Shadows and Smoke

by Rich X Curtis

  It would be hard, he knew. He had few words here. A handful only. Not enough. Learning the language would take time. The Center would give him time, the Boy had said. This world was promising, so they expected his exploration to take more than the few days he usually spent. He could count on being months here, the Boy had told him. Perhaps Murn would even be back when he returned.

  So get started, then. He reached the road; it was a rough macadam similar to others he’d seen. Black, tarry stuff. It smelled of carbon and oil and radiated the day's heat on him as he walked. His shoes, he realized, were too tight on his feet. He would have blisters. He screwed up his face and walked towards the building.

  A truck blew past him at ferocious speed. The wind off it was hot and smelled of petrochemicals, barely refined. He had smelled this before, on worlds with such engines. Industrial, but not still in the Early phase. Pollution-spewing machines were a clear marker. Later civilizations did not tolerate this. He had seen two such advanced civs and a half-dozen more like this one. He preferred the latter; the former were far more dangerous to him.

  The building was wood, built up on stilts. It was a shed or utility structure of some kind. Vehicle repair, he judged. One large door was open, revealing an open bay with a vehicle hoisted on a lift. A man, back-lit, was working. He wore a stained coverall garment and looked up from a workbench as he approached. Tarl raised his hand in greeting, and the man nodded at him.

  Tarl hesitated, looking at the man, then at the other building, clad in some silver metal. It had gleamed at him all afternoon from the hilltop. A humming roar came from a large spinning fan attached to a window in its side. The fan looked like it was made of wood. He could smell cooking in that direction.

  The man stood, wiping his hands on a rag. He ambled over to Tarl, smiling a big, friendly smile. He spoke, a string of nonsense to Tarl. The man looked down the road. He looked at Tarl, taking in his clothes, his dusty shoes. He spoke again. Tarl smiled and nodded. This was how you did it. He shrugged, laughing nervously. “No habla,” Tarl ventured. “I don’t speak.”

  The man nodded, making a sound like “Ahhhh.” He said another word but Tarl didn’t know it, either. The man spat. His smile faded, and he half turned to go. He pointed up at the silver building, the tarverna, as Tarl had been thinking of it. “Rosa,” he said, pointing, then more words. “Señora. Señora Rosa.” He headed back into his shed without a backwards glance.

  Tarl blinked. That hadn’t resulted in a call for authorities, he mused. Lady Rosa? It was a Spanish name; he had heard it before…so, that was hopeful. Maybe he could make himself clear to her. He brushed off his shirt with one hand and crossed the street.

  The building’s metal skin was some kind of alloy, he realized, feeling the lingering warmth of the sun under his palm. The door was wood, thick green paint peeling in large flakes, revealing yellow underneath. A bell chimed as he entered. He looked up, seeing a bell hung in the door's path, swinging gently on a few links of chain.

  He reached up to silence it with one hand. Inside, the building was an eating establishment. Tables and chairs, booths along one wall, padded with worn-looking purple fabric. There were only two patrons, two large, rough-looking men in one booth. They wore round caps with spoon-like bills on the front. Visors, to protect from the sun?

  These men were vehicle drovers, he realized. The visors protected their eyes from the sun’s glare on their long journeys. He nodded to himself. One man was looking at him, and Tarl registered his hostility as soon as he met the man’s eyes. He said the same word, Tarl thought, the man outside had said. Two syllables. His companion glanced over his shoulder at Tarl, then looked back at the paper he had spread across the table.

  It was a map. Tarl recognized it. He wanted very much to look at it, and was on the verge of approaching the men, despite the one’s enmity, when he caught motion. A woman behind the bar said something to him, which he didn’t understand. He looked at her.

  “Señora Rosa?” he said. This was her. A tall woman, solidly built. Long brown hair fell to her shoulder, tied back in a loose plait. Brown skin, brown eyes. She motioned him closer, glancing at the two patrons.

  “Sit here,” she said, in strangely accented Spanish. “Leave those boys alone.” She produced a rag and began wiping the counter. “They’re almost done. Then we can talk. Coffee?”

  He boggled. Coffee? He had had coffee twice before. Once in the world of plantations ruled by the red-robed priests of Rome in New Spain, and again in Brasilia. He loved coffee. He nodded. “Muchas gracias,” he said.

  She looked him up and down. “Your hat,” she said, pointing at the cap he wore. “Take it off inside.” She wore a slight smile, as if he was a wayward boy. So, caps are not to be worn inside, but the drovers wore theirs? He filed this away for later and set his cap on the chair next to him. She gave him a quizzical smile and wandered off.

  She brought him coffee in a thick ceramic mug. He looked at it, thick and black. “Milk?” she asked. He shook his head. Black was how he’d taken it in Brasilia. On the plantations, he had tasted it with milk and other spices. Black was better, strong and pure. He lowered his face to the mug and let the aroma seep into him. Bliss.

  He looked up and saw Rosa engaged in conversation with the two men who were gathering themselves up, folding the map. She laughed easily, Tarl noted, but did not relax around them. As they stood, they slid past her in the narrow aisle, and Tarl noted one of them, the fat one who had scowled at Tarl, place his hand on her bottom. She seemed to expect it and pushed his hand firmly but quickly away. He leered at her. She faced him unafraid.

  The man turned away from her, and, noting Tarl watching them, said something to him. He stopped and repeated himself. The belligerence in his voice was clear, but Tarl understood none of it. He wrapped his fingers around the barrel of the mug; the coffee had warmed it almost too hot to touch.

  The older of the two men paused in the doorway and, glancing at Tarl, called to his friend. He spoke again, more firmly. The fat one sneered and stalked after him. The door slammed shut behind them. Rosa shrugged and began clearing their table’s plates.

  She did so efficiently, Tarl noted. Long experience, he judged. She took the dishes to the sink and dumped them in, frowning at them. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress, and Tarl saw her forearms were thick with muscle. She did, or had done, heavy work in the past. She looked at him. He drank his coffee. It was strong, and bitter with chicory.

  “They come through here now and again,” she said, her shoulders lifted and fell. “Did you understand them?” She began to wash the dishes.

  He shook his head. Then, remembering, he repeated the word the fat one had hurled at him and the artisan from the shed.

  “Beaner,” she said, rolling her eyes. She glanced at him. “Means Mexican, but like an insult, you know?” She furrowed her brow. “You’re not Mexican, are you? You’d have heard that word before around here if you were.”

  The water spat out of the spigot into the sink. Steam wafted gently around her as she washed the dishes with quick, even strokes. Tarl saw she was well-curved, if a trifle stout around the middle. Her breasts were large behind her apron, her belly pouched a little. Her neck was still firm and not sagging or creped like some women got as they aged. He judged her around forty years, maybe thirty-five.

  He shook his head. He knew Mexico was a kingdom to the south, and just days ago, to him, he had been in a crypt underneath Mexico City, which presumably was in Mexico. “No,” he said carefully. “Newer…place.”

  She began wiping the dishes, drying them. She sat the dish down in a rack and looked into his eyes. “New Mexico?” she said. “Your Spanish isn’t that bad. Where you from, originally? Not around here.”

  Tarl was, he knew, skilled at judging people. It was a skill they taught you in the Center, interpersonal relations. They drilled you in it, and it was a fun game to play with the other Trainees. That and some other skills those instructors taught, like sex,
were favorite pastimes. Tarl had surprised himself by having great skill in reading people, noticing things about them quickly, and being able to articulate them.

  Sex, he proved less skilled at, though not for lack of trying. He was a shy lover, usually, and it took a few sessions with a lover before he really felt comfortable with them. Watching Rosa, he realized he was gauging her as a lover. She was older, but a handsome woman, he decided. He sipped his coffee before answering.

  He shook his head again, smiling his best smile. Sorry, I don’t really understand. “No,” he said, “not from around here.”

  “Carl fixing your car?” she asked. She glanced out the window towards the shed. “He’s working on something. That yours up on the lift?”

  He shared his cover story, concocted while waiting for the sun to set. He had been travelling with a family, and they had turned onto another road, towards their home. He was going this way.

  “Hitchhiking? Huh. No car?” she asked. “Listen, what’s your name?”

  “Hector,” he said, giving her the name he had carried in Brasilia. “Hector Ramos.” He held out his hand, hoping the custom was the same here.

  She took it, her hand still damp from the dishes. She looked him in the eye. “I’m Rosa,” she said. “Chambers.” She seemed to come to some decision. “Hector, where you going to stay? I’m about to close up, and Carl won’t be here all night either. I can’t let you stay here, the boss would have my skin. Isn’t a motel for twenty miles.”

  He shrugged. “Outside is fine.”

  She laughed, taking his cup and placing it in the sink. “Not around here…rattlesnakes and coyotes will have you for dinner.” She narrowed her eyes. “You from Europe?”

  He nodded slowly, as if it were something he didn’t want to admit. She looked at him intently. She picked up his hat off the chair and toyed with it. She handed it to him. “Come on,” she said, smiling wryly. “You look like you could use a good meal. You can sleep on my sofa.”

  “Sofa?” He said, dumbly.

  “Couch, silly. Like you sit on.” She shook her head. “You Italian?”

  He shook his head again. No, not whatever that is. Always be from somewhere else. Nowhere they know. “No, I am sorry,” he said, “my speaking bad.”

  “You hungry?” she said, slowly.

  “Si,” he nodded. Accept charity humbly. “You are sure?” Take help, get out of the public areas. He caught her eye, holding it for a long moment before dropping his gaze. She smelled of sweat and cooked food and, underneath, a floral undercurrent, from some kind of soap, he guessed.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure. Can’t leave a stranger out in the cold. My momma didn’t raise me like that. Let’s go.” She turned to the door, turning back to him. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  He followed her. She held the door open for him. She led him past the open bay of the shed. Tarl looked inside, and saw the man, Carl, look up as she passed, then to him. He stiffened and then looked as if he was about to speak. But he said nothing, just watched them as they passed.

  She approached a car, just a vague shape in the gloom of the early night. The moon hung above a low hill to the east, half full. Insects flapped about them, moths or suchlike. “What about,” he said, his voice sounding large and loud in the still night, “the man Carl?”

  “He can go to hell,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Get in, ain’t locked.” She opened the door to the car and boarded. He approached the side of it. He disliked such conveyances. Especially manually piloted ones. They were lethal, often to their own passengers. He found the handle, still warm to the touch. The day had been hot, and he didn’t want to spend the night huddled on the porch of the tavern. He got in.

  She drove fast, clearly familiar with these roads. She fished a packet from her satchel with one hand, the other resting lazily on the steering controls, a hoop of shaped metal. There appeared to be pedals, he observed. Two? Three? He could not tell. She shook it, and a white tube came out. A cigarillo. He had never tried them. Recreational poison, he knew. She put it between her lips. She glanced at him.

  She offered him the packet, watching him with one eye. He stared at it and shook his head. Her eyebrows went up, suspicion. She replaced the packet in her satchel. “Where are you from?”

  He did not answer. “Far away from here,” he said at length. The car had lanterns mounted in its prow. He stared out through the glass window ahead of them. The road was painted with a faded white line. She lit the thin cigar with a glowing ember from a short wand she plucked from the console.

  “New Mexico?” She puffed at the tube, breathing the smoke. She looked at him, her lips twitching into a mocking smile around the little cigar. Her face was lit red by the red ember at its tip. “Few Europeans there, either.” She nodded at him.

  “But,” she continued. “Lots of people stop at the diner. Want to get up north, you got to come this way. So I hear things. During the War, we had a lot more traffic.”

  He glanced at her. War? "The war? Many cars?” He understood her well enough, but playing dumb got people to explain things sometimes. She seemed talkative. Probably not many people to talk to here, he figured. She seemed intelligent. She was probably lonely.

  “Yes,” she said, and he heard the sarcasm in her voice. “The War. You remember the War, right? You hear things. About a bunch of Europeans living in New Mexico. Brainiacs. Science types. Anyway, this trucker was talking up a storm one night, about deliveries he made out there. Lots of supplies he said. Milk and butter and everything that was scarce for the rest of us.” She puffed smoke and shook her head. “They made the bomb up there. Tested them off in the desert, hundreds of miles from nowhere.” She laughed softly to herself. “Might as well have done it right here.” She pointed her cigarette at him, a streak of red emphasis in the dark. “You one of them, aren’t you? One of those scientists?”

  She rolled down the window, breathing smoke out into the wind. His mind raced. Bomb? Tests? “I do science, yes, but mostly math. Calculations,” he said, hoping to clarify. “Yes, from Europe.”

  “My husband,” she said, “before the War, he loved those science stories. Ray guns and spaceships.” She smiled around her cigar, shaking her head. “Still have piles of his magazines.”

  “Your…husband?” he said, wanting to shift the conversation to her and away from him. “You are married?”

  She laughed, looking at him. “Listen to you!” She nodded, turning onto a side road that dipped down into a hollow between two hills. She was quiet for a few moments. “He was in Normandy. Got his medals on the mantel.” Her voice was flat, but he could see the lines in her face from the instrument panel lamps, muscles tight under her jaw, and around the mouth.

  He nodded and thought, while she drove. He pieced it together, then. Her man had died in the recent wars, apparently. In a place called Normandy, which sounded somewhat familiar to him. A European name. The Normans had been a Germanic tribe, he recalled from his time in the Kaiserreich, living in Frankia. Congruence, he reminded himself. The Tapestry had both weft and weave. “I am sorry,” he said. “This was long ago?”

  “Five years,” she said, glancing at him. “Some town in France. A sniper got him. That’s all they told me. I have a letter.” She slowed, and turned off the road onto a much smaller, one-lane road, the gravel well-rutted. The car bounced on its suspension. Tarl gripped the console.

  “Rough road,” she said, “Jim used to gravel it every year, but gravel costs money so…” she trailed off. “Here we are.” The lanterns on the front of the car shone on a large house, with a wide porch. He could see another, low building in the distance. A dog stood on the porch, wagging its tail at the sight of the car, fur bright white in the light.

  She eased the car to a stop and shut off the engine. She turned to him. “Hector, welcome to my home. I’ll feed you, and you’re welcome to the sofa. But Reilly there sleeps at the foot of my bed, and I sleep with a double-barrel twelve-gauge sho
tgun right next to me.” She looked at him, taking a long pull on her cigar. It was nearly down to her fingers. The car’s engine pinged, starting to cool. “I don’t think you will give me any trouble, will you? You don’t look like the type.”

  He shook his head. “No trouble, Señora.” He meant it. “No, I will sleep, and then be on my way.”

  She nodded. “Come on inside then. We can talk more over dinner. I’ve got some pork chops in the icebox.”

  The dog growled at him, but she pulled him away into another room, feeding him from a circular tin she opened with a tool he’d never seen before, that involved a twisting wrist motion. He tried not to stare, to pretend none of this was new to him. It was a skill they taught you at the Center, how to blend in. But he noticed things.

  The house was large. There was a front room connected to the doorway with furniture for sitting, two padded chairs and a long chaise. There was a fireplace with a polished, ornately carved mantel. “A big house,” he said, loud enough for her to hear from the other room.

  She appeared in the doorway. “Jim’s family. All gone now. They were farmers. He inherited it, and now it’s mine.” She smiled sadly. “We never had kids, so…” She shrugged. “It’s mine until the tax man comes to take it.”

  “Tax man?” he said, confused. Taxes were dues, payments made to authority, he understood that. “Payment collector?”

  She laughed. “Something like that,” she said. “I can’t afford this place for too much longer. I’ll sell it, probably next year, if I can. Move to Amarillo. I have cousins there. We’ll see.” She looked at him. “You have a family? Wife and kids?”

  He shook his head. Seekers were not allowed family. That ended when they took you from the tribes. The Center became your family. Only the Archivists and other such support staff had families. “No, it is not for me.” He smiled as shyly as he could. This tactic worked too, sometimes, with women.