Judgment

by Sean Platt

  Cameron looked at Meyer and Kindred. They kept glancing meaningfully at each other, and he’d heard a few chatters in their strange private language while Jabari was talking. Even those few words probably paled compared to what the men were surely sharing in the privacy of their hybrid mind.

  Plotting.

  Planning.

  Working the numbers, finding the logic, weighing the variables.

  It dawned on him: why the Meyers were here, with him, with Jabari.

  “This helps you,” Cameron said.

  “I want to find her as badly as you do.”

  “But it helps you.” He looked right at Meyer, who until now had wanted nothing to do with Jabari’s plan for a dual-Meyer public appearance. One had immediately warmed to the idea, while the other stayed reticent. There’d been a schism between them, but judging by their cooperative chatter now, that discord was gone.

  “It’s true that it makes the matter more urgent,” Jabari said. “The Mullah are slippery. They could be operating in the city, but they could also be people I trust. I can’t know and couldn’t do anything about it if I thought I did. The people of Ember Flats are used to how things are here, and that’s made them complacent. As the saying goes, people can get used to everything. Of course we heard about Heaven’s Veil when it happened. It was an unfortunate accident. Nobody considered what it might mean, or knows the connection between Heaven’s Veil and the Ark.”

  Cameron glanced at Meyer and Kindred. They’d apparently explained it all at some point: the city’s destruction, the way the Astrals had triangulated on the misery streaming into the hidden Ark and used that homing beacon to locate its resting place.

  “So?”

  “If Meyer and Kindred appear at the State of the City address, that balance will be upset. It’s the peace, more than anything, that allows the Mullah’s operation in silence. If we stir the pot, there’s a chance to flush them out.”

  “There’s more to it, Cameron,” Kindred said.

  “Really?” Cameron felt his control slipping. He’d always been angry under the surface but thought he’d grown past the worst of it. But in recent days, that barely checked anger had reasserted itself, and now he felt it threatening to explode. “She laid out something she wanted you to do, and took us prisoner to do it.” He looked around, gesturing sarcastically. “Oh, sure. It’s a nice prison, but we’re not allowed to leave, are we? They bound our wrists. Knocked us out for the trip, and did God knows what while we were sleeping. Then we heard all about this plan, for you to upset the power balance in Ember Flats so the people turn against the Astrals. Who would benefit from something like that, Meyer? Kindred? You’ve got those big brains, don’t you?”

  “This isn’t about my power,” said Jabari. “I hold my position because at least as viceroy, I have some control over—”

  “And what will you have control over if people have a new reason to hate the Astrals?”

  “Cameron,” said Meyer.

  “Let’s call Peers in here,” Cameron said. “What do you say, Mara? He’s the only one in our group who’s had any interaction with your people. Let’s ask him what he thinks of this plan. ‘Hey, Peers, the woman responsible for killing your son has a plan that would eliminate her competition and give her a civilian army. Sound like a good idea?’”

  “As I explained to Mr. Basara, that was a long time—”

  “Meyer … ” Cameron shifted his attention and cut Mara off. “Lila said you were unconvinced and were fighting Kindred on this whole ‘public appearance’ scheme.” He met Kindred’s eyes for a half second, meaning no animosity. His animus was for Jabari, the Astrals, and the universe for concocting this unreasonable brew. “Before Clara went missing, you didn’t want anything to do with this. But now, you’re on board? Think about it for a second — Clara vanishes into the hands of an enemy we’ve not seen for weeks, right out from under our noses, in the Capital of all Capitals, and nobody saw it happen or has any clue where to start looking? Oh, the Mullah are to blame. And yet she benefits.” Cameron concluded with a finger rigidly pointing in Jabari’s face.

  Meyer drew a deep breath then ran a hand over his beard. His eyes took in the room for long, painful seconds. Then he exhaled and said, “We think it might be the only way.”

  “How convenient.”

  But inside his mind, Cameron felt the tiniest of pushes — foreign at first then deeply familiar like a long-forgotten memory. Ever since he and Piper had begun hearing each other’s thoughts on their first journey from Vail to Moab, some sort of psychic itch had stayed just under the surface of his mind, dormant but present, able to be awakened by strong emotions and oddly powerful hunches. But this time it felt like Kindred had stuck an elbow deep into his mind from across the room and nudged him with it.

  Even if she’s behind this, it’s still the only way … so trust us, the nudge seemed to say.

  “It kills two birds with one stone,” said Kindred, his eyes on Cameron’s as if willing him into understanding. “I don’t know how to explain it without insulting my human half, but the Astral knowledge within me has always insisted that the Ark must be opened. The Astrals won’t force us — and in one sense, even Charlie thinks they don’t care if we do. They are impartial. The judge, not the opposition.”

  “Everything that’s pushed us toward or away from putting the key in the Ark has come from the outside. Never the Astrals.” And in Meyer’s downward glance Cameron thought he could see — or maybe sense, via that same dormant mental wavelength — additional context behind his words. “The Astrals have kept an eye on us, but they haven’t actually done anything since Cottonwood.”

  “Derinkuyu,” Cameron said.

  “They blocked us in at Derinkuyu. Nothing more.”

  “Why would they block us in?”

  “Ask Peers,” said Kindred.

  Meyer glanced at Kindred. “The Mullah have nudged us in one direction or another ever since Sinai. Peers talked us into coming here. And the Pall … ” Meyer trailed off. In the second it took to resume, Cameron realized he hadn’t seen the Pall in what felt like forever.

  “Point is, it’s never been the Astrals. And still, it’s like the way has been greased. Not easy but obvious. We’ve never really had a choice. There’s always been one way to go: inexorably here. Most of you should never have escaped Heaven’s Veil, and yet somehow you did, even before we showed up with shuttles from the mothership. After Heaven’s Veil, we might have wandered forever — but then we ran into Peers, who turned us around. We’d never have made it through Hell’s Corridor if not for Christopher. You’d already refused to open the Ark by the time the capital guards appeared, and we’d have left if Jeanine hadn’t needed to be separated from her weapon, keeping us inside the city. Even if we were free to go now, there are literally barbarians at the gate. And now Clara’s been taken, and the demand for her ransom is that you … well, that you do what we came here to do in the first place.”

  “So this is all kismet? Are you telling me the unflappable Meyer Dempsey suddenly believes in fate?”

  “Fate, force, coercion,” said Kindred, his voice more like Meyer than Meyer. “He’s saying it doesn’t matter. You didn’t even know where the Ark was, Cameron. Look at the string of coincidences that led to our discovery. Your father gave you a vague hint. Then, after Benjamin was gone, the thought kept rising in your mind, of a place you’d seen once decades earlier. You powwowed with Clara and figured it out as if it were obvious. We homed right in on it without undue delay or opposition. Despite the Astrals causing the Heaven’s Veil scream and us knowing we were racing them to the finish line, we still managed to get there first at our oh-so-human sub-light speed. And where were the Astrals when we arrived? How about the Mullah?”

  “We saw dead Mullah guards,” Cameron said, thinking back. But he didn’t want to think of that day ever again. The emotions were too intense, still so raw after five long years.

  “Killed by who, Cameron?” said Mey
er. “And where were the rest of them? The Mullah’s mission is supposedly to curate our connection to the Astrals. Together with the Knights Templar, their job was to shepherd the Ark. So wouldn’t you think there should have been more of them?”

  But none of this was making sense. “The Mullah have been chasing us for the key. My father and I first ran into them when … ” Cameron glanced at Jabari then touched the mau under his shirt with tentative fingers. “Years ago. They’ve always been in the way. Always tried to stop or capture or kill us. Five years, Meyer! For five years, they’ve blocked us at every turn. They don’t want us to open the Ark. They want to keep us from it.”

  Jabari picked up the paper then spoke once Cameron’s confused and angry glare seemed to grant permission.

  “At the Initiate,” she said, “we had a slightly different conception of the Mullah. They weren’t protectors of the Ark so much as custodians. Their purpose wasn’t to prevent Astral contact so much as facilitate it. So yes, they stole the archive. They tried, perhaps, to take the key from you at the beginning. But recently our feelers have the impression that the Mullah’s position has shifted — again from preventing to facilitating.”

  “What does that mean?” Cameron asked.

  “It means that once upon a time, I think the Mullah would have felt it was their duty to stop you. But now, they’ll do anything to help you turn that key — or, if you try and turn away, to force you.”

  “But why now? What’s changed?”

  Jabari looked from Cameron to Kindred and Meyer. The two men subtly nodded, affirming Cameron’s impression that all of this had been discussed, and that once again he was late to the party.

  “If I had to guess, I think things may have gone past a point of no return,” she said, “and now, it’s too late to stop the inevitable.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Peers was on the dusty lawn, at night, with a great white light above, when the knock came. He could feel cool air on his scalp, where it was exposed by his dreadlocks. He could feel the grit of sand underfoot, though it was held mostly in place by stubborn desert grass. The light was blinding: a cone of brilliance in the middle of an otherwise black night. The grass beneath the light seemed bleached white. The woman entering the light wasn’t even covering her eyes, gazing up at the mothership as if spellbound.

  The knock repeated. From the house behind him? Peers wasn’t sure. But it broke the vision, and for a second he could feel something heavy in his hands even though he was looking down, at the nighttime ground, somewhere outdoors, and could plainly see that his hands were empty. The woman was still looking vacantly upward at the Astral mothership’s opening belly. And now there was a young man running toward her, panicked, his feet moving full out. He tripped and fell. The woman rose into the air, her arms stretched out like Christ on the cross.

  Piper Dempsey, back when she’d been using that name.

  And the man on the ground, looking in this particular memory like little more than a kid? That had to be Cameron Bannister — his body thinner and almost adolescent-looking, his hair long on top in a way that was probably once a hallmark style, his skin not as desiccated by arid wandering as it was today.

  Cameron yelled out for Piper as she ascended. The sound was raw, real, visceral down to the marrow. Peers was there. He watched Piper vanish, the mothership close its belly, the giant sphere move away. Then it was dark again, and on the open lawn between the house and a building bunkered inside a cliff, it was just Cameron and Peers. And the intrusive sound of knuckles rapping on wood, which didn’t even make sense.

  “Shit,” Peers muttered, his empty hands coming up, weight seeming to fill them. The sensory dissonance was baffling his brain, knocking it about like a violent kick. Finally he found the trick of perception that allowed him to see past what the memory sphere was showing him, and then again he was a man sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor, cradling a metal ball in his open hands.

  “Peers?” a voice called from the door, knocking again.

  “Just a second!”

  He scrambled upright, wondering how long his visitor had been knocking while he’d been sitting, exploring the recorded past. He’d been trying to learn how to use the sphere as much as he’d been specifically snooping through its records. He had to pose a question before it could answer, but Peers didn’t know what he wanted to learn. So far, about two-thirds of the memories had shown himself, Cameron’s group, or both. The thing might hold a disproportionate number of Peers-or-Cameron scenes, but it seemed more likely that Peers could mostly only think in terms of his current group. He didn’t know what the Astrals may have done outside of what he already knew as touch points and didn’t seem to have total control of his mind. He kept unintentionally inserting people he knew into the inquiries, asking questions more specific than he’d intended.

  And the thing had definite limits. He’d asked a few of the obvious big questions: What happened when you visited the Ancient Egyptians? and Did you build Stonehenge? among them.

  But each time he asked something beyond the Astrals’ current visit, he came up empty. It was a record of this visit, and possibly only a subset of the total memories. Perhaps a sensory library that was common to other such spheres, Ember Flats history, and some random stuff that — at least as far as Peers’s inquiries had managed to plunge — seemed to revolve quite a lot around Cameron Bannister and his journey since Astral Day.

  Was it because Peers was incapable of thinking outside his own questions, on a subconscious level?

  Or was it because Cameron Bannister was more important to the Astrals than most people?

  “Peers? We need to talk. Can I come in?”

  It was Jeanine Coffey. And of course she couldn’t come in. He’d locked the door so he could sphere-gaze in private. Now he was scrambling to stash the thing like a teen boy hiding porn with his mother at the door.

  “Hang on! I’m … um … not dressed!”

  Peers scampered to his bed, where he’d used the spin rod for the blinds to pry back a bit of molding covering what seemed to be an unused electrical access. He crawled low and ducked under the bed. Fifteen seconds later the sphere was satisfactorily buried. He stood, his heart pounding and feeling exhausted. He hadn’t slept, other than the few minutes he’d managed before Nocturne nosed him awake to roam the hallways. The house had gone quiet a while after he’d excused himself from Clara’s vigil (after the Titans had made it clear that they could go to their own rooms but nowhere else), but instead of sleeping Peers had found a new hidey-hole for his prize and had memory-walked through the rest of his night. There was so much he needed to see. So much he wanted to uncover from within the sphere, and so little time.

  He glanced at the clock.

  Jesus, it was already after 8 a.m.

  Peers yawned, brushed nonexistent dust from his clothes, then shot into the bathroom, glanced in the mirror, and saw that he looked beat to hell.

  He opened the door. Jeanine was in a large blouse he’d never seen, immaculately clean and ill fitting. At first he thought she wasn’t wearing pants, then he saw a small pair of loose shorts when she moved, concealed below the dress-like tee.

  “Wow, you look like shit.” It wasn’t a judgment. Jeanine sounded almost concerned.

  Peers considered countering. Although he hadn’t slept by choice — feeling the sphere’s clarion call through all five of the minutes he’d considered drifting off — chances were that everyone would look haggard today. Lila had been nodding off when Peers left and Charlie had returned to his room minutes after the general call. But Piper and Cameron had looked almost caffeinated. The Meyers seemed to have reconciled and were running calculations. Pointing out how strange it was that Jeanine didn’t look as bad as he did was tantamount to Peers saying she was a cold, callous bitch who could sleep no matter the crisis — a perspective for which, Peers thought, an argument could surely be made.

  “Thanks,” he said instead.

  “Rough night?”
/>
  “I’ve had better.”

  “I was going to look myself. For Clara, I mean. Tell you the truth, I don’t entirely trust Jabari’s people to thoroughly search. They’re the ones who lost her, right? Inside the damned house. How does that even happen? Did you know they still haven’t found her?”

  Peers hadn’t, but he wasn’t surprised. The Mullah had Clara. He had no proof, but to him it was obvious. They had built the mansion; they had stolen and then repurposed the sphere, which seemed to have kept right on recording Astral thoughts even once in human possession. There were Mullah in the house right now. Peers was even reasonably sure he knew who one of them was. So yes, if Clara had gone missing and Jabari seemed honestly shocked, the Mullah had probably taken her. Of course even sincere searches were coming up empty. Peers knew better than most how well the Mullah could hide.

  But looking at Jeanine, Peers thought it was good that she was practicing this little update routine on him before delivering the news to anyone else. She was as delicate as a dull jigsaw. If she’d announced Clara’s still-missing status to Lila in the same dropping-a-rock way she’d announced it to Peers, the poor girl would be in hysterics.

  “I didn’t know. That’s terrible.”

  Jeanine’s gaze moved to the right and left, as if she might spy Clara in the corner, where everyone had conveniently forgotten to look. Her tongue moved below her lower lip, exploring.

  “I just walked past Lila’s room. Doesn’t sound like she’s taking it well. So, can I come in?”

  Peers stepped back.

  “You don’t have any pants I could borrow, do you? Or shirts?”

  Peers eyed Jeanine up and down. She managed to look stunning despite her rat’s-nest bedhead and ill-fitting wardrobe.

  “I don’t know if they confiscated my backpack because they thought I had weapons hidden in my clothes or if they just wanted to do my laundry, but all I had was what I wore in … and then when I woke up, after sleeping in this stuff I found, even those clothes were gone.”