Chapter 97 Drop

Nine hours is a long time to look at a world.

I spent all of it with my face against the little round port in the nose of my pod. I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. I drank some water, once, because Genny would have known if I hadn't. The rest of the time I looked.

Avalon turned under us.

The Meridian was going round it, slowly, the way the moon goes round the Earth, and every ninety minutes we came round again to the same place. So I saw it all. Five times. Coming up out of the dark at the edge, gold, and then green, and then the long white bands of cloud, curling, and then the dark again.

There were oceans. Very blue. Bluer than anything on Earth had been in my lifetime. There were mountains, a long white spine of them running down one continent like the spine of the ship, with snow on the tops. There were rivers, catching the light, fine and bright as wire. There were places that were green, and places that were a darker green, almost black, and places that were red. A deep rust-red. Long red streaks across the land, here and there, like scratches on skin.

I didn't know what the red was.

I couldn't see it. Not the way I saw things. It was too far, and the air was in the way, a hundred miles of it, thick and moving and full of things I didn't have names for. All I could see was what anyone could see, through a port the size of a coin.

But I looked for the continent from the map. The one the General had shown us, with the forty blue dots and the thirty-four gray. And on the third time round, I found it. The long coast. The river valleys. And in the north, under the white mountains, the hills where Squad Eight was meant to land.

And somewhere in there, two miles from my zone, a gray dot that had said WREN.

Day 297. Orbit. Five times round.

Oceans. Mountains. Rivers. Red streaks. I don't know what the red is.

I found the hills. I found where Wren is.

Two miles.

At eight hours, the link opened.

Not for ten minutes. It just opened, and stayed open. All the channels at once. Squad, and open, and pair. The flat recorded voice came on over the top of everything.

"Cadets. Pod release in sixty minutes. Release sequence by priority. Priority One will release first. Remain seated. Remain strapped. Do not attempt to communicate during descent. Link function cannot be guaranteed below forty kilometers."

Then it went off. And the squad channel was just us.

Nobody said anything for a while.

"Right," said Liam. "So. I just want to say. Before we go. That if anything happens—"

"Nothing's going to happen," said Seraphina.

"If anything happens," said Liam, louder, "I want it on the record that I was right about the paste. Toby's was different. It was greener."

"It wasn't greener," said Toby.

"It was a bit greener."

"It was the light."

"It was greener, Toby."

"Liam," said Luna.

"Yes."

"Shut up."

"Yes, Luna."

But Luna didn't say anything else either. For a long time. The channel hissed. I could hear everyone breathing. I could see them, if I looked, which I did, because I couldn't help it, and because in an hour I wouldn't be able to anymore.

Toby, very still, with his tuning fork in his hand. Not striking it. Just holding it.

Liam, with his knee going. Up and down. Up and down.

Seraphina, two pods along, with her hands flat on her knees and the pod around her golden with warmth, and her chin up.

Luna, at the end, with her eyes shut, and her heart, which I could see, which I'd been able to see for months, going at exactly fifty-two.

The floor. Ticking.

"Orders," said Luna, at last. Very calm. "Same as the roof. Days one and two, stay put. Air, water, warmth. Plant your kit if you can. Count." A pause. "Day three, if the link's working, we pick a place. If it isn't—"

"Everybody walks toward Lucas," said Liam, Toby and Seraphina, all at once.

"Everybody walks toward Lucas," said Luna. "And Lucas—"

"Doesn't walk," I said.

"Doesn't walk," said Luna. "Lighthouses don't walk."

A pause.

"And Lucas," she said. "You owe me something. First night. After we've counted."

"I know."

"I'm holding you to it."

"I know, Luna."

"Good," said Luna Windsor.

At fifty-five minutes, Toby started to sing.

Very softly. On the squad channel. The old song. And under it, after a moment, the hum of the ship came up, very low, and joined him. Following. The way it had been following for two weeks, every time, getting a little closer each time to the notes. By now it had the tune nearly right. Only the third of the four hidden notes still came out a little flat.

Nobody told him to stop.

When he got to the end, Seraphina said, very quietly, "Again."

So he sang it again.

Day 297. 59 minutes.

Toby sang it twice. The ship sang with him. It's nearly got the third note now.

Sera said "again." That's two things she's asked for.

"Priority One," said the flat voice. "Release in ten. Nine."

I put the notebook away. In the thigh pocket. With Father's book and Halloway's notes and Hana's letter and the dusk and Okafor's chevron. I checked the diamond, under the plate over my heart. I checked the scarf, three times round. I put my hands on my knees.

"Six. Five."

"Lucas," said Luna, on the squad channel.

"Yes."

"Count us."

"Three."

"Luna," I said. "Liam. Seraphina. Toby."

"Two."

"Here," said four voices.

"One."

It wasn't like the launch.

The launch had been a noise, and a weight, and then the hand underneath. This was the opposite. This was the hand letting go.

There was a bang. A short sharp one, under my seat, like a door slamming in the floor. And then the pod was falling.

Not falling. Thrown. The cradle on the spine threw it, out through its little hatch in the hull of the Meridian, and for one second I was pressed so hard into my seat that I couldn't feel my hands. And then the pressure let go, and there was nothing.

No weight. No up. No down. My stomach went somewhere I couldn't follow. The straps were the only thing holding me in the seat, and the scarf floated up in front of my face, three gray loops, drifting, and the little round port in the nose went from black to stars to the edge of something enormous and green and back to stars.

The pod was turning. Slowly. End over end.

I looked back. I couldn't help it.

The Meridian. Getting smaller. A long silver shape against the dark, with the gray spine running down the middle of it, and a ring of tiny hatches two-thirds of the way up. One of them open. Mine. And as I watched, another one opened, a little further round. And something small and gray and seed-shaped came out of it, tumbling, the way I was tumbling.

Luna.

Then another. Liam. Then Seraphina. Then Toby.

Five seeds, falling away from the stalk.

I watched them as long as I could. Five little gray shapes, turning, spreading slowly apart against the green. I followed the grains. The fork, and the clasp, and the buckle, and the snowflake. Bright. Exactly where they were.

Then the air began.

It started as a whisper.

A thin high sound, against the outside of the pod, like wind across the mouth of a bottle. And the pod stopped turning. Something caught it, the fins at the tail, the heavy blunt nose, and swung it round, and held it, nose down, pointing at the world.

The whisper became a roar.

The little round port went orange. Then white. The air outside the pod was on fire. Not the pod. The air. Pressed so hard in front of the nose that it couldn't get out of the way, and burned instead. I could feel the heat through the shell, through the padding, through my suit, on my face. The scarf, which had floated up in front of me, fell back against my chest all at once, heavy as a wet towel.

And the weight came back.

More than the launch. Much more. It came down on me from the front, from the nose, as if the whole of Avalon were pressing on my chest to slow me down. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't lift my hands from my knees. My vision went gray at the edges, and then narrower, and narrower, like looking down a tube.

I counted.

I don't know what else to tell you. I counted. Luna. Liam. Seraphina. Toby. Out loud, if I had any breath, and in my head when I didn't. Over and over. And every time I said a name, I followed the grain. And every time, it was there.

But they were moving.

Not the way I was moving. Not straight down. They were moving apart.

At first, a little. A few miles. The way they'd been moving apart in orbit, five seeds spreading slowly as they fell. That was right. That was the plan. Okafor had said: pods scatter. Average thirty miles from the assigned zone.

Then more.

The snowflake, going west. Fast. Faster than it should have been. The buckle, going east. The fork, north, and further north, much further, as if something were carrying it. The clasp, east too, but not as far as the buckle. Spreading. Spreading. Like seeds in a wind.

And there was a wind.

I could feel it, now, through the shell. Not the roar of the burning air. Something else, under it. A shove. A long steady push from the side, from the south, as if the whole sky were moving north at once and we were in it.

The pod lurched.

"Squad Eight," said Luna. Breaking up. Hissing. "Squad Eight, check—"

"Here," I said. Or tried to.

"—ucas, I can't—" Static. "—too fast, we're—"

"Luna."

"—everybody walks—"

And then nothing.

Not static. Not hiss. Nothing. The link went silent in my ear, all at once, the way a door goes silent when it closes. As if someone had cut a wire.

"Luna," I said again. Into nothing.

Nothing.

Forty kilometers. Link function cannot be guaranteed below forty kilometers. My wrist screen said thirty-eight.

I followed the grains instead.

The snowflake, far to the west. The fork, far to the north. The buckle, east. The clasp, east, closer. Still bright. Still exactly where they were. Still moving.

Count them.

I counted.

The fire went out.

The port went from white to orange to red to a sudden enormous green. Not the green of the planet from orbit. Closer. Sky. The pod had come through the burning and out the other side, into air, and the air was green.

There was a bang over my head, and then another, and then a long ripping pull that yanked me up into the straps so hard I bit my tongue. The chutes. Three of them, Okafor had said, opening one after another, each one bigger than the last. I felt every one. Bang, pull. Bang, pull. Bang, a long, long, slow pull, and the weight went from crushing to heavy to almost nothing, and the pod swung, gently, side to side, like a cradle.

And I could see.

Not through the port. Through everything.

The air was thinner now, and closer, and I could look down through the shell of the pod, and through the air, and see the ground coming up toward me. Rock. Red rock. Miles of it. Cracked and fissured and broken into long deep channels, like the bed of a river that had dried up a thousand years ago. And in the channels, the red went darker, and smoother, and caught the light.

Glass.

Red glass. Like the black glass at Site One. Like the bright scar across the flats at home. Rock that had been melted, a long time ago, and run like water, and set hard again.

Something had burned here, too.

I didn't have time to think about it. The ground was coming up fast. Faster than it should have been. The chutes weren't slowing me enough, because the wind had them, the long push from the south, dragging the pod sideways across the sky as it fell.

I looked for my zone. The hills. The white mountains. The two miles to WREN.

There weren't any hills. There weren't any mountains. There was nothing in any direction but red rock and red glass and the long channels running through it, and the wind.

Wherever I was, it wasn't where the map said.

The retros fired at two hundred meters.

I'd forgotten about the retros. Four little rockets, in the base of the pod, that were supposed to fire at the last moment and take the speed off. They fired. I felt them. A hard upward shove, and a roar, and red dust boiling up past the port.

It wasn't enough. The wind had us. The pod hit the edge of a channel sideways, and bounced, and rolled, and fell, and hit again.

Everything went white.

I don't know how long.

Not long. A minute. Less. When I could see again, I was hanging in the straps, upside down, or nearly, with my head lower than my feet and the scarf hanging down past my face in three gray loops. Everything hurt. Nothing hurt in particular. My mouth tasted of blood, from where I'd bitten my tongue. The pod was very quiet.

Then it creaked. And shifted. And rolled, slowly, the last little way, and settled onto its side with a long grinding sigh, like an old man sitting down.

And was still.

I lay there for a while.

Then I looked.

Myself, first. Halloway would have insisted. Yourself first, Cadet. You're no use to anyone bleeding into your own skull. So I looked. Bones, all whole. A crack in one rib, small. Halloway would have called it boring. A bruise across my chest where the straps had been, spreading. My tongue. The inside of my head, where the old weight lived. Quiet. Fine.

Then the pod. The shell, cracked in two places but holding. The air inside it, still good. The fins, one of them gone. The kit, folded up tight in its housing under the seat, every arm and pipe and fold of it, still whole.

And the core. In the middle of the kit. Fog.

Then outside.

The pod had come down at the bottom of a canyon.

A long one. Narrow. Walls of red rock on either side, going up, and up, a hundred meters at least, sheer and cracked and layered like the pages of a book seen edge-on. And the floor of the canyon, where the pod lay, was glass. Red glass. Smooth as water, and as dark as wine, and running away in both directions as far as I could see, curving out of sight round the bends of the walls.

There was nothing alive in it. No plants. No animals. Nothing moving. Only the wind, very far above, along the rim. I could hear it, now, through the shell. A long low sound, like the hum of the ship.

I undid the straps.

The door of the pod was underneath me, half buried in the glass. There was an emergency hatch on the side. I'd practiced it a hundred times in the cave. Handle, twist, push. I did it with my eyes shut, the way I'd practiced, and the hatch went with a hiss and a thump, and fell open, and the air of Avalon came in.

It was warm.

That was the first thing. Warm, and thick, and it smelled of something I'd never smelled before. Not ash. Not the dome's clean nothing. Something sharp and green and a little sweet, like the inside of a stem when you break it. And under it, something hot, like stone in the sun.

I climbed out.

My legs didn't work properly. I'd been sitting for twenty days. I got out of the hatch on my hands and knees, onto the red glass, and stayed there for a moment, on my hands and knees, with the glass warm under my palms.

Then I stood up.

And looked up.

The sky was green.

Not the green of grass, or of Garnet's fern, or of the wheat in spring. A pale green. A clear, high, luminous green, like the color at the very edge of a flame, or like light coming through a leaf, from very far away. It went all the way up. All the way across, from one rim of the canyon to the other. Not a cloud in it.

And low over the western rim, the sun. Not our sun. Bigger. Softer. Gold going on orange, the color of honey held up to a lamp.

I stood at the bottom of a canyon of red glass, under a green sky, and looked at it, and couldn't do anything else.

Then I counted.

I didn't need the link. I'd never needed the link. That was the whole point. I closed my eyes, and stopped looking at anything, and looked for them instead. For the shapes. Four grains of perfectly simple iron, each with one flaw, in one exact place.

The snowflake.

West. Far. Further than I'd thought. A hundred and forty miles, maybe more. Still. Not moving. Down.

The clasp.

East. Ninety miles, a little less. Still. Down.

The buckle.

North and east. Two hundred miles, nearly. Still. Down.

The fork.

North. Far north. Much further than any of the others. Two hundred and sixty miles, and up. High up. As if it had come down somewhere very high and very cold.

The white mountains.

Still. Down.

Four.

All four. Down. Still. Exactly where they were.

I didn't know if they were alive. A grain of iron doesn't tell you that. It only tells you where it is. Toby's fork could be in Toby's breast pocket, or lying in the snow beside him, and the grain would shine just the same.

But they were down. And they were there. And in two days, if the link was dead, they'd start walking.

Toward me.

Then, because I couldn't help it, I looked further.

Out. Up. Past the green sky. Past the two moons, which I couldn't see yet because it was day, but which I knew were there. Out into the nothing. The page with nothing written on it.

I'd found the moon from a bedroom, when I was four. Three hundred and eighty-four thousand kilometers. I'd told Toby I didn't think there was an end to it. Not for something simple enough.

Eleven light-years is not three hundred and eighty-four thousand kilometers.

I looked anyway.

For a long time, there was nothing.

And then.

Faint. So faint I wasn't sure. Like a candle seen through a whole field of fog. Like the last note of something, very far away, after everyone else has stopped singing.

A clasp. On a satchel. On the sixtieth floor.

A buckle. On a shoe.

A ring. On a ribbon. On a wrist.

A hinge. On a pair of spectacles.

A collar. On a dog.

A disc. At someone's throat.

There.

I sat down on the red glass. Quite suddenly. Because my legs stopped working again.

I sat at the bottom of the canyon with my back against the cracked warm shell of the pod, and the scarf round my neck, and Genny's diamond over my heart, and my eyes shut, and I held on to them. All of them. The four on this world and the six on the other one. Faint. Far. Exactly where they were.

And I counted them. Out loud. In the green silence.

"Luna. Liam. Seraphina. Toby."

"Mother. Genny. Garnet. Miss Pell."

"Biscuit." I swallowed. "Okafor."

My voice went up the walls of the canyon, and came back down, very small.

Nobody answered.

That was all right. That was the point of counting.

Day 297. Avalon.

Written sitting on red glass. Back against the pod.

The pods scattered. Much wider than the briefing. A wind from the south, all the way up.

Link died at thirty-eight kilometers. Luna's last words: "everybody walks—"

I don't know where I am. Not the hills. Not the mountains. Not two miles from Wren. A canyon. Red glass. Something burned here once.

The sky is green.

The sun is the color of honey.

Luna: 140 miles west. Sera: 90 east. Liam: 200 northeast. Toby: 260 north, high up. All down. All still.

Mother. Genny. Garnet. Miss Pell. Biscuit. Okafor. Eleven light-years. Faint. There.

I can still count them.

All of them.

Alone.

Not alone.