The bravest and the most fearful had leapt with the tree’s first shudder.
Those wearing drop-suits had glided a long ways, and several of them arrived like a sudden flock. Each body was tied to screams. One fierce yell descended on Diamond, followed closely by a barefoot man who struck just above the boy and above the monkey, grabbing at the webbing and missing, sliding down to where he could cling to the boy’s free arm and waist.
Good cursed, ready to bite any hand that came close.
Diamond didn’t know the man’s face. Gripping with his left hand, he watched the stranger fight to find better handholds, any toehold. Only when the man felt as if he had stopped falling did he look at the boy beside him, and he blinked, finding something wrong about that face . . . and if there was any doubt who this was, it was dispelled when he noticed a monkey that was nearly as famous as the corona’s boy.
With a quiet exhausted tone, the man cursed, and he took a deep breath, and without trying to act too abruptly or too carelessly, he grabbed Diamond’s left arm, attempting to yank it free.
Diamond seized the webbing with his right hand too, and he kicked with his school boots, striking nothing.
Tar`ro was directly below them. Master Nissim was holding the little girl close, and Karlan was at the bottom, watching the tree fall. Only the bodyguard saw what was happening, and when he started to climb, the man kicked Tar`ro, kicked his face as hard as he could with his bare heel, and Diamond’s right hand tightened its grip.
The man had a rough strong voice.
Furious, he said, “You.” He looked at Diamond and said, “You,” once again. Then he found a better grip and grabbed the boy, jerking with most of his weight, dislocating the small shoulder.
With one swift bite, Good claimed the man’s right ear.
Tar`ro grabbed a bare foot and pulled hard, accomplishing little.
Then Diamond let his right hand relax, fingers slipping out of the webbing, and with the nails of two fingers, he pushed into the soft wet centers of the stranger’s eyes.
The man cursed the Creators and every monster as the pressure built, turning his head to shake off the miserable pain. Then Good reached into the man’s mouth and yanked the broad pink tongue, bringing it out where it was bitten off and spat out.
Blind and mute, the stranger let go of Diamond and the walkway, and then Tar`ro managed to punch him once as he spun past, vanishing inside the dazzling wash of sunlight.
Marduk was just above the demon floor. Below that floor was heat beyond all measure and the coronas swimming in air so dense that it acted like water. The lowest, most sun-bleached branches of the tree struck the floor, punching past and igniting, and within moments the entire canopy was swallowed and burning. Then the tree’s descent began to slow, which was normal. Diamond had never seen a tree fall under him, but he had read accounts left by shaking hands. The tree slowed, and tiny factors caused it to tilt slightly, and then it tilted quite a lot, the highest portions of the trunk beginning to swing towards the blimp.
Diamond made himself look up.
The highest portions of the trunk had no homes and few signs of human activity—a broad brownish-black pillar polished smooth by time and darkness. Following behind were the broad branch-like roots covered with bladders and bowls meant to catch the dawn rain. Two roots were close. The blimp’s pilot saw them dropping, and he abruptly shifted course. Diamond was yanked sideways as one engine slowed while guide wires twisted the tail fins, but the descending roots refused to follow any line as they fell, seemingly eager for the chance to smash this tiny black bug.
They were going to be hit and killed.
Diamond knew it and believed nothing else, even as the nearest root missed them by a long ways. Rainwater was spilling from the tipped bowls. Gouges had been cut in the bladders. A tiny cool rain fell over them as the blimp shuddered in the shifting air, feeling the wood race past but surviving unharmed.
Most of the high roots were missing, left behind in the topmost reaches of the Creation. But what remained was burning. Irresistible forces had wrenched apart living wood, setting fire whatever refused to break. The final roots were long and jagged, as if a great hand had yanked so hard that most of their bulk had been forsaken, and the remnants dragged black smoke after them.
The blimp jerked and twisted, finding a new trajectory, and then another, and finally, one straight quick line.
“Maybe,” Tar`ro shouted.
Diamond’s shoulder was healing. Marduk was half-swallowed by the world beneath their world, its canopy lost and a ring of flame encircling the trunk. The trunk looked like a brown finger shoved into filthy water. The coronas’ realm was dark with smoke and wild sparks of light. Diamond cried out, and then Tar`ro said something else. Tar`ro was looking up at him. A wild smile came to his face, and the man shouted, “They don’t practice this. Pilots don’t.”
The guard let out a great sorry laugh.
Roots would catch them, or a burning ember would set the blimp on fire. Or maybe the swirling air would be enough to pull the overloaded machine into oblivion, everyone but Diamond dead.
The room below the human room was Diamond’s first home.
With that odd thought, he shut his eyes, and Good gave a wild howl as scorching heat swept across their faces, and then the air twisted and the walkway gave a wild kick, like the end of a whip, and he opened his eyes to find everybody still clinging tight. Even Karlan at the bottom of the whip had kept hold. The blazing root was below, and the smoky choking air stilled, growing hot as an oven, the heat of the fire and the heat from the ripped-open floor welling up, and the blimp continued pressing backwards, climbing higher while the police officers riding in the nose found enough hope, at last, to begin helping the refugees climb on board, one crying person after another.
The black corona meat was infused with every metal, including so much iron that the blisteringly hot muscles shone black and smelled like engine parts. Corona scales and bones weighed little yet outlasted the best steel, while no knife was as sharp as a young milk-colored tooth. And each of the creature’s exceptional organs filled some essential role, whether in industry or the military, which was why so much wealth was wrapped inside their greasy black guts.
Each District had its slayers and their famous ships, but every history of the subject agreed: the richest hunting and finest crews always worked beneath the present-day Ivory Station.
Commerce meant merchants and markets, laws and professional codes. Civilization would be impossible without that one dull person sitting before a stack of ledgers. Yet the corona traders were often regarded as selfish mercenaries and thieves, and because they also dealt with the papio, some voices regarded the traders as being conspirators against their own kind. Yet Prima’s parents had always avoided the traditional controversies. Famous for integrity and a tenacious need to make their customers happy, her mother and father were never in the top tier of their profession, but buyers knew that her family didn’t lie about wares, and they paid their bills in a timely fashion, and the only people who needed to fear them were the selfish and the foolish who had tried to cheat them or their sterling names.
Prima was raised to appreciate honesty and expect decency, and among her siblings, she was the one who took those lessons deepest into her heart.
Born in comfort, every venture was open to the young girl. Politics was never her first choice as a career, and she could imagine it being her last. But cancer had killed the previous Archon, and she agreed to fill out the final hundred days of his uneventful term. Friends as well as enemies warned Prima that she wouldn’t like the job. The Archon’s desk meant corruption of the spirit, dilution of the soul. List was everyone’s favorite example. Once a fine little fellow, bright and deeply competent, he probably would have stayed decent and basically harmless, if only for a loss or two at the polls. But he won every contest, and now he was a power, a guiding force of nature. His District held half of the world’s humans and two-thirds of its wealth—a circumstance reaching back for as long as any history could see. And if that wasn’t awful enough, the one-time bureaucrat had acquired the King creature, monstrous and allegedly brilliant—a weapon of unmeasured power walking about free and half-tamed.