Smoke's Fire

by Rich X Curtis

  Sangil, Jin, and Malonna seemed frozen, locked in postures of surprise. Jin leaning back, Mal’s hands gripping the table’s edge. Sangil’s right hand raised, as if he were waving at something. She watched his hand close into a fist with a twitch. Victory.

  “I talked with him,” she said, flushed and breathless. Her eyes were shining.

  “Of course you did,” Sangil said, leaning back, relaxing. “That was why you were sent there.”

  She glared at him. He nodded to her.

  “Did he send a message?” He asked, his face a mask of innocence.

  She nodded, chest heaving. The gown was lined with her sweat, and clung to her. She watched Sangil notice her. Of course. She ignored him.

  “He did, he said he expects the next messenger to be authorized to negotiate. He said his patience is wearing thin.” She nodded to Sangil. He was three years her senior, and her direct supervisor. Her Guide. His approval of her was important, if she wished to advance.

  “Did you pass our message to him?” he asked her.

  She nodded quickly. She took a deep breath, not wanting to say more. She shook her head at Sangil. Do not say more about this, she willed him. It was dangerous, even having these thoughts. If they were being watched, if she was…she thought of the Boy with the flat white eyes and shuddered.

  There were whispers among the trainees. Rumors. Tarl was back and had completed the Work. Tarl was one of the Select now. Things were going to change for everyone. The Center itself would change. She heard these rumors daily, reinforced by meaningful raised eyebrows and a wavy hand gesture that denoted smoke.

  Just then she felt, more than heard, a shape approach behind her. A woman, bent and aged, glided towards her down the hall. She was old, Murn saw, her face like a weathered tree. Her eyes were hazed over white, bright in the gloom of the darkened hall.

  The woman’s eyes met hers, or at least looked at her. The old woman paused in front of her. “Murnaballa,” she said, a kind smile on her face. “It is good to see you all grown up.”

  At Murn’s puzzled look she laughed. “Of course you wouldn’t remember me. But I raised you until you were two. You and a few others.” The old woman laughed, a cackle that made the skin on her back twitch and roll. “Just a few.”

  “Who are you?” Murn managed. Behind her, Sangil and the others had stood at the approach of a newcomer. The crone brushed past her, waving a hand feebly several times at Murn, as if to fend her off. Murn did not move, did not even think of moving, of opposing this woman, small as she was. She radiated authority. Murn suddenly felt very cold.

  “Sit, please,” the crone said to Sangil and the others. They sat. The woman glanced at Murn. Murn stared back, wide-eyed. “I am Select,” she said. Mal made a noise in his throat, like a moaning, suppressed burp. Murn felt a laugh, unbidden, rising up in her and she clamped down on it, hard. Her skin felt clammy, her gown clinging to her uncomfortably.

  “Yes,” the Select continued, “it’s true. One of them.” The woman’s smile was open and friendly. She nodded at them. “So it goes without saying that when I tell you never to speak of this meeting with anyone, including among yourselves, that you know this is not the mere request of an old woman by the campfire.” She smiled again. “Now, please leave Murn and myself. Leave. Now.”

  The last two words carried a snap in her gentle voice that had not been there previously. Jin moved first, snatching his slate and satchel off the table and sidling past her, wide-eyed. Mal followed, meeting Murn’s eye for a brief instant as he passed her, but saying nothing. Sangil, Murn saw, was lingering under the old woman’s hazy gaze.

  Why? She thought to herself. Why is he behaving this way? No, this is wrong, do something. “Should I leave as well, Grandmother?” Sangil asked the woman, bold as sunlight. She cocked her head at him.

  The old woman did not hesitate. “Sangillinarma,” she said, naming him. An elegant name. “She smiled at him. “Do you know how many Sangillinarmas I have known in my lifetime?”

  He blinked at her. “No, Grandmother. Many?” Murn saw him lick his lips.

  “A great many.” She kept her smile radiating on him. He looked at Murn, gave a little shrug, and gathered up his sack, a cumbersome leather thing. He stood, nodded to the old woman. She watched him with flat, gray eyes. He paused in front of Murn.

  “Join me.” The old woman said to her, not turning. “Come, sit, please.” Murn squeezed his arm and went into the room. “The door, please, Murnaballa.”

  The old woman lowered herself into one of the chairs. She leaned back carefully, with a great sigh. “I have old bones.”

  Murn sat opposite her. The old woman was massaging her knees. She winced, and then looked up at Murn. “Well, what did he say?”

  “He will not come. His patience is almost gone. The next messenger, he demands, must be a delegate, able to negotiate binding agreements. He stressed this word.” Murn related formally, a subordinate reporting the facts. Her heart was racing. She was sure the woman could hear it.

  “Did he say that? What did he say, exactly? Replay that for me, please, in your mind. Tell me, step by step, how your meeting went.”

  So she did, omitting only Smoke’s attempt to get her to speak openly to him, and what she had told him. That alone, she left out. Still, the old woman had her go through it, several times, then backwards in spots. She prompted, “And this was before you entered his hall, correct, and after that you both walked in together?” Or, “And this was after you left, you ran straight here? To tell them?”

  Yes, she said. She had. She was sorry. She was excited, all of the Guides knew of Tarlannan, who had found the Mind, and brought it back. He was a hero of the Work.

  “Did he flirt with you? You are comely,” the Select said, eying her. Murn felt suddenly very exposed in her clinging, sweat streaked gown. The old woman clucked her tongue, and looked at her. “He did, didn’t he? Come now, there are no such secrets from me.”

  Murn stared. “How…?” She looked at the old woman. “Maybe he did, I don’t know,” she stammered. “How could I know?”

  “Don’t be coy, darling.” The old woman sighed. “I was young once, and know these halls as well as you. Perhaps better? I know what youngsters get up to here. It’s one of the functions of this place.”

  Murn glanced up, puzzled. Function? “I don’t think he was flirting with me.”

  The old woman’s mouth twitched into a pensive smirk. “Well, we couldn’t see…he’s got some sort of barrier to us, in that whole area. Like being blind.” She laughed, gesturing with one skinny, twisted hand to her eyes, hazed over and fogged.

  “You don’t seem blind,” Murn said, astonishing herself. “I mean,” she continued hastily, “you seem to be able to walk unguided.”

  The old woman smiled. “I know these halls well, as I said.” She paused, then sighed. “Very well then, you are delegated.” The old woman began to gather herself together, in the way of the aged, to stand.

  Murn was silent. “Grandmother,” she said slowly, watching as the old woman slowly rose, her hands on the table. “What do you mean?”

  “Negotiate with him. Find out what he wants.” The old woman stood before her, bent almost double with the effort and pain of standing. She straightened slightly, hissing almost silently as her back straightened.

  “But he wants a delegate,” Murn said quickly. “Someone who can enter into agreements, binding agreements. He said those words.”

  “Yes,” the Select said. “So make them. There is nothing he can do that cannot, eventually, be undone. Give him what he wants.”

  “You don’t want to know what he wants? What if he wants something…terrible or disruptive…or threatens the Work?” Murn was, again, surprised to hear herself. She just felt surprised by the whole situation, none of this was normal or expected. She had never even seen one of the Select, let alone spoken with one. And to be chosen like this? Her fingers were shaking, wanting to go in all directions at once. She tuck
ed them carefully in her lap and looked up at the strange old woman, if woman she was. Or old. Definitely strange.

  “We know what he wants. Or at least, we think we do. The dreamers have dreamt it. We’ll find out when you come back.” The old woman smiled, and it was a kindly, friendly smile. The smile of an old woman for a young girl who she is very fond of. “Go and speak with him, and if he wants something…disruptive, promise him some of it. Not all at once. Negotiate. You understand?”

  Murn considered it. “I think so,” she said, uncertainly. “I think I do. You want me to drag this out, piece by piece.”

  The old woman nodded, once, twice. “Good idea. You are starting to see. Don’t agree to everything he wants at once. Think of it more like a seduction. See if that works.”

  Seduction? Murn glanced up at the old woman’s sightless eyes, that did not seem sightless at all to her now. “Seduction?” She asked, quietly.

  “You are comely. You fit a type he likes. We know Tarl, now this Smoke.” Her mouth bent in a sour frown as she said his name. “He will want you,” the Select said, gliding past her on too-quiet feet. The woman made no sound as she passed by. “Find out what he wants and report back. We can wait. The Work isn’t over yet.”

  Chapter Four

  She was a man, which she never got used to. A dead man. He was running, pursued by something. She saw through his eyes, saw what he saw. She heard what he heard. She felt what he felt, as if she was in his body. Or had felt, since this man in particular was long dead. It was a recording, Jessica knew, a slice of this man’s life, stored in the Archives for sifting and review by scholars from the Center. She relaxed, settling back into her chaise, the delicate silver band of the Archivists on her brow. She let the man’s senses flow over her.

  The man ran, breath ragged in his lungs. He was probably panicking, Jessica knew. Nobody ran like this without panicking. It was dark, a forest of thin trees. Searchlights behind stabbed through the gloom. Shapes, silhouettes of men, crashing through the brush behind. It was cold, and the man stumbled on the icy forest leaves. They would catch him, she was sure. She didn’t want to watch it. Sorry, Charlie, she thought.

  Jessica’s hand flicked through a gesture, and her perspective skipped ahead. She saw, through his eyes, a room. Gray walls, a rotary telephone on one wall, recognizable to Jessica even though in her time they had been relics. This one’s receiver was strangely curved to her eyes. The phone was ringing.

  A woman came into view. She was medium height. She had black hair, tied back in a ponytail, and wore a gray uniform. She had pale blue eyes, and stared at the man with some interest as she spoke terse, Russian-sounding phrases into the mouthpiece. The sleeve of her uniform jacket was stained with mud and other, darker colors. The man, Jessica realized, was restrained. She could feel him flex against the bonds that held his hands behind his back. The fingers and hands were numb. He had been tied like this for a while, the blood cut off to the hands. He was in pain, acutely. His face was wet and sore, and his mouth tasted like copper. His tongue probed at an empty tooth socket, there was a jagged tooth root at the base of it.

  Another gesture, and the scene froze. Jessica studied the scene in her mind. An interrogation. The summary of this file had said so. The world was one of the many threads the Center Archivists called the Congruence. Or the Knot. It was old. The summary was terse. A Guide is sent to this world, which had middling promise according to the dreamers’ models. Old models, from that time. There was industrial civilization, and what sounded like a nuclear war in the recent past. His insertion is successful, and he attempts to infiltrate a political group of some sort in what sounded to Jessica like a pre-WWI Czarist Russia. Or maybe a religious group, the summary was unclear on the distinction.

  It didn’t matter. This man was dead. The file was thousands of years old, as best as she could guess. The world was Failed, according to the Center. No potential. A low score. They didn’t make it. They usually didn’t, Jessica knew. Most places didn’t. Jessica wasn’t interested in the world, or the man for that matter. The woman, though, the woman on the phone, in the stained uniform…Jessica recognized her. It was Silver.

  She studied her, frozen, through the dead man’s eyes. It was the same Silver she had known, she was sure of it. The same nose, straight and imperious, the same pale eyes, bright against her olive skin. A word rose up out of her past…doppelgänger. A twin, identical to the woman she had known, looked back at her. The woman who had brought her into all this. Silver was the cause. She had caught this man, and questioned him. She was an official of some sort. But Jessica felt there was something beyond that in her eyes, that she could see. Silver might wear a uniform, but it was a suit of clothes to her.

  Jessica flipped her finger, and the scene resumed in her mind. The woman listened, nodded. “Da,” she said. The man’s gaze fell to the ground as he heard this. He knew what she had said. Jessica could gauge his reaction from the way his head and shoulders slumped in resignation. The woman hung up the phone and turned to the man.

  She stepped close, leaned down and gently lifted his face. She spoke, words in the language Jessica didn’t know, but which she assumed was Russian or a near-variant.

  “Translate,” Jessica whispered, and she understood the words, through some of the Center’s technological magic. The Silver-woman was still speaking.

  “You understand what they want me to do, those idiots back in Moscow?” she asked the man. “You heard?”

  “I heard,” Jessica heard the man say, feeling the words come from her mouth. “They want you to shoot me.”

  “They do,” Silver’s twin said. “They don’t believe you. They say you’re a spy.” She peered at him, narrowing her eyes. “You are a spy, aren’t you?” she said.

  Jessica felt him shake his head, heard the woman’s laugh, very much like the laugh she remembered.

  “Oh but you are,” Silver said. “But not like they say. You are a spy, but not, I think, from here. I believe you. You see, I have a secret that those radioactive idiots under Moscow don’t know about.” She looked askance, as if they might hear her, then shrugged minutely.

  The man said something, slurred beyond Jessica’s ability to hear.

  The woman laughed again. “Shoot you?” She reached down, unbuttoned the holster at her hip with one hand. She drew her the gun, a blocky thing with a scarred wooden grip. “With this?” She caught his eye. “They want me to. But I don’t like taking their orders. And they’ll all be dead in a few days anyway. That bunker isn’t that deep, and it sounds like they’re low on rations. Nobody’s coming out of Moscow.”

  The man shifted in his chair, squaring his shoulders. Preparing for death, Jessica thought. Silver wasn’t going to shoot him, she thought, was she? Would Silver do that? Was this woman even like the Silver she’d know, who had told her her long, strange tale. But Silver had been mercurial and strange, she remembered, and had openly admitted to murders and piracy. She was capable.

  She was still speaking. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said. “But I will if I have to.” She leveled the gun, the barrel held at arm’s length, a foot from his eyes. Jessica could see the grooves and lines in the barrel. “I want answers. You’ve held up well, but playtime is over.” Jessica could see her finger on the trigger, her nails were dirty and ragged.

  The scene froze. Jessica was yanked back into the now. She blinked, looking around. Smoke was there, leaning in the arched doorway to her room.

  “That was rude,” Jessica said. “It was just getting good.”

  “An old report,” Smoke noted. “Doing your homework?”

  “Did you scan it with your super brain powers?” Jessica smirked at him.

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I mean, I could scan it. But it’s a hassle, and it wouldn’t go unnoticed. Interesting?”

  Jessica considered not telling him, but he could, as he said, find out. “Silver again,” she said. “This time
in Russia. I think there was a war. She caught the Guide.” Jessica removed the thin silver circlet from her forehead, setting it gently on the table beside her.

  He frowned at this. “From the Tangle? And that old?” He looked at her. “What’s your take on that?”

  “You’re asking me?” she laughed, sitting up higher in her chair. “I don’t understand any of this. I saw Silver last year, so how can she be there more than four thousand years ago? Or can we even trust the dating system here?”

  “‘Time is relative’,” Smoke said, clearly quoting something. “‘Lunchtime doubly so.’“ He smiled at her. “The Congruence is a weird corner of the universe. Time gets folded around in there.” He shrugged. “It’s not surprising.”

  “Not surprising?” Jessica asked. “In what way is this not surprising? I’ve looked at several hundred reports from this Knot. I found Silver in eight of them, Gold in three. Something is connected here.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you are right. I will look into it.”

  “Look into it?” she asked, cocking her head. “What does that mean? I’m stuck here, I can’t leave this, this compound…”…” she struggled to control the frustration in her voice. “I don’t know what we’re doing here.”

  “I told you,” he said. “Learn the history of the Center, I need perspective. I grew up here, remember?”

  “There is no history,” she said. “Or there are a bunch of stories about it, but no narrative I can suss out that makes sense.” She sighed. “It’s all propaganda for you Guides. What they want you to believe.”

  “Can you review the oldest reports? Maybe start there?” he said.

  “I’ve tried. They don’t tell me much. One thing, though,” she held up a finger. “The early ones are from the fringes of the Knot. Or what is now the Knot. Maybe it wasn’t back then? The systems they use to visualize and classify things seems to have changed over time.” She scowled at him. “Why can’t you do this research? You could do it faster than me.”