Chapter 24: Read Aloud

Resonance Day came round again, and I walked into the Grand Hall at dawn.

The gold light fell from the ceiling onto the same pale floor.

The screens hung on every wall.

The registrar's desk was where it had always been, with a new scale printed beside the old one.

I wore the grey coat of the Corps of Anchors, with a plain silver pin at the collar.

It had my name on it, and no number.

The first of the day's candidates stood at the foot of the aisle in a white gown, gripping her own elbows.

She was twenty-five, with a fever behind her and three years of waiting.

The old machine had printed her a zero the week before.

The Council had ordered every zero retested on the storm scale, and hers was the first to be read in public.

"I'm going to be sick," she whispered, when I stopped beside her.

"Everybody is. Give me your hand."

She gave it to me.

It was cold and damp, and it trembled.

I held it for as long as it took the registrar to bring up the line.

The machine hummed, and the screens filled with a single number.

Seventy-one.

The girl stared at it.

"Is that good?" she said.

"It's the number of a woman who could hold a storm," I said.

"Commanders are going to line up outside your door."

"Mine?"

"And you choose which of them to open it for. Or none. That's the law now."

She started to cry, and the Hall began to clap.

It was not the laugh I remembered.

It was warm, and it went on.

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