He looks sheepish. “Yeah, I did my thing on them,” he says defensively. “It made sense to split up, man! There wasn’t going to be enough food, real soon. And with fewer folks, we could travel faster.”
“So you just set yourself up here as a little king?”
He snorts. “Really? That what you think?” He jerks his thumb at the windows. “You think I’m in charge here? You gotta be kidding me. I’m the golden goose to these assholes.”
“What?”
“There’s one girl here, Cat, I can’t work my stuff on. She’s not much of a bugfuck, but the lies don’t take. So, she makes sure that everyone knows when I’m doing my thing.”
That’s surprising. “Why don’t you just have them … I don’t know. Stop her?”
“Yeah. How do you suggest I do that? Kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
“See, this is where nicknames really suck, man. They saddle you with a name like the Liar, and everyone thinks you’re totally amoral.”
“So, what? They’re holding you hostage just like Quincrux did?”
“I don’t know about that. But they’re not making it easy for me to leave. No food, no guns, no protection if I leave.”
It’s a lot to take in. When I think about how we worried that the Liar was some sort of mastermind …
“You want to tell me what’s going on out there,” Reese says. He’s right, I do.
I start at the point we left the campus, leading the soldiers away. The telling is quick, and I don’t skip over much—only the joining of minds, our telepathic conformity. Reese listens carefully, wants to know how we all didn’t die when the plane failed. Instead of explaining our shared abilities, I simply say, “We caught who we could as they fell. Bernard and Dani died. The pilot. Davies.”
His face clouds, and I guess he isn’t too far removed from humanity to know when death has weight. “Okay. Tell it to me again,” he says. “You just remembered your condition. A heart problem. This time, if you leave anything out, your heart will stop. You understand?”
Suddenly, sweat’s prickling all over my body. I stand there rigid, barely able to move for fear that my heart will stop beating. I run through the story again. I tell him everything. Falling. The joining of the Irregulars’ minds with Shreve as the hub. Our miniature Conformity. Before I’m through, Blackwell and Galine stand in the doorway with weapons.
“Holy shit,” Blackwell says. “Things have gone way off the deep end.”
“And they want me,” Reese says. “They don’t even have a plan. Jack said it himself. Just to bring me to that kid Shreve.”
“Shreve’s trouble,” Blackwell says. There’s no love lost there. “But we can use Jack and Ember. They could be rovers. Scavengers.”
Galine nods, eyes bright. “We can’t draw any more attention to ourselves.” A shiver passes through her, and her face goes still. “I can’t face that thing again.”
“They’re calling it the Conformity. You got that, didn’t you? They’re planning on taking it on,” Reese says.
“Holy Christ,” Blackwell says. “Count me out.”
“Hold on, guys,” Reese says, holding up his hands to Blackwell and Galine, shushing them. He turns back to me. “Hey, Jack. You totally trust us. Right? Understand? We’re the most trustworthy people in the world. We’re your best friends.”
Something’s wrong with what Reese has said, but I can’t figure it out right now because I do like these guys. Always have. There was a time when I was next in line to join Blackwell’s Red Team. I always knew they liked me and we’d become best friends.
“How much time do we have, Jack? You know, before you have to be back with Ember and Tap?”
“I don’t know. Soon, I guess. None of us have watches.”
“Okay. Just give us a minute. You probably want to stay here, Jack, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I do.”
They go into the hall, and I can hear mumblings and murmurings. When they return, Reese is smiling.
“So, listen, Jack. We’ve talked about it and we want you, Ember, and Tap to join our group. You know? We think you’ll be a big asset, since we don’t have any flyers. You want to join us, too, I think.”
Again, something’s not right, but nothing he’s said isn’t true. So I say, “Yeah. Sure, that sounds good.”
“So, you want to convince them to come in here to talk to us. You really want to convince them, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. Blackwell’s and Galine’s faces are masks. They seem neither happy nor upset at the idea of us joining. Something’s wrong here, but I can’t put my finger on it.
“How do you think you’ll be able to convince them?” Reese asks.
I have to think about it. “I’ll tell them that you’re ready to join Shreve. But you have to get some stuff together.”
“Right. You said you carried that woman. The doctor lady.”
“Veterinarian. Madelyn. And yes. Ember lifted her, and we pulled Ember.”
“Okay, you’ll tell them that’s the plan with me, too, right? And they’ll need to come inside and warm up and have something to eat before we leave. Because we’re all friends, right?”
“Yes. We’re all friends.”
“Okay. Let’s go outside, and you can go talk to Tap and Ember,” Reese says. “You’re gonna love it here, you know?”
“Yeah,” I respond. “I think you’re right.”
“You’ll do whatever it takes to get them to come down here for a chat, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“My man,” Reese says, slapping me on the shoulder. “My man.”
I land near them in the snowy field, in the lee of a brake of ponderosa pines. The wind’s not so bad here. The sun feels good on my face. I pull back my hood when I land by Ember and Tap. They look cold and tense.
“Hey,” I say, pulling off my gloves. “He’s willing to go with us to Shreve.”
“What? That easy?” Ember says. “What did you tell him?”
It takes a moment to get everything organized in my head. I haven’t thought this out. Something’s wrong and I don’t know what it is, but still … I need them to come inside to talk with Reese. Everything’s going to be better once they do.
“Mostly everything—”
“What?” Ember’s alarm travels even mind-to-mind. “You told him about us? Our connection?” It’s weird that she doesn’t worry about me talking about the sex—which I don’t think I did—but focuses on our invisible connection to each other.
“No,” I say slowly. “Just that Shreve has a plan.”
“Did he ask about the plan?”
What should I say here—should I tell her he did and that I answered him? Even though she knows that we don’t know what the plan is at all?
“No, he remembers Shreve. Likes him,” I say. “He wants us to come inside and have some food and warm up before we go.”
“That sounds good,” Tap says, rubbing his hands together. “I’m overdue for a visit to the john.”
“Who else was there?”
“A few other extranats. Blackwell and Galine?”
“The old Red Team.” Ember scowls. “Who else? The Bomb?”
“No, he said she took off with her guards. Some guy tried to grab her or something and got shot.”
Ember’s face darkens, and I can see the thoughts churning under the surface there. “So, he’s just gonna come with us, just like that?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re lying to me,” Ember says, taking two steps away.
“Hey!” I say, reaching out to her. She has to understand! Everything will be better once she goes inside. “It’s cool! He’s gonna come with us! Let’s just—”
Ember launches herself into the air, arcing away across the vault of heaven. I’ve never seen her fly so fast.
I leap after her with Tap close behind. The force of the wind with our speed is brutal.
Ember! Come back!
She’s like
a bullet crossing the sky. She passes over the valley’s lip, racing up the mountainside and into the empty air above the snow-clad peaks, and then she’s gone from sight.
But I hear her. I hear her screaming into the space-not-space between us all.
Shreve! SHREVE! We have him! Come to us!
And something trembles there, between us, that thin connection, indistinct and wavering. I must catch her before she can ruin everything.
Something shifts inside of me, and Tap gives a cry because even hanging in the air, falling in space like angels on the wing, I feel an eye fixing upon me. I feel a consciousness turning its attention toward me even as I chase after Ember. And I know what’s coming. If only she had listened.
If only she had come inside.
thirty-six
SHREVE
On the inside, everyone’s the same. From the heartbroken to the dumbstruck, the burdened and the carefree. The fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. The innocent and the guilty. They’re all grist for the Conformity’s mill.
Once, I contained multitudes, waking from dreams of other lives. Once, I was large and could take within me the full expanse of humanity.
But I have become small now, infinitesimal.
Just Shreve.
It’s a buzzing I feel, insistent and frantic, at the edges of my awareness. The world shifts and sways around me, like I was some drunken sailor, cast off of the sea.
You ride the horse; you ride every day, and still your balls never really get used to the abuse. Your taint gets callouses, and still you’ll be sore at the end of the day. And then when you dismount, the world shifts and sways around you, like you’re still moving.
Casey’s riding near me—she stays near, always, because I’m one of the suckiest riders ever to mount a horse—and her smile is genuine and warm. We stayed in the husk of a roadside motel last night. With our own room. The bed was warm and so was she.
All the lives I’ve lived before didn’t prepare me for it. Couldn’t prepare me for her.
But she smiles at me now. A secret smile. It’s not fooling Negata. He’s ridden point most of the day. “I will scout ahead, Shreve, and see what I can see,” he said, and then he glanced from Casey back to me. “Look for me this afternoon.”
When he returns, he is strangely quiet, with nothing to share or report. Casey stays near me. Sometimes I feel her invisible hand on my own. It’s not warm, but it is warm in my memory.
Part of me feels as though I’m in a dream. The world is dressed solely in black and white and gray now, preparing for either a funeral or a wedding. It can’t make up its mind. We ride through white fields like ghosts, as if we’ve passed some border into the territories of death or dreams. The trees scrabble at the sky, stark and bare. The horses plume steaming breaths into the quickening air. It’s snowing again, and the shshshssssssssshhhhh sound of snow falling blankets everything, all other noises.
The world’s ending. And I’m happy. I have nothing except myself. Her warm body. I thought I knew the warm territories of flesh, but I didn’t. I didn’t know. A thousand filched memories, and I didn’t know anything.
The buzzing gets louder, and for a moment I’m reminded of the thrumming, surging presence of the Helmholtz. It’s an insistent bug, buzzing in my hindbrain. Something’s wrong.
“Do you feel that?” I ask Casey.
She sits upright in her saddle, looking around quickly. “No, I don’t feel—”
SHREVE!
The connection is faint but there. Ember.
Casey’s face turns worried; she chews her lip. Grasps my hand with her invisible one.
It seems like forever since I’ve gone beyond myself. Like some slumbering bear, I have to rouse myself. Expand. Become more than just me. Part of me’s sad that it’s come to this. That I am not enough. That I must become more. But there it is. A movement driving me all my life. Becoming more. I slip into the ether, up and out of my body. Out and away in the space-not-space where distance is crossed as like a passing thought.
Ember? What’s wrong? Where are you?
Her mind, touching my own, is familiar as a glove. And for a moment she settles into me. I feel wind howling through her hair and tearing at her clothes. Mountains and forests and streams whip by unimaginably fast beneath her, so that it’s almost too hard to focus on anything. Her head jerks around, looking down the length of her body, and there’s Jack flying behind, arms outstretched.
The Liar! He’s here! There’s real panic in her, surging. And Jack—the Liar got to him! You have to come!
But there’s something more there, a hissing presence. Ink in water, growing and blossoming. The pressure of an awareness that’s huge. It’s coming.
The Conformity.
Fixing Ember in my mind, an invisible tether stretching between us like a filament of gold, I mark her. All the old ghost habits of my mind take over, and it’s like I’ve never left—never stopped being more and diminished into Shreve. I can feel the thousands of minds I’ve touched popping like kernels of corn in hot oil, growing in the hindbrain of my consciousness. I’m swelling huge, rampant.
It takes a monumental effort to disengage from the ether and go back to my body.
I’ve fallen from my horse, faceup, half covered in snow. Casey’s above me, frantic, pawing at my face with gloved hands, trying to sweep away the frozen stuff. Her beautiful face framed by clouds. Snowflakes growing larger in my vision around her.
“It’s time, Casey,” I say. The day’s grown late and the light’s failing now and it’s time. Time to act. Time to join. Time to become more than what we are.
Maybe she’s already touching me mentally, I don’t know. Maybe, entering the ether, I’ve opened myself up. But she’s with me now. She’s inside me and I’m inside her and, far off, we’re connected with Ember and sharing her panic.
“This is the end,” we say, together, as Negata approaches. He’s dismounted and his hood is swept aside, snow nestled in the strands of his jet-black hair. He looks grim, and not a little frightened. He appears old now, wizened beyond his years. I can see them stretching away behind him like a comet’s tail. So much of the world is visible to me now. I grow larger, expanding.
But Negata is sad, and frightened. So strange. I always thought Negata was beyond such feelings.
“Go,” he says, simply enough. He raises his hand, palm forward. “Go. And good-bye, Shreve.”
More should be said, but there’s no time.
Together, we rise, surging into the arteries of air. Lancing forward like some falling star, burning through the atmosphere. It takes a simple adjustment to cocoon us in a shield and then move, even faster, following the golden filament east and south, so fast that the shield of air begins to glow as molecules super-heat into an oncoming wave front before us. There’s a shuddering boom and my/our body is rocked with force. Merely a thought and we’re traveling faster than sound.
The earth passes below us, too fast to see, flickering shades of blurred gray. We were going to cross all this on the backs of horses, and now it rushes by, below, blurred and dreamlike and forgotten almost as soon as it’s passed. What a preposterous plan it was—and yet.
And then Ember is there and we’ve stopped.
We’ve reached density. It’s just a small effort to take Jack and Tap within. Jack struggles at first but settles down, and then he’s one with us and we’re moving back to where we left the Liar. We settle on the earth like a fog, moving as one, all our abilities and knowledge shared.
Everything lost. Everything gained.
When our feet touch ground, I disengage.
thirty-seven
SHREVE
On the inside, I feel such joy at seeing them all again: Jack, Ember, even Tap. My emotions zip around and teeter like a drunk failing a sobriety test. Once, I might have been embarrassed by my joy. Once, I might have tried to hide it.
I grip him in a fierce hug. I think of falling. I think of Booth.
Jack stands
poleaxed, whether at the sight of my mug or at the Liar’s control over him, now washed away like the colors from the world—I don’t know which. After a moment, he curses aloud and then looks at me closely. He grins. “Hope you had a good nap.”
I release him, stretching my arms. “I feel refreshed. How ’bout you guys?”
Ember comes close, slips between Jack and me, and throws her arms over our shoulders, squeezing. She waggles her eyebrows at Casey. “I know what you two have been up to. So naughty—”
Casey looks like she’s about to belt Ember, but I hold up my hand, shushing them. The ether is in me now that I’m open to it, as if I’m pregnant with it. And the pressure, the dark, black pressure there before me grows, yawning. Huge.
“No time for shits and giggles. It’s coming,” I say. “It knows we’re here.”
A branch drops to the ground with a hard, brittle sound. The aspens surrounding the Liar’s dwelling begin to sway and topple. Tap gives a little leap—crossing twenty feet in one bound—and looks at the gray trees lying heaped in the snow. From where we stand, the lodge is in clear view. Roofing tiles begin to slide from the roof. The woodwork surrounding the windows crumbles.
“Something’s not right here,” Tap says, holding up a branch in his hand. It crumbles into dust.
From where we stand, it’s easy to see the Liar, Blackwell, Galine, and the rest of their cadre bursting onto the porch.
“What the hell’s going on?” Ember says.
“It’s coming. And changing the universe,” I say. “Rearranging the world to suit it. Changing the rules of physics. Quantum level.”
“It’s rotting away,” Tap yells, dusting his hands. “It’s like it’s aged five hundred years in seconds!”
By the lodge, the deck slumps to one side. Part of the lodge’s roof caves in. The extranaturals there jump to the earth, rolling. Cursing.
At the far end of the valley, an echoing sound comes. The trumpeting bellow of a foghorn in the mist. The groaning, echoing sound of thousands of pained souls, screaming.
The Conformity comes. It swells like a waxing moon, a great circle of misery growing in the sky. The breath of a hundred thousand humans wreaths it, trails it like a cowl. As it crosses the landscape, passing over toppling forests and crumbling houses, it resembles a smoldering coal, the freezing water vapor pouring off.
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