Cloud Country

by Futuro, Andy

  “You gettin’ the picture, asshole?” Saru said.

  “Very well,” ElilE said. “I will take what memories you give.”

  He beckoned and Saru approached. He placed his hand on her forehead. She felt the warmth of his palm, and the strength of his touch, and then the world around her melted.

  A sucking sensation, like blood being drawn from her brain with a foot-long syringe. Memories, stray and random, popped into view like feed notifications from her implants. There was Jojran, but no, he was too pretty, teeth too white, oh right, the imposter Jojran, the feaster wearing Jojran’s skin. There was Friar and the holodomor, the cathedral of bodies and the centipedes with human heads. Then came Ria, rising up into the night sky, carried high by the scintillant, and a jolt of pain with the memory of herself jumping back to Earth. The more recent memories zoomed by in a blur—punching the Hathaway bitch, Ben, Tess, her recapture by the Hathaways, wandering the mirthul of the Blue God and the visions of her cephereal. Saru gave it all, everything she’d seen, nothing held back, no time, no time to be prissy and private.

  A pop and the world returned to focus, the gray utilitarianism of the hangar and her dirty plane. ElilE’s eyes were closed. His breath came so timid that at first Saru thought there was none at all. She backed away and ElilE’s arm hung in place. She guessed he was having his own acid trip, inside his own mirthul, exploring the virtual world of her memories.

  A few seconds passed, which might have been years of study within the mirthul, and ElilE’s eyes opened. There was a look on his face like the engine of his poise wouldn’t rev. It was pain and sadness and a note of fear. ElilE took a step backward and his knees sagged, woozy like a drunk. And then he fell onto his ass.

  Saru darted forward, swallowing her impulse to laugh, and grabbed his wrist. ElilE’s head wandered like it was trying to track invisible balloons. He raised himself ponderously to his feet and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow.

  “Come with me,” he said. He walked—didn’t run—to the hangar door. Saru watched him, not understanding, not knowing what to do, and then followed. He led her through the maze of steel, past door after unmarked door, closed or ajar, glimpses of hallways, and hangars, and piles of dead trummans pooling gore. Shouts and screams and smatters of gunfire flittered past like ghosts. No one crossed their path. It felt like they walked for a very long time, and took too many turns, and looped around in circles. Saru wasn’t sure if it was the panic tilting her perception, or if ElilE was extending their commute on purpose, giving him more time to collect himself.

  He was walking funny, too straight, too measured, like a pole had been shoved up his ass. Even with this grit-tooth determination he sometimes tripped, or paused to lean against the wall and grimace. Idle thoughts popped into Saru’s brain—so strange that the idle thoughts could still survive with her panic sucking all the oxygen. She wondered if it was safe to trade memories the way they had, so hot and fast, like unprotected sex, and if her memories had somehow infected him. She wondered what irrelevant memories had gushed along for the ride—what secrets had she spilled in her haste? And if all her most embarrassing moments were now spreading out across the universe.

  They reached a pair of imposing, eagle-crested doors that slid open at ElilE’s touch. Beyond them was an elevator of white walls and white carpet. ElilE entered the elevator and stood erect. Saru slumped after him and sprawled on the other side. After a half-second’s journey, and a squirm in her bladder of going up too fast, the doors slid open on a pure white brightness. Saru’s eyes clamped shut, and her eyelids retreated slowly, suspicious of the light.

  From the brightness emerged a glistening white marble floor, and sleek silver chairs with white cushions, everything silver and white and bright and shiny against a backdrop of blue sky. ElilE walked out and Saru followed, still blinking. They were in a transparent dome that curved upwards like a flame. Beyond the couches and chairs was a bed, and a kitchen, and a wet bar—what was this place? Were they still on the aircraft carrier? Ah, right. It was an observation suite, for Hathaway execs and their political fluffers to witness their toy in action.

  Saru drifted to the wall and pressed against it, giving her weight slowly in case it was some yielding material. Below, the decks of the aircraft carrier branched out in a widening spiral that reminded her of a Discount Day tree. Craters and burn spots deformed sections of the hull, so it looked like moldy gray Swiss cheese. Spurts of junk bled from the stumps of blown-away platforms and towers. The sky swarmed with fighters and drones, racing in fly-swirl patterns.

  Saru went to the wet bar and poured herself a glass of eighteen-thousand-dollar Padishah bourbon. Her hand shook, splashing redness over the sides. She brought the glass to her lips and then back down, and repeated this motion a few times without drinking. ElilE watched her in silence.

  “John?” Saru asked.

  ElilE shook his head. Saru nodded.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “The memory of John meeting you entered our shared consciousness. It was prominent, accompanied by a great deal of pain.”

  “And that’s why you cut him off?”

  “John told you of the cephereals. The cephereals also serve as guardians within the shared consciousness. They detect and eliminate malicious information. An immune response. It seems John was most impressed with your actions. Our cephereals deemed your influence an unacceptable risk and quarantined John.”

  “Why? What influence? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You cannot tell, but you are very loud to us. Your violence is a potent form of gratification that we can never feel. The Blue God wars openly with the UausuaU, allowing you to act in ways that we cannot. The fear of our cephereals is that if your influence spreads, the human Gaespora may take reckless actions that will damage the collective.”

  “I guess you could say John was acting reckless. I think he just wanted a little spice in his life.”

  “That was not his decision to make.”

  “Yeah, he said something about that too. So, you were tracking me ever since I teamed up with John?”

  “Yes. Benthalias and Tessenesszbeth both contributed memories of you to our shared consciousness. When you disappeared we deduced that your plane had been interdicted by this aircraft carrier. The difficulty was in the retrieval.”

  “You found some suckers willing to tangle with the Hathaways? All that spying is paying off.”

  “We are using the Zihua, a militia controlled by the Gercer-han, via the usual obfuscation of subsidiaries. In this John was able to provide us a final service. They have taken his body for their own fruitless experimentation.”

  “You’re giving them John’s body?”

  “It is the least John owes us. His consciousness should belong to our own, his thoughts and memories contributing to our whole. Instead, he has given this gift to you.”

  ElilE gestured towards the ring she wore.

  “We do not object,” he said. “Your relationship appears mutually beneficial.”

  “We get along alright.”

  “It seems John is an effective tutor. Your ability to access the gifts of the Blue God has grown considerably.”

  “Then you believe me? You believe the visions I had were real?”

  “We do. We agree with your conclusions. The Blue God is deciding whether or not human continuance is an acceptable risk.”

  “Fantastic,” Saru said. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “We can do nothing.”

  “Fuck that!” Saru yelled. She hurled her glass at the wall.

  “We do not intervene. We do not interfere.”

  “You took over a goddamn aircraft carrier just to rescue me,” Saru yelled. “How is that not interfering?”

  ElilE said nothing.

  “Oh, I get it.” Saru grinned, humorless. “You don’t care about the little old humans do you? You’re too caught up in all this galactic shit to care that your own fucking city, mayb
e your own fucking race is about to be wiped out.”

  She walked up to him, getting her face close, pretending to peer inside his head through his eyeballs.

  “Anybody in there?” she asked, knocking on the side of his head. “Any humanity left in this alien whor—”

  ElilE grabbed her arm and threw her away so fast she didn’t quite know what was happening. She tumbled to the floor, elbows clattering, arm taut with pain, nearly wrenched from its socket. Her teeth scissored her lip, and a coppery warmth pooled in her mouth. Saru grinned up at ElilE, tossed her hair, and spat a spray of blood onto the floor.

  “There you go,” she laughed. “I knew you had it in you.”

  ElilE’s face was swollen, ripe with rage. His chest heaved up and down, and up and down, and slower and slow, sucking in all his anger, wrapping up his emotions in twisty ties, and stuffing them into his colon, probably. Saru could almost see him as a thought wave, see him dissolve into a cloud of atoms, the bands of his control forming glyphs within the chaos.

  “I want the human experiment to succeed,” ElilE said, not quite under control, a morsel of bitterness sprung free. “But my wants are irrelevant. We do not intervene. We do not interfere. Our interactions with the Gods span universes. What we do in one world resonates.”

  “What are you talking about?” Saru picked herself up off the floor. “Space politics? Aliens a billion fucking miles away? I’m talking about Earth, the people, us, you know? Here, now, everything and everyone you know gone. Who the fuck cares about the rest of the universe?”

  “It is that smallness of thinking that leads humanity always to crisis,” ElilE said, with the hint of a sneer.

  “Oh yeah, great, feel superior, jerk yourself off while the world ends.” Saru spat again, a pink foam, wanting to spit right in his eyes.

  She glared at him and he half-glared back.

  “Arguing is pointless,” ElilE said. “We will do nothing. We can do nothing.”

  There was finality in his voice; the words were like a death sentence. Saru stumbled to the wet bar and poured herself another drink, not paying attention. The alcohol stung the cut in her lip, and the pain was sweet. She wandered to a couch and leaned against the side.

  “I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I’ve got most of this figured out already. I’ve been learning a lot, you see? I know I share a margin with the Blue God. I know the Gaespora can’t risk pissing off the Blue God. I know that means I have to do your dirty work. But what I can’t figure out is why you couldn’t just tell me all this from the get-go. You know—before we were on the brink of crisis? Before the Blue God blasted a hole in my city? Before a bunch of innocent people got killed?”

  “Would you have believed us?”

  “No dice!” Saru yelled. “John told me a whole bunch of crazy shit, and you know what? I believed him. I trusted him. He was honest with me. Is honest with me. Running into the feasters and Ria helped a bit, but you know, John showed me Ben and Tess and some other chimeras and that was pretty convincing…”

  Saru trailed off. The answer was there, hiding in that sentence somewhere, just on the tip of her tongue.

  “Running into the feasters…” she repeated. And what had John said? It’s our actions that determine the extent of the margin.

  “Wait…” Saru said. She started to pace. “This doesn’t make any sense. If I shared a margin from the beginning you wouldn’t need Ria because you’d have me…except…it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t connected to the Blue God yet. I didn’t have enough of a margin. The margin changes…and my margin expanded after I ran into the feasters…”

  Of course. Her margin had started to expand after she met with Friar. The first time she went to her mirthul was after touching a feaster. And then when she’d found the holodomor she’d been able to wield the weapons of the Blue God for the first time. She stopped pacing and stared at ElilE in disbelief.

  “You son of a bitch,” she said. “You did this on purpose. You were trying to expand my margin. That’s why you hired me for your damn case.”

  ElilE didn’t react, not even the half-blink signal of surprise. Maybe he was expecting this. Maybe he’d expected her to figure it out sooner.

  “You and the other blue-eyed women shared a set of genetic and environmental facilitators that rendered you potential hosts,” ElilE said. “We calculated that confrontation with the feasters would catalyze an expansion of your margin. The case was one of numerous possible triggers for confrontation.”

  “That’s not an answer!” Saru yelled. “You strung me along like a jackass while I poked goddamn alien monsters in the eye.”

  “We helped you as we could,” ElilE said. “Had you hidden or run from the feasters they would have found you and destroyed you as they did the others. Our actions allowed you to expand your margin. We gave you the tools that were your only hope of survival.”

  “Fuck you,” Saru spat. “You could have told me. Coached me a little. Maybe asked me if I even wanted an alien living inside—” She stopped, a new realization dawning. “Oh. Of course. You couldn’t tell me. Because if I got caught, or became a part of the UausuaU, then the Hungry God would learn everything you told me.”

  She marveled at ElilE’s deviousness.

  “You’re a real sly motherfucker,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.

  “Caution demands that we compartmentalize information,” ElilE said. “It is no different from any other intelligence apparatus. We told you all we could within the realm of prudence. Our knowledge of the Blue God is incomplete. We calculated that of all the women in Philadelphia who shared a margin with the Blue God, you had the greatest chance of survival.”

  “Well did you calculate this, huh? The Blue God attacking Philadelphia? Was that part of your plan?”

  “It was a risk,” ElilE said. “We warned you that the Blue God did not understand humanity, that it could react with violence. With both you and Ria imperiled by the holodomor, it is likely your cephereals took drastic measures to preserve you.”

  “You’re trying to blame me for the Blue God burning a hole in the city? I didn’t want that! I didn’t ask for that.”

  “We do not blame you. Had you been killed it is likely the consequences would have been far worse.”

  “How do you know that?” Saru yelled. “As far as I can tell, I don’t do anything here. I don’t add anything to the equation. Maybe I’m totally irrelevant. Maybe I’m making things worse, you ever think of that? Maybe I should’ve been killed! Maybe I should give up!”

  ElilE didn’t hit her, but he came close. His whole body tensed, arm jerking out and back, leashed to his side with the force of his control.

  “Think!” he spat. “If you had been killed it would have been proof humanity could not protect itself. The cephereals are executors of ideas. Ria was tortured and murdered by feasters. Based on your visions, it is clear that Ria’s cephereal believes humanity will succumb to the UausuaU and must be destroyed.”

  “So what? What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Your cephereal showed you an alternative future. Your cephereal represents humanity’s ability to overcome the UausuaU. To shift our individual margins, and the margin of our species. Both of these futures cannot come to pass. One cephereal must destroy the other.”

  “Oh my God,” Saru said. She took a step back, involuntarily. “You want me to kill her. You want me to kill Ria. First you want me to save her and now you want me to kill her? Are you out of your goddamn mind? I’m not an assassin!”

  “It is the only path we see.”

  “I run away. I hide somewhere. You can hide me.”

  “It is true, you could hide. The Blue God may not act against humanity as long as your cephereal remains. But the power of a cephereal comes from the strength of its idea. The shared consciousness empowers strong ideas and purges weak ideas. Ria is corrupted. Her cephereal protects her, allowing her corruption to progress, demonstrating with clarity the danger that humanity
poses. Your cephereal relies on you to prove its argument. It needs you to show that humanity can fight. If you run again, if you hide, it could weaken your cephereal to the point that it is destroyed. But even if you attempt to stop Ria and fail, that action could strengthen your cephereal enough to overcome Ria’s.”

  “That’s a whole lotta supposition right there.”

  “We cannot know for certain,” ElilE said. “My own experience is limited to the Gaesporan cephereals. I know how they behave, how they grow and die, and how the actions my brethren and I take can strengthen or weaken them. You showed me your visions. I can draw no other conclusion from what you have shown me. Our shared consciousness is in agreement. We see no other way.”

  “Well try harder. I’m not killing Ria!”

  “Ria is corrupted by the UausuaU. By now she could be insane, or demented, or monstrous. Release would be a kindness.”

  Saru screamed at ElilE, not words, just a scream, as though she could blast the calm from his face with the force of her voice. She felt the floor beneath her buck, the glass shatter in her fist, delicious drip of blood. The floor bucked again. The glasses in the wet bar popped, bottles blasting, the transparent walls around them blossoming into cobweb fractures. Saru stared at ElilE, hating him, the hate a living, visceral thing. She gripped the hate in her hands like knives, saw the shadows of knives appearing manifest in her fists. She saw herself plunging the knives into ElilE’s heart, fast—that’s right, I’m faster than you—and seeing his blood gush from the wells in his chest, her tongue lapping, mouth guzzling the information within, feasting and laughing.

  Horrified, she tossed away the imaginary knives, a shake of the hands, and the feeling deserted her like a one-night stand. She drooped, shoulders slumped, leaning against the wet bar and shivering. She had a sense of deja vu, a sense that she’d been here before, seen herself from afar breaking down like this. She stood, and straightened, and felt all her horror and despair and hate and rage slide into her belly, where it gelled into a hernial throb.