The coffee was still warm. I wrapped my fingers around it, warming them. The base complex was drafty. “Newer?” I asked, although I was piecing it together. Salvage, some sort of information salvage operation for the Center. “What about the people?”
He pursed his lips. “Dead. All of them. Dead in their beds, most of them. Indoors, anyway.”
“From what?” I asked softly. His eyes were slits. He didn’t want to talk about this.
“Ash, dust, bad air.” He looked up at me. “Maybe something worse, something in the air, in the dust.” His eyes held mine. “Like a poison, or an agent of some kind. A lot of the people, they died painfully. You could tell when you found them. Mummies. Dried out. But you could tell sometimes they had died suffering. It was…difficult.” He looked away. “We came later, much later, maybe decades or a hundred years. The dust was like drifts of snow, piled up everywhere.”
“What happened there?” I said. “Did you find out?”
“Reboot, we think. The theory was that the planet’s gods had restarted things. Reboot the ecosystem, start over. There was a volcano, or many volcanoes somewhere, spewing megatons of dust into the air. There were earthquakes all the time. The air would rain dust, tiny dust, so bad for you to breathe. The containers kept most of it out; we were obsessive about sealing them up, but it got in anyway. Got everywhere. No matter what you did, you breathed some of it. It was a hard gig. Nice to rotate back to the Center once every few weeks for a few days. No duties, just relax and, um, recuperate.”
“Did you ever learn what happened?” I asked. “I assume that is what you were looking for in the recent news.”
“I didn’t speak English then, nobody on the team did. Just how to read dates—they taught us that.”
“What year was it?” I asked, curious whether the Center’s reach was through time and through…dimensions? Slices of the multiverse?
“Nineteen sixty-eight,” he said. “There was a war in Asia, like tanks and planes. It seems like the big war, the Second World War here, just kept going there. Something like that, but skewed. China, not Japan, as the main Asian side, I think. Same flag as here. It was hard to tell from magazine pictures. I did see a lot of them. Not much else to do when not out in the field. Feed the scanners and sort through the incoming take. It was a shitty job. I saw faces, though, that looked familiar to me, later, when I came here. That was weird.”
He looked at me and took a sip of his coffee.
“Faces?” I asked.
“From the magazines and newspapers. Politicians, like Kennedy and Nixon. But older, I think. Not dead there, that close to the end. Celebrities. Movie stars, stuff like that. Raquel Welch, I remember her.” He smiled. “I remembered her when I came here. She stood out. Oh, and Reagan. I remember him.”
Reagan. I shook my head, picturing Smoke with a dusty, faded copy of Playboy with Raquel Welch on the cover, in a cobbled together bunker. “Maybe the War went bad, went nuclear? How long were you there?”
“A few years. No nukes we could find. But those could have been secret or just happened quickly. That’s the problem with nukes, right? Easy to make mistakes.” He looked down. “There was a bad earthquake. It wrecked the bunker. We were there for a few hours in the dark, waiting for someone’s scheduled rotation to bring the Center news. They pulled us out after that. Just…poof.”
I looked at him. “Find what they were looking for?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe. Your guess is as good as mine.” He glanced at the clock. “We should be almost ready to go.”
“What about space travel, astronomy, stuff like that?” I asked, wanting to keep him talking, steer him away from this painful memory. “Is the Center interested in those? Aliens?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. They taught us it is pointless. The distances and time scales are too large. Same thing, actually.”
I nodded. Time meant distance, when you got right down to it. “The Fermi paradox, though, have you heard of it?”
He smiled. “Where is everybody?” He nodded. “They’re out there, but they’re underneath your feet, down where it is safe and warm and wet. Maybe all around you. Like at the Center. Even in the dust.”
“What about Worlds where the aliens actually arrived? Like other organic life?” I asked. He stood up, looking down at me, frowning.
“We don’t go to those Worlds. At least, I didn’t hear of any.” He reached for his walkie-talkie. “Let’s go.”
“Wait, this is interesting. And maybe relevant,” I said, holding up my hand. “The theory here, that I studied, is that aliens could colonize the whole galaxy in a few million years, but that they don’t seem to have bothered. That’s the Fermi question. Why not? Why haven’t they?”
He looked at me. “You think I know?” He was smiling. He pursed his lips again, a peculiar gesture, something you see French or Germans do sometimes. Incredulity. “Our theory, the Center’s theory, that they taught us, anyway, is that the time scales were too big for that to work, and the First spread their gods the same way that life spread. Panspermia. We talked about this. No aliens, sorry.”
“But that is just here, if you follow me. Worlds congruent with the Center. Nearby. If there are aliens, other life forms, intelligent ones, presumably they too have gods in their universe.” I looked at him. “Wouldn’t they also have this tension on every World, the same as the Center has? This conflict with the gods?”
He looked thoughtful. “Maybe. Hard to argue with the gods.” He left the room. I looked at his receding back, and wondered.
Hard to argue with the gods? Is it? Is it, really?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Smoke waited outside the library in Santa Cruz. He was increasingly nervous. He stood out like a sore thumb, a turd in a punchbowl. Slight, bald, black pants and tactical boots, white T-shirt. He had bought a sweatshirt, a hoodie as the kids said these days, from a skateboard shop sidewalk sale. It was pale pink, with the words Santa Cruz emblazoned on it in a red circle. He leaned against the wall. If the authorities were looking for him, they would spot him. He tried not to look nervous.
It had been tense getting here. He had decided not to risk an Uber, and worried that his phone was being tracked. He had kept it though, in case Silver missed him at the rendezvous. This, in his experience with the plodding federal government, would take a day or two. They could be quick, though, if motivated and prepared. He was probably safe there, but he worried. He had been worming his way through the intelligence community in some capacity for decades, but it was a maze of loosely connected bureaus and offices. Paranoia ran deep, he thought, remembering a popular song from his first few years here. Someone could have caught his trail. They could watch, to see what he was up to. If they had noticed him, they would want to watch him rather than pick him up. Absent an imminent threat, they would watch and wait. It worried him.
So he had taken a cab, paying cash, and walked the final few blocks, buying his sweatshirt along the way. He checked his phone for the time. He was late. He looked up as a blue van pulled into the parking lot, SULLIVAN CLEANERS stenciled in foot-high letters on the side. No rear windows. Gold was driving. The van pulled to the curb; the sliding door slid back. He walked over.
“Get in,” Silver’s voice said from the back. She sat on a long bench seat, cradling a large black pistol in her hand. Not pointing it, but she folded her right hand around the stock. She would shoot him, should he try anything, he was certain. She motioned to the space in front of him. The van was empty, otherwise, a bare metal space with bins bolted to the floor for supplies between the front and back, he assumed. “Sit down on the floor, please. Up against the boxes, there, yes, good enough. Have a seat.”
He did so, and she leaned forward and slid the door shut. Gold engaged the controls and pulled away. Smoke got the sense she had been watching from the front to back Silver up should she need help. He swallowed. Well-coordinated, they were a highly functional team. A long relationship,
Gold had said. Hundreds of years, they had known each other, parting only rarely. She had revealed little more than that. He had pried, but she had declined to speak more of it. Gold did not reveal what she did not want to reveal.
“So, here we are,” Silver said, looking at him with her almond eyes wide in the dim light of the van. “Try anything, and we will kill you.” She smiled. “But you won’t, I think. Am I right?”
“Furthest thing from my mind,” he said, hands on his knees. She meant it, he realized. And so did he. He needed them. The van picked up speed, pulling onto a main road. He glanced out, they were leaving downtown, the ocean on the right. South on the PCH. He looked back at her. “Stolen van?”
She shook her head. “Borrowed,” was all she said. She looked at him. “Weapons in the backpack?” She pointed with her chin.
He nodded. “A pistol, like yours. That’s all. Not loaded.”
“Slide it over to me. Slowly, please.” The gun did not waver, never pointing at him, but never quite pointing away. He did as she ordered. She hooked her right foot over it, shoving it under the seat beneath her. She looked at him. “Nice sweatshirt.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Pink isn’t really my color, but I needed to fit in.”
She nodded. “So, let’s talk. You say the Center wants to meet us. How were you to effect this? What is the mechanism?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. I’m here, then I am there. Truthfully, that’s all I know.”
She shook her head. “No, I mean, by what mechanism were you to bring us with you? Were we to hold hands or…” She shrugged. “What?”
He nodded. “That would not work, I think. At least, they never told me they could do that. They have marked me with something inside me which they can look for, however they do this.” His lips set in a line. “They gave me pills for each of you.”
“Pills.” She looked at him, amused. “Like, in The Matrix? Alice in Wonderland?”
“It’s what they gave me.” He spread his hands slightly, not taking them off his knees. “I told them they were overly optimistic that it would work.” Hands back on knees. “They were insistent.”
“You have these pills?” she asked. “With you, now?”
He nodded. “You need to ingest them. They mark you, your cells for the Center to see, and Recall you.”
“No fucking way,” Gold said from the front seat.
“You were right,” Silver said. “They were optimistic.”
“Then I have about fourteen hours left here,” he said, dejected. “They will Recall me at six AM.”
“And you think they will murder you?” Silver asked. “Or put you to some other use?”
“Yes.” He said it flatly. “They will not be pleased I have failed this badly.”
“Perhaps we can speak with them through you,” she said. She glanced up at Gold, and he got the sense their eyes met, in the rearview mirror, though he couldn’t see. No objection from Gold. “We can negotiate with the Center using you as a messenger.”
“Can they send others?” Gold asked. “Like, an army of ninjas or something?”
He thought about it. “It is difficult to send people through. They send probes, mostly. I know this. Drones. They send these to Worlds they are investigating. People are much harder.”
“They could send a bomb, probably, if they can send a drone,” Gold offered.
“I am not sure they could,” Smoke replied. “The drones are…not mechanical, as I understand it. Energies of some sort. Probes more than drones.”
“UFOs?” Silver asked. “Flying saucers?”
“I thought of this when I first came here.” He nodded. “But I asked, and they denied it. Perhaps someone has seen their drones and concocted a story.” He shrugged. “It happens.”
“Or there are others,” Gold said. “That could happen too.”
“Something is happening here,” Smoke said. “Or I wouldn’t be here.”
“We are digressing,” Silver said. “If there are others, or their probes are the source of UFO stories, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do about it now.” She looked at him. “And now, if I am correct, is what we’re concerned about. Yes?”
“Yes,” he said. “We have until tomorrow morning.”
“So,” she said, “we’ll talk with them.”
Gold said something in a flowing, sibilant language. Silver nodded to her, but did not respond. She looked at Smoke. “She is worried you will try to double-cross us again.”
He looked stricken. “I did not,” he said, “in the first place, double-cross you. I just needed to convince you to take the pills.” Or to get them into their food somehow, he didn’t say, though that had been one option. “You scared me, and I panicked.”
Silver looked at him searchingly. Then she sighed. “Yes. You did. Don’t do this again. We’ll talk with your Center. We will write questions.”
In the front seat, Gold laughed softly. She began to sing, to herself, in a language Smoke did not know. He looked at Silver, and she shrugged. He could see the ocean through the windscreen, slate blue and troubled under an eggshell-blue sky. On the horizon there were clouds. He was afraid, he realized, of what might happen here, to this place, to him. None of it felt promising.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I slept fitfully, and took my watches with Gold on four-hour shifts, which didn’t help. I like my sleep, though I can go without it for a few days if I need to. It makes me cranky, though. My dreams were brief, but uninstructive. A murky expanse of swirling cloud, gray and brown and green. Uncertainty. I tried not to think of it, sitting there in the dark, watching Smoke sleep on the sofa.
We were in a small cabin near a coastal town. Cambria, I think. Gold had rented it with cash by herself, claiming to be an artist who needed solitude with a view of the ocean. It was a nice place, if a little rustic. Once, it probably had housed artists, I thought, back when I had come back to California from Southeast Asia. Or hippies. They had been throughout these hills back in those days. A simpler time, maybe? I doubted it. Every era has its complexities. Was this one any different?
It was, I decided. Complexity was increasing. Information density. This was what powered cognition, perhaps. Start with writing, or back even to language, basic visual arts. Cave paintings, scratches on bone. A straight line, given enough time, to racks of servers in an underground data center. Was this the natural progression of intelligence? From biology to something else? From us to, things? Things like the Center? I thought it might be so.
We had brought Smoke back here. Jessica and Rodriguez were here, waiting. I spent some time with Jessica, explaining the situation. She was frightened, taking notes in a notebook she found in a closet full of board games. Reporters. But she wasn’t flinching, wasn’t ready to run. She wanted the story, I think. Rodriguez, left with Gold. I think she terrified him, but there was also a hint of seduction there. She was crafty that way, teasing him like that. We needed him to stick with us for at least another few days.
The cabin was windswept, nestled among a stand of pines, on a ridge overlooking the sea. It was a lovely place. We had sat on the wide deck after dinner (Mexican brought by Gold from a place in town, with icy Corona beers) and talked.
“Jessica, can you write these questions down for us?” I asked, since she had her new notebook with the green cover and Hello Kitty sticker. I wanted her to have them. “Make two copies, please. One for you to keep.”
“Okay,” she said, picking up her pen. I looked at Gold, who was sitting next to Rodriguez. She handed him a beer. Their hips were touching. I suppressed a smirk. He did not understand what he was dealing with. Gold had seduced how many men? Tens of thousands? She was voracious and easily bored. It was one of her skills, manipulating people. Women, too, I knew. She was keeping him interested.
“First question, ready?” She nodded. “What does the Center want us to do?” She wrote it out twice.
“Next,” I said. “Do not harm or
alter Smoke. His fidelity is important to us, and a prerequisite to negotiations with us.” She repeated the process.
“Maybe make that first?” Gold suggested. “With a nice preamble about how excited we are to meet them, etc.?” She took a long pull on her beer, wrapping her lips around the spout, turning slightly towards Rodriguez. “I was a queen, you know. Negotiations were one of my special skills.” She wiggled a little as she said it.
Slut, I thought. “Good idea, but Smoke can deliver this message verbally, correct?”
“Yes,” he said, “that is no problem, just the messages you want passed verbatim.”
“Do they probe your mind?” I asked, wondering if we could dispense with this written note exchange.
“You mean, can they read my mind?” He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Though they seem to know what I am thinking, but I don’t think they can read it.”
“A super-intelligent machine would read your body like a book,” Rodriguez offered. “It wouldn’t need to read your mind. It would just look at you and know what you were thinking, basically. Hard to lie to. Heartbeat, stress level in voice. Lots of context, scoring, and time for analysis. It would know.”
“Yes,” Smoke said. “It’s like that. They just seem to know what I will say. I never surprise them.”
“Can you bring things back?” Gold asked, nodding at Jessica. “The paper?”
“Yes,” Smoke said. “If it is close to my skin, I can bring it. Within inches.”
Gold looked at me. “They can send a bomb back with him if they want to,” she said, in Nahuatl. “A suicide vest.” Ritual-burning-murder robe was the literal translation.
“We will be careful,” I answered, in that same language.
Jessica looked at us. “What language is that?”
“Aztec,” I said, “basically.”
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