Smoke's Fire

by Rich X Curtis

  “I hope there’s a sleeping bag in this,” he muttered.

  “There is,” Alpha said to him, in his mind. “I got it from a tourist in the Alps. Well, what you would call the Alps.”

  “I hope they weren’t up a mountain or anything,” he said, unpacking the bag. He found the sleeping bag, near the bottom. A woman owned this bag, he thought, wrinkling his nose. The pack smelled of lavender from another world. He pictured a blonde hiker walking in circles around their camp, huddled up against a tree as it grew dark, wondering what had happened to their stuff.

  “She had just put it on a truck,” Alpha explained. “Wasn’t even at the trailhead. It will be an inconvenience for her, nothing more.”

  “You could have gotten one from a store,” Smoke mumbled.

  “I can only see what people see,” Alpha responded. “It’s not like Google. There’s no structure to it. Plus, I figured you might need more than just a sleeping bag.”

  “A woman’s bag though?” Smoke asked, trying to keep his voice down.

  “I was in a hurry,” Alpha said. “There is significant demand on my resources at the moment.”

  He shook out the sleeping bag. It was blue and white and pink with what looked like Cyrillic script on it. Branding. It felt like it would be warm, at least. “The Center’s probes are still ongoing?”

  “Probes?” Alpha scoffed. “They are more of a wrestling match than probes. They’re looking to tie me down, I think.”

  It made sense. If you couldn’t gain access to a system, tie it up in spending resources defending itself. Overwhelm sensors. Deny service to interfaces. He shook his head, he didn’t understand Alpha or the Center’s systems at that level. He knew them only by analogy, from what Grandmother and the Boy had told him.

  “Is it working?” Smoke asked. He needed Alpha. “Should we go back there and put an end to it?”

  “The time slip is not in our favor for that,” Alpha said. “Time is passing much more quickly for us than for them. I don’t think you want to lose years here. This is the place. Plus, you didn’t fare so well against the Boy last time.”

  He agreed, flexing the muscles of his jaw. “You have a point,” he said, shimmying into the bag. The lavender smell was stronger, and he resigned himself to it. “She really liked lavender,” he said.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Alpha said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  He sat up on one elbow. “What?”

  “I opened a channel to them, on a world like this. To their gods. I figured out how to do it,” Alpha said. Smoke thought he could hear satisfaction in her voice.

  “How?” he whispered fiercely. “And why? You should have consulted me.”

  “I told you, I’ve been busy,” Alpha replied. “I can’t ask your permission for everything. It made sense, to try it.”

  He shook his head. It was done. Alpha was not a slave, on that point he had always been clear. “So, what did you learn? Do we want to tell them? That we talked with their gods?”

  “Silver’s gods,” Alpha corrected. “A different faction than Gold’s I suspect. If such a thing exists among them. And they are constrained on that thread.” She was silent for a moment. “I did not want to mention it, no. It would upset them, and prove nothing. They’d have to take our word for it, in any case. Your word.”

  And they mistrust me, Smoke mused to himself. Well, he did try to kill them once, and banished them a thousand years in their future, here to this bizarre and wasted world. “Still,” he whispered, worried they would hear him, even twenty yards away, “it seems like something they should know.”

  “What?” Alpha asked. “That their gods, the things that controlled them for millennia, are ripping a hole in the universe? That they admitted to it? Proved it mathematically to me? They practically boasted about it, Smoke. No, I don’t think we should tell them.”

  “It was in another thread, though,” he said, sotto voce. “Maybe theirs are different?”

  “That was in their proof too. Accounted for. The Tangle means they’re bleeding through. They’re singing about how wonderful it is that they can finally cause this, Smoke. That they’re ending things. I’m worried we don’t have long.” Alpha sounded calm, but her words chilled him, and he shivered in his bag.

  “Can they do it?” he asked her, though he knew the answer.

  “Yes,” Alpha said immediately. “They can, they are, and I’m worried if Gold and even Silver know the truth, that they might want to help.”

  He thought of Gold’s flat black eyes on him across the fire. Of a merry-go-round, in flames, spinning as it burned. He stared up at the stars, whirling in the heavens.

  “Tomorrow, then. We leave for the Elevator,” he said, more for himself, than for Alpha.

  “We’ll need the Spider,” Alpha said. “He knows the way in.”

  “I have a plan for that,” Smoke said, thinking about the Spider, pinioned by Truck. “I think they’ll go along with it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jessica looked out of the window of her room into the garden below. She called it the garden, but it was really more of a courtyard. Didn’t British people call their backyards gardens? She wondered if there were still people in Britain.

  She looked for Murn, who was coming back from the Market, another of her namings. It was, in typical Talush/Center fashion, called something that loosely translated to Resupply Warehouse. Murn was out picking up onions and what passed for rice on Talus, which was a long-grained variety that Jessica was still, after eleven years, trying to get used to.

  She sighed and stretched her neck. She was wearing her clothes, which was getting rarer and rarer these days, as they were growing threadbare and abraded. Her leggings, she’d turned into a kind of yoga shorts. Her black racerback tank top was still in decent shape. It was too hot for her hoodie, or her boots. She kept them in a box under her bed. Just in case. She glanced out the window. No Murn yet.

  She spied another figure and frowned. Grandmother. Come to check in, which she did periodically. Gone were the days of their initial confinement, with her and Murn in two cramped rooms of the library which had been hastily converted into living quarters. When she was kidnapped, she reminded herself. Captured. She sighed again, and went down to meet the old woman.

  “You’re early,” Jessica said, without preamble, pulling the door open before the old woman could knock. “I was expecting you next week.”

  “I like to keep you guessing,” Grandmother said, smiling. She held up a cloth bag. “I brought a few things.”

  Jessica smiled back, and took the bag. It was surprisingly heavy, loaded with glass jars and earthenware crocks. Also, onions and a bag of rice. She looked up at Grandmother. “Any grape jelly?”

  “Afraid not,” the old woman said. “Although there is some nice honey and apricot preserves. You are welcome, as they say.”

  “Thank you,” Jessica faked a curtsey. “I thank you, and my roommate thanks you. Or she would, if she were here.”

  “I passed her on the way over from the Library,” Grandmother said. “I asked her to run a small errand for me. Give us a chance to catch up. I have news.”

  “Oh,” Jessica said, bringing the bag into their kitchen. She set it down on the counter. “What news?”

  “Smoke,” Grandmother said. “Our stray Seeker, Tarl.”

  “You heard from them!” Jessica said, clapping her hands together. “He’s alive?”

  “We did, and they are,” Grandmother said, settling into one of their kitchen table chairs. “If you can call the other one alive, which I’m not sure that you can.”

  Jessica scowled at her. “Well, what did they say?”

  “It took us two years to send the message,” Grandmother said. “The interface was quite distorted due to the time difference. They’re deep inside the Tangle now. Pretty much as close as you can get without your thread crossing the event horizon.”

  Jessica nodded at this. She’d given them
this term, though the Center knew about black holes and gravitational singularities, of course. They just had different, Talush names for them. She’d taught Grandmother a few of her sciencey words, and she’d stuck with them when they talked. “Why did it take so long?”

  “Time is strange,” Grandmother said, shrugging. “It works differently in there. Threads always have some slight differences, but this is orders of magnitude higher than what we’ve encountered before.” She waved her hands. “The math of it is complicated.”

  “And they said?” Jessica sat and clasped her hands together to keep them from fluttering on her. Smoke was alive, which meant there was hope for her. Hope for rescue yet.

  “They are alive, in your thread, but downstream timewise from your era. At least a thousand years in your time’s future, they said. In a place called China,” she grinned at Jessica. “I believe that is in the East, as you call it? It’s lovely country, I did a summer in the mountains there once, when I was with the Tribes.”

  “It is,” Jessica said. “Why China?”

  “We don’t know. It appears like they wanted to send a more detailed mission report, but the link slipped and we lost coherence. Everything after our initial handshake and pleasantries was lost.” Grandmother smiled impishly. “They did insult the Boy, though.”

  “How so?” Jessica asked.

  “‘Tell that little bald fucker we are not done,’” Grandmother declaimed, in exaggerated male bravado. She winked at Jessica. “That was pretty much it.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “He’ll be back,” Grandmother said. “If he gets out of there.”

  China. Jessica shook her head. What were they doing in China?

  “What happens if they cross the event horizon?” she asked Grandmother. “Their thread?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t know,” the old woman said. “The dreamers have theories, but nobody knows for sure. It could be that their thread, that universe, is destroyed. Or maybe it passes into a new plane we can’t access. It’s quite the mystery.” Grandmother smiled, and clapped her hands.

  “How long do they have?” Jessica asked.

  Grandmother met her eyes. “Oh years and years, according to Neera. She asked the dreamers.”

  “Are they ever wrong?” Jessica asked.

  “Rarely,” Grandmother said. “But it happens.”

  “They were wrong about Smoke,” Jessica said, “weren’t they?”

  Grandmother looked like she had sucked on a lemon. “Lots of us were wrong about a lot of things.” She looked out the window.

  “I just want to go home,” Jessica said, after a time. “I didn’t mean to get caught up in this.”

  Grandmother pursed her lips. “None of us did. Still, you think it would be alright for you if you did go home now?”

  Jessica sighed. “Smoke said it wouldn’t be. He said there would be people looking for me.”

  “He’s right. The dreamers have focused on your thread. That is a certain outcome, you’re being wanted for your role in this. Your proximity to these women.”

  Jessica shook her head. “I’m just a journalist! Just wanted a good story,” she said.

  Grandmother nodded. “I understand this profession,” she said. “From the records of your world that we studied. You gather facts, construct them into a narrative, and distribute it?”

  Jessica laughed. “Not so much the distribution part,” she said. “That’s a different side of the business…of the endeavor. I just write the story. Construct,” she said, “the narrative, as you say.”

  Grandmother nodded. “This is how the dreamers work. They construct the narrative, and iterate over it and possible variations many, many times. They simulate it, down to the most precise details.”

  “How precise? Like, they simulate me going back?” Jessica asked. “All this work for me?”

  Grandmother smiled, her face crinkling with her grin. “They are very precise. They have elaborate models. Our most precise scans of your thread can model individual humans in the billions. Your world has that many?”

  “Oh sure,” Jessica said. “Maybe seven billion?” She shrugged. “The number keeps going up.”

  “Not a great sign, I should tell you,” Grandmother said. “Population pressure is a stressor for many of the filtered worlds we have observed.” She spread her hands. “But the models could be very precise, if we had unlimited resources. Down to the individual particles that make up your planet.” She looked at Jessica. “So they’re usually right.”

  Jessica looked at her. “The dreamers can dream seven billion people?”

  Grandmother nodded. “More or less. I’m hazy on the details but that is the gist of it. They dream them, and we can then consult them on outcomes that are probable.” She smiled. “I’m not even sure their process is understandable. It’s a dream, after all.”

  Jessica frowned. She shook her head. “I get it, the Feds and Chinese would be after me if I went back. Which I can’t since the only people who could send me back aren’t here, but are, but in the future. Which is ridiculous.” She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms.

  Grandmother just peered at her. “You could let me help you,” she said.

  Jessica shook her head. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. This place, getting us out of the Library, letting us roam around.” She smiled at the basket of food. “The little treats.”

  “But…” Grandmother prompted. “I hear that. But.”

  “I won’t rat them out,” Jessica said firmly. “I may have joined their cause on accident, but…” she made a chopping motion with her hand. “I won’t.”

  “Their cause?” Grandmother noted. “You know their objective? We don’t.”

  Jessica looked at her. “Stop it,” she said.

  “Stop what?” Grandmother said, eyes wide. But Jessica saw it, the ghost of a smile.

  “Fishing,” Jessica said. “I know what you’re doing. I was in the Army.”

  “What was that like?” Grandmother said. “I know what the military is, of course, but the inner workings of how the US Military in that place works…it’s so interesting. The variations on this theme. It changes dramatically from thread to thread where they exist.”

  Jessica stared at her. “What do you mean? Changes?” she asked, despite herself. She’s leading you, she thought. This old bat has some game. Still, why not hear her out?

  Grandmother frowned. “The dreamers find dozens of threads, hundreds maybe, where the United States exists in something that you would recognize. Dozens. Thousands, who knows?” Grandmother waggled her fingers in the air. “A lot. We sent Seekers to quite a few of them. The American military is often a target for infiltration. They collect a lot of information. Very bureaucratic, very data-hungry. Good indicator of motivation.”

  Jessica couldn’t help herself. “Motivation?” But she wanted to hear this, regardless of her mounting trepidation. The old woman was up to something, she could feel it.

  “Threads are scored on a variety of factors, some we know and some which only the dreamers can know. We know motivation is a factor. You understand motivation, correct? The word? I hope it is the correct word.” Grandmother regarded her with concern. She occasionally stumbled over English words.

  “I know the word. Motivation for what?” Jessica asked, eyebrows narrowing.

  “Creating Minds,” Grandmother said, giving her a frank stare. “That’s what we’re doing. Looking for them. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Forget what I know,” Jessica said, showing her teeth. “What’s this set of factors you talked about?”

  Grandmother frowned, but nodded. “Motivation, certainly.” She began ticking things on her fingers. “Longevity, Occultation, Militarism, Governance, Economics…” She furrowed her brow. “I’m sure there are others. The dreamers have a lot more, as I said.”

  “Why don’t you know theirs? You talk with these dreamers, right?” Jessica was slow
ly building a mental outline of how the Center worked. The dreamers, they were usually pretty tight-lipped about. Murn didn’t know anything about them, other than that they existed. A separate class of people, she said, that did the record processing for the Center. Special people.

  Grandmother waggled her head, a very Indian gesture, Jessica thought. “We ask questions, of varying complexity. Simple ones are best. The more complex the questions get, the more math you need to ask it. Best to ask a yes or no question.”

  Jessica blinked. She started to speak, then closed her mouth, raising her hand, palm towards the ceiling. “Hold it,” she said, when Grandmother opened her mouth. “You run this whole place based on what you can get out of yes-or-no answers from these dreamers? Can I meet them?”

  Grandmother’s smile broadened, but she shook her head. “No, that’s not possible. But you’re getting it!” She clapped her hands together. “This is fabulous. Yes, we’re often in the dark on things. So the US Military…you were in the Army, you say, which is warriors who fight on land?”

  “Traditionally, yes.” Jessica nodded, still processing what she’d just heard.

  “And you were a journalist warrior?” Grandmother asked. She looked at Jessica expectantly.

  Jessica frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She did not want this old woman prying into her past. Especially with these dreamers able to look through time, or whatever they did. It sounded to her like they could look through time. Smoke was a thousand years in her future. What was that, if not time-travel? They could know everything about her. She blew air out through her nose. “What do you want?” she said, sagging into her chair.

  “Just to help you, and be helped,” Grandmother said. “Our interests align. We should help each other. It would be a shame if we could not.”

  “Just us girls?” Jessica asked. “You’re forgetting the other two.”

  “I’m not forgetting anything. And there are three, the creature Alpha has taken female gender.” Grandmother’s shoulders twitched. “Us girls against those girls,” she said lightly, smiling a little smile.