Archangel

by Marguerite Reed

  While the canopy of the Skipjack opened, I let him run; while Bearce staggered out of the equipment shelter, I counted off the seconds.

  The Bucha gun and the rifle I left on the sand. I wanted nothing more than Joop’s knife at my belt. While the P&R officer and Bearce shouted across the lake to each other, I walked in the divots of earth gouged by the Beast’s running feet, past the dead men, into the still-shuddering arboros.

  It was all too possible that he’d paused just inside the curtain of vegetation, there to wait, and pounce on me. On the edge of green I stopped. I was fooling myself into thinking I would be able to sense him, smell him, if he were close by, but I rolled the air around in my mouth anyway, the heat of the late morning sun pasted to my back and scalp, the shadows before me dense and narcotic with humidity.

  He might snatch me at my first step into the dark—but in the gloom, I saw foliage trembling in the wake of his passage. Even the crunch of vegetation trampled underfoot was audible, though receding. Careless, was my first thought. Then: he wants me to find him.

  I drew the knife. I’m going to die, I thought. Bullshit—he’s going to die. I took a step. I took another, pulse slamming all through my body, zero to my very guts.

  You play your little hunting games . . .

  The whole world a blur of green and brown, and slivers of detail slashed into my perception. Here the tracks of the men running, overlaid by the Beast’s; ahead, a castiglia vine wobbled. Reflexively I glanced upward. No Beast up there.

  Onward.

  I ran.

  Heedless, headlong, bashing my way through the beloved forest. I ducked under low-hanging boughs. Flung myself around meter-wide boles in an effort to keep any trace of him in sight, slid, skidded, wrecking young growth as I tore deeper into the arboros.

  Big footprint deep in the humus, pulping the edge of a leaf. A broken branch, pale and jagged, the fibers still moist with sap. Creepers, vines. Footing underneath treacherous with soft spots. I leaped over a deadfall and came down on a mass of rotting leaves. I skidded hard. Fell, rolled, bounded to my feet again.

  Take a moment, goddammit, I told myself.

  In a crouch, hand on knife-hilt, I scanned the area. Leaves filtered the sunlight so that I felt as trapped in emerald as a mosquito in amber. Reflexively I touched fingertips to the spongy arboros floor. Which way, which way? Tell me, Mother.

  Silence all around my perimeter—and to my left, ahead, the screech of an outraged varanid-eating flyer. A vast undulating shadow blotted out the light for a moment. Had the Beast climbed so high as to approach the canopy? Or had he disturbed the flyer on its kill?

  So, go in the direction from which the avian had flown.

  I resumed at a more cautious jog, using all my spatial memory of this area. In several hundred meters, if memory served, the terrain would become rockier as the jungle climbed slowly once again into the foothills of the Anqet range. Would it benefit me if I could catch him before the land started its rise? Climbing would sap his strength and mine.

  In the middle of another reptile scratch the remains of a small varanid, disemboweled, ribs cracked open, proved me right. Another boot print had stamped squarely in the middle of a length of shining gut.

  Bastard, I thought.

  And then a further too-easy-to-read sign, one more fractured sapling at the edge of the clearing.

  All right, damn it. If it were me—

  But while it was easy to put myself in the mind of a fleeing animal, I had no idea what the Beast wanted.

  I swept the clearing, trying to relax, to be permeable, to keep all perceptions open. And there, to my right, the slightest shift of air. Out of the corner of my eye the dapple of light and shade shifted out of pattern.

  I lunged for the man-shaped shadow in the trees. He fled. I retained enough presence of mind not to draw my knife but a reptilian hiss escaped my teeth as I pounded after him. Shoving branches aside, crashing through what brush managed to spring up in patches of sunlight, I kept his form in sight, even when a sapling whipped across my eyes.

  He ran with no discernible effort. Big frame smashing aside any obstacles, no attempt at stealth; no attitude of fear in any line of his body.

  I would make him fear me.

  My teeth ground together. The air in my chest began to burn as I poured on whatever I had, my leg clumsy now, the damned knee threatening to give out with every jarring footfall. And then it dawned on me that he was leading me right back to the little lake, back to our campsite. A growl of anger escaped me. He wanted to do this in front of everyone—in front of the galaxy? Bearce would train his lens on us and upload live to the Source.

  He led me; I did not drive him. The gloom tore away to shreds, sunlight stabbing here and there through the canopy. The wind had picked up; even down here, even in the heat of my pursuit, I felt it cold on my skin. A storm coming.

  The ground rose beneath my feet. The air grew heavier with mist, even with the freshening air. Up toward the head of the waterfall, damn his intelligence. The bellows in my chest pumped harder even as my stride shortened, slowed; and still he eluded me, always just ahead, boot prints vulgar in the mud and humus, giving me the briefest glimpses through the growth. Wasn’t he tired? After so long in the shithole that was Mustaine, after those weeks in our own modest prison, didn’t the slightest bewilderment brake him?

  I can’t do it. I can’t do this. I’m done. I’ll fall.

  Had I possessed more wits I would have used that as a plan. Instead I whipped myself with images of Lasse.

  He doubled back and forth through the trees, now to my left, now to my right, leading always on; and now the ground tilted enough so that from time to time my fingertips touched to the ground. If I wanted, I could boost myself along with a grip on a sturdy plant. His track in the ground became a stair and I climbed it doggedly.

  Lasse skewered on the blonde Beast’s knife. Lasse bleeding his life out onto the dirt. Lasse’s cold hand in mine.

  Shouldering off to my left the ground sheered up in a sudden face of rock: the stream’s bed. Veronica’s hair and other creepers swarmed down its face. I snatched at them, pulled. They stayed fast.

  Up the damn rock I pulled myself, scaling the nine-meter face. My feet in their hard boots scrabbled for toeholds. Every time I pushed up with my left leg, I bit my lip bloody to keep from crying out. Some of the creepers had thorns; they bit into my palms and fingers until my hands were slick with blood, and I had to grip the runners even harder to keep from slipping. The cooling wind found me and chilled the sweat on my skin. Was that the mutter of thunder I heard, or the roar of the waterfall?

  A rock clattered down the stone bluff. And another, bouncing away just shy of my face. I looked up, knowing what waited.

  The Beast stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down at me. I saw no hatred in his face, no glee at turning the tables, only calm. Patience.

  For a moment the idea bloomed, that I could lay down my vengeance, my rage, my lust for death. The only violence he had ever offered me had been in self-defense. The only desire he had displayed towards me was for communication.

  The Beast knelt and extended his hand. The burned one, the one still in its healing glove.

  A ripple of feeling threatened me as I clung to my wall, hands pierced and bleeding, toes dug into a hard-won hollow. My eyes prickled. Tears.

  I could take his hand, have him drag me up. I could ask forgiveness. I could mend and not kill.

  It was what Lasse would have done.

  With my left hand I reached up, stretching. So strong he was he hauled my ten stone up the cliff one-handed, and got me onto solid footing with a grunt and a swing.

  I staggered a bit, my knee feeling as if it had been set on sideways, and pitched clumsily against him. He leaned into me, catching my shoulder, and moved both of us away from the edge of the bluff. Still that hand-width of space between us.

  “Thanks,” I said, panting. And then I drew Joop’s knife and punched it into
his flesh.

  He twisted just before the blade bit. The breath barked out of him. I tore away and bolted.

  Toward the waterfall I raced. Empty-handed, for I’d left the blade in his body. I barely saw the way before me, so scorched on my retinas was the image I’d left behind: the sixteen-centimeter blade jammed into his side, the expression of complete shock on his face.

  “Bitch!” I heard behind me.

  Fuck, I did it now, didn’t I? flew through my head.

  I broke through the forest curtain to a day gone gray and dim. The first raindrops pattered down, fat against the leaves, cold on my skin. Before me a bank of mist drifted up from the edge of the waterfall, plunging down to the lake below—and through that I saw the little valley spread out below and at the far end of it, the campsite, the Skipjack.

  The Beast came crashing out of the treeline. Blood blackened his shirt. In his hand he held the knife.

  “Come on, you freak!” I screamed. Right at the lip of the stream’s edge I crouched, ready for him.

  Teeth bared in a horrible snarl, he pressed his hand into his sodden shirt and then held it up, palm out. Scarlet dripped. “You fucking missed, bitch. Didn’t even nick an organ. Want to try again?” He reversed the knife in a deft flip, and whipped it into the ground before my feet.

  Like an exposed bone the hilt jutted from the dirt. I squatted, ignoring my knee’s protest, and plucked it up. My gaze never left him. Now his breathing had finally quickened; now at last I could see that somehow a toll had been taken. I straightened and sent the knife spinning over the falls.

  For a moment we stood, eyes locked, both blowing hard, spats of rain shocking the skin. Thunder rattled overhead. My lovely arboros before me; wide sky above, seething water and air behind me. This would be a good place to end it.

  I charged him just as the rain broke. He met me with a slap to my face; I ducked beneath that casual blow and punched up into his solar plexus and let the momentum take me up into a second jab beneath his chin. His teeth clicked together. Solid hits, but I’d let myself get in too close for too many seconds and he caught my right arm and wrenched it behind me.

  Something popped. Agony made a star of my shoulder, and I snapped my left knee up into his crotch. His grip slackened; I twisted away, feet slow on the rain-slick ground, and he was right after me. Just enough space to knock away his fist and catch him below his eyebrow with the heel of my hand. I pushed as I dropped into a cat stance—weight on my right leg—strove to keep him at arm’s length.

  He dropped back, hooked a foot in the crook of my knee, yanked my legs out from beneath me.

  When I fell, I rolled; rolled the other way just in time to meet his foot high in my belly. I curved away from the worst impact, but I thought I was going to vomit, even as I wrapped my arms around his foot and calf and pulled him down.

  Instantly I swarmed up his supine body, straddled his chest, and began punching. I aimed for his throat, but he tucked his head, and I thought I was going to break my knuckles on his face. His lip burst against his teeth; the rain instantly washed away the blood. I hit him again, left right; he seized my wrists and flipped me over and crushed me with the weight of his body.

  Here it comes. I wriggled like a beached fish beneath him, all flailing legs, my fingers talons for his eyes. I laid his cheek open before he grabbed my wrist once more. Water dripped off his head into my eyes. I retched, spluttered, spat rainwater at him.

  “Get down here so I can rip your throat out,” I choked out.

  “Wasting your time,” he grunted. “We should kill you right now.”

  “Do it! Just fucking end it! Fucking get it over with!”

  For answer the Beast balled his fist up in the neck of my shirt—I jabbed my thumb into the soft of his neck. Quick as a varanid he snatched my hand in his teeth and bit. I screamed in sudden brassy pain, and he ripped my shirt to the waist.

  I screamed again, louder, not out of pain but to deafen him. I latched my thumb inside his bottom front teeth, jerked my arm back with all my force, and at the same time shoved us over with a wrench of my right foot.

  The ground had gone to mud now. We rolled, and I kept pushing us, my thumb a hook on his mouth—his teeth sawing—and we rolled right over the edge of the cliff.

  Gravity spun us apart. The Beast straightened into a dive but I was so exhausted I no longer cared and I fell all anyhow and let air and water take me.

  The hurt when I hit the water was immense. A nova with no point of origin. My mouth opened to howl and lakewater rushed into my lungs. The waterfall beat my body down, and I tumbled toward the bottom of the lake. My body, stupid, determined body, kept trying to rise, and every time the fall’s incessant roil battered me down.

  Maybe this is better came the thought through the bewilderment of pain and turbulence. This could be over so soon. How much do you miss Lasse?

  My fingers gouged into silt and gravel. If I could find a handhold beneath the tumult, I could just keep myself here. Already waves of gray washed over the blackness inside my eyelids. Even through the impact pain, my lungs felt like twin jets of fire.

  Surface. Bright light and bereavement. I coughed and choked and vomited water, and I thought I would go under again except something was holding me up by my hair. A merciless grip, pulling at my scalp, dragging me into the shallows. I beat feebly at the crown of my head.

  Warm skin—a hand. I cut my tearing eyes to my left and saw the Beast’s dark shape.

  I pushed and slapped at him, as effective as Bibi. When we got to shallow water I dug my heels into the sediment and he let me go.

  It was a great achievement to stand. I did not do it well. He stood patiently while I staggered, my face running with lakewater and rainwater and snot.

  “Jesus, woman, will you let it go?” he said.

  I charged him. He reached out and pushed me down. I got up. Shambled toward him, bare-breasted, fists barely able to clench, teeth bared in effort, weaving all over the place. He shoved me again, and I ignominiously went to my knees before him.

  Rain pocked the surface of the lake. A slime of algae and blood filled my mouth. Every sobbing breath felt like ground glass. Somehow I surged to my feet, but my knee would not bear my weight, and I fell again without the Beast having to touch me.

  “Are you going to listen to us now?” His voice seemed as distant as the thunder muttering from the cumulus clouds above. I swung at his kneecap. He stepped aside with a sound of exasperation. As if I were a piece of furniture he’d stubbed his toe on in the dark. I pitched against him, pummeling his legs, his thighs, blind with rage and pain and stinging water, breath ripping out of me in whistling little pants.

  He was the rock on which my wave of fury broke. I could not move him. I could not change him. I could not do one damn thing to hurt him, to mark him, to make an impression. It had all been for nothing.

  “You have to help me!” I screamed.

  That hand in my hair again as he crouched next to me. Over into the lake he pushed me, holding my head under. Stupid survival instinct overrode my brain, and I thrashed in protest.

  Pain pulled me back into the world, and breath whooped into my lungs.

  His voice, right by my ear: “Are you going to listen to us now?”

  I coughed and swatted him. “Just do it. Fucking drown me.”

  The Beast pushed me down again. My body would not relax, would not let me relinquish my air. Would not let me give up. Chromed lightnings raced across my vision. Fight, my body told me. Fight. One little breath. Just take one.

  I could do that right here, inhale the water, force myself to asphyxiate.

  How soon after that would I see Lasse again?

  Laila’s voice, from what seemed ages ago: You went in there to die . . .

  I opened my eyes and saw the water brown with stirred-up silt. Threads of blood from the bite wound on my thumb floated past. If I could be sure my body would simply decompose here–eaten by the lake’s eukaryotes, broken down f
or nutrients by bacteria—no. My fellow colonists would drag my corpse from the water. Undress it, disinfect it. The technicians would tack shut my mouth and seal my eyes. Inject chemicals up through the femoral artery and drain the blood out through the femoral vein. Suck out the contents of my abdominal cavity. They might dress me in my Integral uniform, or perhaps in my best salwar kamiz. Powder my skin, redden my lips. Lay me in state next to the embalmed corpse of my husband, on display in Lazarette 1.

  I surrendered to the misery. I opened my mouth to suck in a lungful of lakewater—

  And the Beast hauled me up in a roaring arc of silvered scarlet. Air and rain blared into my lungs. Oh, Christ, so sweet—

  “It’s over, Commander,” he said. “You can’t kill us, and we won’t let you kill yourself. It’s over.”

  Boneless I slouched in the water, still feeling the pinch of his hand in my hair—not caring. My shirt gaped open, and my breasts rose and fell on the surface of the water. Mucus ran down my upper lip.

  Nothing mattered but the air my heaving chest pumped in and out of my lungs.

  The Beast crouched beside me in the water. His hand approached my head, but it was only to wipe the slick of snot from my face. “Commander. We did not kill Captain Und—we did not kill your husband. When this is all over, you can execute us if you choose. When it’s all over, you can kill yourself if you want to, and we won’t be there to stop you.”

  I could not see for the rain. “I can’t. I can’t.” My voice was thick, gummy. “I just keep on living. Day after day.”

  “There was nothing you could’ve done.”

  I began to cry. I leaned back against his hand—which no longer hurt me—and sobbed. “I’m tired.” Square-mouthed, limp-limbed, the precious air a barb in every alveolar sac. “I miss him.”

  “We know.”

  “I don’t want to be here without him.”

  “We know.”

  “Can’t you—I don’t know—stop my heart, right here? I won’t hold it against you.”