His audience wasn’t happy with that revelation.
“Espionage,” said the middle general.
“Why wasn’t I informed?” asked the top general. “What are we talking about? Intelligence missions against an ally?”
“The work happily wears any name you give it,” said Father.
The general of generals was outraged. “Plots of this sort aren’t supposed to be hatched and nourished by the civilian element.”
“Yet they were,” said the Archon of Archons. “I’m an ambitious, conniving man with thousands on my staff, and I managed to launch a dozen operations under your oblivious noses. Does that adequately define the situation?”
Silence.
“And now you’re so desperate for explanations that you’ll claim that a few treacherous people managed to carry out a grand attack, and a security network that made my life difficult was just as ignorant as you three.”
Generals looked silly when their shoulders slumped, when their busbies tilted and their uniforms seemed to deflate.
King laughed with his insulting mouth.
“There are other possibilities,” said the youngest old man.
“I’m well aware of that,” said Father.
“If Prima is culpable,” said the general.
“Let’s assume that my colleague and dear friend is innocent,” Father said.
“Then the papio are in charge,” the general of generals allowed. “With their military skills and key agents in Prima’s staff, everything is possible.”
Father used the hardest voice he could muster. “Be careful what you believe. Our peace has held for generations. We must be exceptionally cautious when we start blaming one old enemy.”
“The papio helped,” the general maintained.
“Everybody is a suspect,” the Archon declared, finally rising to his feet.
The generals offered weak shows of teeth.
“Of course we’ll mobilize,” said Father. “The Districts have rules, have protocols. My office has called a worldwide alert. Every military resource will be readied. I intend to follow our primary plan for a large-scale attack on an outer district. Half of our fleet must be ready by tomorrow, and because I want to sleep tonight, I insist that each of you resigns before offering yourself to military court, in preparation for a lengthy examination of records and motivations.”
Soft human faces grew softer. Nothing should have been a surprise, yet twice in the same day, these creatures were astonished by a surprise attack.
Father waited for some trembling voice to ask, “Why?”
Two of them sputtered the question, and he said, “I don’t believe any of your stories. We don’t have any substantive evidence, and indeed, as you warned, we might never have a respectable picture of the truth. But you also told me that we have comparable weapons, if only in small stocks. And if there is a conspiracy at work inside my District, my three ranking officers are staggering incompetents who can’t appreciate their deep weaknesses.”
Each general angrily professed his innocence.
But Father was never moved by innocence. And he didn’t care about guilt on this score. He had already explained his thinking to King. War was not equations on a long page. War was brutal and real and urgent, and what mattered was putting younger men in charge of the human fleets. And that was the only reason why the Archon presented the old men with their replacements’ names, waiting for signatures and stamps.
“I know very little about military matters,” Father continued, “but I’m going to ride with our fleet tomorrow, out to give Prima whatever help she deserves.”
“And I’ll go with you,” King said.
Father let a grin show. “But what if I tell you to stay here and study?”
“I won’t.”
“What if I send a hundred soldiers to restrain you?”
Father and son had planned this game, this loud show. But the generals weren’t paying attention to the family drama, and they weren’t looking at the papers in their hands. All that mattered were their personal miseries, standing inside the bud-green silks and their wrinkled flesh, wet eyes close to leaking tears.
That was why King picked up his father’s massive desk.
The Archon wanted people to be impressed with his son. He wanted his generals to talk about the child’s warrior spirit. But this was too loud, too bold. With a glance, List told King to quit. But Father’s papers had slid free and the desk hung in space, needing somewhere to go. So with his total strength and a contrived flash of rage, King flung the lump of bloodwood partway across the spacious office, watching its flight and then the hard landing that shattered every seam.
“Send a thousand soldiers to sit on me,” he told those cowering old men. “Do it. Please do it. But we’ll go to war a thousand soldiers weaker.”
That young boy generated every possible reaction in people.
Prima was no exception.
Diamond revealed empathy inside the coldest soul, amazement in the most banal. What he meant to the world might leave twenty passionate, conflicting opinions inside the same average head. Some citizens couldn’t sleep with their worries. A mad few claimed to feel his presence—a black chill or a blazing second sun transforming everyone and everything. Even in his presence, the boy was a conundrum. Sometimes he was the wondrous child, charming and sweet and reassuringly ordinary. But then suddenly he became an odd face and a smile that meant nothing. A rational person had to wonder if every appearance was camouflage, an exterior worn by a crafty monster biding its time, waiting for the world to lose its focus, its strength.
Compassion and suspicion lived inside Prima. Seeing Diamond that first time, she wanted to take care of him, marshaling the powers of her office and District in his defense. Yet she also feared him in the deepest worst ways. There were nights without sleep and more nights infected with wild dreams, and odd as it seemed, the only reliable cure for the doubts was to board the hub elevator early in the morning, standing beside a stern, silent gentleman dressed in a stern, silent gray and white uniform, the two of them rising to the highest reaches of the forest.
There was no darker, more oppressive place in the world.
In normal times, barely a whisper of sunlight reached that bleak terrain, and then only noticeable to eyes accustomed to the night.
Yet the world’s roof was plastered with life. Not the trees, no. Named trees and tiny nameless trees weren’t the end of the Creation. Roots snaked only part way inside the fleshy black sky-reef. Learned scientists described that reef as lichen, but instead of being green with algae it was full of organisms that consumed the long-light that no human eye could resolve. Rising from the sun, that portion of the spectrum was relentless, passing through wood and every human body, and the spherical shape of the world served to focus these energies against higher regions, up where the oil-infused reef was deep enough for the gigantic bloodwoods to cling with their greedy, oversized roots.
Prima had climbed the high, half-lit reaches above the District of Districts, but she preferred her home with its blackness and the shallower roots, and in particular the spongy bladders filled with phloem, dangling heavy and rich in the morning gloom. She loved the great dish-shaped basins that hung from trees like intricate shelves, one beside the next in close order, each gathering up the highest drops of rain. Strange creatures thrived where light was rare. She particularly liked the bizarre little animals that flew through the trapped water, fins and pink gills flapping. In that realm, an Archon could find the time to remove her shoes and stockings, sitting on the brink of a favorite basin where the trail was maintained and ropes were strung across the gaps. Then the toes went into the chill water. Many of the water-flyers lacked eyes, but they seemed to taste her flesh in the currents, and when they felt especially brave, they would dart forward, enjoying little nibbles of human skin.
Worries about the boy brought Prima to the world’s ceiling.