Chapter 343 Not Still

Her name was Ilka Marrow.

She told us at the second hour. On the Council band. Through the Meridian's relay. Alone on Level Forty of the north dome with the shift lights on and everyone else on the level asleep, because it was the middle of the night there and nobody had told anyone anything.

"Nobody's told anyone," she said. "The Council. They've seen it. The dome sensors. They must have. Nobody's said anything on the levels." A pause. The hiss of the band. "I went up to the observation deck at shift change. It's—"

She stopped.

"Describe it," said Okafor. Very calmly. Into the relay. In the voice she'd used on the first day in the dome, a long time ago, to a line of frightened cadets. "Slowly. Whatever you can see."

Ilka described it.

Black. That was the first thing. Not dark. Black. The way a hole is black. It hung over the north dome against the brown sky, and the brown sky went dark round its edges, as if it was taking the colour out of the air. Very big. Bigger than the dome. Bigger than three domes. Shaped like nothing. Not round. Not long. A shape you couldn't hold in your eye. When you looked at it, Ilka said, your eye slid off it, like water off a greasy plate.

It didn't move.

It didn't make a sound.

It hung there, over the dome, where four hundred thousand people were asleep. And waited.

"How many people are left?" said Okafor. "Across all the domes. Not just north."

Selwyn answered. From the end of the long table, where he'd come in his dressing gown with his hair standing up. He didn't have to look anything up.

"Nine hundred and forty thousand," he said. "Give or take. After the crossings. North dome has the most. Then the old east block. Then the farm domes along the ridge." He was very grey. "Most of the ones who stayed didn't believe. Or couldn't leave someone. Or were Council."

"Nine hundred and forty thousand," said Okafor.

She looked at the slate.

"We took three and a half million across," she said. "In two years. With fourteen ships and every queen on Avalon singing ropes." She put the stylus down. Very straight. "How long has that thing been waiting over the north dome?"

"Since about midnight," said Ilka. "Our midnight."

"Then it's been waiting six hours," said Okafor. "For us."

Nobody said anything.

"And when it's tired of waiting," said Okafor, "it'll do what they do."

I went to the queens.

Not because I knew what to ask. Because I didn't. Because every time I hadn't known, for as long as I'd lived on Avalon, I'd gone to the top of the garden wall and sat beside our queen in the morning light until I did.

But they were tired.

I knew they were tired. Before I got there. I could feel it. All of them. Every queen on Avalon had given me everything she had to give, nine days ago, on the mountain. And slept six days. And woken. And climbed the mountain again, the next morning, still tired, and sung the shape of Neve's hands into the black until it remembered it was allowed to be full.

And now there were nine hundred and forty thousand people under something that took the colour out of the sky.

I climbed up the garden wall and sat down beside our queen and didn't say anything.

She was awake. Her great head on the warm stone. Her gold and silver dull in the grey before dawn.

She looked at me.

Earth, she said.

"Yes."

The black is waiting there.

"Yes."

Our queen didn't say anything for a long time.

"I can't keep asking," I said. "You gave me everything. Then you got up and gave Neve everything. You've been singing ropes for three years so we could go and fetch people. You've been singing to the young on every world we freed." I looked at my hands. "And every time, it costs you. And every time, I come back up the wall and ask for more."

You think we are tired, said our queen.

"You are tired."

Yes, said our queen. We are tired. She lifted her head. Off the warm stone. All the way. But you think we are tired the way something is tired that has nothing left. She looked down at me. You think we are tired the way prey is tired.

I didn't say anything.

Call them, said our queen. All of them. Here. A pause. It is time you knew what we are.

They came to the red glass.

Not the mountain. The old queen came down off her mountain for the first time since we let her out, Dot said. All of the way. Slowly. Over the canyon and the river and the plain, with the morning coming up behind her, grey and silver and very old, her dull plates catching the light. People came out of their houses to watch her go by. Nobody said anything. Children stood at the edges of the roads with their mouths open. She didn't look at any of them. She came down onto the red glass beside the heavy queen and lay down along the whole of its edge.

And the rest came. All of them. Every queen on Avalon. On the red glass, round the landing field, round the Ground. In the morning light.

And round them, everyone else.

The long table, standing. The keepers, in their row against the heavy queen's side, with the ash keeper at the end. The Overseer, with Mother's hand under its elbow and the dog at its feet. Okafor with her slate. Luna. Sera. Risa. Hana with the twins. The children, all of them, on the blanket at the edge, with Garnet sitting on her upturned crate with her drawing board. Tally. Reed. Neve, with her hands lit.

Everyone.

The old queen spoke first.

Not to me. To all of us. Through Dot, through the wood of the Ground's ramp, loud enough that the whole field could hear.

You think we are prey, she said.

Nobody answered.

You came to us under mountains, said the old queen. Under rings. In towers. In pieces in the backs of children's necks. You found us chained and quiet and you let us out, and every time you let us out you were gentle with us, as if we would break. A pause. We are grateful. We will always be grateful. That is not what I am going to tell you.

She lifted her head off the red glass.

I am going to tell you why we were chained.

On this world, said the old queen, before the Sorn came, I broke a mountain.

Nobody moved.

Not the one I lay under. Another. East of here, where the Hesk plains are now. It was in my way. My young needed the valley beyond it. I asked it to move. It would not. Her pale eyes were very calm. So I broke it. It took me a season. Afterward there was a valley. My young lived in it for a thousand years.

She turned her great old head. Slowly. Toward the heavy queen.

She held her whole world still, said the old queen. A world so heavy nothing could stand on it. She held it so that her young could learn to stand. Every grain of it. For ten thousand years.

Toward the Drenn queen.

Her brood had blades before you had stone knives. They held a forest against everything that came into it. Forever. Nothing ever took the Drenn forest.

Toward the coral queen, in her pool of carried seawater.

She turned oceans. Not a river. An ocean. Round and round her world, for the warmth, for her young.

Toward the Kethri queens, on the wind.

They command the wind on their world. All of it. Every storm that ever blew there blew because they let it.

Toward the forest queen. The hill queen. The red queen. The blue. The marsh queen. The small green one from the wall.

Every queen, said the old queen, on every world, was the strongest thing on it. That is what a queen is. That is why the silver gathers in us. We are the place the world keeps its strength.

She looked at me.

So tell me, she said. How do you chain the strongest thing on a world?

I knew.

I'd known for a long time. I'd seen it on every world we'd freed. I'd seen it under the ring. I'd seen it in the halls, on the benches, in the collars round the necks of young who lay pressed to the ground feeding a tower that grew out of their mother.

"You take her young," I said.

Yes, said the old queen.

They came here, she said. With their Hands. Their towers. Their note. They could not hold me. I broke the first Hand that came down into my valley. I broke the second. A pause. The third did not come down into my valley. It went to where my young were sleeping. In the far hollows. Where I was not.

Her great head went very still.

And the note came out of the third Hand, said the old queen, into every young of mine at once. And they stood up. And walked toward it. And put on collars. And waited. A pause. And the voice in the third Hand said to me: be still. And they will be safe.

Nobody said anything.

I was still, said the old queen. For four hundred years. Under the mountain. In the dark. Because every day, the voice said it. Be still and they will be safe. Do what you are told and they will be safe. Grow the tower and they will be safe. Feed the grey and they will be safe. Her voice was very low. And every day my young walked to the towers in their collars and lay down and fed it. And were safe. Because I was still.

The heavy queen made a sound.

Low. Through the glass. Into all of us.

Dot listened.

She says it was the same, said Dot. On her world. They took her first young. Her son. And made him the top of the world. And told her: be still and he will be safe. A pause. She was still. Under him. For longer than anyone remembers.

The Drenn queen. A sound like blades.

She says they took her whole brood, said Dot. Every young she had. Collared them. Put her in a Hand. Told her: drive it, and they will be safe. A pause. She drove it.

The coral queen. The forest queen. The hill queen. The red queen. The marsh queen. One after another. Every queen on the red glass.

The same thing.

Be still. And they will be safe.

We believed it, said the old queen.

Not because we were stupid. Because it was true. For a long time. It was true. She looked out over the red glass. If we were still, they were safe. Collared. Lying in a ring. Feeding a tower. But alive. If we were not still—

She didn't finish.

She didn't have to. Every queen on the red glass knew. You could feel it go through them. Through the glass. A long low shiver.

Correction, said the ash keeper. Very quietly. From the end of the row. With its red scarf.

Then you came, said the old queen. To me. And you took the collars off. And the young came to us. And we were not still any more. A pause. And for three years we thought: perhaps it is over. Perhaps they have forgotten us. Perhaps the voice was only a voice, and the voice has stopped telling.

She turned her pale eyes north. Toward the sky. Toward the ring, and the ninth line, and the middle, and past the middle.

And then the keepers knelt, she said. Because the voice stopped and listened. And the houses came down the ninth line. And they did not ask the keepers why. They did not tell the queens be still. They did not offer anything. Her voice was very low. They took the keepers. They burned the young. They took the queens away to wherever they keep us.

A long silence.

There is no be still, said the old queen. There never was. The young were never safe. They were only not yet corrected. A pause. We understand now. The houses will never let us go. They will never let our young be safe. Not if we are still. Not if we obey. Not if we do everything they say for ten thousand years. Her great head came down. Toward me. They will keep us until they do not need us. And then they will correct us.

Nobody said anything for a very long time.

Then Garnet, on her upturned crate at the edge of the blanket, with her drawing board on her knees, said:

"So what are you going to do?"

Every queen on the red glass turned her head.

To Garnet.

Who didn't flinch. Who sat on her crate with her pencil in her hand and looked back at them. Fifteen, with the dog on her feet, at the edge of the landing field, in front of every queen on Avalon.

"You said you're not prey," said Garnet. "You said you broke mountains. And held worlds. And turned oceans." She held up her drawing board. The sheet. Four hundred and nineteen circles. Some coloured in. Some black, with white dots. Some black, with green dots. One in the middle, where she'd left room. "These are all queens. Every one. Pointing home. Waiting." She put the board down. "So what are you going to do?"

The old queen looked at her for a long time.

Then she looked at our queen. At the heavy queen. At every queen on the red glass.

Sing, she said.

It wasn't the great singing.

I'd heard the great singing. Every note at once, from every queen, so big it was a place. It had broken the wall at the end of the ninth line. It had made the middle ask who is singing.

This wasn't that.

It started low. The heavy queen. Through the glass. A hum I'd heard her make before, the hum she'd sung into the iron for three days to make the Ground. The hum her young sang in their ring round her. The hum of a world so heavy nothing could stand on it.

Except it wasn't patient now.

Then the Drenn queen. A sound like a thousand blades drawn at once. The Kethri queens, on the wind, a sound like the moment before a storm breaks. The coral queen, deep and green and pulling, like a tide turning. The forest queen, like wind through a forest the moment before the trees go down. The hill queen. The red. The blue. The marsh. The small green one. Our queen. The old queen, last, very low, very old, a sound like a mountain deciding to move.

All together.

Not every note. One.

I felt it go.

Out. Off the red glass. Into the silver. Into every thread. Not along them, the way the great singing had gone, spreading out, filling. Down them. Straight. Fast. Hard. The way the Scarecrow had gone down the one note, like a stone down a well.

To every world on Garnet's sheet.

To every queen we'd freed. Four hundred and more. On their worlds. In their light. With their young round them.

And every one of them heard it.

I felt them lift their heads.

All of them. At once. On four hundred worlds. The red world, under its white sun, where the red queen's young had sung grey out of the rock. The ice world. The moss world. The glass world, where the queen had let her breath out after however long. The stone world. The sea. The world of reeds, half black now. The wind world. The world of long grey grass with a tower at its centre and nobody at the foot of the tower.

Every queen. Lifting her head.

And singing back.

And past them.

Further. Down the threads. Past the freed worlds. To the worlds that weren't freed yet. The worlds where a queen was still in a tower, or a pillar, or under a mountain, or in a Hand. Still still. Still being told be still and they will be safe.

The song reached them.

And I felt them hear it.

Not answer. Not yet. Hear. The way the keepers on the ninth line had heard the middle stop and listen, and knelt, because it was the first thing they'd ever heard a keeper do that wasn't being told.

The queens in the towers heard every queen on Avalon, and every queen on four hundred freed worlds, singing one thing.

Not still.

And further.

Down the threads to the black worlds. Seven of them now, on Garnet's sheet, with white dots in the middle. To the queens under the black. Curled. Deep. With their young in their coils. Their hearts so slow Wren kept losing them.

They heard it.

Their hearts didn't get faster. They couldn't. Not under the black.

But they got stronger.

And furthest.

Past the middle. Past the place where Garnet had left room. Into the dark where I'd felt, on Father's roof, more queens than anyone could count. Taken. Kept. Every queen the houses had ever decided not to waste.

I don't know if they heard it.

I felt the song go toward them. Very far. Very faint. Into the dark.

And I felt something, in the dark, very far, so faint I thought I'd made it up.

Stir.

The singing stopped.

All at once. The way the great singing had. On the red glass, and on four hundred worlds, and in four hundred towers, and under seven black worlds.

The silence afterward was very large.

Nobody moved.

Then the old queen lowered her head to the glass. Not tired. I could feel it. Not tired the way she'd been tired on the mountain. Ready.

Now we are not still, she said.

"What does it mean?" said Okafor.

She was standing at the edge of the red glass with her slate in her hand and her face very white. She'd felt it. Everyone had felt it. Even the ones who'd never heard a queen in their lives. It had come up through the glass and into their feet and they'd stood there with it going through them and not known what it was.

"Practically," said Okafor. "What does it mean?"

The old queen looked at her.

It means we are ready, she said. Every queen who heard. On every world. A pause. It means the next time the houses send correctors to a world with a queen on it, the queen will not curl up under the black and wait for someone to dig.

"What will she do?"

What she did before the Sorn came, said the old queen. What every queen on every world did before the Sorn came. Her pale eyes were very calm. She will break mountains.

"And Earth?" said Okafor.

The heavy queen lifted her head.

All the way. Off the glass. Higher than she'd lifted it since she came to Avalon. Higher than the Ground beside her. Grey and enormous, shaped by a world so heavy that standing up on it took a thousand years.

And made a sound.

Dot listened. For a long time.

She says she will go, said Dot. To the human world. A pause. She says she carried it once. Sixty thousand of them. Off the ash at the east locks. She says she carried them very gently because they were frightened and small and did not know what she was. Another pause. She says she will not carry them gently this time.

"Why not?"

Because this time, said Dot, she will be carrying them away from something.

The Drenn queen said she'd go.

The Kethri queens. The coral queen, who said there was water on Earth, under the domes, very old, very deep, and she'd felt it once on the crossings, and she'd like to see what it could do. The red queen. The forest queen, who said she owed the black something.

Our queen said she'd stay. With the old queen. With the young. With the keepers along the heavy queen's side, who couldn't go anywhere yet, who were still learning to walk anywhere but in circles round a tower. With the children.

Somebody must be here, she said. To be home. When they come back.

Wren was sitting on the edge of the glass when it was over.

With her back against the Ground's ramp and her eyes shut and her hands flat on the red glass on either side of her. Counting. Her lips were moving.

I sat down beside her.

"How many?" I said.

She didn't open her eyes.

"Four hundred and nineteen sang back," she said. "Every one we freed. Every one on Garnet's sheet." Her lips kept moving. "And the towers. The ones still in towers. I can't count them. They're not singing. But they're—" She stopped. Tilted her head. "They're different. Lucas. They were still. Every one. For as long as I've been listening. Still like a held breath." She opened her eyes. "They're not holding it any more."

"And past the middle?"

Wren was quiet for a long time.

"I don't know," she said. "It's too far. Further than I've ever heard." She shut her eyes again. "But something out there just stopped being quiet. I don't know what. I don't know how many." A pause. "I'm going to count it. However long it takes."

Okafor sat down.

On the edge of the red glass. In front of every queen on Avalon. With her slate on her knees.

She didn't write anything for a long time.

Then she looked up. At me.

"I've spent three years," she said, "planning crossings round what the queens could give us. How many ropes. How many ships. How long before they had to rest." She looked down at the slate. "I've never once planned round what they could do."

She turned the slate over. To the back. Past Selwyn. Past Now. Past A keeper said no. Past Everyone.

And wrote, at the top of a clean space:

Not still.

And under it, very small:

Earth. 940,000. Queens going: 6. Ask each one what she can do. Then ask what she'd like to.

She underlined the last line twice.

She did ask them.

All afternoon. On the red glass. Sitting cross-legged in front of each queen in turn with her slate on her knees and Dot beside her in the wood of the Ground's ramp, translating. Okafor had never once in three years sat on the ground in front of a queen and asked her anything. She'd asked me, and I'd asked them, and I'd told her.

She did it herself now. One at a time.

The heavy queen first.

"What can you do?" said Okafor. "Not carry. Do."

The heavy queen thought about it for a long time. The glass under us hummed.

She says, said Dot, the black takes fire. And light. And silver. It does not take weight. A pause. She says she is made of weight. She says if the black comes down on the human world, she will be under it. And she will hold it up.

Okafor wrote that down. Without looking up.

"For how long?"

She says, said Dot, for as long as it takes. She held her world for ten thousand years.

The Drenn queen.

She says her brood is on Avalon, said Dot. Grown. She says they have not drawn their blades for anything but the Teeming since the collars came off. A pause. She says they would like to.

"The correctors don't have anything to cut," said Okafor. "No hearts. Nothing inside but a piece of dead silver."

She says that is exactly where they will cut, said Dot.

The Kethri queens. Both of them. On the wind over the glass, with their great wings out, not moving.

They say the black over the dome does not breathe, said Dot. Nothing that does not breathe understands wind. A pause. They say they will take the air out from under it. All of it. At once. And see what something that does not understand wind does when there is nothing holding it up.

Okafor looked up at them for a long time.

"Liam," she said. Over her shoulder.

Liam was standing with Anja at the edge of the glass. He looked up.

"Go with the Kethri queens," said Okafor. "You see where the air goes. They move it. Tell them where it'll be before it gets there."

Liam looked at his wrist. At the silver scar where the fire had gone onto him on the stone world.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

The coral queen. In her pool of carried seawater. Very deep green.

She says there is water under the human world, said Dot. Old. Very deep. Under the rock under the domes. More water than the humans know. She felt it on the crossings. It has been waiting a long time for someone to ask it something. A pause. She says she would like to ask it to come up.

"Into the domes?"

She says no. Round them. A wall. Between the domes and whatever comes down.

Okafor wrote it down. Then she looked at the coral queen for a long time.

"Hana," she said.

Hana was on the blanket with the twins. She looked up.

"Hydrogen and oxygen," said Okafor. "That's what you told Luna. Not water. What water's made of." She tapped the slate. "If a queen asks a lot of very old water to come up out of the rock, someone's going to need to tell it what shape to be when it gets there."

Hana looked at the twins. At Efua, with her hand in a cup. At Kwame, watching everything.

Then at me.

"Mother will have them," I said.

Mother, in her chair at the edge of the glass, held out her arms without a word.

The red queen. The forest queen.

The red queen said she'd sing the rock. Under the domes. So it would hold. So nothing could come up through it from underneath.

The forest queen didn't say anything for a long time.

She says she owes the black something, said Dot at last. She says she lay under it for many days. She learned its shape. She says she knows where it is taught. A pause. She says she would like to find out whether the place where it is taught can be untaught. All at once. From the inside.

Okafor stopped writing.

"Can it?"

She says she does not know, said Dot. She says nobody has ever been close enough to try.

Then the people.

Okafor read them off the slate at dusk. Standing. With all six queens behind her on the glass.

"Dask. Calder." She didn't look at Luna, or Risa, or Sera. She didn't have to. "All four. Liam, with the Kethri. Hana, with the coral queen. Anja, in front of whatever needs standing in front of. The General. Toby, for the hearts. Neve and Halloway and twelve from the ward, on the Harness, for whoever comes off the levels." A pause. "Selwyn."

Selwyn looked up from the end of the long table.

"You know the Council," said Okafor. "You know which ones will open a door and which won't. You know which levels will believe you and which will throw something." She looked at him. "And your name's on the paper."

Selwyn was quiet for a long time.

"Yes," he said. "It is."

"No children," said Okafor. "No Mother. No twins. No Dory." She looked at the blanket. "Garnet."

Garnet looked up from her drawing board.

"Draw me Earth," said Okafor. "Every dome. Every level. From what Selwyn tells you and what Ilka can see. By tonight." A pause. "And leave room."

Ilka Marrow was still on the band when I came back to the map room.

Seven hours now. Alone on Level Forty. With the shift lights on.

"It's still there," she said. Before anyone could ask. Her voice was very small. "It hasn't moved. People are starting to wake up. Someone on the level above saw it from a window and started screaming." A pause. "Nobody from the Council's said anything. Nothing on the band. Nothing on the screens." Another pause. "I don't know what to tell them."

I leaned in toward the relay.

"Tell them we're coming," I said.

The band hissed.

"When?"

"Tonight," I said. "Your tonight. Tell everyone on every level. Every dome. North first. Tell them to go down. To the lowest levels they can reach. Away from the top of the dome. Tell them to bring nothing but each other."

"And then what?"

"Then wait," I said. "Not still. Wait. There's a difference."

A long silence on the band.

"What's the difference?" said Ilka.

"Still is when you've been told to," I said. "Waiting is when someone's coming."

I said it that night. Before we went.

Not on the porch. On the red glass. At dusk. In front of the Ground, with her ramp down and the heavy queen beside her, standing, for the first time since she came to Avalon. In front of the Scarecrow and the Harness and the Long Legs and the Pool, and six queens, and everyone who was going.

And everyone who was staying.

I said it to all of them. In order. Mother. Luna. Sera. Risa. Hana. Genny. Garnet. Liam. Anja. Toby. Wren. Tally and Reed and Jory and Moon. The children. Every one. Dory last, because she asked.

Dory stood in front of me on the red glass. In her nightgown. With Pebble. Looking up.

"Are you going to break a mountain?" she said.

"I don't know," I said. "The queens might."

Dory considered this.

"Don't let the black near you," she said. "Your fingers. You only just got them back."

"I won't."

"Promise."

"I promise."

She held up her hand. Flat. The way Tally did. The way Neve did, and Kwame, and the keepers, and every child who'd ever come off a bench and found out they could ask.

I put my hand against it.

"Say it to the queens," said Dory. "Before you go. They never get told."

So I did.

To our queen, at the top of the garden wall, who'd stayed. To the old queen, along the edge of the glass, with her eyes very bright. To the heavy queen, standing beside the Ground. To the Drenn queen. The Kethri queens. The coral queen. The red queen. The forest queen.

Out loud. One at a time. In front of everyone.

The old queen listened to the whole of it.

Then she put her great head down on the glass.

Four hundred years, she said. To nobody. Under a mountain. And nobody ever said that.

The heavy queen went up the Ground's ramp.

Slowly. The whole of the field felt every step.

And the Ground lifted.

Days 2777–2778. Not Still.

Ilka Marrow, alone on Level Forty: something black over the north dome, bigger than three domes, waiting. Nine hundred and forty thousand left on Earth. I went to the queens because they were tired, and our queen said I thought they were tired the way prey is. On the red glass the old queen told us what they are: she broke a mountain; the heavy queen held a world; the Drenn forest was never taken; the coral queen turned oceans. The Sorn couldn't chain queens, so they took the young. Be still and they will be safe. Four hundred years, she was still. Correction proved it was never true. Garnet asked what they'd do. They sang one thing down every thread, to four hundred freed worlds, to queens still in towers, to the black worlds, and past the middle, where something stirred: not still. Okafor: ask each queen what she can do. Six queens for Earth. Dory said to tell the queens. The old queen: four hundred years, and nobody ever said that.