A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “I goin’ with Abasio,” announced TeClar to one of the guards. “You don’ need me for escort. The women say nobody needs gettin’ clean today.”

  “That Sybbis, she’s about clean enough,” mumbled one of the guards. “Ever day and ever day, down to the baths and back again. Down to the baths and back again. Three days, nothin’ but goin’ to the baths. Glad she finally got cleaned up.”

  “Don’ know what she’s doin’ makes her dirty,” the other guard offered with a suppressed snigger.

  Abasio glared at him. “Meaning?”

  “What I say?” the guard said indignantly. “Me? I din’ say nothin’.”

  “Better say nothing,” snarled Abasio. “If you know what’s good for you.” And better Purple up, too, he said to himself. Anybody attack the Purple House today, those two’d be dead before they knew who.

  “I got to ax you a question, Basio.”

  Abasio grunted.

  “You know out there where the Greens burn all those old folk? You know, whole lotta those buildings out there got nobody in ’em. Howcome they don fix the old places, Basio?”

  “Nobody needs them fixed,” Abasio replied. “Lots of people went to the stars or moved out to the Edge—the ones that had money enough—and that left lots of empty buildings. We won’t need to fix them until all the tots grow up and we need more room.”

  “Tha’s in the Book,” agreed TeClar.

  Abasio nodded. Yes, it was in the Book of the Purples, along with a lot of stuff about how strong the Purples were getting to be, stronger every generation. Deep as space, said the Book. Something tantalizing about that thought, but Abasio couldn’t identify what. He wasn’t able to identify much this morning, and that was the truth!

  “Whistler, he in the back market yestaday,” TeClar offered, leaving the cracked sidewalk to sidle down a narrow, trash-piled alleyway. “Down here.”

  Abasio followed without comment, kicking the debris aside. The alley debouched onto a flat, open space where a highway had once run, now crowded with individual canvas-shaded booths and carts, its aisles already clotted with shuffling crowds. Though the concrete was cracked everywhere, it was still solid underfoot, all the way to their destination, a cavernous area sheltered among the pillars of a lofty overpass. Though the overpass had fallen in farther on, the space beneath was still accessible from the old on- and off-ramps, and among this “back market” warren of wagons and ancient trucks, both Whistler and Sudden Stop had outlets for their wares.

  They had come to the outermost of the ancient concrete piers supporting the road above when Abasio came to a halt.

  “Whatso?” grunted TeClar, bumping into him.

  “Shh,” Abasio hissed. “Come on.” And he pulled the boy with him behind the shelter of the thick pillar.

  Obediently, TeClar was quiet, peeking curiously from behind the pillar to see what Abasio had noticed. Nothing much was happening. Just people in the market. And what was Abasio doing?

  Abasio was staring at his feet, his mouth open, as though listening very intently.

  TeClar squirmed uncomfortably. There was something. Some little—what was it? A kind of stillness running down through the market? People getting out of the way of something, very quietly, not talking or moving until whatever it was had passed them, then drifting off, leaving the stillness behind them.

  Like a little tide of silence coming, Abasio thought. He had not seen tides, but he’d read about them. The rush of water, the glissade of foam, and the slow withdrawal before the next rush. And there, as at the edge of foamy silence, two striding walkers. Like those he’d most recently seen near Echinot. He must have noticed them, maybe out of the corner of his eye. Seen and responded, though he’d seen them only twice before. Them, or two just like them.

  “Whatso, Basio?” whispered TeClar.

  “Hush,” he hissed so fiercely, the boy gaped at him.

  The walkers came along the marketplace, striding evenly over the slime of refuse and the broken slabs, not seeming to notice the cracks or tilted blocks that made others stumble, preternaturally smooth in gait, their sleek faces without expression. They were like the ones Abasio had seen on the highway, the same skintight glisteny suits, the same shiny, close-fitted helms.

  Awful. Dreadful. Terrible.

  The words had come unbidden. Abasio concentrated on the pillar he was standing behind, stared at it, emptying his mind of anything else. The pocked and dingy surface an inch from his nose was scarred from collisions, stained by weather and birds, blotchily overpainted here and there where some kid-G had painted his colors or his slogan in defiance of the neutrality treaty. Colors weren’t allowed in the market. Abasio concentrated on gray. No color. No color at all.

  The silence moved, coming nearer, stopping behind the very pillar where they stood. The walkers had cornered someone against the pillar and were asking questions, not loudly but clearly, with a peculiar quality of penetration.

  “We were told a dark-haired female person, one about twenty years old, asked directions to this city. Have you seen such a girl?” The words were like ice in the ear, or like fire, painful to hear.

  Abasio smelled terror, an acrid stench of sweat and urine. The man who was being interrogated had lost control of himself, but he was answering: He’d seen a girl here, a girl there, perhaps the girl they wanted. The stillness moved away while Abasio held his breath. When he peeked around the pillar he saw the man sagging against the pillar, trousers stained, tears leaking unheeded down his gray face.

  Why were the walkers still asking the question they had asked him so long ago in Echinot? Why were they seeking a dark-haired girl about twenty? In Echinot it had been thirteen. That had been seven years ago. Had it been that long?

  Awareness trembled in him, making him afraid to move. He knew who they wanted. They mustn’t question him. They mustn’t even see him!

  As though reading his mind, TeClar sagged behind the pillar, holding his breath as the helmeted duo stalked through the back market, out of it, elsewhere. They could tell how far the walkers had gone by the silence that flowed after and around them, the sound resuming only as a subdued murmur.

  They moved from behind the pillar to find the gray-faced man collapsed against the far side, sucking in rasping, agonized breaths. The surfaces around him were blackened Abasio grasped the man’s shoulders and pulled him away from the darkened pave before he knelt beside him. There was a bitter smell, one he recognized.

  “Whatso?” whispered TeClar.

  “He’s dying,” said Abasio, loosening the man’s collar. “See if you can find someone who knows him!”

  TeClar moved off, returning within moments with a younger man, a young woman, son and son’s wife to the fallen man, farmers come to town with a load of sweet corn.

  “What happened?” demanded the young farmer.

  “Walkers,” said Abasio, laconically.

  “Aaah,” the woman cried, putting her hand to her lips and looking around herself fearfully.

  “Papa, Papa,” the boy murmured, lifting the unconscious man, carrying him away. “Oh, Papa, Papa.”

  Abasio moved slowly away, trying to remember why he had come here. Before the walkers had killed the man, or as good as, they’d been asking after Olly. He knew it as a certainty. Olly was who they had always been looking for, a special person, a unique person. Who else but she? He had to go back to the farm and warn her. Soon. As soon as he could.

  “Who those men?” whispered TeClar.

  Abasio shrugged, trying desperately to make his voice sound casual. He knew what they were called. He knew what they could do, Maybe. He didn’t know what they really were. “In Echinot, they call them walkers. If you’re smart, you’ll keep out of their way.”

  TeClar swallowed this with some difficulty. Both the Chingero brothers were naturally audacious without being bright enough to assess the risks they took. Still, he was accustomed to taking orders from Abasio. “We goin’ to fin’ Whistler, now, Basio?�
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  Of course. That’s why they had come. Abasio nodded absently as they moved into the crowd once more, a crowd that seemed unnaturally noisy now that the silence had passed.

  “There,” whispered TeClar, his finger pointing before Abasio’s nose. “There Whistler, Basio.”

  Abasio thrust through the throng milling about. Whistler’s wagon. Whistler always brought a wagon, always had a high, stout counter between him and the customers, always had two or three hired Survivors standing by just in case. Sometimes people wanted stuff they couldn’t pay for. Sometimes they got so desperate they tried to take it without paying. They never got it from Whistler, not that way.

  Abasio had seen lots of druggies die since he’d seen the dying men at Purple House. He’d seen them unconscious in doorways, barely breathing. He’d seen them screaming and shaking and spouting from both ends, like poisoned dogs. He’d seen them throw themselves off roofs trying to fly and root in the gutter filth looking for gold. He’d seen them fade fast, seen them die slow. Ma had said it was bad; Abasio knew it to be true. Since that first sight of death, he’d bought few drugs, and those carefully. Nonetheless, he, like everyone else, knew. Whistler, not only from the almost encounter on the road near the farm, long ago.

  “Whatso, Whistler?” he greeted the merchant.

  “Abasio,” the other rumbled, giving him a basilisk stare, cold as the walkers’ glance but more personal.

  Abasio, remembering the fate of certain people who’d annoyed Whistler, talked only of business.

  “Man at the Patrol Post told me you have something new. Starlight, is it?”

  “Starlight it is.”

  Abasio put an elbow on the counter, attempting to appear sanguine, though being at ease around. Whistler wasn’t either simple or sensible. “What’s the risk, Whistler? Tell me true, now I’m not buying for me, but I’m the one to blame if it isn’t good stuff.”

  Whistler leaned forward and whispered, “You buyin’ for the Purple Chief, the Young Chief, the sweet Baby Chief with his smoothy skin?”

  Abasio didn’t answer. Any answer was dangerous. Someone might hear. Someone might quote him as having said. Someone might even quote him as having listened without objecting, which in itself could be dangerous.

  Whistler sniggered, an ominous sound, like the laugh of a crow settling to dinner on something not quite dead. “Let me tell you the truth. If you was buyin’ for a child’s hobbyhorse with no balls at all, Starlight would make a stallion of him. ‘Starlight, starbright, first star I see tonight, wish I may, wish I might,’ and the wish is granted, absolute! Starlight puts starch in ancient cocks, pours molten metal down droopy dicks, paralyzes pricks so they don’t come down until six days later. Starlight makes maidens tremble in fear. Even tired old whores with cunts so loose they’d go round you twice, the mention of Starlight makes ’em stutter and run for cover. Starlight puts steel in a man’s business, mainman. Starlight is what your Young Chief most needs.”

  Abasio stared into Whistler’s eyes, which showed nothing at all. No emotion. No fun. No hate, no love.

  “Moreover,” Whistler went on, “Starlight stirs up the eggs, mainman, stirs up the nuts, the balls, the jewels, makes them crank out the juice like so many little pumps Childless men wish upon Starlight and are childless no longer. If they’ve got a capable woman, they’re bein’ called Daddy before they know it.”

  “How much?” asked Abasio from a dry mouth.

  “A golden sparrow the vial. Which is good for several nights’ pleasure, mainman. And as many babies in the oven as the ladies involved can manage among ’em. A single golden sparrow guarantees a man his posterity.”

  Abasio’s jaw dropped at the mention of the amount “You’re joking!”

  The eyes turned colder than before. Inhumanly cold.

  “Do I ever joke?”

  And of course he didn’t. Whistler never joked, not even now, when his price was a quarter of what Abasio had managed to squirrel away over the past several years.

  “Pass the cost along, Abasio,” whispered Whistler, leaning across his counter to get close to Abasio’s ear. He pursed his lips and made music, a pure strain of melody that drifted over the marketplace, making a sudden hush.

  It was the same melody Abasio had heard long ago, long and long ago. Then it had intrigued him. Now it made him shiver, for he had until the song was over to make up his mind to buy. If he waited longer, the goods would no longer be available at the price mentioned. Such were Whistler’s rules. He was not a patient man.

  “I’m not carrying that much,” said Abasio.

  The melody stopped, cut off.

  “Your credit’s good.” Whistler turned up his lips at the corner, an uncharming smile with the effect of a snarl.

  The marketplace noises resumed, almost in relief.

  Whistler reached beneath the counter and brought out the vial. “One drop on the skin,” he murmured, opening the vial and waving it under Abasio’s nose. “That’s the smell of the real thing, mainman. One drop anywhere on the skin. No more.”

  The smell was familiar. Abasio got a sudden flash, a cloud of dark hair, this smell coupled with the smell of sweat, a gleam of slender legs, a little moon shining.

  He shook his head, suddenly dizzy. “This stuff is new?” he asked, puzzled.

  Whistler simply stared.

  Abasio shrugged apologetically. “The smell seemed familiar, that’s all.”

  “You’re not my only customer,” Whistler said softly. “Between the physicians and the songhouse managers, my stock is much reduced. Of course, later on, when supplies are larger, the price will be reduced as well. Eventually, it will be cheap. Eventually, most things are.” His smile was bleak. He knew Abasio couldn’t wait until then, not if he was buying for the Young Chief.

  Abasio reflected that there’d been several days he couldn’t remember. He could have smelled it in a song-house during that time. Perhaps he had mixed it up with memories of Olly, memories of people he’d seen while he was drunk. Probably.

  Then who was the woman he remembered? That wasn’t Olly, was it?

  “It’s my neck,” he repeated softly. “Is there anything I should know about it, Whistler? If somebody gets hurt, I’ll get chopped.”

  “Couldn’t hurt a baby.”

  “I’ll bring the money today,” Abasio promised.

  “I know you will,” said Whistler, smiling his cutthroat smile once more while his dead eyes looked past Abasio at nothing.

  It came to Abasio that Whistler looked a lot like Sudden Stop. Unlike Whistler’s guards, the Survivors, who stared into Abasio’s face, storing it up in case they needed to come after him later, both Whistler and Sudden had eyes that looked on past you at something only they could see.

  Abasio put the vial in his breast pocket, placed his open hand across it, and turned to go back through the market, hearing himself hailed from a nearby booth as he did.

  “Whatso, Basio!” The words were like distant thunder.

  “Sudden Stop.” Just the man he’d been thinking of.

  “Heard your little dealings there. Happy to lend you a sparrow if you’d like to get Whistler paid.”

  Abasio pulled his lips into a semblance of a smile Sudden Stop was huge and bald and wondrous strong, he could handle weapons with one hand that other men struggled to carry with two. He was known to be a fair man, but his interest rates were high. Men who didn’t pay were likely to find themselves being used as a demonstration in a weapons test.

  “I thank you kindly, Sudden Stop, but I’ve the money to pay him,” murmured Abasio, thankful that CummyNup was standing guard over Abasio’s home, for there were ears all around the marketplace.

  “Another time then,” rumbled Sudden Stop.

  Abasio put his head down and trudged homeward, TeClar at his side.

  “Me’n CummyNup, sometimes we wonder ’bout those two,” said TeClar. “Whistler an’ Sudden Stop.”

  “Wonder what?” breathed Abasio
, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other Lord, he was tired!

  “Never see those two at a songhouse. Never see those two drinkin’ beer. Never see those two havin’ any fun, you know?”

  “They spend a lot of time out of Fantis,” murmured Abasio. “Maybe they have their fun somewhere else.”

  “Could be.” TeClar nodded. He cast a sidewise glance at Abasio’s pocket, where the drug reposed. “You gonna try it, Basio?”

  Abasio snarled, “I am not. It’s for the Young Chief. All of it. So don’t suggest I let you have a try, either.”

  “Don’ need stuff like that,” asserted TeClar in a lofty tone. “Do fine all by my lone. You really got the money, Basio?”

  “Yeah,” grunted Abasio, wondering how much of it he was going to be able to collect back from the Young Chief “A whole sparrow. Tha’s a lot,” said TeClar sadly. “Tha’s a real lot. Whistler, he charges plenty. And ol’ Sudden Stop, he charges plenty too. I figure every man in Fantis buys from one of them or the other.”

  Probably every man in Fantis had bought from both, Abasio reflected. And a golden sparrow was indeed a real lot. It was ten silver rats, one hundred silver mice. It was one-tenth of a golden crow. But there was enough in the vial for several … sessions. So, if he divided the stuff, put a little in a separate vial, then if the Young Chief liked it, Abasio could tell him he needed money to buy more. And if he didn’t like it, Abasio could sell it elsewhere. Which was the only way to recoup he could think of at the moment.

  “You,” he said, giving TeClar a hard look. “You don’t talk about this, right? You don’t say what I bought, what I paid, right?” He was suddenly desperately weary, so tired, he wanted to he down and sleep.

  “Right, Basio,” agreed TeClar. “But we wasn’ the only ones there.”

  Which was true enough. Nothing that happened in the marketplace could be considered private.

  Weighing his commitments, Abasio decided he would deal with the Young Chief first, then with Whistler. Within limits, Whistler was patient. He knew Abasio would show up with the money because. Abasio wasn’t stupid. The Young Chief, on the other hand, was incapable of making such a judgment.