Dreaming in Smoke

by Tricia Sullivan

  It was Ashki, a witch doctor.

  “. . . a thermal a few hours ago. A small one, but enough to erode parts of the legs. The structure has been vulnerable, thanks to the vandals, and Ganesh still can’t control its extremities. Now the luma’s melting in places. For lack of a better word. It’s returning to its gel state. Taking our history with it. I keep thinking of the fires of Alexandria. What might have been different about history if the library hadn’t burned.”

  Naomi was talking faster than usual. “Darling, you need to keep the Earth Archives intact at all costs. We’re under tremendous pressure from the Dead.”

  “If you’ll let me talk to them, maybe I can convince them that shutting down the reflexes won’t save the Archives. They need to understand that. If only they would cooperate.”

  Lassare cut in. “The Dead have been cooperating for a long time. It’s possible they’ve finally snapped.”

  “Save Earth Archives, no matter what, Ashki!” Rasheeda, in ringing tones, like a prophet or goddess.

  “We can’t get near Earth Archives. They’re not in the Core anymore. We don’t know where they are. We can’t get a code in there, we can’t read them, we can’t even get a shotgun induced. They’re not Dreamable.”

  “Reconfigure them, then. Translate them. Do something.”

  “Reconfiguring Earth Archives at this stage would be like-well, to use an analogy I know you’ll understand, it’d be like playing a piano concerto on a couple of rocks and a rubber band. I just can’t do it yet.”

  “Watch yourselves. The Dead are going to take you out if they sense you’re not accomplishing anything. We’re doing everything we can to negotiate.”

  “Yeah, we noticed that half the heat shields are gone and most of the food stores. I gather this is the result of your negotiations. When are we getting Marcsson?”

  “Don’t give us trouble, Ashki,” Lassare’s voice warned. “You’ll do better under us than the Grunts, who don’t understand the Dead at all. Give us the bottom line and we’ll do what we can.”

  “Structurally we won’t have a collapse as long as First remains unoccupied. But the looting is becoming severe. The Dome was ruptured yesterday, and there are several breaches in the Gardens. You can see algae and weeds already creeping out onto the surface. Don’t like to think what will happen to them when the next thermal comes.”

  Kalypso began to shiver again and lose her ability to concentrate. Her arm had taken to burning ferociously and she had to hold it at an odd angle to hep the wound from touching any other part of her body. She fumbled with the controls to transmit, but the boat must be low on power. She couldn’t get the signal strength she needed. Then Tehar came on the line.

  “I’ve been living in the transit tubes, monitoring the luma. It takes a lot of energy just to keep up with all the shifts in temperature and magnetism. All of us are at it full time and we’re exhausted. We’ve been very lucky with thermal stability but that may not last. I’ve absorbed so much code I feel like my fingerprints are made of it now. Don’t understand it, though, and Ganesh won’t cooperate. Doing the smallest job is like trying to perform surgery with a salad fork. But reality as such is worse. The silence. The boredom. Bare time. Time on its own will make you crazy.”

  Kalypso let out a strangled cry.

  Long silence.

  “Tehar,” Lassare said at length, “we’re trying to get Marcsson. We’ve only gotten one boat over the Rift, and they can’t find a clear channel in the luma to reach him. We don’t have many resources—”

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” he said in a thick voice. “If you can’t bring Marcsson in, I won’t blame you.”

  It was as if he was speaking to her.

  That’s right, she thought, her insides jumping with nervousness. Because I can’t take it. Nobody should expect me to. Wait till he hears about this skin business —

  “But Lassare. I’m going down. I’m headed for the bottom.”

  How could she tell him? What could she tell him?

  “OK, Tehar,” Lassare said hurriedly. “We’re on it. We’re on the situation.”

  Weak with fever, Kalypso sank to her knees and clutched her head in her hands. Fuck fuck fuck.

  Robere’s voice was saying, “For the last time, the Mothers have no control over any of the equipment, boats, or supplies. So when I come on this channel, I expect to be taken seriously. All of you are going to be very sorry when you realize you’ve placed your faith in a bunch of drug addicts. Stop damaging the station and talk to us.”

  Some hissing noises followed. Possibly Teres; the sound was not recognizably human.

  “We will use force against you if necessary. Let us speak to the hostages.”

  Hostages?

  “Robere?” It was the voice of Lila, a botanist and the only person on the station smaller than Kalypso. “Robere, don’t worry. I’m all right. It’s—”

  Marcsson slipped out of fugue and actually smiled. She cut the radio. “We’re integrating,” he announced. His affect was so positive she felt creeped out. “We’re doing a happy data merge. Come. Sit still.”

  She was docile by now. She didn’t move when he anesthetized her thigh. She watched him cut and remove a patch of skin and carefully atomize the wound as before. He took the skin and turned back to his work. The anesthetic wore off quickly and her leg felt hot. She was sucking her lower lip unconsciously and had begun to whine softly like an animal.

  He noticed this and slapped her across the face. “Didn’t you hear what I said? How dare you look at me like you blame me. You’re a part of it too. It’s just as much your fault.”

  She cringed and hid her face.

  “I could take you apart bone by bone, one organ at a time. I could make you Sieng. You’d be less trouble that way. It’s only skin! It’s skin. You should thank me.”

  There was a long, strange pause.

  “You’re so big,” he said. “You’ll never feel it.”

  She wiped tears off her cheeks, resentful that she had to show weakness although it was absurd to be self-conscious around someone like him. He went to the ship’s system. She could see him fooling with the radio.

  “What do you know about the System, anyway?” he asked in a suddenly casual, mundane voice. “You’re the most notoriously ignorant member of your generation. Do you truly have no knowledge of the translation of ecology to mathematics?”

  “I know about it from the statistical end,” she said. “Well. Sort of. I know what a Diriangen function is, and a reducing spiral, and the Stassler Cycle, and—”

  “Those are just names. Do you know what they mean?”

  “Look. I’m a shotgun. I don’t do reality.” He sighed and looked out through the blurred canopy. The fires of the native subs played in his eyes.

  “It’s going to flow over you,” he said softly. “And you won’t understand it. You’ll be the one it flows over, but they’ll be the ones explaining it. None of you will get it.”

  Later that day, Siri came on the radio and announced that neither the Grunts nor the Mothers were in power, so anybody from the Dead who wanted to talk should use this channel to speak to the real leaders, the youth of T’nane. She ended with an idealistic appeal to common goals and history. Kalypso almost gagged.

  The second fever made time move very fast. She was seldom more than one-quarter conscious. When it subsided at last, she crawled around the boat, randomly seeking water, and realized Marcsson was in a deep fugue. She forgot about the water and went for her interface.

  The bridge was the only place she could access anymore. At the unfinished edge of it worked a builder who had, instead of eyes, a large miner’s lamp strapped across his forehead like a huge interface. He was on his hands and knees, humming! “Good Old Stockholm” as he worked. He was wearing an abbreviated cape.

  “Are you the matador?” she asked. “You saved me. . .”

  Something—blood? — was running down his limbs. She looked closer and saw lo
ng trails of ants.

  “You must stop coming here. That’s for you,” he said, pointing to a spot on the bridge. “Take it.”

  Lying on the bricks nearby was a jewel. She picked it up. At first she thought it was another message from Tehar; but it was too beautifully designed, too perfect, to be made by a person. Witch doctors didn’t make Dreams: they were notoriously analytical, not creative. She ran her hands over it, her tongue, pressed it to her chest so she could feel its resonance against her bones.

  Could it be from Ganesh? Had the AI recovered?

  Her heart filled up.

  It was a simple thing, but elegant: a haiku of Dreams. It whispered its title to her as it launched. Tiera del Fuego: a lullaby. She slid into it like silk.

  Ocean, its flung extremities lashing the sky. Night. Salt on bare skin and ice wind filling throat. Arms aching as the paddle fights the waves.

  Struggling. Alive on the fraying seam of things.

  Here, on the water in the Wild: no garment, no shelter, no companion.

  Here, in the canoe, a fire burning: unlikely and real as gravity.

  Here, with you: fire.

  It was all she could do to slip the interface back into Marcsson’s pocket after this. She found the water she’d been seeking and sipped.

  Something good was happening. Somewhere.

  or so she wanted to believe.

  Now that Sieng wasn’t around, she slightly missed the recomposing body. She felt lonely without it. Sieng might be dead, but she was treated with great reverence by Marcsson, whose size did not prevent him from being delicate and refined when he wanted to be.

  He was not delicate and refined toward Kalypso, except during those rare moments of attention after he had begun to do microscopic work to her skin or, rather, to the flesh that was under it. That only happened later, though. For days in which there were no other events for Kalypso, he farmed her skin.

  “Communicate,” he would say. “Yield over.”

  one of his hands could cover her face, and did. His fingers and palm molded to her bone, shut out light from her eyes, gripped her skull. Dirt made his skin bitter. In the Dreamer you surrender to a distant level of consciousness because your senses are removed from you; you turn inward. But this was not a turning-inward, it was a turning-inside-out. He would remove her interface so that his hands took her senses almost all of them at once and she froze like a kitten in its mother’s grip. She froze and left herself. She transferred her self outside to the flat uncoiling of color on the endless water surface.

  At first this was very bad. Then she learned to let it be a kind of relief. When he engaged with her body she was spared the need to think or act because all control belonged to him. She watched her skin disappear and witnessed her own violation: the act was tangible and somehow reassuring because it could be measured.

  It was the rest of the time that ate at her sanity. He sat for hours, motionless, and she mimicked him, unable to act on her own behalf—but all the while she was still thinking. Frantically. How can I escape. It took great effort to keep the breathing quiet—not to let a sudden thought register physically. Not to move her lips or eyes.

  And then he would stand, stretch, and say, “I think I’ll check met. We’re about due for a thermal.”

  Regularly he watered Sieng through the suit’s air intakes. Also he dangled her in the luma, suit and all, to heat her System. She was like a favored pet. When she was fevered, Kalypso was treated similarly, which she enjoyed despite herself.

  Oh for a chance to redo that botched zzz.

  He retreated into fugue. But the next day it got worse.

  He began to re-apply Kalypso’s removed skin to the healing patches of her body. Only now her skin was thick and translucent and bright with indigenes, just like Sieng. She choked and retched.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Azamat?”

  “Talking. I must talk. I must touch. I must know.”

  “You can’t. It killed Sieng. You think it won’t kill you, too? Or me? Fuck you, Azamat, you won’t kill me. Not this way.”

  “To be perceived,” he said. “In every detail. Every—” He closed his eyes; his hands roved over his own body. Drumming.

  Not this again.

  His skill level had increased in the interval of time since he’d started this behavior before he’d delivered her to Neko. Now he was like a cross between a Senegalese street child and a self-infatuated cabaret queen. He played himself. “—moment. If going to have to restrain you now. It will be better that way.”

  He reached for her in the half-hearted way people reach for their clothes in the morning while they’re still half-asleep and thinking of something else.

  Kalypso, for some reason instead of sooner, or later, or never, berked now. There was no rational component. She simply moved. She eluded his grasp and scurried toward the canopy seal. Her fingers ripped it open and she slithered out. one of his hands closed on her ankle. She held her breath and wrenched. The boat tipped hard to port, threatening to roll. Hot, fluid luma surged up and smacked her in the face; then she had no choice but to inhale because she was screaming. The air tasted like nightmares.

  Marcsson had let go of her ankle. Everything tore and hurt when she moved, but she dragged herself across the hull. If she had any kind of idea in her head at all, it probably had to do with getting her suit back from Sieng, because she flung herself toward the corpse and began to undo the suit fastenings. Marcsson was coming toward her rather slowly, like a monster in a horror film: the embodiment of mindlessness. She’d begun to cough and pant.

  There was nowhere to run. She leaned toward an interface that wasn’t there.

  Then she must have passed out.

  Marcsson had her jaw in one of his hands. His lips covered her nose and mouth. He was blowing air into her lungs. She twitched spasmodically, coughed; he hacked away. They were under the canopy of the boat.

  He had her interface in his hands. He looked at it and said, “Give yourself up. I don’t accept your distance. I don’t recognize your boundaries, or your flags. Direct contact only. That’s the way it has to be. What I wish for in the middle of the night. What I wake up gasping for, crying out for. I’ll never never get it.”

  All she could see was her one means of escape, held in his hands.

  “Please give it back. Give me my interface.”

  “No. Not you! I don’t want to touch you.”

  “Of course not,” Kalypso heard herself rail at him. “You want to touch her. Always her her her. I’m alive. Please—” What was she saying? She was not jealous of Sieng. She was not that fucked-up, not yet anyway. She steadied herself.

  He clutched her interface in one hand. She thought for a second he would break it, and heard herself gasping as if he held one of her living bones. He put it in his suit, out of her reach. He was back inside himself. Marcsson could retreat beneath the folds of his own madness; but she was stuck being sane.

  “It hurts,” she said. “You’re hurting me. Azamat. I need the interface. I need it.”

  “I can’t count the vortices,” he said. “It makes me dizzy. Where was I? Ah, restraining you. Lie down flat.”

  He moved some of the trays out of the way to make room for her. He said, “I have to do this because the pain will cause you to thrash. It’s possible you’ll knock yourself out if you hit your head against this casing. I’m sorry about that. But I can’t have a sedative in your bloodstream. It could compromise the result.”

  “Don’t tie me. Please don’t. I’ll hold still. I swear.”

  She was disgusted with herself that she should still be capable of tears and pleading, but there it was. You never knew how low the lowest common denominator of yourself was going to be until you got down there.

  He gave her a look that was very close to kindness.

  “Well. . .” he said.

  “Please, Azamat. I’ll be good. I’ll be quiet.”

  “I guess we can try it that way,” he said awkwa
rdly. “Turn over, then. We’ll start with your back today.”

  Kalypso wished hard for unconsciousness but didn’t get it. Not enough of it, anyway. For a time that felt like years, she was feverish, but Marcsson kept giving her water and talking to her, and this made her stay awake.

  And surely the fever warped her judgment, for she thought she heard emotion in his words; thought she heard lucidity. She didn’t want to listen to his discursive speeches but couldn’t really help it. His tone; was cadenced and oddly soothing.

  “Paradox can only exist inside a person. Math can only exist inside a person. Poetry. Sadness. One person no matter how irritating, boring, dumb or sick embodies it all. That’s why you can never see or touch people. They’re too big to see, no matter what the distance. Your sensing of them will always be indirect, compiled in your mind according to your mind’s shape.

  “All your life people pass through you. Some you don’t notice. Some leave things behind. Some, collectively, erode you so slowly you don’t realize it’s happening. Some take souvenirs. Like collecting rocks from a nature reserve — no one thinks the missing item will matter. But one day you look up and you see that so many pieces of you have been picked up and carted off in all directions. You now live in other people whose movements you can’t track, much less experience.

  “It’s possible to go your whole life without knowing this is happening. Instead just feeling a vague lack, a general whiff of entropy or loss. But if one person comes and picks up your favorite rock and walks away with it, suddenly you feel it. An invisible connection binds you to them. If you’re really unlucky you’ve got something of theirs in the bargain, but you couldn’t give it back even if you wanted to, nor can they, not even if your rock is kryptonite to them, destined to destroy.

  “This is how understanding, aka love, takes you apart.”

  He fell silent. She heard herself let out a sigh. Things that were said, things that happened—she had lost all ability to respond to them. She could only receive. The need to escape pain and disorder rose, stayed steady for a while, and then rose some more; and just when she thought it had gone as high as it could, it went a little higher. But it never diminished.