Judgment

by Sean Platt

  “You … um … missed something.”

  Peers set the ball on the bed. Nocturne craned his neck and took it, then squished it in his jaws. Peers had his hands on his waistband, on his zipper. The pants, like Jeanine’s explorer gear (a bit too Piper-short on Jeanine’s long frame), were new. But they fit him like a glove.

  Jeanine looked him over.

  “You look strange.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “I meant in jeans. I got used to the nomadic look.”

  “I used to wear jeans all the time in London.”

  Jeanine squinted. “You okay, Peers?”

  “Peachy.”

  She watched him for another few seconds then turned to the bed. The backpack was atop the untucked sheets, open. Beside it was what looked like an iron pipe, made of wood.

  “What is that?” Peers asked.

  “Middle part of a lamp. The base was bolted down, but that unscrewed from the base.” She hefted it. “Might break a skull, right?” Jeanine looked up, seemed to mistake his flush for concern. “Look, I don’t want to hurt the wrong people. But we need a gun, and the guards are the only ones packing. We knock one of them out. Just one.”

  “Then what?”

  “Leverage one gun into two.”

  “I meant, with whoever we cold-cock.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it. Drag them into a closet? Tie them up?”

  “This is a terrible idea.”

  “Look, we don’t need to fight our way past an army or get lucky. I don’t buy this surveillance is out bullshit. A house like this? They’re watching it somehow. So we find the surveillance room and watch the tapes for that night. Then we go where Clara went.”

  Peers knew that wouldn’t work, but wasn’t sure how to explain why. He hadn’t been seduced into meaningless immersion; the second time the sphere had captivated him, finding Clara had been his excuse. But no matter how he’d asked the sphere where she’d gone, he’d come up empty. It didn’t feel to Peers like the footage wasn’t there; there were clearly droids flying around to record memories when Astrals weren’t present, and the other records seemed comprehensive. It was more like he didn’t know how to ask or secretly didn’t want to participate (where do a former Mullah’s loyalties lie?) or — and this was the strongest impression — the sphere simply didn’t want to show him. Maybe that meant this was something he was supposed to do, and maybe it didn’t. If Jeanine would leave, dammit, he could unwrap the sphere and immerse then maybe find out. That would be brilliant.

  “Peers?” Jeanine snapped her fingers. “You still with me?”

  “We’re not going to find anything.”

  “Like I said, this is the only way. Cameron is already gone, with Charlie. I think they’re waiting for Kindred and Meyer. I saw them preparing to head out with Jabari. This is the only chance. They’re going to do this, and it’s going to be … bad. I can feel it.”

  “We don’t have time,” Peers said.

  “We have to try.”

  But Peers wasn’t so sure. He’d nudged Cameron to face his destiny, but half the reason he’d wanted to come was his now-on-hold desire to kill the viceroy — and once inside Ember Flats, the Ark’s sheer presence had triggered his second-guessing. Seeing what had happened to the group at Mount Sinai had increased it, and he’d seen hints, in his journeys into the sphere since, that only worsened those impressions. They’d feared the archive’s legend when they’d been kids even though nobody but the elders had seen it or knew where it was. Now he had experiences to back up those fears.

  He’d seen CliffsNotes from previous visitations, extending beyond the time frame the sphere’s main memories seemed to cover. Nothing detailed, only highlights, like a previously on reel at the start of a recurring show, to remind viewers what aired in the last episodes.

  Floods.

  Fires.

  Plagues.

  Earthquakes, storms, dust, death, darkness.

  Extinction — for all but a few new gods and their disciples.

  Yes, what was coming, when Kindred and Meyer stirred the pot while Cameron broke the seal, would be bad. But what could he and Jeanine do? Peers himself held the only security record in the palace (the sphere had already suggested that much), and that record offered no help. They had one man, one woman, one lazy dog, and part of a lamp. They didn’t know where to find Clara, where she could have gone or where she’d been other than “in the hallways somewhere” (another thing Peers couldn’t admit to knowing), and no idea who could have taken her. No clue which loose ends to pursue, where to start searching, whom to —

  But: Wait.

  Wait.

  “Maybe we could—” Jeanine began.

  Peers held up a finger, thinking. Jeanine stopped at the raised finger as if afraid she might break it.

  Finally Peers lowered his finger and met Jeanine’s curious eyes.

  “What? Do you have an idea where we might find Clara?”

  “No,” he said, “but I know who we can ask.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Kindred opened his eyes. Mara was in front of him, waiting expectantly.

  “Anything?”

  “No.”

  “You?” she turned to Meyer, who was also opening his eyes.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

  Jabari stalked the tiny, curved chamber. Kindred recognized Astral fingerprints (if they had fingerprints, which he didn’t think they did) all over the place. It was a vehicle but floated so smoothly that it seemed more like a stationary room. Intellectually, Kindred knew they were moving through the Ember Flats avenues toward the stage in Town Center, but with the half-round walls turned opaque and the sound dampening on, his mostly human mind was fooled. If he couldn’t sense the nearby mothership or hadn’t piloted a shuttle with the same technologies, he wouldn’t have believed it. There’d certainly been nothing of the type in Heaven’s Veil, during his own viceroyship, just as there’d been no giant monuments inside the city walls or vague lumps of sandstone that, if the viceroy commanded, might easily be built into enormous idols in her image.

  “I wish we knew if the Astrals had any idea you were here,” she said, uncharacteristically rattled.

  “They know we’re here,” Kindred said. “But I thought that was obvious.”

  “I mean here. In this vehicle, headed to give a public address. I’d like to know if we’ll be catching everyone by surprise or if they’ll stop us the minute we arrive.”

  Kindred had been pondering that as well — he and Meyer, in their mindshare space, had hybridized to consider it as a combined being. Odds kept coming up roughly even. On one hand, the Astrals had completely ignored them since Titans had stopped guarding their rooms and, supposedly, started searching for Clara. But on the other hand, Astrals didn’t always need eyes to see, and they only had the staff’s word that the security system, when outside a jammer bubble, was no longer able to watch them. Kindred could feel nothing inside his internal space. No Titans at the periphery, no Reptars sent out to quell a coming disturbance, no background hum from Divinity as it laid odds and played its game. If there was a feel to the Astral presence inside Ember Flats, it struck Kindred as detached observation. Anything went, so long as they were allowed to watch.

  That would change when a pair of Meyer Dempseys took to the airwaves and delivered their message. With the Internet mostly gone and satellites dead and jammed, the only real network left was the stone monoliths, jamming the round psychic peg into humanity’s square hole. Modern-day humans could be forced into a collective, sure, but given their ineptness, the broadcast could be broken from Ember Flats to the other capitals with Divinity’s flip of a metaphorical switch.

  Their message would stay in Ember Flats.

  And inside the city, Kindred felt sure it wouldn’t be well received. But that was the point: a distraction and an instinctual psychic burst strong enough to shock the complacent human brain back into its ancient rhythms. If there was one way to get that coll
ective humming — perhaps enough to prove humanity’s worthy, and bode better for judgment — then this, ironically, was it.

  “There’s really no way to know,” Kindred said. “We still come up indecisive.”

  “I thought you were calculating machines,” said Jabari.

  “Not with this many variables.”

  Jabari sat in an easy chair as the room’s gravity seemed to subtly shift: the vehicle taking a slow turn, nearing Town Center.

  “It’s not too late,” Meyer said, watching her. “We can still change the plan.”

  “No. No. I’m fine.”

  “Maybe there are too many variables,” Meyer went on, looking at Jabari. “Cameron needs to open the Ark. The State of the City address will keep people’s attention off him. But you can give it alone. We can stay in here then handle this part of things later.”

  “It’s now or never,” Kindred said.

  “Don’t listen to him, Mara. It’s your city. We can wait until after—”

  “It’s now or never,” Kindred repeated. “You know that, Meyer.”

  Slowly, Meyer shrugged then reluctantly nodded. “Fine. With the Ark opening today, it’s now or never. But it can be never. We don’t need to make this worse. We can return to the palace. You mentioned having some plans.”

  Jabari looked up, reluctantly decisive. “They deserve to know. If we’re about to be put on trial, they should be told what’s coming, and what they’re facing.”

  The room seemed to slow then hitch. On one wall, the view through a window began to change, no longer showing the view outside the mansion. Now they could see people, politely assembled beyond simple, civilized barricades. And they could hear subtle murmurs — the kind that unconcerned people make when going about their ordinary business, with no clue that doom is knocking.

  There were no Titans guards. No Reptars. No signs of Astrals, save the moon-like gray bulk of the nearby mothership and Titan civilians milling among the humans: one big, happy family in the Capital of Capitals.

  Okay,” said Jabari, moving for the door. “Me first. And when I wave, you know what to do.”

  Kindred nodded and crossed his legs in the comfortable chair. Meyer sat in an identical posture beside him. Together they waited for it all to begin.

  CHAPTER 47

  Peers’s comment that they were running out of time was intended as a general public service announcement, but Jeanine took it differently.

  He’d checked a clock, realized there were only ten minutes or so left until the State of the City was scheduled to start, and whispered that they’d have to hurry. Cameron was supposed to wait until the Meyers took the stage and said whatever before he opened the Ark. That meant ten minutes before the address began, maybe another five or ten until Jabari yielded the floor, and probably no more than another five until the shock of dueling Dempseys gave way to the big, uncomfortable announcement. That meant they had twenty minutes until the Ark’s top was popped at most, and Peers worried it might be less. And even if there were twenty minutes left, it’s not like they had twenty minutes. Somehow, if they meant to stop Cameron from opening the Ark, they’d have to get him word. Ideally, they’d also get word to Jabari because she might postpone or handle things differently if the Ark weren’t to be opened. And there was the matter of commitment: Even if they figured out where Clara was in time, and even if they could get word out, there was no guarantee that would stop things. Jabari would be on stage. Cameron might be holding the metaphorical handle, ready to crack the seal.

  Which all meant that they needed to hurry.

  But rather than simply internalizing this and moving quickly and making mental notes, Jeanine took Peers’s words as license to kick Kamal’s office door open the second he cracked it, then hit him hard enough to spatter his desk’s polished wood with blood droplets and pin him to the floor.

  “Jesus, Jeanine!” Peers said as she climbed atop the man’s moaning form, sitting on his chest, incapacitating his limply flailing arms with the weight of her knees. Kamal’s head rolled back and forth, groaning, blood running from a superficial but freely bleeding scalp wound.

  “Get his legs!”

  Peers did as he was told, Jeanine rising above him like a cowgirl, the lamp-birthed weapon held high as if Kamal might rise and strike. But holding the viceroy’s attendant’s legs was like gripping dead fish, and Peers’s biggest concern was that Jeanine would clout him again for spite, just because adrenaline had her intoxicated.

  “You got him?”

  “I didn’t mean for you to—”

  “Do you have him!” It came out as a command, not a question.

  “Yes! I have him!” Peers forced his panic down as blood surged into his head and blurred his vision. If this went on for long, he might tackle Jeanine himself because fight or flight commanded it. Calmer, fighting the sense that time was slipping away, he said, “Did you have to hit him?”

  “You said it yourself. We don’t have time to ask him nicely.” She slapped Kamal’s face, and Peers watched the man’s head slowly wag, his eyes trying to climb into his brain. “Kamal! Where is she? Where is Clara?”

  Kamal moaned. His eyelids fluttered, threatening to drift away. Knowing he was risking wrath, Peers moved up and abandoned the man’s motionless legs, grabbing the cloth skirt over an end table, pressing it to his bleeding head. It came away only moderately wet, the wound already slowing.

  “You nearly killed him,” Peers said.

  “You said he was Mullah.”

  “I said I thought he was Mullah!” Now, with Kamal semiconscious due to Peers’s intel, the signs seemed suddenly dubious. Kamal had known about the sphere when it seemed even the viceroy didn’t know how the system worked, but did that mean he was Mullah? Kamal had also raised eyebrows at Peers when he’d come to the group late. But did that mean he knew what Peers had taken and why, or did it simply mean Peers had probably looked sketchy that particular day, his eyes bugged with guilt, face wet after the nervous sweat had been washed away?

  “Well, what’s done is done.” She slapped his face again, but the man was fading. “Kamal. Kamal!”

  “Great. That’s just great, Jeanine.”

  “What would you have done? Ask him to tea?”

  “I wouldn’t have tried to kill him!”

  “He’s not dead. He’s just out.”

  “Which is perfect. Because he’s sure as hell going to be a big help now.”

  “Maybe he has a key or something. If he’s Mullah, he’d have a secret key to a hidden door somewhere, right? A place where he’s stuffed Clara.” Jeanine’s face clouded in sudden concern, more practical than emotional. “Oh, wow, I hope she’s not dead.”

  “Jeanine!”

  “Don’t just sit there playing nurse, Peers! Search his pockets! Search his desk!” Jeanine snapped her fingers in front of Kamal’s face, tapped his cheeks, called his name louder.

  Peers scrambled along Kamal’s side as he rolled slightly on the floor, consciousness barely hanging on. Jeanine took the opposite side, moving to his other set of pockets. They searched pants, shirt, and suit jacket. But of course they found nothing. Because any keys he’d have, if the man was Mullah, would look like any other keys. Unless he had the ring key — which, come to think of it, he’d have to because there’d been a Mullah keyhole where Peers had found the sphere. The locks weren’t really locks and were simple to pick with nails or pins, but a true Mullah would still own and probably proudly wear a ring that …

  But there were no rings on Kamal’s hands. No necklace or bracelets. Nothing hard at the seams of his clothing, nothing obvious in or on his shoes.

  Peers moved to the man’s desk, glancing at the clock, seeing they’d already lost nearly five minutes. In another five or so, Jabari’s face would probably pop up on every quiet screen in the house, triggering the catastrophe that Meyer and Kindred would finish. A second scream of sorts — all that new emotion streaming across the plaza and into the Ark, distracting the t
hing as the speech sidetracked the people, urging the lid open as Cameron turned his key, the true clock ticking for the first time in thousands of years.

  “Keys. Notes. Anything at all,” Jeanine said, now standing above Kamal with her makeshift weapon raised. Kamal had mostly stopped bleeding below her, barely moving, his chest rising and falling in an almost empty rhythm.

  “There’s nothing.”

  “There has to be something. Look harder.”

  “There’s nothing, Jeanine!” And there wasn’t. The desk drawer was a study in minimalism. Peers saw a single pen, a pad of Post-Its, and a pair of paperclips. He yanked it out and held it up, furious, near panic, then threw it down near Jeanine’s feet.

  “You said he was Mullah.”

  “I said it made sense that he was Mullah! That’s why we were going to talk to him! That’s why I wanted to ask him questions!”

  “And he’d just admit it? Just come out and say, ‘Oh, you want to know if I’m Mullah? Why yes, sure.’”

  Peers practically growled his answer, feeling impotent. “I had a way I wanted to ask.”

  “A special way,” Jeanine mocked.

  “Yes. A special way.”

  “And in just a few minutes, you’d get the answer for us. No violence required.”

  That was the plan, yes. He’d have pushed Jeanine back and talked to Kamal in private. They each thought they knew what the other was, Peers had thought. He’d confirm it, say a few things that proved his membership. Then violence might be needed, but even then Peers doubted it. The Mullah had never responded to threats. But maybe he could trick him, suss out where the girl had gone. It was a thin chance at best, but at least it was a chance compared to whatever this had become. And given what the sphere had shown him about the last times the Ark had rendered judgment, it was a chance worth taking, no matter how thin.

  “Now we’re fucked.” His frustration broke. Peers took Kamal’s single pen from the desk and threw it hard at the polished wood surface. It bounced like a spring and rolled into a corner. “Thanks a lot. But in a way, it’s a relief. Now we don’t have to go through the effort of trying.”