by Victor Milán
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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To Melinda Snodgrass, for saving my life, for helping me improve my craft, and for being my friend for longer than would be kind to either of us to mention.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The usual suspects proved invaluable in the writing of this book.
Thanks to all my friends for being my friends, and helping keep me alive. I love you all.
Thank you to the fine folks in the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society and at Archon in St. Louis for your love and support.
Thank you, again, to my current fellow writers of Critical Mass: John Jos. Miller, Matt Reiten, Jan Stirling, Steve Stirling, Lauren Teffeau, Emily Mah Tippetts, and Sarena Ulibarri, as well to all the past members who helped the project at every step of the way.
Thank you to my agent, Kay McCauley; my editor, Claire Eddy, and her indefatigable assistant, Bess Cozby; and to Richard Anderson, for what might be an even better cover than the one Walter Jon Williams called “the greatest cover in the history of the Universe.” And to Irene Gallo for getting Richard to do it again.
Thanks to David Sidebottom, Lenore Gallegos, and the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe for your support.
Thanks to Ron Miles, Webmaster Supreme, for resurrecting my website from the dead, again. And to Theresa Hulongbayan and Gwen Whiting for continuing to wrangle the Facebook Dinosaur Lords group!
Thanks to Diane Duane and Thomas Holtz for invaluable advice and information.
A heartfelt thank you to George R. R. Martin, for so many things.
Thank you to my Dinosaur Army for keeping the faith.
Thanks to Wanda Day for being there.
And as always—thank you for reading.
Leon Battista Alberti answers the question in Della Famiglia, written in the 1430s. Since the family is the social unit par excellence, Alberti says, any attitude or treatment that benefits your family or serves to increase its honor is acceptable, for this is the defining purpose of life.
—TIM PARKS, MEDICI MONEY: BANKING, METAPHYSICS,
AND ART IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE,
ATLAS/NORTON 2005, P. 26
Part One
Intrusion
Prologue
El Mundo Debajo, The World Below.…—The fabulous realm, claimed by legend to lie beneath the very soil of Paradise, in which the Creators’ servitors, the seven Grey Angels, make Their home. Mortal humans cannot reach there, but only supernatural beings. Some stories claim that the hada, the Fae, dwell there as well. But those are probably only fables made up to frighten bad children, not like you or me.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
THE GREY ANGEL RAGUEL’S DREAM, THE WORLD BELOW
“Face facts,” said Uriel to his host. “You had your chance. And you blew it.”
Raguel sighed dramatically. He sat with knees crossed and hands around the upper one on a jut of ice like a small pressure-ridge. His dream-armor was plate made of ice. Uriel knew he was particularly vain about the effect of the fluting he’d made in its breastplate and limb-armor this time.
“Also, why do you insist on keeping it so blasted cold?” Uriel asked.
“You’re Fire, I’m Ice,” Raguel said. “What do you expect? I find your own Dream beastly hot, you know. Anyway, why are you complaining? Now you get to try your soft Fundamentalist hand at dealing with the human pestilence while I have to rusticate here in exile.”
“You can go fight the Uncreated.”
“To what end? We’ve been doing that for trillions of cycles and aren’t any closer to winning that I can see.”
Uriel was lean, though not gaunt like his Instrumentality or Raguel’s. His own plate armor was green; the cloth-mimicking cape that fluttered from his shoulder-guarding pauldrons, red like flame. He currently favored a clean-shaven appearance, skin rather pallid to contrast with a thatch of black hair, and eyes of green—the prime color of his Patron Creator, Telar, the Oldest Daughter.
“Defeatism?” he asked softly. “Be careful whom you let hear you talking that way, my friend.”
Raguel shot him a glare. When an Angel intended, such glares could wound. Even another Grey Angel. Especially here in Raguel’s own dream, which he had constructed for himself Below.
But Uriel felt no fear. Such acts had consequences. No Angel had ever actually Ended another. But they knew to fear it. Especially given that, in their endless war, they were few, and the Fae, innumerable. And Uriel was a friend.
“Let me back into the fray Above, and I’ll show you how ‘defeatist’ I am,” Raguel said.
“Rules are rules, Ice,” Uriel said. “You failed. Now you wait your turn again. Unless you care to take the matter up with Michael?”
“No need to bother Him,” Raguel said. “And who is like Him? But it just wasn’t fair, how it ended. It hurt the dignity of all Angels, to have that damned overgrown lapdog bite my Instrumentality in half.”
“Then perhaps you should have been more cautious about taking it out and waving it around in order to impress the apes,” Uriel said. “In any event—”
His words ran down. He was aware that Raguel was staring at him. Then his host turned to follow his gaze toward his personal horizon.
Across the ice-sheet walked a naked woman. The winds that howled here, except in the vicinity of Raguel and his invited guest, whipped her long blond hair around her body. She seemed to enjoy the simulated feel, though it must cut her pale skin like flaying-knives.
“Look who’s here,” Uriel murmured.
“Shit,” Raguel said. He snapped to his feet. “Now this really pisses me off to no end. What do you think you’re playing at, Aphrodite, invading my space like this?”
“I am the World, Ice Angel,” she said, approaching, “and I walk where I please.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do it this way,” Uriel said. “I find it … disconcerting.”
She raised a brow at him. “You find the humans’ form disturbing? Look at yourself. Or is it something else?”
“I resent that form,” Raguel said. “Especially when it comes walking in here uninvited. You love the humans so much you actually enjoy appearing in their likeness.”
Like his friend, Uriel found it an exasperating irony that he had by nature the mannerisms as well as the semblance of the humans who infected the Above like a malignant mycelium. But that was his nature—the nature of all his kind. The Creators had made the Grey Angels as their special servitors. And as with the world Paradise itself and everything on it, They had made the Angels as it pleased them to.
“I do,” Aphrodite said. “I love all things of Paradise and on it. Even you, Raguel, even when you act like a sulky
human child.”
Raguel sat down on his ice-jut, crossed his arms, and frowned. “How do you know how a human child acts?”
“Because I watch them,” she said. “You might consider it. Rather than exceeding the Creators’ mandate.”
She had stepped within the charmed circle of calm that Raguel, for his own convenience, kept about himself and Uriel. Now her hair rose in a crackle of electricity, and her blue eyes glared.
“Wait, now,” Uriel said. “I’m not the one here who was actively trying to exterminate the humans.”
She spun on him. “No, you are merely trying to kill most of them.”
“You’re a fine one to talk, meddling in their affairs to help them. Perhaps we’re not the only ones walking the knife edge of what our own Creation permits.”
“I do no such thing. I was made to preserve Paradise—Creation itself. As you were made to maintain Holy Equilibrium within it. I do not ‘help’ the humans. I try to counteract your insane desire to unmake what the Creators made!”
“Fancy words,” their host told her bitterly. “You helped that human pet of yours Karyl put an ignominious end to my Crusade. Even if that does fit your own built-in restrictions enough that you didn’t destroy yourself, it’s still infringing on our prerogative. You do not rule the Angels, World-Spirit!”
In response, she spread her arms. Around Uriel and his friend sprang up Paradise. The icy wasteland—so rare Above—turned to the lush and riotous green and tiny explosions of red and purple and white and gold of some flower-filled clearing in a forest of cycads and lordly conifers. Raguel cried out—whether in surprise or in pain from the touch of warm, humid Tropical air, Uriel didn’t know.
“What are you doing?” Raguel shouted, jumping up again and waving his arms. “My Dream!”
“Indeed I do not rule you,” Aphrodite said, “but I am the Caretaker of the World. From the outer air clear down to the core. And I have the power needed to carry out my mission.”
Raguel held up his hands. To Uriel he looked as if he felt really sick. Uriel thought he understood; he himself was feeling vulnerable in a way none of the Seven had since—well, since the end of the great surface War against the Fae and their blasphemous human allies. And its fearful aftermath.
“Please, Caretaker,” Raguel said. “Please—heal my Dream. You have made your point.”
“But not sufficiently that either of you will desist,” she said.
Raguel hung his simulacrum head.
“I won’t either,” Uriel said. “Though I will echo my friend’s request. You won’t win by kicking apart his ice castle.”
“Very well.” She held out her arms again. The ice and snow and wind whirled in again to supplant the riotous green growth, until all was as before.
“I’m sorry we find ourselves at cross-purposes,” Uriel said, trying to play the peacemaker. Not even he was sure what might happen if for some reason Aphrodite simply decided to erase his friend’s Dream, with them still inside. “Truly. We know that without you we wouldn’t have a world in which to maintain Equilibrium. But you know we operate under the same constraints as you. Since none of us, neither Fundamentalist nor even Purificationist, has involuntarily destroyed himself or herself, our actions must arguably conform to the Creators’ intentions.”
“Through a long and twisted chain of reasoning,” she said.
“Nevertheless.”
A terrible, brilliant noise split the sky overhead.
Literally. Uriel saw rage twist Raguel’s face as he looked up in alarm.
Have the Fae found a way in? Uriel thought in near panic. Not just through our defenses, but into Raguel’s own sanctum? That would mean either some individual Faerie or some unprecedented demon coalition had gotten powerful enough to threaten the Angels with extinction. And thus Paradise. It was every Angel’s ultimate nightmare.
But what poured through the rift in the dense cloud cover Uriel’s host maintained above his Dream in emulation of the World Above’s perpetual daytime overcast was glorious golden light in a shape that reminded Uriel suspiciously of a vagina. A resemblance only strengthened by the winged figure descending through it.
The intruder blew another blast of her golden post-horn. Uriel winced at the sound. And the arrogance that propelled it in lieu of physical breath.
“Say what you will about her,” he murmured, “but Gabriel does know how to make an entrance.”
“You just say that because she’s one of yours,” Raguel said. “Bitch.”
“You know I can hear you, God-Friend,” the Angel called, moving her horn from her lips. She was laughing. Uriel knew that was by no means an unequivocally reassuring sign.
The sky rift closed up again, leaving the clouds the same unbroken sea seethe they had been before. Uriel knew it wasn’t by his friend’s volition. Raguel looked as angry and unsettled by the act of repair as he had by the affront of opening it in the first place.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Gabriel,” Raguel said as she touched down before him on wings as wide as a Long-crested Dragon’s. Which instantly disappeared. “Damn it.”
Uriel knew he didn’t mean that in terms of etiquette alone: an Angel’s Dream was supposed to be inviolable in fact as well as courtesy among peers. That Aphrodite had invaded, annoying though it was, shouldn’t be unexpected: she, after all, was the stuff their Dreams were made of.
But the very nature of Raguel’s personal bubble-realm, within the shared and greater Dream that was the World Below, should have made it inaccessible to any other sprite, Faerie or Grey Angel.
“You didn’t really think you could keep me out, did you, Raggy, dear?” Gabriel asked. Up close she had fine cream-colored features, a straight nose, blue eyes, and wavy red-gold hair that hung about the shoulders of the breast-and-back she wore over her yellow smock and brown leggings—the latter the colors of her Patroness, Mother Maia, the Creators’ Queen. She was strikingly beautiful to Uriel’s eyes—it was another point of resentment among the Seven that their own standards of beauty reflected those of the apes Above.
And under the circumstances, Uriel guessed that it especially rankled Raguel’s semidivine ass that Gabriel, alone of all the Grey Angels, could maintain her beautiful semblance indefinitely while walking about on the surface. Whereas when Raguel mustered and led his abortive Grey Angel Crusade, the beautiful flesh he encased his Instrumentality in had inevitably decayed into a base form that was … something else entirely. Though it had impressed the mortals.
“Aphrodite isn’t the only one who can walk where she pleases,” Gabriel said.
“Even into Dissonance?” Raguel asked.
Uriel winced at his friend’s gaffe. Gabriel’s eyes began to glow blue-white in fury. Literally, like vents to a supergiant star.
The rest could do that trick too, of course. But all Grey Angels were not Created equal. Gabriel’s power was second only to that of the King’s Angel, Michael. And that was before the thing Raguel had tactlessly and foolishly brought up: her captivity in the Venusberg, the hateful realm of Fae. As well as the things she did then, ostensibly under their enchantments.
“I—I,” Raguel said. He stopped and looked wild-eyed, as if some Creators’ geas had stuck his tongue to the back of his teeth. Apology did not come easy to an Angel.
Between them stepped a smaller figure. “Easy, children,” Aphrodite said with maternal good humor—and firmness.
“Out of my way, divine janitor,” Gabriel snapped. Blue lightning bolts crackled through her kinky hair, which began to lift up from the shoulders of her cuirass.
“Go ahead and blast me, Gabi, dear, if it’ll make you feel better,” Aphrodite said, smiling.
Gabriel showed her teeth. But the glow faded, the lightning died, and her hair settled back into place.
Uriel flicked his eyes toward Raguel, who shook his head in relief. None of them, possibly not even the World Witch Herself, knew what would happen if an Angel used her full destructive power on
Aphrodite. Most likely nothing—but that was also the best possible scenario. The others were unthinkable—if all too imaginable to him.
“Let’s all try calming down,” Aphrodite said. She turned to confront Gabriel directly. “Now, God Friend, what were you thinking, barging in here like that? You Angels value your protocols so much. Surely you didn’t treat your poor brother so rudely just to stage an entrance?”
“Don’t underestimate her vanity,” murmured Uriel.
Gabriel laughed. That laughter made Uriel nervous; it was still a danger sign. Then again, since her return to the fold, most things were. All taken with all, it worried him less than the lightning and the hell glow.
“Protocols are fine,” she said. “They give the boys something to occupy their cycles. But I intended to give notice that just because Raguel here failed in his precious scheme doesn’t mean Zerachiel and I failed with him. We know what we must do for the good of Paradise and Sacred Equilibrium. And we will do it—despite your meddling and the hand-wringing concerns of Uriel, Remiel, and Raphael.”
“Shouldn’t you take that up with Michael?” Uriel asked. “He agrees: it’s my turn.”
Gabriel only laughed again. Then turning to Aphrodite, who had stepped back to reopen the circle of discussion, she said, “As for you, my dear, my answer’s simple: if our Creators don’t want us exterminating the humans, they have but to tell us so.”
“How do you dare take it on yourself to unmake what the Creators made?” Aphrodite said. She was frowning fiercely now herself, albeit without the pyrotechnics Gabriel affected.
Gabriel tossed back flame-colored hair. “And who made you ruler over us? You’re a maintenance worker. Your job is to keep the sun from burning the land and boiling the sea. We are the Creators’ appointed servants. Perhaps it’s time someone taught you to keep your place.”
Thoroughly alarmed, Uriel stepped between them. “Here, now,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “You know we don’t dare harm Aphrodite, for fear of upsetting Sacred Equilibrium. If not returning the world to Hell.”
