Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  “A friend of the Colonel Sir’s.”

  “Yes…”

  “Your United States accuses him of harboring a criminal.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “Believe nothing then,” Soulavier said. “We are here.” They passed between broad stone and concrete pillars, missing the ponderous wrought iron gate by inches as it swung wide. Torchlight beams burst out all around. Soulavier pulled out identity papers. The limousine door sprung open automatically and three guards thrust in their rifles. They regarded her with viciously wise slitted eyes, shrewd, intensely skeptical. Soulavier handed them the papers as they glanced at Mary with an occasional murmur of masculine incredulity and admiration.

  Soulavier exited first and held out his hand, fingers waggling, demanding hers. She emerged without accepting his help and blinked at the torchlights and searchlight beams.

  A house? Guard towers all around as in a prison or a concentration camp. She turned and saw a gothic gingerbread monstrosity flanking the wide brick and asphalt courtyard. One vast many pointed curlicue of wood and carved stone and wrought iron, painted a greenish blue with white framed windows and doors like clown eyes and mouths.

  Mary observed that all the guards wore their black berets tilted to one side and were dressed in black and red. All wore on their broad lapels fingersized pins of a ruby eyed skeletal man in top hat and tails. Soulavier stepped forward after conversing with a cluster of guards. “Please give me your weapon,” he said quietly.

  Without hesitating she reached into her pocket, produced the pistol and handed it to Soulavier, who regarded it with some curiosity before passing it on.

  “And your hairbrush,” he said.

  “It’s in the luggage.” Oddly this revelation and disarmament seemed to cheer her. It removed one more level of decision making. Things were getting sufficiently in a rough to break the expected chain of her emotions.

  “We are not simpletons,” Soulavier said as guards removed her suitcase from the trunk and knocked it open with rifles. One tall muscular guard with a wise bulldog face removed the hairbrush, held it up to torchlight, fumbled the cap open and sniffed at the nano within.

  “Tell them not to touch it,” Mary suggested. “It could be harmful to their skin if they touch it.”

  Soulavier nodded and spoke to the guards in Creole. The bulldog guard capped the brush and slipped it into a plastic bag.

  “Come with me,” Soulavier instructed. His own nervousness seemed to have passed. He even smiled at her. As they approached the steps of the front entrance to the house he said, “I hope you appreciate my courtesy.”

  “Courtesy?”

  “To leave you the feeling of being armed, resourceful, until the last minute.”

  “Oh.” The ornate carved oak double doors opened at their approach. Beyond them armored steel vault doors slipped back into recesses. “Thank you, Henri,” she said.

  “You are welcome. You will be checked again for weapons, rather thoroughly. I regret this.”

  Mary felt socially if not spatially disoriented. Giddy. “Thank you for the warning,” she said.

  “It is nothing. You will meet with Colonel Sir and his wife. You will have dinner with them. I do not know whether I will accompany you.”

  “Will you be searched for weapons as well, Henri?”

  “Yes.” He watched her face closely for signs of irony. He found none; she meant no irony. Mary felt acutely the inebriation of danger. “But not as thoroughly as they will search you,” he concluded.

  Past the vault doors, two women in black and red took her firmly by the arms and led her into a cloakroom.

  “Remove your clothes please,” a short, muscularly plump woman with a stern face demanded. Mary did so and they tapped her on the shoulders and hips, stooping to inspect her skin for suspicious blemishes. They felt the gray crease in her buttocks with murmurs of dissatisfaction.

  Doctor Sumpler will certainly hear about this, Mary thought, now knowing whether to laugh or scream.

  They turned her quickly, warm dry fingers.

  “You are not noir,” said the short woman. She smiled mechanically. “I must inspect your privates.”

  “Surely a machine, a detector—” Mary began, but the woman broke off her protest with a sharp shake of her head and a tug on Mary’s wrist.

  “No machines. Your privates,” she said. “Bend please.”

  Mary bent over. Blood pounded in her head. “Is this the standard treatment for dinner guests?”

  None of the women answered. The short woman snapped on a rubber glove, allowed a finger to be covered with translucent gel from a tube and inspected Mary’s genitals and anus with quick professional probes.

  “Put your clothes back on please,” she ordered. “Your bladder is tight. After you are dressed, I will take you to the restroom.”

  Mary dressed quickly, shivering in her rediscovered anger. The disorientation had passed. She hoped that somehow Yardley would come to regret what she had just suffered.

  In the hallway again the short woman led her to a restroom on one side, waited for her to relieve herself and escorted her into a rotunda. Soulavier rejoined her, face composed, hands still, and they stood beneath an enormous chandelier. Mary was no judge of decor but she suspected a French influence: early nineteenth century perhaps. Bluegray walls with white trim. Furniture more fanciful than useful, an atmosphere dominated by the rich and richly oppressive past. Not what she had been led to expect in Yardley’s home; she had visualized more of the hunting lodge or the dark tones of an English study.

  “Madame Yardley, née Ermione LaLouche, will meet with us,” Soulavier said. The guards stood ill at ease behind them, the short woman almost at Mary’s elbow. “She is from Jacmel. A true lady of our island.”

  There are no ladies or gentlemen on Hispaniola, Mary thought. She came remarkably close to saying it aloud; Soulavier glanced at her with warm slightly hurt eyes as if he had heard. He smiled uncertainly and stiffened.

  A painfully thin black woman with high cheekbones and clear staring eyes, at least fifteen centimeters shorter than Mary, entered the rotunda. She wore a long green empire gown and softly, languidly allowed her gloved hand to rest on the upheld arm of a gray haired mulatto in black livery. The mulatto smiled and nodded at Soulavier, the female guards, Mary, all pleasantry and obsequiousness. Madame Yardley hardly seemed aware until she stood directly before them.

  “Bonsoir et bienvenus, Monsieur et Mademoiselle,” the gray haired servant said, his voice resonant as if issuing from a profound cavern. “Madame Yardley is here. She will speak to you.”

  The woman seemed to come alive, jerking and smiling, focusing on Mary. “Pleasant to meet you,” she said, words thickly accented. “Pardon my English. Hilaire speaks for me.”

  The servant nodded with broad enthusiasm. “Please accompany us to the salon. We will take drinks and hors d’oeuvres there. So pleased is Madame to have you as her guests. Follow us, please.”

  Hilaire turned Madame Yardley around with a waltzing step and she glanced over her shoulder at Mary, nodding. Mary wondered whether the woman was starving herself to death or if Yardley preferred emaciated women. The Hispaniolan exiles had told Mary that Colonel Sir kept mistresses. Perhaps Madame Yardley was purely ceremonial.

  The salon was overwhelmingly elegant, a smothering, mal de tête mix of chinoiserie and African motifs. Another even larger chandelier glittered over an enormous hand-woven Chinese rug, sufficiently worn to be centuries old. A drum as tall as a man—an assotor—stood on a pedestal in one corner. Ebony sculptures of bearded men lined the walls, tall shortlegged figures with narrow heads and swayed backs, gods, devils. A huge brass bowl filled with water and floating flowers stood in the corner diagonal to the assotor.

  This elegance countered all she had been told: that Yardley preferred simple quarters and was not ostentatious. The Samedi pins on his guards: did he espouse vodoun as well?

  Madame Yardley sat at one en
d of a soie du chine upholstered couch. Hilaire deftly came around behind her and released her hand, which she then used to lightly pat the space next to her, smiling at Mary.

  “Donnez-vous la peine de vous asseoir. Please,” she said, her voice childlike and spooky.

  “Madame invites you to sit,” Hilaire said. “Monsieur Soulavier, please take that seat there.” He pointed with a multiply ringed finger at a chair fully five meters across the pastel-azure sea of carpet. Soulavier obeyed. Mary took her assigned position. “Madame Yardley wishes to talk with you both about circumstances on our island.”

  What followed was a puppet show conversation of mixed French and broken English from Madame Yardley accompanied by smoothly extrapolated, even psychic English translations from Hilaire. Madame Yardley expressed concern about the difficulties around the island; what did Monsieur Soulavier have to report?

  Soulavier told her little more than what he had told Mary, that Dominicans and other groups were expressing dissatisfaction, that troops had been called out to patrol. This seemed to satisfy.

  Madame Yardley turned to Mary now. Hilaire, standing behind her with his hands on the back of the couch, followed suit. Was she enjoying the stay? Was she being treated well by all Hispaniolans?

  Mary shook her head. “No, Madame,” she replied. “I am being held against my will.”

  A tiny candle of concern in Madame’s eyes but no end to the smile, the childlike inquiry.

  That will come to an end, we are sure; these difficulties are very upsetting for us all. Would that all could live in harmony. Is Mademoiselle Choy a noiriste perhaps, choosing such a lovely design for herself?

  “I meant no disrespect for black people. I simply found this design attractive.”

  Hilaire leaned forward, taking a more direct role. “Do you know what noirism is? Madame Yardley wonders whether you in fact support by your choice of design the political movement whereby blacks around the world have found their pride.”

  Mary considered that for a moment. “No. I sympathize but my design was purely aesthetic.”

  Then perhaps Mademoiselle Choy is a spiritual noiriste, an instinctive supporter, like my husband, Colonel Sir?

  Mary conceded that much might be true.

  Madame Yardley looked to Soulavier, asked him if perhaps Colonel Sir should adapt a new form, take on color as well as soul. She seemed to be jesting. Soulavier laughed and leaned forward to think about this, head tilted to one side, mocking serious consideration. He shook his head violently, leaned back and laughed again.

  Madame Yardley concluded by asking pardon for her appearance. She was fasting, she explained, and would be breaking her fast only this evening. She would be drinking only fruit juices and eating only bread and a little plantain and potato, perhaps some chicken broth. Hilaire held out his hand, Madame Yardley topped it with her own, rose delicately, nodded to Mary and Soulavier.

  “Dinner will be served,” Hilaire said. “Follow, please.”

  The dining room was over fifteen meters long, its oak parquet floor supporting an immense rectangular table. Chairs lined the walls on all sides, as if the table might be cleared away to allow dancing. The sensual numbing deepened as she sat on the left of Madame Yardley before an elegant antique place setting on a damask tablecloth. Fresh orchids and fruit—Mary recognized mangoes, papaya, guava, star fruit—filled a gold ceramic bowl in the center of the table, with ancillary smaller bowls placed a meter on each side.

  Hilaire sat beside and behind his mistress; he would not eat here. Mary wondered when the servant ate or performed any other human functions, if he attended Madame Yardley all the time.

  Madame Yardley slowly and painfully made herself comfortable, her face reflecting numerous small complaints before she was composed and prepared to continue. She bowed slightly to Mary as if making her acquaintance for the first time. Her eyes were so large, staring. Starving. Otherworldly. Indeed, Madame Yardley looked around the table with the same fixed smile, regarding each empty chair as if it were occupied by an intimate acquaintance deserving some special acknowledgment.

  Soulavier sat across from them. Madame Yardley’s gaze fell on him for less time than on one of the empty seats. She turned back to Mary and in French and Creole, speaking through Hilaire, asked her whether she thought Hispaniola was a good place to live compared to Los Angeles or California.

  Soulavier glanced at Mary, nose angled just slightly up, eyes narrowed in warning. Mary tried to ignore him but her caution prevailed. If Madame Yardley was as delicate as she seemed, perhaps on the edge of very poor health, burning her own protein to stay alive, then Mary could risk unpleasantness by not humoring her. She felt in her pocket automatically for the pistol, missed it, saw Soulavier noting her gesture and turned quickly to Madame Yardley.

  “Hispaniola is a lovely island, close to nature. Los Angeles is a very large city and nature has little place there.”

  Madame Yardley absorbed this thoughtfully for a moment. She has never been to Los Angeles, nor to California; as a young girl, she visited Miami, and did not find it much to her liking. So confusing. She prefers, if she is to visit the continent, perhaps Acapulco or Mazatlan, where she spent three years being educated.

  “I’ve never been to Miami, or to the others,” Mary said.

  That was a pity; she should get out of the country more often to see what the rest of the world had to offer.

  Mary agreed that was wise. She wanted nothing more than to be back in LA again and never step outside the city limits. This remained unspoken, however.

  “I have been to Los Angeles,” Soulavier said. He had not revealed this to Mary; perhaps now she knew why Soulavier had been chosen to attend her. “My father helped set up the diplomatic mission in California in 2036.”

  Madame asked him in her direct French what he thought of the city.

  “Very large,” he said first in French then in English. “Very crowded. Not then as much separated I think as it is now, into two distinct classes.”

  Is this true, two classes?

  Mary inclined.

  Soulavier said, “Those who accept the practice of mental therapy and those who do not. Generally speaking, there is discrimination against the latter.”

  All must be therapied?

  “No,” Soulavier said. “But to receive fulfilling employment you must have an acceptable mental and physical health profile. Refusal to be treated for mental or physical disorders…makes it difficult to be accepted by employment agencies. In most of the USA employment agencies screen applicants for the higher paying job opportunities.”

  Madame Yardley laughed a glassy trilling musical laugh, both pretty and disturbing. She expressed an opinion that if everyone on Hispaniola had to prove their mental health the island would blow away like a dead tree in a hurricane. All of Hispaniola’s vitality, she claimed, comes from the refusal to give in to practicalities, to admit reality too deeply into one’s head. Eyes half closed, hand clutching the damask and table edge, she regarded Mary as if she might deny this and provoke Madame Yardley to strike her right off her chair. The fixed smile had vanished.

  Mary inclined again. The smile returned like a flickering candle flame and Madame Yardley glanced up yearningly at Hilaire. The servant immediately pulled an electronic noise-maker from his pocket and pushed three sharp chirrups. Within ten seconds, more servants—mulattoes and one oriental all quite small in stature like children but fully mature—came in bearing soup bowls and a large tureen.

  Nothing was said as they ate the soup, a mildly spiced chicken broth. Mary wondered whether they would all partake of Madame Yardley’s postfast diet.

  She did not ask if Colonel Sir was going to join them later, perhaps when more substantial food was brought in. Soulavier ignored her look and slurped soup from his spoon placidly, content that for the moment there was less danger of awkwardness.

  When the soup course was finished Madame Yardley allowed Hilaire to dab at her mouth delicately. It tastes won
derful, she said, like a breath of life itself. Is Mary curious why she is fasting?

  “Yes,” Mary said.

  Madame Yardley explained that her poor husband is receiving opposition from all sides, even from his wife. She is fasting to convince him to comply with international laws, and not play the rogue; to permanently stop the shipment of Hispaniolan troops to foreign countries to fight foreign wars. He has finally agreed, and so: she breaks her fast. It is important, she concluded, for Hispaniola to assume an even higher moral posture than the countries around her. The island has the potential to be a great paradise, heaven on Earth. But such a dream will not be fulfilled so long as its peoples sin against the other peoples of the Earth or encourage their sins against each other. Is that an idealistic, perhaps a hopeless dream?

  “I hope not,” Mary said.

  Servants brought in wine. Mary accepted a small amount; Soulavier with some eagerness took a full glass of the dark red liquid. Madame Yardley had none. A dull foggy amber juice was poured for her.

  She began to speak again but this time she held up her hand to Hilaire’s mouth. “I think I remember such words now,” she said directly. “I make my husband, you treat this woman well. She has not treated well. No fault her she is among us. Give her what she desires. He says we have not what you desire.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Mary said.

  “You believe this?” Madame Yardley asked.

  Mary shook her head dubiously. “It seems I’ve been sent here for no good reason.”

  Madame Yardley’s candle of concern burned brighter in her eyes. Her expression became motherly and joyful. She leaned forward, strengthened by the soup, and said, “What you want is here. We have the man Goldsmith. I think you can see him, perhaps so soon as tomorrow.”

  Mary put down her glass of wine carefully, fingers trembling with mixed anger and shock. Soulavier seemed just as surprised.

  For a healthy mentality, what is aware in each of us at any given moment is the primary personality and whatever subpersonalities, agents or talents it has deemed necessary to consult and utilize; that which is not “conscious” is merely for the moment (be that moment a split second or a decade or even a lifetime) either inactive or not consulted. Most mental organons—for such is the word I use to refer to the separate elements of mentality—are capable of emergence into awareness at some time or another. The major exceptions to this rule are undeveloped or suppressed subpersonalities, and those organons that are concerned solely with bodily functions or maintenance of the brain’s physical structure. Occasionally, these basic organons will appear as symbols within a higher-level brain activity, but the flow of information to these basic organons is almost completely one sided. They do not comment on their activities; they are automatons as old as the brain itself