by Robert Reed
The papio attacked before darkness. They came exactly as they were supposed to come: a rapid bruising strike with those winged machines that both amused and terrified every fletch captain. Big wings flew beneath the trees, burning fabulous volumes of alcohol even before they climbed toward Danner and the Station. Local airships and tree-mounted gun turrets fired at the blurring targets, and the papio pilots spun and evaded the worst of the gunfire, targeting the worthiest, easiest targets. Fortunes of metal and polished coral were sent flying. Holes were punched through even the toughest corona scales. Late day battles were always the worst. The atmosphere’s high oxygen content meant that fuel tanks ignited with the first spark, while bladders filled with hydrogen gas were bombs waiting for any excuse. Wings shattered and dropped. Airships turned to clouds of flame, their bones littering the open air beneath. But the Happenstance’s captain had his youngest, sharpest-eared crewman listening to the winds, and he launched with the first rumbling of jets, diving into the thickest portion of Danner’s surviving canopy.
Ship and captain roared between branches, shredding leaves and a lot of birds as they fought for distance and invisibility and one last dose of luck.
Then the first mate tore open the sealed flight plan.
“Dirth-home,” she read aloud.
That was a small surprise. They were being ordered toward a keenwood growing on the edge of the District of Districts. It wasn’t an obscure place, but on a table of useful destinations, Dirth-home dangled near the trash can.
“Do we have any followers?” the captain asked.
No papio were visible, thankfully.
The superstitious man had little faith in their prospects. He gave orders about direction and speed, yet he refused to sacrifice the resident baddilick—a golden rat kept for desperate occasions.
“Leave him alone,” the captain said, forcing his crew to shove the angry animal back into its cage.
“But blood could help,” said the first mate. “And it certainly wouldn’t hurt.”
The captain meant to respond. Another moment or two, and he would have explained how their good luck would be someone else’s curse. But a papio flex-wing spied them, diving low and turning its jets to hover long enough to afford two clean shots, and their unarmored engines were instantly turned to scrap.
Twin fires were quenched with smothering gases and foam, but meanwhile the Happenstance drifted into a great old branch, and one of its bladders was punctured, bleeding a fountain of hydrogen.
Of course Diamond could be burned alive and live regardless. Isn’t that what the rumors claimed? The boy was the target, the prize, and that’s why the first wing fell back and fired off flares, signaling its companions. Suddenly three more roaring machines found stretches of bark and walkways where they could set down. Turning to his crew, the captain gave one order, and he meant it, and when nobody reacted, he cursed them and grabbed up the baddilick, throwing the live animal out an open window.
Again, he screamed at his people, “Get out of here.”
But the papio had already reached them. Males and females were the same size, each as heavy as two normal men. They wore the same coral-colored blue-black uniforms. Forcing open both hatches as well as the service entrance, they boarded with the precision that comes only after considerable practice, conquering the crippled ship before another recitation passed.
The top papio was a powerful male with a long rifle and brass pins buried in his ugly face. He looked like a man ready for a fight, the papio mouth proving adept at the human language.
“You will walk me to the cabin,” he told the captain. “You will lead.”
In his life, the captain had never been braver. He was a prisoner, and his ship was crippled, the stink that rode with the hydrogen souring every breath. The carbon dioxide tanks were drained. Any little spark or ill-aimed bullet would ignite that deflating bladder. The little man had every right to feel doomed, and he was pleased to make it halfway to the cabin without collapsing. But his courage felt spent after that, and legs that he had trusted all of his life turned to noodles. He stumbled twice before the soldier picked him up with one hand, shaking him like a monkey, saying, “We want nothing but the boy.”
The captain managed to stand, discovering his voice again. “Why do you want him?”
The rifle barrel jabbed him between the shoulders
He recovered his stride. Navigating the stairs, he asked, “Why do you want Diamond?”
“Because you don’t deserve him,” said the papio.
The cabin door was locked, and the captain spent moments patting his pockets, hunting for a key left behind on the bridge.
Sensing duplicity, the papio reached past him, punched the lock and forced the door inwards.
Brutish faces stared out at the two of them. Royal jazzings were the miniature, half-domesticated versions of the murderous wild jazzings. They had short jaws wrapped inside muscle, their green eyes furious and terrified, each trying to yank loose from the ropes that kept them helpless.
“Where’s the boy?” asked the soldier.
“Where Happenstance wants him to be,” the captain said.
The papio thought of shooting everything, but he wasn’t a fool. So he carefully set down his rifle and used his hands, breaking the monkey’s neck, making no sparks at all as he reached down for the gun again.
What caused the fire would never be known.
The boarding party burned, and the crew burned, and five more jazzings were sacrificed, each with a charm reading “Diamond” fixed to its blazing chest.
SEVEN
Father spoke about finding sleep. He led them to the cabins and one at a time put them inside, closing doors while instructing them to rest. Every cabin had its rubber floor and one tiny window set high, black shades drawn. The spaces were narrow with single narrow cots claiming one of the long walls. Diamond’s cabin was last. The linen was stiff and white, crackling as Diamond sat on the edge of the cot. Father looked at him from the hallway. Then Father looked at the floor, attempting to smile. “Rest,” he said. “You need to,” he said. Perhaps he was talking to himself when he pushed the door closed.
Diamond promised himself dreams. Mother was dead or she was alive. Either way, the boy was certain that she would find his sleeping mind and tell him important somethings with her own voice. That would be a tiny, much wanted happiness. But Diamond couldn’t sleep. He could barely close his eyes, lying on his back in the darkness, his right hand open on his stomach while his left hand made a fist that wasn’t happy anywhere. The fist dug into the sheets and into his hip and sometimes it reached down, banging against the cool rubber floor.
The big ship was trying to be quiet. No engine was running. The crew spoke rarely, never louder than a whisper. But there was a tiny metronome living inside the cabin, flywheels and gears counting the recitations. Diamond listened to that busy machine and to the outside air blowing through the cooling darkness. Tied to heavy branches, the ship continued to move, its frame creaking in a few reliable places. Sometimes rumblings and roaring engines came from distant places, but most of the world was resting. Good was asleep in the safest part of the cabin, under the built-in desk and chair. Seldom was inside the adjacent cabin and Elata was down the hall. His friends cried in their sleep, and they cried while awake, and the crew did some quiet work in the shop and up on the bridge, and Diamond listened to everything before shutting his eyes as an experiment.
A hundred recitations were misplaced.
Some tiny sound woke him. His body and hands hadn’t moved. Diamond slowly opened his eyes, but the perfect darkness left him blind. Where were the dreams? None offered themselves. Maybe he forgot them. Real people usually misplaced their dreams, and that might be the same for Diamond. His relentless brain might be living another fifty lives while asleep, but if he forgot those dreams, there was no way to know about them, and that odd notion made him more hopeful than sorry.
The urge to sleep was lost. Diamond made his
left hand stop being a fist, and he reached over his head for a lamp remembered well enough to be turned on with the first blind attempt.
The metronome had measured his sleep. Diamond studied its numbers until he believed them, and then he sat up.
Yesterday there had been talk about fresh clothes, but Diamond was still dressed in the brown school uniform. That might not change for days and days. When they were sitting in the Archon’s office, Father used the call-lines and his name, building a new plan, and then he hurriedly took a select few people up to the highest berth at the Station. Secrecy was everything. The Archon wasn’t told about the new scheme. Tar`ro left the other guards sitting outside the wrong room, and nobody wasted time finding clothes that would fit children. The big hunter-ship was already fueled and inflated, but only so that it could get out of the way of the warships that were coming from across the District. Their ship escaped long before the papio attacked, slipping into the wilderness once night was done taking charge.
Bountiful was an honorable old name, attached to a big corona hunter so new that Father had never even flown inside it. But he knew the crew, by name and by story, thousands of days shared in the air with these people.
Diamond slid to the end of the cot, feet finding the waiting boots.
The monkey lifted his head, eyes open but seeing very little. Then he settled again, and Diamond slipped away.
Sitting on the hallway floor, Tar`ro was letting his chin rest between his knees. But he shook himself when the cabin door opened, telling the boy, “Stay put.”
Saying nothing, Diamond stepped over the man’s feet.
“Wait for me,” Tar`ro said grudgingly.
Diamond waited.
They walked together, the boy leading them past the empty galley. The hallway ended with a wide door propped open, a great volume of darkness waiting along with the abrupt silence of a conversation interrupted.
Diamond paused at the edge of a room.
From the darkness, Father said, “Here, son. Come over here.”
But the boy didn’t steer toward the voice. This was the machine shop and flying dock where the smaller hunter-ships could be refueled and repaired. Every light had been extinguished—affording a little more security—but one of the three service doors had been lifted high, the soft glimmers and luminescence of wilderness life drifting inside.
Diamond stopped three steps back from the empty air, standing high on his toes while peering out.
The world’s ceiling wasn’t far above them. Wilderness trees were shorter and much thinner than blackwoods, each adorned with twisting branches that usually battled with their neighbors for light and for rain. The wilderness was a tangle. Bountiful was floating inside a confused, ever-changing maze. This realm was shared by multitudes of creatures using colored light to proclaim their assorted majesties. Other animals screamed with their legs or sang with their mouths. The dry night air carried odors that meant nothing to a human nose or to Diamond’s, but each scent belonged to its own language, intense and presumably ancient. Night-flying leatherwings were already heavy with insect meats and bird meats and sips of nectar given by night-blooming flowers. One more step forward and Diamond peered over the floor’s lip, at the living maze, marveling at how Bountiful had burrowed deep into the canopy, hiding where even sharp papio eyes would have trouble spying it.
Two steps and a leap, and he could fall out of this world.
The idea didn’t surprise Diamond. It came to him so clearly and suddenly that he had to wonder if it was a thought that had been dwelling inside him for a long time.
Is that what his forgotten dreams were about?
A half-step more, and he squatted.
Father came up behind, each knee cracking with its distinct voice as he knelt, the cool legs on both sides of his son.
“Are you done sleeping?” Father asked.
Diamond assumed so. Yet now, surrounded by the familiar body, he felt ready to close his eyes to everything.
Master Nissim approached, sitting on their right.
Tar`ro claimed a portion of the floor to the left.
Several recitations passed.
Reluctantly, Father asked, “Did you hear us talking?”
“Yes,” said Diamond. “But I wasn’t listening.”
Father and Nissim didn’t believe him. They said so with silence, and he noticed how they shifted their bodies, as if their bones weren’t comfortable.
Diamond let his mind guess. Then he spoke quietly, though not as sadly as he expected. “They killed all those people, but not me.”
“Not you,” said Father.
“But if they wanted me gone, why didn’t Bits just shoot me when we were alone? Shoot me and tie a weight on my body and drop me through the demon floor?”
Nissim and Father rocked back and forth, saying nothing.
“Well, that’s got a simple answer,” said Tar`ro. “Our enemies, whoever they are, consider the Corona District guilty of an enormous crime. We rescued an abomination. We should have murdered you as soon as you were in our hands. That’s why we deserve to be thrown into oblivion too.”
“He’s not an abomination,” said Father, with heat.
“In their minds, this creature threatens everything they trust. And they’ll try to kill King as well, if they get the chance.”
“My brother’s more dangerous than me,” said Diamond.
“Not in their minds,” said the bodyguard. “King terrifies, but he doesn’t make these people sick to their stomachs.”
The other two men said nothing.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Diamond said.
Then the Master straightened his back, and with a careful tone, he said, “Merit. You should tell him.”
“I know.”
Diamond back leaned into his father.
Yet Father seemed to change the subject. “This machine is a marvel,” he began. “We can’t build a better hunter-ship than Bountiful. Not for any sum of money, not for all of the corona scales and skins and bones in the world. These engines couldn’t be any stronger for their size, or faster, and there’s not many military ships that enjoy the redundancies we have onboard. Even the crew is the finest you can assemble from among millions of living people.”
Diamond leaned harder against him. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do,” said Father.
Maybe.
Then the man wrapped a long arm around his son, asking, “Now what if somebody thought up something new? Let’s say it’s that bright friend of yours. Seldom. Seldom grows up and imagines a revolutionary kind of airship. His design looks like Bountiful, except it floats without hydrogen gas, and it flies faster than our ships or even the papio wings, and best of all, you can crash his ship or set it on fire—any disaster that the Fates and Destinies inflict—but the machine rebuilds itself out of the pieces on hand, making itself stronger in the process.”
Tar`ro laughed dourly. “Listen to him, kid.”
“Me,” said Diamond. “He’s talking about me.”
“And I’m talking about King and the ghost in the wilderness, and whatever creature that the papio might be hiding.” Father held him tight and found a louder voice. “We don’t know anything for certain. But it looks as if there’s a huge, huge difference between you and the other three. King’s nothing like human beings, and nothing like you has been seen in the wilderness or on the reef. You are unique, Diamond. You are special because in so many ways, you’re human.”
The boy fidgeted, and then he said, “But I’m not.”
The men said nothing.
“I’m different,” Diamond said. But he knew exactly what was being said.
“Your body’s more durable, and your brain can’t be broken,” Master Nissim said. “But remember your tenth day in my class. I had your blood and Seldom’s blood on two slides, and what did the other students learn?”
“They couldn’t tell which was which.”
“And doctors have had th
eir looks,” Tar`ro said. “Believe me, the Archon gets every report plopped down on her desk.”
Prue came to mind, expecting to marry him. And just like that, Diamond felt angry toward the little orphan girl.
Father shook him gently. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” the boy lied.
“Everybody’s waiting for you to get old enough,” Tar`ro said.
“Old enough,” Diamond whispered.
“I know you have inklings of this,” Father said. “But you have to see it plainly now. Everybody—the Archons and the papio too—look at you as a potential father. If you can grow up and have children, and if your family inherits your powers—”
“Which might not happen,” Nissim interrupted. “Hybridization is a complex, knot-rich process.”
Tar`ro laughed again. “But what if he can? A thousand women marry him, and his kids get just a portion of his tricks mixed in with that ordinary blood . . . and the world is remade for all time . . . ”
The other men shifted their rumps, saying nothing.
Tar`ro’s voice brightened, hardened. “What’s the matter, gentlemen? You think I should sit in a classroom or stand on that landing, suffering boredom, suffering rain, and for no good reason but to keep one odd kid out of trouble? No, no. I’ve always seen the big true picture.”
“I don’t like the tone,” Father said.
“And neither of you appreciate the scope of things.”
“Perhaps you should describe what you see,” Nissim said.
Diamond stood, stepping out of his father’s reach. The shop’s floor ended with a raised lip, and reaching the edge, he gazed into blackness spoiled by swirling dots and blobs of busy light.
Scorn in his voice, Tar`ro said, “You dear gentlemen are too smart to see anything clearly. We’re not fighting a war. Wars are a string of battles that end when anybody starts to cry. No, what’s happening now is far worse than anything in history books. This is everybody fighting over one clear, spectacular prize. This is two species ready to risk everything, and this is each District doing battle with every other District, and every person tonight is trying to make sense of his thoughts. Now that the world has been stirred up, everything gets ugly, and there’s not going be any good place to go for a long time to come.