Archangel

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Archangel Page 20

by Marguerite Reed

Why wouldn’t he be? I was down, helpless. Even with the rifle, I presented no real threat.

  If he really wanted to kill me, he would snatch the rifle out of my hands, bash me over the head with the stock, rape me or torture me, or both at once, whichever fired his laboratory-assembled synapses. He could slaughter me by half a dozen methods I could think of in a heartbeat.

  He could have let me break my neck in the fall from the tent. He could have stood back and let the varanid cripple me.

  But he didn’t. He hadn’t.

  The bark-burrowing night-chimes, silent during the varanid attack, resumed their song. Their music-box pulse beat in my ears. I wanted to lie there on the arboros floor, I wanted to succumb to the adrenalin- and pain-borne exhaustion. It’d be nice if you could trust him, wouldn’t it?

  It seemed a dozen voices—willing to kill another human being—No military records of any Beast leaving service alive–we’re Ferrum, stable . . . goddamnit, we were sent to help—whispered to me during the short time it took for him to climb the ladder to my tent, find the red plastic medkit, and climb down. Natch . . . Base Enhanced . . . Natch . . . My gut pitched and rocked as the tent did.

  When he was within a meter, I pointed the rifle at him. “Great,” I said. “Shokrun very much. Now put the kit on the ground—slowly.”

  His eyes fixed on mine, mine on his, as he stooped to set down the medkit. He rose with equal deliberation. As if our gaze aligned a conduit, I felt nameless energy cycling between us as it had on the flight here, with no escape, no outlet. The skin on my arms, my neck seemed to crisp with the heat of it.

  I chambered another round.

  “Doctor,” he said, his voice so low I could discern neither question nor appeal nor reproach—and so heard them all.

  “If you don’t want me to kill you, you’ll go up into the third tent. Now.”

  “Let us—”

  “You think I just like to hear myself talk?” With a jet of disgust like bile, I realized that tears lay beneath my thawing control. “Why the hell didn’t you go up when I suggested it?”

  His answer took a long time in coming, and when he gave it, he threw it at me like a handful of so many stones. “We don’t like heights.”

  I loathed saying what I did then, prompted by barest suspicion. Even to him, whom I hated, I hated saying it; it made me complicit with the system that had spawned him and ensnared Moira. “I’m ordering you to go up to the tent.”

  His expression, on the verge of saturnine, smoothed to blankness. “That’s an order, Commander?”

  “That’s an order, soldier,” I rapped out. If he saluted me, I’d—

  Without another word or gesture he turned and made for the ladder.

  “Just a moment,” I called.

  He stopped but did not look back. “Yes, Commander?”

  “Why are you obeying my orders, and not Zhádāo’s?”

  “You’re the Natch. Commander.”

  I was a Natch. Lasse had been a Natch.

  When I was eleven years old—during my first semester of training for Second Wave—I asked my mother about Pride. I wanted to hear about all the sins. The Commandments I kept running across in history and sociology classes seemed fairly self-explanatory, as the distillation of the territorial ethos of an agrarian bronze-age patriarchal society. Those sixth-century sins, however, seemed nebulous and adult to my childish mind—especially Pride.

  Doesn’t God want us to have any fun at all? I whined.

  Don’t think of it as a list on the edubay wall, she said, smiling. Think of it as the troubleshooter section in your owner’s manual. Things to watch out for if you want to take care of yourself.

  But why Pride? I waved to the shelves of discs, plugs, and, glass-cased antiques. Look at all those old stories you study. Heroes are proud, female hereditary rulers of state are proud.

  Let’s look at a very old tale, she said. She took a disc from one long shelf marked Spain and slid it into the holo. A man on a horse appeared, white as salt in the little space. In the man’s right hand was a sword; to his mouth he held a horn.

  This is Hruodland, a military official who lived in Christian Euro, oh, almost two thousand years ago. His superior, a hereditary ruler of a small multi-cultural, multi-linguistic state, led an armed force by invitation into a neighboring territory, to further an alliance with a Muslim Euro officer.

  Mother always began her stories with history, as a caution against romanticization. I kicked my feet, bored. I wanted to see the horses’ white coats shining, to hear the snap of banners in the wind.

  Hruodland’s superior, after some success, saw that his campaign would fail. Not only were the cities getting too strong for him, but word came that a disenfranchised minority beneath his jurisdiction was in revolt. And so he retreated from the territory. He led his military back to his own territory, but the only way back was through the mountains.

  Mother cued another hologram. This one depicted violent yet bloodless conflict, a tangle of men, horses, gleaming weapons.

  Remember, ya habiba, they had no bulk transport then? No hydro-power, not even fossil fuels. They mounted their horses—those who had them—they got on their feet, they harnessed the mules to the wagons. Hruodland brought up the rear guard, while his superior led the way. In one valley, the rear guard was attacked by a small force. No one now is sure whether it was a band of indigenous guerrilla fighters, or whether it was a rogue group of Muslim Euros, retaliating against the interlopers.

  My mother was quiet then, gazing into the hologram. This valley is called Roncesvalles, or Roncevaux. Almost all of the rear guard were slain, and so was Hruodland.

  But what’s this got to do with Pride?

  Well, stories and songs were made of this incident. In the stories, the songs, Hruodland’s name becomes Roland. And he’s defeated because he doesn’t ask for help.

  Aha, human failing. My ears pricked. Why doesn’t he ask for help?

  This was during a time of societal evolution where the individual began to supersede the community. Roland has the means of asking for help, but he perceives he will be shamed if he does so. And he is more afraid of that than he is of defeat and death. He says, and Mother closed her eyes a moment, accessing a few lines from her astonishing treasurestore of memory he says, ‘May it never please God that any man alive should come to say that pagans—pagans!—once made me sound this horn: no kin of mine will ever bear that shame.’

  But this was suicide, wasn’t it? I mean, he knew he couldn’t survive the attack. Father would not approve.

  Brat that I was, I gave my mother a sidelong look, watching her reaction.

  My mother sighed. Your father believes in the goodness of God, that all gifts come from him, and that it’s wrong to spurn those gifts.

  What do you believe?

  At that time I had worn my hair long, a rebellious soft fall past my shoulders. My mother forever smoothed it, fussed over it. Now she sighed and merely slipped an errant mass behind my ear. I believe that God is infinitely merciful. God does not want to make things any harder for us in this life than they already are.

  I reached out and keyed the holo back to the first picture. Black-haired, gold-helmed, the shining warrior hauled back on his horse’s reins in an attitude of defiance and might. He was proud. Right?

  Right. That horn he carries? His co-commanders suggest that he blow it, as a signal to the main force led by his superior, but he refuses. When he finally blows it, it’s too late. And the rescuers can only pick up the pieces. So, you see, his pride got him killed. Pride is dangerous. It’s a liability to you and to your community. If you cannot ask with an open hand— and she laid her hand, palm up, on the table —then you cannot give with an open hand.

  I thought about that, frowning at the holo. Did his superior have responsibility over a large community?

  Thousands of people.

  Did his superior have children?

  Several daughters.

  Would he have b
een killed if he’d come back to help?

  Mother switched off the holo and looked at me thoughtfully.

  It’s not likely. Charlemagne was leading a much larger force. They should have defeated their attackers with ease.

  But did Hroudland—Roland—know that? I pressed. Did he know for sure?

  What are you getting at, Vashti?

  Maybe he thought if he called for help his superior would be killed. And if his superior is killed, what happens to the community he’s responsible for? What happens to his little girls?

  There’s no indication in the poem—

  I rushed over her, fired with the joy of argument. So perhaps Roland was actually performing an egoless act of self-negation for the greater good—

  That’s enough! Maybe we should look to the Greeks.

  I thought about Pride quite a bit while I tended to my knee. I was perfectly capable of treating myself, with everything at hand in my kit—the pain inhibitor patches, the various flexobraces, the coolant packs, the antiseptic wash—although if anyone else had offered, I would have let them help. Such egoization on my part made me, made Ubastis look bad. What do you care? I asked myself, sliding the coolant pack up my shin. So does murder. You think that’s gonna make Ubastis look good?

  I’ll be exonerated.

  You should’ve taken your chance tonight.

  He hadn’t tried to kill me, though. Even in that chaotic moment when I’d pulled my knife, he’d done nothing to defend himself. Activating the coolant, inflating the pack, I played the events over in my mind. Another time, I reassured myself. Another time it’ll be justified. What will happen if I don’t? Like a broken Tilden or a past-prime shuttle, he stands to hurt someone if he’s not taken down.

  I locked the brace around my leg and then pushed up from my other knee, again using the rifle for a cane. When I finally dared to put weight on that leg, pain flared right through the narcotic. My teeth savaged my lip. The ladder was right above me, where I had dropped in relief. I refused to let myself contemplate this next difficulty, but slung the rifle over my back and hauled myself up to my tent: pushing with my good right foot and pulling with my two good arms. I had been through worse, and as I inelegantly rolled over the bolster, I told myself that I would heal, that I would have no problems the next day, that all my plans would come to fruition.

  In the morning I felt somewhat better. Beneath the brace I knew my knee was swollen, but the constantly cycling coolant pack kept that to a minimum. I remembered to replace my lower canine with the gold-plated voca recorder, but I planned to make the day a careful one, more for sightseeing and education than violent clashes. Had this been any other hunt, I wouldn’t have minded; it would have been a pleasure to walk beneath the boughs of the southern Xoisian basin before the rains, and teach offworlders about Ubastis. I wanted to coax Zhádāo out of her shell and elicit honest opinion from Bearce; to, in hope, infect the outsider with a little more regard, a little more caution—a willingness to listen to the Pokies when they stood up in the Senate.

  I could not allow the death among us to dim such pleasure.

  Before first light I crept down the ladder, hoping to be the first one up and doing, but I was met by the Beast—who, wordlessly, pointed to my lost knife and a walking staff trimmed with the tool. I thanked him sourly, and went to prepare our morning meal.

  Past the foliage curtaining our aeries the lake chuckled. Rocked by the water, the drowsing flocks croaked and muttered somnolently. Light seeped into the world. When they showed up, my companions greeted the open sky above their heads, the sandy dirt on their feet with different states of enthusiasm. So much of their lives must have been lived encased by alloy, and yet they seemed at ease on the beach.

  “It was the attack,” said Bearce simply, when I commented on this. “Woke out of a sound sleep to find one’s self in a bed dangling in the air, and then to see you and . . . O-389 and that creature.”

  “I do feel better on the ground,” Zhádāo said. In the faint light of morning, chewing on her soycake, she looked more like a human and less like an Interrogator.

  I found it surprising that in his calling as journalist and hers as military figure that such a waking shocked them so much, and I said so.

  “It’s not the danger; oh, God, no,” Bearce said, laughing. “I’ve been in a firefight between miners and OrshCo infantry. I’ve been knocked out of bed when Leyenda collided with station Deuteronomy. I’ve been in the thick of demonstrations—”

  “No,” said Zhádāo, shaking her head. A faint smile curved her mouth. “It’s the animals. When the danger is from other humans, that’s one thing. But when you don’t know what living thing is coming for you—Bearce, I don’t blame you for being scared.”

  “Ubastis has no large carnivorous arboreal predators,” I said. “That’s exactly why we use the tents. The largest thing you have to be worried about is a lemur—and they eat fruit, and insects.”

  “No snakes?” Zhádāo helped herself to another soycake. “There were snakes at the habitat on my base. Crawling on the ground; in the trees. I fed one a helping of pseudo-prey—” she held her hands about half a meter apart “—which it swallowed whole.”

  I glanced at the Beast; he seemed to be following the conversation with his usual sober application. “No snakes. Evolution on Ubastis seems to have followed parallels of Earth’s, with some variations, but Ubastis didn’t do much with the snake.”

  “Is there a niche for them, do you think? If they were introduced?” Bearce asked.

  “No,” I said.

  The Beast spoke, and as with every time, we flinched, and looked to him. “Yet here we are.”

  The staff made walking bearable. I had already planned a pleasant little hike around part of the lake and into the patchier arboros hemming the west edge. The GPS told me that we’d find a little herd of lesser axeheads, perhaps one or two of the great-shelled polies. I had requested no clearance to hunt them, but they provided a nice introduction to Ubasti fauna. Out on the grassland, I could have showed Zhádāo and Bearce larger, more impressive species—I could have also risked their lives even more than I did here. Montjak’s besora, the most dangerous carnivore any team had discovered, favored the open plains.

  Zhádāo seemed content with that, but Bearce wouldn’t be quiet. Apparently watching the encounter with the varanid last night hadn’t satisfied him. So what would we be seeing today? Just plant eaters? Did the larger predators ever come into this territory? Was I sure? What about in the lake? Was it a question of habitat, then? What would happen if some of the arboros were eliminated?

  At that question I stopped and pivoted around to face him. “Why would some of the arboros be ‘eliminated?’”

  He shrugged. “Hypothetical question.” He looked away from me and gingerly touched the trunk of a small conifer. “Any studies been done on the composition of these . . . trees? I mean, do any of them produce fruit? Nuts? Anything beneficial?”

  I wanted to hold discourse on the word beneficial, but I managed to restrain myself. The soil here had a rockier, sandier composition: cycads dominated this part of the arboros. Wherever I looked, the wand-like trunks of the parasol cycad sprang upwards; their foliage unfurled between us and the sky, filtering the light to green incandescence. Here and there, human-high, the nova cycad hunched, leaves radiating like feathery quills, looking like an enormous jade sea urchin that had decided to live on dry land.

  Clustered at the base and on the exposed roots of the greater trees, scaly rosettes, silver, pink, and sepia banded, cupped water in the bowls formed by their stiff leaves. Higher up, the bromeliads clung to the trunks wherever they could find purchase; and if I had been able to rise up to the canopy, I would have seen them thick along the branches, botanical oases for everything that crawled, swung, scampered, flew.

  I beckoned my charges over to a collection of these little tanks. They ranged in size from the width of my palm to my skull. Each one held water, whether it was merely
a few cc’s, or, in the case of one huge specimen, what looked like a liter.

  I drew Bearce in with a touch on his shoulder. “Can you get a good visual of this? Here, bend down. A little something for the viewers at home.” Squatting was awkward, but I managed with a minimum of pain. “You’re asking if the plants are beneficial. The ones that you’re looking at—aren’t they pretty?—act like miniature ponds.”

  Without touching plant or water I indicated the bowl of the largest. “This tank is big enough to provide a nursery for one of our most surprising terrestrial invertebrates—the aubergine radiate.” I threw a smile to Zhádāo. “Those are one of the things that can crawl, by the way.”

  She pulled a grimace, but did not step back. “Do they bite?”

  “They can . . . when provoked, but then so can I.” I paired that with a grin, for good-humored effect. “So can you. Some time I’ll try to find an adult and show him to you. But for now, let’s look at what we’ve got here.”

  From my belt I pulled the flashlight and narrowed its beam to finger’s width. Its touch blew the bowl’s interior to blank, flat brightness. Across the leaves the shadows of water-skippers crawled. Clenched in fright against the curvature of the bowl, an aubergine radiate cowered. In her larval state, she was too young to have begun to grow the thick, leathery casing over her head, and she had wrapped her tentacles protectively around herself until she looked like a translucent amethyst knot. One eye peeked out, constricted to a pinprick.

  “The thing’s frightened,” Zhádāo said. Her head nearly bumped into mine, so absorbed was she.

  “You bet she is. Now that you can pick her out, let me turn off the light. In a minute she’ll unwind and you can see what she really looks like.” I switched off the beam.

  “How do you know it’s female?” Bearce asked.

  “Radiates—whether terrestrial or aquatic—all start out female. At the end of their larval state, the changes they undergo include a burst of hormonal activity.” I held my breath as the radiate slowly relaxed her tentacles. A fat cracx-hawk banged into one of the leaves and clawed at the smooth surface. Excited, the radiate blushed violet, then shot a jet of water at the insectoid predator. The water knocked the cracx-hawk into the pool. Its wings whirred. In the next instant the radiate snatched the cracx and stuffed it into her beak.

 

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