The Memory of Sky

by Robert Reed

  When the woman looked at Diamond, she smiled, compassion dancing beside a thousand subtle considerations.

  When she and her aide met, Prima held the young woman by an elbow, saying, “Thank you,” before whispering a few private words.

  The aide blinked and stepped back. “I thought we were going to protect him in the Station,” she said.

  “Except our security is lousy,” the Archon said. “We’ve got more than a thousand people in this building, plus refugees, and if we think we can trust everybody, then we’re vulnerable to the next surprise.”

  “Yeah, we’re a mess,” Tar`ro said.

  The group was standing close together again.

  The Archon looked at Tar`ro. “Did you know that guard well? The man named Bits?”

  “Obviously not, madam.”

  Father and Nissim were whispering back and forth again.

  “All right,” the Archon said to the surviving guard. “If you’re making decisions, what would you do? How would you protect the boy from this point on?”

  Tar`ro had thought the problem through. “I’d find a fast fletch and wait for darkness. Then we’d run away.”

  The Archon nodded. “The Happenstance is fueled and ready.”

  “I like that ship,” Diamond said.

  She nodded, playing with a weak smile. “And where would you take the boy, if that’s what we decide to do?”

  “I don’t think I’d tell anybody, madam.”

  “That is a wonderful answer,” the Archon said, turning to her aide once more, ready to deliver orders.

  Father came forward.

  He didn’t hurry, and he certainly didn’t push anyone. But the man put himself in front before he said, “Prima,” with a warm voice.

  “Yes, Merit.”

  “For a lot of reasons, I need to talk to my son in private. Is there any way that would be possible?”

  She barely had to think. “Of course. I understand. In fact, you can use my office, and in the meantime, we’ll make arrangements with the Happenstance.”

  “Wonderful, madam. Thank you.”

  They were walking again, but the Archon stayed behind to deliver more orders. Father pressed the pace. They went into a long hallway, discovering a familiar old man and his old gray-and-white uniform leaning against the blond paneling of his elevator.

  Diamond looked back.

  The bodyguards had nobody to watch but each other. Elata was approaching, and Seldom, with Karlan following everybody else. Diamond had to step out to look past that enormous body, but the hallway curved slightly. He couldn’t see into the atrium anymore. The rest of his class had been left behind, and Prue too. Diamond felt uneasy thinking about strangers walking past the students, nobody noticing them, and in another few moments he might have suggested that someone return to check on the little girl. But then Father ushered him inside the elevator, and the rest of the group followed, doors rattling shut and everyone standing quiet and still as the world dropped fast around them.

  The forest should never stop falling. There was always a limb snapping free, slipping out from beneath the dense canopy. There always had to be dead birds blown from their last perches and desperate monkeys that couldn’t make one long leap, and whole insects and pieces of insects and animal wastes, solid and wet, made a filthy rain, pungent and endless, and the tree-walkers never quit throwing their trash into the open air, pencil stubs and jeweled bracelets and worn-out shoes tumbling down to where the demon floor waited, and after that, oblivion.

  But then the explosions came, and following the blasts were fires that ate their way towards the wilderness. Quest had never seen any collapse of this magnitude. For one horrible moment, the world looked ready to turn black and die. But after the last few trees ripped free of the world, the flames were choked out by their own smoke. That’s when the stillness came. Every weak branch had already fallen. Scared animals didn’t eat or willingly climb anywhere, and nothing in the world was relaxed enough to shit. Suddenly it seemed as if no living creature would ever move again, as if the forest had been trapped inside some invisible glass, clear but unforgivingly rigid, and what if this moment of perfect stillness continued forever?

  Quest was terrified in new ways.

  And then a breeze stirred, twenty little branches falling, and the creature secretly rejoiced.

  Quest had never been so large. Throughout the morning, flocks and swarms of displaced animals had fled to her dobdob tree, too panicked to notice her swollen, barely camouflaged body. She had eaten beyond her fill, beyond any sensible need, using cheap flesh to weave more eyes and more ears and enough nostrils to grab the quietest, most distant scent. Old cautions had been set aside, and while she had no plans to remain this huge, she had to wonder how much larger she could grow before the dobdob branches would split and fall.

  The breeze grew stronger, offering a rich mass of odors and new sounds.

  A thousand human voices were close enough to be heard. Quest listened to citizens on the District’s wild border, and she eavesdropped on foresters and hunters perched in closer places. Every one of them was agitated, angry, and terrified, and they couldn’t reveal their deepest feelings quickly enough.

  Half of those voices talked about the papio.

  Half of that half saw no reason to give the enemy warning or measured decency. The counterattack had to be immediate, without limits. Justice demanded murder on a matching scale, which was ten or twenty or fifty thousand dead, and they wanted nothing else and many wanted to help with the killing.

  “Damn all of the papio,” they said.

  That was when Quest finally twisted a portion of her eyes and ears, fixing them on the distant reef.

  Watching the tree-walkers was always easier than studying the papio. The wilderness trees grew thin and high at its margins, and the reef-humans had better eyes than their cousins had. Worse still, Quest could see very little besides limbs and leaves, and she expected to hear nothing but wilderness sounds. That’s what came to her at first. A hundred thousand trees were calmly swaying in the wind. But then a whisper arrived, strained through wood and cricket song, and she pivoted almost all of her ears, aiming for the inhabited coral.

  A rough rattling noise emerged, like a giant insect shivering itself warm.

  Then a second rattle found her.

  And suddenly she counted five rattles, with vaguer sounds coming from up and down the reef. Powerful jet engines were laboring but not moving. Fuel was being spent for reasons she couldn’t imagine, and she waited for the papio wings to launch. But some invisible signal was given or an established timetable was being followed. Inside the same moment, every engine dropped into silence.

  Clinging to her fragile perch, Quest wondered how fast she could strip away her new flesh, and where she could hide before night.

  SIX

  Father closed the office door while Good claimed the top of the Archon’s desk. A wealth of important papers stood in a stack, ready to be shredded into a workable nest, but the monkey squatted at the desk’s edge, defecating into the round trash basket, and then he closed his eyes as if deep in sleep.

  Diamond thought he should put the mess somewhere else.

  But he did nothing.

  Father slowly lowered himself into one of the guest chairs, and Diamond sat beside him. The Archon’s chair was behind the desk, very tall and made from black leather, steady use leaving the faint impression of the woman’s shoulders and head.

  Father took a deep breath.

  The boy studied the empty chair.

  “I never imagined this,” said Father. “That anyone would want to do this . . . whatever this is . . . ”

  The Archon wasn’t with them, yet Diamond could see her plainly.

  That was important.

  Why was it important?

  “Look at me, Diamond.”

  The boy didn’t want to be seen. He was waiting for his face to find a worthy expression—some sorrowful grin or wild grief or simple cra
zy terror. Any expression would be better than the rigid, unfeeling mask plastered over his features now. But too many feelings were roiling inside him, too many wounds. Maybe the invulnerable brain had been injured and needed to heal. But the brain was harder than his flesh and his bone, and maybe the wounds would never heal. That’s what Diamond was hoping, because awful days like these should leave scars that never went away.

  Father put a hand on his hand.

  Diamond turned toward him.

  The soft old face was wet under the eyes. The scar seemed to be the biggest wrinkle. Father sighed, and with another man’s voice, he said, “I want you to know.”

  The voice was too high, too thin.

  Diamond smelled fresh turds and his father’s sweat and his own sweat, which was saltier than anyone else’s. A full recitation passed before he asked, “What do you want me to know?”

  “How thrilled I am that you’re alive.”

  A set of broad windows looked across a slice of forest that hadn’t fallen yet. The air was teeming with screeching homeless birds. Commuter blimps and private airships were coming from far-flung parts of the District, wanting to help or at least hoping to measure the catastrophe. A much larger airship maneuvered in the distance—an elegant long machine woven around a skeleton of corona bones, made silver from the many corona scales fixed to its hull.

  Father kept talking. “That’s what your mother would want,” he said. “First in her mind would be your survival.”

  Diamond looked at the chair and the left-behind impressions again.

  “Mother isn’t gone,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” Father said. “It’s early. Ships and refugees are scattered. We can’t say anything for certain.”

  Diamond meant something else, but he did a poor job saying so.

  Suddenly, with both hands, someone struck the closed door.

  The boy jumped, but not Father.

  “Yes,” Merit said without turning. “What is it?”

  Tar`ro looked in. “The Happenstance is ready.”

  “All right.”

  “We can climb on board whenever we’re ready.”

  “Thank you, my friend.”

  The guard nodded, watching both faces. Then he said, “It looks like a very short day. The sun’s dimming fast.”

  A lot of trees had fallen and burned, and the coronas’ realm always thrived when that fierce air was seasoned with ash.

  “We won’t be much longer,” Father said.

  Tar`ro nodded, left.

  The military airship had dropped from view. Diamond watched the birds, except he wasn’t seeing them. His eyes were open yet in some odd fashion blind. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, softly and then hard, and opening them again, he found his father sitting in the Archon’s tall chair, hiding every trace of the little woman.

  “I was counting on them putting us inside somebody’s office,” Father said.

  Diamond looked at the walls. Each was adorned with pictures and plaques and certificates full of words that he didn’t have the patience to read.

  “They’d leave me with a working call-line,” the man added.

  Prima enjoyed five working lines to the world, which was a huge number. Maybe only the Archon of Archons had more. Father lifted the receiver and touched several glowing buttons. A ring ended with a buzzing voice, and when the voice quit, Father said, “This is Merit. Now I want you to listen to me.”

  Older children had always helped care for the youngsters.

  That was the human way.

  Adults weren’t suited to the demands of little ones. Somebody needed to feed the creatures, and they had to be bathed and clothed. Small transgressions demanded punishment. Someone needed to act as a diplomat when young friendships were tested. But there was a subtle, far greater blessing in this tedium. The caretakers had no choice but talk to these tiny, uncivilized beings. Every day, instructions and clear warnings had to be given, moral laws invoked, and the same laws had to be defended from evil and doubt and lazy blood. Old stories were recited from memory, and even if the little ones were filthy loud brats with the attention spans of roaches, old stories had a habit of coming alive for the speakers. Suddenly these weren’t strings of memorized words, but they were Truth and Authority, and this was why noses were wiped and asses were spanked every day: the partly grown caretakers were making themselves human.

  Papio children had always helped raise the Eight.

  At first local boys and girls were gathered up and sworn to secrecy. They helped feed the odd mouths and clean up the nasty messes while the doctor and various experts failed to make contact with the Eight.

  But one caretaker made it his mission to stand before the swollen, helpless monster. Day after day, he would hold up a simple object or body part, showing it to whatever looked most like an eye. He named the object, repeating the word a thousand times, and then he listened to the best mouth, ignoring the mutters and groans, waiting for that clumsy first word.

  “Hand,” was what the Eight said first.

  “Hand hand hand hand . . . hand hand . . . ”

  One word grew into a toddler’s vocabulary, and the Eight begged for more children to help it learn and grow.

  The papio searched their world for bright patient youngsters. A secret village was built underground, and to help maintain security, none of the helpers were allowed to return home again.

  Soon the Eight grew one mouth and four clumsy limbs, and each mind learned to speak. Names were given to the Eight. The doctor had her favorite, and every child had his or hers. Hundreds of busy days passed; nothing substantial changed. The Eight remained divided and chaotic. The Eight spoke in riddles and nonsense, although the children were adept at guessing moods, and better than any adult, they could separate their favorite’s words from the mayhem.

  The oldest children became adults. They were thanked and replaced, and with nervous anticipation, they began to dress in adult lives. But the old rules remained in force. Each had to remain in the vicinity, working where they could, and in one case marrying one another. It seemed inevitable that their future children would eventually take up this great work, and their grandchildren.

  But then Diamond came to the reef, and King, both running wild among the furious, horrified papio.

  After that, nothing was the same. King went back to the middle of the world, living inside his father’s giant house of wood and sap. The strange human child was sleeping in his old room, pretending to be a happy normal tree-walker rich with friends, school, and peace. And there were whispers about some magical beast with no shape and no weight, living free in the wilderness between the two human worlds.

  Suddenly the Eight seemed like the weakest child. Powerful voices regretted their patience, and meanwhile, the old doctor who had studied them and protected them returned home, and as promised, she and her cancer died.

  New doctors assembled in a distant city, making plans.

  Throughout those troubles, the children kept vigil, bringing food and drink, news and rumors. And sometimes one of the Eight would take charge of the mouth, speaking to a favorite child with a clear voice, or washing all of them with bent little riddles.

  King and Diamond had been home for forty days. The oldest child—the same young boy who taught the monster to talk—was now a young soldier serving in the local militia. One afternoon he left his post to run up into the reef’s shadows, nothing in his hands but still full of news. The doctors had arrived, bringing tools and odd machines. They wouldn’t discuss their plans, but it was obvious what was coming, perhaps as early as the day after tomorrow.

  One voice took the mouth long enough to say, “I want a basher nut. Bring me one basher nut.”

  Moments later, the Eight collapsed on the favorite dash-and-ash mat, eyes blind and the mouth wide.

  Each entity was at war with its siblings.

  King and Diamond had strong little bodies. But the Eight was a giant, divided and useless so long as each of them rule
d just a few pieces. War was inevitable, and silent. Blood was the weapon of necessity, and their blood came in eight distinct shades. Three were red: smoky red or bright pink or red like a man. Two forms were violet, while one was black and another a cold blue. And the final blood was a scalding, flame-worthy orange. Each had its taste and temperature, its consistency and limits. Each carried cells that might have once fought diseases but now battled foreign organs. Some were strongest in the day, others at night. The bloods flowed where they could, and when every course was blocked, they would pool inside friendly hearts and livers, gathering energy, waiting to attack whatever new weakness was revealed.

  Blood could change its color, pretended to be another.

  On occasions the blood scattered until it was too thin to notice. What was invisible slipped past barriers, attacking like poison, like cancer, killing the enemy from within.

  Fouling the siblings’ meat was a common tactic.

  Cutting nerves and food to the enemies were equally valid.

  Through the night and during the following long day, the giant body was wracked by endless violence. Children brought food that wasn’t eaten and water that wasn’t sipped, and they sat on the coral dusts, watching nothing change. Meanwhile the new doctors approached cautiously, taking temperatures and samples of flesh, scribbling elaborate notes while ignoring what the children told them. The Eight were fighting for control and all the doctors needed to do was to wait for someone to win the last battle. But as a group, those smart doctors decided that war wasn’t the smart conclusion. The corona’s largest child had fallen ill. The eight creatures had lost their equilibrium. Yes, the body was in turmoil, and it was hard to see which part belonged to which creature. But the eight brains were distinct, and doctors understood knives and surgery. To people like them, only one plan made any sense.

  Divers had the reddest blood, and her muscle was red and her bones were white, and Diver’s cells and tissue resembled human cells and human tissue.