Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

  ‘And this…’ She ran her fingertip over the big curved shape that cut the image, a blue glow its edge. She let her finger move into the shaped area and cross a blue and white part, then stop over a green strip. ‘This is where we are.’

  He was about to say, ‘In the sky?’ when the last traces of what he had consumed allowed him to understand something so alien to him that the perceiving of it made the whole world come to a stop. She was showing him the world itself, from the outside.

  ‘Tzaban?’ Her voice seemed to come from far away. He felt a vast, icy emptiness open up inside him and expand rapidly, pushing everything away to the edges of his awareness. He moved away from her and on to the bed, curled up as small as he was able to and wrapped his imaginary tail around him with his face pushed into the pillow that she used, holding to the scent as he tried to find himself in the sudden new space within.

  TRALANE

  Tralane put the astrolabe down and reached out carefully to touch the Karoo man’s shoulder, but even when she rested her hand there he didn’t react. He was still breathing so, after waiting a minute she got up and waited a little more, putting those things she wanted to take back to the laboratory into her pack and putting the rest away under the cot. She didn’t blame him for his silence. When she’d realised what it was, she hadn’t had a thing to say either. She should take it with her and share this but, instead, a strong inner prompt made her slide it out of sight into the bag with the gun. Given what they had already discovered about the artefact she felt this could wait. She had a terrible suspicion in her mind and she didn’t want to share it without proof.

  Exhaustion and the revelations of the last few hours made her lightheaded. She went to the rec room and made herself food from the dry stores, though she could barely eat it. Even the smell made her think of what Tzaban had done and its goodness was overridden by the remembered odour of blood. She made herself eat it, breathing through her mouth, and when she was joined by Carlyn and a few others she reviewed their maps.

  Tzaban’s travels and meals had revealed areas that they were confident they could bring to an active status. The power lines were mostly undamaged in this section and had been closed down by wards and hexes rather than collapses of infrastructure. The language that the artefact’s devices used was archaic but sufficiently familiar from previous archaeological explorations that the linguists had been able to produce a work-in-progress iconography that was reliable in all the core symbols. None of them doubted their abilities to waken the deeper layers of the object, they simply didn’t know what to expect if they did.

  ‘We need to go down and personally investigate these rooms,’ Tralane said, pointing to the most likely looking areas for nexus points. ‘Some of them are fire damaged and full of debris but these here, near the central core, are fine.’

  ‘That’s where the Karoo are,’ one of the power mages said.

  ‘Were,’ Tralane corrected. ‘The one that used these is dead, remember.’

  ‘So he says.’

  Tralane ignored this. She was used to the negativity and she couldn’t fault their fear. ‘The thing is if they wanted to kill us all, they would have done it already. That’s not it.’

  Carlyn looked at her and she saw the deep concern etched in her friend’s face, kind lines made black with wear and tear. ‘How can you be sure what they want?’

  ‘They want us in here doing this for now,’ Tralane said. ‘The Karoo here are in competition. I… I don’t want to cast aspersions on the dead but the two who died were among the weakest of us in terms of ability. And if the Karoo gain insight by consuming then plausibly they were just like a catchup course in what to look for next.’

  ‘So, what, we should make a list of the dumbest ones?’

  ‘No.’ Tralane said firmly, hand down. She wanted to nip that crap in the bud before the grim humour got out of control. ‘Everyone is needed now. There aren’t enough of us otherwise.’

  ‘To do what? Are we still just researching before we’re told to get out?’

  ‘Usually we preserve everything and go slowly but we’re running out of time, I think,’ Tralane said. ‘All being well, reinforcements should get here in a few days’ time. But when they do we should expect another fight so let’s consider that the end of the dig. We could lose access to this for ever at that point. I think we should go inwards as far as we can while we have the chance. It’s the only time we’re going to get. I propose that we set up teams, one to stay here, one to move to this region where we think there might be some central library node and another to this point over here where the majority of the useful objects have been found.’

  ‘You know,’ Carlyn said, drinking from her cup slowly. ‘One thing keeps bothering me a lot. We’ve found things. A lot of the power grid is still good. We can even use our own technology to link with what’s here, up to a point, but although there are all kinds of things used by people and for people there are no people. No skeletons. Nothing. Not a trace.’

  ‘Magi artefacts are always like that,’ a doctor from technical synergy said. ‘Nothing new there.’

  ‘I don’t really buy the idea that they were put here for us by greater powers,’ Carlyn said to him. ‘No offence.’

  ‘Everyone has their theories,’ he said, shrugging.

  ‘Whatever the reason, we have to move while we can,’ Tralane said, trying not to feel the sink in her chest that Carlyn’s reservation had produced. ‘I will be going to this centre on the hope that it’s an information nexus. Doctor Shore, I think you should head the other group and see if this has its own power core we can use. Our batteries are getting too low otherwise. We can operate basic lights and doors but further exploration will be impossible by tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘What about the Karoo?’

  All the faces turned to her.

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ she said, as if she was Tzaban’s keeper. ‘He’ll come with me but he knows the way around down there. He’ll be able to warn us if anything moves. Take weapons.’

  When they had scattered and only Carlyn was left she moved quietly closer and murmured,

  ‘You know it’s like you’ve got your own personal bodyguard and we’re all on our own here. If he doesn’t eat us first, that is.’

  Tralane looked at her. ‘I know.’

  Carlyn sighed. ‘Do you trust him or do you think he’s just going to save you till last?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s possible.’

  Carlyn smiled at her and rested her hand on Tralane’s arm. It didn’t feel comforting enough.

  ‘Do you have feelings for him, ’Lane?’

  ‘Hm?’ She glanced at her friend. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nobody would be surprised. The big alpha beast, hunting for you, protecting you. Look at what happened when he first came to town. It was like a fiesta. Like he was the missing link between every adult woman and her own happiness. I mean, that could have been the presence and the Empress’ teenage dreams having their effect but – who’d say no? Even now, when he’s half as big again and twice as ugly. You’re the chosen one, ’Lane.’

  ‘He didn’t choose me,’ Tralane said.

  ‘Yeah. All the same, can I be on your squad? I don’t have much faith in Shore’s ability to turn soldier.’

  Tralane nodded. She felt so glad that Carlyn was there, and at the same time so sad that she was. She didn’t want her friend there, mixed up with this. She caught Carlyn’s arm, and seeing they were alone said, ‘There is a thing. About the Karoo. It’s possible that, even if he wanted to guard us, if a queen came he might be turned on us anyway.’

  ‘That’s why they’re all male in here, isn’t it? It makes sense. They might even be competing for other queens, not only for themselves.’

  ‘He’s the most human-like Karoo I’ve ever seen. By a long way.’

  ‘What does that mean though, in the end?’

  Tralane shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  Carlyn hugge
d her and Tralane stood there in the embrace and wished it was going to last. She wanted only to be home again, struggling with her own few cache pieces during the day, bothered by minor responsibilities, with Minna and Isabeau safe in the house. But it was too painful to consider that all in the past. She opened her eyes and let go.

  ‘You always were so trusting,’ Carlyn said, almost regretfully. ‘Be careful, ’Lane.’

  ‘Hm, what does that mean?’ Tralane smiled, though she was unsettled.

  ‘Means be careful. I’m going to get some things together.’

  ‘What time is it? We’ll go in two hours. I need some sleep. Meet back here.’

  They kissed and parted. Tralane took water with her back to her cot. When she got there Tzaban was gone, a few white hairs all that remained. She took her boots off, getting into the cot and finding it still warm. She wrapped herself in the thin quilt, muttered the charm that heated the thin cotton wadding, and closed her eyes, assuming that he had gone on a patrol for lack of information. As she always did in that situation, she reached under the bed and pulled out the gun, set it to a narrow focus, checked the power and safety, and put it under the pillow. As with most magi, she had a good internal time sense and could wake when she wished to. She gave herself the maximum she could. Ten minutes was enough to make ready later. It wasn’t as though any of them would be carrying a lot of gear besides basic toolbelts. She hoped he would be back in time.

  As it turned out he was back only forty minutes later. She came out of a blank slumber to the sound of his undressing movements and the long shadow of his crossing the curtained wall in the glow of the dim witchlight she had left. Murmurs and voices, scrapes and shuffles told the story of others trying to rest or study at their spots nearby. On the other side of the room heavy breaths and sighs denoted other activity.

  Normally he slept on the floor and he was moving her boots aside now to act as a headrest when she reached out of the cot and took hold of his arm, tugging it. There was no hesitation or resistance as he obeyed and got into the bed with her. It was extremely cramped. He had to wrap himself around her completely, spooned, so she rested in the tuck of his body, exactly where she had wanted to be.

  ‘They are not close,’ he said, though she hadn’t asked him aloud, his voice a murmur, arm under her head and over her as if they did this all the time. ‘They have gone down into the depths. I think they are also short on time. Look for something perhaps. Make trail you will follow.’

  He was so comforting with his size and warmth. She snuggled backwards into him, giving him her full trust, hearing Carlyn’s voice in her mind warning her, though it was far too late for that kind of warning anyway. Carlyn could not have understood why Tralane felt completely secure with him, no more than Tralane could have explained it to her. She felt sure that if there was going to be a turning point – not that she believed that was possible, entirely – it was at least not now, not yet. ‘They are leading us?’

  ‘Yes, sure. I think so,’ he said and all the comfort in the world could not prevent a sick feeling chilling her from gut to bones. Of course, he wasn’t the only one who had eaten a lot of human lately. She realised only now, stupidly, that they could have been listened to all the time but they had assumed the Karoo were animals and unable to understand. They had assumed the Karoo had no interest in the object other than the mere fact of it being stuck in a piece of ground they considered their territory.

  ‘They don’t mind dark,’ he said. ‘Find a lot of things. Wonder.’ His hand was linked with hers, fingers through fingers. His thumb rubbed casually over the top of her thumb.

  ‘Mmmn,’ she replied, hoping he would stop. She didn’t want to know more right then about what else they could do that she hadn’t bargained for and knew nobody in the Imperium had thought about even for one minute. So the Karoo research team looked like this, and their interdepartmental rivalry was homicidal. She smiled for a second, thinking of it that way, but the nausea didn’t abate. Sleep, longed for, eluded her. Vast gulfs of questions stood between her and it.

  ‘Tzaban,’ she said, trying to be quiet enough that they would not be overheard. ‘Karoo male and female – are they the same as people, as human sexes. I mean, is it for having children?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is for gathering and for making. There’s no human word for that.’

  ‘So, are all the males like each other?’

  ‘No. Fit for place, time, business. Made for purpose. Females make, and hm, another kind of Karoo grows. Like plants. It is not like animals walking, talking, doing. It is like grass, growing, sustaining. Has no, uh, no focus, no mind, only energy, good and bad.’

  ‘How human are you. I mean, is it just a look? Do you – that is, do you function like a human male? Is that how Karoo gets into the human population?’

  ‘Touch, bite, that is how usually. If a female wishes, she can make a human a little bit Karoo. They would not know it. That is how it gets in. I cannot make a human baby with a human female. I can only bite or change energy.’

  ‘Do you feel possessive about me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The queen did that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You are most able to see this thing, learn its secrets.’

  ‘So it’s not that you want me?’

  ‘Man does. Karoo not. I understand. I am very like human, enough to feel and know what you are asking. If I was not, how would I be able to translate well?’

  She started. ‘You’re a translator? I mean, that is your purpose?’

  ‘Yes. It took me a long time to realise what my purpose was but it is to translate, to research humans. Yes. Like you research this cask in the ground and other magical things.’

  ‘You didn’t do much translating for us. You just warned us off coming here.’

  ‘You didn’t ask for translations. You persisted in trespass and I must warn you. And I am not your translator. I have said many times, Karoo is this and that, Karoo does not accept this and that. Nobody listens.’

  ‘Tzaban if I were to offer to share with you everything I know, would that mean you didn’t have to… eat me, let’s just say, for the sake of argument?’

  He paused. ‘That needs a lot of trust. Karoo does not trust humanity. They always lie. But the flesh does not lie. Not ever.’

  ‘If you kill me, there won’t be others. Not many. Not enough. If you kill me, this channel you have to discovering things you can’t know otherwise is gone. Do you understand that? Engineers are rare. My kind doubly so. Once you’ve eaten us up, that’s it. No more knowledge. You’ve been around. You know it’s true.’

  Another pause and she actually felt him smile; the change of the air, the sound of his lips and breath, the warmth against her neck. ‘Yes, Engineer. That is why I am yours now, and you are mine.’

  She wanted to turn and object to this in the strongest terms but, despite the outrageousness of the claim, nothing in her was able to deny it. What did you expect, she thought grimly, the Karoo are writers in blood, not only readers. Her jaw worked as her mouth opened and shut trying to articulate a protest that didn’t have a word to its name. What would he say again – I told you not to come. ‘You belong to the Empress,’ she finally whispered.

  ‘That is a formality that has no weight here,’ he returned. ‘Humans will take words for truths. So that is what I give them.’

  ‘And what do you want, Tzaban?’

  Another of those pauses. ‘Your question has no meaning for me,’ he said.

  She turned around, no mean feat in the bed as there was only enough space for one person and he was already the size of two. She found a way to balance at the edge, her face looking at his, both of them resting on the thin pillow.

  At this range, she realised that some of the illusion of his size was in how he moved and commanded space. His head was only a little larger than hers. The lower half of his face projected very slightly, and his mouth contained some alarmi
ng teeth though, at close range, she could see them slotted efficiently together, canine points stuck into recesses in the opposite gum, so he didn’t look so very different with his long mouth closed. The eyes were alarming at any distance. From twenty centimetres away their nacreous quality was more evident, rainbows on the sheen of the surface over that bright gold and yellow. They were sun-bright though the strip lights gave them a sickly quality. In the dim shaded colours of his face they were so distinct it was difficult not to look at them and be absorbed into their empty black slits.

  ‘All right. What will you do?’ She saw old blood still collected at the base of his whiskers. His nose was the delicate dark purple of an opium poppy’s heart and she touched it with her finger, surprised to find it velvety, like horse nose, not skin like human.

  ‘What I must.’

  She gave up. She could not get to the bottom of her lack of fear – it made no sense. She had heard him reply to questions in dead men’s voices and seen the evidence of his behaviours in all other ways. Her head was full of reasons to escape him, get rid of him. She could still feel the bulk of the gun under her side of the pillow. Her body wanted him however, trusted and loved him. She felt like a little girl again when her head touched his shoulder and felt his warmth and heard his heartbeat.

  She woke with him patting her gently.

  ‘Time to get up,’ he said. He was already dressed and ready, old mud and blood fell in dust off his leather armour as he straightened and checked the position of his daggers.

  Tralane got up and put on her outermost set of overalls, tool-belt and the gun. She carried a pack of other items which she wanted with her and went to collect rations and water at the meeting point. The nap was better than nothing but it was the fear of moving out of their safe area that had her nerves running before they had sorted out the communications plans.