Whisperworld
Chapter 28
On the other side of the Door, everything was white, so bright that I wanted to throw my arm across my eyes. But I could hear them — the Whispers, so faint that I could barely distinguish them from my own thoughts. I forced my leaden legs to work and stepped through the Door. The floor and walls were slick and pale, striped with narrow rows of glowing light. I was in a corridor just wide enough to spread my arms. The metal walls were cold to the touch.
Squinting, I crept down the blindingly white hallway. It was only a few yards long. I didn’t have much time. Kiyu and Jacks were out there, trading their lives for this one chance. I had to hurry. But my knees felt like water and my mouth was dry. The Whispers were in here. They were waiting for me and needed my help.
The hall ended in a set of doors, panes of more shiny metal with another black panel. Words stood out in warning red above the door: Psionic Defense Center. PDC. Pea-dee-see.
There were smaller words printed underneath:
Emergency access
All personnel are subject to search
Please have identification ready
Emergency access? So this wasn’t the front door. But I had never seen any other way into the Stormsphere.
I approached this new door slowly. There was another slot and I slid the key through. The light turned from red to green again and the corridor hummed. It was like being inside something alive. There was a soft whirring noise and the door behind me — the one I’d entered through — began sliding closed. I ran back, but not fast enough. The door thumped shut and the air in the hall hissed like an angry snake. A cold wind blew down on me, pulling at my hair and clothes. I pounded on the door and shouted for Kiyu, but only managed to bruise my fists on the metal as cool, dry air blasted me. But then the hidden machinery whirred again and something clanked beneath my feet. The wind stopped as the far door opened.
As much as I wanted to get out of the tiny hallway before I could be trapped again, I walked slowly. My pulse hammered in my ears as I stepped through the open door and into the Tear of God.
Inside the Stormsphere was a pillar of white. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring uncomprehendingly. The scale was impossible to understand. There was nothing to compare that lonely streak of white to. It seemed at once huge, towering like a highrise, but then small enough to pluck down out of the darkness and hold in my hands. The white pillar floated before me, shifting and undulating like a mirage. Daring me to comprehend it.
Challenge accepted.
The pillar wasn’t the only thing in the Stormsphere, I realized a moment later. I was moving forward, frightened and fascinated, drawn by the huge white… thing, but I hadn’t plummeted down into the darkness below. I stood on a landing made of textured metal mesh, my hands resting on a thick steel railing. I thought it might ring the entire inner circumference of the Stormsphere, but it was hard to tell. More metal glinted in the distance.
Why could I see at all? I looked over the railing, down into the sphere. There were more ring-shaped landings connected by flights of metal stairs, and at least one above me. At the bottom of the hollow sphere, a cluster of bright lights pointed up at the tall, eerie white pillar. The air tasted strange, sweet and burnt and something else, something alive and something dead.
“Hello…?” I called out. “Can you hear me? I… I came. Like you asked.”
My voice echoed through the darkness, off the floating pillar of white. It wasn’t the only sound. There was a soft rustle. The Whispers. I could hear them, actually hear them with my ears. But there were still no words. What now?
The column floated in the center of the black Tear, tethered to the circular walkways. Not tethered, I saw, but connected by bridges of the same silvery mesh that I was standing on now. I made my way to the nearest one and began edging toward the white pillar. The bridge was plenty wide and hemmed in on both sides by sturdy, waist-high railings, but I was still dizzy as I walked. My boots rang off the metal. It felt like I was in some other world, some alien place, millions of miles away from the sand and salt and storms.
Reluctantly nearing the pillar, I realized that neither of my initial impressions had been correct. It was large, much taller than I was, but hardly an entire building. The white thing was maybe fifty or sixty feet tall and a bit less than that in circumference. And the shimmering effect was no mirage or even a polished shine. The pillar was covered in something. Something white that was moving restlessly, fluttering like pieces of paper in a breeze I couldn’t feel. What was it?
I tripped, staggered and clutched at the railing, panting and swearing. When the icy sweat abated and my pulse slowed a little, I took a look at what had just tried to stop my heart. It was a shallow metal tray full of flowers, small bundles of pink five-petaled blossoms. Milkweed. The offerings.
No, I corrected myself. The food. For what, though? Milkweed was poisonous.
But the leaves and stems showed tiny marks where something had nibbled at them. Gingerly, I reached down and picked up one of the flowers. Something small and white wriggled across the petals. It wasn’t a maggot or a worm… It had a collection of stumpy legs and arched antennae in the front. There was another, smaller pair in the back. At least, I assumed it was the back, not another head. I peered closer. The tiny thing wasn’t quite white — there were faint, barely visible stripes of yellow and gray along its length.
“What are you?” I asked.
Was this thing the source of the Whispers? The pale little shape inched across the leaf toward my fingers and I dropped the milkweed with a startled gasp. There were more of the metal trays set up along the bridge. Carefully, I stepped over them. The Whispers were growing louder, but no more discernible.
I was only yards out from the column now. It was rougher, more textured than I had first thought — there were flat parts, panels that stood out at angles from the rest. Walkways, too, like miniature versions of those around the black inner skin of the Stormsphere… All covered in that shifting, shimmering whiteness. The layer of white crunched slightly under my feet as I reached the end of the bridge. It was flaky and as pale as ash. Had there been a fire?
I trailed my hands along the railings. The white layer wasn’t very firmly attached. It broke off beneath my fingers at the slightest touch, falling. Until one of the drifting bits of white fluttered and flew, circling me on bone-colored wings. It soared a few faltering feet, clumsy and awkward, and landed on the back of my hand. I couldn’t even feel the little winged thing’s tiny feet on my skin. I held my breath and stared.
Six pale gray legs, antennae with teardrop-shaped tips. And the wings slowly fluttering against my hand, as soft as Kiyu’s skin and as delicate as flower petals…
I knew what this was. I didn’t know its real name, but I had seen something just like it before. In the desert, with a belly and brain full of engan, I saw the flutterbies, the beautiful wings in bright orange and black, edged in white spots. The shape was the same, but this flutterby was pale. Sick.
Help.
I heard the plea clearly in my head, just like my own thought, but just as obviously alien. I jumped back with a scream, but the winged insect flew closer again and landed on my temple this time, under the brim of Zach’s hat.
More flutterbies took wing, all flying toward me. Hundreds of them. I threw my arm across my face, but they alighted on me. They were on my hands, my head and even the nape of my neck. The Whispers filled my ears, my mind. They were no longer soft, but the crashing of waves that deafened me. I was caught in a storm of white, thoughts that were not my own jolting through me like lightning.
Help us. Help us… We’re dying. We must fly!
I saw the mural again, flashing through my mind. No… not the mural, but the journey that it depicted. Flying north, into the cold places. Eating and growing, changing from eater to flier, mating and dying. The new generation continuing the great journey, led by vital, primordial instinct. South to north, north to south and back again. The endless journey of life. But here, trapped in the darkness, they were dying.
These were the Whispers. The flutterbies. That name wasn’t quite right, I sensed, but it was close enough. I felt it as hundreds of wings brushed my skin. I raised my eyes to the column. The flutterbies that had come to me were only a tiny fraction of the ones contained inside the Stormsphere. Thousands more covered the column like the salt crusted along the hem of Kiyu’s cloak. Many of the flutterbies were too small, some with too many legs or too few, pale orange or gray stripes and bands across their wings in fading memory of their once-vibrant colors. Some flutterbies flapped their wings or crawled awkwardly along the curving surface. But more of them did not move. Dead.
I took another faltering step forward and heard their tiny bodies crunching beneath my boots. Only one in ten still fluttered their pale, weak wings. When I breathed, I thought I could smell sunlight and nectar.
“Can… can you hear me?” I asked.
Yes. We hear you. Hear us. Help us… Release us!
“How?”
The flutterbies crawled over my skin. One of them tickled my cheek with stunted white wings. They didn’t know. They had only a vague understanding of the Stormsphere that was their home, their prison. This thing was a human creation.
They built this place to protect themselves. The thoughts came in strange, overlapping bursts. Only some of them were in words. The Stormsphere had always been for protection, but from other humans, not the storms. The storms came later. Humans were afraid of each other.
“They still are,” I said.
I circled the pillar slowly. I tried not to step on any of the dead flutterbies, but it was impossible. They covered everything. There were bowls, too, on the walkway and crowded onto every horizontal surface of the flickering white column. Flutterbies crawled along the edges, occasionally falling down into the nectar inside. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how they were meant to live.
This wasn’t how anything was meant to live.
I stopped to inspect a shape molded into the side of the floating pillar. I waved my hand gently, scattering the still-living flutterbies. Some flew away to find other perches on the column, several landing on my shoulders or the brim of Zach’s hat.
A person…! I jerked a startled step away before realizing that it wasn’t an actual human, just a depression in the column shaped like one. I would have fit quite snugly inside. Reluctantly, I drew closer once more and delicately swept away the layer of dead, brittle white flutterbies. The surface beneath them was a shiny pale gray set with what looked like copper dots all along the centerline and limbs of the human-shaped hollow. There were more of them around the head, like some kind of helmet or crown.
“What’s this?” I asked. I felt strange just talking to the whole communing swarm of colorless insects, so I addressed one of the larger flutterbies perched on the back of my left hand.
This place, this… machine… it was meant for the humans to use. Not for us.
“Why? What the hell is all of this for?”
I saw the answer in the flutterbies’ shared mind, in our communion. There was a war. There was always war. The world burned. The Wrath not of God, but of men. Psychics died. I wondered if they died in communion, like the elders of Lago Warren.
The entire world burned, cities consumed by white-hot fire and men by engineered fevers. Even afterward, frightened humans executed their own psychics, the flutterbies thought. I thought. We remembered it together.
Their own psychics. And the Gardeners — keepers of the old science and the old prejudices — kept right on killing dreameaters generations later. I touched one of the copper nodes. This machine was built for human psychics.
There was no one left to operate these ancient machines, to put inside the cocoon. The… sphere. So humans roamed. They followed us. But then they caught us in nets and sealed us here in the dark.
I dropped my gaze to the flutterbies, salt-white and flaking beneath my bootheels. They were insects with short life cycles, even if their endless communion created an unbroken chain of memory. Their eggs hatched into tiny, psychic caterpillars that grew up into psychic flutterbies. Humans followed them in their journey until the Gardeners got tired of it all and captured the flutterbies in the Stormspheres.
“You were powerful enough to push back the storms even before the Gardeners imprisoned you here,” I told the white flutterby on my hand. “Can’t you just… bust out?”
The darkness resists us. It is a strong cocoon.
The thought felt slightly petulant and I couldn’t help smiling a little. A cocoon…? So the great black sphere wasn’t a part of the old machine. It was some kind of shield to protect the pillar during the ancient wars. And it did the job well, but now Thorn and the Gardeners had turned protection into a prison.
“There have to be controls for it somewhere around here,” I said. “Where are they?”
On my hand, the flutterby’s pale, mismatched wings drooped and I thought it might be embarrassed. The flight didn’t know. They didn’t understand human machines much more than they did human war. That made sense, I supposed. If they did, why would they need me to free them?
Something white drifted across my vision. A flutterby that had been perched on my hat was falling, wings beating slowly, weakly. I caught it in cupped hands. It lay on its back. I prodded it carefully over onto six tiny feet, but the flutterby only managed to crawl a few more inches and then went still in my hand.
Tears stung my eyes. The dead flutterby was just one of thousands, like the ones I crushed underfoot with every step. But they were small, gentle things. Dreameaters, certainly, but ones who had never hurt anyone, only protected humanity even after we imprisoned them in the Stormspheres. Powerful as their psionics were, surely the flutterbies could have threatened the Gardeners or held the Whisperward hostage to force their freedom. But I could feel their thoughts mingled with mine. Violence had never even occurred to the flutterbies.
All they wanted was to fly.
I didn’t know how much time was left. The flutterbies were a tiny fraction of their former strength and I had no idea what was going on outside the sphere. How long did I have before Greenguard stormed in, sacred taboo giving way before violent necessity?
I searched all around the upper level of the column of white-covered machinery. There were more human-shaped alcoves for the original psychic operators, a half dozen of them up and down the length of the column. But nothing helpful in opening the spherical black shield. I climbed down a ladder, cringing as I smashed more dead flutterbies into ashy dust. I cleared off another panel, but there were no screens or switches or levers. I found one slightly recessed button, but there was no label or anything else. Now what?
I remembered the Halo and its single button. The whole thing was automated, the halo-gram its only interface. I held my breath and pressed the button on the column. The plastic panel began to glow and words appeared in the air, then vanished, replaced by the floating image of an eagle with a shield clasped in its claws. There were stripes and stars on the shield, shining in red and blue. Then the eagle vanished and I was staring at a detailed halo-gram of the Stormsphere. The image of the huge sphere was a faintly pulsing purple-blue.
Now if only I could… I reached out and touched the indigo shimmer and lines of text flashed into glowing life:
PDC barrier is currently engaged: 89% integrity
> System maintenance
> Diagnostics
> Disengage barrier
I slid my fingers through the third option. The short list disappeared, replaced by more text.
The PDC barrier has been engaged for the protection of all personnel and assets
Please confirm authorization before opening
Something slid out of the shiny, ancient pillar of machinery, a black bar with a slot down the middle. There were no red or green lights, but it looked like the same kind of lock as the one on the Door. I guess the long-dead humans didn’t want some floor sweeper opening the shield and exposing their precious machine to enemy dreameaters. I just hoped that Kiyu’s key was the right kind. It had gotten me this far…
I slid the white card through the slot and the halo-gram words changed.
Authorization confirmed
A deep hum started somewhere under the skin of the Stormsphere. It grew louder and crested into a squeal of metal and the growl of machinery. A line split the darkness above me and for the first time in centuries, the two halves of the Stormsphere ground open like a waking eye. Storm-shrouded sunlight flooded into the sphere and I threw my hands up, blinded.
Freedom. Fly. Fly!
All around me, the flutterbies spread their wings, basking in the first sunlight they had ever known. One by one, and then in hundreds and thousands, they began to beat their ashen wings. Some couldn’t fly at all and others managed only a few wobbling flaps before falling once more, but the rest rose up into the air. The Whispers were a roar in my ears as the flutterbies flew off my hat, my clothes, my skin. They were a cloud of white against the darkness, spiraling up into the stormy sky. They were so delicate and fragile, but the black clouds overhead parted before them, leaving only pale sky above.
Something fluttered back down to perch lightly on the tip of my nose. I wondered if it was the same flutterby I had been talking to, but I couldn’t be sure. I had to cross my eyes to keep the little thing in focus.
Its gentle thoughts brushed mine, full of questions and answers and gratitude. I closed my eyes and stood there for a long moment, communing with the flutterbies.
Finally, the last little white shape spread its wings, flew off of my nose, and joined the rest of the flight. They circled over the Stormsphere once and then flew north.
“Julia!” called a voice.
I stood in a deep bowl in the earth, the upper half of the Stormsphere peeled open and exposed. The white column floated in the center, still and silent now. Kiyu skidded over the edge of the open sphere and down onto a walkway. Blood ran from her nose and one of her ears, as well as a dozen other wounds. The veins in her left eye had burst, turning it bright red.
“Julia!” Kiyu cried again. “Are you alright?”
“I’m here,” I shouted.
I crossed the bridge to her and wrapped my arms around her. Kiyu kissed me and I thought of flutterby wings. Then we looked together up into the clear white sky.
“What were they?” she asked.
“Very forgiving,” I said.
