Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  I lifted my eyes, rendered mute again. If his sorrow had undone me, watching slow, reluctant understanding take hold in him was enough to shatter me.

  “Is it really war?” he asked.

  “I think it could be. It’s something bad. Misao is scared. I’ve never seen him scared before.”

  “But they haven’t shown you any real evidence.”

  I thought again about how Misao had said it was a sure thing—but Jerimiah, who had been there, with Bianca—inside Bianca—said they’d found no proof. I tried very hard to squelch that memory, afraid David would read the doubt in my eyes.

  “They can’t show me the secured evidence until I’m under oath again.”

  “An oath you were ready to take just because Misao is scared and Bianca is dead.”

  “No!” I rubbed the spot behind my right ear. “Because the system I’m expert in is a hot spot and is about to explode. Because they need me.”

  Except he was right. I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t thought.

  Oh, I was sure there was trouble. I believed something unprecedented was happening in Erasmus. But I hadn’t demanded real proof. They had said it, and I had believed.

  David did not look away. He blinked once, as if he were perfectly calm, but he read all this in my struggling expression. At last he sighed and stared out across the city, getting lost in the lights and motion for a moment.

  “We live too long,” he muttered.

  I struggled to work out the connection and failed. “What?”

  “We live too long,” he said again. He shoved his hair back from his head with both hands. “Three hundred years, four hundred. We create one family, two, three…we sign contracts with the people we live with like it’s possible to just shut off our feelings on a prearranged date.” He snickered and my stomach sloshed, empty and queasy. Go away, I’d thought. This is not your life. “Did you hear, they’re trying to develop a way to shut down memories of previous families so you can start your second, or third, without any…baggage. Of course, the lawyers’ll also have to develop forms so you can notify your previous family that you’ve decided to forget them so they don’t come looking for you. Except it won’t work,” he said. “I don’t care what they do. It’s all one life. Emotion gets piled on top of emotion, loyalty on top of loyalty, until we’re answering to so many masters we can’t do right by anybody.”

  I shivered as the cold in my heart leached through to my skin. “What are you going to do?”

  He shifted around until he faced me fully, sad but calm. “What are you going to do?”

  There are moments when you know the truth, and it is absolute. “I will not risk war in the Solar System. Not while our children live here.”

  He heard me. Finally. David had never seen even a small war, but he’d heard my stories. He’d seen what it had done to me.

  Think about it. Think about what it’s done to me. Think about your son, your daughters, called upon to take this kind of damage. To inflict this kind of damage.

  Because that was part of the Common Cause. If we did go to war, if it did happen, the draft would be universal. No one who had entered their third decade would be spared. No business, no asset was exempt from conscription or confiscation. The effort would be total until the war was over. It would take Dale, Allie, Jo, him, me. All of us.

  Slowly, David reached for me. He took both my hands in his. His hands were so cold. I folded my fingers around his, trying instinctively to warm them, before I realized I had no warmth left to give.

  “They broke you, Terese,” he whispered. “They took you and used you and broke you. How do I let you go back to that?”

  I shook my head. The artificial breeze brought us the scent of earth, and allowed me to feel the dampness on my cheeks. “I don’t know, David.”

  We sat there, awkward, all the weight of history between us, yet unable to let go of each other’s hands. I remembered everything—all the times he’d pulled me out of the cellar of my despair, all the times I’d fought with him, cried, and demanded so much of him. And here I was, making another demand while I did the thing I swore I’d never do.

  My reason was sound. My duty was absolute. That did not change the fact that I had sworn I would not go back to the Guardians. David had limits. There was only so much he was willing to take. Unlike some people, he was not a bottomless pit for punishment.

  That was the problem. He’d die for the kids, and for me, but he would not suffer for us. Not for long anyway, and not without a reason he could fully comprehend.

  Was that too much? Was that unfair? I’m pretty sure it was, but the thought kept ringing round my head in the heavy silence. Suddenly I missed Dylan. He would have known what to say right now. He would have held my hand and kept me from feeling so alone with my husband.

  But Dylan was gone, gone even longer and farther than Bianca.

  “Stay with me, David,” I said abruptly. David was not part of the blood and the pain. David was the sunlight, the peace, and the freedom. I could have that for one last moment. Surely, that was not too much to ask.

  He considered it, weighing whatever he was able to read in my eyes.

  “I’ll stay for tonight,” he said.

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, you’re returning to your old life, and even if there was room for me in there, there wouldn’t be time. I’ll go home.”

  It was honesty. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was all I had the right to ask for. I don’t know which of us leaned toward the other first, but we wrapped our arms around each other and held on like that for a long, long time.

  When I finally let go I said, “There’s a couple of things I have to take care of first. I’ll meet you at the Palmer House when I’m done, okay?”

  He nodded. “The kids are angry. Not just Jo, either. She called Dale and Allie too. They are truly furious.”

  “I’m not surprised. They’re probably in conference right now, trying to decide what they’re going to do about Mother.”

  “You owe them an explanation.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded once. “Okay, then. I’ll go get Jo on her plane, and I’ll tell her you’ll be in touch before anything else happens.”

  “She won’t want to go.”

  His smile was brief and bittersweet. “So what else is new?” His fingertips brushed my hand as he turned away.

  I didn’t sit and watch him leave. A kind of grim determination settled over me and I rose and walked toward a secondary stairway. I strode down the steps, through the doors, and back down the halls. My peripheral vision was gone. I could only see straight ahead. Nobody got in my way. Nothing shut down in front of me. Misao’s door opened before I had to stretch out my hand.

  He was still behind his desk. I swear he didn’t even have to look up. He’d been waiting for me, the son of a bitch. What was more, he’d brought Vijay and Siri in to wait with him.

  “I am a Grade 3 for pay and benefits, and it all goes into trust for my kids,” I announced. “If I am hospitalized or killed, they get my pay, and they will keep getting it as long as they live, and it gets transferred down to the first-generation heirs if that takes a thousand years. You work it out with the bean counters and legal.”

  Misao nodded.

  “And you are paying all my expenses while I’m evaluated and retrained. All of them. If I want grain-fed beef and caviar three times a day until we launch, you are paying for it.”

  He nodded once more and I drew in a ragged breath. “And there’s one more thing.”

  “Yes?” Even now there was no impatience in Misao’s tone.

  “I won’t have a Companion.” My voice had found its steadiness again, and something of its strength. This was it. My ultimate condition. Not even Bianca’s ghost could argue with this one. “If you require me to carry a Companion, I will not accept this commission.”

  How badly do you want me, Marshal-Steward? Bad enough to make an exception to the rules?

  Vija
y shifted his weight. I could feel how badly he wanted to protest. I wondered what his Companion was saying to him at that moment.

  Misao just blinked at me. I think I prayed at that moment, but I could not for the life of me tell you what I prayed for.

  “Very well. I will make sure your exception goes through.”

  The door in my mind sounded very loud as it slammed. It had been my last out, my last chance, and he wasn’t even arguing.

  Why in all the names of God isn’t he even arguing?

  Misao got to his feet. He touched a command on the desk and a red square lit up in front of where I stood. My palm itched. I laid it on the desk’s smooth, cool surface. Red light filtered through skin and blood, making the edges of my fingers glow.

  “Are you Terese Lynn Drajeske?” asked Misao.

  “I am.”

  “Do you solemnly swear upon this life and all others to come that you will faithfully uphold and defend the laws and conventions of the United World Government of Earth?”

  “I do swear.”

  The first time I took the oath, I was in my third decade. My palms were sweating and my uniform itched. The oath was being read off the desktop by Marshal-Steward Amelia Dan—a willowy, white-haired woman with a voice like an opera singer’s. Maybe Jo would look like her one day.

  “Do you solemnly swear that you will keep the secrets imparted to you by the Department of Peace and Security Maintenance or their duly appointed representatives in the course of your duty?”

  “I do swear.”

  I was in my sixteenth decade, and my palms were sweating and my uniform collar itched. We were outdoors then, under a canopy, with a brass band waiting beside the stage. Misao, in his dress blues and white gloves, administered the oath he’d memorized so I could take up my new rank as Field Commander. I could feel Bianca grinning behind me then too, and Vijay, and Siri.

  “What is the first precept?” asked Misao.

  Response was automatic. The words welled up from my center. I could not have kept silent even if I’d wanted to. I was Terese Drajeske, here and now, with Misao, Siri, Vijay, and my own battered self. “Peace is my duty. Peace is what I am called to watch and expand. I hold close the knowledge that any death by my hand may start the war without end. Only peace creates life. Only life creates peace.”

  The light under my hand changed from red to green, and it was done. I blinked and drew in a shaky breath. It was then I noticed the pain had stopped.

  Oh, David.

  I waited for either Siri or Vijay to welcome me back. Neither did. Misao touched another few commands. “Thank you, Field Commander.”

  I nodded curtly. Misao, my chief once more, bowed his head. We stood like that in silence for a moment. He was telling me he was sorry. Not for what he was doing, but that he could not pay the price himself. Vijay had tried to tell me the same thing, I think, but I hadn’t been ready to feel it. Maybe taking the oath again had reopened the old channels. Maybe now that I’d actually reached the point of no return, I needed to grab hold of those around me so I would stop feeling so desperately alone.

  At the time, I didn’t know which of these was the truth.

  I still don’t.

  SIX

  AMERAND

  “Welcome back, Captain Jireu.”

  My personal Clerk, Hamahd, was waiting for me as soon as I emerged into Dazzle’s battered port yard. The dusty, open space was the polar opposite of Hospital’s flashy arcade. Anything glamorous, valuable, or useful had been stripped away a long time ago. Bare stone and pitted, dirt-smeared concrete baked beneath the lighting panels.

  “Thank you, Hamahd.” I pressed my palm against the pad Hamahd held out, officially swearing that I had gone out with three crew and come back with two because of officially sanctioned and recorded actions taken in the line of duty. The cameras had already recorded my arrival, but Hamahd was particular. His eyes shone bright and beady as a snake’s. He was watching and was not going to disguise the fact. It was one of the things I liked most about him. If I had to have a minder, I preferred that we were both up-front about it.

  “Is there anything I should be aware of?” I asked.

  “Commander Barclay has asked to see you.” Hamahd tucked the pad under his arm. As always, his long black coat was immaculate. It hung in heavy folds over his prominent belly and brushed the top of his neat boots.

  “Right away?”

  “Yes.”

  I sighed. My head ached.

  I wanted to go down to the base streets and the tunnels. I wanted noise and faces. I wanted to talk to people and hear them talk to me, about life and complaints and trivia. I wanted to see Father.

  I wanted the Security to go away for a while. I had done next to nothing on the trip but sit in silence and think. The ship was hyperwired, and small. Leda and Ceshame and I got on all right, but if they saw an opportunity for advancement, they’d take it. It had not been safe to say one word about Emiliya, to pull her letter out of my pocket, or to seek out additional information about Kapa. All I could do was sit in my couch or my pilot’s chair and turn over the thoughts in my own head. I didn’t like the fact that he had turned up and I didn’t know why. I couldn’t believe it was all about Emiliya. Kapa had never run one game at a time. He’d always had something going in the background even when we were kids. If now was his time to try to talk Emiliya into the shadows, it was because it worked into something deeper.

  I turned to Leda and Ceshame. “Get back to the station and check in. Start up the get-to files. Then you can check out, unless something new’s come up.” A riot, a murder, something like that.

  They yes-captained me and stepped smartly out the gate. Bored secops, all of whom got this post because they were in trouble with their commanding officers, barely straightened as they passed. My crew’s swaggers and stolen glances said clearly they were glad to be getting a half day off, which was why I’d given them one. I keep my people happy, which keeps their eyes fixed outward, rather than at my back.

  “Well”—I turned to Hamahd—“let’s not keep Commander Barclay waiting.”

  Hamahd bowed and stepped aside, as if I were actually someone he had to defer to. I started through the air lock, and he fell into place, the regulation four paces behind me, matching his stride to mine. I could just hear the clack of his hard-soled boots against the stone.

  With Hamahd watching my every step I set off across the rooftops of Dazzle toward Upsky Station.

  When Dazzle’s purpose as an entertainment destination collapsed, its people reorganized themselves. Neighborhoods formed up according to tendencies and strata. The towers, domes, and parks just below the biggest light panels and black-sky windows were conquered and divided into private residences for those who had managed to hang on to some money and authority during the Crisis, the Split, and the Invasion.

  Even up here, though, those chaotic times hadn’t been good for the city and we never had enough people to really repair it, let alone clean it. Dirt tracked from the farms and gardens, or blown from pots and window boxes, built up in corners and odd pockets, allowing the local flora to spread. Cobalt-blue and blaze-orange lichen traced patterns on crumbling walls. Fleshy saffron feathers sprouted in dark corners, waving in the breeze from the irregular ventilation. Weeds, spread from the farms, made beards for the gargoyles and obscured the elaborate carvings, providing nest material for greasy feral parakeets as well as for the rats and mice, those eternal companions of human diaspora.

  Predators had been imported to try to control the rodent problem. Now prides of wild cats wandered through the city. But the animals that had most successfully made Dazzle their home were the snakes—mostly small varieties, but every now and then you ran into a constrictor as thick as your wrist. Some of the old subway stations were nothing but huge nests of reptiles. Which were useful ways of getting rid of obnoxious new secops. One or two vermin-clearing assignments and they were glad to get back to Hospital, or even Market. So close to the black
sky, they coiled up in the well-lit places, snoozing peacefully. They draped themselves on skylights and cornices, soaking up as much of the artificial light as they could.

  In addition to the plants, handmade bridges and walkways had sent out tendrils across the roofs and balconies. As the trains and elevators became unreliable or hazardous, foot travel became more important. Some of these bridges were permanent, some actually artistic. Some were temporary and others more or less private property—enterprising families or gangs charged a toll for their use. This was the network I crossed with Hamahd following, all the time four steps behind me, no matter how fast or slow I went.

  We passed the wealthy residents in their weighted, decorated clothes, as well as the more subdued but neatly turned out indentures who waited on them. They nodded in respect to my uniform. Some even raised their hands in greeting although they didn’t stand aside. They didn’t know me. I kept my rooms farther down, closer to the foundation streets. That made me unusual. Most of Dazzle’s secops lived up here. That wasn’t necessarily to be near the gentry, though. The last open tunnels to the farms were up here too. The farms were the most vital and most vulnerable point on Dazzle and have been ever since Oblivion died.

  If you’re an OB, that is, if your family’s from Oblivion, you call the crossing to Dazzle the “Run” or the “Breakout.” If you’re a “Baby D,” from Dazzle, it was the “Invasion.” Whatever you called it, it was done on a massive scale. I was about seven, perhaps eight years old, when my parents, my older brothers, and I crammed ourselves in a ship, shoulder to shoulder with God-Alone knew how many other runners. There was even less food in that hold than there had been back home, and no knowing if we’d be able to land, or if we’d be shot out of the black sky.

  But there were thousands of us. We were sure some of us would make it. They couldn’t get us all.

  They didn’t. They got a lot of us, but not all.

  But what we arrived to was more disaster. When we starving refugees poured out of our ships, we ransacked the farm caverns. We staked out territory in them. Gangs rose up and fought over them. We, they, tried to bribe or enslave the growers.