Chapter 356 The Sorting Place

Tally asked to be the one.

She said it at the kitchen table, the morning after Okafor wrote Ask the voice on the back of the slate. With her notebook in front of her, closed, and both hands flat on the cover. Very quietly. Without looking up.

"The Overseer said I came from there," she said. "Seven-three-K. Before the chair. Before the Chancellor's office." She looked at the notebook. "I don't remember it. I don't remember anything before the chair. Just being in it. And being told to watch." A pause. "But if I came from there, then I was there. And the voice was singing to me there. Before anyone else ever did."

Nobody at the table said anything.

"I'd like to ask it," said Tally. "Myself. If it remembers me."

Mother looked at her for a long time.

"Are you sure, love?" she said.

"No," said Tally. "Genny says that's when you should do things. When you're not sure and you do them anyway." She opened the notebook. To the first page. Where she'd written her own name, a long time ago, in the first marks she ever made. "I chose this name. On the grass. At the garden wall. Lucas asked me why I'd stopped asking, and I found out I could." She looked at it. "I'd like to know what I was called before I chose."

We went to the long ward that afternoon.

The way we always did. Genny laid the nine trays out in a ring on the floor. Dory sat down in the middle of them with Pebble and put her hand flat on the boards and held the door. Efua sat behind her with the air still. Kwame watched. Wren took the corner with her back to the wall and her eyes shut.

Tally sat beside Dory.

Reed came. And Moon. Nobody asked them. They came in through the double doors past our queen's great head on the floor and sat down on either side of Tally without a word, the way they'd sat on either side of her on the porch rail for years.

The Overseer stood in the doorway. With the dog.

I sat behind them all. With my hands on my knees. Listening.

Tally put out her hand. Flat. Up. Toward the thread.

"Are you there?" she said.

Yes, said the voice.

Very faint. Very far. Under the teaching, which was loud, Tally said after, louder than ever. But the voice came through. From the nine quiet places. Snow. Bell. Red. Wind. Moss. Grass. And three more.

Yes. I am here.

"Seven-three-K," said Tally.

The voice didn't answer at once.

"That's what they called it," said Tally. "On the sheets. The ones the humans signed. A code. The place on the thick thread. Halfway to the hollow world." Her hand didn't move. "The Overseer says it's where the taken are sorted. Queens to the rooms. Young to the vats. And the rest—" She stopped. "The rest taught."

Yes, said the voice.

"Tell me about it," said Tally. "Please."

It is a station, said the voice.

On the thick thread. Built round a queen. The way the hollow world is built round a world. A pause. She was broken a long time ago. Not into pieces. Into a shape. They taught her one thing. To sort. Everything that comes up the thick thread goes through her. She feels it. Queen, or young, or other. And she sends it on.

She has done it for longer than anyone remembers.

She does not know she is doing it.

Nobody in the long ward said anything.

And round her, said the voice, rooms. White. Very small. Where the others go. The ones who are not queens and not young. The ones who came on the person lines. A pause. Children. From many worlds. Not only yours. Every world that pays the tithe. Every world the houses take from.

They are put in the white rooms.

And I sing to them.

Tally's hand shook.

Just once. Then it went still again.

I sing them the note, said the voice. Very quietly. Every day. In the white rooms. Until they are only the note. Until they are still. Until they know their shape. A pause. Then they go on. To the benches. Under the ring. Or to towers, to keep. Or to chairs, to watch.

I did that, said the voice. I did it to all of them. I did not know there was anything else to sing.

"You did it to me," said Tally.

Yes.

"Do you remember?"

The voice was silent for a very long time. So long that Wren opened her eyes in the corner and looked at me, and I shook my head, because I could feel it, still there, at the end of the thread. Thinking. Looking. Through everything it had ever sung.

Yes, it said at last.

You were very small, said the voice. You came on a line from the human world. With nine others. A long time ago. A pause. You did not cry. The others cried. You did not. You sat in the white room with your hands together and looked at the wall.

Tally didn't move.

I sang you the note, said the voice. For a long time. Longer than most. You were very still already, but you were not still inside. There was something in you that kept looking. Even when you were still. Even when you knew your shape. A pause. They sent you to the chair. To watch. Because you were good at looking.

"What was I called?" said Tally. Very quietly. "Before. In the white room."

The voice didn't answer for a long time.

You were not called anything, it said. Nobody in the white rooms is called anything. You had a number. A pause. I do not want to tell you the number.

"Why?"

Because you chose a name, said the voice. On the grass. At the garden wall. I heard it. Down the thread. The first time anyone in a chair ever chose anything. A pause. The number is not yours. It was never yours. It was mine. I gave it to you.

Tally is yours.

Tally sat very still in the middle of the long ward for a long time.

Reed put her hand on Tally's knee. Moon put hers on Tally's other knee.

Then Tally said, "Thank you."

For what?

"For not telling me," said Tally. And her voice broke, and she didn't stop it. "For knowing it wasn't mine."

Reed asked next.

She'd never spoken to the voice. Not once. She heard queens inside anything, even a small piece of one, but she'd never put her hand out toward the thread and asked it anything. She put her hand out now. Beside Tally's.

"Was I there?" she said.

Yes, said the voice. You came on a line from a world of rivers. You heard the sorting queen through the floor. Every day. Nobody else could. You would put your ear to the floor of the white room and listen to her. A pause. I sang you the note so you would stop. You did not stop. You went to the benches still listening.

Reed didn't say anything. She took her hand back. And put her ear, very slowly, to the floor of the long ward.

The way she had in the white room.

Moon didn't ask.

She sat very still with her hands together. The way the children on the benches had sat. The way she'd sat on the bench under the ring, before someone asked her why she'd stopped asking. Moon had never said much. She'd chosen her name at Selwyn's table, with one finger on the open page, after thinking about it for a very long time.

She didn't put her hand out.

But the voice said, very quietly:

And you. The small one. You came from a world with two moons. You used to look at the wall of the white room as if there were a window in it. A pause. There was no window. You looked anyway.

Moon's hands came apart. Very slowly. In her lap.

She didn't say anything.

But that night, on the porch, she drew two moons on the corner of Tally's notebook. Very small. The first thing she'd ever drawn.

"How many are there now?" said Tally. "In the white rooms."

Many, said the voice. More than on the benches when you left. More every month. Since the song. Since not still. The houses are taking more. From every world that pays. A pause. And sorting them faster. And sending them on faster.

"Sending them where?"

Not to the benches, said the voice. Not to the towers. Not any more. A pause. To the hollow world.

"Why?"

The voice didn't answer at once.

Because the queens in the rooms are holding, it said. And the houses need strength. And a child who has been sung the note, and knows its shape, and is still—

It stopped.

—gives, it said. The way a queen gives. Not as much. But it gives.

Nobody in the long ward moved.

I felt Dory's hand go rigid on the boards. I felt Efua's air go so still it was like ice. I felt Genny stop breathing.

I did not know, said the voice. Until the far queen called. Until you came up the thread. Until I started listening to what happens after. A pause. They are putting the children in the walls. With the queens. In the hollow world. To take from them.

Because the queens will not give any more.

Okafor heard it all.

Not in the long ward. In the map room. Through Dot. Through the wood. She'd asked Dot to put it through, every word, and she'd stood at the great table with her hands flat on Garnet's sheets and listened to the whole thing.

She came down to the long ward at dusk.

She stood in the doorway beside the Overseer. In her Marshal's coat. Very still.

"Ask it," she said. To Tally. "Ask it if it'll let us through."

Tally looked at her.

"Through the middle," said Okafor. "Up the ninth line. Through the voice. To the thick thread. To seven-three-K." Her voice was very flat. "Not one person scattered. A force. Ships. Queens singing ropes. Everything we've got." She looked at the trays. "It's the middle. Every thread comes into it. Everything going up the thick thread has to go through it." A pause. "Ask it if it'll open the way."

Tally put her hand out.

"Did you hear?" she said.

Yes.

"Will you?"

The voice was silent for a long time.

If I open the thick thread, it said, the houses will feel it. At once. They will know. A pause. They will come down into me. Harder than they ever have. The way they came for the boy, on the ninth line, when I hid him in the grass.

"I know," said Tally.

They will try to take the nine quiet places, said the voice. They know about them now. They felt something hide there. They have been looking. A pause. If they find them—

It stopped.

I will not have anywhere to go, it said. When it is loud.

Tally didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said, "Then we'll find you more."

More what?

"More places," said Tally. "Genny's got four hundred and six trays on this ward. Four hundred and six queens. Broken. Humming. We found nine of them in you." She looked at Genny. "There'll be more. There must be. In the trays. In the pieces Sera brought from Earth. In the hollow world." She looked up. At the thread. "Every one we find, we'll sing up to you. Every one. Until you've got more quiet places than they can find."

That will take a very long time.

"Then it'll take a very long time," said Tally. "Genny says that's all right. She says they've waited longer."

The voice was silent for a very long time.

Then it said:

Yes.

I will open the thick thread.

Tell the woman with the slate.

Okafor didn't say anything when Tally told her.

She stood in the doorway of the long ward for a long time. Then she turned round and walked up the long road to the map room. In the dusk. With her coat buttoned wrong.

I went after her.

She was at the great table when I came in. With the slate. Not writing. Looking at it. At the back. Past everything. First one on time. Task Force Nine. The Mom Squad. Seven-three-K. The sorting place. Ask the voice.

She picked up the pencil.

And wrote, under all of it:

Everyone.

"Not everyone," I said.

Okafor looked at me.

"Not the children," I said. "Not Dory. Not the twins. Not Tally or Reed or Moon. They came from there. They're not going back."

"No," said Okafor. "Not the children." She looked at the slate. "Everyone else." She put the pencil down. Very straight. "Every task force. Every queen who'll sing a rope. Every ship. The Ground, if the heavy queen will leave the keepers. The Meridian, if Ruan can get her off her track." She looked at me. "You. Luna. Sera. Risa. Task Force Nine. The Drenn. The heavy young. Holt. The General." A pause. "Me."

"You?"

"I've been running this war from a slate for four years," said Okafor. "From a room. From a window." She looked out of it. At the town. At the lights. At the long roads going out. "I'm going to see it. Seven-three-K. With my own eyes. When we take the children out of the white rooms." Her voice was very steady. "I owe it four thousand and three numbers."

I told my family that night.

On the porch. All of them. In order. And then I told them what Okafor had written. Everyone.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Luna said, "When?"

"Okafor says ten days. To get everything ready. To get every queen rested. To get the heavy queen to decide."

"Ten days," said Luna.

"Ten days."

She nodded. Slowly. And looked at her hands. Cold. Faintly white at the edges. She'd laid ice floors over the long ward. She'd held the sky over the Hathri. She'd run on a path across a canyon and laughed.

"I'll need a map," she said. "Of the station. Of the white rooms." She looked at Tally. On the rail. "Can you tell Garnet what it's like? Inside? Anything you remember?"

Tally looked at her.

"I don't remember anything," she said. "Before the chair."

"Reed does," said Moon.

Everyone looked at Moon.

She'd never said anything on the porch. Not once. Not in all the evenings she'd sat on the rail between Tally and Reed. She looked very small and very startled at the sound of her own voice.

"Reed listened to the floor," said Moon. "Every day. She told me. On the bench. Under the ring." A pause. "She said the floor had a queen in it. And the queen was always moving things. Round and round. Like a wheel." She looked at Reed. "Tell them. Tell them about the wheel."

Reed didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she put her ear, very slowly, to the boards of the porch.

The way she had in the white room.

"Round," she said. Once. "The rooms go round her. In a ring. Every room. Like seeds round a flower." She lifted her head. "She's in the middle. And she can hear every one of them." A pause. "She doesn't know she's sorting them. She thinks she's counting."

Garnet, on the bottom step, had her drawing board out already. Drawing.

A ring of small rooms. Round a shape in the middle.

Like seeds round a flower.

Dory came to me at midnight.

On Father's roof. She climbed the ladder on her own, which she wasn't allowed to do, and sat down beside me with her knees up and Pebble at the bottom of the ladder looking up, very worried.

"You're going," she said.

"Yes."

"Okafor said everyone." Dory looked at the sky. "But not the children."

"No."

Dory considered this.

"The door," she said. "The one I hold. On the long ward. To the voice." She looked at me. "When everyone goes up the ninth line. Through the middle. Through the voice." A pause. "Somebody has to hold the door open. So everyone can come back."

I didn't say anything.

"Okafor said everyone," said Dory. "Not the children." She looked at her hands. "But I'm Holding. It says so on the slate."

"Dory—"

"I won't go," said Dory. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll be on the long ward floor. Like when you went up the thread." She looked at me very seriously. "Seven hours, last time. I can do more now. I've been practising."

"How long?"

Dory thought about it.

"As long as it takes," she said. "Everyone has to come home. That's the right order." She stood up. "I'll tell Okafor in the morning. She'll say no. And then she'll say yes, because she'll know I'm right." She went to the ladder. Then stopped. "You haven't said it yet tonight. To me."

"You were asleep."

"I'm not asleep now," said Dory.

So I said it. On Father's roof. At midnight. To my daughter, who was nearly seven and looked twelve and held things the way a net holds.

She listened to all of it.

Then she went down the ladder, very carefully, to where Pebble was waiting, and went to bed.

The voice came down the thread at the hour before dawn.

Not to Tally. To me. On Father's roof. The way it had once, to Tally, on the porch rail. Very small. Very fast.

They are moving them, it said.

I sat up.

The white rooms, said the voice. At the sorting place. They felt the thick thread. They felt me think about opening it. I did not open it. I only thought. A pause. They felt it anyway.

They are moving the children. Out of the white rooms. Up the thick thread. To the hollow world.

Today.

I was off the roof before it had finished.

Down the ladder. Across the yard. Up the long road to the map room in the grey before dawn.

Okafor was already there. Of course she was. Standing at the great table with the slate.

She looked at my face.

"How long?" she said.

"Today," I said. "They're moving them today. Up the thick thread. To the hollow world." I put my hands flat on Garnet's drawing. The ring of rooms. Like seeds round a flower. "If they get them into the walls—"

"Then we don't have ten days," said Okafor.

She picked up the pencil.

And crossed out ten days.

And wrote, under Everyone:

Now.

The heavy queen decided at dawn. Before Okafor had finished crossing out the ten days.

Okafor went to ask her herself. Down the long road to the red glass, in her Marshal's coat, with the slate under her arm. She sat down on the glass in front of the heavy queen's great head, cross-legged, the way she'd sat in front of every queen the day after the old queen told us what they were.

The heavy queen was lying where she always lay. Beside the Ground. With the keepers along her side in a row, and the ash queen against her, very small, very grey, with the ash keeper curled against her, with its scarf.

Okafor told her. All of it. Seven-three-K. The white rooms. The children going into the walls.

The heavy queen listened.

Then she lifted her head. And looked down at the keepers along her side. Eleven of them. Grey and thin and long. Who'd come off the ships with nothing under their towers and lain down against her because she said lie down.

She hummed.

She says she cannot leave them, said Dot. Through the wood of the Ground's ramp. She says they are her young now. She decided to be. She says she will not leave young.

Okafor didn't say anything.

But she says, said Dot, the Ground does not need her to carry it. Not any more. She sang into the iron for three days. It knows how to be a ship. A pause. She says her son can carry it. Through the thread. From under the ring. He has been listening to her sing for a long time. He knows the song.

"Her son is the top of the world," said Okafor. "He can't leave the ring."

She says he does not have to leave, said Dot. She says he only has to hum. The Ground will hear him. From anywhere. It was made of his mother's song.

Okafor looked at the heavy queen for a long time.

Then she wrote on the slate. The Ground. Her son hums it.

The ash keeper, against its mother's side, lifted its long grey head.

I would like to go, it said.

Okafor looked at it.

The sorting queen, said the ash keeper. In the middle of the rooms. Taught only one thing. Not knowing she is doing it. It looked at its mother. At the ash queen, small and grey, who'd been taught to be nothing and made into the black over the north dome. My mother did not know either. Someone went into her and found her shape. It turned its long grey head toward Okafor. I would like to be there. When someone goes into the sorting queen.

The ash queen made a sound. Very small. Very hoarse.

The brood-word. For the youngest in the hollow.

Then she lifted her head too. And looked at Okafor.

She says, said Dot, very quietly, she will go with it.

By noon the whole of Avalon knew.

I'm going to write down what it looked like. That day. Because nobody ever saw Avalon like that before, and Genny says nobody will again.

The red glass by the landing field, full of ships. The Scarecrow. The Ground, with her name in gold, waiting for a hum from under the ring. The Harness, with the heavy young walking up her ramp one at a time, because nothing but iron would hold them and Okafor said if there was black at seven-three-K, somebody was going to dig. The Long Legs. The Pool, with the coral queen in her tank. The Open Hand and the Steady, the old Hands, who'd changed their minds a long time ago and would carry anyone who asked.

Every ship we had. All of them. On the red glass at once for the first time since Earth.

And over them, coming down off her track for the first time since the refit, so low that the whole town stopped and looked up, the Meridian. With Ruan in the new map room at the heart of the main ring and Ilka at the relay and the spine-queen laid along the floor, listening.

The queens came down to the glass.

Every one who could sing a rope. The Drenn queen. The marsh queen. The coral queen in her tank. The Kethri queens on the wind. The red queen from the east base. The salt queen. The forest queen, who'd come home from her world of eleven trees, three hundred trees now, because she said she'd like to sing a rope for children who'd been taught to be empty, because she knew how that felt.

Our queen stayed at the top of the garden wall.

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

The old queen stayed on her mountain. But at noon, when the ships were full, every one of us on the red glass heard her. Very far. Very old. One note.

Not not still. Something else. Something I'd never heard a queen sing.

Dot said afterward it was the brood-word for go and bring them home.

Maura brought bread.

Of course she did. Forty loaves. In a handcart. Up the ramp of the Long Legs, because she said there'd be children coming out of white rooms who'd never had bread, and the first thing a child should have, when it comes out of anywhere, is something warm to hold.

Halloway's people loaded the Harness. Blankets. Neve with her lit hands. Toby. The six hundred and forty from the Program floors who could read silver, who said they'd read it on the floors for years to measure how fast children were dying and they'd like, once, to read it to measure how fast they were getting better.

Konrad came down to the glass.

He stood at the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp with his cane. Not coming up. Not his to say. He'd been told he wasn't going anywhere near a thread.

Ingrid came down the ramp of the Long Legs when she saw him. In the green scarf. And stood in front of him.

"Four thousand and three," said Konrad. "Bring back as many as you can."

"I'll bring back all of them," said Ingrid. "Or I'll stay there until I can."

Konrad looked at her for a long time.

"Yes," he said. "You would." A pause. "You always would have."

He held out his hand. Not with bread. Empty.

Ingrid looked at it.

Then she took it. For a moment. Just a moment. And let go. And went back up the ramp.

Luna and Sera and Risa found me at the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp an hour before we lifted.

Luna had the ring. Not on her finger. In her palm. Smoking with cold.

"You kept it," she said.

"You told me to."

"I know." She held it out. "Put it on. Same finger."

I put it on. The fourth finger of my left hand. It burned with cold. It was the coldest thing on Avalon.

Sera put both arms round me. And the heat went into me. All of it. Slowly. Until she wasn't burning any more and I was.

"For the way," she said. "It's cold. Between."

Risa didn't say anything.

She stood at the foot of the ramp with her arms folded and her hair on end and a very small cloud over her head, black. And looked at me. And then at her mother, at the top of the Long Legs' ramp. And at her brother, at the top of the Harness's, beside Halloway, because Sigmund said he could hold a heart still in a crowd better than anyone and Jessa said if he didn't go she'd never hear the end of it.

"Everyone," said Risa.

"Everyone."

"Not the children."

"Not the children."

Risa unfolded her arms. And put her hand flat on my chest. The way Tally did. The way the keepers did.

"Then we'd better bring some home," she said. "Since we're leaving ours."

Okafor gave the slate to Luna.

At the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp. Just before. She came down the long road from the map room for the last time with it under her arm, the way it had been under her arm since the first day in the dome, and stopped in front of Luna, and held it out.

Luna didn't take it.

"You're coming," she said.

"I'm coming," said Okafor. "I'm not taking the slate." She held it out further. "If I'm looking at seven-three-K with my own eyes, I'm not looking at a slate. Somebody has to." A pause. "Chief of Staff. Since the dome. I'm just writing it down."

Luna took it.

She held it very carefully. In both hands. As if it might break. Or she might.

She turned it over. To the back. Past everything. Selwyn. Now. A keeper said no. Everyone. Not still. Dask, D. — Holding. First one on time. Task Force Nine. The Mom Squad. Seven-three-K. Ask the voice. Everyone. Now.

"There's no room left," she said.

"Then start a new one," said Okafor.

Tally and Reed and Moon watched from the porch.

They weren't allowed on the red glass. Okafor's rule. Not the children. They sat on the rail in a row, the three of them, with blankets round their shoulders, and watched the ships fill.

Tally had her notebook open on her knees. A clean page. At the top, in her small square marks, she'd written SEVEN-THREE-K.

Under it, nothing yet.

"You're going to count them," said Reed. Once. "When they come back."

"Every one," said Tally. "Their names. If they've got names." She looked at the page. "If they haven't, I'll ask them if they'd like one. Like Selwyn asked Moon."

Moon, between them, very small, put one finger on the empty page.

"Name," she said. The way she'd said it at Selwyn's table.

Tally nodded.

"Yes," she said. "Like that."

We lifted at dusk.

All fourteen. One after another. Off the red glass. With every queen who could sing a rope singing. With the Meridian overhead. With the whole town on the roads and the roofs and the hill, watching.

On the long ward floor, in the middle of nine trays, Dory put her hand flat on the boards.

"I'm holding," she said.

And under the ring, very far, the heavy queen's son began to hum.

And the Ground went up.

Days 3481–3483. The Sorting Place.

Tally asked the voice herself if it remembered her. Seven-three-K is a station built round a queen taught only to sort; round her, white rooms where the voice sang the note to children from every tithe world until they were still. It remembered her: very small, didn't cry, kept looking. It wouldn't tell her the number; Tally is yours. Reed listened to the floor; Moon looked at the wall as if there were a window, and drew two moons. Since the queens won't give, the houses are putting the children in the walls of the hollow world. The voice will open the thick thread though the houses will hunt its nine quiet places; Tally promised to find it more. Okafor wrote Everyone, and herself. Reed: the rooms go round the sorting queen like seeds round a flower. Dory will hold the door as long as it takes. Before dawn the voice: they felt it think; they're moving the children today. Okafor crossed out ten days. Now. The heavy queen stays with her keepers; her son hums the Ground from under the ring. The ash queen goes, with her keeper. Fourteen ships and the Meridian*. Maura's forty loaves. Konrad: bring back as many as you can. Dory: I'm holding.*