Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  MDI was prosperous indeed. Inside, pale gold walls trimmed with red drapes that rippled like bas relief flags in still air, vids moving across the fabric internal projection or weaving light mod, paintings faces all very This and Now.

  Martin felt faint envy. This was the lobby to a common lab building. MDI shipped designs to arbeiter and thinker manufacturers around the world and that meant huge resources.

  A tall slender androgyne arbeiter with skin the match of the walls, a convolved hairmock the shade of the red drapes and a vertical face dividing eyeline clear and bright as the outdoor sun stood behind a white marble top desk and greeted him in a beautiful synthetic voice. “Carol Neuman please,” he said.

  “You are Martin Burke?” the arbeiter asked. He nodded, averting from the vertical crystal eyeline. “She is paged.”

  “Thank you.” Offhandedly looking around without wanting to see. Not even at its peak did IPR rate this power show. But that was fine; brains not backing; to the swiftest went the race not the gaudiest.

  Carol came down a sculptured stone staircase in pale blue skinform. Deer moves cat walk as he remembered though hipheavier now. Eyes unconcerned professional light smile brown hair in short close waves bouncing back from compression beneath scalpglove in her right hand. He always heard Sibelius strings and drums when seeing her, brownhaired blueeyed Norse tall goddesslike unconcerned but a treasure to the right unlocker of passions. It was still in her this ability to make him think bad LitVid. He returned her smile.

  “Feeling better this morning?” she asked.

  “Rested. Thinking it out.”

  “Good. Welcome to my place of work. We can find a quiet room and talk.”

  “Am I going to get any explanations?”

  “Such as there are.”

  He nodded and followed her back up the stairs. “This is an open lab,” she said. “For public display. I work in the back. I heard about your meeting. It must have been quite a shock.”

  “I call it Fausting,” he said.

  Carol smiled genuinely now. “Good word.” She touched her lips with finger. “Quiet room. All the Raphkind eyes and ears are out. Management very liberal. Trust your temps, trust the agencies. Corporations coddle the chosen now.”

  “As it should be.”

  There was yet this between them, that after the fruit laden horseshit and tears and years they could walk in stride and talk easily. The trap so easy to fall into was that they might have been family, acted as if they had been raised as close almost as brother and sister. Martin Burke could feel his agape/eros routines building castles and filling them with simulations of long domesticity, imagining her when she’s eighty and he’s eighty five still together.

  They walked down a clean fresh calved berg blue hall punctuated with cloisonne vases on white pillars. Carol asked a door to open and it obliged, revealing a long conference room. The lights slowly rose, illuminating brown velvet flocked walls and nano wood furniture, comfortable mover and shaker decor.

  “Impressive,” he said.

  “Flaunt it,” she said, pulling a seat out for him. “You’ve met Lascal and Albigoni.” She sat across from him, skinform tracing her lines but concealing details.

  “For lunch yesterday. First good meal I’ve eaten in some time.”

  She nodded but did not follow that byway. “They Fausted you.”

  “They did.”

  “You’re going to bite?”

  He paused, gritting teeth behind pursed lips, then raising his eyebrows and looking at her from an angle, cautious. “Yes.”

  “Betty-Ann was a lovely girl,” Carol said. “I don’t know if she was as brilliant as her father, but she was a prime soul.” Carol used soul as poetic code for an integrated mentality all levels linked. “She wanted to be a poet and a mother. She wanted her children to look at their world through a poet’s eyes. She was eighteen. I was therapying her for some gene-based subroutine screwups that prevented easeful sexuality. Nothing that would have prevented her rising to any agency’s top list, if she had wanted to ignore her father’s connections.” Carol leaned forward and fixed him with a blue stare that was not humanly angry but gave him insight into Olympian rage. “She idolized Emanuel Goldsmith.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “No. You’ve never met him, either.”

  “No.”

  Carol leaned back and cupped right elbow in left hand. “Albigoni somehow knew that I had worked for you. He knew that my name would mean something to you. But I told him you had to hear it from his own lips. He had Lascal call you because Lascal is very sharp at judging prospects. He sounded you out before you met.”

  “Amazing resources.”

  “The man can do what he says, Martin. No tricks. Albigoni can put you back into IPR fully funded and with a clean slate. He can rewrite small history and clear your reputation. He doesn’t do that sort of thing as a habit but he knows how and he has the means.”

  “Sounds Orwellian.”

  “Albigoni isn’t federal and has no aspirations to politics. He doesn’t want to grind a jackboot into humanity’s face. He’d rather make them smart and stable and happy. Smart stable happy people rent his books and LitVids.”

  “Like Emanuel Goldsmith.”

  “Goldsmith was untherapied,” Carol said. “A privileged natural. More power to the argument that only therapied are truly human.”

  Martin grimaced. “I hope you don’t believe that,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Vested interest I suppose. If he had been therapied he would not have killed. But you can’t force therapy on him—Albigoni doesn’t want that. We satisfy a bereaved gentleman’s passionate whim. We don’t hurt Goldsmith; perhaps we find a way to cure him.”

  Martin fell quiet and the grimace became a frown. “It is not legal. I’ve never done anything illegal.”

  Carol nodded. “Subtle distinction for the prosecutors and lawyers.” She turned away. “I don’t want to lead you astray, Martin.”

  “Too late. I’m led.” He sighed. “And not by you. But I wonder what’s in it for you.”

  “Betty-Ann was a sweet girl. How could he do it?”

  “You want the same thing as Albigoni.”

  Carol glanced over her shoulder at him. “Close.”

  The feeble dream of rekindled romance faded. No returning to that idyll. He was means not end.

  “You’re not much of a…I forget her name. Madeline? Marguerite. Faust’s lust.”

  “Surely you’ve forgotten all that by now.” She looked at him steadily. Olympian; but would another man think so? Perhaps merely intent, focused on his reactions yet revealing none of her own.

  Martin averted from her look. “What’s the next step?”

  “I don’t know,” Carol said. “You’ve put your card message through to Lascal?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then do it.”

  “You’re very cold,” he said softly.

  “I want to go in with you when you probe,” Carol said. “I want to be on the team.”

  “You’re prejudiced.”

  “I never met Goldsmith. I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

  “He killed your patient.”

  “I can handle that.”

  “I don’t know that you can,” Martin said, finding his own tone chilly. “Besides, it’s been a long time since I worked with you. You don’t know the new routines.”

  “Oddly enough, I do. Many of them. I’ve been probing a mentality here for the last two years.”

  “A mentality? What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s no secret. Mind Design is working on an artificial complete human personality. Jill. You’ve heard of it, I’m sure—it’s working with the AXIS people and doing an AXIS Simulation. The five master programmers have downloaded large segments of their memories and personalities into a central processor, and I’ve probed those records.”

  Martin laughed. “That’s a controlled situation. It’s not the same.”


  “Not so controlled. We’ve had our problems, and I’ve solved them. I’ve probably spent more time in the Country than you have. Admitted it’s not the same but it’s certainly the equivalent of a high level training course.”

  “What are they doing: mixing and matching?” Martin asked.

  “Synthesis and pattern imposition. The programmer’s patterns will fade and the new personality will take on its own character. They’re close to getting what they want but my work is finished for now. I can take a furlough. I’m telling them I have a therapy group in Taos to work with. High level expansion therapy. Better living through better minds.”

  Martin remembered Carol as very intelligent and a meticulous planner but she had become more calculating and manipulative. “Who’s Fausting whom?” he asked.

  “I’ve got to go now.” She stood. “Call Lascal. You won’t regret it.” She smiled. “Piece of cake.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “The Mount Everest of all probes, then. Probe a poet who murders. Doesn’t that fascinate you? What kind of Country does Goldsmith have? Is he in hell? We might solve the problem of the origin of evil. Like finding the source of the Nile or the human soul.”

  Martin stood up, feeling punchy.

  “Let me show you out,” Carol said, taking his arm.

  Raise your head Mother of the single hanging breast Raise that great slumbering Egypt and look around What you have done to your children? are you ashamed? You did not cry out when they were ripped from you Did you know what would come Withered bones walking you lift your skirts no shade even And then you give a plague of love Sweep, harvester; half are dead, Mother. Your breast still hangs and on its tip, a drop of bitter white milk, white milk on a black breast Sweep, harvester Pink milk, red.

  14

  Eleven thirty morning in her temporary quarters Mary Choy received the Goldsmith apartment analysis through secured pd optic on her slate. She scrolled through it with thoughts half focused, drinking strong tea and thinking about Hispaniola, formerly Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Colonel Sir John Yardley. Trying not to think about the early morning jiltz and the hellcrowns; poor nasty Lon Joyce’s scream upon waking.

  She closed her eyes then looked up from the analysis and frowned, angry that her concentration had weakened. The stark cot room offered pastel blue gray walls forest green carpet bed already made sheets quarter bouncing tight. Mary touched stylus to lips.

  How it was done. Goldsmith (90% probability) waited in outer room having invited guests to arrive at fifteen-minute intervals and stressing punctuality. Mary read facsimiles of the invitations nine cards hand delivered by special courier one young acolyte escaping (reference vid interview). Party promised unveiling reading of new work from the master and celebration of three birthdays among the acolytes sharing with Goldsmith.

  Goldsmith’s birthday. She had not known that until now. For some reason it shocked her and she had to take a deep breath.

  Goldsmith (90% probability) led them one at a time to sitting room concealed weapon assumed but Mary flashed on him actually revealing the large Bowie knife gold pommel and ivory grip gleaming steel blade a century old owned by his father who used it to defend himself against “honkie” cops (reference ninth acolyte vid interview). Reached around gripping one shoulder with free hand as if in fatherly hug from behind severing long list of essential plumbing blood pumping heart-surprise out and away. Goldsmith likely not spattered perhaps merely an arm to be rinsed and cleaned for the next victim. Abattoir efficiency. Strike them down one by one like steers.

  She closed her eyes again and held them closed brows drawing together lids flicking. Opened them, viewed on.

  Diagrams graphs simulations of supporting evidence from various criminal techs forensics experts, bugs on tracks, arbeiters, assayer prefreeze heat pattern photos giving four dimensional track of warm bodies in motion, bodies falling arcs of warm liquid (splash analysis from walls), each victim’s blood layered on in multiple colors assault by assault, time markers for soaking in, cooling, clotting, cell necrosis and bacterial growth, CG simulations of bodies dragged and heaped up in corners, icon clocks ticking precise time of death in each body outline, muscular activity before death (this an unnecessary detail but provided for thoroughness) and discharge of body fluids (agonal relaxation) besides blood mostly limited by clothing; cooling of bodies (details on cell necrosis, internal decay, bacterial growth in intestines)

  And so on. She grew almost ill.

  Mary turned to the analysis of human organic detritus in carpet and floors. All major deposits partially digested by carpet within past forty eight hours—epidermal keratin hair artificial fiber Trelon Chinoi Nylon Brazil Silk, saliva mucus semen (masturbation; no correlate or mixed sexual fluids from other male or female)—belonged to Goldsmith. He lived alone or very nearly so.

  Plumbing: shower and bathtub revealed no nonGoldsmith cell traces or hairs. No drop-by lovers or intimates privileged to bathe. Sink, Cendarion toilet ash and analysis of nonGoldsmith detritus indicated Goldsmith lived alone, had frequent (two to three times weekly) social occasions involving eight to twelve visitors lasting less than two hours. Distribution of detritus: 34% identified (overlap) of which 35% is from victims, 66% unidentified (IDs in progress for all traces laid down within period of thirty days prior); conclusion: no longterm residents besides Goldsmith.

  Goldsmith kept no animals. His apartment was (typically within the combs) devoid of domestic insect life except for five airborne insects. Goldsmith used approved insect viruses and kept his apartment clean.

  All nonhuman debris were within normal levels in the metabolic carpet. Goldsmith did not smoke or use powder or aerosol drugs. Guests brought in detritus consistent with their travel-paths through apartment and points of origin. Clothing and other fiber matches consistent with above conditions and patterns. Analysis of nondomestic nontailored microbes consistent with above conditions and patterns. Routine searches based upon direct human cell evidence and analysis of territorial mitochondrial drift and evolution of nonsymbiotic/nonparasitic microbial traces expected to soon give leads on homes (breakdown by known city microbial environments) of all unknown visitors to the apartment.

  For thoroughness’s sake there was also a list of three past occupants of the apartment going back ten years compared with their debris lodged in crevices in the bathroom and in areas not covered by the metabolic carpeting.

  All evidence still pointed to Goldsmith.

  Mary turned off the slate. Goldsmith might go to Hispaniola but why would Yardley accept him? Outwardly Hispaniola obeyed the diplomatic formalities; all knew the island’s nature but inclined to this outward politeness, providing safe resorts and safe havens for North’s and South’s anxious bourgeoisie. Crime-free Hispaniola itself a crime.

  Cracks in the federal attitude showing. Flying her there black stylish Mary into the heart of darkness. Darker than Africa that quiet land war and plague emptied last century, Colonel Sir John Yardley sending some of his own foster children to repopulate Nigeria Liberia Angola. Repopulation big business, needs organization and Yardley has a genius for that. If Yardley harbors Goldsmith old friend compatriot and like thinker, the cracks can be split open and federal can rid itself of Yardley and Hispaniola, of the chafing Raphkind promises and treaties. Would that be the maneuver?

  Mary knew herself to be more than a pawn. She was a knight angling her way into Hispaniola where she might make any of a swastika of moves; lance here take there find violations force a confrontation, executing federal schemes through a lowly pd detective. Perhaps because Colonel Sir John Yardley supplied illegal equipment to the Selectors in America north and south, and the Selectors had become more ambitious, begun to target executives politicians Senators and Congressmen, applying Draconian justice.

  In the end it might not matter whether Yardley harbored Goldsmith or not.

  She specked the nation shivering from its damp night of Raphkind, flinging soi
l and drops of offal around the globe.

  If Yardley refused her entry, that violated treaties.

  If she died while in Yardley’s care, victim of some grotesque uprising, he will raise his hands commiserate what can I do they are young and I have only so much power. This for that, action for reaction.

  Mary gathered up her equipment buckled her belt sealed the seams on her uniform with expert finger touches looked at herself briefly in the cubicle mirror wondered how her melanin deficiency patches were doing ordered the door open and walked long gait steady down the white and gray halls to the research center. She smiled at Ensign J Meskys whom she had met perhaps three times before. Meskys returned Mary’s smile. “Long night, sir?”

  “Blear blear,” Mary said. “Please pass my sincere thanks to the criminalists in jag twelve.” LA’s neighborhoods around the combs had been split as if made of pitchforked glass. They were called jags by pd and those who coordinated transit territories. Jag twelve covered the neighborhoods around the third foot of East Comb One.

  “Done,” Meskys said. “Will you be leaving your cubicle today?”

  Mary nodded. “I’m off to make a query at Oversight.”

  Meskys displayed sympathy. No pd enjoyed visits to Oversight.

  “Thanks for the hospitality.”

  “Silky,” Meskys said. “Come again. Pd hotel at your disposal, sir.”

  Along Sepulveda century old buildings stretched between patches of central markets and highrise apartments; shopways and shade entertainment, a neighborhood that catered to combs clientele anxious for a touch of risk, still attractive to the therapied; risk without risk, all the truly therapied would want.

  She walked for a while, enjoying the winter warmth—twenty C and climbing perhaps to twenty two, dry cloudless LA City of Angels deep of winter. The air was clear but for an ozone alert. Onshore breeze. She could smell a touch of the distant sea, kelpfarms and salt.