by Robert Reed
She sobbed and grabbed at him.
Diamond stood, trying to lift her.
A mechanic’s red uniform was holding a fat man, and the man came running up from behind and didn’t like being stopped and didn’t mind at all giving the faceless boy one hard shove, shouting, “Out of my way.”
Diamond turned fast, and he swung.
A fist never enjoys hitting any skull. Even Diamond’s clenched fist ached after it struck the fat and the cheekbone and that big eye that had only just begun to see the miscalculation. The mechanic’s head popped back, and he staggered. But fear and rage had a useful target, and grabbing the boy by the collar, he hit that face three times before realizing what face he was fighting. Then he let go of the boy and cursed various deserving targets, and Diamond, feeling nothing so much as frustration, struck the man twice again, cracking a tooth and leaving both lips split.
“Stop that, stop,” the mechanic said.
Diamond swung once more, slicing the air between them.
“I’m sorry,” the bloodied man said.
Diamond turned away. Elata was on her knees, a little purse pressed to her belly. He grabbed her around the chest and lifted, and then the mechanic seemed to hug both of them, blubbering about how wrong he felt, bringing them to their feet.
Holding Elata’s hand, Diamond climbed over a pair of bodies.
Where was King?
The giant had evaporated, and Quest too. Diamond grabbed that thought and believed it. The gray globe had taken them away. Nothing imagination could build was impossible anymore, and maybe his siblings were yanked out of this Creation, and he should have been with them, and that’s when guilt struck. Even when he saw the crowd parting ahead of him and the broad armored back sprawled across the floor, he continued to grieve having been left behind.
But King was at the edge of the butcher floor, head down, hunkered in a low squat with one of his long elbow spines rising high as he moved his hand.
Orders were shouted across loudspeakers. Every giant door was rising, electric lights flooding out into the irrational black, and each of the indoor fletches began their engines as that great shouting voice ordered every fletch to embark and set up a perimeter. Only then would the doors would shut and seal again.
“Five recitations,” the voice promised, “and we return to gas protocols.”
It was Meeker’s voice.
“The papio are still coming,” the general claimed.
A small voice shouted, “Diamond.”
Seldom.
King twisted his neck until he was looking down the length of his own back. Seldom was standing on the far side of King, waving excitedly. Then he kneeled, vanishing again. The other doors began to lift. The crowd stopped surging, people aiming for the other openings. More people fell but picked themselves up, and what began as a panicky rout became a simple migration to the nearest openings, everybody wanting to stand at the edge, gazing at what couldn’t be real.
Elata pushed into the moving bodies, strong shoulders wedging through.
And now Diamond followed her.
All but one fletch was free of its moorings. They had to push lower before skimming under the rising doors. The fletches and little ships that had been moored outside had embarked. Maybe they were the aircraft visible in the distance, spotlights twisting one way and another while signal lights and flares gave orders, while beyond, out where the great trees hung, a few illegal flickers of light began to emerge.
“The enemy is still inbound,” Meeker said across the speakers.
Even before this, the papio were desperate. Now what did they believe? That the tree-walkers must have found a great weapon—a prize that allowed them to suffocate the world of its sunlight. Of course their fighters would keep coming. How could they do anything else?
Elata reached King’s feet and legs, and without hesitation, she shook free of Diamond’s hand before climbing over the top of the giant.
Diamond went around.
Until the last step, he had no idea what he would find. Imagination was useless. He gave up using his imagination. He discovered Quest wearing a flat gruesome bug shape, the shell of a cockroach and twin eyes looking like domes of polished crystal, various fingers and hands busily pushing into the globe’s holes and out again.
“All of them,” Seldom said.
“I have,” Quest said with a dry, startling human voice.
“Try different sequences,” the puzzle solver said.
King added his littlest fingers, but one finger was caught inside one cylinder, as if in a sad-sack trap.
“I don’t think so,” Diamond said.
Seldom looked up at him, wearing a broad grin.
“It won’t work,” Diamond said.
Hearing his words, he felt absolutely sure.
King cursed about his finger and grabbed the globe with his other hand, yanking hard twice and then gathering himself before he jerked himself free of that embarrassment.
The globe rolled, stopping against the backs of random legs.
Seldom grabbed it.
The abattoir wasn’t quiet and never would be. But people had found places to stand, and only one fletch—the wounded Tomorrow’s Girl—was hanging overhead, engines sleeping. The rumble of generators and the urgent endless wailing of every siren in the human world ripped at the air, and there were conversations that after the mayhem sounded almost reasonable. Strangers talked about the darkness and why this darkness was different than night, and they discussed how would the papio respond, and with nervous caution, some claimed that nothing would come of this but a healthy scare and the total destruction of their enemies.
Elata was standing on her toes, looking outside.
Suddenly, with a loud laughing voice, Seldom said, “Hey.”
Elata turned. “What?”
“Did any of you bother to look here?” the puzzle expert asked.
The other four children gathering around the gray ball, King remaining on his hands and shins.
“What?” Elata repeated.
Seldom took a moment, showing them his fine smile.
Everybody asked, “What is it?”
“Words,” he said. “There’s some tiny words here, on the smooth end of this whatever thing.”
Words?
“I don’t know the language,” the boy continued. “But it’s been my experience that usually, in some way or another, words really want to mean something.”
SIX
Coming to the abattoir was exciting, and the dead corona was a wonder. Seldom was thrilled with his day, and then the world shattered. The papio were coming, the darkness was already here, and inside one impossible moment, everybody turned crazy.
Nothing about any of this should be fun.
Yet weird as can be, Seldom was still enjoying himself. Two bizarre creatures had shoved their way through the riot to find him. King had always been a looming entity, ugly and loud and too dangerous to touch. Diamond was practically ordinary next to his brother, but the giant was here, begging for any help he could find from the great Seldom. And then there was the mystery sister, Quest-of-no-particular-shape. After saying his name three times, loud and then loud again before one final near-whisper, Quest confessed that this madness was her fault entirely.
Seldom offered his first, most reasonable thought.
He said, “Sticking your pinky in a hole doesn’t kill the sun.”
Quest refused to believe simple words. She looked like a girl and like a beetle, and then she was more like a beetle than anything, jointed legs trembling as she stood before the mystery that Karlan carried from the corona’s belly.
King was behind her, towering until he kneeled.
Both creatures talked about urges that sounded like dreams, and what might be instincts, and the keen shared feeling that they were playing out some ancient, mostly forgotten plan.
The aliens were rattled; Seldom was their best hope.
“Try your finger again,” he suggeste
d.
But she had already.
“Try different fingers, different combinations.”
A simple suggestion, but these two marvels hadn’t produced that strategy on their own. He watching them huddle, trying their best while the darkness, this uninvited night, kept its chokehold on everything. Yet this was maybe the finest moment in Seldom’s little life. Strangers were staring at the two apparitions and their hysterical efforts. That one creature had to be the Ghost, they said. And nobody had ever seen List’s son bowing down. And in the midst of that scene was a skinny human boy offering advice and little encouragements. The human was in charge, and Seldom didn’t giggle but could feel the delicious urge slipping up and down his spine.
Then Elata found him.
Seeing her bloodied nose, Seldom instantly felt ashamed for having danced with joy.
He kept making suggestions, and then Diamond emerged from the crowd. Ordering his friend to try his fingertips seemed reasonable, but Diamond said none of this would work. He sounded as if he was sure. Then the ball got loose and rolled, and Seldom captured it first. The gray material felt like nothing else. Maybe this was what a diamond looked like when it was big, but it certainly didn’t resemble the tiny glitters inside museum cases. This was hard and lifeless and he rolled it under both of his hands until he noticed what looked like a blemish at the bottom, opposite the cylinders. The overhead lights were at full strength, bright and blue-white. Kneeling down low, Seldom wiped away a last layer of slime, fingers tingling from the acid, and he announced finding a few lines of delicate, peculiar words.
Unless of course they were scratches, he thought in the next moment. But how could a substance that survived some long fierce burial inside a corona show nothing but those tiny marks arranged in what looked like six perfect rows?
King claimed the object, bright green eyes staring at the scratches.
“Can you read them?” his sister asked.
He said, “No,” and spun it, letting the bulging glass eyes absorb the text.
“I can’t either,” Quest said.
The abattoir doors were open but not for much longer. The sirens were as relentless as always. The enemy was still pushing through the darkness. The papio trained for night raids, and maybe they preferred attacking when nobody could see clearly. Could they have pushed the sun into oblivion?
That wild thought had no time to grow.
A woman’s voice fell from everywhere, urgent but not fast. “One recitation,” she warned, “and then the doors will drop and seal.”
Seldom looked over the heads of people lined up at the opening, and another sharp thought took hold of his brain.
Diamond was peering at the neat scratchy words.
He was as baffled as anyone else.
“Master Nissim,” said Seldom.
The corona’s children looked at him, that first bright sense of understanding emerging.
“He knows old languages,” Seldom reminded his friend.
Diamond said, “Yes,” and stood up.
King jumped to his feet, looking back across the great room.
Looking sorry and lost, Elata stood by the others, one hand holding the purse while she fought the running blood with her other sleeve.
Seldom was wicked for not feeling more sympathetic toward her. But as he approached her, trying to pick good words, Elata seemed to forget her present miseries. Something behind him was worth a good hard stare, and the bloodied arm lifted, two fingers pointing through the open door.
“What is that?” she asked.
At the same moment, with a roaring voice, King said, “I see him.”
“Nissim?” asked Diamond.
“We’ll take this to your teacher,” Quest said.
The three creatures headed back where they had come from. Seldom wanted to follow. This was his puzzle, and he wanted answers, and he managed a long first step before looking his shoulder, following the line made by Elata’s arm and fingers.
Night was ending. A faint but true, undeniable light was growing brighter by the moment, and other people were talking about the glow while pointing in various directions, but always outwards, away from this tree and this giant building.
Suddenly ten voices said, “The sun is coming back.”
Even as the joy grabbed everybody, including Seldom, he suffered doubts. If this was sunlight, then it was peculiar just how weak the light it seemed, and odder still, there seemed to be colors inside the light, as if the sun was trying to awaken but not yet certain which face to put on.
There was a long drop from the big doors to the landing. The wall beneath was covered with sloping nets. Not everyone wanted to jump down, but dozens did. They leaped and others fell, and Seldom intended nothing but to get closer to the edge, finding a somewhat better perch to watch what still didn’t make sense.
Bodies surged and he hurried, Elata settling in beside him. Even with her swollen, sore-looking nose, she was pretty. Seldom’s life couldn’t be awful when he was walking beside this girl.
They reached the edge.
The brave people had gone below, while the cautious and cowardly remained above, enjoying a lesser view.
Seldom was happy with the cowards.
But not Elata. Suddenly she was the girl that he remembered from Marduk—the bright fear-nothing girl who would try any whim twice, just to see what would happen.
“Come on,” she said, tugging at his arm.
Seldom shook his head. But the shifting light was definitely stronger. Not like daylight yet, no. But how many people had ever seen the sun killed and then rekindled again? Maybe this was just the way it was, the way nature was put together. Who could know? And because science mattered so much to him, and because a short pretty and very strong girl wanted this to happen, Seldom let his arm get yanked, sending him tumbling down the nets.
They bounced, and he felt the giggle sliding along his backbone again.
And then they were running across the long landing, chasing people and catching up with some of them, not taking the lead but still among the early few to reach the tall railing. They shoved their heads through gaps. A gun turret was directly under their feet, motors swinging it one way and then another, its vents opened to let the gunner breathe. And that was why they could hear the gunner shouting across a call-line, unless of course he was yelling at himself.
“I see them,” he yelled.
See who? The papio? But it was too soon. Wings were fast, but the machines were flying from the ends of the Creation.
“I can’t count them,” the gunner complained.
Seldom was looking down. Elata was looking down. There was nothing to see but a great cloud of shifting lovely and deeply colored light. For one spectacular moment, Seldom could believe that he didn’t know what he was seeing. He was free to convince himself that he was fortunate, that only the rarest of people got to see the birth of a new sun, and that this was going to be a better, much lovelier sun. Colors like he had never imagined were rising up into his spellbound face.
Elata cursed, and then she muttered, “Oh no. It’s the coronas.”
Seldom blinked, surprise taking his voice away.
“I don’t know how many,” the gunner screamed into his headset. “But it looks like every last one of the monsters.”
No place was quieter, more remote or half so peaceful, as the vacated guts of a freshly killed corona.
Karlan didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Maybe the earlier battle left him jangled. Maybe silence and the relative solitude was a tonic. But a lot of questions never interested Karlan, and that included why he was searching the same terrain all over again, and what he was feeling, and why it felt good to start walking from the gash in the monster’s side, following this twisting space all the way down near the shrunken but still enormous anus.
Everybody understood that the corona flesh was different than other flesh, but that didn’t do the stuff justice. There was strangeness woven into the musc
les, into the organs. The entire body was stacked in odd ways, but that was just one factor. The pure feel of things was peculiar. Even in death, the stomach lining had a quality that Karlan didn’t try to explain. Even when it was chilled, there was heat inside the flesh—a burning that could be felt in every way except with thermometers and touch. The corona’s strength persisted long past its life. Time itself seemed thick and lazy inside the dead blood. The flesh had to be cut apart and its metals rendered before the weird sense of the alien dissolved, and there were moments when this unyielding stubborn and unreflective man wondered if any of these qualities ever really vanished: he was full of corona iron and calcium and copper. Everybody was. Maybe the alien magic was woven inside his world, and that’s why it felt so special and good to kill one of these beasts. It was the only way to rejuvenate what really mattered.
He walked to the anus, and then slower than ever, he walked back again.
Nothing else had been found. Just that one odd ball was trapped inside ten layers of membranes, and nothing else.
But that didn’t mean there was no point in hunting.
Every corona stomach had its odd twists, one-of-a-kind deadends. There were always folds where a human hand could push inside, feeling death that wasn’t dead and the lingering heat as well as that second heat that refused to be measured. Maybe something tiny was buried inside one of these folds. Who knew? Stopped in no particular place, Karlan invested a long moment investigating several deep grooves that gave him nothing. He wanted nothing, and he certainly expected nothing. But his fingers were ready to find a tiny version of that gray ball. He knew what he would do. Before anyone could search his pockets, he would swallow the prize whole. It didn’t matter what the object looked like. The risks were nothing he could measure, so why worry about them? Down the prize would go, and maybe it would take up residence inside his guts like it did before. Or maybe the little ball, or whatever, would endow Karlan with some grave, grand power that would transform him in staggering ways.
That was a thought worth imagining.
Only later, a long time later, did Karlan bother to wonder why the others were taking so long to relieve him, or at least check on his whereabouts. The outside world didn’t exist. Corona flesh had an amazing capacity to deaden sound. Sirens and amplified voices and fletch engines were nothing. Raging gun battles would probably be heard as muddy little thumps in some gray distance. Still alone, puzzled but not worried, Karlan started walking back to the world, and only near the gouged hole did he begin to hear what sounded like a chorus singing in a distant tree.
