Chapter 360 Grandparents

Jessa's daughter was born at midnight.

In the small house at the end of the hospital road. The one with two rooms and a garden that ran down toward the park. The one Sigmund chose because it was a four-minute walk from the ward, which he'd timed, and Jessa chose because the garden faced the morning. The one where Sigmund put the furniture in very straight lines and Jessa moved it all slightly crooked the first night while he was asleep.

It was still slightly crooked. Nobody had ever moved it back.

Halloway was there. Edda, with her sleeves rolled up and her mouth in its line. Neve, with her lit hands, feeling the baby's heart from the moment we came in.

And Sigmund.

He didn't hold Jessa's heart, the way Ruth had held Risa's the night small Sigmund was born, because Jessa's heart didn't need holding. Neve said so. Neve said it was the steadiest heart she'd felt all year. Sigmund held Jessa's hand instead. Both of his round one of hers. And his fence round the whole of the small house, so tight it didn't spark at all, so that nothing outside could get in and nothing inside could get out.

Ingrid was in the garden.

She'd come when Sigmund came to the porch steps at dusk and said Jessa. She'd walked down the hill with him without a word. And at the door of the small house she'd stopped, and looked at her son, and said, "I'll be outside, love. In the garden. If you want me."

And gone into the garden.

And sat down on the grass. With her back to the wall of the house. With the green scarf round her shoulders.

And waited.

Konrad came at the second hour.

Not into the house. Not into the garden. He stood at the gate. With nothing in his hands. He'd been at the guest house when Dot told him. He said afterward he'd started making bread and then stopped, because he didn't know if it was a bread kind of night, and he'd never had to decide that before.

Ingrid saw him at the gate.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she moved over. On the grass. A little. Against the wall.

Konrad came through the gate. And sat down beside her. Not touching.

They sat there together. In the garden. In the dark. With their backs against the wall of their son's house. Listening.

Jessa's mother came at the fourth hour.

Lotte Quint. Who'd kept Jessa's room the same for two years on Earth, after the Quints went down in their pod on Drop Day and didn't come back. Two beds. Jessa's and Marlo's. Made up every morning. Who'd held my mother's hands for a long time, in the Quint house on Earth, when Mother went to tell her what Juno could feel, and said thank you for coming, and didn't say anything else.

She came down the hospital road with Marlo.

Marlo was well now. Mostly. He led the light-benders. He'd held the light round the Harness for six hours on the second black world and passed out at the top of the ramp. He walked his mother down the road with his arm through hers, and she was very small and very straight, and when she saw Ingrid and Konrad sitting on the grass against the wall, she stopped.

She looked at Konrad for a long time.

She knew who he was. Everyone from Earth knew who he was.

Friese. First. On every route sheet. On the recovery orders for Day 300. On the person lines for Day 300, with their pod number on them.

The Quints.

Konrad stood up.

He didn't say anything. He stood up from the grass, very slowly, with his back against the wall of his son's house, and looked at the woman whose children he'd signed for. Both of them. First.

Lotte Quint looked at him.

"You're the grandfather," she said.

"Yes," said Konrad.

"So am I," said Lotte. "The other one." She looked at the house. At the window, with the lamp lit, and the sounds coming from it. "We'll be at the same table for the rest of our lives, Senator. Every birthday. Every supper on Sigmund's night." A pause. "I'd like to know now whether I'm going to be able to sit at it."

Konrad didn't answer.

He looked at her. Then at Marlo. Grey still, at the edges. Thin. With the light-benders' habit of standing very slightly sideways, so the light could get round him.

"I signed it," said Konrad. "Your pod. Both of them. Day three hundred." His voice was very steady. "I read it before I signed it. I always read them." A pause. "I said both of their numbers out loud. In the map room. On the fifth day." He looked at Marlo. "I'm sorry. It doesn't mean anything. I'm sorry anyway."

Marlo looked at him for a long time.

"You're the one who carried the glass," he said.

Konrad didn't move.

"In the town under the garden wall," said Marlo. "For the children from the white rooms. Three weeks. Up ladders." A pause. "Ingrid told the porch you were afraid of ladders." He looked at Konrad's hands. Still healing, at the palms, where the glass had cut through the gloves. "You went up that one four times."

Konrad didn't say anything.

"I was in a housing for a year," said Marlo. "In the hold of a Hand. With something pulling my silver out through my skull. Because you signed first." He looked at his mother. Then at the house. At the lit window. Where his sister was. "And tonight my sister's having your grandchild."

The garden was very quiet.

"I'm not going to forgive you," said Marlo. "Not tonight." He took his mother's arm again. "But I'll sit at the table. Because she's my niece. And she should have both her grandfathers' families at it. Whatever they did."

He looked at his mother.

Lotte Quint looked at Konrad for a long time.

Then she sat down on the grass. On Ingrid's other side.

"Sit down, Senator," she said. "You're blocking the light from the window. I want to see when the lamp moves."

Konrad sat down.

The lamp moved at midnight.

Sigmund came to the door.

Not to the garden. To the front door. He opened it and stood there, in the doorway of the small crooked house, with his sleeves rolled up and his face white and his fence gone. All of it. For the first time I could remember. Not tight. Not holding. Gone. Every spark in him loose and bright and running all over him like rain on a window.

And in his arms, very small, wrapped in the blanket Maura had brought, a baby.

He came down the path into the garden. Very slowly. The way he'd walked down the hospital road with his hands in his pockets, every day, for years.

To his mother.

Ingrid stood up.

"Her name's Inga," said Sigmund.

Ingrid didn't move.

"Jessa chose it," said Sigmund. "Not me. I said she didn't have to. I said everyone would think I'd made her." His voice was shaking. "She said she'd chosen it the day she found out. She said she wanted our daughter to have the name of the woman who held three hundred handlers still in a river and never got a medal for it." A pause. "She said Inga because the whole name's too much for a baby. She said she can grow into the rest."

Ingrid looked at the baby for a long time.

Then she held out her arms.

Sigmund put his daughter into them.

The baby opened her eyes.

Round them, very fine, very bright, the lattice. Like small Sigmund's. Like Ingrid's now, since the finishing. Storm, in every thread.

And something else. Under the storm. Something that reached. The way Jessa reached. Out. Toward everyone in the garden. Toward the grandmother holding her, and the two grandfathers on the grass, and the other grandmother, and the uncle standing sideways in the light from the window.

Reaching.

Finding each of them.

And holding on.

Ingrid made a sound.

Not a word. Not crying. A sound I'd never heard her make. The sound Mother made, Hana said, the first time she held Dory. The sound you make when something you missed is given back to you, and you didn't know until that moment how much.

She held her granddaughter in the garden in the dark.

And everything went quiet.

Not the Hush. Not the quiet before lightning. Just quiet. The garden. The road. The hospital. The town. Everything listening.

Inga yawned.

Konrad didn't hold her that night.

He didn't ask. He sat on the grass against the wall of the house with his hands in his lap and looked at his wife holding his granddaughter, and didn't say anything at all.

It was Lotte Quint who said it.

"Go on, Senator," she said. "She'll want to know both of you."

Konrad looked at Ingrid.

Ingrid looked at him for a long time.

Then she came across the grass. And knelt down in front of him. And put Inga into his arms.

He held her as if she might break.

Or he might.

That was how it started.

I don't know who decided. Nobody did, I think. Mother said it was the scarecrow. Ingrid said it was the flying. Maura said it was the bread. Abena said it was the birds, obviously, and anyone who said otherwise was wrong out loud.

But after that night, after Inga, it changed.

The grandparents came.

Not to visit. Not on Sigmund's night, or market day, or when someone sent Dot. They came. Every day. As if they'd always come. As if the grandchildren were theirs as much as anyone's, and had been all along, and somebody had only just remembered to tell them.

They met in the bakery.

All of them. On the second week after Inga. Before dawn, while Rory fired the ovens. Nobody called it. Mother said afterward she'd just come down for flour and found Ingrid already there, and Maura, and Abena with a basket, and the General standing in the doorway in his greatcoat looking as if he'd been there a while and didn't want to say so.

Konrad came last. With Lotte. They'd met on the road. They hadn't spoken. They'd walked down the hill side by side not speaking, which Ingrid said was progress.

They sat round Maura's floury table.

Nine of them. Every grandparent on Avalon who had a grandchild on our porch.

"The task forces," said Mother.

Everyone looked at her.

"Luna's out every other week," said Mother. "Risa. Sera. Hana, when they need water. Sigmund's on the Harness with Halloway half the month. Liam and Anja." She put her hands flat on the table. "Lucas is building somewhere every day. Or up a thread." A pause. "The children are on the porch. Waiting. The way I waited. For years."

Nobody said anything.

"I'm not having it," said Mother. "Not for them. Not any more."

"A rota," said the General.

Everyone looked at him.

"A rota," he said again. Very stiffly. "Every day. Someone with each of them. Whoever's free. Written down. So nobody's ever on the porch alone wondering who's coming home." He looked at the table. "I ran a front for twenty years on rotas. I can run seven grandchildren."

"Eight," said Lotte. "With Inga."

"Eight," said the General.

"And the town," said Abena.

Everyone looked at her.

"Fifteen thousand children," said Abena. "Under the garden wall. From the white rooms." She folded her hands on the table. "Not one of them has a grandmother. Not one. I asked. Through Dot. Every street." Her voice was very steady. "They've got Tally and Reed and Moon. They've got the keepers. They've got Maura's bread on the sill." A pause. "They haven't got anyone who's old and has time and thinks they're the most important thing on the whole of the world."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Maura said, "I've got the bread."

"I've got the flying," said Ingrid.

"I've got stories," said Konrad. Very quietly. "Every book that came off the archive floors."

"I've got cows," said a voice from the doorway.

Hettie Crale. In her boots. Who'd come for the morning loaves and stopped in the door.

"Twelve of them," she said. "And I'm sixty-eight and Halloway says I've stopped wearing out and my own grandchildren were in the north dome and I never found out if they came off the ships." She looked at the table. "I'll take a street."

By the end of the month there were three hundred of them.

Grandparents. From Earth. From Carver and Ashby and the east locks and Halden. Old men and old women who'd come off the ships in chairs and stopped wearing out and had nobody to be old for. Who went up the hill to the town under the garden wall every morning and took a street each and sat on the steps of the small wooden houses with the windows.

Not to teach. Not to ask. Just to be there.

The old man from Halden, who was a hundred and one, took the street nearest the gate. He sits at the end of it every morning with his hands on his knees and tells anyone who'll listen about Teodor Voss's bicycle shop, and how he used to fix the children's bicycles for nothing.

The children from the white rooms don't know what a bicycle is.

They listen anyway.

Mother moved down the hill.

Not out of the house. Out of Father's chair on the porch. She'd sat in it for years. Watching. Waiting. Saying say it when I came up the path.

She stopped waiting.

She was in the kitchen every morning before anyone else was up, with Kwame on a stool beside her, holding spoons still. She was in the wheat field with Dory and Ash and Trevor and small Sigmund every afternoon, adding things to the scarecrow. A hat. A second scarf, because Ash said one wasn't enough and it was getting colder. A small wooden bird on its shoulder, that Konrad carved, very badly, and brought up the hill without saying anything, and Mother tied on with string.

She took Dory to the long ward on the afternoons when Dory held the door to the voice. And sat behind her. With her hand flat on Dory's back.

Holding her. While she held.

"Somebody should," she said. When Halloway asked. "She's seven."

Ingrid flew them.

Every grandchild who could. Dory and small Sigmund every dawn. Then Ash, who'd never flown and said she didn't need to because she could make things rise, and Ingrid said then rise, and took her hand, and Ash went up off the plain with her hinge face screwed up and her hands warm and came down twenty minutes later and didn't speak for an hour.

Then Trevor. On a path of ice under him, because Luna insisted. Ingrid said the path was cheating. Luna said she didn't care.

Then Efua and Kwame. Very slowly. Very low. With Hana underneath with her arms out and Abena beside her saying they're fine, they're fine, they're Oseis, they're always fine.

And on the fifth week, Rain.

From the town under the garden wall. With the round window at the top. Who'd come out of a white room and named herself on the thirty-first day watching rain on the glass. Who had three sisters on a world that paid the tithe.

Ingrid took her hand. And took her up. And held still in the air over the plain with her, very slowly, for a long time.

Rain looked down at the town under the garden wall. At fifteen thousand windows.

Then up. At the sky.

"Window," she said. In Moon's word. Not her own. Pointing.

"Yes," said Ingrid. "The biggest one."

Konrad read to them.

That was what he could do. He couldn't fly. He couldn't make anything warm. He couldn't hold a spoon still or freeze a lake. He'd read every sheet he ever signed, for thirty years, and said every number out loud in the map room for eleven days.

He read to them.

Every evening. On the porch. In the voice he'd used in the Senate to read things into the record. Out of the books that had come off the archive floors in the Scarecrow's hold, every book in the Council archives under New Halcyon, that I'd scattered and put back, every page.

Stories. Old ones. From before the domes. About forests and kings and talking animals and children who went through doors into other worlds.

The grandchildren sat on the steps and listened.

Then the children from the town under the garden wall started coming. A few at first. Then more. Sitting on the grass at the bottom of the porch steps. Listening. Some of them couldn't understand a word. They came anyway. They said, Tally told me, through Dot, that they liked the sound of someone reading something that wasn't the note.

By midsummer there were two hundred of them on the grass every evening.

Konrad read to all of them.

He never once looked up from the page.

Maura fed them.

Of course she did. All of them. Every grandchild. Every child from the town under the garden wall. The Calder kitchen had bread going from dawn till dark, and when it got too small she took over the old bakery behind Thorne's shop, and Thorne came and stood in the doorway and told her she was using too much rye, and she told him he was standing in her light, and they've been arguing about it ever since.

Ash bakes with her now. Every morning. With her hands in the dough, warm, not burning. Rory the second too. He's down to two bowls before it rises.

Rory came in on the second week.

Maura's Rory. Sera and Liam's father. Who'd tended a heat plant by hand for twenty years because they took his fire at the gate, and got it back, and stood at the window of the Calder kitchen with his arms folded the morning I opened Maura's doors.

He came into the bakery and stood at the oven and looked at it for a long time.

"It's not hot enough," he said.

"It's never hot enough," said Maura. "Not on its own."

Rory put his hand on it.

And it was.

He fires the ovens every morning now. Before dawn. Ash says he does it so Grandma doesn't have to. Rory says he does it because the ovens are bad and somebody has to. Maura says he does it because he likes watching Ash knead, and Rory says that's ridiculous, and stands in the doorway every morning for an hour watching Ash knead.

The General took Trevor fishing every week.

They never caught anything without freezing the lake. The General said this was a problem. Trevor said it was a method. They've been arguing about it for a year.

Last month the General took Dory too. And Ash. And small Sigmund. Four grandchildren, one old man in a greatcoat, and the seventh lake.

They came home with nine fish. In nine blocks of ice.

And small Sigmund, who'd made a very small thunderstorm over the lake to see what would happen, soaked to the skin.

The General was soaked too. He didn't mention it.

Trevor said he smiled twice.

Luna found her father on the jetty at the seventh lake.

She'd come back from a task force a day early. The Long Legs, from a world of wind where a council had sent word through its queen that it would like to talk, and Okafor had sent Luna to listen, because Luna listened better than anyone. She came home and the porch was empty, and the rota on the kitchen wall said Trevor: the General. The lake.

So she went to the lake.

He was at the end of the jetty. In his greatcoat. With a rod. And Trevor beside him, very small, with a rod of his own, both of them looking at the water with exactly the same face.

Nothing was frozen.

Luna stood at the land end of the jetty for a long time.

"He's waiting," said the General. Without turning round. "For one to bite. On its own. Without freezing anything." He didn't move. "It's been three hours."

"It's never going to bite," said Trevor. Very seriously. "Grandpa says that's not the point."

"What's the point?" said Luna.

The General didn't answer at once.

"Your mother," he said at last. "She never knew. About the Accord. About the room. About what I signed." He looked at the water. "I never told her. And then it was too late to tell her anything." A pause. "I sat with you every evening when you were small. Every evening I was home. And I never once said anything that mattered. Because if I'd started, I'd have had to say all of it."

Luna didn't move.

"I'm saying it now," said the General. "To him. Every week. On this jetty. Everything I never said to you." He looked down at his grandson. "Not the war. Not the room. Just—" He stopped. "Just what it's like to wait for something. And not freeze it. And let it come."

Trevor's rod twitched.

Very slightly.

Nobody moved. Not Trevor. Not the General. Not Luna at the end of the jetty.

The rod twitched again.

And Trevor, very carefully, with his face doing exactly what his grandfather's did, didn't freeze anything at all.

He pulled.

It was a very small fish.

Luna came down the jetty. All the way. And sat down on the boards beside her father. And didn't say anything.

But she put her hand on his arm. And left it there.

Abena and Papa took Efua and Kwame every third day.

To the house with the pond. And the river in the yard. Where Papa kept the water moving and Kwame held leaves still in the middle of it, and Efua sat on the edge with her feet in the water and filled every cup in the house without being asked.

And then, on the way home, they shouted at birds.

Hettie Crale has given up. She says she'll move the seed rows. She says there's no point fighting an Osei.

And Lotte Quint.

Who'd kept a room the same for two years with two beds made up every morning.

She came to Sigmund's house every day. To hold Inga. To sit in the crooked garden and rock her and sing to her, very quietly, a song from Earth that nobody else knew. A song her own mother had sung, she said, on a level of the dome nobody remembered now.

On Sigmund's night, she sat at the table.

Across from Konrad.

They didn't speak to each other. Not for weeks. They passed the bread. They passed the salt. They watched Inga.

Then, one night, at the end of supper, Konrad cleared his throat.

"Mrs. Quint," he said. "Your song. The one you sing to her." A pause. "What's it called?"

Lotte looked at him for a long time.

"It doesn't have a name," she said. "My mother never told me one."

Konrad nodded. Slowly. And looked at his granddaughter, asleep in her basket between them.

"Would you teach it to me?" he said. "So I can sing it to her. When it's my turn."

Lotte didn't answer for a long time.

Then she sang it. At the table. Very quietly.

And Konrad listened. With his hands flat on the table. The way he'd listened to every code in the map room. Every word.

And the next Sigmund's night, when Inga woke up crying at the end of supper, Konrad picked her up out of the basket. Very carefully. As if she might break, or he might.

And sang it.

Badly. Out of tune. Getting the third part wrong.

Inga stopped crying.

Lotte Quint put her hand over her mouth and looked at the ceiling for a long time.

Garnet drew the rota.

Of course she did. On a sheet as big as the great table, pinned to the kitchen wall. Every grandchild down one side. Every day across the top. And in every square, a name. In her neat hand. Who was coming. Who'd be there.

Dory looked at it for a long time.

Every square in her row was full. Every day. For a month. Grandma. Ingrid. Grandma. The General. Grandma and Maura. Ingrid. Papa Osei.

"There's no empty ones," she said.

"No," said Garnet.

Dory put her finger on one. Tomorrow. Grandma.

"What if Grandma has to go on a task force?" she said. "The Mom Squad. If something comes down."

Garnet took her pencil. And wrote, very small, in the corner of every square, under every name, a second one.

And if not: Konrad.

Dory looked at it.

"He can't fly," she said.

"No," said Garnet. "He can read."

Dory considered this.

"That's all right," she said. "I can fly. He can read. That's the right order."

The first answer came on the hundredth day.

From the sixty-four worlds. Through the queens. Through a thread on the far side of the fourth line, where a queen in a tower on a world of shallow seas had heard Konrad's words go down the thread, and Voss's, and Selwyn's, and passed them on, as best she could, to whoever lived on her world and signed.

Ruan put it through to the map room. Ilka read it out.

It was very short.

"We signed," said Ilka. Reading. "We have always signed. Our children go up the thread. We have never asked where." A pause. "You say you signed and stopped. You say you are alive. You say you are not punished." Another pause. "Show us."

Okafor looked at Konrad.

He was at the great table. Where he sat in the mornings now, before he went up the hill to read. With his gloves off. With his hands healed.

"They want to see you," said Okafor.

Konrad looked at the slate.

"I don't go near a thread," he said. "You said."

"I know what I said." Okafor put her pencil down. Very straight. "I'm asking you now." A pause. "Not to fight. Not to carry. To stand on a world where a council signs, and be someone who signed first and stopped. And is alive." She looked at him. "And is somebody's grandfather."

Konrad didn't answer for a long time.

Then he said, "I'd have to ask."

"Ask who?"

"Inga," said Konrad. "Lotte. Ingrid. Sigmund." He stood up. "Small Sigmund. Dory." A pause. "The children on the grass. Two hundred of them. I read to them every night." He picked up his cane. "If I go, someone else reads. I'd have to ask who they'd like."

Okafor looked at him for a long time.

"Go and ask," she said.

I found Mother in the wheat at dusk.

By the scarecrow. With its frozen arms and its fat straw middle and its two scarves and Konrad's badly carved bird on its shoulder. She was adding something. A ribbon. Red. From Efua, who'd brought it up from the pond in her teeth that afternoon and dropped it at Mother's feet without a word.

"You've stopped sitting in Father's chair," I said.

Mother tied the ribbon on. Very carefully. Round the scarecrow's wrist.

"I sat in it for three years," she said. "Waiting for you to come up the path. Telling you to say it." She stepped back and looked at the ribbon. "I liked it. I'm not sorry. Somebody had to be there when you came home."

"Then why stop?"

Mother looked at me.

"Because the children were on the porch too," she said. "Waiting for you. The way I was." She looked out over the wheat. At the porch. Where the rota was pinned to the kitchen wall behind the window and the grandparents were coming and going all evening. "And I was so busy waiting for you that I didn't see them waiting." A pause. "Your father would have seen it. He saw everything. He'd have been out here with them every day while you were gone." She smiled. "Burning the toast."

I didn't say anything.

"So I'm doing it for him," said Mother. "What he'd have done. And Ingrid's doing it for the years she was in the room. And Konrad's doing it because he can't do anything else and it's the only thing that might make up for any of it." She tucked the end of the ribbon in. "And Maura's doing it because she's always done it and nobody noticed."

She turned round. And looked at me. In the dusk. In the wheat. Beside the scarecrow her grandchildren built.

"You can come home late now, Lucas," she said. "Whenever you need to. From wherever." She put her hand on my face. The way she had when I was eleven. "Someone's always on the porch. It just isn't me waiting any more."

"Who is it?"

"Everyone," said Mother.

I said it that night. On the porch.

All of them. In order.

Which took a long time now. Because the porch was full. Because the grandparents were on it. Every one. Not in the three chairs at the end. On the steps. On the rail. On the boards. With grandchildren in their laps.

Mother, with Kwame. Ingrid, with Dory asleep against her shoulder. Maura and Rory, with Ash and Rory the second between them, smelling of bread. Abena and Papa, with Efua. The General, with Trevor, both of them very slightly frosty. Konrad, on the top step, with small Sigmund leaning on his arm, reading.

And Lotte Quint, at the end of the rail, with Inga.

I said it to every one.

When I got to Konrad, he looked up from his book.

"The children on the grass," he said. "I asked them. Who they'd like to read if I go."

"What did they say?"

Konrad looked down at the page.

"They said you," he said. "When you come back."

Days 3531–3631. Grandparents.

Inga Friese was born at midnight in the crooked house. Ingrid waited in the garden; Konrad came to the gate and sat beside her; Lotte Quint and Marlo came, and Konrad said their pod number out loud to their faces. Marlo: you carried the glass; I'll sit at the table because she's my niece. Sigmund came out with his fence gone. Jessa named her for the woman who held three hundred in a river. She reaches, like Jessa, and holds on. After that the grandparents came every day: Mother in the kitchen and the wheat and behind Dory on the long ward, holding her while she holds; Ingrid flying every grandchild who could, and Rain; Konrad reading to two hundred on the grass; Maura and Rory and Ash in the bakery; the General and nine fish in nine blocks of ice; Abena and Papa and the birds; Lotte singing, and teaching Konrad the song. Nine grandparents met in the bakery and made a rota; Abena said not one child in the town under the garden wall had a grandmother, and by the month's end three hundred old people from Earth had a street each. The first tithe world answered: show us. Konrad asked the children. They said: when you come back.