Chapter 89 The General's Request

The summons came through Okafor.

She didn't put it on my bed. She handed it to me at breakfast, folded once, without a word, and stood there while I read it.

Cadet Dask will report to the office of General Windsor, Level 140, at 1900 hours today. Alone.

I looked up at her.

"I don't know," said Okafor, before I could ask. "He didn't tell me. He doesn't tell me things." The steel side of her face caught the light from the counters. "But I'll be at the bottom of the gold lift at 2100. If you're not down by then, I'm coming up."

"You can't go up to the hundred-and-fortieth floor."

"Watch me," said Okafor.

Luna didn't say anything when I told her.

We were in the reading room. Two o'clock, the night before. The two cups. She'd listened, with her cold coffee in her hands and the neuroanatomy book turned round between us, and when I'd finished she looked at the book for a long time without reading it.

"He's never asked to see a cadet alone," she said. "Not in my lifetime. Not one." She turned a page. "He'll be polite. He'll offer you a chair. He'll offer you a drink, and you'll say no, and he'll pour one anyway and leave it on the table in front of you so you have to look at it." She turned another page. "And he'll tell you something true. One thing. He always does. That's how he makes you believe everything else."

"What else will he tell me?"

Luna looked up at me.

"I don't know," she said. "That's the part I'm frightened of."

The General's office was at the very top of the Halcyon Tower.

Not the Great Hall. Above it. A long room with a window along one whole side, looking out over the dome, the way the gala balcony had. A long table, dark wood, with twelve chairs and nobody in any of them. And on the far wall, lit by a lamp of its own, a map.

Avalon. AV-7. The same continent. Mountains and rivers and the long curve of the coast.

But this one wasn't on a screen. It was paper. Hand-drawn, in ink, and very large, covering the whole wall. And there were no dots on it. No blue. No gray. Just the land. As if someone had wanted to look at the world without anything on it at all.

The General was standing at the window with his back to me.

He didn't turn round when the aide showed me in. He waited until the door had closed. Then he said, still looking out at the dome:

"Sit down, Cadet Dask."

I sat.

There was a chair pulled out, at the near end of the long table. And on the table in front of it, a glass. With something in it, gold, catching the lamp.

I didn't touch it.

The General turned round.

I'd seen him on the stage. On field one. At the gala, with Luna on his arm. I'd never been in a room with him before. Just him and me. He was smaller than I'd thought. Not short. Narrow. Very straight. With gray hair cut so close to his skull you could see the shape of the bone, and pale eyes. Luna's eyes. Colder.

Three rows of medals on his chest. I looked at them. I didn't mean to. One of them, on the end of the second row, was dull. Not polished like the others. As if it had been kept in a drawer for a long time and only taken out recently.

He saw me looking.

"You'll have heard," he said, "that I signed your father's commendation denials."

I didn't say anything.

"After the river. Twenty names. Every one. Denied." He walked to the end of the table and stood with his hands behind his back. "Sergeant Okafor will have told you that. And my daughter will have told you she read it in the reports. Thirty-seven of them." He looked at me. "They're both right. I signed every one."

That was the true thing. Luna had said. He'd always tell you one.

I waited for the rest.

"I was Lieutenant Harrow's commanding officer," said the General.

I hadn't known that.

"I was twenty-six. A captain. The youngest in the eastern command. They gave me the program units because nobody senior wanted them. Nobody wanted to stand next to children who could set fire to the air." He wasn't looking at me now. He was looking at the map on the far wall. "Field Unit Seven was mine. Harrow was mine. The map was mine."

The room was very quiet.

"I drew it," said the General. "From reconnaissance that was two days old. I knew it was two days old. I sent them across the Orme anyway, because the column needed the depot by morning, and my colonel needed the column, and my colonel's general needed his colonel." He paused. "And the far bank had a hole in the sound a mile wide."

"Twenty dead in ten minutes."

"Twenty-one," said the General. "Corporal Pim died two weeks later. In the infirmary. The reports don't count him. I do."

I didn't say anything.

"And when your father came back from the bridge," said the General, "with a girl on his shoulder and his ears bleeding, and asked for a commendation for every one of the twenty, I knew that if I approved them, the board would ask why twenty program subjects had died crossing a bridge that my map said was clear." He looked at me. "So I denied them. All of them. And I kept my company. And then my battalion. And then my brigade." He touched the dull medal on the end of the second row. "And then this."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you'd have found out," said the General. "You read everything. My daughter reads it to you upside down." He almost smiled. Almost. "And because I'd rather you heard it from me than from a file, at night, on the Meridian, with nobody to ask."

He pulled out a chair. Across the table from me. He sat down in it. He folded his hands on the dark wood.

"I was in the Great Hall," he said, "when your father laid his list on the cushion. Next to the medal. I was standing at the back. A colonel by then. I watched him look at the medal, and then at the Council, and then at the back of the hall. Where I was." He was very still. "He didn't say anything to me. He didn't need to. He just looked. With those eyes. For about three seconds. And then he put the list down and walked out."

"And Directive Nine?"

The General didn't flinch. I'll give him that. Like Halloway.

"I was in the room," he said. "I didn't vote. Colonels don't vote. I was there to advise on the security implications of three hundred and eleven Cinder subjects inside the glass." He looked at his hands. "I advised that they were a risk. Which was true. And I said nothing else. Which was the thing I was best at."

The lamp over the map hummed.

"The way this government treated Trevor Dask," said General Windsor, "is the thing I am most ashamed of in my life. I want you to know that. I've never said it to anyone. Not to the Council. Not to my wife, when she was alive. Not to Luna." He looked at me. "I'm saying it to you because you're his son, and you're about to go somewhere I'm sending you, and I may not get another chance."

I sat very still.

I could see his heart. Of course I could. I didn't want to look. But it was a page.

It wasn't going like a bird's. It wasn't calm, like Crane's. It was going slow, and heavy, and a little uneven. Like a man carrying something up a long flight of stairs, who'd been carrying it so long he'd stopped noticing the weight, and had just put it down for a moment, and felt how much it had cost.

It was the truth.

I didn't know what to do with that.

"Thank you for telling me," I said.

The General looked at me for a long moment.

"He'd have said that," he said quietly. "Thank you. He always did."

"I know."

"Even to me." The General looked at the glass in front of me, which I still hadn't touched. "The week after the river. In the corridor outside my office. I'd just signed the last of the twenty. And he passed me, coming the other way. With those spectacles on. And he stopped. And he said, thank you for seeing me, Captain. Because I'd had him in, that morning, to tell him the answer was no." He was quiet. "Thank you for seeing me. After I'd told him his dead didn't count."

"That isn't why I asked you here," said the General.

He stood up again. He walked to the window. Looked out over the dome. The city glittering, a hundred and forty floors down.

"I asked you here to give you an order," he said. "The only one I'll ever give you directly. And I want you to understand it exactly."

I waited.

"When you land," said the General, "Luna is your commanding officer. Not the Director. Not the Meridian. Not me." He turned round. "If an order comes down the link from this office, and Luna gives you a different one, you follow hers. Every time. Whatever mine says."

I stared at him.

"Sergeant Okafor," said the General, "will have told you not to trust anybody above the rank of sergeant."

"Yes, sir."

"She's right." He said it flatly. "She was always right. She got it from your father, and your father got it from me, the hard way, at a bridge." He looked at me. "Luna is a cadet. She's below the rank of sergeant. She's the only person on that ship who is below it and who also knows everything I know." A pause. "Follow her."

"Why?"

"Because she asked the number," said the General. "On the first day. In front of everyone. She asked Okafor how many we were expecting to bring back, before she'd say yes." He was quiet. "I never asked it. Not once. In thirty years. Not at the Orme. Not since. I drew the map and sent them over and counted afterward." He looked at the map on the wall. The paper one. With nothing on it. "She asks it first. That's the only kind of person anybody should follow onto a world like that."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

The glass on the table caught the lamp. The city glittered. The General stood at the window with his hands behind his back.

And I thought about Luna. In the reading room. At two in the morning. With her fingers on the side of her neck.

Father took me to a doctor in the Ministry. I had a small operation. Father said, now you'll be steady.

"Sir," I said.

He turned his head.

"Luna's neck," I said. "The left side. Under the jaw. There's a scar."

The General went very still.

"There's something on the nerve," I said. "The vagus. The one that slows the heart. A silver thing. Three millimeters. Wrapped round it. It's been there eleven years. It ticks fifty-two times a minute." I made myself keep going. "She asked me to look. She told me you had it put in. After Albert's hand. She told me you said now you'll be steady."

The General didn't say anything.

"She thinks you did it to make her a weapon," I said. "Steady. Still. Something you could point. She thinks you put a clock on her heart so nobody could read her face."

The city glittered.

"Is she right?" I said.

The General walked back to the table.

He didn't sit down. He stood at the end of it, with his hands on the back of a chair, and looked at the dark wood for a long time.

"How much do you know about the heart now?" he said. "Halloway tells me you've been studying."

"Some."

"Then tell me what happens when the vagus fires too hard."

I thought about it. The brainstem. Night eleven. Luna's cold coffee.

"The heart slows," I said. "Too much. It can stop. For a second. For a few seconds. If it's bad enough—" I stopped.

"If it's bad enough," said the General.

He took his hands off the chair.

"She was six," he said. "In the kitchen. Albert dropped a pan behind her. She jumped. And the cold came out of her for the first time. You know that part. She froze his hand to the kettle." He was looking at the table. "What she doesn't know, because she was six, and because she fainted, is that it didn't only go outward."

I didn't move.

"It went in," said the General. "The cold. Down the nerve. The way fear goes down it. Into her own heart." He looked up at me. "Her heart stopped, Cadet Dask. For four seconds. On the kitchen floor. Albert held her in his good arm with his other hand frozen to the stove, and shouted, and her heart stopped, and I was in the next room, and I counted."

The lamp over the map hummed.

"Four seconds," said the General. "And then it started again. On its own. And she woke up, and cried, and didn't remember. And three days later, the doctors at the Ministry told me it would happen again. Every time she was frightened enough. Every time the cold went in instead of out. And that one day, it wouldn't start again on its own."

I looked at the scar. In my mind. On the left side of her neck. The little silver ring on the nerve. Ticking.

Fifty-two.

And I understood.

"It's not a ceiling," I said. "It's a floor."

The General looked at me.

"It doesn't stop her heart going fast," I said. "It went to eighty. In the corridor. Risa felt it. It let it." I was working it out as I said it. "It stops it going slow. It won't let it go below fifty-two. Whatever the cold does. However frightened she is. It just keeps ticking. Fifty-two. And the heart can't go under it."

"Yes," said the General.

"It's not to make her steady. It's to keep her alive."

"Yes."

"And you told her—"

"I told a six-year-old girl who'd just woken up on a kitchen floor," said the General, "that she'd had a small operation. And that now she'd be steady." His voice didn't change at all. "Because I couldn't tell her that her own gift had nearly killed her. That every time she was really afraid, the thing inside her would try to stop her heart. I couldn't tell her that. She was six. She'd never have stopped being afraid of being afraid."

"And then she grew up."

"And then she grew up," said the General. "And she was steady. And she was first in every class, and she never froze anyone again, and she never once fainted, and she led a squad, and she asked the number." He looked at the dark wood. "And every year, I meant to tell her. And every year, she was a little more steady, and a little more proud of it. And she'd decided I'd done it to make her a weapon. And I thought—" He stopped. "I thought that if she believed that, she'd at least believe she'd chosen to be steady. That it was hers. Not a thing she needed to stay alive."

He was quiet for a long time.

"I've let my daughter hate me for eleven years," said General Windsor, "rather than tell her she's breakable."

I didn't say anything for a while.

I thought about Mother. On the last page of her list. Written larger than the rest.

Never choose for them without telling them.

Your father loved me so much he lied to me for eleven years. So that I'd never have to carry it.

Eleven years.

"I'm going to tell her," I said.

The General looked at me.

"She asked me if it could come out," I said. "She told me it was my exam. She wants me to learn enough to take it out. She thinks it's a leash." I met his eyes. "If I'd learned enough, and done it, without knowing—"

I didn't finish.

The General had gone gray. Not pale. Gray. All the way down.

"So I'm going to tell her," I said. "Tonight. Not because you said I could. Because she has a right to know what's on her own heart." I stood up. "And because somebody I love told me never to choose for anyone without telling them. And I got it wrong once already this year. I'm not getting it wrong again."

The General looked at me for a long time.

"Your father would have said that," he said.

"My mother said it."

"Yes," said the General. "I expect she would have." He looked at the map. The paper one. Avalon, with nothing on it. "Tell her," he said. "I couldn't. Eleven years, and I couldn't." A pause. "Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her—"

"No," I said.

He stopped.

"You tell her that part," I said. "She's on the hundred-and-fortieth floor every Sunday for dinner. You've got one Sunday left." I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair. "I'll tell her what's on her heart. You tell her why."

I left the glass on the table. Full. I never touched it.

At the door, I stopped.

"Sir."

"Cadet."

"The map." I looked at the paper on the wall. The continent with nothing on it. "Why is it blank?"

The General looked at it for a long time.

"Because I drew the last one," he said. "And it was wrong. And twenty-one people crossed a bridge because of it." He didn't look at me. "I drew this one so that every morning I'd remember I don't know what's there. Neither does anybody else in this building." A pause. "Luna will find out. Follow her. And when you know, draw it yourself."

Okafor was at the bottom of the gold lift at nine o'clock exactly.

She looked at my face when the doors opened. She didn't ask anything. She fell in beside me, and we walked back toward the cave, through the long corridors under the tower.

"Well?" she said finally.

"He told me he drew Harrow's map."

Okafor didn't break stride. But I saw her jaw move. The steel and the bone together.

"And?"

"And he told me to follow Luna. Not him. Her. Whatever he says."

Okafor walked for a long time without saying anything.

"Took him thirty years," she said finally. "But he got there." She looked at me sideways. "What else?"

"Something I have to tell Luna first," I said.

Okafor nodded once. And didn't ask again.

Luna was in the reading room at two.

Two cups. The book turned round. Her face very still.

I sat down. I didn't open the book.

"He told you something true," said Luna. "Didn't he. One thing."

"Yes," I said. "And then he told me something else true. About you."

Her hands went still round her cold cup.

And I told her.

The kitchen. Albert's hand. The cold, going outward, the way she remembered. And the cold going inward, the way she didn't. Her heart stopping on the kitchen floor. Four seconds. Her father in the next room, counting. The doctors at the Ministry. It will happen again. Every time she's frightened enough. One day it won't start on its own.

A floor. Not a ceiling.

Fifty-two.

Luna sat very still and listened to all of it.

When I'd finished, she didn't say anything for a long time. Her fingers had come up, without her noticing, to the left side of her neck. To the scar.

"So it's not a leash," she said.

"No."

"It's—" She stopped. Her voice did something. Just once. Like a crack in ice. "It's what's been keeping me alive. Every time I was frightened. On the gallery. In the rain. In the corridor, with your face in my hands." She pressed her fingers against the scar. "Every time. It just kept ticking. And I hated it."

"Yes."

"And he let me." Very quietly. "For eleven years."

"He said he couldn't tell you that you were breakable."

Luna laughed. It wasn't a laugh. It was the sound the ice made on the gallery window, sometimes, at night, when the temperature changed.

"Breakable," she said.

She was quiet for a long time. The frost was coming up from under her hands, across the table, in slow white ferns. All the way to my side. Further than it ever had.

"The exam," she said at last.

"It's cancelled," I said. "I'm not taking it out. Not ever. Not unless there's something better to put in its place. And not without a teacher."

Luna looked at me. With her pale eyes. In the blue light from the corridor.

"You'd have done it," she said. "If you'd learned enough. If I'd asked. You'd have taken it out."

"Yes."

"And I'd have—"

"Yes."

Luna Windsor looked at me across the table for a very long time. And then she reached across, through the frost, and put her cold hand on top of mine. And left it there.

"He's got one Sunday," I said. "I told him to tell you the rest himself."

"I know," said Luna. "I heard you. Just now. In my head. In exactly that voice." Her hand didn't move. "I'll go."

We sat like that until the lamp in the corridor clicked over from blue to gray.

Neither of us opened the book.

Day 261. The General.

He drew Harrow's map. He signed the twenty. Twenty-one; he counts Pim.

"The thing I am most ashamed of in my life."

"Follow Luna. Not me."

The silver on her nerve isn't a ceiling. It's a floor. Her heart stopped for four seconds when she was six. It keeps it from stopping again.

Exam cancelled.

I told her. Mother's rule.

He has one Sunday.

Her hand on mine. Cold. All night.