9

Amber never doubted for a moment that she would see a big, empty room and that was just what she saw. But she knew what Meoraq was expecting too, and so she knew what was going to happen next. And oh God, it hurt to see it.

“Father,” he said, and with a flicker and a whine, lights all around the room came wearily to life. As they strengthened, the huge monitor on the far wall lost some of its mirror-like shine, but still Meoraq took two steps toward it before he realized what it was. He stopped, blinking rapidly as he stared first at his reflection and then at hers and then at the rest of the room. There really wasn’t much to see. It was nothing but a reception area, reduced by military design to six angled walls, several banks of computer consoles, one horseshoe-shaped desk with a single chair aimed at the door they’d come in through, two other doors, and of course, the enormous display monitor behind the desk in which the yellow light of Meoraq’s lamp still sparked a ghost-like echo.

He took it all in, plainly puzzled but showing no doubt, no real concern. When Amber hesitated a touch on his arm, he gave her an inquiring glance, but shrugged off her silent sympathy and instead marched over to one of the other doors and nudged the lockplate. It blatted at him but didn’t open. “Nuu Sukaga,” he said, and the door behind Amber hissed shut.

“Locks engaged. Timeout to systems restart. Doors will open in ten and ninety. Present mnabed to override.” The lockplates lit up helpfully, but no one had anything to offer any of them.

Meoraq backed away from the door, looking frustrated but not alarmed, not really. He turned around again, all the way in a circle, as if checking to make sure God hadn’t materialized behind him while he was distracted by the door. He ended up facing Amber and the two of them just looked at each other for a while.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“I know.”

“Everyone hears Him!” he insisted, just as if she’d argued. “Everyone! He has to be here! It has to be…some kind of test!” He swung away, holding up his lamp and searching each shadowed, empty corner. “Father?”

The lights pulsed as if in answer and grew that much stronger. The big monitor flickered. Smaller ones evenly spaced around the otherwise featureless walls snapped on, one after the other, showing first a clean black screen and slowly spilling out lines of silent code. Somewhere, speakers thumped on at an ear-splitting level and hummed their way down to something subaudible. “Operational drive activated,” said a lizardish voice. “Systems override. Searching for file. Please wait.”

“There’s no one here,” she said softly.

“He’s here! He has to be here! Maybe…” He turned back, still not panicked, still with that awful bafflement. “Will you pray with me? Maybe we have to pray.”

The big monitor flickered again and pulled up a very obvious load-bar. As it crept toward completion, that cool, androgynous voice came back with, “File recovery in process. Please wait.”

“I’ll pray with you,” said Amber. “Tell me how.”

But he didn’t, not right away. He just looked at her, standing alone in the center of that empty room with the big screen firing up behind him. The lamp in his hand trembled. He looked at her. He did not speak.

Amber gently took the lamp and set it down on the edge of the console nearest to her. He let it go, his eyes fixed to the little flame, but otherwise, he didn’t move, not even when she came back and tried to put her arms around him.

“He didn’t lie to me.”

“Who?”

“Master Tsazr.” Meoraq pulled out of her reach and paced back to the door, pushing at the lockplate twice before going on to the next door. “I saw him. I saw his face! He heard God’s voice! That is truth! It…” His long stride slowed. He looked at her again, lost between one door and the next. “It’s me.”

“No.”

Meoraq’s spines lowered until they were shivering close against his skull, but his back stayed straight and his shoulders squared. His eyes drifted from one computer to another, beginning and ending with the big screen and the nearly-there load-bar. “He doesn’t want to talk to me,” he said, and staggered without ever taking a step.

“Meoraq, don’t. Please, don’t.” She caught his face, made him look at her, but it was a long time before he saw her. “It’s not you, I swear it’s not.” And wildly, because anything was better than this…this awful dead confusion in his eyes, she said, “Maybe it’s me, okay? Maybe women aren’t supposed to come here. You did everything right, Meoraq, you know you did.”

His brows furrowed, the knobby ridges cutting shadows down his lizardish cheeks. “I don’t…know what I did wrong…”

“Recovery complete,” said the voice. The monitor went black and then came to sudden life. It showed a room—this room, she realized. The camera was aimed down at the desk, where a lizardman in a grey and black uniform crouched. He wasn’t sitting, wasn’t standing. There was a chair, but he wasn’t using it. He was just…hunched there, holding onto the desk like it was keeping him on the ground. There was no sound, but lights were going wild all around him in that/this room, making madhouse colors dance across his scales. His mouth was open; his eyes were hell. Slowly, his head turned until he was staring directly at the camera, directly at them.

Meoraq’s hand twitched toward the hilt of his kzung, but he stood his ground. “This is a recording!” he said, and turned in a sudden, curt circle, shouting, “I know the difference! This is just an image! This is not Sheul!”

The picture on the monitor died.

Meoraq glared at it, his mouth flared open, hissing through his teeth. “I am not deceived! I am Uyane Meoraq, a Sword and a true son of—”

The picture came back. The same room. The same man. He was sitting now, his eyes staring and glazed. “I want to say that I didn’t know,” he said, and it was the voice that did it. Recognition like a hammer slammed down into Amber’s brain and she suddenly knew him, knew this room, knew that voice. The kiosk in the ruins; Scott and Nicci and everyone standing around to listen while the man in the recording—this man—told them to come to Matezh, that they had to come together, that there was still hope.

Now that man clapped a hand to his brows and clenched it there, shaking his head over and over before suddenly slapping at the desk. “How can I say that?” he cried. “How can any of us say that? After we spent years in development to make sure we got it as virulent and as violent as the science allowed, how can anyone pretend they didn’t know it would end the world?”

Something in the recording sounded a tone. The man looked around at the wall behind him as one of the green lights turned yellow. “Ghedov is gone,” he said, running out to tap at that computer. “I guess Daophith and Jezaana will be next. Saiakr is still sending me the numbers—that’s Technician Raaq Saiakr at Culvsh—and everything is working just the way we planned. I can’t…” He trailed off, staring at the screens, then shook his head again. “I can’t,” he said simply, and switched the recording off.

Amber looked at Meoraq, but he was still frowning at the screen. His spines were flat, but in spite of his obvious confusion and frustration, his neck was still dark.

The image flickered and came back. The same man at the same computer leaned back in the same chair. He was barefooted and naked to the waist, but was still wearing his uniform pants. Behind him, the wall of lights was entirely yellow.

“It’s all over,” he said. “So I guess I should talk about it. For posterity.” He snorted without much humor and bent out of frame, coming back with a bottle. He drank, then rubbed his brows and put the bottle on the desk next to his computer. “For all the people,” he said dryly, “who are going to see this and want to know what happened. So. What happened is, making war makes money. I wish we had a better reason. I wish we had enemies at least, a war that we were making the stuff for…but it was just something we were making. Just our job.”