Judgment (24 page)

“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, outposts, 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.”
 

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.