[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I post new chapters about every two weeks, and the next chapter is planned for around November 24th.]

Previous: Chapter 13

The silence was oppressive.

Flicker’s hearing was quite acute. Her power and reaction time let her start damping the effect of loud noises while they were still in her outer ears, and she created her own shockwaves so often it had long ago become second nature. So she never suffered the gradual, subtle hearing deterioration most people did from loud music and environmental noise.

But there was no sound. No people besides Journeyman and her, no traffic, no running machinery, no birds, no insects, no running water. Not even any wind at the moment. The faint rustle of Journeyman’s trenchcoat seemed loud.

There wasn’t all that much to see, either–a large, shallow pothole in the dark. It was about twenty feet wide and maybe three deep. It was filled with a mixture of dead weeds, mud, and ice.

“There’s nothing here,” she said, after shining her flashlight around.

“Not now,” said Journeyman. "But a Siberian elm grew there, until a few years ago. The one I brought Sylvi to.“

They were near the outskirts of Pripyat, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Flicker was back in her costume, and she checked the radioactivity again–not life threatening, but enough to keep most people away. There were a few hotter spots at the bottom of the hole. Most of it was from cesium-137–the shorter lived isotopes had decayed, in the quarter-century since the disaster.

"What happened?” Flicker turned the flashlight off, and let her eyes start adjusting to the night again.

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t continue right away, and the silence was back.

“Do you want to go somewhere else to talk?” she asked after a while.

“We probably should. I had a lot to drink, and this place gets to me. It sure got to her. That was the problem.” He sighed. "But this was the last place I saw her, and I wanted you to see it, since I’ve been telling you the story.“

"Thank you for trusting me.”

“This part… isn’t so much about trust. Just about pain. And helplessness.”

“Which requires trust, to share.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

A little while later, after a quick trip to her decontamination shower, Flicker rejoined Journeyman at his home and workshop, a converted former farmhouse located in one of the more rugged areas of Pennsylvania. She sat beside him on the couch, legs curled underneath her body, holding a mug of hot chocolate.

He stared at his cup of tea. "My idea didn’t turn out to be nearly as good as I thought. People are scared of Chernobyl. And it had plenty of trees. But a lot of them weren’t very happy trees. And that matters, to a dryad. The Red Forest gave Sylvi nightmares.“

"The Red Forest?”

“The pine trees just downwind of the plant were all killed by the fallout radiation, but they didn’t decay–they just stood there, dried out and brownish-red. The people handling the post-disaster cleanup ended up bulldozing them all and burying them in trenches, because of fears of what would happen if they caught fire. It’s still the most radioactively contaminated area in the world, though most of it is underground now.

"And Sylvi could feel echoes from it–it was like a ghost forest to her, of trees that died horribly.”

“Oh no.”

“She was always tough, but she wasn’t… all that stable, even to start with. And losing her original tree was a big blow to her sanity. Dryads don’t usually survive that–they don’t usually want to survive that–which was why Sylvi never wanted to talk about it.

"Chernobyl was a good place to hide. But it wasn’t a good place to heal, especially for someone who already suffered from depression. She wasn’t happy with her new tree–in one of her more lucid moments, she really chewed me out for the arrogance of daring to pick a tree for her. I asked what I was supposed to have done, and she said I should have let her die.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. I did what I could to help her, but it wasn’t much. I arranged a satellite net connection, but she wasn’t interested anymore. She had always had important responsibilities, even if she didn’t always like them, and without anything to do she just started drifting away.”

Journeyman took a swallow of tea, then set his cup down. "I tried to talk to her about portal theory, and other worlds, because she was sick of Earth, and dryads supposedly have a natural ability to use trees as a kind of portal–but she didn’t stay interested for very long at a time. She kept losing patience and yelling at me to just go away. To live my own life, because she didn’t have one to share, anymore.

“I still brought her cigarettes. She’d light up, then curse at me for bringing memories back, when she wanted to forget.

"And then one day, a little over a year later, I ported in to visit–it had been longer than usual since my last one, almost a week–and she was gone. And so was her tree.”

“Did you try to find her?” asked Flicker.

Journeyman met her eyes, then looked down. "I looked around a bit, in the abandoned buildings nearby where she’d been living. Most of the stuff I’d brought her was still there, but there were some clothes and personal items missing. There wasn’t any note, and I started up her computer to check that–nothing.

“And then I noticed something about the hole where her tree had been–remember how wide and shallow it was?”

“Yeah.”

“That pretty much matched the area of the tree’s root system. The area you’d have to disturb if you wanted to move the whole thing without hurting it.”

“Oh. So–”

“Sylvi must have found a way to leave–and take her tree with her. Because who else would bother? So I don’t think it was suicide. Or foul play. And since there was no note… I don’t think she wanted me to find her, wherever she went. I remembered what she’d said, all those years ago, about not trying to rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued. So I finally listened.”

“And let–” His voice choked up and he turned away.

Flicker put her hand on his back.

“And let her go,” he whispered.

Flicker was finally learning how to listen, too. Just because someone had stopped talking for the moment didn’t necessarily mean they were done. Journeyman continued a little while later, as they shared some takeout stir fry.

“It was the thinking I did about the aftermath of the curse that made me decide to become a superhero. Because if I could do that, I absolutely needed to be thinking of consequences beyond the personal. Or I’d end up a villain by default. I was arguably already there; very few people see themselves as villains, but being willing to kill people that way was what I’d call a hint.”

“Is that when you starting talking to Doc? You were so grim and mysterious, that first visit.”

“Yeah, but I was grim because of Sylvi. Doc was way more understanding and accepting than I expected. He had a reputation for being pretty paranoid.”

“He’s good at hiding suspicion while he does a Database psych evaluation, and he had a lot of people try to fool him during the Lost Years, so he knows the patterns. And, well, you knew magic, you could teleport, you wanted to be a superhero, and you asked for his help first–did you really think he’d say no?”

“Heh. I wasn’t very sure of anything then–living off the grid most of the time means you risk missing significant changes. It’s an occupational hazard for magicians. But even the limited Database access he gave me opened up all kinds of possibilities for proper mathematical analysis of magic–I hadn’t had the resources or statistical tools before.

"And Doc was real happy to have me as a source and go-between for the magical community. He does some chancy stuff, but he listens. And he understood what needed not to go in the Database.”

Journeyman snorted. "You were the problem there. You’d think the Database was yours, not his.“

"I’ve used it as auxiliary memory from the beginning, because of the mismatch between what I want to remember and what I can actually stuff into my long term memory every time I sleep, before my high speed storage decays. So I feel very possessive– that’s why I spent so much of my money on the capacity for a complete backup.”

Flicker smiled. "But I’m willing to compromise, now–I hadn’t realized just how much of a pain magic makes computer security.“

"I didn’t fully appreciate it either, until I got the tip–I thought password stealing was the main threat. But Stella is taking care of it.”

“Yeah.” Flicker hesitated for a moment. "There is one thing I’d like to suggest. You can tell me to mind my own business if you want. Not getting closure bothers you–not as much as it does me, but still. If you didn’t find a note at Chernobyl… then you can’t really be sure Sylvi didn’t want you to know what happened. Particularly given what you said about her mental state.

“If you want to find out–even if you don’t want it going into the Database–we can talk to Lif. She’s really good at tracing threads. And we’d know where to start. Or if you’d rather I didn’t know either, you can talk to Lif yourself. I’ll give permission.”

“Um.” Journeyman stared off onto space while he considered. "I… think I’ll need to sleep on that. Thank you for the offer, it means a lot. But we should get back–I’m sure the world hasn’t stopped throwing up crises while we’ve been out of touch.“

*****

Cryptographer and privacy expert Chuck Shiner sat on the low retaining wall outside the conference center, talking on his phone. The presentations he’d been most interested in were over, his own wasn’t until tomorrow, and he was thinking of getting something to eat.

"Not bad,” he said. "But it was obvious where everyone added a bit at the beginning and a new summary slide to try to keep up with current events.“

He yawned as he listened to the response from one of his colleagues, who was currently in Japan. The last talk he’d attended had consisted of decent results presented by someone with an unfortunately soothing voice and manner, and Chuck was still shaking off the resulting torpor.

"Yes, I’m using one right now. It’s worked fine so far, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it much. I’ve heard adoption estimates from about a million all the way up to half a billion. Which seems a little extreme, today, but I wouldn’t want to bet against it tomorrow, at the rate they’re spreading. No one really knows except the UPP folks, and they haven’t released any figures yet.”

Several other conference attendees sat on the wall or nearby benches, drinking coffee, checking messages, talking, or just enjoying the late afternoon sun. A steady stream of pedestrians thronged the sidewalk between them and the nearby street, and gulls pecked at dropped scraps. He looked up at the blue sky above the line of buildings, watching other birds wheel and turn against the scattered clouds.

“We picked the wrong week to be traveling. I’d like to take a closer look at the UPPfone infrastructure, but the Grs'thnk fleet and Black Swan are obviously dominating the discussion here. Did… Yes, I sent my own list to that address, but who knows.”

He frowned. A dot had just appeared from behind one the clouds, and appeared to be moving closer. Definitely not a bird–a military jet? But there was something wrong with the shape. A faint rumble echoed, just audible above the traffic noise. A sonic boom?

“How many? No I hadn’t. The news feeds have been going crazy, so I’m missing things…” He trailed off to stare.

The dot had turned into a humanoid flyer remarkably quickly. She was nearly overhead when she dove feet-first for the ground, flexed her legs to soften her landing, and stood. She was less than fifty feet away. Everyone else nearby was staring as well, and there was a screech of brakes and a near collision as at least one driver did a double take. The newcomer folded her wings and turned towards him. He felt a little thrill of fear. Those eyes…

“Uh, listen, can I call you back? There’s someone who wants to… talk to me, I think.”

He ended the call as she came closer.

“Chuck Shiner?”

“Yes?” Her voice, appearance, and manner of approach had already established her own identity beyond any doubt.

“I’m interested in your conference presentation, but I’m afraid attending it would be unnecessarily disruptive. Establishing social trust as an intelligent non-human is rather relevant to me, and I thought you might like to add an anecdotal example. I understand you have a few questions, as well. Do you have time to talk? I thought I’d buy you dinner.” She smiled.

“Sure…” His day had just turned completely surreal.

There was a fancy restaurant next to the conference center that wasn’t packed like the others, but it was ridiculously expensive–it catered to those wealthy enough to pay a large premium not to have to rub shoulders with run of the mill attendees.

“Table for two,” said the entity beside him to the maitre d’ after they entered. "I have a reservation.“

"Name?” asked the maitre d’. There were appearances to maintain, after all.

“Black Swan.”

Next: Chapter 15

