She must’ve been there. He poked at the burned edge; a black flake adhered to his fingertip. Floating around out in the air, with that silly sweet smile on her face, when the Dead Centers blew open that whole section of the wall. All that screaming and various other loud noises as those horizontal suckers got crisped; plus big bright explosions – must’ve looked just fascinating to her. Axxter shook his head, grimacing at more than the burned smell rendered on his tongue. And then those fuckers – he meant the Dead Centers, even without the name forming inside his head – they looked out past the blown-open wall, out into the sky, and there’s some beautiful naked female apparition bobbing around out there, with her little smiling face looking in all curious to see what was going on, and a great big butterfly sphere filled with light behind her . . . So they just naturally lift their flame-spitting weapons at her – or just
look
at her with their dead eyes, all flint and steel. And just zap her out of the sky.
Bad
fuckers. An angel doesn’t stand a chance in this bad world.
“That’s what you get for being curious, sweetheart.” Axxter looked down at the angel’s sleeping face, turned to one side against the table, but there was no sign that she’d heard. It’s what I’ll probably get someday, too; remembering his little stroll around the ruin zone, the burn stench in his nostrils and the empty gazes of the horizontal dead on his back.
She was still breathing; inside the curtained-off space he could even hear the slight motion of air. Just getting her off the wall and into a secure space had postponed her death. Axxter scratched the side of his face, wondering what to do next. Probably won’t even die from the torn-open membrane, he supposed. But just kinda . . .
starve
to death, go into a moping decline or something, from not being able to float around in the air and do whatever it is angels do. Like a wing-clipped bird, a big one; what he imagined an eagle would be like. Have to hand-feed them for the rest of their lives, which wouldn’t be long, but would be sad. Shit; kinder to just kill her – he could dig enough anaesthetic dermal patches out of the med kit to do the job. Just slather them on the naked body and watch the heartbeat flutter and go still, under the massed chemical weight.
Or – the mercenary consideration; always that – I could just call up ol’ Ask & Receive. Tell them what I have here on the table; they’d have a pickup squad zooming down the wall in seconds, right to this spot. Take her right back to their toplevel research labs, and –
He shook his head. You get to go to hell – someplace down below the clouds, he imagined – for something like that. Being responsible for angel dissection. If there isn’t a hell, then there should be one, just for cases like that.
For a couple of minutes he stood by the table, gazing at the angel. Then he pushed through the curtains and clambered up the wall to where he’d left the Norton. He returned with his graffex gear. Setting it on the floor, he began pulling out the things he’d need.
† † †
He had strapped himself into the Norton’s sidecar, and even managed to fall asleep in that awkward position, legs angled out over the side. Not wanting to be there in the curtained-off work space when the angel awoke; there’d been enough bad shit happen to her, he’d figured, without her finding some gross, scary human being beside her.
An alarm beeped inside his ear, pulling him up from sleep. It took him a moment, blinking and running his tongue over sour-tasting teeth, before he realized what it was. “She’s up?” He had left a mike pinned to the curtains, set to detect any small sound.
I SUPPOSE. The letters moved across his gaze. EITHER THAT OR SOMETHING ELSE IN THERE.
Axxter climbed down to the platform. When he parted the curtains, he saw the angel sitting on the edge of the table, feet dangling. Her dark hair fell across her shoulders, one ribbon of it curling over her breast.
She looked straight at him. “Hello.” No fear in her face or voice.
He stood on the platform’s edge, curtain in each hand. “Uh –” His own voice had gotten lost for a moment. “Hello.”
A smile, radiant and heartbreaking. “Lahft’s my name. Angel’s my game.”
That threw him. Physically: he held tighter to the curtains to keep from swaying back from the platform’s edge. Who knew they could speak at all? Let alone anything you could understand. “Loft,” he repeated, unable to think of anything else.
She shook her head, the dark hair lifting from her shoulders. “Lahft. Lah-ah-ah-
ahft
.” Again the smile, waiting.
A fierce, dizzy joy swept across him, which he had to marvel at even as it passed. This was why he’d left the horizontal, gone vertical, stared down the wall and felt his guts rise in his throat, just to wake up and see that . . . all of that. To be standing, gazing at this female thing. But not that; that wasn’t it at all. An
angel
smiling at him. For her to be there, to be here . . . in a little space, nothing but the curtains and the echoing platform between him and the great empty air. If it only happened once, that was enough. Then it would always be happening, somewhere. Out here.
“Laaahhft. How’s that – okay?”
She nodded, then laughed when he told her his name. “Ny.” She looked upward, considering the sound. “Nigh, near, nearest. No such word as
nearer
. In a way.”
Her voice so bright, madly cheerful – considering what had happened to her, the condition he’d found her in – he wondered how much she actually understood of what she said, and how much was just parrot tape loops cycling around. Where’d she get it from, then? Eavesdropping – on whom? He let it slide, one of life’s mysteries. He stepped farther onto the platform, letting the curtains fall behind him; something small and metallic clattered away from the edge of his shoe. Looking down, he saw one of the scalpels he’d used to cut away the burnt edges of the angel’s flight membrane. All of the med kit’s implements were on the platform, arranged in lines and starbursts; the empty kit lay tucked under the table. She’d done all that, carefully and silently, before some small inadvertent noise had triggered the alarm mike.
He stepped over the surgical tools and stood by the table. The black leather satchel with his graffex gear inside was stowed beneath; with a real freelancer’s instinctive caution about the tools of his trade, he had put them out of harm’s reach.
The angel didn’t look at him, but went on gazing at the spoked curtains above her head. “The sky’s so small here.” She sounded puzzled.
“Oh – hang on.” He reached over to the nearest panel of fabric, unsnapped the fastener, and drew the curtain rattling to one side. The angel watched his actions with interest and gave a little delighted laugh when the open air was revealed.
“There you go.” Axxter grasped the edge of the table, bracing himself against the wind that now coursed over the platform. She looked at him, the same sweet smile indicating her incomprehension. You beautiful idiot; a sad twinge inside himself. How would she know anything, about anything at all? “You see – that wasn’t the sky. You were inside. You understand? Before I pulled the curtain back.”
“Before . .” Lahft’s gaze wandered from his face. “Beee . . . fore.” Looking placidly at the sky. “Forbear. Four bears.”
Christ; maybe Guyer’s spoiled all this for me. The angel sat on the edge of the table, her hands folded in her lap, the wind tracing her hair over her bare shoulders. Axxter watched her with diminishing lust. Impossible to keep up a carnal interest in anyone – anything – this dim. Like raping a puppy. Enough bad payback there to last you for the rest of your life.
Or – he considered another possibility – maybe she’s smarter than you think. In the kinds of things that angels would know. And with just . . . a different sense of time. If any at all – he wondered how much it would be logical for angels to know about something like that.
She had caught sight of something over her shoulder and had twisted her slender neck to look at it. The flight membrane – whole and spheroid again, not the tattered rag Axxter had found her wrapped in – reflected her distorted face in the shiny metallic surface.
“Uh – I did that.” Axxter didn’t know if he was apologizing or bragging. “I had to, ’cause it was such a mess. That’s why it’s different now.”
“Different?”
No
different
without
before
. “This –” He reached above her shoulder and poked the flight membrane, his fingertip dimpling the biofoil he had implanted to replace the burnt-away tissue. “This isn’t the way it was . . .” He stopped, seeing her smiling, uncomprehending gaze.
Was;
what good did that do? Like teaching higher mathematics to a cat. He didn’t even know why he was trying to explain.
He tried again. “Look.” She obediently followed his lifted finger. “The sky – right?” A nod from her. She understands
something
, at least. “Okay, that’s the way it is
now
.” He reached for the curtain edge and drew it around, shutting off the view beyond the platform, enclosing them again in the protected space. The sunlight filtered dimly through the curtain fabric. “Now it’s all small again. Like it
was
.” The last word desperate; I’m blowing it, he thought. Not even getting close. He flicked the curtain partway open again, revealing an angled wedge of the sky. “Is.” Closed again, in half-light. “Was.” Shaking his head, a sigh; forget it. Somebody, a professional semanticist maybe, might be able to bridge this gap; he couldn’t.
She still smiled at him, Which only made him feel more frustrated. An amusing thing, in a world full of amusing things. A wonder that she hadn’t just broken out laughing at him. Maybe that’s the benefit of being an angel; all the sad things are in that other world, of
before
and
was
. She doesn’t have to worry about any of that. If she worries about anything at all.
He wondered how much she remembered of whatever had happened to her.
Remembered
– that was a laugh. Probably dropped like a stone through the clouds below, to whatever oblivion lay beneath them. He bent down and picked up a small battery torch from the tools scattered across the platform floor. The glowing ball of flame danced in her eyes as he held the torch in front of her and flicked it on. For a moment, Lahft smiled at the tiny spark – pretty light – then her face clouded. She drew back, hands pushing against the edge of the table.
Well, well. There’s something there after all – maybe right down in the cells, the organism’s own deep memory. Axxter snapped the flame off – the distress in the angel’s eyes made it seem uncomfortably like torture – and dropped the torch.
“Not . . . here.” She sounded almost thoughtful, gazing away from him, tilting her head to look up the expanse of wall above the platform. “A bright place. Like that.” She pointed to where the torch’s flame had been.
No time, no difference between
then
and
now
. . . She thinks it’s still happening somewhere. Always happening, without end, in that bright place. “Up there?” He indicated the wall sector from which he himself had been traveling.
“Yes.” Lahft nodded, the smile gone for a moment, brow creased with an effort at comprehension. “All bright . . . and
loud
.”
“Loud?”
Her head tilted back again, this time with her eyes closed. She screamed.
It sounded as if every death in the ruin zone, all the charred faces gaping against the blackened walls, had been taped, dubbed into one stack, and dubbed into a loop feeding back into itself. If God were a parrot . . . the hell of his lungs, tongue, broken spine. The platform’s curtains flapped as if they could rub into sympathetic fire.
The scream battered against Axxter. It didn’t stop; the cords in the angel’s neck tightened, vibrating. He stepped backward, the sonic wave pushing him away. His foot caught the torch he’d discarded, and he went down, landing on hip and elbow. He scrabbled to get away from the scream at his back, and found himself gazing over the platform’s edge. Beyond his fingertips clenching into space, he saw the clouds massing against the building’s curve. Even falling, hands outstretched, he wouldn’t escape the noise raking up his spine.
It stopped. Just the wind sliding past his ears; Axxter rolled onto his side and looked back at the angel on the table. The smile returned to her face, but different. A tilt of her brows, the gaze no longer wide-open.
Not as dumb as you think, turkey
. Unsteady, he managed to get onto his knees, then his feet. Two parallel lines of medical tools marked his flight across the platform.
“You saw it, then? What happened?” Axxter stood beside the table again. She must’ve seen it just hanging out there in the air, the way angels do, when the Dead Centers blew open the wall, in the process of reaming out the foolish horizontal collaborators. Saw it, and watched: more amusing things, doing amusing things. Bright, fiery light and an interesting noise. Curiosity had its inevitable price, though.
She paid no attention to him. Looking over her shoulder, she was again absorbed in examining the mended flight membrane. The silvery biofoil reflected her intent expression.
All right, toots. He reached under the table, past the dangling bare legs, and fetched out his graffex gear. Now a little surprise for
you
.