Judgment

by Sean Platt

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Cameron’s attention snapped back to Charlie, looking at him like he was an irredeemable idiot. He was the opposite of drunk. Why Piper had thought he’d adopted a substance habit was beyond Cameron. He didn’t want to contradict her, but it seemed far more likely that she was lying for reasons unknown (or at least badly mistaken) than that Charlie had ever waxed philosophical with her. Yet she’d said he’d been strange and aloof, somehow disturbing when surprising her in the hall. When Cameron had asked him about it, Charlie said that he’d been sleeping at the time. He wasn’t sure whom to believe, but ultimately it didn’t matter.

  “Pay attention, Cameron. Honestly. You’re just like your father.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s not a compliment.”

  Yes, this was Charlie, all right: no drugs or booze required. Benjamin had been the closest thing Charlie had ever had to a best friend as far as Cameron knew, yet this was the plainspoken way he honored the man’s memory. Sure, Benjamin could be a pain in the ass; Cameron knew that better than anyone. But right now it felt like disrespecting the dead — and a jinx on the moment given what Cameron would be doing next.

  “Jabari kept most of her da Vinci Initiate data. She seems to have been far better prepared than Meyer. Maybe that’s because her preparations were based on research while Dempsey’s were based on an acid trip. She—”

  “Ayahuasca. Not acid.”

  Charlie glared at Cameron, who suddenly felt like he should apologize. For everything throughout the history of time. Then he continued.

  “She had a private plane on permanent standby. Right where she lived, down the road, not a state away. If she’d had to drive, Jabari wouldn’t have gone right the hell through Chicago like Meyer. The only thing that got him past doomsday was probably dumb luck and the fact that the Astrals seemed intent on making him one of the Nine. Regardless, she’d backed everything up remotely, in scads of locations and locally on an array of drives. The woman seems to do nothing that isn’t phenomenally thought out. Just one more reason I wish Benjamin had done more to poach her from Delacroix instead of admiring her work from afar.”

  Cameron thought there might be an insult lurking somewhere in Charlie’s words. Maybe another reminder of how Mara would have been a better offspring for Benjamin than Cameron. He said nothing.

  “Culling Jabari’s comprehensive Initiate research, I’d have to agree with what Peers has been saying all along: You have to do this. There’s a strange organic matrix that seems to be just below the surface of that key you’ve been carrying. I’d have to break it open to be sure — and without proper equipment, I can’t look inside the thing — but it fits some of what Delacroix found about biological imprinting. You touched the key, and it somehow mated itself to you. Carrying it for five years has likely only strengthened the bond. Maybe it would work if someone else used it, but I doubt it.”

  “Great.” At least this wasn’t something he didn’t already know.

  “What I don’t understand is that Delacroix’s and Jabari’s research on matrices like the ones I think your key uses shows that it should require a hell of a lot longer to imprint. Kind of like a waiting period. Like the Astrals figured a lot of humans would touch the thing, so it needed to wait a long time to ‘activate’ on one particular person. To be sure that person was its match.”

  “What, am I dating this thing now?” Cameron looked down, but the key in his satchel didn’t respond.

  “Be serious, Cameron. And just tell me. When you take the key out, does it almost seem to adjust to your fingertips?”

  Cameron shrugged. Though he’d never once come close to dropping the thing, as if his grip was infallible.

  “And when you used the key back in Heaven’s Veil to turn off the ‘spotlight’ inside the Apex pyramid … ”

  “It worked, yes.”

  Charlie assessed Cameron as if perhaps he was lying.

  “I’ve had it for five years,” Cameron said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Delacroix was predicting it would take fifteen or twenty years for bonding to occur. It could be non-continuous exposure, but the math says the time required after first contact is nonnegotiable.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Charlie. I haven’t had it that long. Maybe I’m not the Chosen One after all.”

  “Neither here nor there, I guess. If you used it in Heaven’s Veil, there’s no reason you couldn’t use it now. You understand the importance of timing?”

  “Just that I should open it when Meyer and Kindred are on stage. Not before or after.”

  “Correct. It will ensure you have privacy and minimize the chance that someone will interfere. Jabari says she’ll put a few people at the entrance points to the courtyard but that most of her guard will be across the square. After she’s done her bit and stepped down to let Kindred and Meyer take over, she’ll be coming back here, and those guards are required to keep her out of harm’s way.”

  “How brave of her,” Cameron said. Charlie eyed him, but Cameron knew he was deflecting. He was so terribly scared. He knew all the reasons for Jabari hightailing it back to the palace, and he did, in the end, mostly trust the viceroy and her plan. But he didn’t want to do this — not one tiny little bit — and all delays and distractions were welcome.

  “The square isn’t that far. You’ll hear Jabari’s address in the air, but you can also monitor it on that mobile she gave you.”

  Cameron patted his pocket. It was almost like the time before Astral Day, watching live entertainment on a phone.

  “It’s not like the old cell networks or the Internet,” Charlie said.

  “I know. I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. This is the Internet, Astral style. It’s what all the ancient societies used to do: mind-to-mind communication. Only, we’re so retarded and disconnected today that we can’t always tune into the thoughts of others, even with rock monoliths around all the capitals and the big statues set up as focal points, antennae, and repeaters. We need clunky devices like the one I gave you. It’s not a perfect system, it goes: thoughts, rebroadcast, reception … then the person ‘receiving the thoughts’ by watching them on one of those little screens has to take an extra step and process the information visually as if it were happening in front of them. That extra step leads to dissonance.”

  “Give me the short version, Charlie.”

  “What you see on that screen isn’t video from a videocamera. It’s an average of the way all of the eyes across town will see the event. If you could get the vision right inside your mind, it would make sense to your brain. But it doesn’t.”

  “Shorter,” Cameron insisted.

  “Don’t trust what you see on the screen. Listen and trust your hearing instead, if you can. You’ll hear Jabari finish, there will be a lull, and then you’ll probably hear a collective gasp or commotion. You should be able to hear Meyer, but it’s possible the humans running the show will have already killed the amplifiers. So you’ll have to take a guess. Open the Ark then. Immediately. Don’t wait.”

  “I know what to do, Charlie.”

  “No,” Charlie insisted, his voice finding uncharacteristic anger, “you don’t. You thought you knew what to do when we went to Sinai, but you weren’t prepared when the Ark fought back. Now here we are again. You said you knew what you were doing when you took us into Damascus, and I’m sure you remember how that turned out.”

  “You want to lead instead of me? Any time, Charlie.”

  “Stop acting so goddamn righteous,” Charlie snapped. “And most of all, stop acting so goddamn sure. You think it’s confidence, but it’s actually arrogance. I remember it from way back when I first met you, when you were a jackass kid with a chip on his shoulder. You had your problems with Benjamin, and I get it. My father and I weren’t the best of friends either. But if you presume this time and get it wrong because you’re still fighting daddy issues and feel the need to always be r
ight and never admit when you aren’t certain, it won’t be someone getting shot by mistake. This time, the whole damned planet will suffer.”

  Cameron felt himself wanting to fight back — or at least to call Charlie on his cheap shots — but the most frightened part of him was sure Charlie was right. He wasn’t sure. He had no idea what was next, and the uncertainty was worse than any punishment. Maybe opening the Ark would free Clara like the Mullah promised, and maybe they’d welch. Maybe the Astrals would judge humanity as worthy even though Cameron felt that the verdict would swing the opposite way. Maybe, if armageddon came, some would be spared, and maybe Piper and Lila and the others would be among them. Or maybe not.

  Maybe by turning the key only he could turn, he’d be freeing humanity from bondage.

  Or maybe he’d be committing genocide.

  “All right,” Cameron said, his eyes watching the space beyond the gate, seeming to sense the Ark and its waiting keyhole somewhere beyond. “Tell me what to do.”

  Charlie did.

  CHAPTER 45

  Peers paced.

  He’d left the silver sphere traced with glowing blue lines on the middle of his bedspread, right in plain sight. If anyone were watching this room, it’d be obvious what he’d done, and possibly reveal the true nature of his intentions. But if he understood the catch-22, nobody could be watching the room because he’d stolen the device that did the watching. Or was it really that simple?

  He stopped his feet. Stared at the sphere. Felt it calling to him like a compulsion. Just minutes ago, he’d watched Moscow getting annihilated during the first phase of the occupation, just after the motherships arrived. Peers, like everyone else, knew all about Moscow; it was the 9/11 and Paris terrorism of the Astral era. Moscow meant violence, intimidation, distrust, and an instinctual (if somewhat cowardly) impetus toward unconditional obedience. Moscow’s destruction had been the alpha dog asserting his dominance; it was the new guy in prison beating the shit out of the largest inmate in the yard. Moscow had steeped in every human psyche as a brutal, uncompromising lesson in paying attention and doing what humanity was told.

  And yet Peers had just watched Moscow’s destruction through Astral eyes. Seen that way, it hadn’t been so horrible. Somehow the sphere conveyed not just sensation but also thoughts and feelings. Peers, fully immersed, had felt shockingly blasé as he’d watched all those lives end. It’s just energy, he remembered thinking. Why fret the pieces when the whole lives on?

  And really, Moscow had been firing rockets up at the mothership.

  And really — given the temperament of the strangely connected, technologically advanced, arrogant crop of humans the planet had grown during the last epoch — a statement had needed to be made.

  And honestly, considered rationally, killing the millions in Moscow had probably saved hundreds of millions of lives because without that statement others might have kept right on fighting the motherships.

  Peers had felt pretty reasonable about the whole thing by the time the vision ended, and then he’d shot up from the bed and dropped it, staring at the sphere like a clot of bloody mucus. Staring, he’d felt as if he’d done something awful. And he didn’t want to do such a hideous thing again.

  But then other questions had reasserted themselves.

  Questions he’d never been given the answers to —answers he very much needed to know.

  Questions about the Mullah elders and the secrets they kept. If anyone would know the answers to those questions, it would be the Astrals — considering they were supposedly on the other end of all the secret Mullah business anyway.

  The Mullah called the Astrals “the Horsemen,” and now that Peers was staring at the sphere, feeling equal parts revulsion and desire to grab the thing and reimmerse, he understood why. Maybe the Horsemen would bring about the end of the world, and maybe they wouldn’t. Perhaps they’d already done it dozens of times, as both the elders and people like Benjamin Bannister believed. Either way, they felt like executioners. They felt like dark riders, once you’d been inside their minds.

  Only that wasn’t quite accurate. When he’d been inside the sphere, he’d felt content, reasonable, and objective. It was only laying human analysis over Astral actions that made them seem dark or evil. Only seeing those things through a human lens made them feel horrible — and that, Peers thought, made it all the more disturbing.

  He took two steps toward the sphere. He took one step back.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said aloud. Then, to Nocturne, “Isn’t this ridiculous?”

  The dog wagged his tail, still lying on his side, slapping the floor in rhythm.

  He went to the bed, wrapped the sphere in the comforter, then used his feet to kick the padded package off the bed, onto the floor, and ultimately under the box spring.

  There was a knock on the door, but it was perfunctory: one solid rap, and then the door was swinging open. Jeanine entered looking like she was ready to go hiking. She’d found shorts, a sensible T-shirt, and a backpack. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, looking at Peers while he froze, guilty at a near-catch for the second time in an hour. He’d been sure he’d locked the door. But then again, Peers hadn’t thought he’d needed one. He was going to change the minute Jeanine left, and the rest amounted to tidying up and killing time. He hadn’t meant for the sphere to leap out from its hiding place and into his hands. He hadn’t meant to go memory-walking again.

  Jeanine looked him over. Peers was still in shorts and a sleep shirt — miles distant from his desert garb, but even further from clothing he’d want to wear in public.

  “What have you been doing in here?” Jeanine asked. “Are you even ready?”

  Peers felt a thin mist of sweat on his forehead. “I just need a minute.”

  “Want me to step out?”

  No, no, he didn’t want that at all. If she went into the hallway, he’d pick up the sphere again. His only evidence of self-control — and it was a small thing — was the way he’d shoved the sphere away before Jeanine knocked, not because she had. A good thing considering the nil delay between knock and entry.

  “I was just … ” He looked toward the bed and the comforter-wrapped bounty beneath it. Then he grabbed a wad of clothes and ran into the bathroom. Before closing the door, he saw Jeanine meander forward, her curious eyes absorbing the contents of his room. Each room seemed to have been customized for its occupant: Peers had a dog bed and toys; Piper and Cameron had a king-sized bed instead of a queen because they roomed together; Lila, now heartbreakingly, had a second small bed with pink sheets. And while Peers was changing, Jeanine would be exploring what made his room unique — what defined Peers as a person, through Astral (or at least Jabari’s) eyes.

  As the gap closed, shutting Peers in the bathroom, he saw Jeanine bending to pet Nocturne, squatting while the dog rose in greeting.

  A board squeaked as she stood. Footsteps while she crossed the room.

  “I got the clothes from Piper,” she said, her voice clear through the door. “But of course, when I got back to my room, there were finally some clothes there for me, too. New stuff. But it was girly. What’s up with this place? In what world am I girlier than Piper?”

  Peers shuffled through his pile. A shirt peeked out; he dragged it on inside out. It came back off, a dreadlock snagging in the neck hole.

  “I just kept hers. The backpack was actually in a supply closet. Oh, and I got this.” Pause. “Oh, right. I guess you can’t see it from in there.”

  He heard fabric shuffle. Probably Jeanine setting the backpack aside, sorting its contents, showcasing whatever “this” was to show him once he came out.

  Then he heard a muffled crump, followed by a series of material groans as padding and springs shifted.

  Dammit, now she’s sitting on the bed.

  “What were you doing while I was gone? Did you find anything at all?”

  “Just a second!”

  More shifting. More groans as she shifted on the m
attress.

  Jeanine was probably leaning forward. Wondering why the bed didn’t have a comforter. Looking underneath, probably about to drag the thing from below, spreading the thing on top to be helpful.

  “Jeanine!” But it came out alarmed, not casual as intended.

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “Nocturne likes it when you throw the ball for him. It’s in the bin near the door.”

  “He looks tired to me,” said Jeanine’s voice.

  Peers straightened his shirt. Found pants, jeans, and succeeded in putting one leg in the wrong hole. The bed groaned again.

  “He’ll really appreciate it!”

  His heart was beating. The sheen of sweat was growing thicker, wetter, almost dripping. It had never, in history, taken longer to put on a pair of jeans. And meanwhile, Jeanine was out there, surely on all fours, dragging the comforter out and noticing something heavy inside it, taking the sphere, touching it, realizing that they wouldn’t have to search for Mullah because there was at least one of them closer than she’d thought.

  This would be a gun. And when he came out, she’d shoot him.

  But there was a noise outside: the flat thunk of a tennis ball striking the floor, followed by a mad scrabble of paws and claws.

  Jeanine said to Nocturne, “Silly boy, look what you did. I don’t want to fish it out from under there.”

  Peers got the other leg in his pants and knocked the door open, his fly still unbuttoned and unzipped. He saw Jeanine getting to her knees, moving toward the bed and the lump of fabric underneath, the green fuzzy shape of a tennis ball beside it.

  “I’ll get it.”

  And Peers did, flaps open and flying, his knee practically kicking Jeanine out of the way. He got the ball in his hand and nudged the comforter bundle back with his forearm, then came out with the ball held up like victory. Jeanine’s eyes went from the ball to his crotch.