Father paused, staring at the same point for a long moment. Then he put the telescope to his eye, focusing by turning the littlest tube. What he saw brought silence and then a soft sigh, and then he lowered the telescope, closing it back into one tube.
Seldom aimed in the same direction.
“What do you see?” Elata asked.
“Nothing,” he said. Then he laughed nervously and said, “No, there’s a big airship. Near the canopy, pointed this way.”
The two men glanced at each other. Father handed the telescope to the Master as he began talking again.
“The forest explodes,” he said. “Seeds and spores and the tough eggs can withstand the steam. The only living creatures that survive are the coronas. At least nothing that I’ve seen, and I’ve watched that realm longer than anyone else alive, I’d guess.
“I know coronas. And by ‘know,’ I mean I’m a little better than most when it comes to guessing where they’ll be tomorrow and which one is the easiest to stalk and how to make my kill without killing myself. Which is why an old man can do a young man’s job.”
He gave his son another smile and wink. “I’m sure your mother has mentioned how much I enjoy being a slayer.”
“You hate it,” Diamond said.
“The killing and carving up of these big magnificent beasts, each one older than me and sometimes ancient. But there is one blessing that found me only because I spent my life going out into the sky and killing giants.”
He took his son under his arm and said nothing.
“What?” Diamond asked.
“I want you to know why,” Father said. “Why your mother and I feel so fortunate to know you, whatever you are.”
Lowering the telescope, the Master made a sorry sound.
“What?” Elata asked. “What did you see?”
Nissim shook his head and touched Father on the shoulder, the two men exchanging slow significant nods.
With one finger, Father touched Diamond on his tiny, tiny nose. “The coronas like to visit our world. And do you know why?”
The boy shook his head.
“I don’t know why either. But I know how they do it. Each one of these creatures is full of bladders. It inhales the hot dense air and compresses the air even more than before, and when the bladders open, a roaring jet comes out of their central mouths. That’s what throws it past the stubborn demons. And then the corona’s black muscle inflate the same bladders, making them round and swollen but with nothing inside. Nothingness is lighter than hydrogen. The vacuum buoys the creature up into what has to feel frigid and dry.”
“They come to feed,” Seldom said.
“Sometimes,” Father said. “I’ve seen them hunting for meat at the bottom of the canopy, which means they’re hungry, maybe. But they’re more likely to ignore easy meals. If they were humans, I’d describe them as being curious wanderers, but they aren’t human and ‘curious’ might mean nothing to them. Usually they travel alone, and I don’t know why. My sense is that they’re not loners by nature. In fact, I’d wager quite a lot that they’re intensely, obsessively social creatures. Even alone, they are constantly, constantly talking to one another. One of their voices is deep and loud, bladder spitting out words that shake our world. And they also leak stinks that make other coronas happy or angry, and they have special organs hidden under every scale. They’ll lift those scales and produce brilliant light. The color of that light can change instantly. Color has meaning. Certain patterns are exceptionally important, and I’ve deciphered a few words and concepts, but really I know nothing. Nothing. And nobody else understands the coronas. But I’ll tell you what most of the slayers believe; the real reason they rise into the high thin empty air is the same reason why people stand on a stage when they have important opinions to share: from high, they can broadcast their brilliance down to their entire world.”
Father paused, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.
“What we usually see here are the younger, immature coronas,” he said. “Most of them are smaller than the poor lady behind us.”
“A lady?” Elata asked.
“They’re always a mixture,” Father said. “Slayers are supposed to count the glands and leave good records, and this one is three parts female to two parts male. And I don’t know why. But we know quite a bit about their ages and movements because we keep careful records. Every harpoon wears its slayer’s code, and the files are kept at Ivory Station. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if we found several old harpoons buried in this body, which gives us dates and places and descriptions about when she was last seen. My guess? She’s eighty thousand days old, maybe older. Which seems like a long time but isn’t. There are older and much larger coronas, giants that rise up through the demon floor only under the most special circumstances, and those behemoths are astonishingly ancient.”
Father paused, looking down. “How’s the foot?”
“It’s fine.” Diamond lifted the other leg, testing the ankle. “Good.”
What wasn’t quite a smile appeared, and Father looked at the demon floor and the yellowish light. “Coronas usually surface near the reefs. For some reason our district sees more activity than most, which is why we have a proud history of chasing them. But more than a thousand days ago, a genuine marvel—a creature at least twice as big as the normal behemoth—appeared near the middle of the world. It was a huge dark unexpected beast that pushed its way through the floor, managing to make one long lazy circle before vanishing again.
“It rose up late in the day, and I couldn’t have seen it if I wanted. Slayers hunt the margins, not the middle. Of course we were sorry to have missed the spectacle, but nobody expected a second sighting. Coronas don’t fall in love with patterns. We assumed this was a fluke, a one-time experience. But less than thirty days later, the giant showed again. That time it was early morning. She emerged from the same point and made the same slow journey. I heard later that she was so enormous and so distended by her vacuum-swollen bladders that she cast a shadow across the District of Districts, causing a modest panic.”
Hugging himself, Seldom said, “Wow.”
Diamond watched his toes and the gritty ground.
“The third appearance was at night,” his father said. “The old lady was seen only because people had figured out her schedule, and everybody was watching for her. As I told you, coronas make their own light—most of it purple and colors beyond purple. But ‘Help’ is a plea made with a golden fire. Our mystery corona emerged that night and flashed a yellow cry in all directions. Normally it would have been brilliant, a searing light visible across the world. But despite its size, the beast had a feeble glow. Only at night would the plea be visible. And the fourth time it appeared, another twenty-nine nights later, she repeated her cry for help, but even weaker than before.
“So there was a pattern to her appearances, and it was precise. People made graphs and looked into the future, deciding it would be midday when the behemoth emerged again. And we were ready. Every healthy, sober slayer in the world was hovering above that location, and exactly when it was predicted, a long dark shape emerged from the superheated soup.”