A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  This was more of the pattern. Just as she had known the meaning of that terrible chair, so she knew the portent of the total pattern The only child had come to the right place and her destiny was high indeed! Stratospheric! Extraterrestrial!

  She swayed between the two women who were holding her, who had held her all during the strange ceremony in this terribly strange place. There had been more walkers than she could count, the smell of them like a nauseating gas, making her so dizzy that most details had been lost upon her Ellel’s voice reverberating in this pillared hall had been only sound with no sense. These rituals and confrontations had no meaning, but then, no more meaning was necessary. All the veils of fatigue, fear, and hunger did not hide the central fact, the core of certainty.

  Now, drawn away from the women by Ellel’s hand, she followed blindly, like a toddler too weak to resist.

  “Come along,” said Ellel, moving rapidly across the vast space and into a seemingly endless corridor. “I want to show you to my colleagues My dear colleagues, who have supported me so faithfully all these years. Qualary! Come with us.”

  The woman trotted after them as they went down curving hallways and ramps, through doors, past cavernous, noisy spaces, and into a kind of foyer, where two men were seated in massive chairs facing one another as they played a complicated game with white and black pieces on a figured board.

  Olly, breathing shallowly, staggering from being dragged so quickly along, saw them without seeing them, her mind scurrying about like a mouse seeking a hole. Behind the men was a window, and through the window she could see something huge that she had no label for A tower? One tower inside another? It made no more sense than the rituals had done.

  “Gentlemen,” Ellel said in a gloating voice. “Mitty Ander. I’d like to introduce you to the last surviving Gaddir!”

  The man addressed as Mitty turned slowly toward her, one hand holding a gamepiece that sank slowly toward the table. “The old man is dead, then?”

  “I mean besides him,” snapped Ellel.

  “No,” Mitty said flatly “Not possible.”

  “Tell me your name, girl!” demanded Ander of Olly.

  “Olly Longaster,” whispered Olly.

  Mitty laughed. “Hardly a Gaddir name.”

  “Werra!” Ellel blazed “No matter what she calls herself, the tissue sample says she’s Werra! Her ability says she’s Werra!”

  Mitty gave her a quick, almost frightened look. “Her ability—”

  “Really, Ellel?” Ander commented, twisting his mouth into an appreciative smile. “Here’s our wonderful Ellel telling us she was right all along!”

  “Isn’t she always?” Mitty asked in an expressionless voice as he swept the white gamepieces from the board. Ander followed his example, the table gathered the board and pieces into itself and folded into Mitty’s chair.

  “Well,” said Ander, nodding toward Olly with a meaningless smile. “How nice that you’ve joined us. Particularly just now.”

  “I was given no choice,” said Olly in a stubborn, childlike voice she did not recognize as her own It was a voice. on the edge of tantrum, teetering into hysteria. “I was— was—”

  Mitty gave her a look, admonishing, warning, what? She couldn’t tell, but she swallowed her words and was silent.

  Ander chuckled “No. Our Ellel doesn’t give any of us much choice.”

  “This young woman looks tired to death,” said Mitty, calmly, objectively. He gave Ellel a long look. “I suppose you’ve had her up all night.”

  This was so near the truth as to make Ellel mutter angrily.

  Mitty spoke to Ellel, but his eyes were fixed on Olly’s. “She needs rest. She needs food. She’ll do you no good if she falls ill, Ellel. Send her off with Qualary. Let her get some sleep and some breakfast. You’ll want her at the peak of her—ability, won’t you? Didn’t Werra’s plans specify as much? It seems to me I remember something of the kind. And now that she’s here, we can take our time to discuss how matters should go.”

  Olly dropped her eyes. He was talking to her, telling her something.

  Ellel spoke with only slight annoyance. “How thoughtful of you, Mitty. By all means.” She turned toward Qualary. “Take her home with you, Qualary!” She dismissed them both with a gesture. “Mitty and Ander and I have things to talk about.”

  Qualary took Olly by the shoulder to lead her away.

  Ellel’s strident voice reached them as they neared the door “Don’t misplace her, Qualary.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Qualary doggedly.

  “My walkers will make sure you don’t,” Ellel said in a razor-edged whisper. “They’re watching you, Qualary And you, Olly Longaster. You can’t take two steps without their seeing you, nor three without their catching you!”

  She paused, then laughed as she saw Qualary’s expression. “Why, Qualary! You don’t like them, do you?”

  “It’s—sometimes hard to get my work done with them around,” murmured Qualary, bending her shoulders and back, bowing her head, groveling a little, just a little, for groveling pleased Ellel mightily.

  “Oh, my dear, they won’t interfere. They’ll simply be sure our guest doesn’t wander off. Or that you don’t let her out of your sight.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Qualary again. She bowed her head even more submissively and waited until Ellel had turned back to the others before she drew Olly out into the corridor.

  “What was that thing through the window?” Olly whispered, pointing over her shoulder.

  “That’s the shuttle,” Qualary answered quietly. “A kind of spaceship.”

  So that was a shuttle. Somehow, she hadn’t expected it to look like that. She had thought it would have wings, like a bird. “What are they going to do with it?” she asked. She knew. She only wanted to hear the words.

  “Fly away.” Qualary laughed chokingly, a bitter sound, making fluttery motions with her hands. “That’s what they say.”

  “Where?” Olly breathed.

  “I only know what they say,” Qualary replied, giving her an impenetrable look. “Can you walk?”

  “Rather than be carried by those things,” Olly said, “I can walk, yes. I like them no better than you do.”

  “Hush,” the woman said, putting her fingers on Olly’s lips and glancing sidewise, to see who might have heard.

  “But I do want to send a message to my friends,” Olly said stubbornly, moving Qualary’s fingers away. “They’ll be worried about me.”

  Qualary shook her head, leaned close, and whispered, “I have no way to send a message to anyone outside the wall Ellel would have to do it.”

  Olly felt her eyes overflow, tried to blink back the tears with no success. “I’m so tired.”

  Qualary, distressed, wiped the tears away, whispering, “You’ve been up all night, just as Mitty said.”

  Olly opened her mouth to tell of the wildly disordered apartment where she had spent the night; of that terrible face beneath a shoddy too-small crown, which should have been laughable but wasn’t. It had seemed a kind of madness. Oracle had said something once about madness: The only difference between a futile madman and an effective tyrant is power and will. Ellel’s vision of herself might be mad, but she had the power and the will to make it come true. What could she tell Qualary of this? Nothing that would do any good.

  Dismayed at Olly’s pallor and her silence, Qualary nudged at her. “You haven’t slept?”

  “No,” Olly replied, falling back on simple complaint, simple needs, simply stated. “And I haven’t had anything to eat or drink. And I do have to let my friends know where I am.”

  “Well, then, food and rest can be had at my house.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “And I have a friend who can send a message. Maybe.”

  They left the precincts of the Dome and went into an ordinary street, not unlike the streets back in Whitherby, except that it was thronged with blackly glittering walkers who watched with redly gleaming eyes, heads swiveling as
Qualary and Olly went by. They went into Qualary’s house, an ordinary house. Looking dazedly out the window, Olly thought it a banal setting for the creatures, swirling like eddies in the aftermath of a flood, their bodies moving aimlessly while their eyes kept this house under purposive observation.

  “Do all of them belong to Ellel?” Olly cried, on the verge of hysteria.

  “All the ones you see out there. Ander and Mitty have a few, but they never use them Berkli has none. He hates them. But then, Berkli is a doubter.” She fetched a pillow, helped Olly lie down on the sofa, and covered her with a soft blanket.

  Berkli had been the man routed from the Dome. “What does Berkli doubt?”

  “Oh, he doubts everything. Doubts the Domers should have ever left their towers by the seas to come here. Doubts they should have bothered with the shuttle at all. Doubts they’ll ever get the shuttle finished. Doubts they’ll get the guidance system they need to fly it.”

  Olly had no doubt they had already found their guidance system, but it was obvious Qualary didn’t understand the implications. “Why do they want to go?”

  “To the space station? They say there are materials in the space station that they want.”

  Olly had heard that during her previous night’s experience. “They say I am a Gaddir.”

  Qualary rubbed her forehead. “They say so I don’t know exactly what that means.”

  “Do you think I am a Gaddir?”

  Qualary pivoted on one foot, a swinging motion, back and forth, back and forth, as though perhaps the motion helped her think. “There were three Gaddir families Hunagor died long before I was born. Werra died when I was just a teen Tom says old Seoca is still alive, though nobody outside Gaddi House has seen him for ages.”

  “Ellel says I’m a Werra. Could my mother and father both have been from this Werra family?”

  Qualary shook her head, confused. “Girl, I don’t know. None of them talk with me; they just talk around me. All I know is what I overhear.”

  Olly sighed “I’ve seen the shops the Domers run. I can figure out what they do, how they live. But what do the Gaddirs do?”

  Qualary shrugged. “I’ve asked my friend Tom—he’s a Gaddir—but all he does is make jokes. The Gaddirs don’t say what they do. Or did.”

  “Someone here sends people to burn books. And change the names of things.”

  “People speak of that in the marketplace, but it isn’t the Domers who do it. I’d have heard about it if they did.”

  “Somewhere here are thrones.”

  Qualary shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Olly sighed. “Thank you for telling me what you do know, Qualary.”

  Qualary wrung her hands together. “It’s because I know how you feel I really do. Sometimes with Ellel I’ve been so—so scared! And when the walkers are around, I just freeze. I hate feeling like that, and the only time I feel even halfway safe is when I know exactly what’s expected, what I have to do I thought—I thought the more you knew, the easier it may be for you. I don’t want anything to go wrong. When things go wrong, people get hurt.”

  She made a sound of distress, bowing her head to hide her eyes. Then she said, “You must be starved.”

  She went into the neighboring room, where Olly heard at first agitated steps, a few muffled gasps that might have been sobs, then noises that were gradually quieter and more purposeful. She had almost fallen asleep when Qualary returned bearing a tray that she placed on a small table by the sofa.

  “Scrambled eggs,” she said “Green pepper sauce. Piñon muffins.”

  “You’re very kind,” Olly murmured. The smell of the food awakened her slightly, and she sat up to nibble for a while in drowsy silence before asking, “You’ve never heard anything about five champions, have you?”

  Qualary shook her head.

  “What about six people or groups set on salvation?” Qualary, buttering a muffin, answered without hesitation. “The six set on salvation are the Sisters to Trees, the Guardians of Earth, the Artemisians, the Northern Lights, the Sea Shepherds, and the Animal Masters.”

  Olly was amazed and showed it. “The who?”

  “The six groups set on salvation, dedicated to saving the earth I’ve heard there are others elsewhere, but those six are the ones we trade with, in the marketplace here.”

  “I met a Sister to Trees,” Olly offered around a mouthful of eggs. “And I know some Artemisians. I’ve heard the Artemisians mention the Animal Masters and the Guardians, but I don’t know what the Guardians do.”

  “They’re mostly involved with water and soil, with stopping erosion and cleaning up pollutants. The Northern Lights run ozone plants. The Sea Shepherds govern fisheries. The Animal Masters run breeding farms, set hunting quotas, and hunt down poachers—though of course the Artemisians do that too. It was the Animal Masters who salvaged zoo and farm stock after men went to the stars, and it is they who bring the camel caravans across the desert from the west.”

  Olly started to ask about talking coyotes and bears, then bit her tongue. Any such information given to Qualary could get back to Ellel It would be unfair to ask Qualary. to keep secrets. Instead, she yawned. The food had drawn her blood away from her brain, and she was suddenly overwhelmingly drowsy. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m so sleepy.”

  “Lie down. Sleep.” Qualary rose. “I’ll be here when you wake.” Looking down at the weary woman, she thought it was the least, perhaps the only thing she could promise.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ask, dreamed Olly to herself, one only child. She walked in a dark place, her hands held by a person on each side of her. These were her parents, she knew. Father. Mother.

  “Where are we going?” she asked them.

  “We’re there,” they said, both at once, with one voice. “Here we are.”

  And they were there, where the three chairs were, tall chairs, gray and ancient, their arms and backs carved with beings whose bodies were twisted into curly words. Mother went to the left-hand seat, and Father to the seat in the middle. Olly was all alone.

  “Here we are,” the ones in the great chairs said. “Here we are, child. These are the thrones.”

  “What do you want with me?” she cried. “Why am I here?”

  “We need you, child. You were born because we need you to do something for us.”

  “I don’t want to!” she cried. “I want to go away with Abasio. I want to go to the Faulty Sea and see the stilt houses I. want to travel to Low Mesiko. I want to want to …” She wept in her dream. “It’s not fair.”

  “There’s a way,” said the right-hand chair. “There’s always a way. Everything has happened before. If not here, elsewhere. If not now, then. Every question has been answered before.”

  The right-hand chair was empty. She wanted to get up next to Mother and Father, but it was too tall to sit in.

  “It’s too big for me,” she said. “It towers.”

  “Yes,” they agreed “It’s huge. It’s old It’s not for you.”

  She laid her hands on the seat. It felt old and powerful and wise Everything was there, in the chair. Everything she needed. And it connected to everything else, everywhere.

  “The end is in the beginning,” said the chair “To the weak, succor; to the strong, burdens.”

  Then they were gone, all of it was gone, and she was merely asleep.

  A knock at Qualary’s door.

  “Tom!” Qualary cried, when she had opened it. “What brings you here?”

  He had a strange feathered thing on his shoulder, not quite a bird. “I understand you have a houseguest,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Where’s my Orphan?” said the feathered thing, turning its bright black eyes this way and that, stretching its ruffled head from side to side, clacking its rapierlike beak. “Where’s my Orphan?”

  “Where did you hear about her?” asked Qualary, her eyes on the feathered being.

  “Oh, someone saw you walking along the street.” He strol
led into the room and gazed at the young woman asleep there, her face peaceful.

  “There’s my Orphan!” said the feathered thing, fluttering to the back of the sofa and settling there with a chortling sound. “My Orphan.”

  Tom said, “So it’s true. Well. Do you know who she is?”

  “I know what Ellel says,” she murmured.

  “She’s a pretty thing,” he said softly.

  “You had some interest in her?” Qualary asked in a worried voice.

  “Now, Qualary”—he smiled again—“of course I do. Isn’t this supposed to be the missing Gaddir child? The rumored child? The child who is going to solve all of Ellel’s problems?”

  “I think she’ll be safer if you don’t take any interest in her,” whispered Qualary.

  “She would have been safest if Ellel had taken no interest in her, but perhaps you’re right.” He looked out the window at the passing hordes. “What do you suppose would happen if we tried to take her over to Gaddi House right now?”

  “We’d be stopped!” she said, distressed. “Ellel has told the walkers the girl is to stay here. Don’t do anything to set the walkers off, Tom! Please! You know what they can do!”

  “Well, of course,” he said softly, “I wouldn’t endanger either of you.” He touched her cheek, smoothed the furrows between her eyes. “Ellel will know I was here. If she asks why I came, tell her I found the girl’s pet bird, and I was curious about her. Don’t worry over it, Qualary. Everything will work out.”

  “I do worry about it!” she cried in an agonized whisper, looking over his shoulder at the shifting masses of walkers. “I keep watching them See the one on the corner, jerking and twitching, just like the one did that killed the children!”

  He patted her face and was out before she could say good-bye.

  When he reached the street, he was stopped almost immediately, one walker holding him, one questioning him.

  “What are you doing here?” the walker asked, with a peculiar buzzing and rattling in the metallic voice, as though some part were not firmly connected.