Shadows and Smoke

by Rich X Curtis

  “Door’s locked tight,” she said to him, conversationally. “They went for axes. Or bigger guns. We have a minute, maybe more. You lucid? You faded on me there.” She buckled the leather strap around her waist. “There’s only one of these, I’m afraid. Meant for him, in case he needed to escape. Fire or invaders, he said. He showed me, the last time I was here with him. Kept it under the bed.”

  He nodded. It felt good to lean back against the wall. He was shaking. Her voice faded in and out of his hearing. He was barely conscious, he realized. His vision blurred in waves. “I can hear you,” he said, louder than he intended. He heard the slur in his speech, his face still half-numb.

  He felt a sick realization. This wasn’t just a knock on the head. This was Recall. He was being summoned, pulled out, extracted. The Center was retrieving him. They would have their own questions for him. Ones he couldn’t answer yet.

  She tightened shoulder straps and looked down at him. “You had questions for Schmidt? He was not a nice man, you know. Lots of red in his ledger, if you ask me. Lots of whispers. Bad shit. Both of them, really.” She frowned. “Though Willie here was a looker. Fun in the sack, too.”

  He blinked at her. Then nodded. “Yes, Cybernetics,” he said thickly. “He was in charge of research. Code machines.”

  She cocked her head at him. “Schmidt? His machines? Code-breakers? From the War? They were his grandfather’s baby, really, but he never shut up about those, did he? Why the interest?”

  “How advanced? Are they…awake?” He spoke urgently. He could feel the pull now, the unraveling of his thoughts as the Center focused its distant attentions on him. He knew he didn’t have long here, in this place. They were pulling him out.

  “Who are you?” She laughed. She narrowed her eyes at him. A loud thud banged from the wall behind him. Another. Axes, she had said. She glanced at the door behind him. “They're just machines.”

  “Did he say…” He trailed off. He felt numb, his tongue was thick, and seemed to fill up his mouth. Another hammer blow behind him, followed by another. He heard shouts behind him, but they came to him distantly, as if down a long, receding tunnel. “Anything like that?”

  “He was always talking,” she said. She held a pair of what looked like goggles dangling from one hand. “One day, he claimed, we would teach machines to think, or learn to.” She waved her hand dismissively. “They help run the empire. The camps, their resettlements. Tools of bureaucracy,” she said, frowning. “Tools of the Reich. Lots of that these days. Somebody should do something.”

  She pulled on the goggles. They made her look like an insect, a mantis or malevolent wasp, he thought. “I’m surprised you got this close to him. They’re usually watching everyone. That’s what Hektor’s machines do, really. They watch, and report. Everything and everyone. Getting so you can’t do a damn thing without being seen by the Kommissars.”

  He sucked in a breath. “Not alive then?” The wall against his back shuddered more violently. They had fetched a ram of some kind. He could feel the Center’s presence now, in his mind, buzzing with voices like a million angry bees. They were taking him back.

  She eyed the door cooly. “How could they be alive? They’re machines.” She shook her head at him, caught his eye with hers, pale blue and clear behind the yellow goggles. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he was gone. While she watched, he had vanished, winked out as if he was never there.

  The woman stood frozen, lips parted, looking where the man had been. She raised a hand in protest, then folded her fingers into a fist. She looked at the patch of wall where he had leaned for a long moment, then nodded sharply. “Huh,” she said aloud. The door boomed, bowing slightly as the ram struck home.

  Then she turned on her heel and ran out the balcony doors. Never breaking stride, she leapt out into the empty night.

  Chapter Two

  The River Marshes, Talus

  Previously

  Tarl held the man’s hand and looked across the river into the past. They stood on a little grassy bluff atop a dune. The river roiled and rolled, spiraling and braided with a thousand tiny wakes of flotsam and jetsam. He could feel the rush of its passage on his cheek, they were that close. The man pulled him closer to him, closer to the edge. The man’s legs splayed wide for purchase, and Tarl could feel the tension in him. Tarl looked up at the man, but his eyes were intent on the river and the edge of the steep embankment.

  He edged forward. The man’s hand was warm and dry. Tarl was sweating, as he eyed the rushing river. He forced himself a little taller, as he stepped boldly forward. He was even with the man now, and he looked up at him as he stepped to the edge.

  The man’s eyes were pale, blue shading to silver-white, but they were wide and receptive. The man is watching, Tarl thought to himself. The others were as well. He glanced behind him, at the thin line of men and other boys who were observing from a safe distance. Waiting, he knew, and watching. Watching him. He was last. He resolved to not shame himself and stepped a half step close to the edge.

  The boys all had their turns. They had, each with their man, or their woman, already approached the river, stood for a few moments, and then edged back. He had watched them, knowing his turn was coming. He saw their strides, long at first, then shortening as they approached the turf-lined edge of the river’s channel.

  “Rough water today. This is a good test. We will do it here,” the strange boy had said to the oldest adult in the group who had nodded deferentially, and backed away. He had motioned the other adults to him, and they quickly gathered as if they had had been expecting the signal. The strange boy had peered at the little group of boys, watching them with his wide, white eyes. He had clapped his hands together and sang a little song at them. Tarl didn't know the words.

  Tarl had, with the other boys, stood uncertainly in a small group, clutching their arms around their chests. They were all dressed in the tight black briefs provided when they left their villages. Their bundles were in a pile at their feet. None of them had shoes.

  The strange boy who had spoken and sung wore a short white skirt and had a shaved head. His eyes were clouded and white, but he could see them well enough, Tarl thought. He had felt the strange boy's eyes on him. He was always watching them.

  He had looked at the others, but he had known they would be unfamiliar to him. He didn’t know these boys; he didn’t know any of these people. He was alone. He had screwed his face up and hugged his arms to his bare chest. It was cold this near the river.

  The men had broken rank after a quick conference and rejoined their charges. The man had come up beside him and clapped him on the shoulder with a smile. Tarl had smiled nervously.

  “We watch now,” the man said to him. He gestured, as they led the boys out one by one, with their minders. Led towards the edge of the river. Tarl had watched and seen how close the others had gotten. “We will be last,” the man said.

  “Why?” he blurted. He shocked himself, but it was too late.

  The man’s head jerked around. The pale eyes narrowed. “We will be last,” the man repeated. “Watch now.” He looked like he might say more, as he hesitated slightly, but then he turned away. Tarl set his jaw, and clutched his skinny arms to his chest tighter.

  “Last,” a voice said behind him. He turned to see the strange boy seated atop a nearby boulder. He hadn't heard the boy approach over the rush of the river. The boy grinned at him. There was nothing kind in the smile. He cocked his head, his skin stretching across his face. His eyes, Tarl thought, were white, or nearly white, swirled with gray. “You will be last. Soon,” the boy with the gray-white eyes on the boulder said. “It won’t be long.”

  The man at his side had patted his shoulder and nudged him around. Their turn had come. He had stepped out with the man, leaving their little group, forward to the lip of the chasm. He could feel the river’s roar through his feet, a grinding thunder of brown, white-foamed torrent rushing through the channel.

  Tarl steeled hi
mself. The roar of the river throbbed in his lungs. He looked back at the man and took another half step forward. The man shook his head minutely. “No further,” he said, loud enough for Tarl to hear, but not, perhaps, the assembled crowd. “No further.” He motioned Tarl back.

  Tarl looked at the river. It was full of debris, logs and bushes and tree branches. There had been a storm inland, swelling it into this wild torrent, the wrinkled landscape funneling it here through this narrow chute. A tree rolled by, denuded branches splayed and flailing at the bank upriver from them, then spinning away, spiraling downriver in a rush.

  “Look!” the man shouted above the rush, pointing across the river.

  Tarl looked, eyes straining to see the far bank. It was mud, just a mud embankment. That was all, but then, as he watched, a section of the hillside across the river from him sloughed away. The river rushed through, roiling into suddenly revealed caverns in the hillside. But not before Tarl could see them, straight and regular. Dark caverns, but square, with floors, and with walls. There had been a flash of white, of a white wall, he thought, before the river had swallowed it.

  The man motioned him back. He went with him, back to the group, glad to leave the river’s edge behind him. He could feel it there, behind him like a malevolent force. He felt it crawling through the canyon towards him. He felt it in his spine.

  The others were gathering their burdens, packs, and walking sticks. Tarl went to find his, but came up short at a jerk on his shoulder. The strange boy, the boy with white eyes, had yanked on his shoulder. He squared himself up for a fight.

  He was no stranger to fights, having scrapped with the boys of his band and other nearby groups. He balled his fists, a snarl forming on his lips. The man stepped quickly between them.

  “What did you see, Cousin?” the boy asked, cocking his head as he had from atop the boulder.

  “I saw a river,” he said. “There’s a lot of water over there. Go and look.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “A river! Yes!” He laughed. A barking, mocking laugh. He waved the man aside. “Good, good.” He smiled. “Aside from the river, what did you see?”

  “I saw a hillside fall into the river,” he said, “and I saw a tree.”

  “A hill fell into the river,” the boy repeated. “And there was a tree.” Tarl glanced up at the man, whose face was impassive. The boy’s eyebrows raised. “Anything else?”

  “The hill had a tunnel, or a cavern. It was long and had many rooms.” He paused. “The river rushed in, so I didn’t get a good look.”

  “More than these fellows did though,” the boy said. Again he glanced at the man. Something passed between them.

  “What did this say to you?” the man asked him. The strange white-eyed boy listened.

  He glanced at both of them before answering. He licked his lips. “The hill is a building. Buried underneath the hill, I mean.”

  The boy nodded. “Just that hill?” He looked around them. There were hills everywhere in this rolling, wrinkled land. Across the river were larger hills, a central pile crested with trees.

  He shook his head. “Probably all these hills have buildings underneath them.”

  The boy clapped his hands. “Good! And what does that tell you?” He leaned in expectantly.

  “That many people lived here,” he said. “If people made them.”

  The boy nodded. “People did make them. But this land goes on for days and days of marching. You have seen it.” His white eyes were wide as he spoke. “If you could fly as a bird flies, you could see it. It would be plain as the nose on your face.” He pulled at his own nose and laughed his high laugh again.

  Tarl had noticed the strange land. They had marched through this strange hillocky landscape for two days to get to this place, only to find the river impassable. He nodded. “The world is old.”

  The strange boy smiled at him, inclining his head. “Continue.”

  He continued. “If these are all buildings, then many people lived here, many hands of hands of hands of people.” He was proud of this. He was good with counting and could manage large numbers in his head. His uncles had said so. He was the best at it among all his cousins.

  The strange boy nodded. “Who were they? These people, who lived here and built these buildings?” he asked. “Who do you suppose they were? The people who lived here?” He gestured, his skinny arm encompassing the wide landscape.

  He looked up at the man. The man just stared back, listening. Tarl shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know this.”

  The boy laughed again. “Neither do we.” He glanced up at the man, who stood close to Tarl. The boy spoke directly to him. “Bring him to me in Talus.”

  After that, they marched well into the twilight of the evening. He walked with the other boys as they followed the river channel northwards. The hillocky landscape, humped with mounds, had a path which the Guides seemed to know. It wasn’t much of a path, but it was clear people passed this way occasionally.

  He forced himself to look around, to study the land as they walked through it. The mounds were, now that he noticed it, laid out in rows, and so the little band of boys and their Guides wove in and out between them, moving steadily away from the river. Sometimes there were pits, which they had to skirt, and everywhere was low, scrubby brush and pine forest.

  The sea was nearby. He could smell it and occasionally he saw white gulls soaring overhead. They made his heart ache, ache for home, for his little pallet in his mother’s tent, his cloth hunter-cat toy that he had left behind when these strange men and this strange boy had selected him. He had not wanted to look like a child to these proud, upright adults who had come into their camp and told his elders that they had selected him, and that he would come with them.

  His mother had wept and run out of their camp. But his uncles, the men of their group, had beamed, and clapped him on the shoulder. They were proud of him, that he had been chosen. It was a great honor for their Guides, the ones who kept them safe and watched over them, to have chosen him. He would become one of them, and would return one day to be a Guide like them.

  The strange boy had remained silent, and he had taken him for a servant at first. He stayed apart from the group, while the tribe feasted their guests that night. The Guides produced a small flask of clear liquor, which the adults all took a small sip of. The gathering lapsed into a party, dancing around the fire started, and the tribe sang their favorite party songs while the various cliques danced.

  First, encouraged by the grownups, were the youngers. Five toddlers, three boys and two girls, who were led out to the firelight and, to the delight of the Guides and elders alike, did their wobbly dance. Aja drew a cheer as she spun about, her blond braids flying, until she stepped too close to the fire and her mother, broad-hipped Ana, scooped her up, and carried her around the fire, crying “Bird! Bird!” while tiny Aja shrieked with glee.

  The strange boy had clapped his hands and laughed with the rest at the toddlers. Drawn by his strange voice, and wild, barking laugh, he examined the Boy, as he thought of him now. Bald, skinny, brown. He looked just old enough to be his senior, but acted older. He was confident; he carried himself differently. Everything about the boy was strange, with strange eyes and strange speech and weird barking laugh.

  The woman Guide Tarl sat near nudged him, as she noticed him looking at the Boy. She caught his eye, shook her head minutely. Don’t do that. She nudged his shoulder again, pointed at the toddlers doing their strutting dance, huge grins on their faces and squealing laughter. She turned back as Mitha fell on his butt, but kept dancing sitting in the sand, his arms pumping with the chanting crowd. He saw a brief shadow pass over her face, like a swift cloud over the face of the moon. Regret. He turned to see Mitha’s gran, Sarna, pick him up and pat the sand off him.

  Then the older boys, his group, his cousins Harl and Ferel, both a year senior to him and thus named. His own naming was coming, and his mother had whispered his name to him jus
t this moon, warning he was not to tell a soul, and to pretend surprise. Tarl. They had scrambled onto the sand around the fire, and he had expected he would join them, but when they stepped out and looked for him, the Guide to his side rested his hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

  “We watch,” he said, leaning towards him. “We watch,” he repeated. “This is not for us.” He nodded soberly to him, and then at the woman, and the other Guides. “Not for us.” He smiled. “But you will see. It is not all bad.”

  The woman said something to the man in a speech he didn’t know, and the man shrugged and nodded. Agreement, with whatever she had said. Had she chided him? Was she the band’s leader? It was unclear, to him, who was in charge of these strange, pale-eyed adults with fine clothes and long hair, if anyone was. They watched Harl and Ferel strut through their dance, cartwheeling around the fire in close synchronization before falling out in a laughing heap. His hands and feet knew these steps, he had practiced this with them for hours on end. He could have, he thought, made it twice around the fire.

  The Boy hooted at them, clapping wildly. He saw Tarl looking at him and nodded, smiling. He nodded at the two boys…dusting sand off of themselves and waving to the assembly. Tarl smiled back and clapped for his age-mates. They stepped out of the firelight, and the girls entered.

  They had arranged their entry by age. First, came the youngers, his age, Tena and Sharl, holding hands and shyly pirouetting once around the fire. The Guides clapped politely, and the families cheered the loudest. The girls, blushing, scampered out of the firelight. Then came Monna and Lara, stepping through a complex strutting whirl they had devised and practiced. This drew cheers from the young men in the shadows, and the girls grinned at their encouragement.