The Memory of Sky

by Robert Reed

  “I hope I can depend on you,” she said.

  “Of course, madam.”

  “Because I will.”

  He nodded.

  She handed her aide a thick folder.

  “I still don’t understand,” he said. “Why would you take such a risk?”

  Ready for the question, she said, “Believe me, I know the man. List is self-absorbed and bloodless and shrewd, and worst of all, he perpetually thinks too much about himself.”

  The young man nodded gamely, but he didn’t understand.

  “Four hundred days ago, when the Archon followed Diamond to the reef, the man pranced in front of the papio. He told the papio to steal Diamond. He advised them that they should kill the Archon of Archons and start a great war with the tree-walkers because the boy was that important, that precious. His tone, that corrosive attitude, didn’t help then, and it won’t work today. And I think you agree with me. Today, everything depends on the face that we send against our enemies.”

  She picked up a sack full of intelligence reports and papio rosters. Everything else would be brought by others.

  Prima carried the sack, walking quickly.

  “And the Archon of Archons agreed to this change,” the lieutenant said cautiously.

  “Yes.”

  “Because you hit him a few times,” he muttered.

  Nobody was as important as this one young officer, and that’s why she stopped and looked at Sondaw, staring until he grew uneasy enough to throw his gaze at an empty wall.

  “I struck him in front of his son.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “I don’t know what King is. I can’t say that he’s a new species or something that the Creators forgot in their ovens. But ritual violence is King’s breath. A one-sided fight would accomplish considerable good. That’s what King believes, in his blood and spines. List was ashamed to be on the floor, and his adopted son was horrified by his father’s lousy showing, and because I had every advantage, at least for a few moments, the fleet is ours.”

  “As long as we aren’t at war,” Sondaw said.

  “We’ll be at peace tomorrow,” she said, walking again.

  From two steps behind, her aide said, “But the Archon won’t let this stand.”

  “He won’t,” she agreed.

  “Madam,” he said. “I know how a beaten man thinks.”

  She slowed. “From experience?”

  “Every man knows,” he said.

  Women knew it too, but she let that declaration pass. “The risks are smaller this way,” she insisted. “List is pushed aside temporarily. And as you pointed out to me, thank you, King might well have played a role in the various treacheries. Minimizing him is another blessing.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  She slowed, and the lieutenant had no choice but catch her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw no one else. “I can trust you, can’t I?”

  Flustered, he said, “Of course, madam.”

  “Three days ago, you didn’t exist. Not in my world. But here you are, helping your mother carry home the groceries.”

  The lieutenant glanced at the folder in his hands.

  “The rain’s nearly finished,” she said. “Come with me.”

  The man took one step and stopped.

  “Now what’s wrong?” she asked.

  Sondaw surprised her. With a hard gaze and stern tone, he said, “I don’t believe this. List wouldn’t simply hand over his fleet.”

  “Yet he did.”

  “No.”

  They stood alone in the hallway.

  “What do you think happened?” she asked.

  “You struck him, and in front of his son, you knocked him down. But that wasn’t enough.”

  “No?”

  “In the end, I think you made a deal with the man.”

  “A deal,” she repeated.

  “You come from a trading family. Traders know how to make agreements, and that’s why you gave him something, and I think you gave him more than that one chance to hit you in the face.”

  “What could I possibly offer the Archon?”

  Sondaw’s face flushed, and he said, “Diamond.”

  Prima placed two fingers across the young man’s mouth. “This is the trader’s secret, Lieutenant: I would have done that anyway. Really, after the carnage at home, after so much death, how can we pretend to anybody that our little District might ever keep that boy safe again?”

  ELEVEN

  High-hands rode on top of warrior-class fletches. Selected for their sharp vision and sure reflexes, they were the key protectors on any ship. Nothing outflew the papio wings. But wings were expensive and lacked endurance, and one man riding astride a well-calibrated autocannon, if he had the necessary gifts, should be able to kill a wing before it finished its first attack. And that was why the papio would run out of wings, and that’s why they were sure to lose the next war.

  High-hands deserved to be the elite among their ranks.

  Of course wars only lived in history books and wherever confident generals played their intricate, well-practiced games. For a very long while, the military had fought only skirmishes with the papio, and the Jugular had never done even that. A middle-aged fletch, in fine repair and with a well-trained crew, it had made a thousand patrols without delivering any killing shots. Three high-hands were riding on top, each inside a gun bubble. Quyte had earned the primary seat over the bow. His eyes were first to spot Bountiful. That long forest-colored machine was emerging from the wilderness, pushing hard toward the reef. Calling down to the captain, Quyte gave the target’s position and apparent speed, and while he spoke, his hands reflexively checked his weapon, making certain that the first explosive round was ready in the breech.

  Then he had finished talking and finished loading, and that’s when Quyte realized he was gasping, and the rapid, rattling of his heart made his entire chest ache.

  The young man had never been political or subject to religious passions. In temperament, he was considered, if anything, too mild for his critical post. There was no pattern to his friendships, except that he was close to almost everybody on the roster. He had no great failings of character. While he knew what the old books said about the Creators and perfection, he didn’t think much about the lessons of faith and humanity’s place in the world. What was important was that he had great respect for Prima and for the military. As it happened, Quyte had seen Diamond many times in the past. The boy lived close to Shandlehome—a buckwood tree where Quyte’s family to live. Quyte’s father had spent a portion of his savings to acquire the same fine quality telescope that high-hands used in their bubbles. Every time the high-hand visited the old home, he spent some moments looking at the landing that wore a big net and that big window where Diamond could be seen playing children’s games, or playing with his monkey, or doing nothing but sleep.

  Shandlehome fell two days ago. Quyte’s parents were presumed dead, along with both his sisters and their husbands and a newborn nephew.

  In that, the high-hand was the same as many others.

  Everybody had suffered. Almost every citizen in the District and onboard the Jugular had spent the last two days wishing miseries for their enemies. Of course some of that hatred had to be aimed at the boy. Diamond was the target of this attack, and there was always extra rage that needed someplace to gather, and why not throw obscenities at the creature that brought this rain of carnage and waste? Yet Quyte never mentioned any of those deep feelings, assuming that everyone was the same. What’s more, the gunner had fine reasons to honor his uniform and his District. He was married to a beauty he had known since school, and his wife was still alive, living near the Jugular’s primary dock, which was as far from the mayhem as possible. Also, she was fifty days pregnant. The future had become a very dangerous tangle, and it was important for Quyte to play the role of the loving, reliable husband. Two days ago, he promised his sobbing wife that he would be careful and smart, and he promised that nobody wanted war
, and he meant those words when he spoke them and he believed them as well as he could believe anything. But the gunner’s nature was to have very little faith in great callings, and he was even less introspective than most of his peers, and perhaps those were reasons why he was vulnerable to wild, unpredictable shifts of mood.

  Quyte saw the corona-hunter and called to the fletch’s captain, and he made his cannon ready for things that wouldn’t happen.

  Then his hands weren’t busy anymore, and they started to shake. His entire body trembled. Time was empty, leaving him with all sorts of vivid thoughts, and he rolled into the next moment and the next, and ideas kept bubbling up, leaving him nowhere to escape.

  The Jugular’s captain had clear orders.

  Finding and intercepting Bountiful was his primary mission, and if that was accomplished, then the Archon wanted that every power short of brute force should be employed in bring the missing ship home again.

  The captain, who had a well-deserved reputation for simple clear talk, had explained the mission to his disciplined crew.

  Quyte understood his ship’s role and his personal responsibilities.

  Three others fletches were patrolling in the formation, all to their right. Bountiful was on their left, and while signaling with flashing lights and important horns, the Jugular pushed to full speed, dropping water and climbing to intercept the runaway airship.

  Quyte was watching Bountiful when the first wings appeared.

  From behind him, a high-hand shouted, “Two hawkspurs under the canopy’s toes.”

  He should have seen the wings earlier, and he turned surly. An instant later the papio were on top of them, using those roaring wasteland engines to slice at the air and try to ruin his courage. But unexpectedly, the intruders were a welcome change. They made the situation vivid and immediate. Quyte was a gunner again, nailed to a tough worthy job. The newfound sense of duty rode with him all the way to Bountiful. The papio were brazenly supplying cover for the corona-hunter. Whether they controlled it or not was a question for others. His duty was to watch everything, protect the men riding with him, and protect his world to the best of his ability—and every moment of training seemed to matter as he held the gun with both hands, tracking one wing and then the other until the Jugular reached a point just ahead of the corona-hunter.

  Their captain ordered a full stop, and the slick triangular airship reversed engines to block the way.

  Bountiful sounded its collision horn, but the captain or its pilot weren’t taking chances, dropping ballast before passing overhead, aiming for the next substantial gap in the canopy.

  More papio wings appeared, three and then another pair buzzing about the scene without getting close to branches or those tough slow-moving targets.

  Bountiful was climbing fast, but a second fletch had closed the gap, pushing overhead and then barring the escape route.

  Again, the collision horn blew.

  The third fletch pulled ahead and spun around, her nose facing Bountiful, her speed and grace matching every movement that the corona-hunter could manage.

  Following protocols, the Jugular eased close to Bountiful, blocking another one of the available retreats.

  The fourth fletch still had air to cross, but once it arrived, that big airship wouldn’t have anywhere to escape. Long before the harpooners and slayers and that one odd boy could make it to the reef, Bountiful would be surrounded and boarded, and that’s how the peace would be saved.

  Quyte had very little to watch now. The hawkspurs couldn’t approach the canopy, and there was nothing to see among the branches. So he watched the notorious ship, and in particular the open doorway and its airborne dock. Their natural enemies were standing inside that huge room, pretending to own the place, which answered one critical question. The papio had been chasing the boy for two days, and now they had him. Quyte and the other high-hands watched the whiffbird propellers start to turn and the papio soldiers standing near the open door with weapons in hand, and then Quyte put his telescope to his right eye, discovering humans in the shadows, standing along the back wall in a neat short line.

  The boy was there.

  His proportions were weak and wrong, and Quyte recognized the tightly wound hair and the sickly face. Then he saw what might have been a smile, those peculiar white teeth catching the little bit of morning light that made it to the back of the room.

  Quyte was certain that he saw a smile.

  If someone could have talked to the young high-hand a day or two later—if Quyte was given the chance and enough encouragement to explain his actions—he would have had very little to say. He was no deep believer in any custom or tradition, particularly his own. He thought that Creators and the meanings of humanity were other people’s interests. His personal losses from the attack were huge, yet he had the wife and unborn child too. He was trained. By every measure, he was disciplined and proud of his uniform. Maybe he had heard other soldiers talking with conspiratorial tones, plotting this or implying that. But the gunner had never felt interest in treachery. His sole crime was to not mention the dangerous chatter to his thoroughly indifferent superiors. Indeed, Quyte looked like the best man to put inside that blister. But then he peered through the telescope and saw the boy smiling, and he watched the papio working quickly to launch their whiffbirds, and the peace and apparent stability of that scene made this young soldier think in a startling new way.

  Two days ago, trees died and people died so that one creature had this chance to move from the trees to the reef. That was the truth dangling in plain view. Maybe the boy asked to live with the papio. Maybe he even planned for it, or he was an innocent moved by some greater evil. Details didn’t matter. The core of the story was impenetrable to reason and evidence and every fear of being wrong. What mattered was that vast forces had unleashed the explosions as a cover or as punishment, and it only seemed as if the boy had been lucky enough to escape.

  But Diamond had to survive Marduk’s fall.

  That always was the plan.

  And that had to be why the creature was standing where he was, the monstrous smile filling a wicked alien face. Those sick white teeth were what caused the gun to move, and only the faint, faint possibility of innocence kept the high-hand from shooting Diamond with the first shell, aiming instead for a place that was higher and far more frail.

  “Women are rarely stronger than men,” Crock’s mother used to joke. “But women are never, ever as weak as the strongest man.”

  Crock was strong by every measure.

  Becoming a soldier wasn’t easy work, but after two days on that path, her vocation was set. Others failed in their training, and good soldiers could complain. But not Crock. Physical challenges were weathered without complaint. She liked to run. She loved to carry and climb. Shooting was a fine challenge wrapped around geometry, and following orders, even the dumb orders, proved easier than the headstrong girl had imagined. Once trained, she would never stop being a soldier. It was the blunt polished certainty of her existence that made her happiest, and because there hadn’t been any war for generations, it seemed self-evident that her running and shooting were good reasons for fun, and following dumb orders was the cost to having a uniform and abundant food as well as a pension once it was time to retire.

  Six hundred days ago, Crock was posted to the roughest, poorest slice of the world, and soon after that she volunteered to fly inside whiffbirds. Whiffbirds were risky duty, even in peace. But the pay was better, and she had new skills to learn, including new words and fresh curses. She endured bruising training sessions where crews were taught to protect something that was very special, very secret. Something that they were forbidden to know about. But soldiers had always been bold and young, and no secret was safe with those kinds of people. Smart voices talked about the Eight, and later Crock heard about an armored child and a half-human child who had come out of the trees for a visit. And once during a very long day, she was standing alone in the wilderness, inside a blind, p
racticing her stealth skills when a creature with no clear shape walked on the branch in front of her. And just like that, she was one of the few people who knowingly saw the beast that could dress itself in dream.

  Soon after that the Eight became One, and that was Divers.

  Every day more soldiers were stationed nearby, as bodyguards and mechanics, pilots and simple soldiers.

  One night, a colleague asked Crock if she wanted an audience with Divers.

  But she had been ordered to avoid the creature, which was what she intended to do until ordered otherwise.

  Then came whispers about whispers, and rumors wilder than any tale about old coronas coughing up unlikely beasts. And soon after that the tree-walkers decided to slaughter each other in a mad, idiot attempt to murder one boy. Crock found herself in briefings about situations that had already changed in the field. Three times, she sat onboard her whiffbird, instructing her team about a new destination but always with the same goal—to grab up that miracle boy. But those important missions were aborted twice, and the third attempt was called off when an orange flare was sent past their bird’s nose. Only the fourth mission mattered. That briefing came en route. Crock read from papers so important that they had to be burned afterwards. Like any assignment devoid of planning and good sense, there were needless casualties on both sides. But there weren’t as many dead as she feared, and Bountiful was theirs, and the boy was theirs again. He was stolen from a corona set on their land, after all. And if all of that wasn’t historic enough, Crock was told to take her three best men to the galley and sit on everybody but the boy.

  Soldiers are consummate experts at sitting. Crock’s prisoners were slender short creatures, except for the boy named Karlan. They smelled odd but not sour, and it took time to grow accustomed to their wispy, unserious voices. Because she knew their language, at least to a point, she found herself interacting with them, and liking them for good reasons, and not liking them for different good reasons.