Archangel

by Marguerite Reed

  I wanted to be there when the Beast woke up. I wanted my face to be the first thing he saw, my voice the first to whisper in his ear. I could not kill him; but there were other means to satisfaction.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Aren’t you going to be late?” Bozana shouted over her shoulder. Bibi eluded her, trundling from room to room stark naked. Bozana, on loan from her opt at the Child Center, thundered after her with every sign of enjoying the chase, even when Bibi started hollering “poopybutt, poopybutt!” at the top of her lungs.

  “Where the hell does she get that from?” I held the fitted jacket to my torso and studied it in the mirror. White jacquard, an Ubasti send-up of my hunting clothes. Tight, immodest, and more comfortable than one might think. Not as comfortable as the standard Ubasti dress, salwar kamiz. Utterly practical, at once unisex and multisex, salwar kamiz lent itself to a variety of expression within its form. It bestowed grace to the clumsy, elegance to the coarse, drama to the plain. But tonight’s activities demanded I wear something the offplanet guests would understand.

  Bozana stuck her head in the room, her caramel twist of hair sagging loose from its pins. “Wear the other one.”

  “The green kamiz? Why?”

  When Bozana felt mischievous, a dimple in her left cheek winked in and out of sight like a tiny star. It flashed now. “You need color in your life. Every time you go to some sort of social gathering, you wear white.”

  “I’m fine in white.”

  “This is Moira’s party, right? One never knows who might show up. You’ve been wearing white for four years now and you always look so sad. People talk.”

  “That’s in my job description. You think they’d prefer it if I wore my regular hunting gear?”

  She dimpled again. “Are you kidding? You probably wouldn’t get in the door. So don’t forget the braids and the knives. You need the proper accessories to be marketable!”

  We snickered together, pretending to ignore the little face that peeped around the door jamb. Bozana seized her opportunity to snatch Bibi up by the armpits. “Phew! You stink! You go right into the bath, baby!”

  When the sounds of gleeful splashing were well underway, Bozana returned to find me dressed in the white. She tsked at the color, but I ignored her, cursing instead at the last tabs on the jacket.

  “How’d I put on weight after ten days in the bush?” I scowled at myself in the mirror and rotated my shoulders. Was it my imagination, or was the fabric pulling across the back? Was the flesh too loose on my bare arms? Did I see a gap between the tabs? I smoothed the heavy material over my waist and hips.

  “Stop it,” Bozana said. “You don’t know how many Enhanced women are jealous of your figure.”

  “They can get implants,” I snapped.

  She sighed and took my hands. The mehndi she had applied on my palms earlier looked like a mad cinnamon marriage of lace and ferns. “Let me see your feet,” she said. Obediently I pointed a toe. The pants stopped at just above the ankle, leaving my feet exposed. One could not call them bare, exactly, as Bozana had painstakingly covered them with the same pattern that adorned my palms.

  “Damn, I do nice work,” she said. “Very baladi, very low-tech.”

  “Even in my fake hunting clothes? You sure I should skip the boots this time?”

  “And hide my hard work from everyone? You’re a study in contrasts, and they won’t know what to make of you.” She grinned at me and went back to Bibi, who was doing her best to break a few eardrums.

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” I muttered. I fiddled with my hair once more. It stood out from my skull in spikes. Should I have combed it down?

  “Would you go?” Bozana shouted.

  “I’m going; I’m gone!” I slipped on my comlink. On the bed rested an alloy box. Sealed against moisture, dust, chemicals. Keyed to my thumbprint alone. On my way out I picked it up. For four years it had remained locked. Perhaps tonight I would open it.

  When I walked into the Ximenezes’ reception room, the door whispered shut behind me—no archaic slamming here, nothing to signal my entrance. Yet suddenly I found myself the focus of perhaps forty, fifty pairs of eyes.

  For a moment I seriously entertained the thought of excusing myself and going right back out that door. I set down my storage box on an unoccupied chair, took a deep breath, and turned on my smile.

  “In the same way,” I said, “does the theropod Montjak’s besora hunt its prey. By surprising it, bursting into the herd, hoping to catch one of the slower animals. Not the most efficient method, I might add.”

  “It’s bloody efficient enough for me!” Laughter rippled through the room. This was Yao Sewaa, First Wave botanist; I caught a glimpse of aubergine skin and an ebullient gesture. “Who wants to see what one of those things can do, hey?”

  Here came the first act.

  Gasps and a few nervous giggles bubbled from the guests as the bulbs over Yao dimmed. No accident he’d stood where he did. It had taken Moira and her creative team months to plan and code the hologram for tonight, and Yao had played his trigger part perfectly. The light sifted itself into a pattern suggestive of vegetation—fronds, stalks, bladed leaves of the sun-loving jibril thorn.

  A bass note sounded. So deep and loud we registered it as vibration, not sound. Flat, without resonance. If one hadn’t felt the real thing, it could be imagined as a footstep. The footstep of a multi-ton animal. I heard a cry from one person, profanity from another, felt a motion in the room: the guests shifting in a group—

  Even though I knew what to expect, my guts knotted. The variegated green and shadow shivered, and one dark orange talon pushed aside the leaves to reveal a flat, wedge-shaped reptilian head, all golden eyes and scales like tongues of flame. Gasps, prayers rose behind me. I couldn’t blame one person for that reaction. The thing stood two and a half meters high and could have easily taken my head within its jaws.

  Montjak’s besora stood there revealed in all its peculiar glory: each scale lined and curving outwards, giving a bristly, spiky appearance. Lemon below, red-tipped orange above, all the more bizarre because this creature went on two legs, like the terrible lizards of Earth. It stood there, bristling. One might expect the air itself to ignite.

  The slit-pupiled eyes surveyed the area. The broad head dipped in a scooping motion, and its mouth opened. Only a little—I knew this behavior, it was sampling chemical messages in the air—but the people behind me murmured in fear. I heard sobbing. So, time to end it.

  In a dancer’s gesture I swung my arm up and around—the sensors in the hologram picked up the motion, and the besora’s gaze seemed to follow my hand. Slow, slow, for both the technology’s benefit and the audience’s, I drew my knife from its sheath on my belt. Another moment of drama: lifting the blade so that the light slid across the metal in a liquid flare. The besora saw it too, drew back one clawed hand to strike—and I threw the knife. Straight through the hologram it shot. The image fragmented into countless luminescent points and vanished—leaves, besora, the whole brilliant tableau.

  A rattle of applause ran around the room. Amused, I shook my head and waved towards Yao. “Clap for him, he’s the one who survived an attack!”

  “Scar’s right here,” he called, one hand to the waist of his salwar.

  A chorus of protests answered him. A few of the people near him drifted politely off, just as he offered to lift his sherwani. I knew what they would see if he had. A long slanting ellipsis of centimeter-wide dimples ran from just above his right buttock, enclosed the iliac crest, and stopped just short of the root of his penis. Most of the First and Second Wave had seen it; he would display his scars to anyone expressing an interest.

  I smiled and moved into the space cleared by the grandstanding Moira and I had arranged ahead of time. Montjak’s besora was the most beautiful animal I had ever seen. More so even than Mumtaz. Where Mumtaz was a mammal, warm blood and placental like me, the only things Montjak’s besora had in common with humans was
that it hunted on two legs—and had twice the brain of its prey. Yao had been lucky.

  I hoped that the vivid presentation—light a lovelier medium than static polyresin—would make an impression, even in this crowd of tiresomely gorgeous men and women. Perhaps twenty people I recognized, even a couple of Second WaveMates sharing a dish of hummus. Next to Moira stood the all-important food import coordinator. By the drinks table, one of the captains of Patrol & Rescue. A vibramin warbled formless tones, programmed to the human respiratory-pulmonary rate of mild excitement. At one end of the room a trickle of recycled water glistened down a foam rock face, bordered by gold mohurs. Unlike the flowers potted on my balcony, these had been hammered out of actual metal.

  Hello, Vashti. Marhaba, namaste, konnichiwa, chao.

  I felt a touch on my shoulder. András Kárpáti, the regional Patrol & Rescue captain, stood there, his indigo coat a sober, oddly offworld hue in this crowd. He held a flute of sparkling white wine in each hand.

  “Going to be a bad night,” he said without preamble, long face lugubrious. “Why is she serving this junk?” He thrust one of the flutes at me. I took it on reflex. “She should have stuck to strawberry.”

  “András. Why is tonight ‘going to be a bad night?’”

  He cut his eyes to his right. “Look there. Caspian Younglove.”

  “Our importer; I saw him.”

  “Right. And those two on Moira’s other side. A tidy little square. Is she trying to convince them this slop is any good?” He threw his head back and drained the flute.

  “You seem to like it well enough,” I said.

  “It’s wet. After three weeks running the wadis, I’ll take it. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. Jamalu can’t be here—working an op tonight—so I don’t have to like anything.”

  Casually I shifted so that my right shoulder was to András. As if an afterthought, I glanced to my left. Moira’s group. Caspian Younglove, in a ravishing scarlet and gold sherwani; Moira in something elegant and sleeveless, looking like a sinuous amethyst column; and two other people, men, both dressed in the distinctly offworld garb of short tunic and tight pants. Either they’d been downside for a month or so, or they’d taken follicle stimulation after being in Q: their Source-friendly dark hair lay in sculpted waves.

  At first the only way I could tell them apart was the lack of facial hair on one, the Van Dyke beard on the other. As I watched them for a minute or so, the facial expressions identified them as well. The clean-shaven man would have been handsome if not for his adolescent glower; the other offworlder smirked like a benign grand-uncle.

  “Who are they?” I whispered. “They look as if they’re at a toddler party.”

  “They think we are,” András said. He lifted another glass of wine from a passing tray. “Toddlers, that is. That’s Senator DeBeers, the scowly one.”

  “The profiteer?” A couple of people glanced at me.

  “No, no, Vashti. Show a little sophistication, please?” Scorn thickened his voice. “He represents the people, remember? That’s why it’s called ‘the People’s Party.’ Honestly, we fanatics in this backwater are too naïve.”

  “And the one looking as if he’s going to pat Moira either on the head or on her ass?”

  András grinned. “Sure you don’t recognize him?”

  Something about the cast of his dark face, the line of the orbital bone, the set of his full mouth tugged at my memory. “A Source reporter?” I guessed.

  “Such handsome bronzed features . . . ?” He shook his head at my expression. “That’s Senator Taroush. Salvator Taroush. Hassan Taroush’s son.”

  The same Hassan memorialized next to my husband at the minaret in New Albuquerque, a leader of the First Wave. Not only had he kept his hundred alive during training, but he had been instrumental in establishing the legal rights to our subterranean agriculture. Thanks to Hassan Taroush, the colonies on Ubastis were not totally dependent on the agriculture coming in from the immense field stations.

  “And which way does he jump?” I mused out loud.

  “Wherever the money tells him to,” András said, and snorted. “Same as DeBeers. Same as every politician since three Neanderthals got together.”

  “How much have you drunk?”

  “Not enough, my lovely Mrs. Undset. What do you suppose they’re discussing over there, hmm? The question of Ubasti sovereignty?”

  “Quit staring,” someone at my left said quietly.

  “She isn’t staring, Mieu.”

  I was, dammit. I let my gaze slide over the throng past Moira and her offworld companions, and then brought it around to confront this advisor.

  Pham Mieu, in yellow hemp, looked back at me, the corner of her mouth tucked inward. She had served her ten years with Second Wave, specializing in communications, and gone straight into the liaison office afterward. “Senators DeBeers and Taroush,” she said smoothly, “are paying Ubastis a good will visit, as representatives of Federated Space.”

  “Opposing camps—I hope Taroush is Expansion Party, right? But why DeBeers? People’s Party doesn’t have that much support here.” I looked from Mieu to András. “Does it?”

  Mieu shrugged; András rolled his eyes. “So naïve. The Expansion Party never gets anything done. Why do you think they’re called Pokeys?”

  I took a drink of the wine, my mind turning. No imports were allowed onto Ubastis without UBI permission, but Caspian Younglove’s presence meant a deal was going down. The Commonwealth owned the vessels, but Caspian told them where to pick up, what to carry, how much, where to unload. He’d abandoned the chance of a great deal of profit in privatized imports and had thrown his lot in with Ubastis, but how far could I trust him? And Senator DeBeers . . . Profiteer . . . a member of a party who would like nothing better than to open up Ubastis for immediate maximum colonization. If not by human beings, then by factories. Dig it up, cut it down, wear it out, pack it in. What was Taroush’s role in all of this?

  “I thought tonight was going to be fun,” I said.

  “Make do,” Mieu said. “There’re a lot of old friends here. Fine wine, a better table. Just visit, eat, enjoy.” She gave me a sidelong look. “For all you know, they’re discussing who’s going to be first in the daisy chain.”

  Caught by surprise, I snickered. “Don’t make waves, right?”

  “Old Mieu never makes waves,” András said. “Wear the mask you’re supposed to, Citizen! Present the united front with a smile.”

  “You will, too, András,” Mieu said. “We all do. And we all have good stories for the offworlders.”

  “So maybe DeBeers’s come down here to spy for General Zhádāo,” I said. “And Taroush is keeping an eye on him.”

  “What a nasty suspicious mind you have, Mrs. Undset,” András said.

  “Taroush may or may not be on our side. Who knows what the general wants? But DeBeers’s a profiteer. Although I admit,” I said, “not everyone who makes money is a profiteer. I make money.”

  Her brows went up. “And where does it go?”

  “All right,” I conceded. “But they’ll be downside at the same time. All of these powerful offworlders . . .”

  The tuck in Mieu’s lower lip had deepened; I saw the rhythmic movement that meant she was gnawing thoughtfully. “I want to talk to Numair about this.”

  Conversation, the cooing of the vibramin, the whirring of the Tildens swirled and eddied in the room. The hairs on my arms lifted. I pitched my voice for Mieu’s ears alone. “Your perception?”

  “Subjective. Not useful,” she replied in the same tone.

  “Stow the disclaimer. Get to the meat.”

  She threw me a glittering look, the color high in her face. “I don’t like it. Ubastis gets maybe a couple of big offworlder visits per year; and now all of a sudden in less than ten weeks we get three? One of them a general? What’s that, so close to the vote?”

  I could not tell her about the Beast, not yet. This could not be anything other than coincidenc
e.

  Moira, as usual, laid a fabulous table. Down the center ran a largish holo, mimicking an old-fashioned aquarium—with no walls. Thumb-sized fish swam in bursts of orange, sulfur, cyan, through plants that waved in programmed currents. An eel, an improbable braid of violet light, undulated past our plates. The very best plasticware, a resin that approximated archaic mother-of-pearl inlay. Delicate little daggers for cutting the seitan steak. Crystal water glasses. Gossamer napkins, hardly the thing for catching a dropped piece of food. I caught said gobbet of food as it teetered on the edge of my plate and popped it into my mouth with my fingers, praying no one was watching. To my relief I had been seated halfway down the table, a discreet distance from both senators. On the other hand, Caspian Younglove sat at my left. A woman in a turquoise choli and lengha ate composedly at my right—a complete stranger. I tried to engage her in chat; she responded civilly, but disinterestedly. The seatmate to her right, a dark-hued man with braids down to his shoulders, had caught her fascination. The aqueous light from the holo flickered over her coppery skin as she turned her shoulder to me in dismissal.

  If I looked to the wall opposite, I would see my reflection in the four-meter mirror framed in gold leaf. I could see all of the guests, the waterfall, the door across the room. My position in the middle of the table had been no accident.

  I ate my food—prepared by Moira herself, I knew—and pretended to listen to the conversations around me. Scraps of babble. At least Moira knew how to cook.

  “Smile,” Caspian said to me. I groaned mentally, washed my mouthful down with a swig of water, and prepared to be polite. Stuffing all the impolite responses in my mental closet.

  “What would you rather be doing right now, Caspian?” I asked. “Name it. Anything.”

  Amusement warred with speculation across his features. “Are you suggesting?”

  “Certainly not. Merely curious.”

  His gallantry deflated into something more approachable. “In that case, I’d rather be at work.”

  I laughed. “Not sybariting on some lux station with a view of the Phoenix nebula?”