Take Back the Sky

by Greg Bear

  Why go there at all? I don’t like it.

  WE’RE IN OUR soft, warm quarters, half-asleep, when a searcher appears at the entrance. Its tentacles twinkle in the dim light. No surprise, in darkness they, too, kind of glow. They could be responsible for all the elf-light residue, bits and pieces of squid skin, squid dust. Humans shed, too, but it isn’t nearly as weirdly pretty.

  Wonder what they look like when they’re at home? Maybe not very different from the way they look swimming along the cloverleaf waterways. Peaceful, graceful—dedicated and working away for the Gurus. Wonder if Bird Girl can persuade them to work for us. Maybe she already has.

  There are several of them outside the hole. DJ and I are gathered up, gently but no nonsense. Not that he and I are prone to offer objections. DJ looks resigned to anything as long as it’s over with soon.

  The searchers have Bird Girl in tow as well. She’s not moving, not in charge, not drafting us forward with her wings. I miss that, somehow, and wonder what’s changed. They’ve wrapped her in a cinched cover or blanket. All of her four eyes are tightly closed. Unconscious? No link. No information from her about what might be next.

  “We’re going forward, aren’t we?” DJ asks me.

  “If that’s where Ulyanova is.”

  “Christ, she scares the fuck out of me,” he says.

  “Why?”

  He snorts and gives me a grim smile. Nobody else from our squad is going with us. They’re sleeping like cozy little dormice.

  The searchers do their arm-nest thing and sedan-chair us beyond the node, through more canebrakes, following an internal highway that spirals and arches forward. I wish I could have a moment with Joe or even Borden to express my last will and testament—give my love and a soldier’s farewell to Mom if you make it, Commander, won’t you? The tear-jerking moment of every half-assed war movie, because you know this poor SOB is doomed—all he has to do is ask and you know he’s about to fly right out of the frame, right out of the screenplay. The Gurus, expert craftsmen, would plan it that way to keep their audience happy, right? Maximum interest.

  But this is a tougher kind of epic. Not much in the way of sentiment. Pure scrap and stain. We should be accustomed to simply and violently ending it all. A lot of our dismembered, carbonized, vaporized friends are out there waiting for us. But this feels different. What can Ulyanova possibly be or do that scares us both so bad?

  WE’VE BEEN TRAVELING with the searchers, right behind them, for quite some time. Big fucking ship. None so big as this one, and here it’s filled with screw gardens bigger than any we’ve seen earlier, if size can be estimated in the dim light—and if they are gardens, really, because they seem to enjoy the dark.

  More spherical cages become evident, hiding back in other squash courts, other cubical recesses, filled with skeletons, some possibly human, many not—like abandoned and uncleansed graveyards in an old city—proud Guru trophies. Imagine the categories! Best performance with cruelty. Most satisfying vengeance. Most popular caged slaughter.

  It’s sobering to think (or to hope) that all these bodies, these dead, were once monsters like Grover Sudbury. Perversity is everywhere. But where did they all come from? There aren’t enough planets, I’m thinking, DJ is thinking. And none of our melted soup of leftover knowledge helps us understand.

  That’s all we’ve got to distract us—screw gardens and cages filled with corpses. DJ and I keep silent out of respect, but maybe as much out of terror. Surely these charnel houses carry their own ghosts! What would the ghost of a nonhuman be like? How would it differ from our own spirits of the dead—which of course we all know don’t exist? They’re figments of our imagination. I’ve never seen a ghost, right? Except that I have. And not just Captain Coyle, who wasn’t really a ghost anyway.

  Ghosts seem to be able to get around. I don’t know how. Maybe the dead humans up here have already returned to Earth. Maybe they’re lost, drifting in between, dissolving, evaporating. That leads me down more highways of dark speculation—anything to keep alert. Fear and anger are good for keeping alert, though maybe not the best for clear thinking. But I have to wonder—when they destroyed Titan’s archives, and Mars’s, did they destroy Captain Coyle’s last existence?

  Maybe now she can become a real ghost. Will that be better?

  Enough spooky shit. We have to concentrate on what is immediately apparent and important—that there are dead things aboard this ship that do not come from Earth or anyplace like Earth, that are not Antag or anything like Antag. So who most recently supplied these cages with victims? And are more on the way?

  “Maybe they won prizes,” DJ says softly as we’re moved forward, echoing my own theories. “Big ship carries a shitload of fine Guru memories.”

  Maybe. But still no explanation for the screw gardens, why so large, why so many?—dozens and dozens arrayed in the dark volumes. Maybe the screw gardens are spooky, too. How the fuck would we know what’s spooky and what isn’t?

  This is the Guru’s Rolls-Royce, the limo that takes the most important Gurus where they want to go, their personal conveyance around and beyond the solar system—the way they connect with every show they’re producing for their faithful audience of interstellar couch potatoes.

  The show must go on, but who could hold an audience’s interest for hundreds of millions, much less billions, of years? We’re none of us all that charming, all that interesting and suspenseful. We’re none of us movie star material! Maybe it’s in the writing. The Gurus have to be masters of suspense and plot to make our petty little dramas popular.

  FINALLY WE COME to an opening in the cane highway, something the searchers can pass through, carrying DJ and Bird Girl and me. The architecture changes. My eyes have a difficult time tracking, and I’m not sure I understand our present surroundings, but that turns out to be because I’m dizzy. My heart is thumping out of rhythm. Something in the air smells sweet. Could be airborne persuasion or nutrients for searchers—not so good for us. To distract myself, I pay attention to searcher skin and how the segments link as they move. These are nothing like terrestrial mollusks.

  My heart steadies, my eyes stop trying to cross—and it all clicks into place. Up ahead, nine searchers in charge of a large, dark bundle give scale to a distant bulkhead. The bulkhead is flat gray and hundreds of meters wide. The bundle the searchers have surrounded is wrapped in a tight gray blanket, maybe eight meters long. At their poking, the bulk flexes. A big Guru? No … and in silhouette, it doesn’t look like a searcher, either—more like an Antag, but larger than any we’ve met.

  Bird Girl’s eyes open. She blinks and spreads her wings. Two searchers attend to her now, grooming her fine feathers with the tips of their arms. She’s smoother, less frazzled—being dolled up for something, I guess, some major introduction or presentation, but who could possibly care how she looks, way up here?

  Our link is back but it’s filled with emotions and scrambled information I can’t make sense of. I try to sort and filter the emotions—and then realize they’re both intensely political and intensely romantic.

  Bird Girl is terrified. And she’s in love.

  The searchers move away. She straightens her shoulders and spreads her wings with a pride and presence I’ve never seen or felt from her—like a princess entering court for the first time. The searchers allow us to float free, but we aren’t nearly as good at drafting as the Antags, and the canes are out of reach. Then they remove and roll up the big blanket, revealing what could be a huge, shiny black slug with purple highlights. But it spreads a wide set of wings, as if waking, or as a welcome … dwarfing Bird Girl, the searchers, us. Wingspan of at least ten meters.

  Bird Girl speaks. DJ and I hear a raspy version of what she’s saying, in both English and Russian. “Thank you for witnessing. This is my husband—our husband. We are together again. Isn’t he beautiful?”

  The emotion pouring through our link is extraordinary—immense relief that this huge Antag is still alive, that the family
they trained and fought with has been rejoined, ready to resume something approaching a normal life—along with a sense of completion. Where did they keep him? Somewhere on Titan, I presume, and then carried here … asleep, waiting for a safer moment to return and take charge.

  “We are together, we have come this far, and we are going home!” Bird Girl announces.

  The big male’s head is at least twice as wide as hers, his four eyes farther apart but roughly the same size and color. He surveys the searchers and Bird Girl with a sleepy calm, all is well, all is in order, he approves—but then his four purple-rimmed eyes light on DJ and me. With apparent surprise, he scrutinizes us, feathers rising around his massive shoulders. I gather that we’re unexpected, unwanted—why are we here?

  And that could be a problem. Based on the emotions coursing through our connection, to Bird Girl—and no doubt to the other female Antags on this hijacked ship—he’s the ultimate reference point, their mentor and mate, mate to all …

  Scares me, really, because to him, we’re completely disgusting. We’re still the enemy.

  THE SECRET WORLD OF PLANTS

  The big male speaks to Bird Girl in a high voice that belies his size—more screech-rasp, untranslated. This goes on for a few minutes, with DJ and I out of the loop and way out of our depth, but happy to be ignored.

  “She’s filling him in,” I say.

  “I don’t think he likes us,” DJ says.

  Nothing on our link except a smothering mask of affection, not meant for us. Bird Girl is truly enamored.

  “They should get a room,” DJ says. “Is she going to keep him all to herself?”

  He had to ask. From behind, we hear more Antag music, chirps and rasps and soaring notes. I rotate by waving my arms and see five searchers escorting seven more females, including three of the formerly oh-so-superior armored commanders, singing their appreciation like groupies. All of them have folded their wings, leaving Bird Girl as the only female to spread them wide. Clearly this is a great moment for the larger family. We know our enemies not at all.

  Two searchers spray something from their tails at the canebrakes. From the shadows we hear rustling and rattling and watch as more canes grow and weave to shape arched thickets, which then fan to connect with the bulkhead, a spiral of climbing ways and bridges.

  “That’s cool,” DJ murmurs.

  The searchers take hold of us, gentle but no nonsense, and Bird Girl slowly folds her wings, then allows herself to be conveyed by her fellow females away from the big male. Her moment with the paterfamilias seems to be over. Her grief is obvious even without our link—and overwhelming when I dip in. Separation is such sweet sorrow. What a guy. What a species in which to be male! What’s required of the big boy when he’s at home? Is he tasked with a head-butting competition to win his place in the herd? Alpha male sports? Keeping a rolling orgy going 24/7?

  DJ and I keep silent on all frequencies as our escorts guide Bird Girl and us toward a spiral bridge of fresh canes.

  “Ever seen a dead cell?” DJ whispers.

  “Plenty, after a bare-knuckle fight.”

  “In microscopes, I mean! Cells got a skeleton made of fibers just like these bamboo bridges—grow at the tips when the cell wants to move, shrink back when it’s not needed.” DJ can be full of surprises. Not all porn and old movies in that noggin. “Kill the cell and the gunk, the gel, shrivels, and leaves a pile of sticks. This ship is a giant cell!”

  Good to know. I don’t believe it for a moment, but it’s better than anything I’ve got. We’ve been sedan-chaired around that internal skeleton for half an hour or more, and now, through gaps in the canes we see spaces accessible by other arches and bridges—dark, empty spaces. Maybe Gurus once slept there. Maybe they kept sporting victims up here and pulled them out when needed to fight and die.

  I once got into a classroom argument with a teacher about the plural of the name Spartacus. The other kids ragged me all day, on the playground or walking home. Now we’re surrounded by cages and maybe holes that were once filled with Spartacuses. Spartaci. Spartacoi. Fuck it.

  Echoes tell me our surround is narrowing. It’s become completely dark. Not even the searchers are illuminating. Not at all reassuring that Bird Girl is with us, because based on what’s passing through our link, her deadly sadness and lovebird grief, she might happily be going to her doom, having displeased the big male with our presence, her dealings with the enemy. No way to know how smart the big male is or what they said to each other. He might have given her instructions to gut herself and us besides.

  As the lights come back up we can see that we’ve reached a much slimmer portion of the ship’s hull, perhaps closer to the actual bow. Bird Girl isn’t committing suicide. She’s taking us to Ulyanova. Big male (I’m going to call him Budgie) may not like us, but that hasn’t changed the basic plans.

  “Why aren’t the showrunners doing something about us? Why haven’t they learned?” DJ whispers.

  “Showrunners? Learned what?”

  “Gurus!” DJ says with a critical scowl. “Ship’s been hijacked. Shouldn’t there be a fail-safe, some sort of dead Guru switch, that would blow it up if it’s hijacked?

  “Damned obvious,” I whisper back. “Ulyanova’s convincing. Or maybe—” And this hurts to both think and say, I almost want to shut up and just curl into a ball. “Maybe the plan hasn’t changed. We won’t matter a great goddamned toothpick to this ship unless we get boring.”

  DJ plays out my drift. “So we’re doing exactly what it wants—and this is our third act!”

  I have to admit I was bored back in the tail, for a while, but this is definitely more and more interesting. I’d fucking stay tuned. What do we say to Ulyanova when we meet up? Wonder what Budgie will say once he’s brought up to date?

  Somehow these awkward thoughts leak to Bird Girl. She directs her searchers to move her and favors us with close examination. Four eyes bore into my two. I’m outmatched.

  “Show respect,” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “We have left the mimic alone. Now she makes request for your presence.”

  DJ and I look at each other.

  She raises a ridge between her shoulders and shakes it out with a shuffling noise. The searchers link up, grip our hands, and reach us out to a ladder of large, U-shaped grips mounted on one face of a long, sinuous beam. They release us to the grips, cold and hard, then swing off to one side. DJ and I cling as the beam pushes forward—grows forward!—and twists, spiraling us like a steel vine toward a diffuse haze, like moonlight in a cathedral.

  Bird Girl has crossed with us and grips the rungs behind, wings folded. “Climb,” she says.

  The beam carries us into a narrower, longer chamber, like a pipe or a needle, filled with long ribbons about as broad as my forearm. The ribbons cross over in a kind of braid every five or six meters and are alternately dark, then bright again, illumination flowing aft as if carrying signals to the rest of the ship—like fiber-optic cables. The beam pushes and twists up the middle of these ribbons, contorting to avoid the braids. Searchers are moving up along the outside, keeping up with us and following more arches of canes.

  As the ribbons twist along to an end, we see just beyond their conclusion four oblong panels, as colorful as stained-glass windows, but arranged in a wide quadrangle, like the faces in a clock tower. From where we are, each of the four faces appears divided into multicolored wedges, like pie charts—but sprinkled with stars.

  As we grow up to and then through the faces, two searchers hiding in the angles between retreat into shadow like shy schoolchildren. The faces have painted themselves with thousands of cryptic symbols, red and blue against a silvery background like a clear dusk sky. Every few blinks, the symbols lift and rearrange—impossible to read or understand.

  “Any constellations?” DJ asks from below. The beam—the vine—pushes and twists on.

  “No,” I say. “Some sort of diagram.”

  Mayb
e this is Ulyanova’s playroom and these are her mirrors, where she’s pasted Day-Glo stickers to remind herself of a human childhood. But the stars that flock in the surrounding mosquito cloud are pinpoint brilliances, like stars in a clear night sky. Not at all like stickers.

  Beyond the ribbons and inboard from the faces, more searchers are spraying to encourage canes to grow, giving access to another swallow’s nest of shiny black spheres—different in color, but not unlike our present habitats.

  “The mimic asks that you will all move here,” Bird Girl says. I detect a seething kind of hatred in her, and not just for Ulyanova—for us as well. Meeting up with Budgie seems to have stiffened her anger—maybe bent her thoughts. At any rate, I’m not feeling any sense of partnership, much less affection.

  “Better accommodations?” DJ asks.

  “Closer to where the mimic hides.” She stretches out a wing.

  Starboard from the clock faces, about fifty meters forward of our new domiciles, I make out a slowly undulating curtain, like a tapestry woven from strands of smoke. I turn to communicate this discovery to DJ and Bird Girl when, without warning, Ulyanova and Vera appear through the curtain and surge up before us.

  Bird Girl retreats a few rungs, feathers spiked, and DJ lets out a shuddering groan, but the starshina looks only at me.

  “Long time!” she says, and tries for a charming smile. Epic fail. My God, she’s nothing but skin and bones! In this light, her face stretches across her skull like frog skin, moist and shiny, eyes large and brilliantly empty. “I am glad you are here,” she says. “I need to think again like human.” I cringe as something from her probes my mind, like frozen fingers touching my thoughts, my memories. Ulyanova cocks her head, trying perhaps for coyness, but appearing toothy, feral. “So many strange days. Vera and I make new home. It will be beautiful when finished.”

  “It is already beautiful,” Vera says. “It could be more useful.”