Smoke's Fire Page 13

  “You think the Center was formed after a war over the dreamers?” Neera pondered this. “But with who?”

  Grandmother was silent for a few moments, thinking. One group of trainees was singing in the Tree, an old song about lovers reuniting after long years apart. At length she sighed. “We know the dreamers are real, and we know the First created them to do the Work, the original work, the work of fostering intelligence. The Center harnessed, somehow, the dreamers in the crust and mantle of this planet. We’ve had an uneasy truce with them ever since. As long as we continued and protected the Work, they seem willing to help us.”

  “Doctrine says they filter worlds that don’t fit their pattern,” Neera said. “Our longevity implies we’re considered viable.”

  Grandmother waved this away. “For now. They are not human, so don’t try to understand them in human terms. They have factions just like us, or, rather, factions with agendas we can’t understand. Inhuman ones.” She clapped her hands together. “But I think you have hit on it. Alpha is not like them, Alpha is like us.”

  Neera nodded. “This is what I think Ghalarothoran was saying. Alpha is not a failure of the Work, Alpha is success. We found her, and because of her something happened to cause the Tangle. Something the First wanted to happen. Or didn’t want to happen.” She looked at Grandmother. “How can we tell?”

  “Something happened. But what?” Grandmother shook her head. “Alpha is like us, or rather, structured like the humans of that place, that thread she came from. The one Tarl spent all those years on.”

  “The one with those women. They were there, too,” Neera said.

  Grandmother snapped her fingers together. “The women. The dreamers there adapted, just as they did here. Here, they gained the Center. They have us. There…” she said, with finality, “in that thread, what they had was them.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The mountain passage took two weeks. Silver had expected them to be through in ten days, but she misjudged both the distance and the speed of Truck, their slowest. It had been many centuries since she’d traveled on foot through China, and had forgotten how big it was. It seemed to go on forever.

  The distant mountains grew steadily closer, and the land began to rise to meet them, the low rolling hills giving way to steeper slopes that stacked upon each other like folds in a blanket. The pass they were aiming for had been well-traveled once, so the going was relatively easy. Even for Truck, who lumbered up the remnants of the old highway which they followed.

  The highway was just crumbled concrete chunks and asphalt debris, long ago eroded away. But the roadbed was more or less intact. Once they had committed to the road, with the land on either side either too steep to climb, or too sloped for Truck to navigate, Silver hailed Carter by radio to bring the Dutchman around to their camp and help her scout ahead.

  He brought the little blue-white blimp in smoothly. They were camped on what must have once been a crossroad, or an intersection. A grassy ridge marked what must have once been an overpass, long ago fallen and overgrown with tall, yellowing grass. She had climbed it to watch his approach. The Dutchman nosed down just yards from her, and she ran forward to take up the tether line. She looped it around the nub of a concrete pillar, pitted and crumbling. It should hold, she thought.

  Carter appeared in the midships hatch. He hopped out with the dog, who scampered towards her, barking.

  She grabbed his muzzle and shook it. “Missed me, did you?” she said, giving his neck a good scratch before he bounded off, hot on the scent of something. She looked up to Carter. “Good landing,” she said. “Nice and smooth.”

  “Any one you walk away from, right?” He shook her hand. It had been four or five days since she’d seen him. He was, on her orders, keeping well clear of Warren’s group, and also scouting their back trail. She wanted to know when Warren’s people were arriving, as they had been joined by several groups already, and more allegedly on their way, riding hard to reach them from all over the Unit’s fiefdoms in China.

  After the war with the Bloom ended, the Unit had come to China. Warren said they’d had transport via a train, but Silver doubted any train had survived until now. Not exposed to the elements for a thousand years. Everything collapsed, eventually. Things fall apart, she thought. They just do.

  But now they were all coming, at Warren’s call. She had, she said, two hundred and thirty-five active members. They’d had close to a thousand, but there had been attrition. Fights, Silver surmised. Turf wars. There had even been a mutiny, and some of them had fled south, to the island nations and Australia. She wrinkled her nose. Warren had left a lot of loose ends, she thought. Too many for comfort.

  So she’d set Carter to watching their trail. To give her warning and keep the blimp away from the Unit. The Dutchman was the only airpower on the planet, and she wanted to keep it in her control. And it was the escape route for her crew if she needed. It could carry a dozen people, and cargo to spare. More than enough for Gold, Li, Smoke, and Carter to escape with. And the dog.

  Truck, however, was a different story. He was going on a one-way trip, she thought, wherever they wound up. But now that they were committed to the road, she wanted to make sure there were no insurmountable barriers ahead of them that the big yellow earthmover couldn’t navigate. She hoped there wouldn’t be, but needed to find out.

  “Let the dog have a run, then I want to get going,” she said to Carter, tossing her bag into the hatch and levering herself up. “You come along, no sense in you staying here.”

  He nodded at her and went looking for the dog. Carter didn’t like being around the soldiers of the Unit, she noticed. It was obvious in his manner when he interacted with him. Warren and her soldiers didn’t like him much either.

  “Where’d you find him?” Warren had pressed her around the fire one night, after a grueling passage up a set of narrow switchbacks. She had a hunk of gristly meat from some kind of deer one of her outriders had brought in. At least, Silver thought it was deer. She wasn’t entirely sure.

  “California,” Silver answered, around a mouthful of sizzling meat. “Down around Fresno, I imagine. Was just walking along, him and that dog.”

  “And you say he was in some sort of prison?” Warren asked, eyes dark in the firelight. “Guarded by drones?”

  She nodded. Carter hadn’t told her much, but it sounded like he’d spent a lot of years penned up on a particular mountain in the Sierra Nevadas. Trapped by drones who kept him penned there, supplied by locals with food for the winters. “That’s what he said,” she said, after relaying the story to Warren. She didn’t think much of it.

  “He looks familiar,” Warren said after a time, staring into the firelight. “I mean, he’d have to shave for me to be sure, but I swear I’ve seen him before.”

  Silver looked at her. “One of yours?” she asked. “One of your mutineers?” she said dubiously. Carter could shoot and was pretty handy otherwise, but he wasn’t military.

  “God no.” Warren laughed. She slapped her thigh. “I’d know those motherfuckers cold.” She shook her head. “But he sets my alarm bells off. He tell you anything else?”

  “He had family in Boston, town on the north coast. Before the Bloom,” Silver said. “He told me he visited there when he escaped.”

  “Walked all that way?” Warren asked, stirring the fire with a stick. Embers flew up, dancing in the heat-roiled air over the fire.

  “He was in some sort of institution in Virginia, I think,” Silver said. Or was she guessing at the state. “Somewhere mid-Atlantic, anyway. He escaped from there, then went north to Canada.” She regretted the turn this conversation was taking. You’re getting lax, you gossiping old woman, she chided herself.

  Warren was silent for a time. “A prison in Virginia? Sounds federal to me.” She leaned back and raised her voice. “Chen! You have any records of federal prisons in Virginia?” She cocked her head.

  “Negative, Commander,” came the reply out of the darkness
where Truck’s bulk loomed. “I do not have any records of our Mr. Carter. No facial matches in my law enforcement files.” A pause. “But my files are far from complete. If he was kept, as you seem to suspect, by the US Federal government, I may not have these records.”

  Warren looked at her. Silver laughed. “He’s just a guy,” she said. “He got caught up in the Bloom in D.C. Some woman gave him a dose of something. Big white pill, he said.”

  Warren slapped her thigh again. “Spook shit,” she said triumphantly. “They gave us big white pills too. Same lot of spooky motherfuckers, I’ll bet.”

  “The ones who went upwell?” Silver pointed with her chin at the sparkling dome of stars overhead. She loved the sky here at night, the stars seemed close enough to touch. She traced the outline of some of her old friends. The Bear. Orion with his belt. The Serpent, twining around the Maiden. She sighed.

  “A lot of them did, for sure,” Warren agreed. “There were plenty of regular launches from Kennedy, we heard about those.” Silver saw her outline shrug in the darkness. “Don’t know who but a lot of them got out. We heard the president did.”

  Silver did not like the turn this conversation was taking. Before she could say anything, another voice joined their conversation. It was Gold, huddled under a blanket, a few feet out of the circle of light cast by their little fire. “The girl, with the blonde hair?” she asked. “The woman King?”

  “Hah,” Warren spat. “Not her, she died in a helicopter crash. And she was President. Her brother. The real-estate one. Like his dad.”

  Gold was silent. “Didn’t you Americans have a revolution to get rid of that sort of shit?” she asked after a pause. “Monarchs?”

  Warren shrugged again, and stretched. “We did, but shit happens. I don’t know. It was a long time ago. A lot of these yahoos”—she gestured out at the campsite spilling down the slope, at the constellation of fires dotting the darkness below them—“will debate that mess for hours with you, if you like. I was a soldier, so I barely paid attention to it.”

  “Still,” Gold said. “A President murdered by an unknown gunman, who escaped?” Gold asked. “And in broad daylight?”

  “Yeah,” Warren agreed. “That sucked, but…” She stood, brushing herself off. “It was a long time ago. Who the fuck cares anymore?”

  Gold was about to reply, Silver knew. The snake has to have the last bite. She spoke a Nahuatl word. “Silence,” she said softly, then, louder, to Warren. “It was a long time ago, all of it. See you in the morning.”

  “In the morning,” Warren said. “Let’s get an early start, if we can.” She stalked off into the darkness.

  After she was out of earshot, Gold said, “You don’t like history? I was enjoying our little chat.” Silver could hear the smile in the dark.

  “I know what you were doing,” Silver replied. “Just keep it to yourself. We have enough trouble, no sense borrowing more.”

  “What,” she said, “you don’t think she knows? She was sniffing pretty close to it.”

  She was, Silver realized. Carter wouldn’t be safe if they knew who he was. If they knew what he’d done. He’d told her, in their long passage from California to China. But she’d not shared it with Warren or even Smoke. She had told Gold, though, that first night. Like an idiot.

  “Keep your mouth shut, okay?” she said, being intentionally cagey. The Spider was strapped to Truck still, but the damn thing could probably hear them. She hoped Gold would pick up on it, or realize how well the thing could hear. Smoke had said it was a law enforcement drone, so she worried about acoustics.

  “I don’t mind assassins. He seems kind of…dorky is the word?” Gold was smiling broadly now, Silver could see her teeth in the dark.

  “Later,” she said in Nahuatl. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  “You sleep,” Gold said. “I’ll watch the fire.”

  “I was looking at the stars,” Silver said. “Trying to remember the Chinese constellations.”

  “I never knew theirs,” Gold said. “But the Americans had a bunch, and I was pretty good at them.” She pointed, her arm a dark line against the darker dark beyond.

  Silver followed her arm. “That was called, the Big Dipper, I think, right?” Gold said.

  “For Romans, the Bear,” Silver said. “The Great Bear. There was a little one too, but I think we’re too south for it.”

  “My people in Guatemala,” Gold said. “They called it the Three Sisters. They were courted by a god who wanted the eldest for his queen.” She sat silent for a while. “I think they quarreled over who would marry him. Something like that.”

  “Thought you didn’t forget things?” Silver chided her, knowing it wasn’t so. Not by a long shot.

  “Faces,” Gold said out of the darkness. “I never forget faces.”

  “I have that, too.” Silver agreed. “I remember so many faces. As many as the stars in the sky, sometimes.” She waved vaguely up at the stars. That many, she thought. Maybe more.

  Gold was quiet for long enough that Silver though she might have gone to sleep, but then she spoke, out of the darkness.

  “This god was supposed to end the world if he didn’t get his blood, his sacrifices,” she said. “But he hasn’t gotten any in a long, long time.”

  “That’s for sure,” Silver said. She remembered Gold’s tales of the great Aztec court at Tenochtitlan, and the huge racks of skulls the priests kept full, in offering to her gods. Her gods, Silver knew. She had, if not named them, fostered them. Nurtured them. Curated them. She pictured her atop a great pyramid, wearing a golden jaguar crown, and green feathered cloak. Gold had said the cloak itched, but she liked to be nude under it. She shed it during the offerings, when the captives were brought, bent back over the great altar, and the black knives flashed down. That image, she remembered. She was sure Gold had not forgotten it.

  “It’s too bad he didn’t end the world,” she said, wistful.

  “Spanish came,” Silver said. “Sort of ended it.”

  “Just another spoke on the wheel,” Gold said testily. “You know what I mean. Burn the damned merry-go-round.”

  “Is that what we’re doing?” Silver asked, eyes still on the sky. “What about your girlfriend?”

  Gold was quiet. “Fuck you, Silver,” she said, after a time.

  “Fuck you too.” Silver smiled, looking up at the stars. There were so, so many of them, endless and forever. She pointed, raising both hands to the sky. “End all this? Why?”

  “Somebody has to,” Gold said. “Who else, but us?”

  Carter, the dog, and she scouted the pass. Luckily, she didn’t see anything that Truck probably couldn’t navigate. Some of the mountain streams had cut the roadbed, but it was mostly still intact. There was rougher ground at the summit of the pass, but she and Carter agreed it was navigable. Truck had big tracks and his arms could scoop and grade a path for him. Kind of what he was made for, she mused. Road building.

  “They’re going to figure out who you are soon enough,” she said to Carter as they headed back to find the Unit. “Some of them may not be happy about it.”

  “Republicans with long grudges?” He grimaced. He knew it was true. “Why couldn’t we find a bunch of thousand-year-old Chinese soldiers who didn’t give a shit about all that.”

  “Shit happens,” she said, echoing Warren. “That was a long time ago, but you never know. Some of these guys don’t like you already, because you sank that boat.”

  “It didn’t sink,” he said. “It was floating when we left it.”

  “It did sink,” Silver snapped. “And that red bastard wanted my scalp for it. Probably still does. They’re going to talk and we want them on our side. So I want you back scouting the backtail when we get back. See if you can find more stragglers. Tell them where we are over the hailer if you find any.” She glanced at him. “Just don’t let them get a look at you and for god’s sake don’t shave.”

  “You really think they’ll recognize me?” Carter as
ked.

  “You shot the president and had a huge trial, remember?” Silver said, adjusting the yoke to counter an updraft. “They’ll remember you.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said vaguely. “I don’t remember the trial much.”

  “They drugged you, bet on it.” Silver looked at him. “You were aimed at him, in my opinion. Political warfare. Somebody wanted him gone and wanted a patsy. You lucked out.”

  “I sure did,” he said, eying the horizon. “Hit the fucking lottery, didn’t I?”

  “Could be worse,” Silver said easily. She glanced at him, noting the tension in his neck and knuckles.

  “Could it?” he said, looking at the rank and march of the mountains to the south, gray and black and white in the distance. “Could it be any worse?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Chen listened and watched. Every day he listened to the wheeze and puff of Truck as he ground his great tracks forward. He listened to the shouts and orders of the horsemen around the camp and estimated their number. Each night he watched the stars overhead and calculated the little army’s position. He listened to Smoke and to Silver and to the woman Gold and her paramour, Li. He heard everything within a hundred-yard radius of his crippled thorax, and what he couldn’t hear clearly he post-processed until it was intelligible. He watched and waited.

  Truck, he diagnosed, had bearing failure on at least three of the wheels of his tracks. His cooling system was increasingly inefficient, probably due to impurities blocking his cooling lines. That the large yellow earthmover had survived this long was, he knew, improbable. But it had also spent long periods idle, preserving its mechanical systems. His prognosis was not good. This journey would be Truck’s last. There would be no way to repair him if he broke down on the road, so they would leave him. This thought pleased Chen. It was petty, he knew, but it pleased him all the same.