The urge to sleep was lost. Diamond made his left hand stop being a fist, and he reached over his head for a lamp remembered well enough to be turned on with the first blind attempt.

The metronome had measured his sleep. Diamond studied its numbers until he believed them, and then he sat up.

Yesterday there had been talk about fresh clothes, but Diamond was still dressed in the brown school uniform. That might not change for days and days. When they were sitting in the Archon’s office, Father used the call-lines and his name, building a new plan, and then he hurriedly took a select few people up to the highest berth at the Station. Secrecy was everything. The Archon wasn’t told about the new scheme. Tar`ro left the other guards sitting outside the wrong room, and nobody wasted time finding clothes that would fit children. The big hunter-ship was already fueled and inflated, but only so that it could get out of the way of the warships that were coming from across the District. Their ship escaped long before the papio attacked, slipping into the wilderness once night was done taking charge.

Bountiful was an honorable old name, attached to a big corona hunter so new that Father had never even flown inside it. But he knew the crew, by name and by story, thousands of days shared in the air with these people.

Diamond slid to the end of the cot, feet finding the waiting boots.

The monkey lifted his head, eyes open but seeing very little. Then he settled again, and Diamond slipped away.

Sitting on the hallway floor, Tar`ro was letting his chin rest between his knees. But he shook himself when the cabin door opened, telling the boy, “Stay put.”

Saying nothing, Diamond stepped over the man’s feet.

“Wait for me,” Tar`ro said grudgingly.

Diamond waited.

They walked together, the boy leading them past the empty galley. The hallway ended with a wide door propped open, a great volume of darkness waiting along with the abrupt silence of a conversation interrupted.

Diamond paused at the edge of a room.

From the darkness, Father said, “Here, son. Come over here.”

But the boy didn’t steer toward the voice. This was the machine shop and flying dock where the smaller hunter-ships could be refueled and repaired. Every light had been extinguished—affording a little more security—but one of the three service doors had been lifted high, the soft glimmers and luminescence of wilderness life drifting inside.

Diamond stopped three steps back from the empty air, standing high on his toes while peering out.

The world’s ceiling wasn’t far above them. Wilderness trees were shorter and much thinner than blackwoods, each adorned with twisting branches that usually battled with their neighbors for light and for rain. The wilderness was a tangle. Bountiful was floating inside a confused, ever-changing maze. This realm was shared by multitudes of creatures using colored light to proclaim their assorted majesties. Other animals screamed with their legs or sang with their mouths. The dry night air carried odors that meant nothing to a human nose or to Diamond’s, but each scent belonged to its own language, intense and presumably ancient. Night-flying leatherwings were already heavy with insect meats and bird meats and sips of nectar given by night-blooming flowers. One more step forward and Diamond peered over the floor’s lip, at the living maze, marveling at how Bountiful had burrowed deep into the canopy, hiding where even sharp papio eyes would have trouble spying it.

Two steps and a leap, and he could fall out of this world.

The idea didn’t surprise Diamond. It came to him so clearly and suddenly that he had to wonder if it was a thought that had been dwelling inside him for a long time.

Is that what his forgotten dreams were about?

A half-step more, and he squatted.

Father came up behind, each knee cracking with its distinct voice as he knelt, the cool legs on both sides of his son.

“Are you done sleeping?” Father asked.

Diamond assumed so. Yet now, surrounded by the familiar body, he felt ready to close his eyes to everything.

Master Nissim approached, sitting on their right.

Tar`ro claimed a portion of the floor to the left.

Several recitations passed.

Reluctantly, Father asked, “Did you hear us talking?”

“Yes,” said Diamond. “But I wasn’t listening.”

Father and Nissim didn’t believe him. They said so with silence, and he noticed how they shifted their bodies, as if their bones weren’t comfortable.

Diamond let his mind guess. Then he spoke quietly, though not as sadly as he expected. “They killed all those people, but not me.”

“Not you,” said Father.

“But if they wanted me gone, why didn’t Bits just shoot me when we were alone? Shoot me and tie a weight on my body and drop me through the demon floor?”

Nissim and Father rocked back and forth, saying nothing.

“Well, that’s got a simple answer,” said Tar`ro. “Our enemies, whoever they are, consider the Corona District guilty of an enormous crime. We rescued an abomination. We should have murdered you as soon as you were in our hands. That’s why we deserve to be thrown into oblivion too.”

“He’s not an abomination,” said Father, with heat.

“In their minds, this creature threatens everything they trust. And they’ll try to kill King as well, if they get the chance.”

“My brother’s more dangerous than me,” said Diamond.

“Not in their minds,” said the bodyguard. “King terrifies, but he doesn’t make these people sick to their stomachs.”

The other two men said nothing.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Diamond said.

Then the Master straightened his back, and with a careful tone, he said, “Merit. You should tell him.”

“I know.”

Diamond back leaned into his father.

Yet Father seemed to change the subject. “This machine is a marvel,” he began. “We can’t build a better hunter-ship than Bountiful. Not for any sum of money, not for all of the corona scales and skins and bones in the world. These engines couldn’t be any stronger for their size, or faster, and there’s not many military ships that enjoy the redundancies we have onboard. Even the crew is the finest you can assemble from among millions of living people.”

Diamond leaned harder against him. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do,” said Father.

Maybe.

Then the man wrapped a long arm around his son, asking, “Now what if somebody thought up something new? Let’s say it’s that bright friend of yours. Seldom. Seldom grows up and imagines a revolutionary kind of airship. His design looks like Bountiful, except it floats without hydrogen gas, and it flies faster than our ships or even the papio wings, and best of all, you can crash his ship or set it on fire—any disaster that the Fates and Destinies inflict—but the machine rebuilds itself out of the pieces on hand, making itself stronger in the process.”

Tar`ro laughed dourly. “Listen to him, kid.”

“Me,” said Diamond. “He’s talking about me.”

“And I’m talking about King and the ghost in the wilderness, and whatever creature that the papio might be hiding.” Father held him tight and found a louder voice. “We don’t know anything for certain. But it looks as if there’s a huge, huge difference between you and the other three. King’s nothing like human beings, and nothing like you has been seen in the wilderness or on the reef. You are unique, Diamond. You are special because in so many ways, you’re human.”

The boy fidgeted, and then he said, “But I’m not.”

The men said nothing.

“I’m different,” Diamond said. But he knew exactly what was being said.

“Your body’s more durable, and your brain can’t be broken,” Master Nissim said. “But remember your tenth day in my class. I had your blood and Seldom’s blood on two slides, and what did the other students learn?”