by Platt, Sean
“The what, Clara?”
“Who are you?” Clara asked.
The question was answered when two Titans entered the hallway behind her. There was a shuffling of claws from the other end, and two Reptars moved to block them in the passage.
“I wasn’t sure we could trust a rogue,” the woman said. “But here you are, right where you’re supposed to be. I guess dreams do come true. You’re a hard woman to find, Clara.”
“You’re not Astral,” Clara said. Everything about her screamed human, from her body language to the cadence of her speech.
And the woman replied, “But not very smart.”
Chapter Thirteen
The man behind the rock looked up at Peers after Peers asked his question. He had a long, weathered face that wasn’t quite handsome, nor ugly. The women he’d heard talk about Stranger seemed to lean in one direction, but it was always unclear which. He might be “rugged,” perhaps — handsome because he was a bit rough around the edges. But Peers knew two things: the face was long and drawn, never quite smiling. And — to Peers, at least — a bit frightening.
And like everyone, Peers knew that the face hadn’t changed since their arrival — a day that Peers was now disturbed to realize he remembered in all its original clarity.
“I might ask you the same thing,” Stranger said.
Peers wasn’t sure how to respond. Officially, did they know each other? Had he forgotten the way the rest of them seemed to have? The way Peers had, only a few hours ago? He’d left Sadeem, meaning only to get the water for Clara requested by the Sage. Then the waking dream had claimed him. He’d left the caves without question, following a siren song written for him. Seeing the monolith glinting in the sun (ahem, the freighter) told him where he’d been headed all along.
“Do you know who I am?” It seemed a safe question, and didn’t give away that Peers knew a lot more about Stranger than he had the day before.
“You’re Mullah.”
Peers looked down. That told him nothing. The robe gave him away. He was about to inquire further, but Stranger interrupted with something more relevant that Peers, with all his renewed memory, had been ridiculous enough to have forgotten.
“Tell me you saw that.” Stranger pointed toward the big rusting boat on the sand. Now closer, Peers could see most of the ship, but it looked like it always had.
“Saw what?”
Stranger watched him evenly. This felt to Peers like a game of chicken —both of them wanted to admit something strange, with neither willing to go first.
“Your name is Peers. Peers Basara.”
“So you do know me.”
“I may. From a long time ago.”
But Peers could tell it was a half truth.
“You’re the one they call Stranger.”
“Why are you here, Peers?”
“You asked me if I saw something. What did you mean?”
Stranger was still looking at Peers as if there were weapons raised between them. He pulled something from his robe and held it up: a small silver sphere, about the size of the one Piper carried when they’d crossed the sea in that horrible metal box, and hid like something precious and shameful.
Stranger held it up, then out for Peers.
“Hold this.”
Peers took the thing. It touched his palm, and he realized he’d been tricked. He felt a hand enter his mind and grope around. The sensation was intrusive but lasted only a second. Then it was gone, and Stranger was meeting his eyes in a new way, reaching out to pluck the sphere from Peers’s palm.
“So your memory is back.”
“Memory of what?” Peers asked, blinking, trying to regain his composure.
“There’s no need to pretend. I used to see much more than I can now, but I haven’t lost all of my tricks. It’s come back to you. And peeking into the network through your eyes, I’d guess it’s all come back to the others as well.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What is it that makes you want to hide, Peers Basara? What secret are you so determined to keep that you’d lie to me even as I stand here, knowing the truth?”
Peers’s internal eyes flitted to something like a black box wrapped in thick, heavy chain. There was something hidden deeper, all right, and Peers almost knew what it was: a secret he seemed to be keeping even from himself. But he wouldn’t open that box. Not yet, and maybe not ever.
Stranger pointed again. “There was an Astral shuttle there not two minutes ago. A man I know was loaded into it. A very important man. And there was a woman down there, too — a woman I’m afraid I also know. It scares me, and I’m not accustomed to fear. I know exactly who you are and that you’ve been drawn to this place without even being sure why. But most importantly I know that something has changed for you, as it has for everyone in the village, as it seems to have changed, albeit differently, even in me.” He pointed again. “I’m afraid that was Eternity down there with two Reptars and two Titans. The human face of their Divinity queen — on this planet, at least. I’m afraid because a long time ago, I seem to remember knowing where all the pieces were supposed to go in order for something to happen. But now I don’t know if this is what I’d wanted or something different. One of them has been taken, and this time I’m afraid that Eternity won’t be so easily fooled. It’s all coming back around, and you damn well know it, Peers Basara of the Mullah, who traveled with Meyer Dempsey across the ocean, guided by my hand. Stop being such a coward. Stand like a man, or go back to where you came from.”
Peers knelt beside Stranger, who was still low, as if meaning to continue peering past the dunes at the empty freighter.
“I’ve been dreaming of this place,” Peers said.
“You all have.”
“Everyone in the village?”
“No. Just those with a job to do.”
“So they’re not dreams? Are they like …” Peers swallowed. “Like before, with the Astrals and their rings of stones?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why now?”
“It has something to do with Clara.”
“Meyer’s granddaughter?”
Stranger nodded. “She’s been waging a silent war. She seems to have finally scored a victory, but the Astrals hit her back. I was supposed to find her, but I came here instead.”
“Why?”
“I can’t see it as I used to. But you’re proof that something is different. We were supposed to forget. I remembered. So did Clara and a few others. But that was supposed to be all. Your knowledge was like a sickness, and for some reason, they were unable to kick it.”
“To the Astrals?”
Stranger’s eyes were fixed on the freighter. He nodded.
“Do you know why? Or what it means?”
“One day I might have. But not today.”
“Maybe it will come back to you. Like everything came back to me.”
“I’ve gotten something else,” Stranger said. Peers shifted to look at the man’s face, then wished he hadn’t. People in the village treated Liza Knight like a holy mother and her priests and clerics as wise men. But when they truly needed something important, the people went to Stranger. It was hard, feeling as lost as Peers suddenly felt, to see the man bothered.
“What?” Peers asked.
Stranger turned to Peers. His eyes could only be described as haunted.
“A grudge,” Stranger said. “A vendetta.”
Peers let a moment pass, unsure how to respond. Finally he shifted on the sand. “So what now?”
Their attention was drawn back to the ship before Stranger could answer.
A new woman approached from the far dune, walking toward the hulking ship in the bright wide open.
Chapter Fourteen
Liza just wanted to get out of the sun.
She wasn’t afraid of the cargo ship the way so many people were. Why would she be? It was only a ship. But even if she’d been like the others — blank-headed, unable to fathom the idea of the t
hing being crafted by human hands (or robots, or whatever it was that built ships back before the whole damned planet was resting in peace) — Liza doubted she’d have been afraid. Many things in the world weren’t easily explained. The big ball of fire in the sky, for instance. Nobody really knew what that was these days now that all the scientists were dead or stupid. The theories were hilarious. She kept waiting for someone to propose that thunder was surely the gods dancing.
But even with her remembering mind, Liza might have feared the ship. Strange things happened out this way. People got lost and never came back. They saw things. And at night, the thing was creepy beyond belief. It would be easy even for a rational person to believe in ghosts — even if she was supposedly a holy person, which Liza, beneath her skin, decidedly was not.
But today, after waking up in the middle of the goddamned desert and frying like a piece of bacon, Liza didn’t care if there were all sorts of boogies in the cargo ship. It was shade. And she was curious. She’d come out here a few times to try and raid the thing for futuristic goodies, but her devoted followers made it hard to venture off alone. The rectory was comfortably within The Clearing’s borders, and that meant she could never slip away. Some pious asshole always ended up following, asking why Mother Knight was taking a pilgrimage to someplace so unholy.
Well, she was alone now. If she could remember how she’d managed to get here from the rectory without being followed, she’d take notes on how to repeat it in the future. But Liza didn’t remember at all. One moment she’d been in the garden on the cusp of lunch, and the next she’d been sunbathing in 100-degree heat. Or so she assumed, though Liza was unable to verify without a thermometer or a watch.
“I miss my coffeemaker,” she said aloud.
But Liza didn’t like the way her voice sounded as she neared the freighter’s base and slipped into blessed shade. She’d said that tiny witticism to lighten her mood, but the problem with doing such things alone was that nobody ever appreciated your mirth. The only audience for Liza’s hilarity right now was Liza, and Liza (as a spectator) sort of thought that Liza (as a performer) was a shitty comedian, and was, in fact, a lot more scared than her stern image normally allowed.
“Bullshit,” she said.
But again, not funny.
Liza slouched. She sat against the metal, wondering distantly if the ship might choose this moment to defy two decades of sensible physics and tip over to crush her. It might be a blessing. She could spin this all she wanted, and play to all the audiences of Liza Knights that she chose, but she’d lost two hours of her life and woken somewhere far off and not terribly safe. Supposedly there were raiders from other tribes out here — folks who, despite being as saved from the big flood as her own village, still refused to play nice with the only few humans left on the planet. And of course, there was sunburn.
Maybe she was losing her mind.
Water. She desperately needed water.
Liza looked up at the ship, then along its edge, toward where she could (blessedly) walk to the nearest ladder in the shade. But she stopped when she saw that there were footprints all around. And at the end of the forward-facing footprints, a large, circular, almost smooth indentation in the sand, as if a shallow glass bowl had been pushed into the ground to hold the sand back.
Curious, Liza went to it. She had to move into the sun, but something held her spellbound. A memory trying to resurface — not of her childhood or old-world Earth or even last week but of something recent. From the time she’d lost.
It had something to do with all these footprints.
Some of which, she now noticed, were enormous, with toes, as if made by a couple of desert-dwelling bigfoot. Some were like paws, long lines dragged in the sand. There was a curious set comprised of a semi-pointed, distorted oval, always followed by a round impression like a dot — big, short, fat exclamation points, really.
Like … high heels?
It’s in the canyon.
Liza looked up, but no one had spoken. It had been a whispered voice — or rather, the ghost of a whispered voice. As if she hadn’t heard it now but had been repeating it in her mind like a song stuck in her head.
It’s in the canyon, at the bend, beneath where the sun sets.
Like a refrain. On a loop. Someone giving shitty directions to somewhere because Google Maps hadn’t been invented yet — or whatever.
Liza knelt.
She touched the impression in the sand.
This time the memory came with pictures, sensations, and sound. Was this place — in the canyon, apparently — somewhere she’d been? She definitely didn’t recognize it. But Liza had heard it. Of that she was sure. Maybe she’d seen pictures, if that were possible. Either way, it was compellingly familiar. She knew this place.
Liza realized that she really, really wanted to see it again.
What was there?
Food? Weapons? A cache containing a generator, fuel, extension cords, and a Mr. Coffee?
Liza almost knew. But she didn’t actually know — at least not specifics. She didn’t precisely feel affection for … whatever it was; this was more like the memory of warmth. An aftertaste of adoration, left like the scent of something burned hours ago.
She stood.
She knew the canyon. There was only one within reasonable walking or horse-riding distance. North, where the terrain grew inhospitable and the land had dried like old leather. The thing probably ran northwest to southeast, meaning that if someone approached from the most likely path, there were only a few jogs where the sun might seem to set into the canyon itself.
She desperately wanted to go there.
More, perhaps, than she wanted to know what had happened in her past two hours — whatever it was that had caused her to wake in the desert, alone.
You’re losing your mind, Liza. Like you almost lost it on the ship, when everyone was forgetting and you …
But that was absurd. She hadn’t seriously considered trying to scuttle the ark and take her chances in a lifeboat. That had been a flight of fancy — the kind of thing a sane woman considers when every single person around her becomes paranoid idiots who Won’t. Leave. Her. Alone.
There were many explanations for why Liza might lose a bunch of time and wake up somewhere new. Like psychedelic drugs people told her the Mullah kept experimenting with. Or too much of the monks’ mead. She hadn’t had either, to her recollection, but maybe that was proof of how drunk or high she’d been: so high that she didn’t even remember getting high.
Liza’s mind didn’t dignify this theory with a response.
“I’m fine,” she said to nobody.
But this time, someone replied.
Chapter Fifteen
The woman with the short, hawkishly styled brown hair stopped walking, turned back to Clara and Logan, then said, “I can hear you.”
Clara looked at Logan. Logan looked back at Clara. Clara felt suddenly uncomfortable with the woman’s dark brown eyes upon her. It wasn’t nerves so much as discomfort. As if she’d been caught doing something shameful in front of Logan.
“You. I can hear you.”
Sadeem was looking at Clara, his face concerned. Clara gave him only a glance and then said, “I didn’t say anything.”
The woman gave Clara a long, hard look. For a moment, Clara thought she might react like a Reptar — biting her in half and ending this tense, protracted misery. Instead the woman put her hand on her hip and gave a bob of her head.
“You know, we’ve felt you. For our entire time in orbit, trying to solve the last bit of this epoch’s ‘human problem.’ You have always struck us like a pebble in the shoe: a tiny harmless thing, irritating for its persistence.”
Clara thought, If you’re really Astral Divinity, your true form is a thing like a light-filled anemone on a ship in orbit somewhere. You don’t even wear shoes. But she kept her mouth shut, waiting for more.
The woman glanced down — at her shoes, black and sleek with a low heel.
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br /> “Your kind.” She glanced at Logan, shaking her head as if bemused, almost smiling. “You’re like ghosts. There but not quite. And that was the worst thing about feeling your little attacks on our machine: For twenty years, we couldn’t find their source. But then when you finally broke through and our … measures … to suppress your memories failed, some of the other Divinities were bothered because it meant you’d remember your pasts. But not me. Because even if the whole thing was falling apart, at least we could finally see you — right there as a big, bright light on your own annoyingly persistent neural network.”
It was such a strange way to speak, for an Astral.
“‘Divinities’?” Clara said.
“Divinities,” the woman repeated.
“I’ve never heard it plural. Usually, it’s like there’s only one of you.”
The woman’s jaw worked. Clara watched, aware in a distant way that the human thing in front of her was merely a puppet for Divinity. And yet this one sure seemed to have made itself comfortable in bones and muscles and flesh.
“The point is, I can hear you now,” she said, still stopped in the rock hallway while the Titans and Reptars waited. “And not just your thoughts about how you might be able to duck down the corridor coming up on the right and run toward the new exit you don’t think we know is there.” Her eyes flicked toward Logan, then back to Clara. “We can hear all sorts of things you might be thinking.”
Inside Clara’s mind, she heard a voice that wasn’t quite her own.
Did you make a mistake in leaving him, Clara?
Was Logan as kind a lover as you remember in what he recalls as your cold and distant way?
Divinity smiled at them each in turn, then turned and resumed walking. Clara sensed Logan’s discomfort without seeing it, feeling the blood rush to her face.
“Sadeem,” the woman said as they passed the corridor down which Clara no longer felt any desire to try and escape. “You once told our Eternity about a Mullah legend. About seven founders that you call ‘Archetypes.’”