Chapter 348 Thousands

The first call came through the salt queen.

Not on the Meridian's relay. Not down a thread from the middle. Through a queen. Up from the west base, where the salt queen had gone to lie on the white flats by the sea after we dug her out of the black. She lay there in the sun every day with her young round her, and listened, the way every freed queen listened now, to every thread.

And one night, at the hour before dawn, she heard something on a thread nobody had ever sung down.

She sent it to our queen. Our queen sent it to Dot. Dot knocked on the shutter.

"Operator," said Dot. Through the wood. "There is someone on a thread. Not a queen. Not a world we know." A pause. "They are asking for Avalon."

I went to the map room.

Okafor was there. Of course. In her Marshal's coat, which she still buttoned wrong, with her slate and her cold coffee. And Ruan on the big screen from the Meridian. And Ilka at the relay behind her, with the spine-queen laid along the floor.

"Not a queen," said Ruan. "The spine-queen says it's coming through the salt queen's thread but it isn't from a queen. It's from—" She stopped. "She says it's from the young. A whole world of young. With no queen."

"No queen?"

"Their queen's in a tower. Like the others. They say the tower stopped singing to them when your queens sang not still. They say they heard it. Every one." A pause. "And then the black came."

Their name was the Ossari.

That's the nearest Dot could make it. A world of caves. Deep. Going down under the surface of a world so cold nothing lived on top of it, into warm dark rock, where the Ossari lived in long galleries they'd sung out of the stone over thousands of years. Pale. Many-limbed. Blind. They saw with sound. They sang to the rock and the rock sang back and told them where everything was.

Their queen had been in a tower at the bottom of the deepest cave for longer than anyone remembered. And the Ossari had fed it, the way every brood fed every tower. And been safe.

Until three nights ago.

When every queen on Avalon sang not still. And it went down every thread. And the Ossari's queen, in her tower at the bottom of the deepest cave, heard it.

And stopped holding her breath.

They did not come for the queen, said Dot. Very quietly. Translating. They came for the caves.

The black came down the shafts. From the surface. Into the galleries. The ones nearest the top first. A pause. The Ossari do not run. They have never needed to. When something comes into their caves, they sing to the rock, and the rock closes round it. That is how they have always been safe. Another pause. They sang to the rock. The black took the singing. The rock did not close.

Nobody in the map room said anything.

They say there were two hundred thousand of them, said Dot. Three nights ago.

"And now?"

They do not know, said Dot. They say they are counting.

"They weren't a fault," said Okafor.

She was standing at the great table. Over Garnet's sheet. Over the circles. There was no circle for the Ossari. Nobody had ever freed their world. Nobody had ever been there.

"They weren't a fault," she said again. "They were doing exactly what they were told. Feeding the tower. Being still. For longer than anyone remembers." She put her hand flat on the sheet. "Their queen heard a song. That's all. She heard it, and she stopped holding her breath." She looked up. "And the houses burned the caves."

The Overseer was in the doorway. With the dog.

Yes, it said.

"Why?"

Because she heard it, said the Overseer. A queen who has heard not still cannot be made still again. Not by the note. The voice will not sing the note now. A pause. So the houses do not try to make her still. They make sure there is nothing left for her to be not still for.

It wasn't only the Ossari.

By the end of that week there were eleven calls.

By the end of the month, forty.

Through the salt queen. Through the red queen at the east base. Through the coral queen at the west. Through Tally's queen in her green shallows and the forest queen on her world of eleven trees and the queens on four hundred freed worlds, every one of whom was listening now, every night, to every thread, for anyone else who'd heard the song.

And every call was the same.

Our queen heard it. And then the black came.

The houses had stopped waiting.

That was what Wren said. In the corner of the map room. With her eyes shut and her back against the wall. Counting, the way she'd counted since before the dome. Except she couldn't count fast enough any more.

"They're not sending correctors one world at a time," she said. "Not like the ninth line. Not like the forest world. They're not waiting to see what we do." She opened her eyes. "They're everywhere. All at once. Every world they think might have heard."

"How many worlds?"

Wren looked at Garnet's sheet. At the back of it. At the thousands of small grey dots Garnet had drawn past the middle until she ran out of paper.

"I don't know," she said. "Everywhere the song went."

The song had gone everywhere.

That was the thing. We'd sung it. All of us. Every queen on Avalon, on the red glass, after the old queen told us what they were. Not still. Down every thread. To every world. To every queen in every tower. As far as it would go.

It had gone very far.

And now, everywhere it had reached, the houses were coming. Not to collar. Not to correct one keeper who'd knelt. To burn. Whole worlds. Whole peoples. Who'd never been faults. Who'd done nothing but hear.

"We did this," said Luna.

At the kitchen table. At midnight. With the slate between us and Okafor's handwriting all over it, every call, every world, every number.

"We sang it. And they heard. And now they're burning."

"The houses are burning them," said Sera. From the stove. Very quietly. "Not us."

"I know," said Luna. "I know that." She put her face in her hands. "I know."

Okafor made the task forces in the third week.

She'd been building toward it. I could see that, afterward. The ranks. The bases. The interceptors. The Meridian. Everything she'd done since Earth had been a front for one world. For Avalon. For towns that were too far from the landing field to reach in time.

This wasn't one world.

"Task forces," she said. At the long table. Standing at the far end, by the open doors, with the heavy queen's great head beside her and every brood and every town in its seat. "Not armies. Not fleets. Small. Fast. Each one built for one thing. Each one sent where it's needed and brought home the moment it isn't."

She held up the slate.

"Two kinds," she said. "One goes to fight. To stand in front of whatever's coming down, long enough for whoever's there to get ready. To hold. If they want to stay. If they want to fight for their own world, we help them fight for it." A pause. "The other kind goes to bring them home."

"Home?" said someone. Carver's seat. "Here?"

Okafor looked at them.

"Where else?" she said.

There were eight at first.

Okafor drew them up on the slate. Four to fight. Four to carry.

The fighting ones she gave to people who'd stood in front of things before. Luna had the first. With Risa and Sera. Anja had the second, with the Drenn brood, half of them, who said they'd been waiting a thousand years to fight for someone else's forest. The General had the third. Holt had the fourth.

The carrying ones she gave to people who'd held.

Mother had the first.

"No," I said. In the map room. When Okafor read it.

Mother looked at me.

"You've held more people than anyone on Avalon," said Okafor. Not to me. To Mother. "You held two hundred handlers in the sea. You held the reed queen's light when it was going out. You held the Overseer for twelve hours while the houses tried to take it." She put the slate down. "I need someone who'll stand on a burning world with forty thousand frightened people and hold the ground under them until the last one's up the ramp."

"She's my mother," I said.

"Yes," said Okafor. "And she's the best I've got."

Mother didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she stood up. From Father's chair, which somebody had carried up to the map room for her, because she wouldn't sit in any other.

"Lucas," she said.

"You can't."

"I've been sitting in that chair," said Mother, "on the porch, for three years. Listening to you say it every night. Watching you go. Every time. Watching all of you go." She put her hand on my face. The way she had when I was eleven. "Your father went to the Varran pass and I didn't know for nine days if he was alive. I sat with my children and waited. I'm not waiting any more."

"Mother—"

"I'll come home," said Mother. "I'll come home every time. And you'll say it on the porch. And I'll say it back."

She took her hand away.

"Who's on my task force?" she said. To Okafor.

Hana had the second.

She'd asked not to have a rank. She'd said someone had to be in the house who wasn't anything but Hana. She stood up at the long table when Okafor read it and said, very calmly, "Yes," and nobody understood why until she said, "My mother's people lived on Harbor Block Forty-four under a dome for eighty years and nobody ever came for them. I'll go." And sat down.

Neve had the third. With her lit hands and Toby beside her.

Selwyn had the fourth.

He didn't say anything when Okafor read it. He sat at the end of the long table with his pen and looked at her for a long time.

"I signed the paper," he said at last. "That let the houses tithe a world."

"Yes," said Okafor. "Go and un-sign it."

And me.

I wasn't on any of them.

"You're needed here," said Okafor.

"I'm needed there."

"You can be anywhere on Avalon in nine minutes," said Okafor. "You can feel every grain of a world. You can take a whole archive apart and put it back in the hold of a ship." She looked at me. "There are two hundred thousand Ossari coming. Or forty thousand. Or however many are left. They see with sound. They live in caves they've sung out of warm rock for ten thousand years." A pause. "Where are they going to live, Dask?"

I didn't say anything.

"And the next ones," said Okafor. "And the ones after that. Forty calls in a month. Every one a people. Every one a world. Every one needing somewhere on Avalon that's like home." She put the slate down on the great table. "Nobody else can make that. Nobody."

"So I stay home and build."

"You stay home and build," said Okafor. "And every time a task force comes back with a ship full of someone who's never seen Avalon, there's somewhere for them to go."

I hated it.

I want to write that down. Genny says the brood book should be true.

I hated it. Every time a task force went out from the landing field, every time Mother went up the ramp of the Harness in her dark coat with Father's ring, every time Luna went on an ice path into the sky and Sera after her burning and Risa as lightning, I stood on the red glass and watched them go and felt them get smaller and smaller down the threads until I couldn't feel them any more.

And then I went and built.

The Ossari came on the eleventh day.

Mother brought them.

Forty-one thousand. Out of two hundred thousand. She'd gone down the deepest shaft on their world into the warm dark with her task force behind her and the black coming down the shafts after them and held the rock. Every gallery. Every tunnel. Held it still so the black couldn't take the shape out of it before the Ossari got out. For two days. While the Ossari sang their way up out of the dark toward the ships, family by family, the way the people of the north dome had come down the service tunnels to the locks.

Their queen came last.

Out of the tower at the bottom of the deepest cave. Pale. Many-limbed. Blind. Sung out by her own young, who'd gone back down for her past Mother's people, against the black, singing the whole way.

Mother came down the Harness's ramp on the red glass with grey in her hair that hadn't been there when she left.

She walked up the long road to the porch. And sat down in Father's chair. And looked at me.

"Say it," she said.

I'd made them caves.

Under the Hesk ranges, in the east. Where the old queen had broken a mountain before the Sorn came. The ranges were old and deep and warm at the root, and I'd gone down into them the week before, scattered, through every grain of the rock, and felt where it was warm and where it was cold and where water ran, and asked it to open.

Not tunnels. Galleries. Long and high and curving, the way Mother had told me the Ossari's were. With the rock singing. I didn't know how to make rock sing. The red queen did. She'd come from the east base and lain at the mouth of the first gallery for three days, singing into the stone, until it hummed back.

When the Ossari came down the long road from the landing field to the ranges, pale and many-limbed and blind, feeling their way with sound, they stopped at the mouth of the first gallery.

And sang.

And the rock sang back.

And told them where everything was.

Their queen lay down at the bottom of the deepest gallery I'd made, in the warm dark, the way she'd lain in her tower at the bottom of the deepest cave on her own world for longer than anyone remembered.

Except there was no tower.

And her young came down to her. All of them. Forty-one thousand. And lay round her in the dark.

And for the first time in longer than anyone remembered, nobody was feeding anything.

After the Ossari, I stopped counting.

Not because I didn't care. Because there wasn't time.

The Vel came next. Through the Kethri queens. A people who'd lived in the upper air of a world of gas, floating, never touching anything solid, in great drifting herds the size of towns. The black had come into their sky. Luna's task force went. Brought back nine thousand.

I made them a sky.

Over the western coast. Where the salt young could taste the wind. I went up into the air over the sea and felt every grain of it and asked it to hold warm and still and heavy in a great bowl, and asked the clouds to stay. The Kethri queens sang wind into the edges of it, so it would hold. Doctor Bell sent people to measure it, and measured it, and sat down on the beach and said she was going to need a great deal of new paper.

The Vel came up out of the Long Legs' hold and rose. Into the bowl of sky. And drifted.

And for the first time since the black came into their world, touched nothing.

The Thren. A people made of something like glass, who grew. Who lived on a world of crystal plains under a hard white sun, and stood very still, for years, and grew toward the light. The General's task force held their world for nine days, while they decided whether to stay. They decided not to. The General brought back a hundred and eleven thousand, standing very still in the hold of every ship he had.

I made them a plain. North. Past the ninth lake. In the cold country, where the light was long and white and hard in summer. I asked the rock to come up out of the ground in great flat sheets, glassy, and asked the light to stay on them.

The Thren stood on it. Very still. Toward the light.

They're growing now. Slowly. I go and look, sometimes. I think one of them waved. Neve says it's very hard to tell.

The Mireth, who lived half in water and half out and had to have both. I made them marshes along the river south of the town, and the marsh queen came and lay in them and sang them the shape of home.

The Quillin, who were very small and lived in swarms of a hundred thousand and thought as one. I made them a forest of hollow reeds by the lakes, and the reed queen came, a small green light, and sang to the reeds, and they grew up round the Quillin the way her own had.

The Aun, who were very large and very slow and lived in deep cold water and sang to each other across a whole ocean. I made them an ocean. That one took me a month. Not a small one. The coral queen helped. The heavy queen held the shape of the basin while I asked the ground to go down. Hana came back from her task force and stood on the shore for three days with her hands out, telling every molecule of water that came up out of the deep rock what shape to be.

The Aun came up out of the Pool into it. And sank. Very slowly. Into the dark at the bottom.

And sang.

And from the other side of the new ocean, a mile off, another Aun sang back.

The Tolgarra, who weren't a people but a forest. One forest. All of it one thing. Thinking very slowly through its roots. Whose world was black now, except for one valley. Anja's task force went and stood in front of the valley with the Drenn while the forest decided to come. It took the forest four days to decide. The Drenn held for all four.

I couldn't make them a forest. I don't know how to grow a tree.

The forest queen came. From her world of eleven trees. Across the dark. She lay in the valley where the Tolgarra had come down off the Ground in the heavy queen's hold, a single great tangle of roots and trunks, and she sang to it. And the Tolgarra put its roots down.

And something in Avalon's soil, very old, very deep, under everything, answered.

Not every task force came home with anyone.

Holt's went to the Hathri in the second month.

A people of the high steppe, on a world of long wind and short summers. Herders. Nine hundred thousand of them, moving with their herds across a grassland the size of a continent, following the rain. Their queen was in a tower on a mountain at the edge of the steppe, and when she heard the song, she stopped holding her breath. And the Hathri, a thousand miles away on the grass, felt her stop, and looked up.

They called on the fourth day. Through the hill queen, who knew grass.

Holt took six ships.

The black was already on the steppe when they came out of the rope. Not coming down from the sky. Coming across the ground. From every direction at once. A ring, the size of a continent. Closing.

The Hathri were in the middle of it. Nine hundred thousand. With their herds.

There was nowhere to land.

Holt landed anyway.

He told me about it after. In the map room. At three in the morning. Sitting in Okafor's chair, because Okafor had given it to him and stood by the window. With his hands round a cup of coffee he didn't drink.

"We put the ships down in a line," he said. "Six. Right in the middle of them. Ramps down. And we shouted. Every language Dot had. Here. Come here. Now." He looked at the cup. "They came. They ran. Thousands of them. Up every ramp. With their children on their backs."

He was quiet for a long time.

"The black closed at the second hour," he said. "From every side. On the grass. On the herds. On the ones still running toward the ships." He put the cup down. "We had six thousand aboard. And the ring was a mile off. And closing. And I had a choice."

Nobody said anything.

"I could wait," said Holt. "For the ones still running. And the black would reach the ships with the ramps down. And everyone aboard would go." He looked at his hands. "Or I could close the ramps."

He didn't say which.

He didn't have to.

Six thousand, one hundred and four Hathri came to Avalon.

Out of nine hundred thousand.

Thirty-one of Holt's people didn't. The ones on the ramps. The ones who'd stayed at the bottom, shouting, pulling people up, until the last minute. Until after.

Holt closed the ramps with them still on the grass.

He told the long table that. Standing in the bowl in front of a thousand seats. In his own words. He said it so nobody would ever have to wonder. He said he'd do it again. He said he'd never forgive himself. He said both of those were true and he didn't know how.

Then he sat down.

The Hathri queen didn't come. She was in her tower on the mountain at the edge of the steppe, and the black reached the mountain before anyone could reach her.

She's still there. Wren can hear her. Under the black. Alive. Very faint.

There's a white dot on the back of a seed-vault inventory in Garnet's maps. One of a great many now.

Okafor didn't say anything when he'd finished. She came and stood beside his chair and put her hand on his shoulder, and left it there, and that was all.

I made the Hathri a steppe. In the far west, past the salt. Grass to the edge of the sky. The hill queen came and sang it the shape of home.

Six thousand of them, on a grassland the size of a country.

It's too big for them. I know. I made it that big anyway.

So there's room. For the rest. When we go back for her.

By the end of that year there were three hundred and twelve peoples on Avalon.

By the end of the next, there were over a thousand.

I'm going to write down what that was like. Because nobody else will. Because Genny's busy with the brood book, which has gone to eleven volumes, and Garnet's busy with the maps, which she's had to start on the backs of old seed-vault inventories because there isn't enough paper on Avalon.

It was like this.

The long table didn't fit in the long hall any more.

So the carpenters from the east block built a new one. Not a hall. A bowl. Cut into the side of the hill below the town, open to the sky, in rings, going down, like the inside of a flower. With a seat for every people. Every brood. Every town. Thousands of seats.

And at the bottom of the bowl, at the head of the table, which wasn't a table any more but a flat round stone the size of a kitchen, Kwame sat on Hana's knee.

And pointed.

Which everyone had agreed counted.

It was like walking down the long road from the house to the landing field in the morning and hearing forty languages before you got to the bottom. None of them human. Some of them not even sound. The Vel spoke in colour, across the sky over the western coast. The Thren spoke in light, very slowly, on their plain. The Ossari spoke in the rock, and if you put your hand on the stones in the wall by the forge you could feel them talking, under the Hesk ranges, a hundred miles away.

It was like Dot knocking on the shutter every night. Every night. Operator. Someone on a thread.

It was like Genny at the kitchen table at two in the morning with three volumes of the brood book open at once, writing down what a Thren looked like well and what a Thren looked like not well, and what you did when that happened, because Ruth had asked and Halloway had asked and the Thren couldn't tell anyone, because it took a Thren four days to say a sentence.

It was like Tally, on the porch rail, with a new notebook every month, writing down the name of every people that came. In her small square marks. Not the numbers. The names. Because she said someone should know who had come, not only how many.

It was like never sleeping.

It was like this.

Like standing on a new plain in the far south, in a country nobody had walked since before the Sorn came, with the sun coming up and nobody there but me and a ship due at noon with a people I'd never heard of who lived on a world I'd never seen. And shutting my eyes. And feeling the ground. And asking it what it would like to be.

And it telling me.

Hana found me on the forge roof on the four hundredth night.

Father's forge. The copy. Where Odell had built the first engine, a long time ago. I'd gone up there because it was the only roof in the town that didn't have someone on it listening to a thread.

She sat down beside me. With a shawl round her shoulders.

"You haven't slept," she said.

"I slept."

"Not in this house," said Hana. "Not in a bed. Not for two weeks. You sleep on the ships coming back from wherever you've been making somewhere." She pulled the shawl tighter. "Efua's stopped holding the air still when you come in. Do you know why?"

I didn't.

"Because you don't come in," said Hana. "You come in and you go out. She can't hold the air still that fast."

I didn't say anything.

"Kwame asked me yesterday who the man is who says it on the porch." Hana's voice was very steady. "He knows. He was being Kwame. He was making a point." A pause. "He's hardly more than a baby and he's making points, Lucas."

I sat on Father's roof for a long time.

Then I said, "There are a thousand peoples on Avalon."

"I know."

"Every one of them needs somewhere. And there are more coming. Every night. Every week." I looked at my hands. "And I'm the only one who can—"

"No," said Hana.

I looked at her.

"You're the only one who can do it fast," said Hana. "That's different." She looked out over the town. At the lights. At the long roads going out. At the new bowl of the long table on the side of the hill, lit, with thousands of seats in it. "Doctor Bell's people built a sky for the second herd of Vel. Did you know? While you were in the south. They measured yours and built another one. It took them three weeks. You'd have done it in a day." A pause. "It's a very good sky."

I didn't know.

"Halvard Ostrand's people built the Mireth a second marsh," said Hana. "The Ossari have started singing new galleries on their own. Under the ranges. Further than you made. The Quillin are building something by the lakes nobody understands." She took my hand. "It doesn't all have to be you. Not any more. That's what Okafor meant. When she said nobody else could. She meant nobody else could yet."

I came down off the roof.

I walked home. Up the long road. In the dark. Past the forge, past the mill, past a market stall where a Mireth was selling something very wet to a man from Carver. Past the bowl of the long table, empty now, every seat. Up the hill.

Efua was on the bottom step.

She'd been there since dusk, Mother said. She wouldn't come in.

She saw me coming up the path. And stood up. And put out her hand, flat.

And the air round me went very still.

I stopped at the bottom of the steps. And didn't move. And didn't go anywhere. And let her hold it.

For as long as she wanted.

I said it that night.

To everyone. In order. Slowly. Mother in Father's chair, with grey in her hair from four task forces now. Luna, Sera, Risa, home for a night between worlds. Hana with Kwame asleep on her shoulder. Efua on the bottom step with her hand still out. Dory. Ash. Trevor. Small Sigmund, who wasn't very small any more. Genny with the eleventh volume of the brood book. Garnet with the back of a seed-vault inventory covered in tiny circles. Tally and Reed and Jory and Moon. Wren. Toby. Liam and Anja and Rory.

And when I got to Kwame, he woke up.

And looked at me. Calmly. Considering.

"There," he said.

The first thing he'd ever said to me. Not Papa. Not Mama. There. Like Genny said it. Twice, usually. He only said it once.

But I knew what he meant.

Dot knocked on the shutter at midnight.

I was still on the porch. I hadn't gone to bed. I was sitting in the dark with Efua asleep against my side and her hand still out, very slightly, in her sleep.

"Operator," said Dot. Through the wood. Very quiet. "Someone on a thread."

"Who?"

Dot was silent for a long time.

"Not a people," she said. "Not a world." A pause. "It is coming from past the middle. From where they keep the queens." Another pause. "It is a queen, Operator. One of the kept ones. She heard the song. A long time ago. When we sang not still. She has been trying to reach us ever since."

I didn't move.

"What does she say?"

Dot's voice went very strange.

"She says there are a great many of them," said Dot. "Where she is. She says they have all heard it now." A pause. "She says they are not still any more either."

And then, so faint I almost didn't hear it:

"She says the houses are afraid."

Days 2882–3290. Thousands.

A people with no queen in reach, the Ossari, called through the salt queen: their queen heard not still*, and the houses burned the caves. Not faults. Just hearing. Forty calls in a month. Okafor made task forces: four to fight, four to carry; Mother has the first carrying one, and came home with forty-one thousand Ossari of two hundred and grey in her hair. I stay home and build: caves the rock sings in, a sky over the coast for the Vel, a crystal plain for the Thren, marshes, a reed forest, an ocean for the Aun. Three hundred peoples by the year's end; over a thousand by the next. The long table is a bowl in the hill. Hana: it doesn't all have to be you; nobody else can yet. Efua held the air still and I stayed in it. Kwame's first word: there. At midnight, a kept queen from past the middle: they've all heard; they're not still; the houses are afraid.*