“Still, I had my lines to count. I was young and proud, and that’s why I boasted too much. The papio were offended. One old papio man, dead now for thousands of days, looked at this little tree-scrambling human with his wasted learning and his stacks of cylindrical rock. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Something needs to be seen by ignorant you.’
“Few know about this place. Even the papio don’t know about it. High on the reef country, beyond where even the papio live, there is one tiny patch of existence on which nothing grows. There is no coral and no soil, and not even the woeful-vines take root there. It is a different part of the world than anything I’ve seen anywhere—a place no larger than a large man’s arms can stretch across. The surface is smooth and gray and perfect, except for the words embossed in the middle.”
The fletch shuddered and dove again. Nothing changed outside the window. The same twisted branches raced past, little dashes of color showing a flock of scattering birds. The day was older, but the sunlight insisted on growing even brighter.
“Were those papio words?” Seldom asked.
“And what did they mean?” Elata pressed.
“Oh, the language was a mystery to me and to my guide too,” Nissim confessed. “But there were similarities to parts of archaic human language, and I saw hints of papio in the lettering. So I made an exact copy. I brought the words back to the District of Districts, and I brought my core samples too. For a thousand days, I buried myself inside the University library. The oldest surviving books in the world are stored in a special room, in the driest possible air, and I studied there until my sinuses were full of dust, and I learned as much or more about old languages than anyone else in the world. And only then did I try to translate that mysterious emblem.”
Nissim stopped talking. Suddenly he resembled an old man wrung empty of breath and stamina. He shook his head slowly and narrowed the eyes that refused to let go of what he had seen, and he dipped his head, watching the back of one hand as he began reciting the words.
“ ‘We are boys and we are girls,’ ” he said, “ ‘and we have come to this fruit of perfection, this utopia, to live as good people must. Every temptation has been left behind. We bring nothing but pure thoughts. In this great realm, we will build a society of fairness and modesty, or we shall fail and suffer the doom that failed souls must suffer. Then we will die, and the great fire will consume us, and nothing will remain of our good dream but the eternal promise that always and forever draws creatures of courage, pulling us onward.’ ”
His voice stopped and he lifted his hand, watching it close and then open again. “To the best of my ability, that is the full text.”
Diamond closed his eyes, absorbing each word. But nothing made sense, and he felt foolish.
“I don’t understand,” said Seldom.
“What does that mean?” Elata asked.
Again, the Master placed his hand on Diamond’s head
The boy opened his eyes.
Nissim was showing him a wary smile and hard unblinking gaze.
“These words likely mean more than I realize,” the man said. “And I won’t pretend to understand the people who wrote them. But the phrase that destroyed my life, the piece of this puzzle that utterly fascinated me . . . it is where they wrote, ‘We have come to this fruit of perfection.’
“Now ‘fruit’ is the simplest translation. On the one hand, that just means the edible seed of any plant. It might be the only fruit in one grand Creation. But the ancient word means quite a lot more: it was used to describe a great tree covered with countless branches, each branch heavy with fruit. Just one of those sweet treats is the world where we happen to live. That’s what I realized. Sitting alone inside that library, close to the perfect center of the perfect world, I began to understand that what we think of as the Creation is what those lost authors called ‘this great small realm.’
“It presses against one’s sanity, I know. But regardless what people are taught and regardless what we’d love to believe, this world is not everything. There are other fruits suspended on many branches, and perhaps we aren’t the only people. That was my revelation. My great scholarly paper was focused on that premise, outlining a set of fantastic, inevitable conclusions and proving every point as well as I could.
“I wasn’t an idiot. I did expect doubts. There are people who are terrified by any idea, and I accepted that. But I didn’t appreciate the pride and power of our rulers. If vast realms are set beyond the walls of the world, then our great men and women are tiny. And if the fruit tree is vast, then we are next to nothing.
“That idea is what made them furious. That’s why I was tried and convicted of heresy—an ancient crime rarely invoked but always in the books, always waiting its day. And that’s why I lost my life’s work. And that’s why my papers were burned. And while I watched, my precious cylinders of ancient coral were taken to the bottom of the University Tree, and one after another, they were thrown off into the scorching, cleansing sun.”
The Master turned away, wiping at tears.
Diamond looked out the window, embarrassed and sorry, waiting for his thoughts to make sense. How could anything be larger than this enormous world? But even as he denied that impossible idea, dream-like images swirled in front of his mind’s eye. Suddenly he had too many fantasies to count and none felt real, and he believed each one of these impossibilities. In despair, he covered his face with his hands. A thin breathless cry leaked out. Then some little word was whispered. Who spoke? Diamond dropped his hands, looking at Seldom and at Elata. They were trading whispers while watching him—that sense of being spellbound never more obvious.
Master Nissim took a deep breath, ready to speak again.
Two quick explosions shook the Happenstance. The left engine screamed, and startled, Diamond stood up, face against the window. The propeller was still spinning, pushing dense black smoke behind them. Dirty red flames flickered inside a shell made of iron and corona scales. Elata and Seldom were beside him, laughing nervously. Then Nissim pulled them away from the window, and the engine coughed, and the rattling slowed to a hard steady pounding as the smoke kept rushing out and the propeller seized up. Long white blades were frozen in place, each one cut from a corona bone, each carved into an elegant, lovely airfoil.
The pilot ran into the cabin cursing. “Back, back,” he warned everyone but himself, picking Diamond up by the shoulders and pushing him away. Someone in the cockpit yelled a question, and the pilot flung himself against the rubber window, muttering an answer that couldn’t be heard even by the boy standing behind him.
“Is it off?” shouted the cockpit voice.
The pilot backed away. “It’s done.”
“Fire?”
“Seen worse, but it’s burning,” was the expert assessment. “Throttle back starboard. Half power.”
The remaining engine quieted substantially.
With total faith in the window’s strength, the pilot pressed against the flexible material, pushing out into the air as he gazed at the ship’s body. After careful study, he said, “No punctures. No secondary fire. Good.”
“What happened?” Elata asked.
“The engine exploded,” Seldom answered.
The boy’s answer brought a hard long laugh. Hands on his hips, the pilot looked at his little audience. “My good loyal trustworthy engine, and it blows. Think of the odds. But the ship is mostly right, and we’re not ridiculously far from our destination. Not close either, mind you, but let’s just count our fortunes and limp in the rest of the way. Nice and slow, and hope that we don’t blow the other engine too.”
On that grim note, he left again.
Nobody felt like sitting. Standing was easy when the fletch was cruising at a lazy pace, and there were plenty of reasons to feel fortunate. Diamond returned to the left side of the cabin. The sun was brighter than ever. Nothing lay below except twisting limbs and enormous leaves. Some leaves were dark green, others almost transparent. Some grew from the surrounding trees, while parasites and epiphytes clung to every worthy surface. Colored birds and drab birds and enormous, machine-like insects flew everywhere. The air had grown heavy and definitely warmer. Diamond was sweating, and he wasn’t moving, breathing slower than ever, holding one good breath deep and then slowly letting it out again.