Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  Martin leaned forward. “He thought the therapists would do a large scale patchup, a general radical therapy, and Goldsmith would no longer be Goldsmith. Might not even be a poet.”

  Lascal did not deny this.

  “I suspect Albigoni believes that what made Mr. Goldsmith a good poet is intimately linked with his being a murderer,” Martin said. “It’s an old misconception supported by science only when psychology was a squalling infant, that genius is close to madness.”

  “Perhaps, but if Mr. Albigoni learns there’s any link at all, and there’s a possibility he brought a scorpion into his home and lost his daughter…”

  Martin leaned back, witnessing yet again Paul Lascal’s transformation into a paid surrogate of Albigoni, a man whose job it was to anticipate the whims and emotions of his boss. How solidly grounded was Lascal’s sense of self?

  “Who are you, Mr. Lascal?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “What put you on the Albigoni spin?”

  “I’m not the one you’re examining, Dr. Burke.”

  “Idle curiosity.”

  “Out of place,” Lascal said coldly. “I’m an employee of Mr. Albigoni, and I’m also a friend—though not a social equal, perhaps. You think of it as symbiosis. I think of it as helping a great man get through this life with a little more efficiency, a little more time to do what he is truly good at doing. The perfect lackey, you might say, but I’m content.”

  “I don’t doubt you are. That’s a remarkably cogent self analysis, Mr. Lascal.”

  Lascal regarded him coldly. “Ten more minutes, unless we hit another knot.”

  When he goes to sleep, the worlds are his…He becomes a great king, or a learned man; he enters the high and the low. As a great king travels as he pleases around his own country, with his entourage, even so here, taking with him his senses, he travels in his own body as he pleases.

  —Brhad Aranyaka Upanisad, 2.1, 18

  34

  Writing for hours on end until his muscles cramped, his stomach growling for lack of food, stopping only for a few moments each hour to relieve a persistent and irritating diarrhea, Richard Fettle reveled in his diabolic concentration, once again slave to words. The day before, he had suspended all judgment over what he was writing; he no longer revised, he hardly even bothered to keep his grammar tidy.

  Nadine had abandoned him unnoticed and probably for good sometime the night before. He had since written an additional thirty crabbed pages and was running out of paper but no matter; he now had no qualms whatsoever about using the despised slate. The physical quality of the words he was writing meant nothing; only the act itself.

  He was happy.

  stopped to survey the blood, he would find auspices in the sprayed life of these poor adoring chickens, his students. To realize with a fresh, exhilarating terror the extent to his freedom, and how precarious it was. How much longer could he live, knowing what he knew? He squatted among the flesh ruins for yet another hour, watching the blood grow dark and sticky. He philosophized about its senseless attempt to coagulate, to shut out the bad world, when in fact death was here and the bad world had already triumphed. So had the bad world triumphed in him; he was as dead as his students, but miraculously able to move and think and question; dead in life, free. He was loosed of the bonds his previous years of socialized life had clamped to him; slipped of the reputation that had smothered him. Why then didn’t he leave the apartment and begin immediately to prolong his living death? The longer he stayed, the more chance his freedom would be discovered and circumscribed.

  He left the room of slaughter and went into his office, to look over his serried ranks of works, the books and plays and poems, the volumes of letters, all superseded. Before he could leave all this, he had to write his manifesto. That could only be done with a pen and ink, not with the vanishing electronic words of a slate.

  The last sheet of paper was full. Richard stacked the pages neatly to one side and brought out the slate, grinning at the ironic divergence. He paused for a moment, sensing his bowels shift, waited for the return of some temporary stability, then switched on the slate and continued.

  “I cannot say I am sorry for what I have done. The poet must go where no others go, or where the despised go. I am now there, and the freedom is breathtaking. I can do and write about whatever I want; no greater penalties or oppobrium *cheep*

  MISSPELLED WORD I Suggest OPPROBRIUM.

  “Dammit.” He shut down the correction feature.

  “can be added. I can write about racial hatred, my own hatred, approvingly or disapprovingly; I can suggest that the whole human race should be immolated, children first; that the therapied should be burned alive in their concrete mausoleums. I can shout that the Selectors are correct and that the imposition of ultimate pain is the only way to cure some of the diseases of this society should it continue to exist; perhaps infants should be subjected to the hellcrown to prepare them for the evil they will inevitably do. But writing is dead for me, too; I can do whatever I want. Catch me soon. I will not stay for your inane judgments. I have other things to experiment with.

  “I am the only human being alive, and that is because I am dead.”

  Having written this manifesto, he pinned the sheet of paper to the wall with his father’s knife, the weapon of his freedom, and walked past the door to the room of slaughter, not looking in, aware of his freedom yet again, like a new suit of clothes or no clothes at all.

  He left the apartment, the comb, the city. Outside, it seemed he might ascend into the clouds, become a passing vapor and rain down on all that he might be absorbed by them, the whole human race choosing to slaughter itself, to truly be free; and then perhaps a few, a hundred or a thousand, of those also dead-alive, the survivors of this truth-gathering, would

  He stopped and rushed to the bathroom. Purged himself as he imagined Goldsmith might have felt purged; wondered if he could use that metaphor shitting himself clean or had already used it; could not remember. Returned to the slate, hitching up his pants.

  finally know who they were, a finality of awareness, their selves distinguished and etched more deeply, their spirits unified in sorrow and joy for what they had done.

  Now was the best time to end but the smoothness was not there; he would best cut it short now and polish later not to interrupt the spontaneity.

  He could not now become a cloud however. He would have to find another way to vanish. Disappearing, his name would become legend; he would be more famous than any poet, and in their dreams, people would think of him, wonder where he was, and then he would be inside of them and that would be just as good. Better. He walked his first mile away from the city, into the brown hills. He crossed scorched grassland

  Not ending smoothly at all; refusing to end, in fact, and Richard needed to rest.

  and felt the cold wind blowing through his clothes, on his flesh,

  Richard closed his eyes, trying to force the ending, seeing instead a kind of continuing adventure. Goldsmith within him wanted to explore this new freedom. But suddenly Richard was exhausted and a black pall moved between him and the slate screen. Another purge coming on.

  the puffs of smudge from a controlled burn rising about his legs, “I will burn this society to its roots

  He could feel another manifesto coming on as well. “Please let me go,” he muttered, rolling on the bed, drawing up his legs.

  and let the green new grass grow through, fresh and free

  Rushed to the bathroom.

  The individual differentiates from its world and its social group when it is able to observe all their elements as manipulable signs. In any individual, cultured or not, “consciousness” develops when all the portions of its mind agree on the nature and meaning of their various “message characters.” This integration results in a persona, an “overseer” of the mental agreement—the conscious personality.

  —Martin Burke, The Country of the Mind (2043-2044)

  35

 
Oceanport LAX lay four miles out from shore, serviced by VTOL shuttles and three highway bridges. Liftways branched to the west and north like the rays of a Navajo sun sign; to the south and east vast pinkish gray bodies of water edged by narrow seafence revealed oceangoing nano farms linked to the central oceanport platform.

  The scramjet sat quietly idling its four huge engines on the liftway, sleek gray sharkshape seeming to fly even on the ground. The embarking passenger tube snaked slowly out and met its door. Waiting travelers boarded from one end as disembarking passengers exited via a rear tube. Arbeiters smoothly rolled from the plane across their own tube, carrying the detritus of the previous flight. Scramjets never rested; their engines burned hydrogen day and night automatic pilots never shutting down, human supervisors changing watch every eight hours or two round trips whichever came first.

  Mary Choy settled into the seat. Straps curled around her, adapting to her shape. She looked out the broad window at a massive black bulbous nosed suborbital warming up for its launch farther out on the liftway. Fifty suborbitals a day launched from oceanport to cross the immense Pacific in less than an hour, each carrying upward of a thousand passengers or a hundred tons of cargo. Scramjets were for shorter hops or less traveled routes; they carried less than four hundred passengers and traveled at no more than three times the speed of sound. The flight to Santo Domingo HIS would take just under three hours. She could have traveled to China faster.

  Low wisps of cloud lay in a ragged fringe to the west. The ocean beyond the liftways was bright blue under a noon pearlsun burning through high haze. Mary absorbed this all with a curious hunger. Eager to land in Hispaniola and perform her job, eager to get through the next few weeks.

  Eager to get away from her failures.

  In the terminal Reeve’s plain messenger had given her a box containing a metal comb a makeup kit and a hairbrush. The hairbrush’s handle unscrewed with a trick twist to show a gray paste that she recognized as some sort of nano. She had put the box into her luggage and checked it through. The messenger had also given her a disk containing instructions. She took out her slate now and played the disk. When finished she erased the disk tucked away the slate and looked out the window thoughtfully. As Reeve had said not exactly legal. But under the circumstances, very interesting. She wondered if it would work.

  The seatback airline vid came on automatically before her and she shut it off with a languid finger flick. Closed her eyes. Looked back through the past two days at the comfortable physicality and affection of her time with Ernest, ending in schism. Duty over life. All she had was duty it seemed at times; her focus and reason for being. Keeping the forces of darkness at bay that others might live and love undisturbed; not her. No self pity.

  The turbines of the liner’s engines ramped in subsonic mode to a high whistle. Outside the noise could be easily tolerated, chaos of turbulent air reduced by ducts constantly adjusting controlling diverting and funneling at three hundred trims per second, playing one rolling wave of sound off against another. Only in the center of the exhaust would noise crescend to the unbearable. She imagined herself sitting there invulnerable beaten by the string of fire cones, staring into the furnace.

  Melodrama.

  Pd’s duty was to quiet the noise of the human furnace.

  She smiled as the plane began its forward roll. Briefly the exhaust was diverted for vertical lift and the engines gave their true enveloping bellow like a thousand hurricanes played backward, muffled only by the superior design of the gray shark’s skin. They rolled and rose and crossed with a transverse weave off liftway and over blue water, blowing concentric storms with the last wash of the vertical thrust; then the scramjet was at speed and smoothly cutting air ascending sharp forty-five, pressure rising within the cabin, balancing. Whisper quiet. Might as well be in a glider or soaring.

  The plane was not full. Jitters in the tourist market; most of these passengers would be LA tourists on their way to stable Puerto Rico, transferring to VTOL shuttles in Hispaniola. People front and back talking unconcerned. Normal folks with real lives and real loves and balanced duty, internal pressure matching external.

  Mary closed her eyes and reclined her seat. The scramjet bumped onto its own shockwave and surfed at forty two thousand feet quieter still ahead of its own noise. A single steward chaperoned a pair of arbeiters bearing drinks along a ceiling track, dropping food from hidden ducts running the spine length of this comfortable shark. Bellying up to second mach.

  Mary could not sleep. She turned on the seatback vid and flipped through channels, found LA civic news, selected for comb tales, hoping to catch the public spin on Goldsmith. Surprisingly little furor in the commercial vids or the LitVids. Goldsmith’s murders were hardly an everyday occurrence but neither were they tuned to the particular frequency of today’s public passions.

  The murders had been bumped by an exceeding interest in the unresolved discoveries of AXIS. Space did not interest her much. She felt a touch of irritation and switched channels to jag tales.

  More Selector predation. A representative of sixth jag twenty eighth district Mario Pelletier by name longtime politico had been hellcrowned for alleged misappropriation of jag untherapied relief revenues. Twenty seconds in the clamp. Required minor glial balance therapy to recover from the trauma but refused any other treatment. “I took my licks. I can take whatever they dish out. Not so bad. Not so bad.” Haunted look; almost certainly would retire within a few weeks nest in with whatever family he had wrap nacre around his life and avoid any possible second encounter. Selectors would have triumphed yet again raising public image making the bent untherapied a little more wary a little more cautious, perhaps walk a little more the straight and narrow.

  She curled her fingers reflexively. Not legal, but she would hellcrown every Selector for three minutes. Barge into Selector hideout six arbeiters three assistants grab Yol Origund himself, the Israeli expatriate who had taken the Selector mantle from founder Wolfe Ruller. Push the assistants outside watch the arbeiters tie the captives into hard chairs pull the clamp on their heads scan and reroute their own darkest inner boxes, watch the flick of concern as they see red lines…

  Crime and punishment.

  She switched back to the AXIS reports. Poor Ernest. He would never use a hellcrown for its intended purpose but the technological sparkles enchanted him. What artist would not want even the crudest direct access to the viewer’s imagination.

  Had she been too harsh. No knowing. Duty and law.

  Mary Choy caught herself hitching a sob. Spun out and not yet begun. She glanced at her seatmates C, E, F, G, three young men in longsuits and an older woman expensively dressed in thirties period all involved in seatback vid, deadsound dulling their entertainments to distant whispers. They heard nothing of her distress.

  LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “AXIS’s number two mobile explorer has finally finished an investigation of the sample scraped from one of the towers found arranged in rings across B-2. While the mobile explorer’s nano based laboratories are very small, they are almost as thorough as any similar laboratories on Earth, the only difference being that on Earth, we’ve experienced an additional fifteen years of progress. Still, the results are expected to be enlightening.

  “If you’ve noticed, as we have, that reports from all AXIS monitoring facilities have been less informative recently, there’s a simple explanation. We are in a difficult phase of AXIS’s exploration of B-2. The large-scale investigations have shown a world at once enigmatic and entrancing, a world covered with life but with no obvious animals or even large plants. Yet the existence of the circles of towers seems to point to some form of intelligent life, though we are cautioned against drawing such conclusions. What AXIS is doing now is delving deeper into the evidence it’s gathered thus far. The mobile explorers wander and float purposefully and conduct their analyses; the nickel sized children continue to broadcast information about the planet as a whole; the volumes of information AXIS is absorbing
are tremendous.

  “But AXIS is not able to quickly send all this information directly back to Earth. AXIS has been designed as a true remote thinking machine, able to conduct its own experiments and draw its own conclusions, condensing the information—freeze drying it, as it were—and sending the more compact results to us.

  “Should AXIS find a mystery it cannot solve, then the unprocessed facts will indeed be returned to Earth, but not immediately; that process could take years, even decades. AXIS is capable of surviving for at least a century, repairing itself, happily going about its work; but there are many weak links, not the least of them being the transponders spread across deep space between Earth and Alpha Centauri. They cannot repair themselves as AXIS can. They exist in the deep cold of interstellar space and their entire energy budget is devoted to receiving and transmitting signals. Should one of these transponders be lost, transmission time of all information will quadruple. Should more than one be lost, transmission may stop completely or proceed at an impossibly slow rate.

  “And if for any reason part of a message is lost, it will take virtually another decade to instruct AXIS to send it again. The thread of AXIS’s downlink to Earth is fragile indeed, which I suppose is only fitting, considering how audacious this enterprise is in the first place.”

  There are no chariots there, no yokes, no roads. But the King projects out of himself chariots, yokes, roads. There are no joys there, no happiness, no pleasures. But he projects from himself joys, happiness, pleasures. There are no pools there, no lotus ponds and streams. But he projects from himself pools, lotus ponds and streams. For he is the creator.