Cloud Country Read online

  Now the sky was nearly black, and they tripped and banged against things that filled Saru with hope and dread as the plane grew nearer—and also the danger of impaling herself on a spike or breaking her toes on a cinderblock. They raced and ignored the pain of their cuts old and new, the scraping of their feet, the banging of their shins against drums and bricks and piles of old beams, whipped forward by the booming laughter of thunder above, and the wind cackling at their backs.

  They reached the plane, John diving in the open door, Saru a second behind, shoving his cheeks in over to the pilot’s side, slamming (slow-gliding) the door behind her. It was quiet in the plane, the wind a whistle outside, the thunder just a groan. The wind had dragged in about a foot of sand. John slapped at the controls, and Saru wondered if the plane could even take off in these conditions. Her question was answered in seconds, as the controls hummed to life, the walls went invisible, and the junkyard wobbled away.

  Saru gripped the edge of her seat, sucking in breaths. A far-off splotch of lightning spread across the sky, illuminating the clouds, slicing towards them. The walls of the plane dimmed and then went black, and still the lightning was visible. With a crackle and a spark, the walls snapped back into visibility, sensors overloaded by the light, and Saru was staring at the lightning through the windshield. John seemed to be in shock or brain dead or something. He leaned on the control column, keeping their plane in circles, so even at its leisurely pace the lightning crept closer.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Saru yelled, but John didn’t seem to hear. Snarling, she shoved him aside and grabbed the control column herself. Fuck! She yanked the control column hard to the right, and the plane jolted away from the storm. She slammed the throttle, so the ground blurred, and the lightning shrank to prickles in the rear-view camera.

  “You done feeling sorry for yourself?” Saru asked John. His head was buried in his hands, body tucked into a ball. “You want to take over or switch places? Hello?” She poked him and then punched him in the arm. Reluctantly he took the controls. He pressed a few buttons and the controls disappeared completely. The plane leveled out and he shriveled into sulking again.

  Saru stared at John in disgust for a few minutes and then followed his lead. She rested her head on the dashboard and let her stomach settle. Her body was still doing strange things, her skin hot and then cold, her organs wandering around and jiggling at the slightest movement. She couldn’t touch anything without sensations and flashes of memories that didn’t seem to belong to her. Even the touch of her ass against the leather was causing a parade of images—tigers in domed preserves, laser-shot and skinned by hand, their skins hung up and tanned, and bent around the shape of a seat.

  Saru stared out the window at the gathering dark. A smattering of pale stars shone across the sky; they made her think of freckles. Was it still the same night? No, it was a new night. They had been lying in the desert a whole day. Or had it been more time? Multiple days, or weeks, spent with (or inside of) Tess? It was too hot, suddenly, the plane was too small. She pressed her hand against the window and then smacked it. There. She needed to be there. Outside. Anywhere. It was too hot in here, too small, too suffocating. There was a pressure in her chest, an urge to cry, a knifepoint of despair worming its way to her heart. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. But she could. The stars were taunting her, leering with mean, playground faces.

  Beeping filled the cockpit, shrill, demanding, and the wooden dashboard panel snapped back. Displays winked into existence, far more than had been there before, showing numbers and readings, outside camera views, and flashing red lights. John sprang to life and attacked the controls. The flashing stopped, and the beeping, but the instruments still glared their warnings. A blip had appeared on what Saru knew from the feeds to be radar, and the blip was big, bigger than what she thought was reasonable, taking up half of the display. One of the other displays blinked and thousands of lights appeared across it forming a pattern—stars or…she connected the dots in her brain and saw the shape. It was a ship, or a plane, or a castle in the sky, huge and getting bigger as it neared.

  “The autopilot,” John whispered. He gave Saru a look of horror. “I wasn’t thinking. I put on the autopilot. It locked onto the location the Hathaway Security message was broadcasting and—”

  “It’s okay,” Saru said, through grit teeth. “Just get us the fuck out of here.”

  John jerked the control column. The stars became rays as the plane spun around, and skipped away at what Saru guessed was the speed of light. The force pressed her into her chair. She felt her skin stretch back, the blood draining to her back, her thoughts pressed back, everything in her body trying to get as far back as possible. The giant plane that seemed to be the cause of all this shit was shrinking with distance, and that would be a victory if the flight weren’t killing her. There was too much blood crowding in her head, it was going to pop like a tomato, brains all over the window, what a mess to clean.

  Her hands smacked at John but had no power, her arms flopping like socks and sliding to dangle at her side—not enough blood maybe? It was all in her head. How did arms work anyway? It was getting harder to see, a blackness snaking around her periphery, slicing away inches of vision, and what remained was wavy and watery.

  Saru swiveled her head to the side, a motion like rolling a great stone with all her might, where a display was demanding attention. It showed a plane that looked like a crow with upturned wings, and lots of little barrels and dicks that could only be guns and missiles. A fighter, she guessed, a warplane, chasing them. Could they outrun it? Could they even go any faster without turning themselves to soup? The view of the pursuing fighter switched. She saw some sort of automatic filter being applied to the image, and then a yellow beam flared from the fighter’s nose.

  Their plane bucked and the lights flickered. A laser? Was the fighter going to blow them up? She wanted to laugh at this but she couldn’t get the air out of her lungs. Of all the ways to die, shot down in a plane had never made her list of likely candidates. Oh man, should’ve saved some of that champagne, could’ve crashed this bitch in style. We coulda held hands and sung a song!

  The yellow beam flared from the fighter again, and their plane lights blinked out. Saru felt a tickly lightness in her groin that was almost a sex pleasure, as the plane slowed and slowed and sloooowed. The lights came back on, dimly, and the plane hovered. All the controls were black and dead. John was stabbing at them frantically.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” he was yelling.

  “What is?” Saru managed. Her head pounded, nausea rushing with the blood around her guts, climbing the ladder of her spine and throat. How was John not pudding? It was training or something, that control he and his friends had over their bodies. Or maybe he was just tougher.

  “It is a hacking beam,” John said. “The fighter has control of our plane.”

  “What do we do?” Saru asked. “We do wedowedo,” she repeated for no reason.

  It was calm for a moment, floating there, bobbing in the sky, and then the plane began to move, drifting back in the direction they’d come. The plane swiveled around and she saw what looked like a city skyline perched on the horizon, lights in neat up-and-down rows like skyscrapers, blue and white and yellow and red carving rectangles and circles and stubby wings out of the darkness. Lines and highways of lights branched out like the spiral arms of a galaxy, moving in slow procession in and out of the vessel, and as they neared Saru saw these parading lights were other planes, corvettes and yachts and sedans, and even warships, all caught and hijacked and fed to the great beast in the clouds—a Hathaway Security aircraft carrier.

  A clunk rang through their plane, and it dipped with the force of an impact. There was a horrible clanging of stressed metal. Saru grabbed at her jeweled sword and then laughed at herself, knowing it was useless. The radio crackled, and a pleasant female voice came through:

  “Welcome to Hathaway Security’s Sky Defender Service: Keeping the Ski
es Open for Business. You have been selected for a random security screening. For your safety and convenience, please do not resist.”

  The message repeated. Saru gawked at the radio and then tried to shut if off, but none of the buttons worked. The aircraft carrier loomed larger; Saru could make out the curve of its hull disappearing into the clouds, the individual towers rising up from its decks. A face appeared in the window, a metal arachnid face with lots of who-the-hell-knows mandibles. It clamped onto the window with two suckers and brought a drill to the forefront. There was a screech as it bore through the glass, and then a tube shot through the opening, and she heard the hiss of gas.

  “…for your safety and convenience, please do not resist… please do not resist… please do not resist…”

  It smelled sweet, like baking cookies, and…cinnamon? Saru’s head felt woozy, and the blackness began to carve around her periphery again, vision dimming to a wobbly circle.

  “John,” she croaked. “Do somethin’ ya jerk.”

  John was turning into a fish. His eyes were rolling and his lips were flopping between open and pursed. Ha haha ha. Wake up, John! Do I look like that? There were vague thoughts of alarm, wild escape plans, a few regrets, but mostly just a warm and fuzzy feeling, spreading with that lovely hiss of gas. It was so nice, so comfortable, her arms were made of pillows, bright, fluffy-cloud pillows…

  *

  Saru awoke in a jail smaller than others she had known, but it was a jail for sure, no mistaking. There were bars straight up and down, hard walls, harder floors, hard cots, and toilets like thrones for all to see your business. Everything was gray and black and beige and the other forgettable colors of the bureaucratic rainbow. The air felt stale, air that had made its way through other people’s mouths and assholes a thousand times before reaching her own. A hum clamored in her ears, a band-practice stew of engines and machinery, slammed hatches, and boots on metal. John was nowhere to be seen.

  Someone was sobbing, gentle, upper-class sobbing; Saru could tell right away from its daintiness, its disbelief at the existence of misery. She smiled at this, couldn’t help herself. Of all the jails or prisons or tied-up, not-allowed-to-leave places, she’d never found herself in finer company. The prisoners in the other cells were wrapped in luxurious clothes—patterned caji suits and dresses with pearls and ivory and jewels. Their wrists and necks and ears hung with adornments, gold and silver, ruby and diamond, sparkling in the fluorescent glare. Even the techies in their casual slacks and shirts decorated with whatever cute bullshit they thought would get them laid showed wealth—so soft-looking, tightly woven, so many threads. What had John called these people? The hidalgos. The crust of the power pie. The millionaires and billionaires who one way or another could vex or threaten a scion.

  “Hey, asshole!”

  Saru stirred at this, propped herself up on an elbow to watch the show. A man in a dragon-swirl (real silver woven in?) caji suit in the cell across from her had his hands around the bars and his face stuck between them. He was tall and soaked in wealth, with the bearing of a man who always gave orders, and demanded answers, and patronized his underlings with red-faced, bourbon lust.

  “You want to tell me what I’m doing in a cell here? Hey, you, hey, I’m talking to you!”

  A guard wandered into view and Saru sat up, cross-legged, on the cot. The guard wore all black, with pads of armor on his shins and knees and thighs and chest, and a helmet with a black fabric mask that covered all but his eyes. On his chest and back was the bald-eagle emblem of a Hathaway Security contractor. The guard smashed the butt of his rifle into the prisoner’s jutting face, causing a scream, and a spray of red and teeth and bits of tongue. More screams, from the wife and kids. The cell door swung open and the guard whipped out a telescoping combat baton. He strode inside and swung the baton around like he was hacking away at a growth of weeds, more screams and cries and sick, spattered crunching. Then nothing but sobs and moans, and still forms, and barely moving chests, up up, a wheeze, and down, and a pause, and at last up again, to suck in just so many more minutes of life.

  Saru lay down and closed her eyes. It was quiet now, no more sighs of exasperation, no more whispered conversations, no more demanded answers. She could feel the fear, a heavy, low-fog stink, as it wrung out of her fellow prisoners, dripping from their pores, staining their fancy clothes. This was all new to them, the plane people. It was a safe guess these people had always been on top in their worlds, always made the rules, always been clucking and talking down on the shit like her that walked the streets and knew the cops and the security contractors as nothing but bastards and thugs and jackals. These rich fuckers had only ever known the people with the uniforms and guns as servants and protectors. Welcome to the real world, starring you—unimportant, unimpressive, unarmed, and useful mainly for your holes and labor. No one to suck your self-important dicks. No one to listen to how hard you’ve got it. No one to give a shit about you.

  The slurping was annoying her, scratching at her concentration, the syrup sound the bold man’s wife made every time she took a breath. Saru could see her pretty face in her mind’s eye, ruined with the pendulum swings of the baton, smeared skin and crumpled bone, a warp of cuts and bruises, and the schluck slurp schlcuk slurp of almost drowning in her own blood. Saru grit her teeth. Not your problem, honey. Focus! A million plans for escape flashed through her mind, all of them worthless. She’d seduce the guard, steal his gun, find John, and the two of them would fight their way to the flight deck, where they’d what? Steal a plane? They’d tried that one already. Or should they go to the bridge or the cockpit, or whatever this flying fortress used to steer, and point their guns at the captain and make her take them back to Philly? Maybe have her drop them off somewhere? Thanks, and so long! Or should she demand a lawyer—ha! Think! There had to be a way to escape.

  Bribery was out or one of these hidalgo clowns would have done it. In fact—why hadn’t they? Surely if these people owned their own aircraft they had enough green to bribe some contractor. What was preventing it? A brand? A loyalty implant? Brainwashing? She opened an eye halfway and studied the guard, trying to decipher his secret. He was big—no surprise—and he stood funny, leaning forward, stooped. His breath was deep and wheezy, one long, filthy groan, rising and falling. The more Saru observed him, the stranger he seemed, just still, stupid, not pacing or sitting, just standing there. A doppelganger? A temporary clone squirted out for guard duty when the prison was full, half-baked and dumb?

  The guard turned as if he could feel her staring, as if he could see her eye half-open in the shadows of her cell. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She focused on his eyes. They were all pupil, no iris, huge and black amidst a nest of thick, red veins. The skin around them was too wrinkled, too pink, too thick. A body mod? No. A trumman. A half-human. A pig-person: dumb, strong, loyal when trained, and without any of the ethical downsides of a human being. They were cheap at scale, no implants to maintain aside from a tracker and a shock chip, no healthcare, no death benefits, you could pay them in slop. A shiver of disgust ran down her spine. She’d always hated trummans. There was something about the dumbness, about that animal amorality. He/it had gone in and beaten that rich asshole and his family just like a chore, just like a trick that would bring him praise. Shake! Roll over! Kill! There was nothing he couldn’t do, no moral spectrum—torture, rape, murder, cannibalism, all just checkboxes on whatever twisted to-do list his masters programmed.

  Rationally, Saru knew there were worse creatures out there—hell, hadn’t she seen ‘em all at this point? There were people who actually enjoyed those types of things, did them for pleasure, did them just to get off on their own evil. But the thought of those eyes, those dead, dumb eyes coming towards her, of the trumman opening the cell and beating her bloody, the eyes still dumb, forcing himself into her, not comprehending, just obeying…

  The trumman grunted and lumbered towards her. He opened her cell door, and in a flash Saru dart
ed for the opening, hands grabbing at his holster. A fist slammed into the back of her head, and her vision winked out for a second. When her eyes worked again, she was staring at the ceiling. The trumman had replicated—no, there had been two all along, his friend just out of sight. How had she missed his grunting? Rough hands grabbed her, yanking her up, dragging her in a fist-grip of hair. Plastic cuffs snapped around her wrists, and her arms jerked at awkward angles. More kicks landed, up and down across her body, and all she could do was constrict herself, curl up and hide the more sensitive targets. They dragged her out, banging against the bars, past the cells of the other prisoners, hollow-eyed, staring, looking away, sparkle of tears or stain of blood on their faces. The woman with her face caved in lay still. Her husband was shaking, hands shaking, body shaking, cradling her, his hands darting away at the touch of blood.

  The trummans dragged Saru along, bumptity bump, across the tread-plate metal, and the jags added new portals to her tattered robe and skin. They kicked her, and stepped on her wrists and hands as they tumbled in the way of their boots, her blood squirting onto their pant legs, leaving wet bands of rust on the floor. Bump! They dragged her over the threshold of a bulkhead, just a sack of crap, as much a person as cornmeal or potatoes.

  The room was small and bare, a metal coffin, with a metal cross like a multiplication sign. A body dangled from the cross like a leg-spread Christ. It was John. Black rivers of caked blood flowed from the boreholes in his skull.

  “You sons of bitches!” Saru screamed, flailing against the trummans’ hold, more blows falling across her. “Motherfuckers!”

  Two other trummans were arguing with each other, shoving each other, barking unintelligibly. They peeled John off the cross and dragged him away, as Saru’s trummans dragged her forward. John’s head banged against the doorway and flopped to the side, and his bloody eye sockets fell on Saru.