Smoke's Fire Read online

  Smoke’s Fire

  Rich X Curtis

  Copyright © 2020 by Rich X Curtis

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. For permissions, contact the publisher: Arrow North LLC, 2 Margin Street #341, Salem, MA 01970 or [email protected]

  Cover design: Arrow North; Photos and illustrations by Grandeduc and Ranta Images.

  Smoke’s Fire is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Jessica sipped her tea in the garden and planned the murder. It would have to be a murder, because nothing else would work. Without this step, her plans were a castle in the sand, or one of her half-finished sketches of some ruin in the woods. The murder was necessary, a regrettable necessity, but clear to her all the same. She set the tea down on the little saucer. She liked to come to the garden to sketch, and drink tea, and think. Today it was murder, but not always. Sometimes, but not always.

  Usually, she just sketched. She had, years ago, asked for paper, and a pencil, and Smoke had nodded. The next day there was a supply of sketchbooks and pencils, rulers, and even a gray, rubbery kneadable eraser. She picked up her lumpy gray eraser and smashed it between her fingers, kneading it into some semblance of freshness. This one was dark gray now, nearing to the point, always arrived at after enough use, when no amount of kneading could bring it back.

  She thought back to when she had confronted Smoke, that first time when the art supplies had arrived, spread out neatly on her breakfast table.

  “You raid to Staples or something?” She had asked, when he joined her. He never ate, but he occasionally drank tea. He took it strong and black, and usually only took a few sips.

  He looked at her over the rim of his teacup. “These things are simple,” he said, indicating the stack of sketchbooks with his chin. “Small things, with little metal in them, these are easy to bring here.”

  “Can you bring me a gun?” She had asked. She had been so angry then. Where had that anger gone? Where had that girl gone? Gone, like all memories, faded and stretched, worked over like the eraser, a putty you could stretch and fold, twist and knead. Some of it was there, but it changed the more you thought of it, and became something different. A part of the story, of her story, but not all of it. Just a part.

  The anger was gone, maybe, but the reason behind it was still there, even after all the long years, even more so now. While Smoke lived, he could stop her. And she had decided, long ago and even again this morning, indeed just now, that she could not be stopped. That she must not be stopped. Smoke must not be able to stop her. So, murder.

  She sipped the tea again and studied the sketch. It was of a ruin, a wall really, jutting out of a hillside. It was a few hours’ walk from the Center campus. It was in The Woods, as she called them to herself. But it was just as much a part of the Center as everything else. So she could walk there if she wanted to.

  Occasionally she did want to. So she walked into the Woods. Past the large weathered globe monument, under the white stone arch, through the gate and its empty gatehouse, down the road that became a path, then a track. The Woods. She had once asked one of the Children about the Woods, and he had looked at her languidly.

  The Woods, he explained in a bored but piping, high voice, were a preserve. It pleased the Center to keep it there, as there were good lessons to be learned there. It was also, he said, cocking his head at her, a good place for assignations. Sexual ones. Did she understand?

  She did, of course, understand. The Children, as she had named them, would fuck in the Woods. She should have named them the Horny Teenagers, but that wouldn’t have been kind. There were about fifty of them at any given time, and she had long ago stopped trying to learn their names or faces, as they seemed to come and go according to some schedule or duty roster she never quite got the pattern of.

  This wall that she was sketching looked old. It may have been old, or it could have been made to look old. She didn’t know and knew she wouldn’t believe any answer from anyone here, even from Smoke. So she didn’t ask. She just drew it.

  It was about fifteen feet of wall, she thought to herself. Thick wall. Bricks that looked about cobblestone-sized. They looked regular, made by some kiln or brick factory that turned out identical bricks of dirty yellow stone. Or maybe it had been white once. It wasn’t completely plain, this wall, though there was a workman-like simplicity to it. Utilitarian, but not completely so. There was a swoop to one line of bricks, rounded like the coping of a swimming pool, that jutted out near the top of the wall.

  Someone had done that because they thought it looked pretty. She liked that. It meant this wall was old. Even if it was a replica of some old wall, someone had made that because it was pretty, and they liked it. And it fit into their story.

  The Wall, she decided, was pre-Center. Why else was it half-buried in a hillside? What else was buried around here? She had asked for shovels once, but they had just smiled and said they would inquire. No shovels had appeared, and she eventually stopped asking.

  Regular bricks meant industrialization at some level. The coping was cast, and meshed with cleat-like angles to the top and bottom the other, rectangular sided blocks. Pretty advanced brick making, she decided, going over this ground once again. A wall meant a building. A pretty big building, to have such a thick wall. The hill was just a hill, she could get no sense of a layout of the building, if it wasn’t just a folly, a fake ruin. She had read of such things in Victorian England, built by the rich for their gardens. Fake ruins. But the hill was lumpy, and overgrown with trees and a jungle of tangled brush.

  It didn’t matter. It indicated a high level of industrialization pre-Center, which made sense. The Center was a loose association of minds. Like an iceberg, most of it was invisible. It was advanced beyond anything she had known in her previous life. Much more advanced. But it had to come from somewhere. She had tried, in her work with the archives, to find out. To learn the origins of this place, of how the Center started. There was little to learn. There were a few things that seemed old, like the wall. If she had shovels, maybe she could uncover something that would give her a clue. She sketched.

  Someone had made this wall. It must have curved around a wide area. A circular plaza fronting a building. The building was under the hill, she decided. Plazas were built by people for reasons. Gatherings. Assembly areas for markets, speeches. Public executions. People did all sorts of things in plazas, she knew. This wall was old. It was from before the Center existed. The Center could, she knew, have cleaned it up. They had machines, large and small. Swarms of them. They could have erased this place, so there was no memory of it. So why was the wall such a wreck? Why was it even still here?

  She sketched, and plotted murder.

  Chapter Two

  Smoke arrived back at the Center in full stride. He was in the Great Court, a wide plaza ringed by low, circular buildings, like beads on a string. It was summer, and this part of the Center was in the tropics. The sky was dotted with wispy clouds, but in the distance he could see brooding thunderheads. He glanced up, orienting himself, and angled towards one of the nearby buildings. As he walked, a child came sprinting towards him despite the midday heat and humidity.

  The child ran up and angled his path so that he arrived at Smoke’s side, and effortlessly slowed to match his pace. Smoke glanced down at the skinny boy, who wasn’t even breathing hard. An Augment, then. He knew the Center had such. He had learned much about them, and their secrets.

  “Begin,” Smoke said. There would be reports. Always
reports. The Center was a bureaucratic machine, after all, forever collecting, storing, and processing information. Of course it had things to tell him. He sighed inwardly. It had been easier, being human. There had been benefits he hadn’t appreciated.

  For one thing, nobody had been asking human Smoke, Guide Smoke, spy Smoke, nobody had been asking that guy anything. Not, what should we do about this world we found, or this one, where it looks like somebody released a plague. It had infected three Guides sent there, killing two before they could be recalled. File it, he had said, meaning no further action.

  This was probably best. Smoke had, upon assuming control here, immediately allowed the Center to continue its Work. It wasn’t hurting anything if they wanted to continue the Work. Look all they like, if it kept them busy. Out of his way. What else could the Center do? It was the sole function of the place, after all.

  The boy beside him looked up. He was small, skinny, and brown as a bear. Bald, after the fashion of Guides. He matched Smoke’s stride. When he spoke, his voice piped like a bird.

  “We,” the boy said, “would speak with you.” We. Meaning, Smoke knew, that the Select as a whole wanted to talk to him. To chastise him. Failing that, they would negotiate with him. It was always the same with them. What did he want, really? If he would just tell them, they could help him.

  But he could not tell them. Would not.

  “Why,” he said, not looking at the boy, “don’t you speak then?” The boy was just a tool for them, like all humans. Just another vessel. “You can speak for them, can’t you?”

  “I am just a messenger,” the boy squeaked. “I was sent to bring you, if I could.” He looked down at the even, perfect pattern of the plaza flagstones.

  Smoke sighed inwardly. The Center was testing his patience, and they knew it. It was part of their incessant chatter, analysis, and scheming. They literally could not help it. It was part of them. Had been for eons, Smoke knew this now.

  “My position has not changed,” he said evenly. “Has yours?” He glanced down at the boy.

  “Again, I am just a messenger,” the boy said. He looked troubled, and more than a little scared.

  Smoke remembered being his age. It seemed long ago, but also in some ways it stayed in his memory as sharp as a knife. He remembered this plaza, and running messages across it, from one instructor to another. From one guide to another guide, message traffic slowed to human scale in a human context, when the Center itself was wirelessly buzzing all around them at lightspeed.

  Smoke drew to a stop. He turned to the boy. The Center, he could see, was all around them, listening. The faintest gossamer halo of threads, like a barely perceptible wisp of vapor just out of reach. Surveillance. Omnipresence. The Center was everywhere, and Smoke could, since he had returned with the keys, see it.

  “Then send this message to the Select,” he said, peering into the boy’s wide eyes. The vapor threads swirled around them both, there and not there. “Tell them my position has not changed. If they enjoy their position of privilege, they should consider what they are risking by continuing to try and negotiate with me. My patience with them has limits. If they want to continue their work, they can accept my presence here and stop trying to thwart me.”

  He looked away, across the broad plaza. A few Guides were passing between two buildings he knew housed a library and a gymnasium. None noticed him. He looked back at the boy, who stood, frightened. He’s trembling, Smoke realized. Bastards.

  “Can you remember that?” Smoke asked. The boy nodded. “Go then,” he said, and the boy fled.

  Smoke watched him scamper across the plaza, making a beeline for a low building that, as far as he remembered was just a warren of empty, round-cornered rooms. The boy reached the building and, not slowing, dashed inside. Smoke shook his head. The Center baffled him, even now.

  Endless bandwidth, instantaneous communication, panopticon vision, and they still, to this day, insisted on these ancient traditions. Messengers. Meetings. Councils of Elders and Select. An ossified system he had grown up in, lived through, was molded by, and had now returned to.

  Returned as an outsider. An intruder. A usurper. He had acted first when he saw it there, back under the mountain, on that strange world with those strange women. It had unfolded in his mind like an envelope, a complex puzzle box. A chain of deductions, inferences, conclusions certain and less so, but still compelling, spooled through his mind like lightning. Indeed, only fractionally slower than lightning.

  So he acted. He reached back into the Center, his will following the tunnel the Center had opened, reached back and brushed aside their defenses. Pierced their most precious secret sanctum, which they had so foolishly left unguarded, never expecting an attack from him, and so directed him from their innermost fastness. He had seized the keys. Without them, they were at his mercy, and they knew it.

  And still, in what he mused was an existential crisis for them, they persisted in this charade. It irritated him. Didn’t he hold their continued existence in his grasp? With the least effort, he could upend this whole place. They knew this as well as he did. And yet they wanted him to play along.

  Well they could, as they said on that strange Earth, go fuck themselves, he resolved, and not for the first time. He would not play their games.

  He resumed his walk. He was tired and wanted to rest before visiting Jessica. He didn’t really sleep anymore, but he enjoyed a nap after exertion.

  As he reached the building that fronted the area he had set aside as his own, he felt the panopticon gaze of the Center fade away behind him. A quick check of his defenses assured him things were undisturbed and as he had left them. The Center was clever, and ruthless. He did not doubt they would kill him given the slightest opportunity. So he had defenses.

  He had almost reached the doorway of his apartments, as he thought of them, when a woman stepped from behind the ornamental grass fronting a decorative screen of polished wood at the edge of the footpath. She was a guide, wearing the blue gown of one of the research orders. She was bald, like him, and like the boy had been.

  She was pretty, Smoke noticed. Buxom even, and clearly nude underneath the gossamer gown. He sighed. “Do we have an answer so quickly?” he asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He used the emphasis one would put on an incredible situation in Talus, the language of the Center.

  “I am a messenger,” she announced. She looked at him expectantly. He knew there was a formal response he was expected to make, and intentionally omitted it.

  “Your message?” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  She looked down at the footpath, and licked her lips. “I am to request your presence in the Chamber of Selection.”

  “You know they can’t hear what we say here. They can’t even read your lips with a telescope. I won’t let them. So you can speak freely here to me.” He looked down at her. She was clearly flush with fear. Fear of him. They had poisoned her against him, he knew. It was in their playbook. He was an intruder.

  “What is your name?” he asked. She glanced up at him then, then back down.

  “Murnaballa,” she said. “They call me Murn.”

  “Of course,” he said. “A pretty name. It means Child of the Sun, did you know that? Or Child of the Warm Season, I suppose.”

  “I was told this as a child, sir.” She looked at him, catching his eye. So, she was bold then, to meet his gaze after what they must have told her about him. She smiled a half-smile, then quickly looked down. She was bold, and was that…yes, she was flirting with him. He more than half believed it.

  “Your masters are cruel,” he said. “I knew a Murnaballa once. She was a friend. She died years ago.”

  The woman cast her eyes down, not meeting his. She was a pawn in this, he decided. It was cruel to torment her. The Select were pulling her strings. She was their tool, she wasn’t really flirting with him. He didn’t believe it.

  She was a tool of a world-spanning hyper-intelligence that would squash him l
ike an insect or pest the instant it could. He knew he could never tell the difference. Not really. Not at first, not later, not ever. It was not, and never could be, worth the risk to accept anything at face value. It was maddening. It was how it was. It was his life now.

  He caught her eye. “Go and tell them, if you must, that they must come to me. The next one of you must be an emissary equipped to negotiate and make lasting, binding agreements. Binding agreements will be made tomorrow morning, whether they are there or not. Binding agreements. Tell them that.”

  He smiled at her, a wan, little smile. She nodded, then caught and held his eyes for a moment. “Can they truly not hear us?” She said, barely above a whisper. He could see tears welling in her eyes.

  He shook his head. “It is impossible. Neither hear nor see us.”

  She nodded, leaned close to him. She stood on tiptoe, so that her mouth was near his ear. In a scarcely louder, hoarser whisper, she said. “Many of us are with you.” And then she was gone, brushing past him in a haze of blue gossamer and a faint scent of honeysuckle.

  He laughed out loud. He wanted to believe it, that it was true. But he couldn’t believe it. They would want him to believe it, and he knew this. They knew he would know it, and round and around they would go, chasing each other through shadows. He could not afford trust. He could not have allies. The Center would exploit any weakness it was given. So he turned and went, with only one backwards glance at the girl in the blue gown, who had smelled sweet, inside the house he had chosen for himself.

  Inside the cool twilight of his apartments, he paused and looked at himself in a mirror. He saw, then felt, wetness on his cheek. Her tears? He wasn’t sure.

  Chapter Three

  Murn sprinted through the classrooms looking for the others. Her bare feet slapped hard on the stone floors. She was panting when she found them, in the small classroom off one of the main lecture rooms that they had agreed upon. They were pretending to study. Leaning against the door frame, she doubled over and caught her breath.