PART II

SUNNY SLAUGHTERHOUSE

After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.

—ITALIAN PROVERB

NINE

Cliff stood at the edge of the ruined city and tried to get his eyes to work right.

This world looked … strange. Shimmering green and blue halos hovered around the edges of every burned tree and smashed building. The jet scratched across the sky had its usual twisting helical strands around its hard, ivory-bright core … but there, too, an orange halo framed it, winking with vagrant lights.

Okay … shake the head, blink. Repeat. The colored halos dimmed. He made himself breathe long and slow and deep. Acrid smoke tainted the dry air.

In the second Folk attack, he had gotten hit again. Irma had stitched the wound in his right shoulder and then … he slept. It was strange to sleep for days and nights—though those words meant nothing here, where the ruddy star hung forever in the same spot in the sky. Yet he had slept long, his irked back and aching bones told him.

He had come out of it, stiff and dry and jerky. A bit foggy, he watched the Sil deal with their wounded and put out the widespread fires. He had just woken up and now, after a breakfast of odd foods and stale water, felt pretty well. The halos ebbed, faded. With Irma he stood watching the Sil work. Their lithe bodies slumped and sagged. They were naturally limber, dexterous creatures, but not now.

Irma said, “The skyfish came over this part while you and I were trying to help carry that heavy ammo the Sil use. Blasted everything.”

He nodded, dimly recalling the fevered hours of carrying heavy cargo on rolling flatcars. Their wooden frame carriers held long cylinders of shaped shells with elementary fuses on the underside. It paid to be careful with them. Hard, dumb, sweaty work it was, while they heard hollow hammer blows rain down like a distant drumming wrath of sky gods. The concussions rolled over them and he had learned pretty quickly not to look up or back too much, because the occasional orange-hot fragment or buzzing shrapnel came that way. Once he had seen a zigzag tree burst into flame after a sizzling meteor slammed into it. He had helped throw water on it, then dirt when they had to. The burning city took all the reservoir water, and then that ran out, too.

After they got it put out, the humans went back to hauling ammo. The Sil guns hammered hard, trying to take down the skyfish. The brown and green football blimps churned across the sky and aimed lasers, antennas, and some kind of fire weapon down on the city.

He distracted himself by thinking how the skyfish could work at all. Its elaborate fins could flare out, capturing wind like a sail, and driving the gasbag forward. He guessed the huge creature could trim on this by shifting mass inside itself, getting a torque about its center of mass to navigate. This can be somewhat like a ship sailing at angles to the wind, tacking with its big side fan-fins spread out. It had big eyes and blister pods, maybe evolved from some balloonlike species. A bioengineered creature used to slowly patrol the air above the Bowl.

He had watched the battle and recalled how this place had been only a short while before. The Sil had their pride, of course. Their first full awake time in this large Sil city, the five visiting humans had to be led around, shown the town. They saw ancient majestic buildings of stacked stone, gleaming shiny statues to great dead savants, beautiful swooping curves and ramps and towers, then spindly ceramic bridges over moist green gardens and sprawled homes. They exhausted their reserves of oohs and ahhs. It was indeed a fine city of untold ancient origin.

Not now.

During the battle, at least five of the living skyfish had circled, covering each other against any Sil artillery. When the guns barked up at them, a shower of beams and missiles cascaded down, silencing the crews. The pain beam was terrifying. When it struck, Cliff could see the shocked fear come into the Sil faces. They turned and ran, some snatching at their skins as though they were on fire. At the sensory level, they were.

The pain gun was a microwave beam that excited Sil nerves with agonies that made them fall, writhe, scream. It deranged some, who howled and jerked and ran in chaotic bursts. Others had the sense to run steadily out of the beam, if they could. The effect was intense, immediate, and ended Sil resistance where the beams struck. The pain projectors were soundless, which made them even more horrifying. These were the standard Folk weapon to panic opponents, and they worked their silent terror well.

But humans did not feel it at all. Some difference in the neural wiring made them immune. So Cliff, Aybe, Terry, Howard, and Irma hauled ammo and tried to stay alive. The skyfish wallowed across the air above the Sil city and brought flame spouts to bear. Some forked down green rays that seared buildings and people alike. The enormous living sky creatures systematically burned along geometric paths, and whole blocks of homes and factories burst into yellow flame.

The Sil brought their archaic weaponry to bear and blew shredding blasts into the skyfish underbodies. Once Cliff heard an enormous hollow whoosh that thundered down like a bass note. He and Irma looked up and saw a skyfish belly explode. A huge yellow ball licked around the green skin and trailed up the sides.

“Hydrogen,” Irma said brightly. “That’s their buoyancy gas.”

Howard said, “Helium must not give them enough lift. Tricky.”

“Oh, come on, where would they get helium?”

Another skyfish was floundering now, spewing fluids from multiple wounds, losing altitude, veering erratically. The city below it boiled with flame. The great beast slid down the sky through realms of smoke. Its crash was like a green egg crumbling in slow motion as it burned.

The destruction lumbered on amid roars and bangs and the sour stench of flame. Not long after, a nearby explosion Cliff never saw caught him. He took hot fragments in his left side and arm and went down. Then it all got fuzzy, the licking flames filmed over by a gray screen of pain.

He recalled seeing the skyfish turn and begin their ascent. They rose quickly, buoyed by the spreading fires below. Someone said the huge blimps would mend and rearm at higher altitude and might come back … and then it all went vague and he fell away into troubled sleep.

So now, getting his eyes to see this place right again, it seemed odd to have the big world go rolling along without him. Sils labored nearby and gave the humans no notice whatever. There was a gray silence to their movements, but they kept on stolidly.

Just like it will keep on after you’re dead, Cliff thought. The wide busy world of muscle work, weather changing, window washing, future judging, fast joyous dancing, racing heart in great passion, nose picking, fun talking, and bug swatting—all that will go merrily yea merrily along. If these aliens were never aware of your presence, they won’t be overwhelmed by your absence. But the same is true of the people you know, too. The world picks up the pace and moves on. Eternally.

They were standing apart from the men—Terry, Aybe, Howard—at the city’s edge. The humans had all slept in a makeshift cave in the surrounding hills, to avoid the constant light. Here there were scraps of the lush greenery on the slopes amid the rocky landscape, with some odd trees and big-leafed plants rich in fruit. They were eating some of these, rather bland with lots of pale blue juice. Irma said, “Quert looks worn down.”

Cliff turned to see the slim alien approach, its usually light-footed stride slow and lame. Quert’s voice was grainy, flat. “Onto here I-we came to speak”—a jerky hand gesture—“and wish share help.”