Bountiful was huge, and every surface was new. Black rubber stairs led to black rubber-draped gangways illuminated by jars of luminescent yogurts. The corona bladders had a milky whiteness that came from being stretched, holding back the hydrogen. But they were young and strong, and nothing besides a huge rifle or small cannon could rip any hole in this material. Several papio filled the gangways, nervous enough to spin around when prisoners approached. Merit told them that their bosses were below, where it was safe. He asked the last soldier what she was hunting. She touched her tattoo of a whiffbird, presumably for luck. “It was nothing, a little wild animal,” she said. “But it’s gone. Are you going above?”
“Shouldn’t we?” asked the mechanic.
“If you can save our lives, go above. Go.” Then she retreated with the rest of her troop.
Rope ladders carried them to platforms too tiny to hold even a small papio. They climbed and sniffed, walked on horizontal ropes and pushed at the rigid bladders with their slick boots. Tanks of compressed carbon dioxide gas were fitted into the gaps, waiting for any excuse to flood the air and kill combustion. But there wasn’t any fire to fight. And with every few steps, the smell continued to strengthen.
“This feels wrong,” the mechanic said. “This high, surrounded by hydrogen, we should feel light in the head.”
Merit nodded, counting more senseless details.
“You know,” the mechanic said. “If we had the proper attitude, we could split some bladder and vent a little gas out the top of Bountiful, and then by accident, light it.”
“A signal, you mean.”
“Visible at night and hot enough to burn the passing leaves, leaving Prima a nice bright trail to chase.”
“Except our hosts would notice the fire,” Merit said.
“Maybe not for a while. Wings and jets aren’t flying, they’re just ballistics. They’re way too fast.”
Another tiny platform waited in front of them.
“I want to try signals,” the old fellow said.
“Except,” Merit said. “The last time I spoke to our Archon, I might have threatened to take my son to the papio and safety.”
The mechanic used a few quiet, rich words.
Merit absorbed the abuse.
And then nobody was speaking. The platform was the last flat surface, and a body was sprawled across it, limbs dangling on three sides. They approached until they were baffled, and then they knelt on the rope, Merit in front, holding the railing with one hand while he played with two days of whiskers.
“It’s a jazzing,” said the mechanic. “A young dead jazzing.”
Merit eased forward, pulling a torch from the tool belt.
“Don’t spark,” his companion warned.
“The bladders aren’t leaking,” Merit said. “This is the stink’s source, and I don’t think it ever was a jazzing.”
The body had been shot several times. Odd flesh had been torn apart, and a sticky black fluid had leaked from the holes, not coagulating so much as simply drying out in the open air. There were eyes that were little more than the pits on a coral viper. No mouth existed because no mouth was needed. The limbs were powerful before they died, and he touched the nearest foot, discovering that the jazzing-style claws were as soft as warm rubber.
“Smell this,” Merit said, waving his fingers under the mechanic’s nose.
“That’s our stink,” the man said with a grimace.
Merit stood. “We drop this body out the nearest vent and climb down like heroes.”
The plan was accepted with a soft laugh. Then the mechanic added, “But what is this creature? Its nothing like any beauty in my school books.”
“I think the school books need updating,” said Merit.
“And the rest of us could use some youth too,” joked his companion.
Once again, Diamond stepped back from the window.
Grayness came again, and the girlish voice. “I won’t be seen. Before dawn, I’ll hide again.”
“Where?”
“In the best place, and I haven’t decided.”
Good was sleeping on the floor, on a nest made from sack pieces and scrap paper. The monkey smacked his lips at some imagined food, and then he gave a long loud fart that changed the cabin air.
Something was funny. Diamond caught himself laughing.
“Dawn’s coming,” Quest warned. “I see signs, and I only have a few eyes.”
The creature was plastered to Bountiful’s hull, a fake window on her backside. She didn’t want a passing ship, any kind of ship, to spy her. She had explained some of her tricks to her brother, including how she played with light and odors. But Diamond had the impression—a quiet, growing impression—that the girl had no real explanations for what she did.
“How big can you grow?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“How much can you eat at once?”
“More than I ever have, I think.”
“Good is my friend,” he said. “Don’t eat him.”
“I won’t.”
Diamond sorted questions on a list that never grew shorter.
Then she said, “You interest me.”
“You interest me.”
“Do you know why I’m fascinated?”
“The same reason that you want to know about King,” he said. “We’re your brothers, in a fashion.”
“We are, and no.”
“Why then?”
“I heard you talking to your teacher. I was outside the window yesterday, and you told your teacher that nothing is evil. A voice said that to you.”
“I don’t know whose voice,” he said.
“But that interests me. Very much.”
Outside, the big engines were beginning to throttle back.
“They’ll tie down the ship before dawn,” Quest said.
Diamond needed sleep, and he feared closing his eyes. “Do you know the voice I’m talking about?” he asked.
Quest said nothing, and the grayness in the window held steady.
“Does some little voice push between all of those ears?” asked Diamond.
“I can have a thousand ears,” Quest said. “I weave them until they are huge and sensitive, and nothing escapes them. But I’ve never heard the voice you are talking about. It’s a stranger to me.”
Once again, Diamond put his face against the glass.
“That’s part of why you are fascinating,” she said.
And the boy said, “If you see so much, maybe you look in the other direction.”
“Do I watch the reef?”
“You do.”
“I never get close, because of the danger.”
“But you can’t stop watching for the other one. Can you?”
“You want to see what I know.”
“Everything,” Diamond said. “But we don’t have time. You pick for my eyes, sister. Please.”
TEN
King didn’t believe in demons or in nailing myth and human words against what refused to be understood. But he understood and accepted that every sphere had its center, and the Creation was the largest, most perfect sphere that could exist. Humans ruled what mattered, and the District of Districts was the center of what mattered, and his homeland had always rightfully dominated this wonderful rich world.
There had always been a Grand University clinging to the bloodwoods, and the University typically kept a powerful telescope lashed to its great trees. Forever pointing downwards, the giant tube and crystalline lenses had one target, one subject. When night was young—when ordinary souls saw nothing beneath but ink and the senseless glimmer of the demon floor—a Master’s eye, ruined by a life of hard reading, would be set against a round disk of glass, gaining the best possible view of the sun.
There were other methods of study. Any fire could be safely cast onto screens or trapped inside sealed boxes where its rich, complicated light might be carved into myriad flavors. Yet that flawless, perfect circle let itself be seen plainly only for brief times. That was when its qualities had been calculated. Lying at the bottom of Creation’s sphere, its size had proven to be changeless, its brightness fixed and eternal. Night was the shadow cast by the corona jungle. The jungle grew thick in a day and thicker through the night. Every night, the blackness won, alien weeds pressing against the brilliance until even young eyes with their lenses could see nothing but velvety blackness marred only by the coronas—a scattering of tiny brilliances thriving inside that fiery sodden alien realm.