by Sean Platt
The woman ignored him. It wasn’t an air of blatant snubbing — more that she seemed to feel this was unworthy of discussion. A bit of 101-level information obvious to even the dumbest person accustomed to apocalyptic resets.
“The Mullah will remain our contacts. You will be the first Elder.”
“I’m not an Elder.”
“You are now. The location of your previous portal is submerged, and the connection to the old portal has been severed. There has been no contact from those whose energy we have experienced before. We believe they have perished. We will help you establish a new portal once the waters recede and will shuttle your tribe’s remainders to the new location, for you to lead.”
“You killed off the other Elders?” The thought was chilling. Sadeem was a respected man in the Mullah order — knowledgeable for sure, a thought-leader without question. It was Sadeem who’d argued most vehemently that the Lightborn were worthy of exploration; Sadeem who, when an unexpected opportunity had presented itself to study one, had jumped at the chance. Clara’s visit to the Mullah and all he’d learned about the children’s unique position in the mental order had happened almost as if by divine providence, and Sadeem had been looking forward to reporting his findings to the Elders. There were many to tell. He was three broad levels from the top as far as he knew, and it was possible there were levels above about which he knew nothing.
But now Eternity was saying they were all gone? All of the Elders — enough to leave Sadeem at the top? Was this how the Astrals treated those who they’d tapped as partners?
“It was unavoidable,” Eternity said. “Any intercession to guide your senior individuals to safety would have compromised the larger plan. Your order did not feel the call to reach a capital, or chose not to heed it. Yet one more example of the failure of this epoch’s interconnectedness.”
“There is supposed to be a truce between us! Between Mullah and Astral! We had an agreement! We do not interfere with you, and you do not interfere with us!”
“We did not interfere,” Eternity said.
“You killed them!”
“They failed to extricate themselves from circumstances past epochs and your own scrolls foretold. But we honored our agreement. We have not harmed the Mullah.”
Sadeem’s mouth hung open — an incredulous look that would have had an obvious meaning for any human, but Eternity simply waited for him to speak again.
“You killed them,” he repeated.
“Only individuals perished. The Mullah remain.” She nodded toward Sadeem.
He still didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t being obstinate, if Astrals could even be such a thing. She was stating fact as she saw it.
“You may choose the new portal’s location,” she said after Sadeem failed to speak. “You may choose those who will go with you to build your new society of guardians.”
“So that you can betray and kill them off the next time around?”
“The individuals you choose will not be alive at the end of the next epoch.” Again the woman looked at Sadeem, seeming to wonder if he was a fool. How could the Astrals possibly betray the new Mullah’s founders thousands of years in the future? They’d betray those founders’ ancestors. Why wasn’t Sadeem getting this?
“What if I refuse?”
“Then you are of no use to us.”
“Why me? Why should I be their leader?”
“Because you are here.”
“Why am I here?”
Now the woman faltered, and Sadeem found his mind falling back to what they’d almost discussed: the reason he was on the ship, having nothing to do with a new generation of portal-keepers. That was just before something that looked a lot like human anger had prompted the massive ship to melt the ice caps, inviting what was apparently only the middle phase of the human apocalypse.
Eternity had mentioned both Stranger and Lightborn: two wild cards that prompted a rapid shuffling of the human deck. And when Sadeem had none of the answers she’d wanted, the woman became vengeful like a human scorned.
Obeying an instinct, Sadeem spoke again before she could reply.
“How is it going for you? This reset of yours?”
“It proceeds as expected.”
“Exactly as expected?”
“You have seen the process. It is something your order must understand, and record in its new scrolls.”
“Why?”
“Because the old race memories must be expunged. It is the only way for a fresh start. But one group must keep the secrets. One must harbor past knowledge so as to facilitate the next cycle and prompt those who remain to avoid its immediate mistakes. That is the Mullah’s burden, and yours to recall and record.”
“So you kill us off, down to a few million survivors. You somehow erase our memories. And then you leave and let us do it all over.”
“As was in the last epoch’s Elder scrolls.”
“And that includes the Archetypes mentioned in the scrolls: the King, the Innocent, the Fool … ”
Eternity’s head cocked — another all-too-human expression. She didn’t know this part of what he was saying, and it was written all over the face she’d either fabricated or commandeered. Apparently the Archetypes, like other aces in the-hole, were something the Mullah had discovered or created while the overlords were away.
“Never mind,” Sadeem said.
Eternity paced the room. If Sadeem didn’t know better — if he didn’t know her to represent the supreme Astral intelligence and instead accepted the illusion that she was a stern human woman in a red dress — he’d have thought her preoccupied. As if she was uneasy about something despite the complete and total Astral obliteration of the planet, and couldn’t help wondering at unseen grit in the works of their supposedly flawless machine.
“Something wrong?” The moment it rose to his lips, Sadeem knew it was the wrong thing to say. Speaking to Eternity as if it were the human it pretended to be wasn’t just ridiculous; it felt dangerous. Like poking a venomous snake with a branch, daring it to strike.
Eternity glared at him.
Then the projection snapped back into the room’s center, its sensory radiation already fogging Sadeem’s sense of place.
The scene showed a large group of survivors at the top of a very tall hill, safe from the floodwaters, making camp. Sadeem heard a minute cracking sound like shards of broken glass crunched underfoot. A few of the campers’ heads turned, and their breath puffed out like cotton in the suddenly cool air. At first Sadeem didn’t understand what he was seeing, until he realized the crackling was the sound of ice forming at the edge of what had previously seemed a tropical sea. A vortex formed overhead, bringing an intense chill down from above. The people ran about, shouting, clutching themselves as they shivered. Ice crystals spread and raced out from the shallows like messengers in a hurry to deliver horrid news.
“Watch carefully,” Eternity said, her blue eyes as cool as the forming ice in the projection. “There is so much left of the cleansing for your scrolls to record.”
CHAPTER 43
Stranger reached out, felt the mind complementary to his own, and borrowed its computational power the way the humans once called on their great computer network to do the same thing. It wasn’t much of a trick once you knew what you were looking for — once you understood how this epoch’s people were different and unexpected. That’s what Meyer Dempsey had subconsciously realized long ago, before his mind had birthed one Astral copy and then another, before the Astral hive had forced a part of Meyer’s essence out to become the Pall. Before the Pall had, in turn, been changed by the addition of another human mind to become Stranger, as he was now.
Meyer had taken mind-altering substances to feel the shared connection.
But Stranger could open those same connections with a thought.
His mind spread out, became not quite itself. Machinery turned. And he saw the changes, the critical mass forming within the collective unconsciousness that was (A
stral opinions notwithstanding) very much in existence. There weren’t many humans left, relatively speaking, but those remainders belonged — not by the Astrals’ definitions, exactly, and not quite by the intentions of the viceroys forced to choose. But by another definition, superior to them all.
Even now, inside the foreign mind, Stranger could feel the energy.
Puzzle pieces slotting together, as if solved by a Lightborn.
Like Clara Gupta, even now, grappled with the same puzzles as she discovered her silver orb, terrified in the dark with her friends. Even now her mind was turning, fitting the subtlest pieces together. If he focused, Stranger could almost see it happening: a corner of the mess slowly resolving.
Yes, Stranger thought, borrowing his counterpart’s brainpower, things were coming along just fine.
He pulled a trio of silver balls from his pocket. He let them lie in the expanse of his big right hand. They turned, and as they did he let their hypnotic rhythms show him his work across the world.
Ice formed across the tropics. Not everywhere; only under the motherships ushering change. Stranger wasn’t an archaeologist and even now found no true interest, but he could imagine the bafflement of future archaeologists when seeing the evidence: apparent glacial grooves along the western shores of Africa; fossils of frost-stunted plants buried in time at the Earth’s hottest spot. The great ships’ engines siphoned molecular inertia into themselves by a mechanism Stranger didn’t understand, and as they did the water’s tiniest pieces slowed, stopping, coming to rest in a crystal lattice. Within hours the equatorial waters where survivors thronged, despite the sun’s assault, were frozen twenty feet deep. Those who’d thought themselves survivors discovered otherwise, and another percentage of the population perished.
In the tiny sub, Stranger watched as Piper Dempsey found the silver sphere in the backpack beside Mara Jabari’s tablet from what must feel like forever ago. He watched as she summoned the others to see then saw her hide it when they turned to look. I meant this, Piper told Meyer. What is this? Showing him the first thing she could find after changing her mind, which turned out to be a cache of medical supplies. Wounds were patched. Bruises were treated. And only later did Piper pull the small sphere back from her hasty hiding place and stare into its polished surface: a face that Stranger, by looking into one of the spheres on his own palm, could see looking back out at him.
Stranger watched as Piper noticed its warmth and vibration, as she noticed the Cradle’s instruments warm from dormancy as she held the sphere close, as she tucked it into a compartment near the steering fork and announced, without explanation, that the sub’s electronics were working again … and that the GPS, which had no signal, was nonetheless steering them somewhere she believed they should go.
Stranger watched Etemenanki Sprawl as the city’s vessel left its former shores, full of those ingenious enough to board it. He watched Viceroy Anders set aside the sphere he’d sent, obeying an internal compass she felt was truer than his as she commanded the vessel to turn and rescue the stranded. But then the last of the crust holding Old Goat’s true bounty at bay sheared apart under the water at the urging of the nearby Astral mothership, lava frothed forth, and before it could be quenched the waters around the former Iceland boiled. There were no magma ducts leading to the higher peak where Etemenanki’s survivors, near but not atop Old Goat, had made their marooned new home. Still the magma found its way upward as the Astral mothership cut its way, and the tip broke loose before Anders could reach the stranded. An ordinary mountain birthed a new volcano, and the people burned.
Stranger watched as, in both Hanging Pillars and Roman Sands, late waves settled and those who’d found vessels were overtaken by motherships and shuttles. Unlike Viceroy Anders, Liza Knight of Roman Sands was more practical. She did not command that the already-overfull vessel turn back as shuttles worked.
The raking did not take long, and mere hours later Stranger could tune into both cities and see almost nothing — except for a single ship that the Astrals had for some reason failed to jettison: a freighter with a captain that could not fire her engines or steer her, and yet found himself both knowledgeable and able once he set the sphere from his pocket onto the great ship’s dashboard. And after that, Stranger watched the big ship make slow loops, its movements curiously agile for something so large, its engines burning no fuel. He watched as, one by one, the small group in the bridge found boats and land the Astrals had missed, stopped beside them in ways such a large ship should not have been able to manage, and dropped ladders that they had no trouble finding or knowing how to use.
When the local sea was bare and the freighter was more occupied, Stranger watched as the captain — a Warrior of sorts more than a captain — turned the ship on a bearing that avoided obvious land, toward the seemingly endless water, inspired by his spherical lucky charm.
The vessels of both Canaan Plains and Loulan Mu were only partially filled, but as Stranger looked at both places he saw a sea overfilled with all the world’s nightmare creatures, overtaking lesser vessels one by one and leaving the large ship untouched. He saw sharks, all of which had developed an intense interest in human flesh. He saw fish with teeth — knowing that despite their reputations they seldom attacked people — swarm and leap. He saw those too near the water get snatched like something from a bad movie, dragged sideways, tipping their boats into the water. He watched water snakes and fish with deadly barbs clog the surface like flotsam, turned inexplicably savage. There were aggressive whales and unkind dolphins. Smaller craft were capsized, while larger ships were bombarded with wave after wave of kamikaze sea life, rushing the spinning engine blades until they were jammed, overheated, and stilled. Then the few clouds parted, and the marooned ships baked in the sun, decks covered with ravens who’d developed curious eye-jabbing habits, with goliath hornets displaced by the flood, intent to vent their aggression on any humans who chose to stay on deck.
Onboard the vessel previously of Ember Flats, the old order’s Capital of Capitals, Stranger watched Viceroy Mara Jabari stare into her own silver sphere, wishing irrationally that the time was right to reach out and speak to her. But the dominoes had been laid, and this was a delicate time, as the Astrals plunged powder-white fingers into the soft flesh of humanity’s psyche, believing it to be disconnected. Now was not the time to reveal the truth: that humanity had not grown without a developed collective consciousness, but that it had simply grown one the Astrals had never seen. Stranger, being mostly human himself, could see the connections, feel them forming as the Astrals did their work, reducing the human population to only those who, thanks to some wrenches in the works, contained enough seeds to germinate.
But Jabari looked into her sphere and rolled it across an old map of the former globe that someone of wit had included in the vessel’s onboard supplies. And if Stranger focused, he could catch the tone of her thoughts: guilt, regret, and resentment. Jabari wondered at what might happen next, more fearing that she’d remain a leader than hoping to be one.
I’ve failed them, she thought. The viceroys cannot meet. There are no hookups remaining, and the Astrals control the satellites.
Meyer, and all that made him special by the Da Vinci Initiate’s reckoning, would die along with everyone else. Even if he and Kindred made the Cradle, they’d starve like the rest of them, with nowhere to be and nowhere to go.
They might all be dead, her mind twisted the knife. ALL of the viceroys. I might be the only one left. This single ship might be all that’s left of mankind.
It wasn’t true, but Stranger couldn’t tell her.
More would perish. Many, many more.
The viceroys would not meet as planned.
But below the surface, something new was growing.
Stranger, as he sat top the big hill, looked down into the spheres. He wondered if this — all the work he’d done — made him selfish. He wanted very much to live, and it was only his own arrogant need that served the rest, purely by
chance.
In the end he decided that there were many things that even he didn’t know or understand, and that all plans had their masters, and that the only thing more selfish than what he’d done so far would be to ignore the commands of his own plan’s master.
Then the first thing happened that Stranger hadn’t anticipated. The first of many things he hadn’t — and wouldn’t — see coming.
The first connection lit.
And then the next.
CHAPTER 44
“Did you say something?” a girl asked.
Clara looked over. They were in the lowest level of the Ember Flats vessel, half the ship’s kids tossed into one giant pile with only minimalist wooden bunks to tease their comfort. Clara didn’t understand any of it. If the Astrals were such magicians, how about a few mattresses? Heck, how about some TV? Anything to pass the time in this dank ship, so much like something from hundreds of years ago.
But, she thought, at least it was better than the belowdecks space they’d been in before finding a hatch leading up here. That had felt like pure luck, and thank God for it. Clara didn’t know how it had happened. She’d had this feeling that the hatch was to one side so she’d crawled there, even as other Lightborn protested in the dark.
“Sorry?”
“I said, ‘Did you say something?’” The girl stopped, realizing the absurdity of telling Clara what she’d said when she’d asked if Clara had spoken. Then she laughed. She looked maybe seven, like Clara. But this girl wasn’t Lightborn, and felt much younger.
“I didn’t say anything.” Clara let herself smile. She knew this wasn’t the only ship of survivors; she could still sense the other Lightborn who’d managed similarly miraculous stowaways on other ships. But Clara felt mostly alone — the simple, quiet solitude of the surviving few. Talking to anyone felt nice. To see even a ghost of humor.