The boy was there.
His proportions were weak and wrong, and Quyte recognized the tightly wound hair and the sickly face. Then he saw what might have been a smile, those peculiar white teeth catching the little bit of morning light that made it to the back of the room.
Quyte was certain that he saw a smile.
If someone could have talked to the young high-hand a day or two later—if Quyte was given the chance and enough encouragement to explain his actions—he would have had very little to say. He was no deep believer in any custom or tradition, particularly his own. He thought that Creators and the meanings of humanity were other people’s interests. His personal losses from the attack were huge, yet he had the wife and unborn child too. He was trained. By every measure, he was disciplined and proud of his uniform. Maybe he had heard other soldiers talking with conspiratorial tones, plotting this or implying that. But the gunner had never felt interest in treachery. His sole crime was to not mention the dangerous chatter to his thoroughly indifferent superiors. Indeed, Quyte looked like the best man to put inside that blister. But then he peered through the telescope and saw the boy smiling, and he watched the papio working quickly to launch their whiffbirds, and the peace and apparent stability of that scene made this young soldier think in a startling new way.
Two days ago, trees died and people died so that one creature had this chance to move from the trees to the reef. That was the truth dangling in plain view. Maybe the boy asked to live with the papio. Maybe he even planned for it, or he was an innocent moved by some greater evil. Details didn’t matter. The core of the story was impenetrable to reason and evidence and every fear of being wrong. What mattered was that vast forces had unleashed the explosions as a cover or as punishment, and it only seemed as if the boy had been lucky enough to escape.
But Diamond had to survive Marduk’s fall.
That always was the plan.
And that had to be why the creature was standing where he was, the monstrous smile filling a wicked alien face. Those sick white teeth were what caused the gun to move, and only the faint, faint possibility of innocence kept the high-hand from shooting Diamond with the first shell, aiming instead for a place that was higher and far more frail.
“Women are rarely stronger than men,” Crock’s mother used to joke. “But women are never, ever as weak as the strongest man.”
Crock was strong by every measure.
Becoming a soldier wasn’t easy work, but after two days on that path, her vocation was set. Others failed in their training, and good soldiers could complain. But not Crock. Physical challenges were weathered without complaint. She liked to run. She loved to carry and climb. Shooting was a fine challenge wrapped around geometry, and following orders, even the dumb orders, proved easier than the headstrong girl had imagined. Once trained, she would never stop being a soldier. It was the blunt polished certainty of her existence that made her happiest, and because there hadn’t been any war for generations, it seemed self-evident that her running and shooting were good reasons for fun, and following dumb orders was the cost to having a uniform and abundant food as well as a pension once it was time to retire.
Six hundred days ago, Crock was posted to the roughest, poorest slice of the world, and soon after that she volunteered to fly inside whiffbirds. Whiffbirds were risky duty, even in peace. But the pay was better, and she had new skills to learn, including new words and fresh curses. She endured bruising training sessions where crews were taught to protect something that was very special, very secret. Something that they were forbidden to know about. But soldiers had always been bold and young, and no secret was safe with those kinds of people. Smart voices talked about the Eight, and later Crock heard about an armored child and a half-human child who had come out of the trees for a visit. And once during a very long day, she was standing alone in the wilderness, inside a blind, practicing her stealth skills when a creature with no clear shape walked on the branch in front of her. And just like that, she was one of the few people who knowingly saw the beast that could dress itself in dream.
Soon after that the Eight became One, and that was Divers.
Every day more soldiers were stationed nearby, as bodyguards and mechanics, pilots and simple soldiers.
One night, a colleague asked Crock if she wanted an audience with Divers.
But she had been ordered to avoid the creature, which was what she intended to do until ordered otherwise.
Then came whispers about whispers, and rumors wilder than any tale about old coronas coughing up unlikely beasts. And soon after that the tree-walkers decided to slaughter each other in a mad, idiot attempt to murder one boy. Crock found herself in briefings about situations that had already changed in the field. Three times, she sat onboard her whiffbird, instructing her team about a new destination but always with the same goal—to grab up that miracle boy. But those important missions were aborted twice, and the third attempt was called off when an orange flare was sent past their bird’s nose. Only the fourth mission mattered. That briefing came en route. Crock read from papers so important that they had to be burned afterwards. Like any assignment devoid of planning and good sense, there were needless casualties on both sides. But there weren’t as many dead as she feared, and Bountiful was theirs, and the boy was theirs again. He was stolen from a corona set on their land, after all. And if all of that wasn’t historic enough, Crock was told to take her three best men to the galley and sit on everybody but the boy.
Soldiers are consummate experts at sitting. Crock’s prisoners were slender short creatures, except for the boy named Karlan. They smelled odd but not sour, and it took time to grow accustomed to their wispy, unserious voices. Because she knew their language, at least to a point, she found herself interacting with them, and liking them for good reasons, and not liking them for different good reasons.
Just once, Diamond came into the galley to eat and speak to his father.
She watched the boy and listened carefully to whatever he said. Diamond loved his father, that old man Merit. Merit knew the papio and respected them, and she could see his love for the boy. But oddly, Diamond didn’t generate emotions inside her. He spoke words that she understood about subjects that didn’t exist, and he seemed out of place in more ways that she could count, and then he had left the galley for his cabin again and she was glad of it.
Later, after the storm broke and night was finished, Bountiful was spotted by the fletches. The mission commander sent orders that one soldier was to guard the former crew while the rest of the prisoners were brought to the machine shop and lined up in plain view. Tree-walkers liked to ride inside gas bags. Their quickest bags were approaching in a hurry, and their captains needed to be reminded who was at risk if real fighting should break out.
Crock considered leaving the big boy behind. Karlan was the only prisoner who worried her, and because of that, she liked him. She saw good qualities in his walk and manner and how he wore his little miseries, and that’s why she put Karlan beside her. To help the image of peaceful coexistence, she cut away the bindings around his wrists, and then she told him that if anything felt wrong, with him or the world, he would die first.
“Good to know,” the boy said, winking at her.
Then the Diamond boy was brought to the dock. Three fletches had already caught them, and the papio commander called down from the bridge with orders to get every whiffbird ready. Smart leaders wanted options in case of trouble, and the first option was to throw their prize into one of the birds and then flee into the tangled canopy overhead.
Karlan was standing on Crock’s left, and the big room was jammed full of engine sounds. Diamond stood to Karlan’s left, flanked by his father and his teacher while that tiny monkey perched on his shoulder. Two other papio soldiers were on her right, while past them were the disarmed bodyguard and two other children.