Chapter 72 Black

It was dark when I woke up.

That was the first thing. Not the pain. Not the bed. The dark. A soft, thick, comfortable dark, the kind you get in the valley in winter when the cloud comes down over the field and sits there.

I lay in it for a while. Not thinking. Just lying.

Then I thought: I can't see.

And then I thought, very slowly, the way you put your weight on a step you're not sure of: No. That's not it.

Because I could see.

I could see the ceiling. Gray. Plaster. A crack running across it from the corner, thin as a hair, with a little spider sitting very still at the end of it. I could see the rail at the foot of the bed, steel, with a chart hanging off it on a clip. I could see a chair beside the bed, and somebody in the chair, sitting very straight with her arms folded, asleep.

It wasn't dark in the room.

It was dark in me.

I lay there and worked it out.

The needles were gone.

That was what the dark was. For five weeks there'd been needles behind my eyes, going and going, every time I looked at anything bright. And under the needles, all the time, a sort of noise. Not a sound. A pressure. Like standing too near the filter at home when it was running hard. I'd stopped noticing it, the way you stop noticing the filter.

And now it had stopped.

Everything was quiet. Everything was soft. My head felt like a room after a storm, when somebody's finally opened all the windows and the air's come in.

I turned my head on the pillow.

The person in the chair was Okafor.

She was asleep with her chin on her chest and her arms folded and her boots planted flat on the floor, as if she'd sat down to wait for something for five minutes and been surprised by a day. There was a cup of something on the floor by her boot, with a skin on it.

I looked at her.

Not at her. Into her. I didn't mean to. But there wasn't any falling anymore. There wasn't any going-deeper. I just looked, the way you look at a page, and it was all there at once. The skin. The muscle. The wires. Her heart, slow and even, sleeping. The iron in her blood. The little bricks the iron was made of. The little bright points the bricks were made of, held together by nothing.

All of it. At once. Like looking at a field and seeing the field and every ear of wheat in it and every grain in every ear, all at the same time, without having to choose.

And it didn't hurt.

I lay there and looked at Sergeant Okafor all the way to the bottom, and nothing hurt at all.

"Sergeant," I said.

My voice came out like a crow's. Okafor opened her eyes at once, all the way, the way soldiers do, the way Father used to in the night when one of the twins coughed.

She looked at me.

And her heart, which I could see, which I could see everything of, did a very small thing. Just one beat. A little skip. Like a foot missing a stair in the dark.

Then it went back to normal.

"Dask," said Okafor.

"How long?"

"Three days." She unfolded her arms. "It's the morning of the fourth."

"Is everyone—"

"Everyone's fine. Sixty-one. Not a blister." She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. "Except you."

She told me in the dark. The way she told me everything that mattered.

She didn't put the lamp on. She knew better now. She just sat forward in the chair, in the gray light from the little window high up in the wall, and told it to me plainly, in order, the way you'd write up a report.

That I'd stopped breathing twice in the first night. That Halloway had sat up with me both times, with her silver case open on the bed. That the blood had stopped by the morning. That there'd been a lot of it.

That Odell had got the valve shut and then sat down on the concrete in the gray dust and not got up for an hour.

That the hall was shut. That there were men in it now, in gray coats, with slates. Not Avalon men. Council men.

"And the bolt?" I said.

Okafor looked at me for a moment.

"What bolt?"

"On the coupling. The north wall. The eighth one. It wasn't steel."

She was quiet.

"Odell has the bolt," she said finally. Very low. "He picked it up off the floor before the Council men came in. Put it in his apron pocket. Hasn't given it to anyone. Hasn't said anything to anyone." She paused. "Except me. Last night. In this chair. He said, the boy will ask about the bolt. And I said, what bolt. And he said, exactly."

I didn't say anything.

"So we don't talk about the bolt," said Okafor. "Not in here. Not yet. Understood?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Good." She sat back. "The Director came. Every day. Twice yesterday." Her voice didn't change at all. "Stood at the end of the bed. Read your chart. Didn't sit down."

"Did he say anything?"

"He said, remarkable." Okafor looked at the chart on the rail. "Twice."

She asked me, then, how my head was.

And I told her. That it was quiet. That the needles had gone. That there wasn't any falling anymore, that I didn't have to go down into things, that it was all just there, at once, all the way to the bottom, like looking at a page.

Okafor listened. She didn't write any of it down. That was how I knew it mattered.

"Your father said that," she said, when I'd finished. "Afterward. Like a page." She looked at her hands. "He said it to me on the infirmary step. The day they let him out. He said, it's like a page now, Maris. I can read everything. I can't stop reading it."

I'd never heard anyone call her Ada. I didn't think anyone had for twenty years.

"Can you?" said Okafor. "Stop?"

I tried.

I looked at the ceiling, and tried to just see the ceiling. The plaster. The gray. The crack. The spider.

And I did see them. The plaster and the gray and the crack and the spider. But underneath, very quiet, very faint, like the stars still being there in the daytime, I could see the rest. The bricks. The bright points. All of it. Waiting.

"No," I said. "Not all the way. But it's quiet. It doesn't pull."

Okafor nodded slowly.

"That's what he said too," she said.

The nurse came in at eight with a tray.

She was young. Not much older than Luna. With a white cap and a round face and a name badge that said PIM, and she came in backwards through the door, pushing it with her shoulder, saying good morning, Sergeant, I've brought him some broth in case he—

And turned round.

And saw that I was awake.

And looked at me.

I watched it happen. I couldn't not watch it. I could see all of it, all at once, to the bottom. Her heart, which jumped like a hare in a field. Her hands, which went tight on the tray, so the spoon rattled against the bowl. The little muscles round her mouth, which pulled, just slightly, before she made them stop.

And her eyes. Which went to mine. And stayed there for one second. And then went away, very fast, to the rail at the foot of the bed, to the chart, to the floor, to anywhere.

"Good morning," she said to the chart.

"Good morning," I said.

She came round the side of the bed the long way. The way that kept the chair and Okafor between us. And she put the tray down on the little table, at the very far end, at arm's length, and pushed it toward me an inch with her fingertips, the way you'd push a bowl of milk toward a dog you weren't sure of.

"There's broth," she said to the tray. "And bread. Doctor Halloway says small amounts."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

She went out. The long way round. She didn't look at me again. She didn't look at anything. And the door swung shut behind her, and I heard her feet in the corridor, very fast, and then stopping, a little way down. And standing there. And not moving.

I looked at Okafor.

Okafor was looking at the door.

"Sergeant," I said. "Is there a mirror?"

There wasn't a mirror.

There was a steel basin, on the stand by the window. Okafor brought it over without saying anything and held it up in front of me, in both hands, at an angle, so the gray light from the window fell in it.

I looked.

A boy in a white infirmary shirt. Thin. Thinner than five weeks ago. Brown hair sticking up on one side from the pillow. A bruise on the cheekbone where my helmet had hit the concrete. Dried blood still in the little creases at the side of my nose, where they'd missed it.

And my eyes.

They were black.

Not dark. Not brown, the way they'd been. Black. All of them. No white at the edges. No color in the middle. No little ring where the color stopped and the dark started. Just two smooth black shapes, where eyes went, like two pools of water at the bottom of a well, on a night with no moon. Like holes in a sheet. They caught the light from the window, and held it, and didn't give any of it back.

I'd seen them before.

Every day of my life, until I was ten. Across the breakfast table. Over the top of a book. Looking at me from under the brim of a hat in the middle of the field, with the wheat up round his waist.

Father's eyes.

I sat and looked at them for a long time, in the basin. Okafor didn't say anything. She just held it very still.

Then I looked up from the basin, at her.

And she looked back. Straight into them. And didn't look away. And her heart, which I could see, didn't jump this time. Not at all. It just went on, slow and even, a soldier's heart, the way it always did.

"You get used to it," said Okafor. "Took me about a week, with him."

"Does everyone?"

Okafor put the basin down.

"No," she said.

The dusk was on the bedside table.

I hadn't seen it. It was folded, neatly, beside a cup of water and Toby's tuning fork, which somebody had wiped clean and put down very straight. One of the lenses had a new scratch across it, from the concrete. Somebody had tried to polish it out and not managed.

I picked them up.

I didn't need them. That was the strange thing. I sat there with Father's spectacles in my hand and the gray light from the window falling on my face, and it didn't hurt at all. The light was just light. The needles were gone.

I didn't need them for the light anymore.

I sat and turned them over, and thought about the nurse in the corridor. Standing very still a little way down. Not coming back.

And I thought about Father, who'd been sixteen, sitting on an infirmary step with a lamp and a pair of old spectacles, making dusk out of soot. And wearing them, after. For years.

And I thought: He didn't need them for the light either.

I put them on.

They let me call home that afternoon.

Okafor arranged it. She brought the screen in on its trolley herself, and plugged it into the wall, and then stood in the corner by the door with her arms folded, looking at the ceiling. The spider had moved. It was halfway down the crack.

The screen lit up.

Mother. On the sixtieth floor, in her blue cardigan, in the chair by the window. And either side of her, so close they were nearly on top of each other, so close the screen could only get half of each of them, Garnet and Genny.

"LUCAS."

That was Garnet.

"Hello, Garnet."

"You were ASLEEP for THREE DAYS," said Garnet. "Miss Pell said. Mother wouldn't let us call. She said you were resting. Three days. I've never slept for three days. I tried. I did one night and then I woke up because Genny was breathing."

"I don't breathe loudly," said Genny.

"You breathe," said Garnet darkly.

Mother wasn't saying anything.

She was looking at me. Very still. At the dusk, on my face. At the new scratch across the left lens.

And I knew she knew.

She'd always known before anyone. When I'd broken the jug when I was six, and hidden the pieces. When I'd stopped sleeping after Father. She'd look at me over the table, just like that, very still. And wait.

"Lucas," she said. Very gently. "Take them off, love."

I took them off.

It was very quiet on the sixtieth floor.

Garnet's mouth was open. Genny wasn't moving at all. Mother's hand had gone to the arm of her chair and was holding on to it.

I could see her heart. Even through the screen. Even a hundred floors away. Not the wires, not the bricks, not the bright points, the screen didn't carry those. But I could see her face, and I'd known her face my whole life, and I could see it go somewhere very far back. Years and years back. To a step, and a boy with a lamp, and a pair of black eyes looking up at her for the first time.

"Oh," said Mother. Very softly. "Oh, love."

That was all. She didn't cry. She didn't look away. She just looked at me, the way she'd looked at him every day across the table, for eighteen years.

And then Garnet leaned in very close to the screen, so close her nose nearly touched it, so close all I could see was one eye and a lot of fringe, and looked at my eyes very hard for a long time.

"They're pretty," said Garnet.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

"They are," said Garnet, as if somebody had argued. "They're like the sky. At home. At night. When there wasn't a moon yet. Before you did the moon." She thought about it. "Except you can see yourself in them. I can see me. I'm very small." She waved, at her own reflection, in my eye, on a screen, a hundred floors away. "Hello, me."

Behind her, Mother made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.

Genny didn't say anything for a long time.

That was Genny. Garnet said things the second they came into her head, all of them, in order, at full volume. Genny let them sit. Turned them over. Looked at them from underneath. And then asked the one that mattered.

She sat back from the screen, in her chair, with her hands in her lap, and looked at me.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

"No," I said. "Not anymore."

Genny was quiet.

"Not anymore," she said, "means it did."

I looked at her. My sister. Nine years old, on the sixtieth floor, in a school pinafore with ink on the cuff, reading Father's notebooks at night under the covers and finding the things in them that nobody else had found.

"Yes," I said. "It did. A lot. For five weeks."

"You didn't tell us."

"No."

"You should have," said Genny. Not angry. Just stating it. Writing it down somewhere inside. "We're not little, Lucas. Not like that. We've read his notebooks. We know what happened to his eyes." She paused. "Notebook thirteen doesn't say anything. It just draws. Pages and pages. Smaller and smaller." She looked at me. "Like he was copying something out. Like he was reading it." She paused. "Is that what it's like? Reading?"

I didn't say anything for a second. Then:

"Yes," I said. "It's a page."

Genny nodded, slowly, as if I'd confirmed something she'd already written down and underlined.

"Then you'll be able to see what's in Mother's vials," she said. "Now."

Okafor, in the corner, uncrossed her arms.

Very slightly. Not enough for the screen to see. Just enough for me.

I looked at Genny. And then at Mother. At Mother's hands on the arm of her chair. At the little glass vial on the table beside her, which I hadn't noticed until then. Half drunk. Clear. With something in it, at the bottom, that caught the light, just slightly, like a little silver dust.

Through a screen, I couldn't see what it was made of.

But I'd be able to. Now. In a room with it. All the way to the bottom.

"We'll talk about it," I said. "Not on the screen."

Genny looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded again. And didn't say anything else about it.

She was nine. And she knew exactly what not on the screen meant.

That frightened me more than my eyes did.

Mother sent the twins off at the end. To Miss Pell, for supper. Garnet went backwards, waving at the screen, saying bye, Lucas, bye, Lucas's eyes, until Genny took her hand and pulled her out of the door.

And then it was just Mother.

She sat in her chair by the window and looked at me for a long time without saying anything.

"He hated mirrors," she said finally. "For a year. After. He wouldn't have one in the house. When we got to the valley, there wasn't one, and he said good, and that was the end of it. I did my hair in the kettle for sixteen years."

"I didn't know that."

"No. You wouldn't." She smiled, very slightly. "He wore those spectacles every day. You remember."

"I thought they were for the light."

"They were. At first." Mother looked at the dusk in my hand. "And then they weren't. After the first year, the light didn't hurt him at all. He told me so. He just kept wearing them." She was quiet. "They were for other people, love. So other people wouldn't have to look. So the people in the shops wouldn't go quiet. So the man at the depot wouldn't count his change twice." She looked at me. "So I wouldn't have to."

I didn't say anything.

"I made him take them off," said Mother. "One night. At the table. I said, I married those eyes, Trevor Dask. Take those silly things off and look at me." She was smiling properly now. And her own eyes were wet. "And he did. And after that he only wore them in town."

She leaned toward the screen.

"Wear them for the shops if you want," she said. "Wear them for the nurses. Wear them for anybody who can't manage. That's kind, and he was kind, and so are you." She looked at me very steadily. "But you take them off for the people who love you, Lucas Dask. Every time. You don't hide from us. You hear me?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Good." She sat back. She was tired. I could see it. "Now go and eat that broth. You look like a fence post."

When the screen went dark, Okafor took the trolley out without saying anything.

At the door, she stopped.

"Dask."

"Sergeant?"

"The nurse," said Okafor, without turning round. "Pim. She's nineteen. Her brother was in the old program. Second intake. Didn't come out of the infirmary." She paused. "She's not frightened of you. She's frightened of what she remembers."

The door closed behind her.

I sat in the bed for a long time, with the broth going cold at the far end of the table.

Then I put the dusk back on the bedside table, folded, beside Toby's tuning fork. And reached over, and pulled the tray all the way toward me. And ate the broth.

And looked at the ceiling.

The spider was nearly at the bottom of the crack now. Small and brown and patient. And underneath it, quiet, faint, like stars in the daytime, the whole of the ceiling, all the way down to the little bright points. Waiting. Not pulling. Just there.

Like a page.

I could read all of it.

I wrote it down that night, on the back of the chart, with Okafor's pencil, because nobody had brought my notebook yet.

Day 179. Black.

It's a page. Father was right.

The dusk was never for the light.

Take them off for the people who love you.

Garnet says they're pretty.