by Robert Reed
“Tell me your question,” he said.
Nissim asked, “How many legs does it take to build a stool?”
Tar`ro saw the point immediately. “You want me to say, ‘Two isn’t good enough.’ Is that right?”
“But two is enough. It requires balance, but balance is possible.”
“Until you quit paying attention, and then you fall over.” Tar`ro liked the game enough to grin. “Three legs make the stool stable. That’s what you want me to say.”
“Except four legs work even better.”
The guard shrugged. “Which means more wood and more precision, what with getting each piece to be the same length. Look at your old desk, standing crooked on the floor.”
“I like my desk,” the teacher said.
“Good for you,” said the guard. “But talking about stools, let’s say that maybe we’re already at the bottom of our inventory when it comes to working legs. Ever think in those terms?”
“Never,” Nissim said.
The grin came again, and Tar`ro looked at him, hard. “I know all about you.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“You’re the professor who got fired. Then you were the butcher who got old inside the freezer. But now you lucked into this easy job because that boy likes you and his folks want you here. Merit and Haddi demanded you, in fact. And you happen to be a damn smart man who makes every other teacher in this place feel like an idiot.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re right. I haven’t tested all of your colleagues.” Looking into the back of the classroom, Tar`ro said, “Here’s something else I know: this school’s teachers and administrators don’t relish the idea of an ex-butcher and crazy man working with their most precious student.”
“Crazy man,” Nissim repeated.
“You. You hold some peculiar ideas. Not that you bring them out and let them dance every day. You’re trying to be careful. But despite appearances, I’m not altogether stupid. Little pieces of what you call ‘thinking’ keep slipping inside my head.”
“Which pieces?”
“The Creation isn’t everything. In fact, the Creation isn’t even the first thing. People and the papio came from the same stock, which is why we can crossbreed on rare, beer-inspired occasions. And you also think our peculiar, unbreakable boy might be even more remarkable than we can guess.”
The students’ faces were pressed against the cage wall, watching the unhungry fire spider lazily pursue the frantic rodent.
Diamond’s face was in the middle, enthralled.
“What do you think the boy means?” asked Nissim.
“I don’t think. Thinking is a civilian job.”
“And you’re a soldier.”
“And soldiers believe nothing but the clear clean ideas that they’re ordered to believe.”
“You are an exceptionally fortunate fellow.”
Tar`ro shrugged, ignoring sarcasm and any personal doubts. “I believe what our Archon says: the child is leftover from the Creation. That King beast is another leftover. And there were two more creatures trapped inside the corona’s stomach. But like I was told, our boy is the one who matters. He matters because despite the differences, he is so much like us.”
“There are similarities,” Nissim agreed.
The guard put his hand to his face, pretending to find itches that needed attention. “You know, it would make this school happy to get rid of you.”
“Some people like me,” said Nissim.
“Don’t be confused, sir. You’re too smart for that. People are nice to your face, but that’s because you’re important today. And, ‘Today is always half-done,’ as they say. You don’t believe what everybody else believes. In fact, you prefer to think crazy crap, and if your rank happened to be stripped away tomorrow, your friendliest colleagues would run away rather than share your air.”
At long last, the spider was gaining momentum. The children hooted, and Nissim had more questions to ask.
But Tar`ro surprised him. “Let’s talk about stools,” he said.
“I’d like that.”
“There might be situations, special circumstances, where four legs would work better than three.”
“I can imagine that,” Nissim said.
“You can? Well, then you are a brilliant man.” Tar`ro glanced out into the hallway, making certain it was empty. And again he whispered under his scratching hand, saying, “Three people are allowed to carry guns inside this school.”
“That’s a reasonable regulation.”
“But maybe an old butcher could slip a small knife or two inside his pockets.”
“Knives aren’t worth much in a fight.”
“No? I’ve heard that you had good results with your butcher tools, one time or another.”
Nissim responded with chill silence.
Then the spider struck, and the children broke into cheers—except for the boy in the middle, who acted rather sorry to see the scurrier’s pink insides.
“You’re the science teacher,” Tar`ro said. “To me, science is a bag of magic tricks. Nothing else. But I’m guessing there’s some good trick that will let you hide something small, but something that has punch.”
Nissim sighed and looked out the long window. “You and your colleagues like to search my classroom for hazards.”
“But those are routine searches,” Tar`ro said. “And here I’m going to share one very big secret. Show us something that we can see easily. Set it in an obvious place. The most amazing things will vanish when we never stop staring at them.”
The neighboring tree was falling.
Rail was falling.
Children yelled, and adrenalin made them jump. Arms lifted, hands to the head. Simple words were repeated. “No can’t never be never no!” Screams were too loud to carry anger. This was not possible. How could this be real? But the great tree was clearly sliding downward, clearly gaining velocity, and everybody at the window realized it and their voices died away in another moment, mouths and brains struck dumb by the enormity of what couldn’t be conceived.
Desperate to watch, Diamond started toward the window.
Bits’ empty hand grabbed the boy around his neck. “Stay with me, now, stay close.”
Diamond stopped and looked over his shoulder.
The slick gray pistol filled the guard’s other hand, aimed at the empty floor but moving, drawing circles with the wide barrel.
“Stay,” Bits repeated.
In all of this, what was most striking—the odd detail that Diamond would never forget—was how the man’s face suddenly became handsome. Bits was engaged, serious and focused. This great noble work depended entirely on him, and it transformed him in the eyes of a lost child. He was the same man, but the grand nose and those scar-pitted cheeks were suddenly being drawn with a different, more supremely talented set of brushes.
Diamond leaned closer to his guard, feeling glad for nothing but the touch of that rough certain hand.
Then the Master spoke.
“I’m stupid,” Nissim said.
Diamond looked at him.
Odd beyond measure, the Master was still sitting on his chair. Rail was dying and Marduk was shaking hard, yet he remained behind his desk, glancing at the window and then at Diamond, disgusted when he said, “I’m an idiot.”
Bits tugged at the boy, pulling him a step closer to the cages.
“Stealing the boy,” Nissim said. “That’s what I assumed somebody would try.”
Bits glanced at the doorway and hallway, pulling the pistol a little closer to his side.
“But what if they wanted to kill Diamond,” Nissim said.
The boy stared at his teacher.
“Destroy him while murdering all of us too,” the Master said. “I never imagined . . . not seriously, no . . . ”
A hard sound came out of Bits. It wasn’t laughter, though it sounded like laughter. There was pain to the noise, and fury, and then he said, “Shut up.�
�
Marduk was being shaken hard from above, but now a second strong vibration was driving upwards from the canopy. Rail’s long branches were yanking loose from Marduk’s canopy. The twin insults met in the wood surrounding them, causing the floor to rise up and then drop again, and cages tried to leap off their stands, and the biggest tank of rainwater sloshed and then pitched sideways, shattering against the floor as the room tilted sharply towards the open window.
Bits managed one quick glance at everything, and then his eyes turned to the open door.
“To kill one child,” the Master called out. “Why all this?”
Bits opened his mouth and stopped his voice.
The floor rolled and Nissim remained seated. Both of his hands were under the desk, arms moving as if the fingers were very busy. That coral bowl with its favorite pens had slid up to the desk’s edge, and Diamond suffered the odd urge to run over and rescue the bowl before it fell.
Then he realized what was missing from the desk.
The chrysalis was. Maybe it fell and rolled where he couldn’t see it, and that made him weirdly sorry. He liked that rich green sack full of salted juices and the half-finished fly, huge wings folded down, black in appearance because the colors were piled on top of each other, and if countless other things hadn’t been happening during those few breaths, Diamond might have asked the Master where the ornament went.
“Just kill him and be done with it,” Nissim said.
Peculiar, disturbing words.
“Cut off the head and throw everything back to the coronas,” said the Master. “But why murder thousands along with him?”
Again, louder this time, Bits said, “Shut up.”
Then the guard’s gun jumped, seemingly on its own, and the free hand yanked at the boy, dragging him back to where the floor was slick with water and the open doorway was close, and Bits squatted, as if trying to hide in Diamond’s feeble shadow.
“I know why,” said the Master.
The teacher’s arms weren’t busy now. He sat motionless, as still as if fixed inside a painting, staring only at the boy. He was plainly, painfully terrified, which couldn’t have been more sensible, except of course his fears had an added dimension. When he finally spoke, his voice was loud enough to be heard over the splintering wood and the crying children and the drumming engines of the blimp. “This is a warning, isn’t it?” he shouted. “The corona’s children are abominations, and all of us are guilty when it comes to ending this scourge.
“Am I right, Bits?”
The gray pistol came up, punching Diamond on his right ear. Then the man told the boy, “Do what I tell you. Do it. Or I’ll shoot your friends.”
Rail was falling fast. The broad black trunk was plunging, nearly vertical, gaining speed by the instant as the brilliant morning sunshine flooded up through the shredded canopy. Light filled the air outside and inside their room, quicker than even Diamond’s eyes could follow, as if the sun was always here and hiding, eager for its chance to blaze.
Everybody blinked.
The walkway from the blimp was almost to the window, but it rose again, seemingly buoyed up by the brilliance.
Seldom was weeping, staring at the Master.
Elata’s infuriated mouth was closed, and she stared at the gun and Diamond as her hands lifted and found one another, fingers meshing.
Diamond squirmed.
A reasonable, nearly calm voice came from some hidden place. Bits said, “Stay with me, and they get away.” He shook the boy’s shoulder. “Trouble and everybody dies with you.”
Diamond remained perfectly motionless.
Nissim was still sitting and Bits was still squatting, and the pistol’s steel barrel was brushing against the boy’s ear when Sophia ran into the room, starting to yell some important words.
Bits turned and shot her in the jaw, shot her from down low, and the woman’s skull was demolished with the brains and frightening red blood mixing into a fountain of shattered bone.
The screams began again.
Children dropped to their knees, throwing hands over their faces, while Nissim remained on his chair. For no apparent reason, one of the teacher’s hands was shoved inside that beautiful chrysalis, bright slick embryonic fluids pouring free. The chrysalis was pointed at Diamond, and Nissim looked sorry and maybe he started to offer an apologetic sound, but then he fired three quick shots.
Two bullets of polished black coral burrowed their way inside the boy.
Bits was turning, still hunkered down, trying to aim for the teacher.
But Nissim’s third shot clipped the boy’s sturdy collar bone, bouncing and spinning sloppily upwards, and another fragile brain was instantly ripped free of its home.
The floor was wet and twin holes had been ripped through Diamond’s chest. He was conscious, miserably aware of everything. He knew who shouted what and who could do nothing but weep and how every person in the classroom acted once the bullets quit flying.
Elata didn’t cry. Standing motionless, hands wrapped together and her pretty face hardened, she let some deep reflex scrape away her emotions and throw them aside.
Seldom was tears and action, rushing toward Diamond, putting his face close when he asked, “Can you hear me?”
Easily, but Diamond seemed empty of words.
Master Nissim shook his arm and the chrysalis fell away, revealing a stubby pistol built from rare woods and coral. His face was even stiffer than Elata’s. Eyes looked at the dead while the pistol nearly vanished inside the big hand, and the students shouted around him, and the walkway finally, finally pushed through the wind, spring-loaded hooks grabbing hold of the window’s sill.
Making no sound, Good jumped high and landed on the teacher’s arm, big jaws crunching down on the gun and fingers.
Nissim cried out sharply.
Diamond tried to shout, “Stop.” But some thick hot and slightly bitter syrup had filled his mouth.
The gun that shot him was dropped, and the Master saved his hand, and the monkey brought the gun straight to Diamond.
The boy coughed up blood mixed with nameless secretions.
Good carefully set the gun in his hand.
Then an adult appeared in the doorway, attached to another gray pistol. Tar`ro looked at the two bodies lying close to each other. His weapon moved like a nose, as if sniffing the air. Then the surviving guard saw Nissim pressing hard at his bloodied hand, fighting to staunch the flow, and he walked around Diamond, staring at the wounds that were already beginning to heal and the coral gun in his hand and the orange-headed monkey that kept every hair erect, ready to battle anyone who threatened what was his.
Diamond saw that much. But his wounds and what passed for adrenalin pulled most of his focus to places inside him. Ribs were shattered and his flesh was shredded, his heart opened wide and both lungs choking, and one of those fat rock bullets had burrowed into his spine. But those injuries weren’t dangerous. He was certain to survive. Every damaged organ had calmly put itself to sleep, and every essential function was replaced by hidden talents, by secret reserves. He couldn’t remember being any way but alive, yet this was a different kind of life. Breath was unnecessary. Blood was just another kind of clothing, and without a heart, he could be naked while the blood was washed. He felt like a fancy new battery fresh from its box, full of sparks, and maybe this was why he ate so much every day. Invisible motors filled his tiniest places, eager for their chance to help. Those motors gave him strength. Even with twin chest wounds, he felt as if he could pick himself off the floor, running to the window and the walkway, escaping this wicked place.
But he remained sitting on the slick floor.
Another teacher had entered the room—a woman followed by the youngest, littlest children.
And beside her was a huge muscled fellow dressed in brown.
Karlan stared at the gore, impressed and maybe fascinated, and compared to everyone else, utterly calm.
Someone shouted from the world outsi
de.
Three of Diamond’s classmates were already on the walkway, crawling forward, while a furious policeman waded over them, offering up a string of curses when he wasn’t telling the others not to come.
“The boy first, the boy now!” he said.
Something about the classroom was changing.
What was different?
Tar`ro knelt close to Diamond and looked at the monkey, but he was speaking to Seldom. He told the crying boy, “Help me lift your friend come on hurry.”
Marduk had changed. Stillness had claimed the long trunk. It had just happened, and Diamond accepted that as very good news. Whatever force or monster had cut Rail away at its roots had failed with Marduk. Diamond’s tree was too strong to die, and Diamond had known that all along. Joy took hold. Joy caressed him, and now he weighed nothing. Seldom didn’t need to help lift him from the floor. Suddenly everybody was as light and insubstantial as gnats, and the walkway was arched high in the middle, and the blimp had decided to yank itself into a very unlikely angle, as if it were trying to cling to the school’s roof.
The policeman guarding the walkway tried to shout directions or curse again, or maybe he just wanted a deep breath before doing whatever was to come. But his next step was clumsy, and the black uniform flapped hard as everybody in the room started to fly.
The policeman lifted off the walkway, and then he was gone, so quickly that it seemed as if he had never been.
Marduk had just wrenched itself loose from the world.
Everybody would die. Every unsecured body and piece of furniture were flung against the ceiling. Diamond hit hard and lay on his back looking at a floor swept clear of desks and books, but not blood. People were bleeding and hurt, pinned to the ceiling, and nobody had the energy to cry out. Tar`ro was still beside to him, shouting something about waiting, and Good clung to his boy, and Diamond started turning his head, trying to find the Master.
Tar`ro said, “Wait.”
Far below, Marduk’s branches pushed into the canopy that still held it on three sides, and then the largest limbs were grabbed by the surviving neighbors, and the tree’s plunge suddenly slowed.
