Emissaries from the Dead

21. PLUNGE

Friend to Half-Ghosts withdrew one limb from the Uppergrowth, held it before him like an offering, then reached up and found another handhold closer to me.

He withdrew another limb, hesitated again, and grabbed hold once more.

He did the same with his hind limbs, one after the other, each time at the same glacial pace, each time demonstrating hiccups of reluctance in what otherwise looked like an inexorable advance.

His pace was matched by his fellow Brachiators. They were all advancing on me.

Some were already removing the detached claws threaded into their fur.

I closed my eyes, imagining how much it would hurt to have those claws driven through my wrists and ankles, persuading myself that this was in fact my fate, struggling to summon fear of the torments about to fall upon me.

I finished the count to thirty and then, living dangerously, started at zero again.

One, two…

I still heard them coming.

Fifteen, sixteen…

The rumble of their approach was enough to make my body shake.

Twenty-one, twenty-two…

I expected a furry hand to close around my wrist at any moment.

Twenty-five, twenty-six…

I couldn’t believe they hadn’t gotten here yet.

Twenty-seven, twenty-eight…

I could feel them all around me, their hot breath already warming my skin.

Thirty.

I opened my eyes.

They had advanced at varying speeds, reflecting the variation in their ages and physical conditions. A burly, many-scarred specimen with gray streaks in its coat had overtaken the somewhat slower Friend to Half-Ghosts and might be upon me minutes ahead of its brother.

There was no doubt what they intended to do to me.

Given a chance, they would gather around on all sides, seize my arms and my legs with a strength natural to any creatures who never knew respite from the need to hold on. One or two would take each arm. One or two would take each leg. They would hold my merely human limbs in place, not out of malice but out of simple animal awareness that the passage into Life always causes great pain and might lead weaker creatures into convulsions. They might even speak a few comforting words.

And then they would drive the claws through my wrists and ankles.

They understood that this might kill me. It had, after all, killed Warmuth. But they would still see it as an act of kindness.

By their lights it would be the ultimate act of friendship.

The Brachs were still minutes away, their charge as interminable as it was inexorable.

I made my voice very naïve and very small. “What are you doing?”

“We are giving you what you have asked for,” Friend to Half-Ghosts said.

Would Cynthia have looked around herself and seen sudden menace in a population now converging on her from all sides? Would she have wondered if she’d said the right thing, or instead offended them in some way? Or would she have been proud beyond measure that she had succeeded beyond all measure whereas all of her mocking, unfriendly co-workers had failed?

The gray Brachiator was almost upon me. There was no reason to believe its catalogue of facial expressions carried the same spectrum of meanings as the nearest human equivalents, but that little half-smile at worse seemed kind, compassionate, even holy.

The claw it drew back for a strike was cracked with age and stained with the blood of Brachs fallen in battle.

If I stayed here it would know my blood as well.

So I sprung all my lines but one and plunged, spread-eagled, toward the clouds.

I gasped, felt terror and panic fill my veins with liquid ice, called myself a thousand resentful names, wondered if crucifixion at the hands of the Brachiators would have been all that bad an alternative to falling, angrily told myself I was being stupid, and screamed.

Then I gasped again as a jolt pulled my spine taut and flung me upward, back toward the Uppergrowth, and the Brachiators gathered around my home of the night before.

The cord attached to my chest harness was too elastic. I was going to bounce too high and give the Brachiators a chance to grab me on the rebound.

It was a stupid thing to be afraid of. No cord is that elastic. And the Brachs could not see what my body was doing. Their gazes were fixed on the Uppergrowth, not on anything taking place below them.

I still came so close to their assembled backs that I could read their respective histories in the scars cross-hatching their flesh.

For a moment I heard thunder.

Then I fell again, the urge to scream not quite as overpowering this time.

When the cord drew taut I was left whirling at its lowest point, the cloudscape and Uppergrowth reduced to kaleidoscopic whirs.

I hadn’t registered making fists, but when I unclenched them now, my palms tingled from freed circulation. Which struck me as stupid. Panic’s no good as a survival mechanism if it’s so clueless it thinks you can punch a deadly drop into submission.

The spinning of the circle of clouds, down below, slowed to a stop, then changed direction as my line uncoiled. Clockwise this time. No less disorienting, but at least a change.

No point in panicking, then. So I tapped my throat-mike. “Oscin? Skye? I have what I need. I’m ready for a pickup.”

Silence.

I tapped my mike again. “Oscin? Skye?”

They came in, brusque and out-of-synch. “I read you, Andrea. I’m also a little busy.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m under attack.”

I had heard an explosion, but had been too busy fighting back my own fear that I’d been unable to register the sound as anything but One One One’s constant ambient thunder. Now I realized it had been louder, and closer, than any of the storms had been. “From who?”

“Please be quiet, Andrea. This is hard work even for two heads.”

I spun at the end of my line, searching the open air for signs of a skimmer under attack. For a long, terrifying moment I found nothing: there was simply too much sky, too many clouds, too many distant specks journeying toward their own unknown destinations. Then more muffled thunder arrived from somewhere to my immediate right, and I spun again, tracking the sound.

I saw a gray speck that could only be the skimmer drawing a line across the sky, a mere thousand meters below, and a bright object too small to be a vehicle following close behind. A bright red flower bloomed between them before vanishing: an airburst of some kind. The purple afterimage was just beginning to fade when the sound reached me: a muffled, comical pop that sounded more like a failed attempt at an explosion than the real thing. Even as I watched, the skimmer seemed to wobble, then spin, before beginning a steep dive.

“No!” I shouted.

Oscin spoke alone, his voice calm but harried. “Please, Andrea. If we really think we’re about to die, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

The skimmer faded from sight long before it reached the clouds, the blurring effects of the intervening atmosphere camouflaging its exact position against the roiling storms. Even the explosions became harder to see. When one blinding retort lit up the sky, I was so certain the skimmer had gone up that I actually screamed.

I felt a tug on my back.

Looking up, I saw something else happening. The Brachiators had reached my line and gathered around it. Friend to Half-Ghosts was probing it with his claws, as he struggled to puzzle out its meaning. They had to be a little confused. After all, their perspectives were fixed; they just saw the line itself, and how it was anchored. They couldn’t look down and see vulnerable little me, bobbing like a trinket at the end of a string. And even if they could they probably couldn’t pull me up. Their muscles were built for clinging, not lifting.

At least, that’s what I hoped.

There was another burst of light down below.

“That wasn’t us,” Oscin said. “But it was close.”

“You have any ideas?”

“Lots. But we need better ones. This is just a clumsy old transport. We don’t have the weapons or the maneuverability to win a dogfight, and our enemy doesn’t seem to place much stock in playing fair.” Whatever he said next was drowned out by a loud roar. “—wounded.”

Another tug from up above. I bobbed a few centimeters, thrashed, saw the Brachiators huddle as they conferred over what to do next.

I tapped my throat mike and murmured the code I had for Lastogne. It took all of five seconds for him to answer: five seconds inhabited by the terrible suspicion that something had befallen all the people in the hangar. Then I heard a clutter, a muttered curse, and a voice thick with sleep. “Unngh. Counselor? Aren’t you back yet?”

“No,” I said, “and we’re not going to be back at all unless we get a rescue mission out here, right away.”

A pause. I heard another voice in the background, female, asking Lastogne a sleepy question. He relayed it. “Are you still in the habitat?”

“That’s affirmative. We’re under attack and we need a pickup.”

He didn’t ask me who was attacking. “You have a location? A grid number?”

“I didn’t even know you used grid numbers!”

“Can you ask the Porrinyards?”

“They’re busy! Just track my signal!”

“Hang on,” he said. “I’ll get Mo Lassiter.”

I felt another sharp tug on my line, lifting me a few centimeters. This time it wasn’t followed by an equivalent drop. When I looked up, I understood why. The Brachiators were working out a plan to retrieve me. Even as I watched, the gray-haired one had cupped one of his hands around a length of cord and was lumbering away from its anchoring point, turning himself into a pulley that would draw me up the farther he traveled. Other Brachiators were stepping in to take the slack.

Retrieving me could take hours, but the Brachiators had plenty of time. It was all they did have. I wasn’t sure I had any. “Damn you, Peyrin! This is getting serious!”

He came back on. “We’re working on it, Counselor. Still looking for Mo.”

“Does it matter who you get? We’re in trouble here!”

“I recognize that, Counselor. I want her because she knows the Uppergrowth better than just about anybody, and she’s most equipped to find you based on your signal. But we’re not waiting for her. We’ll have a party outfitted and ready to go in just under two minutes, with or without her.”

I felt another tug, and began to wonder if I even had two minutes.

A point of light emerged from the clouds, became an arc, then headed back in. I couldn’t tell whether that was the Porrinyards or their pursuer. Oscin’s signal broke into mine: “I’m having a rough time, Andrea. I’ve had to descend a little farther than I wanted to, into a storm, and it’s going to take me a few minutes to pull out. Don’t overreact if I’m out of touch for a while.”

I was still wondering what overreaction was supposed to entail in this situation when Lastogne returned, all out of breath: “Found Mo. She’s getting ready. What’s happening?”

Another tug, yanking me upward.

“Counselor?”

The Brachiators were now acting in concert, the cord strung through several sets of hands as everyone involved in my retrieval followed the gray-hair’s lead. Several were drawing up their own slack, increasing the speed of my ascent. A few seconds ago I had considered the sluggishness of the species a near guarantee that they wouldn’t have me back within reach for hours. Now I figured I had minutes.

At that point I’d have nothing but words to save me from what had happened to Cynthia Warmuth.

Lastogne prodded me. “Counselor?”

“Tell Lassiter I’m hanging from a safety line and under assault from Brachiators. Tell her I think I have five minutes or less. Tell her the Porrinyards are in a skimmer, under attack by someone airborne.” A thought occurred to me. “Contact the AIsource too.”

“They must know what’s happening already.”

“I’ve no doubt of that. But they may not refuse a direct request for help.”

The Brachiators had a rhythm going. The stop-start-stop-start I’d endured up to this point had given way to constant effort. When I looked up I saw that the number of Brachs working on the project had increased to half a dozen.

I thrashed, arced my back to provide myself access to the line, and pulled myself upward, climbing hand over hand until I could wrap my arms and legs around the hanging cord. It robbed me of some distance, but at least it allowed me to face them.

The Porrinyards came back online, speaking together. “Are you all right, Andrea?”

“I should be asking you that question.”

“It’s been a rough few minutes,” they said, “but I’m clear enough, right now, to tell you what I’m dealing with. Peyrin? Are you getting this?”

Lastogne broke in. “I’ve got you.”

“We’re under attack by what seems to be a human being, or other humanoid, inside some kind of heavily fortified flying armor. It’s demonstrated offensive capabilities including light explosives and motion-seeking projectiles, both of which might have put me down long ago were the pilot not more interested in forcing me down into the clouds. I seem to be outside its reach right now, but every time I’ve tried to rise above the storms I’ve been…” A rumble of static. “…chastised. I’m trying to manuever around a bit, and find some way to ascend, but that effort’s taking me farther and farther away from Counselor Cort.”

Another tug drew me upward. I said, “This isn’t about attacking you. It’s about keeping you too busy to retrieve me.”

“That’s what I’m thinking too,” the Porrinyards said.

“Then get yourselves to safety. I’ll wait for Lassiter to show up.”

“I’m sorry,” the Porrinyards said. “I didn’t quite get that.”

“I said, save yourselves. Let me fend for myself for once.”

“Nope,” the Porrinyards said. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear that, either.”

I called them just about every horrid name I knew and several others I had to make up. Just a few arm-lengths above me, the Brachiators continued working with an efficiency I never would have expected of them, as they drew me closer and closer to clawing distance. I saw slack in the line hanging in loops from a dozen Brachiator hands. I heard reverent discussion of Life and Half-Ghosts rolling from a dozen Brachiator mouths. This was a religious experience for them, one the members of this tribe would no doubt pass along to their children and grandchildren long after my name ceased being even a footnote in human history.

I pulled myself up a little farther, hating having to get closer to them but needing the extra slack so I could stand in the makeshift stirrup the cord formed as it looped under my feet. It turned the line into a kind of elevator, which I rode as they pulled me toward them.

The broad furry back of the nearest Brachiator was now a little more than a single arm’s length out of reach.

Lastogne broke in. “Counselor? You there?”

I blinked sweat from my eyes. “I hope you have a smarter question than that.”

“We’re going to need you to hold on for a while. The AIsource have closed the Habitat.”

I heard another long, rumbling explosion: either real thunder or the Porrinyards being punished for making another attempt to rescue me. I hadn’t noticed any flash of light, so I couldn’t tell where it had come from, except down below. My brain immediately conjured an image of the skimmer breaking in half and the Porrinyards sharing a scream as they toppled head-over-heels into toxic murk. I didn’t much appreciate the way my stomach clenched at the image. I didn’t want to live through this if the Porrinyards got killed.

Lastogne continued: “They wouldn’t let us in. They called current conditions in there too hazardous to allow any further entry.”

I removed the stun device from my collar. It was the same one I’d used on Gibb the other day, but it was calibrated to deliver incapacitating jolts to human beings and might be nothing more than a pinprick to Brachiators. With my bag of essentials still in the skimmer with the Porrinyards, and the item I’d saved for use against the Heckler long since fallen into the clouds, it was all I had. “I suppose you argued the point?”

“We told them we still had four people in there, in immediate need of evacuation.”

The number seemed right until I remembered to count Gibb, still enduring his voluntary exile at Hammocktown. “You have more than four.”

“What?”

The gray-haired Brachiator gave another heave-ho, so mighty that I almost bumped my head on his back. I tapped its spine with the only weapon I had, the stunner, and was not rewarded with spectacular results: a little buzz, a little twitch, a little grunt of annoyance. Any thoughts I’d had of bravely fighting off the entire tribe with nothing more than the stunner quickly vanished.

Lastogne cut in again. “Counselor, repeat what you just said. You have more than four people in there?”

“I’m a little too busy to do your math for you, sir! I have things to do!”

The gray-hair gathered up all his strength and tugged again, drawing me level with the sea of broad, simian faces. His own eyes rolled toward me. In a heartbeat, my last chance to escape would be gone. I’d never win if this became a battle of competing muscle power.

But speed I had over all of them.

I didn’t even need to hurry as I reached out with one hand and used the stunner to deliver what must have been an agonizing jolt to his right eye.

Quick biology lesson: it doesn’t matter what species you belong to. If you have eyes and the capacity to suffer, that place has some of the most sensitive pain receptors in your entire body.

The gray Brachiator shrieked. It didn’t let go of the line at first, but it did remove one of its anchoring grips on the Uppergrowth and grab for me, its claws vibrating with a frenzy that might have seemed convulsive had it originated from a creature capable of faster motion.

I had just enough time to move my hand over its other eye and deliver another jolt.

Blinded twice, too agonized to be capable of conscious thought, the Brachiator released its grip on my line. I jerked downward, passing just under its reach and the reach of the other Brachiators clutching at me. I didn’t fall any farther because there were too many other Brachs holding the cord. With their reaction time, it might take them a few seconds to even realize that something bad had just happened, and seconds more to decide I was one fish best released. That is, if they decided that. My glimpse of Brachiators at war hadn’t exactly painted them as creatures who gave up the first time they were bloodied.

Just above me, Friend to Half-Ghosts roared. “You asked for Life!”

My own cry was no less shrill. “I’ve changed my mind! I don’t want any part of it! And I don’t want any part of you!”

Then I fell.

My safety line, released by all the Brachiators at once, went slack for its entire length, freeing me to plunge again. I wasn’t ready for it this time, and screamed all the way down, crying out when the cord once again drew taut.

Lastogne, who’d been listening to every last gasp and squeal, was by this time shouting my name over and over. I counted four separate repetitions of “Counselor Cort!” Each one a little more hopeless, a little more certain that I’d given up the fight.

I didn’t manage words until the cord used up its elasticity and I was once again spinning at the bottom of the line. “I’m…here, sir. A little mussed, but alive for the time being.”

He expended his relief in a single whuff of air. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve bought myself a few more minutes. No more, I think. The Brachs are pretty upset at me by now. And you?”

“We haven’t heard from the Porrinyards in a while. They’re not answering. I don’t know whether they’re dead or just unable to respond. The AIsource themselves have been less than forthcoming. They say they’ve withdrawn their permission for a human presence inside the Habitat, and will be expecting us to depart the station within forty-eight hours. No word on the disposition of the people still inside. Which we still count as four, by the way. You, Gibb, Oscin, and Skye.”

The damned thing I kept wanting to do, but hadn’t been able to do, gnawed at me once again. I shifted my grip on the line, released one hand so I could blow on the aching and now bleeding palms, and said, “Have you counted heads there?”

“Nobody’s signed out but you four.”

“Forget who’s signed out. You can’t expect a murderer to sign in and out like a normal person taking shore leave. Gather everybody in the hangar for a roll call. That includes you. If you don’t get at least three other parties to vouch for your own presence there, I’m going to assume you’re talking to me from some remote location and presume you are our saboteur. The only acceptable excuse for not giving me what I need in five minutes will be that I’m dead and not available to take it from you.”

His urgency went away a little, replaced by his usual wry humor. “That does remain a possibility, Counselor.”

“I know. But you had better proceed as if it’s not.”

“I’m right on it,” he said.

I felt another tug from up above.

Before I looked, I was sure I knew what it was. It had to be the Brachiators making another attempt to pull me up. I’d have to hold on tight and wait until I was in range again. I didn’t think going for the eyes would work a second time, since even creatures as slow as they were would learn from the first time.

Then I looked, and saw that my situation was significantly worse than that.

The gray-haired Brach had given up on retrieving me and begun attacking the line itself.

If I listened real hard, I could make out the scraping sounds from down here. He was slashing away with all the strength he had.

I couldn’t blame him. After all, I had presented myself as a friend and then made myself his enemy. He wouldn’t consider what I’d done self-defense. He’d see it as betrayal.

You could even give him credit for still trying to give me what I wanted. I’d told him I wanted nothing to do with them. Or with Life.

It would cost him nothing to oblige me.

I’d be safe enough until he realized that the line was impervious to his claws. Then he’d start working out other ways to dislodge me.

My first impulse was to get Lastogne back on the line and beg. But it wouldn’t do any good. Nothing would do any good. Even if the AIsource reopened the Habitat right now, no skimmer available to Lastogne or his people could reach me in time to make a difference. The Porrinyards could be dead already for all I knew, and my last resort, Gibb, was stuck on Hammocktown with no means to mount a rescue mission, assuming he’d even want to.

By all meaningful definitions of the word, I was already dead.

But then, by all local definitions of the word, I’d been dead before.

Hating the necessity, I had to climb.

It was a useless gesture. There was no safer place above me worth climbing to. I’d been there already. I knew all I had to look forward to up there was a bloodier death. But the one trait I’d taken from my experiences on Bocai, and nurtured in all the terrible places I’d been since, was an absolute inability to do nothing. Faced with a choice, I’d always seek higher ground, even when higher ground was worse.

I was halfway back to the Uppergrowth when the first spurt of manna juice hit my forehead, stinging my eyes and forcing me to clear my vision with the back of one hand. The Brachiators were slicing away at the vines anchoring my line. The Porrinyards had used an air cannon to drive it through multiple generations of Uppergrowth, and advised me that the anchor was solid enough to support several times my own weight. But it wouldn’t be if it was physically ripped from its foundations. It wouldn’t be if the Brachiators dedicated themselves to cutting away every single vine between them and the anchoring hook. Chances were, they wouldn’t need to excavate it entirely for the cord to give way. The vines between it and the surface were part of what held it fast, after all. Weakening them might be more than enough to loosen my shaky hold on their world. I wouldn’t know until I actually started to fall.

No doubt about it. This would be a goddamned stupid way to die.

The sap started to pour. One spurt drenched my face. I licked my lips, and found it as bitter as the worst unsweetened tea. An acquired taste, all right, though under the circumstances I regretted never tasting the fermented version.

My arms were getting tired.

I pulled myself up another arm’s length, gasped as something sticky flopped against my shoulders, looked down and saw a short length of vine tumbling into the void.

“Oh, Juje! You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Manna juice was pouring down the rope and flowing over my hands.

As the Brachiators slashed and sliced at the vines anchoring my cord, the size of the hole they dug had turned out to be not nearly as dangerous a factor as how much it bled. The Uppergrowth had begun to hemmorhage, and the line anchored in the center of the damage had become the natural conduit for goo. My hands were just now getting the first of it. In a second or two, the line would be as impossible to climb as any other greased pole.

No sooner had I realized that than the lubrication started to perform its magic. I slipped a full meter, stopping only when I hit a section of cord still dry enough to maintain friction against my hands.

I kicked, shouted an obscene word, got another faceful of goo for my troubles, and did the only thing left available to me.

I started to laugh.

This was a stupid way to die, all right.

But also a goddamned funny one.

The more crap splattered my cheeks and splattered my eyes and greased up my hands and sent me sliding downward, the more I sank into a hilarity of a kind I hadn’t enjoyed since the good days on Bocai. It just burst from me, in great big rolling belly-laughs that didn’t banish my terror so much as subsume it.

Damn it all, I might have wanted to live, but if I had to go, then I couldn’t think of any dumber, or more appropriate, way than this.

Another burst of thunder, very loud and very close, drowned out a frantic query from Lastogne. “Counselor? Are you crying?”

“Hell, no! I’m laughing my ass off!”

A pause. “Care to share the joke?”

“You have to be here, Peyrin. But—ack!—rescue me and I’ll be happy to explain it to you!”

My hands gave way. I plunged back to the bottom of my line, spun like a top at the cord’s lowest point, endured a fresh indignity as another spurt of manna juice drenched my head and shoulders, gasped with fresh awareness of the nearness of death, and took vague notice of a dragon bursting from the clouds below with an angry thrash of gigantic wings. One last moment of spectacle before I went.

Lastogne shouted, “Counselor! Do you read?”

I caught my breath. “Not for long, Peyrin. I think we’ve reached the last seconds. Did you do that last roll call?”

“Almost counted wrong,” he said. “Forgot Li-Tsan on the first go-round. She’s still locked up in the transport.”

“And after you count Li-Tsan?”

He said something I missed, because I was too busy shouting.

Because as the dragon leveled off and descended back into the clouds, another object peeled away from it: something that had been using it for cover, something that was now rising as fast as it could toward my position. Something only visible as a bright burst of light.

It didn’t look like a man-sized object in an offensive flying armor.

It looked like a skimmer.

“Oh, God,” I said, let it be…

Lastogne shouted again. “COUNSELOR!”

The object’s flight was erratic, nothing even close to a straight line, but a queasy wobble that made it look off-center, even struggling.

Come on, Come on, Come on…

“COUNSELOR!”

I dropped a meter. The vines anchoring my cord were starting to let go. I had a couple of heartbeats, maybe less, before they failed; not enough time for the Porrinyards to ascend to this altitude.

Who cares? As long as they survive! They can—

A bright, fiery rose blossomed far below; an airburst of some kind, though one too far away to hear quite yet. It was so bright that I lost the object at its center. About half a minute later, the sound reached my position: no longer a deafening cataclysm, just a vague, distant rumble too bearable to represent the loss of two people I didn’t want to see dead.

It took me some time to register that my eyes were closed against a now-torrential rain of manna juice, and that Lastogne was screaming at me: “COUNSELOR! GODDAMNIT, COUNSELOR! I CAN HEAR YOU BREATHING!”

My voice broke three or four times before I managed to get out a word. “Peyrin…?”

“I’m here, Andrea.”

I didn‘t have enough life left in me to protest the use of my first name. “…what was…that count again?”

He spoke quickly. “I was right the…”

My safety line failed.

With the cloudscape many kilometers below me, there were precious few visual cues advising me of my sudden delivery to an inevitable death. It was my spine that felt the sudden loss of control, my skin that registered the rush of air against my face.

I swallowed air and tried to get used to the idea. It wasn’t all that hard. I’d been as good as dead for so many years; in part I’d wanted to be. Nothing ahead of me offered any further surprises. I found even enduring it in the form of a fatal drop didn’t bother me all that much: the anticipation had been such a burden that the real thing came as a relief.

So I spread my limbs, maximizing my surface area against the onrushing wind, and allowed One One One to take me.

I had regrets. One, that I’d never tell Gibb what I’d learned about the Brachiators. Two, that I’d never tell the AIsource what I’d figured out about them. Three, that I’d never find out about the mysterious gifts they’d claimed to hold for me. Four, that I’d never confront the Unseen Demons over everything they’d done to my life.

Five, that I hadn’t made peace with Bringen. He’d indicated a thousand ways that he’d wanted to, and I’d shut him out every single time. I didn’t need his response to my mail to know that I’d misjudged him. I knew I had.

Six, that I hadn’t made a path for myself instead of allowing the Dip Corps to choose my path for me.

Seven, that I’d adopted the face of the monster I was supposed to be, instead of saying the hell with what people think and becoming someone who might have achieved a little peace.

Eight, that I’d turned away so many who had tried to befriend me. There had been so many names over the years, passing in and out of my life like rumors: Dejah, Roman, Mikal, too many to name, all refusing to give up on me even after I’d declared myself a lost cause.

Nine, that I wouldn’t get to finish this thing that had started between me and the Porrinyards. I sure as hell knew what it was and I sure as hell knew I couldn’t trust it. Either way I didn’t care. It was just too goddamned unfair to be losing it now before I even got a chance to explore it.

Ten, that I’d allowed my past to become my all-purpose excuse. It shouldn’t have been. All it ever did was put up a few walls. It wouldn’t have defeated me, to the extent it had, with me its eager collaborator.

When all was said and done, I’d been my own worst Unseen Demon.

But that was all right.

“An.”

I’d passed the point where regrets meant a damn.

“Drea.”

Like fear, and desire, and ambition, and unsolved mysteries, they were just a waste of my time now.

“Andrea!”

All I had left now was the way I faced the little time I had left.

So I opened my eyes and faced the clouds and saw them, still floating like cotton so far below, still roiling with angry thunder, still waiting for me to join them. I’d keep my eyes open for as long as I could, despite the building wind that was already inflating my cheeks and making a grimace out of my lips. Only the irritation of the air pressure against my eyelids made the tears roll back along my temples: nothing else. Not

“ANDREA!”

I almost thought it was Lastogne again. But no, the shout came from my immediate left, from a burned and battered object falling alongside me. Turning my head to see it almost required more strength than I had. Believing what I saw required considerably more effort than that: it was a skimmer, diving straight down in an attempt to match my velocity. The passenger cab paralleled me, with the two standing occupants, Oscin and Skye, both oriented like horizontal protrusions from a sheer vertical surface.

Less than an arm’s length separated me from Oscin’s outstretched hand. It was enough distance to exclude me from the skimmer’s local grav. The skimmer, not built for speed, was having a hell of a hard time pacing me. Only my blunt position against the wind was slowing me enough to permit even this brief approach.

I didn’t even want to know how much fancy maneuvering they’d needed to pull off just to get this close.

They yelled at me again, the words whipped away from the wind.

I waggled my arms. That did something terrible to my aerodynamics and I veered away from the skimmer. For one queasy instant I overcompensated, and found myself diving a direct vertical that left it far behind. Then I flattened myself against the wind again, slowed, felt a nauseating shock wave against my legs as the skimmer almost slammed into my back, and felt that familiar shape swallow up the sky again, this time to my right.

This time, when I looked, Skye was sitting on Oscin’s shoulders, reaching for me with everything she had. Her face was desperate and her chin smeared with blood. Her wrists and hands just barely cleared the ionic shields, grasping for me. I almost corrected the wrong way a second time, remembered the way the same action had affected my fall only a few seconds ago, and this time converged on the two familiar faces, at a speed which immediately made me think of head-on collisions with brick walls.

Too late, I realized that I was not the only person in danger here. One miscalculation, and the weight of my own falling body could yank them both free of the skimmer’s local grav. I couldn’t be responsible for that. I wouldn’t. Given another second to think of it, I would have veered away and gone to my death, rather than allow them to sacrifice themselves for me.

A gust of wind blinded me just as Skye’s hands converged on my wrist.

Have you ever passed through one zone of local grav into another, without either warning or a decent period of transition? Everything changes in less time than it takes your neurons to fire. In this case, the skimmer at my side was suddenly and without any argument the skimmer beneath me. I slammed against the seats, doubling over, and almost rolled over the side as the local grav flickered off, rendering the cloudscape down again.

Both Oscin and Skye were clutching at available handholds with their free hands, while using the other two to grab on to me. It took me a second to realize what they’d done: switched off the local grav at the instant I was pulled inside it, to avoid snapping my neck and rupturing every organ in my body as I was forced into a sudden and unexpected perpendicular jerk.

My legs flailed behind me. I screamed. I pulled myself closer to my Porrinyards and, the instant I had the chance, threw both my arms around one of the seat backs, once again certain I was going to die.

I don’t remember any of the next thirty seconds at all.

Then the grav came on again. My knees settled against the deck. My head bounced lightly against the back of the seat, with a force not much worse than a painful thud. I felt my empty stomach slosh, looking for something to expel.

I realized, with dull amazement, that we’d stopped.

The Porrinyards hadn’t managed anything approaching their usual grace. Oscin lay sprawled against the control panel, his forehead bleeding from a nasty diagonal gash. Skye, curled on her side beside him, looked worse: the blood I’d seen on her chin a few seconds ago had been joined by a swelling bruise on her cheek. For the first time I also saw the nasty flash-burn that had turned her right hand a bright shade of red.

They managed to sit up just as I did, their faces tilting at complementary angles.

Then they smiled, in the manner of people sharing a naughty personal joke. “Why, Andrea. You look good enough to eat.”

I didn’t quite get the punchline until I tried to lift my hand off the deck and needed extra strength just to overcome the glue. Then I understood. I was still coated, head to toe, with a thick layer of manna juice. I was good enough to eat. Hell, I was downright delectable.

And though I might not have said it, under other circumstances…sometimes the straight line is just too perfect.

We didn’t have to swap information just yet.

There were other urgencies.

“You better come here and taste some.”

They scurried over, on hands and knees.

We took the skimmer away from the clouds, sharing our experiences of the last few minutes. Mine elicited winces of sympathy, and at one point a fervent, “Juje, we’ll make you a high-altitude specialist yet!”

Theirs was a little more dizzying. They hadn’t gotten away from the Heckler until they hit upon the radical tactic of using one of the dragons for cover. Flying alongside it, straining the skimmer to its absolute limits in order to keep up with the giant creature’s flight speed, they’d taken advantage of the Heckler’s obvious reluctance to fire weapons in its vicinity, remaining safe in its shadow until the Heckler gave up and flew off.

They said, “I’m surprised he didn’t come after you next.”

I sucked some manna juice off my fingertips. “He?”

“He. She. Whatever. I’m just using the pronoun for convenience. Either way, I have trouble understanding why you weren’t the next target.”

My ragged fingernails were still glistening from the juice of the Uppergrowth. “I wasn’t expecting to survive the trouble I was already in. Whoa. Damn.”

“What?”

“One of this place’s smaller mysteries just solved itself for me.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Not a particularly important one, but one that adds to the big picture. Believe me, I’ll be addressing it before long. You were saying?”

“I was wondering why your friend didn’t come after you when we proved too hard to get. And I know you were under attack yourself, but as long as he’d given up on us, why didn’t he just zip on up and make sure? Why behave like a cheap neurec villain and trust in a cliffhanger to take care of you?”

I bit my thumbnail. The clicking sound repelled me, and I felt no urge to do it again. “I don’t know. There could have been a deadline. Maybe he had to get back to the hangar so he wouldn’t be missed. Or maybe he had something else to—” At which point I froze. “Oh, shit.”

The Porrinyards saw the look in my eyes. “What?”

“Gibb.”

For a little while, everything had seemed better.

And then we returned to the site of what had been Hammocktown.

Some of the support structures remained, but everything else had been twisted out of recognition, or ripped free of its moorings to plunge into the clouds below. Thickets of loose cables dangled from the Uppergrowth, twisting in the winds, some trailing strips of tattered canvas like banners scarred in battle.

Everything else that had been here last night, including Stuart Gibb, was gone.