The Smudger Read online

  “Back at the safehouse… somewhere...”

  “You’re coming with me. It’s an offence to transport an unregistered carrier into, or out of, city limits. You know that.” He eyed me closely. “What’s a trader doing with a carrier anyway?”

  “She was a birthday present,” I said, with more venom than I’d intended.

  He slammed me against a building before I even realised he was moving. My head scraped against the wall as his arm pressed across the back of my shoulders. With his other hand, he twisted my arm behind my back. My knees bent in reflex, and I found myself kneeling on the wet ground.

  My hands were cuffed and he hauled me back to my feet.

  “We didn’t have to do this the hard way,” he hissed into my ear.

  “And miss out on this intimate moment?”

  “Do I need to remind you that I’m armed?” He didn’t. I wasn’t going to forget that. But the anger just kept pouring out of me uncontrollably.

  “You wouldn’t care about missing papers if I was a merchant. If I didn’t have scars you wouldn’t have even asked.”

  “Your kind are in the colonies for a reason. Rats belong out there, scrubbing an existence in the slums. They do not belong in the city, harassing law-abiding citizens. If I had my way you’d all be strung up by the necks.”

  I clamped my mouth closed.

  “I could do it right now and no one would even care. No one would ever ask about you. I’d be hailed a hero if anyone found out. Why do you suppose the authorities let the rogues run free?” He shoved me towards the curb. “Here’s our ride.”

  An auto car, branded up in police colours, stopped next to us. The warden pulled the back door open and pushed me inside. Malia came next, and finally, he clambered in with us. He pulled the door shut, and the car pulled away, the route to the police station already pre-set.

  32

  KIOTO

  The holding cell was already busy; people of all sorts forced together in one horrible situation. All eyes were on me as I was uncuffed and pushed inside, Malia behind me.

  “How long are we going to be in here?” I asked the warden.

  He shrugged. “Until they call you for questioning.”

  “How long is that likely to be?”

  He smiled. “I’d make myself comfortable, if I were you.”

  I wasn’t the only trader here. Two more were huddled in one corner: safety in numbers. But Malia’s twitching had got worse on the journey here, so we sat as far from anyone else as we could, and turned our backs to them. I took Malia’s hands in mine.

  “You need to try and fight the shivers,” I said. “You need to keep quiet.”

  She nodded, the strain already evident on her face.

  I looked around. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know what else to do. Maybe if I had some sleeping pills...”

  “It’s alright. I’ll do my best.”

  “Hopefully we’ll get called soon.”

  Malia looked at me, her eyes wide. “What will happen to me? Because you have no papers.”

  “The Arukumbi aren’t all carriers. A lot of your people still live free lives—”

  “Banished to the marshes in the north,” Malia cut in.

  “If you’re not a slave, you don’t need any documents.”

  “Yes I do. Arukumbi need to carry ID documents with them at all times. Your freedom is very different to mine. Besides, as soon as they realise I have the shivers—”

  “Hopefully we’ll be out of here before they do.”

  Malia grunted as she twitched again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “We really need to get out of here soon.”

  “What are we going to do about finding your sister?” She swallowed hard. “Find her!” she called out.

  I didn’t need to look up to know that everyone was staring.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The memories kind of hook up with things I’m thinking or experiencing.”

  “I know, I know. It’s not your fault. I think we need to find out if this name and the address attached to them is true. Or if, maybe, it used to be true, but isn’t anymore. It’s been ten years since Omori was taken.”

  “You’ll never find her,” Malia said. She shook her head. “Sorry, that wasn’t me either.”

  I nodded and patted her hand. “Someone in this city must know Omori. She must have gone to school, she must have friends. They can’t keep her locked up.”

  “The thing is, are we going to be able to access the right people?”

  “We’ll just start at the exchange. Maybe her family used a trader once. It’s a bloody long shot, but it’s all I’ve got right now. I guess maybe government records… But the chances of me accessing them are slim.”

  “You’ll never find her,” Malia repeated, louder this time. “If only Tian were still with us.”

  “Yeah.” I looked down at the floor.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. You two got pretty close, despite… you know.”

  “Being mortal enemies? Yeah, yeah we did.”

  “Have you ever heard from him again? After that one time?”

  “No. I’ve had no response to my messages, and every time I try to call him it cuts straight off.”

  “He’s dead!” Malia shouted. “You killed him!”

  “What’s going on?” A warden was at the door, his hand hovering over his stun gun.

  “She’s just scared,” I said. “She gets nightmares.”

  “When she’s awake?”

  “She’s just scared,” I said again.

  “Keep the noise down.”

  “I’m sorry,” Malia whispered.

  “It’s ok.”

  “He’s coming for you!” The words came out in a scream along with a convulsion that threw her to the floor.

  The warden was back at the door, his stun gun in his hand.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Can we just get questioned? You can see that being here is freaking her out.”

  He squinted in at us. “That’s more than her being scared. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing, really, I’ll keep her quiet.”

  “Maybe I can keep her quiet.” He passed his gun from one hand to the other, and then back again.

  I held a hand up to him. “No, really, she’s fine, I’ll keep her quiet.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Malia said again. “The stress is making it worse.”

  I dropped my head into my hands and thought for a moment, alone, in the darkness. I looked up. “I’m going to have to do an extraction.”

  “You can’t. You know what will happen. If it causes a rush, you’ll die.”

  “If that warden decides to put goodness knows how many volts into you, you could die. I don’t have a choice.”

  “But I do. I won’t let you do this. I was taught how to block a merchant from my head.”

  “Merchants are very different to traders. Their training is completely different. Their methods, their skill, everything. I’m doing this, and if you try to stop me, it just makes the chance of a rush even greater.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said hesitantly.

  I grinned. “Want to take the risk?”

  “Screw you,” Malia whispered. “What choice do I have?”

  “I’ll be really gentle. I need you to sit still and quiet. Don’t try to fight it at all. Just let me in. We need to do this quickly.”

  I placed my hand on her forehead and closed my eyes. I tested my way into her head, as if I were walking over a frozen lake. I pushed gently, felt my way around. And then I began to pull, lightly, like unthreading a knitted jumper. It came easily, too easily, and I had to slow down again, fight my sense of urgency. I continued to unravel the memories, taking more and more.

  I could feel them coming faster, like a dam about to burst. My head was getting heavier, my thoughts becoming foggy. I pulled my hand away, breaking the connection.

  33

  SENETSU


  I felt the pillow slowly lift from the back of my head. I stayed lying on my stomach, my face pressed into the bed.

  “What are you doing under there?” asked Saji.

  “Trying to find silence,” I mumbled.

  The bed sunk as he sat next to me and placed his hand on my back.

  “Omori’s playing outside.”

  “Oblivious.” I rolled over and looked up at him. “She’s so strangely happy here, and I can’t stop asking myself if she’s happy because this is a nice place, or if she’s just happy because of the extraction and she doesn’t know any different. Which means, are we unhappy just because we remember Okaporo, and Kioto, and...” My voice gave out and I wiped a tear from my cheek. “I miss her so much, I don’t know how much longer...”

  He pulled me up into his arms, wrapping them around me and squeezing me tight.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of him; the comforting smell of earth, and animals, and hard work. My heart ached in my chest, the pain swimming through my body.

  “I know, I know,” he said soothingly.

  “I need to get her back,” I said. “I can’t be without her anymore.”

  “We will. We’ll go and get her. We’ll take Omori and leave Kumonayo far behind us.”

  “Thank you, thank you. I can’t take this anymore.” I pulled back from him. “The whispering. The constant whispering. It says Kioto’s name over and over. It talks about Okaporo. Some days I swear I can hear their screams in it.”

  Saji nodded. “I hear it too.”

  “I asked Tokai about it. And she was so flippant. Told me it was nothing but the wind in the long grass. That the Arukumbi used to call this whole area The Whispers. She said that they believed the whispers were the voices of their ancestors. They’d sit and listen to them for hours, trying to find truths in the sound. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine how crazy that would make you? She said we’re not so superstitious, so sentimental to believe such things. That it’s nothing but the wind, and we hear in it whatever we want to hear. But I see it, I see it in everyone’s eyes. They all know it’s far more than that.”

  34

  KIOTO

  Slowly, I opened my eyes. The light in the cell was painfully bright. I screwed my eyes shut again, but the pain was already in, behind my eyelids. I pressed my hand to my head.

  “Are you alright?” Malia asked. I could feel her hands on me, but it felt disconnected, distant.

  “The throw,” was all I managed to say.

  And then there were hands everywhere, all over me, clasping my arms, pulling me to my feet. I heard Malia say something, but I didn’t catch what it was. And then I was walking, or stumbling at least, and there was light and pain and black spots in my vision. And then there was a chair, and a table, and a voice.

  I stared at my hands in my lap, my eyes averted from the lights above me. I stared, and frowned, and tried to keep them in focus.

  And then there were questions, and they kept coming. I thought I might be answering, but I had little knowledge of what I was saying. I only hoped that it wasn’t the truth.

  “Where’s Malia?” I asked.

  “What?” the voice asked in reply.

  “Where’s Malia?”

  “The carrier?”

  “She’s not a carrier. She’s Arukumbi, but she’s not a slave. I’m a trader. We don’t have slaves.”

  “Yes, we thought that was a little curious too. And you don’t have any papers for her.”

  “She’s not a—”

  A hand was slammed down on the table, and the sound hit me as if that warden had used their stun gun. My brain spun, my vision went dark, and I swallowed back a throat full of hot vomit.

  “You’ve already told me she’s a smudger. I just want to know where you got her.”

  Damn. “She used to be. I bought her, and I freed her. I meant that she used to be a smudger.”

  “You know that the process doesn’t work like that. Her freedom needs to be processed by the courts. She needs to be assessed as fit and healthy. We can’t have carriers roaming all over the country unchecked.”

  “Why are you keeping us?”

  “I simply want to know what you were doing outside that block for three days.”

  “I was looking for someone.”

  “Your sister.”

  Again. Damn. “I really don’t feel well.”

  “We’re not playing that one. What are you doing in Kumonayo, Kioto? You’re a hell of a long way from home.”

  “I have no home.”

  “A trader without roots? I find that hard to believe.”

  “My roots were burnt,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  I sighed. “I’m from Okaporo.”

  Even through my pounding head, I could hear the intake of breath. It was always the same reaction. People liked to give themselves a moment to consider what to say next.

  “And where have you been since then?”

  I sighed again. “Kagosaka until I was 16. And then, just wherever my feet took me.”

  “And where did you come across this smudger?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Really.” It was an accusation rather than a question.

  “I’ve been all over the place. Everywhere kind of looks the same after a while.”

  “Then let’s try why you have her.”

  “She seemed nice.”

  “She seemed nice?”

  “Yes. I wanted to free her. Have you never done anything nice for someone?”

  I risked raising my eyes a little. I could see his hands on the table between us. His neat, clean nails. His crisp, white shirt cuffs, the crease ironed into the sleeve. His expensive watch. His wedding ring. All lit in that sickly green glow that showed he had a screen open, floating somewhere between his head and mine. Recording me.

  “So you picked up this smudger, but you don’t remember where, simply because you wanted to do something nice? How much did you pay for her? Do you remember that?”

  “I don’t, no.”

  “For a trader, someone who deals in memories, who probes through other people’s heads, your memory isn’t very impressive, is it?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps it’s all that childhood trauma.”

  “I can keep you here for a very long time, if that’s how you want to play it.”

  “I’d like that, the hospitality has been top notch.”

  “I’m glad you find it all so amusing. You know that I can hold traders for five days before I need to petition for longer. And do you know how many of those petitions are denied?”

  “I can’t think.”

  “None. Not one. Ever. And, as for your carrier, I can detain her indefinitely. I can return her to her former owner if I wish. Or I could have her destroyed.”

  My eyes flicked up to rest on his stubbled chin. They ached at the strain, and I dropped my gaze back to my lap.

  “You didn’t know that, did you? She’s property, nothing more. Until her freedom is granted by the courts, not by you, she’s no more alive to me than this table. And I can have her destroyed just like that.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Maybe that helps your memory a little?” he suggested.

  The door opened, the thud of it rattling through my skull, and another body entered the room. There was whispering, shuffling, scraping, more footsteps.

  “Excuse me.”

  And then I was alone. And I was alone for a long time. Enough time for the symptoms of the throw to recede to a dull ache in my sinuses, and a slight discomfort in my stomach. Enough time for me to run through every moment of the conversation, to analyse every word, every gesture, every silence. Enough time for my confidence to fall apart, and for me to imagine awful, horrible outcomes. All of the worst case scenarios, and scenarios even worse than those.

  I shook my head to try and clear it, the unfamiliar memories jingling around like bells. I started pushing
them backwards, filing them away somewhere they wouldn’t bother me too much. But one of them snagged, it didn’t want to move. This memory was something different. It clung on because it recognised my own memories. It recognised me. It was one of Omori’s.

  I cradled it like I’d once cradled my new born baby sister; so scared of dropping it if I didn’t hold on tightly enough, but equally scared of hurting it if I hung on too tightly. It was so precious, and I vowed to protect it with my life, just as I had when Omori was born.

  And then the door opened again. I looked up.

  “You’re free to go.”

  35

  SENETSU

  As I walked towards the community hut, I looked over at the merchant’s wagon parked outside Tokai’s house. It wasn’t the first one I’d seen in the colony.

  The community hut was almost empty. It was late, and most people had already eaten. They were all back at home, tucking their children into bed.

  Saji was tucking Omori in tonight. I couldn’t stand her bright eyes and broad smile anymore. I was swollen with guilt for feeling that way, but every time she told me how happy she was, it was as if she’d slapped me around the face. I could only see it as being smug, triumphant, conceited. It was wrong, it was disgusting that I felt that way. I hated her. No. I hated myself. I hated everything that had happened, and everything that we’d done.

  I served myself a plate of food, dried out under the hot lights. I sat apart from anyone else. I knew I was meant to be trying to integrate, to make this place, at least, some kind of home, but I couldn’t look anyone in the eye tonight.

  My solitude was quickly interrupted, however, as Tokai settled herself across the table from me.

  “It’s nice to see you in here, even if you are sitting alone,” she said.

  I nodded, and shovelled a large forkful of potato into my mouth.

  “How are you all settling in?”

  I cocked my head from side to side, weighing up my answer. “Omori’s very happy here, she’s always telling me so.”

  “That can’t be easy.”

  “It’s not. I mean, I’m glad she’s happy, we only ever want to see our children happy, don’t we?”