Angel Fire

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “That should take care of him.” Gaby smiled benignly.

  “Stupid limey,” he muttered.

  “Please, don’t use the brogue here,” she pleaded. “They don’t like the Irish all that much ... and he’s a nice boy.”

  She shoved his head under the water again. He ducked away and tackled her. She kicked at him, but not very hard. Handicapping herself to give the cute little chimp a chance.

  So they frolicked like two teenagers without any worries in the world.

  Except that most teenagers were burdened with what they thought were horrendous worries.

  “Enough.” Panting for breath and hanging on the side of the pool, Sean finally struck his colors. “You win.”

  “Draw.” She pretended to be exhausted too. “Now do your lengths.”

  “What?” he protested. “I’ve already had enough exercise.”

  “Jackie Jim,” she said sternly, “swim!”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  So he swam. She was, after all, the boss, draw in their wrestling match or not.

  Like Jacob, he had wrestled with an angel. And he had not been smote on his thigh yet.

  “How do angels die?” he demanded, after he had swum the half mile she had ordered.

  Sitting above him on the side of the pool, a towel around her shoulders, she hesitated as she always did when he probed for information about her species.

  “Second law of thermodynamics mostly. We grow old and begin to fall apart. We have managed to control most infectious diseases that harm us, though occasionally a microbe appears that causes problems.... Accidents, of course.”

  “Accidents?”

  “Which one would encounter in certain places. There are some disadvantages in our complex and intricate energy patterns. When they are disrupted by such intrusions, they do not easily reactivate.”

  “You die?” he asked, wrapping a towel around his shivering shoulders.

  “Indeed we do,” she said somberly. “Now hurry with your shower, we will barely have enough time for the noon train to Cambridge.”

  Like all things English, the shower arrangements were quaint; Gaby had to go up a flight of stairs and Sean down a flight. It took a long time for the water to warm up. So-and-so’s believe in cold showers.

  As he luxuriated in the warm water and covered himself with soap suds, Sean wondered about proton blasts. Angels ought to stay away from cyclotrons. They probably knew that.

  Another male entered the shower room, a strong-man type with bulging muscles and a thick black beard. Sean, embarrassed as always by his puny physique, turned his back.

  Could have gone back to the room for a shower, but herself doesn’t want me to catch cold.

  Chills don’t cause colds. Well, maybe she knows something I don’t.

  A vise closed on his neck and a huge paw covered his mouth. His breathing stopped as though someone had turned off the switch.

  The bearded bastard is killing me.

  He fought, as successfully as would a rag doll in the hands of an angry three-year-old.

  This time his life did rush by. Fiona and Deirdre ... no one at all to take care of them, except Mona. Dear God, no.

  Where was Gaby? What was the magic phrase that was supposed to draw her back?

  He couldn’t remember.

  The act of contrition from Sister Intemerata’s class came back to his mind, as consciousness faded. He couldn’t quite remember how it went___

  He was on the slippery floor of the shower room. The hot water was beating down on him. Fool must have bumped into the shower knob. A hideous bearded face loomed above him. The last sight he would see.

  Where was his damn guardian angel when he really need her?

  I am hardly sorry— No, damnit.... Heartily ... never could keep it straight. Throat on fire, chest collapsing, heart about to explode.

  Then he heard the sound of a trumpet, loud, angry, violent. Suddenly he was free, desperately gulping for air.

  A naked Gaby was swinging the giant through the air, her hands holding his feet, as effortlessly as he used to swing a yo-yo.

  God, she is beautiful.

  The killer’s head cracked against the shower wall and split in half. Blood smeared the shower wall and rushed down to the floor, mixed with the hot water, and poured over him. Roll away from the water, you damn fool.

  Then the bearded man’s blood and body disappeared, just as had the killers in New York. Heavenly garbage disposal.

  Gaby wrapped him in her arms, like he was a boy child with a scraped knee. On the whole, a consoling place to be.

  “Thank the Most High you are still alive.”

  He tried to say “I’ll drink to that,” but the only sounds to come from his mouth were inarticulate gurgles.

  Then they were in his hotel room and he was under the covers of his bed.

  We didn’t take the elevator, I swear we didn’t take the eleva-

  tor. She’s able to move instantly from one place to another. A little less than the speed of light. And carry me with her. Why did we have to fly the Atlantic in that damn airplane?

  Gaby was still becomingly unclothed. So was he. Too sick to be embarrassed. Probably didn’t mean anything to her anyway.

  Her hand touched his throat, her large brown eyes were soft and gentle. The pain went away.

  Then her hand moved to his chest. Pain there ceased too.

  She’s healing me.

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “Forgot the magic words.”

  Now his hand was in hers. Terror left him. Shock effect too. It’s as though it never happened.

  “Nice trick,” he said, his voice almost normal.

  “Special treatment for Irish wolfhounds.” She smiled, a loving mother replacing an angel of death. “Now sleep for an hour. We’ll take a later train.”

  She folded him into her arms and held him like a baby against her chest.

  Wonderful, he thought. Protected by the best mama in all the world. Nothing to worry about.

  She touched his head and he sunk into restful sleep.

  None of it really happened, he told himself as the lovely body, now quite naked, appeared to grace his dreams once more. Not as perfect as the nude Gaby. Human flaws and hence human. He did not worry about the dreams anymore.

  He knew that all doubts were over. Gaby was real. So were those who had determined to kill him.

  Only on the train to Cambridge did he begin to wonder about what had happened in the shower room.

  They were alone in a first-class compartment. He was pondering his notes for the talk that evening before a late supper at high table. The college was alleged to have the best claret in western Europe.

  Gaby was listlessly watching the barren countryside under a cold December sun that was racing rapidly for the warmth and comfort of the horizon.

  “Was there anyone else in the woman’s shower with you?” he asked as they sped through the waterlogged East Anglian countryside.

  “Two American teenagers. Plagued by silly adolescent modesty, I might add. Wanted to stare at me without being caught at it. And most embarrassed when I stared back. Typical of the prudery of your species, especially its females. Actually, they had rather cute little bodies.” She smiled approvingly. “Pert young tits. Not the kind which would appeal to you save as a momentary curiosity. I made a few changes to enhance and preserve their appeal.”

  “Like my posture?”

  “Except in such matters it is not even necessary to touch them. They will spend a fair amount of time in front of mirrors for the next week trying to figure out”—she chuckled—“whether they’ve really changed.”

  “They must have been surprised when you disappeared.”

  She turned away from the window. “I didn’t actually disappear.”

  “You were in two places at once?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Don’t I rate an explanation?”

  She considered him thoughtfully. �
��You should discover us through doing the appropriate scholarly research instead of playing on my sympathies.... In any event, it would be a mistake to conclude that I am confined to that portion of my energy field that creates the analog. Our size is not the same as yours.”

  There were giants in those days, the scriptures said.

  “So you can give the impression of being in one place while you’re mostly in another, messing with the mammary glands of children you find transiently attractive?”

  “Something like that.” She turned back to her examination of the East Anglian countryside. “I was not,” she added as an afterthought, “messing around. There was excellent reason for preserving the attractiveness of those young persons. No law against killing two birds with one stone ... to use your folk wisdom.”

  I’m still not convinced that it’s all not a damn clever illusion.

  Yes, I am. She’s real all right. I’d like her not to be real, but she’s real.

  “Do you mind if I ask why that man, now safely reduced to chemicals, wanted to kill me? Is it impertinent to wonder what this is all about?”

  “Not impertinent”—she turned wearily to face him again— “just a waste of time. As I have said with all the clarity at my command, there are certain people who want to dispose of you. We cannot ascertain their reasons. Not quite random violence, but the next thing to it. We intend to take care of you until we find out. Is that enough?”

  “No.”

  “Well.” She turned away impatiently. “For the present it will have to do.”

  He considered the handsome woman next to him. She was wearing brown leather slacks and a sand brown suede jacket and carrying a matching midcalf raincoat. Undergraduate garb, fit right into the Cambridge scene. Till you looked at the price tags and realized that no motorcycle punk could afford the four-figure costs.

  Beautiful, timelessly beautiful. With a thousand moods and faces, all of them attractive.

  No, I don’t want you to be an illusion. I don’t want her ever to go away.

  Only please make those other people go away.

  He put his hand in his pocket and clutched the rosary he had purchased in the religious goods store at St. Paddy’s. He decided that he would do something he had thought of before but never tried. Superstitiously, he pointed the cross at Gaby.

  It didn’t make her disappear. He didn’t think it would.

  “Gaby ...” he began tentatively.

  “Yes?” She turned on him impatiently.

  “I don’t mean to be a nuisance.”

  “You’re never a nuisance, Jackie Jim. Always sweet and cute. Sometimes ...” She smiled her maternal smile.

  “... A bit of a pest?”

  “I was going to say a bit too curious. But then you’re a scholar, aren’t you? A Nobel Prize winner, which is why I’m here. Anyway, what is it?”

  “You were magnificent with your clothes off.”

  “You were able to notice, were you?”

  “You know damn well I was!”

  “All right.” She colored as she did when a compliment broke through her defenses. “I’m glad you liked me. To tell the truth, I figured you might. But it’s only an analog body, as you know.”

  “A faint shadow?”

  “A pale hint.” She grinned crookedly. “You should see what I’m really like. Only, of course, you can’t see what I’m really like, can you? That’s what this whole crazy adventure is about—a species which has evolved so far that it is imperceptible to human senses.”

  “Mostly.”

  “Right,” she agreed. “Mostly.”

  “But you guys don’t wear clothes like we do?”

  “That is hardly necessary or possible.”

  “So there’s no comparison in your species for nakedness in ours?”

  “A prurient question, Professor Desmond, if I ever heard one.”

  “We’re a prurient species. I gather you’re not.”

  That was, he had learned, an excellent way to get to her. All you had to do was suggest that they were lacking in something that humans had, and she became very defensive.

  “We are too prurient,” she said hotly, “more powerfully and more effectively than you are.”

  “But differently?”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “So it’s all right for me to ask my prurient question.”

  “Maybe it would be better for you to read your Financial Times.” She gestured at the paper on the seat opposite them. “Its pink color is mildly prurient, I should think.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “That devoted wolfhound expression will get you nowhere.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Besides, I have probably told you too much about us as it is.”

  “I don’t think your friends told you that when you had your big confab yesterday. They told you you were doing fine and you should continue to follow your instincts.”

  She considered him cautiously, suspiciously. “In an earlier age you would have been burned at the stake as a wizard. But”—she shrugged—“my hat, if I were wearing one, is off to you, Professor Desmond. That was remarkably accurate.”

  “Hangdog but ingenious wolfhound, huh?”

  “To answer your question, as you probably have surmised already, we do have a way of disclosing the inner self to those with whom we are intimate, and it is not totally dissimilar to your custom—interesting, I will admit—of undressing for the other. A way of revealing our depths that is both an invitation to love and a reward for it. Does that answer your question?”

  “The possibility drives you guys up the wall?”

  “It sure does!” She laughed happily. “What would be the point in it if it did not?”

  “I’m not surprised.” He settled into his round table omniscience mode.

  “Beast!” She swung her fist at him, deliberately missing. “You are too surprised. Everything about me surprises you and delights you.”

  “If you say so.”

  They laughed together, friendship and fun restored at the same time.

  “So you want to know how it works?”

  “I’m curious.”

  She pondered. “Well, strictly speaking, you couldn’t see it at all. I mean, if I were to attempt to lure an unattached angel to combine with me—a very serious procedure given what I’ve told you about our propensity to pair-bond—and I were to do it while I am watching over you, you would not even know it was happening.”

  “I could see your mood change, couldn’t I?”

  “Probably not. If I want to hide my emotions from you, I can do it very effectively. By the way”—she winked—“I am not engaged in such behavior at the present.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The closest I can come to you seeing me as I am was the pattern of lights you witnessed in the hotel room in New York. That did not seem to amuse you.”

  “It was lovely, but I wanted to see a person who went with the voice.”

  “The lights are a person,” she said with a sigh, “but I understand you. Which would you prefer?” The woman next to him was replaced briefly by an enchanting drama of lights. Then the woman returned.

  “I like them both, but it’s a lot easier to travel with you the way you are now.”

  “I thought as much.” She stopped, thinking hard. “Well, I can demonstrate a not-too-distant reflection of our self-disclosure, one you can see, more or less, from my other mode. If you want.”

  “Of course I want.”

  “Some cautions?”

  “Sure.”

  “First of all”—she was counting on her fingers, obviously intrigued by the experiment—“you should not expect the result to be erotic in your sense of that word.”

  “I’ve given that up.”

  “I bet. Secondly, it may be too much for you, too much color

  and light. It may scare you terribly. I’ll stop before it does any harm, but I should warn you.”

  “No
problem.” His heart was pounding.

  “Thirdly ...”

  ‘Tour friends advised against it?”

  “On the contrary, they advised in favor of it. They argued that it would make my work easier because it would bind you to me for the rest of your life. Not as a mate, but as someone who was strongly linked to me. Do you want to risk that?”

  “Let’s not kid each other, Gabriella Light, you’ll always be part of my life if I survive whatever these enemies are up to.”

  “Oh”—she waved her hand in dismissal—“don’t worry about them.”

  “You want to bind me that way, don’t you.”

  “Very much indeed. I ... can’t help but be, ah, emotionally invested in you.”

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The woman next to him vanished and the intricate and exquisite light patterns returned, dancing, bubbling, frothing, whirling. Red, green, and blue mostly, with a restless variety of combinations of patterns.

  Yep, that was Gaby all right.

  The dance became more intense, more excitable, more challenging. The colors flashed on and off, at one moment almost invisible and then at another moment so bright that he was forced to close his eyes.

  He felt himself soaring out of the old railway carriage and into the stars. This was not a good idea after all. I am out of control now. Maybe we should stop.

  It was too late to stop. The color points vanished and were quickly replaced by a massive waterfall of gold and silver that seemed to fill the whole of creation, sweeping everything before it, absorbing, caressing, drinking in, destroying.

  Too much beauty, too much goodness, too much grace. All the beauty there ever was and there ever would be and still more. That was the real Gaby, stripped of all protection and all veils, infinitely vulnerable and infinitely appealing. The waterfall continued to flow, its power growing in intensity. He belonged to it for-

  ever. But so it belonged to him. There would be no turning back. Not ever.

  God was noting this strange nuptial and writing it down forever in His book.

  God?

  No longer, in the face of so much beauty, could he doubt.