Judgment (5 page)

“It helped us in Heaven’s Veil.”
 

“It
got us out.
That’s different.”
 

Cameron wanted to argue
(How is “getting us out” not helping us?),
but he knew exactly what she meant. And this was hardly the time to discuss it. Unless this — with the Pall beckoning them into danger with its silent understanding — was
exactly
when it mattered most.
 

“Who was that man, Cameron? The human I saw? How could it be Mullah if there was only one of them?”
 

From the left-side passage, a black-headed Reptar emerged. Slowly, and in no rush. Cameron and Jeanine ducked behind a rock wall, but it wasn’t looking in their direction. If it had been a human, Cameron could almost have believed it had left the rest of its group to smoke a cigarette and pass the time.

And now here came the smoke as if plucked from Cameron’s imagination.
 

Swirling slowly around them.
 

Raising Jeanine’s gun arm, commanding the movement of her hand.
 

Jeanine looked over at Cameron, eyes wide.
 

The gun leveled at the Reptar.
 

And then the Pall squeezed Jeanine’s hand in its smoky fist, pulling the trigger, shooting the Reptar in the side of its panther-like head.
 

“I … I didn’t mean to … ”

Jeanine didn’t need to finish. Every Astral in the choke point was spilling toward them like hornets disturbed.
 

“Run!”
Cameron shouted, bolting up from his crouch.

So they ran.

Piper heard the gunshot. For a second she was back with Meyer before this had all started, in Vail when it had still been Vail, firing the slug that had ended Garth’s life outside the Axis Mundi. Then she was in the cave at Mount Horeb, which Charlie said was the same as Mount Sinai, where Moses had received the Ten Commandments from God and the smashed pieces of those original judgments had once been entombed in the Ark. Where, Cameron seemed to believe, the Astral Archive birthed its most famous legend.

But then the instinctual, gut-deep memories were gone, and Piper was back in the caves with Lila and Charlie and Clara behind her, with Christopher and the Brothers Dempsey spilling from the opposite chamber.
 

“Was that a gun?” Christopher asked, staring at Piper.
 

She didn’t answer. Piper was in the stone hallway where the Pall had beckoned her. She wasn’t the logical leader of this party with Cameron gone but was at the group’s head, all of them unsure whether to proceed or duck back into their holes.

Ahead, Piper saw Astrals.
Lots
of Astrals. Spilling away from the choke point by the huge round stone door like water down a drain. Apparently keeping Piper’s group trapped was no longer interesting. Only whatever had fired the gun seemed to matter now.
 

“Psst!”

Piper’s head turned. She saw a very thin, very tall man with a wispy brown mustache beyond the choke point, hiding behind a rock wall as the Astral outflow began to dissipate.
 

The man looked directly at Piper and waved her forward. As Reptars and Titans poured from the funnel, Piper realized she could follow. But should she? Was it the Pall again? It had vanished just before the gunshot, dissolving into a thin, nearly invisible mist so it could sneak back past the Astral blockade.
 

But no, she didn’t think the Pall had ever sampled a thin man with a mustache. And besides, this man was making sounds, whereas the Pall was only gestures — and (when it took the effort required to maintain a shape) facial expressions.

“Psst! This way!”
 

Kindred put a hand on Piper’s shoulder. Meyer, in parallel, put a hand on her other shoulder. Piper felt like a tome between matching bookends. Meyer had grown a beard and Kindred was clean shaven, but if not for the facial hair, it would have been impossible to tell them apart.

“Don’t,” Kindred said.
 

And Meyer, in Piper’s other ear, said, “For once, we’re in agreement.”
 

But Piper was thinking of the Pall. It had taken form in her stone room a few minutes ago, not Meyer and Kindred’s. Both Meyers seemed to have a trusting yet suspicious relationship with the Pall, not all that different from the oddly fraternal relationship they had with each other. On one hand, Kindred and Meyer had been the strongest voices for its inclusion in the group, back when they could have abandoned it at the Utah ranch. But on the other hand, it had changed since then, like everyone else. Now Piper seemed to sense it most. Piper who, despite the Pall’s maddeningly neutral behavior, still believed it was around for a reason.
 

Whoever this man was, the Pall had known he was was out here. And it had wanted the group to find him.
 

“Piper!” Meyer hissed.
 

She slipped her shoulders from both of their warning hands. Lila was behind her, Clara at her back. The women were leading while the men stayed in the rear. They were being either bold or foolish; she’d find out which in no time.

“This way,” the man repeated as Piper approached, moving toward the passage opposite the one taken by Astrals. There was a startled gasp from her back, and Lila skittered sideways, away from the body of a fallen Reptar.

The man vanished down the passage. After a moment’s hesitation, Piper raised her flashlight and followed.
 

She almost lost their guide several times in the next sixty seconds, but he kept stopping, giving her time to follow his glow. The group was sticking close, mumbling but saying nothing, apparently having decided that anything that drew an Astral platoon away had earned benefit of the doubt. They’d been trapped; now they weren’t. Maybe this strange man was trouble, but he was leading them into a lateral move at best.

“We’ll wait a moment.” His words were oddly formal, and Piper realized for the first time that he seemed to have a British accent.

“Why?”
 

He waved them back against the wall, stowing his light. Two Reptars passed.
 

“That’s why.”
 

“Who are you?”
 

“My name is Aubrey Davis.”
 

Piper waited, but apparently he was finished.
 

“Why did you come for us?”
 

“It seemed likely that you’d steered into some trouble.”

“But how … ?” She didn’t even know what to ask.
What? Where? When? And why?
But she settled for the topmost question in her mind: “Who told you we were down there? How did you even—”

“My employer and I sometimes use these caves for storage. We considered using the place as sanctuary but discovered its unfortunate shortfall as you seem to have.”
 

“Which is … ?”
 

“That there’s only one entrance.”
 

“We thought a single entrance would make it easier to defend.”
 

“Yes. Well. How would you say that has worked out?”

Aubrey was looking into the hallway, still pinned around the corner. It seemed empty to Piper, but he appeared to be waiting for something.
 

“We heard there was a colony here. A community of humans.” That was sort of a lie. In truth, Cameron had remembered the place and its honeycombed grandeur and thought its location would be a perfect place to establish residence, and for once to be able to flee the endless sun and exposure. Sure, they’d heard rumors of communities, and if others knew of Derinkuyu, it’d make a perfect spot. Especially since the Astrals were far less intent on hunting humans lately. At least everyone but the Dempsey/Bannister clan.

“We saw you go in,” Aubrey told her in his crisp accent, still looking around the corner. “Unfortunately the Astrals watch this quarter as well. Often they let humans come and go, but they went right after you. Any idea why?”
 

Yes, sure,
Piper thought.
We’re carrying a key that we thought would deactivate an alien doomsday advice. But of course, once we realized it was an archive rather than a weapon, the Astrals were no less interested in pursuit. From Little Cottonwood Canyon to Heaven’s Veil to Mount Sinai to cities under Turkey, we’ve stayed interesting as long as we’re still holding the ball.
 

But on the heels of that thought were a dozen others the group had endlessly debated.
 

So why not leave the key behind and let them have it?
 

Why not smash the key so that no one could use it?
 

And since the Astrals seemed truly unable to open the archive without the key even after they’d followed the Heaven’s Veil scream to find it, would it really be that big of a deal to to just let them have it — and unarchive what they seemed to want?
 

Charlie arguing one way.
 

Cameron arguing another.
 

And, still present even after his death, Benjamin Bannister’s ghost seemed to argue yet a different path.
 

“No,” Piper lied. “But our group … we got separated from—”

But now there was sound from behind them again. The Astrals had circled around, and Piper could hear them spilling upward, still in pursuit of their alien plate — the key to unlocking God knew what evidence in advance of humanity’s trial.
 

“Brilliant,” Aubrey muttered, looking back. “I do love an exciting finish.”

“Stop and wait,” said the man with dreadlocks.
 

Cameron looked at Jeanine, their lights extinguished, crouching in the dark. They’d ducked away from the pursuing Astrals, turning back to the lower floor where they’d lost Piper and the others following the strange man’s appearance. He hadn’t seemed surprised to see them. He was wearing the same desert robes reported by Jeanine. But this man was definitely not Mullah.
 

“We have to go back down,” Cameron said.
 

“Down?”
He actually laughed. The man had a broad, dark face and seemed like a Middle-Easterner, but his speech was clipped and precise — far higher English, Cameron thought, than his own. “From where you shot the alien? No, I don’t believe so.”
 

“I didn’t — !”
 

Cameron raised a hand to cut Jeanine off. They didn’t know who this man was, where he’d come from, or what he wanted with them. Giving him clues that might lead to the Pall — possibly still an ace in the hole — seemed like a terrible idea.
 

But the dreadlocked man either didn’t hear her, or didn’t care.
 

“Listen,” he said. “You’re lucky to have got away from there. I wasn’t sure how I was going to extract you and your others without the distraction.”
 

Meaning the gunshot. Jeanine looked up, but again Cameron’s eyes silenced her.
 

“Our others. That’s what I’m talking about. We have to find them.”

“No worries. My friend was in the opposite tunnel. I followed you; he meant to go in after them.”
 

“They could be in trouble.”
 

“You were the ones in trouble, my friend. Still are.” He seemed to perk his ears, listening for alien sounds echoing through the hallways.
 

Cameron flinched. Something cold touched his bare arm. It took him a moment, in the dark, to realize it had been the wet nose of a dog sitting silently by his side. A large black lab that seemed to belong to their new guide. But the dog required no instructions and behaved like a human. Cameron wasn’t sure if the animal was shepherding their group of three or herding it. It seemed calm enough, but Cameron wondered if that would change if he tried something the dreadlocked man didn’t want, like fleeing in pursuit of his friends.

“I have a vehicle outside. It is sufficiently hidden. You were not going to escape on foot, as we saw you come. I am fairly confident that my friend has already ushered the rest of your people from the lower level. Go back now, and you will only increase your chances for peril. I am a competitive man. If my assistant returns with a greater percentage of those he was charged to save, I will be disappointed. So please, stay close. Even one of you getting eaten takes my record down to 50 percent.”