“Divers,” he said. “That’s my other sister’s name.”
“Where’s Quest now?” Seldom asked.
The other children were listening too.
“I don’t know where she is,” Diamond said. “She promised to stay close, but she was hungry . . . and that was before the attack.”
Bountiful had recovered most of its trim. People who couldn’t work were sitting on the shop floor. A couple of the crew members were digging into one of the storerooms, working to assemble and inflate one of the little airships.
Merit yelled at them, and he tried to stand.
“Don’t,” Nissim said. “Let the leg rest.”
Somewhere in the mayhem, his left knee had been wrenched. Even with adrenalin quickening his blood, Merit had trouble coping with the pain.
Pointing at the storeroom, he said, “There isn’t time for cleverness. Tell them.”
“Okay,” Nissim said. “But what good can we do?”
“Deploy crash chairs. And find a working receiver, get an open line to the bridge.”
The Master nodded, and in a moment of genius, he kicked Karlan.
“Get up and help me,” he said.
Karlan cursed. But a moment later, with the weariest of groans, he stood and started walking.
Diamond had stopped talking about sisters, but he hadn’t quit thinking about them. One glance at his big eyes said as much.
“And what does Quest look like?” Elata asked.
“Anything she wants,” Diamond said, delighted. “She shapes the body she needs, or she peels away everything to become small.”
“What about Divers?” asked Seldom.
A different siren began to sound, spreading through the ship with a rhythm that Merit knew too well.
“Fire suits,” he shouted to Nissim and Karlan. “Unpack all of them, now.”
The crew from the storeroom came running, throwing themselves into the task. And the three children continued to sit on the floor, not calm and not even a little relaxed; but they acted as if time didn’t matter, as if their conversation could be cut off anywhere and resumed at some later, better moment.
Good was sitting between Diamond’s legs, and he dropped his head whenever he heard the wings approaching, as if that would make the machines miss. Suddenly he lowered his head farther than ever, and the children and even Merit did the same. A pair of wings roared past, probably embarking from High Coral Merry on their way out to shoot at List’s fleet.
“Divers,” said Seldom, holding to the topic.
“She’s like a giant papio,” Diamond said. “Quest doesn’t dare get close to the reef. The wilderness is too thin and high, and she might be seen. But from a distance, once, she saw Divers all alone.”
“You’re sure it was her,” said Elata.
“She’s huge. As big as a big room,” Diamond said. “And she had hurt herself on the coral. That’s what Quest saw, and that’s what she showed me.”
The other children nodded.
“I saw her bleeding, and then it was healed. Like me, and like King too.”
“Quest is the same as you two?” asked Seldom.
“But she’s even more powerful than us.”
Diamond looked giddy and sick, joyous and ready to collapse. A father knew how to read his son’s face, and Merit had only a little trouble piecing together the clues. Putting an arm around the boy, he said, “Maybe we should stop talking. Save our strength.”
But the boy had to tell him one last wonder. “Her blood was red. I saw that. It was red and shiny just like mine.”
Nissim dragged up shiny fire suits, looking like flattened bodies. Karlan was standing at the edge of the shop floor, one giant arm holding a strap so that the big body could lean into the open, affording him a better view of the world.
Merit fought his leg until he was standing.
The suits came in various sizes, few able to fit anybody properly. Diamond found the smallest two and gave them to his friends, and while Elata dressed, Seldom said, “You can’t let yourself burn. Even if you healed, that would be awful.”
“I’ll wear something big and share it with Good.”
Good jumped when he heard his name.
The crash chairs were built into the long back wall, and everyone would sit with the wall on their right, backs to the bridge. It took several recitations to dress and get into position. Merit wished he could help more, and he was glad not to be tempted. He claimed a chair behind his son, and Diamond turned and looked back at him. But the face was working to smile, the last of the genuine joy being spent.
As promised, the oversized suit had room for a monkey. But the animal had his own plan, climbing into a high cupboard filled with tools that were quickly flung across the shop, leaving an empty volume that was dark and cool when the door was secured behind him.
Outside, coming too slowly and too late, were a squadron of whiffbirds. But the at least wings had stopped flying close, making the world quieter when the final siren came to life—a bright screeching roar warning of an imminent collision.
Karlan was last to claim a crash seat, but he didn’t bother with the undersized suits.
Nissim was behind Merit, struggling with the clips on his various belts.
Bountiful’s engines screamed, begging for speed. Then they suddenly fell silent, and Elata asked, “What’s that mean?”
“We’re going into reverse,” Karlan shouted. “Kill some momentum before we smash into the reef and die.”
The airship jumped, passing from the open air into the confused breezes above the coral. Merit looked out the missing doors, glad for the pressure of the belts and sitting close enough to his son to touch him, waiting for smart words to come to mind—a last thought before everybody but Diamond was cooked to death.
That’s all that seemed possible just then.
And then a papio appeared, galloping down the hallway and into the shop. The man was using an arm and both legs to run, and under the other arm was an insulated box bound tight with cords covered with various pillows pulled from various beds. The stranger ignored everybody else, sprinting to the first missing door and grabbing the same strap that Karlan had held, eyeing distances and speed before very carefully flinging the box into the open air.
Merit looked ahead, checking on Diamond.
His son had dipped his head, and his father couldn’t be certain, but Diamond looked as if he was crying.
Then the old slayer looked at the open door and the papio standing with the strap in hand, and suddenly the papio was off the floor and rising, caught up in some fantastic gust of wind that was visible for a moment. It looked like a quivering mass of hard gray smoke, and whatever it was carried the papio up the side of the ship, out of sight, so suddenly that it seemed as if the man had been imagined, had never been.
Bountiful’s engines coughed and returned, propellers aiming for a hard reverse.
The great ship slowed noticeably, and it plunged harder.
Merit hoped for a valley, flat-bottomed and relatively safe. But then he saw a ridge of coral edging towards them, lifting higher as they dropped . . . and to his son, to everybody, he shouted, “Wait for us to stop, then run!”
The collision was abrupt, and it was softer than he had any right to expect. Grinding roars ended with a merciless jerk of corona bones and lightweight alloys. In an instant, the bottom section was torn free of the half-deflated bladders. The shop and hallway, cabins and galley were lodged inside a long crevice, and they stopped moving while the rest of the ship found itself lighter again, leaping high before shredding and collapsing, the engines igniting a wealth of hydrogen in a scorching blaze that even at a distance felt like the world had been shoved inside a hot angry oven.