“If you think there isn’t,” Karlan said, laughing.

Then he turned, both of them watching Quest.

Like any woman, she kept changing appearances. She became a narrow and very tall cone, and then the cone collapsed into a rounded mass, flesh swirling around some stubborn core. But where were the legs? Why wasn’t the girl making legs or living ropes, anything that could drag her to ruined doors?

Karlan thought that part through, finally seeing what was simple.

There really wasn’t enough air to breathe, was there?

Staring out into the killing night, Diamond waited for Quest to finish her preparations. Distant fires were struggling to survive. A dead corona fell past, limp and dark and almost soundless. Then a civilian blimp followed, two heavy timbers strapped to its underside, helping drag it toward thicker air. For an instant, Diamond saw inside the brightly lit cabin, saw packed bodies and desperate faces and hands holding guns.

Haddi approached him, stopping short of the door and the endless fall. She was breathing in long, weak gasps, but once she began to talk, nothing about her seemed weak.

“You need to know,” she said. “I am proud of you.”

Diamond watched the blimp turn small with distance.

“I was foolish, holding you to such a high standard,” she said. “Whatever you are, you are a child, and I shouldn’t have expected so much.”

“But you should have,” he managed.

“Look at me, Diamond.”

She wasn’t alone. Master Nissim stood behind her, his big frame surrounding her body, both lit by the weak glow of burning wood and Quest’s ongoing metamorphosis. The gray ball was on the floor where he left it. And nearby stood Elata and Seldom, one of them clinging to the other one’s free hand.

“You’re my mother,” Diamond said. “Nobody else is.”

Haddi straightened a back that was rarely straight anymore, and her breath came even faster than before.

“Thank you,” she said.

Everyone was suffering. Speed mattered, and Diamond wanted to leave now, which was why he tried to walk past them.

But the Master put a hand to his shoulder, saying, “I have something to give you.”

Diamond paused. “A lesson,” he guessed.

“But not as a teacher,” Nissim said.

The entire facility began to shake. Quest was violently twisting, the body burrowing through the abattoir’s floor.

“A butcher’s perspective can help you,” Nissim said.

“All right,” Diamond said, sick of waiting.

The butcher said, “Wherever you happen to go, show up on time and sober, and do all of your work with an artful amount of complaining. And when you’re working with other butchers, remember: everybody has knives and cleavers.”

Diamond stared up at that worn old face.

“When there’s trouble,” said Nissim, “and there always is trouble among butchers, your advantage comes in realms that don’t involve the steel.”

Diamond closed his eyes, thinking.

With no warning, Quest plunged through the bone floor.

Was his sister leaving without him? And without the key too?

But no, she was inside the rooms below, grabbing hold of the building’s foundation, and her body hadn’t finished making ready for whatever she was planning.

King was holding the gray ball in his hands.

King ran, and then Diamond ran. Nobody else could even try.

The two Archons had found each other in the gloom, converging beside a booth where call-lines ended. One circuit was working, and like dear friends, they put their ears to the same earpiece, listening to some quick voice.

Diamond stopped running.

Until his mother caught him, he wasn’t sure why he was standing still.

Her hands had never felt colder, every little bone struggling to be felt. She squeezed him and panted for a long moment before saying, “Good-bye.” Then she said, “Good-bye,” again, with a softer, sadder voice.

“I do remember your face,” he said. “When I was looking up from the toolbox, I saw you watching me.”

With that. Diamond had to turn and run again.

He didn’t dare do anything else.

Only at the end, by accident, did Seldom suspect what Elata wanted.

The moment they emerged from the giant sister, the girl began to chase after Diamond, and a familiar, reassuring jealousy fell across Seldom. He always felt inadequate next to any corona’s child, but particularly his best, almost-human friend. He had no choice but assume that she wanted nothing but to be near Diamond. Which would have doomed her, maybe. And maybe all of them. But then Seldom began to think how Elata stood apart from everybody all day, saying nothing unless forced to talk, and he remembered how she had acted every day for what seemed like a long while. She was far from happy. Almost nothing in her life was pleasurable, and the world since Marduk fell was horrible, and maybe Seldom wasn’t as sensitive about people and emotions as he should be, but had one talent not shared by the perfect-brained Children: he was a genius when it came to misremembering the past.

That’s what Seldom did then. He thought he remembered Elata turning to him once, confessing that if life became too unbearable, she would simply jump.

Later, replaying the abattoir and his faltering memories, Seldom would realize that the girl had never said anything of the kind. He couldn’t figure out where that non-memory came from, unless instinct or intuition were talking. But the recollection felt genuine then, and that’s why he forced himself to run, catching her and grabbing her hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he lied.

“Then stop,” she said.

Too graceless to invent an explanation, Seldom simply told her, “No. I want to keep you close.”

Elata considered fighting and didn’t.

They were standing together, not talking, when Quest sank through the floor. Then Diamond finished talking to his mother and to Master Nissim. He trotted past his friends, seeing them without seeing them. Diamond had a way of noticing everything, but he didn’t even make eye contact with his only real friends. Elata watched him pass them, and then she started to follow Diamond.

Seldom allowed himself to be dragged along behind her.

The Archon of Archons had dropped a call-line receiver, and he hurried to catch his son, presumably to share more of his political genius.

Karlan appeared, placing himself in Diamond’s path. Loudly, very happily, he announced, “I’m going with you.”

Seldom stopped running, and Elata shook free.

Quest was almost invisible, her body squirming under the floor, destroying rooms and machinery as she made herself ready.

Diamond told Karlan, “No.”

Seldom watched his brother and the rifle that he was carrying. He knew his brother. Karlan was considering shooting Diamond and maybe King too, giving him the freedom to do whatever he wanted. Seldom shivered, watching the rifle barrel drawing little circles in the air.

Again, Diamond said, “No.”

King came past both of them, saying, “He is coming. With a gun. We need soldiers.”

Diamond asked, “Why?”

From under the floor, a giant mouth roared at them.

Quest said, “Hurry.”

Everybody was walking towards her.

Diamond asked King, “Why do we need guns?”

“The spotter station below us survived. They just got their com-line fixed, and they’re reporting. After the sun vanished, after the coronas were done rising, the papio started launching their slayer ships. Maybe they’re trying to save their people, looking for better air. Whatever the reason, we aren’t going to be alone down there.”

Diamond gave no reaction.

“So I am going,” Karlan said, showing a smile to his little brother.

Elata was past all of them. Before anyone could stop her, she jumped into the fresh hole in the floor, vanishing inside whatever Quest had become.

Karlan laughed while picking up ammunition belts.