Skyland (27 page)
I didn't stop him.
"I do. I do want
to help." Harper shook his head. "I did, anyway. And I did what I
could. That doesn't mean I want to sign my life over to you
now."
"It would be a good life."
"So you say."
Harper looked around the room to avoid the
eyes of the bearded man – Apep, whatever that meant – who sat in
silence across the table, watching him. They were again in yet
another black room. But this time it was warm, like the rest of the
ship. The door was open, the table was wood, and the chairs had
soft pads on them.
"If you don't mind telling me," Apep began,
"what were you planning to do once you got to Den?"
"Why?"
"You were not pre-registered on the first
ship."
"So?"
"So you didn't have plans to leave. You
didn't make arrangements. You had nothing to go to there. How do
you think your wife will fare with no plan, with no one to look
after her?"
"You said she would be looked after."
"Oh she will be. We have her well cared for.
But what life do you want for her? The life of a refugee, always
beholden to the charity of others? Or a free life, well supported,
happy with her husband?"
Harper did not answer.
"You would have money, enough to buy a
comfortable life. As an expert, not a combatant, you would be
well-protected."
Harper looked at his reflection in the shiny
black top of the table, and didn't speak.
"Think about it."
"I have. I will not be a spy."
"You wouldn't be."
"What would you call it?"
"You would help us understand the culture,
develop a way to reach the Sky cults and their ilk, find common
ground, foster dialogue. You would more of an... anthropologist.
Not a spy."
"You call it a more comfortable word, but it
is still the same job."
"Think about it."
"
I
do think about it. Unlike you. You
destroyed half the countryside."
"Just think what we would have had to do
without your help. With an insider, with an expert, we could
pinpoint our targets. With more help, we could execute missions
with surgical precision. Much less damage."
"Hm."
"Think about it," Apep said again.
And with that, the bearded man got up and
walked out of the room, and Harper was left alone. He closed his
eyes. His father's face rose behind his eyelids. Always the same.
Always
the same
.
Abomination... Abomination!
"Take a break."
"Yes, sir."
The guard – Apep had forgotten his name,
Dorson, maybe or Dorset or Dob or... it didn't matter – he left
without question. The old soldier sat back in the vacated seat in
front of the monitors, this time looking at the room he had just
left. The phone in his hand cast a silver light on the neat beard
and the fine lines in the face, lines around the eyes the mouth.
Laugh lines. He smiled into the phone.
"Yes, sir, we got the father."
He poked at a monitor, and the neat little
rooms of the ship disappeared. Again, the old man, who probably was
not that old and who was now a parsec behind, shone on the screen,
still curled on the hard sleeping platform. Apep reached out a hand
again and he swiped in another window, back to the big, bulky
Skyland ship lumbering through space around him. A young man
flopped back onto a pillowy bed, and stared at the ceiling with
blank eyes.
"Actually he...
he
got his father.
Harper Fields caught his own father before he destroyed another
ship. He caught his old man himself."
A distant voice, faint as it reached all the
way from Union Proper, whispered into the dark security room from
the phone in the bearded man's hand.
"Do you believe him?" it said.
"Yes. I think so."
Silence from the other end of the phone.
"Well, no. No I don't." Apep shook his
head.
"Mhm."
"I don't think he caught his father. I think
that was an accident. But I think he will help us. I believe
that."
"Yes?"
"Yes. He tried to help the chair maker."
"Really?" Surprise lifted the quiet voice on
the other end of the phone.
Apep smiled wider. "He was quite inventive,
really. He found all the ways out of the base – even ones we hadn't
thought of. He was ready to jeopardize his own deal with us – with
his wife and everything – to help the old man."
"He is a fighter."
"That he is." Apep nodded to the empty room
and the invisible voice on the other end of the phone. "He really
is."
"Good. Hold on to him."
"Of course."
"And, Apep."
"Yes?"
"Please hurry."
The voice disappeared from the other end,
the phone clicked, and the dark room was silent again.
The doorbell rang.
Zara jumped at the alien sound.
Why don't they just knock here?
The woman from Den – a tiny woman, fat but
short almost as a child, an old grandma who'd taken in refugees for
the money – waddled to the door. Zara tensed, cringing into her
blanket, clutching the hot cup in front of her.
The door opened and she choked, her breath
stopped by the cold. But she turned her face into the frigid gust,
white puffs of air skipping from her nostrils as she struggled to
breathe. The cold bit at her face even at this distance, but she
couldn't help herself. She squinted into the wind, straining to see
the person at the door.
Harper?
A skinny man, very young and vaguely
familiar, stood at the door wearing the dirt brown of the Union
soldiers.
Of course not.
She turned her face away, eyes watering from
the cold blowing in from the outside. The door clicked shut. Warmth
closed back in around her, but the drop that ran from her eyes
stung her still-cold cheek.
"Oh, dear, another blanket?"
Zara had barely been able to understand the
old woman's Den accent when she'd first arrived, but now after a
few weeks, it only took a bit of concentration to discern the
words. She nodded – the old woman had as much trouble understanding
her. A moment later, a heavy blanket was wrapped around her
shoulders. Heavy against her back, it draped between her and the
chair.
"Thank you."
"It's not really that bad, you know," said
the woman. "At least it's not a white one."
Zara shook her head, confused. "A white
what?"
"A white Day! Have you ever seen snow,
dear?"
"No."
"Oh, you'll love it, you'll love it. But if
you think this is cold..." She shook her head, already waddling
back to the kitchen.
Zara looked back to the warm cup. She put
her face over the steam, to warm her eyes and her cheeks in the
heat of the... some sweet drink the old woman had made.
She took another sip of the drink and tried
to swallow the disappointment she'd felt every time the doorbell
had rung.
Harper...
"Zara, right ma'am?"
She looked up at the young soldier now
standing beside her chair. He was so thin that his smile seemed to
take up his entire face. She nodded, then looked back to the cup in
her hands.
"Happy Day!"
"Happy Day," she mumbled as she'd done all
evening.
"This is from your husband, ma'am."
A hand moved into her vision.
It held a narrow length of blue cloth.
Zara reached out. Her fingers brushed,
gently – almost fearfully – the deep blue piece. She stroked the
threads, thick and tightly woven and dyed without dilution –
without even a trace of a dampening color – the shade of the sky
just before it blackens for night. She drew her hand back, looked
up at the smiling soldier.
Such a rich shade of the sacred color she
had never seen, even on the altars of the Sky Reverends.
"Go on," said the soldier. "It's for
you."
The thin hand pressed the piece into her
fingers, and she took it.
It was a strip, no wider than two of her
fingers and just long enough to go round her neck with a little
frog clasp on the end. A necklace. The material was heavy, the
threads thick, but so densely woven as to be smooth like silk. She
squinted at it, but she could see no trace of the original
material's color beneath the deep blue.
A chill wormed through her
stomach.
Who on Skyland...? The money... the
audacity!
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips
together to keep them from shivering.
Oh Harper...
"Thank you."
"It's no problem, ma'am, I was headed back
anyway." The chair beside Zara pulled back against the wood floor,
and the soldier sat down.
She looked away, out the window, back to the
outside. She looked up at the Sky. It was not her prescious blue,
but a cold, blotched white-grey. The stories on Skyland waxed on
about the great puffs of white cloud long ago that covered the Sky
and brought rain. They were worshipped, entreated – glorious
raiments of the Sky herself. But looking at them now, Zara couldn't
help seeing them as anything but... cold. A white fleck hung in the
air outside, floating on the wind. Another followed it. Then
another.
It had begun to snow.
"Is he safe?" she asked the young
soldier.
"Safe as he can be. We're taking good care
of him. He'll be just fine, ma'am."
"It's Zara. Call me Zara."
"It's very nice to meet you, Zara. You can
call me Wills. Your husband is doing really well. And we're all
hoping to be out of the periphery before the next Hundred days
pass. You'll see him in no time."
Zara nodded, but did not look at him. A
chair on her other side scraped the floor. Somebody moved beside
her. Another chair creaked. Glassware clinked in the kitchen. More
flakes were falling outside the window. The shadow of a dozen
people moved against the glass as the snow danced on the other
side.
It was the tenth Tenth Day celebration.
While every Tenth Day the Infinite Space
worshipped in silence and wailing, wordless song, when ten of these
had passed – or every Hundreth Day – they gathered together to
celebrate with gatherings filled with talk and food and laughter
and, Zara had heard, even real songs with words.
The grandma's house was speckled with stars
– on the table in between the dishes, in frames around the walls,
on strings hung over the doorways. Even the figure-eight over the
fireplace held a few folded paper stars in its curves.
A big metallic star – or Zara assumed it was
supposed to be a star, it was more like a pointy ball of a hundred
spears – hung in the center of the room from a hook in the ceiling,
right over the long table. On the table itself, normally bare and
polished wood, a long black cloth lay.
"Let's eat!"
A cheer went up from those gathered in the
room. The old woman had waddled back out of the kitchen with a dish
of meat in her hands, followed by a girl and a bony man as old as
the woman but almost twice as tall with a smile to challenge the
young soldier's. They each carried platters of food. More chairs
scraped against the floor, and those who hadn't already sat down
did so as the food was set on the table, and the hosts returned to
the kitchen for more.
When it was all set down, the old man stood
at the head of the table. He looked at the star-ball hanging above
them.
"Every day is a day for the Infinite. But
today we also remember that which is closer to home!"
Another cheer went up from around the table
and the old man continued.
"But before we forget, let us join now for a
moment in the silence of the Infinite Space."
He sat down, bowed his head; the others
followed, and the silence fell.
Zara bowed her head with the rest but her
eyes glanced up, flicking around to her fellow dinner guests.
Across the table sat a woman with a blue scarf over her shoulders
and blue trim on a white tunic. She had the black hair of the
Skylanders, but the skin of her hands was smooth and fine, the
Sky-colored trim of her sleeves unworn. A city woman. She looked
towards Zara. For one second, their eyes met and the other woman
smiled big before closing her eyes and bowing her head for the
silence. Zara lowered her own eyes, but kept them open.
She looked down into her hand.
The blue cloth from Harper stared back up at
her.
Oh my Sky, how did you get such a hue?
Blythe, Aelius
: (1987–)
North American scribe. Timid, nomadic.
Female of the species H. sapiens.
Also wrote: