Seldom allowed himself to be dragged along behind her.
The Archon of Archons had dropped a call-line receiver, and he hurried to catch his son, presumably to share more of his political genius.
Karlan appeared, placing himself in Diamond’s path. Loudly, very happily, he announced, “I’m going with you.”
Seldom stopped running, and Elata shook free.
Quest was almost invisible, her body squirming under the floor, destroying rooms and machinery as she made herself ready.
Diamond told Karlan, “No.”
Seldom watched his brother and the rifle that he was carrying. He knew his brother. Karlan was considering shooting Diamond and maybe King too, giving him the freedom to do whatever he wanted. Seldom shivered, watching the rifle barrel drawing little circles in the air.
Again, Diamond said, “No.”
King came past both of them, saying, “He is coming. With a gun. We need soldiers.”
Diamond asked, “Why?”
From under the floor, a giant mouth roared at them.
Quest said, “Hurry.”
Everybody was walking towards her.
Diamond asked King, “Why do we need guns?”
“The spotter station below us survived. They just got their com-line fixed, and they’re reporting. After the sun vanished, after the coronas were done rising, the papio started launching their slayer ships. Maybe they’re trying to save their people, looking for better air. Whatever the reason, we aren’t going to be alone down there.”
Diamond gave no reaction.
“So I am going,” Karlan said, showing a smile to his little brother.
Elata was past all of them. Before anyone could stop her, she jumped into the fresh hole in the floor, vanishing inside whatever Quest had become.
Karlan laughed while picking up ammunition belts.
King and the key plunged into the hole.
Diamond ran a little ways and then stopped, turning in one circle and half of another before asking, “Where’s Elata?”
Seldom caught up and said, “She already got onboard.”
Diamond didn’t want to believe him. “Why?”
“She doesn’t like here,” Seldom said reasonably.
From below, Quest roared, “Now,” and as if to prove the urgency, beams of bloodwood and bone pegs began to shatter.
“Out of my way,” Karlan shouted, and he vanished.
Diamond ran and jumped after him.
And then Seldom sprinted to the hole’s edge, finding what looked like an ordinary wooden trap door flung open, and the only surprise was how little surprise he felt, watching himself fearlessly leap after the others.
ELEVEN
They fell past the lost sun, mesmerized eyes absorbing the endless night. Seven of them noticed nothing else, but with the same vision, the eighth teased out a thin sliver of pale golden light.
Tritian fixed the eyes on a narrow patch of ink, and the light was a little brighter.
Whatever it was, they were closing the gap.
Two moments of debate ended with a plan. The glow was below them but not beneath. Aligning the head while extending arms and legs, the Eight allowed themselves to fall like the world’s weakest bird, fast but not straight, and time made the corona become real—one of the last and the oldest, too weak to flee the gaping wound in the world, far too stubborn to give up and die.
The Eight planned for a graceful collision.
The disk-shaped body sang in painful colors, in sharp yellows, and the bladders expanded for lift and then collapsed, and it sounded as if the last of the world’s air was exploding out of the giant’s mouth.
The Eight believed in inevitable successes. Their aim was perfect and true until they missed the giant corona. But the ancient creature noticed motion and ended up catching them instead, its longest, strongest neck stretching as far as possible, the last of its teeth removing a hand and foot before bringing the Eight close.
The corona might be the last living First.
Why it would grab this miserable creature was a mystery, and what it thought about its quarry remained unknown. But the leviathan kept the Eight close, and they fell together. The Eight clung to the neck that had damaged them and saved them, and they grew a new hand and a worthwhile foot. The giant mouth was close, wide when it caught the air and roaring when the air jetted free. In the presence of vast memory and every answer, there was no chance to piece together even the barest conversation. The world remained built from puzzle, from ignorance. Yet the Eight had never felt closer to any organism than this desperate doomed wondrous soul.
In Creation, no fall is eternal.
In the end, in terror or exaltation or maybe by sheer chance, the First emitted a single pulse of scorching purple light, showing its passenger what was rising fast from below.
The chamber ended with a barren floor, and all nine died.
And time flowed and eight of them were less dead.
More time was crossed while the shared body wasn’t just repaired but reinvented, the old papio-form given lungs for this air and a mouth gifted at cursing.
The body crawled out from beneath the corona’s smashed remains. The Creation loomed overhead. Walls defined a finite, knowable space. The space couldn’t be seen but was felt, invisible every way but in the mind. Tritian made the new body stand, and they enjoyed the first shared breath. The floor beneath was slick and gray and a little cool against just-born flesh, and it seemed far too flat. A perfect sphere had been promised, but the wise Masters were again proved wrong. They were standing at the bottom of a pipe, and a steady wind was blowing across the floor, one direction in mind. In the distance, in the darkness, great masses were slamming against the floor. Not just the coronas were falling. With the forest overhead, dead trees were falling, and downed aircraft, and it was inevitable that one object or a thousand more would crash down on top of the Eight. They would die again and crawl out into the open again, nothing ahead but work, hellish laborious work that would not end until the starved forest was safely dead underfoot.
The Eight practiced running, covering a short distance before a new sound made them pause.
A papio wing was diving from high overhead.
Divers fell silent inside them.
Tritian told the others to give him the only voice.
The jet engine throttled down, and the nose sprouted a column of light that pivoted, finding the gray floor rising, and then the machine landed in the distance, skidding sharply and then crashing into piece of debris.
Unused munitions detonated.
The violence washed across the landscape, and overhead, dozens and maybe hundreds of aircraft took sight of the goal.
They came in waves, exhausted wings followed by overloaded airships full of tree-walkers, and there were individuals riding beneath parachutes and inside drop-suits. Most of the refugees landed badly, dying instantly or after some plaintive wails. But others touched down successfully, and only time stood between now and that moment when some survivor, standing amidst the carnage, noticed the Eight
Those lucky eyes belonged to a papio crew riding inside what looked like a slayer-hunting aircraft. Motors and gas bladders held several dozen soldiers aloft, and they fixed their spotlights on a big papio body, a woman’s magnified voice shouting at them and echoing across the gray plain, asking if they were the great missing Eight.
Tritian demanded calm from his siblings.
Each of the Eight helped raise one hand high, friend to friend.
And then Tritian told a useful lie. Shouting over the roar of engines, he said, “We are the Seven. Divers is dead.”
Human memory forgot quite a lot after one day, and six hundred days could wipe away much of the past. But these creatures knew how to nourish old emotions, keeping them raw enough to last for generations.