A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  “Computers. Magic kitchens. Fresh fruit. Wow.”

  “The huruss operates all over the planet. Used to run into Menissa, but they filled in the tunnel when the Terrans arrived. My parents’ reconnaissance team were the last passengers.”

  “I’m beginning to see what you meant about life-style sacrifices on the part of the Koi exiled in the colony.”

  “You’ve barely scratched the surface, Ms. Rowe.”

  “Wow,” she repeated. “Who can afford all this? I mean, all this, for two people and… where are the mules?”

  “Our second car is a stable car.”

  “Must have cost a fortune!”

  “Public transportation,” he replied with a trace of smugness.

  “Public? You mean, anyone can travel like this?”

  “Any Koi. If they travel at all, which they don’t very often.” He reached for a small blue fruit and tossed it between his palms with studied casualness. “A telepathic society has less need of physical journeying.” He put down the fruit. “For instance, there’s no such thing here as a freeway. There are local road systems, but they’re kept to a minimum.”

  “Ah. And what about air travel? Oh, I forgot…”

  His smugness returned. “No, it’s perfectly possible, if the Wall isn’t screwing up your instruments. The Koi toyed with air travel in the past, but we abandoned it when a properly clean and quiet method eluded us. Besides, we outgrew the need.”

  “Oh.” If he felt like it, he would no doubt explain this further. She knew it all had to do with the painful subject of halm, so she didn’t press him. Instead, she frowned at a bank of dials and buttons. “Any suggestions as to how this works?”

  Ra’an looked it over dubiously, then said, “Try this.” A spot on the counter glowed warmly.

  “The stove!” Jude crowed delightedly.

  “Pure luck. I was really too young for cooking the last time I was in one of these. At home, my father wouldn’t let me near the kitchen.” He smiled crookedly. “He swore I had no sense of taste.”

  “Well, even if you’d cooked up a storm as a four-year-old, these things might have changed a bit in thirty years.”

  “Not really. It’s Terran thinking that machinery must be constantly redesigned, even if the change produces no visible improvement in its performance. If a machine exists to do all your work for you, that is an obviously infinite line of development. Here, machines exist to aid in doing the work as efficiently and, more important, as pleasantly as possible.

  “Now, kitchen equipment,” he continued, patting the countertop as if it were a lab specimen, “has an easily obtainable efficiency apex. There’s not much mystery about what you want it to do, and they got it doing that in the best way possible years ago. No need to change it. No need to buy a new stove every five years.”

  Jude grinned. “May the gods of conspicuous consumption strike you dead.”

  He passed over a light enameled pot. “Fill this. That’s the water tap.”

  She continued her exploration while he diced vegetables with deft quick strokes, as if to prove that he could be as neat and efficient as the kitchen.

  “I can’t find the meat anywhere,” she said after a thorough search.

  “There won’t be any.”

  “Ahh, right. Clennan told me… but wait, there was meat in our trail rations…?”

  “You’re forgetting my upbringing. Daniel ate meat whenever he could afford it, and I did what he did.”

  She leaned against the counter, watching him thoughtfully. “I’ll bet the Koi don’t distill brandy, either… am I right?”

  “You are,” he answered, his face averted. “But it is possible to get quite drunk on Ruvalan wine, I am told.”

  “Ah, but I’ll bet it takes longer.” When he remained silent, she pursued, “You really are a kind of hybrid, aren’t you, Ra’an? I mean, there’s Koi and Terran, and you, somewhere in between.”

  Ra’an slammed the knife down on the counter. Jude backed off. “Hey. Wait. I only meant that coming home will involve a few life-style sacrifices on your part also. I hadn’t seen it that way before.”

  His fingers thrummed the countertop, then relaxed. He picked up the knife again. “Nothing I can’t do without,” he muttered and scraped the vegetables into the pot.

  I won’t miss the meat, Jude mused, as they ate in silence. It’s not as if I got much of it back home, even before the Wards. And the soy substitutes will be no loss, especially if everything here tastes as good as this does.

  “The only problem with using the huruss,” Ra’an commented suddenly, “is that I had to use my name to call the computer. It’ll send the information along to Ruvala. They will be expecting me.”

  “Is that bad?”

  He shrugged, uneasy. “Leaving the colony on the sly will be considered a kind of treason. Dereliction of duty, or whatever. Also, I fear…”

  “What?”

  “You’ve seen them. You called them the gull-beasts.”

  “They do exist! I knew it!”

  He stared at his plate “I couldn’t believe you’d actually seen them. That was one of the first hints that you… It takes halm to see the shanevoralin in flight.”

  “How did you know I saw them in flight?”

  “The only place where they come to rest in the colony is a small walled garden in the Quarter, where you could never have been.”

  “Shanevoralin.” Jude savored the word. “Why would you be afraid of a bird?”

  “This is not some mere Terran bird, Ms. Rowe.” Absently his hand stroked the leather casing of his flask, which he had brought to the table with his meal. “It was not the full truth when I said that the colony was totally isolated from the Koi outside. The shanevoralin bring news back and forth, of a sort.”

  “Like a carrier pigeon? They used to have those on Terra.”

  “The shanē carry picture messages, in their brains. The name means ‘wings of halm’ in the coastal tongue. They are… how can I explain it… like blank recording discs. The images they carry are picked out of Koi minds, little flashes of halm transmission that are vivid enough to attract the creatures’ attention, as fish will swim after a bright pebble rolling with the current.

  “There are some who develop a special rapport with the shanē—old Luteverindorin in the Quarter, he is sea-bred, and the shanē love him. Often they will come when he calls them, but even he can’t be sure where they’ll fly next.”

  “And what makes them a threat to you?”

  “An outcast in the Quarter, an angry misfit, is sure to excite the interest of the shanevoralin. They may have brought such news home to Ruvala.”

  “Come on—your family will be ecstatic to see you after all these years.”

  He fidgeted. “The return of the prodigal? I don’t know. Misfits are considered dangerous to the health of the community, and community is very important to the Koi.” He paused, then went on in a rush, “I haven’t seen my parents in twenty-three years; I don’t even know if they’re alive. I haven’t seen my home in thirty. I don’t know what it’s like to live as an adult in a normal Koi society. Maybe it’s too late to learn. And then,” he continued with effort, “I walk into all this bringing a… a Terran with me.”

  “Ah yes. The rat in the woodpile.”

  “What?”

  “A kinder version of an ancient racial slur.”

  He was silent for a moment, pensive, then put his head in his hands. “And then there’s the matter of halm.”

  “But it would seem,” she reminded him quietly, “that you’re not as deficient there as you thought.”

  “Perhaps not. We’ll see soon enough.” From across the table, she could see his thumbs pressing hard into his jaw. He shook his head slowly, as if giving something up. “Jude… I have to tell you… you know… the Wall, I could have made it easier for you, but I was hoping you wouldn’t make it through.”

  “Without you, I wouldn’t have.”

  “I kn
ow,” he said dryly. “In the end, my conscience…”

  “Oh.” She sat back. “Is that all. Well, that’s all right.”

  He seemed surprised. “All right?”

  “Yes.” Her tone was cool, thoughtful. “I still think there’s something that would do us both some good.”

  “What?”

  A final moment of courage-gathering, and she rose from the table. She crossed to her berth, leaving a rustle of silken fabric on the floor behind her. “Come to bed.”

  He didn’t move.

  “If you didn’t want it,” she said from the bed, “it would be easy to say no.”

  “I don’t understand why it’s so easy for you to say yes, after what I just told you.”

  She smiled wistfully. “Who said it was easy? But I’d like to give it a try, if you don’t mind.”

  He came and stood by the bed, hesitant. Then slowly he drew the sheet aside and sat down beside her. His eyes avoided hers, instead followed his own rust-colored hand as he slid it along the pale length of her body. She felt it tremble as it came to rest beneath the curve of her breast. A ragged breath escaped him.

  She reached for the belt wrapping his waist, but he stayed her hand with an abruptness that sent a thrill of doubt through her.

  What if he is different from other… from humans? What will I do?

  As if he had heard her, he reached to loose the belt himself and shrugged his kimono to the floor.

  “Do you see anything that frightens you?” he asked.

  She brushed her fingers across the tight skin of his belly, felt the muscles quicken to her touch. “Nothing. Should I?”

  He leaned, and kissed her tentatively, suspicious even of his own desire. Her mind sought his, touched, and shrank away from the chill of his refusal.

  “No,” he insisted. “Not that.” He hovered over her, unable now to pull away. “Only this.” He kissed her again and took her in his arms to cover her body with the cool smoothness of his own.

  Chapter 21

  Slouched in a pool of green light in his darkened office, Bill Clennan jabbed an accusing finger at the man on the vidphone.

  “Come on, Murphy, do I have to get out there and do everything myself? Verde’s flesh and blood. He can’t have vanished. Get on it, man!” He slapped the disconnect button, then grabbed the plastic cup he’d been mangling during the conversation and lashed it against the wall.

  Five days. Five fucking days. Three major blackouts. No water in half the city, the whole colony in an uproar, repair robots on the blink. Clennan pushed his chair back with a snarl of frustration. They must have built this damn matchstick city overnight.

  Clennan had all his men out on the search for Lacey, along with the reinforcements Ramos had sent in from Terra. The kid remained at large. And now Mitchell Verde had disappeared.

  Verde’s file lay open on the desk, clean as a whistle. Clennan found such cleanliness suspicious. He was learning a co-practitioner’s sort of respect for the old conservationist. Verde walked the line of legality very carefully. He took good care of the loonies, earned his meager pay. But were the loonies the only reason Verde stuck so hard to the Quarter? Clennan flipped off the fluorescent above his head and sat in the dark rubbing his eyes viciously. He wanted a long talk with Verde. He’d sent Murphy, the only man he could spare, to the Cafe daily. All very pleasant: Mr. Verde was just here, sure to be back later. The black proprietor was nowhere to be found either. Only Natives, smiling and helpful, even in the midst of the turmoil that was laying waste to the city.

  “Natives.” Clennan pondered the relationship between Verde and Koi. It was like finding a blank page in his file. If it didn’t mean anything, why was it there?

  The Natives. He hadn’t given them much thought before, except as a potentially useful tool in his own enterprise. Now he realized his ignorance of them was a handicap. He Hipped the light back on and scowled at his desk, at the rat’s nest of printouts, search reports, equipment requisitions, piles of paper he hadn’t even glanced at. Waste paper, all of it, and on top a pile of dispatches from Colonel Ramos, who was pouring on the pressure.

  Clennan ordered bouillon from the kitchen computer, made a face at it when it appeared, pale and tepid in its slot, but picked it up wearily. Anything to kill the taste of stale coffee.

  He worried the bandage on his cheekbone. The wound was beginning to itch, a healthy sign, but one more irritant that he didn’t need. So this is it, he reflected in disgust. The big favor from Daddy Ramos. The job that was supposed to be a picnic, because I was a good boy and paid my dues. Some picnic. A grimy office that’s hardly any bigger than all the other grimy offices, and the luck to be standing on the powder keg just when the fuse is being lit. If I had the sense to be as paranoid as everyone else around here, I’d think someone was setting me up. He flicked the piled dispatches with an angry finger. Julia, get off my goddamn back!

  Container of pale soup in hand, he rose and wandered out of his cubicle and across the hall to the dispatch room, to listen restlessly to the radio reports coming in from the search teams. Nothing. Static. Creaks and whistles. A babble of voices networked all over the colony, coming up with a big zero. Clennan shook a dozing dispatcher awake.

  “Pump in some caffeine, Jose.” He scrutinized the big schematic map of the colony illuminating the wall above the desks. It was colored by sector, spotted with forty green numbers that crawled antlike across its face. He squinted at numbers, noted an aggregation of them in the waterfront area, and leaned over a dispatcher’s shoulder.

  “Seventeen, twenty-nine, thirty, and four. If they’re not hot onto something, tell them to spread out. We can’t afford the overlap.”

  Four desks down, an operator glanced up. “Mr. Clennan, we’re getting a priority-A request from the colonial police. They want more of our men on riot control.”

  “Tell ’em to stuff it.”

  The operator caught his neighbor’s eye and shrugged. “Yessir, Mr. Clennan.”

  Riots and looting are police problems, Clennan muttered to himself. They won’t give me the authority, I ain’t taking the responsibility. “If they’d declare martial law as I asked them to,” he complained to nobody in particular. “But no, that’s bad for business.” As if drunken mobs roaming the streets were good for business.

  He sipped at his cold broth, letting his gaze slip down the wall to a second map hovering above an empty desk, darkened but for a single bright dot. The dot was stationary. It had not moved since the audio had cut out in a flurry of muffled shouts ten days ago, but the trace signal was still broadcasting, from somewhere up in those mountains, so he kept it alive, just in case. The darkness of the map chilled him, and the pregnant stillness of the red dot. His mouth twitched briefly. He’d scoured the transcripts, listened to tapes over and over, trying to piece together what had gone on up there in the Guardians. Screw that Alien Division and their bright ideas, he thought bitterly. Not my fault that this one went wrong.

  The next desk over was completely shut down. The much-publicized penal expedition had foundered in mutiny while still within radio range. The mountains had swallowed up the escapees, but for the few who staggered half-crazed back to the colony, preferring a life in the Wards to another day Out There.

  Those mountains, Clennan swore. Those goddam mountains!

  Then there was a howl of radio static, and pandemonium broke out in the communications room.

  “Hallelujah!” A whoop from radio desk seven. “On target! Roger, one-oh, keep him in your sights!”

  Clennan loped down the line of desks, checked the map. “One-oh. Larsen. Okay. O-kay! Buena Vista sector. Four and nine are in the neighborhood. Send them in!” He leaned into the microphone. “One-oh, Central, stay with him. We’re sending reinforcements.”

  “Central, one-oh, Roger. Off we go!” The man on the other end could barely contain his triumph.

  Clennan calculated swiftly. Buena Vista. The most exclusive suburbs. The kid was hiding out in
the scare parties in the bungalows. Good cover. This Lacey’s no fool, as we should have guessed by now.

  “Central, this is one-oh. We’ve got a lot of dressed-up civilians here who think we’re part of the entertainment. Request permission to stun if necessary.” The listening operator shot an inquiring glance at his boss.

  “Go ahead!” Clennan shouted. “Whatever you have to do, just get in there and get that kid!”

  Lacey was out cold when they dragged him in.

  Search team 1-0 slapped one another on the back in exhausted pride.

  “Had to hit him full power to bring him down. He’ll be out awhile,” team leader Larsen explained as Clennan surveyed the boy’s slack face, sullen even in unconsciousness.

  “Anything on him?” he asked, knowing the answer beforehand.

  Larsen shook his head wearily. “Not even a match.”

  “Send him down to Sensory Dep. I’ve got some business to tend to in the Quarter. Don’t start on him till I get back.” He scrawled a signature. “How many civilians?”

  “Oh, a dozen or so will wake up with headaches tomorrow, but I doubt there’ll be any charges. They seemed to think it was a great way to end a party.”

  Clennan grunted, writing. “Scare party?”

  “Yup. They were right in the middle of offering a sacrifice to appease the good old Dark Powers when we came charging in.” The team leader chuckled with mirthless irony.

  “What was the sacrifice this time?”

  “Don’t know. I was, ah… busy. You see it, Williams?”

  His aide smiled out of a soot-blackened face and gestured with both hands. “Very impressive. Something with diamonds. Almost took it with me.”

  Larsen rubbed his cheek with a grimy palm. “What happens to these ‘sacrifices,’ anyway?”

  “Don’t know, but I’d sure like to,” Clennan replied. “I guess it’s not really illegal, but I’ll bet someone has been making his fortune at these parties while we’ve been busting our asses! Break your men, Larsen, but send someone down to the Transport Terminal to get a message to Colonel Ramos. Williams, you tell Dispatch to notify the Colonial Authority. Big publicity release, all media. Maybe it’ll quiet the crowds a little to hear that the cause of all this hoopla is a real live human being.”