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, it 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.