by Sean Platt
“Where are we, Kindred?” She’d raised her voice to be heard over the pounding, like projecting in a noisy restaurant.
“North of Ember Flats.”
“How long to the Cradle?”
“I don’t know exactly. Jabari programmed everything into the tablet.” He looked up. Rain on his face was like a high-pressure showerhead. The downpour came in fat drops. “What do you think? Should we get the tablet out right now?”
“So you’re working from memory.”
“Yes.”
“And fortunately your memory is infallible.”
He hesitated a second. Then: “Yes.”
Piper’s eyes went to the others. Peers and Meyer were in the lead, the soaked dog plodding in the mud beside them. Lila was a dark shape in the rain behind Peers, stalking closer than Piper liked.
“Luckily you have Meyer’s mind on this, too,” Piper said.
“Luckily.”
Again Piper watched him. Kindred didn’t like her gaze. Irritation had been stewing in him for days, but his reaction to Piper now was something else. Logical wariness, as if something deep was calculating a chance of danger.
“I can hear your thoughts, Kindred.”
“Don’t. My head is my business.”
“And I notice how Meyer isn’t there nearly as strongly as he used to be.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
Piper gave an if you say so sort of nod. She probably sighed, too, but Kindred couldn’t hear it in the rain.
“We shouldn’t pretend, you and me. We shared a life back in Heaven’s Veil. When did we become such strangers?”
“Maybe when you took up with Cameron?”
Kindred regretted the jab as he said it. Piper’s eyes registered a cheap shot, and Kindred was left wondering where it had come from. Once upon a time he’d been Meyer Dempsey in full, sure of himself even when unsure of what to do next. But that was no longer true. Now he was a ball of loose ends. The Ark’s opening had changed something.
Piper seemed to shrug it away. The topic changed as they trudged on, looking ahead, the Nile valley overfull to their right, down a gently sloping line of land.
“I know something is different with you,” she said. “I can feel it.”
“Nothing has changed.”
“You’re angry. You’re confused. It’s like you’re becoming a hole in the air. A cold spot.”
“Jesus, Piper.”
“You were always your own man. You kept to yourself, just like Meyer. He was always a tough nut to crack. And when you thought you were him, you were the same. Even after, it’s like I couldn’t tell you apart, once he put some meat back on his bones. If he hadn’t grown his beard and you didn’t wear different wedding rings, I’d never have been able to know who was who.”
Kindred pointed, not liking where this seemed to be going. “I think it’s up that way.” But they’d have to detour around; he’d pointed toward a flood. Debris in the water showed how fast the overfull river was flowing. His eyes noted a piece of what might once have been someone’s wall, its window still intact. He saw the roof of a submerged car, racing off to some underwater expressway.
“But now you’re easy to tell apart,” Piper continued. “You’re coming apart. Like you’re half a person. What is it you’re looking for, Kindred?”
“Just the Cradle. Like the rest of you.”
“That’s not what I mean. It’s like there’s a magnet inside you. But I can’t tell what it’s attracting. Where the thing you’re seeking is. I only know it’s coming.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“The Astrals connected us,” Piper went on. “Anyone within range of those big rocks is connected, but ever since the Ark opened it’s like everything is magnified. I can still feel Cameron, Kindred. I can still hear him in here.” She pointed to her head, looking distraught. “I can hear almost everyone now, but only on the surface. I know you’re seeking something, but not what it is. I know Meyer is afraid, but not why. I know Peers is keeping a secret that’s eating him up inside, and it’s not just that he used to be Mullah. It’s something much worse. Something he’d rather die than say out loud.”
“Piper … ”
“And I can feel Lila’s festering anger. At first she was worried and nervous, but those feelings have been growing darker and darker since we left. Maybe since before then. It’s not like your rage, when it flares up. Lila’s has direction. It’s poison. I know she’s mad at Peers, and that she doesn’t trust him. But Kindred … it’s so much heavier than that.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“To tell me the truth. You and Meyer are supposed to be our compass. We lean on you as if you were the same person. You’re like two halves of the same — ”
“Well, we’re not, okay?” Kindred blurted. “I’m me. He’s him. And if that’s the way things are, you’ll just have to fucking deal with it.”
Piper looked at Kindred sidelong. The rain between them made a partial curtain. Piper’s black hair was plastered to her head, rain running in tiny rivers down to her neck, along her face and dripping from her chin.
“Maybe you should tell me what’s really going on,” Kindred said. “Or maybe you could talk to Meyer instead of me. If this copy of Meyer is falling apart, maybe you should leave me the fuck alone and talk to the original.”
Piper watched him for another long moment. Either they were walking lower without meaning to, or the river was rising that fast, because Kindred felt his steps getting wetter. He looked down to see their feet ankle-deep.
“The man in my head says the Astrals know who we are and where we’re going. That they’ve known it from the start.”
“Good for him,” Kindred muttered.
“He says that Jabari really did create a secure line of communication between all the viceroys. And he says that if we can make contact, the Astrals can’t listen.”
“Good for all of us,” Kindred amended.
“So far it hasn’t mattered that they can’t listen because they think they know what we’re going to do. He says it’s what we’ve always done, time after time after time.”
Kindred was going to ask about that, but Piper was inside his head. Her feelings flavored her words, and he found himself understanding. Throughout time, the same events happened over and over. There was always an exodus. There were always survivors. There was always a deposed King who lived, although those who traveled with him seldom did.
“Bullshit,” Kindred said, feeling nerves prickle his neck.
“He tells me that we have a chance to turn the tables this time. Because of the children. And because of him. We have just this one way to plan without the Astrals listening. This one way to surprise them. This single ace in the hole, as long as we can make it to Jabari’s rendezvous point.”
“Why are you telling me this? Go tell Meyer.” Then, with venom that came from nowhere, pulling from Piper’s thoughts, he added, “Go tell the King.”
“Who is the man in boots?” Piper asked.
Kindred walked a few more paces before realizing she was staring right at him. She wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. She was asking him for real, as if she thought he might have a clue.
“What the hell makes you think I’d know?” Kindred asked.
“Because what the man in boots wants more than anything,” Piper said, “is you.”
CHAPTER 27
Around a copse of barren-looking trees, in a tiny inlet that was more lake than river by the time they reached it, Meyer pointed at the edge of something in the water and said, “There.”
“There what?” asked Peers beside him.
“It has to be Jabari’s Cradle.”
“Looks like junk floating in the water to me,” Peers said.
“It’s a dock.”
Lila came up beside him. Piper and Kindred followed, and Meyer noticed a strange glance move from one to the other.
Piper said, “What are we looking
at?”
“That thing in the water there. See it?”
Piper squinted. Meyer tried to see it through her eyes rather than his memory. He’d spent fifteen minutes looking through the information on the tablet at their last stop, careful to stay in the center of the ramshackle shelter and keep both the tablet and its waterproof bag dry. The dock was temporary, shoved way back. In the photos, the thing wasn’t visible. It looked like swamp — a stagnant corner of a river branch where no water circulated, where trees overhung the water and crocodiles were probably plentiful. But the point was to hide, from both the riverbank and the sky. They’d have to cut through brush (and, again, crocodiles) to reach it. Or at least that’s how it would have been, before the coming flood. Now the water had risen several feet above the normal surface, and the river appeared much broader than in the photos. The stagnant inlet was no longer stagnant, raised enough to make it part of the river proper. They wouldn’t have to hack through brush at this point. But they might have to swim.
“That thing that looks like a piece of aluminum?”
“Yes.”
“How is that a dock?”
“It’s a floating dock. You saw the pictures.”
“I forget the pictures, Meyer,” Piper said.
“It’s not permanent. Jabari said they planned to rotate the location if needed, if new viceroys joined or left their little group. So it’s a floating aluminum dock, tethered to concrete anchors.” Meyer looked again. “Tethered well, by the looks of it. We’re only seeing the corner.”
“You’re sure?” Piper asked. “Maybe it washed away.”
“Concrete anchors wouldn’t keep a floating dock under like that,” said Peers, shading his eyes, trying to see better.
“The air barrels might have been punctured by river debris. If a few of them filled with water … ”
“There’s no way that’s it,” said Peers. “Where are the trees? The dock in the photos was huge.”
“The trees are half-submerged, Peers. And so is the dock.”
“The entire dock?”
Kindred’s hand was between them, snapping its fingers.
“Give me the pack.”
“Why?”
“Just give me the fucking pack, Meyer. You’re not the only one in charge here.”
Meyer gave Kindred a glance, feeling almost nothing in their shared internal space. He’d grown used to Kindred’s absence, but it seemed strange now that he noticed it. There was something different about him. Some unspoken change of which Meyer was unaware. Usually, Kindred felt like a mirror. But now he struck him as an annoyed man with poor social awareness.
Meyer watched as Kindred stalked away. There was an abandoned car farther up the hill. He tugged on the door, found it unlocked, then closed himself inside. Meyer and the others watched his head as he did something: probably opened his pack to look at the tablet.
Meyer turned to Piper. She’d been watching the exchange and seemed to understand his brewing questions. He’d seen them talking — but unlike in the past, Meyer found himself unable to access the content once Kindred was alone with an unoccupied mind. Piper, on the other hand, was a one-way street, able to see into them all. But Meyer couldn’t see into her. Without Kindred’s pairing, he felt incomplete, blind and all too mortal.
???
And Piper’s eyes and slow nod seemed to say, Later.
Kindred returned a few minutes later. He handed the backpack to Meyer, with an apology somehow present in the simple gesture. He seemed to be offering Meyer the pack rather than commanding him to take it. The acquiescent manner of a kid about to say, Aw shucks, I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.
“This is it,” Kindred said, looking at Peers first then the others. “Meyer is right. It’s a four-slip floating aluminum dock, and there are twelve flotation barrels beneath it. Jabari’s specs say it’s anchored to concrete with heavy chain, but only in two places. So something would have to have burst the barrels. But this is the spot, all right.”
Meyer watched Kindred finish, wanting to note his many omissions. The way their minds used to work, their shared consciousness would have determined all the specs, including the likelihood that the entire dock was still submerged instead of part of it having broken away.
How many upward pounds of buoyant force does a sealed plastic barrel containing such-and-such cubic feet of air exert when submerged two feet beneath the surface? What’s the tensile strength of the chain the builders used as tethers? Normally, Meyer would know it all. Either eight of the twelve barrels were punctured, or it’s broken off; those are the only two possibilities. And they’d have calculated the odds of each.
But now there were only Kindred’s words, the river, and the rain.
“How can you be sure?” Peers asked.
“GPS is still working through Jabari’s protected protocol — the same one we’ll join once we reach the ground repeater at the rendezvous point.”
“Maybe the Astrals hacked the GPS signal,” Peers said. “How do you know they don’t know exactly where we are?”
“They might know where we are,” Meyer said. “But not through the network. It’s secure.”
“We don’t know it’s secure,” Peers said. And Meyer noticed how Lila stared at him. Cold, like a snake.
“It’s secure,” said Kindred. “I looked at those specs, too. It’s a closed network, like an old company intranet. Not like the Internet.”
“So?”
“So it’s not accessible from the outside. There are no connections to any wider networks. It could only be hacked from the inside.”
“You can’t be sure that means — ”
“You’re awfully worried about security,” Lila said, cutting him off, “for a guy whose buddies managed to shut down the palace’s security when they grabbed my daughter.”
“Now just wait a goddamned — ”
“Lila,” said Piper.
“All that matters,” Meyer said, projecting his voice, “is that we made it here. We can worry about the rest later. “This was step one. Either those subs are still on the dock, or they’re not.”
Kindred nodded. “The specs say they’re designed to be stored with the ballast tanks flooded, so they’d have been resting below the dock either way. If it’s still here under the water, submersibles should be, too. Each holds ten people, so we can all fit in one. I’d say our odds are good. Only one needs to have survived and kept its tether.”
“How do we get to it?” Piper asked. The river was dark in the evening light, under the gathering clouds. Its overflown banks had made it surging and angry-looking. The plus side was that crocodiles might have a hard time treading water long enough to eat them, but the downside was that if the crocs weren’t able to swim in this, humans probably wouldn’t either.
“Jabari put a startup app on the tablet,” Kindred said. “I initiated it for all four subs. Instructions say it’ll take a few minutes for the startup routines to run and safety-check, then blow out the tanks and surface. But she gave us a rigged version of the app because she needed to keep her own authorization while letting us have a piece, so the status indicators are less than ideal.”
“In English, please,” said Peers.
Kindred sighed. “I don’t know if the subs are actually there and initializing or not.”
“So what do we do?” Piper asked.
“We wait,” Kindred answered. “Either one or more will come to the surface, or they won’t.”
“And if none do?” Lila said.
“Let’s cross that bridge if we find it,” Meyer said.
They looked out across the water. It was full of debris, as if the monster swelling the river had reached out, taken civilization by the throat, and dragged it in to drown. Vehicles moved past. Sections of roofing and drywall. A small shed, intact. Clothes, sheets, children’s toys.
“Something you might want to know,” Kindred said, not turning. “When I was up there on the tablet, I opened the feed to Ember Flat
s.”
“And?” Meyer said.
“We don’t have a live line to Jabari, but her man Kamal thought to leave us a message.”
“Kamal?” Peers said, looking guilty. “So he’s … okay?”
“Okay enough to type. He said Divinity came for Jabari, using a human body. Walked right up to the bunker door and knocked. They told her that the flooding will come from more than the rain, that the big ship we saw moving away was going north to melt the polar ice cap. And they told her the big boat the Astrals left to save a small number of people would be filled however she wanted — her choice alone. So Jabari’s combing the citizen roster, looking for … ” Kindred sighed, and Meyer thought of how much it must take for the man — never very emotional — to sigh. “For the people most worth saving if most of humanity is to be exterminated.”
Meyer met Piper’s eyes. She looked crushed, but somehow strong.
“She won’t be joining us,” Kindred continued. “Divinity put her on the Ember Flats Ark. She’s not allowed to surrender her spot for someone else.”
“How did Kamal leave the message for us?” Lila asked.
“Kamal,” Kindred said, “was allowed to give up his.”
The thought settled. A dark veil fell over the group of six — human and canine — beside the rushing and violent river.
They waited. They watched the river. Rain pounded, and even during the few minutes they all spent being soaked, the level inched higher. Much more, and the delta would flood. Egypt wouldn’t be much of a desert after all.
Waiting for the submersible to surface. Waiting for their one and only way through the coming decimation — and, if Jabari’s viceroy cabal really did have a surprise yet up its sleeve, humanity’s final shot at salvation.
“Nothing,” said Lila, watching the dock’s corner. “There’s nothing there. There’s no way out.”
There was a loud and terrible banging. Then another. And another. Even behind the sonic backdrop of rain, it was like gods banging anvils with titanic hammers.
Across the flooded Nile, the dock was jerking up, then sagging down.