You give so much.
She set the tomatoes to fry in a small pan on the fire, turning them every so often with the tip of her knife. The sun had half set and turned the water below the color of blood. Zola figured there was something natural in this space, in moments like this, something primitive and true. Wrapped in the blanket, she imagined herself like the Anasazi, staring out at the desert from the high safety of their hollow cliffs. She’d had a collection of Anasazi relics once, in a special plexi case in her Latitude abode. Pot shards with zigzag designs, a stone grinding tool. Prizes in her collection of souvenirs from all over the globe, talismans to the idea of a world growing smaller, coming together, like it had been when the old cities had been filled with people instead of water—but now that was all gone. The sun turned red over the canals and flooded brownstones, a different sort of desert. Down there, the cops hunted junkies. And those cops knew Zola’s name.
“Baby. Eat.” She held the pan and beckoned Marco to the fire. He smiled weakly.
“Lo siento, baby, I just got no appetite. Looks mad tasty, ya, but . . .” He dropped his face into his hands and squeezed his forehead. “My head, killing me fucking bad.”
The Rican madre had given Zola the mullein and saw palmetto wrapped in two big banana leaves, and these Zola pulled from the pocket of her discarded overalls. She mixed the herbs together with some local rooftop dirt weed and tobacco from a stale cigarette, both of which she’d kept hidden in a little wooden box in her day bag. She rolled it all together in a tear of notebook paper and licked it shut.
“You ever regret it?” Marco asked, his face still cradled in his palms. Zola leaned close into the fire to light the joint. Marco looked at her. “Do you?” His face hollow, an apparition of who he’d once been. A stab of fear shot through Zola: Marco was fading, and they both knew it. Zola understood exactly what he was asking. Did she regret losing that other life? Was the Light worth the sacrifice? Was he worth it?
That other life. Even the memory of it felt somehow false, a life so wholly different it might never have been.
* * *
Her navigator’s abode. A slice of sky wrapped in photosensitive plexi, the sunlight pouring in. This was what Zola remembered. Resting in the deep folds of an African leather sofa, bathing in sunlight as she did the work for which she was born. Navigating. Reaching out to her ships, their eager minds meeting hers as they cut across some far-flung stretch of globe. Around Zola, her collection of artifacts. Zulu spears and Siberian oak tables, pottery shards and computer keyboards, ornamental wristwatches and Amazonian fertility totems, all arranged geographically, a ritual layout of lost histories. Curled up at her feet, two great and friendly wolfhounds.
Her ships, sunlight in the mornings. Latitude filling her mind, that easy hive hum. Six thousand people living their lives, their minds shared with hers. The sensate minutiae of their mornings, breakfast smells and first-light trysts, people doing Latitude’s work. The hum, a greater metabolism in which Zola had always been immersed, whose unifying thread was a collective will bent on the flow of goods, the accumulation and reinvestment of boggling amounts of currency. Connection. This was what she remembered.
And Byron. His dense physicality, the gentle way his mind braided through hers. Her primary, her mate. Born the same day, the two of them. Brought forth from the laboratory wombs deep in the Latitude vaults. Connection—this was what they were designed for. Brought forth together, the two of them, already immersed in the buzz of Latitude’s collective ebb and flow. The cinnamon and musk smell of him, his eyes lighting up when it was impossible to tell whose thought belonged to whom, his thick arm splayed possessively across her in sleep. Born together, born for each other.
She knew now that the Light had touched her first in dreams. Now she could recognize it. Half-remembered images, how she’d start awake, and the aftereffects, a manic residue she carried through her days. In sleep, the Light came to her as quick, stabbing visions. The ocean’s slate horizon—out there, beyond the globe’s long curve, a flash, brighter than the sun. Pure white light.
She’d wake next to Byron in a sweating tangle of Milanese silk, the morning sun slashing horizontally across the apartment, the dream already fading. Beside her, Byron would sleep on, the bulk of him rising and falling with meaty breaths, gentle and oblivious, his dreams the dreams of Latitude. A flash. That was all it had been, just a dream.
But then the Light came to her when she was awake.
Her abode was on the thirteenth floor of Latitude’s North River Tower, a diamond of steel and plexi that rose like a rapier tip from the bank of the Hudson. A monument to the rebirth of global trade. Latitude, reaching out, touching every part of the world, making it smaller every year. One day, it would be the way it had been centuries before, cheap goods from across the world filling everyone’s life. This was Latitude’s directive, and it was therefore Zola’s. Deep in the nest of an African leather sofa, she worked with her face turned up to the morning sun.
Four thousand miles away, a fleet of ten catties sailed in formation, parallel to a thin white ribbon of sand just visible against the eastern horizon. These were her ships, a day out of Ivory Coast, loaded up with industrial diamonds, copper, manganese, gunning for the North Atlantic. Their sails dug hard into wind blown from a storm to the south. Their minds pressed Zola’s, full of the joy of their sprint.
She ran them north, and as she did Byron emerged naked from sleep and came to her, rubbing sleep from his soft moon face. Zola pulled him down and straddled him, and rode him in the sofa’s smooth leather as the sun warmed them both. She let the ships feel him, let him feel the ships and salt air and motion. Together they watched the prows slice long swells into rainbows of silver spray. They felt the waves, their endless roll perfectly in tune with Zola’s movements. In the freedom of it he laughed and bit Zola’s neck, and through it all Latitude was there, in the background, encouraging, other minds reaching out, joining them in the moment. Light filled the abode and the white orb of the sun seemed to grow around them, and somehow inside Zola, too, a hot coin at the top of her spine, spreading, like she was falling into it—
I AM.
The statement blotted out everything. It wasn’t a voice, or even thought. It was simply knowledge.
I AM.
Some axis tilted inside Zola, gravity changed direction. The dream returned to her. That lighthouse flash. Now there were people on a shoreline—they stared at the horizon. They had been there for a long time, she sensed, watching. All at once they turned. Fire filled their eyes.
I KNOW YOU.
It was her face. All of them, they were her.
YOU ARE.
White light seared the horizon. It grew, a star exploding, an infant taking its first breath. It enveloped the sea, the shoreline, the people. White fire, a magnesium flare, the hot spot in her head exploding, filling her, and everything else was gone.
When the Light receded, Zola didn’t know how much time had passed. There on the couch, blinking, still atop Byron; her heart hammered in her ears. Her mind reached out to her ships. They were disconcerted, still running north, but slow now, their formation faltering. Byron, one hand frozen against her breast, gaped at Zola.
“I am . . . ,” he said after a moment, “amazing.”
“Did you . . . ?” Zola, struggling to reel in her ships, didn’t know what to say. Did you see . . . ?
You shone like the SUN, girl.
No. The light. Come on, did you see it?
Byron, grinning . . . I saw.
* * *
High up in the dead Stuy tower, Zola stared into the fire and exhaled smoke. “Sometimes I regret, ya.” Honest, because she always was with Marco. “I miss my ships.”
The itch came on strong and for a moment it made Zola shudder under her blanket. Some days, like today, when it had been a long time between ceremonies, it felt as though her soul had been stretched between two far-away moments in time. It felt like it might snap. Her mind ra
iled against its isolation.
“I regret it bad, sometimes. Wish I could unsee everything the Light shown me. Just wake up one morning back in Latitude, my people all around, and me linked with my fleet of big catties. Sailing down the North Sea, steering them home. I miss my people.” The white noise press of Latitude’s minds, gentle as low surf breaking. All of them dead now, all of it gone. She said, “Latitude collected our memories. I never knew anything but that, like time just washed through us and collected in a pool. Never lost. Now it’s like it never happened.” Outside, the city had gone red as the sun bled away. “I lose every moment, like I’m not even here, ya. The time’s just gone, no proof I ever witnessed it.”
“The Light reach out to you long before I ever met you,” Marco said. With his feet at the edge of the drop, he shivered. “You a medium, same as me. Why that Gov lady got such a thing for you—she knows it.” He looked at Zola. “When I’m gone, you got to step in, answer the call.”
“Don’t talk like that. You going nowhere.” Zola rose from the fire and moved to Marco. She sat behind him, wrapped herself and the blanket around him, meeting as much of his skin with hers as she could. He was cold. “This’ll help your head, baby.” Motherly, she wedged the joint between his lips.
He sucked deep. As he held the smoke in his lungs Zola could feel his heart stutter against her breast. His tremble eased then, and Zola pressed her lips to his back, to his neck, to his shoulder. Her mind reached out for his, but she didn’t have enough left, and neither did he. They both needed to touch the Light. From within the isolation of her own skull, she whispered in his ear:
“I never regret you.”
Three: The Source Doesn’t Miss
GOT SOME MEAT FOR YOU. The woman cop stood like a Kevlared George Washington in the bow of a labor boat with too many makeshift canvas sails, her shotgun propped over one shoulder and her chin cocked back, portrait-ready. Her crew heaved-to and readied lines. One kicking, one dead.
Watching her from the deck of the katana, Chu and Holder exchanged a sour glance. A shared prayer to whatever gods punished vainglory.
Please dump her overboard.
They’d dealt with this woman before. Like all the new cops, she was a hustler. Figured it was her place to scam and dicker. She was arrogant—she’d sewn stars onto the breast of her faded surplus fatigues and taken to calling herself Captain. Chu eyed her coolly. The katana’s gunwales bristled with miniguns, their aim aligned with Chu’s mood, which right now was an inclination to turn Captain’s boat into a steaming cavity in the water. Her mind met Captain’s:
Good for you. Gender?
One male, dead one’s a bitch. The woman’s mind, whenever it touched Chu’s, felt like cruel laughter and broken glass. Holder in particular bristled whenever the woman came around. He tried to hide it, but Chu saw: Captain offended his sense of decency. The raw sweat stink rolling off her and her crew, the sun-blistered skin of her cheeks, the rust along her big shotgun’s barrel. Thugs, every single one of these paid cops. Downtown water rats, slavers. Wild born, raised in the holds of scavenger barges or low in the old tower cores, those dark and half-submerged bazaars where people trafficked in pure labor, a vulture economy that revolved around scraping clean the corpse of the old world. Thugs, to whom Chu had given badges, specifically for their expertise in human bondage. Holder stood there, glaring.
“He ain’t so friendly,” commented Captain’s second in command, the muscled blond. He eyed Holder.
“Oh, I’m friendly,” Holder said, also aloud, “it’s just the reek down here. The canal stink. Rats crawling all over one another. Makes my skin itch.” The two men pointed humorless smiles at each other.
Captain’s mind reached out and for an instant Chu caught a glimpse of herself through the woman’s eyes: face impassive, stars pinned to epaulets—real stars, forged of dedicated service and sacrifice, not cheap bits of brass found in some previous century’s abandoned surplus depot.
Let’s see what you’ve got, Chu demanded. Captain’s crew hoisted two bundles, bound in tarps and rope, from the labor boat’s hull. These they heaved onto the katana’s deck. Chu pulled a blade, stepped forward, cut one of the bundles open.
A girl, or at least what had been a girl. Maybe fifteen years old, face cratered around a large-caliber bullet hole beneath one eye. Chu frowned.
Not the one I’m looking for.
She the one we found. Up Stuy way, just like you said, Colonel Mama. Mama: the one with the purse, the one who doled out coins and candy.
The vector I’m looking for is older. Twenty-five or so.
Don’t care if this girl one and the same with the one you got a taste for. That—Captain indicated the corpse with the barrel of her shotgun—still a medium, and mediums what we get paid to get. We get, you pay, that’s the deal. No doubt what she is, found her doing ritual, bunch of junkies up in the old towers. Righteous trash, straight firing their brains, and she at the heart of it, zactly way you said. Captain showed teeth—wooden dentures rotted brown. Don’t know where you get your info, Mama, but we never come up zactly empty.
My source doesn’t miss. Chu gestured at the other bundle. What about that one?
We pump him full of tranq, but he come around soon enough. He rascally, though. Sneaky little fuck, you watch out.
Chu cut rope and canvas with her blade. The bundle spilled open. An old man this time, a slit of white barely visible beneath still eyelids. A finger to the neck: Chu felt a pulse.
Was he touching the Light when you caught him?
No, but enough people said. He a straight fire priest, for sure, Mama.
“For sure,” echoed the big blond.
You don’t want him, we take him along with us, find some use for him. Captain leered, her look ever hungry. Got flesh on him before his fingers show bone, a measure of good hard work left there, straight cash for us, no doubt.
“No doubt.” Again the blond ape with the hat and the AK smiled.
The bundle on the deck stirred; the old man’s eyes fluttered open, seemed to register nothing, until they fixed on Chu. Then they went wide with fear. Chu pressed her mind to the old man’s, felt scorched pathways, the memory of white light, profound union. Grief now at his own isolation.
Chu gestured. Goggins and Solaas stepped forward. In the sun, their graphene armor gleamed. The old man moaned as they hauled him out of the bundle and up to his feet. His mouth hung open and he gave Chu a pleading look, but only vowels emerged. Goggins and Solaas dragged him away, down to the hold below. If he was a vector, Grandma could use him.
You get your pay. Chu’s mind touched Captain’s. Currency flowed. Captain smiled big wet dentures. Chu jerked her chin at the corpse. You can hang on to that. Keep yourself ready down around Stuy Town. I’ll update you when my source gives me new vectors. Any more you bring me, you know I’ll pay.
Captain slung her shotgun over a shoulder and hoisted the body. Chu considered the corpse, propped there for an instant on the gunwale before it dropped over the side and into the rancid river.
If you come across the one I want, Captain, don’t kill her. Don’t try to take her. Reach me instead. I’ll come for her myself.
A strange stillness came over Captain and her crew. She exchanged a glance with the skinny old man to her left, who wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and held a little terrier on his lap. Sucking sounds came from her dentures as she gave Chu a sly look.
You still pay, though.
If your information leads me to Zola, specifically to her . . . I pay triple.
We maybe seen her then.
Where? What happened?
Up Stuy way, where we got the others. We got righteous eyes on her, up close and personal. She was pushing a boat down the street. Captain shrugged. She got loose.
It happens, the cowboy blond said.
Colonel Chu swallowed fury. They floated in a swath of open water, two cop boats lashed together, one of them a slaver, the other clearly military—traffi
c gave them a wide berth. The shit and oil stink of the East River cloyed at Chu’s nostrils; the towers of the old scrapers rose along either bank, flooded, hollow, dead. For an instant, her hatred for this city was so intense she thought she would burst into flame. She wanted to burn the whole place down with her.
Why you got such a bone for one girl, hey? Captain wondered.
Chu considered her answers, her thoughts drifting to her source, the woman strapped to the table in the hold below. She was the one who got away, she said after a moment, and for some reason this made Captain smile. I know Zola’s in Stuy Town. Get eyes on her again.
For sure, Colonel Mama. Girl’s as good as got.
So you say. Now get off my boat. You stink.
* * *
“You were wrong.” Chu reversed a small steel chair and sat straddling it, arms folded across the back, facing the restraining table. A stale circle of daylight fell through a tiny round portal high on one wall, and in this the woman on the table stared at the ceiling, wordless. She had long ago ceased to struggle against the straps. Speaking aloud, Chu pressed. “They missed her.”
The woman let out a long breath and turned her head to look at Chu. Sweat beaded the woman’s forehead; her neck pulsed slightly where a tube entered it, attached to a fat IV bag slung overhead. Chu swallowed hard. It fazed her, every time. The woman, staring. In the sunken cheeks, in the delicate brow, Chu still saw the child she had been. Her face identical to Chu’s own, but underfed, junkie-glazed. A distorted mirror, a version of self that had traveled a twisted path, but one near enough to Chu’s own it felt close enough to touch, close enough it could contaminate.
The Burning Light Page 3