When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  As we rose up to the twenty-fifth storey of the office block I began to feel dizzy and it wasn’t just from the overpowering perfume from the flunky’s black and silver wings. Yesterday I’d had to cope with the vertigo of Chesshyre’s building site. What horrors awaited me in his church? I had my doubts whether I really would be able to cope with SkyNation.

  The flunky led me to the eastern wall of the office block, out a door, and onto a transparent bridge from the office block to the church, which we entered through a side door. Here we stopped.

  We were standing on a small platform inside a cave of cobalt ice. The flunky stepped back and locked the door behind us.

  Shafts of light fell from above into the darker depths below. Running out from our little platform was a walkway suspended over the void. Near the back of the church, upon a square white pillar, flickered a fire. Behind this a large VaporView silently poured a fall of fog into shadows below; a serene face framed by six wings of fire glowed in the fog. A seraph. Was this their altar? If so, it seemed that this church set out to show that its members revered the elements of fire and air, or perhaps that they had mastered them.

  Through the clear facet of the roof above, I could see sky. The front and back of the church were also transparent. A walkway ran from our platform and joined the central aisle of the church—what I’d normally call the nave though there was no transept—and the flunky now led me this way towards the fire altar. The suspended walkways were just wide enough to spare me the worst of my vertigo but they lacked railings.

  Chesshyre’s building was even more beautiful inside, with the sky falling into it, but someone had muddled the blue space. We passed winged figures in alcoves lining the walls: angels; a green glass Garuda; Hermes, the messenger god with his winged feet and winged helmet; a Nike; a boy who must be Eros. A gold disc of sun near the fire altar sported wings, making the sun look like nothing so much as a flying coin, which seemed only too fitting. Sad though; the church would have been ravishing if it had been left empty.

  As we neared the fire altar, the flunky veered to the left and we entered a doorway leading to a series of offices behind the main body of the church. We stopped in front of a door bearing a gold-lettered sign: Office of the Archangel. Archangel? I curled my lip. Hadn’t these guys had a decent education? They must know archangels ranked low in the medieval hierarchy of angels, with the seraphim themselves making up the highest rank.

  When I entered his office, David Brilliant, Archangel and MP, was standing at his window, looking towards Parliament House, his back to me, his wings sweeping to the floor. He was talking loudly to a group of advisers, as if making a speech. The flunky hesitated in the doorway, then beckoned me into the room where we went to stand with the advisers, all winged. I could already guess my job application would not be looked on favourably as I was not one of the elect. There was one other non-flier in the room, a tall, pale man with a high shiny forehead who’d folded his long limbs into the armchair at one side of Brilliant’s desk. Must be eccentric; who let himself go bald anymore?

  Brilliant kept talking without turning around and I was grateful for the chance to take in the strange scene. Brilliant’s wings were the gaudiest I’d yet seen, horizontally striped in bars of red, green, blue and gold. His office was decorated in a similarly garish style, every wall covered with paintings of men and women with wings. Reproductions of Giotto and Fra Angelico paintings of annunciating angels crowded uncomfortably next to a gloomy Romantic painting of a dying Icarus. This man must be the culprit, responsible for cluttering Peter’s pure design with a jumble of kitsch. Did Peter hate him for it? Now he was refusing to work for Flores, whoever he was. Maybe Peter was growing wary of clients he couldn’t control.

  Brilliant’s flow of speech did not lessen and I focused on what he was saying.

  ‘Mankind has images of angels over six thousand years old. We have images of angels, winged gods and goddesses and winged bird-humans from every culture and time. Ancient Egypt, ancient Africa, South America, wherever you look. These beings are always links between heaven and earth. The Church of the Seraphim believes that humans are meant to attain our true, winged form to embody, like the rainbow, this bridge between heaven and earth, between God and Man.’ Here Brilliant paused and drew in a deep breath, resuming in a more hectoring tone.

  ‘What we believe is that angels will exist, that our race has always known its destiny, that it is our sacred and solemn task to become angels, that this is why we have never been satisfied, why we’ve always striven to go beyond, to surpass every achievement, one after another, until we stand on the brink, this brink, of oneness with the heavens, to unite heaven and earth. Yes, unite! We are so close!’

  Brilliant dropped his voice. ‘The veil between the worlds shimmers,’ he whispered. In spite of myself I leaned forward, as did his advisers. Even the pale man sat up, fanning out his remarkably long fingers, then twisting them into a whitish knot, and stared at Brilliant.

  I suppressed an impish urge to interrupt, to ask whether Zefiryn was the church’s version of the holy sacrament.

  ‘We have only to put out our hand,’ continued Brilliant, almost breathless, drunk on his own rhetoric. ‘When we truly achieve this, we will discover a new world, a new dispensation. New revelations will be granted us. We will walk, nay, we will fly, into a realm of gold.’

  Brilliant paused. Scattered applause from the advisers. Was he rehearsing a sermon for the church or a speech for the parliament?

  An adviser piped up, ‘But won’t people—I mean non-fliers—won’t they say we’re leaving them behind?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Brilliant. ‘Glad you mentioned that.’ He turned around and I saw that he was a beefy red-faced man with slicked-back dark hair, his vivid wings contrasting with his sober white shirt and dark suit trousers. Brilliant looked like a corpulent middle-aged executive who’d been plucked from a board meeting, briefcase and all, and been given these gaily striped wings. I saw I had to revise my belief that all fliers must be lithe.

  Brilliant continued in his high-flown style, as if thousands were listening. ‘In religions based on the revealed word of God, God and humans are separated, with angels bridging the divide. Angels reveal the divine word and carry out God’s will. This can include showering people with grace, marks of special favour and even salvation. Who’s to say we can’t help non-fliers?’ The pale man winced and hunched over, his shoulders stooped. Something in Brilliant’s words had offended him.

  Brilliant paused and his face hardened. His voice rumbled. ‘But we can only do this if we are allowed to pursue our true path. We cannot be dragged down by those who are not chosen. Religions have argued about the true nature of angels; were they purely spiritual entities, did they have material bodies or were they spiritual bodies who could assume physical form? We will answer that question. We will assume the perfection of angel form and then we will achieve the spiritual perfection. We must tread the path of glory laid out for us.’

  Brilliant had walked over to his heavy wooden desk but he did not sit down. The advisers moved across the office towards the door in a rustle of feathers and papers, some already speaking into their slicks as they moved.

  ‘There’s more,’ said Brilliant to the woman who had questioned him. ‘I haven’t finished writing it yet. I need to say something about how, far from leaving non-fliers behind, we need their help to do our work. It is not enough that the rest of humanity does not hold us back from our mission, in fact it must help us or we cannot succeed.’ Brilliant looked over to the pale man sitting in the armchair, who nodded slowly. ‘Which is why we are blessed to work with good friends such as yourself.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the pale man. ‘We’ll talk more about the right way to explain that. To the literal-minded it seems strange we could have common interests.’ He broke off, wheezing, exhausted by his few words. Brilliant stared at him, his look of co
ncern shading into disapproval. The pale man unfolded himself from the chair and at his full height was one of the oddest-looking men I’d ever seen, elongated like a stork in human form but with his chest puffed out like a pigeon.

  The advisers, except for the woman who’d questioned Brilliant, left the office, followed by Storkman.

  Brilliant was still talking to his adviser. ‘The human project is over,’ he said. He must have liked that phrase, for he repeated it: ‘The human project is over. The post-human project, the supra-human project, is now underway.’ I could see why he’d waited for Storkman to leave the room before he tried out that little slogan.

  Brilliant sat down heavily behind his desk, waving me to the chair in front of him, and took the slick proffered by the flunky, who then left with the adviser. Brilliant and I were now alone. He made a show of examining the slick. I looked to my right out the window. The park between the church and Parliament House was lush, shaded by figs and banyan trees.

  Brilliant looked up. ‘An impressive résumé.’ I’d only glanced at what Sunil had concocted but apparently I had policy experience in bioengineering. If Brilliant probed me I’d sound like a fool but I suspected Brilliant was the sort of man who did the talking. I was not proved wrong.

  ‘We need someone who can truly understand the issues facing the Seraphim,’ Brilliant began. I’d expected him to say something like this. This was code for preferring to hire someone with wings. ‘However, someone . . . like you could also be useful, in liaising with other independent parties, for example.’ Brilliant waved a hand at the closed door to the corridor. ‘You saw our friend there. He’d be more comfortable working with someone like you.’ The human project is over. Yes, I should bloody well think he would be more comfortable working with someone like me.

  Brilliant propped his elbows on the desk, steepling his fingers. ‘The more I think about it, the more we probably need two people for this position. Someone such as yourself and, ah, someone naturally more in tune with the aims of the church. Just why would you be interested in working for us, Mr Fowler?’

  This question I had prepared for. I waffled on about wanting to work on the cutting edge of policy, a natural extension of my work in bioengineering. Inspiration struck and I confessed an interest in family policy: how did non-flier parents minister to the spiritual needs of flier children, as they were going where their parents could not follow, and so on and so forth. I laid it on a bit thick but Brilliant’s eyes widened. Oh Christ, he was actually impressed. How could Peter bear working with such a confused and, at least on current evidence, not very bright bunch?

  Brilliant’s slick rang with a clarion call of trumpets, a shimmer of harp strings. Could the man really be such a cliché? I looked at the paintings of baby angels around the room. He could. Or maybe Brilliant really was brilliant and this sentimental kitsch was part of his cover. Maybe he was a steely, calculating genius, manipulating his flock. Most likely he was both, sentiment and steeliness meshing perfectly.

  ‘What?’ Brilliant was saying. ‘You can’t be serious. Can’t you handle it?’ He looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry. Bear with me.’

  Ah, well done, Sunil, staging a diversion, just as we’d planned.

  Brilliant rose to his feet. Now he was agitated, walking around the room. ‘Well, if you’re sure it will only take a few minutes.’

  Brilliant put his slick away. ‘Hope you’ll forgive me,’ he said. ‘Something urgent has just come up. Perhaps we can reschedule?’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’d rather wait.’

  Brilliant looked flustered. ‘Oh, fine. Right. Look, I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’ll send Uri in to look after you.’

  ‘Please don’t bother on my account,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some catching up to do.’ I raised my slick. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Brilliant was putting on his jacket, which fastened around his wings. ‘Sorry. I’ll be as quick as I can.’ He trotted out the door.

  Don’t hurry back now. When he’d gone, I waited a minute, listening. I went to the door and looked out but saw no-one. It was clearer to me, after listening to Brilliant rehearse his sermon, why Brilliant had given himself the title of Archangel. He aimed to become a Seraph, his speech had implied, but would not yet claim to be so exalted.

  Now I needed to move quickly. I’d done this kind of thing many times but today I was strangely clumsy and slow. My hands were damp and I fumbled my slick, dropping it, swearing.

  Phew. What the hell was wrong with me? Getting into and out of situations like this was my job. Usually I was stone-cold steady but Luisa’s apparent murder, my lack of sleep, my fears for Peri and Hugo, my anxiety over Tom, were unnerving me.

  Finally, I recorded a few seconds of myself innocently reading. Then I plugged in and uploaded the images so that the view of me reading would be played on a loop to surveillance devices covering this room. I searched the room, wondering whether the church had security I didn’t know about. If I was caught, Sunil would cut me loose—Zeke who? Sorry, don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s the deal with black ops.

  My surveillance technology was good but Sunil’s was better and he’d given me a slick with more access codes than even I had. I slipped it into the larger screen on Brilliant’s desk and let it get on with downloading the files while I prowled around the room, picking up papers, briefs, speeches, copying as much stuff as I could.

  One of Brilliant’s minions put his head around the door as I was putting a speech back on Brilliant’s desk but he was speaking to someone else and by the time he glanced at me I was next to the window. The minion nodded at me and withdrew.

  My slick. Finally. Hikikomori boy surfacing. Good news/bad news. Story of my life these days. Encrypted file. Accompanying notes from Wilson: Little Angels file—accessed several layers, not all the way in. Enough 4U? More will cost. Typical small business, bit more secure than norm, not hardened target. BUT!!! What’s deal with Dr E???? Cracked government agencies with less security. Cerberus fortifications. Not dealing with that; hope whoever’s protecting him doesn’t track me down. Human intel only way.

  Thanks, hikikomori. Human intel. Yes, but how was I going to get into Flierville? No way in there without being tracked and recorded. I could break into almost anywhere in the City and leave no traces but Flierville would test my ingenuity.

  Brilliant reappeared, shaking his head. I was sitting in my chair, guilelessly reading a news update, having retrieved my image-loop a minute or so previously, upon Sunil’s signal that Brilliant was heading back to his office. I’d also been checking for the signal from Hugo’s tracking device but it hadn’t shown up. Not that I’d expected it to. Every time I thought of Peri and Hugo I felt a sick fall in my belly, the same feeling I’d had standing on the point of the prow in Cloud City and walking down the central aisle of the church over the cavern.

  We wrapped up the interview, with Brilliant promising to contact me in a few days. I left the church through a back exit onto the park facing the rear of Parliament House and walked away with the uncomfortable feeling that Brilliant might actually offer me work, which was not a scenario I’d planned for. I’d assumed I’d be unacceptable to the church and had quite looked forward to waxing indignant over my rejection and perhaps even threatening them with action in the anti-discrimination tribunal.

  On the train back to 80 Metre Road Station, I glanced at the Little Angels file and skimmed some of the stuff from Brilliant’s office but I was distracted. Peri and Hugo, and Luisa, hovered in my thoughts and were the cause of the churning in my guts. Thomas was on my mind just as constantly. If he became a flier I didn’t want him getting mixed up with that church; I didn’t want him to become convinced of his own superiority and destiny as a flier. Yet wasn’t I contradicting my own aims by feeling that way? Didn’t I want to raise Thomas above the crowd, literally, by transforming him into a flier? Li
ke my own parents sending me to St Ivo’s, I wanted to give him a better chance in life but didn’t want him to take on the attitudes of the class to which I was trying to give him life membership. Didn’t make sense. Change but remain the same. Be better than I am but don’t show it. One of those impossible injunctions parents force on their children.

  I was distracted too because I was pondering how much double-dealing I would risk with Sunil. Ordinarily on a job like this I’d be paid to work through the material I’d gathered and present it predigested in useful form. This time, though, Sunil had directed I was to hand everything over without looking at it. Usually I’d have been only too delighted to oblige. Not this time. This information would touch closely on many things I needed to know, in relation to not only Peri’s case but also my anxieties for Thomas. I was not used to betraying clients this way. Still, what Sunil didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I’d send him the material that night, sure he had no way of finding out I’d kept a copy of it for myself.

  At Ventura, I fed Frisk and settled down to read the material Wilson had sent me from Little Angels. Much of it was different versions of the catalogue I’d already seen. Inquiries from families. Were there other girls like Peri, girls who’d done more than just look after baby? If so, there were no obvious requests for wet nurses. Everything seemed above board. No mention of girls wanting wings. There was the information on Peri that I already had from Chesshyre plus a few other messages, including one from the Church of the Seraphim recommending her to Harper. How had she known anyone there? No mention of wet-nursing or surrogate motherhood for her, though. Not surprising; stuff like that wouldn’t be written down.