“But why would your mother be here?” he asked.

“There are so many people,” the girl said, sounding nothing but reasonable. “She’s going to be one of these people.”

Diamond backed away. Master Nissim was talking to his other students. Even on his knees, the man was taller than anyone from the class. Holding two boys by their shoulders, he looked at all of them when he said, “Hope for the best, because it happens. The best happens.” He nodded hard, trying to convince. “Someone is coming to help, and you’ll get to where you need to be.”

The oldest girl asked, “Are you leaving us?”

Nissim made his mouth tiny, and he glanced at Merit.

Father put himself beside his son again, one hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t want you to leave us,” the girl said.

But then one of the boys shook free of the Master’s hand, and he said, “No, we want to get away from him.”

The boy pointed at Diamond.

Diamond’s soldiers had burned to nothing. He was suddenly thinking how those toys had names, but real people were so much bigger than any piece of paint and carved wood. He had sat with these other children for hundreds of days, and he knew their names and quite a few details about their lives, although he didn’t know very much at all. Yet with his memory, he could replay each of their days together, if he ever wanted.

If it was ever important, that is.

Then the pitch and pace of voices changed. The Archon had suddenly emerged in the deepest part of the atrium, back where the elevators waited.

The aide saw Prima, and relieved, she turned to Diamond. “This way,” she said to him and only him.

The boy began walking, but not fast.

Good leapt up on his left shoulder again.

“What about my other students?” Nissim asked, rising stiffly. “Do they come with us?”

“No, we have people to help them,” the aide said.

She wasn’t looking at anyone. People who lied often hid their eyes.

Diamond stopped and turned.

Elata was standing beside Prue, looking at Diamond. She said a word or two to the little girl. Then she ran over to her friend to say, “I don’t know.”

“Know what?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at Diamond. “Seldom, come on right now,” she shouted.

Seldom walked with his arms tight around his waist.

Karlan began to follow, and Tar`ro stared at him.

“I saved your boy,” Karlan pointed out. “Without me, we’d have all gone down with the damn tree.”

“So you’re a hero,” Tar`ro said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” the giant boy said. “You can be hero someday too.”

Nobody’s face was calmer than the Archon’s face. Nothing about her could be confused for happy or relaxed, yet the day’s horrors hadn’t damaged her normal self. Problems here wanted to be solved, and there were opportunities ready to be found, and just the way she carried herself was a testament to poise and strength and an infectious will that almost everyone wanted to feel.

When the woman looked at Diamond, she smiled, compassion dancing beside a thousand subtle considerations.

When she and her aide met, Prima held the young woman by an elbow, saying, “Thank you,” before whispering a few private words.

The aide blinked and stepped back. “I thought we were going to protect him in the Station,” she said.

“Except our security is lousy,” the Archon said. “We’ve got more than a thousand people in this building, plus refugees, and if we think we can trust everybody, then we’re vulnerable to the next surprise.”

“Yeah, we’re a mess,” Tar`ro said.

The group was standing close together again.

The Archon looked at Tar`ro. “Did you know that guard well? The man named Bits?”

“Obviously not, madam.”

Father and Nissim were whispering back and forth again.

“All right,” the Archon said to the surviving guard. “If you’re making decisions, what would you do? How would you protect the boy from this point on?”

Tar`ro had thought the problem through. “I’d find a fast fletch and wait for darkness. Then we’d run away.”

The Archon nodded. “The Happenstance is fueled and ready.”

“I like that ship,” Diamond said.

She nodded, playing with a weak smile. “And where would you take the boy, if that’s what we decide to do?”

“I don’t think I’d tell anybody, madam.”

“That is a wonderful answer,” the Archon said, turning to her aide once more, ready to deliver orders.

Father came forward.

He didn’t hurry, and he certainly didn’t push anyone. But the man put himself in front before he said, “Prima,” with a warm voice.

“Yes, Merit.”

“For a lot of reasons, I need to talk to my son in private. Is there any way that would be possible?”

She barely had to think. “Of course. I understand. In fact, you can use my office, and in the meantime, we’ll make arrangements with the Happenstance.”

“Wonderful, madam. Thank you.”

They were walking again, but the Archon stayed behind to deliver more orders. Father pressed the pace. They went into a long hallway, discovering a familiar old man and his old gray-and-white uniform leaning against the blond paneling of his elevator.

Diamond looked back.

The bodyguards had nobody to watch but each other. Elata was approaching, and Seldom, with Karlan following everybody else. Diamond had to step out to look past that enormous body, but the hallway curved slightly. He couldn’t see into the atrium anymore. The rest of his class had been left behind, and Prue too. Diamond felt uneasy thinking about strangers walking past the students, nobody noticing them, and in another few moments he might have suggested that someone return to check on the little girl. But then Father ushered him inside the elevator, and the rest of the group followed, doors rattling shut and everyone standing quiet and still as the world dropped fast around them.

The forest should never stop falling. There was always a limb snapping free, slipping out from beneath the dense canopy. There always had to be dead birds blown from their last perches and desperate monkeys that couldn’t make one long leap, and whole insects and pieces of insects and animal wastes, solid and wet, made a filthy rain, pungent and endless, and the tree-walkers never quit throwing their trash into the open air, pencil stubs and jeweled bracelets and worn-out shoes tumbling down to where the demon floor waited, and after that, oblivion.

But then the explosions came, and following the blasts were fires that ate their way towards the wilderness. Quest had never seen any collapse of this magnitude. For one horrible moment, the world looked ready to turn black and die. But after the last few trees ripped free of the world, the flames were choked out by their own smoke. That’s when the stillness came. Every weak branch had already fallen. Scared animals didn’t eat or willingly climb anywhere, and nothing in the world was relaxed enough to shit. Suddenly it seemed as if no living creature would ever move again, as if the forest had been trapped inside some invisible glass, clear but unforgivingly rigid, and what if this moment of perfect stillness continued forever?

Quest was terrified in new ways.

And then a breeze stirred, twenty little branches falling, and the creature secretly rejoiced.

Quest had never been so large. Throughout the morning, flocks and swarms of displaced animals had fled to her dobdob tree, too panicked to notice her swollen, barely camouflaged body. She had eaten beyond her fill, beyond any sensible need, using cheap flesh to weave more eyes and more ears and enough nostrils to grab the quietest, most distant scent. Old cautions had been set aside, and while she had no plans to remain this huge, she had to wonder how much larger she could grow before the dobdob branches would split and fall.

The breeze grew stronger, offering a rich mass of odors and new sounds.