Chapter 76 Okafor's Story

She sent for me the next night. After lights out.

Not a card. Okafor didn't do cards. She just stopped at the end of my bed on her last walk down the barracks, with her lamp turned low, and said, "Forty-one," very quietly, and walked on.

Liam was asleep. Toby wasn't. I saw his eyes open in the dark as I got up, and close again.

Her office had the lamp off.

It always did, now. For me. She'd stopped turning it on the week the headaches started, and she'd never turned it back on, even after the needles went. She sat behind her desk in the dark with her hands folded on top of a slate, and the only light came in from the corridor, gray, through the little window in the door.

The photograph was on the wall behind her. I couldn't see it in the dark. Not with ordinary eyes.

I could see it with mine.

Field Unit Seven. Twenty-odd soldiers in a row, in front of a broken wall, squinting into a sun that wasn't there anymore. And at the end, the tall young man with black eyes. His hand on the shoulder of a girl. And the girl looking up at him with her mouth open in the middle of a laugh. Both sides of her face her own.

"Sit," said Okafor.

I sat.

"Tell me what you saw," she said. "In the fourth hour."

I told her.

All of it. The table on the screen behind Crane's chair. The nine lit callsigns and the twenty-five gray. Wren's column. The numbers that wobbled the same every eight cycles, to the second decimal place, right back to cycle one.

I told her about our field. That it had never had the same numbers two weeks running in fifteen years. That nothing real did.

She didn't interrupt. She didn't write anything down. She sat in the dark with her hands folded on the slate, and the steel side of her face toward the window, catching the gray light, and listened.

When I'd finished, she didn't say anything for a long time.

"Sixty-three cycles," she said finally.

"Sir?"

"Sixty-three. That's how many ticks I've got for her. On my slate." She turned the slate over. In the dark. She didn't need to look at it. "Every nine days, the comms room sends me a list. Callsigns. Who called in. Who didn't. That's all I get. A list of names and a tick." She was quiet. "I've ticked her sixty-three times. And I've been proud of her sixty-three times. Early. Best numbers. I said it to you. I said it in this room. Like a fool."

"You couldn't have known."

"I could have asked for the numbers." Her voice didn't change at all. "I didn't. I didn't want to see Teodor Venn's last ones. Or Juno's. I didn't want the numbers. I wanted the ticks." She put the slate down, very flat. "And somebody upstairs knew I'd want the ticks."

"Who's sending them?" I said.

"I don't know."

"Crane?"

"Maybe. Maybe the comms room. Maybe somebody above the comms room." She looked at me in the dark. "It doesn't matter yet. What matters is why. And there's only two reasons anyone loops a dead base's numbers, Dask."

I waited.

"One. So nobody asks questions about how she died." Okafor's jaw moved, the steel and the bone together. "Two. So nobody goes looking for her."

"Those are the same."

"No," said Okafor. "They're not. The first one means she's dead and they're hiding it. The second one means they don't know she's dead." She leaned forward. "And they'd rather nobody found out either way."

I thought about the Chancellor. In the Great Hall. In her plain white dress, with the silver seed on a chain round her neck. So I'm told.

"You said don't tell her."

"I said not yet."

"Why?"

Okafor didn't answer straight away.

She turned in her chair, slowly, and looked up at the photograph on the wall behind her. In the dark. She couldn't see it. I don't think she needed to.

"Because she's above the rank of sergeant," said Okafor. "And I'm going to tell you why that matters. I'm going to tell you once. And then I'm never going to say it again, in this room or any other." She turned back. "Your father would have told you himself. If he'd had the time. He'd have told you at fifteen. He told me at twenty-eight. Later than I needed it."

"I was seventeen," said Okafor, "at the river."

She said it the way you'd start reading a report. Flat. In order. Not looking at me. Looking at the gray light on the door.

"Field Unit Seven. Twenty-six of us. Program subjects, all of us. Second intake. Your father was sixteen and he'd already been through it. The needles. The dark. He'd come out of the infirmary three weeks before with those eyes and a pair of spectacles he'd made out of a broken pair and some soot, and they'd put him in charge of us, because nobody else wanted to stand next to him." A pause. "He wasn't in charge. Not on paper. On paper it was a lieutenant called Harrow. Harrow was a normal. Harrow had a map."

"What happened to Harrow?"

"Harrow had a map," said Okafor again, "and the map was wrong."

"The river was the Orme," she said. "The old one, north of the city, before they dammed it. There was a bridge. A rail bridge. Steel. Very old. And on the other side of the bridge was a supply depot, and on our side was the road to the dome. And the things that came down out of the sky wanted the road to the dome."

"The invaders."

"We didn't call them that. Not at the river. We called them the quiet ones." She was still looking at the door. "They didn't make any noise. That was the worst of it. The ships didn't. The soldiers didn't. You'd be in a trench at night with the guns going and the shells coming in, all of it so loud you couldn't hear your own heart, and then all of a sudden, very close, a patch of quiet. Like a hole in the sound. And then the person next to you would be gone."

I didn't say anything.

"Harrow's map said the far bank was clear. We were to cross the bridge and hold the depot until the main column came up behind us. Two hours. Maybe three." She breathed out. "The far bank wasn't clear. There was a hole in the sound on the far bank about a mile wide. We got halfway across the bridge before it opened up."

"Twenty dead in the first ten minutes," I said.

Okafor turned her head.

"Luna told me," I said. "She's read the reports. Thirty-seven of them."

Okafor looked at me in the dark for a moment. Then she nodded, slowly. As if that was right. As if that was what Luna Windsor would do.

"Twenty," she said. "In the first ten minutes. Harrow in the first one. On the bridge. The rest of us in the middle of the bridge with nowhere to go. Six left. Your father. Me. Pim, who carried the radio."

"Pim?"

"Corporal Danny Pim." She was quiet for a second. "His niece is a nurse here now. You'll have met her."

I thought about a round face under a white cap. A tray pushed across a table with fingertips. In the old program. Second intake. Didn't come out of the infirmary.

"He didn't die at the river," said Okafor. "He died after. In the infirmary. Two weeks later. The things they'd put in us were still going wrong in half the second intake, and the river took it out of him." She didn't say anything for a moment. "Nobody told his family that part. They just know he didn't come out. His niece grew up on it."

"Your father held the bridge," said Okafor.

"For nine hours."

"For nine hours. On his own. Acting without orders, under sustained fire." She said the words exactly the way the report must have said them. "He stood in the middle of a steel rail bridge with five people lying behind him and the far bank shooting at him, and he looked at every round that came at us. Every one. And took it apart before it got there." Her hands were very still on the slate. "Nine hours, Dask. Do you know how many rounds that is?"

I didn't.

"Neither did he," said Okafor. "He stopped counting at about four thousand. He told me after. He said he'd always counted things, since he was a boy, and that was the first time in his life he'd ever stopped."

I thought about Father. Counting the rows of wheat, out loud, under his breath, walking the field in the evening. Counting the stones in the wall. Counting the twins' fingers and toes when they were born, twice, to make sure.

Four thousand.

"And the bridge," said Okafor. "He held the bridge too. That was the part nobody believed. It was an old bridge. It was coming apart under us, from the shelling. And he held it together. With his eyes. Every rivet. For nine hours. While he was doing the rest." She looked at the photograph again. "He couldn't see into the quiet ones. You understand. Not their ships. Not their armor. It was like fog to him, he said. Like looking into a cloud. So he couldn't stop them. All he could do was stop what they sent at us. And keep the bridge up under us. And wait."

Fog.

I didn't say anything. I sat very still. But something cold went down my back, all the way down, like Luna's hand.

Fog without a reason. That was what I'd said. In the kit room. About the core of the kit. The one thing in the whole kit I couldn't see into.

"What happened at nine hours?" I said.

"The column came up," said Okafor. "Behind us. Three hours late, because the map was wrong for them too. And the quiet ones went. The way they always did. All at once, with no noise. Like a tide going out." She was quiet. "And your father sat down on the bridge. Right where he was standing. And his nose was bleeding and his ears were bleeding and he was laughing. Because it was over. And he looked round to count us. And he counted five."

"Five?"

"Five," said Okafor. "Not six."

She put one hand up, very slowly, in the dark. And touched the steel side of her face.

"I was behind him," said Okafor. "The whole nine hours. I was the one keeping the weight off." She moved her hand, just slightly. "That's what I do. You've felt it. On the first day. I can make things heavier. Or lighter. I was making the bridge lighter, under us, so it wouldn't fall. And I was making the rounds heavier, the ones he didn't get, so they'd drop short." Her hand came down. "In the eighth hour, I stopped being able to do both. I chose the bridge."

I didn't say anything.

"Something came through. A piece of something. I never saw it. It took the jaw off. This side." She didn't touch it again. "I was lying on the bridge for the last hour, behind him, and he didn't know. He couldn't look round. If he'd looked round, he'd have stopped looking at everything else."

"He counted five."

"He counted five," said Okafor. "And then he found me. And then he picked me up."

"And carried you two miles."

"Two miles. To the aid station. Over his shoulder. With his nose bleeding and his ears bleeding and nine hours of the bridge still in his legs." She was quiet for a long time. "I don't remember it. I remember the bridge. And then I remember the aid station. And a voice saying she won't make it, there's nothing to fix it with. And then your father's voice saying I'll fix it."

"There wasn't anything to fix it with," said Okafor. "That was true. Nothing at the aid station. No plate. No bone. So he took the rail."

"The rail?"

"From the bridge. He'd brought a piece of it with him. In his pocket. I don't know why. He said, after, he'd just picked it up when he picked me up. Without thinking." She breathed out. "A piece of the steel he'd held together for nine hours. And he sat by the bed in the aid station with the medic holding the lamp. And he looked at what was left of my face, and he looked at the steel. And he made me a jaw."

I thought about Mother. On the screen. He said steel was easy. But a face was a whole world. And he only knew the front of it.

"Six hours," said Okafor. "Half a millimeter at a time. Joining it to the bone. Every nerve he could find, he went round it. Every blood vessel. The medic told me after that he didn't blink. Not once. And when he'd finished, he got up and walked outside and was sick in a ditch, and then he came back in and sat down again and waited for me to wake up."

She was quiet.

"And when I woke up," said Okafor, "the first thing I saw was those eyes. Black. Right up close. And I was seventeen and I'd been shot in the face and I didn't know where I was. And I screamed."

"I'm sorry."

"So was I," said Okafor. "I was sorry for twenty-six years." She turned the slate over on the desk. Once. "He didn't flinch. He just said hello, Maris. Sorry about the eyes. I'll put the spectacles on. And he did. And he never took them off in front of me again. Not once. Not in the whole war."

She was quiet for a long time after that.

I didn't say anything. I sat in the chair in the dark and looked at the photograph on the wall behind her, with my eyes, the way she couldn't. The girl. Laughing. With both sides of her face her own.

"The photograph's from before," I said.

"Three days before," said Okafor. "Harrow took it. With his own camera." She didn't turn round. "I keep it so I remember what the far bank costs."

"You said he saved the city," I said finally.

"I didn't say that. I'm about to."

She sat back in her chair.

"Two years after the river," she said, "a ship came down over the dome. Over New Halcyon. One of theirs. The big ones. You've seen the pictures in the history books. The long gray shapes. The books say there were dozens. There weren't. There were six, in the whole war, the big ones. And one of them came down over the city, very low, very slow, and very quiet. And stopped. Right over the glass."

"What was it going to do?"

"Nobody knew. That was the point. It didn't do anything. It hung there. For a day. And everyone under the glass looked up at it. Two million people." Okafor's voice didn't change. "And the guns couldn't touch it, and the planes couldn't touch it, and the Council sat in the hall on the hundred-and-fortieth floor for twenty-four hours and couldn't decide anything."

"And Father?"

"Your father had been sent to the eastern domes. Three hundred miles away. He came back on his own. Without orders. Again." She almost smiled. "Him and a girl from Orphan Hall Three who could pick up a truck by looking at it."

Mother.

"I was on the ground," said Okafor. "With the remains of Seven. In the square under the ship, holding back the crowd. And I watched them go up. On a maintenance lift. Up the outside of the dome. To the top of the glass. Right under it."

"He couldn't see into it," I said. "The ship. You said. It was fog."

"It was fog," said Okafor. "From the outside." She looked at me. "So your mother tore a hole in it."

I didn't breathe.

"I don't know how. I don't think anybody does. I don't think she does. Nobody had ever moved that metal. Not with guns, not with anything. She took hold of a patch of that gray hull with her mind, from the top of the glass, and pulled. For an hour. Until her nose was bleeding and her hands were shaking and she was screaming. And it bent. And then it tore, like wet cloth. And there was a hole in it the size of a door." Okafor's hands were very still. "And your father went through the hole. Inside. Where it wasn't fog anymore."

"What did he see?"

"He never told me," said Okafor. "He never told anybody. He was inside for eleven minutes. And then he came out. And the ship—" She stopped. "The ship came apart. Not exploded. Came apart. Like a piece of knitting when you pull the end. Slowly. From the inside out. Very quietly, the way they did everything. And it fell. Not on the dome. Beside it. In the river. In the Orme. Where the bridge had been."

She was quiet.

"Your mother was on the roof of it when it went," she said. "Pulling him out of the hole with her mind. The whole top of it burning round them, whatever it was they burned. I watched them come down the side of the dome on the lift with her coat smoking."

I was on the roof of an invader ship while it burned.

"Two million people," said Okafor. "Under that glass. They'd have all been dead in a day. Maybe less. Nobody ever found out what it was there to do. And a week later, the war stopped."

"Then they gave him a medal," I said.

"Then they gave him a medal." Okafor's voice went very dry. "In the Great Hall. On a cushion. In a box a junior aide had polished. Your father stood up in front of the whole Council and looked at the medal. And then he said, I've got a list."

"A list?"

"The twenty from the river. Harrow. Pim. And the forty-one from the second intake who'd never come out of the infirmary. He'd written them all down. He'd asked for a commendation for every one of them, after the river. Every name. And it had come back, every time, denied. Signed by a colonel called Windsor." She paused. "He said, I'll take that when you give them theirs. And he put the list down on the cushion next to the medal. And walked out."

"The Senator said he refused it."

"The Senator was holding the box," said Okafor. "He'd have seen it that way."

"And then?"

"And then they gave him a door," said Okafor.

She said it very quietly. Flatly. The way you'd say and then it rained.

"Not straight away. They kept him first. Nine years. Under the glass, where they could see him. They let him marry your mother on the Ministry steps, and the whole city came, and the papers called them the couple who saved New Halcyon. And all the time there were men in gray coats writing down where he went." She paused. "And then the Council got frightened of all of us at once. Directive Nine."

I didn't say anything.

"Every Cinder subject in the dome," said Okafor, "and every dependent, born and unborn, out through the locks inside seventy-two hours. Three hundred and eleven of us." She didn't move. "Your mother was expecting you. That's what unborn meant, in that paper. It meant you."

"The locks."

"The locks. In the snow. No rank. No pension. No name on anything. And a promise they wouldn't be followed." The steel side of her mouth moved. "Which was a lie. You know that now. Eleven years of a satellite over your valley."

"And then the Retention Act."

"Eight months later. Thirty-one families let back in. Lifetime service. The ones who were useful and controllable. I was useful. I signed." She looked at the door. "Crane drew up the list. Your father's name was never on it. They gave him a medal and then a door, and they never once offered to open it again." A pause. "The night before the locks, he came and found me in the queue in the square, with everybody's bags in the snow, and he sat down on my kit bag beside me. And he told me."

"Told you what?"

Okafor looked at me in the dark.

"He said, Maris. Listen. I'm going to tell you something and I want you to remember it all your life." Her voice changed. Just slightly. Not like an impression. Like someone reading a thing they'd read so many times the paper had gone soft. "The sergeant asks how many we're bringing back. The lieutenant has a map. The colonel signs the paper. And everybody above the colonel decides what the paper says. And not one of them has ever stood on the bridge."

She was quiet.

"Trust your sergeant, he said. Trust the people who stand on the bridge with you. Trust the ones who'll carry you two miles. And don't trust anybody above the rank of sergeant. Not ever. Not with your life, and not with anybody else's."

"Is that why you've never been promoted?" I said.

Okafor made a sound in the dark. It took me a second to realize it was a laugh.

"They've offered," she said. "Four times. Lieutenant, twice. Captain, twice. I said no thank you." The steel side of her face caught the gray light from the door. "Sergeant's the highest rank that still does its own laundry. And still has to look its cadets in the face in the morning."

"And the Chancellor?"

"The Chancellor is above the rank of sergeant," said Okafor. "Very far above. She may be good. I think she might be. She looked you in the eye at the gala, and I've seen generals who couldn't." She leaned forward. "But she's had a niece on that slate for sixty-three cycles. And she said so I'm told. Which means she's been told something by somebody, every nine days, for a year and a half, and she's never once gone down to the comms room and asked to see the numbers herself."

She sat back.

"So either she doesn't want to know," said Okafor. "Or she already does."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

"Then who do I tell?" I said.

"Me," said Okafor. "You've told me. That's done." She picked up the slate. "And you tell your squad. Your sergeant's on the bridge with you, but your squad's on the bridge too. The Windsor girl. The Calders. Marsh." She paused. "And Friese, if you have to. The girl. She'll carry you two miles. I've watched her."

"And then?"

"And then you go to Avalon in eighty-five days," said Okafor. "And you remember the bridge. And whatever's on the far bank." She looked at me. "If Mara Voss is alive on that world, Dask, she's been alone for a year and a half on a base that nobody's allowed to notice has gone quiet. And she was fast at deciding." The steel side of her mouth moved. "So she'll have decided something. And it won't have been to lie down."

"Back for the wheat," I said.

"Back for the wheat," said Okafor.

She sent me back to bed at one in the morning.

At the door, I stopped.

"Sergeant."

"Dask."

"The anatomy book. The one you gave me. With his notes." I was looking at the photograph, on the wall, in the dark. "You said he left it at the aid station."

"He did."

"After he made your jaw."

"Yes."

"Did you read the margins? On the page about the face?"

Okafor didn't say anything for a while.

"Every night," she said. "For a year. In the infirmary. Until I knew them by heart." A pause. "He'd drawn the nerves. All of them. Very small. And at the bottom of the page, in pencil, he'd written: Sorry, Maris. I only knew the front of it."

The lamp in the corridor hummed through the little window in the door.

"Go to bed, Dask," said Sergeant Okafor.

I wrote it down. In the anatomy book. On the page about the face, under his writing, very small, so that his line was still on top.

Day 192. The bridge.

Four thousand, and he stopped counting.

He held the bridge and Maris held the bridge and nobody held Maris.

The quiet ones were fog. So Mother made a door in the fog.

The kit cores are fog.

Trust the people on the bridge.

Nobody above sergeant.

And under it, the last thing. The only thing she'd asked me, in a year, to remember all my life.

Count them. Every time. And then go back for the one you didn't count.