Judgment

by Sean Platt

  Lila looked around, but the jammer — apparently a bit of Terrence that survived past death — was still in place on the ottoman, apparently on and granting them privacy.

  If they believed Jabari. Or any of it.

  “No. I don’t think she knows much.” Lila didn’t go on and say the rest: But she definitely knows something about something. Lila was afraid that Clara knew more than she let on about the archive, or about what might be coming. But she didn’t want to ask, and face the answer.

  Meyer shook his head, looking toward the fire.

  “What is it?” Lila asked.

  “We keep going back and forth on this thing. This appearance Mara wants us to make.”

  “You and Kindred, you mean?”

  Meyer nodded. “Usually, we can reach an agreement. This time, we can’t. Kindred thinks we should refuse, but I’m inclined to do what she says.”

  “Why?”

  “We both think she’s telling the truth about her intentions. Just like we know she’s telling the truth about who she is. They didn’t duplicate her. She’s not a Titan. There is no ‘Kindred’ for Ember Flats like there was for Heaven’s Veil.”

  Lila watched her father’s eyes. It was strange to think that not only did she have two equally valid fathers, she’d also lost one that everyone had forgotten. He’d been her father, too. In that first copy’s mind, he’d been Meyer Dempsey. He’d built an empire, raised two children, had twice been a husband. And yet he’d died without anyone knowing until later — swept under the rug until Kindred’s Astral memories could give them all the grizzly details.

  The newest shift in Meyer’s eyes was hard to pin down, but to Lila it resembled defeat. Was it crushing to know the Astrals had found him unfit to lead a capital as himself but had no such compunctions about letting Mara Jabari do the same?

  “If she’s telling the truth, why don’t you agree?” Lila asked.

  “You know how Kindred is. The first time we found the Ark, it barely fazed him. He and Charlie have been saying we made a mistake from the start. But you want to know what I think, princess?”

  Hearing him use the long-dormant term of endearment, Lila felt something shatter inside her. Whatever it was had been teetering on an internal shelf — a glass figurine, saved from her nearly forgotten childhood, when this man had been more dictator than father.

  “What, Dad?”

  “I’m starting to think that Cameron is onto something. Maybe we shouldn’t open the thing at all.”

  “And just delay things forever?”

  “Why not?” Meyer shrugged. “Forever is a very long time. The Astrals here aren’t like they were in Heaven’s Veil. I watched one of the Titans remove the key from Cameron’s satchel, inspect it, then return it to his bag. Kindred says they know what it is and what it’s meant to do, but they gave it right back. I think Peers is right. They stopped chasing us a long time ago. Now they only follow as if keeping tabs. Because they’re content to wait. Nobody knows how long the Astrals were around in previous epochs. Did they decide humanity’s fate right away or take decades? Centuries? Even Charlie can’t say. So is it terrible that I wonder if we should just never open it? The Astrals will wait, long past our deaths. Then it will be someone else’s problem.”

  Lila watched her father. This wasn’t the man she grew up with, and the beard wasn’t the only difference. Something had wormed under his skin. Meyer Dempsey, both before and after captivity, faced his problems. This fatalism was as disturbing as a confession.

  “The Astrals don’t care, princess. They don’t care if we keep going as a species or are wiped out. They don’t even care if we’re judged one way or the other. As far as they’re concerned, humanity’s case file can stay open forever.”

  “They killed Cameron’s dad to get the key. They destroyed Heaven’s Veil to find the Ark. So what’s changed that now they don’t even care?”

  “They found the Ark. They know where the key is. Someone shuffled their deck, but now everything’s back where it belongs.”

  To Lila, the explanation tasted funny. They’d spent years fearing and running from the Astrals, certain that what kept them coming was a desire to steal the key and activate the archive. The notion that they’d wait an eternity for someone to decide whether or not to pop the thing’s top didn’t sit quite right. They’d been nudged along the way, always suspiciously guided into the right spots at the right times.

  “What about the thing Mara Jabari wants you to do?” Lila asked.

  “Same argument. Kindred wants to open the Ark, and I want to let it be. He wants to stir the world’s peace, and I’m inclined to let that be, too.”

  “What does she want, Dad? Specifically.” Jabari had been vague on the details. Kindred and Meyer would both be surprise guests at the State of the City address, and the fact that there were now two Meyer Dempseys would, seemingly, shock the world. But how, and why? Lila was unconvinced, and that was just one of a dozen topics on which Clara seemed suspiciously silent.

  “What is the Ark, Lila?”

  “An archive. Of humanity’s ups and downs while the Astrals have been away.”

  “What else?”

  Lila shrugged.

  “It’s a symbol,” Meyer said. “Everyone who’s ever been to church — or, hell, who’s ever seen Raiders — knows about the Ark. Charlie’s told me some whoppers as far as alternative theories, where the Ark was a weapon as we first thought, or a machine, or a source of unlimited power for humans to harness and use. But the fact that we think it’s so many things is what makes its mystery so compelling. Makes it fertile ground for new myths and the revitalizing of old ones. Nobody — except maybe the Astrals — knows the truth. Mara says they’ve deliberately said nothing, conveyed no messages about the Ark for Jabari or anyone else to reveal. They put it up on that platform in the middle of the courtyard and built a cupola around it. They’ve lined the walls of its enclosure with massive stone tablets written in an unknown script. Nobody’s ever seen writing like it, so no one knows what it says. We couldn’t tell from a distance, but Mara showed us close-up photos, and it’s obvious that the Ark is missing a piece — that key Cameron is carrying. So everyone in Ember Flats walks by, drawing their own conclusions based on all they’ve ever heard and learned, wondering at the keyhole without a key. The Astrals don’t need to say anything, Lila. That’s the trick. Humanity’s said it already, rumors and hearsay perpetuated over thousands of generations: the legend of the sword in the stone, the Ark of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments, you name it. And the flood, of course. The flood that wiped the world clean when God became angry, so Earth could try again.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “Mara doesn’t just want us to appear, Li. She wants us to tell our story.”

  “And?”

  “It’ll collapse all the myths. Think about it. Humanity knows there’s a golden object on display in Ember Flats, smack-dab among the pyramids. But nobody’s told them what it is or means. Which is fine because we all think we already know. Catholics think it’s one thing. Muslims think it’s something else. Atheists and agnostics have their opinions, just as steeped in myth as those of the religious folks even if they pretend they’re being objective. The ancient aliens people think it’s something else: maybe a nuclear weapon, displayed to quietly threaten us — or, conversely, as a display of the changed relationship between humans and Astral: a bomb turned into a monument as a gesture of peace. No matter who you are, you have an opinion as to what that object is and what it means. But everyone is guessing. Except for us.”

  Lila looked up, met her father’s eyes.

  “It’s been here for five years, Lila. They built their city around it. And because Ember Flats is the Capital of Capitals, where all the global broadcasts originate — the center of the new world, which the other cities look to for guidance — that means the entire world, in one way or another, has been built around that golden box. Even the wanderers, outpo
sts, and gangs we’ve run across know about the Ark. Everyone’s formed their opinion, and those opinions — all different — are safe and stable until someone establishes a definitive truth. The Astrals aren’t talking about the Ark. But we can. And because of who we are — the viceroy much of the world assumed was dead and an apparent duplicate — they’ll be inclined to believe us. I’m sure the Astrals — or even the human city authorities — will kill the world feed the minute they see us on it, but Ember Flats will see us. It’ll start chaos, and the chaos will spread like a virus.”

  “And Kindred still wants to do it?”

  “I think it’s more that he feels we need to.”

  “I thought he felt that we needed to open the Ark.”

  Meyer exhaled. “It’s complicated, Lila. That’s why it took us hours to talk it all out before Kamal and Ravi got the rest of you from your rooms, and hours after you all went back. I promise it makes sense in Kindred’s mind. Mine too, really. The trick is that although we agree on what’s being done, we disagree on the damage it will cause.”

  “Or won’t,” Lila added.

  “Oh, it causes damage even in the best-case scenario.”

  Lila didn’t know how to respond, so she simply stared into the purple fire.

  “So what are you going to do?” she finally asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The viceroy needs both of you. So if you don’t want to do it … ”

  “It’s not that simple. You know how it is with Kindred and me.”

  Lila didn’t, but she’d heard this before and had tried to understand. Her father wasn’t really one man anymore. His strange mind sharing with Kindred — the conjoining that turned them into a logical machine, neither Meyer or Kindred but instead a third thing — made him more like a consciousness with two bodies. It wasn’t literal, but that was as close as Lila’s mind could get to grasping the concept. Both men described the shared portion of their memories as being more “in the cloud” than on either brain’s hard drive. It was a different breed of psychic, a process that turned two things into one. It meant that while they were separate men, they were sometimes like two projections of a single being.

  “If you don’t do it, will she let us go?” Lila asked.

  “I don’t know. She may not feel she has a choice.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “Just one more way we can refuse to decide, and let a stalemate continue forever.”

  “So we’re prisoners.”

  Meyer looked around the room then gestured at their posh surroundings for emphasis. “It’s not a bad way to be incarcerated, is it? Before Peers convinced us to come here, we’d been searching for a place to settle. Derinkuyu has nothing on Ember Flats.” He wagged a sarcastic finger at Lila. “Now get back to your cell with its king bed and private bathroom before the warden knows you’re gone. You’re just asking for the guards to catch you out then pin you down and give you a massage.”

  Lila tried to smile, but it just wasn’t funny. Prison was prison. Plots were plots. And as wrong as her father felt about what Jabari had in mind for him and Kindred in a few days, she was already reasonably certain he’d do it.

  There was a knock at the open door, across the large room. Lila and Meyer both turned to see Piper standing in the entranceway. Meyer tapped the privacy jammer, dropping the bubble — and for a half second a thought occurred to Lila: Were the Astrals so easily fooled? They were in the middle of a public room, discussing subversion. She thought of Cameron’s suspicions of Peers, suddenly sure this was all a setup: a double-cross inside a double-cross inside a plot inside a misleading assumption. Her brain spun with reversals too thick to track.

  “Piper. Come over, and join us,” Meyer said.

  Piper knotted her hands at her waist, not moving. She looked at no one in particular, then at Lila.

  “Have either of you seen Clara?” she asked. “I can’t find her anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Nocturne nudged Peers’s hand, waking him. He felt momentarily disoriented then looked at the bedside clock. It was 12:04 a.m. A hair after midnight. Had he really gone to sleep just two hours ago? But then, they’d all been exhausted after the day’s events, and sleep — for Peers, at least — had descended like a hammer. Jabari had said they could go wherever they wished within the viceroy’s mansion — and the Titan guards were gone — so at first, Peers had planned to use his new freedom to snoop. He’d find where Jabari was hiding the secrets he felt sure she had buried. He’d find evidence of her nefarious plans just as she’d urged Meyer and Kindred to reveal evidence of the Astrals’ iniquitous schemes.

  Was this truly about the Ark?

  Was it truly about Heaven’s Veil — about informing the populace of the real reason the old American capital stopped broadcasting just before the Astrals had miraculously found a way to track their lost archive?

  Or was it about power?

  Peers had his doubts. He’d sat there all night, stewing, watching Ember Flats’s benevolent leader. He’d never met her, true. Nobody else had, either; according to Lila, there’d been an ambassador banquet in Heaven’s Veil, but it had been presided over by the first Meyer duplicate, now deceased. Had Jabari been at that banquet, or just her ambassador? Peers certainly didn’t know, and ultimately it didn’t matter. Any familiarity with this woman came secondhand at best.

  The only things they knew about Mara Jabari came from two sources.

  The first, of course, was Jabari herself.

  But their bigger body of knowledge about Ember Flats and its viceroy came from common knowledge. Supposedly other capitals these days knew Ember Flats to be the peaceful, cooperative paradise it was, but that information hadn’t leaked into the outlands. To the non-capital cities — and to every wanderer they’d encountered outside of formal borders — Ember Flats was the pit that Peers had encountered all those years ago with Aubrey and James. And to that overwhelming majority of the population (the one Peers had encountered, anyway), the woman who ran such a hell could only be a demon herself.

  Bloody Mara, the outlanders called her.

  Sure, it was rumor. Sure, rumors always twisted out of control. And sure, Peers had heard the axiom about how when you assumed things, you made an ass out of u and me. But he’d also stood, helpless, while the Ember Flats guard executed his son in the viceroy’s name.

  Nocturne seemed to understand none of this. He’d licked Jabari’s hand when they’d been gathered around the fire and was licking his now.

  “Traitorous hound,” Peers said.

  The dog made a snuffling noise then rubbed his head and body against the bed’s side before flopping awkwardly onto the floor.

  Peers rolled over, grunting with annoyance. He really was exhausted.

  Nocturne buried his nose in Peers’s armpit, nudging him.

  “G’way.”

  The nose vanished. It returned a moment later, feeling decidedly thicker between Peers’s upper and lower arms, spreading the angle of his elbow. He craned back to look and saw that the dog had retrieved a tennis ball, and that the larger object Peers felt was the dog’s muzzle with a fuzzy green thing in his mouth. There’d been a bin of dog toys when he’d woken in the room the first time just as there’d been a plate of cheese and fruit waiting for Peers on the dresser, high enough to be out of dog’s way. Someone had appointed the room for them both, but it’d been a big laugh between them (canine and human joking privately that the great viceroy apparently didn’t know everything) that the box had so many balls and pull-toys. Nocturne didn’t like tugging or fetching balls. He’d chase a stick, but he’d only enjoyed other toys while in Damascus, in the company of other animals. Then, he’d loved balls. A human throws; two dogs scramble to see who can reach it first. The game just wasn’t any fun when you were alone in the chasing.

  “Piss off,” Peers told Nocturne.

  The dog sat. He dropped the ball then stared at Peers with his mouth open and panting, tail wagging.

  “It’s bloody
well after midnight,” Peers explained.

  When Nocturne didn’t respond, Peers rolled back over and said, “Tosser.”

  The dog nudged him again. Peers felt the slobbered-up tennis ball drop onto his bare arm then roll onto the covers. Peers knocked it away. The dog patiently retrieved the ball (humans just don’t understand such things) and set it back by his elbow, wet and disgusting.

  “I’m not playing fetch right now, you fucking idiot.”

  Nocturne barked.

  “Go to sleep!”

  He barked again.

  Rubbing his face, Peers sat up. He gave the dog a long, serious look, which Nocturne broke by licking his lips. Then he stood without further remonstrations, figuring that Nocturne had decided to be an asshole and wouldn’t be talked out of it now. Stupid artificial daylight. They’d spent most of the past five years in the wild, sleeping whenever the sun was down no matter what the clock might have said. Now they were in a place with electricity — with goddamned streetlights in the courtyard and roads past the drapes. If he were to go outside now, there’d be enough light in Ember Flats that he’d be unable to see the stars — just the mothership’s big, knobby belly hovering a mile or so away. The light was twisting their circadian rhythms. Damned dog’s internal clock thought it was daylight.

  Peers visited the restroom, relieved himself, and splashed some water (hot from the tap; Ember flats had everything) on his face. Then he removed the ball from the sheets, using only his index finger and thumb in deference to the slobber. The ball went back to the bin, and Peers traded it for a chew toy. Let the damned dog gnaw. It’d mean gross chomping sounds all night, but what the hell, Peers was plenty tired enough to sleep through it, and “chew” wasn’t a game that required a partner.

  Nocturne watched Peers set the toy on the floor. Then he ignored it, returning to the bin for the ball. He set it down and barked again.

  “You don’t even like balls.” Then, because it was late and he felt lightheaded, he added, “Just like my ex-wife.”

  Nocturne retrieved the ball again then ran out into the hallway. Which was good enough. Until he returned, left, then returned again, tail wagging, dropping the ball long enough to pant, retrieving it, dropping it to woof and play-growl and bark.