Archangel

by Marguerite Reed

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I had hoped to come upon the Beast asleep, dreaming through the last traces of Q. I saw the movement of his head toward the doorway when it hissed open. So much for the silence of the hunt.

  Almost I did not go in. Almost I ran. I growled—which he heard; the dim light flashed in his eyes—and pushed myself into the room.

  He lay on the bed, covered to the ribs with a sheet. Although I knew that sheet concealed the restraint that buckled underneath the bed’s metal frame, my flesh shrank in fear. So big. Outweighing me by thirty kilos; on his feet he’d stand nearly a half meter taller than me. He could pick me up and literally rip me apart. I’d seen it happen.

  I did not want to talk to him while he remained supine on the bed. His position spoke to me not of an enemy, but of someone who needed attention, nursing, nurturing. I went to the wall console. “You’re going to sit up,” I warned. I keyed in a suitable angle; the upper half of the bed rose, clanking a bit in subdued protest.

  I set the box down on the small table and leaned back against it, arms crossed beneath my breasts. “Do you know where you are?” I asked.

  He licked his lips. “Not in Mustaine.” His words caught; he coughed, tried again. He had a voice like a serrated blade, sharp, with a burr in the back of his throat. “They said scheduled for termination.” His hands laced across his belly. The edge of one of those hands, held just so, could break vertebrae.

  “Seems you’ve been rescued. By a governor’s wife. You’re on Ubastis.”

  “Ubastis.” As if the name were a flavor, rather than a word. Odd to hear it pronounced so, thoughtfully, in that voice. “The green planet.” He sighed then, his face averted, eyes shut. In a normal person I would have suspected exhaustion or emotion.

  “Look at me,” I said. Obediently he turned his head and gave me his obsidian gaze. “Mustaine is gone. Destroyed by its own reactor. The governor’s wife has obtained you out of pity before it even happened. So you’re an exotic to her. She may parade you at parties. She may order you into her bed.

  “And when she’s tired of you, I’ll show up.”

  “Your bed’s next?”

  The burst remote was a cool disc in my sweating palm. I aimed it at him. He stared back at me.

  “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t use this.” The Beast having a seizure in Chitra’s viddie file had been bigger; I could lay this one out with no trouble.

  “You a killer, then?”

  Like an idiot I goggled at the remote. “It’s a shock to your brain. Electrical. Convulsions, perhaps even brain damage. But it’s not going to kill you.”

  He shook his head and reached up with one hand to touch the base of his skull. “Not electrical. Chemical. Complete disruption. Nothing to tell synapses to resume communication.”

  I did not lower my arm. “I could do it now.”

  “You could.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Hesitation. “Yes.”

  I found that hard to believe. “Who am I?”

  “Commander Vashti Loren. Doctor of xenobiology. Minister of the Integral, administrating congress—”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Prison.”

  The laugh sounded ugly in my throat. “Prison. Quite the network you poor bastards must have.”

  “There was a holo in some of the cells—”

  “Describe it.”

  “A naked woman, asleep on shiny cloth. Her arms are around some kind of big spotted animal. Its head is wedged underneath hers. She’s very pregnant—her belly big. Long hair all over her pillow.”

  “Did the goddamn holo link to a biography? How do you know who I am?”

  He frowned. His knuckles whitened. “Stories about Ubastis,” he said finally. “Commander Loren’s name is in some of them.”

  To be sure. But very, very few people knew what position I held. Ministers of the Integral were seeded through the population centers of the planet. In order to do our work unobtrusively, we employed misdirection and took advantage of human nature’s desire for the ruling body, Bureau, King, or God, to be in a physical location, apart. By all means, let’s obey the powers that be, but make sure they’re somewhere else where we can keep an eye on them. If I asked the average citizen where the Integral’s office was, they would suggest one of the Lazarettes serenely orbiting the planet. Or New Cairo. Or even New Albuquerque. Only a handful of people knew my position. Others, such as Haas, saw the image projected; knew I might have some political sway due to my status of hero’s widow.

  Widow. Once more I leveled the remote. “You asked me if I’m a killer. If you know who I am, then you also know the answer’s yes.”

  “Do it, if you’ve got the balls.”

  By touch I opened the box beside me on the table. Cloth inside, folded. A shirt. I yanked it out and snapped it open right in his face. Flakes of dried blood exploded outward like spores. He blinked, and flinched when I dropped it on his lap.

  “That’s my husband’s shirt,” I said. “Pick it up.”

  He did so slowly, holding it up by the shoulders. Creases latticed the fabric, precise as a cartographer’s grid. It stank—I saw his nostrils flare and his chest lift as he took in the odor. Eyes on me, not the shirt.

  “Look at it.”

  A small triangular rent flapped open. He dropped one side of the shirt and put an inquisitive finger into the tear.

  As if the empty space beyond had been my own body, I felt it. I slid right up to him as he reclined in the bed before me and touched the very tip of my fingernail to his skin, right below the rib cage. He flinched and his gaze cut back to mine. I held that gaze, hypnotized by hate.

  “It stabbed him right in the liver,” I whispered.

  Lasse had made no noise, only a surprised grunt as the knife punched in. It had taken two of the smugglers to hold me. One of them had clamped his palm over my mouth, thumb and forefinger pulling my lower eyelids down so that I must see. If I could have gouged my eyes out, I would have.

  My nail traced the path across the Beast’s skin as I spoke, pushing the sheet down. “Slashed through the muscle, into the intestines.”

  So different, this Beast from that one. That one had been blond, pale as a fish, slack-lipped with pleasure. He gripped Lasse’s hand with the gun in it and squeezed. Squeezed as he jerked the knife across Lasse’s belly, above the navel; the shirt never ripped, only twisted along with the pull of the knife.

  My fingers pushed the sheet down further, skated across the retraining belt, and dipped between his legs to find his testicles. I cupped the hot, heavy weight, feeling the delicate rounds within the skin, ignoring his penis brushing against my wrist, ignoring his sharp inhalation. My face centimeters from his. “And then it raped him.”

  Lasse had never called out. Too afraid of bringing the other Patrol & Rescue into this nest of slaughter. He lay stunned, open-eyed, until the Beast nailed him to the ground with the knife that had disemboweled him. And then he struggled. Bug on a pin, the Beast said, and laughed, and ripped off Lasse’s pants.

  Every thrust forced more blood out of him until the leaf mold was a scarlet swamp. My own face swam with tears; they coursed over my captor’s hand and melted the seal of our flesh. I twisted and bit his thumb to the bone. He cried out and snatched his hand away from my face.

  I roared Lasse’s name. Deaf to his croak of horrified denial, I whipped my head back and felt my skull connect with the smuggler’s. The crunch of a nose being broken. Weight dropping away from my upper body. The other one clawed his way up my legs, trying to hold me down as I squirmed to face him. His fist came at me; I slipped in beneath the blow and grabbed his head by the ears. I used the only weapon left to me. I craned up, as if to kiss—the expression on his face a study—and I ripped his lower lip off his face.

  While he rolled on the ground squalling I seized the gun from his belt and shot him and the other smuggler.

  I’m here! I shouted. Before I moved again I ch
ecked the magazine. Fifteen slugs left. With luck I would kill the Beast; if need be, I could shoot Lasse and myself.

  Perhaps Lasse was already dead. After that last awful cry I had not heard a sound from him. His open eyes stared. At me? At nothing? I rose to my feet on the edge of the clearing, and the Beast, still plunging against Lasse’s body, glanced up.

  I let him see me. I let him see me, drenched in blood, training the black eye of intent on his skull. He parted his lips—to speak, to laugh, to moan—and I shot him.

  The slug knocked him back and blew out the back of his head in a crimson splatter. I did not stop. I shot him in the throat, in the chest, the stomach, in the genitals, until he stopped moving. Standing over him, bullet after bullet slapping into him, my hand aching.

  Then I fell to my knees and crawled to Lasse.

  If this had been a work of fiction I might have chosen the bitter resolution of Lasse dying before I reached him. With his very fingerends he clung to the beloved world. As I scrambled to him his eyes slowly tracked me.

  Lasse, was all I could say. I lay down next to him, my cheek pressed into the bloody dirt, and held his hand.

  His gaze moved over my face; I saw the mask of blood reflected in his eyes. Not mine, I said. I took care of them all.

  He shut his eyes and exhaled. I squeezed his hand; he looked at me.

  I began to say the Lorica. What I could remember of it, anyway. I arise today. Through Heaven’s might, sun’s brightness, moon’s whiteness, fire’s glory, lightning’s swiftness, wind’s wildness, ocean’s depth, earth’s solidity, rock’s immobility.

  My mind groped. Faint pressure from Lasse’s hand. His lips, slimed with blood, moved. Cuing me. Christ, he said.

  Christ beside me, I said. His pupils were beginning to dilate. I moved in until the breath from my words washed over his face. Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me.

  How cold his hand was. Cold as a stone, bone of earth. Christ in my lying, my sitting, my rising; Christ in the heart of all who know me.

  He left me then. He sighed once, like a child dropping into sleep. I felt him go.

  Christ on the tongue of all who meet me, I said. To finish it. To sail him home. I sobbed the words now, no longer needing to be strong. Christ in the eye of all who see me. Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

  I took his gray face and kissed it, kissed his mouth, closed his eyes and kissed them. I straightened his clothes. Then I laid myself beside him, taking his hand once more. Our last bed, of dead leaves, humus, mould, alien skin of an alien planet. And the alien mouths of her thousand thousand children drinking him in.

  So András and his team found us not long after, side by side. They had to peel me from the ground. They could not unclench my hand from his.

  “Don’t ask me if I’ve got the balls, bastard,” I whispered to the Beast in the bed before me. “I’ll wear yours on a fucking necklace.” My hand tightened convulsively.

  With one hand he seized my throat. So fast I couldn’t register the movement as even a blur. His thumb rested right over my windpipe and his fingertips pressed into my vertebrae. Sweat shone on his hairless scalp.

  “It was a rogue,” he said.

  “No shit,” I said, my larynx trying to push past his grip. We certainly had each other’s attention now. “Let go.” I showed him the remote. “Let go, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

  He held me lightly enough so that I felt no pain. “Listen. Listen. That was in prison too. That story. Some of that clutch was in Mustaine.”

  “I’m doing it—” My thumb slid to the button.

  “Still time to squeeze. Convulsions.”

  “It’d be worth it.” My voice like gravel in my throat.

  Nothing. We stared into each other’s eyes; I saw the vein swollen beneath the skin, pulsing down from his scalp to curl above his left eye, the minute contractions and dilations of his pupils.

  I released his scrotum. His hand relaxed on my neck. Then I grabbed the metal box and belted him across the face with it.

  His head rocked back and he let go of me. Surprise, I had taken him by surprise; but then he came up from the bed in a rush, never even heeding the belt, which popped apart like a blade of grass, and he threw me down on my back, my head hitting the floor, the remote gone clattering into a corner, and my mouth gasping beneath his hand.

  Who’s going to take care of Bibi? What’s going to happen to her? My brain swam from the blow. I would be dead in another moment; dammit, I couldn’t breathe; and his voice was in my ear in a rapid growl.

  “Astatine clutch. Inception date 2263. Androgen receptors mutated in each clone and were found to be twice as sensitive as normal human receptors. Nothing but cancer and dementia. Very unstable. We’re Ferrum, stable, stable; goddamnit, we were sent to help.”

  I managed to free an arm from beneath his hundred-plus kilos and began hitting him. Then trying to go for his eye, thumb seeking. A corner of the box I’d hit him with had sliced his face. Blood made his skin slippery. He caught my wrist and ducked his head into my neck.

  “The vote is in four months; you’re being watched; you have a two-year-old daughter named Bibi—what do you want to happen to her?”

  I went still. My breath whistled double-time through my nostrils. Where before terror had lent me strength, now it sapped me to debility. To hear my daughter’s name in this thing’s mouth, his cheek against mine—

  “Not going to hurt you. Not going to hurt your daughter. Listen. They want to discredit you. They want you out of the way.”

  Perhaps if I twisted my leg somehow I could still manage to get him in the crotch. God, the weight of him—the idea flitted through my mind to stop struggling. Give up. Death was coming for me one way or the other, in a besora’s dagger-filled mouth or a stampede of axeheads. Why not here in the medbay? I closed my eyes.

  “Will you listen?” An increment of release from that hand over my mouth. “Will you scream?”

  I shook my head no. So tired, sick from all that adrenaline.

  He took his hand from my mouth; I licked my lips, ran them over my teeth. “Let me up,” I croaked.

  He slid back onto his knees and I kicked away from him, resisting the impulse to catch him in the groin with one bare foot. When I was clear of him I flipped over onto my feet and hands and scrambled for the corner. The corner into which the remote had fallen. I snatched it. Spun around. He was on me again already, one hand around my foot, yanking me toward him; and as I slid along the floor I screamed and depressed the button.

  Nothing.

  We stared at each other in shock.

  I could feel my hair standing on end. I screamed again, right in his face, a primordial shriek vomited up from God knows where; pushing and pushing that damned button.

  He still held my foot. He switched his grip to my ankle and in one smooth move rose to his feet, lifting me as easily as I could have lifted Bibi—yet only high enough so that he could step on my hand, the one holding the remote. Suspended—pinned—I could only flail in useless contortions, hoping my free heel could connect with his face. I tried not to think about being ripped in half and instead cursed him breathlessly.

  Was I going to pass out? The blood thundered in my head; my ears rang—abruptly he let me go and I toppled to the floor before I could catch myself. Dimly I heard the sound of feet running. The Beast must’ve heard them before I did.

  He had retreated against the far wall, hands behind his back, feet apart, ignoring me while I used the bed to pull myself up. I wanted to puke. Despite the Beast’s efforts, I still held the remote, and when the door slid open to admit Haas I tossed it to her.

  She caught it reflexively, then looked from me to the Beast. “What the hell? What happened? I heard screaming.”

  “That was me,” I snarled. “Moira’s toy attacked me.”

  “You’ve got blood on your neck. Oh, and your lovely jac
ket.” Real regret in her voice, there.

  I put my hand up but felt nothing. My fingers came away smeared with red. “It’s his.”

  Haas looked at the bed, and even in the dim light I saw her go paler still. “The remote—” she began.

  “Somewhere someone’s monitor is changing channels like a mad bastard.”

  “It didn’t work—”

  “No, it didn’t fucking work! Look at him! Fucking look at him! Get him shackled now, or doped out, or shot. Something.”

  Haas’s mouth hung open. “Who has shackles?”

  “Kill him. Kill it. I’m charging Moira with smuggling, acquisition of human property, concealment of a deadly weapon. I’ll do it, I’ll get my Varangar and kill it now.”

  Haas looked as if someone had molested her mother. Not far wrong. “I’m sure there was a misunderstanding—Ya Allah, Commander, we don’t kill anyone here.”

  “Misunderstanding?” I bent my head and pointed to the back of my head where a knot had already formed. “You want to misunderstand a possible concussion?”

  “Look at him.” Haas put what she must have thought was a comforting hand on my shoulder and leaned in. “Look at him, Commander, he hasn’t moved a muscle. But he can understand every word we say.”

  I glanced at the Beast. The set to his mouth was bitter.

  Haas, with another dubious look at me, stopped and picked up Lasse’s shirt. She held it up, brows lifting as more of the brown flakes sifted to the floor. “Is this yours?”

  “It’s Dr. Undset’s. The shirt from Wadjet Valley.”

  She made a thoughtful noise in her throat, laying the shirt over her forearm—as if she held an infant—and smoothed one hand over it. “A relic.”

  It was hard to speak through the tears threatening in the back of my throat. “You could say that.” I reached for the shirt, my gaze on the Beast, who had not moved. I felt Haas slipping the garment into my hand and folding my fingers over it.

  Very low, she said, “Vengeance? Is that what your husband would have wanted?”

  What Lasse would have wanted? No. No. I wanted vengeance. “Do you have a comlink I can use? Mine’s on the floor somewhere.”