Shadows and Smoke

by Rich X Curtis

She glanced up at him. "You say that like it's a bad thing, being your woman." She shook her head. "I can't help how I feel."

  "How do you feel?" He asked. This was the crux of the matter, he thought. The Boy had promised him he would...do something. Tarl was unsure, being with Murn, if he had.

  "I feel anxious, Tarl," she said with a sigh. "All the time. You..." She pulled her hand free of his. "You're leading the Seekers. I feel like I'm not able to give you what you want."

  "What I want?" he said, with forced levity. "What do you think I want?" He reached for her hand. "Besides your sweaty little body in my bed, that is."

  She kept her hand out of his reach. "Stop with that," she said. He could see the shadow had returned, darker now than before, her face set with lines he had never noticed before. "When you're here, I want to be with you. I want it bad. Like, so much." She laughed harshly, and he could see tears on her cheek. She wiped them with the hem of her sleeve. "But when you're gone...I'm not the same."

  "What do you mean?" he said. "You miss me?"

  She laughed softly to herself, shaking her head. "I do, but that's not it," she said. "I...feel differently when you're gone. I think I resent it, that you leave and that..." She wiped her eyes again. "That you might not come back. I get angry. I get angry about that."

  "I don't like it either," he said. "It's the Work," he continued, but she waved him to silence.

  "Stop with that. I know you can't help it. It's not you, or the Work. It's something inside me." She looked at him. "I think something is wrong with me."

  "What do you mean?" He said, peering at her. "You feel unwell?"

  She looked at him, holding his eyes with hers. "Sometimes. I don't know." She licked her lips, taking a deep breath. "When you're away, like this past time...I...do things." She bit her upper lips, nodding her head.

  He thought of Sangil, and sighed. "I talked with Sangil, Murn. I know about that." He reached for her. "I don't mind..." He began, but she batted his hands away.

  "Sangil," she scoffed. "It's not just him. It's me...I can't help it. It's all I think about sometimes. I'm like a slave to it," she whispered. "Something is wrong inside me." She looked down, shoulders trembling.

  He frowned at her. "Tell me, I don't understand," he said. "If you need help we can talk with Neera."

  She looked up. "No," she said flatly. "That will not help. You don't understand." She took a ragged breath, wiping her nose. "She can't know."

  "Know what?" he asked, perplexed.

  "At night, it seems worse at night, although during the day I have it too," she said in a rush. "I can control it then, focus on my work. But at night, Tarl, it takes over. I can't get it out of my mind. It's like I'm in a fog." She looked up at him, and he saw her eyes were rimmed with red, and had bags he hadn't noticed until now.

  "Maybe you're just worried," he said. "About me," he hurried, holding up his hand at the storm he saw gathering in her eyes. "Coming back. It's natural."

  "It's not natural, Tarl!" She snapped. "I'm doing things I never...I never would have done before. It's all I can think of."

  "What sorts of things?" he asked. "What are we talking about here?"

  But just then another pair approached their section of the path, and Murn turned away to hide her face from them, waiting until they were alone again. She took his arm then, and fell in step beside him, not facing him as she spoke.

  "I do things, things I can't seem to help. Every night. I can't sleep. I can't sleep until I... Oh Tarl this is hard. Until I'm satisfied. That's what it is. I'm obsessed with it."

  "With..." He trailed off, looking down at her, trying to catch her eyes, but she was stone-faced, not looking at him.

  "Fucking, Tarl," she said flatly. "I'm doing it a lot. Every night. Sometimes during the day."

  "With who?" The words seemed torn out of him, surprised. He saw her wince as he said them.

  "Anyone. Everyone." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter who. It's like a madness...something from the Archives, from one of the decadent worlds we study." She bit her lip. "Last night I was with a pair of Support workers in their barracks," she said in a monotone, squeezing his arm. "And as I left their bed, I wandered into the groves near the farm. I saw a light in the trees and there was a party going on. I didn't get home until it was dawn."

  He was silent. "Murn," he said slowly. "This isn't healthy for you." He put his arm around her.

  "I know," she cried, leaning her head into his shoulder. "I can't help it though. Last night wasn't the first time, either." She sounded uncertain. "I think I've done that before. It's like a dream."

  He felt ice in his belly. The Boy. His bargain. He shuddered as the ice turned to heat, a warmth in his chest that spread like fire. He shook. "It will be all right," he mumbled. "I think it's just stress. It will pass."

  She shook her head. "I'm not sure it will," she said. "I've put in for rotation. I need to get away from this place. For a while at least."

  He stopped, turning her to look at him. "You're going to the Tribes?" he asked. Archivists often went into the Tribes to study and teach, ensuring the Tribes kept to the lifestyles the Center approved for them. "For how long?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I can't be here. This is bad, Tarl." She sighed, holding up her hand while she got her breath. "I've been going to the Farm for weeks, every time you go out. The Farm and the Support teams...it's where I've been going. To them. So the Library doesn't find out. But they will if it keeps up. I can't control it sometimes. Every night I'm wet and hot with it, Tarl. It's strong. I've never felt anything like this before, and I'm scared." She said this all in a rush, voice shaking. "I can't stay here. I'll die." She nodded at him. "I will. I can feel it."

  He hugged her then, there on the path. He thought of the Boy, and his sniggering laugh. He thought of the bargain he'd made, and how he'd spoken of Murn. The Boy had laughed, and snapped his skinny fingers in Tarl's face. Bargain accepted, he had chimed, and skipped out of the common room that night.

  "I think of you when it is happening," she said softly into his chest. "That's what is so bad about it. I can be with men, with women, with a group." She sobbed. "I think of you when I'm doing it."

  “I thought you knew. She rotated out, to the south,” Tarl said to Jin, when he asked about Murn the next morning, when he arrived to breakfast late. “This morning. We won’t see her for months."

  The Guides rotated through the various human settlements. It was traditional that every three months, some groups went elsewhere, and other groups came to the Center, to train and work and learn. To study and teach the Tribes. Some, like Tarl and Jin and Sangil, were classed as Dedicated. This meant they rarely needed to rotate out to tend remote human tribes in the wilderness. Only when their missions were extreme, or troubling were they required to take an extended break from the Work. Tarl had not rotated since he began going out. He hoped it would be good for Murn.

  Murn left that morning with the early morning boat. He had spent the night with her, but she had slept a fitful sleep next to him. She'd coiled into a ball, and babbled to herself. Nonsense, but he listened as he thought of what to do. Once, she had moaned aloud, and thrashed. He rose up on one elbow to look at her, but she'd been asleep, and the dream had passed. He didn't sleep until dawn, and when he woke she was gathering her things to go. She touched his cheek and left.

  That evening he'd agreed to meet Jin and Sangil again, to make up for his aborted celebration the previous day. As he walked, he looked about the Center and thought dark thoughts.

  He reflected on a world he had been to, a year previously. Industrial civilization, very militaristic. The white northerners, from a place called Germania, had ruled most of the planet. They were locked in a cold war with the southerners. He had infiltrated their military under the guise of a low-ranking supply officer in their flying corps.

  Their flying machines were bulbous, ornate affairs, and the pilots of those machines were special, elite members of their military pri
esthood. Especially the war pilots, with their four-winged jets that bristled with guns. The Dedicated were like that, Tarl mused, they were the elite. Men and women who faced death regularly in dangerous and unpredictable situations. How humans were cruel to each other. How casual they were with cruelty.

  He recalled how those flyers had partied after their missions. It was universal, he thought, for elite groups to celebrate their missions, remember their failures, and share stories. It was human. The Boy, though, was he human? Was Grandmother? What was the Center?

  He approached the Fig Tree, spying Sangil and Jin in their usual perch, and then he saw her.

  She was not exactly like the woman from the cave, but she was close. Her eyes were brown. She wore no powdered gold, no necklace of golden teeth plucked from the skulls of the ancient dead. But she was of a similar height, with a similar build. A heart-shaped face, perhaps a touch more rounded, less lined with care. And Jin had spoken the truth, she had the big brown eyes of the south that watched him curiously as they approached.

  He grinned at her, and she smiled slightly and turned back to her party. It turned out, of course, that their party was the one Jin and Sangil had meant. When introduced, Tarl sensed a slight rose blush under the woman’s brown cheeks.

  “I’m Tarl,” he said. “I’m with these two simpletons.” He smiled, hoping for a charming smile and not the grin of an imbecile. He felt like the latter the instant he finished his utterance, but she laughed, eyes twinkling.

  “Lara,” she said, offering her hand. He took it in his. It was warm, the skin of her palm was not soft, but not rough either. Her accent marked her as a southerner as much as her olive tan did. She smiled, showing rows of even white teeth. “You were the one who was out, and just returned?”

  “How did you hear about that?” He asked, in mock surprise. “Did these jesters tell some tale?” Behind him he heard Jin and Sangil pretend to be exasperated.

  “They said,” she spoke loudly enough for the group to hear, “that you were the most talented Seeker in many years at the Center, and have the most missions out to your credit.”

  “And we still haven’t finished the Work,” he said, self-deprecatingly. “All that means is that I’m stupid enough to keep doing this.” He smiled at her, enjoying her little joke. She was feisty, and he liked that in women. He liked aggressive women, he realized. Murn was like that. And others, he realized. His liaisons in the past had been with women who chased him and didn’t require much effort on his part. He enjoyed being courted and liked assertive women who weren’t afraid to flirt a little with a man on their first meeting.

  “Not only has he not finished the Project,” Jin said, calling the Work by its less formal name, “but he hasn’t told us anything about his latest adventure yet. Let’s hear it!”

  There was food and wine and other drinks set out on one platform for them. They gathered around it, with several of the southerners. Tarl sat lotus style next to Lara, who folded her legs underneath herself. Noticeably close to her, he realized. They ate and talked, and occasionally their knees touched, or her hand brushed his as they reached for the same dish.

  He told his tale, leaving out much of the story. He told them of a madwoman, a crazed priestess who wore golden bells in her braids. He told them of the dead god, which sobered them as they considered it. He told them of the dancer spitting gold dust on him, and this lightened things up a bit. Jin told a story of his own then, in this vein, full of ribald deception and strange sexual mores from one of his mission’s worlds. Some of the southerners frowned at this, their district being conservative and staid in such things. The conversation wandered in various directions, and it relieved Tarl that his storytelling duties as the returned Guide were over. Now he could relax and enjoy himself.

  Some time later, after several glasses of wine, and as the party was breaking into smaller knots of three or four, Lara stood. She looked down at Tarl and offered her hand. He took it and arched his eyebrows at her. She smiled and tugged his hand. Come with me.

  So he stood and went with her. They wandered down the platforms to the base of the great fig, then among its head-high roots to the wide lawn around it. There they settled, on the cool grass, and looked up at the night sky.

  “Your story troubled me,” she said. “It must take a toll.”

  He nodded, not speaking. It took a toll. He was not the same man he had been when he began going Out, this he knew. He was different, changed. More…thoughtful. It made sense, how could he not be changed by this? By these places and the people he met there, the things he had seen. Do not trust them. A madwoman in a cave. There was too much to say, to talk about it. It wouldn’t make a difference. The Work was all. The Work, they said, was the Center, and the Center was the Work. Everything else served this purpose.

  He shrugged, putting his arm around her. She folded into him, soft and warm. They lay back in the grass. “I think it changes you,” he said. “I’m different than I was.”

  “They say you’ve done it the most,” she said. “Gone out. Not just your friends, either,” she said. “In the Library they were talking about you, so I asked.”

  “So you’re stalking me?” He asked, smiling at her. Her face was very close to his.

  “Maybe,” she breathed, looking him in the eye briefly, and then dropping her gaze. She lifted her head to his. “Maybe just a little.”

  So he kissed her. It was easier than talking about himself. Or the Work. Or thinking about madwomen with gold dust and oil on their bellies.

  They kissed for a long while, while the sky purpled and then grew dark. Light globes began glowing, marking the footpaths. She nuzzled him in the neck, nipping lightly at his skin with her teeth. “Take me to your bed,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  So they went, but it was bad. She was lovely, with pert, small breasts tipped with dark brown nipples. Her belly was firm, her thighs strong with muscle from long walking. She moaned and writhed as he pleasured her with his tongue, his fingers caressing her. He heard her cries and gasps of pleasure, but then he also heard again the sounds of the woman’s tribe, as they had coupled in the surrounding twilight of their underground chamber. He remembered his straining to hear the woman’s voice in the mingled sounds of a dozen unseen lovers. Had she been like this? He thought of Murn, her pale body writhing in a press of faceless Workers, her blue eyes empty and vacant.

  And at this thought, he went soft, leaving him flustered and embarrassed. Lara tried to rouse him, stroking him, and even using her lips on him before he pulled her away. She kissed him then, gently and full of understanding, which made it worse. He didn’t want to be damaged, he didn’t want her pity. She settled her cheek against his chest and soon slept. He lay awake and hated the woman in the crypt, the Boy, and even Murn. He probed his feelings like his tongue returning to a freshly pulled tooth.

  The next morning he woke to find her gone. They summoned him to his briefing. He tried not to think of Lara or Murn or his failed lovemaking. He studied and trained all that day and the next. He had language lessons for basics. Simple words he could learn in a day. Clothing guidance. Culture similarity review. He didn’t ask how the Center knew these things. They wouldn’t tell him. He had asked once. He just applied himself, trying to soak up as much as he could. Some stray fact might save his life if he learned it. So he learned, studying deep into the night of the second day.

  The third day, the Boy met him in the training room. The Boy looked at him, smirking. Tarl didn't speak. The Boy raised an eyebrow and, with a wave of his skinny hand sent him to Texas.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Texas, USA

  August 1949

  It was hot. It was dusty. The land rolled out in front of him, the hill he was on was one of many which stepped out across this wide land. The heat was like an anvil, dropped on Tarl in an instant. He had gasped at it, staggered and almost fell, before he regained his equilibrium. He had felt this before, but it was always a shock.

  He ha
d arrived wearing the clothes they told him, with earnest sincerity, would be passable. A strange set of loose pantaloons belted around his waist. A set of underclothes, similar enough to garb he had worn at the Center, when he wore anything. Over this, a stiff white tunic, fastened with buttons of a white bone-like material. And on that, a coat of the same black, scratchy material as his pants, cut with wide flaps across his chest. It was loose on him; he felt like a child in it. To top it off, a hat with a short, angled brim.

  Now he sat on the hill, fingering a button in the shirt, looking down into the valley below as dusk gathered around him. He had shed the jacket and rolled up the sleeves of the shirt to cool himself somewhat. The shirt, he had opened down to the waist to keep his core temperature down.

  The valley held a road. On the road vehicles occasionally passed. Some were large, towing wagons of cargo. One had held animals, bovines, he thought. Others, smaller, more rounded, looked to hold a handful of people. Tarl had seen such things before. Cars. Automobiles. He chewed on the words he had learned. Truck, the big ones. He only had a handful of words. This was always the hardest part. Insertion.

  He waited. Below him was the road. And on that road, a structure. A set of buildings, actually. Sometimes vehicles stopped there. There were usually one or two there. It was something. He didn’t want to walk across this wide prairie if he could avoid it. That would tell him nothing. He settled down to wait.

  As the twilight dimmed, yellow lights came on around the structure. A sign came on, held high on a pole. He studied the glyphs again, as he had all afternoon. A branchlike sigil, like three fingers held lengthwise. Two snakes, and a zero. Tarl spat into the dirt, stood and began walking.

  If he arrived out of the dark, that was easier, he expected, to explain to the locals, than if he wandered in from the countryside in broad daylight. It would have to do. As he walked, small life scattered occasionally through the underbrush. Rats, he said to himself, remembering it was a dual-purpose word. Small life, scavengers, and also an insult or expletive.