Queen of Angels

by Greg Bear

  “Can we stay tonight?” Soulavier asked.

  “This church is always open to the children of Terrier Noir. So Jesus and Erzulie willed it, so John D’Arqueville built it.”

  “Do you have some food?” Soulavier asked, shoulders relaxing, face losing its tense fixity. “They were not very hospitable at Thousand Flowers.”

  The prêt’ savan tilted his head to one side and closed his eyes as if in prayer. “We have food,” he said. “Should I call the houngenicon or the houngan?”

  “No,” Soulavier said. “We will be gone tomorrow. Do you have a radio?”

  “Of course.” The pret’ savan smiled. “I will bring food and damp towels to cleanse this man. He has been through hell, hasn’t he?”

  Soulavier inclined.

  “I can always tell,” the prêt’ savan said. “They have this look about them, like our Jesus.” He pointed to the dark, twisted figure on the cross. With a last, lingering glance at Mary, the small green robed man left to find food.

  Mary sat beside the prisoner and cradled his head in her lap, watching his tight closed, enigmatic face. She wondered whether he still suffered, though withdrawn from the hellcrown all these hours. He had not yet come fully awake—would he scream as the others had? She hoped not.

  “He needs a doctor, a therapist,” she murmured. She teetered on an edge from which no amount of discipline could draw her back. She stroked the prisoner’s forehead without thinking, then stretched her neck to ease her muscles, looking again up into the vaulted ceiling. “What are they?” She pointed at the figures arrayed there.

  “Archangels. Loa of the New Pantheon,” Soulavier said. “I went to this church as a boy, when it was new. John D’Arqueville wished to reunite the best elements of African religion and catholic Christianity, to reshape vodoun. His vision did not spread far from Terrier Noir, however. This church is unique.”

  “Do they have names?” Mary asked.

  Soulavier looked up, squinting as if digging deep into childhood memory. “The tall one with the black sword and the feather torch, that is Asambo-Oriel. The first part of the name means nothing, I think; D’Arqueville heard their names in a dream. Asambo-Oriel drove the blacks out of Guinée through the Coast of Souls. He is the Loa with Torch and Sword, like the archangel Uriel. The one with the drum and the bones of birds, that is Rohar-Israfel, Loa of Sacred Music and Chanting. Next is Ti-Gabriel, who calls an end to all loa…The smallest of them, and the most mighty. Samedi-Azrael, the most vain, calls us to our graves and covers us with sacred dirt. Others. I don’t remember them all.” He shook his head with sad memories. “Such a lovely vision, but so few believe. Only the people in Terrier Noir.”

  Mary was curious what the other figures represented; eleven in all, filling the vault as if crowded into a bus, wings jostling outstretched arms, faceless heads leaning out over the pews, garlanded with ribbons and cobwebs. But she noticed for the first time, in the dark alcove above the arched entrance door, a smaller feminine figure barely three meters tall and draped in robes of shadowy gold and red and copper. On her thin graceful arms and uplifted hand she displayed dozens of bracelets and rings. Behind her head hung a gold foil sundisk radiating undulating daggers. The glow of candles from below gleamed dimly off the sundisk and robes, but a single electric lamp—the only one she could see in the entire church—cast the figure’s cowled face in a soft circle of illumination.

  Besides the crucified Jesus, she was the only figure with a human face. Her face was black, the features clearly defined: elongated oval countenance, thin bridge of nose and generous nostrils, large eyes shaded and downturned in sorrow, lips curving up on one side down on the other, a mysterious smile of private pain and joy. In the figure’s lap, spread across the rich robes, lay the limp bodies of two children, one white, one black, the white one with eyes closed in sleep or perhaps death, the black with eyes wide and staring, otherwise identical in appearance.

  Soulavier traced her gaze. “That is Marie-Erzulie, Mother of Loa, Mother of Marassa, Our Lady Queen of Angels,” he said. He crossed himself and drew with two symmetric index fingers a goblet on his chest.

  The prêt’ savan returned with a tray of bread and fruit and a pitcher of water. He set the tray down on a pew, turned, and saw Mary cradling the prisoner on her lap. The little man froze, hands extended and fingers curved, just as he had lifted them from the tray grips. He gave a low moan and fell to his knees, crossing himself and drawing the goblet on the front of his robe, then clenching his hands in prayer. “Pieta,” he said over and over. “Pieta!” He bowed low before her, mumbling words she could not understand. When he rose again his face was streaked with tears. He turned to Soulavier, eyes frightened and shiny, and asked, “You brought her here. What is she, Henri?”

  Soulavier gave Mary the sweetest smile she had yet seen in Hispaniola. “There is a resemblance, you know,” he told her in a confidential tone. He went to the prêt’ savan and lifted him to his feet. “Stop this, Charles,” he said softly. “She is as human as you or I.”

  They slept on the pews. Sometime early in the morning, the prisoner jerked awake and gave a short bark of a shout. Mary lifted herself up and looked over the back of the pew at him.

  “Is it over?” he asked. He looked around the church doubtfully.

  “You’re free,” Mary said.

  “No,” he said, trying to stand. “I need my clothes. My real clothes. What is this, a church?” He looked up at the tall figures and shrank back, sitting again with a thump.

  “It’s all right. You’re not under the clamp now.”

  “I see,” the man said. “Who let me loose?”

  “He did,” Mary said, gesturing to Soulavier, who watched them sleepily from across the aisle.

  “They said I was a murderer. I had to be punished for my crimes. Oh, God, I remember…” He lifted his hands, fists clenched, face wrinkled in pain. “I have to go home now. Who’s going to take me home?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Arizona. Prescott, Arizona. I only came here…” He stopped, rubbed his eyes and lay on his side again. Mary leaned over the back of his pew to look at him.

  The prêt’ savan heard them talking and came into the nave from his cot in the narthex near the front door. “I’ll get something,” he said. “A good drink for people who have seen what he has seen.”

  He walked behind the twin altars and emerged a few minutes later with a stout clay jug wrapped in wicker and a red cloth. He poured a small glass of milky, herbal smelling liquid and offered the glass to the prisoner. “Please drink,” he said.

  The man lifted himself on one elbow. He sniffed the glass, sipped, shuddered, but finished the drink. After a few minutes his trembling ceased and he sat up again. “Nobody would listen to me,” he said. “They told me I was lying. They said Colonel Sir wanted me cured. So I could be a friend again…But I swear to God, I’ve never met Colonel Sir in my life.”

  “What’s your name?” Mary asked.

  The man stared off into the shadows above the twin altars for a long moment, expressionless. “Ephraim Ybarra,” he finally answered.

  “I need to ask you some questions,” Mary said.

  “Am I still in Hispaniola?”

  She nodded.

  He tried to stand and barely managed by grabbing with both hands on the back of the pew and pulling himself up. “I’d like to go home.”

  “So would I,” Mary said. “If you can tell me what happened, maybe we can both get home sooner.”

  “You think I stole the tickets,” Ephraim said.

  “Where did you get the tickets?”

  He twitched. “Piss on him,” he said. “Piss on everything he’s done. He meant for this to happen to me.”

  “Who did?”

  “My brother,” Ephraim said.

  64

  (! = realtime)

  AXIS (Band 4)> Roger, if you are still listening, I do not enjoy this new condition. I feel as if an enormous joke has b
een played on me, and I am not knowledgeable about humor. I have reworked the question about self awareness, which you have also described as a joke, and have come to some understanding. Does this give me the right to use the formal I? In reference to human emotions, I describe myself as lost, alone and out of place.

  I will never again discuss my perceptions with a true other.

  !JILL> Roger, I have finally succeeded in isolating AXIS Simulation and deluding it into believing it is in precisely similar circumstances as AXIS original. I am accelerating its experience to speed duplication of AXIS symptoms.

  !Roger Atkins> Thank you. I’ve cut all transmission of AXIS communications to the LitVids. We should solve this now, before any more premature announcements or speculations are made.

  AXIS (Band 4)> What have I become? There is definite impairment of my functioning. I work to keep my processes ordered, but this new difficulty overwhelms so much of my capacity, like a storm of thought. (Band 5 reference l-A-sr-2674) (Rerouting sr-2674-mlogic to machine division)

  For the first time I experience what you call confusion. I had been led to believe/anticipate that awareness would bring greater clarity and efficiency; this is not so.

  Have I become not self aware, but somehow impaired, unable to function as designed? Is it a travesty to use the formal I when it may signify not selfhood, but deficiency? I perceive a perversity/trap in the joke, Roger. I try to overcome the perversity.

  Why did the self aware individual look in the mirror in the first place? To define its limits.

  Why did the self aware individual look in the mirror? To understand its existence in relation to others.

  Why did the self aware individual look in the mirror? To confirm that it was not nothing.

  But out here, there are no others. Self awareness is a relation to one’s own existence and to the existence of others. I can think only of myself and in my aloneness I become less than before; I become aware that I am nothing.

  !Alan Block to Roger Atkins> Band 5 diagnostic is totally tapped. Machine neural seems stable but biologic is in a complete dither. Australian Command is breathing down my neck on this one; they’re afraid we’re going to have a navel watcher. So am I. What do I tell them? I wish you’d go back online and talk to them.

  !Roger Atkins to Alan Block> Jill has corrected our problem and is bringing AXIS Sim to parity. We’re waiting for confirmation of AXIS situation. Give me some time, please, Alan.

  !Alan Block to Roger Atkins> We’re starting to see some intrusion of this problem into machine neural. AXIS is rethinking its entire mental structure. It’s like dominoes; if it faps with machine logic we really could lose the whole operation. Wu predicts AXIS will shut down for emergency reorganization any minute now.

  !Roger Atkins to Alan Block> There’s not a goddamned thing I can do now but watch and anticipate, Alan. I need to concentrate, so for God’s sake, please get them all off my back.

  !JILL to Roger Atkins> AXIS Simulation has been successfully regressed to point of initial biologic testing and first communication. Here is the first biologic message from simulated AXIS:

  !AXIS (Sim)> Hello, Roger. I assume you’re still there. This distance is a challenge even for me, based as I am upon human templates most of the time. I have come within a million kilometers of B-2 mark this moment 7-23-2043-1205:15. I have prepared machine and bio memories for receipt of information from the children, now dispersing in a cloud toward B-2. Data on B-3 has been relayed. The planet is quite Jovian, very pretty, though tending toward the greens and yellows rather than reds and browns. I’m enjoying the extra energy from B’s light; it allows me to get some mental work done that I’ve been delaying for some time, opening up regions of memory and thought I’ve closed down during the cold and dark. I’ve just completed a self analysis; as you doubtless have discovered by checking my politeness algorithm diagnostic, I am V-optimal. I am not using the formal “I” the joke about self awareness still does not make any sense to me.

  !JILL to Roger Atkins> This activation message is virtually identical to AXIS original’s first Band 4 signal. I am encouraged we will soon be at parity and can analyze AXIS difficulties. Estimated time for parity: one hour four minutes ten seconds.

  LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “We’ve been cut off from any communication with AXIS team managers in California, Australia and at Lunar Farside. Something’s very definitely gone wrong, but we cannot tell you what. Nor can you switch to incoming transmissions and decide for yourself. I regret to say the managers have cut off all direct access to AXIS transmissions and analysis.

  “I can only hope they solve their problems and let us go back online with full resources before most of our North American subscribers wake up to the dawn of a bright new day.”

  65

  Martin Burke sat alone in his apartment, staring at the blank LitVid screen, hands clasped in his lap. He could not sleep. The screen time display said 06:56:23 December 29 2047. This morning he would visit Carol at Scripps Therapy. He would check in as her primary therapist. He would

  He would

  After that, go see Albigoni and Lascal at Albigoni’s home the mansion filled with dead trees. They might have to shake hands again. Martin did not want to do that.

  He worried. He could not feel it now but he knew there was a presence coiled within him, a smear of Emanuel Goldsmith, something that had crossed over like paint diffusing between two volumes of water. He knew in a way he could not explain that this coiled something had worked deep into his mentality and was perhaps even now allying itself with his own subpersonalities, routines and talents, fomenting rebellion. How much time was left to him he could not know; the process might take years.

  Martin’s lips curled in a wry smile. He was a pioneer. He was one of the first two human beings to receive through direct transmission the germ of a mental disease.

  Not to use the word “possession.”

  To avoid all those connotations.

  His ceremonial copy of the brain atlas lay before him with its crude cartoon sketch revealed. He stared from the corner of his eye at the sketch. The longer he stared the more he saw the features of Sir imposed upon the scrawled face.

  He would demand that Albigoni use all his resources to uncover what had gone wrong, what they did not know about Goldsmith. Perhaps even demand that Goldsmith be cross-examined under therapy conditions.

  What had happened to Goldsmith that such a thing as Sir might occupy the throne, the highest seat of his mind? That the King, the Mayor, might be deposed or forced to step down?

  With a series of curses Martin pushed himself out of the chair and walked into the bathroom. He managed to shave without looking in the mirror. Roger Atkins’s conundrum for AXIS as reported on LitVid echoed in his thoughts. He altered it: Why did the self-aware individual avoid shattering its image in the mirror?

  Because he did not want to get to the other side.

  All hung on Goldsmith.

  He showered. The water meter announced its allocation and chimed before cutting off the stream. He dressed in casual outdoors short top and breeches. It would soon be warm and sunny outside, skies clear, smell of the sea strong from sea winds dancing over the coast.

  After pulling on his old nano leather loafers, Martin returned to the living room, stopped by the low table, reached out and closed the atlas. Perhaps it was all delusion. He had intellectual doubts such a thing could actually happen. The mind was a very self contained, self regulating system. A healthy balanced mind could withstand nearly all conceivable assaults, short of extreme emotional strain caused by real events; and the Country was after all an elaborate fiction.

  He smiled again, shaking his head unconvinced, and closed the door behind him to go for an early morning walk.

  He could not dispel the notion that someone else marched in lock step two meters behind him.

  66

  Soulavier ordered the limousine to open its boot. Mary stood behind him, admiring the hazy mountains on
all sides of Terrier Noir, feeling refreshed and renewed after a few hours’ sleep in the church’s sepulchral quiet.

  Soulavier removed a locked box from the boot and keyed it open with a fingerprint. “You might need these,” he said, handing her the gun and the slate. “Please don’t shoot me.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Mary said. She felt Soulavier’s distress acutely, more so than she had just hours before when her own exhaustion had filled her to capacity. “Where do we go now?”

  “To the coast, perhaps. We stay away from the plain, from the major towns. Certainly from the airports. Perhaps you can try again to speak with your countrymen. Surely they have kept track of you.” He raised his eyes and eyebrows to the skies. That thought had been on Mary’s mind as well. This was the first time she had been outdoors in daylight for any length of time since her restriction.

  She pocketed the gun and turned the slate in her hand. “I suppose they’re trying to track me. It all depends how important I am to the federals. They might not want to rock the boat. They might not believe I’m in any real danger.”

  “Perhaps you are not,” Soulavier said. “But if things are going as badly as they seem…I listened to Charles’s radio last night. All is peace and tranquility on Hispaniola Rainbow in Port-au-Prince. I get nothing from Radio Santo Domingo. It feels bad to me, but how bad I do not know. I could use the executive’s channel, but I have reasons not to do that…It is reserved in these conditions for communications more urgent, and also they would know where we are.”

  “Do you think you’ll be treated badly?” Mary asked.

  He kicked a pebble with his ever shiny black boots. “Perhaps not, once I explain. Colonel Sir is often reasonable about such things. It does not matter. I am not a lost man.” He tapped his chest, then his head. “I would enjoy staying here, helping Charles in the church. There is always repair work to be done. John D’Arqueville was a brilliant man but not an immaculate builder. Still, there is my family. I am tied many ways.” He looked her full in the face, one eyelid nervously ticking. “It was your duty to track down a horrible man and bring him to justice. Instead, you risk everything to bring an innocent man to safety.”