Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  Took an escalator to third tier lobby two. Sat with the coffee drinkers and their timeismoney expressions. Examined them casually sherlocking as hobby, and fell into her perpetual muse about how unfortunate sherlocking was a blind jape. Cannot riddle from ambiguous evidence; no detective can avoid the blunder of two or three way outcomes of deduction. Deduction and detection could not be cars on a slaveway; they must freely turn. Still, sherlocking was an amusement and sometimes its results were intriguing. Here for example: a young man on the clear turbo to a needle’s point federal/state job, dressed as second generation therapied (or natural) might dress in the younger crowds, face bland but not without character. Mary Choy guessed him a conscientious but not inspired bed partner; he had three fingernails on his right hand red and gold lacquered with marriage inquiries from large families. Only in the high federal ranks did such manners dance the norm, families clans gens statting their position in the nomenklatura made largely ceremonial by President Davis before Raphkind. Such positions did not breed high physical passions; they did breed manners, and among the therapied manners rarely hid aberrations. Nice young man in a pleasant deadend existence prime candidate for eloi upon middle age. A pretty parasite.

  Coming in to the waiting area, somebody more vital: a female transform wearing styles to hide her orbital adaptations, an exotic in the combs. All eyes drawn. The exotic saw Mary Choy and acknowledged kinship with a smile. Came to sit.

  “May I?”

  Mary inclined. The orbital transform bent with strained grace; her muscles now tuned to the bonds of Earth. She obviously shuttled often and was proud possessor of two zone body chemistry; such a transform was too expensive for private payment and must have been federal or firm/house funded. The nice young man decided this orbital transform was too much even for fantasy and ignored her. Others less meshed in the hierarchy admired her openly. Mary was pleased when she sat beside her.

  “Pardon my awkwardness,” the orbital said. “I’m still adjusting. Bichemical.”

  “So I specked.”

  “I’ve only been landed eight hours. You’re pd, aren’t you?”

  Mary inclined again. No sherlocking necessary; the uniforms were commonly known and varied little from city to city.

  “And you,” she said, “are from the Greenbelt?”

  The orbital transform smiled. “How keen,” she said. “Who did you?”

  “Dr. Sumpler.”

  “His group did me too. I must visit him while down. Are you pleased?”

  She considered describing the melanin depletion but since the news would have little practical value to a bichemical, simply gave the polite “Yes. Very.”

  The orbital transform saw signs of Mary’s impending departure for appointment—her glance at the glowing flasher on the wall, her own symbol coming soon—and offered her a card. “I’m down for a week. Much work. I’d enjoy company. We can reminisce through old style catalogs.”

  Mary laughed, took the card, offered her own. “That would be fun.”

  “Everything’s on the card.” The name on the card: Sandra Auchouch. “Pronounced Awshuck.”

  “Of course. Pleasure to meet you.”

  The orbital transform inclined and they touched fingertips. No carnal thoughts here; the transform by dress and manner was straight as no orbit could be; Mary rarely crossed. But among professionals in going jobs friendship might be a chance thing and chances had to be advantaged.

  R Ellenshaw prospered at his high desk; no sherlocking to see this. The metro-federal interface supervisor had the look of the oft therapied a man with guts stamina and manifold problems that he had spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to smooth.

  Mary would not have entered his office with a different attitude had he been whiz natural; he was higherup and she came to him with a problem she would not have wanted had the roles been reversed. Mary Choy respected leadership and valued overhead flak armor.

  “M Choy. Welcome to Valhalla.” Ellenshaw stood before his desk memo and slate in hand, not happy. “You’ve tumbled into a shink wasp’s nest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please sit.” He looked her over sharply without a flicker of judgment or even male interest. Mary’s respect for him went up a notch. Professional ice was tough to grow and maintain minus berging out and Ellenshaw did not look a berg; too therapied and self knowing for that. “I have some questions and then your instructions.”

  She sat, crossing long legs, black workpants hissing faintly.

  “You are convinced personally that this Emanuel Goldsmith is the murderer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ve checked out this letter. It is indeed from Colonel Sir John Yardley.” The ice was transparent enough for Mary to see Ellenshaw’s political stripe; like most west coast pd he had detested Raphkind and the tumescence of the Dirty East. Old politics old dirt. “Do you have any idea where Emanuel Goldsmith is now?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He’s gone underground?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Hispaniola?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But would Yardley have taken him in?”

  Mary didn’t hazard.

  “You know this will become a federal football. The possibility that Goldsmith has gone to Hispaniola makes the halls echo, M Choy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s no chance the federals can bury this. Too many gold and platinum names, too much high blood. So they’ve handed the football to us. Jurisdiction primary. To keep your grip on the football, you have to be fresh snow, M Choy. Are you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve checked your record and I agree. I envy naturals, M Choy. I envy your record.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ve had to spend a fortune on therapy to untangle and smooth out. It’s been worth it, but…So.” That had been a calculated ice thinning and it had worked; he had revealed enough about himself to make Mary feel she was in his confidence, that he had confidence in her.

  “I believe you call it flak armor now, M Choy. Protection from this level so you can concentrate on your work. The armor is thin this case. You are not completely on your own and you are working a spike fence. We likely cannot catch you if you fall. Not in time. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The word here is, west coast federals hate the Yardley connection as much as I do. It’s old, it’s Raphkind, it smells. East coast federal is still ambiguous and likely will be for years while the grand juries and courts grind slow. But maybe not. Yardley keeps pushing his imports…We keep blocking them. Spike fence.

  “I give you permission to sniff all local trails and if they’re still cold after two days, you have clearance for an official visit to Hispaniola. Assistants if you need them, as many as five.”

  “I’ll need two Hispaniolan experts,” Mary said.

  “My office will find them and pass their names and currvitas on to Supervising Inspector D Reeve, unless you have people in mind already…”

  She did not. “Do I have your permission to query Citizen Oversight?”

  Ellenshaw averted for a moment, frowning. “We can only make so many Oversight queries. But if any case merits, this one does. You have permission to go to Oversight.”

  “Thank you.” She inclined.

  “Details are on your orders. We’ll work with federal to get Hispaniola to cooperate with you. Call me anytime. Don’t be isolated. You might be our flak armor on this one.” He smiled cleanly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  She left Ellenshaw’s office knowing this was the case of her career and pd was giving her extraordinary support; also knowing federal had deemed her expendable, but not in a minor cause. She would be stupid not to be afraid. To those concerned with basic human dignity Colonel Sir John Yardley was the western world’s prosperous heart of darkness. Mary Choy allowed herself the requisite fear, but no more.

  The comb towers went dar
k against the last blue wink of dusk. She drove a slaveway to the pd shade central on Sepulveda and filled out a request for overnight research space, slept an hour in a cop cot, drank a nutrient cocktail and went to work.

  LA City of Angels like a horse sleeps on its legs. I’ve walked the shade (since before it was shadowed) late night and seen the nocturnal half conduct itself busily not just machines but people…Don’t think the shade is reckless eccentricity. It has its own life, not clean like the therapied hives perhaps, but rich and full as any past city, as organized; shade has its mayors and councils, bosses and workers, mommies and daddies, neighborhoods and businesses, hospitals and pd stations, churches and libraries, and they are vital. Bootstrappers, perfecters of humanity, don t forget the ground you lift yourself from, unless you want a hard fall!

  10

  Sure as is, they had him Fausted; Albigoni and Lascal had tempted and Martin Burke was about to succumb. It was all over but the night of pangs. Still the forms must be observed; the night of pangs must pass.

  Adult enough to realize that the prize might be hollow, Martin Burke tried to deny the temptation but could not. The pair had found his most vulnerable patch in his most pale and yielding underbelly. His life was science and he had been removed from that life through no fault of his own, merely as an accident of bad politics and history. To have it back would mean he could live again. He longed to walk the Country of the Mind. That was a stimulus like no other; knowledge from the frontier that defined all frontiers.

  Martin grinned in the half dark watching a playback of the AXIS reports. He selfsaw that grin and sobered. He did have one train of questions to answer but Carol Neuman was not taking her calls and she did not have a home manager.

  Martin closed his eyes and tried to stop shaking. Ethical questions all too obvious and tenacious. Goldsmith’s right to deny intrusion. Still, a poet, a murderer whose country of the mind would reflect the artist’s adaptation of subaware forces…Never such an opportunity. Never.

  “I am not a bad man,” he said out loud. “I didn’t deserve what happened to me and I do not deserve this now.” This what. Qualms. Opportunity/temptation.

  Albigoni had nothing to lose. If Martin would not give him what he wanted nobody could except perhaps the ghosts/doppelgangers of Martin Burke that might exist elsewhere, sucking his discoveries raking his ground with more brutal clawed fingers, the far less scrupulous who might exist in Hispaniola exploiting not developing the Country of the Mind and racing ahead of him even now, alligator versus hare, alligator eats the hare.

  Martin was not a bad man. Albigoni had not immediately flown Goldsmith to Hispaniola and paid Colonel Sir John Yardley what he might require, so Albigoni was not a bad man, either. Of course Yardley’s prisons and labs were rumor; still Albigoni had the connections to have such rumors confirmed or denied. Albigoni did not intend to harm Goldsmith and of course Goldsmith was a bad man; no harm to him but the probe of science a redemption opportunity payment; a recovery of his value to humanity.

  Martin lay back on the couch, still shaking, fingers laced. Not a bad man. Perhaps not even a bad deed.

  He got up from the couch and placed another call to Carol.

  “Hello.”

  He started in surprise and pushed his hand back through his hair. “Hello, Carol. This is Martin.”

  “I thought you’d call. I’ve been working.”

  Martin’s tension erupted before he could wrap it tight. “You’ve put me into a horrible quandary. God damn it, Carol. God damn it.”

  “Whoa. I’m sorry.”

  “I wonder whether you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. Listen. I just got in. You want to talk with me, but not tonight. It’s too late. I’ve contracted with Mind Design Inc in Sorrento Valley. Through StarTemp agency you know. If you can come out to—”

  “Yes. I know where it is. Which lab?”

  “Thirty one. Midmorning?”

  “Ten.”

  “I don’t hate you, Martin. Whether I should I don’t know but I don’t. We’ll talk.”

  They said brief farewells.

  AXIS replays had lost their charms and he shut down the screen with a curt “Off.” With some guilt he understood that his shaking was not from moral dilemma; there really had been none from the moment of the offer. He shook because of eagerness and excitement.

  In white society every black is a trained bear. That’s how I feel at times even with my white woman who shows not the slightest sign of thinking such. Does she love me for being the one black male writer given a chance to shine in USA this generation? One per, an old law. The greatest taint of all is the taint left by history on my own soul. I cannot love her; I see her with scarred eyes.

  11

  Richard Fettle returned to his shade apartment by seven o’clock, hoofing slowly up crumbling concrete and steel stairs. He brushed aside an abundance of brown and yellow banana leaves intruding into the second floor landing, slipped his smoothworn brass key into tricky lock and greeted the cheap ten year old home manager on smoke stained fireplace mantel with “It’s me. Only me.”

  “Welcome home, Mr. Fettle,” the manager croaked. + Once did not recognize me. Raised a miserable stink. Pd didn’t come. Neighbors checked in though. Take care of our own.

  He made himself a cup of coffee and sat in a chair he had made twenty years before to give to his

  A comfortable chair the last he had of his handicrafts. Gave it to his

  He glanced briefly at a slate, noted some articles in today’s Shadow Rhubarb he wanted to read, finished his coffee and wondered what he would do for dinner. He wasn’t hungry but the body must. Truth to tell he was depressed now, decompressed, all the stories told to all who mattered and nothing but his own thoughts not good company at all. + Roughed and not deserving cut that refrain and bear down on your past you bastard

  + Your wife

  + Your wife, gave the chair to her. Not the time to think those thoughts, however. Richard closed his eyes and leaned back, the chair expanding under him footrest up back tilted arms inclining, friendly.

  + Why he did it. Madame de Roche thinks not crazy; a natural. Why then. Brilliance getting Emanuel down they say they say. Deep depravity coming up sicking up foulness like a dog. Bubble of evil in still waters noxious gases. Poem in that. Nothing worth bothering with. If not depraved not crazy then rational. Thinking all the time; planning. Form of expression. Expression of true brilliance stretching beyond human morality limitations. Did it for his art to see what he would make himself into. Kill himself as well as them; sure as hell he has no life to return to. Murderer murders twice. Kills two for each victim. No. Kills himself only once; murder once and it’s enough you’re done for deep therapy enforced maybe not even you left when you come out. Wanted to go through that maybe; kill be caught be prosecuted and therapied deep therapy…Come back new Goldsmith. See if poet survives that. Like scientist a personal experiment.

  Richard tightened his eyelids until his nose wrinkled.

  + I am a simple man with simple wants. I want to be left alone. I want to forget.

  But forgetting was not possible. He had half an impulse to open all the nets and LitVids on his slate and immerse himself in the propagated facts but he resisted. The simple knowledge was enough; multiple murders, likely by the man Richard admired most in the world.

  “Somebody’s coming,” the manager rasped. People walked by and the manager was never sure whether to express concern or not.

  The door chimes century old corroded brass antiques bumbled and belled against each other. Richard imagined them shaking off dust; they were seldom disturbed. He collapsed the chair and strode hunched to the door to peer through the verdigris stained peephole.

  Female, black hair, long gray and orange shift, clutching a woven reed handbag. Nadine Preston. “Hi to you,” she said, bending to eyeball the peephole. “I thought you might be feeling down.”

  Richard opened the door. “Come in,” he said voic
e mortician deep and resigned. He coughed and shook his head to clear the somber tone. “Please come in.” He had always come to her, not the other way around, to control his exposure to her bad times. He wondered whether he should feel touched by her concern.

  “Are you down?” she asked brightly.

  “A little,” he confessed.

  “Then you need company.”

  “Actually, I do, I guess,” he said.

  “Such enthusiasm. Have you eaten?”

  He shook his head.

  She opened her handbag and brought out a suckwrapped package of forever meat. “I can do wonders with this,” she said. “Have any potatoes?”

  “Dried,” he said.

  “We’ll have shepherd’s pie.”

  “Thank you for coming over,” he said.

  “I’m not always good for you,” Nadine said demurely looking down at the carpet. “But I know when you need somebody and you shouldn’t sleep alone tonight.”

  The shepherd’s pie tasted decently of salt and garlic and potatoes which reminded him of Nadine, a salt and garlic woman. As they ate she talked about the shade vid industry as she had known it and as she still came in touch with it. His mind was nudged away from the problem of the day until a gap formed between him and recent memory and he listened to her, so tired that he saw the pale ghosts of hallucinations. Blue raincoated figure in the corner of his eye.

  “They did this scene with music,” Nadine said, talking about some vid production ten years past. “The director needed to show that now the musician a cellist was really playing much better than before, and the scorer said but we have soundtrack that’s already the best we can get. He plays the cello and it’s the best cellist in the world playing behind him but there was no contrast. The director says then ‘Get a fruity cellist.’ Just that. Fruity. When the best isn’t good enough you go a step beyond, into the frankly bad. Isn’t that marvelous?” She smiled broadly, hand frozen in a demonstrative wave and he chuckled politely nodding yes that’s the way of it. Richard could not help being polite and kind to her when she was in this mood, and it was a good story.