by Sean Platt
Lila felt the wrap around her body. Was it better to be eaten than held and raped, assuming she’d be dead before the captors realized her gender? She wondered if maybe Jeanine’s grenade solution wasn’t, in the end, the best way to go.
Charlie, beside Jeanine, took the ball and continued the lecture.
“Just as we’d assumed, Peers’s images show that the Astrals have irrigated far outside the old valley. They don’t seem to have bothered to grow palm trees around the pyramids, but they’ve reincorporated them into their urban sprawl. See here, and here. The footprint is mostly Old Giza, but Ember Flats proper stretches well into the previously arid region we’ve classically associated with ancient Egyptian society. The Great Pyramid is here. The Sphinx is here. And this” — he traced his finger in a lazy loop, hitting map markers — “is the Fibonacci spiral. They seem to have centered Ember Flats on the old blueprint from their last visit. You’ll see new development here, here, and here.”
“What really matters to us is this artery.” Jeanine moved her finger to a line at map’s lower corner, leading into Ember Flats. “Faiyum Desert Road.”
“I’ve been on that road,” Cameron said.
“I’m sure it’s changed since you last saw it,” Peers said. “When Aubrey and I came to the city five years ago, the Astrals were using this old stretch as its major supply artery — for anything that the humans insisted on moving without Astral help, I imagine.”
Lila felt herself nod. The same thing had happened in Heaven’s Veil. The Astrals could probably have waved a cosmic magic wand and made the city shape itself to their ideal, but humanity had grown a lot of pride since the old days. In what felt like a gesture of pity, she remembered her father (the man she’d thought at the time was her father, anyway) negotiating human building in addition to all that was being done by shuttles and motherships.
“They were still dealing with a lot of rebel activity at the time,” Peers continued. “So it seemed they’d done massive earthmoving along the sides of the road, a few hundred yards distant, to make it into a valley. The shuttles were able to efficiently patrol the edges from the air to protect the road so that none of the human raiding parties could reach the supply caravans before they could spot them and take them out.”
“But as with everything, the Astrals seemed to have stopped humoring Ember Flats once people quit constantly fighting,” Charlie said. “The city stopped using the roadway. They seem to have abandoned it, probably because shuttles can easily bring whatever they need. It’s fallen into disuse. We watched the road for a while before leaving the Den and didn’t see a single legitimate supply vehicle.”
“Legitimate vehicle?” Piper said, her eyebrows knitting.
Jeanine swept the big map aside and replaced it with a greatly magnified image. Lila saw the same valley roadway, now scattered with what looked like small, out-of-focus black and silver rectangles of various sizes.
“This bit of forgotten road, if you haven’t connected the dots,” she said, “is the stretch known as Hell’s Corridor. It’s the only intact and passable route to Ember Flats that’s not already claimed by one of the clans. Because it was patrolled by superior Astral forces for so long, no one clan was able to claim it.”
“What are all these little rectangles?” Lila asked.
“All of them claiming it.” Jeanine laid several magnifications atop the road valley image, clearly showing the rectangles to be highly modified vehicles, each one as frighteningly armored and armed as their bus. Poking from the tops of the vehicles and surrounding them in loose groups were colored dots that Jeanine seemed to have put on the image for some reason.
“What do the dots indicate?” Piper said, pulling one forward and squinting.
“They don’t indicate anything. You’re looking at people’s heads.” Jeanine turned the image around, seemed to consider something, then returned it.
Lila looked again. All of the colored blobs were more oblong than circular, but they were all sorts of colors: white, blue, orange, red, green, teal, more.
“I almost wish the resolution on the Den’s equipment wasn’t so good,” Jeanine went on. “But it looks like the rumor mill got it entirely right. The clans all shave their heads then paint themselves in their clan’s color. This is as a big dustup was forming, but we clicked through images as it unfolded. When dots of different colors get near each other, they start to disappear. We think it’s the clans killing each other then stealing the bodies for their own … use.”
“Use how?” Clara asked.
Lila took Clara by the shoulders, held her close, and used her eyes to beg Jeanine’s silence.
“Nobody occupies the corridor,” Peers said. “I’ve been watching it the entire time Aubrey and I have been at the Den. They only enter it like this to fight, and nobody enters it on one side without another side heading in. So they keep an eye out, but it’s usually empty. If we’re fast enough, we can maybe squeak through.”
Meyer and Kindred both looked at Jeanine. She shook her head. Lila sensed that a question and answer had silently passed between them. Part of Jeanine’s response seemed to have been, But let’s not mention that.
“We should go around,” said Cameron.
Meyer shook his head. “We can’t. We’ve run all those scenarios. The bus won’t have sure enough traction anywhere but here.”
“Then we leave the bus. We go in on foot.”
Kindred spoke, and Lila knew he was answering as her father’s other mental half. “The scenarios predict far less success if we slow down and offer multiple targets. Some of which are … less equipped than others.” The scenarios. The pair was always running scenarios, and their logical conclusions never seemed to be wrong. He’d looked at Lila and Clara while saying the last. It was insulting but true. Carbine or not, she’d be easily overtaken the minute the cannibals arrived and sent her into a panic.
“Can we get our hands on another shuttle?” Cameron asked, looking at Kindred.
“No. We’re lucky they weren’t in the shuttle I originally commandeered when the collective called it back.”
“Multiple vehicles.”
“We have the best chance of success with a single target.”
“Multiple vehicles could draw pursuers off of the one we most need to get through the Corridor. So they won’t all be on us at once.”
Meyer looked pained and sympathetic at once. “And who goes in the decoy vehicle, Cameron? It can’t be you. So whom do we choose to die?”
“Besides,” Jeanine said, “even assuming we could get more vehicles, which I don’t see how we can, there are plenty of clans watching the valley to overrun two cars, three cars, whatever. Our best shot is with a blitzkrieg run. All eggs in one basket, put the pedal to the metal, and drive like hell.”
Cameron looked at Peers and Aubrey then Charlie. He seemed to decide whether he should say something then finally did. “I thought you said the Astrals wanted us to reach the Ark.”
“That’s only a guess,” Aubrey pointed out. “It’s in no way certain.”
“And there’s no ‘us,’” Peers added. “You’re King Arthur, remember? If anyone is supposed to reach it, it’s you and you alone. But even then it feels far from a guarantee.”
“Because the Astrals can’t control the clans outside Ember Flats and clear us a path?” Cameron shook his head. “I don’t buy that for a second.”
“Because it’s a test,” Charlie said.
All heads turned toward Charlie.
“We’re here to be judged, remember? We open the archive, and we open humanity’s case file. But won’t the way we try tell the Astrals a lot about us? If we don’t make it, they’ve learned something about this group, as representatives who carry the key. But if we don’t make it, do they really care? Maybe someone else will pick up the key and try to open the archive instead. Or maybe the Astrals will render judgment without bothering to have a trial, if that’s the analogy. After all, if a defendant doesn’t show up
to defend himself, he loses by default.”
The bus was quiet. Cameron turned to Lila and Piper with his lips pressed together, his expression grim.
“This is why you have to stay behind,” he said. “This is why it’s stupid for you to come.”
“Maybe,” Peers said. “But then again, if this is all part of a test, might our faith matter to the archive? Maybe it’s interested in which choices we make about life, death — and, not to be trite, but … sticking together until the end.”
Lila crossed her arms over her chest. The gun, on its strap, nestled against her.
“Cameron and Clara are going, so I’m going. If you want me to stay behind, you’ll need to tie me down.”
Piper put an arm around Lila’s shoulders. “Me too.”
Cameron gave what Lila thought was a pointedly sexist sigh as if to say: Women.
“We’ll all be fine,” Piper said. “You’ll see.”
Kindred looked away. So did Meyer.
Clara said, “Not all of us.”
CHAPTER 14
The bus idled at the end of a long road, at the Corridor’s southeast end, where embankments the Astrals had built to shelter the road were barely twin mounds at the sides. Ahead, the terraformed walls grew, offering protection from anyone attempting to overtake a passing convoy from the sides.
Or — for any convoys passing without the benefit of an Astral guard on the raised shoulders — offering an impossible corner.
“You’re sure this is a good idea?” Peers looked over at Jeanine, who was surveying the scene from one of the bus’s pop-tops using pre-Astral-Day binoculars.
“It’s a terrible idea,” she replied.
“Then you’re sure this is the only way.”
“If you want to get to Ember Flats, yes. But that’s a question worth asking: Are we sure we want to? I don’t know about you and Aubrey, but we’ve spent five years moving slowly and steadily away from the place. Fifteen hundred kilometers later, I’m not entirely convinced we haven’t just wasted a lot of time and fuel. It’s not too late, Peers. We could turn around. No point in throwing good blood after bad.” She lowered her binoculars, and Peers saw something curious on the pretty woman’s hard face: fear.
“We haven’t spent any blood,” Peers said.
“You spent your son. Meyer spent his. Cameron’s father. Clara’s father. Meyer’s ex-wife, Heather. My old boss’s daughter. And those are just the big ones.”
“I meant on the detour from where you were to where we are now. Nobody’s died. No one’s been hurt. We have no sunken costs in term of life or limb.”
Peers wondered why he was arguing the point then realized that he was terrified, too. The ravine-shaped funnel ahead was empty, but it wouldn’t stay that way. And even if they made it all the way through, then what? Every city Peers had seen and every city the new group whispered about had been worse than the last. The Astrals were building in all the capitals, according to satellite images in the Den. It was so efficient, slave labor seemed the only explanation. Just like in the days of pharaohs. Ember Flats wouldn’t be a picnic. Fantasies of walking to the Ark or to the viceroy’s mansion suddenly felt exactly like that: fantasies.
“Not yet,” Jeanine said.
“Clara’s just a kid. Just because she said—”
“Clara’s not just a kid. She’s Lightborn.”
“That just means she’s advanced and sensitive.”
“Kindred and Meyer would tell you the same thing. You can see it in the way they skulk around, the way they won’t meet your eye. It’s not probable that at least some of us will die if we do this. It’s inevitable. So I have to ask, why do it? Why fight a losing battle? There’s no shame in walking away.”
No, Peers thought. There’s no shame. But if they didn’t try for Ember Flats once this close, how would he look at his reflection in whichever chipped and filthy mirrors he might find in what was left of the world? And how long could he really expect to keep on breathing if they turned away now?
But Peers didn’t have to answer. Didn’t need to convince her, even though he himself was more uncertain than ever. He didn’t believe in the powers of the Lightborn. They were simply less jaded versions of readers and psychics. But still he felt a cold hand pressing against his spine as if the future was really already written.
He didn’t need to give his conflicted opinion because Jeanine spoke first.
“You’re sure it’s there,” she said, staring forward.
“The Ark?”
“You aren’t just guessing. Listening to the same rumors we’ve all heard. You have proof.”
“I have photos. Recent ones.”
Jeanine sighed. The Corridor ahead remained far too empty. As was the land around them, back where they could still see the horizon. Some people said the cannibal tribes had made themselves comfortable in the ground they called home, burrowing tunnels over the years using scavenged Astral equipment, honeycombing the sand and rock like nests of ants. Ahead, not five miles distant, they saw the Ember Flats skyline. Stone pyramids joined by blue glass. Old temples met with new ones of rock and metal. The modern city lay beyond, closer to the Nile. But the true capital was here. The mothership, hanging just off to the side, giving the city its sunlight. Ember Flats protected an area that included both irrigated soil and arid sand, but it was in the desert that Viceroy Mara Jabari and her government made their traitorous homes. Peers could feel eyes upon him as they sat indecisive at the artificial valley’s mouth. The only thing keeping the clans at bay was the knowledge that other clans were eyeing the new prey as well. The only thing keeping them temporarily safe was the fact that they were in such a fragile abundance of danger.
“When the Ark shone into us at Sinai all those years ago, I felt as if it was judging me even back then,” Jeanine said. “But do you want to know something funny? I’ve felt ever since as if it left the seed of a challenge inside me. As if it’s been watching with condescension to see if I have what it takes to meet my summons.”
“What happened at Sinai?” Peers asked. Several of the group had alluded to that day, but each time it felt like a slip. They were hoarding a secret that they’d agreed to bury forever. This, here and now with Jeanine, was the first time he’d ever heard anyone break the covenant and speak so openly. It had the feel of a dare. Or, to use Jeanine’s word, of a person rising to a challenge.
“Make you a deal, Peers. If you and I both make it through the next fifteen minutes or so, I’ll buy you a beer and tell you the whole story.”
Peers, despite his turbulent emotions, managed a small smile. “And if they don’t have beer in Ember Flats?”
“They’re living in pyramids. They must be on some mind-altering drug.”
“Not two minutes ago, you were arguing that we should turn around and not look back.”
“Yeah, well.” Jeanine sighed again. “I guess I don’t like the idea of some alien device thinking it got one over on me for all of eternity.”
“Deal, then.”
Jeanine slapped Peers’s offered hand. Then her face snapped back to serious.
“Start the clock,” she said.
CHAPTER 15
Christopher was peering through the bus’s slats, listening to its idling motor thrum like a heartbeat, watching a vulture settle near a canted road sign written in Arabic like an omen. His eyes on the tall boy with the thick eyebrows standing at its side, staring back him.
He jumped when Lila set a hand on his shoulder. His head smacked the overhead rack. Instead of luggage, it held boxes of ammunition they’d all helped pull from the Den’s stores. It was pointless. The run would be quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. The idea of anyone but Jeanine competently reloading a military weapon in the hot mess of panic, as the bus bounced over ruts, was absurd.
“See anything?” Lila asked.
Christopher returned his eyes to the road sign. He saw the vulture, but Trevor Dempsey was gone.
“Nothing,” he said.
Lila was looking at him funny. Her mouth made a curious little shape. She raised one hand and brushed hair from his forehead.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he repeated.
“Chris … ”
“I’m just jumpy, Lila. I think we all are.”
Lila turned at a noise behind her. Christopher followed her gaze. Jeanine was pressing buttons on a large LED clock that had, once upon a time, probably spelled out the name of the bus’s next stop. For reasons unknown, Peers had converted it to a multipurpose display. For the duration of the trip, it had been counting off their trip with kilometers traveled. The display had been counting backward from just under fifteen hundred — probably to give the passengers some sense of progress on the days’ long journey. It had almost reached zero, but now Jeanine was resetting it to read 10:00. She stepped back and the clock suddenly read 9:59, then 9:58.
“I know we’re all nervous.” Jeanine tapped the clock. “But the good news is that we only have to be afraid for another ten minutes. Once time runs out, this will all be over.” She looked directly at Clara, and Christopher — the girl’s adopted father, in spirit if not on obsolete paper — felt a pang of intense guilt. This token and the associated pep talk was for all of them, but she was offering it mostly to Clara. The girl Christopher wasn’t protecting, and was shepherding into peril.
Nobody contradicted Jeanine to voice Christopher’s thoughts:
Ten minutes, unless the bus is tipped over and we have to make it on foot.
Ten minutes, unless Ember Flats is just as bad inside as it it outside.
Ten minutes … unless we’re all dead in five.
She went on, framing the talismanic clock like a seasoned leader. It was a battlefield commander telling a gutted soldier he’d be just fine, but even Christopher felt himself calming by degrees as the seconds ticked in peace. This isn’t so hard, just nine minutes and forty seconds left to go. Then movement caught his eye, and he looked through the slats, again at the road sign.
