her hand flat on the table. "It doesn't know where we are. It knows something sang along its threads. From the wrong end. It knows four hundred and twelve queens answered. It knows children sat down." She looked round the table. "It doesn't know where the singing came from. Not exactly. The singing went along every thread at once. Through every queen. It came from everywhere."

"It's asking," I said.

"I know it's asking."

"The Sorn don't ask."

"I know they don't," said Okafor. "That's why I don't trust it."

The General shook his head slowly.

"Maris," he said. Nobody called her that. He did, sometimes, in the map room, when it was very late or very early. "I've been in a room with them. Thirty years ago. The night of the Accord." He looked at his hands on the table. "They didn't ask anything. Not once. They told us what we'd sign. They told us what we'd give. They told us where to put our names." He was quiet. "If that thing at the middle is asking, it's never done it before. It doesn't know how to trap us with a question. It doesn't know what a question is."

"Then what is it doing?"

"I don't know," said the General. "I'd like to find out."

Luna was at the end of the table with her notebook.

"It's a crack," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"Like the grey in the halls," said Luna. "When the dog lay on it. A crack. Something that's never been anything but grey, feeling something it's never felt." She turned a page. "We sang. Fifty-eight thousand children stood up. A keeper hummed. The Overseer held out bread. And the one note stopped." She looked up. "And then the thing at the middle asked a question. For the first time. In all the time anyone has known about the Sorn."

"So?"

"So if we don't answer," said Luna, "the crack closes."

Voss spoke from the door.

She hadn't said anything. She never said anything in the map room. She sat by the door with her book on her knee and wrote. But she put her pen down now.

"I sat in a chair for twenty years," she said. "And people asked me things. Through the door of my office. In letters. In the Senate. Every day." She looked at her hands. "And I didn't answer. Not really. I signed something. Or I passed it on. Or I let the small polite one answer, sitting in my chair, learning how to sit like me." She was quiet. "Nobody ever answered anything in that building. For twenty years. That's how it worked. That's what it was for."

Nobody said anything.

"And then my niece counted me," said Voss. "Out loud. In front of everyone. And I'd never been counted. And I answered." She looked at Okafor. "That's all. I answered. I stood up in the Senate Annex and told four million people the truth because someone had finally done something that wasn't a paper." She picked her pen back up. "If something at the end of the ninth line has asked its first question, Major, I'd like it to get its first answer. I didn't get mine for twenty years. I know what that does."

Okafor stood at the head of the table for a very long time.

Then she looked at the Overseer.

It was standing at the end of the table. Stooping under the map room ceiling, the way it always did. With its bread. With the dog across its feet.

"You were made by them," said Okafor. "Grey and a piece of a queen and an order. You stood over a world. You reported." She looked at it. "Have you ever heard one of them ask a question?"

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

"No," it said.

"Have you ever asked one?"

"Once," said the Overseer. "At the mouth of a passage. A girl had left bread on a stone. I asked if it was for me." A pause. "Nobody answered. She had gone. I ate it anyway." It looked down at the loaf in its hands. "I did not know, for a long time, that asking had been the thing I did. Not eating."

"And if nobody had left the bread?"

"Then I would still be sitting at the passage," said the Overseer, "reporting."

"Not the map room," said Okafor at last. "Not me. Not you, Dask." She looked at the slate on the wall. Every one. "The long table. Everyone sang. Everyone decides."

The long table sat at noon.

Under the silver tree. Every seat. Every town and every brood, and the chair at the foot for the ones without queens. And the green full, and the streets round the square full, and every rail line carrying people in from the towns since dawn because Kwame had sent the Kethri with word down every line: the table sits; everyone who sang is asked.

I told them. All of it. The question, still going out along every thread, still waiting. What Okafor said. What the General said. Luna. Voss. The Overseer.

Then Kwame, at the head, said, "Your turn," to the first seat.

And it went all the way round.

It took all afternoon.

Carver said answer. The farmer with soil under her nails said a tree that's asked to fruit and never answered stops flowering. Stillwater said answer. Ashby, who'd dug salt for thirty years, said they'd like to be asked something by the Sorn just once and see what it felt like to answer.

The Reach said don't. A shepherd. He said a wolf that asks where your sheep are sleeping isn't asking. Nobody argued with him. Kwame said your turn to the next seat and Voss wrote it down.

Halden said answer. The old man with the filter. He said nobody asked Halden anything before the doors opened, and he'd like it written that Halden voted to answer.

The broods said answer. Every one. The Hesk seat, the boy with markings like scales, closed his eyes for a long time and said: she says when the Sorn came to her world they did not ask. She says she would like them to know what it is to be answered.

The last seat was the chair at the foot.

Tally sat in it. With Reed beside her, and Moon in her lap, and the feathered child standing at her shoulder.

Kwame looked at her.

"Your turn," he said.

Tally didn't answer at once. She sat very straight in the plain chair with her notebook open on the table in front of her. To the page that said WILL YOU COME WITH ME?

"It asked who is singing," she said at last. "That is a question."

"Yes," said Kwame.

"I was taught that asking is not how it's done," said Tally. "Every day. On a bench. For as long as I remember." She looked down the long table. "Then Voss asked me why I stopped asking. And I asked her why she stopped signing. And Wren counted me. And I chose my name." She put her finger on the page. "Every good thing that happened to me happened because someone asked, or because I did." She looked up. "If the thing at the middle has asked, it is the first time. It does not know how. It will not know what to do with an answer." A pause. "Neither did I."

The long table was very quiet.

"I would like to answer it," said Tally. "Please. Not where we are. Not what we are. Just who." She closed the notebook. "It asked who. I know who."

Kwame looked down the long table for a long time.

Then at Okafor, standing at the edge of the green with her slate under her arm.

Okafor didn't say anything. She looked at Tally, very small, very straight, in the plain chair at the foot of the table. With her silver hair grown out past her ears. With Moon asleep in her lap.

Then she nodded. Once.

"Then the table answers," said Kwame. "Through her." He looked at Voss. "Write it down, Renata. Every word."

"I always do," said Voss.

We did it at dusk.

On the green. Under the silver tree. Not at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, on the red glass, where we'd sung. Okafor said the singing had come from everywhere and the answer should too. Not from a place. From a table.

Tally sat in the plain chair.

Genny sat on the grass beside her. With her left hand still cold to the wrist, in her lap, wrapped in a cloth Ruth had warmed. She couldn't sing. Not yet. But she could ask the queens. And they could carry it.

And the queens sang under her. Quietly. Not every note this time. Just enough to carry. Our queen, from the garden wall. The first queen. Tally's queen, from her green shallows, tall and pale, with her silver top bent toward the chair.

And Dory, asleep in her bed on the second day, with Mother beside her, turned her head on the pillow. Toward the square. And her lattice brightened, very faintly. Holding. Even asleep.

Tally didn't sing.

She didn't know how. She'd sung will you come with me on the red glass, very flat, very badly, and she'd said afterward she didn't think she'd do it again.

She just spoke.

Out loud. In her careful flat voice. Into the singing. So the queens could carry it along every thread, the wrong way, to the end of the ninth line.

To the question.

"You asked who is singing," said Tally.

"It is us. The ones you told not to ask. Every day. On benches. In halls. Under rings. In collars. In towers. In the backs of people on the human world. We are the ones you taught."

"And our mothers. Who you broke into pieces, and put in pillars, and made to sing one note into us. They remembered the other notes."

"And everyone who asked us. When we did not know we were allowed. Who sat down at our height and asked if we would like to come with them."

A pause.

"That is who is singing."

The queens carried it.

I heard it go. Along the silver. Out of every queen on Avalon. Into the hello. Along it. And out along the grey threads, the wrong way. To every tower. To every keeper. To the grey at the end of the ninth line, so large the halls were a pebble.

To the question.

And then nothing.

For a long time, nothing.

The question stopped. Along every thread. All at once. The way the one note had stopped, the day before.

And the grey at the end of the ninth line went very still.

I listened. Everyone on the green was very still too. Tally in the chair. Genny on the grass. Okafor at the edge with her slate. Voss at the foot of the table with her pen above the page.

The silver tree's leaves, the ones like small hands that turn to follow the sun, turned toward the west. Toward the last of the light.

Nothing.

Then the voice.

Very quiet. Very large. From the middle. Along every thread at once.

Why?

Tally's hands, on the notebook, went very still.

It had asked again.

Not who. Not what. Why.

Why are you singing. Why did they stop. Why did the children sit down. Why did a keeper hum. Why did a queen not lift.

Why.

The second question it had ever asked.

Tally looked at the notebook for a long time.

Then she looked up. At Reed, beside her. At Moon, asleep in her lap. At the feathered child, standing at her shoulder. At the long table, every seat full, everyone looking at her. At Voss with her pen. At Okafor.

At me.

And then she answered.

"Because someone asked us," said Tally.

The queens carried it.

Along the silver. Along the threads. The wrong way. To the end of the ninth line.

And this time the silence didn't come back.

Something else did.

Not a voice. Not a question. Not the one note. Something I'd never heard from the grey at the end of the ninth line, or from any grey, or from anything the Sorn had ever made.

It was very faint. Very far. Very large.

And it was coming from the middle. From the place where the one voice was. Along every thread at once.

It wasn't a note.

It was the sound something makes when it's been asked a question and answered, and doesn't know what to do next.

It was listening.

The threads went quiet.

Not stopped. Quiet. All of them. Every grey thread going out from the end of the ninth line to every tower on every world. The take them that had gone along them two nights before. The one note. The question. All of it.

Quiet.

And on world after world, along every thread, I heard the towers stop pushing.

Not because we'd folded them. Not because a queen had sung into them. Because nothing was coming along the thread for them to push. The middle had stopped sending. It was listening. And a tower with nothing coming down its thread doesn't know what to do.

So it stood there.

Not pushing.

And under it, in collars, on world after world, the young lifted their heads.

"How many?" said Okafor. Very quietly. To Wren. Who'd come down from the north wall at the first word and was standing at the edge of the green with Toby's stone at her ear and her head tilted.

Wren didn't answer for a long time.

"I can't count them," she said at last. "Too many. Too far." Her voice cracked. "But the towers have stopped. Most of them. Everywhere the singing reached. They're just standing there. With nothing coming down the thread." She opened her eyes. "And the young are lifting their heads. Everywhere."

Selwyn was the first to move.

At the far end of the long table. In the corner chair he'd sat in every evening for a season, since Voss gave him the names. He stood up. Very slowly. With one hand on the table. And looked at Tally in her plain chair at the foot.

"It asked why," he said.

Tally looked at him.

"Yes."

"I signed papers for twenty years," said Selwyn. "The vials. Every Monday. The Program. Cinder." His voice was very rough. "I never once asked why. Not once. Not about any of it. Why the vials never made anyone well. Why the Sorn wanted the children. Why we were paying." He looked at his hands on the table. "And that thing at the middle has been taking children from every world it holds for longer than humans have stood up. And it's just asked why."

Nobody said anything.

"It's asked more than I ever did," said Selwyn. And sat down. Very heavily. And put his face in his hands.

Voss, at the foot of the table, wrote it down.

Then she got up. And walked the whole length of the long table, past every seat, to the corner. And sat down in the empty chair beside him. And didn't say anything.

She just sat there.

Jory found Tally afterward.

On the green. By the silver tree. She was still in the plain chair. Everyone else had gone. Moon was asleep across her lap. Reed had gone to sit in the green shallows with their queen.

Jory sat down on the grass in front of her. At her height. The way she'd knelt in front of him in the fitting room behind the suit bay, a long time ago, with the notebook.

He took a pencil out of his coat. One of Ruth's.

And held it out.

"You answered it," he said. "The thing at the middle."

"Yes."

"Will you write it down? What you said?" He held the pencil out further. "So it's counted. The first time anyone answered it."

Tally looked at the pencil for a long time.

Then she took it. And opened the notebook. To a clean page. And wrote, very carefully, in Genny's square letters:

IT ASKED. WE ANSWERED.

And under it, one mark.

"That one is everyone," said Tally. "All of us. One mark." She gave the pencil back. "Some things you count as one."

The voice didn't speak again that night.

Or the next. Or the one after.

The threads stayed quiet. The towers stood still. And the four hundred and twelve queens who'd answered the singing went on pointing home. Toward Avalon. Faint, and very far, and very patient.

Waiting for someone to come.

Garnet drew them all night.

On the floor of the long room. On a sheet so big it covered the whole floor, so that she had to move the slivers on their white cloths up onto the shelves to fit it. With every colour of chalk she had. And Genny beside her, with her cold hand in her lap and her warm one flat on the boards, telling her where. And Tally, telling her which ones she could hear too, the faint ones, the ones only someone born whole under a ring could hear.

Lines. From a dot in the middle.

Four hundred and twelve.

Okafor came in at dawn.

She stood in the door of the long room with her slate under her arm and looked at it. The whole floor. Covered. Four hundred and twelve lines going out from the dot like the spokes of a wheel. Like the rails going out from the city. Like the threads going out from the end of the ninth line.

And at the end of every one, a small circle.

Not crossed out. Not yet.

"Garnet," said Okafor.

Garnet looked up. From the floor. With chalk to her elbows and the old brown dog asleep on her foot.

"How long did that take?"

"All night," said Garnet.

Okafor looked at the floor for a long time.

"Four years," she said. "To cross out eleven circles." She looked at the four hundred and twelve. "I said twenty, at the start."

Nobody said anything.

"Every one of those has a queen," said Okafor. "Pointing here. Waiting for someone to sing her a rope." She looked at Genny. "That's easier than finding her. Isn't it."

"A thousand times," said Genny. "We don't have to look. She's already looking at us."

"And every tower on every one of those worlds," said Okafor, "has stopped pushing. Because the middle's stopped sending. Because it's listening." She looked at me. "For how long, Dask?"

"I don't know."

"No," said Okafor. "Nobody does." She looked at the floor again. At all of it. "So we'll go fast." She took out her stylus. "Not one at a time. Not two at once. As many as we can. Every ship. Every queen who'd like to carry one. Every person whose silver's started listening." She looked at Garnet. At Genny. At Tally. "Every one of you who can do what Dask does, slower."

"Mother," said Garnet. "And us. And Lucas."

"Three," said Okafor. "Today." She looked at the four hundred and twelve circles. "By the end of the year, I'd like thirty."

Sera warmed Genny's hand that night.

At the kitchen table. Genny sat with it in her lap, wrapped in Ruth's cloth, white to the wrist, cold. She'd been holding it like that for two days. Not complaining. Genny never complained. Writing with her other hand, slowly, in the notebook, because she said she'd rather be useful with one hand than useless with two.

Sera came and sat down beside her. And didn't ask. She unwrapped the cloth, very carefully. And took Genny's cold hand in both of hers.

And held it.

Not hot. Sera could be hot enough to melt iron. This wasn't that. Warm. The way you warm a cup of milk for a child. Slowly. Patiently. A little at a time.

Genny looked at her.

"Ruth said it'll come back on its own," she said.

"I know what Ruth said," said Sera. "I'm a Calder. We don't wait for things to come back on their own." She didn't let go. "My mother used to do this. When Liam burned himself as a boy and then got frightened of fire and couldn't feel his own hands for a week. She'd sit with him at the stove every night and hold them. Warm. Until they remembered."

Genny didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she put her pen down.

"Sera," she said.

"Mm."

"Lucas said it to everyone. Out loud. On the porch." Genny looked at her hand, in Sera's. "I didn't say it back. To anyone. I wrote it down instead."

"That's all right."

"It's not," said Genny. Very quietly. "It's not the same as saying it." She looked at Sera. "Thank you. For my hand. And for him. For putting your hand on his chest every time. I've watched you do it since the forge." She swallowed. "I love you. You're my sister. I've never said."

Sera didn't say anything.

She held Genny's hand. And the hand got warm. And warmer. And then, very slowly, Genny moved one finger.

Sera put her face down on the kitchen table, on top of their two hands, and set fire to the tablecloth.

Mother put it out from the stove without turning round.

Okafor made the list that afternoon.

In the map room. With Garnet's sheet brought up from the long room floor and pinned across two walls because it wouldn't fit on one. Four hundred and twelve circles. And the slate beside it.

"Three today," she said. "Dask. The twins. Dorothy." She wrote them. "Three who can open a tower or a collar or a housing without breaking what's inside." She looked round the table. "I'd like more."

"There aren't more," said the General.

"There will be," said Okafor. She looked at Ruth, in the door. "Halloway. The ward. How many people have watched the twins take a housing off?"

Ruth thought about it.

"Hundreds," she said. "Neve. The orderlies. Every chair beside every bed. Jory. Tally." She paused. "The twins taught Neve to ask a root which way it went in. She can't take it out. But she can ask."

"Then she can ask," said Okafor. "And someone else can touch." She wrote it. Neve. "Who else has been listening?"

Nobody answered at once.

"Liam," said Hana. From the back. "He can see the air inside a fire now. Where it's going before it goes. He learned it from watching me." She shifted Kwame. "A tower's not a fire. But it's something with something inside it that it doesn't want to let go of."

Okafor wrote it. Calder, L. Osei.

"Reed," said Tally. From her chair by the door. "She can hear a queen in a tower. Even a very small piece. She heard ours in pieces in the long room before anyone told her." She looked at Reed. "She could find the queen. Before anyone opens anything."

Okafor wrote it.

"Genny's hand's cold," said Garnet. "For three days. Ruth says." She looked at her sister. "And I can't do it without her saying it. Not yet. Not on a whole world."

"Then you'll go with someone else saying it," said Okafor. "And Genny will go with someone else touching. And you'll both teach whoever's with you." She put the stylus down. "That's how it works now. Nobody goes alone. Everybody teaches."

She looked at the four hundred and twelve circles across two walls.

"Thirty by the end of the year," she said. "Teams. Every one with someone who can ask and someone who can touch and someone who can hold." She looked at me. "And you, Dask, go wherever nobody else can. And come home every night. And say it out loud."

"Say what?"

"Whatever you said on the porch," said Okafor. "Everyone heard about it. Windsor wrote it in her book." She picked up her slate. "I'd like it said every night. To whoever's there. That's an order."

"You said the last one was the only one you were giving."

"I lied," said Okafor. "I'm a sergeant."

I went into the children's room that night.

Late. After everyone was asleep. Mother was in the chair between the beds, the way she'd been both nights, with her hands in her lap and her eyes shut. Not asleep. She never is when I come in.

Dory was asleep in her bed. Breathing slow and deep. Ash on the floor beside her on the blanket. Pebble at the foot. Trevor in his cot under a thin crust of frost.

I stood between the beds.

The way Father had. Every night. When the words got stuck.

Mine didn't.

"I love you," I said. Very quietly. To Dory, asleep. To Ash, on the floor. To Trevor, under his frost. "I'm proud of you. All of you." I looked at Dory. "You held everyone. Even when it pushed. Even when you couldn't. You held on."

In the chair, Mother didn't open her eyes. But I saw her hands move in her lap. One over the other. Very slightly.

"Okafor's order?" she said. Very quietly.

"No," I said. "Father's."

Mother didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she opened her eyes. And looked at me, standing between the beds. And I saw her face do the thing it had done at the kitchen table at five in the morning, two days ago, with the tea going cold.

"He'd have liked that," she said. "That you do it awake."

Dory woke at noon on the third day.

I was sitting on the edge of her bed. Ruth had just gone. Mother was in the chair between the beds with her hands in her lap. Pebble lifted his head off Dory's feet.

Dory opened her eyes.

She looked at me for a long time. With the lattice round her eyes faint, very faint, the way it went when she was very tired.

"Did they answer?" she said.

"Yes."

"What did they say?"

I thought about it.

"They asked why," I said. "And Tally told them. And then they listened."

Dory considered this. Very seriously.

"Good," she said. "That's what you're supposed to do." She shut her eyes again. "When someone tells you why."

And went back to sleep. With her hand flat on the blanket. Holding.

Days 2727–2730. The answer.

Dory slept two days. The question stayed on every thread, patient: who is singing? Okafor said don't answer; the General said they've never asked anything and don't know how to trap us with a question; Luna said it's a crack, and if we don't answer it closes; Voss said she went twenty years without answering anyone and knows what that does. The Overseer said asking was the thing it did, not eating. The long table sat; Carver, Halden and every brood said answer; the Reach said a wolf that asks where your sheep sleep isn't asking. Tally, in the chair for the ones without queens: it asked who; I know who. At dusk, carried by the queens: it is us, the ones you taught; our mothers, who remembered the other notes; and everyone who asked us. The middle asked a second question: why? Because someone asked us. Then it listened. The threads went quiet; towers on world after world stopped pushing with nothing coming down to push; the young lifted their heads. Garnet drew four hundred and twelve circles on the long room floor. Okafor: three of us today; thirty by the end of the year. Dory woke and asked if they'd answered. They asked why, and then listened. Good. That's what you're supposed to do.