After Mind (32 page)

The thickened water gurgled as it surged. The currents rushed out of balance, pulsing through the ship’s circulatory system. It refluxed forward in eddies and swirls, then was swallowed back down through the drains that led behind the bulkhead, then back to the tank, the torn skin over the water, and the gondola that was cut through and hung from its lasting cable.

A shudder ran down Ceeborn’s spine. The tremors and swells were not the result of the ship’s arrival or its sickness, but of the catastrophe he’d caused in the tank.

Tenden pulled himself up onto the footing of the next bridge that connected the rear bulkhead to the healthier body of the ship. He reached down to grasp Ceeborn’s hand as he climbed. Ceeborn reached down in kind for Spud. They climbed the side of the bridge together with the natural bobbing and bumping of friends familiar in a line.

On the bulkhead side of the bridge’s deck to their left was an air-tight hangar door. To their right was an equal-sized opening in the stretched, vertical membrane screen. Beyond the screen was Meg.

Ceeborn wasted no time and entered through the healthier opening into a bright warehouse of a transportation annex, and then he stopped dead in his tracks. Tenden and Spud bumped up behind him.

An industrialized Chokebot stood on its hind and middle legs. Its front body section was raised. It wielded a hose connected to a fifty-five-gallon drum. With its front claws clamped on the nozzle, the Chokebot sprayed a dump of household goods, broken building supplies, and the discarded shrubs of a garden. It held the hose with deft precision, de-printing the collection of waste from top down, dissolving it into a wilting, disintegrating glob of swirling colors. Grates in the floor allowed the pour off to drain down into an array of recycling vats.

Michael Longshore crossed the workspace, wearing the worn coveralls of a senior logistics technician, raised his goggles to his head, and circled behind the Chokebot. He entered a workstation protected from errant spray by a clear, wraparound screen. He sat back against a stone white wall. He tossed his goggles onto his desk and sighed at the growing mountain of stacked abacus beads on his wall, his count of pending product requests.

Huge stacks of crates and supplies filled the aisled shelves of a massive cargo bay at the side of his station through the double-wide doors. A passing forklift buzzed and whirled, transferring pallets according to its programmed course. The air was alive. Something big was happening. They were arriving.

Michael ran his hand through his hair, straightened his hard hat high on his brow, and steadied his mood to get back to his day. Then he saw through the clear screen of his workstation Ceeborn, Tenden, and Spud standing in awe, hiding in plain sight, each keenly aware they were in a place they were not supposed to be.

Ceeborn stepped forward through the hangar with Tenden and Spud as the Chokebot lowered the hose. It tilted its domed head, but Michael gestured for it to continue with its routine chores. It continued as instructed.

Ceeborn tried the door at the end of the hangar. It was locked. An air curtain rose from a row of perforated tiles at his feet. Michael stepped outside the clear screen of his station. He mimicked the lifting of a floor tile with his left hand, and with his right, he lowered his hand through in descent. Ceeborn lifted the D-ring of tile at his feet and slipped down with thanks into a cool, darkened vent.

He led Tenden and Spud through the tunnel, shuffling along on his back through a tight-fitting S-curve, passing beneath various points of gravel and peat, all unseen from the ground above. Tenden and Spud followed in fits of caution and awe. Then, at another narrow bend, Ceeborn dropped into a thin pool of water that met with a gust of cross-current air. He reached up and backward with his hands into a shaft. He pulled in his gut and climbed, rising at last. He pushed aside a floor grate.

He exited at the vent of the spiral garden. He knew exactly where he was.

A ground spasm sent a ripple across the leaves. Tenden and Spud stepped out, settled to the ground, and waited for his lead.

The whole feel of the semi-circular valley was different from the circular nature of the gully. The valley’s ground was definitely on a curve but the sky seemed flat across the valley’s peaks. Maybe, Ceeborn thought, if the valley was anything like the circle of the gully, the ground he was on wrapped wholly around the sky. The sky would then have to be a sheet within the rounded, tubular enclosure of the ship. If so, then his new perspective of his world would be complete, and once exposed, would surely be a sight to behold.

“Let’s go,” he said as got up from his knee and ran through the garden. Tenden and Spud trampled to follow.

He led them on the path ahead to the adobe school, then onward through the fronds to the village, and the boardwalk beyond.

“Wait up, how do you know she’ll be here?” Spud asked.

“Because I saw the bird. She must have caught it. She fed it. It’s hers.”

“What bird?” Spud asked.

Ceeborn pushed aside the vertical netting of the grand aviary cage.

Meg sat on the knee-high edge of a stone fountain beneath the hanging greenery of the cage. Koi swam in the aerated pool and hid under a blanket of floating lilies. A lizard rested on a stone and basked in the warmth of a heat lamp. Her elbows were tucked into her waist. Her hands were cupped out over her lap. She glanced up. Tenden and Spud paired off and investigated the cage’s beauty of nature.

Meg slid her thumbs from over her cradled fingers and the Prion poked its head through her grasp. Its blue beak tapped at her fingers. She picked up a silvery minnow from the wetted rock at her side and fed it to the growing sea bird.

“My mom says one day all kinds of birds and animals are going to fill these cages,” she said.

Ceeborn tilted his head back toward the vines not yet fully ingrown through the roof. Rows of water-misters triggered, and with a hiss, the nozzles rained a cloud of settling mist that kept all the greens glistening and pure. He drew in a cooled, moistened breath as his face was kissed by the touch of water. He looked back down at Meg and smiled.

“I think they’re all going to love it,” he said. “The water feels pure.”

“This isn’t the right habitat for a Prion,” she said. “They like the snowy cold. But she has nowhere else to go. And I can’t take her with me when we go down to the planet. What if that’s worse?”

He rested his palm on the surface of the water, broke his fingers through its skin, and submerged his hand to his wrist. The koi scattered for cover. His gaze fixed on his face in the pool. He swirled his hand through the water below.

“Are the patrols still after you?” she asked.

He pulled his hand from the water with a bone-white lily and offered it to her with the twist of a grin. “Probably. I got this for you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said.

“It’s a flower from the sea. Get it?” he said. “A flower from the Cee. Cee—born.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Why don’t you let the bird stay here? And you come with us. We’re getting off this ship.”

She held the bird still in the cup of her hands and stroked its beak with the edge of her finger.

“Where’s Robin?” he asked.

Meg opened her hands and let loose the Prion. It flew up to the woven branches at the top of the aviary. “She went to find you,” she said.

“Yeah, it could live in here,” Spud shouted with a wide-jowled smile as he watched the Prion settle on a branch and shake its feathers beneath a mist.

Ceeborn looked into Meg’s eyes. She was more than troubled. She was afraid.

“What happened to your neck?” she asked.

“I got stung. But it’s not getting better. I think the water makes it worse.”

“My mom can see you.”

“We just came from my dad’s if that’s where she went. We’ll never make it that way. The water is rising somehow. I think the tank might be emptying into the ship.”

“Then you really want to get out of here?” she asked and stood.

Tenden and Spud turned and waited for his answer.

“Are you really ready to leave this ship behind?” she asked. “Even if every part of it is destroyed?”

The ship’s tremors returned and the water of the lily fountain vibrated into nightmarish rings. Meg covered her hand over her heart and breathed.

“This ship is dying,” Ceeborn said. “We don’t have a choice anymore.”

Tenden nodded. “I’m ready.”

“As long as we stay out of the water,” Spud said. “We definitely don’t want to go back in the water.”

“Funny thing is, when I was younger, I never liked to get wet that much to begin with,” Ceeborn said to Meg, then grinned. “But my dad fixed me.”

“Then I know a way,” she said, and came closer. “It’s different and special. You should see it before we leave. I think you’ll find what you’re looking for. There’ll be all the dying you’ll ever need.”

He held his hand to his neck and looked up through the mist and mesh of the cage toward the flickering sky.

“No Chokebots will follow where we’d be going,” she said. “I don’t think they can. And maybe, just maybe, you might want to start calling me Terri.”

“Now why in the world would I want to do that?”

Her smile faded and she took a step back.

“Fine, then let’s do it,” he said. He was sure.

“It’ll be high,” she said.

“That’s okay, I can do high,” Spud said.

“We’ll go together, all of us, not alone,” Meg said.

“No problem, they’re my friends. I won’t leave them. The three of us are good climbers.”

“Don’t worry,” Meg said. “You won’t have to climb. Where we’re going, the sky will come down to you.”

TWENTY

IT’LL BE HIGH

C
EEBORN, TENDEN, AND Spud hiked behind Meg’s lead up a slope toward a clean and modest white bulkhead at the far front of the ship. Rather than plod as they walked, the hike became easier the higher they climbed. The air was the same, but their footsteps were lighter. The hill narrowed with each step as it rose toward a point in the sky.

Ceeborn looked back over his shoulder at where they had come. The glandular fountain and footbridge he had bypassed were far behind, where the floor of the valley met the slope. But directly overhead was a vision more disconcerting. They were about to bump up against the flatness of the sky. But, on closer look, it wasn’t entirely flat; there was a brighter bulge down its center, possibly a tube, running all the way down the length of the valley to the screened-off gully at the far distant end of the ship.

As they climbed still higher, he imagined the long bulge was like a curled up paper held inside the larger roll of the ship. And a flattened sheet was stretched sideways to the left and right peaks of the valley like wings off a tubular spine. It was a new and wild perspective that at once set his mind at ease. The sky was a projection and Meg was taking them to the best of the show.

The end of the tube met with the center of the white bulkhead only a short distance ahead up the hill. A double-wide door was at its base.

“You don’t have to ask,” Meg said. “I’ve got the key.”

“I told you it was going to be neat,” Spud said as he ran ahead. “The sky tube goes straight back behind the white bulkhead. That’s where the ball is turning.”

“What ball?” Ceeborn asked.

“Ball and socket that holds up the axle,” Tenden said. “But we’re not supposed to be here.”

“Tenden and me, we used to come up here to walk around,” Spud said.

“You don’t have to tell them everything, Spud. Settle down,” Tenden said as he nudged Spud forward.

Meg held open the right side of the double-wide door. Inside was a clean, white room lit by four corner posts that flickered. The doors closed, the room jolted, then rose.

“Don’t worry,” Meg said on the ride up. “But I did warn you, it would be high.”

The lift stopped and Meg held her key at the door. “You ready to walk across the sky to the end of the world?” she asked Ceeborn. He was.

She turned her key and the doors opened to the long shaft of brightness. They exited onto a staging collar. A solid axle ran high above their heads down the length of the tube and far into its pinpoint distance. Spaced lengthwise around the axle were eight long rails that ran like tracks to its end. Spokes radiated outward periodically from the axle and held the thin and stretched cylindrical projection screen of the sky. There was room between the axle and the screen to move about, to fix things, if there was ever the need. From the valley looking up, the screen itself showed blue and puffy white clouds. But from inside its screen looking down, it was all terrifyingly clear.

Ceeborn attempted his first cautious heel then toe onto the transparent screen. The sloped hill they walked up below was only a mild drop away at first but fell quickly to the valley below like the shelf of a deep sea.

Meg folded her arms and waited as he bucked up his nerve. “If the height bothers you,” she said, “look up and follow the rails.”

Then with a leap of faith, he stepped, then skipped, and found his footing. “This is amazing,” he said. He ran in spurts up to full speed as if he were escaping across the clouds to the ends of the world. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.” He stopped and turned for her reaction. Her blush had returned. She was elated. “Thank you for letting me measure the sky with you. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Tenden and Spud hopped out for their try.

“You sure the patrols can’t come up here?” Ceeborn hollered down the tube.

“No,” she shouted. “The screen’s too sensitive.” She jumped out behind Tenden and Spud. “Their claws will poke through!” she yelled as they ran to catch up.

He hopped over small runs of water that trickled and pooled along the flow of the screen. The water itself had risen through the porous material and condensed on the rails of the axle, where it hung as teardrops along the long lashes of the world. With the right pressure, the clouds would open and the mists would fall as a filtered rain, a dusting or cool sun shower over the valley below. The trickling streams that congealed and remained above the clouds ran off for collection in cisterns behind the white bulkhead at the clean end of the sky.