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Chapters (48)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Epigraph
  4. 1. The Dream of the Blue Fox
  5. 1. THE DREAM OF THE BLUE FOX
  6. 2. THE THREE
  7. i.
  8. ii.
  9. iii.
  10. iv.
  11. v.
  12. vi.
  13. vii.
  14. viii.
  15. ix.
  16. x.
  17. xi.
  18. xii.
  19. xiii.
  20. xiv.
  21. xv.
  22. xvi.
  23. xvii.
  24. xviii.
  25. xix.
  26. xx.
  27. 3. Botch Behemoth
  28. 3. BOTCH BEHEMOTH
  29. 4. CAN’T REMEMBER
  30. 5. Leviathan
  31. 5. LEVIATHAN
  32. 6. THE BODY
  33. – 7 –
  34. 7. Corpse
  35. 7. CORPSE
  36. 8. The Dark Bird
  37. 8. THE DARK BIRD
  38. 9. CAN’T FORGET
  39. i.
  40. ii.
  41. iii.
  42. 10. The Dead Astronaut
  43. 10. THE DEAD ASTRONAUT
  44. 0. A Scrap of Paper Found in Chen’s Suit
  45. 0. A SCRAP OF PAPER FOUND IN CHEN’S SUIT
  46. Also by Jeff Vandermeer
  47. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  48. Newsletter Sign-up

Moss, to Chen long before, as they surveilled Charlie X from afar and she had noted Chen’s shiver, the tremor in his step, the approach from the far horizon of his fate: “It will be like snapping pea pods in half. Or husking corn. It will be sharp, intense, invasive. But then the numbness will set in. And you will fade out, and something else will fade in. You will not know this by then, but you will still be there.”

“Where we are weak, we are strong.”

Sad wonder as Chen’s suit filled with writhing green, and because it no longer mattered, pushed the faceplate open and the salamanders dissolved into floating spirals that rose in a column of green smoke. Dissipated into the sky.

Everything was contaminated. Nothing was.

All that would remain of Chen in time was a rain of tiny salamanders. Green, yellow, orange, red, and then black. Then they would come no more.

Always reduced to nothing by the morning, to be taken up by the sky, to rain down once more. Each time removing more toxins from the air, the soil, the water. The penance he had chosen, for it went with his nature as Charlie X had instilled nature in him.

He would rain down upon the City for a hundred years or more. Lifted up and diminished and lifted up again. He would become a part of the landscape in a way that Grayson was incapable of. He would be everlasting.

Grayson had fewer options.

Maybe only one option.

xx.

beneath the stars
beneath the planets

v.1.0 Grayson, limping as she walked, torn at from the storm, numb, lost. As if none of it had happened or all of it had happened at once. The farthest-most point. The most intimate. Had she truly reached it yet? Her eye clicked, whirred with dust, with stress. Heat signals jumbled. Almost useless. Night vision the reason not to tear it from the socket, start over. As if her life pod had crashed in the desert and she was making her way clear of the wreckage. An acrid, terrible smell in her nostrils.

Left arm hanging loose. Bandage across the elbow. Right arm still resolute, holding the gun. She had broken down weeping, twice. Had lain against the cooling sand, unable to move. The second time, she’d opened her pack for water, found Moss’s special supplies. The seeds and sprouting tendrils Grayson had been told to plant so long ago. In the event. Not to bring Moss back but to let the natural part of her live on.

Stared at a promise from so long ago. Destined for some other Grayson. She could not bring herself to see Moss there. Bear false witness. Oracles that misled.