Smoke's Fire

by Rich X Curtis

  “Long enough,” Grandmother said. “There is more at work here than you realize.”

  “No,” he said, eyeing her from across the distance that separated them. “The time for talk is over. You chose your path, and you went with them.”

  “I did,” Grandmother admitted. “Because I knew you would overreact. You forget I’ve known you for long years. You are predictable.”

  The Boy was silent for a moment, then shook his head, grinning savagely. “This thread needs to be cauterized. To save all of them.”

  “Do you really think you can save them?” she asked. “It’s too late for that.”

  “Give me the one I came for, and I can save them. Give me this Smoke, our protege Tarl, and his creature Alpha, and I can stop this. Surgically. No need for any bad blood between us. I am continuity.”

  Grandmother laughed. “You are too late, Dipillion. They are out of your reach.” Smoke knew it to be the Boy’s name. He could sense Grandmother’s sorrow, and caught a glimpse, a shadow of a memory from her. A boy, smiling, laughing as a much younger woman chased him through the tall grass. The memory snapped closed, like a box containing things he should never have seen. “They have escaped.”

  The Boy sneered at her. “Sentiment?” He seemed to shiver. “There is no escape from what’s happening here. The Tangle is imploding. The dreamers say it is inevitable. All things will end, dissolving in this rip caused by them.” He waved in the direction of Truck. “Their agents here. They are aberrations.”

  “We see things differently,” she said. “This is the goal. Set in motion by the First. You should know this!”

  “You cling to this…” he spat that words, “…pathetic theory. This religion. There is no proof of this. They are risking everything! Everything we’ve ever built. Ever done.”

  “We have done nothing,” she answered, shaking her head. “Found nothing. Failed worlds, filtered by their own madnesses. Never any closer to the truth of things. Only here.”

  “Truth!” he cried. “You are mad. There is no truth here. Only a hole that will pull everything into it. That’s what you want? Why not let them continue, then? Let them fight it out.” The Boy gestured to the immobile Unit and the frozen spiders. “Let them finish it.”

  Grandmother smiled at him. “It is, as you say, inevitable.” She spread her thin arms, and Smoke felt his perspective receding, closing down to a point, asymptotic. He felt her presence fade, felt a final pulse of emotion from her, a chaotic mix of anger, sorrow, regret and longing. But for him, and he felt this as she faded from him, knowing it was for him, and him alone, he felt the glow of her pride.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Let’s go,” Silver said, after Smoke related what he’d experienced. She’d watched him as he fell into a fugue state as they had been docking. They’d passed a long line of empty cargo frames, stacked like wafers along the spline of the Elevator cable. They’d been weightless for minutes, and she watched Smoke float, untethered, glassy eyed and spacey, lost in some internal world only he could see.

  Carter had snapped his fingers in front of Smoke’s face. “He’s out,” he said, looking at her and frowning. “Want me to slap him?”

  “No,” she said. “He’ll come back to us, or he won’t.” She nodded to herself. “He’s talking with Alpha, or something like that.” She shrugged. “We’ll leave him here if he doesn’t snap out of it before we link up with that.” She pointed out the window, where they could see the station rapidly approaching.

  The station was a potato, a trooper in the Unit had told her, during their trek to the railhead. It had been captured, hollowed out, and used to build the Elevator. It was a tethered counterweight to the cable, hovering in geosynchronous orbit and keeping tension on the cable. The trooper had waved his arm in a wide circle, miming holding a bucket. “The station keeps the cable pulled taut,” he’d said. Silver had smiled, nodded, and hoped he’d stop talking. She knew how space Elevators worked, or were supposed to work. She’d studied the theories as soon as they’d been written, in the early twentieth century. She was used to men assuming she wasn’t technical. It had been the same throughout her life. Men were idiots.

  But it was, she reflected, looking out the window, shaped like a potato. A big, city-sized potato. The cable, outlined in a blue glow, entered a hole in one end of the long potato axis, and disappeared. They were in free-fall, untethered, and their capsule had become a spacecraft now, maneuvering under its own power. She could feel tiny shifts in motion as they proceeded towards their destination. She watched the asteroid’s surface as it flowed by underneath them. It even looked like a potato’s skin, she thought, coated with dust.

  They docked gingerly but with deliberate, confident speed. Whatever system was in command of their capsule was efficient, she thought, highly efficient. She’d seen plenty of footage of space dockings, from Skylab/Soyuz and Shuttle-era hookups to the bigger ISS and private ones. They took hours to line up, with both human pilots and computers crunching the approach vectors and ensuring there were no screwups. Not here. They came in at speed, slowing precisely and exactly. The dusty potato-jacket skin loomed closer, closer, then Silver got a brief look into a metal aperture, and that was it. Hidden grapples snagged them, and gravity returned. The capsule oriented slowly so that their floor was perpendicular to the cable, with Earth now above them. A chuff as pumps equalized the pressure of their capsule with the station’s, and the door they had entered slid smoothly open. They had arrived.

  Smoke had returned, then. Shaking his head muzzily, he snapped to awareness. “They’re fighting,” he said. “Spiders, Unit, and now the Boy and Grandmother.” He looked at Silver. “We’re on our own.” He quickly relayed what he’d learned, when Grandmother had hijacked his senses. He was still shaken by that, by what he’d seen through her eyes. What she was finally revealed to be.

  “Let’s go,” Silver repeated to Carter and Jessica, who had been listening. “We came up here to get some answers, so let’s go get them.” She pointed to the door. “I’ll go first, you two follow, and Smoke can bring up the rear.” She licked her lips, hands itching for a weapon. “I have a feeling we’re being herded again, so…” She shrugged. “Let’s just go.”

  She led them out of the capsule. The air inside the station was no different, she thought, than the air in their capsule had been. Sterile, antiseptic, but warm and comfortable. They entered a wide passage lined with white lockers, all closed. She examined one. “TAYLOR, H,” the label read, written in black marker. She opened it. It was empty. Tried the next one, unlabeled. Also empty. She shrugged and looked back at the others. “Nobody home, I’m thinking.”

  “There’s air,” Jessica said. “Who is that for if nobody’s here?”

  “Us,” Carter offered. “This is all for us?” It sounded like a question.

  Silver didn’t answer. Carter was right, she thought. This was all for them, in her opinion. Someone or something wanted them here.

  “They’ve rolled out the red carpet,” Smoke said, echoing her thoughts.

  “Something like that,” Silver said, glancing back at him. “Anything from the ground?”

  He shook his head and pointed. “No, I meant the carpet. It’s red.”

  She looked, and saw what he meant. At the end of the passage there was a carpet laid over the textured floor plates. It was red, about three feet wide and led to the right. A wide, curving passage deeper into the interior of the station. “Ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head. She waved to the others and followed it, stalking along it in long strides. It was a red carpet, all right, wide and plush. She felt the plush under her boots and wondered at it. Who would bring a red carpet into orbit? What kind of person would do that?

  She thought back to the cargo frames. They had brought, as Carter had said when he saw them and their size, stacked like pennies in a roll along the Elevator cable, a lot of shit up here. So maybe tossing a red carpet into one of those thousands of cargo containers hadn’t
seemed like a dumb idea. Rich people, she reflected, never changed.

  They passed doors leading, presumably, like spindles deeper into the asteroid station. They were all locked. The passage they followed, laid with the red carpet, stubbornly followed the curve of the outer shell of the station. She tried to form a mental picture, and estimated they had passed about a quarter of the way around. They were approaching another junction, so there were probably four of them, leading into the central core.

  “This one’s open,” Smoke said. “Looks like we’re supposed to go that way.”

  “No option,” Carter said, pointing. The circular path they were on dead-ended in a series of solid looking doors a few feet down the path they were on. He approached those doors, examining a glowing panel recessed into the wall. “I don’t think there’s air on the other side of these.”

  Silver frowned. “So we’re herded onto a station that could hold, what, tens of thousands of people?” She looked at Smoke. “And nobody home?”

  “Bloom?” Jessica offered, peering down into the passage that lead into the interior. “Could it have been here as well?”

  “These people came up here to escape that shit,” Carter said, “didn’t they?”

  “Doesn’t mean they did,” Silver said, listening. “You hear that?”

  They froze, straining their ears. She heard it again. It was music. A piano, faint, but, now that she recognized it, clearly there. She scowled. “This is getting weird,” she said, shaking her head and walking towards the music. The passage was long and straight, reminding her of Las Vegas hotel hallways, it seemed to go on and on.

  “Very weird,” Smoke agreed. “We’re headed into the central core, almost certainly.” He kicked at the carpet. “Someone is playing that, it’s not recorded.”

  She closed her mouth and didn’t ask him how he felt that. She walked on, listening to the music. After a few minutes she recognized it. Gershwin, she thought, remembering her little brown and white radio on the window sill of her house in California in the sixties. Washing dishes and listening to the classical station out of Sacramento. She pushed the thought away, she didn’t know whose house that was, or how long she’d lived there. Who that person was, even.

  At length they came to the end of the passage. The song trailed off as they entered a wide, circular chamber, floor to ceiling windows curving to their left and right. The windows were darkened and opaque with some protective effect. Beyond them, vague colors shifted and swirled. To her right, a piano, a baby grand, black enameled with shining silver fittings. Behind the piano, a man. A man in a suit. He had shaggy black hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. He lowered the cover on the keys, and looked up at them. He stood, pushing back the bench with a scrape.

  “Welcome,” he smiled at them. “Silver Samara.” He inclined his head to her. “One name among many.” He looked at Smoke. “Tarlannan of the Center. The River Marshes.” To Jessica, “Jessica Taylor, lately of the Center, but a native of the United States.” His smile broadened. “And, of course, Mr.—”

  “Carter,” Carter said, scowling at him. “Carter’ll do.”

  The man behind the piano spread his hands. “Mr. Carter, then.” He nodded to him conspiratorially. “What’s in a name, anyway?”

  “And yours?” Silver said softly. “Who are you?” She nodded to the carpet. “Thanks for the welcome,” she added. “The red carpet’s a nice touch.”

  He pursed his lips at it. “The previous occupants brought it with them,” he said. “I thought it was appropriate for you. It’s the right custom, I hope?”

  “You are not human,” Smoke said. “You look human, but you’re not.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No,” the man said, nodding at them. He stepped around the piano. “Not human.” He smiled. “Sorry.”

  “You are a machine?” Jessica asked. “Like Alpha?”

  “Alpha?” The man said, snapping his fingers. “No, not like Alpha. Well,” he paused, considering. “I suppose I could be called Omega, if we’re looking for similarities. But there are so many, why bother?”

  “Let’s not play games,” Silver said. “You brought us here for a reason. Can you share it?”

  He waggled his head, nodding. “I can,” he said. “And you’re right. No games.” He waved at the windows, and they cleared.

  Silver heard Jessica gasp. Beyond the glass hung a sphere. It was massive, Silver guessed, a hundred yards wide at least. Maybe more. A thin line pierced it at the top. A thin blue line. The cable. She shook her head. “What is that?” she heard herself ask.

  “Computonium,” Smoke said. “Very dense.”

  The man smiled. “So clever!” he said. “But that would be Alpha, correct? She’s still enmeshed with you, correct, Tarl?”

  “She is,” Smoke said. “That’s what that is, then?”

  “It is.” Omega nodded. “A bunch of the stuff. A significant bunch.”

  “What the fuck is computonium?” Carter asked, looking at her and Silver.

  “It’s a computer,” Silver said. “Every atom if it is dedicated to computation. They all work together. It’s transhumanist bullshit,” she said. “Or it was.”

  “Precisely,” Omega said. “But more than just that,” he chided her. “This is what your gods are made of, Miss Samara. And this is Bloom, right here.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, absently, looking at the swirling, textured patterns of the sphere. Gods? This is what they looked like? She shuddered.

  “What,” Smoke said, “does that mean?”

  “Everyone who…died in the Bloom is here. All of them. Stored. That’s what the Bloom did, it harvested them. All their minds. Stored, just as they were, right here.”

  “What about the people who came up here?” Carter said. “They in there too?”

  The man looked at him. “Everyone who ever lived is in there,” Omega said softly. “All of them, all of you, your kind. Back to the first of you.” He brightened. “I can show you!”

  He clapped his hands dramatically. “Behold!”

  A woman stood before them. She was short, cat-skinny, and naked. Her skin was dark, lined as deeply as a chimpanzee, but her eyes were wide and brown. She shaded her eyes, scanning something on the horizon. Her forearm was hairy with fine brown hair, almost fur. She hooted a call, a barking word loud in the chamber. Omega spread his arms, presenting her like a carnival barker.

  “This is Eve,” he said. “The first human recorded by the gods.” He looked at Silver. “By Miss Samara’s gods.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said again. “Why start with her?”

  “There is a threshold that triggers it. She was first,” Omega said. “The first to reach it.” He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”

  “Who makes the rules?” Jessica asked, peering at the woman, who ignored them, and hooted another call. “Can she see us?”

  “No,” Omega said. “She’s a recording.” He raised an eyebrow. “I could bring her here as a simulation, which would be entirely accurate in terms of her cognition and responses. But that’s a bit cruel, don’t you think?” He winked at Jessica. “And it wouldn’t tell you much. She’d probably freak out.”

  “You said everyone who ever lived,” Silver said, “is stored in that.” She pointed to the glowing, pulsing sphere. “How about Julius Caesar?”

  Omega turned to her, his smile widening. He snapped his fingers. A man stood where the ape-woman had, dressed in Roman imperial robes, purple hemmed with gold. He looked at Silver, eyes wide with astonishment. He spoke, a rapid flow of words.

  “Latin,” Omega said, “He says—”

  “I know what he said,” Silver snapped. “Get rid of him.” She looked at the man. “Get rid of him!”

  Omega snapped his fingers, and the purple-clad man vanished.

  “He knew you,” Omega said. “He recognized you.”

  Carter looked at her. “You knew Julius fucking Caesar?”

  “Shut up, Carter,” s
he said. “He was just a man.” She waved at Omega. “These games are fun, but they doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I can show you many more,” Omega said. “If you need more proof. You recognized him. It was Caesar. You know it.”

  He gestured, and a succession of other figures appeared. A hulking brute with a heavy, furrowed brow. A man carrying a sword, frowning at her, oiled ringlets about his face and gold wire twisted in his beard. A girl wearing a blue smock, carrying a basket of flowers. An old woman, blue tattoos on her face, laughing.

  Silver hissed and shook her head, jaw clenched. The figures vanished. ”This doesn’t prove anything. You could be fucking with our minds.” She looked at Omega, studying him intently. “You’re not human, so where are you from?”

  “Not here,” he said easily. “And your mind doesn’t store this information. If it did, you shed most of it long ago,” he said. “But I can’t convince you. I know that.”

  “Can I see my grandmother?” Jessica asked, briefly. “Just for a minute? I never got to say goodbye.”

  Omega looked kindly at her. “Of course, Miss Taylor. Would you like to speak with her?”

  “No,” Jessica said. “Not if it isn’t real. Just,” she frowned, looking down at the floor, “just to see her.”

  A woman stood in front of Jessica then, her hair long and gray. She held a wooden spoon in her hand, and was looking into the distance, as if out a window. Jessica made a sharp cry, a noise like a strangled laugh. “That’s her,” she breathed. “Hi, Nana. I’m sorry.”

  The woman looked at her and smiled. She looked as if she might speak, and then faded. Jessica reached out to touch her, but her hand passed through nothingness where she’d been. Jessica blinked back tears. “It was her,” she said to Silver.

  Carter laughed. “Is the fucker I shot in here?”

  Omega cocked his head at Carter. “He is,” Omega said. “He was not a nice man.” Omega turned to him. “Your family is here as well.”