by Sean Platt
Carl’s mouth opened.
The monolith.
The freighter.
Carl.
The Seven, or the Eight.
And the network. Puzzle pieces that spawned a new dimension, immune to the Astrals’ best attempts to fight back.
“Because … because they …”
But before Carl could finish, Stranger’s door banged open with a pop like a wood knot in a fire.
“Stranger,” said the woman at his threshold, her cadence rushed. “It’s Clara. She’s collapsed.”
CHAPTER 2
Piper’s eyes opened. There was no threshold between sleep and wakefulness. She’d been in one place but was now in another, eyelids not at all heavy as they usually were when slumber departed, looking up at the roof of the small stone house that Meyer and his brother had built with their bare hands. Or at least that’s what Piper seemed to remember them doing, though for some reason now, on this particular morning, she had her doubts. Beams overhead were large and thick — denuded trees made more or less round. But she didn’t remember Meyer and Kindred felling the trees, just like she didn’t remember how two men had lifted something so heavy over their heads.
Something was wrong. It had nothing to do with the beams. It was something more. Something worse. And yet, in its own way, better.
“Meyer.”
He was already as awake as she was, as if he’d been lying beside her all night with open eyes, watching stars the roof kept them from seeing.
“I know.”
There was a knock. The door wasn’t latched, and swung inward as the visitor tapped it, pivoting on forged metal secured to the frame, pinned together with a small rod. Clara had told them how to make the doors swing, and as far as Piper remembered they hadn’t had a clue before. She’d done it as a girl, a long time ago.
“Mom.”
“Come in,” Piper said.
The door swung the rest of the way. Lila entered. She seemed out of sorts, a bit manic — exactly the way Piper’s insides were starting to feel. Exactly the way Meyer, now that Piper glanced over, appeared.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Lila said.
“But there’s something else. What is it, Lila?”
Piper was looking over at Meyer. When she’d said his name, he’d muttered two words as if awaiting her prompt. His response had made sense in the moment, but now she was already forgetting what that meant.
“I don’t know. I had a dream. With Clara. She was a little girl again. But …”
“But what, Lila?”
“She was asking about her father.”
“It was just a dream.”
Still, Piper felt a chill. She’d been dreaming of Lila, back when Lila was a child. And Lila hadn’t been asking about her father, but she had been asking about her mother. About Piper. But Piper couldn’t remember having ever given birth. She remembered Lila growing up, but didn’t remember being pregnant. The dream felt weary. Just thinking about it made her tired again, but it wasn’t the usual phenomenon of a fading dream. She was detouring around a blind spot, pretending it wasn’t there.
She didn’t used to have these thoughts. But lately, spots in Piper’s memories had plagued her. She’d look at Clara and wonder. She’d look at Meyer and wonder. She’d look at herself in the mirror, and she’d wonder. There was a recurring image of Lila, still in her teens, standing beside a boy with severe black eyebrows. Not Clara’s father, whom nobody spoke of (and pretended they didn’t talk about for reasons of decency, not because nobody, including Lila, knew who he was), but someone else. A hole in the family that was supposed to be here. On waking, Piper wanted to prowl the village, looking for that young boy who’d gone missing, who wasn’t ever actually there.
“And her grandfather,” Lila added.
Piper looked over at Meyer. He was almost seventy. Piper, at fifty-six, was courting the reaper. Meyer’s age flat-out thumbed its nose at him. But Meyer never got sick, same as his brother. Sometimes it seemed like the governor was blessed by the gods and might live forever. Or by someone else — a bargain made, to keep his spirit young.
Meyer looked back at Piper, his eyes still as vibrant as they’d been when she’d met him. Which had happened when …
But that box in her mind was also empty.
Meyer stood. He pulled on loose pants and a shirt, then opened the rear door. She knew where he was going, and the knowledge took some of the air from her lungs. Every day, he visited Kindred in the small hut on their small plot, nearest the governor’s house but still separated by a sparse, ratty lawn. It was more like feeding a wild animal than paying a visit.
“Meyer,” she said.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Meyer!”
He turned fully, waiting.
“Something’s happening, isn’t it?”
He turned back and left without a word.
Lila came forward. She sat on the bed’s edge, watching her father leave and close the door. She swept her housedress up beneath her and perched half-on, half-off. A flash of something nostalgic invaded Piper’s mind — (She and Lila in a dark place, made of stone, underground, quiet, the darkness lit not by candles but like some bit of leftover magic that today they’d have run straight to Stranger’s Church.) — and then she was Lila again, her own daughter now seen through a recent veil of unreality, sitting on the bed, making Piper feel like an imposter. As if Lila had come to her for something that Piper wasn’t qualified to dispense.
“She was asking me again, Mom,” Lila said, and again Piper felt a strange reaction to the word, wishing for once that Lila, now an adult, would call Piper by her name. “Clara was. And not just in the dream, I mean. In wakefulness.”
“Asking what?”
“Asking me about her father. About you. About my mom.”
Piper didn’t like the sound of that. Lila had listed three items, not two. And from experience, Piper knew exactly how Clara asked those questions: not like she wanted to know but like she knew fine — and wanted to see if you did, too.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“That’s probably why you had your dream.” Piper’s eyes went to the still-open door. She’d accepted this early intrusion without question and so had Meyer, but Lila hadn’t really explained. It was only a dream. But Piper’s own dream was still clinging to her insides like a drowning man fighting the tide. It was true: Something was happening. The idea of Lila bursting in to tell them something so mundane made sense, and that in itself was a bother.
“Maybe.” Lila sighed. “Probably.”
The rear door opened. Meyer was already back, this time with Kindred. They’d once been identical, but Piper now found herself drawn to their change in diverging directions. Meyer’s clothing was sold by the tradesmen, but Kindred wore mostly loose shirts that had gone threadbare at the elbows. Kindred spent more time in the sun — he’d burned, tanned, then wrinkled. Meyer’s skin was comparatively smooth. Kindred’s hair had grown long, while Meyer kept his short.
“Something’s happened with Clara,” Meyer said.
Piper answered, reaching for Lila’s wrist. “What is it?”
“Word came from the Mullah in the hills,” Kindred said. “Through a courier.”
“Is she with them? With the Mullah?” Lila said it like an accusation, but just because Kindred and Meyer supported Clara’s bizarre practices didn’t mean they were to blame. Clara was twenty-seven years old and far beyond needing her mother’s permission or approval. Piper, however, could hear the edge in Lila’s tone.
You two got her into this, and now look what’s happened.
Between the lines, Piper got a distinct, obvious flash of knowledge that had no business being in her head, and she knew what Meyer had been keeping from her. They’d had their bond from the start, and Piper had always felt excluded. Now she was trying the Mullah’s brew — and Meyer, Piper knew without a doubt, had been drinking it alongside her.
(It’s
not true.)
But no, it very much was. Piper knew, because she’d always known more than she should … or at least, that’s the impression she was now beginning to get, more and more with every passing moment.
“I think so. Yes.”
Piper raised her eyes. Looked into Kindred’s and saw more than the darkness seen by the others. Now Piper saw something else. Something so familiar and so near, she could almost touch it. She almost flinched, wanting to avert her eyes, because in that moment it was as if she and Kindred shared an intimate history: as if before she’d been with Meyer, she’d been with him.
(In an enormous stone house with many levels. In a city that fell to ashes. Before the New World. When Lila was …
When Lila was …)
Piper put her hand over her mouth and uttered a noise like a squeak. All heads turned to her, and Piper could only look back, pulse heavy, chest wanting to heave in a parody of panic.
Lila wasn’t her daughter.
Clara wasn’t her granddaughter.
In all their lives, how had none of them known?
“Piper?” said Meyer.
Meyer and Kindred weren’t brothers.
And there had been another man in her past. A man named … named …
“Clara will be okay, Piper.” Meyer put his strong arm around her, keeping legs made of jelly from letting her fall. “But we need to go to the Mullah. Now.”
Piper took two long, deep breaths, then nodded to indicate that she was okay.
But she wasn’t.
Because something had changed.
It wasn’t the drink, the drug, or the practice Meyer and Sadeem the Wise simply called “meditation” that had caused whatever was wrong with Clara now.
It was something else. Creeping and distant, crawling back into Piper’s awareness with black claws and purring throats.
A wall had fallen.
Whatever Clara and the Mullah had been trying to do in those far-off caves, they’d either catastrophically failed or catastrophically triumphed.
CHAPTER 3
“Come. Hurry.”
Sadeem waved a frantic hand at Peers. He scuttled over, ducking low to avoid the outcropping. Watching him approach, Sadeem wasn’t sure whether to envy the younger man’s agility or give thanks for his own increasingly stooped posture. When he’d first come here — in his midfifties, about the age Peers was now — he’d hit his head on that stupid outcropping three times out of every four. Now he missed it because he’d aged into clearance.
“Yes, Sage.”
“Bring her water.”
“Can she drink it?” Peers looked down at the young woman who, if they all didn’t know better, might appear to be sleeping with her head in Sadeem’s lap.
“She’s not actually unconscious. Just … below consciousness.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes, Peers. She is still here. Just kept from us, as if she’s been taken behind a curtain.”
“Was she taking …” He trailed off.
Sadeem shook his head. “Clara doesn’t need the medicine to talk to the others.” In truth, he was thinking of discouraging the medicine’s use for the whole clan instead of just keeping Clara off it. Only Governor Dempsey seemed to benefit from the drug, but even that felt to Sadeem like playing with fire. Not only did they need to tiptoe around Dempsey as a need-to-know visitor (even he didn’t realize which portals into the collective the medicine opened; he simply knew it felt familiar, as if from a forgotten life), but Sadeem wasn’t convinced the Astrals didn’t see through Meyer’s eyes whenever he took it. If they kept giving Dempsey the drug, they might be turning him into a spy against them. That’s how the Astrals had originally seen much of the world and selected their viceroys, after all.
Meyer and even Kindred — though Sadeem had his doubts about the latter — were part of this. But letting Meyer participate in the ceremonies was simply playing their part as the keepers of the Astral portal so that they could do the rest without being watched. If he knew too much about what Clara and the other Lightborn were doing, he wouldn’t understand.
At least not until he and everyone else truly understood.
Peers nodded assent, then ran off to fetch the water.
A tall man, in his thirties, entered the chamber. Sadeem smiled, then nodded toward the attendant near the chamber’s entrance. He drew a curtain, and Sadeem saw his silhouette move before it.
“Did you have trouble finding us?” Sadeem asked.
Logan shook his head of long sandy blond hair.
“Not at all.”
“Did you see the path?”
“Do you mean literally?”
Sadeem cocked his head. It was a tiny test, just to see.
“There’s no path in the sand. But I could see one with my eyes half-closed. To me it looked like an orange line that branched but always came back together. One line in the many was clearly brightest, and easy to follow.”
Sadeem nodded. “The bright path is Clara’s. As I understand it.”
“You still can’t see into it. Into the network.”
“I’ve never been able to.”
“I thought maybe now …” Logan looked down at Clara, uncomfortable as if they were deliberately excluding her inert presence. “Now that you’ve broken in …”
“When a dam breaks,” Sadeem said, “some water always flows both ways.”
Logan shrugged.
Sadeem’s stoic face broke, and he almost laughed, despite it all.
“I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be a sage. I’m the elder here. If I don’t speak in koans half the time, I risk my position.”
“Would they really—?”
“It’s was joke, Logan. Do you remember jokes? Has that particular human tradition been lost as well?”
Logan extended a hand, as if pointing at Sadeem.
“Hey, Sage,” Logan said. “Pull my finger.”
“And the jokes have stayed so highbrow. It does my old heart good to see it.” He shifted, better settling Clara’s head. “No, they wouldn’t kick me out. Among the Mullah, I’m the only one who knows what happened before the Forgetting.”
“What about Peers?” Logan ticked his head toward the portal.
“Peers is a curious one. Clara says he’s forgotten, and that what he knows today is the same as any of the others: things I’ve taught them, and that they believe. She says that Peers doesn’t remember as we do. But she also says that it’s like he almost knows. When she tunes into his consciousness within the larger network, she sees a nugget buried deep inside his mind — a secret he’s keeping from everyone, yet has probably forgotten he’s keeping.”
“Could it be something dangerous?”
“I don’t know.” Sadeem shrugged. “Why don’t you ask her?”
Logan looked down then up at Sadeem, knowledge dawning.
“Is that why I’m here, Sage? To try and talk to her?”
“Allah knows I can’t.” Sadeem ran a hand over her hair, softly, slowly. “But she’s still here, Logan. I’m not like you. I can’t see the minds. I have to trust Clara when she talks about things taking shape beneath the surface.”
“Then how are you able to work with her to …?” He stopped, unsure what it was that Clara and the Mullah had been doing — on and on and on, since the Astrals had left the second time.
“Most of it is on faith,” Sadeem answered. “Clara tells me that the network is still alive, even through the Forgetting. She talks as though it’s a puzzle where pieces fit far too well for coincidence. You and the other Lightborn saw how you could turn on the minds of the other, non-Lightborn children, and Clara tells me that even today, now that those children are grown, their altered minds still fit the grid in ways they shouldn’t. And there’s more: linchpin mental abilities that optimize the network. Giving it more branches, like a shot of vitamins for the collective. But you know much of this. What matters more is that I need you now, Logan. And so does she.”
“You always had a connection,” Sadeem said.
Logan shook his head. “That was a long time ago.”
“And, what? You’ve shut off your memory? Doesn’t it persist for you and the others?”
“You know it does,” Logan said, sounding slightly irritated.
“And?”
“And what, Sage?” he said, his patience breaking. “You have your memory, but you ran off to live in a cave with a cult of followers. You didn’t stay in the village like we did. Do you think anyone believes we are simply eccentric? The new religions are as bad as some of the old ones. They tolerate us because we teach them how to smith metal and harvest oil for light and how to build their homes so they won’t topple. But they don’t accept us. It’s only a matter of time before someone decides we’re witches or something and begins to capture and burn us. I guess the joke’s on them, though, huh? Because we can see intentions coming. We’ll be able to hit the desert and wander.”
“I wouldn’t have called for you if it wasn’t dire,” Sadeem said.
“You know we decided this was the best way. We wanted to fit, in and Clara wanted to stand out. She made her choice. She’s on her own.”
“Logan,” said Sadeem. “Look at her.”
He watched Sadeem with hard, defiant eyes. But when the Sage didn’t break his gaze, Logan looked down.
“This isn’t fair,” he said.
“She needs you. I can’t reach her.”
“Then call Stranger. Stranger knows the mindscape. Carl Nairobi spoke to me earlier. About dreams. I sent him to Stranger’s Church”
Sadeem shook his head. “Stranger was once a maestro, but today he is nearly human.”
“He hasn’t aged.”
“That doesn’t mean he can touch her mind anymore. Or any of your minds. It must be you.”