by Ian McDonald
14
On the night of Friday 21st Augtember, at twenty minutes of twenty, the Babooshka leaped up in the middle of one of their interminable word games just as Grandfather Haran was about to put “zoomorph” down on a triple word and exclaimed, “Is time! Is time! My baby, oh, my baby!” And she rushed into the room where the placentory had pulsed and pumped and swelled day by day, hour by hour, for two hundred and eighty days, 7520 hours, into a great bulb of blue-red flesh.
“What is it, flower of my heart?” cried Grandfather Haran. “What is the matter?” Receiving no reply, he hurried into the room and found his wife standing with her hands to her mouth, staring at the placentory. The artificial womb was shuddering and contracting and a foul, fetid stench filled the room.
“Is time!” gabbled the Babooshka. “My baby is come! Our Baby! Oh, Haran! Husband.”
Grandfather Haran sniffed the foul air. A trickle of black fluid squeezed out of the placentory and stained the nutrient liquid. A sense of great evil clutched at his heart.
“Out,” he commanded the Babooshka.
“But Haran… our child! I, a mother, must be with my child.” She reached for the fleshy obscenity on the window-ledge.
“Out! I, your husband, command it!” Grandfather Haran seized his wife by the shoulders, turned her around, and thrust her out of the door, which he bolted behind him. Hideous beichings were now erupting from the spasming placentory. Grandfather Haran approached with trepidation. He tapped the jar. The placentory emitted a keening whine as if gas were streaming out under high pressure. Bubbles boiled to the surface of the Belden jar and burst, emitting a suffocating stench. Grandfather Haran covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief and prodded the womb with a pencil. The placentory con vulsed and, with a tearing, belching sound, spewed vile grey slime into the air. It spat a torrent of foul black fluid interspersed with stifling farts, then ripped down the middle and died. Holding his breath lest he vomit, Grandfather Haran poked about the decomposing remains with his pencil. There was no sign of there ever having been a child within. He did find some rotting black segments of what looked like mango skin. Satisfied that there was no child, alive or dead, he left the room and locked it behind him.
“A terrible, blasphemous thing has happened here tonight,” he told his wife. “As long as I live, no one will ever enter that room again.” He strode to the front door and threw the key as far into the night as he could.
“My child, Haran, my child, is she alive, is she dead?” The Babooshka swallowed. “Is she… human?”
“There never was a child,” said Grandfather Haran, looking straight ahead of him. “Heart of Lothian has deceived us. The womb was empty. Quite empty.” There and then he broke the vow his wife had made for him and went down to Tatterdemalion’s B.A.R to drink himself stupid.
At the precise moment the Babooshka leaped up and abandoned her game, Genevieve Tenebrae felt a tearing pain wrench at her. She let out a tiny, sobbing moan and knew that the time had come.
“Dearest, is there anything wrong?” said Gaston Tenebrae from his chair by the fire, where he sat of an evening smoking his hookah pipe and dreaming of sweet adultery.
Another contraction wrenched Genevieve Tenebrae.
“The child,” she whispered, “It’s coming.”
“Child,” said Gaston Tenebrae, “What child?”
Genevieve Tenebrae smiled through the pain. She had purposefully kept the pregnancy secret for nine months in anticipation of this delicious moment.
“Your child,” she whispered. “Your child, you vain idiot.”
“What?” roared Gaston Tenebrae, a thousand kilometres away, tall and futile as a wet reed.
“You slipped up, husband. Your child… you’ve denied me… and denied me, and kept… me… waiting, so I kept you waiting and now… the waiting’s done.” She gasped as a new pain gripped her. Gaston Tenebrae fluttered and flustered like a tiny, pathetic bird in a grenhouse. “Get me to Quinsana… Marya Quinsana.”
She collected her remaining dignity and walked to the door. There the fiercest set of contractions yet racked her.
“Help me, you good-for-nothing pig,” she moaned, and Gaston Tenebrae came and helped her through the cold dark night to Quinsana’s Dental and Veterinary Surgery.
Seeing it loom out of post-anaesthetic torpor, Marya Quinsana’s face looked rather like a llama’s, thought Genevieve Tenebrae. This plangent thought circled in the superconducting circuit of her mind until the gift-wrapped bundle of baby was placed in her arms and she remembered everything.
“Not that much harder than delivering a goat,” said Marya Quinsana, smiling all over her llama face. “But I thought it best to knock you right out anyway.”
“Gaston, where is Gaston?” asked Genevieve Tenebrae. Her husband’s goateed face bent close to hers.
It said to her in a confidential whisper, “I’ll speak to you when we’re alone.”
Genevieve Tenebrae smiled distantly, her husband of no more importance than an irritating fly. What mattered was the child in her arms, her child; had she not borne it herself, carried it within her for nine months, made it a part of her for almost half a year?
“Arnie Nicolodea,” she whispered. “Little Arnie.”
When the news of the surprise birth of the third natural citizen of Desolation Road broke in the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel, Persis Tatterdemalion declared drinks all round and there was toasting and merrymaking by all save Grandfather Haran, who came to realize as the night passed into morning exactly what had been done to him. He also came to realize that he could never prove anything.
“Isn’t it strange,” commented Rajandra Das, made loquacious by maize beer and wine from the hotel fermentory, “that the couple who wanted the baby didn’t get one and the couple who didn’t did?” Everyone thought that a pithy summarization.
15
Rajandra Das had once lived in a hole under Meridian Main station. He still lived in a hole: in the Great Desert. Rajandra Das had once been prince of gutterboys, tramps, beggars, freebooters, goondahs and bums. He still was prince of gutterboys, tramps, beggars, freebooters, goondahs and bums. There was no one to compete with him for the honour. Too lazy to farm, he lived by his wits and the charity of his neighbours, charming their broken cultivators and faulty sun-tracker units to renewed vigour, aiding Ed Gallacelli in the construction of mechanical devices of little practical value save the utilization of too much time. Once he had fixed a Bethlehem Ares Railroads Locomotive: a Class 19, he remembered; it had limped into Desolation Road with a badly tuned tokamak. It had felt like the old days again. In a fit of nostalgia he had almost asked the engineers for a ride: to Wisdom, shining dream of his heart.
Then he thought of the guard who had thrown him off the train and the hardships, hard kicks, and work, hard work he would encounter on such a journey. Desolation Road was quiet, Desolation Road was isolated, but Desolation Road was comfortable and the fruit could be picked fresh from the tree. He would stay awhile yet.
Upon the winter solstice, when the sun stood low upon the horizon and the red dust glistened with frost, Adam Black returned to Desolation Road. His coming was as welcome as spring to the winter-weary farming folk.
“Roll up, roll up,” he bawled. “Adam Black’s Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza once again” (and here he banged his gold-topped cane on a small block for emphasis) “presents to you the wonders of the four quarters of the world in an all new” (bang bang) “show! Featuring for your delectation and delight ladies” (bang) “gentlemen” (bang) “boys” (bang) “and girls, a never-before-seen novelty, an Angel from the Realms of Glory! Cap tured from the Heavenly Circus, a real, bona fide, hundred percent cardcarrying gilt-edged angel!” (bang bang) “Yes, roll up, roll up, good citizens, only fifty centavos for five minutes with this wonder of the Age; fifty centavos, good people, can you really afford not to witness this unique phenomenon?” (bang bang) “If you would be so kind as to form an ord
erly line, thank you… no pushing please, there’s time enough for everyone.”
Rajandra Das had come late to the show. He had been comfortably asleep by his fire when the Chautauqua train drew up and as a consequence had to stand in the cold for over an hour before his turn came.
“Just the one?” asked Adam Black.
“Don’t see anyone else.”
“Fifty centavos then.”
“Ain’t got fifty centavos. You take two honeycombs?”
“Two honeycombs are fine. Five minutes.”
It was warm in the coach. Black drapes covered the windows and whispered as the hot air from the ventilators stirred them. In the centre of the car stood a large and heavy steel cage, most solid, without doors or locks. Sitting on a trapeze suspended from the roof of the cage was a melancholy creature Rajandra Das was meant to believe was an angel, though it was no angel he had ever been taught about as a child on the pious knee of his dear and departed mother.
Its face and torso were those of an extraordinarily beautiful young man. Its arms and legs were made out of riveted metal. At shoulder and hip, flesh blended into metal. There were no distinct boundaries between skin and steel. Rajandra Das could see that this was no mere fusion of human with prosthetic. This was something distinctly other.
A glowing blue aura outlined the angel and provided the only illumination in the black, warm carriage.
Rajandra Das did not know how long he stood and stared before the angel extended its mechanical legs into long stilts and stepped down from its trapeze. It telescoped to human height and pressed its face close to the bars, eye-to-eye with the staring Rajandra Das.
“If you’ve got only five minutes, I suggest you ask me something.” the angel said in a thrilling contralto voice.
The staring spell was broken.
“Hoee!” said Rajandra Das. “Just what sort of thing are you?”
“That’s usually the first question,” said the tin-pot angel with the weariness of long-established routine. “I’m an angel, a seraph of the Fifth Order of the Heavenly Host, hand-servant of the Blessed Lady of Tharsis. Now, would you like me to petition Our Lady on behalf of yourself or others, or take a message to a departed beloved beyond the veil of death? That’s usually the second question.”
“Well, it ain’t mine,” said Rajandra Das. “Any fool can see you’re not taking any message anywhere, not while you’re in that cage performing for Mr. Adam Black. No, what I want to know is what the hell kind of angel you are, sir, ’cause I was always taught angels were like ladies with long hair and pretty wings and glowing shifts and all that.”
The angel pouted in petty offence.
“No damn dignity these days. Anyway, that’s the third question most mortals ask. I expected better of you after you missed out question two.”
“Well, how’s about answering question three, then?”
The angel sighed.
“Behold mortal.”
Out of its back unfolded two sets of collapsible helicopter vanes. The cage was too small to permit the rotors to open fully and the drooping blades made the angel seem even more pathetic and futile.
“Wings. And as for the gender question.” The angel’s halo flickered. Peculiar swellings rose and moved under its fleshly parts. Its features melted and ran like rainwater off a roof. The subcutaneous moundings converged, solidified, and formed a new terrain of features. Rajandra Das let out a low whistle of appreciation.
“Nice teats. So you’re either.”
“Or neither,” said the angel, and repeated the facial thaw trick, melting into an extraordinarily beautiful young person of indeterminate gender. Now worthy of the pronoun, it tucked its rotor blades into its back and smiled a disconsolate smile. Rajandra Das felt a needle of sympathy prick his heart. He knew how it felt to be in a place he had not chosen to be. He knew how it felt to be pissed on by life.
“Anything else, mortal?” asked the angel wearily.
“Hey hey hey man, not so touchy. I’m on your side, honest. Tell me, how come you can’t bust out of this cage with one flick of your pinky finger? I was taught angels were pretty powerful things.”
The angel leaned confidentially against the bars of its cage.
“I’m only an angel, Fifth Rank of the Heavenly Host, not one of the big shots like PHARIOSTER or TELEMEGON; they’re the most recent models; First Orders, Archangelsks; they can do just about damn anything, but we angels, we were the first, we were the Blessed Lady’s prototypes and she improved the design with each succeeding model: Avatas, Lorarchs, Cheraphs, Archangelsks.”
“Hold on, hold on, you saying you were made?”
“We all get made, mortal, one way or another. My point is, we angels are designed to run on solar power, that’s why Adam Black keeps this cage in darkness, otherwise I might be able to charge up enough sunpower to sunder these bars. Though,” the angel added dolefully, “we angels are primarily designed for flight, not fight; most of my strength is channelled through my rotors.”
“So what if I opened all the curtains?”
“Adam Black comes and closes them again. Thanks for the thought, mortal, but it would take about three weeks of constant sunshine for me to regain my full angelic might.”
Adam Black put his head round the door and said, “Time’s up. Come on out.” He looked sternly at the angel. “You been keeping them talking again? I’ve told you to keep it short.”
“Hey hey hey, what’s the rush?” protested Rajandra Das. “There’s no one after me and we were just getting to an interesting stage in the conversation. One minute more, all right?”
“Oh, okay.” Adam Black withdrew to count his takings: six dollars fifty centavos, a chicken, three bottles of peapod wine, and two honeycombs.
“All right, tell me more, man,” said Rajandra Das. “Like how you came to be in this here cage in the first place.”
“Simple carelessness. There I was in the Great Company of the Blessed Lady, parading over some ten centavo High Plains town called Frenchmanwe do that from time to time, make like a big circus parade, keeps mortals mindful of higher things, like who made the world, and anyway, the Blessed Lady’s got this new policy of direct intervention with organic beings. Well, it was a pretty big show and what with the Great Powers and Dominions and the Spiritual Menagerie and the Big Blue Plymouth and the Rider on the Many-Headed Beast and all that, it took the best part of a day for it to pass over. I was in the final wave and what with all that waiting around I was getting pretty bored, and bored angels get careless. Next thing I knew, I’d flown smack into the high-voltage section of the Frenchman microwave link. Stunned me. Clear blew my fuses. Kayoed. Mortals cut me down and stuck me in this cage in a cellar and fed me cornpone and beer. Any idea what it’s like to be an alcoholic angel? I kept telling them I was solar powered, but they couldn’t take it in. Mortals were wondering what they could do with an angel from the Heavenly Host, when along came Adam Black and bought me and my cage for fifteen golden dollars.”
“Well, what about trying to escape?” suggested Rajandra Das, thinking evil thoughts.
“No lock. We are good with machinery, I’ll say that for us, any lock on that cage I could pick, but that Adam Black knows his hagiography, for when I had regained my strength and grown new circuits, he had this door all welded up.”
“That’s bad,” said Rajandra Das, remembering holes under Meridian Main Station. “No one should ever be in a cage because of a mistake.”
The angel shrugged eloquently. Adam Black put his head around the door again.
“Okay. Time’s up, and I mean time’s up. Out. I’m closing up for the night.”
“Help me,” the angel whispered desperately, gripping the finger-thick steel bars. “You can get me out, I know it; I can read it in your heart.”
“That’s probably just question five,” said Rajandra Das, and he turned to leave the darkened, carriage. But out of his pocket he slipped his Defence Forces multiblade knife, stolen from Krishnamu
rthi’s Speciality Hardware, and palmed it to the angel.
“Hide that,” he whispered without moving his lips. “And when you get out, promise me you’ll do two things. First is don’t come back. Ever. Second is remember me to the Blessed Lady when you see her, because she made me kind to machines and machines kind to me.” The palm turned into a wave of farewell. Adam Black was waiting to lock the doors.
“Some sideshow you got there,” Rajandra Das commented. “Tell you this, going to be a hard act to follow. What you got lined up for us next? St. Catherine in a cage, eh?” He winked at the showman. Already he thought he could hear the rasping of metal on metal.
16
The morning ROTECH came it entered the world as a dull drone in the dreams of the people and crept out of them as a heavy throbbing. It woke everyone from their sleep and it was then that they realized that they were not sharing the same communal nightmare, that the noise was a real objective phenomenon, so real and objective that it made every loose item in the house rattle and sent plates from their shelves to smash on the floor.
“What is it, what is it?” the people asked each other, throwing on their day clothes, throwing off nightmare superstitions of Apocalypse, Armageddon, nuclear destruction, interplanetary war or the sky falling upon their heads. The throbbing grew until it even filled the spaces inside their skulls. It shook the rocks beneath their feet, it shook the bones beneath the skin, it shook heaven and earth, it shook the people up the stairs and out of their front doors to see what was happening.
Above Desolation Road hung a thousand silver saucers, so shiny-bright in the dawn sun that they blinded the eye: a thousand silver sky-craft shaking earth and heaven with the pounding of their engines. Each was a full fifty metres across, each bore the holy name of ROTECH in conjunction with a serial number and the subscript, in bold black: <