“ ‘You’re pregnant. Not far along, and you’re going to give birth early.’

“She stared at the toolbox, and I opened it. And there you lay, smiling and patient and peculiar beyond belief. This was nine hundred and eighty-three days ago. And when your mother looked at me again, I knew. I just knew. You were ours, and we belonged to you, and we would never surrender one another. Certainly not without waging a war, I would think.”

THIRTEEN

Diamond memorized each word and the shifting sounds of his father’s steady urgent voice, and he saw the keen amazement of the other faces hearing the same story. There was deep importance in what had just been told but he understood very little. This day was already full of complications and the unexpected, and no matter how bright he might be, this was too much. Yes, his father discovered him inside a corona’s stomach. That seemed incredible to others but felt utterly reasonable to him. Seldom might have nodded smartly and said such things happen every day, and Diamond would have believed him. “I could never, ever have dreamed this,” said Master Nissim. Yet the miracle boy had no doubts, no complaints. This was just another ingredient to a world too big to comprehend. It didn’t even occur to Diamond that Father wasn’t his true father. No story could diminish the man’s importance in his life. “You were ours, and we belonged to you, and we would never surrender one another.” Mother was just as real, just as vital, and he was thinking only about her when the long silver airship let loose a shrill wail, announcing its momentous arrival.

“Come on,” Father said, leading them back up the valley.

Nobody else spoke. Faces thoughtful and looking at the ground, no one ready to look Diamond in the eyes. He stared at the spent, badly eroded coral. He couldn’t remember walking here before. And he had no memory of riding inside the closed toolbox, much less being trapped in the belly of a monster. But he saw his mother’s face hovering, and Father kneeling beside her, and it was possible to believe that he could feel the cold metal against his bare feet and baby hands. Maybe it wasn’t a genuine memory but it felt authentic, and he clung the image, convincing himself that it was his birth, or at least his beginning.

The airship passed directly overhead, the air drumming and the ground shaking as the vast engines throttled down.

The men from Father’s crew were running away from the dead corona, running straight at them.

The horn sounded once again, followed by an explosion and bright flash. A steel anchor was catapulted at the ground, slicing into the coral and biting hard, and then a thick steel rope fell after it, building a gray pile taller than any man.

The running men dropped their heads and ran faster. Father waved and shouted a warning as two more anchors were launched, one from the bow and one from close to the stern.

The ground to their right exploded—dust and gravel lifting high and falling down on them.

Then the propellers reversed, screaming with a different voice as they killed the last of the momentum.

Father cursed and looked up.

His men came close, and he told them, “They just want us scared.”

“We are scared,” one man said.

The others laughed.

Father kept looking up.

“We’re done with the chores,” said the first man. He was oldest and seemed in charge of everyone but Father. “What’s next?”

A few breaths of hydrogen were vented and the metal ropes were winched tight, killing the slack and testing the anchors before the ship was yanked low enough to deploy the gangway.

“Where do you want the glands?” the man asked.

Father looked at them, considering.

The men smiled at him and at Diamond, every one of them did, and the youngest face said, “Show us that foot again.”

Diamond lifted his leg, drawing circles with his toes.

“What a thing,” the young man said.

Father raised his hand.

The faces returned to him.

“I’m ordering you to do nothing,” he said. “You can’t imagine how much trouble this is going to cause, and you’ve done too much already. So leave the glands under Little Rilly and walk anywhere else. That’s my order.”

“Yeah, but what do you want done?” asked the first man.

“Seven hundred days ago,” Father said. “That trick we used to save the Bascher crew.”

Nobody acted surprised.

“You want Little Rilly rigged up,” the first man.

“I’m telling you not to,” Father said. “I’ll do that work myself.”

“No offense, sir,” said the young man. “But we’ll do it better than you can and do it a damned lot faster.”

Everybody nodded, satisfied with that response.

Father opened the telescope, ignoring the blimp to look at the tents. “The papio are back,” he said. “And this time, in strength.”

Squinting, Diamond counted a dozen big bodies standing in a ragged line, watching the ship and watching them. They were sitting back on their haunches, several pressing telescopes against their long strange faces.

“You’re off-duty,” Father told his men. “The day is yours. Do whatever you want, or do nothing.”

The men gave one another some friendly shoves, hurrying back toward the dead corona.

One last time, the ship blew its warning horn. And before the bright echoes faded, Father knelt beside his son and said, “Listen to me. This is what will happen, and this is what we are going to do.”

“That’s the Ruler of the Wind,” Seldom told Diamond. “It’s the biggest machine in Creation.”

The airship was too vast to absorb with one look. The Ruler was a separate landscape, like a silver hill that just happened to be above their heads. Countless objects were lashed to its body—smaller airships and cavernous vents and the engines falling quiet and the propellers smoothly slowing until they stopped turning altogether. Turrets clung to the belly and sides, each bristling with big guns pointing out at nothing. Tall windows revealed rooms spacious enough for hundreds of people, but nobody was visible, giving the machine an incurious temperament to everything else. The reef and the papio were nothing, and this little group of people were nobody, and the hill would continue to float where it was for reasons that were no one else’s business.

A bright hiss of air ended that mood. The main gangway was deployed—a long reach of pounded metal and cable that unfolded from the ship’s bow, the lower end settling on the ground before them.

Nobody appeared. They stared up into a giant cavity, and for a long while it was possible to believe that the ship was empty, a derelict brought here by unfortunate winds.

Master Nissim turned to Father, saying, “It has to be a skeleton crew.”

“Flying light and fast,” Father agreed.

Then a man emerged. He seemed small at a distance and got tinier as he came close. It was his posture that shrank him. He was nervous, fearful, one hand riding the railing and the shoulders sagging while the face tilting backward, as if trying to keep his eyes from staring at the three children and two older men.

“Just as I guessed,” Father said.

The doctor stopped before reaching the ground.

“Where is she?” Father called out.

“Just behind me,” the doctor said. Then he needed a deep breath, giving him the strength to make a thin unconvincing smile. “I didn’t tell anybody about the boy,” he said. “I kept my promises to you.”

“Yet here you are,” Master Nissim said.

The doctor glanced at him and then back at Father. “The Archon came to my office yesterday. He knew everything. I don’t know how. He explained this would be a wonderful opportunity. You were going to be gone for the night, and he told me to contact your wife and threaten to tell people about the boy. He ordered me to arrange a meeting away from the house, which is what I did, and that’s all I did.”