Queen of Heaven

by Michael Orr

  Inside the city ramparts, the lone, staggeringly huge spire rose up from the center of an immense pit. It reached kilometers into the sky, stretching toward the flaming Virran heavens while seven equally-spaced buttresses swept down from the spire like spokes, meeting the landscape right at pit’s edge. The gigantic structure looked to be made of chalk.

  As the tram neared the pit, it became clear this was no natural crater. At least thirty kilometers across, it sank deep into the ground, with the city’s architecture not so much built upon the uneven terrain as growing out of it. The urban sprawl was part of the ground itself, with the blockiness of usable buildings replacing the random geology of natural earth.

  All of this bore architectural features like roofs, balconies and windows. Bridges and winding roads led from one precipitous outcrop to another, crisscrossing the walls of the pit like ribbons while air traffic darted this way and that in the open airspace.

  “Wow.” Amber stood at the edge, staring.

  “Kinda reminds me of an industrial mining pit,” Trish said, casting her eyes every which way. “’Cept maybe a thousand times bigger.”

  She traced the central spire all the way to its tip, then followed the sweeping lines of the nearest buttress back down to the pit’s edge. It came to rest about half a kilometer from where they stood. Then she noticed...

  “OMG, it’s all terraced!”

  Amber followed Trish’s eyes and zoomed in with her own lens. The buttress was indeed notched, with entire neighborhoods nested in the lap of each enormous terrace. Every portion of the buttress was etched with terraces all the way up its sweeping arc toward the spire.

  “Holy cow!” Amber gawked. “One’a those spokes alone prob’ly holds a million people!”

  Trish shook her head with awe. “Or more. No wonder there’s so much wilderness outside the city walls. They must do this so they can keep the rest’a the planet pristine.”

  A hand touched her shoulder and she turned to meet the smile of a travel guide.

  “If you’d like to go down in, rides embark over there...” The guide pointed to a shelf of platforms lining the edge of the pit where passengers were queuing up for skybuses.

  “What about the tower?” Trish asked.

  “That’s the residential sector. Basically off limits. Down there’s the commerce center where all the shopping and dining is.”

  Trish looked at Amber. “Ready?”

  A skimmer whisked them over to the bussing shelf and they stepped into a glass-bottomed Virran shuttle that drifted easily into the open air.

  Saiph’s generous light filtered through the planet’s magenta veil and painted the walls of the pit, lighting everything as the bus passed close by outcrops of windows. It skimmed down toward the pit’s core several kilometers below, and from here the central spire went from ‘huge’ to ‘god-sized’.

  “Lookit that...” Trish whispered, staring straight down into the massive population center beneath her feet.

  Amber blinked, fighting her vertigo with a creased forehead. “Think I’ll just wait ’til we get down.”

  “So cool.” Trish peered into passing windows, glimpsing Virrans in the midst of their daily lives.

  The bus drifted over the downtown district, passing by tidy bazaars and ultra-clean shopping districts peopled by long, sinewy Virrans, their iridescent indigo skin veiled by draping folds of gauze. The culture organized itself in a color-coded caste system, with little mingling outside a given group’s color. It all looked serene, and there seemed to be no offense when wearers of one color were obliged to brush up against those of a different caste.

  “Check it out...” Trish pointed to one Virran who sped along on a floating footboard ahead of a train of hovering packages, all apparently bought at separate shops considering their different colors and shapes.

  “Over there...” Amber spotted another, and soon they noticed similar trains all over the market.

  Trish shrugged. “I guess Virran stores don’t deliver.” She studied the bottom of the pit with its larger, more substantial buildings. Crowds of Virrans down there convinced her it must be the main shopping area, and when the bus settled on its pad she was straight out the door.

  “Hey!” Amber slalomed through the stream of exiting passengers to keep up.

  Trish stopped and sniffed the city air, catching a medley of aromas she couldn’t identify. Cooking? Industry? The scent of Virrans themselves? None of it smelled like she’d expect for a violet world.

  “Got carried away,” she apologized. “I think this’z the garment district.”

  Virrans used space in unusual ways, with clusters of cylindrical shops that varied in color and size depending on where they sat. Those facing the thoroughfare were smaller than the ones nested deeper in, giving the impression of a disorganized pipe organ.

  The areas between clusters always featured community artwork, which struck human eyes as angular chaos of an altogether alien aesthetic. And hanging over all of this like permanent umbrellas were taut, stretched awnings of translucent fabric that gathered the natural sunlight and diffused it down below to provide source-less lighting devoid of natural shadows.

  Surrendering to the strange ambience, Amber eased up on craning her neck all around. “Okay, this’z supercool.”

  Trish shook her head. “They talk about it in the brochure, but...” She noticed something way up where Amber had been gawking.

  Unlike the linear streams of sky traffic back on Earth, here the skyborne vehicles skittered in and out between skyscrapers like butterflies.

  “Think they use a central AI for traffic like we do?”

  Amber shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “Can you imagine?” Trish turned back to the city’s bustling sky. “What kinda brain would ya hafta have ta process all that and not get in accidents, like, every ten meters?”

  Amber shook her head. “So...sump’m in particular you’re lookin’ for?”

  “I heard about this fire fabric they’ve got,” Trish said with gleaming eyes.

  “Am I sensing a new outfit on its way?” Amber sassed. But the Asherah crowd thinned and they both stopped cold, face-to-face with Virrans.

  A youngling about Trish’s size rushed forward, an immense grin on his happy face as he came closer. He looked inordinately pleased with himself for discovering them, and there was nothing for Trish and Amber to do but smile back.

  A sharp whistling sound followed him over, but the youngster was too taken by his discovery to notice. That was when a long blue tentacle wrapped around his middle and drew him gently back.

  He turned and sent a lower-pitched whistle back to the tentacle’s owner, undoubtedly a parent, but to no avail. He turned back to the girls and seemed to say ‘goodbye’ with his joyful eyes as he withdrew.

  Trish waved and Amber giggled a little.

  “That was different!”

  “Look!” Trish pointed to a distant shop where strips of lively flame draped like liquid fire from a hanging display.

  13

  * * *

  YSP – RIGEL SYSTEM – MAR 23, 2371

  Two days after Virris, Trish and Amber were on Rigel’s eighth planet, Ysp; this time joined by Saia in a surprise cameo away from her port o’ call station.

  For the moment they were all silent, fixated on the colorful avian Byoons who missiled themselves through the air to neighboring cloud villages.

  “It takes so much work,” Amber mumbled.

  Trish was shaking her head. “Looks like fun.”

  “Oh, not the flying. I mean keeping their villages floating. So much energy.”

  Saia shrugged. “s’Not that big a drain if ya got the right tech.”

  Amber searched for signs of tech, but found none.

  “You guys do see ’em flying, right?” Trish interjected.

  Byoons cornered the market on ‘exotic’. There was no other Alliance race like them. Built like avian squids, they jetted through the sky by pro
pelling themselves forward with a blast of air and streamlining their bodies into a bullet shape. It was magic to watch their multicolored shapes careen through Ysp’s clouds, darting every which way overhead as they flashed in beams of Rigel’s peek-a-boo glare.

  “Reminds me of an aquarium,” Saia noted. “A sky-sized one.”

  “So cool.” Trish refused to look away from the spectacle.

  A cluster of adult Byoons lighted on a purpose-built perch not far away, instantly dominating everything around with their three-meter-high bulk. They immediately began warbling at each other in voices that sounded like the creak of rubber or fingertips streaking across wet glass.

  “What th...?”

  Barrages of words swamped Trish and her friends, coming non-stop through their earBabels.

  “Go ta mute! Go ta mute!” Trish tapped frantically at her ear for the emergency shutoff as the Byoons’s stream-of-consciousness conversation overflowed her brain.

  “Oh my gawd!” She straightened up now that the verbal attack was silenced. Amber and Saia were doing the same.

  “Guess we won’t be chatting with the locals,” Saia griped.

  Amber blinked at the Byoons in awe. “How the hell d’they make sense of all that?”

  “Who says they do?” Saia quipped. “Maybe they just ignore each other ’n listen to themselves.”

  Amber sniffed at the breeze. “Y’guys smell that?”

  “I think it’s them...” Trish nodded at the cluster and Amber lifted her chin in an ‘aha’.

  “We could catch a tour.” Saia nodded at a dock jutting out from the next village over. Eternally social Byoons built their neighborhoods close together, with five or six villages always in view through the ever-present clouds.

  Oftentimes, rickety bridges spanned the gap between this and that village for the sake of terrestrial tourists, but public transportation came in the form of dirigibles of varying shapes and sizes. The airships posed the least threat to constantly darting Byoons and were Ysp’s main form of travel.

  In the mood for sightseeing, the trio made their way across the bridge toward the local dock.

  “Anybody have an idea how high up we are?” Amber asked, peering over the railing at the clouds below.

  “High,” said Trish.

  “High enough ta not wanna know,” Saia agreed.

  They reached the dock a few minutes later and lit the beacon to hail an available airship.

  “Z’at one?” Trish pointed to a vague shape moving through the local clouds. It quickly broke free to reveal itself as a modest sloop drifting toward their dock under the power of elegantly-swifting oars.

  “Ahoy...” came a male voice through the mist.

  “Ahoy!” they shouted back, eager to see the owner.

  “Aha! Band of maidens...” The sloop crept up to the dock with its captain directing prearranged nets and lanyards from the helm to secure his weather-beaten ship in place. That done, he hopped down from his scaffolded perch to greet his new passengers.

  “You’re a Lingan.” Saia grinned as he lifted her hand to his lips. Lingans looked human, but with intriguing differences like deep espresso skin sheened with glittery copper freckles.

  “So I am!” He smiled, taking Trish’s hand next, then Amber’s. “And where can go such lovely nymphs?”

  “Welll...” Trish turned coy, “we don’t really know. Whaddo you suggest?”

  His eyes lingered on her longer than expected and she felt an awkward fidget coming on, but he spoke in the nick of time.

  “On such a day, you see most at Great Rift.”

  “Great Rift?”

  “It take many time to there, but the clouds lower... let sun hit rocks. Hovering rocks, not find anywhere.”

  “Hovering?” Saia glanced at her friends. “Sounds int’resting.”

  “What’s a trip like that cost?” Trish asked.

  “Quarter day travel to and from. Some stopoff...” He tossed out a figure in local currency and Amber took a noticeable step back.

  Trish leaned in. Whispered, “Don’t panic.”

  “Huh?” Amber hushed, but Trish had already turned back to the Lingan captain.

  “What about ninety?”

  He studied her appreciatively for another long moment. “One-ten,” he countered with delight.

  Amber and Saia stood by, watching Trish and the captain haggle like they were speaking in tongues.

  “Split the difference?” Trish asked with puppy eyes.

  “Done!” The captain broke out in a toothy grin and gestured grandly to the gangway.

  “Seriously?” Saia growled in Trish’s ear as they crossed the narrow plank.

  “Didn’t you read the Rigel stuff?” Trish shushed. “Only strangers pay full price. Friends here expect a discount.”

  “Also,” the captain called out, climbing back to his helm, “I am Wesquie. Please make comf’torbal. I have hammocks for rest, and other nice. It takes us a time to break free of mist.”

  They drifted away from the dock and Trish stood at the rail, drinking in the Byoons’s picturesque style. Soon she’d be floating through the planet’s Great Rift, the huge equatorial ravine separating northern and southern hemispheres where gravity flux sent rocks and boulders skyward.

  A shiver of excitement tingled through her. This’z real!

  “You think somethings?” Wesquie called over.

  Trish took the excuse to join him at the helm, climbing her way up the scaffolding beneath his unabashed gaze.

  “It’s all very...unreal to me.”

  “Unreal?” He clearly enjoyed looking at her. Maybe a little too much.

  “We don’t have cloud villages and airships on Earth.”

  “Neither my home,” he agreed. “So I am here.”

  “With your own ship.”

  His smile matured beyond simple politeness. “Only work open to outsiders. Byoons very choosy.”

  “You’re happy away from other Lingans?”

  “Oh, I not alone. A few of us here. You, on different hands, bring everyone everywhere.”

  Trish squirmed a little. Met him with an apologetic smile. “Wwwe just like ta visit.”

  They were still chatting when Saia left Amber to her below-deck explorations and joined them.

  “You live aboard the ship?” she asked.

  “Yesss...” He bowed to the obvious. “Everything I need is here. But you no agree, living on your liner.”

  “I dunno...” Saia swept her gaze around the deck and the surrounding mists. “You’re free t’get off wherever and enjoy what Ysp has to offer. We’re stuck on Asherah ’til she makes planetfall.”

  He turned his attention to her. “You can trapped?”

  “Maybe sometimes,” Saia admitted.

  “And you?” he asked Trish, who nodded at Saia.

  “Well she’s been out here longer than me. I’m just happy t’see the Alliance.”

  Sometime later, the sloop broke out into hazy sunlight and the girls leaned against the bowsprit rail, gazing upon a garden of huge rock spires poking out of the mist like shadow phantoms.

  “You like maybe we dance with clouds?” Wesquie aimed the ship up toward the massive cumulus clouds towering over them like windblown anvils. Within minutes they were skirting dramatic pastel colored shelfs like a boat playing among shoals close to shore.

  “I can’t believe how huge they are!” Trish stretched out over the rail to rake her hand through the vapor. Wesquie leaned the ship in with a mischievous grin, plunging everyone into the cloud’s depths.

  “It never occurred t’me they’d smell like moisture,” Trish said as they broke free a little ways on, the sloop and everything on it now glistening with water beads, including the three of them.

  “Look look...” Wesquie pointed to a flock of condrells using the cloud banks the way fish use coral reefs.

  “Flying snakes?” Amber muttered, watching the reptiles glint in Rigel’s light. They darted in and out of the cloud ban
ks like prey.

  “Dragons,” Saia corrected. “Must be predators around here somewhere.”

  “Only Byoons,” Wesquie said, bringing a yelp from Amber.

  “Byoons?! They hunt these things?”

  Saia shrugged. “Everything eats.”

  Half an hour later they dropped down below the cloud ceiling and drifted into a sea-sized basin on lazy oars.

  “Welcome to Great Rift,” Wesquie announced. “Now you see somethings.”

  “Ohmygod...check that out!”

  Amber’s excitement brought Trish and Saia’s glances over to starboard, where a close collection of moss-covered rocks floated in the open air.

  “They just stay like that?” Trish asked Wesquie.

  “Yes and no. Depends.”

  “What happens if ya step on ’em?” Saia wondered.

  “If big enough, you can walk.”

  The girls’ eyes widened. “Can we?!”

  Wesquie smiled. “Not those. Only ones with plants and trees. Those can safe.”

  It took a while, but he eventually found a complex of floating islets complete with a stepping-stone bridge connecting them.

  “You gotta be kidding!” Saia studied the skyslets. The two main ones were carpeted by short grass, with patches of inlaid stone bricks for tiles and a healthy collection of plants. The larger islet even had a stand of palms sheltering its far side.

  “That is absolutely the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” Trish bounced. “Somebody made this!”

  “Okay can go.” Wesquie steered the ship close, maneuvering delicately alongside the initial welcoming stone.

  Trish didn’t need to be told twice. She was instantly over the rail, testing the stone’s stability.

  “Feels kinda floaty-solid,” she reported, letting go of the rail to put her whole weight on it.

  The stone bobbed a little and tipped slightly against her off-center weight, but kept its place.

  “Safe,” Wesquie nodded confidently.

  Saia followed as soon as Trish reached the nearest islet, and Amber left the safety of the sloop with equal parts reluctance and intrigue. Now all three of them stood on the smaller islet floating free in the middle of the sky.