The Stars Are Legion(72)

“Did you ever want to?” I ask.

She doesn’t reply.

I take a moment to consider how much to tell her, and then I say, “I think I threw away a child. I don’t have a clear memory of it, but it was a child, no bigger than my fist, and I threw it into the darkness. I know what it is to want a resolution.”

Casamir whistles softly. “That’s a long way up, Zan.”

“It was a long way here,” I say, shaking away my memory. Arankadash is still not looking at me. What did I expect? “I’m not turning around. How do we get up there?” There’s no wall to climb, no rope, only a blistered hole in the sky, just as Arankadash described it.

Casamir walks over to it, and I follow. We both stand in the streaming light coming in from above. I squint, trying to see the source of the light, but it’s so dazzling, I can’t see what’s making it.

“Ideas?” I say.

Casamir chews her lip. She counts off six paces, then six more, bringing her to the edge of the circle of light. “Huh,” she mumbles, and then she starts doing what I assume are sums in her language.

I cross my arms and examine the edges of the hole. Like the blistered folds of the hole in the Mokshi, it looks like something has burst down toward us as opposed to bursting up and out. That implies plenty of stuff falls in but not much goes out. Only the babies.

“Are you sure they ascend?” I ask Arankadash. “The babies? You’re sure they’re not . . . eaten?”

“I have heard . . . ,” Arankadash says. “I have heard that they go up in the light.”

I stare up again, long enough to be a little blinded when I look away. Whatever power the light has, it doesn’t work on me or Casamir.

Casamir brings her torch over. I feel the heat of it as she raises it high. “I have an idea,” she says. “But it may be a bit . . . labor-intensive.”

“It’s not as if we’ve got anywhere else to go,” I say, “but up.”

“Hot air rises,” Casamir says, tapping the torch. “We’ve made sacs of heated air with torches at home to scout out the upper reaches of the sky and provide transit. It’s a possible thing.”

“You’re kidding,” I say.

“I never joke about science.”

“I doubt a backpack full of air is going to be enough to carry me up,” I say. “Even if we can get one of these airtight.”

Casamir gestures to the sea. “We’ve seen that those things have got sacs they use to surface,” she says. “We can use those.”

“They’d need to be butchered and dried and—”

“I did say labor-intensive,” Casamir says.

“Well,” I say, and sigh, because nothing here is ever easy. “You want us to go back in and fish that thing out, don’t you?”

“Sorry?” she says.

“Better than being stuck here.”

We head back into the boat.





“THE SECRET TO LEADERSHIP IS NOT TO BE A PARTICULARLY INTELLIGENT PERSON. IT IS TO SURROUND ONESELF WITH THOSE FAR SMARTER THAN ONESELF. AND TRY NOT TO KILL THEM.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





27


ZAN


Hauling and drying out the creature is a massive undertaking. I’m not sure Casamir realized what an ordeal it would be. But there are four of us and one creature, and nowhere else to go but up. We make neat work of it.

When it is done, I’m still not convinced this is going to be successful. I sit down on the beach and wipe my face on my sleeve as Casamir stuffs the torch into the end of the animal’s sac.

We wait. Casamir seems utterly confident. She crouches next to the thing, muttering to herself. Arankadash is already asleep a few paces away, probably the smartest one of us. Das Muni is still picking her way up the beach, putting shiny baubles into her pocket.

I’m not sure when I first notice the bag inflating. It seems like an age has gone by. But there it is, sure enough: a rippling there at the end of the organ.

Casamir claps her hands and comes over. “It’ll be a while,” she says. “Let’s eat.”

We sit down to eat and watch the organ slowly inflate. Above us, the canopy of green fungi shifts color again. I fear another rain of little snake creatures, but there’s nothing this time, only a dimming of the light.

“You still up for going this far?” I ask Casamir.

She leans back on her elbows, grins. “This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. Wait until they hear about it back home. No one has gone this far.” She gazes up at the halo of light.

“Maybe there is a reason for that,” Arankadash says, sitting down next to us. She rifles through Casamir’s pack for an apple and peels away the outer skin. I wonder why I haven’t thought to do that yet.

“Don’t be superstitious,” Casamir says.

Arankadash says, “Not everything can be explained with the mind. There are larger things than our mind, things so great we cannot comprehend them.”

“Believing that is what keeps the mind weak,” Casamir says.

“I know only what I’ve seen,” I say, “and I’ve seen other worlds just like this one, hundreds of them, hanging in the darkness.”