A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Before leaving, Ellel had called together several young Family members who were known zealots and faithful followers. She had given them weapons and a key to her quarters, with instructions to go there at the first sign of any revolt and hold the rooms against invasion.

  Shortly after hostilities had begun at dawn, some Ellels and Anders had taken up whatever weapons were at hand and had gone to fight the Artemisians and gangers, plunging through the gates with a fine disregard for the reality of the situation. They were surprised and dismayed when they came under fire from the walkers and were pinned down outside the gates. While these Domers were putting themselves at risk, Ellel’s zealots had barricaded themselves in Ellel’s apartment to await whatever happened. Strangely enough, nothing happened for some little time, and they were growing weary of their duty and hungry for news by the time the guard they had left at the end of the corridor dived through the door to announce the approach of Berkli, Mitty, and a half-dozen other men.

  Two Ellel adolescents had been stationed at either side of the door “Are they going to attack us?” one of them asked the other. “Should we attack them?”

  The youngster he queried answered the question by firing an indiscriminate burst down the corridor.

  “We could have asked them first,” said the other, plaintively “We don’t even know what’s happening.”

  The Berkli-Mitty group fetched makeshift barriers and, pushing these ahead of them, came far enough down the corridor to be heard.

  “When the walkers come in, they’re going to kill us all,” shouted Mitty. “I don’t care what Ellel told you. The walker programming is breaking down! Remember how the children were killed in the marketplace? They’re all behaving that way now, and they’ll kill you just as dead as they’ll kill us!”

  There was a momentary lull in the firing from inside before the youth who had shot first shouted an obscene reply and let loose a fusillade.

  Those in the corridor waited for the firing to die down.

  “Idiots,” muttered Mitty.

  “He’s telling you the truth!” Berkli cried. “If one of you would like to go look over the eastern wall, we’ll give you safe passage.”

  This time a considerable pause, during which those in the corridor could hear voices raised, some angry, some plaintive. A pale young face thrust itself around the doorframe. “I’ll go look,” said the young man in a voice that squeaked.

  “Fine,” said Mitty “But hurry up about it.”

  He scuttled past, so intent upon glaring at them that he came almost to a stop.

  Berkli said, “You’re Vans Ellel, aren’t you? Well, hurry. Ellel won’t want to come back and find her whole Family dead!”

  The youngster’s eyes widened, and he scampered off.

  “Vans?” asked Mitty.

  “I get him mixed up with his brother,” sighed Berkli. “Twins, about fourteen Ellel’s best followers are about that age. They have good minds and no experience. I was that age once I, too, thought I could remedy the world with a little direct action.”

  “What’s keeping him!” demanded Mitty.

  A few long moments passed “Here he comes,” said Berkh.

  The youngster came at top speed. “They are!” he cried. “They’re killing Ellels and Anders outside the gate!”

  He went on, and again they heard voices raised from inside. Shortly an arm emerged, waving a towel, and the youngsters trailed out, half a dozen of them.

  “We didn’t know,” they said apologetically. “Honestly. Ellel just told us to keep you out of here. We didn’t know.”

  Mitty had no time for recriminations. He found the locked door to the closet Qualary had spoken of, then he and three of his technicians began arguing how to get into it without setting off anything irreparable.

  Deep in the woods to the west, the stones piled high upon the walkers began to shake and tumble. The earth vibrated, as though a volcano were erupting, and a tower of dust rose from the rock pile. A walker arm emerged, then a walker head, then a walker entire, who began dismantling the rock pile and letting the buried soldiers loose once more.

  Above them on the wall of the canyon, weary Heroes glanced at one another in what would have been called despair among men less brave. They turned their horses and rode back toward the city. Perhaps someone there had thought of something else to try.

  So close to the wall that he was unseen from above, Abasio brandished his power lance and muttered every filthy word known to gangers as he parried and thrust and dodged and leaped. Tom’s device would have been very useful if the man could just aim the damned thing. Eventually, the number of walkers destroyed might add up to something No doubt they had already disposed of several dozen, but meantime, all he, Abasio, could do was try to keep them at a distance while Tom kept yelling, “Give me a minute, just a minute, I ought to get a bunch with this, a bunch, just give me a minute …”

  A new sound obtruded on the cacophony of battle, a high voice that cut through the clangor, the grunting, and the shouting with crystalline clarity:

  “Abasio, Abasio, Abasio the Cat!” the voice shrilled, a cry taken up by a hundred other voices.

  Abasio glanced up. Across the heads of the walkers he saw a waving banner and a high chair carried on the shoulders of heaving men CummyNup was carrying the banner, and Sybbis was standing in the chair, pointing toward him. She shouted again, and her bearers turned in his direction bellowing, “Abasio, Abasio the Cat!”

  The momentary distraction had been all the walkers needed. Abasio was struck from one side and felt himself falling endlessly down into a scarlet-black maelstrom.

  In the forest, Bear turned on his hind legs, growling a futile challenge, as three of the walkers worked their way closer and closer.

  Coyote lay stunned behind a rock while other animals and monsters ranged across him and around him.

  Black Owl, recumbent, stabbed with his lance at the walker above him. He was lying in a pool of his own blood and did not think he would rise from this place again.

  Wide Mountain Mother watched and cursed while her daughters worked among the bodies of the wounded and slam.

  At the gate, a clot of Ellels and Anders tried to flee back through the gate and were pursued by walkers who then began attacking every person they saw inside the Place.

  And in Ellel’s closet, Mitty sweated, cursed, and said over his shoulder to Berkli, “I wish you’d thought of this earlier, Berkli. I wish it hadn’t taken so long to get into the closet. I wish I’d been quicker figuring out what this thing is set for. Really, you should have thought of this first.”

  “I know,” growled Berkli. “Will you hurry!”

  “I have hurried. Well, as they say, do or die. This is it, or we’re all dead!”

  He punched in a signal, then another, and another yet.

  Inside and outside the wall the walkers staggered. They moaned They stopped. They gazed sightless, at nothing. They cried out, a vast inhuman cry of loss or despair or some totally indecipherable feeling, perhaps only an enormous severance, and fell Row on row. Rank on rank. Black helmets and red and gold, like beads from a necklace, dropping like wheat from the scythe, eyes going blank, voices going mute, falling down in their hordes.

  From the top of the sky the Griffin stooped, screaming, dropping in a great flurry of scaled wings at the foot of the wall near where Tom Fuelry still crouched over his device. Any view of those fallen there was lost under the flailing of great wings and a tangle of Gaddirs and gangers, struggling to rise.

  The Griffin rose again, half seen through a cloud of dust. It arrowed away to the north.

  Silence.

  Silence utter. As though the world held its breath.

  Sybbis leaped to the ground and ran to the place Abasio had been, pulling and tugging as she searched among the bodies, crying Abasio’s name. Where was he? Who could tell if he was there or not? There were bodies in the pile who might be Abasio. Faces were disfigured, torsos and limbs were mangled.
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  “Abasio!” she screamed. The gangers took up the cry, making the canyon ring with the sound.

  “He not here,” said CummyNup, as he sadly rummaged among the fallen. “He dead, Sybbis.”

  She had tears on her face. Over the past days, she had built him into something more than merely mortal, something that could not be allowed to die. “Not!” she cried, whirling to face her followers “Gone, not dead. Basio the Cat, he got nine lives Basio, he can’t die.”

  “Gone,” they cried obediently, exalted by the moment “Gone, not dead.”

  Above them on the road the feathered warriors caught their breaths and raised their own war cry. From beyond them, away south, came a howling and yelping of animal packs, and from farther yet came the bell-like noise of sword hilts striking shields.

  As they turned about and worked their slow way northward into the rocky wilderness and forest lairs, even the monsters sang an awful paean of victory.

  Berkli clapped Mitty on the back, wordlessly, then hugged the man and wept unashamedly.

  Deep in Gaddi House, the old man bowed his head and shook it slowly to and fro.

  “Pity,” he said “Always, such a pity.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Late afternoon, wearing on to the close of a sunless day. Sparse snow, whirling, refusing to settle. Blood turning to dark ice; the wounded cursing or crying out as they are lifted and carried away to warmer places beside hastily built fires, where skilled Gaddirs or Artemisians are gathered to offer succor. Bodies chilling into death as other Artemisians and gangers move sadly among the slain. Everywhere the stink of walkers, their rigid forms, their staring eyes. They are not dead or dying. They are merely inactivated. Merely quiescent. Firelight reflects from their red orbs, giving an appearance of life, and rescuers shudder, looking hastily elsewhere.

  In the Place of Power, Ellels mutter in their homes, speaking of their leader’s rage when she returns to find what has happened They are impotent. Every Ellel with any capacity for leadership is on the shuttie Anders huddle in their pavilion, speaking worriedly of the strange alliance the day has brought forth Forsmooth Ander is among them. Though he should have gone, a last- moment indisposition (so he said) prevented it Now he moves restlessly among his kindred, trying to draw the severed lines of power into his own hands.

  Only certain Mittys and Berklis are out, working methodically from fallen walker to fallen walker, each of them armed with a small, hastily built device that will, so says The Mitty, do more than merely deactivate The walkers, wherever they are, must be located one by one and once and forever killed, their bodies dragged to a rocky pit, and in that place, burned.

  In the control section of the shuttle, Ellel awakes from a days-long sleep. Ander is no longer beside her. He has gone to his own space to rest, at least, the telltale before her says that space number two is occupied, so she assumes he is resting.

  She yawns, leaning forward to look out the windows onto the universe. There before her something sparkles, something glitters, something not natural, a created thing, a gem against the darkness of heaven. Beyond it is the luminous slice of the moon, a slender arc, rimming the earth’s shadow.

  Tiny explosions of joy erupt inside her, like the explosions of firecrackers, one after another, little poplets of happiness. Herself, here, as she planned to be. The station there, growing visibly larger as she watches. The moon, lovely in its pearly splendor. Soon she will be there, she and her walkers, and her people. The weapons will be dismantled and stowed aboard. Perhaps some walkers and people will stay on the station. There have been discussions of that possibility. And there will be walkers on the moon!

  The station is closer. It looks much as she has envisioned it, much as the plans describe it. A huge wheel spinning in space, attached by four spokes to an unmoving hub where the shuttle will dock. And there, protruding from the unmoving hub, are the particular things she is most interested in. The mighty sun cannons that will make her invincible upon earth, their lenses glittering, almost as though in greeting.

  “Oh, Daddy!” she murmurs in her delight. “Look at them! Will you look at them!”

  To her eyes they have an elegance, a simplicity that she finds lovely. According to the accounts she has seen, they were tested on earth before they were installed here, so she knows they will work on earth as they do here. With considerably less efficiency, true, but they will work. Of all possible earthly opponents, only the Edgers have worried her until now. The Edgers are enigmatic. They are self- contained and self-satisfied. But when the Edgers know she has these, they will not dare stand against her. Not for long, at any rate.

  And there, nearby—the unfinished starship! Just as she has been told. Actually, it is less finished than she hoped, but still—nothing that can’t be managed. Later. What a pity Ander didn’t stay here in the control section. He won’t be able to see from where he is! She thinks of waking him and discards the notion. This time is too precious. She thinks of arousing Daddy and letting him watch the approach, discarding this notion as well. Re-creating him was an indulgence. It was a kind of madness. She has known that all along, but when she could not let the world see the reality of Empress Evel, she needed that secret source of support and confirmation. What happened to her face, her body, had not dissuaded her. But now she laughs abruptly at revelation Here, now, she doesn’t need him anymore!

  Slowly, slowly, the station comes closer, the great wheel growing until it occupies the entire window, until she can see only part of it: the hub, to her left, its bay gaping.

  She shifts uncomfortably. The shuttle should be coming directly into that bay, but instead it seems aimed at the empty space between hub and wheel. A spoke of that wheel slides across her vision. Space Space. Another spoke slides by, closer. Space. Space. And a spoke yet again, almost touching the shuttle! Barely clearing before the shuttle moves past it!

  The shuttle has gone past! Past the station! It has slid between two spokes of the wheel with contemptuous ease. Leaving the station behind.

  Frantically, Ellel brings the rear viewers onto the screen, verifying what she already knows. The station is behind them. They have not stopped at the station.

  Has the fool girl misunderstood? Does she believe they intended to go to the moon first? Surely not!

  Ellel releases her belt, flinging herself up with such force, she bumps her head on the panel above herself She pulls her way toward the guidance booth. The girl still sits, as unmoving as before. Did Ander give her some other instruction? Is this his fault? Breathing hard, Ellel goes on by, back past the toilets and the galley into the living space, stopping aghast at the sight of her own door open Unlocked and open. And inside, exposed to the view of anyone, everyone, what has been her own secret Ander! Who else but Ander?

  Raging, she goes past, to the second cubicle, stops at the open door, storms in, then catches herself with a scream of half-fury, half-surprise as floating red globules stir in the air she has disturbed by her entry, wobble and bump against her, to break stickily against her clothing, against her skin, staining her with blood.

  Blood. Ander’s blood. And he, bobbing around the space like an unwieldy balloon. And the door beyond his open, and the next. All of them, open.

  Raging, screaming, she goes down the long tubelike corridor, seeing in every cubicle the same, bodies still strapped into bunks with great globules of blood floating everywhere. Dead. All of them dead Anders and Ellels both!

  Howling, she catapults back to the guidance booth. Her hand on the girl’s wrist. No pulse. Her hand on the girl’s neck. No pulse. Her hand on the breast. No breath. The girl is no longer living. Despite the hostages, the girl has brought them this far and then died. Died!

  And there, behind her ear, a small wound. A tiny, precise wound. Unlike the other carnage, this wound has bled hardly at all.

  Was it Ander who did this? Ander who did all this?

  A chuckling sound. She looks up to see the bird, the strange bird, the bird with the rapier b
eak sitting upon a pipe that runs along the central corridor. There is blood upon its beak, and it is watching her.

  Ander did not do this.

  Stunned into utter quiet, Ellel looks out the glassy panes once more in the direction of their flight, seeing all too clearly where they are going. Their impetus will take them past the moon, beyond the moon, and on toward the silent mockery of the oh-so-distant stars.

  Behind her, the guardian-angel chuckles sadly once more.

  The former hostages had assembled on the terrace above the canyons, to lean upon the parapet while Nimwes and Qualary set out tea and hot soup, and Tom, with bandaged head and arm, fumbled with the controls of the air screen that warmed the place. His Wisdom was there, and a scatter of Gaddirs.

  “Did your Hero survive?” His Wisdom asked Oracle and Drowned Woman, who were huddled together over their teacups.

  “We don’t know,” said Oracle. “Someone said they’re tending their own wounded, but no one has come to say who lived and who died.”

  “Ah,” said His Wisdom. “And what of Bear and Coyote and our other talkative friends, Tom?”

  Tom shrugged and replied wearily, “I don’t know, sir. Give me a minute, and I’ll go find out.”

  In a bleak voice Arakny said, “When the battle ended, I went down to speak with Wide Mountain Mother, and she told me Black Owl is dead. Olly and Abasio knew him.” She did not speak of the other wounded or dead, many of whom she herself knew well.

  At her mention of Olly and Abasio, a tiny ripple of movement ran through the group: pained shifts and glances, compressed lips, a wiping of sudden tears Olly was gone, and Abasio had been killed at the foot of the wall.

  “I was amazed to see giants fighting on our side,” murmured Oracle to no one in particular. “I had not foreseen such a thing.”

  “I don’t think they were fighting on our side out of any sense of conviction or alliance,” said Tom, half-angrily. “I think they were just doing what Griffin told them to do.”

  “Orphan told me a little story about a griffin, a long time ago,” mused Burned Man. “Remember, Oracle?”