by Robert Reed
Smiling, the mechanic said a few words.
Everybody laughed with their faces, their voices. But serious eyes kept giving the world hard study. Then the captain stepped away from the edge, and the three of them stood with their backs to the doorway, hands over mouths, each taking his and her turn in the conversation.
“Something is happening,” Tar`ro agreed.
“They hear your father,” the Master guessed.
Saying so made it a little bit true. But not enough.
“Father isn’t coming,” Diamond said.
“You don’t know that,” Elata said.
Just the same, the boy got to his feet. Sitting was awful. His legs were desperate to walk.
“Stay,” Tar`ro said.
But Diamond was already running on the hard black rubber floor, leaping over tied-down machines and a neat stack of deflated bladders. The captain was a short woman, stocky to the brink of fat, and she had a deeper voice than some men. The voice said his name. One arm lifted, and Diamond let himself be caught short of the doorway. Then she squeezed his shoulder, saying, “Please, stay with me.”
“Where’s my father?”
As if expecting the question, she said, “He isn’t late. But we need to leave this place at once.”
“No.”
“Quiet,” she said.
He didn’t think that he had been yelling.
“Look at me, Diamond.”
She had been a pretty woman before she got old, and she was always talented, and more than once, Father had mentioned how rare it was for any woman to give her life to killing coronas.
Diamond yanked her hand and skipped sideways.
Shaking what hurt, she told him, “We had another weak rain this morning. The canopy below was already thin, but now it’s thirsty, and someone could easily see us from below.”
“The papio might,” the mechanic said.
“Anybody might,” said the harpooner, sucking air through his golden teeth.
“So we’re preparing to cut loose and move,” the captain said. “But don’t worry. Your father knew this was possible and told us where we’ll go next. He might well beat us there, honestly.”
A broad leatherwing came from under the ship, slow lazy strokes beating at the bright air. A flock of millguts swirled high above. From inside the canopy, in those places where shadows joined ranks, a single big jasmine monkey proclaimed dominion over the best part of Creation.
“But there’s something else,” said the captain. And with that she put her bulk in front of him.
Good jumped up on Diamond’s shoulder, and the others walked up after him.
Tar`ro asked Seldom, “Do you see your brother?”
“Not now.”
But Elata nodded, saying, “There.”
Karlan was helping drag heavy machinery. Working on the far side of the shop, he was a huge figure beside the crew, and even at a distance, he looked as close to happy as any of these miserable people could be.
Diamond wasn’t worried about Karlan. The crew scared him, but not the boy who tried to kill him.
Was that foolish?
The captain touched Diamond with her sore hand, lightly.
“Listen,” she said.
He focused on her face, her open mouth.
“Stories,” she said. “Out here, all of the stories get told. People think they see things and they believe they hear things, but nothing’s ever certain. Except that four creatures were trapped inside that old corona.”
Diamond saw where the words were pointing. Harpooners had great eyes; the boy couldn’t count the times people had said so in his presence. Once again, he slipped past the captain, two leaps putting him at the floor’s end, a lip of bone and featherwood pressed against the toes of his boots.
“Where’s the ghost?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” said the harpooner, an exceptionally strong hand dropping on the boy’s shoulder.
Diamond remembered to be scared of the man.
“It’s that burr-tree that worries us,” the harpooner said. Then the hand moved, pulling Diamond back from the emptiness. “I was counting branches, which everyone should do. You know, to keep your faculties sharp. And somewhere in the last five recitations, while I was looking everywhere else, one of those very big branches decided to melt and then vanish.”
The fleet had come from the District of Districts—one hundred and seventy-three giant machines serving as backbone to humanity’s combined fleet. Each airship was dressed in the name of a hero or famous battle, or some vivid emotion, or moral concepts that even the wicked enemies would appreciate. There was the Fire at Night, the Wettle, the Passion, the Honest, Raging Fist, the Marqlet, Vengeance, Shattered Wings, the Chew, and the venerable Destiny, older than any living man but holding its hydrogen as well as any of its mates. Every ship was held aloft by the best corona bladders, tough as steel and a fraction the weight. Each had a skeleton of corona bone draped with skins and scales pulled from a thousand dead monsters. The fleet moved together, like a mishmash of dissimilar birds forced into one long flight. Some of the ships were little fletches, bird-shaped and lightly armored to allow for speed and endless grace. There were bigger fletches with banks of engines, a few towing complacent, balloon-like panoplies. There were warrior-class spears and battle-class behemoths, and a dozen fast-freighters carried stockpiles of fuel and food and munitions. And the fleet was bearing quite a lot more—a stew of orders and guidelines, ranks and egos, thousands of soldiers who had never walked on coral, and one overriding command ruling all others:
Protect the flagship.
Nestled in the armada’s heart, the Ruler of the Storm was both safe and magnificent. The younger sibling to the Ruler of the Wind, the machine was only two-thirds finished when her sister was destroyed. But a useful bureaucratic panic allowed the construction to be finished in record time. The Wind’s crew was dropped like gears into their old tasks, minus the original captain who was given a public trial leading to a loud plea of guilt by incompetence. Then the Archon of Archons spoke to a select audience, telling supporters that while old Merit played a role in the disaster, he appreciated the slayer’s motivation. He was also a father, and however wrong the methods and however shameful that day, the Archon used his office to grant the hero a full pardon for that enormous crime as well as for any and all failures of character during the last thousand days.
“Remember the pardon, son?”
Every word returned to King, as well as his father’s burning humiliation.
“No,” said King. “It’s lost to me.”
Smiling, List said, “We know better than that.”
The past was usually a prologue to some little lesson.
“Now what if I’d accepted everyone’s wise advice? Put our most famous slayer on trial, the man standing for a cause that nobody had ever imagined possible. I would have won an effective verdict. Our allies in the outer Districts would be warned. No one would doubt that I was in total command. But that’s all I would have won—a lone judgment underscoring what everyone already appreciated. Words riding soft white leather, framed in my office and worth nothing.
“The boy was going to remain inside the Corona District. Prima would make certain of that. Diamond is hers, and contesting her ownership would have been a massive waste of time and resources.”
And here was the lesson, King knew.
“I win and the rest of history plays out as it has. Merit languishes in jail, while his son runs free in this District, despising me. Then the evil and the idiotic try to murder Diamond just the same. And what’s my position in that scenario? My fleet goes where it wishes. Nobody can stop us. But look at the people above us. Better and better, you know how to read our moods, our fears. Study those faces. Find one face isn’t thrilled to see us, threatening our common enemies with quick brutal law.”
King and his father were sharing one of the observatory blisters, riding on the Ruler’s top spine.
“Are you
looking at the faces, son?”
“I’m watching your face, sir.”
Smiles were never simple. Father’s grin was smug but cautious.
“Well, yes,” said the little man. “Take my word for it. If I’d listened to my shrewd advisors, we’d be looked upon as invaders. Even as it stands, I’m sure that a few of our supposed allies think we’re responsible for this miserable mess.”
King asked, “But why would you want to kill the boy?”
“Your brother,” said Father.
King stared at the changing smile.
“I can’t say this enough: we’re emotional beasts, quick to judge and stubborn when it comes to defending our opinions.” Father paused, eyes turned upwards. “But worse, we are an exceptionally, shamelessly lazy species. If people look at me as their enemy—if I bring rage to their bellies, their hearts—then I must have been the agent who ordered bombs exploded on the top of the world. I’m the one who killed thousands in hopes of murdering one soul. And why hold that wicked notion? Because smart opinions involve quite a lot of tedious, unthankful work, and we are too busy to bother.”
King made a rough wet noise with his eating mouth, and with his breathing mouth, he said, “Lazy and stupid too.”
He was provoking Father, but the man was clever enough to see it.
“If only we were stupid,” said List. “No, we carry big brains. Not unbreakable like yours. But I’ve never met the man whose head was filled up in one lifetime. And the smartest of us, if he wants, can feed that lard so many carefully picked, well-pickled facts. We’re lazy and instinctive, and we find it so easy to believe what’s unlikely, and we fight for what pleases us while ignoring most everything that’s hard, and what genius we have builds elaborate lies that have no good function except to put us at the center of this glorious, eternal world.”
King finally looked up. The fleet had reached the point where the overhead canopy suddenly grew thin, great old branches missing their ends and then absent entirely. The Ruler’s engines changed pitch and speed as the airship slid beneath the tree called Hanner. These were little blackwood trees, barely sticks compared to the giants of home, and ballast was being dropped—thousands of buckets of water released into the midday light—and suspended on rainbows, the flagship began its ascent into the enormous gouge that had been hacked into the forest.
King was thoroughly impressed.
What he saw and what wasn’t seen captivated him.
Verbal accounts weren’t adequate. The sheer volume of lost trees took him by surprise, and so did the blackened carcasses of buildings clinging to Hanner’s fire-ravaged trunk. Crude new gun emplacements had replaced those destroyed last evening. Hundreds of little civilian blimps had been brought from everywhere, apparently to do nothing but look tiny against the carnage. Banners hung on the surviving trees, names asking other names to come and find them. Countless survivors sat on the brinks of landings and sheered-off limbs. They were watching the Ruler of the Storm climb towards them. The Ruler bristled with cannons and armor, and the front battleworks brandished rockets bigger than any papio wing, each tipped with the Creation’s most powerful explosives. Yet King couldn’t see the promised relief or pride or even the scornful stares of hatred. Father was wrong. The greatest ship in the world, and the most that it earned was weary curiosity from fat brains already too full with too much.
King imagined the slaughter of the falling trees. The mind gave fire and misery to thousands of nameless bodies, and his hearts began to race, and the armored plates rose from his body. His rage was as pure and sharp as it had been in a very long while, and he was at least as crazed towards every enemy as any human could be.
An elegantly uniformed officer had appeared inside the blister.
“Find us a working line,” Father said, pointing at the ruins of the Ivory Station. “I want a conversation with Prima.”
“Communications are problematic,” the officer pointed out.
“I beg to differ.” The Archon of Archons walked up to his son, reaching high with both hands, starting to push. Other fathers might straighten their children’s unruly hair, but List risked slicing fingers, trying to make the plates lie flat. “The greatest military force in the world is under my colleague’s feet. I’m quite certain that she knows that I’m here.”
The plates began to drop under the little fingers.
Father winked knowingly. “But this idea is always warm in your mind, isn’t it, son? Conversation is really the least impressive way to deliver your message.”
Bountiful dropped little streams of water meant to evaporate before being noticed, and tanks of pressurized hydrogen were milked for a few moments, giving the bladders more lift. Then the tethers were released, anchors left buried in the trees. Smoothly and quietly, the smallest two engines nudged the ship ahead, pushing it through the first gap and into a crooked airborne tunnel that would carry them up to places where the big machine would never be seen.
Father hadn’t returned.
Good sat beside Diamond, both watching the open doorway. “Merit where?” asked the monkey.
“Coming,” Diamond said.
Good stood on his four hands, considering his boy.
Diamond had promised the captain that he wouldn’t approach the open air again. But he could tell his monkey, “Watch for him. Go on now.”
A slow gait carried Good across the shop floor. Everybody in the crew had a job, a task, some consuming chore that kept him distracted. The harpooner’s chore was to stand beside the long gun, an explosive round sleeping in the breech. The man was counting branches, and then he looked at the monkey, unhappy about something. And Good tried to smile—a peeling back of lips to reveal yellow canines and pink gums—and as he did on rare occasions, he rose up on his hind legs, clumsily shuffling forwards like a shriveled old human man.
The harpooner said a word.
The little man beside him said several words.
And together, the two of them watched the world steadily descend around them.
Elata and Seldom sat on the floor with Diamond. Tar`ro and Nissim filled matching chairs. Both men had made cups with their right hands, chins against their palms as bleary eyes lost the war against sleep.
“I don’t want to be here,” said Elata
The boys squirmed silently.
“I know, I know,” she said. “There’s nowhere else to be.”
The day was as short as any could be. The high parts of the world had never warmed properly and now they were growing black. The ship’s little engines rumbled, easing Bountiful inside shadows. Disturbed, a young leatherwing rose from below, wings beating hard to match the ship’s motion, four lidless eyes peering inside the shop before the creature pivoted and spun away.
Master Nissim snored softly.
“But what am I doing here?” Elata asked.
“Sitting,” said Seldom. Then he made himself laugh.
Diamond looked at the girl’s hand, and in his mind, he took hold of it. But when he tried to do that in life, she pulled her arm away. “I didn’t ask,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Did I say, ‘Let me ride along’?”
Diamond felt his stomach and his heart, but he wasn’t sure why.
“We’re here with our friend,” Seldom said.
“I know where we are. But I don’t see why.”
When he concentrated, Seldom squinted. The long squint ended with a firm voice claiming, “We’re here to help Diamond.”
Elata looked at Diamond. Her eyes and face had never worn that expression, mistrustful and sad and very nearly desperate. Then she looked out the open door, saying, “He doesn’t need us. He has the Master and his bodyguard, and everybody else.”
Crossing his arms, squeezing his chest, Seldom said, “Diamond is our friend.”
“I know.”
“Diamond’s my best friend,” he said.
“Not mine,” she said.
The air had changed te
mperature. Diamond couldn’t tell if it was colder or warmer, but there was a difference.
She said, “You’re my best friend, Seldom. Diamond is second.”
The boy had to smile, but he didn’t seem to like the happiness.
Diamond wanted to talk, and so he said, “Maybe.”
His friends looked at him, waiting.
“Maybe you’re here so I can take care of you,” he said.
Elata made a scornful face, considering those words.
“Maybe,” said Seldom, without conviction.
Yet if that were true, then Diamond should accomplish some good act. But nothing could be done or said that seemed beneficial, and those thoughts put him back into a gray sorry place.
Then Good let loose with a wild celebratory hoot.
Out in the wilderness, myriad monkeys returned the call.
Dropping to all fours, Good sprinted back to the children, saying, “Old man back.”
The little airship climbed into view, chasing them through the trees.
Nissim was awake again.
The children stood.
The little airship revved its engine and then slowed again, aiming for Bountiful’s door. Mr. Fret nearly clipped his right wing as he slid onboard.
Father was out and walking before the airship was restrained. It was important to give his son a smile and nod, and then he asked a pair of mechanics, “Why aren’t you gone? These woods are clear as glass.”
Nobody answered. A captain’s decisions didn’t need defending.
Tar`ro got to his feet, but the Master remained seated. From the chair, he asked, “What did Prima say?”
Blood lit up Father’s face. He intended to answer, or perhaps he had a different subject in mind. Diamond never learned what words would come next.
The man hesitated.
His head tipped on its side, eyes nearly closed. “Cut your engine, Fret,” he shouted.
The engine was rattling and spitting stink, and then it was quieter, the propeller taking its time spinning down.
Bountiful’s engines continued pushing, but a sharper second noise was closing.
Tar`ro stared at the floor, and getting to his feet, Nissim looked at the ceiling, nodding without comment.
