Kaspar? I think he is with the Third Engineers.'
Spur explained that there were over eleven thousand volunteers in the Corps of Firefighters and that if her nephew was an engineer he was most probably a regular with the Home Guard. Spur couldn't keep track of all the brigades and platoons in the volunteer Corps, much less in the professional Guard. He said that he was just a lowly smokechaser in Gold Squad, Ninth Regiment. His squad worked with the Eighth Engineers, who supplied transportation and field construction support. He told her that these fine men and women were the very models of spiritual simplicity and civic rectitude, no doubt like her nephew. Spur was hoping that this was what she wanted to hear and that she would leave him alone. But then she asked if the rumors of pukpuk collaborators infiltrating the Corps were true and started nattering about how she couldn't understand how a citizen of the Transcendent State could betray the Covenant by helping terrorists. All the pukpuks wanted was to torch Chairman Winter's forests, wasn't that awful? Spur realized that he would have to play to her sympathy. He coughed and said he had been wounded in a burn and was just out of hospital and then coughed again.
'If you don't mind,' he said, crinkling his brow as if he were fighting pain, 'I'm feeling a little woozy. I'm just going to shut my eyes again and try to rest.'
Although he didn't sleep, neither was he fully awake. But the nightmare did not return. Instead he drifted through clouds of dreamy remembrance and unfocussed regret. So he didn't notice that the train was slowing down until the hiss of the air brakes startled him to full alertness.
He glanced at his watch. They were still an hour out of Heart's Wall, where Spur would change for the local to Littleton.
'Are we stopping?' Spur asked.
'Wheelwright fireground.' The fat man pulled a limp handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and dabbed at his hairline. 'Five minutes of mandatory respect.'
Now Spur noticed that the underbrush had been cleared along the track and that there were scorch marks on most of the trees. Spur had studied the Wheelwright in training. The forest north of the village of Wheelwright had been one of the first to be attacked by the torches. It was estimated that there must have been at least twenty of them, given the scope of the damage. The Wheelwright burn was also the first in which a firefighter died, although the torches never targeted citizens, only trees. The fires they started were always well away from villages and towns; that's why they were so hard to fight. But the Wheelwright had been whipped by strong winds until it cut the trunk line between Concord and Heart's Wall for almost two weeks. The Cooperative had begun recruiting for the Corps shortly after.
As the squealing brakes slowed the train to a crawl, the view out of Spur's window changed radically. Here the forest had yet to revive from the ravages of fire. Blackened skeletons of trees pointed at the sky and the charred floor of the forest baked under the sun. The sun seemed cruelly bright without the canopy of leaves to provide shade. In every direction, all Spur could see was the nightmarish devastation he had seen all too often. No plant grew, no bird sang. There were no ants or needlebugs or wild gosdogs. Then he noticed something odd: the bitter burnt-coffee scent of fresh fireground. And he could taste the ash, like shredded paper on his tongue. That made no sense; the Wheelwright was over three years old.
When the train finally stopped, Spur was facing one of the many monuments built along the tracks to honor fallen firefighters. A grouping of three huge statues set on a pad of stone cast their bronze gazes on him. Two of the firefighters were standing; one leaned heavily on the other. A third had dropped to one knee, from exhaustion perhaps. All still carried their gear, but the kneeling figure was about to shed her splash pack and one of the standing figures was using his jacksmith as a crutch. Although the sculptor had chosen to depict them in the hour of their doom, their implacable metal faces revealed neither distress nor regret. The fearsome simplicity of their courage chilled Spur. He was certain that he wasn't of their quality.
The engine blew its whistle in tribute to the dead: three long blasts and three short. The gandy stirred and stretched. 'Wheelwright?' she muttered.
'Yeah,' said the fat man.
She started to yawn but caught herself and peered out the open window. 'Who's that?' she said, pointing.
A man in a blue flair suit was walking along the tracks, peering up at the passenger cars. He looked very hot and not very happy. His face was as flushed as a peach and his blond hair was plastered to his forehead. Every few meters he paused, cupped his hands to his mouth and called, 'Leung? Prosper Gregory Leung?'
Five
Fire is without doubt an advantage on the whole. It sweeps and ventilates the forest floor and makes it clear and clean. I have often remarked with how much more comfort amp; pleasure I could walk in wood through which afire had been run the previous year. It is inspiriting to walk amid the fresh green sprouts of grass and shrubbery pushing upward through the charred surface with more vigorous growth.
- Journal, 1850
The man waited impatiently as Spur descended from the train, kit slung over his shoulder. Although he did not turn back to look, Spur knew every passenger on the train was watching them. Was he in trouble? The man's expression gave away nothing more than annoyance. He looked to be younger than Spur, possibly in his late twenties. He had a pinched face and a nose as stubby as a radish. He was wearing a prissy white shirt buttoned to the neck. There were dark circles under the armpits of his flair jacket.
'Prosper Gregory Leung of Littleton, Hamilton County, Northeast?' The man pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and read from it. 'You are currently on medical leave from the Ninth Regiment, Corps of Firefighters, and were issued a first-class ticket on this day - '
'I know who I am.' Spur felt as if a needlebug were caught in his throat. 'What is this about? Who are you?'
He introduced himself as Constant Ngonda, a deputy with the Cooperative's Office of Diplomacy. When they shook hands, he noticed that Ngonda's palm was soft and sweaty. Spur could guess why he had been pulled off the train, but he decided to act surprised.
'What does the Office of Diplomacy want with me?'
Just then the engineer blew three short blasts and couplings of the train clattered and jerked as, one by one, they took the weight of the passenger cars. With the groan of metal on metal, the train pulled away from the Wheelwright Memorial.
Spur's grip on the strap of his kit tightened. 'Don't we want to get back on?'
Constant Ngonda shrugged. 'I was never aboard.'
The answer made no sense to Spur, who tensed as he calculated his chances of sprinting to catch the train. Ngonda rested a hand on his arm.
'We go this way, Prosper.' He nodded west, away from the tracks.
'I don't understand.' Spur's chances of making the train were fading as it gained momentum. 'What's out there?'
'A clearing. A hover full of upsiders.' He sighed. 'Some important people have come a long way to see you.' He pushed a lock of damp hair off his forehead. 'The sooner we start, the sooner we get out of this heat.' He let go of Spur and started picking his way across the fire-ground.
Spur glanced over his shoulder one last time at the departing train. He felt as if his life were pulling away.
'Upsiders? From where?'
Ngonda held up an open hand to calm him. 'Some questions will be answered soon enough. Others it's better not to ask.'
'What do you mean, better?'
Ngonda walked with an awkward gait, as if he expected the ground to give way beneath him. 'I beg your pardon.' He was wearing the wrong shoes for crossing rough terrain. 'I misspoke.' They were thin-soled, low-cut and had no laces - little more than slippers. 'I meant simpler, not better.'
Just then Spur got a particularly intense whiff of something that was acrid and sooty, but not quite smoke. It was what he had first smelled as the train had pulled into the Memorial. He turned in a complete circle, all senses heightened, trying to pinpoint the source. After fire ran through the litter of leaves and twigs that covered the forest floor, it often sank into the duff, the layer of decomposing organic matter that lay just above the soil level. Since duff was like a sponge, most of the year it was too wet to burn. But in the heat of summer it could dry out and became tinder. Spur had seen a smoldering fire burrow through the layer of duff and emerge dozens of meters away. He sniffed, following his nose to a charred stump.
