Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  Emiliya skimmed through the reports, picking random experimental results and skipping down to the summaries. The frustrations and setbacks of seeking “true” immortality flashed before her eyes. Bellicose arguments shot back and forth. Theories were built up and torn down. It was the whole tangled mess of scientific and technological progress. It was impossible to fake such a mess. The fakes were invariably too tidy and didn’t involve anything like enough people—or enough failures.

  She flicked forward and backward, jumping randomly through time, tracking not by chronology but by the names of experimenters. She followed individual progress. She connected requisitions to personnel records, to names she vaguely recognized as having been dropped by friends of friends.

  The final breakthrough seemed to have come about two years ago. A new subject entered the experiment. After that, the fetal trials began to succeed. The babies started maturing, instead of growing tumors and expiring in the womb. The new subject got the tag: IDFM40981A.

  Emiliya’s fingers ached. Her eyes blurred, but she didn’t stop. She activated another cross-check, flicked through another set of reports, looking for a name and an origin point. Where had IDFM40981A come from? If there was falsification in all this, that might be it.

  At last, an initial health report opened. Human subjects all had to be scanned and examined when they came in. Variables had to be recorded and accounted for, including names and worlds of origin, even if they were never mentioned again.

  Emiliya read the report.

  I should have known, she thought. I really should have guessed.

  Of course IDFM40981A was Bianca Fayette. The missing saint. The Solarans sent an immortal into the Erasmus System, and the system took her apart to see how she ticked.

  Emiliya’s hands fell into her lap. So that’s it. It is real. The Blood Family, or at least select members of the Blood Family, are going to live forever.

  And she really did have to choose whether to join them.

  Or maybe she’d already made her decision. Her heart thumped hard against her ribs. She stood. She could barely feel the ground under her feet as she walked down the corridor to Piata’s room.

  The door was open. The room had been stripped. All traces of personal occupancy had been removed. Only the basic furniture everyone was issued when they came to Hospital remained.

  Emiliya drifted inside. She stood in the middle and tried to keep breathing. It was far too like her mother’s empty suite.

  “He’s gone,” said someone from the hall.

  Emiliya jerked around. Stash Madison—another member of her cohort who had only attained mediocrity—leaned against the threshold, his arms folded.

  “I don’t know what they finally caught him at, but it must have been pretty big, because the Clerks walked him out, then five minutes later they came back and yanked out all his stuff, too.”

  So. She already was Blood Family. She’d turned Piata over to them and hadn’t thought twice about it. Piata had asked for it. It was his own fault this had happened to him. He’d gotten clever, gotten greedy.

  She’d won, really. She could keep on winning.

  “Maybe you should get out of there,” suggested Stash.

  “Yeah.” Stash looked worried, but a cleaning drone polished the floor behind them.

  “I’m tired,” she said, just in case he was wondering how she was. “I’m going to bed. You on first shift tomorrow?”

  “Yep. Seein’ you then?”

  “We go where we’re needed.”

  She drifted back to her room. She shut and locked the door, not that it meant anything. They can get in whenever they choose.

  It’s all right. Nothing unexpected, and besides, what have I got to be afraid of now?

  She had turned Piata in. She’d been living with that for days. The fact that she was Erasmus, as opposed to just Erasman, shouldn’t make any difference. There was no reason for it to.

  Except it did. It made all the difference under the whole black sky.

  Emiliya smoothed her hair back, wondering what she should do. She probably didn’t have a whole lot of time. The Grand Sentinel didn’t seem like he was willing to wait forever. Maybe she should get a good dinner, gorge herself on meat and cake and fresh vegetables. Things she hadn’t tasted in years. Of course, now she was going to have that forever. She was Erasmus. Blood. Surely whatever was going to happen next was going to have a life of luxury as part of it.

  How am I going to tell Amerand?

  She squeezed her eyes shut. It would serve him right if she just vanished. If he’d talked to her—if he’d tried to find a way while they were free for that moment in the peeled core—she could have told him…she could have told him so much.

  Another thought came to her, tugging her mind from Amerand to the four columns of patient IDs. All the IDs that did not belong to Bianca Fayette.

  She moved back to her desk. She was lighter than a feather. Lighter than air. All her new knowledge had dissolved her from the inside out, and only her ghost remained.

  She found the list of human subjects. She made her connections and got her admission data. She sorted for sex, she sorted for age, she sorted for arrival time. She sorted for world of origin. The results gave her all the women from Oblivion. There were a dozen. She flicked through them.

  Barai Rhu Amos was the fifth. Amerand’s mother, whom he had been searching for through the diaspora worlds, hoping against hope that she was still alive somewhere, had been taken to Hospital.

  She died after delivering the tenth fetal experiment implanted in her.

  Emiliya looked at her closed door. They could be out there right now, waiting for her to make her decision. Or they could be on the other end of the line, waiting for her next message.

  Waiting to see, for instance, whether that message went to the Grand Sentinel, or Amerand.

  Waiting to see if they would have to kill her.

  “No,” she whispered to the screen and the empty room. “No, I don’t think so.”

  She lifted her hands and laid them on the keys. She flicked through the records a few more times, making notations, marking the most important, double-checking the codes and keying them to the proper personnel records. Just in case anyone needed to refer to this data again. Organization was important. They always stressed that in the academy. Emiliya had organized and cross-filed her own reports for years. She was very good at it.

  If anyone came looking, she wanted to be sure they found the correct information.

  Emiliya checked over her work and made sure it was properly stored. She stood and crossed her room. She sat on the edge of her bed. Random thoughts filled her—blurts and strings of memory. Hope burned and choked and sputtered out, because it wasn’t real. She wasn’t Amerand, and she had no Terese Drajeske to make her believe.

  She lay down and drew up the covers. She fumbled inside her jacket pocket and brought out one of the scalpels she was authorized to carry because of her medical specialty. She was efficient. She knew just what to do and what order to do it in.

  By the time the sensor on the floor registered blood and alerted the emergency team that had the authorization to override the door lock, Emiliya had almost bled out. It was decided not to try for revival as they could do more with the parts.

  THIRTY

  TORIAN

  Torian sighed and closed the active pane.

  “I am sorry, Emiliya,” he whispered, running his fingers down the edge of the black square.

  “Sentinel?” The warm voice rose from the back of his mind.

  Torian steepled his fingers. The office faded around him, and forms took shape in front of his mind’s eye. He now stood in the middle of the Clerks’ hive in the new governing palace.

  Hagen Kane bowed to him.

  “You should know Terese Drajeske is sending an out-system transmission.”

  Is she? From the authorized station?

  “Yes, but this is not the approved hour.”

  No,
it is not. Well. With that, I would say our time has come. We will simply have to work with what we have. The heat burned on his neck and the back of his scalp. Are we following Amerand Jireu?

  “We are.”

  Good. Alert me as soon as his course becomes clear. We need time to activate the backup in case he fails to follow through.

  “It will be done.”

  The Master Clerk bowed again and Torian moved his fingertips apart. Regretfully, he turned his back on his desk. He had thought they would have a few days yet.

  All the important pieces are in place. They will fall in order. And even if one or two get out of arrangement, there is still time to make adjustments. After all, now that we have neutralized the Solarans, who is there to interfere?

  Torian left his private office. Beyond his doors, in the central palace, the celebrations were in full cry. Eight hundred members of the Blood Family filled the great room and spread out into the side chambers. The servants moved through the glittering crowd as smoothly as trained dancers, offering food and drink, which also overflowed the tables set by the door of each chamber.

  Everyone was in their finest: gold and silver, and genuine Old Earth gems—not the native analogs—shone like fragments of rainbow on gowns and robes. Security was much in evidence too, in its most formal uniform, accompanied by gilded but highly functional swords and daggers, as well as stark black projectile weapons.

  It was just warm enough. The air was filled with perfumes designed to heighten sense and sensation. It was loud and glittering now, and would grow increasingly raucous as the night went on. Dancers—clothed and nude—whirled and kicked, glided and soared on stages of various sizes. Elsewhere there were illusionists, light-painters, and musicians. Fully interactive games played out on the screens, and people cheered at fencing matches, aerial battles, even a poetry competition.

  Torian craned his neck, searching for a figure in black and white.

  It did not take him long to pick Bloom out from the crowd. The Master of Dazzle stood in the middle of a crowd of young cousins, saying something that had them all laughing out loud. Bloom glanced toward him, and Torian nodded. In answer, Bloom bowed to his little audience and moved gracefully aside to stand next to Torian.

  “You have done extremely well,” said Torian softly. “How long can you maintain the festivities?”

  Bloom surveyed the gathering like a master engineer, judging its level, brightness, and flow. “Three days, perhaps four, if that becomes necessary.”

  “I do not think it will.” Torian paused. “The offer still stands, Bloom. You have earned a place with us.”

  Bloom faced Torian. He bowed, and Torian sensed that for once the gesture was sincere. “I do thank you, Grand Sentinel, but no. I shall watch my final great illusion play out, then I shall…fade away.” He smiled at Torian’s blank expression. “And once again, you do not understand me.”

  “I admit I do not.”

  “That is because, Sentinel, you have never been taught the absolute necessity of a well-timed exit.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing now?”

  “You know it isn’t. Still, I wish you luck in your new venture. Your time will not be dull.”

  Torian offered his hand, and Bloom took it with a grip that was much more firm than the Grand Sentinel expected. “I will miss you.”

  Once more Bloom bowed, the grand, sweeping gesture that Torian expected from him. Then the Master of Dazzle turned away and slid easily into the currents of the party he had created. Torian felt a small shiver run inexplicably up the back of his neck as he watched Bloom depart.

  Let him go, he counseled himself. He would never accept the network, and how could he serve in the new system without it?

  Torian continued to make his own way through the crowds, pausing frequently to exchange greetings and compliments, even with the third- and fourth-degree family members. He skirted past the children, who were, of course, finding their own amusements around and between the adults and in general ignoring the ones created for them. A melancholy stained his mood, the closest he had come to regret down the long years of planning for this moment.

  It is only change, the last change. Better it should be over and done with soon.

  At the far end of the Grand Hall Mai Erasmus held court from her high-backed chair, cradling her daughter Indun in her arms. The other infants lay in specially designed bassinets that allowed them freedom to wriggle and coo—and also monitored every one of their vital signs.

  Torian laid his hand on Mai’s shoulder. She glanced up from the baby. He leaned over and poked his finger into Indun’s pudgy fist. Indun grasped it and immediately tried to yank it into her mouth.

  “She’s hungry again.” Mai sighed. “I’m beginning to think I won’t be able to keep up.”

  “You’ll do fine,” murmured Torian. “And you’ll have help. It’s time to go, Mai.”

  She met his gaze and nodded once. She stood, gathering her shining skirts with her free hand. Her well-trained waiting maids lined up instantly behind her. Indun, she declared, was getting fussy. Mai glided through the party, explaining that the noise and the heat were “just too much.” Indun obligingly set up a loud wail and everyone smiled to see what a dedicated mother Saeo Mai Erasmus was proving to be. Torian caught Estev’s eye with a nod and a tiny flickering movement of his fingers. Estev bowed and smiled and said he’d better make certain his wife and daughter did not want anything, and he followed Mai out.

  Torian resumed his slow circuit of the rooms: exchanging greetings, asking after health and business, hearing concerns and making promises that shortly “everything will be taken care of.”

  “The plan is in order,” he assured everyone who asked. “The first wave will be leaving soon. Enjoy the festivities until you are called.”

  They all knew of the triumphs on Hospital, of the heritable immortality and the living network that would ensure the permanence of the Erasmus System and the Blood Family.

  What most of them did not know was that immortality would be given only to certain, selected members of the Blood, and that these were the only ones who would be taken into hiding until such time as any fallout from their dealings with the Pax Solaris had cleared.

  Those who remained behind did not, of course, know he had planned for their ending as carefully as he planned for the others’ continuation. Bloom’s party would keep them amused and distracted for the few hours remaining to them.

  That he’d lied to the majority of the family did not trouble Torian much. He had been lying to Felice and Jasper’s children for centuries.

  Eventually, he reached the main doors. He passed through them into the relatively empty corridors. All around him, the motif of the family tree was repeated: in etched glass, in beaten bronze, in inlaid marbles and delicate paints. Torian drew a deep breath and walked purposefully down the avenues that would take him to the port yard.

  Behind him, the celebrations continued.

  THIRTY-ONE

  VIJAY

  One of the larger ironies of the Erasmus System, thought Vijay Kochinski, is that it is not illegal to remove water from Dazzle.

  It was highly illegal to take water off Fortress without permission. It was a death sentence to be out in a ship on a course or at a time that had not been thoroughly approved and reapproved by Flight Control. But it simply never seemed to have occurred to anybody that someone might remove water from a world that was struggling to keep itself hydrated.

  As a result, one major part of Papa Dare’s operation was perfectly legal. He bought up water at the markets with the considerable credit and scrip he had at his disposal, and he either turned it around for resale or hoarded it in very heavily secured warehouses.

  That, supposedly, was what was going on today. As a result, Vijay—along with Meek and the other four strongarms Meek had rounded up for this job—was able to walk into the port yard without any hassle from the few listless secops. Vijay wouldn’t have thought much of i
t, except for Meek’s half-drunken revelations: The cargoes weren’t going to the normal ports on Market. Oh no, these were being stuffed into Habitat 3, until the thing had become a damn floating ocean. The patri was coming down hard on everyone, then that fuckless fool Kapa vanished, taking an entire registered ship with him, which meant the whole run was in danger of being postponed. The permissions had been set for nearly a month, and Papa Dare did not like to have to rearrange his schedule. There were dozens of people in the fragmented, shifting morass that oversaw Dazzle’s port, and all of them had to be kept properly bribed, flattered, and fed. It took intense dedication to forge a chain that worked even once. Having to rearrange it would cause serious, and maybe permanent, delays.

  Papa Dare evidently felt that time was an issue. Which made Vijay wonder what they were really loading into the ship today. You could stash all kinds of lethal items in a watertight container. If you filled a habitat with poison or disease, then dropped that habitat through a jump gate and into an inhabited system…

  Papa Dare paid extra so his cargo was at least nominally secured behind one of the yard’s few walls. Vijay hung back as Meek presented the promissory and manifest to the hardeyed Clerk, one of a half dozen or so prowling the port’s interior. Vijay was the most visibly scarred, and the tallest of the strongarms. No point in presenting himself for closer inspection.

  But the Clerk wasn’t interested in any of them yet. She ran her fingertips over the manifest as if checking for holes in the sheeting and handed it back to Meek with a nod.

  Meek jerked his chin for his crew to follow him, and they all filed through the narrow opening in the patched-together partition.

  “You,” said the Clerk.

  Vijay stopped. “What?” he asked.

  The Clerk peered up at him. She had green eyes and golden skin.

  “She one of the Marshal-Steward’s cousins?” muttered Took from the back of Vijay’s mind.

  That’d be too weird for words.

  “You are identified as Edison Ray, registered and attached to the Pax Solaris.”