by Platt, Sean
Onboard the vessel previously of Ember Flats, the old order’s Capital of Capitals, Stranger watched Viceroy Mara Jabari stare into her own silver sphere, wishing irrationally that the time was right to reach out and speak to her. But the dominoes had been laid, and this was a delicate time, as the Astrals plunged powder-white fingers into the soft flesh of humanity’s psyche, believing it to be disconnected. Now was not the time to reveal the truth: that humanity had not grown without a developed collective consciousness, but that it had simply grown one the Astrals had never seen. Stranger, being mostly human himself, could see the connections, feel them forming as the Astrals did their work, reducing the human population to only those who, thanks to some wrenches in the works, contained enough seeds to germinate.
But Jabari looked into her sphere and rolled it across an old map of the former globe that someone of wit had included in the vessel’s onboard supplies. And if Stranger focused, he could catch the tone of her thoughts: guilt, regret, and resentment. Jabari wondered at what might happen next, more fearing that she’d remain a leader than hoping to be one.
I’ve failed them, she thought. The viceroys cannot meet. There are no hookups remaining, and the Astrals control the satellites.
Meyer, and all that made him special by the Da Vinci Initiate’s reckoning, would die along with everyone else. Even if he and Kindred made the Cradle, they’d starve like the rest of them, with nowhere to be and nowhere to go.
They might all be dead, her mind twisted the knife. ALL of the viceroys. I might be the only one left. This single ship might be all that’s left of mankind.
It wasn’t true, but Stranger couldn’t tell her.
More would perish. Many, many more.
The viceroys would not meet as planned.
But below the surface, something new was growing.
Stranger, as he sat atop the big hill, looked down into the spheres. He wondered if this — all the work he’d done — made him selfish. He wanted very much to live, and it was only his own arrogant need that served the rest, purely by chance.
In the end he decided that there were many things that even he didn’t know or understand, and that all plans had their masters, and that the only thing more selfish than what he’d done so far would be to ignore the commands of his own plan’s master.
Then the first thing happened that Stranger hadn’t anticipated. The first of many things he hadn’t — and wouldn’t — see coming.
The first connection lit.
And then the next.
Chapter Forty-Four
“Did you say something?” a girl asked.
Clara looked over. They were in the lowest level of the Ember Flats vessel, half the ship’s kids tossed into one giant pile with only minimalist wooden bunks to tease their comfort. Clara didn’t understand any of it. If the Astrals were such magicians, how about a few mattresses? Heck, how about some TV? Anything to pass the time in this dank ship, so much like something from hundreds of years ago.
But, she thought, at least it was better than the belowdecks space they’d been in before finding a hatch leading up here. That had felt like pure luck, and thank God for it. Clara didn’t know how it had happened. She’d had this feeling that the hatch was to one side so she’d crawled there, even as other Lightborn protested in the dark.
“Sorry?”
“I said, ‘Did you say something?’” The girl stopped, realizing the absurdity of telling Clara what she’d said when she’d asked if Clara had spoken. Then she laughed. She looked maybe seven, like Clara. But this girl wasn’t Lightborn, and felt much younger.
“I didn’t say anything.” Clara let herself smile. She knew this wasn’t the only ship of survivors; she could still sense the other Lightborn who’d managed similarly miraculous stowaways on other ships. But Clara felt mostly alone — the simple, quiet solitude of the surviving few. Talking to anyone felt nice. To see even a ghost of humor.
“I thought you said something about boots,” the girl told her.
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t have any boots.”
“That’s okay,” Clara said, “because I didn’t ask for them.”
“And I especially don’t have man’s boots.”
Clara looked at the girl again, this time taking her in from head to toe. She was wearing a fine blue dress — the kind of thing Clara’s mother used to make her wear for fancy balls, back in Heaven’s Veil. A strange thing for a ride in an apocalyptic ark. Clara fought an urge to take their conversation sideways, to ask where the girl had been when the water started rising.
She was watching Clara right back, as if in expectation. Her skin was almost as dark as Ella’s, but her eyes were emerald green. It was a curious look, and Clara found herself spellbound.
“You heard me say something about men’s boots?”
“Or a man in boots,” the girl answered.
Clara turned in the opposite direction, finding the area behind her still empty. Some of the Lightborn, once they’d found their way out of the ship’s pitch-black underbelly, had been antsy. Logan had nodded to Clara knowingly (deferring to her as the group’s new leader, perhaps) and risen to take them away, leading them like a chaperone. Clara had felt the group’s anxiety but didn’t want to go along. And now, looking at the green-eyed girl, she wondered if there’d been a reason. Maybe she’d heard her the way the girl seemed to have heard Clara’s thoughts about the stranger with his scuffed brown boots, and she’d stuck around to have this very discussion.
“I might have been mumbling,” Clara lied. She’d been silent, but her mind had been active — yawning back to a vision of the man by the campfire, wondering if what he’d seemed to be telling them all was true. “What else did I say?”
“Dunno.” The girl wrinkled her nose. “Did you say you went camping or something?”
“You don’t know if I said it or not?”
Again the girl shrugged. Perhaps the oddity was dawning on her. Clara tried to sympathize but couldn’t. Ever since she’d been inside her mother, she’d heard the thoughts and feelings of others. She didn’t know what it was like to suddenly waken to a latent ability.
Or more accurately, being woken to one. By Clara’s mere presence, if she had to guess.
The girl seemed uncomfortable, probably trying to decide how she could think Clara had spoken without any details about what she’d said. But mental and spoken communication weren’t the same. When speaking mind to mind, answers occasionally came before the questions. You sometimes smelled aromas before knowing their source.
Clara turned herself around, rotating without standing. Once fully facing the girl — the two of them nearly knee to knee on shoddy wooden benches as if preparing for a game of patty-cake — Clara smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Zoe.”
“And of course you already know mine.”
“Clara.” The girl’s face wrinkled again as she tried to recall if Clara’s name had been said aloud before her friends had left to go exploring.
“That’s right. Do you want to play a game?”
“My brother has Go Fish,” Zoe said.
“Not like this. It’s a pretend game.”
“Okay.”
“We close our eyes and pretend we’re somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. This ship is smelly.”
Zoe laughed. “Okay.”
“What kind of a place do you want to imagine?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about if we pretend we’re camping? You said camping.”
“Okay.” Zoe reached for a pair of long metal rods lying along one wall, apparently as leftovers from construction that never existed. “These can be our hot dog sticks.”
“No, we don’t do it like that.”
Zoe held the rods then set them slowly back down. “Then how?”
“We close our eyes.” Clara closed hers, to demonstrate.
“Okay. Now what?”
> “Now we take turns filling it up.”
Clara looked around inside her mind, watching the scene come into being like a 3-D model rendered. It was the same campsite she and the Lightborn had visited with the man in boots, but this time he hadn’t created the space. This time, Zoe was doing it.
“How do we fill it up?”
“Just put something there. In your imagination.”
A pink dinosaur, human sized and standing on two legs, more cute than menacing, popped into existence in a small green hat.
“Nice. I like his hat,” Clara said.
When Zoe said nothing, Clara opened her eyes. Zoe was staring at her.
“Whose hat?”
“Close your eyes,” Clara said.
After a second, Zoe did. Then Clara did the same.
“My turn.”
Clara pictured a dwarf with a nose so big he could barely hold it up. The nose was bright red and dripping.
Zoe laughed.
“What?”
“I just imagined something else. A little guy with a big nose.”
“Hey! It’s supposed to be my turn.”
“Sorry,” Zoe said.
Clara turned the imaginary dwarf into a troll. It growled, and leaped. Zoe gave a tiny shriek, and when Clara opened her eyes this time, Zoe gave a tiny embarrassed laugh.
“Something just kind of freaked me out.”
“In your own imagination?”
Zoe looked slightly away, frowning. The answer, from Zoe’s perspective, was probably Sort of. Other people’s thoughts always struck Clara as obviously foreign no matter how well they meshed with her own. Each thought had an accent, and a discerning mental ear couldn’t help but gather the accents of others. She knew something was strange but had no frame of reference.
But children, unlike adults, had malleable perspective. That’s the whole reason Clara had been sure, once they were aboard the ships, that this was possible.
Adults had to be convinced. Their minds, through the passage of years, set like concrete.
But not children. Children could still convince themselves to believe.
“It was the troll, wasn’t it?” Clara asked.
Zoe nodded without thinking then stopped to wonder why she was nodding.
“Close your eyes, Zoe. I want to show you something.”
Clara focused.
“What just popped up around the campsite, Zoe?”
“Dunno.”
“I think you know. Look behind the pile of logs.”
Zoe laughed again. “What are you doing here?” she said to something that didn’t exist.
“What do you see, Zoe?”
“It’s a pig. Why did I think of a pig around a campfire?”
Clara inserted a clown.
“Probably the same reason you’d think of a clown.” Then Clara added two elephants, a spotted leopard, and a banana tree. “Or those elephants. Or the leopard. Or even that banana tree over by the pond.”
When Zoe looked over, she seemed almost ready to run. This playmate was no fun after all. This playmate, Zoe seemed to have decided, could do black magic.
So Clara sent her emotional mind toward the girl’s, cupping it in a nonphysical palm. Her mind touched Zoe’s, and second by second the girl began to relax. It was like hypnosis. It wasn’t easy, coming psychically alive for the first time.
“What’s my mom’s name, Zoe?”
“L … Lila.”
“What about my dad?”
“R …” But then rather than finishing the name, Zoe’s hand went over her mouth and she said, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“He …”
Clara slowly opened her mind, sending out only what Zoe needed to know. She’d picked up on the fact that Clara’s dad was dead and that had been expected, but Clara hadn’t realized Zoe would know her father’s misdeeds as well — knowledge that Clara could see on Zoe’s face even now, as the girl groped for proper expression.
Clara took Zoe’s hands in hers, feeling rattled. She’d had the feeling that the Lightborn would be able to rouse the dormant minds of non-Lightborn children since before the big waves — that they’d be able to “light up the connections,” to use the cowboy’s expression. But she hadn’t realized how smoothly it would happen. Zoe’s mind, as Clara peered inside, was wide open. And through that mind, Clara could see Zoe’s brother’s. And her brother’s friend. And the kids that friend had met on the vessel, all of whom were a level up, above them now.
In Clara’s mind, connections lit like Christmas bulbs coming alive.
“What’s happening?” Zoe asked.
And behind that first question, Clara heard a hundred others.
Clara wasn’t entirely sure. So she gave the only answer she had.
“What no one expected.”
Chapter Forty-Five
For the first few days, as the food held out — shrink-wrapped dry goods like crackers and preserved meat sticks, plus bottled water and juices — Lila occupied herself by watching the tablet, staying amused with its stored media, taking a strange and savage pleasure in knowing they had no connection to get more media, and that for all they knew, they were the planet’s only survivors and that no media would ever be made by humans again.
She watched reruns of Piper’s favorite old show, which just so happened to be her late mother’s favorite old show. Friends. It had been old when the world ended the first time, when humanity learned it wasn’t alone. And it seemed ancient now — memories of a day gone by when people had no more pressing concern than getting to the coffee shop to sit around on an orange couch, worrying about their ongoing relationship issues.
Lila watched the show, numb, playing the tablet too loud, without using the headphones she’d found in one of the compartments. Hours passed.
For the next few days, after the dying satisfaction of watching mindless entertainment had lost its edge, Lila watched the waterline, occasionally popping the sub’s top to scan the horizon. Kindred told her to be careful, but that was a laugh; if there were humans left, they’d have better things to do than concern themselves with one and a half rebellious viceroys. And if there were still Astrals? Well, there would be worse things, after days in an endless ocean, than getting shot to bits.
Lila’s father told her to watch for land if she had to go topside. But that was a laugh.
Piper said nothing. She’d kept to herself since the electrical equipment had come inexplicably back online — divorced, it seemed, from the power that should have come from the engines. None of them were mechanics or engineers, but Lila knew that something was fishy with the sub and that they were all pretending it wasn’t so they wouldn’t break the spell, causing ruin. And since that time — since that little bit of sub-related magic — Piper had been strange. Almost secretive. She woke some nights screaming, clutching a small purse she’d found — a purse she wouldn’t let anyone else touch. And Piper would say that she remembered nothing of the dreams. And she’d look at Lila with wide eyes and repeat the same: It’s nothing. I don’t remember why I was scared, only that I had a bad dream.
But Piper looked at Lila as if she thought Lila knew something. As if whatever she knew, Piper didn’t want her to know. So she kept to herself more and more, clutching her purse, peering inside it, obsessing over the sub’s broken navigation, seeming to pretend that she knew a way to go even if there was no way she could. There was no GPS. Only a nonsense heading. A place toward which Piper kept them pointed, without notes or calculations.
After five days, the food ran out.
After seven, Lila remembered that Peers was an enemy. But she forgot why, exactly. There’d been a time in which she’d had all sorts of problems with the man. She’d considered stabbing him once she found something sharp — that thought had come on day two. But she hadn’t killed him and couldn’t remember why. There was something between them, so for the sixth and seventh days she sat across the sub and stared until he looked away, over and
over again. And when he went topside to look futilely for land as Piper tweaked the controls, mumbling to herself, Lila considered following him up and shoving him overboard. There must still be sharks in the ocean. She could cut him before knocking him into the water. Let Peers bleed and the predators come.
On the ninth day, Lila found herself forgetting her own daughter. Worse: She remembered that daughter suddenly one day and realized that not only had she forgotten Cora but that she’d been forgetting her for days now. But Cora might still be alive. Cora might not have been killed by …
??
Or she might not have perished in the …
??
Except that her daughter’s name wasn’t Cora, it was Clara. Clara. Clara. Clara. Lila repeated it over and over like a chant.
“Lila. You look like shit.”
Lila’s father, talking to her, looking a whole lot like shit himself. It took her a long time to remember why there were two of him, and once she remembered that, she couldn’t recall the circumstances that had created the second. Were they twins? Was the other her uncle?
“Are you okay? How’s your … your head?”
Lila was annoyed by the question. She hadn’t hit her head. But then she realized why her father was asking, and it wasn’t about Lila at all. His head wasn’t all that well, and he seemed to be seeking company in some sort of mental misery.
“Why?” she asked him.
“Have you been having dreams?”
“Why?”
“I’ve been thinking about when you were a kid. Do you remember that?”
Of course she didn’t. What a stupid question.
“Do you remember that, Lila?”
And he, the great Meyer Dempsey, who might be a twin, didn’t remember either. At least that’s what Lila thought.
“Do you remember what it was like, growing up in Colorado?”