by Robert Reed
Grown men and women were shouting.
Karlan emerged just as the newest panic took hold, the depleted crowd running back into the abattoir’s interior.
He understood only that he must have missed quite a lot. The main doors were closing, which meant that they had been opened in his absence. Only one fletch was left indoors, which happened to be the battered Girl. What little could be seen outside was more puzzling than what was inside. There was far too much darkness, except for a curtain of light that couldn’t decide on the right colors. Maybe Karlan had never been scared in his life, at least in any normal sense. But he was very much aware of being out of balance, and the effect was to make him numb and stupid for a few moments. One foot lifted and dropped again. More than anything, he wished he had found some ancient treasure, because nobody was going to bother searching him now.
The big general and little List were standing pretty much where Karlan last saw them. Each was holding one receiver while talking on a second receiver, and surrounding them was the usual collection of officers and aides who were working hard not to make their pants soggy.
Wanting the truth, Karlan headed for them.
But then he came across the old teacher and the old mother. They would work even better.
Karlan asked for an update.
Haddi couldn’t talk. She didn’t try to speak, standing with her arms crossed and hands wrapping into fists, the blood just about drained from her face.
Nissim told the story.
And Karlan interrupted him twice, laughing at what sounded just too strange. The sun was gone? And the coronas were coming too? The slayer laughed until he was sure that the retired butcher had finished spinning this story, and then he looked around again, waiting for his brain to catch up with everything that he was seeing.
Then the armored god showed up with the gray ball in both hands. And riding on top of King was a giant bug, except she was no bug. Karlan understood that easily enough, and looking up at that peculiar face, he said, “I’ve seen you look prettier than this. How have you been, girl?”
Quest dropped and flattened, and she changed color, half-vanishing into the butcher floor.
King turned the ball in his hands, and shoving the smooth end at Nissim’s face, he asked, “Can you read this?”
“Read what?” the old man asked.
But then Nissim said, “Wait.” The four-fingered hand was shaking, pulling a pair of reading glasses out of shirt pocket. Both hands were shaking. Not for the first time, Karlan decided the old guy was just about cooked, nothing left in his nerves anymore. But the glasses got to the nose, and the nose got close to whatever marks were on that peculiar ball. Karlan wondered if he should have looked the ball over more carefully, using his torch and young eyes. But he couldn’t see anything from here, standing one step away, and what-maybes were about the biggest waste of time in life.
“Can you read it?” said the bug on the floor.
Nissim gave a half-hearted nod, and then he shook his head, meaning no.
“But you’ve translated old writing before,” King said. “Diamond told me. Out on the reef, where nobody goes, you deciphered a message—”
Interrupting, Haddi screamed, “Where’s my son?”
Diamond wasn’t anywhere in view. But List was approaching, and the general wanted to join their little party. Except he first had to tell a handful of soldiers to find more soldiers, as many as possible. He was looking at Quest as he gave orders. Quest had never been easier to see, and Meeker wasn’t the kind to allow this sweet opportunity to drip away.
The big steel doors had pulled closed and sealed.
Once again, bellows were filling the room with extra air, and the cadaver balloons spun in the air overhead while the Girl creaked against its moorings.
List arrived with his people. Like always, he looked clever and sneaky, ten ready sentences riding his tongue, each one eager to be said.
Between two aides was Prima, out of her manacles and looking pretty much disgusted with everything.
Karlan had always liked that tough little gal.
Haddi kept talking about her son. Could anyone see Diamond?
Nissim said, “Quiet.”
The old woman didn’t want to be quiet. She turned until she saw Meeker, and she hurried toward him, asking, “Did you put him somewhere? Is he safe?”
Meeker was getting his soldiers ready to surround Quest.
“Put who where?” the general asked the petrified mother.
Nissim had one eye pressed against the mad scratches, and there stood King, rigid as a statue, holding the lost ball motionless, as if it were set in a vice.
Quest got up on her long back bug legs, glass eyes peering at the mystery.
Meeker was making his own quick search for Diamond, as if his vision could be better than a mom’s.
And then all of those eyes in the room stopped seeing anything. The big guns outside began punishing someone, but the cannons were a small mess of noises compared to what else came. Somewhere past the big steel doors wasn’t one sound but a host of new sounds, none loud yet but heavy in nature, like big weights bashing against drumheads, and those roaring wails weren’t just moving fast but they were rising past where Karlan was standing, soaring towards the highest reaches of the trees.
Every slayer in the room lifted his head or her head.
Coronas were outside, flying wild in a realm where they hadn’t been since the beginning of civilization.
Diamond had stopped running. He had followed Elata and Seldom when they jumped over the edge but lost sight of them before anybody reached the landing’s edge. The electric lights had abandoned him, every door down and sealed. A hundred faces were pointed away from him. Anonymous backs and hairy heads were silhouetted by a wash of pale light that tried to be red and tried to be purple and then blue. Crossing his arms, Diamond rocked slowly from side to side while struggling to find two small people. A military fletch was circling nearby, yellow spotlights aiming at targets moving swiftly below. Each beam dimmed as the open air brightened. Dozens of fletches and other military craft roamed in the distance. People standing at the railing were shouting. Some pointed below while others turned suddenly, fleeing toward the abattoir. A few voices shouted, “Coronas.” Most people made incoherent noise, monkey noises, high-pitched and horrified and all the more bracing because of it.
Needing some idea to pin against the mayhem, Diamond decided that a flock of coronas was following the giant body up here. They were grieving. The coronas wanted revenge. Maybe they wanted to recover the globe or even the children that had been taken from them. Whatever was happening, Diamond believed in purpose—clear and narrow and understandable—and that’s why he could stand in one place, not calm but not panicked either, the arms coming uncrossed but nothing else changing as the first of the running, wailing humans raced past him.
A cannon set beneath the landing fired one round, and that seemed to set off every other gun. Emplacements on the distant trees began lashing out with tracers and flares, fireballs and concussive blasts. And then the big fletch finally decided on a worthy target, every spotlight pulling together, creating a single beam that illuminated something that was directly beneath.
The ship’s guns fired while its engines throttled up.
Air was being explosively ejected from a giant’s puckered mouth.
Diamond expected to see a corona and didn’t. Instead he saw an unexpected shape following the joined beam of light. The shape had to be made of light because it was too quick to be real, appearing in an instant and chasing the spotlights toward the machine that was struggling in vain to get out of the way. Diamond didn’t see trailing necks or heads, and the normally rounded body was distorted, made long by its velocity and the thin cold air rushing past it and the rapid sharp bursts of air that he still hadn’t heard. He saw nothing clearly save for a brilliant flash of light that was purple laid over colors far beyond purple, and what was obvious was that these two ob
jects would have to collide.
Now he heard the air thundering out of the corona’s mouth.
The fletch’s belly guns fired furiously, and at the last moment, someone thought to kill the spotlights, which accomplished nothing.
The corona was half-grown, riding on a column of jetted hot air, and papio wings couldn’t fly that fast. The impact took no time. The fletch was intact, full of people and hydrogen and machinery and ammunition, and then it was bored through and torn to shreds, all of those pieces hanging fixed in the air while the corona continued to rise, giving no signs of slowing.
More coronas appeared. All of them were young, all rocketing past the landing, and Diamond put his hands on his stubbly head and yanked at his ears while his mouth twisted in anguish, leaking a moan, numbing breathless fear rendering him impossible heavy.
The fletch was shattered and now falling, but the sound of that titanic impact finally arrived—bladders bursting, the skeleton shattering—and buried inside that uproar was a voice and a name, and it took another moment for him to recognize the name.
“Diamond,” said the voice.
Seldom was standing directly in front of him.
Elata was holding Seldom’s arm, dragging him along. She hadn’t noticed Diamond. She intended to pull her friend back to the building, and to help keep Seldom moving, she shouted, “Go,” and, “Go,” again with a furious hoarse voice.
The three of them ran.
And the coronas raced past, turning the landing bright and purple with red waves and twisting flashes of blue and gold. Giants by the hundreds were rising, and the air shook with their jets, and the entire landing jumped while the cannons fired as fast as they could, except it was easy to miss hearing any of them.
Elata was holding Diamond’s hand now, not Seldom’s, and nobody could remember how that happened.
Every doorway into the abattoir was closed. Desperate people were shoved against the small doorway where they entered earlier. The first row of bodies kicked the steel and begged in high shrieking voices, and then the next ranks pushed against them, leaving no room to kick and no breath to use in their pleading. Seldom tried to claim Elata’s other hand, except she was still carrying her purse. She looked at him and then Diamond, surprised to find him joined to her. She wanted to be pleased. The beginnings of a smile shone in the corona light, and then something was above them, close and coming fast, and she flinched reflexively and the other two knelt with her, and a corona fell onto the landing, first with its heads and ropy limp necks and then its exhausted, doomed body.
Bloodwood boards sagged and shattered, but the massive framework beneath managed to weather the impact. The landing tilted before finding a stable angle that might last ten breaths or maybe forever. The corona’s body radiated heat like an open smelter. A thick yellow light poured out over everyone. The corona’s necks lay scattered, limp. The two heads closest to the abattoir and people did nothing for a long moment. Then the triple eyes opened and one head lifted and the other rose and fell weakly before pulling in the neck’s slack, giving it the leverage to rise to its neighbor’s height. The corona’s light washed over every surface. The triple eyes took on a rich golden color. The triple jaws opened, each as long as a man was tall, and the teeth turned gold as both heads slowly examined the humans that were doing nothing but standing, not one arm moving and nobody daring to breathe.
One head closed its jaws.
The weaker head left its mouth open, bright sharp tongues emerging to taste the thin cold and nearly useless air.
A big turret was perched on top of the abattoir. Its gunners could see the corona below, but the cannons had safeties to assure that nobody would stupidly pummel the landing during some otherwise reasonable battle. Those safeties had to be unlocked. The work took cursing and muscle and memories that had never quite become routine, and then the frantic men who finally accomplished that job had no time or patience left to contemplate the fragile peace below.
The corona had done nothing but collapse.
Then the cannons began boom-booming, precious rounds of junk metal and explosives battering the helpless body.
A squealing roar came from deep inside the creature, emerging from the mouth and then every head, and the body twisted while turning a vivid blackish purple, and half of the remaining necks reached upwards, trying to kill what was killing it.
Then a second turret found its freedom and fired.
Another corona—smaller and stronger, already high overhead—turned and dove down to help its brother. Coming like a spear, its scaled carapace smashed armored glass and the men, and it got its body became trapped inside the ruined turret, badly wounded and furious and deeply unsatisfied by whatever revenge that it wanted to accomplish.
Necks and heads dangled down across the abattoir’s front.
The first corona said quite a lot with its light, its mournful noise, and with potent scents that normally kept coronas calm and thoughtful.
It begged the world’s coronas to do nothing more.
But there was no normal, no decency.
The trapped corona let twenty heads drop as far as they could on rubbery necks, jaws opened and then slamming shut again. Diamond hadn’t moved since the three of them hunkered down for no good reason. Elata was in the middle. A big man in a government suit was standing on the other side of Diamond, and a sharp bright sound brought the barest sense of motion, and then the corona head was gone and the man was almost gone. Just his legs remained, the left leg managing to stand on its own an instant longer than its mate.
Inside the next moments, with scorching efficiency, that densely packed crowd of bodies was shredded, pieces of bodies scattered, and the few dozen survivors were lying on their stomachs, holding a little still or very still, begging the Fates for just one more recitation of life.
The second corona stopped the slaughter abruptly, retrieving its necks and its focus in order to try and pry itself free.
The first corona turned yellow again, but not as bright anymore. The two inquisitive heads pushed forwards, followed by many more. Corona heads were what saw the world and touched the world and sometimes made noises, and they were what guided prey and pieces of prey into the real mouth. Carefully, slowly, those heads passed over corpses and soaked red clothes. People’s breakfasts and wet brown feces had been freed from various rectums. The triple eyes had turned red and brown, and the jaws were held shut, and the corona seemed to be counting the living, nudging each one, watching startled people react or not react. Curiosity might be at play. Diamond thought as much, when he thought anything. And then the strongest first head saw Elata and came close before the jaws spread and three tongues emerged, ready to taste her face.
She made a soft miserable sound but refused to move. Glaring at the creature, she closed her mouth tight and took a useless breath through her bloodied nose and held her face steady, just for an instant, summoning the will to tip her head into the mouth, inviting whatever came next.
Diamond reached out, grabbing the raspy tip of the nearest tongue.
The tongue jerked back and the head did much the same, putting distance between them. But a fresh thought or old notion took charge, and ten different heads came forward, wanting to examine the odd organism huddling with the dead and condemned humans.
Again, the corona’s body changed color. What looked deep purple to a human eye was just the lazy end of the high-purple spectrum—a powerful scalding light that could carry a lot of meaning, or a single message repeated millions of times.
Fascination was a human word. But the heads and their necks pushed against one another, fighting to gain a closer viewpoint of a singular entity huddling in the gore. Corona flesh made the air hot and suddenly quiet. The roar of siblings and guns and every other nightmare was dulled when those many eyes came close to Diamond, and then seemingly as an afterthought, studying the tiny monkeys on either side of him.
“What?” Diamond said.
Then he climbed up on hi
s knees and stared at the first head, asking again, “What?”
Bunched together, those heads provided easy targets. Soldiers fired from the gun ports beside the doorway, big slugs chewing away at the jaws and eyes. But even as the pedestrian doorway was opened, even as electric lights washed over the scene, the surviving few heads stared at Diamond and the other two children.
Once more, the first head pushed forward and opened.
Having no shot, the soldiers held their fire while watching three tongues embracing the alien face. Bristles even harder than corona teeth left Diamond’s cheeks and chin bloodied, but not too deeply, and he was mostly healed after the corona slumped into death and the soldiers returned him to his mother.
SEVEN
Quest was ready.
Telling herself so didn’t make it true. And confidence was always the worst trap that a soul could set for herself. But Quest spent effort and anticipation wondering what could happen and what she would do in response, and despite being more visible than she had ever allowed herself to be, she wasn’t sick with worry. She was safer inside this one reinforced structure than anywhere else. One wretched event after another had arrived, and the human animals had no time or will to spare on one ghostly being. Besides, Quest was responsible for some chunk of this madness, and maybe all of it. An urge had claimed her and her siblings, but it was her finger that touched the bottom of a simple tube, which happened to be the moment when the sun vanished. Did she cause this torment, or was this coincidence? How could anyone know? But the point was that everyone believed she was culpable, including Quest, and the most hopeful thought in this wild unimagined set of nightmares was that the finger that ended the world might well bring it back again.
