Archangel

by Marguerite Reed

  I poured myself a drink.

  Bibi industriously sorted and resorted her numbered blocks. I erased the news, and Zhádāo’s keen face. My fingers, of their own kinetic memory, tapped in Chitra’s number.

  Half a planet away, the connection linked. I waited for her to sign on, watching her sigil spin slowly above the board. It frayed into threads of light and her body wrap appeared.

  “Hey,” she said. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “No idea. When did you get a new wrap?”

  “Last week.” I heard the preening in her voice. “You like it?”

  I leaned closer and peered at the three-dimensional mannikin. Last week Chitra must have tired of curls, for her hair now spiked up from her scalp. I wasn’t sure whether this gave her an air of youthful rebellion or made her look like an egg-wet chick. The rest of her looked good enough, gilded Pacific skin, arms folded across her chest, the snotty little smirk I never could resist. “I always like your wraps, sugar.”

  “You going to replace yours any time soon?”

  “You trying to tell me something?”

  “Me? It’s fine. It’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous.”

  “You oughta get animation on that thing.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can make its eyes roll when yours do.” I grinned and lounged back in my chair. “I need a favor, angel.”

  “Oh, it’s angel now. I don’t know, I think you need to studiously devote some time to niceness before I—”

  “Moira has a Beast.”

  “This is a shitty linkup. What is Moira doing with a yeast? Has the Integral finally yielded to People’s Party pressure and plotted a gramina field?”

  “No, no, you prune—”

  “First angel, now prune—”

  “A Beast. A Beast.” Bibi glanced up at me in the middle of trying to fit one of the blocks into her mouth.

  Chitra’s silence contradicted her wrap’s impudent expression. “Tell me more,” she said finally, in a tone of voice I’d never heard before; I sensed this was the Chitra the other physicists saw. “What favor are you asking me?”

  “How can you track a Beast if you’re not in the military?”

  “How do you track one of your terrible lizards? How do you track anything?”

  “Find where it’s been.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Grazing patterns, nests, scat, kills.”

  “Go on.”

  “But this is a chip in a computer. A killer chip in a killer computer, but still.”

  “Even chips have distinctive marks.”

  “Distinctive marks,” I repeated obtusely.

  “Every chip has a serial number. It may be microscopic, but it’s there.”

  “Would a Beast have a microscopic serial number?”

  “It might be microscopic. I don’t know. Listen . . . if you can wait, I can find out for you. I’ll get back with you in just a few, okay?”

  “Thanks, Chitra.”

  “Send one of those sex-starved hunters my way. That’s why they’re gun-mad, you know. Sublimating like crazy.” The grin returned to her voice. Her wrap, then her sigil winked out.

  As good a time as any to begin plotting out a hunt for that general. Sure, I could help her kill something—but this would also be a chance to pound a wedge into the granite of her opinions. What would work on her? Beauty? Grandeur? Intelligence? Something . . . cute?

  I called up maps, migratory patterns, images of the more charismatic species we had found. I found them all fascinating, but we xenobiologists had learned that the average spacer had a more favorable reaction to the big, the brightly colored, rather than the small and the drab. Life being what it was, small and drab always outweighed big and bold.

  Small and colorful, on the other hand, chose that moment to manifest itself as a toddler who failed at stacking her blocks more than five high.

  When Chitra chimed back, I was in the middle of soothing Small, Colorful, and extremely noisy.

  “Bad time?” she asked.

  “No. She just can’t arrange the universe as she’d like, is all.”

  “She should be a physicist; she’d be much happier.”

  “Catch me anything good?” I flipped Bibi onto her back and started kissing the soles of her feet.

  “I found a brute of a psychiatrist who told me all Beasts have a chip implanted beneath the skin at the base of the occiput. You have that readout, you can track it through the military database.”

  I thought of Zhádāo. “What if the particular database has been wiped out?”

  In the silence I could feel her focus tightening up once more. “What’s going on in New Albuquerque, Vashti?”

  I told her. She reacted as I had, with dismay and alarm. “It’s a good thing you’re there, and Moira probably knows it. In fact, I’d say she was counting on it.”

  “Fucking shit.”

  “You seem to have a good grasp of the situation.”

  “I bet she’s counting on me to do this. I bet she knows, this moment, that I’m rooting around for as much information as possible, and that my next step will be to download everything about Beasts I can get my bit rates around.” I remained crouched over Bibi, each foot pressed against the side of my face.

  “More ‘gain?” she asked. I obliged her, biting softly on her toes, while my mind spun without traction. I should transfer out of New Albuquerque: pack up, right now, and be gone before sunrise. Screw Moira and her manipulative assumptions. It would serve her right. Let her handle the Beast by herself.

  “How can I get the information that’s on that chip?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten squeamish. Dig it out of his head.”

  “Why go to the trouble when I can just kill him?” Hearing those words come out of my mouth nauseated me. I took a long breath. “No—better just to transfer somewhere else.”

  “And what’s this Beast going to do when you’re gone? If you leave, New Albuquerque loses the only citizen whom the Integral has licensed to kill another human.”

  “For self-defense, you don’t need a license.”

  “Try this, then. New Albuquerque loses the only citizen who is willing to kill another human.”

  It was my turn to be silent. I did not like to think about that. I did not like to think of what that made me.

  “Vashti?”

  “Will you help me?”

  “It’ll take me some time to go through the military database. More time to hack the prison records.”

  “What records? Mustaine doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “If there are guidelines out there, I can find them and download them for you by the time you wake up tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re saving my ass again, Chitra.”

  “It’s that pesky hero implant I got last month. You wouldn’t believe the number of little kids I’ve pulled from crashed gliders. Think I’ll buy a total bitch implant next time.”

  Her chuckle sizzled into static as her sigil winked out. I stayed on the floor with Bibi a long time, tickling her, kissing her soft baby skin, while the words willing to kill another human being revolved slowly in my mind.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I woke when the storm reached its height. Darkness and noise confused me momentarily. I swung out of bed and tried to get my bearings, stunned by the simultaneous howls of my daughter, the wind, and the alarm.

  The backup generator failed again, I thought as I stumbled through the doorway. I made my way to the crib to find Bibi standing bolt-upright. Her face was damp with tears, and I scooped her into my arms. She roared into my shoulder for a few minutes while I navigated the hallway to the main console. When I found the switch for the alarm and disabled it, the decibels dropped to a tolerable level and I sank to the floor gratefully.

  “Thunder!” Bibi declared. I found her face and wiped her tears away with my thumb.

  “Thunder,” I agreed.

  “I’m crying!”

>   At least she was calming down enough to comment. We listened to the storm for a few minutes, her body tensing each time sound split the air. I found some comfort in soothing her; a few times I could imagine that the storm was trying to slap the walls in. Even through the tufa I heard gust after gust battering the cliff, rain lashing the streets. Any flyer with sense had grounded hours ago, cozy in one of the hangars dotting the Big Tawny’s expanse.

  A pinpoint of red light began flashing in the dark, paired with a low beep. Someone wanted me on the comlink. I hitched Bibi up onto my hip and, after barking my shin on a chair, located the link and slipped it one-handed over my ear, adjusting the whisker-fine filament down to my mouth.

  “Loren here,” I murmured, trying to fend off Bibi’s exploring hand.

  “Great. Can you meet me in the bay?” Moira’s usual polite tones sounded strained.

  “Moira, you’re not going to tell me what I think you are.”

  “Please, Vashti?”

  “Get the doctor on rotation who’s attached to that bay. Get him to hype your little trophy up with some Bericol and call it sweet dreams. You can buzz me in the morning.” Like a fool I waited for her response instead of clicking off immediately.

  “I can’t tell Dr. Haas.”

  Now I did click off. I yanked the link out of my ear and pitched it in the general direction of the couch. Lips compressed so tightly my face hurt, I marched into Bibi’s room, shielding her head with my hand from lurking doorjambs in the dark. With a minimum of tears I changed her by touch, hauled her back onto my hip, and stomped off to the medbay.

  Halfway to the lab the lights began to flicker as some tech with his head on straight did his job. Faintly behind the walls I could hear relieved exclamations from other citizens.

  “Lights make on,” Bibi said equably. I looked down at her to see her pants were on backwards.

  “Can you be good?” I asked as we approached the door to the lab. “Can you sit down and not go anywhere for Mommy?”

  “No,” she said.

  I groaned and hit the buzzer, seeking admittance. Instantly the door slid open.

  Beneath a dim red pulse, Moira stood at the console, keystroking while the Beast convulsed in its chrysalis of gel. She threw a frowning glance over her shoulder when I entered. “Oxygen is offline,” the computer’s serene contralto voice announced. “Oxygen is offline.”

  “Thank God,” Moira said. Sweat glistened on her upper lip. “Can you get him out of there?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I let Bibi slide down my leg to the floor, where she promptly ran over to one of the consoles and started imitating Moira. I blessed the bay designers who left each system with its own passcode, and strode over to the Beast’s pod.

  Convulsions wracked his body. To see that arrogantly sculpted form reduced to insensate thrashing muddied my emotions like a stick stirring up silt in a pond.

  “Checking the boot log. He’s been down for ten minutes.”

  I began swearing under my breath. The pod’s lock, mercifully, was unencoded. The seal hissed like a day-old pterahedron and I slapped the clamps up, then set my heels under the exposed lip and heaved upward.

  The vectragel shimmered. I did not allow myself to think, but plunged my hands into the quivering stuff, raking it away from the Beast’s face. The gel was still warm; it was like reaching into the body cavity of an animal. Chunks of it hit the floor in splat after splat. I hiked up my galabeya, climbed onto the pod, and straddled him. His spasms quieted.

  How easy it might be. Experimentally I laid my hands on his throat. The artery beat beneath my fingers. I could cut off the blood supply to his brain with a carotid choke. I could pull up his head and smash it back down with my weight behind it. I could—

  “Oh my God—” Footsteps, and Moira’s hands were reaching for me. I batted them away. “Vashti, are you crazy? Get off of him, it’s too dangerous—”

  Even in the grotesque mix of colored lights, Moira’s face looked bloodless. “A little slow to think about that, weren’t you?” I cleared away the Beast’s nose and mouth and grasped the tube. No hesitating now.

  “Call Dr. Haas,” I said, and began to pull.

  “Vashti—”

  “Call Dr. Haas or I’ll kill him right now.” Goddamn old-fashioned intubation. Steady tension, from the bronchia up through the trachea and then the larynx. My chest ached in reflexive sympathy. At last the tube slipped free, warm from his body and slick with mucus. Moira on the comlink apologetically urged someone to hurry. “Watch his vitals,” I called.

  “BP 88 over 50. He’s not breathing, Vashti.”

  “At least his heart’s going.” If the heart stopped, so did the brain. My galabeya was soaked with the gel by now. I tipped his head back and slipped my finger past his teeth, wiping his mouth from right to left. If he had a convulsion now I’d lose the finger. Airway clear. Nostrils pinched shut. Years of training overcame my revulsion, and I put my mouth down on his.

  Two slow breaths. I felt his chest rise with each one. The artery in his neck surged beneath my fingertips. “Pulse?” I gave him another two slow breaths.

  “42. But strong.”

  I expected nothing less from a Beast. Still, complete Quarantine could still be a tricky business, claiming a few lives every few years from cardiac arrythmia or brain death . . . If I could just get this big son of a bitch to breathe. I counted. I breathed.

  Something small and warm and wet clasped my calf. “Bibi, not now.”

  “Mommy, I have gooey hands—”

  “Fifteen minutes, Vashti.”

  I crushed my mouth down on his once more, slamming my breath into him, struggling to maintain the skin of ice over anger. Come on, you genetically engineered fuck, come on and breathe, if you’re gonna die I’m gonna be the one to kill you, just a little bronchial action, please, come on, come on, you bastard.

  Lift of that splendid chest. On his own. I splayed my palm across his sternum to feel for myself. “That’s it, great, do it again—” He obliged.

  I wanted to slide down to the gel-splattered floor to join my daughter. All I allowed myself was to brace my arms, fists clenched on the edge of the pod on either side of his head like an exhausted lover. At that unwelcome thought I finally swung my leg over and slipped down from the pod, shaking. You just saved his life, you bitch.

  I should have let him die right there. Next time—I would make sure there was a next time, one where I could look him in the eye and see him recognize Death.

  “Vitals,” I said.

  “BP 100 over 55. Pulse 60.” I heard the click in Moira’s throat as she swallowed. “Oh, my God, Vashti.”

  “You saying oh my God because you almost lost him, or because you didn’t?”

  The metallic whisper of the door pierced the room. Involuntarily I tensed. A woman strode into the lab, her expression alight with curiosity and exasperation. Stocky, a little taller than I, blonde-brown hair tousled from bed, dressed in hemp denim tunic and pants.

  “Dr. Haas, thank goodness,” Moira said. I bent down and beckoned to Bibi, who sat squarely in the middle of the mess of vectragel, mashing it into her clothes.

  “What’ve you done now, Moira?” the woman said.

  I noted her familiarity with my friend—we of Ubastis really did try to be a classless society, but primates being primates, that didn’t work as well as we might want it to. Some whom Moira had befriended were very aware of her position as Numair’s wife—and I knew she harbored no delusions about the quality of their attachment. Which kind of friend was this?

  She glanced at me once as I hoisted Bibi onto my hip, a notation as sharp as a scalpel, even amidst her moving across the room to the Beast’s pod.

  “Who’s this?” Not waiting for an answer, she looked at the console, frowning. She glanced from the Beast to the console and back again. “Dear God, is this what I think it is?”

  Moira looked at me; I chose that moment to begin wiping the gel from my cloth
es and Bibi’s. “It’s a Beast brought in for rehabilitation,” she answered.

  “Why wasn’t I notified? Considering the ramifications—” Haas glanced over her shoulder at me. “Tech, come over here and clean this guy up, would you? And bring me a light point.”

  Moira’s half-gasp, half-chuckle was audible even halfway across the room. Deciding on a suitable reaction took me a moment. I set Bibi on a nearby chair, unwound her arms from my neck despite her protests, and found a light point and a liquivac racked on the wall with the exploratory instruments. Demurely I handed her the light point and then began suctioning the bulk of the gel away from the Beast’s body.

  Haas thoroughly, roughly examined him. “He’s sound. I’d expect him to emerge some time tomorrow, maybe ten hours or so . . . Look at this, Tech. I bet you won’t see another example of functional VM Enhancement done by the military in your lifetime.” She handed the light point to me and peeled the pads from his eyelids.

  My curiosity overrode my irritation for a moment. Gingerly I eased back the Beast’s eyelid and peered into the depths. The hazel iris contracted, but not before the pupil ignited with reflected light. I jumped and almost dropped the point. Haas chuckled.

  “Let me see,” said Moira. I handed her the point and turned my back on the two of them to find a handtowel in one of the cupboards. “That’s impressive. Just a little deliciously eerie, don’t you think?”

  “Nice, huh? The military had some good people. They took mitochondrial expansion to a new level before the HGC pulled an ethics block. This guy was a night hunter.”

  Moira bent over the Beast, peering into his eye, then running her fingertips down his body. “What else can you show me? Vashti, can you get this residue off him?”

  I wadded up the towel and pitched it at her. “I saved his ass; you can wipe it for him.”

  The expressions on their faces were nearly identical, save that shame tinged Moira’s.

  Haas’s shock was pure, however. “You can’t talk to her like that—”

  “Don’t you think so? Feeling pretty sure of your rung on the ladder this morning, Doctor? Even if I were a tech—” I clapped my hands for my daughter and she ran to me. I swung her up and faced her again. “I could talk to her how I liked, and to you too. Citizen.”