Judgment (38 page)

As the gap closed, shutting Peers in the bathroom, he saw Jeanine bending to pet Nocturne, squatting while the dog rose in greeting.
 

A board squeaked as she stood. Footsteps while she crossed the room.
 

“I got the clothes from Piper,” she said, her voice clear through the door. “But of course, when I got back to my room, there were finally some clothes there for me, too. New stuff. But it was girly. What’s up with this place? In what world am I girlier than Piper?”
 

Peers shuffled through his pile. A shirt peeked out; he dragged it on inside out. It came back off, a dreadlock snagging in the neck hole.
 

“I just kept hers. The backpack was actually in a supply closet. Oh, and I got this.” Pause. “Oh, right. I guess you can’t see it from in there.”
 

He heard fabric shuffle. Probably Jeanine setting the backpack aside, sorting its contents, showcasing whatever “this” was to show him once he came out.

Then he heard a muffled
crump
, followed by a series of material groans as padding and springs shifted.
 

Dammit, now she’s sitting on the bed
.
 

“What were you doing while I was gone? Did you find anything at all?”
 

“Just a second!”
 

More shifting. More groans as she shifted on the mattress.
 

Jeanine was probably leaning forward. Wondering why the bed didn’t have a comforter. Looking underneath, probably about to drag the thing from below, spreading the thing on top to be helpful.
 

“Jeanine!” But it came out alarmed, not casual as intended.
 

When she didn’t answer, he said, “Nocturne likes it when you throw the ball for him. It’s in the bin near the door.”
 

“He looks tired to me,” said Jeanine’s voice.
 

Peers straightened his shirt. Found pants, jeans, and succeeded in putting one leg in the wrong hole. The bed groaned again.
 

“He’ll really appreciate it!”
 

His heart was beating. The sheen of sweat was growing thicker, wetter, almost dripping. It had never, in history, taken longer to put on a pair of jeans. And meanwhile, Jeanine was out there, surely on all fours, dragging the comforter out and noticing something heavy inside it, taking the sphere, touching it, realizing that they wouldn’t have to search for Mullah because there was at least one of them closer than she’d thought.
 

This
would be a gun. And when he came out, she’d shoot him.

But there was a noise outside: the flat
thunk
of a tennis ball striking the floor, followed by a mad scrabble of paws and claws.
 

Jeanine said to Nocturne, “Silly boy, look what you did. I don’t want to fish it out from under there.”

Peers got the other leg in his pants and knocked the door open, his fly still unbuttoned and unzipped. He saw Jeanine getting to her knees, moving toward the bed and the lump of fabric underneath, the green fuzzy shape of a tennis ball beside it.
 

“I’ll get it.”
 

And Peers did, flaps open and flying, his knee practically kicking Jeanine out of the way. He got the ball in his hand and nudged the comforter bundle back with his forearm, then came out with the ball held up like victory. Jeanine’s eyes went from the ball to his crotch.
 

“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.”

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 collective 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—”