by Robert Reed
Nissim paused.
“Why waste your time with me?” asked Prima. “My vote counts for less than nothing.”
Nissim wasn’t cowed or embarrassed or even hesitant. He instantly explained, “I’m practicing my arguments. That’s all. I want to be ready before I approach the generals with what I know and what I’m afraid of.”
Prima considered laughing. But Diamond’s arrival shifted her mood, and she fell into a keen scorching glare.
Diamond said, “Sir.”
“Yes?”
“We don’t need a telescope.”
Nissim closed his eyes and opened them, and only then did he look at the boy. “Why don’t we?” he asked.
But Diamond didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to Prima. “You need to come with me, madam.”
“Do I?” she asked skeptically.
“Both of you should please follow me, please,” he said.
Karlan had returned. Diamond expected him to be carrying guns, but he wasn’t. Corona skin had been pulled from the scrap pile—a long narrow skin salvaged from an old towing balloon, saved to make patches. He handed the skin to King, and King immediately began wrapping it around his chest, three circuits made before he bunched up the rest of the strap and walked toward the glass coffin.
Every soldier worried. Hammers didn’t seem like enough weaponry, and the hammer-man put his hammer down and motioned for help. Suddenly ten men were warily staring at the Archon’s son, every gun in hand, ready to lift.
King glanced through the glass as he walked past, aiming for Diamond and the others.
List stepped out to meet his son.
King touched his father on the shoulder with a finger, just that, and he walked past the man while calling to Diamond.
Again, that sense of deep knowing took hold.
King was breathing hard and that was all that he was doing. “This is what we are going to do,” he said.
But Diamond said it to his brother first. There was no conscious thought until the words were spoken, and King opened both mouths while the dark green eyes grew even bigger, listening the basics of what he intended to do.
Then he was finished, and after a great breath, King said, “Unless there is a better way.”
The brothers tried silence, wishing for inspirations that never came.
Karlan was speaking quietly to his brother and to Elata too. In the distance, soldiers began to fire at the invaders, killing the corona heads. Conversation became harder work, and looking about the room, a pair of officers noticed King standing with the civilians and how the other soldiers encircled the coffin, guns at the ready. But they didn’t approach by themselves. The chain of command made certain that Meeker was alerted to the new danger, and he felt confident enough to approach, ready to disarm this situation with another few careful words.
The rest of the group was standing close to each other, watching King. Watching Diamond.
“We’re going to retreat,” Meeker began. “Unessential personnel are being pulled back into the tree. There’s a bunker in that heartwood. It’s older than everybody but you two, I’ll wager. This attack can’t last much longer. The coronas are too high, too cold. We’ll outlast them.”
As if to prove him wrong, another full-grown corona drove its body into the damaged door, a long steel shard cutting two soldiers in half.
The gunfire quickened.
Soldiers guarding the coffin wondered if someone should reinforce the defenders.
But Meeker told them, “No, come here,” and then he began to wave at the nearest group of high officers.
King’s left palm drop on top of the general’s head.
Inside the abattoir, everyone stopped talking, and most of the guns quit firing.
“No,” said King. “That won’t happen.”
List started to speak.
King’s other hand covered his father’s mouth and entire face. Then as soldiers pushed close from all sides, he told everyone, “There’s a better shelter for these people. And anybody who stands in my way is going to die.”
List put both of his hands on the smothering hand.
“You’re welcome to remain with us, Father,” King said. “Or if you wish, follow some other branch to its end.”
Big rifles were set against strong shoulders, sights finding their marks on that armored face.
Meeker’s voice broke when he said, “No.”
“What?”
“You won’t do this,” Meeker said.
“What am I going to do?” King began.
Then a lone sniper took the easy shot. Rare metals burrowed into King’s forehead and skidded upwards, leaving a clean gouge carpeted with white bone. Suddenly every officer was shouting, telling everyone to hold their fire, and King reacted instantly, angrily, lifting the general by his head and turning him, fixing that narrow body against the broad armored chest. But pulling that long strip of bladder skin around his captive proved difficult, particularly when a desperate man was squirming and every rifle in the room was pointing at his head.
Diamond jumped forwards to help.
In moments, Meeker was swaddled like a baby, two chests pressed together, and King adjusted the man’s height and made a final hard knot before bending the head forward, allowing his eating mouth to engulf the entire scalp.
Razored teeth began to chew, just enough to let the man sense the kind of pain that would follow.
Meeker went limp.
“Now,” said King with his breathing mouth. “Slow, but not slow.”
Diamond followed the group, making certain that everybody was included. Elata and Seldom were holding hands. Karlan pivoted as he walked, counting the guns aimed at him. Mother said something to her son, and she said the same words into her cupped hands. Prima thought about running away and didn’t, and List shuffled his feet until he half-tripped on a saw that had been forgotten on the floor.
“Father, be careful,” King said.
Soldiers had the coffin surrounded. The hammer-man was shooting King with his imagination, practicing the motion and his aim while dreaming that he would be the hero to bring this monster to its knees at last. Right up until the end, that man was making himself ready, and then a young fellow beside him lifted his pistol, fast but not nearly fast enough, and a creature full of oxygen and nerves took two hard strides before swatting both of those soldiers in their faces, breaking every little bone.
Three snipers fired into King’s back.
And he knocked every soldier off his feet and kicked their guns back at his companions.
Karlan picked up the biggest two rifles, and again, he spun in a slow circle, taking a census of his new enemies.
The glass coffin’s top trough was jammed hard into the bottom trough. King’s first yank did nothing, and the second yank lifted both of them off the floor. But then the top one let its grip slip, and he spun and flung it across the floor.
“Get her,” he called out.
But Diamond already had his sister in his hands. She was no bigger than that first time when he knowingly saw her—a bug-like creature clinging to the window of that tiny awful cabin—and she seemed weak in every way. But the jointed legs clung to his forearm, while bright crystalline eyes captured his face, and he stared down at her, and the faint beginnings of a voice said nothing that made sense, but the sounds seemed hopeful nonetheless.
Prima hesitated, looking lost when she glanced at the boy who had ruined her world. But she needed him enough to ask, “Where’s shelter? Where can we go?”
With his free hand, Diamond gave her a push.
The ancient corona was waiting. One hole led inside, and even though the scales and muscles were weak in life and very dead now, the body’s bulk would supply protection against almost every attack. King turned to walk backwards, letting the room see the man strapped to his chest, that fragile head surrounded by teeth. And between more big breaths, he said, “Diamond. First.”
Diamond climbed into the gouge, running a
few steps before stopping. Nothing about the gut felt familiar. He didn’t know this room. But to his sister, he said, “Home again,” and heard a weak laugh.
His mother was next, and she took a moment looking about, probably wondering what Merit would have made of this remarkable place.
The others were coming, Karlan at the back.
King remained outside.
From a deep pocket came a long torch, and Karlan turned it on and handed it to List. Then to Nissim, he said, “Help me drop the ceiling.”
Two timbers were kicked out, and soft old meat shut out the outside world.
Within the gloom, two lights shone.
Quest was glowing weakly.
Diamond kneeled on the gooey floor, and speaking in a whisper, carefully but quickly, he said, “I asked you once early on. ‘How big can you grow?’
“Well, show me how big, sister.
“Show everyone.”
EIGHT
A dead neck provided the way.
Despite living among tree-walkers, King had never walked along any branch, but running up the corona’s neck had to be similar. Legs reached, feet planted. Sprinting was work, but balance was the greater trick. The first few steps taught him how the mind could grow peculiarly fond of any branch or neck, learning its curves and textures, anticipating what would happen next. Then the object to which he had pinned his hopes decided to vanish under its brothers, which was a small treachery, and King had to leap twice, finding a better neck that carried both of them to the top of the giant carcass.
Meeker’s face was pressed against King’s neck, and whenever his head twisted, teeth sliced into his scalp.
King tasted human iron and human salt. Running across the flesh, he told his prisoner, “Shout. Offer some final orders.”
“You want them . . . to hold their fire,” the general guessed.
“Not that, no,” said King. “Reasonable. Tell them to be reasonable. The world’s dying, and this is everybody’s last chance to be sensible.”
Meeker cursed.
King ran and then the corona’s body fell away under them, and he half-jumped and half-slid back to the floor. By then, the other generals had to be realizing where he was going, if not why. But there was no time to react. The gangway to the Girl remained intact and unguarded. The only soldier in view was a recruit only a few days out of training, ordered to reinforce the soldiers who were being killed by living coronas. The boy was trotting towards the battlefield. Thinking like a soldier, he sensed that a slow, steady pace might save his life.
Then he saw King and the general dangling from the alien’s mouth, and dumbfounded, the boy stopped, doing nothing but staring at the day’s latest astonishment.
King sprinted past.
In the edge of an eye, Meeker saw the familiar green uniform. “Do what you have to,” he screamed. “Shoot shoot shoot.”
Nobody fired.
The gangway had a steep pitch, almost like a ladder. King needed both hands to climb. Speed counted, but he didn’t hold any one pace. Snipers would have to work for their clean shots, and that’s why he was better than halfway to the fletch before a signal was given, a dozen bullets launched at the same moment and battering his skull on three sides.
The humans wanted one sharp stunning blow.
The idea was respectable. But King’s hands were locked on the heavy rope railing, and one foot never lost purchase. He dangled but didn’t fall and a moment of empty blackness passed, and then he was conscious again, climbing again, and only when he was standing inside the fletch did he taste what was inside his eating mouth, understanding what happened when his head jerked.
King spat out the slivers of bone and the juicy remnants of brain. Then he unwrapped the skin around his chest, dropping the corpse to the distant floor.
Next he broke the heavy ropes, dropping the gangway.
One guard and three capable monkeys had been left on duty. The monkeys needed no excuse to jump away, limbs extended to slow their descent. But the human guard had the duty of firing at the invader while donning a drop-suit, and then he flung himself free of the abandoned ship.
Karlan’s instructions led to the belly turret.
King was far too large to squeeze inside that bubble of glass, but he could lay on the floor above and grab the cannon’s tiny handles, one thumb on the trigger.
A hundred soldiers were running below him, shouting and taking positions and then abandoning those positions for better ones.
Most of the civilians were retreating into the hallways.
The towing balloons that helped carry the corona up from its home were gathered nearby, rubbing each other and the highest portions of the ceiling. They should have been drained immediately, but people had been too busy and too excited to remember routines. And because all of the vents in the abattoir had been closed, making ready for the papio attack, every breath of leaked hydrogen was now puddling in easy view.
Three bursts of cannon fire shredded the bladders, unleashing fierce blue flames.
For the next recitations, the only duty below was survival. Fire triggered alarms, and pressurized carbon dioxide exploded from tanks waiting above the ceiling. People scattering, fighting for gas masks or simple distance. The heavy gas caused some people to pass out and drop. Scaffolding burned and rope rigging burned, flames draped across the giant corona, and the shredded bladders fell like dead leaves. But then the fires were suddenly finished, and the generals ordered their soldiers to approach the great black corona, carrying cutting tools as well as weapons, plainly ready to slice a fresh hole into its side.
King fired one explosive round and then ten more, and some of the soldiers ran.
Others lay still.
The coronas at the ruined door were wounded and weak, but no human was left to fight them. They squirmed and crawled inside, and they screamed mournfully while their dying flesh flashed gold and purple
Once again, desperate troops made a run for the dead giant. Snipers supplied covering fire, shooting at the turret, ignoring King while trying to kill the cannon. But the weapon was a tough proven design. Shells ricocheted, hitting King in the face and hands and across his shoulders. One eye was blinded briefly, but he became a quick expert with the cannon. That attack faltered, and he held tight to the handles, and because a relentless mind needs to be busy, he began to count the dead soldiers.
He stopped at fifty, well short of the answer.
And King was thinking this: generals were idiots at quite a lot, but not war. If they couldn’t get inside the corona, they would try next to drop boarding parties from the overhead vents. To meet the attackers, he ran into the battered machine shop, claiming a long cylinder of steel to use as a battering club. But his enemies didn’t even try to win back the Girl. Returning to the turret, he saw tubes in the doorways below, and out from the tubes, riding on columns of roaring smoke, were at least a dozen rockets.
The tree-walkers were so desperate that they were going to bring the fletch down on top of their own heads.
Tomorrow’s Girl absorbed the first impacts and explosions, and the bladders seemed to be holding their gas. But then a peculiar smell hit the nostrils at the back of his breathing mouth—an odor that every human nose thought was sickening. But King had always found it to be a lovely smell, maybe the finest in the world, and the next blast would ignite this mess of a ship.
King imagined how it would feel to be burnt to the bone.
That’s why he ran again. His trusted fear carried him down the hallway and out of the gangway hatch, using his mass and raw power to leap free.
Feet first, King plunged toward the distant floor.
The living coronas were still crawling indoors. He watched their necks wrap around machinery and each other, yanking with the last of their life. Then the other corona began to move—the gigantic black corona already in a place far beyond life
One of those dead heads rose up on the end of a dead neck
Impossibly blue eyes
were gazing up at her brother.
They were falling and maybe the fall would never stop. There was no way to deny that possibility. And for a moment that stark, simple future not only felt possible, but inevitable and perhaps for the best.
The air had turned thin and cold to a corona’s sensibilities.
The demon floor had vanished. The Eight were plunging towards what should be the sun, where the sun belonged inside the proper Creation, except up was down and nothing was below but chill perfect blackness that was working hard to drown a few weak smears of scattered, desperate light.
When the sun vanished, most of the coronas had fled upwards, either by panic or plan.
The Eight might wish for their own bladders and wings.
But there was no time for wishes.
The lost old world was above them—the hard-purple of corona voices mixed with fire colors and heat colors too. The human forest was full of violence and great voices and brilliant voices, every kind of light smeared together, rendered as a faint whisper that almost, almost had passed out of existence.
Wishing was a waste of time, but not memory. One of the small voices suddenly mentioned a certain day and one brief incident wrapped around an inchoate nut. None even the small voice understood why that mattered now, but it did matter. Eight souls were suddenly talking about a Procession of the Harvest, sharing perspectives about a ceremony said to be ancient and important, except nothing about the Procession had seemed critical. The papio were regimented creatures who appreciated order and orders and acts of devotion. This was just another ancient ceremony. Even on that poor, barely inhabited portion of the reef, the local papio were compelled to mark the passage of another one hundred and thirty days, carrying the symbolic harvest into the nearest village, and the Eight were allowed to watch.
That was before Diamond and King, when their body was still helpless, ruled by every soul and by no one.
One of the caretaker children was given the weighty task of describing what was happening below and would happen in the next few breaths. A line of papio was passing beneath the ravine where the corona’s child could watch from deep shadows. At first, the only lesson seemed to be that the papio weren’t what they claimed to be. The boasts about discipline, about being orderly and obedient, looked like lies. From the moment it appeared, the holy Procession was deeply, urgently sloppy. Children broke from the ranks to chase and play. Adults were little better, carrying their symbolic harvests in the wrong hands and with the wrong form. The old people chastised everyone for their failures, but they seemed to do that in glad, half-hearted ways that only made the chaos worse. At one point, a pair of small boys ran wild up the slope, past the markers that were intended to warn people away from the ravine. That incident made the caretaker nervous, but the boys—young enough to be blameless in everything they did—stopped short of the Eight and began to play a new game, standing on tall points of reef to see how far each of them could pee.