The Memory of Sky

by Robert Reed

  One simple story had been recited many times, and the Archon told it best. The narrow, shrill-voiced man thought it was a good story, a comforting explanation. He smiled as believably as he could manage, promising Diamond that this fierce, seemingly endless contest was inevitable. It had to happen. Because Diamond existed, this was nothing less than destiny. Nodding, List explained that whatever Diamond was, he had always been the irresistible prize: a human who wasn’t quite human, a blessing that was going to remake one species and the Creation.

  Perhaps. But nothing was known for certain, Diamond said.

  List scoffed at that complaint and maybe at the weak will that made it. The great prize was the great prize because of belief. Reality was everyone’s secondary concern. But of course Diamond would be a man soon, and everything might be answered soon. He would have a family of enduring, unbreakable children, or there wouldn’t be any children and he would be just one great blessing, like King.

  The Archon of Archons claimed that both of those destinies should make the boy smile now and again.

  Diamond still smiled, but never for those suffocating reasons.

  Habit and being polite were the only reasons to smile anymore.

  Everybody held various opinions, except for Mother. She didn’t pretend ten opinions, or even just two. There was one hard truth and nothing else: she was a widow who lost more than her husband. Everything but her only son was gone, and the son that she couldn’t stop loving had proved himself to be as ugly as was every angry boy and boyish man who ever picked up a club.

  Haddi didn’t pretend to understand what was inevitable about the world. Where the war might have emerged, if it began on its own or with help, were questions not worth the trouble. What she did know—what her heart and mind and soul understood too well—was that inside Diamond, underneath everything special, waited a beast just like the beast inside the rest of them.

  Standing in the darkness, touching that unfastened door, Diamond saw his mother. Several conversations replayed themselves inside the same intense moment. She was weeping while talking to her son. She was talking to him while her face was like coral, a pale coral, rigid and cold. And she was warm-voiced and calm, looking at the ceiling as she spoke. And finally, she was quietly talking to Good, pretending not to notice the beast standing a few steps away.

  In each case, the same message was delivered.

  “He would have been so disappointed,” she said.

  To her son, she said, “Your father.”

  To the monkey, she said, “Merit.”

  Then she said, “That good man despised violence against humans. It didn’t matter if they were us or if they were the papio. He never wanted to raise a hand, much less incinerate hundreds of them. And he certainly wouldn’t approve of you trying to murder one of your own siblings.”

  “The Eight were evil,” Diamond said, trying to combat her logic.

  “You knew that,” she said skeptically.

  “I did,” he claimed.

  “And that fact hasn’t changed?”

  There were papio soldiers who had protected the Eight, and now they were squatting inside tree-walker prisons and interrogation cells. They didn’t describe a simple evil giant. Nothing about the creature was simple, including the mastermind—Divers.

  “But Divers killed my father,” Diamond said.

  That was the day when Mother was addressing Good, not him.

  “I saw Divers kill him,” Diamond shouted, his voice livid, each word blended into the next.

  Mother’s face turned hard and cold. She stared at the monkey and then turned to her son. The pretty mouth was pinched, and the dark red-rimmed eyes refused to blink. Then very quietly, almost too softly to be heard, she said, “I know what you saw. But what your father would ask. If he were sitting next to me, if he could look at you . . . ”

  The boy’s anger abandoned him.

  He didn’t intend to ask, “What would Father ask?”

  But his mouth muttered that question just the same.

  Mother’s voice didn’t answer. She changed the gait and color of her words, sounding very much like Merit when she said, “Diamond. Tell me. How many fathers did you kill that day?”

  Wrenching endless sadness took his heart. Pain that would cripple anyone else became a weight, Diamond’s massive and faithful burden. But the murderous boy kept living. He managed to sleep nights and eat every day, growing in little bursts like every other boy, and the hair changed on his body, and when he wasn’t conscious about his grief and guilt, he became very much aware of new feelings—feelings as old as any species living inside the Creation.

  The memories faltered, and the present returned.

  In the middle of this night, Diamond took one long breath, holding the air deep inside his chest while all of its oxygen was married to his salty blood.

  Then the sentry walked past the door, beginning his rounds, and the boy waited for half a recitation before slipping into the hallway, still not breathing, nothing useful left inside his lungs, his legs working with a magic that he couldn’t hope to understand.

  Important humans knew how to curry favor, and that was why the Archon used to receive gifts, enormous numbers of fine rare wondrous gifts.

  That was before the war.

  In those days, Father was the world’s most important man, and it was fashionable among the half-powerful to give him portraits and sculptures of his extraordinary son. And that was why King’s rooms were crowded with big canvas sheets slathered in paint, and tall blocks of carved wood and carved coral, and best of all, figurines built wholly from corona parts. Each work represented him, and they were usually competent and sometimes inspired. Few humans actually visited King inside his own quarters, but the typical reaction was to assume that the giant, heavily-armored beast was self-absorbed. Why else populate your home with thirty-seven portrayals of yourself?

  Except none of these objects were King, and that’s what he liked.

  With paint and knives, King had altered each one of the gifts. An unsuspected artistic talent helped him adjust the lay of the armor and the color of spikes and the precise dimensions of legs and arms and the two mouths. Why this should matter was a mystery, particularly to him, but the creature never questioned his instincts. He considered these figures to be his family. Maybe they were ancestors; maybe they hadn’t been born yet. Names and life stories mattered less than their presence, particularly the sense that he belonged to some abundant species populated with names and important stories.

  King was taller than any human, tree-walker or reef-walker, and he weighed half again more than the largest papio. But three hundred days ago, this body that he barely understood had stopped growing. He knew that before anyone else. The butcher scale in the doctors’ offices soon proved it. Eating more earned him nothing but more frequent trips to the toilet. His full-sized body was also showing other signs of maturity, and he had to assume that each stage was inevitable, natural, and healthy. Yet how could he be certain? A species of one had no guidelines, no history. He was alone in the worst ways, and alone in the best too, and maybe that’s why it was easy to take pleasure from standing inside a magnificent room where King-like figures were set in rows—a pattern that felt right and proper and lovely.

  “Did you hear the explosions?” asked his guest.

  “They woke me,” said the breathing mouth.

  “How many?”

  King raised both hands, implying twelve.

  His brother nodded, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  “Did he wake?” King asked.

  “Not when I jumped over his bed,” Diamond said.

  It was an old joke. The Archon was a light sleeper, but both of them had experience slipping through the man’s home without being noticed—unless List was aware and had decided not to challenge either of them.

  “Where was the fight?” asked Diamond.

  King pointed at the memory of each blast.

  “My old home,” the
human said sadly.

  Only little battles were fought in the Corona District. The blackwoods were dead, and the papio had all but abandoned that portion of their reef, which made this night a bit unusual.

  “Maybe someone’s starting a large offensive,” said King.

  Diamond nodded.

  King had finished growing, but the human was only beginning. Everything that had been frail and small about Diamond was being swallowed by strong human muscle and a skeleton that was brawnier than anyone might have guessed. If the boy grew like his truly human cousins, he might end up tall. He could even find power, in some fashion. But he was also a species of one, which meant that nobody knew the answers. He could just as well grow until enormous, or he could transform into some unsuspected entity, like a thunderfly springing out of its chrysalis.

  “Let’s watch the war,” King suggested.

  Diamond was holding the fancy brass knob. He started to open the door but then closed it again.

  “I’ll get us to a spotter station,” King said.

  “No,” the boy said. “I don’t want to see the war now.”

  King waited, knowing what was coming.

  “Put it out,” Diamond said.

  They had used the sign five nights ago, and this was too soon.

  “Or I’ll put it out,” he said.

  Saying nothing, King walked to the wall nearest the outside world, gently lifting a statue of himself made from silvery corals frosted with paint. This was the statue that resembled him best, which was why he called it Grandfather. It took a fair amount of power to lift his ancestor, exposing a small hole that had been surreptitiously cut through the wall and between the sacks of protective water, leaving a tube where a simple bell and tether lived.

  With his breathing mouth, King blew into the tube.

  The bell dropped and the rope straightened, and the bell rang out. Not even King’s exceptional ears could hear the tiny clangor, not from indoors. Which was why they had settled on this signal.

  The statue was set back in place.

  Diamond was waiting in the empty hallway, patient but not patient.

  A bolted steel door led to the rest of the palace. But they took a different route, climbing stairs to an observation tower built from corona parts and the strongest glass ever pulled from a furnace.

  In other times, the District of Districts would have worn spectacular lights. Even in the belly of the night, a million people would have been awake, burning candles and electric fires, and the little public blimps would have been climbing and falling, taking insomniacs and drunks to whatever door seemed like a good idea. But this was wartime. Fuel wasn’t scarce, but the generals demanded rationing to build character. Besides, just the glimmer of a few hundred lights would help the enemy wings navigate between the giant bloodwoods, and nobody wanted to make any attacks easier for the papio.

  One window panel was unlocked. Diamond popped the latch and pushed the glass inward—a curved triangle rimmed with a rubbery white gasket made from corona fat.

  They waited.

  In the distance, in the direction of Diamond’s former home, were several more blasts, each with enough punch and heart to be heard by human ears.

  Diamond crossed his arms, saying nothing.

  They might wait until dawn, of course. Or this could be a wasted night, although that would be unusual.

  Because he wanted to talk, King said, “Dreams.”

  “None were interesting,” said Diamond.

  Sometimes the boy endured glimpses of an earlier life, or at least that’s what he claimed. He told what he could remember and what he might remember, and sometimes he made allusions about a disembodied voice that came while he was awake, dispensing nuts of wisdom and nuts with no meat at all.

  “What about your dreams?” the boy teased.

  King had never suffered from those hallucinations. Sleep was oblivion for most of his soul, black and intense and relatively brief, while a lucid sliver of his mind remained on duty, constantly watching for enemies and potential allies.

  The brothers stood together but not together. They looked like strangers who happened to share a destination.

  Night held its pace, and talk fell away to bored silence, and King considered sleeping on his feet.

  Finally the boy said, “She won’t come.”

  “It’s too soon,” King agreed.

  Five nights ago, while they stood exactly here, a pair of night-flying leatherwings had descended on the tower. One of the leatherwings circled nearby while his mate landed on the sill and reshaped her face, conjuring a human mouth and young woman’s voice.

  “Good evening, brothers,” she had said.

  Quest’s skills never stopped improving. Any body shape was possible, rendered with the proper feel and scent and countless details. The male leatherwing had been fooled by her disguise. King had heard the high-high-pitched cries demanding caution, professing love, and endlessly promising to remain loyal whatever happened. And as always, he felt admiration for this marvelous creature. But it wasn’t love, no. He wouldn’t allow love to blossom ever, no. But there were secret thoughts where his sister grew brave enough to slip inside the palace with King. Diamond was anywhere else, and once inside King’s quarters, she would summon a body like his, only female.

  How she would look, he had no clue.

  And the biggest part of his secret, what made his hearts race, was failing to imagine that wondrous moment.

  Five nights ago, the brothers shared gossip about the war while their cautious sister described what she had seen. Tree-walkers had attacked the City of Round Roads, but they did it only because the city was already devastated. The papio didn’t defend wastelands. Heavily armored airships pulverized the broken buildings, and all but one returned to base intact.

  The secret consensus and the public consensus were very similar: the war was going badly for both species. The papio were always short of fuel and bombs, while the tree-walkers could make all the alcohol and explosives they wanted from what remained of their forest. But the tree-walkers had lost far too many airships, and there was nervous, consistent talk that the stockpiles of corona parts were just about spent.

  “I don’t see them preparing for any abduction raid,” Quest volunteered.

  The boy always asked about the imaginary raids. Five nights ago, he accepted the news the same as always: silently, nodding once and then once more before steering the conversation back to Quest.

  Their sister wore endless shapes, but she never stopped carrying her fears. Even when it was just the three of them, escape routes on all sides, she remained guarded, anxious. She might talk about where she went at night, but her daylight haunts were her own business. She had dropped clues that she was human-shaped now and again, but whenever King brought up the possibility, Quest offered various reasons why that disguise was too demanding and far too dangerous.

  “Humans don’t notice leatherwings and epiphytes,” she said. “All humans care about are their own faces and the sounds those faces leak.”

  King remembered every word spoken at the last meeting.

  Diamond was probably doing the same.

  The giant looked at his brother’s face, reading the seriousness. “What do you want to ask her tonight?”

  “Nothing,” the boy lied.

  Bright green eyes stared, King waiting.

  Finally, Diamond admitted, “I wanted to talk about the Eight.”

  Just mentioning the name caused the plates on King’s shoulders to life.

  “Where is Divers?” the boy added.

  They looked at one another for a long while. Then the human approached the open window, and King stood behind him, watching the naked hands touching the white gasket and the sill where their sister would perch, if she showed. But she wasn’t coming tonight. They should give up the hope and sneak back to their quarters before their absence was noticed by someone who cared enough to sound an alarm.

  In the distance—a different d
irection this time—King heard the screaming of a single papio rocket flying flat and swiftly into a flurry of cannon fire, accomplishing nothing, the rocket continuing on its important path.

  Diamond probably only heard a murmur of the battle. But he tilted his head, listening intently.

  And then the rocket struck its target or maybe a lucky cannon shell, and the explosion spread outwards, the blaze outraced by a roar that made the great bloodwood tree shiver slightly.

  Diamond breathed hard, and he pushed his head into the open air.

  King watched the back of the creature’s close-shaved head, the tiny neck exposed. Was this a test? Was the boy testing if his brother could be trusted? Regret was a beast that preyed on other creatures, not King. He never once doubted his reasons for trying to cut off Diamond’s head and throw the pieces back to the coronas. One moment demanded one action, but moments changed. Conditions slipped away, leaving new conditions. This boy might remake his species, or he would fail, but King would more than likely remain the largest and smartest brother. Eventually the war would end, and the Archon would die in his sleep, more likely than not, and his son would inherit whatever remained of this Creation. At that moment, inside a single breath, there was no other future worth cherishing.

  They listened to the night.

  Finally Diamond pulled his head back inside the tower, ready to close the window and give up on their sister.

  But then he paused.

  Diamond stood as motionless and King was close behind him, watching him, not thinking about anything at all.

  Diamond was like a statue.

  And King heard the voice.

  Very quietly, the voice said, “This is the Great Day.”

  King couldn’t tell which of his ears had heard the voice, if any. He didn’t recognize the language, yet the words and meanings were perfectly understandable. Needing a worthy explanation, he decided that Diamond had pulled some trick on him, and maybe he should break Diamond’s spine in a few places, as a warning.

  But then that little neck turned, and nothing in that human face hinted at a joke.