Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  She was asking me to take on a Companion. Bianca’s Companion.

  “I cannot believe you did that.” My voice shook. Cold surged through me. “Even if it wasn’t completely morbid, even if it wasn’t indecent and disrespectful, and…What in God’s name were you thinking?”

  Very softly, Siri said, “That Bianca might still be alive.”

  I stared at her until my head ached. She just sat there, calm and collected. Like she believed what she said. Like it was possible.

  “Have you lost your mind, Field Coordinator?” I asked quietly, matter-of-factly. It was the only explanation I could come up with.

  “No, I haven’t.” Siri had clearly been ready for that assessment. Her eyes gleamed with the light of discovery. “Think about it—about Jerimiah, about his condition, about how he was found.” Siri leaned forward, ticking the points off on her fingers. “He was found damaged, unable to even say how his principal died, in a body that was barely still a body. Even now he is disassociated from himself.”

  “I’ve seen all that.” I’d made myself look at it. I’d needed to know where and how Bianca was found if I was to begin an investigation into her death. Now the sight of her decayed body weighed heavily in the hole in my head, and it would probably never go away.

  “If someone took her into captivity, if they removed the Companion network and implant…”

  “You can’t just remove a whole Companion network.” Pain. Knives and dirty, bloody fingers, and pain and pain until I passed out and woke to more pain and the hole in my head…

  “They have a hospital the size of a small planet out there. They might have been able to do the surgery.” Instead of butchery, said the silence of her pause. Instead of what was done to you. “They had a look, managed the data alterations in the inorganic components, and put him back. He’d already been through enough trauma. Any mismatch between his organic and inorganic nodes could easily be put down to that.

  “Plus,” she went on, gathering steam, “the people who provided the identification of the body aren’t exactly on our side.”

  “Her body was shipped back here.” By now I had rallied enough to put some force and incredulity back into my voice. “Are you saying our people can’t run DNA matches?”

  “Things can be faked. Things can be grown.”

  “They faked a human body? A well-known and thoroughly IDed human body?”

  The gleam in Siri’s eye brightened. She was sure she had me. “A body in an advanced state of decay, shipped back in puddles and pieces. Hospital the size of a planet, remember? You’ve never heard of stem cells? You know, the little bits of you that can be used to grow other bits of you?”

  I sat there biting my lips against the ideas that swirled through my mind. Me carry Bianca’s companion? What about Dylan? Dylan screamed when they cut him out of me. I screamed. He died. I died. The hole was too deep, too permanent. There was no filling it. I would not have another Companion trying to straddle that abyss inside me.

  The thought twisted my guts, and yet…there was something in it. I didn’t want a Companion. I didn’t want to face that dependency or that loss, again. But what if I carried Bianca’s Companion? The one who had been there with her, the one who knew all the secrets she had kept to herself?

  The idea repulsed me as it beckoned me. To have even that much of Bianca back. Could I stand to have a part of Bianca with me?

  If there was even the smallest possibility that Bianca might be alive, could I refuse?

  No. Get past this. Remember what is real. I took a deep breath. “If you’re so sure about this, Siri, why didn’t you tell Misao?”

  “I did.” But for the first time since she came in, Siri wasn’t looking at me. “He didn’t believe me.”

  Relief like a tidal wave washed over me. Not because of what she said, but because as she shifted her weight and rubbed her hand back and forth on the sofa cushion next to her, I understood that she had not only been turned down, but turned down flat, and this was a desperate attempt to revive a dead cause.

  “That’s it, then,” I said.

  “No,” snapped Siri. “It isn’t. If you’d just look…”

  “No.”

  “Listen, Terese…”

  I shook my head, hard. “It is not possible,” I told her. “They would have had to fake the memory node that had her last words stored in it. They would have had to have known my name and our relationship. There’s too much.”

  “Hospital the size of a planet,” repeated Siri. “With a hell of a reputation for doing the impossible out in the colonies. I know, because I looked. We don’t know what they can do out there.”

  “If you think Bianca’s still alive, why would you want me to carry Jerimiah? Why wouldn’t you want him safe back here waiting for her?”

  “Because then we’d have his memories, Bianca’s memories, to work from. You worked with her longer than anyone. You’d be able to interpret the fragments better…”

  I couldn’t stand it. The pain was too much. “Why in God’s nine billion names are you doing this, Siri?”

  Siri licked her lips. “Because she sent me away and I left. I didn’t ask, I didn’t think about it. I just sulked and I went, and she was caught and maybe cut up and maybe worse, and I wasn’t there to stop it.”

  I nodded. “I know just how you feel.”

  “Then will you at least consider it?”

  For a moment hope, bright and cruel as a knife, presented itself to me. It took every ounce of strength I had to turn away. “No, Siri. I cannot believe it. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  I swallowed. This was no time to lie. “Because if I do, I will go in there ready to tear the place apart with my bare hands. I won’t give a shit about any other part of this mission.”

  I straightened my spine and my voice sharpened, taking on the tone I use for giving orders without my conscious will. “You don’t bring this up again. Not to me, not to Vijay, not to anybody. And if you aren’t going to be able to keep your mind on the real mission, you say so right now, do you understand me?”

  Anger sparked deep in Siri’s gaze, but she simply said, “You have no idea how much she did for you.”

  “I do.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said in a hot, harsh whisper. “If you knew, if you really knew, you’d do anything to find her.”

  I could not hear any more of this. “Understand me clearly, Siri.” I spoke each word with as much force as I had in me, so I would obliterate the temptation she’d held out to me. “I catch you giving less than one hundred and ten percent to our stated mission—I catch you doing one bit more than you’ve been authorized to do—and your time as a Guardian will be over. This is a hot spot and we cannot be screwing around.”

  I had her gaze and I held it, watching every shift of her eyes, watching her shoulders slump one millimeter at a time.

  Siri squared her shoulders, coming to attention even though she remained seated. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and I nodded, just like Misao.

  We talked a little more, about this and that, minutiae about the mission arrangements blended and blurred with trivia about the new XP games she’d gotten me to try and the new restaurant we’d ordered from last night. She left without referring to her theory again.

  But even as the shield opaqued, I knew she wouldn’t give the idea up for as long as the mission lasted. I sat there with my hands on my knees, trying to blink the conversation back into forgetfulness.

  David, you were right. We live too long. We serve too many masters, have too many families. We think we can walk away. We want to walk away, but we can’t.

  I could not believe Bianca was still alive.

  I could not believe it for all the reasons I had given Siri, and one more. Because it meant I had done less for her than she had done for me, and I didn’t know if I could live with that.

  I had to forget Siri’s words. If I remembered them, I would forget everything else, maybe even my oath—maybe
even the First Precept—and then God help me, and God help Erasmus, and maybe even God help the Pax Solaris.

  EIGHT

  EMILIYA

  Emiliya Varus sat at her heavy, sharp-cornered desk. A single light square from the fully paneled ceiling shone down on it. The room around her was small, providing just enough space for a narrow bed, the desk, the chair, a tub, and a toilet behind a folding screen. A few shelves and cupboards were attached to the walls, but they were mostly empty. Emiliya owned a couple of extra sets of professional whites, a few knickknacks given as gifts by friends from the Medical, and nothing else.

  The room was stifling, but Emiliya did not turn on the vents. Running the vents cost. Instead, she’d opened the door behind her. Voices drifted in from the hallway and from the rooms next door. She ignored them. Instead, she kept her mind and her eyes on the fold-up screen in front of her, studying her day’s reports, making sure she had filled in all the lines and boxes correctly so that she was not fined for mistakes.

  On Hospital, the Clerks didn’t follow lowly scan-and-stitch physicians personally. They followed their records. Those records controlled appointments, postings, future opportunities, and, most important, debts. It was vital that she not give them additional opportunities to up her load.

  You’re going to get us all out of here one day, Emiliya, her mother said. That’s your job.

  Except she hadn’t done all that well at the academy. She’d tried and she’d tried again, until she made herself sick and broke down, and adding to her debt because she became a patient as well as a student. In the end, she could only scrape out a general degree, which was nothing. The kind of work she was given barely covered the cost of supplies.

  “Hey, Emiliya!”

  Emiliya jerked her head up and around to see a young man leaning in from the brightly lit corridor.

  “Hey, Piata,” she answered with much less enthusiasm.

  “Records?”

  Emiliya grunted an affirmative and faced the screen again, hoping that Piata would take the hint and leave her alone.

  He didn’t. He strolled inside and squatted down next to the desk, folding his gangly arms to rest on the edge. He had a sharp face and tan skin. Dark freckles dusted his cheeks and the backs of his delicate hands. The prominent bones of his wrists stuck out from under the weighted cuffs of his professional whites. A gold-crystal-studded cap covered his ginger hair.

  “Got the word that you’re heading up the team on the new saints.”

  Emiliya sighed and leaned all the way back.

  “Looks that way.” She folded her arms and cocked her head toward him. “You want the job?”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Piata’s eyes opened wide with surprise. His irises were a strange tarnished-gold color. Emiliya expected they were a modification, possibly a home brew, that didn’t go quite right. “You’ve hit the jackpot.”

  “No jackpots in Erasmus anymore, Piata. You know that.”

  His cocky grin didn’t falter. “There is if you get your debt cleared.”

  “What?”

  “You get debt-free, you stand a chance. You can even leave.”

  Emiliya rubbed her eyes. I don’t have time for this. She hadn’t had a whole lot to eat today and even though she was used to it, it was making her short-tempered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Brahm Rajandur.”

  “And what’s a Brahm Rajandur?”

  “Brahm Rajandur is the guy who brought the last saint into Hospital.”

  Now I know you’re just kidding me. “We’ve never had a saint here.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Emiliya held on to her temper with difficulty. “Look, either make sense or go away.”

  “Brahm Rajandur.” Piata straightened himself. “Look him up.” He tapped the edge of her screen. “He got publicly cleared of all his debts, and he’s in a positive salary now.”

  Emiliya faced her screen and her report. “Go away, Piata.”

  “Okay. Okay.” He held up both hands and backed away. “I’m going.”

  Emiliya didn’t watch him leave. She scrolled down through her work. The mountain of red tape and registry work was going to make her late for the discount hour in the cafeteria. She sighed and called up her accounts, looked at the negative balance, and sighed again, smoothing her hair back with both hands.

  Maybe just skip dinner. She thought about Amerand and how he’d looked at her last time, a little concerned but mostly disappointed. He never thought about what made her so thin. Just assumes it’s because I don’t train enough. He never thought that she might be skipping meals to try to save money.

  I work on Hospital, after all. Why would I be starving?

  And as if her hash of feelings about Amerand weren’t enough, Kapa showed up.

  She’d been having tea with Amerand when she got Kapa’s ping. It had taken all her will-power not to run out of the room then and there. It had taken her hours to work up the nerve to go down and see him. What a joke that Amerand caught them together.

  Of course, Kapa might have arranged that. He did things like that.

  Kapa.

  He had broadened out, a lot. His hands were thick. The muscles on his neck stood out and he’d already started to get wrinkles around his eyes. He’d lost a tooth and had a stupid, flashy amethyst replacement. He looked terrible.

  He looked magnificent.

  “Kapa.” She had said his name softly, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear her over the constant noise of the crowded port. But his head swiveled around, and his eyes lit up.

  “Emiliya!” He strode over—long, easy, light-footed strides despite his weighted boots. “I was starting to wonder if you got my message.”

  The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a skinny boy. That time, she’d kissed him hard and buried her fingers in his hair. This time, she couldn’t move. “What are you doing here?”

  His grin broadened. “I promised, didn’t I?”

  Oh, he’d promised. I’m getting us out of here, Emiliya, he’d said. All the way out.

  “That was ten years ago!” And you’ve been gone for seven of them. You left and you didn’t take me with you.

  But he’d just shrugged, like it was no big deal. “It took longer than I hoped. But I’m here now.” Kapa stepped close, and took her hands. His touch was heavy, slow, nothing like she remembered. “I’ve got a license and I’m a pilot, and I’ve got a berth for a doctor.” He lifted her hands as if he meant to kiss them.

  “I can’t go with you!” She remembered how she pulled away, how it was a relief and terribly painful at the same time.

  He stared at her then. “Why not?”

  “I’m on contract with Hospital until my debt is cleared. I can’t move a pinky unless they tell me to!” You’re too late!

  “God-Alone, Emiliya.”

  “And I’ve still got family,” she barreled on. “My mother, my brothers and sister back on Dazzle. If I go AWOL, what happens to them?”

  He threw out his hands like he always had when they argued. “Did I say AWOL? Do you really think I’d come back here if I couldn’t get you out clean?”

  “This is not clean. Clean is getting a request through channels. This is…shadows.”

  “Sorry I didn’t fill out all the proper forms, Emiliya.” He sneered at her, the curl of his lip revealing a hint of that stupid purple tooth. “But I’m here and I’m asking anyway. You say yes and the rest is just that: forms.”

  “Except you’d have to buy me, Kapa.”

  He shrugged again. “So what?”

  “You’d have to buy me and pay rent on me. And if you didn’t, it’d all pile onto my mother.”

  Kapa snorted and kicked the wall. She recognized that gesture and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to see the boy she’d loved in this careless man. “Now you’re sounding like Amerand.”

  “Maybe it’s time I did.”

  “You with him now?”

  She shook her head. �
��No. Now I’m just alone.”

  Except she wasn’t alone. Amerand stepped up, and, standing between light and shadow, she chose light.

  But why the hell did that light have to be so cold?

  Since then, she’d gone over the scene a hundred times. She should have taken Kapa’s hand. She should have turned him in for spite and for the bounty. She could even have told Amerand what Kapa had said before he got there. But he hadn’t asked, and she’d gotten so used to hiding things from him she couldn’t make herself speak.

  She shut the screen off because leaving it on made the numbers on her debt account click up even higher.

  Once, Kapa had been the one who made her safe, but he’d been gone too long. Now seeing him for the pirate he’d become terrified her. There had to be another way out.

  But in the pit of her heart, she knew there was no legal way. There never would be. She’d have to run for it, and her best chance for making that run hadn’t been back for a month.

  “I’m so sorry,” whispered Emiliya to the memory of her mother’s hopes. Mother, Kim, Parisch, Geri. Maybe there were more by now. Mother somehow always managed to be unlucky, or careless. Or maybe she thought her general-degreed daughter could free two or three more while she was at it.

  I thought it could work, too.

  But the anger was born of guilt and frustration and it did nothing to warm her. What her mother did was one thing, but the kids…her brothers and her sisters…It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t deserve indenture. They didn’t deserve to lose that last sliver of hope.

  What the hell is Piata thinking coming in and spreading hallway rumors? She lifted her head and glowered at the door. Everybody whispered them, in the corners and behind desks, trying to dodge the drones and the ears. Did you hear, this guy, he found a new way to work RNA transfers, and they cleared his debt? Do you know, there was this one woman, she got this new live mitochondrial-imaging system going, and they cleared her debt?