Judgment (46 page)

The boy pushed on the rock. Glanced back, pushed again. He’d even smelled at the gap, as if the good stuff in the temple might be sweets he could sniff from a distance. Eventually, the boy decided he’d seen enough, that the temple’s guts had never been the goal and that the door and foyer themselves were boring. So he’d turned to go, then half tripped and smacked his back against the wall near the door.
 

Peers watched it happen. Beside the boy, the door slid sideways. Not open like on a hinge but into the wall. It shouldn’t have been possible with stone.
 

The boy looked at the door, deeply puzzled and slightly afraid. The door’s movement had been too quiet for stone on stone, and that meant he probably wouldn’t be discovered by sound. But on the other hand, here he was, on the threshold, the door wide open. He’d be beaten if caught. Maybe expelled.
 

The boy looked at the open door, with nothing but darkness inside.
 

Maybe killed, for all Young Peers knew.
 

The boy turned, now noticing a small circular keyhole with a pattern that matched those rings worn by the elders. Then he looked at his belt, where he’d leaned against the wall. He’d tucked a cleaning pad into his waistband when the commotion started, when the outsiders had arrived and the Mullah stirred to find them, then either kill or force them to leave. He’d been scouring one of the tables using the pad, which was a big wad of twisted metal threads.
 

Watching now, it was obvious to Adult Peers what had happened. Just as he’d done when he’d retrieved the sphere from its original home in the closet, the metal on the pad had pressed into the key indentations. You didn’t need a special key after all. You had to touch the points with something, maybe metal.
 

Adult Peers felt his heart skip, mentally urging the boy back. But of course, this had
happened
. This was history, already written.
 

He walked forward.
 

The temple was small. Far too small to be called a temple, not much larger than a walk-in closet at the viceroy mansion. If this were real, it would have been a tight fit for two people. But in reality he’d been the boy in this place, looking at the temple’s sole feature: a blue disc on the far wall about the size of a large dinner plate, glowing in the dark, swirling like liquid.
 

Peers touched the disc and found it semi-permeable. It gave a bit when he pressed it, like taffy.

A voice in his head (just in the boy’s head at the time, but now also echoed in Adult Peers’s head) said,
Who are you?

Peers remembered how unsure he’d been about how to answer — or, really, whether he should even try. He wasn’t supposed to be near the temple. He definitely wasn’t supposed to be
in
the temple. And holy of all holies, he
really, really
wasn’t supposed to be in front of this disc thing, touching it, talking to who knew whom. Or what.

But the answer rose in Young Peers’s mind, now echoed in Adult Peers’s thoughts, without effort. A lie.
 

I’m an elder of the Mullah.

You seem young. Even for a human
.
 

Young Peers stepped back. All the way to the doorway. Intellectually, he
should
be terrified. But curiosity was the stronger emotion. He’d
never
be here again. If he left now, too many questions would plague him. What was this thing? Who was the voice in his head? And how did this all work, anyway? He knew the voice wasn’t really speaking his language. It was an instantaneous translation of both words and concepts, happening mind to mind.
 

This was too much. He had to leave.
 

But instead, Peers watched his stupid younger self step forward again.
 

We were not expecting contact,
said the voice.
 

Yeah, well.
 

There seemed to be a pause as if the voice was waiting for something. Then it said,
The archive has been disturbed.

And Peers, having no idea what that meant, said,
Okay.

He saw a mental image, of a large gilt box in a cave. There was a cerebral relaxation, and he somehow knew that what the voice proposed — the thing he’d just agreed with — wasn’t actually true. Peers intuited this as good; the archive, whatever it was, hadn’t been touched. It was something else — related but different — that this little mind-meld felt was off.
 

The the voice seemed to decide what that thing was.
The key. It has found a bearer.

Sure.

Is this why you’ve broken the silence?

I thought someone should know. About the archive and the key, I mean.

Why has this happened?

Peers recalled one of the expressions his father had brought back from the outside world. It wasn’t appropriate, but seeing as this was a mental thing, he was unable to keep it from slipping out.
 

Shit happens.

Is it time?

Um, I don’t know.
 

It has been millennia since the last epoch. Your kind has rebuilt. You know the rules. We will not decide. Only you can decide.
 

Now Peers was uneasy.
Both
Peerses were uneasy: Young Peers because he’d trespassed enough and was ready to leave, curiosity or no curiosity, and Adult Peers because a slow creeping was summiting his spine.
 

Epoch.
 

Rebuilt.
 

Only you can decide.
 

And on the heels of those thoughts, he recalled Ravi’s words, before he’d run off terrified:
You opened a lock in the temple? Beyond the elders?

Because that definitely wasn’t supposed to be possible, not without a key, not even if you had steel wool on your belt. But then again, the way had always parted for Peers almost as if he had a role to play in destiny.

And Ravi’s parting whisper, before he’d run:
The Fool.
 

Aloud, even though he was inside a memory, Adult Peers said, “Oh, shit.”
 

The key has found its bearer,
said the voice.
The portal has been activated.
 

But the boy was becoming worried. Worried about what this place was, whom exactly he was talking to, and most pressingly, when the elder guard would return. He’d been here far too long, and was in too deep. But the voice held his attention like a clenched fist.

Are you ready?

Young Peers didn’t answer. He backed away. The voice held him, freezing his muscles. It wasn’t going to let him go. He’d be held here forever. They’d find him here, tethered. He’d die in this place, his mind held prisoner.
 

Are you ready?
the voice repeated, its tone calm and rational.
 

Yes! Yes, just let me go!

And then, it did. Young Peers reeled backward, his momentum strong enough to propel his memory body back through Adult Peers’s own insubstantial presence. The boy emerged on his backside then stumbled out into the light. Clumsily, he pushed the steel wool pad against the lock, and of course the door closed. Peers remembered how easily it had shut, cutting the boy off from that strange, horrible blue disc and its resident voice. He’d been so relieved. For two weeks afterward, he was sure he’d gotten away with it. Only later had a kid named Fahim finked on him, reporting out of pious guilt that Peers Basara had gone to the area outside the temple door. He hadn’t even seen Peers enter; just going to the temple and touching its closed door was enough to earn his exile.
 

Peers, shut in the dark chamber when the door closed, stepped through the wall and found his child self walking backward, afraid to move his eyes from the door. He remembered how terrified he’d been. How much he’d felt on the edge of a near-miss, almost having been caught, maybe trapped. But cogitation had been cut short when the floor trembled, its point of origin far in the other direction, where the intruders were being dealt with.
 

The room changed like a jump cut in a film. Suddenly Adult Peers — alone now — found himself back in his room in the Ember Flats viceroy’s mansion. The room was still shaking, but now it wasn’t from the rocks shifting in what the Mullah called the Key Room. It wasn’t the sign of coming that he now realized it had always been. Now it was the sign of something else.
 

Past knowledge stitched with the understanding gained since. All the things he’d studied, both on his own and in concert with data sent from Benjamin Bannister’s group, from other groups around the world, both before and after the Astrals’ arrival. Mullah legends meeting science, myth, and findings from sites across the globe. And all of a sudden, everything seemed to fit.
 

Are you ready?

The Astrals viewed time differently than humans did. Even neglecting physics Peers knew nothing about, decades and even centuries simply didn’t mean much to beings who lived nearer to eternity. From their distant home, mentally accessible only through the portal, it would take them forever to reach Earth. Hell, it might take more than a decade.
 

They’d arrive on their dark, spherical horses.
En masse
, to weigh humanity and lay judgment — but only once we were ready. That’s what the Mullah were for. They were the keepers. Those who mediated the way. Kept Pandora’s box closed until it was time to open it, when circumstances were finally right, and we’d had time to become what the keepers felt had a fair chance of succeeding.
 

And again, Peers heard,
Are you ready?

And his own answer, blurted in childish fear:
Yes!

He backed away from the Astral sphere. He looked up, toward the invisible sky, hidden behind the palace roof.

He’d done this.
 

He’d called them.
 

It was Peers, all those years ago, who’d brought the Astrals to Earth far, far too early, as only a Fool could do. He’d gone where he wasn’t supposed to go. Touched what he oughtn’t have touched. Transgressed where nobody was supposed to transgress. And eleven years later, the Horsemen had arrived.
 

Had the Mullah known? Peers wasn’t sure. They’d exiled him without ceremony, not bothering to detail what damage, if any, he’d caused. But Peers thought they might not have known at the time, though they surely figured it out later. When Peers had been exiled, the concern had been all about the incursion into the Key Room: the key finding its bearer; Cameron Bannister finding his place in destiny, dooming himself to finish off the choice that Peers, too young to know any better, had triggered the process of choosing.
 

Coincidence? There was no such thing in the blessed, cursed life of Peers Basara, Fool of legend.
 

He remembered the desert. The shove from his own uncles and cousins and mother, telling him to never return. The Mullah’s was a sacred duty, and Peers had threatened it. If only they’d known how badly.
 

Sabah had said,
When the day comes that the Horsemen arrive, may the Dark Rider himself take your soul.
 

The Dark Rider.

In the old legends, the Dark Rider rode at the rear of the Horsemen’s pack. Lagging back, lying in wait. And given the way modern technological society had crumbled in the years since the occupation, that wouldn’t be hard. If there was a Dark Rider, he could hang back, just out of obvious sight. There were no strong telescopes anymore. No telemetry, no radar, no satellite feeds out of Astral hands, and even those pointed only at the ground.

He had to find the tunnels. He had to get away.
 

Peers zipped the pack, slung it over his back, and rushed for the door, Nocturne at his heels.
 

They both stopped when the door opened. In his fugue, Peers seemed to have missed a major event at the palace: one that had ripped the house wide open, leaving his room door opening into open yard, chaos, and rubble.
 

But he barely saw the rubble, or the chaos beyond.
 

An all-black ship, its bulk spanning to the edge of each visible horizon, was sliding into place above Ember Flats.
 

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SHIT FROM BRAINS

Johnny told me I had to write this Author’s Note.
 

I said, “But you
always
write the Author’s Notes — I haven’t written one since
Unicorn Western!
”
 

And he said, “DUDE. I
ALWAYS
write the Author’s Notes! YOU
haven’t written one since
Unicorn Western.
”
 

It’s true, I haven’t. Because it seems natural for Johnny to spill his guts after finishing the first draft, then it’s my job to go in and mop it all up. But when he added, “And besides, I think our readers would really like hearing from you,” I think he’s at least partially right. I mean, it’s all math. Many readers don’t even get to the Author’s Notes, and then at least some of you reading this now are thinking, “DAMMIT! I CAME HERE FOR JOHNNY.” But there are probably at least a few of you who might be genuinely happy to hear from me. Sorry to everyone else — Johnny will be back for
Extinction.
Probably.