Cloud Country Read online

  A sound like molded air, and a glimmer in the distance that grew quickly into some sort of flying boat. It pulled alongside the huddle of men bearing her stretcher, and Saru saw it was a flying carpet, decorated with a maze of geometric designs. A mob of beautiful people sprawled across the carpet, laughing and drinking from golden cups, and, in the center of the carpet, on a throne of rose gold, lounged the most beautiful woman Saru had ever seen. Her skin was black pearl, smooth and shining, body lithe, and a face of perfect mathematical symmetry. Her hair tossed and flowed and shifted hue from gold to crimson in adaptation to the motions of her head, so there was never a wandering strand or a flawed angle. Her eyes too shifted from crystal blue to green, and also the color and fullness of her lips, which wore a smile that showed everything in this world was hers to command or disdain.

  “So,” the woman spoke, in a voice of honey and wine. “This is the source of our commotion. Bring it closer.”

  The men obeyed, so quickly it was like their own bodies were extensions of the woman’s, tied by reins of invisible nerves. They lifted Saru up with a bump, arms extended straight overhead, kneeling so that Saru was eye level with the woman in the throne.

  “Hmmm…” the woman mused, a dubious note. “What does our consigliere think? Shall it be kept?”

  A man in a plain caji suit stood behind the throne. His face was pretty, and strange in a way that was familiar. His eyes sought Saru’s and lingered, and it seemed to her they stayed that way for a very long time, and that words were passing between them, sliding like drops of water down a thread of spider web.

  “Yes, mistress,” he said at last. “This one will prove…entertaining.”

  “Excellent!” the woman clapped in delight. “Entertainment! This place is so dreary. Have it mended. Then bring it to my chambers for presentation. The fools must fetch a carpet. If it expires they will be whipped.”

  She tossed a hand in the air and the carpet sped away.

  Now the stretcher-bearers treated Saru like a treasured vase. Another carpet sped their way, and paused, hovering, next to them. This carpet was not nearly as fine, and Saru could see from her tilted-world vantage that underneath were rows of white-glow circles the size of coasters. They were gravity mirrors, each more expensive than her Cadillac, more expensive than any car she could imagine—though her imagination was broken from the fall and the bizarreness of her surroundings, and from never having been that great to begin with. The men laid her on the carpet with soft hands, and the bristles nipped her skin, and the world became a blur as they flew. Glimpses of more orchards and gazebos, hedge mazes and sporting arenas, and she was sure she saw a herd of unicorns galloping in the distance through bosomy hills, or maybe it was the tugging of dreams against her pain-sapped consciousness.

  It was going dark when they reached the palace, and also the coast, speeding down a stone pier that extended far into the ocean. Waves crashed against the pillars, and lapped at statues of goat men, and women with the heads of dogs, and women holding snakes and apples, and other fantasy. The water as far as Saru could see was clear and not black with chemicals or choked with the vomitus algae of the lakes she knew, and there was so much of it, disappearing to infinity. She had seen oceans before, knew what they looked like from the feeds, but to be near one and to see it with her eyes, her real eyes, and to feel the weight of it around her in the air, and the spray, mist across her skin, and the smell of salt—it brought an odd, familiar sensation that a part of her had lived here once and called it home. The sun was a wavering orange, hanging above the waves, and it left a stain on the water. In that shimmering light she saw life and motion, and the motion formed a pattern that was almost words. It was like the song of the UausuaU, but it spoke of the Earth itself, and of cold nights, and snug burrows, and many living things all part of one another in some way large or small.

  A hundred alabaster rectangles rose before them, stacked seemingly at random, like a pile of shoeboxes, no visible supports other than the hairpin pylons of the foundation, lifting the whole display above the waves. Coming closer she saw that the boxes were lined with darkly tinted windows, entire walls of windows glimmering with the light of the dying sun, and above it all a flower-stem tower, petals in the clouds, casting a gentle sweep of electricity in heartbeats across the sky, flickering back the smog and dust and pollution of the world. A cloud shear larger than the one on the Vericast tower, large enough to cover Philadelphia, or even more—the whole of this one woman’s private land.

  They flew into a hangar, though with marble steps and chandeliers, and shiny wooden walls. Carpets came and went, fancy carpets filled with beautiful revelers, and simple throw rugs with the uniformed, grim-faced enforcers. Her carpet parked in a row of similar carpets, and Saru hiccup-chuckled to herself at the white lines of the parking space, and the lousy job her captors had done settling between them. They carried her through a side door, away from the bustle of the hangar, though still with many servants running to and from, and she saw other uniforms for other duties, and one man in a floppy chef’s hat. It was not so decorated in the servants’ corridors, but it was clean and carpeted, and as nice as the nicest hotel Saru had ever paid to stay in.

  Down the halls through many twists and turns they went, and doors that opened at waving hands—security clearance embedded, she supposed, within the skin, or eyes, or most likely in the brands that all the servants wore, the ruts of their allowed passage spelled out in certain detail. The room where they laid her down was a hospital of sorts, quiet, with dim lights and gentle beepings, low ceilings like a parking garage, and with the same, stark cement for a floor. She was flopped onto a bed with wheels, and then rolled to a tank like a furnace with green bubbles for flames, and many pipes and coils like roots spreading out into the shadows behind. There were other tanks like this one, many of them, and she saw bodies floating in them, eerie, sleeping forms, bobbing gently, with a variety of wounds sealing up before her eyes. By far the most common injury was the red trench of a whip lash, the labial flaps of torn skin drawn and stitched whole by metal shrimp crawling across the bodies, jaws lapping at the wounds. The sight filled Saru with dread.

  There were other machines too, furnaces for real, half circles of red and yellow along the wall, and they ate bodies by the dozens, the dead and failed servants, recycled into heat. Hunched figures in white cloaks stalked the hospital, their faces covered so thoroughly with implants they looked themselves like metal shrimp or elzi. They hovered over the wounded and dead, probing with laser scalpels and syringes, and tickling sensors, ushering some bodies to the furnace, some to the tank, and others to unmarked doors that let out gusts of muffled screams when opened. Saru saw up close the skin of the men that bore her, and that their every hair was raised, their flesh in anxious bumps.

  The men helped one of the twisted doctors cram her into an empty tank, and the door closed. Her heart roared out in panic and a scream dribbled up from her tattered lungs. There was no air in the tank, and through the glass the world was warped, and the nightmare of the human creatures outside was magnified a thousandfold. Liquid squirted from tubes in the bottom, thick and oily like shampoo, and cold and tingly like mouthwash, and in every way unpleasant. Saru rocked herself as she could to avoid it. The liquid came and came, gushing, and gelling, and rising, up around her neck, her lower parts numbing against its touch, feeling it ooze into her cracks and pores and openings. It rose above her tilted-back, chin-up head, and battered its way into her mouth and down the tunnels of her nose and throat, into her belly and lungs, writhing through her guts so that it hugged her both inside and out. The numbness drew through her skin and into her muscles and bones and sheltered organs, and one by one the pieces of her body disappeared to any sensation, like she was being carved and swallowed by nothingness. She saw the metal shrimp swimming towards her in swarms, crawling across her skin and digging inside with the needles of their many legs, so their heads could bury deep and feast upon her bones. Then the nothin
gness reached her head and closed around it, and she was gone.

  *

  Saru awoke on one of the stretcher beds, a sudden, electric-shock wakefulness. She gasped, sucking down the dank air with the greed of the nearly drowned, and then leapt to her feet, crouched and ready to fight. Another electric shock, emanating in fiery waves from her thigh, wobbling her knees and then dropping her to the floor. She saw then the burn on her thigh, the melted-flesh circle of the brand that all the interns wore, the circle H and the source of the electric pains. She howled and leapt from her crouch at the nearest doctor, and the pain raced up to her brain, where it echoed like a tolling bell and grew and grew, so that her vision shook with its vibrations, and her legs spasmed like skewered insects, and the blackness filled her head again, her few seconds of consciousness swallowed by pain.

  2. Captive Feedback

  This time Saru awoke in a different room, a small room all to her own, with bright colors on the wall, in a bed that was by far the most comfortable she had ever known. She did not leap to her feet in rage, but instead studied her surroundings, and her body, which had changed. Slowly the idea came that she was whole, no cuts or broken bones, and even better than she had been before. All the scars from so many ancient slashes and brawls and trips and tumbles onto broken bottles of rum had grown into pale lines, barely visible against her skin, which seemed smoother and less freckled. Her nipple had grown back too, and it seemed her breasts were more alert. Her hair was longer than she had ever worn it, a rich, subtle red that was no product of dye or her own genes.

  Saru stretched and felt the quiver of muscles bent to work, and it felt better than she could have ever imagined, a slow contentment, cat-like from neck to navel, to heel and toe. She stretched for hours, maybe, and then drew back the luxurious white sheets and stood. A robe hung on a peg on the wall, one of the brightly colored robes of the pretty people. She put it on and shivered at the comfort, admiring herself in the full-body mirror mounted next to the peg. The fabric was scant, revealing the brand on her thigh, but it warmed her and felt as good as the embrace of the feather bed. A pair of the fancy sandals sat under the mirror and she slid them on. They felt like tiny clouds.

  The door opened and the strange, pretty man from the flying carpet walked in. He stared at Saru, eyes going straight for hers, not even a glance at her tits or thighs or the tease of her short-ass robe. That told her all she needed to know.

  “You’re Gaesporan,” she said. Her second guess was robot.

  “Yes,” he said, and his voice confirmed it, a velvety, not-quite monotone, matching the clockwork rising of his chest and blinks. He studied her, not like other men with the hope of wetting their cocks, or like the angel men who had judged her like a piece of farm equipment. His eyes were distant to all that, not really caring about her body or her face, but the movements she made, and the way she stood, and the angle at which she held her chin.

  “You are Saru Solan,” he said.

  Saru stepped backwards in lazy, ballet steps, and grabbed a handful of sheet, tearing it with a tug.

  “Sorry, I don’t know who that is,” she said, stalling. She smiled, a movie-star smile, wide and plastic and empty of humor. Her hands worked at the sheet, tearing and wrapping it tight around her forearm, and wrist, and palm, layer after layer so it was almost a cast. Yeah, that’ll do.

  The Gaesporan watched, expressionless, and she realized that for a man, a creature like him with chump change in the way of emotion, this was damn near close to nervousness. He didn’t know what to do—didn’t have all the answers, for once. Yeah, how do you like it, asshole? How do you like being kept in the dark all the time, the big dicks upstairs playing with your life on a string? It’s not fun, is it?

  He seemed to make a decision, but there was a slowness to his words—not deliberation—more like he was reluctant, hedging his bets. And she realized too that these guys sucked at taking risks and making moves in the dark, and she could see in her own dislike of them the shared dislike of the Blue God.

  “I would like to take you from here,” the Gaesporan said, and Saru snorted at the “would like.” She was in a real shit position, but something had him scared, and he wasn’t giving orders just yet. “This place is not safe,” he continued.

  “Sorry,” Saru said, making her smile as wide and dumb as possible. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” And where will you take me, eh? Somewhere ‘safe’? Back to your boss? Back to get debriefed and disappeared? Back to stand trial for blowing up half of Philadelphia? Pass.

  “There is a complication,” the Gaesporan said. “You came over the wall. By law you are now an intern, and the property of the Hathaway family.”

  “I’m not anybody’s ‘property.’”

  “Legally—”

  Saru slammed her wrapped arm into the mirror. It shattered and the shards fell around them, springing up and biting her bare legs. The Gaesporan threw up his arm to shield his face and leapt away—the first awkward motion she’d ever seen one of them make. Then he straightened himself and looked down at his bare feet, cut and bloodied, spreading a Merlot stain across the floor. Saru fished for a right-sized shard of glass and then sat cross-legged on the bed. She tossed a pillow to the Gaesporan so he could staunch the blood—there, I’m a merciful God—but the pillow just bounced off his head and fell to the floor.

  Saru tore off another few strands of sheet and braided them tight. She bit down on the braid, tucking back her tongue, and then looked down at the H brand on her thigh. Okay, you can do this. Deep breath. And again. Okay. With a quick—don’t think about it!—motion she stabbed the shard of glass down and forward under the skin, screaming and biting on the braid. The Gaesporan made a noise, maybe it was words, maybe it was even a shout, and she screamed more and worked the glass in circle. With a final scream she jerked out the glass and ripped away the branded circle of skin like it was a giant scab. She fell back on the bed, soaked in sweat, clamping the remaining sheet to the wound, the blood soaking through, more sheet, more blood, and she let out a gasping laugh liked she’d just been fucked senseless. Another scream, bit-off, spitting out the braid, tears in her eyes, a, aha, aha, ha, oh God the pain! She had nothing, no drugs or booze or analgesic implants, no Quick-e-Set or instant sutures. Oh fuck, oh fuck, the pain!

  At last she got enough sheet on the wound so it didn’t become bloody-tissue wet, and the heaving in her chest slowed and slowed, and the pain resigned itself to piercing convulsions up and down her leg, and a cold, sick pit in her stomach. Not bad. The Gaesporan was looking at her horrified—real, true, human emotion on his face like he’d been shocked down into flesh and blood. Welcome, welcome to the club. In his humanity, he looked young, very young, almost a kid in a too-big suit. She tossed him the other pillow, and felt something that might have been sympathy or gas.

  “Your feet, your feet,” she gasped.

  He gaped, and then grabbed at the pillow and stepped onto it, which made him look even more like a kid. Don’t touch the floor, the floor is lava!

  The door opened and a guard poked his head in—his turn to gape. He looked from the kid standing on a pillow to the woman having the mother of all periods and his lips wobbled in failed attempts before he managed, “Is everythi—”

  “Leave us!” the Gaesporan bellowed, part menace, part kid faking a dad voice. The guard was gone, door slammed, glad to not have to have anything to do with the situation. Saru tried to laugh but it came out a gasp. With more gasps and groans and a few Jesus-Fucking-Christs! she sat up and tied the last of the sheet tight against the wound. A red dot appeared but it didn’t spread, and then she wobbled over the side of the bed and limped to the door.

  “Where are you going?” the Gaesporan asked. He tried to step after her but his foot winced back against the glass on the floor, and he fell onto his ass, letting out an oomph. Saru watched this, soaking in the triumph. So much bullshit, magical lights and death rays, people dying and coming back to life, big pi
ts of bodies singing choir together—it was nice to see one of these jerks act human for a change. She yanked open the door, pleasantly surprised that it did indeed open, and then shambled down the hall, smoothing out her limp, so it traveled like a wrinkle up her skin to rest in the grit of her jaw. There were no cries from the Gaesporan for guards, and no one ran after her or grabbed her arm, or, hell, even seemed to notice her at all.

  The plan—more of a notion, really—was to limp her ass to the hangar, steal a carpet, jet over the wall, and fly like hell. The problem—problem one of hundreds she could already see emerging—was that her plan was incredibly stupid. She had no idea where she was going and none of the doors were marked. And why would they be? Everyone in the estate was networked, that much was clear from the brands, and with their implants they had maps and signs and autopilot AIs that would take them where they needed to go with a thought. And without so much as a Net feed herself she couldn’t hijack their access or even see what they saw. She was trapped, trapped in the physical world, with the primitive toolbox of her ape brain.

  Eventually—guided by a tracing hand and the dodging of crowds—Saru found herself in a wing that must have been for the residents themselves. She’d followed a gaggle of laughing interns, ducking through the door with them and then losing them at the first chance. Now she roamed hallways that were wide enough to drive down, and they were deserted. The carpet was a lush crimson, with tangled depictions of forests and fruits. It covered caramel marble that rose in carvings two feet up the wall and transformed without a seam into dark wood of equal extravagance. Light came from chandeliers, church-height above, with wrought faces of curly-haired babies and golden overlays, so the light came out in patterns like aristocratic disco balls. Paintings covered the walls, old paintings, portraits(?) of distinguished men and women in dresses and suits, beautiful and proud, and going backwards in time through what Saru supposed were the most fashionable clothes and skin colors of their ages. Eventually the men went from caji suits to ancient choke-ties and blazers, and the women wore plain dresses with no threaded electronics or cutouts for their nipples, and they both wore pale and boring skin.