by Sean Platt
But now she could still feel Ember Flats, and the Ark summoning some sort of power. But she couldn’t feel Clara. Where had she gone? Was she still okay?
Peers saved her from responding, cutting off Piper and ignoring Lila.
“Come. Hurry! There’s a new ship. It’s — ”
“I think we figured that out,” Kindred said.
“Its purpose is to destroy. It’s their wrecking ball. We can’t be here when it starts doing what it came here to do. Do you understand? There are not several of these large ships. There is only one. And it’s here, right above us. Ember Flats is where it all begins. We can’t be underneath it when Armageddon arrives!”
Piper was sensing something new from Peers. There was fear, yes. And urgency, for sure. But there was something else as well. He’d been keeping one secret, she saw, and now he was keeping another. It was guilt atop guilt, and the deepest layer was miles thick. The kind that had gripped Peers by the spine, to never let go.
What had he done? She narrowed internal eyes, trying to flex that new limb. But focus eluded her. Piper’s mind was too preoccupied with what he’d said about Ember Flats, about plagues. And about what she’d seen — or, more accurately, had stopped seeing — about Clara.
“We are safer in here than out there,” Jabari said.
“We are annihilated in here, whereas out there we at least have a chance!” Peers was practically heaving, his body language pleading. Piper wondered again at his intent. He seemed more than eager to leave. This was somehow personal. If nobody listened, Piper sensed, Peers would fight tooth and nail until they did.
He was behaving as if he needed to right a terrible wrong. As if this was all his fault. She could see it in his manner and sense it in his emotions.
“Peers?” Piper asked. “Do you know where Clara is?”
“They’ve made their judgment already,” Peers rushed on. “Now they’re stirring panic to squeeze out the last of our poison — to make sure there’s no corner of us they haven’t seen. Meyer and Kindred’s announcement made everyone angry, and now all of that rage is streaming into the Ark, adding to what they know and believe about us. But it won’t hold for long. Soon it’ll all be shaken out. They’ll return to their ships, and the lottery will start. We can’t count on that. Not for all of us. We have to get out!”
“Where are you getting this information, Peers?” Meyer asked.
“It doesn’t matter!”
“It matters to me.”
“There’s no way to move unseen,” Jabari said. “We will be safest below.”
Peers turned to Lila, then Jabari, then Piper.
“Please,” he said, his voice softer. “You must trust me.”
“But Clara … ”
“The Mullah didn’t leave that note, Lila! Ravi did. Jeanine and I got him to confess. There’s no time to explain. But she’s fine. I know she’s okay.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Piper thinks the same thing,” Kindred said. “She said that Clara is safer than us. Going is our only sensible option. We might not get another chance.”
“She’s your granddaughter, Dad!” In Lila’s emotional state, she didn’t seem to know which Meyer she was addressing.
“She’s fine, Lila!” This time, it was Meyer.
“Is that what your superbrain tells you? You two being Sherlock?”
“Honestly? Yes. Based on what we know, getting out is our best-possible scenario. We’ll circle back once the big ship is gone. If Peers is right, it’ll move on eventually. We can get Clara then. She and Piper both seem to have … something. We’ll find her if she’s as safe as everyone seems to think. But we can’t find her if we’re dead.”
Lila turned away, somewhere between angry and terrified. Piper felt a jolt watching her, wondering if she should speak up. She’d felt Clara was plenty safe when this started, yes. But they’d been paralyzed with indecision, watching Ember Flats implode through the windows and gate, for the better part of an hour. Did the fact that she couldn’t really feel Clara now mean she was having a hard time finding the levers on her new psychic gifts? Or did it mean that Clara had moved out of safety and into peril?
“We’re going,” Kindred said. “Now.”
“Yes,” Peers agreed. “Now.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Jabari said. Beside her, Lila nodded. And Piper, almost unaware of her own actions, realized she was nodding as well.
“Don’t listen to her,” Peers said.
“Listen to me,” Jabari countered, her stare even and firm. “I don’t care how many ‘scenarios’ Meyer and Kindred have run. We thought out every tiny piece of this at the Initiate. Other than the big ship, everything else has gone according to predictions.”
“You mean other than the planet-sized thing above us? Is that the small, failed prediction you’re referring to?”
Jabari ignored Kindred, facing Piper, whom she seemed to see as her biggest potential ally — the one in the middle, whose swing vote might make all the difference.
“All else has gone according to predictions,” Jabari repeated, eye to eye with Piper. “We’re excellent at prediction and planning. I got from where I was to here without incident. I had a plane ready, with redundancies. Other people’s trips to their capitals went less smoothly, I hear, due to poor planning and poorer in-the-moment decisions.”
“Wait just a goddamned minute,” Meyer said.
“Who plots a road trip through Chicago?” Jabari said. “What sort of prepper does that?”
“My plane was grounded.”
“And you had it at an airport where a crew listens to groundings? Not a private strip where you make the rules? That seems like the poorest of choices.” Jabari was speaking to Meyer, but her eyes were on Piper. She paused, seeming to gather courage. Then her eyes flicked to Meyer and back to Piper. “No wonder they felt the need to put an Astral in your place.”
Meyer lunged at her, but Jabari had put herself behind Lila. She moved back as Meyer, control effectively lost, reached and stuttered behind his daughter. Piper stepped between them, holding her hands out like a referee separating fighters.
“Enough! Knock it off, both of you.”
“We’re not leaving without Clara,” Lila said.
“We’re not leaving at all,” Jabari added. “It’s not just Clara. Leaving under that ship’s eye would be idiocy.”
“You set the plans in place.” Kindred seemed agitated but not nearly as much as Meyer, who was stepping back as his fury subsided and — true Meyer, to the last — straightening his tie.
“Yes. Plans. Plural. You make plans and you nest them, with backups in case things happen, as they have. We also have a network with the other viceroys, on that pirate signal, that lets us meet from time to time, but the signal is blocked. So we’re cut off. It’s just us. And do you know what that means we have to do?” Jabari didn’t pause to let Kindred answer. “We do the best we can. If we could reach the Cradle, we’d have headed north on the rivers to make contact away from the city. If we couldn’t make contact, we’d go to the sea. And if we couldn’t leave, we’d stay in the city. There’s a well-stocked bunker below. This was always part of the plan, in the event that we couldn’t leave the palace without being watched from above … which, if you’d like to look outside for a second, we can’t.”
Peers stepped up to Jabari.
“What if I told you we could?” he asked.
CHAPTER 6
The man in blue jeans sat on a white bench, reflecting that Meyer Dempsey would think this place resembled an Apple Store. Surfaces were white and rounded. It was the definition of minimalism, if minimalism really meant nothing. From where he was waiting for his appointment, the room’s walls, ceilings, and floors were an undifferentiated expanse of white. Light seemed to come from everywhere, so there weren’t many shadows. It seemed entirely possible to be walking through a place like this and run into a bench you hadn’t known was there.
He squinted. These human eyes were so limited. It had been easier when he was able to shift shape, to become smoke or Astral or any human he’d touched. Even that black dog. Now it seemed he was stuck in this shape, doomed to be human for at least a fair spell. There were worse things in the universe. He’d seen as much before being squeezed out of the collective: Meyer Dempsey’s humanity distilled, forced through a matrix of Astral assessment. He’d been the piece that didn’t fit when they called him the Pall, but now he fit even less. He wasn’t sure why he had this shape. Was this how Meyer’s mind saw rebellion personified? If so, why hadn’t he coalesced into a punk rocker once the Ark’s opening ceremonies had finished assimilating him, once done with Cameron Bannister? He could be pierced and tattooed, sporting a two-foot, egg-white-stiffened mohawk.
He looked down at his blue jeans. At his boots.
Well, this would do. He was nothing if not a strange wanderer in a strange town.
A featureless door opened across the white space. It looked for a moment as if the first Apple Store had opened into a second Apple Store beyond. Maybe Hell would be an endless chain of white rooms where you could buy glossy electronics. Or Heaven, depending on your take. Either way, he supposed humanity would discover what was waiting beyond mortality’s curtain soon enough. The answer had definitely surprised Dempsey’s expelled emotions — or himself, if a finer line was to be drawn.
A woman stepped through the doorway, and the second Apple Store disappeared. She approached him on sensible heels — the stranger found himself wondering if she was about to offer him a discount on an overpriced mobile phone.
“Who are you?” The woman would have been in her late twenties if she were actually human. She had a pleasant, pretty face, but it seemed almost as if she didn’t know how to use it. She wore her pleasing features sternly, pleasantries left in the box.
“I guess that’s a matter of opinion,” he answered.
“What is your name?”
“I suppose you can call me Stranger.”
“What do you want?”
“Got the new iPhone?”
“We do not understand.”
“’Course you don’t.” Stranger stood, shifted his weight, felt as if he’d subconsciously adopted the stance of a waiting gunslinger. He leaned against a wall to make himself friendly, but that pulled up Meyer Dempsey’s image of himself as the old-time Marlboro Man. “Who are you, if we’re getting friendly?”
“We are Divinity.”
“You look like a woman to me.”
“You would not understand our native form.”
Stranger sent his mind back. He’d been created, as the Pall, after the first false Meyer’s death by Meyer’s son-in-law. If he concentrated hard, he could almost glimpse memories from the Titan who’d become that first replacement Meyer.
“I’ve seen it. I’d understand it.”
“You would literally not understand it,” the woman said. “We communicate mind to mind, whereas you require speech.”
“Do we? I’ve seen the trick you pull with those big rocks. Wakes up even the dumb old human mind, doesn’t it?”
“Irrelevant.”
“You’re such a pleasant conversationalist anyway,” Stranger said, kicking one leg up so the sole of his boot rested against the wall. “Don’t suppose you’d like to get a cup of coffee?”
“Why are you here?”
“You brought me here.”
“On your demand.”
“I asked kindly. Your Titans allowed it after seeing my trick. Sorry about the Reptar, by the way.”
“Irrelevant.”
“And yet, my condolences.”
“How did you do what you did?”
“Even the Great Divinity wonders at my petty tricks? I’m flattered.”
“You haven’t answered the question.”
Stranger reached into his pocket, then his hand emerged with three golf ball-sized silver spheres. He flexed the muscles of his hand, and the balls rolled in circles against each other, emitting light chimes. A subtle shift of pressure made them climb higher, into the branches of his fingers. He held them splayed, balls between each digit, then closed his palm and made them vanish.
“Like it?”
“We do not understand.”
“You asked to see my trick.”
“It’s not what we were referring to. We meant — ”
“I know what you meant, darlin’. Problem is you’re attempting to judge a people without understanding them.”
“We now know all we need to know.”
“Because of the Ark, you mean.”
The woman finally expressed surprise. Which, Stranger thought, was a wonder in itself. All he’d seen of the Astral mind spoke of emotional inertia. Surely the Astrals had it, but they kept it contained and didn’t allow feelings to affect what they saw as work and duty. But that had changed, and Stranger was proof. The idea was supposed to squeeze all contaminants from the collective — the pollutants dripped by one Astral replacement’s overeager participation in a human’s peaks and valleys. Kill off one kid and force a guy to decide between two women he loves, and things get messy fast.
“What do you know of the archive?”
“Same as Bannister. Both Bannisters. Same as the various Dempseys — Meyer and Piper, even Heather, God rest her soul.”
“Heather wasn’t a Dempsey.”
Stranger reached for his lips, realizing only once his long fingers touched them that he wasn’t chewing on a toothpick. But he gestured as if he’d plucked one from between his lips anyway and spoke in a gotcha tone. “See? Now, you shouldn’t care to point that out.”
“You haven’t answered our question about the archive.”
“And you haven’t answered my insinuation about Heather. Tell me. Who did Meyer Dempsey love more?”
“Irrelevant.”
“Is it now?” Stranger smiled secretively then moved away from the wall and stood with a hand on one hip. “Well then. I don’t want to be rude. To tell you the truth, I don’t know much more about the Ark than you planned for them all to know.”
“You mean what their research told them.”
“Mmm-hmm. Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. It wasn’t what you’d intended. Like Cameron Bannister being able to open the thing. Just like how he could reach the archive without problems, whereas anyone else would have been pushed back by your Titans and Reptars.”
“Why are you here?”
“I see. You’d rather be direct. I like that in a woman. Then I’ll just say it. ‘Course I know about the archive. I know you wanted it open, and I know it was the choice to open the archive — not what it contained — that mattered most.”
“The archive contains records of all that has happened in the last epoch. It is the evidence by which humanity will be judged.”
“And judged guilty, no doubt.”
“It is none of your concern.”
“What about the viceroys? Is that my concern?”
This time, the woman paused with her mouth open. A curious affect for a species that normally communicated without using mouths at all.
“I know that you know they’re plotting against you. All of those disobedient, individual-minded folk. Even Dempsey, who you replaced, is a loner. You’d sure be stupid not to see the way they’ve been sneaking around behind your back. So of course you know. You know that all of those loyal human leaders you put in place to run your cities actually aren’t loyal at all. You know about their secret communication channel, which really ain’t so secret from where you’re standing. You know about Mara Jabari’s Cradle, stashed outside Ember Flats. And … ” Stranger paused, wishing he had a toothpick or a cigarette to play with for effect. “Let me guess. If they run to the Cradle, you won’t stop them. You’ll let them leave, shooting lasers at their heels to pretend you’re chasing them, although you never really have.”
The woman’s mouth worked, but no words came out. Did being in a human form color the
way her mind worked? Was she a transformed Titan, like both replacement Meyers? Or some sort of projection? Stranger knew better than most what taking human form did to an Astral intelligence. Flesh had a way of getting its emotional hooks into you.
“Did I ever tell you about my cousin Timmy?” Stranger asked the woman.
“We do not understand.”
“Well, actually, he was Meyer’s cousin Timmy. He wanted to be a musician. Everyone was supportive. Really supportive. Like, too supportive. You know how everyone supports a retard? That’s about how everyone supported Timmy. Folks in the family told Cousin Timmy how good he did in everything having to do with his music. They went to all his shows. They wore shirts he made for shitty gigs in pissant little clubs. You know why? Because they didn’t really believe in him. They faked enthusiasm because they felt they had to, and when you fake it, you don’t need to believe. And do you know who Timmy became?”
“No,” the woman said.
“He became Tim Whitney.”
The woman just stared.
“Not a country music fan, I see.”
“Why are you here?” To Stranger, the woman sounded stuck in a loop.
“Tim wasn’t the biggest name, but he definitely made it on the professional music scene. Pretty big time, and he made a great living as a semi-famous singer until you killed him along with most of the planet. But his family couldn’t see his fame even when he had it because to them he was their stupid Cousin Timmy, who thought he could play guitar. ‘Good for poor, dumb Timmy,’ they said. You get me?”
“What is your intention? What do you want?”
“Friend, it’s not a matter of what I want. It’s a matter of what I can give you.”
“How did you destroy the Reptar?”
Stranger held up his hand. He pinched a silver ball between thumb and forefinger and ring finger. He made it dance, put his other hand to it, and suddenly had a pair rolling across the backs of two hands. Then three, then four.
He waved his hands theatrically, and all the balls were gone.
“I have many tricks I’d rather not share.”
“Then what do you have to give?”
