“Can you read it?” said the bug on the floor.
Nissim gave a half-hearted nod, and then he shook his head, meaning no.
“But you’ve translated old writing before,” King said. “Diamond told me. Out on the reef, where nobody goes, you deciphered a message—”
Interrupting, Haddi screamed, “Where’s my son?”
Diamond wasn’t anywhere in view. But List was approaching, and the general wanted to join their little party. Except he first had to tell a handful of soldiers to find more soldiers, as many as possible. He was looking at Quest as he gave orders. Quest had never been easier to see, and Meeker wasn’t the kind to allow this sweet opportunity to drip away.
The big steel doors had pulled closed and sealed.
Once again, bellows were filling the room with extra air, and the cadaver balloons spun in the air overhead while the Girl creaked against its moorings.
List arrived with his people. Like always, he looked clever and sneaky, ten ready sentences riding his tongue, each one eager to be said.
Between two aides was Prima, out of her manacles and looking pretty much disgusted with everything.
Karlan had always liked that tough little gal.
Haddi kept talking about her son. Could anyone see Diamond?
Nissim said, “Quiet.”
The old woman didn’t want to be quiet. She turned until she saw Meeker, and she hurried toward him, asking, “Did you put him somewhere? Is he safe?”
Meeker was getting his soldiers ready to surround Quest.
“Put who where?” the general asked the petrified mother.
Nissim had one eye pressed against the mad scratches, and there stood King, rigid as a statue, holding the lost ball motionless, as if it were set in a vice.
Quest got up on her long back bug legs, glass eyes peering at the mystery.
Meeker was making his own quick search for Diamond, as if his vision could be better than a mom’s.
And then all of those eyes in the room stopped seeing anything. The big guns outside began punishing someone, but the cannons were a small mess of noises compared to what else came. Somewhere past the big steel doors wasn’t one sound but a host of new sounds, none loud yet but heavy in nature, like big weights bashing against drumheads, and those roaring wails weren’t just moving fast but they were rising past where Karlan was standing, soaring towards the highest reaches of the trees.
Every slayer in the room lifted his head or her head.
Coronas were outside, flying wild in a realm where they hadn’t been since the beginning of civilization.
Diamond had stopped running. He had followed Elata and Seldom when they jumped over the edge but lost sight of them before anybody reached the landing’s edge. The electric lights had abandoned him, every door down and sealed. A hundred faces were pointed away from him. Anonymous backs and hairy heads were silhouetted by a wash of pale light that tried to be red and tried to be purple and then blue. Crossing his arms, Diamond rocked slowly from side to side while struggling to find two small people. A military fletch was circling nearby, yellow spotlights aiming at targets moving swiftly below. Each beam dimmed as the open air brightened. Dozens of fletches and other military craft roamed in the distance. People standing at the railing were shouting. Some pointed below while others turned suddenly, fleeing toward the abattoir. A few voices shouted, “Coronas.” Most people made incoherent noise, monkey noises, high-pitched and horrified and all the more bracing because of it.
Needing some idea to pin against the mayhem, Diamond decided that a flock of coronas was following the giant body up here. They were grieving. The coronas wanted revenge. Maybe they wanted to recover the globe or even the children that had been taken from them. Whatever was happening, Diamond believed in purpose—clear and narrow and understandable—and that’s why he could stand in one place, not calm but not panicked either, the arms coming uncrossed but nothing else changing as the first of the running, wailing humans raced past him.
A cannon set beneath the landing fired one round, and that seemed to set off every other gun. Emplacements on the distant trees began lashing out with tracers and flares, fireballs and concussive blasts. And then the big fletch finally decided on a worthy target, every spotlight pulling together, creating a single beam that illuminated something that was directly beneath.
The ship’s guns fired while its engines throttled up.
Air was being explosively ejected from a giant’s puckered mouth.
Diamond expected to see a corona and didn’t. Instead he saw an unexpected shape following the joined beam of light. The shape had to be made of light because it was too quick to be real, appearing in an instant and chasing the spotlights toward the machine that was struggling in vain to get out of the way. Diamond didn’t see trailing necks or heads, and the normally rounded body was distorted, made long by its velocity and the thin cold air rushing past it and the rapid sharp bursts of air that he still hadn’t heard. He saw nothing clearly save for a brilliant flash of light that was purple laid over colors far beyond purple, and what was obvious was that these two objects would have to collide.
Now he heard the air thundering out of the corona’s mouth.
The fletch’s belly guns fired furiously, and at the last moment, someone thought to kill the spotlights, which accomplished nothing.
The corona was half-grown, riding on a column of jetted hot air, and papio wings couldn’t fly that fast. The impact took no time. The fletch was intact, full of people and hydrogen and machinery and ammunition, and then it was bored through and torn to shreds, all of those pieces hanging fixed in the air while the corona continued to rise, giving no signs of slowing.
More coronas appeared. All of them were young, all rocketing past the landing, and Diamond put his hands on his stubbly head and yanked at his ears while his mouth twisted in anguish, leaking a moan, numbing breathless fear rendering him impossible heavy.
The fletch was shattered and now falling, but the sound of that titanic impact finally arrived—bladders bursting, the skeleton shattering—and buried inside that uproar was a voice and a name, and it took another moment for him to recognize the name.
“Diamond,” said the voice.
Seldom was standing directly in front of him.
Elata was holding Seldom’s arm, dragging him along. She hadn’t noticed Diamond. She intended to pull her friend back to the building, and to help keep Seldom moving, she shouted, “Go,” and, “Go,” again with a furious hoarse voice.
The three of them ran.
And the coronas raced past, turning the landing bright and purple with red waves and twisting flashes of blue and gold. Giants by the hundreds were rising, and the air shook with their jets, and the entire landing jumped while the cannons fired as fast as they could, except it was easy to miss hearing any of them.
Elata was holding Diamond’s hand now, not Seldom’s, and nobody could remember how that happened.
Every doorway into the abattoir was closed. Desperate people were shoved against the small doorway where they entered earlier. The first row of bodies kicked the steel and begged in high shrieking voices, and then the next ranks pushed against them, leaving no room to kick and no breath to use in their pleading. Seldom tried to claim Elata’s other hand, except she was still carrying her purse. She looked at him and then Diamond, surprised to find him joined to her. She wanted to be pleased. The beginnings of a smile shone in the corona light, and then something was above them, close and coming fast, and she flinched reflexively and the other two knelt with her, and a corona fell onto the landing, first with its heads and ropy limp necks and then its exhausted, doomed body.