A white blank pressed on Lucy’s face. Panicked, she scrabbled in front of her, trying to clear a breathing space. An instant later, she plunged into air. At first, she couldn’t see anything. She felt cloud, damp beneath her knees. Then her eyes cleared. Around her, she saw a circle of servants crouched in a tiny room.
There were six of them staring at her. ‘This is that Protector they were shouting about,’ murmured one. Beside him, a wizened servant nodded and said nothing. ‘Fracta?’ the first one continued. ‘This is one of the Earth creatures.’
The one called Fracta had a face as shrunken and impassive as a tortoise. Skin hung in ruffles down her neck. ‘Better for you that you had not found us,’ she said, keeping her eyes on Lucy. ‘Tell me, what do you think of our Cloudland?’
Lucy opened her mouth to answer and found her thoughts had broken into single words. ‘Beautiful,’ she forced out. ‘Strange.’
‘Beautiful and strange.’ Fracta tasted the words. ‘Yes.’ There was another pause. Lucy saw again the long table in the Citadel where the Cirrus and Cumulus feasted while the servants waited at their backs. ‘And unfair. Why do you serve them? Why should you do all the work?’
Fracta’s eyelids flickered. Behind Lucy, two Stratus started whispering. Fracta glanced at them and they fell silent.
‘There is an old rule,’ said Fracta. ‘Statues for law and Cirrus for watching, Cumulus for cities and Stratus for work. You have heard this?’
Lucy shook her head.
‘Well,’ Fracta tilted her chin sideways, ‘perhaps you know as little as you say. Or perhaps you have Earth tricks I cannot recognise.’
A knot-faced servant whispered in Fracta’s ear. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘No needless violence. The Stratus can keep her.’
‘Keep me?’ Lucy’s lungs burnt as though she was running hard.
‘Please understand that we deal in necessities.’ Fracta spoke in the same impassive voice. She considered Lucy for a long moment. Lucy forced herself not to look away, though her whole body was shaking.
‘Let me tell you a story to make clear what I mean . . . Last year, three Stratus decided they could not work an hour more. They put down their tools and crept from the cellar, buried in a cloud city, where for two decades they had worked without pause. Stepping into the street, they saw the stars: the same stars they had seen in their first decade, living as harvesters on the Stratum. Without much thought, they stole three flight boards and rode down the dark, back to their first home.’
Fracta’s voice was soft. The other Stratus sat without moving. Everything was quiet and close. The walls were pressing in.
‘The next morning, the Cumulus called for their breakfast. They waited and grew angry; their breakfast did not come. At last, marching down to the cellar, they discovered those three Stratus had gone. Then the outrage – meetings and messages! They woke a statue and the statue ordered: Those three Stratus must be put to death.’
Around Lucy, the Stratus shifted on their heels. The word death seemed to make a clanging sound. Pain clasped a steel hand around Lucy’s calf. Her leg had cramped. She could hear how the statue would have spoken; she could picture those words issuing from its narrow mouth. Daniel was right not to trust the statue, she thought, and loneliness ran through her like a tide.
‘We have watched your Earth,’ continued Fracta. ‘We have seen how many ways you have to die. It is harder to kill a Cloudian. Only time will do it, and ice. The statue ordered a Megalith to fetch from the Arctic a fragment of zero: absolute cold. It said: Find those Stratus and feed them to it. Some say the Megalith lost its mind, listening to the cries those Stratus made, but that I do not know for certain, for the Megalith has not returned.’
‘What’s this got to do with me?’ demanded Lucy. Her leg was killing her. She tried to stand but Fracta gripped her arm.
‘I tell you this so you understand we have no choice but to imprison you. If your friends in the Citadel learnt you found us meeting here, they would understand we intend revolution, and they would most certainly kill us.’
‘But you can’t imprison me! I haven’t done anything wrong!’
Fracta stretched her mouth into a bitter smile. ‘They only saved us from their frozen cities because they could not feed themselves without us. They brought us here to serve them – but in doing so, they brought us together. Strange irony, that their hideaway should offer us our chance of freedom. We must flee to the Stratum now, while they are too fearful to pursue us.’
‘But I won’t tell them,’ cried Lucy. ‘You can’t keep me!’
Fracta shook her head regretfully and signalled to the waiting servants.