by Robert Reed
Karlan joined the pilot, pushing binoculars against his eyes. Maybe the first wings were holding back, but a second wave was coming fast as bullets, and he didn’t recognize their design.
Oh, he had to smile.
“Surrender your weapon, son,” said the captain.
“I’ve seen this before,” Karlan said. “The papio are going to board us. They want our ships.”
“Impossible,” the captain said.
These new wings were blunt but powerful, faster than any other wing that was capable of hovering, but that’s what they intended to do, pushing close as the jets began to tilt, killing their terrific forward momentum.
“Oh, sir,” the pilot said.
“Your weapon,” said the captain, showing a trembling hand.
Karlan ran. Three strides and he was off the bridge, out of sight. The captain had so much free time that he could come across the intercom, telling his crew that the young ensign was insubordinate and possibly a traitor and to take all necessary measures to bring him under control.
The cargo hold was in the ship’s belly. If Karlan had to jump onboard a moving fletch, that’s where he’d make it happen. But a couple slayer/soldiers were waiting in the hallway just outside, automatic weapons aimed at the criminal.
Karlan stopped and dropped his pistol, and then his empty hands lifted a little higher than his waist.
He smiled until the faces relaxed. Nobody was about to be shot.
The roar of jets ended the peace, followed by one hard blast.
The Girl lifted and two slayers fell. Then Karlan was between them, grabbing up one of their guns and both of them, handing over his pistol to the unarmed man.
“What’s happening?” that man asked.
“I don’t know,” Karlan said. “Let’s look.”
The doorway into the hold was jammed by the blast. Karlan stepped back and kicked it once, and it was open. Sunlight rose from what should be darkness. He stayed back and fired just one round, and a bullet came back at him, striking the metal doorframe before turning into coral dust.
Coral instead of metal; the papio didn’t want punctured bladders by accident.
Karlan cursed and fired but stayed back, hiding his body.
The man with the pistol was much braver. Jumping into the opening, he screamed, “We’re boarded,” and fired once before sitting on the floor with his throat shattered and blood pumping down the front of his cheap, badly fitted armor.
Karlan put his free hand on the other slayer.
“Wait,” he said.
Just as he guessed, a flash grenade came rattling out from below. He jumped on it and flung it back below, and one of those fine rugged papio curses could be heard just before the thump of the blast.
Smoke came next, thick and black.
Again, Karlan told his companion, “Wait.”
Papio soldiers were shouting at each other. Karlan couldn’t understand any words, but five distinct voices seemed to be arguing tactics.
The slayer beside him was shaking with nerves.
Not Karlan.
As a boy, he heard those stories about great warriors who were happy only when they were in battle. But what he had learned already as a fighter was that battles brought nothing that was happy. Gunfire scared him to the core, and he was no different than the others. But what attracted him—what found Karlan in these moments and what lingered afterwards—was the sense that most of existence was nothing. Life was an empty place full of nothing, like one of those heavy jars in the labs where they pumped out the air and the heat, leaving nothing but the void. Only in these little moments of terror did something true and real rush into the emptiness.
This moment wasn’t joyful and it wasn’t unpleasant. Now and for the next long while, Karlan would experience the absolute clarity that comes when life begins and nothing else has room. A mind could engage so fully that it would race past the ordinary, and that’s why he left the trembling slayer behind. Crawling into the smoke, Karlan grabbed the shot slayer by the back of his armor. The man was still bleeding, still dying. He was easy to hold up high, and Karlan stood and fired into the clearing smoke just once, just to draw attention, and two soldiers shot the doomed slayer and Karlan kept holding him, pieces of coral finishing the job.
The papio had to steal this ship fast.
They advanced bravely, and Karlan used the dead man as a shield, putting down four of the enemy before his clip was empty.
The fifth soldier got into the hallway.
And then it was nothing but hands and feet and teeth, and yeah, maybe that part of the battle got to be fun.
THREE
The two of them had never touched.
“Hold my hand,” she said, standing close to him but not close.
The spotter was already excited by everything happening below. Looking at the woman, he was startled and a little thrilled to discover that she was prettier than he recalled. She wasn’t watching the battle through her little telescope. Looking at him, her hand was outstretched with those long fingers rippling, and that fine young face was showing some him some kind of smile.
He took the offered hand.
Something cut into his palm.
He said, “Ouch,” even as he tried to hold on to her. But the pain was too intense, and he took back his hand, shaking it slowly, stoically.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
The spotter meant to say that it was nothing, forget it. But his words started to pile up on his thickening tongue.
“Sit down,” the pretty woman suggested.
Sitting was the last thing that he wanted to do. Blinking hard, he looked through his telescope’s eyepiece. Except the giant corona had turned into one very dark blur, and the fletches and papio wings were nearly invisible against the yellow shine of the demon floor and the world beneath.
He rubbed his eyes, using the hand that didn’t hurt.
Then he stopped rubbing, and without feeling any sensation, he quietly dropped to the floor.
The woman stepped over him. She was still quite pretty, except her face was wrong in the middle, dark human eyes replaced with bulging domes that resembled brightly polished crystal. And that was the moment when, for many fine reasons, the man lost consciousness.
Mayhem ants stung bark rats and other prey with this toxin. Creating the molecule was simple. Using it successfully was more problematic. The man could stop breathing, which would leave her with the unwelcome decision of employing the antidote or not. Or the man could die of cardiac failure, which would present her with another dilemma—whether or not to eat his empty body.
But thankfully the man’s breathing remained steady.
Quest claimed his telescope—the big better telescope. Her new eyes were more powerful than anything a proud hawk would sport. Through the glass, she saw three fletches burning, bladders and torn hulls splattering against the demon floor. One more fletch was hovering above the great corona, a hair of steel tight between them. The corona was the greatest in Creation, its interior gorged with hot air and vacuum, and the circular body shook every time hot air roared out of its mouth, shoving it a little higher. Every strength was being spent to maintain its slight altitude above the glistening floor, and it spoke only as it breathed again, falling slowly—speaking as waves of yellow light that swirl across the bloated gray body, the effect pitiful and magnificent.
The papio had surrounded the corona, throwing cannon fire at the free-flying airships and flares at each other, and then they weren’t firing anymore, circling their quarry at a wide, watchful distance.
Quest considered stepping outside, remaking herself with the sleek shape of a champion hawk and then leaping.
But one bold thought woke old fears, nailing her current feet to the floor.
And then as if proving her wisdom, new aircraft arrived at the battle site. They were swift despite being burly, odd bones riding some very powerful jets. Quest had studied every papio weapon, and these resembled nothing else—
entities created just now, for this special day.
One of the new aircraft rushed the corona, jets pivoting as it slowed abruptly, parking beneath that lone fletch that had lashed itself to the creature.
The corona blew air and hovered, and the other fletches converged, making a larger circle around their round quarry. And the swift papio wings circled in the distance while the new ships hovered in a single watchful mass. All of the fuel in the world wouldn’t keep the papio aloft for long, she thought. And then the corona let out a bright flash of yellow light, and one side of the body dipped far enough to slice into the demon floor. The floor broke, splitting like the face of water in a bowl, and the creature dropped farther, necks pulling back as if to avoid this fate, and then the great body flapped its edges and blew air and swelled even more, lifting up once again, defeating its weight and its drag for another few moments.
Flares were dropped from the other fletches.
A new plan was found.
Half of hunter ships attacked the corona, piercing it with harpoons tied to lines that dragged dozens of flattened bladders into the bright furious air. Pressurized hydrogen turned the bladders into taut white balloons. The miserable corona continued to flap and blow, but now a hand was lifting it from above. Altitude was bought, and the corona quit struggling for a moment or two, and it was easy to imagine thankfulness in those next flashes of blue light, and then more flashes far beyond purple.
Then the papio attacked again, en masse.
For Quest, time wasn’t defined by how long it took one human mouth to finish one recitation. Time was the accumulation of incidents and activities, and if nothing happened, no time passed. Or like now, everything below her happened at once, and time had never been swifter. Those blunt new aircraft singled out fletches to attack from below, presumably to steal them from their crews. Other fletches were attacked by warrior pilots onboard the roaring hawkspur wings. She could hear the battle, the gunfire and explosions and the occasional blaring horn pushing through the morning air. She heard the concussive blasts of breath coming from the dying giant. What had been scattered fleets turned into a single confused maelstrom. Even her spectacular eyes and swift reflexes fought to keep track of every ship. Nothing was certain. But it seemed as if the papio had the initiative, tearing apart two and then another three fletches with no losses of their own. And every one of the new aircraft was positioned beneath a target—sometimes two underneath the same target. All the fuel in the world wouldn’t keep them aloft for much longer, but this was a one-way mission. Papio soldiers must have drilled and drilled in secret, probably for hundreds of days, learning how to steal the fletches and save themselves while giving their species the spectacular gift.
The tree-walkers were losing.
Quest started making brave little plans to find her way to the reef, to watch any new siblings being born, although there wasn’t much chance that she would actually dare it.
Then an eye that never blinked saw everything change.
The corona was doing nothing. It wasn’t blowing, and the soft old body had shriveled, each of its bladders deflating slightly. And then every neck was moving, swifter than Quest imagined possible. They stretched and reached above the body, those old jaws grabbing what they could and holding as tight as they could with the few teeth left to them. They bit down on the papio machines, nothing else, and the necks tugged until the aircraft spilled one way or another, losing their trim.
Quest counted the ships plunging through the floor.
Every ship died.
One plan was ruined, and now the hawkspurs on the periphery swept in to attack the corona, trying to puncture the balloons keeping it aloft. But more fletches drove harpoons and balloons into the body, and the high-hands were ready with crossing fire and easy, bold targets already short of ammunition. The corona was suddenly limp and most certainly dead, but the papio were defeated as well. One species survived, and what had triggered the slaughter was adorned with a hundred swollen balloons that worked as one, forcing the carcass upwards, fast and then faster.
Quest stepped back from the telescope.
One last time, she looked at the man on the floor. Except for the achingly slow rise and fall of his chest, he didn’t move. He was alive but with nothing to spare.
She knelt down, prying open one blind eye.
A taste of the antidote passed into the quiet, half-dead blood.
Then she stepped outside, looking up at the forest, each of the enormous bloodwoods wrapped with homes and stubby, bristle-leafed limbs, each one tapering down to a point like the point where she stood, as close to the sun as possible. Thousands of people were hiding. Thousands more were watching the marvels below. And meanwhile the dead corona was covered with balloons and rising faster by the instant, which was what Quest was watching when another brave plan came to mind—a plan that refused to be ignored.
Major engagements, regardless how distant, meant the immediate rooms were locked down. Public call-lines were disabled. Air vents were sealed. Toilets stopped working after the first flush. Without windows, the outside world was an invisible realm quivering with potential. One could imagine anything happening. But Diamond’s thoughts always turned the long-feared kidnapping: a squadron of top-line fletches defending the palace, well-rested soldiers marshalling inside the palace hallways and ballrooms, and the papio arriving on columns of flame and thunder.
Most lockdowns were brief and dull, ending without explanation.
The resident sentries were as uninformed as anyone else trapped inside, though they worked hard conveying that guardly sense of stoic, unimaginative resolve.
But there were long attacks that brought endless sirens and little else. The adrenalin kick was soon swallowed by life, and because no room was considered safer than any other, life inside their home continued as best as it could. Elata dressed after breakfast.
The trip to the Grand University was out of the question, so Nissim suggested that school start early.
Mother informed the sentries that everybody would be in the classroom. She sat in back. Good made a bed between her and Diamond. The Master stood up front, and with an expression more calm than concerned, he contemplated the wailings. “This does seem longer than usual,” he admitted.
“Maybe it’s a drill,” Seldom suggested.
Drills sounded the same as attacks, but they had more endurance.
Scratching his chin and the bristly whiteness, Nissim said, “I don’t think a drill . . . ”
And then every siren was turned off, the world filled with an abrupt, ear-rattling silence.
Everyone was ready for the soldiers’ call-line to blare, announcing the lockdown’s end. But what they heard was the grumbling chatter between a pair of men at the end of the adjacent hallway.
Mother excused herself and left.
Master Nissim grabbed a history book, naming a likely page.
Seldom dutifully opened his copy. Diamond had already read the book to the end, and putting his hands over the cover, he closed his eyes, flipping through the pages in his mind.
Mother and the guards were whispering. The guards’ call-line was working, but nobody wanted to share any news with them.
A pad of paper and two pencils were on Elata’s desk. Her textbooks were stowed, and nothing mattered but drawing what was inside her head.
The Master said her name.
“I heard you,” she said, drawing faster.
Nissim wanted to be careful with Elata. Watching the girl, he felt a teacher’s frustrations mixed with growing concerns. Nobody here should be happy. Tragedy had weight and power, and each face showed its effects hundreds of days later. For a long while, Elata was the bellwether, first to anger and quick to cry and quicker still to tell the Master that history was a ridiculous subject.
“It’s all the same story, again and again,” she would complain. “Why waste our little time with crap that never changes?”
“Because what can be predicted can be unders
tood,” he had argued. “And in little ways, the inevitable can be beaten.”
They had some fine debates on the subject, yes.
But ten days ago, there was a change. The girl turned pleasant overnight. She still didn’t want to read history, but she was polite, even sweet about her defiance. A smile kept surfacing, and what most alarmed Nissim was that he believed in her smile. But the girl had always been an accomplished liar. So long as Elata’s true thoughts were a mystery, he intended to watch her carefully.
“Seldom,” said the Master. “Would you please read the bottom passage?”
The boy’s long back needed to be straightened, and Seldom always grew serious when reading. Even reciting a joke, words came out slow and heavy.
“ ‘The first person to define the natural motions of weight was not Akkan Cheen, as is commonly thought. At least three other scientists from three distinct earlier ages have been credited for making these discoveries independently. It seems as though each era of social order and relative wealth leads to the same epiphanies, and perhaps that is the mark of real disorder—when we forget what should be self-evident, and for the willing mind, what should be most beautiful.’ ”
Seldom finished with a grin.
Nissim once took Diamond aside, saying, “You deserve to be told. The best student that I have—the finest that I’ve ever known—is Seldom. It isn’t you, and that probably won’t ever change.”
Diamond had the perfect memory, but Seldom adored knowledge.
Diamond could easily outthink his friend, yet he never outworked him or wrung half as much pleasure from an elegant thought found inside his own head.
To all three students, the Master said, “I adore that passage.”
Diamond nodded, waiting.
“And why do I like it?”
Diamond was listening and reading in his head, and he was looking at Elata too. He saw her serious focused and very pretty face and how the long pencil swirled over the paper, creating the shaggy magnificence of a blackwood tree.
The girl habitually drew pictures of her lost home.
“Diamond,” said the Master.
