For the first time, an organ that wasn’t any human lung pulled in a long breath, and King realized that the air was markedly thinner than usual, and it was too chilly, oxygen present but not nearly enough.
The atmosphere was draining from the world.
Sounds were draining away, thin and too slow. He listened. A thousand humans were begging in the dark, beseeching the Creators to make a new day, and ten thousand more voices were passionately cursing the Fates. Other humans said nothing, but he heard the noise they made as they fell, clothes flapping and dropsuits flapping. Despair or madness or maybe just stupid mistakes caused people to tumble free from this tree. Those ten carefully named ears heard individual bodies knifing through the thin air, and King wished he was deaf, and in the next breath, he wished that he could hear every sound inside this big room of a world.
A piece of steel cable offered itself as a handhold, and planting one foot, King dangled into the open air. No demon floor glimmered below. The corona realm was missing, and beyond was an emptiness that didn’t require any sun. But the dark air was perfectly empty. Past the sharp tips of the trees were ships—tree-walker airships and papio wings that had survived the coronas. It took time and some thought to realize what had happened: desperate hands had overloaded these machines with extra ballast, or the papio had pushed their aircraft into endless dives. There wasn’t enough air up here, but maybe there was below. Maybe that’s what this cluttered fleet was chasing. Unless this wasn’t a survival strategy. Maybe it was as simple as before they died, these people wanted to see what lurked below.
King imagined a dirty steel floor and some important hatch foolishly left open, letting the air leak away.
He couldn’t stop remembering how his hand pushed Quest’s hand into the ball.
King had never shared the maps of his body. He never mentioned them to Father or Diamond, and certainly not to anyone else.
Each of his hands had its own name.
The hand around the cable wanted to let go, allowing his body to plummet to the world’s floor.
The rest of King overruled that hand, and he came back inside.
His reborn lung had no trouble finding adequate oxygen, at least for the present moment. His feet sounded different, walking across the slick black floor. The nearest corona let loose a long exhausted sound, complications woven into the misery, and he was thankful that he didn’t know what sad words were being said.
The giant creature was inflated with emptiness, scales pulled apart and the body rising like a building before him. The dying flesh was hot but not hot enough, and it was velvety black save for the peculiar imperfections—spots too miniscule to be bright, yet brilliant enough to shine against the blackness.
With the razored tip of a finger, King touched the brightest light.
An old thought came near enough to be felt, and then it was gone just as suddenly, and maybe it never existed.
But the urge to fall remained relentless. He felt it in his limbs, his reflexes. Ignoring that insanity took work. To distract himself, King drew an arcing line from the first light to a bright neighbor and then to others still. This was a puzzle that couldn’t be a puzzle. These points of light felt random. Yet with stubborn cleverness, the alien boy managed to write his name once with the tree-walker language, and then he began drawing the long, self-invented word that meant “King.” Slicing deep into the wounded flesh, every gesture was precise and a little desperate. But the perfect little specks were fading, and the blackness surrounding them was losing its vibrant sheen, and before King would finish that simple task, the corona was dead, deep bladders collapsing and the body slumping, crushing both of his names.
TEN
White light filled the stomach.
Diamond asked what was happening outside.
“The world is dying,” Quest said, her voice small, sorry.
“Can you see where we need to be?” he asked.
“I pushed a few eyes through the abattoir’s floor. I’m looking now. But the shape of everything below us seems different, and I can’t see enough to know.”
Nobody spoke.
“I’m hurrying,” his sister said.
She was furiously rebuilding herself.
“But all of you need to leave,” she said. “I’m becoming clumsy. If you stay here, I’ll likely digest you.”
Karlan blew air through his teeth, almost laughing when he asked, “So are we going to get shot when we show our heads?”
“You won’t be shot,” Quest said firmly. “I promise you.”
Nobody asked why.
Then she said, “Diamond. Take the key with you and explain the situation to King. As soon as I’m ready, bring him and the key back with you.”
The world was insane, but that sounded reasonable.
Why?
She said, “Now, please. Get out of me.”
The slayer-made gash in her side lifted, white light spilling across the white bone floor. The warm damp interior air led the way. Karlan waved for Diamond, wanting him to emerge first. “In case your sister happens to be wrong,” he said, thumping his scalp with imaginary bullets.
With both hands, Diamond lifted up the ball.
But then Mother hurried past him, one arm waving as she told the darkness, “We surrender, we surrender.”
Nobody fired.
There was no one to raise a weapon, much less beg for mercy.
King was alive but noticeably smaller. He was standing near the open door, standing beside one of the attacking coronas. The corona was motionless and dark, and it had to be fascinating, judging by how his brother stared at the carcass.
Diamond let the ball fall and roll, but the alien ignored the noise.
“Can you breathe?” Nissim asked Mother.
“If I work at it,” she said, wheezing as she walked.
Quest closed the opening. Save for a faint ruddy glow leaking from her entire body, the gigantic room was dark and cold.
“Butcher’s weather,” joked the Master.
Seldom followed Diamond. But then he noticed Elata standing apart from everyone, and he turned and went back to her. For someone’s sake, he said, “This will get better.”
“Better than what?” she asked.
King was a statue. His breathing and his hearts might have stopped, still as he was.
Diamond approached him, talking quickly. “The gray ball is some kind of machine, maybe a key. And Quest is taking us below to rekindle the sun.”
King didn’t respond.
“What are you doing?” asked Diamond.
The statue didn’t react.
Then another voice said, “You know me.”
List.
“I’m not a gracious man,” said the human, hurrying to stand beside the statue, one hand stroking the sharp plates high on one arm. “And I won’t pretend graciousness now. I know the world is built on numbers, and the counting and the weighing are what I do better than most people. Which is the heart of the reason why a clerk would invest so much and risk so much in a child unlike all others.”
Two fingers bled, and he sucked on them for a moment.
Then the man said, “You saved me. Today, you took a huge risk and saved all of us. But that’s not what is important. What matters—why I should feel grateful—is that you knew what to do. You couldn’t know the sun would leave. But then that happened and everything was collapsing, and the three of you had the clearer, cleaner sense of these events. And if I can make myself hope, I’ll hope that despite being an ignorant and ungracious calculating monster, I nonetheless helped put you where each of you can help us.”
A breath emerged from King’s high mouth.
Words followed.
“In no way is this about you,” King said.