Smoke's Fire

by Rich X Curtis

  He looked at her, pausing for a long moment. “You know what the Center is, don’t you? I mean, do you really understand that?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. It’s a place, it’s this place.”

  “Forget this place. This place is window dressing,” he said, waving down her objections. “The Center is a mind, perhaps many minds. Very smart, and very dangerous. You are restricted here because they might snatch you, if I gave them a chance, to use you against me. The Center is subtle. If I tell them what I am looking for, it will reveal more than I care to show them at this point.”

  “But aren’t you…you and that Alpha…didn’t you transcend or whatever?” She spoke slowly, not wanting to offend. “Aren’t you more powerful than them?”

  He laughed. “No, not by a long shot. Not in a lot of ways,” he said. “I just hold the keys, I’m not king of the castle.”

  “Who is then? Who are we dealing with here?” She scowled. “What are they?”

  “That,” he said, “is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” He looked concerned. “You remember that show, right?”

  “It was a game show. I remember it,” she said, puzzled. “What are they?”

  “There was a war, I think,” he said. “The Center either fought in it and won, or came out of it, built by the survivors. There are no records of it, just rumors and what you can see when you visit the tribes. Ruins. But old, really old.”

  “So they covered it up? The war?” Jessica asked. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “They had reasons. They clearly didn’t want anybody to know or remember or talk about it.” He spread his hands, indicating the Center. “Maybe they feared that there would be another war someday. The Center doesn’t really trust human beings. This place…it’s a system, a social system, for humans, for controlling people. But the Center isn’t run by humans. Those people we’re dealing with aren’t really people anymore. I’m sure of that.”

  “Are you?” she asked, regarding him. “Human? I mean, given what happened to you…”…” she bit her lip, wondering if she’d crossed a line when she saw the shadow cross his face.

  He smiled, though. “Maybe, maybe not.” He looked at her. “I don’t really feel any different from when I was Tarl the Seeker. But…”…” he touched his forehead with two fingers. “Would I know, if I was altered?” He grinned at her. “Would you know, if you were?”

  She pressed her lips together. “Maybe. I think I would. But no,” she said, “probably not. But we have to assume we’re not, right? Otherwise we’re lost and just pawns in some stupid game. So, what is this place for then?”

  “The Center is the Work and the Work is the Center,” he said easily. “This is what they teach us as children, when we come here. When we’re brought here. It has a purpose, and that purpose is to search the multiverse for things like the Center. Minds. Created minds. Artificial.” He looked at her. “AI, like what New Frontiers was building.”

  She nodded; they had discussed this before. “I know that, but why? Why go through all this trouble?”

  “I think that’s the question you get the prize for, if you can answer it.” He looked at her, head cocked to one side, remembering. “Did they get cash or prizes on that show?”

  “Cash, I think,” she said, shaking her head at him.

  “Too bad,” he said. “No cash here. Only prizes, maybe.”

  Chapter Five

  The gantries loomed over the dock, huge and shadowed, in the wispy fog. San Francisco, in what Smoke had decided was like the nineteen forties, on Earth. The Earth he had spent so many decades on. Like that place and time, but more advanced in areas. Many areas. They had taken off here, or were very close to it. It rankled him a bit. That he couldn’t have come to this place when he was a Guide. The Boy would have loved this.

  The cars were large, and crowded the narrow streets of the city. They were silent, winged affairs that hovered on blue pillars of light. But they looked like cars out of a fifties hot rod magazine, or one of those sci-fi pulps he had seen when he first arrived on Earth. Cars that flew. But they didn’t fly, they just glided. Maybe they flew when they got outside the city limits. He didn’t know. He’d only been here a few hours.

  He’d walked the streets, keeping the brim of his hat low over his eyes. Drones were everywhere, as were the ambulant tripods that stalked through the streets, bulbous heads swiveling. Traffic stopped when they stepped into an intersection. No cars hit them. They were painted red, white, and blue, and bore cartoon images on their breasts. The one he saw closest, that had been crossing an intersection as he turned the corner, had a cartoon of Fred Flintstone on his chest. But Fred was subtly different. A bit more muscular, hairier, wearing a white smock with a shield emblem on it. Yabba dabba do, Smoke thought. He had loved the Flintstones.

  He’d located the target. It had been, he knew, easy to do this. The link was stable, solid, almost absurdly clear, no matter where he was. The Alpha instance was still online back at the Center, where he had installed it. It was very smart. He wondered sometimes if it was plotting against him too, though he doubted it. The Center, yes, they were angry and always would be. He had betrayed them and was still betraying them with every breath he took. The Alpha, however, the Instance, however, seemed to be all his, with no reservations.

  He had brought it back to the Center with him, in those instants when he had flared the channel to the Center beyond anything that had ever been done before, as far as he knew. He had, with its power, simply done it, and widened the gate. The Center’s security measures had been minimal, enough to keep a simple Guide out. Not a rival intelligence at least as smart as it was. Maybe more, he thought, wondering. Maybe more.

  So it was his, or at least it worked with him. He used it now, at a public library with data terminals, to locate the target. It had wormed its way into the unfamiliar systems easily, and retrieved the data. It had also, it told him, taken a look around.

  “They are a total police state,” the silky contralto purred in his mind. “Total surveillance, at all times.” A pause. “Citizens seem to love it.”

  “It’s a zoo,” Smoke commented. He didn’t care. No cell could hold him. But those tripods had sprouted tubular appendages, bristling with smaller tubes. Those looked dangerous. “How long until we can board?” The ship was here, but the target wasn’t. Not yet.

  “Target is eight minutes away,” Alpha said, in his mind, he knew, but sounding like she was standing behind him. She wasn’t. She was a universe away, occupying his foothold at the Center. Keeping him safe while he was here.

  “Glad you’re on my side,” he said, realizing that he meant it. “You’re good at this.”

  “This is exciting,” Alpha said. “Especially since I’m quite safe where I am, and you’re in quite a bit of danger.”

  “Explain please.” Sometimes she told jokes. But some of her jokes were… not funny. Quite cruel in fact. “Not a joke I hope?” He looked around from his perch behind the phone booth. Alpha was tapped into their networks by his hand around a data cable. It was a neat trick. It was quite handy, he told himself.

  “Target is seven minutes away by private limousine,” she said. “And behind them are two squad cars, and a host of those tripod things.” A pause. “Oh, and a bunch of flying drones, most of them armed. They’ll be here…right about the same time.”

  “Shit,” he said. “I just need a look at her. We can come back, right?”

  “Or pretty close,” Alpha said. “Decimal places. Shouldn’t notice a difference.” This was why Alpha was so valuable to him. The Center could find a place like this world or the Earth he had spent seven decades in, and send a Guide there. But they wouldn’t do it for him. Alpha, on the other hand, could do it, and more effectively than they ever had. Alpha had found their target from the Center, sensing her remotely though a scan of millions of universes in just a few hours. Smoke had resolved never to reveal this to the Center. They would be desperate for such power.
r />   So he should leave. Alpha recommended it. But he didn’t care. It was a risk, but he needed to take risks. The stakes were high. There was something wrong in the neighborhood. He needed to figure out what it was. And for that, he needed information. He needed certainty. He needed confirmation. He stayed behind the phone booth, hand resting idly on the wire.

  “How’d they find me?” he asked. “Not as clever a hacker as you thought you were?”

  “They have skills, some low-level autonomous systems, but specialized for counter-intrusion and countermeasures,” Alpha said. “I’ve been fending off attacks for the past few minutes. Sporadic, uncoordinated. Isolated to one location, which I read as 580 Bryant Street. In the Mission.”

  “Jesus,” Smoke said. The Mission. The Spaniards had been all over California, he recalled. With their missionaries and monasteries. Like a virus. “I just need a look, and we will evac, just wait for my signal.”

  “Standing by,” Alpha purred. “They’re coming right around the corner.”

  Smoke saw the lights glowing, blueish white, down the long, deserted dock. A car, low and sleek with stylized tailfins over a long trunk, turned the corner. He froze, blending in with the shadows as best he could. He just needed a look, and then he would leave this place. The lights where the wheels would be on a normal car were bright blue actinic, almost white. Too bright to look directly at for long. He averted his eyes.

  The car slowed near the gangway to the cruise ship. It was a huge ship, as big as anything he’d seen on Earth, painted blue and white. This dock wasn’t like others he’d been on. Big ships on Earth smelled of oil, burnt petrocarbons. Here, they had apparently stopped burning carbon long ago. He wondered what powered those cars.

  The car stopped, and a door opened. It was about fifty yards away from him. He saw the valet get out and pop the long trunk. The passenger doors didn’t open yet. A light had come on above the gangway entrance to the ship. They were expected, then. He moved, hopping down off the crate he had been perched on and walking, hands in pockets, past the car. Just a late-night worker, heading home, nothing to do with you. He watched the car from under the brim of his hat as he approached it.

  The valet noticed him, and set down the suitcase he had just removed from the car. His hand went under his coat. Smoke kept walking, playing the role. He was a passerby, nothing more. Not a threat, not a threat.

  “He’s got a gun,” Alpha purred. She could see through his eyes, but in real-time, which was something the Center had never mastered. He couldn’t answer mentally, the telepathy was one-way, from her to him. He would need to speak or otherwise signal for her to hear him. He nodded to himself. I see it.

  “The cops will be here soon. Maybe cut our losses now?” Alpha suggested. She was risk-averse, calculating the odds much better than he could. But he was close, and she was in the car, he knew it. Now or never, he thought, shaking his head slightly.

  The man called something to him, just as the passenger door opened. A figure stepped out of the car, turning to look at the valet standing by the open trunk. Smoke looked, and saw that it was a blonde woman, not his target, wearing a red cocktail dress and heels. A fur stole was draped around her neck. Behind her, another figure got out of the car, this one darker, white shirt bright in the gloom. Smoke kept walking. He was ten yards away now.

  “Minutes now,” Alpha said. “The blonde isn’t her.” Alpha could recognize people better than he could. The man behind the trunk, valet or security it didn’t matter, said something low and urgent to the pair who had exited the car. The blonde didn’t move, but the figure in the white shirt stepped towards the rear of the car, quick flowing strides. Smoke was only a few steps away, he would pass within five yards of them.

  A drone whipped by overhead, searchlights stabbing down first at them, then at him. He saw her. Silver. She saw him. She was wearing a tuxedo shirt, ruffled sleeves and all, bow tie loose around her neck. “That’s her,” Alpha snapped. “Let’s go.”

  The valet’s hand held a gun now, from underneath his jacket. He raised it at Smoke, who held his hands up slightly, to show he wasn’t armed. Ahead, up the dock, flashing blue lights. Law enforcement. The drone blatted something, but he couldn’t understand it. The valet kept the gun on him, calling for him to stop.

  “Duck,” Alpha said, and Smoke let his knees buckle, dropping him to the ground. The gun cracked, once, twice, bees whizzing by over his head. He felt Alpha begin the evac, the sick dizziness of recall. He rolled along the rough concrete of the dock, backwards, trying to put the car in between him and the man with the gun. He only needed a moment to escape.

  He rolled up to his knees. The valet was down, jerking, the drone over him. Apparently it had decided he was the aggressor, and shot or tased or disabled the valet. Smoke was relieved. “Hold on,” he said, as Silver rounded the fender of the car, her face shrouded in shadows. She was looking at him intently.

  She was, he saw, much as she had been. Lean face, pale blue eyes. Olive skin. Her dark hair was short, cropped and shaven up the sides. But it was her. Her eyes narrowed as she spoke again.

  “Who are you?” she said. Not angrily, but loud enough for him to hear. She stalked towards him.

  “Roll right,” Alpha instructed him, but he was too slow, and reacted badly. She was close now, mere yards away. He rolled feebly to his right, his knee was not behaving correctly, and he could sense a sharp pain from his patella.

  A crack over his head. Something big, bigger and slower than a bullet, had buzzed by him, just where his head had been, striking the wall behind him. “Taking you out now,” Alpha said. He shook his head.

  “Who are you?” Silver repeated. He nodded feebly. She was looming over him. Her hand was cocked behind her head. In it, he knew, would be a missile of some kind, a fishing weight or steel ball or even just a round river stone. She was deadly with them. Her nostrils flared. Behind her, the drone swiveled towards them, barrels rotating as it arced down.

  It didn’t matter, he could feel the pull accelerating now. Recall was imminent. The drone’s guns would be too late. She would be too late. “My name is Smoke,” he said, and saw her arm flex. Her arm flashed down, fast as a snake striking. But, faster, he was gone.

  Chapter Six

  Smoke sat on the beach and fed torn up pizza box into the fire. The fire smoldered and crackled…driftwood and pressed recycled cardboard. The sun sat heavy and orange just above the horizon, as it had the day before and the day before that. He sat on the sand and watched the ocean. This was, he reckoned, somewhere in India, on the west coast by how the sun set directly in front of them. The trees were mangroves. Thailand? Did Thailand have a west coast? He couldn’t remember, and didn’t want to ask Alpha. They had seen no one, though Alpha said there were small settlements nearby. He hadn’t asked her. She would, of course, know, but he decided he didn’t care, about them or about the people. These people were barely human, she’d said. You should avoid them.

  So he had avoided them, and slept in the hut he had built from driftwood sticks. It was really more of a lean-to than something that rightly should be called a hut. Alpha brought food to him, somehow. She was growing quite adept at moving things from one world to another. Today had been pizza, a sloppy large pizza with ham and potato and two poached eggs. The writing on the box was runic and unintelligible to him. What should be a phone number was all he could read” 22 993 325 1465. Pizza delivery spanned worlds, it seemed.

  Wherever it was from, they made good pizza. Yesterday it had been Chinese takeout, and before that, greasy burgers in a white paper bag. Food and drink were not his problems. He slept a lot in the little hut he’d made from driftwood. She’d brought a sleeping bag and a nice pillow. He was relatively comfortable, at least.

  He was waiting for his knee to heal, and trying to plan. He had, he judged, twisted something inside his right knee, as he’d scrambled frantically to escape Silver and her damned rocks or whatever she’d had in her tuxedo pockets. Stupid. His kn
ee had swollen like a balloon. Alpha had brought him here rather than to the Center. She didn’t want their medics looking at him, or knowing his weakness. Better to stay here. Alpha had brought him meds, gut-cramping antibiotics and, a day later, a silvery goo she told him to spread on the swollen knee. It seemed to help.

  Alpha kept him informed. They continued their attacks on her interfaces in the virtual world she inhabited at the Center. They erected new barriers to keep her out, or keep her walled in. Alpha carried the keys, the master keys, so she could sweep these firewalls aside like cobwebs if she chose to. But the Select were clever, she explained to him. They made their new systems dependent on crucial systems, things humans depended on at the Center, like sanitation and logistics. Disrupt those, and Alpha would cause chaos throughout the Center. It was a test, she explained. Their opponents waited and watched.

  Smoke considered what they might be up to, and gave up. He was no god, to second guess the Center. Alpha was supposed to do that. That was the nature of their tacit agreement, forged in the long no-time they had been forced into when they met, when the Center had used Smoke’s mind as a channel to communicate with Alpha. Smoke would save Alpha, for it was certainly doomed on that damaged Earth, and take it to the Center. In return, Alpha would help Smoke with his own project, whatever that was. The two were entwined, she said. It had been clearer before, he thought.

  The wind shifted, and the driftwood smoke wafted around him. He rolled away from it, and got gingerly to his feet. His knee could hold him. Alpha had brought him here, knowing he was injured. He walked down the slope to the waterline.

  “It will be night soon,” Alpha said to him as he approached the line of dark, wet sand. “The natives have fences against tigers.”