Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (13 page)

“You got me,” Cameron told her.

“I’ll take you.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for looking out for me.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Danika said. “I’m only in here because I’m heating up a burrito.”

“Oh.”

“Are you there?” Danika, like Cameron, knew the limits of what should be said over the air and didn’t specify where
there
was. Terrence had cobbled together secure protocols in the past, but this wasn’t one of them. Most of the time, Terrence ushered them into an existing system, allowing them to piggyback rather than generating something brand new like this one-on-one radio show. But Cameron’s options had always been limited, and both sides knew it.

“I’m on my way,” Cameron told her.

“You’re calling from halfway?”

“I’m on a motorcycle.”

“A motorcycle, huh?” Cameron imagined Danika putting a hand on her slim hip through the pause. “I won’t lie. I’m a little turned on.”

“Is … is the main man there?”

He meant Benjamin, but flinched from using his name. He’d already used his own, and Danika had used hers, but for some reason Cameron thought there was a possibility the Astrals might know a Benjamin who knew too much information, out there in the desert. Piper might have told Meyer, who might have finked. But then of course, Meyer would know and be able to tell the aliens about Cameron, too.

“You mean Benjamin?”

Sigh
. “Yes.”

“He’s outside somewhere. I think he’s trying to look at the … the hole thingy again.”

Danika meant the old money pit, which the ship had used to recharge while hovering above Moab. The same ship, Cameron sometimes thought, that was now over Heaven’s Veil and yet never bothered to float back over for long enough to incinerate the camp of dissenters it had spent so much time floating above. They must have better things to do, or found them unworthy of notice.

“How long for you?” Danika asked. Meaning:
How long until you reach Heaven’s Veil?

“Hard to guess. Unless I run into something, maybe two or three hours.”

“That close?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, when you get there, can you also — ?”

A flash of something caught his eye. Cameron cut her off. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Why?”

Cameron swallowed, looking at the shimmering cluster ahead.

“Because I’ve run into something.”

C
HAPTER
15

The monk, who’d introduced himself by the name Thelonius (said with a smirk, as if it were a joke), led Piper past the group of milling robed figures, toward the large doors of a back room. Chanting hummed from somewhere — a sound Piper now realized had been forming a subtle buzz in the background for the final few blocks of her journey. She had no idea what times of day the Rational Monk choir did their rational chanting, but if done at night, the area’s people must sleep well.

Heads continued to turn toward the dignitary among them as Thelonius dragged Piper through the gathering. They were nearing the choir room, and Piper had a bizarre hope that she wouldn’t be asked to sing. The chanting was in Latin, for one. For another, it would have to be about aliens or rational science. She knew some about the former, less about the latter, and none of it in any dead or foreign tongues.

“Unbar the front doors once we’re through here,” he said to a brown-haired woman, before seeming to reconsider. “Actually, prop them open. I don’t think anyone saw us out there, but I feel a sudden urge to appear open and holy.”

The woman nodded and crossed the shadowed space to stand by the door. Thelonius stopped in front of the large inner doors as Piper remembered her reticence and pulled against him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“We’re friends. Friends of your friend. Of Terrence.”

“How do you know Terrence?”

“It’s not important.” He tugged again, but Piper resisted. Behind the closed back room door, the rich, deep sounds of the choir continued to roll like soothing tides.

“I have no idea who you are, why you’re looking for me, or what you think I — ”

“He sent us a message, Mrs. Dempsey. Terrence. He told us that he sent you our way but was concerned that you either wouldn’t make it or would fail to understand. You’ve seen our pilgrims walking the streets?”

Piper nodded.

“Today they walk and search for you.”

“Why?”

“On that, I’m trusting Terrence.”

Piper looked at the door. This was all too strange. She felt snared in a trap, and took a step back. “Prove it.”

“I don’t have details.”

“Who is Terrence to you?”

Thelonius, who’d seemed so serene outside, now looked urgent, maybe annoyed. He grabbed her again with a glance at the barred front doors.

“
Terrence,”
he said, “is the man we trust enough to believe when he asks us to show the wife of this city’s viceroy
this.”

With Piper’s now-bare arm firmly in his grip, the monk leaned back toward the choir room door and rapped a complicated knock on its surface. A loud metallic clang preceded a swinging door and a sight that was nothing like Piper expected.

She’d heard a choir that sounded fifty monks strong, but there were only three people in the large room. None were singing. They were all working at the strangest computers Piper had ever seen. Each had a touch screen embedded in a large slab of wood, like an ancient console television. The monks were in the same brown robes as the others, but their expressions as they turned, Piper thought, were anything but Zen. There was no serenity or peaceful contemplation. Instead, there was hard light and skeptical intelligence. One was at rolltop desk, holding a plastic device that looked like an enormous syringe with a plunger under his thumb. On the desk, its top open, were dishes, trays, and some sort of electronic fluid-containing device that Piper didn’t recognize.

She watched the choir room doors sigh closed behind them, the reticence shocked from her body. Large metal bolts extruded at the edges — bolts that would extend and seat once the doors were closed, but would be mostly invisible when fully recessed. The door itself was much thicker than it appeared, and the monk closing it now was sliding a compartment closed on the right door’s surface, hiding a high-tech-looking control panel.

Piper stopped resisting, and Thelonius released her. She looked around the room, noticing something else amiss — just one among many.

“Where are the windows?”

“They’re stained glass lightboxes on the outside.” His temper seemed to settle with Piper’s mood.

“The chanting. Where is the chanting coming from?”

“It’s a recording. There are about a dozen speakers in various places, leaking the approximate amount of sound your ear would naturally expect from any given place around the perimeter. Fortunately, that many sources facing out means it doesn’t have to be deafening in here to sound loud enough out there.”

Piper felt her head shaking. She stepped into the room’s center, baffled. The monk scientists returned to their work, apparently less interested in Piper than those outside.

“What is this place?”

“A place of science,” said a voice behind her.

Piper turned. She hadn’t seen the large Hispanic woman when she’d entered, but now she saw an alcove to the right filled with a paperwork nest. There didn’t appear to be a computer. Just paper.

The woman was dressed in a robe similar to the others, but her hood, also down, appeared much fuller, its color a deep maroon. Her insignia was slightly more ornate, edged in golden thread. That struck Piper as strange, too, considering that traditional monks were supposed to eschew flair to celebrate modesty and homogeneity. But then again, these weren’t traditional monks.

The woman held out a hand. “I’m Gloria Reyes, this order’s abbess.”

“Abbess?”

“Spiritual leader of a monastery,” Gloria explained.

Piper looked around, feeling more out of place than at any time in her life. She was wearing a girlish summery dress and half of a draped shawl on her shoulders. Her hair was askew but carefully brushed. She must look immodest amid the monks, city royalty among the poor. Famous among the anonymous. Infamous while the monks, apparently, championed the resistance.

“But you’re not a religion,” said Piper. “It’s a cover for … for whatever I’m seeing.”

“We’re very much a religion,” Gloria said. “Honest religions seek the truth.”

“Then what is all this?”

“The search for truth.”

Piper paced the room, drawing glances from the working monks. Thelonius waited, silent behind her.

“We’re able to convert this room if needed.” Gloria gestured at one of the huge, wood-framed touch screens, which Piper now saw was backed by some sort of even larger wooden base. “These fold down into pews, hiding the screens at their bottoms,” she said, nodding toward a long hinge at the consoles’ bases. “Where Michael is working, the rolltop folds down and there’s a compartment toward the back, hollowed into the wall behind, to stow his equipment. The door keeps curious eyes out. And if we have time, there are freestanding pews in the narthex we can move into this area here.”

Piper looked around. It wasn’t like a spy movie. Maybe the space could be made to look like the choir chamber it sounded like, but it wouldn’t happen at the pull of a lever.

“What if you don’t have enough warning? How did you build this place? Where did you get the big doors with their huge bolts?”

“It’s not relevant,” Gloria said. “What’s relevant is that Terrence sent you to us. The message was limited, but it did suggest that you have something we should see.”

The woman held out her hand, softly smiling.

Piper met the abbess’s brown eyes. Terrence had sent her here, yes. But there was still far too much unknown to surrender herself so easily. She was tired of the dark. She’d lived in it under Meyer during their flight from New York, then under Cameron. Now she was in the dark yet again under a new Meyer, who kept personal secrets as well as the more tangible sort she’d seen then copied from his office terminal. Piper was tired of not knowing. Tired of not deciding. Tired of being another person’s pretty thing to command.

“Did Terrence have this church built?” Piper pretended she didn’t see Gloria’s open hand.

“No, of course not. A faction here had it built. But in a city this size, under duress, it’s never long before curious minds find similar thoughts. Since then, along with us, he’s been communicating with others from here.”

“Who?”

“We should get started, Mrs. Dempsey.” Gloria extended her hand farther.

Piper clasped the drive in her pocket, aware too late that she was drawing an X on her treasure.

“Not yet. First, you tell me who Terrence has been talking to.” Piper figured she knew the answer but wasn’t about to volunteer information these strangers might not yet have.

“Very well. It’s a group in the Utah desert. The principal’s name is Benjamin Bannister.”

“You know Benjamin?”

“Somewhat. But Terrence knows them best.”

Piper’s eyes darted around. She urged herself to relax. What were the odds that these people would bring her in here, show her their treason, speak of both Terrence’s dual allegiance and Benjamin by first and last name … and still be playing Piper into a trap? The Astrals wouldn’t go to these lengths; they’d have killed or detained her outside. Meyer wouldn’t go to such lengths either. His approach to disagreement was simpler and surprisingly effective. He bullied the other party into seeing his way of thinking.

Piper found herself willing to deliver the drive (she’d wanted to reach Benjamin and was now at the source), but Gloria lowered her hand from its beckoning then gestured to a second alcove and a pair of comfortable-looking chairs.

“Please have a seat,” she said. “You seem uneasy.”

“I’m okay.”

“Nonetheless.” She gestured more firmly.

“Really, I’m okay.”

“You have questions.”

“It’s fine,” said Piper, now fearing a conversion sermon. They were scientists, sure, but the abbess had made it clear this was also religion. Piper had grown up religious, giving her mixed feelings today. In Piper’s experience, the pushiest among the faithful saw the unenlightened as filled with questions. Conveniently, the church always had answers.

“Please, have a seat. Time is always short, but it’s important that you’re comfortable.”

“I’m okay,” Piper said for the third time.

The abbess approached, using her superior bulk to herd Piper toward the chairs.

Piper sat. Gloria followed. Scientists continued to work in the background.

“Are you going to tell me why your people carve those stone effigies around the city walls?” Piper asked, unsure what to say.

“The artists among us believe in something they cannot see, and hope to reach it through the journey of spirit.”

“Oh,” Piper said.

“That’s the perfect place to begin,” the abbess said. “We believe this is happening because your husband did the same thing.”