Tar`ro had thought the problem through. “I’d find a fast fletch and wait for darkness. Then we’d run away.”
The Archon nodded. “The Happenstance is fueled and ready.”
“I like that ship,” Diamond said.
She nodded, playing with a weak smile. “And where would you take the boy, if that’s what we decide to do?”
“I don’t think I’d tell anybody, madam.”
“That is a wonderful answer,” the Archon said, turning to her aide once more, ready to deliver orders.
Father came forward.
He didn’t hurry, and he certainly didn’t push anyone. But the man put himself in front before he said, “Prima,” with a warm voice.
“Yes, Merit.”
“For a lot of reasons, I need to talk to my son in private. Is there any way that would be possible?”
She barely had to think. “Of course. I understand. In fact, you can use my office, and in the meantime, we’ll make arrangements with the Happenstance.”
“Wonderful, madam. Thank you.”
They were walking again, but the Archon stayed behind to deliver more orders. Father pressed the pace. They went into a long hallway, discovering a familiar old man and his old gray-and-white uniform leaning against the blond paneling of his elevator.
Diamond looked back.
The bodyguards had nobody to watch but each other. Elata was approaching, and Seldom, with Karlan following everybody else. Diamond had to step out to look past that enormous body, but the hallway curved slightly. He couldn’t see into the atrium anymore. The rest of his class had been left behind, and Prue too. Diamond felt uneasy thinking about strangers walking past the students, nobody noticing them, and in another few moments he might have suggested that someone return to check on the little girl. But then Father ushered him inside the elevator, and the rest of the group followed, doors rattling shut and everyone standing quiet and still as the world dropped fast around them.
The forest should never stop falling. There was always a limb snapping free, slipping out from beneath the dense canopy. There always had to be dead birds blown from their last perches and desperate monkeys that couldn’t make one long leap, and whole insects and pieces of insects and animal wastes, solid and wet, made a filthy rain, pungent and endless, and the tree-walkers never quit throwing their trash into the open air, pencil stubs and jeweled bracelets and worn-out shoes tumbling down to where the demon floor waited, and after that, oblivion.
But then the explosions came, and following the blasts were fires that ate their way towards the wilderness. Quest had never seen any collapse of this magnitude. For one horrible moment, the world looked ready to turn black and die. But after the last few trees ripped free of the world, the flames were choked out by their own smoke. That’s when the stillness came. Every weak branch had already fallen. Scared animals didn’t eat or willingly climb anywhere, and nothing in the world was relaxed enough to shit. Suddenly it seemed as if no living creature would ever move again, as if the forest had been trapped inside some invisible glass, clear but unforgivingly rigid, and what if this moment of perfect stillness continued forever?
Quest was terrified in new ways.
And then a breeze stirred, twenty little branches falling, and the creature secretly rejoiced.
Quest had never been so large. Throughout the morning, flocks and swarms of displaced animals had fled to her dobdob tree, too panicked to notice her swollen, barely camouflaged body. She had eaten beyond her fill, beyond any sensible need, using cheap flesh to weave more eyes and more ears and enough nostrils to grab the quietest, most distant scent. Old cautions had been set aside, and while she had no plans to remain this huge, she had to wonder how much larger she could grow before the dobdob branches would split and fall.
The breeze grew stronger, offering a rich mass of odors and new sounds.
A thousand human voices were close enough to be heard. Quest listened to citizens on the District’s wild border, and she eavesdropped on foresters and hunters perched in closer places. Every one of them was agitated, angry, and terrified, and they couldn’t reveal their deepest feelings quickly enough.
Half of those voices talked about the papio.
Half of that half saw no reason to give the enemy warning or measured decency. The counterattack had to be immediate, without limits. Justice demanded murder on a matching scale, which was ten or twenty or fifty thousand dead, and they wanted nothing else and many wanted to help with the killing.
“Damn all of the papio,” they said.
That was when Quest finally twisted a portion of her eyes and ears, fixing them on the distant reef.
Watching the tree-walkers was always easier than studying the papio. The wilderness trees grew thin and high at its margins, and the reef-humans had better eyes than their cousins had. Worse still, Quest could see very little besides limbs and leaves, and she expected to hear nothing but wilderness sounds. That’s what came to her at first. A hundred thousand trees were calmly swaying in the wind. But then a whisper arrived, strained through wood and cricket song, and she pivoted almost all of her ears, aiming for the inhabited coral.
A rough rattling noise emerged, like a giant insect shivering itself warm.
Then a second rattle found her.
And suddenly she counted five rattles, with vaguer sounds coming from up and down the reef. Powerful jet engines were laboring but not moving. Fuel was being spent for reasons she couldn’t imagine, and she waited for the papio wings to launch. But some invisible signal was given or an established timetable was being followed. Inside the same moment, every engine dropped into silence.
Clinging to her fragile perch, Quest wondered how fast she could strip away her new flesh, and where she could hide before night.
SIX
Father closed the office door while Good claimed the top of the Archon’s desk. A wealth of important papers stood in a stack, ready to be shredded into a workable nest, but the monkey squatted at the desk’s edge, defecating into the round trash basket, and then he closed his eyes as if deep in sleep.
Diamond thought he should put the mess somewhere else.
But he did nothing.
Father slowly lowered himself into one of the guest chairs, and Diamond sat beside him. The Archon’s chair was behind the desk, very tall and made from black leather, steady use leaving the faint impression of the woman’s shoulders and head.
Father took a deep breath.
The boy studied the empty chair.
“I never imagined this,” said Father. “That anyone would want to do this . . . whatever this is . . . ”
The Archon wasn’t with them, yet Diamond could see her plainly.
That was important.
Why was it important?
“Look at me, Diamond.”
The boy didn’t want to be seen. He was waiting for his face to find a worthy expression—some sorrowful grin or wild grief or simple crazy terror. Any expression would be better than the rigid, unfeeling mask plastered over his features now. But too many feelings were roiling inside him, too many wounds. Maybe the invulnerable brain had been injured and needed to heal. But the brain was harder than his flesh and his bone, and maybe the wounds would never heal. That’s what Diamond was hoping, because awful days like these should leave scars that never went away.
Father put a hand on his hand.
Diamond turned toward him.
The soft old face was wet under the eyes. The scar seemed to be the biggest wrinkle. Father sighed, and with another man’s voice, he said, “I want you to know.”
The voice was too high, too thin.
Diamond smelled fresh turds and his father’s sweat and his own sweat, which was saltier than anyone else’s. A full recitation passed before he asked, “What do you want me to know?”