Cloud Country (18 page)

Saru walked to what she guessed was the sunroom, because it was all glass, walls and ceiling, except for the wall shared with the kitchen. There was no actual sun in this place, no single source of light—just the blue dome overhead, with its own steady illumination. No clouds, no motion in the sky, no shadows, none of the millions of tiny clues her body used to sense the truth in its surroundings. It had been better when she was in the mirthul, because then at least she had known it wasn’t real, that it was a plane of existence that played by different rules. But now she
was
in her world, her natural physics, and it felt
wrong
.

Saru plopped onto one of the lounge chairs, and the AI material melded to the shape of her butt. That too felt wrong, too comfortable, not hard enough. She growled and stood and glared at the lounge chairs. Who would buy this crap? Or better yet—why was this crap inside the scintillant? And why did it seem so
familiar
? She kicked the chair, as if she could kick out some answers. And then it clicked. The feeds. Magazines. She had seen this house before, or a house like it, in a Home Castle feed. It was the perfect house, the model house, the aspirational house that any real and valuable person should own. Saru burst out laughing and then felt a wave of pity, and a sickness in her stomach. She kicked open the door and wandered out onto the deck, past the hot tub, and the cold tub, and the BBQ-XL, and the full-sized, stained-glass deck table with umbrella and wicker chairs. She leaned over the railing and spat into the pool, which had a waterfall, and a water slide, a lane for lap swimming, a wave generator, and a light-show bubble spa.

Beyond the pool was a garden, rows of yellow flowers, and red flowers (roses for sure, she knew that one), and blue flowers, and trees hanging with lemons. Through the garden wound a gravel path, leading to a cluster of hatbox structures in the distance—tents?

“Hello?” Saru called back into the sunroom, the word racing through the empty house. “Helloooo?”

Nothing, just her own hello coming back to her, subdued, dipped in menace like everything else. Saru went back into the kitchen and found the knife library. There were sixty fucking knives and they were all digitally labeled. She had to pull out the handles one by one, until she found a real serious motherfucker. She swished it around a bit, getting a feel for the balance, and then walked over to the Net room and murdered one of the plush chairs. Yeah, that’d do it. She could have brought a gun or a bazooka or a machete with her if she’d wanted, but of course none of that could harm a God. This knife wouldn’t even tickle a thug wearing a particularly thick sweater, but it felt better to have something than nothing, another mental prop to keep the unease at arm’s length. Her fear necklace was slithering tighter, a sneaking garrote around her neck.

She slipped the knife into her belt and did a final screen of the house. She jogged up the stairs, through the thirty-nine bedrooms and twelve bathrooms, the sex rooms and McChristian prayer rooms. She jogged down to the wine cellar, and the sauna, and the garage, and the second wine cellar, and then decided she’d just about wasted enough time. She returned to the deck, and set off along the path into the garden.

Her feet crunched against the gravel, the only sound. There was no other life here, no birds or buzzing insects. Just the flowers, pesticide perfect, tame and manicured, in scientific rows like pixels of color on a screen. Everything about it made her skin crawl. There was more life in a Philly alley, even if it was just possums and weeds and roaches. Saru saw the path led to a wall of tight hedges, a verdant fortress, and there were indeed tents and flags and domes rising from beyond the wall.

The path ended before a gate, a stone archway between the hedges, with a ticket booth and turnstiles. With a shock, she realized it was the gate to the old Philadelphia Zoo, copied and stuck here in this mansion’s backyard. There was no sign though, no neon flashing or holographic animal display. Where the words should have been there was nothing, just an ugly scribble of metal like the artist had gotten frustrated and given up, a failure of memory. Saru stopped. It felt like there was an invisible barrier in front of the archway, her fear made solid, keeping her from taking another step. Don’t do it. Don’t go in there. Go back to the house, that was nice. Saru grit her teeth, and clutched the knife handle in her belt, and pushed her way through the turnstile, into the zoo.

13. The Zoo

Saru had been to the zoo once, when she was a kid in the Hathaway Morning House, and she had hated it. There were so many people, and so many kids, though that had made it easy to escape for a while. The teachers could track her implants, she could never really get away, but in the density there was a refuge, a sea of flesh that needed to be parted, and the overloading and slowness that comes with too many implants shoving into a second-tier Net connector. She had wandered by herself for a while, not really paying attention to anything in particular, until she came to the bear cage. It was small. She didn’t know shit about bears, had never seen one, or been able to imagine one that wasn’t a cartoon. But she knew just by looking that the cage was too small, and the bear was too big, and the ground was too hard, and the rocks were too fake. The bear was mangy, with tattered brown fur and swathes of bare skin, and she knew that God or whatever hadn’t made him that way. The bear had an erection, and he was beating at it with his paws, insane, frenetic. The people around her were laughing and pointing and making jokes, their eyes flashing pale as they took recordings to share on their feeds. Saru had wanted to hurt them, to punch them all to the ground and rip out their throats with her teeth.

There were no crowds in this zoo, no one, and no noise or breeze or motion. Quiet. Paths branched out in front of her, wiggling between tents, and cages, and railings around pits that she guessed should hold animals. There were no signs or markers. No ice-cream or cotton-candy vendors. Saru swung her finger around, trying to divine which way to go, and it landed on the center path. She walked to the nearest cage. As she drew close she saw there was something inside—and she froze. And listened. Nothing. Her hand closed around the knife hilt and…don’t be stupid. Whatever it is it’s caged. It was a mound, a lump…a body.

Saru crept forward and brought her head to the bars so that they almost touched her cheeks. It was a man, or maybe a skeleton he was so thin, yellow skin, drawn, tight around protruding bones, eyes albino raisins, mouth lolled open, hair a wisp of sun-dead grass. His clothes were soiled, but they had been nice, expensive, an elaborate gold-woven caji suit. There was a placard in front of the cage: Royce McFadden. Saru didn’t know him though the name seemed to tickle her memory. Was it an old enemy of Ria’s? A lover who had done her wrong? A rapist? Or a john that had stiffed her once?

Saru moved to the next cage. This one held a woman, dead in seemingly the same way, wearing a shimmery pearl dress. Her skeletal arm reached through the gap in the bars. Pleading. Desperation. Had she been tortured? No…and yes. Starved. She’d starved to death or died of dehydration. Ria had stopped feeding her. On purpose? Angry? Disappointed with her pet? Or just…unconcerned. Saru read the placard: Margot Sigh. Again the name familiar, on the tip of her tongue, niggling at the back of her memory. For the millionth time Saru wished that she still had her implants, that she could scan the body for clues, figure out who this woman was and why she had died, and what she had to do with any of this alien bullshit. Was she another contender? Another blue-eyed host who shared a margin with the Blue God? Was Ria consolidating her power? Abducting and murdering the few who could stand in her way? Was there a cage for her, Saru Solan? If only she had information! If only she could access the…feeds.

The feeds. Margo Sigh. Of course. She was a celebrity—she’d made an award-winning sex tape. Saru ran back to the other cage. Royce McFadden…he was a sports guy, a boxer or a football player. She ran to the next cage in line, down the whole line of cages: Jezebel Courout, she was on a reality feed about tech wives; Caroline Bader-han, she’d starred in a film about an elzi falling in love; Elton Bush, McChristianity’s sexiest man…now just husks, all of them dried and twisted and shrunken and starved. They were toys, dolls that Ria had picked up to play with and forgotten about.

Saru moved down the line of cages, following the path, arms and skulls stuck through the bars, voicelessly screaming and begging. Had the celebrities called to one another as they died, shouting encouragement? Had they starved together, scooped up in one go? Or had it been slower, one by one, watching the neighbor shrink away a little faster, captured two days earlier, two days accelerated into doom? What had they said to each other? It’ll be okay, it’ll all be okay. Drinking their own piss, lapping at their own shit, licking their lips and salivating over the corpse of their neighbor in the cage next door? A vile part of Saru found glee in these thoughts. She thrilled at the misery of their fall, like she had laughed at the rich fools in the Hathaway jail thinking that money or popularity was some inoculation against suffering. Suffering, the great equalizer, the great equal-opportunity employer.

Cage after cage after cage. No longer bright brass, with colored flags, but black and red with rust, and floors of bare cement. The placards no longer read names but madness, words written in blood: Who the Fuck Cares? Just Some Asshole. Why? Why?
And eventually simply: What? The path vanished. The flowers and grass were gone. The sky was dark and gray with streaks of black cloud. Sound now, scratchy, squeaking, wire brush against her ear, growing, growing, a mob of sound. It was coming from a ring of rusty spikes jutting from the ground, a pit, and the sound rose like a swarm of flies to envelope Saru as she drew closer. If felt like the sound was eating her, each scratch and shriek a peck at her skin, nibbling it away. Saru came to the railing and looked down.

Rats. Thousands of rats. Millions of rats. A sea of rats, crawling and squirming and writhing around one another, scrabbling and sliding against the smooth pit walls, fucking and breeding, biting and fighting, murdering and eating one another, a kingdom of rats, where there was no ground except the rats below, and the rats below them, and the rats below them, the king rats on the surface with the luxury of open air, and not dribbled with the shit of their betters.
Shriek,
a rat with his eyes clawed out, burble of blood, sinking into the mass, necklaces and jewels of entrails, body torn and strewn for dinner.
Shriek
, a litter of rats born, bounced and heaving, guarded by the hissing mother, now one gobbled, now another, but more survive to keep the mass alive. Saru puked, a feast over the edge for the rats! She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, controlling her shudders, and walked over to the placard. Two words written in blood: Homo Sapiens.

There was another pit nearby, and Saru walked over with leaden steps, having to force each rise of each leg, the black pearl of the fear choking against her throat. This pit was tranquil. There was a man inside, alive, naked, sitting on a rock, staring at the wall in silence. He was covered in blood, crusted blood from scabbed cuts, stained blood splashed on his skin, yellowy thin blood around his mouth and blood on his hands. His body was thin and ragged, and his hair wisped like the corpses around him. So many, shriveled and starved, woven together like the dried grass of a crow’s nest. He’d piled them up in stacks around him so there was a floor, a rock to sit on and not brush death. The man looked up at Saru as she leaned over, and his eyes rolled into a slow recognition. His mouth cracked open, and a sound came out, a sound like she had never heard before, from men or aliens, or the tortured girls or the UausuaU. It was a whimper and a moan, an unbroken blue note, slithering up from the pit, forcing her eyes closed, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, and the whimper trickling up, snaking around her and binding her with revulsion and…too much…too much! Saru took a step back, and then she was running down the path, not daring to look into the cages or pits that she passed, the whimper tailing her, stabbing into the back of her brain, until she forced herself to stop and catch her breath, and control, control, control, still and calm…but fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, calm, breathe, calm…oh fuck…

The sky overhead was black. The cages around her were twisted and broken, the bars winding upwards, metal vines dangled with skeletons and laughing bodies. The buildings and tents were crumbled and fires burned amidst the rubble. Blood burbled in cracks in the cement. The spiked pits were full of bodies, each with their own label: Heroes! Murderers! Enemies! Allies! Foreigners! Fools! Saru walked quickly, keeping her eyes narrowly in front of her, leaping over fallen walls, streams of blood, bodies knotted into comical shapes, torn and sewn together, bent and ripped, skin stretched into kites, forward, forward, oh God, oh God, how could she? How could Ria do this? Fear pressing against Saru, a hurricane at her front and at her back, goading her onward, battering her into pausing and spurts of panic, scrabbling over piles of rubble, pits of flame, charred bodies at the edges, bodies amidst the rubble, fissures of gore, towers and trees of twisted metal and spikes, caged skeletons, bodies suspended from ropes around their necks, lynched in chords, bodies strapped to wheels and broken, oh God, Ria, what have you done? Fire and death and blood and bodies, all of the pain and suffering and horror rising into a crescendo around her, the fear a claw, clamped around her heart, her neck, squeezing and cutting, run! run! until at last it came to an end.

The black sky of clouds melded with the black of space and milky stars. The war zone broke into cliffs that jutted out into the void, gaps of space swallowing the land as if this were the shore of the universe. For a moment Saru forgot her horror, and simply marveled at the scene, the horizon melding into space. The peace was calming. Her breath came steadier. Her heart slowed, and she breathed, and she breathed, and felt steady. She took a step, and then another. It was a long walk to the edge of this world, each step a drop of calm, a tiny mediation. Now there were no bodies, no rubble, no wells of blood and columns of flame. The destruction gave way to simple dirt, and stone, and patches of grass. Step after step, until Saru was on a cliff, with space above and below. A figure in the distance, a shape, now a body, now a woman, just a girl, really, sitting on the very edge of the cliff, legs dangling over the side into space, kicking idly, hands tugging at the grass and letting the blades drift down. Saru approached slowly, slow, soft steps, until she was right there next to the girl, still ignored completely. She sat, and dangled her legs too, and tried not to think about what would happen if she fell.

Ria was dressed in a skirt and a torn tee shirt. She looked like she was coming off a bad night, scuffed knees, eyes red and squinted, propped on heavy bags, nails bitten, chewed lip, no shoes. Her hair had fallen out, except for a gray crown of stragglers, and the skin of her bare skull was clumped with scabs and jaundiced tumors. Boils and sores, and the nubs of incipient tentacles sprouted from her neck, and arms, and legs.

Ria’s feet kicked to a rhythm that seemed to be on pace with the Earth spinning below. She didn’t look up at Saru’s approach, or when Saru sat next to her—didn’t move or react in any way. Ria’s eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the Earth.

“Ria—”

“Shhhhh,” Ria said, still not moving, lips parting just enough to release the air. It was a nature sound, like her shush was just the wind in the trees. Saru fell quiet. It was all quiet up here, nothing but quiet. Looming, heavy quiet.

“Listen,” Ria said.

Saru listened. And heard. A voice, drifting up from the Earth, and inside the voice was pain. A woman, screaming, her hands hacked off with a machete. More voices, a whole village of amputees, crying, wailing, bleeding, for being on the wrong edge of a conflict. Saru forced herself to listen, to not look away, shoving down the clamor of emotions inside her, to look, and accept the reality. Another voice. A man gunned down in her home town, in Philadelphia, a robbery gone wrong, just going to get smokes and then gone, vital patterns randomized by high-velocity metals. A child, body rearranged by the grill of a car, a drunken mistake, the new arrangement unsuitable for life. More voices, too many for any one to gain attention, a montage of anguish, children covered in boils, patterns repurposed by disease, women groveling sex objects, patterns rendered inanimate, men stabbing and shooting one another, scrabbling for shiny trinkets, scrabbling to climb up their pointless, imaginary hierarchy, scrabbling up on a floor of victims, so that only the most ruthless could cut and carve and claw their way to the top, only the most vile could see the sky and dribble shit on the masses below. The Earth was gone, all Saru could see were the rats, the pit of rats writhing in their own tiny universe, all other life destroyed, fucking and killing and churning up and down in an endless cycle.

Saru gasped and the vision broke. Her lip was bleeding—she’d bitten through it again, and her palms were red with the delving of her nails.

“You see,” Ria said.

Ria’s eyes lost focus and she looked confused. She yanked angrily at the grass, and threw it down in frustration, and then she crossed her arms and held herself like she was freezing. A tear slid from her eye, a perfect blue jewel, and then another, and she was crying. Saru felt tears coming to her own eyes, pouring down, jewels sprinkling the Earth like rain. Saru grabbed Ria and pulled her close, and held her. Ria clung to her like a child. Saru kissed her cheek and pet her hair, and squeezed her with all the love she had, more love than she knew was possible, and cried until she ran out of tears. The Earth spun below. The stars twinkled on.

Saru held Ria, calm, and in control, feeling Ria’s pattern, the dance of atoms that made her what she was in this world. It was a pattern Saru recognized, close to her own, so close, they were all so close. Saru wrapped herself around Ria’s pattern, beaming in all the love she could. And then she broke it, breaking Ria’s body, breaking the pattern of thoughts, breaking and cracking and tearing out what she could of the pattern. Ria fought back, body squirming in Saru’s grip, mind screaming for aid. Saru held tight. The body lay still. The skin turned gold, hair gold, clothes melding into gold, the eyes blue crystals still wide with betrayal. Saru held the light in her arms, and little by little she flicked it away, shooting it across the galaxy in beams and bolts and waves.