The nearly invisible face lifted, staring at her.
And then an old thought came back to Elata—an idea the girl dreamed up maybe two days after she met Diamond. She had never mentioned it. It was such an obvious idea, simple and direct and obvious. In a world full of people who were smarter than she’d ever be, she couldn’t believe that no one else had thought it. So the inspiration had to be stupid and wrong, and that’s why she never brought it up.
Until now.
“Diamond,” she said. “You have the power to do whatever you want. You could shape the world as it needs to be, or at least better than this shitty damned mess of ours. You had the power when I met you, and you didn’t even know it, did you?”
“Know what?” he asked.
“You could have told us,” she whispered. “You could have told us that you remember your life before, and you remember the Creators, maybe, and we would have believed a thousand smart instructions from the Creators. After that first day with me, you could have claimed anything. The Creators sent you here to share their blessings, and maybe you could have gotten some good things done.”
He said, “No.”
“No?”
“Because I don’t remember any of that,” he said.
Diamond’s face was acquiring sharp lines. Leaking from the stomach walls and from the floor was a faint glow, and maybe it was Elata’s imagination, but she felt cooler than just a moment ago. The air was fresher, wasn’t it?
“I don’t have anything to tell,” he insisted.
She said, “You’re not listening to me.”
“I’m supposed to invent a story?” he asked.
Then she lifted her face into his face, and for the first time in her life, Elata kissed Diamond’s odd mouth.
And having won his undiluted attention, she told him, “Every story is a lie. But if you could have done that one thing, given us a lie worth believing, then the world wouldn’t be any worse than this, at least. If you just would have.”
NINE
No flesh was stranger than corona flesh. Quest had lived inside one forever, but she plainly hadn’t been able to consume what was in easy reach. Later, young and free in the wilderness, she would steal scales that refused to be chewed and bones that fought every stomach she could conjure. Even a thin shred of black meat proved too novel for metabolisms that thrived on every other kind of food. But where a monkey might dream about conquering undiscovered trees, Quest fantasized about acids and heat and wondrous enzymes that had never been born, and later, living in the District of Districts, she sneaked inside one of the factories that turned meat into guns, stealing a wide sampling of parts that slowly taught her how to consume the life that was like none other.
She imagined needing these skills, but never like this.
Not this scale
Wounded and tiny, scared beyond every fear experienced before, she was barely able to form any thought as Diamond carried her inside the carcass. She certainly didn’t dream that he would let her go with the promise that she would grow as large as possible. She should have explained how unlikely that was, but then she astonished herself, blindly carving a path into the dead meat, wasting energy and time before the stomach’s lining became a tumor wrapped around a stale mass of congealed blood.
Corona blood was the easiest meal.
One feast led to another five, each larger than the last, and faster, and more efficient. Energy collected was energy to be focused. Quest wove a wormy shape and stretched long before building branches. Every end hunted for delicious cancers and willing organs. The first neck found was infiltrated. Dead flesh was pushed aside by rubber and simple new tissues and neurons fat enough to carry images from big, unborn eyes. In less than a recitation, Quest fabricated new eyes inside the sockets of the old, and ears sprouted along the rubber skin, and with its fifth try, that reborn neck rose off the bone butcher floor, absorbing vibrations that sounded like explosions, and then a blurring image that turned clear and still made no sense.
King was falling, which was quite unexpected and a little funny too.
Why was her brother up in the air?
Then the fletch above him turned to flame and shattered.
King struck the floor and started to run. A length of pipe was clenched in his hand. Three strides were made, and then the fourth began before guns and soldiers began battering him from all sides.
King spun, and the pipe flew free, and he dropped and hands struck the floor, and he rose and again sprinted as the wreckage fell behind him and the fire stood tall and more guns drove metal into his armor, his muscle.
King was fighting to reach the dead corona.
To shelter against her.
She reached out with the neck, wanting to surround him, and then a cannon began firing quick concussive blasts. Her brother leapt sideways before a shell hit the floor and skipped and detonated, and he shrank down low and ran faster than seemed possible, fabulous long strides keeping him ahead of the next three blasts. But the reborn neck had too far to reach, and the last round dug low into King’s back and emerged again in front—a timed round meant to punch through the armor on papio wings—and the explosion left two of her eyes blind and King thrown back onto the floor, exposed and limp, both hands thrown across a hole that filled with bright purple blood.
Three more of the corona’s necks had turned to rubber sleeves and new muscle.
Fresh easy food lay everywhere, and she feasted in ways no corona could: the heads bolted down dead soldiers and several mortally wounded soldiers, and one dead general, and all of that monkey meat was suffused inside a vast new body that was barely begun.
Soldiers came out of hiding places, shooting King at will.
Then they were too close to his body to shoot.
Quest’s first neck stretched toward those soldiers, and the triple-jaws opened wide, and the new mouth said its first clumsy first word, “No.”
A familiar soldier stood before her, his face bloodied and a hammer in his favorite hand. He was happily swinging the hammer against the spikes on King’s head.
Again, Quest said, “No.”
The soldiers took note, and with new enthusiasm, they left King alone to kill the talking corona.
One last time, she told them, “No.”
They fired at the carcass and the neck and that opinionated mouth, and hiding soldiers fired down on both of the corona’s children.
That was the moment when hard decisions became simple.
A tiny portion of Quest’s new flesh needed a good shake, one kind of molecule turning into another.
From the bullet-riddled mouths came a thin vapor—wet and swift and almost as loud as the gunfire and cannons—and every mortal creature that breathed had to pull a taste of that stew into their lungs, their blood. The genius of mayhem ants had been tweaked, made stronger and far quicker. Paralysis was the first symptom, and in some cases, the prey would stop breathing forever.
But at this moment, looking across the battlefield and two thousand days of relentless fear, Quest could find no reason for any of these hateful beasts to ever wake again.
Blackwood leaves were large as rugs and nearly as durable. But eventually they wore out, and the tree would scavenge their nutrients and precious salts, leaching the green color out of them, revealing a vivid orange shade that stood out in the canopy—a rare color that Diamond always found pleasing.
The corona’s stomach walls had begun to glow with that same telltale orange, soft and warm and steady, and everyone was painted that deathly shade.
Diamond had no idea what he wanted.
Then he saw the strongest face, and he knew a little more. Just a little. Saying nothing, he stared at that face until the eyes gave him a suspicious glance, and then Diamond stepped past his mother and Master Nissim, saying, “You did a wonderful thing, trying to kill me. I’m sorry I never thanked you.”