Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  When will she get a job? their mother asked plaintively. At sixteen, Arden Stafford had been on the Street. At seventeen Arden had disappeared into it, and Ardath had emerged from that chrysalis, a young Fashionable immediately turning heads.

  Get a job? Ardath had whatever she wanted and paid for nothing. She had the best wines, the best suppers, for merely walking into the Plane and being herself-Ardath, a Grand Stylist, one of the chief arbiters on the street, of what Fashionables should be and do. If Ardath even spoke to a Fashionable, that person's public esteem rose, and if Ardath turned a cold shoulder to a certain look, that person's stock plummeted in the Trend.

  So with establishments. Wherever she dined, the place thrived and raked in the money. If she lived in an apartment complex, it profited, and that complex had a long waiting list for rentals at inflated prices. If she wanted a modification, she had it, gratis, and the doctor could as well move into a fancier residence and take on assistants. Theaters, style shops, restaurants, accessory shops, jewelers, all begged her attendance and offered her gifts. She let most such offerings fall untouched and unrebuffed. Grand Stylists made no mistakes, and what they noticed, let alone what they adopted for themselves, they chose ever so carefully.

  She knew he was here, no question, and Procyon waited. After a few moments with the owner, she rose from the table, made her obligatory tour of inspection, briefly noting this and that person, chatting amiably with Spider, pausing to tip up the face of a young female hopeful and look critically, then smile. Ardath was never cruel. It was always positive notice, encouragement to what pleased her. Young Fashionables regarded her with worship and flocked to her vicinity in droves, wearing their best, all in a hope sometimes gratified for no plea at all, only the spontaneous honesty of her judgment.

  His own dark tones, shirt and coat, matched her somber dress. He was glad of that accident as she slipped up and joined him at the bar. He'd known if he was going shopping uptown he wanted no flamboyance in any shop frequented by Earthers, but if he subsequently visited his sister, modest plumage definitely served. He by no means wanted a visual conflict with Ardath, by no means wanted to attract her kind of notice to his inexpert choice of style.

  She leaned an elbow on the bar. Her skin settled on the lowest, slowest flicker. Blues melted back in curling, gold-edged shapes around her features, making of Ardath's natural clear complexion an Arden-mask, his sister's real face, revealed for him for the moment.

  "Procyon." The voice had grown sweeter and lower over the last year. Even that was modified, and sounded like power in restraint, no longer his sister's voice, or even her original accents. "You look very well tonight." Seeing that she was beyond the Style, if she wanted to take her brother's hand, even to smile and compliment his modest, off-the-rack, though pricey suit, no one could fault her. Her fingers lingered on his, on the three handmade rings that were his personal vanity. "And what brings elder brother asking questions?"

  "Oh, the annual parental occasion." He was just a little pained by the continuing performance, by the continual diminution of Arden in Ardath. "I just thought you'd like to know it's taken care of. A friendly advisory."

  "Do I care? Let me see."

  "A truly d‚class‚ crystal egg will find its way to the parental door tomorrow, with a Caprice label."

  She drew back the hand in dismay. "Oh, shame, Procyon!"

  Now it was his sister's voice. And he smiled, having scored.

  "I confess. I did it. I doubt they'll see the humor in it. I signed both our names."

  Very few people took any liberties with Ardath these days. He did. He saw the indignant fire in her eyes and the frown on her lips, and was immensely gratified to see the little girl for a moment, his outraged little sister in the Stylist's mask.

  "Jeremy and Arden. In eighteen-point engravure. We were very proper. Mother, by the way, patiently asks whether you have a job yet."

  Lifted brows. An uncontrolled gold flush washing over her cheeks spoiled the carefully modulated tendrils of color. Then outright laughter roused a sparkle of blue and gold, dancing like fire along her skin. No need for big brother to take her on a guided tour. She knew she'd been tagged, by someone who knew her well.

  She said, with hauteur: "I hope you reassured her of your own orthodox circumstances."

  "Oh, I did. Certainly."

  "What do you do these days?" Tag, and tag. "You're not flopped down with those Freethinkers again, are you? Not embezzling from banks."

  And she got no more information than usual.

  "Still just pushing keys for the government."

  "And wearing fabulous silk shirts." A touch drifted across his collar. "That is nice silk, big brother. Imported?"

  "Expensive, expert keys for the government." A sweet, false smile. For revenge, she ran him through the everlasting familial maze: what do you do, where do you work, why the secrecy. "Expensive keys for very many hours. Slave labor. But I won't intrude my decadent Freethinker self here. Dessert at La Lune. I've dropped a bit of weight. I have it coming."

  "La Lune Noir. Nice place. Drop my name there."

  Meaning the establishment would give him his dessert and dinner just for the notice of Ardath's brother. "No. No, little sister." The false, sweet smile became true. "I pay my own way. And I don't want a personal following. I only thought you should know I've taken your name in vain-your birth name-just keeping those parental doors open."

  "I won't visit them. I won't ever. You're entirely wasting your time."

  "Life's long. Things change. And please don't trouble to damn Caprice. They exist to please our mother. It's ever so good someone does."

  "Oh, don't talk about her. It's a boring topic."

  "She's a good person. So's our father, for that matter. Don't get too improved to remember that they gave us a good start."

  "I don't remember that. I don't choose to remember it. Our mother used up that credit."

  "Will you forget me? Will I get just too boring to cross your mind?"

  "Never." Light danced in her eyes. Likely a number of chemo-machines did, and music attended her, unheard by anyone outside her skull, music along with her personal messages. He saw from time to time how her eyes flickered with external input. She'd become the center of her own electronic universe, a very active internal universe of lights and signals and transmissions. "But Caprice! I could just die."

  "Oh, don't. I'm sure you have something else to do this evening. I'm off to La Lune."

  "On your own card, silly brother."

  "It's just money. I have plenty."

  "Mysterious, always mysterious. Are you actually going to the parentals tomorrow?"

  "I'm hard to catch. I'm sure there's a gruesome dinner in the works, tomorrow off shift. I intend to disappear for at least six hours. Overtime at the office."

  Slow, wicked smile. "Do they think of me often?"

  "The parentals? They always ask how you are. I lie and say I see you often. I tell the truth and say you're doing fine."

  "I'll bet she prays over me."

  "Not such an unloving thing to do, midge."

  "You're so brave, to go there."

  "Oh, not that brave. I sometimes miss vegetables boiled to mush." Sometimes he longed for a parental voice. He was human. He experienced nostalgia. He wasn't that sure about Ardath. She had had yet to grow into her emotional adulthood when she fled a career in the plastics plant, and something in her had never ticked over to love for her origins, only roused a rebellion more bitter and more lasting than his. If she didn't cure that anger, she'd carry a lasting scar that nothing could cure-a part of her, he feared, that never would grow up. Lately, too, he detected a troubling chill, a remoteness he didn't like in her, and he suspected a first twist around that deep scar: he might be the only one who could talk to her that knew what her growing up should be. So he didn't give up the battle.

  But no one took up an inordinate amount of Ardath's time. Her fans were hovering. It was time to get out of the w
ay.

  "I feel the urgent need for dessert. I'll leave now. Have a wonderful time, sis."

  "So d‚class‚." She kissed him on the cheek. The whole restaurant must notice. The old warmth was there, and his sister was there, not yet warped by the anger or the changes, and that pleased him. "Why don't you just get a tap like every other reasonable person in the universe? Your department won't know. They can't rule your whole life."

  "Government rules, government restrictions. A third time, government restrictions, and, trust me, they would know, darling sister. I know I'm not convenient. But my job's how I afford to go into these trendy places to see my dear sister. And you always manage to know when I'm looking for you. So somber today. You so clearly dressed to match me."

  No one else would dare that impertinence. Her lips parted a second time in shock, her eyes flashed. And being his sister, she laughed aloud and hit him on the arm. "Silly Procyon. Go entertain yourself." Her skinlights curled closer and closer to her features, well controlled, now-over lips, tip of nose. Eyes lingered last, changing subtly from dull native green to pale, gas-fire azure. "Be good."

  "I'm always good," he said solemnly. "Virtuous is another matter."

  He left half his glass. He walked out among the reflective columns, out toward the street, the cynosure of every eye in the Plane. He was an encounter he was sure Ardath would have to live down tonight, oh, at least for two minutes; but she had the personal force to do it with complete aplomb: it was why he dared needle her.

  Not exactly what Brazis liked, his skirting through the kind of attention that surrounded his sister, but on the PO staff's advice, he wore that public notice like a mantle, just another camouflage. No one high in government service sought public attention-so perhaps it made him less suspect. He walked out into the normal neon light of Grozny and down the street, momentarily enveloped in a string of dancers that melted past him, then stepping around a band of preteens clustered around a bench, kids likely not going home tonight and maybe not going home for the next number of nights-until the police rounded them up, asked them where they did belong, and billed the parents.

  Most teens out at this hour were simple sessions-dodgers or young half-day factory workers on off shift, plus the more or less honest daylighters, who studied their hours or worked their hours and then played as hard as their finance let them, no one at home caring. They weren't generally a problem, but you didn't lay a credit card down on a counter and turn your head when that sort was about.

  A few Freethinkers congregated at the corner-you could tell the type by the grimy, threadbare casuals, their own statement of style, their contempt of money. He didn't know the faces: those had all seemed to change in the years since his sojourn there. but then, he'd been transitory in that group. He'd attended only two meetings, long enough for disillusionment to set in; he'd quit them in three months, seeing nothing that interested him there.

  And he'd made a full confession of his former associations in his government resume, so he wasn't open to blackmail. Brazis reportedly didn't take his admission for a problem. Intellectual flirtation, he'd called it, in his interview. The rest who'd shared those grimy rooms at Michaelangelo's claimed they wanted to change the universe, but they spent their meetings nitpicking their own election rules and taking up collections for legal fees for extremist idiots. Mostly they sat around swilling cheap beer, complaining that everything the government touched was corrupt, and proposing no societal fix that could survive their own personal habits.

  Well, so now he was working for the corrupt government himself, well, working inside it, on a critical job, and he had a very different view of how much actually did get done by officialdom, hour by hour, day by day, to keep the station running, never mind the corruption that threaded its way through human affairs in every endeavor-including Freethinker elections.

  Maybe Freethinkers were leaven in the societal loaf, and shoved public opinion into progressing a healthy few degrees a century, in a society otherwise far out of time with the rest of the speeding cosmos, but otherwise they had no power, and Chairman Brazis just did as he did, and moved society in his own, far more powerful way. A former Freethinker strongly suspected Brazis had his own shadowy spots; but Brazis made the Project work, and did his job, and was, meanwhile, fair to his staff. A former Freethinker held a niggling suspicion that purity of life and purpose was the most suspicious thing in a public official. A former Freethinker began to think that the real world had far more layers than he'd once thought.

  Well, but he was growing layers, himself. Secrets. Things he didn't admit. Ardath grew more and more apart from him. He worried about her, but as yet thought of nothing he could do but live within her reach, and wait, and keep to his own venues except on rare occasions of purpose. Like the parental anniversary.

  La Lune Noir wasn't on his sister's list. Too near Blunt for high fashion, but sitting on Grozny, purveying its fancy food at a modest price that didn't upset his old Freethinker sense of economy. It had that kind of clientele, not quite in the Style, rubbing elbows with the fringe of the Trend.

  And it had that beautiful showcase of desserts, right in the window.

  He walked in and, being as he was a regular, his regular waitress nabbed him and showed him right to his table, his preferred place near the vid screen. "The usual?"

  "Everything."

  He loved not having to think much on his off shift. He liked La Lune for leaving their patrons music-free and vibration-free, to bring in their private choices on their taps, or not.

  It meant the place was hushed, except the noise of adjacent conversations, the clink of glasses, and the occasional crash of a dish.

  "Damn!" from the kitchen. He laughed.

  That was La Lune.

  A trio came in during his supper, danced on the transparent floor, to music the lot of them shared, and he recognized in that set three of his old Freethinker friends, who'd likewise left the den and prospered obscenely, by Freethinker standards. Marcus Liebermann was a medtech and Danny Casper was a paralegal. And Angie Wu, who'd recently married Danny, had become that archenemy of Freethinkers and terror of every marginal shop on the street-a customs cop.

  They waved at him, he waved at them-he exchanged a few words with Danny and Angie and Mark when the music changed and they left the dance floor-how are you doing? Seeing anybody? New job? And from him to Angie and Danny: Congratulations on the wedding.

  Seen any others of the old gang? however, was anathema as a question. He'd kept his distance from these three, and didn't socialize. They didn't have that much in common anymore, didn't occupy the same stratum of society.

  Polishing more than a handful of social contacts cost more energy than he had these days, and he was glad that his three old acquaintances didn't propose to join him in a dinner well under way. He enjoyed the last of his entr‚e, drank a second glass of wine, shut his eyes in the general noise of quiet conversations around him, and let the tension flow out through his fingers and toes. He was trying not to think more deeply about Ardath.

  He remained concerned about the changes in her, however, which seemed too many, too fast. He worried about the day she'd age, and how she'd take it, and where she'd go, when his own career was a very healthy, government-funded, extended lifetime-so long as he didn't personally piss off Brazis or commit one of the hundred and one fatal rule infractions.

  Not hard rules. No theft. No drugs. No illicits. No criminal associations. No dinner with three old friends over there-not because they weren't probably completely respectable, these days, but because if he did, they'd have government investigators raking over their pasts, maybe to their detriment.

  All his friends had to pass muster. And intimate relationships outside the department just couldn't happen.

  That was the killer. You could work out arrangements for a personal life in government service: a prospective mate could be sucked into the offices, given some adequate job, and earn an equivalent security clearance, but you'd bet
ter be damned sure, thoughtful, and permanent about your choice. Divorce that mate, and you might both be reassigned somewhere less nice within those office walls. The PO didn't like attachments or tag ends that hung out into the ordinary world. especially tag ends that hung out down in the Trend.

  And if a tap should get fired from his job, worse thought, he got to spend the rest of his life wondering how the world down there was getting along, what that sandy plateau was becoming, how the people he'd come to know almost as family were doing in their day-to-day lives-and no one in the Project would ever give him those answers. Lose his security classification over some infatuation? Even a passionate attraction? It was like a musician agreeing to be cut off from music if he fell in love inconveniently-or ever changed his affections. It was a painter agreeing to go blind if he fell in love. It was the one cruel downside of his extravagant lifestyle, and it had happened more than once in the long, long history of the department. A significant number who'd fallen afoul of the infamous Rule 12, the personal relationships rule, and gotten into some insolvable personal entanglement, had subsequently gotten in trouble with the Project's secret police, or spiraled down with drugs, with drink, with a series of unsuccessful relationships inside the Project, spreading disaster around them as they went. Or they just ended up discreetly killing themselves.