“Not about me personally,” List agreed.
“And it isn’t about any of you monkeys.” King was facing the corpse, and then he turned, gracefully and with no sound. He ignored his father. The eyes were fixed on his brother.
Diamond took a reflexive step backwards.
“We are supposed to do this thing, whatever this thing is,” said King. “But we can’t remember what the duty is. We forgot because too much time passed. Because the corona kept us locked inside her belly longer than she should have, than was intended, and even our great minds couldn’t keep every memory clear and fixed.”
Diamond looked at the satin black corona flesh.
“Too many days have passed,” said King. “I’ve looked in my mind, poked and looked, and I don’t remember enough even to know what we’re late for.
“But I can’t believe it has anything to do with these damned monkeys.”
Karlan didn’t feel like moving. Watching the monster remaking herself, guessing what she would become, seemed like a suitable game.
Then somehow the one-time Archon ended up standing nearby. She wasn’t doing anything, but she was breathing quickly nonetheless, like someone halfway up an unwelcomed set of stairs. He didn’t know the woman from a can of paint. If they ever talked, he had forgotten the conversation. Yet something about her being a prisoner—one of the great enemies of the modern world—made her fascinating.
Karlan approached, and when he had her gaze, he said, “I’m going to leave with them.”
She blinked, saying nothing, probably building her own response.
“This world is dead,” he said. “But from what I hear, our little friends might be heading someplace else.”
Now she laughed.
Good.
“You should come too,” Karlan said.
The next laugh died. Prima used both hands, wiping at the short hair that prisons liked to mandate for criminals and guards alike. Then with a quiet smiling voice, she asked, “Why should I? Because there’s no reason for me to stay?”
“If you think there isn’t,” Karlan said, laughing.
Then he turned, both of them watching Quest.
Like any woman, she kept changing appearances. She became a narrow and very tall cone, and then the cone collapsed into a rounded mass, flesh swirling around some stubborn core. But where were the legs? Why wasn’t the girl making legs or living ropes, anything that could drag her to ruined doors?
Karlan thought that part through, finally seeing what was simple.
There really wasn’t enough air to breathe, was there?
Staring out into the killing night, Diamond waited for Quest to finish her preparations. Distant fires were struggling to survive. A dead corona fell past, limp and dark and almost soundless. Then a civilian blimp followed, two heavy timbers strapped to its underside, helping drag it toward thicker air. For an instant, Diamond saw inside the brightly lit cabin, saw packed bodies and desperate faces and hands holding guns.
Haddi approached him, stopping short of the door and the endless fall. She was breathing in long, weak gasps, but once she began to talk, nothing about her seemed weak.
“You need to know,” she said. “I am proud of you.”
Diamond watched the blimp turn small with distance.
“I was foolish, holding you to such a high standard,” she said. “Whatever you are, you are a child, and I shouldn’t have expected so much.”
“But you should have,” he managed.
“Look at me, Diamond.”
She wasn’t alone. Master Nissim stood behind her, his big frame surrounding her body, both lit by the weak glow of burning wood and Quest’s ongoing metamorphosis. The gray ball was on the floor where he left it. And nearby stood Elata and Seldom, one of them clinging to the other one’s free hand.
“You’re my mother,” Diamond said. “Nobody else is.”
Haddi straightened a back that was rarely straight anymore, and her breath came even faster than before.
“Thank you,” she said.
Everyone was suffering. Speed mattered, and Diamond wanted to leave now, which was why he tried to walk past them.
But the Master put a hand to his shoulder, saying, “I have something to give you.”
Diamond paused. “A lesson,” he guessed.
“But not as a teacher,” Nissim said.
The entire facility began to shake. Quest was violently twisting, the body burrowing through the abattoir’s floor.
“A butcher’s perspective can help you,” Nissim said.
“All right,” Diamond said, sick of waiting.
The butcher said, “Wherever you happen to go, show up on time and sober, and do all of your work with an artful amount of complaining. And when you’re working with other butchers, remember: everybody has knives and cleavers.”
Diamond stared up at that worn old face.
“When there’s trouble,” said Nissim, “and there always is trouble among butchers, your advantage comes in realms that don’t involve the steel.”
Diamond closed his eyes, thinking.
With no warning, Quest plunged through the bone floor.
Was his sister leaving without him? And without the key too?
But no, she was inside the rooms below, grabbing hold of the building’s foundation, and her body hadn’t finished making ready for whatever she was planning.
King was holding the gray ball in his hands.
King ran, and then Diamond ran. Nobody else could even try.
The two Archons had found each other in the gloom, converging beside a booth where call-lines ended. One circuit was working, and like dear friends, they put their ears to the same earpiece, listening to some quick voice.
Diamond stopped running.
Until his mother caught him, he wasn’t sure why he was standing still.
Her hands had never felt colder, every little bone struggling to be felt. She squeezed him and panted for a long moment before saying, “Good-bye.” Then she said, “Good-bye,” again, with a softer, sadder voice.
“I do remember your face,” he said. “When I was looking up from the toolbox, I saw you watching me.”
With that. Diamond had to turn and run again.
He didn’t dare do anything else.
Only at the end, by accident, did Seldom suspect what Elata wanted.
The moment they emerged from the giant sister, the girl began to chase after Diamond, and a familiar, reassuring jealousy fell across Seldom. He always felt inadequate next to any corona’s child, but particularly his best, almost-human friend. He had no choice but assume that she wanted nothing but to be near Diamond. Which would have doomed her, maybe. And maybe all of them. But then Seldom began to think how Elata stood apart from everybody all day, saying nothing unless forced to talk, and he remembered how she had acted every day for what seemed like a long while. She was far from happy. Almost nothing in her life was pleasurable, and the world since Marduk fell was horrible, and maybe Seldom wasn’t as sensitive about people and emotions as he should be, but had one talent not shared by the perfect-brained Children: he was a genius when it came to misremembering the past.
That’s what Seldom did then. He thought he remembered Elata turning to him once, confessing that if life became too unbearable, she would simply jump.
Later, replaying the abattoir and his faltering memories, Seldom would realize that the girl had never said anything of the kind. He couldn’t figure out where that non-memory came from, unless instinct or intuition were talking. But the recollection felt genuine then, and that’s why he forced himself to run, catching her and grabbing her hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he lied.
“Then stop,” she said.
Too graceless to invent an explanation, Seldom simply told her, “No. I want to keep you close.”
Elata considered fighting and didn’t.
They were standing together, not talking, when Quest sank through the floor. Then Diamond finished talking to his mother and to Master Nissim. He trotted past his friends, seeing them without seeing them. Diamond had a way of noticing everything, but he didn’t even make eye contact with his only real friends. Elata watched him pass them, and then she started to follow Diamond.