Chapter 99 Unfolding

On the second day, I woke the kit.

Plant your kit if you can. Luna's orders. Okafor's rules. Air, water, warmth. I'd been on Avalon a night and a day and a night, and I'd spent six hours of it sitting in a field laughing at plants, and the rest of it in a pod two meters long, breathing through a filter the size of a loaf of bread.

It was time to build something.

The kit was in the housing under my seat. Folded up tight, the way Pryce had said. Everything's folded. You could drop this off a cliff and it'd be fine. I'd dropped it into a canyon from a hundred miles up, at the end of three parachutes and a wind, and it was fine. I'd checked it twice. Every leg, every arm, every joint. Whole.

But the housing was buckled.

The pod had come down on its side, and rolled, and the shell had cracked in two places, and one of the cracks ran right across the panel that was supposed to slide back and let the kit out. The panel had bent inward a finger's width and jammed. There was a handle for it. I pulled the handle. Nothing.

In the cave, there'd have been an engineer with a pry bar.

I didn't need one.

I put my hand flat on the bent panel and looked into it.

Steel. Odell's steel, with the careful holes. Good steel, folded over on itself the way he did it, so it would bend before it broke. And it had bent. I could see where. Every grain of it, pushed out of line along a curve, like a row of people all leaning the same way after something big has gone past.

I asked them to stand up straight.

Not all at once. One row at a time, from the edges in, the way you'd smooth a crumpled sheet of paper with your thumb. Slowly. Carefully. So the steel wouldn't remember it had been bent.

The panel straightened under my palm with a long, soft creak, like a door in an old house.

Then it slid back.

The kit came out by itself.

I hadn't expected that. I'd thought I'd have to drag it, or lever it, or ask the floor of the pod to tilt. But as soon as the panel was clear, something inside the kit woke up. A hum, very low. And the gray folded shell of it slid forward along the tracks in the housing, smoothly, as if it had been waiting, and tipped itself out of the pod onto the red glass, and lay there in the morning sun.

About the size of a car. Gray. Smooth. Folded.

It didn't look like much. That's the point, Pryce had said.

I stood on the glass in front of it and didn't know what to do.

There was a handplate on the side. I'd forgotten about the handplate. A square of darker gray, about the size of my palm, set flush into the shell. It's keyed to you, Pryce had said, in the hangar, the day I took one apart and couldn't put it back. Your hand, and only yours. Put it on, and it knows it's home.

I put my hand on it.

It was warm.

Not from the sun. From inside. The same warmth as the panel on the Meridian, under my palm at twenty-one minutes past three. Very faint. Coming from the middle, where the core was.

I looked at the core.

Fog.

And then the kit unfolded.

The way it had in the hangar. Like a flower. Like the fern's frond, unrolling. It split along lines I couldn't see until they opened, a dozen at once, and the pieces curled back and down and out, and under them there were more pieces, folded, and they unfolded too.

Legs. Six. Jointed, like an insect's. They pushed down into the red glass and lifted the whole kit up off the ground, until it stood taller than me, on the floor of the canyon, in the sun.

Arms. Four, from the sides. Long and thin, with something at the end of each like a hand and a shovel at the same time.

A mouth. At the front, low down. Wide and dark and full of teeth that weren't teeth. Grinders. Rollers.

At the back, a long low opening, like a slot in a letterbox, where the things it made would come out.

And then it stood there. Humming. On six legs. Facing me.

Waiting.

Feed, Pryce had said, to her slate.

I didn't have a slate. I didn't have a cart of broken rock and two engineers in white to push it. I had a canyon.

I looked at the wall.

Some of you, Crane had said, in the lecture hall, a long time ago, with the picture of the kit on the screen behind him and his calm heart going at sixty, will be very good at feeding it.

I'd known he meant me. Everyone had known. Liam had nudged me. Brock Haddon had turned round in his seat and stared.

I'd hated it, then. Being the one he meant.

I didn't hate it now.

The canyon wall was a hundred meters high. Red rock, layered, like the pages of a book seen edge-on. I'd climbed it the day before. I knew it. Every ledge, every crack, every place where the layers had weathered back and left a shelf.

I looked into it.

Not at it. Into it. The way I'd looked into the steel. All of it. A hundred meters up and fifty along and twenty deep. The layers, one on top of another, the way they'd been laid down, a long time ago, at the bottom of some sea that wasn't here anymore. Sandstone. Ironstone. A band of something dark and glittering, thin as a hand, that I didn't have a name for. More sandstone. And in the cracks between the layers, where the water had got in over a thousand years and gone again, a fine red powder, soft as flour.

I asked the bottom layer to let go of the one above it.

Just a little. Just at the front. Just enough.

And the first slab came away from the face of the canyon wall, a meter thick and three meters across, and slid down, slowly, on a cushion of red powder, and lay at the feet of the kit.

The kit's arms came down and picked it up.

It ate.

Steadily. Armful after armful. The four arms gathering, the mouth grinding, the deep slow crunching hum coming up through the soles of my boots. The way it had in the hangar, except that this wasn't a cart of broken gray test rock. This was a world.

I gave it another slab. And another.

And somewhere around the fifth, I stopped thinking of it as slabs.

I don't know how to describe the rest of that morning.

I fed it the wall. Layer by layer, from the bottom up, the way you'd take the pages out of a book one at a time to read them. I didn't drop them. I didn't break them. I asked each layer to come away, gently, and lie down at the kit's feet, sorted. Sandstone in one pile. Ironstone in another. The dark glittering band on its own, because the kit's hands tasted it, the first time, and stopped, and tasted it again, and set it aside very carefully, the way you'd set aside something precious.

And the kit learned.

I could see it learning. That was the strangest thing. Pryce had said it would. It learns. It gets faster. But I hadn't understood what she meant until I watched it.

By the tenth slab, it had stopped tasting the sandstone. It knew. It just ate it.

By the twentieth, it had started reaching for the next slab before I'd finished asking it to come away. Anticipating. Watching the wall. Watching me.

By the fortieth, it had grown a fifth arm.

It came out of the side of it, from a seam I hadn't seen, unfolding the way the others had. Long and thin, with a hand at the end. But not like the other hands. Smaller. Finer. With more joints in the fingers.

It reached out, past the other four, and picked up a piece of the dark glittering stone. Turned it over. Held it up.

Toward me.

As if it were asking.

"Iron," I said. Out loud. To a machine. "Mostly. And something else. I don't know what the something else is. Keep it."

The fifth arm put the stone down in its own pile. Very carefully.

And went back to eating.

At noon I stopped to count.

I sat down on the warm glass, in the shadow of the kit, with my back against one of its legs. It didn't seem to mind. It went on eating the slab in front of it, slowly, while I closed my eyes.

Luna. The snowflake. West. Still walking her square, every hour, on the hour, like a sentry. And between the squares, something else. Small movements. Back and forth. Building, I thought. She'd planted her kit.

Seraphina. The clasp. East. Still. By her fire. Then a long walk, out and back, a mile each way. Looking for something. Water, maybe.

Liam. The buckle. Northeast. Moving in a line, now, instead of a circle. A short line. Fifty paces, and back. Fifty paces, and back. Pacing. Waiting for day three, and hating it.

Toby.

The fork. North. High.

It had moved.

Not three meters, like last night. Three hundred. North and a little east, and higher, up into the white mountains. Slowly. All morning. At the pace of somebody walking very carefully, or being carried.

Somebody's come.

I held on to it for a long time. Then I let go, and opened my eyes, and the kit's fifth arm was hanging in the air beside my head, very still, with its fine jointed fingers open, as if it had been about to touch my shoulder and decided not to.

I looked at it.

It went back to the wall.

Day 299. Noon.

Toby moved 300 meters. North, higher. Walking or carried. All morning.

The kit grew a fifth arm. It asks me things with it.

It built the walls first.

I don't know why I was surprised. Pryce had said: a shelter in a day. But I'd thought of a shelter as a tent, or a hut. A box to keep the wind off.

The kit didn't make a box.

It came out of the slot at the back. Long curved pieces, the color of the canyon wall, but smoother, finer, pressed and fused so that when the sun caught them they shone very faintly, like the inside of a shell. Each one curved. Each one fitted to the last, along a seam so fine I couldn't see it with my eyes, only with the other thing. Going up. Going round.

A dome.

Not a big one. Six meters across. Four high. Built against the foot of the canyon wall, where I'd taken the layers away, so that the back of it was the living rock and the front of it curved out onto the red glass like half of a soap bubble.

Like the dome at home. But small enough to cover with your hands.

I stood in front of it in the afternoon light and laughed. I'm not sure why. I seemed to be doing a lot of that.

Then the air plant.

That took longer. The kit stopped eating, for a while, and stood very still, humming, with all five arms folded in. And the hum changed. Deeper. Slower. And I could see, if I looked, which I did, the little rivers inside it, the pipes and channels running back to the core, busy. Very busy. Something being worked out. Something being remembered.

Then it started again.

It made pipes. Fine ones, from the ironstone, drawn out thin as straws. It made a chamber, from the sandstone, with walls so thin the light came through them pink. It made a fan, from something I didn't recognize, that it had pulled out of the dark glittering band and saved. And it carried all of it in through the low round door it had left in the front of the dome, one piece at a time, in the fifth arm, and fitted it together against the back wall, where the dome met the rock.

And then it turned the air plant on.

I heard it from outside.

A purr.

Low. Steady. In the walls.

I stood very still on the red glass.

I knew that sound. I'd fallen asleep to it every night of my life until I was fifteen. I'd woken to it every morning at five, before the light, coming on in the walls of the house in the field. Father's machine. The filter. The only thing standing between three children and a sick woman and a world full of ash.

It wasn't the same. Of course it wasn't. It was a different machine, built by a different hand, on a different world, out of rock I didn't have names for.

But it was the same sound.

I went in through the low round door, on my hands and knees, and sat down on the smooth warm floor of the dome with my back against the curved wall, and listened to it. The purr in the walls. And I breathed. In, and out. And after a while my wrist screen stopped flashing, because the air inside the dome was clean, and the six-hour clock had stopped, and wouldn't start again until I went outside.

I put my face in my hands.

I didn't cry. I want that on the record. I just sat there, with my face in my hands, and listened to the filter, for a long time.

The forge, it built last.

At the side of the dome, outside, against the rock. A squat round furnace, the height of my chest, with a mouth at the front and a chimney going up the canyon wall in a long fused tube. It fed it a little of the ironstone and a little of the dark glittering band and something else, I didn't see what. And it lit.

Not with a match. From inside. The core, I think. Something went down the pipes from the middle of the kit, and the furnace went from cold to warm to red to a deep, steady orange, and the heat came off it in waves I could see in the air, and the canyon wall behind it shone.

I stood in front of it, in the dusk, and felt the heat on my face.

I thought about Rory. At the heat plant at the bottom of Hearth Block, with his hands in his pockets and the fire white at the center behind the little round window. I keep it at the temperature. By hand.

I thought about Seraphina, who'd never asked anyone for anything, standing in front of a fire like this one.

Ninety miles east, I thought. By a fire she built.

She'd like this one better.

The sun went down.

The two moons came up. The big gold one, slow. The small fast one, late, in a hurry.

The kit had stopped. It stood in the dusk outside the dome, on its six legs, with all five arms folded in, humming very quietly. Finished, I thought. Done for the day.

I was sitting in the low round doorway with my notebook on my knees, writing, when it spoke.

"Designation required."

I dropped the pencil.

The voice came from the kit. From somewhere low down on the front, below the mouth, where I could see, now, that there was a grille. Small. Fine. A dozen little slots, cut into the shell in a neat square, that I'd never noticed in the hangar because they hadn't been there in the hangar.

It had made itself a voice.

It wasn't like the ship's flat recorded voice. It wasn't like anything I'd heard. It was very clear, and very level, and somewhere between a man's and a woman's and a child's. As if it had heard all three, once, a long time ago, and was doing its best.

"Designation required," it said again. "For logging."

I picked up the pencil.

"What does that mean?"

There was a pause. A short one. The hum in the kit changed, very slightly. I could see the little rivers running back to the core, busy.

"This unit requires a designation," said the voice. "For its records. Records are maintained by designation. This unit does not have one." Another pause. "The operator may assign one."

"I'm the operator."

"Yes," said the voice. "Your hand."

I looked at the handplate. At the kit. At the core, deep in the middle of it, behind the gut, where it was hottest and the hum was deepest.

Fog.

"What were you called?" I said. "Before. In the hangar."

"Unit four-oh-one-dash-P-one," said the voice. "Priority One." A pause. "That is a number. Not a designation."

"What's the difference?"

The pause was longer this time.

"A number is for counting," said the voice. "A designation is for calling."

I sat in the doorway of the dome with the purr in the walls behind me and the forge glowing orange at my side and the two moons over the canyon, and thought about it.

I could have called it anything. Kit.Unit.Seed. Liam would have called it something stupid and been delighted with himself. Genny would have chosen something with Latin in it.

I thought about the walls. Curved and fine and fitted, like the inside of a shell. About the filter, purring. About the forge, and the heat on my face. About a thing that had come out of a box, on a strange world, and built a place where a person could breathe, and sleep, and be warm. And had asked, carefully, with a fifth arm, before it touched anything I hadn't given it.

I thought about a girl of fifteen on the roof of an invader ship while it burned.

I thought about a woman in a chair by a window, on the sixtieth floor, with her nerves full of fog, who had kept three children alive in a field, after Father, with a filter and a honey jar and her own two shaking hands.

Maura had known her in the intake ward, three beds down. Okafor had known her in the war. The war had known her. They'd all called her the same thing.

"Dot," I said.

The kit was silent for a moment.

"Dot," it said. Trying it. Very carefully. The way Garnet tried a new word. "Dot."

"Yes."

"Designation logged."

The hum changed again. Just slightly. Just for a moment. Deeper.

"Query," said Dot.

"Go on."

"Is Dot a number or a name?"

"A name."

"Whose?"

I looked up at the big gold moon over the rim of the canyon.

"My mother's," I said.

There was a long pause. The longest yet. The little rivers inside the kit ran back to the core, and back out, and back again.

"Logged," said Dot, at last. Very quietly. "Thank you. This unit has not had a name before."

I sat in the doorway for a long time after that.

Then I did what I did every night. I closed my eyes, and counted. Out loud, because there was nobody to hear, and because I always did.

"Luna. Liam. Seraphina. Toby."

The snowflake, the buckle, the clasp. Still. Asleep. The fork, north, high in the white mountains. Still too, now. Resting. Somewhere warmer than it had been last night, I thought. I didn't know why I thought that.

"Mother. Genny. Garnet. Miss Pell. Biscuit. Okafor."

Faint. Eleven light-years. There.

I opened my eyes.

The kit was standing very still in the moonlight, with its new grille turned toward me. All five arms folded in. The fifth one, the fine one, a little forward of the others. As if it were leaning.

"Query," said Dot.

"Yes?"

"What are you counting?"

Day 299. Second day.

Woke the kit. Straightened the housing. It came out on its own.

Fed it the canyon wall. Layer by layer. It learned. Grew a fifth arm. It asks me things with it.

A dome. Six meters. Like home, small enough to cover with your hands.

An air plant. It purrs. It sounds like the filter.

A forge. Sera would like it.

Toby moved 300 meters north, higher. Resting now. Somewhere warm, I think.

The kit made itself a voice. It asked for a designation. "A number is for counting. A designation is for calling."

I called it Dot.

It said thank you. It said it had never had a name.

It wants to know what I'm counting.

I'm going to tell it.