The Memory of Sky

by Robert Reed

  Merit tried to follow. The knee fought him, but the man refused pain and weakness and his own gathering age. He wanted nothing but to take care of the last shred of his family, and that’s why he managed to sprint for a fair distance. Nobody followed. He discovered that he was alone, limping along the ridge’s crest. Then he stepped wrong on the weak leg, tilting and recovering. But as the pain escalated, his strong leg slipped out from under him. He fell hard and spun down the far side of the ridge, and his cheek shattered and one wrist snapped before he came to a rest inside a wide bowl where rainwater clung to the sandy coral grit.

  Merit lay on his back.

  Machines were flying, approaching from every direction.

  For a moment, he could hear Diamond calling for him. Or he imagined the familiar, wondrous voice. Either way, Merit sat up and remained sitting upright, and a creature that was scampering up that same slope spotted him and turned its course, approaching close enough that there was nothing in the world but the coral beneath and the titanic beast that overwhelmed—a papio’s shape but enlarged, juvenile in the face but powerful and sure-footed, strange pink hair that wasn’t hair, and lungs like bellows breathing hard after a very long run.

  “Divers,” said Merit.

  “And you are?” a booming voice asked, in papio.

  He said his name both ways. “Merit,” and then, “Deserve.”

  “I know you,” said the creature. “Yes, I know all about you.”

  Then Divers reached down with both of those huge hands, one set of fingers carefully cradling the injured body while other fingers closed together, and that was the hand that pulled, removing the man’s tiny head.

  TWELVE

  The life inside him had never been so full and rich.

  But the life outside, what Diamond carried on his shoulders and soul, was nearly lost. Home and that wonderful room were lost. The wooden soldiers were ashes, and so was Mother. Mother was lost everywhere but inside his mind, and he didn’t have time or the resolve to make those memories even passingly real. Not thinking about his mother, Diamond felt ashamed. His good brief life was in ruins. Besides the tattered school uniform, he owned nothing physical. There was nothing to carry but thoughts and shifting urges, memories on the surface and memories buried and ideas that didn’t deserve being called plans and emotions that scalded and brightened, too quick and far too restless to be tamed. Diamond had to shoulder his misery. Huge and relentless, the sense of grievous loss made his body tremble while roiling, bitter sensations kept finding ways to share the agony, the despair. A perfect indestructible mind could never leave any notion behind. The boy was convinced that he would never stop suffering, and indeed, he would have argued and maybe fought with any voice claiming that one day, with time, these horrific losses would stop slicing him down the middle.

  But even now, more than devastation lived inside him.

  That bizarre, wonderful sister emerged from hiding long enough to give him glimpses of the world she saw, which was different from the world Diamond knew. Quest was wondrous, and if she wasn’t blessing enough, in those last moments together, Quest gave Diamond their second sister—another splendid creature, but this one more similar to him than different.

  Even at its worst, the immortal Creation was inventive. What might happen was inevitable, and every event and circumstance and loving face would find ways to repeat itself. That great odd thought meant that if nothing ever ended, and Diamond realized that if the world could live on and on, with him or without him, then every good soul would come around again.

  Woven through his misery: beauty.

  Sitting inside the little cabin, he asked the walls and Good, “Where did that thought come from?”

  No voice had spoken to him from outside. Plainly, this notion grew out of some secret piece of his mind.

  But the beauty proved unreliable. Bountiful was about to crash, and Diamond was begging with the Creators for everyone’s survival, and that’s when the papio man ran into the machine shop. He was the man with the knives. The padded box was under his arm. Suddenly the world was nothing but stark and sick and horrible. Old pains returned. Scalding embarrassment stole his breath. What had been cut away from him was aching again, and the boy instantly dropped his gaze, closing his eyes and making new wishes. Then the box was thrown overboard, and the man who cut him had vanished. Diamond presumed that he fell or jumped when Bountiful began to shake. That made it seem as if one wish had been answered, which gave those next moments a rich sense of magic . . . and what was magic if not the finest beauty . . . ?

  As the airship crashed, Diamond focused hard on a single thought: everybody who died now would ultimately emerge again from the trees and sunlight, from the rain that washed every dawn and the ashes of the dead mixed into that rain.

  That seemed a pretty, perfect thought.

  And after the crash, it was possible to believe that everybody survived because of Diamond’s thinking. He must have cast some spell, yes. Clambering barefoot out onto the dusty coral, the boy felt miraculous. All of his people were alive. They emerged from the wreckage hurt but whole, and Good was equally blessed. Diamond didn’t think about the human crew or papio soldiers that he hadn’t saved. He was a gruesomely tired boy who didn’t have time or the urge to imagine the suffering of unseen faces. The bare soles of his feet were bleeding against the rough coral, growing hot while healing. Then Elata and Seldom began talking about the papio man, about the half-invisible shape that had yanked him upwards. Quest had to be responsible—they said it and Diamond believed it—and all at once he was running, sprinting on toes already healing as thick leathery callus.

  Nothing was as important as this dash through smoke and across the wasteland; Diamond had to find his sister in the fiery ruins.

  With its belly sheared free, Bountiful’s gas bags and bridge had jumped higher into the air, avoiding a long stretch of the rising ridge. The crash site wasn’t as close as it appeared. Diamond’s first surge took him into a wall of smoke that suddenly lifted, revealing coral boulders stacked haphazardly, lifting toward a faraway tangle of corona parts and fire. An irregular pop-pop-pop warned that ammunition was detonating. The smoke left behind the good odor of burnt wood and the sick flavor of cooked flesh. Diamond hesitated, eyes hunting for the quickest route. Then came more pop-pops from behind and overhead, and he stopped to turn and look, discovering whiffbirds descending, and beyond them, a pair of swift fletches flying the bloodwood banners of the District of Districts.

  He managed one deep breath.

  Then some little motion drew his gaze. He saw his father. Father was coming, struggling along the sharp uneven blade of this awful ridge, looking miserable, and Diamond had never felt more love. Father’s eyes were looking down. Every stride had to be measured before it was taken. The sore knee had to endure one step and then brace for the next step, and the next. The man barely glanced up, and he never looked at Diamond, and then one bad step caused him to wobble, wobble and then catch himself before he tumbled, instantly lost to view.

  Diamond ran back down the slope, calling to his father.

  Overhead, one of the fletches fired a big cannon, and the most distant whiffbird exploded, haphazard pieces falling past the reef’s last lip.

  The boy paused on a knoll of sparkling blue coral, and one last time, he screamed, “Father.”

  Then he didn’t as much run as he leapt, one knoll to the next, bouncing down the ridge and down the far bank, reaching a place where he finally saw the man alive and well enough to sit upright. And that was the last moment for a very long time when Diamond could find anything inside him that felt remotely like happiness.

  The allegiance of outsiders let Divers win over the Seven, and that great success left her free to entertain the seductive, nearly respectable notion that dominion didn’t have borders, that control didn’t have to end with her skin.

  No soul would be as close to her as the Seven. Yet there were different ways to belong and endless avenues
when it came to possession. Divers had allies among the papio, and she was shrewd enough or lucky enough to choose the right champions. For several hundred days, she asked for favors that were just large enough or wrong enough to test their resolve. None mentioned her little crimes to the higher powers. Researchers and the military didn’t seem to watch her anymore carefully than before. Then one day—a decidedly ordinary day—she casually asked a few trusted soldiers and former caretakers if there might be an easy way, a clean way, to get rid of the Diamond boy.

  More than she had hoped, her suggestion was embraced. Plans were drawn up and thrown into fire pits when they proved unworkable. Then new plans were invented and measured, and discarded, but this time with insights and a fresh sense of what was a little bit possible and what might be achieved with the Fates’ help.

  One morning, a highly placed papio—a stranger until that moment—approached Divers with a battle plan in hand. That was the moment when she realized that for some papio and quite a few tree-walkers, Diamond was the greatest enemy imaginable. And that was probably the last moment when a phrase from her and one hard stare could have ended the plot.

  But the proposed target was a single tree, and destroying Marduk seemed proportioned, even reasonable.

  Divers gave her approval, and none of the Seven attempted to stop her.

  Twenty days before the attack, during a final meeting of conspirators, one grinning lieutenant revealed that with so much fuel and manpower on hand, a far wider attack had been mandated. “In case the little boy wanders or escapes every trap,” was the excuse offered.

  Divers couldn’t disagree with the logic.

  Tritian couldn’t agree. He said nothing, but even his silence felt disapproving. Yet Divers was secure enough to invite her brother’s opinion: one last chance to offer up whatever words that he wished.

  Tritian responded with the obvious logic. “If this happens, and if everything afterward happens as you hope, then the humans and the world only lose everything that they might have gotten from that one boy.”

  No offspring, in other words. Which assumed of course that Diamond could father children . . . but waiting to find out meant waiting too long. If Diamond vanished, both human species would remain frail and mortal, which was exactly what Divers intended.

  The Eight knew this: They had lived forever inside the old corona, implying they were in some fashion immortal. Immortal beings could afford patience. The forest and every soft mind around them would soon forget the carnage. The Eight would remember, and the other two siblings too, assuming they continued wandering the world for thousands and millions of days. And of course Diamond wouldn’t actually be dead. That was a point worth making, worth repeating. The boy would survive fire and stomach acids. And a better day was coming, a perfect day when the world that Divers had created could dredge up an old corona, embracing that human child all over again.

  That’s where she put her thoughts. Every day until the trees fell, Divers reminded herself that the suffering would pass. Revenge was just a different kind of storm. Regrets mattered, but lumped together, the voices inside her—the Seven’s voices and her own—were the world’s smallest noise.

  The attack was delivered on schedule, and the only important failure in that fine bold overgrown scheme was that against long odds, Diamond survived for another two days.

  But that was best, in the end. The boy was a critical chore best done by Divers and Divers alone.

  She ran through the night to meet Bountiful, but it fell short of her and she had to sprint to the crash site, finding Merit first. The slayer was sitting up and talking. And Divers killed him swiftly, without pain, and then she wiped the one hand clean on her trousers, thinking only about Diamond.

  Because some moments have to be perfect, she misheard a nearby thudding, looking at the echo, not the cannon.

  The boy was as obvious and tiny as she had imagined. He was perched high on the eroded crest of sourlip, big eyes bright from an endless flow of tears. Shame struck, but the sensation was brief and weak. Disapproving words danced about her. But there was no need to defend her actions, not to herself or any suffering witnesses. The adoptive father would have been a stumbling stone. There was no doubt in that matter. As every papio understood, dangerous stones should be kicked off the path, and nothing too wrong had been done. Yet Divers found herself wasting a few breaths arguing with the whispers coming from each of the Seven.

  “Merit was disruptive,” she said with her mind.

  She warned, “He would have fought us now, and he would have led the assault to recover his son tomorrow and the day after.”

  Then aloud, she said, “Time makes sense of every mess.”

  And she paused at that point, waiting for Tritian’s response, or anyone’s. But the only voice came from a weak sister and her steadiest ally.

  “You’re talking,” said the girl. “But you’re not talking to us.”

  Divers laughed.

  “None of us spoke,” the sister insisted.

  She laughed out loud, mocking the liars.

  Meanwhile the boy hadn’t moved, which was hard to believe. Diamond was staring at the Eight. Fresh smoke was standing tall behind him. He should have run into the smoke while he had the chance. Divers had foolishly given him enough time to flee, or better than that, hide. If that little body wormed its way deep inside a crevice, it could keep out of her reach for a little while. But no, he was standing on the same knoll, too stunned or sad to think, much less act on the simplest instinct.

  At last, Divers began climbing to the ridge’s crest. The reef beneath her was as narrow and keen as an old medical scalpel, and she couldn’t run fast. The boy watched her coming, and then he yelled, one hand high over his head and waving, as if that motion helped fling his word into the high bright morning air.

  “Here,” he shouted. And again, “Here.”

  Divers glanced over her shoulder. Two fletches were closing on the boy, but they were still too distant to matter.

  She sprinted on feet and hands.

  Then the hard chugging rattle of rotors took away every other sound, and three whiffbirds came from behind, sweeping low over her, two of the craft pivoting before settling on the ridge in front of Divers, stubbornly barring her way.

  The unit banners told her everything. These were birds from a distant base, and none of these soldiers could be trusted.

  Divers stopped for an instant, pretending obedience.

  To the Seven, she said, “Suggestions.”

  No one responded.

  Then she broke into a hard sprint, bounding down the slope to evade the big machines. Armed warriors jumped free, shouting commands at each other and at her. She was past the first whiffbird when the second machine launched again. A loudspeaker punched through the roar, the woman pilot shouting to her, saying, “Back away and let us take the prize. The prize. The prize.”

  Divers paused, listening for the other Seven, listening carefully, but she heard nothing. Not disapproval, not agreement. Not rage or fear or even an empty gray sound inviting her to do what she wished.

  What she wished.

  The world’s largest hands grabbed and yanked, a lump of coral wrenched free of the weathered reef. Her aim felt wrong, and as soon as the projectile left the hand, she began hunting for more ammunition. But the pilot never imagined being attacked by something as stark as one tossed stone. She couldn’t guess Divers’ power and flew straight until the canopy shattered and the airship dove, striking nose-first, rotors shattering and scattering before the wreckage came to rest on the broken, worn-out ground.

  Divers picked up one of the rotor blades—a long piece of corona bone, white in the body and whiter along the sharpest edge—and ran on. The third whiffbird had settled just under the knoll, on a tiny patch of half-flat ground. Diamond was surrounded by papio soldiers. He didn’t run from them either. Then a big loudspeaker blared, a tree-walker yelling from the nearest fletch, the worst possible rendering of papio s
aying, “Ours, ours, ours.”

  Divers arrived at the base of the knoll.

  Two soldiers lifted their rifles, and she chopped them with the blade.

  An officer fired into her body, and she knocked him down with her sword’s blunt face, yanking the gun away before lifting his body—a proud papio warrior held kicking in one hand.

  The Seven said nothing.

  The officer rose and spun once in the air before landing in the whiffbird’s whirring rotors, and the reef was splattered with pieces and mist.

  Panicked, the remaining soldiers scattered.

  But Diamond remained where he had always been, rocking side to side and then not rocking, setting his feet apart and his hands at his side.

  “What are you doing?” Divers called out.

  “Standing like soldier,” said the weeping boy.

  “You should have run,” she said.

  “You should run,” he said.

  “Your people aren’t close enough to help,” Divers said.

  The boy wiped his eyes with his fingers, the right eye and then the left, and that hand dropped to his side again.

  Divers started to climb the steep slope.

  And then at last, finally, one of the Seven spoke. Quietly, firmly, that loyal little sister asked, “Are we certain that Diamond is alone?”

  Feet stood their ground, and it became their ground. No other place was worth so much courage and strength, passion and the unalloyed need to make the world understand its value. This one space was precious, and he said so with his entire body, including the hand clinging to the polished brass tube.

  Father’s officers had temporarily become Prima’s officers. One officer was watching Bountiful’s long fall and its fiery crash. King studied the human working the controls, moving dials that engaged tiny motors that moved a telescope lashed to the Ruler’s skin, changing directions and focus and the magnification. Several large telescopes were feeding light into the Ruler’s bridge. Each had its officer watching a distant critical part of the world. Then once King understood the mechanisms, he made the officer move aside. King didn’t lift the man, and he certainly didn’t strike the uniform or the face. But the human discovered that he had lost his space, and several soldiers saw the incident and came forwards, discussing how to force King aside.