by Robert Reed
Soldiers came out of hiding places, shooting King at will.
Then they were too close to his body to shoot.
Quest’s first neck stretched toward those soldiers, and the triple-jaws opened wide, and the new mouth said its first clumsy first word, “No.”
A familiar soldier stood before her, his face bloodied and a hammer in his favorite hand. He was happily swinging the hammer against the spikes on King’s head.
Again, Quest said, “No.”
The soldiers took note, and with new enthusiasm, they left King alone to kill the talking corona.
One last time, she told them, “No.”
They fired at the carcass and the neck and that opinionated mouth, and hiding soldiers fired down on both of the corona’s children.
That was the moment when hard decisions became simple.
A tiny portion of Quest’s new flesh needed a good shake, one kind of molecule turning into another.
From the bullet-riddled mouths came a thin vapor—wet and swift and almost as loud as the gunfire and cannons—and every mortal creature that breathed had to pull a taste of that stew into their lungs, their blood. The genius of mayhem ants had been tweaked, made stronger and far quicker. Paralysis was the first symptom, and in some cases, the prey would stop breathing forever.
But at this moment, looking across the battlefield and two thousand days of relentless fear, Quest could find no reason for any of these hateful beasts to ever wake again.
Blackwood leaves were large as rugs and nearly as durable. But eventually they wore out, and the tree would scavenge their nutrients and precious salts, leaching the green color out of them, revealing a vivid orange shade that stood out in the canopy—a rare color that Diamond always found pleasing.
The corona’s stomach walls had begun to glow with that same telltale orange, soft and warm and steady, and everyone was painted that deathly shade.
Diamond had no idea what he wanted.
Then he saw the strongest face, and he knew a little more. Just a little. Saying nothing, he stared at that face until the eyes gave him a suspicious glance, and then Diamond stepped past his mother and Master Nissim, saying, “You did a wonderful thing, trying to kill me. I’m sorry I never thanked you.”
Suspicion gave way to surprise and a brief, half-sweet grin.
“Then you’re welcome,” Karlan said.
Mother said, “No.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
“No,” she repeated, anger stretching the simplest word.
Diamond watched Karlan. “You showed everyone my nature, including me. Nobody else did that.”
“He was trying to murder you,” Mother said, emphatic and furious. “Whatever happened afterwards, it wasn’t what he intended.”
Diamond smiled, and he said, “I don’t know.”
No one spoke.
The stale hot air had been replaced. Everyone was comfortable, everyone breathing easily.
Diamond turned to look at every face before returning to his tormentor. “I remember everything. My room is still inside my head, and every day that I lived there alone lives here. Every time my parents came to feed me, I remember. Every time the door was locked. I was their secret, and they talked to their secret, and they tried their best to keep the world secret from me. They had reasons, their sensible decent reasons, and I accepted their judgment until you came through that door and cut me open and proved what I was. Maybe you had some other goal in mind. That doesn’t matter. I once tried to give my face a fine brave scar, to look more like my father. I took a secret knife from its forgotten drawer and cut and cut and cut, seeing my skull and peeling back my flesh. But what I wanted wasn’t important. What was leftover was the same lesson that you’d already given me.”
Diamond paused, unsure what to say next.
His mother made a low sound, anger mixed with anguish, and then he knew.
Turning to Haddi, he said, “I dream about my parents. My real parents, and I’ve never told you, no. But sometimes they come to me while I’m sleeping, and they talk to me or they don’t say anything. They’re just there.”
“You never told me,” she said, dismayed.
Diamond agreed with a nod, nothing more.
“In one dream,” he began. Then he paused, pretending to think even though he found the next words waiting. “In my favorite dream,” he said, “I would crawl inside the chamber where there were little drawers and my knife, except there was a secret doorway that I hadn’t ever noticed before. Everyone has secret doors in their dreams, and maybe that’s why I thought nothing was remarkable. But that door was gray. And not just any gray, but it was this color and it had exactly this feel.” He kneeled suddenly, both hands against the ball. “It looks orange now, I know. But in sunlight, this was the same magical gray as that gray door, and one night my father was waiting behind it.”
Diamond let silence have its moment.
“He was a strong man,” he said. “His body was like mine, the long legs and short arms and the same kind of nose and mouth, and he spoke to me. He said that this was the best place me for now, that I was safe here. He warned that everything was stranger than I realized. And not only did I have to come find him and find my mother, but I had to bring all of them with me.”
Again, silence.
“ ‘All of them,’ ” Seldom repeated. “You mean your brother and sister too?”
Diamond said nothing.
“And the Eight,” Prima guessed, bristling at that possibility.
But Diamond didn’t want to talk about lessons buried inside dreams or one nameless gray orb. And he didn’t want to talk anymore about his old room or locked drawers and how the Creation had to be one secret room inside something quite a bit larger. He had a goal, a destination, and he was as eager as anyone to discover what it might be.
Once again, the boy looked at Karlan.
Karlan shifted his grip on the rifle, as if making his hands comfortable. With rare caution, he asked, “So what’s the monster’s big plan now?”
“I’m going to turn the sun back on,” Diamond said.
No one made sound.
And he turned in a circle again, slowly. Every face was important. Mother was worn out and doubtful. The Master was wishing that he could believe, but he couldn’t. The two Archons were standing beside each other, each watching the orange stomach floor. Seldom did believe, which made him the only one, while Elata was offering a thin smile, not quite nodding but plainly glad that Diamond had taken her advice and was trying to weave a fictional tale, no matter how gloriously silly and pathetic it seemed to be.
Karlan waited for the gaze.
Again, both hands needed to shift against the weapon.
“I want you to throw me into the air again,” Diamond told him.
That won a big laugh, and Karlan asked, “Is that so?”
“Yes,” Diamond said with enthusiasm. “And I’ll hold tight to this ball and plunge to the bottom of the world, and I’ll make the world live again. Or I won’t. But that’s what I’m going to try.”
Each person took a small step backwards.
But then the orange light became white, the walls of the dead stomach vanishing in the glare, and from some new mouth, a close and strong mouth, Quest said, “No, that’s crazy talk. I have to be the one to take you down there.”
Which was the moment when Diamond realized to whom he had been talking all along.
Doctors had drawn maps of his body, but when King was still a living secret, isolated inside the palace, he insisted on naming each of his organs and bones and even the spikes and individual plates of armor. The project demanded a language of its own, each word built from sounds that felt comfortable inside his ffaffar and his woooloo, and once finished, he rarely thought in those terms. But for a long while, maybe always, that one day was the best day of his life.
Now those remarkable organs were healing.
He was sitting in the open, alone. Generators were thrummi
ng in the distance, but critical wires had been severed or circuits were disabled and the entire abattoir had given up the fight against night. Sitting in darkness, King realized that he was more durable than this building, but perhaps not the tree. That was the first bright thought sparking in his mind: the giant bloodwood was ancient by any fashion, and as tough as he was, and he was just a frail sack full of smaller sacks that didn’t know their true names.
The darkness was imperfect. Quest blushed when the necks ate and when the main body shuddered, shimmers of color hinting that energy was being ripped free from one great meal. Also glowing were the coronas that had crawled through the shredded doorway, still living, still making weak threads of light, their bodies plainly struggling to survive just the next moments.
When he felt strong enough to stand, King remained sitting, touching his new chest and belly, measuring how much bulk had been lost before he climbed up onto his feet and was disappointed.
Then his sister made one astonishing sound, wet and massive, prolonged yet impatient—amorphous flesh rising high, ready for invisible hands to give it some final, perfect shape.
The new, somewhat shorter King stood easily enough.
The butcher floor was bloodied but otherwise empty. Every dead soldier had been ingested, and there was no reason to feel uncomfortable about the dead becoming meals. But other soldiers had gasped while the necks swallowed them whole, and King considered what to say to his sister later, if there was any such thing as later.
He took one short step and two long steps toward his sister, and then he paused.
The necks were being absorbed, and a long groan rose from that tall body. A titanic new shape was forming from the rank and raw.
Did Quest name her organs as she worked?
That was a question worth asking, if he ever had the chance.
King turned and strode toward the obliterated doorway. Twisted steel plates squealed with the wind. Corona blood flowed like water and stank of metal and felt slick underfoot. The abattoir’s enormous landing had been wrenched free, unless it had collapsed under too much wreckage. Dark empty air was everywhere. The neighboring bloodwoods seemed remote, illuminated by clinging, half-dead coronas and countless little fires that would never do more than consume buildings and walkways. Bloodwoods didn’t like to burn. But looking out into the black air, gazing hard at the Middle-of-the-Middle, what impressed the boy was the feeble, smoky nature of each fire.
For the first time, an organ that wasn’t any human lung pulled in a long breath, and King realized that the air was markedly thinner than usual, and it was too chilly, oxygen present but not nearly enough.
The atmosphere was draining from the world.
Sounds were draining away, thin and too slow. He listened. A thousand humans were begging in the dark, beseeching the Creators to make a new day, and ten thousand more voices were passionately cursing the Fates. Other humans said nothing, but he heard the noise they made as they fell, clothes flapping and dropsuits flapping. Despair or madness or maybe just stupid mistakes caused people to tumble free from this tree. Those ten carefully named ears heard individual bodies knifing through the thin air, and King wished he was deaf, and in the next breath, he wished that he could hear every sound inside this big room of a world.
A piece of steel cable offered itself as a handhold, and planting one foot, King dangled into the open air. No demon floor glimmered below. The corona realm was missing, and beyond was an emptiness that didn’t require any sun. But the dark air was perfectly empty. Past the sharp tips of the trees were ships—tree-walker airships and papio wings that had survived the coronas. It took time and some thought to realize what had happened: desperate hands had overloaded these machines with extra ballast, or the papio had pushed their aircraft into endless dives. There wasn’t enough air up here, but maybe there was below. Maybe that’s what this cluttered fleet was chasing. Unless this wasn’t a survival strategy. Maybe it was as simple as before they died, these people wanted to see what lurked below.
King imagined a dirty steel floor and some important hatch foolishly left open, letting the air leak away.
He couldn’t stop remembering how his hand pushed Quest’s hand into the ball.
King had never shared the maps of his body. He never mentioned them to Father or Diamond, and certainly not to anyone else.
Each of his hands had its own name.
The hand around the cable wanted to let go, allowing his body to plummet to the world’s floor.
The rest of King overruled that hand, and he came back inside.
His reborn lung had no trouble finding adequate oxygen, at least for the present moment. His feet sounded different, walking across the slick black floor. The nearest corona let loose a long exhausted sound, complications woven into the misery, and he was thankful that he didn’t know what sad words were being said.
The giant creature was inflated with emptiness, scales pulled apart and the body rising like a building before him. The dying flesh was hot but not hot enough, and it was velvety black save for the peculiar imperfections—spots too miniscule to be bright, yet brilliant enough to shine against the blackness.
With the razored tip of a finger, King touched the brightest light.
An old thought came near enough to be felt, and then it was gone just as suddenly, and maybe it never existed.
But the urge to fall remained relentless. He felt it in his limbs, his reflexes. Ignoring that insanity took work. To distract himself, King drew an arcing line from the first light to a bright neighbor and then to others still. This was a puzzle that couldn’t be a puzzle. These points of light felt random. Yet with stubborn cleverness, the alien boy managed to write his name once with the tree-walker language, and then he began drawing the long, self-invented word that meant “King.” Slicing deep into the wounded flesh, every gesture was precise and a little desperate. But the perfect little specks were fading, and the blackness surrounding them was losing its vibrant sheen, and before King would finish that simple task, the corona was dead, deep bladders collapsing and the body slumping, crushing both of his names.
TEN
White light filled the stomach.
Diamond asked what was happening outside.
“The world is dying,” Quest said, her voice small, sorry.
“Can you see where we need to be?” he asked.
“I pushed a few eyes through the abattoir’s floor. I’m looking now. But the shape of everything below us seems different, and I can’t see enough to know.”
Nobody spoke.
“I’m hurrying,” his sister said.
She was furiously rebuilding herself.
“But all of you need to leave,” she said. “I’m becoming clumsy. If you stay here, I’ll likely digest you.”
Karlan blew air through his teeth, almost laughing when he asked, “So are we going to get shot when we show our heads?”
“You won’t be shot,” Quest said firmly. “I promise you.”
Nobody asked why.
Then she said, “Diamond. Take the key with you and explain the situation to King. As soon as I’m ready, bring him and the key back with you.”
The world was insane, but that sounded reasonable.
Why?
She said, “Now, please. Get out of me.”
The slayer-made gash in her side lifted, white light spilling across the white bone floor. The warm damp interior air led the way. Karlan waved for Diamond, wanting him to emerge first. “In case your sister happens to be wrong,” he said, thumping his scalp with imaginary bullets.
With both hands, Diamond lifted up the ball.
But then Mother hurried past him, one arm waving as she told the darkness, “We surrender, we surrender.”
Nobody fired.
There was no one to raise a weapon, much less beg for mercy.
King was alive but noticeably smaller. He was standing near the open door, standing beside one of the attacking coronas. The corona was motionles
s and dark, and it had to be fascinating, judging by how his brother stared at the carcass.
Diamond let the ball fall and roll, but the alien ignored the noise.
“Can you breathe?” Nissim asked Mother.
“If I work at it,” she said, wheezing as she walked.
Quest closed the opening. Save for a faint ruddy glow leaking from her entire body, the gigantic room was dark and cold.
“Butcher’s weather,” joked the Master.
Seldom followed Diamond. But then he noticed Elata standing apart from everyone, and he turned and went back to her. For someone’s sake, he said, “This will get better.”
“Better than what?” she asked.
King was a statue. His breathing and his hearts might have stopped, still as he was.
Diamond approached him, talking quickly. “The gray ball is some kind of machine, maybe a key. And Quest is taking us below to rekindle the sun.”
King didn’t respond.
“What are you doing?” asked Diamond.
The statue didn’t react.
Then another voice said, “You know me.”
List.
“I’m not a gracious man,” said the human, hurrying to stand beside the statue, one hand stroking the sharp plates high on one arm. “And I won’t pretend graciousness now. I know the world is built on numbers, and the counting and the weighing are what I do better than most people. Which is the heart of the reason why a clerk would invest so much and risk so much in a child unlike all others.”
Two fingers bled, and he sucked on them for a moment.
Then the man said, “You saved me. Today, you took a huge risk and saved all of us. But that’s not what is important. What matters—why I should feel grateful—is that you knew what to do. You couldn’t know the sun would leave. But then that happened and everything was collapsing, and the three of you had the clearer, cleaner sense of these events. And if I can make myself hope, I’ll hope that despite being an ignorant and ungracious calculating monster, I nonetheless helped put you where each of you can help us.”
