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.