Archangel

by Marguerite Reed

  Her face was not that of an ambassador, only of another human woman digging a position from which she would not be shaken: closed against me, the muscles schooled to reveal nothing, except, perhaps, a somber disapproval. “This is not Eden,” she said. “You are not Uriel.”

  “No,” I said. “I am Michael.”

  In the emotional backrush of Haas’s visit I decided I was fit for nothing except the balcony. I unfolded a chair and settled back, watching my toddler run back and forth along the four-meter length of sculpted tufa. Each time she reached the opposite railing she would touch the basket of summer-blooming mohurs with her index finger and then count.

  “One,” she said, looking at me.

  At first I didn’t catch on, and said, “Two.”

  Idiot parent. “One! One-one-one-one!”

  “One,” I said.

  “Two,” she continued, her lips pursed, nodding in approval.

  We got all the way up to three, which I was beginning to think of as the squealing number. “Go!” she squeaked. I echoed her and she careened back to me and flung herself into my arms. We squeezed a lot of giggles out of that game.

  Eventually she settled for a session of drawing mysterious rhomboids and ellipses. I watched her for a while. My mind half-consciously cradled the idea of light pen on screen; steel nib on paper; quill on vellum; stylus on clay; paint-daubed stick, carefully chewed, on the cool rock of the cave. How Lasse would have loved watching her, teaching her.

  I slipped the link into my ear, angling the mic to the corner of my mouth, and opened my mail.

  The usual junk babbled at me, both in text and audio. Jingles for different spas. Cosmetic implants and marrow replacements. The highest quality synth-sex suits now on the market—“steer your own ship on the seas of bliss,” sang a trio of sopranos—either programmable by myself or nexed with the sensitive and virile sex-worker of my choice. As I deleted down the list, the advertisements became more personal: genteel relevant queries. The newly restored Van Eyck light gallery was making a circuit of the nearby space stations and would be coming into Ubastis’s field this season; did I want to reserve a seat on a shuttle? Shepherd University was preparing for semester classes, would I accept a holo-posting as guest lecturer with the xenobiology department? As a representative of Ubastis, would I like to tour Sui Gold? I sent that one to my good friend András Kárpáti—Sui Gold was the largest hemp processing station in the Commonwealth, manufacturing everything from fabric to beer to plastics to the popular kief twists we called sticks.

  At last I found two letters. One was from Chitra. A small file, strangely enough; could it be the information I’d requested? One was from my agent, most likely reminding me to send my notes.

  “Open Tariq’s mail dated the second.”

  My agent, Mohammad Tariq, never sent holos if he could help it, so his letter opened up simply as lines of meticulous black text. He didn’t want to know about my notes from the hunt. His letter was to remind me that no less a personage than the fourth in command of the Commonwealth Army, General Zhádāo Bik, was tentatively scheduled with me for a trek into one of the bionomes of Ubastis for the purpose of lawfully hunting, with intent to kill, one or two (larger) representatives of the native fauna.

  With unusual boldness for him, Mohammad also wrote that he comprehended the possibility of some apprehension on my part concerning the general, given the nearly diametric opposition of our politics. He had every confidence in my ability to censor my personal feelings for the more immediate good of the economy. As always, I should be sensible that the hosting of a personage of this magnitude would be highly advantageous to the Ubastis Biome Integral in matters of a financial bearing. Mohammad was terribly sorry about the disruption of my schedule, but he was sure that I perceived the merit of this application. If necessary, he would postpone the next client’s application for yet another month.

  The biomes I had the most familiarity with, in terms of topography and prey, were going to be moving into a rainy season in a couple of months. While conducting a safari in the midst of daily torrents was possible, only the scientific benefit would outweigh the commercial value. And unless my client specified a hardship hunt, with the accompanying disclaimers, waivers, and classes, I had no interest in subjecting any offworlder to that level of discomfort.

  What did I want to subject an offworlder to? Especially one so adamantly for the People’s Party?

  “Compose to Tariq,” I said, after some thought. Bibi left her scrawling and wandered over to hug my knee. I ruffled her hair. “Of course I understand the sensitivity of General Zhádāo’s visit. Please don’t worry about any breach of propriety on my part. Even if this means my schedule with my opted work in the hydroponics lab and with the Children’s Center is affected, steps will be taken to rearrange the time with other citizens. By no means should we offend General Zhádāo—and potentially the entire Commonwealth military—by delaying her hunt. I agree to this engagement, provided—” here was the tricky part “—that someone from the Source is also invited.”

  The Source was the highest tech information supply in the galaxy, with untold amounts of bank funneled into it every cycle, pioneering communications that were head and shoulders above the government and military sectors. They would jump at the chance to send someone down to Ubastis for a mere visit—and for a hunt? They’d slap the journalist on their fastest ship and log his obituary with a smile.

  UBI was not on poor terms with the Source, but an actual boots-on-the-ground representative, paired with General Zhádāo—oh, this had the potential to free two cats with one key.

  There was still Chitra’s mail to view. Bibi had decided she was finished with drawing, however, and just as I was about to open the file, she ran out to me, howling, her mouth an irregular square. She claimed to have hurt herself. I examined the wound, an indefinite point on her solid calf. She decided it was time for something to eat. I agreed.

  She trotted ahead of me into the kitchen and got in the way each time I lingered for more than a minute, worming her way between me and the cupboard, the cold box, the nanocycler. Finally after some words I set her in her chair and dragged her to a point where she could watch me. I cut up vegetables—“my do like tomatoes,” she earnestly informed me—flashed some seitan nuggets, sliced a few melon wedges, and set them before her. When I watched her, she used her fork; when I had my back to her, cleaning up, she used her fingers. She popped food into her mouth and smiled and wiggled as if nothing could be finer than eating lunch with her mommy in the kitchen on a beautiful spring day.

  Was I putty? Absolutely.

  Having a child was a terrible thing, I had learned. I had not believed this when I applied to be fertilized with Lasse’s sperm. Not a few people were shocked that I chose implantation rather than farming out the fertilized egg, or using a synthetic womb. That was not the terrible thing. Nor were the stares from strangers on the street while I grew monthly, amazing myself and others with my bulk. I still did not believe it when I peeked between my legs as the ob/gyn drew my daughter out of my body and I glimpsed one muculent grayish-pink foot. Not even when Moira finally put her, squinting and snuffling, on my belly. I merely believed I had given birth. I did not realize, until much later, what this meant.

  Lasse broke my hymen; he penetrated me innumerable times; there was nothing sexual we did not try, or at least contemplate. No one would call me a virgin. But until Bibi, I was. Virgin to the universe. From Bibi the universe pierced me through. There was an old, old story from Earth, about a fish-woman, a mermaid, who for love asked that her tail be split into legs so that she might walk on land. She was given her wish, but every step she took cut her feet like knives.

  After Bibi, everything cut me, broke me, sliced me open, cleft my soul. I was Bibi’s mother; I was also mother to the toddler five houses to the west, to the newborn I had seen strapped to her father’s back as he trudged off to the nearest hangar for restock. Mother I was to the sober gangling students
in New Albuquerque’s one school; mother I was to the young people who taught them.

  More painfully, to all Ubastis. Mother I was to the animals I killed for men. Everything that crept and swam and ran and flew was mine, from the pseudo-tarsiers prying up the skin of the helix tree for the insects scurrying beneath, to the insects themselves; from the maned wulanghari crying at the stars to the pterahedron folded up, like a skin umbrella, on her nest in the basalt cliffs. Out in the bush the image struck me, from time to time, of sinking my hands into the teeming dirt and rubbing it into my skin, plastering myself with it. Of suckling the soft-billed monotremes at my breast. Of wrapping my arms around one of the enormous horsetails at the fringe of the arboros and embracing it so tightly I sank into the heart of the tree.

  I believed I was a little crazy.

  Believing this changed nothing.

  Not one single grinding day.

  Bibi squirmed when I tried to put her in her crib. “My in the big bed!” she protested.

  “No, sweetie. It’s sleepy-time.” I put her pacifier on her pillow. She kneeled to pick it up and I rolled her over onto her back. “You’re tired; you’re a tired little girl. Mommy has to work.”

  “My help.”

  I laughed. “You’d be some help, all right.” I drew the ratty green blanket over her and followed that with the sturdier multicolored one. “Go to sleep, Boo.”

  I softly shut the door on her whining and returned to the balcony. As I sat down, the Adhan surged from the gallery atop the tower.

  Come alive to worship, come alive to success, the call went, a ringing male voice pouring from the sky, as if light had been given a tongue.

  A sigh of content escaped me. I never realized how much I missed the call to prayer until I heard it on my return. Not many devout Muslims cared to go on safari, and my days of running with Patrol & Rescue—who were a congenial mix of Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians—were long gone.

  So many ghosts there. Ghosts that Moira’s actions had woken: noisy, clamorous things, plucking at the sleeve of memory. I had not yet recovered from the fact that she had dared what she did. In Christ’s name, Moira, why?

  “Let’s restore a little order here, shall we?” I muttered, and opened Chitra’s file.

  Text, and the little blinking star that meant she’d sent something more. Vashti, I read, no guidelines found. None whatsoever. Obfuscation, equivocation, doublespeak, but nothing concrete concerning the assimilation of any BioEngineered ASsault Tactician. Only archives found are froth ‘human interest’ pieces on Beast adoption. No follow-up. No civilian record of the non-Beast individuals mentioned in these articles. No military records of any Beast being discharged alive from service. The only thing I’ve been able to find is some raw stuff from I don’t know how many decades ago. From what you’ve described, I wonder if this is your ‘Little Problem’ in the footage here? How long do these things live? Anyway, let me know. Once again you people in UBI get to make up the rules; aren’t you lucky? The image of Moira at the medbay computers, fingers flickering over the console, surfaced in my mind. Why had she been at the console instead of trying a more immediate approach?

  Mumtaz, I thought. The cheetah.

  A profiteer company had sunk an enormous amount of bank into a zoological space station, a veritable Ark. Genetically perfect specimens were lab-produced and nurtured in a controlled environment for human edutainment. For a price you and your family could experience the wonderful biological diversity that was 21st century Earth (so realistic!), just before the Big Die-Up. Moira heard what happened to the few genetically imperfect specimens and, in direct defiance of UBI, had one brought in.

  And here was another dangerous animal. I opened the attachment.

  Images blew across the screen at an angle: after a moment I realized it was from a high-end retina-cam, seen from the viewpoint of someone up high, on a scaffolding, maybe, or stairs. The picture was a little fuzzy, but without the jerky motion associated with the cheaper cams that lacked a built-in stabilizer. So, a professional, or at least someone with professional equipment. Perhaps a freelancer who’d been hoping for a payday from the Source.

  No commentary, no sound. What I saw didn’t need any.

  From what I could tell, the videographer was attending some kind of review—not a parade; or if it was, it was a private one. I saw no one who looked like a civilian; everyone wore uniforms. The camera panned past formation after formation. After I won the struggle to see past the homogeneity of the uniforms, I gasped and literally put a hand to my mouth.

  It was one thing to grasp the concept of clones: that human efforts in the realm of genetics and reproductive science had expanded far beyond cloning a pet or creating herds of transgenetic goats for pharmaceutical production. It was another thing entirely to see what such expansion had burgeoned to: the mass production of humans. The level of resources this required staggered the intellect.

  Seeing row upon row upon row of the same face. I tried to count and failed, but there seemed to be at least three platoons of Beasts—the Beast—the same face two hundred forty times beneath snappy forage caps, eyes front.

  I felt dizzy, disoriented. Nauseated, even. The camera panned on, to my relief, only to show other platoons of other faces, repeated one hundred sixty times here, three hundred twenty times there. I felt my mouth turning down in an involuntary scowl of repugnance.

  Beasts. One group was light bronze, arched of brow and nose, a little slimmer than the others, wiry. Another group stood taller than Moira’s Beast, though lither and uglier.

  At the front of each platoon, as if reviewing them, stood who I assumed were their COs. In comparison to the Beasts, they appeared wispier, scruffier somehow, scrappier. I thought one or two of them might be women.

  All those Beasts—and there were more off-camera, I knew—remained at parade rest in perfect stillness. Antikytherata, golems, automatons. Waiting for their masters’ command.

  In the time it took for me to blink, all of that changed.

  A ripple in the ranks of the latter Beast types surged to the fore; I realized it was due to all the Beasts moving away from the disturbance. The picture zoomed in on two men grappling each other. One a copy of Moira’s Beast, the other one of the more coarsely featured models. They staggered towards the CO of one of the platoons; the stockier Beast drove his thumbs towards the thinner Beast’s eyes, while his adversary gripped him in a half-headlock, straining to force his arms down. Nothing I hadn’t seen in other fights.

  But then the shorter Beast found leverage. His free hand shoved upwards, and the taller Beast’s eyeball popped out of his skull like a lychee nut, all white flesh with the dark pit exposed.

  From the camera angle I saw the taller Beast’s face become a monster’s, a rictus of agony and effort. I could not imagine that level of pain or what kept him on his feet. His hand snaked back, whipped forward in a leopard fist jab, caught his opponent in the throat. The other man dropped like a sack of laundry.

  Motion blurred the right edge of the field. One of the COs jumped into the frame, hand outstretched, holding something. The surviving Beast, still on his feet, eyeball like a tumor perched just outside his swollen lids, actually cringed, hands up in a defense posture. The next second he too was on the ground, but not still: from crown to heels he arched in a convulsion, every muscle locked and rigid. In the middle of the second spasm the picture cut out.

  It had taken longer to download the link than to watch it. I sat staring at the empty space for a full minute, shaky, scared, horrified. What had I seen? Two Beasts wrangling over Christ knew what, and a commanding officer stepping in to drop a killer. Ugly, all of it.

  It was not the violence that rocked me so. It was all those damned identical faces.

  Dump him, I thought. Drug him deeper, fly him out to the bush, and leave him. Have an anon call Patrol & Rescue. They find him and eliminate him. No questions asked, not after Wadjet . . . Sneak into the lab with a double-hype of Bericol.
Oops, too bad; Q claims another life.

  It would be so easy.

  Fuck you, Moira, I thought. I wanted to kick something. Fuck you for tempting me with vengeance.

  A long moment passed during which I sat looking blindly into nothing. Counting backwards from ten. Deep breaths in through the nostrils, out through the mouth, all the calming drills.

  When my pulse had subsided, I picked up my comlink. It hooked me onto Dr. Haas’s code without protest. After a few cheeps, she came on.

  “Haas here.”

  “Loren here.” I cleared my throat.

  She sighed audibly, almost a groan. Every nuance intentional.

  “I have to ask. How long do you estimate Moira’s pet will be under? Last night you said ten hours, right?” I glanced at the clock. “That was at 0300 hours. It’s almost 1300 hours now.”

  “That was an initial impression. He’s still under and doesn’t show any signs of coming out.” A silence. “I miscalculated. Whoever put him into Q suppressed him to a considerable depth.”

  “Oh . . . that’s too bad.” Despite my discomfort, I discovered a smile in my voice. “I have a favor to ask you.”

  “Really? This is a reversal.”

  “Isn’t it? Would you set the medbay com to alert me when he comes out?”

  “Let’s not have a repeat of last night, interesting as it was.”

  “Are you going to Moira’s dinner tonight?”

  “She didn’t invite me.”

  “Then I’ll see you in the medbay. Loren out.”