And so did the King monster living in List’s house, and the rumors of two more mysteries, whatever they might be.
Just the idea of these creatures was a lure, a nectar perhaps, or perhaps the bait in a trap. Prima could never be as close to the ends of the Creation as she was there, and it was possible to sit in the dark, feeling bony mouths chewing harmlessly at her toes. And in the dark, as alone as any Archon could be, she was able to consider each impossibility.
“Madam,” said a man’s rough voice. “You wouldn’t recognize this place now.”
Prima was standing alone in her office, the call-line pressed hard against her ear and her mouth. “Tell me,” she said.
“There’s smoke everywhere, and sunlight,” said the fletch’s captain
“Of course,” she said.
The line crackled for a few moments, threatening to break. But the voice returned in mid-sentence, telling her, “ . . . but the ignition failed or they didn’t finish the setup.”
“What are we talking about?” she asked.
“The bladders, madam. Somebody pumped fuel into Hanner’s oldest bladders. We’re guessing by the smell, but the alcohol’s been spiked with explosives. That would make the blast hotter and much quicker.”
“Inside the bladders?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Which was brought there how?” she shouted.
“In drops and dribbles, I’d guess.” The captain paused, and the roar on an engine sounded. “If I seeded this entire area—what exploded and what didn’t—then we’d be talking about a hundred loads of high-quality papio fuel and explosives.”
“Papio,” she repeated.
“That’s what I’m guessing, madam. And the detonators are definitely papio. Which makes it double-lucky that Hanner didn’t come down too. The papio have great detonators.”
Did the man know how he sounded, praising the murderers?
“But are we safe now?” she asked.
“Your tree?” The voice became quieter, as if he were holding the call-line away from his mouth. “Hanner will survive the day, madam. And we can drain this bomb out without too much risk. But the fuel is toxic and the explosives have some ugly chemicals. This mess has already seeped through the bladder walls, poisoning the wood for a hundred paces in every direction. Long-term, we’re talking about abandoning Hanner before she dies and drops on her own.”
Prima straightened her back, narrowed her eyes. “Thank you.”
“But we think, we hope, the fires are done burning,” he continued. “So at least the damage won’t spread farther.”
Plainly, the captain wasn’t seeing what she saw. The first fire might be done, but a far worse blaze was beginning.
“Madam?”
The Archon said nothing.
“Can you hear me, madam?”
But she had nothing to say. Standing alone and feeling alone, she thought about the mouths that had lived inside those dark basins of rainwater. Did the attached minds—those little white drops of brain—ever ask if there were better places in existence?
Did they believe in brighter realms?
And would that be a comfort, knowing it was so?
FIVE
The woman never pretended to be their mother, not when she did her duties and not inside their minds. Explaining her place, she told the other papio that she was a door between the Eight and the world. Her deep voice and uncompromising attitude colored everything. Some of the Eight always loved her, while others felt that way only afterwards. One or another might ask to know her feelings. Did she love them, and if so, in what order did she love them? These weren’t fair questions, and she told them so. But then she would answer the question, claiming to love each of them equally, even though that was untrue. She also assured them they shared a wonderful body, a beautiful body, and everyone wanted to believe those words even more than the promises of love: this contrivance of flesh and imagination was the Eight, and it was lovely, and the woman rightfully saw magnificence standing before her.
She was tiny beside them.
Every papio as small, and the clever monkeys scrambling through trees were smaller still.
The woman first visited the outpost soon after the Eight were discovered. She was one body among the government dignitaries and important scientists—the quiet assistant to a high-ranking doctor. That man didn’t like the Eight. He saw an abomination and the need for hard measures, and that’s why he was quickly sent away. The initial examination was hers, and with important people watching, she worked with her eyes and fingers, then razors and swords and a sequence of increasingly elaborate machines, exploring the conundrum that the Creators had bestowed on humanity.
Eight creatures lived inside a bag of sloppy, ill-ordered flesh. Maybe they were together at the beginning of everything, or maybe they merged inside the corona’s stomach. There was no way to know. Piercing the skin with sound and metal, the doctor identified each enduring mind as well as the different flavors of meat. In those days, the Eight had a few sloppy eyes and ears, temporary limbs and no working stomach. They were close to helpless when the doctor bathed them with sugar water and injected pulverized meat inside them. Despite that miserable diet, they managed to grow, gaining insights and little talents as the body became huge. Their first good hands were tendrils. They made holes that pretended to be mouths. Then through the force of clumsy shared wills, they created muscle and various stomachs, and a kind of bone appeared inside that knotted confused flesh, defining arms and legs and ribs and the interlocking disks that joined into one broad backbone wrapped around eight distinct spines, each springing from a mind with its own voice.
The tendrils vanished and the holes healed. A skull formed around two giant golden eyes. Several hundreds of days passed before their body appeared finished. That was the body that the doctor admired—a looming papio-inspired frame from which came an avalanche of a voice.
Selected people came to stand before the Eight, and in one fashion or another, every visitor begged to know what the Eight knew.
What the Eight understood was confusion and a gnawing sense of loss. But words didn’t have bones. Words were difficult to tame, and nothing they said emerged in the proper ways.
“What is your oldest memory?” the papio asked.
No memory felt true. They might have been trapped inside the corona for ten days or ten million days. And before that they could have been sitting on the laps of the Creators, giving advice about the building of the world. The bitter truth was that the Eight could make any claim, sing any wild brag, but they wouldn’t know enough even to guess if they were lying.
Vagueness and mystery were reliable ways to make the papio unhappy.
Patience grew even thinner when the Diamond boy emerged from his room. The doctor happened to be gone that day, having some distant errand to walk. Diamond boy came straight to this place, as if searching for the Eight. But he wanted only his father, and King followed him. King and Diamond were individuals, not alloys. Each had one voice and a single personality, and they could run fast in a straight line, and they didn’t waste any time with riddles, and they didn’t fall silent because the voices inside them were fighting to control the world’s largest tongue.
King and Diamond were gone before the doctor returned.
Important people came with her. Leaders and old thinkers squatted before the giant Eight, arms crossed, tough feet set against the reef. “You’re gifts from the Creators,” they said. “That much is undeniable. And belonging to the Creators means that you once stood in their presence, even if that was ten billion billion days ago.”
A thread of logic lay in those words, narrow and seductive.
The Eight stared at the papio. Each face showed terror and amazement, resignation and despair, while incoherent rages hunted for any worthwhile target. The audience was a multitude, and they were disorganized, and nobody dared call the papio insane.