Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  “The people are all gone now. Empty, every one. But everything works, the lights change, the moveways run. I didn’t believe everybody was gone until I checked the central control offices. Oh, there were so many wonderful devices.” He sighed. “The beauty, the complexity. Fantastic what people made.” He sighed again, thinking of the wonderful technology, the creations abandoned, running down. “One strange thing. In the biggest city I saw, old Chio, almost every entertainment screen had the same tape running.”

  “What was it?”

  “A girl, a young girl with long hair. Almost to her feet, I’ve never seen such hair. She was laying it out on a sort of table, with her head down. But no sound, I think the audio was broken. Then she poured a liquid all over very slowly. And then she lit it, she set fire to herself. It flamed and exploded and burned her all up. I think it was real.” He shuddered. “I could see inside her mouth, her tongue going all black and twisted. It was horrible. Running over and over, everywhere. Stuck.”

  She made a revolted sound. “So you want to tell that to your father, to his ghost or whatever?”

  “Yes. It’s all new data, it could be important.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said scornfully. Then she grinned at him. “What about me? Am I new data, too? A woman who isn’t going to the River? A woman who is going to stay here and make babies? Maybe I’m the last.”

  “That’s very important,” he said slowly, feeling a deep confusion in his gut. “But I can’t believe, I mean, you—”

  “I mean it.” She spoke with infinite conviction. “I’m going to live here and have babies by you or some other man if you won’t stay, and teach them to live on the Earth naturally.”

  Suddenly he believed her. A totally new emotion was rising up in him, carrying with it sunrises and nameless bonds with Earth that hurt in a painless way; as though a rusted door was opening within him. Maybe this was what he had been groping for.

  “I think—I think maybe I’ll help you. Maybe I’ll stay with you, for a while at least. Our—our children.”

  “You’ll stay a month?” she asked wonderingly. “Really?”

  “No, I mean I could stay longer. To make more and see them and help raise them, like Father did. After I come back from saying good-bye I’ll really stay.”

  Her face changed. She bent to him and took his face between her slim dark hands.

  “Jakko, listen. If you go to the River you’ll never come back. No one ever does. I’ll never see you again. We have to do it now, before you go.”

  “But a month is too long!” he protested. “My father’s mind won’t be there, I’m already terribly late.”

  She glared into his eyes a minute and then released him, stepping back with her brief sweet laugh. “Yes, and it’s already late for bed. Come on.”

  She led him back to the room, carrying the candles, and he marveled anew at the clutter of strange activities she had assembled. “What’s that?”

  “My weaving room.” Yawning, she reached in and held up a small, rough-looking cloth. “I made this.”

  It was ugly, he thought; ugly and pathetic. Why make such useless things? But he was too tired to argue.

  She left him to cleanse himself perfunctorily by the well in the moonlit courtyard, after showing him another waste-place right in the garden. Other people’s wastes smelled bad, he noticed sleepily. Maybe that was the cause of all the ancient wars.

  In his room he tumbled into his hammock and fell asleep instantly. His dreams that night were chaotic; crowds, storms, jostling, and echoing through strange dimensions. His last image was of a great whirlwind that bore in its forehead a jewel that was a sleeping woman, curled like an embryo.

  He waked in the pink light of dawn to find her brown face bending over him, smiling impishly. He had the impression she had been watching him, and jumped quickly out of the hammock.

  “Lazy,” she said. “I’ve found the sailboat. Hurry up and eat.”

  She handed him a wooden plate of bright natural fruits and led him out into the sunrise garden.

  When they got down to the beach she led him south, and there was the little craft sliding to and fro, overturned in the shallows amid its tangle of sail. The keel was still protruding. They furled the sail in clumsily, and towed it out to deeper water to right it.

  “I want this for the children,” Peachthief kept repeating excitedly. “They can get fish, too. Oh, how they’ll love it!”

  “Stand your weight on the keel and grab the side rail,” Jakko told her, doing the same. He noticed that her silks had come loose from her breasts, which were high and wide-pointed, quite unlike those of his tribe. The sight distracted him, his thighs felt unwieldy, and he missed his handhold as the craft righted itself and ducked him. When he came up he saw Peachthief scrambling aboard like a cat, clinging tight to the mast.

  “The sail! Pull the sail up,” he shouted, and got another faceful of water. But she had heard him, the sail was trembling open like a great wing, silhouetting her shining dark body. For the first time Jakko noticed the boat’s name, on the stern: Gojack. He smiled. An omen.

  Gojack was starting to move smoothly away, toward the reef.

  “The rudder!” he bellowed. “Turn the rudder and come back.”

  Peachthief moved to the tiller and pulled at it; he could see her strain. But Gojack continued to move away from him into the wind, faster and faster toward the surf. He remembered she had been handling the mast where the computer was.

  “Stop the computer! Turn it off, turn it off!”

  She couldn’t possibly hear him. Jakko saw her in frantic activity, wrenching at the tiller, grabbing ropes, trying physically to push down the sail. Then she seemed to notice the computer, but evidently could not decipher it. Meanwhile Gojack fled steadily on and out, resuming its interrupted journey to the River. Jakko realized with horror that she would soon be in dangerous water; the surf was thundering on coral heads.

  “Jump! Come back, jump off!” He was swimming after them as fast as he could, his progress agonizingly slow. He glimpsed her still wrestling with the boat, screaming something he couldn’t hear.

  “JUMP!”

  And finally she did, but only to try jerking Gojack around by its mooring lines. The boat faltered and jibbed, but then went strongly on, towing the threshing girl.

  “Let go! Let go!” A wave broke over his head.

  When he could see again he found she had at last let go and was swimming aimlessly, watching Gojack crest the surf and wing away. At last she turned back toward shore, and Jakko swam to intercept her. He was gripped by an unknown emotion so strong it discoordinated him. As his feet touched bottom he realized it was rage.

  She waded to him, her face contorted by weeping. “The children’s boat,” she wailed. “I lost the children’s boat—”

  “You’re crazy,” he shouted. “There aren’t any children.”

  “I lost it—” She flung herself on his chest, crying. He thumped her back, her sides, repeating furiously, “Crazy! You’re insane!”

  She wailed louder, squirming against him, small and naked and frail. Suddenly he found himself flinging her down onto the wet sand, falling on top of her with his swollen sex crushed between their bellies. For a moment all was confusion, and then the shock of it sobered him. He raised to look under himself, and Peachthief stared too, round-eyed.

  “Do you w-want to, now?”

  In that instant he wanted nothing more than to thrust himself into her, but a sandy wavelet splashed over them and he was suddenly aware of chafing wet cloth and Peachthief gagging brine. The magic waned. He got awkwardly to his knees.

  “I thought you were going to be drowned,” he told her, angry again.

  “I wanted it so, for—for them. . . .” She was still crying softly, looking up desolately at him. He understood she wasn’t really meaning just the sailboat. A feeling of inexorable involvement spread through him. This mad little being had created some kind of energy vortex around her, into which
he was being sucked along with animals, vegetables, chickens, crowds of unknown things; only Gojack had escaped her.

  “I’ll find it,” she was muttering, wringing out her silks, staring beyond the reef at the tiny dwindling gleam. He looked down at her, so fanatic and so vulnerable, and his inner landscape tilted frighteningly, revealing some ancient-new dimension.

  “I’ll stay with you,” he said hoarsely. He cleared his throat, hearing his voice shake. “I mean I’ll really stay, I won’t go to the River at all. We’ll make them, our babies now.”

  She stared up at him openmouthed. “But your father! You promised!”

  “My father stayed,” he said painfully. “It’s—it’s right, I think.”

  She came close and grabbed his arms in her small hands. “Oh, Jakko! But no, listen—I’ll go with you. We can start a baby as we go, I’m sure of that. Then you can talk to your father and keep your promise and I’ll be there to make sure you come back!”

  “But you’d be—you’d be pregnant!” he cried in alarm. “You’d be in danger of taking an embryo on the River!”

  She laughed proudly. “Can’t you get it through your head that I will not go on the River? I’ll just watch you and pull you out. I’ll see you get back here. For a while, anyway,” she added soberly. Then she brightened. “Hey, we’ll see all kinds of things. Maybe I can find a cow or some goats on the way! Yes, yes! It’s a perfect idea.”

  She faced him, glowing. Tentatively she brought her lips up to his, and they kissed inexpertly, tasting salt. He felt no desire, but only some deep resonance, like a confirmation in the earth. The three moondogs were watching mournfully.

  “Now let’s eat!” She began towing him toward the cliff steps. “We can start the pills right now. Oh, I have so much to do! But I’ll fix everything, we’ll leave tomorrow.”

  She was like a whirlwind. In the food room she pounced on a small gold-colored pillbox and opened it to show a mound of glowing green-and-red capsules.

  “The red ones with the male symbol are for you.”

  She took a green one, and they swallowed solemnly, sharing a water mug. He noticed that the seal on the box had been broken, and thought of that stranger, Mungo, she had mentioned. How far had her plans gone with him? An unpleasant emotion he had never felt before rose in Jakko’s stomach. He sensed that he was heading into more dubious realms of experience than he had quite contemplated. He took his foodbar and walked away through the arcades to cool down.

  When he came upon her again she seemed to be incredibly busy, folding and filling and wrapping things, closing windows and tying doors open. Her intense relations with things again . . . He felt obscurely irritated and was pleased to have had a superior idea.

  “We need a map,” he told her. “Mine was in the boat.”

  “Oh, great idea. Look in the old control room, it’s down those stairs. It’s kind of scary.” She began putting oil on her loom.

  He went down a white ramp that became a tunnel stairway, and came finally through a heavily armored portal to a circular room deep inside the rock, dimly illumined by portholes sunk in long shafts. From here he could hear the hum of the station energy source. As his eyes adjusted he made out a bank of sensor screens and one big console standing alone. It seemed to have been smashed open; some kind of sealant had been poured over the works.

  He had seen a place like this before; he understood at once that from here had been controlled terrible ancient weapons that flew. Probably they still stood waiting in their hidden holes behind the station. But the master control was long dead. As he approached the console he saw that someone had scratched in the cooling sealant. He could make out only the words:—WAR NO MORE. Undoubtedly this was a shrine of the very old days.

  He found a light switch that filled the place with cool glare, and began exploring side alleys. Antique gear, suits, cupboards full of masks and crumbling packets he couldn’t identify. Among them was something useful—two cloth containers to carry stuff on one’s back, only a little mildewed. But where were the maps?

  Finally he found one on the control-room wall, right where he had come in. Someone had updated it with scrawled notations. With a tremor he realized how very old this must be; it dated from before the Rivers had touched Earth. He could hardly grasp it.

  Studying it, he saw that there was indeed a big landing dock not far south, and from there a moveway ran inland about a hundred kilometers to an airpark. If Peachthief could walk twenty-five kilometers they could make the landing by evening, and if the cars were still running the rest would be quick. All the moveways he’d seen had live cars on them. From the airpark a dotted line ran southwest across mountains to a big red circle with a cross in it, marked VIDA! That would be the River. They would just have to hope something on the airpark would fly, otherwise it would be a long climb.

  His compass was still on his belt. He memorized the directions and went back upstairs. The courtyard was already saffron under great sunset flags.

  Peachthief was squatting by the well, apparently having a conference with her animals. Jakko noticed some more white creatures he hadn’t seen before, who seemed to live in an open hutch. They had long pinkish ears and mobile noses. Rabbits, or hares perhaps?

  Two of the strange white animals he had seen sleeping were now under a bench, chirruping irritably at Peachthief.

  “My raccoons,” she told Jakko. “They’re mad because I woke them up too soon.” She said something in a high voice Jakko couldn’t understand, and the biggest raccoon shook his head up and down in a supercilious way.

  “The chickens will be all right,” Peachthief said. “Lotor knows how to feed them, to get the eggs. And they can all work the water lever.” The other raccoon nodded crossly, too.

  “The rabbits are a terrible problem.” Peachthief frowned. “You just haven’t much sense, Eusebia,” she said fondly, stroking the doe. “I’ll have to fix something.”

  The big raccoon was warbling at her; Jakko thought he caught the word “dog-g-g.”

  “He wants to know who will settle their disputes with the dogs,” Peachthief reported. At this, one of the moondogs came forward and said thickly, “We go-o.” It was the first word Jakko had heard him speak.

  “Oh, good!” Peachthief cried. “Well, that’s that!” She bounced up and began pouring something from a bucket on a line of plants. The white raccoons ran off silently with a humping gait.

  “I’m so glad you’re coming, Tycho,” she told the dog. “Especially if I have to come back alone with a baby inside. But they say you’re very vigorous—at first, anyway.”

  “You aren’t coming back alone,” Jakko told her. She smiled a brilliant noncommittal flash. He noticed she was dressed differently; her body didn’t show so much, and she kept her gaze away from him in an almost timid way. But she became very excited when he showed her the backpacks.

  “Oh, good. Now we won’t have to roll the blankets around our waists. It gets cool at night, you know.”

  “Does it ever rain?”

  “Not this time of year. What we mainly need is lighters and food and water. And a good knife each. Did you find the map?”

  He showed it. “Can you walk, I mean really hike if we have to? Do you have shoes?”

  “Oh, yes. I walk a lot. Especially since Ferrocil stole my bike.”

  The venom in her tone amused him. The ferocity with which she provisioned her small habitat!

  “Men build monuments, women build nests,” he quoted from somewhere.

  “I don’t know what kind of monument Ferrocil built with my bicycle,” she said tartly.

  “You’re a savage,” he said, feeling a peculiar ache that came out as a chuckle.

  “The race can use some savages. We better eat now and go to sleep so we can start early.”

  At supper in the sunset-filled porch they scarcely talked. Dreamily Jakko watched the white bats embroidering flight on the air. When he looked down at Peachthief he caught her gazing at him before she quickl
y lowered her eyes. It came to him that they might eat hundreds, thousands of meals here; maybe all his life. And there could be a child—children—running about. He had never seen small humans younger than himself. It was all too much to take in, unreal. He went back to watching the bats.

  That night she accompanied him to his hammock and stood by, shy but stubborn, while he got settled. Then he suddenly felt her hands sliding on his body, toward his groin. At first he thought it was something clinical, but then he realized she meant sex. His blood began to pound.

  “May I come in beside you? The hammock is quite strong.”

  “Yes,” he said thickly, reaching for her arm.

  But as her weight came in by him she said in a practical voice, “I have to start knotting a small hammock, first thing. Child-size.”

  It broke his mood.

  “Look. I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind. You go on back to yours, we should get sleep now.”

  “All right.” The weight lifted away.

  With a peculiar mix of sadness and satisfaction he heard her light footsteps leaving him alone. That night he dreamed strange sensory crescendos, a tumescent earth and air; a woman who lay with her smiling lips in pale-green water, awaiting him, while thin black birds of sunrise stalked to the edge of the sea.

  Next morning they ate by candles, and set out as the eastern sky was just turning rose-gray. The ancient white coral roadway was good walking. Peachthief swung right along beside him, her backpack riding smooth. The moondogs pattered soberly behind.

  Jakko found himself absorbed in gazing at the brightening landscape. Jungle-covered hills rose away on their right, the sea lay below on their left, sheened and glittering with the coming sunrise. When a diamond chip of sun broke out of the horizon he almost shouted aloud for the brilliance of it; the palm trees beyond the road lit up like golden torches, the edges of every frond and stone were startlingly clear and jewellike. For a moment he wondered if he could have taken some hallucinogen.

  They paced on steadily in a dream of growing light and heat. The day wind came up, and torn white clouds began to blow over them, bringing momentary coolnesses. Their walking fell into the rhythm Jakko loved, broken only occasionally by crumbled places in the road. At such spots they would often be surprised to find the moondogs sitting waiting for them, having quietly left the road and circled ahead through the scrub on business of their own. Peachthief kept up sturdily, only once stopping to look back at the far white spark of Station Juliet, almost melted in the shimmering horizon.