“You’re certain?”
She said, “Yes.”
The old teacher was preparing a large accurate copy of the message. Quest’s eyes were best, and she copied what she saw with a sharpened pencil while he made notes between and beside the lines. Not one mark on the globe duplicated an existing letter, but there were passing resemblances that gave the game hope. And sometimes Nissim would go back and look hard at one word or two, muttering when he breathed, repeating a string of possible translations that gave their audience reason to bend at the hips, waiting for enlightenment. But so far, his best attempts only brought more questions.
Quest had never written with any implement. Now she was finishing the final line from a text that was as old as the Creation, or older.
Such an odd thought, and welcome. Her new hand slowed, trying to render the final symbols perfectly.
“And that’s it,” said Nissim.
It was. Yes.
King set the globe on the floor.
Meeker came forward, for the first time. He had unremarkable exterior, nothing to separate him from a million other soldiers, but he carried himself as if no one was half so important. Even List gave the man a careful gap in space and in noise.
“How close is the translation?” asked the general.
He only spoke to the human.
“This is an ancient language,” Nissim said. “Ancestral, probably. Hopefully. But I don’t have any of the books that I need.”
“People have been sent to the library,” Meeker said.
There was an excellent library below them. Quest had sneaked inside on several occasions, always at night, reading random volumes in the dark.
“If they survive the mission, you’ll have everything from your shopping list,” Meeker promised.
Nissim looked at the writing and then looked up. His eyes avoided every face. “All right,” he said to nobody.
No one else spoke.
Then the old woman cried out, and Diamond ran up alone. A dozen soldiers were chasing him, losing the chase, and another dozen were accompanying the boy’s human friends. Until that moment, Quest hadn’t realized how worried she was. Then the unsuspected weight was gone, and she felt even more confident than before.
“But that is the full message, yes?” Meeker asked.
The Archon came forward, alone. He meant to examine the paper, but Meeker stopped him with the touch of a finger.
“Give our scholar some room,” said the voice in charge.
The Archon put on a smile. “Of course.”
Master Nissim stared at the carefully transcribed words. His own pencil was busy in his hand, spinning between fingers. But his face was calm and thoughtful, red-rimmed eyes dancing back and forth without any trace of order. Quest watched for order. The man wasn’t reading what he could understand, and he didn’t seem to be lingering over any piece of the text either. For a thousand days, Nissim had been growing older. Each time Quest saw that face, it wore more wrinkles and white hairs and broken, unhealing veins. But not this time. Under these awful circumstances, the man’s exterior appeared peculiarly youthful, the blood behind the old skin helping smooth features by hundreds of days.
Quest didn’t like human faces, but she liked his face.
She couldn’t read human thoughts, much as she tried. But she had a clear sense of his mind when Meeker asked, “How close are you?”
“Not close,” the old teacher said. “Not yet.”
Nissim was lying.
“Well, we don’t need to remind you about the urgency of this.” Then with a general’s sense for drama, Meeker tipped his head, giving everyone good reason to listen to the carnage outside.
Haddi was hugging her son.
King and Karlan approached the boy from opposite directions. The alien stomped twice at the floor, greeting his brother, while the giant human clamped his hand on top of the bare head, saying, “Stop being an idiot.”
The irony was rich. Two souls that tried to kill Diamond were now rejoicing at his rescue.
Irony wanted Quest to laugh.
She didn’t laugh.
Seldom arrived, and his brother slugged him in the chest, saying, “Stop being brave.”
Haddi gave Elata a suffocating hug.
The girl bit her bottom lip, saying nothing as she stared at the floor.
Nissim’s pencil had stopped moving. The youth in his face had suddenly drained away. He looked weary and then angry. The mysterious words needed one more long stare, and then he looked at the gray globe that was waiting patiently to the side, no longer needed and indifferent to the lack of attention. The object needed a long stare, and Quest tried to pull the insights out of the man’s mind. And then, as if sensing the interest, Nissim turned towards her face, taking a moment to clear his thoughts. He meant to whisper something. Something very important needed to be shared. Great events and little ones had led to this moment, and Quest felt ready and lucky, even though she sensed that she wouldn’t relish what she would hear . . . and that’s when Meeker took one long step forward, pulling a compact pistol from under his bright green general’s shirt.
The first round exploded on impact, throwing her across the floor.
She was lying alone on the butcher floor as the next nine bombs left her battered, unable to resist as the soldiers that came running at her from every direction, like cockroaches.
Slayer tools were slicing apart his sister’s body, power saws and the finest knives in the world helping separate the unessential away from what seemed to be her mind. Impressive planning was on show. The soldiers worked quickly, some of them smiling to hide their fears. They wouldn’t touch her body without rubber gloves or the heel of a boot. The bravest pair volunteered to drop the soulless meat into glass buckets filled with acid. Even the blood was worrisome. A woman soldier walked about the slaughter, cooking the dark blue spills with a handheld torch.
King barely watched his sister being eviscerated.
These circumstances needed a good polish, and that’s why Meeker went to Diamond before anyone else. Not even pretending to smile, he said, “I didn’t want this. I hate this. But the creature has been running free too long, and we know about a hundred incidents where she’s done harm, by choice or chance.”
Diamond was listening to the human, but his face was empty.
“I know the creature tried to help you before,” the general said. “And I don’t want you to believe that I would want it hurt in any lasting way. ‘Her,’ I mean. I don’t want ‘her’ to be in pain, much less crippled. But she had to be contained. Do you understand me?”
Diamond seemed to nod, although the motion was very slight.
“Quarters have been built,” Meeker continued. “There is a home waiting for a reduced, much safer version of her. No witness has seen the creature absorbing or manipulating glass, and so there’s a glass room near the palace—”
“Glass,” Diamond said.
“Everyone needs to be safe, including her.”
“Quest,” said the boy.
“Yes. Quest. Of course I know her name.”
The conversation was just one set of noises that King absorbed and mostly ignored. He also heard the wailing of coronas and the dull concussive booms of guns, and there were several conversations and dozens of important faces nearby, not one of them mattering. What drew his hard focus was one man standing alone, standing motionless, one foot in front of the other as if he was planning to take a walk but still wasn’t quite certain where he wanted to be.
King stared at his father, and he listened to the little man’s breathing and the quick sorry racing of his heart. War had eviscerated the Archon’s office. But instead of being dumped into buckets, the old powers were now worn by men in bright uniforms—warriors who had never killed another man with their own hands. The creature who once ruled the world had been sidelined by endless war. Civilian tasks were few, and List had no clear authority or even the right to speak. He was just another piece of the audience. He was almost pitiful, although what mattered to his son wasn’t pity and it wasn’t sorrow, much less any desire for greater, deeper understandings. All the miseries in the world, and what transfixed and saddened King was the cavernous gap between himself and that defeated creature.