“You were just going to settle in? Just like that, for as long as you could?”
“I had a Plan B if things went south.” He touched the gun at his side — the first firearm Clara had seen since the New Beginning. She felt herself watching him with sympathy, unable to help it. He laughed.
“Relax. You know the ending of this story. It worked out. I didn’t even see the floods until I was on my boat with the crew of the SS Cubicle beside me.” He nodded to the huts and their unseen occupants. “But I did start going through Mara’s files, because she was always stingy with information and I figured this was my last revenge. She had tons of data on the Astrals. Most of it was Da Vinci Initiate archives — stuff Mara probably never even went through but kept for reference. I plinked around for a while, but at some point during my repeating cycle of time-killing activities — read, make a lap around the room, do five push-ups, stand in front of the mirror and declare a sassy affirmation — I started to wonder why, when your grandfather and the others wanted to leave the city, she insisted on staying. It was a real puzzler. She said it was safer in the bunker than outside, but Mara was the kind of person who always had plans to back up her backups.”
“Was she staying in case I came back?”
“Maybe. You’d have to ask her.”
Clara felt her lips purse. She exhaled. He didn’t know.
“Mara passed away.”
His head bobbed. Apparently it wasn’t unexpected.
“I don’t know if she stayed for you. We thought for a while the Mullah had abducted you for leverage. That little point of confusion led to quite the concussion.” He rubbed his temple absently, like a reflex. “But it had me thinking in circles. Mara either stayed because she thought it was safer inside the city — or for you — or because someone else needed to go.”
“Are you suggesting she stayed behind so that my grandfather and the others could take the sub? There were a bunch of them, weren’t there?”
“Plenty.” Kamal nodded. “Plenty for Mara and me to go with you, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with unconsciousness at the time. But who knows? Maybe only one worked. Maybe if two subs had gone, they would have presented a bigger target for the Astrals and nobody would have survived.”
“Kamal. There’s no way Mara could have known anything like that.”
“I’m sure she didn’t. And I don’t think she had delusions that she did. I’m just saying that one way or another, everything worked out. And so when you ask about whether I believe things happen for a reason? Well, it’s hard to argue with the results. I’m here. As are you. Mara made it, and so did Meyer, based on what you’re saying. So who’s to say it wasn’t all planned that way … somehow?”
Clara turned to the internal vision of her mother and the departed at the end of that long hallway. It sure did feel like Lila’s death had a cosmic reason — but of course she’d feel that way. Invoking faith was just another way of saying the deceased had gone to a better place. Believing the irrational made grieving so much easier.
“Maybe it’s coincidence,” Clara said.
Kamal shifted on the rock, rolling a bit to the side to access his pocket. He reached down, and when his hand opened in front of Clara, there was a polished silver sphere sitting on its palm.
“Do you know what this is? I’ve carried it like a holy token every day of my life here, and still it doesn’t have a scratch. That used to tell me it was something special, like it would make me invincible or bring me luck. But this morning I remembered where it came from. That’s when I rounded everyone up, saddled the horses, and rode ‘quickly to the east, in the direction of the rising sun, to find her.’” He nodded meaningfully toward Clara. “To find you, Clara, just in time.”
Clara picked up the sphere, cradled it in her hand, feeling a quiet buzz from its smooth metal skin.
“Stranger. Stranger gave this to you, didn’t he?”
Kamal shrugged, apparently not knowing the name. “A tall man in jeans and boots. Long, narrow face and hands the size of dinner plates.”
“Why? To save me? But he couldn’t possibly know …” She stopped on her own, shaking her head, lost.
“He told me I needed to tell you something.”
“Tell me what?”
“I don’t know.” He clinked his cup against hers. “Maybe it’s that now, you’re the world’s sassiest aide.”
“It’s just a coincidence, Kamal. It’s luck. It has to be.”
“I don’t think so, Clara.”
“I do.”
“I don’t,” he insisted.
Clara’s shoulders rose and fell. She met his stare. “Why? What makes me so special?”
But Kamal just repeated what he’d said before.
“I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 25
The dark-haired Astral — Divinity, Meyer believed she was most conveniently called, though of course every entity that ran a mothership was called the same damned thing — entered the room. She stood in the white doorway, nearly impossible to tell from the white room other than by a slight difference in illumination. Meyer was sitting, far more coherent than he’d felt earlier, Carl still watching him as if he expected Meyer to go berserk at any moment. The two men hadn’t spoken since Meyer started babbling. Carl seemed to prefer silence over nonsense.
“You,” she said, pointing at Carl. “Go for a walk.”
Carl looked at Meyer as if this might make sense to him. It didn’t. Meyer was more or less himself again, strange transcendental experience aside. For a while it had felt like he was on a medicine man’s trip through the expanded universe, but right now he was only a man with the limited knowledge that came with it. And something was wrong with him — he was finding the Astral attractive, having mood swings like a pregnant woman, oscillating between confused, terrified, and apparently plain old cocky Meyer Dempsey — who’d apparently been in short supply over the past two decades.
The woman sighed. Rolled her eyes. Then stepped aside.
Two Titans entered.
“Don’t make me say please.”
Carl gave Meyer another glance. Meyer shrugged. After another few beats, Carl stood, went to the door, and gave Divinity another long look to be sure she was really asking him to leave their prison — in the company of the Titans, but departing nonetheless — then finally moved past her. Once the trio’s footsteps faded, another two Titans appeared.
She moved to a wall. Pressed a panel. A small door opened, and she dragged out what looked like an ordinary desk chair — all white, of course. Then she turned it around and sat, legs primly crossed, looking up at Meyer until he did the same on one of the benches along the wall, opposite her.
“Needed a prop?” Meyer asked, nodding toward the chair.
“Needed a place to sit.” She raised her eyebrows. “Would you like one?”
“I’ve got a seat.” He tapped the bench. “And there weren’t any more chairs in there anyway.” He looked at the closed compartment, now invisible.
“This wasn’t just sitting in there,” Divinity said. “It made the chair at my request.”
“I didn’t hear you request anything.”
She assessed him, her stare unblinking.
“There are a lot of things we’re able to do that you have yet to figure out.”
Meyer waited for more, but she took her time going on.
“I could ask that compartment to make me a table. Or a refrigerator. Or a baseball bat.”
“You know baseball?”
“We know your game. But why did you leap to that conclusion? Perhaps I needed something I could beat you to death with.”
Another long pause.
“I don’t think you’d have brought me here if you wanted to kill me.”
“I was offering examples. Don’t be so jumpy.”
Meyer shook his head. “What are you? Really.”
“You can call me Divinity.”
“Bullshit. You strike me as human. I know what Di
vinity is like. They’re stiff. Can’t talk for the sticks up their asses. I used to share Kindred’s memories, and he talked to you all the time.”
“Kindred?” She pretended not to understand. Then: “Yes. I remember. The duplicate we sent down to fuck your wife.”
Meyer had his rebuttal ready, but that particular comment took him off guard.
“He seemed to think that—”
“The second duplicate we sent down to fuck your wife, actually. The first was so damaged that at the end, it wanted to fuck your ex-wife, too.”
Meyer’s brow wrinkled. “What are you?”
“Divinity.”
“You don’t talk like they do. You don’t act like they do.”
“Maybe I’ve improved at my job. Perhaps during the past twenty years we’ve had to stay here thanks to your granddaughter, I’ve learned the trick of getting under a man’s skin.”
“Why?”
She shrugged and made a why not pout with her lips. “Why beat you to death with a baseball bat?”
Meyer sat back, unsure where this was headed. Divinity made up the difference, leaning forward, elbows on the knees exposed by her mid-length skirt.
“Let’s cut the shit, as your people say.”
“Okay.”
“You know what you are.”
“I thought we were discussing what you were,” Meyer said.
“Our monitors showed you in here not long ago, babbling as if you were intoxicated. Then you said, ‘You don’t have to kill them. You can outrun them.’”
“So?”
“Were you intoxicated?”
“There’s nothing in here to drink. Or eat. Or use.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Meyer didn’t respond. After a moment, Divinity shook her head and sat back. She walked to a wall and pressed something to open the door. She didn’t say anything to the Titans, but both looked at her as if not hearing correctly, then eventually half shrugged and left the room. The door closed. Divinity pressed something else, and the panel flashed red.
“You can speak freely. We’re alone.”
“Without your guards, what’s to stop me from tackling you and breaking your neck?”
Divinity shrugged as she sat back in her chair. “Nothing, I suppose. But this is just a body. You of all people should understand that the body is only matter, and that the energy lives beyond it.”
“Why would I ‘of all people’ know that?” Meyer’s legs had tensed of their own accord. Without his mind’s permission, Meyer’s body had taken the idea to spring and tackle as a legitimate one. He somehow felt certain that the woman-thing was bluffing — despite her being a puppet for Divinity’s true being, the death of this meaningless body was something she’d fight hard to prevent.
“Who were you talking to when you said, ‘You can outrun them’?”
“Myself.”
“And who was the ‘them’ in that sentence? Who could be outrun? And to where?”
“It didn’t mean anything. I was babbling.”
“I thought we agreed to cut the shit?”
Divinity’s tongue found her cheek. She seemed to consider whether or not to say something else, fingers working in tiny rhythms on her lap, her every nuance perfect. She was barely alien — as good a human as any of them.
“Do you seriously not know what you did?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Another long pause. Divinity was deciding whether or not to give him more without getting something in return. An effortless negotiation that wasn’t a negotiation at all. If he’d been holding out like a poker match, he would have been winning. But here Meyer was clueless.
“Our species does not have a true hierarchy. You see Reptars and Titans and Divinity, and above Divinity you see Eternity, responsible for the largest of our Earthfaring ships. But we are all the same. There is one field of energy, and the bodies are manifestations, like the tallest of underwater mountaintops poking their heads above the sea.”
Meyer didn’t believe that at all. Maybe it had been true when they’d arrived, but this woman was nothing if not an individual.
“Nevertheless, we consolidate our collective decisions within the area that manifests as Divinity — and above that, Eternity. It creates what appears to be a hierarchy, even though it is not.”
“She’s your boss,” Meyer clarified.
Divinity’s lips tightened, then relaxed. Her jaw worked.
“Eternity believes that Earth is a malleable experiment. In short: Whatever happens, happens. Others in the collective have what you might feel is a more literal interpretation: The experiment operates within strict conditions, and any events that outgrow those conditions should be considered anomalies. Our usual protocol with farm planets is to conduct a reset at the end of each epoch so that the next one will not be flawed with the previous epoch’s prejudices. So when, after the extinction and population reset, our Forgetting failed to hold, there was disagreement in what has previously been a harmonious whole. One opinion — that of Eternity — called for us to continue the experiment until we could accomplish a complete Forgetting. And so that is what we have done: we’ve been in orbit this entire time, trying to erase knowledge that Clara somehow keeps restoring as fast as we can blank it.”
“What was the other opinion?” Meyer asked.
“That we should consider the farm a loss, and exterminate the remaining stock.”
Meyer met her gaze, unwilling to show any fear.
Divinity stood and began to walk the room’s perimeter.
“Now that Clara has forced the human collective to backwash into ours, the need for a final decision has become much more urgent.” She shook her head, and a tiny smile found her lips. It wasn’t warm at all. “I’ll just go ahead and say it, Mr. Dempsey — we’ve lost our control of you. There was always a chance we could contain the Lightborn infection, but not anymore. Now it’s spreading. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Earth will need to be declared a loss. All that’s left is for the collective to accept it. And that’s why I’m talking to you now.”
“Okay,” said Meyer, trying and mostly failing to deliver a neutral response. He didn’t like dignifying any of this, but it all rang true. And this was something he wanted — perhaps needed — to know.
Reluctantly, he added, “Why?”
“Because Eternity insists on non-interference, there’s only so much we can do. We can force a Forgetting, but if it fails, we can’t go down there and coach you into a new government with your memories intact. We can set the Mullah as guardians, but because the last epoch’s Mullah turned on us and hid our archive, we cannot let this epoch’s Mullah know where it is. If they do, widespread knowledge of our archive might affect the experiment. And — most pertinent to where we are now — our acceptable level of interference will allow us to wipe you all from existence but will not allow us to leave orbit while Clara’s box is still open.”
“So?”
“She wouldn’t want me talking to you,” Divinity said, now almost whispering. “This right here?” She made a little back and forth gesture with one long finger, indicating their discussion. “It’s ‘muddying the data.’”
Divinity sat. Inched her chair closer. Leaned in.
“But I believe that there’s still a solution and that misunderstandings are getting in the way. If we’re honest with each other, I believe this situation can be salvaged. We won’t have to fly home and incinerate your planet. Your entire species doesn’t have to die … if we can stop pretending we don’t really know what’s happening here.”
“What is happening?”
“Your people are trying to build something that the Mullah believed might stop us. It’s absurd, and impossible — born of the same vain hopes that powered endless science fiction movies that you yourself might have made.”
“You … you know my movies?”
“We know a lot about you. More than you’d believe.” She sat back and crossed
her arms, the topic wordlessly changing. “There’s nothing there for Clara and the others, though. What they’re after is based on a Mullah legend I don’t mind telling you about in the spirit of honesty — of clearing the air to save your species. It goes like this: There are seven key people who represent essential roles in the new society of any epoch. Our Forgetting erases their memories, so those people merely act as pillars during the reset. But some of your people on the planet believe that this time around, with memories intact, those Archetypes will be able to do something more. We’re already collecting them, and there’s a spy in their midst. One they’ll count as a friend, who reports to us.”
“Who?” Meyer said, somehow certain he already knew.
“Your turn.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Yes, you do, Meyer. Even if you don’t think you know it. You’re finding higher states without chemical help to get your body out of the way. You’re projecting.”
“Projecting what?”
“‘You don’t have to kill them. You can outrun them.’ One of our listening posts heard your ‘Kindred’ say that on the surface just after you said it here.”
“I … I didn’t do anything, though.”
“Then Kindred began to see. It’s obvious if you watch the stream, from a Reptar’s point of view. It confuses him, but he sees it just fine.”
“What does he see? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”
“Come on, Meyer. Tell me the truth. The longer they keep fighting, the faster Eternity’s decision will be driven home. I got this bit of human tripe from one of your infomercials: Help me help you.”
“Stop bullshitting. Stop fighting a losing battle like a fool, and tell me the truth!”
Her timbre had risen in the final sentence, and now Divinity was practically panting, shoulders broad, standing, chest heaving, color up.
He looked her over, shaking his head in puzzled amazement.
“What happened to you over the past twenty years? What’s made all of you so damn—”
She slapped the wall. The door slid open. The first Titans were back, just outside, with Carl between them, as if they’d all been waiting.
Resurrection (Alien Invasion Book 7) Page 13
