One of Father’s men emerged from a tent, each hand holding a long toolbox. Seeing Diamond, he began to laugh. He couldn’t act happier. Then he looked past the boy, and the laughter drained away into a low mutter while he lifted the boxes in front of him, as if to use them as a shield.
Diamond slowed to look back.
Papio bodies were a little strange, but what was chasing him was far more peculiar. The body was covered with yellowish plates of armor, bright spikes on the elbows and knees and around the crest of the head, and the creature’s legs were at least as tall as Diamond’s legs, and if the gait wasn’t the same as Diamond’s running stride, it was because that armored suit covered the entire creature, including a nightmarish mask that couldn’t be the face.
Diamond slowed to a trot, measuring the threat.
The creature was taller than him, and it was broader, and maybe it wasn’t as fast but the body relentless pushed forward. “Someone like me is inside,” Diamond thought, giving himself time to invite happiness. What a great day this would be, finding another person with his shape and perhaps even the same face. But it occurred to him that the armor wasn’t worn. Those spikes and plates looked as if they grew from the body, and the eyes staring out from the mask were strangely shaped and too green to be real, and where one mouth should be enough there were two big openings, one on top of the other. The top mouth began to shout at him. A voice neither human nor papio asked, “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful as me, you cowardly monkey?”
Diamond ran again, sprinted, cutting through the back of the tent village.
A broad, heavily used trail attacked the slope leading out of the valley. Two white-haired papio were coming down the trail together. One was an old man who was careful in his manner, while the other papio was an even older woman and—a once-powerful creature reduced to a frail wisp, holding her companion’s offered hand while grinning at the odd fellow who was desperately climbing towards them.
Diamond jumped sideways, and his sandal clipped the gnarled dead stump of a tree, dropping him, and then the ground tore through his trousers, coral stripping the flesh from one knee.
The old woman stood over him for a moment. The wrinkled face was tattooed with faded vines and half of her teeth were missing, and she whistled when she offered a single human word. “Careful.”
The boy sat up, and then a callused knuckle touched him on the forehead, tapping him twice.
Catching Diamond’s gaze, the male papio told him, “Blessings of the Creators upon you.”
He leaped up and ran on.
The trail was slick and the steep pitch of the hill became steeper as he reached the summit. Nothing was as easy as before. Fatigue grabbed the backs of his legs, warming the muscles. The harder he ran, the heavier and duller he felt. One moment he was thinking about nothing, and then a tangle of ideas came to him in hard, confused bursts. He was running forever, except he couldn’t. There was a plan at work. But what was the plan? Then his father’s voice found him, repeating everything in one breathless rush, and the boy listened to that memory. He was going to be caught. For everyone’s sake, he couldn’t get away. But that didn’t seem fair or right, certainly not this soon, and that was why Diamond gathered himself, pushing to the top.
Behind him, the old papio man cried out.
Diamond finished the climb. Generations of feet had built the trail, cutting into the hill’s crest, and he stopped where it flattened and turned. The armored creature had just pushed the two papio aside. The old woman began to scramble across the loose rock and the man lost his grip, and with a clatter of dry gravel and soft dust, she tumbled forward, rolling limp and quick to the bottom of the hill.
Her misery deserved one backward glance from the armored beast, and nothing more. Then it looked forwards again, the talking mouth taking a huge wet breath, and what could have been a laugh erupted from it.
“Ugly stupid monsters,” he said.
The old woman gingerly picked herself off the ground.
“This is beauty you see,” boasted the creature. Then the other mouth spat at the ground. “Come with me, little monster,” the talking mouth shouted. “Surrender and nobody else is crushed.”
Streams of dust flowed down the slope, and voices called out, and Diamond heard birds speaking fiercely and the wind blowing in the distance, and then he felt the wind rush warm across his damp dusted face.
“I know you,” he said.
The strange face changed expressions.
A smile, was it?
“You came out of the corona too,” Diamond shouted. “We were inside her stomach, sleeping together.”
“You don’t know me,” the creature said.
“We’re like brothers,” said Diamond.
The other mouth spat out a gob of golden juice, and eyes that weren’t like any others stared at some point above his head. Calculations were made, and the creature increased its pace, charging up the sheer slope. Save for shorts and a belt, its powerful body wore nothing but the armor. Spikes and brass-colored scales made it seem bigger than it was, and the voice was fearless in every way but its speed. Maybe the species always breathed fast. But as it moved closer to the boy, it breathed in hard deep gasps, muttering, “We’re nothing like brothers and you belong to me and try to fight me, please, you cannot win, you shit.”
They were four strides apart when the creature pitched forwards, exhausted, and Diamond spun around and tore down the hill’s backside.
This was new ground, a new landscape. This portion of the reef was shrouded in low thick foliage. Plants didn’t fall from the sky but instead rose up out of the weathered coral, which somehow seemed more reasonable, more proper. The bark was like leather and the leaves were dark green and thickly built, each shining as if waxed by careful hands, and the talking birds were loud and urgent, and the air buzzed with myriad insects. Little animal bodies moved down runways hidden beneath the hip-high canopy. Diamond listened to them and the heavy feet chasing after him, and looking down to the next valley, he wished for Father’s voice to come tell him what to do now.
No one spoke to him, not even his enemy.
The new valley was smaller and wetter than the valleys behind them. The first, trees stood as tall as a grown man, and they looked a little like blackwoods. A small papio was scampering with her hands and head down, and then she heard him and looked up in time to move aside, hiding long incisors behind bright pink lips.
The armored creature was running fast again, closing the gap.
A sharp ugly spat came out of the bottom mouth.
The papio let the creature pass, and then she pulled a deep long meaningful scream out of her chest.
The little forest was shocked into silence.
Diamond sped up again. The trail flattened and broadened before coming to an abrupt end. One long patch of ground had been thoroughly stripped of trees and smoothed like a floor before a thick coat of blackened pitch was laid across the pulverized coral. The surface was rubbery and a little soft. Various machines stood in the open, no two identical but each following the same logic. Each machine carried little rooms up high and closed doors, and they stood on big wheels that came in pairs and foursomes. The wheels were made of rubber and wood, and the rooms rested on metal skeletons that must have been shiny once but had turned rusty red. Three papio were climbing down from one machine. They saw Diamond and stared, and then they saw the other creature. One of the papio turned to the others. Senseless words sounded like a question. Her companions considered the matter and gave different answers, and they ended up doing nothing as the two monsters ran by.