My training had never covered tightrope walking. Even if it had, it wouldn’t have covered walking a beam that curved. When fighting vertigo, a straight line requiring a forward stride is about a hundred times easier than a curve requiring a miniature course correction with every step.
But all I had to worry about right now was the distance between me and the next vertical support. That wasn’t too far. It gave me something to aim for. I could manage both speed and accuracy that long.
I stood there, trembling, rehearsing my moves a thousand times in the space of a second.
Just as I took the first step, the Heckler spoke again.
“There’s even a contingency plan. You should know about this one, Andrea. It’s really quite clever. You see, the people who use you, who rely on your skills and reap the benefits of your accomplishments, who have sheltered you from the same fate afforded the rest of the surviving Bocaian colonists, do value you, in the way they’d value any other useful tool. They intend to hold on to you for as long as they can. But they also know that you might not always be as useful as you are now, and foresee any number of circumstances where you might, someday, become a liability. In such an event they know any number of ways to turn your third-tier personality to their advantage. They’ve considered how to arrange circumstances where you’d be likely to turn that famous anger of yours inward. And the second you surrender to the inevitable, they’ll gnash their teeth and wring their hands and wax rhapsodic about the deeds of the public servant who had overcome such a tragic beginning to accomplish so much. They might even feel bad. But they won’t mourn. Because nobody mourns a monster, Andrea.”
I was on my knees, hugging the vertical rib I’d aimed for. “Nobody…asked them to.”
The twenty steps had taken only a few seconds to travel. Recovering from the sheer terror of the journey had kept me mute and paralyzed a full minute after that. My belly had become a pit of ice, my heart a runaway engine intent on ripping free of my chest.
“I should tell you everything,” the Heckler continued.
I rose to my feet, balancing myself on that last section of rib, trying not to wobble and knowing I would anyway, working up enough nerve for the last rush to safety.
“Because that’s the way your mind works. You’ve survived this long because you refuse to die when there’s still something left to know. You can’t go without knowing the faces of your Unseen Demons.”
Juje! Is there anybody here who doesn’t know that phrase?
No. Forget that. That’s just an attempt to rattle you. Concentrate on the road ahead. There won’t be a perfect moment. The more I stay here trying to work up sufficient nerve, the more hopelessly spastic I’ll become. The only choice is to go.
But my arms refused to relinquish their grip.
“But if I tell you everything, you lose that excuse for living. Should I tell you, Andrea? Would that give you an excuse to jump?”
I balanced myself as best as I could and launched myself on my journey across that final quarter-section of rib.
Five steps in and I knew I was in trouble. I was already leaning far too far to my left, and beginning to lose my balance. Momentum still propelled me forward, but I was not so much running as falling in slow motion.
My right foot caught the rib at a glancing angle instead of a secure one and it went out from under me and gravity took hold, and I pinwheeled my arms and for just one moment managed to avoid toppling—and in that second pivoted almost one hundred and eighty degrees while catching sight of a pair of familiar figures hopping off the edge of a rope bridge that I would never survive to reach.
I recognized them as the Porrinyards.
The gesture pissed me off. Why were they so eagerly killing themselves? This was my moment to die.
Then I was in free fall and I knew that these last several minutes had been nothing but a delaying action, because I was dead, and that stupid hateful voice had been right about me not wanting to die with so many questions unanswered.
I never fainted. Had I continued to fall, I would have remained wide-eyed and terrified, recording every millimeter of that endless, inevitable plunge to dissolution in the storms below.
But I never saw the arc of the other bodies, falling up to meet mine.
14. RETREAT
The Porrinyards half escorted, half carried me to the communal tent where I’d conducted the bulk of the day’s interviews, applied a buzzpatch sedative that didn’t alleviate the residual aftereffects of terror so much as wrap them in soft, sweet-smelling flowers, and stayed beside me for the two minutes it took to summon Gibb and Lastogne.
When Lastogne showed up, he paused at the tent flap to drive back the small mob of indentures attempting to enter with him. I heard men and women, some of whom I recognized by voice, peppering him with questions. Some had to do with whether I was okay, others had to do with what the hell had happened, and still others had to do with whether the danger was over. He told them to take it easy and give him room. They did both with minimal protest. He may have been an irritating son of a bitch, but he knew how to make his authority stick.
As he came in, sealing the flap behind him, I saw that he’d donned a pair of long-sleeved gray pullovers, covering everything but his hands and feet. Puffy, sleep-deprived eyes, and a circle of bare, pale skin at the site of his ROM prosthesis, furthered the impression that he’d come in a hurry. He slid down the canvas to Oscin’s side and demanded, “Is she all right?”
“You can try asking her,” I said.
He didn’t quite manage to hide surprise. “Forgive me, Counselor. You looked a little catatonic there.”
“I’m in shock, which isn’t even remotely the same thing.”
His lip curled, in a combination of annoyance and admiration. “My apologies. Do we have any idea what happened?”
I resisted making a snide comment over his use of the pronoun we. “Some kind of dissolving agent turned my hammock to confetti.”
“How fast?”
“Minutes.”
The Porrinyards, bracketing me on both sides, moved a little closer. “She almost didn’t make it out.”
“I didn’t make it out at all,” I said. “You pulled me out.”
That glimpse I’d caught of them, jumping off the edge of the rope bridge, had proven only the first step in an insanely intricate trapeze-act manuever they’d plotted and executed at the very instant they’d seen me about to fall. Oscin had clung to the bridge by his knees and ankles, securing Skye so she could wrap her arms under mine on her upswing.
Coordinating their movements with such instant perfection had been easy enough, given their abilities. Holding on to me and my bag during my ten seconds of full-tilt, convulsive panic had been considerably more difficult.
They’d almost lost me.
Worse, at least from their point of view—Oscin had almost lost Skye.
I’d thrashed so hard that Oscin had lost his grip on one of Skye’s ankles. They’d had only a second to decide whether to drop me or keep holding on.
I tried to imagine what it would have been like for them, if Skye had fallen. Oscin’s body would have remained safe, but he would have felt every sensation she felt as she plummeted through the clouds, just as she would have felt every sensation he felt as he remained safe high above her. Both halves of their shared personality would have felt safety and damnation at the same time, as half of everything they were died. Turning away would not have been an option.
Oscin would have known every single moment of Skye’s agony.
And yet they’d held on to me anyway.