Archangel

by Marguerite Reed

  I had secreted the remote in my utility belt, within easy reach. The motion of the VeeTOL lulled me. For now I could be patient. What could he do at this altitude but kill us all? With a mental shrug I consigned vigilance to my hindbrain and allowed myself to enjoy the flight. Flying bored some people, but I had always found it relaxing, an ideal of dreaming sleep, rather than the mosaic pieced together by one’s unconscious.

  At a low deck of two thousand meters we passed over the leading foothills of the Anqet Mountains. I pointed them out to Zhádāo and Bearce. In this season, if we landed (I told them), we would find cascades of flowers: the Lucretia plant, a benign relative of the Clytemnestra. I did my best to paint a picture for Bearce of the cascades of bell-shaped ivory blooms, rosettes of dagger-shaped leaves where the tiny lamellae-toed vertebrates who served as their sole pollinators scampered.

  “One can curl up on my thumb,” I said. “How many eggs can a reptilian usually lay?”

  Zhádāo shrugged. “Ten?”

  “Sure, sometimes ten. Sometimes five. Some reptilians, such as the horned archelon, can lay a hundred. King Anak can lay only one.”

  “The archelons are the turtles, right?” Bearce broke in. “Big as a shuttle? I’d love to see one of those.”

  “They’re like turtles,” I said. “They share many characteristics of Earth turtles, particularly the prehistoric species. But . . .” and I held up a cautionary finger “. . . they are not from Earth. So we can’t, in good conscience, call them turtles, can we?”

  “I’m reminded,” Zhádāo said, “of the arguments that raged when human clones were first approved.” The lines fanning across her cheekbones deepened. “Certainly, they were built from human genetic material inserted into a human egg, incubated in a model of a human organ—but could we call them human?” With no subtlety whatsoever her gaze tracked to the Beast.

  And, mindlessly, Bearce and I followed her lead.

  In the diffuse light filtered by the windows, his eyes were flat black discs. “We think this ‘human’ thing hacks you people more than it does us.”

  “Are you saying you don’t care that you’re not human?” Bearce suggested from his corner.

  The Beast shifted into an unmistakable posture, both hands behind his head, legs now crossed ankle on knee. I fought my own body’s response to make myself smaller. Instead I tucked one foot beneath myself, raising myself up so that my sightline rode over his, and laid my arm along the tops of the seats. It felt too vulnerable; it was as if ions ricocheted in the space between our open bodies.

  And yet it worked: the Beast conceded territory, bringing his hands to his lap. His words, however, belied any submissive pose. “You don’t think we’re human, that’s jake with us. But tell us why, hey?”

  The general shrugged. She seemed more interested in adjusting the lanyard on her airmask. “Because you are man-made. You are created by humans; therefore you are not human.”

  “Why? Aren’t you the same as us? Just less Enhanced, is all.”

  Zhádāo smiled. “Listen to you. ‘We.’ ‘Us.’ You can’t shake that clone conditioning. Can Beasts conceive of self? You were created not to conceive of self.”

  I looked out at the shield, seeing our reflections ghostly in the glass canopy. I did not like the way the conversation had turned. This was an argument I myself might have made; yet in another’s mouth I heard the false note. Although I had been all too ready to question the Beast’s humanity, logic began to fail me. I did not like the path down which this led me. I must not yield an iota to compassion.

  But what Zhádāo was saying, that something had been purposefully created not to conceive of self, roused horror in me. All those identical faces . . .

  “We’re not allowed to think of him as human,” I said heavily, “because if those who created him created a human, that makes them divine. Our species puts off hubris the way a star puts off radiation, and we know it. But we can’t name our sins. We can’t name our sins, so we don’t have to own them. So to appease ourselves we call our creations inhuman—” gorge rose in my throat, or tears “—and we make them slaves.”

  I could look at none of them. Their regard crawled across my face.

  “Dr. Loren,” the Beast said, “is the only human here.”

  I hated him. I hated them all.

  The karstic topography of the Anqet mountains yielded slowly to the further foothills and then the lowlands. We had traveled through two bionomes, and if we flew another two hundred or so kliks, we would find ourselves over the intertidal swamplands—beautiful and deadly, where I would never take any offworlder. Bearce’s horned archelons could be found there, as well as tiny venomous ammonites and the flesh-burrowing dodecapods.

  The lowland arboros was quite enough for this group.

  Ever the showman, Joop took our approach in an ever-tightening spiral, letting us get a good look at our playground. From the north and east, out of the aquifer beneath the Anqet mountains, rose the lazy Krka. It had shone like the sun’s path since we came over the Anqet, descending in abrupt steps through the foothills, in shallow waterfalls extending, at some places, over a mile. The closer to the sea the Krka came, the wider and lazier it became. Still here and there, little tributaries forked away from its munificence, carving their own paths. Some of them relinquished into swamps; a few of them formed little lakes on their journey to the salt.

  Our drop site was not far from one of these lakes. Unnamed, it was marked on the charts only as K6L2, a long, shallow, eutrophic lake perhaps fifteen kliks long and seven kliks wide, measuring no more than thirty meters deep. The little tributary tumbled from a fifteen-meter drop into a limestone basin that poured into the lake, looking for all the world like a holo-fountain. Bearce would love it, I knew.

  Joop set down at the southern tip of the lake, where a natural beach had formed. Lacustrine yellow-throats and broad-nosed goobies, come in for the evening to roost, burst up from the water in an opal explosion of water and lithe iridescent bodies. While Bearce exclaimed over the brilliance, I scanned the arboros behind us. Foliage trembled from the passage of bodies, large and small; shadows scurried, lumbered in the gloom beyond massive boles.

  I felt the muscles in my shoulders and neck loosen as if a knot had been undone. A Gordian knot, true; but in the keen excitement cutting through me, I would not stop to question it.

  When I addressed my three charges, my voice shook. I cleared my throat and started over. “In just a moment, Sergeant Al-Mansur is going to open the shield. We have several kilos of luggage and equipment to unload, and then we get to set up our base camp, all before nightfall.”

  “How much time do we have?” asked Zhádāo.

  “Since we’re so close to the equator, this time of year we have around twelve hours of daylight, give or take. Joop, what time is it?”

  “Gettin’ on for fourteen. So you got until maybe nineteen. Time enough.”

  Zhádāo frowned. “We’ve been in the air how long?”

  “Four hours or so,” I said.

  “Four hours—how slow were we going?”

  “Only a hundred fifty,” Joop said. “Slower over the mountains.”

  “Until nineteen should be enough time,” Bearce said. The tone of his voice rendered the phrase a question, not a statement.

  “More than enough,” I said.

  “We’ll make it enough time,” Zhádāo said.

  I held up a cautionary finger. “Yeah, we’ll make it enough time. But remember, friends, we’re having fun. We’re doing this for fun.”

  It was fun for them—I hoped it was fun for them—but it exhausted me. Under usual circumstances I functioned with an eye graft in the back of my head, as the saying went. Simultaneously I monitored my client and the proximity of dangerous animals. Now I was trying to monitor Zhádāo and Bearce, the indigenous lifeforms, and the Beast.

  I had my moment, though, at their expense. As the canopy slid back, the smokiness of the glass yielded to dazzling mid-af
ternoon daylight, every color a hallucinatory experience, the touch of the air a balmy caress. Zhádāo and Bearce drank in deep lungfuls of real, wild, unfiltered oxygen. Bearce exclaimed in shocked disgust. Zhádāo brought the mask she’d worn around her neck all day up to her face and affixed it.

  “What is that reek?” Zhádāo asked, just as Bearce clapped a hand over his mouth—although I could still hear his astonished curse.

  I fought my grin just enough so that they could see I was trying to be polite. “That’s the odor of thousands of liters of lake water, liberally seasoned with minerals, bacteria, necrotic botanical and zoological matter, and the excreta of over five hundred species.”

  Zhádāo nodded. “Quite the teeming bionome we’re going to invade.”

  “Hell of a word, invasion. If I go wading in there with a cut on my foot, it might get infected, sure. We’ve barely begun to catalog strains of bacteria that might be harmful to—” I balked on the word humans “—homo sap. But there’s not a single manmade pollutant in there.”

  I stole a glance at the Beast, out of habit. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest, listening, with a cast to his features that might have been enjoyment.

  “There’s worse-smelling things,” he said. “A pile of dead bodies stinks a hell of a lot worse.” He uncoiled to his feet and in one stride was at the edge of the cabin, between me and Zhádāo. He rested his hands on the back on the seat, tilting his head into the slight breeze. “But you’re no stranger to that particular aroma, are you, General?”

  “More of a stranger to it than you,” she said, her voice tinny and distant behind her air filter. “Your kind did Hell’s work that month.”

  I had thought that with so many hands, unloading and setting up would be easier than if it had been just Joop, one client, and myself. I was wrong. Zhádāo and I disagreed on almost every placement of our gear. Bearce sat right down in an unpacked camp chair and cammed the whole time. He got, I’m sure, fantastic footage of us assembling the polyply hut and the proof storage crates, the com, the nanocycler, the toilet.

  When we had the basics set up, Joop bid us farewell. “I’ll fly by in a week,” he said. “If I don’t see you at your base, I’ll raise you by comlink or homer.”

  Both Zhádāo and Bearce automatically put a hand to their belts, where’d they’d clipped the homers I’d provided them.

  “I hate to ask it, but bring food,” I said. “We’re going to be running tight rations.” It was a lie, but he and I knew that such a big party would strain our resources. If I never brought it up, Joop, at least, would wonder why. In a week—perhaps less—fewer of our group would need food.

  Joop took in the site, dark brows quirking upward. “You going to have enough tents?”

  “We have three—” I started, but Bearce, squatting on his heels by Zhádāo, broke in.

  “Tents? You mean we’re not staying in the hut?”

  “Well, no,” I said, with an apologetic smile. “That’s to house the bulk of our supplies and the really delicate stuff. And it’s animal-proof.”

  “And the tents aren’t?” This from the Beast, but I could not tell whether he was truly concerned or still hacking on Zhádāo.

  “The tents go in the trees,” I countered. At the expressions that met this, I hurried on. “Don’t worry, you’ll love it! It’s very safe, very comfortable. There’s a rail all around the floor of the tent, but if you’re nervous, you can buckle yourself in.”

  “But there’s only three,” Joop said, grinning. “So two of you are gonna have to double up.”

  “Zhádāo, you and I—”

  She cut me off with a nod. “Thank you, but Bearce and I will be sharing a tent.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Ah. That takes care of that, then.”

  Joop winked at me.

  As I walked him to the VeeTOL, he became more solicitous. “You think you’ll be all right? That’s an . . . interesting bunch you have there.”

  “You think so?” Artlessly I looked over my shoulder. Bearce watched us—or at least he aimed his cam in our direction—and I volunteered a jaunty wave. Zhádāo was peering into the hut, directing the Beast who was loaded down with two packs. Hers and Bearce’s, I would guess.

  “You’ll be lucky if that so-called general doesn’t break nerve and shoot one of you instead of what you’re hunting. The—you said he was a journalist?—that guy looks like he’s been around, but if you get charged by a besora, he’ll be camming it, not saving you.”

  “He’s supposed to save us with the cam.”

  “The only guy who looks like he’s worth anything,” Joop continued, “is that—that construct, that gen. He’s not paying, is he? Are you taking my advice and finally bringing some help?”

  “Yeah. Trial run. He’s strong, he’s alert, he’s no fool.”

  “Get him to watch your back. You’ll need it, I have a hunch.”

  “I know what I’m doing. Most of the time, anyway.” I forced a laugh. It sounded plausible, I thought. “We’ll be fine.”

  “I know. It’s—with more offworlders asking for clearance, and with the vote coming up—it makes me jumpy, that’s all. Wish there was a way we could just seal the damn planet off for a hundred years.” His gaze searched my face. “If you need anything, if you have any problems, you com me.”

  “Joop—”

  “I know I’m not one of your Second Wave sahbities. But if you think you’re getting into a scrape, or if you can’t handle your people, get me. Promise me, all right?”

  “You’ll see us in a week.”

  “Fine.” He threw his hands up, laughing. “Hey—if you do bag a carnivore, get me a tooth, huh?”

  “That’s trophy-taking! Joop, I’m shocked!” Now my laugh was genuine.

  “Make a little necklace with it. Really impress the offworld ginch.”

  We kissed cheeks farewell, his beard against my smooth skin, and I watched the VeeTOL rise in an ifrit of wind and leaves. The reptiles, who had returned to the water, burst upward again in a cacophony of indignation. He circled the lake with one of his signature banks, then headed east. I watched until the gleaming craft disappeared beyond the crown of the arboros.

  In a week the Beast would be dead. Either he would be dead or he would kill me. Who would find us first, Patrol & Rescue, or Joop? If there was a way I could ensure that whoever found me would be a complete stranger . . . I walked back to the encampment, hands clasped behind my back, images of the necessary course of events cycling through my brain.

  With the light still strong, with everyone still disordered in their new setting, I felt relatively safe, and so brought out the weapons. Half my mind still turned on the gyre that was my goal.

  One knife for each person. Three of the knives were identical work blades, twenty-centimeter pugs, simple black thermoplast hilts, carbon alloy blades. The fourth I’d scrounged off of Joop, and it was a big flash bastard, the blade at least sixteen centimeters, exaggerated brass-finish cross-guards. Probably to impress the ginch.

  That one I strapped to my thigh. The more modest knives I handed out to the others. Zhádāo pulled hers from the sheath, looking at the thing as if she’d never held one before.

  “Is something wrong?” I tried to ignore the sight of the Beast slipping his knife into his boot.

  “I don’t believe so,” Zhádāo said. “Dr. Loren, why is it so much of the technology Ubastis—and particularly you—choose is so low? Determinedly low, I would say?”

  Others had asked me that question. “I’d love to answer you in detail,” I said, smiling as if I posed for a Source Announcement. “Let me summarize by saying that if something works—a tool, a concept, a modality—we see no reason to improve upon it.”

  “The VeeTOL? Don’t you think coming out here in a skipjack would have been an improvement? God knows we could have cut our travel time by at least half.”

  I rubbed my hand over my mouth and chin, feigning thought. “We would’ve made it here by late morning
.”

  “Errr.” Bearce made an apologetic noise. “We also would have blown maybe four megaliters of fuel, dumping more than thirty-one pollutants into the air. I did a story on pollutants for the Source three years ago,” he added when Zhádāo turned to look at him. Those coal eyes held no spark of warmth. He opened his mouth—and I cleared my throat, forestalling whatever he else he might have offered.

  “Who wants some guns?” I asked.

  They watched me unpack and assemble the Justin, the Magdeburg, the Varangar. Zhádāo and Bearce asked questions, but when I offered Zhádāo the Magdeburg, she stepped back.

  “Do you have gloves?” she asked.

  “Gloves?”

  She pointed. “Your hands. They’re oily.”

  I dropped the butt of the rifle to the ground and leaned on it, biting my lip. I could not look at her for some seconds. “Bik,” I said, forcing the first-name basis, in as gentle a tone as I could muster, “did you actually want to hunt, or did you simply want to visit?”

  Her chin went up. “To hunt.”

  Bearce slid in, his cam angled away from his eye. “Dr. Loren, you have to forgive the general and me. We’re both spacers; we’re used to hygenic surroundings, mechanical noises. This is indescribably beyond our experience. We’re babes in the woods—do you know that old expression?” He put a hand to Zhádāo’s elbow and whispered in her ear. “If you can excuse us for a nano?”

  I nodded. What could I do? They walked to the hut, Bearce bent in a solicitous arc over Zhádāo’s steely figure. You get to be a general by telling other people what buttons to push? I wanted to yell. I settled for muttering to myself. “What the hell is she doing here, anyway?”

  “Do you really want the answer to that?”

  The Beast was watching me across the table of rifles. Arms folded, a hint of a frown line between his brows, he looked as if he could stand there all night.

  “Do you know the answer?”