Shadows and Smoke

by Rich X Curtis

  He smiled his best disarming smile and spread his hands. “I’m new here,” he said, telling the truth but as a lie. “I arrived this morning, and was just looking at the wonderful town you have here, and I got lost.” He smiled again, pleased with himself at having delivered such a lengthy speech and not stumbled on it.

  Her eyes widened. “You arrived this morning? From where? How?” She looked at his clothes, a one-piece jumpsuit the Archivists were sure would allow him to fit in. He was beginning to doubt this, as she seemed to study it carefully. “By submersible?”

  He smiled, cocking his head at her. “From Europa? That’s a long journey in a sub,” she offered. She glanced up the street. “Where are you trying to get to?”

  He nodded, indicating understanding. He pointed at the superstructure. “I am here to help with the machines.” In there, you silly woman, I need to get in there, he thought. Help me get in there, he willed her, keeping up his dumb smile. Just a lost technician from Europa.

  She followed his pointing, nodding. “And you couldn’t find your way there?” She frowned again, but there was a hint of a smile in there too, at his naïveté.

  He nodded. “Lady, I wanted to see this district. It is much like how my parents talked of their town in my youth…” he trailed off, smiling again. He looked down the street at the little cottages and their manicured lawns. He put a wistful expression on his face as he did so, hoping it would convince her.

  It worked. Her face had softened, and she pursed her lips. “Well, running the blockade in a sub to help us is welcome. I’m surprised they didn’t announce that a sub had arrived. It’s been a long time for the Southern Fleet. Years, now that I think of it.” She looked at him. “Do you know who you are supposed to meet?”

  He shook his head. “Just that the cybernetics machinery needed help.” He tried to stay vague. “I will find my way,” he said, hoping to mollify her. He turned away, back the way he had come.

  “Wait,” she commanded. “My husband is a computer. He will know who to bring you to.” She rummaged in her bag, bringing out a flat black slab of what looked like glass. She tapped at it with a long-nailed finger, then raised it to her ear, raising her eyebrows at him.

  “Darling,” she said, “I am sorry to interrupt your work. I have a man here, off the sub that came in last night who is a little lost.” She regarded Tarl as she listened, cocking her head slightly. She held the device away from her ear slightly, leaning towards Tarl.

  “What did you say your name was?” she asked. She held the phone away from her ear, covering the mouthpiece with one long-nailed hand. “He says there’s no sub.” She shook her head at such silliness.

  “It may still be secret,” he said, feigning chagrin at perhaps revealing it too early. “My name is Tarl Annan,” he added. “Tell him the cybernetic technician requested by the Fleet,” he continued, improvising.

  This was, he thought, probably the best solution. He only needed a few minutes with one of their machines to get a grasp of their basic architecture. Once he knew that, he just needed to survive to Recall. They could imprison him if they liked. He didn’t think they would go beyond that. He hoped not. Prison he could face. No prison could hold him when the Center snatched him back.

  She was listening through the device. It was some sort of radio, he knew. He had studied enough sims in worlds where such devices were common. Her frown deepened, the lines to the sides of her mouth darkening, as she glanced up at him. Her eyes narrowed. She covered her mouth then, turning away from him. Then she turned back and before she could speak he knew she was lying to him.

  “He’s sending a vehicle,” she said, smiling. Her smile was thin and tight. She glanced up the street, jaw muscles working. She was holding her communicator in her fist. What had her husband said? That there was no sub? Obviously, he thought, but there was something else there. An anger. “They should be here soon.”

  “You are angry,” he said, smiling at her.

  Her nostrils flared. “Angry? Why would I be angry?” She laughed, but it was hollow and thin as her smile.

  “Your husband denied knowing I was coming, didn’t he?” Tarl said. It didn’t matter. This was a floating island, there was nowhere he could hide. He could, he thought, leap over the edge, if he could reach it. But he doubted there was even time for that. He had seen a tall fence along the edge of the platform. The fence bore a sign showing that it carried a charge of electricity.

  That should have told you they were fearful, he chided himself. That and the roving patrols in their little carriages. Something had happened here, he thought, that drove these people onto these islands. To create them. They were planned, he knew, according to the information the Archivists shared with him. A built environment. They were protective of their security. No submarines had come in years, she had said. Perhaps they were in a war, and they suspected him of being an enemy.

  It didn’t matter, he told himself. He would, regardless of whether they threw him in a cell, be recalled out of this place soon. An eerie wail reached him, and one of the little blue boxy cars skidded around the corner of the street. He watched as it squared up on its chassis and sped towards them, lights atop the roof flashing red and orange.

  The woman had run for a house. Tarl watched as she pounded on it with a fist, rattling the doorknob to be let in. She glanced back at him, and he saw fear in her eyes. Fear of him, but also as she glanced at the car, fear of something else.

  The little car skidded to a stop and the right-hand door flew open. A man climbed out, staying low behind the door. He pointed a weapon at Tarl, thick snout poking out in the valley between the door and windscreen of the car. “Raise your hands!” the man shouted.

  He wore a tight-fitting helmet of what looked like black ceramic, with a visor sprouting two bulbous lenses. His voice was amplified, from a speaker mounted atop the car, Tarl realized. Tarl raised his hands slowly. That weapon was probably what they called a shotgun or busser, a pellet thrower, scattering a cloud of tiny metal balls across a wide area. Lethal at close range, Shona had taught him. If someone points one of these at you, just do what they say and try to complete your mission, she had said. Survival is the key, and we can always go back if there is something useful.

  He swallowed and made no moves. The woman had disappeared inside the house. “Place your hands on your head.” The man had a commanding voice which echoed off the houses. Tarl could feel it in his lungs, it was that loud. At the top of the street another of the boxy cars wheeled around the corner.

  He did as the man instructed. When the other car arrived, two men scrambled out, dressed in blue coveralls emblazoned with badges, and they conferred in low voices. Then they quickly bound his wrists in metal manacles, behind his back. They shoved him none too gently into the first car.

  Tarl forced himself to relax, despite the discomfort. He was trussed like a captive animal now. Theory of law enforcement, which they had had at least one session on as trainees, said that he would be taken to a central holding area, to be interrogated by superiors. This was, for the Center, a doctrine that had been established by analysis of many thousands of worlds. Security services all worked the same way. Muscle and intellect. He was in the hands of the muscle for now, so he waited to meet the brains.

  As they drove away, he craned his neck to look backwards, to see if the woman in the brown smock who had been willing to help a stranger was visible. But all he saw was a row of too-alike houses, with their identical white picket fences. He sighed. It was rare, he knew, for Seekers to meet kind strangers. But they could be useful. Not this time, he thought. Not here.

  Doctrine held true here, he noted. They drove him towards the superstructure. It was larger than he had realized, he saw, craning his neck to look up through the vehicle's windows. Ten levels above the main deck of the island, at least, he thought. It was wide at the bottom; the base splayed out in four main pillars, under which clustered a large cargo handling bay. The door the little car drove throug
h was large enough for a massive cargo carrier, he thought. He had seen them parked near the edge of the island. They had looked idle, and he had noted their sides pocked with rust and salt crust on their canvas canopies.

  The superstructure itself was rusty. There were streaks of rust on the walls, some of them peeling in wide, palm-sized flakes. Metal would, rust the second you took it out of the forge, he knew. Put it in water and this sped up the process. The building was burning, just at a slow, slow rate. Immerse it in salt water, and it was like submerging the metal in a solvent. The Center had tried to drill them in the chemical reactions involved, but it hadn’t, at least in his case, taken. He knew metal rusted, and that this ship or island or platform, he knew, was metal. That was the extent of his knowledge.

  They parked the cars, and his captors hauled him out and into a door set into the superstructure. A small antechamber with a pair of sliding doors. A lift, then. The two men behind him held their busser guns at the ready. Tarl noted that they stood too close to him and tisked at them in his mind. Shona would have been disappointed. He could have probably disabled these three, perhaps even bound as he was. But what would that accomplish? He was on a floating island, wearing manacles on his wrists. It would just get him killed, and he meant to survive.

  He remembered the first capture he had seen in the sim chamber. The resignation that the Seeker had shown when he realized he would now have to endure interrogation. But the man, Tarl reminded himself, had not panicked. So he, Tarl, would not panic. He would not do something stupid, like attack these men in the lift carriage. He would wait and learn what he could.

  Their badges, for example. He made sure he got a good look at them. Also, the control panel for the lift. Even though their alphabet looked mostly strange and unfamiliar to him, he made sure he took a good, focused look at it. The Archivists might, when they reviewed his record, and dreamed the sim of this place, learn something useful. It was good practice to be observant, even if you didn’t understand what you were looking at.

  They led him out of the lift into a warren of small rooms, through a tight corridor stacked with pallets. They had to push him through a few gaps he wouldn’t have otherwise been able to negotiate. Eventually they arrived at a room he took to be a cell. It had a door of iron bars, which he could probably fit his wrist through, but nothing more. They removed the cuffs and shoved him inside.

  The one who had taken the cuffs off of him looked at him. “You swim up from the deepwater colonies?” He laughed, pleased with his joke.

  “Colonies? Underwater?” Tarl asked. This was new, he hadn’t heard that before.

  The man scowled, not expecting this response. “Funny man, are you?” he sneered.

  “No seriously, are there colonies under the surface of the sea?” Tarl asked. This man might tell him, or at least reveal something. Communication is essential. The Center studies all, so get more data while you can.

  The man’s brow furrowed. “Haven’t been in decades. All blown in the war. Dumb idea anyway.” He looked the man over. “All your kind, black ass.” He raised his chin at this epithet.

  Insult. Meant to provoke him, he reasoned. Tarl shrugged. Sometimes it’s better to take what information you can get, he mused, and not push your luck. “Tell your master I am here, and I have news from distant lands.”

  “Land! Nobody lives on land,” the man scoffed, but he looked troubled, Tarl thought. His eyes narrowed at Tarl. “Distant lands. You from the land?” he asked. “Where?”

  Tarl didn’t answer his question. He sat down on the metal bench and stretched his legs. “Your master,” he said, not looking up at the man. “Tell him I have news.” He did not look until he heard the man's footsteps retreating down the corridor.

  They kept him waiting for the better part of an hour. He reviewed everything he had learned. There was a fleet of these platforms. The Southern Fleet, the woman had called it. Was there a Northern Fleet? Had there been? They had some contact with the land through submarine visits. There had been a war, where colonies under the surface had been destroyed. These platforms were worn, perhaps many decades old. How long would they stay afloat?

  That was the big picture. They had radio communications of some sophistication. This was a good sign. He had seen spiky antennae atop the superstructure complex. Microwave antennae, he had recognized, and dishes to gather distant signals. Orbital satellites? Maybe. Some cultures did this. It made sense…the planet was a cage.

  The Center taught that space was a lure, but it was false. Mature cultures, the ones they sought, would realize that the distances and time-scales were a gulf too vast to be crossed. They would, as the Center had done, investigate elsewhere. They would find a way to the Tapestry. The universes were too big. Even light couldn’t cross them from one end to the other. There was only one other option.

  While he waited, he thought about what he knew of how the Tapestry worked. How the Center sent him and other Seekers to these worlds. He knew, or just accepted, in the way students accrete knowledge that is assumed by their groups, that the Center had created artificial Minds that were as intelligent, or more, than humans. That the Center was such a mind, or assembly of minds. Arwal had hinted at this. Grandmother had, he thought, said as much to him when he was younger. He struggled to remember exactly how she had phrased it, but couldn’t.

  How old was Grandmother? Nobody he knew could remember her in her younger years. He had asked Neela once, about Grandmother. How old is she? Her eyes had gone wide, and she had sucked in a breath, mouth setting in a line. He had noticed this, but she had covered it up well. She didn’t give him an answer either. “None of your business, Trainee,” she’d said, frowning. “Focus on your studies.”

  So how did they do it? The Center used simulations to train him, and the Archivists somehow recorded everything he saw, heard, smelled, and touched. Presumably what he tasted. How? How could this be done? He didn’t know. Could they read his thoughts when they processed his missions? The Archivists talked of groups who dreamed the simulations into existence. Who were these groups? He resolved to ask Murn to see if she knew. She was still low in the Library's hierarchy, but maybe it was common knowledge. Seeker trainees weren’t told very much about how any of this worked, he realized.

  They dreamed the simulations. Were they dreams? Did they force the Seeker trainees into these dreams? Was this process related to how he traveled here? Was this a dream? How could that be? This was real, he thought, as real as the Center. The bunk he sat on was hard and uncomfortable. This floating platform, rusted and aging, was no dream. It was real, or nothing was real, he decided.

  Footsteps approached, and he looked up to see two figures approaching. A man and a woman. They wore blue uniforms, clearly figures of some rank. There wore insignia at their collars and cuffs, but it meant nothing to him. The man was young, sandy blonde hair and brown eyes, a pinched expression on his face as he regarded Tarl. The woman was blonde, with bright blue eyes and thin lips. Her hair was short under her peaked cap. She regarded him cooly.

  “Stand,” the man said. Tarl noted he wore a sidearm at his belt, a flat black pistol in a black leather holster. Tarl nodded and swung his feet off of the bunk. He stood, looking up at them both. Tall folk, here, he noticed. Everyone he’d met, including the women, had been tall. Tall, white, and blonde. Northern tribes, he would have placed them if they were at the Center.

  “Who are you?” The woman said. She raised a hand and brushed the man aside with the back of it, a gentle touch on his shoulder. “Please be honest with us. This will be more pleasant for everyone if you are.” She regarded him confidently, without hesitation.

  Tarl studied her face. She was serious. This was a threat, he knew. If they thought he was lying, he would be questioned more harshly. He didn’t know when the Center would recall him. He nodded. “I am Tarlannan. I come from the Center,” he said. “My friends call me Tarl.”

  She frowned. “Well,” she said, “We are not your friends. We t
hink you are a spy.” She leaned forward slightly, as if to confide in him. “We shoot spies.” She met his eyes. “So please, explain how you got here, and why you are here. We are interested. This can, as I said, go one of two ways. A pleasant way, and a less pleasant one. The choice is yours.”

  He sighed. Anything he said would be wrong, and silence wouldn’t learn anything. "I am from another universe,” he said. “Another…place. They sent here me to determine if your culture is…technologically mature.” He wondered if he had gotten the words right. This was stretching his Latin, and he did not know the word for a universe, so he had substituted the Talush word, cosmush, in its place.

  She shook her head slightly. Then she smiled. “I could take you out of this cell, Tarl.” She gestured. “You are interested in our technology? I could show you around. Would you like that?”

  He sensed her mocking him. “I would like that very much,” he said. “But I doubt you mean it.”

  “Of course I don’t mean it.” She laughed. “You are a spy. A spy from Kush, if I am guessing right. Are you Kush?”

  “I don’t know where Kush is,” he said. “I am from another world entirely.”

  The man said something to her in a language Tarl didn’t know. She waved him into silence with two fingers. The man lapsed into silence, but set his jaw in anger. He did not like how she was handling this. Did he want to shoot Tarl? Or torture him. Both were possible, judging by the glare stuck on his pinched face.

  She considered this. “You look like a Kushite,” she said. “They were dark-skinned like you.”

  “Were?” he asked. “Are they no more?”

  “Kush and the rest of the Middle Sea are a wasteland,” she said. She shook her head at him, a look of puzzlement on her face. Then she nodded to herself. “You will really persist in this farce of being a supernatural being?”