Diamond followed in his wake.

Meeker was standing with generals, with List. He was giving orders to one officer, but that important thought was interrupted as King and the others moved past. The general waved and said, “Follow,” and obeying his own advice, he started out after them.

Mother and Nissim were together, arms locked and feet apart. The Master’s size and strength had kept them very close to where they began, and Mother saw Diamond among the heads, her free arm lifting, a word or two shouted but not heard.

“Seldom,” King roared.

A long arm lifted up ahead, and it dropped.

The crowd was flowing towards the open door. Sirens were screeching, as urgent as ever. But noise didn’t matter so much anymore. Would the papio continue their attack? In a world where night could arrive without warning, would their pilots and soldiers hold to the mission?

King pushed slow people aside, and Diamond followed, and then King stepped over a row of bodies knocked off their feet.

Some of those people weren’t moving.

Diamond started to leap before he saw her. Falling to his knees, he pressed his face next to Elata’s face, blood from her nose bright under the lights.

She sobbed and grabbed at him.

Diamond stood, trying to lift her.

A mechanic’s red uniform was holding a fat man, and the man came running up from behind and didn’t like being stopped and didn’t mind at all giving the faceless boy one hard shove, shouting, “Out of my way.”

Diamond turned fast, and he swung.

A fist never enjoys hitting any skull. Even Diamond’s clenched fist ached after it struck the fat and the cheekbone and that big eye that had only just begun to see the miscalculation. The mechanic’s head popped back, and he staggered. But fear and rage had a useful target, and grabbing the boy by the collar, he hit that face three times before realizing what face he was fighting. Then he let go of the boy and cursed various deserving targets, and Diamond, feeling nothing so much as frustration, struck the man twice again, cracking a tooth and leaving both lips split.

“Stop that, stop,” the mechanic said.

Diamond swung once more, slicing the air between them.

“I’m sorry,” the bloodied man said.

Diamond turned away. Elata was on her knees, a little purse pressed to her belly. He grabbed her around the chest and lifted, and then the mechanic seemed to hug both of them, blubbering about how wrong he felt, bringing them to their feet.

Holding Elata’s hand, Diamond climbed over a pair of bodies.

Where was King?

The giant had evaporated, and Quest too. Diamond grabbed that thought and believed it. The gray globe had taken them away. Nothing imagination could build was impossible anymore, and maybe his siblings were yanked out of this Creation, and he should have been with them, and that’s when guilt struck. Even when he saw the crowd parting ahead of him and the broad armored back sprawled across the floor, he continued to grieve having been left behind.

But King was at the edge of the butcher floor, head down, hunkered in a low squat with one of his long elbow spines rising high as he moved his hand.

Orders were shouted across loudspeakers. Every giant door was rising, electric lights flooding out into the irrational black, and each of the indoor fletches began their engines as that great shouting voice ordered every fletch to embark and set up a perimeter. Only then would the doors would shut and seal again.

“Five recitations,” the voice promised, “and we return to gas protocols.”

It was Meeker’s voice.

“The papio are still coming,” the general claimed.

A small voice shouted, “Diamond.”

Seldom.

King twisted his neck until he was looking down the length of his own back. Seldom was standing on the far side of King, waving excitedly. Then he kneeled, vanishing again. The other doors began to lift. The crowd stopped surging, people aiming for the other openings. More people fell but picked themselves up, and what began as a panicky rout became a simple migration to the nearest openings, everybody wanting to stand at the edge, gazing at what couldn’t be real.

Elata pushed into the moving bodies, strong shoulders wedging through.

And now Diamond followed her.

All but one fletch was free of its moorings. They had to push lower before skimming under the rising doors. The fletches and little ships that had been moored outside had embarked. Maybe they were the aircraft visible in the distance, spotlights twisting one way and another while signal lights and flares gave orders, while beyond, out where the great trees hung, a few illegal flickers of light began to emerge.

“The enemy is still inbound,” Meeker said across the speakers.

Even before this, the papio were desperate. Now what did they believe? That the tree-walkers must have found a great weapon—a prize that allowed them to suffocate the world of its sunlight. Of course their fighters would keep coming. How could they do anything else?

Elata reached King’s feet and legs, and without hesitation, she shook free of Diamond’s hand before climbing over the top of the giant.

Diamond went around.

Until the last step, he had no idea what he would find. Imagination was useless. He gave up using his imagination. He discovered Quest wearing a flat gruesome bug shape, the shell of a cockroach and twin eyes looking like domes of polished crystal, various fingers and hands busily pushing into the globe’s holes and out again.

“All of them,” Seldom said.

“I have,” Quest said with a dry, startling human voice.

“Try different sequences,” the puzzle solver said.

King added his littlest fingers, but one finger was caught inside one cylinder, as if in a sad-sack trap.

“I don’t think so,” Diamond said.

Seldom looked up at him, wearing a broad grin.

“It won’t work,” Diamond said.

Hearing his words, he felt absolutely sure.

King cursed about his finger and grabbed the globe with his other hand, yanking hard twice and then gathering himself before he jerked himself free of that embarrassment.

The globe rolled, stopping against the backs of random legs.

Seldom grabbed it.

The abattoir wasn’t quiet and never would be. But people had found places to stand, and only one fletch—the wounded Tomorrow’s Girl—was hanging overhead, engines sleeping. The rumble of generators and the urgent endless wailing of every siren in the human world ripped at the air, and there were conversations that after the mayhem sounded almost reasonable. Strangers talked about the darkness and why this darkness was different than night, and they discussed how would the papio respond, and with nervous caution, some claimed that nothing would come of this but a healthy scare and the total destruction of their enemies.

Elata was standing on her toes, looking outside.

Suddenly, with a loud laughing voice, Seldom said, “Hey.”

Elata turned. “What?”

“Did any of you bother to look here?” the puzzle expert asked.

The other four children gathering around the gray ball, King remaining on his hands and shins.

“What?” Elata repeated.

Seldom took a moment, showing them his fine smile.

Everybody asked, “What is it?”

“Words,” he said. “There’s some tiny words here, on the smooth end of this whatever thing.”

Words?

“I don’t know the language,” the boy continued. “But it’s been my experience that usually, in some way or another, words really want to mean something.”

SIX

Coming to the abattoir was exciting, and the dead corona was a wonder. Seldom was thrilled with his day, and then the world shattered. The papio were coming, the darkness was already here, and inside one impossible moment, everybody turned crazy.