by Robert Reed
The tendrils vanished and the holes healed. A skull formed around two giant golden eyes. Several hundreds of days passed before their body appeared finished. That was the body that the doctor admired—a looming papio-inspired frame from which came an avalanche of a voice.
Selected people came to stand before the Eight, and in one fashion or another, every visitor begged to know what the Eight knew.
What the Eight understood was confusion and a gnawing sense of loss. But words didn’t have bones. Words were difficult to tame, and nothing they said emerged in the proper ways.
“What is your oldest memory?” the papio asked.
No memory felt true. They might have been trapped inside the corona for ten days or ten million days. And before that they could have been sitting on the laps of the Creators, giving advice about the building of the world. The bitter truth was that the Eight could make any claim, sing any wild brag, but they wouldn’t know enough even to guess if they were lying.
Vagueness and mystery were reliable ways to make the papio unhappy.
Patience grew even thinner when the Diamond boy emerged from his room. The doctor happened to be gone that day, having some distant errand to walk. Diamond boy came straight to this place, as if searching for the Eight. But he wanted only his father, and King followed him. King and Diamond were individuals, not alloys. Each had one voice and a single personality, and they could run fast in a straight line, and they didn’t waste any time with riddles, and they didn’t fall silent because the voices inside them were fighting to control the world’s largest tongue.
King and Diamond were gone before the doctor returned.
Important people came with her. Leaders and old thinkers squatted before the giant Eight, arms crossed, tough feet set against the reef. “You’re gifts from the Creators,” they said. “That much is undeniable. And belonging to the Creators means that you once stood in their presence, even if that was ten billion billion days ago.”
A thread of logic lay in those words, narrow and seductive.
The Eight stared at the papio. Each face showed terror and amazement, resignation and despair, while incoherent rages hunted for any worthwhile target. The audience was a multitude, and they were disorganized, and nobody dared call the papio insane.
The leader among the leaders stepped forward.
“The children who tend to you like to boast about you,” she began. “They claim that each of your minds is bottomless, that everything you see is etched in hard coral. So tell us what you remember. Tell us about Those Who Made Everything?”
Emotions ran hot inside the Eight. Urgent words and the staring faces triggered old thoughts and utter nonsense. Too many answers offered themselves. Eight fierce, terrified wills battled for the giant mouth, and what emerged was dense, passionate, and convoluted—much of it wrapped inside eight vanished languages.
During earlier days, visitors like these might pull out a few words that seemed familiar. There was illumination and comfort in the Eight’s nonsense—any sound that might prove a tiny personal concern. Or people would hear nothing but a mess and then return home. In those days, patience was in charge. Inertia was the pilot. Nothing needed to be different tomorrow; nothing needed to be changed. But now the tree-walkers had a warrior in the making, and they had a human-like creature with his own magic, and what if the clever monkeys also found the missing child, that ghostly phantom that wandered the wilderness?
But that was before. Every past moment was different. What happened now could not have been more important, which was why the Eight focused remarkably well, agreeing on one clear answer, if only for a few breaths.
In the papio tongue, they proclaimed, “The Creators are dead.”
“But we know this already,” said the leader, rocking forward on hands as well as her toes.
“And the Creators looked like you,” said the Eight.
“Why would they look any other way?” the woman asked in return. “Why make this world and not put your face on its rulers?”
“But they created nothing,” said the Eight.
“Who created nothing?”
“The ones you keep misnaming,” they said. “If they deserve a name, you should call them ‘The Destroyers.’ ”
Nobody understood. Each word was known, but the implications were too strange, too enormous. Even the Eight were as lost and foolish as everyone else, listening helplessly as the words bubbled out of the long graceless mouth.
The mouth stopped working again.
A few of the papio said, “Blasphemers.”
They were the ones who hurried to their wheeled vehicles and drove away, wanting to be as far from this madness as possible.
The other papio walked slowly to their vehicles, but they didn’t leave. With their backs to the Eight, quiet voices spoke about possibilities and plans. Twice the doctor woman came close to those people, attempting to join the conversation. Twice she was told to step away and not approach her patient either. Then the government people finished, a bargain finally struck, and they called to the doctor and gave her explicit instructions, causing her face to turn stiff and sorry.
She came up the face of the reef, up into the shadows where the corona’s child liked to sit, a dash-and-ash mat underfoot and the entire world stretched out before their two enormous golden eyes.
“Did you hear them?” she asked.
They had only two ears, but those ears were huge and sensitive, pulling in sounds from everywhere.
“We heard nothing,” said the clumsy voice.
She laughed at them.
“Liars,” she said.
Better than any other adult, she understood them. Tired from the climb, she sat at the edge of the mat. A pair of young boys was approaching, carrying dried rockworms and soggy tomalots. She turned and said, “Leave the baskets and go. Wait for me below.”
Boys never liked to be told what to do. This was something the Eight had noticed. But the children respected the woman. In fact, they liked to boast to the giant that she was the best doctor in the papio world, which meant the entire world. Tree-walkers were stupid little monkeys, said those boys, and of course their monkey doctors were idiots.
“Go now,” she snapped at the boys.
They grudgingly set their baskets on the mat and galloped off.
To her patient, the doctor said, “I have quite a lot to tell you.”
“We heard every word,” they said.
“I know what you heard, and that’s why I won’t repeat their idiot noise. They want me to spell out the possibilities, but I don’t need to spell anything. You understand their plans. Their plans look awful to the nine of us, yes. But my impressions and my frustrations aren’t worth much at all.”
The Eight waited, and the woman said nothing.
Then the long mouth opened, each of them trying to move the huge pink tongue.
She saw the struggle, and she laughed sadly.
They stopped moving, still as the coral beneath them.
“First of all,” she said. “You must, must, must change. I know your circumstances are difficult. I can’t imagine how it would feel, sharing my skull with seven brilliant souls. But this is not a natural arrangement. I told you that long ago and every day since. I think each of you were eaten by the corona but not killed. That stomach was an acidic oven, but you survived. I can’t guess how you managed, but you survived as one body, round as a green nut, and after so much time in that awful state, under pressure, in the worst hell, you were joined. And even after all of my work, I still can’t count how many ways in which you are fused into One.
“But you aren’t One.
“Being many might be wonderful, but I don’t see the wonderful standing before me. And you plainly need to be reminded that we aren’t lying inside a hot acid bath. The trap around you is far worse than any corona’s stomach. From this moment on, your existence will be in question, and that assumes just one of you takes charge of the body and your voice.”
&n
bsp; “But that can’t be done,” one of the Eight said, and another said, and then several more. “We’ve tried and failed and failed again. Quit demanding the impossible.”
They spoke the same words, but the tongue and mouth created only a gush of angry, slurring words.
“I don’t care which one of you leads,” the doctor claimed, even though they suspected who was her favorite.
The giant body slumped down on the mat, each soul defending its pieces.
“And that isn’t all of my news,” said the doctor.
None of them wanted to listen. They were sick of papios and their noises. But the doctor’s admonishments were followed by silence and a hard stern stare that caught everyone by surprise.
The giant head rose.
One mind asked, “What do you have to tell?”
“I am like you now,” she said.
“Like us how?”
“I’m more than one.” The woman put her weight on her feet, hands lifting, lifting away the clothes around her chest. “A second entity lives inside me. It’s vigorous and enduring. By all evidence, it took root inside my left breast before spreading to other places, and it should outlive me by a moment or two. Or if someone takes these cells and cultivates them, my companion can live forever.”
They didn’t have words or any useful thoughts.
“Cancer,” she said, exposing the rib-rich chest and the surviving breast and the mutilations masked by padding and vanity. “The cancer is killing me.”
In that instant, each one of them loved her.
“I’m going home soon to die, and you’ll be left here inside the world, and the world is a monster’s stomach too.”
A long slow noise leaked out of them.
“And no,” she continued, “I won’t tell you who should rule that body of yours. But if you keep acting like a crazy beast squatting in the shadows, then my people will have no choice but action.”
She covered her wounds, weeping quietly.
“Believing there’s no choice is the same as having no choice,” she warned. “Can any one of you see that?”
The Archon was elsewhere. Diamond asked when she would return, but nobody seemed to know. Good was riding on Diamond’s left shoulder, growling out of habit. Tar`ro had placed himself beside the boy, growling with purpose. When one of his armed colleagues approached, presumably to help protect their charge, Tar`ro said, “You’ll want to give me distance.”
The other guard didn’t understand.
“Bits,” said Tar`ro. “You were friendly with Bits, weren’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then get out of my sight.” Tar`ro waved at the other guards, saying, “Believe nothing and watch each other. Agreed?”
Prima had left her aide in charge. Excited by the responsibility, the young woman led the refugees across the landing and into the atrium. The giant room was filled with sunlight and sorry voices. The blackwood statue of a slayer remained in the room’s center, and when they walked past, habit took charge. Diamond stopped and stared up at that magnificent figure.
The aide had a specific destination. She paused to wave. “Hurry up now please,” she said.
“No, we can wait here,” Tar`ro said.
She shook a finger. “Why here? We’re exposed here.”
“Yeah, but I probably won’t feel safe inside any little room.” Tar`ro gave the space a quick, thorough study. “We can see everybody here, and we’ve got escape routes. So this is where we are going to live for next few recitations. Understood?”
The aide was in charge one moment, and then she wasn’t. Her face turned sour, and a matching voice said, “All right, but not for long.”
Merit and Master Nissim were at the back of the group, talking quietly. People were walking past Diamond. Some of the people were strangers, but plenty of faces were familiar. Some people looked straight ahead, thinking dark important thoughts. Some noticed the boy, staring at him until they felt self-conscious, and then their eyes jumped away. People were holding books and folders and critical sheets of paper. Empty hands often made fists. Nervous perspiration made everyone smell. Office clothes were wrinkled and dark with sweat, and there were green-gray militia uniforms not quite buttoned up, and four uniforms made of fancy green silk were walking together, worn by officers in the District Regulars.
The soldiers approached the famous statue and a tangle of lost kids, paying attention only to each other.
“So it was the papio,” one officer said.
“Evidence says,” another said.
The third officer offered up curses, nothing else.
Then the man at the lead said, “I don’t believe it’s them.”
Others didn’t agree, but nobody dared argue the point.
The ranking officer wore corona teeth on his shoulders and a hat made from fancy red fur. “This was a bee bite. This was nothing. If I were the papio, I’d have hit us a hundred times harder, while I had surprise working for me.”
Then the soldiers were past, out of earshot.
Again, Diamond looked at the slayer’s statue. Up close, there wasn’t any face. The blackwood had been attacked with chisels, leaving a lumpy surface that didn’t look like any human being. Only from a distance did the eyes appear, and that stern smart mouth, and the long noble nose worn by every hero in the history books.
Schoolmates stood close to one another. The littlest girl was watching faces. Her expression was very serious, very hopeful.
Diamond stepped close and said, “Prue.”
She didn’t look at Diamond. “Do you see her?” she asked.
“See who?”
“My mother. Don’t let me miss my mother.”
Good had grown heavy. Diamond poked him in the ribs, and he jumped to the floor, pushing between his boy’s school boots.
Elata was behind Diamond. She was crying again, and Seldom stood beside her, looking as if he was going to be sick. Karlan was in the background, his face flat and dry, lips pressed into a scar-colored line, both fists drumming on his thighs.
“Do you see Mommy?” Prue asked.
There was no name to put to his feelings. Diamond was miserable before he talked to Prue, and this was just a different, newer misery. Looking out at the people, his stomach felt as if it had been cut open, and that’s when a piece of him turned curious, wondering if he would throw up and what that would feel like.
“But why would your mother be here?” he asked.
“There are so many people,” the girl said, sounding nothing but reasonable. “She’s going to be one of these people.”
Diamond backed away. Master Nissim was talking to his other students. Even on his knees, the man was taller than anyone from the class. Holding two boys by their shoulders, he looked at all of them when he said, “Hope for the best, because it happens. The best happens.” He nodded hard, trying to convince. “Someone is coming to help, and you’ll get to where you need to be.”
The oldest girl asked, “Are you leaving us?”
Nissim made his mouth tiny, and he glanced at Merit.
Father put himself beside his son again, one hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t want you to leave us,” the girl said.
But then one of the boys shook free of the Master’s hand, and he said, “No, we want to get away from him.”
The boy pointed at Diamond.
Diamond’s soldiers had burned to nothing. He was suddenly thinking how those toys had names, but real people were so much bigger than any piece of paint and carved wood. He had sat with these other children for hundreds of days, and he knew their names and quite a few details about their lives, although he didn’t know very much at all. Yet with his memory, he could replay each of their days together, if he ever wanted.
If it was ever important, that is.
Then the pitch and pace of voices changed. The Archon had suddenly emerged in the deepest part of the atrium, back where the elevators waited.
The aide saw Pr
ima, and relieved, she turned to Diamond. “This way,” she said to him and only him.
The boy began walking, but not fast.
Good leapt up on his left shoulder again.
“What about my other students?” Nissim asked, rising stiffly. “Do they come with us?”
“No, we have people to help them,” the aide said.
She wasn’t looking at anyone. People who lied often hid their eyes.
Diamond stopped and turned.
Elata was standing beside Prue, looking at Diamond. She said a word or two to the little girl. Then she ran over to her friend to say, “I don’t know.”
“Know what?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at Diamond. “Seldom, come on right now,” she shouted.
Seldom walked with his arms tight around his waist.
Karlan began to follow, and Tar`ro stared at him.
“I saved your boy,” Karlan pointed out. “Without me, we’d have all gone down with the damn tree.”
“So you’re a hero,” Tar`ro said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the giant boy said. “You can be hero someday too.”
Nobody’s face was calmer than the Archon’s face. Nothing about her could be confused for happy or relaxed, yet the day’s horrors hadn’t damaged her normal self. Problems here wanted to be solved, and there were opportunities ready to be found, and just the way she carried herself was a testament to poise and strength and an infectious will that almost everyone wanted to feel.
