Jovah's Angel

by Sharon Shinn

  “A man by the name of Thomas, down at the Edori camp. He said you were lacking in faith.” Her eyes were focused on his right arm, on the black lump that once had been the Kiss of the god. “And I see he was right. How did that happen?”

  Automatically, his hand went to the smooth marble nodule in his arm, dead now, carrying no messages to the god. On Alleluia’s bare arm he could see her living Kiss. “Like everyone else, I was dedicated to the god when I was born. My parents were—Well, my mother was as devout as anyone, I suppose, but my father was a questioner. Questioned everything—got it from his father, whose grandmother was—well, it’s a long story. But he got it honestly. My father pioneered some of the research into electricity that has galvanized the world we live in today, although he didn’t know nearly what we know now. Anyway, we worked together on an early project in which we hadn’t yet learned how to direct that power. And it’s a deadly power.”

  He paused a moment. He couldn’t remember the last time he had told this story. When he told Noah, perhaps. “And it went amuck. Killed my father, almost killed me. I saw the flame arc across my body like candlelight passing over a wall. The Kiss in my arm sizzled—and exploded. I cannot describe how agonizing… And my father was dead. And the fire was gone.”

  Alleluia took a deep breath. “But you could have—I don’t know that it’s ever happened before, but you could have had the Kiss replaced. I know priests—”

  “I didn’t want to,” he interrupted gently. “What could be the point of being dedicated to a god who would let my father die?”

  She watched him narrowly. “Death is always sad and rimmed with grief. But all men die. That is not a reason to forsake the god. That is a reason to trust him and love him, for it is to his arms you will be remanded when you too pass from this world.”

  He made a conciliatory gesture with his hands. “It is true that all men die, and that death is a ridiculous reason to hate anything,” he acknowledged. “But I lost my faith at that moment, and I never regained it. I began to question, and I did not find answers. Not with a god. I found them in science.”

  She said softly, “But it was science that killed your father, and not Jovah. Why would you still trust it?”

  He smiled crookedly. “Maybe I don’t trust it. Maybe I want to tame it so I can understand what it did.”

  “So who was your great-great-grandmother?” she asked.

  He laughed at her quick, pouncing change of subject. “She was the lost daughter of Nathaniel,” he said. “Or have you never heard of her?”

  She actually clapped her hands together like a schoolgirl. “The wicked Tamar!” she exclaimed. “Of course I have heard of her. Nathaniel and Magdalena were the only two angels ever allowed to intermarry by a special dispensation of the god. They had six daughters, five of them angels of spectacular voices and great sweetness of disposition. And then they had Tamar, who was born without wings and proved to be a great trial to them. Or so the histories say. Didn’t she—I thought she died when she was very young, in some ill-fated boating accident or some disaster riding a horse.”

  “No, she disappeared when she was in her early twenties, and they didn’t see her again until Nathaniel was dying. At least, this is how the family history records it. Apparently they’d known she was alive all this time, because her Kiss was still active, and every once in a while they would have one of the oracles ask the god to track her. They say her mother, Magdalena, fainted when Tamar walked into the room—although whether from mortification or affection one hardly knows. I tend to vote for mortification. They say Magdalena was a silly woman.”

  “So, you’re descended from the first angels of Cedar Hills,” Alleluia said. “I would not have thought it.”

  “It’s a very distant connection,” he said. “And, as you see, I’ve moved pretty far down a different road. I don’t trade much on my family background, but you did ask.”

  “Well, I don’t trade on mine at all,” she said, and then, as if afraid he would follow up on that opening, briskly turned to business. “But I didn’t come here to swap tales of our ancestors. I came to offer you a job, if you’d be interested.”

  “Anything that has sent you searching for me all the way from the Eyrie would have to be unusual enough to interest me,” he said. “Who told you to look for me, by the way?”

  “An Edori engineer named Daniel who lives in Velora. Who told me to look for your friend Noah, who would direct me to you. It was a little more tortuous than I anticipated, but now that I’ve found you—”

  “I’m eager to hear about this job.”

  “Have you ever been to the Eyrie or Monteverde?”

  “No.”

  “Then you haven’t seen the machine I’m talking about. It’s leftover technology from the original settlers, and it plays music—recordings of the masses sung by Hagar and some of the first angels. We have no idea how they made the recordings or how the equipment works, but there are—oh, three hundred masses and other pieces available to us. Except most of the machines at the Eyrie have failed in the past few months. Now there is only one operational, and my guess is that it too will break very soon. And I wondered if you might be able to fix one of them.”

  He was wholly intrigued. “What powers these machines?”

  “Powers them?”

  “Makes them go. Supplies their energy.” She looked completely baffled, so he tried to explain. “Every inanimate object that acquires force, energy or motion has to have it supplied by an outside source,” he said. “For instance, that fan blade over there. You can move it with your finger or I can build a motor that turns it, but that motor is activated by electricity. All the factories in Breven are run on steam heat, but they require fire to create the steam which is compressed in a box until it whooshes out with tremendous force.” He flung his hands apart to illustrate. “Now, perhaps our ancestors knew of other sources of power, but to date, this is all we have—manual labor, steam and electricity.”

  “What creates the electricity?” she asked. “It seems to come from nowhere.”

  He smiled. “Mostly it comes from falling water,” he explained. “The Gabriel Dam on the Galilee River, for instance. Millions of gallons of water pass over it every day, and that motion creates another motion in equipment we have set up—” He paused; there was no simple way to explain this, and he didn’t think she really wanted a lesson in hydroelectricity. “Think of the falling water as substituting for the energy you would supply if you pushed something very hard. Motion can always be translated into power.”

  “I don’t think we have anything like that at the Eyrie,” Alleluia said. “I don’t know what makes the machines work. I was hoping you would.”

  “I’d love to look at them, in any case. I’ve never seen any of the settlers’ technology. It must be fascinating.”

  “I worry about that. This sudden leap forward into science. I don’t know that we were meant to discover—electricity—and falling water—and factories. Science is what sent the colonists from their home world to Samaria, you know—science and all its destructive power. Who knows that our scientific discoveries will not inevitably start us down the road that led them to disharmony and death?”

  “Science is not evil! Name a single evil thing it has done.”

  She turned one hand palm up in her lap. “Chased the Edori from their homes,” she said. “Created great stinking factories in Breven and the mining towns. I believe science is changing the face of Samaria, Caleb Augustus, making the villages cities and the farms wastelands. I wonder how we will turn back to a simpler way of life.”

  “Why is it better because it is simpler?”

  “Why is it better because it is more complex?” she countered. “What has electricity given you except sharper lighting and mass production? Those factories have completely changed the structure of buying, selling and making original goods. Is that a benefit? It does not seem so to me.”

  “We are in the early days of science,” Cal
eb argued. “From the things we discover today we will learn amazing things. Travel, for instance. My friend Noah has already built this—contraption—a self-propelled vehicle that covers the ground two or three times faster than a man on horse. Someday maybe we shall build machines that can fly! We will—”

  “Fly! Why should you want to do that?”

  He laughed at her. “Because I can’t! Because I know it is possible, and I want to know how it is done.”

  “To what end? To get from Luminaux to the Manadavvi compounds in two days instead of ten? Why is haste so desirable? Why make the world revolve that much faster?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I can’t explain. Maybe there are no benefits, or maybe the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. I still want to do it. I want to discover what can be done. I want to make things, build things, expand things, speed things up. I want to know how things work. It’s a fever in me. And I happen to think what I can create will make life better for some people.”

  “And people like me who fear progress are all to be scorned for their timidity and their lack of vision.”

  “Not at all,” he said seriously. “It is people like you who make people like me justify ourselves. And that is no bad thing, either.”

  “In any case, I have no right to be moralizing,” she said with a sigh. “Since I came here specifically to exploit your talents. It is just that—sometimes I wonder. Where we are going, and what we will regret once we get there.”

  “We will always regret something,” he responded. “I would rather rue what I did than what I failed to do.”

  Alleluia smiled, seemingly with an effort. “Certainly that is an optimistic way to approach it,” she said. “So! You will come look at my machines?”

  “Yes, as soon as I can. I have a job here that will take me another three or four days. Can you wait that long?”

  “I am at your mercy,” she said lightly. “Since you appear to be the only man in Samaria who can help me. Come when you can.”

  He took a deep breath and braced his hands on his knees. How did one invite the Archangel to dinner? “That settled,” he said, “can I offer you another service? May I take you out for something to eat? Luminaux is an inexhaustible banquet, so they say. I know a number of restaurants a stranger might not be familiar with—”

  She hesitated, then smiled. “I appreciate the offer,” she said, “but I have one more task in Luminaux, and perhaps I should concentrate on that.”

  “What is it? Maybe I can help.”

  “I believe—we have been told—that Delilah is living here somewhere. She has scarcely communicated with any of the angels since she left the Eyrie, and I just want to know if she is well.” Alleluia shrugged. “Not that I think she is particularly interested in seeing me, or any of us, for that matter. But—just to find out.”

  “As it happens…” Caleb said slowly, “I know where she is.”

  She looked at him sharply. “You do? Someplace disreputable?”

  “Now why would you say that?” he marveled.

  She flushed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that—Delilah always lived at the extreme edges. I am only guessing, but if she feels cast out from the angels, I would expect her to embrace the worst that the mortal lifestyle has to offer. I’m sorry if I wrong her.”

  “I was thinking you must have known her very well.”

  Alleluia shook her head. “Watched from a distance. Delilah was the kind who thrived on being at the absolute center of the world. And she was the best at balancing all those opposing forces. But if that excitement has been taken away from her—Well… I imagine she must be thriving on something else.”

  Caleb rose to his feet. “Let me show you,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll like it, but it sounds like you won’t be surprised.”

  They arrived at Seraph about an hour before Delilah was scheduled to perform. For reasons it was hard to analyze, Caleb was glad that Noah would not be here this evening, for he was away on a weeklong trip to a mining town near the Corinni Mountains. He ushered Alleluia to a table more centrally located than the one he was accustomed to taking; no one would automatically look for him there. It had the added advantage of being equidistant from the strings of lights outlining the walls and stage. Thus they sat in a pleasant semidarkness where they were unlikely to attract much attention.

  “The food is fairly good,” Caleb said. “We sometimes come here every night of the week.”

  “We?”

  “My friend Noah and I. The Edori who was supposed to direct you to me.”

  “Is it the food that draws you or the company?”

  “Noah has become very friendly with Delilah. She calls herself Lilah here, by the way, but I imagine everyone knows who she is.”

  He thought he had skated through that one successfully, but Alleluia instantly asked, “And have you become very friendly with her, too?”

  “I’m friendly with everyone,” he said, and let it go at that.

  She ordered a light meal, skipped the wine, and looked around her with the close attention she seemed to give to everything. She was the only angel in the place, but the rest of the clientele was fairly upscale, if young. Just the sort of rich, bored, jaded socialites who would get a kick out of seeing a fallen Archangel sing for their entertainment. Alleluia offered no comment.

  “When does the show begin?” she asked.

  “Soon. Are you sure you don’t want wine?”

  “I’m sure.”

  They ate the last part of their meal in virtual silence. Though she was pleasant and responded any time he essayed a remark, Caleb sensed Alleluia growing tense or at least very focused, and he eventually gave up all attempts at conversation. She continued to watch the people and listen to the musician playing the dulcimer, and betrayed no signs of impatience.

  It was later than usual, and all their dinner debris had been cleared away, when Delilah finally took the stage. Thanks to all the work Caleb and Noah had done, these days her entrance was most dramatic. All the lights in the room went out, sending a gasp through the crowd. Slowly, filtering down from above like a single directed ray of sunshine, one narrow spotlight came to life. From the darkness on the stage it shaped a shadow—bowed head, sculpted wings, praying hands—until, gradually growing stronger, it painted the whole angel in a brilliant, iridescent light. As the light grew brighter, the angel lifted her dark head, spread her clasped hands, and seemed to be bathed in the white radiance of absolution.

  As always, she began with that unearthly, heartbreaking croon, a prayer for mercy, perhaps, or a requiem for a lost soul. Or both. As many times as he had heard it, Caleb was always moved by that first eerie song, driven to the edge of grief but comforted by the incredible richness of Delilah’s magnificent voice.

  He glanced at Alleluia to see her reaction. Even in the near-total darkness, he could make out the pale oval of her face turned toward the stage, and the stony expression that had settled across her cheeks. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips were very slightly pursed, as if she were judging a contest and had to concentrate closely. With something like shock, he realized that she was not impressed. What could she think was missing from Delilah’s voice? What memories could she compare it to, that she would think this performance was in any way inferior?

  He was still watching Alleluia when Delilah made her abrupt, unnerving switch to one of the bawdiest ballads Caleb had ever heard her sing. The Archangel’s eyes widened a little, but she looked neither surprised nor censorious. In fact, a faint smile touched her lips and she shook her head so slightly that the motion was almost undetectable. Caleb was oddly relieved.

  They did not speak for the duration of the concert but, like the other patrons, sat mesmerized by the angel’s performance. Caleb wondered if Delilah somehow knew who was in the audience and was doing her best to be outrageous, for every song she offered was rowdy or tasteless or both, and her grimaces and gestures were suggestively in keeping with the lyrics. No one else in the audi
ence seemed disapproving; maybe it was just his tablemate who made Caleb more than ordinarily sensitive to Delilah’s selections.

  When the performance ended nearly ninety minutes later, the house lights went down with a crash of cymbals and rose again to thunderous applause, by which time the stage was deserted. Caleb instantly fixed his attention on Alleluia, noting that she was clapping her hands politely and watching the stage as if she expected an encore.

  “Is that the end of it?” she asked, turning to Caleb.

  “Yes. She’ll come out into the audience shortly, at least she usually does, but she won’t sing again tonight. I imagine a performance like that must be fairly exhausting.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Alleluia said idly. “It takes at least as much energy to sing one of the high masses, and the range is more difficult, and the music far more intricate. And Delilah used to come away from singing a mass even more charged up than she was before she started. She feeds on her own energy, you know. Nothing seems to drain her.”

  “So what did you think?” he asked, because he really couldn’t tell.

  “Well, it’s certainly a waste of the most beautiful voice of our generation,” she said flatly, “but I’d rather see her sing this sort of thing than not sing at all. Delilah would die if she didn’t sing.”

  Not at all the answer Caleb would have expected from the Archangel—until he had met this particular Archangel. “That’s generous,” he said. She appeared surprised.

  “Ah, angela, it’s good of you to grace us with your presence,” came a voice behind them, and suddenly the unctuous Joseph was at their table. “Did you enjoy the performance? Lilah is superb, is she not?”

  “Unequalled,” Alleluia agreed. “You are fortunate to have her.”

  He smiled his oily smile. “We make each other’s fortunes,” he said. “I provide her an unmatched venue, she provides a certain talent. The key to a profitable business relationship.”

  “Yes,” Alleluia said. “Well.”

  He leaned closer, till his face was inches from the angel’s. Alleluia held her position, but her cool eyes narrowed. “Do you sing, angela?” he asked suddenly. “How’s your voice?”