A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “What sort of information?” asked Berkli “Since yours is a Gaddir talent, I suppose you’ll need information from Gaddi House?”

  “I will,” said Olly, reading him correctly. “Never!” snarled Ellel.

  “Then I can’t do the job,” said Olly, keeping her voice flat and unemotional.

  The others murmured among themselves. Ellel’s golden mask glared at Olly as though to pierce her through. Olly managed to return the look with one that was virtually mindless. She had allies in this room, but she would not keep them long if Ellel knew it.

  Abruptly, Ellel’s face cleared. She had thought of something.

  “Well then,” she said, in a voice that was little more than a keening whisper. “I shall take this matter under advisement. It may be possible for her to go into Gaddi House. Under the proper conditions. I will think it over.”

  Olly took a deep breath, ready to assert herself again, only to see from the corner of her eye a tiny motion of Qualary’s hand. It was a warning. Best she not break Qualary’s rule again. Don’t appear contentious. Though she wanted to scream defiance, she stayed quiet. They couldn’t kill her if they needed her to guide their ship! They couldn’t hurt her seriously.

  But it would be dangerous to say that. She threw another sidelong look at Qualary and found the woman’s eyes fixed pleadingly upon her. She bit down her anger and said in the childlike tones she remembered using when Oracle had been grumpy, “Oh, I’ll help if I can. I think it’s all very exciting.”

  Several bystanders dressed in silks with fluttering sleeves smiled and murmured to one another. Ander nodded drunkenly, apparently satisfied. Berkli and Mitty carefully did not look at each other.

  “Take her away, Qualary,” Ellel snarled. “I’ll let you know later about where she can go.”

  “Ma’am,” bobbed Qualary. She came to put her hand on Olly’s shoulder, and they departed as they had come.

  “You did very well,” murmured Qualary as they went down one of the long curved corridors around the Dome. “You didn’t give her much of a chance to get mad at you.”

  “Is there some way I could talk to Berkli?” Olly asked.

  “Berkli! Why?”

  “He may have useful information, and he might tell me things Ellel won’t. I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Trying to talk with Berkli would be a good way to get yourself killed! Ellel hates him almost as much as she hates Gaddi House. Berkli has no power. The walkers belong to Ellel. He doesn’t dare cross her. Not him, nor Mitty either!”

  Despite this warning, when they emerged into the air, they found the walkers going away, flowing toward the gates in the wall. Only a sparse dozen remained to watch them.

  Inside, Qualary went to the window, her mind busy with a thousand suspicions brought about by the sudden departure of the others, the threats Ellel had made.

  “You never told me about last night. What happened while you were with Ellel?”

  Once more Olly tried to put words to the experience. Once more she failed “I can’t … it’s hard to describe,” she said. “It was just—confusing. Her place is like a … I don’t know. It’s sort of like Oracle’s cavern, all cluttered up with meaningless stuff.”

  “I know,” said Qualary, sitting beside her. “I know I’m her housekeeper. I know exactly what it’s like.”

  Olly threw up her hands. “As for her, she’s strange. What she says she wants and what she really wants may be different things. I kept feeling she was lying to me, but also lying to herself.”

  “Did you mention where you came from?” Qualary asked. “Did she ask anything about your childhood? Did you tell her anything about your growing up, who took care of you?”

  Olly tried to remember. “She knew I came from an archetypal village. I’d already told her.”

  “Did you tell her anything about it?” Qualary persisted. Had she? Olly tried to remember and couldn’t. “I must have told her something,” she confessed. “I was so tired, and so hungry, and she kept.…” She couldn’t describe it. Qualary shook her head, trying to make the motion seem casual. “It probably doesn’t matter,” she soothed. “It probably makes no difference.”

  In the archetypal village where Olly had grown up, day had succeeded day as though nothing at all had happened. A new Bastard had come to take the place of the old. There was never any shortage of Bastards, as Drowned Woman remarked—or of Fools, said Oracle, for they soon had another one of those as well. The new Orphan was only a baby, kept so shut away by the Wet Nurse that the villagers did not know if it was a boy or a girl.

  Oracle missed having an Orphan to cosset with biscuits and to plague with good advice. Drowned Woman spoke of her fosterling longingly from time to time. Burned Man recalled her as well, saying what a quick pupil she had been, how exceptional her understanding. Remembering in what company the Wet Nurse had arrived, none of them spoke of “their.” Orphan in her hearing, though it was likely she overheard them anyhow. Wet Nurse, they all soon confirmed to one another, was a sneak.

  Winter came with early snow, and the peddlers told of disease among the cities. This telling was reinforced by the farmers who supplied them with food. The cities were dying, they said. Then the cities were dead. No more gangers.

  Hero went out to see what was happening in the world and returned with a look both stern and sad on his face. “Woe and pity!” he cried. “For the cities are no more.”

  Burned Man sat in his front window and wept as though he would never stop. “All those children,” he cried. “All those poor children.”

  “Come now,” said Oracle impatiently. “Hero says most of the children who were born healthy are still healthy, and as for the rest, you knew very well they were headed toward such an end! That’s what got you in this fix in the first place!”

  “But—but—” he cried.

  “There is no but!” she exclaimed. “If a man leaps from a high cliff and breaks his legs, do we say, ‘But it isn’t fair! But it isn’t right! But someone should have figured how to leap from cliffs without breaking bones! But all the cliffs should have been leveled long ago!’ We don’t blame the council or the mayor. Instead we say the jumper is a damned fool and lucky that he isn’t dead. Surely the end is in the act! And if your gangers go to the songhouses and take drugs when they know it causes disease, surely the end is in that act as well.”

  “They don’t mean to die!” he cried. “And what of the innocent man or woman your jumper pulls over with him when he goes!”

  “Few ever mean to die,” Oracle replied. “And no one ever means to be pulled over by someone else, but those ends are also in the act. Who one chooses to be with is as important as what one chooses to do Danger is communicable, like disease.”

  “I blame the Edgers!” he shouted. “They could have—”

  “Man believes what he wants to believe,” sighed Oracle, “and he usually wants to believe someone else is to blame. So blame who you like. You might remember what you yourself told Orphan. There are not enough Edgers in the world to have fixed the cities. There are no acceptable solutions to some problems!”

  Still, Burned Man would not be consoled for days. He spent his time between fury and tears, until at last both emotions wore themselves out and left him much as he had been before.

  It was then that the walkers came.

  They came in great numbers in the early morning, along the road and from among the trees on either side of the village, and down the trail that ran beside the waterfall. They found Oracle asleep in her cavern and Drowned Woman playing with the Water Babies, they found Burned Man fixing his breakfast, they looked for Hero but missed him, for he was off on a quest. The three they found they took over the hill with them and down into the valley of the Crystal, where they took old Cermit from feeding his chickens and Farmwife Suttle from milking her cow, and then with all these folk who had succored and loved Orphan, they went at great speed into the southwest, returning to the Place of Power whence they had bee
n sent.

  At nightfall, Hero returned to the village to learn from Miser and Artist and Ingenue what had happened there and that the black-helmed creatures had sought him, Hero, as well. Long into the night he sat at the flap of his tent, thinking heroic thoughts. At dawn he rose, mounted his horse, and left the village without a declamation, without a stated quest. For the first time in his life, he had encountered a situation he could not meet alone. He knew of other villages, of other Heroes. He intended to go to them, all of them, and ask for help, for there was a maiden to be rescued. A maiden he knew.

  During the long night, he had been surprised to discover that knowing Orphan made a definite difference.

  By an inside route through Gaddi House, up certain shafts and across catwalks above otherwise untraversable areas, it was possible to reach the roof, a vast graveled area broken here and there by glass-roofed openings that let light into the gardens far below. It was old Seoca, Orphan’s Herkimer-Lurkimer, who suggested Tom take their guests to this vantage point. It was from behind the roof’s low parapet that Tom showed Arakny and Abasio the Place of Power, pointing out shuttle and Dome and explaining how the Domers had arrived in the long ago.

  When he had finished, Abasio said, “Everything looks calm down there, very peaceful. But earlier, you said none of us was safe. What did you mean?”

  Tom leaned upon the parapet and pointed downward. “See those walkers moving about? A lot of them recently left, but there are still enough of them to kill us all. One word from Ellel, and it would be like a scythe cutting grain. Men would fall dead, harvested.”

  “I’ve heard the sound they make,” said Abasio. “From miles away, but the sound still pained me and killed birds.” Tom went on: “Think how many of them there are! Thousands, getting older every hour. Wires corroding, circuits wearing, crystals fracturing. Even pseudoflesh eventually sickens and dies. His Wisdom thinks these creatures may have been stored away in the first place because they were considered dangerous or unreliable. Otherwise they’d have been used for something, wouldn’t they? Well, what happens when their systems break down?”

  Arakny and Abasio considered this in silence, which Arakny eventually broke to say, “No one has told us yet what this woman Ellel wants with Olly.”

  “The shuttle is almost complete. It lacks only a guidance system to be able to carry them out, away, into space.”

  “They think Olly has one?”

  “They think she is one.”

  “I don’t understand—?”

  “You mean—?”

  Both of them shouted, heard themselves shouting, guiltily hushed themselves.

  Tom said, “According to what I’ve been told, certain persons of the Gaddir lineage have the mental ability to do this thing. Have you ever heard of idiot savants?”

  Arakny had “They are persons without competent mentation who nonetheless have a single outstanding talent, as for example creating representational art, or rendition of music heard, or instant calculation.”

  Tom nodded. “The Gaddirs I speak of are savants with normal mentation. They can instantly establish the interaction of seemingly unrelated facts. One facet of this talent is to compute the relative motion of two or more bodies in space. It’s a talent many people use when they play games. They see a thrown ball, and they jump to catch it, unconscious of the calculation that has taken place in computing the speed and direction of that jump. Gaddir talent is the same, only vastly more powerful.”

  “So they’d put Olly in this ship—”

  “Install,” said Tom very quietly.

  “What do you mean, install?”

  “I mean, put wires in her head,” said Tom. “Install—”

  Arakny and Abasio shared glances, hoping they had not heard him correctly, knowing they had.

  “—but it will only work if she’s willing,” continued Tom. “According to His Wisdom, she must be willing.”

  “Does she know this?”

  “Parts of it. I doubt she knows she’d be wired into the ship, though she may know even that by now.”

  “If she knew, why was she in such a hurry to get here?” cried Arakny.

  “If she doesn’t know, is she to be allowed to find out about it?” Abasio demanded in an angry voice.

  “Necessarily, yes. Since she has to be willing, she has to know all about it. Though they are holding Olly prisoner, in a sense she holds them as well.”

  “She only came here, or started for here, because of her prophecy,” grated Abasio.

  “What prophecy was that?” asked Tom. Abasio quoted it, in full.

  “Ask one only child,

  Ask two who made her,

  Ask three thrones that tower,

  Gnawed by four to make them fall.

  Find five champions,

  And six set upon salvation,

  And answer seven questions in the place of power.”

  “Well, as to the three thrones that tower,” said Tom, “they are here. Gaddi means ‘throne.’ This is Throne House.”

  “And what are the thrones?”

  Tom looked over their heads, as though seeking revelation. “I don’t know, even though I’ve gone with His Wisdom when he goes down to the throne room, where they are. What he sees may be different from what I see. He sometimes tells me the thrones were made before men were made.”

  Arakny said, “Are they things? Or beings?” Tom sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “They look like thrones—great, gray chairs, tall and imposing. But they’re carved all over with creatures. The chamber where they are is misty or smoky, sometimes more than others, and it’s often hard to see the thrones. I know Hunagor is sitting in one of them, and Werra is sitting in another, and the third one—well, it’s more or less empty, though it has old Seoca’s name carved on it.” “Hunagor? Werra?”

  “Two of His Wisdom’s kinsmen. They died some time ago.”

  “The thrones are crypts, then Coffins?” Tom shrugged. “One could say that, I suppose.” He shook himself. “If you’ve seen enough up here, His Wisdom is expecting us.”

  They returned the way they had come, oppressed by the vast shadowy spaces inside the great house, wondering at all this empty space housing so few, for when they asked, Tom replied that there were only a couple hundred Gaddirs, in space enough for thousands. There had been thousands once, he said. Long ago. When they were needed.

  “But there are only two hundred now, and that includes the children and our agents,” he said, “who do His Wisdom’s will, out in the world.”

  They were taken to join the old man on his terrace. “I’ve shown them the Place,” said Tom. “I’ve answered their questions, so far as I could, but they want to know about the thrones.”

  “Of course they do,” said the old man. He reached out his hands to Abasio and Arakny. “The thrones have been here a long time. Think of the phrase ‘seats of power’. When one sits in a seat of power, one can accomplish things. If it is necessary that certain things be accomplished, then the appropriate seats of power rise up. This is natural law. It always happens.”

  “Rise up from where?” Arakny asked.

  “Well, as to that, I’m not sure. Out of time, perhaps. Or some other space. Or the inside of the earth, perhaps, where they were forged at the beginning of the planet. I truly don’t know. I’m not sure even the thrones know their origin.”

  “But one sits there?”

  “One can Briefly. If one is of the right lineage And then one understands certain things that have to be done.”

  “Tom says your name is on one of them. You sat there?”

  “I did. Briefly You’re welcome to go look at them, so you can tell Olly about them.”

  “We can tell Olly?”

  “If you choose to go to her, yes. Tom tells me she’s being kept in a house down there in the Place. She’s with a woman we know, a very pleasant woman. Tom can take you down there, or try, at least, though you may be stopped. As with most things, there’s danger invol
ved.”

  “Danger from this Ellel person?” demanded Abasio. The old man gave him a wide-eyed look, like a child’s. “Ellel needs Olly, but she doesn’t need either of you. She may feel you are an entanglement, a complication, and Ellel habitually disposes of complications. She may kill you. Or take you hostage.”

  He waited, but neither Abasio nor Arakny replied. “On the other hand,” the old man continued, “she may let Olly come back here with you. Which would be a good idea, if possible.”

  “And if Olly decides not to do this guidance thing?” asked Abasio.

  “Ellel would be very angry.”

  “It sounds to me like danger if she does and danger if she doesn’t,” said Arakny “What difference does it make?”

  “Oh, every decision makes a difference,” said the old man. “Though sometimes we lack the ability to distinguish between alternatives.”

  “How do we get to her?” Abasio asked.

  Tom snorted, a sound like a troubled laugh. “We walk out the gate of Gaddi House and stroll across the grass, where there’s still some left. We go down the street and knock on Qualary’s door. That’s how I got there yesterday, though I almost didn’t get back!”

  Arakny threw up her hands, her voice rising stridently. “It hardly sounds like a mission requiring courage and resolution, to take a simple walk down the street!”

  The old man bowed his head over his knotted hands. When he looked up, he spoke softly. “Often the most terrible struggles take place quietly, behind a screen of normal activity and civility, behind a curtain of diplomacy. In secrecy, in silence, a whole race may be destroyed without notice. Whole cultures and species have been destroyed while men smiled and spoke of economics, of employment, of progress, of the welfare of mankind. Is a threat less deadly because it does not scream and rage and threaten force of arms?”

  “So out there is danger.”

  He gave his answer gravely. “Yes. But so long as you remain here, you are perfectly safe.”

  “Being perfectly safe is not what I had in mind!” cried Abasio, in a fever of impatience. “There was danger all around when we started out on this journey. I don’t see that anything’s changed. It was gangers and walkers and monsters then, it’s just another kind of gangers and more walkers and monsters now. I told Farmwife Suttle I’d keep Olly safe, and that’s what I’ll try to do. I want to go where she is.”