Judgment (12 page)

Lies were being told; Cameron wouldn’t allow himself the luxurious stupidity of pretending they weren’t. But Kindred said that Peers wasn’t Astral, and neither were Aubrey or Nocturne, both of whom had come along as well because a party isn’t a party without a butler and a dog. But Cameron couldn’t work out a harmful angle to the possible lies. Hell’s Corridor took no bribes. If they were overtaken, the painted cannibals would devour Peers and Aubrey just the same.
 

“You should talk to him, Cameron,” Jeanine finally said.
 

“Peers?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“About what? Benjamin?”
 

“About this. About
all
of this.” She gestured to indicate the bus, the fortunate fuel, the lack of pursuit by Astral shuttles or road warriors, the fact that they’d been talked into going at all.
 

“I’m not sure what you mean.”
 

“Ask him if he’s telling the truth.”
 

Cameron thought she must be kidding, but Jeanine’s eyes were hard and serious.
 

“Right.”
 

“You’d be amazed what happens when you’re straight with people. One day, a man came into the Republic claiming to be lost. And Nathan said to him, perfectly reasonably, ‘Tell me something. Are you telling the truth?’ He blurted out that he’d been sent to kill Nathan, then he became one of his best lieutenants.”
 

Cameron looked back out the window. Something flashed in the corner of his eye, momentarily became a long column of shifting-color smoke, and then was gone.

Without a word, Cameron stood. He sat beside Piper then leaned against her as the bus rumbled on. He was asleep ten minutes later.

He woke an unknown time later when Piper rose to use the onboard bathroom. The day slipped by with little conversation. Cameron milled up and down the aisle, restless, hating the quiet. Meyer and Kindred took the back seat for a pow-wow — low, subtle, quick words whispered in their strange little language. Lila and Clara had either brought or found a deck of cards because they began playing Go Fish. Piper pulled her battered Vellum from her pack, recently charged after a long quiescence in the Den’s abundant power. She hadn’t added new books to the thing in half a decade but always found something to read when power allowed. The same books over and over or new-to-her stories she’d stockpiled before Astral Day, Cameron never knew.
 

Day became evening. Opposition ignored them. Evening became night. With the sun’s departure, Peers announced that the headlights made the bus too obvious a target and pulled off the road. Never mind that the bus — which was large, silver, and not silent — had been a target all day. Never mind that there was a shelter at the ready, and Peers pulled them right into it.
 

They made a small fire. Jeanine and Meyer stood sentry. Some hours later they traded — Kindred and Christopher took a turn. Cameron considered speaking to Piper and then Jeanine, rallying a group to mutiny or leave. Instead he found himself sitting on a rock, knowing only four things: They were headed to Ember Flats. The Ark was in Ember Flats. Cameron would need to open the thing if they could reach the city and resist arrest long enough to reach it. And Peers, no matter his motivations, would take them there.
 

Aubrey sat beside him.
 

“You’re wondering about Peers.”

Cameron looked over. The firelight barely reached this far, but there was a moon. He could see Christopher’s arms burdened with a rifle, standing just a few dozen yards farther on.
 

“I don’t blame you,” Aubrey went on. “In your shoes, I’d wonder about Peers as well.”

“The Den … ” Cameron began.
 

“He’s telling the truth about the Den. It’s stuffed with Astral technology and was clearly an alien base. We found it as he said, but it was mostly dead. Filthy. None of the equipment seemed to work. Sand had drifted in. But Peers went to school for a curious combination of majors. One was as you’d suspect, which gives him his archaeological bent. But don’t let his desert robe and knotty dreadlocks fool you. He’s also an engineer. When I first met him, he looked like an accountant. And if Peers Basara can’t clean a machine and make it run, it can’t be fixed by anyone.”
 

Cameron looked toward Peers, by the fire, chatting amiably with Meyer. Or at least Cameron thought it was Meyer; from here, what he thought was a beard might merely be shadow.
 

“But you wonder how we can so boldly turn toward Ember Flats. The explanation of our fuel supply doesn’t sit right. You’ve noticed that the roads are clear as if they’ve been paved just for us.” The thin man nodded toward the shelter’s front, just beyond the fire. The entire bus had fit neatly inside. “And most of all, you’re wondering about that. How we found shelter so easily, so readily.”
 

“Okay. I’ve wondered.”
 

“He’s obsessed. Peers, I mean. Did he tell you we’ve been to Ember Flats before?”
 

“No.”
 

“Years ago. Before the Ark was there. By the timeline as I understand it, before Heaven’s Veil was destroyed. We knew the Templars had hidden something the Astrals needed, thanks to communication bursts your group sent our friends before the Veil went dark. It was simple — and honestly rather obvious — to conclude it must have been the archive.”
 

“Why was that obvious?” Cameron remembered Benjamin’s glee when he seemed to realize the same thing, regarding the whole thing as a big historical joke. But it had taken Charlie’s analysis of Benjamin’s work and Clara’s plunging of Cameron’s forgotten past to assemble two and two on the American end.
 

“Once we realized the point was judgment rather than simply blowing us all up, it was simple. The Ark of the Covenant is perhaps the most famous object in history. And like any famous historical story, it’s been distorted and symbolized over time. Some ancient aliens scholars believe it was a weapon, just as we first thought the Astrals had lost a weapon. Some believed it was radioactive, that it was a machine, that carrying it could bring domination or destruction. But more famously, what is the Ark known as?”
 

“The resting place of the Ten Commandments.”
 

Aubrey nodded. “Perhaps a prior set of judgments. At least history’s interpretation of the story. We considered Biblical Mount Sinai, but by then the Astrals had triangulated on the emotional outcry that arose with the annihilation of Heaven’s Veil, and we knew we’d never find it first.”
 

“If the Ark wasn’t in Ember Flats, yet … ”
 

“We still thought of it as Giza back then. Can you think of any reason why a couple of ambitious British scholars like yours truly and my mate there might want to reach Giza, as part of what used to — before the great changes — feel like a revolutionary cause?”
 

“You were searching for something.”
 

“That’s right. In the original pyramids, before they were made of blue glass. In those old monoliths, clichéd as they are. We were able to bribe our way in, sniffing out a trail Peers had uncovered. It was just the three of us.”
 

“Three?”
 

“Me. Peers. And Peers’s son, James.”

Cameron looked up, surprised.
 

“We were captured by the Ember Flats guard. We were supposed to be taken to the viceroy, a woman named Mara Jabari. We never made it that far; I imagine she was too busy handling insurrections elsewhere. So the guard handled us on their own, with the viceroy’s blessing. They wanted to know who’d sent us and what we were after. When Peers wouldn’t talk, they decided to show us they were serious. So they killed James. Just shot him in the head. He was only nineteen.”

Cameron looked at Peers, still by the fire but now beside Clara. They were just talking, but something hurt Cameron’s chest. It wasn’t about the story being told. It was more personal — another father-son bond broken, or reflected pain on the day they’d found the Ark then run with no intent to ever return.

“He’ll die to reach Ember Flats again, Cameron. He does not care. He wants to look Mara Jabari in the eye then slit her throat.
That
is Peers’s secret, and I thought you should know it before we go farther. It’s in our mission to help you reach the Ark, if indeed that’s the right choice, which I’m also not sure of. But know that Peers has vengeance on his mind. Know that he’s been scouting satellite imagery, making lists of necessary supplies, even heading out to set up bivouac stations like this one. Mapping routes. Handing out bribes. All just to get us into the city, by any means necessary.”
 

Cameron considered. If anything, Aubrey’s story made the case for following him even stronger. If Peers wanted to slit the Ember Flats viceroy’s throat, he’d have done all he could to make sure he got close enough to pull his knife. Close enough to reach the Ark, as long as there were no conflicts.

“And Hell’s Corridor?” Cameron said.

“The painted cannibals cannot be bribed. The peril there is all too real. And once we enter the city, it will likely be just as bad. To Peers, all of this is acceptable risk.”
 

“And you?”

“I have stood by Peers this long. James was like a son to me as well. But perhaps even more, I believe in the archive. I believe that if it can be opened — if it
should
be opened — that this will at least end. Your man Charlie will tell you: Once the archive is unlocked, we believe the information collecting will stop, and the process of judgment will begin, like a jury retiring to reach its verdict. They may judge you as well, as the key bearer. We cannot know how long the process will take or what criteria they will use. You know as well as I do what their device must have recorded over the past epoch: humanity’s best and worst, hopefully not in equal measure. But whether we are found guilty or innocent, it will be over. And
that
is why I am here. The life of a nomadic archaeologist and ancient aliens theorist may sound like it’s all grand galas and parties with dancing girls, but I assure you, the reality is far less impressive. And I’m tired, Cameron. Taking you to the Ark feels a bit like playing Russian roulette. But by now I’m ready to pull the trigger even though I can’t know whether it will be air or a bullet in the chamber when the hammer falls.”
 

Cameron lifted the thermos at his side. He’d poured some of the distilled liquid from Peers’s bottles back at the Den into the dented metal tumbler and a bit more into the cap. He handed the cap to Aubrey and raised his cup for a toast.

“Amen to that, at least,” Cameron said.
 

Cups clinked.

They drank.

Lila felt the wrap tight around her torso. She hefted the carbine’s weight in her arms. Jeanine, who’d fired one before, had tried to talk Lila out of the weapon when Peers had opened the bus’s equipment locker to distribute guns like deadly presents. Jeanine said its kick would “knock her tits off.” But seeing as Lila — like Piper — had wrapped herself tightly enough to obscure her appearance, she figured her warning was moot.

“Just don’t try to shoot through the slats,” Jeanine warned. “You’ll never hold it still enough and will end up cutting our ride in half.”
 

Lila thought that was a bit of an overstatement. She could pull a trigger, especially after squeezing so many (on admittedly smaller weapons) in the past. But she’d still heed Jeanine’s advice and only shoot with her upper half fully through one of the pop-up hatches, content to call the issue a draw.

Jeanine walked away, checking the others’ weapons, leaning out to survey the bus’s shell for obvious weaknesses, generally taking command away from Peers, who to his credit seemed willing to give it. Cameron had hinted that Peers had planned this operation in advance — but emphasized that a run down Hell’s Corridor couldn’t
be
planned. If Peers were as smart as Aubrey claimed, he’d take Jeanine’s advice and keep his mouth shut.
 

Lila watched Jeanine, stuffing down a mounting sense of concern that had bloomed into terror. Jeanine looked completely at ease, even cavalier. She hadn’t wrapped her torso to hide her femininity from the horde ahead. She hadn’t hidden her ponytail or smeared any grease on her face. She looked, Lila thought, like she’d probably make a rather delicious target. But Jeanine had been wearing a grenade inside her vest for months, nestled between her breasts in a modified bra pouch. “Let someone try to cop a feel on me,” she’d say. “Just let them
try.”
 
And that didn’t include the second tiny grenade she had
just in case.
The little black cylinder with its short, dangling cord. “I keep that one in a seam on my pack, no one would ever look there,” she’d often said, and always like a dare.
 

Peers had brought satellite images of the Corridor, but they showed nothing they didn’t already know. Jeanine spread them on the bus’s central table as their target approached, calling for a stop and a general meeting.