Strangers could afford to share a single comforting position. But those who saw Diamond every day had offered a variety of opinions, conflicted and often contradictory. The Archon’s aides and the generals had told him that he was blameless but wars should never be launched without planning and every advantage. Office workers assured him that vengeance was right, even noble, but a hundred days later, the same voices claimed that nothing right had been accomplished and nothing good could be found anywhere. Everyone liked to talk about evil people dying, yes, but they couldn’t stop from praising the heroes and the innocent who died every day. Nissim and Elata and Seldom were trusted voices: each had held Diamond by a warm hand, claiming that their lives would have looked much the same without war. Or maybe they were talking to themselves, wrestling with doubt. With or without the war, this odd family would have come to the District of Districts. They were destined to stand behind heavy walls and locks and paranoia. That was the future and always had been, at least since Marduk fell, but it was hard to argue that the rest of the world would been the same tonight if one salvo of reef-hammers had remained asleep inside their tubes.
One simple story had been recited many times, and the Archon told it best. The narrow, shrill-voiced man thought it was a good story, a comforting explanation. He smiled as believably as he could manage, promising Diamond that this fierce, seemingly endless contest was inevitable. It had to happen. Because Diamond existed, this was nothing less than destiny. Nodding, List explained that whatever Diamond was, he had always been the irresistible prize: a human who wasn’t quite human, a blessing that was going to remake one species and the Creation.
Perhaps. But nothing was known for certain, Diamond said.
List scoffed at that complaint and maybe at the weak will that made it. The great prize was the great prize because of belief. Reality was everyone’s secondary concern. But of course Diamond would be a man soon, and everything might be answered soon. He would have a family of enduring, unbreakable children, or there wouldn’t be any children and he would be just one great blessing, like King.
The Archon of Archons claimed that both of those destinies should make the boy smile now and again.
Diamond still smiled, but never for those suffocating reasons.
Habit and being polite were the only reasons to smile anymore.
Everybody held various opinions, except for Mother. She didn’t pretend ten opinions, or even just two. There was one hard truth and nothing else: she was a widow who lost more than her husband. Everything but her only son was gone, and the son that she couldn’t stop loving had proved himself to be as ugly as was every angry boy and boyish man who ever picked up a club.
Haddi didn’t pretend to understand what was inevitable about the world. Where the war might have emerged, if it began on its own or with help, were questions not worth the trouble. What she did know—what her heart and mind and soul understood too well—was that inside Diamond, underneath everything special, waited a beast just like the beast inside the rest of them.
Standing in the darkness, touching that unfastened door, Diamond saw his mother. Several conversations replayed themselves inside the same intense moment. She was weeping while talking to her son. She was talking to him while her face was like coral, a pale coral, rigid and cold. And she was warm-voiced and calm, looking at the ceiling as she spoke. And finally, she was quietly talking to Good, pretending not to notice the beast standing a few steps away.
In each case, the same message was delivered.
“He would have been so disappointed,” she said.
To her son, she said, “Your father.”
To the monkey, she said, “Merit.”
Then she said, “That good man despised violence against humans. It didn’t matter if they were us or if they were the papio. He never wanted to raise a hand, much less incinerate hundreds of them. And he certainly wouldn’t approve of you trying to murder one of your own siblings.”
“The Eight were evil,” Diamond said, trying to combat her logic.
“You knew that,” she said skeptically.
“I did,” he claimed.
“And that fact hasn’t changed?”
There were papio soldiers who had protected the Eight, and now they were squatting inside tree-walker prisons and interrogation cells. They didn’t describe a simple evil giant. Nothing about the creature was simple, including the mastermind—Divers.
“But Divers killed my father,” Diamond said.
That was the day when Mother was addressing Good, not him.
“I saw Divers kill him,” Diamond shouted, his voice livid, each word blended into the next.
Mother’s face turned hard and cold. She stared at the monkey and then turned to her son. The pretty mouth was pinched, and the dark red-rimmed eyes refused to blink. Then very quietly, almost too softly to be heard, she said, “I know what you saw. But what your father would ask. If he were sitting next to me, if he could look at you . . . ”
The boy’s anger abandoned him.
He didn’t intend to ask, “What would Father ask?”
But his mouth muttered that question just the same.
Mother’s voice didn’t answer. She changed the gait and color of her words, sounding very much like Merit when she said, “Diamond. Tell me. How many fathers did you kill that day?”
Wrenching endless sadness took his heart. Pain that would cripple anyone else became a weight, Diamond’s massive and faithful burden. But the murderous boy kept living. He managed to sleep nights and eat every day, growing in little bursts like every other boy, and the hair changed on his body, and when he wasn’t conscious about his grief and guilt, he became very much aware of new feelings—feelings as old as any species living inside the Creation.
The memories faltered, and the present returned.
In the middle of this night, Diamond took one long breath, holding the air deep inside his chest while all of its oxygen was married to his salty blood.
Then the sentry walked past the door, beginning his rounds, and the boy waited for half a recitation before slipping into the hallway, still not breathing, nothing useful left inside his lungs, his legs working with a magic that he couldn’t hope to understand.
Important humans knew how to curry favor, and that was why the Archon used to receive gifts, enormous numbers of fine rare wondrous gifts.
That was before the war.
In those days, Father was the world’s most important man, and it was fashionable among the half-powerful to give him portraits and sculptures of his extraordinary son. And that was why King’s rooms were crowded with big canvas sheets slathered in paint, and tall blocks of carved wood and carved coral, and best of all, figurines built wholly from corona parts. Each work represented him, and they were usually competent and sometimes inspired. Few humans actually visited King inside his own quarters, but the typical reaction was to assume that the giant, heavily-armored beast was self-absorbed. Why else populate your home with thirty-seven portrayals of yourself?
Except none of these objects were King, and that’s what he liked.