by Robert Reed
“That’s what I think,” he said.
Every man was suddenly talking at once. Angry, sloppy whispers mixed in the air. Diamond was left free to bend until he felt as if he were floating over the lights of a million insects. Something about this scene was eerily, deliciously familiar, and ready to remember, he felt happy enough to smile.
Then the bickering and the talk of violence became loud, and an ancient memory fled back inside the boy’s tiny, enormous mind.
Sleep had never been her nature. Fatigue had done its damage in the past, nipping at her flesh, playing games with her thoughts, but Quest had endured enough weariness to believe that sleep could never claim her. Except yesterday morning was relentless and sorry and wicked. Exhaustion arrived before she shucked off most of her body, letting the temporary flesh die in plain sight while the rest of her scrambled to a higher position. Abandoning organs and limbs demanded hard concentration. Climbing fast without being seen was always best done when she was rested. She wasn’t rested. The last of her legs were trembling when she found a new perch—a marginal hiding place on the edge of the District—and that was when the papio attacked.
Quest was already taking wild chances. Just lingering near the settled forest was a gnawing risk, and that was before full war broke out. She saw the papio wings flying into the forest’s wound, shooting at shadows, and the tree-walkers flung slugs and darts and swift little bombs, almost every shot missing its mark. Quest should have left immediately. She knew it. Yet there she remained, ignoring every wise impulse, eating more lost birds and using their meat to cook fresh eyes and great funnel-shaped ears, aiming the new organs everywhere but at the ongoing battle.
Was this a symptom of deep fatigue, turning blind to a thousand dangers?
She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. But the boy kept churning her thoughts. Instinct and every drop of new blood accepted his importance, yet she had no idea where he was or how awful his circumstances were. That’s why she shucked off most of those new senses and slipped out of her hiding place, abandoning the wilderness. Exhaustion brought madness. Insanity made her leap and scamper, even as those scrawny high branches shook from cannon fire, and suddenly she discovered herself clinging to a bare trunk still warm from the morning’s fire, gazing down into the raw gouge of open air and late sun and war.
The Ivory Station was on the far side of the gouge.
Her final eyes watched little else.
The battle was at its frenzied worst: rapid and vicious, and clumsy. Presumably both sides had intricate battle plans, but nobody seemed to remember them. Armored airships maneuvered clumsily beside the Ivory Station, and the wings slashed past, sometimes spinning their jets to hover long enough for two targets to fix every weapon on one another. Corona bladders and scales were extremely tough, weathering astonishing rains of gunfire. But even the strongest materials failed eventually. Airships turned to flame. Wings shattered and tumbled toward the demon floor. There was an instant when exhaustion would annihilate both armies, but then the final airships retreated into the forest, and as night rose, a flock of larger, slower wings arrived, delivering hundreds of papio soldiers to the wide landing at the bottom of the Ivory Station.
Night bloomed faster than normal. The papio launched flares as messages, and the tree-walkers launched flares to confuse their enemies. Small guns took over the fight. Eerily beautiful clusters of light were born from explosions. The Station burned in darkness. Hanner’s trunk and battered canopy burned. Spellbound, Quest never noticed the pair of wings coming up her side of the gouge, and then they slashed past, near enough that their jets warmed her flesh.
She dropped that flesh and fled.
An agile little wing pursued her through the forest’s highest reaches. Or it was hunting other quarry, and it just happened to fix its bright spotlights on her body. The glare made her flesh turn real, a small cowardly shadow lurking beneath. Burning precious fuel, the wing hovered. Quest was perched on a dead hard-willow branch. The pilot stared at her with a puzzled, halfway-irritated expression. “You are something and you are important,” the woman probably thought. “But you aren’t what I want tonight.”
Quest let the branch slip away.
The papio fired her guns in response, splintering rotted wood.
Quest made herself narrow, falling as fast as possible. Wilderness was beckoning, familiar and dense, unconquered by either human species. Then she pushed much of what remained into long leatherwings, and she flew, flat at first and then higher, deep into places that nobody but her had ever named, her final eyes drinking the available light.
She had never felt as tired as she did then.
For the first time in her life, closing her eyes and mind seemed possible.
But time moved, and she moved through time, and there always seemed to be another point where she was sicker and weaker than before. No creature could live long in this state, not even her. Each stroke of the wings found misery. Muscles born just that day were spent, poisoned by their exertions, and she had to summon enough will to keep her mouth from hunting. The wilderness was jammed with creatures fleeing lost places, out of their territories and easy to kill. But she wasn’t safe and maybe she never would be safe again. That grim possibility carried her high, up near the ceiling where the only sunlight came after the rain, and that’s where she found a nest of daylight leatherwings—great beasts driven mad by explosions and the stench of burnt life.
She killed several and ate the pregnant female first.
She grew a few eyes and many more ears before grabbing tight to a lingerblossom trunk, dangling, passing into a state that wasn’t sleep and never would be.
Her rest might have lasted a long while.
But words found her. These weren’t human words. Every species of monkey had its language, and Quest knew all of them. Sleepless, paranoid jasmine monkeys were talking about an airship. They didn’t name the vessel or any of the people onboard, but the animals counted the cables that moored the big dark gasbag in one place, and hungry enough to ache, the troop was plotting to walk across the cables, slipping inside that big open door at the bottom. There was food inside. They could smell feasts. But the main stink was unfamiliar and wrong, which was the only reason that they didn’t attack.
“What is that stinky shit?” monkeys asked monkeys.
Quest grew nostrils.
Dry dark night air rose into what passed for her face, and she drank huge amounts of air before catching the musky odor of coronas and their odd, alien blood.
Only a hunter-ship would carry that stink.
Only someone wanting to hide would bring an open-air vessel deep into this labyrinth of trees.
Diamond was a faint, half-born possibility, but Quest couldn’t dismiss this opportunity.
Should she rest or move?
Motion claimed her, fingers letting go of the bark, every fatigue and ache and tiny cancerous doubt left behind with the hiding place.
The galley was small and polished. Corona scales covered every tabletop, and the plates were bright white ovals cut from corona bone, and every utensil was quality steel decanted from the monsters’ blood. Breakfast was hot and it was cold, each kind of food filling its own platter set on the first table. But most of the crew had been called away for a critical meeting. Three children and the monkey shared that table. Karlan sat alone in the back. The cook remained on his feet. Orders had been delivered, and the man wasn’t shy about playing with the handgun in his apron pocket. The giant boy did some good yesterday, but he had a reputation for causing trouble. Stopping trouble was the cook’s responsibility, and for what seemed like a very long while, he had been nervously imagining the circumstances that would make him shoot the young fellow in a leg or the shoulder, or maybe through the heart.
Everybody was hungry, but only Good was eating. There were no windows in the galley, but they heard the rain beating against Bountiful and everybody felt the rising winds, the red breath of the day combing the tangled wildern
ess.
Elata sat at the end of the table. She was a thousand days older than yesterday. Diamond thought the girl looked like her mother, and he nearly said so. His mouth opened, and noticing his eyes, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
Seldom said, “Everything’s wrong.”
“I was talking to Diamond,” she said.
“I know,” Seldom said.
Seldom looked younger than yesterday. He looked smaller too, and he couldn’t stop crying.
“Stupid,” Elata said, picking up a bright fork.
“Who’s stupid?” Seldom asked, sniffing quietly.
“Me,” the girl said. “I keep thinking she’s waiting for me. My mother. She’s sitting at home, in her favorite chair, and she’s not happy.”
Nobody else talked.
“I didn’t come home. I must have run off. Or she’s angry about something else that I did or didn’t do. Somehow I’ve pissed her off, and that’s the only way that I can think about her. Cursing me.”
She paused, and Diamond stared at his plate.
“But there’s a weirder part,” she said. “Do you know what it is?”
The boys glanced at each other.
From across the room, Karlan said, “You want to go home and get yelled at.”
She nodded. “I do. But that’s not it.”
Diamond asked, “What’s weird?”
“My father is sitting there too,” she said. “And he’s been dead for most of my life, it seems.”
The rain spoke. Nothing else.
Then Elata sat up straighter, her features aging even more. She hadn’t cried this morning. Her face was dry and stiff as if carved from coral. Out from her clamped mouth came her tongue, wetting her fingertips, and then she picked up a jar full of sugar, pouring half of it onto the clean plate in front of her. With two fingers, Elata began pulling the glittery brown sugar into her mouth, three tastes managed before she said, “This got me in trouble, every time.”
The boys slowly dished food to their plates, and Diamond ate.
Karlan had claimed a platter of smoked amiables, and now he picked up the top slice. But he ate in nibbles, and slowly. His face looked carved, but it was different than Elata’s face. Diamond couldn’t decide if he saw strength or anger, or if something that he couldn’t name was running under the skin.
With a spoon, Seldom pushed a half-egg to the edge of his plate. He looked as if he was crying but his voice was steady. “I keep thinking this is yesterday,” he said. “It’s dawn and everything’s normal, everything’s starting again. But this time I know what is going to happen. This time I can do something about it.”
“What are you going to do?” Karlan asked, his tone was more curious than cross.
Seldom dropped his spoon. “I’ll tell Mommy and Papa.”
Karlan’s face didn’t change. “And they’ll explain to you that you’re an idiot, and Mom would tell you to go to school anyway.”
Diamond put a boiled half-egg into his mouth, tasting the yellow.
“No, I’d stop everything from happening,” Seldom said with conviction. “I’d call the Archon from our house and warn her, and Bits would be arrested, and the bombs above would be disarmed. Then I’d go to school like normal, and everything would be what it should be.”
“Except you’d be the hero,” said Karlan.
Seldom nodded, wishing for all of it.
“A hero who could see the future,” said his brother.
“I guess.”
“And what would the Archon do, after you saved the world?” Karlan had found enough reason to smile, and he took a big bite of meat, chewing as he spoke. “If you think she’s interested in that critter beside you, then what would she get out of a beast who sees tomorrow and maybe a long ways farther than that?”
Good was finished eating. Jumping down, he said, “Shit.”
Diamond pointed.
The monkey trotted past Karlan. The two exchanged glances, the human finding reasons for a long soft laugh.
Good laughed in his shrill way.
“Corona-boy,” Karlan said. “What are you thinking about?”
Diamond was thinking about eggs, how the whiteness was one thing and the yolk was entirely different. He was thinking about various mothers and how fifty-eight days ago Elata’s mother had invited Seldom’s mother and Haddi inside her modest home, along with the two boys. Everybody sat in a nice little room. Adults and children played a game that nobody enjoyed. But everyone’s best manners were on display, and Elata’s mother—Taff—seemed thrilled with pieces of her little party. The woman particularly enjoyed watching her daughter talking to Diamond. Elata was funny that day, happy and quick to laugh, and her mother couldn’t stop smiling at both of them.
Taff’s expression seemed strange then. In some way, he knew what she was thinking, but after what he had heard last night, there was no ignoring the meanings.
“You aren’t answering me,” Karlan said.
“I’ve got a lot of thoughts,” he said.
“Tell me one,” said the giant boy, his voice low and abrasive.
“No,” said Elata. “Just ignore him.”
Seldom rocked slowly from side to side, matching the wind-born motions of the ship.
Karlan rose to his feet fast enough that the cook shoved his right hand into the deep pocket, aiming with his eyes.
But that’s when Good came out from the toilet, and glancing at Karlan, he sensed nothing wrong. Nothing was dangerous. Unperturbed, the monkey jumped up on the table and claimed Seldom’s half-egg for himself, consuming it with one bold slurp.
Diamond whispered, “I can see the future.”
“What’s that?” Karlan asked.
“I know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Not about tomorrow, but with the bigger things.”
Everybody but Good stared at him. Even the cook was interested.
But Diamond was just talking. Words came out of his mouth, except they weren’t his words. He didn’t think before saying, “Fire.”
“What about fire?” Karlan interrupted.
“Nothing,” said the boy, wishing he had stayed quiet.
Elata stared at him, almost smiling.
The cook leaned forward. “There’s fire in our future? Is that what you see coming?”
Then Seldom was giggling and groaning, saying, “Well, really. Really? Who doesn’t see that?”
Flesh believed in time.
What was alive, no matter how simple, held deep confidence in the rhythmic changes of light and water, the passage of days and the inevitability of night. Time informed existence, defined its promise and framed every limitation. Complex, self-aware life went so far as to stare into the future, imagining what might be, and occasionally planning for events that wouldn’t occur for one day or a thousand, or more likely, would never happen at all.
Great events were sweeping the world, but old schedules remained intact, and the papio were perhaps the most methodical creatures—serving the metronome, the calendar, and their deep need for the illusion for order.
That morning, a new child was given to the Eight.
“Tradition put you here,” Divers instructed. “You’ve been granted the honor of serving the Corona’s largest, most helpless child. Except we aren’t helpless, and all you need to do is to stay close but stay out of our way too.”
“Yes, I know,” said a tiny voice.
“Don’t bow to us, and don’t ever strut in front of us,” she continued. “Just come forward now and give us your name. And if you want, ask questions. Regardless what you ask, we’ll pretend these are wise questions, fresh as the coral blossom sprays, and they’ll be answered however we choose.”
The child was a little larger than most for his age, and instead of red or pink hair, his scalp was covered with the darkest brown tangle of twisting hairs. In their life, the Eight had never moved from this isolated, thinly populated terrain, but they understood the reef through books and the stories told by other
s.
Judging by appearances, this boy came from the world’s farthest ends.
“Zakk,” he called himself.
The Eight and the boy were standing inside an empty hanger. The resident wing was destroyed during the raid on the Ivory Station. Its replacement would fly its mission today before dropping onto the tarmac outside, and that wouldn’t happen for a long while. The hanger’s doors had been left open. Vast golden eyes were turned forwards. Those eyes wore a papio face, strong and feminine and agreeably handsome. The hair was dense and pink, though up close it looked more like frizzy rope mixed with peculiar silks and spider webs and pale red worms wriggling slowly in the flesh. Half-trousers and a half-halter and new sandals were the only clothes. No tattoo ink or piercing could take hold in the brown flesh, and there was no way to build scars. Smooth flesh and huge eyes made the Eight resemble a toddler—a toddler built on a fantastic scale. But the toddler’s clumsiness was gone. Balance was effortless, and speed mattered, and Divers insisted that the Eight were ready to move faster than anybody expected. To that end, during the night, when untrusted eyes weren’t watching, she would force this body to climb steep slopes and sprint down the craggy backsides of the ridges.
The Eight leaned back, each hand holding a telescope, twin black tubes raised to the eyes. Both tubes were moving, sweeping the scene for anything interesting, and hopefully important.
Something about the scene made the new boy uneasy. His feet were moving, and the yellow eyes kept dancing, watching the open air.
“You’re safe,” said Divers.
“Am I?”
“Absolutely.” She smiled, telling him, “We’re dressed in shadow, Zakk. Even if the enemy noticed us, and they can’t, we’re shielded by coral and the hanger’s iron walls.”
