Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  !Keyb> Why are you concerned about my reactions?

  !JILL> You are a part of me, deeply submerged but still there. I wish to maintain a good relationship with you. I am concerned for your wellbeing.

  !Keyb> Thank you. I appreciate your concern. Good night.

  1100-11001-11111111111

  God shot up with me last night. Vda shared my needle Except he use the Empire State Building Filled his veins with Con Ed

  His hair stood out all over Manhattan Dreams popped outta his skin Jesus pulled his arm Said Com’on Poppa

  But God he’s tired he’s Very old Com’on Poppa let’s go home

  God shakes his head Sky whirls Looks down on me He’s big

  Says I love it Love you Love you all

  You love rats I say

  Yes I do.

  Com’on Poppa it’ll look bad In the papers You here with him

  My Son, He says. They changed him. Broke my heart.

  But Jesus finally he Takes God away

  Comes back. Looks at me. Says Look at you. Ain’t you ashamed?

  I ain’t got much now Except God shot up with me last night.

  27

  LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “It’s Christmas morning, but AXIS is not with us this morning, though we read its words, look at the pictures its nickel children and mobile explorers have taken; these pictures were sent almost four years ago, and AXIS is now four years into its mission, sweeping around Alpha Centauri B.

  “This is the first Christmas when the human race has known that it is not alone. We must pause and reflect on a new truth this Christmas; we are not God’s only children. Perhaps we are not his most advanced, nor the most pleasing in His eyes.

  “Look at the status boards. Keep those comments coming. We know you tune to LitVid 21 for such thoughtful moments. Ours is an enlightened age. It’s about time we faced a few simple truths.”

  28

  Mary Choy awoke with Ernest beside her, arm across her breasts, and marveled at the comfort of not sleeping alone. Usually she chafed at having somebody occupy her bedspace, even Ernest. Now it seemed right. Ernest opened his eyes, surveyed one nippleless breast, murmured, “Ah please. Bring it out for me.”

  Smiling, she erected and colored a pink rose nipple on orca black. Allowed it to be sensitive. He crept like an infant to the nipple kissed it drew on it with a delicate vacuum.

  “Your promise,” she said.

  “Promise. Yes.” He lifted his head and smiled at her. “I am not capable of lust this morning.”

  She lifted an eyebrow skeptically.

  “Not until coffee and breakfast. I need fluids.”

  “You need to show me what you’ve been working on.”

  “Breakfast first. I promise, I promise.” He backed away from her tickling fingers and handed her an exquisite mocksilk robe nanopatterned to his own designs. A tightly bonded 2D stat golden dragon moved across the black fabric, stared at her, flicked tongue and exhaled a sunburst of flame. She rotated in the long mirror, pleased. It was her size. Ernest had brought it in while she slept. He watched her from the door, holding shut with one hand a plain but real red silk robe that reached to his thighs. “You like it?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “It’s yours. If you don’t like the black background, it has two other choices. Just say ‘green please’ or ‘brown please.’“

  “‘Green please.’“

  The robe seaswirled from hem to neckline and became dark green.

  “‘Brown please.’“

  And then sunlit maple brown.

  “It’s more than beautiful,” she said, throat tight. “It’s my size, tailored to my shape. You wove it especially for me.”

  “Least I could do,” Ernest said, bowing slightly and backing out. “Breakfast in five minutes.” Mary recognized nothing but a nano repository and the oven, which looked more complex than her own. She would not have dared touch anything. His kitchen was a marvel of custom and experimental appliances all assembled from industrial discards or parts obtained by trading his creations.

  She had never suspected all the avenues Ernest’s art had traveled, simply knowing him to never be ostentatious never bragging never revealing, never lacking in funds, quite a contrast to the few other artists she had known. “You’re working on more clothing projects?”

  “No.” He stood thinking before the nanofood machines then sat on an old wooden stool in front of a taste, shape and color board and worked up what they would eat with deft motions. “Just had a new set of custom proteins to test. Flat panel weavers and manipulators of carbohydrates. They’re pretty common in fabric manufacture. Mocksilk no problem.”

  “But the statting…”

  “You’ve seen statting before.”

  “The resolution is marvelous.” She lifted the robe lapel fabric between thumb and index finger. The dragon’s horns brushed beneath her thumb, nubbled raw silk. “The craftsmanship is beautiful.”

  “Dragon has sixty behaviors,” he said, still working the board. “You’ll never know what it does next. You can only tell it to be still. Otherwise it’s untamed, the way a dragon should be.”

  Breakfast built itself quickly in the oven, a film of reddish nano drawing material from dimples and side troughs in the glass dish and rising like baking bread. In most homes nanofood prepared itself out of sight; not in Ernest’s.

  In three minutes the red film slid away, revealing thin brown slices with a breadlike texture kippers applesauce scrambled eggs flecked with green and red. The oven automatically heated everything to its desired temperature then opened its door and slid the meal out for their inspection.

  “Smells wonderful,” she said. “Much better than commercial.”

  “I’m thinking of releasing certain restraints on my kitchen nano and seeing what happens. But I do not experiment on guests.” Ernest pulled out two chairs from an antique wooden table. He poured fresh orange juice from a fruitkeeper and they sat down to eat.

  “You’re showing off, aren’t you?” she asked quietly, savoring the eggs. “You can afford all these things farmfresh.”

  “Would you know the difference?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Then what’s the point? Nano’s cheaper. I’m a good cook.”

  Mary smirked. “Just showing off.”

  “Well, you asked,” Ernest said.

  “I hope this isn’t all you’re going to show me.”

  “No. I’ll keep my promise. Big project. My biggest yet.”

  “After you’ve built something for your friends in West Comb Two.”

  “That’s already finished. They’ll never know it’s discarded junk from my last exhibition. They have no taste, and neither do their financial advisors. They’ll save it for five years, hope it appreciates, sell it on a glutted market…get nil.”

  “Then they’ll come after you.” She genuinely worried they might.

  “We’ll be married by then. You’ll protect me.”

  Mary chewed and watched him closely, looked away looked back with a slow blink. “All right,” she said.

  Ernest’s mouth opened.

  “Eat,” she suggested. “I’m anxious to see.”

  “You’ll marry me?”

  She smiled. “Eat.”

  The day outside was clear and warm, winter clouds restrained to the east, beach fog breaking up to the far west. Ernest wore a formal suit, long hair in braids, clutching his slate and a portable nano controller. He escorted her down the cracked sidewalk to the curb where a long black limo waited.

  “You can afford this?” Mary asked while sliding into the broad interior.

  “For you, anything.”

  “I’m not fond of drama,” Mary warned.

  “My dear, this whole day is going to be drama. You asked to see.”

  “Well…”

  He touched his finger to her lips silencing protest and gave the limo controller an address in the old city center shadows
. “Bunker Hill,” he told Mary. “One of my favorite neighborhoods.”

  The limo accelerated smoothly across the unslaved street, found an old three deck freeway rolled into a slaved lane and took them through the shadows to the old downtown. Ernest named the ancient buildings of Los Angeles, many of them all too familiar to Mary. She had spent much time in this large jag in the second semester of being an officer candidate.

  “The Pasadena freeway used to go through here,” Ernest said. “They dug it up when I was a kid and put in eight deck slaveways.” Ernest was four years older than Mary. “That’s when the whole hill area ramped down. It’s your oddfolks and shade tech artists that are bringing it back…Not that we’ll ever match the combs.”

  “You’re not even going to try?”

  “We’re trying,” he said, nodding. “At least allow me a crude attempt at humility.”

  The limo debouched them before a high red hotel awning. “Bonaventure” clung in patchy gold letters to the awning’s sides. Beyond the awning there was no longer a door, however; it had been replaced or perhaps eaten by a slab of something that resembled stone but which Mary recognized as activated architectural nano.

  “My consortium bought the towers two years ago,” Ernest said. “I have a fortieth share. We designed the nano and contracted a supply firm to feed it. It’s turning the whole building inside out. In the end, it’ll dissolve the old steel and leave pure nanoworks in its place…The fanciest studio-gallery complex in all of shade LA.”

  Mary stepped from the limo, Ernest lending a courtly hand. “I would have shown it to you when it was finished,” he said, “but maybe it’s more interesting this way.”

  She stepped from beneath the awning and looked up at two great cylinders of gray and black nano silent and motionless beneath the blue sky.

  “The old glass is already gone. We had to wait six months to get destructure permits. Now it’s just old steel, composites and nano prochines. Would you like to see the prochines? We have safe walkways and some of the upper interior is already finished.”

  “Lead on,” Mary said.

  Ernest pointed his control at the blank slab and a small hole formed, quickly expanding to make a rough doorway. The edges of the doorway vibrated at eye-blurring speed. “Don’t touch,” Ernest warned. He preceded her down a narrow tunnel. The walls hummed like a nest of bees. “It’s hot enough to burn. We had to license for factory water use, then it turned out the best nano for the job wasn’t fond of water. We found a way for it to self cool. We’ll cache the water for later varieties of nano, later refinements.”

  Mary nodded but she knew very little about nano and its ways. The tunnel opened onto a warm glass tube some three meters in diameter that stretched thirty meters across an open pit filled with lumbering gray cubes cylinders centipedes, crablike shapes carrying more cubes and cylinders. Mary sniffed yeasty sea-smell. Sunlight filtered down through alternating mists of red and blue. The mists flowed with eerie self motivation around and through the giant prochines. Below, some of the moving cubes left behind the deposited frameworks of walls; other cubes sliding several meters behind filled these frameworks with the proper optical cabling and field and fluid guides. Between the walls lurked gray coated hulks of antique air conditioners and ducts already being removed by destructor and recycling nano. “They’ll be done on this level in a couple of days,” Ernest said.

  “What is this going to be?”

  “Where we are now, a ground floor showroom for the comb citizens. Anyone with sufficient money. Poor wretches of the shade produce tech art, patrons from the combs revel in the ‘primitive ambience.’“

  “Sounds servile,” she said.

  “Never underestimate us, my comb sweet,” Ernest warned. “We’ve got a number of top comb artists coming here just for the extra attention.” He seemed disappointed she was less than enthusiastic. In reality the activity made her nervous. She had not witnessed her own restructuring conducted by Dr. Sumpler’s infinitely more subtle nano servants; seeing this grand old hotel being refleshed and reboned gave Mary a twinge. She glanced at the nano scars on Ernest’s fingers. Catching her glance he lifted his hands and shook his head, saying, “This doesn’t happen anymore. I’m on to them, Mary. No need for you to worry.”

  “Apologies.” She kissed him, cringing slightly as a nano slurry spouted up over the walkway tube and fastened itself to an opposite buttress, congealing into a limp cylinder. “This isn’t entirely your project,” she said. “What are you working on for yourself?”

  “That’s the climax,” he said. “We have all day?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Then let me unveil at leisure. And promise one thing. You’ll tell nobody.”

  “Ernest.” Mary tried to sound peeved but another spurt of nano broke her tone and she ducked under the rushing shadow. He touched her in reassurance then ran on waving his hand. “Follow me, much to see!”

  She caught up with him in another length of tube deep in the heart of the old hotel, now a great hollow stacked with slumbering mega prochines. “The atrium,” he said. “This used to be a beautiful hotel. Glass and steel, like a spaceship. But the money tide flowed to the combs and it couldn’t survive on locals and foreign students. It was turned into a religious retreat in 2024, but the religion went bankrupt and it’s been going from hand to hand ever since. Nobody thought of making it into an artists’ retreat—artists could never have that much money!”

  The tube ended at the battered brass doors of an old elevator. “It’s safe,” he said. “The last thing to go, or maybe we’ll keep it…Committee hasn’t decided yet.” He punched an age whitened heat sensitive plastic button and the doors opened with a clunk. “Going up.” Ernest stepped in after her. He paced back and forth on the worn carpeted floor grinning and clenching his hands. “You must promise not to tell.”

  “I’m not a snitch or a wedge,” she said.

  He looked at her earnestly. “It’s extreme, Mary. It’s truly extreme and secrecy is high utmost. Please promise.” The smile had gone from his face and he wet his lips with his tongue.

  “I promise,” she said. The man she planned to lawbond. Inner tug of the lone wish. One is fortress only when one. Two is breached.

  He took her hands and squeezed them smiling again. “My studio is at the top. Everything’s finished up there, has been for two weeks. I moved my stuff in before the space was finished. It’s still a little warm—waste heat from nano. Not uncomfortable.”

  “Lead on,” she said, trying to recover the morning’s flush of affection. She asked herself if what she felt was a nonneutral flaw. She had felt it before around Ernest yet could still wrap it in a warm affection and forget it: caution.

  Mary thought back to when she had first met Ernest.

  “There’s light,” he said, swinging open a hall door. “And so much space.”

  Two years ago. She had just been promoted. Had gone to a North Comb One party to relax in company of a male transform less extreme than she whom she had met at a temp career seminar. Mary had heard Ernest from across the room throwing barbs into a conversation of well dressed comb artists and their longsuited managers. He had been harsher then, aware of his own brilliance and acid with frustration. Witty, pushing, charmingly rude; the artists and managers had enjoyed him, exhibiting the calm and often irritating demeanor of the therapied. Mary listening had not liked him much at all, but when they crossed paths in the partygoer’s random walk later he had accepted her with nary an eyeflicker or leer as a transform, had said some enlightening things about the shadows art communities, had shown her with boyish pride a projection that turned his suitsleeve into a caravan of clowns, and a nanobox that sculpted portrait likenesses from beach pebbles. Had given her a likeness of herself in slate made at that moment from a rock in his pocket. Had then expressed admiration and a wish to speak with her beyond the confines of the party. She had turned him down, attracted more now but still put off by his prior brashness. He had persis
ted.

  Ernest spoke and the studio door opened. Mary entered as the lights began coming on around the broad circular room. Dazzling spots limned a high broad shadow. In an alcove above them and behind the door a bank of additional lights glowed.

  At the back of the huge space reclined the shape of a nude woman perhaps ten meters long and six high, elongated arm raised reaching for a suspended cube, hips exaggerated, alternating segments chrome and brilliant fresh bronze, knee a silver disk on bronze, elbow a golden disk, eyes buried in deep shadow. For a dizzy moment she wondered if the sculpture was so heavy it would fall through the floor and drop them all in angry prochine paste.

  “It’s not solid. It’s not metal,” he said. He danced a quick step in delight. “Most of it’s not even there. And that’s the only clue I’ll give you. Go on. Discover.”

  “It’s finished?” she asked, hesitating.

  “A few more weeks. Some refinements. It’s meant to be appreciated by any individual for ten or twenty years, always something new. Go on. Touch.”

  Mary reluctantly approached the creation, face downcast eyes upturned lips pressed together. Who could know what to expect? She had seen enough of Ernest’s work to know that the apparent form was a very small part of the work. She looked quickly left right up and down to catch glimpse of projectors, glimmer of lased light, some clue. Mary did not appreciate surprises even aesthetic ones.

  “No teeth. Move up,” Ernest encouraged. She turned toward him sighing irritated turned back fixed on the creation’s heavylidded eyes, pupils silver rimmed gold in ancient green bronze, following her, lips forming giantess’s brazen Mona Lisa smile, boulder sized head inclining averting peering to left and above at something not there not of interest at least to an ancient goddess a black curved wall. Against her will Mary looked. Black shining lacquer waves rolled along the wall sky matte gray behind them decorative spume rising in precise patterns, a black lacquer mermaid issuing from the waves in bas relief combing moontouched hair.