Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  A silver moon hovered over the reclining figure’s midsection, moon shadow tarnished, moon limb polished brilliant. Mary and the figure stood in a mercury sea quick metal waves lapping around her feet. Something tickled the back of her thoughts and Mary’s eyes widened. She closed her eyes and saw parallel scan lines crossing her visual field. Where had she

  The figure stood in the vastness of the studio ceiling rising over her like a canopy and spread her arms wide sex glowing lava slit in bronze, saying in brazen hollowness, “These are the expected forms. These are the ones we love, daughters all, makers of sons.”

  Mary saw a line of women around the giantess’s feet mother and aunts sister school friends women from books female legends: Helen of Troy Margaret Sanger Marilyn Monroe Betty Friedan Ann Dietering; all somehow hooked into what she thought of as the essence of human femaleness like a chorus line early to late left to right ending in the transform she had met in the upper reaches of pd Central, Sandra Auchouch. Mary jerked back to look again at her mother, saw the face severe and disapproving and then softening, juvenating, Mother as she might have first seen her idealized her when Mother was all before the long years of disapproval and finally hatred and casting aside. Her throat caught and eyes filled but she did not blame Ernest for she was fully into the experience now, as in a dream. She closed her eyes and saw more red scan lines. What are they

  Saw herself pretransform as if in a mirror dressed in long gown hitched high left side showing short legs skin almond brown face flatter nose wide eyes upslanted quizzical, Mother’s face with Father’s mouth. Ernest knew nothing about these times and surely did not have a picture of her mother. Red scan lines she had seen before

  In police training

  The chorus line faded and the central figure glowed with warm orange sunrise light raised both arms was fledged with feathers of silver, lava line of vagina concealed now beneath a gown like night mist, eyes closing face elongating Madonna wings expanding stretching behind arms

  In police training with a modified Selector hellcrown These are the warning signs of being scanned for dreamstate replication torture by a clamp

  “Ernest!” ‘she screamed. “What are you doing?”

  The figure collapsed into its first state reclining nude, and Ernest stood beside her trying to hold her hand which she kept jerking from his grasp, backing away from it from him. “Where did you get it?” she asked voice rich gravel furious.

  “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

  “Where did you get the hellcrown?”

  “It’s not a. How did you know?”

  “My God, you bought a hellcrown!”

  “It’s not a hellcrown. It’s altered, it can’t hurt anybody. It just scans and allows my psychotrope to select memory images. It’s tuned for pleasant but significant recollections.”

  “It’s illegal, Ernest, for God’s sake. It’s got to be blackscore, an old model, but it’s illegal as hell.”

  “It’s just the frame, technically speaking. It’s an old model, that’s absolutely right. It mimics regular dreamstate revival. It’s no worse than what you can buy in a toy store.”

  “Scan lines in my limbic system and visual cortex, Ernest! Jesus. Where did you get it?”

  “It’s for art, it’s harmless—”

  “Have you had a therapist certify it, Ernest?”

  He flinched from her sarcasm and squinted. “No, Christ no, of course not. But I’ve researched and tried it on myself for months.”

  “You bought it from Selectors?”

  “Ex Selectors. Defectors.”

  “More contacts?” Her tone had become bitter honey. The nonneutral flaw her innate urge to overcaution had blossomed and now she wanted to slap him. He did not help by breaking into a sweat and stammering, beautiful brown face shining in the multiple spots and glimmering lasers. The figure reclined impassive uncaring.

  “You cannot tell, Mary. I would never have shown it to you if I’d known—”

  “Possession of hellcrowns is a federal felony, Ernest. What does my promise mean to you when I could lose my high natural, be forcibly therapied and removed from pd, just by associating? What kind of idiot are you to put me in this position?”

  Ernest stopped trying to explain, shoulders slumping. He shook his head. “I did not know,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I think I’ll need you to escort me out of here,” Mary said. Fury turned to nausea. “Please take me outside.”

  “The limo will drive us back—”

  “Not with you. Please, Ernest.”

  “Mary, what is this?” he said, shoulders rising. “This is nothing! It’s harmless. Under the circumstances, the law is ridiculous.”

  She pushed aside his waving arms and walked briskly to the door then down the short hallway. “Take me out of here.”

  He followed, eyebrows knitted in hurt and puzzled anger. “I haven’t hurt anybody! This will never hurt anyone! What are you going to do? Report this?”

  “What were you going to do, sell it to some comb art lover? Have a hellcrown hidden on his premises for him to be caught with?”

  “It’s not for sale. It’s a display piece, advertising, it would never leave this building, this studio, it can’t.”

  “You paid Selectors for this…You helped people evade the law. I cannot…” She shut her eyes, mouth open, raising and shaking her head. “Tolerate. Allow.” She would not allow herself to cry. In the face of all that would happen tomorrow: this. The disappointment and shock the realization that her anger was in fact not entirely rational that her disappointment was deep not surface that the surface person might in fact tolerate this even be amused by it but not that deep person.

  Ernest twisted, raised his fists into the air and let out a roaring scream of frustration. “Then go and tell your goddamned pd. Go! Why are you doing this to me?”

  He stopped, chest rising and falling, eyes suddenly calm and expectant. He wiped his hands together. “I apologize,” he said softly. “I’ve made a bad mistake and I did not mean to. I have hurt you.”

  Now her tears came. “Please,” she said.

  “Yes. Of course.” He instructed the floor manager to call a metro cab.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll take a pd minibus.”

  “Right,” he said.

  The battle has gone on for too long, John. Everyone knows who I am but me. I do not like my self-ignorance. I feel myself fade day by day. I am being hunted. If I do not learn who I am soon, I will be found and killed. A game! This is the game I play within my head each day to get the words to flow, but it works less and less often, and that may mean

  that it is

  true.

  29

  Martin had spent the morning and early afternoon in his assigned room in Albigoni’s mansion, eating the breakfast and lunch purveyed by the expensive arbeiters and catching up on Goldsmith’s written works. He was reluctant to go anywhere unless summoned. That reluctance faded by thirteen thirty. He dressed in onepiece and armwrap and inspected himself in the mirror, then ventured out.

  Entering the long dining hall also empty he walked past the left hand line of chairs, impressed by the silence. Sun came clean and clear of dust motes through the tall dining room windows. He scrutinized the huge oak beams, frowning, dawdled a bit in the huge mechanized kitchen and wandered on like a child in a fairy castle.

  He encountered Lascal in the study sitting glumly before a slate reading a text page.

  “Where is Albigoni?” Martin asked.

  Lascal said good morning. “Mr. Albigoni is in the family room. Down the hall past the entryway and to your left, up the half stairs and on the right, two doors down.”

  “He’s alone?”

  Lascal nodded again. Not once did he remove his eyes from the screen. Martin stood beside him for a moment, shuddered delicately and followed his directions.

  Albigoni squatted before a tall Christmas tree in the family room, wrapped packages scattered
around him. When Martin entered Albigoni looked up and self consciously began to replace the packages.

  “Am I disturbing you?” Martin asked.

  “No. We had…done all this.” He waved at the tree and the packages. “Already. She loved Christmas. Betty-Ann. I don’t mind, I suppose. It reminds me of when she was a little girl. We’ve had Christmas trees in here every season since she was born.”

  Martin looked on the man with narrowed eyes. Albigoni got to his feet slowly like some lethargic animal sloth or tired gorilla. “When the funeral is done, we’ll give the packages to charity. She didn’t send her packages to us…didn’t bring them yet.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Martin said.

  “It’s not your grief.”

  “It’s possible to be too clinical,” Martin said. “Sometimes the problem outshines the pain.”

  “Don’t worry about the pain,” Albigoni said. “You worry about the problem.”

  He brushed past Martin and turned, all the lines on his broad fatherly face dragging his expression down, waved his fingers without raising his hand and said, “You’re free to do whatever you wish on these grounds. There’s a pool and gymnasium. Library of course. LitVid facilities. Perhaps Paul has told you that already.”

  “He has.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll meet in La Jolla. You’ve made out your list, your itinerary…”

  Martin nodded. “Physical diagnostic for Goldsmith, mental scan, then I want to study the results.”

  “I’ve hired top neurologists to do all this. Carol gave us a few names…discreet, professional. You’ll have everything you need.”

  “I’m already assured of that,” Martin said. Fausting orders. What grants would Carol’s neurologists get? What would they be told?

  Albigoni raised his eyes to meet Martin’s. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Burke, right now, nothing we are about to do makes much sense to me. But we’ll do it anyway.” He left the room. Martin felt the Christmas tree behind him like a presence. Dark oak and maple furniture; lost forests.

  “I’ll take a swim, then,” he murmured. “Everything is in the very best of hands.”

  John, I think of Hispaniola as Guinée. Lost home. No Africa, only Hispaniola. We’ve talked of writing your poem. May I come home? I do not know what baggage I’ll bring with me.

  30

  Nadine had gone on for an hour about the folks at Madame de Roche’s and what she had told them. She had mentioned the Selector’s visit. They had been quite impressed; none of them had ever rated a Selector’s attention. They had expressed worry even fear. “They told me they didn’t want you to come around for a while,” she concluded looking up at him sadly from the couch.

  “Truly?”

  She nodded.

  “More time to work then.”

  “I don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “It took a lot for me to come back here. Courage.” She sniffed. “I thought you might recognize that and congratulate me.”

  Richard smiled. “You’re a brave woman.”

  “We could go to the Parlour. You know. Pacific.”

  “I’d rather stay here.”

  “They might come back.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s Christmas Day, Nadine.”

  She nodded and stared at the curtained windows. “That used to be important to me when I was a girl.”

  Richard looked yearningly at his desk and the waiting paper. He bit his lower lip gently. + She won’t leave.

  “I’d like to write.”

  “I’ll sit here and you write. I’ll fix dinner.”

  + She won’t go. Tell her to go.

  “All right,” Richard said. “Please let me concentrate.”

  “You mean don’t talk. You’d think I could keep my mouth shut but I’m afraid, Richard. I’ll try.”

  “Please,” he persisted.

  She pressed her lips together toothless mum crone. He sat at the desk and picked up the stat pen, laying down a charged blank line beginning A then erasing it thin whoosh of breath pushing flakes to carpet.

  I made arrangements carefully, knowing I would need my clothes clean. I resented them coming, forcing my design, but so it was; to push the grave dirt from my good self, I had to perform this ceremony. Perhaps in a few days I would go to Madame’s and do something similar there. I started back from my cleaning of the knife, shocked, realizing they were the people I would really have to dispose of; not these poor youngsters, who had looked up to me as they might a father. But I had to go on nevertheless. For the sake of my poetry, dead within me; fugitive, hated, pushed away from the luxury of my comb life, I could start again, hide in the countryside, devote more time to my writing away from constant distractions

  “Richard? Can I go get some food for dinner? The kitchen’s empty and I’ll need to use your card. Mine’s tapped.”

  “Use my card,” Richard said.

  “I’ll go out and be back in a half an hour. Where’s the best neighborhood market?”

  “Angus Green’s. Two blocks down Christie and up Salamander.”

  “Right. I know it. Any suggestions?”

  He looked at her eyebrow raised and she mummed her lips again. “Sorry.” She opened the door and glanced back at him already bowed over the desk, stat pen working. Shut the door. Footsteps down the concrete.

  distractions and luxuries there came the first announcement of the door voice. Here it was. A new hour, new day. The year one. Time all moments from this moment, all beginnings from here. I opened the door and smiled.

  BOOK TWO

  1100-11010-11111111111

  There was one man. We, who are still sinners, cannot attain this title of praise, for each of us is not one, but many…See how he who thinks himself one is not one, but seems to have as many personalities as he has moods, as also the Scripture says, “A fool is changed as the moon.”

  —Origen, In Librum Regnorum

  31

  LitVid 21/1 C Net Sidelights (Philosophical commentator Hrom Vizhniak): “What we have seen so far is a strange and empty world, covered with a weak and sporadic vegetation, the seas filled with plant life and perhaps no other kinds of life, while on the land, the circles of towers—undeniably artificial, it seems to me—tempt us to speculate about the presence of a lost civilization and dead intelligences. The enigma continues throughout this Christmas Day; additional data from AXIS is supplementary rather than revelatory. Project managers at AXIS, and AXIS scientists, are understandably reluctant to posit any theories. But LitVid marches on, and the pressure to make theories is enormous.

  “We have asked Roger Atkins of Mind Design Inc to ask the AXIS earthbound simulation what it thinks about the possibility of life on B-2. I spoke with the simulation personally, through the auspices of the simulation’s ‘mother,’ Roger Atkins’s masterpiece of cybernetics, Jill. Here is what AXIS’s earthbound sibling said:” JILL (AXIS Simulation)> “The shape of the towers is quite striking. That the towers seem to do nothing whatsoever would lead me to think they were either designed as static artworks or as monuments or markers, but their placement around the globe, other than their nearness to oceans, is seemingly random. The question of life in the seas is not yet completely answered; AXIS has not ruled out the possibility of large mobile life forms such as whales. There also remains a possibility that the life in the oceans is organized in some fashion not familiar to us.”

  Vizhniak: “The reluctance of the simulation to speculate is part and parcel of a disease of quiet that has descended over AXIS’s designers and masters and interpreters. What would they say if they were less discreet? Would they speculate about a living ocean, one unified life form covering the watery parts of B-2? Would they speculate about intelligent beings that have retreated to the seas, reverting to some idyllic primordial form, taking a vacation as it were after having a crack at higher civilization? Perhaps they would tell us that the builders of the towers have moved on to live in space as we begin to do now, building huge space colonies or
perhaps starships in which their patterns are stored for long journeys outward…B-2 becomes a toy for the intellect, an enigma that piques our deepest curiosities. In the end, LitVid is left with the idle speculations of boring old farts such as myself. How long we must wait for the truth, who can say?”

  Sidelights Editor Rachel Durrell: “Dr, Vizhniak, you’re aware we’re coming up on a peculiar kind of millennium.”

  Vizhniak: “Yes. The binary millennium.”

  Durrell: “You spoke of our impatience to know, our impatience for finished answers. Do you think the binary millennium is a symptom of childish curiosity?”

  Vizhniak: “In a few days, when our year of eleven ones turns to a year of one with eleven zeros after it, speaking in binary of course, a vast number of people feel that something significant will happen. Others will doubtless try to make something significant happen, not that I would wish to encourage them.”

  Durrell: “Yes, but do you think this is a symptom of our childishness, our extreme youth?”

  Vizhniak: “We are no longer children, I would say humanity entered its difficult adolescence in the twentieth century and now we are teenagers. Childhood was the innocent violence and glory of the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, when we learned to use our hands, as it were…the comparisons are inexact, But here we are, struggling with inner forces we do not understand, trying to be mature, forcing ourselves to be mature, and woe to those who put up an appearance of trying to hold us back, We therapy ourselves—and that is not to say that therapy is ineffective, for it is one of the wonders of the mid twenty first century, this push for true mental health. I myself would be half the man I am now without therapy…I consider the reluctance of the untherapied, and their fears about losing individuality, to be groundless. I am not known as a human zero, you know. Some think me pretty crusty. But I wander.