by Sean Platt
Not anymore. Not if Eternity couldn’t see reason due to an infiltration of human emotion. Not if Eternity was willing to expend so much time and so many resources creating living quarters that were so much finer than Divinity’s.
Her hand circled the lamp. It stood on the floor, its neck rising to her shoulder, placed beside a comfortable-looking chair as if Eternity’s surrogate planned to plop itself down for some reading. The lamp had a cord even though its power source was induction. The cord, just for show, was plugged into an outlet that was also just dressing.
She put a second hand on the lamp’s neck.
She hefted it, ripping the cord from the wall.
With the heavy end of the lamp held high, choked up on like the baseball bat so recently under discussion with the problematic Mr. Dempsey, Divinity paused for a second before swinging.
Then she smashed the lamp’s business end through the glass top of a coffee table. She swung it at a painting (Matisse? She wasn’t sure; she’d studied only the human culture that mattered to her function, which just so happened to be what interested her most) and when she did, the lamp’s heavy square base dug its corner through the canvas, ripping it. She pivoted, teeth bared, and took a second to study her crazed reflection in Eternity’s beveled mirror before reducing it to shards.
Her pulse quickened with every assault. Chemicals flooded her surrogate’s brain. Her arms grew momentarily strong, wanting to flex and extend of their own accord. She saw everything with fresh clarity, heart hammering high in her throat, the air so unnecessary to her usual (old) form raking in and out. For a half minute — no more — there was only the delicious pulse of fury. Then it ended as quickly as it began, and Divinity was left heaving great gulps into her lungs, hair askew and eyes all whites in the shattered mirror’s leaning shards.
She dropped the lamp. Then, after a thought, Divinity kicked it aside. Then, because the lamp had won each of its bashing encounters and that didn’t seem fair, she picked it up again and this time swung it with arms, legs, and torso working together into the bare concrete of a hearth around a patently unnecessary fireplace. It snapped more than broke, but she let it fall for good this time, staring at it as if daring it to rise up and challenge her again.
Divinity wanted to run. Something in her told her to leave this place.
Instead, she flopped into a black chair with chrome legs and surveyed the carnage.
Look what you made me do, she thought at no one in particular. The collective wouldn’t hear her. These days it was more natural to not feed into nor draw thoughts from it. Doing so took a small act of mental switching, to light the connection.
This situation was intolerable. She’d come here to argue a point with Eternity, and instead she’d made the point’s tip finer on her own. Either way, difficult choices needed to be made. Perhaps she’d frightened Meyer into giving up his people — his Archetypes that were causing so much worsening from the human end — but there were no guarantees that his mind would even be able to locate them. Even if it could, it wasn’t a certainty that Meyer would tattle. She might have frightened him with the bluff of destroying their planet for good. But on the other hand, Meyer was seeing things clearer and clearer — and he might have seen that threat for the bullshit it was.
Of course they couldn’t simply destroy humanity. The bond had grown too strong. Divinity had checked the stream after Eternity’s return from abducting Carl Nairobi, and knew just how much diving deep and hurting Carl had injured Eternity, too. It’s why Divinity had spoken with Meyer instead of hooking him up to a mind probe. But he was starting to understand things. He might have known why Divinity didn’t do what she could have, and seen it as a weakness.
It was a good thing they’d set their contingency plan into place. Divinity didn’t want to use it any more than Eternity (well, okay, that wasn’t true; right now, she felt a lot like ruining things), but contingencies were there for a reason.
She should find Eternity and discuss moving forward with Plan B.
But, looking around the surrogate storage room, Divinity somehow doubted that Eternity would listen as objectively as she would have had Divinity found her instead of an empty apartment.
Well. They were a collective. Nobody was truly in charge. They did what was best for all, every time. She didn’t need Eternity’s support. Not when Eternity was so focused on primping and decorating and giving herself a human name.
Divinity had her ace in the hole.
She still had the Villain, already working.
CHAPTER 28
The sun was hot. Liza marched on with her shirt off, ancient brassiere showcased as half of the new world’s first bikini. Most of the women here went commando up top, but not Liza. She hadn’t forgotten as others had, so she’d spirited those bras away and kept using them under her shirts, damn the anachronism. Maybe it was more natural to let ’em hang. But she’d been set in her ways and wasn’t about to go hippie now.
She draped her doffed blouse across her shoulders, vacillating between two equally unappealing options: the intense heat of her unfortunately dark clothing or sunburn from exposure. She’d never tanned well. Her hair was light brown but fair and fine, and she had her father’s freckles. She’d survived this place in the shade but now could practically smell herself sizzling like bacon.
Liza stopped again, sloughed sideways in the shade, and gave thanks to a God she didn’t believe in that she’d been zapped to whereverthefuck with a bag still hanging from her shoulder. She still had the half-full bottle of water, plus an unopened one from the cache on the bridge. But on the flip side, she also had no clue where she was. One moment she’d been running around the freighter deck and seeing Reptars everywhere; then the next she’d been in the middle of nowhere with zero landmarks in sight. It was a lot like what had happened earlier, only without the sleepy awakening. This time the memory webs between one place and the next weren’t fuzzy as they’d been when she’d appeared near the monolith after tending her plants. This time, the jump-cut between freighter deck and open desert was instantaneous, as if she’d blinked and been transported like in I Dream of Jeannie.
Well, it almost made sense. Lost time and a sense of dislocation, be it a smooth or snap transition? Either fit. Liza was simply losing her mind.
She screwed the plastic cap off the half-full bottle. She should ration her water given that she didn’t know how far she had to go, but kind of fuck that. So instead she raised the uncapped bottle to a pointy succulent at the edge of her shade hollow and said, “Cheers.” Then she downed it all and tossed the bottle into the sun. If the environmentalists were right, that bottle would last a few thousand years before degrading. Maybe she should stuff a note inside, and leave it for the aliens’ next return.
Liza considered staying put until she starved to death. What would it matter? She was off her gourd. Maybe dying would be fun for her ruined mind. Maybe she’d even lose all the time between now and then, waking up a half skeleton this time, remembering the good old days when she’d had love handles.
But eventually Liza stood — a position that regrettably took her halfway out of the small patch of rock-thrown shade. She raised a hand to her forehead and squinted into the distance. The sun was lower but not low enough to offer any real relief. And maybe that was, finally, a better argument to stay where she was and not set out to gather more skin cancer. But there was urgency beside her apathy, and of the two, the first was stronger.
It’s in the canyon, at the bend, beneath where the sun sets.
What a bunch of bullshit. She didn’t even know what it was. And even if she did — and if she agreed it was worth hauling a bit more ass through the desert to find right now — she had no idea where that wise bit of instructions assumed she was starting from. Head for the setting sun from Place A, and you’ll find Spot B. But if you start a thousand miles north at Place C and do the exact same thing, you’d end up somewhere entirely different. An instruction as helpful as “park under the
moon.”
“This is stupid,” Liza said aloud.
But she walked on anyway. And within a half hour or so, Liza saw a dark slash in the sand ahead. Another fifteen or so minutes showed her, once up a rise, that the slash was a canyon. The sun had been taking its sweet time descending all day and wasn’t moving much faster now, but there was a bend in that dark slash, and Liza’s eye predicted it’d set right at the curve, perfectly on target.
It’s in the canyon.
What was?
But at this point it didn’t matter. Liza hadn’t wanted to be at the monolith, but at least it had given her a signpost. She knew approximately where the village was from the old beached ship, and she’d been with people, even though they’d been people she knew of more than knew — let alone cared about. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few words, but still they’d been humans. Now she was alone. Without any landmarks. She could be a half mile from a known location, or on a different continent. Anything could happen when you kept finding yourself teleported to strange new places and slowly going insane.
“Fine,” Liza said, marching on because there was nowhere else to go. And then she added inside her own head because speaking aloud felt so funny, But you could at least tell me what I’m after.
She didn’t expect a response, mostly because there was no one around and the thought had been confined to her own crazy skull.
But she got one. Clear as day, before internal eyes, Liza saw a familiar-looking backpack — one she’d used as a twentysomething to trek across Europe, saved for no reason through all her years in Roman Sands, and finally dug from hock and packed once she realized the end was finally nigh.
That backpack had disappeared from her home one night not long after they’d settled in at The Clearing, vanished like so many other belongings. The culprit had left valuables in exchange for things of no consequence. It hadn’t made sense.
Liza had always wondered why someone had raided their village in such a specific way. She’d suspected whom — her money was on Stranger and his minions. Because whereas Liza had formed her religion for control, Stranger’s competing religion seemed based on faith. And with faith always came fear.
The image persisted, like a picture burned into an ancient TV.
Why the hell would her old backpack be out here?
And if that’s what she was really after, why did she feel such a burning impetus to recover it from its apparent hiding place right now given that it had been gone for twenty years?
“You suck,” she said to whoever or whatever was inside her head.
Liza walked. The image of her old hiking pack strobed before it faded, unseen hands at her back, shoving Liza toward her puzzling prize.
CHAPTER 29
By the time night descended on the second day of human memory, the small settlement had bunkered itself down in what was, despite all the chaos, upheaval, and death, now feeling like the dawn of a new normal. Clara doubted she’d spend many hours in Kamal’s little village, but another night felt comforting. She had Piper back; she had Kindred back; she had Stranger back … Hell, she even had Logan back, for what that particular loose end was worth. She hadn’t spent half her day in a trance for a while, and for once was getting used to living without the feel of an Astral boot on her neck. It was nice to simply exist after twenty long years of fighting.
Clara turned her head. Logan was spooned behind her, his hand draped over her side. He’d come to comfort her, but as hours passed he’d finally fallen asleep. She supposed the whole thing was okay. Maybe she even liked it, though in truth it was hard to say. In the purest sense, she and Logan had once loved each other — and despite what he’d surely thought, Clara hadn’t stopped loving from her end just as he’d never stopped from his. But the days when her endless work hadn’t been wedged between them were long ago.
Clara slipped out from under Logan’s arm, laying it gently on the hand-woven blanket. She looked back at him, taking a moment to wonder. He’d never stopped being a good man. They hadn’t lost their pasts, but Kamal’s people had. Who had woven that blanket? A filing clerk? An Ember Flats Senate page? What necessities had driven this settlement? And what coincidences were yet to unfold in this carefully crafted drama to surprise them all?
Before leaving the hut, Clara moved to the other pad and checked on Piper. She was asleep like Logan, with a loose lock of dark brown hair spilled across her forehead. With her eyelids shut, her big blue eyes were invisible — charming weapons disarmed, shut now to look inside where demons played.
Light spilled through the cracked door. There was a small plastic-edged travel mirror nearby so she picked it up to look herself over. Her eyes, so far as she could see in the scant light, were no longer puffy or red. Tears, once Peers had confirmed what Clara already knew, had finally come with the night to cut clean tracks through the filth on her face. But there was a basin near the mirror, so Clara used a rag to wipe herself until she was presentable. Then she turned to the door, and the source of light.
A fire burned ahead, low but far from coals. To the right she saw a lump in the open sand: Kindred sleeping. And to the left — exactly the same distance away, in an identical position on the opposite side — was Stranger.
Clara grabbed another government-intern-made blanket from the pile and wrapped it around herself like a shawl to shield the winter chill. She moved forward, watching two heads turn to greet her as the third, across the fire, lifted its chin to watch her approach.
“You’re awake,” said Sadeem.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Your mother?”
“It’s a lot of things. Can you feel the network, Sadeem?”
Peers and Kamal both looked back at Sadeem, but the old man simply shook his head.
“I’ve never really been able to.”
“I’m surprised Kindred and Stranger can sleep. The network itself is becoming brighter and more alive, but every time I closed my eyes, it was like those two were standing right beside me. They’re so bright inside. And they’re …” She frowned, then finally shrugged resignation. “I don’t know. Different somehow.”
“We were talking about that,” said Sadeem. “Come, sit.”
As Clara was deciding where to plant herself, Peers and Kamal both moved aside to widen the space between them.
“Please,” Peers said. “Kamal says he’s forgiven me for assaulting him back in Ember Flats, but I don’t trust him.”
“It was mostly that woman anyway. Jeanine, I think. But yes. I am planning to kill Peers in his sleep. Not because I’m still mad. But, because … you know. To close the circle.”
The stupid jab of humor was, in the dark and quiet, surprisingly rousing. Clara felt her lips turn up despite trying to hold her face serious. Then she sat.
“They do seem different,” Sadeem continued, looking at Peers. “In some very … significant … ways. We think it happened when your mother passed. Based on what Kamal said he learned from Mara Jabari, a similar change happened in the first Titan replica of Meyer when your uncle, Trevor, was killed.”
“What kind of change?”
Peers turned to Clara. “Did Piper tell you how we got here? To where we were when you came over the dune to find us?”
“She was too upset about Mom. She said she’d tell me later.”
“What about Kindred? Stranger? Did they say anything?”
“I haven’t talked much to either of them. I ran up to Kindred when we found you and hugged him. Stranger wouldn’t come to me, so I had to go to him. But it’s like I said: They’re different somehow. They still won’t go near each other — even though when I look inside, it’s like they’re magnets. They’ve always had that attraction on the network, but it’s so much stronger. Now, to resist the pull, it’s like they’ve reached some sort of agreement. If one can’t do something, they both won’t do it. I feel like they want to talk to me. But they can only do it together, and won’t approach each other.”
Clara
looked at Peers. “So how did you get here?”
Peers glanced at Sadeem as if for authorization. Then he said, “We teleported.”
Clara’s mouth opened, then stalled.
“I’m sorry?”
“I know how it sounds. But it happened. Piper, Kindred, Stranger, and that woman from the rectory — Liza Knight — were on the freighter. Astrals were everywhere. They’d been hiding in the shipping containers, guarding something, and we woke them. We were dead for sure. But then all of a sudden we were gone from the freighter and right where you found us.”
“You lost time,” Clara said. “The Astrals did something to you then dropped you off.”
“No. Something happened. We all felt it. I don’t know what happened to Liza, but I’m sure of what happened to the rest of us. You could feel something in the air. Like the charge before a thunderstorm, or static in a thick carpet. There was something on the ship, Clara. Kindred and Stranger were … powering it, maybe. Or powered by it. Stranger said it felt like he suddenly understood that there was no here or there and that he could just sort of step sideways and leave. And, it seems, take the rest of us with him. With them.” Peers emphasized the final word with a glance toward Kindred.
“But teleporting? How is that possible?”
Peers shrugged. “I guess possibility isn’t what it used to be.”
Clara shook her head, at a loss. Apparently the three of them had been discussing absurdities for a while.
“Peers thinks Kindred and Stranger are the King Archetype,” said Sadeem. “Two heads. Maybe the power on the ship can somehow join them. Make new things happen.”
