Zenn Scarlett

by Christian Schoon

  “Scarlett!” the constable yelled to make himself heard above the wind. “We gotta get these people down, before somebody gets killed.”

  “I can’t,” she told him.

  “Whaddya mean you can’t?”

  “I can’t control it.” she shouted at him, her throat tight, ready to cry, refusing to cry. This was the end of the cloister. Even if they somehow got back down to the ground, the council wouldn’t just vote against them. They would tear the place down with their bare hands.

  “Listen, girl,” Ren put his face close to hers, jaw set, words squeezing out from between clenched teeth. “You get this damn thing to set us back down on the ground and you do it now.”

  “I told you I can’t.” She pointed at Liam. “And it’s because of him!” She couldn’t keep the words from coming. She didn’t even try. “It was you! All of it. Everything that’s happened.”

  Liam held up his hands, as if to ward off a blow.

  “Scarlett, I didn’t do this.”

  “Then why didn’t you come back? Last night?”

  “It was Dokes. He was waiting for me at Vic’s. He jumped me. When I came to I was locked in the milking barn. It took me till this morning to get out.”

  “What the…?” Ren yelled, cutting Liam off. “What the Nine Hells are you talking about?”

  “Graad Dokes. He cut the cables,” Liam shouted.

  “Right…” Ren muttered, looking from Liam to Zenn. “You two have obviously lost your damn minds.” He looked toward the bow. “You!” He shouted at the emissary, then staggered forward to talk to the Kiran.

  “I’m telling the truth, Scarlett,” Liam said, gripping the railing next to her. “Graad said he was going to do something to the creature. Something the council would never forget. I came to warn you.”

  “What?” Fane yelled, joining them. “This was done on purpose? Someone severed the sunkiller’s anchors?” He shouted into Liam’s face: “And you allowed this?”

  “I’m not talking to you, off-wa,” Liam yelled at Fane, who showed no sign of backing off. “It was just to scare the council, when the sunkiller got loose,” Liam said to Zenn. “You weren’t all s’posed to get on this thing. I told her I wouldn’t do it.” He slammed his fists down on the rail. “I told her.”

  “Told who?” Zenn said.

  “Vic. She said we had to show the council. Show them the cloister had to go.”

  “Vic? Why?”

  He looked into her face, eyes anguished, and the words spilled out of him in a torrent.

  “Vic said the valley was settled by her kin. Said the cloister land was hers by rights. She said the land was being wasted, that it shouldn’t be used to keep monsters alive. It was her idea that I make friends with Hamish, get him to trust me, so I could do the things I did...”

  “And what about me? Getting me to trust you?” she shouted, thinking of Liam’s lips on hers, feeling something tearing loose inside her. “That was Vic’s idea too?”

  “No, Scarlett… well, at first. But not later. Not after Zeus. You nearly made yourself sick to save him. I saw it then. All your animals matter as much to you as Zeus does to me. They deserve their chance, just like him. I know I was stupid not to see that. I see now.”

  Zenn looked at Liam’s battered face, his matted hair, smelled his stupid alfalfa smell and… she’d had enough. She couldn’t take any more. She turned away, bit down hard to keep from crying, to keep from screaming, to keep from grabbing the towner boy by the neck and throwing him over the railing.

  “Zenn. I know now Vic was wrong about you. About the cloister. About everything. But I waited too long to…”

  “Scarlett.” Ren was yelling at her as he came toward them, pulling himself back along the railing with one hand. “That off-wa’s no damn help.” He slapped the pistol on his hip. “What if I kill the thing?”

  “What? No!” Zenn shouted.

  “Lives are at stake here.”

  “It won’t help. It’s the gas in the wings. It’ll just keep floating up even if it’s dead.”

  “What if I shoot the wings?”

  “There are hundreds of gas bladders. Even if you could shoot them all, there isn’t time.”

  One of the female council members pushed herself away from the group to speak.

  “Why won’t this thing just… fly us down to the ground?” she said, her thin face pinched and pale with fear.

  “It can’t fly down,” Zenn told her. “That’s what the operation was for, to help it control its flight.”

  “But if it can’t go down, what’ll happen to us?” Pelik Shandin spoke from the center of the frightened group.

  “Look.” The thin-faced woman was pointing out at the canyon wall. “We’re almost up to the pressure gradient.” She was right. They’d come up nearly level with the closest bary-gen. Just above it, Zenn could see the translucent layer of ionized air that stretched its protective barrier over the valley.

  “We… we’re gonna go through the gradient,” Pelik shouted. “We’re all dead!”

  Zenn wanted to yell at him to be quiet, to tell him he was just going to panic everyone. But he was right. Once the sunkiller penetrated the layer of pressurized air created by the bary-gens, they’d float up into the almost nonexistent Martian atmosphere.

  “Kiran,” Ren yelled at the emissary, who’d made her way astern to stand near them. “If I killed it, would that work?”

  “No.” Her turquoise eyes flashed angrily. “You must not. And it would not aid us if you did. The sunkiller would bring us down of her own will… if the healers have done as promised.” The emissary turned to Zenn. “Have you?”

  “What’s she mean?” Ren shouted at her.

  Of course. The answer was right there in front of them – or right above them. They still had a chance. A long shot, but a chance, if they acted in time. If she acted.

  “The sutures,” Zenn shouted at Ren. “They’re still holding the plexus valve shut. If we cut the stitches, it’ll open the plexus and the sunkiller can control her buoyancy.”

  “Alright, how do we make that happen?” Ren said.

  “I’ll have to go up. I have to try and cut the sutures.”

  “Nine Hells.” Ren craned his head up at the sunkiller’s underside, then looked down at the distant valley floor.

  “You can’t. It’s too dangerous,” Liam said. “I’ll go. Tell me what to do.”

  “You?” Fane growled at him. “Our plight is your fault. Have you not done enough already? I am familiar with the animal. I should do this.”

  Liam squared off in front of Fane. “Look, off-wa, I don’t know who you are, but…”

  “Neither of you can do it,” Zenn shouted at them. “It has to be me.”

  “Alright then, do it,” Ren said to her, stepping between Liam and Fane. “What can we do? To help?”

  “I’ll have to climb up at the back, near the tail,” she said. She turned and started to work her way along the handrail to the rear of the swaying gondola. “I might need help getting started.”

  At the stern, the wind produced an eerie moan as it streamed through the web of rigging that held the basket suspended beneath the sunkiller’s body.

  “If you two can boost me up,” she said to Liam and Fane, “I can reach that next row of rigging, get a hold of the tail vertebrae and climb up on her back.” The two boys regarded each other for a tense moment.

  “Very well,” Fane said, gesturing at Liam. “Take her feet. I will lift at her legs.”

  “I’m taller than you,” Liam said. “You take her feet.”

  “Taller?” Fane leaned into the towner’s face. “You are no more than…”

  “Liam,” Ren cut them off. “Take her damn feet and get her up there.”

  Liam obeyed, and the two of them managed to raise her high enough that she was just able to get her hands on the rigging.

  “Alright. I have it,” she shouted back.

  “You sure?” Liam yelled.

&
nbsp; “Yes. Let go.”

  Liam and Fane released their hold. Zenn’s legs swung out into the empty air so quickly she almost lost her grip on the rigging. Buffeted by the wind, she looked down in terror. Hundreds of feet beneath her flailing legs, a hair-thin streambed writhed through the blood-red sand.

  THIRTY

  The next second, she’d thrown one foot up toward the tail and locked her knee over a protruding knob of vertebrae. One hand followed, then the other, then her other leg and with one final effort she was astride the base of the animal’s tail, looking up at the buff-colored hillock of its huge back. The wind was much fiercer beyond the relative shelter of the gondola, and her loose hair whipped across her face and eyes. She had to grip the sandpaper skin of the tail with all her strength to keep from being blown off. The scabs on her knuckles had now been mostly torn open, and blood had run down into her palms, making it even harder to maintain her grip.

  Barely ten feet away, the white mound of surgical dressings covering the methane plexus rippled and snapped in the airstream. She laid her body low along the backbone and, moving hand over hand from one vertebrae to the next, worked her way forward.

  At the plexus, she sat up just enough to see better, and unhooked the maser-scalpel from her tool belt. Anchoring herself by gripping a fold of skin with her free hand, she started slicing away at the layers of heavy bandages.

  She pulled and hacked away at the dressings until it all came free at once and, caught by the wind, flew off into the air.

  A voice sounded, faintly, rising up from below.

  “Scarlett!” It was Ren. “We’re almost through the gradient.” Zenn looked up just in time to see the sunkiller’s two heads lift together and penetrate the barrier. They reacted in unison, swooping back down into the valley’s air with a keening shriek. The heads dipped out of her sight then, moving as far from the gradient as they could, even as the body continued its ascent.

  Bending back to the plexus, eyes watering from the scouring wind, Zenn cut away at the first suture, then cut through three more. The sunkiller’s tough outer layer of skin had almost no nerve cells running through it in this area, so she wouldn’t hurt it if she missed a suture and cut the flesh. But the valve, hidden beneath the surface layer of skin, wouldn’t be able to open until she’d cut the last stitch.

  Two more sutures severed. Only three left. The next moment, the wind died, and the air went still and deathly silent. She was at the barrier. She took a last quick breath, bent down against the sunkiller’s skin, and then felt herself carried up through the invisible dividing line, thrust into the freezing, airless atmosphere of Mars.

  How long did she have? How much air did a human’s lungs hold? And how long until the gondola and those in it also rose into the killing zone?

  She sat up again, face stinging from cold, eyelashes icing up fast – but at least there was no wind. And at this level, the air pressure had only dropped a little. But once they’d ascended another hundred feet, the air pressure would lessen dramatically. She didn’t want to think what would happen to her body then – any organ within an enclosed interior space would depressurize catastrophically. She thought of her eyeballs exploding… and started cutting.

  Her bloody hands were already half-frozen. She sawed clumsily at one suture, managed to cut through it. Just two more. Her lungs were bursting, collapsing. All she wanted was to breathe. Even though she knew there was no air around her, even though it would surely be the last thing she ever did, all she wanted was to open her mouth and fill her lungs with something, anything.

  Another suture sliced through. One more, just one to go. But her vision was starting to fade, blackness creeping in. She was passing out. She had to breathe, had to. She swiped the scalpel again, but her eyes had nearly frozen shut. Then she felt something on her stiffened, bloody hand – something warm, warm air, blowing outward from the skin. She forced one ice-crusted eye open. There was a slit, in one of the tubules radiating out from the plexus. She must’ve nicked it. The wound was leaking warmth onto her hand, visibly clouding the air. She fought to think. The tubules... carried gas to the plexus… One of the gases… was oxygen. She had no time, no options, no choice. She cut at the tubule again, enlarged the small cut to almost a foot across, and with a desperate lunge, buried her face in the wound.

  She sucked in with all her might, filling her lungs and… she could breathe. Yes! It was an oxygen tubule. She breathed in again, lungs expanding with hot, smelly, glorious air. A few more lungs-full and she felt the ice melt from her eyes. She could see again. She took one more full breath, then risked sitting up. She quickly aimed the scalpel at the last remaining suture and cut it free.

  Instantly, the plexus expanded, filling like an oblong, fleshy dome running along the center of the sunkiller’s back. The tubules branching out from it filled with gas next, inflating all along the surface of the great wings, routing gases to and from the bladders on the wings’ undersides. She thrust her head back into the warmth and air of the tubule. The next moment, the sunkiller cried out, a joyful, wild, soaring double cry – and she felt them dropping through the motionless, icy air, descending toward the pressure gradient.

  Zenn breathed deep, the warm, rank air in her lungs radiating out to bring her chilled body back to life.

  She felt the sunkiller going back through the barrier, felt the valley’s air washing over her – thick, luscious, breathable air. She’d done it. She’d actually done it. She sat up. She shouldn’t have.

  The violent gusting wind below the gradient struck Zenn’s chest with the force of a sledgehammer. A millisecond later, she was no longer on the sunkiller’s back, but was tumbling backwards, head over heels. Her cheek slammed into something, skin ripped from her face. She clutched frantically at the tail, got a grip, lost it, blood-slick fingers sliding. Then she sailed free – and fell.

  Zenn plummeted through empty, rushing air, her body tumbling, spinning, every sickening turn bringing her eyes back around to the impossible, heart-stopping sight: the sunkiller and its gondola racing up and away into the pink-blue sky.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Zenn had shut her eyes against the horrifying sight of the sunkiller receding above her. Now, she opened her eyes, saw the Martian surface speeding by far below and shut her eyes again. Her face burned as if branded, her chin and neck wet from blood oozing down her cheek, the metallic taste strong on her lips.

  I’m alive. I shouldn’t be alive.

  There was a painful pinching, like two vices, cutting into her armpits.

  I should’ve hit the ground by now.

  “Novice Zenn?” the voice came at her out of the darkness. “Is your brain conscious?”

  Reluctantly, she eased one eye open, then the other. Yes. There was the ground, hundreds of feet below her. But it was no longer rushing up to meet her. It was moving… she was moving… sideways.

  “I thought for myself.” The voice said. “You suggested I think in this way. And I did. And here we are.”

  She realized then what gripped underneath her arms. Coleopt claws. Hamish. Hamish, holding onto her, flying, wings thrumming.

  “Hamish.” She felt as if she could cry, but she laughed, despite the pain. She spit blood. “Hamish, it’s you.”

  “It is me. I had no one to ask approval of, do you see? No one to ask if your situation was both dire and urgent. So I thought of the answer myself. And I myself approved the action of coming to see if you required assistance. As I flew upward, you were all at once coming downward. I flew in such a way that I encountered you falling. I was accurate. And here we are, safe and ship-shape.”

  “Yes, Hamish,” Zenn said, crying and laughing and tasting her own blood at the same time. “Safe. Safe and ship-shape.”

  By the time Hamish circled around to carry her over the cloister’s south wall, the sunkiller was already inside the compound. The immense wings arched over the chapel ruins, where the animal had anchored itself to a fragment of stone arch with its long tail
hook.

  As Hamish slowed down to land, Zenn could see Liam was helping the council members clamber out of the gondola and onto the ground, where Otha and Hild waited. Fane and the Kiran emissary were securing the gondola with heavy lines attached to large pieces of rubble. The sunkiller had brought its two heads down low to watch the activity. But when its four sharp eyes caught sight of Hamish descending, both heads raised up and cried out a double honking alert.

  She saw Liam raise his arm to point at them.

  Hamish touched down lightly and released Zenn from his grip. The next thing she knew, Otha was there, gathering her up in his arms.

  “Zenn, we thought you’d… we thought…” he didn’t finish, but held her away from him, up in the air, seemingly unable to speak at all. That was a first.

  “Otha. Could you please…?” Still aloft in his grip, Zenn nodded her head at the ground.

  He set her down.

  “Sexton Hamish.” Otha clapped both his hands onto the coleopt’s upper carapace. “Well done. Well done, sexton.” Hamish seemed unsure of how to respond to this unusual outburst from his director-abbot.

  “Child!” Hild rushed up and began to fuss over Zenn, smoothing her hair, pulling out a handkerchief to daub at her bloody face. “Are you alright? Look at you. Ren says you got up on that animal’s back. You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”

  “She did, though,” Hamish said. “And then she fell off into the air.”

  “Oh!” Hild’s hands flew to her mouth.

  “And I thought for myself!” Hamish exclaimed.

  “Scarlett!” Liam called as he ran to where she sat. “You’re alive – how in Nine Hells…?”

  “I flew without any approval other than my own,” Hamish went on proudly. “And I encountered novice Zenn at an altitude well above ground-level and…”

  “You? Caught her? In midair?” Fane said, coming to stand behind the others, shaking his head in wonder. “By the Shepherds!”

  But Zenn could no longer hear any of them, because Hild had wrapped her in her thin, strong arms, pulling her in close, rocking and crying and tsking and scolding. Which, for once, Zenn didn’t mind at all.