Eric leaned over. “Do we wait for everyone to leave with their cargo?”
“Now,” I hissed.
“And the Venusians?”
“Once we’re off the ground they can jump out if they want to stay, or join us if they want freedom,” I said.
We’d wanted a few more days to plan the exact attack on an airship, but we had our chance. Normally several overseers stood inside to watch us. Normally they were more vigilant. But they’d gotten their troublemakers this morning. They were sated from the violence and punishment.
Eric and I attacked the overseer from each side. We wrapped a ripped-open water sack around his head to muffle his cries. We yanked him beneath bags of grain and I crushed his neck with the heel of my foot repeatedly until the soles of my feet struck metal.
Shepard ran into the empty control room and triggered the helium-release valve, reversing the flow from the pressurized tanks.
The hiss was loud, and I glanced down the bay. No armies of overseers swarmed us yet though they were turning, their large, dark eyes opening in realization.
“Fellow people,” I announced to the whole cargo bay. “We are stealing this ship. And if you would like to flee with us, you are welcome. If not, run for the ground!”
Two Venusians ran, jumping out of the bay. It was already three feet off the ground. They rolled on the grass, and for their loyalty were treated with kicks from enraged overseers.
One of them grabbed the lip of the open bay, struggling to get aboard. I kicked at his hands as we continued to rise into the air. He looked up at me, hanging from the edge, such hatred and astonishment in his eyes.
I stomped his fingers until he screamed and let go. He dropped ten feet to the ground, his legs folding awkwardly under him.
The other Venusians turned and ran back for their rifles as we rose higher. The violent lasers cracked and sizzled the air, but I ran forward with Shepard to jam the engines full on. When they droned to life the airship surged away even faster.
Later, I walked back to the open bay and looked back at the stone towers of Kish as they receded in the distance. We passed over the swamps and marshes that surrounded it. Something with a giant, saurapodian neck peeked its head out of the treetops and bellowed at us.
We were a craft of free people.
7.
WHEN MY SON TURNED FIVE, I SAT HIM DOWN. “IT IS TIME TO tell you who you really are, and where you really came from,” I said.
I told him that he was from the tribe of humanity, from the world of Earth.
“Where is that?” he asked.
“Far above the veil of gray.” I pointed at the clouds.
“Will we ever go back?” he asked.
“Most likely not,” I told him. Maybe war had consumed them all. I remembered the stories soldiers told of a new superweapon both sides had supposedly tested out in the deserts of Nevada and North Africa. A bomb that could unleash hell itself and destroy the world many times over. I hadn’t heard of any new Earthmen being captured, or coming through the skies, so maybe the atom bomb had been used.
Or maybe Earth assumed that the surface of Venus was too dangerous, as both missions there had failed to return.
But I told my son of the blue skies and beautiful places I’d seen. About his grandparents and great-grandparents. All the history I knew.
“One day, you, or your child, will stand tall among the Venusians,” I told him. He looked more like his mother than me. And while it complicated our relationship, I knew at least some small part of what he was going through. “But always remember where you came from.”
When he hugged me, his face showed that he didn’t understand.
But I would continue to tell him anyway. Until the stories lodged deep and could be carried onward.
“I know I’m of the tribe of Earth,” he said, and then left to play in the wading pool near the common house. It was hot, and the splashed water cooled him.
He never asked about the scars on my arms, but one day I would have to tell him I’d been branded as a runaway. That the overseers marked me, and would beat me for the slightest provocation.
I never told him his own mother, Maet, cut her throat when they finally caught us. They had followed a homing beacon still working in the wreckage of the airship. They found where we ditched it, and spent months tracking us through the fetid jungle.
I never told him that the mild-mannered scientist, Eric, threw himself in front of laser fire to save my son’s life.
I never told him why his “uncle” Shep limped so horribly.
These things he would discover the truth of sooner or later, and I wanted it to be as late as possible.
On Earth, many slaves living in the very country I had risked my life to protect had in the past tried to run away, like I had. And been dragged all the way back across states, hundreds of miles, to the place they’d run away from. Some across countries.
Because a successful runaway was a precedent. They’d spent resources to hunt us down and bring us back. And in some ways, I’d been no different than Heston. I’d assumed I was smart. Different. Special. That I would be the one to beat the odds.
I knew more now. More of the maps, and paths, and geographies out past Kish. I knew them better than ever before. But to risk the run was to risk my innocent child’s flesh to torture, or worse, for being a runaway if caught.
When he was older, I thought, maybe he would want to try to escape with us. Or maybe not, and I would have to leave him to face life on his own. But I couldn’t leave him now. This is how so many in the past must have gotten trapped, I realized, even as I continued to plan my escape.
I found myself apologizing to my own ancestors. Apologizing for getting caught again, after they worked so hard to free themselves.
There was a poem one of my aunts read to me by a poet named Paul Dunbar. I understood it, finally, though I wish I never had.
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
Every night, in the common house, while I fell asleep, I dreamt of pale, blue skies.
ELIZABETH BEAR
Elizabeth Bear was born in Connecticut, and now lives in Brookfield, Massachusetts, after several years living in the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and in 2008 took home a Hugo Award for her short story “Tide-line,” which also won her the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (shared with David Moles). In 2009, she won another Hugo Award for her novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom.” Her short work has appeared in Asimov’s, Subterranean, SCI FICTION, Interzone, The Third Alternative, Strange Horizons, On Spec, and elsewhere, and has been collected in The Chains That You Refuse and New Amsterdam. She is the author of three highly acclaimed SF novels, Hammered, Scardown, and Worldwired, and of the Alternate History Fantasy Promethean Age series, which includes the novels Blood and Iron, Whiskey and Water, Ink and Steel, and Hell and Earth. Her other books include the novels Carnival, Undertow, Chill, Dust, All the Windwracked Stars, By the Mountain Bound, Range of Ghosts, a novel in collaboration with Sarah Monette, The Tempering of Men, and two chapbook novellas, “Bone and Jewel Creatures” and “Ad Eternum.” Her most recent books are a new collection, Shoggoths in Bloom, two novels, Shattered Pillars and One-Eyed Jack, and a novella, “The Book of Iron.”