Fouling the siblings’ meat was a common tactic.
Cutting nerves and food to the enemies were equally valid.
Through the night and during the following long day, the giant body was wracked by endless violence. Children brought food that wasn’t eaten and water that wasn’t sipped, and they sat on the coral dusts, watching nothing change. Meanwhile the new doctors approached cautiously, taking temperatures and samples of flesh, scribbling elaborate notes while ignoring what the children told them. The Eight were fighting for control and all the doctors needed to do was to wait for someone to win the last battle. But as a group, those smart doctors decided that war wasn’t the smart conclusion. The corona’s largest child had fallen ill. The eight creatures had lost their equilibrium. Yes, the body was in turmoil, and it was hard to see which part belonged to which creature. But the eight brains were distinct, and doctors understood knives and surgery. To people like them, only one plan made any sense.
Divers had the reddest blood, and her muscle was red and her bones were white, and Diver’s cells and tissue resembled human cells and human tissue.
The old woman doctor had commented on the similarities several times. But even once would have been too often. Divers’ siblings saw the implications. The papio were imagining a human cousin floating between the monstrous Seven. What would be their value once another Diamond was hacked free of her prison?
And there was a second advantage that Divers held—innate talents for managing her organs and blood, and for manipulating the complex, chaotic nervous system strung between each of her siblings. She was the strongest when war began. But everybody else saw the value in stomping on Divers, making her feeble. As the second night arrived, she was the seventh strongest power—her brain pushed to the top of the skull while her surviving body was a ribbon of red meat running down the body’s long back.
But what is small can be strong, in the right circumstances.
Night arrived, and the doctors had made their decision. Long knives and cauterizing loops were laid out on the adjacent mat. By every measure, the giant body was helpless, eyes shut and the breathing fitful. One last battery of tests had to be carried out. A thousand bits of flesh were taken from everywhere, and the Eight’s body was painted as the doctors worked, each patch of skin given an owner and rough borders.
Just then, five caretakers appeared.
Two of the children were nearly adults, while the others belonged to the youngest class. Each shouldered a covered basket or polished gray jar. Sober, serious faces went unnoticed. Children normally chattered with one another, but not this group. The doctors mapping the body reacted by waving at the air, telling them that they were needed anywhere but here. Yet the caretakers claimed orders and duties. Reaching the edge of the Eight’s mat, they set down the baskets and tall jars, and instead of leaving, they stood shoulder to shoulder, pulling guns out from the baskets and jars.
The finest surgeons in the world were told to sit on their hands and do nothing, and they did just that.
Then the oldest children grabbed the long razor-edged surgical blades, and following the brightly colored ink lines, they opened twin gouges down the Eight’s long back.
Divers was tiny because her plan was to be tiny.
Losing every battle, she had retreated purposefully until she was as small as Diamond and easy to reach.
The plan—her simple brutal perfect plan—began long ago. Through riddles and codes, she spoke to her favorite papio children. She explained just enough to make them understand what she wanted. Then she gave the signal, the code words, “Basher nut,” and the one young soldier went back to the armory to collect weapons and make ready.
Surgical blades slashed deep into the hot rainbow blood. A war-torn body tried in vain to heal, but there was too much weakness, too much damage. With the skull suddenly exposed, the biggest child yanked an iron hammer out of his water jar and swung hard ten times before exposing the brains. Each brain was remarkably similar. They had the same size and a similar elongated shape, covered with tiny hairs that had infiltrated every other brain. They wore the same glossy gray color of something that wasn’t metal or stone, that couldn’t be shattered by human force and that was alive without belonging to the living world.
Divers’ brain was on top, attached to a long armful of ruddy wet meat.
And Divers had won.
Her siblings felt it, knew it. Another pair of cuts, graceless and savage, and she would have popped free from the body, torn loose from her siblings’ minds. But the children with the knives did nothing more. Obeying instructions, they stepped aside while the wounds struggled to heal, and that was the moment when Divers said to her sisters and brothers, “No, I won’t leave you.”
No one else spoke, not with any kind of voice.
The minds had always known how to talk silently to their neighbors, and that was the voice she used then.
“We’ll stay as one and die as one,” she promised.
Decisions were made in those next quiet moments.
Then after more healing, Divers took hold of the mouth, the long tongue, announcing, “We are done.”
The children put down the knives and guns. By the time soldiers arrived, the ravaged body was halfway recovered. An event resembling an election or chemical reaction had run its course. One soul was granted full control over the mouth and motor functions as well as the largest share when it came to decisions and plans. And that soul lifted the gouged body off the mat, telling the papio, “We are finished.”
The doctors were too flustered to think clearly. But all of the children smiled—even those temporarily wearing chains.
“I’m in total charge,” said the new voice, lucid and strong. “But if you should ever try to harm any of us, now or tomorrow—if you raise a blade against us for any reason—none of us will help you again. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
The doctors claimed to understand, and so did the various leaders who arrived over the next days, paying their respects to the reborn child.
And for hundreds of long days, Divers had walked about the world with a measure of freedom, and Divers spoke to whomever she wished, and life became such a pleasure that the Seven inside her began to love everything that they shared.
The man’s words were being dragged through long reaches of secure copper, making his voice even less impressive than usual. Sounding like a shrill boy reading a script, the Archon of Archons told her, “My condolences for you and for your suffering people.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Then aiming for a caring tone, he said, “Prima.”
She bristled whenever the ambitious little man used her given name.
“This is a grave tragedy, a supreme crime,” List continued. “You know I’m not a man given to idle promises, but I swear, there will be justice, Prima.”
Prima was standing at the back of the command center. What was it that made a simple sound into your name, and why did you hate your opponents mangling your identity with their unworthy lips?
“Thank you,” she repeated.
“What have you heard from the other Districts?” he asked.
“Every Archon is promising every resource. And their offices and mine are coordinating our united response.”
“Wonderful.” List didn’t ask for specifics. No sane leader could spell out what “united” meant.
“Every District is on full alert,” she said.
“Naturally,” he said, papers shuffling near his microphone. “In fact, Baffle District has front-line ships patrolling the fringe of papio airspace.”
Prima hadn’t heard that news. With two curling fingers, she caught the attention of a young lieutenant, bringing him close.
“I only wish we had our forces stationed in your District,” he continued.
“They’ll arrive soon enough,” she said.
What might have been a click of the tongue came into the earpiece. “This is the not the time for doubts. But if you’d allowed us to base a portion of our forces inside your territory—”