Dan Vyleta - Smoke

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They talk in the hallway, Sebastian and Lady Naylor. It appears he is too excited to sit down. Charlie watches him closely while he listens in on their conversation. A clean-shaven man, the skin young and chafed where the razor has touched it. When he smiles, dimples dig themselves into the corners of his mouth.

“I did the tests. Three separate blood samples, all negative. He’s unspoiled.”

“When do we start, then?”

“The sooner the better. I’ll go in to him now.”

It’s Thomas who blocks Sebastian’s path. Always Thomas: the one amongst them least afraid to start a fight. Livia draws close to him, chin drooping, false-meek, edgy, small hands curling into fists.

But it’s Charlie who speaks.

“What are you going to do to the child?”

Sebastian turns to him, answers frankly, guilelessly, his hands busy sorting through the contents of his doctor’s bag.

“We will take off his György respirator. The mask. He needs to breathe freely and to eat. He has had a rough voyage. No sunlight, liquid food, sedated for much of the time. Now he is anaemic and showing early signs of scurvy. We can fix all that once the respirator is off.”

“It’ll infect him.”

“Why yes. In fact, we’ll make very sure he’s infected before we take it off. You object? He was bound for infection the moment he left his jungle tribe. It took severe precautions to preclude it until now.”

“Once he’s infected — he won’t be able to go back.”

Sebastian seems surprised by the comment, as though Charlie has said something he has failed to consider. But before he can answer, Lady Naylor intervenes.

“Before the week is out, the world will have changed. Not just London, or England, but the world! None of our truths will hold anymore.”

“Then he will be able to go back?”

Her answer is raw with emotion. “We will all be free for the first time in our lives.”

Without saying a word, Livia pulls Thomas out of Sebastian’s way. He lets her do it, his eyes on Charlie, soliciting his thoughts.

Sebastian is through the door and has locked it long before Charlie has puzzled out what his thoughts may be.

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One glimpse is all they get before the door closes: a little creature with an outsize head, the mask bulbous up front and smooth around the back, rubber-coating his skull. A proboscis dangling from the jawline. Eyes ringed in metal, portholes to the child within. He is sitting on the ground not on the bed, squatting really, bum on heels. His fingers are busy with an insect, pinning one of its legs to the floor, watching the bug’s body march itself around this pivot. The boy looks up when Sebastian’s shadow intrudes upon him. Then the door falls shut; the lock snaps, the key is removed. Is pocketed, Charlie imagines, the doctor’s bag put down. Thomas takes up position at the keyhole without hesitation, almost shouldering Lady Naylor aside. His report is terse. Charlie and Livia stand close behind him, Charlie conscious of her smell, her presence, and careful not to touch.

“Sebastian is talking to the boy. I cannot hear what he is saying. Now he is tying his hands. No struggle. He is attaching something to the end of the mask, to the breathing tube or whatever it is. A metal disk of some sort, like a tin of boot polish. It screws onto the end. Now he reaches for his doctor’s bag, pulling out a syringe. Big needle. It goes into the tin, not the boy. And now—”

Thomas falters, pales, stands up abruptly and starts hammering on the door. Charlie and Livia both start forward, to the keyhole. He captures it first, greedy for the horror beyond, and afraid, too, wishing to protect Livia from it, his heart beating from the warmth of her cheek next to his.

What he sees is hard to describe. The child is shaking, convulsing. Sebastian’s hands are steadying him, pressing him down to the floor. The mask appears changed, the eyeholes jet black, the rubber tube jerking as though alive. Then, around the edges of the mask, the boy appears to start bleeding: black, sticky Smoke seeping out like oil. Minutes of this, Thomas pounding the door. Then Sebastian takes off the mask, a buckle at a time; takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabs it with a liquid from a bottle, wipes down the exhausted child’s face, removing a glossy layer of near-liquid Soot. The boy that emerges is thin, sallow underneath his dark skin, the hair black and vigorous if cropped very short. Crooked teeth and small crinkly eyes. The moment he has regained some strength he starts pummeling Sebastian, biting and kicking. Charlie looks away in anguish. Livia takes his place. They are all speechless. Thomas has stopped attacking the door, his fists swollen. Beyond it the sounds of struggle reach them dimly.

Then Livia says, “He is not smoking. He’s angry and scared, and you’ve infected him, but he isn’t smoking.”

“He won’t,” Lady Naylor says. “There is an incubation period.”

“How long?”

Her mother hesitates. “Several weeks before he starts showing. But in seventy-two hours his blood will begin to change.”

The door opens and Sebastian emerges. Behind him the child is a crumpled figure on the bed; his head lost in its linen, exhausted and still. For a moment Charlie has the urge to hit Sebastian, Smoke black and bitter in his mouth.

But the man’s eyes dispel his anger.

“Poor child. He is exhausted. Best let him rest now. To-ka. He keeps saying To-ka . Perhaps it means Mother.”

When Sebastian locks the door it seems a mercy, not punishment. Though, of course: it also suits his plans.

“What was in the tin?” Thomas asks hoarsely.

“Soot. Very black Soot.”

“Then you found a way to bring it to life.”

“Yes, of course. Soot can be quickened: turned back into Smoke. Temporarily, partially, at great cost. It’s an inefficient process.”

“Like cigarettes.”

“Yes. The technology is decades old.”

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It is hard to sleep after what they have seen, hard to talk even, compare notes. They sit around uneasily, Charlie, Thomas, and Livia, on the floor of the room shared by the two boys, each of them caught in their own thoughts. Livia has pulled a bent cigarette from her pocket, one of Julius’s, and is cutting it open with the edge of a fingernail. After some minutes she stands to get closer to the lamp.

“It’s a mix of Soot and tobacco. But it’s sticky somehow, like it has been treated with some goo.”

“That’s what does it then,” Thomas suggests. “ Quickens it. Makes it revert to Smoke.”

“It has a peculiar smell. And the Soot is very dark.” Livia runs her finger through it, raises it up to the eye. “And look: each little particle is different, some black, some grey.” She turns, catches Charlie’s eye, looks back at her finger. “I have never done this before. Study Soot. In school they just told us it was dead. Inert. ”

She rerolls the cigarette, sticks it in her mouth, bends to the lamp. At once Charlie is on his feet. His hand is near her shoulder before it occurs to him that he no longer has a right to touch.

“Don’t,” he says.

“Why? Will it turn me bad?” She hides her face by lowering it to the gas lamp, sticks the end of the cigarette into its flame. “One puff, Charlie. We live in London. We are all inhaling fifty puffs a day.”

Charlie retreats a step, sees Thomas rise in expectation. He likes her smoking , it shoots through him before he buries the thought. Livia inhales, exhales, her cheeks flushing dark after some delay. It takes her a moment to collect herself.

“Nasty but weak,” she says. “A tingle of filth. It made me feel angry, imperious. And also a little—” She breaks off, biting her lip. “Animal functions. That’s what it speaks to. A whisper in the blood.