by Robert Reed
Then the Ghost touched him on the face, so lightly and so carefully that the sensation seemed to fall short of being real. And the creature had a soft quick voice, not human or anything else.
“Quest,” it said.
“What?”
“My name is Quest.”
Diamond asked, “Why?”
“The word suits me,” it said.
The boy wasn’t sure what to think, and he tried to empty his head.
“Do you remember before?” Quest asked.
“Before?”
“Before this world.”
“Maybe,” said Diamond. Then he pushed his hand and arm deeper into the picture of the Corona District. Fingertips found a curved surface, warm and dry. The insides of a huge empty snail shell felt this way.
“I like to watch you,” said Quest.
Diamond’s hand returned to the cabin.
“I make eyes like you make hair,” said Quest. “I watch Creation.”
“If I could grow more eyes, I would,” said the boy.
There were clicking noises that sounded happy, or it was just clicking.
“We’re brothers,” Diamond ventured.
“I’m female,” said Quest, her insect hand retreating.
“Oh.”
“You and King are male.”
Diamond was surrounded by Quest, and the air was growing stale. He pulled his head back inside but left the window open.
“I watch everything,” his companion repeated.
One question begged to be asked, but Diamond didn’t speak quickly enough.
“You were taken from the corona before I was,” Quest said.
“Who took you?”
“A tree-walker,” she said.
“Which one?”
The scene dissolved into gray light, and then a simple image was drawn on the grayness. One man’s face appeared, sturdy and unfamiliar. It would take some thought, but Diamond said his first impression. “I don’t know your father.”
“He’s not my father,” she said.
He started to ask.
“He’s a thief,” she said. “Thieves like to steal from the corona kills. He was dressed like a slayer when he stepped inside the stomach. Three of us were still there. The man saw your father take you, and then he went inside. He picked up King first and could have taken him. He wished that he would have. But I was the smallest, the easiest to hide, and he carried me to his home.”
“Where is that?”
“He lives in the wilderness.”
“When did you leave him?”
“I can’t leave him,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” Diamond said.
“I shared his house for three hundred and fifty-seven days,” said Quest. “Every sight remains seen, every moment keeps living. What is part of me cannot be left behind.”
Diamond was exhausted, baffled. Meanwhile Good remained under the cot, and the papio were still shouting in distant parts of the ship. Bountiful was pushing toward some important destination, and night might hold tight for a very long while. More questions begged to be asked but the boy said nothing, carefully remembering each one of his questions.
“I lived inside a strong cage made of steel and corona parts,” Quest said. “The thief fed me good foods, and some bad foods, and he gave me water. I learned to how to shape myself while I grew, and then I stopped growing. He wanted me to be large and important. So I stayed small and ugly.”
“But you got out of his cage,” said Diamond.
Quest made a clicking noise, perhaps agreeing.
“Before,” said the boy. “What were you showing me before?”
The thief’s face melted back into the gray, and the gray became trees again. The trickery was extraordinary, almost frightening. Diamond looked out at the scene, feeling small, and in ways he had never imagined, he felt foolish.
This was two days ago, he guessed.
The bird sounds melted away. The airships turned silent, and not so much as a whisper of wind could be heard. Then a distant voice, human and unfamiliar, came from deep inside the Corona District.
“Now now now,” the faraway man shouted. “We have to get out of here!”
Diamond had no weight, and he wasn’t breathing anymore.
Then the explosions came, muted to keep the papio from hearing them. The trees fell exactly as they did before, and Diamond wrapped his arms tight around his chest, waiting to feel sick and miserable. But the strongest emotion was anger, slippery and chaotic. He wasn’t certain where the rage was pointed, but the next words jabbed in an unexpected direction.
“I hate that man who stole you,” Diamond said.
The grayness came again, and silence.
“You’re hiding from the thief now,” he guessed.
The voice became more female, and it sounded young. “I cannot hide, and he cannot find me.”
“Because you’re a ghost,” Diamond guessed.
“Because he is the ghost,” she said. “The moment I escaped from the cage, I said his name. I said it nicely, and when he looked at me, I killed him.”
Diamond’s arms dropped.
“I am killing him now and always will be,” Quest said. “But I never ate any portion of his body. I would have enjoyed crunching one of his fists or a foot. But in my life, I have done nothing smarter than killing that brutal man and then flying away from the urge to eat him whole.”
A papio was hurrying down the hallway. Merit felt the floor dip under the soldier’s weight, and then the soldier stopped, calling a name through the door.
The woman soldier wore that name. She looked alert until she stood up, and then fatigue took hold. Her thin pink beard was holding crumbs from the last rations, and the tattoo on the forehead—a blood-and-bone whiffbird—needed to be washed.
The papio said a second name.
“Deserve” was a poor papio translation for Merit’s name.
“I need him. Let him out,” the man said.
The disruption was a bother. Bountiful had finally fallen quiet. The prisoners had dropped their heads on the tables, sleeping or pretending to sleep. But now the faces were lifting, secretive conversations beginning all over again. Merit rose with the first prompting. The woman put a hand on her steel-and-coral pistol, opening the galley door with the other hand. To somebody, Merit or her colleagues or maybe herself, she said, “Long long night.”
The papio waiting in the hallway didn’t know Merit, but he was under strict orders to treat the boy’s father with dignity. “I would be honored if you would help us,” he said, the half-learned words dribbling out. “A problem requires an expert.”
“What have you done to our ship?” Merit asked.
“An accident needs a repairman,” said the papio. “You may pick which one.”
Merit looked back into the room.
“Fret,” he said.
Unease and pain didn’t need translation. The dead man’s name caused the crew to look at the tabletops and their own hands, and then an older man got to his feet. Dressed in blue, he clicked his heels, saying, “Fret reporting.”
“Come with me,” said Merit.
The mechanic joined them in the hallway, and the galley door was closed again.
“A bladder is leaking,” said the papio.
In reflex, the tree-walkers took deep breaths.
“I don’t smell anything,” the mechanic said.
“It’s a small leak, far above. And maybe our noses are more sensitive to the stink you give the hydrogen.”
Two of them started to walk.
Merit didn’t move.
The papio turned. “What?” he began.
“My son,” the slayer said. “Before anything, you’ll show me Diamond.”
“Afterwards,” said the officer.
Merit sniffed the air again.
“The boy first, and then I’ll help you,” the mechanic said.
“Very well.”
A young soldier was blocking the hallway. He
didn’t wake until the officer kicked him, and then he rose and fumbled with the door.
Merit reached past him, claiming the handle. As the door opened inwards, as he stepped inside, he knew that something was wrong.
The boy was sitting on his cot, his back straight and both feet on the floor.
Diamond never sat that way.
Merit looked around the tiny cabin.
Good came out from underneath the cot. “Good sorry,” he said.
“What did you do?” asked Merit.
“Bit best finger.”
Merit couldn’t count the times he had walked into a room to look at his boy, and he couldn’t shake the strong, chilling sense that something was amiss.
“Show me your thumbs, son.”
The boy pointed two healthy thumbs at the ceiling.
“Is there something else?” he asked.
An odd expression broke on the boy’s face. The little nose crinkled, and Diamond began to comb the curly brown hair with one hand. Tugging hard, he said, “Nothing else,” and then he started to fiercely chew his bottom lip.
Merit turned to the monkey. “Why did you bite your boy?”
“Angry.”
Behind him, the papio officer said, “We need to go.”
Instincts screamed. Everything was wrong, and Merit didn’t want to leave. But whatever had happened was finished, and he was powerless, and the papio could well have made a bullet hole while chasing whatever it was that had scared them so badly.
This puzzle had to wait.
“I’m sorry, Diamond,” said Merit. “It’s my fault we were caught.”
“No,” the boy said.
“I dropped a wrench, and they saw it,” he confessed.
“This is bad,” Diamond said. “But it’s also wonderful.”
“Why wonderful?”
White teeth shone, and the boy realized that he was smiling. Dipping his head, he said, “Never mind.”
The situation kept growing heavier. But Merit forced himself to shut the door, and the sleepy soldier once again sat in front of the cabin. Walking back to the shop to collect tools, Merit noticed as much as he could. He counted soldiers and whiffbirds. A narrow door was open. What was that room? The dead men and pieces of men had been dragged there for safekeeping. But now the papio’s mission leader was filling that tiny space, looking out the door with yellow eyes narrowed, as if she was waiting for enlightenment or the punchline of an intricate joke.
Merit fell in beside the escorting papio.
Behind them, the mechanic said, “I smell it now.”
The stink was rich and unforgettable. Pulled from blossoms of a bug-eating plant, it was the wickedest rot in the world, adored by flies and cadaver bugs. Noses said that this was a bad leak, and Merit regretted wasting time talking to his son.
The officer was ready to accompany them, but he had no anti-static clothes. The mechanic pulled down two pairs of boots and jerseys. Nothing here would fit the papio, but they needed to know the stakes.
“One spark and we burn,” Merit explained, in papio.
The officer looked at the slick rubber clothes, reconsidering his orders.
“I don’t want us to burn,” Merit said. “So yes, you can trust me to go up and patch the hole and come back again.”
“Yes,” the officer agreed. Then turning to the mechanic, he said, “Good luck, Fret.”
The mechanic sighed and walked on.
Bountiful was huge, and every surface was new. Black rubber stairs led to black rubber-draped gangways illuminated by jars of luminescent yogurts. The corona bladders had a milky whiteness that came from being stretched, holding back the hydrogen. But they were young and strong, and nothing besides a huge rifle or small cannon could rip any hole in this material. Several papio filled the gangways, nervous enough to spin around when prisoners approached. Merit told them that their bosses were below, where it was safe. He asked the last soldier what she was hunting. She touched her tattoo of a whiffbird, presumably for luck. “It was nothing, a little wild animal,” she said. “But it’s gone. Are you going above?”
“Shouldn’t we?” asked the mechanic.
“If you can save our lives, go above. Go.” Then she retreated with the rest of her troop.
Rope ladders carried them to platforms too tiny to hold even a small papio. They climbed and sniffed, walked on horizontal ropes and pushed at the rigid bladders with their slick boots. Tanks of compressed carbon dioxide gas were fitted into the gaps, waiting for any excuse to flood the air and kill combustion. But there wasn’t any fire to fight. And with every few steps, the smell continued to strengthen.
“This feels wrong,” the mechanic said. “This high, surrounded by hydrogen, we should feel light in the head.”
Merit nodded, counting more senseless details.
“You know,” the mechanic said. “If we had the proper attitude, we could split some bladder and vent a little gas out the top of Bountiful, and then by accident, light it.”
“A signal, you mean.”
“Visible at night and hot enough to burn the passing leaves, leaving Prima a nice bright trail to chase.”
“Except our hosts would notice the fire,” Merit said.
“Maybe not for a while. Wings and jets aren’t flying, they’re just ballistics. They’re way too fast.”
Another tiny platform waited in front of them.
“I want to try signals,” the old fellow said.
“Except,” Merit said. “The last time I spoke to our Archon, I might have threatened to take my son to the papio and safety.”
The mechanic used a few quiet, rich words.
Merit absorbed the abuse.
And then nobody was speaking. The platform was the last flat surface, and a body was sprawled across it, limbs dangling on three sides. They approached until they were baffled, and then they knelt on the rope, Merit in front, holding the railing with one hand while he played with two days of whiskers.
“It’s a jazzing,” said the mechanic. “A young dead jazzing.”
Merit eased forward, pulling a torch from the tool belt.
“Don’t spark,” his companion warned.
“The bladders aren’t leaking,” Merit said. “This is the stink’s source, and I don’t think it ever was a jazzing.”
The body had been shot several times. Odd flesh had been torn apart, and a sticky black fluid had leaked from the holes, not coagulating so much as simply drying out in the open air. There were eyes that were little more than the pits on a coral viper. No mouth existed because no mouth was needed. The limbs were powerful before they died, and he touched the nearest foot, discovering that the jazzing-style claws were as soft as warm rubber.
“Smell this,” Merit said, waving his fingers under the mechanic’s nose.
“That’s our stink,” the man said with a grimace.
Merit stood. “We drop this body out the nearest vent and climb down like heroes.”
The plan was accepted with a soft laugh. Then the mechanic added, “But what is this creature? Its nothing like any beauty in my school books.”
“I think the school books need updating,” said Merit.
“And the rest of us could use some youth too,” joked his companion.
Once again, Diamond stepped back from the window.
Grayness came again, and the girlish voice. “I won’t be seen. Before dawn, I’ll hide again.”
“Where?”
“In the best place, and I haven’t decided.”
Good was sleeping on the floor, on a nest made from sack pieces and scrap paper. The monkey smacked his lips at some imagined food, and then he gave a long loud fart that changed the cabin air.
Something was funny. Diamond caught himself laughing.
“Dawn’s coming,” Quest warned. “I see signs, and I only have a few eyes.”
The creature was plastered to Bountiful’s hull, a fake window on her backside. She didn’t want a passing ship, any kind of ship, to
spy her. She had explained some of her tricks to her brother, including how she played with light and odors. But Diamond had the impression—a quiet, growing impression—that the girl had no real explanations for what she did.
“How big can you grow?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“How much can you eat at once?”
“More than I ever have, I think.”
“Good is my friend,” he said. “Don’t eat him.”
“I won’t.”
Diamond sorted questions on a list that never grew shorter.
Then she said, “You interest me.”
“You interest me.”
“Do you know why I’m fascinated?”
“The same reason that you want to know about King,” he said. “We’re your brothers, in a fashion.”
“We are, and no.”
“Why then?”
“I heard you talking to your teacher. I was outside the window yesterday, and you told your teacher that nothing is evil. A voice said that to you.”
“I don’t know whose voice,” he said.
“But that interests me. Very much.”
Outside, the big engines were beginning to throttle back.
“They’ll tie down the ship before dawn,” Quest said.
Diamond needed sleep, and he feared closing his eyes. “Do you know the voice I’m talking about?” he asked.
Quest said nothing, and the grayness in the window held steady.
“Does some little voice push between all of those ears?” asked Diamond.
“I can have a thousand ears,” Quest said. “I weave them until they are huge and sensitive, and nothing escapes them. But I’ve never heard the voice you are talking about. It’s a stranger to me.”
Once again, Diamond put his face against the glass.
“That’s part of why you are fascinating,” she said.
And the boy said, “If you see so much, maybe you look in the other direction.”
“Do I watch the reef?”
“You do.”
“I never get close, because of the danger.”
“But you can’t stop watching for the other one. Can you?”
“You want to see what I know.”
“Everything,” Diamond said. “But we don’t have time. You pick for my eyes, sister. Please.”
TEN
King didn’t believe in demons or in nailing myth and human words against what refused to be understood. But he understood and accepted that every sphere had its center, and the Creation was the largest, most perfect sphere that could exist. Humans ruled what mattered, and the District of Districts was the center of what mattered, and his homeland had always rightfully dominated this wonderful rich world.