A Rumor of Angels

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  She lay awake for a long time, unable to shake a longing to be there, singing under that sea-washed sky. In the morning, she tried to recall the song, and could not.

  Chapter 12

  “The least you could have done is give me some warning!”

  In the driver’s seat, Clennan watched the road and offered no excuse.

  “Smug bastard. Two lousy months and I’m supposed to be superwoman. What about all that gear I spent weeks training with? I won’t last very long out there with nothing but a pack full of cameras!”

  “You’ve been dying to get your hands on those cameras. Quit griping. I sent your gear in a logging truck. For anyone who’s watching, this is a little day trip to the country.”

  Jude turned away to mope out the window, only privately admitting relief at being in action at last. The camera pack snuggled at her side. She rubbed at the plastic seat cover, sharply conscious of its indestructible man-made blindness. Civilization. She was leaving it behind.

  The freeway was a corridor of heat. It looped upward through the pastel suburbs choked with squat tiny houses as identical as mushrooms, set on dirt-and-gravel lawns. Row after row, boxes on a grid, they brought a lesson home to Jude’s urban mind: More space is not automatically better if the landscape is ignored. Terra’s megalopoli created their own landscape; there was nothing left there of the original. But on Arkoi, with wilderness mountains all around, new homes should look a little less like a host of alien devices parked temporarily on a hillside. Are these Bill’s dream houses? she wondered.

  Farther along, Clennan urged the reluctant car past a convoy of heavy open trucks groaning up a steep grade. Slouched in morose groups in the back of the trucks were the other prisoners she had traveled to Arkoi with. They clung to their seats without speaking, packs and boxes piled high around them.

  Clennan glanced over at her sharply as she craned her neck for a better look. “Be a good girl, now,” he warned and then smiled to make a joke of it.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Somewhere where you’re not, with full press coverage and lots of noise. Hey, be happy. You’re the lucky one.”

  Lucky? To die alone instead of in company? Her camera pack nudged against her as they jarred over a bump, and she chided herself for her pessimism. The other possibility is freedom, after all…

  Passing the suburbs, they entered the industrial zone that ringed the colony. Factories and power plants, dumps and gravel pits were strewn about with little thought to containing their spread. The sky was obscured by colored pipe networks and smoke plumes, and the noise of machinery was deafening. Clennan slid the windows shut. Jude’s eyes narrowed in dismay. I could be back on Terra, looking at all this. But it was worse, for beyond the maze of cranes and steam and trusswork rose the blue wall of the Guardians, a reminder of the beauty that was being destroyed.

  Clennan was driving very fast. They left the factories behind and were soon in the midst of new construction, vast scars cut into the green to make way for developments and private enclaves. Farther on were the larger estates, fenced and heavily guarded. As they moved up into the first stand of tall trees, the estates grew bigger and the walls higher and more forbidding. Three hours later, they were deep in the foothill forests, solid ranks of pine trunks on either side and the hot bright road curving endlessly in front of them. Clennan was making no conversation. His tanned face was set in a tight smirk, his eyes on the road. Jude unbuckled her camera pack and limbered up with a few experimental shots of moving scenery.

  Finally, Clennan gave a satisfied grunt. Ahead was a break in the trees and a cluster of small buildings on one side of a grim electrified barrier that vanished into the trees in either direction.

  “The border,” he explained unnecessarily. They pulled up to the gate, sweltering in the open sun. The three guards lowered their stunners and waved aside the papers Clennan held out to them. Jokes and grins were exchanged. One peered across at Jude and raised a suggestive brow.

  “Day trip, eh, Bill?” He nodded to his companions. “And I gotta spend my time with this riffraff.”

  Clennan laughed. Jude stared straight ahead until he jogged her elbow proudly and pointed ahead. “There’s a manned gate at the four points of the compass. Otherwise it’s all computerized. Even a leaf blown across this fence will register on the monitors.”

  “That must be very inconvenient,” Jude replied dryly. “All those leaves…”

  “Necessary.”

  “They used to threaten us like that in the Wards. ‘No point in this complex is more than four seconds from an armed robot.’ ”

  “Foolproof security system,” he gloated.

  Gloating, he was at his most annoying. “Yeah, but you know something, Clennan? It’s got to be pretty puny compared to whatever’s Out There. Five million free Terrans imprisoned by a wall of mountains? Now that’s foolproof.” Her smile was bleak and ironic.

  Clennan put the car in gear. The guards opened the gates and waved them through. “My boys,” said Clennan and threw them a final rakish grin. He drove until they were out of sight of the border, then pulled over to the side in a small clearing, where a roughly paved logging road led off into the forest. He did not stop the engine.

  “This is it, kid. Out you go.”

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  He nodded and favored her with his most innocent smile. “Your boy will be along in a while.”

  She regarded him a moment, then finally shook her head. “Bill, I must compliment you on your cold-blooded dedication to your job. I’m sure you’ll go far.”

  The grin weakened, then shut down completely. He laid one arm across the seatback, fingers touching her shoulder. “Look, kid, there is one thing I can do for you, off the record.” He leaned forward, and from under the seat, produced a small bundle. He slid it across the seat toward her. “Couldn’t let you have this before ’cause it’s against the flight plan, but Ramos’ll never be any the wiser, and I’ll feel better knowing you have it.”

  Jude unfolded the wrappings. Nestled in an old shirtsleeve lay a battered service stunner. The sight of it sent a surge of hope and guilt through her. She fingered its pitted surface thoughtfully. “Charged?”

  “Full.” The hand on the wheel tapped a nervous rhythm.

  She grasped the handle. The whole gun fit neatly into her palm. It was warm and felt like security. Momentarily, she considered turning it on Clennan. I could steal the car, leave him stranded in the wilderness. But no, Bill Clennan would never hand over a loaded weapon without some contingency plan. Besides, the gesture touched her. He had actually risked himself to do her a favor, a minor risk for him, true, but Out There, a stunner could be her lifesaver.

  “Make sure your Native boy doesn’t see it until you need it,” he advised. “Remember, he said no weapons.”

  “What if he finds it?” she asked rhetorically, and in asking, realized that it was the alien’s disapproval she feared as much as his anger. What will he think of me?

  Clennan shrugged. “Don’t let him find it.”

  Jude gazed down at the little weapon. A gouge in the handle smiled up at her. She could not refuse it. She put the stunner away in her camera pack. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.” He reached across her and opened the door. Jude shouldered the pack and climbed out into the sun. Clennan whipped the car around, and with a mock salute, sped back down the road.

  Jude stood motionless in the dust. The clearing was deserted. She felt a momentary rush of elation, so intoxicating that it dissipated for a time even her urbanite agoraphobia. Such freedom, to stand on an empty road in the middle of a wilderness! She stretched her arms and smiled benignly at the blistering sun. “It’s fantastic out here!” she shouted.

  But the empty silence soon closed in on her. She feared and wished for the alien’s appearance. She walked the circuit of the clearing, peering into the trees. While she remained in the sunlight, the green forest depths drew her. As s
oon as she ventured into their shade, chills crept through her and drove her back into the sun. Finally, she chose a large rock out in the open and sat down to wait.

  Before long, she was sweating and thirsty. Her trail clothes were too heavy for such heat, the boots still stiff and new. Clennan had left her no water, and she hadn’t eaten since their very early breakfast, now six hours ago. The hot sun made her sleepy, enough to dull her reflexes. She didn’t hear the alien enter the clearing until he spoke from a few paces behind her.

  “In this sun, Ms. Rowe, it is advisable to wear a hat.”

  Jude spun around. “Where have you been?”

  He looked twice his weight in heavy overalls. He shrugged stiffly and brushed bark and sawdust from his arms. “You must know that ‘Natives’ are not allowed past the border except on guarded work details. My pass described me as a logger, so I came with the trucks.” Then he turned and whistled sharply, one high note. From out of the trees trotted three shaggy mules, loaded with packs. They made straight for Jude and nosed at her curiously. Despite being unused to nuzzlings from large animals, she sat still and allowed each a gingerly pat.

  “Did they come with the trucks?”

  “Ms. Rowe, nothing gets through that border without a pass.” He started across the clearing toward the logging road, the mules following behind in a line. The last one waited for Jude to precede it, its ears cocked at her expectantly until she got the idea and walked ahead. She would have sworn its clear golden eyes held a glint of amusement.

  The alien set a slow pace up the winding road into the mountains. All the hot afternoon long, climbing and climbing, they saw nothing but trees, tall evergreens, thick-trunked and straight, spaced so regularly that Jude contemplated the possibility that they had been planted, all at the same time. She gave that up when her mind boggled at the hugeness of such a task. It was not at all what she had expected a wilderness forest to be: no picturesque forest cottage, no deer crashing off into the thickets. But then, this is Arkoi. I should expect these endless swaying groves to be devoid of animal life. Her camera banged uselessly at her side as anticlimax drained away all initial excitement. There was nothing to distract her from the heat, now becoming unbearable, or her thirst. When the paved road gave out and turned to a swirl of dust beneath the mules’ feet, she began to cough convulsively. Her new boots slipped on the scattered pebbles. The alien watched her covertly for a while as he continued his uphill plodding. When it finally seemed to her that she would choke, he dropped back with a canteen in his hand. He allowed her one hasty gulp. She scowled at him as if she would tear the canteen from his grip, then subsided as he scowled back. Petty aggression was a prison reflex, out of place here in the wilderness, where she was at a stranger’s mercy. They faced each other silently. Jude felt her sweat running rivulets through the dust on her cheeks. She brushed a wisp of hair back, aching with sudden loneliness, standing in the road with this pitiless alien. His face was hard under the shadow of his brimmed hat. She brushed at her hair again, a totem gesture to ward off the fear that was rising inside her. She wished for the stunner, out of reach in her pack.

  “Do we have to be so careful with the water?” she asked, trying not to sound querulous.

  He stared as if trying to read secrets in her, but to her surprise, handed back the canteen. “We must be careful with everything if we wish to survive,” he lectured distantly.

  She gave the canteen back and did not ask for it again until it was offered.

  When the sunlight grew long and amber, and the gloom behind the tree trunks deepened into darkness, Jude wondered how long the alien intended to keep going without a break. As if in a trance, he trudged along, hour after hour, with unbroken pace. She thought of how Clennan had worked her mercilessly, and how she had complained. Now she offered him a silent vote of thanks for whipping her into shape from the physical wreck she had deteriorated to in the Wards.

  Ahead, the alien slowed, alert. Jude heard a distant whine of power saws.

  “Logging camp?” she asked.

  He nodded. “This far up into the woods, they’re usually fully automated. We should be able to get by unnoticed.”

  They proceeded cautiously upward into a devastation of clear-cutting. Under the glare of huge portable lights that made noontime out of the late gloom, logging machines moved ponderously about their destructive business. Acres of cut logs waited in stacks by the roadside. Ra’an used them as cover, skirting swiftly around the camp. The road ended at the camp. On the far side, Ra’an plunged several paces into the forest, then stopped to look back. The saw whine sharpened, there was a deep cracking, and a giant tree crashed to the ground.

  “The robots don’t mind being up here by themselves,” he remarked, “and they can do six of those big trees in an hour, limbed and stripped.”

  Jude found his tone obscure. “Somehow I had gotten the idea that you don’t approve of all this technology.”

  “Ah, but you are wrong, Ms. Rowe. It is not the fault of the technology that it is so often misused. In this case, those robots are doing a boring and dangerous job very efficiently.” He pointed out a humanoid form whirring briskly among the huge machines. “That supervisor will never go to sleep in the shade or get drunk on the job. The Terrans who created him are ravaging our forests, but he himself is an admirable creation, don’t you think?”

  Jude grimaced in distaste. “Have you ever known a robot that could take a joke? Or make a decision based on compassion rather than the letter of the law?”

  “That is the fault of their programmers,” he replied smugly.

  “Sorry. After six years of Ward security robots, anything that close to human without actually being human gives me the creeps.”

  Ra’an raised a dark eyebrow, then turned away. They walked through the trees in silence for a moment. Then he added flatly, “Myself, for example.”

  Jude laughed, taken aback. “That’s absurd. You’re human.”

  “No, I am not. Do not make that mistake. It may surprise you to learn that the Koi have a word which roughly translates as ‘human,’ but it is used to differentiate not between Koi and what you would call animal, but between Koi and Terran.”

  “But…”

  “A critical distinction, Ms. Rowe. The Koi are unique to themselves, not some lesser offshoot of your human race. Arkoi is a parallel world in another universe, not a minor planet in yours.” His voice took up a lecturing cadence. “But the Terrans cannot bear to have their homocentric egos threatened by the possibility of equal nonhuman intelligence.”

  “Ra’an, I would be mad to doubt your intelligence.”

  “So you rationalize me away into some safely human category? The tourists are more honest with themselves. They regard the Koi as animals, and fear them as they fear anything strange. ”

  Jude stopped and planted her feet. “Look, I admit I find you strange… alien, all right? But I’m willing to assume that’s because I don’t know you. Believe me, there are a lot of Terrans I find pretty strange, too. If you consider yourself something other than human, fine, I accept that. It doesn’t mean we can’t figure out a way to get along. I wish you would at least give credit to my good intentions.”

  The alien looked bored. “The road to hell… is that not the saying?”

  The long hot climb had sapped the patience that nurtured those good intentions. “Of course, there’s always the possibility,” she said slowly, “that the problem is not that you’re an alien and I’m a racist, but that you are just plain disagreeable.”

  He regarded her icily. “A neat way of avoiding the dilemma altogether. Dismiss me as an individual, alien or human.”

  “I don’t see that you’re giving me much choice. Why?”

  He would not answer. He stalked on ahead, threading a slim path through the underbrush, and leaving her to puzzle out his contrariness on her own. His tightly controlled manner did not successfully conceal his deep reserves of anger and pain. Jude had had a hint already of the da
ngers of provoking him in that tangible aura that his anger had generated. There at least was one thing about him that was unhuman, yet…

  As she struggled after him, through the thickening forest, she gave some thought to her definition of the word “human.”

  Chapter 13

  Late into dusk, the alien halted at last, his choice of a campsite governed more by the failing light than by comfortable terrain. The forest offered no friendly clearings. All signs of a path had disappeared hours ago, swallowed up by a blanket of pine needles. Jude collapsed with her back against a tree and shut her eyes to ward off the nausea of exhaustion. With the ceasing of the steady crunch of their footfalls, it was still as a void beneath the trees, as unreal as a dream, thick with the pungency of sap and heat-soaked earth. A silent rain of needles fell on her hands, her lap, her hair. Her courage balked at the idea of sleeping in the open with nothing to shut out the utter blackness of a night without electric lights. She made a private plea to the sun not to set.

  The alien set to work unloading the mules. The equipment he unpacked was devastatingly primitive: two sleeping bags, two metal cups, a pot, some aluminum utensils, a single tiny lantern, more or less what Clennan had outlined as the barest necessities for survival. Somehow it had never occurred to Jude that the alien would bring only the bare necessities.

  He cleared a small circle in the pine needles and built a fire. Jude roused herself and wandered over hazily.