PIZLO raced through Ulmazh’s inverted city, bounding along the boardways of the underground Civilized Wood that were achingly familiar but completely new, as if they conspired to mislead his every step. He bowled over frightened Fant who could not remove themselves from his path fast enough. Their reaction to him had changed. Instead of fleeing at the first unconscious recognition of an abomination, each sensorium processed additional bits and pieces, recognized the feel of him from the fresh distribution of his nefshon echo. He saw it in their faces as he rushed past. Their fear and disgust had vanished. Instead their eyes welled up with adoration. They loved him and more, wanted him to know they did. With no hesitation they followed and flowed after him. The chorus of their voices called his name, praising him, apologizing for their blind, senseless disregard, begging forgiveness, urging him to see each of them as individuals, as they now saw him.
Pizlo ran faster.
Somewhere far ahead lay an elevator to an airlock to the shielded opening he’d used to enter this place. Everything around him murmured directions to him, precognitive whispers of the fastest way to return to Druz and Jorl’s yacht. Trusting to the voices that had guided him all his life, he barreled toward a dead end, a blank wall of living green. He left the growing mob that trailed his heels and dove into the tight foliage that every resident of this city knew to be an impenetrable surface. Leaves and branches tore at him, slowed him slightly, broke before his insistence and gave way. Several Fant tried to follow him even here, cried out as their larger, adult bodies met more resistance, as wood lacerated their skin and blood flowed. One shouted after him, “Pizlo, we feel the pain you’re denied!” And further behind that, a murmur of voices crying plaintively, “We love you!”
A route through the uncivilized portions of Ulmazh’s much younger forest called to him and he left his followers behind.
He scrambled and climbed, desperation fueling his speed. Rina was hurt. Rina was dying. It was his fault, his doing, and he’d foreseen none of it. In hindsight though, the obviousness of it threatened to paralyze him. If he hadn’t come here, hadn’t confronted Klarce, hadn’t been an abomination, his best friend would be fine. This was what all the moons had been warning him of, not danger to Jorl’s person but to his daughter. This now was his damn hero’s journey. Not the ink for tattoos, not traveling inside a moon, not meeting and transforming Klarce, not saving Jorl. This. The struggle to save the innocent girl his blindness had put in danger.
Already nauseated from ingesting so much koph in one day, Pizlo nonetheless pulled a last wafer from his bandolier as he headed ever outward to the airlock. At the first hint of his own nefshons he shunted that awareness aside and reached for familiar particles that he’d never summoned before. Calling to them brought him a living thread from Druz above him in the ship on the moon’s surface. He pulled the sight and scent and feel of her surroundings from her recent memories and spun them into the mindspace. He didn’t know if Jorl had ever spoken to her like this and needed to keep her distraction to a minimum.
“Druz! Druz! Prepare for launch. Hurry!”
“Little Prince? I didn’t see you come onboard. How did you evade the sensors in the lock?”
“I didn’t. I’m not there yet. But soon. Don’t worry about it, I’ll explain. But this is an emergency. We need to leave the very instant I’m onboard. You understand?”
“I don’t, but I can comply. I trust your explanation will be detailed.”
“Yes, when I’m there. For now, do what you need to do so we can get downworld as fast as possible. Get us as close to Keslo as you can. Do you have maps of the island?”
“Of course.”
“Right, right. You’re going to need to land closer to shore than you usually do. Right in the harbor. Find an open portion of a pier and snug up against it. Oh, and open the airlock for me.”
“That’s not prudent.”
“Maybe not, but it will save time. None of the people following me can get there before I do.”
“Following you? Why are people following? Are you in danger?”
“Druz, please, focus. Do what I ask. I promise I’ll sort it all when I’m there and we’re underway.”
Pizlo severed the contact and focused on finding the path the moon was sharing. The infrastructure of its Civilized Wood had never been explored by Ulmazh’s residents. The meta-trees here had grown strangely in the artificial and upside-down gravity, thicker but not denser. Wood shattered as he forced a path forward and in retaliation his flesh tore. It didn’t hurt, but even so he’d slowed, which meant, pain or not, he’d done himself some real damage. His left arm had stopped working. Glancing down he saw a red gash in the skin and a jagged bit of living bone poking through. It didn’t matter. Druz could probably fix that once he got to the ship. And he had to, so he could locate Jorl and then get Rina to the ship. He reached again for nefshons, Jorl’s threads, and gasped as he connected not with just one but a trio of him. They spoke as one, their resonance murmured to him, each piece little more than a whisper.
“Not now, Pizlo—”
“I know, Rina’s in danger. I’m coming to help.”
“You can’t—”
“No, you can’t. Not by yourself, not completely. You need to trust me on this. All the moons are in agreement. You can’t save her without me.”
Unspoken emotions from past discussions and arguments rippled through his connection, triggered associations that would never have slipped through, revealing the strain on Jorl. “Precognition is probabilistic. You can’t fully know the future.”
“You say that because you’re on the outside looking in. You’re partly right and you’re partly not. We can have this debate some other time. But if you want to talk probabilities, then I’m telling you the odds of you saving Rina on your own—regardless of how many of you are involved—are just short of infinite.”
“I won’t give up!”
“Don’t!” Pizlo shouted through the link and rushed along an open branch ever nearer the edge of metal and artificial soil that existed here in lieu of a Shadow Dwell. “Keep doing what you’re doing until we get there.”
“We?”
“Druz and me. We’re bringing your ship back.”
“That won’t help. Nothing on Barsk can and the ship can’t get her to Haven in time.”
“It can,” said Pizlo. “It will. The ship’s infirmary has a stasis bed. It will keep Rina stable, but only if you keep the cascade from progressing too far. Keep fighting, we’re coming.”
He felt a pause and then a change. Amidst the strain and fear and rawness, a piece of Jorl’s mind reorganized and fell into place. In that moment, in a context of gratitude and weariness, his mentor stopped seeing him as a child.
“Pizlo … hurry!”
He ended the connection as he ran/fell down the massive bole of a meta-tree, its surface roots angling toward the horizontal. A moment later he was running over dense packed earth towards a metal rim and the scaffolding beyond. He vaulted the edge and landed without pause upon a gantry, knowing the route through the hexagonal pattern of giant pots to the maintenance gate. He climbed a loop and up became down as the artificial gravity fell away and the moon pulled him in its own direction. He stumbled, his injured arm flailing uselessly and ran on. Ahead, he saw the same bored sentry who had let him pass as if being an abomination carried the same weight as Jorl’s aleph. The guard stood at his duty station. This time his face broke out in an expression of awe and delight. He rushed to meet him halfway, babbling the while.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand before. I didn’t know. Please, let me help. Whatever you need. Oh my, your arm … is that a compound fracture? Sit, I’ll call for a physician. And maybe my son, too. He’s about your age. Meeting you would change his life. All you’ve been through. I can’t wait to tell him I met you, before I mean, and that I got a chance to make up for it. But the doctor first, of course—”
Pizlo cut him off with a curt wave of his trunk and never broke stride. “You want to help? Open the gate.”
The man leapt to the controls and a second later the maintenance gate opened, its halves receding into the surrounding walls. Pizlo sped through.
“Lock it behind me. If anyone comes after, keep them from following. I’m leaving and it won’t be safe for them up top.”
“No, of course. I don’t understand how it’s safe for you. Do you want me to come with?” He followed the teen through, pausing at the control station on the other side. “I can code-lock the gate from here just as well. That would keep anyone from following and maybe I can lend a hand when you get up top.”
Pizlo flinched at the earnest need in the man’s voice. “No, really. Stay here. I’m good. Um … thanks.”
Lights came up in the corridor as he stepped beyond the maintenance gate, harsher and brighter, a clear demarcation that he was leaving a place for Fant. The unforgiving sterility of space lay ahead of him and whether the builders of this place had intended it as a reminding metaphor or not, there was nothing of life in this corridor. He pressed on and arrived at last at the elevator to the surface. His ill-fitting environment suit lay where he’d left it. Pizlo paused only long enough to shove his feet into the boots. He snatched up the helmet with his trunk and hauled the legs of the suit up with his good hand and then was moving again. He fell into the elevator, punched the button for the surface, and pulled himself into the clothing, not even attempting to slide his broken arm into its sleeve. He forced himself to slow down and perform the safety checks that his precognition had brought to him, visions of all the ways he could die if he ignored them dancing through his consciousness. He disregarded the stifling feel of the suit’s sleeve on his trunk as the readout in his helmet read green. Soon after, the elevator’s door opened onto the corridor leading back to the disguised airlock and the surface of Ulmazh.
Pizlo refrained from running—it would only cause him to leap and crash into the ceiling and risk damaging his environment suit—hurrying toward the far end of the corridor in a series of carefully controlled bounds. He cycled the lock, flung himself within and slapped at the close-button with the empty mitten of his trunk sleeve, gripping the handle by the outer door, preparing to fling himself over the surface of Ulmazh the instant the airlock allowed.
The moon’s rotation had carried the city’s entry point into a spot of relative darkness. The searing red light of Ekkja lay somewhere beyond the horizon. The soothing blue white of cloud-wrapped Barsk was nowhere in sight. There was an abundance of starlight, and the hurried arc of tiny Wella as it tore across the sky, confusing everything with faint and ever-shifting shadows.
After the brightness within the corridor and elevator, Pizlo couldn’t see anything on the moon’s surface. His eyes had always been weak, and he’d long since learned not to rely on them. Jorl’s ship was where he knew it to be and he set off for it without hesitation.
* * *
DRUZ’S voice met him as he entered the airlock. “What is happening, Little Prince?”
“We’re leaving,” he said. He ignored the protocols that insisted he stay suited until past the next set of seals. He pounded on the intercom with his fist. “The outer hatch is sealed. Lift now, please. It will be fine.”
“There is a not insignificant possibility of harm to you if we depart before the final lock cycles. It won’t be long—”
“Druz, listen to me. I’ve seen the probabilities, and seen beyond them. I’m good. But Jorl and Rina are not. Time is everything right now. Go!”
The airlock fell silent save for the hiss of building pressure. A moment passed and a rumbling vibration knocked Pizlo off his feet. He bounced off the wall and crashed to the floor as Druz accelerated the ship and fought off Ulmazh’s claims of gravity. The inside of his suit felt wet. He was bleeding. A lot. Possibilities fell away now that they were moving, but the outcome was still far from fixed. He understood that now. He kicked off the rest of his suit and removed his helmet as the inner hatch unsealed. Druz awaited him on the bridge. He’d promised her an explanation but doubted any of it would make sense.
* * *
RISING up from the airless grip of relatively tiny Ulmazh was much quicker and easier than a controlled push through the atmosphere of the much larger planet it orbited, but he’d impressed upon Druz the need. Crossing the thin strip of space between the two hadn’t taken long and after some emergency first aid, a sling, and an IV to replenish his blood, he and Abenaki had used the remaining time prepping the stasis bed in the infirmary. The Procy’s intimate knowledge of it proved an unexpected boon.
The ship fell from the sky with a determination greater than all the rain of Barsk. It was late morning, and most of the boats from Keslo had long since set off. Those gone fishing were far enough out as to not notice a spacecraft aiming for the dock, and those traveling to other islands wouldn’t return until Druz had taken off again. Other vessels getting in their way wouldn’t be a problem. Jorl had called in some favors and island officials had declared a temporary medical emergency to clear pedestrian traffic from the Civilized Wood all the way down to the harbor.
That last had been a mistake.
“There are people on the dock, Little Prince,” said Druz over the yacht’s intercom. “Thousands of people. I doubt the structure is rated for so many. If even a portion of it fails, as seems likely, they’re in serious danger.”
Pizlo stood in the hold, one hand and his trunk over a control board that would extend and maneuver a gangway to the pier once the hatch opened so they could take Rina onboard.
“That makes no sense. No one should be there.”
“I have the dock on the screen now,” said Abenaki. “I’m looking at a whole lot of no one.”
“They’ve seen the ship,” added Druz.
“How can you be sure?”
“They were standing still before, but now many of them are jumping into the water and swimming toward us. Many of the others are singing. Well, chanting, really.”
“Chanting? Can you make out the words?”
“Yes, we’re close enough now, but … you should hear this for yourself. Patching the audio through to this channel…”
Their voices echoed through the hold, hundreds of voices repeating two syllables, over and over. Piz. Lo. Piz. Lo. Piz. Lo.
The sound cut off and Druz came back on. “I’m uncertain how to proceed. If Jorl and his daughter are down in that throng, I can’t see them. What do you want to do?”
Pizlo shut down the control board. “Send Abenaki to the infirmary to get some koph. I’m on my way to the bridge.”
“Why?”
“Because we have to find another way in, and you’ve never been there. Take us up. Maybe if the people down there see us fly away, they’ll leave the dock before it collapses.”
“Understood. But why are they calling your name? I thought because of the circumstances of your birth they couldn’t so much as acknowledge you.”
“Yeah,” said Pizlo. “That’s changed. They adore me now.”
* * *
HE sat at the second navigation board, transposing a location as he knew it in his head to coordinates that the ship would understand. The Procy had returned with the koph about the same time as he’d sat down. He locked in the last bits just as the first perception of nefshons came to him along with a nausea that might have been from whatever meds Druz had added to his IV, or the toxic effects of so much koph in such a short span. He passed control of the board to Druz. “Take us there. I have to talk to Jorl, and then I’m heading to the volar airlock.”
He reached for Jorl’s nefshons and they came to him in a rush. He didn’t bother with a mindscape. Jorl was there, standing in front of him in emptiness.
“Pizlo, are you ready for us? We’re at the top of the funicular but there’s been a delay of some kind. The car’s stuck at the bottom.”
“Change of plans. Instead of staying out of your way, there’s a mob of people crawling all over the dock. That’s probably why your rail car is stuck. Doesn’t matter. You’d never make it to the pier and it wouldn’t be safe to try.”
“We have to try! We need to get Rina into the stasis bed.”
“We will. But we’re going another route. Go to the balcony that opens on Arlo’s Chimney. I’ll meet you there.”
He let go of the connection to Jorl and opened his eyes to the bridge. Druz and Abenaki both stared at him.
“Druz, as you come up on those coords you’re going to see a big hole in the green. It’s a shaft that cuts all the way down to the Shadow Dwell. Get as close to that opening as you can. I’ll rappel down it until I reach Jorl and secure Rina. Abenaki, come with me. I’m going to need your help to rig a grapnel and harness.” Without waiting for a reply he started running through the ship.
The Procy followed. “Why do your people have holes cutting top to bottom through your forests?”
“They’re … monuments. Memorials. This one is called Arlo’s Chimney.”
“Oh. Who was Arlo?”
“My father.”
* * *
TOO quickly, but not quickly enough, they were braking through the air above Keslo. Pizlo waited in the airlock on the underside of the foot of the ship. The outer door was open. How many doses of koph had he taken recently? It was too much. He needed to sleep, needed to purge the poison of it from him. Both would have to wait.
Wind and rain howled through the hatch. He stood poised to leap through open air toward what seemed a tiny hole in the rainforest canopy. The straps of a support harness cut into his body and for once he wished he could feel the pain of it. He didn’t know what kind of transportation Jorl had arranged for Rina, and a variety of hooks and cables lay wrapped around his waist. The ship had surely reached the chimney first, but they wouldn’t be far behind.
The future was stupid.
In one version, they’d mistakenly landed in the harbor and hordes of desperate Fant had boarded the ship to force apologies on him, beg forgiveness, ask to learn from him how they could be better, more generous beings. They still loathed all other abominations, just not him. They knew him, loved him more than they loved themselves. And their love had kept him from reaching Rina and securing her into the ship’s stasis bed in time to keep her body from destroying itself.
In another outcome, some other portion of Keslo’s citizenry had decided to seek out Jorl. He had helped raise him, after all, and who better to share their new insights with? Again, they blocked Rina from him and prevented her access to safety. Then there was the version where despite all precautions the grapnel malfunctioned, or a knot slipped, or a cable snapped, on and on down ever decreasing probabilities that all resulted in Rina’s death. Stupid stupid stupid. Like the universe wanted him to fail and wanted her to die.
Pizlo was having none of it.
He jumped from the airlock, determined to contradict the wishes of the universe.
* * *
ONCE he’d cleared the open air and actually entered the mouth of the chimney, the rest of his fall was familiar. The six-sided shaft opened up around him, turning in a slow helix as it dropped. He knew every handprint of it all the way down, what to touch to slow his descent, where to grab or push. He didn’t need two good arms and could have done this part in his sleep.
He reached the top of the Civilized Wood, and midway through it one side of the chimney opened onto a public balcony. School groups came there sometimes, choral groups as well, to experience the weird acoustics such shafts made possible. And though this chimney was named for Arlo, his newly adoring public wouldn’t know to seek him here. The balcony was empty. He broke his fall, and hung.
He didn’t wait long. Jorl and Dabni raced toward him down the approaching boardway dragging a wheeled cart between them. Some sort of folding bathtub perched atop the cart, water sloshing from it as they reached the balcony’s railing and brought it to a stop. Rina lay inside.
“Is the stasis bed ready?” Jorl was out of breath, his ears down and back, his eyes wild.
Even before answering, Pizlo was swinging to the railing and unwinding the grapnel from about his waist, working out the best way to secure it to the tub. “Yes, it’s all primed.”
“The settings differ by race,” said Jorl.
“That’s what Druz said. She’s already searching databases for the proper calibration for a juvenile Lox. The generic setting will serve to start and we’ll fine-tune it once we’re underway.”
“Yes, but—”
Pizlo waved him off. “This isn’t going to work. I’ll spend more time wrapping up the tub than we can spare. Give her to me.”
Jorl lifted his daughter from the water and handed her to Pizlo who cradled her against himself with his trunk and one arm. It was awkward but he wouldn’t have to hold her for long. Despite the cold water dripping from her, her skin was hot. As he held her close she whimpered.
“Wait,” said Dabni. “Please, take her doll, too. She’ll want it when she wakes up.” She tucked Kokab under the strap of his bandolier.
From down the boardway came a cry. They all turned. Tens of people were rushing toward them.
Jorl gasped. “What is happening?”
“My fault,” said Pizlo. “Klarce sent my echo down. I didn’t think it would … well, I didn’t think.”
“It’s no one’s fault,” said Jorl. “More importantly, it’s in the past now. History. Go, look after Rina. We’ll deal with this.”
“It’s not just these people, Jorl, it’s the entire planet.”
“I understand. And between Dabni and me, we know more about nefshons and memes than anyone alive in the galaxy. We’ll fix it. Not today, but soon. I promise. Now go.”
There was no future in which Pizlo was going to win that argument. He stood on the balcony railing, briefly gripped the loose cable with his trunk and pulled, two short, two long, two short. High above, Abenaki responded to the signal and activated the pulley in the airlock. Pizlo began the long ascent back up the chimney. By the time his adoring public reached the railing he was well out of sight.