Chapter 86 Miss Pell, Again

They gave us two days.

Forty-eight hours of leave, before quarantine. Before the Meridian. Every cadet. Up to the dome, to whatever floor your family was on, to sleep in a real bed and eat at a real table and say whatever you were going to say.

"It's called embarkation leave," said Okafor, at breakfast. "In the war, they called it something else." She didn't say what. "Back by eighteen hundred on Sunday. Anyone late runs the beam on the Meridian. I've asked. They have one."

Nobody laughed. She hadn't meant anybody to.

The lift to the sixtieth floor wasn't gold. It was an ordinary lift, gray, with a soldier in it who pressed the button and looked at the wall. I stood at the back with my kit bag and the dusk in my pocket and watched the numbers go up.

Forty. Fifty. Fifty-five.

I thought about the last time. Families' day. Mother in the wheelchair at the end of the corridor. Garnet running.

Sixty.

The doors opened.

And Garnet hit me.

Not ran at me. Hit me. At full speed, from about ten yards, in her socks on the polished floor, so that she slid the last three and arrived round my middle like something fired out of a gun. I went back into the lift wall. The soldier stepped aside.

"LUCAS," said Garnet, into my shirt.

"Hello, Garnet."

"I had a cold," said Garnet. Very loudly. Very clearly. Into the corridor, where there was a camera in the corner of the ceiling, which I could see, and which she was very carefully not looking at. "A very bad cold. For two whole days. I couldn't go anywhere. Not to the clinic or anywhere. It's better now." She looked up at me. Her eyes were very bright. "Miss Pell says it was the worst cold she's ever seen."

"I'm glad it's better."

"It might come back," said Garnet darkly. "Colds do."

And then she let go of my middle and grabbed my hand and stamped her right foot on the floor, hard, once.

"That's mine," she said. "On my shoe. The one you made. Genny said. I can't see it but I know it's there." She stamped again. "Can you see it? From here? Is it working?"

I looked.

The buckle on her shoe. And in it, a grain of perfectly simple iron, with one point missing. Bright as a star.

"It's working," I said.

Garnet looked so pleased that I thought she might go up like a firework.

Mother was in the doorway.

Not the wheelchair. Not the frame. Standing. In the doorway of the flat, with one hand on the frame of the door, in her blue cardigan, with her hair tied back. Thinner. Grayer at the temples than when I'd left the valley. But standing.

She watched me come down the corridor with Garnet attached to my arm.

She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She looked at my eyes, and then my face, and then my eyes again. And on her left wrist, tied round it in a little bow, was a blue hair ribbon with a small steel ring at the end of it.

When I got to the door, she let go of the frame and put both her hands on my face. The way she always had. The way Luna had in the corridor.

"Oh, love," said Mother. Very softly. "You're so tall."

"I'm the same height."

"No you're not," said Mother. "You're taller. You just haven't noticed."

I won't tell all of those two days.

Some of them are mine. Some of them aren't anybody's but ours. The four of us, round the table in the flat on the sixtieth floor, with the city glittering in the big window, and Miss Pell coming and going quietly with plates. Garnet talking. Genny correcting her. Mother at the end of the table, the way she'd been at the end of the table in the valley, watching us with her chin on her hand.

I'll tell some.

I'll tell that Garnet made me a strawberry. Out of a button off her cardigan. She held it in both hands with her eyes screwed shut, and it went soft and red and smelled of summer, and she gave it to me and watched me eat it, and it tasted slightly of button. I said it was the best strawberry I'd ever had. She said I always said that. She was right.

I'll tell that Genny showed me the clinic's supply invoices. Copied out, by hand, in notebook sixteen. Three pages of them. Columns of numbers. Dates. Quantities. Stabilizer, sealed, L62. She'd circled one line in red. A delivery, every Monday, of exactly the same amount. And another line, once a month, much bigger. And another, newer, that had only started six weeks ago. Sample kits, pediatric, x2. Requested: Office of the Director.

"Two," said Genny. "Pediatric. That's children. Six weeks ago." She looked at me. "There are two children in this flat."

I'll tell that Mother walked to the window with me on the second night, without the frame, and stood looking out at the city, and held my arm. And told me that Maris Okafor had been the bravest girl she'd ever met, and the angriest, and that she'd hated Trevor for a whole year for making her a jaw she didn't ask for, and then stopped hating him all at once, in a single afternoon, for reasons nobody ever explained.

"She kept the disc?" said Mother.

"In her desk drawer. She's rubbed one side of it smooth with her thumb."

Mother was quiet for a long time, looking at the city.

"Of course she has," she said.

And I'll tell about the stairwell.

That was the second night. The last night. Late. After everyone had gone to bed. After Garnet had fallen asleep against my shoulder on the sofa in the middle of a story about a horse and I'd carried her to bed, and Genny had pretended to be asleep until I'd gone and then called goodnight, Lucas through the door in a very wide-awake voice.

I couldn't sleep. Of course I couldn't. Tomorrow at eighteen hundred, I'd be back in the cave. And in nine days after that, quarantine. And then the Meridian. And then I'd be eleven light-years from this flat, and this table, and the lemon tree in the bath.

I got up at two. Out of habit. Because two o'clock was coffee. Because Luna would be in the reading room, down in the cave, a very long way below me, with two cups, waiting for nobody.

I went out into the corridor. In my socks. And stood by the big window at the end, looking at the city.

And a door opened behind me. Very quietly.

Not the flat. The other door. The one at the end of the corridor, plain and gray, with a sign that said STAIRS — EMERGENCY USE ONLY.

Miss Pell was standing in it. In her gray coat, over her nightgown. With her spectacles on. Holding two cups of tea.

She didn't say anything. She just tilted her head, very slightly, toward the stairs behind her.

And went back through the door.

I followed her.

The stairwell was concrete. Bare and gray and cold, going down and down in a square spiral into the dark, with a dim emergency lamp on every landing. It smelled of dust and cold metal. Nobody used it. Nobody ever used it. There were lifts.

Miss Pell went down half a flight. To the landing between the sixtieth floor and the fifty-ninth. And sat down on the top step, very neatly, with her coat folded under her, and held out one of the cups.

I sat down beside her and took it.

"There are no cameras in the stairwells," said Miss Pell. "Between floors. They put them on the landings when they built the tower and then took them out again when people complained about being watched going up and down to their neighbors." She drank her tea. "It's the only place in the Halcyon Tower that nobody is looking at. I've been coming here at two in the morning since the week I came to your family."

"To think?"

"To write," said Miss Pell. "The second set of reports. The ones I don't send."

She drank her tea for a while. So did I. It was very strong, with a lot of sugar in it. The way Mother made it, when somebody had had a shock.

"I'm going to tell you something," said Miss Pell. "Before you leave. I'd have told you on the screen, but Genny tells me you've agreed between you that some things are not for the screen." She looked at her cup. "She's very proud of that agreement. She's written it in her notebook."

"I know."

"Then I'll say it here." She turned her head and looked at me. At my eyes. Her heart didn't skip. It hadn't once, in two days. "The Director has started asking me about Garnet."

I didn't say anything.

"Not Genny," said Miss Pell. "Not your mother. Garnet." She held her cup in both hands. "Every week, I write him a report. You've heard them. Your mother reads them to you. The girls ate their vegetables. Mrs. Dask walked forty-three meters. It has been regular." She paused. "At first, they were true. Every word. I was very good at true, Lucas. I was a matron. I wrote things down."

I sat very still.

"I've told you this," said Miss Pell. "Or your mother has. That I report to him. That I was asked. Because he told me Juno was well, and I'd do anything for Juno." She was quiet for a moment. "What I haven't told anyone is what he started asking six weeks ago."

She reached into the pocket of her coat. And took out a folded piece of paper. And held it out.

I unfolded it.

The handwriting was small and neat and leaned slightly forward, like somebody walking into a wind.

Miss Pell. In future reports, please include a full account of every object Garnet has altered by touch, with a description of the change, the time taken, and her apparent state before and after. Please retain the objects where possible. A sample kit will be delivered to the flat. A blood sample from Garnet, taken by yourself, is required at your earliest convenience, and before the Meridian launches. This is not negotiable. — C.

I read it three times.

"Before the Meridian launches," I said.

"Yes."

"Why before?"

Miss Pell looked at me for a long moment.

"I've been thinking about that for six weeks," she said. "And I believe it's because he isn't sure. He wants to know what Garnet is before you're gone. In case it's something that would make you stay." She drank her tea. "And if it is, he'd like to know while he can still choose whether to tell you."

The stairwell was very quiet. Somewhere far below, a pipe knocked.

"What did you do?" I said.

"Nothing," said Miss Pell. "That's what I'd have done, once. Sat on this step every night and done nothing. Because I'm a coward, Lucas. I was always a coward. I went into Orphan Hall Three as a matron because I was too frightened to be anything else, and I sang to the little ones at night because it was the only brave thing I could think of that didn't need any courage."

"That's not—"

"But your sergeant had already come to tea," said Miss Pell. "Months before the note."

I stopped.

"Okafor. Back when you'd just got your suits. With a lemon cake I'd made, and a slate in her pocket she didn't take out. And she sat in my kitchen for three hours and didn't say anything at all for the first two of them. And then she told me." Miss Pell's voice didn't change. It was very level. Very matron. "That Juno wasn't calling in. That she hadn't called in since the fourth month. That her last words on the channel were north's wrong here, it moves, going to look. And that she'd gone, and never come back on."

I didn't say anything.

"And all that time," said Miss Pell, "the Director had been telling me Juno is well. Every time I asked. In writing." She folded her hands round her cup. "Juno is well. Her numbers are excellent."

"So I stopped," said Miss Pell. "Telling him true things."

She said it simply. The way Okafor said and then they gave him a door.

"Not all at once. I'm not stupid. If the reports changed overnight, he'd know. So I kept the easy ones true. Vegetables. Lemon trees. Your mother's walking. Those are true. Those are safe." She looked at me. "But Garnet hasn't altered a single object since I came. Not in my reports. She's shown no further development. She's very ordinary, Garnet. Very sweet. Quite slow at sums. I worry about her a little." She paused. "That's what I write."

"And the strawberries?"

"What strawberries?" said Miss Pell.

I looked at her.

She looked back. Perfectly calm. Perfectly polite. A matron with her spectacles on.

"And the blood sample?"

"The kit arrived," said Miss Pell. "In a box. With very clear instructions. I've attempted to use it three times. The first time the needle was blunt. The second time Garnet cried so much that I couldn't in good conscience continue. The third time, the sample was unfortunately contaminated." She drank her tea. "I'm a terribly clumsy woman, Lucas. Everyone says so. I've written to the Director to apologize. Three times."

"And then he booked the clinic."

"And then he booked the clinic," said Miss Pell. "For Saturday morning. Two hours after Genny's pass came through. So that you wouldn't be there, and Genny wouldn't be there, and it would just be Garnet and me and a doctor I didn't know." She looked at me. "And Garnet developed a cold."

"Officially."

"Officially," said Miss Pell. "It's going round. I expect it will come back."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

I was looking at my hands. At my cup. At the concrete step. I was thinking about the ship. Eleven light-years. Eighteen months for the circles to meet. Crane's note, folded in my lap. Before the Meridian launches.

"I should stay," I said.

"No," said Miss Pell.

"If he wants her blood that badly—"

"Then he'll want it whether you're here or not," said Miss Pell. "And if you stay, he'll have you as well. In a room in the cave, for tests, for the rest of your life. Like your father's paper said." She put her cup down on the step beside her. "And your mother's vials will stop. And Genny's tutors. And the roof garden. And then he'll have all three of you in one building, with no one at the door."

I didn't say anything.

"Go," said Miss Pell. "Go to your world. Find out what's on it. Find out what's in the silver. Find out what happened to the thirty-four." Her voice cracked. Just very slightly. Like a hairline in a teacup. "And I'll stand at the door."

"You said you were a coward."

"I am," said Miss Pell. "I'm a coward who's had a long time to practice." She looked at me. "I know where the cameras aren't. I know which doctors drink and which nurses have children of their own. I know three teachers at Genny's school who were orphans in the program dormitories, the way I was. I know the night porter's mother's name." She folded her hands. "Nobody notices a matron, Lucas. That's the only magic I've got. I'm going to use it."

I told her, then.

I hadn't meant to. I'd told myself I wouldn't. Because I didn't know anything for certain, and I'd learned what happened when you gave people numbers you didn't understand.

But she'd come down to the stairwell at two in the morning with two cups of tea. And she'd said I'll stand at the door.

So I told her about the map.

The four layers. The thirty-four gray dots. The forty blue ones, every one next to a gray. Toby's zone, at the foot of the white mountains, with nothing near it but snow.

And the pencil circle.

"Somebody drew it," I said. "In the white. On the fourth layer. Where there wasn't a base. Where there wasn't anything. A small circle, in pencil. As if they'd been looking at it and wondering."

Miss Pell had gone very still.

"Where in the white?" she said.

"North," I said. "North of Toby's zone. Up in the mountains. Further north than anything else on the map."

Miss Pell didn't say anything.

Her hands, round her cup, had started to shake.

"I don't know what it is," I said. "I don't know who drew it. I don't know if it means anything. It could be nothing. It could be a mistake. Somebody doodling." I looked at her. "I'm not promising you anything. I don't know anything. I'm just telling you what I saw."

"North's wrong here," said Miss Pell. Very quietly. To her tea. "It moves. Going to look."

"Yes."

"She always knew north," said Miss Pell. "From four years old. In the dark. In a strange building. Spin her round ten times with her eyes shut and she'd point to it, every time, and laugh." She put her cup down. Her hand was shaking so much that the tea slopped over the rim onto the step. "If north moved, she'd follow it. She wouldn't be able not to. She'd have to know where it went."

"Toby lands at the foot of those mountains," I said. "He's my squad. He's the best person I know. He'll go and look. I'll ask him. I won't have to ask him."

Miss Pell put both her hands over her face.

She didn't cry. Not out loud. She sat on the concrete step at two in the morning, in her nightgown and her gray coat, with her spectacles pushed up into her hair, and her hands over her face, and her shoulders very still.

After a long time she took her hands away.

"North was never wrong," said Miss Pell. "I told you that. Through your mother. Months ago."

"I remember."

"I didn't know what I meant," said Miss Pell. "I just knew it was true."

I made her one before I went back up.

From the hinge of her spectacles. A grain from the left side, where the metal was thickest. Perfectly simple. One flaw.

"Eleven," I said, and gave them back.

She put them on. She couldn't see any difference. Nobody could.

"So you can find me," she said.

"So I can count you."

Miss Pell looked at me for a long time over the top of her spectacles. The way Halloway did. The way all the people did who'd decided, somewhere along the line, to stand at a door.

"Your father," she said, "came to the orphan hall once. When I was a matron. Before the war was over. To see your mother. He sat in the kitchen and drank my tea and said it was the best tea he'd ever had." She stood up. She picked up both cups. "He always said that. About everything. Your mother told me. He said it about every cup of tea for twenty years."

"I know," I said. "So do I."

"Yes," said Miss Pell. "I'd noticed."

She went up the half flight to the door. And stopped with her hand on it.

"Go to sleep, Lucas," she said. "It's a long way to Avalon. And I've got a report to write."

"A true one?"

"Mostly," said Miss Pell. And went through the door.

Day 241. The sixtieth floor. The last night.

Garnet stamped her shoe. It's working.

Mother stood in the doorway. Without the frame.

Genny's invoices: "Sample kits, pediatric, x2. Requested: Office of the Director."

Crane wants Garnet's blood before the Meridian. "Not negotiable."

Miss Pell has been writing two sets of reports. She stopped telling him true things after Okafor came to tea.

Three needles. Blunt, crying, contaminated. "I'm a terribly clumsy woman."

"I'll stand at the door."

North was never wrong.

Eleven.