“Those scales were dark as soot, but soot is sturdier. I had never seen so many necks and heads on one body, but half of the heads were damaged and several more missing. The skeleton was even weaker than the scales. Bones were fractured and healed, others fractured and unhealed. Important glands were half-dead. There were cysts and odd cancers and scars lain over scars. Even the muscle and blood were poor quality. A barrel of meat usually yields ten different metals, including enough iron to build one strong tool. But that woman was anemic—anemic to the point where a strong torch could shine through a thick steak—and with all of that illness inside one beast, it makes the mind wonder what kind of misery she was suffering at the end.

“Seven harpoons were found inside that meat. Three wore legible marks, but no one found any record of the slayers who had shot them. The other four harpoons had different designs than anything used today or even in the oldest history books. Some said that the corona was as old at the world, which is another reason to be impressed and feel sick to your stomach. At the beginning of time, that creature thrived, touched by the Creators and now killed by a troop of fancy monkeys.

“Without question, the District of Districts sent a full delegation, led by the Archon of Archons. I had never seen the man before. Never seeing him again would make me happy. I was standing in the gore, up to my knees in greasy gray livers, and that’s when the Archon and his various assistants walked up to congratulate me. His name’s List, and he didn’t wait for me to talk. With that scratchy voice, he told me that the corona was impressive and he was glad that he had seen it, but in the end it wasn’t much of a prize, and where would the investment be recovered? He struck me then as the kind of man who always sounds half-smart, particularly when the topic is unimportant. When he spoke, what mattered was to make me appreciate that huge quantities of manpower and fuel and capital and hope had been invested in this adventure, and nothing of real substance would come of it, and then he turned to one of his aides, and with a voice meant to remind me who was in charge of the world, he said, ‘We can’t afford bonuses. Tell the other Archons that nothing will be paid from the common pool.’

“And with that bomb thrown, he left us, retreating to his personal airship and comfortable bed.

“My crew spent the next dozen recitations cursing. And then our Archon returned. Prima told us not to worry. She didn’t exactly insult List. She’s too charming and too shrewd for that. But she promised to pay what she could from the smaller local fund, and she reminded us how proud she was of us, yes, and of every other slayer crew from the Corona District.

“By then the papio numbered in the hundreds. This is the end of the world to them, a place beyond every better place, but delegates and citizens, soldiers and even children had gathered. They were curious and remarkably talkative. Plus there were other human dignitaries, and slayers crews waiting to spell us when we got tired, and there were rich individuals who had hired fletches to come here for no reason other than to see something that would never be seen again.

“A different crew finally sliced open the corona’s stomach.

“It was the darkest part of the night, and my boys were exhausted. I went looking for relief, for fresh willing backs and hands, and I happened to see the stomach’s juices spilling across the coral. Those juices are highly, highly acidic. The coral was fizzing and popping as the mess spread and sank underground. Nobody was paying attention to the interior, at least not then. Even after being dead for so long, there was a lot of residual heat. I don’t know why I swung my torch at the hole. But I had a good angle to see far inside, and I had to be the first person to spot something moving. The object was large, larger than me by a long ways. I held up my torch and caught a round shape wiggling at its edges. Then I climbed inside that hot gutted stomach, avoiding the dangerous last puddles, and I put a gloved hand on the big odd moving object, and what looked like a hand started to emerge, apparently trying to touch me.

“I ran back outside, startled.

“Another crew noticed, and they took the trouble to yell some abuse my way. What kind of slayer got scared like a little boy? I laughed off the jokes, and when they returned to their work, I began to study the stomach and intestines. Corona guts are usually a nice round ring, simple and tidy. But not inside her. There were turns I’d never seen before. There was a giant pocket full of acid and bad stinks and I don’t know how many kinds of filth. The mystery object was tucked inside that pocket, and beside it were three odd shapes, each quite a bit smaller than the one that I saw first. I don’t know why, but I picked up the tiniest specimen. It was round and warm and very hard on the outside, like callused skin, and it smelled wicked as can be. Nobody was watching me. I stripped off my shirt and wrapped the object inside it before walking outside and over the next ridge, then down into a gully where nobody was watching, where coral sands made a soft flat space.

“That’s where I put down what I had taken. What wasn’t mine. Not even slayers are allowed to claim any part of the corona without permission, but I was angry about the bonuses, and I was very, very curious. That simple chunk of meat was something that the corona had eaten but never digested, which was bizarre, and I had never seen such a thing, and I had never heard of such of thing, and I wanted one good long look before I surrendered the prize.”

Father hesitated, and he sighed. The approaching ship was too big to be a blimp. It had a framework made of corona bones, and it was big enough to seem big though it was still a long ways off. Steady strong engine sounds gave the air a slight and very pleasant hum.

“What happened?” Seldom asked.

“Yeah, what?” Elata asked.

Father used a voice that would never stop being amazed. “I knelt down in the dark and watched that little blob,” he said, staring at Diamond. “I saw its shape change. The transformation took time. There didn’t seem to be any sense to what I was watching. But there were differences in its appearance, and new shapes emerged, and I touched the object on one end and felt what could have been bone where twenty recitations earlier there was nothing. Then the little arms pulled free, and legs that were bent back and newly born straightened out suddenly and this sweet, half-formed face looked up at me. And then you coughed—a hard big cough that threw stinking liquids over my face—and as soon as your lungs cleared, you said words to me. Words I’ve never heard before, or since.”

Diamond kept watching his toes. Pieces of this story seemed familiar, or his imagination was painting pictures.

“Night ended,” his father said. “The corona forest that grew in a day turned to steam and burst through the demon floor. Warm water rose over the reef and me, and over you, and I sheltered you with my body. When the worst of the rain passed, you looked like a two-hundred-day old baby—oddly shaped but healthy enough to smile at me—and I hid you under my coat again and walked past the remains of the corona. The stomach was still exposed, but those other three mysteries were gone. I never found out who took them. I emptied my toolbox and set you inside, wrapped in a towel, and you were quiet enough to scare me on the journey home. But nobody noticed how I carried that old box, carefully and with both hands. I carried it all the way to our house, and I stepped through the curtain you saw today for the first time, and your mother looked at me and knew something was happening. The first words that I said were, ‘You aren’t going outside for a few days.’

“ ‘Why not?’ she asked.