PROCYON

  Torture is what this is: She feels her body plunging

  from a high place, head before feet. A frantic wind roars past. Outstretched hands refuse to slow her fall. Then

  Procyon makes herself spin, putting her feet beneath her

  body, and gravity instantly reverses itself. She screams, and screams, and the distant walls reflect her terror, needles jabbed into her wounded ears. Finally, she grows

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  quiet, wrapping her arms around her eyes and ears, forc-

  ing herself to do nothing, hanging limp in space while

  her body falls in one awful direction.

  A voice whimpers.

  A son’s worried voice says, “Mother, are you there?

  Mother?”

  Some of her add-ons have been peeled away, but not

  all of them. The brave son uses a whisper-channel, say-

  ing, “I’m sorry,” with a genuine anguish. He sounds sick

  and sorry, and exceptionally angry, too. “I was careless,”

  he admits. He says, “Thank you for saving me.” Then to

  someone else, he says, “She can’t hear me.”

  “I hear you,” she whispers.

  “Listen,” says her other son. The lazy one. “Did you

  hear something?”

  She starts to say, “Boys,” with a stern voice. But then

  the trap vibrates, a piercing white screech nearly deafening Procyon. Someone physically strikes the trap. Two

  someones. She feels the walls turning around her, the

  trap making perhaps a quarter-turn toward home.

  Again, she calls out, “Boys.”

  They stop rolling her. Did they hear her? No, they

  found a hidden restraint, the trap secured at one or two

  or ten ends.

  One last time, she says, “Boys.”

  “I hear her,” her dreamy son blurts.

  “Don’t give up, Mother,” says her brave son. “We’ll get

  you out. I see the locks, I can beat them—”

  “You can’t,” she promises.

  He pretends not to have heard her. A shaped explosive

  detonates, making a cold ringing sound, faraway and

  useless. Then the boy growls, “Damn,” and kicks the trap, accomplishing nothing at all.

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  C O E L AC A N T H S

  “It’s too tough,” says her dreamy son. “We’re not do-

  ing any good—”

  “Shut up,” his brother shouts.

  Procyon tells them, “Quiet now. Be quiet.”

  The trap is probably tied to an alarm. Time is short, or

  it has run out already. Either way, there’s a decision to be made, and the decision has a single, inescapable answer.

  With a careful and firm voice, she tells her sons, “Leave me. Now. Go!”

  “I won’t,” the brave son declares. “Never!”

  “Now,” she says.

  “It’s my fault,” says the dreamy son. “I should have

  been keeping up—”

  “Both of you are to blame,” Procyon calls out. “And I

  am, too. And there’s bad luck here, but there’s some good, too. You’re still free. You can still get away. Now, before you get yourself seen and caught—”

  “You’re going to die,” the brave son complains.

  “One day or the next, I will,” she agrees. “Absolutely.”

  “We’ll find help,” he promises.

  “From where?” she asks.

  “From who?” says her dreamy son in the same instant.

  “We aren’t close to anyone—”

  “Shut up,” his brother snaps. “Just shut up!”

  “Run away,” their mother repeats.

  “I won’t,” the brave son tells her. Or himself. Then with a serious, tight little voice, he says, “I can fight. We’ll both fight.”

  Her dreamy son says nothing.

  Procyon peels her arms away from her face, opening

  her eyes, focusing on the blurring cylindrical walls of the trap. It seems that she was wrong about her sons. The

  brave one is just a fool, and the dreamy one has the good 7 7

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  sense. She listens to her dreamy son saying nothing, and

  then the other boy says, “Of course you’re going to fight.

  Together, we can do some real damage—”

  “I love you both,” she declares.

  That wins a silence.

  Then again, one last time, she says, “Run.”

  “I’m not a coward,” one son growls.

  While her good son says nothing, running now, and he

  needs his breath for things more essential than pride and bluster.

  ABLE

  The face stares at them for the longest while. It is a

  great wide face, heavily bearded with smoke-colored eyes

  and a long nose perched above the cavernous mouth that

  hangs open, revealing teeth and things more amazing

  than teeth. Set between the bone-white enamel are little

  machines made of fancy stuff. Able can only guess what

  the add-on machines are doing. This is a wild man, pow-

  erful and free. People like him are scarce and strange,

  their bodies reengineered in countless ways. Like his

  eyes: Able stares into those giant gray eyes, noticing

  fleets of tiny machines floating on the tears. Those ma-

  chines are probably delicate sensors. Then with a jolt of amazement, he realizes that those machines and

  sparkling eyes are staring into their world with what

  seems to be a genuine fascination.

  “He’s watching us,” Able mutters.

  “No, he isn’t,” Mish argues. “He can’t see into our

  realm.”

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  “We can’t see into his either,” the boy replies. “But just the same, I can make him out just fine.”

  “It must be. . . .” Her voice falls silent while she ac-

  cesses City’s library. Then with a dismissive shrug of her shoulders, she announces, “We’re caught in his topological hardware. That’s all. He has to simplify his surroundings to navigate, and we just happen to be close enough

  and aligned right.”

  Able had already assumed all that.

  Mish starts to speak again, probably wanting to add to

  her explanation. She can sure be a know-everything sort

  of girl. But then the great face abruptly turns away, and they watch the man run away from their world.

  “I told you,” Mish sings out. “He couldn’t see us.”

  “I think he could have,” Able replies, his voice finding

  a distinct sharpness.

  The girl straightens her back. “You’re wrong,” she says

  with an obstinate tone. Then she turns away from the

  edge of the world, announcing, “I’m ready to go on now.”

  “I’m not,” says Able.

  She doesn’t look back at him. She seems to be talking

  to her leopard, asking, “Why aren’t you ready?”

  “I see two of them now,” Able tells her.

  “You can’t.”

  “I can.” The hardware trickery is keeping the outside

  realms sensible. A tunnel of simple space leads to two

  men standing beside an iron-black cylinder. The men

  wear camouflage, but they are moving too fast to let it

  work. They look small now. Distant, or tiny. Once you

  leave the world, size and distance are impossible to mea-

  sure. How many times have teachers told him that? Able

  watches the tiny men kicking at the cylinder. They beat

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  on its heavy sides with their fists and forearms, managing to roll it for almost a quarter turn. Then one of the men pulls a fist-sized device from what looks like a cloth sack, fixing it to what looks like a sealed slot, and both men

  hurry to the far end of the cylinder.

  “What are they doing?” asks Mish with a grumpy in-

  terest.

  A feeling warns Able, but too late. He starts to say,

  “Look away—”

  The explosion is brilliant and swift, the blast reflected off the cylinder and up along the tunnel of ordinary

  space, a clap of thunder making the giant horsetails sway and nearly knocking the two of them onto the forest

  floor.

  “They’re criminals,” Mish mutters with a nervous ha-

  tred.

  “How do you know?” the boy asks.

  “People like that just are,” she remarks. “Living like

  they do. Alone like that, and wild. You know how they

  make their living.”

  “They take what they need—”

  “They steal!” she interrupts.

  Able doesn’t even glance at her. He watches as the two

  men work frantically, trying to pry open the still-sealed doorway. He can’t guess why they would want the doorway opened. Or rather, he can think of too many reasons.

  But when he looks at their anguished, helpless faces, he

  realizes that whatever is inside, it’s driving these wild men very close to panic.

  “Criminals,” Mish repeats.

  “I heard you,” Able mutters.

  Then before she can offer another hard opinion, he

  turns to her and admits, “I’ve always liked them. They

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  live by their wits, and mostly alone, and they have all

  these sweeping powers—”

  “Powers that they’ve stolen,” she whines.

  “From garbage, maybe.” There is no point in mention-

  ing whose garbage. He stares at Mish’s face, pretty but

  twisted with fury, and something sad and inevitable oc-

  curs to Able. He shakes his head and sighs, telling her, “I don’t like you very much.”

  Mish is taken by surprise. Probably no other boy has

  said those awful words to her, and she doesn’t know how

  to react, except to sputter ugly little sounds as she turns, looking back over the edge of the world.

  Able does the same.

  One of the wild men abruptly turns and runs. In a su-

  personic flash, he races past the children, vanishing into the swirling grayness, leaving his companion to stand

  alone beside the mysterious black cylinder. Obviously

  weeping, the last man wipes the tears from his whiskered

  face with a trembling hand, while his other hand begins

  to yank a string of wondrous machines from what seems

  to be a bottomless sack of treasures.

  ESCHER

  She consumes all of her carefully stockpiled energies,

  and for the first time in her life, she weaves a body for herself: A distinct physical shell composed of diamond

  dust and keratin and discarded rare earths and a dozen

  subtle glues meant to bind to every surface without being felt. To a busy eye, she is dust. She is insubstantial and useless and forgettable. To a careful eye and an inquisitive touch, she is the tiniest soul imaginable, frail beyond 8 1

  R O B E R T R E E D

  words, forever perched on the brink of extermination.

  Surely she poses no threat to any creature, least of all the great ones. Lying on the edge of the little wound, passive and vulnerable, she waits for Chance to carry her where

  she needs to be. Probably others are doing the same. Per-

  haps thousands of sisters and daughters are hiding

  nearby, each snug inside her own spore case. The tempta-

  tion to whisper, “Hello,” is easily ignored. The odds are awful as it is; any noise could turn this into a suicide.

  What matters is silence and watchfulness, thinking hard

  about the great goal while keeping ready for anything

  that might happen, as well as everything that will not.

  The little wound begins to heal, causing a trickling

  pain to flow.

  The World feels the irritation, and in reflex, touches

  His discomfort by several means, delicate and less so.

  Escher misses her first opportunity. A great swift shape

  presses its way across her hiding place, but she activates her glues too late. Dabs of glue cure against air, wasted.

  So she cuts the glue loose and watches again. A second

  touch is unlikely, but it comes, and she manages to heave a sticky tendril into a likely crevice, letting the irresistible force yank her into a brilliant, endless sky.

  She will probably die now.

  For a little while, Escher allows herself to look back

  across her life, counting daughters and other successes,

  taking warm comfort in her many accomplishments.

  Someone hangs in the distance, dangling from a simi-

  lar tendril. Escher recognizes the shape and intricate glint of her neighbor’s spore case; she is one of Escher’s

  daughters. There is a strong temptation to signal her,

  trading information, helping each other—

  But a purge-ball attacks suddenly, and the daughter

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  C O E L AC A N T H S

  evaporates, nothing remaining of her but ions and a flash of incoherent light.

  Escher pulls herself toward the crevice, and hesitates.

  Her tendril is anchored on a fleshy surface. A minor neu-

  ron—a thread of warm optical cable—lies buried inside the wet cells. She launches a second tendril at her new target.

  By chance, the purge-ball sweeps the wrong terrain, giv-

  ing her that little instant. The tendril makes a sloppy connection with the neuron. Without time to test its integrity, all she can do is shout, “Don’t kill me! Or my daughters!

  Don’t murder us, Great World!”

  Nothing changes. The purge-ball works its way across

  the deeply folded fleshscape, moving toward Escher

  again, distant flashes announcing the deaths of another

  two daughters or sisters.

  “Great World!” she cries out.

  He will not reply. Escher is like the hum of a single

  angry electron, and she can only hope that he notices

  the hum.

  “I am vile,” she promises. “I am loathsome and sneaky,

  and you should hate me. What I am is an illness lurking

  inside you. A disease that steals exactly what I can steal without bringing your wrath.”

  The purge-ball appears, following a tall reddish ridge

  of flesh, bearing down on her hiding place.

  She says, “Kill me, if you want. Or spare me, and I

  will do this for you.” Then she unleashes a series of vivid images, precise and simple, meant to be compelling to

  any mind.

  The purge-ball slows, its sterilizing lasers taking care-

  ful aim.

  She repeats herself, knowing that thought travels only

  so quickly and The World is too vast to see her thoughts

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  R O B E R T R E E D

  and react soon enough to save her. But if she can help . . .

  if she saves just a few hundred daughters . . . ?

  Lasers aim, and do nothing. Nothing. And after an in-

  stant of inactivity, the machine changes its shape and nature. It hovers above Escher, sending out its own tendrils.

  A careless strength yanks her free of her hiding place. Her tendrils and glues are ripped from her aching body. A

  scaffolding of carbon is built around her, and she is

  shoved inside the retooled purge-ball, held in a perfect

  darkness, waiting alone until an identical scaffold is

  stacked beside her.

  A hard, angry voice boasts, “I did this.”

  “What did you do?” asks Escher.

  “I made the World listen to reason.” It sounds like Es-

  cher’s voice, except for the delusions of power. “I made a promise, and that’s why He saved us.”

  With a sarcastic tone, she says, “Thank you ever so

  much. But now where are we going?”

  “I won’t tell you,” her fellow prisoner responds.

  “Because you don’t know where,” says Escher.

  “I know everything I need to know.”

  “Then you’re the first person ever,” she giggles, win-

  ning a brief, delicious silence from her companion.

  Other prisoners arrive, each slammed into the empty

  spaces between their sisters and daughters. Eventually

  the purge-ball is a prison-ball, swollen to vast propor-

  tions, and no one else is being captured. Nothing changes for a long while. There is nothing to be done now but

  wait, speaking when the urge hits and listening to

  whichever voice sounds less than tedious.

  Gossip is the common currency. People are desperate

  to hear the smallest glimmer of news. Where the final ru-

  mor comes from, nobody knows if it’s true. But the

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  woman who was captured moments after Escher claims,

  “It comes from the world Himself. He’s going to put us

  where we can do the most good.”

  “Where?” Escher inquires.

  “On a tooth,” her companion says. “The right incisor,

  as it happens.” Then with that boasting voice, she adds,

  “Which is exactly what I told Him to do. This is all be-

  cause of me.”

  “What isn’t?” Escher grumbles.

  “Very little,” the tiny prisoner promises. “Very, very

  little.”

  THE SPEAKER

  “We walk today on a thousand worlds, and I mean

  ‘walk’ in all manners of speaking.” He manages a few

  comical steps before shifting into a graceful turn, arms held firmly around the wide waist of an invisible and equally graceful partner. “A hundred alien suns bake us with their perfect light. And between the suns, in the cold and dark, we survive, and thrive, by every worthy means.”