Cloud Country (15 page)

The trumman had stepped back, slowly—God, he was slow—and she couldn’t see his face, but she imagined the surprise that must have been on it. She reached forward, casually, and put a hand on his shoulder, and a red-ember glow spread from her touch and travelled across his whole body until he was just a man-shaped flicker of red, and then he was nothing, a puff of ash. A part of her was horrified by this, that stupid fear jabbing in her back—what was she afraid of? She was a God after all, and could do whatever she wanted. She walked to the door; her knees sagged and she tripped forward, catching herself and leaning against the wall for balance. It irked her that there was still pain, that the cuts hadn’t all healed, and that some were serious and demanded attention, and that her skull was pounding like someone had shoved it into a turbine. She tried to open the door, but her hand fumbled on the latch, and so she punched it, arm going cleanly through, and then laughed, and held her palms against the metal until it melted to slag.

Saru strolled into the hallway. It was a narrow, metal corridor that went left and right, with more doors like her own. There were screams and shouts coming from both ends of the hall—oh goody, no hard choices—and other sounds, staccato
pftss
, coming in bursts. It was gunfire, silenced. Escaping prisoners? Or execution, the food bill too high. Or something…else. There was a presence, a tingling in the back of her mind, a vague…something…coming towards her. She decided to go left—why not?—away from the presence, but she knew the presence knew her, and was coming. The door opened in front of her, a trumman in his mask and Hathaway uniform. He raised his gun, not fucking around, and she slapped him, ha!, causing his head to splash like a too-ripe cherry. She stumbled over the body and nearly fell again.

The pain was nagging at the edges of her concentration, her hand was flickering, the beautiful gold static-ing back to an ugly pale hand of ripped-out fingernails. Forward, forward, she needed to get out, needed to escape, needed to get out so she could save the world or get drunk—what was the plan? The presence was homing in on her, escape, escape, vision blurring, hands pale, arms pale, chest naked and pale, where was her armor? Was she drooling? Blood, drizzling from a slack mouth, she couldn’t keep it closed,
goddamarmnoit
, she had to get out, had to escape, part two of the plan, escape, escape, where was she going?

The door in front of her swung open. Another trumman. Saru tried to swat him away but she couldn’t even raise her arm. He was fast now, lightning, and his gun rose up to her head, barrel poking her in the forehead, boop! She froze; he did nothing…why? The presence was there, that niggling, nagging, whatchamacallit presence, a force field between the gun and her head, a single well-aimed thought guarding her from oblivion. Soft footsteps creeping up behind her. A pair of legs in a black caji suit and a pair of bare feet.

ElilE walked past her and took the gun from the frozen trumman. In three seconds the rifle was disassembled and the pieces clattered to the ground. ElilE placed his palm on the trumman’s head and the trumman fell backwards like a board—dead? Asleep? More shouts behind her, explosions, gunfire. Saru stumbled to her feet and over the body of the trumman, away from the commotion. ElilE walked next to her, saying nothing. Someone handed him a foily emergency blanket, or maybe he wove it while she wasn’t looking. He tried to drape the blanket over Saru’s shoulders, and she tried to push him away, and managed to knock herself against the wall. She stumbled on, gritting her teeth, awake, awake!, escape!, past blood stains and bodies, trummans and men in uniforms she didn’t recognize, past hangars, and doors, and endless doors, and mobs of shivering prisoners or ex-prisoners, until she found herself at last in a small hangar in front of her plane. The door opened, and she crawled inside, sand and candy wrappers grating a welcome against her knees. She crawled up onto her seat and hit the button to send it all the way back, and curled herself into a ball. ElilE watched her, fading a little with each droop of her eyelids. He walked away.

“You can leave the fucking blanket,” Saru said.

And then she passed out.

11. Acceptable Risk

Escape! Saru jolted upright and—fuck! Her head smacked into the ceiling, and she tumbled off the seat, her body a frenzy of disconnected limbs. She landed with her knees prayer-bent, crouched under the dashboard, arms gripping the seat back like she was sliding off a cliff. The absurdity of her position froze everything for a second, and then she pushed herself free, and tripped out the door, and landed hissing on all fours outside the plane.

She wobbled into a stand, the aches and pains waking and bum-rushing through her—dizziness and nausea, and sharp complaints from all the usual suspects. Someone had slapped Quick-e-Stitch bandages across her more aggressive cuts, and painted the smaller ones with gluey flesh fusers—she didn’t know whether to be angry or thankful. A brown uniform like a flight suit rested on a folding chair next to the plane door, with a pair of boots and socks tucked underneath. Saru yanked on the clothes and found they fit well enough. The second the zipper reached her neck, the hangar door slid open, and ElilE stepped through.

He walked towards her and Saru stumbled towards him, his form wavering psychedelically in her blurred and crusted eyes. Words dribbled from her mouth—Escape! Danger! Cereal—cephereal! We’re all gonna die!

“Listen,” she croaked, the first real word in the bunch, gripping ElilE’s arms for emphasis and support. “You gotta listen to me. It’s important. Something bad’s gonna happen. Real bad. The Blue God. People are gonna die.”

ElilE said nothing. He looked at her in that still-bored mannequin mask, like she was an accountant rattling on about expense reports.

“Hey!” She slapped him. “I’m not fucking around here. This is important! The Blue God is going to destroy Philadelphia. It’s gonna burn it, or burn away the sky, or send down a bunch of laser balls and shoot everyone.”

Could he not hear her? Was she not speaking Glish? ElilE was just looking at her, not doing anything, not running around giving orders—all hands on deck!, raise shields!, or whatever leaders yelled.

“You have suffered trauma,” ElilE said, talking in some bizarre other world, some other point of view where she was crazy and everything else was normal.

“God damnit!” Saru yelled.

She pushed her body right, wrapping her right knee behind ElilE’s, jamming her elbow into his chest and forcing him backwards over her leg. His response came a second too late, and he was already in the air, and then back-slamming against the ground. His breath
oomphed
out, and Saru was on top of him, pinning him with all the strength she could muster. She could feel the power roiling through ElilE’s body, knew he could toss her away like a fuck doll if he chose. His face was the broken mask, the anger blotched red and obvious, and thank you God, at last she was getting through to him.

“Listen,” Saru said, bringing her face close. “I. Am. Not. Crazy. The Blue God is going to kill a lot of people. I’ve seen it. I don’t know when, but it’s going to happen, and it could be soon. It could be happening now.”

She could see in his eyes he didn’t believe her. He was humoring her, letting her feel like she still had a scrap of control over her life.

“Look,” she pleaded. “Look at the thought probe they stuck in my head, it’ll, it…” she faltered. Would the thought probe show her island? Would it show anything that happened inside the mirthul?

“Go into my head!” she said. She pressed an elbow into his throat and let his right hand slip free. She grabbed the free hand and slapped it to her forehead. “Go into my memory. Go see that I’m not lying, that I’m not crazy. I know you can do it. Build a glane or take me to a mirthul or something.”

ElilE studied her, eyes wide and then narrowing into the realm of calculation. His breath steadied. He was a clock.

“Release me,” he said.

Saru waited half a second, and then let him go. He stood and brushed himself off. Saru tottered a foot away, blur creeping into her sight, feeling the despair take hold, the weight of the responsibility dragging her down. ElilE spoke:

“Let us go to—”

“No,” Saru interrupted. “You’re going to listen to me.” She grabbed at his arm and pressed his palm to her forehead. His arm flopped away. She felt the scream in her throat fizzle. ElilE didn’t know. He didn’t know any of it. He couldn’t care. The last time they’d spoken was at the police station, a million years ago. He didn’t know she’d found the holodomor and the Blue God’s scintillant. He didn’t know how much she had learned, how much she’d changed. As far as ElilE knew, Philadelphia had been attacked by the Blue God for no reason, and he’d just spent a hell of a lot of effort to save her stupid ass.

“I’ll do it myself,” Saru snarled, snapping her hand to his forehead. They stood there, stupidly, her hand clenching ElilE’s skin, nothing happening.

“Are you finished?” ElilE asked.

“No!” Saru yelled. Her other hand clamped onto ElilE’s skull, thumbs pressed into his forehead. She focused on a single memory, a single image of the holodomor beneath Philly. She bundled the image tight, imagining the memory sharp and hard as a diamond and willing it to travel through the electric pulsing of her skin, into the unfamiliar pattern of ElilE’s skin, blasting the diamond memory like a bullet from her brain into his. Nothing. And then a flash. A gasp, ElilE’s. His body sagged, and Saru gripped tighter, holding him up by the head as she chiseled more memories into diamonds and launched them like bullets into his brain.

“Enough!” ElilE bellowed. He thrust Saru away, and with the physical thrust came a mental one, like a force field repelling her weaponized memories. They both dropped into a combat stance and studied the other, as if considering the next move. A part of Saru thrilled at the idea—a whole new dimension in which to fight.

“You gettin’ the picture, asshole?” Saru said.

“Very well,” ElilE said. “I will take what memories you give.”

He beckoned and Saru approached. He placed his hand on her forehead. She felt the warmth of his palm, and the strength of his touch, and then the world around her melted.

A sucking sensation, like blood being drawn from her brain with a foot-long syringe. Memories, stray and random, popped into view like feed notifications from her implants. There was Jojran, but no, he was too pretty, teeth too white, oh right, the imposter Jojran, the feaster wearing Jojran’s skin. There was Friar and the holodomor, the cathedral of bodies and the centipedes with human heads. Then came Ria, rising up into the night sky, carried high by the scintillant, and a jolt of pain with the memory of herself jumping back to Earth. The more recent memories zoomed by in a blur—punching the Hathaway bitch, Ben, Tess, her recapture by the Hathaways, wandering the mirthul of the Blue God and the visions of her cephereal. Saru gave it all, everything she’d seen, nothing held back, no time, no time to be prissy and private.

A
pop
and the world returned to focus, the gray utilitarianism of the hangar and her dirty plane. ElilE’s eyes were closed. His breath came so timid that at first Saru thought there was none at all. She backed away and ElilE’s arm hung in place. She guessed he was having his own acid trip, inside his own mirthul, exploring the virtual world of her memories.

A few seconds passed, which might have been years of study within the mirthul, and ElilE’s eyes opened. There was a look on his face like the engine of his poise wouldn’t rev. It was pain and sadness and a note of fear. ElilE took a step backward and his knees sagged, woozy like a drunk. And then he fell onto his ass.

Saru darted forward, swallowing her impulse to laugh, and grabbed his wrist. ElilE’s head wandered like it was trying to track invisible balloons. He raised himself ponderously to his feet and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow.

“Come with me,” he said. He walked—didn’t run—to the hangar door. Saru watched him, not understanding, not knowing what to do, and then followed. He led her through the maze of steel, past door after unmarked door, closed or ajar, glimpses of hallways, and hangars, and piles of dead trummans pooling gore. Shouts and screams and smatters of gunfire flittered past like ghosts. No one crossed their path. It felt like they walked for a very long time, and took too many turns, and looped around in circles. Saru wasn’t sure if it was the panic tilting her perception, or if ElilE was extending their commute on purpose, giving him more time to collect himself.

He was walking funny,
too
straight,
too
measured, like a pole had been shoved up his ass. Even with this grit-tooth determination he sometimes tripped, or paused to lean against the wall and grimace. Idle thoughts popped into Saru’s brain—so strange that the idle thoughts could still survive with her panic sucking all the oxygen. She wondered if it was safe to trade memories the way they had, so hot and fast, like unprotected sex, and if her memories had somehow infected him. She wondered what irrelevant memories had gushed along for the ride—what secrets had she spilled in her haste? And if all her most embarrassing moments were now spreading out across the universe.

They reached a pair of imposing, eagle-crested doors that slid open at ElilE’s touch. Beyond them was an elevator of white walls and white carpet. ElilE entered the elevator and stood erect. Saru slumped after him and sprawled on the other side. After a half-second’s journey, and a squirm in her bladder of going up too fast, the doors slid open on a pure white brightness. Saru’s eyes clamped shut, and her eyelids retreated slowly, suspicious of the light.

From the brightness emerged a glistening white marble floor, and sleek silver chairs with white cushions, everything silver and white and bright and shiny against a backdrop of blue sky. ElilE walked out and Saru followed, still blinking. They were in a transparent dome that curved upwards like a flame. Beyond the couches and chairs was a bed, and a kitchen, and a wet bar—what was this place? Were they still on the aircraft carrier? Ah, right. It was an observation suite, for Hathaway execs and their political fluffers to witness their toy in action.

Saru drifted to the wall and pressed against it, giving her weight slowly in case it was some yielding material. Below, the decks of the aircraft carrier branched out in a widening spiral that reminded her of a Discount Day tree. Craters and burn spots deformed sections of the hull, so it looked like moldy gray Swiss cheese. Spurts of junk bled from the stumps of blown-away platforms and towers. The sky swarmed with fighters and drones, racing in fly-swirl patterns.

Saru went to the wet bar and poured herself a glass of eighteen-thousand-dollar Padishah bourbon. Her hand shook, splashing redness over the sides. She brought the glass to her lips and then back down, and repeated this motion a few times without drinking. ElilE watched her in silence.

“John?” Saru asked.

ElilE shook his head. Saru nodded.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“The memory of John meeting you entered our shared consciousness. It was prominent, accompanied by a great deal of pain.”

“And that’s why you cut him off?”

“John told you of the cephereals. The cephereals also serve as guardians within the shared consciousness. They detect and eliminate malicious information. An immune response. It seems John was most impressed with your actions. Our cephereals deemed your influence an unacceptable risk and quarantined John.”

“Why? What influence? I didn’t do anything.”

“You cannot tell, but you are very loud to us. Your violence is a potent form of gratification that we can never feel. The Blue God wars openly with the UausuaU, allowing you to act in ways that we cannot. The fear of our cephereals is that if your influence spreads, the human Gaespora may take reckless actions that will damage the collective.”

“I guess you could say John was acting reckless. I think he just wanted a little spice in his life.”

“That was not his decision to make.”

“Yeah, he said something about that too. So, you were tracking me ever since I teamed up with John?”

“Yes. Benthalias and Tessenesszbeth both contributed memories of you to our shared consciousness. When you disappeared we deduced that your plane had been interdicted by this aircraft carrier. The difficulty was in the retrieval.”

“You found some suckers willing to tangle with the Hathaways? All that spying is paying off.”

“We are using the Zihua, a militia controlled by the Gercer-han, via the usual obfuscation of subsidiaries. In this John was able to provide us a final service. They have taken his body for their own fruitless experimentation.”

“You’re giving them John’s body?”

“It is the least John owes us. His consciousness should belong to our own, his thoughts and memories contributing to our whole. Instead, he has given this gift to you.”

ElilE gestured towards the ring she wore.

“We do not object,” he said. “Your relationship appears mutually beneficial.”

“We get along alright.”

“It seems John is an effective tutor. Your ability to access the gifts of the Blue God has grown considerably.”

“Then you believe me? You believe the visions I had were real?”

“We do. We agree with your conclusions. The Blue God is deciding whether or not human continuance is an acceptable risk.”

“Fantastic,” Saru said. “What are you going to do about it?”