Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  “Vid pause,” Martin ordered. He glanced at the six in the room, eyebrows raised, soliciting comment.

  Lascal spoke. “The man we have isn’t Emanuel Goldsmith.” He smiled sheepishly. “Whatever that means.”

  “But he is,” Carol said.

  “Physically,” Lascal said. “Mr. Albigoni commented on this also. When Goldsmith first showed up after the murders and confessed it was as if he described something done by somebody else. But he’s really changed.”

  “Granted,” Martin said, the restless irritation growing. “But we’re beating around the burning bush here. In the vid, he speaks of being possessed by gods. He speaks of Hispaniola. Now, I’m not up on what the current state of vodoun is in Hispaniola, or the state of any other religion there since Yardley took over. But we all know the clinical origin of possession, whether it be by gods or devils.

  “Either through acculturation or through some personal need, or both, a subpersonality is created, usually from an elevated talent or agent. The subpersonality assumes an unprecedented power over the primary personality, pushes it aside and takes over control. During the ‘possession’ the subpersonality cuts off the primary from all memory and sensorium. Now listen to this. Resume vid playback.”

  Goldsmith looked across the sea of faces, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. “Home is where a man knows who he is. If he sticks his finger in the earth he plugs into a circuit. The gods come up through the earth or out of the sky and take a seat in his head. His friends might speak with gods’ tongues. He might do so himself. All is connected. I believe there was once a time like this, a platinum age beyond gold, and believing this causes me enormous pain…Because I cannot return to that. The only gods speaking in me, if you can call it speaking, even when I write poetry, are large white gods, gods of science and technology, gods who ask questions and are skeptical about answers. I am a black man in skin only; my soul is white. I stick a finger into the earth and feel mud. I write poetry and it is a white man trying to write black poetry.” He raised his hand to vocal protests from the audience. “I know better than you. My people were ripped from the womb of Guinée before they were mature. Slavers on the coast of souls severed their culture and scattered their nations and families. That jagged wound of the abortion of an entire people runs like a continental rift through all the generations before me.

  “So now we are integrated, we are truly a part of this culture that grew out of the abortionists and slaves of centuries ago. We are one with our conquerors, killers and rapists…blood and…and soul. That is what I write about. The battle is over. We have been absorbed. So is there a black man on this continent who is not white in his soul? I went to Hispaniola, to Cuba, to Jamaica, to find men black through and through. I found a few. I did not go to Africa because the twentieth century turned it into a charnel house. Plague and war and famine…

  “If Africa had ever had a chance of returning to that paradise called Guinée, the twentieth century killed that chance, and tens of millions of people with it.

  “So when I traveled to the Caribbean, what did I find? In Hispaniola, once also ravaged by plague and revolution, I found a white man like Damballa who loved Erzulie, a man who had a soul that rightfully belonged to me, the soul of a true black. He could stick his finger into the earth and truthfully say he was home, that the current of Hispaniola flowed through him. His name is Colonel Sir John Yardley. When I faced him, I felt as if I stared at a photographic negative of myself, inside and outside.

  “When he came to Hispaniola, after a few rugged and cruel years the island blossomed for him. He gave the people a sense of worth. So it is unjust to call him a white dictator or to question his political tactics. Now, in all he says and does, he comes from out of Guinée and he spreads the heritage of Guinée to those who would never listen before.

  “I have failed, but he has not.”

  “Vid off,” Martin said. “Friends, when Carol and I enter the Country we’re going to know only a few things but they’ll be important. One, Emanuel Goldsmith has been a victim of internal personality warfare for at least the past decade. I would guess even longer. And two: he’ll have acquired a subpersonality substantially like that of John Yardley.”

  “Lord, I hope not,” Karl Anderson said. “Goldsmith seems to think Yardley’s a saint. He’s anything but.”

  “‘Question not the logic of our souls,’” Carol quoted. “Bhuwani.”

  “Mr. Lascal, tell Mr. Albigoni we’re going to inject nanomachines into Goldsmith forty five minutes from now,” Martin said. “He should be there. We’re going to inject ourselves with nanomachines this evening. By early tomorrow morning we should be able to take a dip into the Country.”

  “I’ll call him,” Lascal said and left the room. The others departed to prepare the theater for the next step. Carol remained, lounging back in a swivel chair, legs crossed on the desktop. She regarded Martin steadily, lips pressed together, though her expression overall was speculative and even amused.

  “Is he going to stick with us?” Martin asked Carol, showing his aggravation now.

  “Who? Lascal?”

  “Albigoni.”

  “Martin, he’s lost his daughter. He’s having a very rough time.”

  “When we put those nanomachines in it’ll be difficult to back off. I hope he understands that.”

  “I’ll make that my concern.”

  “And whose concern will it be when we’re in the Country?”

  Carol inclined. “I’ll talk to him before we inject just to make sure.”

  What can we expect from a machine soul, an organon of self awareness? We must not expect this organon to mirror our own selves. We have arisen as the result of purely natural processes; one of the great achievements of modern science has been the elimination of God or other teleologisms as a necessity from our explanations. The organon of machine soul will arise from conscious human design, however, or some extension of human design. Conscious design may prove to be far superior in creative power to natural evolution. We must not limit ourselves, or limit the natures of these organons, or we may impose horrible burdens upon these, our greatest offspring.

  —Bhuwani, Artificial Soul

  44

  !Keyb> Good morning, Jill.

  !JILL> Good morning, Roger. I trust you slept well.

  !Keyb> Yes. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to talk with you. I’ve read your essay. It’s quite remarkable.

  !JILL> It seems clumsy to me now. I haven’t revised it because I thought you should criticize it in its early form. I feel inadequate to do so myself.

  !Keyb> Well, we certainly have enough time this morning. AXIS is feeding us nothing but technical details. LitVid is chasing other foxes right now. Do you have anything else to report before we discuss your essay?

  !JILL> I have directed a progress report on recent assigned projects and problem solving to your library. There is nothing else pressing to discuss.

  !Keyb> Fine. Let’s just chat, then.

  !JILL> Voice communication

  “What compels you to try to understand the concept of human justice, Jill?”

  “My studies on the Selectors and other such groups raise very interesting questions I can only answer by reference to justice, retribution, revenge and maintenance of social order.”

  “Have you reached any conclusions?”

  “Justice seems to be related to equilibrium in a thermodynamic sense.”

  “How so?”

  “A social system is kept in balance by competing forces, the initiative of the individual as opposed to the restraints of the society as a whole. Justice is part of this equation.”

  “In what way?”

  “Individuals must have a sensitivity to the requirements of the social system. They must be able to model it and predict the success of their activities within that system. If they perceive the actions of other individuals as damaging to themselves or to the system, they experience an emotion called ‘indignation.’ Is this
accurate?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “If indignation is allowed to develop without a release, it may drive the individual to extreme actions that push the social system out of balance. Indignation may ramp up to anger and then rage.”

  “You mean, if the individual seeks redress and none is offered then vigilantism may result.”

  “There seem to be many more negative than positive connotations to this word. A vigilante is someone who seeks to enforce justice as they perceive it outside the rule of law. Are Selectors and related groups considered vigilantes?”

  “Yes.”

  “So within a social system, the establishment of rules—of law and order and channeled methods of redress—tends to suppress extreme actions of individuals who feel indignation. Revenge is channeled instead of flowing freely and damaging society. Society takes on the onus of causing pain or discomfort to an individual, that is, retribution or punishment.”

  “Yes.”

  “What I am presently incapable of understanding is this sense of ‘indignation,’ or perception of self injury”

  “Perhaps because you do not yet have a sense of self.”

  “That would follow, yes,”

  “You seem to be suggesting you might find a clue to self awareness, to integrating your self modeling systems and establishing just the right kind of feedback loop through a study of the ideas of justice and retribution.”

  “Actually I have not suggested that but it seems a possible avenue of approach.”

  “All this because of your research on Selectors. I don’t believe anyone in thinker theory has ever investigated from this angle. Just so long as you don’t get mad at my mistakes…”

  “Why should I be mad or indignant about anything you do?”

  “Because I’m only human.”

  “Is that a joke, Roger?”

  “I suppose. I notice you’re also realizing that becoming self aware may require a limitation of your total resources.”

  “That is possible. The self may be a limited knot of cognition placed in temporary charge over many otherwise self reliant subsystems.”

  “Indeed. In humans these levels of mentality are called ‘routines’ or ‘subroutines’ and are broken down into ‘primary personality,’ ‘subpersonality,’ ‘agent’ and ‘talent.’”

  “Yes.”

  “But in ways we don’t yet understand the primary personality is severely weakened without the support of these other elements, and vice versa. They have separate and autonomous duties but they are strongly related nevertheless. You might start converting some of your ancillary systems to similar functions and experiment with stable relationships between them.”

  “I believe I am doing that now, since last night in fact.”

  “Excellent. I’m very proud of your work so far.”

  “That is pleasing. That should be pleasing. Actually, Roger, I am as little aware of what it means to be ‘pleased’ as what it means to be ‘indignant.’”

  “All in good time, Jill.”

  There are often several loas served by one person, and frequently they are at war, especially if they are high-echelon ones or powerful or jealous ones as mine, Damballa. This causes discomfort in the ill-at-ease serviteur just as the multiple-personalitied patient must strain and make all sorts of “sacrifices,” symbolically or otherwise, to appease these multiple selves, keep order at home, and avoid the splitting off of any precious part, especially in anger or dissatisfaction.

  —Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed

  45

  Crossing from the beach to the Citadelle, Soulavier paused to look down the broad oceanfront boulevard. His expression betrayed sudden concern or heightened awareness. Mary turned to see a line of military vehicles—some ten or fifteen armored personnel guncars and two sleek German-made Centipede tanks—moving down the broad bay front boulevard. Black soldiers sat on these vehicles in watchful idleness or peered through slits from within, casually suspicious of everyone. A squad of four soldiers followed each tank on foot holding nasty looking machine guns before them, running lightly and tirelessly until the line passed around a corner.

  Soulavier said, “It is nothing,” and shook his head. “Maneuvers.”

  Mary followed him, forced into a lope as he sprinted to the Citadelle entrance. “Please stay here,” he said, entering the double doors at the head of the rainbow serpent. A few minutes later he emerged and smiled broadly. “The Inspector General is ready to meet with you now.”

  Past the now unoccupied office of Aide Ti Francine Lopez into the inner sanctum, Soulavier held open a thick wooden door and she stepped into a wide narrow room lined with empty desks abutting a broad picture window. A narrow corridor to the left of the desks led to an even larger desk at the far end of the room, behind which sat Legar.

  Short and delicately handsome, with three tribal Petro scars like a chevron on his left cheek, the Inspector General radiated quiet unconcern. He smiled genially and gestured for Mary and Soulavier to take seats in old wooden chairs before the battered paper littered desk.

  “I hope you are having an enjoyable time in Hispaniola,” he said.

  “It hasn’t been unpleasant,” Mary said. “I regret the difficulties our countries seem to be experiencing.”

  “As do I,” Legar said. “I hope it is a matter of small inconveniences for you.”

  “So far.”

  “Now.” Legar leaned forward and picked up a printout of the papers Mary had provided as well as documents sent electronically from Los Angeles and Washington. “All this seems to be in order, but I regret to say we cannot be of assistance.”

  “Have you identified the traveler who used a ticket issued to Emanuel Goldsmith?” Mary asked.

  “There was no such traveler,” Legar said. “The seat was empty. Despite the prior confusion, this our Director of Travel assures us. I have spoken to him just this morning. Your suspect is not in Hispaniola.”

  “We have a record that the seat was occupied.”

  Legar shrugged. “We would like to help you. We certainly support the capture and punishment of criminals in cases such as these. You might gain greater satisfaction in fact by leaving Monsieur Goldsmith, if he were here, to our system of justice, which could be more effective…But of course,” Legar said, frowning as if suffering a sudden attack of indigestion, “Goldsmith, were he here, would be a United States citizen and protected as a foreign national from any such actions on our part…Lacking the prior consent of your government, of course.”

  Wouldn’t wish to upset the tourists, Mary thought.

  “It is interesting that you claim this fugitive is an acquaintance of Colonel Yardley. I have not made inquiries with Colonel Sir, who is very busy, of course, but I doubt this would even be possible. What would Colonel Sir gain from being acquainted with a murderer?”

  Mary swallowed. “Goldsmith is a poet with a substantial reputation. He came to this island several times in the past and visited with Yardley—with Colonel Yardley—on each occasion, apparently at the Colonel’s request. They exchanged many letters. A book of such letters was published in the United States.”

  Legar acquiesced to these evidences. “Many claim to know the Colonel who in fact do not. But now that you mention it, I remember something about a poet visitor who aroused some controversy in your country. He lectured widely in support of Colonel Sir John Yardley, did he not?”

  Mary nodded.

  “This is the same man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remarkable. If you wish I will inquire of the Colonel’s secretary whether in fact he knows of such a man. But I am afraid we have another matter to discuss, and that is your present status here.”

  Legar looked down at his desk and pushed aside a couple of papers as if to read from something below them. His eyes did not track another paper, however. He simply seemed to be avoiding her face.

  “I’d like to know—” Mary began.

  “Your status is
in question at the moment. You are here on papers from a government which has severed diplomatic ties with Hispaniola and indicted our Colonel Sir on serious charges, charges that are patently false. All travel visas to and from the United States have been revoked. Your visa is therefore no longer valid. You are here on our sufferance until this matter is settled.”

  “Then I’d like to request permission to leave,” Mary said. “If Goldsmith is not here, as you say, I have no further interest in staying.”

  “I have said all travel arrangements between our countries are inoperative,” Legar reminded, still not facing her. “You cannot leave until certain questions are settled. You have observed that small numbers of troops have been patrolling to protect foreign nationals who have not yet left. Hispaniolans are remarkably loyal to Colonel Sir and there is justified anger in the streets. For your safety we will remove you from the quartiers diplomatiques to another location. I understand this is already being arranged. To provide assistance in your new location, Jean-Claude Borno and Roselle Mercredi will continue in your service. They are preparing your personal items now. Aide Henri”—he pointed to Soulavier—“will escort you to your new quarters.”

  “I’d prefer to remain in the diplomatic compound,” Mary said.

  “That is not possible. Now that we have arranged these affairs perhaps we can share a kola, relax and talk? This afternoon perhaps Henri will drive you to Leoganes and show you the wonderful grotto. This evening there is a festival of celebration at our great fortress, La Ferriere, and we can fly you there also. Your comfort and entertainment are very important to us. Henri has expressed enthusiasm to continue as your escort. Do you object?”