Fallen

by Claire Delacroix

  Montgomery glanced up to find Lilia watching him. "Careful, Montgomery," she said, her tone mischievous. "You keep doing stuff like that and I might start to like you."

  Montgomery felt a dull flush rise on the back of his neck. He blurted out his foremost thought. "Why do you think Fitzgerald's death wasn't an accident?"

  She inhaled and glanced away, her lips tightening. He didn't think she would answer him, but her words fell in a sudden torrent. "Gid was a statistician, a mathematician. He thought in terms of probabilities."

  Montgomery remembered the first hundred digits of pi coiling around Fitzgerald's chest and understood another tattoo. "The probability of dying of radiation poisoning when you open your visor in a hot zone is pretty high."

  Lilia nodded. "Gid used to joke that radiation was natural selection for Nuclear Darwinists."

  "I'd think it was an occupational hazard."

  "No. We prepare for it." She shook her head. "Gid said that only stupid Nuclear Darwinists die of radiation poisoning. We have the gear. We have the training. We witness the effects." She sighed. "And once you've seen someone die of radiation poisoning, you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy."

  "But he opened his visor."

  "No." She shook her head vehemently. "No. Gid was the one who could calculate maximum exposure time in his head, given radiation levels, even to the point of taking protective gear and monthly exposure into account. The man was a human calculator. If he was conscious, he would never ever have opened his helm in a hot zone. And if he was unconscious, he couldn't have done it."

  "Which means?"

  Lilia's lips set. "Which means that someone did it for him."

  Montgomery looked away from her. "There's another possibility, Lil," he said quietly. "He could have done it on purpose."

  Suicide.

  The unspoken word hung between them. The way she caught her breath told Montgomery that Lilia had thought of that before. He looked up and saw her dismay, saw the tears she blinked away.

  "Never," she said fiercely. "Gid would never do that."

  But it was exactly what she was afraid of.

  "He denounced you," Montgomery reminded her. "You could have been the one who opened his visor."

  "He didn't denounce me, not directly." She frowned. "Just my angel-shades. Besides I would have had to have been in New Gotham to do it, if I could have done it. I'm sure the databanks show that I haven't left the Frontier in years."

  "If there's a way to fool the databanks, you'd know it."

  She met his gaze. "I didn't kill Gid, Montgomery. I fought with him, but I didn't kill him. I didn't even know where he was."

  He leaned against the railing beside her. "It seemed as if you didn't think it was him when his body was found."

  "I didn't." She gestured helplessly. "We fought. I threw him out." She swallowed and glanced at him, her eyes a vivid blue. "I don't do well with distrust and unfair accusations."

  Montgomery could believe that.

  "My angel-shades aren't frauds. They're not surgical adaptations. I found them just as they are." Her lips tightened. "Gid should have believed me."

  "I do."

  Lilia eyed him for a long moment, then turned away. "Leave me alone, Montgomery."

  He felt a pang of sympathy for her. She was afraid that she had driven Fitzgerald to suicide, and her need to know the truth was what had compelled her to finally leave the Frontier.

  Montgomery hoped that she proved her fear wrong.

  He wanted to help her do it.

  He touched her chin, forcing her to look at him. He saw dread and defiance mingled in her gaze, as well as an unexpected vulnerability. His first assessment had been right: Lilia wasn't as cold as she wanted everyone to believe. "Even if Fitzgerald did kill himself, Lil, it's not your fault."

  Lilia stared at him, then pointed across the alley. "Look!"

  Rachel had pulled the blind aside to look out the office window.

  "She's waiting for someone," Lilia said lightly, as if she hadn't looked so vulnerable just a moment before. Montgomery wasn't fooled. "Someone who's late."

  The suicide subject was closed.

  "How do you know?" Montgomery moved closer behind Lilia. He put a hand on her waist and felt her trembling.

  She lifted her chin. "I don't, but if there isn't a story, I can make one up." Again, he caught a glimpse of Lilia's impish grin, the one that made his blood pressure rise.

  Meanwhile, Rachel glanced over her shoulder.

  "Then that person has arrived," Montgomery said, wondering who it might be. He moved his thumb across the small of Lilia's back, across the laces and boning of her corset.

  He felt her straighten, heard her take a breath. He was glad to know that he wasn't the only one affected by proximity.

  "And she knows that person," Lilia said. "I sure didn't get a smile of welcome like that."

  Rachel closed the blind. A bit of light showed around its perimeter for a minute, then was extinguished.

  They stood and watched for a moment, then Lilia swore with sudden force. Montgomery thought for a moment that he'd let his caress become too overt, but Lilia tried to push past him.

  "Move!" she commanded.

  "What's the matter?"

  She planted one hand in the middle of his chest, trying to shove him out of the way. "They've left. She left with whoever came. That's why the lights are out."

  "You don't know that..."

  "No, but I can guess." Her eyes flashed with anger. "And you distracted me. On purpose. Don't try to tell me otherwise, Montgomery. You might be good, but you're not that good." Before he could defend himself or his amorous talents, Lilia squeezed past him. She nearly crowded him over the railing with the volume of her skirts.

  "Look at the time, it's after four," she raged. "I've got to get around to the front of the building to see where they're going."

  "After four?" Montgomery echoed.

  His palm chimed right on cue. Lilia scrambled down the fire escape, almost slipping in her haste. Montgomery swore, then hurried after her. He would have lifted her down, but she jumped before he got to the bottom. Evidently, she trusted him to follow her or didn't care whether he did, because she began to run down the alley without glancing back.

  Montgomery stopped in the alley and took the incoming call from his supervisor, doubting it could be anything good. He decided against opening a vid link.

  "Monitoring says your earlobe feed is dead," Tupper-man said and Montgomery knew he'd made the right choice. "What's wrong?"

  "I don't know. It seems fine from this end." Montgomery paused, as if fiddling with the ear stud. "How's this?"

  "No different." Tupperman exhaled in exasperation. "They always say the new models are better and they're always wrong. Book a review with Tech Support as soon as you report today, Montgomery."

  "Yes, sir. Reporting in twenty." Montgomery closed the connection and looked around himself. There was no sign of a tall shapely woman running in creamy skirts and a broad-brimmed hat.

  Lilia was gone.

  And worse, he had no idea where.

  The man was too perceptive by half. Lilia ran as fast as she could, down the alley and around the corner. Was she running after the receptionist or running away from Montgomery's steady gaze? He seemed to be able to read her thoughts. In a way it was spooky; in another, it was a relief to put pretense aside.

  Especially as he didn't seem to hold her choices against her.

  Lilia had quickly become aware that Montgomery wasn't right behind her. Maybe one of his glow girls was calling him. Maybe he knew something she didn't. Maybe he was leaving her to her own resources. Maybe she was going to have to keep dropping items of clothing to keep him around.

  It was a surprisingly appealing notion.

  On the other hand, he'd made that move with his hand, keeping her from thinking straight right when thinking straight would have been the best option. Had he distracted her on purpose, to give whoever was
at Breisach and Turner time to get away?

  Lilia didn't know and she didn't like that one bit.

  Montgomery messed with her game. It was better to be without him. After all, he'd casually voiced the fear that had haunted her since she'd had news of Gid's death. Had Gid committed suicide? Had it been her fault?

  She'd owed Gid better than that. Lilia frowned, pushing the echoes of that last fight from her thoughts.

  But if Gid had committed suicide, then who had killed Y654892?

  Lilia peered around the edge of the building where Breisach and Turner kept their offices, but there was no sign of Miss Obstructionist Lilia waited, trying to stifle a dawning sense that she'd been outsmarted. Maybe the receptionist had seen the pair of them when she'd looked out the window.

  Maybe she'd exited the building through the netherzones. Lilia snarled at herself for missing the obvious: the receptionist was, after all, a shade, thus a member of that population for whom the underground network had originally been constructed.

  Lilia ducked into the closest access, but the primary level was too crowded to find anyone. She supposed the commuter traffic had begun already as the conveyors were packed. There was no point in descending to the lower level; it was illegal for norms to go there, but more importantly, it was only expedient to use the lower zones when Lilia knew her destination. She had no idea where the receptionist might go.

  Lilia reluctantly gave up the chase.

  She walked slowly, letting the crowd push her where it would. Nice lead, Gid, she thought, trying not to become despondent over her failure so far to discover anything. Where do I go from here?

  Gid, not surprisingly, had little to say for himself.

  It wasn't the first time that her brilliant husband had left Lilia in his intellectual dust. Could he have killed himself over the fact that she'd tossed him out? Their relationship had always been unbalanced in terms of affection given and received.

  She couldn't think about that. It made her feel too guilty. She had to prove her gut response right instead. Gid had been killed.

  But by who?

  Lilia did what she usually did when she needed to think. Later she would wonder whether Gid had been guiding her footsteps. Maybe somewhere in the cloudy nirvana—or in the gritty hellfire that Lilia always thought sounded like more fun—he'd been listening in.

  Or maybe he had just known her well.

  In that moment, though, filled with frustration from botching her only leads, a visit to the local parallel of where she spent most of her waking hours was the closest thing to psychological comfort food.

  Lilia went to the circus.

  Press Release

  From The Society of Nuclear Darwinists July 15, 2099

  "Sunshine Heals" Heads to the Frontier

  CHICAGO—Ernestine Sinclair, President of the Society of Nuclear Darwinists, announced today that the Society's successful and popular prevention program is expanding to new horizons. "There's a need that we can help to service," Ms. Sinclair said. "We're happy to work hand-in-glove with the Republic on this initiative, and to expand our program into new territory. Children throughout the Republic deserve protection from thyroid cancer and the Society is committed to ensuring a healthy future for all citizens." She noted also that expanding the program was a fitting way to celebrate the Society's seventy-fifth anniversary.

  The link between radiation exposure and the development of thyroid cancer in children has been observed since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the wake of Chernobyl, children were given doses of potassium iodide to prevent their thyroid glands from absorbing radioactive iodine from their environment.

  It was Ernest Sinclair, founder of the Society of Nuclear Darwinists, who first tested the link between the in-gestion of vitamin C as a preventative measure against cancers triggered by radiation exposure. The "Sunshine Heals" program was launched by Ernest Sinclair in 2040, whose own son suffered from thyroid cancer. In a tragic note, Ernie Sinclair, Jr., succumbed to his cancer shortly after the program was initially planned, and the inaugural "Sunshine Heals," which delivered oranges throughout the eastern seaboard, was dedicated to his memory. The cartoon mascot of Orville the Orange-affectionately known as Orv to children throughout the Republic-was based upon a drawing made by Ernie Junior when told of his father's plans.

  "Sunshine Heals" has grown to a massive program, consuming 54 percent of the Republic's orange production and requiring fifty canola-fueled transport trucks, it is entirely staffed by volunteers and funded fully by the Society for Nuclear Darwinists.

  Ernestine Sinclair has dedicated this year's program, the fifty-fifth annual "Sunshine Heals," to the memory of her father and to the older brother she never knew.

  VIII

  Lilia found the local circus easily on the perimeter of town, on the old city side, of course, the muck of the Hudson alongside. She stepped beneath its welcoming arch—a concoction of scrounged wire and light bulbs that looked tawdry in the daylight, but would be magical at night—and took a deep breath.

  Lilia preferred the circus before it opened to the public. The performers were awakening from their night revels and there was a sense of being privy to something that shouldn't be seen.

  She liked being in on the secrets, big or small. In daylight, the circus didn't look the same—the lights were off, the faces were devoid of makeup, the sparkling costumes were folded away. What lurked behind the illusion was surprisingly mundane.

  This circus was a bit smaller than Joachim's and Lilia thought of his characteristic comment that everything was bigger on the Frontier—an assertion invariably accompanied by a lewd wink. Lilia's boss was all of four feet tall, a lifetime circus performer who had lucked into ownership.

  Or had worked himself senseless into it. Lilia still wasn't sure.

  The New Gotham circus had three tents of good size, the biggest one striped red and white. The red was faded, so the tent—and presumably the circus itself—had been in business for a while. The same rows of banners hung between the tents as did at the Frontier circus, those brightly colored squares embellished with the watchful eyes of the Republic. Lilia could smell coffee and frying bacon and knew they were both the real thing.

  Lilia wandered between the tents as if she belonged. People were chatting and working, mucking out the animals. It was like a family farm, one with elephants and llamas and tigers.

  It was also a family farm in which almost all occupants were shades. A shade in faded sweats was teaching a younger shade to walk the high wire. Both had a sixth toe on each foot. The sixth toe—like a fifth finger or second thumb—was a pretty common mutation, so all circuses were well provided with trapeze and high-wire artists. The young shade kept glancing over her shoulder, even when the older one chastised her for not paying attention.

  Lilia could name her tune: she was recently arrived.

  It took time for any shade to learn that the hunt was over, and even more time to believe that the circus wasn't too good to be true. Most tended to suspect a trick; some clung to that fear longer than others.

  At the circus, in contrast to the Republic's slave dens, shades were encouraged to choose names. The policy started for a practical reason: it was much easier to remember to call "Danny" than "Q871692." Also, giving names to shades made it less clear to authoritative eyes that they were shades, and not humans, either surgically altered or masquerading as shades.

  The legal stuff wasn't Lilia's speciality. She simply knew that telling a shade that he or she would be able to choose a name was always the moment that the deal was made.

  Sometimes shades already had names, if they weren't hiding out alone. Sometimes they knew what they wanted to be called; sometimes the other circus shades helped them make a choice; sometimes they took the name of a norm they've met. There were fourteen shades named Lilia at the circus on the Frontier and six named Joachim—one of which was a baby girl.

  To have a name was a potent thing. Lilia often though
t that shades would work at the circus for that right alone.

  The humanity of shades was inescapable in the field, before they had become dulled by poor nutrition, drudgery, drugs, and lack of sleep. It was easier to believe the rhetoric about protecting shades and offering relief to parents of shades, once the shades themselves were disheartened and sedated and looking pathetic.

  Looking, in fact, like Sub Human Atomic Deviants. Lilia suspected that norms could only persist in believing that shades weren't really human because they'd never talked to one.

  Maybe that was the plan.

  The few other Nuclear Darwinists who did work in the field, the hotshots who "harvested" on behalf of the Society, were like Rhys ibn Ali, Lilia's personal choice of poster child for inhumanity, self-motivation, and unethical behavior.

  What did Montgomery think of shades? The comments he'd made so far had been disappointing in that regard.

  But then, she'd been disappointed when they'd been interrupted on the fire escape, as well. Lilia had been sure that Montgomery was going to really kiss her, to really go for a tongue tangler, and she'd been ready to participate. That would have been the rebel wild-boy Montgomery, in his high boots, faux leather, and velvet, the unpredictable twin Montgomery with the unruly glint in his eyes.

  She wondered which version of him she'd see next.

  His evil twin had her vote, no doubt about it.

  "Can I help you?"

  Lilia jumped. An older woman, twice as tall and half was wide as Joachim, watched her with the same suspicion Joachim would have shown to a stranger who arrived unannounced.

  Lilia felt right at home.

  The woman's voice was raspy, indicative of a habitual indulgence of one kind or another, and her face was lined with experience. Her eyeliner was too dark for her bottle-blond hair, and had been applied with less than a steady hand.

  Same for the hair color.

  "We're not open until six and we don't give tours." Her body language screamed "get out" and she was probably packing a weapon.

  Although, so was Lilia.