He had taken his phone out of his pocket without realizing it. There were emails waiting from his ostensible superiors in the US government. They might be troublesome should he remain here, in this World. They would surely miss, in a day or two, one of their ultra black operatives and a team of the best special forces. But that was a secondary problem. He had to convince the Center he had succeeded. He had to succeed, period. He had to beg. He wiped his mouth, frowning at the phone.
He dialed Gold.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gold, being Gold, had prepared to run at a moment’s notice. It didn’t surprise me, as obsessive organization was one of her tics. She had a fat stack of cash, clothes, and an assortment of weapons and other gear packed into a set of small bags stuffed into a large black duffel. She had stowed it in the garage and had the sense to grab it before she ran. I approved and told her so. She smirked, but said nothing nasty. There might be hope for us yet.
We had abandoned the SUV in a residential neighborhood, calling an Uber from Jessica’s phone, taking it to a run-down main street in a nearby coastal town. I led us into Tasty Creme Donuts, realizing with a flash I had been here before, decades earlier. With my husband, after Vietnam. We had sat in the corner booth. I nodded to the woman behind the counter and asked if we could take it. She nodded, and we sat down.
“Bear claws?” I asked, brightly. Then, quieter. “Play along, please.”
“Starving,” Gold said, scanning the menu. “Eggs and bacon. Oooh, they have huevos rancheros. My favorite.”
I looked at Jessica and Rodriguez. We had spoken little yet, since she had told us what she suspected as we fled.
“Look, if you two want to walk out, go for it. We’re not especially healthy to be around,” I said. I smiled at Jessica. “We’ve put you two through a lot.”
“Are you two going to…do something?” Rodriguez asked. He looked tired. Wrung out. “I mean, about NF?” He toyed with the laminated menu, bending it. The waitress came by. I ordered coffee all around.
Gold glanced up to inspect the waitress. “She’s from Guatemala, or maybe Belize.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. Jessica made a noise.
“Racist much?” she asked, darkly.
“She likes to classify people,” I said, placating. “Natives. It’s an old habit.”
“From around Xunantunich,” Gold said, stirring her coffee with a finger. I could hear her relishing the place name on her tongue. She looked up at Jessica, shrugged, and looked away. “Near Guatemala.” She flicked the coffee off her finger.
“And yes,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “We will do something. Just not sure yet. What I am sure of—”
Jessica had reached across to grab Gold’s wrist. I went still, ready for anything for a long instant. Gold did not seem to notice; she was still staring out the window absently. I raised my hand in between them. “Jessica,” I said slowly, peeling her fingers off Gold’s wrist. “This is not wise.” Gold sighed and glanced at her, then at me.
“She’s angry,” Gold said. “I don’t blame her. I’m angry too.” She looked at Rodriguez. “We scare him. Guess what, amigo,” she said to him, flashing her best smile. “I’m scared of me too.”
“Look,” I said, and then waited for the waitress, and the attendant delays with ordering. I had the farmer’s omelet as it seemed loaded with protein. Gold had her huevos. Rodriguez had a vegetarian omelet. I had to cajole Jessica into getting something. “Two eggs for her, scrambled, with toast and fruit on the side please.” I smiled at the waitress. “Long day ahead.”
“Oh, what are you guys up to?” She was young, maybe twenty, pretty, and round in the way of young Mexican girls with healthy appetites. Her neck had a tattoo which I found unfortunate, since neck tattoos to me spoke of a rough social group. I hoped she was living a good life.
“We’re scouts for a film crew. Headed down to Carmel.” I patted Gold’s duffel, on the banquette behind us. She smiled, and I smiled back. She had straight, even teeth.
“Guatemala, some Spanish,” Gold said, sipping her coffee. “It’s in the nose. They all had that nose.”
“She spent a lot of time down there,” I said. “In that part of the world.”
Jessica looked at her, thinking. She and Gold eyed each other.
“You mean, she spent, a lot of time down there?” Jessica said, spinning her coffee mug. She glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”
Gold held up her hand imperiously, elbow propped on the Formica table. There were comedy and tragedy masks in the patterned Formica, in the 1950s line art style, I noticed. “A long time, as you say. I know…people. These people, I am close with.”
“We are digressing,” I said to her in Nahuatl. “It doesn’t matter which of your piss smells sweeter.”
She looked at me. “Mine does. Maybe you like the taste of hers better?”
“Yours is a little bitter,” I said, locking eyes with her. “Now stop this bitching at her. She’s under my protection.”
“Protection,” she said, as if tasting the word for the first time. Then, a shrug. Acceptance. She smiled at Jessica.
“What language is that?” Rodriguez asked. Male bravado, inserting himself into the dispute to take control.
Gold looked at him, swiveling her head to focus her smile on him. “Your ancestors weep. I hear them,” she said, gesturing to her temple. “In my mind.”
He just looked at her, blinking in confusion. I noticed, if he didn’t, the little flip she did to her bangs, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Protection,” I said again, in that language, putting some snap into my voice. Cloak of my family’s house, the phrase meant. Or my master’s house. I wasn’t sure.
She raised her hands in surrender and looked at the window.
I had turned to Jessica to speak when Gold’s phone rang. I looked back at Gold.
She took the phone from her pocket and regarded it, frowning. She pushed it over to me. “Smoke,” she said.
“Answer it,” I said.
“I was Queen here, not you,” she said in high-caste Nahuatl, shoving the phone at me. It slid across the Formica. Comedy, tragedy staring up at me, both laughing. “You speak to him.”
I answered it. “Hello, Colonel Smith.”
A pause. “Silver,” he said. “How are you?”
“Doing well, thank you,” I said, standing so Gold could get out. “And you?” I pointed at the front door and the back. Check them both, this meant. She nodded.
“I was having coffee,” he said, “and I thought of you two.”
“Interesting,” I said. “We were doing much the same.”
“Great minds think alike,” he said. “You two are running, then?”
“What would we be running from?” I asked, all innocence. I leaned against the wall and looked out towards the street. Empty of obvious menace. Gold returned from the back of the cafe, shaking her head. No threats. “You saw what happened to your crew. Why should we be running?” We slid back into the booth.
He paused. “Yes,” he said, “that was…educational. But I felt threatened.”
“Funny thing, that,” I said. “So did we.”
“Yes, unfortunate. Can we agree that, for the moment, there is a truce between us?” A note of hope in his voice? It was hard to read, carrying the unfamiliar inflections of a non-native speaker.
“We can agree to this while we’re talking,” I said. Gold looked at me. I was certain she could hear his side of the conversation. “What shall we talk about?”
“The federal government will wake up to what happened at the house soon,” he said. “They will have questions.”
“Of course,” I said. “More for you, though, than us.”
“Granted,” he said. “But they will know enough about you two to be interested.”
He was right. There were the aircraft pilots, at the least, who could report on the two women they had transported.
And probably more personnel. There would be reports. Even, given enough time, forensic evidence from the house if the fire hadn’t destroyed it. DNA? I wondered what they would think of mine and Gold’s DNA. Paleolithic. A puzzle for them.
“So,” I said, “I agree, this could be a problem. I’m not concerned about it. They are slow and predictable.” Like your team of warriors, I thought.
“We share the same goals,” he said. “We are, or we should be, collaborating.”
“Oh?” I said, letting the smile climb into my voice. “Would this be so you could take another crack at us?”
“No,” he said. “That was a mistake. I apologize. The Center felt threatened. You were much more perceptive than I gave you credit for. I am sorry.”
I suppressed my anger. “Your warriors were people,” I said. “You wasted their lives.”
“I know that,” he said. Regret. “I should not have made this mistake, but I panicked.”
“What happened to you?” I said. “Back there. Where you went?”
“There was…debriefing. The Center had questions. Many questions. About you, and about Gold. What you were to each other. Your capabilities and motivations. They…devised a plan.” It came out in a rush. Confession.
“Explain this plan. Clearly, please.”
He sighed. “I only know my part, but I can guess at the rest,” he said. “They want to talk to you. To both of you.”
“How would that be possible?” I said. “You communicate with them how?”
“There is a transfer,” he said. “One moment I am here and the next, I am there.”
“Teleportation?” I asked.
“For lack of a better term, yes,” he said. “It is quick.”
I thought of the puff of air I had felt this morning in the house’s kitchen. Displaced air, but only a little, as if the surrounding air had not collapsed towards the center of the Smoke-shaped hole, before being displaced mere milliseconds later. Maybe less.
“That’s a neat trick,” I said. “Nothing like that here.”
“No,” he said. “But that’s how it works. I was to give you each something, talk to you about it. But I didn’t get the chance.”
There were implications here I didn’t like. Nor did I like how long this conversation had been going on. Sloppy. Phones were beacons. The feds were waking up, and they would track things, sifting their logs. We needed to move.
“We need to talk,” I said. “In person.”
“It has to be today, if we can,” he said. Fear. “I am due to report in the morning. They may Recall me if I have failed.”
“That,” I said, “is more your problem than mine. But yes, the sooner the better.” I looked at her and Gold nodded.
He named an address. “One hour,” I said, and hung up.
Our food arrived. The waitress smiled at us. She was pretty. I hoped for her sake she didn’t run with a bad crowd. It’s a tough world out there. Everybody has a story, though, and we can’t save everyone.
Gold was talking. “So, Mr. Rodriguez, your family is from Chihuahua? Am I right? I am right. Around there?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sometimes some event or happenstance will leap out at me which I did not recollect that I knew. Take Smoke, for example. He had known we were a danger to him, that we did not trust him. He claimed his Center had debriefed him. He was not wrong to mistrust us.
But even so, he came back to us. He had no options except success, he said. Perhaps if he had been from here, from Earth, I would have been able to read him better, to spot his lies, evasions, and nervousness. There was a movie I loved from the seventies, with Albert Finney as the famous detective Hercule Poirot. Wonderful performance, detecting the slightest duplicity when interviewing a star-studded cast of suspects. He won an award for that, did you know? Of course not, how could you? Well before your time, I suspect.
No detective, me. I missed it, as I couldn’t read his cues. Not reliably. Smoke is a good liar. Concealing his intentions from a hyper-intelligence for decades probably gave him a leg up on me. I didn’t suspect his final moves, but then, how could I? Anyway, I digress.
My thoughts of these last days are full of doubt, leading up to, what, the end? Whatever happened that time Gold and I led a man from another dimension on a harebrained dash to, what, steal a nascent AI? Could I have seen a sign in Smoke, in his posture, speech pattern, a nervous tic…some tell that he would betray us?
Betrayals are common enough. Gods know I have betrayed an endless array of men, women, children. Lovers, husbands, children and grandchildren. I can see many of their faces in a disapproving parade, if I but close my eyes. I am no saint, nor do I claim to be. I am, however, often the one who breaks up, rather than the one broken up with. The dumper, versus the dumpee. Self-protection strategy. This is not an excuse. I just kick myself I couldn’t spot him earlier.
I spoke with him, at length, the morning before we boarded the plane. Gold was off “provisioning” she said. Gather obsidian, she muttered to me, in Nahuatl. An old expression for preparing for ritual battle, or sacred battle. She was fluent in the Aztec tongue, but I was less so. Nuance can escape you, but her glance at me, the way she held my eyes, I knew what she meant. She didn’t trust Smoke.
I didn’t either but we were more or less stuck with him. So, I wanted to hear more. I was trying to get some answers from him about the Center, about whether it was some kind of mirror-earth, some close analogue to our universe. I wanted to know more about this. Men seem to like to talk about themselves, no matter where they are from, so I got him talking and kept him at it. I suspect he knew what I was doing, but we had been up late talking all night and by now were in a groove.
“The Center,” I said, drawing him out, “is it some kind of building?”
He shook his head. “No,” he gestured, fingers spread, “it is everywhere. All around us. They say that even the dust belongs in it. To it.”
“No big mainframe, then?” I asked.
“It really wasn’t like that. The center…campus, was large, but it sprawled. Like a university here, I would say. Dorms, dining halls, recreation.” He smiled. “Lots of pools, with those gentle pool-rivers snaking around through it, by the dining halls and dorms. Some of the dorms had grassy lawns for picnics and gatherings, bonfires and such.”
“Sounds like summer camp,” I said, smiling.
He glanced at me, questioning.
“It sounds nice, I meant. Like a resort.” I wondered at the purpose of such a place, just to keep these Guides, these people like Smoke, his comrades, colleagues, fellow missionaries, happy? “Is it romantic?”
He met my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. It sounds romantic. Lots of secluded, private places?” I said, putting just a flake of irony in my voice.
He noticed. “It wasn’t like that, but I suppose it happened.” He looked away.
“You blushing, Señor Smoke?” I said, teasing. “No need.” I smiled. “A change of subject. The AI. What does it want?”
“I think it wants to survive, same as you and I.” He nodded. “Existential stakes are how it views things. Survival.”
“You think it’s right?” I asked.
“I think there is something true in what it says.” He swallowed, looked around for his coffee cup, and peered dubiously into it. He sipped. “I’ve seen Worlds where something went…wrong. Environmental collapse, no fish in the oceans, no animals left. Just a few scattered humans scratching out a life in toxic swamps. One had air so thick, we needed masks. I was part of a team there.”
“What were you doing?” I asked, to keep him talking.
He paused for a long while, and I let him unlock those memories, which are sometimes like a box you need to open carefully and empty it to inventory its contents.
“They had been there for a while. Maybe years. Had a set of old cargo containers dragged together. They had cut the sides, sealed it all up inside. Like a spaceship, somewhe
re out there.” He gestured with his hand, broad and vague.
“There?” I nodded up, since we were still at least, I thought, several stories underground.
“Some place in the Midwest. Not sure where. All the writing was in English. Close enough to English here, I think. First time I had seen it, it was like here. But different. Seems more old-fashioned than here. Like from the fifties, maybe. Lots of pictures of men in suits and hats, women with headscarves. Scanned books, lots of books, magazines, whatever. With portable cameras, small ones. There was a reading machine, built from local parts. They devoted a whole section of the campsite to it.”
“What machines? That read?” I sat up a little.
“Book scanners, they had a dozen.” He made a flapping motion with his hands, rubbing them together. “Very fast. Every day somebody would pick up the storage units, like a hard drive, and bring it back to the Center.” He smiled. “Close to the skin, you can move small things. The machines were always breaking, so they mostly made new ones from the old, broken ones. It was a mess, but it was a big operation.”
“Knowledge mining?” I asked.
He waggled his head. “Yes, I think so. Something like that. We scrounged for books, anything printed, the more recent the better.”
“Scrounged?” I slid my coffee cup across the table. “Do you mind?”
He poured, his mouth set in a line. He set the thermos down gingerly. Everything Smoke did, he did carefully.
“We dug around in buildings, gathering books, anything printed. Magazines and newspapers left out in situ were the high priority. Recent stuff. Newer.” He looked at me to drive home the point.
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