Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

  Carlyn had her moment of time out, thinking. Then she said, ‘Did you get anywhere?’

  Tralane nodded. There was no point explaining the details. ‘Can record images.’ She did not mention the thoughts, the memories she had put into the crystal without meaning to. She wasn’t ready for that herself. ‘And I can process the recordings through the Bridge into other devices. I think it’s all about natural patterns, even apparently chaotic events have patterns of a kind within them you see if you—’ She broke off, already aware she’d gone too far and was about to head into the dead zone where Carlyn couldn’t follow. ‘The input of the recording can be used to make other things, I mean not sounds.’

  She got up and opened one of the cabinets, leaning over a tottering pile of odds-and-ends boxes. It tipped and then gave way. Amid a shower of old circuit boards, wires and screws she grabbed for the thing she wanted and came away with it victorious.

  ‘What’s that?’ Carlyn asked obediently as Tralane brandished the object in her hand.

  ‘That,’ Tralane said, straightening her arm and taking aim at an empty degreaser canister on her primary desk, ‘is a gun.’ She caressed the trigger point with her index finger. There was a strange distortion of the air between the gun muzzle and the canister, like heat waves, or a jagged break in reality that was over as soon as begun. With a strange cracking, tearing sound the canister flew apart into several pieces. Powder, splinters and larger bits scattered over a wide area, some of them flaring with heat and smouldering before they went dark.

  Tralane bent her elbow and put the gun up, pointed at the roof, careful to remove her finger from the trigger. She thumbed the safety on with a caress to the grip and then looked at Carlyn’s shocked, open-mouthed face with a grin of triumph that she just couldn’t help. The smell of melted plastic and burning degreaser overrode the delicious smell of dinner but to her it was no less attractive.

  Carlyn regained her poise after a moment. ‘Who else knows about this?’

  ‘Just me,’ Tralane said.

  ‘Jardant?’

  ‘Nope. But this is not pure Sircene tech. This is from the Conclave Distribution. So, my bet is that there are other things like this out there somewhere.’ Tralane popped the pack of the gun and took the knuckle-sized crystal shard out, holding it up to the light between thumb and forefinger. ‘This is the magazine – the thing that determines the nature of the shot.’

  She looked at it as Carlyn squinted. So small. The recording inside it was simply the background burr and hubbub of a few moments at one of the Scarlets’ parties; people talking, a little music, some laughter. She could only imagine the scale and purpose of what her storm crystals were going to do.

  They heard footsteps outside in the corridor at the same moment. Tralane slipped the crystal into her trouser pocket and lobbed the now-useless gun up into the same jumble of crap it had been in before in the top section of the cupboard. A few cables fell down but they landed amid the general mess on the floor just as Tralane got back on to her seat. There was a perfunctory knock and nearly at the same instant the door opened and Minnabar leaned in, both hands on the frame. She kept her feet at the threshold as though crossing actually into the lab would burn her toes.

  ‘Mom, can you give me the keys to the solar?’

  ‘No,’ Tralane said, picking up her wine glass. She knew that Minnabar wanted to take her party up there so they could lie around under the sky feeling like miniature queens of the universe and that was fine except the last time they did it they left a stinking mess which she only discovered a week later when she went in to do maintenance on the house energy system. She’d spent an hour hoofing trash and wiping surfaces. Minna had been turned to dishwash duty for a week in response and had succeeded only in aggravating everyone by cracking, chipping or breaking almost every whole dish in the house. Plus all the protesting ‘Laters!’ that had to be endured every time the allotted hour came around.

  ‘Aww. I promise to clean up.’ Minna had adopted the whining tone of a three-year-old, slightly modified by a knowing attempt at cuteness and an evil-eyed promise of sulky retaliation.

  Tralane felt herself weaken and Carlyn’s attention on her. ‘No.’

  ‘But Mom!’

  There was apparently no back-up behind the but. But was self-evidently righteous. But.

  Tralane looked over her glass at her younger daughter. ‘Go away.’

  Minna hung even more, like a torture victim, like a saint about to be dragged away and martyred. ‘Awww… but I’ll clean up after. I promise. And the others. We’ll be good.’

  ‘I said no drinking. You covered my sofa in beer puke. No.’ The sofa had had to be burnt.

  ‘Moooo-ooommm! I’ll take care of it I swear. The others promise too. We know we were bad that one time. One time. Come on. Pleeeaaassseee.’

  Tralane picked up the nearest soft object – a worn piece of foam padding that had once housed a medium-sized power converter – and threw it at Minna’s head. ‘No. And don’t hassle Bestie.’

  ‘Who?’ Minna batted the foam away irritably, but confusion briefly overrode it.

  ‘Jardant,’ Carlyn said with an indulgent aunt’s tone. ‘And I can’t believe you really need the solar when you have such lovely rooms of your own plus the Karoo to talk about all night. Did you see him?’

  Minna pulled a face of knowing, catlike pleasure as she gave Carlyn all her attention. ‘Well Jard is fending off that runner in the kitchen although I don’t give him more than two rounds before he goes down. And I did, I did see!’

  Tralane snorted with amused irritation as Carlyn leant forwards, all agog.

  ‘I knew you’d find a way! How did you do that? I heard it was a crush.’

  Minna tossed her head. ‘That’s for me to know but…’ She hesitated, then realised it was Carlyn she was talking to and rushed on. ‘He was sooo tall, and so big, and so furry and lilac and orange and white… I swear I’ve never seen anything so freakin’ odd in all my life!’ She shuddered. ‘Eew.’

  Carlyn nodded, disappointed. ‘I guess you didn’t get close enough to make any real observations.’

  ‘I saw the Empress arrive and leave. She went right past me, this close!’ Minna held up finger and thumb millimetres apart.

  ‘Mmn,’ Carlyn wasn’t interested in Empresses except as the best examples of blood telepaths.

  ‘Better get back to your party,’ Tralane said in a commanding tone. ‘There’re jugs of new wine in the pantry. I daresay we won’t miss it if just one goes astray.’

  Minna rolled her eyes, ‘Thanks, Mom.’ She lounged away, mollified, sighing heavily at the hard state of her life.

  Tralane turned to Carlyn and shrugged. ‘Bribery with alcohol. Never fails. I wish our family weren’t so predictable.’

  Carlyn glanced up at the cupboard where the gun had rattled its last. ‘I wouldn’t call you predictable, Lane. That’s the last bloody word I’d use for you.’

  Tralane grinned, ‘Yes well. Let’s turn our minds to something useful shall we?’ She picked up the goggles and recued her recording of the Karoo. ‘My turn I think…’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ZHARAZIN

  Zharazin Mazhd followed Isabeau Huntingore from the end of the street where the secret exit of the Rose let her out into the yards. Wrapped up in her scholar’s robes and hood she didn’t make any effort to notice her surroundings. She walked silently and quickly with the tread of a missionary, focused on immaterial things. He could have walked directly behind her and she would not have been wiser. It was remarkable, considering. But then she probably had faith in the secrets she’d learned so far. He shouldn’t be surprised. She was so young.

  She hesitated on the corner and he saw her throw a book into one of the open trashcans although she barely broke stride to do it. Within moments she had gone and he was there. He reached inside and retrieved it, slipped it into an inside pocket of his overcoat – one of many for just such moments. His action was nearly as smooth as
hers. He followed her at twenty paces as she marched back to the Sun Plaza along the dark colonnades of the Library. She had a real stalk, the kind of movement he associated with women twice her age. It combined with the sensual, beautiful feel of her skin under his hands and the extraordinary performance he’d witnessed in the Rose to make her one of the most unusual people it had ever been his pleasure to spy upon.

  He had no reason to do so – no official reason such as a paid scrip – but the same instinct that had propelled him to pursue the mystery of the dark speck in the skies for its own curious sake now made him sure that there were rewarding things to be had from this pastime. Not to mention, she was Tralane’s daughter. He had schooled himself to have an eidetic memory for faces. One quick perusal of the Who’s Who every year was enough to keep him current on any notable person, right down to the least short-term lecturer in the University’s least popular subject. Isabeau Huntingore was in there high up, like all the rare blood families. And you didn’t get more rare than a Sircene maternal line crossed with an Arost paternal input. He would have suspected a child of intellectual conjecture, an experiment of lines, had he not known Tralane Huntingore well enough to see that Isabeau was purely an accident of youthful infatuation and a careless disregard for consequences.

  Of course the one thing he hadn’t seen was her face. But there were few Arost children of the right age in the city, and none with the freedom Isabeau had to roam at will. Touching her was all the confirmation he had needed. She shared Tralane’s genes and Zharazin knew those. His particular blood talent was the ability to identify lines from the touch of a single cell, the composition of a face or an individual’s scent. He was also able to predict correctly the likely outcomes of any combination of hybrids or pedigrees, any combination of individuals, purely on spec. If he’d been born female then he would have taken his place among the echelons of the Legacy as one of the invaluable Mediatrices whose wombs were capable of genetically recombining zygotes into necessary, viable or important forms, drawing on their vast Memories and the Morphatic Libraries of the Blood. A lifetime as the highest and most valued being would have been guaranteed, personality no object.

  As a male he was strictly limited to recognition and no more – a talent scout or matchmaker at best, a shoddy snooper of personal tragedy at worst. He’d been both, still was, when the money was necessary or the job essential for the furtherance of his career although he scorned the ability. It was effortless, like breathing, no challenge, no skill involved. Spying on the other hand, real spying, real information dealing, that was all about skill and instinct working together, patience, endurance, insight, timing; things worthy of respect.

  He was interested not so much by Isabeau’s perfectly ordinary reaction to Borze – they had great genetic potential which their bodies recognised with a rush of exchanges even when their minds weren’t up to the task – but by her later indifference to her own enjoyment of the athletic intervention of the two younger men.

  As he’d watched them he realised she was only half present. Most of her mind was already absorbed with something more immediately interesting. He would have given a lot to know what that was. He would have given a lot for her kind of detachment. Even watching them had made him want to bite his fingers in frustration. She on the other hand – flew like an eagle.

  The men had not cared to notice as they’d been primarily infatuated with their good luck in finding such a nubile, young girl through whom to bond with each other. Zharazin had envied them. He’d no such passion for any man. Ordinarily he didn’t wish for one. Only when he saw it and understood he had missed a facet of worthwhile experience did it occur to him to think of it. Meanwhile, in the midst of a semi-sacred spiritual act of potential transcendence, riding the fierce train of her body’s pleasures like the captain of a peerless warship, Isabeau Huntingore had remained ineffably cool and untouched, queen of everything.

  He had trouble even now as he followed her relentless tread in trying to figure out how such a girl could ever be anything other than immaculate. You could fuck her twenty ways and not puncture her, hammer like a machine and not break her. She was curious steel.

  And just fifteen minutes before that she’d been so unutterably the willing carnal property of Fadurant Borze that men were talking about it in tones of bitter envy before Borze had even left the building. They stared at him with new respect, grudging but nonetheless real. What could you do in the face of a man like that but stand in baffled acceptance?

  Now Isabeau sliced a path through Sun Plaza. Zharazin took an oblique way, only keeping her in sight, his movements languid, carefree, the antithesis of hers in a dance he had to be careful of – too skilled and it looked deliberate. Oh the difficulty of appearing accidental while being as calculated as the most rigorous horoscope. But he was spared the exultation of his best skills. For some reason she changed tack abruptly as she neared one of the better tea-tents, giving it a wide berth, then resumed her course. He realised where she was going: the palace. He almost missed the reason for her detour.

  Minnabar Huntingore, brazen bronzed girl of society, was holding court. Thank the gods for Isabeau, Zharazin thought as he saw this. Without her he would have gone unreminded of the youthful underclass, obsessed as his mistress was with the higher, harder workings of the adult minds in Glimshard. She missed a lot because of that. One day he knew it would be important and in this entirely unexpected coincidence of finding Isabeau Huntingore and following her – somewhere in there lay the key to undoing his service from Shrazade. Of course, protecting Tralane had nothing to do with it. He hesitated as this thought came unwelcome into his speeding mind, a ghost on an adjacent track – a feeling which always presaged a significant vision His bones hollowed, ready for flight. He was not up to the task of saving Huntingore from the Infomancy and the Minister of Defence. It was an iron mantle, too heavy for a mink like him.

  He was forced to pause, to mine this moment of vision. They came without warning and left the same way and must be hunted in their time and not his. He felt around in the far dark recesses of himself, in his hands and in his guts. He felt a trap on him, cold metal pressures on the backs of his hands, against his elbows and the tops of his feet even as he continued walking in the dusky, seductive sunset light. Calculating people with power were arranged against Tralane Huntingore, although they were not in position yet. That was a way off.

  He crossed a black bar of shadows where the palace banners cast flicker-edged pitfalls on to the immaculate paving. Ahead of him Isabeau Huntingore proved an untouchable course and finally he stepped back into its groove and felt the warmth of its security ease the cold of his insights a little. He became the page to her queen. He followed her under the arches and through the tented way, lined with guards who turned a blind eye to her and a weather one to him. He had a billion reasons he might go inside the palace on his own account. He was well known.

  The guards gave him disliking, slant looks that cut to the quick of who he was. No finery you can wear, they said, that can disguise your true form, your filthy foreign blood. They hated him very well for all he could have, for the secrets he must know and the places he could go and all the more because the law and the way of things prevented them laying a finger on him when up on the high Steppes they’d have been on him like a pack of dogs, ripping and tearing until nothing was left but a bloody stain.

  Mind, on the Steppe he’d have cut their throats himself long before that and left them empty shades to wander the windswept hills forlorn, forgotten by their women.

  He smiled at them, their red, bubbling deaths in his eyes, and they turned away one at a time. The fuck-you contest pleased him.

  Ahead of him, Isabeau’s knightly stride took her to the outer yards and following became difficult. There were many others around now, passing back and forth on minor businesses with the lesser offices of the city courts and other bits of formal mundanity that required signatures, papers, meetings and handshakings. Fortunately, his p
ast as a delivery boy and his subsequent elevation to diplomatic status within the Infomancy meant most of them simply assumed Zharazin was on official duties with someone else. He was able to reinforce this with smiles and the touching of the air that showed willing for a handshake without the time or effort needed to actually touch another, pointing generally where Isabeau had gone as if his meeting lay coincidentally ahead of him. He swam along this river of recognition, seen by everyone, noticed but not noted.

  His body shimmered with sensual delight in this liquid deception. He recorded it as another notch in the post he’d set up for Isabeau – part of an inner forest of record wherein he kept all his tallies – hers a slender white stripped branch stabbed into the earth with emphatic force among the varied uprights. And then she took her significant turn and he walked past, light with amazement and quite unable to pursue since there was no possible reason for him to do so.

  The door with its heavy hanging bead curtain yanked aside and tied with an old scarf, a steady, opulent darkness within, red lit if you could get your eyes to find the light, more of a nest or a den than anything else for the woman who kept it and possibly lived in it, without any kind of title; it was marked on his inner map in letters of black, red and gold. The Empress’ silent favour posted her there. Halfway between commercial Glimshard and the Court at a distance that was locally known as Safe or Summons – too far away to hit or be hit by directly, close enough to see.

  He knew very well whose offices it was, if you could give that kind of name to a hovel full of shite. He knew who Isabeau was speaking to with such careless, vigorous disgust when he overheard her say,

  ‘I’ve had second thoughts. I accept your offer of an internship or whatever it was you were offering.’ And then, a fraction of a second later, just before his walk carried him out of earshot, she added with uncertainty, ‘If it’s still open, that is.’