The lieutenant was through the door. One guard looked in at the remaining three people, and then he smirked and winked, throwing the cell door closed and slamming the lock shut.
“No,” said Father, his voice thick and low.
There was a simple, easy response. A few driving kicks would destroy the lock or the entire wall.
Unprompted, he approached the blank steel slab.
Some small noise came from behind, barely audible over the gusting winds and furious rainwater.
Expecting nothing, King glanced back.
Standing with his arms crossed on his chest, Father wore a stunned, confused expression. He acted like a man who was sick in his lungs, his heart. Sweat poured from his flesh, and his face was exceptionally red, and the voice that people everywhere mocked without end was shriller than ever.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
Prima had punched him, and she looked ready to strike the man again. But instead of swinging, she laughed and grabbed her rain-soaked shirt, tugging from the bottom.
“The law gives us a choice,” she said quickly, with minimal breaths. “In times of peace, we can have a council of the Archons, and we vote on a single leader. And you always win. You have more than half of the world’s citizens and far more than half of our soldiers, and the rest of us couldn’t legally stand against you. But I’m sure you remember the full law, that the forest doesn’t have to be ruled by the District of Districts. In crisis but before war is declared, the leading Archon can dispense his power however he sees fit, and in another few moments that’s what you are going to do for me.”
Father was mute.
The woman had pulled off her shirt and the clothing under it. She was not young, and as King understood these matters, she wasn’t more than passingly attractive. But he was curious nonetheless, watching the trousers fall next, and the clothing beneath them. A long horizontal scar defined her belly. She stank of energy and salt as she kicked off her shoes and all of the clothes, and naked now, standing in front of Father, she claimed the pose that King knew in his blood.
It was his posture, facing any enemy.
Instinct older than his flesh took hold. King stood against the door and the wall, watching that little woman approach a man with more strength and more mass. But Father couldn’t muster the will to lift either fist higher than his aching chest, and the stick-like arms began to pummel him with long slow blows.
“No,” Father said.
The man couldn’t believe what was happening.
“Stop,” he said.
She speeded up the swings.
Already bloodied, List turned to his son.
“Help me,” he begged.
Crush the woman with one swing, and the fight would be finished. But this was Father’s ground to defend, not King’s, and far more important, nothing in this boy’s life had ever been as fascinating or enlightening as watching a sterile old woman bring her fists down on the beaten man’s face.
The cabin door swung open.
The window was a window again. Diamond was watching what was outside, unless of course this was another one of his sister’s memories turned into light and noise. He couldn’t tell, couldn’t ask. But what he saw was interesting in its fashion, built from simple shapes and a few noises repeated without end. Dark rain broke against Bountiful’s skin. What might be the long tree limb was twisting in the gale. There were only two distances in that world, near and not-near, and that was a peculiarly fascinating thought.
Diamond pulled his head out from under the curtains.
A soldier filled the open door and part of the hallway. Motioning at the boy, he repeated a word that he had just learned. “Eat,” he said.
Good sat on the cot, growling.
Diamond straightened the curtains. “Stay here,” he said.
“Yes,” the monkey agreed.
“I’ll bring you food,” he said.
“Hate you, thank you,” Good replied.
The soldier closed the door behind him and then sat in the hallway again. A woman soldier was waiting outside the galley. She watched Diamond’s walk. More curious than caring, she asked, “How do you feel?”
“Hungry,” he said.
“I believe you,” she said.
The galley was crowded, the air thick with sweat and cold food. People stopped eating to look at the boy. Some of them made faces. Some were glad to see him. Elata smiled and Seldom called to him by name, while Karlan saw something funny in his arrival, laughing loudly before he attacked his meal again.
“Your father’s working,” Master Nissim said.
“He’ll be back soon,” Tar`ro said. “Get a plate, sit with us.”
Platters of cold meats and boiled eggs and greasy bread waited on the countertop. Diamond filled two white bone plates, and he might have tried holding a third. But that would be too much, too blatant and bold. Sitting beside the Master, he began with the eggs, one at a time.
“Have you slept?” Seldom asked.
Every question had its traps. Diamond lied, saying, “Yes.”
Elata watched the eggs vanish. Then she put her hands on the table and studied her fingers, asking, “Will we ever go home, ever?”
Diamond stopped eating.
“What do you mean?” asked the Master.
“When Diamond reaches the reef . . . will the rest of us go free . . . ?”
Every little sound in the galley vanished. Nobody was eating. The only noise was the storm, and it had already spent the worst of its fury.
Nissim put a hand on Elata’s hands. “We don’t know,” he said.
Elata looked at the woman soldier. “Can I go back to the trees?”
The papio had warmer eyes than Diamond had guessed. But she decided to say nothing.
“I’m staying with you,” Nissim told Diamond.
Seldom looked at the Master and then Elata. “I don’t think they’ll give us a choice,” he said.
Seldom didn’t want to choose.
The urge to eat had vanished, but Diamond kept working with his hands, his mouth. One plate was bare when a mechanic came through the door, followed by Father.
“Come here,” his father said.
Diamond was already on his feet.
“Is that yours?” Father asked.
He meant the last plate.
“Bring it here,” he said. “And I’ll get one for me.”
They sat close to one another, as far from the other prisoners as possible. But the woman soldier was close enough to touch them, and she didn’t care if she stared, listening to every word.
Father had filled his own plate, but he barely ate.
“Where were you?” asked the boy.
“Above. Our guests shot a hole in one of the bladders.”
“What were they fighting?”
“A shadow, apparently.”
Diamond looked at the papio, and then he stared at the long strips of cured pink meat. “Good wants some of this,” he said.
“I bet.”
They didn’t talk, and they didn’t eat quickly. Sometimes Diamond looked at his father’s red, wet eyes.
“She’s dead,” Diamond said at last.
Father didn’t ask who he meant. He just nodded, saying, “Yes.”
“But that’s all right,” said the boy.
Merit kept his mouth closed.
“I’ve been thinking about the Creation,” Diamond said.
“Thinking what?”
“It never ends,” he said.
Father glanced at Nissim. Then to his son, speaking softly, he said, “I don’t know about that.”
“I know.”
Father looked at Nissim again.
“This isn’t one of the Master’s lessons,” Diamond said.
“All right. What do you know?”
“If the world does go on forever, if we can’t count all of the days, then everybody has to come back again. If we’re born once, we can always be born. Every trillion trillion days, each of us gets to live, and it always feels like the first time.”
Merit said nothing.
The woman soldier glared at the boy, lips taut, long teeth showing.