Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  Swinging around deftly she lifted the woman up by the ears wrapped an arm around her neck and applied pressure to her throat until she stopped kicking. Willow wrapped tack cord around her legs. “She shot at us,” he said gasping for breath. “She fapping shot at us.”

  “That’s automatic therapy mandatory,” Mary said to the woman. The woman’s eyes looked up at her out of a mess of blood and tangled hair. For a moment Mary caught a satisfying glimpse of disorientation and terror. She relaxed her grip.

  “My hand,” the woman said thickly, moaning. “My nose.”

  “Small price,” Mary said, turning away.

  “You fapping bitch!” Willow shouted.

  “Now, now,” Mary said, some of her status calm returning. “No way to talk to a citizen.”

  “Sorry,” Willow said. Sampson reported the takedown to the CEC and first team leader. They tried to lift the woman but she struggled again. Willow pulled out more tack cord and pinned her arms to her body. In their ears CEC said, “All three levels searched. One out the roof, takedown by team three. Eight suspects secured and three victims. Calling in therapists and meds.”

  “We’re crossing this bridge,” Mary said to the woman, who squirmed violently against the tack cords. “Do you want to make us all fall off?”

  The woman became still. “We’re just doing your job, damn you,” she said, split lip swelling.

  “Oh.” Mary nodded emphatic gratitude. “My apologies.”

  Willow lifted the woman’s feet and Mary her shoulders. They carried her over the narrow bridge and dropped her beside Sampson. Sampson smiled broadly ironically at Mary.

  “You lysing lobe sod,” Mary told him in a tone of pure syrup.

  He lifted his arm and showed her a torn sleeve. Blood trickled down his wrist and dripped from his finger.

  “Just a flesh wound, ma’am,” he said. Flechette darts were designed to change shape and burrow if given a purchase of more than a centimeter. Sampson was very lucky.

  “Could have taken your arm off,” Willow said admiringly.

  Mary pulled back, looked Sampson over critically, then held out her arms and hugged him. “Glad you’re still with us, Robert,” she said into his ear.

  “Fine job, Mary,” he responded.

  “Hey,” Willow said. “How about me?”

  “Show me your blood,” Mary told him. He looked abashed and then she hugged him as well. “Let’s get Robert looked at.”

  “Should be worth at least a day off,” Sampson said. He shook his arm flinging more blood from his fingertips and clutched it at the elbow. “Christ. It’s beginning to hurt.”

  Mary stood before the recorders taking down officer testimony on the jiltz. A pd legal advisor and metro certified public witness stood behind the officer in charge of the vid.

  “Did you incur or cause any injuries in this action?” the pd advisor asked her.

  “No injuries to myself. I slightly injured an unidentified female suspect when she attempted to flee and used a weapon.”

  “Nature of that weapon?” the advisor asked.

  “Flechette pistol.”

  The evidence processor, a young assistant sergeant, removed the pistol in its protective translucent bag from a tray atop a pd arbeiter and dangled it in the scanning lines of the testimony vid’s secondary recorder. Already officers and technicians were preparing to fasten ceiling tracks throughout the house and mount assayers and sniffers.

  The suspects were being kept in another room pending onsite arraignment; therapists had not yet arrived to remove the clamps from three victims. All pd was authorized to do was shut down the active elements of the hellcrowns. Mary had not yet seen the room where the victims were kept. She was restless to do so although she feared it would give her nightmares.

  Out of the corner of her eye she spotted three metro therapists entering through the wide front door. They crossed the marble tile floor to the stairs leading to the second level, two men and a woman in pale gray midsuits. She knew two of them; they had given first therapy treatment to Joseph Khamsang Phung during her last Selector jiltz, her only prior witnessing of an active clamp.

  “Were you with another officer at the time?” the advisor continued.

  “Yes. LAPD Junior Lieutenant Terence Willow.”

  “Did he help you inflict injury to the suspect?”

  “He struck her in the face to distract her.”

  “Describe the nature of the injuries.”

  “Suspect fired a volley from her pistol as she emerged from a third level arbeiter service elevator. I had jinked to the surface in front of her, and I…” She closed her eyes to aid complete recall and described her actions in breaking the woman’s wrist and two fingers. She hated on site testimonies but they saved much time later in trials.

  When her turn was done and T Willow was in the line of vid, she walked off and looked around the house, staying out of the path of the technicians. The dominium was a wonder—even fancier than she had imagined. Everything appeared either antique or human made. She suspected everything had authenticity stamps. Ceramics wooden furniture custom equipment arrays, all the very best. A Japanese made home manager with at least ten dedicated French and Ukrainian arbeiters now assembled as if for military inspection in the first floor kitchen, being checked by a pd tech. They were probably all illegally altered for surveillance and guard duty.

  For a minute she paused in the first level room where the eight suspects were being held. All well dressed comblooking citizens between twenty five and sixty years, not a one she would have specked as a potential rad or deviant. They stood with hands tack corded in front of them wearing LAPD remote headsets for access to their chosen attorneys.

  Mary’s takedown had been treated by a metro physician and now slumped pale, wrapped in nano bandage in an office chair to the left of the grim-faced lineup. She was the only one sitting. She saw but did not see M Choy standing in the doorway. Mary surveyed the seven others looking for the Selectors known to have been involved in the Phung case. Double naughts. Not a one.

  A technician begged her pardon and pushed past her, rigging more ceiling track.

  With a deep sigh Mary turned and walked up the wide stairs to the second level. She might have avoided all this; still, Reeve had done her a genuine pd courtesy allowing her on this jiltz.

  The Comb Environs Commander, a tall narrow faced blond man, stood with the comb civil attorney. Both nodded to her as she passed. They were deep in discussion of litigation and repercussions. She heard the commander reassuring the comb metro attorney that all permissions had been received and that fed and state court orders were on record for every action taken this morning.

  Morning. Through a second level picture window, peeking between the outer comb mirrors she saw the northern limb of what looked like an attractive morning. Fog burning off. Pleasant day. Steadying herself she stepped into the doorway to the windowless cylindrical room at the center of the second level. The three metro therapists kneeled around the clamped victims on their cots. Low murmurs passed between them as they examined their patients. The single hellcrown resembled a hospital arbeiter, about a meter tall, three stacked spheroids with a connecting ridge up one side, the control panel like a remote keyboard. One of the therapists held that panel now, slowly bringing the victims back to consciousness. The hellcrown was not an expendable Hispaniolan import; it was custom fine machinery, perhaps Chinese. Capable of delivering hours of retribution in minutes.

  “They set him for high-ramp dream of five minutes. Five minutes,” the eldest therapist, a woman in her fifties, told her colleagues. “Who was he?”

  “Representative of marketing for Sky Private,” said another. “Lon Joyce.”

  The man moaned and tried to sit up, eyes still closed. His face was wizened with fear and pain. The therapist restrained him with her arm. Mary entered the room and stood out of the way arms crossed, biting her lower lip. She could feel the contortion of discomfort on her own face, empathy
for the three on the cots.

  One of the therapists she had met before noticed her standing there, blinked, ignored her. None of the victims not even the unclamped patient had yet recovered consciousness.

  “Sky Private. Airplane manufacturers?” the third therapist asked. “What did he do?”

  “Sold defective airframes to an Indian company,” said a voice behind Mary. She turned and saw the CEC.

  “Hardly seems worth five minutes,” the female therapist said in an undertone, administering a metabolism control patch.

  “You helped with the roof takedown?” the CEC asked Mary in an undertone.

  She nodded. “Get anybody important?”

  “Not Shlege unfortunately. The woman you caught was Shlege’s mistress, however. It’s nice to give the bastard a little grief.” He nodded at the three victims. “We’ve just got ID confirmed on all of them. One of them is Lon Joyce. Four small aircraft fell out of the sky near New Delhi. He used stale nano to make his airframes. Allegedly knew it, too. Civil suits passed him by; he was far richer than those he killed.”

  Mary swallowed. “The others?”

  “The young man on the left is Paolo Thomerry from Trenton New Jersey. Heard of him?”

  She had seen his name on the pd bulletins. “Short eyes,” she said.

  “Exactly. Twelve children from New York to Los Angeles in the past three months. Refused therapy; called it philosophy.”

  “And the third?”

  “A petty embezzler from jag three. He threatened his estranged wife that he would kill her. Selectors got to him before he got to her. We think the wife must have called them in. She didn’t think to call us first. She must have really hated him.”

  Mary tried to reconstruct what had happened; blindfolded or drugged or both the three miscreants brought into the dominium by trained reliable Selectors, the hellcrown and clamps prepared, the mock court proceedings, sentencing and clamping within twelve hours of sentence, release a day or two later on the streets of LA let them fend for themselves. Most who had undergone the clamp needed some form of therapy or another; some needed it badly.

  Few ever repeated their crimes.

  Her lip curled and she shook her head slowly. “They should clamp themselves,” she murmured.

  The CEC rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “You’re the principal in the East Comb One murders, Investigator M Choy?”

  “Yes.”

  He extended his hand and she clasped it firmly. “Good hunting,” he said. “Take it from me; there’s a real letdown if these clowns get your quarry before you do. And word’s out. They’re after Goldsmith. Perhaps that’s why we missed Shlege. He may be out in the jags now, tracking.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Mary said.

  The eldest victim, Lon Joyce, came awake and began to scream.

  Mary turned and descended the stairs at a run.

  13

  Martin Burke pumped a pushbike to the bus station—no autobus service in his neighborhood, due to rebellion of landowners against civic intrusion of guideways and subsequent per capita five grand a year tax infants under two exempt—and folded it into a locker twenty five per day, spoke his destination into a reception ear and waited. Ten minutes and a large autobus hummed and groaned in beneath the translucent seashell canopy, twenty meters long and segmented like a worm, a white and gold amphisbaena, nothing but seats and flex windows and flex door. Martin came aboard, put his feet on the safety bar, allowed a belt to cross his heart and fell into slaveway muse.

  The dilemma had burned out its fuse for now. He thought of nothing much important. Seeing roads, roads occupied him.

  A completely private citizen owned passenger car basic model cost two hundred twenty five thousand dollars in California, one hundred thousand dollars a year in slaveway use tax, fifty thousand vehicle excise, twenty thousand state sales, twenty thousand federal sales, five thousand slaveway research, two thousand five hundred domicile parking fee, two thousand five hundred electricity allocation license fee, five hundred per month domicile plug maintenance fee, two hundred surcharge meter fee, fifty LA City of Angels/California Transportation Operations (CALTROPS; the forms had all been designed and the logo locked in before a cunning citizen pointed this out and they were still not amused) joint participation tax. The average fully agented and employed therapied citizen earned three hundred k a year, the average shadows unagented untherapied a third of that, a bus certificate for one year cost twenty k and still the slaveways were packed like clay.

  Three LitVid comedies were based on Slaveway Flying Dutchman never leaving the road cannot afford a house raising family in cramped citizen vehicle chased by tax authorities; twenty two LitVid entertainments dealt with Los Angeles and/or southern California highways in the latter half of the twentieth century, time of romance. They had not been called freeways for nothing.

  Glimmer of circumstance. Sun crossing his nose made him blink. Hello. Awake now. Dreading being Martin Burke. Nothing enjoyable at this instant about being himself. Ozymandias in the dust. His attention switched from external to internal. He thought of Carol and the weaknesses and frictions between even stable men and women. Conflict of the sexes is not a disease; it is an unavoidable byproduct like smoke and water from a fire. People are slow burners; burn themselves crisp come back for more, eloi born again new pleasures and new toys. Burn again.

  He closed his eyes and pinned his moth thought. He and Carol had burned brightly not slowly. Carrying a torch for each other, they had known a passion it was unimaginable could have been felt by any others. Clear light between their ears the widest possible sunny rooms their love no clouds expansion and a clean yellow joy. Bright dazzle past, he saw that she was less infatuated and more pragmatic than he and he agonized over her control. Martin had not been in control. He had been head over.

  At first he had teased her about her pragmatism and after a few such teases she had said not at all viciously, “I have to hold something in reserve. I need something left over after all. I’m still me.”

  Fire struck by rain. Clear light gone. He had known for sure that he would lose her and so he did. A few days and weeks of that sort of hurt demanding backandforth and she had lofted higher, suspicious, aware that he was a natural not therapied and that even highly rated naturals could come tumbling down. His genius outshined hers two to one and the myth of bright instability had been in her eyes. She had squinted whenever he spoke, a small anticipatory wince.

  Martin had known it would soon end and he had pushed it and when the end came, when she had quietly told him they should separate, he had flipped. She had been the ideal and pinnacle and she could not just withdraw unscathed. He had had to hurt her in some way so she would not treat the next unsuspecting male so callously; no sadistic impulses mind you merely an educational burn sting warning slap. He had not known how much he had tipped until he found himself at her apartment door fruitbowl in hand with a pile of horse dung (could have been worse could have been dogshit) beneath the perfect fruit. She had invited him in as you might invite a friend who has interrupted you, taken the package, opened it, smiled gently glad to see you’re taking it so well it’s going so well for you, picked up an apple, stared at the fresh farmpicked fertilizer for home gardeners fifty dollars a liter mess, and she had cried. Not tears of anger or frustration. Just little girl tears. For ten minutes she had cried saying nothing not moving the tears taking more and more out of her.

  Martin Burke had watched in stone amazement eyes wide as saucers sucking in the pain no glory no satisfaction no revenge no lessons taught seeing so much more clearly now how far he had tipped and what pain a well-adjusted brilliant young man with prospects could cause.

  From that moment three years ago until last night they had not talked. She had left IPR.

  Martin had gone through the Raphkind years another kind of dead romance; Carol had moved on to therapy high achievers and work at Mind Design on artificial perception and advanced thinker psycholog
y.

  She had therapied Albigoni’s dear dead daughter. That connection had brought both of them to this point. Because of her he was being Fausted. Because of her he might find his way back through the labyrinth to the full light of celebrity scientist and control of IPR.

  Side trip through Goldsmith’s Country of the Mind.

  The bus cruised into Sorrento Valley. Three levels of slaveways on ancient tracks covered sacred transportation ground bought with the treasure of ancient citizens, upper road level topped with curved glass. The slaveways gently curved through hills covered with corporate hanging gardens. Alternating bars of sun and shade from slaveway canopy supports crossed his face.

  The gold and white vehicle snaked into the Mind Design bus station and issued his card with a transfer credit. A corporate grounds cab waited patiently for him while he passed ID and took him to the proper building. He stepped out of the cab shielding his eyes against the sun.

  He had visited Mind Design Inc only once five years before in the IPR glory days. MDI technicians and programmers had swarmed around him smiling, some in white skinform others in time honored denim, shaking hands talking about work on this agent work on that as if they knew what a natural agent was and how powerful. Maybe they do now, Martin allowed, but not then. Even he had barely begun to understand the power and perplexity of natural mental agent integration into routines subroutines and personalities.

  MDI had been his negative his research’s negative that is: building from below rather than probing from above.

  Now Martin Burke was a nonentity who needed Carol Neuman’s clearance to get on the grounds. If he attracted any attention it was cursory Who was that face? Did I know that face once? Years ago maybe before loss of status legal difficulties expulsion disgrace by association.

  He hunched his shoulders.

  Building thirty one rose on broad aluminum inverted pyramid feet above an open courtyard, early teens architecture imitating mid twentieth. Wide and low rising only three stories above the courtyard with two narrow trilons on the north end supporting a weave of optic fibers that leaked spinning galaxies even in midmorning sun. Showplace. Prominence and respect. Style and cleanliness.