The Memory of Sky

by Robert Reed

  Diamond looked back at Elata, at Seldom. He wanted to catch his mother’s gaze, but she was watching the butcher floor, arms crossed as her mouth offered silent words. She was holding an earnest conversation with her dead husband.

  Beneath the floor, huge pumps began working.

  The air inside the room instantly thickened, vents pumping in extra air to keep any toxic gases outside. The blowing air made the overhead fletches yank against their moorings, and the balloons spun like a flock of fat birds.

  Slayers dragged more timbers inside the wound.

  List came forward, standing among the soldiers. With his weak loud voice, he told everyone, “Hurry.”

  All of the world’s sirens were roaring, but the attacks wouldn’t happen immediately. Even the swiftest wings needed twenty or thirty recitations to cross half of the world.

  But the Archon saw no reason for patience. Pushing the officer in charge, he said, “Get your people in there. Let the slayers do their work, but you build a roof. You drag and carry. I want the next children free before the papio arrive.”

  “What about security?” the man asked.

  “Security we have. Time is scarce.”

  The order couldn’t be obeyed without a general’s compliant nod. But having received that, the soldiers marched forwards, glad to be busy.

  Again Karlan emerged from the carcass. His clothes were dripping with iron-infused blood, and he was angry enough to glare at every invader. But a few withering curses was enough of a defense, and then he smiled, telling those miserable fools what to bring out next and what not to touch or trust.

  List approached the boys, glancing at Diamond. Something like hope was building in the eyes, and the man even tried to smile. Then he looked at King, saying, “A lot of orders are at work here. But I’m giving you one important command.”

  The son couldn’t have stood taller, waiting for the next words.

  “Don’t hurt them,” List said. “You won’t harm these next children at all. Is that understood?”

  King stomped the floor ten times.

  His eating mouth made injured noises, but the other mouth remained mute.

  The soldiers had vanished. Karlan had vanished. But suddenly the soldiers were emerging. Bent low, the first few of them were sprinting, one stumbling and his companions jumped over his rolling body.

  “We found something,” several men cried out.

  Generals and soldiers, government people and the resident staff pushed forward. Muttering sounds ended with questioning sounds. Meeker was at the front of the crowd, and with a tentative grin, he said to List, “There’s news.”

  “Yes?” asked the Archon.

  “The papio don’t have as many wings as we feared. So we may, may be able to win everything today.”

  King told Diamond, “I was right.”

  Diamond stared into the black hole, saying nothing.

  “Just like your mysterious voice predicted,” said King.

  Diamond started to shake his head. He intended to say, “No,” before cautioning that the voice, whatever it was, stubbornly refused to speak in easy, obvious terms.

  But there wasn’t any time to explain. Karlan emerged from the corona, one rounded object cradled in his arms. Everybody saw him. Every conversation ended. There was a long fine moment when the prize looked like a baby, and the man covered in stomach wastes and rot looked like the proudest father in Creation. Standing at the edge of the wound, boots sinking into the soft old flesh, Karlan used the reflected sunlight to study what he was holding. He almost smiled, but the smile didn’t have any purchase. So he decided to shake his head, and with no ceremony and no warning, he tossed the object onto the butcher floor.

  The prize was round and stayed round, and it sang on impact, resembling a bell ringing in the distance. It hit the bone slats and rang each time that it bounced, and then it began to hum while it rolled forwards, dedicated to one straight line.

  People caught in front of the wonder stared, and then when it came close, everybody turned, trying to leap out of the way.

  “That’s all there is,” Karlan shouted. “Caught in some kind of cyst high in the stomach, all alone.”

  A single child would still be important.

  Two of the coronas’ older children came forwards, intercepting the ball, and List stayed at his son’s side.

  King stopped the humming and the roll with one bare foot.

  A sphere was part of the object, but there was more than that. One of the sphere’s faces was adorned with cylinders—fourteen cylinders—and that made it look less pretty and perfect than it would have looked otherwise.

  “Do you know this thing?” King began.

  Diamond said, “Maybe,” and bent low.

  “I know this thing,” King said.

  What Diamond recognized was the shape that made no sense other than looking distinctly familiar. Did he once have a toy that resembled this object? None came to mind, and the more he tried to remember toys, the less likely that felt.

  But the object was definitely an object.

  Not a child, no.

  King played his toes across the top of the sphere.

  Stomach juices clung to the round surface. Kneeling, Diamond put a hand against the grayness and pulled away the acids and a scrap of corona flesh. The sphere was wider than his forearm was long, but shorter than his full arm. It had weight but not as much as he might have guessed. Then a memory found him and took hold, a voice from some deep past—a human voice, female and familiar—and he heard her telling someone, “The one in the middle. That’s the trigger.”

  “I know this thing,” King repeated.

  “Yes,” Diamond said.

  “I don’t know the language, but I’m remembering a voice.”

  “A human voice,” Diamond said.

  “No,” said King. “It was like my voice. It was beautiful.”

  List stood close to them, and Meeker had joined him. To nobody in particular, Archon asked, “Is it some kind of machine?”

  “A weapon,” the general suggested.

  Instinct kept Diamond silent, and maybe it was the same for King.

  “Any ideas, son?”

  King didn’t answer his father’s questions. Saying nothing, he bent his legs until his knees were planted against the floor.

  Diamond couldn’t remember his brother ever holding this pose.

  “The middle one,” King whispered.

  Diamond gave the ball a half-spin. Fourteen cylinders were pointed at their faces, offering no advice. But for the first time in the boy’s life, his stomach felt sick, as if razors were bouncing in his middle, and the pain and accompanying dread grew worse when Diamond obeyed some imprecise, presumably ancient instruction, his right index finger slipping inside that middle cylinder.

  The cylinder was smooth as a gun barrel, and it ended with a hard flat surface that did nothing.

  He touched bottom and nothing happened, not to the ball or to them, and that felt like a wonderful stroke of luck. Like a monkey who leaps from one branch without knowing if another branch is below: Diamond had taken a gigantic chance, and he had survived.

  List and Meeker were talking to Karlan and the other slayers, demanding that everyone climb back inside, to hunt through the stomach again.

  With his smallest finger, King reached into the center cylinder.

  Again, nothing happened.

  But the ball remained a miracle. The gray surface was as perfect and smooth as any substance made by any human. All of time had been spent inside a beast’s erosive belly, yet the sphere’s mirror-like shine was spellbinding.

  Diamond and King stared at their own reflections.

  With a flat hand, King wiped away more acids, and he laughed at the distorted image of himself.

  Then a third face joined their reflections. She was a plain-faced woman wearing a colonel’s uniform, and what made her remarkable was the smile that was very much like their smiles. Whatever this mystery was, i
t thrilled her beyond all measure.

  King turned to look at the officer.

  “May I?” she said.

  Against every instinct and all of her endless fears, Quest had sneaked into this facility. She came forwards with the chaos, and now she was kneeling between them, not caring who might notice. Her hand and just her hand had ceased to be human. It resembled the complicated limb of an insect, and her longest finger started to enter the cylinder, not quite touching bottom when she stopped herself.

  “No,” she said.

  People began noticing the colonel kneeling with the boys. Bystanders were talking, and Seldom was poking Elata with an elbow, saying, “Look, look.”

  “No,” Quest said once again, and she pulled her hand away, the finger hovering in the air.

  One authentic general shouted.

  “The sister’s here!” she cried out.

  And then it was King whose hand jumped ahead, grabbing what wasn’t a wrist and shoving two smaller fingers into that center cylinder.

  One last time, she said, “No.”

  Then she touched bottom, probably for no longer than a quick heartbeat, and an army of mirrors had nothing to reflect, and the huge building was plunged into darkness.

  Startled, the world stopped talking.

  And then a smart voice—Seldom’s voice—shouted out, “It’s out, it’s gone. The sun is gone.”

  FIVE

  This was a harder birth than the last birth.

  Maybe in some remote past, one of them suffered more terribly. And the most miserable infancy could always be longer and perhaps, perhaps more painful. But all of that was conjecture, not memory. Memory gave them a stick with lines, a measuring rod to set beside their present burdens. The only other birth that they could remember involved the papio feeding them easy meals and simple conversations and some days filled with kindness, or at least the absence of outright malevolence. But nobody in this place pretended to be their parent. What they brought from their former life, knowledge about machines and science, human languages and human politics, offered less than nothing in this new existence. Existence was filled with endless, wrenching demands. The only goal was survival. Between every day’s beginning and end, there were moments and sometimes long intervals when survival seemed unlikely, and the despair only worsened when night descended.

  Even something as simple as one small escape was impossible.

  For days and days and days, they were pinned inside a cavity—a slick-walled chamber empty of everything but the eight of them.

  At first, they were barely joined. Flesh that was happy in cold realms and a thin atmosphere had been shredded, and then it was seared. The present climate was a furnace in darkness and even worse when the sun washed over the world. The toxic atmosphere was thicker than water, and it never quit pressing against the cooked meat and eight hapless brains. To lay at the bottom of this hole, unable to heal and unable to die, was a fate that made the bravest, most secure among them think the impossible:

  This was deserved.

  Just punishments were being delivered to the wicked.

  Even the worst among them—Divers—was ready to accept that nothing would ever change. More brutal days were coming, and what remained of the body would keep baking and mummifying, leaving them to suffer endlessly inside a carcass discarded by some vengeful, unimaginative Fate.

  Tritian was best suited for this furnace. But without food, without energy, his abilities went to waste.

  Eyes were made, and nothing good was seen.

  Various ears were woven, and there was nothing to hear but slow massive winds and little animals squeaking and the shredded remains of great voices—corona voices, everyone agreed.

  “Something edible, something sweet, will come close,” they told each other. “And we’ll catch it and eat it and grow again.”

  Nothing came.

  The hole was rounded like a ball, a partially squashed ball, broadest at the bottom and small at the mouth. Certain rare corals on the papio reef had the same blue-black color and the same slick-yet-rough texture. Those were the hardest, most precious corals, prized as jewelry and bullets. Maybe this was their native habitat. Maybe only a few stunted pioneers of these corals managed to push past the demon floor, struggling to grow in the sweet cold rarified air.

  The Eight couldn’t forget falling. Explosions and their momentum carried them into the corona world, and then the floor was below them again. The floor claimed them and brought them tumbling down again. Would they fall back into their world, like a toy tied to a rubber string? No, the Eight were suddenly flung sideways, hard as a cannon flings its shell. At least that was the sensation, what each of them sensed. They were above the demons and their magic, surrounded by blistering wet air, and a wind took them, or maybe it was the backwash or hard gasp of a corona, and then their senses failed, and time passed, and they settled here or they were set here, and they would likely remain inside this nameless hole for the next million horrific days.

  Mortality was a blessing granted to others, not to them.

  The Eight made simple eyes that didn’t boil.

  The days and darknesses between were counted.

  The flesh that hadn’t been lost or burnt was refashioned, attempting to become useful. But the best that could be managed was a single stubborn vessel with persistent eyes and ears, a rough grasp of taste and smell, and one weak mouth leading into a shared stomach.

  Tritian was in charge of the wreckage.

  More days were counted, and nights, and the frail strokes of each little heart.

  But movement was impossible. Hunting was impossible. And no stupid animal wandered into their grave, offering its flesh as energy. Each day brought more weakness and less possibility. If not for the accidental charity of a passing corona, nothing would have changed until the Eight were as hard as the coral on which they laid.

  Only the very young coronas had patience for holes and crevices and caves. And as holes were measured, the Eight had picked the bleakest, least interesting cavity in Creation. But a baby corona traveling to an interesting place was delayed by some social catastrophe common to young creatures everywhere. He/she paused where no corona ever paused. The creature needed a moment to nourish an insult and massage a bruised ego. Eleven heads saw nothing but embarrassment, while the twelfth head noticed a flat bit of colorless trash that wasn’t expected and might have some interesting quality to fill the next half-moment.

  That tiny creature approached.

  Yet nothing about it seemed small. A magnificent, light-infused beast hovered overhead, and aching with hunger, the Eight imagined killing the creature, or at least ripping away the most curious head. But the visitor had a keen respect for danger, and the first twitch of the trash made it retreat again, and pause. The mysterious object was alive. Hard contemplation led to a quick journey through the roaring winds, and it caught one the gilled beasts rather like what the papio called “fish.”

  A simple mouth accepted the food, chewing in a very sloppy desperate and entertaining fashion.

  Two hundred and six other fish followed that treasure, each delivered on a different morning, and then that dull hole inside the coral was filled with new flesh.

  The corona wasn’t so much a baby anymore. Presumably he/she had opinions about the discovery, and maybe that’s why no one else was told. That might have been a second blessing. Or maybe not. But what mattered was that the fish were eaten in the greediest ways, and the secret creature changed shaped daily, and the corona enjoyed the ritual as well as the slow clumsy transformation of its helpless pet.

  Only Tritian’s flesh could endure the heat and pressure, but each of the Eight contributed little talents and sometimes an unsuspected brilliance. A shared metabolism had to be configured. Odd proteins and dense hot fats had to shredded with new chemistries. Those early fish offered little nutrition, but the last dozen seemed delicious, and they were rich with energy, and the latest stomach wasn’t just happy for the work,
it begged for more.

  Arms and legs had to be contrived.

  One quality about this remarkable place was how extraordinarily heavy the Eight had become.

  Weight wasn’t a constant, according to the papio Masters. They showed the Eight old compelling evidence that the demon floor pulled harder on the coronas. Maybe the Masters didn’t know much about much, but they had been right about this fact. And once another sweet fish was delivered, the Eight began to climb, new limbs pulling the new body to the sharp edge of the hole. Then Tritian ordered everyone to stop and rest, waiting for the next morning’s meal.

  The next fish was carried by the baby’s smallest head. Discovering its pet in an unexpected place, it rose and hovered. Coronas spoke more with light than sound or scent. The orange flashes were admissions of being startled. And then came a bright purple light edging into higher realms, and two heads that had never brought fish reached down, neatly wrenching free every limb on its pet’s body.

  The Eight were thrown back into the hole, and the fish was dropped on top of them.

  Again, the vengeful Fate was in control.

  Another forty-seven days and nights were spent making ready for the forty-eighth morning. Then when the baby arrived—a much bigger entity by then—it found nothing in hole but water and rough coral.

  Its pet had fled.

  Sorrow swirled inside anger, and not just one head reached inside the hole. Five heads decided to make quick work, examining the pit for clues about where the odd creature might have fled. Except the Eight hadn’t escaped. What the baby hadn’t seen was blue-black like the walls, and it grabbed the heads, the necks severed near the creature’s body. What survived that wicked attack swam away. What might have been shame kept the corona from admitting what he/she had found and what he/she had done since. Meanwhile the lost pet was well-fed and now mobile, and the Eight moved between different holes and deep cool caves, hunting its way back to rough health.

  The old world was the destination.

  To make that journey, Tritian remade the body that had worked well before. At first glance, they looked like a papio made huge. But this papio didn’t require lungs or big hearts. The hyperdense air gladly pushed its oxygen inside the orange blood and meat. Its mouth was only for eating. There was no one to carry on a conversation with, and no need for a voice. And the eyes only looked like eyes that worked well in the other world, but they could absorb energies far from the visible, pedestrian light.