Smoke's Fire

by Rich X Curtis

  The dog padded into the cockpit. Carter looked down at the creature. Dogs were rare in China, apparently. Warren had been surprised to see his. She had asked him questions, probing his origins. He had answered politely but minimally. He didn’t want to talk about the mountain. It was troubling, and she had peered at his face in a way he didn’t like. His beard was full, but he could sense her peeling it off with her eyes, trying to gauge what he looked like without it.

  The Unit was from his time, or nearly. He had committed a crime. He’d shot a criminal, a tyrant. A despot. His father had raised him to revere the Founders of the USA. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, all of them. They had thrown off rule by tyrants, and it had gnawed at him as an adult, when he saw it happening all around him. Tyranny. Cronyism. Pardons and crooked judges. Rule by criminals. Maybe it was always that way, he had told himself. His friends had shrugged. People looked the other way. T’was ever thus, he was told. Maybe he had been a fool to believe in the Republic. In what he’d been raised on. Maybe they all had been.

  But maybe not. Maybe it hadn’t been that way at all. It was confusing, he knew, to go down those tracks in his mind. It confused him, got him all mixed up about what was real and what was, he admitted, fantasy. He had lived inside his head so long he felt he knew its twists and turns. He was not, he knew, the sanest of people.

  He scratched the dog behind the ears. He knew the Unit, at least some of them, would remember him if he told them his real name. If he shaved, he knew they would recognize him. Some of them might be angry at him still. Even though it had been almost a thousand years, even though he had paid—oh yes, he’d paid—his debt to society. Even though the US of A was long, long gone. Nobody alive except the Unit even remembered it. The people who lived in its ruins didn’t even know.

  But they would be angry, so he stayed John Carter, a name he’d plucked out of the clutter of his mind, from a boyhood spent with comics and haunting old bookstores for sci-fi and fantasy novels. From a time before his life got tangled up in madness, in trying to right historic wrongs. Before he was confined, and drugged, or on the run in the wilderness. He shook his head, and twitched the control yoke back into line with the road below.

  Silver didn’t care about his crime. She hadn’t asked about his imprisonment on the mountain much, either. She’d seemed to chalk it up to some autonomous systems at work, that had kept him confined there on that mountain. But he wondered. Those machines, the drones, he felt they had recognized him. He had felt seen by them. Then they had herded him to the mountain.

  Following that line of thought also led to a dark place. Systems that could survive centuries of wrack and ruin? That were somehow interested enough in him to herd him onto a mountain for decades? He had been kept there. They had fed him, and kept him confined. Why?

  Examine the other survivors, he told himself. Truck, a wheezing relic that had spent most of the time in a garage, parked. The Spider, Chen, who had been active with the Unit, but who had spares, according to Warren, for that nightmarish body. The Unit itself, a thousand soldiers augmented, like him, against the Bloom. Smoke and the two women didn’t count. They were from the past, or somewhere else at least.

  The common thread, he realized with a flash, was the Bloom. They were all connected somehow to the event that had taken the lives of almost everyone on the planet. So, he mused, the chances of his imprisonment not being connected as well seemed low. Did it matter? The systems had gone offline, eventually, broken down as things do. Was he alive because of the Bloom?

  He had been dosed. With something that kept him alive. He suspected the woman in the bar, as he’d told Silver. But it could have been anytime. He knew the doctors had given him all sorts of drugs in that hospital-slash-prison they’d kept him in. But he suspected her. She had laughed, eyes twinkling. The laugh of someone beyond consequence, he told himself. Beyond reach. Beyond justice or even history. He shook his head.

  Too much thinking, he told himself. Too much living in the past, but it gnawed on him. Why was he here? Why had the drones kept him there so long? Someone had been behind that, he reasoned. There had been a building, with people, at the foot of the mountain. He had seen it. Had there been communications gear in that burned out building? He wished he’d taken a closer look.

  The Unit and Silver’s crew were heading to the space Elevator. He certainly didn’t remember any space Elevator being built, but he was familiar with the concept. He had been an avid reader of science fiction as a teen, and well into college. Somebody was up there. He knew who had gone up, via Silver from Warren. The ones behind the Bloom. The people in charge. The people who did all this.

  They would, assuming any were still alive, remember him. They would have been able, assuming they had the will, to fly drones. To recognize him. He had been in the high Sierra, somewhere north of Lake Tahoe, which he had been looking for. Silver and Gold had raided a data center near there. The one that started all this mess. Was that why he’d been spotted? Had he stumbled into some kind of salvage operation?

  He shook his head. Impossible to know. The people who had gone up the Elevator, gone upwell, as Smoke called it, weren’t really people anymore. Who was, in this motley crew? Nobody. He reached down and patted the dog. What was human, really? He felt human, but he was at least a thousand years old and didn’t get sick anymore, so that was a decidedly inhuman condition. He wished he’d been able to see Lake Tahoe again.

  He’d visited it once. His sister had lived there, working as a maid in one of the hotels. He’d gone in the summer, and remembered the crystal-clear water. They’d stopped at the visitor’s center at the Donner summit, where the Donner Party had wintered. He remembered seeing the tree-stumps cut off at the level of the snow pack, thirty feet above where he stood, gawping up at them. Those people had suffered, he told himself, more than he had. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he chided himself. You haven’t had to eat anybody.

  Their guide, a Native American man, had told them a story about how the local tribe, the Washoe, had at first tried to help the desperate survivors. But then they’d found the half-eaten corpses, and decided it was better if the white people starved. Was this a mercy? He wondered at it. Better that they die than live with this horror haunting them, he decided. It was probably the right call.

  He looked up through the windscreen at the fading daylight. He scanned the horizon down the road. No sign of Truck, which always stood out. So he would need to set down soon. Silver would get his news in the morning. It didn’t matter. She’d have to wait. He was tired.

  The first stars were twinkling in the twilight when he got the little airship grounded and staked down securely. He gathered wood and let the dog run loose, sniffing around and pissing on things. He had half a rabbit in the icebox, but that was it for food. No breakfast unless he saved some. He always slept in the Dutchman, counting on the dog to wake him if anybody approached. No one ever did. China was a big, mostly empty country. He’d seen very few people anywhere, even the Unit was pitifully small, in what had once been the Earth’s most populated country.

  The Bloom, he thought, sitting on a rock near his little campfire, the Bloom caused this. And the people up there, up among the twinkling stars, they caused the Bloom. He remembered pulling the trigger, and watching the president’s head jerk back, blood splattering on the side of the helicopter. One shot. He hadn’t felt anything that he could recall. Just…empty. Now though, was he still empty? Was it possible to be empty in all this emptiness?

  He thought of his daughter. She had lovely dark, straight hair. She’d cut her bangs right before he’d gotten arrested. Did she get to grow up before all this happened? Had she escaped? Went up the Elevator? She’d loved Star Wars and Star Trek, he remembered. They’d watched those together many times. Maybe she’d gone into science somehow. Maybe she had been in the right place, at the right time. Maybe she was up there. Maybe she’d been treated, like he had, and still lived. He was still alive. Anything was possible, wasn’t i
t?

  He whistled for the dog, who came bounding up out of the darkness. He peeled off a hunk of rabbit and tossed it to him, smiling grimly as he watched the dog wolf it down in two bites. The people who did this were up there, he told himself again, so he would go up there, if he could. Pulling the trigger had been the start of it, but not the end, he told himself, looking up at the twinkling stars. The end of the beginning, maybe. But not the end. Not yet.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Dutchman came back just as they were breaking camp. Silver watched it loop around the bluff they’d occupied. The Unit was mostly assembled now. Almost five hundred mounted troops and twice that on foot, according to Warren. Her officers, the ones from the Unit, numbered almost a hundred, she said. A good-sized force, Silver thought. But she knew there was a long way to go yet.

  She corralled a few troopers to help secure the Dutchman, calling out to them in Chinese. It had come back to her rapidly, though sometimes her phrasing and accent drew strange looks from the troops. But that had been true even during her first sojourn there. China was a big place, and had always had regional accents and idiom. It surprised her when she found herself thinking in Putonghua, it had happened that fast.

  The troops grabbed the guy lines and she yelled at them to stake them down, showing them with pantomime when one of them stared blankly at her. They got the idea, and in short order the blimp was secured. A light breeze blew, and small as Dutchman was, as old as it was, it was still quite buoyant.

  Once secured, she gave a thumbs up to the silvered cockpit windows. The running lights flashed, and there was a short delay as Carter shut things down. The dog leaped out of the little airship as soon as Carter swung the belly door open. He came down the ramp, toting his backpack, and nodded at her when he saw her. She walked over to join him.

  “Found the railhead,” he said, twitching the backpack into place on his shoulders. “Right where Warren said it was.”

  “And?” she said, running her eye down the length of the Dutchman’s bag. It was dusty but seemed sound. “What else?” There had to be something, or he’d have radioed. She looked expectantly at him.

  “People there,” he said, looking askance as Warren and her staff approached. “Buildings still standing. Wooden roofs over blockhouses. Smoke from their chimneys.”

  “Numbers?” she asked quickly, wanting intel before Warren got within earshot.

  He shook his head. “I saw smoke, I turned back. If they saw me…” He shrugged. “Didn’t want to risk the Dutchman. Repairing roofs takes a good-sized crew, though.”

  She nodded. “Roads passable?”

  He nodded. “Should be there in two, maybe three days. Not far.”

  Warren walked up. She was flanked by Lawton and one of her Chinese captains, a dour middle-aged man named Sung. “Welcome back,” she smiled. “You find it?”

  Carter glanced at Silver before answering. Silver nodded, noting the twitch of Warren’s lip at the deference to her.

  “Right where you said it was,” Carter said. “Looks occupied, though.”

  Warren nodded at him. “It is occupied,” she said, peering at him through eyes slitted against the rising sun. She shaded her eyes with a palm, to see them better. “My people are there. Have been forever.”

  Silver laughed. “Got it,” she said. “Got it. I was wondering what you were holding back.”

  Warren smiled at her. “They saw the blimp miles out. Say they could have taken it out.” She looked back at Carter, then to Silver. “Your boy’s not sneaky.”

  “Nobody told me to sneak up on them,” Carter objected. “My job was to scout the place.”

  “Sung,” Warren said over her shoulder. “What is the first job of a reconnaissance scout?”

  “Stealth,” he answered swiftly. “Then measurement, and reporting. This is how we teach them.”

  Warren cocked an eye at her. “This can’t come with us,” she said, nodding up at the airship. “It’s too slow and conspicuous. If my troops could have taken it out, anything that we’re walking into at Star City will be twice as dangerous. At least.”

  “Star City?” He blinked at Warren, mouth opening and closing. He turned to Silver. “Nobody told me to be sneaky.”

  “Not your fault,” she reassured him, waving it away. She smiled at Warren. “You set us up for this little charade, then?”

  Warren spread her hands. “I call ’em like I see ’em. You’re out of your depth.”

  Silver chuckled, looking up to the sky. “I can see,” she said after a moment, “how you might think that.” She looked Warren up and down. “You think I’m soft?”

  Warren didn’t answer. “Your words.” She met Silver’s eyes after a moment. “Not mine.”

  “You’ve held this command together well,” Silver said. “I wonder, though, if I went south and talked with—”

  Warren cut her off. “You can fuck off south right now if you want,” she spat. “Nobody is stopping you.” She leaned in close. “Question me again,” she stage-whispered, loud enough for the others to hear, “and you will be.”

  Silver gauged her. This woman needed her, she knew. Warren and the Unit were out of their depth, not her. But Warren didn’t need to be weakened by a conflict in front of her troops. Silver didn’t, she realized, know how secure her position was with the Unit. Did they resent a thousand years of serving under this woman? Surely there must be some resentment, but she knew the military, and knew how deep respect for command ran. Time to back down.

  She nodded acceptance. “Not challenging you,” she said. “Let’s just make sure that in the future, maybe you tell us what’s up.”

  “You want to be informed, you place yourself under my command,” Warren said easily. “Otherwise, you will find shit out when you find it out.” She turned on her heel, then paused. “Saddle up,” she said. “Oh, and we’ll need the Dutchman to start ferrying some staff up to the railhead. We need them to get things ready for the rest of us.”

  Silver nodded. It made sense. They were exposed. Anybody watching from orbit might deduce their destination, which was bone obvious to her. If there was a functional railway, a hyperloop, as she had suspected there was, then it made sense to hurry. She didn’t want to be sitting and waiting to be shelled from space.

  But why wait? Every night the Unit paused to camp. Truck was surely leaking enough heat and radiation to home in on, if they didn’t have other means. They were being watched. She could feel it, a phantom itch between her shoulder blades. Somebody was watching, waiting. Playing a game with her. She flared her nostrils and nodded to Warren. “We’ll be ready.”

  She turned with Carter back to the Dutchman as Warren and her cadre stalked off. “Go clear out the hold for her troops. They’ll probably want their horses with them.”

  “What the fuck was that about?” he hissed at her. “She didn’t tell me to sneak up on the damn railhead.” He pulled her shoulder as she passed him.

  She slapped his hand away, eying him sharply. “Watch yourself,” she said. “You want to walk back to Fresno?”

  “Fuck you,” he said. “Nobody’s going back to Fresno and you know it.” He waved around them. “We’re going to die here, doing this. I can fucking feel it. Like a cloud is bearing down on us.”

  “Poetic,” she said wearily. “Get the fucking cargo hold ready for their fucking horses, Carter.” She turned away from him, as she saw Gold approaching from Truck’s direction, Li trailing behind. “I’m coming with you. Let me grab my bag.”

  She nodded to Gold. “What’s up?” she asked.

  Gold pursed her lips. “You tell me,” she said. “I saw, from over there.” She pointed with her chin, back the way she’d come. “Thought Warren was going to smack you.”

  Silver winced. “We need her, and she knows it.” She eyed Gold, nodding at Li as she approached. “What she doesn’t know is that she needs us.”

  “What’s her issue?” Gold asked. “She pissed at Carter? Find out what he d
id? Back Stateside?”

  Silver shook her head. That was still a secret, as far as she knew. But she’d told Carter not to shave in any case. “The railhead. It’s active,” she said. “Warren’s had troops there all along.”

  Gold nodded. “Smart lady,” she said. “Maintenance?” They had discussed this several times already. Any train system would need constant maintenance.

  “Yeah,” Silver said. “Going up there now. Might be room, if you want to come.”

  Gold looked her in the eye, and smiled. She reached back and took Li’s hand. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “Keep an eye on things.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, smiling back at her. “I’ll see you up there.” She turned to go, then paused. “Hey, where’s Smoke? You seen him?”

  Gold shrugged. “He’s always mooning about somewhere,” she said. “Why?”

  “If you see him,” Silver said. “Tell him he can ride with us if he likes. There’s room.”

  “I’ll tell him if I see him,” Gold said. “He’s always talking with that insect,” she said. “You know, the one you won’t let me crack open?” She smiled sweetly.

  “We may need that thing. Don’t fuck with it.” Smoke, talking with Chen? She didn’t like that. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. And that thing is listening all the time. I see its ears twitching.” She said this last in their shared language, Nahuatl. “I don’t like that thing.”

  “I don’t either,” she said. “But we may need it for computer shit.”

  Gold spat. Silver knew she hated computers. She always had. Even when NSA had started going digital, in the eighties. She once bragged she had thought about killing Bill Gates, but didn’t think it would stop them. “Let people become slaves to such things,” she’d said. She didn’t care. That had been in the scant days they’d had together. Before they had headed north into the mountains and their encounter with Smoke.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her had. She pointed her chin in the direction of Warren. She eyed Silver. “That’s all that was about? Carter and the railhead?”