Giant trees slid past, each adorned with walkways and homes and tiny, tiny people who sometimes looked at the noisy aircraft but mostly ignored it, marching through their own magnificent day. Species changed—different bark and different trunks hanging from the sky—but it was easy to believe that this incredible forest had no end. In no time at all, the fletch had carried Diamond farther than he had wandered during his entire life. That obvious idea startled him, and he laughed, just a little bit. But more surprising was his reaction: he didn’t look for his parents now, ready to share his astonishment. They weren’t here, not even in the corner of his eyes, and for the first time today he found himself wondering what would happen if he never saw them again.
Guilt grabbed hold. His mother and father were a little bit dead to him, and he had already adjusted to that hard fact. Bending forward, he shut his eyes, fighting that one simple idea. He could be an orphan, but accepting that possibility seemed treacherous. Wrong. Palms to his eyes, he concentrated on his breathing and his heart, and after a long while a big hand that he knew came down on his head, tousling his curly hair.
Nissim shouted his name and pulled back the hand, saying, “We’ve crossed. We’re in the wilderness. Do you want to see?”
Diamond sat up, wiping at the eyes once more. Sunlight was bright and close and a little less green. The dense old canopy had been replaced by smaller branches that were above as well as below, and the trees were smaller and far more numerous, and even when he searched hard he couldn’t find any trace of homes or human beings. This was a very different forest. The fletch was slowing, changing course every few moments to avoid limbs. One giant leatherwing insisted on flying beside them, flapping hard and then tucking its wings, slipping between twin trees before returning to tease the fletch with its grace and fearlessness.
The engines ran slower and slower. Nothing was quiet, but it was easier to talk, and that was what Nissim wanted. Leaning across his seat, he waited for Diamond to meet his eyes. “Once in my life, I was a teacher,” he began. “Maybe somebody mentioned that to you. There were days when I held a high post at the Grand University in the District of Districts. But there was trouble, and I lost my post and my credentials and my home. I ended up living in the Corona District, needing work. My father was a butcher so I already knew the trade. And that’s how I earned my post at the local school.”
His voice wanted to sound steady but wasn’t. His face was self-conscious and indignant, big eyes staring into the distance, and the Master needed a few moments to shape his next words.
“What I just told you is what students and their parents hear about me,” he continued. “It’s a simple story. There aren’t any details, and more than most stories, it happens to be true. I was a professor. There was a kind of scandal. And now I cut up animal parts every day, without complaint. I’ve worked in that school for three thousand and eleven days. Of course people have to look at me and wonder. Rumors aren’t usually kind to a former Master. But I didn’t do anything horrible. I don’t wear manacles or prison tattoos, and the authorities don’t seem especially worried that I’m close to children. So how awful was my crime? It couldn’t have been too terrible. At least that’s what charitable parents like to say to one another when they think that they’re out of earshot.
“But believe me, my crimes were appalling. What I did was unimaginable and wicked, and that’s why I was tried in a secret court and stripped of my degrees, my fancy titles. It has been thousands of days since I told anybody what I did. Not since I came to Corona and met with the local police. Not since long before any of you were born.”
Squirming in his seat, Diamond glanced at the passing branches, details smeared by the rubber window and their fantastic speed.
The Master said his name.
The boy blinked and looked at those great black eyes.
“We count our days,” Nissim continued. “From the beginning of time, humans have used the days to measure time. Everybody knows this. But most people don’t realize that there are a few scholars, very unusual researchers, who spend their lives doing nothing but trying to make a fair full count of the world’s days and nights. An honest number would tell us quite a lot. That’s the logic, at least. Knowing when the world was born would give us a huge number, and wouldn’t that be fine evidence of the world’s greatness?”
“How many days are there?” Elata asked.
Nissim smiled grimly and lifted his hand, clamping it over Seldom’s mouth.
“You don’t know,” he said to the boy. “And don’t bother guessing.”
Seldom shrank back and stayed quiet.
Nissim said, “Various counts exist. Scholars are divided into important factions—warring tribes, really—and nobody agrees. Nobody can ever agree. Each answer has a different path behind it, and long gray reaches of history compromise every number. There have been wars: tree-walkers against papio; civil insurrections. Governments have fallen into the sun, and chaos has ruled for generations, and nobody knows how many times our records were burnt or left to rot.
“Now most authorities believe the world was born at least one million days ago, and some claim it was more than ten million days ago. I’ve known smart men and smart women who invest all of their intelligence in one number and then convince themselves that it’s not just right, but inevitable and beautiful and theirs. But there are a few of us, always just a few, who are interested in finding a new means of counting.
“Which brings me to me.”
He paused. The fletch dove suddenly and then just as suddenly jumped higher, and someone from up in the cockpit screamed—a boyish wail of approval at the airborne dance.
“The edge of the world is marked with the living coral.” Nissim was looking at a point behind Diamond’s head. “The coral grows from where existence begins, and it creates a strange terrain. This is where the other people live, the papio. They live in villages and giant towns, and except for all of their differences, they’re exactly like us. They fight each other and sometimes they pick fights with us. The papio are intense and very intelligent and they like to be silent when they’re with us, but they have their own language and their own wonderful alphabet, and like us, they have scholars who keep count of the days.”
Nissim paused, licking his lips.
“The coral grows,” he said. “Every day, it lays down a tiny layer of new coral along the reef’s belly. What lives is as blue as it is green, and every night that coral rests. Nights leave behind faint dark lines in the ground. When I was a young student, I read that it was possible to take a core sample from the coral and count the daily rings, measuring the passage of time. As a scholar, I decided to make that my life’s work. The deepest and presumably oldest coral happens to be there.” He pointed forward. “That’s why I passed through the District of Corona on my way to visit the papio. I needed to learn their customs and language before receiving permission to drill, which took effort and time and a good deal of luck. And even with those accomplishments, everything remained difficult.
“I had to hire papio engineers to design the drilling apparatus. Cutting into deep old coral isn’t easy work, and I don’t know how many times wise people from both species warned me that I was attempting the impossible.
“And to a degree, those doubters were correct.
“The first drill went into the old blue-green stone on top. It cut deep and then wore out, and I pulled a core sample and the second drill cut even farther. Eventually I had the deepest hole in the world. But the youngest coral is far tougher than the grandfatherly stuff, and after nine drills, the stone was too young and too deep, and I was only halfway to the bottom of the ancient reef.